Tech

The institutions that partook in the project are Allameh Tabataba'i University, Payame Noor University, Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, Financial University, and Kazan Federal University. A paper called "The Impact of Technology Acquisition & Exploitation on Organizational Innovation and Organizational Performance in Knowledge-Intensive Organizations" appeared in Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education.

Co-author, Associate Professor Tatyana Baklashova explains, "The interest to the problem of technology use and its influence on organizational innovation and efficiency of knowledge-intensive organizations derived from one our areas of interest - management education in Russia and abroad."

"As a result, we shed light on dependencies and mutual influences among technology acquisition and use, organizational innovations, organizational training, and performance."

80 international companies from Iran were selected, and 320 respondents in key managerial positions were questioned. As the researchers found out, acquisition and use of technological innovations is a positive influence on organizational efficiency.

Life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias often occur after a heart attack, as the scar tissue can interfere with the spread of electrical impulses that activate the heart. An international research team under the leadership of the University Hospital Bonn in collaboration with colleagues from the Cornell University and the University of Pittsburgh has now developed a method to improve electrical transmission in the heart by transferring a single gene, Connexin 43, to cells that form the infarct scar. The results are now published in the scientific journal Scientific Reports.

In a severe heart attack, many heart muscle cells die and are replaced by scar tissue, rather than new heart cells. "The connective tissue cells act like an electrical insulator," explains Prof. Dr. med. Wilhelm Röll from the Department of Cardiac Surgery at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB). For this reason the normal electrical excitation of the heart is disrupted by the scar, often resulting in a dangerously rapid heart rhythm that is the most common cause of sudden death. "This disruption of conduction results in a condition that is equivalent to a cardiac arrest," emphasizes Röll.

Heart muscle cells are electrically coupled to each other via tunnel proteins, the so-called connexins, that allow the electrical wave to propagate rapidly from one heart muscle cell to the next, provided that there is no scar tissue. "The Connexin 43, is particularly important for the transmission of electrical stimuli between heart muscle cells," says Prof. Dr. med. Bernd K. Fleischmann from the Institute of Physiology I at the Life & Brain Center of the University of Bonn.

Connexin 43 improves the transmission of stimuli in the infarct area

The aim of the international research team was to introduce connexin 43 into the infarct in order to improve the electrical connection within the cells of the scar tissue. In mice that had previously suffered a heart attack, the Connexin 43 gene was introduced with a virus, resulting in the expression of Connexin 43 by scar cells that are normally electrically silent.

Subsequent investigations revealed that mice (over)expressing Cx43 in the infarct area were only half as likely to suffer from the cardiac arrhythmia compared to control animals that failed to produce Cx43. "We were able to visualize that connexin 43 improves the spreading of the electrical signal in the infarct area," says Prof. Dr. med. Guy Salama from the University of Pittsburgh in the USA. "What is new here is that we show that expression of a single gene, connexin 43, enables the electrically silent cells that form the scar to participate in electrical conduction; modest expression of this gene markedly limits the risk of dangerous cardiac arrhythmias in this model of a cardiac infarction," reports Prof. Michael Kotlikoff from Cornell University in Ithaca (USA) on the study results. The international team of researchers, which included scientists from the UKB's Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology and who produced the lentiviral constructs, also showed that the protective effect of connexin 43 persisted for many weeks.

Currently, patients who are at increased risk for cardiac arrhythmias are implanted with a defibrillator, which uses strong electrical pulses to restore a more normal heartbeat in case of ventricular fibrillation. The scientists now hope that their findings suggest a rather simple gene therapy approach to reducing the incidence of cardiac arrhythmias following myocardial infarction, avoiding the complications and unpleasant sensations associated with pacemaker therapy. "So far, our findings have been based on studies on mice," emphasizes Röll. "There is still a long way to go before it can be used on humans, but our experimental findings on small animals are very encouraging."

Police violence in the US is taking a 'substantial' toll on youth and people of colour, indicates research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.

Estimates from the available data show that more than 100,000 years of life were lost in 2015 and 2016, with half that total among people of colour.

There are no comprehensive official data on deaths and injuries caused by encounters with the police in the US, although several studies have attempted to come up with some figures, using available information.

But none of those studies has attempted to calculate years of life lost (YLLs), a measure used in public health to look at the impact of disease and injuries across different groups of people.

The researchers therefore drew on The Counted database, a publicly available data series compiled by The Guardian, to characterise deaths and YLLs due to police violence in the US in 2015 and 2016.

The Counted combines police reports, news stories, and other independent reporting systems with crowdsourced information in a bid to monitor all deaths in the US attributable to police violence.

The researchers calculated YLLs for each person in the database by subtracting the age at death from the corresponding standard life expectancy.

In 2015 and 2016, 1146 and 1092 people, respectively, lost their lives to police violence. Over half of these were among Whites (just under 52%), while around one in four (25.5%) were among Blacks and just under 17 percent among Hispanics.

The researchers estimated that there were 57,375 and 54,754 YLLs due to police violence in 2015 and 2016, respectively.

The estimates showed that police violence disproportionately affects the young--25-34 year olds--and people of colour, who make up 38.5 percent of the population, but comprise more than half (51.5%) of YLLs in 2015-16.

"The number of YLLs due to police violence is substantial," say the researchers, who point out that these deaths rival other significant causes of death in the US, including meningitis and giving birth. And they exceed those caused by unintentional firearm injuries and cycling accidents.

"Yet many of these conditions receive more attention than police violence, in terms of grant funding, for example," they say, adding that the figures don't capture the wider impact, such as non-fatal injuries, long term disability, and family trauma.

Without better data, it will be very difficult to set policy and stem the tide, they conclude.

University of Sydney researchers aim to help clear up conflicting dietary advice around egg consumption, as a new study finds eating up to 12 eggs per week for a year did not increase cardiovascular risk factors in people with pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes.

Published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition today, the research extends on a previous study that found similar results over a period of three months.

Led by Dr Nick Fuller from the University's Boden Institute of Obesity, Nutrition, Exercise and Eating Disorders at the Charles Perkins Centre, the research was conducted with the University of Sydney's Sydney Medical School and the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.

In the initial trial, participants aimed to maintain their weight while embarking on a high-egg (12 eggs per week) or low-egg (less than two eggs per week) diet, with no difference in cardiovascular risk markers identified at the end of three months.

The same participants then embarked on a weight loss diet for an additional three months, while continuing their high or low egg consumption. For a further six months - up to 12 months in total - participants were followed up by researchers and continued their high or low egg intake.

At all stages, both groups showed no adverse changes in cardiovascular risk markers and achieved equivalent weight loss - regardless of their level of egg consumption, Dr Fuller explained.

"Despite differing advice around safe levels of egg consumption for people with pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes, our research indicates people do not need to hold back from eating eggs if this is part of a healthy diet," Dr Fuller said.

"A healthy diet as prescribed in this study emphasised replacing saturated fats (such as butter) with monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats (such as avocado and olive oil)," he added.

The extended study tracked a broad range of cardiovascular risk factors including cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure, with no significant difference in results between the high egg and low egg groups.

"While eggs themselves are high in dietary cholesterol - and people with type 2 diabetes tend to have higher levels of the 'bad' low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol - this study supports existing research that shows consumption of eggs has little effect on the levels of cholesterol in the blood of the people eating them," Dr Fuller explained.

Dr Fuller said the findings of the study were important due to the potential health benefits of eggs for people with pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes, as well as the general population.

"Eggs are a source of protein and micronutrients that could support a range of health and dietary factors including helping to regulate the intake of fat and carbohydrate, eye and heart health, healthy blood vessels and healthy pregnancies."

The different egg diets also appeared to have no impact on weight, Dr Fuller said.

"Interestingly, people on both the high egg and low egg diets lost an equivalent amount of weight - and continued to lose weight after the three month intended weight loss phase had ended," he said.

TORONTO-(May 5, 2018)-States with stricter firearm laws have lower rates of firearm-related deaths in children, according to cross-sectional analyses to be presented during the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) 2018 annual meeting. The Children's-led research team also found that states with laws that mandated universal background checks prior to firearm and ammunition purchase were associated with lower rates of firearm-related mortality in children, compared with states that lacked these laws.

"Injuries due to firearms are the nation's third-leading cause of pediatric death," says Monika Goyal, M.D., M.S.C.E., director of research in the Division of Emergency Medicine and Trauma Services at Children's National Health System and lead author of the research paper. "Firearm legislation at the state level varies significantly. Our findings underscore the need for further investigation of which types of state-level firearm legislation most strongly correlates with reduction in pediatric injuries and deaths."

The research team analyzed data from the 2015 Web-based injury statistics query and reporting system maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to measure the association between Brady Gun Law Scores--a scorecard that evaluates how strict firearms legislation and policies are in all 50 states--and state-based rates of firearm-related death among children 21 years and younger.

In 2015, 4,528 children died from firearm-related injuries. Eighty-seven percent were male; 44 percent were non-Latino black; their mean age was 18.

State-specific firearm-related mortality rates among children were as low as 0 per 100,000 to as high as 18 per 100,000. Median mortality rates were lower among the 12 states requiring universal background checks for firearm purchase at 3.8 per 100,000 children compared with 5.7 per 100,000 children in states that did not require background checks. Similarly, the five states with this requirement had a lower median mortality rate, 2.3 per 100,000 children, when compared with states that did not require background checks for ammunition purchase, 5.6 per 100,000 children.

"Newtown. Orlando. Las Vegas. Parkland. Those are among the mass shootings that have occurred across the nation in recent years. While these tragedies often are covered heavily by the news media, they represent a subset of overall pediatric injuries and deaths due to firearms. Pediatric firearm-related injuries are a critical public health issue across the U.S.," Dr. Goyal adds.

"Pediatricians have helped to educate parents about other public health concerns, such as the danger posed by second-hand exposure to tobacco smoke or non-use of seat belts and car seats. In addition to presenting our most recent study results, members of our research group are also hosting a workshop at PAS aimed at inspiring pediatric clinicians to similarly tackle this latest public health challenge and to advocate for firearm safety," she says.

Pediatric Academic Societies 2018 annual meeting presentations:

Saturday, May 5, 2018

"Newtown, Orlando, Las Vegas ... What pediatric providers can do to improve firearm safety."
8 a.m. to 10 a.m. (ET)
Alyssa Silver; Alex Hogan; Asad Bandealy, M.D.; Priti Bhansali, M.D.; Gabriella Azzarone; Monika Goyal, M.D., M.S.C.E.; Nancy Dodson; Kavita Parikh, M.D., M.S.H.S.; Shilpa Patel, M.D.; Sabah Iqbal

Monday, May 7, 2018

"The association of state gun laws with pediatric mortality from firearms."
4:15 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. (ET)
Monika Goyal, M.D., M.S.C.E.; Gia Badolato; Shilpa Patel, M.D.; Sabah Iqbal; Katie Donnelly, M.D.; Kavita Parikh, M.D., M.S.H.S.

TORONTO-(May 5, 2018)-Just as a runner steadily builds up endurance in order to peak at just the right time, the placenta carefully calibrates how much of the hormone allopregnanolone (ALLO) it produces during pregnancy. The placenta ramps up ALLO production in the second trimester of pregnancy and achieves peak production just as fetuses approach full term, according to multi-institutional research presented during the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) 2018 annual meeting.

The placenta is the source of more than 200 different hormones that each uniquely contribute to the smooth running of the pregnancy and the fetus' overall health.

ALLO, a progesterone derivative, may protect the developing fetal brain in pregnancies compromised by such conditions as high blood pressure. Researchers know ALLO is made in the adult brain in response to stress and modulates neuronal excitability. Less is known about how placental ALLO levels evolve during pregnancy and in newborns shortly after birth.

Anna Penn, M.D., Ph.D., a neonatologist/neuroscientist at Children's National Health System, and colleagues created a designer experimental model to study how premature loss of ALLO alters orderly brain development. Knowing more about the interplay between ALLO and normal development of the cortex, the outer layer of the cerebrum, is a first step that could lead to strategies to rescue this vital brain region.

"The cortex is basically the brain's command-and-control center for higher functions. In our experimental model, it develops from the middle of gestation through to the end of gestation. If ALLO levels are disrupted just as these cells are being born, neurons migrating to the cortex are altered and the developing neural network is compromised," says Dr. Penn, senior author of the research presented at PAS 2018. "We're concerned this same phenomenon occurs in human infants whose preterm birth disrupts their supply of this essential hormone."

To better understand the human placental hormone pattern, the research team analyzed cord blood or serum samples collected within the first 36 hours of life for 61 preterm newborns born between 24 to 36 gestational weeks. They compared those preemie samples with samples drawn from 61 newborns carried to term who were matched by race, gender, size for gestational age, delivery method and maternal demographics.

They used liquid-chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, a technique that can precisely analyze trace levels of compounds, to compare levels of 27 different steroids, including ALLO and its precursors as well as better-known adrenal gland hormones, such as cortisol and 17-Hydroxyprogesterone.

"Pregnancies complicated by hypertension tended to correlate with lower ALLO levels, though this finding did not reach statistical significance. This suggests that ongoing placental dysfunction and ALLO loss, not the increase that we expected to be caused by stress, may alter cortical development in these pregnancies and put babies at risk," Dr. Penn adds. "In addition, having the largest neonatal sample set to date in which multiple steroid hormones have been measured can provide insight into the shifting hormone patterns that occur around 36 weeks gestation, just prior to term. Hopefully, restoring the normal hormonal milieu for preemies or other at-risk newborns will improve neurological outcomes in the future."

TORONTO-(May 5, 2018)-Young parents who have less education and care for more than one child are more likely to have persistent symptoms of depression that linger six months after their newborn is discharged from the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), according to a Children's National Health System research presentation during the Pediatric Academic Societies 2018 annual meeting.

"Using a validated screening tool, we found that 40 percent of parents in our analyses were positive for depression at the time their newborn was discharged from the NICU," says Karen Fratantoni, M.D., M.P.H., a Children's pediatrician and the lead study author. "It's reassuring that, for many parents, these depressive symptoms ease over time. However for a select group of parents, depression symptoms persisted six months after discharge. Our findings help to ensure that we target mental health screening and services to these more vulnerable parents," Dr. Fratantoni adds.

The study is an offshoot from "Giving Parents Support (GPS) after NICU discharge," a large, randomized clinical trial exploring whether providing peer-to-peer parental support after NICU discharge improves babies' overall health as well as their parents' mental health. Mothers of preterm and full-term infants who are hospitalized in NICUs are at risk for peripartum mood disorders, including postpartum depression. The Children's research team sought to determine how many parents of NICU graduates experience depression and which characteristics are shared by parents with elevated depression scores.

They included 125 parents who had enrolled in the GPS clinical trial in their exploratory analyses and assessed depressive symptoms using a 10-item, validated screening tool, the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). Eighty-four percent of the parents were women. Nearly 61 percent of their infants were male and were born at a median gestational age of 37.7 weeks and mean birth weight of 2,565 grams. The median length of time these newborns remained in the NICU was 18 days. When the newborns were discharged, 50 parents (40 percent) had elevated CES-D scores. By six months after discharge, that number dropped to 17 parents (14 percent).Their mean age ranged from 26.5 to 30.6 years old.

"Parents of NICU graduates who are young, have less education and are caring for other children are at higher risk for persistent symptoms of depression," says Dr. Fratantoni. "We know that peripartum mood disorders can persist for one year or more after childbirth so these findings will help us to better match mental health care services to parents who are most in need."

An American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' committee opinion issued May 2018 calls for all women to have contact with a maternal care provider within the first three weeks postpartum and to undergo a comprehensive postpartum visit no later than 12 weeks after birth that includes screening for postpartum depression and anxiety using a validated instrument.

Heavy seasonal rainfall has recently caused flooding in Kenya and NASA analyzed and estimated the total rainfall using data from a suite of satellites and gauges.

The heavy rainfall has resulted in the displacement of over 244,000 people. This deluge follows the severe drought that afflicted East Africa in 2017. The estimated death toll from flooding and mudslides has recently been increased to about 100 people.

At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, NASA's Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) created a merged precipitation product from the GPM or Global Precipitation Measurement mission constellation of satellites. Rainfall accumulation estimates were calculated and summarized for the period from April 27 to early May 4, 2018.

GPM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency or JAXA. GPM also utilizes a constellation of other satellites to provide a global analysis if precipitation.

During this period heavy seasonal precipitation fell over Kenya. Rainfall totals in some areas near the Indian Ocean coast were estimated by IMERG to be greater than 430 mm (16.9 inches). Over western Kenya and eastern Uganda rainfall was estimated by IMERG to frequently exceed 200 mm (7.9 inches). IMERG data are produced using data from the satellites in the GPM Constellation, and are calibrated with measurements from the GPM Core Observatory satellite as well as rain gauge networks around the world.

The prevalence of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnoses in children and young people has increased, but diagnostic practice among clinicians remains variable, with significant diagnostic delays and reliance on subjective assessments. A new clinical trial published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry shows that adding a computerised test of attention and activity (QbTest) to standard care can reduce the time needed to make a diagnostic decision on ADHD, increase the likelihood of excluding ADHD when it is not present, and improve clinicians' confidence in their decision-making, without compromising diagnostic accuracy.

In the randomised, parallel, single-blind controlled trial in mental health and community paediatric clinics in England (the AQUA study), 267 participants aged 6-17 years-old and their clinician were randomised to either receive the QbTest report or not as part of their standard diagnostic assessment for ADHD. 132 out of the 267 participants and their clinicians received the QbTest report.

Clinicians with access to the QbTest report were more likely to reach a diagnostic decision about ADHD. At 6 months, 76% of those with a QbTest report had received a diagnostic decision, compared with 50% without. The QbTest reduced appointment length by 15%, increased clinicians' confidence in their diagnostic decisions, and doubled the likelihood of excluding ADHD. There was no difference in diagnostic accuracy.

The prevalence of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnoses in children and young people has increased, but diagnostic practice among clinicians remains variable, with significant diagnostic delays and reliance on subjective assessments.

The AQUA study, published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, was funded by the NIHR Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care East Midlands and supported by NIHR Mental Health MedTech Co-operative.

"The assessment of ADHD remains largely subjective and children and young people in the UK, compared to other European countries, experience some of the longest delays for a diagnostic decision and initiation of appropriate treatment," said lead author Professor Chris Hollis, of the University of Nottingham, in the UK.

"The AQUA trial is ground-breaking because it is the first independent randomised-controlled study to demonstrate that an objective assessment technology (QbTest) can increase the speed and efficiency of diagnostic decision-making in ADHD. The clinicians who had access to a QbTest report were faster in reaching diagnostic decisions with no overall loss of diagnostic accuracy.

"Interestingly, clinicians with a QbTest report were more likely than those without a QbTest report on a young person to exclude a diagnosis of ADHD. The results suggest that QbTest is ready for implementation within the ADHD assessment pathway in the UK, and other countries with similarly long delays to diagnosis, where it is likely to lead to earlier diagnostic decisions and significant healthcare system efficiencies."

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have combined derivatives of two surplus materials--wood pulp and dried-up pieces of an invasive exotic pest--to form a new composite material that is flexible, sustainable, nontoxic and UV light-reflective. The material, described in a new paper (link is external) published in Advanced Functional Materials, could soon be used in a wide variety of applications, including food packaging, biomedical devices, building construction and the design of cars, trucks and boats.

The key to this unlikely marriage of wood and pests is a motif called the "Bouligand structure," in which molecules stack up in a twisted shape, similar to tiny spiral staircases. Scientists have learned that the Bouligand structure provides a certain kind of resilience to cracking; the force of an impact is guided by those tiny, nanosized, staircase-like twists and turns through a series of detours. Rather than cracking straight through, the energy of a bump or crash is thus deflected through a kind of tortuous path, leaving the overall material intact and functional.

While wood does not have a natural Bouligand structure, it has attracted scientists for decades, in part because there is an ample supply of material left over after the processing of paper and commercial lumber.

"The idea of making useful products out of wood pulp has long intrigued a lot of people in many different industries," says Jeff Gilman, who leads the composites project team at NIST.

By washing that pulp with acid to remove its lignin and amorphous cellulose, scientists discovered several years ago that they could create a milky solution that ultimately dried to form a new material with a Bouligand structure. The key component of this solution was tiny crystalline rods of cellulose, known as cellulose nanocrystals or nanocellulose. However, on their own, the pulp-derived Bouligand films are brittle and won't hold much weight.

The NIST team hypothesized that combining the short wood-derived nanocellulose rods with another natural material with longer crystalline rods would result in something new that would be incredibly strong and flexible. With appropriate additives, this new material could be used to create films that could slow down the diffusion of water and oxygen.

"The right product, if developed, could be used in everything from aerospace composites to packaging that would keep food fresh," Gilman said.

One option for the new composite material: the carcasses of a dried-up aquatic creature called a tunicate that is considered a pest in some countries and a delicious treat in others.

In many parts of Asia, the brown aquatic creatures (Styela clava) are often cooked and served in spicy sauces. But without natural predators present to eat them in new environments, their populations begin to grow into super-abundant numbers that eventually clog boat engines and fishing gear, outcompete native fish, reduce healthy plankton populations and foul and ruin productive shellfish beds. Some environmental managers think that finding a way to remove and use them as a resource could serve a beneficial purpose. Harvesting them is one option. Like an oyster, the inside of a tunicate is considered the tasty bit. The outside is usually just thrown away, meaning there could be a ready source for this material in areas where they are often cooked.

What specifically intrigued the NIST researchers, however, was the tunicate's inner structure, which was made of very long, highly crystalline nanocellulose. These were different from the shorter crystals found in wood.

"Tunicates have stuck out as the gold standard for their physical properties," said Johan Foster from Virginia Tech University, who is one of only a handful of teams working on tunicate harvest and research around the globe. Foster gathered and supplied the tunicates for the NIST project from a dock in Western France, where the animals are considered a nuisance species.

Some scientists had assumed that a composite made entirely out of long crystalline tunicate nanocellulose would be incredibly strong and tough. However, by testing dried mixed tunicate/wood composite materials, lead author Bharath Natarajan was able to identify the exact point of greatest toughness.

"If you put a little tunicate into the wood pulp composite, it makes it a little stiffer, and it doesn't break as quickly and becomes more flexible," Natarajan said. "Put in 10 percent and it's twice as strong. If your mixture is 30 percent tunicate and 70 percent wood pulp, the resulting composite is 15-20 times tougher. But after that, you really don't see an improvement in strength, and there is a reduction in toughness."

Tunicates are plentiful, but remain expensive to process, so knowing exactly how much to add is key to scaling up their use in the future, and for keeping any resulting products affordable.

Adding the tunicates also caused the nanocrystals to twist in a different way and accelerated the structure formation in the wood pulp. It also formed a pattern that was tighter and denser, making the new composite material UV-reflective.

"Many materials begin to degrade if they are exposed to the sun for a long time," said Gilman. "This material could potentially be used as a coating on other surfaces in order to reflect light and extend durability."

In the coming years, Natarajan and his team will continue to test ways their new tunicate-wood pulp mixture could be used to manufacture resilient, flexible and UV-reflective composites for use in the manufacture of sustainable, lightweight automobiles and aerospace vehicles, among other products.

Irvine, Calif., May 3, 2018 - The nation's aging infrastructure requires massive investment. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates the U.S. needs to spend some $4.5 trillion by 2025 to fix the country's roads, bridges, dams and other infrastructure.

Imagine if engineers could build structures with materials that do not degrade over time. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine have proposed a new simulation technique that could help engineers do just that.

Mohammad Javad Abdolhosseini Qomi, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, and engineering graduate student Ali Morshedifard have developed a numerical method to simulate the molecular aging process in amorphous materials, such as concrete and glass. This technique could help researchers not only better understand how materials weaken with age, but also develop materials that maintain their strength indefinitely. Their work appears this week in Nature Communications.

According to the researchers, aging originates at the atomic and molecular levels. Because of this miniscule scale, it's nearly impossible to track microscopic changes over long periods. "In computer simulation of materials, you would have to simulate a quadrillion time steps to capture only one second of behavior. That would not even get us close to the time scales relevant for aging phenomena, which are in the order of years and decades," explained Qomi.

In their incremental stress-marching technique, Qomi and his graduate student subject the material's molecular structure to cyclic stress fluctuations, and then follow the material's response to such perturbations. "Hydrated cement is composed of disk-like globules at the nanoscale. We serendipitously found that these globules gradually deform under sustained load, but the deformation comes to a stop after a certain period. We also found that the collective behavior of globules gives rise to a non-asymptotic deformation, which we believe to be at the origins of creep in cementitious materials. It was fascinating to see atomic origins of viscoelastic and logarithmic deformation under constant stress," said Morshedifard, the paper's lead author.

Qomi and his research team plan to apply this new technique to explore the relationship between the composition and texture of structural materials and their time-dependent behavior.

"The Federal Highway Administration spends more than $80 billion a year to fix bridges that degrade as a result of aging phenomena," Qomi continued. "Understanding how structural materials age is the very first step toward designing reduced-aging materials that can potentially save taxpayers money."

Technique uses photons, fundamental components of light, to measure nanoscopic materials thinner than 100,000th the width of a human hair - with 30,000 fired per second and 500bn throughout

Research will mean measurements 100x more precise than existing two-photon techniques - with the potential to aid research into cell membranes and DNA

Two-photon technique more stable than existing one-photon technology

New technique could also be substantially cheaper

The precision of measuring nanoscopic structures could be substantially improved, thanks to research involving the University of Warwick and QuantIC researchers at the University of Glasgow and Heriot Watt University into optical sensing.

QuantIC is the UK Quantum Technology Hub in Quantum Enhanced Imaging and part of the UK National Quantum Technologies Programme.

Using pairs of photons, fundamental components of energy that make up light, the researchers have devised a way to measure the thickness of objects that are less than a 100,000th of the width of a human hair.

The new technique involves firing two near identical photons onto a component known as a beamsplitter, and monitoring their subsequent behaviour - with some 30,000 photons detected per second, and 500bn in use throughout a full experiment.

Because of the tendency of identical photons to 'buddy up' and continue travelling on together -- the result of a delicate quantum interference effect - the researchers' newly developed setup offers the same precision and stability as existing one-photon techniques that, due to the equipment required, are more costly.

Offering a range of potential uses, including research to better understand cell membranes and DNA, as well as quality control for nanoscopic 2D materials of a single atom's thickness, such as graphene, the new research is also a marked improvement on current two-photon techniques with up to 100x better resolution.

To measure the thickness of a transparent object (any object through which a photon is able to pass), each of a pair of identical photons are fired along separate paths:

Photon A then continues into a beamsplitter, whilst Photon B is slowed down by a transparent object before entering the same beamsplitter.

The likelihood that the photons exit the beamsplitter together is then recorded allowing researchers to measure the thickness of the transparent object Photon B passed through.

As the thickness of the sample is increased, the photons are more likely to exit the beamsplitter separately.

Dr George Knee of the University of Warwick's Department of Physics, who developed the theory behind the new method, said:

"What's really exciting about these results is that we can now investigate objects down at the nanoscale with an optical sensor operating on a fundamentally different physical effect.

"Until now, so-called two-photon interference has not been able to achieve such great resolution, meaning that we are stuck with some of the downsides of the established methods based on single-photon interference - which requires more expensive technology than our new two-photon technique.

"We have managed to get a big improvement by tuning the interferometer into a more sensitive operation mode and removing slow drift by repeatedly switching the sample in and out.

"The advantages of being impervious to phase fluctuations and having large dynamic range mean that sensors such as ours could have a big impact on biological imaging and the associated research that it feeds into."

QuantIC co-investigator and lead researcher on the project, Professor Daniele Faccio, whose two photon sensing technology was used to generate the data said:

"The results of our collaboration with the University of Warwick offer a range of potential uses, including research to better understand cell membranes and DNA as well as a quality control for nanoscopic 2D materials of a single atom's thickness, such as graphene.

We are excited to be advancing quantum imaging and helping to maintain the UK's position in the development of new quantum technologies."

The research, Attosecond-Resolution Hong-Ou-Mandel Interferometry, is published by Science Advances.

Tokyo, Japan - Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have created new superconductors made of layers of bismuth sulfide (BiS2) and a high entropy rare earth alloy oxyfluoride, containing five different rare earth (RE) elements at the same crystallographic site. The new material retains superconducting properties over a wider range of lattice parameters than materials without high-entropy-alloy states. Their work promises an exciting new strategy for designing new layered superconductors, a potentially key development in the search for high-temperature superconductors.

Superconductors are key to a range of exciting potential applications. For example, zero resistivity promises loss-free power transmission and powerful electromagnets. The challenge has been to discover a material that retains this property at higher temperatures, closer to ambient temperatures. Despite focused work and a number of breakthroughs in recent years, the hunt is still on for effective strategies to create new superconducting materials.

One strategy is the use of layered materials with a molecular structure consisting of alternating superconducting layers and "blocking layers" acting as insulating spacers. A team led by Associate Professor Yoshikazu Mizuguchi from the Department of Physics, Tokyo Metropolitan University, has uncovered an important aspect of designing the insulating layer. They were able to combine five different rare earth (RE) elements, lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, and samarium, and create a "high entropy alloy" in the blocking layer. High entropy alloys have attracted considerable attention in recent years for their toughness, resistance to fatigue and ductility, amongst many other notable physical properties.

The team's new materials, with different proportions of REs (10-30%), exhibited enhanced superconducting properties; in particular, materials with the same period in their molecular structure exhibited a superconducting transition at higher temperatures when the blocking layer contained a high entropy alloy. They believe that the high entropy alloy helps to stabilize the crystal structure of the superconducting layer.

The work's impact is not limited to the new materials they present. Given the existence of a large number of superconducting layers which are compatible with RE oxides, this innovation opens the way for a broad new strategy for engineering new, revolutionary superconducting materials.

Scientists from the Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy (MBI) in Berlin combined state-of-the-art experiments and numerical simulations to test a fundamental assumption underlying strong-field physics. Their results refine our understanding of strong-field processes such as high harmonic generation (HHG) and laser-induced electron diffraction (LIED).

Strong infrared laser pulses can extract an electron from a molecule (ionization), accelerate it away into free space, then turn it around (propagation), and finally collide it with the molecule (recollision). This is the widely used three-step model of strong-field physics. In the recollision step, the electron may, for example, recombine with the parent ion, giving rise to high harmonic generation, or scatter elastically, giving rise to laser-induced electron diffraction.

One of the commonly used assumptions underlying attosecond physics is that, in the propagation step, the initial structure of the ionized electron is "washed out", thus losing the information on the originating orbital. So far, this assumption was not experimentally verified in molecular systems.

A combined experimental and theoretical study at the Max Born Institute Berlin investigated the strong-field driven electron recollision dynamics in the 1,3-trans-butadiene molecule. In this molecule, the interaction with the strong laser field leads mainly to the ionization of two outermost electrons exhibiting quite different densities (Figure 1). The state-of-the-art experiments and simulations then allowed the scientists to measure and calculate the high-angle rescattering probability for each electron separately. These probabilities turned out to be quite different both in the measurements and in the simulations. These observations clearly demonstrate that the returning electrons do retain structural information on their initial molecular orbital.

AUGUSTA, Ga. (May 3, 2018) - Immune cells that are ready to take action against invaders like bacteria have been found in women's breast milk, researchers say.

They say the presence of this SWAT team of immune cells called innate lymphoid cells, or ILCs, in human breast milk is more evidence of the benefits of breastfeeding.

Short term, the ILCs in breast milk may help protect newborns from infection, and longer term help babies develop their own protective immune system, they report in JAMA Pediatrics.

"We were looking for the source which can provide immune protection to the baby while it develops its own immune system," says Dr. Jack Yu, chief of pediatric plastic surgery at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.

"We think these cells help provide frontline immune protection for the baby," says Dr. Jatinder Bhatia, chief of the Section of Neonatology and vice chair of clinical research in the MCG Department of Pediatrics.

"These cells are upstream of the immune response ... we know they can initiate and advance an immune response," adds Dr. Babak Baban, immunologist in the Department of Oral Biology in the Dental College of Georgia at AU and in the MCG Department of Surgery.

They found all three known classes of ILCs present in fresh human mother's milk - type 1 is the most prevalent - and parallel mouse studies show that the cells not only are transferred to baby by nursing but that they survive in the baby's gut for at least several days. Now they want to learn more about what happens to the ILCs once they get to baby's gut and how/if they help tailor the baby's microbiome, which aids digestion and infection protection and typically is very similar to mom's, particularly with breast feeding.

"The moment you are born, you start to build a microbiome," Yu says. Their preliminary findings, including the parallel mouse studies, indicate ILCs are a player in the construction. ILC3s definitely have a role, Baban says of this ILC type that helps form the protective mucosal layer for the gut and respond to the microbiome when it does develop.

The researchers think the ILCs in the breast milk may also be a way to protect mom from getting an infection from the suckling baby. The cells may even be part of the dynamic that enables the content of breast milk to change to help the baby get over that infection.

"There is a feedback loop," says Yu. It's known that some immune cells like leucocytes, another white blood cell that fights infection, increase in the milk in response to an infection in the baby. The researchers still don't know if the newly found ILCs do the same but suspect that ILCs are part of the cue to the mom that something is amiss with her baby.

ILCs of all types are known to locate in tissues throughout the baby's body during development, where they appear stationary and inactive, waiting for a developed immune system to communicate with, says Baban, the study's corresponding author. "Until then, these cells are like a central command in each tissue with no soldiers," he says adding that the ILCs transmitted in breast milk may help provide those soldiers.

Scientists have only been studying ILCs for about a decade, and they have been found to be important in inflammation, immunity and tissue homeostasis.

It's known that mother's milk contains millions of cells, including a lot of immune cell types. But this appears to be the first time ILCs have been reported to be among the cell types, Yu says.

In fact, the largest immune cell population in breast milk is macrophages, which ILCs are known to direct. Macrophages, which literally means 'big eaters," are the largest of the white blood cells and much-better studied than ILCs. They are known for their ability to envelop unwanted items like bacteria, viruses and dead body tissue, and can also help incite or calm inflammation.

ILCs, although always ready for a fight, don't do the attacking themselves rather send cytokines - proteins important in cell signaling - to tell the macrophages what to do, Baban says.

Bhatia, who has chaired the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Nutrition, is an advocate for breastfeeding, including for the premature babies in his neonatal ICU at Children's Hospital of Georgia. When mother's milk is not available, the NICU team uses donor breast milk. Bhatia notes that formulas today more closely mimic mother's milk, including containing nutrients like the essential omega 3 fatty acid, DHA, associated with brain development, and lactoferrin, a protein that aids iron transport and has anti-infective properties.

The researchers note that while the cells can survive the acidic environment of the stomach, ILCs and many other helpful cells don't survive refrigeration. For the newly published study, the researchers did extensive cell analysis on fresh milk from four lactating women.

The baby does has some other frontline protection provided by immunoglobulin G, the most common antibody in our circulation and the only one that can journey through the placenta to the baby, Baban says.