Tech

Tanzania's Udzungwa Mountains are carpeted by dense rainforest, making the area impossible to reach by jeep or other vehicles. As such, the leopards in this area have never been subject to the prying eyes of researchers. Until now.

After covering 2,500 square kilometers on foot, setting up 164 game camera traps and collecting more than 5000 days worth of footage from the area, the Natural History Museum of Denmark's Rasmus W. Havmøller has discovered new and surprising knowledge about these spotted predators.

"I'm the first person to study leopards in this area, simply because it is so inaccessible. It took several pairs of good hiking boots, let me put it that way," says Havmøller, who never actually got to see one of the shy leopards with his own eyes. Instead, he had to "settle" for buffalo and elephants.

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hile Havmøller never caught a glimpse of a leopard himself, his 164 camera traps most certainly did. Using motion sensors, the cameras captured the leopards, as well as forest antelopes, baboons and other leopard prey on film. Camera observations revealed leopard behaviour that contradicts previous assumptions.

"In the past, leopards were thought to be most active at dusk. Very surprisingly, the study shows that leopards hunt and move around at very different times of the day depending on whether they are females or males," says Rasmus W. Havmøller, who adds:

"Females are typically active from early through late morning, and then a bit before sunset, while males only really wake up at night."

This is the first time that differences in activity patterns between male and female leopards have been studied.

Differences between male and female leopards have only recently begun to be studied, so there is still much to learn about the animal. But researchers need to hurry. Rapidly growing human populations in Africa and India are the greatest threat to these animals, which are forced from their habitats and shot when they near livestock.

"Globally, things are going awfully for leopards, with sharp declines in their populations over the past 100 years. Furthermore, these animals aren't monitored all that well. In part, this is because it is difficult. But also, because there has been a greater focus on species that are even more endangered, including lions, tigers and cheetahs. Therefore, it might be that the leopards in Udzungwa present the last chance to study these creatures in a diversified environment, one that has only been lightly impacted by humans, before they end up becoming highly endangered" explains Rasmus W. Havmøller.

The researcher believes that the results will provide a better understanding of the lives of wild leopards -- an understanding that may help prevent their complete extinction.

"The fact that female leopards are active well into the morning makes them more vulnerable to human activities, since this is when we as humans are most active. To protect something, one needs to have some knowledge about it. During my study, we also discovered that a leopard from the rainforest doesn't move into semi-arid areas or onto the savannah, or vice versa. It's very strange. Why they don't is the next big question," concludes Havmøller.

People prefer coronavirus contact tracing to be carried out by a combination of apps and humans, a new study shows.

The research shows people are more concerned about who runs the process than the risks of others having unauthorised access to their private information, or their data being stolen.

Most people who took part in the research were in favour of the NHS processing personal data rather than the Government or even a decentralised system that stores only minimal personal data.

A total of 41 per cent of those questioned wanted a mixture of an app and human contact during the tracing process, compared to 22 per cent who wanted it purely to be run via contact with another person and 37 per cent who wanted the process to only be digital.

The research was conducted by Laszlo Horvath, Susan Banducci and Oliver James from the University of Exeter during May and is published in the Journal of Experimental Political Science.

They ran an experiment on 1,504 people who were given information about two apps though a series of five pairings, with their properties relating to privacy and data security displayed randomly, and asked which they would prefer to use. In a second study, the academics also surveyed 809 people about their preferences for how apps should be run and designed.

The decentralised system of contact tracing, currently trialled in the UK, was chosen by participants with a 50 per cent probability, meaning this particular design didn't influence people's choice. However the probability of people choosing the app designed to work as part of a NHS-led centralised system was 57 per cent, meaning it was more popular, while 43 per cent of apps chosen were described as having data which would be stored on servers belonging to the UK government, making them less popular.

A randomly selected group of people were also informed about the risk of data breach issues, but this didn't have an impact on people's preferences.

Dr Horvath said: "We had thought people would prefer apps which were less intrusive and protected their privacy, for example not needing as much information about their location, but this wasn't the case. Our research shows people are supportive of taking part in the contact tracing process if needed. They are less concerned about the possibility of data breach problems than who their app is run by, and privacy didn't affect their preferences when they had a choice of apps."

Professor Banducci said: "Our research shows people are supportive of the NHS storing and using their personal information. Faith and trust in the NHS is high at the moment so it may motivate people to take part in the process if the Government involves the health service in its development and deployment. Trust in the provider of contact tracing will be crucial if it is to be used successfully to reduce the spread of infection."

Professor James said: "People who took part in this research preferred a balanced - human plus digital - approach to contract tracing. Privacy concerns were not as influential as we expected. Trust in the provider of the app is currently more important, something for the Government to remember as work on the UK's contact tracing system continues."

A group of Skoltech scientists used machine learning (ML) methods to predict superhard materials based on their crystal structure.

The research was published in the Journal of Applied Physics. This work is supported by Russian Science Foundation.

Superhard materials have recently attracted increasing research interest due to their potential implications for industries broadly ranging from oil production to high technology manufacturing. A superhard material has two crucial features, hardness and fracture toughness, that represent its resistance to deformation and crack propagation, respectively.

Materials with properties that would suit specific industry requirements can be found computationally using advanced methods of computational materials science backed by a good theoretical model to calculate the desired properties for superhard materials.

Efim Mazhnik, a PhD student at the Skoltech Center for Energy Science and Technology (Computational Materials Discovery Laboratory), guided by Skoltech and MIPT professor Artem R. Oganov, succeeded in building such a model using convolutional neural networks (CNN) on graphs, an ML method that enables predicting a material's properties from its crystal structure. Using a set of materials with known properties, you can teach CNN to calculate those properties for previously unfamiliar structures.

"Faced with a lack of experimental data on hardness and fracture toughness to properly train the models, we turned to more abundant data on elastic moduli and predicted their values to obtain the sought-for properties using the physical model we had created earlier," says Efim Mazhnik.

"In this study, we applied ML methods to calculate hardness and fracture toughness for over 120,000 crystal structures, both known and hypothetical, most of which have never been explored in terms of these properties. While our model confirms that diamond is the hardest known material, it suggests the existence of several dozen other potentially very hard or superhard materials," comments Artem Oganov.

If you asked people to name a famous psychology study, the "marshmallow test" would probably come out near the top of the list. In this task, young children are told they can immediately get a small reward (one marshmallow) or wait to get a bigger reward (two marshmallows). Researchers have shown that the ability to wait is associated with a range of positive life outcomes, including higher SAT scores more than a decade later.

A new study published in the journal Psychological Science expands on this earlier research and shows that young children will wait nearly twice as long for a reward if they are told their teacher will find out how long they wait.

"The classic marshmallow test has shaped the way researchers think about the development of self-control, which is an important skill," said Gail Heyman, a professor at the University of California San Diego and lead author on the study. "Our new research suggests that in addition to measuring self-control, the task may also be measuring another important skill: awareness of what other people value. In fact, one reason for the predictive power of delay-of-gratification tasks may be that the children who wait longer care more about what people around them value, or are better at figuring it out."

For their study, Heyman and her colleagues from UC San Diego and Zhejiang Sci-Tech University conducted two experiments with a total of 273 3- to 4-year-old children in China.

The researchers told the children that they could earn a small reward immediately or wait for a bigger one. Children were assigned to one of three conditions: a "teacher" condition, in which they were told that their teacher would find out how long they wait; a "peer" condition, in which they were told that a classmate would find out how long they wait; or a "standard" condition that had no special instructions.

Children waited longer in the teacher and peer conditions than in the standard condition, and they waited about twice as long in the teacher condition as compared to the peer condition.

The researchers interpreted the results to mean that when children decide how long to wait, they make a cost-benefit analysis that takes into account the possibility of getting a social reward in the form of a boost to their reputation. These findings suggest that the desire to impress others is strong and can motivate human behavior starting at a very young age.

The researchers were surprised by their findings because the traditional view is that 3- and 4-year-olds are too young to care about what other people think of them.

"The children waited longer in the teacher and peer conditions even though no one directly told them that it's good to wait longer," said Heyman. "We believe that children are good at making these kinds of inferences because they are constantly on the lookout for cues about what people around them value. This may take the form of carefully listening to the evaluative comments that parents and teachers make, or noticing what kinds of people and topics are getting attention in the media."

Researchers designed DLnano-vaccines displaying 60 copies of protein parts derived from the melanoma-specific antigens Trp2 and Gp100 and tested these in mouse models of melanoma, observing prolonged survival that depended on CD8 T cell activation both in therapeutic and prophylactic settings.

"One of the advantages of synthetic DNA technologies over other methods is the versatility of the platforms," said Ziyang Xu, Ph.D., a recent doctoral graduate working at Wistar and the first author of the study. "DLnano-vaccines may be designed for various cancer targets and our study shows this is a promising strategy for cancer immunotherapy that may warrant further testing."

To elucidate the mechanism through which DLnano-vaccines activate CD8 T cells, the team studied the effects of the DNA-launched version of a previously described HIV nanoparticle vaccine (eOD-GT8-60mer). They observed that DLnano-vaccines administered via electroporation resulted in transient muscle cell apoptosis that attracted macrophage infiltration at the injection site, which in turn was instrumental to activate CD8 T cells.

DLnano-vaccines were developed using synthetic DNA technology in collaboration with the lab of David B. Weiner, Ph.D., Wistar executive vice president, director of the Vaccine & Immunotherapy Center, and the W.W. Smith Charitable Trust Professor in Cancer Research and also a co-senior author on the study.

Autistic individuals are more likely to have chronic physical health conditions, particularly heart, lung, and diabetic conditions, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Cambridge. The results are published today in the journal Autism.

Earlier research has shown that autistic people on average die younger than others and that this may be, in part, due to chronic physical health conditions. Previous studies have also shown that autistic people are at higher risk of a variety of health conditions, but we don’t know what is driving these increased risks. Thus, better understanding of the physical health of autistic adults may help us improve both their quality and length of life.

1,156 autistic individuals and 1,212 non-autistic individuals took part in an anonymous, online survey developed by the team about their lifestyle choices and daily habits, personal and family medical history. The results indicate that autistic individuals are, on average, 1.5 to 4.3 times as likely to have a wide variety of health conditions, including low blood pressure, arrhythmias, asthma, and prediabetes.

This new study is also the first to examine the influence of smoking, alcohol use, and BMI. Surprisingly, the results show that these lifestyle factors (which increase the risk of chronic physical health problems in the general population) do not account for the heightened risk of heart, lung, and diabetic conditions seen among autistic adults.

The study also explored the experiences of female respondents and of older adults, both of whom remain understudied groups. The results revealed that autistic females, even more so than autistic males, are more likely to report increased risks of physical health conditions. In addition, the types of conditions of risk depend on the person’s biological sex. For example, autistic females are 4.3 times more likely to have prediabetes than non-autistic females; however, autistic and non-autistic males are equally likely to have prediabetes. These results suggest that a “one size fits all” approach to the healthcare of autistic people may not be effective.

Elizabeth Weir, the PhD student who led the study, said: “This is a first step in better understanding why autistic individuals are so much more likely to have chronic physical health problems. While smoking, alcohol, and BMI may play a role, we now need to focus on what other biological (e.g. genetic, hormonal, etc), environmental, lifestyle (e.g. diet, exercise, sleep, etc) or healthcare-related factors are contributing to these health disparities.”

Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge, who was part of the team, said: “This new study highlights the physical health risks to autistic individuals, and has important implications for their healthcare. Understanding the reasons why these disparities exist will allow us to better support autistic individuals and improve the quality and length of their lives.”

One-hundred million light years away from Earth, an unusual supernova is exploding.

That exploding star -- which is known as "supernova LSQ14fmg" -- was the faraway object discovered by a 37-member international research team led by Florida State University Assistant Professor of Physics Eric Hsiao. Their research, which was published in the Astrophysical Journal, helped uncover the origins of the group of supernovae this star belongs to.

This supernova's characteristics -- it gets brighter extremely slowly, and it is also one of the brightest explosions in its class -- are unlike any other.

"This was a truly unique and strange event, and our explanation for it is equally interesting," said Hsiao, the paper's lead author.

The exploding star is what is known as a Type Ia supernova, and more specifically, a member of the "super-Chandrasekhar" group.

Stars go through a sort of life cycle, and these supernovae are the exploding finale of some stars with low mass. They are so powerful that they shape the evolution of galaxies, and so bright that we can observe them from Earth even halfway across the observable universe.

An image of the "Blue Snowball" planetary nebula taken with the Florida State University Observatory. The supernova LSQ14fmg exploded in a system similar to this, with a central star losing a copious amount of mass through a stellar wind. When the mass loss abruptly stopped, it created a ring of material surrounding the star. Courtesy of Eric Hsiao

Type Ia supernovae were crucial tools for discovering what's known as dark energy, which is the name given to the unknown energy that causes the current accelerated expansion of the universe. Despite their importance, astronomers knew little about the origins of these supernova explosions, other than that they are the thermonuclear explosions of white dwarf stars.

But the research team knew that the light from a Type Ia supernova rises and falls over the course of weeks, powered by the radioactive decay of nickel produced in the explosion. A supernova of that type would get brighter as the nickel becomes more exposed, then fainter as the supernova cools and the nickel decays to cobalt and to iron.

After collecting data with telescopes in Chile and Spain, the research team saw that the supernova was hitting some material surrounding it, which caused more light to be released along with the light from the decaying nickel. They also saw evidence that carbon monoxide was being produced. Those observations led to their conclusion -- the supernova was exploding inside what had been an asymptotic giant branch (AGB) star on the way to becoming a planetary nebula.

"Seeing how the observation of this interesting event agrees with the theory is very exciting," said Jing Lu, an FSU doctoral candidate and a co-author of the paper.

They theorized that the explosion was triggered by the merger of the core of the AGB star and another white dwarf star orbiting within it. The central star was losing a copious amount of mass through a stellar wind before the mass loss was turned off abruptly and created a ring of material surrounding the star. Soon after the supernova exploded, it impacted a ring of material often seen in planetary nebulae and produced the extra light and the slow brightening observed.

"This is the first strong observational proof that a Type Ia supernova can explode in a post-AGB or proto-planetary-nebula system and is an important step in understanding the origins of Type Ia supernovae," Hsiao said. "These supernovae can be particularly troublesome because they can mix into the sample of normal supernovae used to study dark energy. This research gives us a better understanding of the possible origins of Type Ia supernovae and will help to improve future dark energy research."

Washington, September 10, 2020--The effectiveness of educational content aimed at correcting misconceptions about the risks, transmission, and prevention of Covid-19 is largely influenced by a person's prevailing moral values, according to a new study published today in Educational Researcher, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association.

Study authors Gregory Trevors and Melissa Duffy, both of the University of South Carolina, found that people with strong moral concerns for the well-being of individuals were more likely to update their existing Covid-19 beliefs when presented with new information. Conversely, people who place strong moral value on protecting group cohesion and people who value protecting individual freedoms were more likely to reject new information and maintain Covid-19 misbeliefs. The three moral orientations examined are commonly associated with, respectively, liberal, conservative, and libertarian ideologies, according to the authors.

"Our results indicate that messages relaying basic facts about Covid-19 risks and prevention may be rejected by individuals when they are perceived to conflict with strongly held moral values," said Trevors, an assistant professor of educational psychology and research. "Perceived conflicts between public health messages and moral values evoke negative emotions, such as doubt, anger, or confusion, which spark cognitive disbelief and rejection of new information."

"A one-size-fits-all approach to communication is not likely to succeed with the general public," Trevors said. "Instead, information and calls to action need to be framed differently to connect with various moral beliefs."

For example, for people who value social cohesion, Covid-19 messaging could highlight mask wearing as a patriotic act. For people who value individual liberty, messaging could emphasize mask wearing as self-protection that enhances personal freedom to participate in work or recreational activities.

"The public health responses to the pandemic, such as mask-wearing, stay-at-home orders, business closures, may be viewed as undermining social cohesion or personal autonomy, depending on a person's moral orientation" said Trevors.

For their study, Trevors and Duffy surveyed a sample of 518 U.S. adults recruited online from 12 states--Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. These states have been identified in previous research as among those whose residents are most likely to favor an immediate return to normal economic activity and most likely to travel outside the home. The study authors surveyed respondents on the importance of providing for the vulnerable, obeying authority, and protecting personal liberties, to assess their prevailing moral orientation. The authors then examined respondents' knowledge of Covid-19 risks and prevention and their responses to messages correcting common Covid-19 misconceptions.

"Our findings come at a time when disagreements over Covid-19 knowledge are undermining collective action, and shared understanding and consensus are crucially needed," said Trevors. "It is clear that messages about evolving evidence and practices during the pandemic need to take into consideration the moral values of the intended audiences and their potential cognitive and emotional reactions to those messages."

"We will need to promote the acceptance of the best available Covid-19 evidence in ways that allow Americans to act in accordance with differing moral values," said Trevors. "This will take creativity, patience, trust, mutual respect, and communication between elected policymakers and public health officials at the national, state, and local levels."

New Orleans, LA - Research led by Jeff Gidday, PhD, Professor of Ophthalmology, Biochemistry, Neuroscience, and Physiology at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine, reports what is believed to be the first study in a mammalian model documenting the reprogramming of heritability to promote disease resilience in the next generation. The results are published in the Journal of Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, the flagship journal of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO), available here.

The researchers used a functional measurement to document resilience to injury of the retina of adult mice that were born to parents who were exposed to intermittent, mild systemic hypoxia (reduced concentrations of oxygen) for several months prior to mating, even though the injury-protected mice received no treatment themselves. The therapy, akin to brief exposures to high-altitude air, is considered "epigenetic" because it modifies which genes are converted into proteins in tissues throughout the body, including germ cells (sperm and eggs).

"We exposed mice to nonharmful hypoxia to trigger these adaptive changes" says first-author Jarrod Harman, a doctoral student in Dr. Gidday's lab. "But there are many epigenetic stimuli that could cause these changes as well, including exercise, and other 'positive' stressors. Not all stress is bad for you."

The researchers also extensively analyzed the injury-resilient retinae. By comparing the protein profiles of these retinae to those of mice derived from untreated parents using mass spectrometry, they identified many of the potential proteins and related biochemical mechanisms by which this intergenerational, injury-resilient state is achieved. These proteins, serving in both functional and structural roles, represent potential therapeutic targets for drug development to protect against retinal diseases associated with an inadequate blood supply (ischemic retinopathies).

Other studies have shown that repetitive exposure to adverse stimuli can enhance the susceptibility of first-generation offspring to disease. But Gidday contends that, conversely, this is the first study to use a mild, nonharmful stress like intermittent systemic hypoxia to provide protection against disease in first-generation offspring.

"Research has shown that environmental enrichment can enhance some baseline memory metrics in both parents and offspring," Gidday says, "but no study has ever shown that offspring can inherit a neuroprotective phenotype induced in parents by epigenetics. The implications of this finding with respect to our understanding of the heritability of disease susceptibility, and disease resilience, is profound."

Companion studies addressing the safety profile of the treatment showed that the intermittently reduced oxygen stimulus used to trigger injury resilience across generations caused no injury to the most oxygen-sensitive cells of the brains of mice receiving the treatment, nor affected the normal structure or function of the retina of the adult offspring derived from treated mice.

Ischemic retinopathies are diseases that result from some degree of prolonged, lower-than-normal blood flow to the retina, compromising the delivery of much-needed oxygen and glucose to this very metabolically active tissue. The most well-known examples are glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy, but the retina can also be deprived of blood flow acutely, as happens with a heart attack or stroke. Collectively, the resultant visual impairment suffered by those with these retinopathies is staggering, and in a large percentage of cases, complete blindness can ensue.

"The direct inheritance of an induced phenotype is what Lamarck famously proposed in 1809, the year Darwin was born" says Gidday. "Here we are, almost 200 years later, finding evidence to support this concept, despite it being largely displaced for the last 150 years by Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection. More than likely both operate under distinct environmental situations to enhance both short- and long-term reproductive fitness."

The year 2020 will be remembered for being a very trying year and western wildfires have just added to the year's woes. So far in 2020, California has experienced 7,606 fires and those fires have consumed 2.3 million acres. Washington and Oregon have also been hard hit by wildfires. Over 300,000 acres are reported to be burning. Four towns in Oregon have been mostly destroyed by the wildfire devastation. The town of Malden in Washington was also destroyed. And a wildfire meteorologist with the National Interagency Fire Center, Nick Nausler, tweeted that the U.S. has not seen this level of wildfire activity since the "Big Blowup" of 1910.

In this side-by-side image above, the left side image shows the areas (marked in red) where the wildfires are currently burning in the West. Copious amounts of smoke spill off the coast and into the Pacific Ocean. The right side, however, shows the real story of the danger that smoke poses. Using the OMPS (Ozone Mapping Profiler Suite) instrument aerosols are detected and measured in terms of thickness and height of the atmospheric aerosol layer. For most atmospheric events involving aerosols, the AI ranges from 0.0 (colorless through light yellow, yellow, orange, and red) to 5.0 (deep red), with 5.0 indicating heavy concentrations of aerosols that could reduce visibilities or impact health. High aerosol concentrations not only can affect climate and reduce visibility, they also can impact breathing, reproduction, the cardiovascular system, and the central nervous system, according to the US EPA. Since aerosols are able to remain suspended in the atmosphere and be carried in prevailing high-altitude wind streams, they can travel great distances away from their source and their effects can linger as evidenced in the image found below.

The smoke released by any type of fire (forest, brush, crop, structure, tires, waste or wood burning) is a mixture of particles and chemicals produced by incomplete burning of carbon-containing materials. All smoke contains carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and particulate matter (PM or soot). Smoke can contain many different chemicals, including aldehydes, acid gases, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), benzene, toluene, styrene, metals and dioxins. The type and amount of particles and chemicals in smoke varies depending on what is burning, how much oxygen is available, and the burn temperature.

Exposure to high levels of smoke as evidenced in these wildfires should be avoided. Individuals are advised to limit their physical exertion if exposure to high levels of smoke cannot be avoided. Individuals with cardiovascular or respiratory conditions (e.g., asthma), fetuses, infants, young children, and the elderly may be more vulnerable to the health effects of smoke exposure.

Residents of these areas are on notice that sunsets will be much redder and more orange for a while. The reason? The size of the smoke particles is just right for filtering out other colors meaning that red, pink and orange colors can be seen more vividly in the sky. More orange and red sunsets are likely as long as the smoke lingers.

NASA's Aqua satellite analyzed Tropical Storm Paulette in infrared imagery as it moved through the Central Atlantic Ocean. At NASA, the imagery was false-colored to show cloud-top temperature gradients and identify the locations of the strongest storms. The imagery also indicated Paulette was being affected by wind shear.

Infrared Imagery and Paulette's Strength

One of the ways NASA researches tropical cyclones is using infrared data that provides temperature information. The AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a look at those temperatures in Paulette and gave insight into the size of the storm and its rainfall potential.

Cloud top temperatures provide information to forecasters about where the strongest storms are located within a tropical cyclone. Tropical cyclones do not always have uniform strength, and some sides have stronger sides than others. The stronger the storms, the higher they extend into the troposphere, and the colder the cloud top temperatures. NASA provides that data to forecasters at NOAA's National Hurricane Center or NHC so they can incorporate in their forecasting.

On Sept. 9 at 12:47 a.m. EDT (0447 UTC) NASA's Aqua satellite analyzed Tropical Storm Paulette using the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument. AIRS found coldest cloud top temperatures as cold as or colder than minus 63 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 53 degrees Celsius) northeast of the center and in a band of thunderstorms south of center. The center is near the southern side of a large thunderstorm cluster, with the bulk of deep convection in the northeastern quadrant of the cyclone.

NASA research has shown that cloud top temperatures that cold indicate strong storms that have the capability to create heavy rain.

Paulette had maximum sustained winds near 60 mph (95 kph) at the time of the AIRS image. Wind shear continued to affect the storm and weakened it over the next day.

What is Wind Shear?

In general, wind shear is a measure of how the speed and direction of winds change with altitude. Tropical cyclones are like rotating cylinders of winds. Each level needs to be stacked on top each other vertically in order for the storm to maintain strength or intensify. Wind shear occurs when winds at different levels of the atmosphere push against the rotating cylinder of winds, weakening the rotation by pushing it apart at different levels. Wind shear from the west-southwest was pushing the bulk of strong thunderstorms northeast of Paulette's center.

Paulette's Status of Sept. 10

By 5 a.m. EDT (0900 UTC) on Sept. 10, although Paulette's center of circulation had separated farther south from the cloud mass during the early morning hours, infrared imagery showed the cyclone was still producing an area of deep convection and strong thunderstorms consisting of minus 79 degrees Celsius (minus 110.2 degrees Fahrenheit) cold cloud tops.

Robbie Berg, hurricane specialist at NOAA's National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida, noted at 11 a.m. EDT on Sept. 10, "Southwesterly shear has increased over the cyclone as expected, with the latest University of Wisconsin-Madison-CIMSS analysis now between 35 and 40 knots." The wind shear is expected to peak by 11 p.m. EDT on Sept. 10, so a little more weakening is anticipated over the next day or so.  The shear is then forecast to gradually abate.

At 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC), NHC reported the center of Tropical Storm Paulette was located near latitude 21.5 degrees north and longitude 49.1 degrees west. That is about 935 miles (1,510 km) east-northeast of the Northern Leeward Islands. Paulette is moving toward the west-northwest near 10 mph (17 kph). A west-northwestward or northwestward motion with some increase in forward speed is expected through the weekend. Maximum sustained winds have decreased to near 50 mph (85 kph) with higher gusts.

Paulette's Forecast

NHC expects a west-northwestward or northwestward motion with some increase in forward speed through the weekend. Some additional slight weakening is expected during the next day or so, but Paulette is then forecast to re-strengthen by Saturday.  Paulette could become a hurricane by Sunday or Monday.

There are no coastal watches or warnings in effect. Interests in Bermuda should monitor the progress of this system. Ocean swells forecast to spread across the southwestern Atlantic through the weekend.

New York - In a study published in JAMA today, Mount Sinai researchers report findings that shed some light on the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on Blacks, who have experienced rates of infection and death that are much greater, in some areas twice and three times more, than their proportion of the population. "Our study suggests one factor that may partially contribute to COVID-19 risk among Blacks," says lead author, Supinda Bunyavanich, MD, MPH, Professor of Genetics & Genomic Sciences and Pediatrics, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

"The virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-Cov-2, uses transmembrane serine protease 2 (TMPRSS2) to facilitate entry and spread in the body," says Dr. Bunyavanich. "The degree to which a person expresses TMPRSS2 may affect how easy it is for the virus to get in and spread. We found that nasal expression of TMPRSS2 was significantly higher in Blacks than in Asians, Latinos, those of mixed race/ethnicity, and Whites. An important point is that gene expression is a dynamic reflection of personal, social, and environmental history, and many complex factors contribute to health disparities."

In this retrospective analysis, Dr. Bunyavanich and colleagues drew on a cross-sectional study of 305 patients of diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds, ages 4-60, within the Mount Sinai Health System, from whom they collected nasal samples.

"One of the key takeaways of our findings is the critical importance of including diverse participants in clinical trials," says Dr. Bunyavanich. "In clinical trials of TMPRSS2 inhibitors, it's possible that different effects may be seen depending on racial/ethnic background. More broadly, we also need to address the social determinants of health, economic disparities, and differential access to health care that drive racial/ethnic disparities in health."

In a previous study, also published in JAMA, Dr. Bunyavanich and colleagues studied the same cohort to better understand why COVID-19 may be less common among children. "In that study, we found age-dependent expression of the SARS-CoV-2 receptor angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) in nasal epithelium, with levels lowest in young children and increasing with age into adulthood. Lower ACE2 expression may help explain why children have been largely spared in the pandemic, while possibly pointing to a potential biomarker of susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2," says Dr. Bunyavanich.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- For quantum optical technologies to become more practical, there is a need for large-scale integration of quantum photonic circuits on chips.

This integration calls for scaling up key building blocks of these circuits - sources of particles of light - produced by single quantum optical emitters.

Purdue University engineers created a new machine learning-assisted method that could make quantum photonic circuit development more efficient by rapidly preselecting these solid-state quantum emitters.

The work is published in the journal Advanced Quantum Technologies.

Researchers around the world have been exploring different ways to fabricate identical quantum sources by "transplanting" nanostructures containing single quantum optical emitters into conventional photonic chips.

"With the growing interest in scalable realization and rapid prototyping of quantum devices that utilize large emitter arrays, high-speed, robust preselection of suitable emitters becomes necessary," said Alexandra Boltasseva, Purdue's Ron and Dotty Garvin Tonjes Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Quantum emitters produce light with unique, non-classical properties that can be used in many quantum information protocols.

The challenge is that interfacing most solid-state quantum emitters with existing scalable photonic platforms requires complex integration techniques. Before integrating, engineers need to first identify bright emitters that produce single photons rapidly, on-demand and with a specific optical frequency.

Emitter preselection based on "single-photon purity" - which is the ability to produce only one photon at a time - typically takes several minutes for each emitter. Thousands of emitters may need to be analyzed before finding a high-quality candidate suitable for quantum chip integration.

To speed up screening based on single-photon purity, Purdue researchers trained a machine to recognize promising patterns in single-photon emission within a split second.

According to the researchers, rapidly finding the purest single-photon emitters within a set of thousands would be a key step toward practical and scalable assembly of large quantum photonic circuits.

"Given a photon purity standard that emitters must meet, we have taught a machine to classify single-photon emitters as sufficiently or insufficiently 'pure' with 95% accuracy, based on minimal data acquired within only one second," said Zhaxylyk Kudyshev, a Purdue postdoctoral researcher.

The researchers found that the conventional photon purity measurement method used for the same task took 100 times longer to reach the same level of accuracy.

"The machine learning approach is such a versatile and efficient technique because it is capable of extracting the information from the dataset that the fitting procedure usually ignores," Boltasseva said.

The researchers believe that their approach has the potential to dramatically advance most quantum optical measurements that can be formulated as binary or multiclass classification problems.

"Our technique could, for example, speed up super-resolution microscopy methods built on higher-order correlation measurements that are currently limited by long image acquisition times," Kudyshev said.

UPTON, NY--The search is on to discover new states of matter, and possibly new ways of encoding, manipulating, and transporting information. One goal is to harness materials' quantum properties for communications that go beyond what's possible with conventional electronics. Topological insulators--materials that act mostly as insulators but carry electric current across their surface--provide some tantalizing possibilities.

"Exploring the complexity of topological materials--along with other intriguing emergent phenomena such as magnetism and superconductivity--is one of the most exciting and challenging areas of focus for the materials science community at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory," said Peter Johnson, a senior physicist in the Condensed Matter Physics & Materials Science Division at Brookhaven. "We're trying to understand these topological insulators because they have lots of potential applications, particularly in quantum information science, an important new area for the division."

For example, materials with this split insulator/conductor personality exhibit a separation in the energy signatures of their surface electrons with opposite "spin." This quantum property could potentially be harnessed in "spintronic" devices for encoding and transporting information. Going one step further, coupling these electrons with magnetism can lead to novel and exciting phenomena.

"When you have magnetism near the surface you can have these other exotic states of matter that arise from the coupling of the topological insulator with the magnetism," said Dan Nevola, a postdoctoral fellow working with Johnson. "If we can find topological insulators with their own intrinsic magnetism, we should be able to efficiently transport electrons of a particular spin in a particular direction."

In a new study just published and highlighted as an Editor's Suggestion in Physical Review Letters, Nevola, Johnson, and their coauthors describe the quirky behavior of one such magnetic topological insulator. The paper includes experimental evidence that intrinsic magnetism in the bulk of manganese bismuth telluride (MnBi2Te4) also extends to the electrons on its electrically conductive surface. Previous studies had been inconclusive as to whether or not the surface magnetism existed.

But when the physicists measured the surface electrons' sensitivity to magnetism, only one of two observed electronic states behaved as expected. Another surface state, which was expected to have a larger response, acted as if the magnetism wasn't there.

"Is the magnetism different at the surface? Or is there something exotic that we just don't understand?" Nevola said.

Johnson leans toward the exotic physics explanation: "Dan did this very careful experiment, which enabled him to look at the activity in the surface region and identify two different electronic states on that surface, one that might exist on any metallic surface and one that reflected the topological properties of the material," he said. "The former was sensitive to the magnetism, which proves that the magnetism does indeed exist in the surface. However, the other one that we expected to be more sensitive had no sensitivity at all. So, there must be some exotic physics going on!"

The measurements

The scientists studied the material using various types of photoemission spectroscopy, where light from an ultraviolet laser pulse knocks electrons loose from the surface of the material and into a detector for measurement.

"For one of our experiments, we use an additional infrared laser pulse to give the sample a little kick to move some of the electrons around prior to doing the measurement," Nevola explained. "It takes some of the electrons and kicks them [up in energy] to become conducting electrons. Then, in very, very short timescales--picoseconds--you do the measurement to look at how the electronic states have changed in response."

The map of the energy levels of the excited electrons shows two distinct surface bands that each display separate branches, electrons in each branch having opposite spin. Both bands, each representing one of the two electronic states, were expected to respond to the presence of magnetism.

To test whether these surface electrons were indeed sensitive to magnetism, the scientists cooled the sample to 25 Kelvin, allowing its intrinsic magnetism to emerge. However only in the non-topological electronic state did they observe a "gap" opening up in the anticipated part of the spectrum.

"Within such gaps, electrons are prohibited from existing, and thus their disappearance from that part of the spectrum represents the signature of the gap," Nevola said.

The observation of a gap appearing in the regular surface state was definitive evidence of magnetic sensitivity--and evidence that the magnetism intrinsic in the bulk of this particular material extends to its surface electrons.

However, the "topological" electronic state the scientists studied showed no such sensitivity to magnetism--no gap.

"That throws in a bit of a question mark," Johnson said.

"These are properties we'd like to be able to understand and engineer, much like we engineer the properties of semiconductors for a variety of technologies," Johnson continued.

In spintronics, for example, the idea is to use different spin states to encode information in the way positive and negative electric charges are presently used in semiconductor devices to encode the "bits"--1s and 0s--of computer code. But spin-coded quantum bits, or qubits, have many more possible states--not just two. This will greatly expand on the potential to encode information in new and powerful ways.

"Everything about magnetic topological insulators looks like they're right for this kind of technological application, but this particular material doesn't quite obey the rules," Johnson said.

So now, as the team continues their search for new states of matter and further insights into the quantum world, there's a new urgency to explain this particular material's quirky quantum behavior.

San Juan Capistrano, Calif.--Two devices for creating minimally invasive dialysis access--the Ellipsys® Vascular Access System and the WavelinQ™ 4F System--demonstrated high rates of technical success and low rates of complications, according to a new study published in the Journal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology. In addition, both technologies enabled patients to start dialysis sooner compared to surgery, offering significant quality-of-life benefits.

For patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) who require hemodialysis, the preferred type of vascular access is an arteriovenous fistula (AVF)--a permanent connection between a vein and artery in the arm. Until recently, the only way to create an AVF was through a surgical procedure that subjects patients to discomfort, longer recovery times and delayed dialysis.

Both the Ellipsys and WavelinQ devices offer a nonsurgical alternative by using a minimally invasive approach to create a percutaneous arteriovenous fistula (pAVF). The new single-center study, led by vascular surgeon Robert Shahverdyan, MD, (Vascular Access Center, Hamburg, Germany), compared the outcomes for 100 patients who underwent pAVF procedures (65 Ellipsys and 35 WavelinQ) from December 2017 to December 2019.

The Ellipsys System had a technical success rate of 100 percent, and only 27.7 percent of patients required secondary interventions following fistula creation. The WavelinQ system demonstrated similar outcomes, with a technical success rate of 97 percent and 26.5 percent of patients requiring secondary interventions. Overall, 79.5 percent of Ellipsys patients and 58 percent of WavelinQ patients were able to successfully begin dialysis with their fistula. At 12 months, 82 percent of Ellipsys fistulas were still functional, compared to 60 percent of WavelinQ fistulas.

"For every patient, my goal is to create the best possible dialysis access with the fewest possible interventions," said Dr. Shahverdyan. "Our data show that with careful planning, both systems can safely and quickly create percutaneous fistulas with a high rate of success, though the Ellipsys System appears to create more durable access that is also easier to repair if that becomes necessary."

Compared to surgical fistulas, both devices reduced the time to dialysis (cannulation). The mean time to cannulation for WavelinQ was 90 days, compared to 60 days with Ellipsys. In fact, 75 percent of Ellipsys fistulas were ready for cannulation at just 4 weeks, with a small number of patients ready for early cannulation within a few days of fistula creation, Dr. Shahverdyan notes.

"This study confirms other newly published data showing how much faster we can start using the Ellipsys percutaneous fistula for dialysis--a finding that has significant patient safety benefits," said interventional radiologist Jeffrey Hull, MD, of Richmond Vascular Center, Richmond, Va. "The sooner a patient can start dialysis with their fistula, the sooner we can get them off such riskier dialysis access methods as central venous catheters, which are associated with much higher rates of infection and other complications."

Dr. Hull is the lead author on a recent study of Ellipsys pAVF that reported an average time to dialysis of 66 days. Vascular surgeon Alexandros Mallios, MD, recently published data showing that patients were able to begin using their pAVF for dialysis an average of 4 weeks after creation, with six percent of fistulas becoming functional in as little as 2 weeks.

The studied technologies differ significantly in their design, pAVF creation technique and fistula location. The single-catheter Ellipsys system uses ultrasound guidance and thermal energy to create the fused and permanent connection between the perforating vein and the proximal radial artery; no radiation or contrast media are required. The WavelinQ device is a two-catheter system that uses radio-frequency energy and fluoroscopy to create an aligned slit fistula. Differences between the systems can affect patient eligibility for the procedures based on anatomic constraints.

"Based on our preoperative ultrasound evaluations, we found that 65 percent of patients were eligible for an Ellipsys pAVF, compared to just 27 percent with the WavelinQ system," said Dr. Shahverdyan. "By knowing that more than twice as many patients will be able to undergo the procedure, Ellipsys makes it more feasible for a center to offer this endovascular approach to creating dialysis access."

Cleared by the FDA in 2018 for patients with end-stage renal disease, Ellipsys is the first significant innovation in AVF creation in over 50 years. It transforms a complex surgery into a minimally invasive procedure that can be performed in a hospital outpatient setting, ambulatory surgery center or physician's office. Since 2015, nearly 3,000 patients worldwide have undergone the Ellipsys procedure. Recently published long-term data show that 92 percent of Ellipsys fistulas are still functional after 2 years. The study also found high levels of patient satisfaction with the procedure.