Tech

This holiday season will be a lonely one for many people as social distancing due to COVID-19 continues, and it is important to understand how isolation affects our health. A new study shows a sort of signature in the brains of lonely people that make them distinct in fundamental ways, based on variations in the volume of different brain regions as well as based on how those regions communicate with one another across brain networks.

A team of researchers examined the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data, genetics and psychological self-assessments of approximately 40,000 middle-aged and older adults who volunteered to have their information included in the UK Biobank: an open-access database available to health scientists around the world. They then compared the MRI data of participants who reported often feeling lonely with those who did not.

The researchers found several differences in the brains of lonely people. These brain manifestations were centred on what is called the default network: a set of brain regions involved in inner thoughts such as reminiscing, future planning, imagining and thinking about others. Researchers found the default networks of lonely people were more strongly wired together and surprisingly, their grey matter volume in regions of the default network was greater. Loneliness also correlated with differences in the fornix: a bundle of nerve fibres that carries signals from the hippocampus to the default network. In lonely people, the structure of this fibre tract was better preserved.

We use the default network when remembering the past, envisioning the future or thinking about a hypothetical present. The fact the structure and function of this network is positively associated with loneliness may be because lonely people are more likely to use imagination, memories of the past or hopes for the future to overcome their social isolation.

"In the absence of desired social experiences, lonely individuals may be biased towards internally-directed thoughts such as reminiscing or imagining social experiences. We know these cognitive abilities are mediated by the default network brain regions," says Nathan Spreng from The Neuro (Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital) of McGill University, and the study's lead author. "So this heightened focus on self-reflection, and possibly imagined social experiences, would naturally engage the memory-based functions of the default network."

Loneliness is increasingly being recognized as a major health problem, and previous studies have shown older people who experience loneliness have a higher risk of cognitive decline and dementia. Understanding how loneliness manifests itself in the brain could be key to preventing neurological disease and developing better treatments.

"We are just beginning to understand the impact of loneliness on the brain. Expanding our knowledge in this area will help us to better appreciate the urgency of reducing loneliness in today's society," says Danilo Bzdok, a researcher at The Neuro and the Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, and the study's senior author.

Ancient Punt was a major trading partner of Egyptians for at least 1,100 years. It was an important source of luxury goods, including incense, gold, leopard skins, and living baboons. Located somewhere in the southern Red Sea region in either Africa or Arabia, scholars have debated its geographic location for more than 150 years. A new study tracing the geographic origins of Egyptian mummified baboons finds that they were sourced from an area that includes the modern-day countries of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Dijbouti, Somalia, and Yemen, providing new insight into Punt's location. Published in eLife, the results also demonstrate the tremendous nautical range of early Egyptian seafarers. A Dartmouth-led team of researchers including primatologists, Egyptologists, geographers, and geochemists, worked together to analyze the isotope composition of baboons discovered in ancient Egyptian temples and tombs, and modern baboons from across eastern Africa and southern Arabia.

"Long-distance seafaring between Egypt and Punt, two sovereign entities, was a major milestone in human history because it drove the evolution of maritime technology. Trade in exotic luxury goods, including baboons, was the engine behind early nautical innovations," explains lead author Nathaniel J. Dominy, the Charles Hansen Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth College.

"Many scholars view trade between Egypt and Punt as the first long maritime step in a trade network known as the spice route, which would go on to shape geopolitical fortunes for millennia. Other scholars put it more simply, describing the Egypt-Punt relationship as the beginning of economic globalization," he added. "Baboons were central to this commerce, so determining the location of Punt is important. For over 150 years, Punt has been a geographic mystery. Our analysis is the first to show how mummified baboons can be used to inform this enduring debate."

Ancient Egyptians revered baboons throughout their history, with the earliest evidence dating from 3,000 B.C. Baboons were even deified, entering the pantheon of gods as manifestations of Thoth, a god associated with the moon and wisdom. One species, Papio hamadryas (the sacred baboon), was often depicted in wall paintings and other works, as a male, in a seated position with its tail curled to the right of its body. The species was among the types of baboons that were mummified in this very position with the linens carefully wrapped around its limbs and tail. Another species, Papio anubis (the olive baboon), was also mummified but it was typically wrapped in one big cocoon in a manner reflecting far less care. Baboons have never however, existed naturally in the Egyptian landscape and were a product of foreign trade in the region.

The study focused on mummified baboons from the New Kingdom period (1550-1069 B.C.) available in the British Museum and specimens from the Ptolemaic period (305-30 B.C.) available in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London. In addition, the authors examined tissues from 155 baboons from 77 locations across eastern Africa and southern Arabia, encompassing every hypothesized location for Punt. The team measured oxygen and strontium isotope compositions and used a method called isotopic mapping to estimate the geographic origins of specimens recovered from the New Kingdom and Ptolemaic sites in Egypt.

Strontium is a chemical element that is found in bedrock, which is specific to a geographic location. As strontium erodes, its composition is absorbed into the soil and water and enters the food web. As animals drink the water and eat the plants, their teeth, and hair and bones, obtain a geographic signature reflecting where they have lived in the past and most recently, respectively.

Baboons must drink water every day and are considered obligate drinkers. Their bodies reflect the oxygen composition of water in the landscape. The enamel of an animal's adult teeth reflect the unique strontium composition of its environment when the teeth formed in early life. In contrast, hair and bone have isotope signatures that reflect the preceding months (hair) or years (bone) of dietary behavior. Similar to strontium, oxygen compositions (specifically, isotopes) of water can also vary by geographic location but the researchers found data from the specimens in this category were inconclusive, and only reflected values specific to Egypt.

The findings demonstrate that the two mummified P. hamadryas baboons from the New Kingdom period, EA6738 and EA6736, were born outside of Egypt. They had most likely come from a location in Eritrea, Ethiopia or Somalia, which narrows down the location of Punt.

The data suggest that EA6736, a P. hamadryas baboon, must have died shortly, day or months, after arriving in Egypt, as results indicate that its enamel and hair did not have sufficient time to convert to the local oxygen signature of drinking water.

Five species of mummified P. anubis from the Ptolemaic period reflected strontium levels that are consistent with an Egyptian origin, which provides tantalizing hints of a captive breeding program for baboons at this time, probably in Memphis, an ancient capital in Lower Egypt, northwest of the Red Sea.

As the researchers explain in the study, their estimated location of Punt is still provisional but the role that baboons played in the Red Sea trade network and their geographic distribution is one that is integral to understanding the historic origins of international maritime commerce.

CSL's Systems and Networking Research Group (SyNRG) is defining a new sub-area of mobile technology that they call "earable computing." The team believes that earphones will be the next significant milestone in wearable devices, and that new hardware, software, and apps will all run on this platform.

"The leap from today's earphones to 'earables' would mimic the transformation that we had seen from basic phones to smartphones," said Romit Roy Choudhury, professor in electrical and computer engineering (ECE). "Today's smartphones are hardly a calling device anymore, much like how tomorrow's earables will hardly be a smartphone accessory."

Instead, the group believes tomorrow's earphones will continuously sense human behavior, run acoustic augmented reality, have Alexa and Siri whisper just-in-time information, track user motion and health, and offer seamless security, among many other capabilities.

The research questions that underlie earable computing draw from a wide range of fields, including sensing, signal processing, embedded systems, communications, and machine learning. The SyNRG team is on the forefront of developing new algorithms while also experimenting with them on real earphone platforms with live users.

Computer science PhD student Zhijian Yang and other members of the SyNRG group, including his fellow students Yu-Lin Wei and Liz Li, are leading the way. They have published a series of papers in this area, starting with one on the topic of hollow noise cancellation that was published at ACM SIGCOMM 2018. Recently, the group had three papers published at the 26th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (ACM MobiCom) on three different aspects of earables research: facial motion sensing, acoustic augmented reality, and voice localization for earphones.

"If you want to find a store in a mall," says Zhijian, "the earphone could estimate the relative location of the store and play a 3D voice that simply says 'follow me.' In your ears, the sound would appear to come from the direction in which you should walk, as if it's a voice escort."

The second paper, EarSense: Earphones as a Teeth Activity Sensor, looks at how earphones could sense facial and in-mouth activities such as teeth movements and taps, enabling
a hands-free modality of communication to smartphones. Moreover, various medical conditions manifest in teeth chatter, and the proposed technology would make it possible to identify them by wearing earphones during the day. In the future, the team is planning to look into analyzing facial muscle movements and emotions with earphone sensors.

The third publication, Voice Localization Using Nearby Wall Reflections, investigates the use of algorithms to detect the direction of a sound. This means that if Alice and Bob are having a conversation, Bob's earphones would be able to tune into the direction Alice's voice is coming from.

"We've been working on mobile sensing and computing for 10 years," said Wei. "We have a lot of experience to define this emerging landscape of earable computing."

Tsukuba, Japan - If a creature with eight legs, a large abdomen, and lots of eyes comes crawling your way, even if you have never seen one like it before, you know instinctively that it is a spider. Likewise, an animal with wings, feathers, and a beak is unlikely to be mistaken for anything other than a bird. The common features of a group of animals that make them immediately recognizable are often called a ground plan or body plan, and have traditionally been used to categorize animals.

More recently, researchers have found that comparative embryology, the study of how different animals develop at the embryonic stage, can also shed light on the ground plan of a group of animals and help identify their evolutionary history.

In a study published in the December 2020 issue of Arthropod Structure and Development, a group of researchers led by the University of Tsukuba examined the eggs of five different stonefly species to infer the ground plans of each and answer lingering questions about the evolutionary relationships among stonefly species.

"Although there are more than 3,500 described species of stonefly (order Plecoptera) distributed across all continents except Antarctica, there are only two main groups (called sub-orders): Antarctoperlaria, found mainly in the Southern Hemisphere, and Arctoperlaria, which includes the Northern Hemisphere species," explains senior author Professor Ryuichiro Machida. "While previous studies have uncovered the main features of the embryonic ground plan of Arctoperlaria, there is little information on the embryonic development of Antarctoperlaria."

To establish the embryonic ground plan of the Antarctoperlaria, and potentially the wider order Plecoptera, the researchers examined the eggs from five different stonefly species representing three of the four main families of Antarctoperlaria. Both the entire eggs and ultrathin egg sections for transmission electron microscopy were examined.

By determining the shared and divergent characteristics of the five species, the researchers were able to infer the ground plans not only of the four main antarctoperlarian families, but also of the larger order Plecoptera.

"Eggs from two of the four main families had hard outer membranes, called chorions, which, although functionally similar, were structurally very different," says Professor Machida. "Given that only one group of arctoperlarian eggs have a similar hard chorion, we can infer that a thin chorion is a ground plan character of Plecoptera and that a hard chorion is an evolved trait."

Similarly, attachment structures, which anchor the eggs to the riverbed, have been regarded as being an ancestral feature. However, careful inspection revealed that they were actually acquired in parallel in each lineage, proving that determining the embryonic ground plan of a species can answer important questions about its evolutionary history.

Researchers have designed and built a new chemical tool inspired by natural metal-containing enzymes in living organisms. The product, a tetrahedral "chiral zinc", maintains its shape for years, providing a new structure with exciting possibilities for manufacturing pharmaceuticals and optical electronics. Experts add quotation marks around "chiral zinc" to emphasize that a chiral bond is attached to the zinc, rather than another atom in a molecule that happens to contain zinc.

"We expect that the results of this study will add a new page to the chemistry textbooks and will have a great impact on many industries involved in substance synthesis," said Professor Mitsuhiko Shionoya, leader of the lab that conducted the research at the University of Tokyo. The team's results are published in Nature Communications.

An essential feature of the compound is its chirality at the atom of zinc in the center of the molecule. A chiral molecule comes in two versions, called enantiomers. The enantiomers are made of the same elements, but differ in the 3D orientation of how the atoms are bonded, like left and right hands.

Chirality can give chemicals unique optical properties, which can be useful in electronics. Some chiral drug molecules are therapeutic in one orientation and toxic in the opposite, so isolating the desired enantiomer is often essential for drug manufacturers and methods to force chemical reactions to produce only the desired enantiomer could save time and reduce waste.

Chemists have developed many efficient ways to build chiral compounds with carbon and other nonmetals at the chiral center. Additionally, the design of chiral catalysts that contain metal - but whose chirality is not centered at the metal atom - earned the 2001 Nobel Prize in chemistry for their useful ability to induce carbon-centered chirality. However, making metal-centered chiral molecules remains an open challenge. Metals are more difficult to use as chiral centers because the bonds they make are often less stable.

"My dream was a little bigger. I would like every element of the periodic table to become the center of chirality," Shionoya remarked. Single atoms of zinc surrounded by four arms in a triangular pyramid, or tetrahedral, shape are common in nature - many types of tetrahedral zinc compounds, such as zinc fingers, bind to DNA and others manage carbon dioxide in mammalian cells.

Synthetic chemists have made 3D five and six-armed zinc compounds, but the synthetic tetrahedral zinc compounds made to date have been stable for mere minutes before their bonds disassembled.

Shionoya's research team hypothesized that if each of the four arms attached to the zinc is given a different role, the final chiral molecule could remain stable and serve as a useful tool to speed up other chemical reactions. The team's first step was to design a three-armed structure, or unsymmetric tridentate ligand, and attach those arms to the central zinc atom.

"This was the most difficult part. There were no successful examples of stabilizing the tetrahedral metal-centered chirality before the start of this study, so we had to design the tridentate ligand from scratch," said Shionoya.

This first step produced equal amounts of each enantiomer of a chiral zinc attached to the tridentate ligand.

Then, researchers attached an intermediate fourth arm called the auxiliary chiral ligand. This chiral ligand gave the whole tetrahedron two points of chirality - one in the fourth arm and one at the central zinc. Heating the solution coaxed almost all of the molecules to reconfigure into the one more stable enantiomer.

The last step was to replace the chiral auxiliary with an achiral fourth arm. The final product was obtained as 100% pure single enantiomer crystals. The purity of this enantiomer remained greater than 99% over time and even after dissolving the crystal in a solvent.

One exchangeable arm remains on the "chiral zinc," which can then be used to speed up chemical reactions to produce useful products. Moreover, using a pure solution of one enantiomer of a chiral catalyst can often push a chemical reaction to produce a final product that is also a single enantiomer.

"We hope many chemists will start using tetrahedral metal complexes as catalysts to make useful products for society," said Shionoya.

Digital tracking of people with mental health conditions has the power to transform medical diagnostics and treatment, but its claims need careful scrutiny, says an expert in digital analytics from the University of Bath.

The approach, known as 'digital phenotyping', uses digital traces from smartphones, combined with medical data, and input from patients throughout the day. It offers a new route to detect and monitor various health conditions that scientists and startups are rapidly exploring, but critical questions remain, says Dr Brit Davidson from the University's School of Management, in General Hospital Psychiatry.

Although Dr Davidson believes that digital phenotyping has great potential she says that at present strong claims are often made without rigorous evidence.

For example, a marker of concern might be a sudden drop in smartphone-based communication. For one person this could be a sign of social withdrawal, but for another this might mean they are communicating face to face instead: the link between online and offline behaviour remains unclear and under-researched.

"There are serious ethical questions due to the intrusive nature of having all digital interactions recorded," said Dr Davidson. "We do not yet know the impact of continuous monitoring on people, yet alone those with severe psychiatric illness such as schizophrenia, bipolar, and various depressive disorders, commonly seen in current research samples. I would like to see greater study of data from the general population as a safer avenue to pursue until the research is more established."

Dr Davidson raises further concerns regarding privacy and data protection, both particularly important for sensitive data from devices alongside (mental) health information. Dr Davidson hopes that professional bodies will provide guidelines regarding ethical, privacy and security, and data collection protocols for conducting this research.

She also draws comparisons with medical insurance companies increasingly linking with fitness devices (eg FitBit and Vitality) to offer tailored premiums, where users won't necessarily understand the implications. For example, forgetting to wear the device could trigger insurance to be invalidated or increase premiums if activity levels drop below a certain level.

"As the majority of the population now owns a smartphone, digital phenotyping could help to reduce digital and health inequalities as this can allow additional touchpoints for those who might use healthcare services less. However, the research remains in its infancy and requires a series of difficult questions to pave the future of digital medicine."

According to a new study from the University of Vaasa, Finland, seabed sediment and asphalt areas are noteworthy sources of heat energy also in northern conditions. Sediment heat has been studied in Suvilahti, Vaasa, and asphalt heat in the parking area of University of Vaasa for several years.

- I studied the usability of two new kinds of geothermal heat sources in Finnish conditions, says Mäkiranta, who is defending her doctoral dissertation on 18th December in the University of Vaasa.

A city area accumulates enormous amounts of heat energy into their environments due to buildings, streets, traffic and people. Also the scarcity of vegetation has the impact that it is warmer in a city environment than in the countryside. Heat collects, among other things, below asphalt surfaces and in the substrate of shallow water bodies.

In the study, the renewability of sediment heat was first verified. Undersea sediment is nature's own heat reservoir, so to speak. The sun charges heat into the sediment layer during the summer. The 2008 housing exhibition area of Suvilahti, Vaasa uses this heat reservoir for heating and cooling the houses. Permanent lowering of the sediment's temperature was not observed despite several heating seasons.

Below asphalt, temperatures were found to remain above zero degree in a depth of half a meter from April until December. According to Mäkiranta, because of its seasonal availability, asphalt heat should be stored or used for example to revive a heat well instead of direct use. A particular downside of asphalt heat is heat loss during the night. The usability of asphalt heat can be developed by improving the heat transferability of asphalt by changing the soil structures below the asphalt or by irrigation of the asphalt surface.

Wider use of geoenergy would improve energy self-sufficiency

The wider perspective of the study concerns saving energy and energy self-sufficiency.

- My doctoral thesis studies the possibilities of utilising urban energy right where it is generated. Furthermore, the energy self-sufficiency of our country can be improved by investing in more extensive use of geoenergy than is currently the case. Local energy should be used as extensively as possible instead of transporting energy from long distances, says Mäkiranta.

- Why bring energy for example in the form of heating fuel from far away, when underground local heat and local sources of waste heat are available and usable?

The doctoral dissertation consists of seven part-studies, four of which concern sediment heat and three concern asphalt heat. The part-studies have been published as seven peer-reviewed articles. Research measurements were carried out in the period 2013-2017.

Public defence

The public examination of M.Sc. Anne Mäkiranta's doctoral dissertation "Renewable thermal energy sources: sediment and asphalt energy applications in an urban northern environment" will be held on Friday 18 December 2020 at 12.

The event will be organized online: https://uwasa.zoom.us/j/64924660831?pwd=cDlaak9QRllXN2RuZlB1ME9wZVpndz09

The field of dissertation is Energy Technology. Professor Markku Virtanen (Aalto University) will act as an opponent and Research Manager, Ph.D. Erkki Hiltunen as a custos. The examination will be held in Finnish.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- Electronics are increasingly being paired with optical systems, such as when accessing the internet on an electronically run computer through fiber optic cables.

But meshing optics -- which relies on particles of light called photons--with electronics--relying on electrons -- is challenging, due to their disparate scales. Electrons work at a much smaller scale than light does. The mismatch between electronic systems and optical systems means that every time a signal converts from one to the other, inefficiency creeps into the system.

Now, a team led by a Purdue University scientist has found a way to create more efficient metamaterials using semiconductors and a novel aspect of physics that amplifies the activity of electrons. The study is published in the journal Optica.

This new class of materials has the potential to dramatically increase the resolution in medical scanning and scientific imaging and drastically reduce the size of supercomputers, creating a future where scientists can see tiny things in far greater detail and devices are smaller and more powerful.

Scientists have worked for decades to shrink photons down to a nanometer scale to make them more compatible with electrons -- a field known as nanophononics. This can be achieved using rarefied materials and expensive production techniques to make so-called hyperbolic materials. Using hyperbolic materials, scientists can shrink photons by compressing the light, making it easier to interface with electrical systems.

Evgenii Narimanov, a theoretical physicist and professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue, explained, "The most important thing about hyperbolic materials is that they can compress light to almost any scale. When you can make light small, you solve the problem of the disconnect between optics and electronics. Then you can make very efficient optoelectronics."

The problem lies in creating these hyperbolic materials. They typically consist of interwoven layers of metals and dielectrics, and every surface must be as smooth and defect-free as possible at the atomic level, something that is difficult, time-consuming and expensive.

The solution, Narimanov believes, includes semiconductors. Not, he emphasized, because of anything special about the semiconductors themselves. But because scientists and researchers have devoted the past 70 years or more to producing high-quality semiconductors efficiently. Narimanov wondered if he could harness that proficiency and apply it to producing new and improved metamaterials.

Unfortunately, semiconductors do not make inherently good optical metamaterials; they do not have enough electrons. They can work at relatively low frequencies, in the mid- to far-infrared scale. But to improve imaging and sensing technologies, scientists need metamaterials that work in the visible on near-infrared spectrum, at much shorter wavelengths than the mid- and far-infrared.

Narimanov and his collaborators discovered and tested an optical phenomenon called "ballistic resonance." In these new optical materials, which combine metamaterial concepts with the atomic precision of single-crystal semiconductors, free (ballistic) electrons interact with an oscillating optical field.

Synchronizing the optical field with the frequency of the motion of the free electrons as they bounce within the confines of the thin conducting layers, forming the composite material, causes the electrons to resonate, enhancing the reaction of each electron and creating a metamaterial that works at higher frequencies. While the researchers were not yet able to reach the wavelengths of the visible spectrum, they did get 60% of the way there.

"We showed that there is a physics mechanism that makes this possible," Narimanov said. "Before, people did not realize this was something that could be done. We have opened the way. We showed it is theoretically possible, and then we experimentally demonstrated 60% improvement in the operational frequency over existing materials."

Narimanov originated the idea and then teamed up with Kun Li, Andrew Briggs, Seth Bank and Daniel Wasserman at the University of Texas, as well as Evan Simmons and Viktor Podolskiy at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. The University of Texas researchers developed the fabrication technology, while the Massachusetts Lowell scientists contributed to the full quantum theory and performed the numerical simulations to be sure everything functioned as planned.

"We will keep pushing this frontier," Narimanov said. "Even if we are extremely successful, nobody is going to get semiconductor metamaterials to the visible and near-infrared spectrum within a year or two. It may take about five years. But what we have done is provide the material platform. The bottleneck for photonics is in the material where electrons and photons can meet on the same length scale, and we have solved it."

In extreme environments, even the most ordinary tasks can seem like unsurmountable challenges. Because of such difficulties, humanity has, for the most part, settled on grounds that were favorable for harvesting crops, herding cattle, and building shelters. But as we seek to expand the limits of human exploration, both on earth and in space, the people pioneering this search will undoubtedly face conditions that, for all intents and purposes, are not conducive to human habitation.

One of the foremost challenges facing any intended long-term settlement, be it in the Antarctic or on Mars (perhaps in the near future), is achieving some degree of autonomy, to enable isolated colonies to survive even in the event of a catastrophic failure in provisioning. And the key to achieving this autonomy is ensuring food sufficiency and self-sustenance. Unsurprisingly, therefore, space agricultural technology is one of the research topics currently being undertaken by the Research Center for Space Colony at Tokyo University of Science. The researchers here hope to spearhead the technological development for safe and sustainable space agriculture--with the aim of sustaining humans for a long time in an extremely closed environment such as a space station.

To this end, an innovative study was conducted by a team of Japanese researchers led by Junior Associate Professor Norihiro Suzuki from Tokyo University of Science--this study, published as a "Letter," made the front cover of the prestigious New Journal of Chemistry of the Royal Society of Chemistry. In this study, Dr. Suzuki and his team aimed to address the problem of food production in closed environments, such as those in a space station.

Realizing that farmers have used animal waste as fertilizer for thousands of years, as a rich source of nitrogen, Dr. Suzuki and his team have been investigating the possibility of manufacturing it from urea (the main component of urine), to make a liquid fertilizer. This would also simultaneously address the problem of human waste treatment or management in space! As Dr. Suzuki explains, "This process is of interest from the perspective of making a useful product, i.e., ammonia, from a waste product, i.e., urine, using common equipment at atmospheric pressure and room temperature."

The research team--which also includes Akihiro Okazaki, Kai Takagi, and Izumi Serizawa from ORC Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Japan--devised an "electrochemical" process to derive ammonium ions (commonly found in standard fertilizers) from an artificial urine sample. Their experimental setup was simple: on one side, there was a "reaction" cell, with a "boron-doped diamond" (BDD) electrode and a light-inducible catalyst or "photocatalyst" material made of titanium dioxide. On the other, there was a "counter" cell with a simple platinum electrode. As current is passed into the reaction cell, urea is oxidized, forming ammonium ions. Dr. Suzuki describes this breakthrough as follows, "I joined the 'Space Agriteam' involved in food production, and my research specialization is in physical chemistry; therefore, I came up with the idea of 'electrochemically' making a liquid fertilizer."

The research team then examined whether the cell would be more efficient in the presence of the photocatalyst, by comparing the reaction of the cell with and without it. They found that while the initial depletion of urea was more or less the same, the nitrogen-based ions produced varied both in time and distribution when the photocatalyst was introduced. Notably, the concentration of nitrite and nitrate ions was not as elevated in the presence of the photocatalyst. This suggests that the presence of the photocatalyst promoted ammonium ion formation.

Dr. Suzuki states, "We are planning to perform the experiment with actual urine samples, because it contains not only primary elements (phosphorus, nitrogen, potassium) but also secondary elements (sulfur, calcium, magnesium) that are vital for plant nutrition! Therefore, Dr. Suzuki and his team are optimistic that this method provides a solid basis for the manufacture of liquid fertilizer in enclosed spaces, and, as. Dr. Suzuki observes, "It will turn out to be useful for sustaining long-term stay in extremely closed spaces such as space stations."

Humans inhabiting Mars might still be quite a distant reality, but this study surely seems to suggest that we could be on a path to ensuring sustainability--in space--even before we actually get there!

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Telling a distressed friend or family member something as simple as "I understand why you feel that way" can go a long way toward helping loved ones feel better, new research suggests.

In the study, participants described to the researchers a real-life incident that made them angry.

When researchers didn't show support or understanding for the anger participants were describing, the story-tellers showed declines in positive emotions. But when the researchers validated what the participants were saying, their positive emotions were protected and stayed the same.

Similarly, study participants reported dips in their overall mood as they recalled the anger-provoking event, and only those who were validated reported a recovery of mood back to their starting point.

There was no significant difference found in participants' negative emotions - a result that speaks to the value of focusing on protecting positivity, said Jennifer Cheavens, senior author of the study and a professor of psychology at The Ohio State University.

"We have underestimated the power of positive emotions. We spend so much time thinking about how to remedy negative emotions, but we don't spend much time thinking about helping people harness and nurture positive emotions," Cheavens said.

"It's really important to help people with their depression, anxiety and fear, but it's also important to help people tap into curiosity, love, flexibility and optimism. People can feel sad and overwhelmed, and also hopeful and curious, in the same general time frame."

The study is published online in the Journal of Positive Psychology.

In three experiments, the researchers assessed the effects of validation and invalidation on what are known clinically as positive and negative affect. Positive affect refers to positive emotions and expression that Cheavens said allow us to be curious, connected and flexible in our thinking. Negative affect, on the other hand, refers to negative emotions and expression ranging from disgust to fear to sadness.

A total of 307 undergraduate students participated in the experiments. The students completed questionnaires measuring positive and negative affect at the beginning and end of the study and overall mood at several time points during the experiments.

Researchers asked participants to think and write for five minutes about a time when they felt intense anger, and then verbally describe those experiences to a researcher. Based on randomized assignments, the experimenter either validated or invalidated their angry feelings.

The participants' experiences with anger covered a wide range: roommate troubles, unfaithful romantic partners, being the victim of a theft or getting mad at their parents.

Experimenters listening to their stories used flexible scripts to respond. Validating comments included such phrases as "Of course you'd be angry about that" or "I hear what you're saying and I understand you feel angry."

Invalidating responses ranged from "That doesn't sound like anger" to "Why would that make you so angry?"

Results showed that all participants had a decrease in positive affect while they were thinking and writing about being angry. However, when they started describing the situation to experimenters, the validated participants' positive affect matched or even exceeded their baseline measures. The positive affect scores for those who were invalidated did not recover while talking with the experimenters.

Based on five measures of mood in two of the three studies, participants' mood consistently darkened as they considered what made them angry. Validated participants' moods were restored to normal, but the invalidated students' moods generally continued to get worse.

The research team conducted the studies with plans to apply the results in a therapy setting. But the findings are relevant for relationships as well, Cheavens said.

"When you process negative emotions, that negative affect gets turned on. But if someone validates you, it keeps your positive affect buffered. Validation protects people's affect so they can stay curious in interpersonal interactions and in therapy," she said.

"Adding validation into therapy helps people feel understood, and when we feel understood we can receive feedback on how we also might change. But it's not a uniquely clinical thing - often the same ways you make therapy better are ways you make parenting, friendships and romantic relationships better."

Many neurodegenerative conditions, from glaucoma to Alzheimer's disease, are characterized by injury to axons -- the long, slender projections that conduct electrical impulses from one nerve cell to another, facilitating cellular communications. Injury to axons often leads to neuronal impairment and cell death.

Researchers know that inhibiting an enzyme called dual leucine zipper kinase (DLK) appears to robustly protect neurons in a wide range of neurodegenerative diseases models, but DLK also inhibits axonal regeneration. Until now, there have been no effective methods to modify genes to improve both the long-term survival of neurons and promote regeneration.

In a paper published December 14, 2020 in PNAS, a multi-university team led by researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Shiley Eye Institute at UC San Diego Health identified another family of enzymes called germinal cell kinase four kinases (GCK-IV kinases) whose inhibition is robustly neuroprotective, while also permitting axon regeneration, making it an attractive therapeutic approach for treating at some neurodegenerative diseases.

"We basically figured out that there are a set of genes that, when inhibited, allow optic nerve cells to survive and regenerate," said senior author Derek Welsbie, MD, PhD, associate professor of ophthalmology in the Viterbi Family Department of Ophthalmology at Shiley Eye Institute.

"Prior to this work, the field knew how to get these cells to survive, but not regenerate. Conversely, there are ways to promote regeneration, but then the survival was rather modest. Of course, for a successful strategy of vision restoration, you need both and this is a step in that direction."

The researchers conducted a series of screens after first creating retinal ganglion cells (RGC) from human stem cells. RGCs are a type of neuron located near the inner surface of the retina of the eye. They receive visual information from photoreceptors and collectively help transmit that information to the brain.

The first screen involved testing a group of well-studied chemicals to assess their ability to increase the survival of RGCs; the second to measure the ability of chemicals to promote regeneration.

"We then used a machine-learning technique to understand why certain compounds were active while others were not and it identified these key genes," said Welsbie.

The discovery that these genes improved RGC survival was not surprising, he said. "However, you would have predicted that they (like DLK) would have blocked regeneration when inhibited, not promote regeneration. That was definitely a surprise. It highlights one of the advantages of discovery-based science using high-throughput screening: By testing many agents at once, we can find identify overlooked genes that might not have been thought to play a role."

Welsbie and colleagues focused their work on RGCs because they are interested in optic neuropathies, such as glaucoma. "Most people think only about glaucoma in terms of 'eye pressure,'" Welsbie said. But eye pressure is only part of the problem. At its core, glaucoma is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by progressive loss of RGCs and their axons, leading to measurable structural and functional damage to the optic nerve, visual impairment and blindness.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate 3 million Americans have glaucoma. It is the second leading cause of blindness worldwide.

Welsbie cautioned that it's not yet known whether these findings extend to other neuron types, but he noted that the work suggests strong therapeutic possibilities.

Electrons inhabit a strange and topsy-turvy world. These infinitesimally small particles have never ceased to amaze and mystify despite the more than a century that scientists have studied them. Now, in an even more amazing twist, physicists have discovered that, under certain conditions, interacting electrons can create what are called "topological quantum states." This finding, which was recently published in the journal Nature, has implications for many technological fields of study, especially information technology.

Topological states of matter are particularly intriguing classes of quantum phenomena. Their study combines quantum physics with topology, which is the branch of theoretical mathematics that studies geometric properties that can be deformed but not intrinsically changed. Topological quantum states first came to the public's attention in 2016 when three scientists -- Princeton's Duncan Haldane, who is Princeton's Thomas D. Jones Professor of Mathematical Physics and Sherman Fairchild University Professor of Physics, together with David Thouless and Michael Kosterlitz -- were awarded the Nobel Prize for their work in uncovering the role of topology in electronic materials.

"The last decade has seen quite a lot of excitement about new topological quantum states of electrons," said Ali Yazdani, the Class of 1909 Professor of Physics at Princeton and the senior author of the study. "Most of what we have uncovered in the last decade has been focused on how electrons get these topological properties, without thinking about them interacting with one another."

But by using a material known as magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene, Yazdani and his team were able to explore how interacting electrons can give rise to surprising phases of matter.

The remarkable properties of graphene were discovered two years ago when Pablo Jarillo-Herrero and his team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) used it to induce superconductivity -- a state in which electrons flow freely without any resistance. The discovery was immediately recognized as a new material platform for exploring unusual quantum phenomena.

Yazdani and his fellow researchers were intrigued by this discovery and set out to further explore the intricacies of superconductivity.

But what they discovered led them down a different and untrodden path.

"This was a wonderful detour that came out of nowhere," said Kevin Nuckolls, the lead author of the paper and a graduate student in physics. "It was totally unexpected, and something we noticed that was going to be important."

Following the example of Jarillo-Herrero and his team, Yazdani, Nuckolls and the other researchers focused their investigation on twisted bilayer graphene.

"It's really a miracle material," Nuckolls said. "It's a two-dimensional lattice of carbon atoms that's a great electrical conductor and is one of the strongest crystals known."

Graphene is produced in a deceptively simple but painstaking manner: a bulk crystal of graphite, the same pure graphite in pencils, is exfoliated using sticky tape to remove the top layers until finally reaching a single-atom-thin layer of carbon, with atoms arranged in a flat honeycomb lattice pattern.

To get the desired quantum effect, the Princeton researchers, following the work of Jarillo-Herrero, placed two sheets of graphene on top of each other with the top layer angled slightly. This twisting creates a moiré pattern, which resembles and is named after a common French textile design. The important point, however, is the angle at which the top layer of graphene is positioned: precisely 1.1 degrees, the "magic" angle that produces the quantum effect.

"It's such a weird glitch in nature," Nuckolls said, "that it is exactly this one angle that needs to be achieved." Angling the top layer of graphene at 1.2 degrees, for example, produces no effect.

The researchers generated extremely low temperatures and created a slight magnetic field. They then used a machine called a scanning tunneling microscope, which relies on a technique called "quantum tunneling" rather than light to view the atomic and subatomic world. They directed the microscope's conductive metal tip on the surface of the magic-angle twisted graphene and were able to detect the energy levels of the electrons.

They found that the magic-angle graphene changed how electrons moved on the graphene sheet. "It creates a condition which forces the electrons to be at the same energy," said Yazdani. "We call this a 'flat band.'"

When electrons have the same energy -- are in a flat band material -- they interact with each other very strongly. "This interplay can make electrons do many exotic things," Yazdani said.

One of these "exotic" things, the researchers discovered, was the creation of unexpected and spontaneous topological states.

"This twisting of the graphene creates the right conditions to create a very strong interaction between electrons," Yazdani explained. "And this interaction unexpectedly favors electrons to organize themselves into a series of topological quantum states."

Specifically, they discovered that the interaction between electrons creates what are called topological insulators. These are unique devices that act as insulators in their interiors, which means that the electrons inside are not free to move around and therefore do not conduct electricity. However, the electrons on the edges are free to move around, meaning they are conductive. Moreover, because of the special properties of topology, the electrons flowing along the edges are not hampered by any defects or deformations. They flow continuously and effectively circumvent the constraints -- such as minute imperfections in a material's surface -- that typically impede the movement of electrons.

During the course of the work, Yazdani's experimental group teamed up two other Princetonians -- Andrei Bernevig, professor of physics, and Biao Lian, assistant professor of physics -- to understand the underlying physical mechanism for their findings.

"Our theory shows that two important ingredients -- interactions and topology -- which in nature mostly appear decoupled from each other, combine in this system," Bernevig said. This coupling creates the topological insulator states that were observed experimentally.

Although the field of quantum topology is relatively new, it holds great potential for revolutionizing the areas of electrical engineering, materials science and especially computer science.

"People talk a lot about its relevance to quantum computing, where you can use these topological quantum states to make better types of quantum bits," Yazdani said. "The motivation for what we're trying to do is to understand how quantum information can be encoded inside a topological phase. Research in this area is producing exciting new science and can have potential impact in advancing quantum information technologies."

Yazdani and his team will continue their research into understanding how the interactions of electrons give rise to different topological states.

"The interplay between the topology and superconductivity in this material system is quite fascinating and is something we will try to understand next," Yazdani said.

Researchers at HSE University and Lomonosov Moscow State University analyzed data on Russians' movements during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Their analysis showed that residents of lower-income municipalities self-isolated less compared to residents of higher-income cities. The findings were published in the journal Environment and Planning A.

Restrictions on population mobility reduce the frequency with which infected people come into contact with uninfected ones, thereby reducing infection rates and the consequences of the pandemic. However, the effectiveness of these measures depends on the extent to which they are observed. The most reliable way to determine this was to assess citizens' levels of mobility.

The researchers decided to find out what impact the level of wages has on citizens' mobility. To do this, they analyzed Yandex data on the share of people leaving the immediate vicinity of their homes from early March to late June. The sample included 308 Russian municipalities, which were divided into 10 groups according to residents' level of wages.

At the end of March, a regime of "non-working days" was introduced in Russia, followed by the closure of most companies and public transport. Already in the first week, the main mobility trend emerged: residents of the richest cities moved around the city 1.5-2 times less compared to residents of the poorest municipalities in the sample.

After the &laquonon-working days» period was extended by a month, isolation rates in high- and middle-income cities fell by a third and the gap between rich and poor municipalities narrowed. It is likely that residents of wealthier areas also started looking for ways to maintain their incomes rather than staying at home. In poorer cities, the decline in mobility was smaller but lasted much longer. This can be explained by the fact that these areas have greater shares of residents working in the public sector, and employees of this sector received compensation from the state for their loss of wages.

When the national "non-working days" period ended, the trend reversed, with residents in wealthy cities returning more quickly to pre-isolation levels of mobility than those in poorer municipalities. As a result, the mobility curve of residents of poor areas is U-shaped, characteristic of protracted crises, while the curves of wealthy medium-sized municipalities are more like V-shaped.

The authors cite weak state assistance for citizens and businesses as a possible reason for these trends.

'The more vulnerable areas were de facto deprived of the opportunity to maintain a safe routine due to the need to maintain a minimum wage level on their own,' says Ruslan Dokhov, Senior Lecturer at HSE University.

The Fatty Acid Research Institute (FARI) has published a new research paper in conjunction with The Cooper Institute on omega-3s and heart rate recovery.

Omega-3 fatty acids have a long history of being "heart healthy" but exactly why and how has been less clear. They are known to lower serum triglyceride levels, but the effect is relatively small and it's not clear how much of a risk factor high triglyceride levels is in the first place. So how do the omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA work?

A recent study1 from the Cooper Center Longitudinal Study (CCLS) and FARI sheds new light on this question.

The investigators utilized data from 13,912 healthy men and women who had preventive medical examinations at Cooper Clinic in Dallas over a 10-year period. These examinations routinely included both treadmill exercise testing and measurement of the Omega-3 Index (i.e., red blood cell EPA+DHA levels from OmegaQuant Analytics).

One component of the exercise test is called "heart rate recovery" and it refers to how quickly the heartbeat slows down after maximal exercise. The faster it drops, the healthier the heart.

Comparing each patient's heart rate recovery with their Omega-3 Index, the researchers found a significant relationship between these two variables such that the higher the Index, the faster the heart rate dropped down. The effect was more marked in women than men, but statistically significant in both. This is summarized in the Figure 1 (right) where the Omega-3 Index is plotted on the x-axis, and the drop in heart rate one minute after stopping the treadmill test (measured in beats per minute, bpm) is shown as a positive number on the y-axis. These are the unadjusted values. (For example, 25 bpm on the y-axis means that 1 minute after stopping exercising -- i.e., the maximal heart rate -- the person's heart rate dropped by 25 bpm).

When adjusted for age, maximal METS (a measure of cardiorespiratory fitness), BMI and smoking status, a 2-percentage point higher Omega-3 Index was associated with a 0.35 and 0.69 bpm greater heart rate recovery in men and women, respectively (p

Previous studies2 have shown that a slow heart rate recovery is associated with increased risk for sudden cardiac death, which fits with higher EPA and DHA levels being linked with reduced risk for sudden cardiac death3.

Dr. William Harris, President of FARI and co-inventor of the Omega-3 Index, who was also an author on the study, commented on the implications of this research. "These new findings from the CCLS harmonize with the known benefits of omega-3 fatty acids on resting heart rate and provide new clues to how these important fatty acids can preserve cardiac health," he said.

"These benefits on cardiac autonomic tone join other cardioprotective effects of omega-3 fatty acids, including the reduction in blood pressure, chronic inflammation and platelet aggregation, to at least partially explain why omega-3s are good for the heart. Future treatment studies should define the omega-3 intake (and Omega-3 Index) that optimizes this aspect of cardiac function."

Dr. James H O'Keefe, MD, a cardiologist and Medical Director of the Charles and Barbara Duboc Cardio Health & Wellness Center at Saint Luke's Mid America Heart

Institute in Kansas City, MO, and a Professor of Medicine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (who was not involved with the study) remarked that this
research provides "strong data supporting the robust cardiovascular benefits of omega-3 fatty acids."

In 2006, Greenpeace launched a campaign exposing deforestation caused by soy production in the Brazilian Amazon. In the previous year, soy farming expanded into more than 1,600 square kilometers of recently cleared forests. The destruction, they said, had to stop.

In response, major soy companies in the region reached a landmark agreement as signatories to the Amazon Soy Moratorium (ASM), pledging not to purchase crops grown on recently cleared land. Deforestation fell in the following years, but no one had measured the moratorium's aggregate impact.

Now, assistant professor Robert Heilmayr and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin Madison have quantified the ASM's effects and documented how it achieved its success. The researchers found that the agreement prevented thousands of square kilometers of deforestation over its first decade. What's more, the policy did not appear to hamper agricultural growth or push deforestation to other sectors or regions. The study, funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Norwegian International Climate and Forest Initiative, appears in Nature Food.

"Over one decade the ASM saved 18,000 square kilometers of forest," said Heilmayr, an environmental economist in the Environmental Studies Program and at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. "This is an area bigger than the state of Connecticut."

Around the same time the Amazon Soy Moratorium was adopted, the Brazilian government was expanding its regulations against deforestation. The policies covered the legal Amazon, a larger administrative area that includes the Amazon biome and parts of the Cerrado biome - a vast region of tropical forest and savannah southwest of the rainforest.

Fortunately, the moratorium had three key features the team could use to distinguish its effects from these government actions: It went into effect in May 2006; it was restricted to the Amazon biome; and it applied specifically to land cleared for soy production. Heilmayr broke down how these factors directed the team's analysis. "We compared deforestation across ecological biomes after the adoption of the ASM, and across locations with different suitability for soy production, to isolate the impact of the ASM," he explained.

The authors found a reduction in deforestation above and beyond what they could attribute to government policies alone. They estimate that between 2006 and 2016, deforestation in soy-suitable portions of the Amazon was 35% lower than what would have occurred without the ASM.

"Our study is important because, for the first time, we were able to control for other policies and factors outside the ASM to quantify its unique contribution to forest conservation," explained coauthor Holly Gibbs, associate professor at UW Madison.

Scientists and conservationists were concerned the ASM might prompt soy farmers to begin planting in pastures, thereby pushing ranchers to clear more forest, essentially passing the buck to a different sector. However, the study suggests this did not happen. Gibbs explained it's likely due, at least in part, to similar campaigns aiming to stem deforestation in the cattle sector. These efforts began in 2008 and resulted in similar zero-deforestation agreements in the cattle industry. The team also saw little evidence that the ASM was pushing deforestation into the nearby Cerrado biome, though this risk continues to be a concern.

Although some Brazilian policymakers worry that strict environmental commitments may weaken economic growth, soy production in the Amazon has continued to expand since adoption of the ASM. It increased from 4.9 million tonnes of production in 2006 to 17.2 million tonnes in 2019. Ultimately, the moratorium has demonstrated that soy expansion is possible without deforestation, Gibbs explained.

To better understand how this type of conservation policy could be applied elsewhere, the team sought to pinpoint exactly what contributed to the moratorium's effectiveness. "One of the strengths of the Amazon Soy Moratorium is that it was a nearly unanimous decision among all the soy buyers in that sector," said Heilmayr. The signatories account for about 90% of all soy purchases in the region, and this high market share ensured that the agreement would transform agricultural practice. If farmers wanted to sell their soy, they'd have to abide by the policies it set out.

Another factor that contributed to the ASM's success was the cooperation of private companies, non-profit NGOs and government agencies. Corporate participation adds a direct market penalty that discourages deforestation, Heilmayr explained. Meanwhile, the involvement of environmental organizations like Greenpeace, The Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund boosts confidence that the agreement isn't merely a form of greenwashing. Finally, public investments in satellite monitoring systems and local property registries provide the backbone for monitoring and enforcing the moratorium. Heilmayr believes the interplay between businesses, NGOs and government actors has lent greater credibility to the initiative in the eyes of the global community.

In 2016, the parties involved chose to renew the ASM indefinitely. While this represents a major victory for sustainable agriculture, the agreement's continuing success still faces obstacles. Some farmer representatives have raised objections to the ASM, saying that requirements that go beyond the country's forest laws amount to a violation of Brazil's sovereignty. However, the researchers note that the ASM also ensures that the Amazon soy sector maintains access to valuable international markets, according to industry trade groups, and at low cost to Amazon soy farmers.

Thanks to the ASM, almost no soy coming from the Amazon currently contributes to deforestation. Research suggests that 98.6% of all soy grown in the region complies with the moratorium.

Photo Credit: LISA RAUSCH

"Very few Amazon soy farmers have land suitable for soy that they could clear in compliance with Brazil's Forest Code," said coauthor Lisa Rausch, a researcher at UW Madison. "The ASM really serves to reduce the incentives to clear land on non-soy farms and in unregistered areas for future soy production."

The current political, economic and environmental zeitgeist highlights the benefits of the ASM's unique mix of public and private policymaking. Deforestation rates are now double what they were at their low point in 2012, though they're still dramatically lower than what they were back in 2003 and 2004. This uptick may reflect efforts by the Bolsonaro government to weaken the country's environmental protections.

Heilmayr hopes "the interplay between private and public policymaking can make environmental gains more resilient - consistent global demand for zero-deforestation soy will continue to discourage new deforestation despite the weakening of public policies."

As a growing number of major companies pledge to reduce their environmental impacts around the world, the question arises of how to translate these lofty goals into concrete actions. "The ASM is a nice example of what is possible when companies take aggressive, transparent steps towards supply chain sustainability," Heilmayr said. "It provides hope that private actors can trigger meaningful improvements in the way society interacts with our environment."