Tech

The ocean hosts an inconceivable wealth of marine life and diverse habitats, most of which remains unknown and unseen. International plans to mine minerals from the deep seafloor threaten this largely unexplored biodiversity hotspot. States are currently seeking to develop a legal framework for deep seabed mining. In cooperation with the Heinrich Böll Foundation, an international team of researchers from the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) has published a new study warning against a rush to exploit deep seafloor resources and calling for coordinated efforts to develop alternative approaches.

The international community is currently developing a legal framework for the management of deep seabed mining in areas beyond national jurisdiction. Prior to agreeing such a framework and before potentially harmful mining activities could commence States need to achieve a common global understanding of the rights and obligations of different actors regarding the seafloor. This is the recommendation of an international team of authors from the IASS, TMG - ThinkTank for Sustainability, the University of Auckland, and Globelaw.

The future governance of these areas, the authors argue, should be guided by their internationally recognized status as a "common heritage of mankind". In light of this, particular consideration must be given to the conservation of ecosystems and the question of whether and how deep seafloor resources could be used sustainably.

The study makes a strong case for greater coordination to ensure that the development of a legal framework for deep seafloor mining under the auspices of the International Seabed Authority - the institution responsible for managing activities in marine areas beyond national jurisdiction - do not hamper ongoing UN negotiations for a new international agreement on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity. The conservation and exploitation of the deep sea should not be negotiated in separation, the international governance researchers concluded.

COLUMBUS, Ohio--Mobile apps that work with Bluetooth devices have an inherent design flaw that makes them vulnerable to hacking, new research has found.

The problem lies in the way Bluetooth Low Energy devices - a type of Bluetooth used by most modern gadgets - communicate with the mobile apps that control them, said Zhiqiang Lin, associate professor of computer science and engineering at The Ohio State University. Lin presented the findings this week at the Association for Computing Machinery's Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM CCS 2019).

"There is a fundamental flaw that leaves these devices vulnerable - first when they are initially paired to a mobile app, and then again when they are operating," Lin said. "And while the magnitude of that vulnerability varies, we found it to be a consistent problem among Bluetooth low energy devices when communicating with mobile apps."

Consider a wearable health and fitness tracker, smart thermostat, smart speaker or smart home assistant. Each first communicates with the apps on your mobile device by broadcasting something called a UUID - a universally unique identifier. That identifier allows the corresponding apps on your phone to recognize the Bluetooth device, creating a connection that allows your phone and device to talk to one another.

But that identifier itself is also embedded into the mobile app code. Otherwise, mobile apps would not be able to recognize the device. However, such UUIDs in the mobile apps make the devices vulnerable to a fingerprinting attack, Lin and his research team found.

"At a minimum, a hacker could determine whether you have a particular Bluetooth device, such as a smart speaker, at your home, by identifying whether or not your smart device is broadcasting the particular UUIDs identified from the corresponding mobile apps," Lin said. "But in some cases in which no encryption is involved or encryption is used improperly between mobile apps and devices, the attacker would be able to 'listen in' on your conversation and collect that data."

Still, that doesn't mean you should throw your smartwatch away.

"We think the problem should be relatively easy to fix, and we've made recommendations to app developers and to Bluetooth industry groups," he said.

After Lin and his team realized Bluetooth devices had this built-in vulnerability, they wanted to see how widespread it might be in the real world. They built a "sniffer" - a hacking device that can identify Bluetooth devices based on the broadcasting messages sent by the devices.

"The typical understanding is that Bluetooth Low Energy devices have signals that can only travel up to 100 meters," he said. "But we found that with a simple receiver adapter and amplifier, the signal can be 'sniffed' (or electronically found) much farther - up to 1,000 meters away."

They then drove the "sniffer" around a 1.28-square-mile area near Ohio State's campus to field-test the vulnerability. They found more than 5,800 Bluetooth Low Energy devices. Of those, about 5,500 - 94.6 percent - were able to be "fingerprinted" (or identified) by an attack and 431 - 7.4 percent - were vulnerable to unauthorized access or eavesdropping attacks.

Those that were vulnerable to unauthorized access had issues with the initial "fingerprinting" between device and phone app that put them at risk of hacking. "It was in the initial app-level authentication, the initial pairing of the phone app with the device, where that vulnerability existed," Lin said. If app developers tightened defenses in that initial authentication, he said, the problem could be resolved.

The team reported their findings to developers of vulnerable apps and to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, and created an automated tool to evaluate all of the Bluetooth Low Energy apps in the Google Play Store - 18,166 at the time of their research. In addition to building the databases directly from mobile apps of the Bluetooth devices in the market, the team's evaluation also identified 1,434 vulnerable apps that allow unauthorized access, a number that surprised Lin. Their analysis did not include apps in the Apple Store.

"It was alarming," he said. "The potential for privacy invasion is high."

These devices know a lot about us - they are the wearable technologies that track our steps and our heart rates; the speakers that "hear" us and play songs we want to hear, or give us an easy way to order new things off the internet.

Lin's research focuses on vulnerabilities in tech, trying to identify those potential security gaps before they become true security problems. Earlier this summer, he and researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology found more than 1,600 vulnerabilities in the support ecosystem behind the top 5,000 free apps in the Google Play Store.

Tropical Storm Fengshen's cold cloud top temperatures revealed that the storm was maintaining strength as a strong tropical storm. Forecasters expect Fengshen will continue strengthening and reach typhoon status.

One of the ways NASA researches tropical cyclones is by using infrared data that provides temperature information. The AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a look at the temperatures in Fengshen which gave insight into the storm's strength.

Cloud top temperatures provide information to forecasters about where the strongest storms are located within a tropical cyclone. Tropical cyclones do not always have uniform strength, and some sides are stronger than others. The stronger the storms, the higher they extend into the troposphere, and the colder the cloud temperatures.

On Nov. 13 at 0259 UTC (Nov. 12 at 9:59 p.m. EST) NASA's Aqua satellite analyzed Tropical Storm Fengshen in near infrared light, using the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument. Credit: NASA JPL/Heidar ThrastarsonOn Nov. 13 at 0259 UTC (Nov. 12 at 9:59 p.m. EST) NASA's Aqua satellite analyzed the storm using the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument. AIRS found coldest cloud top temperatures as cold as or colder than minus 63 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 53 degrees Celsius) around Fengshen's center.  NASA research has shown that cloud top temperatures that cold indicate strong storms that have the capability to create heavy rain.

By early Nov. 14, forecasters at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center noted, "Infrared imagery revealed that deep convection has re-built over the low-level circulation center with improved deep convective banding [of thunderstorms]." Microwave imagery also revealed an eye developing.

On Nov. 14, the National Weather Service (NWS) in Tiyan, Guam stated a Typhoon Warning remains in effect for Agrihan, Pagan, and Alamagan in the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas. Damaging winds, including winds of 39 mph or more are expected after midnight with near typhoon conditions, shortly afterwards.

At 7 a.m. EDT (10 p.m. ChST, local time Guam/1200 UTC) on Nov. 14, the center of Tropical Storm Fengshen was located near latitude 17.5 degrees north and longitude 146.5 degrees east, moving west at 17 mph. That puts the center of Fengshen about 100 miles south-southeast of Agrihan, 65 miles southeast of Pagan and 45 miles east of Alamagan.

Maximum sustained winds remain near 65 mph. Fengshen is expected to intensify slowly tonight and Friday, and will likely be a typhoon by late Friday morning, after it has passed through the northern Marianas.

NWS said, "Fengshen is expected to gradually turn toward west-northwest later tonight [Nov. 14], passing very close to Alamagan Island early Friday morning [Nov. 15]. Fengshen will then turn slowly northwest on Friday as it moves away from the Marianas."

Typhoons and hurricanes are the most powerful weather event 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.

The AIRS instrument is one of six instruments flying on board NASA's Aqua satellite, launched on May 4, 2002.

All plants need carbon dioxide, or CO2 to live. They extract it from the air and use it during the photosynthesis process to feed themselves.

But what happens to aquatic plants? How do they get carbon dioxide?

Some have partial terrestrial forms, such as floating leaves or above water growth, which allows them to use carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But for plants that live completely submerged in water, CO2 is limited and many of these plants have developed a mechanism to tap into other carbon sources. In this case, they extract it from bicarbonate -- a naturally occurring mineral that comes from the weathering of soils and rocks and the runoff reaches the plants.

In a paper published today in Science, researchers from Arizona State University School of Life Sciences found that not only are freshwater aquatic plants affected by climate, they are also shaped by the surrounding landscape.

"In this study, we're able to show that yes, when in an environment where carbon dioxide is limited, then plants use strategies to extract carbon from bicarbonate," said Lars Iversen, principal investigator for the study and a research fellow at the School of Life Sciences. "We see this in local rivers and lakes, but we also see this across the globe. We have identified patterns across ecoregions and there's a direct link between the availability of catchment bicarbonate and the ability of aquatic plants to extract carbon from that bicarbonate."

The study, which focused specifically on aquatic plants that live completely submerged, also showed that when plants have easier access to carbon dioxide, they will use that as their carbon source, even if bicarbonate is available.

"One of the main points of this study is that aquatic plants are different. We cannot use our extensive knowledge about terrestrial plants in the same way as aquatic plants," said Iversen, a researcher in Assistant Professor Ben Blonder's ecology lab. "This is really important because on a global scale, at least one-third of the human population is very closely linked to freshwater systems. So things like deltas, drinking water, and fishing grounds are critical to human survival. If we are to understand how these systems will persist and change within the next 100 years, then we really need to know how some of the main components and structures in freshwater systems are working."

Environmental changes caused by human activity, such as deforestation, land cultivation, and the use of fertilizers, are causing large increases in bicarbonate concentrations in many freshwater bodies around the world. Iversen said the insight from this study will help researchers evaluate how ecosystem functions change if concentrations of bicarbonate increase.

ST. LOUIS - Since the 1990s, scientists have been exploring the possibilities of miniaturized chemical "laboratories" on a chip, which have potential as point-of-care diagnostics, analysis kits for field research and someday even conducting chemical tests on other planets.

In a normal lab, chemists use beakers to mix chemicals and study reactions. In a miniaturized laboratory, microfluidic systems can conduct chemical experiments on a chip through a series of small connected tubes the size of a hair.

This technology currently is in use, most notably in the medical field, which creates organs-on-a chip for research. However, the technology's potential has not fully been reached because the chemical reactions are controlled by large equipment that is often external to the chip.

In a recent study published in Nature, researchers from Saint Louis University along with colleagues from Northwestern University and Normandie Universite shared their discovery of a way to program built-in controls in a microfluidic network.

"We took our inspiration from electronics, in which a chip's controls are self-contained," said Istvan Kiss, Ph.D., professor of chemistry at Saint Louis University. "When we started the research in this field, we said 'Why don't we build tiny little reactors, sub-millimeter-sized. We used only a small number of reactors, so directing the flow was easy with simple, tiny tubes. But now, to advance the technology, we need the chip to be a bit more complicated, with many reactors and tubes in between, to operate more like a circuit."

To solve this problem, researchers combined network theory and fluid mechanics and created controls operated entirely on the chip.

Together with Yifan Liu, Ph.D., graduate research assistant at SLU and other colleagues, Kiss designed a network with a nonlinear relationship between the applied pressure and flow rate, which can be used to switch the direction of liquid flow simply by changing the input and output pressure.

Taking a cue from a counterintuitive theory about traffic patterns, the scientists found that shortcuts aren't always the fastest way from point A to point B. A phenomenon known as Braess's paradox has demonstrated -- in traffic patterns, electronics, springs - that sometimes having more pathways to travel actually slows down traffic rather than speeds it up.

"We've built a network that shows that paradox," Kiss said. "As we studied how water molecules go around obstacles, it created a 'valve.' Water molecules are diverted from their paths. At low flow rates, they go towards the obstacles, while at high flow rates, they go the opposite way."

"When we close a shortcut channel, it results in a higher, rather than lower, total flow rate. We're interested in how such changes in flow rates and directions will eventually change the chemical reactions in the reactors."

This technology could be used to create portable lab testing systems as well as to design new applications, such as health monitoring wearables or deployable space systems.

Language research has documented that people tend to draw inferences about speakers based on how they talk. These often implicit inferences can occur in the blink of an eye and can affect how smart we think someone is, how much we like them, and more. This is also the case for the non-native accents typically present in speakers who learn a new language later in life.

Linguistic research suggests that these accents are strongly shaped by the speaker's first language that they learned growing up. New research from an international collaboration between the University of Rochester and universities in Germany and Holland sheds light on just how strong these effects can be. This work, which was conducted by lead author Job Schepens as part of a Fulbright fellowship to the University of Rochester, is the first to evaluate these effects on a large scale and may lead to novel methods of instruction for adults learning to speak foreign languages. The results of the study were published in the journal Cognition.

The team analyzed a dataset of more than 50,000 adults who learned Dutch as their second or third language. These data were collected through a state exam administered by the Dutch government to immigrants that enter Holland. Among other aspects, the exam rated the Dutch speaking proficiency for each test taker. Test takers from more than 60 different first language backgrounds were represented in the data.

The team found that a little less than half of the individual variance in the perceived proficiency of learners could be accounted for by a handful of factors: the learner's education and gender (women had higher scores than men), the learner's age when they arrived in Holland, the time they spent in Holland before taking the exam, and the learner's first language. This last factor alone accounted for 50 percent of the explained variance in learners' proficiency.

This strong effect of a learner's first language seems to be almost entirely driven by how similar the learner's first language is to the language they are trying to learn. Schepens's team coded the linguistic similarity between Dutch and the 62 first languages spoken by different learners in the database. In collaboration with Roeland van Hout, a professor at Radboud University, they coded, for example, how similar the languages were to Dutch in terms of their sound structures. The huge majority--about 80 percent--of the effect of language background was explained through linguistic similarity. Of the test takers who grew up speaking Arabic, only about 5 percent scored higher in Dutch speaking proficiency than the worst 50 percent of the test takers that grew up speaking German.

"Our results suggest that this is in large parts due to the fact that German shares many linguistic features with Dutch, whereas Arabic does not," Schepens says. "This is not a new insight, but the present study is the first to quantify just how substantial this effect is."

"This suggests that a large proportion of the perceived non-nativeness of a learner is simply due to the language they grew up with, and this factor is entirely out of their control," says Florian Jaeger, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester.

The results also corroborate an important insight from research on how languages should be taught to adults, Jaeger says. "Since the language the learner grew up with has a large effect on what they struggle with, language instruction that takes into account a learner's first language promises to be more effective."

New Haven, Conn. -- The transition to electronic health records (EHRs) was supposed to improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare for doctors and patients alike -- but these technologies get an "F" rating for usability from health care professionals, and may be contributing to high rates of professional burnout, according to a new Yale-led study.

By contrast, Google's search engine earned an "A" and ATMs a "B" in similar but separate studies. Like EHRs, the spreadsheet software Excel got an "F."

"A Google search is easy," said lead author Edward R. Melnick, assistant professor of emergency medicine and director of the Clinical Informatics Fellowship at Yale. "There's not a lot of learning or memorization; it's not very error-prone. Excel, on the other hand, is a super-powerful platform, but you really have to study how to use it. EHRs mimic that."

Published in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings, the new study was a joint effort of researchers at Stanford, Mayo and the American Medical Association (AMA).

There are various EHR systems that hospitals and other medical clinics use to digitally manage patient information. These systems replace hard-copy files, storing clinical data, such as medications, medical history, lab and radiology reports and physician notes. They were developed to improve patient care by making health information easy for healthcare providers to access and share, reducing medical error.

But the rapid rollout of EHRs following the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009, which pumped $27 billion of federal incentives into the adoption of EHRs in the U.S., forced doctors to adapt quickly to often complex systems, leading to increasing frustration.

The study notes that physicians spend one to two hours on EHRs and other deskwork for every hour spent with patients, and an additional one to two hours daily of personal time on EHR-related activities.

"As recently as 10 years ago, physicians were still scribbling notes," Melnick said. "Now, there's a ton of structured data entry, which means that physicians have to check a lot of boxes. Often this structured data does very little to improve care; instead, it's used for billing. And looking for communication from another doctor or a specific test result in a patient's chart can be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. The boxes may have been checked, but the patient's story and information have been lost in the process."

Melnick's study zeroed in on the effect of EHRs in physician burnout.

The AMA, along with researchers at Mayo and Stanford, surveys over 5,000 physicians every three years on topics related to burnout. Most recently, the burnout rate was found to be 43.9% -- a drop from the 54.4% of 2014, but still worryingly high, researchers said. The same survey found that burnout for the general U.S. population was 28.6%.

One quarter of the respondents were also asked to rate their EHR's usability by applying a measure, System Usability Scale (SUS), that has been used in over 1,300 other usability studies in various industries.

Users in other studies ranked Google's search engine an "A." Microwave ovens, ATMs and Amazon got "Bs." Microsoft Word, DVRs and GPSes got "Cs." Microsoft Excel, with its steep learning curve, got an "F."

In Melnick's study, EHRs came in last, with a score of 45 -- an even lower "F" score than Excel's 57.

And EHR usability ratings correlated highly with burnout -- the lower physicians rated their EHR, the higher the likelihood that they also reported symptoms of burnout.

The study found that certain physician specialties rated their EHRs especially poorly -- among them, dermatology, orthopedic surgery, and general surgery.

Conversely, specialties with the highest SUS scores included anesthesiology, general pediatrics, and pediatric subspecialties.

Demographic factors like age and location mattered, too. Older physicians found EHRs less usable, and doctors working in veterans' hospitals rated their EHR higher than physicians in private practice or in academic medical centers.

By benchmarking physicians' feelings about EHRs, Melnick said, it will be possible to track the impact of technology improvements on usability and burnout.

"We're trying to improve and standardize EHRs," Melnick said. "The goal is that with future work, we won't have to ask doctors how they feel about the EHR or even how burned out they are, but that we can see how doctors are interfacing with the EHR and, when it improves, we can see that improvement."

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Race-based discrimination and stereotypes are ubiquitous in the online communities and mobile apps that gay and bisexual men use to search for sexual and romantic partners, research indicates.

But because racialized sexual discrimination - also called sexual racism - is a relatively new area of study, researchers currently don't have a tool for measuring its impact on the well-being of men of color who use these websites, according to University of Illinois social work professor Ryan Wade.

Wade and Gary W. Harper, a professor of health behavior and health education at the University of Michigan, have developed a scale to help researchers better understand how the psychological well-being of ethnic minorities is affected by RSD experiences.

Wade presented their latest research on the topic at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association in Philadelphia on Nov. 6. He and Harper are the co-authors of a new study, a comprehensive review of prior research on RSD that was published recently in the American Journal of Community Psychology.

Wade and Harper found that RSD emerges in a variety of forms and contexts in these online communities and, less often, when men meet potential partners in person. These include prominent statements in users' online profiles that express inclusionary or exclusionary racial preferences for potential partners.

The researchers note that these race-based preferences - usually expressed by the white majority seeking to exclude people of color - are a common part of the narrative within these online spaces.

However, the degree to which racial and ethnic minorities perceive race-based partner selection as racist gets overshadowed by these personal preference narratives, Wade said.

Whiteness is the hallmark of desirability for some participants in these networks, and some researchers have called race-based partner selection "the new face of racism in online sexual and dating networks of gay/bisexual men," according to Wade and Harper's study.

RSD also emerges in statements that reject, erotically objectify or denigrate men of color and perpetuate stereotypes about their perceived sexual prowess, sexual roles or physical attributes.

Wade and Harper hypothesize that exposure to these experiences may foment feelings of shame, humiliation and inferiority, negatively impacting the self-esteem and overall psychological health of racial and ethnic minorities.

"We ran a series of focus groups to talk about this phenomenon, to determine the different domains it includes and to identify RSD-related experiences that could be measured," Wade said.

Using information gathered from focus group participants, Wade and Harper developed a scale of RSD that categorized men's experiences into four domains - exclusion, rejection, degradation and erotic objectification.

The scale consists of 60 items that assess a broad scope of unique RSD experiences across all four of the hypothesized domains, accounting for the effect and frequency of these experiences and the perpetrator's race.

"RSD perpetrated by in-group members - people of their same race - came up as a major point in our focus group discussions," Wade said. "Participants discussed how being discriminated against by people of their own racial or ethnic group hurt in a unique way, so we wanted to account for that too when developing the scale."

The overall impact of any given RSD experience is measured by multiplying the frequency and effect scores for each domain, Wade said.

To test the scale, Wade and Harper launched a project called ProfileD, in which they recruited young gay and bisexual black men ages 18-29 through social media to participate in an online survey about their RSD experiences.

Data from more than 2,000 participants who consented to be in that project were used in preliminary analyses of the scale.

Tropical Cyclone Kalmaegi is still experiencing wind shear and those winds have continued to displace the strongest storms north of the cyclone's center. NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite passed overhead and identified those strong storms using infrared light.

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard Suomi NPP provided an infrared image of the storm. Infrared imagery reveals cloud top temperatures, and the higher the cloud top, the colder it is, and the stronger the storm. The VIIRS instrument aboard captured an infrared image of the storm on Nov. 14 at 1:12 a.m. EST (0512 UTC). VIIRS showed strong storms in a large area north and northwest of the center, where cloud top temperatures were as cold as minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 62.2 Celsius). Storms with cloud tops that cold have been found to generate heavy rainfall.

Wind shear seems to be preventing Kalmaegi from consolidating, as the storm is still a tropical depression. In general, wind shear is a measure of how the speed and direction of winds change with altitude. Tropical cyclones are like rotating cylinders of winds. Each level needs to be stacked on top each other vertically in order for the storm to maintain strength or intensify. Wind shear occurs when winds at different levels of the atmosphere push against the rotating cylinder of winds, weakening the rotation by pushing it apart at different levels.

At 10 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC), the center of Kalmaegi was located near latitude 15.3 degrees north and longitude 125.8 degrees east. That is 286 nautical miles east of Manila, Philippines.  Maximum sustained winds are near 30 knots (34.5 mph/55.5 kph).

Kalmaegi is moving toward the west-northwest toward a landfall in Luzon, Philippines in the northern part of the country. Landfall is expected in northeastern Luzon on Nov. 16.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- For years, physicists have assumed that Cooper pairs, the electron duos that enable superconductors to conduct electricity without resistance, were two-trick ponies. The pairs either glide freely, creating a superconducting state, or create an insulating state by jamming up within a material, unable to move at all.

But in a new paper published in Science, a team of researchers has shown that Cooper pairs can also conduct electricity with some amount of resistance, like regular metals do. The findings describe an entirely new state of matter, the researchers say, that will require a new theoretical explanation.

"There had been evidence that this metallic state would arise in thin film superconductors as they were cooled down toward their superconducting temperature, but whether or not that state involved Cooper pairs was an open question," said Jim Valles, a professor of physics at Brown University and the study's corresponding author. "We've developed a technique that enables us to test that question and we showed that, indeed, Cooper pairs are responsible for transporting charge in this metallic state. What's interesting is that no one is quite sure at a fundamental level how they do that, so this finding will require some more theoretical and experimental work to understand exactly what's happening."

Cooper pairs are named for Leon Cooper, a physics professor at Brown who won the Nobel Prize in 1972 for describing their role in enabling superconductivity. Resistance is created when electrons rattle around in the atomic lattice of a material as they move. But when electrons join together to become Cooper pairs, they undergo a remarkable transformation. Electrons by themselves are fermions, particles that obey the Pauli exclusion principle, which means each electron tends to keep its own quantum state. Cooper pairs, however, act like bosons, which can happily share the same state. That bosonic behavior allows Cooper pairs to coordinate their movements with other sets of Cooper pairs in a way the reduces resistance to zero.

In 2007, Valles, working with Brown engineering and physics professor Jimmy Xu, showed that Cooper pairs could also produce insulating states as well as superconductivity. In very thin materials, rather than moving in concert, the pairs conspire to stay in place, stranded on tiny islands within a material and unable to jump to the next island.

For this new study, Valles, Xu and colleagues in China looked for Cooper pairs in the non-superconducting metallic state using a technique similar to the one that revealed Cooper pair insulators. The technique involves patterning a thin-film superconductor -- in this case a high-temperature superconductor yttrium barium copper oxide (YBCO) -- with arrays of tiny holes. When the material has a current running through it and is exposed to a magnetic field, charge carriers in the material will orbit the holes like water circling a drain.

"We can measure the frequency at which these charges circle," Valles said. "In this case, we found that the frequency is consistent with there being two electrons going around at a time instead of just one. So we can conclude that the charge carriers in this state are Cooper pairs and not single electrons."

The idea that boson-like Cooper pairs are responsible for this metallic state is something of a surprise, the researchers say, because there are elements of quantum theory that suggest this shouldn't be possible. So understanding just what is happening in this state could lead to some exciting new physics, but more research will be required.

Luckily, the researchers say, the fact that this phenomenon was detected in a high-temperature superconductor will make future research more practical. YBCO starts superconducting at around -181 degrees Celsius, and the metallic phase starts at temperatures just above that. That's pretty cold, but it's much warmer than other superconductors, which are active at just above absolute zero. That higher temperature makes it easier to use spectroscopy and other techniques aimed at better understand what's happening in this metallic phase.

Down the road, the researchers say, it might be possible to harness this bosonic metal state for new types of electronic devices.

"The thing about the bosons is that they tend to be in more of a wavelike state than electrons, so we talk about them having a phase and creating interference in much the same way light does," Valles said. "So there might be new modalities for moving charge around in devices by playing with interference between bosons."

But for now, the researchers are happy to have discovered a new state of matter.

"Science is built on discoveries," Xu said, "and it's great to have discovered something completely new."

The world of aerospace increasingly relies on carbon fiber reinforced polymer composites to build the structures of satellites, rockets and jet aircraft.

But the life of those materials is limited by how they handle heat.

A team of FAMU-FSU College of Engineering researchers from Florida State University's High-Performance Materials Institute is developing a design for a heat shield that better protects those extremely fast machines. Their work will be published in the November edition of CARBON .

"Right now, our flight systems are becoming more and more high-speed, even going into hypersonic systems, which are five times the speed of sound," said Professor Richard Liang, director of HPMI. "When you have speeds that high, there's more heat on a surface. Therefore, we need a much better thermal protection system."

The team used carbon nanotubes, which are linked hexagons of carbon atoms in the shape of a cylinder, to build the heat shields. Sheets of those nanotubes are also known as "buckypaper," a material with incredible abilities to conduct heat and electricity that has been a focus of study at HPMI. By soaking the buckypaper in a resin made of a compound called phenol, the researchers were able to create a lightweight, flexible material that is also durable enough to potentially protect the body of a rocket or jet from the intense heat it faces while flying.

Existing heat shields are often very thick compared to the base they protect, said Ayou Hao, a research faculty member at HPMI.

This design lets engineers build a very thin shield, like a sort of skin that protects the aircraft and helps support its structure.

After building heat shields of varying thicknesses, the researchers put them to the test.

One test involved applying a flame to the samples to see how they prevented heat from reaching the carbon fiber layer they were meant to protect. After that, the researchers bent the samples to see how strong they remained.

They found the samples with sheets of buckypaper were better than control samples at dispersing heat and keeping it from reaching the base layer. They also stayed strong and flexible compared to control samples made without protective layers of nanotubes.

That flexibility is a helpful quality. The nanotubes are less vulnerable to cracking at high temperatures compared to ceramics, a typical heat shield material. They're also lightweight, which is helpful for engineers who want to reduce the weight of anything on an aircraft that doesn't help the way it flies.

The project received second place among peer-reviewed posters at the 2019 National Space and Missile Materials Symposium and received third place at the Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering 2019 University Research Symposium.

That recognition is helpful for showing the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research, which partially supported the work, the promise of further research, Hao said.

Genetic research led by Queen Mary University of London could open the way to earlier identification of people at risk of heart failure and to the development of new treatments.

The Queen Mary University of London team applied an artificial intelligence (AI) technique to analyse the heart MRI images of 17,000 healthy UK Biobank volunteers. They found that genetic factors accounted for 22-39 per cent of variation in the size and function of the heart's left ventricle, the organ's main pumping chamber. Enlargement and reduced pumping function of the left ventricle can lead to heart failure.

The research, which was part-funded by the Wellcome Trust and the British Heart Foundation and published today in the journal Circulation, suggests that genetic factors significantly influence the variation in heart structure and function. The team identified or confirmed 14 regions in the human genome associated with the size and function of the left ventricle - each containing genes that regulate the early development of heart chambers and the contraction of heart muscle.

Lead researcher Dr Nay Aung from Queen Mary University of London, said: "It is exciting that the state-of-the-art AI techniques now allow rapid and accurate measurement of the tens of thousands of heart MRI images required for genetic studies. The findings open up the possibility of earlier identification of those at risk of heart failure and of new targeted treatments. The genetic risk scores established from this study could be tested in future studies to create an integrated and personalised risk assessment tool for heart failure.

"The AI tool allowed us to analyse images in a fraction of the time it would otherwise have taken. Our academic and commercial partners are further developing these AI algorithms to analyse other aspects of cardiac structure and function. This should translate to time and cost savings for the NHS and could potentially improve the efficiency of patient care."

Steffen Petersen, Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at Queen Mary University of London, who also worked on the project, said: "Previous studies have shown that differences in the size and function of the heart are partly influenced by genes but we have not really understood the extent of that genetic influence. This study has shown that several genes known to be important in heart failure also appear to regulate the heart size and function in healthy people. That understanding of the genetic basis of heart structure and function in the general population improves our knowledge of how heart failure evolves.

"The study provides a blueprint for future genetic research involving the heart MRI images in the UK Biobank and beyond."

Patricia Munroe, Professor of Molecular Medicine at Queen Mary University of London, who also worked on the project, said "High fidelity MRI measures combined with genetics is reassuringly validating many known heart structural proteins, but our work also finds new genes from more heritable functional measures that are associated with ventricular remodelling and fibrosis. Further genetic studies including analyses of additional heart MRI chambers are expected to provide deeper insights into heart biology."

It is expected that many more genetic markers for cardiac conditions will be identified as the UK Biobank database grows. Earlier this month UK Biobank announced it will begin sequencing the whole human genome of 450,000 participants, following the success of the pilot sequencing programme in 50,000 participants.

Quantum computing has the potential to revolutionize technology, medicine, and science by providing faster and more efficient processors, sensors, and communication devices.

But transferring information and correcting errors within a quantum system remains a challenge to making effective quantum computers.

In a paper in the journal Nature, researchers from Purdue University and the University of Rochester, including John Nichol, an assistant professor of physics, and Rochester PhD students Yadav P. Kandel and Haifeng Qiao, demonstrate their method of relaying information by transferring the state of electrons. The research brings scientists one step closer to creating fully functional quantum computers and is the latest example of Rochester's initiative to better understand quantum behavior and develop novel quantum systems. The University recently received a $4 million grant from the Department of Energy to explore quantum materials.

QUANTUM COMPUTERS

A quantum computer operates on the principles of quantum mechanics, a unique set of rules that govern at the extremely small scale of atoms and subatomic particles. When dealing with particles at these scales, many of the rules that govern classical physics no longer apply and quantum effects emerge; a quantum computer is able to perform complex calculations, factor extremely large numbers, and simulate the behaviors of atoms and particles at levels that classical computers cannot.

Quantum computers have the potential to provide more insight into principles of physics and chemistry by simulating the behavior of matter at unusual conditions at the molecular level. These simulations could be useful in developing new energy sources and studying the conditions of planets and galaxies or comparing compounds that could lead to new drug therapies.

"You and I are quantum systems. The particles in our body obey quantum physics. But, if you try to compute what happens with all of the atoms in our body, you cannot do it on a regular computer," Nichol says. "A quantum computer could easily do this."

Quantum computers could also open doors for faster database searches and cryptography.

"It turns out that almost all of modern cryptography is based on the extreme difficulty for regular computers to factor large numbers," Nichol says. "Quantum computers can easily factor large numbers and break encryption schemes, so you can imagine why lots of governments are interested in this."

BITS VS. QUBITS

A regular computer consists of billions of transistors, called bits. Quantum computers, on the other hand, are based on quantum bits, also known as qubits, which can be made from a single electron. Unlike ordinary transistors, which can be either "0" or "1," qubits can be both "0" and "1" at the same time. The ability for individual qubits to occupy these "superposition states," where they are simultaneously in multiple states, underlies the great potential of quantum computers. Just like ordinary computers, however, quantum computers need a way to transfer information between qubits, and this presents a major experimental challenge.

"A quantum computer needs to have many qubits, and they're really difficult to make and operate," Nichol says. "The state-of-the art right now is doing something with only a few qubits, so we're still a long ways away from realizing the full potential of quantum computers."

All computers, including both regular and quantum computers and devices like smart phones, also have to perform error correction. A regular computer contains copies of bits so if one of the bits goes bad, "the rest are just going to take a majority vote" and fix the error. However, quantum bits cannot be copied, Nichol says, "so you have to be very clever about how you correct for errors. What we're doing here is one step in that direction."

MANIPULATING ELECTRONS

Quantum error correction requires that individual qubits interact with many other qubits. This can be difficult because an individual electron is like a bar magnet with a north pole and a south pole that can point either up or down. The direction of the pole--whether the north pole is pointing up or down, for instance--is known as the electron's magnetic moment or quantum state.

If certain kinds of particles have the same magnetic moment, they cannot be in the same place at the same time. That is, two electrons in the same quantum state cannot sit on top of each other.

"This is one of the main reasons something like a penny, which is made out of metal, doesn't collapse on itself," Nichol says. "The electrons are pushing themselves apart because they cannot be in the same place at the same time."

If two electrons are in opposite states, they can sit on top of each other. A surprising consequence of this is that if the electrons are close enough, their states will swap back and forth in time.

"If you have one electron that's up and another electron that's down and you push them together for just the right amount of time, they will swap," Nichol says. "They did not switch places, but their states switched."

To force this phenomenon, Nichol and his colleagues cooled down a semiconductor chip to extremely low temperatures. Using quantum dots--nanoscale semiconductors--they trapped four electrons in a row, then moved the electrons so they came in contact and their states switched.

"There's an easy way to switch the state between two neighboring electrons, but doing it over long distances--in our case, it's four electrons--requires a lot of control and technical skill," Nichol says. "Our research shows this is now a viable approach to send information over long distances."

A FIRST STEP

Transmitting the state of an electron back and forth across an array of qubits, without moving the position of electrons, provides a striking example of the possibilities allowed by quantum physics for information science.

"This experiment demonstrates that information in quantum states can be transferred without actually transferring the individual electron spins down the chain," says Michael Manfra, a professor of physics and astronomy at Purdue University. "It is an important step for showing how information can be transmitted quantum-mechanically--in manners quite different than our classical intuition would lead us to believe."

Nichol likens this to the steps that led from the first computing devices to today's computers. That said, will we all someday have quantum computers to replace our desktop computers? "If you had asked that question of IBM in the 1960s, they probably would've said no, there's no way that's going to happen," Nichol says. "That's my reaction now. But, who knows?"

When cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) transitioned from life on land to life in the sea about 50 million years ago, 85 genes became inactivated in these species, according to a new study. While some of these gene losses were likely neutral, others equipped cetaceans with "superpowers" for surviving in the open ocean, facilitating deep dives and paving the way for a unique new sleeping style. Although previous studies have provided insights into the genomic changes that drove transformations as the ancestors of modern cetaceans transitioned from a terrestrial to a fully-aquatic lifestyle, these genomic changes remain incompletely understood. Matthias Huelsmann et al. searched for gene-inactivating mutations from 19,769 genes in 62 mammal species, screening for those that were turned off after cetaceans split from the ancestors of modern hippopotamuses but before toothed whales split from baleen whales. Among the inactivated genes identified in cetaceans, the researchers found a gene involved in saliva secretion, which became unnecessary since the watery surroundings sufficiently lubricate food and dilute salivary digestive enzymes, as well as two genes that promote blood clot formation but do not affect wound sealing, without which whales gain protection from blood clots while diving. The cetaceans also lost lung-related genes, allowing their lungs to temporarily collapse as they descend into the deep--an occurrence that would be alarming in humans, but which makes whales better divers by reducing their buoyancy and protecting them from injuries caused by rapid pressure changes when they resurface. Further, Huelsmann and colleagues found that cetaceans lost all genes required for synthesizing melatonin, which may have led them to evolve a type of sleep in which one brain hemisphere stays awake so they can continue to resurface and generate heat as needed.

Imagine trying to paint a forest when all the artist has is a leaf and a piece of bark versus having a living, growing tree as a model. Seeing how the parts fit together can make all the difference.

That's the level of advancement in organoid science that researchers at Cincinnati Children's have achieved with findings published today in the prestigious journal Nature. Instead of growing mini human organs independently in separate lab dishes, a team led by Takanori Takebe, MD, succeeded at growing a connected set of three organs: the liver, pancreas and biliary ducts.

Organoids, grown from stem cells, are tiny 3D formations of human tissue that actually perform the functions of multiple cells types found in full-sized organs. Organoid experts at Cincinnati Children's have already grown intestines that feature nutrient-absorbing villi, stomach organoids that produce digestive acids, and more.

By themselves, human organoids already provide a sophisticated tool for research. But this advance allows scientists to study how human tissues work in concert. This major step forward could begin reducing the need for animal-based medication studies, sharply accelerate the concept of precision medicine, and someday lead to transplantable tissues grown in labs.

"The connectivity is the most important part of this," Takebe says. "What we have done is design a method for producing pre-organ formation stage tissues so that they can develop naturally. We are maximizing our capacity to make multiple organs much like or body does."

A 5-year quest achieves key goal

Takebe, age 32, joined Cincinnati Children's in 2016 and holds a dual appointment at Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) in Japan. He graduated from medical school in 2011 with plans to become a liver transplant surgeon. But as he learned about the yawning gap between the supply and demand for donor organs, Takebe shifted gears to focus on organ supply.

In previous research, Takebe has demonstrated a method to produce large supplies of liver "buds," an early-stage form of a liver organoid. He also has grown liver organoids that reflect disease states, including steatohepatitis, a dangerous form of liver scarring and inflammation that occurs in some people with obesity.

His work to date has been hailed by the Imperial Prince of Japan, who presented Takebe with an honor in 2018 from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Discover magazine also listed Takebe's organoid work as No. 5 in its list of the top 100 science achievements of 2013.

But Takebe says this project is his highest-impact work yet.

"We noted this point in organ differentiation some time ago. But it took five years to tune up the culture system to allow this development to occur," Takebe says.

How three proto-organs grow in concert

The hardest parts of the process were the earliest steps. Takebe worked for many hours with colleagues at Cincinnati Children's including first author Hiroyuki Koike, PhD, now at Nippon Medical School in Japan, to perfect the process. They started with human skin cells, converting them back into primitive stem cells, then guiding and prodding those stem cells to form two very early-stage "spheroids" of cells loosely termed the foregut and the midgut.

These balls of cells form very early in embryonic development. In humans, they form late in the first month of gestation. In mice, they form in just 8.5 days. Over time, these spheres merge and morph into the organs that eventually become the digestive tract.

Growing these spheroids in the lab was a complex process that required using the right ingredients at the right time. Once they were mature enough--a timing step that required much work to pinpoint--then came the easier part.

The team simply placed the spheroids next to each other in a special lab dish. The cells were suspended in a gel that's commonly used to support organoid growth, then placed on top of a thin membrane that covered a carefully mixed batch of growth medium.

"From this point, the cells knew what to do," Takebe says. (see video for illustration of this)

The lab team simply watched as cells from each spheroid began to transform upon meeting each other at the boundary between the two. They converted themselves, and each other, into more specialized cells that could be seen changing colors thanks to chemical tags the lab team had attached to the cells.

Soon, the merging, changing spheres sprouted into branches leading to new groups of cells that belonged to specific organs. Over a period of 70 days, these cells continued to multiply into more refined and distinct cell types. Ultimately, the mini organoids began processing bile acids as if they were digesting and filtering food.

"This was completely unexpected. We thought we would need to add ingredients or other factors to push this process," Koike says. "Not trying to control this biological process led us to this success."

What does this advance mean?

Aaron Zorn, PhD, Director of the Center for Stem Cell and Organoid Medicine (CuSTOM) at Cincinnati Children's says this advance will be useful in multiple ways.

"The real breakthrough here was to be able to make an integrated organ system," Zorn says. "From a research perspective this is an unprecedented opportunity to study normal human development."

However, Takebe and colleagues were able to grow these organoids only so far.

For the long-term hope of growing organ tissues large enough to be useful in human transplantation, Takebe says more work is needed. He and his colleagues already have started working on ways to add in immune cells along with cell lines needed to form blood vessels, connective tissues, and more.

But for research and diagnostic purposes, this discovery may have more immediate implications.

In precision medicine, doctors are starting to use genomic data and other information to determine exactly which treatments would work best for patients with serious disease, at what dose, and with the least amount of possible side effects.

A living "gut" of multiple organs would provide scientists with a powerful tool for studying exactly how gene variations and other factors affect organ development during pregnancy, and to develop better targeted drugs to treat conditions after babies are born.

A connected system of "generic" human organoids would offer much more information than having three organoids in disconnected dishes. Growing a set of gut organoids for a specific patient could allow even more precise diagnosis and customized treatment.

"Current liver regenerative medicine approaches suffer from the absence of bile duct connectivity," Takebe says. "While much work remains before we can begin human clinical trials, our multi-organoid transplant system is poised to solve this issue and may someday provide a life-long cure for patients with liver diseases."

Someday may not be so far away

While much more work remains ahead, Takebe and colleagues already report one step toward a practical application.

The team already has grown a set of gut organoids that lack the gene HES1. This is one of several known genes that play a major role in triggering biliary atresia, a condition that destroys the biliary duct system, which leads to liver failure and death unless a transplant can be provided. This condition is the leading cause of liver transplants for children.

The new study demonstrates how the gut organoids are harmed by the lack of HES1. If scientists can find a way to compensate for that genetic variation, they may be able to find a medication or cell transplant that would preserve biliary function in newborns and possibly avoid the need for hard-to-obtain liver transplants.