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PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- When acting as one part of a group charged with deciding how to punish someone -- a jury, for example -- individuals are swayed by their peers to punish more often than they would if deciding alone, a new study found.

"People can get together in a group and be intensified by the other people in their group to behave in ways they wouldn't typically when alone, including becoming more punitive," said Oriel FeldmanHall, an assistant professor of cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences at Brown University and senior researcher on the study. "Even in a fairly sterile laboratory setting, when you're just exposed to the minimal preferences of a few other people, it is enough to amplify your punishment recommendations of perpetrators by 40 percent."

The findings were published on Monday, Aug. 12, in the journal Scientific Reports.

FeldmanHall, who is affiliated with Brown's Carney Institute for Brain Science, and her research team conducted five experiments involving almost 400 participants. Four looked at individuals' willingness to punish people who behaved selfishly in economic tasks, and another involved determining punishment recommendations for hypothetical perpetrators of crimes of varying severity.

Across all experiments, participants decided -- either as a member of a group, or alone -- whether or not to punish the offender. The study also measured differences in partiality: Some experiments were set up such that the decision-maker was tasked with serving as an impartial juror; in others, the decision-maker was directed to imagine they were the victim of an unfair offer or mock crime.

The team found that as the number of pro-punishment people in the group increased, other participants become up to 40 percent more willing to recommend punishing a perpetrator, FeldmanHall said. That trend held true whether the experiment was framed such that the participant was an impacted victim or an impartial juror.

However, they also found some differences. Victims were more readily swayed by their peers' decisions to punish. In contrast, jurors conformed to group decisions at a lower rate than victims and also took into account the severity of the perpetrator's offense when deciding whether to punish.

Using a computational model that describes how people use contextual information to make decisions, the researchers found that participants used both their peers' preferences as a guidepost for how much they should value punishment and were less cautious about making decisions when they believed they were only one voice among many.

"When punishment is delegated to groups, there's the benefit of pooling people's preferences and perspectives, but it also introduces the danger that people will conform to the group's preferences," said Jae-Young Son, first author on the paper and a doctoral student in FeldmanHall's lab. "In real-world contexts, such as a jury, there's a possibility that being part of a group will make everyone within the group less cautious about their decisions -- that may be sufficient to convince some people to conform to the majority opinion, and that creates increasingly large majorities that eventually convince everyone else."

Although these results may seem alarming in certain contexts, FeldmanHall added that conformity can also be adaptive -- it helps humans survive.

"People use each other as a reference points all the time because it is adaptive and helpful for gathering information," she said. "Looking to other people, and how they approach a justice dilemma, can -- although not always -- be a useful thing."

However, more research is needed to understand the extent to which people are willing to be flexible about moral decisions, she added.

The participants were recruited from the Brown community and online through Amazon Mechanical Turk, two common ways for recruiting participants for this type of experiments. FeldmanHall said she prefers to use both methods of recruitment to ensure that the team's results are robust.

In addition to FeldmanHall and Son, Brown investigator Apoorva Bhandariwas an author on the paper. The research was supported by Brown internal funding.

HOUSTON - (Aug. 12, 2019) - A Rice University lab wants its products to look sharp, even at the nanoscale. Its latest creation is right on target.

The Rice lab of materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan has created unique two-dimensional flakes with two distinct personalities: molybdenum diselenide on one side of a sharp divide with rhenium diselenide on the other.

From all appearances, the two-toned material likes it that way, growing naturally -- though under tight conditions -- in a chemical vapor deposition furnace.

The material is a 2D transition metal dichalcogenide heterostructure, a crystal with more than one chemical component. That's not unusual in itself, but the sharp zigzag boundary between elements in the material reported in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters is unique.

Dichalcogenides are semiconductors that incorporate transition metals and chalcogens. They're a promising component for optoelectronic applications like solar cells, photodetectors and sensing devices. Lead author Amey Apte, a Rice graduate student, said they may also be suitable materials for quantum computing or neuromorphic computing, which emulates the structure of the human brain.

Apte said well-known, atomically flat molybdenum-tungsten dichalcogenide heterostructures can be more alloy-like, with diffuse boundaries between their crystal domains. However, the new material -- technically, 2H MoSe2-1T' ReSe2 -- has atomically sharp interfaces that gives it a smaller electronic band gap than other dichalcogenides.

"Instead of having one unique band gap based on the composition of an alloy, we can tune the band gap in this material in a very controllable way," Apte said. "The strong dissimilarity between two adjacent atomically thin domains opens up new avenues." He said the range of voltages likely spans from 1.5 to 2.5 electron volts.

Growing the materials reliably involved the creation of a phase diagram that laid out how each parameter -- the balance of chemical gas precursor, the temperature and the time -- affects the process. Rice graduate student and co-author Sandhya Susarla said the diagram serves as a road map for manufacturers.

"The biggest issue in these 2D materials has been that they're not very reproducible," she said. "They're very sensitive to a lot of parameters, because the process is kinetically controlled.

"But our process is scalable because it's thermodynamically controlled," Susarla said. "Manufacturers don't have a lot of parameters to look at. They just have to look at the phase diagram, control the composition and they will get the product every time."

The researchers think they can gain further control of the material's form by tailoring the substrate for epitaxial growth. Having the atoms fall into place in accordance with the surface's own atomic arrangement would allow for far more customization.

AUGUSTA, Ga. (Aug. 12, 2019) - When we race walk, for example, part of our healthy heart muscle may want a little more blood and oxygen, so our tiniest blood vessels send a message upstream to the larger vessels to send more.

Now researchers at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University have found that a chemical in our bodies known to help blood vessels dilate also sends that signal to the larger blood vessels that more blood is needed.

They've also found that in diastolic heart failure, a condition where the left ventricle, the major pumping chamber of the heart, can't relax enough to fill adequately, the natural inhibitor of that chemical goes up and communication with upstream blood vessels goes down. And, when they bring the inhibitor down, it reduces the heart dysfunction, they report in the journal Circulation: Heart Failure.

"What we are talking about here even many cardiologists cannot see," Dr. Zsolt Bagi, vascular biologist in the MCG Department of Physiology, says of the microvasculature that pervades our heart muscle, aligning one on one with each individual heart cell.

One of the problems is there is not much that can be done to treat this type of tiny blood vessel disease if it is found, says Bagi, the study's corresponding author.

But Bagi and MD/PhD student Alec Davila think they have found more reason to look.

Like the larger coronary artery problems most of us probably think of when we think of heart disease, factors like high cholesterol, high blood pressure and smoking, can also produce disease in these tiny blood vessels so the essential communication about more blood doesn't happen well and we can end up with heart muscle damage and heart failure.

Microvascular dysfunction is thought to underlie many of the problems associated with diastolic heart failure, but how was an unknown and so is which comes first.

In an obese rat destined to develop diastolic heart failure, and in the blood vessels of patients, the investigators have some of the first evidence that there is a "critical deficit" in the ability to appropriately dilate blood vessels.

They saw that the chemical adenosine, which normally facilitates the dilation, doesn't work well because levels of its innate inhibitor, adenosine kinase, are increased.

In a healthy state, the two provide balance for each other, but adenosine levels are typically somewhat higher.

If you are healthy, when a portion of your heart needs more blood and oxygen for that walk or to hike up some stairs, adenosine levels go up and adenosine kinase levels decrease, which is good, Davila says.

Now they've shown that in their animal model of disease, giving a drug that blocks adenosine kinase boosts the intrinsic adenosine production back where we need it, which is also good, says Bagi.

In both their model and in human microvessels, they found that adding the adenosine kinase inhibitor in turn improved the ability of blood vessels to dilate.

Treatment of the animal model with the inhibitor prevented diastolic dysfunction when started early, and partially reversed the condition when it had already developed, so diastolic function improved and there was less expression of markers of inadequate oxygen for the heart muscle. As a proof of principal, they also tried just directly adding more adenosine, which also restored the ability to dilate.

"The novelty here is that adenosine really amplifies the signal," says Bagi. The signal for more blood went out in a couple of seconds and the dilation started happening in a couple of more seconds, they say. Bagi and Davila suspect a daily adenosine kinase inhibitor will one day help that happen in patients.

The adenosine kinase inhibitor they used appears to be pretty specific, and is being looked at as well for epilepsy, where levels of adenosine kinase also are high, Bagi says. They doubt an adenosine drug, already used for heart arrhythmias, would work because it's so short-acting.

While they don't know exactly what increases adenosine kinase levels in disease, they want to. Possibly chronic inflammation, which plays a role in so many diseases like hypertension, obesity and diabetes -- all of which are risk factors for heart disease -- has a role in this as well, Davila says.

The issue of which comes first, the diastolic heart failure or microvascular problems, is a hot topic being pursued by several labs, including Bagi's, who suspects it's the microvascular disease.

Much like in the brain, the heart's blood supply starts with larger blood vessels that feed into progressively smaller ones with thinner walls. Ultimately, a blood vessel about the size of a strand of human hair feeds each individual heart cell, or cardiomyocyte. "The microcirculation continuously directs the blood flow where it's needed," Bagi says.

He suspects the microcirculation is affected in any type of heart failure, but likely more so in diastolic heart failure. This type is more chronic and insidious, says Bagi, and patients are largely unaware it's happening until they start having trouble with usual activities like walking up the stairs.

Rather than the classic chest pain most of us think of with heart problems,
it's symptoms can include the also classic shortness of breath with exercise but also waking up at night with breathing problems as well as coughing and wheezing, fatigue and swelling of the feet, ankles, legs and abdomen.

Systolic heart failure, where the major pumping chamber of the heart can't contract adequately to move blood out to the body, is likely what many of us think of as heart failure and it often follows heart attack(s), which have damaged the heart muscle.

With diastolic heart failure, the main pumping chamber still pumps out okay, but left untreated the ventricle may eventually have trouble with both relaxing and filling, Bagi says. He notes that it actually takes more energy for the pumping chamber to relax than contract. "It's never a passive thing."

Today there are no targeted therapies to help correct the microvascular disease associated with diastolic heart failure rather general approaches like exercise and possibly drug therapy that target known risks like high cholesterol, Bagi says, noting again that microvascular function is tough to measure, which has made it tough to find drugs that target it.

A research team from Aalto University has developed a novel strategy to create virus-based materials for catalysis. The project, which is framed within the Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie actions, aims to pave the way towards the application of optically active biohybrid materials - a combination of biomolecules and synthetic moieties - in topics ranging from nanomedicine to green organic synthesis or environmental sciences.

'Our first challenge was to select the right photosensitizer,' says Eduardo Anaya, Postdoctoral Researcher at Aalto University, 'We decided to employ phthalocyanines, a synthetic derivative of hematoporphyrin (the dye responsible for the colour of blood), due to their outstanding properties as a reactive oxygen species generator. However, the use of this kind of dyes in aqueous media presents several challenges that affect their performance. Therefore, careful design was necessary to maintain their properties`.

In collaboration with Professor Tomas Torres' research group from the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, a new phthalocyanine derivative was synthesised, resulting in a molecule with resilient properties in different ionic strength media. The design ensured the photoactivity of the dye even in an aqueous environment.

'One of the focuses of our research group lies in the design of new protein assemblies and their potential application as new materials' adds Professor Mauri Kostiainen, leader of the Biohybrid Materials group. 'Our approach is based on supramolecular interactions, such as electrostatic binding so, in this project, we decided to combine the positively charged dye with a negatively charged tobacco mosaic virus (a 300 nm long rod-like virus), resulting in a photoactive fibrous material. This approach led to highly ordered threads, which were thoroughly characterised by X-ray scattering and several microscopy techniques in the Nanomicroscopy Center at Aalto', Kostiainen says.

In addition to the structural characterisation, Anaya points out that the most crucial feature is that the dye remains active despite being immobilised in the fibres. ´We can fix the reaction site in solid support and pass the solution we want to react through it, being visible light the only "fuel" we use for it to happen. This allows us to create a continuous flow set-up that enable the scaling up of the oxidation process', he concludes.

The research team designed a proof-of-concept device where immobilising the fibres within a glass capillary; an incoming flow was oxidised in several cycles. The resilience of the fibres was assessed, concluding that both their structural stability and photoactivity remain constant over time. One additional advantage is that, once the oxidation process is completed, a light pulse can disassemble the fibres, making them easy to dispose of. The reported approach represents the first step towards the use of biohybrids in continuous flow reactions, which represent an environmentally friendly approach to this type of industrial process.

NEW YORK -- In a scientific first, Columbia scientists have demonstrated how the brains of young songbirds become tuned to the songs they learn while growing up.

The results of this study, published today in Nature Neuroscience, illustrate the extraordinary flexibility of the growing brain. Because the brain region that listens to sounds, the auditory cortex, is similar in birds and mammals, this study could help to explain why we learn our own native language so easily but struggle to learn languages we did not hear when we were young.

"The language sounds we learn as infants shape the way we hear for the rest of our lives, and the vocal sounds that songbirds hear while young may have the same effect," said Sarah M.N. Woolley, PhD, a principal investigator at Columbia University's Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and the paper's senior author. "By mapping these birds' auditory systems as they learn their songs, we hope to decipher the mechanisms that guide our own capacity to learn speech."

No other animal's communications can match the complexity and diversity of human language. But the trills, peeps and warbles sung by the more than 5,000 species of songbirds come close. The most commonly studied songbird species is the zebra finch. A young male zebra finch learns his song from his father by listening and imitating during the first three months of life.

"When first learning to sing, the juvenile's song is unstructured, similar to the way a human baby babbles before producing words," said Jordan Moore, PhD, a postdoctoral research scientist in the Woolley lab and the paper's first author. "But by the time the bird nears adulthood, it reproduces the more complex aspects of its father's song. We were interested in what is happening in the brain during this song learning period."

In a series of experiments, Drs. Moore and Woolley studied both the iconic zebra finch and the long-tailed finch, a species not commonly studied in the lab that sounds very different from its zebra finch cousin. The researchers examined brain cells called neurons that comprise the auditory cortex, the brain region that listens to sound.

While monitoring that neural activity, the researchers played recordings of songs to zebra finches and long-tailed finches. They then played synthetic sounds that were designed to match certain acoustic features of each species' songs.

From this, they identified a neural circuit in the auditory cortex where the cells' responses became specialized for the songs the birds learned.

"After identifying this circuit, we wanted to understand its flexibility," said Dr. Woolley, who is also a Columbia professor of psychology. "How does this circuit change over time as the bird learns and matures? And how do these changes integrate the bird's biology and its experience with the song its tutor sings?"

To find out, the researchers placed eggs from the two species in the nests of a third songbird species, the Bengalese finch. The team could then assess whether these cross-fostered zebra and long-tailed finches -- who were now being raised by Bengalese finches -- learned the songs of their adoptive fathers.

"That is exactly what happened," said Dr. Woolley. "The juvenile zebra and long-tailed finches began to sing like their Bengalese finch adoptive fathers and ignored the songs of their biological fathers, whom we had placed across the room and so were still within earshot."

Auditory neurons in the cross-fostered birds responded more strongly to Bengalese finch song than did neurons in birds that had learned their own species' songs. Those same neurons showed specialized tuning for the acoustic features of Bengalese finch song. This showed that the selectivity of one song versus another is shaped by what the bird learned to sing -- and not simply the species to which it belongs.

While remarkably adept at copying Bengalese finch song, the cross-fostered zebra and long-tailed finches did show some limitations. They copied individual sounds, or syllables, with ease, but they never quite grasped the syntax of their adoptive parents' song. Drs. Moore and Dr. Woolley are currently investigating the reasons for this.

Though focused on birds, today's study also offers intriguing insights into human speech and language.

"Move a five-year-old child from Madrid to New York, and within a month she can become nearly fluent in English. Her parents, meanwhile, may struggle to keep up," said Dr. Woolley. "Why? This extraordinary adaptability of the young brain is something we are actively working to understand."

Tiny Tropical Storm Henriette is the newest addition to the tropical cyclone line-up in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. The storm developed early on Aug. 12 and soon after the GPM satellite passed overhead and found heavy rain happening around its center.

The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core satellite passed over Tropical Storm Henriette at 2:06 a.m. EDT (0606 UTC) on August 12, 2019. GPM found the heaviest rainfall was around the center of circulation falling at a rate of 25 mm (about 1 inch) per hour, over open waters of the Eastern Pacific. GPM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA.

NOAA's National Hurricane Center (NHC) said, at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC), the center of Tropical Storm Henriette was \located near latitude 19.7 degrees north and longitude 112.2 degrees west. The storm is far enough away from land that there are no coastal warnings in effect. It is about 265 miles (430 km) southwest of the southern tip of Baja California, Mexico.

Henriette is moving toward the west-northwest near 12 mph (19 kph) and this general motion is expected to continue for the next couple of days. Maximum sustained winds are near 40 mph (65 kph) with higher gusts. Tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 35 miles (55 km) from the center. The estimated minimum central pressure is 1005 millibars.

Henriette is expected to begin weakening by Tuesday, Aug. 13 and degenerate into a remnant low pressure area by Tuesday night.

An international team of subsurface explorers from the University of Adelaide in Australia and the University of Aberdeen in Scotland have uncovered a previously undescribed 'Jurassic World' of around 100 ancient volcanoes buried deep within the Cooper-Eromanga Basins of central Australia.

The Cooper-Eromanga Basins in the north-eastern corner of South Australia and south-western corner of Queensland is Australia's largest onshore oil and gas producing region of Australia. But, despite about 60 years of petroleum exploration and production, this ancient Jurassic volcanic underground landscape has gone largely unnoticed.

Published in the journal Gondwana Research, the researchers used advanced subsurface imaging techniques, analogous to medical CT scanning, to identify the plethora of volcanic craters and lava flows, and the deeper magma chambers that fed them. They've called the volcanic region the Warnie Volcanic Province, with a nod to Australian cricket legend Shane Warne.

The volcanoes developed in the Jurassic period, between 180 and 160 million years ago, and have been subsequently buried beneath hundreds of meters of sedimentary - or layered - rocks.

The Cooper-Eromanga Basins are now a dry and barren landscape but in Jurassic times, the researchers say, would have been a landscape of craters and fissures, spewing hot ash and lava into the air, and surrounded by networks of river channels, evolving into large lakes and coal-swamps.

"While the majority of Earth's volcanic activity occurs at the boundaries of tectonic plates, or under the Earth's oceans, this ancient Jurassic world developed deep within the interior of the Australian continent," says co-author Associate Professor Simon Holford, from the University of Adelaide's Australian School of Petroleum.

"Its discovery raises the prospect that more undiscovered volcanic worlds reside beneath the poorly explored surface of Australia."

The research was carried out by Jonathon Hardman, then a PhD student at the University of Aberdeen, as part of the Natural Environment Research Council Centre for Doctoral Training in Oil and Gas.

The researchers say that Jurassic-aged sedimentary rocks bearing oil, gas and water have been economically important for Australia, but this latest discovery suggests a lot more volcanic activity in the Jurassic period than previously supposed.

"The Cooper-Eromanga Basins have been substantially explored since the first gas discovery in 1963," says co-author Associate Professor Nick Schofield, from the University of Aberdeen's Department of Geology and Petroleum Geology.

"This has led to a massive amount of available data from underneath the ground but, despite this, the volcanics have never been properly understood in this region until now. It changes how we understand processes that have operated in Earth's past."

The researchers have named their discovery the Warnie Volcanic Province after one of the drill holes that penetrated Jurassic volcanic rocks (Warnie East-1), itself named after a nearby waterhole), but also in recognition of the explosive talent of former Australian cricketer Shane Warne.

"We wrote much of the paper during a visit to Adelaide by the Aberdeen researchers, when a fair chunk was discussed and written at Adelaide Oval during an England vs Cricket Australia XI match in November 2017. Inspired by the cricket, we thought Warnie a good name for this once fiery region," says Associate Professor Holford.

Amidst a surge in research and media reports on the potentially negative consequences of "sexting," a University of Arizona researcher is exploring what motivates young people to send sexually explicit images of themselves via text message in the first place.

The explanation isn't as straightforward as one might think, especially when it comes to young women, says UA sociology doctoral student Morgan Johnstonbaugh, who presented her research during the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting in New York City over the weekend.

In an online survey, Johnstonbaugh asked more than 1,000 college students - age 20 years old on average - from seven U.S. universities to describe the last time they sent a nude or semi-nude photograph of themselves to another person electronically. They were then asked why they shared the photo. Presented with a list of 23 possible reasons, they could check as many or as few as they wanted.

In her analysis of the responses, Johnstonbaugh found that the odds were four times higher for women than men to say that they sent sexually explicit images of themselves in order to prevent the recipient from losing interest or to prevent the recipient from looking at images of others. This may point to a persistent sexual double standard that could be disempowering for women, Johnstonbaugh said.

"The sexual double standard is this idea that's perpetuated in society that men and women have different types of sexuality - that men have uncontrollable, voracious desires, whereas women are capable of making moral decisions and acting as the gatekeepers to sexual activity," Johnstonbaugh said. "With this idea in mind, women may feel pressured to share images with their boyfriends in order to keep them interested or to please their appetite."

However, Johnstonbaugh discovered that the odds also were four times higher for women than men to say that they sent sexually explicit images as a way to feel empowered, and women were twice as likely as men to say they sent such images to boost their confidence.

"Women might find sexting to be really empowering because you can create a space where you feel safe expressing your sexuality and exploring your body," she said.

It was not uncommon for female respondents to select both empowering and disempowering reasons for sexting, showing just how complex their motivations can be, Johnstonbaugh said.

"The fact that women are more likely to feel both empowered and disempowered - that they're selecting both of these options when thinking about the same event - highlights the fact that women have more to gain from a potentially beneficial interaction, but they also have more to lose," Johnstonbaugh said.

Further analysis is needed to better understand other possible motivations for sexting, as well as which motivations might be more common for men, Johnstonbaugh said.

She said she hopes her findings help provide a more nuanced understanding of sexting for scholars, educators and policymakers interested in reducing harmful sexting practices.

"In this research, my goal was to disentangle the pressures young people are experiencing, and to get a better understanding of why they are sending these images and what potential benefits they might be hoping for," she said. "This gives us a little more perspective."

There is nothing to be gained by operating on a patient with a so-called displaced fracture of the shoulder. Three weeks with the arm in a sling so that the shoulder is kept inactive yields the same results.

This is documented by a new study with researchers from Aarhus University, Viborg Regional Hospital, Denmark, and a number of university departments in Finland, Estonia and Sweden.

The results of the study have just been published in the scientific journal PLOS Medicine.

The results are based on a study of 88 patients over the age of sixty, all of whom had fractures of the shoulder of the type where the bones are displaced.

This often happens in connection with a fall on the shoulder and the traditional treatment for a displaced shoulder fracture is an operation in which the bones are joined again using plates or metal screws. In the study, half of the patients were operated on, while the other half only had the arm supported by a sling. All 88 patients underwent rehabilitation under the supervision of a physiotherapist and were subsequently followed for two years.

Once the study was completed the researchers could conclude that there was no difference between the two types of treatment when they were measured on the basis of the patients' own assessment of function, pain and quality of life. These results were already valid after one year. The leader of the study, professor of orthopaedic rehabilitation Inger Mechlenburg from the Department of Clinical Medicine at Aarhus University and Aarhus University Hospital, says:

"The results are thought-provoking in that there is no difference between patients who underwent surgery and those who didn't. Those who underwent surgery don't have better shoulder function or less pain than those who didn't. Our conclusion must therefore be that the least intrusive form of treatment shows itself to be the best. As there is no difference in the patients' ability to carry out daily chores, their level of pain or quality of life with or without the displaced shoulder fracture surgery, then treatment with only a sling should be preferred, as the patients thereby avoid surgery-related pain and complications," she says.

She is prepared for the results to lead to discussions between professionals, because this challenges common practice.

"It's difficult to change clinical practice, especially if it's a question of going from more to less," says Inger Mechlenburg. For this reason, it has also been important for the research group to ensure the study was as comprehensive as it was.

"The fundamental starting point of the study was to find the best form of treatment for precisely this type of injury. We've provided evidence that there is no beneficial effect of surgery, and the various healthcare services should address this fact," she says.

Los Angeles - UCLA researchers have developed an artificial intelligence system that could help pathologists read biopsies more accurately and to better detect and diagnose breast cancer.

The new system, described in a study published in JAMA Network Open, helps interpret medical images used to diagnose breast cancer that can be difficult for the human eye to classify, and it does so nearly as accurately or better as experienced pathologists.

"It is critical to get a correct diagnosis from the beginning so that we can guide patients to the most effective treatments," said Dr. Joann Elmore, the study's senior author and a professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

A 2015 study led by Elmore found that pathologists often disagree on the interpretation of breast biopsies, which are performed on millions of women each year. That earlier research revealed that diagnostic errors occurred in about one out of every six women who had ductal carcinoma in situ (a noninvasive type of breast cancer), and that incorrect diagnoses were given in about half of the biopsy cases of breast atypia (abnormal cells that are associated with a higher risk for breast cancer).

"Medical images of breast biopsies contain a great deal of complex data and interpreting them can be very subjective," said Elmore, who is also a researcher at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. "Distinguishing breast atypia from ductal carcinoma in situ is important clinically but very challenging for pathologists. Sometimes, doctors do not even agree with their previous diagnosis when they are shown the same case a year later."

The scientists reasoned that artificial intelligence could provide more accurate readings consistently because by drawing from a large data set, the system can recognize patterns in the samples that are associated with cancer but are difficult for humans to see.

The team fed 240 breast biopsy images into a computer, training it to recognize patterns associated with several types of breast lesions, ranging from benign (noncancerous) and atypia to ductal carcinoma in situ, or DCIS, and invasive breast cancer. Separately, the correct diagnoses for each image were determined by a consensus among three expert pathologists.

To test the system, the researchers compared its readings to independent diagnoses made by 87 practicing U.S. pathologists. While the artificial intelligence program came close to performing as well as human doctors in differentiating cancer from non-cancer cases, the AI program outperformed doctors when differentiating DCIS from atypia -- considered the greatest challenge in breast cancer diagnosis. The system correctly determined whether scans showed DCIS or atypia more often than the doctors; it had a sensitivity between 0.88 and 0.89, while the pathologists' average sensitivity was 0.70. (A higher sensitivity score indicates a greater likelihood that a diagnosis and classification is correct.)

"These results are very encouraging," Elmore said. "There is low accuracy among practicing pathologists in the U.S. when it comes to the diagnosis of atypia and ductal carcinoma in situ, and the computer-based automated approach shows great promise."

The researchers are now working on training the system to diagnose melanoma.

Typhoon Krosa is a large storm moving through the Northwestern Pacific Ocean and infrared imagery from NASA's Aqua satellite revealed that the large typhoon also has a large eye.

Cloud top temperatures provide information to forecasters about where the strongest storms are located within a tropical cyclone. NASA's Aqua satellite took Typhoon Krosa's cloud top temperatures to get that information. NASA's Aqua satellite analyzed the storm on Aug. 7 at 11 p.m. EDT (0359 UTC) using the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument. The stronger the storms, the higher they extend into the troposphere, and they have the colder cloud temperatures. AIRS found coldest cloud top temperatures as cold as or colder than minus 63 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 53 degrees Celsius) around the eye and in large bands south and east of the center. Cloud top temperatures that cold indicate strong storms that have the capability to create heavy rain.

Early on Aug. 9, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center noted that infrared data revealed that Krosa has an eye that is 40 nautical-miles wide.

At 5 a.m. EDT (0900 UTC) on Aug. 9, the center of Typhoon Krosa was located near latitude 22.0 degrees north and longitude 141.2 degrees east. That puts the center of Krosa about 168 nautical miles south of Iwo To island, Japan. Krosa was slowly crawling toward the east. Maximum sustained winds were near 85 knots (98 mph/157 kph).

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center expects that Krosa will turn northwest, and pass to the southwest of Iwo To island, Japan. It is then to continue tracking northwest and pass east of Minami Daito Jima, Kadena and Amami Oshima, on its way to the four main islands of Japan. Krosa is also expected to weaken over the next five days.

Could large TV monitors in waiting rooms, informing visitors about current local medical research, be a good idea? A study shows that people provided with news in this way are more interested in medical research than those randomly excluded from the news flow.

"Simply expressed, interest was 30 percent higher in the group that had received the news, and there's no doubt that was statistically significant," says Ronny Gunnarsson, Adjunct Professor of General Practice at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, the study's lead author.

The purpose of the trial, published in BMJ Open, was to assess public interest in health-related research, understand the extent to which people want to be proactively informed about current medical studies in the location concerned, and gauge the impact large TV screens mediating such news may have on this interest.

The TV monitors were placed in the waiting rooms at two hospital emergency departments in North Queensland, Australia. When the screens were on, brief descriptions of current research studies in the local area were displayed. The text moved across the monitors, and QR (Quick Response) codes were provided for those wishing to read more. Alternatively, the screens were randomly switched off and no information was given.

For the questionnaire survey among patients and those accompanying them, there were a total of 2,167 adult respondents. They had all been sitting in the waiting room for at least ten minutes. Seven-tenths of those asked to answer the questions did so.

Of the respondents, 86 percent stated that they were "somewhat" or "very" interested in local current medical studies. In general, interest rose with advancing age, and the female respondents were more interested than the males.

Moreover, interest was 30 percent higher in the group accessing the screen-mediated news in the waiting room than in the control group, who were there when the screens were turned off. The groups were the same size (about 750 people in each) and adjustments for gender, age, and socioeconomic status were made in the analysis.

According to Gunnarsson, the fact that people generally say they understand what medical research is about, as long as someone takes the time to tell them about it, is known from previous studies. However, this is the first time a controlled trial of research news in particular has been carried out using TV monitors in hospital waiting rooms.

"People are interested and keen to know more, and it's vitally important to stimulate interest in evidence-based medicine. Otherwise, we risk losing funding for medical research in the long run.

"Other options already exist, in Facebook groups and elsewhere, where academic medicine is seen as something undesirable that people want to avoid. If that attitude is further rooted in society, we're in danger of getting into a situation where tax revenues might be spent where evidence is lacking, and then there'd be less money for evidence-based medicine. And that's a crucial issue," Gunnarsson concludes.

Stem cells hold the key for tissue engineering, as they develop into specialised cell types throughout the body including in teeth. An international team of researchers, including scientists from the Biotechnology Center of the TU Dresden (BIOTEC), has found a new mechanism that could offer a potential new solution to tooth repair. They discovered a new population of mesenchymal stromal cells in a continuously growing mouse incisor model. They have shown that these cells contribute to the formation of dentin, the hard tissue that covers the main body of a tooth. Importantly, the work showed that when these stem cells are activated, they send signals back to the mother cells of the tissue to control the number of cells produced, through a molecular gene called Dlk1. This study is the first to show that Dlk1 is vital for this process to work. In the same study, the researchers also demonstrated that Dlk1 can enhance stem cell activation and tissue regeneration in a wound healing model. This mechanism could provide an innovative solution for tooth repair, addressing problems such as tooth decay, crumbling and trauma treatment. Further studies are needed to validate the results for clinical applications to determine the appropriate duration and dose of treatment.

The study was led by Dr Bing Hu of the Peninsula Dental School of the University of Plymouth, UK. Co-authors were research group leader Dr. Denis Corbeil and his colleague Dr. Jana Karbanová from BIOTEC. "The discovery of this new population of stromal cells was very exciting and has enormous potential in regenerative medicine," says Dr. Denis Corbeil.

Generally speaking, most people find the idea of workers being replaced by robots or software worse than if the jobs are taken over by other workers. But when their own jobs are at stake, people would rather prefer to be replaced by robots than by another employee. That is the conclusion of a study by the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and Erasmus University in Rotterdam.

Over the coming decades, millions of jobs will be threatened by robotics and artificial intelligence. Despite intensive academic debate on these developments, there has been little study on how workers react to being replaced through technology.

To find out, business researchers at TUM and Erasmus University Rotterdam conducted 11 scenarios studies and surveys with over 2,000 persons from several countries in Europe and North America. Their findings have now been published in the renowned journal Nature Human Behaviour.

Human replacements pose greater threat to feeling of self-worth

The study shows: In principle, most people view it more favorably when workers are replaced by other people than by robots or intelligent software. This preference reverses, however, when it refers to people's own jobs. When that is the case, the majority of workers find it less upsetting to see their own jobs go to robots than to other employees. In the long term, however, the same people see machines as more threatening to their future role in the workforce. These effects can also be observed among people who have recently become unemployed.

The researchers were able to identify the causes behind these seemingly paradoxical results, too: People tend to compare themselves less with machines than with other people. Consequently, being replaced by a robot or a software poses less of a threat to their feeling of self-worth. This reduced self-threat could even be observed when participants assumed that they were being replaced by other employees who relied on technological abilities such as artificial intelligence in their work.

Weaker organized resistance?

"Even when unemployment results from the introduction of new technologies, people still judge it in a social context," says Christoph Fuchs, a professor of the TUM School of Management, one of the authors of the study. "It is important to understand these psychological effects when trying to manage the massive changes in the working world to minimize disruptions in society."

For example, the insights could help to design better programs for the unemployed. "For people who have lost their job to a robot, boosting their self-esteem will be less of a priority," says Fuchs. "In that case it is more important to teach them new skills that will reduce their concerns about losing out to robots in the long term."

The study could also serve as a starting point for further research on other economic topics, says Fuchs: "It is conceivable that employee representatives' responses to job losses attributed to automation will tend to be weaker than when other causes are involved, for example outsourcing."

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A thin film that reflects light in intriguing ways could be used to make road signs that shine brightly and change color at night, according to a study that will be published on Aug. 9 in Science Advances.

The technology could help call attention to important traffic information when it's dark, with potential benefits for both drivers and pedestrians, researchers say.

The film consists of polymer microspheres laid down on the sticky side of a transparent tape. The material's physical structure leads to an interesting phenomenon: When white light shines on the film at night, some observers will see a single, stable color reflected back, while others will see changing colors. It all depends on the angle of observation and whether the light source is moving.

The research was led by Limin Wu, PhD, at Fudan University in China, whose group developed the material. Experts on optics at the University at Buffalo made significant contributions to the work, providing insight into potential applications for the film, such as employing it in nighttime road signs.

"You can use this material to make smart traffic signs," says Qiaoqiang Gan, PhD, an associate professor of electrical engineering in the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and a co-first author of the new study. "If a person is listening to loud music or isn't paying attention while they're walking or driving, a color-changing sign can help to better alert them to the traffic situation."

Testing color-changing road signs at night

In one set of experiments, researchers created a speed limit sign with letters and numbers made from the new film. The scientists placed a white light nearby to illuminate the sign, and when a fast-moving car drove past, the color of the characters on the sign appeared to flicker from the perspective of the driver as the driver's viewing angle changed.

In other tests, the team applied the new material to a series of markers lining the side of a road, denoting the boundary of the driving lane. As a car approached, the markers lit up in bright colors, reflecting light from the vehicle's headlights.

From the driver's perspective, the markers' color remained stable. But to a pedestrian standing at the side of the road, the color of the markers appeared to flicker as the car and its headlights sped past.

"If the car goes faster, the pedestrian will see the color change more quickly, so the sign tells you a lot about what is going on," says co-author Haomin Song, PhD, UB assistant professor of research in electrical engineering.