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GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- At first glance, Garra surinbinnani looks like a stout, brown minnow with the face of a boxer who's gone one too many rounds. But the deep gash in its forehead studded with blue spikes is a natural feature whose function remains a mystery.

Discovered by Florida Museum of Natural History researchers, this freshwater fish makes its home in the fast-flowing, rocky streams of Western Thailand, a region that the species' namesake, the late conservationist Surin Binnan, devoted himself to protecting.

Lawrence Page, curator of fishes, and his team collected the fish in the Thung Yai Naresuan Wildlife Sanctuary, a pristine but treacherous area they could only access with the help and expertise of Surin and sanctuary rangers. When the team surveyed its catch, G. surinbinnani's odd physiognomy was cause for conversation.

"In terms of weirdness, this fish is up there," said Page, lead author of the study describing the species. "The reaction of everyone who saw it was just 'Why is it so bizarre-looking?'"

A few other Garra species have similarly outlandish foreheads, but G. surinbinnani sports two tiny horns, giving it a "netherworldly appearance," Page said. The purpose of the facial groove in these species is unknown: Some scientists have suggested it could be used in territorial displays or even for fighting, but in fish, these behaviors are common only in males, and both male and female G. surinbinnani have the modification.

"It could be for burrowing or maybe it's just bling," said David Boyd, study co-author and an ichthyology collection technician at the Florida Museum.

Museum researchers were not the first to collect G. surinbinnani, which lives throughout the Mae Klong river basin, but it was previously misidentified as another species, G. fuliginosa. The scientists named the new species in honor of Surin, whose single-minded zeal for conservation left a lasting impression on them.

"I felt inspired when I talked to him, just to see someone who felt so convicted about doing what they believed in," said Zachary Randall, study co-author and Florida Museum biological scientist. "He had dedicated his life to protecting the forest. Even in regular conversation, his passion came through."

Surin died of liver cancer in September at age 56.

Walking where tigers tread

Page and his team have been documenting Thailand's freshwater fishes since 2007, honing in on the Mae Klong drainage over the past five years. The team is working on a book that describes all the fish species in the basin, an understudied region, with photographs of live specimens and distribution maps.

They were eager to take their seine nets into the remote, mountainous Thung Yai sanctuary, the largest protected area in Thailand and a World Heritage Site, but wouldn't have gotten far without Surin's assistance. Surin and rangers with Thailand's Royal Forest Department help maintain the sanctuary and defend it against poachers. The undisturbed habitat is home to some of Thailand's most charismatic wildlife, including elephants, gibbons, tigers, barking deer and hornbills.

But little to nothing has been known about Thung Yai's fish - which is how the scientists found themselves perched precariously atop mounds of gear in the back of four-wheel-drive trucks, "clinging on for dear life" as they rollicked over the sanctuary's unpaved road, Boyd said. Meanwhile Surin hung from the back with one hand as casually as though he were riding shotgun in a Lincoln Town Car.

After nightfall - and many stops to winch their trucks from the mud - the group dismounted to walk the final half-mile to the field station where they would sleep. Along the way, Randall's headlamp illuminated a fresh tiger print on the path.

"We all looked at each other and decided to walk closer together," he said.

In addition to tigers, the team had to watch out for gaur, a large, horned bovine considered one of the region's most dangerous animals.

But after sampling streams for several days, the scientists emerged unmauled and ungored - and with at least five undescribed fish species, including G. surinbinnani, and potentially a new loach genus. Surin shared in their excitement.

"He had such an enthusiasm for what we do, and we appreciated that," Boyd said. "He implicitly understood the importance of biodiversity. By bringing us in, he knew he would get a return on investment by learning about the fish, and he instilled that in a lot of the rangers."

The team had heard Surin was terminally ill, but the news was hard to believe in the face of his energy and athleticism.

"We were all looking forward to working with Surin in coming years," Randall said. "After seeing how healthy he was, we thought he had actually beat the cancer."

A force of nature

Formerly the prosperous owner of a computer repair business and a property developer, Surin, whose formal name was Amphol Tapanapunnitikul, devoted the last portion of his life to preserving Thailand's wildlands. He established and directed a non-profit organization, the Foundation of Western Forest Complex Conservation, which planned, constructed and maintained infrastructure projects in Thung Yai to help defend the sanctuary against poaching. The foundation also pioneered many ongoing conservation efforts, such as protecting reservoirs from illegal fishing nets, conducting elephant surveys, reducing human-elephant conflicts and starting Thung Yai's first tiger research project.

Along with a lifelong love of wildlife, Surin had a predilection for undertaking projects others described as impossible, said David Butler, his close friend and FWFCC co-founder.

Surin, who had established Thailand's first computer network, designed and built a radio tower system on Thung Yai's forbidding terrain so rangers could better communicate with one another. He also installed satellite internet and constructed wildlife protection stations - even floating stations - by hand, raising the funds himself.

"He gave and gave and gave," Butler said. "He probably knew more about Thung Yai than anyone else. He dedicated his life to it, and he wouldn't let anything get in his way. He was more committed than anyone I knew."

A self-described junk collector, Butler met Surin in 2002 while shipping Vietnam War-era Army trucks back to the U.S. When Surin refused to accept payment for his assistance with the project, Butler, who had noticed the wildlife photos tacked to Surin's office walls, offered to donate to his conservation club instead. Surin readily agreed and, in turn, convinced Butler to board a truck loaded with radio and solar equipment bound for a remote ranger station in Thung Yai.

For Butler, the experience was transformative.

"I was overwhelmed by how important it was," he said. "I saw stuff that no Westerner gets to see. On the way home, I remember being upset at how little was being done to protect it."

Butler had no previous conservation experience and "barely got through high school," but joined Surin's efforts. "We weren't scientists," he said. "We were just doing whatever we could to conserve biodiversity."

He recalled Surin as "the kindest, most thoughtful person. But he also meant business."

Butler recounted a time when rangers warned Surin that a local poacher planned to kill him. Surin's response was brash: He walked into the poacher's house unannounced and dared him to carry out his threat. Completely unnerved, the man abandoned poaching instead.

"He was just a remarkable individual," Butler said. "The only way I can put it is that he seemed superhuman."

Butler accompanied the Florida Museum team on its Thung Yai expedition and said the researchers' deep knowledge of fish was a frequent topic of discussion between him and Surin.

"It was so fun to watch the fish guys," he said. "Their expertise was off the charts."

One unique feature of G. surinbinnani, the researchers noted, was that while other fish sheltered behind rocks in Thung Yai's swift streams, this species openly braved the currents, no matter how strong.

So it was with Surin.

"He was a driving force," Butler said. "He was completely fearless and could just make anything happen."

A new artificial intelligence (AI) tool could help social media networks and news organizations weed out false stories.

The tool, developed by researchers at the University of Waterloo, uses deep-learning AI algorithms to determine if claims made in posts or stories are supported by other posts and stories on the same subject.

"If they are, great, it's probably a real story," said Alexander Wong, a professor of systems design engineering at Waterloo. "But if most of the other material isn't supportive, it's a strong indication you're dealing with fake news."

Researchers were motivated to develop the tool by the proliferation of online posts and news stories that are fabricated to deceive or mislead readers, typically for political or economic gain.

Their system advances ongoing efforts to develop fully automated technology capable of detecting fake news by achieving 90 per cent accuracy in a key area of research known as stance detection.

Given a claim in one post or story and other posts and stories on the same subject that have been collected for comparison, the system can correctly determine if they support it or not nine out of 10 times.

That is a new benchmark for accuracy by researchers using a large dataset created for a 2017 scientific competition called the Fake News Challenge.

While scientists around the world continue to work towards a fully automated system, the Waterloo technology could be used as a screening tool by human fact-checkers at social media and news organizations.

"It augments their capabilities and flags information that doesn't look quite right for verification," said Wong, a founding member of the Waterloo Artificial Intelligence Institute. "It isn't designed to replace people, but to help them fact-check faster and more reliably."

AI algorithms at the heart of the system were shown tens of thousands of claims paired with stories that either supported or didn't support them. Over time, the system learned to determine support or non-support itself when shown new claim-story pairs.

"We need to empower journalists to uncover truth and keep us informed," said Chris Dulhanty, a graduate student who led the project. "This represents one effort in a larger body of work to mitigate the spread of disinformation."

Researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology have partnered up with engineers from Corning Inc., U.S., and T8, Russia, and developed a system for high-throughput data transfer over great distances without the need for signal repeating along the way. Systems of this kind could be used to provide internet connection and other communication services in remote communities. The study is reported in IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

Countries with large underpopulated areas -- such as Russia and Canada -- or those comprised by numerous islands, like Indonesia, face difficulties in providing communication services. Without intermediate electricity-powered repeater stations, the signal gets attenuated and does not arrive at the destination. To make long-haul data transmission cheaper, engineers come up with fiber optic systems that amplify the signal along the link without the need for electrical power sources. Top transmission systems available today enable data transfer at the rate of 100 gigabits per second across 500 kilometers (311 miles).

The authors of the letter successfully transmitted a signal over 520 km (323 mi) at 200 Gbps. This had only been done in research labs before, but those results could not be carried over to actual applications. This time commercial cables developed by Corning were used, making the technology applicable under realistic conditions. To avoid the attenuation of the signal, it was amplified initially upon transmission and then two more times remotely, along the way.

"To amplify the signal in the passive fiber, the stimulated Raman scattering effect and remote optically pumped amplifiers were used. The Raman scattering effect allowed us to use the passive optical fiber as an amplification medium, considerably increasing the signal-to-noise ratio at link output," explained the study's lead author Dimitriy Starykh, a PhD student at MIPT's Phystech School of Radio Engineering and Computer Technology.

The transmission line comprised three sections, each consisting of fiber optic cables of two types connected in series. Remote optically pumped erbium amplifiers (ROPA) were installed at the points of junction between the sections. ROPAs consume optical pump and use this energy to amplify signal. The team optimized the junction positions to increase output signal quality, placing the two ROPAs 122 km (76 mi) from the transmitter and 130 km (81 mi) from the receiver, respectively.

The researchers set the signal symbol rate to slightly short of 57 billion pulses per second; the transmitter allowed the transfer of five bits per symbol, enabling a total bit rate of 284 Gbps. While the system potentially supported data transfer at up to 400 Gbps, the engineers ran it at a reduced speed to increase the transmission distance.

"We are already working on a fiber optic system that would achieve higher transfer rates. While the current speed tops at about 400 Gbps, we aim to reach 600 Gbps per channel with the new system," T8 CEO Vladimir Treshchikov commented. "We achieved signal improvement for rates of 200 Gbps and even 400 Gbps per channel. I think, next year we could set a further transmission distance record."

The results achieved by the researchers can already be employed to provide communication services in sparsely populated areas, such as the Russian island Sakhalin.

Artificial Intelligence may be just the thing to accelerate spray-on solar cell technology, which could revolutionize how consumers use energy.

A research team at the University of Central Florida used Machine Learning, aka Artificial Intelligence to optimize the materials used to make perovskite solar cells (PSC). The Organic-Inorganic halide perovskites material used in PSC converts photovoltaic power into consumable energy.

These perovskites can be processed in solid or liquid state, offering a lot of flexibility. Imagine being able to spray or paint bridges, houses and skyscrapers with the material, which would then capture light, turn it into energy and feed it into the electrical grid. Until now, the solar cell industry has relied on silicon because of its efficiency. But that's old technology with limits. Using perovskites, however, has one big barrier. They are difficult to make in a usable and stable material. Scientists spend a lot of time trying to find just the right recipe to make them with all the benefits - flexibility, stability, efficiency and low cost. That's where artificial intelligence comes in.

The team's work is so promising that its findings are the cover story Dec. 13 in the Advanced Energy Materials journal.

The team reviewed more than 2,000 peer-reviewed publications about perovskites and collected more than 300 data points then fed into the AI system they created. The system was able to analyze the information and predict which perovskites recipe would work best.

"Our results demonstrate that machine learning tools can be used for crafting perovskite materials and investigating the physics behind developing highly efficient PSCs," says Jayan Thomas, the study's lead author and an associate professor at the NanoScience Technology Center with multiple affiliations. "This can be a guide to design new materials as evidenced by our experimental demonstration."

If this model bears out, it means researchers could identify the best formula to create a world standard. Then spray-on solar cells may happen in our lifetime, the researchers say.

"This is a promising finding because we use data from real experiments to predict and obtain a similar trend from the theoretical calculation, which is new for PSCs. We also predicted the best recipe to make PSC with different bandgap perovskites," says Thomas and his graduate student, Jinxin Li, who is the first author of this paper. "Perovskites have been a hot research topic for the past 10 years, but we think we really have something here that can move us forward."

What we do to one part of our Earth system does not just add to what we do to other parts: "We found a dense network of interactions between the planetary boundaries," says Johan Rockström, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-author of the study. Two core boundaries - climate change and biosphere integrity - contribute more than half the combined strengths of all the interactions in that network, the scientists find. "This highlights how careful we should be in destabilizing these two," says Rockström. "The resulting cascades and feedbacks amplify human impacts on the Earth system and thereby shrink the safe operating space for our children and grand-children."

Burning down tropical forests to expand agricultural lands for instance increases the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. The additional greenhouse gases contribute to the global temperature increase, the harm done to the forests becomes harm to climate stability. The temperature increase can in turn further enhance stress on tropical forests, and for agriculture. The resulting amplification of effects is substantial even without taking tipping points into account: Beyond a certain threshold, the Amazon rainforest might show rapid, non-linear change. Yet such a tipping behavior would come on top of the amplification highlighted in the analysis now published.

The new study builds on the groundbreaking 2009 and 2015 studies on the planetary boundaries framework that identified the nine critical systems that regulate the state of the planet: climate change, biogeochemical flows (namely of nitrogen and phosphorus), land-system change, freshwater use, aerosol loading, ozone depletion, ocean acidification, loss of biosphere integrity including biodiversity, and introductions of novel entities such as toxic chemicals and plastics. The way of staying within planetary boundaries varies from one place to another on Earth, hence calculating them and the interactions between them on an aggregated level cannot directly be translated into policies. Yet it can provide some guidance.

"There's good news for policy-makers in our findings," concludes Rockström. "If we reduce our pressure on one planetary boundary, this will in many cases also lessen the pressure on other planetary boundaries. Sustainable solutions amplify their effects - this can be a real win-win."

A multidisciplinary group of engineers and scientists has discovered a new method for water filtration that could have implications for a variety of technologies, such as desalination plants, breathable and protective fabrics, and carbon capture in gas separations. The research team, led by Manish Kumar in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, published their findings in the latest issue of Nature Nanotechnology.

The study, which brought together researchers from UT Austin, Penn State University, the University of Tennessee, Fudan University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was initially inspired by the way our cells transport water throughout the body and began as an attempt to develop artificial channels for transporting water across membranes. The aim was to mimic aquaporins, essential membrane proteins that serve as water channels and are found in certain cells. Aquaporins are fast and efficient water filtration systems. They form pores in the membranes of cells in various parts of the body - eyes, kidneys and lungs - where water is in greatest demand.

Kumar and the team didn't manage to mirror the aquaporin system exactly as planned. Instead, they discovered an even more effective water filtration process. Unlike the body's individual aquaporin cells, which function effectively independent of one another, the membranes developed by Kumar's research group didn't work well alone.

But, when he combined several of them to create networks of "water wires," they were highly effective at water transport and filtration. Water wires are densely connected chains of water molecules that move exceptionally fast, like a train and its individual cars.

"We were trying to copy the already complicated water transport process used by aquaporins and stumbled upon an entirely new, and even better, method," said Kumar, an associate professor in the Cockrell School's Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering. "It was completely serendipitous. We had no idea it would happen."

These networks of artificial membranes could prove useful for separating salt from water, a filtration process that is currently inefficient and costly. The new membrane has shown impressive desalination properties, exhibiting far more selective salt and presumably other contaminant removal when compared with existing processes.

"Our method is a thousand times more efficient than current desalination processes in terms of its selectivity and permeability," Kumar said. "For every 10,000 saltwater molecules that pass through current desalination systems, one salt molecule might not be filtered out. With our new membrane technology, one salt molecule for every 10 million water molecules would not be filtered out, while maintaining a water transport rate comparable to or better than current membranes."

For his entire career, Kumar has focused on developing materials and processes that take the functionality of biological molecular models and apply them into engineering scales.

"It is difficult to even effectively mimic the complexities of how the human body works, especially at the molecular level," he said. "This time, however, nature was the starting point for an even greater discovery than we could have ever hoped for."

HOUSTON - (Dec. 16, 2019) - The river may rage or gently roll, but in the end the sand and silt will have their way.

Rice University Earth scientists and their colleagues have defined a surprising breakpoint at which the grain size of riverbed sediment exercises extraordinary control over how much material will be transported downstream, nourishing deltas and coastlines.

New work led by Rice coastal geologist Jeff Nittrouer and postdoctoral researcher Hongbo Ma brings decades of experiments and field observations into focus by showing that sand and silt suddenly shift from one means of transport to another.

In short, some grains of sediment larger than about 150 microns (considered fine sand) move along the riverbed and some are suspended in the current. Finer grains are completely lifted into the flowing water and move much faster toward the mouth of a river. There, they can rapidly change the landscape and generate deltas while supplying coastlines with sediment.

The researchers were surprised to find that grain size dominates the manner of transport regardless of how fast the river is flowing, according to their report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which won this year's "Best Paper Award" from the International Association of Chinese Youth in Water Science.

"Most people look at silt and at sand and say these things are awfully close to one another," Nittrouer said. "But the reality is there are fine-scale differences between the two that offer enormous changes in the amount of material moved. We often consider the world to be a linear place, but if you change grain size by just a small fraction, you suddenly change the volume of material transported by 10- to 20-fold."

Relatively coarse material is associated with large sand dunes that make riverbeds rough and provide friction that limits the amount of energy available to move sediment, he said.

But silt and very fine sand, transported via suspension, build long, low dunes that reduce the energy consumed by friction and facilitate high sediment transport rates. "Direct suspension allows more of the flow's energy to be utilized in transporting the sedimentary material," Nittrouer said.

Sediment flux alters coastlines, deltas and the course of rivers themselves. "Our capability to predict how fine-grained sediment moves in different environments has been very limited," Ma said. "We basically set out to simplify the entire system."

He said previous algorithms provided patchwork solutions that applied to either large sand particles or silt but didn't account for what was assumed to be a gradual transition from one means of transport to the other. "We were surprised to find there's no continuous transition between them," he said. "It turns out that at a certain point, they suddenly transition to another state."

Ma built the universal transport algorithm after considering nearly 2,000 sets of sediment transport data from several decades of published research, along with his team's own observations, particularly through a National Science Foundation-backed study of China's Yellow River (aka the Huanghe River).

"Hongbo has essentially taken a large database and used it to ground a new algorithm that allows for a spectrum of grain sizes," Nittrouer said. "It lets us make predictions about how much and where sand or silt should move under the influence of given environments and boundary conditions.

"That has a lot of bearing on how we understand the movement of material on Earth, as exemplified by fine-grain rivers like the Yellow River," he said.

The Yellow River is known to send about a billion tons of sediment each year towards the sea. The Rice lab has already used its new algorithm to predict changes in the Yellow River delta, the results of which appear in a recent paper led by graduate student Andrew Moodie, also a co-author of the new study.

Nittrouer suggested the algorithm could have wide application on Earth and beyond.

"If we want to understand how much material is moving on a planet like Mars or the structure of the system that transported that material -- the channel dimensions, the bed forms in the channels -- we can use inverse modeling to determine what the transport conditions were like in the past," he said. "That ties intimately into the environmental conditions that were present within that region at some given time."

He noted the surprising boundary may reflect even larger forces at work in nature. "You can push nature for so long and then, once you cross some threshold, major shifts begin to happen," he said. "People are trying to figure out where these thresholds exist in terms of climate perturbations and climate change.

"So this is a demonstrable example of a threshold in nature, a small change that can provoke big ones," he said.

Boston, MA -- Nearly half of all patients who suffer migraines report sleep disturbance as a trigger for their headaches. But the relationship between sleep and migraine headaches is not well understood or well-studied. Investigators from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have conducted the largest prospective study using objective measures of sleep to date to evaluate the relationship between sleep and migraine headaches. The team's findings generally support patients' reports of sleep disturbance as a trigger for migraines. In both diary assessments and actigraphy measurements, the team observed that sleep fragmentation -- time spent in bed, but not asleep -- was linked to migraine onset not on the next day but rather the day after that. The team did not find that sleep duration or self-reported low sleep quality was associated with higher risk of migraine over the next day or day after. Results are published in Neurology.

"When it comes to sleep and migraines, there's a lot that we don't know. I became interested in this topic because migraine patients are frequently referred to me in the sleep clinic for help with treating their insomnia," said corresponding author Suzanne Bertisch, MD, MPH, a physician and clinical investigator in the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders at the Brigham. Bertisch began work on this project while at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. "Anyone treating these patients wants to be able to counsel them on what to do to decrease their risk of a migraine, but the literature is unclear on what kind of sleep interventions may be helpful."

Bertisch and colleagues conducted a prospective cohort study of 98 adults with episodic migraines, who reported at least two headaches, but had fewer than 15 days each month with a headache. The participants completed electronic diaries twice a day, recording details about their sleep, headaches and health habits for six weeks. During that time, they also wore a wrist actigraph to bed to objectively capture their sleep patterns. The team adjusted data for other migraine triggers, including daily caffeine intake, alcohol intake, physical activity, stress and more.

Over the course of six weeks, participants reported 870 headaches. Nightly sleep duration of 6.5 hours or less and poor sleep quality were not associated with migraines the day immediately following (Day 0) or the day after that (Day 1). However, sleep fragmentation measured by both diary and actigraphy were associated with higher odds of having a migraine on Day 1.

"Sleep is multi-dimensional, and when we look at certain aspects such as sleep, we found that low sleep efficiency, which is the amount of time you're awake in bed when you're trying to sleep, was associated with migraines not on the day immediately following, but on the day after that," said Bertisch. "However, we did no observe a relationship between short nightly sleep duration (under 6.5 hours) or reported sleep quality and risk of migraine."

CORVALLIS, Ore. - An Oregon State University chemistry researcher who made history a decade ago with the accidental discovery of the first new blue inorganic pigment in more than two centuries is again pushing forward the science of color.

Analyzing the crystal structure of pigments based on hibonite, a mineral found in meteorites, Mas Subramanian of the OSU College of Science has paved the way toward designing more pigments that are stable, durable and non-toxic with vivid hues.

Findings from the study, supported by the National Science Foundation, were published in the American Chemical Society journal, ACS OMEGA.

Subramanian and his team discovered YInMn blue in 2009 when they were experimenting with new materials that could be used in electronics applications.

"We got lucky the first time with YInMn blue, and now we have come up with some design principles," Subramanian said.

Through much of recorded human history, people around the world have sought inorganic compounds that could be used to paint things blue, often with limited success. Most had environmental or durability issues.

"Most pigments are discovered by chance," Subramanian said. "The reason is because the origin of the color of a material depends not only on the chemical composition, but also on the intricate arrangement of atoms in the crystal structure. So someone has to make the material first, then study its crystal structure thoroughly to explain the color."

Before YInMn blue, the last blue discovery was cobalt aluminum oxide-based blue, synthesized by a French chemist in 1802. Cobalt blue remains a dominant commercial pigment because of its intensity of color, ease of synthesis and wide applicability.

Its production, however, requires a significant amount of a cobalt ion, Co2+, that's hazardous to both humans and the environment.

By analyzing the structure of hibonite-based blue pigments, Subramanian has developed a way to match or surpass cobalt blue's vividness while using much less of the harmful carcinogenic cobalt ion, or replacing it entirely.

The hibonite-based pigments are more thermally stable than cobalt blue due to their higher preparation temperature and remain unaltered structurally and optically upon exposure to strong acid and alkali.

The researchers report that an oxide containing calcium, aluminum, titanium along with cobalt or nickel can crystallize into a structure similar to hibonite that allows for a series of blue colors.

Compared to traditional cobalt blue, the new blue can be "tuned" by adjusting how much cobalt (Co2+), nickel (Ni2+) and titanium (Ti4+) are placed into the hibonite structure's three possible "chromophore" environments; those are the parts of a molecule that determine color by reflecting some wavelengths of light while absorbing others.

This study shows the presence of chromophores in a "trigonal bipyramidal-shaped crystal environment" - essentially consisting of two triangular-base pyramids joined base-to-base - is critical for color enhancement.

"This part of the crystal structure of hibonite, like YInMn blue, allows for vivid blue colors with a reddish hue," Subramanian said. "The hibonite blue exhibits better energy-saving, heat-reflecting properties than traditional cobalt blue due to the presence of titanium and less cobalt content.

"In nature, hibonite is only found in meteorites that have been subjected to thousands of degrees of temperature when they go through the Earth's atmosphere, so it makes sense that the structure is remarkably stable," he added. "These kinds of mineral structures are probably the future for designing durable and safe inorganic pigments."

Determining the key structural ingredients required for making vivid colors should allow for shorter times between pigment discoveries, Subramanian said, adding that science doesn't always follow a prescribed path.

"Research is like when you go on a journey to see something, and maybe when you get there it wasn't as interesting you thought it would be, but what you saw along the way was more interesting than you could have imagined."

Leesburg, VA, December 16, 2019--According to an article published ahead-of-print in the February 2020 issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), fluorodeoxyglucose PET (FDG PET) can be used to predict the histopathologic subtypes and growth patterns of early lung adenocarcinoma.

"FDG PET, combined with high-resolution CT (HRCT), has value for predicting invasive histopathologic subtypes, but there was no significance for predicting invasive growth patterns," clarified lead author Xiaoliang Shao from the department of nuclear medicine at Soochow University in Changzhou, China.

Shao and colleagues' retrospective analysis was conducted on the PET/CT data on ground-glass nodules (GGNs) resected from patients with stage IA lung adenocarcinoma, evaluating the efficacy of PET maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax) combined with HRCT signs in prediction of histopathologic subtype and growth pattern of lung adenocarcinoma.

Although SUVmax measured significantly higher in GGNs with invasive HRCT signs, the diameter of GGN, as well as the attenuation value differential between ground-glass components and adjacent lung tissues, were independent predictors of FDG uptake by GGNs.

Additionally, SUVmax was higher in invasive adenocarcinoma than in adenocarcinoma in situ (AIS)-minimally invasive adenocarcinoma (MIA), with SUVmax 2.0 the optimal cutoff value for differentiation.

Acinar-papillary adenocarcinoma had a higher SUVmax than lepidic adenocarcinoma, with SUVmax 1.4 the optimal cutoff value for differentiation.

"In stage IA lung adenocarcinoma characterized by GGNs, the SUVmax of GGNs with invasive CT features was high," Shao wrote, adding that HRCT can be used in diagnosing the subtypes of lung adenocarcinoma.

"However, it cannot be used to differentiate different growth patterns of lung adenocarcinomas."

As Shao concluded: "The efficacy of FDG PET SUVmax in differentiating lung adenocarcinoma subtypes is similar to that of HRCT signs, however, the diagnostic efficiency of FDG PET combined with HRCT is significantly higher than that of each imaging technique alone."

London, UK: A recent study published in the journal Cephalalgia, the official journal of the International Headache Society, reported an intriguing discovery. The study, entitled “Investigation of distinct molecular pathways in migraine induction using calcitonin gene-related peptide and sildenafil”, was conducted by Dr. Samaira Younis and colleagues from the Danish Headache Center, Rigshospitalet Glostrup, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Previous clinical studies from the same research group using experimental human models have shown that at least two cellular signaling pathways are involved in migraine attacks. One is mediated by increases in cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP), which can be stimulated by infusing calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) intravenously in patients, and the other one, the cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP), which is upregulated under the actions of the inhibitor of phosphodiesterase-5 sildenafil. The research question in this study was whether activation of these 2 different signaling pathways would yield distinct migraine attacks with regard their clinical characteristics.

Dr Younis investigated the clinical characteristics of migraine attacks of 27 participants following intravenous injections of CGRP and oral administration of sildenafil. Attacks’ pain localization and quality, as well as related symptoms such photophobia, phonophobia, nausea, aggravation by exertion, and triggers associated were compared between conditions in a double-blind, randomized, cross over design. Participants received both CRRP and sildenafil in two different days, separated by approximately 14 days in order to avoid drugs carry-over effect.

CGRP and sildenafil provoked migraine attacks in 67% and 89% of patients, respectively. In 63% of participants, both drugs provoked migraine attacks. There were no differences in the clinical characteristics of attacks, meaning that both drugs act through a redundant molecular pathway. The finding concerning a more effective action of sildenafil in provoking migraine attacks “might be attributed to its more downstream effects, thus being closer to the common determinator compared to CGRP in the migraine initiating cascade”, Dr Younis explains. Additionally, The findings of this study will help researchers to search for “commonality of migraine attack initiation as it could prove a prospective cellular target for new preventive therapeutics”, Dr Younis concludes.

A new paper to be published on 16 December provides a significant new insight into our understanding of uranium biogeochemistry and could help with the UK's nuclear legacy.

Conducted by a team of researchers from the University of Manchester, Diamond Light Source and Radioactive Waste Management, their work shows for the first time how uranium forms a uranium-sulfur complex under conditions generally found in the environment and how this compound can be an important intermediary in uranium immobilisation. Published in Environmental Science & Technology, the paper is called "Formation of a U(VI)-persulfide complex during environmentally relevant sulfidation of iron (oxyhydr)oxides" 1

Professor Katherine Morris, Associate Dean for Research Facilities in the Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Manchester and the Research Director for the BNFL Research Centre in Radwaste Disposal explains why recreating and studying these chemical complexes is highly relevant for understanding and dealing with radioactive waste. She explains: "To be able to predict the behaviour of the uranium during geological disposal, we need to take into account that it may have interacted with other processes taking place in the ground. These so-called biogeochemical reactions are often a complex set of interactions between dissolved chemical species, mineral surfaces, and microorganisms."

The recent study is the first time that researchers have shown that a uranium-sulfide complex can form under conditions representative of a deep underground environment. This complex then transforms further into highly immobile uranium oxide nanoparticles.

In the experiment, the researchers studied uranium when it sits at the surface of the mineral ferrihydrite, which is a widespread mineral in the environment. The researchers used an X-ray based method called X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy (XAS) to study the samples at Diamond Light Source, the UK's national Synchrotron. The XAS data, in combination with computational modelling, showed that during the sulfidation reaction, a short-lived and novel U(VI)-persulfide complex formed during this biogeochemical process.

Professor Sam Shaw, Co-Investigator and Professor of Environmental Mineralogy at the University of Manchester; "Shining the synchrotron beam onto the sample causes the uranium within to emit X-rays. By analysing the X-ray signal from the samples our team were able to determine the chemical form of uranium, and to which other elements it is bound. To further validate the theory on the formation pathway of the uranium-sulfur complexes, our team also made computer simulations to conclude which type of complex is more likely to form. This is the first observation of this form of uranium under aqueous conditions, and provides new insight into how uranium behaves in environments where sulfide is present. This work

demonstrates the deep understanding we can develop of these complex systems and this knowledge will help underpin efforts to manage radioactive wastes in a geological disposal facility."

Dr Luke Townsend, Postdoctoral Fellow in Environmental Radiochemistry at The University of Manchester, who undertook this research as part of his PhD further adds:

"When trying to mimic environmental processes in the laboratory, it's a challenge to produce accurate, high quality, reproducible science with such complex experiments, whilst also maintaining relevance to the geodisposal environment. However, obtaining exciting results such as these makes all the hard work and commitment to the project from myself and the group, both in our labs in Manchester and on the beamlines at Diamond, completely worthwhile."

The XAS measurements were performed at Diamond on beamlines I20 and B18 by the researchers who used highly controlled sulfidation experiments that mimic biogeochemical processes in the deep underground environment. This was combined with geochemical analyses and computational modelling to track and understand uranium behaviour.

Physical Science Director at Diamond, Laurent Chapon concludes; "This is another example of how Diamond's state of the art analytical tools are enabling scientists to follow complex processes and help them to tackle 21st century challenges. In this instance, our beamlines allowed the users to gain real insight into the environmental relevance of this new uranium-sulfur complex, which feeds into our understanding of geological disposal."

A new study led by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests there is a link between bacteria that live in the upper airway and the severity of asthma symptoms among children with mild to moderate asthma.

The study raises the possibility that the airway's microbiome could have a causal role in the severity of asthma symptoms. The research paves the way for future studies to discover whether altering the types of bacteria that live in the upper airway could help patients with asthma.

The findings appear Dec. 16 in the journal Nature Communications.

"There is an urgent need to develop better asthma therapies for these patients," said senior author Avraham Beigelman, MD, an associate professor of pediatrics at Washington University. "Though our study can't prove causation, it raises intriguing questions that we plan to pursue. If we somehow supplement such patients with what appear to be good bacteria, will they do better? We are interested in studying whether we can deliberately alter the airway microbiome to reduce the risk of worsening asthma symptoms."

In the U.S., more than 6 million children under age 18 have asthma, or about 1 in 12. It is the leading chronic pediatric disease and the No. 1 reason for missed school days, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.

The researchers found that children who experienced early warning signs that their asthma was going to flare up were more likely to have bacteria associated with disease -- including Staphylococcus, Streptococcus and Moraxella bacterial groups -- living in their upper airways. In contrast, airway microbes dominated by Corynebacterium and Dolosigranulum bacteria were associated with periods of good health, when asthma was well-controlled.

Beigelman and his colleagues also found that children whose airway microbial communities switched from being dominated by Corynebacterium and Dolosigranulum bacteria to being dominated by Moraxella bacteria were at the highest risk of worsening asthma symptoms compared with children whose microbial communities made any other kind of shift.

"Our data demonstrated a rapid change of the airway microbiome in the children who transitioned from respiratory health to disease," said first author Yanjiao Zhou, MD, PhD, who conducted postdoctoral microbiome and bioinformatics research at Washington University before joining the faculty at the University of Connecticut. "It is also intriguing to find that the microbiome changing pattern could play an important role in asthma exacerbation. We are planning future studies to explore this possibility."

The upper airway microbiome study was conducted in conjunction with a clinical trial involving 214 children ages 5 to 11 with mild to moderate asthma. The trial -- called Step Up Yellow Zone Inhaled Corticosteroids to Prevent Exacerbations (STICS) -- was conducted as part of AsthmaNet, a national network of medical centers conducting asthma research funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Washington University is an AsthmaNet site, and asthma specialist and co-author of the current microbiome study, Leonard B. Bacharier, MD, a professor of pediatrics at Washington University, led the pediatric portion of the STICS trial at Washington University.

The clinical trial's purpose was to determine whether quintupling the dose of an inhaled corticosteroid at the first signs of worsening asthma was better than keeping a low dose of the same medication. The trial found no benefit to the larger dose, and those results were published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2018.

During that trial, the researchers also collected nasal mucus samples from the children to study their upper airway microbiomes. Samples were collected at the beginning of the trial, when all of the participants had controlled asthma, as well as at the first early signs that asthma control was slipping.

Based on these findings, Beigelman and Zhou said they plan to conduct studies in mice with carefully controlled airway microbiomes to see if the researchers can uncover a causal role for bacteria in asthma severity. In addition, such experiments could allow them to test different interventions that might deliberately alter the upper airway bacteria in a way that could be protective.

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Endometrial cancer is the most common gynecological malignancy in the U.S. and the fourth most common cancer among women. In addition, endometrial cancer incidence rates are on the rise in the western world, suggesting that alterations in environmental factors such as diet, lifestyle, and the vaginal microbiome may be important drivers in its cause.

In a study published in Scientific Reports Mayo Clinic researchers identified a microbiome signature associated with endometrial cancer, which is in part promoted by post menopause. The goal of the study was to understand how endometrial cancer risk factors alter the reproductive tract microbiome and endometrial cancer risk.

"If the microbiome does play a role in endometrial cancer, beyond being a marker for it, this could have important implications for endometrial cancer prevention," says Marina Walther-Antonio, Ph.D., lead author of the Mayo Clinic study.

According to Dr. Walther-Antonio the established role of the vaginal microbiome as a key factor in vaginal and obstetric health, as well as vaginal microbiome differences found between different ethnicities adds to the importance of exploring the microbiome in endometrial cancer.

The research team previously found microbiome differences between patients with and without endometrial cancer in a uterine microbiome study published in 2017 that led to the development of a vaginal swab screening methodology used for endometrial cancer."

"The new study gave us the knowledge and application needed to further develop this screening tool for endometrial cancer," says Dr. Walther-Antonio.

Dr. Walther-Antonio and researchers are currently investigating the role of the microbiome in endometrial cancer and potentially how to prevent the actions of harmful bacteria to the host.

Overall, the team verified the main known risk factors for endometrial cancer (postmenopausal status and obesity) and identified high vaginal pH as an additional factor associated with patients with endometrial cancer.

"We have determined that all of these factors impact the reproductive tract microbiome, further identified post menopause as a key factor, and are looking ahead to discuss potential translational applications of this knowledge, which may bring new approaches to address current health disparities in endometrial cancer," says Dr. Walther-Antonio.

An inexpensive material, made from tungsten disulfide flakes just a few atoms thick, has helped to improve the performance of organic solar cells1. The discovery by KAUST researchers could be an important step toward bringing these photovoltaic cells into wider use for generating clean electricity.

Most solar cells use silicon to absorb light and convert its energy into electricity. But carbon-based semiconductor molecules, used in organic photovoltaics (OPVs), offer some distinct advantages over silicon. OPVs tend to be flexible, for example, which means they could be manufactured at a large scale using low-cost roll-to-roll printing. But the best OPVs convert about 16-17 percent of the light they capture into electrical power, well short of commercial silicon cells that exceed 20 percent.

Thomas D. Anthopoulos, and colleagues at the KAUST Solar Center, have estimated that OPVs could rival that performance if certain parts of the cell were improved2. When light hits the semiconductor, it frees electrons from the material and leaves positively charged holes. Electrons and holes are gathered up by different layers on opposite faces of the semiconductor and delivered to the cell's electrodes to generate a current. The leading hole transporter is a polymer called PEDOT:PSS, but it is acidic and absorbs moisture from the air, which degrades other materials in the solar cell.

Anthopoulos's interdisciplinary team has now developed a hole-transporting layer made from flakes of a 2D material, tungsten disulfide. The researchers used ultrasound to tear the flakes off powdered tungsten disulfide suspended in a mixture of water and ethanol. This sonication method is inexpensive and easy to scale up, and the flakes can be spread onto an electrode using a simple and widely used spin-coating process.

The team fabricated several OPVs this way, and the best had a power conversion efficiency of 17 percent, which is the highest for any OPV using a 2D material as a hole transporter and among the highest for any OPV. "We were very surprised to reach 17 percent," says Yuanbao Lin, a Ph.D. student on the team. "We feel this is just the beginning and there is significant room for performance improvement."

The team found that the tungsten disulfide layer has a lower resistance than PEDOT:PSS and is also better at gathering holes than its rival, leading to improved performance. "Our immediate goal is to push the efficiency of our organic solar cells well beyond 17 percent and toward our theoretically predicted limits," says Anthopoulos. "We also aim to study the stability of these high-efficiency organic solar cells."