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Although there is good news about smoking -- only 14 percent of Americans smoke, the lowest number ever, according to a 2017 National Health Interview Survey -- challenges remain. In a given year, more than 40 percent of smokers make no attempt to quit. For those who do, it can take many tries -- estimates vary from six to 30 -- before they succeed, if they ever do. If more smokers are to succeed in staying quit, a better understanding of the factors that hinder them from meeting smoking cessation milestones is needed.

In the November issue of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, investigators at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) identify cessation fatigue -- emotional exhaustion and reduced coping resources due to attempts to quit smoking or stay quit -- as one such factor.

"We all know the stories of people who have tried and tried but repeatedly failed. Think about the cognitive and emotional toll that must take," explains Matthew J. Carpenter, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at MUSC, a member of the Hollings Cancer Center and senior author on the article. "People get burnt out or exhausted from making repeated attempts and this study shows that has an effect on smoking cessation milestones."

In the study, cessation fatigue, which was measured with a new multi-item scale for emotional exhaustion developed at MUSC, increased in the first six weeks of a quit attempt before plateauing. High cessation fatigue scores also predicted worse performance on important cessation milestones, such as time to quit attempt (for smokers who intended to quit) and relapse (for those already making a quit attempt). For both groups, those with higher scores on the emotional exhaustion scale, indicating a greater degree of cessation fatigue, were significantly less likely to have gone a full week without smoking at two months.

Why is this important? First, because cessation fatigue seems to be increasing just as other important predictors of relapse, such as withdrawal symptoms, are abating. Second, it offers a novel target for intervention strategies and helps identify those who would be most likely to benefit from those interventions.

"This could be like a triage where you could quickly give it to people and see where they're at on this fatigue level," says Bryan W. Heckman, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at MUSC and first author on the article. "If they're high or elevated, then that might be an intervention point to help them reduce their fatigue."

A number of existing and developing intervention strategies could help reduce cessation fatigue. Pharmacological therapies already used in smoking cessation could be timed to ease cessation fatigue. Mobile health (mHealth) applications, which can reduce the logistical burden and stress of making a quit attempt, could be especially useful. For instance, Heckman is testing whether locations that prompt increases in urges to smoke can be programmed into an app using the GPS available on cell phones. When smokers making a quit attempt approach a location that they associate with smoking, they would automatically receive a push notification from the app to take a nicotine lozenge to help stave off the temptation to smoke.

"If we automate treatment using apps and reduce the amount of effort that people need to put into quit attempts, that could end up reducing fatigue over time," says Heckman.

"Using these mHealth technologies, we both automate and personalize," adds Carpenter. "Instead of giving blanket advice to twenty people, we can tailor therapy to each individual."z

Next steps will be a longer-term study of the effects of cessation fatigue on quit attempts. Once cessation fatigue and its time course are better understood, more mHealth interventions targeting it will be developed and tested. Heckman and Carpenter also think it would be worthwhile to explore cessation fatigue in those making quit attempts for different substances of abuse or in those making other efforts at lifestyle change.

"I don't think this is just about addictions and smoking," says Carpenter. "This is about health behavior change. Think about anything that anybody tries to do that's hard. It takes time. To say that you're going to be one hundred percent committed on every day of your life in that attempt is folly. It's a process. It takes a toll on you. Now we can look at this as a process and quantify that fatigue over time and see how it matters."

Tropical Cyclone 04S, known as Bouchra formed in the Southern Indian Ocean during the week of Nov. 12 and by the end of the week it had become a remnant low pressure area. Over the weekend of Nov. 17 and 18 it regenerated into a tropical cyclone and the NOAA-20 satellite passed overhead and captured a visible image of the storm.

At 3:24 a.m. EDT (0824 UTC) on Nov. 19the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard the NOAA-20 polar orbiting satellite saw the elongated storm. The VIIRS image revealed that the storm appeared to stretch from northwest to southeast. That's an indication that winds or wind shear was affecting the storm and elongating its circulation center, weakening the storm (again).

In general, wind shear is a measure of how the speed and direction of winds change with altitude. Wind shear can tear a tropical cyclone apart or weaken it.

On Nov. 19 at 10 a.m. EST (1500 UTC) Bouchra's maximum sustained winds were near 50 knots (57 mph/92 mph) making it a tropical storm. It was located approximately 672 nautical miles southeast of Diego Garcia near 15.2 south latitude and 80.4 east longitude. Bouchra was moving southwestward and is expected to maintain intensity over the next several days before weakening.

Bouchra is expected to dissipate by Nov. 22.

NOAA-20 is the first in the JPSS series of satellites. JPSS is a collaborative program between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its acquisition agent, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NOAA is responsible for managing and operating the JPSS program, and developing portions of the ground segment, while NASA is responsible for developing and building the JPSS instruments, spacecraft, and portions of the ground segment and providing launch services.

For more information about the JPSS series of satellites, visit: https://www.jpss.noaa.gov/

AMHERST, Mass. - Until recently, scientists thought of viruses as mostly small infectious agents, tiny compared to typical bacteria and human cells. So imagine the surprise when biologist Jeff Blanchard and Ph.D. student Lauren Alteio at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with others at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI), discovered giant viruses - relatively speaking the size of Macy's parade day balloons - in soil at Harvard Forest in Petersham, Massachusetts.

"We were not looking for giant viruses," says Blanchard. "Our goal was to isolate bacteria directly from the environment to understand how microbial communities are changing in response to soil warming."

For this work, the researchers suspended microbial cells from the soil in a mild detergent solution, added a non-toxic DNA-binding dye, then used fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) to isolate individual cells, Blanchard explains. Giant viruses, up to hundreds of times larger than other viruses, have extremely large genomes and are captured by this method because of their similarity in size to bacteria, he notes.

A collaborator and senior scientist at the JGI in Walnut Creek, California, Tanja Woyke, suggested they then use a new strategy, mini-metagenomics, for putting the cells into small pools before sequencing and assembling their genomes. This resulted in DNA sequences from over 2,000 individual cells and/or particles, Blanchard reports. In the pools they found 16 new giant viruses, which was "a wonderful surprise and very exciting new science," he adds.

Co-first author with Alteio of the paper in Nature Communications, JGI bioinformaticist Frederik Schulz, who helped Alteio to identify new soil bacteria and archaea in the mini-metagenomic data, says, "The fact that we found all these giant virus genomes in soil was especially intriguing, as most of the previously described giant viruses were discovered in aquatic habitats. The metagenomic data generated here from a single sampling site contained far more new giant virus genomes than any other data set I have seen to date."

Blanchard adds, "Our research is usually focused on the effects of soil warming, but this new mini-metagenomic approach has uncovered a trove of viral and bacterial biodiversity in species groups we don't typically associate with the soil. There are a number of mysteries we'll be following up on."

Schulz points out, "We recovered 16 distinct giant virus genomes in this study, but we are merely scratching the surface. If we sample more at the same site this number would easily double, triple or even quadruple." The authors say results illustrate that using new methods "can lead to key discoveries."

The giant virus discovery is related to long-term soil-warming experiments in place for many years at the research forest about 28 miles northeast of the UMass Amherst campus, where heating cables similar to those used to keep football and soccer fields from freezing are buried about 4 inches (10 cm) under several plots. The cables keep the soil surface 5 degrees Celsius warmer than the ambient temperature, creating an outdoor laboratory of artificial climate change, Blanchard says.

In most giant virus research, he says, researchers cultivate a protist or amoeba host which attracts viruses that usually infect it, a labor-intensive process. "They're hard to work with, and only viruses that grow in that host will be cultivated," he notes. "There are millions of potential host species and it would be impossible to use this approach with them all." By contrast, isolating cells directly from the environment and using mini-metagenomics methods yields genomic data at a lower cost, he says.

"Tanja is famous for sequencing genomes of hard-to-cultivate organisms from environmental samples and she had the intuition that if we took this new approach, new branches of life would be revealed," Blanchard says. "While using this method we don't know what our giant viruses look like; one could try to repeat the experiment in future research to image some particles after they are sorted."

The UMass Amherst microbiologist adds, "Not only did we just discover many new giant viruses, but we did it using a thimbleful of soil. It would be nice to characterize these viruses one at a time, there's a lot of skill and art in that. But it would be a years-long project. Finding 16 at once is kind of overwhelming, and none of them are the same. If you think of all the soil in the world, if there are 10,000 species of bacteria in a gram of soil, about a teaspoon, imagine how many new giant viruses are out there."

Woyke adds, "To me, the most intriguing and eye-opening part of the study was the high number and diversity of major capsid proteins, which is like a barcode for giant viruses, found in the unassembled bulk soil metagenome. Deep sequencing of soil metagenomes is revolutionizing our understanding of this very important terrestrial ecosystems with many exciting soil microbiome initiatives ongoing, yet our data emphasizes that still many missing pieces to the puzzle remain."

The scientists gave the new species names that reflect their forest origins, such as "Dasovirus" Greek "daso" for forest and "Solumvirus" for Latin "solum" soil. They also propose naming one "Harvovirus" to honor Harvard Forest.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Engineers at Duke University have demonstrated a device that can direct photons of light around sharp corners with virtually no losses due to backscattering, a key property that will be needed if electronics are ever to be replaced with light-based devices.

The result was achieved with photonic crystals built on the concept of topological insulators, which won its discoverers a Nobel Prize in 2016. By carefully controlling the geometry of a crystal lattice, researchers can prevent light traveling through its interior while transmitting it perfectly along its surface.

Through these concepts, the device accomplishes its near-perfect transmittance around corners despite being much smaller than previous designs.

The Semiconductor Industry Association estimates that the number of electronic devices is increasing so rapidly that by the year 2040, there won't be enough power in the entire world to run them all. One potential solution is to turn to massless photons to replace the electrons currently used for transmitting data. Besides saving energy, photonic systems also promise to be faster and have higher bandwidth.

Photons are already in use in some applications such as on-chip photonic communication. One drawback of the current technology, however, is that such systems cannot turn or bend light efficiently. But for photons to ever replace electrons in microchips, travelling around corners in microscopic spaces is a necessity.

"The smaller the device the better, but of course we're trying to minimize losses as well," said Wiktor Walasik, a postdoctoral associate in electrical and computer engineering at Duke. "There are a lot of people working to make an all-optical computing system possible. We're not there yet, but I think that's the direction we're going."

Previous demonstrations have also shown small losses while guiding photons around corners, but the new Duke research does it on a rectangular device just 35 micrometers long and 5.5 micrometers wide -- 100 times smaller than previously demonstrated ring-resonator based devices.

In the new study, which appeared online on November 12 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, researchers fabricated topological insulators using electron beam lithography and measured the light transmittance through a series of sharp turns. The results showed that each turn only resulted in the loss of a few percent.

"Guiding light around sharp corners in conventional photonic crystals was possible before but only through a long laborious process tailored to a specific set of parameters," said Natasha Litchinitser, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke. "And if you made even the tiniest mistake in its fabrication, it lost a lot of the properties you were trying to optimize."

"But our device will work no matter its dimensions or geometry of the photons' path and photon transport is 'topologically protected,'" added Mikhail Shalaev, a doctoral student in Litchinitser's laboratory and first author of the paper. "This means that even if there are minor defects in the photonic crystalline structure, the waveguide still works very well. It is not so sensitive to fabrication errors."

The researchers point out that their device also has a large operating bandwidth, is compatible with modern semiconductor fabrication technologies, and works at wavelengths currently used in telecommunications.

The researchers are next attempting to make their waveguide dynamically tunable to shift the bandwidth of its operation. This would allow the waveguide to be turned on and off at will -- another important feature for all-optical photon-based technologies to ever become a reality.

The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core satellite is providing data on rain rates within Tropical Cyclone 33W as it moves over the Philippines on Nov. 19.

Tropical Depression 33W is about to traverse the south-central Philippines. In the Philippines, 33W is designated "Samuel."

The GPM satellite passed over the eastern half of Tropical Depression 33W on Nov. 19 at 3:06 a.m. EST (0806 UTC) and measured the rainfall rates. The heaviest rainfall was occurring around the center at a rate of 1.2 inches per hour while light rain was occurring throughout much of the eastern half of the storm. The bulk of the clouds and showers associated with 33W are located in the storm's western quadrant.

GPM is a joint satellite mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency called JAXA.

At 10 a.m. EST (1500 UTC), the center of 33W was located near latitude 9.1 degrees north and longitude 129.7 degrees east. 33W is moving toward the west-northwest and has maximum sustained winds near 30 knots (34.5 mph/55.5 kph)

Philippines storm signal 1 has been placed in effect for Luzon that includes Masbate, and for the Visayas region that includes Samar, Eastern Samar, Biliran, Leyte, Southern Leyte, Bohol, Cebu, Siquijor, Negros Oriental and Occidental. In the Mindanao region, Signal 1 is in effect for Surigao del Norte and Sur, Agusan del Norte and Sur, Dinagat Islands, Misamis Oriental and Camiguin

33W will move west-northwest, later west and into the South China Sea.

WASHINGTON, D.C., November 18, 2018 -- Whether it's the acrobatics of a flock of starlings or the synchronized swimming of a school of fish, nature is full of examples of large-scale collective behavior. Humans also exhibit this behavior, most notably in pelotons, the mass of riders in bicycle races.

During the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics 71st Annual Meeting, which will take place Nov. 18-20 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia, Jesse Belden, a researcher at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, will describe the research he and his colleagues have been conducting on collective behavior in pelotons.

Using aerial video footage of bicycle races, Belden and colleagues analyzed peloton motion to determine what causes changes in the group's large-scale collective behavior. They found that riders move through the peloton in a manner similar to circulation in a fluid and observed two types of propagating waves within pelotons. "You see all these patterns and motion behaviors emerge," said Belden.

The researchers found two types of waves affect the structure of a peloton. First, the researchers found a wave that moves back and forth along the peloton, usually due to a rider suddenly hitting the brakes and others slowing to avoid a collision. The other type of wave is a transverse wave caused when riders move to the left or right to avoid an obstacle or to gain an advantageous position.

Pelotons maintain a persistent structure, and researchers previously thought this form was driven by individual riders seeking an aerodynamic advantage. However, aerodynamics only come into play at the outside edges of the peloton. Instead, the researchers found that peloton dynamics are likely driven by rider vision, with each rider keeping other riders within a range of peripheral vision that is most sensitive to motion. Additionally, wave propagation speeds were consistent with human reaction time rather than conscious cognitive decisions like improving aerodynamics.

These findings shed new light on large-scale collective behavior in humans and could apply to varied topics including traffic and crowd management. Additionally, understanding the role of sensory input in collective behavior is important to building better autonomous vehicles like self-driving cars. This research has also given insights into the cognitive processes involved with individual rider actions and their effects on broader peloton dynamics. "Unlike birds or fish, you can talk to the cyclists," Belden said.

WASHINGTON, D.C., November 18, 2018 -- Urinating into a cup may be a medical necessity for monitoring the health of the kidney and other issues, but it's often uncomfortable, embarrassing and messy -- especially for women. But what if there were a way to comfortably provide a sample without the splashback?

Tadd Truscott, associate professor at the Splash Lab at Utah State University, created a set of experiments using an anatomically correct female urethra that produced a jet of water with a pressure and flow equivalent to what a human bladder produces. He and his colleagues did this to examine its interaction with a soft polymer similar to the female labia. Inspired by the findings and her own work with disabled persons, Faith Leibman applied the knowledge to her recently released patented product called the Orchid. Leibman's Orchid is a funnel-like catch attached to a urine sample cup. Its design makes it easier for women and people with disabilities to provide a urine sample.

During the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics 71st Annual Meeting, which will take place Nov. 18-20 in Atlanta, Georgia, Josh Wille, a member of Truscott's team, will describe the findings and their potential implications, especially when trying to "aim for the cup."

Understanding the interactions between fluids and soft structures could improve the overall experience of providing urine samples.

"While many studies have looked at how the jet infringes on a surface, few have considered the exit of fluid," explained Truscott. "Even fewer studies have looked at women and urination."

The intent of the experiment is to characterize the behavior between the jet and a soft polymer. "It was challenging to simulate the interaction between the urine stream and the simulated labia, as this external feature varies greatly between women," said Truscott.

Truscott found that as the simulated labia was pushed further into the stream, the urine became a liquid sheet. The finite length of the polymer caused small jets and droplets to form at either end, which created an even wider stream of liquid.

"It was not surprising to find that the further the simulated labia was pushed into the jet, the more mess it made. On the other hand, we thought the Coanda effect would play a bigger role, but the jet flow only attached itself to the simulated labia when it was pushed less than one quarter of the way through," said Truscott. The Coanda effect is the phenomenon where a jet of fluid follows the curvature of a surface like when a back side of a spoon is placed in the flow of the kitchen faucet and diverts the flow.

This research could have wider implications beyond the Orchid device, according to Truscott. "We could look at changing the overall design of things like clothing and toilets to make urinating less messy for both men and women. The research could also be applied to devices that assist women in urinating while standing up, something that could be particularly useful to women in the military."

WASHINGTON, D.C., November 18, 2018 -- Marvel comics superheroes Ant-Man and the Wasp -- nom de guerre stars of the eponymous 2018 film -- possess the ability to temporarily shrink down to the size of insects, while retaining the mass and strength of their normal human bodies. But a new study suggests that, when bug-sized, Ant-Man and the Wasp would face serious challenges, including oxygen deprivation.

Those challenges, along with their solution-microfluidic technologies, will be described by engineering mechanics graduate student Max Mikel-Stites of Virginia Tech at the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics 71st Annual Meeting, which will take place Nov. 18-20 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia.

Mikel-Stites and his advisor, Anne Staples, an associate professor in the biomedical engineering and mechanics department at Virginia Tech, normally study biological fluid dynamics, with a particular focus on insect respiration and insect-scale fluid flows. Staples' lab has developed microfluidic devices inspired by insect respiratory systems in which the flow rate and direction of flow through individual channels in the device can be controlled without the use of valves.

The work, which will be discussed in a separate presentation at the DFD meeting, could reduce the actuation machinery needed for microfluidic devices used in many different scientific fields, and make them more portable and cost-efficient. "Applying that perspective to Ant-Man and the Wasp seemed like a straightforward thing to do," said Mikel-Stites.

In their analysis, the researchers determined that the atmospheric density -- basically, the number of molecules (say, of oxygen) in a given volume of air -- experienced by the bug-sized heroes is reduced to a level nearly identical to that of Mt. Everest's so-called "death zone," where there is not enough oxygen for a human to breathe. "While the actual atmospheric density is the same for an insect and a human, the subjective atmospheric density experienced by a human who shrinks to insect size changes," Mikel-Stites explained. "For example, a normal-sized person taking a deep breath can expect to inhale some number of oxygen molecules. However, when that person is shrunk down to the size of an ant, despite still needing the same number of oxygen molecules, far fewer are available in a single breath of air.

The "death zone" begins for a normal-sized human about 8,000 meters above sea level. The shrunken superheroes, the researchers calculated, would feel like they were at an altitude of 7,998 meters, and that would make for a serious -- if not deadly -- case of altitude sickness.

"For someone not acclimated, symptoms of altitude sickness range from headache and dizziness to the buildup of fluid in the lungs and brain, and possibly death. This occurs in part because people may respond by trying to breathe more rapidly, to increase their oxygen intake, and because the body is attempting to function with less oxygen than it normally does," he said.

And that's not the extent of Ant-Man's and the Wasp's problems, the team found. Based on a relationship known as Kleiber's law, which correlates the metabolic rate of an animal to its size, the researchers found that the metabolic rates per unit mass of the superheroes at bug size would increase by approximately two orders of magnitude -- as would their oxygen demands.

But all is not lost -- thanks to science. According to Mikel-Stites, the use of microfluidic components such as Knudsen pumps (which are driven by temperature gradients) and microscale gas compressors, could be embedded into the helmets of Ant-Man and the Wasp to help them breathe at the microscale.

Presentation E19.3, "Why Ant-Man and the Wasp Need Helmets to Breathe" by Maxwell Mikel-Stites and Anne Staples, will be Sunday, Nov. 18, 5:36 p.m. in Room B306 of the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta. Abstract: http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DFD18/Session/E19.3

SEATTLE (November 16, 2018) - People with food allergies know eating at a restaurant means using multiple strategies to make sure your order doesn't contain something that could send you to the hospital with anaphylaxis - a severe life-threatening reaction.

New research being presented at the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI) Annual Scientific Meeting examined what tools people who have food allergies use to prevent allergic reactions at restaurants. Members of a food allergy network were given a 25-question survey that examined specific behaviors used in preparation for restaurant dining.

"The most frequent preventive strategies were speaking to a waiter on arrival (80 percent) and ordering food with simple ingredients (77 percent)," says Justine Ade, MD, lead author of the study. "The least used strategies were placing allergy orders separately (23 percent) and using a personal allergy card (26 percent). We found when those with food allergies used more strategies in a restaurant, the result was fewer reactions. People who used an average of 15 strategies when eating out tended to avoid having a severe allergic reaction. Those who did experience an allergic reaction were using an average of only six strategies at the time of their most severe reaction. Those same people increased their average number of strategies to 15 after experiencing a severe reaction."

The most and least used strategies among families were:

Top five:

Speak to waiter on arrival (80%)

Order food with simple ingredients (77%)

Double check food before eating (77%)

Avoid restaurants with higher likelihood of contamination (74%)

Review ingredients on a restaurant website (72%)

Bottom five:

Place food allergy order separately (23%)

Use personal allergy card (26%)

No longer eat at restaurants (39%)

Choose a chain restaurant (41%)

Go to restaurant off peak hours (44%)

"Eating out at a restaurant is a challenge for people with food allergies," says allergist Leigh Ann Kerns, MD, ACAAI member and study co-author. "Checking ingredients in the dishes that the restaurant offers ahead of time and finding strategies that work for you or your child can help to minimize the risk of reactions. If you think that you or your child may have a food allergy, see an allergist for testing. Allergists are specially trained to help you to manage your food allergies so that you can stay safe while enjoying life."

Researchers at Idaho National Laboratory have discovered how to make "superalloys" even more super, extending useful life by thousands of hours. The discovery could improve materials performance for electrical generators and nuclear reactors. The key is to heat and cool the superalloy in a specific way. That creates a microstructure within the material that can withstand high heat more than six times longer than an untreated counterpart.

"We came up with a way to make a superalloy that is much more resistant to heat-related failures. This could be useful in electricity generators and elsewhere," said Subhashish Meher, an INL materials scientist. He was lead author of a new Science Advances paper describing the research.

Alloys are combinations of two or more metallic elements. Superalloys are exceptionally strong and offer other significantly improved characteristics due to the addition of trace amounts of cobalt, ruthenium, rhenium or other elements to a base metal. Understanding how to build an improved superalloy is important for making the metallic mixture better for a particular purpose.

INL scientists have been studying nickel-based superalloys. Since these superalloys can withstand high heat and extreme mechanical forces, they are useful for electricity-generating turbines and high-temperature nuclear reactor components. Previous research had shown that performance can be improved if the material structure of the superalloy repeats in some way from very small sizes to very large, like a box within a box within a box.

This is called a hierarchical microstructure. In a superalloy, it consists of a metallic matrix with precipitates, regions where the composition of the mixture differs from the rest of the metal. Embedded within the precipitates are still finer-scale particles that are the same composition as the matrix outside the precipitates - conceptually like nested boxes.

Meher and his coauthors studied how these precipitates formed within a superalloy. They also investigated how this structure stood up to heat and other treatments.

They found that with the right recipe of heating and cooling, they could make the precipitates two or more times larger than would be the case otherwise, thereby creating the desired microstructure. These larger precipitates lasted longer when subjected to extreme heat. Moreover, computer simulation studies suggest that the superalloy can resist heat-induced failure for 20,000 hours, compared to about 3,000 hours normally.

One application could be electrical generators that last much longer because the superalloy that they are constructed of would be tougher. What's more, INL scientists may now be able to come up with a procedure that can be applied to other superalloys. So, it may be possible to adjust a superalloy's strength, heat tolerance or other properties to enhance its use in a particular application.

"We are now better able to dial in properties and improve material performance," Meher said.

SEATTLE (November 16, 2018) - If you are one of the millions of people in the U.S. who has a severe allergy and carries an epinephrine auto injector (EAI) you may have wondered if it will still work if it gets left in your car in winter and freezes. Turns out it will still work, according to new research being presented at the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI) Annual Scientific Meeting.

"Since many people who live in cold climates use an EAI, we wanted to explore the effects of freezing on how an EAI functions," says Julie Brown, MD, abstract author. "Lead author and researcher Alex Cooper took 104 same-lot pairs of EAIs and froze one of each pair for 24 hours, while the other was kept at recommended temperatures as a control. Once the frozen devices were thawed, they and their controls were injected into meat. The meat and devices were weighed both before and after firing. The change in meat weight and device weight was similar between frozen-thawed devices and their controls, indicating that freezing did not affect how the EAIs functioned once they were thawed."

Allergists recommend using epinephrine as the first line of defense in treating anaphylaxis. The consequences for not using epinephrine when it is needed are much more severe than using it when it might not be necessary.

"Many people who use EAIs have been concerned about the current shortage of EpiPens," says allergist Anne Ellis, MD, chair of the ACAAI Anaphylaxis Committee. "It's important for those who have severe, life threatening reactions to their allergies to have confidence in the EAIs they carry and know they'll work in an emergency. This study showed that even when an EAI has been unintentionally frozen, the risk is low that it will malfunction."

If you have an EAI that was unintentionally frozen, and you experience an anaphylactic reaction, it's better to use a 'thawed' device than nothing at all. However, you should talk with your allergist about a prescription for a new device.

"The study did not examine the amount of epinephrine remaining in the solution after it had been frozen," says Dr. Ellis. "We know epinephrine is a somewhat unstable compound, and that's why the shelf life of EAIs is so short."

If you have a severe allergy that could result in anaphylaxis, see an allergist. Allergists are trained to help you live the life you want by working with you to treat allergic diseases and avoid severe reactions.

Tropical Cyclone Gaja continued to organize in the Bay of Bengal as it made its approach to southeastern India when NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite passed overhead and captured an image. The image revealed that Gaja had developed a cloud-filled eye.

The Bay of Bengal is in the Northern Indian Ocean basin, east of India.

On Nov. 15, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite took a visible light image of Tropical Storm Gaja. It revealed what appeared to be a cloud-filled eye. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center confirmed that "animated multispectral satellite imagery shows a more compact system with a dimple feature on the central convection - indicative of a formative eye."

On Nov. 15 at 10 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC) Gaja's maximum sustained winds were near 55 knots (63 mph/102 kph), but weakening is expected as it nears the coast of southeastern India. Gaja was located near 10.8 degrees north latitude 80.7 east longitude. It was about 145 nautical miles south-southeast of Chennai, India.

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center or JWTC noted that Gaja will move west-southwest and is approaching landfall near Cuddalore before Nov. 16 at 4 a.m. EDT (0900 UTC). After crossing southern India, the storm will re-strengthen in the Arabian Sea, before dissipating after 5 days.

Wherever there's water, there's bound to be bubbles floating at the surface. From standing puddles, lakes, and streams, to swimming pools, hot tubs, public fountains, and toilets, bubbles are ubiquitous, indoors and out.

A new MIT study shows how bubbles contaminated with bacteria can act as tiny microbial grenades, bursting and launching microorganisms, including potential pathogens, out of the water and into the air.

In the study, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the researchers found that bacteria can affect a bubble's longevity: A bacteria-covered bubble floating at the water's surface can last more than 10 times longer than an uncontaminated one can, persisting for minutes instead of seconds. During this time, the cap of the contaminated bubble thins. The thinner the bubble, the higher the number of droplets it can launch into the air when the bubble inevitably bursts. A single droplet, the researchers estimate, can carry up to thousands of microorganisms, and each bubble can emit hundreds of droplets.

"We discovered bacteria can manipulate interfaces in a manner that can enhance their own water-to-air dispersal," says Lydia Bourouiba, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the Fluid Dynamics of Disease Transmission Laboratory.

Bourouiba's co-author on the paper is graduate student Stephane Poulain.

Something in the water

Bourouiba has spent the past several years meticulously generating, imaging, and characterizing clean, uncontaminated bubbles, with the goal of establishing a baseline of normal bubble behavior.

"We first had to understand the physics of clean bubbles before we could add organisms like bacteria to see what effect they have on the system," Bourouiba says.

As it happens, the researchers first noticed bacteria's effect somewhat by accident. The team was in the midst of moving to a new lab space, and in the shuffle, a beaker of water had been left out in the open. When the researcher used it in subsequent experiments, the results were not what the team expected.

"The bubbles produced from this water lived much longer and had a peculiar thinning evolution compared to that of typical clean water bubbles," Poulain says.

Bourouiba suspected the water had been contaminated, and the team soon confirmed her hypothesis. They analyzed the water and found evidence of bacteria that are naturally present indoors.

The juice effect

To directly study bacteria's effect on bubbles, the team set up an experiment in which they filled a column with a solution of water and various bacteria species, including E. coli. The researchers developed a system to generate bubbles with an air pump, one at a time, inside the column, in order to control the volume and size of each bubble. When a bubble rose to the surface, the team used high-speed imaging coupled with a range of optical techniques to capture its behavior, at the surface and as it burst.

The researchers observed that, once a bubble contaminated with E. coli made it to the water's surface, its own surface, or cap, immediately started to thin, mostly by draining back into the water, like a melting shell of chocolate. This behavior was similar to that of uncontaminated bubbles.

But the contaminated bubbles remained on the surface more than 10 times longer than uncontaminated bubbles. And after a critical period of time, the bacteria-laden bubbles started thinning much faster. Bourouiba suspected that it might not be the bacteria themselves, but what they secrete, that holds the bubble in place for longer.

"Bacteria are alive, and like anything alive, they make waste, and that waste typically is something that potentially could interact with the bubble's interface," Bourouiba says. "So we separated the organisms from their 'juice.'"

The researchers washed bacteria away from their secretions, then repeated their experiments, using the bacteria's secretions. Just as Bourouiba suspected, the bubbles containing the secretions alone lasted much longer than clean bubbles. The secretions, the group concluded, must be the key ingredient in extending a bubble's lifetime. But how?

Again, Bourouiba had a hypothesis: Bacterial secretions may be acting to reduce a bubble's surface tension, making it more elastic, more resistant to perturbations, and in the end, more likely to live longer on a water's surface. This behavior, she noted, was similar to surface-active compounds, or surfactants, such as the compounds in detergents that make soap bubbles.

To test this idea, the researchers repeated the experiments, this time by swapping out bacteria for common synthetic surfactants, and found that they too produced longer-lasting bubbles that also thinned dramatically after a certain time period. This experiment confirmed that bacteria's secretions act as surfactants extending the lifetime of contaminated bubbles.

The researchers then looked for an explanation for the drastic change in a contaminated bubble's rate of thinning. In clean bubbles, the thinning of the cap was mostly the result of drainage, as water in the cap mostly drains back into the fluid from which the bubble rose. Such bubbles live on the order of seconds, and their drainage speed continuously slows down as the bubble thins.

But if a bubble lasts past a critical time, evaporation starts playing a more dominant role than drainage, essentially shaving off water molecules from the bubble's cap. The researchers concluded that, if a bubble contains bacteria, the bacteria and their secretions, make a bubble last longer on a water's surface -- long enough that evaporation becomes more important than drainage in thinning the bubble's cap.

As a bubble's cap gets thinner, the droplets it will spray out when it inevitably bursts become smaller, faster, and more numerous. The team found that a single bacteria-laden bubble can create 10 times more droplets, which are 10 times smaller and ejected 10 times faster than what a clean bubble can produce. This amounts to hundreds of droplets that measure only a few dozens of microns and that are emitted at speeds of the order of 10 meters per second.

Low emission zones are now in place in 200 cities across Europe, but London findings suggest that interventions that deliver larger reductions in emissions may be needed.

The introduction of the low emission zone in London, UK, has only contributed to modest reductions in exposure to nitrogen oxides from diesel vehicles, and these improvements appear to have little effect on the lung health of children, according to an observational study published in The Lancet Public Health journal.

The observational study including over 2,000 primary school children (aged 8-9 years) living in highly polluted areas of London's low emission zone confirms that chronic exposure to common traffic-related pollutants is linked with reduced lung function.

Moreover, despite improvements in air quality following the introduction of the low emission zone, the researchers found no evidence of a reduction in the proportion of children with small lungs or asthma symptoms over the 5 years since the scheme was implemented.

The study highlights that despite European air quality policies and local measures, London's air pollution may be putting children at risk of lifelong health problems, and underscores the need for more radical solutions to tackle high levels of air pollution. Early in 2019, London will introduce an Ultra Low Emission Zone, which is predicted to deliver major improvements in air quality.

"In many areas of London, air pollution still remains a major issue," says author Professor Chris Griffiths from Queen Mary University of London, UK. "Some improvements in air quality have been made despite the diesel vehicles emitting higher levels of pollutants in the real world than in tests. Even so, many areas of inner and outer London are still breaching EU air pollution standards and are unlikely to meet them without a substantial tightening of current emission controls." [1]

Air pollution is linked to 7 million premature deaths worldwide every year (of these, 3.7 million are linked to outdoor air pollution). In the UK, air pollution contributes to 40,000 deaths each year, nearly a quarter of them in London [2]. Across Europe, where more than half of new cars are fuelled by diesel, nitrogen oxide has become a major problem, and has been linked to asthma and impaired lung development in children.

Low emission zones have been widely promoted as the best way to tackle traffic pollution, with around 200 in operation across Europe. But little research has been done on the effectiveness of this approach at reducing air pollution and improving public health. London introduced the world's largest citywide low emission zone in stages during 2008 and 2012, requiring diesel vehicles entering Greater London to meet certain emission standards or pay daily charges--and providing a unique opportunity to investigate how effectively the initiative has improved air quality and children's respiratory health. [3]

The study included 2,164 children aged 8-9 years from schools close to air quality monitoring stations in four inner city London boroughs (Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Greenwich, City of London) in breach of EU annual nitrogen dioxide limits (40 μg/m³).

Between 2009-10 and 2013-2014, children were given yearly winter health checks that included measuring the size and function of their lungs by blowing into a machine called a spirometer [4]. Parents were also asked to complete a medical history questionnaire for their child, including questions on respiratory and allergic symptoms (eg, asthma, eczema, hay fever).

Annual average exposure concentrations of nitrogen oxides and particulate pollution (PM 10 and PM 2.5) were measured at the home and school addresses of each child over the 5-year study. The researchers also modelled pollution exposures for the 3 hours (0600-0900h), 24 hours, and 7 days before each child's annual health check. This allowed them look at the effects of both short-term and annual average exposures simultaneously. They also took into account other factors that can affect respiratory health including age, sex, height, body mass index, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and exposure to environmental tobacco smoke.

Results showed that introduction of the low emission zone had little impact in reducing levels of ultrafine particles (PM2.5) or course particulate matter (PM10) over the study period.

In contrast, levels of nitrogen dioxide at both the roadside and monitoring sites within and surrounding the study area fell by around 1 μg/m³ per year (figure 3). Additionally, the proportion of children exposed to the EU annual nitrogen oxides limit fell from 99% (444/450 children) in 2009 to 34% (150/441) in 2013.

Nevertheless, average exposure levels of nitrogen dioxide over the 5-year study remained high (median 40.7 μg/m³) and the researchers estimate that children's lung capacities were reduced by around 5%. They also noted some evidence of a reduction in rhinitis, but not asthma symptoms over the study period.

"Although changes of this magnitude are unlikely to cause problems in healthy children, we urgently need to know whether these lung deficits will impact lung function and health in later life", says Professor Griffiths. "Until longer-term impacts are known, doctors should consider advising parents of children with clinically significant lung disease to avoid living in highly polluted areas, or to adopt personal mitigation measures to limit their exposure. More research is needed to identify factors that lead to increased susceptibility or protection." [1]

According to lead author Dr Ian Mudway, King's College London, UK: "There is an urgent need to improve our air quality, especially within our congested cities. Policies such as the Low Emission Zone strive to do this, but their effectiveness needs careful and objective evaluation, not only in terms of whether they improve air quality, but more importantly, whether they deliver better health. As the evidence base grows demonstrating that air pollution impacts on the health of children born and growing up in our cities, so the justification for decisive action increases." [1]

Co-author Professor Frank Kelly, National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health of Environmental Hazards HPRU, UK, adds: "These new findings linking air pollution and children's lung growth provide further support for the introduction of the ultra Low Emission Zone in London early next year." [1]

The authors note that the study is observational, so no firm conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect. They also point to several limitations, including that the lack of a control group and pre-intervention health data mean that attribution of the changes in air quality and health to the low emission zone, and a direct evaluation of the health impact of the scheme, were not possible. They also note that the study began after the introduction of the initial phases of the scheme so the full effects might have been underestimated.

Writing in a linked Comment Dr Hanna Boogaard, Health Effects Institute, USA, discusses the challenges of conducting research into the health effects of air quality interventions. She concludes: "A key question that remains largely unresolved is whether NO? [nitrogen dioxide] is a causal agent or only an indicator of traffic-related air pollution, given that correlations in space and time between concentrations of NO? and other traffic-related air pollutants are often high. The study by Mudway and colleagues adds to this quandary, and shows that more stringent measures to improve urban air quality and children's health might be needed."

Regular measurements of head circumference of very preterm and full-term babies from an early age add valuable information when screening for long-term neurocognitive risk according to researchers from the University of Warwick and University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Very Preterm (VP) and Very Low Birth Weight (VLBW) infants have smaller heads at birth, and therefore smaller brains, but measuring their head growth helps monitor risks to their brain growth and future IQ.

Regular early head circumference assessments add valuable information when screening for long-term neurocognitive risk - according to new research by an international research collaboration, including the University of Warwick, UK and the University of Tennessee Knoxville, US.

The researchers found that a method as simple and cost effective as frequently measuring head size adds valuable information when screening for long-term neurocognitive risk.

The research published in Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society examined the development of children who are born very preterm and/or very low birth weight who tend to have a lower head circumference at birth, and if their heads don't grow sufficiently their IQ development might be impaired.

203 VP/VLBW (under 32 weeks gestational age and/or under 1500g) and 198 term born children (between 37 and 41 weeks gestation) were followed in Germany born in 1985-6 into adulthood.

Co-researchers Dr Dieter Wolke and Dr Julia Jaekel measured the head circumference at birth, 5 months, 20 months and 4 years of age. Intelligence was assessed with standardised tests in childhood - 6 and 8 years, and at 26 years.

They found that VP and VLBW infants had smaller heads at birth, but between birth and 20 months their heads grew relatively faster than that of term born children because they had to catch up.

Professor Dieter Wolke, from the Department of Psychology and Warwick Medical School at the University of Warwick is a senior author in the report, 'Head growth and intelligence from birth to adulthood in very preterm and term born individuals.' He comments:

"Measuring head circumference and thus head growth in early childhood is a proxy measure of brain volume growth in early childhood. It is simple and cheap to do and as shown in our research, slow head growth is a specific warning sign for potential neurocognitive problems."

Dr Julia Jaekel, the first author from the University of Tennessee said:

"Those who showed faster head growth, whether preterm or term born, had higher intelligence scores at 26 years. Catch-up head growth was particularly beneficial for intelligence scores in VP and VLBW children. It was a better predictor than how early or at what birth weight infants were born."

This research shows that head growth is a proxy measure of brain volume growth and is linked with long-term cognitive development. Monitoring the development of head growth, in particular in VP and VLBW infants, assists in the assessment of neurocognitive risks later in life.

The next step for researchers is to investigate how to assist with head growth and thus brain development in VP and VLBW children. Some of these targets for improvement are nutrition and eating, neuro-protective treatments, and appropriate cognitive and emotional stimulation as brain food.