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A recently published study that looked at public opinion on plant-based diets has found widespread support for the ethics and environmental benefits of veganism and vegetarianism among meat eaters, but finds that the barriers are practical matters of taste, price, and convenience.

Analysis published in the journal Sustainability from University of Bath Psychology PhD student Chris Bryant suggests that 73% of meat eaters surveyed considered veganism to be 'ethical', 70% said it was good for the environment and half (50%) considered it healthy. 60% thought veganism was 'acceptable'.

By contrast, over 80% of respondents thought veganism was not easy, 77% thought it 'inconvenient' and over 60% thought it was not enjoyable. Attitudes from respondents towards vegetarianism were significantly more positive on almost all counts.

The study, which involved 1,000 men and women with an average age of 34, was conducted in September 2018. Participants were recruited online through the survey platform Prolific. The work was partially funded by the charity Viva! as part of Chris Bryant's ESRC PhD. His research is focused on shifting preferences away from animal consumption in view of climate change and reducing animal suffering.

Chris Bryant from Bath's Department of Psychology explains: "At a time of year when many people are considering switching to plant-based diets with 'Veganuary', this study shows that most people already agree with the ethics of veganism and are aware of the benefits of vegan diets to the environment.

"That many people agree with the principles of veganism is one thing, but in terms of changing behaviours we need to acknowledge that for many it has been seen as too expensive, inconvenient and a sacrifice in terms of taste.

"Interestingly, in the time since this study was conducted, these things have all changed substantially. Supermarkets, restaurants, and even fast food outlets have developed numerous high quality and affordable vegan options. Having direct replacements for the foods people know and like makes it easier for everybody to consume fewer animal products. If we are to reduce animal product consumption in the UK and around the world, the development of high quality affordable alternatives to animal products is key."

January marks the start of Veganuary, the annual campaign which last year inspired over a million people to try vegan diets for January and beyond.

Earlier this month, the fast food bakery Greggs launched a vegan steak bake. This follows the introduction of Subway's vegan Meatball Marinara sub and even a vegan KFC burger.

During storms in the southwestern U.S., some rattlesnakes drink rain droplets from scales on their backs. This unusual behavior could help them survive in a desert environment with infrequent rain. Now, researchers have figured out how the nanotexture of scales from these snakes helps them use their bodies to harvest rain. They report their results in in ACS Omega. Watch a video about the snake scales here.

The western diamondback rattlesnake (Crotalus atrox) from southern Arizona and other areas of the U.S. Southwest has been seen emerging from its den to harvest rain, sleet and even snow. The snake flattens its body and often forms a tight coil, presumably to maximize the area for water-gathering. As rain droplets coalesce on its back, the slithery reptile sucks water from the scales. Gordon Schuett, Konrad Rykaczewski and colleagues wanted to take a closer look at rattlesnake scales to determine what makes these serpents so adept at harvesting precipitation.

The researchers compared the surface wettability and nanotexture of scales from the western diamondback rattlesnake and two other species of desert-dwelling snakes that do not show rain-harvesting behavior: the desert kingsnake and the Sonoran gopher snake. The team dropped water onto the snakes' backs, finding that the droplets beaded up, coalesced and stuck to the rattlesnake's scales, whereas they formed shallow puddles that often slipped off the other snakes' bodies. Scanning electron microscopy of rattlesnake scales revealed nanochannels that form a labyrinth-like network, but scales from the other two snakes did not show these same features. The rattlesnake's dorsal scales aid in water collection by providing a sticky, hydrophobic surface that "pins" water droplets to the surface, the researchers say.

BROOKLYN, New York, Weekday, January 8, 2020 - Scientific literature abounds with examples of ways in which member diversity can benefit a group - whether spider colonies' ability to forage or an industrial company's financial performance. Now, a newly published mathematical framework substantiates the seemingly counterintuitive observations made by prior scholars: Interaction among dissimilar individuals can speed consensus.

The NYU Tandon School of Engineering research team studying under Institute Professor Maurizio Porfiri and Visiting Professor Alessandro Rizzo applied stochastic tools, used to predict random occurrences, because leaders and followers both encounter many unpredictable interactions during their decision-making process. The team's model also accounts for wide varieties of individuals - and individual performance - within a group and recognizes the members' varying ability to make meaningful communications connections.

The model correctly anticipated prior theoretical and empirical observations in which groups of human or animal leaders attempted to steer the dynamics of a set of followers toward a desired state.

"Leader-Follower Consensus on Activity-Driven Networks" is available in Proceedings of the Royal Society A at https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2019.0485. The U.S. National Science Foundation, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, and the Compagnia di San Paolo supported the research.

With the 2020 elections looming and amid continuing concerns over social media's role in U.S. politics, four top universities have published a comprehensive new report recommending how candidates, tech platforms and regulators can ensure that digital political campaigns promote and protect fair elections.

The report, Digital Political Ethics: Aligning Principles with Practice, was developed by Johns Hopkins, Georgetown and Fordham universities and the University of North Carolina. Hopkins political scientist Adam Sheingate and his co-authors conducted extensive interviews with digital political consultants and executives from platforms such as Facebook to devise best practices for ethical online campaigning.

From those discussions four broad ethical principles emerged for how campaigns, platforms, and regulators handle digital campaigns: They should encourage voter participation, protect election integrity, increase transparency, and ensure fairness and consistency. The authors detail 12 recommendations - including a call for federal regulations - to achieve those goals.

For example: Digital campaigns should not use hacked or stolen materials or accept help from foreign agents. Platforms should not ban political advertising, as Twitter did last year. And campaigns making exaggerated claims should provide proof just as TV ads are required to do by federal regulations that do not exist yet for digital efforts.

The report covers a variety of issues critical to the 2020 elections: microtargeting on Facebook, government regulation of online ads, data transparency practices of Facebook and Google, security of voter data, and the role of misinformation.

Absent any current regulatory oversight power, the authors encourage journalists to use these ethical best practices when examining the digital practices of campaigns.

E-cigarette use is rising, particularly among young adults and teens. Recent illnesses and deaths attributed to vaping have caused intense scrutiny of the chemicals in e-liquids and vapor, but little is known about the size of vaping particles and their deposition patterns in human airways. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Chemical Research in Toxicology have analyzed how e-cigarette particle size and deposition change with factors such as device power, e-liquid composition and vaping practices.

Unlike regular cigarettes, which burn tobacco to produce smoke, e-cigarettes are battery-powered devices that heat an e-liquid to form an aerosol, which the user inhales. E-liquids typically contain nicotine, flavoring agents and a base material, such as vegetable glycerin or propylene glycol. Because e-cigarettes do not combust tobacco, they are thought to be less harmful to human health than regular cigarettes. However, actual health risks are not well understood. Therefore, Qingyu Meng and colleagues wanted to investigate the particles produced by vaping, which typically consist of liquid droplets of the base material, and how they might be deposited in human airways.

The team observed vaping sessions of 23 volunteers and used these findings to simulate human vaping with a smoking machine. The researchers then collected the aerosol and measured particle size distribution. They also tested the impact of various factors. Among their results: higher device power settings and the use of vegetable glycerin-based e-liquids produced larger particles than lower settings and propylene glycol-based liquids. Also, at a fixed puff volume, longer puff durations (in other words, slower air flow) generated significantly larger particles. The researchers estimated that most of the particles were deposited in the lower respiratory tract (the trachea and bronchi), whereas a smaller amount entered the deeper bronchoalveolar regions of the lungs. Although e-cigarette particles were smaller and less abundant than those generated by regular smoking, they have similar human airway deposition patterns, the researchers say.

University of Toronto Engineering researchers have developed a super-stretchy, transparent and self-powering sensor that records the complex sensations of human skin.

Dubbed artificial ionic skin -- or AISkin for short -- the researchers believe the innovative properties of AISkin could lead to future advancements in wearable electronics, personal health care and robotics.

"Since it's hydrogel, it's inexpensive and biocompatible -- you can put it on the skin without any toxic effects. It's also very adhesive, and it doesn't fall off, so there are so many avenues for this material," Professor Xinyu Liu, whose lab is focused on the emerging areas of ionic skin and soft robotics.

The adhesive AISkin is made of two oppositely charged sheets of stretchable substances known as hydrogels. By overlaying negative and positive ions, the researchers create what they call a "sensing junction" on the gel's surface.

When the AISkin is subjected to strain, humidity or changes in temperature, it generates controlled ion movements across the sensing junction, which can be measured as electrical signals such as voltage or current.

"If you look at human skin, how we sense heat or pressure, our neural cells transmit information through ions -- it's really not so different from our artificial skin," says Liu.

AISkin is also uniquely tough and stretchable. "Our human skin can stretch about 50 per cent, but our AISkin can stretch up to 400 per cent of its length without breaking," says Binbin Ying, a visiting PhD candidate from McGill University who's leading the project in Liu's lab. The researchers recently published their findings in Materials Horizons.

The new AISkin could open doors to skin-like Fitbits that measure multiple body parameters, or an adhesive touchpad you can stick onto the surface of your hand, adds Liu. "It could work for athletes looking to measure the rigour of their training, or it could be a wearable touchpad to play games."

It could also measure the progress of muscle rehabilitation. "If you were to put this material on a glove of a patient rehabilitating their hand for example, the health care workers would be able to monitor their finger-bending movements," says Liu.

Another application is in soft robotics -- flexible bots made completely out of polymers. An example is soft robotic grippers used in factories to handle delicate objects such as light bulbs or food.

The researchers envision AISkin being integrated onto soft robots to measure data, whether it's the temperature of food or the pressure necessary to handle brittle objects.

Over the next year, Liu's lab will be focused on further enhancing their AISkin, aiming to shrink the size of AISkin sensors through microfabrication. They'll also add bio-sensing capabilities to the material, allowing it to measure biomolecules in body fluids such as sweat.

"If we further advance this research, this could be something we put on like a 'smart bandage,'" says Liu. "Wound healing requires breathability, moisture balance - ionic skin feels like the natural next step."

Conventional wisdom says that having just one mutated copy of the cystic fibrosis gene has no effects on a person's health--the disease occurs when both copies of the gene are mutated. But a new study from the University of Iowa suggests that may not be the case.

The research, published recently in the journal PNAS, found that people with one mutated copy of the cystic fibrosis (CF) gene, sometimes called CF carriers, are at increased risk for all of the conditions that affect people with CF.

Importantly, although the relative risk is higher, the study shows that the absolute risk - the likelihood of a CF carrier getting many of these conditions - is still very low. However, because more than 10 million Americans are CF carriers, the new findings suggest that the amount of illness caused by CF-related conditions could be substantial.

"CF carriers are nowhere near as at-risk as patients with CF," says Philip Polgreen, MD, UI professor of internal medicine and epidemiology and senior author on the study. "But compared to people with no CF mutations, they have a slightly higher risk for some diseases."

Some previous reports have linked being a CF carrier with an increased risk for some CF-related conditions, like pancreatitis, male infertility, and airway infections. The new study shows that CF carriers also have an increased risk for other CF-related conditions, including type 1 diabetes, gastrointestinal cancer, and newborn failure to thrive.

The UI team used data from the IBM Watson/Truven Health Analytics MarketScan Database, a very large database of health information, to analyze the effect of CF carrier status on increased risk for CF-related conditions.

They identified 19,802 CF carriers whose diagnosis had been confirmed by genetic testing and matched each carrier to five people without CF (a total of 99,010 people). The analysis showed that for 59 CF-related conditions, carriers were at an increased risk, and the risk was significant for 57 of the conditions. In addition, the more prevalent a condition is in people with CF, the more prevalent it is in people who are carriers.

The researchers also constructed a "validation cohort" comprised of mothers whose children were diagnosed with CF (meaning the moms must be carriers). Health records of the women, from before their children were diagnosed, revealed similar findings to the big database study.

The findings may have implications for certain lifestyle choices. Due to the increased risk for respiratory disease or pancreatic problems, for example, Polgreen says it may be even more important for CF carriers, compared to non-carriers, to avoid excess alcohol consumption.

From a broader perspective, the researchers also think the study reveals the potential power of combining genetic testing information with health information from very large observational databases of medical records.

"More and more individuals are receiving genetic testing from their providers or from private companies, and if this information can be incorporated into health care records, there could be many new opportunities to discover both population-level health risks and individualized treatment options," says Aaron Miller, PhD, UI assistant professor of epidemiology and first author on the study

Dying cells in the body can keep the immune system in check, thus preventing unwanted immune responses against the body's own tissues. Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center have now identified a receptor on murine immune cells that activates this protective mechanism and can thus prevent dangerous autoimmune reactions in which the immune system attacks the patient's own body tissues.

Billions of cells die every day in the human body. This occurs as part of a highly regulated process called apoptosis or programmed cell death. The dying cells confront the immune system with large amounts of proteins, which ought to activate an immune response, but the apoptotic cells seem to actively suppress the immune system so that it does not attack the body's own tissues. "We began wondering many years ago what kind of protective mechanism prevents autoimmune reactions - the body attacking its own tissues - when cells in the immune system, such as dendritic cells, take up the remains of the dead cells," Peter Krammer, an immunologist at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), remarked.

Krammer, his colleague Heiko Weyd, and their team recently found an answer to the question: As soon as apoptosis is triggered, the dying cells transport proteins from the annexin family to the cell surface. The annexins act like a stop signal for the cells of the immune system and prevent an immune response from being triggered.

Kevin Bode from Krammer's department has now identified the dectin-1 protein as the annexin-binding receptor on the surface of dendritic cells: Dectin-1 recognizes the annexins and triggers a signaling pathway in dendritic cells that ultimately suppresses the immune response.

Mice that do not have any dectin-1 on the surface of their dendritic cells showed a stronger immune response to dying, apoptotic cells. Moreover, the mice without dectin-1 developed signs of autoimmune diseases in old age.

The DKFZ scientists thus discovered an important control mechanism for the immune system's 'self-tolerance'. "But we assume that the body has other protective functions to prevent autoimmune reactions too. That's why the loss of dectin-1 in the animals does not become apparent until later in life," Bode explained.

"Interestingly, dectin-1 has a dual role," added Peter Krammer. Dectin-1 not only binds annexins; it also binds certain pathogens at a different binding site. This has the opposite effect and triggers an immune response. "We thus identified a crucial immune checkpoint which, depending on the binding partner, either triggers or suppresses the immune response," Krammer explained, emphasizing the importance of the work.

A key link in the dectin-1 signaling pathway is the enzyme NADPH oxidase 2. People who lack this enzyme develop autoimmune diseases. In cooperation with the Children's Hospital Zurich and Heidelberg University Hospital, the DKFZ researchers are therefore currently examining blood samples from patients lacking NADPH oxidase 2 to find new starting points for potential treatments.

Why animal experiments are vital in cancer research

Autoimmune diseases have a hugely detrimental impact on patients' lives and in some cases are even life-threatening. In order to develop effective treatments, it is therefore vital to know which mechanisms suppress the immune responses to a patient's own body tissues or in contrast activate them. By establishing the interaction between annexin on the surface of dying cells and dectin-1 on the dendritic cells, Bode and his colleagues identified a key mechanism that prevents autoimmune reactions in healthy body tissues. In doing so, they have found an interesting starting point for future drug treatments.

Although the interactions between annexin and dectin-1 were initially identified in a Petri dish, the scientists needed an animal - with all the diversity of the various components of the immune system - to demonstrate that the bond between these two proteins actually suppresses autoimmune reactions.

Viruses are not easy to characterize. But we need to because being able to quickly predict the surface charge of viruses opens up new possibilities for vaccine purification and making gene therapy treatments for eye diseases and muscular dystrophy.

Caryn Heldt, director of the Health Research Institute at Michigan Technological University, studies virus surface chemistry with funding through the National Science Foundation's faculty early career development (CAREER) program. Her latest paper, published in Langmuir, focuses on using surface charge to determine a virus' isoelectric point, a common way to characterize viruses.

The innovation is that instead of bulk characterization, she's doing it using a single-particle method.

"So we have these bulk methods where we put a virus in solution and we characterize the solution," said Heldt, who is also the James and Lorna Mack Chair in Bioengineering and an associate professor of chemical engineering. "But if your virus isn't completely purified -- which is also difficult to do -- then your characterization of your bulk solution means you're characterizing everything in that solution."

To improve the accuracy of this characterization, Heldt suggests a single-particle method that uses atomic force microscopy (AFM). The adhesion between the AFM probe and the sticky virus surfaces can be measured -- it's called chemical force microscopy (CFM).

"Viruses are these complicated molecules that have a lot of different chemistries on them," Heldt said, adding that as a big, complex molecule a virus reaches its isoelectric point when all its negative and positive charges balance out. "At a particular pH, the virus has a neutral charge. So if we want the virus to have a positive charge, we put the pH below the isoelectric point and vice versa."

That means Heldt's team could make the AFM probe positive or negative, then scan a solution across different pHs to determine a virus' isoelectric point. To verify that the method worked, the team used two viruses: non-enveloped porcine parovirus (PPV), which has a well-documented isoelectric point, and enveloped bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV), which does not have a known isoelectric point. The methods matched up.

"So now we can try and predict chromatography conditions with just a small amount of virus," Heldt said, explaining that chromatography uses surface charge to determine whether a virus is present in a medical test or for vaccine purification. "Also, we have preliminary data that shows this could be helpful for manufacturing viruses that could be modified and used to target specific genes to help with diseases like muscular dystrophy and some retinal diseases."

In both cases for chromatography and gene therapy, less is more. In a body or vaccine, it doesn't take much virus to wreak havoc; single-particle methods could provide more answers with a smaller sample. For gene therapy, using a bunch of inactive virus capsids that a body's immune system would fight is not ideal treatment; CFM could more easily discern inactive from active capsids, which could then be purified for a more effective treatment.

As a biomedical engineer, Heldt is keen to bridge the fundamental understanding of virus chemistry and its applications. By refining virus characterization, single-particle methods could streamline several medical processes including vaccine production and gene therapy manufacturing.

Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have synthesised the world's first one-atom-thick amorphous material. Previously thought to be impossible, the discovery of monolayer amorphous carbon (MAC) could finally settle a decades-old debate of exactly how atoms are arranged in amorphous solids, and open up potential applications.

This major research breakthrough was led by Professor Barbaros Özyilmaz, Head of the NUS Department of Materials Science and Engineering. The results were published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature on 8 January 2020.

The NUS team grew the material and studied its properties and potential areas of application. In addition, atomic resolution imaging was performed by the group of Professor Kazu Suenaga from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan, and Professor Junhao Lin from Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTECH), China. Furthermore, theoretical simulations were carried out by the group of Professor Sokrates Pantelides from Vanderbilt University, USA.

"With MAC, we have shown for the first time that fully amorphous materials can be stable and free-standing in single atomic layers. Amorphous materials are of great technological importance, but surprisingly, they remain poorly understood from a basic science point of view. This breakthrough allows for direct imaging to reveal how atoms are arranged in amorphous materials, and could be of commercial value for batteries, semiconductors, membranes and many more applications," said Prof Özyilmaz, who is also from the NUS Department of Physics and the NUS Centre for Advanced 2D Materials.

The structure and synthesis of monolayer amorphous carbon

In the study of amorphous materials, there are two opposing groups. One says that it is possible for materials to have a fully-disordered, completely random structure. The other, says there is always nanometre-sized order, of tiny crystallites, that is surrounded by random disorder.

The newly synthesised MAC films show the latter arrangement. The researchers see nanometre-sized patches of strained and distorted hexagonal carbon rings, but there is random disorder between these patches. Hence, the MAC films also contain 5-, 7-, and 8-membered rings too.

These atomically-thin sheets of amorphous carbon are synthesised by using a laser vaporising a carbon-containing pre-cursor gas into an atomically fine mist. This turns the carbon precursors into highly reactive, energetic species which immediately form a MAC film when they hit the surface of almost any substrate.

The revolutionary properties of monolayer amorphous carbon

Despite having a disordered atomic structure, MAC is capable of some truly incredible behaviour. Dr Toh Chee Tat, the first author of the paper, said, "What is amazing about MAC is that it exhibits some properties that are totally different from traditional monolayer materials."

One such exceptional property is that MAC films can be 'plastically deformed'. This means that they can be stretched into irregular shapes, and stay conformed to that position. There is no other single-layer material in existence that displays significant plastic deformation.

The fact that MAC behaves this way, compared to nanometre-thick crystalline materials which would easily snap when stretched, significantly expands the number of industrial applications it could be suitable for.

Holes can even be punched into the material, or it can be torn, and yet the film will retain its key properties. Also, MAC can be grown on many different substrates including copper, gold and stainless steel. "Everything that is understood from atomically thin crystals -- in terms of their properties and how they are analysed -- does not apply here. It is a completely new material that we are studying," shared Dr Toh.

Industrial applications of monolayer amorphous carbon

"MAC is much more hardy and cheaper to make than conventional crystalline two-dimensional films. The laser-assisted deposition process through which MAC is synthesised is already commonly used in industry. Hence, we can grow a large-area, defect-free, monolayer film on a wide variety of substrates with high throughput and at low temperature," explained Prof Özyilmaz. This makes MAC a potential low-cost material to address industry needs, and for some applications, it may be an alternative to two-dimensional crystals such as graphene.

For example, ultrathin barrier films are sorely needed in many industries -- for next-generation magnetic recording devices, copper interconnects, flexible displays, fuel cells, batteries and other electronic devices. However, the performance of conventional amorphous thin films is poor when made very thin, and other atomically-thin films cannot be produced according to stringent industry standards without compromising their qualities.

"Our monolayer amorphous films not only achieve the ultimate thickness limit, but also do not compromise on uniformity and reliability, and are generally considered viable for industry," said Prof Özyilmaz.

Next steps

Prof Özyilmaz is the lead Principle Investigator of a multidisciplinary team that was recently awarded a grant under the National Research Foundation Singapore's Competitive Research Programme to investigate the properties of monolayer amorphous materials. The research team will be studying the many possible applications of this material and will be collaborating with industrial partners to accelerate the commercialisation of monolayer amorphous materials such as MAC.

Highlighting female achievements in the workplace makes capable women significantly more likely to want to be the boss, a study shows.

Public feedback about a woman's performance can significantly increase her willingness to lead, even in male-dominated environments, according to the research. The teams led by these women are subsequently more likely to perform well.

The research, by Dr Jingnan Chen from the University of Exeter Business School, found increasing the number of men in mixed-gender teams negatively impacts women's willingness to lead, especially on tasks seen as stereotypically male. Publicly acknowledging women's abilities and achievements, however, helps to alleviate this effect.

In male-stereotyped industries, women in both mixed and single gender groups are twice as likely to shy away from leadership roles. Men also shy away from leadership positions in female-stereotyped industries, but only when they are in mixed-gender groups.

Dr Chen said: "There are so many capable women, but many do not feel encouraged in their workplace, and this leaves them feeling they shouldn't put themselves forward for leadership positions. There is not enough attention paid to the efforts of high-achieving women, partly because they are less likely than men to self-promote their abilities, but it is very important that their work is equally recognised.

"If we have more acknowledgement of women's achievements, so their colleagues know what they are doing well, women will be more likely to step up and utilise their leadership skills. Recognising women's abilities should be done by pointing out their quantitative achievements - specific, objective and measurable work such as sales figures or number of projects successfully completed.

"Of course this research does not suggest anyone should downplay male achievements, but it shows companies should make a commitment to making sure female achievements are not overlooked or ignored. This is especially important in male-dominated industries."

The research shows making people's achievements public increases the chance that men in all-male groups will prefer to take the lead. This has the opposite effect for women in all-female groups --capable women are deterred from leading, due to women wishing to signal fairness and a sense of cooperation. In mixed gender groups, however, public feedback significantly encourages the best female performers to lead.

Academics conducted an experiment, using 248 University of Exeter students in groups of four, where they were asked to complete tasks such as answering quiz-style questions, and how likely they were to lead their group on a particular task. They were also asked if women or men would be more likely to know more about that subject area, and how likely it was that their answer was right.

Dr Chen said: "We have shown highlighting achievements is both highly beneficial and often straightforward for companies. The most capable female and male leaders emerge, and consequently the best group outcomes are obtained, when public performance feedback is given."

PLYMOUTH MEETING, PA [January 8, 2020] -- New research in the January 2020 issue of JNCCN--Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network uses data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) from 2000 to 2017 to examine self-reported drinking habits among people reporting a cancer diagnosis. The researchers found that of 34,080 survey participants, 56.5% were current drinkers, 34.9% exceeded moderate drinking levels, and 21% engaged in binge drinking. This is the first large study to be done on alcohol use in the oncology population. Given that alcohol has been identified as a risk factor for several cancers[1] (and contributed to 5.8% of cancer deaths in 2012[2] ), the researchers were surprised by how high those numbers were.

"We recommend that providers screen for alcohol use at regular intervals and provide resources to assist in cutting down use for those who may engage in excessive drinking behaviors," said Nina Niu Sanford, MD, Assistant Professor, Dedman Family Scholar in Clinical Care, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Department of Radiation Oncology. "Typically, questions about alcohol use are just asked once when the patient first enters the medical system and then copied into subsequent notes as part of the patient's social history."

For the purposes of the study, excessive drinking was defined as more than one drink a day for women, and more than two drinks a day for men, per CDC guidelines[3]. Binge drinking was defined in the same guidelines as consuming enough alcohol to raise blood alcohol content to at least .08%, which generally means at least four drinks within two hours for women, and at least five for men. For this study, the researchers defined binge drinking as the consumption of at least five drinks in one day at any point over the past year. The authors noted that there aren't currently studies that establish safe levels of alcohol use when it comes to cancer risk, but studies have suggested the risk is higher for people who engage in binge drinking.

Further examination of the data showed binge drinking rates were much higher for younger survivors. Among those age 18 to 34, 23.6% met the criteria for binge drinking, while only 2.6% of those 75-and-older reported the same. Likewise, survivors of cancer types that are more associated with younger people--like cervical, testicular, head and neck cancers, and melanoma--were more likely to report drinking at all levels, while drinking was much less common for survivors of breast cancer. Somewhat paradoxically, the researchers also found that better self-reported health correlated to more drinking.

"We would hypothesize that individuals with a diagnosis of cancer who self-report poor health status may be those with persistent or recurrent disease who are undergoing active treatment, or experiencing persistent side effects from prior treatment, and therefore may have been advised not to drink or don't feel well enough to consume alcohol," said Brandon A. Mahal, MD, McGraw/Patterson Center for Population Sciences, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. "However, since causation cannot be established from the NHIS survey, another possibility could be that alcohol use improved the overall self-reported health among cancer survivors, although we think this is less likely. These results point to the fact that more research on alcohol use is needed for all subsets of survivors of cancer, perhaps with an emphasis on reduction in patients who feel well and report excessive drinking."

Crystal S. Denlinger, MD, FACP, Chief, GI Medical Oncology, Fox Chase Cancer Center, chairs the NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines®) Panel for Survivorship. She was not involved in this study, but commented on the importance of more research into the impact of alcohol use among cancer survivors.

"This study highlights the prevalence of current alcohol use among cancer survivors, including an increase in alcohol intake over time and higher rates among younger cancer survivors," said Dr. Denlinger. "As alcohol intake is a risk factor for cancer development and may contribute to worse outcomes following a diagnosis, this behavior is ripe for education and intervention in the survivor population. Currently guidelines for the care of cancer survivors, including the NCCN Guidelines for Survivorship, recommend limiting the intake of alcohol. Further work to understand optimal dissemination of these recommendations and ways to change alcohol use behavior is clearly needed in the cancer survivor population, particularly among younger survivors."

Notably, the researchers also found that 16.7% of cancer survivors self-reported as current smokers. Both current and former smokers were more likely to report themselves as current drinkers. The researchers recommend that survivors also be screened for smoking, and then counseled on both smoking and drinking-related health issues, and offered cessation support.

To read the entire study, visit JNCCN.org. Complimentary access to "Alcohol Use Among Patients With Cancer and Survivors in the United States, 2000-2017" is available until April 10, 2019.

[1] Van't Veer P, Kampman E. Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and the Prevention of Cancer: A Global Perspective. World Cancer Research Fund/American Institute for Cancer Research; 2007.

[2] Praud D, Rota M, Rehm J, et al. Cancer incidence and mortality attributable to alcohol consumption. Int J Cancer 2016;138:1380-1387

[3] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Alcohol and public health: frequently asked questions. Available at cdc.gov/alcohol/faqs.htm. Accessed July 30, 2019.

Earth is doomed -- but not for 5 billion years. Our planet will be roasted as our sun expands and becomes a red giant, but the exoplanet WASP-12b, located 600 light-years away in the constellation Auriga, has less than a thousandth of that time left: a comparatively paltry 3 million years.

A Princeton-led team of astrophysicists has shown that WASP-12b is spiraling in toward its host star, heading toward certain destruction. Their paper appears in the Dec. 27, 2019, issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

WASP-12b is known as a "hot Jupiter," a giant gaseous planet like our neighbor planet Jupiter, but which is very close to its own star, orbiting its sun in just 26 hours. (By contrast, we take 365 days to orbit, and even Mercury, the innermost planet of our solar system, takes 88 days.)

"Ever since the discovery of the first 'hot Jupiter' in 1995 -- a discovery that was recognized with this year's Nobel Prize in Physics -- we have wondered how long such planets can survive," said Joshua Winn, a professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton and one of the authors of the paper. "We were pretty sure they could not last forever. The strong gravitational interactions between the planet and the star should cause the planet to spiral inward and be destroyed, but nobody could predict how long this takes. It might be millions of years, it might be billions or trillions. Now that we have measured the rate, for at least one system -- it's millions of years -- we have a new clue about the behavior of stars as fluid bodies."

The problem is that as WASP-12b orbits its star, the two bodies exert gravitational pulls on each other, raising "tides" like the ocean tides raised by the moon on Earth.

Within the star, these tidal waves cause the star to become slightly distorted and to oscillate. Because of friction, these waves crash and the oscillations die down, a process that gradually converts the planet's orbital energy into heat within the star.

The friction associated with the tides also exerts a gravitational torque on the planet, causing the planet to spiral inward. Measuring how quickly the planet's orbit is shrinking reveals how quickly the star is dissipating the orbital energy, which provides astrophysicists clues about the interior of stars.

"If we can find more planets like WASP-12b whose orbits are decaying, we'll be able to learn about the evolution and eventual fate of exoplanetary systems," said first author Samuel Yee, a graduate student in astrophysical sciences. "Although this phenomenon has been predicted for close-in giant planets like WASP-12b in the past, this is the first time we have caught this process in action."

One of the first people to make that prediction that was Frederic Rasio, the Joseph Cummings Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Northwestern University, who was not involved in Yee and Winn's work. "We've all been waiting nearly 25 years for this effect to be detected observationally," Rasio said. "The implications of the short timescale measured for orbital decay are also very important. In particular it means that there must be many more hot Jupiters that have already gone all the way. When they get to the Roche limit -- the tidal disruption limit for an object on a circular orbit -- their envelopes might get stripped, revealing a rocky core that looks just like a super-Earth (or maybe a mini-Neptune if they can retain a bit of their envelope)."

Rasio also edits Astrophysical Journal Letters, the journal in which the new paper appears. The researchers had originally submitted their paper to a less-prestigious sister journal also published by the American Astronomical Society, but Rasio redirected it to ApJ Letters because of the "especially great significance" of the research. "Part of my job is to ensure that all major new discoveries presented in manuscripts submitted to the AAS Journals are considered for publication in ApJ Letters," he said. "In this case it was a no-brainer."

WASP-12b was discovered in 2008 through the transit method, in which astronomers observe a small dip in a star's brightness as the planet passes in front of it, each time it completes an orbit. Since its discovery, the interval between successive dips has shortened by 29 milliseconds per year -- an observation that was first noted in 2017 by co-author Kishore Patra, then an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

That slight shortening could suggest that the planet's orbit is shrinking, but there are other possible explanations: If WASP-12b's orbit is more oval-shaped than circular, for example, the apparent changes in the orbital period could be caused by the changing orientation of the orbit.

The way to be sure if the orbit is actually shortening is to watch the planet disappear behind its star, known as occultation. If the orbit is just changing its direction, the actual orbital period doesn't change, so if transits occur more quickly than expected, occultations should occur more slowly. But if the orbit is truly decaying, the timing of both transits and occultations should shift in the same direction.

Over the last two years, the researchers have collected more data, including new occultation observations made with the Spitzer Space Telescope.

"These new data strongly support the orbital decay scenario, allowing us to firmly say that the planet is indeed spiraling toward its star," said Yee. "This confirms the long-standing theoretical predictions and indirect data suggesting that hot Jupiters should eventually be destroyed through this process."

This discovery will help theorists understand the internal workings of stars and interpret other data relating to tidal interactions, said Winn. "It also tells us about the lifetimes of hot Jupiters, a clue that might help shed light on the formation of these strange and unexpected planets."

"The orbit of WASP-12b is decaying," by Samuel W. Yee, Joshua N. Winn, Heather A. Knutson, Kishore C. Patra, Shreyas Vissapragada, Michael M. Zhang, Matthew J. Holman, Avi Shporer and Jason T. Wright, appears in the Dec. 27, 2019, issue of the Astrophysical Journal. The research was supported by Princeton University, the Heising-Simons Foundation, NASA Solar Systems grant NNX14AD22G, the Pennsylvania State University, the Eberly College of Science and the Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium. The authors wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Maunakea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community: "We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain."

January 2, 2020 - Boiling water turns spaghetti from brittle, inedible rods to soft, delectable pasta. A new study models the mechanics behind how noodles deform when they cook. Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, identified three states during a spaghetti strand's evolution: sagging, settling, and curling. When placed in a pot of boiling water, a spaghetti strand will first sag and then settle on the pot's bottom before finally curving in on itself. By incorporating these properties into their model, Goldberg and O'Reilly were able to accurately replicate the behavior of a noodle. They then tested this model against a single spaghetti strand soaked for two hours in a pot of room-temperature water. The results validated the model's ability to predict the mechanical behavior of the pasta's core -- potentially valuable knowledge for the food production industry and food science community. Future research could examine the deformation of rigatoni or lasagna, the authors suggest.

Although governments, academia, and organizations all around the world have been emphasizing the crisis concerning the use of fossil fuels for many years, their demand has constantly been on the increase. Now that supply is seriously dwindling, researchers have fervently focused on finding alternative fuels that are cleaner and with the potential for sustainable production.

Hydrogen (H2) is a very attractive candidate as a replacement of fossil fuels because it can be produced from water (H2O) through hydrolysis, the splitting of water molecules. Another sustainable route is the synthesis of biodiesels, which are made using vegetable oils through a transformation process known as transesterification. However, biodiesel synthesis produces excessive amounts of glycerol (C3H8O3); it is estimated than the biodiesel industry in Europe alone produces a surplus of 1.4 million tons of glycerol, which cannot be sold to other industries. If glycerol could be used as a raw material to obtain more valuable chemicals, this would make the biodiesel industry more profitable, thus encouraging governments and companies to switch away from fossil fuels.

Fortunately, researchers from Tokyo Tech and Taiwan Tech recently found an efficient way to put this surplus glycerol to good use. While the electrochemical conversion of glycerol to other more valuable organic compounds, such as dihydroxyacetone (DHA), has been studied for years, existing approaches require the use of precious metals, namely platinum, gold, and silver. Because the use of these metals represents 95% of the overall cost of glycerol to DHA conversion, this research team focused on finding an affordable alternative.

In their study, they found that copper oxide (CuO), a cheap and abundant material, could be used as a catalyst to selectively convert glycerol into DHA even at mild reaction conditions. For this to happen, the pH (concentration of free hydrogen ions) in the solution of the electrochemical cell has to be at a specific value. Through various microscopy techniques, the researchers analyzed the crystalline structure and composition of the CuO catalyst and tailored them to make it stable while also carefully inspecting the possible conversion pathways for glycerol in their system according to the solution's pH. This allowed them to find appropriate reaction conditions that favored the production of DHA. "We have not only discovered a new, earth-abundant catalyst for high-selectivity DHA conversion, but also demonstrate the possibility of giving new valuable life to a waste product of the biodiesel industry," remarks Prof. Tomohiro Hayashi, lead researcher from Tokyo Tech.

What's more, the electrochemical system proposed in this study not only produced DHA from glycerol on one end, but also H2 on the other through water splitting. This means that this approach could be used to address two current problems simultaneously. "Both the biodiesel and the hydrogen generation industries could benefit from our system, leading to a more sustainable world," explains Prof. Hayashi. A diagram of sustainable energy cycles including both the biodiesel and hydrogen industries is shown in Figure 1. In conclusion, it is crucial that we keep on trying to address the problem of sustainability in our use of fuels, and studies such as this one take us one step closer to a greener future.