Tech

Researchers have developed a visualization method that will determine the distribution of components in battery electrodes using atomic force microscopy. The method provides insights into the optimal conditions of composite electrodes and takes us one step closer to being able to manufacture next-generation all-solid-state batteries.

Lithium-ion batteries are widely used in smart devices and vehicles. However, their flammability makes them a safety concern, arising from potential leakage of liquid electrolytes.

All-solid-state lithium ion batteries have emerged as an alternative because of their better safety and wider electrochemical stability. Despite their advantages, all-solid-state lithium ion batteries still have drawbacks such as limited ion conductivity, insufficient contact areas, and high interfacial resistance between the electrode and solid electrolyte.

To solve these issues, studies have been conducted on composite electrodes in which lithium ion conducting additives are dispersed as a medium to provide ion conductive paths at the interface and increase the overall ionic conductivity.

It is very important to identify the shape and distribution of the components used in active materials, ion conductors, binders, and conductive additives on a microscopic scale for significantly improving the battery operation performance.

The developed method is able to distinguish regions of each component based on detected signal sensitivity, by using various modes of atomic force microscopy on a multiscale basis, including electrochemical strain microscopy and lateral force microscopy.

For this research project, both conventional electrodes and composite electrodes were tested, and the results were compared. Individual regions were distinguished and nanoscale correlation between ion reactivity distribution and friction force distribution within a single region was determined to examine the effect of the distribution of binder on the electrochemical strain.

The research team explored the electrochemical strain microscopy amplitude/phase and lateral force microscopy friction force dependence on the AC drive voltage and the tip loading force, and used their sensitivities as markers for each component in the composite anode.

This method allows for direct multiscale observation of the composite electrode in ambient condition, distinguishing various components and measuring their properties simultaneously.

Lead author Dr. Hongjun Kim said, "It is easy to prepare the test sample for observation while providing much higher spatial resolution and intensity resolution for detected signals." He added, "The method also has the advantage of providing 3D surface morphology information for the observed specimens."

Professor Seungbum Hong from the Department of Material Sciences and Engineering said, "This analytical technique using atomic force microscopy will be useful for quantitatively understanding what role each component of a composite material plays in the final properties."

"Our method not only will suggest the new direction for next-generation all-solid-state battery design on a multiscale basis but also lay the groundwork for innovation in the manufacturing process of other electrochemical materials."

Targeted content to reduce stress, anxiety during pandemic

Improvement similar to traditional psychotherapy

Anxiety and depression may have tripled during coronavirus

Quick and easy apps with activities that fit into busy lives

10 tips for good mental health now

CHICAGO --- Terrified you will contract COVID-19? Feeling down, lonely and wondering when you'll be able to safely see your friends in person again?

A new Northwestern Medicine collection of mobile apps called IntelliCare -- free for downloading in the Apple and Android stores - significantly reduces anxiety and depression, reports a new study to be published May 20 in JAMA Psychiatry.

The apps also have special content to help people reduce the stress and anxiety of dealing with the pandemic.

"These apps offer remote treatment to avoid depression and anxiety during these socially distancing times," said senior study author David Mohr, director of the Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies and professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "They're designed to fit easily into people's lives and to help the millions of people who want support but can't get to a therapist's office."

Prior to the pandemic, more than 20 percent of Americans had significant symptoms of depression or anxiety each year. Now that percentage may have tripled, according to new research. Prior to the coronavirus, only around 20 percent of people with a mental health problem got adequate treatment.

"The number of Americans getting the help they need is certainly lower now than before," Mohr said.

The multiple apps offer short exercises to de-stress, reduce worrying, methods to help your life feel more meaningful, mantras to highlight your strengths, strategies for keeping up with daily activities and more.

The level of improvement in anxiety and depression - about 60% recovery - was similar to that seen in traditional psychotherapy. While the new study employed coaching along with the apps, previously published research showed the apps alone also reduce anxiety and depression.

People who received IntelliCare over eight weeks showed significantly greater improvements in depression and anxiety compared to the control group. Once the control group received the intervention, their depression and anxiety decreased, too.

"Participants continued to use IntelliCare throughout the eight weeks of coaching and beyond, which is important because people often stop using mental health apps before treatment ends," said lead study author Andrea Graham, assistant professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern.

This study was conducted as a clinical trial across the internal medicine clinics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. People were enrolled in the study if they met criteria for depression or anxiety. They were randomized to receive either IntelliCare or continue with care as usual. Of a total of 146 participants, 74 received IntelliCare, and 72 received treatment as usual from their primary care provider.

How the apps can help

Say you are worried that you are going to get sick with COVID-19.

"That kind of thinking can make you feel anxious and impact your daily activities," Graham said. "You can go to the Thought Challenger app to challenge the negative thinking and change it into something more positive or realistic. The app helps you question the evidence that your thoughts are 100% true and see if it's a type of negative thinking pattern. Then, the app may guide you to change your thinking to: 'There's a lot I can do to stay healthy like washing my hands'."

10 IntelliCare tips for good mental health during the coronavirus:

#1 Be Kind to Ourselves

We may experience waves of emotion or negative thoughts. Act in a kind and understanding way toward ourselves. Remind yourself of the good things you're doing in this challenging time.

#2 Be Kind to Others

Social distancing means we are spending more time with fewer people. This can create strain and stress. Notice the positive things those around you are saying and doing. Kindness toward others can help us feel less distressed and more positive.

#3 Do Things you Enjoy and that Make you Feel Good

It can be hard to do activities we enjoy in times of stress. But doing enjoyable activities helps us with our mental health by making us feel good! Take time to do the things you enjoy, find meaningful or have fun doing.

#4 Maintain a Routine

This pandemic has caused many of us to have changes to our daily routine. In this time of change, think about how you can create a new routine or adjust your regular routine, so you can have a bit more order to your day.

#5 Get Enough Sleep

When we're stressed or feeling down, it can be hard to get enough sleep, or we may sleep for longer stretches of time than usual. Try to wake up and go to sleep around the same time each day, on the weekdays and weekends.

#6 Try to Keep Up with Healthy Eating and Physical Activity

In times of stress, keeping up with balanced eating can be helpful, and taking time to move our bodies also can make us feel good and boost our mood.

#7 If You Need to, Take a Break from the News

In this challenging time, we are getting a lot of information - from the news, social media and talking with friends and family. If you find yourself getting too stressed and worried, see if you can take a break and limit the amount of time you spend with the news.

#8 Challenge Your Negative Thoughts

Information about this pandemic can lead to negative thoughts, and so can the uncertainty about all that's happening around us. Negative or unrealistic thoughts can impact how we feel. We can challenge our thoughts and change them to more positive or realistic ones.

#9 Create Positive Experiences and Emotions

There are many things we can't control right now. But one thing we can do is create positive experiences and emotions, like remembering positive moments from the day, expressing gratitude to others and doing acts of kindness.

#10 Keep Looking Forward

In this challenging time, remember that things will return to normal again, even if we don't know when. If we can stay hopeful and look forward to better times ahead, it will help us stay positive now.

Two vaccines for malaria based on genetically engineered malaria parasites have been found to be safe in humans and show preliminary signs of protection, according to a pair of new phase 1/2a clinical trials. Although further work is needed to determine their effectiveness, the new vaccines represent a promising approach to create a long-sought yet elusive vaccine for malaria. Drug treatments and interventions like mosquito nets have reduced the health burden of malaria over the past few decades, but the disease continues to pose a huge public health challenge in developing countries. The creation of a workable vaccine has been a major goal for researchers for 50 years, but most vaccine candidates have failed to show durable benefits in trials. Isaie Reuling and colleagues previously created a vaccine based on a genetically modified version of the malaria parasite Plasmodium berghei, which infects rodents but does not cause disease in humans; the parasite was modified to express a protein from the closely related Plasmodium falciparum, the primary cause of malaria in humans. Here, the scientists administered their vaccine to 24 healthy human volunteers, who tolerated the immunizations well and did not show any severe side effects. The vaccine delayed infections when the immunized volunteers were exposed to mosquitoes infected with P. falciparum, an effect that may result by blocking the parasite from invading liver cells, the researcher speculate. The authors also estimated the immunization would slash parasite loads in the liver by 95%, indicating it might provide some protection to individuals.

Taking a similar approach, Meta Roestenberg and colleagues conducted a phase 1/2a trial of their PfSPZ-GA1 vaccine, which uses a genetically weakened P. falciparum parasite. The authors tested various vaccine doses in 19 volunteers and saw that the vaccine was well-tolerated and safe. The research team then immunized 39 volunteers with either PfSPZ-GA1 or a control vaccine three times over 24 weeks and exposed the volunteers to controlled bites from mosquitoes infected with wild-type P. falciparum. Three volunteers showed complete protection, while others displayed signs of protection and delayed malaria infections compared to nine individuals who received a placebo vaccine. Reuling et al. and Roestenberg et al. say that more studies are needed before making definitive conclusions about the strength of their vaccines, but suggest their results merit further testing.

A team of physicists at the University of Bristol has developed the first integrated photon source with the potential to deliver large-scale quantum photonics.

The development of quantum technologies promises to have a profound impact across science, engineering and society. Quantum computers at scale will be able to solve problems intractable on even the most powerful current supercomputers, with many revolutionary applications, for example, in the design of new drugs and materials.

Integrated quantum photonics is a promising platform for developing quantum technologies due to its capacity to generate and control photons - single particles of light - in miniaturized complex optical circuits. Leveraging the mature CMOS Silicon industry for the fabrication of integrated devices enables circuits with the equivalent of thousands of optical fibres and components to be integrated on a single millimetre-scale chip.

The use of integrated photonics for developing scalable quantum technologies is in high demand. The University of Bristol is a pioneer in this field, as demonstrated by new research published in Nature Communications.

Dr Stefano Paesani, lead author explains:

"An important challenge that has limited the scaling of integrated quantum photonics has been the lack of on-chip sources able to generate high-quality single photons. Without low-noise photon sources, errors in a quantum computation accumulate rapidly when increasing the circuit complexity, resulting in the computation being no longer reliable. Moreover, optical losses in the sources limit the number of photons the quantum computer can produce and process.

"In this work we found a way to resolve this and in doing so we developed the first integrated photon source compatible with large-scale quantum photonics. To achieve high-quality photons, we developed a novel technique - "inter-modal spontaneous four-wave mixing" - where the multiple modes of light propagating through a Silicon waveguide are non-linearly interfered, creating ideal conditions for generating single photons."

Together with colleagues at the University of Trento in Italy, the team based at Prof Anthony Laing's group in Bristol's Quantum Engineering Technology Labs (QETLabs) benchmarked the use of such sources for photonic quantum computing in a heralded Hong-Ou-Mandel experiment, a building block of optical quantum information processing, and obtained the highest quality on-chip photonic quantum interference ever observed (96% visibility).

Dr Paesani said: "The device demonstrated by far the best performances for any integrated photon source: spectral purity and indistinguishability of 99% and > 90% photon heralding e?ciency."

Importantly, the Silicon photonic device was fabricated via CMOS-compatible processes in a commercial foundry, which means thousands of sources can easily be integrated on a single device. The research, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Hub in Quantum Computing and Simulation and the European Research Council (ERC), represents a major step toward building quantum circuits at scale and paves the way for several applications.

"We have solved a critical set of noises that had previously limited the scaling of photonic quantum information processing. For example, arrays of hundreds of these sources can be used to build near-term noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) photonic machines, where tens of photons can be processed to solve specialised tasks, such as the simulation of molecular dynamics or certain optimisation problems related to graph theory."

Now researchers have devised how to build near-perfect photon sources, over the next few months the scalability of the Silicon platform will allow them to integrate tens to hundreds on a single chip. Developing circuits at such a scale will make it possible for NISQ photonic quantum machines to solve industrially-relevant problems beyond the capability of current supercomputers.

"Furthermore, with advanced optimisation and miniaturisation of the photon source, our technology could lead to fault-tolerant quantum operations in the integrated photonics platform, unleashing the full potential of quantum computers!" said Dr Paesani.

The world's growing population and increasing human welfare will necessitate a 30-70% increase in food production over the next three decades. At the same time, the huge quantities of food needed must be produced in such a way that protects the environment and is resistant to climate change. If we are to succeed, it will require a complete overhaul of the way we produce food. Researchers from the University of Copenhagen, among others, have now created an overview of solutions that include a number of new technologies that can collectively address this global challenge. The results is published in Nature Food.

Food production

"Unfortunately, if we are to meet the growing demand for food in the years ahead, optimising our current methods of production will be insufficient. They just won't do. A radical change is needed," states Svend Christensen, a professor and the Head of Department at the University of Copenhagen's Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences.

He continues: "We have identified 75 new technologies which, combined, can transform the entire food chain -- from production and processing, to consumption and waste management -- to meet the demands of the future for significantly greater food production, that protects the environment and while being resilient to climate change."

Together with an array of leading researchers from the 'Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization' and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security, Svend Christensen has identified a number of new and upcoming technologies that together, and each with their own approach, will be able to solve this global challenge for society. Most of these technologies are fully developed, while others are just a few steps away.

Artificial intelligence, micro-algae production and vertical farming

Some of the more well-known technologies include artificial intelligence, robotics, genetic engineering, micro-algae production and vertical farming. Others include nitrogen-fixating cereals that do not require artificial fertilizers, biodegradable polymers and the breeding of insects for animal feed and foodstuffs.

While each of these technologies are distinguished by their ability to reduce the climate footprint, there are tradeoffs that public authorities and decision makers must take a stand on. Among other things, the researchers cite the use of GMOs, as well as varying levels of access to new technologies from country to country.

"There is no doubt that this will require the support of, and large investments from, politicians, so that technologies and know-how are available in as many countries as possible. At the same time, there is a need to test and adapt these technologies in order for them to be used across the food chain, from farm to fork. This requires considerable investment and an acceptance of some of the technologies that need to be developed and adapted over many years. But this is the way forward if we are to solve this enormous challenge," says Svend Christensen.

Public acceptance is necessary

Some of the new technologies may seem controversial to consumers. Therefore -- in terms of generating public support and acceptance -- transparency, clear information and open dialogue will be necessary so that consumers can become comfortable with the new ways of producing food.

Physicists have measured the flight times of electrons emitted from a specific atom in a molecule upon excitation with laser light. This has enabled them to measure the influence of the molecule itself on the kinetics of emission.

Photoemission - the release of electrons in response to excitation by light - is one of the most fundamental processes in the microcosm. The kinetic energy of the emitted electron is characteristic for the atom concerned, and depends on the wavelength of the light employed. But how long does the process take? And does it always take the same amount of time, irrespective of whether the electron is emitted from an individual atom or from an atom that is part of a molecule? An international team of researchers led by laser physicists in the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics (LAP) at LMU Munich and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) in Garching has now probed the influence of the molecule on photoemission time.

The theoretical description of photoemission in 1905 by Albert Einstein marked a breakthrough in quantum physics, and the details of the process are of continuing interest in the world of science and beyond. How the motions of an elementary quantum particle such as the electron are affected within a molecular environment has a significant bearing on our understanding of the process of photoemission and the forces that hold molecules together.

In close collaboration with researchers from the King Saud University (KSU) in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), and additional international partners, the team at LAP has now determined how long it takes electrons to be photo-emitted from a specific atom within a molecule (in this case, the iodine in ethyl iodide). The measured times were in the range of tens of attoseconds. One attosecond is a billionth of a billionth of a second.

The researchers used a range of pulses in the x-ray region to excite the targeted electron. The use of machine learning helped to improve the precision of the analysis of the experimental data, and resulted in more accurate comparisons with theoretical predictions. "The comparison of the experimental data with theoretical simulations finally revealed the influence of the molecule on the time that electrons need for the photoemission process," explains Professor Matthias Kling, who heads the Ultrafast Imaging and Nanophotonics group within the LAP team. The researchers found that the delay attributable to the molecular environment became larger as the energy of the light pulses - and hence the initial kinetic energy imparted to the electrons - was reduced.

The observations may be compared with exploring a landscape. When flying over it, many details on the ground remain unnoticed. At ground level, every single bump makes itself felt. The same is true for excited electrons. If the initial impulse is just enough to enable them to leave the molecule, the retarding effect of the forces that hold the molecule together is greater than when the 'kick' is sufficiently energetic to eject them more promptly.

"Our observations indicate that experiments tracing photoemission time permit us to learn about the forces within molecules", explains Professor Abdallah Azzeer, Head of the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics at KSU in Riyadh. "These studies could improve our understanding of quantum effects in molecules and chemical reactions," adds Prof. Alexandra Landsman from Ohio State University in the US, who leads the group that conducted the majority of the theoretical work.

It might sound like science fiction, but scientists are preparing to build colonies on the moon and, eventually, Mars. With NASA planning its next human mission to the moon in 2024, researchers are looking for options to power settlements on the lunar surface. According to a new article in Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, nuclear fission reactors have emerged as top candidates to generate electricity in space. 

When it comes to powering an astronauts' settlement, there are many factors to consider, writes correspondent Tien Nguyen in collaboration with ACS Central Science. The power source must be capable of being transported safely from Earth and of withstanding the harsh conditions of other worlds. Past space missions have used solar power as a scalable and renewable source of electricity, but the dark craters of the moon or the dusty surface of Mars may not offer enough light. The limited lifespans of battery and fuel cell technologies typically relegate them to backup options. Nuclear devices that run on decaying plutonium-238 have been used to power spacecraft since the 1960s, including Mars rovers and the space probes Voyager and Cassini, but they don't provide enough energy for a settlement. In contrast, nuclear fission reactors that split uranium-235 atoms, which are used by power plants here on Earth, could provide a reliable power source for a small space settlement for several years, scientists estimate.

Despite funding and design setbacks, researchers are reinvigorating efforts to create a nuclear reactor for space travel and settlement. In the early 2010s, a team of scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory, NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy came together with the goal of developing a new nuclear fission system that could produce at least 10 kilowatts of energy. With a core containing molybdenum and highly enriched uranium, the reactor uses nuclear fission to generate heat, which is converted to electricity by simple piston-driven engines. The prototype, which was tested in 2018, produced up to 5 kilowatts of electricity. The researchers hope to optimize the technology to achieve the desired 10-kilowatt output. They also say that transporting uranium in space can be done safely, as the alpha particles emitted by the core are weak and can be fully contained by proper shielding.  

A recent analysis of discourse on Facebook highlights how social media and an individual's sense of identity can be used to dehumanize entire groups of people.

"Fundamentally, we wanted to examine how online platforms can normalize hatred and contribute to dehumanization," says Jessica Jameson, co-author of a paper on the work and a professor of communication at North Carolina State University. "And we found that an established model of the role identity plays in intractable conflicts seems to explain a great deal of this behavior."

For this study, Jameson worked with colleagues at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem to assess discourse on a Facebook page that was noteworthy in Israel for propagating right-wing hate speech. Specifically, the researchers examined comments on the page that were related to other Israeli Jews who commenters felt were not politically right wing.

"We found that the language used in these Facebook interactions hewed very closely to three stages we see in Terrell Northrup's theory of intractable conflict," says Jameson. "One stage is the threat - meaning that the people in one group perceive another group as a threat to their identity. For example, one representative comment we found was that 'The leftists are our devil, because of their existence the country is being destroyed and the army weakened.'

"A second stage is distortion. This basically means that the first group will not engage with new information regarding the other group - instead distorting it or dismissing it as irrelevant for some reason. For example, 'I don't know if I really want to know the answer to the question of whether the thinking of the left is due to infinite stupidity or infinite naivete.'

"A third stage is rigidification - where people become locked into their positions, making it difficult or impossible to change their views of the other group," Jameson says. "This is where dehumanization occurs, and we see people referring to the political left as 'cockroaches,' 'vermin,' or 'stinking dogs.' And when people stop seeing members of a group as human - that's dangerous.

"Look, when social media tools are used for community-building, or to provide social support, or to engage people who have otherwise remained silent, they are very valuable," Jameson says. "The concern that is raised by our work here is that when one identity group uses these platforms to dehumanize another group, there is no possibility for conversation with those who have different views. And things may potentially become dangerous.

"I don't think having social media companies police their own sites is the answer. But I do think this work highlights the need for more efforts aimed at fostering healthy communication between groups."

Researchers examine the effectiveness of consuming hemp oil extracted from the whole Cannabis plant using a chronic neuropathic pain animal model. Researchers at The University of New Mexico (UNM) showed that legal Cannabis hemp oil reduced mechanical pain sensitivity 10-fold for several hours in mice with chronic post-operative neuropathic pain.

Distinguished from its still largely criminally prohibited cousin, "hemp" refers to Cannabis plants with less than 0.3 percent tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) per mass. Hemp is now federally legal to produce and consume in most regions throughout the United States (U.S) as a result of the Hemp Farming Act, proposed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2018.

This major breakthrough in cannabis prohibition now enables millions of Americans the ability to access a natural, effective, and relatively safe alternative option for treating chronic pain. Conventional pharmacological drugs, namely opioids, are driving the leading form of preventable deaths and conventional medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the U.S.

The University of New Mexico has conducted a series of recent studies testing the effectiveness and safety of consuming the Cannabis plant, but this is the first study measuring the therapeutic potential of legal hemp oil with low THC levels.

"Cannabis plants with low THC are still psychoactive, but tend to result in less psychedelic experiences, while still offering profound and often immediate relief from symptoms such as pain, anxiety, and depression," says co-researcher, Dr. Jacob Miguel Vigil, associate professor in the UNM Psychology Department.

Using a chronic neuropathic pain model that exposes mice to post-operative neuropathic pain equivalent to several years of chronic pain in human clinical patients, the researchers were able to examine how hemp oil influences momentary pain sensitivity to the affected region. For several hours after Cannabis consumption the mice demonstrated effective pain relief, approaching the mechanical pain sensitivity of naïve control mice that did not undergo the surgical operation.

"Our lab utilizes a unique nerve injury model mimicking human neuropathic pain that has allowed demonstration of hemp's reversal of the pain related behavior" said one of the lead investigators, Dr. Karin N. Westlund, Department of Anesthesiology, their article titled "The Therapeutic Effectiveness of Full Spectrum Hemp Oil Using a Chronic Neuropathic Pain Model," published in the journal Life.

Studies in animals can be superior to clinical trials because they circumvent human biases and expectancy effects, or perceptual and cognitive reactions to enrollment in cannabis-themed experiments. Several studies measuring the effects of cannabis in humans observe patients reporting psychedelic experiences, whether or not they received the active cannabis agent, otherwise referred to as the 'placebo effect.'

The study examined the effectiveness of "LyFeBaak" hemp oil, produced by Organic-Energetic Solutions, which has been available for legal purchase in New Mexico since 2019. "We grow hemp that is optimized to potentiate the plants utmost health and vitality through hypermineralization techniques, rather than merely plants that are grown in a state of fight-or-flight, which unfortunately is common in the cannabis industry. These techniques have enabled us to produce hemp products that patients swear are effective for treating dozens of mental and physical health conditions. The new changes in hemp laws are now allowing us to test these claims," adds co-author and hemp grower, Anthony L. Ortiz.

"Hemp plants contain numerous therapeutic constituents that likely contribute to analgesic responses, including terpenes and flavonoids, which in theory, work together like members of a symphony, often described as the entourage effect," says fellow researcher, Jegason P. Diviant. Several clinical investigations have shown that medications based on synthetic cannabis analogues and isolated compounds tend to offer lower reported symptom relief and a greater number of negative side effects as compared to whole plant, or "full-spectrum" Cannabis flower and plant-based extracts.

The authors do caution that few studies exist on the long-term use of hemp oil, due mostly to historical federal prohibition laws in the U.S. "However, this is an extremely exciting time in modern medical discovery, because the average citizen now has legal access to a completely natural and effective medication that can be easily and cheaply produced, simply by sticking a seed in the ground and caring for it as you would any other important part of your life," says Vigil.

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite passed over the western North Atlantic Ocean and provided forecasters with a visible image of Post Tropical Storm Arthur.

During the afternoon (Eastern Daylight Time/U.S.) of May 19, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard Suomi NPP provided a visible image of Arthur and showed a weak circulation with the bulk of clouds northeast and east of the center. Arthur is located out in the Western Atlantic Ocean far from the U.S. coast and parallel to the Virginia/North Carolina border.

The NOAA National Hurricane Center's Tropical Weather Discussion on May 20 at 8:05 a.m. EDT noted, "Post-Tropical Cyclone Arthur is north of the area near latitude 35 degrees north and longitude 65 degrees west. Arthur will move southeast to south through Thursday [May 21], and weaken. Large northeastern [ocean] swell from Arthur will affect the waters that are to the NE of the Bahamas, through Friday [May 22], and then subside on Friday night and Saturday."

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.

NASA satellites have been providing forecasters with various types of imagery on Typhoon Amphan as it heads toward a landfall near the border of eastern India and Bangladesh on May 20.

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided visible imagery of Amphan and NASA's Aqua satellite provided an infrared view of the storm's cloud top temperatures. Amphan was moving north through the Bay of Bengal and forecast to make landfall in northeastern India near Kolkata, which is just west of the border with Bangladesh.

The Bay of Bengal is located in the northeastern part of the Indian Ocean. The Bay is framed by India to the west, Bangladesh to the north, and Myanmar to the east.

On May 19, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard Suomi NPP provided a visible image Amphan. The image showed that Amphan covered the northern part of the Bay of Bengal.

Tropical cyclones are made up hundreds of thunderstorms, and infrared data can show where the strongest storms are located. They can do that because infrared data provides temperature information, and the strongest thunderstorms that reach highest into the atmosphere have the coldest cloud top temperatures. Convection is rising air that condenses and forms the thunderstorms that make up a tropical cyclone. When it is strong, it pushes clouds higher into the troposphere (the layer of atmosphere closest to Earth's surface). The higher you go in the troposphere, the colder the air temperature gets and colder cloud tops indicate stronger storms.

On May 20, 2020, at 3:30 a.m. EDT (0730 UTC) the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument that both fly aboard NASA's Aqua satellite found coldest cloud top temperatures in a large area around Amphan's center of circulation and along the coast on northeastern India. It was as cold as or colder than minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 62.2 Celsius). NASA research has found that cloud top temperatures that cold indicate strong storms with the potential to generate heavy rainfall.

On May 20 at 5 a.m. EDT (0900 UTC), Tropical Cyclone Amphan was located near latitude 20.5 degrees north and longitude 87.9 degrees east, approximately, 129 miles south-southwest of Kolkata, India. Amphan was moving to the north-northeast and had maximum sustained winds 85 knots (98 mph/157 kph). Amphan continued to hold on to Category 2 hurricane status on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.

Forecasters at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center said that Amphan was weakening as it moves north-northeast toward landfall. That landfall occurred in the morning hours of May 20 Eastern Daylight Time.

The Regional Specialized Meteorological Center (RSMC) in New Dehli, India reported, "Amphan crossed West Bengal-Bangladesh coast between Digha (West Bengal) and Hatiya Islands (Bangladesh) across Sunderbans near latitude 21.65 degrees north and longitude 88.3 degrees east between 1530 and 1730 [India Standard Time or] IST (6  and 8 a.m. EDT) on May 20 with wind speed of 155-165 kph [96 to 103 mph]." Amphan is forecast to move inland in a north-northeasterly direction.

From testing drugs to developing vaccines, the close study of the immune system is key to improving real-world health outcomes. T-cells are integral to this research, as these white blood cells help tailor the body's immune response to specific pathogens.

With lattice light-sheet microscopy (LLSM), scientists have been able to closely examine individual cells, such as T-cells, in 4D. But with limited data points, there wasn't an effective way to analyze the LLSM data.

A new paper by researchers from the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of Chicago, published May 20 in the journal Cell Systems, introduces a solution--a pipeline for lattice light-sheet microscopy multi-dimensional analyses (LaMDA).

The Pritzker Molecular Engineering researchers who authored the paper include graduate students Jillian Rosenberg and Guoshuai Cao of the Huang lab group. They first set out to study T-cell function using high-dimensional microscopy, and then they identified the need for an effective method of analysis. So, they pivoted to developing the LaMDA pipeline.

"We realized that the images are amazing, but they were being underutilized due to a lack of available analysis techniques," said Cao.

To fill that gap, the researchers decided to shift the paradigm. Instead of treating each cell as a data point, they found a way to treat each molecule as a data point, increasing the total number of data points. This made it possible to conduct a sophisticated analysis.

"We have developed a pipeline to enable machine learning and complex analyses on these videos, which was not previously feasible," Rosenberg explained. "These analyses allow us to identify differences between molecules that we cannot identify by eye."

LaMDA could help develop new vaccines

Combining high-dimensional imaging and big data analyses, LaMDA can reveal and even predicT-cellular states. According to Rosenberg, one of the most promising aspects of LaMDA is its potential to predict biological responses, without the need for complex experiments.

More research is needed to further confirm this predictive capacity. However, she explained, "the potential to predicT-cellular states and subcellular signaling is a very powerful asset of LaMDA."

This means LaMDA could have numerous medical applications, such as drug testing and vaccine development, in addition to expanding the knowledge of T-cell biology.

"Researchers or pharmaceutical companies could use LaMDA to determine how certain drugs are resulting in subtle changes in subcellular signaling, which provides information on both drug safety and efficacy," said Rosenberg.

"Our LaMDA pipeline could also be extended to the development of peptide vaccines to treat infection, cancer, and autoimmunity," she added, "or be used to study thymic education or peripheral tolerance, two very important topics in T-cell biology."

A research tool for T-cells and beyond

Although the researchers began by studying T-cell receptors, creating the LaMDA pipeline quickly became their focus. Using previously known facts about T-cells, they were able to validate LaMDA as an effective analysis pipeline that can be expanded to other fields of study.

"While we ultimately want to learn more about T-cells, our purpose in creating LaMDA was to provide a tool for other researchers to use for future discoveries," said Rosenberg. The research team intentionally designed LaMDA to be easy for other scientists to use, including those who may be unfamiliar with data science techniques.

"We believe this analysis pipeline will benefit users of high-dimensional microscopy across all fields of science," said Cao.

It's worth noting that the researchers have only tested LaMDA in a single molecule, under a few different conditions. "To make this pipeline more robust, it should be validated on other cell types, molecules, and conditions to prove its wide applicability and address any potential unforeseen issues," Cao said.

One day, the researchers hope the LaMDA pipeline can also be used to study the interaction of multiple molecules.

Conventional wisdom suggests that when a company generates more carbon emissions, investors should lower its stock price. After all, the company is generating a socially undesirable byproduct.

Future carbon pricing initiatives by governments will also add extra obligations to the balance sheet. Prior analyses of Australian, U.S. and European firms corroborate this line of reasoning. However, Canadian firms' stock prices do not subscribe to this conventional view, suggests research by Paul Griffin, professor at the University of California, Davis, Graduate School of Management and lead author of a recent study.

"We find a positive relation between the market value of Canadian firms and the level of their greenhouse gas emissions. This positive relation has strengthened in recent years, mainly for high emissions-intensity firms in the Canadian energy sector," he said. This is due to a couple of factors, including that Canada adopted greenhouse gas protocols earlier than other countries, and that Canada has national and subnational expenditure policies that offset climate impacts on the economy, he explained.

The study, The Curious Case of Canadian Corporate Emissions Valuation, was published online in late April in The British Accounting Review. Co-authors are David H. Lont, Department of Accountancy and Finance, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand; and Carol Pomare of the Ron Joyce Center for Business Studies, Mount Allison University, New Brunswick, Canada.

The paper examines the relevance to investors of the greenhouse gas, or GHG, emissions of publicly traded Canadian firms from 2006 through 2018.

Despite the high market value, this does not mean, Griffin said, that Canadian firm managers can automatically raise share prices by increasing emissions.

"First, Canada adopted greenhouse gas protocols earlier, thus reducing current and future compliance costs compared with the earlier years," he said. "Second, Canadian governments and businesses have invested heavily and increasingly in carbon mitigation projects to combat climate and emissions concerns."

Investors view these policy factors as favorable for firm value net of the costs and risks of regulatory compliance, researchers said.

"Consistent with this result, we find that the positive impact of emissions on firm value in Canada is amplified for high emission-intensity firms (mostly in Alberta). For these firms, the payoffs to environmental investment are greater compared with low emission-intensity firms (mostly in the Ontario-Québec corridor)," Griffin said. "Emissions data from two different sources -- voluntarily disclosed data by the firms and data mandated by the Canadian government -- generate the same findings."

DALLAS – May 20, 2020 – A new UT Southwestern study shows how an effective but largely abandoned treatment for Type 2 diabetes could be used again in combination with another drug to eliminate problematic side effects.

Rosiglitazone, sold under the brand name Avandia, won Food and Drug Administration approval in 1999 and became a leading treatment for Type 2 diabetes, capable of increasing insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance. It fell out of favor after studies raised concerns about the risk of heart attack in some patients, as well as a risk for osteoporosis and evidence of increased weight gain and fluid retention.

In a study published this month in Cell Metabolism, researchers show how adding a second, experimental drug referred to as Compound A activates a receptor in fat cells and certain immune system cells called the G protein-coupled receptor 120 (GPR120) to complement the effects of rosiglitazone and allow a lower dose to be used.

In a mouse study, the combination of Compound A with the minimal dose of rosiglitazone produced a similar degree of insulin sensitization as the maximal dose of rosiglitazone, according to the report.

“The very low dose we used in this study showed no side effects – no weight gain, no fluid retention – in mouse models,” says Dayoung Oh, Ph.D., senior author of the study, assistant professor of internal medicine, and a researcher in UT Southwestern’s Touchstone Center for Diabetes Research.

Additional research is needed to check for bone loss and heart problems at the lower dose, she says, but those effects too could likely be eliminated or lessened by reducing the dosage of rosiglitazone.

In 2010, responding to studies reporting an increased risk of heart attack in rosiglitazone patients, the FDA issued prescribing and dispensing restrictions on the drug. Those were lessened in 2013 and removed entirely in 2015 after the FDA determined the data did not show an increased risk of heart attack with rosiglitazone. However, usage of rosiglitazone has remained low.

“For a long time, rosiglitazone has been used for treating Type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance,” Oh says. Although there are other drugs to treat Type 2 diabetes, “this drug is very good – very effective. But at the same time, there are still serious side effects, including weight gain, fluid retention, and more.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 34 million Americans suffer from diabetes, and 90 to 95 percent of those cases are Type 2 diabetes. The disease can lead to kidney or heart disease and stroke, and can be fatal.

The current study found that the positive effects of rosiglitazone, which acts on the anti-diabetic target PPARy in fat cells, can be heightened by combining it with an activator, or agonist, to spur GPR120 activity as well. 

The study showed that Compound A, a small molecule developed by Merck & Co. Inc., works much like the omega-3 fatty acids enriched in fish oil, a natural GPR120 activator, to lower inflammation and improve insulin sensitivity. While mice that were given the minimal dose of rosiglitazone alone failed to show improved insulin sensitivity, those given Compound A in combination with low-dose rosiglitazone had enhanced insulin sensitivity, according to the study.

Oh says she would like to work with interested clinical researchers to test Compound A to boost rosiglitazone’s effectiveness and reduce its side effects in patients at the lower dose.

She also plans to do additional research to uncover the specific mechanism by which GPR120 activation reduces rosiglitazone’s side effects.

“The hope is that we will be able to use rosiglitazone at lower doses to treat Type 2 diabetes patients in a more effective way without side effects,” Oh says.