Tech

COLUMBIA, Mo.-- One of the most devastating images from 2015 shows a 3-year-old boy, Alan Kurdi, facedown and unmoving on a beach in Turkey. Alan had drowned during an attempt to escape Syria, and the image sparked outrage and concern worldwide over the refugee crisis in Europe. It also highlighted the power a single image can have.

Now, Keith Greenwood, an associate professor in the Missouri School of Journalism, has found that a majority of photos depicting the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis portrayed the refugees as victims. Greenwood said this finding has implications for how the public perceives migratory events, including current ones such as the influx of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. The study also underscores the responsibility of photojournalists to convey a broader story with their pictures.

"Typically, powerful or shocking photos of migrants get the greatest reaction," Greenwood said. "However, those potentially dark moments don't always capture the full scope of the event. Photojournalists and news organizations have a big opportunity to tell a greater story."

Greenwood and TJ Thomson, a Missouri School of Journalism alumnus, analyzed more than 800 photos from the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis that were submitted by photojournalists for the 2016 Picture of the Year International competition. They found that more than 600 of the photos depicted the migrants as victims dependent on foreign aid, including refuges being detained or waiting in a migrant camp. Only 186 of the photos showed the refugees with some amount of agency, such as refugees looking for food or bathing themselves. Out of the entire collection, only a single photo showed refugees in an educational setting.

Photographs are used by the public to make sense of news stories. If an individual only sees images of migrants clashing with police at a border, for example, they might be more inclined to think the situation more militarized than if they had seen photos of migrants peacefully waiting in line to go through a border checkpoint. However, Greenwood adds that individuals viewing images tend to accept or reject them based on their own personal belief system.

"Research shows that people view photos through their own frame of reference and judge them accordingly," Greenwood said. "For example, a person who believes migrants are a threat might find that a photo of a migrant throwing tear gas at a border officer enforces their opinion, but they might reject an image of a migrant shown in a more peaceful light as a one-time thing."

While photojournalists are often limited by their assignment, Greenwood recommends that news organizations take note of how their visual storytelling is framing a migration event and work to present the bigger picture through daily photographs made in the field.

"There needs to be a greater discussion on telling the broader story -- a migrant's story doesn't end once they cross the sea or make it through the border," Greenwood said. "If news organizations leave out what happens to migrants once they've settled in to a new place and are working to make a new life, they might be missing out on a huge opportunity."

"Framing the migration: A study of news photographs showing people fleeing war and persecution," was published in the International Communication Gazette. The coauthor, TJ Thomson, is an alumnus of the Missouri School of Journalism and currently a lecturer in digital journalism at Queensland University of Technology in Australia.

Researchers of Peter the Great St.Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU) are developing new materials for solid-state thin-film Li-ion batteries for micro and nanodevices. The first stage of the project was successfully completed at the laboratory "Functional Materials" of the Institute of Metallurgy, Mechanical Engineering, and Transport SPbPU. The project is supported by the Russian Science Foundation (RScF).

Part of the results obtained at the first stage of the project was published in the article "Atomic Layer Deposition of NiO to Produce Active Material for Thin-Film Lithium-Ion Batteries" in the journal Coatings, MDPI.

The authors suggested using a new pair of reagents to obtain the electrode materials based on nickel oxide. Researchers studied the fundamental processes taking place during the charge and discharge processes of thin-film material.

It should be noted that the lithium-ion batteries are used not only in phones and laptops but also in the whole class of micro and nanodevices such as wireless sensors, pacemakers and etc. These devices, usually, operate using thin-film current sources. The smaller the device, the thinner the power source is required. Therefore, the materials should have improved electrochemical characteristics to operate longer without additional charge.

"In the frames of the RScF project, we obtained an electrode material based on nickel oxide by atomic layer deposition (ALD) using new processes. We demonstrated its possible application in Li-ion batteries by studying its electrochemical features. In the future, we are planning to improve the materials of electrodes for thin-film batteries. It will bring us closer to a prototype of a solid-state thin-film Li-ion battery produced by ALD. I suppose that the positive results undoubtedly will be interesting for commercial application", says Maxim Maximov, leading researcher of the laboratory "Functional Materials" of the Institute of Metallurgy, Mechanical Engineering and Transport SPbPU.

Big food brands, such as Kellogg, Campbell, Mars Wrigley and General Mills, have started investing in their ingredients by helping farmers improve soil health and sustainability. Not only do these programs enable companies to reach their sustainability targets, they also help farmers cut costs, provide quality crops and improve stewardship of the land, according to an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society.

Agriculture sustainability programs include consultations with agronomists, on-farm data collection and education. These efforts are fairly new to the food industry, Senior Business Editor Melody Bomgardner writes. The nonprofit company Field to Market created the first commonly used tool for on-farm sustainability about 5 years ago. Currently, few farmers are aware of these new programs, according to a survey conducted by the Environmental Defense Fund. However, the programs are growing in popularity as food companies and farmers work together to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, water use and the overall environmental impact of farming, while also cutting farmers' costs and maintaining their stewardship of the land.

Solutions to improving soil health are unique to each farm, and although new tools are being developed, none can currently take a farm's data and provide specific solutions. However, farmers can take advantage of cost-sharing programs that allow them to install drip irrigation, try organic production or plant cover crops. They can select strategies to reduce the use of synthetic nitrogen, such as less tillage or a microbial soil enhancement product. The programs are focused on education and data gathering, but it is unclear if the initiatives will actually have an impact on sustainable farming, experts say.

A new Tel Aviv University study finds that prehistoric humans "recycled" discarded or broken flint tools 400,000 years ago to create small, sharp utensils with specific functions. These recycled tools were then used with great precision and accuracy to perform specific tasks involved in the processing of animal products and vegetal materials.

The site of Qesem Cave, located just outside Tel Aviv, was discovered during a road construction project in 2000. It has since offered up countless insights into life in the region hundreds of thousands of years ago.

In collaboration with Prof. Cristina Lemorini of Sapienza University of Rome, the research was led jointly by postdoctoral fellow Dr. Flavia Venditti in collaboration with Profs. Ran Barkai and Avi Gopher. All three are members of TAU's Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures. It was published on April 11 in the Journal of Human Evolution.

In recent years, archaeologists working in caves in Spain and North Africa and digs in Italy and Israel have unearthed evidence that prehistoric people recycled objects they used in daily life. Just as we recycle materials such as paper and plastic to manufacture new items today, early hominids collected discarded or broken tools made of flint to create new utensils for specific purposes hundreds of thousands of years ago.

"Recycling was a way of life for these people," Prof. Barkai says. "It has long been a part of human evolution and culture. Now, for the first time, we are discovering the specific uses of the recycled 'tool kit' at Qesem Cave."

Exceptional conditions in the cave allowed for the immaculate preservation of the materials, including micro residue on the surface of the flint tools.

"We used microscopic and chemical analyses to discover that these small and sharp recycled tools were specifically produced to process animal resources like meat, hide, fat and bones," Venditti explains. "We also found evidence of plant and tuber processing, which demonstrated that they were also part of the hominids' diet and subsistence strategies."

According to the study, signs of use were found on the outer edges of the tiny objects, indicating targeted cutting activities related to the consumption of food: butchery activities and tuber, hide and bone processing. The researchers used two different and independent spectroscopic chemical techniques: Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDX).

"The meticulous analysis we conducted allowed us to demonstrate that the small recycled flakes were used in tandem with other types of utensils. They therefore constituted a larger, more diversified tool kit in which each tool was designed for specific objectives," Venditti says.

She adds, "The research also demonstrates that the Qesem inhabitants practiced various activities in different parts of the cave: The fireplace and the area surrounding it were eventually a central area of activity devoted to the consumption of the hunted animal and collected vegetal resources, while the so-called 'shelf area' was used to process animal and vegetal materials to obtain different by-products."

"This research highlights two debated topics in the field of Paleolithic archaeology: the meaning of recycling and the functional role of small tools," Prof. Barkai observes. "The data from the unique, well-preserved and investigated Qesem Cave serve to enrich the discussion of these phenomena in the scientific community."

"Our data shows that lithic recycling at Qesem Cave was not occasional and not provoked by the scarcity of flint," Venditti concludes. "On the contrary, it was a conscious behavior which allowed early humans to quickly obtain tiny sharp tools to be used in tasks where precision and accuracy were essential."

The researchers are continuing to investigate prehistoric recycling by applying their analysis to other sites in Africa, Europe and Asia.

DNA assembled into nanostructures such as tubes and origami-inspired shapes could someday find applications ranging from DNA computers to nanomedicine. However, these intriguing structures don't persist long in biological environments because of enzymes called nucleases that degrade DNA. Now, researchers have designed DNA nanostructures that can heal themselves in serum. They report their results in ACS' journal Nano Letters.

Someday, doctors could introduce DNA nanostructures to the human body to diagnose diseases or deliver medications, among other applications. But first, they must find a way to protect or repair the molecules when nucleases attack. Researchers have developed several approaches to stabilize the structures in serum, such as chemically modifying or coating the DNA. However, making this stabilized DNA can be expensive and time-consuming, and the modifications could affect the nanostructures' biocompatibility or function. So, Yi Li and Rebecca Schulman wanted to develop a self-repair process that could substantially extend the lifetime of DNA nanostructures.

The researchers designed DNA nanotubes that self-assemble from smaller DNA "tiles." In serum at body temperature, the nanostructures degraded within only 24 hours. However, when the researchers added extra tiles to serum containing the nanotubes, the building blocks repaired damaged structures, extending their lifetimes to more than 96 hours. By labeling the original nanotubes and the extra tiles with differently colored fluorescent dyes, the team determined that the additional small DNA pieces repaired the degrading structures both by replacing damaged tiles and by joining to the nanotube ends. The researchers developed a computer model of the process that indicated DNA nanostructures could be maintained for months or longer using the self-healing method.

DALLAS, May 29, 2019 -- Drinking 32 ounces of an energy drink in a short timespan may increase blood pressure and the risk of electrical disturbances in the heart, which affect heart rhythm, according to a small study published in Journal of the American Heart Association, the Open Access Journal of the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association.

The study enrolled 34 healthy volunteers between the ages of 18 and 40 years. Participants were randomly assigned to drink 32 ounces of one of two commercially available caffeinated energy drinks or a placebo drink on three separate days. The drinks were consumed within a 60-minute period but no faster than one 16-ounce bottle in 30 minutes.

Researchers measured the electrical activity of the volunteers' hearts by electrocardiogram, which records the way a heart is beating. They also recorded participant's blood pressure. All measurements were taken at the study's start and every 30 minutes for 4 hours after drink consumption.

Both energy beverages tested contained 304 to 320 milligrams of caffeine per 32 fluid ounces. Caffeine at doses under 400 milligrams is not expected to induce any electrocardiographic changes. Other common ingredients in the energy drinks in the study included taurine (an amino acid), glucuronolactone (found in plants and connective tissues) and B-vitamins. The placebo drink contained carbonated water, lime juice and cherry flavoring.

In participants who consumed either type of energy drink, researchers found that the QT interval was 6 milliseconds or 7.7 milliseconds higher at 4 hours compared to placebo drinkers. The QT interval is a measurement of the time it takes ventricles in the heart (the lower chambers) to prepare to generate a beat again. If this time interval is either too short or too long, it can cause the heart to beat abnormally. The resulting arrhythmia can be life-threatening.

The results of the study confirm previous findings and suggest that the QT interval changes are generally sustained over the four-hour monitoring period rather than being a short-lasting effect after consuming 32-ounces of an energy drink.

Researchers also found a statistically significant 4 to 5 mm Hg increase in systolic and diastolic blood pressure in participants who consumed the energy drinks.

"We found an association between consuming energy drinks and changes in QT intervals and blood pressure that cannot be attributed to caffeine. We urgently need to investigate the particular ingredient or combination of ingredients in different types of energy drinks that might explain the findings seen in our clinical trial," said lead author Sachin A. Shah, Pharm.D., professor of pharmacy practice at University of the Pacific, Thomas J. Long School of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Stockton, California.

The study is the largest controlled study of the effects of energy drinks on the heart and blood pressure in young healthy volunteers. Estimates indicate that about 30% of teenagers between the ages of 12 through 17 years in the United States consume energy drinks on a regular basis, which have been linked to increased emergency room visits and death.

"Energy drinks are readily accessible and commonly consumed by a large number of teens and young adults, including college students. Understanding how these drinks affect the heart is extremely important," said study co-author Kate O'Dell, Pharm.D., professor of pharmacy and director of experiential programs at the Thomas J. Long School of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.

Among the study's limitations, it was designed to assess the effects of short-term consumption of an energy drink and does not provide insight into long-term effects nor the effects of routine energy drink consumption. Additionally, energy drink consumption was evaluated alone, and it is not uncommon for energy drinks to be consumed in combination with other substances such as alcohol. Finally, the study included only healthy individuals between the ages of 18 to 40 years and the results may be different in other populations.

"The public should be aware of the impact of energy drinks on their body especially if they have other underlying health conditions," Shah said. "Healthcare professionals should advise certain patient populations, for example, people with underlying congenital or acquired long QT syndrome or high blood pressure, to limit or monitor their consumption."

Kyoto, Japan -- Why do we fish?

At some point eons ago, our primarily fruit-eating ancestors put their hands in the water to catch and eat aquatic life, inadvertently supplementing their diet with nutrients that initiated a brain development process that eventually led to us. But how did this begin?

Now, according to a research team from Kyoto University, one potential clue may have surfaced thanks to observations of our closest genetic relatives: chimpanzees. The scientists report the first ever evidence of wild chimps habitually catching and consuming freshwater crabs.

Writing in the Journal of Human Evolution, the team describes year-round, fresh water crab-fishing behavior -- primarily among female and infant chimpanzees -- living in the rainforest of the Nimba Mountains in Guinea, West Africa.

"The aquatic fauna our ancestors consumed likely provided essential long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, required for optimal brain growth and function," explains first author Kathelijne Koops from the University of Zurich and Kyoto University's Leading Graduate Program in Primatology and Wildlife Science.

"Further, our findings suggest that aquatic fauna may have been a regular part of hominins' diets and not just a seasonal fallback food."

The study began in 2012 when the researchers first observed the chimpanzees fishing for crabs. For two years, they documented the demographics and behavior of these chimps, while also analyzing and comparing the nutritional value of the crabs to other foods in the chimpanzees' diet.

Crabbing, they learned, not only took place year-round -- without regard to season or fruit availability -- but intriguingly was negatively correlated with the chimps' consumption of ants, another diet staple. Mature males were the least likely to consume aquatic fauna.

"Energy and sodium levels in large crabs are comparative with ants," explains Koops, "leading us to hypothesize that crabs may be an important year-round source of protein and salts for females -- especially when pregnant or nursing -- and for growing juveniles."

The study further sheds light on our own evolution, by showing that fishing behaviors may not be restricted by habitat as initially assumed.

"This isn't the first case of non-human primates eating crabs," points out senior co-author Tetsuro Matsuzawa, "but it is the first evidence of apes other than humans doing so. Notably, previous observations were from monkey species in locations consistent with aquatic faunivory -- lakes, rivers, or coastlines -- and not in closed rainforest."

"It's exciting to see a behavior like this that allows us to improve our understanding of what drove our ancestors to diversify their diet."

Cancer researchers have discovered surprising new functions for a protein called MYC, a powerful oncogene that is estimated to drive the development of almost half a million new cancer cases in the US every year. The study, which will be published May 29 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, shows that MYC affects the efficiency and quality of protein production in lymphoma cells, fueling their rapid growth and altering their susceptibility to immunotherapy.

MYC drives the development of a wide range of cancers by enhancing the growth and proliferation of tumor cells. This is mainly due to MYC’s function as a transcription factor controlling the production of protein-encoding messenger RNAs (mRNAs) from thousands of different genes within the cell. However, some evidence suggests that MYC might also control the subsequent “translation” of these mRNAs into proteins, a process carried out by complex cellular machines known as ribosomes.

A group of researchers led by Hans-Guido Wendel at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Zhengqing Ouyang at The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine, and Gunnar Rätsch at the ETH Zürich, analyzed the types of mRNA translated by ribosomes in lymphoma cells containing either low or high levels of MYC. The researchers determined that high levels of MYC stimulate the translation of a specific set of mRNAs, many of which encode components of the respiratory complexes that allow the cell’s mitochondria to produce energy.

The research team found that, in the absence of MYC, the proteins SRSF1 and RBM42 can bind to these mRNAs and prevent them from being translated by ribosomes. When MYC levels are high, however, SRSF1 and RBM42 no longer bind to the mRNAs, and they are free to be translated into respiratory complex proteins. MYC therefore promotes the generation of energy that can fuel the lymphoma cells’ rapid growth and proliferation.

The researchers also discovered that MYC affects how much of an mRNA that ribosomes translate, resulting in the production of longer or shorter versions of proteins. For example, lymphoma cells containing low levels of MYC produce a truncated version of the protein CD19 that, unlike full-length CD19, is no longer exposed on the surface of the cancer cell.

This is important because lymphoma can be treated using CAR-T immune cells that have been genetically engineered to recognize and kill CD19-expressing cancer cells. Loss of surface CD19 is associated with resistance to CAR-T cell therapy, but how lymphoma cells reduce surface CD19 levels is unclear. The researchers found that CAR-T cells were less able to recognize and kill lymphoma cells that lacked surface CD19 because they expressed low levels of MYC.

“Altogether, our study reveals that MYC can affect the production of key metabolic enzymes and immune receptors in lymphoma cells by regulating the efficiency of mRNA translation and the integrity of protein synthesis,” says Hans-Guido Wendel. The researchers now plan to investigate how MYC regulates these different aspects of protein production in cancer cells.

With a wide range of healthcare, energy and military applications, stretchable electronics are revered for their ability to be compressed, twisted and conformed to uneven surfaces without losing functionality.

By using the elasticity of polymers such as silicone, these emerging technologies are made to move in ways that mimic skin.

This sheds light on why Smooth-On Ecoflex, a substance most commercially used to create molds and movie masks and prosthetics, is the most prominent silicone elastomer (a rubber-like substance) found in research.

While handling a sample of the material, Dr. Matt Pharr, assistant professor in the J. Mike Walker '66 Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University, and graduate student Seunghyun Lee, recently discovered a new type of fracture.

"I have done some work in the area of stretchable electronics, so I have a lot of materials from when I was a postdoc. We had to store samples in our office and, likewise, I had some here because we were going to use them in a project that we ended up not doing. I'm a nervous fidgeter and while I was playing with it, I noticed something weird," said Pharr.

This oddity is what Pharr and Lee refer to in their recent publication "Sideways and Stable Crack Propagation in a Silicone Elastomer" as sideways cracking. This phenomenon is when a fracture branches from a crack tip and extends perpendicular to the original tear.

Their findings not only provide a fresh, new perspective on the formation of factures and how to increase stretchability in elastomers, but also lay the foundation for more tear- and fracture-resistant materials.

"Initially this material is isotopic, meaning it has the same properties in all directions. But once you start to stretch it, you cause some microstructural changes in the material that makes it anisotropic -- different properties in all different directions," said Pharr. "Usually, when people think about fracture of a given material, they're not thinking about fracture resistance being different based on direction."

This conceptualization, however, is critical to innovation and advancement in stretchable electronics.

As Pharr explained, upon loading, polymers with incisions tend to be ripped apart from one end to another. However, materials that exhibit sideways cracking stop the fracture from deepening. Instead, the incision simply expands alongside the rest of the elastomer and eventually, once stretched enough, looks like nothing more than a small dent in the surface of the material -- negating further threat from the original crack.

This allows the unharmed section of an elastomer to retain its load-bearing and functional properties, all while increasing stretchability.

Going forward, by investigating how to reverse engineer microstructures that lead to sideways cracking, researchers can harness the benefits associated with it and develop application methods to materials that do not normally exhibit such fractures. This would lead to better fracture resistance in the very thin layers of elastomers used in stretchable electronics, as well as greater stretchability -- both of which are key to the advancement and future usability of such technologies.

"To me, this is scientifically intriguing," said Pharr. "It's not expected. And seeing something that I don't expect always sparks curiosity. (The material) is literally sitting in a drawer in my desk and this was all inspired by playing around."

Two large European studies published by The BMJ today find positive associations between consumption of highly processed ("ultra-processed") foods and risk of cardiovascular disease and death.

The researchers say further work is needed to better understand these effects, and a direct (causal) link remains to be established, but they call for policies that promote consumption of fresh or minimally processed foods over highly processed foods.

Ultra-processed foods include packaged baked goods and snacks, fizzy drinks, sugary cereals, ready meals containing food additives, dehydrated vegetable soups, and reconstituted meat and fish products - often containing high levels of added sugar, fat, and/or salt, but lacking in vitamins and fibre. They are thought to account for around 25-60% of daily energy intake in many countries.

Previous studies have linked ultra-processed foods to higher risks of obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and some cancers, but firm evidence is still scarce.

In the first study, researchers based in France and Brazil assessed potential associations between ultra-processed foods and risk of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease (conditions affecting blood supply to the heart and brain).

Their findings are based on 105,159 French adults (21% men; 79% women) with an average age of 43 years who completed an average of six 24-hour dietary questionnaires to measure usual intake of 3,300 different food items, as part of the NutriNet-Santé study.

Foods were grouped according to degree of processing and rates of disease were measured over a maximum follow-up of 10 years (2009-2018).

Results showed that an absolute 10% increase in the proportion of ultra-processed food in the diet was associated with significantly higher rates of overall cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, and cerebrovascular disease (increase of 12%, 13%, and 11% respectively).

In contrast, the researchers found a significant association between unprocessed or minimally processed foods and lower risks of all reported diseases.

In the second study, researchers based in Spain evaluated possible associations between ultra-processed food intake and risk of death from any cause ("all cause mortality").

Their findings are based on 19,899 Spanish university graduates (7,786 men; 12,113 women) with an average age of 38 years who completed a 136-item dietary questionnaire as part of the Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra (SUN) study.

Again, foods were grouped according to degree of processing and deaths were measured over an average of 10 years.

Results showed that higher consumption of ultra-processed foods (more than 4 servings per day) was associated with a 62% increased risk of all cause mortality compared with lower consumption (less than 2 servings per day). For each additional daily serving of ultra-processed food, mortality risk relatively increased by 18% (a dose-response effect).

Both studies are observational so can't establish causality, and there's a possibility that some of the observed risks may be due to unmeasured confounding factors.

Nevertheless, both studies took account of well known lifestyle risk factors and markers of dietary quality, and the findingsback up other research linking highly processed food with poor health.

As such, both research teams say policies that limit the proportion of ultra-processed foods in the diet and promote consumption of unprocessed or minimally processed foods are needed to improve global public health.

This view is supported by Australian researchers in a linked editorial, who say the dietary advice is relatively straightforward: eat less ultra-processed food and more unprocessed or minimally processed food.

They say future research should explore associations between ultra-processed food and health harms in different populations around the world, and examine how harm occurs (for example by changing the gut microbiome in ways that could disturb energy balance).

In the meantime, policy makers "should shift their priorities away from food reformulation - which risks positioning ultra-processed food as a solution to dietary problems - towards a greater emphasis on promoting the availability, affordability, and accessibility of unprocessed or minimally processed foods," they conclude.

Computers and similar electronic devices have gotten faster and smaller over the decades as computer-chip makers have learned how to shrink individual transistors, the tiny electrical switches that convey digital information.

Scientists' pursuit of the smallest possible transistor has allowed more of them to be packed onto each chip. But that race to the bottom is almost over: Researchers are fast approaching the physical minimum for transistor size, with recent models down to about 10 nanometers -- or just 30 atoms -- wide.

"The processing power of electronic devices comes from the hundreds of millions, or billions, of transistors that are interconnected on a single computer chip," said Dr. Kyeongjae Cho, professor of materials science and engineering at The University of Texas at Dallas. "But we are rapidly approaching the lower limits of scale."

To extend the quest for faster processing speed, the microelectronics industry is looking for alternative technologies. Cho's research, published online April 30 in the journal Nature Communications, might offer a solution by expanding the vocabulary of the transistor.

Conventional transistors can convey just two values of information: As a switch, a transistor is either on or off, which translates into the 1s and 0s of binary language.

One way to increase processing capacity without adding more transistors would be to increase how much information each transistor conveys by introducing intermediate states between the on and off states of binary devices. A so-called multi-value logic transistor based on this principle would allow more operations and a larger amount of information to be processed in a single device.

"The concept of multi-value logic transistors is not new, and there have been many attempts to make such devices," Cho said. "We have done it."

Through theory, design and simulations, Cho's group at UT Dallas developed the fundamental physics of a multi-value logic transistor based on zinc oxide. Their collaborators in South Korea successfully fabricated and evaluated the performance of a prototype device.

Cho's device is capable of two electronically stable and reliable intermediate states between 0 and 1, boosting the number of logic values per transistor from two to three or four.

Cho said the new research is significant not only because the technology is compatible with existing computer-chip configurations, but also because it could bridge a gap between today's computers and quantum computers, the potential next landmark in computing power.

While a conventional computer uses the precise values of 1s and 0s to make calculations, the fundamental logic units of a quantum computer are more fluid, with values that can exist as a combination of 1s and 0s at the same time or anywhere in between. Although they have yet to be realized commercially, large-scale quantum computers are theorized to be able to store more information and solve certain problems much faster than current computers.

"A device incorporating multi-level logic would be faster than a conventional computer because it would operate with more than just binary logic units. With quantum units, you have continuous values," Cho said.

"The transistor is a very mature technology, and quantum computers are nowhere close to being commercialized," he continued. "There is a huge gap. So how do we move from one to the other? We need some kind of evolutionary pathway, a bridging technology between binary and infinite degrees of freedom. Our work is still based on existing device technology, so it is not as revolutionary as quantum computing, but it is evolving toward that direction."

The technology Cho and his colleagues developed uses a novel configuration of two forms of zinc oxide combined to form a composite nanolayer, which is then incorporated with layers of other materials in a superlattice.

The researchers discovered they could achieve the physics needed for multi-value logic by embedding zinc oxide crystals, called quantum dots, into amorphous zinc oxide. The atoms comprising an amorphous solid are not as rigidly ordered as they are in crystalline solids.

"By engineering this material, we found that we could create a new electronic structure that enabled this multi-level logic behavior," said Cho, who has applied for a patent. "Zinc oxide is a well-known material that tends to form both crystalline solids and amorphous solids, so it was an obvious choice to start with, but it may not be the best material. Our next step will look at how universal this behavior is among other materials as we try to optimize the technology.

"Moving forward, I also want to see how we might interface this technology with a quantum device."

For environmental monitoring, precision agriculture, infrastructure maintenance and certain security applications, slow and energy efficient can be better than fast and always needing a recharge. That's where "SlothBot" comes in.

Powered by a pair of photovoltaic panels and designed to linger in the forest canopy continuously for months, SlothBot moves only when it must to measure environmental changes - such as weather and chemical factors in the environment - that can be observed only with a long-term presence. The proof-of-concept hyper-efficient robot, described May 21 at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in Montreal, may soon be hanging out among treetop cables in the Atlanta Botanical Garden.

"In robotics, it seems we are always pushing for faster, more agile and more extreme robots," said Magnus Egerstedt, the Steve W. Chaddick School Chair of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and principal investigator for Slothbot. "But there are many applications where there is no need to be fast. You just have to be out there persistently over long periods of time, observing what's going on."

Based on what Egerstedt called the "theory of slowness," Graduate Research Assistant Gennaro Notomista designed SlothBot together with his colleague, Yousef Emam, using 3D-printed parts for the gearing and wire-switching mechanisms needed to crawl through a network of wires in the trees. The greatest challenge for a wire-crawling robot is switching from one cable to another without falling, Notomista said.

"The challenge is smoothly holding onto one wire while grabbing another," he said. "It's a tricky maneuver and you have to do it right to provide a fail-safe transition. Making sure the switches work well over long periods of time is really the biggest challenge."

Mechanically, SlothBot consists of two bodies connected by an actuated hinge. Each body houses a driving motor connected to a rim on which a tire is mounted. The use of wheels for locomotion is simple, energy efficient and safer than other types of wire-based locomotion, the researchers say.

SlothBot has so far operated in a network of cables on the Georgia Tech campus. Next, a new 3D-printed shell - that makes the robot look more like a sloth - will protect the motors, gears, actuators, cameras, computer and other components from the rain and wind. That will set the stage for longer-term studies in the tree canopy at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, where Egerstedt hopes visitors will see a SlothBot monitoring conditions as early as this fall.

The name SlothBot is not a coincidence. Real-life sloths are small mammals that live in jungle canopies of South and Central America. Making their living by eating tree leaves, the animals can survive on the daily caloric equivalent of a small potato. With their slow metabolism, sloths rest as much 22 hours a day and seldom descend from the trees where they can spend their entire lives.

"The life of a sloth is pretty slow-moving and there's not a lot of excitement on a day-to-day level," said Jonathan Pauli, an associate professor in the Department of Forest & Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has consulted with the Georgia Tech team on the project. "The nice thing about a very slow life history is that you don't really need a lot of energy input. You can have a long duration and persistence in a limited area with very little energy inputs over a long period of time."

That's exactly what the researchers expect from SlothBot, whose development has been funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research.

"There is a lot we don't know about what actually happens under dense tree-covered areas," Egerstedt said. "Most of the time SlothBot will be just hanging out there, and every now and then it will move into a sunny spot to recharge the battery."

The researchers also hope to test SlothBot in a cacao plantation in Costa Rica that is already home to real sloths. "The cables used to move cacao have become a sloth superhighway because the animals find them useful to move around," Egerstedt said. "If all goes well, we will deploy SlothBots along the cables to monitor the sloths."

Egerstedt is known for algorithms that drive swarms of small wheeled or flying robots. But during a visit to Costa Rica, he became interested in sloths and began developing what he calls "a theory of slowness" together with Professor Ron Arkin in Georgia Tech's School of Interactive Computing. The theory leverages the benefits of energy efficiency.

"If you are doing things like environmental monitoring, you want to be out in the forest for months," Egerstedt said. "That changes the way you think about control systems at a high level."

Flying robots are already used for environmental monitoring, but their high energy needs mean they cannot linger for long. Wheeled robots can get by with less energy, but they can get stuck in mud or be hampered by tree roots, and cannot get a big picture view from the ground.

"The thing that costs energy more than anything else is movement," Egerstedt said. "Moving is much more expensive than sensing or thinking. For environmental robots, you should only move when you absolutely have to. We had to think about what that would be like."

For Pauli, who studies a variety of wildlife, working with Egerstedt to help SlothBot come to life has been gratifying.

"It is great to see a robot inspired by the biology of sloths," he said. "It has been fun to share how sloths and other organisms that live in these ecosystems for long periods of time live their lives. It will be interesting to see robots mirroring what we see in natural ecological communities."

A Neptunian planet has been found in what should be a 'Neptunian Desert' by telescopes run by the University of Warwick in an international collaboration of astronomers.

NGTS-4b is 20% smaller than Neptune, about 3 times the size of Earth, and has been nicknamed the 'Forbidden' planet by researchers

Discovered using the state-of-the-art Next-Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) observing facility, designed to search for transiting planets on bright stars, but NGTS-4b is so small other ground surveys wouldn't have spotted it.

It's hotter than Mercury at 1,000 degrees Celsius

An exoplanet smaller than Neptune with its own atmosphere has been discovered in the Neptunian Desert, by an international collaboration of astronomers, with the University of Warwick taking a leading role.

New research, led by Dr Richard West including Professor Peter Wheatley, Dr Daniel Bayliss and Dr James McCormac from the Astronomy and Astrophysics Group at the University of Warwick, has identified a rogue planet.

NGTS is situated at the European Southern Observatory's Paranal Observatory in the heart of the Atacama Desert, Chile. It is a collaboration between UK Universities Warwick, Leicester, Cambridge, and Queen's University Belfast, together with Observatoire de Genève, DLR Berlin and Universidad de Chile.

NGTS-4b, also nick-named 'The Forbidden Planet' by researchers, is a planet smaller than Neptune but three times the size of Earth.

It has a mass of 20 Earth masses, and a radius 20% smaller than Neptune, and is 1000 degrees Celsius. It orbits around the star in only 1.3 days - the equivalent of Earth's orbit around the sun of one year.

It is the first exoplanet of its kind to have been found in the Neptunian Desert.

The Neptunian Desert is the region close to stars where no Neptune-sized planets are found. This area receives strong irradiation from the star, meaning the planets do not retain their gaseous atmosphere as they evaporate leaving just a rocky core. However NGTS-4b still has its atmosphere of gas.

When looking for new planets astronomers look for a dip in the light of a star - this the planet orbiting it and blocking the light. Usually only dips of 1% and more are picked up by ground-based searches, but the NGTS telescopes can pick up a dip of just 0.2%

Researchers believe the planet may have moved into the Neptunian Desert recently, in the last one million years, or it was very big and the atmosphere is still evaporating.

Dr Richard West, from the Department of Physics at the University of Warwick comments:

"This planet must be tough - it is right in the zone where we expected Neptune-sized planets could not survive. It is truly remarkable that we found a transiting planet via a star dimming by less than 0.2% - this has never been done before by telescopes on the ground, and it was great to find after working on this project for a year.

"We are now scouring out data to see if we can see any more planets in the Neptune Desert - perhaps the desert is greener than was once thought."

An analysis of over 3000 patients with cancer of the oesophagus and stomach suggests female patients are more likely to survive longer than male patients, but experience more nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea during therapy.

Oncologists from The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust who led the research, in collaboration with the UK Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Unit (MRC CTU) at University College London, say the interesting findings could potentially help to tailor the management of patients and also highlight those more at risk from specific side effects.

Data from the study will be presented in a poster session at this weekend's American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting in Chicago, where it will also be awarded a Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO Merit Award. The award recognises organisations/individuals who are making great contributions to advancing cancer research.

Researchers conducted an analysis on data taken from four previously published large randomised trials conducted primarily in the UK.

Patients in the trials had been allocated to receive chemotherapy before undergoing surgery to remove the tumours.

In the analysis of 3265 patients - 2668 male patients and 597 female - researchers found female patients were significantly more likely to experience nausea (10% versus 5%), vomiting (10% versus 4%) and diarrhoea (9% versus 4%). Female patients were also significantly more likely to live longer than males following treatment for their cancer, with researchers finding an average of five months additional survival for women. The researchers also looked to see whether there were any differences dependent on age. They found that whilst older patients (70 years or more) experienced significantly more neutropenia - low white blood cells - whilst receiving chemotherapy, there were otherwise no significant differences in cancer-related survival when compared with the younger patients (aged below 70).

Lead author Dr Avani Athauda, Clinical Research Fellow at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and recipient of the Merit Award, said: "We tend to use a standard treatment approach for managing oesophageal and stomach cancers. What this research suggests is that there are significant differences between male and female patients not only in how they react to chemotherapy but also how long they survive following treatment for their cancer. For female patients, it may be worthwhile providing additional awareness and counselling for gastrointestinal side effects when prescribing chemotherapy."

"We already know that there are vast differences in the biology of these cancers between individual patients and we plan to further investigate at a genetic level why there might be such differences in how patients benefit from chemotherapy with varying survival. This may help to explain the differences we have observed between male and female patients undergoing the same treatments."

Senior author Professor David Cunningham OBE, Consultant Medical Oncologist at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust said: "This is a significant finding based on a large scale data set, and furthers our understanding about two types of cancer that affect almost 16,000 people each year in the UK alone."

"The complexity of cancer is a constant challenge to developing effective treatments, with hundreds of different types affecting patients in different ways. At The Royal Marsden we are focused on developing smarter, kinder and more personalised treatments."

Researchers are following on from this study by looking at tumour samples from patients enrolled into the trials to identify, at a molecular level, markers that may help to predict which patients do well and which don't.

Research has documented the widespread availability of graphic images of self-harm, such as cuttings, on the photo-sharing platform Instagram. After a British father said his 14-year-old daughter had viewed such explicit images on Instagram prior to her suicide, the platform announced that it would no longer allow such graphic images to appear.

But little is known about how often such graphic images reach Instagram's users and whether they have an effect on viewers.

Now, a new study by researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania and two European institutions is the first to investigate the relationship between exposure to self-harm on Instagram and subsequent self-harm and suicidality-related outcomes in young adults.

The research, published in the journal New Media & Society, analyzes data from an online survey of young adults conducted at two points a month apart, in May and June 2018, prior to Instagram's announcement that it would seek to reduce images of graphic self-harm. The two-wave survey was completed by 729 U.S. adults ages 18 to 29. Over 80 percent were women.

The researchers found:

Exposure: More than 4 in 10 (43 percent) of the people surveyed had seen a post of self-harm on Instagram at least once, and more than half of those had seen more than one;

Accidental exposure: Most of those (80 percent) exposed to the self-harm posts said they encountered those posts by accident;

Emotional distress: More than half (59 percent) of those exposed to the self-harm content reported being emotionally disturbed by it;

Presumed copycat influence: Surprisingly, nearly a third (32 percent) of those exposed to self-harm posts on Instagram said at the first interview that they had performed the same (or very similar) self-harming behavior as a consequence of seeing the content.

Importantly, the researchers found that people who reported having seen self-harm images on Instagram at the first interview were more likely than those who didn't to report their own self-harm at the second interview. The study also found that exposure to self-harm on Instagram at the first interview predicted higher levels of suicidal ideation and risk for suicide at the second interview. The analysis controlled for prior reports of self-harm.

"Media researchers, suicide experts, and parents have all expressed concern in the past about this explicit content on Instagram," said the lead author, Florian Arendt, a health communication professor at the University of Vienna. "Our results provide evidence that this concern is justified."

"The findings suggest that whether the Instagram posts instigate self-harm on their own or not, they do reach vulnerable young people and may play a role in encouraging similar behavior in those who are exposed to them," said the study's U.S. author, Dan Romer, research director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC).

Instagram and self-harm images

Instagram has more than 1 billion monthly users and over 500 million daily active users, and is one of the most popular social networking platforms among young people. It also has been a publicly available, unrivaled source for regularly uploaded explicit and graphic self-harm depictions. The most common were of mild or moderate injuries, but the depictions also included bleeding flesh wounds caused by cuttings on extremities, the researchers said.

Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among 15- to 29-year olds. While deliberate self-harm "tends to be repetitive and largely non-suicidal," the researchers said, "it increases the risk of future suicide."

For this analysis, the researchers conducted surveys with young adults who were recruited from internet gaming sites. The researchers cautioned that the nonrepresentative sample may have been overly selective of people concerned with suicide, since that was disclosed as one purpose of the survey, and therefore the results can't be generalized to all young people. "Since the survey sample primarily included young women, we could not determine whether the effects were as strong for men," Romer said.

In February 2019, after the survey was completed, Instagram said it would remove graphic images of self-harm but permit nongraphic images such as healed scars. In a statement at the time, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said removing nongraphic images might inadvertently "stigmatize or isolate people who are in distress," and keeping them would let people share their stories and potentially help others.

Arendt said, "For Instagram to recognize the potential hazard of self-harm posts is a good and appropriate move. More research will be needed to determine whether self-harm posts that are less graphic also elicit harmful effects, or whether this content could even be helpful to those posting it or to others in distress. It is a complicated issue with no straightforward answer."

Efforts by Instagram to remove such images may be a challenge given their prevalence on the platform and the need for constant surveillance to detect and remove them. After Instagram's announcement, there were reports that such posts continued to appear on the platform.