Tech

ITHACA, NY - The way people get around, particularly in big cities like New York, is changing rapidly, but a fundamental problem remains unsolved: how to best size and operate a fleet of vehicles, especially traditional taxis and particularly given taxi riders' attitudes toward sharing.

A study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Senseable City Laboratory - with important input from Steven Strogatz, the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University - offers a network-based solution to the classic "minimum fleet problem:" Given a collection of trips - specified by origin, destination and start time - what is the minimum number of vehicles needed to serve all the trips, without incurring any delay to the passengers?

"You could view it as, in the best of all possible worlds, what's the fewest cabs that we would need?" said Strogatz, a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow, who collaborated with MIT's Carlo Ratti, senior author of "Addressing the Minimum Fleet Problem in On-Demand Urban Mobility," which published in Nature.

Instead of "ride-sharing," Ratti and Strogatz considered the notion of "vehicle sharing" in their model system. Using a 2011 data set of 150 million taxi trips taken in New York City over a year, the group used the Hopcroft-Karp algorithm - a matching formula co-developed more than 40 years ago by Cornell computer science professor John Hopcroft - to solve the problem of matching rides to riders with the fewest vehicles possible.

Strogatz admits that there are portions of the study that assume best-case conditions: All the desired trips are known in advance, and no passenger should have to wait for their taxi to arrive.

"And no driver should be driving around for more than 15 minutes between drop-off and the next pickup," Strogatz said. "Those are all pretty strong assumptions."

The results: With optimal service levels, their research allows for a 40 percent reduction in fleet size, compared with current taxi operation. Even if trips are not known in advance, a real-time version of the algorithm - in which customers hail rides with an online app - allows for a 30 percent reduction.

Researchers openly state that their approach assumes a "top-down" model, in which trip requests and vehicle dispatching are all centralized, which is obviously not the case in the real world.

"To some extent," the researchers wrote, "our results can then be seen as a quantification of the well-known game-theoretic notion of 'price of anarchy' in urban taxi operation."

"Price of anarchy" refers to the notion that there is some efficiency loss in a system's lack of coordination.

"While optimal from the vehicle operation and environmental viewpoint," they wrote, "a monopolistic market is however highly undesirable for many other reasons, most importantly lack of competition and consequent higher prices."

Nevertheless, the group's computational analysis of the data - from which they've culled results in past work, including a 2017 paper on urban ride-sharing- proposes that there exists a more efficient way to deploy taxis, lowering emissions and traffic congestion in the process.

"The point I think we're making is that reducing the anarchy - having a little bit of planning and optimizing - seems to go a long way," Strogatz said.

The researchers say their results could become even more relevant down the road as fleets of networked, autonomous vehicles become commonplace.

"This shows that tomorrow's urban problems regarding mobility can be tackled not necessarily with more physical infrastructure but with more intelligence," Ratti said. "In other words: More silicon, and less asphalt."

A new study published in the Taylor & Francis journal Temperature compares how different types of cars warm up on hot days when exposed to different amounts of shade and sunlight for different periods of time. The research team took into account how these differences would affect the body temperature of a hypothetical 2-year-old child left in a vehicle on a hot day. The study highlights the need for greater awareness and prevention measures for pediatric vehicular heatstroke, even perhaps a technological solution for in-car alerting systems when a child is mistakenly left behind.

"Our study not only quantifies temperature differences inside vehicles parked in the shade and the sun, but it also makes clear that even parking a vehicle in the shade can be lethal to a small child," said co-author Nancy Selover, an Arizona State climatologist.

Researchers used six vehicles for the study: Two identical silver mid-size saloon cars, two identical silver city cars, and two identical silver minivans. During three hot summer days with temperatures above 35°C in Tempe, Arizona, researchers moved the cars from sunlight to shade for different periods of time throughout the day. Researchers measured interior air temperature and surface temperatures throughout different parts of the day.

"These tests replicated what might happen during a shopping trip," Selover said. "We wanted to know what the interior of each vehicle would be like after one hour, about the amount of time it would take to get groceries. I knew the temperatures would be hot, but I was surprised by the surface temperatures."

For vehicles parked in the sun during the simulated shopping trip, the average cabin temperature hit 46°C in one hour. Dash boards averaged 69°C, steering wheels 53°C, and seats 51°C in one hour.

For vehicles parked in the shade, interior temperatures were closer to 38°C after one hour. Dash boards averaged 48°C, steering wheels 42°C and seats 41°C after one hour.

The different types of vehicles tested warmed up at different rates, with the city car warming faster than the mid-size saloon and minivan.

"We've all gone back to our cars on hot days and have been barely able to touch the steering wheel," Selover said. "But, imagine what that would be like to a child trapped in a car seat. And once you introduce a person into these hot cars, they are exhaling humidity into the air. When there is more humidity in the air, a person can't cool down by sweating because sweat won't evaporate as quickly."

A person's age, weight, existing health problems and other factors, including clothing, will affect how and when heat becomes deadly. Scientists can't predict exactly when a child will suffer a heatstroke, but most cases involve a child's core body temperature rising above 40°C for an extended period. In the study, the researchers used data to model a hypothetical 2-year old boy's body temperature. The team found that a child trapped in a car in the study's conditions could reach that temperature in about an hour if a car is parked in the sun, and just under two hours if the car is parked in the shade.

"We hope these findings can be leveraged for the awareness and prevention of pediatric vehicular heatstroke and the creation and adoption of in-vehicle technology to alert parents of forgotten children," said Jennifer Vanos, lead study author.

With summer coming, it's only a matter of time before the smells and tastes of barbecued foods dominate the neighborhood. But there's a downside to grilling that can literally get under your skin. In a study appearing in Environmental Science & Technology, scientists report that skin is a more important pathway for uptake of cancer-causing compounds produced during barbecuing than inhalation. They also found that clothing cannot fully protect individuals from this exposure.

In the U.S., 70 percent of adults own a grill or a smoker, and more than half of them grill at least four times a month, according to the Barbecue Industry Association. But barbecuing produces large amounts of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. These carcinogenic compounds can cause respiratory diseases and DNA mutations. Eating grilled foods is the most common source of PAHs arising from barbecuing. However, according to a previous study by Eddy Y. Zeng and colleagues, bystanders near barbecues were likely exposed to considerable amount of PAHs through skin exposure and inhalation, even if they didn't eat the grilled foods. Building on that study, the team sought to more precisely quantify skin uptake of PAHs from barbecue fumes and particles.

The researchers divided volunteers into groups at an outdoor barbecue to provide them with varying degrees of exposure to the food and the smoke. After analyzing urine samples from the volunteers, the researchers concluded that, as expected, diet accounted for the largest amount of PAH exposure. However, the skin was the second-highest exposure route, followed by inhalation. They say oils in barbecue fumes likely enhance skin uptake of PAHs. The team also found that while clothes may reduce skin exposure to PAHs over the short term, once clothing is saturated with barbecue smoke, the skin can take in considerable amounts of PAHs from them. They suggest washing clothes soon after leaving a grilling area to reduce exposure.

Improved regulation has deterred a greater amount of financial misconduct in the UK since the global financial crisis, according to new research published today by the University of East Anglia (UEA).

Since the crisis of 2007, there has been increased awareness of the risks posed by the conduct of financial institutions and their employees. More incidents of financial misconduct have been investigated, with regulators applying increasingly large fines and demanding the repayment of profits.

However, it remains uncertain if these regulatory changes have limited how much financial misconduct occurs and so this study examined whether regulators have improved their capacity to detect or deter financial misconduct since the end of the crisis in 2010.

Researchers at UEA, Bangor University, and the Universities of Warwick and Otago conducted an analysis differentiating between detection and deterrence of financial misconduct during the period 2002-2016.

The findings, published in a working paper by UEA's Centre for Competition Policy, show that while detected breaches of UK financial regulation fell after 2010, the corresponding level of deterrence actually rose in this period.

The authors say this could be because of highly-publicised changes in regulatory structures, the effectiveness of punishments, or cultural change in the financial services industry.

Dr Peter Ormosi, senior lecturer in competition economics at UEA's Norwich Business School, said: "By examining pre- and post-financial crisis periods, we show that while detection rates for breaches of financial regulation have remained constant and the number of detected cases has dropped, there was a significant increase in the rate of deterrence occurring after 2010.

"We believe this is strong evidence that the UK regulatory environment improved after 2010, with an increase in the effectiveness of regulation of financial misconduct in recent years."

John Ashton, professor of banking at Bangor Business School, said it was important to assess if the increasingly harsh punishments have been effective in reducing misconduct and other risky practices.

"While financial misconduct alone is rarely the cause of financial crises, poor conduct by financial firms amplifies the macroprudential risks, for example through mortgage fraud, mis-selling of financial services, or even market abuse," said Prof Ashton.

"Therefore it is important not only to limit the dangers posed by financial misconduct through appropriate assessment of the risk and the creation of resilient financial institutions, but also to enhance methods to quantify the effectiveness of regulatory detection and deterrence in order to best minimise misconduct by firms and individuals."

The authors applied a new method of quantifying the detection and deterrence effect of financial regulation on financial misconduct, using a statistical approach employed in biological, ecological and demographic research - previously applied to assess other areas of criminal and corporate offending.

Using Australia as a control country, the study drew on data from Final Notices and Enforcement Undertakings issued by the UK Financial Services Authority and Financial Conduct Authority and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission between 2002 and 2016.

Co-author Dr Tim Burnett, from the University of Warwick, said: "One of the key difficulties in evaluating the effectiveness of financial regulation enforcement is that the data generally only shows us information on the number of individuals or firms who were actually caught. These figures, however, tell us little about what proportion of the crime we are successful in detecting, or whether our policies are deterring misconduct (where a potential perpetrator elects not to engage in crime in response to the potential penalties).

"Using a Capture-Recapture approach, typically used in biology or ecology, allowed us to examine data on detected offences and their associated punishments and use this to draw conclusions on both the effectiveness of policy at detecting misconduct, but crucially also to estimate the proportion of potential offenders which were dissuaded.

"Our headline results suggest that there was a shift in regulatory effectiveness after the financial crisis, and that this resulted in greater deterrence of financial misconduct."

Millions of young children living in conditions of war, disaster, and displacement are at increased risk for developmental difficulties that can follow them throughout their lives. A new Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences article reviews what's known about the effectiveness of early childhood development programs in humanitarian settings and present a framework and recommendations for future research.

The authors note that while there is robust evidence from stable contexts demonstrating effectiveness, research in humanitarian settings is lacking, and more evidence is needed to demonstrate not only which programs are effective, but importantly why, how, and in which contexts, settings, and populations these programs effectively operate. Such research would produce insights that will enable humanitarian actors to adapt, transfer, and scale successful program models to mitigate the negative effects of war, disaster, and displacement.

"We know from decades of research that early childhood programming has the powerful potential to improve the lives of children and families living in adversity. Yet in conflict and crisis settings, where experiences of severe and prolonged stress threaten healthy development, these programs are largely absent," said lead author Katie Maeve Murphy, of the International Rescue Committee. "There is a clear need for further research--with a focus on implementation processes associated with effective outcomes in order to change the trajectory and significantly enhance the lives of children and families living in crisis and conflict."

The paper is part of a special issue on implementation research and practice for early childhood development, intended to advance evidence for effective scaling up of nurturing care interventions that promote early childhood development.

Not long ago, cannabis growers learned their trade mainly by trial and error, passing along tips to others behind a veil of secrecy. But with expanding legalization of cannabis in the U.S., this situation is changing. According to an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly news magazine of the American Chemical Society, cannabis growers are starting to benefit from increased communication and scientific research about the plant and its cultivation.

Melody Bomgardner, senior editor, notes that in several U.S. states, cannabis is now a high-value crop that can be grown legally. In Oregon, monthly sales of cannabis have skyrocketed to an annualized rate of $480 million, according to the state's Office of Economic Analysis. This booming business has attracted the interest of manufacturers of agricultural pesticides, fertilizers and equipment. Yet because the drug remains illegal at the federal level, cannabis has yet to benefit from federally sponsored research programs that support mainstream crops.

State agricultural organizations and some researchers are now working to fill that gap. One of the challenges they face is pest and disease management. Because state laws prohibit most synthetic pesticides for cannabis use, many growers turn to predatory organisms and other biological means of pest control, for example, green lacewings that eat aphids. Other efforts to improve cannabis agronomy include establishing the best fertilizers and growing conditions for the plant, and sequencing the cannabis genome to discover why some varieties produce higher levels of certain compounds, such as the hallucinogen tetrahydrocannabinol. As the social stigma surrounding cannabis fades, the demand for trained scientists will grow, industry experts say.

A new Physiological Reports study reveals that evening use of light-emitting tablets can induce delays in desired bedtimes, suppress secretion of melatonin (the hormone that regulates sleep and wakefulness), and impair next-morning alertness.

Nine healthy adults participated in a randomized and counterbalanced study comparing 5 consecutive evenings of unrestricted use of light-emitting tablet computers versus evenings reading from printed materials.

On evenings when using light-emitting tablets, participants' self-selected bedtimes were on average half an hour later, and they showed suppressed melatonin levels, delayed timing of melatonin secretion onset, and later sleep onset. When using the tablets, participants rated themselves as less sleepy in the evenings and less alert in the first hour after awakening on the following mornings.

"These findings provide more evidence that light-emitting electronic devices have biological effects," said co-author Dr. Jeanne Duffy, of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. "Using light-emitting electronic devices in the late evening can postpone our decision to go to sleep, and make us more sleepy the next morning."

SYRACUSE, NEW YORK -- The large and small, beautiful and bizarre are among the newly discovered animals, plants and microbes announced by the College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) as the Top 10 New Species for 2018.

The large is a majestic tree that towers up to 130 feet (40 m); among the small is a tiny, single-celled protist. The list of science's best discoveries includes a rare great ape and the fossil of a marsupial lion that roamed Australia in the late Oligocene Epoch. There are also two residents of the world's oceans -- a fish from the depths of the Pacific Ocean and a bright amphipod from the chilly waters of the Antarctic Ocean.

The 11th annual list, compiled by ESF's International Institute for Species Exploration (IISE), also includes a beetle that looks like part of an ant, a plant that partners with a fungus, a bacterium that looks like hair and a beetle that resides in the dark and has an interesting evolutionary story.

In addition to the two ocean dwellers, the new species hail from countries around the globe: Brazil, Costa Rica, Sumatra in Indonesia, the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, Japan, Australia and China. And one was found in an aquarium in the United States -- its origin in the wild is not known.

The first list was compiled in 2008.

"I'm constantly amazed at how many new species show up and the range of things that are discovered," said ESF President Quentin Wheeler, the founding director of the IISE.

Wheeler and the IISE issue the list each year as a lesson in the value of species exploration and biodiversity.

"We name about 18,000 per year but we think at least 20,000 per year are going extinct. ... So many of these species -- if we don't find them, name them and describe them now -- will be lost forever. And yet they can teach us so much about the intricacies of ecosystems and the details of evolutionary history. Each of them has found a way to survive against the odds of changing competition, climate and environmental conditions. So each can teach us something really worth knowing as we face an uncertain environmental future ourselves."

Wheeler puts responsibility for the rate of extinctions squarely on humans.

"At this stage, it's us. People are altering habitats and changing the climate," he said. "As inconvenient as it might be to adapt to climate change with our crops and relocate cities in the most extreme scenarios, what we can't do is bring back species once they're gone."

The institute's international committee of taxonomists selects the Top 10 from among the approximately 18,000 new species named the previous year. The list is made public around May 23 to recognize the birthday of Carolus Linnaeus, an 18th century Swedish botanist who is considered the father of modern taxonomy.

The list follows.

Protist: Aquarium to enigma

Ancoracysta twista

Location: Unknown

Discovered in an aquarium in San Diego, California, USA, this new single-celled protist has challenged scientists to determine its nearest relatives. It does not fit neatly within any known group and appears to be a previously undiscovered, early lineage of Eukaryota with a uniquely rich mitochondrial genome. Eukaryotes are organisms with cells in which genetic material is organized in a membrane-bound nucleus. Prokaryotes, like bacteria and archaea, lack such an organized nucleus. Eukaryotes include single-celled protists as well as multi-celled organisms we commonly think of as animals, plants and fungi.

Ancoracysta twista is a predatory flagellate that uses its whip-like flagella to propel itself and unusual harpoon-like organelles, called ancoracysts, to immobilize other protists on which it feeds. The geographic origin of the species in the wild is not known. It was found in a tropical aquarium at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography on a brain coral. The unusually large number of genes in its mitochondrial genome opens a window into the early evolution of eukaryotic organisms.

Atlantic forest tree: Mighty in size, small in number

Dinizia jueirana-facao

Location: Brazil

The legume genus Dinizia was known, until now, from a single Amazonian tree species, D. excelsa, discovered nearly 100 years ago. Dinizia jueirana-facao, up to 130 feet (40 m) in height, emerges above the canopy of the semi-deciduous, riparian, pristine Atlantic forest where it is found. This massive tree, weighing an estimated 62 tons (56,000 kg), is smaller than its Amazonian sister-species and lacks its buttresses, but is similarly impressive. D. jueirana-facao is known only from within and just beyond the boundaries of the Reserva Natural Vale in northern Espirito Santo, Brazil. While large in dimension, the tree is limited in numbers -- it is known from only 25 individuals, about half of which are in the protected area, making it critically endangered. The woody fruits are impressive in size, too, reaching about 18 inches (0.5 m) in length. More than 2,000 species of vertebrate animals live in the Atlantic forest, including almost 200 endemic species of birds. This forest is home to more than half of the threatened animal species in Brazil, but its range has been severely diminished and fragmented, with perhaps 15 percent of its once 330 million acres (more than 1.3 million square kilometers) remaining.

Amphipod: A name that rings a bell

Epimeria quasimodo

Location: Antarctic Ocean

Here's a new species whose name might ring a bell. This amphipod, about 2 inches (50mm) in length, Epimeria quasimodo, is named for Victor Hugo's character, Quasimodo the hunchback, in reference to its somewhat humped back. It is one of 26 new species of amphipods of the genus Epimeria from the Southern Ocean with incredible spines and vivid colors. The number of species, and their extraordinary morphological structures and colors, makes the genus Epimeria an icon of the Southern Ocean that includes both free-swimming predators and sessile filter feeders.

The genus is abundant in the glacial waters circulating south of the Polar Front and their crested adornments are reminiscent of mythological dragons. When a treatment of the genus was published in 2007, many researchers assumed that the species were rather completely known. Using a combination of morphology and DNA evidence, however, a Belgian pair of investigators have demonstrated in their comprehensive monograph just how little we yet know of these spectacular invertebrates.

Baffling Beetle: Camouflaged hitchhiker

Nymphister kronaueri

Location: Costa Rica

Nymphister kronaueri is a tiny beetle that lives among ants. At about 1.5 mm in length, 16 of them could line up head-to-tail in the space of an inch (2.5 cm). But their story gets much better. They live exclusively among one species of army ant, Eciton mexicanum. The host ants, as with other army ants, do not construct permanent nests but are nomadic. In the case of E. mexicanum, they spend two to three weeks on the move, making raids each day to capture thousands of prey items, then spend two to three weeks in one location. While the beetle can move about and feed while the host colony is stationary, it must make the trip with the ants when they are on the move to a new location. The beetle's body is the precise size, shape and color of the abdomen of a worker ant. The beetle uses its mouthparts to grab the skinny portion of the host abdomen and hang on, letting the ant do the walking. At a glance, an ant with the beetle onboard appears to have two abdomens but the upper one is a beetle. Like other myrmecophiles (literally, ant lovers), these beetles must use chemical signals or other adaptations to avoid becoming prey themselves. Exactly how that works in the case of N. kronaueri is yet to be determined.

Tapanuli Orangutan: Endangered great ape

Pongo tapanuliensis

Location: Sumatra, Indonesia

Until now, only half a dozen non-human great apes have been recognized. The eastern and western gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos are more closely related to humans than the orangutans which are the only great apes in Asia. In 2001, the orangutans of Sumatra and Borneo were recognized as distinct species, Pongo abelii and P. pygmaeus. An international team of researchers, examining morphometric, behavioral, and genomic evidence, have concluded that an isolated population at the southern range limit of Sumatran orangutans, in Batang Toru, is distinct from both northern Sumatran and Bornean species. Genomic evidence suggests that while the northern Sumatra and Borneo species separated about 674 thousand years ago, this southern Sumatra species diverged much earlier, about 3.38 million years ago. As soon as the significance of this isolated population was determined, it revealed the most imperiled great ape in the world. Only an estimated 800 individuals exist in fragmented habitat spread over about 250,000 acres (about 1,000 square kilometers) on medium elevation hills and submontane forests from about 1,000 to 4,000 feet (300 to 1,300 m) above sea level, with densest populations in primary forest. Size is similar to other orangutans, with females under 4 feet (1.21 m) in height and males under 5 feet (1.53 m).

Swire's Snailfish: Deepest fish in the sea

Pseudoliparis swirei

Location: Western Pacific Ocean

In the dark abyss of the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific lies the deepest spot in the world's oceans and the deepest-dwelling fish ever discovered with verified depth. Large numbers of the new species were attracted to traps baited with mackerel. Pseudoliparis swirei is a small, tadpole-like fish measuring a little over four inches in length (112 mm) yet appears to be the top predator in its benthic community at the bottom of this particularly deep sea. It was captured at depths between 22,000 and 26,000 feet (6,898 and 7,966 m). A fish was recorded on camera at an even greater depth, at nearly 27,000 feet (8,143 m) but it was not recovered and could not be confirmed to be the same species. P. swirei belongs to the snailfish family, Liparidae. Among the family's more than 400 named species are fish found at all depths, from intertidal pools to the deepest reaches. It is believed that about 27,000 feet (8,200 m) is a physiological limit below which nearly all fishes cannot survive.

Heterotrophic Flower: Magnificent moocher

Sciaphila sugimotoi

Location: Ishigaki Island, Japan

Most plants are autotrophic, capturing solar energy to feed themselves by means of photosynthesis. A few, like the newly discovered S. sugimotoi, are heterotrophic, deriving their sustenance from other organisms. In this case, the plant is symbiotic with a fungus from which it derives nutrition without harm to the partner. In fact, the plant family Triuridaceae to which it belongs consists entirely of such mycoheterotrophs (fungus symbionts). The discovery of any new species of plant in Japan is newsworthy as the flora is well-documented, so such a beautiful new flower is an exciting addition. The delicate S. sugimotoi, just under 4 inches in height (10 cm), appears during short flowering times in September and October, producing small blossoms. The species is considered critically endangered as it has been found in only two locations on the island in humid evergreen broadleaf forest, represented by perhaps 50 plants. As with other fungal symbionts, the species depends on a stable ecosystem for survival.

Volcanic Bacterium: New species erupting onto the scene

Thiolava veneris

Location: Canary Islands

When the submarine volcano Tagoro erupted off the coast of El Hierro in the Canary Islands in 2011, it abruptly increased water temperature, decreased oxygen and released massive quantities of carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide, wiping out much of the existing marine ecosystem. Three years later, scientists found the first colonizers of this newly deposited area -- a new species of proteobacteria producing long, hair-like structures composed of bacterial cells within a sheath. The bacteria formed a massive white mat, extending for nearly half an acre (about 2,000 square meters) around the summit of the newly formed Tagoro volcanic cone at depths of about 430 feet (129-132 m). Scientists reporting the new species concluded that the unique metabolic characteristics of the bacteria allow them to colonize this newly formed seabed, paving the way for development of early-stage ecosystems. They dubbed the filamentous mat of bacteria "Venus' hair."

Marsupial Lion: Ferocious fossil

Wakaleo schouteni

Location: Australia

In the late Oligocene, which ended about 23 million years ago as the Miocene arrived, a marsupial lion, Wakaleo schouteni, roamed Australia's open forest habitat in northwestern Queensland, stalking its prey. Scientists from the University of New South Wales recovered fossils in the Riversleigh World Heritage Area in Queensland that proved to be a previously unknown fossil marsupial lion. Weighing in at about 50 pounds, more or less the size of a Siberian husky dog, this predator spent part of its time in trees. Its teeth suggest that it was not completely reliant on meat but was, rather, an omnivore. It is part of a lineage (the genus Wakaleo) that followed Cope's rule during the Miocene, increasing in size through time, possibly in response to larger prey that, in turn, evolved as the flora changed as the continent became drier and cooler. Based on their discovery, researchers believe two species of marsupial lion were present in the late Oligocene 25 million years ago. The other, Wakaleo pitikantensis, was slightly smaller and was identified from teeth and limb bones discovered near Lake Pitikanta in South Australia in 1961.

Cave Beetle: Imprints of darkness

Xuedytes bellus

Location: China

Beetles that become adapted to life in the permanent darkness of caves often resemble one another in a whole suite of characteristics including a compact body, greatly elongated, spider-like appendages, and loss of flight wings, eyes and pigmentation. Such troglobitic beetles are a prime example of convergent evolution, that is, unrelated species evolving similar attributes as adaptions to similar selection forces. A new species of troglobitic ground beetle from China, less than half an inch in length (about 9 mm), is striking in the dramatic elongation of its head and prothorax, the body segment immediately behind the head to which the first pair of legs attach. Xuedytes bellus was discovered in a cave in Du'an, Guangxi Province, China. Like much of southern China, this is in a vast karst landscape riddled with caves and home to the greatest diversity of cavernicolous trechine ground beetles (family Carabidae) in the world. To date, more than 130 species, representing nearly 50 genera, have been described from China. This new one is a spectacular addition to the fauna.

Lithium ion batteries have come a long way since their introduction in the late 1990s. They're used in many everyday devices, such as laptop computers, mobile phones, and medical devices, as well as automotive and aerospace platforms, and others. However, lithium ion battery performance still can decay over time, may not fully charge after many charge/discharge cycles, and may discharge quickly even when idle. Researchers at the University of Illinois applied a technique using 3D X-ray tomography of an electrode to better understand what is happening on the inside of a lithium ion battery and ultimately build batteries with more storage capacity and longer life.

Put simply, when a lithium battery is being charged, lithium ions embed themselves into host particles that reside in the battery anode electrode and are stored there until needed to produce energy during the battery discharge. The most commonly used host particle material in commercial lithium ion batteries is graphite. The graphite particles expand as the lithium ions enter them during charging, and contract when the ions exit them during discharging.

"Every time a battery is charged, the lithium ions enter the graphite, causing it to expand by about 10 percent in size, which puts a lot of stress on the graphite particles," said John Lambros, professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and director of the Advanced Materials Testing and Evaluation Laboratory (AMTEL) at U of I. "As this expansion-contraction process continues with each successive charge-discharge cycle of the battery, the host particles begin to fragment and lose their capacity to store the lithium and may also separate from the surrounding matrix leading to loss of conductivity.

"If we can determine how the graphite particles fail in the interior of the electrode, we may be able to suppress these problems and learn how to extend the life of the battery. So we wanted to see in a working anode how the graphite particles expand when the lithium enters them. You can certainly let the process happen and then measure how much the electrode grows to see the global strain--but with the X-rays we can look inside the electrode and get internal local measurements of expansion as lithiation progresses."

The team first custom built a rechargeable lithium cell that was transparent to X-rays. However, when they made the functioning electrode, in addition to graphite particles, they added another ingredient to the recipe--zirconia particles.

"The zirconia particles are inert to lithiation; they don't absorb or store any lithium ions," Lambros said. "However, for our experiment, the zirconia particles are indispensable: they serve as markers that show up as little dots in the X-rays which we can then track in subsequent X-ray scans to measure how much the electrode deformed at each point in its interior."

Lambros said internal changes in the volume are measured using a Digital Volume Correlation routine--an algorithm in a computer code that is used to compare the X-ray images before and after lithiation.

The software was created about 10 years ago by Mark Gates, a U of I computer science doctoral student co-advised by Lambros and by Michael Heath, who is in U of I's Department of Computer Science. Gates improved upon existing DVC schemes by making some critical changes to the algorithm. Rather than only being able to solve very small-scale problems with a limited amount of data, Gates' version incorporates parallel computations that run different parts of the program all at the same time and can produce results in a short time, over a large number of measurement points.

"Our code runs much faster and instead of just a few data points, it allows us to get about 150,000 data points, or measurement locations, inside the electrode," Lambros said. "It also gives us an extremely high resolution and high fidelity."

Lambros said there are probably only a handful of research groups worldwide that use this technique.

"Digital Volume Correlation programs are now available commercially, so they may become more common," he said. "We've been using this technique for a decade now, but the novelty of this study is that we applied this technique that allows internal 3D measurement of strain to functioning battery electrodes to quantify their internal degradation."

Third-grader Jessica was quiet in group discussions and did not see herself as a strong science student. But after an eight-week unit in school where she was able to read, write about, collect data on and even draw and photograph ladybugs for a project, she began to see herself as scientist in her own right - explaining the life stages and lifestyles of ladybugs to grownups with conviction.

Jessica became a citizen scientist.

In a new UC Davis article, "Real Science in the Palm of Your Hand: A Framework for Designing and Facilitating Citizen Science in the Classroom," co-authors Emily Harris and Heidi Ballard explain that youth participation in citizen science -- activities where members of the public contribute to the generation of real scientific knowledge -- can support youth to learn and identify with science, as was the case for Jessica.

"In these moments," the authors wrote, "she was seen -- and started to see herself--as an expert. For months afterward, she and her peers continued finding and documenting ladybugs at home and school and helped the garden manager consider new plants to provide a year-round ladybug habitat."

Try these methods with your students

Harris is a research scientist at BSCS Science Learning in Colorado Springs and a graduate of the UC Davis School of Education. Ballard is an associate professor of environmental science education in the School of Education, and founder and faculty director of the Center for Community and Citizen Science at UC Davis. The article was published in April in Science and Children.

The authors share a research-based framework intended to help classroom teachers think beyond what Citizen Science activities to do and consider how to design and facilitate those activities for meaningful student learning. Their research focuses on the specific outcome of how young people develop agency to use environmental science to create change in their lives and communities. They examined in 10 case studies of youth participation in citizen science in Northern California, including groups monitoring bird populations, butterfly life cycles, water quality in urban creeks, or land use.

Students learned how to collect and analyze data, evaluate data quality to contribute to real scientific research, draw conclusions and communicate findings through essays and presentations. For example, Jessica learned about the stages of ladybug life cycles (egg, larva, pupa, adult) and analyzed ladybug data from the garden, presented to school stakeholders and wrote about their findings. She even took her research to the practical level of making recommendations to school staff to promote ladybug-friendly habitat in the school gardens.

The real-life investigation, data collection, learning and presentation was key to the project - and important for building a framework for teaching youth to be citizen scientists, Ballard said.

"We found this helps students realize that impacting the environment is not a choice, but impacting it positively can be. Through garden visits and classroom conversations, Jessica, for example, came to see that she could play a role in improving ladybug habitats at school through garden management decisions."

Leading international study of youth learning

Research continues at the Center for Community and Citizen Science, which is now leading an international study of youth learning in the field and online, in projects facilitated by natural history museums. The LEARN CitSci project includes principal investigators from the United States and United Kingdom. Citizen Science practitioners from The Natural History Museum in Los Angeles, The Natural History Museum in London, the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco and education researchers from UC Davis, the Open University and the University of Oxford are participating.

The Center is also offering professional development opportunities for educators interested in exploring how community and citizen science can help them meet their goals for learning.

Despite a fall in prescription numbers for low-value treatments, the overall cost of prescribing these items in English primary care has risen, according to new research published by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. NHS England has identified low-value treatments deemed to be ineffective, over-priced and of low clinical value, in order to increase value from the £17.4bn NHS medicines bill. The researchers found a strong association between practices with a higher proportion of patients over 65 and low-value prescribing. They also found prescribing behaviour clustered by Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), the NHS bodies responsible for planning and commissioning health care services in their local area.

The researchers, from the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, assessed the current use of low-priority treatments identified by NHS England, their change in use over time and the extent and reasons for variation in prescribing.

In addition to the national results presented in the paper, the researchers also shared all data on prescribing at all individual NHS practices. This is published through an interactive website, OpenPrescribing.net, which can be used by GPs, local commissioners, and even patients, to see where there are possible savings opportunities for individual prescribers.

Lead researcher Dr Ben Goldacre said: "There were almost one million fewer prescriptions for low-value items between July 2016 and June 2017, compared with the previous year. Despite the consistent downward trend in items, costs have risen, increasing by £4.5m when comparing 2016/17 with 2015/16.

The researchers found that while the cost per item has remained stable for most low-value treatments, for three items identified by NHS England, liothyronine (for hypothyroidism), trimipramine (an antidepressant) and co-proxamol (a painkiller), the cost has risen dramatically, by £73, £168 and £71 per prescription, respectively.

Dr Goldacre said: "Co-proxamol, liothyronine and trimipramine illustrate a concerning phenomenon, where despite successful efforts to limit prescribing numbers, costs have risen sharply." Giving co-proxamol as an example Dr Goldacre explained: "It's expensive because it was removed from the drug tariff, meaning that any prescriptions for it have to be sourced as a 'special' order. There is limited regulation of the cost of such special orders, making real world cost savings on such drugs difficult until there are a very small number of total prescriptions."

The researchers found that the strongest association with the level of prescribing cost at practice level was with the proportion of patients over 65, although they noted that this is perhaps not surprising given that older patients are generally more likely to receive prescriptions.

Commenting on the large degree in variation according to CCG, Dr Goldacre said: "This is likely to be due to differences in policy between different CCGs and practices, rather than clinical need."

Children as young as age three are able to make judgements about who owns an object based on its location, according to a study from the University of Waterloo.

The findings also show that children can sense an item's ownership without seeing someone interact with it. They intuitively know who owns an item, even if their parents have not pointed that out to them.

"Previous research looked at how children understand the ownership of an object after someone has interacted with it or talked about it. But in the real world, we're surrounded by objects that no one is interacting with or near, and it's still important to know who owns what," says Brandon W. Goulding, lead author and PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology. "One way we can do that is to realize a whole area is under someone's ownership, and because of that, we can infer everything in that area is owned by that person. That way, you don't have to worry about learning hundreds of individual object-owner relationships."

The study involved children ages three to five years old. In a series of experiments, participants were shown slides that depicted two yards divided by a roadway and told one house belonged to a person and the other to his neighbour. Each yard contained various objects such as flowers or a lawnmower. Without being told any information about the objects, the children were asked to determine whether they belonged to the person or his neighbour.

Children of all ages in the study could infer that the person owned the objects in his yard, but not objects in his neighbour's yard. Participants were still able to correctly infer ownership when the person was moved across the street to visit his neighbour, suggesting the proximity of the owner to his territory wasn't key to their understanding. Furthermore, older children are able to consider history and past events when determining ownership. For instance, when a dog brings an object into the yard, the five-year-olds knew the ball likely belonged to someone else.

"People are often concerned about their children's possessiveness - the 'gimmes' - but I think they often have adult-like intuitions about ownership," said Ori Friedman, co-author and professor of psychology. "Often, we assume we have laws that legal experts understand, and people learn them and pass them on. However, there could be another way to look at it: that our psychology shapes our culture and laws. Children's judgements are strikingly in line with the law, yet they are likely unaware of such legal conventions," said Friedman.

Overall, the study suggests that children's judgements are more in line with adults than we thought.

The full study "The development of territory-based inferences of ownership" appeared recently in the journal Cognition.

Washington, DC (May 22, 2018) -- For the first time in humans, researchers will test a two-pronged approach to treat advanced stage colorectal cancer (CRC), potentially increasing life expectancy. Combining a DNA vaccine, which boosts the body's immune response against tumors, with an antibody that blocks the body's natural defense against the potency of the DNA vaccine, may lead to the development of an effective treatment for late stage CRC, when a cure is not often possible. Preliminary research leading up to this trial will be presented at Digestive Disease Week® 2018.

Study implications

"We are on the cusp of testing something that could be transformative for cancer treatment," said Robert Ramsay, PhD, BSc, group leader of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Center at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Center at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and lead researcher of the study. "Cancer vaccines are getting closer to the clinic every day and are likely to provide a safer and more effective pillar of treatment for patients. Right now, the pillars of treatment include surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and vaccines would bring immunotherapy to the mix."

Immunotherapies failed to meet expectations in previous studies. The body naturally puts the brakes on the cancer-fighting immune responses stimulated by vaccines to protect against a potentially out-of-control immune response. The development of new immune checkpoint blockade antibodies, which are being used with the DNA vaccine in this study, is intended to get past this obstacle by temporarily blocking the protective response.

Study results

In preliminary mouse studies, Ramsay and his colleagues tested the DNA vaccine TetMYB and anti-PD1 on mice that were induced to develop cancer cells. Tumors in the mice responded very well to the treatment, and the cancer was cured in about half of them. Mice were expected to live for only a couple of days or weeks, but about 50 percent of them survived up to two years.

The vaccine also created an "immune memory" in the animal studies. When mice cured during the study were later re-challenged with the same tumor, it was immediately rejected. "There is an immune memory for the vaccine," Ramsay said.

Next steps

Ramsay and his team are testing the regimen for the first time in humans in a phase 1 trial of 32 patients with advanced stage CRC. The study is designed to test safety and, if safety is shown, to allow all patients in the trial to receive the full treatment.

"Once cancer has spread to other parts of the body, patients with CRC have few other viable options; therefore, this treatment could be life-changing for these patients," said Toan Pham, a PhD candidate and research fellow at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre at the University of Melbourne, who is conducting the study with Dr. Ramsay.

Aromatic polyimide is one of the most thermal- and chemical-resistant polymers with high mechanical strength, which is widely used for electrical insulation materials and aerospace materials. One of the major polyimides is made from tetramethyl biphenyltetracarboxylate, which is prepared by dehydrogenative coupling of dimethyl phthalate catalyzed by conventional [Pd(OAc)2]/[Cu(OAc)2]/1,10-phenanthroline (phen) system. However, the product yield is normally less than 10%. Nevertheless, this process is used for the industrial production. The mechanism had remained largely unknown because the process needed harsh conditions (over 200 degrees Celsius), cross-linked catalyses using Pd and Cu complexes, and very diluted catalyst conditions.

Synchrotron radiations now shed light on the mechanism. A joint team of TUAT, Osaka university and Kyoto University, first focused on the potential intermediates such as [Pd(OAc){C6H3(CO2Me)2}(phen)] based on the widely believed catalytic cycle and they prepared them by independent reactions. Some stoichiometric reactions using the intermediates suggested the formation of tetramethyl biphenyltetracarboxylate, the product, by subsequence of disproportionation giving Pd{C6H3(CO2Me)2}2(phen) and the reductive elimination. They confirmed these potential intermediates worked as the catalysts and the turn over numbers (TONs) reached to 91. They also used Pd K-edge (24.357 keV) XANES and EXAFS measurements using the synchrotron radiations of SPring-8 BL01B1 at Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institution. They found that an in situ catalyst solution in dimethyl phthalate starting from [Pd(OAc)2]/[Cu(OAc)2]/phen converted into [Pd(OAc){C6H3(CO2Me)2}(phen)] by the XAFS study. This new methodology and results have been published in the ACS Catalysis.

"This process has been used for an industrial production of an aromatic polyimide precursor, despite of the low catalytic efficiency. This is an awesome process originally found by industrial researchers for production of the precursor because of high atom efficiency and direct access from readily available dimethyl phthalate. Our results are surely service to the further development on the catalysts, that leads to the more economical production of the polyimide. Although some pioneering groups have studied the related catalyses, we are glad to contribute some" said Masafumi Hirano, a TUAT professor of chemistry and a principal of the study.

The current scope is, however, limited to the Pd catalyst side. Although the detailed study on the Cu catalyst is more difficult, this is the way to the perfect understanding of this catalysis.

"The in situ solution XAFS analysis of homogeneous catalyses is still difficult but our team works well in all stages in organometallic chemistry, catalytic chemistry and the XAFS study. I appreciate diversity of the team members with different back ground in chemistry", said Masafumi.

GALVESTON, Texas - A collaborative research team has uncovered new information that more accurately explains how cancerous tumors grow within the body. This study is currently available in Nature Genetics.

Researchers led by scientists at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and Baylor College of Medicine found that a losing a section of messenger RNA that was previously thought to transform normal cells into cancerous ones actually acts by blocking a body's ability suppress the formation of tumors. The finding could completely alter the way that medical science approaches the formation of tumors.

In molecules throughout the body, the three-prime untranslated region, or 3'UTR, is a section of messenger RNA that can alter gene expression. It's known that shortening this RNA section promotes cancerous tumor growth.

"Researchers have historically thought that this was because 3'UTR shortening induces the expression of proto-oncogenes, normal genes that when altered by mutation or expressed too high, become oncogenes that can transform a normal cell into a cancer cell," said Eric Wagner, UTMB associate professor in the department of biochemistry and molecular biology. "However, using a combination of computational approaches and cancer cell models, we found that 3'UTR shortening in tumors actually causes tumor-suppressing genes to be turned off."

In the study, the researchers used "Big data" analyses to reconstruct the RNA thought to form global regulatory networks within breast tumor cells and their matched normal tissues. This approach identified the fact that 3'UTRs are vital in regulating these global regulatory networks. Using this new information, they then disrupted these networks within breast cancer cells to test the effects on tumor growth.