Culture

All 50 U.S. states enacted concussion laws between 2009-2014 to mitigate the consequences of concussion. While details of the laws vary from state to state, all state laws address three main factors: concussion education; removal from play after suspected concussion; and return-to-play requirements.

A new study conducted by researchers at the Center for Injury Research and Policy in the Abigail Wexner Research Institute (AWRI) at Nationwide Children's Hospital investigated the barriers high schools across the country face when implementing state concussion laws.

The study, published today in Journal of Adolescent Health, found that many high schools reported challenges implementing and enforcing the three main parts of state concussion laws. Athletic trainers noted in interviews that the concussion education materials currently available often used complex medical terms, did not require active learning, and were often not available in needed languages. In addition, athletic trainers noted a lack of buy-in to state law requirements from both coaches and parents, who may not understand the potential severity of these injuries, which, in turn, made scheduling a time for this training and full compliance with school concussion policies challenging.

"Our hope is that school administrators, athletic directors, and athletic trainers can use these findings to identify implementation barriers in their own schools," said Ginger Yang, PhD, MPH, senior author of the study and principal investigator in the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's. "These findings can help high schools structure their school's policies to maximize the safety of student-athletes and shed light on necessary updates and revisions to current state-level concussion laws."

The barriers to removal from play were associated with athletes' attitudes towards concussion and concussion reporting as well as their unwillingness to disclose concussion symptoms, and resistance from coaches and parents. Sports culture and "old school" mentality of parents and coaches that encourage athletes to "play through it" and "toughen up" can create an environment that is not conducive to athletes reporting symptoms. Lack of an effective system for communicating across all levels was also noted, especially when a concussion occured during an away game.

"It is imperative that parents, athletes and coaches understand and follow their school's concussion policy. It's better to sit out for a game than to get injured worse and miss the rest of the season," said Sean Rose, MD, pediatric sports neurologist and co-director of the Complex Concussion Clinic at Nationwide Children's. "Athletic directors, school administrators and athletic trainers can help create an environment that focuses on the safety of the kids and encourages the disclosure of concussion symptoms and immediate removal from play following an actual or suspected concussion."

Barriers to return-to-play centered on policy-level influences, including high costs of and limited access to medical treatment and lack of clarity or specification in state laws regarding which medical professionals can, or should, provide return-to-play clearance. The importance of athletes being treated by a medical professional with up-to-date concussion-specific medical training is desired, but access to these professionals can be disproportionally challenging for some athletes.

Policy-makers can use these findings to update current state concussion laws, clarify return-to-play language, and include ways for athletes who face sociocultural or economic barriers to be cleared to safely return-to-play. By identifying intrapersonal, interpersonal, organizational and policy-level barriers to the implementation of state concussion laws at the school level, effective implementation strategies can be developed to increase the public health impact of these laws.

Neurons that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine communicate with T cells to enhance allergic inflammation in the lungs of young mice but not older mice, researchers report November 19 in the journal Immunity. The findings potentially explain why asthma susceptibility is higher in children than in adults. By highlighting the important role of interactions between the nervous system and the immune system in childhood asthma, the results could lead to new strategies for treating the common chronic disease.

"This is the first study that reveals a contribution of age-related nerve-T cell communication to susceptibility to the development of asthma in young children," says senior study author Xingbin Ai, a Harvard researcher at Brigham & Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. "Since asthma often starts in early childhood, we believe that the identification of disease mechanisms unique to young age will provide novel therapeutic targets for early intervention of asthma."

Asthma is a potentially life-threatening chronic condition that intermittently inflames and narrows the airways in the lungs, causing wheezing, chest tightness, shortness of breath, and coughing. Although medical treatment and management of environmental triggers can help control symptoms, there is currently no cure for the disease. In the United States, asthma affects more than 26 million people, including an estimated 6 million children. In fact, it is one of the most common long-term diseases of childhood.

Ai and colleagues suspected that the nervous system, which communicates with the immune system to regulate inflammation, might explain the high prevalence of asthma in children. As the nervous system continues to develop after birth, neurons may modulate tissue inflammation in an age-related manner.

In the new study, Ai and colleagues investigated the role of the developing nervous system in asthma characterizing early age. The researchers discovered that sympathetic nerves innervating the mouse lung primarily produced dopamine in early postnatal life but another neurotransmitter called norepinephrine in adult life. A similar pattern was evident when they compared lung and lymph node tissues from children up to 13 years of age and adults ranging in age from 40 to 65 years.

In addition, the researchers found that dopamine released by sympathetic nerves innervating the lung binds to the dopamine neurotransmitter receptor on CD4+ T helper cells to promote their differentiation into asthma-exacerbating Th2 cells, thereby enhancing lung inflammation. By contrast, norepinephrine-producing nerves in the adult lung had no such effect. Importantly, the findings reveal the similarity between mice and humans in terms of the innervation of dopamine-producing nerves in the early lung and the T cell response to dopamine.

In mouse models of allergen exposure, the dopamine-DRD4 pathway significantly increased Th2 cell inflammation in the lung tissue of neonatal mice, reducing mucus overproduction and airway hyper-responsiveness. By contrast, these effects were either not evident or much weaker in adult mice exposed to allergens.

Taken together, these findings demonstrate that the dopamine-DRD4 signaling between sympathetic nerves and CD4+ T helper cells in the lung plays an important role in augmenting allergic inflammation in early life. By facilitating inflammation, dopamine-producing nerves may endow the early lung with a mechanism of tissue repair following infection, which may be advantageous when the lung is immature and vulnerable to pathogens.

"Our findings provide evidence for the involvement of the communication between nerves and immune cells in susceptibility to asthma in early life," Ai says. "It is important to emphasize that simply generically blocking the nerve-immune cell communication is not a good solution, as nerves play important roles in regulating functions of the airway, such as breathing. We will need to identify more specific pathways along the nerve-immune cell axis for therapeutic targeting."

Toward this goal, the researchers will set out to identify druggable targets to disrupt the nerve-T cell communication that goes awry upon allergen exposure. They will also evaluate whether this age-related communication impacts the progression of asthma from childhood to adulthood, and if so, how disease progression can be prevented. Another avenue of future research will be to investigate how allergen exposure and viral infection may affect nerve development in the lung, thereby triggering asthma in children.

"We hope our findings can be used to facilitate the discovery of specific biomarkers for the identification of allergic asthma in children and to predict the severity and progression of the disease," Ai says. "In addition, targeting the communication between sympathetic nerves and CD4+ T cells via the dopamine-DRD4 pathway may be a strategy to battle the increasing prevalence of allergic asthma in children."

Researchers studying six adults who had one of their brain hemispheres removed during childhood to reduce epileptic seizures found that the remaining half of the brain formed unusually strong connections between different functional brain networks, which potentially help the body to function as if the brain were intact. The case study, which investigates brain function in these individuals with hemispherectomy, appears November 19 in the journal Cell Reports.

"The people with hemispherectomies that we studied were remarkably high functioning. They have intact language skills; when I put them in the scanner we made small talk, just like the hundreds of other individuals I have scanned," says first author Dorit Kliemann, a post-doc at the California Institute of Technology. "You can almost forget their condition when you meet them for the first time. When I sit in front of the computer and see these MRI images showing only half a brain, I still marvel that the images are coming from the same human being who I just saw talking and walking and who has chosen to devote his or her time to research."

Study participants, including six adults with childhood hemispherectomy and six controls, were instructed to lay down in an fMRI machine, relax, and try not to fall asleep while the researchers tracked spontaneous brain activity at rest. The researchers looked at networks of brain regions known to control things like vision, movement, emotion, and cognition. They also compared the data collected at the Caltech Brain Imaging Center against a database of about 1,500 typical brains from the Brain Genomics Superstruct Project.

They thought they might find weaker connections within particular networks in the people with only one hemisphere, since many of those networks usually involve both hemispheres of the brain in people with typical brains. Instead, they found surprisingly normal global connectivity--and stronger connections than controls between different networks.

All six of the participants were in their 20s and early 30s during the study, but they ranged from 3 months old to 11 years old at the time of their hemispherectomies. The wide range of ages at which they had the surgeries allowed the researchers to home in on how the brain reorganizes itself when injured. "It can help us examine how brain organization is possible in very different cases of hemispherectomy patients, which will allow us to better understand general brain mechanisms," says Kliemann.

Moving forward, the hemispherectomy research program at Caltech, led by Lynn Paul (senior research scientist and principal investigator) in the laboratory of Ralph Adolphs (Bren Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Biology and the director of the Caltech Brain Imaging Center) hopes to replicate and expand this study in order to better understand how the brain develops, organizes itself, and functions in individuals with a broad range of brain atypicalities.

"As remarkable as it is that there are individuals who can live with half a brain, sometimes a very small brain lesion like a stroke or a traumatic brain injury like a bicycle accident or a tumor can have devastating effects," says Kliemann. "We're trying to understand the principles of brain reorganization that can lead to compensation. Maybe down the line, that work can inform targeted intervention strategies and different outcome scenarios to help more people with brain injuries."

What The Study Did: This randomized clinical trial compared maternal blood loss with immediate umbilical cord clamping (within 15 seconds after birth) versus delayed clamping (60 seconds after birth) in 113 women who had a scheduled cesarean delivery at term of 37 weeks or more.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

Authors: Cynthia Gyamfi-Bannerman, M.D., M.Sc., of the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York, is the corresponding author.

(doi:10.1001/jama.2019.15995)

Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.

Scientists have peered inside the brain to show how taking DMT affects human consciousness by significantly altering the brain's electrical activity.

DMT (or dimethyltryptamine) is one of the main psychoactive constituents in ayahuasca, the psychedelic brew traditionally made from vines and leaves of the Amazon rainforest. The drink is typically prepared as part of a shamanic ceremony and associated with unusual and vivid visions or hallucinations.

The latest study is the first to show how the potent psychedelic changes our waking brain waves - with researchers comparing its powerful effects to 'dreaming while awake'.

The work, led by researchers from the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London and published today in the journal Scientific Reports, may help to explain why people taking DMT and ayahuasca experience intense visual imagery and immersive 'waking-dream' like experiences.

DMT is a naturally occurring chemical found in miniscule amounts in the human brain but also in larger amounts in a number of plant species around the world.

Accounts from people who have taken DMT report intense visual hallucinations often accompanied by strong emotional experiences and even 'breakthroughs' into what users describe as an alternate reality or dimension.

But scientists are interested in using the powerful psychoactive compound for research as it produces relatively short but intense psychedelic experiences, providing a window for collecting data on brain activity when consciousness is profoundly altered.

In the latest study, the Imperial team captured EEG measures from healthy participants in a clinical setting, in a placebo-controlled design.

A total of 13 participants were given an intravenous infusion of DMT at the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Imperial Clinical Research Facility.

Volunteers were fitted with caps with electrodes to measure the brain's electrical activity, before, during and after their infusion, with the peak of the psychedelic experience lasting around 10 minutes.

Analysis revealed that DMT significantly altered electrical activity in the brain, characterised by a marked drop off in alpha waves - the human brain's dominant electrical rhythm when we are awake. They also found a short-lived increase in brainwaves typically associated with dreaming, namely, theta waves.

In addition to changes in the types of brainwaves, they also found that, overall, brain activity became more chaotic and less predictable - the opposite to what is seen in states of reduced consciousness, such as in deep sleep or under general anaesthesia.

"The changes in brain activity that accompany DMT are slightly different from what we see with other psychedelics, such as psilocybin or LSD, where we see mainly only reductions in brainwaves," said lead author Christopher Timmermann, from the Centre for Psychedelic Research.

"Here we saw an emergent rhythm that was present during the most intense part of the experience, suggesting an emerging order amidst the otherwise chaotic patterns of brain activity. From the altered brainwaves and participants' reports, it's clear these people are completely immersed in their experience - it's like daydreaming only far more vivid and immersive, it's like dreaming but with your eyes open."

Mr Timmermann explains that while it's unclear as to whether DMT may have any clinical potential at this stage, the group hopes to take the work further by delivering a continuous infusion of DMT to extend the window of the psychedelic experience and collect more data.

The team says future studies could include more sophisticated measurements of brain activity, such as fMRI, to show which regions and networks of the brain are affected by DMT. They believe the visual cortex, the large area towards the back of the brain, is likely to be involved.

Dr Robin Carhart-Harris, head of Centre for Psychedelic Research, said: "DMT is a particularly intriguing psychedelic. The visual vividness and depth of immersion produced by high-doses of the substance seems to be on a scale above what is reported with more widely studied psychedelics such as psilocybin or 'magic mushrooms'.

"It's hard to capture and communicate what it is like for people experiencing DMT but likening it to dreaming while awake or a near-death experience is useful.

"Our sense it that research with DMT may yield important insights into the relationship between brain activity and consciousness, and this small study is a first step along that road."

"They're out there," goes a saying about extraterrestrials. It would seem more likely to be true in light of a new study on planetary axis tilts.

Astrophysicists at the Georgia Institute of Technology modeled a theoretical twin of Earth into other star systems called binary systems because they have two stars. They concluded that 87% of exo-Earths one might find in binary systems should have axis tilts similarly steady to Earth's, an important ingredient for climate stability that favors the evolution of complex life.

"Multiple-star systems are common, and about 50% of stars have binary companion stars. So, this study can be applied to a large number of solar systems," said Gongjie Li, the study's co-investigator an assistant professor at Georgia Tech's School of Physics.

Single-star solar systems like our own with multiple planets appear to be rarer.

Alpha Centauri B? Wretched

The researchers started out contrasting how the Earth's axis tilt, also called obliquity, varies over time with the variation of Mars' axis tilt. Whereas our planet's mild obliquity variations have been great for a livable climate and for evolution, the wild variations of Mars' axis tilt may have helped wreck its atmosphere, as explained in the section below.

Then the researchers modeled Earth into habitable, or Goldilocks, zones in Alpha Centauri AB - our solar system's nearest neighbor, a binary system with one star called "A" and the other "B." After that, they expanded the model to a more universal scope.

"We simulated what it would be like around other binaries with multiple variations of the stars' masses, orbital qualities, and so on," said Billy Quarles, the study's principal investigator and a research scientist in Li's lab. "The overall message was positive but not for our nearest neighbor."

Alpha Centauri A actually didn't look bad, but the outlook for mild axis dynamics on an exo-Earth modeled around star B was wretched. This may douse some hopes because Alpha Centauri AB is four lightyears away, and a mission named Starshot with big-name backers plans to launch a space probe to look for signs of advanced life there.

The researchers are publishing their study, which was co-led by Jack Lissauer from NASA Ames Research Center, in Astrophysical Journal on November 19, 2019, under the title: "Obliquity Evolution of Circumstellar Planets in Sun-like Stellar Binaries." The research was funded by the NASA Exobiology Program.

No exoplanets have been confirmed around A or B; an exoplanet has been confirmed around the nearby red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, but it is very likely to be uninhabitable.

Earth? Just right

Even with its ice ages and hot phases, Earth's climatological framework has been calm for hundreds of millions of years - in part because of its mild orbital and axis-tilt dynamics - allowing evolution to take big strides. Wildly varying dynamics, and thus climate, like on Mars would stand to regularly kill off advanced life, stunting evolution.

Earth's orbit around the sun is on a slight incline that seesaws gently and very slowly through a slight precession, a kind of oscillation. As Earth revolves, it shifts position relative to the sun, circling it a little like a spirograph drawing. The orbit also precesses in shape between slightly more and slightly less oblong over 100,000-year periods.

Earth's axis tilt precesses between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees over the course of 41,000 years. Our large moon stabilizes our tilt through its gravitational relationship with Earth, otherwise, bouncy gravitational interconnections with Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter would jolt our tilt with resonances.

"If we didn't have the moon, Earth's tilt could vary by about 60 degrees," Quarles said. "We'd look maybe like Mars, and the precession of its axis appears to have helped deplete its atmosphere."

Mars' axis precesses between 10 degrees and 60 degrees every 2 million years. At the 10-degree tilt, the atmosphere condenses at the poles, creating caps that lock up a lot of the atmosphere in ice. At 60 degrees, Mars could grow an ice belt around its equator.

Universe? Hopeful

In Alpha Centauri AB, star B, about the size of our sun, and the larger star, A, orbit one another at about the distance between Uranus and our sun, which is a very close for two stars in a binary system. The study modeled variations of an exo-Earth orbiting either star but concentrated on a modeled Earth orbit in the habitable zone centered around B, with A being the orbiting star.

A's orbit is very elliptical, passing close by and then moving very far away from B and slinging powerful gravity, which, in the model, overpowered exo-Earth's own dynamics. Its tilt and orbit varied widely; adding our moon to the model didn't help.

"Around Alpha Centauri B, if you don't have a moon, you have a more stable axis than if you do have a moon. If you have a moon, it's pretty much bad news," Quarles said.

Even without a moon and with mild axis variability, complex, Earthlike evolution would seem to have a hard time on the modeled exo-Earth around B.

"The biggest effect you would see is differences in the climate cycles related to how elongated the orbit is. Instead of having ice ages every 100,000 years like on Earth, they may come every 1 million years, be worse, and last much longer," Quarles said.

But a sliver of hope for Earthlike conditions turned up in the model: "Planetary orbit and spin need to precess just right relative to the binary orbit. There is this tiny sweet spot," Quarles said.

When the researchers expanded the model to binary systems in the universe, the probability of gentle obliquity variations ballooned.

"In general, the separation between the stars is larger in binary systems, and then the second star has less of an effect on the model of Earth. The planet's own motion dynamics dominate other influences, and obliquity usually has a smaller variation," Li said. "So, this is quite optimistic."

HOUSTON -- Newly diagnosed prostate cancer patients have multiple standard-of-care treatment options available, but many are not fully informed of their choices. A study led by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center found men who seek treatment at a multidisciplinary (MultiD) prostate cancer clinic are more likely to be advised about treatment choices and to receive care that complies with evidence-based treatment guidelines. African American men who visited the MultiD clinic also were more likely to receive definitive, or curative, therapy, compared with national trends.

The findings, published in Cancer, are based on the largest and longest analysis of a MultiD clinic database. The study evaluated treatment choice at MD Anderson's Multidisciplinary Prostate Cancer Clinic in comparison to U.S. national trends assessed by reviewing the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database.

According to the American Cancer Society, 174,650 new cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed this year, making it the most common non-skin cancer in men. Previous studies have shown mortality rates are similar for those who opt for active surveillance versus treatment, yet many men continue to experience preventable treatment side effects.

"Men who visit a MultiD prostate clinic have the opportunity to see a radiation oncologist and a urologist in the same visit, giving them the chance to discuss treatments options and potential side effects in order to make an informed treatment decision," said Chad Tang, M.D., assistant professor of Radiation Oncology and study author. "Patients and their families appreciate the opportunity to hear all treatment options and receive assistance with decision-making."

The study analyzed 4,451 men with prostate cancer treated at the MultiD clinic from 2004-2016. To compare nationwide trends, 392,710 men with prostate cancer diagnosed from 2004-2015 were selected from the SEER database.

Men with low-risk disease were more likely to choose active surveillance in the MultiD clinic than the SEER group. In 2015, the rate of active surveillance among men with low-risk disease in the MultiD clinic was 74% compared with 54% in the SEER group. The tendency toward active surveillance for patients with low-risk prostate cancer is supported by the current National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines and national trends.

At the high risk end of the spectrum, significantly more men were offered aggressive treatment in the MultiD clinic group as compared to SEER patients. Nearly 20% of men with high-risk disease chose non-definitive treatment in the SEER group whereas all men with high-risk disease received definitive treatment in the MultiD clinic group. NCCN guidelines recommend men with high-risk prostate cancer receive definitive treatment.

In the MultiD clinic, African American men over 70 with low-risk disease were more likely to choose active surveillance than older white men. In all other age and risk groups, African Americans were more likely to receive definitive treatment. In the SEER cohort, the opposite was found where African Americans in all risk groups were more likely to receive definitive treatment across age groups.

Previous studies have shown increased use of definitive therapy among white patients compared with African American patients. Among MultiD clinic patients an opposite trend was found for high-risk, intermediate-risk and young low-risk patients, with African American patients having higher rates of definitive therapy.

"These results suggest that when offered treatment options by a multidisciplinary team, African American men may choose a more definitive treatment choice," Tang said. "The outcomes of this study offer an important motivation to provide multidisciplinary clinical care on the national level."

MD Anderson has implemented multidisciplinary prostate cancer clinics across the MD Anderson Cancer Network®. MD Anderson Cancer Network collaborates with community hospitals and health care systems to provide higher quality and advanced care to patients in the communities in which they live.

The authors note several limitations to the study. Those included the current SEER database contains data through 2015, where the MultiD clinic database has information through 2016. The SEER database also lacks significant details regarding complete therapy and does not have data on whether patients were treated with active surveillance, watchful waiting, hormones alone or "benign neglect." Finally, there is inherent patient referral preference to this single center MultiD clinic.

Follow-up studies will look at other aspects of treatment choice. A current study evaluates financial effects of patients who choose external beam radiotherapy, brachytherapy and prostatectomy and the availability of choice across the country using the SEER database.

Husbands are least stressed when their wives earn up to 40% of household income but they become increasingly uncomfortable as their spouse's wages rise beyond that point and are most stressed when they are entirely economically dependent on their partner, new research from the University of Bath shows.

The study of over 6,000 American heterosexual couples over 15 years showed husbands are anxious when they are the sole breadwinner, shouldering all the burden of responsibility for the household's finances. Stress levels decline as their wives' earnings approach 40% of household income. But as women's earnings go through that point, the study showed husbands' stress levels gradually increasing.

"These findings suggest that social norms about male breadwinning - and traditional conventions about men earning more than their wives - can be dangerous for men's health. They also show how strong and persistent are gender identity norms," said Dr Joanna Syrda, an economist at the University of Bath's School of Management.

"This is a large study but of a specific group - other conventions apply in other groups and societies and the results may change as times move on. However, the results are strong enough to point to the persistence of gender identity norms, and to their part in male mental health issues. Persistent distress can lead to many adverse health problems, including physical illness, and mental, emotional and social problems," she said.

Dr Syrda noted the study also showed that husbands did not suffer psychological distress about their wives' income if their wife was the higher earner before marriage and the existing and potential income gap was clear to them.

Figures from the Pew Research Centre in the US show only 13% of married women earned more than their husbands in 1980. But by 2017 the figure was close to one third and the trend was likely to continue. Dr Syrda said she and other researchers were increasingly interested in how this would affect social norms, wellbeing, and our understanding of masculinity.

"The consequences of traditional gender role reversals in marriages associated with wives' higher earnings span multiple dimensions, including physical and mental health, life satisfaction, marital fidelity, divorce, and marital bargaining power," Dr Syrda said.

"With masculinity closely associated with the conventional view of the male breadwinner, traditional social gender norms mean men may be more likely to experience psychological distress if they become the secondary earner in the household or become financially dependent on their wives, a finding that has implications for managing male mental health and society's understanding of masculinity itself," she said.

Dr Syrda said her study also shed light on the 'bargaining power' between husband and wife.

"The elevated psychological distress that comes with husbands' economic dependence on their wives can also have practical underpinnings due to bargaining in the shadow of dissolution or the fear of reduced economic status in the event of an actual divorce. These effects are larger among cohabiting couples, possibly due to the higher probability of dissolution," she said.

The study also showed a disparity in the way husbands and wives assessed their own psychological distress and that of their partner. Survey respondents were asked to measure distress in terms of feeling sad, nervous, restless, hopeless, worthless, or that everything was an effort. Men reported better mental health than their wives reported on their behalf.

"This too may be down to gender norms. If masculine social roles preclude the admission of vulnerability, and men are inclined to hide symptoms of stress and depression, it follows that wives' responses [about their spouses] will be less accurate," Dr Syrda said.

In fact, wives reported their husbands' lowest distress level was when they were contributing 50% of the household income, while husbands reported lowest distress when their wives contributed 40%.

"The fact that a wife observes to a lesser degree her husband's elevated psychological distress when he is financially dependent on her may be simply because he does not communicate it - this may be yet another manifestation of gender norms," she said.

PITTSBURGH--Trash talking has a long and colorful history of flustering game opponents, and now researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have demonstrated that discouraging words can be perturbing even when uttered by a robot.

The trash talk in the study was decidedly mild, with utterances such as "I have to say you are a terrible player," and "Over the course of the game your playing has become confused." Even so, people who played a game with the robot -- a commercially available humanoid robot known as Pepper -- performed worse when the robot discouraged them and better when the robot encouraged them.

Lead author Aaron M. Roth said some of the 40 study participants were technically sophisticated and fully understood that a machine was the source of their discomfort.

"One participant said, 'I don't like what the robot is saying, but that's the way it was programmed so I can't blame it,'" said Roth, who conducted the study while he was a master's student in the CMU Robotics Institute.

But the researchers found that, overall, human performance ebbed regardless of technical sophistication.

The study, presented last month at the IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN) in New Delhi, India, is a departure from typical human-robot interaction studies, which tend to focus on how humans and robots can best work together.

"This is one of the first studies of human-robot interaction in an environment where they are not cooperating," said co-author Fei Fang, an assistant professor in the Institute for Software Research. It has enormous implications for a world where the number of robots and internet of things (IoT) devices with artificial intelligence capabilities is expected to grow exponentially. "We can expect home assistants to be cooperative," she said, "but in situations such as online shopping, they may not have the same goals as we do."

The study was an outgrowth of a student project in AI Methods for Social Good, a course that Fang teaches. The students wanted to explore the uses of game theory and bounded rationality in the context of robots, so they designed a study in which humans would compete against a robot in a game called "Guards and Treasures." A so-called Stackelberg game, researchers use it to study rationality. This is a typical game used to study defender-attacker interaction in research on security games, an area in which Fang has done extensive work.

Each participant played the game 35 times with the robot, while either soaking in encouraging words from the robot or getting their ears singed with dismissive remarks. Although the human players' rationality improved as the number of games played increased, those who were criticized by the robot didn't score as well as those who were praised.

It's well established that an individual's performance is affected by what other people say, but the study shows that humans also respond to what machines say, said Afsaneh Doryab, a systems scientist at CMU's Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) during the study and now an assistant professor in Engineering Systems and Environment at the University of Virginia. This machine's ability to prompt responses could have implications for automated learning, mental health treatment and even the use of robots as companions, she said.

Future work might focus on nonverbal expression between robot and humans, said Roth, now a Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland. Fang suggests that more needs to be learned about how different types of machines -- say, a humanoid robot as compared to a computer box -- might invoke different responses in humans.

Researchers from Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) and University of Salento, both in Lecce, Italy, and Harvard Medical School in Boston have developed a new light-based method to capture and pinpoint the epicenter of neural activity in the brain.

The approach, described Oct. 7 in Nature Methods, lays the foundation for novel ways to map connections across different brain regions--an ability that can enable the design of devices to image various areas of the brain and even treat conditions that arise from malfunctions in cells inhabiting these regions, the researchers said.

The work was led by Ferruccio Pisanello at IIT, Massimo De Vittorio at IIT and University of Salento, and Bernardo Sabatini, the Alice and Rodman W. Moorhead III Professor of Neurobiology in the Blavantik Institute at Harvard Medical School, and funded by the European Research Council and by the National Institutes of Health in the United States.

One of the central challenges in modern neuroscience is recording the exchange of information between different regions of the brain, as well as between different cell types. The new method overcomes this challenge by allowing the simultaneous collection of signals from various brain regions through the use of a tapered optical probe.

The study marks the first instance of successfully using light to decode the activity of specific neuronal populations as well as manipulation of different brain regions with the use of a single probe. The approach relies on bringing fluorescent molecules into specific nerve cells in order to track their electric activity and to measure the level of neurotransmitters--molecules that act as chemical messengers across neurons.

To achieve this, the team used an optical fibre in the shape of a narrow cone with a tip so thin and so precise that it is capable of capturing light from single neurons along regions as long as 2 millimetres (0.07 inches).

The researchers inserted the light-sensing probe inside the striatum, a region of the brain involved in planning movements, and used it to track the release of dopamine, a critical neurotransmitter involved in motor control which also plays a key role in the development of disorders like Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia and depression.

The device successfully captured neural activity in specific sub-regions of the striatum involved in the release of dopamine during specific behaviours.

The approach has effectively allowed scientists to capture how nerve signals travel in time and space and to gauge the concentration of specific neurotransmitters during specific actions. The method enriches researchers' methodological repertoire and augments their ability to study the central nervous system and probe the molecular causes of neurological disorders.

COLUMBIA, Mo. - Down syndrome, due to an extra chromosome 21, occurs in 250,000 children and adults in the United States, making it the country's most common chromosomal disorder. Inherited heart defects, thyroid cancer, celiac disease and developmental disabilities are common Down syndrome complications. Only recently has catatonia, a behavioral condition marked by new onset immobility, mutism, withdrawal and other behavioral abnormalities, been recognized in Down syndrome.

While considerable research has been done on Down syndrome, little is known about associated catatonia. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have conducted the first longitudinal study of consecutively diagnosed individuals with catatonia in order to identify the most effective treatments and outcomes.

Judith Miles, professor emerita of child health-genetics in the MU Thompson Center for Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders, thoroughly assessed seven adolescents with Down syndrome and diagnosed with catatonia between 2013 and 2018.

"As this was the first well-studied group of patients with Down syndrome who developed catatonia, we collected a comprehensive data set of medical, developmental, demographic, family, social and genetic information," Miles said. "By involving the patients' families throughout the process, we were able to monitor progress over time in a patient-centered way."

Miles found catatonia in young people with Down syndrome, for the most part, resembles catatonia complicating other psychiatric and medical disorders. Lorazepam, a sedative drug that helps restore the balance of neurotransmitters in the brain, and electroconvulsive therapy, which involves a brief electrical stimulation of the brain while the patient is under anesthesia, both resulted in reduced behavioral symptoms over time. The research highlights the importance of sustained treatment to help patients with Down syndrome and catatonia maintain recovery long-term.

"This research can help families, physicians and psychiatrists who take care of kids with catatonia," Miles said. "Our main goal is to enhance medical services and treatment options in order to ultimately improve health outcomes."

Genetic analyses have revealed remarkably higher species diversity in common red seaweed than previously assumed. It was thought that there were only five related species of the Gloiopeltis genus (known as 'funori' in Japanese) worldwide. However, genetic analyses of historic and modern specimens have revealed that there are over ten in Japan alone. The reinstatement of the species Gloiopeltis compressa (new Japanese name: Ryukyu-funori) was proposed by this research. It is found in Okinawa and has previously been confused with other species of Gloiopeltis.

These discoveries were made by an international research collaboration group consisting of the following members from Kobe University; Assistant Professor Takeaki Hanyuda, Professor Hiroshi Kawai (both of the Research Center for Inland Seas) and Kensho Yamamura (2nd year Masters in Biology at the Graduate School of Science).

The results of this research were published in the following journals; 'Phycologia' (October 14, 2019) and 'Phycological Research' (October 29, 2019).

Research Findings

Gloiopeltis is a genus of seaweed that is reddish brown to dark yellow in color. Called 'funori' in Japanese, it has been utilized to make glue and binding since ancient times. It is also used as an ingredient in miso soup.

Until recently, there were five identified species worldwide, three of which were found in Japan- 'fukuro-funori' (Gloiopeltis furcata), 'ma-funori' (Gloiopeltis tenax) and 'hana-funori' (Gloiopeltis complanata). This research team revealed through genetic analyses that there are in fact over ten species of Gloiopeltis in Japan alone.

Analyses of Gloiopeltis furcata

Gloiopeltis furcata has the widest distribution range among Gloiopeltis species. It is found in the inter-tidal zones of temperate to cold water regions covering most of the northern Pacific Coasts. The research team genetically analyzed specimens of G. furcata collected from many habitats across its wide distribution. They revealed that there are 4 to 5 unnamed species that have previously been misclassified as G. furcata. These are easily confused with each other unless genetically analyzed.

Genetic analysis also suggested that some populations of G. furcata had previously been miscategorized as separate species. It was shown that Gloiopeltis minuta native to California and so called due to its small size, was in fact G. furcata. A 19th century sample from Kamchatka, Russia was classified as G. dura, however this species has not been reported since the name was introduced. Genetic analysis showed that this species was also synonymous with G. furcata.

The research group also genetically analyzed the type specimen of G. furcata taken from Sitka in Alaska in the 19thcentury. This specimen is currently housed at the V. L. Komarov Botanical Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia. Analyses revealed that this specimen was very close genetically to the specimens found in the Hokkaido and Tohoku areas of Japan. It was determined that they are conspecific- they belong to the same species. As G. furcata has been reported over a much wider range of Japan, it is thought that there are several different species south of Tohoku- more research is required to illuminate this.

Analyses of the Gloiopeltis complanata subgenus

Gloiopeltis complanata is distinguishable from G. furcata by its smaller size and greater number of branches.

To discover more about the G. complanata clade, genetic analyses were performed on historic and modern samples from the Okinawa region. This included 19th century specimens now held at Trinity College Herbarium in Ireland. These historical samples were taken by American botanist Charles Wright during the North Pacific Exploring Expedition of 1853-56.

The results confirmed that there is a separate species that was previously thought to be the same as G. complanata, which was very close genetically to a species which was described as Caulacanthus compressus in the 19th century. Therefore, this research group proposed the reinstatement of the species Gloiopeltis compressa (new Japanese name: Ryukyu-funori). It is mainly found in Okinawa (formerly the Ryukyu kingdom) and is characterized by its smaller size.

Discovery of an unconfirmed species in Japan

This research also revealed that a species previously found in Korea - Gloiopeltis frutex - also grows around Kyushu in southern Japan. Overall, this research has identified a new species, Ryukyu-funori (Gloiopeltis compressa), and has revealed that there is great variation in the Gloiopeltis genus in Japan and worldwide. Continuing research is hoped to illuminate this further.

In the deep sea, far away from the light of the sun, organisms use chemical energy to fix carbon. At hydrothermal vents - where hot, mineral-rich water gushes out of towering chimneys called black smokers - vibrant ecosystems are fueled by chemical energy in the vent waters. Mussels thrive in this seemingly hostile environment, nourished by symbiotic bacteria inside their gills. The bacteria convert chemicals from the vents, which the animals cannot use, into tasty food for their mussel hosts. Now an international group of scientists led by Nicole Dubilier from the Max Planck Institute of Marine Microbiology in Bremen and Jillian Petersen, now at the University of Vienna, reports in ISME Journal that carbon fixation in the deep sea is more diverse than previously thought.

Meet Thiobarba, the new bacterium on the block

It has long been known that deep-sea Bathymodiolus mussels, distant relatives of the edible, shallow-water blue mussel, harbor symbionts inside their gills. In 2016, Adrien Assié carried out his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology and discovered symbiotic bacteria living between the mussel's gills, calling them Thiobarba. Adrien's further studies reveal that these bacteria not only belong to a family not yet known, but also feed in an unexpected way. "Thiobarba fixes carbon using the Calvin cycle," explains Nikolaus Leisch, shared-first author of the study. "It is the first of this bacterial group to use this pathway for carbon fixation." Usually this group uses a pathway known as the reverse TCA-cycle, which is much more energy efficient, to fix carbon. However, it does not work well in the presence of oxygen, which is abundant in the gills of these mussels. "This discovery calls into question current assumptions about which bacterial groups use which type of carbon fixation pathway," Leisch continues.

Fixing CO2 their neighbors' way

The Thiobarba family belongs to a group of bacteria called Epsilonproteobacteria, recently renamed as Campylobacterota. Members of this group were not known to live in symbiosis with mussels, or to use the Calvin cycle. But how did Thiobarba acquire the genetic toolbox for the Calvin cycle? "Our results, based on metagenomic sequencing, indicate that they obtained some of the required genes from other symbionts that also live inside the mussel's gills", says Adrien Assié, the other shared-first author of this study, who now works at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. "Living within its tissue, the endosymbionts have evolved a much more intimate symbiotic relationship with the mussel. Before Thiobarba was able to successfully settle on the Bathymodiolus gills, one of its ancestors must have acquired the tools of the trade from the endosymbionts, allowing its descendants to colonize mussel hosts more efficiently."

Symbiosis as a blueprint for evolutionary processes

The scientists next set off to look for similar processes in free-living Campylobacterota. And indeed, bacteria from water samples taken at hydrothermal vents contained the corresponding genes. Using the Calvin cycle might be more widespread in this group of bacteria than previously thought. "Our research on symbiotic bacteria has often revealed new insights that are also relevant for free-living bacteria. By studying symbioses, we can learn a lot about microbial life in general and its evolution," project leader Nicole Dubilier concludes.

In 2006, Japanese researchers came up with a new way of creating pluripotent stem cells through epigenetic reprogramming of connective tissue cells. Their discovery has yielded a highly valuable cell type which scientists can use to grow all cells of the human body in a Petri dish.

When culturing these so-called "induced pluripotent stem cells" (iPS cells) as three-dimensional cell aggregates, functional miniature versions of human organs, the so-called organoids, can be created by selectively adding growth factors. In the past years, this technique has been used to create cell culture models of the intestines, the lung, liver, kidneys and the brain, for example.

Previous organoids remained incomplete

Such organoid models are often surprisingly similar to real embryonic tissues. However, most remained incomplete because they lacked stromal cells and structures, the supportive framework of an organ composed of connective tissue. For instance, the tissues lacked blood vessels and immune cells. During embryonic development, all these cell types and structures are engaged in a process of constant exchange, they influence each other and thereby boost the development and maturation of the tissue and of the organ. Diseases, too, usually evolve in the tissue context with the involvement of different cell types. The selective incorporation of stromal components, and especially of functioning blood vessels, would therefore promote the maturation of already established organoid models.

Scientists from the University of Würzburg have now taken a major step towards developing such complex organoids. The anatomists, Dr. Philipp Wörsdörfer and Professor Süleyman Ergün, the head of the Institute of Anatomy and Cell Biology, were in charge of the project. In an article published in the journal "Scientific Reports" in early November 2019, the two researchers present the results of their work.

Mesodermal stem cells make miniature organs complete

"We used a trick to achieve our goal," explains Philipp Wörsdörfer. "First we created so-called mesodermal progenitor cells from pluripotent stem cells." Under the right conditions, such progenitor cells are capable of producing blood vessels, immune cells and connective tissue cells.

To demonstrate the potential of the mesodermal progenitor cells, the scientists then mixed these cells with tumour cells as well as with brain stem cells that had previously been generated from human iPS cells. This mixture grew to form complex three-dimensional tumour or brain organoids in the Petri dish featuring functional blood vessels, connective tissue, and in the case of the brain tissue, also brain-specific immune cells, the so-called microglia cells.

"In the future, the miniature organ models generated with this new technique can help scientists shed light on the processes involved in the genesis of diseases and analyse the effect of therapeutic substances in more detail before using them on animals and human patients," says Süleyman Ergün. This would allow the number of animal experiments to be reduced. Moreover, the organ models could contribute to gaining a better understanding of embryonic development processes and grow tissue that can be transplanted efficiently since they already have a functional vascular system.

Infectious diseases are caused by pathogenic microorganisms capable of entering, colonising and growing within a host organism, thus producing an infection. Bacterial infections have been on the rise worldwide in recent years, but many mechanisms underlying bacterial pathogenesis are still poorly understood. This is highly relevant given the fact that the development of new antimicrobial therapies is largely based on current knowledge of the mechanisms behind these infections. The proteins coded by the bacterial genes are responsible for the thousands of biochemical processes essential for the efficient propagation of the pathogen. Many studies demonstrate, however, that in order to identify these genes, in vivo information is needed on what happens with the bacteria in a real case of an infected host. The in vitro studies, i.e., those recreated in laboratories with cell and bacterial cultures, later do not always correlate with data from in vivo studies. This is due to the fact that pathogenic bacterial genes essential for producing the infections depend on the environment of the colonised organism.

A team of researchers from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and from the Centre of Genomic Regulation (CRG) has created the BacFITBase database. Based on the results of the in vivo experiments, researchers systematically characterised the bacterial genes relevant for host cell invasion and infection. All the experiments performed were based on a technique named transposon mutagenesis, where the DNA fragments called transposons are transferred to the organism's pathogenic genes, thereby inactivating them.

By doing so, their role in the infection can be observed directly and researchers can determine which are essential for a specific host organism to become infected. Therefore, this database will make it easier to identify target proteins that can help in fighting infectious diseases and accelerate the development of new antimicrobial agents.

The database contains over 90,000 entries with information on specific pathogenic bacterial genes and their contribution to in vivo infectious conditions in five different host species. It includes information on a total of 15 bacteria (two variants of Salmonella enterica, Haemophilus influenzae, Streptococcus pyogenes, Porphyromonas gingivalis, Mycobacterium avium, three variants of Escherichia coli, Vibrio cholerae, Campylobacter jejuni, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Serratia marcescens and Vibrio parahaemolyticus) and 5 model vertebrates (cow, pig, hen, mouse and rabbit), with information across 10 different tissues.