Tech

A team of chemists has developed an MRI-based technique that can quickly diagnose what ails certain types of batteries--from determining how much charge remains to detecting internal defects--without opening them up.

"The use of alternative energy and electrically powered vehicles will further increase the demand for better and safer batteries," observes Alexej Jerschow, a professor in New York University's Department of Chemistry, who led the research team. "However, there are currently only a very limited set of tools available to diagnose a battery's health without destroying the battery--our non-invasive technique offers a faster and more expansive method for making these assessments."

The work, described in the journal Nature Communications, also included Andrew Ilott, an NYU post-doctoral fellow at the time of the study and now a research investigator at Brisol-Myers Squibb; Mohaddese Mohammadi, an NYU doctoral candidate; and Christopher Schauerman and Matthew Ganter, research scientists at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

"Ensuring cell quality and safety is paramount to the manufacturing process that can save companies significant cost and prevent catastrophic cell failures from occurring," says Ganter, co-director of the RIT Battery Prototyping Center.

"This work not only supports the battery industry as a whole, but also the growing energy storage ecosystem in New York," adds Christopher Schauerman, co-director of the RIT Battery Prototyping Center.

The research focuses on rechargeable Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, which are used in cell phones, laptops, and other electronics.

Notably, rechargeable batteries are at the heart of new technologies, including electric cars or storage for renewable energy sources.

However, recent malfunctions in hand-held devices and electric vehicles have highlighted the difficulties in designing batteries for these cutting-edge technologies. In addition, engineers often cannot determine the nature of defects or even impending battery failures without taking apart the device, which typically results in its destruction.

In general, magnetic resonance (MR) methods provide the ability to measure tiny changes in magnetic field maps and, as a result, create a picture of what lies inside a structure--for example, MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) can produce images of the human body's organs in a non-invasive manner.

In their Nature Communications work, the scientists adopted a procedure similar to MRI. Here, they measured tiny magnetic field changes surrounding the battery's electrochemical cells.

In their experiments, they examined Li-ion batteries in different states--various levels of charge (i.e., battery life) and conditions (i.e., some damaged and others not). Such cells were prepared by collaborators at RIT's Battery Prototyping Center. With these cells, the NYU team was able to match magnetic field changes surrounding the batteries to different internal conditions, revealing state of charge and certain defects. These included bent and missing electrodes as well as small foreign objects in the cell, which are flaws that can occur during the normal manufacturing process.

"With future enhancements to this method, it could provide a powerful means of predicting battery failures and battery lifetimes as well as facilitate the development of next-generation high-performance, high-capacity, and long-lasting or fast-charging batteries," adds Jerschow.

Bethesda, Md. (May 3, 2018)--Sympathetic nerve activity to skeletal muscle blood vessels--a function of the nervous system that helps regulate blood pressure--increases during physiological and mental stress in people with chronic anxiety, a new study finds. Over time, this response may increase the risk of high blood pressure and heart disease, although the study did not test this specifically. The study, published ahead of print in the Journal of Neurophysiology, was chosen as an APSselect article for May.

Researchers from the University of Iowa studied the responses of two groups of volunteers after they experienced physiological and mental stressors. One group of people had chronic anxiety as determined by standardized scales used to measure anxiety and depression. The control group did not have anxiety. The research team placed the volunteers' hands in an ice-water bath for two minutes to assess their responses to physiological stress. After a brief recovery period, the participants verbally solved simple math problems as fast as they could for four minutes to induce mental stress. Before the start of each test, the researchers gave the participants a two-minute "warning" countdown.

The research team inserted a tiny microelectrode into a nerve near the back of the participants' knee to measure sympathetic nerve activity throughout testing. They monitored the volunteers' rate of blood flow and blood pressure in the upper arm and heart rate via a finger cuff during both activities. Blood samples showed that the anxiety group had higher levels of norepinephrine, a hormone that sympathetic nerve fibers release in response to stress, before testing began. Norepinephrine causes the blood vessels to contract, which raises blood pressure.

The researchers observed increased nerve responses in both groups before and during the ice bath and math activities. However, the increase "was significantly greater among [the anxiety group] compared with [the control group], suggesting an enhanced sympathetic anticipatory response," the research team wrote.

Heart rate increased during the two-minute countdown, another sign that the anticipation of impending stress or discomfort caused physiological changes in the body. However, there was no significant difference between the anxiety and control groups. "Future studies are warranted to determine whether augmented [sympathetic nerve activity] is associated with deleterious end-organ consequences in persons with anxiety and cardiovascular disease or cardiovascular disease risk factors," the researchers wrote.

WHAT:

Researchers have exploited a quirk in the genetic make-up of the deadly malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, to create 38,000 mutant strains and then determine which of the organism's genes are essential to its growth and survival. P. falciparum is responsible for about half of all malaria cases and 90 percent of all malaria deaths. New information about the parasite's critical gene repertoire could help investigators prioritize targets for future antimalarial drug development.

The international research team led by John H. Adams, Ph.D., of the University of South Florida, was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. The study appears in the May 4 issue of Science. Rays H.Y. Jiang, Ph.D., of Universtiy of South Florida, and Julian C. Rayner, Ph.D., of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, U.K., collaborated with Dr. Adams in this research.

The complete genetic sequence of P. falciparum was determined more than a decade ago, but the functions of most of its genes remain unknown, and until now only a few hundred mutant strains had been created in the lab. The difficulties in manipulating P. falciparum stem in part from the extremely high percentage of adenine or thymine (two of the four chemical building blocks that make up DNA) in its genome. Standard methods for creating mutants rely on more variation in gene sequences and so do not work on P. falciparum. In the new research, Dr. Adams and his colleagues created mutated versions of nearly all the parasite's 6,000 genes with a technique that preferentially targets areas rich in adenine and thymine, thus exploiting the very feature that had foiled previous attempts at genetic manipulation.

The team used computational analysis to distinguish non-essential genes (those that could be mutated) from essential, non-mutable ones. About 2,600 were identified as indispensable for growth and survival during the parasite's asexual, blood stage. These included ones associated with P. falciparum's ability to resist antimalaria drugs, highlighting them as high-priority targets for new or improved antimalarial compounds, the researchers note.

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 3, 2018 -- Fundamental researchers at the Colorado School of Mines have proposed a novel two-part system for separating impurities from natural gas in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, from AIP Publishing. Natural gas primarily contains methane, but impurities in the gaseous mixture need to be removed before the methane can be put into the pipeline. The newly proposed purification system combines two separation methods and, in principle, promises to improve performance, reduce costs and diminish ecological side effects compared to benchmark technologies.

Natural gas processing typically relies on high-temperature techniques that incur high operating costs. "We propose an integrated process consisting of gas hydrates and membranes, to make the overall process of purifying natural gas potentially more economical without high-temperature driven processes," said co-author Moises Carreon, an expert in membrane separating technologies.

Membrane technology applies different types of material to filter out carbon dioxide and nitrogen from raw natural gas. Propane and hydrogen sulfide are also often present and can negatively affect membrane performance. A possible solution to this problem emerged when Carolyn Koh, an expert in hydrates, Pramod Warrier, postdoctoral researcher, and Carreon began talking.

"Hydrates form hydrogen-bonded water cages that trap the gases you want to separate," Koh said. "It's a potentially very selective way of trapping those gases." Different pressure and temperature conditions are required for impurity hydrates to form compared to methane hydrates. The engineers decided to introduce selective hydrate formation as a preliminary step to the membrane separation process.

In the paper, the researchers used well-established algorithms to prove the feasibility of specific hydrates' formation. These conditions have a relatively low energy demand that could make the integrated system economical.

"In this integrated system, we first remove all of the nasty chemicals present in natural gas using gas hydrates to produce a purer mixture," Cameron said. He then explained how the purer mixture of gases is easier to separate using membrane technology.

Hydrate formation is not only energy-efficient but also environmentally friendly. Water is the only additional material required for gas hydrate formation, and it effectively sequesters hazardous gases like hydrogen sulfide into the solid hydrate form, which prevents its release into the environment. There are some other contaminants that need to be removed separately, but this newly proposed system reduces environmental impact from the current industrial processes.

The integrated hydrate-membrane system can also serve as a model for other molecular gas separations, such as hydrogen gas purification.

The engineers are now focused on proving their theoretical concept. "We're trying to demonstrate that this integrated system can effectively separate natural gas impurities in laboratory experiments," said Carreon. Part of that work will involve optimization to ensure that the hydrate structures form easily and rapidly, and can maintain their stability.

In the zebra finch, an extra chromosome exists in the reproductive, or germline, cells. (Songbirds have 40 chromosomes and 41 with the extra chromosome.) Known as the germline-restricted chromosome, its sequence is largely unknown and none of its genes have been identified, until now. Using sophisticated genome-sequencing techniques, American University researchers have identified the first gene of the GRC. This finding could pave the way for further research into what makes a bird male or female.

"We don't know the function of this gene, and we don't know how many other organisms have genes like this," said John Bracht, assistant professor of biology at American University.

Bracht led the team of students on the genomics project. The idea originated when he started his lab at AU in 2014 and got to talking about the unusual genomics of zebra finch with Colin Saldanha, a co-author and collaborator on the study. Saldanha is an AU neurobiologist who studies how estrogen protects the brains of zebra finches from dangerous inflammation after traumatic injury. Both scientists agreed it would be worthwhile to try to sequence the mysterious extra chromosome in the germline of songbirds.

The work began three years ago, and since then, Bracht and his students have used computational biology to sequence, sort and filter genetic data obtained from Saldanha's finches. They decided to sequence RNA because much DNA can be highly repetitive and much of it is not used for the protein coding necessary for gene functions. The RNA represented a smaller target in which to find an unknown gene of an unknown chromosome, Bracht said.

Bracht and his students began the assembly process with 167,929 strands of RNA, eventually winnowing down that number through the computational process and verification work in the laboratory to eight proteins, one of which they confirmed as the first gene on the germline-restricted chromosome that they named 'GRC α-SNAP.' This is an exciting find because GRC α-SNAP is part of the SNAP family, genes crucial to membrane fusion in neuroscience and beyond. The fact that this new SNAP gene is found only in the germline immediately suggests several potential functions and directions for follow-up experiments.

Other findings from the filtering process are useful in filling in the gaps of finch biology. When the zebra finch genome was sequenced in 2010, some genes were missed. The AU team identified 936 of these missing proteins including another SNAP gene beyond the GRC α-SNAP. This makes the zebra finch the first known organism to display a gene duplication for this SNAP family of genes.

Furthermore, an evolutionary analysis showed GRC α-SNAP evolved for positive selection--evolution for changes to its protein sequence, rather than selection to maintain the status quo. This is suggestive of evolution toward a function, but much more research will be needed to determine what that function is and why it exists. For now the team can speculate: for example, a clear genetic determinant of sex is missing in birds. Could the gene play a role in sex determination?

"The discovery of GRC α-SNAP raises questions about sex determination in the zebra finch and the possibility that it is part of what makes a female bird a female, possibly downstream through the genetic expression in the ovaries," Bracht said. Next steps include sequencing the DNA and exploring functionality studies in the zebra finch.

Researchers have discovered three distinct variants of magnetic domain walls in the helimagnet iron germanium (FeGe). Their results have been published in Nature Physics.

Researcher Dennis Meier, an associate professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), says to understand the significance of the discovery, you have to first consider how magnetic fields are created.

An electric current can generate a magnetic field, as in electromagnets. The second source of an electric field is spin, which is the magnetic moment of an atom's elementary particles.

The type of magnetism we commonly think of is ferromagnetism. This type of magnetic order occurs when the magnetic moments of the atoms in a substance are essentially aligned - that is, they point in the same direction. Then they attract or repell other magnetic objects.

With helimagnets, the atoms' magnetic moments arrange themselves in spiral or helical patterns instead.

Iron germanium (FeGe) is a mixture of iron and the metalloid germanium. It has a crystalline structure similar to what we find in a diamond, where the same pattern of atoms repeats itself.

In reality, this material is not as uniform as it looks. The crystal may be close to perfect, but the magnetic structure can simultaneously have its own organization.

In other words, an apparently perfect crystalline structure in a solid is divided into separate areas, each with its own special magnetic properties. These magnetic regions are called domains.

In ferromagnets, the atoms in each of these domains have magnetic moments pointing in the same direction, but the direction varies between neighboring areas.

In helimagnets we find domains with spiral patterns instead.

The transitions between these areas are called domain walls, which are what Meier and his colleagues are studying.

The international research group discovered three new classes of domain walls in helimagnets. The special patterns occur because of so-called topological defects.

The researchers were lucky to find them, Meier says, with perhaps a bit more modesty than necessary. But you have to know when you're lucky, he adds with a grin.

Their discoveries are completely new to science.

Domain walls can have exotic magnetic properties that the regions which they separate don't reveal. The walls, for example, may interact more strongly with an electric current and could possibly be used for data transfer and storage in the future.

This discovery may someday provide an alternative to today's computers, which flip the magnetic field and toggle the voltage between 1 and 0, or 'on' and 'off.' This method is far more energy intensive than moving topological magnetic structures along so-called "racetrack memories."

"The next thing we're going to do is try to influence these new domain walls," says Meier.

The researchers will attempt to direct these walls with an electric current - that is, get control of them. For this project Meier and his team at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering will collaborate with colleagues from the NTNU's new Center of Excellence QuSpin (Center for Quantum Spintronics) .

There is no evidence that publishing patient death rates for individual bowel surgeons in England has led to risk averse behaviour or 'gaming' of data, finds a study published by The BMJ today.

In fact, the results show that the introduction of public reporting of individual surgeons' outcomes coincided with a substantial reduction in mortality for patients having non-emergency ("elective" or "scheduled") bowel cancer surgery.

Similar improvements were not found for emergency surgery, suggesting that improvements in care before, during and after major bowel surgery - only possible for elective procedures - may explain the findings.

When patient death rates for individual surgeons were first published in June 2013, the move was hailed as a major breakthrough in transparency that would drive up standards of care in England.

But critics argue that public reporting of outcomes encourages risk averse behaviour, whereby surgeons are less likely to offer surgery to patients at higher risk, and manipulation of data to increase patients' predicted risk or to make patients ineligible for public reporting, often referred to as "gaming."

So far, the evidence that public reporting leads to improvements in the quality of patient care is surprisingly weak, and its effect has been studied only in cardiac surgery and almost exclusively in the US.

So a team of UK researchers led by Kate Walker from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, decided to look for evidence of risk averse behaviour, manipulation of data, and change in death rates immediately before and after the introduction of surgeon specific outcome reporting in colorectal cancer surgery across the NHS in England.

They analysed data for over 111,000 patients included in the National Bowel Cancer Audit (NBOCA) diagnosed with colorectal cancer from April 2011 to March 2015.

To investigate risk averse behaviour, they compared the proportion of patients who had elective surgery, predicted 90 day mortality, and observed 90 day mortality, before and after the introduction of public outcome reporting.

After factors that could have affected the results, such as patient characteristics and tumour grade, were taken into account, the researchers found that the proportion of patients with colorectal cancer who had major surgery did not change after the introduction of public outcome reporting (63.3% before compared with 63.2% after).

The proportion of urgent or emergency procedures - and therefore ineligible for public reporting - also did not change after the introduction of public reporting (15.5% before compared with 15.6% after).

The predicted 90 day mortality remained the same (2.7%), but the observed 90 day mortality fell from 2.8% before to 2.1% after. Further analysis showed that this reduction was over and above the existing downward trend in mortality before the introduction of public reporting.

The authors outline some strengths of the study, noting the large sample size which represents 92% of all colorectal cancer patients admitted to an English NHS hospital. However, they point out that this is an observational study, so no firm conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect - and say that using a "before-after" design is a potential weakness as changes may occur in the quality of data over time.

Nevertheless, they say their study "provides unique evidence that the introduction of public reporting of outcomes for individual colorectal cancer surgeons has not led to a decrease in the number of patients at high risk undergoing a major resection and has coincided with an improvement in 90 day mortality for eligible patients."

These findings suggest that public reporting for individual clinicians "seems to have triggered an improvement in outcomes after elective procedures that can be achieved only through the involvement of the entire clinical team," they conclude.

Harsher drug prohibition won't stop violence, argue Paul Whitehouse, former Chief Constable of Sussex Police, and Jason Reed at Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP UK) which supports drug policy reform, in The BMJ today.

They say spending £40m on policies based on prohibition "is unlikely to solve the problem" and they call for drug policy to shift focus from criminal justice to public health.

Last week, the Royal College of Physicians of London joined calls for an end to criminal sanctions against people who take drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and cannabis for non-medical reasons, saying the criminal justice system "is not the place to address the often complex needs of people addicted to drugs."

Earlier this month, after a spate of violent crime, the UK Home Office released its Serious Violence Strategy, stating that the government's response "must tackle the misuse of drugs" as a priority, with more expected from the police.

But the authors point out that only four years ago, the same department released a report acknowledging that drug laws have no real impact on drug use.

They highlight the failed, dangerous and expensive pursuit of a punitive drug policy.

For example, the Home Office has prioritised tackling "county lines," where gangs recruit children to distribute drugs to provincial towns.

Yet Neil Woods, an undercover police officer and LEAP UK chairperson estimates that for the 1000 years of cumulative prison time, with each operation taking around six months to complete, the flow of drugs in any city was interrupted for only around two hours, and it's often the most vulnerable who were affected and not those at the head of the supply chain.

Woods and many colleagues now call for the control and regulation of drugs to take this $320bn global industry out of the hands of organised crime.

Reed and Whitehouse also point to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, that makes all drug possession and supply a crime, "but the deterrent doesn't work and drugs are more readily available than ever," they write.

Scotland now has the highest rate of drug related deaths in the EU, with 867 people dying in 2016 - more than twice as many as a decade ago, while the government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs reports that 2,677 people died from opioid overdose in 2015 in the UK. "Without the threat of criminal repercussions more people with drug problems could get help," they write.

Furthermore, each UK taxpayer spends an estimated £400 a year on drug policy, with the annual cost of class A drug use in England and Wales estimated at over £15bn and in Scotland around £3.5bn, they add.

Some police forces are taking different approaches to drug enforcement within the law, they explain. For instance, in Durham, a policy of not arresting people for drug possession and low level dealing has gained public support, while in North Wales, police are putting more focus on supportive services.

International examples also show that more humane drug policies do not lead to an increase in consumption, as proponents of prohibition argue, but to a reduction in crime and overdose deaths.

Reed and Whitehouse argue that the government's "new" strategy is already outdated. To reduce the violence from illegal trade "we should replace our enforcement led approach with regulation, taxation, support, and education in a health based strategy."

Until Westminster sees how much the public support drug policy reform "we are unlikely to see any differences in rates of street crime. When so many law enforcement voices are calling for drug law reform, we have to ask why legislators are not listening," they conclude.

The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core satellite has been busy analyzing severe weather in the U.S.

Until May 1, tornado alley was experiencing a drought of spring tornadoes. The eighteen tornadoes reported in the area yesterday may be a sign of things to come. Moisture laden air from the Gulf of Mexico is having a more normal interaction with dry air flowing from the desert south-western states (dry line). Wind speed and wind direction change (shear) with height results in thunderstorms that spawn rotation and tornadoes.

The GPM core observatory satellite passed over tornado alley in the early morning of May 1, 2018, at 6:28 a.m. CDT (11:38 UTC). Tornadoes were not observed until the afternoon but storms were already shown firing up from Kansas to Minnesota. The GPM's satellite's Microwave Imager (GMI) and Dual Frequency Precipitation

Radar (DPR) instruments scanned this stormy area and provided instantaneous measurements of precipitation intensity. GPM's radar (DPR Ku Band) found that a few storms in Kansas were dropping rain at a rate of over 1.4 inches (35.6 mm) per hour.

GPM's 3-D radar (DPR Ku Band) data obtained a view looking toward the northeast, and showed the 3-D structure of precipitation within those early morning storms. DPR cross-section scans showed that a few storm tops in northeastern Kansas were already reaching heights above 8.6 mile (13.9 km). In a graphic developed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, a color enhanced vertical slice revealed that downpours over southwestern Iowa were returning strong radar reflectivity values exceeding 53.5 dBZ to the satellite.

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

The National Weather Service forecast for the afternoon and evening of May 2 noted "Severe thunderstorms are expected across parts of the southern and central Plains into the middle Mississippi Valley this afternoon into tonight. Swaths of damaging winds, large to very large hail, and several tornadoes are anticipated, especially from western/central Oklahoma across southern to eastern Kansas and northern to central Missouri."

The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center is forecasting "an Enhanced-to-Moderate Risk of severe weather for the Central and Southern Plains and into the Mid-Mississippi River Valley on Wednesday and Wednesday night [May 3]. Severe thunderstorms with damaging straight-line winds, large to very large hail, and a couple of tornadoes will be possible."

Strong vertical wind shear had taken its toll on Tropical Cyclone Flamboyan when NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the Southern Indian Ocean. Flamboyan, now a subtropical cyclone, had been stretched out and its only precipitation pushed southeast of the center.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite provided a visible image of Flamboyan on May 2 at 3:50 a.m. EDT (0750 UTC). The storm was devoid of rainfall with the exception of the southeastern quadrant. Wind shear has pushed all the storm southeast of the center.

At 11 p.m. EDT on May 1, or 0300 UTC on May 2, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) issued their final warning on the system. At that time the center of Tropical Cyclone Flamboyan was located near 19.1 degrees south and 84.6 degrees east, about 983 nautical miles southeast of Diego Garcia. The storm was moving toward the south-southeast at 5.7 mph (5 knots/9.2 kph). Maximum sustained winds are near 46 mph (40 knots/74 kph).

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center noted "The low level circulation center is highly elongated due to the presence of strong 57 to 69 mph (50 to 60 knots/92 to 111 kph) northwesterly vertical wind shear, and deep convection is sheared well to the southeast." The storm is expected to decay gradually over the next couple of days.

CINCINNATI -- Scientists at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center have uncovered three distinct subtypes of eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE), an emerging food allergic disease. The discovery provides a framework for developing precision medicines to treat this often-debilitating disorder.

The researchers found that each of the three groups, or endotypes (EoEe1, EoEe2, and EoEe3), was associated with different clinical features and molecular pathways.

"Our goal is to provide the type of deep disease understanding and therapeutic decision-making that is now becoming routine in the cancer field," says Marc Rothenberg, MD, PhD director of allergy and immunology at Cincinnati Children's and senior author of the study. "We applied deep molecular profiling of biopsy tissues from patients undergoing endoscopy to evaluate the presence of EoE.

We found that molecular profiling provided an advantage compared with classical microscopic analysis, the traditional approach to looking at biopsy specimens. These findings provide a potential framework for developing distinct predictive medicine and future therapeutic strategies for specific EoE subpopulations."

The study, conducted at research institutions throughout the United States, is published online in The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology.

The scientists studied biopsies of 185 children and adults at 10 sites associated with the Consortium of Eosinophilic Gastrointestinal Disease Researchers (CEGIR). After analyzing various structural and molecular features, they identified endotypes that were consistent across children and adults and were independent of the number of eosinophils in each sample. The three identified endotypes ranged from mild to severe.

Eosinophils are normal cellular components of the blood, but when the body produces too many eosinophils they can cause a variety of eosinophilic disorders, such as EoE. These are disorders involving chronic inflammation and resulting in tissue damage, often in the gastrointestinal system, including the esophagus.

"We have identified genes that are altered within each of the EoE endotypes, establishing insight into distinct disease mechanisms and allowing us to consider personalized treatment approaches," says Dr. Rothenberg. "This is an important stride forward for the allergy and gastroenterology fields. With emerging new therapies for allergic diseases, including a new class of anti-eosinophil drugs, as well as anti-inflammatory biological agents that block specific component of allergic inflammation, this is good news for patients, as this brings the field one step closer to personalized and precision therapy."

CINCINNATI -- A pilot study indicates that artificial intelligence may be useful in predicting which students are at higher risk of perpetrating school violence.

The researchers found that machine learning - the science of getting computers to learn over time without human intervention - is as accurate as a team of child and adolescent psychiatrists, including a forensic psychiatrist, in determining risk for school violence.

"Previous violent behavior, impulsivity, school problems and negative attitudes were correlated with risk to others," says Drew Barzman, MD, a child forensic psychiatrist at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and lead author of the study. "Our risk assessments were focused on predicting any type of physical aggression at school. We did not gather outcome data to assess whether machine learning could actually help prevent school violence. That is our next goal."

The study is published online in the journal Psychiatric Quarterly.

Dr. Barzman and his colleagues evaluated 103 teenage students in 74 traditional schools throughout the United States who had a major or minor behavioral change or aggression toward themselves or others. The students were recruited from psychiatry outpatient clinics, inpatient units and emergency departments.

The team performed school risk evaluations with participants. Audio recordings from the evaluations were transcribed and manually annotated. The students, as it turned out, were relatively equally divided between moderate- to high-risk, and low-risk, according to two scales that the team developed and validated in previous research.

There were significant differences in total scores between the high-risk and low-risk groups. The machine learning algorithm that the researchers developed achieved an accuracy rate of 91.02 percent, considered excellent, when using interview content to predict risk of school violence. The rate increased to 91.45 percent when demographic and socioeconomic data were added.

"The machine learning algorithm, based only on the participant's interview, was almost as accurate in assessing risk levels as a full assessment by our research team, including gathering information from parents and the school, a review of records when available, and scoring on the two scales we developed," says Yizhao Ni, PhD, a computational scientist in the division of biomedical informatics at Cincinnati Children's and co-author of the study.

"Our ultimate goal, should research support it, is to spread the use of the machine learning technology to schools in the future to augment structures, professional judgment to more efficiently and effectively prevent school violence, adds Dr. Barzman."

From 2002 to 2013, New York City implemented a series of policies prioritizing the public's health in areas beyond traditional healthcare policies and illustrated the potential to reduce cardiovascular disease risk. This strategy is known as employing a "health in all policies" approach. Researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health catalogued health-relevant legislation in New York City from 1998 to 2017 and found that 7.4 percent of the 3,745 pieces of legislation introduced during the Bloomberg Administration had the potential to impact New Yorker's cardiovascular health. The researchers focused on four categories of factors associated with cardiovascular health: air pollution exposure, physical activity, dietary intake, and tobacco smoke exposure--the one most targeted by legislative efforts. The results are published online in the journal Cities and Health.

"Over the past 15 years, there has been growing attention to a 'health in all policies' approach by local, regional, and national governments to improve the well-being of all communities and people," said Brennan Rhodes-Bratton, MPH, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at the Mailman School. "Local health promotion efforts and multi-sectoral municipal policies have the potential to efficiently reach large numbers of urban residents and impact their health."

Each year during the Bloomberg Era, with the exception of 2012, saw the enactment of at least one risk factor-related bill. For comparison purposes, the enacted legislation from four years preceding and following the three consecutive terms served by Mayor Bloomberg were also examined. Thus, the catalogue presents laws enacted during 1998-2017.

For example:

Air Quality: Among 130 pieces of legislation relevant to improving air quality during the Bloomberg administration, 28 percent were enacted. Examples of policies passed included a mandate on the use of clean heating oil, retrofitting low sulfur diesel fuel for school buses, and the city's purchase of cleaner vehicles. During the preceding mayoral term, 27 bills relevant to air pollution became laws. The four years after the Bloomberg administration only saw 12 air pollution-relevant legislations pass.

Healthy Diet: Legislation to address factors that influence the risk of consuming an unhealthy diet included 30 bills introduced, of which 33 percent were enacted policies. Examples: prohibiting the use of artificial trans fats by food service establishments and allowing for a larger number of New Yorkers to qualify for federally-sponsored SNAP Program (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). During the preceding mayoral term, there were no enacted bills relevant to the quality of dietary intake. The four years after the Bloomberg administration passed five dietary-relevant legislations.

Physical Activity: Legislation promoting physical activity--including regulation of the surface areas of playgrounds and athletic fields, the increase of bike lanes throughout the city, and creation of a public bike-sharing system--included 75 introduced and 14 enacted bills. During the preceding mayoral term, there were no enacted bills relevant to physical activity. The four years after the Bloomberg administration passed 20 bills relevant to physical activity.

Tobacco Cessation: There were 39 bills related to reducing tobacco smoke exposure between 2002 and 2013, of which 29 percent were enacted--including an increase on the tax for cigarettes; the Smoke-Free Act of 2002, which prohibited smoking in bars and restaurants; a smoking ban at construction sites, and hospitals; and the inclusion of public health messaging where tobacco products are sold. During the preceding mayoral term, 5 bills relevant to tobacco smoke exposure became laws. The four years after the Bloomberg administration only passed 12 tobacco smoke exposure-relevant legislations.

"Following higher taxes on cigarettes and the Smoke-Free Air Act, New York City adult smoking prevalence declined 35 percent, from 22 percent to 14 percent," observed James Colgrove, PhD, professor of Sociomedical Sciences.

"Our findings illustrate the potential of a 'health in all policies' approach that a city takes-- whether it's regulatory changes, taxes, or innovative health promotion campaigns ---can make a difference," noted Y. Claire Wang, ScD, MD, Mailman School associate professor of Health Policy and Management. "Our data suggested that the Bloomberg administration and the legislations enacted during that period reduced cardiovascular diseases among New Yorkers; these policy efforts can serve as a model for other municipalities to pursue similar results."

"This is the first comprehensive examination of New York City's legislation in relation to the plausible impact on residents' health," said Rhodes-Bratton. "Future research on how these policies impact segments of the population--the young, older adults, and people residing in socio-economically depressed neighborhoods--are the missing pieces and will be equally important for informing legislative efforts."

Researchers at Western University and Lawson Health Research Institute have shown a novel relationship between the intestinal microbiome and atherosclerosis, one of the major causes of heart attack and stroke. This was measured as the burden of plaque in the carotid arteries.

In order to understand the role that bacteria in the gut may play in atherosclerosis, the researchers examined blood levels of metabolic products of the intestinal microbiome. They studied a total of 316 people from three distinct groups of patients - those with about as much plaque as predicted by traditional risk factors, those who seem to be protected from atherosclerosis because they have high levels of traditional risk factors but normal arteries, and those with unexplained atherosclerosis who don't have any traditional risk factors but still have high levels of plaque burden.

"What we found was that patients with unexplained atherosclerosis had significantly higher blood levels of these toxic metabolites that are produced by the intestinal bacteria," said Dr. David Spence, professor at Western's Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry and scientist at Robarts Research Institute. The researchers looked specifically at the metabolites TMAO, p-cresyl sulfate, p-cresyl glucuronide, and phenylacetylglutamine, and measured the build-up of plaque in the arteries using carotid ultrasound.

The study, published in the journal Atherosclerosis, noted that these differences could not be explained by diet or kidney function, pointing to a difference in the make-up of their intestinal bacteria.

"There is growing consensus in the microbiome field that function trumps taxonomy. In other words, bacterial communities are not defined so much by who is there, as by what they are doing and what products they are making," said Greg Gloor, PhD, professor at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry, scientist at Lawson and a co-author on the study.

The study indicates that the gut microbiome plays an important role in an individual's risk for atherosclerosis, opening the door for new treatment options for those patients with unexplained plaque build-up in the arteries.

"The finding, and studies we have performed since, present us with an opportunity to use probiotics to counter these compounds in the gut and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease," said Gregor Reid, PhD, professor at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry, scientist at Lawson, and an expert in probiotics who contributed to the study. Spence adds that repopulation of the intestinal microbiome is another novel approach to treatment of atherosclerosis that arises from this study.

Wednesday, May 2, 2018, London, United Kingdom: The Global Longevity Consortium, consisting of the Biogerontology Research Foundation, Deep Knowledge Life Sciences, Aging Analytics Agency and Longevity.International platform, announce the publication of a new 650-page analytical report entitled Longevity Industry Landscape Overview Volume II: The Business of Longevity.

This new report, standing at 650 pages, gives a more comprehensive look at the major players, companies, investors and influencers that comprising the emerging longevity industry globally. It categorizes, systematizes and individually profiles what we consider to be the top 100 longevity companies and VC firms, as well as the most prominent individual longevity investors and thought leaders. It offers a history of the longevity industry, its rise in 2016 and it's full-blown emergence in 2017, forecasting the major trends and developments in the industry in the years to come, as well as discussing in detail what the major risks and roadblocks are moving forward, and the major items that stand to jeopardize the credibility and success of the industry. This report details the present state of personalised, precision, and preventive medicine (referred to hereafter as "P3" medicine), how it works in conjunction with emerging preventative medical technologies, and the prospects for the next five years.

Interested readers can view the full report online, or can view the report's Infographic Summary to get a brief but comprehensive overview of its contents.

It follows on the heels of Volume I: The Science of Longevity, which set the landscape of geroscience against the backdrop of the 'silver tsunami' of global demographic aging. It summarised the history and current state of development in geroscience, and examined whether existing proposed solutions measure up to the impending problems. This first report tied together the progress threads of the constituent industries into a coherent narrative, mapping the intersection of biomedical gerontology, regenerative medicine, precision medicine, artificial intelligence, offering a brief history and snapshot of each. It also categorized, systematized and individually profiled 650 longevity-focused entities, including research hubs, non-profit organizations, leading scientists, conferences, databases, books and journals.

This second volume outlines the commercial side of this emerging industry. It describes the novel financial systems that will form the necessary framework of the industry. Mindful of the large size and complexity of the industry, the report utilizes comprehensive infographics and specialised mind maps in order to do for longevity what Mendeleev, with his Periodic Table of Elements, did for chemistry, so that specialists and non-specialists alike could stand united before a unified vision of the industry landscape.

Notably, the report classifies different sectors in the industry and considers the synergetic convergence of several sectors that are not traditionally seen as related to the Longevity industry. In particular, in addition to biomedicine proper, the report classifies the emerging technologies of P3 Medicine, as well as the AgeTech sector (consisting of non-biomedical technologies that can assist elderly people in maintaining quality of life), and the financial sphere as four intersectional quadrants of the Longevity industry.

Rather than being seen as separate industries with fairly little overlap, they should in fact be more appropriately considered in combination and convergence. Given the significant impact that societal ageing and Longevity have upon economies, pension funds and insurance companies in particular, and healthcare systems in general, have the potential to tie financial performance to quantitative measures of healthy longevity like HALY (health-adjusted life years) and QALY (quality-adjusted life years) in order to help economies thrive due to an increase in its citizens healthy longevity. Chapter 7 of the report considers the creation of a novel financial system in relation to longevity, and how a new financial model can be created to simultaneously avoid economic stagnation in the face of demographic aging, while creating an infrastructure whereby governments and financial institutions can reap gains from maximizing not just population lifespan, but healthspan as well.

Much in line with the release of Volume I, the Global Longevity Consortium has published Volume II: The Business of Longevity online, freely available to the public, in order to promote a more comprehensive understanding of the emerging longevity industry for scientists, investors, entrepreneurs, investors, analysts and enthusiasts alike. It will be followed-up by several special case studies throughout 2018, including regional case studies that analyze the longevity industry in specific geographic locations (the first of which will be Longevity Industry in the United Kingdom), as well as several other case studies which give deeper analysis to some of the specific topics introduced in Volume II.

The consortium behind these reports are interested in collaboration with interested contributors and institutional partners to assist with the ongoing production of these reports, to enhance their outreach capabilities and ultimately to enhance the overall impact of these reports upon the scientific and business communities operating within the longevity industry, and can be reached at info@longevity.international.