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Cats have a reputation for being hard to read, but new research from the University of Guelph has found that some people are veritable "cat whisperers" who excel at deciphering subtle differences in cats' faces that reveal mood.

Women and those with veterinary experience were particularly good at recognizing cats' expressions -- even those who reported they didn't feel a strong attachment to cats, the large study found.

"The ability to read animals' facial expressions is critical to welfare assessment. Our finding that some people are outstanding at reading these subtle clues suggests it's a skill more people can be trained to do," said Prof. Lee Niel, who led the study with Prof. Georgia Mason, both from U of G's Campbell Centre for the Study of Animal Welfare.

The only research so far on readings cats' faces has focused on expressions of pain. "This study is the first to look at the assessment of a wider range of negative emotional states in animals, including fear and frustration, as well as positive emotional states," said Mason.

Published recently in the November issue of Animal Welfare, the study recruited more than 6,300 people from 85 countries who were asked to watch 20 short online videos of cats from a collection of 40 videos, gleaned mostly from YouTube, and complete online questionnaires.

The videos showed cats experiencing either positive emotional states (situations the cats had sought out, such as being petted or given treats), or in negative states (such as experiencing health problems or being in situations that made them retreat or flee). Each video was focused on the cat's face -its eyes, muzzle and mouth. None of the cats showed expressions of fear, such as bared fangs or flattened ears, since these facial expressions are already widely understood.

Participants were asked to judge whether each cat was in a positive state, a negative one, or if they weren't sure.

Most participants found the test challenging. Their average score was 12 out of 20 -- somewhat above chance. But 13 percent of the participants performed very well, correctly scoring 15 or better -- a group the researchers informally called "the cat whisperers."

These people were more likely to be women than men, and more likely to be veterinarians or vet technicians. Younger adults also generally scored better than older adults.

"The fact that women generally scored better than men is consistent with previous research that has shown that women appear to be better at decoding non-verbal displays of emotion, both in humans and dogs," said Mason, who worked on the study along with post-doctoral researchers Jenna Cheal and Lauren Dawson.

Surprisingly, being a cat lover made no difference at all, since reporting a strong attachment to cats did not necessarily result in a higher score.

The finding that some people are skilled at reading cats' faces suggests that others could be trained to do so as well.

"This is important to be able to do because it could help strengthen the bond between owners and cats, and so improve cat care and welfare," said Niel.

To test your own cat-reading abilities, the research team has created a website with details.

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP or S-NPP satellite passed over the Philippine Sea in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean and found Typhoon Kammuri's eye obscured.

Since Kammuri has now entered the Philippine Area of Responsibility, defined by the World Meteorological Organization, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA), it has been assigned a parallel name of "Tisoy." The rational is that it is felt that Filipinos will respond more to familiar names and that it helps to underscore that these named weather disturbances pose a direct threat to the country.  However, for the purposes of these discussions, the international recognized name designated by the Regional Specialized Meteorological Center (RSMC) Tokyo --Kammuri--will be used.

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) continues to track Kammuri in order to assess the impacts on the various islands in the path of the storm. In anticipation of the storm, PAGASA has continued to issue flood alerts to various locations. This is especially important due to the fact most of the population is along the coast and in low-lying areas.

NASA-NOAA's S-NPP satellite saw Typhoon Kammuri on Nov. 30 at 1:04 p.m. EST (1604 UTC) on the extreme western side of the pass for the satellite. Imagery continued to show a large central dense overcast (CDO) that would obscure the low-level circulation.

The CDO of a tropical cyclone is the large central area of thunderstorms surrounding its circulation center. It is caused by the formation of its eyewall. It can be round, angular, oval, or irregular.

Several prominent features in the CDO include tropospheric gravity waves along with multiple overshooting tops. In addition, while this normally would be in the "noisy" part of the scene for the Day Night Band on S-NPP, there was still enough signal from the airglow (the moon was at waxing crescent with 16% illumination) to see mesospheric gravity waves along with a single lone lightning streak within the CDO. Infrared data revealed temperatures of cloud tops were as cold as 119 Kelvin (minus 117.6 degrees Fahrenheit/minus 83.1 degrees Celsius).

On Dec. 2, visible imagery from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite showed that Kammuri's eye continued to be covered by clouds. The western quadrant of Kammuri was already over the eastern central Philippines.

On Dec. 2, 2019 at 4 a.m. EST (0900 UTC) Typhoon Kammuri (Tisoy in the Philippines) was located near latitude 13.0 degrees north, and longitude 125.6 degrees east, about 285 nautical miles east-southeast of Manila, Philippines.  Kammuri (Tisoy) is moving west and had maximum sustained winds 105 knots (121 mph/193 kph).

At 7 a.m. EST (1200), PAGASA raised 3 warning signals on Dec. 2. Tropical Cyclone Wind Signal number 3 is in effect for Luzon: Catanduanes, Camarines Sur, Albay, Sorsogon, southern portion of Camarines Norte, Masbate including Ticao and Burias Islands, Romblon, and southern portion of Quezon. In the central Philippines, it is in effect for the region of Visayas: Northern Samar, northern portion of Eastern Samar (Can-avid, Dolores, Maslog, Oras, Arteche, Jipapad, San Policarpio), and northern portion of Samar.

Tropical Cyclone Wind Signal number 2 is in effect in the northern Philippines for the region of Luzon: Metro Manila, Bulacan, Bataan, Tarlac, Pampanga, Nueva Ecija, southern Aurora, Cavite, Batangas, Laguna, Rizal, rest of Quezon including Polillo Islands, Oriental Mindoro, Occidental Mindoro, Marinduque, rest of Camarines Norte, Calamian Islands, southern portion of Zambales, In Visayas the signal covers: the rest of Eastern Samar, rest of Samar, Biliran, Aklan, Capiz, northern portion of Antique, northern portion of Iloilo, northern portion of Negros Occidental, Northern Cebu, and northern portion of Leyte.

Tropical Cyclone Wind Signal number 1 is in effect in the northern Philippines for the region of Luzon: Southern Isabela, Mountain Province, Ifugao, Benguet, Nueva Vizcaya, Ilocos Sur, La Union, Pangasinan, Quirino, rest of Aurora, and rest of Zambales. In Visayas: Rest of Antique, rest of Iloilo, Guimaras, rest of Negros Occidental, Metro Cebu, rest Leyte, and Southern Leyte. And in the region of Mindanao it is in effect for: Dinagat Islands and Siargao Island

Kammuri is moving in a westerly direction as it approaches the eastern Philippines. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center expects that the storm will strengthen slightly today, Dec. 2, but will then start to weaken. The typhoon is then expected to turn east-northeast as it passes through the Philippine archipelago, but will then veer southwest, weaken and dissipate.

PITTSBURGH (Dec. 2, 2019) -- Tires gripping the road. Nonslip shoes preventing falls. A hand picking up a pen. A gecko climbing a wall.

All these things depend on a soft surface adhering to and releasing from a hard surface, a common yet incompletely understood interaction. New research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) finds the missing link between soft surface adhesion and the roughness of the hard surface it touches. The paper, "Linking energy loss in soft adhesion to surface roughness," (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1913126116) was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and was coauthored by Siddhesh Dalvi, Abhijeet Gujrati, Subarna R. Khanal, Lars Pastewka, Ali Dhinojwala, and Tevis D.B. Jacobs.

Dr. Jacobs, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at the University of Pittsburgh's Swanson School of Engineering, and Dr. Dhinojwala, interim dean and H.A. Morton Professor of Polymer Science at The University of Akron's College of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering, have used in situ microscopic measurements of contact size to unlock the fundamental physics of how roughness affects soft material adhesion.

"A gecko running up a vertical wall is an excellent example of how nature has developed a solution to stick to rough surfaces," says Dhinojwala. "The key to achieve this adhesion on rough surface is molecular contact. Soft material can conform to rough surfaces and create the molecular contact necessary to stick well. We need a fundamental understanding of the parameters that control adhesion to rough surfaces and the underlying physics."

There are two different parts of the process: what happens when you load up the contact and what happens when you separate it.

Previous theories have proposed how roughness affects the first half of the process, but offer no insight into the second half. This problem is called "adhesion hysteresis," meaning the soft surface contact behaves differently as it encounters the rough surface rather than when pulled away. One way to think about adhesion hysteresis is to think of a small rubber ball. Pressing the ball down against a hard surface expands the area of contact; letting go will cause the area to shrink again, but not in a predictable, symmetrical way. This discovery marks the first model of rough adhesion that can predict both.

The key to this foundational discovery is a close look at the rough surface itself--very, very close.

"People have been measuring roughness for a hundred years, but conventional techniques can't see the small detail," says Jacobs. "We zoomed in, combining multiple techniques, to measure roughness on top of roughness on top of roughness. The texture goes down to the atomic scale for many surfaces."

The group developed a new approach using an electron microscope to measure roughness down to below the scale of a nanometer. One of the surfaces in this study appeared far smoother than two others when measured using conventional techniques; however, when measured down to the atomic scale, it proved to be the roughest of all. This small-scale roughness created a lot more surface area for the soft material to grip. The detailed understanding of the rough surface was the missing link that explained the predicted the surfaces' adhesion behavior.

"Our research answered an important question, but in another sense, it opened up a new line of inquiry," says Jacobs. "There are a lot of interesting questions about what it really means for surfaces to be 'in contact' and how to link what is happening at the atomic-scale to what we observe in full-size, real-world contacts. And we're excited to continue answering them."

Doughnut-shaped tokamaks -- facilities designed to reproduce the fusion energy that powers the sun and stars on Earth -- must withstand forces that can be stronger than hurricanes created by disruptions in the plasma that fuels fusion reactions. Recent findings by physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) show that certain forces released by disruptions act in a surprising manner. The results could enable designers of large future facilities such as ITER, the international tokamak under construction in France, to better contain forces that could seriously damage the facility.

Two forces

Causing these forces produced by disruptions called "vertical displacement events" (VDEs) are "eddy" currents that swirl within a tokamak's inner walls and "halo" currents that enter and exit the walls. Yet no matter how strong the halo currents grow, the total forces slamming into the walls do not become more powerful. Results of state-of-the-art PPPL simulations, using PPPL's flagship M3D-C1 code, show that any increase in the halo current is unexpectedly offset by a reduction in the eddy current -- just as losses offset gains in a bank account as if it were a zero-sum game.

"What we found was that changing the halo current doesn't affect the total vertical force," said Cesar Clauser, a PPPL post-graduate fellow who led the research reported in Nuclear Fusion. "This was a surprising and interesting result."

Fusion combines light elements in the form of plasma, the hot, charged state of matter composed of free electrons and atomic nuclei. Physicists seek to capture and control fusion on Earth to produce a safe, clean and virtually limitless source of power for generating electricity.

PPPL researchers aimed to compare their sophisticated model with findings of the simplified models that ITER uses to calculate disruptive forces. "One implication to draw from our study is that measuring the halo current could be a proxy for the total forces," said PPPL physicist Nate Ferraro, a coauthor of the paper with PPPL physicist Stephen Jardin. "This could lead to a more complete understanding."

Advanced PPPL code

The advanced PPPL code M3D-C1 revealed the close relationship between the eddy and halo current forces in ITER plasmas and showed that changing the halo current did not affect the total vertical forces. "The simulations covered a wide range of halo current cases since we wanted to look for the worst-case scenario," Clauser said.

The two-dimensional simulations analyzed the total force produced by the two currents but not the distribution of forces within ITER walls. Future three-dimensional studies will model the distribution to seek out paths for halo currents that eddy currents might not offset.

Having a supportive family environment makes school-age LGB children in the UK significantly less likely to be victims of bullying, according to new research by Anglia Ruskin University (ARU).

The researchers used data on LBG men and women with an average age of 37, and examined their experiences of when they were in school and later in life, in the workplace.

The study, published in the International Journal of Manpower, found that gay and bisexual men had been 31% less likely to be frequently bullied at school if they were from a supportive family background. For lesbian or bisexual women, the figure was 25.6%.

However, family support counted for less in the workplace, where family support was associated with a 12.5% reduction in frequent bullying towards gay or bisexual men. For lesbian or bisexual women, the reduction was only 4.6%.

Nick Drydakis, Professor in Economics at ARU, said: "If an LGB child has received support from their parents which has positively impacted on their self-esteem and self-worth, this pattern might have influence how adult LGB people prevent, avoid or deal with victimisation.

"Parents who have supported their children during difficult times might have taught them the appropriate attitudes and approaches to address homophobia as well as its adverse effects.

"If, for LGB children, family support results in building their sense of identity, self-esteem and control, we might suggest that all these psychological states during the school-age period might positively impact on psychological traits in adulthood.

"Family acceptance seems to be crucial to ensure that LGB children develop a healthy sense of self while family rejection of LGB children can negatively affect their identity and well-being."

The study is the first of its kind to examine whether family support during school age can have long-term positive effects on LGB people's future workplace experiences.

The U.S. spends $5 billion a year to repair damages to road infrastructure from winter snow and ice control operations and the use of traditional deicers. A team of researchers at WSU is developing a more sustainable solution using grape skins and other agricultural waste.

The researchers, including graduate student Mehdi Honarvar Nazari and Xianming Shi, associate professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering, determined that their deicer containing grape extract outperformed commonly used deicers, including road salt and what is thought to be a more environmentally friendly blend of salt brine and beet juice. They published their results in the December issue of the Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering.

Every year, roughly 27 million tons of sodium chloride, commonly known as road salt, is used on U.S. roadways for winter maintenance. The chlorides do not degrade in the environment and may pose long term environmental risks. Commercial deicers typically contain chemicals that are corrosive toward metals, asphalt, concrete, and pose some risk to aquatic species.

Beet juice has become a common additive used by highway departments and cities to enhance the performance of deicers while reducing their corrosive impacts. However, when beet juice enters water bodies, it can deplete oxygen and endanger aquatic organisms.

Working to develop a greener additive, the WSU researchers derived chemicals from waste grape skins through chemical degradation and natural fermentation. Shi said their novel process to make the formula produces no waste of any kind.

The researchers found that their grape extract-based solution melts ice faster than other deicers and causes significantly less damage to concrete and asphalt, the two most ubiquitous materials used in bridges and roads. The solution also poses less risk to nearby water bodies.

"We delivered a more sustainable solution because we're introducing less chlorides into the road operations and are achieving comparable or better performance," Shi said. "It's one step in the right direction."

Shi first thought of using biotechnology to derive deicer additives out of agricultural waste materials several years ago when tasked by the Alaska Department of Transportation to develop locally sourced and performance-enhanced brine formulations for anti-icing. His group has also successfully applied this technology to waste peony leaves, sugar beet leaves, dandelion leaves, and waste from apples and grapes.

"The beauty of this approach is that it allows us to diversify," he said. "We can use this same platform technology in different regions of the country but choose a different agricultural product, depending on what source of waste is available."

New Rochelle, NY, December 2, 2019--In a new study, researchers provide conclusive evidence of a statistical relationship between the incidence rates of invasive cancer in a given area in the U.S. and the amount of precipitation and climate type (which combines the temperature and moisture level in an area). The researchers recommend additional studies to understand how environmental factors such as precipitation and temperature are linked to cancer rates. The current study is published in Environmental Engineering Science, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. Click here to read the full-text article free on the Environmental Engineering Science website through January 2, 2020.

The article entitled "Precipitation and Climate Zone Explains the Geographical Disparity in the Invasive Cancer Incidence Rates in the United States," was coauthored by Vishal Shah, Randall Rieger, and Liang Pan, West Chester University of Pennsylvania. The researchers reported that in the United States, counties with high precipitation and cold climate have statistically significantly higher invasive cancer incidence rates. They emphasize that precipitation, moisture, and temperature might not be direct causes of increased cancer rates, but may instead increase exposure to carcinogens by acting as carriers, or increase the generation of naturally occurring carcinogens.

"This is an important study with findings that illustrate for the first time the statistical connection between natural factors and cancer rates in the U.S.," says Catherine A. Peters, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of Environmental Engineering Science and Professor, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Princeton University.

New research from the University of Rochester will enhance the accuracy of computer models used in simulations of laser-driven implosions. The research, published in the journal Nature Physics, addresses one of the challenges in scientists' longstanding quest to achieve fusion.

In laser-driven inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiments, such as the experiments conducted at the University of Rochester's Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE), short beams consisting of intense pulses of light--pulses lasting mere billionths of a second--deliver energy to heat and compress a target of hydrogen fuel cells. Ideally, this process would release more energy than was used to heat the system.

Laser-driven ICF experiments require that many laser beams propagate through a plasma--a hot soup of free moving electrons and ions--to deposit their radiation energy precisely at their intended target. But, as the beams do so, they interact with the plasma in ways that can complicate the intended result.

"ICF necessarily generates environments in which many laser beams overlap in a hot plasma surrounding the target, and it has been recognized for many years that the laser beams can interact and exchange energy," says David Turnbull, an LLE scientist and the first author of the paper.

To accurately model this interaction, scientists need to know exactly how the energy from the laser beam interacts with the plasma. While researchers have offered theories about the ways in which laser beams alter a plasma, none has ever before been demonstrated experimentally.

Now, researchers at the LLE, along with their colleagues at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France, have directly demonstrated for the first time how laser beams modify the conditions of the underlying plasma, in turn affecting the transfer of energy in fusion experiments.

"The results are a great demonstration of the innovation at the Laboratory and the importance of building a solid understanding of laser-plasma instabilities for the national fusion program," says Michael Campbell, the director of the LLE.

USING SUPERCOMPUTERS TO MODEL FUSION

Researchers often use supercomputers to study the implosions involved in fusion experiments. It is important, therefore, that these computer models accurately depict the physical processes involved, including the exchange of energy from the laser beams to the plasma and eventually to the target.

For the past decade, researchers have used computer models describing the mutual laser beam interaction involved in laser-driven fusion experiments. However, the models have generally assumed that the energy from the laser beams interacts in a type of equilibrium known as Maxwellian distribution--an equilibrium one would expect in the exchange when no lasers are present.

"But, of course, lasers are present," says Dustin Froula, a senior scientist at the LLE.

Froula notes that scientists predicted almost 40 years ago that lasers alter the underlying plasma conditions in important ways. In 1980, a theory was presented that predicted these non-Maxwellian distribution functions in laser plasmas due to the preferential heating of slow electrons by the laser beams. In subsequent years, Rochester graduate Bedros Afeyan '89 (PhD) predicted that the effect of these non-Maxwellian electron distribution functions would change how laser energy is transferred between beams.

But lacking experimental evidence to verify that prediction, researchers did not account for it in their simulations.

Turnbull, Froula, and physics and astronomy graduate student Avram Milder conducted experiments at the Omega Laser Facility at the LLE to make highly detailed measurements of the laser-heated plasmas. The results of these experiments show for the first time that the distribution of electron energies in a plasma is affected by their interaction with the laser radiation and can no longer be accurately described by prevailing models.

The new research not only validates a longstanding theory, but it also shows that laser-plasma interaction strongly modifies the transfer of energy.

"New inline models that better account for the underlying plasma conditions are currently under development, which should improve the predictive capability of integrated implosion simulations," Turnbull says.

Realistic images can be more effective than statistical data for persuading people to take action in support of seismic upgrades to schools, new University of British Columbia research suggests.

Seismic engineers and psychologists from UBC teamed up with a visual artist to create an image showing what a Vancouver elementary school would look like after a major earthquake. Then, the researchers used two groups of study participants to test the effectiveness of imagery versus statistics in conveying the risk posed by earthquakes.

When presented with the opportunity to sign a petition in support of accelerating seismic upgrading of local schools, people who had seen the image were more likely to sign. They signed up at a rate of 77.3 per cent, compared to just 68 per cent of the group who saw only statistics.

"Using vivid images to convey scientific information can motivate the public to take action," said Iris Lok, a UBC PhD student in social psychology and the study's lead author. "If we want people to take the risk seriously, it may be valuable to show them what familiar public buildings--or even their own homes--might look like after a major earthquake. We see this approach as a valuable part of a broader strategy for motivating people to prepare for earthquakes."

Vancouver, where the study was conducted, sits near the Cascadia Subduction Zone where the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate and the North American plate meet. The region is vulnerable to a megathrust earthquake.

The researchers selected a high-risk school in Vancouver that had yet to receive seismic upgrades, and obtained information about the school. Using this information, the team's engineers envisioned what would happen to the school during a major earthquake. The artist brought their vision to life by creating a vivid representation of what the school would look like, based on the best available science.

The experiment aimed to see whether people would be more motivated to take action after seeing this vivid image compared to the statistics typically provided by government.

The researchers also surveyed participants about their own intentions to prepare for an earthquake, and their support for city-level risk-mitigation initiatives. While the image did prompt increased endorsement of the petition, it had little effect on people's self-reported intention to prepare for an earthquake or to support city initiatives.

"People often make decisions about risks by relying primarily on their gut feelings. This study suggests that people might be more likely to care about earthquakes if dry, abstract information were translated into vivid imagery that would affect people on a more emotional level," Lok said. 

AURORA, Colo. (Dec. 2, 2019) - Infant and toddler foods sold in pouches have lower nutritional value than foods sold in jars and other packaging, according to a new study led by researchers from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

The findings of the study are published in the current issue of the journal Nutrition Today.

"The high level of sugars in some pouches is potentially concerning because pouches are coming to dominate the market for infant and toddler foods," said Kameron Moding, PhD, assistant professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Purdue University. "While pouch products are popular and convenient, the nutritional profiles differ from products sold in other packages, particularly with respect to sugars coming from fruits."

Moding conducted the research for this study as a postdoctoral fellow at CU, working with Susan Johnson, PhD, professor of pediatrics at the CU School of Medicine, who is senior author of the article.

The researchers evaluated the contents of 548 products. Of those, products in pouches totaled 274, nearly twice as many as sold in jars or other packaging, such as trays, that were made by companies based in the United States. These products were reviewed for their ingredients and evaluated for their nutritional content and the age of children targeted to consume the product.

One of the key findings was that pouches more commonly had blends of fruits and vegetables than other packaging types. Pouches also were less likely to contain single vegetable products. Previous studies have indicated that incorporating dark green vegetables into the diets of infants and toddlers is limited perhaps because of a lack of commercially prepared single-vegetable products.

"Since early experiences with flavors and textures of foods may provide the foundation for later food acceptance, it is important to expose infants to a wide variety of flavors, textures, and nutrient-dense foods" said Moding.

According to national estimates, between one-third and one-half of infants in the United States consume at least some commercially prepared infant and toddler foods, with infants between six months and eight months of age being most likely to consume these products.

"We need to conduct more studies to understand whether the sugar contents of these pouch products reinforce infants' innate preference for sweetness and influence the trajectory of the transition to family foods," said Moding. "We do know that infant and toddler foods that contain fruit purees and juice concentrates may create 'health halos' that lead caregivers to believe such blends are more healthful than they truly are, especially when they are high in sugars, but low in fiber."

Eating a krill-only diet has made one variety of Antarctic penguin especially susceptible to the impacts of climate change, according to new research involving the University of Saskatchewan (USask) which sheds new light on why some penguins are winners and others losers in their rapidly changing ecosystem.

Human activities in Antarctica since the 1930s led to massive shifts in the population of krill--a shrimp-like crustacean that is a key food source for penguins, seals, and whales. The result has been that one species--gentoo penguins--thrive, while the population of chinstrap penguins dwindles, according to research published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Human activities, like hunting and global warming, are not only affecting species we routinely harvest - like krill. Gentoo penguins adapted by eating what was most available. Chinstrap penguins, picky eaters who continued to eat krill, didn't do as well, " said USask's William Patterson, part of the research team co-led by Louisiana State University's Michael Polito and Kelton McMahon from University of Rhode Island, and also involving researchers at University of Oxford and University of California, Santa Cruz.

The authors predict that the Antarctic Peninsula Region will remain a hotspot for climate change and human impacts during the next century, and believe their research will be beneficial in predicting which species are likely to fare poorly and which will withstand--or even benefit from--future changes.

"By understanding how past ecosystems respond to environmental change, we can improve our predictions of future responses and better manage human-environment interactions in Antarctica," said McMahon.

The research team analyzed 100 years-worth of penguin feathers to determine what the penguins had eaten by measuring stable nitrogen isotope values of amino acids. For chinstrap penguins, the answer was almost exclusively krill.

"When seal and whale populations dwindled due to historic over-harvesting, it is thought to have led to a surplus of krill during the early to mid-1900s," said Polito. The result: a population explosion for both species of penguin.

"In more recent times, the combined effects of commercial krill fishing, anthropogenic climate change, and the recovery of seal and whale populations are thought to have drastically decreased the abundance of krill."

Gentoo penguins adapted by eating relatively more fish and squid, while chinstrap penguins continued to feed exclusively on krill.

"Since the 1930s, human activities have reduced the population of chinstrap penguins by 30 to 50 per cent. That's accompanied by increases in the gentoo population of up to 600 per cent in some locations," said Patterson. "This has implications for future populations, where the specialists are more likely to be endangered by human activities and variability in the natural environment."

URBANA, Ill. - Mental health is a concern in rural areas, as farmers cope with stress and uncertainty due to economic and environmental conditions. Often, there are no mental health providers in the local community. Public health programs can help, but what are the best ways to reach farm populations with those programs? That's the topic of a new study conducted by a University of Illinois researcher.

"We know it's a problem in the population, and we know access to mental health care is not always available in rural areas," says Josie Rudolphi, assistant professor of agricultural and biological engineering at the U of I. She notes, from a previous study she conducted, that up to 60% of young farmers and ranchers reported at least mild symptoms of depression and 70% reported at least mild symptoms of anxiety.

Rudolphi worked with the Marshfield Clinic Research Institute in central Wisconsin to deliver a program called Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) to local communities. MHFA is an eight-hour course that trains people to provide assistance to those suffering from mental health issues. The program aims to reduce stigma, and it offers a five-step action plan to assess a problem, provide recommendations, and de-escalate a crisis situation.

"We had this program but the question was who should be delivering the information to farmers," Rudolphi says. "We knew from a previous study that farmers want to receive agricultural health and safety information from people like bankers, extension personnel, insurance agents, and firefighters - people who have a really good understanding of risk."

But those results might not transfer to mental health information, she notes.

"Mental health safety is a totally different topic; it's still highly stigmatized in the community, and we weren't comfortable assuming that the people they wanted to hear about tractor safety from were the same people they wanted to hear about stress management and mental health from," she says.

Rudolphi and her co-authors conducted a survey of 300 farmers in three counties in central Wisconsin. They received 159 responses; a 53% response rate. Respondents' median age was 56, and they were predominantly male (90%) and white (93%). This is comparable to the general demographics for farmers in the U.S.

The survey asked respondents to indicate who they wanted to receive information from and how they wanted it delivered. The researchers included both mental health and ag health and safety information in order to note any differences between the two topics.

They found that respondents would be most receptive to receiving mental health information from licensed medical providers, as well as from spouses, family members, and friends. They would be least receptive to receiving the information from attorneys, bankers, and commodity groups.

Overall, respondents were much more open to receiving ag health and safety information from any source, including ag and health safety specialists, firefighters/ems, and extension personnel.

The survey also found that the preferred methods of delivery for both types of information are newspapers and magazines, as well as face-to-face communication. Respondents were least likely to want information from social media, the internet, and phone support lines.

"We were surprised to find that they are really uninterested in the internet when it comes to mental health information," Rudolphi says. There are many resources available online, such as webinars and fact sheets, and even one-on-one internet communication such as a virtual therapist. The survey showed these methods may not be preferred or appropriate.

"Farmers want information face-to-face, and they want it from their innermost circle. Equipping those people with as much information as possible to deal with the stress and subsequent mental health issues of our farmers is important. These results really help us inform dissemination and creation of future resources," Rudolphi says.

"It's much more labor intensive; the quick and easy solution would be to host and post a webinar that could have wide reach. But I think it speaks to this population; they're still a very close-knit group. They really rely on face-to-face contact; that's much more valuable to them," she adds.

Rudolphi led MHFA trainings in Wisconsin for families and friends of farmers. However, she notes that bankers and insurance agents also expressed interest in the classes, because they often have firsthand knowledge of stressors in a farmer's life and they want to be able to help. When trained correctly, they may become part of the farmer's close network of support.

Understanding the reasons behind the survey responses is a topic of future studies, Rudolphi says, and that may point to ways to expand the network of people who farmers trust to provide mental health information to them.

Rudophi is also planning to replicate the study in Illinois. "We're looking to see if there's a program that's more manageable but achieves the same goals and can be distributed statewide," she says.

Humans have an early understanding of the laws of physical reality. Infants, for instance, hold expectations for how objects should move and interact with each other, and will show surprise when they do something unexpected, such as disappearing in a sleight-of-hand magic trick.

Now MIT researchers have designed a model that demonstrates an understanding of some basic "intuitive physics" about how objects should behave. The model could be used to help build smarter artificial intelligence and, in turn, provide information to help scientists understand infant cognition.

The model, called ADEPT, observes objects moving around a scene and makes predictions about how the objects should behave, based on their underlying physics. While tracking the objects, the model outputs a signal at each video frame that correlates to a level of "surprise" -- the bigger the signal, the greater the surprise. If an object ever dramatically mismatches the model's predictions -- by, say, vanishing or teleporting across a scene -- its surprise levels will spike.

In response to videos showing objects moving in physically plausible and implausible ways, the model registered levels of surprise that matched levels reported by humans who had watched the same videos.

"By the time infants are 3 months old, they have some notion that objects don't wink in and out of existence, and can't move through each other or teleport," says first author Kevin A. Smith, a research scientist in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS) and a member of the Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines (CBMM). "We wanted to capture and formalize that knowledge to build infant cognition into artificial-intelligence agents. We're now getting near human-like in the way models can pick apart basic implausible or plausible scenes."

Joining Smith on the paper are co-first authors Lingjie Mei, an undergraduate in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and BCS research scientist Shunyu Yao; Jiajun Wu PhD '19; CBMM investigator Elizabeth Spelke; Joshua B. Tenenbaum, a professor of computational cognitive science, and researcher in CBMM, BCS, and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL); and CBMM investigator Tomer D. Ullman PhD '15.

Mismatched realities

ADEPT relies on two modules: an "inverse graphics" module that captures object representations from raw images, and a "physics engine" that predicts the objects' future representations from a distribution of possibilities.

Inverse graphics basically extracts information of objects -- such as shape, pose, and velocity -- from pixel inputs. This module captures frames of video as images and uses inverse graphics to extract this information from objects in the scene. But it doesn't get bogged down in the details. ADEPT requires only some approximate geometry of each shape to function. In part, this helps the model generalize predictions to new objects, not just those it's trained on.

"It doesn't matter if an object is rectangle or circle, or if it's a truck or a duck. ADEPT just sees there's an object with some position, moving in a certain way, to make predictions," Smith says. "Similarly, young infants also don't seem to care much about some properties like shape when making physical predictions."

These coarse object descriptions are fed into a physics engine -- software that simulates behavior of physical systems, such as rigid or fluidic bodies, and is commonly used for films, video games, and computer graphics. The researchers' physics engine "pushes the objects forward in time," Ullman says. This creates a range of predictions, or a "belief distribution," for what will happen to those objects in the next frame.

Next, the model observes the actual next frame. Once again, it captures the object representations, which it then aligns to one of the predicted object representations from its belief distribution. If the object obeyed the laws of physics, there won't be much mismatch between the two representations. On the other hand, if the object did something implausible -- say, it vanished from behind a wall -- there will be a major mismatch.

ADEPT then resamples from its belief distribution and notes a very low probability that the object had simply vanished. If there's a low enough probability, the model registers great "surprise" as a signal spike. Basically, surprise is inversely proportional to the probability of an event occurring. If the probability is very low, the signal spike is very high.

"If an object goes behind a wall, your physics engine maintains a belief that the object is still behind the wall. If the wall goes down, and nothing is there, there's a mismatch," Ullman says. "Then, the model says, 'There's an object in my prediction, but I see nothing. The only explanation is that it disappeared, so that's surprising.'"

Violation of expectations

In development psychology, researchers run "violation of expectations" tests in which infants are shown pairs of videos. One video shows a plausible event, with objects adhering to their expected notions of how the world works. The other video is the same in every way, except objects behave in a way that violates expectations in some way. Researchers will often use these tests to measure how long the infant looks at a scene after an implausible action has occurred. The longer they stare, researchers hypothesize, the more they may be surprised or interested in what just happened.

For their experiments, the researchers created several scenarios based on classical developmental research to examine the model's core object knowledge. They employed 60 adults to watch 64 videos of known physically plausible and physically implausible scenarios. Objects, for instance, will move behind a wall and, when the wall drops, they'll still be there or they'll be gone. The participants rated their surprise at various moments on an increasing scale of 0 to 100. Then, the researchers showed the same videos to the model. Specifically, the scenarios examined the model's ability to capture notions of permanence (objects do not appear or disappear for no reason), continuity (objects move along connected trajectories), and solidity (objects cannot move through one another).

ADEPT matched humans particularly well on videos where objects moved behind walls and disappeared when the wall was removed. Interestingly, the model also matched surprise levels on videos that humans weren't surprised by but maybe should have been. For example, in a video where an object moving at a certain speed disappears behind a wall and immediately comes out the other side, the object might have sped up dramatically when it went behind the wall or it might have teleported to the other side. In general, humans and ADEPT were both less certain about whether that event was or wasn't surprising. The researchers also found traditional neural networks that learn physics from observations -- but don't explicitly represent objects -- are far less accurate at differentiating surprising from unsurprising scenes, and their picks for surprising scenes don't often align with humans.

Next, the researchers plan to delve further into how infants observe and learn about the world, with aims of incorporating any new findings into their model. Studies, for example, show that infants up until a certain age actually aren't very surprised when objects completely change in some ways -- such as if a truck disappears behind a wall, but reemerges as a duck.

"We want to see what else needs to be built in to understand the world more like infants, and formalize what we know about psychology to build better AI agents," Smith says.

DURHAM, N.C. - Duke Cancer Institute researchers have observed how stem cell mutations quietly arise and spread throughout a widening field of the colon until they eventually predominate and become a malignancy.

Using an innovative modeling system in mice, the researchers visually tagged colon cancer mutations by causing stem cells to glow. Mutations found in colon cancer were then visualized in the animals, illuminating a sort of tournament-to-the-death underway in the intestine in which one or another mutation prevailed over the others to become the driving force of a malignancy.

"This study provides new insight into the previously invisible process in which mutant precancerous stem cells spread throughout the colon and seed cancer," said Joshua Snyder, Ph.D., assistant professor in the departments of Surgery and Cell Biology at Duke and corresponding and co-senior author of a study publishing online Dec. 2 in the journal Nature Communications.

"Our technique sets a firm foundation for testing new therapies that interrupt this early, pre-malignant process. We hope to one day target and eliminate these stealth precancerous cells to prevent cancer," Snyder said.

Snyder and colleagues -- including co-senior author H. Kim Lyerly, M.D., George Barth Geller Professor at Duke ¬-- applied the molecular dyeing technique in a new way, tagging several common colon cancer mutations in the stem cells of a single tumor to create a fluorescent barcode.

When transferred to a mouse, the rainbow of fluorescent stem cells could be visually tracked, revealing the cellular and molecular dynamics of pre-cancerous events.

In this way, the researchers found key differences in how the intestinal habitats common to babies and adults grow pre-cancerous fields of mutant cells. At a critical period, newborns are sensitive to the effects of mutations within intestinal stem cells. This insidiously seeds large fields of premalignant mutated cells throughout the intestine -- a process called field cancerization -- that dramatically increases cancer risk. These fields of mutated cells can grow and spread for years without being detected by current screening technologies; often, they remain harmless, but under proper conditions, can rapidly become cancerous later in adults.

The researchers also observed that some colon cancer mutations found in patients can lead to a striking increase in the fertility of the environment surrounding precancerous fields. Ultimately, this leads to the rapid spread of fields throughout the intestine, with lethal consequences.

Certain common mutations that arise from external sources, such as an injury or an environmental exposure, could also disrupt the environment surrounding the stem cell and lead to the rapid growth and spread of precancerous fields. These occurrences can be especially lethal in adults and occur much more rapidly than previously expected - as if dropping a match on a drought-stricken forest.

"Field cancerization has been suggested to be the defining event that initiates the process of cancer growth, including cancers of the breast, skin and lung," Snyder said. "Our technique allows us to model how premalignant cells compete and expand within a field by simple fluorescent imaging, potentially leading to earlier diagnosis and treatment."

Snyder said additional studies are underway using the fluorescent barcoding to view the cancer fields in breast cancer, aiming to learn more about when a pre-cancerous condition known as ductal carcinoma in situ is driven by malignant vs. benign mutations.

In addition to Snyder and Lyerly, study authors include Peter G. Boone, Lauren K. Rochelle, Veronica Lubkov, Wendy L. Roberts, P.J. Nicholls, Cheryl Bock, Mei Lang Flowers, Richard J. von Furstenberg, Joshua D. Ginzel, Barry R. Stripp, Pankaj Agarwal, Alexander D. Borowsky, Robert D. Cardiff, Larry S. Barak and Marc G. Caron.

Kanazawa, Japan - Researchers at Kanazawa University performed a detailed investigation of the molecular mechanisms by which organic solar cells suffer damage as they are exposed to sunlight. This research has important implications for developing next-generation solar sheets that combine high efficiency, low cost, and long device lifetimes.

Solar power represents an important element of future renewable energy solutions. Historically, solar panels have tended to be inefficient or else too expensive for most homeowners to consider installing. A new class of solar cells that utilizes layers of carbon-based polymers offers efficiency of up to 10% - which is considered the minimum for practical use - at an affordable price point. The primary remaining obstacle to wide adoption of these new photovoltaics is the short lifetime of these devices because cumulative damage from the sun tends to erode their performance. Owing to the multilayer nature of the devices, it is often difficult to identify molecular mechanism by which this degradation of efficacy occurs over time.

Now, based on the results of current-voltage curves, impedance spectroscopy, and UV-VIS spectrophotometry, a research team at Kanazawa University has determined an important factor that can cause reduced performance. Similar to the way your carbon-based skin cells can get a nasty sunburn from the sun's ultraviolet light after a day at the beach, the researchers found that the fragile organic molecules in the semiconducting layer can be damaged from exposure.

"We found that damage from UV light increased the electrical resistance of the organic semiconductor layer," first author Makoto Karakawa says. This led to reduced current flow and thus an overall decrease in efficiency. Using a method known as matrix assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight, the researchers determined the likely degradation products from solar damage. When some sulfur atoms in the materials get replaced by oxygen atoms from the atmosphere, the molecules no longer function as intended.

"While new organic semiconductor materials have allowed us to drastically increase overall efficiency, we found that they tend to be more fragile to UV damage," senior author Kohshin Takahashi explains. Based on this understanding, it may be possible to design more robust devices that still maintain their high energy conversion rate, which is an important step to making solar an even larger portion of renewable energy generation.