Culture

Fact: About 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period, 75 percent of plant and animal species went extinct, including the dinosaurs (except those that evolved into birds).

Fact: About 66 million years ago, an enormous asteroid or comet hit the Earth near what is now Chicxulub, Mexico, throwing rock, dust and water vapor into the atmosphere.

Fact: About 66 million years ago, a massive volcano erupted lavas in India that are now called the Deccan Traps, burying much of the subcontinent under more than 11,000 feet of basalt (lava rock) and pouring poisonous gases into the atmosphere.

Princeton geoscientists Blair Schoene and Gerta Keller led an international team of researchers who have assembled the first high-resolution timeline for the eruptions in India's Deccan Traps. Their research appears in the Feb. 22 issue of the journal Science.

"Everyone has heard that the dinosaurs died from an asteroid hitting the Earth," said Schoene, an associate professor of geosciences. "What many people don't realize is that there have been many other mass extinctions in the last 500 million years, and many of them coincide with large volcanic outpourings" from the massive volcanoes known as flood basalts or large igneous provinces.

Keller, a professor of geosciences, has argued for decades that the eruption of the Deccan Traps caused the dinosaur mass extinction. In 2013, she, Schoene, and his students began trying to find the ages of the thick layers of lava, which were known to be about the right age but had never been precisely dated.

Schoene uses several techniques for geochronology, the science of assigning ages to rocks. The most famous geochronology technique, usually called "carbon dating," uses the decay rate of radioactive carbon-14 to find fossils ages. That works for plants or animals that are a few thousand years old, making it useful for archaeology but not for 66-million-year-old basalt. For rocks from around the time of the mass extinction, geoscientists have a few choices of naturally radioactive materials. Uranium-lead geochronology yields very precise ages, but minerals containing uranium rarely occur in basalt, the rock that makes up the massive lava flows; uranium-bearing zircon is more often found in explosive eruptions from Mount St. Helens-type volcanoes, which have a more silica-rich chemistry.

The researchers were aware that the odds were stacked against them. "I don't think that any of us anticipated that our first trip to the Deccan Traps would lead to the type of dataset that we were able to produce," said Mike Eddy of the Class of 2011, now a postdoctoral research associate in geosciences and a co-author on the Science paper.

For the first few days, the researchers gathered samples of coarse-grained basalts, trying unsuccessfully to find uranium-bearing minerals. Then came a stroke of luck.

"During our first week in India, we found a high-silica ash bed between two basalt flows, and it got our gears turning," Eddy said. The researchers knew that silica-rich volcanic ash could easily contain the tiny zircon crystals that preserve radioactive uranium. "The real breakthrough came a day or two later, when Blair realized that the fossil soils may have also collected this type of ash in small amounts," Eddy said.

In other words, instead of focusing on the lava flows themselves, the researchers shifted their focus to the zircon crystals found in the layers of ash in soil between the lava beds. By precisely dating zircons that were deposited before and after the Deccan Traps lava flows, they could tightly constrain when the volcano must have erupted.

Over three field seasons, the researchers gathered samples from more than a hundred sites and shipped them back to the lab at Princeton. "It is always entertaining when we ship samples at the end of the trip," said Eddy. "This frequently involves a full day, starting with finding cardboard boxes that have enough structural integrity to make it back to the USA, packing said boxes, a visit to the post office to pick up the necessary forms and have the boxes inspected, a visit to a cloth shop to buy canvas, a visit to a tailor to have the boxes sewn into canvas bags, traveling around town to numerous ATMs to collect enough cash to ship the boxes internationally, and a final few hours of paperwork and stamps to get the boxes out the door. In total, the entire process can take up to 12 hours."

Of the 141 sample sites, 24 yielded uranium-bearing zircon crystals, which allowed the research team to conclude that the Deccan Traps erupted in four distinct pulses, each time belching enormous volumes of sulfur and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The thousands of tons of lava would have killed anything living nearby, but the gases reached around the world.

Sulfurous gases can cool the atmosphere in the short term, while carbon dioxide warms it in the long term. When volcanoes release enormous volumes of both, "these can lead to climate swings between warm and cold periods that make it really hard for life on Earth," said Schoene. To determine how big an effect it would have had, they needed to constrain the timing of the eruptions: Tons of carbon dioxide erupted in a hundred years will have very different effects than the same volume outgassed over the course of a million years.

Of the four eruption pulses, two took place before the mass extinctions, with the second beginning only tens of thousands of years before the Chicxulub impact -- a geologically short amount of time. "The first two pulses ... correspond with a period of time where climate fluctuated from cold to hot to cold again, and many scientists think this indicated an initial disruption to the climate that may have contributed to the mass extinction event," said Schoene. "Our data show that maybe the second pulse could have played an important role in the extinction itself because it happened right before it."

Keller is more definitive in her conclusions: "Deccan volcanism is the most likely cause of the dinosaur mass extinction," she said. "The Chicxulub impact may have contributed to their demise, though the timing and environmental effects of this impact still remain to be determined."

"In general, I think this paper is significant and interesting," said Pincelli Hull, an assistant professor of geology and geophysics at Yale who was not involved in this research and who has argued against the role of the volcano in the mass extinction. "The paper is a huge advance in timing the [Deccan Traps] eruptions, but how that relates to the timing of outgassing is still a major question that needs to be resolved to figure out exactly what the relevant roles of volcanism and impact were."

The researchers will continue to tease apart the effects of the one-two punch of the Deccan Traps eruptions and the planet-shaking impactor, said Eddy. "Regardless, it seems like the end-Cretaceous was a terrible time to be on Earth."

MINNEAPOLIS, MN- February 22, 2019 - Nearly 3 million Americans are living with atrial fibrillation (AFib), which is described as quivering or irregular heartbeat (arrhythmia). With increasing lifespan and increasing prevalence of risk factors such as obesity, experts believe the number of people living with AFib will increase at an exponential rate in the next decade. This has important public implications since AFib is associated with a higher risk of stroke, heart failure, cognitive decline and dementia, and death.

Lin Yee Chen, MD, MS, Associate Professor with Tenure, Cardiovascular Division, in the Department of Medicine with the University of Minnesota Medical School was part of a Writing Committee tasked with updating the 2014 guidelines for patients with AFib. The 2019 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association/Heart Rhythm Society Guidelines for the Management of Patients with Atrial Fibrillation were just published in Circulation, the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, and Heart Rhythm as the standard for the management of Afib in the U.S.

"These guidelines are written for all physicians in all specialties," said Chen. "It doesn't matter whether the clinician is an orthopedic surgeon, gynecologist, oncologist or brain surgeon, everyone is bound to encounter AFib in their patients because it is so prevalent."

One section of the new guidelines speaks to guiding practitioners across the whole spectrum of medicine, focusing on the use of new blood thinners or anticoagulants in people with AFib. The new guidelines help determine how and when to use these new agents, including in a situation that involves surgery.

Another portion of the document addresses the management of AFib in different scenarios, such as patients who have developed heart attacks.

"AFib patients are put on blood thinners to prevent stroke. When we need to perform procedures like a coronary angioplasty to open up any blockage in the heart arteries during a heart attack in AFib patients, we will also have to prescribe other agents called antiplatelets which when used in combination with blood thinners can elevate significantly the risk of bleeding, which is a real dilemma." said Chen. "Current research is now in favor of double therapy- one antiplatelet agent and one anticoagulant, as opposed to two antiplatelets and an anticoagulant."

A final section addresses the importance of weight-loss and weight management in improving the outcomes in people with AFib. In recent years, there is increasing evidence to suggest that lifestyle modification such as weight loss and physical activity can reduce the frequency and the burden of AFib. This has been incorporated into the new guidelines.

"The University of Minnesota could potentially make some significant contributions in the field of lifestyle modification and AFib," explained Chen. "Currently, I am the Principal Investigator of an Academic Health Center Faculty Research and Development grant which funds a randomized controlled trial aimed at evaluating different exercise protocols in reducing the burden of AFib.

"Being represented on the Writing Committee is a great honor for the University of Minnesota Medical School, because ultimately, the point of our research is to influence and impact the way we practice medicine," said Chen. "I think this is testimony to the outstanding research we perform for AFib at the University of Minnesota which is recognized by the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology."

SAN FRANCISCO - Promising new therapies for food allergies are on the horizon, including an experimental immunotherapy awaiting federal approval that enables people who are very allergic to eat peanut protein without suffering serious side effects.

Good news, right?

As it turns out, the idea of a child who is highly allergic to a specific food eating that same food item makes kids with lifelong food allergies and their parents a bit queasy.

"It's a very big paradigm shift. From diagnosis, children are told to avoid their food triggers at all cost. But now they may be counseled to approach the very thing that scares them, put it in their body and see what happens," says Linda Herbert, Ph.D., an assistant professor in Children's Division of Psychology and Behavioral Health.

"On the flip side, these new protections could reduce long-term anxieties, replacing daily anxiety about accidental exposure with a newfound sense of empowerment. Either way, a lot of families will need support as they try these new treatments that enable them to ingest a food allergen daily or wear a patch that administers a controlled dose of that food allergen," Herbert says.

She will discuss food allergy treatments in the pipeline and families' psychosocial concerns related to daily life as she presents a research update during the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI) 2019 Annual Meeting. A select group, including Herbert, has been recognized with an AAAAI Foundation Heritage Lectureship, which honors distinguished AAAAI members with a special lecture and plaque.

Herbert's symposium targets allied health professionals at the annual meeting, including psychologists, dietitians and nurse practitioners who attend to a host of psychosocial concerns felt by families affected by allergies to foods like eggs, nuts and cow's milk.

"When patients arrive for outpatient therapy, they feel anxious about being safe when they're out in public. They have anxieties about their children feeling safe at school as well as managing restaurant meals. They explain difficulties being included in social events like birthday parties, field trips and shared vacations," Herbert says. "Some families restrict social activities due to stress and anxiety."

Children's National Health System takes a multidisciplinary approach for complex conditions like food allergies, she says, combining the expertise of psychologists, medical providers, research nurses, clinical nurses, registered dietitians and other allied health professionals.

"When we all communicate, we can see the complete picture. It strengthens the care that the child receives, and it's especially powerful that it can happen all at once - rather than going to multiple appointments," she adds.

During such group huddles, the team agrees on a plan together that is communicated to the family. One ongoing challenge is that one-third of school children with food allergies are bullied or teased.

"A lot of parents don't necessarily know to ask or how to ask. I frequently suggest that clinicians discuss peer concerns more in clinic."

Opioid-related deaths nationwide jumped fourfold in the last two decades, and the epidemic has made major inroads in the Eastern states, according to a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Harvard University and the University of Toronto.

"Although opioid-related mortality has been stereotyped as a rural, low-income phenomenon concentrated among Appalachian or Midwestern states, it has spread rapidly, particularly among the Eastern states," the study said.

The researchers found the highest rates of opioid-related deaths occurred in eight states: Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire and Ohio. Two states, Florida and Pennsylvania, had opioid-related mortality rates that were doubling every two years. The mortality rate from opioids has increased the fastest in the District of Columbia, more than tripling every year since 2013, the researchers found.

The study's findings will be published Feb. 22 in JAMA Network Open. Mathew Kiang, ScD, a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford, is the lead author. The senior author is Monica Alexander, PhD, assistant professor of sociology and statistical sciences at the University of Toronto.

'More potent than they expected'

Synthetic opioid deaths now outnumber heroin deaths, which suggests synthetics, such as as fentanyl, have contaminated the production process of other illegal drugs, like cocaine and methamphetamines, and is no longer limited to heroin, Kiang said.

"People aren't aware their drugs are laced and more potent than they expected, putting them at higher risk of overdose," Kiang said.

The research, which is based on data from the National Center for Health Statistics and the U.S. Census, suggests the opioid epidemic has evolved as three waves, based on the types of opioids associated with mortality:

The first wave of opioid-related deaths, from the 1990s until about 2010, was associated with prescription painkillers.

The second wave, from 2010 until recently, was associated with a large increase in heroin-related deaths.

The third and current wave, which began around 2013, involves a rapid increase in deaths associated with illicitly manufactured synthetic opioids, such as tramadol and fentanyl.

"The evolution has also seen a wider range of populations being affected, with the spread of the epidemic from rural to urban areas and considerable increases in opioid-related mortality observed in the black population," the study says.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that African-Americans experienced the largest increase in opioid overdose deaths among any racial group from 2016 to 2017, with a 26 percent surge.

"The identification and characterization of opioid 'hot spots' -- in terms of both high mortality rates and increasing trends in mortality -- may allow for better-targeted policies that address the current state of the epidemic and the needs of the population," the researchers wrote.

States are trying to combat the epidemic by enacting policies, such as restricting the supply of prescription painkillers and expanding treatment and access to the overdose-reversing drug naloxone.

"Treating opioid use disorder should be our top priority to curb the problem," Kiang said. "Similarly, we have the ability to counteract the effects of an overdose. These lifesaving drugs should be easily accessible and widely available."

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- The good news is that physician burnout appears to be improving, along with indicators for physician well-being. However, physicians remain at high risk for burnout, depression and depersonalization, compared to other professionals. Those are the updated findings from Mayo Clinic researchers and their collaborators that are published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

"This is good news. It shows that burnout is being addressed nationally and programs are having some impact," says Lotte Dyrbye, M.D., Mayo Clinic researcher and senior author of the paper. "Clearly more organizational change and more research is needed to sustain this trajectory."

Researchers from Mayo Clinic, the American Medical Association and Stanford University collaborated in the national survey of physicians across more than 20 specialties to assess any changes between the previous study in 2014 and the original survey in 2011. While burnout varies by specialist, overall reported levels of burnout and satisfaction with work-life integration improved between 2014 and 2017 -- but only to 2011 levels. The researchers say individual and organizational efforts have improved the situation, but more work needs to be done.

Burnout encompasses many aspects but includes the areas of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, distress and depression. Extreme cases of burnout can lead to medical errors affecting patients, job loss and suicide. Survey responders say the demands of updating electronic health records are a major factor in burnout. These demands limit the time physicians can spend with patients, and that affects career satisfaction.

More than 30,000 physicians were invited to participate in the electronic survey. Roughly 17 percent (5,197) responded, and a second attempt to reach nonrespondents gained 248 more participants. Questions mirrored those on the previous surveys.

Researchers say the reason for the change may be due to physicians adapting to the new work environments over the three-year period. Also, much progress may be attributed to interventional programs to stem burnout in hospitals and other facilities. Conversely, they say the indicators may have improved because many distressed physicians have left the profession.

A new study by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers found that U.S.-based patient advocacy organizations received a disproportionate amount of contributions made by the world's 10 largest pharmaceutical companies in 2016.

The study assessed contributions to patient advocacy groups in seven countries and the United Kingdom and found that U.S.-based patient advocacy organizations received 74 percent of total contributions in 2016, or an estimated $88 million dollars.

Patient advocacy organizations are nonprofit groups that focus on specific medical conditions. They are found in almost every industrialized country and seek to raise awareness, lobby for research and treatment options as well as provide patient and caregiver education, advocacy and support services.

The study was published online February 21, 2019 in the American Journal of Public Health.

"Patient advocacy groups have an important role when they testify in Congress, at the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and other government agencies," says senior co-author Gerard Anderson, PhD, professor in the Bloomberg School's Department of Health Policy and Management. "It is important for policymakers to understand the funding sources for these organizations."

The report reveals a patchwork of disclosure levels among countries, with only six of the 10 drug companies disclosing their financial donations to U.S.-based patient advocacy organizations in 2016. This disclosure gap suggests that the total amount of contributions to U.S.-based patient groups was even higher, as four companies did not disclose their U.S. contributions.

In contrast, the study found that all 10 companies disclosed their 2016 financial transactions to patient advocacy organizations in France, Germany and the United Kingdom, which encourage or require such disclosure.

The authors say the findings underscore the importance of transparency given the growing role of patient advocacy groups, particularly in the U.S., and recommend moving to greater disclosure, either voluntary or regulatory.

"Patient advocacy groups have grown exponentially in the last 10 years, but the magnitude of pharmaceutical industry funding to them across countries has not been measured before," says So-Yeon Kang, MPH, MBA, lead study author and research associate in the Bloomberg School's Department of Health Policy and Management. "Patient advocacy organizations are supposed to represent their constituents' interests. Transparency is critical to avoid conflict of interests."

For their study, the researchers identified the world's 10 largest pharmaceutical companies based on total global revenue in 2016: Pfizer, Novartis, Roche, Sanofi, Merck, AbbVie, Amgen, Gilead, Janssen and GlaxoSmithKline. Together they accounted for 41 percent of pharmaceutical industry revenue that year. The study authors then researched disclosures for contributions from these 10 companies to patient advocacy groups based in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom and the U.S. The researchers collected financial information from pharmaceutical websites, funding reports and other public-facing documentation, such as annual reports.

In France, Germany and the United Kingdom, where all 10 pharmaceutical companies disclosed financial contributions to patient groups, the researchers note that in addition to robust regulatory frameworks, information about disclosures was easily accessible and content was consistent.

Other countries, including the United States, had varying amounts of disclosed information available. The researchers report that they encountered several barriers with data collection in the U.S., including different reporting styles and mixed information with various types of grants.

The six companies that disclosed contributions to U.S. groups contributed $120 million in patient advocacy funding to the study countries--$88 million to U.S. groups and $32 million to groups in the remaining six countries and the U.K.

Researchers also wanted to understand the relationship between patient advocacy groups and the pharmaceutical market in the respective countries. The researchers did not find any association between companies' contributions to a country's patient advocacy groups and the country's population, pharmaceutical revenue or GDP.

"If financial support to patient advocacy organizations is really about patient education, you would expect the funding to be the same in each country," says Anderson. "This analysis shows that there's no correlation and something more than patient education influences the level of patient advocacy organization support in a country."

The disproportionate amount of funding to U.S. patient advocacy organizations and unregulated financial disclosures highlight the importance of establishing reporting guidelines.

"Legislative actions, such as expanding the Physician Payment Sunshine Act, would insure universal disclosure compliance," says Kang. "But as an intermediary step, the industry should consider adopting a voluntary disclosure requirement at the trade association level. They already have it in Europe. Why not in the U.S.?"

Increased transparency, the authors say, would help address potential conflicts of interest associated with the pharmaceutical industry's support. "The U.S. has one of the most robust drug regulation processes," explains Anderson. "It is often the first country to adopt prescription drugs and therefore has a significant influence on a product's performance in a global market. Regulation is important because these groups can be influenced by the money they receive from drug companies."

The remarkable properties of a recently-discovered squid protein could revolutionize materials in a way that would be unattainable with conventional plastic, finds a review published in Frontiers in Chemistry. Originating in the ringed teeth of a squid's predatory arms, this protein can be processed into fibers and films with applications ranging from 'smart' clothes for health monitoring, to self-healing recyclable fabrics that reduce microplastic pollution. Materials made from this protein are eco-friendly and biodegradable, with sustainable large-scale production achieved using laboratory culture methods.

"Squid proteins can be used to produce next generation materials for an array of fields including energy and biomedicine, as well as the security and defense sector," says lead author Melik Demirel, Lloyd and Dorothy Foehr Huck Endowed Chair in Biomimetic Materials, and Director of Center for Research on Advanced Fiber Technologies (CRAFT) at Penn State University, USA. "We reviewed the current knowledge on squid ring teeth-based materials, which are an excellent alternative to plastics because they are eco-friendly and environmentally sustainable."

Squid ring teeth are all-rounders

As humanity awakens to the aftermath of a 100-year party of plastic production, we are beginning to heed nature's warnings - and its solutions.

"Nature produces a variety of smart materials capable of environmental sensing, self-healing and exceptional mechanical function. These materials, or biopolymers, have unique physical properties that are not readily found in synthetic polymers like plastic. Importantly, biopolymers are sustainable and can be engineered to enhance their physical properties," explains Demirel.

The oceans, which have borne the brunt of plastic pollution, are at the center of the search for sustainable alternatives. A newly-discovered protein from squid ring teeth (SRT) - circular predatory appendages located on the suction cups of squid, used to strongly grasp prey - has gained interest because of its remarkable properties and sustainable production.

The elasticity, flexibility and strength of SRT-based materials, as well as their self-healing, optical, and thermal and electrical conducting properties, can be explained by the variety of molecular arrangements they can adopt. SRT proteins are composed of building blocks arranged in such a way that micro-phase separation occurs. This is a similar situation to oil and water but on a much smaller, nano-scale. The blocks cannot separate completely to produce two distinct layers, so instead molecular-level shapes are created, such as repeating cylindrical blocks, disordered tangles or ordered layers. The shapes formed dictate the property of the material and scientists have experimented with these to produce SRT-based products for a variety of uses.

In the textiles industry, SRT protein could address one of the main sources of microplastic pollution by providing an abrasion-resistant coating that reduces microfiber erosion in washing machines. Similarly, a self-healing SRT protein coating could increase the longevity and safety of damage-prone biochemical implants, as well as garments tailored for protection against chemical and biological warfare agents.

It is even possible to interleave multiple layers of SRT proteins with other compounds or technology, which could lead to the development of 'smart' clothes that can protect us from pollutants in the air while also keeping an eye on our health. The optical properties of SRT-based materials mean these clothes could also display information about our health or surroundings. Flexible SRT-based photonic devices - components that create, manipulate or detect light, such as LEDs and optical displays, which are typically manufactured with hard materials like glass and quartz - are currently in development.

"SRT photonics are biocompatible and biodegradable, so could be used to make not only wearable health monitors but also implantable devices for biosensing and biodetection," adds Demirel.

No squid was harmed in the making of this film

One of the main advantages of SRT-based materials over synthetic materials and plastics made from fossil fuels are its eco-credentials. SRT proteins are cheaply and easily produced from renewable resources and researchers have found a way of producing it without catching a squid.
"We don't want to deplete natural squid resources and hence we produce these proteins in genetically modified bacteria. The process is based on fermentation and uses sugar, water, and oxygen to produce biopolymers," explains Demirel.

It is hoped that the SRT-based prototypes will soon become available more widely, but more development is needed.

Demirel explains, "Scaling up these materials requires additional work. We are now working on the processing technology of these materials so that we can make them available in industrial manufacturing processes."

Researchers in Virginia Commonwealth University's Department of Physics have discovered that a technique known as nanopore sensing can be used to detect subtle changes in clusters, or extremely small chunks of matter that are bigger than a molecule but smaller than a solid.

"Nanopores act as extremely small volume sensors that are on the order of a few nanometers a side," said Joseph Reiner, Ph.D., an associate professor of experimental biophysics and nanoscience in the College of Humanities and Sciences. "This size scale allows us to observe when the cluster changes size by a single ligand molecule. The ability to detect these changes in real time -- as they happen -- to a single cluster particle is the new and exciting thing here."

The discovery is described in a paper, "Ligand-induced Structural Changes of Thiolate-capped Gold Nanoclusters Observed with Resistive-pulse Nanopore Sensing," by Reiner and physics professor Massimo F. Bertino, Ph.D., along with VCU students Bobby Cox, Peter Wilkerson and Patrick Woodworth, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

"This is new because there really aren't many ways to detect these changes on a single particle in real time," Reiner said. "This opens the door to observe all kinds of interesting phenomenon on nanosurfaces, which is an area of great interest to many chemists in both applied and pure research areas."

The research sheds new light on the activity of clusters, which are extremely reactive objects and are considered to be interesting for catalysis, or the acceleration of a chemical reaction by a catalyst.

"Understanding how molecules behave on a nanocluster helps [our] understanding of their catalytic properties," Bertino said. "To date, people thought that molecules were kind of stationary on cluster surfaces. Our experiments show that molecules, instead, change their configuration and position at a very fast pace. This opens new perspectives for the chemistry of these things."

The team's findings could lead to exciting new discoveries, Bertino said.

"There are several possible alleys that open now. One is to look at cluster growth. Nobody has a good grasp on how these things come into existence. Another one is to help tune their properties," he said. "To date, people grow these things and make them reactive, but it's not always clear how this happens. Essentially, darts are thrown at the problem and one hopes that one of them sticks. This work allows us to look at a single cluster of a well-defined size and lets us mess with it by varying one parameter at a time."

By getting a better look at these clusters and how they behave, the researchers hope to gain a better understanding of how catalysts could be improved for more efficient drug discovery and synthesis.

About VCU and VCU Health

Virginia Commonwealth University is a major, urban public research university with national and international rankings in sponsored research. Located in downtown Richmond, VCU enrolls more than 31,000 students in 217 degree and certificate programs in the arts, sciences and humanities. Thirty-eight of the programs are unique in Virginia, many of them crossing the disciplines of VCU's 11 schools and three colleges. The VCU Health brand represents the VCU health sciences academic programs, the VCU Massey Cancer Center and the VCU Health System, which comprises VCU Medical Center (the only academic medical center and Level I trauma center in the region), Community Memorial Hospital, Children's Hospital of Richmond at VCU, MCV Physicians and Virginia Premier Health Plan. For more, please vcu.edu and vcuhealth.org.

The use of alcohol and tobacco is closely linked to several diseases, and is a contributing factor in many deaths.

A recent study using data from 1.2 million people has now been published in the journal Nature Genetics. Several research groups around the world are involved, among them a group from the Nord-Trøndelag Health Study (HUNT) and the K.G. Jebsen Center for Genetic Epidemiology.

"We discovered several genes associated with an increased use of alcohol and tobacco. We also looked at the correlation between these genes and the risk of developing various diseases and disorders," says Professor Kristian Hveem at the HUNT Research Centre. He is also the head of the Jebsen Center and one of the study's co-authors.

Genes and diseases

The research groups discovered a total of 566 gene variants at 406 different sites in the human genetic material that can be linked to the use of alcohol or tobacco. One hundred fifty of these sites are linked to the use of both tobacco and alcohol.

Alcohol consumption was measured in terms of the number of standard alcohol units. Tobacco use was measured in the number of cigarettes per day.

"The study group that was genetically predisposed to smoking was also genetically predisposed to a number of health problems, including obesity, diabetes, ADHD and various mental illnesses, whereas a genetic risk for alcohol was associated with lower disease risk. This does not imply that consuming more alcohol improves health, but indicates a mechanistic complexity that needs to be investigated further," Hveem says

We reported evidence for the involvement of many natural signalling agents in tobacco and alcohol use, including genes involved in nicotinic, dopaminergic, and glutamatergic neurotransmission which to some extent may provide a biological explanation for why we seek artificial stimuli.

New insights

The data that was collected came from a number of studies and included different age categories, societies with different attitudes to the use of drugs and different patterns of alcohol and nicotine use. However, results showed that the correlation between genetic risk and the development of different disease categories varied little between the population groups.

It is important to note that a gene variant that predisposes a person to a certain trait does not have to be "expressed" or biologically active, which could depend on several factors. The interplay between different genes may play a role, and social conditions also influence the use of alcohol and tobacco, making it difficult to draw any firm conclusions.

This research gives new insight into the complexity of genetic and environmental factors that compel some of us to drink and smoke more than others. It is also interesting to note that some of these genes linked to increased use of alcohol, reduce the risk for some diseases.

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Leprosy has a history that has spanned centuries and societies across the globe. Yet, it continues to be a problem -- even in the modern era. Sufferers from the chronic and infectious skin disease still face the social stigma and lack of medical care that people have endured since the origins of the disease itself. Although leprosy can be treated, the World Health Organization reported 216,108 cases in 2016, with some of these patients seeking treatment at Mayo Clinic's Rochester campus.

Looking at risk factors and demographic information of sufferers, researchers discuss local case studies of leprosy in the upcoming issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

Using an electronic health record database, researchers identified nine patients with leprosy who were evaluated and treated at Mayo Clinic from 1994 to 2017. Demographic information was obtained on these patients, including age, gender, country of origin, travel history and skin biopsy results. Seven patients were men, and two were women. Their ages ranged from 15 to 63. Six patients had emigrated from foreign countries -- Guam, Indonesia, Mexico and Micronesia -- and three patients were born in the U.S. All of the patients had skin lesions of leprosy that involved their trunk, upper and lower extremities, and/or head and neck. Many of the patients also had neurological symptoms, including a reduced sense of touch.

Common factors found in patients in the review include Micronesian lineage and extensive travel while being immunosuppressed. Spencer Bezalel, M.D., one of the authors, notes that the average person in the U.S. is not at risk for contracting leprosy. "Immunosuppressed people traveling to countries where the disease is prevalent in high rates are at highest risk, as are people planning on being in close contact with others infected for long periods of time," says Dr. Bezalel.

Leprosy is caused mainly by the bacterium Mycobacterium leprae. Occasionally, it is caused by a newer species called M. lepromatosis. The disease mainly affects the skin and peripheral nerves. While the exact mechanism of transmission is not known, it is thought that a person needs to be in contact with an infected individual for an extended period of time. In some cases, armadillos, who are hosts of the bacteria, have been known to transmit the disease. In most modern instances, people who develop leprosy are immunosuppressed, such as transplant patients or those taking immunosuppressive medications for other reasons. Otherwise, these people live in or travel to places where the rates of leprosy are high.

While leprosy is rare within the U.S., this research illustrates that the disease cannot be entirely ruled out in certain circumstances. Treatment of leprosy with antibiotics and vigilance on behalf of immunosuppressed people or those who travel considerably is adequate to prevent the devastation caused by leprosy in days past. "Leprosy is not highly contagious or easily spread, and most people have immunity against the disease," says Dr. Bezalel.

Food can conjure up all kinds of warm and fuzzy feelings--childhood nostalgia, memories of road trips, or just the simple comfort of a nourishing cup of soup.

For restaurants, though, conveying a sense of love could be as simple as picking a different menu font.

A recent study found that when restaurant diners read menus with healthy food options printed in a typeface that appears handwritten, they were more likely to believe that the food was better for their bodies, made of better ingredients, and prepared with more care than similar items printed in machine-style fonts.

"The handwritten typeface conveys love, and that sense of human touch feels even more salient," said Stephanie Liu, co-author of the study and assistant professor of hospitality management at The Ohio State University. "It feels to the customer like there is more heart, more effort, and more love in it, even though it doesn't cost any more money."

The team's findings were published Feb. 10 in the Journal of Business Research.

The researchers conducted online surveys and found that the positive-response phenomenon occurred only when customers perceived the restaurant or menu items as healthy or locally grown--when the restaurant's brand was health-focused.

"This wouldn't apply to a fast-food brand that sells low-quality hamburgers," Liu said.

But a font that appeared handwritten, even if it had been produced by a computer and not actually written by hand, triggered the perception that extra love and care are imbued in the restaurant's offerings.

Liu has a theory about why this might be: The world is growing ever-more automated and ever-more mechanized. Technology can put distance between humans and occasionally remove the warmth that comes with human touch.

Handwriting can convey that warmth, because it requires more effort than typewritten font. A handwritten note, for example, is more personal than one typed on a computer. A typeface that appears handwritten, with imperfect curves and slants and organic strokes, conveys a deeper sense of emotional connection than machine-written typeface, which is typically squared, straight and uniform.

"As a marketing strategy, customers are just subconsciously processing information, and they feel that human touch in the letters on the menu," Liu said. "And they feel that the restaurant put more effort into the design of this menu and they are getting this product to you with more care."

Handwritten typeface might also help solo diners feel slightly less lonely, the researchers found, creating a sense of warmth and connection with the restaurant that could inspire those customers to return.

The researchers found that when customers believed the menu contained "love," those customers were more likely to interact with the restaurant's brand on social media, Liu said.

Lesbian and bisexual women are at increased risk of being overweight or obese compared to heterosexual women, according to new research from the University of East Anglia and UCL.

Gay men however are less likely to be overweight than their straight counterparts, and more at risk of being underweight.

The study, published today in the Journal of Public Health, is the first to investigate the relationship between sexual orientation and body mass index (BMI) using population data in the UK.

The findings support the argument that sexual identity should be considered as a social determinant of health.

The research team pooled data from 12 UK national health surveys involving 93,429 participants and studied the relationship between sexual orientation and BMI.

Lead researcher Dr Joanna Semlyen, from UEA's Norwich Medical School, said: "We found that women who identify as lesbian or bisexual are at an increased risk of being overweight or obese, compared to heterosexual women. This is worrying because being overweight and obese are known risk factors for a number of conditions including coronary heart disease, stroke, cancer and early death.

"Conversely, gay and bisexual men are more likely than heterosexual men to be underweight, and there is growing evidence that being underweight is linked to a range of health problems too, including excess deaths.

"We also found that gay men are significantly less likely than straight men to be overweight or obese.

"This study demonstrates that there is a relationship between sexual identity and BMI and that this link appears to be different for men and women.

"There are a number of possible explanations for these findings. We know that sexual minority groups are more likely to be exposed to psychosocial stressors, which impacts on their mental health and their health behaviours such as smoking and alcohol use and which may influence their health behaviours such as diet or physical activity.

"These stressors include homophobia and heterosexism, negative experiences that are experienced by the lesbian, bisexual and gay population as a result of their sexual orientation identity and are known to be linked to health.

"Until 2008, sexual orientation wasn't recorded in health surveys. This means that until recently it has not been possible to determine health inequalities affecting lesbian, gay and bisexual people.

"Continued collection of data on sexual orientation identity within national health surveys allows us to measure the health of sexual minorities.

"We hope that policy makers and clinicians will be able to use this fresh evidence to provide better healthcare and tailored advice and interventions for lesbian, gay and bisexual people. We need longitudinal research to understand the factors underlying the relationship between sexual orientation and BMI, and research to understand more about being underweight, especially in this population."

Researchers in Japan think they have found an answer to the fundamental biological question of how individual cells know which way to position themselves within a complex, multicellular body. Depending on a cell's purpose in the larger structure, contact or diffuse chemical signals direct it to its final destination.

The journey from egg and sperm to a fully grown body requires more than just multiplication. Plants, animals, and people are all made of trillions of cells, carefully organized into larger structures like tissues and organs. Somehow, each cell knows where it belongs - the left side of the heart, the inner lining of the colon, and so on - and generally stays put.

"It's close to impossible to dissect what's happening while cells position themselves in multicellular organisms because there are so many players: different cell types, different molecules inside cells, different chemical signals outside the cells, cell growth, programmed cell death," said Professor Satoshi Sawai from the University of Tokyo, an expert in biological physics, a field that uses the principles of physics to understand living systems.

The slime mold system

Slime molds provide a simpler system to understand cell positioning. Slime molds are amoebas, but are similar in size and shape to human white blood cells and share the fundamental aspects of cell dynamics, such as migration and engulfment of disease-causing pathogens.

Individual cells of the slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum can exist independently, living freely in the soil and eating bacteria and fungi. When food is scarce, independent slime mold cells clump together and function as a multicellular organism.

When slime mold cells clump together, sometimes 100 cells, other times 10,000 cells, they differentiate into two distinct types.

The first type, pre-stalk cells, eventually forms a column that supports a sphere composed of the second type, pre-spore cells. Researchers call this two-part structure a fruiting body. The pre-stalk cells will die as the pre-spore cells eventually float off in the wind to a better environment where they can grow and divide again as independent amoebas.

Inside the clump, before the fruiting body takes shape, cells attach to form long trains and swirl around, immersed in a chemical signal that they secrete. First identified in the 1970s, this diffusive chemical, called cAMP, attracts cells.

Traditionally, the degree of attraction to cAMP signals was thought to separate the cells into pre-stalk and pre-spore cells. More recent genetic experiments revealed, however, that molecules related to adhesion, or cell-to-cell touch, may also be important.

"What's great about slime mold is that you can take individual cells out of the larger structure and they still do their thing by behaving naturally in a relatively simple setup that mimics the multicellular environment," said Sawai.

Two types of signals

In their new experiments, the researchers took cells out of a multicellular clump and tracked how the individual cells migrate in response to artificial touch and cAMP signals.

When cell trains formed, the leader cell moved in the direction of cAMP. The follower cells were not pulled along, but rather actively pushed leader cells forward.

"Cell-cell contact activates processes for cell movement. The follower cells are the engine and the leader cells are the steering wheel, always pointing in the direction of the chemical signal," said Sawai.

Researchers also placed individual pre-stalk or pre-spore cells with beads coated with an adhesion molecule that appears to function in the tail end of cells. All cells attached to follow the bead as in a cell train. Researchers then added cAMP to the experiment. Pre-stalk cells released the bead and moved towards the cAMP source. Pre-spore cells, however, ignored cAMP and held fast to the bead.

Sawai's research team demonstrated that head-to-tail touch between cells directs their migration, but cAMP somehow overrides this contact only in pre-stalk cells.

"Many people think you have to go to Mars to look for the fundamental rules of what makes life. But we can look at all the still-unexplored branches of the tree of life here on Earth. Slime mold gives us hints at what to look for to understand the mechanistic logics underlying more complex species," said Sawai.

This discovery of the importance of cell-cell contact to activate cell movement and organization will open new possibilities to study cell-pattern formation in events such as embryo development or spread of breast cancer.

The results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

One of the largest field experiments ever conducted is providing the best evidence yet in support of a key Darwinian theory--that interactions between species are stronger toward the tropics and at lower elevations.

An international research team used a simple experiment that mimics how plants and animals interact with each other--leaving seeds out for 24 hours to see how many are consumed by animals. Seven thousand seed beds were deployed across a huge geographic area, with 70 sites cutting across 18 mountains from Alaska to the Equator.

"Theory predicts that interactions among species--like predation and competition--will be strongest in the warm, productive, biodiverse ecosystems of the tropics and at low elevations," says lead author Anna Hargreaves, who launched the project while at UBC's Biodiversity Research Centre. She is now a professor at McGill University.

"For example, the spectacular diversity of tropical trees is thought to result partly from stronger interactions between plants and the animals that prey on their seeds, which shapes how and where plants grow and adapt."

But until recently, evidence for this key ecological theory was inconclusive and came from small-scale studies that used different methods.

The new study found seed consumption, or predation, increased by 2.6 per cent for every 10 degrees of latitude toward the Equator and by 0.4 per cent for every 100-metre decline in elevation. In total, seed predation increased 17 per cent between Alaska and Equator and by 17 per cent from 4,000 metres above sea level to sea level.

The researchers used consistent methods from the Arctic to Equator and replicated the 24-hour experiment several times during each latitude's natural seed-producing period.

"These interactions form the basis of how ecosystems function and the direct benefits of those ecosystems to human society," says Santiago David, a PhD student at UBC who ran one of the study sites in Colombia. "Understanding global patterns in key interactions between species, such as seed predation, is essential when we think about managing or restoring the ecosystems, especially in the face of climate change."

Predation driven by insects, other invertebrates

By protecting some seeds from mammals, the researchers showed that the study's large-scale patterns are being driven by the smallest seed predators: insects and other invertebrates.

The only other standardized experiment of comparable scale used clay model caterpillars and found that attack rates on the model caterpillars increased toward low latitudes--an interaction also driven largely by invertebrates.

"Taken together, these experiments suggest that invertebrates play an outsized role in the community dynamics and evolution of tropical and lowland ecosystems," says Hargreaves. "And yet we know relatively little about invertebrates, for example, how climate change is affecting their populations."

The researchers are now combining fake caterpillars with the seeds to determine if the patterns they found with one form of predation hold true with another.

The study, "Seed predation increases from the Arctic to the Equator and from high to low elevations," involved researchers from 13 institutions across the Americas, was published today in Science Advances.

https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aau4403