Culture

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.--Liberal-leaning companies are more likely to work in concert with the demands of activists of all kinds than conservative-leaning companies, according to researchers at Penn State and the University of Washington. The findings suggest that not all companies make concessions to activists as a result of threats but may instead have a workforce that is more amenable to activists' requests.

"We usually think of businesses as being focused solely on making a profit and being neutral or detached from political beliefs," said Forrest Briscoe, professor of management and organization. "Our research suggests that organizations' openness to social activism is related to their employees' political ideologies and not necessarily a response to threats."

The researchers identified the political leanings of the Fortune 500 companies using publicly available data on employees' political campaign donations. They documented the companies' responses to activism both through interviews with some of their corporate social responsibility officers and through the collection of data on protest events from articles published in U.S. newspapers. The results appeared online on May 28 in Administrative Science Quarterly.

The team found that organizational liberalism is a significant predictor of a firm's likelihood of yielding to activists' requests.

"Liberalism tends to be characterized by a belief in the interconnectedness of humans whereas a more conservative belief is that there is more independence of individuals," said Briscoe. "Our research supports this idea because it shows that liberal organizations tend to be more open to engaging with civil society."

The team also found that the more geographically concentrated a company's employees are, the more their values matter to the companies' responses to activists.

"Some companies' employees are all located at headquarters, whereas others have employees all over the country," said Briscoe. "You can imagine how someone in headquarters who is deciding how to respond to an activist might be more inclined to make a decision that aligns with the general mood of the employees if he or she is located in the same building with those employees and has to walk down the hall and face them. That's what we found; the more concentrated the employees are in a physical space, the more their values matter to the decision that gets made by the company."

Another finding is that the more an organization's political ideology is incongruent or out of alignment with the community where it is headquartered, the more its ideology matters to decision making.

"This makes sense if you think about the salience of an organization's values being greater when those values are different from those of the people just outside the boundary of the organization," said Briscoe. "In general, differences increase salience."

According to Abhinav Gupta, assistant professor of strategic management, University of Washington, the findings have implications for organizations and civil society actors, such as social activists, who are often struggling to figure out where to deploy their tactical efforts and which organizations to target.

"The conventional wisdom holds that social activists should target companies that can be readily named and shamed into capitulating to their demands," said Gupta, a former Penn State graduate student. "But our research suggests that there is additional merit in identifying companies that are ideologically attuned to engaging with social activists and using them to build momentum for the cause."

Recording the movements of people and animals (including birds and insects) has become very easy because of the development of small and inexpensive GPS devices and video cameras. However, it is still difficult to infer what triggers such movements (for example, external stimuli and/or their mental processes) from the behavioral records.

In this study, Shuhei Yamazaki and colleagues have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) technology, first, to estimate an animal's behavioral state, such as "resting", "feeding", or "traveling", without human classification, and, next, to explore the characteristics of each behavioral state by comparing responses under different conditions, such as before and after experiencing a certain stimulus.

This method, termed STEFTR (state estimation and feature extraction of animal behavior), enabled the researchers to estimate the behavioral states of roundworms and penguins that move approximately 1 cm in 10 min in a petri dish and several kilometers in 1 day or more in the Antarctic Ocean, respectively, by analyzing them in exactly the same way. Notably, they achieved > 90% accuracy using only tens of animal trajectories, although traditionally researchers used prior knowledge of specialists about the animal's movement and/or millions of video images of animal behavior to train AI.

In the feature extraction, Yamazaki et al. revealed experience-dependent (i.e., "learning"-dependent) changes in specific behavioral aspects in worms and bats, and sexual pheromone-dependent changes in fruit flies. Moreover, they revealed changes in nerve activity that is linked to behavioral change in worms.

In conclusion, the STEFTR method may make it easy to infer "important places" for animal behavior, such as nests and feeding places that are usually difficult to find, using only trajectory data of wild animals. In addition, it may help discover important brain activities related to animal behavior, thereby contributing to the progress of basic brain science.

New research indicates that transgender and non-binary individuals are significantly more likely to have autism or display autistic traits than the wider population - a finding that has important implications for gender confirmation treatments.

The study, led by Dr Steven Stagg of Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) and published in the journal European Psychiatry, is one of the first pieces of research to focus on people who identify as non-binary.

It found that 14% of the transgender and non-binary group had a diagnosis of autism, while a further 28% of this group reached the cut off point for an autism diagnosis, suggesting a high number of potentially undiagnosed individuals.

These figures were primarily driven by high scoring amongst those whose assigned gender was female at birth, supporting recent evidence that there is a large population of undiagnosed women with an autism spectrum disorder.

The authors also found higher levels of systematising (a tendency to analyse, control and use rule-based systems) and lower levels of empathy amongst the transgender and non-binary group, characteristics often found in individuals with an autism spectrum disorder.

The study of 177 people reported an autism diagnosis of 4% for the cisgender group (those whose gender identity matches their gender at birth). This is higher than previously-reported estimates for the wider population and the authors believe self-selection for the study could be responsible.

Dr Stagg, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Anglia Ruskin (ARU), said: "We found that a significant proportion of the transgender and non-binary group either had a diagnosis of autism or displayed autistic traits, including a difficulty in empathising and an overreliance on systematic, rule-based reasoning.

"One of the striking findings was the number of individuals born female who met the cut off for autism spectrum disorder. This is particularly important given that individuals born female are twice as likely to be referred to gender identity clinics.

"Problems interpreting social signals, a literal understanding of language and difficulty recognising and interpreting one's own emotions could mean that individuals struggle with therapeutic interventions.

"People with autism are also more likely to seek unequivocal answers to the complex issues surrounding gender identity. Our study suggests it is important that gender identity clinics screen patients for autism spectrum disorders and adapt their consultation process and therapy accordingly."

Removing the barriers of access to technology does not close the digital divide for African American and older patients, according to new research from The Ohio State University College of Medicine.

As part of a larger examination of patient portal use, this study published in the journal Telemedicine and e-Health looked at the use of patient portals while people are admitted in the hospital. Over a one-year period, researchers found patients age 60 and over used the portal less than patients ages 18 to 29, and African American patients used the portal less than white patients.

"Patient-facing technology like inpatient portals are intended to engage patients in their health care by improving communication with the care team and allowing them to access test results, progress notes and other information in their medical records," said Daniel Walker, assistant professor of family medicine and biomedical informatics in CATALYST, the Center for the Advancement of Team Science, Analytics and Systems Thinking in Health Services and Implementation Science Research in the College of Medicine. "The lack of use of this technology may be limiting its ability to improve health and health care."

The overall study has been led by Ann Scheck McAlearney, professor of family medicine and executive director of CATALYST, and was funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. McAlearney explained, "This large, pragmatic, randomized and controlled trial has been recruiting patients admitted to six Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center hospitals over the past two years. It enables us to examine various factors influencing patients' and providers' use of and experience with the patient portal, including identifying these disparities we have found."

Patients enrolled in the study used a hospital-provided tablet with a password-protected patient portal application they could access. Patients were not prompted to use the patient portal by the study team. To measure portal usage, researchers looked at the total number of tasks completed during the hospital stay such as logging into the application, sending messages to the care team, viewing test results, ordering meals and accessing tutorials. The 60 to 69 age group used the inpatient portal 45 percent less than the 18 to 29 age group and the 70 and over age group used the inpatient portal 36 percent less than the 18 to 29 age group. African American patients used the portal 40 percent less than white patients.

"When we looked at the data, we saw older patients used the tutorial feature more than younger patients signifying older patients may need more training resources in order to increase use," Walker said. "The use disparity between African American and white patients suggests the differences in use may be more nuanced and not simply an access issue. Additional intervention is needed to close the digital divide."

Future analyses will explore the factors that contribute to the age and race disparities to help develop educational interventions to close the gap in technology use.

"There's been a rapid growth of technological resources to help patients manage their health," said Dr. K. Craig Kent, dean of Ohio State's College of Medicine. "With continued innovation, it's vital that all patients, regardless of age or race, are able to use these tools that can significantly enhance communication and patient care. As helpful as these tools can be, the research of our team at Ohio State shows that we need to create approaches that are usable to all patients, regardless of age and race."

(PHILADELPHIA) - N-acetylcysteine (NAC) is a naturally occurring molecule that replenishes one of the body's antioxidants and now shows potential benefit as part of a standard course of treatment for patients with Parkinson's disease, according to a study published in the journal, Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics. The study found improvements in dopamine levels, the primary neurotransmitter that is specifically decreased in Parkinson's disease, as well as improvements in clinical evaluations of the patients' mental and physical abilities. The study was performed by the Department of Integrative Medicine and Nutritional Sciences, as well as the Departments of Neurology and Radiology, at Thomas Jefferson University.

Current treatments for Parkinson's disease are generally limited to temporarily replacing dopamine in the brain along with medications designed to slow the progression of the disease. The destruction of dopamine nerve cells in Parkinson's disease appears to result in large part due to oxidative stress which lowers levels of glutathione, a chemical produced by the brain to counteract oxidative stress. NAC is an oral supplement, and also comes in an intravenous form that is used to protect the liver in acetaminophen overdose. Several initial studies have shown that NAC administration increases glutathione levels in the brain, but it has not been tested whether such an effect would augment dopamine levels as neurons recover function. The current study tested this by tracking dopamine re-uptake via brain scans.

"This study is an important step in understanding how N-acetylcysteine might work as a potentially new avenue for managing Parkinson's patients. The NAC appears to enable dopamine neurons to recover some of their function," said senior author on the paper Daniel Monti, MD, Chairman of the Department of Integrative Medicine and Nutritional Sciences and Director of the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health at Thomas Jefferson University.

This study advanced earlier findings that NAC may increase dopamine function in patients with Parkinson's disease. In the study, 42 patients with Parkinson's disease continued their current treatment and were placed into two groups - the first group received a combination of oral and intravenous (IV) NAC for three months (in addition to their current treatment program); and the second group, the control patients, received only their standard-of-care Parkinson's treatment for three months. Those patients in the active group received 50mg/kg NAC intravenously once per week and 500mg NAC orally 2x per day on the non IV days.

Patients were evaluated clinically using the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS), which assesses a variety of symptoms including both cognitive and motor function. Patients also underwent brain scanning using DaTscan SPECT imaging which measures the amount of dopamine transporter in the basal ganglia, the area most affected by the Parkinson's disease process. This test was used to determine the level of neuronal recovery. Patients were evaluated initially and after three months of either receiving the NAC or standard of care therapy.

Compared to controls, the patients receiving NAC had improvements of 4-9% in dopamine transporter binding and also showed improvements in their UPDRS score of about 14%.

"This is an exciting study that suggests a natural molecule such as NAC can help improve dopamine function and symptoms in Parkinson's patients," said corresponding author and neuro-imaging expert Andrew Newberg, M.D., Professor and Director of Research at the Department of Integrative Medicine and Nutritional Sciences. The investigators hope that this research will open up new avenues of treatment for Parkinson's disease patients.

The researchers first looked at fly densities inside and outside groups of wild sooty mangabeys and chimpanzees in Tai National Park, Ivory Coast, finding many more flies in primate social groups than outside them. First author Jan Gogarten then carried out a quirky experiment to understand how this high density of flies was maintained, marking over 1,700 flies with nail polish in a group of mangabeys. To their surprise, the researchers recaptured these colorful flies in the mangabey group up to two weeks later and nearly a kilometer and a half from where they were marked. "These surprising results suggest there is a high density fly cloud following monkeys as they move kilometers each day through the forest", says Gogarten.

Given that monkeys and apes have flies buzzing around them in high density swarms, the team set out to test whether flies pose a disease risk like they do for humans. Indeed, nearly seven percent of flies in the mangabey group contained high concentrations of anthrax (Bacillus cereus biovar anthracis). It was possible to culture anthrax from these flies, confirming the viability of this pathogen. Previous research by the team has shown that anthrax is responsible for nearly forty percent of all animal deaths in Taï National Park, suggesting that these fly associations may pose a major risk to primates. Flies also contained the DNA of the bacterium Treponema pallidum pertenue, which causes yaws disease in humans and infects mangabeys in this ecosystem causing horrific lesions. "This study is the first to show that flies actively track primates in the forest and in doing so expose them to dangerous bacterial pathogens", says Wittig. "These experiments suggest that fly associations represent an understudied cost of sociality and that flies are a nuisance that not only affects humans at their summer picnics, but exist more broadly in monkey and great ape populations", says Leendertz.

There is a silver-lining to these findings - while a pathogen carrying fly swarm clearly represents bad news for these primates, they are a useful tool for monitoring the health of these populations, providing much needed data about the pathogens circulating in wildlife without necessitating the darting of wild animals, which always poses a risk to both researchers and wildlife.

Researchers at the University of Nottingham have discovered that repurposing a heart drug could significantly increase the survival rate for children with ependymoma - a type of brain tumour.

The findings, published in Scientific Reports and led by experts in the University's Schools of Medicine and Life Sciences, suggest that co-treatment with a drug normally used to treat cardiac hypertrophy can overcome chemotherapy resistance and increase survival in over a third of ependymoma patients.

Ependymoma are the second most common malignant brain tumours in children. They can occur across all age groups, but the outcome for children is lower than in their adult counterpart. The poorest survival is seen in infants, with the five year prognosis at just 42-55%.

The use of chemotherapy in children with ependymomas has had variable levels of success, leading to the frequent belief that ependymomas are chemoresistant tumours, since over half of tumours cannot be cured by chemotherapy alone.

The study was led by Dr Beth Coyle from the University of Nottingham's School of Medicine and Dr Ian Kerr from the School of Life Sciences. The PhD student who undertook the research, Durgagauri Sabnis, was a recipient of a University of Nottingham Vice Chancellor's Research Excellence Scholarship and the British Federation of Women Graduates (BFWG) foundation grant.

Dr Coyle said: "We are hopeful that by combining this repurposed drug with current treatments we can give new hope for long term survival to patients with these devastating brain tumours".

In this study the authors set out to determine the nature of this chemoresistance. They show that, in patients treated with chemotherapy alone, the presence of a chemotherapy drug-pumping protein called ABCB1 was associated with a significantly poorer outcome.

Tumours that expressed ABCB1 were less likely to respond to chemotherapy and more likely to be locally invasive.

The authors then used a heart drug to inhibit ABCB1 function in cells taken from patient's tumours. The heart drug was able to stop ABCB1 pumping chemotherapy drugs out of the tumour cells making them more sensitive to chemotherapy and less able to migrate.

ABCB1 is expressed in over one third of patient's tumours, all of whom could potentially benefit from repurposing of this heart drug in future clinical trials.

Women tend to have a greater immune response to a flu vaccination compared to men, but their advantage largely disappears as they age and their estrogen levels decline, suggests a study from researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The researchers, whose study appears July 12 in the journal npj Vaccines, evaluated responses to the flu vaccine in 50 adults age 18-45 years and 95 adults age 65 and older, and found that the women in the younger group had a stronger immune response compared to the older women and all men. Experiments in mice yielded similar results, and suggested that estrogen--levels of which lessen with age in females--boosts females' immune responses to flu vaccines, while testosterone lowers males' responses. The scientists expect that their results will be generalizable to other vaccines.

"We need to consider tailoring vaccine formulations and dosages based on the sex of the vaccine recipient as well as their age," says study senior author Sabra Klein, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Bloomberg School.

Scientists have known that women tend to have stronger immune responses to vaccines, and also that the elderly tend to have weaker responses. Klein and colleagues in their study set out to get a better understanding of the interaction of these sex- and age-related differences.

First, they evaluated immune responses to the 2009 H1N1 influenza vaccine in 145 human volunteers--one group age 18-45 years, the other 65 and older. Analyzing key markers of the immune response, the researchers found that, on average, women in the younger group had a stronger response compared to both the men and the older women. The younger women had, for example, a jump in their levels of the important immune protein IL-6 that was almost three times greater than that seen in the younger men, and almost double that seen in older women. Measures of the anti-flu antibody response also were higher for the younger women compared to the men and the older women, though the greatest differences were between the younger and older women.

The team conducted a similar set of experiments in adult and aged mice and observed similar results. They also determined that the younger mice, compared to the older mice, were much better protected from a challenge with live flu virus--the younger female mice being best protected. This group, for example had much less flu-induced lung inflammation after the virus challenge.

In the mice and in the human volunteers, the younger females, as expected, had higher bloodstream levels of estradiol, one of the important estrogens, compared to the older, post-menopausal females. Similarly, the younger males had higher bloodstream levels of testosterone compared to the older males. A stronger vaccine response was linked to higher estradiol among the females and, more weakly, to lower testosterone among the younger males.

Klein and her colleagues found evidence that this association with sex hormone levels was causal. Removing the ovaries and testes of the mice to cut down estradiol and testosterone production eliminated the male/female differences in vaccine responses. When the scientists then artificially resupplied estradiol to some of the low-hormone female mice, the mice showed greater vaccine antibody responses. By contrast, resupplying testosterone to the castrated males caused them to have lower antibody responses.

"What we show here is that the decline in estrogen that occurs with menopause impacts women's immunity," Klein says. "Until now, this hasn't been considered in the context of a vaccine. These findings suggest that for vaccines, one size doesn't fit all--perhaps men should get larger doses, for example."

She and her colleagues are now investigating the molecular mechanisms by which estradiol and other estrogens boost the antibody response to vaccines.

Over the past 22 years, sea levels in the Arctic have risen an average of 2.2 millimeters per year. This is the conclusion of a Danish-German research team after evaluating 1.5 billion radar measurements of various satellites using specially developed algorithms.

"The Arctic is a hotspot of climate change," explains Prof. Florian Seitz of the German Geodetic Research Institute at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). "Due to rising temperatures, the glaciers of Greenland are receding. At the same time sea ice is melting. Every year, billions of liters of meltwater are released into the ocean." The enormous volumes of fresh water released in the Arctic not only raise the sea level, they also have the potential to change the system of global ocean currents - and thus, our climate.

But how fast do sea levels rise? And precisely what effect does this have? To answer these questions, climatologists and oceanographers require specific measurements over as long a period as possible.

In a collaborative effort, researchers from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and from the TUM have now documented sea-level changes in the Arctic over more than two decades. "This study is based on radar measurements from space via so-called altimetry satellites and covers the period from 1991 to 2018. Thus, we have obtained the most complete and precise overview of the sea level changes in the Arctic Ocean to date. This information is important in terms of being able to estimate future sea levels associated with climate change," says Stine Kildegaard Rose, Ph.D., researcher at Space DTU.

Finding water with algorithms

"The challenge lies in finding the water signals in the measured data: Radar satellites measure only the distance to the surface: Albeit, vast areas of the Arctic are covered with ice, which obscures the seawater," explains Dr. Marcello Passaro. The TUM researcher has developed algorithms to evaluate radar echoes reflected from the water where it reaches the surface through cracks in the ice.

Using these algorithms, Passaro processed and homogenized 1.5 billion radar measurements from the ERS-2 and Envisat satellites. On the basis of the signals tracked at the TUM, the DTU team worked on the post-processing of these data and added the measurements collected by the current CryoSat radar mission.

From monthly averages to a climate trend

The researchers created a map with lattice points to represent the monthly sea level elevations for the period between 1996 and 2018. The sum of the monthly maps reveals the long-term trend: The Arctic sea level rose by an average of 2.2 millimeters per year.

There are, however, significant regional differences. Within the Beaufort Gyre, north of Greenland, Canada and Alaska, sea levels rose twice as fast as on average - more than 10 centimeters in 22 years. The reason: The low-salinity meltwater collects here, while a steady east wind produces currents that prevent the meltwater from mixing with other ocean currents. Along the coast of Greenland, on the other hand, the sea level is falling - on the west coast by more than 5 mm per year, because the melting glaciers weaken the attractive force of gravity there.

"The homogenized and processed measurements will allow climate researchers and oceanographers to review and improve their models in the future," concludes Passaro.

BOSTON (July 16, 2019)-- A new study published in Cell Reports found that a transcription factor called Slug serves as 'command central' for determining breast stem cell health, regulating both stem cell activity and repair of DNA damage. The research team also discovered that Slug likely functions as a safeguard against age-related decline of breast stem cell function.

Transcription factors are proteins that bind to DNA sequences and play a role in cancer. The research team previously reported that Slug plays a central role in some types of breast cancers. Building on their prior work, the researchers used breast cells from both humans and mice to explore how Slug might be helpful in maintaining cell fitness.

"These findings help us understand how Slug functions in normal breast tissue and how it may function in breast cancer," said breast cancer researcher Charlotte Kuperwasser at Tufts University School of Medicine. "Slug is overexpressed in a subtype of breast cancer called basal-like breast cancer. If Slug is also critical for DNA damage repair mechanisms in basal-like breast cancers, it might increase the attractiveness of Slug as a therapeutic target."

The main function of stem cells in our bodies is to replenish tissues, and to do so, stem cells need to stay healthy. One of the most important ways stem cells do this is by efficiently repairing damaged DNA, as unrepaired damage can lead to mutations in DNA that disrupt normal stem cell behavior. Upon detecting DNA damage, stem cells activate checkpoints to prevent replication of damaged cells, and they only regain regenerative activity after damaged DNA has been properly repaired.

"Our previous work established that Slug is critical for stem cell activity in breast tissue, but we suspected that there was more to the story," said Kuperwasser. "In asking what other functions Slug might be performing in breast tissue, particularly with regard to maintaining cell fitness, we found something quite interesting, which is that Slug regulates breast stem cell function partially through DNA damage repair."

More specifically, the researchers found that Slug deficiency in human breast cells prevented recruitment of key proteins that are required for repairing DNA. This function of Slug appears to be independent of its role in regulating gene transcription.

While Kuperwasser and colleagues have yet to determine whether breast cancer cells utilize Slug's DNA damage repair function, their current study did make a connection between Slug's multifaceted roles in breast tissue and another biological process: aging.

As stem cells age, their ability to replicate and repair DNA damage decreases. The team found that breast tissue from aged mice had higher levels of DNA damage and lower stem cell activity. Importantly, these characteristics were also found in Slug-deficient breast tissue from young mice. The observation of these characteristics both in aged tissue and in young Slug-deficient breast tissue strongly suggests that Slug function is disrupted during aging. The precise mechanism of how that function is disrupted is still being investigated by the team.

"Our data point towards Slug acting as a safeguard against breast tissue aging, as it promotes both stem cell activity and efficient DNA damage repair, which are disrupted in aged breast tissue," said co-first author Kayla Gross, who did this work as part of her Ph.D. dissertation at the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts.

"But these 'fountain of youth' properties of Slug are certainly a double-edged sword. Breast cancer cells may keep themselves up and running by co-opting the stem cell activity and DNA repair activity of Slug. What will be most important going forward is understanding how Slug is regulated. How do aged cells turn off its functions? How do breast cancer cells turn them on?" continued Gross.

Astronomers have made a new measurement of how fast the universe is expanding, using an entirely different kind of star than previous endeavors. The revised measurement, which comes from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, falls in the center of a hotly debated question in astrophysics that may lead to a new interpretation of the universe's fundamental properties.

Scientists have known for almost a century that the universe is expanding, meaning the distance between galaxies across the universe is becoming ever more vast every second. But exactly how fast space is stretching, a value known as the Hubble constant, has remained stubbornly elusive.

Now, University of Chicago professor Wendy Freedman and colleagues have a new measurement for the rate of expansion in the modern universe, suggesting the space between galaxies is stretching faster than scientists would expect. Freedman's is one of several recent studies that point to a nagging discrepancy between modern expansion measurements and predictions based on the universe as it was more than 13 billion years ago, as measured by the European Space Agency's Planck satellite.

As more research points to a discrepancy between predictions and observations, scientists are considering whether they may need to come up with a new model for the underlying physics of the universe in order to explain it.

"The Hubble constant is the cosmological parameter that sets the absolute scale, size and age of the universe; it is one of the most direct ways we have of quantifying how the universe evolves," said Freedman. "The discrepancy that we saw before has not gone away, but this new evidence suggests that the jury is still out on whether there is an immediate and compelling reason to believe that there is something fundamentally flawed in our current model of the universe."

In a new paper accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, Freedman and her team announced a new measurement of the Hubble constant using a kind of star known as a red giant. Their new observations, made using Hubble, indicate that the expansion rate for the nearby universe is just under 70 kilometers per second per megaparsec (km/sec/Mpc). One parsec is equivalent to 3.26 light-years distance.

This measurement is slightly smaller than the value of 74 km/sec/Mpc recently reported by the Hubble SH0ES (Supernovae H0 for the Equation of State) team using Cepheid variables, which are stars that pulse at regular intervals that correspond to their peak brightness. This team, led by Adam Riess of the Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland, recently reported refining their observations to the highest precision to date for their Cepheid distance measurement technique.

How to Measure Expansion

A central challenge in measuring the universe's expansion rate is that it is very difficult to accurately calculate distances to distant objects.

In 2001, Freedman led a team that used distant stars to make a landmark measurement of the Hubble constant. The Hubble Space Telescope Key Project team measured the value using Cepheid variables as distance markers. Their program concluded that the value of the Hubble constant for our universe was 72 km/sec/Mpc.

But more recently, scientists took a very different approach: building a model based on the rippling structure of light left over from the big bang, which is called the Cosmic Microwave Background. The Planck measurements allow scientists to predict how the early universe would likely have evolved into the expansion rate astronomers can measure today. Scientists calculated a value of 67.4 km/sec/Mpc, in significant disagreement with the rate of 74.0 km/sec/Mpc measured with Cepheid stars.

Astronomers have looked for anything that might be causing the mismatch. "Naturally, questions arise as to whether the discrepancy is coming from some aspect that astronomers don't yet understand about the stars we're measuring, or whether our cosmological model of the universe is still incomplete," Freedman said. "Or maybe both need to be improved upon."

Freedman's team sought to check their results by establishing a new and entirely independent path to the Hubble constant using an entirely different kind of star.

Certain stars end their lives as a very luminous kind of star called a red giant, a stage of evolution that our own Sun will experience billions of years from now. At a certain point, the star undergoes a catastrophic event called a helium flash, in which the temperature rises to about 100 million degrees and the structure of the star is rearranged, which ultimately dramatically decreases its luminosity. Astronomers can measure the apparent brightness of the red giant stars at this stage in different galaxies, and they can use this as a way to tell their distance.

The Hubble constant is calculated by comparing distance values to the apparent recessional velocity of the target galaxies -- that is, how fast galaxies seem to be moving away. The team's calculations give a Hubble constant of 69.8 km/sec/Mpc -- straddling the values derived by the Planck and Riess teams.

"Our initial thought was that if there's a problem to be resolved between the Cepheids and the Cosmic Microwave Background, then the red giant method can be the tie-breaker," said Freedman.

But the results do not appear to strongly favor one answer over the other say the researchers, although they align more closely with the Planck results.

NASA's upcoming mission, the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), scheduled to launch in the mid-2020s, will enable astronomers to better explore the value of the Hubble constant across cosmic time. WFIRST, with its Hubble-like resolution and 100 times greater view of the sky, will provide a wealth of new Type Ia supernovae, Cepheid variables, and red giant stars to fundamentally improve distance measurements to galaxies near and far.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C.

Biodiversity loss is one of the most prominent global issues, also affecting human well-being. With privately owned land covering large areas of the world, private land conservation is an increasingly recognized strategy to address the biodiversity crisis and support human well-being.

Several governments are currently developing and implementing private land conservation policies to achieve national and global conservation targets. A new study assessed 30 years of published scientific literature in order to identify research gaps and mainstream future private land conservation research.

"We found that 78% of the articles focused on four countries only, namely United States of America, Australia, South Africa and Canada", says Gonzalo Cortés Capano, a PhD student at the University of Helsinki and lead author of the study. "However, priority areas for biodiversity conservation on private land extend well beyond these four countries. Worryingly, we also found that half of the articles did not report the engagement of any stakeholder sector, which is fundamental for successful biodiversity conservation".

"Furthermore, we found differences in literature content, showing that research has focus on different topics at the continental level", says Associate Professor Tuuli Toivonen, a co-author in the paper. "These differences might well reflect research adaptations to regional contexts and needs", she continues.

"While several policy instruments exist to promote private land conservation globally, we found that property rights instruments, for example landowners voluntarily transferring partial property rights to a conservation organization, were the most covered instruments in literature", says Dr Alvaro Soutullo, Scientific Director of the Uruguayan Antarctic Institute, a co-author in the paper.

"As conserving biodiversity in a changing world requires understanding complex socio-ecological systems, it is paramount that future research better understands stakeholders' engagement in private land conservation", says Adjunct Professor Enrico Di Minin, senior co-author in the paper. "We also need to better understand which conservation actions and policies help achieve the best outcomes in diverse cultural and geographical contexts", he concludes.

Pick your chicken wisely. The choice could make or break your marriage.

For generations, household farmers in the Horn of Africa have selectively chosen chickens with certain traits that make them more appealing. Some choices are driven by the farmers' traditional courtship rituals; others are guided by more mundane concerns, such as taste and disease resistance.

The result is the development of a genetically distinct African chicken -- one with longer, meatier legs, according to new Washington University in St. Louis research published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology. But that 3,000-year-old local breed type is threatened by the introduction of commercial cluckers.

This study contains the first metrical baselines of chickens with known history in the region, and it reveals much about the history of the selection process and African poultry development, said Helina S. Woldekiros, assistant professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences.

For this new work conducted in collaboration with researchers from the Universities of Exeter, Leicester, Nottingham, Oxford and Roehampton in England, Woldekiros returned to a community in northern Ethiopia near where she previously discovered some of the oldest known physical evidence for the introduction of domesticated chickens to the continent of Africa.

"I'm a bone person, so I'm mostly interested in how much change there was between the archaeological chickens and the modern ones," Woldekiros said. She already had measurements from the ancient chickens in her original find. So she approached 20 families in the small village of Mesert to ask if she could survey their chickens before a Christmas celebration -- then processed all the bones after the chickens were eaten.

In addition to the earliest domestic chickens in Africa and today's African local chicken breeds, the study includes the red junglefowl -- a wild chicken found only in Asia -- using bones from a collection curated at the Natural History Museum at Tring, England, northwest of London.

By comparing measurements from these three types of chickens, Woldekiros collaborated with her colleagues from the U.K. to identify key differences that provide insight into African poultry development over the centuries.

"African farmers were selecting for longer limbs," Woldekiros said. "They were looking for more meaty legs, rather than meaty wings. There was a big change in the length of the legs." The earliest domesticated chickens, dating from 800 BCE to 400 BCE, were also much closer total body size to today's red junglefowl than to the modern household chicken.

African chickens are a primary source of protein for the farmers with whom Woldekiros works. Most Mesert families keep between five to seven birds at any given time. Locals prize certain physical attributes like colorful shank feathers and elaborate comb patterns. But Woldekiros is concerned about a trend that she has been observing while she conducts her fieldwork.

"Right now, exotic and commercial chickens are being introduced to Africa, and local African breed types are in danger," Woldekiros said.

"They are more biologically diverse than the exotic or commercial birds," she said. "Now we are in danger of losing that diversity."

The new chickens might be more productive -- but it comes at a cost.

"The problem with the new chickens, even though they produce more meat and more eggs, is that they're really expensive to keep," she said. "You need to build a shelter for them, so they can't scavenge like local birds. And they're very sensitive to disease."

These costs weigh particularly heavily on widows and single mothers for whom chickens have traditionally been a good source of income, because they were so inexpensive to keep, she said.

Gut microbes produce compounds that prime immune cells to destroy harmful viruses in the brain and nervous system, according to a mouse study published today in eLife.

The findings suggest that having a healthy and diverse microbiota is essential for quickly clearing viruses in the nervous system to prevent paralysis and other risks associated with diseases such as multiple sclerosis.

A condition that causes progressive damage to nerve cells, multiple sclerosis has become more common over the past several decades. Viral infections in the brain or spinal cord are thought to trigger this disease. Some scientists believe that changes in the way we eat, increased sanitation or growing antibiotic use may be causing detrimental changes in the helpful bacteria that live within the human body, potentially increasing the risk of multiple sclerosis and other related diseases.

"We wanted to investigate whether gut microbes could alter the immune response to a virus in the central nervous system and whether this affects the amount of damage the virus causes," says one of the lead authors David Garrett Brown, a graduate research assistant in the Department of Pathology at University of Utah Health, Salt Lake City, US.

To do this, Garrett Brown and co-lead author Ray Soto looked at the effect of Mouse Hepatitis Virus, a virus that infects cells in the mouse nervous system and causes multiple-sclerosis type symptoms, on two groups of mice: some with normal gut microbes and some that were bacteria-free. They found that bacteria-free mice had a weak immune response, were unable to eliminate the virus and developed worsening paralysis, while those with normal gut bacteria were better able to fight off the virus.

Mice treated with antibiotics before the onset of disease were unable to defend themselves. They also had fewer immune cells called microglia, which help flag viruses for destruction by other immune cells.

Next, the team identified compounds produced by gut bacteria that might help the microglia. When they administered these helpful compounds to the bacteria-free mice, they saw that the animals were protected from neurologic damage caused by the virus.

"We've shown that gut microbes protect infected mice from paralysis by turning on a specific pathway in central nervous system cells," explains June Round, Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology at University of Utah Health, and a co-senior author alongside Professor Thomas Lane, from the same department. "This suggests that signals from microbes are essential to quickly clear viruses in the nervous system and prevent damage from multiple sclerosis-like diseases. Our results emphasise the importance of maintaining a diverse community of bacteria in the gut, and that interventions to restore this community after taking antibiotics may be necessary."

Robotics researchers at the University of California San Diego have for the first time used a commercial 3D printer to embed complex sensors inside robotic limbs and grippers. But they found that materials commercially available for 3D printing still need to be improved before the robots can be fully functional.

Researchers who specialize in 3D printing have long sought to make an entire robot in one print--a machine that would be able to walk itself away from the printer when it's done. This would make it easier to print more robots faster. It would also make it possible to 3D print robots without human supervision, for example on the moon or Mars.

One of the main roadblocks on the way to this goal is the development of effective sensors for soft robots. That's because soft, flexible robots often have complex surfaces and movements that are difficult to equip and cover with sensors made with traditional manufacturing techniques. These types of robots are more flexible than their rigid cousins and can safely work side by side with humans.

The UC San Diego researchers' insight was twofold. They turned to a commercially available printer for the job, (the Stratasys Objet350 Connex3--a workhorse in many robotics labs). In addition, they realized one of the materials used by the 3D printer is made of carbon particles that can conduct power to sensors when connected to a power source. So roboticists used the black resin to manufacture complex sensors embedded within robotic parts made of clear polymer. They designed and manufactured several prototypes, including a gripper.

When stretched, the sensors failed at approximately the same strain as human skin. But the polymers the 3D printer uses are not designed to conduct electricity, so their performance is not optimal. The 3D printed robots also require a lot of post-processing before they can be functional, including careful washing to clean up impurities and drying.

However, researchers remain optimistic that in the future, materials will improve and make 3D printed robots equipped with embedded sensors much easier to manufacture.

"Embedded printing of sensors is a powerful process that could enable and enhance seamless integration of sensors into soft robots, but there does not yet exist a suitable, commercially available, easy to use platform that allows users to simultaneously print soft actuators and sensors," researchers write.