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An unexpected phenomenon known as zero field switching (ZFS) could lead to smaller, lower-power memory and computing devices than presently possible. The image shows a layering of platinum (Pt), tungsten (W), and a cobalt-iron-boron magnet (CoFeB) sandwiched at the ends by gold (Au) electrodes on a silicon (Si) surface. The gray arrows depict the overall direction of electric current injected into the structure at the back of the gold (Au) contact and coming out the front gold contact pad.

The CoFeB layer is a nanometer-thick magnet that stores a bit of data. A "1" corresponds to the CoFeB magnetization pointing up (up arrow), and a "0" represents the magnetization pointing down (down arrow). The "0" or "1" can be read both electrically and optically, as the magnetization changes the reflectivity of light shining on the material through another phenomenon known as the magneto-optical Kerr effect (MOKE).

In the device, electric current can flip the data state between 0 and 1. Previous devices of this type have also required a magnetic field or other more complex measures to change the material's magnetization. Those earlier devices are not very useful for building stable, non-volatile memory devices.

A breakthrough occurred in a research collaboration between The Johns Hopkins University and NIST. The team discovered that they could flip the CoFeB magnetization in a stable fashion between the 0 and 1 states by sending only electric current through the Pt and W metal layers adjacent to the CoFeB nanomagnet. They did not need a magnetic field. This ZFS (zero-field switching) effect was a surprise and had not been theoretically predicted.

In their work, the researchers created a special kind of electric current known as a "spin" current. The electrons that carry electric current possess a property known as spin which can be imagined as a bar magnet pointing in a specific direction through the electron. Increasingly exploited in the emerging field known as "spintronics," spin current is simply electric current in which the spins of the electrons are pointing in the same direction. As an electron moves through the material, the interaction between its spin and its motion (called a spin-orbit torque, SOT) creates a spin current where electrons with one spin state move perpendicular to the current in one direction and electrons with the opposite spin state move in the opposite direction. The resulting spins that have moved adjacent to the CoFeB magnetic layer exert a torque on that layer, causing its magnetization to be flipped. Without the spin current the CoFeB magnetization is stable against any fluctuations in current and temperature. This unexpected ZFS effect poses new questions to theorists about the underlying mechanism of the observed SOT-induced switching phenomenon.

Details of the spin-orbit torque are illustrated in the diagram. The purple arrows show the spins of the electrons in each layer. The blue curved arrow shows the direction in which spins of that type are being diverted. (For example, in the W layer, electrons with spin to the left in the x-y plane are diverted to move upward toward the CoFeB and the electron spins to the right are diverted to move down toward the Pt.) Note the electron spins in the Pt with spin to the right (in the x-y plane), however, are diverted to move upward toward the W and the electron spins with spin to the left are diverted to move downward toward the Si. This is opposite to the direction the electron spins in the W are moving, and this is due to differences in the SOT experienced by electrons moving through Pt and those moving through W. In fact, it is this difference in the way the electrons move through each of these two conductors that may be important to enabling the unusual ZFS effect.

The research team, including NIST scientists Daniel Gopman, Robert Shull, and NIST guest researcher Yury Kabanov, and The Johns Hopkins University researchers Qinli Ma, Yufan Li and Professor Chia-Ling Chien, report their findings today in Physical Review Letters.

Ongoing investigations by the researchers seek to identify other prospective materials that enable zero-field-switching of a single perpendicular nanomagnet, as well as determining how the ZFS behavior changes for nanomagnets possessing smaller lateral sizes and developing the theoretical foundation for this unexpected switching phenomenon.

Occupational health researchers at Colorado State University are drawing attention to worker safety and satisfaction in a young industry still finding its feet: legal cannabis.

CSU researchers in the Department of Psychology have completed a first-of-its-kind, peer-reviewed study that examines the demographics, physical environment and psychosocial aspects of working in the cannabis trade, which is now legal in some form in over half the United States, including Colorado. The study results were published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine.

The study, led by psychology graduate student Kevin Walters, is a snapshot of who works in the cannabis industry in Colorado. It outlines potential improvements in worker health and safety, and it delineates specific hazards for workplaces to take note of, from ergonomic concerns due to trimming plants to slips, trips and falls.

"We don't want our work to be the end," Walters said. "We're just starting to build a conversation."

The study extends from a report co-authored by Walters, published last year, which was aimed at cannabis industry leaders. Both documents rely on results of a 214-person survey of cannabis industry workers across the Front Range of Colorado. The population sampled was "direct to plant," meaning employees who come in contact with cannabis plants or products at work every day.

The participants were asked about their occupation, job tasks, well-being, occupational health and safety, and cannabis and tobacco use.

The results found that workers were generally job-secure and valued safety. They also regularly consumed cannabis, expressed low concerns about workplace hazards, and reported occupational injuries and exposures.

Working in the industry, the authors found, is associated with positive outcomes for workers. But there is an imminent need to establish more formal health and safety training and guidelines in order to build up a culture of best practices. According to survey results, about 46 percent of respondents reported little to no worker safety training since beginning their employment.

The need to evaluate the cannabis workforce is gaining ground in the public health sphere. The state of Colorado recently published an industry-specific guide to worker health and safety. In June and November, the Center for Health, Work & Environment at the Colorado School of Public Health, and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, jointly hosted safety trainings that highlighted many of the issues Walters' study outlined. To date, these organizations have trained more than 220 people. The course, the first of its kind, is now available online.

Researchers investigated the diet of people buried in the Ii Hamina cemetery from the 15th to the 17th centuries by analysing isotopes in the bones of the deceased. Isotopes preserve information on the various nutrient sources used by humans during their lifetime. A study published in the Environmental Archaeology journal reveals that the dominant protein source was small fish, such as roach or Baltic herring.

The medieval cemetery of Ii Hamina is located next to the centre of the Ii municipality. Through investigations conducted at the cemetery, significant knowledge has been gained on past human generations in Northern Ostrobothnia and in Finland in general.

The study of the diet of medieval Ii residents indicated a very large share of fish-based food. Of all protein consumed, as much as 70% may have been fish. On the one hand, this is evidence of the importance of waterways; on the other hand, it indirectly indicates the insignificance of farming and dairying in the region.

Sufficient but unbalanced nutrition

A previous study already revealed that medieval residents of Ii had no significant trouble finding food.

"This new study confirms the notion that the diet in Ii was very likely sufficient," says researcher Maria Lahtinen from the Finnish Museum of Natural History Luomus, part of the University of Helsinki.

The recently published study indicates that the fish consumed by the residents of Ii was probably from the middle of the food web, in other words roach, Baltic herring or other species feeding on benthic and other invertebrates. Species-specific findings cannot, however, be gained through isotope analysis, so the species mentioned are based on guesswork.

Seal hunting, on the other hand, most likely did not play a significant role in medieval Ii, the study finds.

In prior studies, the dental health of the deceased has also been investigated, revealing a very protein-rich diet compared to today. On average, the population at that time was also shorter. These factors are evidence of an unbalanced diet.

Another finding in the new study was an individual whose bone isotope consistency differed from others. The diet of this individual was much closer to living habits based primarily on farmed food. The bones of altogether 98 buried individuals were analysed in the study, which makes it very likely that this individual was originally from somewhere else or in some way enjoyed a special status in the community.

Tiny jumping fish can leap further as they get older, new research shows.

Mangrove rivulus are capable of "tail-flip jumping" many times their body length when out of water, allowing them to escape predators and find better habitats.

Researchers from the universities of Exeter and Alabama looked at how physical traits and age affected how far the fish - found in the US, the Bahamas and Central America - could jump.

They found certain traits were linked to longer jumping among younger fish, but as they got older these effects diminished and age itself was most closely linked with jumping distance.

Of more than 200 fish examined, the longest jumper was also the oldest - a four-year-old mangrove rivulus that jumped more than twelve times its body length.

"We found that the length and position of certain bones seem to help younger fish jump further," said Dr Tom Houslay, of the Centre for Ecology and Conservation on the University of Exeter's Penryn Campus in Cornwall.

"However, these links disappear as they age, and older fish are better at jumping regardless of these physical characteristics.

"Adults probably rely less on bones because they have the musculature and neural systems to coordinate jumping, something that isn't highly developed in the young fish.

"Few studies have examined how the relationship between form and function changes across lifespan, and we were intrigued to find experience trumps all - at least if you're a mangrove rivulus."

The study found that older fish typically jump about half a body length further than younger ones, meaning they are better jumpers even when their larger size is taken into account.

Mangrove rivulus, which live in noxious crab burrow habitats, are about 2-3cm long as adults and have a number of unusual adaptations to allow them to live out of water.

They are also self-fertilizing simultaneous hermaphrodites, meaning if they find themselves with no mate they can reproduce alone by making clones.

This adaptation, unique among vertebrate life, also makes them a useful species for studying genetic differences in physical form and performance.

"The next step in this line of research is to figure out whether genetic variation underlies differences in body structure associated with jumping performance in young fish," said Joe Styga, PhD candidate at the University of Alabama and lead author of the study.

"This information may help us to determine to what extent jumping performance may evolve in the face of environmental change."

A research team from Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) and Waseda University have successfully produced high-quality thin film monocrystalline silicon with a reduced crystal defect density down to the silicon wafer level at a growth rate that is more than 10 times higher than before. In principle, this method can improve the raw material yield to nearly 100%. Therefore, it can be expected that this technology will make it possible to drastically reduce manufacturing costs while maintaining the power generation efficiency of monocrystalline silicon solar cells, which are used in most high efficient solar cells.

Background

Solar power generation is a method of generating power where solar light energy is converted directly into electricity using a device called a "solar cell." Efficiently converting the solar energy that is constantly striking the earth to generate electricity is an effective solution to the problem of global warming related to CO2 emissions. By making the monocrystalline Si solar cells that are at the core of solar power generation systems thinner, it is possible to greatly reduce raw material costs, which account for about 40% of the current module, and by making them flexible and lighter, usage can be expected to expand and installation costs can be expected to decrease.

In addition, as a method of reducing manufacturing cost, thin-film monocrystalline Si solar cells that use porous silicon (Double Porous Silicon Layer: DPSL) via lift-off are attracting attention as having a competitive edge in the future.

Among the technical challenges related to monocrystalline Si solar cells using lift-off are 1) the formation of a high-quality thin film Si at the Si wafer level, 2) achieving a porous structure that can easily be lifted off (peeled off), 3) improving the growth rate and Si raw material yield (necessary equipment costs are determined by the growth rate), and 4) being able to use the substrate after lift-off without any waste.

In order to overcome challenge 1), it was necessary to clarify the main factors that determine the quality of thin film crystals grown on porous silicon, and to develop a technique for controlling these.

Overview of Research Achievement

A joint research team consisting of Professor Manabu Ihara and Assistant Professor Kei Hasegawa of the Tokyo Tech, and Professor Suguru Noda of Waseda University has developed a high-quality thin film monocrystalline silicon with a thickness of about 10 μm and a reduced crystal defect density down to the silicon wafer level at a growth rate that is more than 10 times higher than before. First, double-layer nano-order porous silicon is generated on the surface of a monocrystalline wafer using an electrochemical technique. Next, the surface was smoothed to a roughness of 0.2 to 0.3 nm via a unique zone heating recrystallization method (ZHR method), and this substrate was used for high-speed growth to obtain a moonocrystalline thin film with high crystal quality. The grown film can easily be peeled off using the double-layer porous Si layer, and the substrate can be reused or used as an evaporation source for thin film growth, which greatly reduces material loss. When the surface roughness of the underlying substrate is reduced by changing the ZHR method conditions, the defect density of the thin film crystal that was grown decreased, and the team eventually succeeded in reducing it to the Si wafer level of about 1/10th. This quantitatively shows that a surface roughness in the range of only 0.1-0.2 nm (level of atoms to several tens of layers) has an important impact on the formation of crystal defects, which is also of interest as a crystal growth mechanism.

The film formation rate and the conversion rate of the Si source to the thin film Si are bottlenecks in the production of thin-film monocrystalline Si. With chemical vapor deposition (CVD), which is mainly used for epitaxy, the maximum film forming rate is a few μm/h and the yield is about 10%. At the Noda Laboratory of Waseda University, instead of the regular physical vapor deposition (PVD) where raw Si is vaporized at around its melting point of 1414 ?C, by vaporizing the raw Si at much higher temperature of >2000 ?C, a rapid evaporation method (RVD) was developed with a high Si vapor pressure capable of depositing Si at 10 μm/min.

It was found that the ZHR technology developed this time can resolves technical problems and drastically reduce the manufacturing cost of the lift-off process.

Future Development

Based on the results of this study, not only did the team discover the main factors for improving the quality of crystals during rapid growth on porous silicon used for the lift-off process, they succeeded in controlling these. In the future, measurement of the carrier lifetime of the thin film, which is directly connected to the performances of solar cells, and fabrication of solar cells will be carried out with the goal of putting the technology into practical use. The use of this Si thin films as low cost bottom cells in tandem type solar cells with an efficiency of over 30% will also be considered.

The results are published in the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) journal CrystEngComm and will be featured on the inside front cover of the issue.

St. Augustine, Fla. (March 15, 2018)- Irish culture will soon be celebrated across the globe with parades, pub crawls and seas of green. But newly uncovered documents prove unlike previous belief, St. Patrick's Day celebrations did not start in Boston, rather at least 100 years earlier in St. Augustine, Florida.

The curious discovery comes from a rather unlikely source: gunpowder expenditures lists from St. Augustine for the years 1600-1601.While cannons and other artillery were often fired to help guide ships safely across St. Augustine's protective sandbar, they were also shot off during times of public celebrations and religious festivities.

A single entry from March 1600 states St. Augustine's residents gathered together and processed through the streets in honor of the feast day of San Patricio, or St. Patrick. As they made their way through the town, cannons fired from the wooden fort in celebration of the Irish saint.

"It was certainly a surprise," said historian J. Michael Francis, PhD, University of South Florida-St. Petersburg, who uncovered the document. "It did not register the first time I saw the name "San Patricio," the Spanish name for St. Patrick. After a few seconds it actually hit me that there was a St. Patrick's Day parade/procession in St. Augustine in 1601. Even more surprising was that the document identified St. Patrick as the patron saint of the city's maize fields."

Dr. Francis discovered the records while exploring St. Augustine's long Spanish imperial history. Over the past several decades, Dr. Francis has examined thousands of documents housed in Spain's Archivo General de Indias (AGI), one of the world's most important historical archives, classified as a World Heritage Site. The archive also includes information about Ricardo Artur (Richard Arthur), the Irish priest who likely introduced the devotion to St. Patrick. When Artur disappears from the historical record in 1604, so do the references to St. Patrick.

In application, strength and stability of single microgels are important for controlling functions. However, their mechanical properties have been little known due to measurement difficulty. Miho Yanagisawa and Atsushi Sakai at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology and their colleagues succeeded in measuring the elasticity of single microgels by pulling the with a microcapillary and quantifying deformation and pressure during aspiration.

Through analysis of size dependence on elasticity of gelatin microgels formed inside cell-mimicked small mold (1/10th to 1/1000th of a millimeter), they discovered that Cell-sized mold makes gelatin gels 10 times stiffer. Detailed analysis of molecular structure in the gelatin microgels revealed that increase of β sheet from interaction with lipid membrane covering the cell-mimicked mold is the factor for the higher stiffness.

These findings indicate mechanical properties of gels can be controlled by modulating space sizes for gelation. By application of these findings, development of novel functionalization methods for various biopolymer gels and elucidation of mechanical properties of biopolymer gels in living cells such as cytoskeletal gels are expected.

Like an island nation, the nucleus of a cell has a transportation problem. Evolution has enclosed it with a double membrane, the nuclear envelope, which protects DNA but also cuts it off from the rest of the cell. Nature's solution is a massive--by molecular standards--cylindrical configuration known as the nuclear pore complex, through which imports and exports travel, connecting the bulk of the cell with its headquarters.

In research described March 14 in Nature, scientists at Rockefeller University and their colleagues have delineated the architecture of the nuclear pore complex in yeast cells. The biological blueprint they uncovered shares principles sometimes seen on a much larger scale in concrete, steel, and wire.

"It reminds us of a suspension bridge, in which a combination of sturdy and flexible parts produce a stress-resilient structure," says Michael P. Rout, who led the work together with Brian T. Chait.

The pore complex contains 552 component proteins, called nucleoporins, and scientists hadn't previously known how they all fit together. It took a combination of approaches to assemble a comprehensive map of these pieces. The researchers hope this new molecular structure will enable new studies of how the nuclear portal functions normally, and how defects in it lead to diseases such as cancer.

A milestone

The pore complex first emerged when single-celled organisms--the only living things at the time--acquired special compartments containing organ-like structures, including the nucleus, which houses the cell's genetic code.

It serves not only as a conduit to and from the nucleus, but also as a checkpoint regulating what passes in and out. Genetic instructions transcribed into RNA are allowed to exit, for example, while proteins needed inside the nucleus may enter. Other things, such as viruses bent on taking over the cell, are kept at bay.

Rout and Chait began mapping this ancient structure more than 20 years ago, knowing the project could well span decades since the target of their curiosity is not easily defined.

More than a third of the pore complex can move about, and this flexibility, along with the structure's immense size and the constant stream of traffic passing through it, meant that no single approach to mapping it would work. "In the end, we used everything we could lay our hands on, brought the results together, and integrated them into a single structure," says Chait, who is Rockefeller's Camille and Henry Dreyfus Professor.

Together with researchers at the University of California, San Francisco; Boston University Medical School; and Baylor College of Medicine, the team was able to determine the type and amount of each nucleoporin and their proximities to one another, as well as the weight and shape of the whole complex.

This data allowed them to visualize the anatomy of many of the individual pore components and to place them all within the pore complex. They uncovered a complicated ringed structure containing rigid, diagonal columns and flexible connectors that evoke the towers and cables of human-made structures like the Golden Gate Bridge.

The resulting map is a breakthrough in a line of investigation with a deep Rockefeller history. The pore complex first came into human view in the 1950s, when a university scientist, Michael Watson, observed small densities dotting the surface of the nuclear envelope. And about two decades later, the lab of Günter Blobel, who passed away last month, was among the first to discover individual nups and then determine their structure.

A new starting point

When it comes to the pore complex, yeast has a considerable amount in common with us. When the team compared their data with structural findings from human pore complexes, they found similar elements arranged somewhat differently. The resemblance suggests the yeast pore complex could be useful for research relevant to humans.

And there's a lot of such research to be done. Defects in the pore complex and its components have been linked to a host of diseases, including autoimmune disorders and cancer; meanwhile, viruses have evolved ways to sneak past it altogether. But the details of these malfunctions and blind spots are often obscure.

The new yeast structure may help. With it, the team found they could map sites that are altered in some cancers--evidence, they say, that the yeast pore complex can be used to test how factors like stress, drugs, or mutations change the human structure, and so aiding efforts to understand and treat disease.

NASA got an inside look at the heavy rainfall within developing Tropical cyclone Eliakim.

The new tropical cyclone that may affect Madagascar in a few days has been generating an impressive rate of rain. The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core satellite analyzed rainfall rates as it passed over the Southern Indian Ocean.

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) has been keeping an eye on an area of convection in the Indian Ocean northeast of Madagascar. A circulation center had already been observed as the low pressure area continued strengthening in an area of low vertical wind shear and warm sea surface temperatures. Early on March 14, Tropical cyclone Eliakim developed.

Madagascar has already been affected by a couple of tropical cyclones that caused flooding and deaths. Tropical cyclone Ava caused many deaths in January when its heavy rains caused extensive flooding in Madagascar. Tropical cyclone Dumazile also caused extensive flooding less than two weeks ago when it passed close to the eastern side of Madagascar.

NASA's GPM core observatory satellite viewed the latest forming tropical cyclone when it flew over the Indian Ocean northeast of Madagascar on March 14, 2018 at 0228 UTC (March 13 at 10:28 p.m. EDT).

The typical clockwise spiral of rain bands in the forming tropical cyclone were revealed with data collected by GPM's Microwave Imager (GMI) and Dual Frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) instruments.

GPM's radar probes of the large convective band wrapping around the eastern side of the forming tropical cyclone indicated that rain was dropping at a rate of over 207 (8.1 inches) per hour.

GPM is joint satellite mission of NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency or JAXA.

At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, data from GPM was used to create a 3-D flyby animation. The GPM data were used to estimate cloud top heights that were calculated by blending data collected by GPM's radar (DPR Ku Band) with cloud top heights based on temperatures from the METEOSAT satellite's infrared image. GPM's DPR discovered that cloud tops were reaching higher than 16 km (9.9 miles) in the strong convective rain bands east of the forming tropical cyclone's center of circulation.

On March 15 at 4 a.m. EDT (0900 UTC), the center of Tropical cyclone Eliakim was located near 14.9 degrees south latitude and 53.9 degrees east longitude. That's approximately 368 miles north-northwest of Port Louis, Mauritius. The western quadrant of the storm is already affecting northern Madagascar.

Eliakim was moving to the southwest at 9.7 mph (8 knots/14.8 kph) and had maximum sustained winds near 52 mph (45 knots/83 kph).

Eliakim is moving southwest while intensifying to a strong tropical storm with expected maximum sustained winds near 69 mph (60 knots/11 kph). The storm is forecast to make landfall in northeastern Madagascar before turning southeast.

Northern Madagascar is under a Yellow Alert. For forecast updates from Madagascar's Meteorological Service, visit: http://www.meteomadagascar.mg/.

In the event of a cardiorespiratory arrest, two actions are crucial for the patient's survival: cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and defibrillation. CPR consists of rhythmically compressing the patient's chest to generate a minimum flow of blood in order to minimise the deterioration of vital organs (heart and brain). And defibrillation involves applying an electric shock to try to reverse the arrhythmia. "It is essential to perform CPR properly for the manoeuvre to be effective, and that is not easy even for highly trained personnel, since the chest has to be compressed at the appropriate frequency and depth (between 100-120 compressions per minute and between 5 and 6 cm)," explained Digna María González-Otero, author of the work.

The quality of the compressions is related to the patient's survival. That is why the resuscitation guidelines recommend the use of feedback systems to monitor the quality of CPR in real time. "These devices are usually placed between the patient's chest and the rescuer's hands and guide the rescuer to help him/her achieve the target depth and frequency of the compression," pointed out the UPV/EHU researcher. So, researchers in the UPV/EHU's Signal and Communications Group have developed an algorithm to calculate the depth and frequency of the compressions on the basis of chest acceleration. "In other words," said González-Otero, "just by placing an accelerometer on the patient's chest we can measure, in real time, the depth and frequency at which the compressions are being performed, and then correct the rescuer if necessary so that he/she performs quality CPR".

On sale shortly

The work published in the prestigious PLOS ONE journal validates the use of the new algorithm by demonstrating that it is very accurate in calculating the frequency and depth of the compressions when the acceleration signals measured in the chests of actual patients with cardiorespiratory arrest are analysed.

In view of the results obtained, the company Bexen Cardio, located in the Basque town of Ermua, is starting to market a device to assist the CPR used by this algorithm. It is a flexible, very thin device resembling a cushion. "The device functions when it is connected to the defibrillator and is the screen of the defibrillator which tells the rescuer whether he/she has to press harder, work faster, etc.," said Digna María González-Otero. "We could say that it is a straightforward, intuitive accessory of the defibrillator and which is geared, above all, towards the emergency services," she added. In fact, "some emergency services are already using it to validate its use in actual patients, to see whether it works as expected, whether it is convenient for the rescuer, whether it meets expectations, etc.", pointed out González-Otero. Bearing in mind the results being achieved, its mass marketing is expected to take place within a few months.

DALLAS, March 15, 2018 - Blacks often have higher exposure to air pollution than whites, which may partially explain their higher risk heart disease and death compared to whites, according to new research in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, an American Heart Association journal.

Exposure to air pollution is associated with elevated blood sugar levels, poorly functioning blood vessels, heart disease events and death.

"Previous studies showed chronic exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) - a component of air pollution emitted from vehicles, factories, power plants, fires and second-hand smoke - is associated with increased cardiovascular risk and death," said Sebhat Erqou, M.D., Ph.D., study lead author and fellow in cardiovascular disease at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.

"Data also indicates that minorities are more likely to live in areas close to pollution sources, including heavy roadway traffic areas," Erqou said. "However, racial differences in the exposure to air pollution and their role in disparities in cardiovascular risk and death have not been fully explained."

Researchers merged data on fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and black carbon - a component of ultrafine particulate matter - from a Pittsburgh-area monitoring and modeling campaign, with data from the Heart Strategies Concentrating on Risk Evaluation (HeartSCORE), an ongoing community-based study that included 1,717 participants (66 percent women, 45 percent black, average age 59) in western Pennsylvania. Participants were assessed by questionnaires and during annual follow-up study visits for heart-related hospitalizations, heart attacks, acute coronary syndrome, stroke, coronary revascularization or cardiac death.

Researchers found fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution exposure was associated with elevated blood glucose, worse blood vessel function, cardiovascular events and death from all causes. In addition, blacks compared to whites had:

higher average exposures to fine particulate matter air pollutants;

higher average exposures to black carbon air pollutants; and

45 percent higher risk of cardiovascular events and death from any cause, after considering traditional cardiovascular disease risk factors.

Researchers said about 25 percent of the association between race and cardiovascular events and death may be explained by exposure to fine particulate matter pollutants. However, greater income and education lessened the impact of air pollution.

The study has limitations including that it was conducted at a single institution in one city, so the range of exposure might have been narrower when compared to other localities.

"Further larger-sized, multicenter studies can help to better understand the role and mechanisms of environmental pollution exposures in racial differences in cardiovascular risk and clinical outcomes," Erqou said.

A Ludwig Cancer Research study shows that ovarian cancer, which has proved resistant to currently available immunotherapies, could be susceptible to personalized immunotherapy. Led by Ludwig Lausanne investigator Alexandre Harari and George Coukos, director of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Lausanne, the study shows that ovarian tumors harbor highly reactive killer T cells--which kill infected and cancerous cells--and demonstrates how they can be identified and selectively grown for use in personalized, cell-based immunotherapies.

"Tumors whose cells tend to be highly mutated, like those of melanoma and lung cancer, are the ones that respond best to immunotherapies," says Harari. "It has long been a question whether we'd even be able to detect sufficiently mutation-reactive T cells in patients with tumors that have low mutational loads."

Harari, Coukos and their colleagues report in Nature Communications that, despite their low mutational load, epithelial ovarian tumors are infiltrated with T cells that are especially good at recognizing and killing cancer cells.

Cancer cells that have a relatively large number of mutations in their DNA express aberrant proteins--or neoantigens--that reveal the cancer to the immune system. Killer T cells recognize tiny, mutated bits of these antigens, known as neoepitopes. But neoepitopes vary wildly from patient to patient, even within the same type of cancer. This has long stymied efforts to develop generally effective therapies that target cancer antigens.

To get around this problem, researchers have been developing sophisticated methods to extract T cells from patients, select and expand those that best target a patient's cancer and reinfuse them into the patient. These approaches usually rely on T cells extracted from the bloodstream, not those already inside the tumor, which are referred to as TILs (for tumor infiltrating lymphocytes).

Experimental therapies using T cells taken from the bloodstream have not, however, worked very well against solid tumors. Further, when TILs have been used for such purposes, the proportion of what Harari calls the "juiciest" T cells--those recognizing mutations on cancer cells--tends to decline significantly when the cells are expanded in culture.

"To circumvent these problems, we developed a new methodology to identify highly reactive TILs and expand them in a manner that, rather than diluting the juiciest TILs, enriches them instead," says Harari. "This allowed us to compare the activity of TILs that target neoepitopes with their counterparts in the peripheral bloodstream."

The researchers show that killer T cells isolated from ovarian tumors using their method are much better at both recognizing neoepitopes than are those isolated from blood.

"We could even compare T cells from the two compartments targeting the exact same mutation and show that the TILs were more functional than the T cells we collected from the peripheral bloodstream," says Harari.

Notably, the researchers found that, using their methods, highly reactive TILs could be obtained from some 90% of the ovarian cancer patients whose tumor samples they examined.

"The big message," says Coukos, "is that future cell-based therapies can be envisioned for low mutational load tumors and should prioritize the use of TILs over T cells collected from peripheral blood. This novel strategy to obtain enriched TILs also offers great therapeutic opportunities."

Harari, Coukos and their colleagues will now be applying their findings to an ambitious program to develop and streamline personalized immunotherapies for cancer patients currently underway at the Lausanne Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research.

Neuroscientists at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre have identified a circuit in the primary visual cortex (V1) of the brain that integrates head- and visual-motion signals. The study, published today in Neuron, elucidates the mechanisms by which visual and vestibular inputs to the brain sum together to enable appropriate behavioural responses.

As you go about daily life you are constantly moving your head to look around the world. In order to make sense of the information that falls within your gaze you need to keep track of the position of your head; this is accomplished with information that comes from your vestibular sense organs, which are in your inner ears.

The research team identified a site in the primary visual cortex (area V1) where vestibular signals and visual signals converge and went on to determine that the vestibular signals come from the retrosplenial cortex, a brain area thought to encode information critical for spatial navigation through the surrounding world.

Associate Director of the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre and director of the project, Professor Troy W. Margrie commented:

"Since the 1950's we have been focused on understanding how the direction and velocity of sensory stimuli are represented at the level of the primary sensory cortex. Here we show that this cortical process is context-dependent and involves 'internal' signals that report the motion status of the animal."

To first identify areas within V1 that might have access to head-motion signals, the researchers used state-of-the-art Neuropixels probes to record from the brains of mice that were passively rotated. The initial recordings were carried out in complete darkness to ensure there was no visual input and the data showed that V1 layer 6 (L6) neurons convey information about the motion of the head during rotation.

The second part of the study, using intracellular recordings, focused on which aspects of head motion might be encoded by such activity. By lesioning the vestibular canals and rotating the animals at various speeds, they showed that the vast majority of V1 L6 neurons receive synaptic inputs whose activity provides a reliable estimate of the velocity of the head.

"Perhaps the most surprising observation was the extent to which these signals were being represented across the local network. Despite exploring only a small fraction of vestibular stimulus space, almost all cells were found to respond," Professor Margrie remarked.

To investigate the integration of head- and visual- motion signals in individual V1 L6 cells, intracellular recordings were again obtained from mice while being rotated past a static visual stimulus and then compared with data from mouse rotations in the dark. It was found that L6 neurons receive set of inputs distinct from those conveying visual motion information and that these signals linearly sum to distinguish internal from external motion and their combination.

The final part of the study focused on a potential source of the head motion signals. The retrosplenial cortex (RSP), an area of the brain involved in spatial navigation, was proposed as a likely candidate due to its monosynaptic connectivity with V1 L6 and its proposed functional relevance. To test this theory, pseudoviruses were used to express a calcium indicator that allowed the optical recording of the output signals of RSP neurons. The data showed that RSP does provide a plausible pathway for the integration of head motion signals.

Professor Margrie remarked in conclusion: "Given our previous anatomical findings and its role in spatial processing the RSP was our first candidate region. These new data raise the possibility that various kinds of spatial information might be relayed. In this sense, L6 might serve as a locus for context-dependent modulation of sensory signalling in the cortex."

A breakthrough by Australian scientists has brought the introduction of an unlikely hero in the global fight against antibiotic resistance a step closer; the humble platypus.

Due to its unique features - duck-billed, egg-laying, beaver-tailed and venomous- the platypus has long exerted a powerful appeal to scientists, making it an important subject in the study of evolutionary biology.

In 2010 scientists discovered that platypus milk contained unique antibacterial properties that could be used to fight superbugs.

Now a team of researchers at Australia's national research agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Oganisation (CSIRO), and Deakin University have solved a puzzle that helps explain why platypus milk is so potent - bringing it one step closer to being used to save lives.

The discovery was made by replicating a special protein contained in platypus milk in a laboratory setting.

"Platypus are such weird animals that it would make sense for them to have weird biochemistry," CSIRO scientist and lead author on the research published in Structural Biology Communications, Dr Janet Newman said.

"The platypus belongs to the monotreme family, a small group of mammals that lay eggs and produce milk to feed their young. By taking a closer look at their milk, we've characterised a new protein that has unique antibacterial properties with the potential to save lives."

As platypus don't have teats, they express milk onto their belly for the young to suckle, exposing the mother's highly nutritious milk to the environment, leaving babies susceptible to the perils of bacteria.

Deakin University's Dr Julie Sharp said researchers believed this was why the platypus milk contained a protein with rather unusual and protective antibacterial characteristics.

"We were interested to examine the protein's structure and characteristics to find out exactly what part of the protein was doing what," she said.

Employing the marvels of molecular biology, the Synchrotron, and CSIRO's state of the art Collaborative Crystallisation Centre (C3), the team successfully made the protein, then deciphered its structure to get a better look at it.

What they found was a unique, never-before-seen 3D fold.

Due to its ringlet-like formation, the researchers have dubbed the newly discovered protein fold the 'Shirley Temple', in tribute to the former child-actor's distinctive curly hair.

Dr Newman said finding the new protein fold was pretty special.

"Although we've identified this highly unusual protein as only existing in monotremes, this discovery increases our knowledge of protein structures in general, and will go on to inform other drug discovery work done at the Centre," she said.

In 2014 the World Health Organisation released a report highlighting the scale of the global threat posed by antibiotic resistance, pleading for urgent action to avoid a "post-antibiotic era", where common infections and minor injuries which have been treatable for decades can once again kill.

The scientists are seeking collaborators to take the potentially life-saving platypus research to the next stage.

A team of researchers have developed an open-source, clinically validated template for a 3D printed stethoscope for use in areas of the world with limited access to medical supplies - places where a stethoscope could mean the difference between life and death.

"As far as we know this is the first open-source medical device that has been clinically validated and is widely available," said Dr. Tarek Loubani, associate professor at Western's Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, associate scientist at Lawson Health Research Institute and an emergency room physician at London Health Sciences Centre.

Loubani spent time working as an ER physician in hospitals in Gaza during wartime when medical supplies were often scarce. "We wanted physicians and allied health care professionals to be able to have something that was high quality. This study found that the acoustic quality was the same in our stethoscope as in a premium brand stethoscope."

The idea to 3D print a stethoscope was born while playing with a toy stethoscope and noticing it performed its function quite well. That led Loubani and a team of engineers to design an open-access template for a 3D printed stethoscope that could be created using recycled plastic. Now, the team's stethoscope has been clinically validated, and their results are published online today in the journal PLOS ONE.

The stethoscope, called the Glia model, was made using free open source software to keep costs low and allow others to easily access the code. With the Glia template, the stethoscope can be made in less than three hours and costs less than $3 to produce. Anyone with a 3D printer and access to ABS - a plastic used to make garden chairs and Lego - can create the device. The results of the study show it has the same acoustic quality as the best stethoscopes on the market.

"Use of the open source approach in every aspect of this project contributes powerfully to the body of medical device research," said Gabriella Coleman, PhD, noted scholar on technology and open source software. "This research gives a guide for others to create medical-grade open access devices that can reduce costs and ultimately save lives."

The device is currently in clinical use by physicians and allied health professionals in Gaza and is also being trialled clinically at the London Health Sciences Centre, in London, Ontario.

Loubani says stethoscopes may not be seen as vital for diagnosis and treatment in places such as London, where physicians rely heavily on ultrasound, CT and other diagnostic technologies. However, in war torn and low-income communities, the stethoscope is a necessary tool.
"Stethoscope utility goes up as other resources go down. In London, if someone gets shot, I can use an ultrasound to look inside and see if there is a life-threatening air pocket called a pneumothorax. In Gaza, ultrasounds are not available in emergency departments, or are dilapidated, so the stethoscope becomes an inexpensive tool that allows us to make life-saving decisions."

The hope now is to create templates for other medical devices that can be made or improved on-site in locations with scarce resources.