Tech

Visible imagery from NASA's Terra satellite revealed 03W that formed near the island of Yap in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean.

Yap State is one of the four states of the Federated States of Micronesia. The other three states include Kosrae State, Pohnpei State, and Chuuk State.

A tropical storm watch remains in effect for Yap and Ngulu in Yap State and Kayangel in the Republic of Palau.

On March 15, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite provided a visible image of 03W in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean. The image showed an elongated storm.

At 2 p.m. EDT (1800 UTC) on March 15 (4 a.m. CHST on March 16 local time) the National Weather Service (NWS), Guam, noted that the center of Tropical Depression 03W was located near Latitude 7.9 degrees North and Longitude 140.9 degrees East. That's about 130 miles south of Fais and about 220 miles east-southeast of Yap. 03W is moving west at 8 mph and is expected to maintain this general course and speed through the weekend, passing close to Koror on Sunday. Maximum sustained winds remain at 30 mph.

NWS noted "damaging winds are currently not expected at yap. However...the strongest winds are on the north side and 03w is expected to pass south of Yap...meaning that Yap will receive these strong winds as the center of 03w passes by. Small craft should return to port and any small loose objects should be brought indoors."

03W is forecast to intensify slightly later today but keep below tropical storm force. 03W is forecast to weaken Sunday night, March 17. It is expected to dissipate near Mindanao, Philippines.

Visible imagery from NASA's Terra satellite showed Tropical Cyclone continued to move in a westerly direction after making landfall in Mozambique.

On March 15, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite provided a visible image of Idai. The imagery showed the storm centered over central Mozambique and its western quadrant had already spread into Zimbabwe. Even over land, the system still showed a ragged eye on microwave satellite imagery.

At 0300 UTC on March 15 (11 p.m. EDT on March 14), the Joint Typhoon Warning Center or JTWC issued the final warning on Idai. At the time, Idai was over land and had maximum sustained winds near 90 knots (103.6 mph/166.7 kph). It was centered near 19.6 degrees north latitude and 34.8 degrees east longitude.

Idai is expected to affect parts of the Mozambique provinces of Zambézia, Sofala, Manica, Tete and Inhambane. Moderate to strong rains accompanied by severe thunderstorms and gusty winds are expected in the north of the provinces of Niassa, Cabo Delgado and northern Tete.

JTWC has forecast Idai to rapidly weaken as it tracks across central Mozambique and into northern Zimbabwe.

For the latest advisory from the Mozambique National Meteorology Institute (INAM), visit: http://www.inam.gov.mz/index.php/pt/novo-sistema

By Rob Gutro
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Tiny, easy-to-produce particles, called quantum dots, may soon take the place of more expensive single crystal semiconductors in advanced electronics found in solar panels, camera sensors and medical imaging tools. Although quantum dots have begun to break into the consumer market - in the form of quantum dot TVs - they have been hampered by long-standing uncertainties about their quality. Now, a new measurement technique developed by researchers at Stanford University may finally dissolve those doubts.

"Traditional semiconductors are single crystals, grown in vacuum under special conditions. These we can make in large numbers, in flask, in a lab and we've shown they are as good as the best single crystals," said David Hanifi, graduate student in chemistry at Stanford and co-lead author of the paper written about this work, published March 15 in Science.

The researchers focused on how efficiently quantum dots reemit the light they absorb, one telltale measure of semiconductor quality. While previous attempts to figure out quantum dot efficiency hinted at high performance, this is the first measurement method to confidently show they could compete with single crystals.

This work is the result of a collaboration between the labs of Alberto Salleo, professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford, and Paul Alivisatos, the Samsung Distinguished Professor of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at the University of California, Berkeley, who is a pioneer in quantum dot research and senior author of the paper. Alivisatos emphasized how the measurement technique could lead to the development of new technologies and materials that require knowing the efficiency of our semiconductors to a painstaking degree.

"These materials are so efficient that existing measurements were not capable of quantifying just how good they are. This is a giant leap forward," said Alivisatos. "It may someday enable applications that require materials with luminescence efficiency well above 99 percent, most of which haven't been invented yet."

Between 99 and 100

Being able to forego the need for pricey fabrication equipment isn't the only advantage of quantum dots. Even prior to this work, there were signs that quantum dots could approach or surpass the performance of some of the best crystals. They are also highly customizable. Changing their size changes the wavelength of light they emit, a useful feature for color-based applications such as tagging biological samples, TVs or computer monitors.

Despite these positive qualities, the small size of quantum dots means that it may take billions of them to do the work of one large, perfect single crystal. Making so many of these quantum dots means more chances for something to grow incorrectly, more chances for a defect that can hamper performance. Techniques that measure the quality of other semiconductors previously suggested quantum dots emit over 99 percent of the light they absorb but that was not enough to answer questions about their potential for defects. To do this, the researchers needed a measurement technique better suited to precisely evaluating these particles.

"We want to measure emission efficiencies in the realm of 99.9 to 99.999 percent because, if semiconductors are able to reemit as light every photon they absorb, you can do really fun science and make devices that haven't existed before," said Hanifi.

The researchers' technique involved checking for excess heat produced by energized quantum dots, rather than only assessing light emission because excess heat is a signature of inefficient emission. This technique, commonly used for other materials, had never been applied to measure quantum dots in this way and it was 100 times more precise than what others have used in the past. They found that groups of quantum dots reliably emitted about 99.6 percent of the light they absorbed (with a potential error of 0.2 percent in either direction), which is comparable to the best single-crystal emissions.

"It was surprising that a film with many potential defects is as good as the most perfect semiconductor you can make," said Salleo, who is co-author of the paper.

Contrary to concerns, the results suggest that the quantum dots are strikingly defect-tolerant. The measurement technique is also the first to firmly resolve how different quantum dot structures compare to each other - quantum dots with precisely eight atomic layers of a special coating material emitted light the fastest, an indicator of superior quality. The shape of those dots should guide the design for new light-emitting materials, said Alivisatos.

Entirely new technologies

This research is part of a collection of projects within a Department of Energy-funded Energy Frontier Research Center, called Photonics at Thermodynamic Limits. Led by Jennifer Dionne, associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford, the center's goal is to create optical materials - materials that affect the flow of light - with the highest possible efficiencies.

A next step in this project is developing even more precise measurements. If the researchers can determine that these materials reach efficiencies at or above 99.999 percent, that opens up the possibility for technologies we've never seen before. These could include new glowing dyes to enhance our ability to look at biology at the atomic scale, luminescent cooling and luminescent solar concentrators, which allow a relatively small set of solar cells to take in energy from a large area of solar radiation. All this being said, the measurements they've already established are a milestone of their own, likely to encourage a more immediate boost in quantum dot research and applications.

"People working on these quantum dot materials have thought for more than a decade that dots could be as efficient as single crystal materials," said Hanifi," and now we finally have proof."

A recent study finds that older adults feel younger when they feel that they have more control over their daily lives, regardless of stress or health concerns. However, stress and health - not a sense of control - play a significant role in how old younger adults feel.

"We recently found that there are things older adults can do to improve their feelings of control in their everyday lives," says Shevaun Neupert, a professor of psychology at North Carolina State University and co-author of a paper on the work. "Now this study highlights how those feelings of control influence perceptions of age. The more control older adults think they have, the younger they feel."

For this study, researchers had 116 older adults (ages 60-90) and 107 younger adults (ages 18-36) fill out a daily survey for eight consecutive days. Study participants were asked questions aimed at assessing their daily stresses, physical health, sense of control over their daily lives, and how old they felt.

"Everyone's sense of control fluctuates from day to day, or even over the course of a day - that's normal," Neupert says. "We found that when older adults felt more in control, they also felt younger. That was true even when accounting for stress and physical health."

However, an individual's sense of control had no bearing on self-perceptions of age for young adults. But stress and adverse changes in health did make young people feel older.

"This highlights the importance of having older adults retain some sense of autonomy," Neupert says. "It's not just a nice thing to do, it actually affects their well-being."

Making a revolutionary biosensor takes blood, sweat and tears.

And saliva, naturally.

University of Cincinnati professor Jason Heikenfeld examined the potential of these and other biofluids to test human health with tiny, portable sensors for the journal Nature Biotechnology.

Heikenfeld develops wearable technology in his Novel Device Lab in UC's College of Engineering and Applied Science. His lab last year created the world's first continuous-testing device that samples sweat as effectively as blood but in a noninvasive way and over many hours.

"Ultimately, technological advances in wearables are constrained by human biology itself," the study said.

Remarkably, many of the innovations in the field of biosensors and sweat technology were developed in Cincinnati. The first glucose monitor for diabetes was commercialized in the region. The inventor of the the world's first antiperspirant, called Odorono, was a Cincinnati physician named Abraham Murphey.

"We have such a strong history in this field here. It's really fascinating," Heikenfeld said.

Heikenfeld credits the hard work of his team for his lab's success.

"We have been able to go far and fast here," Heikenfeld said. "We resonate with a certain type of student. As much as we have brilliant faculty at UC, if we didn't have talented students here, this technology wouldn't exist. We would just be talking theoretically about the potential."

In the Nature article, Heikenfeld identified four waves of discovery when it comes to testing human health. First, doctors began drawing and shipping blood to labs in an invasive, time-consuming and labor-intensive process that patients still undergo today.

Starting around the 1980s researchers, including pioneering UC engineering professor Chong Ahn, developed point-of-care lab tests that allowed doctors to get immediate results. Instead of shipping samples to a lab, doctors could test samples themselves using tiny self-contained devices.

"Dr. Ahn has been at the forefront of developing these point-of-care devices," Heikenfeld said.

Now, Heikenfeld said, we're in the midst of a third wave -- continuous health monitoring with wearable devices like those developed at UC. These provide data over time so doctors can track health trends instead of relying on the snapshot that a single blood test provides.

"That's super powerful because it tells me am I getting better? Am I getting worse?" Heikenfeld said.

Eventually, the field will see devices implanted in the body for long-term diagnosis or monitoring, he said. But first researchers will have to create robust sensors that can provide accurate information over a much longer time frame.

"That's the big challenge," Heikenfeld said. "Sensors are chemically reactive themselves. So they don't last."

After examining the use of saliva, tears and interstitial fluid, Heikenfeld concluded in the Nature article that sweat holds the most promise for noninvasive testing because it provides similar information as blood and its secretion rate can be controlled and measured.

In his Novel Device Lab at UC, Heikenfeld and his students have been creating new sensors on a wearable patch the size of a Band-Aid that stimulates sweat even when a patient is cool and resting. The sensor measures specific analytes over time that doctors can use to determine how the patient is responding to a drug treatment.

The sensors can be tailored to measure anything from drugs to hormones to dehydration, Heikenfeld said.

Last year the lab created the world's first continuous-monitoring sensor that can record the same health information in sweat that doctors for generations have examined in blood. The milestone is remarkable because the continuous sensor allows doctors to track health over time to see whether a patient is getting better or worse. And they can do so in a noninvasive way with a tiny patch applied to the skin that stimulates sweat for up to 24 hours at a time.

"This is the Holy Grail. For the first time, we can show here's the blood data; here's the sweat data - and they work beautifully together," Heikenfeld said.

Heikenfeld and his students published their latest experimental findings in December in the journal Lab on a Chip. UC's study tracked how test subjects metabolized ethanol. The study concluded that sweat provided virtually the same information as blood to measure a drug's presence in the body.

The latest breakthrough at UC marked the culmination of more than seven years of research, he said.

"For medications, we can use sweat to get an exact measurement of concentrations in the blood," Heikenfeld said. "That's important because once we can measure concentrations of therapeutics in blood, we can look at drug dosing. And that could make current dosing look like something from the Stone Age."

Cincinnati is home to several companies that are turning technologies for drug prescribing, delivery and monitoring into commercial products. The list includes Assurex Health, Enable Injections and Heikenfeld's Eccrine Systems, where he is co-founder and chief science officer.

Study co-author and computational biologist Tongli Zhang said devices like these will help doctors to provide personalized care. Zhang is an assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Systems Physiology at the UC College of Medicine.

"You don't give children the same drug dose as adults. Likewise, we can specify a dose based on a patient's weight," Zhang said. "But some patients might have liver or kidney failure. And others might metabolize a drug 10 times faster. So the same dose might be ineffective in some patients and toxic in others."

Zhang said continuous sensors could change treatments in fundamental ways.

"Personalized or individualized medicine is becoming a bigger deal. We realize it's important. If we can understand what's going on in the body, we can tailor the treatment accordingly," he said.

UC is at the forefront of developing new biosensors that Heikenfeld thinks will revolutionize the way we track disease and wellness.

"UC continues to build on our rich regional history in revolutionizing diagnostics through this third wave of continuous biochemical sensing," he said.

Tropical Cyclone Savannah continued to move in southerly direction in the Southern Indian Ocean, and move away from Indonesia. NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided a visible image of the storm. Savannah is no threat to land areas.

Savannah formed on March 14 as Tropical Cyclone 19S and once it strengthened into a tropical storm it was renamed.

Suomi NPP passed over Savannah on March 15 and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument provided a visible image of the storm. The VIIRS image showed a rounded area of storms around the low-level center of circulation with a band of thunderstorms feeding into the center, extending to the southeast. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) noted "animated enhanced infrared satellite imagery depicts a consolidating system with a central dense overcast feature persisting over the low-level circulation center." A microwave image showed tightly-curved bands of thunderstorms wrapping around an eye feature, indicating the storm was strengthening.

Savannah is forecast to move towards the southwest over the coming days, continuing on its path away from Indonesia. At 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC), Savannah was near 14.4 degrees south longitude and 98.4 degrees east latitude, about 185 nautical miles southwest of Cocos Island. Maximum sustained winds were near 55 knots (63 mph/102 kph).

Forecasters at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center noted that Savannah will move southwest, later turning west-southwest, while intensifying to 80 knots after three days. The storm will then start to weaken.

NIMS, the University of Tokyo, Niigata University and RIKEN jointly designed a multilayered metamaterial that realizes ultra-narrowband wavelength-selective thermal emission by combining the machine learning (Bayesian optimization) and thermal emission properties calculations (electromagnetic calculation). The joint team then experimentally fabricated the designed metamaterial and verified the performance. These results may facilitate the development of highly efficient energy devices.

Thermal radiation, a phenomenon that an object emits heat as electromagnetic waves, is potentially applicable to a variety of energy devices, such as wavelength-selective heaters, infrared sensors and thermophotovoltaic generators. Highly efficient thermal emitters need to exhibit emission spectrum with narrow bands in practically usable wavelength range.. The development of such efficient thermal emitters has been targeted by many researches using metamaterials that can manipulate electromagnetic waves. However, most of them have taken an approach of characterizing the material structures selected empirically. , it has been difficult to identify the optimum structure from a vast number of candidates.

The joint research group developed a method of designing metamaterial structures with optimum thermal radiation performance using a combination of machine learning and the calculation of thermal emission properties. This project focused on easy-to-fabricate multilayered metamaterial structures composed of three types of materials in 18 layers of varying thickness. Application of this method to about eight billion candidate structures led to the prediction that a nanostructure composed of non-periodically arranged semiconductor and dielectric materials would have superior thermal radiation performance, which was contrary to the conventional knowledge. Then the research group actually fabricated the metamaterial structure and measured its thermal emission spectrum, and consequently demonstrated an extremely narrow thermal emission band. Measured in terms of the Q-factor (a parameter used to measure the width of thermal emission spectral bands), the newly designed nanostructure produced a Q-factor close to 200, when 100 had been considered the upper limit for conventional materials?an exceptionally narrow thermal emission spectral band.

This research demonstrated the effectiveness of machine learning in developing highly efficient thermal emission metamaterials. The development of metamaterials with desirable thermal emission spectra is expected to facilitate more efficient energy use throughout the society. Because the nanostructure design method developed is applicable to all kinds of materials, it may serve as an effective tool for the design of high-performance materials in the future.

New research led by the University of East Anglia (UEA) suggests that people with a positive attitude are more likely to eat healthily.

The study examined the motivational role of a theory called regulatory focus on consumers' involvement in nutrition, that is, the time and effort they put in to finding out about nutrition and seeking out nutritious food.

It also examined the effect of nutrition involvement on consumers' knowledge of nutrition and dietary behaviour.

Regulatory focus suggests that there are fundamental motivational differences among people, with two aspects - promotion and prevention - guiding behaviour. Individuals with a promotion focus are concerned with pursuing positive outcomes, for example engaging in healthy behaviours, while those with a prevention focus will seek to prevent negative consequences, for example by avoiding unhealthy behaviours.

The findings, published in the journal Appetite, show that having a promotion focus leads to consumer's involvement in nutrition, which in turn leads to nutrition knowledge and diet adjustment following advice, for example from media, doctors, family members or friends. Having a prevention focus had no effect on nutrition involvement.

It also found that the effect of promotion focus on nutritional involvement was greater among high income consumers. The evidence suggested that the effect of promotion focus was stronger among men than women, but the authors say this is to be expected because previous research has shown that women have higher levels of nutritional involvement, irrespective of having a promotion focus.

Lead author Kishore Pillai, professor of retail and marketing at UEA's Norwich Business School, said the findings provided insights about nutrition-related consumer attitudes and behaviours and were important given the growing rates of obesity and conditions such as diabetes.

"The higher aspirational levels of promotion focused consumers will lead to greater involvement with nutrition to enhance their well-being," said Prof Pillai. "While both promotion and prevention focused individuals will be motivated to maintain good health, the former are more likely to employ approach strategies such as nutritional involvement.

"Consumer decisions regarding eating behaviours and nutrition can lead to consequences such as illness and obesity that have direct public health policy implications. Obesity is preventable and increasing consumer involvement in nutrition can help achieve this.

"Consumers are likely to receive advice regarding nutrition from multiple sources in their day-to-day lives. Public agencies can encourage promotional focus and in turn involvement in nutrition through appropriate communication. But, as the results of this study indicate, the effectiveness of this intervention will vary between high and low income groups and is likely to vary between males and females."

Prof Pillai added: "Given the problems of obesity and illnesses directly linked to unhealthy eating habits, the direct effect of nutrition involvement on dietary behaviours demonstrated in this study underscores the importance of investing in efforts to promote nutrition involvement from a public health policy perspective."

The study involved 1125 consumers in Taiwan, where dietary habits have been changing and there have been increases in obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes. Participants were questioned about their nutrition involvement and knowledge, and diet adjustment.

IQ in childhood is a better indicator of adult wealth than math for very preterm and very low-weight babies, according to a new study in PLOS ONE.

These findings contrast with previous evidence suggesting the specific importance of math skills for economic achievement.

"Considering preterm and low-birthweight individuals' multiple neurocognitive difficulties, our results suggest that IQ is a more significant predictor of adult wealth than the ability to solve specific math problems," said Julia Jaekel, associate professor of child and family studies, who coauthored the study with Nicole Baumann and Dieter Wolke from the University of Warwick and Peter Bartmann from the University of Bonn.

The study, "General Cognitive but Not Mathematic Abilities Predict Very Preterm and Healthy Term Born Adults' Wealth," followed more than 400 children born in Bavaria, Germany, from birth through adulthood. Of the children in the study, 193 were born very preterm (under 32 weeks gestation) or with very low birth weight (less than 3.3 pounds) and 217 were healthy term babies.

Using standardized tests, psychologists assessed general intelligence and specific math skills of the children at eight years old. When the subjects reached age 26, information on their income, social benefits, educational qualifications, and career success was summarized into a comprehensive wealth index.

The researchers tested whether math abilities or IQ explained the negative consequences of very premature birth on adult wealth. They concluded that IQ was a better predictor of life course economic success.

This new research adds to the understanding of long-term outcomes in the lives of children who are born very preterm. As many children demonstrating cognitive impairments attend mainstream schools, it also provides an opportunity to develop strategies for ensuring that they receive best support for their learning progress.

"No matter whether their difficulties are global or specific, many very preterm and very low birthweight individuals require continued educational support in order to succeed in school and life," said Dieter Wolke, a professor of psychology at the University of Warwick. "Our findings can inform the design of follow-up and intervention services to reduce the burden of prematurity for those individuals who were born at highest neonatal risk."

"Our goal was to see how chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas react to unfamiliar objects in the wild since novel object experiments are often used in comparative psychology research, and we wanted to know if there were any differences among the three great apes," says Ammie Kalan, a primatologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. "We were specifically surprised by the differences in reactions we observed between the chimps and bonobos. Since they're sister species and share a lot of the same genetic makeup, we expected them to react similarly to the camera, but this wasn't the case."

"The chimpanzees were overall uninterested in the camera traps--they barely seemed to notice their presence and were generally unbothered by them," Kalan says. "Yet the bonobos appeared to be much more troubled by camera traps; they were hesitant to approach and would actively keep their distance from them."

Individuals within a species reacted differently to the cameras as well. For example, apes living in areas with more human activity, such as near research sites, can get desensitized to unfamiliar items and become indifferent toward such encounters in the future. However, another member of the same species who has had less exposure to strange or new items, might be more interested in them. The age of the ape plays a similar role. "Younger apes would explore the camera traps more by staring at them for longer periods of time," Kalan says. "Like human children, they need to take in more information and learn about their environment. Being curious is one way of doing that."

The range of responses shown by the apes, and the complex differences both between species and within a single species, demonstrates a need for scientists to consider how animals will respond to the presence of unfamiliar monitoring equipment in their natural habitats. "The within and between species variation in behavior towards the unfamiliar items might be problematic when trying to collect accurate monitoring data," Kalan says. "To curb this effect, it would be worth having a familiarization period, where the wild animals can get used to the new items."

Despite this potential complication, using camera traps to monitor populations of animals in the wild is still one of the most useful options. "Our knowledge tends to be limited by the number of groups or number of populations we're able to study, but using monitoring technology like camera traps is an effective way of solving that problem," Kalan says. "I think it's really interesting from a behavioral flexibility perspective to consider how wild animals react to these new technologies. I would love for more researchers to investigate novelty responses while doing monitoring surveys."

White British people are almost twice as likely to hold extremist views as people of Pakistani heritage in England, according to a study by Queen Mary University of London.

The study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, also found that depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress were associated with having extremist sympathies.

Professor Kam Bhui CBE from Queen Mary University of London said: "British counter terrorism policy has had an undue focus on Islamic fundamentalism, with White British extremism normally considered as a lesser problem.

"The fact that those who are White British are approximately twice as likely to have extremist sympathies as those of Pakistani heritage will therefore come as a surprise. This raises concerns about right wing extremism and suggests that a focus on tackling Islamic fundamentalism is flawed, and we need to consider extremism more generally.

"The link we've found between poor mental health and extremist thoughts shows that we need much more progressive thinking and better research on the causes of extremism and what might be done to prevent it. Our study suggests some mood symptoms, anxiety and traumatic symptoms may be important susceptibility factors.

"It shows us how important it is to support people with mental health issues, who may be less able to manage radicalising messages, and could end up adopting extremist sympathies. This provides yet another reason why it's so important to think about our communities' mental health."

The study used a survey of 618 people, including White British and Pakistani heritage men and women living in Blackburn with Darwen, Bradford, and Luton.

Extremist sympathies were assessed using ratings on seven items* of an established measure of sympathies for violent protest and terrorism (SVPT), and information was collected on diagnoses of depression and symptoms of anxiety, personality difficulties, autism and post-traumatic stress.

341 (61 per cent) respondents condemned violent protest and terrorist actions; 144 (26 per cent) were neutral, and 73 (13 per cent) were sympathisers of violent protest and terrorism

Extremist sympathies were more common in those with depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress

15.1 per cent of the White British and 8.1 per cent of the Pakistani groups showed extremist sympathies

Those born in the UK more often expressed extremist sympathies (14 per cent), compared to those born outside the UK (6 per cent)

Extremist sympathies were significantly more common in lifetime alcohol drinkers, tobacco users, and illicit drug users, and in those with a criminal conviction

Younger people and single people more often expressed extremist sympathies, compared to older, married or divorced people

Gender, religion, religious attendance, education level, political engagement, life events, discrimination, social capital, and social support were not associated with extremist sympathies

Autism and personality disorder scores were not associated with extremist sympathies. However, the individual item of 'losing one's temper easily' was positively associated with holding extremist sympathies

Measuring actual extremist behaviour and engagement with extremist networks is complex. Instead, measuring sympathies for such acts provides a way of studying a potential susceptibility to violent behaviour and terrorism ethically, in the population at large, without incrimination, or breaches of confidentiality. This can help test prevention policies and practices if the measure were included in national surveys.

Extremist views and attitudes are also more common than acts of terrorism, and may indicate a preliminary stage of the radicalisation process that can be prevented, yet this link needs more research.

The findings of this study may also be used in helping UK public servants, such as doctors and mental health professionals, who have been asked to show 'due regard' to the identification of those at risk of radicalisation. The measure may be a useful supplement to mental health assessments.

Dr Clive Gabay, Senior Lecturer in International Politics at Queen Mary University of London, who was not involved in the study, added: "This research should serve as a wake-up call to policy makers and political commentators who continue to downplay anti-BAME racism from white population groups. Racism is a serious factor in the current political debates around immigration and integration, and we need to be mindful of the re-emergence and growing popularity of extremist anti-BAME and anti-immigrant views.

"These findings also dovetail with other research that suggests that large numbers of those who voted in favour of leaving the European Union were rural and suburban middle class voters with racist and prejudicial attitudes towards migrants driven by socio-economic anxieties concerning their own historically accrued privileges."

The study is limited in that the data are self-reported by participants. A potential limitation of the SVPT measure is that respondents need only sympathise with one item to be considered to hold extreme views. Using a threshold of two or more sympathies to classify sympathisers led to similar results, although only 23 people then showed sympathies. Sympathising with committing minor crime was the most commonly endorsed item. Excluding this item from the classification of those with sympathies, however, produced no major changes in results.

It has been known for decades that cancer cells have an altered metabolism and it is seen in several biochemical pathways and in particular, in the way they get energy for their survival.

If healthy cells use the mitochondrial respiratory chain, tumors use aerobic glycolysis, a process that allows them taking energy quickly but depending on glucose. This phenomenon -known as the Warburg effect- is caused by several changes that take place during cell transformation.

Now, a new article describes an epigenetic injury found in human tumours which created this altered path to take energy from the cancer. The study, published in Journal of Clinical Investigation Insight, is a new research carried out by the group led by Manel Esteller, professor of Genetics of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the University of Barcelona (UB), ICREA researcher, coordinator of the Cancer Epigenetics and Biology Program at IDIBELL, and director of the Josep Carreras Institute.

According to Professor Esteller, who led the new scientific study, "we found squamous tumors -in the head, neck, esophagus and cervix- show activity loss of the SVIP gen, which prevents deterioration of proteins that are important for cell balance. The fault in the SVIP gene function causes the destruction of the metabolic mechanisms that allow glucose's physiologic use to get energy in a controlled way, and which is finally replaced by a kind of molecular "fast food" that gets cheap energy for the tumor cell".

"We have also seen patients with this metabolic change that show a shorter survival over the course of their disease", continues Manel Esteller. "However, cancer cells' addiction to glucose could be their weakness. Therefore, pre-clinical studies show that patients with the epigenetic loss of the SVIP gene are sensitive to drugs against glucose receptor, which block the entrance of this molecule and cause a kind of 'abstinence syndrome' of the tumor that holds their growth back".

AUGUSTA, Ga. (March 13, 2019) - Our bodies are continuously concocting specific antibodies to thwart invaders like a virus or even pollen, and scientists have new information about how the essential production gets fired up and keeps up.

It's a key protective mechanism that the scientists want to better understand with the long-term goal of manipulating it to help keep us well, says Dr. Nagendra Singh, immunologist in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.

"We are trying to design small molecules that can either block or activate this pathway," says Singh, corresponding author of the study in the journal Nature Communications.

The pathway is called ufmylation, and in this pathway, a polypeptide call Ufm1 is known to target other proteins, connect with them, and change their function. One of those proteins is Ufbp1, and investigators have learned that the Ufbp1 that emerges is key to both immune cells called naïve B cells becoming antibody-producing plasma cells and to plasma cells stepping up production of protective antibodies.

Better understanding how this natural protective mechanism works could ultimately help design better vaccines, the investigators write. In fact, current vaccines help prime B cells to have memories of certain invaders so they can more quickly respond, Singh says.

Selective increases in this Ufbp1 or ufmylation pathway, for example, might one day yield an even more targeted attack on the flu virus.

Conversely, for allergy sufferers, selective intervention might stop the production of antibodies against tree and weed pollens that are already producing itchy, watery eyes and noses this year.

It might enable as well a reduction in antibodies the body inexplicably makes against itself in autoimmune diseases like lupus and arthritis. In fact, the scientists already are looking at making the adjustment in a mouse model of lupus.

They found that Ufbp1 suppresses the enzyme PERK to help B cells differentiate. Proteins have to be properly folded for any cell or body function to happen and PERK is part of the body's natural "unfolded protein response," to try to correct problems with improperly folded ones that don't function correctly and may instead become toxic to cells.

When newly made proteins fold improperly, PERK gets activated which stops new protein production and decreases the misfolded protein pileup. But at this juncture, scientists have learned that Ufbp1 suppresses PERK to ensure ample production of plasma cells. So when there is a deficiency of Ufbp1 in B cells, they found that while B cells survived, the development of plasma cells was impaired.

Inside plasma cells they found that Ufbp1 gets upregulated so the endoplasmic reticulum, basically the manufacturing plant for a cell, can expand and protein folding capacity can expand with it. Conversely, they showed Ufbp1 deficiency in the plasma cells impairs expansion of the endoplasmic reticulum and antibody production.

"We knew that proteins were folded in the endoplasmic reticulum and that an expanded endoplasmic reticulum is the hallmark of secretory cells like plasma cells being made," Singh says, "but exactly what components were involved, we did not know."

"What we have found is that the ufmylation pathway is very important in cells that secrete a lot of proteins, like plasma cells," he says.

"Antibodies work like long-range missiles," Singh notes, and plasma cells usually shoot them from the bone marrow. B cells also are made in and by the bone marrow, but circulate as well looking for invaders. When they spot one, they must go to the spleen or to a nearby lymph node to become a plasma cell. Plasma cells then move back to the bone marrow and typically take aim from there.

The survival and maintenance of plasma cells is a continuous and delicate balance, which can turn deadly when it goes wrong. Without this balance, plasma cells can grow out of control, become cancerous instead of protective and result in multiple myeloma. One of many next steps for the scientists include looking at whether targeting Ufbp1 holds the key to designing the next generation of multiple myeloma treatments.

There also are individuals born with some key ufmylation pathway components missing and, while not a lot is known about the impact, it can result in a disease that damages your brain called encephalopathy as well as blood disorders, Singh says. Protein misfolding is also a known factor in conditions like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

Singh notes that misfolding likely happens in all of us, but at low, harmless levels.

BEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL...March 13, 2019 -An international team of researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the University of Oxford and University of Birmingham have found that internet search patterns and rhythms reflect seasonal interest in plants and animals.

This surprise finding, published in PLoS Biology, suggests new ways to monitor changes in the world's biodiversity based on monitoring internet searches and may provide a roadmap for conservation around the world.

"This work is part of a growing field of research called 'conservation culturomics' which aims to elucidate patterns of human-nature interactions manifested in large digital repositories," says BGU's Dr. Uri Roll, a senior lecturer in the Mitrani Department for Desert Ecology at The Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research.

"It also reveals new techniques to observe interest in nature and may provide effective conservation targets," says Roll. "We live in an age of disintegrating natural ecosystems and biodiversity collapse. Novel tools and approaches are needed to tackle these gargantuan challenges."

The team used Wikipedia pageviews records and eBird data to assemble a massive dataset of 2.33 billion pageviews spanning nearly three years for 31,715 species across 245 Wikipedia language editions.

More than a quarter of the species in their dataset showed seasonal interest. For these seasonal species, the researchers found that the timing and amount of internet activity is a highly accurate measure of when and how the species is present. The team thinks it might be possible to measure changes in the presence and abundance of species simply by measuring internet activity.

By taking a deep dive into the seasonal patterns, the researchers found several interesting trends. Often, seasonal interest in Wikipedia pages reflect seasonal patterns in the species themselves.

For example, pages for flowering plants tended to have stronger seasonal trends than those for coniferous trees, which do not have an obvious flowering season. Likewise, pages for insects and birds tended to be more seasonal than those for many mammals.

Different language editions of Wikipedia show different seasonal patterns too: Wikipedia in languages mostly spoken at higher latitudes (Finnish or Norwegian for example) had more seasonal interest in species than Wikipedia editions in languages mostly spoken at lower latitudes, such as Thai or Indonesian.

In addition to correlating seasonal patterns in online interest with patterns in nature, the researchers also identified instances where seasonal patterns responded to cultural events. In the U.S., English page views for the wild turkey showed repeated annual spikes around Thanksgiving.

Together these patterns suggest that people's online behavior is a response to phenomena in the natural world.

"People are often becoming increasingly detached from the natural world and as a result we didn't really expect their activity online to respond to patterns in nature," adds lead author and University of Oxford doctoral candidate John Mittermeier. "To see that online activity often correlates strongly with natural phenomena seems to suggest that people are paying attention to the world around them. From a conservation perspective, that is really exciting."

The research team posits that there is a lot of potential to apply these methods to conservation policy and actions, such as selecting flagship species or iconic areas. Being able to identify a seasonal peak in interest in a particular species, for example, could help an organization decide when and how to launch a particular fundraising campaign.

Researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology teamed up with colleagues from the U.S. and Switzerland and returned the state of a quantum computer a fraction of a second into the past. They also calculated the probability that an electron in empty interstellar space will spontaneously travel back into its recent past. The study comes out March 13 in Scientific Reports.

"This is one in a series of papers on the possibility of violating the second law of thermodynamics. That law is closely related to the notion of the arrow of time that posits the one-way direction of time: from the past to the future," commented the study's lead author Gordey Lesovik, who heads the Laboratory of the Physics of Quantum Information Technology at MIPT.

"We began by describing a so-called local perpetual motion machine of the second kind. Then, in December, we published a paper that discusses the violation of the second law via a device called a Maxwell's demon," Lesovik said. "The most recent paper approaches the same problem from a third angle: We have artificially created a state that evolves in a direction opposite to that of the thermodynamic arrow of time."

What makes the future different from the past

Most laws of physics make no distinction between the future and the past. For example, let an equation describe the collision and rebound of two identical billiard balls. If a close-up of that event is recorded with a camera and played in reverse, it can still be represented by the same equation. Moreover, one could not tell from the recording if it has been doctored. Both versions look plausible. It would appear that the billiard balls defy the intuitive sense of time.

However, imagine that someone has recorded a cue ball breaking the pyramid, the billiard balls scattering in all directions. One need not know the rules of the game to tell the real-life scenario from reverse playback. What makes the latter look so absurd is our intuitive understanding of the second law of thermodynamics: An isolated system either remains static or evolves toward a state of chaos rather than order.

Most other laws of physics do not prevent rolling billiard balls from assembling into a pyramid, infused tea from flowing back into the tea bag, or a volcano from "erupting" in reverse. But we do not see any of this happening, because that would require an isolated system to assume a more ordered state without any outside intervention, which runs contrary to the second law. The nature of that law has not been explained in full detail, but researchers have made great headway in understanding the basic principles behind it.

Spontaneous time reversal

Quantum physicists from MIPT decided to check if time could spontaneously reverse itself at least for an individual particle and for a tiny fraction of a second. That is, instead of colliding billiard balls, they examined a solitary electron in empty interstellar space.

"Suppose the electron is localized when we begin observing it. This means that we're pretty sure about its position in space. The laws of quantum mechanics prevent us from knowing it with absolute precision, but we can outline a small region where the electron is localized," says study co-author Andrey Lebedev from MIPT and ETH Zurich.

The physicist explains that the evolution of the electron state is governed by Schrödinger's equation. Although it makes no distinction between the future and the past, the region of space containing the electron will spread out very quickly. That is, the system tends to become more chaotic. The uncertainty of the electron's position is growing. This is analogous to the increasing disorder in a large-scale system -- such as a billiard table -- due to the second law of thermodynamics.

"However, Schrödinger's equation is reversible," adds Valerii Vinokur, a co-author of the paper, from the Argonne National Laboratory, U.S. "Mathematically, it means that under a certain transformation, called complex conjugation, the equation will describe a 'smeared' electron localizing back into a small region of space over the same time period." Although this phenomenon is not observed in nature, it could theoretically happen due to a random fluctuation in the cosmic microwave background permeating the universe.

The team set out to calculate the probability to observe an electron "smeared out" over a fraction of a second spontaneously localizing into its recent past. It turned out that even if one spent the entire lifetime of the universe -- 13.7 billion years -- observing 10 billion freshly localized electrons every second, the reverse evolution of the particle's state would only happen once. And even then, the electron would travel no more than a mere one ten-billionth of a second into the past.

Large-scale phenomena involving billiard balls, volcanoes, etc. obviously unfold on much greater timescales and feature an astounding number of electrons and other particles. This explains why we do not observe old people growing younger or an ink blot separating from the paper.

Reversing time on demand

The researchers then attempted to reverse time in a four-stage experiment. Instead of an electron, they observed the state of a quantum computer made of two and later three basic elements called superconducting qubits.

Stage 1: Order. Each qubit is initialized in the ground state, denoted as zero. This highly ordered configuration corresponds to an electron localized in a small region, or a rack of billiard balls before the break.

Stage 2: Degradation. The order is lost. Just like the electron is smeared out over an increasingly large region of space, or the rack is broken on the pool table, the state of the qubits becomes an ever more complex changing pattern of zeros and ones. This is achieved by briefly launching the evolution program on the quantum computer. Actually, a similar degradation would occur by itself due to interactions with the environment. However, the controlled program of autonomous evolution will enable the last stage of the experiment.

Stage 3: Time reversal. A special program modifies the state of the quantum computer in such a way that it would then evolve "backwards," from chaos toward order. This operation is akin to the random microwave background fluctuation in the case of the electron, but this time it is deliberately induced. An obviously far-fetched analogy for the billiards example would be someone giving the table a perfectly calculated kick.

Stage 4: Regeneration. The evolution program from the second stage is launched again. Provided that the "kick" has been delivered successfully, the program does not result in more chaos but rather rewinds the state of the qubits back into the past, the way a smeared electron would be localized or the billiard balls would retrace their trajectories in reverse playback, eventually forming a triangle.

The researchers found that in 85 percent of the cases the two-qubit quantum computer indeed returned back into the initial state. When three qubits were involved, more errors happened, resulting in a roughly 50 percent success rate. According to the authors, these errors are due to imperfections in the actual quantum computer. As more sophisticated devices are designed, the error rate is expected to drop.

Interestingly, the time reversal algorithm itself could prove useful for making quantum computers more precise. "Our algorithm could be updated and used to test programs written for quantum computers and eliminate noise and errors," Lebedev explained.