Tech

Two in three hospitalized seniors are prescribed drugs that should be avoided by older adults, increasing the risk of injury and adverse drug reactions. Improving hospital prescribing practices can reduce the frequency of inappropriate medications and resulting harm, according to a new study led by McGill University researchers.

Potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs) are drugs that should be avoided by seniors because the risk of harm or injury outweighs the expected benefit, particularly when safer or more effective alternatives are available for the same condition. A new study published in Journal of the American Geriatrics Society is the first to examine the impact of these medications as a result of decisions made by care teams during hospital stays.

As patients recover, they are especially vulnerable in the short-term period after discharge, when the associated risks and adverse reactions can result in emergency department visits, rehospitalization, and even death within 30 days.

Navigating the risks and benefits of medications

To estimate the number of PIMs prescribed to patients, the researchers analyzed data from hospital admissions records, provincial health databases, and filled prescriptions in Quebec between October 2014 and November 2016.

The results they found were surprising. "The risks associated with some of these drugs are well-known to clinicians, yet they are still commonly prescribed," says lead author Daniala Weir, a former doctoral trainee under the supervision of Robyn Tamblyn in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. "Benzodiazepines, for example, are typically used to treat anxiety and insomnia in adults, but are known to increase the risk of falls for seniors."

Clinicians may judge that the benefit of a PIM outweighs the harm for their patient. "This could be true in specific situations; however, on the whole, these medications still tend to cause more harm than good for the average older adult," says Weir.

The researchers conclude that these findings demonstrate a need not only for further research into the risks associated with continuing PIMs at hospital discharge, but also for better guidance to improve prescribing practices in hospitals for older adults.

" Dr.Weir has identified important and preventable risk factors for avoidable harm in hospitalized seniors. With the introduction of computerized discharge prescriptions, there can be an automated review and alerts for potentially inappropriate medications; interventions that have proven to be effective in reducing PIMs in other jurisdictions," says Professor Tamblyn.

TROY, N.Y. -- If builders could incorporate solar harvesting into the siding of a building, the amount of energy from the grid that a structure would need may significantly decrease.

In research published recently in Renewable Energy, a team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, led by Diana-Andra Borca-Tasciuc, a professor of mechanical, aerospace, and nuclear engineering, demonstrated the potential of wedge-shaped luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs). These efficient modular solar units could easily be hung on the side of a building.

The LSCs considered in this study are made of transparent plastic with a film of photoluminescent particles on the back, similar to those used in LEDS. Solar cells mounted on the larger edge of the LSC convert energy captured from the sun into electric power. The way these devices capture and concentrate sunlight enhances the power that is produced by each unit of surface area within a solar cell.

Before now, this unique shape and construction had only shown promise in theory. In this research, the team took that a step further and tested how these LSCs could function within the lab. The researchers also used light data from the field to help predict annual energy production if the LSCs were to be hung on walls. Based on data from Albany, New York, and Phoenix, Arizona, the annual energy production predicted for these devices was up to 40% more than the annual energy produced by solar panels, when both are installed vertically.

"While this technology is not meant to replace solar panels, it expands our capacity to efficiently harvest solar energy in the built environment," Borca-Tasciuc said. "It works well for vertical wall applications where a solar panel does not perform as well."

"As the world transitions toward carbon neutrality, using vertical surfaces effectively for solar power harvesting will be a necessity for the solar industry," said Duncan Smith, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering at Rensselaer. "Particularly in urban settings, the roof area of taller buildings is usually dedicated to HVAC equipment and cannot be used for solar panel installations. In these same buildings, however, there is extra room on the walls."

The team is now looking to optimize the shape of the LSC and is exploring ways it could engineer surface properties to more efficiently capture and retain the light entering the device.

Borca-Tasciuc and Smith were joined in this research by Michael Hughes, the director of Faculty Development for the Education for Working Professionals Program at Rensselaer. The research team also worked with undergraduate students who were completing a capstone project through the Multidisciplinary Research Laboratory at Rensselaer, a space that provides real-world experiences for students in preparation for their future careers.

Microbes in "starter cultures" impart a distinctive tang and longer shelf life to food like sourdough bread, yogurt and kimchi through the process of fermentation. To get a better grasp of how microbes do this in fermented sausages, such as chorizo and pepperoni, researchers reporting in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry carefully show that these tiny organisms change the composition of fatty acids in these meats, contributing to many desirable traits.

Fatty acids and related compounds can influence the quality of fermented foods. For example, one species of bacteria in sourdough cultures produces a type of fatty acid that increases bread's resistance to mold. Scientists, however, haven't had a good handle on how specific cultures drive the formation of these and other similar compounds in meat, partially because some of the previous studies on meats have not included a bacteria-free control. To better understand the link between microbes and molecules, Nuanyi Liang and colleagues wanted to see how the production of fatty acids within sausages varied depending on the microbial culture used to ferment it.

To do so, they prepared the meat three ways. In one method, they included only the bacterium Latilactobacillus sakei; in another preparation, they used both L. sakei and Staphylococcus carnosus. Both of these samples were made in such a way as to prevent contamination from bacteria in the environment. They treated the third sample -- the control -- with an antibiotic solution to eliminate the microbes naturally living within the sausage. Over the course of 20 days, they checked the sausages and found a markedly different profile for microbe-free sausage compared to the sausage containing either of the two microbial cultures. For example, the researchers observed that linolenic acid, an unsaturated fatty acid, was accumulating in the microbe-free sausage but not in the cultured sausage. Differences emerged between the two sets of microbes as well, with the sausage containing the L. sakei culture alone, for example, producing higher levels of coriolic acid, which has antifungal activity and, at higher concentrations, also imparts bitter taste. A better understanding of the biochemistry by which microbes influence the quality of sausage and other fermented foods will aid the production of consistent, long-lasting and good-tasting products, the researchers say.

Computational modeling has provided new insights into the heart's vascular system, a complex and mechanically demanding system that remains poorly understood.
Researchers from the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin and Iowa State University used computational modeling techniques to enable accurate visualizations of valve behavior for the first time.

The research was featured in the most recent edition of the journal, PNAS, in a paper entitled: Thinner biological tissues induce leaflet flutter in aortic heart valve replacements.

Valvular heart disease is a growing public health concern due to the high prevalence of valve degeneration among aging populations.

"In the past, valve replacement meant undergoing open-chest surgery, a complex procedure and substantial recovery time," said Dr. Michael Sacks from the Oden Institute and the Cockrell School's Department of Biomedical Engineering who coauthored the study with fellow Oden Institute faculty member from Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, Dr. Thomas J.R. Hughes. The study's lead author was Emily L. Johnson from Iowa State University and included other Iowa State colleagues including Oden Institute alumnus, Dr. Ming-Chen Hsu.

Thankfully, many patients with severely diseased aortic valves that need to be replaced can now opt for catheter-based bioprosthetic valve deployment - a procedure that is minimally invasive and eliminates much of the risk associated with previous surgical valve replacement surgeries.

With the introduction of transcutaneous (through the skin) aortic valve replacements, recovery times are greatly reduced. All such valves are made from xenograft biomaterials, and while effective for this application, have limited durability.

Furthermore, the transcutaneous replacement valve designs incorporate thinner, more flexible xenograft biomaterials in order to streamline safer deployment through catheters.

Heart valves are highly complex and function in one of the most mechanically demanding environments in the body. They also remain poorly understood, not surprising given their complex shape and position tucked away inside the heart. So while it stands to reason that developing bioprosthetics that look, feel and function more closely to the native heart valves they replace was a good idea, this new study suggests the introduction of thinner leaflets may produce unintended negative effects.

Computational modeling has enabled accurate visualizations of valve behavior for the first time. And, the study highlights the potentially serious impact of introducing thinner, more flexible tissues into the cardiac system.

Durability is a key factor and the researchers found thinner valve leaflets 'flutter' like a flag in order to open and close the valve through millions of cycles that allow for natural blood circulation.

"Valvular designs that are too thin flutter and this compromises their durability and in turn can induce blood cell damage," said Dr. Thomas J.R. Hughes.

"All these fluttering effects are cumulative, and may limit the bioprosthetic heart valve's durability," added Dr. Sacks.

"The ability to look at this phenomenon in-silico (on a computer) for the first time allows us to determine how the leaflets undergo fatigue and assess what's needed to improve their durability - new design, new materials, or both."

While the study builds upon decades of research conducted by researchers from the Oden Institute and Iowa State University, it could not have been made possible without access to the supercomputing power made available by the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at UT Austin. All simulations were generated on TACC's 'Stampede' system.

"It cannot be understated just how important the role of facilities like TACC have played in the ever-improving accuracy of computational engineering and science simulations," said Dr. Thomas Hughes.

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) brought the atomic scale imaging resolution of scanning tunnelling microscopy, a technique that won the Nobel Prize in Physics, to non-conducting surfaces. However, imitations remain when trying to use the technique at its most sensitive with photosensitive samples in liquids. Now researchers at Kanazawa University show how to overcome these constraints, by driving a cantilever several micrometres in size at megahertz frequencies with stability and control in liquid and without potentially exposing the sample to light.

Atomic force microscopes monitor the forces at play between a surface and a tip attached to a cantilever to extract information about the surface topography and composition. By oscillating the cantilever over the surface instead of dragging it the strength of interactions with the cantilever and tip can be inferred from changes in the oscillation amplitude or resonant frequency without damaging the surface.

Usually a piezo actuator generates an acoustic wave that drives the cantilever to oscillate at its resonance frequency. However, this approach is prone to spurious contributions to the resonance from the components of the device linking the actuator to the cantilever. The impact of these effects is greater for the most sensitive cantilevers, which are small and have high megahertz resonance frequencies. Alternatives are photothermal, electrostatic or electrostrictive cantilever excitation, but if the material under study is photosensitive or kept in an electrochemically active liquid, these too have drawbacks. Instead Takeshi Fukuma and colleagues at Kanazawa University followed up with a magnetic excitation approach.

They investigated how to implement their approach with three makes of cantilever, which they customized by adding a magnetic bead decorated with a carbon nanoscale tip. They then applied an alternating magnetic field by feeding an a.c. current into a tiny solenoid made from a 0.2 mm diameter wire wound around a 3 mm diameter cylinder.

Although other groups have previously demonstrated dynamic AFM driven by magnetic excitation, the approach once again runs into problems for small cantilevers. The feedback loop to handle the circuit latency and compensate for the frequency-dependent impedance so that the device covers a wide frequency bandwidth does not work so well at high frequencies. Instead the researchers designed an open loop differentiation circuit that feeds in a complex coil voltage proportional to the frequency and input voltage.

To demonstrate the applicability of their approach they measured cantilever resonance curves and the atomic scale topography of a mica surface in phosphate buffered saline solution with various customized cantilevers including those with a megahertz-order resonance frequency.

[Background]

Atomic force microscopy

The first image using AFM was reported by Gerd Binnig, Calvin Quate and Christoph Gerber in 1986, five years after the scanning tunnelling microscope. The technique is capable of atomic scale resolution and generates images by measuring the sum strength of a number of forces at play between tip and sample, including van der Waals and electrostatic.

AFM uses a cantilever with a tiny tip attached at the end. For static AFM the tip is dragged over the surface and the cantilever deflection is measured or, the cantilever height is adjusted to maintain a constant deflection. In dynamic AFM, where the cantilever oscillates at its resonance frequency and taps the surface with the tip, contact between the tip and surface is causing less damage to the sample. It is capable of high sensitivity imaging without making contact with the surface at all in non-contact mode, by monitoring the impact of interactions with the surface on the amplitude and frequency of the cantilever oscillations.

Besides piezo actuated and photothermal cantilever excitation electrostatic and electrostrictive interactions can be used by applying a bias voltage between tip and surface or both sides of a cantilever. However, in many of the liquids used to house samples, this can cause uncontrolled chemical reactions.

Closed loop versus open loop with differentiation circuits

When using magnetic fields to excite oscillations in the cantilever, the circuit supplying current to the solenoid coil needs to maintain a constant current amplitude. However, the impedance of the circuit increases with frequency, so that a higher voltage signal is needed to maintain a constant current amplitude. This is usually achieved with a feedback loop, which converts the coil current to a voltage and compares it with the input voltage. However, this feedback loop becomes unstable at megahertz frequencies.

In the open-loop circuit used instead, the input voltage is fed into a differentiation circuit that returns a complex coil voltage that is proportional to the input voltage and the frequency (Vcoil = iωVin, where Vcoil is the coil voltage, Vin is the input voltage and ω is the frequency.) This way the coil voltage automatically scales with the frequency, compensating for the frequency-dependent impedance changes.

A team of chemists from HSE University and the Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry used molecular modelling to find out that two medications that have been known for a long time can be used to fight SARS-CoV-2. These are disulfiram, which is used to treat alcoholism, and neratinib, an experimental drug being used to treat breast cancer. The paper about the discovery has been available online since August 4, 2020, in the 4th issue of Mendeleev Communications journal.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095994362030170X

The structural elements of the virus that are less subject to mutation during its evolution should be chosen as a target for the potential treatment. Otherwise, a medication effective against one strain would no longer be effective against another. The best candidates for this are conservative proteins, such as the SARS-CoV-2 virus main protease M pro. In addition to being resistant to mutations, M pro plays a major role in coronavirus replication, which means that its inhibition (blocking its function) is able to slow down or even completely stop its reproduction inside the body.

Usually, the process of docking, as with a port dock and a ship entering it, is used for molecular modelling in simple cases. Two molecules participate in docking. One is called a 'ligand' (here, it is a medicine), and the other one is 'receptor' (or active site) of the target protein, such as Mpro, which can be used to 'dock'. An effective drug docks with the active site, by covalent links, which makes the enzyme dysfunctional or destroys it. But classical docking does not work in SARS-CoV-2.

To overcome this problem, chemists from HSE University and the Zelinsky Institute decided to use 'on-top docking', which they came up with shortly before the pandemic.

'We decided not to focus on the previously described active site, but to investigate the whole surface of M pro protein with many medications, hoping that the big calculation powers would return useful "dockings",' - says Igor Svitanko https://www.hse.ru/en/org/persons/219432788 the author of the article, Professor at the HSE Joint Department of Organic Chemistry with the RAS Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry.

The researchers used the spatial model of SARS-CoV-2 Mpro created in January 2020 from PDB database (ID 6LU7). The potential drugs were taken from the database of medications approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The research team's own algorithms were used for modelling.

The modelling data demonstrated that sulphur-containing drugs show unusually high ligand efficiency at the active centre of SARS-CoV-2 main protease Mpro, but only disulfiram 4 retains stable interactions.

Today, it is most commonly used for treating alcoholism. Disulfiram fights SARS-CoV-2 in two ways. First, as previously demonstrated in vitro with SARS and MERS coronaviruses, it is a covalent inhibitor. In addition, it fights COVID-19 symptoms such as the significant decrease in reduced glutathione, which is an important antioxidant. This deficiency may lead to severe manifestations of the disease.

In addition to disulfiram, the Russian chemists were the first to predict the potential efficiency of neratinib, an irreversible tyrosine kinase inhibitor, against SARS-CoV-2. Just recently, in 2017, FDA approved neratinib as an adjuvant treatment of breast cancer.

Modelling has shown that both potential inhibitors of the main coronavirus protease (M pro) are, presumably, covalent. For example, disulfiram can probably block the M pro enzymatic activity by thiol-disulfide exchange reaction, while neratinib binding suggests the possibility of covalent interaction similarly to covalent peptide inhibitors.

The tests that were performed on July 27, 2020 at Reaction Biology Corp., a certified laboratory in the U.S., demonstrated that disulfiram really inhibits M pro in 100 nm concentration, which confirmed the results of the modelling. Unfortunately, the second substance - neratinib - demonstrated activity on M pro, but it was insufficient for clinical use.

Meanwhile, the main achievement is the demonstration that the 'on-top docking' approach is working and returns quite realistic and controllable results. The team's plans for late 2020 and 2021 include molecular modelling of treatments for diseases that have demonstrated their harmfulness but have not yet spread over the world.

The heights of La Soufrière de Guadeloupe volcano can be hellish, sweltering at more than 48 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit) and swathed in billows of acidic gas. Researchers would like to monitor gas and steam eruptions at its summit, to learn more about the volcano's explosive potential, but conventional seismometers are destroyed quickly in the hostile environment.

An instrument called an optical seismometer appears to be up to the challenge, however. In the journal Seismological Research Letters, a team of scientists describes how they developed and installed an optical seismometer just ten meters away from a spewing fumarole (a gas and steam vent) at the Caribbean volcano's summit.

The motion of the optical seismometer (and therefore of the ground) is estimated using an interference phenomenon, which occurs when an infrared laser beam is reflected by the mirrored surface of the seismometer mobile mass. This laser beam is carried between the seismometer at the summit and a remote and safe optoelectronic station through a long fiber optic cable, climbing the volcano's slope. The station calculates the ground displacement and sends the records in real-time to the French Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Guadeloupe.

The seismometer operates purely mechanically, and requires no electronics or power supply that would be vulnerable to the summit conditions, said Romain Feron, the paper's lead author from the ESEO Group and the LAUM laboratory at the Université du Mans. The instrument is encased in Teflon to protect it from the sulfuric gases released by the fumarole.

"It is, to our knowledge, the first high-resolution optical seismometer ever installed on an active volcano or other hazardous zone," Feron and colleagues write in SRL.

The success of the seismometer, after ten years of development, suggests that it could be a good seismic solution in other challenging environments, they noted, including oil and gas production fields, nuclear power plants and high-temperature geothermal reservoirs.

Now in operation on the volcano for nine months, the instrument is collecting data that will be combined with other observations from the Guadeloupe observatory to better monitor La Soufrière. The volcano's last significant eruption of gas and steam in 1976 caused evacuations in Basse Terre, Guadeloupe's capital city. Since 2018, the volcano's dome and summit fumaroles have become increasingly active.

Seismic monitoring at volcanoes can help researchers understand the movement and pressurization of underground fluids. The new optical seismometer could provide better locations for microseismic events under the dome, and offers a more detailed glimpse of "the fumarole signature, which helps to constrain the geometry and activity of the plumbing system of the dome," Feron said.

The instrument has recorded seismic waves from a regional earthquake, an earthquake in Chile, and small seismic events within the volcano less than 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles) below the summit, the researchers reported.

Feron and colleagues made an arduous climb to La Soufrière's 1,467-meter (4,813-foot) summit in September 2019 to install the seismometer, using gas masks to protect themselves from the toxic gases spewing from active fumaroles. In addition to the gases and high temperatures, the team needed to keep a close eye on the weather during the installation, Feron said.

"It could be beautiful at the bottom of the volcano, but hellish at the top at the same time," he recalled. "It becomes very risky to climb the steep and slippery slopes of the volcano with heavy equipment on the back, not to mention lightning."

Scientists have created a rapid and affordable test for breast cancer that is designed for use in developing regions, where patients often face delayed diagnoses that worsen their outcomes. The diagnostic showed an initial accuracy of 100% when tested in a small group of 68 patients, and could yield repeated results in less than 1 hour. Although more testing with large patient groups is necessary, the technique's speed and ease-of-use could help clinicians in resource-limited settings overcome barriers to rapid cancer diagnosis. Spotting cancers early on is challenging enough in developed countries, but it can be even more difficult in low- and middle-income countries, where more than two thirds of deaths from cancer occur. Due to the lack of medical infrastructure and healthcare specialists, diagnoses can be delayed for months and often come only after a patient has developed advanced disease. To address the need for new cancer tests, Jouha Min and colleagues harnessed image cytometry, a technique that images and analyzes individual cells for malignancy. They developed a compact and automated cytometry test named CytoPAN that studies breast cells gathered with fine-needle aspiration, a less invasive alternative to standard biopsies. In a validation study in South Korea, CytoPAN could be applied to 63 of 68 patients with breast cancer and spotted cancers with an accuracy of 100%, using as few as 50 cells per specimen. The test also spotted ER/PR and HER2, key cancer biomarkers, with an accuracy of 93% and 96%, respectively. The method offers several features for usability and affordability: it yields results quickly, integrates a simplified workflow that requires minimal training, and uses test kits with an estimated cost of only $5, more than five times cheaper than current diagnostics. The authors say future trials should test CytoPAN with a wider range of biomarkers and in other regions such as sub-Saharan Africa, where women with breast cancer face additional risks such as HIV infection.

Usher and Ng, journalism professors at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, identified nine clusters of journalists or “communities of practice” in their study, published online by the journal Social Media and Society.

Their “elite/legacy” cluster was the largest, including about 30% of the journalists covered in the study, with The Washington Post, NBC News, NPR and The New York Times among the major newsrooms represented.

A congressional journalism cluster included another 20%. The other clusters centered around CNN, television producers, local political news, regulatory journalists, foreign affairs, long-form/enterprise reporting and social issues.

In leading the study, Usher said she wanted to “describe the contours of what political journalism in Washington looks like and of the process of making news unfold.” Another goal was to better understand how journalists connect to and learn from each other and establish conventional knowledge.

Twitter seemed an ideal way to do that, given its unique role among journalists as a virtual water cooler, Usher said. “Most of the time, what happens on Twitter does not reflect the real world. But in the case of political journalism and political elites, generally speaking, what happens on Twitter is reality.” It’s an online reflection of their offline lives and work, she said, and plays a significant role in agenda-setting.

“So this was a particularly potent way of looking, at scale, at how ideas are exchanged, how people are making sense of things,” Usher said.

The “at scale” part is where Ng comes in. Usher’s research has focused more on qualitative research, primarily about elite U.S. newsrooms and how new technology impacts how journalists work. Ng, however, specializes in big data and computational social science. She saw particular power in applying those tools to journalists’ interactions on Twitter.

“With more than 2,000 journalists in this study, we could not observe each of them individually in real life. So we used their digital life as a way to understand how they interact with their peers,” Ng said.

The researchers started with a list of all credentialed congressional correspondents as found in the Congressional Directory, then identified those with active Twitter accounts.

Ng collected all the tweets, retweets and replies posted on most of those accounts over two months in early 2018, using Twitter’s application-programming interface. She winnowed those further to only those sent between or referencing other Beltway journalists.

The final data set consisted of 133,529 Twitter posts from 2,015 journalists, about one-third of all credentialed congressional correspondents.

Ng applied a “community detection” algorithm to determine where there might be clusters of journalists, based on their Twitter interactions. Usher labeled those clusters based on biographical and employment data, as well as an analysis of the words used in the tweets.

Several things stood out for Usher in examining these specific clusters. The large elite/legacy cluster, with some of the most influential news media prominently represented, was also among the most insular, she noted. More than 68% of the cluster members’ Twitter interactions with other journalists were within the group.

“That also may mean they’re not engaging, in the same kind of way, with the people who are actually on the ground getting these sorts of congressional microscoops, they’re not engaging with the journalists who are the policy wonks,” Usher said.

“I was also really intrigued to see that there was a television producer cluster, where Fox was in the mix with ABC and CBS, which might explain why we tend to see a lot of the same faces on TV news programs.”

One cluster was labeled as CNN because more than half its members were CNN journalists and much of the conversation related to network stories and personalities, which Usher found problematic.

“CNN is telling a story about what is happening with CNN, and that is worrisome. Maybe that’s an organizational branding strategy, but I think it potentially has deleterious effects for public discourse,” she said.

In the opposite direction, she was encouraged to see a space in the long-form/enterprise cluster where journalists doing the “deep, thoughtful dives” could exchange ideas.

Overall, however, Usher thinks their findings add to concerns about journalists’ Twitter use. “Political journalists in D.C. are people who use Twitter all day. And so the question is what does that do to how they think about the world. And generally, from this paper and a previous one I did on gender and Beltway journalism, it seems to me that it can make things worse.”

IKBFU Institute of Living Systems biology scientists study protective mechanisms of the Curonian Spit wild plants. The scientists are particularly interested in a beach pea plant (Lathyrus maritimus Bigel). This plant is constantly affected by ultraviolet rays, high humidity, low temperature, high salinity in the water, and many other factors. The plant can be viewed as a fine example of ecological adaptation, but the mechanism of the adaptation has not been thoroughly studied yet.  The beach pea grows closer to the seaside on Curonian Spit foredunes' leeward side. The plant blooms in June and August, yields in August and September. It is sometimes used as cattle fodder. Unlike other legumes, it is not cultivated, partly due to a lack of study of its nutritional and antioxidant value and the possible presence of toxins. However, according to employees of the Laboratory of Natural Antioxidants of the Institute of Living Systems, the plant, due to its antioxidant properties, is promising for use in biotechnology and agriculture.

It is worth noting that the research was carried out with wild plants directly, away from the comfort of a laboratory.

Pavel Maslennikov, Associate Professor at the IKBFU Institute of Living Systems:

"Wild plants that have not been subjected to directed selection may differ significantly from the model ones in terms of the constitutive or stress-induced level of known adaptive reactions. Such studies of wild species allow us to expand our knowledge of the general laws of protective response under stress conditions".

The research of the scientists is based on the study of the antioxidant system of plant protection, in particular - low-molecular antioxidants, which are extremely diverse and belong to different classes of chemical compounds.

Dr. Maslennikov also added:

&laquoOur work has studied the accumulation of ascorbic acid (AA) and its derivatives, as well as water-soluble antioxidants and antioxidant enzymes in the leaves of the coastal rank. The content of metals and active oxygen forms in the leaves of plants on the windward and leeward sides of the foredune was analyzed. Soil (temperature, humidity, TM) was analyzed, wind speed and air humidity were measured. Growing conditions of plants from the windward side of the foredune are less favorable than from the leeward side: constant mechanical influence of wind from the seaside, chloride salinization, lower temperatures, lower humidity of soil can cause oxidative stress in plants. Under these conditions, the accumulation of low-molecular antioxidants - ascorbic acid - significantly increases the adaptation of plants to adverse conditions on the windward side of the foredune».

The study of scientists also showed that the level of ascorbic acid derivatives to a large extent also prevailed in plants on the windward side of the foredune (seaside). Phenological phases of development in these plants came one or two weeks later than in plants on the leeward side.

The study results are important both for the development of biocoenosis conservation strategy and for the knowledge base about the nature of the protective response in wild plants and the limits of their survival under changing natural conditions.

HOUSTON - (Aug. 5, 2020) - Using data from NASA's InSight Lander on Mars, Rice University seismologists have made the first direct measurements of three subsurface boundaries from the crust to the core of the red planet.

"Ultimately it may help us understand planetary formation," said Alan Levander, co-author of a study available online this week in Geophysical Research Letters. While the thickness of Mars' crust and the depth of its core have been calculated with a number of models, Levander said the InSight data allowed for the first direct measurements, which can be used to check models and ultimately to improve them.

"In the absence of plate tectonics on Mars, its early history is mostly preserved compared with Earth," said study co-author Sizhuang Deng, a Rice graduate student. "The depth estimates of Martian seismic boundaries can provide indications to better understand its past as well as the formation and evolution of terrestrial planets in general."

Finding clues about Mars' interior and the processes that formed it are key goals for InSight, a robotic lander that touched down in November 2018. The probe's dome-shaped seismometer allows scientists to listen to faint rumblings inside the planet, in much the way that a doctor might listen to a patient's heartbeat with a stethoscope.

Seismometers measure vibrations from seismic waves. Like circular ripples that mark the spot where a pebble disturbed the surface of a pond, seismic waves flow through planets, marking the location and size of disturbances like meteor strikes or earthquakes, which are aptly called marsquakes on the red planet. InSight's seismometer recorded more than 170 of these from February to September 2019.

Seismic waves are also subtly altered as they pass through different kinds of rock. Seismologists have studied the patterns in seismographic recordings on Earth for more than a century and can use them to map the location of oil and gas deposits and much deeper strata.

"The traditional way to investigate structures beneath Earth is to analyze earthquake signals using dense networks of seismic stations," said Deng. "Mars is much less tectonically active, which means it will have far fewer marsquake events compared with Earth. Moreover, with only one seismic station on Mars, we cannot employ methods that rely on seismic networks."

Levander, Rice's Carey Croneis Professor of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, and Deng analyzed InSight's 2019 seismology data using a technique called ambient noise autocorrelation. "It uses continuous noise data recorded by the single seismic station on Mars to extract pronounced reflection signals from seismic boundaries," Deng said.

The first boundary Deng and Levander measured is the divide between Mars' crust and mantle almost 22 miles (35 kilometers) beneath the lander.

The second is a transition zone within the mantle where magnesium iron silicates undergo a geochemical change. Above the zone, the elements form a mineral called olivine, and beneath it, heat and pressure compress them into a new mineral called wadsleyite. Known as the olivine-wadsleyite transition, this zone was found 690-727 miles (1,110-1,170 kilometers) beneath InSight.

"The temperature at the olivine-wadsleyite transition is an important key to building thermal models of Mars," Deng said. "From the depth of the transition, we can easily calculate the pressure, and with that, we can derive the temperature."

The third boundary he and Levander measured is the border between Mars' mantle and its iron-rich core, which they found about 945-994 miles (1,520-1,600 kilometers) beneath the lander. Better understanding this boundary "can provide information about the planet's development from both a chemical and thermal point of view," Deng said.

A collision avoidance system, or pre-crash alert generated by a vehicle, can often be found as an optional safety feature in today's vehicles to help reduce possible accidents and save lives. However, these systems are not always tested in a real-world environment prior to the vehicle being owned and operated.

A team of engineers at the University of Missouri conducted open road testing of three collision avoidance systems and demonstrated that a drivers' visual behavior in response to an alert generated from a collision avoidance system can be divided into one of four different behavioral categories: active gaze, self-conscious gaze, attentive gaze and ignored gaze.

Active gaze: Driver takes immediate action in response to an alert.

Self-conscious gaze: Driver is already aware of the situation that triggers the alert and doesn't react.

Attentive gaze: Driver is aware of the alert but deems it's not serious, so the alert is ignored.

Ignored gaze: Driver doesn't respond because the alert is bothersome to the driver.

Jung Hyup Kim, an assistant professor in the College of Engineering and the study's author, said similar studies used driving simulators and closed-course tracks for testing, but this is one of the first studies to use open road, or real world, conditions. The study tracked a group of college-age male drivers as they tested each system on 9.3 miles of open roads that reflect the typical driving experience for their age group -- streets near the Mizzou campus, other surrounding city streets and highways.

"If you truly want to evaluate the effectiveness of this technology, you also have to understand how drivers will respond to alerts, because every auto company develops their own guidelines for generating an alert," said Kim, whose appointment is in the Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering Department. "Therefore, by better understanding a driver's visual behavior in response to an alert, this information could help auto companies develop more user-friendly systems and lead to less of a chance that a driver ignores or turns off a collision avoidance system."

Each participant was filmed responding to alerts by the collision avoidance system while driving. A combination of cameras was used -- a pair of specialized eye glasses worn by the driver to capture eye movement, a 360-degree camera mounted on the vehicle's roof and a camera pointed at the driver from the passenger side door to capture arm and leg movements. A GPS camera mounted on the windshield also logged the vehicle's speed and location.

Kim analyzed each video seven seconds before and after an alert occurred. He said a limitation of the study was the age group and demographics of the drivers, and future plans include incorporating more drivers of different ages and demographics.

"As time goes by, drivers get older, and their response times are likely to be slower and more delayed," Kim said. "Therefore, if we can collect data from maybe a thousand drivers and use a range of different ages and demographics, then that information might be beneficial for auto companies."

The conference paper, "The effects of collision avoidance warning systems on driver's visual behaviors," was presented at the 2020 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, held virtually this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Funding was provided by Missouri Employers Mutual. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funding agencies.

As climate change brings hotter weather to Southern California, coastal populations from San Diego to Santa Barbara may face an increased risk of contracting West Nile virus and other mosquito-borne diseases, suggests a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

West Nile virus is America's deadliest mosquito-borne disease and has been a threat to the Los Angeles metropolitan area since it arrived in 2003. The virus is harbored by mosquitos and birds and is most commonly spread to humans through the bite of an infected mosquito.

The study team analyzed data on nearly 2 million mosquitoes that had been captured and tested for West Nile in Los Angeles between 2006 and 2016. They then used machine learning to identify the landscape and climate conditions that influenced mosquito infection in different neighborhoods.

They found that infection among captured mosquitoes was strongly associated with the average temperature in the neighborhood.

"Our data revealed a sharp transition, where -- as temperatures shift between 70 to around 73 degrees Fahrenheit -- the likelihood of capturing infected mosquitoes in L.A. neighborhoods increases dramatically," said Nicholas Skaff, the lead author of the study and a former postdoctoral scholar in environmental health sciences at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health. "Above this range, conditions become consistently favorable for transmission, and below this range, conditions are consistently unfavorable."

The results, published today (Wednesday, Aug. 5) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, help explain why coastal L.A. communities -- where typical summer conditions hover right at the boundary between favorable and inhibitory temperatures --- seem to be protected some years, yet vulnerable in others.

With significant warming expected over the coming decades, a greater number of West Nile cases may be expected along the Southern California coast, said Justin Remais, associate professor of environmental health sciences at UC Berkeley.

"Coastal L.A. appears to be vulnerable to the expected warming of California's climate by mid-century, which will push coastal climates more consistently into the favorable zone," Remais said. "Inland L.A. may not be as susceptible to these shifts, as the climate is already favorable. Yet, as climate warming progresses towards the century's end, it is possible that temperatures become too hot in these areas."

The researchers emphasize that one or a few particularly hot days do not appear to increase transmission risk significantly. Rather, it is sustained warm temperatures over the course of weeks that give mosquitoes time to acquire the infection and pass it on to bird host species like the house finch.

"Our research suggests that, rather than focusing on daily weather reports, it's important to examine temperatures over the long haul," Skaff said. "If coastal Los Angeles experiences a month or two of warm temperatures during the summer or early fall, it's probably a good time to be extra careful to avoid mosquito bites. Inland parts of L.A. are almost always sufficiently hot during the summer, so other factors end up determining whether intense transmission occurs there."

And while the data indicate that temperature plays a very important role, the researchers emphasize that many factors ultimately determine whether a West Nile outbreak will occur.

"You can think of the favorable temperature range we identified as a prerequisite -- if other things don't go right for the vector or the virus, transmission may still not occur, even when temperatures are favorable," Skaff said. "For example, if most of the susceptible birds in the region were infected during the previous year or two because a large outbreak occurred, herd immunity will be high, and the risk to people will be limited."

"Predicting the transmission of infectious diseases carried by animal hosts and vectors represents a complex puzzle," added Remais, "and machine learning can pick up patterns in vast epidemiological and ecological datasets that help us understand why certain people and neighborhoods are at the highest risk, as well as what the future holds."

COLUMBUS, Ohio - The findings of a new study led by researchers at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC - James) could refine an important set of prognostic and treatment recommendations for younger adult patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML.

The retrospective study evaluated the molecular characteristics and outcomes of 863 patients with AML who were treated according to 2017 European LeukemiaNet (ELN) recommendations. The patients were under age 60 with a median age 45 years.

ELN recommendations are internationally used for diagnosing and managing people with AML and other leukemias. AML is a neoplastic disease of the blood that affects about 19,900 Americans and kills nearly 11,200 of them yearly, according to the American Cancer Society. Only 35-40% of AML patients under age 60 achieve long-term survival, the researchers note.

The study, published in the journal Leukemia, found that:

9% of favorable-risk and 53% of intermediate-risk patients should be reclassified as adverse risk;

4% of favorable-risk and 9% of adverse-risk patients should be reclassified as intermediate risk.

"If verified, our findings may refine the ELN risk stratification of younger acute myeloid leukemia patients, which could improve patients' treatment choices and outcomes," says first author Ann-Kathrin Eisfeld, MD, an investigator in the OSUCCC - James Leukemia Research Program.

During this study, Eisfeld and her colleagues detected 2,354 mutations, an average of three per patient.

The researchers determined the frequency of mutations additional to those used to define current ELN risk-groups, and mutations in several "functional group" categories: RAS-pathway mutations, kinase and methylation-related mutations, and mutations in genes encoding for spliceosomes, transcription factors and tumor suppressors.

They compared the frequencies of the mutations within each ELN risk group - favorable, intermediate and high - to learn which were associated with better or worse outcomes and might therefore help refine the 2017 ELN classification.

Key findings include:

BCOR- or SETBP1-mutated favorable-risk patients with non-core-binding-factor AML and IDH-mutated adverse-risk patients had intermediate-risk outcomes.

Outcomes of NPM1/WT1 co-mutated patients and those of ZRSR2-mutated patients resembled outcome of adverse-risk patients.

FLT3-ITDhigh allelic ratio conferred adverse risk, rather than intermediate risk, regardless of NPM1 mutation status.

DNMT3A mutations signaled very poor survival.

WINSTON-SALEM, NC -- Aug. 6, 2020 -- Scientists at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) have biofabricated human colorectal cancer miniature organs, called organoids, to better understand how a tumor grows in its natural microenvironment and its response to therapies. This new study is the first to replicate observations of native tumor tissue in a laboratory model and validate it in the context of the whole-body physiology.

Current strategies to understand tumor progression studies are centered on the tumor cells in isolation, but do not capture the interactions between a tumor and its surrounding microenvironment. This leads to inaccuracies in predicting tumor progression and chemotherapy response.

"Tumors are products of their environment. They send signals that can have significant effects on local tissue, and they receive signals from nearby cells and tissues that can alter their progression," said Shay Soker, PhD, senior author of a new study published in the journal Scientific Reports.

New technologies that better show the specific properties of a tumor will have a significant effect on patient death rates and lead to development of new treatments which target the cancer, sparing healthy tissue from the side effects of chemotherapy treatments.

The WFIRM team previously developed a 3D organoid model of the colon, complete with its unique micro-architecture, and used it to analyze colorectal cancer biopsies to identify significant changes in the miroenvironment.

The team analyzed the tumor microenvironment and corresponding "finger print" and found that samples with orderly extracellular matrix - the "glue" that holds cells together - maintained these structures. In contrast, disordered extracellular matrix allowed for a more primitive "finger print." Furthermore, these results were replicated in the context of whole-body physiology, to show for the first time that a pre-structured tumor microenvironment maintains its architecture in the laboratory. Non-traditional treatments that target the extracellular matrix might provide valuable avenues for developing new treatments or therapies that synergize with existing chemotherapeutic or radiation technologies.

By controlling cancer cell responsiveness through changes to the tumor microenvironment, lower doses of chemotherapy or radiation could become effective, thereby reducing or eliminating many of the undesirable side effects of traditional cancer therapies, as well as yielding lower tumor resistance.

"The 3D bioengineered colon cancer constructs are a promising model for drug development and screening because they can reproduce human physiology at a high level," said Anthony Atala, MD, director of WFIRM.