Tech

Satellite imagery showed that Tropical Depression Jelawat was still dealing with southerly vertical wind shear that was pushing the bulk of its clouds north of its center.

On March 27, Jelawat was centered over 100 miles from Yap State in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean. Yap State is one of four states in the Federated States of Micronesia. The other states are Chuuk State, Kosrae State and Pohnpei State.

That day at 8 a.m. EST (1200 UTC), the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite captured a visible image of Jelawat. The image showed that the bulk of the convection remains displaced to the north. That's because the system is in an area of moderate vertical wind shear.

By 11 a.m. EST (1500 UTC) Jelawat was a tropical depression with maximum sustained winds near 34.5 mph (30 knots/55.5 kph). The center of circulation was near 10.6 degrees north latitude and 135.5 degrees east longitude. Jelawat was moving to the northeast 7 mph (6 knots/11 kph).

The image was created at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) noted that Jelawat is now "coming out of a momentary quasi-stationary motion and is now getting back on track along the southwestern periphery of the sub-tropical ridge to the northeast. After 36 hours, it will turn more northeastward on the poleward side of the sub-tropical ridge."

Anyone who has sat down to a summer crab feast knows how hard, messy and delicious they are.

But University of Cincinnati biologist Bruce Jayne found some water snakes that specialize in catching and consuming live crabs, without the benefit of mallets, bibs or utensils.

Snakes can't chew their food so anything they eat must be bite-sized, even if this amuse-bouche sometimes is an antelope. A species of water snake in Malaysia defies this limitation by ripping crabs into manageable bite-sized pieces, Jayne found.

"Tigers can take huge prey. But for most snakes, the limit on prey size is what they can swallow whole," said Jayne, a professor of biological sciences in UC's McMicken College of Arts and Sciences.

Jayne studies the gape of snake mouths to determine how this physical limitation factors into a snake's hunting behavior and choice of prey.

He examined the feeding habits of three species of mildly venomous water snakes living side by side in southeast Asia: one that ate hard-shelled crabs, one that ate soft-shelled crabs and a third that ate snapping shrimp. He found that snakes that hunt soft-shelled crabs can take on prey four times bigger than they otherwise could swallow whole.

"These crabs are huge! The legs alone were nearly as big as the snake's gape. But they can consume the crab by pulling it apart when it's soft and vulnerable," Jayne said.

His study was published in February in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. He also presented his findings in January at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology's annual conference in San Francisco.

Most water snakes eat fish, but a family of snakes called homalopsid eats only crustaceans.

"They're quite the gourmets," he said.

Now Jayne is turning his attention to North American water snakes that eat crayfish. Like the Asian water snake Gerarda, queen snakes found in the eastern United States specialize in hunting softshell crustaceans, namely crayfish.

Jayne has always been fascinated by reptiles. He co-authored more than 70 studies on snakes or lizards in peer-reviewed journals and has handled venomous species without incident all around the world.

"I have not been bitten, and I intend to keep it that way," Jayne said. "I do not take chances."

Jayne began field research on crustacean-eating snakes in the 1980s through serendipity during his first postdoctoral fellowship at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. He and esteemed snake researcher Harold Voris, now curator emeritus at the museum, had gone to Singapore to conduct a mark-and-recapture study of highly venomous sea snakes, which local fishermen sometimes caught in fishing nets. But late monsoon rains kept the fishing boats tied up at the docks that year.

Field research is fraught with these challenges. Jayne said they had to improvise.

"We thought, 'What do we do now?' Frustrated by our bad luck, we were walking along the shore and noticed a lot of homalopsid snakes in the mudflats coming in on the tide," he said.

Locals sometimes call them mangrove snakes because of the habitat where they are found. And that year they were legion. He and his research partner found one about every meter of shoreline.

"Oddly enough, even though these species were abundant, they were not terribly well-studied," Jayne said.

"Almost nothing was known about the crab-eating snakes," Voris said. "When you think about it, the mangroves are an extremely productive ecosystem. The crabs maintain high numbers year-round. If snakes can solve the problems of eating crabs, they can exploit this resource. It's a wonderful system."

Jayne found three similar snakes living side by side in the same brackish habitat but hunting far different prey: Fordonia leucobalia hunted hard-shelled crabs; Gerarda prevostiana ate soft-shelled crabs and Cantoria violacea dined on snapping shrimp.

Jayne used night-vision cameras to record their nocturnal hunting techniques, which were specially adapted to their choice in prey.

Cantoria, also called Cantor's mangrove snake, hunted the very biggest snapping shrimp they could swallow whole. Fordonia chose tiny hard-shelled crabs that were less than half the size they could swallow. Meanwhile, Gerarda, commonly known as Gerard's water snake, hunted enormous crabs that were soft from the early stages of moulting.

Crabs have hard exoskeletons that they shed periodically as they grow. After shedding, it takes time for their newly exposed exoskeleton to harden into protective armor.

Most snakes have sharp, needlelike teeth that are poorly designed for chewing, Jayne said. Gerarda gets around this limitation by ripping off bite-sized chunks of crab and swallowing the pieces whole.

"That's one of the nice things about studying anatomy and behavior. You know the evolutionary relationships. You can find some counterintuitive patterns," Jayne said. "It appears that this specialty in feeding on soft-shelled crustaceans popped up after they were already feeding on hard-shelled crustaceans."

Jayne used night vision cameras to record the hunting habits of the snakes while doing his field research. He played one of the videos in his office.

"This is a freshly molted crab," Jayne said. "It's slimy. They go from being soft and slimy to leathery and ultimately hard."

The whole process takes just 45 minutes.

"So the snakes only have about a 20-minute window to eat the crab the way they really like them," he said.

Still, crabs are not an easy meal. They move quickly both in and out of water. And crabs will eat almost anything, including small snakes, Jayne said.

"Crabs are a dreadful thing to consume for a snake -- all these pointy edges and sharp claws," he said.

So it was not terribly surprising to Jayne that Fordonia, the serpent that specializes in hard-shelled crabs, goes after considerably smaller ones, devouring them legs first from side to side.

"We knew the anatomical limits of what the snake could eat. But as prey gets bigger, how much harder is it to eat?" he asked. "It could be that snakes don't eat bigger prey because they're harder to catch."

This crab-eating snake also demonstrated a surprising hunting technique, Jayne discovered.

"Despite the great diversity of feeding behavior among the world's 3,000 snakes, it virtually always starts and ends the same way -- with an open-mouthed strike and swallowing the prey whole. Even in venomous snakes, they may strike the prey and release it," Jayne said.

But Fordonia strikes at the crab not with its mouth or fangs but with its chin to pin down the wriggling meal. Then it coils its body around the pinned crab to manipulate and swallow it.

Fordonia's stomach is tough and resistant to a crab's sharp points and claws. And horrifyingly, the snakes don't always kill a crab before swallowing it.

Jayne studied the snakes' diets by gently prodding their full bellies toward their chins until they coughed up their last meal.

"When we had Fordonia regurgitate the crabs, they were still alive and ran away," he said.

This discovery refuted previous research that speculated Fordonia crushed its food with its jaws to consume its hard-shelled dinner.

Jayne said he would like to return to Malaysia to investigate a fish-eating water snake that has an enormous tooth at the roof of its mouth that is even bigger than its rear fangs.

"There was nothing to suggest they were eating anything really strange. It was very bizarre," he said. "They have such weird dentition, there must be something going on."

And fellow researcher Voris said the study sheds light on the way that animals come to exploit similar niches in the environment, regardless of geography -- a system called convergent evolution.

"It really tests the idea of convergent evolution," Voris said. "Do we see similar types of behaviors and morphologies and hunting tactics in different geographic areas? Or are there important differences that suggest it came about differently?"

Voris said Jayne's work is a testament both to his perseverance and the university's commitment to research over a career.

"This is the result of his being supported in his teaching and research over years," Voris said. "If we didn't have that in our system of higher education and we don't support science on an ongoing basis, we're in trouble."

And work like this often leads to unexpected discoveries, such as the medical benefits of snake venom in controlling seizures, he said.

"It doesn't always seem like it because we're learning how things operate," Voris said, "but applied science is at almost every turn in the work we do."

BOSTON, MASS. - You're waiting to get your teeth cleaned, half-dozing in a chair with your mouth propped open when a robot appears to do the job. Would you be willing to undergo a dental cleaning performed by a robot? How about a root canal? Autonomous gum surgery, anyone?

What if the robotic procedure was offered at half-price?

In an online survey of 502 individuals (260 female), participants were "significantly less willing to undergo more invasive procedures, such as gum surgery and a root canal, and significantly more willing to undergo procedures such as tooth cleaning or whitening performed by a robot," said Stephen Rice, associate professor of human factors at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Moreover, the promise of half-price dentistry increased participants' willingness to accept dental care from an autonomous robotic dentist, Rice and colleagues reported at the 2018 International Symposium on Human Factors and Ergonomics in Healthcare (HFEH) in Boston, Mass., March 26-28.

Currently, medical robots such as the da Vinci® Surgical System are being used to help doctors perform various operations, including cardiac surgery. Medical robots can help doctors increase the precision, safety and quality of certain surgical procedures as well as rehabilitation and patient-care operations, Rice said. Yet, robotic dentistry is still in the early stages of development.

In 2017, a robotic dentist in China fitted two dental implants into a woman's mouth. In addition, a Miami, Fla.-based company, Neocis, announced last year that it had received clearance from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration to introduce a robotically assisted dental surgical system called Yomi.

As robots become increasingly commonplace in many different settings, "It's important to understand consumer perceptions of autonomous technologies," said Embry-Riddle graduate student Emily Anania, the lead student author of the HFEH poster presentation. "People are not always accepting of emerging technologies. We know from many different studies, for example, that driverless cars and autonomous aircraft technologies cause some people to react with fear or anger. Better insights to those perceptions will be essential in order to increase acceptance of these technologies."

Ten Dental Procedures

The Embry-Riddle patient-perceptions survey, completed by Rice and five students on the university's Daytona Beach, Fla., campus, informed all participants that robotic dentistry is currently being tested. The survey then asked participants to indicate their willingness to have a robot perform ten separate procedures: teeth cleaning, tooth extraction, root canal, teeth whitening, applying sealant, applying a cap, bonding, gum surgery, applying braces and putting in a filling.

Next, participants were asked similar questions, but with an added incentive: "Imagine that the dentist offers you a 50% (half-price) discount on all dental work done by a robot in his or her office," the survey said. "The robot will work autonomously (without human intervention)."

The data from the study revealed some interesting patterns.

In general, 51% of the respondents were moderately or strongly opposed to robotic dentistry, the research group reported. Respondents were particularly wary of invasive procedures like extractions, root canals, and gum surgery, where 66% of the participants were moderately or strongly opposed. Female respondents in general were less likely to be willing to accept robotic dentistry, Anania said.

On the other hand, there were two procedures that participants were less negative about, including teeth cleaning and/or whitening; here, only 32% of the participants were opposed at full price, and 83% were willing to undergo the procedure if the price was cut in half.

Public-perception surveys of emerging technologies are essential, Rice said, because "consumers help drive what is acceptable with automation, and healthcare is no exception."

Robotic dentists have the potential to improve the precision of different dental procedures, he said. Such technology could make dental care more accessible in rural or otherwise underserved areas. Finally, just as aircraft auto-pilot systems allow pilots to focus on safety, Rice added, robots could free up dentists to continuously improve healthcare practices and protocols.

The research presented at the HFEH event, "Factors Affecting Consumers' Acceptance of Robotic Dentists," was prepared by Rice and Anania, with her fellow graduate students Mattie N. Milner, Nadine Ragbir, Matt Pierce and Nathan W. Walters. A large contingent of Embry-Riddle faculty and students took part in the symposium, which was chaired by Assistant Professor Joseph R. Keebler.

Philadelphia, March 27, 2018 - About one third of cancer cases are estimated to be linked to dietary and other modifiable risk factors, especially for obesity-related cancers such as breast, colorectal, ovarian, endometrial, kidney, gallbladder, esophageal, and pancreatic cancers. In this special theme issue of the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, food and nutrition practitioners and other health professionals take an in-depth look at the relationship between nutrition, obesity, and cancer prevention, treatment, and survival and identify research gaps for future prevention research efforts.

The United States has a high burden of cancer. The American Cancer Society estimates there will be more than 1.7 million new cases diagnosed in 2018 and around 610,000 cancer deaths. Studies strongly suggest that diet is associated with cancer and that obesity increases the risk of many types of cancer as well as several chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and chronic inflammation.

Key issue highlights:

Obesity prevalence in the US has tripled over the last 50 years. In 2016, a report by the International Agency for Research on Cancer highlighted that excess body fatness increases the risk for 13 types of cancer. Lead investigator Stephen D. Hursting, PhD, MPH, professor, Department of Nutrition, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and colleagues review the multiple mechanisms underlying the obesity-cancer link. Their detailed review also assesses the dietary interventions that are being implemented in preclinical and clinical trials.

"Obesity-associated metabolic perturbations are emerging as major drivers of obesity-related cancer, including alterations in growth factor signaling, inflammation, and angiogenesis," explained Dr. Hursting. "Preclinical evidence suggests that dietary interventions, such as calorie restriction, intermittent fasting, low-fat diet and the ketogenic diet, have the potential to reverse some of these obesity-associated alterations; however, more clinical data are needed to confirm translation to human subjects."

A group led by Guido Eibl, MD, from the Department of Surgery, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, on behalf of the Consortium for the Study of Chronic Pancreatitis, Diabetes, and Pancreatic Cancer, reviews the current knowledge pertaining to obesity and type 2 diabetes as risk factors for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), one of the deadliest cancers. Although the risk factors promoting PDAC development have been known for several decades, their underlying molecular mechanisms and interactions have just recently begun to be explored. The article highlights the risk factors for PDAC development and progression, their interplay and underlying mechanisms, and the relation to diet, and outlines research gaps and opportunities.

High quality epidemiologic studies associate obesity with an increased risk of PDAC, however, there are many unanswered questions. For example, the beneficial effects of weight reduction and bariatric surgery on improving insulin resistance are known, but their role in decreasing PDAC incidence is still essentially unknown.

"Altogether, given the high mortality of PDAC and the expected increase in obesity and diabetes over the next few decades, efforts should be undertaken to mechanistically understand the link between obesity, diabetes, and PDAC. Preclinical animal models are available that will facilitate the study of these important interactions to advance our knowledge, so that the obesity- and diabetes-driven burden of PDAC can be curbed," commented Dr. Eibl.

Consumption of dietary energy density (DED) has been associated with weight gain in adults. DED is the ratio of energy (kilocalories or kilojoules) intake to food weight (grams) and is a measure of diet quality. Cynthia A. Thomson, PhD, RD, professor, Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, The University of Arizona, and colleagues present results of an investigation into the association between baseline DED and obesity-associated cancers in over 90,000 postmenopausal women enrolled in the observational study or the calcium and vitamin D trial and hormone replacement therapy trials of the Women's Health Initiative. Investigators found that DED was associated with higher risk of any obesity-related cancer. Of note, the higher risk was restricted to women with normal BMI.

"The demonstrated effect in normal-weight women in relation to risk for obesity-related cancers is novel and contrary to our hypothesis," remarked Dr. Thomson. "This finding suggests that weight management alone may not protect against obesity-related cancers if women favor a diet pattern indicative of high energy density. Higher DED in normal-weight women may promote metabolic dysregulation independent of body weight, an exposure known to increase cancer risk.

DED is a modifiable risk factor. Nutrition interventions targeting energy density as well as other diet-related cancer preventive approaches are warranted to reduce cancer burden among postmenopausal women.

In a pilot intervention among 46 cancer survivors aged 60 years or older, Wendy Demark-Wahnefried, PhD, RD, professor of Nutrition Science, University of Alabama at Birmingham, and colleagues, posed the question of whether a home vegetable gardening intervention was feasible among older cancer survivors, and whether it was associated with improvements in diet and other health-related outcomes. Participants were randomized to receive a year-long vegetable gardening intervention immediately or to a wait-list control arm.

Investigators found the gardening intervention was well accepted, safe, and feasible and also significantly improved reassurance of worth and reduced gains in central adiposity. Data also suggested that it increased vegetable and fruit consumption by approximately one serving per day.

"Results suggest that future larger studies are warranted. A fully powered randomized controlled trial is currently underway and recruiting 426 older cancer survivors across Alabama," noted Dr. Demark-Wahnefried.

Nancy J. Emenaker, PhD, MEd, RDN, LD, and Ashley J. Vargas, PhD, MPH, RDN, both registered dietitian nutritionists from the National Institutes of Health, review the scientific evidence linking diet and cancer. They explain the inconsistencies in the nutrition and cancer scientific literature and the issues that registered dietitian nutritionists (RDNs) face when translating this complex information for patients.

"RDNs are uniquely positioned to provide balanced, evidence-based information from peer-reviewed literature to help at-risk and cancer patients understand the strength of the evidence guiding individual health decisions," observed Dr. Emenaker and Dr. Vargas. "Despite the best efforts of nutrition science researchers, inconsistencies exist across the diet-cancer prevention scientific literature. Clinical trials are the gold standard of research, but the body of scientific data should be compelling before translating scientific findings to our at-risk, presumed healthy patients for disease prevention and patients with a good prognosis undergoing treatment."

"RDNs play such an important role in both cancer prevention and cancer care. Our profession is involved in research to investigate diet-cancer relationships, as well as supporting individuals and communities in making lifestyle changes for cancer prevention and treatment. RDNs are integral in providing quality care by implementing evidence-based interventions," added Linda Snetselaar, PhD, RDN, LD, endowed chair and professor, Department of Epidemiology, College of Public Health, University of Iowa, and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

A new approach to analyzing prostate gland tissue may help address a major challenge in treating prostate cancer - determining which tumors are unlikely to progress and which could be life threatening and require treatment. In their report published in the journal Scientific Reports, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators describe how cellular metabolites - proteins produced as the results metabolic processes - in apparently benign tissues from cancerous prostates not only can determine the grade and stage of the tumor but also can predict its risk of recurrence.

"Prostate cancer detection through elevated PSA levels followed by prostate tissue biopsies often cannot differentiate between patients with early-stage, indolent disease and those with aggressive cancers," says Leo L. Cheng, PhD, of the MGH Departments of Radiology and Pathology, co-corresponding author of the report. "The additional metabolic information provided by magnetic resonance spectroscopy can help guide treatment strategy, both to prevent overtreatment of slow-growing tumors - a critical and widely recognized current issue - and to identify the aggressive tumors for which additional treatment should be considered."

It has been estimated that more than 70 percent of men who receive a prostate cancer diagnosis after PSA (prostate-specific antigen) screening and biopsy are likely to have less aggressive tumors that will have little impact on their future health, but around 17 percent have aggressive, potentially fatal disease. Traditional histologic analysis of prostate gland biopsies - which may miss the most informative tissues - classifies tumors based on their cellular structural appearance and cannot distinguish dangerous tumors from those that can safely be monitored through watchful waiting.

When an elevated PSA level indicates the possible presence of prostate cancer, tissue biopsies are often taken from random sites within the gland, which can result in some samples with tumor tissue and some in which all tissue may be benign. The MGH team used magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), which reflects biochemical activity within tissues, to analyze samples of benign prostate tissues from more than 150 men with a confirmed prostate cancer diagnosis that had led to complete removal of the prostate gland. Since this was a retrospective study of patients diagnosed up to 15 year ago, the researchers had access to both pathological analysis of the entire prostate gland and the eventual outcome for each patient.

The team first analyzed benign samples from 82 patients to identify any metabolic changes that appeared to reflect key prognostic factors - tumor grade, which reflects overall prognosis; stage, how far the tumor has spread, and the likelihood of recurrence. They separately analyzed samples from the remaining 76 patients and found the same associations between metabolite levels, grade/stage and recurrence risk. Specifically, metabolic profiles of what appeared to be benign prostate tissue were able to differentiate more aggressive from less aggressive tumors and tumors found throughout the prostate gland from those confined to a limited area. Levels of a metabolite called myo-inositol - known to be a tumor suppressor - were elevated in the tumors of patients with highly aggressive cancers, the significance of which is yet to be determined.

"Measurement of a tumor's metabolic activity in the initial biopsy, even in histologically benign tissue, could help to determine whether a patient should have a prostatectomy or, for those with less aggressive disease, could enter active surveillance with peace of mind," says Cheng, an associate professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School. He and his team are now analyzing samples from more than 400 additional prostate cancer cases and working to refine the field of metabolites that provide information valuable for treatment planning.

An analysis of data from a previous study of more than 1,350 smokers intending to quit after a hospitalization found that those who reported using electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) during the study period were less likely to have successfully quit smoking 6 months after entering the study. The authors caution, however, that because of the study's design, it cannot support the conclusion that e-cigarettes are not useful smoking cessation aids and stress the need for further investigation of that question.

"Study participants who used e-cigarettes generally used them infrequently and not every day, a pattern that may not be an effective way to use them for quitting smoking," explains Nancy Rigotti, MD, director of the Tobacco Research and Treatment Center at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and leader of the study published in Annals of Internal Medicine. "It does not prove that e-cigarettes could not be of benefit if a smoker switches completely from tobacco cigarettes and uses them regularly, in the same way that FDA-approved nicotine replacement products are intended to be used."

While it is generally agreed that e-cigarettes - which deliver nicotine without many of the harmful products produced by burning tobacco - reduce the health risks inherent in smoking cigarettes, few studies have directly investigated the usefulness of e-cigarettes in smoking cessation. The current study analyzed data from a randomized clinical trial that compared two approaches to support hospitalized adult smokers intending to quit after discharge - usual care, which involved recommendations regarding smoking cessation medications and support services, or the intervention, which provided participants with their choice of free FDA-approved smoking cessation medications for up to three months and automated phone calls providing advice and encouragement.

Participants in both study groups could use e-cigarettes, if they chose to, but were advised that their effectiveness as cessation aids was unknown. During follow-up calls, participants were asked if they'd used e-cigarettes since discharge. More than one-quarter of patients had used e-cigarettes in the three months after discharge, with more frequent use in the usual care group than in the intervention group. But overall use was intermittent, with different participants using e-cigarettes at different times. Almost 70 percent of those who used e-cigarettes indicated doing so to help them quit smoking, and their frequency of use ranged from around once a week to daily.

At six months after discharge, participants were biochemically tested for signs of recent smoking. In both groups, participants who reported having used e-cigarettes in the three months after hospitalization were less likely than those who did not use e-cigarettes to have results indicating they were not smoking, an association that was stronger among those in the intervention group. Rigotti notes, however, that since participants chose whether to use e-cigarettes on their own, it could be that those who did so were already having more difficulty quitting.

"These results indicate the urgent need for randomized, controlled trials to investigate whether e-cigarettes can help smokers to quit, which have been difficult to do in the U.S. because of regulatory challenges," she says. "In the meantime, I would tell smokers who want to quit or cut down to use one of the FDA-approved smoking cessation medications, which are known to be safe and effective, as a first choice. If they do choose to try e-cigarettes, they should switch completely from tobacco cigarettes and use e-cigarettes daily, something the American Cancer Society has recently recommended."

Rigotti is a professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. The co-authors of the Annals of Internal Medicine report are Yuchiao Chang, PhD, Sara Kalkhoran, MD, MAS, Douglas Levy, PhD, Susan Regan, PhD, Jennifer Kelley, RN, MA, and Daniel Singer, MD, MGH Division of General Medicine; Hilary Tindle, MD, MPH, Vanderbilt University; and Esa Davis, MD, MPH, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The study was supported by National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute grant R01-HL11821.

PULLMAN, Wash. - Computer users -- at home and at work -- often engage in behaviors that create security risks and privacy threats, despite having a variety of security options available.

Clicking on unfamiliar links, choosing weak passwords and sharing personal information can leave a user's computer or employer open to having information stolen.

For businesses, this is especially concerning because employees who engage in risky behaviors at home may carry those habits into the workplace, putting the company, fellow employees and customers at risk. According to IBM and the Ponemon Institute, the average cost of a data breach for companies in 2017 was more than $3.5 million.

Give employees a reason to care

A recent study published in the Journal of Management Information Systems suggests information security managers and supervisors could have greater success in motivating employees to act more securely by avoiding cold, authoritative commands, and instead create security messages that are relatable and provide options for how employees can better protect information and respond to threats.

According to Washington State University researcher and co-author Rob Crossler, Carson College of Business assistant professor of information systems, employees may fail to realize they are putting company data at risk or have less of an interest in taking steps to ensure security because it's not their personal data.

"If you want people inside an organization to truly change their security behaviors, you have to give them a reason to care," said Crossler. "You have to get them motivated in order to be effective at changing behaviors."

Choices not mandates

According to Crossler, when employees feel they have a choice in their response in what works best for them, they tend to take actions that are more secure.

He recommends information systems managers avoid messaging that is too rigid in its instruction, and instead focuses on different strategies for protecting information and responding to threats. For example:

Your passwords are the keys to your digital life, and your online accounts are a proverbial gold mine for someone looking to steal your identity. Hackers often accomplish identity theft by figuring out online passwords. Regardless of how confident you are in your computer skills, you can learn how to create strong passwords and manage them using a password manager. A password manager is software that aids in keeping track of multiple passwords. We recommend using Dashlane, 1Password, KeePass or LastPass. Each of these is an adequate solution, so feel free to choose the software you like the best as your password manager.

The goal is "changing the conversation to be about a partnership," Crossler said. "The focus should be 'We are in this together, and you have options on what you can do to help,' as opposed to 'You have to do this or that.'"

Better security not perfection

"When it comes to securing what you are doing, we are all going to fail. We are not going to be perfect. Phishing attacks are getting so good that even the most alert individual is going to make a mistake," he said. "If they fail in their actions, employees should be encouraged to immediately report it and do the right thing without fear of being reprimanded."

Organizations can work to safeguard against security threats and encourage their employees to make better decisions by providing information and security training on a more frequent, year-round basis, said Crossler. Managers and supervisors also can find the latest information on security issues and threats, as well as access up-to-date education and training resources, on the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team website (http://www.us-cert.gov).

DULUTH, Minnesota--A paper published this week in the journal Limnology and Oceanography Letters is the first to show that lake size and nutrients drive how much greenhouse gases are emitted globally from lakes into the atmosphere.

"Our research pioneers a new way of determining the global atmospheric effect of lakes using satellite information on lake greenness and size distribution," said co-author John A. Downing, University of Minnesota Sea Grant director and professor of biology at the University of Minnesota Duluth. "This is important because the world's lakes and surface waters will emit more greenhouse gases as they become greener and more nutrient-rich."

Greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere drive global climate change. Although carbon dioxide is the most well-known greenhouse gas, methane and nitrous oxide, which are also emitted from lakes, could be far more devastating because they have much greater warming potential.

"Our work shows conclusively that methane, which is emitted from lakes in bubbles, is the dominant greenhouse gas coming from lakes and surface waters globally," said lead author Tonya DelSontro, now a researcher at the University of Geneva. "The greener or more eutrophic these water bodies become, the more methane is emitted, which exacerbates climate warming."

Green lakes result from excessive fertilization by nutrients, such as phosphorus and nitrogen, and when sediment accumulates in lakebeds. Such "greening" is called eutrophication.

"Our research team assembled the largest global dataset on lake emission rates of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide," said Downing. "When we analyzed the data, we found that emissions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere were influenced by the amount of eutrophication but also that lake size matters a lot for carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide."

If the world's lakes and other surface waters become more eutrophic it could negate the reductions that society makes by reducing fossil fuel emissions.

"We need to know how much of these greenhouse gases are being emitted to be able to predict how much and how fast the climate will change," said DelSontro. "This paper is significant because we developed a more effective approach to estimate current and future global lake emissions."

The authors point to four key advancements that enabled their results to be more accurate than previous estimates: Recent advances in satellite and sensor technology, availability of detailed geographical data on lakes, an increasing number of global lake observations and improved statistical survey designs.

The authors also offer some relatively simple things people anywhere can do to protect the water in their community:

Decrease fertilizer application on urban and agricultural land

Maintain large buffer or filter strips of vegetation that intercept stormwater runoff

Manage septic systems to ensure they work effectively

Keep streets and curbs clean

"Even moderate increases in lake and surface water eutrophication over the next 50 years could be equivalent to adding 13 percent of the effect of the current global fossil fuel emissions," said Downing. "By keeping our community waters clean, we make better water available to future generations and we decrease worldwide emissions of methane that speed climate change."

Controlling greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades could substantially reduce the consequences of carbon releases from thawing permafrost during the next 300 years, according to a new paper published this week in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences.

Conversely, climate policy that results in little or no effort to control greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide would likely result in a substantial release of carbon from the permafrost region by 2300, the study found.

A. David McGuire, U.S. Geological Survey senior scientist and climate system modeling expert with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Institute of Arctic Biology, is lead author of the paper. Several other UAF researchers, along with scientists from about two dozen other research institutions worldwide, contributed to the study.

Scientists estimate that the soils of the Earth's circumpolar North contain about twice the amount of carbon as is in the atmosphere. Much of that carbon is frozen organic matter locked within permafrost. As global temperatures rise and permafrost thaws, the previously frozen organic material begins to decay and releases greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide. The release of that carbon can, in turn, cause additional warming and the release of more carbon, something scientists call a positive feedback loop.

Even without immediate controls on greenhouse gases now, the bulk of the permafrost carbon release would not occur until after the year 2100. Study authors note that this could cause society to grow complacent and accept less aggressive efforts to control greenhouse gases. Waiting too long to institute controls could mean the controls come too late to prevent substantive loss of carbon from permafrost soils.

"Society can do something about this, at least that's what the state-of-the-art models are saying," McGuire said.

The degree to which climate change could influence carbon dynamics in the northern permafrost region has important implications for policy decisions. However, most climate system models have not done a good job of showing the relationship between permafrost and soil carbon dynamics. Because of that, they haven't allowed an accurate assessment of the effects of climate change on carbon in the region.

In the new study, McGuire and his colleagues used simulations to study changes in permafrost and carbon storage in the northern permafrost region from 2010 to 2299 using two climate change scenarios: One with low carbon dioxide emissions and one with high carbon dioxide emissions. Permafrost expert Dmitry Nicolsky of the UAF Geophysical Institute provided simulation data on changes in the extent of permafrost in the northern hemisphere and the predicted thaw depth under the two scenarios.

The low emission scenario would require carbon emissions by global human society to decrease by 75 percent during this century. In that scenario, the study showed the loss 3 million to 5 million square kilometers of permafrost and changes in soil carbon ranging from a 66-petagram loss to a 70-petagram gain. One petagram equals one trillion kilograms or 2.2 trillion pounds.

In the high emission scenario, or essentially no change in current trends of fossil fuel use, permafrost losses were between 6 million and 16 million square kilometers, while soil carbon losses varied from 74 to 652 petagrams and occur mostly after 2100. This represents a loss of 20 to 63 percent of the carbon now stored in northern permafrost.

The findings suggest that effective new greenhouse gas controls could help lessen the effects of climate change on the release of carbon from soils of the northern permafrost region and therefore decrease the potential for a positive feedback of permafrost carbon release on climate warming.

"If such controls aren't adopted, it will lead to major changes for ecosystems and infrastructure," Nicolsky said.

Alexandria, VA, USA - The 47th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Dental Research (AADR), held in conjunction with the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association for Dental Research (CADR), featured a symposium titled "The Novel Insights of Proteoglycans in Mineralized Tissues." The AADR/CADR Annual Meeting is in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., USA from March 21-24, 2018.

Proteoglycans are present on the cell surface and in the extracellular matrices (ECM) of all mineralized tissues, but the exact role of these heavily glycosylated proteins in bone and teeth are not well understood. In addition to being structural proteins, proteoglycans are capable of affecting both intracellular and extracellular events, such as the assembly of ECM and the transduction of signaling cascades.

"Mechanistic insights into the molecular and cellular functions of proteoglycans in mineralized tissues will reveal both the sophistication of the regulatory mechanism and the challenges that remain in uncovering the entirety of their biological functions," said session chair Xiaofang Wang, Texas A&M University College of Dentistry, Dallas. "This symposium aims to provide an update of recent discoveries on the role of proteoglycans in mineralized tissues."

These discoveries are striking examples of proteoglycans previously ascribed functions largely structural proteins, that have now been shown to have important molecular and cellular functions directing bone and tooth development. The novel insights into the understudied roles of these heavily glycosylated molecules presented in this symposium offer an exciting new frontier for scientific inquiry, especially for those with an interest in mineralized tissue biology, craniofacial development, matrix biology and glycobiology, amongst others.

This symposium featured talks from Marian Young, National Institutes of Dental and Craniofacial Research, NIH, Bethesda, Md.; Xiaofang Wang, Texas A&M University College of Dentistry, Dallas and Shuo Chen, University of Texas at San Antonio.

BOZEMAN -- Researchers at Montana State University in Bozeman have published a study showing how access to high-quality fruits and vegetables - or lack thereof - strongly influences whether healthy foods make it to a person's breakfast, lunch or dinner plate. 

"Fruit and vegetable desirability is lower in more rural built food environments of Montana, USA using the Produce Desirability(ProDes) Tool" was published Jan. 23 in the journal Food Security.
 

The researchers developed and used a food environment measure, the Produce Desirability (ProDes) Tool, to assess consumer desirability of fruits and vegetables. With the tool, the researchers found fruit and vegetable desirability is lower in more rural areas of Montana.

"This is important because it has the potential to impact consumer selection and consumption in rural areas, furthering health disparities," said Selena Ahmed, MSU professor of sustainable food systems and one of the study's authors. Carmen Byker Shanks, professor of food and nutrition and sustainable food systems, was co-author. Ahmed and Byker Shanks, both in the College of Education, Health and Human Development's Department of Health and Human Development, also serve as co-directors of the Food and Health Lab at MSU.

The research findings indicate a potential for long-term health implications based on access to high-quality fruits and vegetables, Byker Shanks said. 

"It turns out that the overall quality of food available in a food environment really matters," said Byker Shanks. "Whether or not there's access to quality fruits and vegetables in a given area affects the daily choices people are able to make about what they eat. The food choices made each day add up to a person's overall dietary quality and impacts long-term health."

Although food deserts - areas lacking affordable, high-quality food - can exist anywhere, Byker Shanks said that in Montana they're most prevalent in rural areas.

"We have measured fruit and vegetable quality in several different ways across rural and urban areas of Montana," she said. "We're seeing real disparities along rural and urban lines in grocery stores, where fresh fruit and vegetable quality in Montana's rural grocery stores tend to be significantly lower than in urban settings.

"The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends five to 13 servings of fruits and vegetables per day - an amount that is difficult to achieve if the fresh fruits and vegetables are not as desirable to the consumer due to quality," she added.

Researchers have developed a stretchable, flexible patch that could make it easier to perform ultrasound imaging on odd-shaped structures, such as engine parts, turbines, reactor pipe elbows and railroad tracks--objects that are difficult to examine using conventional ultrasound equipment.

The ultrasound patch is a versatile and more convenient tool to inspect machine and building parts for defects and damage deep below the surface. A team of researchers led by engineers at the University of California San Diego published the study in the Mar. 23 issue of Science Advances.

The new device overcomes a limitation of today's ultrasound devices, which are difficult to use on objects that don't have perfectly flat surfaces. Conventional ultrasound probes have flat and rigid bases, which can't maintain good contact when scanning across curved, wavy, angled and other irregular surfaces. That's a considerable limitation, said Sheng Xu, a professor of nanoengineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and the study's corresponding author. "Nonplanar surfaces are prevalent in everyday life," he said.

"Elbows, corners and other structural details happen to be the most critical areas in terms of failure--they are high stress areas," said Francesco Lanza di Scalea, a professor of structural engineering at UC San Diego and co-author of the study. "Conventional rigid, flat probes aren't ideal for imaging internal imperfections inside these areas."

Gel, oil or water is typically used to create better contact between the probe and the surface of the object it's examining. But too much of these substances can filter some of the signals. Conventional ultrasound probes are also bulky, making them impractical for inspecting hard-to-access parts.

"If a car engine has a crack in a hard-to-reach location, an inspector will need to take apart the entire engine and immerse the parts in water to get a full 3D image," Xu said.

Now, a UC San Diego-led team has developed a soft ultrasound probe that can work on odd-shaped surfaces without water, gel or oil.

The probe is a thin patch of silicone elastomer patterned with what's called an "island-bridge" structure. This is essentially an array of small electronic parts (islands) that are each connected by spring-like structures (bridges). The islands contain electrodes and devices called piezoelectric transducers, which produce ultrasound waves when electricity passes through them. The bridges are spring-shaped copper wires that can stretch and bend, allowing the patch to conform to nonplanar surfaces without compromising its electronic functions.

Researchers tested the device on an aluminum block with a wavy surface. The block contained defects two to six centimeters beneath the surface. Researchers placed the probe at various spots on the wavy surface, collected data and then reconstructed the images using a customized data processing algorithm. The probe was able to image the 2-millimeter-wide holes and cracks inside the block.

"It would be neat to be able to stick this ultrasound probe onto an engine, airplane wing or different parts of a bridge to continuously monitor for any cracks," said Hongjie Hu, a materials science and engineering Ph.D. student at UC San Diego and co-first author of the study.

The device is still at the proof-of-concept stage. It does not yet provide real-time imaging. It also needs to be connected to a power source and a computer to process data. "In the future, we hope to integrate both power and a data processing function into the soft ultrasound probe to enable wireless, real-time imaging and videoing," Xu said.

The brain is a complex network containing billions of neurons, where each of these neurons communicates simultaneously with thousands of other via their synapses (links). However, the neuron actually collects its many synaptic incoming signals through several extremely long ramified "arms" only, called dendritic trees.

In 1949 Donald Hebb's pioneering work suggested that learning occurs in the brain by modifying the strength of the synapses, whereas neurons function as the computational elements in the brain. This has remained the common assumption until today.

Using new theoretical results and experiments on neuronal cultures, a group of scientists, led by Prof. Ido Kanter, of the Department of Physics and the Gonda (Goldschmied) Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center at Bar-Ilan University, has demonstrated that the central assumption for nearly 70 years that learning occurs only in the synapses is mistaken.

In an article published today in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers go against conventional wisdom to show that learning is actually done by several dendrites, similar to the slow learning mechanism currently attributed to the synapses.

"The newly discovered process of learning in the dendrites occurs at a much faster rate than in the old scenario suggesting that learning occurs solely in the synapses. In this new dendritic learning process, there are a few adaptive parameters per neuron, in comparison to thousands of tiny and sensitive ones in the synaptic learning scenario," said Prof. Kanter, whose research team includes Shira Sardi, Roni Vardi, Anton Sheinin, Amir Goldental and Herut Uzan.

The newly suggested learning scenario indicates that learning occurs in a few dendrites that are in much closer proximity to the neuron, as opposed to the previous notion. "Does it make sense to measure the quality of air we breathe via many tiny, distant satellite sensors at the elevation of a skyscraper, or by using one or several sensors in close proximity to the nose? Similarly, it is more efficient for the neuron to estimate its incoming signals close to its computational unit, the neuron," says Kanter. Hebb's theory has been so deeply rooted in the scientific world for 70 years that no one has ever proposed such a different approach. Moreover, synapses and dendrites are connected to the neuron in a series, so the exact localized site of the learning process seemed irrelevant.

Another important finding of the study is that weak synapses, previously assumed to be insignificant even though they comprise the majority of our brain, play an important role in the dynamics of our brain. They induce oscillations of the learning parameters rather than pushing them to unrealistic fixed extremes, as suggested in the current synaptic learning scenario.

The new learning scenario occurs in different sites of the brain and therefore calls for a reevaluation of current treatments for disordered brain functionality. Hence, the popular phrase "neurons that fire together wire together", summarizing Donald Hebb's 70-year-old hypothesis, must now be rephrased. In addition, the learning mechanism is at the basis of recent advanced machine learning and deep learning achievements. The change in the learning paradigm opens new horizons for different types of deep learning algorithms and artificial intelligence based applications imitating our brain functions, but with advanced features and at a much faster speed.

A novel lens offers scientists the sharpest X-ray images yet from the nano world. The device is made from alternating layers of tungsten carbide and silicon carbide and can focus hard X-rays into a spot of less than ten nanometers in diameter as a team lead by Saša Bajt from the German research center Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY report in Light: Science and Applications, a journal of the Nature Publishing Group.

The short wavelength and the penetrating nature of X-rays are ideal for the microscopic investigation?of complex materials. For example, nanometer resolution X-ray images provide better understanding of structure and function of materials, which is critical for the development of new materials with improved properties. This requires bright X-ray sources but also highly efficient and almost perfect x-ray optics. To acquire images, the X-rays must be focused : as in a light microscope. This is not easy as high energy X-rays penetrate most materials unimpeded and cannot be significantly manipulated with conventional lenses. The multilayer Laue lens overcomes this problem. This device is basically a synthetic nanostructure that diffracts X-rays much like a crystal. If shaped the right way, the incident X-rays can all be concentrated in a very small focus.

The synthetic nanostructures are prepared by magnetron sputtering. We introduced a new pair of materials, tungsten carbide and silicon carbide, to prepare layered structures with smooth and sharp interfaces and with no material phase transitions that hampered the manufacture of previous lenses. Equally important is the control of the layer thickness and shape with atom-scale precision, explains Bajt.

The sub-nanometer control of layer thickness gained through sputter deposition is considerably better than obtainable in a lithography process , a process used to prepare lithographic zone plates commonly used in x-ray microscopes operating at lower X-ray energies. The high aspect ratio (smallest layer thickness vs. optical lens thickness) of the deposited layers makes for very efficient x-ray focusing, which is critical for fast imaging. The paper presents different characterization methods and ways to reduce remaining lens imperfections. The team is convinced that creating lenses approaching a single nanometer resolution is possible.

Researchers at Houston Methodist used computer modeling to find an existing investigational drug compound for leukemia patients to treat triple negative breast cancer once it spreads to the brain.

The Houston Methodist researchers culled through thousands of existing drugs to see if they could identify a compound that would prevent cancer cells from spreading, or metastasizing. They discovered edelfosine, which has been FDA-approved as an investigational leukemia treatment, and has also been used in clinical research for primary brain tumors.

In the March 22 online issue of Cancer Research, scientists explained how they injected triple negative breast cancer stem cells from patients into mice. After treating them with this compound, the cancer stem cells did not grow once they metastasized to the brain.

"This compound stopped the cancer cells from communicating with brain cells as they traveled from the breast to the brain. Repurposing a drug compound to prevent the spread of cancer could be a game-changer in the prevention and treatment of metastatic brain disease," said Stephen T. Wong, Ph.D., P.E., chair of the systems medicine and bioengineering at Houston Methodist Research Institute and one of the corresponding authors.

Triple negative patients usually have shorter survival time after diagnosis of brain metastasis, suggesting that these tumor cells adapt much more readily once they've moved to the brain. Triple negative remains the most challenging type of breast cancer to treat, and tends to show more traits possessed by cancer stem cells than other breast cancer subtypes.

"Viable treatment options for brain metastases are still an unmet need," said Hong Zhao, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of systems medicine and bioengineering at Houston Methodist Research Institute and co-corresponding author. "Since edelfosine is already FDA-approved, we want to try and move this compound into a phase II clinical study for metastatic brain cancer in the next few years."

Bringing a new drug to market can cost billions of dollars and take up to 17 years. This isn't the first time Wong and his lab have explored repurposed drugs for breast cancer. In 2011, they applied big data mathematical and bioinformatics models to screen for existing FDA-approved medications that might be effective against cancer stem cells. In collaborating with the Houston Methodist Cancer Center, they identified the anti-malarial drug chloroquine as a potential cancer stem cell killer. A few years ago, the group discovered another existing compound that improved blood flow in damaged hearts, also proved to be effective in treating locally advanced or metastatic triple negative when combined with chemotherapy. Both drugs are currently in clinical trials.

Wong and his lab want to see if edelfosine could be incorporated into future clinical research focused on other tumor sites such as lung, ovarian and pancreatic cancers.