Tech

For the first time scientists have been able to put a figure on how many faces people actually know- a staggering 5,000 on average.

The research team, from the University of York, tested study participants on how many faces they could recall from their personal lives and the media, as well as the number of famous faces they recognised.

Humans have typically lived in small groups of around one hundred individuals, but the study suggests our facial recognition abilities equip us to deal with the thousands of faces we encounter in the modern world - on our screens as well as in social interactions.

The results provide a baseline with which to compare the "facial vocabulary" size of humans with facial recognition software that is increasingly used to identify people at airports and in police investigations.

Dr Rob Jenkins, from the Department of Psychology at the University of York, said: "Our study focused on the number of faces people actually know- we haven't yet found a limit on how many faces the brain can handle.

"The ability to distinguish different individuals is clearly important--it allows you to keep track of people's behaviour over time, and to modify your own behaviour accordingly."

For the study, participants spent an hour writing down as many faces from their personal lives as possible - including people they went to school with, colleagues and family. They then did the same for famous faces, such as actors, politicians, and other public figures.

The participants found it easy to come up with lots of faces at first, but harder to think of new ones by the end of the hour. That change of pace allowed the researchers to estimate when they would run out of faces completely.

The participants were also shown thousands of photographs of famous people and asked which ones they recognised. The researchers required participants to recognise two different photos of each person to ensure consistency.

The results showed that the participants knew between 1,000 and 10,000 faces.

Dr Jenkins added: "The range could be explained by some people having a natural aptitude for remembering faces. There are differences in how much attention people pay to faces, and how efficiently they process the information.

"Alternatively, it could reflect different social environments-some participants may have grown up in more densely populated places with more social input."

The mean age of the studies participants was 24 and, according to the researchers, age provides an intriguing avenue for further research.

"It would be interesting to see whether there is a peak age for the number of faces we know", said Dr Jenkins. "Perhaps we accumulate faces throughout our lifetimes, or perhaps we start to forget some after we reach a certain age."

NASA's Aqua satellite peered into Hurricane Sergio with infrared light to determine if the storm was intensifying or weakening. Infrared data showed cloud top temperatures were getting warmer on the western half of the storm, indicating the uplift of air in storms had weakened.

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Hurricane Sergio on Oct. 9 at 6:17 a.m. EDT (1017 UTC). AIRS uses infrared light and infrared light provides scientists with temperature data and that's important when trying to understand how strong storms can be. The higher the cloud tops, the colder and the stronger they are. So infrared light as that gathered by the AIRS instrument can identify the strongest areas of a tropical cyclone.

At the time Aqua passed overhead, coldest cloud top temperatures in thunderstorms circled the eye and appeared in fragmented bands of thunderstorms north and south of the center. Those temperatures were as cold as or colder than minus 63 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 53 degrees Celsius). The exception was on the western side of the storm, where cloud top temperatures were warming, meaning they were not getting as high in the atmosphere.

Despite the slow weakening the hurricane still has a large but well-defined inner-core in the low and mid-levels.

The National Hurricane Center noted at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC), the center of Hurricane Sergio was located near latitude 16.6 degrees north and longitude 127.4 degrees west. That's 1,215 miles (1,960 km) west-southwest of the southern tip of Baja California, Mexico.

Sergio is moving toward the northeast near 7 mph (11 kph). A faster northeastward motion is expected for the next several days. Maximum sustained winds have decreased to near 80 mph (130 kph) with higher gusts. Gradual weakening is anticipated during the next several days.

NHC noted that there are no coastal watches or warnings in effect, but interests in Baja California Sur should monitor the progress of Sergio.

What appears to be a long tail in satellite imagery of Tropical Storm Leslie is in fact clouds associated with a nearby elongated area of low pressure, or a trough.

On Oct. 8, the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA-NOAA's Suomi satellite provided a visible look at Tropical Storm Leslie that showed a developing eye and a long stretch of clouds associated with an elongated area of low pressure that extends over the United Kingdom.

NOAA's National Hurricane Center noted "Although the winds have not yet increased, the surface center of the tropical storm has become more embedded within its cold cloud tops and several recent microwave overpasses indicate that the cyclone is beginning to establish an inner-core. Strengthening is therefore still expected, and Leslie is forecast to become a hurricane by tomorrow."

At 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC) on Oct. 9 the center of Tropical Storm Leslie was located near latitude 31.3 degrees north and longitude 43.5 degrees west. That's 1,045 miles (1,680 km) west-southwest of the Azores Islands. Leslie is moving toward the south-southeast near 13 mph (20 kph), and this general motion is expected to continue for the next day or so. Maximum sustained winds are near 65 mph (100 kph) with higher gusts. Some strengthening is anticipated, and Leslie is forecast to become a hurricane again on Wednesday.

The National Hurricane Center cites different forecast modeling possibilities for Leslie. It could merge with a trough or elongated area of low pressure or Leslie could remain a tropical cyclone almost indefinitely if it continues meandering over the northern Atlantic.

In a study of postmenopausal women, participants who lost weight had a lower risk of developing invasive breast cancer than those who maintained or gained weight. Published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the findings suggest that weight loss may help lower postmenopausal women's breast cancer risk.

Although obesity has been strongly related to breast cancer risk, studies examining whether weight loss might reduce postmenopausal women's risk have provided mixed results. To examine the issue, Rowan Chlebowski, MD, PhD, of the City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, California, and his colleagues analyzed information on 61,335 women participating in the World Health Initiative Observational Study who had no prior breast cancer and had normal mammogram results. The women's body weight, height, and body mass index were assessed at the start of the study and again 3 years later.

During an average follow-up of 11.4 years, there were 3,061 new cases of invasive breast cancer diagnosed. Women with weight loss ?5 percent had a 12 percent lower breast cancer risk compared with stable weight women, with no interaction by body mass index. Weight gain of ?5 percent was not associated with risk of breast cancer overall but was associated with a 54 percent higher incidence of triple negative breast cancer.

"Our study indicates that moderate, relatively short-term weight reduction was associated with a statistically significant reduction in breast cancer risk for postmenopausal women," said Dr. Chlebowski. "These are observational results, but they are also supported by randomized clinical trial evidence from the Women's Health Initiative Dietary Modification trial where, in a randomized clinical trial setting, adopting a low-fat dietary pattern that was associated with a similar magnitude of weight loss resulted in a significant improvement in breast cancer overall survival. These findings, taken together, provide strong correlative evidence that a modest weight loss program can impact breast cancer."

DURHAM, N.C. -- Materials scientists have sussed out the physical phenomenon underlying the promising electrical properties of a class of materials called superionic crystals. A better understanding of such materials could lead to safer and more efficient rechargeable batteries than the current standard-bearer of lithium ion.

Becoming a popular topic of study only within the past five years, superionic crystals are a cross between a liquid and a solid. While some of their molecular components retain a rigid crystalline structure, others become liquid-like above a certain temperature, and are able to flow through the solid scaffold.

In a new study, scientists from Duke University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) probed one such superionic crystal containing copper, chromium and selenium (CuCrSe2) with neutrons and X-rays to determine how the material's copper ions achieve their liquid-like properties. The results appear online on Oct. 8 in the journal Nature Physics.

"When CuCrSe2 is heated above 190 degrees Fahrenheit, its copper ions fly around inside the layers of chromium and selenium about as fast as liquid water molecules move," said Olivier Delaire, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Duke and senior author on the study. "And yet, it's still a solid that you could hold in your hand. We wanted to understand the molecular physics behind this phenomenon."

To probe the copper ions' behavior, Delaire and his colleagues turned to two world-class facilities: the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge and the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne. Each machine provided a unique piece of the puzzle.

By pinging a large sample of powdered CuCrSe2 made at Oak Ridge with powerful neutrons, the researchers got a wide-scale view of the material's atomic structure and dynamics, revealing both the vibrations of the stiff scaffold of chromium and selenium atoms as well as the random jumps of copper ions within.

For a narrower but more detailed look at vibration modes, the researchers bombarded a tiny single grain of CuCrSe2 crystal with high-resolution X-rays. This allowed them to examine how the rays scattered off of its atoms and how scaffold vibrations enabled shear waves to propagate, a hallmark of solid behavior.

With both sets of information in hand, Delaire's group ran quantum simulations of the material's atomic behavior at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center to explain their findings. Below the phase transition temperature of 190 degrees Fahrenheit, the copper atoms vibrate around isolated sites, trapped in pockets of the material's scaffold structure. But above that temperature, they are able to hop randomly between multiple available sites. This allows the copper ions to flow throughout the otherwise solid crystal.

While more work is needed to understand how the copper atoms interact with one another once both sites become occupied, the findings offer clues as to how to use similar materials in future electronic applications.

"Most commercial lithium ion batteries use a liquid electrolyte to transfer ions between the positive and negative terminals of the battery," Delaire said. "While efficient, this liquid can be dangerously flammable, as many laptop and smartphone owners have unfortunately discovered."

"There are variants of superionic crystals that contain ions like lithium or sodium that behave like the copper in CuCrSe2," Delaire said. "If we can understand how superionic crystals work through this study and future research, we could perhaps find a better, solid solution for transporting ions in rechargeable batteries."

Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is unique among all moons in our solar system for its dense and nitrogen-rich atmosphere that also contains hydrocarbons and other compounds, and the story behind the formation of this rich chemical mix has been the source of some scientific debate.

Now, a research collaboration involving scientists in the Chemical Sciences Division at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has zeroed in on a low-temperature chemical mechanism that may have driven the formation of multiple-ringed molecules - the precursors to more complex chemistry now found in the moon's brown-orange haze layer.

The study, co-led by Ralf Kaiser at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and published in the Oct. 8 edition of the journal Nature Astronomy, runs counter to theories that high-temperature reaction mechanisms are required to produce the chemical makeup that satellite missions have observed in Titan's atmosphere.

The team also included other researchers at Berkeley Lab, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Samara University in Russia, and Florida International University. The team used vacuum ultraviolet light experiments at Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source (ALS), together with computer simulations and modeling work to demonstrate the chemical reactions that contribute to Titan's modern-day atmospheric chemistry.

"We provide evidence here for a low-temperature reaction pathway that people have not thought about," said Musahid Ahmed, a scientist in Berkeley Lab's Chemical Sciences Division and co-leader of the study at the ALS. "This gives rise to a missing link in Titan's chemistry."

Titan may yield clues to the development of complex chemistry on other moons and planets, including Earth, he explained. "People use Titan to think about a 'pre-biotic' Earth - when nitrogen was more prevalent in the early Earth's atmosphere."

Benzene, a simple hydrocarbon with a six-carbon single-ring molecular structure, has been detected on Titan and is believed to be a building block for larger hydrocarbon molecules with two- and three-ring structures that, in turn, formed other hydrocarbons and aerosol particles that now make up Titan's atmosphere. These multiple-ring hydrocarbon molecules are known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).

In the latest study, researchers mixed two gases - a short-lived two-ring PAH known as a naphthyl radical (C10H7) and a hydrocarbon called vinylacetylene (C4H4) - at the ALS, and produced three-ring PAHs in the process. Both of the chemicals used to drive the reaction are inferred to exist on Titan based on what is known about the chemical makeup of its atmosphere.

The ALS experiments jetted away the end products of the reactions from a small reaction chamber. Researchers used a detector known as a reflectron time-of-flight mass spectrometer to measure the mass of molecular fragments produced in the reaction of the two gases. Those measurements supplied details about the chemistry of the three-ring PAHs (phenanthrene and anthracene).

While the ALS experiments used a chemical reactor to simulate the chemical reaction and a beam of vacuum ultraviolet light to detect the products of the reaction, supporting calculations and simulations showed how the chemicals formed in the ALS experiments do not require high temperatures.

PAHs like the chemicals studied at the ALS have properties that make them particularly difficult to identify in deep space, Kaiser said. "In fact, not a single, individual PAH has been detected in the gas phase of the interstellar medium," which is the material that fills the space between stars.

He added, "Our study demonstrates that PAHs are more widely spread than anticipated, since they do not require the high temperatures that are present around carbon stars. This mechanism we explored is predicted to be versatile and is expected to lead to the formation of even more complex PAHs."

And because PAHs are considered as precursors to forming molecular clouds - the so-called "molecular factories" of more complex organic molecules that can include the precursors to life as we know it - "This could open up theories and new models of how carbon-containing material in deep space and in the rich atmospheres of planets and their moons in our solar system evolve and originate," he said.

Alexander M. Mebel, a chemistry professor at Florida International University and co-leader of the study, carried out calculations that showed how the reactants can naturally come together and form new compounds at very low temperatures.

"Our calculations revealed the reaction mechanism," Mebel said. "We showed that you don't need any energy to drive the reaction of naphthyl and vinylacetylene, so the reaction should be efficient even in the low-temperature and low-pressure atmospheric conditions on Titan."

A key to the study was in the detailed modeling of the reactor cell where the gases were mixed.

Mebel noted that modeling of the energies and simulations of the gas-flow dynamics in play within the reactor help to monitor reaction progress inside the reactor, and allowed researchers to tie theoretical results closely with experimental observations.

The modeling work, which helped to predict the chemicals produced in the reactions based on the initial gases and the temperature and pressure of the heated chamber where the gases were mixed and struck with the vacuum ultraviolet beam, was led by the research team at Samara University.

"This verification of the model, by comparing it with experiments, can also be helpful in predicting how the reaction would proceed in different conditions - from Titan's atmosphere to combustion flames on Earth."

An aim of the continuing research, Kaiser said, is to unravel the details of how carbon-containing compounds with similar structures to DNA and RNA can develop even in extreme environments.

Atrial fibrillation (AFib) patients with a history of cancer are less likely to see a cardiologist or fill anticoagulant prescriptions compared with AFib patients who never had cancer, according to a study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. By not filling and taking prescribed medication, these patients are potentially putting themselves at increased risk of stroke.

Cancer detection and treatment methods have improved significantly over time, leading to a greater number of older people who are surviving and living longer after a cancer diagnosis, and as a result, developing other health conditions. AFib specifically is an important comorbid condition in cancer patients. Both have several common predisposing factors, including advanced age and inflammation, plus certain chemotherapeutic agents have been linked to the development of AFib.

How to best care for the increasing number of cancer survivors who are reaching older ages is a challenge for clinicians since comorbid conditions usually span multiple specialties. This study looked at the relationship between early cardiology involvement after an AFib diagnosis in patients with a history of cancer and how that affected outcomes.

"Overall, our data suggest that suboptimal antithrombotic care exists in AFib patients who have a history of cancer," said Wesley T. O'Neal, MD, MPH, lead author of the study and a cardiology fellow at Emory University School of Medicine. "The decision to initiate antithrombotic therapy or refer to a cardiology provider should be individualized to the patient, but our data suggest that cardiology providers positively influence outcomes among these patients."

Researchers looked at over 380,000 AFib patients in the MarketScan database and found 17 percent had a history of cancer. Prostate and breast cancers were the most common types of cancer, and patients with a history of cancer were also older and more likely to have other cardiovascular conditions. The data showed that patients with a history of cancer were less likely to see a cardiologist after AFib diagnosis and less likely to fill prescriptions for oral anticoagulants, which are essential to reducing the future risk of stroke. Differences were similar when looking at active cancers versus remote history of cancer.

The researchers confirmed that a beneficial association existed between early cardiology involvement at the time of AFib diagnosis among patients with a history of cancer. After 1.1 years of follow up, cancer patients who did see a cardiologist were more likely to fill their prescriptions, showed a reduced risk of stroke and did not show an increased risk of bleeding. These patients were more likely to be hospitalized, which may be due to more aggressive treatments.

According to a related editorial, the number of cancer survivors in the United States is expected to increase from over 15 million to over 20 million by 2026, which will lead to an increased focus on addressing their long-term medical and psychosocial needs.

"The management of cancer patients must extend beyond their primary malignancy and will require an interdisciplinary approach from oncologists, primary care providers and other subspecialists," said Sean T. Chen, MD, an author of the editorial from Duke University Medical Center. "The increase in survivorship is a testament to the dramatic improvements in cancer therapy, but continued emphasis on a patient's diagnosis of cancer can shift significant attention away from other essential aspects of care."

Carbon losses caused by El Niño forest fires of 2015 and 2016 could be up to four times greater than thought, according to a study of 6.5 million hectares of forest in Brazilian Amazonia.

New research, published in a special issue of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, has revealed that the aftermath of 2015 and 2016 forest fires in the Amazon resulted in CO2 emissions three to four times greater than comparable estimates from existing global fire emissions databases.

The finding is part of a series of results published this week by Lancaster University researchers who were working in the heart of the site of one of the worst forest fires the Amazon has seen in a generation.

Researchers say uncontrolled wildfires in the understorey - or ground level - of humid tropical forests during extreme droughts are a large and poorly quantified source of CO2 emissions.

The study 'Quantifying immediate carbon emissions from El Niño-mediated wildfires in humid tropical forests' looked at a 6.5 million hectare region, of which almost 1 million hectares of primary and secondary forests burned during the 2015-2016 El Niño (an area approximately the size of half of Wales).

Although the area analyzed covers less than 0.2% of Brazilian Amazonia, these wildfires resulted in expected immediate CO2 emissions of over 30 Million tonnes, three to four times greater than comparable estimates from global fire emissions databases.

Lead author Kieran Withey of Lancaster University said : "Uncontrolled understorey wildfires in humid tropical forests during extreme droughts are a large and poorly quantified source of CO2 emissions . These u¬nderstory fires completely consumed leaf litter and fine woody debris, while partially burning coarse woody debris; resulting in high immediate CO2 emissions. This analysis covers an area of just 0.7% of Brazil, but the amount of carbon lost corresponds to 6% of the annual emissions of the whole of Brazil in 2014."

At the end of 2015, Santarém in the Brazilian state of Pará, was one of the epicenters of that year's El Niño. The region experienced a severe drought and extensive forest fires and the researchers were working right in the middle of it. Scientists from 'ECOFOR', the international research project led by Professor Jos Barlow from Lancaster University, had installed 20 study plots in Santarém, eight of which burned.

The research team quickly realized they had the opportunity to document in detail how a forest responds to fire on this scale.

Dr Erika Berenguer of Oxford and Lancaster University, and colleagues found that following the fires, the surviving trees grew significantly more than those located in unburned forests, regardless of their history of previous human disturbance. On average trees in burned areas of forest grew 249% more than trees in forests hit by drought but not fire. Although the growth rate is good news, this large increase in growth appears to be a relatively short-term response.

Professor Jos Barlow of Lancaster University said: "Only a few trees can survive these wildfires, as Amazonian forests did not co-evolve with this threat. So even though surviving trees grow faster in burned forests, this does not compensate the large carbon loss that results from tree mortality."

Meanwhile, Camila V. J. Silva of Lancaster University led research including 31 other burned plots across the Brazilian Amazon, which showed that even 30 years after a fire, seemingly 'recovered' forests still hold 25% less carbon than nearby undisturbed primary forests.

She said: "Wildfires in humid tropical forests can significantly reduce forest biomass for decades by enhancing mortality rates of large and high wood density trees (such as Brazil Nut or Mahogany) , which store the largest amount of biomass in old growth forests. Our work has demonstrated that wildfires significantly slow down or stall the post-fire recovery of Amazonian forests.

Dr Berenguer said: "Overall, our combined results highlight the importance of considering wildfires in Brazilian forest conservation and climate change policies. With climate models projecting a hotter and drier future for the Amazon basin, wildfires are likely to become more widespread. The continued failure to consider wildfires in public policies will lead to shorter fire-return intervals, with forests being unable to recover their carbon stocks."

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- A new analysis by researchers from Brown University and the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation has found that nonfatal injuries in the U.S. in the year 2013 cost more than $1.8 trillion.

And nearly all injures are preventable, said Dr. Mark Zonfrillo, an associate professor at Brown University's Warren Alpert Medical School and a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Hasbro Children's Hospital.

The study, led by Zonfrillo, found that in 2013 about one in 10 individuals in the U.S. was treated for an injury at a hospital, resulting in an annual cost of $1.853 trillion. The findings were published on Monday, Oct. 8, in the journal Injury Epidemiology.

The team analyzed anonymized data from hospital-treated nonfatal injuries and determined three different costs for the 31,038,072 injuries: total medical spending, work lost, and decreased quality of life. Medical spending -- which included costs such as hospital and home care, emergency transportation, medicines and physical therapy -- cost $168 billion. Future lost work from permanent disability cost $223 billion, and quality of life losses cost $1.46 trillion.

"Having an economic analysis that focuses on the burden of injury from the perspective of not only acute medical costs, but also ongoing costs like quality of life, raises awareness around injury and the importance of injury-prevention efforts," Zonfrillo said. "These injuries are preventable, and quantifying the costs is one strategy to encourage societal injury prevention efforts."

Injury prevention depends on engineering, education, economics and enforcement, he said. For example, a well-designed child car seat is of limited use if it's not used consistently or properly. On the enforcement side, Zonfrillo said a common reason people give for not using safety devices, such as bicycle helmet, or not behaving safely, such as putting their cellphone away while driving, is "'if it was important enough, it would be a law.' Laws are powerful -- legislation has absolutely been shown to reduce deaths caused by injuries."

Previous analyses of injury costs have focused only on certain populations, such as children or Medicaid recipients, included medical treatment costs only or used much older data sets, Zonfrillo said.

In addition to the total cost of injury, the researchers looked at the data by various categories including age, household income, region and cause of the injury. Injuries caused by falls and being hit by objects were the most common in all age groups. On the other hand, near drownings, firearm-related injuries and self-harm injuries were less common, but more expensive.

The study found the following, among many other key data points:

12.08 million injuries were caused by falls or being hit by an object accidentally, which cost almost $808 billion in total (an average of $66,857 per injury); an additional 654,688 assaults involved hitting with an object or pushing, which cost $67.66 billion (average $103,352 each)

3.08 million injuries were caused by car-related accidents -- whether to a vehicle occupant, pedestrian or cyclist -- and these cost $207 billion (average $67,163)

10,772 near drownings -- including accidents, self-harm, assaults and those of unspecified intent -- cost $3.89 billion (average $361,354)

74,072 firearm-related injuries cost $16.32 billion (average $220,380)

437,963 self-harm injuries cost $30.17 billion (average $68,894); poisonings were the most common (63.8 percent) but the least costly (average $44,316); self-harm injuries excluding poisonings cost an average of $112,222 each

Children between the ages of 1 and 11 received injuries costing $47,663, on average, which is the lowest for any age group; infants under the age of 1 were the costliest age group at $97,623 each

Households with incomes in the bottom 25 percent experienced more injuries, accounting for 30.8 percent of all injuries; households with incomes in the top 25 percent had slightly more expensive injuries, at $64,950 per injury, compared to an average $59,687 across all income levels

91.5 percent of patients with injuries were treated and released from the emergency room, while the remaining 8.5 percent were admitted to the hospital; patients who were admitted had far more costly injuries averaging $343,535, compared to $33,184; of that number, $38,112 was from medical costs and $305,423 from lost work and decreased quality of life due to disability

Of the 8.5 percent of patients admitted to the hospital, 38.7 percent were admitted in the South, which is proportional to the percent of the U.S. population living in the region (37.4 percent); however injuries admitted to hospitals in the West were 11 percent more costly than average, both in terms of straight medical costs (19.8 percent) and lost work and decreased quality of life (10.4 percent)

Researchers have discovered that the same gene which increases your risk of depression following financial stress as you grow older also reduces your chance of depression associated with friendship and relationships stresses when young- your social network.

This may have implications for treatment, but also offers a possible answer to a question which has puzzled scientists: why has depression survived through evolution? This work is presented at the ECNP Congress in Barcelona.

5-HTTLPR, which is found on chromosome 17, is a form (a variant) of the gene which carries the instructions for producing the serotonin transporter protein, which is central to the pharmacology of depression: antidepressants such as Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs, e.g. Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, and others) are the mainstay of drug treatment for depression. One of the two variants of 5-HTTLPR, the short (s) variant is generally thought to promote a tendency to depression, although as depression is associated with many genes, there is no single genetic cause of depression.

For an inherited trait to survive over time, there normally needs to be some advantage to it being passed on, but with depression there is no obvious reason why evolution should allow a tendency to depression to survive.

Now scientists have found that the s variant (5-HTTLPRs) of this gene may help protect against the depression associated with stressors and life events deriving from the social network in younger people. In previous work, the same scientists had found that the 5-HTTLPRs variant does not increase the depression risk following exposure to most types of stressors as had been believed, but in fact may actually only increases the risk of depression following financial stress in older males.

Researcher Dr Xenia Gonda said: "What we see is the same gene having opposite effects following different types of environmental events and even at different points throughout one's life. For people under around the age of 30, their social network of friends and acquaintances is vitally important. This is the period when they are looking to form attachments. In this younger age, we found that the 5-HTTLPR s variant protects people against depression when exposed to social network stress. However, our previous work showed us that the same gene variant tends to make people more susceptible to depression if they experience financial stress when they get older.

With the older group, we found that if we looked at the two genders separately, this effect was observable only in men, whose traditional gender role is that of the provider for the family so that's perhaps why financial problems may be more stressful for them".

For the latest work, the team had enrolled a sample of 1081 volunteers from Budapest and Manchester, all under the age of 30, and questioned them about 4 different types of stress experience including relationship problems, illness or injury, financial difficulties, and stresses related to the social network such as friends and acquaintances. They found that the short variant of 5-HTTLPR, which is present in around 37-40% of the Caucasian population, conferred a statistically significant protection against depression risk following social network problems, but not against the other stressors in the study.

Dr Gonda continued, "Depression is not a single disease, and depression related to different types of genes and different stresses may respond to different types of pharmacological and psychotherapeutic treatment. What our study shows that genes involved in depression may actually have positive effects which can also be exploited for therapy. For example those with higher social sensitivity conferred by the s allele may respond better to psychotherapy than those who do not carry this variant, however, further studies would be needed to confirm this.

It's a subtle distinction, but we believe depending on the environmental context, 5-HTTLPR may have both negative and positive effects; so sometimes it may promote depression, but in certain circumstances, like when exposed to life events and stressors affecting the social network, it protects. We should always consider the possible ancestral context when looking at the adaptive or risk side of genes, and it appears that the adaptive role of 5-HTTLPR was to increase sensitivity to social influences and events with positive outcomes, and its negative effect like increasing depression risk appear only in case of a few types of stress. And this is probably why these genes have been preserved in evolution. But we need to remember that there are multiple genes involved in depression which interact with one another and with the environment, so it's not as simple as saying 'this gene causes depression'.

The take-home message from this work is that "depressogenic" genes (genes which are associated with more depression) are not always depressogenic, it depends on their environmental context, your gender, your age, and what type of stress you are under".

She added "We have surveyed more than 1000 people in this research, but this is a fairly modest sample in terms of population genetics, so we are continuing the research to allow us to confirm the findings".

The combined impact of deforestation and wildlife exploitation on bird numbers is severely underestimated and could lead to some species becoming extinct, a joint study by the University of Sheffield and National University of Singapore has found.

Scientists focused on Sundaland - a hotspot of biodiversity in Southeast Asia, spanning Borneo, Sumatra, Java and Peninsular Malaysia - where habitat loss, and hunting and wildlife trades are particularly intense.

Looking at 308 forest-dependent bird species, they found that when the loss of forest habitat and bird trapping in the area was examined together it resulted in a much higher average population loss than when accounted for separately.

The study calls for the threats to biodiversity to be considered in totality in order for effective measures to be implemented.

The research, which was conducted between October 2016 and July 2017, also suggests that about 50 to 90 of forest-dependent species in the region, such as the ruby-throated bulbul and white-crowned hornbill will be extinct by 2100.

Tropical forests are the most biodiverse ecosystem globally, however, extensive loss of tropical forests driven primarily by the expansion of agricultural land threatens the survival of forest species. Coupled with other anthropogenic disturbance such as logging, hunting and fires, the threat to biodiversity in these forests is amplified.

While the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has been tracking the different forms of threats to wildlife, the assessments tend to look at each form of threat separately. These threats, are however, interconnected and the combined impact could be more severe than currently estimated.

The researchers focused their study on quantifying the combined threats of deforestation and wildlife exploitation in Sundaland.

"Recent extinctions like the passenger pigeon and the dodo present common traits like the simultaneous combination of habitat loss and active hunting," said Dr William Symes, from the National University of Singapore.

"This fatal combination of ingredients is present for dozens of unique bird species in Sundaland. At current rates, vanishing forests and enormous trapping pressures are likely to drive many of them to extinction in the near future."

Their evaluation revealed that 89 per cent of the 308 forest-dependent bird species studied had experienced an average habitat loss of 16 per cent due to deforestation, and they also estimated that wildlife exploitation had led to a 37 per cent decline in mean population on average.

Among the bird species studied, the researchers also identified 77 'commercially traded' species that are more commonly exploited. They found that the estimated average decline for these exploited species was 15.3 per cent from deforestation alone, but when combined with the effects of exploitation, the estimated average decline was drastically increased to 51.9 per cent.

In addition, the assessment of the combined impact of deforestation and exploitation in the study suggests that a total of 51 species should be listed as critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable - nearly doubling the number currently listed by IUCN.

Dr David Edwards, from the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield, said: "Our study highlights the importance of considering the impact of major conservation threats in combination.

"Recent habitat loss and exploitation combine to drive dramatic extinction risks to the forest specialist species of Sundaland. Without urgent policy intervention to curb deforestation and slow the quantities of birds entering the cage bird trade, many species are likely to be lost.

"Failing to account for these combined threats can lead to a major underestimation of threats in the IUCN Red List assessments."

The combined impacts of deforestation, forest fragmentation and commercial exploitation are not unique to Southeast Asia. Rampant land-use change and wildlife trade drive the decline in parrots from Latin America, Africa and Asia.

"Our technique of evaluating the combined threats can be applied to other tropical forests facing similar threats, to facilitate the development of effective conservation policies. Coordinated efforts to curb commercial exploitation and slow deforestation, for instance, can limit the extinction of bird species," Assistant Professor Roman Carrasco from the National University of Singapore added.

Publishing a high-impact scientific article is a significant achievement for researchers. Being featured on the journal cover is even better.

A new study outlines advances in the field of catalysis research, with broad applications for innovative energy technology.

Gary Moore, an assistant professor in the School of Molecular Sciences and a researcher with the Biodesign Center for Applied Structural Discovery, and his team won the coveted honor when their research article, "Electrocatalytic Properties of Binuclear Cu(II) Fused Porphyrins for Hydrogen Evolution," was selected for the cover of the October edition of ACS Catalysis.

Moore's graduate students, Diana Khusnutdinova and Brian Wadsworth, were the lead authors on the study. Jason Drees, former multimedia developer for Biodesign designed the journal cover.

"It's always a pleasure to have others take special notice of my group's research," Moore said.

Established in 2011, ACS Catalysis is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes manuscripts covering experimental and theoretical research on materials and molecules that are catalytic in nature. Catalysts play an essential role in energy conversion processes in biology and technology. They act to provide low-energy pathways for chemical reactions and find their way into applications ranging from fuel manufacturing to guiding the bioenergetic reactions essential to all living organisms.

Moore's lab studies the ways in which catalytic materials powered by photovoltaics can produce energy to meet humans' needs while minimizing environmental impact. According to Moore, their studies are inspired by the process that plants and other photosynthetic organisms use to convert sunlight to fuels through a series of photochemical reactions.

"This process powers our biosphere and supplied the fossil fuels our modern societies rely on," Moore said.

The cover art illustrates the molecular structure of the reported catalyst, a binuclear copper(II) fused porphyrin which is composed of two porphyrin macrocycles, as well as the union of two protons to synthesize hydrogen (H2). The study explores the electrocatalytic properties of the porphyrins in this hydrogen evolution reaction.

"In our recent ACS Catalysis publication we describe a new class of catalyst for driving the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER)," Moore said. "The product of this reaction is a fuel and an important chemical feedstock. The reported catalyst uses a molecular framework to house two copper metal centers. Under appropriate conditions, a single molecule of the catalyst produces more than 2,000,000 molecules of hydrogen per second. This rate constant is among the highest reported in the literature."

By understanding the physical and chemical properties of these electrocatalysts, Moore believes further enhancement of their catalytic properties is possible.

With human energy demands rapidly increasing and with serious concerns about the environmental impacts of the fossil fuel economy, clean alternatives in energy production are desperately needed. Research like Moore's may pave the way for a more sustainable future that will enable humans to meet acute energy needs with a more eco-friendly, low carbon regime.

"We imagine the promising features of the catalyst described in our current report will provide a foundation for achieving new energy technologies requiring enhanced control of matter and energy at the molecular level," Moore said. "Human-engineered systems capable of converting sunlight and water to fuels offer a promising approach to obtaining a sustainable energy future."

As Moore explains, one innovation that makes this study stand out is the use of copper in lieu of the industry's standard, platinum.

"The long-established industrial catalyst for activating this reaction is elemental platinum. However, concerns that future market demands for platinum and other rare-earth elements could outpace availability have prompted researchers to seek alternative materials and design principles to prepare catalysts for the production of hydrogen and other industrially relevant chemicals," Moore said.

Not only did the study pave the pathway for the use of copper in hydrogen evolution reactions, but it also yielded results on the kinetics associated with the compound.

"The copper-based assembly achieves one of the highest maximum turnover frequencies reported for a molecular hydrogen evolution reaction catalyst," Moore said.

Moore and his team are pursuing follow-up studies that will continue to shed light on the electrocatalytic properties of these assemblies.

"Members of my research team and I, including Diana Khusnutdinova and Brian Wadsworth, are currently in France to perform in situ x-ray absorption measurements at the SOLEIL synchrotron. These studies will investigate the electronic structure of the catalyst described in our current ACS Catalysis article and other related materials," Moore added.

Work is also currently underway involving catalysts that make use of other types of earth-abundant metal centers and molecular-based scaffolds to house them, which Moore's group looks forward to reporting on in the near future.

The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core satellite passed over Tropical Storm Kong-Rey and analyzed the rates in which rain was falling throughout the storm.

At the time GPM passed overhead, GPM's Microwave Imager (GMI) instruments collected data that revealed moderate convective rainfall northwest of Kong-Rey's center. GPM indicated that rain was falling at over 1.8 inches (45.7 mm) per hour within two areas of storms northwest of Kong-Rey's center.

At 5 a.m. EDT (0900 UTC) on Friday, Oct. 5, the center of Tropical Storm Kong-Rey was located near 29.6 degrees north latitude and 125.9 degrees west longitude. Kong-Rey is about 211 nautical miles north-northwest of Kadena Air Base, Okinawa Island, Japan. Maximum sustained winds are near 63 mph (55 knots/102 kph) with higher gusts.

Kong-Rey is moving toward the north. A turn toward the northeast is expected to take the storm into the Sea of Japan. The storm is now weakening, and will become extra-tropical over northern Japan.

The inability to alter intrinsic piezoelectric behavior in organic polymers hampers their application in flexible, wearable and biocompatible devices, according to researchers at Penn State and North Carolina State University, but now a molecular approach can improve those piezoelectric properties.

"Morphotropic phase boundary (MPB) is an important concept developed a half-century ago in ceramic materials," said Qing Wang, professor of materials science and engineering. "This concept has never before been realized in organic materials."

The concept of morphotropic phase boundary refers to significant changes in material properties that occur at the boundary between crystalline structures, and are dependent on a material's composition.

The piezoelectric effect is a reversible process that occurs in some materials. When the material is physically compressed, an electrical charge is produced, and when an electric current passes through it, mechanical motion results.

The researchers looked at ferroelectric poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-trifluoroethylene) --P(VDF-TrFE) -- copolymers and found that tailoring the molecules to specific arrangements around chiral, or asymmetric, centers led to transitions between ordered and disordered structures and created a region within the material where ferroelectric and relaxor properties compete. Relaxors are disorganized materials, while normal ferroelectric materials are ordered. In ferroelectric polymers, an MPB-like effect is induced by the molecular chain conformations that are tailored by chemical compositions.

"We studied MPB formation in organic materials using a combined experiment and theory approach -- first principles calculations of possible configurations, synthesis of new polymers and comprehensive characterization of structures and properties," said Wang.

The simulation work was done at North Carolina State University.

The researchers also used a wide variety of methods to investigate the polymer including nuclear magnetic resonance, x-ray powder diffraction and Fourier-transformed infrared spectroscopy looking at the transition area and boundaries.

"Given flexibility in molecular design and synthesis, this work opens up a new avenue for scalable high-performance piezoelectric polymers," the researchers report today (Oct. 4) in Nature.

Engineers at UC San Diego used wearable off-the-shelf technology and machine learning to predict, for the first time, an individual's blood pressure and provide personalized recommendations to lower it based on this data.

Their work earned the title of Best Paper at IEEE Healthcom 2018. To the researchers' knowledge, this is the first work investigating daily blood pressure prediction and its relationship to health behavior data collected by wearables.

When doctors tell their patients to make a lot of significant lifestyle changes--exercise more, sleep better, lower their salt intake etc.--it can be overwhelming, and compliance is not very high, said Sujit Dey, co-author of the paper and Director of the Center for Wireless Communications at UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering where he's a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

"What if we could pinpoint the one health behavior that most impacts an individual's blood pressure, and have them focus on that one goal, instead," Dey asked.

Dey and co-author Po-Han Chiang, a graduate student in the Mobile Systems Design Lab in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering, collected sleep, exercise and blood pressure data from eight patients over 90 days using a FitBit Charge HR and Omron Evolv wireless blood pressure monitor. Using machine learning and this data from existing wearable devices, they developed an algorithm to predict the users' blood pressure and show which particular health behaviors affected it most.

This study affirmed the importance of personalized data over generalized information. While many health databases add large amounts of patient data into one model, considering all patients together to make health suggestions, the personalized information in this study was more effective. For example, one subject's blood pressure was most affected by the number of minutes they were sedentary throughout the day. Changing that one factor had a significant impact, lowering their average systolic blood pressure by 15.4 percent and their diastolic blood pressure by 14.2 percent in one week. For another subject, the time they went to bed was the most important factor in lowering their blood pressure based on their historical data. When this subject went to bed a total of 58 minutes earlier over the week prior, they experienced a 3.6 percent drop systolic blood pressure and 6.6 percent decrease in their average diastolic blood pressure from the previous week.

"This research shows that using wireless wearables and other devices to collect and analyze personal data can help transition patients from reactive to continuous care," said Dey. "Instead of saying 'My blood pressure is high therefore I'll go to the doctor to get medicine,' giving patients and doctors access to this type of system can allow them to manage their symptoms on a continuous basis."

Dey and Chiang have recently teamed up with clinicians at UC San Diego Health and are working to test their predictive model on a larger sample size, provide one day ahead prediction, and study the long-term effect of health behaviors on blood pressure.