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Alzheimer's disease is more common in rural Appalachian Ohio communities than in other rural areas in the state - raising concerns about access to early, specialized care in a region where many residents face struggles getting the medical care they need, a new study has found.

Researchers from The Ohio State University examined 11 years of federal Medicare data, ending in 2017, to compare the prevalence of Alzheimer's disease and related disorders in Appalachian Ohio with other parts of the state. The research was published online this month in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

"Those who live in rural Appalachia, in particular, are both much more disadvantaged on the whole from a socioeconomic perspective and have a higher burden of Alzheimer's disease and related disorders compared to those who live elsewhere. It's a double whammy," said Jeffrey Wing, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Ohio State's College of Public Health.

Rural Appalachian counties had a 2-3% higher prevalence of the degenerative brain disease compared to rural non-Appalachian counties. The researchers looked at the data on a county level, and adjusted for other population differences, including demographics and prevalence of other diseases.

Likely compounding the problem are well-established barriers to care in the region, especially when it comes to specialized care, Wing said.

"You really need to see a neurologist to get diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and that is likely more challenging for many in Appalachia than it is for people elsewhere in Ohio," Wing said.

An estimated 5.8 million people in the U.S. are living with Alzheimer's disease and related disorders and, with an aging population in America, the burden is increasing. According to the Alzheimer's Association, that number is expected to more than double by 2050.

Though there is no cure for Alzheimer's, interventions and therapies to delay its progress and improve a patient's quality of life are often most helpful earlier in the disease process. And an early diagnosis can also provide an opportunity for both patients and caregivers to be connected to other supportive resources, Wing said.

"There aren't many studies that have been able to provide an estimated prevalence of Alzheimer's in geographically diverse populations, and we're hopeful that this information will help illuminate potential needs in Appalachia - that could include more screenings, earlier screenings and reallocation of medical and support resources," he said.

Wing and his colleagues would like to further explore what factors might be driving the prevalence of Alzheimer's in Appalachia, he said.

"We're trying to think about some structural and sociodemographic factors that may be driving this, including race and ethnicity, as proxies for racism, education and income," Wing said.

TAMPA, Fla. -- Targeted therapy with BRAF-MEK inhibitors is an effective treatment for patients with advanced melanoma that cannot be surgically removed or has spread to other areas of the body. However, many patients become resistant to the therapy, and this can often lead to further metastasis. Moffitt Cancer Center researchers who helped develop this type of combination therapy are now working to better understand what leads to this resistance in hopes of developing ways to overcome it.

In a new article published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, Moffitt researchers identify erythropoietin-producing hepatocellular receptor A2 (EphA2) as a driver of metastasis and BRAF-MEK inhibitor resistance in melanoma.

EphA2 is a tyrosine kinase receptor that helps maintain a stable environment in normal cells. However, EphA2 is often overexpressed in many cancers and plays a critical role in its growth. Its exact function depends upon the signaling pathway: canonical and noncanonical. The canonical pathway inhibits cancer cell proliferation and acts as a tumor suppressor. The noncanonical pathway has the opposite effect, promoting tumor survival and metastasis.

The Moffitt team, in collaboration with scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, focused on the noncanonical pathway of EphA2. Using comprehensive mass spectrometry-based phosphoproteomics, the researchers mapped the signaling network driven by noncanonical EphA2 and found that it induces an amoeboid phenotype that enhances metastatic potential.

"This is important because an amoeboid phenotype enhances metastatic potential by helping to protect melanoma cells that have entered the blood stream from shear stress and allowing the cells to adhere to endothelial cells in other areas of the body," said Inna Smalley, Ph.D., study author and assistant member in the Cancer Physiology Department at Moffitt.

The research team further confirmed the findings by developing a mouse model using melanoma cells transduced with EphA2-S897E, the noncanonical pathway, and found a significantly higher number of metastases to the lungs.

"We hope that having a better understanding on what drives resistance to BRAF and BRAF-MEK inhibitor therapy and further metastasis will allow us to better understand the process of therapy escape and develop new treatment strategies for melanoma patients," said Keiran Smalley, Ph.D., lead study author and director of the Donald A. Adam Melanoma and Skin Cancer Center of Excellence at Moffitt.

Scientists are looking at luminescent transparent films for use in energy-efficient displays (such as LED screens) and other applications, and the possibilities it opens up for advancing methodologies in several fields of biological and electronics research. However, although multicolor-emitting transparent solid films have been developed, finding efficient ways to tune the color and intensity of light emissions has been challenging.

Now, in a recent paper published in The Royal Society of Chemistry's Materials Advances, a novel mechanism for easily tuning the luminescence of a newly modified light-emitting solid transparent material is described--it involves simply modulating its proton concentration (or pH) via the application of a voltage.

This material was developed in the lab of Professor Makoto Tadokoro, an inorganic chemist and materials scientist at Tokyo University of Science in Japan. Prof Tadokoro and his team, including Dr. Hajime Kamebuchi from Nihon University, Japan, and Mr. Taiho Yoshioka from Tokyo University of Science, began with a transparent polymeric film called Nafion. Nafion films are well-known as proton-conductors (materials in which electricity is conducted via the movement of protons) and cation exchangers (materials that readily attract positively charged particles). These two properties proved key to the luminescence control afforded by the material that it would eventually help form.

A third property of Nafion that made it even more useful for Prof Tadokoro's team is its molecular structure. Nafion's structure allowed "complexes" of two metals, terbium (Tb) and europium (Eu), which are known to be light emitters, to be embedded in it when it was dipped in a solution containing the metal complexes. Thus, the fabrication process of the material was simple and inexpensive.

When the final product--a metal-complex-containing polymeric film--was immersed in an acidic solution (pH 2-5; proton donor), it turned green. Soaked in an alkaline solution (pH 9-12; proton acceptor), it turned red. In a neutral solution (pH 6-8), it turned yellow (a combination of red and green).

Spectroscopic analysis told the authors why these specific color changes were occurring. In acidic solutions, the protons taken up by Nafion were 'turning on' the Tb metal ions, but not the Eu metal ions. In alkaline solutions, Eu metal ions took the spotlight and emissions from the Tb ions were quenched. In neutral solutions, both emitted light. This confirmed that the proton concentration gradient within the material determined its luminescence.

The scientists were then able to easily tune the luminescence by hooking the material to a battery after dipping it in an acidic solution. The acidic solution made the material green. But upon application of a voltage, as protons moved towards the negatively charged side of the material, the proton-deficient positively charged side began to turn red. The central portion of the material became yellow. Prof Tadokoro says, "We think that this was the most challenging part of our study--and incidentally also our biggest success. The finding that the flow of protons in a solid medium under an electric field can be controlled, which in turn allows us to control the 'color' of emitted light, is unprecedented. In biological systems, ion flows are responsible for many essential biochemical activities. The 'solid-state ionics' demonstrated by us can find applications in a lot of different fields."

When further asked about the practical significance of his work, Prof Tadokoro says, "Our findings show that it is possible to fabricate inexpensive multicolor emitting glass or film materials whose emissions can be tuned by simply applying a voltage to control the proton flow, and therefore proton gradient, within the material. In other words, not only electron conduction, but proton conduction can be a way in which the luminescence of materials is controlled."

But, while this study is a big step in the journey to achieving transparent emitters for a wide range of applications--such as detecting pH gradients in biological cells or constructing novel displays and illuminators--the device developed here is not quite ready for the market. Prof Tadokoro says, "We are now trying to add a blue light emitting complex into our system, so that we can obtain a material that can emit light over the entire visible spectrum."

Once that is achieved, the sciences will be advanced a little bit more, and a new generation of highly tunable multicolor-emitting materials may not be too far away!

Philadelphia, September 2, 2020 - After a baby is born, doctors sometimes examine the placenta--the organ that links the mother to the baby--for features that indicate health risks in any future pregnancies. Unfortunately, this is a time-consuming process that must be performed by a specialist, so most placentas go unexamined after the birth. A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) report the development of a machine learning approach to examine placenta slides in the American Journal of Pathology, published by Elsevier, so more women can be informed of their health risks.

One reason placentas are examined is to look for a type of blood vessel lesions called decidual vasculopathy (DV). These indicate the mother is at risk for preeclampsia--a complication that can be fatal to the mother and baby--in any future pregnancies. Once detected, preeclampsia can be treated, so there is considerable benefit from identifying at-risk mothers before symptoms appear. However, although there are hundreds of blood vessels in a single slide, only one diseased vessel is needed to indicate risk.

"Pathologists train for years to be able to find disease in these images, but there are so many pregnancies going through the hospital system that they don't have time to inspect every placenta," said Daniel Clymer, PhD, alumnus, Department of Mechanical Engineering, CMU, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. "Our algorithm helps pathologists know which images they should focus on by scanning an image, locating blood vessels, and finding patterns of the blood vessels that identify DV."

Machine learning works by "training" the computer to recognize certain features in data files. In this case, the data file is an image of a thin slice of a placenta sample. Researchers show the computer various images and indicate whether the placenta is diseased or healthy. After sufficient training, the computer is able to identify diseased lesions on its own.

It is quite difficult for a computer to simply look at a large picture and classify it, so the team introduced a novel approach through which the computer follows a series of steps to make the task more manageable. First, the computer detects all blood vessels in an image. Each blood vessel can then be considered individually, creating smaller data packets for analysis. The computer will then access each blood vessel and determine if it should be deemed diseased or healthy. At this stage, the algorithm also considers features of the pregnancy, such as gestational age, birth weight, and any conditions the mother might have. If there are any diseased blood vessels, then the picture--and therefore the placenta--is marked as diseased. The UPMC team provided the de-identified placenta images for training the algorithm.

"This algorithm isn't going to replace a pathologist anytime soon," Dr. Clymer explained. "The goal here is that this type of algorithm might be able to help speed up the process by flagging regions of the image where the pathologist should take a closer look."

"This is a beautiful collaboration between engineering and medicine as each brings expertise to the table that, when combined, creates novel findings that can help so many individuals," added lead investigators Jonathan Cagan, PhD, and Philip LeDuc, PhD, professors of mechanical engineering at CMU, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.

"As healthcare increasingly embraces the role of artificial intelligence, it is important that doctors partner early on with computer scientists and engineers so that we can design and develop the right tools for the job to positively impact patient outcomes," noted co-author Liron Pantanowitz, MBBCh, formerly vice chair for pathology informatics at UPMC, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. "This partnership between CMU and UPMC is a perfect example of what can be accomplished when this happens."

A new University of Kentucky College of Medicine study provides insight into how a protein called angiotensinogen (AGT) contributes to blood pressure regulation and atherosclerosis.

AGT is a member of the renin-angiotensin system, a hormone system in the human body that regulates blood pressure and fluid balance. AGT produces angiotensin II, which regulates blood pressure and contributes to atherosclerosis, or the buildup of plaque in the arteries.

When forming angiotensin II, amino acids are "clipped off" of the AGT protein. The study, co-led by Saha Cardiovascular Research Center researchers Hong Lu and Alan Daugherty, found that replacing the amino acids in AGT did not affect blood pressure or atherosclerosis in mice.

The findings may mean that these amino acids in AGT that were thought of as critical regulators of blood pressure and atherosclerosis may not be as critical as initially thought. A better understanding of the peptide that causes blood pressure changes may provide insight into future drug development, Daugherty says.

"High blood pressure is an extremely common manifestation that is very difficult to treat, The more that is known about the structure of AGT and how it functions can potentially change the way high blood pressure is managed and lessen the chronic disease effects of increasing blood pressure and atherosclerosis," said Daugherty.

The study used a unique mouse model that lacked AGT in the liver and used a state-of-the-art technique to change the amino acids of the protein in the liver. These tools enabled the team to study whether changes of amino acids in AGT influence blood pressure and atherosclerosis.

The research team is continuing to look at different sequences that are thought to have functional importance to learn more about how the body handles AGT to affect blood pressure.

The storm was a potential tropical depression on Sept. 1, but by Sept. 2, the area of low pressure in the Caribbean Sea strengthened into a tropical storm and was named Nana.

NASA's Terra satellite provided forecasters with a look at the strength of the thunderstorms that make up Nana by analyzing cloud top temperatures.

Potential Tropical Depression 16 developed into a tropical storm by 12:05 p.m. EDT on Sept. 1, south of Jamaica. Tropical Storm Nana is the 14th named tropical storm of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season.

Warnings and Watches Now in Effect

NOAA's National Hurricane Center (NHC) posted watches and warnings on Sept. 2 for areas in Central America, as Nana is forecast to move on a westerly path through the Caribbean Sea.

A Hurricane Watch is in effect for the entire coast of Belize. A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for Yucatan, Mexico from Puerto Costa Maya to Chetumal, Mexico and for the entire coast of Belize.

A Tropical Storm Watch is in effect for the northern coast of Honduras from Punta Patuca westward to the Guatemala border, for Roatan Island and the Bay Islands of Honduras and for the Caribbean Sea coast of Guatemala.

Infrared Data Reveals Nana Strengthening

On Sept. 1 at 11:35 p.m. EDT (Sept. 2 at 335 UTC), the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite gathered temperature information about Tropical Storm Nana's cloud tops. Strongest storms were around the center of the storm, where temperatures were as cold as or colder than minus 80 degrees (minus 62.2 degrees Fahrenheit). That area was surrounded by large area of slightly less powerful storms where cloud top temperatures were as cold as or colder than minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 56.6 Celsius).

"Nana's Central Dense Overcast has become a little better defined, with cloud tops to minus 80 degrees Celsius [minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit] or colder. Upper-level outflow continues to be somewhat inhibited over the northern portion of the circulation. SFMR-observed surface winds and adjusted flight-level winds from an Air Force Hurricane Hunter aircraft indicated an intensity of 50 knots. Although northerly [wind] shear is likely to limit intensification, the environment is conducive enough for Nana to strengthen into a hurricane later today," Dr. Richard Pasch wrote in the 5 a.m. EDT Nana Discussion. Pasch is a senior hurricane specialist at NOAA's National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami, Florida.

Nana's Status on Sept. 2

At 8 a.m. EDT (1200 UTC) on Sept. 2, the center of Tropical Storm Nana was located near latitude 17.1 degrees north and longitude 83.7 degrees west. It was centered about 150 miles (240 km) northeast of Limon, Honduras and 305 miles (490 km) east of Belize City, Belize.

Nana was moving toward the west near 18 mph (30 kph), and this general motion with some decrease in forward speed is expected today. Maximum sustained winds were near 60 mph (95 kph) with higher gusts. The minimum central pressure estimated from a NOAA Hurricane Hunter aircraft observations is 996 millibars.

Nana Forecast Toward Belize

The NHC forecast expects a westward or west-southwestward motion tonight and Thursday. Strengthening is expected, and Nana is forecast to become a hurricane later today or tonight before it reaches the coast of Belize. On the forecast track, Nana will be moving near but north of the coast of Honduras today and likely be approaching the coast of Belize tonight and early Thursday.

Tropical cyclones/hurricanes are the most powerful weather events on Earth. NASA's expertise in space and scientific exploration contributes to essential services provided to the American people by other federal agencies, such as hurricane weather forecasting.

For updated forecasts, visit: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov

Sudden death syndrome (SDS) is one of the most destructive diseases of soybean, with losses of nearly 1.7 million metric tons in 2014. The disease is especially severe in the Midwest and North-Central regions, where conditions of high soil humidity and cold weather help the disease grow. SDS is difficult to control as current management practices, which include using fungicide seed treatments and tolerant soybean varieties, can add production costs, reduce profits, and can ultimately be ineffective.

Recently, Mirian Pimentel, a PhD student, and a group of plant pathologists at Southern Illinois University, discovered a promising new tool to fight SDS. They observed that several biological control agents (BCA), or beneficial fungi, were able to substantially reduce the growth of the causal pathogen agent of SDS. In some cases, these agents even overgrew the pathogen, parasitized it, and displayed evidence of "feeding" on it.

They found that isolates from the genera Trichoderma showed the highest inhibition of SDS pathogen growth and even reduced root rot. Additionally, these agents interacted with soybean plants to colonize their roots and activate plant defense-related genes, which help the soybeans fend off attacks from pathogens.

"Our results highlight the potential of Trichoderma isolates native to soybean production fields in inhibiting pathogen growth and reducing SDS severity, providing additional tools for biological control in soybean production," explained Dr. Ahmad Fakhoury, a plant pathologist at Southern Illinois University. "This research highlights the possibility for future implementation of biological control in soybean production to manage SDS. The integrated use of biological control with other management practices can be valuable for sustainable and cost-effective protection of soybean from yield losses."

"This research provides an overview of how biological control can be used as a tool to fight important plant diseases that threaten global food security," Pimentel said and encourages the agriculture industry to develop technologies to optimize the activities of these biological control agents in the field.

These promising results have led Fakhoury and his research team to further investigate different biological agents-pathogen interactions. Their current research will help them better understand how different isolates of the BCA T. harzianum interact with the SDS pathogen.

For more information, read "Trichoderma Isolates Inhibit Fusarium virguliforme Growth, Reduce Root Rot, and Induce Defense-Related Genes on Soybean Seedlings" in Plant Disease.

Syracuse, N.Y. - A study published today by the JAMA Network Open shows that in the period from October 2015 to September 2016 before the Affordable Care Act, a substantial portion of Medicare patients referred to home health care after hospitalization did not receive that care.

Using national data, the researchers detailed how often Medicare patients referred to home health care services after a hospital discharge received one or more home health care visits. They examined variation in the rates of successful home health care referrals by patient sociodemographic characteristics.

The study, "Assessment of Receipt of the First Home Health Care Visit After Hospital Discharge Among Older Adults," was published today by the JAMA Network Open. Led by Syracuse University Professor Jun Li, the research team noted these key findings:

Only 54 percent of Medicare patients referred to home health care services following a hospitalization received home health care visits.

Black and Hispanic Medicare beneficiaries received home health at lower rates than White patients by 7.3 and 9.2 percentage points, respectively.

Patients residing in disadvantaged neighborhoods - those in ZIP codes with high poverty and unemployment rates - received lower rates of home health care services by approximately 5 percentage points.

Home health care is one of the fastest-growing services used by patients following a hospital stay in the U.S. Patients receive health and social services within their homes to help them recover from illness or injury and to maintain their independence. Ensuring access to home health care has important implications for patient wellbeing and the U.S. health care system.

The study examines recent years since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The research team includes Jun Li, an assistant professor of Public Administration and International Affairs at the Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, a faculty associate in the Aging Studies Institute, and a faculty affiliate in the Center for Aging and Policy Studies; Mingyu Qi, a statistical analyst at the University Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine; and Rachel M. Werner, a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and the Robert D. Eilers Professor of Health Care Management at the Wharton School, and the Executive Director of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics.

This study indicates that despite the benefits of home health care, nearly half of the discharged patients are unlikely to receive it. The findings suggest patients in vulnerable population groups are more likely to face consequential barriers to home health care. These disparities are doubtlessly contributing to the inequitable health care system in the U.S.

"Recent health care reform efforts increasingly rely on home health care as a substitute for institutional care," Li said. "With this knowledge, policymakers should implement a system that ensures all patients receive the home health care that has been recommended by their physicians."

Typhoon Maysak was moving north through the East China Sea early on Sept. 2 when NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite passed overhead and captured a visible image of the storm approaching landfall in South Korea.

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard Suomi NPP provided a visible image of Typhoon Maysak on Sept. 2 at 1:24 a.m. EDT (0524 UTC) and saw Typhoon Maysak headed for landfall in southern South Korea. The image revealed that the eye had again become obscured, and strong thunderstorms circled the center of circulation. The northern quadrant was already moving over South Korea and the eastern quadrant was brushing Kyushu, Japan. Kyushu is the most southern and third largest island of Japan's five main islands.

On Sept. 2 at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC) Maysak was still a typhoon with maximum sustained winds near 90 knots (104 mph/167 kph). It was located near 33.1 degrees north latitude and 127.9 degrees east longitude, about 134 miles south-southwest of Busan, South Korea. Maysak was moving to the north-northeast.

Maysak is forecast to move north make landfall later in the day today, west of Busan, South Korea. It will weaken rapidly as it passes over the length of the Korean peninsula, to dissipate over northeastern China.

For more than five decades, NASA has used the vantage point of space to understand and explore our home planet, improve lives and safeguard our future. NASA brings together technology, science, and unique global Earth observations to provide societal benefits and strengthen our nation. Advancing knowledge of our home planet contributes directly to America's leadership in space and scientific exploration

As with the previous pandemics and other major events, such as the Great Depression and World War II, the coronavirus pandemic will profoundly change workplaces and the nature of work itself.

In fact, it already has, according to a new article published by an international panel of management experts, including Michael Wilmot, a new assistant professor in the Sam M. Walton College of Business. Many of these changes, especially the massive shift toward remote work - what most people refer to as "working from home" - are probably here to stay.

"We know that previous major world events had a profound impact on workplaces and the kind of work people do," Wilmot said. "In fact, these events led to the demise of some markets and businesses and the creation of others. This pandemic is no different. It will change work in fundamental ways, and this will challenge people to learn to work in ways dramatically different than previous generations."

Wilmot, who studies the role of personality at work, was one of several researchers who contributed to "COVID-19 and the Workplace: Implications, Issues, and Insights for Future Research and Action," published in the August issue of American Psychologist. As the title suggests, the article emerged as an overview of previous research related to work and workplaces, studies that apply in the context of a pandemic. Lead authors - Kevin Kniffin at Cornell University, Jayanth Narayanan at the National University of Singapore, and Frederik Anseel at the University of New South Wales in Australia - describe the article as a generative overview, a framework for identifying work and workplace issues for producing future research.

The authors and contributors cited several previous studies pertinent to the context of the pandemic, especially those related to remote work, which communications technologies and faster internet connectivity have facilitated over the past several years. In this sense, COVID-19 merely accelerated an already growing trend. The authors pointed to a survey of 229 human resources departments showing that roughly half of the companies had more than 80% of their employees working from home during early stages of the pandemic. The companies expect substantial long-term increases for remote work after the pandemic.

The above trend, suddenly mandatory for almost all individuals who do their work from an internet-connected computer, creates or complicates a host of issues, including "presentism" - people working at home when ill - and the inability of some people to set boundaries between work and home.

As one who studies the role of personality at work, Wilmot contributed insights pertaining to disparate impacts on employees with regard to certain individual differences and personality traits. For example, how will these issues affect extroverts versus introverts?

The authors identified several other issues, including:

A loss of social connectedness and loneliness for many employees, which can negatively affect performance and commitment to organizational goals.

Increased risk among employees for substance abuse and addiction.

Related to above issues, companies might need to create or augment employee assistance programs and hire staff trained to recognize mental health issues.

The possibility that virtual work arrangements will foster more participatory relationships, given that physical cues of dominance are less salient in virtual environments.

The need for human resource departments to develop new performance management and appraisal systems for remote-working populations.

The expectation that some companies will institute new modes of surveillance due to perceived lack of control, now that employees are "out of sight."

"Considering all these issues and more, I think it's important to examine how workers will adapt," Wilmot said. "I'd like to think some of the insights we provide will make positive contributions in the face of these changes."

Demand continues for plastics and solvents made from petrochemicals, which are mainly produced by refining oil despite diminishing global oil reserves, driving forward the search for new ways to produce the chemicals we need.

Methane is the main component of natural gas and a promising raw material for the production of industrial chemicals. However, turning methane into commercial products currently requires multiple, energy-intensive stages. "Finding a more energy efficient direct method would be a real advantage," says Mustafa Ça?layan, a Ph.D. student working under the supervision of Jorge Gascon, "but a one-step conversion of methane into valuable products is still a great challenge."

The process, methane dehydroaromatization (MDA), requires a catalyst to speed up the reaction, and chemists are searching for the best metal-mineral combination for this vital role. "Understanding the reaction mechanism is crucial for the improvement of a given process," says Ça?layan.

However, MDA has proven difficult to observe in action. Drawing on their experience with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), a technique for visualizing the structure of molecules, Gascon's team studied what happens in the early stages of the reaction using a molybdenum-zeolite catalyst.

The researchers observed the first organic molecules formed by carbon-carbon bonding in the first stages of the reaction. Among these was acetylene, a colorless gas that is widely used as a fuel and chemical building block. "Finding the right NMR parameters to visualize what we were after was challenging," says co-author Abhishek Dutta Chowdhury, "but we confirmed the existence of some intermediate species that have been hypothesized for a long time."

They also identified two of potentially several activation pathways for carbon-hydrogen bonding that lead to the formation of useful hydrocarbons, such as benzene, a building block of plastics, lubricants, resins and rubber.

"We have found a way to take snapshots at the molecular level of a chemical reaction that occurs under very harsh conditions," says Ça?layan. Such insights could help enable more efficient methane conversion, with many potential benefits. For example, natural gas is voluminous and therefore very expensive to transport. "It would be great if we could convert natural gas into condensed hydrocarbons on the extraction site before transporting it," adds Ça?layan.

One-step methane conversion still has obstacles. "We are working to prevent the catalyst from becoming deactivated too quickly," says Gascon. "This study is one more small step toward making more industrial use of natural gas."

As global temperatures continue to rise, cities and towns not historically prone to large wildfires may begin to face greater threats. An unsuspecting Tennessee community found itself in this position during the 2016 Chimney Tops 2 Fire, which led to 14 deaths and nearly 200 injuries -- many related to last-minute evacuations.

To understand what motivates people to evacuate, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) surveyed affected residents. Their analysis of the responses identified key factors at play, including risk perception, gender, warnings from trusted sources, and evacuation plans. They also uncovered an unexpected phenomenon, wherein smoke appeared to lower peoples' sense of danger. These results, outlined in the International Journal of Wildland Fire, could help communities, especially those without robust wildfire response plans in place, devise and improve strategies for getting people to head for safer ground.

The NIST survey asked residents of Sevier County, Tennessee, the county most impacted by the fire, about a multitude of factors that could have affected their decision to flee or stay behind.

Receiving almost 400 responses, the survey revealed that nearly 80% of evacuations occurred on the day the fire had breached the city limits, despite the fire burning for days prior in the nearby Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In addition, less than a quarter of surveyed residents received any type of warning or had prepared an evacuation plan for their household.

"While wildland fires can occur fairly regularly during fire season, only a small percentage actually spread into communities. So, the local public wasn't necessarily prepared," said Emily Walpole, a NIST social scientist and co-author of the study.

The team used statistical approaches to determine how much influence the factors from the survey had on each resident's sense of danger to themselves or others and on their evacuation decision.

The analysis revealed that witnessing flames or embers increased perceptions of risk -- a somewhat expected outcome, Walpole said. Seeing or smelling smoke appeared to have the opposite effect, however, lowering residents' sense of danger. According to the authors, the seemingly bewildering finding could be explained by the wildfire's longevity.

"Since this wildfire was actually burning for a week in the surrounding area, we proposed that some kind of desensitization might have happened," Walpole said. "It's possible that you get used to smelling smoke and it basically lulls you into a false sense of security ... the fire could be miles away and be producing smoke."

Whether one's sense of security was false or not, it emerged as the most critical factor for evacuation decisions. By asking residents to rank their perceived risk on a scale of one to five, the researchers found that the likelihood of evacuation increased by 3.5 times with each increasing point on the scale.

Gender also had a powerful effect, as women were almost three times more likely to evacuate than men. Studies of other extreme events, such as hurricanes, have suggested that this outcome could be in part because women are more likely to take on caregiving roles, Walpole said.

The effects of household preparedness were split. Those that took measures to make their residence more fire-safe -- clearing vegetation around the house, installing more fire-resistant roofing, etc. -- were more than twice as likely to stick around, as they may have felt more secure at home. However, having an evacuation plan, which could make evacuating a more approachable option, made households about twice as likely to clear out.

The survey also probed residents about the warnings they received from sources they deemed credible which, for most, were official sources, including fire and police departments. The researchers uncovered that hearing from a trusted source increased the odds of evacuating by a factor of almost 5.5. However, the fraction of surveyed residents that received trusted warnings or any warnings at all was low, at 7.4% and 22.7%, respectively, which could partially explain the prevalence of last-minute evacuations.

"It seemed that people expected that if a large wildfire requiring evacuation was going to happen, they would be told. Instead many had to find out on their own," Walpole said.

"By shedding light on several critical motivators -- and demotivators -- of evacuation, we will be able to help emergency planners account for human behavior in their response plans, which will become ever more essential as the changing climate creates ripe conditions for wildfires in new regions," said Erica Kuligowski, formerly a social scientist at NIST and co-author of this study.

In particular, the authors call out the essential nature of early warnings with clear messages, accurately representing the threat of oncoming wildfires.

"There's a need for official communication where possible, having warnings where experts are letting the public know they are actually in danger," Walpole said.

In light of emerging evidence showing how a commonly used class of insecticides can spread through the environment to pollinators, predators and other insects they are not intended to kill, researchers are warning about the potential for widespread environmental contamination.

In an opinion in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from North Carolina State University and Pennsylvania State University argued for curbing the use of neonicotinoid insecticides by discontinuing the practice of applying them preventively on crop seeds, since the practice is in wide use in the United States and has been found in one study to benefit a small fraction of crop fields. They argue that reducing this and other common preventive practices could reduce cascading effects on the environment from insecticides whose risks have not been fully characterized.

"Since the research has focused on transmission of the insecticide from a plant to a particular pest to a predator of the pest, it's ignored the hundreds of other herbivores that are also on that plant, and also transmission of that material to their predators. That's where the food web concerns come in that we're interested in," said Steven Frank, co-author of the opinion and a professor in NC State's Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology.

Since their introduction in the early 1990s, neonicotinoids have become the most widely used insecticides in the world, researchers said. In 2014, these products represented 25 percent of the global pesticide market, other scientists have reported. The authors also said they are among the most toxic insecticides to insects ever developed.

These insecticides are used in crops, lawns and landscapes, livestock production and even in pet flea and tick products. They are also used in lawns, commercial landscapes and to protect trees. For example, neonicotinoids were used to treat 200,000 hemlock trees in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

"They are applied to hundreds of thousands of trees each year for protection from exotic pests, which can be lethal to trees, but also from cosmetic pests, which generally are not lethal," Frank said.

Recently, a study uncovered a new way that neonicotinoids can spread through the food chain.

Published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study led by researchers from the Valencia Institute of Agricultural Research showed that neonicotinoids can be transmitted in a sugary liquid called "honeydew" that is excreted by certain insects like aphids, mealybugs and whiteflies. The toxin is ingested by other bugs that eat the honeydew like hoverflies or parasitoid wasps.

"We've known that neonicotinoids can be transmitted through nectar and pollen and can harm pollinators that way - directly from the plants," Frank said. "We've known that if herbivores feed on the plants and predators eat those herbivores, that they could be harmed because the neonicotinoids accumulate in the herbivores' bodies. This was a new revelation that it could be transmitted through the herbivore to the environment as a carbohydrate that a lot of animals feed on."

The authors said this raises the potential for additional off-target effects to other organisms as the toxin is spread by organisms that are not killed as they ingest it.

"This adds one more example of how the material can move in a three-part food chain from the plant to an herbivore to a predator," Frank said. "That's been documented now a couple of times. Our concern is that if it can do that, it seems evident that it could spread much wider throughout the entire food web because insect populations are so diverse and abundant on plants."

Frank said their concern goes beyond insects. If ingested by organisms that are not killed directly, those organisms could pass the toxin on to insects, birds, amphibians or others.

"Insects are food for thousands of different vertebrates - everything from birds to mice, lizards and frogs, and fish," Frank said. "All of those things eat insects. As the environment fills with contaminated insects, other organisms could be eating them. Even though the neonicotinoids have relatively low mammalian toxicity, which makes them safer for applicators, there is still risk of some toxicity, and there could be toxicity for other vertebrates."

The authors said one potential way to curb their use is to refrain from using them preventively as seed coatings in crop fields, where they have been shown to have limited benefit. One study found they benefit just 5 percent of crop fields when applied preventively to seeds.

"We're putting these materials into the environment even though, in some cases, there's no tangible benefit to them," Frank said. "It seems like their use could be reined in substantially without hurting farmers or the economy."

More research is needed, Frank said, to understand the full effect on food webs and the environment.

"The concern is for biodiversity generally, where we don't know how far through the food web these materials travel, and to what consequence," Frank said. "We’re seeing biodiversity of insects and other things decline around the world. There's a multitude of factors contributing to this that we don’t know the extent of, but this could be playing a role. And the other concern is general environmental contamination."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has prioritized finding effective treatment of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), one of the most common bacterial pathogens and the single most deadly drug-resistant bacteria in the United States. Now, a new study led by Dartmouth Engineering faculty shows promise for an engineered lysin-based antibacterial agent that may enable safe, repeated dosing to treat life-threatening infections by MRSA and other types of S. aureus.

In recent years, lysins--enzymes naturally produced by microbes and associated viruses--have shown potential to treat S. aureus, which can rapidly acquire resistance to other types of antibiotic drugs.

"Lysins are one of the most promising next-generation antibiotics. They kill drug-sensitive and drug-resistant bacteria with equal efficacy, they can potentially suppress new resistance phenotypes, and they also have this laser-like precision," said Karl Griswold, corresponding author and associate professor of engineering at Dartmouth.

While there is promise in lysins, development has been slowed due to concerns that they prompt humans' immune systems to develop antidrug antibodies, which can have negative side effects including life-threatening hypersensitivity reactions.

That's why the Dartmouth Engineering team--which also included researchers in Dartmouth's computer science department, The Lundquist Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Lyticon, and Stealth Biologics--engineered and patented F12, a new lysin-based antibacterial agent. F12 is essentially able to hide from the human immune system (due to T cell epitope deletion), and therefore does not cause the same negative side effects as unmodified, natural lysins.

F12 is the first lysin-based treatment with the potential to be used multiple times on a single patient, making it ideal to treat particularly persistent drug-resistant and drug-sensitive infections. Preclinical studies showed the efficacy of F12 does not diminish with repeated doses, while two other anti-MRSA lysin treatments currently in clinical trials are only designed to be used a single time.

"We have engineered this super potent, super effective anti-MRSA biotherapeutic, and we've done it in a way that renders it compatible with and largely invisible to the human immune system. By making it a safer drug, we've enabled the possibility of dosing multiple times in order to treat even the most highly refractory infections," said Griswold.

The team's paper, "Globally deimmunized lysostaphin evades human immune surveillance and enables highly efficacious repeat dosing," was published earlier today by Science Advances. The work was the result of two grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) totaling $1.7 million.

The paper details the treatment's positive results in rabbits, mice with partially-humanized immune systems, and studies with extracted human immune cells. Griswold believes the antibacterial agent could be ready for human clinical trials as soon as 2023.

"This is the first report of a translation-ready deimmunized lysin, and F12 has serious, bonafide clinical potential," said Griswold.

Further studies of F12 will examine synergy with standard-of-care antibacterial chemotherapies; preliminary results suggest the combinations are extremely potent and suppress drug-resistance phenotypes.

Bacterial speck disease, which reduces both fruit yield and quality, has been a growing problem in tomatoes over the last five years. Because the culpable bacterium, Pseudomonas syringae, prefers a cool and wet climate, crops in places such as New York State have been particularly susceptible.

Recent research at the Boyce Thompson Institute headed by postgraduates Carolina Mazo-Molina and Samantha Mainiero and overseen by faculty member Greg Martin may change this. Published in the August issue of The Plant Journal, their work has uncovered the first known gene to impart resistance to a particular strain, called "race 1", of the bacterium causing speck disease.

Another resistance gene, Pto, which provides resistance to race 0 strains of Pseudomonas syringae, has been used for over 25 years. However, crops remain vulnerable to the increasingly common race 1 strain, resulting in significant losses for growers.

With the discovery of this new gene, which the researchers have dubbed Pseudomonas tomato race 1 (Ptr1), damage caused by bacterial speck disease may soon become a thing of the past.

"We are working with plant breeders now to introduce the Ptr1 gene into tomato varieties that already have Pto," explains Martin, who is also a professor at Cornell University's School of Integrative Plant Science. "If you do that, then you will have resistance to all known bacteria that cause speck disease."

Natural Selection and Serendipity

The project started in 2015, after a chance outbreak of bacterial speck disease at one of Cornell's research farms, where BTI faculty member Jim Giovannoni was researching tomato fruit quality. Giovannoni is also a USDA scientist and an Adjunct Professor in Cornell's School of Integrative Plant Science.

"Speck disease wiped out their entire trial except for two plants," explains Martin. "Both of those plants turned out to have the Ptr1 resistance gene. This was a remarkable coincidence of natural selection and serendipity."

The two plants that survived both contained a gene derived from Solanum lycopersicoides, a wild relative of the cultivated tomato. By collecting seeds of the plants and studying their inheritance patterns, the team determined that a single region on one chromosome is responsible for conferring resistance, work that was published in Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions in 2019. In this most recent paper, they have identified a specific gene in this region that confers race 1 resistance, the Ptr1 gene.

Mazo-Molina described the thrill of identifying the gene. "When we found Ptr1, I would always say it 'might be the gene' or 'could be the gene,'" she explains. "But at some point, I was able to tell myself, 'This is the gene. You don't have to doubt it.'"

Ptr1 codes for a protein that indirectly detects the presence of a pathogenic protein called AvrRpt2. Both apple and the popular model plant Arabidopsis have genes that encode proteins that also recognize the same bacterial protein.

"The three proteins are completely different," says Martin. "There's no similarity at all. It looks like an example of convergent evolution, independent solutions in different plants to the same problem."

"Because detection of AvrRpt2 evolved multiple times across evolutionary history, the AvrRpt2 protein likely plays a key role in the pathogen's ability to infect plants", Martin says.

Next Steps

Now that the gene has been identified, the team is focused on developing tomato varieties that carry the Ptr1 gene. "The wild species in which Ptr1 is naturally found is really difficult to cross with cultivated tomatoes," explains Mainiero. "We can't just use traditional breeding methods."

Thankfully, there may be another way.

"A defective form of the gene is present in many tomato varieties already," says Martin, "with natural mutations having made it nonfunctional. There is a new type of gene editing technology called CRISPR Prime Editing that might allow us to go in and repair this defective gene."

Mainiero plans to work on the CRISPR Prime Editing project, and Mazo-Molina will focus on understanding the molecular mechanism of action underlying Ptr1.

Martin emphasizes that the collaboration between the Mainiero and Mazo-Molina was key to the project's success. "It is a great example of a collaboration within a lab between two different lab members," he says. "They worked seamlessly as a team."