Culture

Emails, instant messaging, app notifications, RSS feeds, and a plethora of social networks inundate almost every aspect of daily life from work to home or just keeping in touch socially. Some people average more than four information technology (IT) switches per minute. This barrage of IT interruptions makes it increasingly difficult to focus on the task-at-hand.

Legend has it that millennials, specifically the "Net Generation," use many technologies simultaneously, masterfully switching from one to the next. They claim that it's easy and that they can do it much better than older generations. Research, so far, hasn't proven this claim and the consequences of these incessant interruptions on attention and performance.

Florida Atlantic University researchers in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science are one of the first to examine this phenomenon in college-age students. The study provides some of the first results on whether or not "Net Genners," who have grown up with widespread access to technology, are developing greater digital literacy than generations before them, and if this has enriched them with an ability to switch their attention more efficiently.

For the study, researchers simulated a typical working environment, complete with IT interruptions, to allow them to track the effects on participants' inhibitory processes. One hundred and seventy-seven mostly college-age participants were divided into three groups: those who received IT interruptions; those who did not, and a control group. Researchers compared the three groups' accuracy and response time on completing tasks, gauging their level of anxiety.

Results, published in the journal Applied Neuropsychology: Adult, indicate that there is no need to "pardon these interruptions," at least for this younger generation.

Findings show that switching between technologies did not deplete or diminish performance in the group that had the IT interruptions compared to the control group or the group that did not receive IT interruptions. Unexpectedly, however, researchers discovered diminished performance in the participants from the group that did not receive any IT interruptions.

All three groups reported low levels of anxiety during the study. Seventy-five percent of two of the groups reported their anxiety as "not at all" or "a little bit," and the researchers did not find any significant differences between groups.

"We were really surprised to find impaired performance in the group that did not receive any information technology interruptions. It appears that the Net Generation thrives on switching their attention and they can do it more efficiently because information technology is woven throughout their daily lives," said Mónica Rosselli, Ph.D., senior author, professor and assistant chair of psychology in FAU's Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, and a member of the FAU Brain Institute (I-BRAIN), one of the University's four research pillars. "Because younger generations are so accustomed to using instant messaging, pop-ups like the ones we used for our study, may blend into the background and may not appear surprising or unplanned, and therefore may not produce anxiety."

Prior research in the general population has found that it takes about 25 minutes to return to an original task following an IT interruption and 41 percent of these interruptions result in discontinuing the interrupted task altogether. Emails alone cause about 96 interruptions in an eight-hour day with an added one-and-a-half hours of recovery time per day.

Results of the new FAU study sheds light on younger generations who have commonly used instant messaging as a major communication tool and this communication preference may reveal a perception gap between generations.

"How we adapt to technology and leverage it to our advantage by deciding what information we attend to at any given moment has substantial implications on our ability to remain valuable and productive in our respective work and education domains," said Deven M. Christopher, co-author and a graduate psychology student at FAU. "Results from our study may provide a basis for further research, especially because younger generations are developing in a more connected world than preceding generations."

A study published on August 27 in Frontiers in Pharmacology found that general probiotic use in the U.S. could save the health care payer and the economy around $1.4 billion in medical bills and lost productivity due to acute respiratory tract infections (RTIs).

RTIs include influenza-like illnesses (ILIs) with symptoms ranging from mild cold to the more serious flu. Although most acute RTI episodes resolve on their own, RTIs result in a high number of doctor visits and pose a heavy burden on society and the health care system.

The systematic reviews by York Health Economics Consortium (YHEC) and Cochrane Collaborative reported probiotics use was associated with reduced number and duration of ILIs, antibiotic courses used and days absent from work.

"We wanted to assess how much the use of probiotics in the management of common acute RTIs could contribute to savings in healthcare costs in the U.S.," said Daniel Tancredi, co-author on the study, an associate professor at the Department of Pediatrics and a researcher at the Center for Healthcare Policy and Research at UC Davis.

An economic model simulating general probiotics use by the U.S. population

The authors developed an economic model to estimate the cost savings of general use of probiotics in the U.S. They created a simulation (1:1000 scale) reproducing a population representative of the national demographics. They tailored the model to account for age, vaccination status, smoking status and time spent in shared indoor environments, such as daycare for children or shared offices for adult workers.

They estimated the number of ILI cases, the duration of illness, the costs associated with doctor visits and the number of days missed from school or work. For these estimates, they used the 2017-18 Influenza Season of FluView from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other national databases.

The researchers modeled the illness experience for the simulated population under two scenarios: one where everyone uses probiotics and one where no one does. They did a simulated model based on the Cochrane Collaborative review and another based on the YHEC review. The Cochrane review accounted for reductions both in number of episodes of RTIs and disease duration, allowing for the estimation of the cost savings associated with fewer doctor visits. The YHEC review could only quantify savings associated with fewer sick days due to RTI.

Cost savings

"Although flu-like illnesses usually resolve on their own after one or two weeks, there is great benefit in reducing ILI incidence and duration," said Irene Lenoir-Wijnkoop, first author on the study and senior scientist in public health nutrition at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. "Less sickness means reduced suffering and significant cost savings from health care expenses and sick absences."

In the Cochrane scenario, the analysis showed that if everyone in the U.S. took probiotics, health care payers would save $373 million in RTI-associated medical bills in one year. These savings include the cost of more than two million courses of antibiotic prescriptions averted and correspond to a decrease of 54.5 million sick days. When counting the savings from reduced productivity loss of 4.2 million workdays, the total savings for society would amount to $1.4 billion.

In the YHEC scenario, generalized probiotic use could save $784 million per year for averted productivity loss related to absence from work due to illness.

"Because both reviews included studies from different strains of probiotics, including both effective and ineffective ones, our results are based on an estimated average effect," said Tancredi of UC Davis. "With more evidence on which probiotics are effective in protecting against RTIs, it would be possible generate more definitive estimates of the potential cost savings associated with their use."

Misfolded proteins must be promptly eliminated as they can form toxic aggregates in cells. Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich biologists have studied how this process is triggered in mitochondria and identified a general alarm signal that activates it.

Proteins can perform their biological functions only if they fold into the correct three-dimensional form. As a rule, this conformation is largely determined by the amino-acid sequence of a protein, but many proteins require accessory factors to fold properly. If protein folding is perturbed (as in the presence of oxidative stress, for instance), not only do inactive proteins accumulate, they can also give rise to highly toxic aggregates. However, cells have evolved a quality-control mechanism that monitors protein folding. If a misfolded protein is detected, a process known as the Unfolded Protein Response (UPR) is activated, which ensures that the protein is degraded and normal cell function is restored. Using the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans as their experimental model, LMU biologists led by Stéphane Rolland have asked how this stress response is triggered in mitochondria, and identified a fundamental mechanism that regulates the UPR in these organelles. Their findings appear in the leading journal Cell Reports.

The UPR machinery is found in several of the diverse membrane-bounded intracellular compartments found in eukaryotic cells, so that errors in protein folding anywhere in the cell can be swiftly dealt with. The mitochondria, which provide the cell with chemical energy, represent one such compartment. Earlier studies on C. elegans had indicated that the transcription factor ATFS-1 plays an important role in initiating the UPR in these organelles. Normally, ATFS-1 is imported into the mitochondria and rapidly degraded. However, when mitochondria are under stress, the protein is re-routed to the cell nucleus. There it activates the transcription of genes which code for proteins that implement the UPR in mitochondria. Moreover, this signaling pathway has been evolutionarily conserved, at least in part, from nematodes to mammals.

"Up to now, the precise nature of the signal that triggers this cellular stress response was not fully understood," Rolland explains. "We therefore carried out an extensive genome-wide screen designed to systematically identify all the genes and biological processes that are involved in the activation of the UPR in mitochondria." The screen showed that inactivation of 171 genes activate the UPR in mitochondria, and many of their protein products are localized in mitochondria. Furthermore, inactivation of many of these genes leads to a reduction in the level of the electrochemical potential across the mitochondrial inner membrane. This drop in mitochondrial membrane potential is accompanied by a decrease in the rate of protein import into the organelle, which is then followed by activation of the UPR. "We believe that the decrease of mitochondrial membrane potential serves as a general signal for the induction of the mitochondrial UPR," says Rolland.

Mitochondrial proteins contain a N-terminal amino-acid sequence that is responsible for their targeting to mitochondria. These so called mitochondrial targeting sequences can be "strong" or "weak" depending on their amino-acid composition. While proteins with "strong" mitochondrial targeting sequences can be imported into mitochondria even with a low membrane potential, proteins with "weak" mitochondrial targeting sequences cannot. Rolland and colleagues propose that the transcription factor ATFS-1, which has a "weak" mitochondrial targeting sequence, acts as a sensor, which detects and reacts to a decline in mitochondrial membrane potential. If the potential becomes abnormally low, import of ATSF-1 into the mitochondria is blocked. The resulting rise in its concentration in the cytoplasm then leads to its uptake into the nucleus, where it activates the transcription of genes necessary for the mitochondrial UPR. The proteins encoded by these genes have "strong" mitochondrial targeting sequences and can therefore be imported into mitochondria despite their low membrane potential in order to restore mitochondrial function.

Scientists from Basel have investigated the activity of stem cells in the brain of mice and discovered a key mechanism that controls cell proliferation. According to the researchers, the gene regulator Id4 controls whether stem cells remain in a state of rest or enter cell division. The results were published in Cell Reports and may be relevant for treating neurodegenerative disease in human brains.

Whether stem cells also occur in the human brain has long been controversial. Today, it is considered certain that the brain can form new neurons throughout life. The stem cells that have been found to be behind this process are restricted to specialized regions in the brain, so-called niches, which provide key signals that regulate stem cell self-renewal and differentiation. With increasing age, however, the stem cells become increasingly inactive and divide less frequently. They transition into a "quiescent" or dormant state.

Hyperactive signaling pathway inhibits cell division

So far, it was unclear why stem cells in the adult and aged brain fall into a state of rest. A research team led by Prof. Verdon Taylor from the Department of Biomedicine at the University of Basel has now discovered which factors block entry of stem cells into cell division. They were investigating the so-called Notch signaling pathway in more detail, a pathway central for regulating stem cell activity in the brain.

The study shows that the Notch2 signaling pathway controls the expression of a specific transcription regulator called Id4. Once expressed, Id4 inhibits the division of stem cells and blocks the production of new neurons in the hippocampus of the adult brain. Notch2 signaling maintains high levels of Id4 in some neural stem cells, and thereby explains why these stem cells increasingly enter a state of rest in the adult and geriatric brain.

As the brain ages, the Notch2-Id4 pathway enters into a state of hyperactivity, presenting a strong molecular brake that inhibits stem cell activation and neuron production. Conversely, inactivation of this pathway releases the brake and enables the production of new neurons - even in the brain of geriatric mice.

Reversible resting state

The results show that the stem cells in the mammalian brain are in a reversible resting state regulated by signals and factors in the niche. By manipulating the signaling pathway, the production of new nerve cells can be specifically stimulated.

The study provides important information on the basic mechanisms of neurogenesis in the adult mouse brain. Since the Notch signaling pathway is widespread and occurs in most organisms, the researchers hope that the findings can also be transferred to humans. In this way, brain damage caused by degenerative and neuropsychiatric diseases could be repaired in the future.

Dementia and marital status could be linked, according to a new Michigan State University study that found married people are less likely to experience dementia as they age.

On the other hand, divorcees are about twice as likely as married people to develop dementia, the study indicated, with divorced men showing a greater disadvantage than divorced women.

In one of the first studies of its kind, Hui Liu, professor of sociology, and colleagues analyzed four groups of unmarried individuals: divorced or separated; widowed; never married; and cohabiters. Among them, the divorced had the highest risk of dementia.

The study, published in The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, comes at a time when 5.8 million people in the U.S. are living with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias, costing $290 billion, according to the Alzheimer's Association. It's a serious public health concern, Liu said.

"This research is important because the number of unmarried older adults in the United States continues to grow, as people live longer and their marital histories become more complex," Liu said. "Marital status is an important but overlooked social risk/protective factor for dementia."

Liu and her follow researchers analyzed nationally representative data from the Health and Retirement Study, from 2000 to 2014. The sample included more than 15,000 respondents ages 52 and older in 2000, measuring their cognitive function every two years, in person or via telephone.

The researchers also found differing economic resources only partly account for higher dementia risk among divorced, widowed and never-married respondents, but couldn't account for higher risk in cohabiters. In addition, health-related factors, such as behaviors and chronic conditions, slightly influenced risk among the divorced and married, but didn't seem to affect other marital statuses.

"These findings will be helpful for health policy makers and practitioners who seek to better identify vulnerable populations and to design effective intervention strategies to reduce dementia risk," Liu said.

Researchers have successfully created a model of the Universe using artificial intelligence, reports a new study.

Researchers seek to understand our Universe by making model predictions to match observations. Historically, they have been able to model simple or highly simplified physical systems, jokingly dubbed the "spherical cows," with pencils and paper. Later, the arrival of computers enabled them to model complex phenomena with numerical simulations. For example, researchers have programmed supercomputers to simulate the motion of billions of particles through billions of years of cosmic time, a procedure known as the N-body simulations, in order to study how the Universe evolved to what we observe today.

"Now with machine learning, we have developed the first neural network model of the Universe, and demonstrated there's a third route to making predictions, one that combines the merits of both analytic calculation and numerical simulation," said Yin Li, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, University of Tokyo, and jointly the University of California, Berkeley.

A comparison of the accuracy of two models of the Universe. The new deep learning model (left), dubbed D3M, is much more accurate than an existing analytic method (right) called 2LPT. The colors represent the error in displacement at each point relative to the numerical simulation, which is accurate but much slower than the deep learning model.

At the beginning of our Universe, things were extremely uniform. As time went by, the denser parts grew denser and sparser parts became sparser due to gravity, eventually forming a foam-like structure known as the "cosmic web." To study this structure formation process, researchers have tried many methods, including analytic calculations and numerical simulations. Analytic methods are fast, but fail to produce accurate results for large density fluctuations. On the other hand, numerical (N-body) methods simulate structure formation accurately, but tracking gazillions of particles is costly, even on supercomputers. Thus, to model the Universe, scientists often face the accuracy versus efficiency trade-off.

However, the explosive growth of observational data in quality and quantity calls for methods that excel in both accuracy and efficiency.

To tackle this challenge, a team of researchers from the US, Canada, and Japan, including Li, set their sights on machine learning, a cutting-edge approach to detecting patterns and making predictions. Just as machine learning can transform a young man's portrait into his older self, Li and colleagues asked whether it can also predict how universes evolve based on their early snapshots. They trained a convolutional neural network with simulation data of trillions of cubic light years in volume, and built a deep learning model that was able to mimic the structure formation process. The new model is not only many times more accurate than the analytic methods, but is also much more efficient than the numerical simulations used for its training.

"It has the strengths of both previous [analytic calculation and numerical simulation] methods," said Li.

Li says the power of AI emulation will scale up in the future. N-body simulations are already heavily optimized, and as a first attempt, his team's AI model still has large room for improvement. Also, more complicated phenomena incur a larger cost on simulation, but not likely so on emulation. Li and his colleagues expect a bigger performance gain from their AI emulator when they move on to including other effects, such as hydrodynamics, into the simulations.

"It won't be long before we can uncover the initial conditions of and the physics encoded in our Universe along this path," he said.

People who work in the swine sector have declared war on what is known as Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus (PRRSV), responsible for millions in losses, not only in Spain, but throughout the world. Although it was discovered in the 90s, in recent years the sector has faced the emergence of new, more virulent strains that have, in some instances, devastated farms' entire pig populations. Fighting against this disease today is very difficult, as each of the strains of this virus behaves differently, so no effective vaccine against it has been developed.

A research group from the University of Córdoba, led by Professor Librado Carrasco, has been researching this virus for years with the aim of helping to develop vaccines that reduce mortality in the pig sector. But, for this, it is important to seek out similarities between strains. "In our last study we compared two strains, one of low virulence, on which we had been working since the discovery of the disease; and another of great virulence that is much less known," explains Irene M. Rodríguez Gómez, one of the group's researchers.

The study was carried out at the Animal Health Research Center in the province of Barcelona, always under the control of the ethical committee, not only at the University of Córdoba, but also of the one established by the Generalitat de Catalunya (regional government) to oversee the use of animals for scientific purposes. Three groups of pigs were used. The first was infected with the low-virulence strain, and the second with the high-virulence strain. The third, used as a control group, helped determine the normal parameters of an uninfected animal.

The study lasted 13 days, during which temperatures and blood samples were taken daily, and clinical symptoms observed. On the day of their euthanasia a bronchoalveolar lavage (a procedure to obtain information about the airway cells) was performed, and lung samples were taken. In addition, other organs were used for other studies.

"The results indicated that the high-virulence strain caused earlier and greater damage than did the low-virulence strain," explains the researcher. In addition to the analysis of the symptoms and the lesions observed in the infected pigs, an exhaustive study of what happened with the cells in which the virus was housed, or macrophages, was carried out.

"A reduction in this type of cells was observed in the lungs," says Irene Rodríguez. "These cells are of great importance when it comes to defending the organ, so their reduction causes the lung to be exposed to secondary infections, mainly bacterial, giving rise to other processes, such as bronchopneumonia." The study also determined that high-virulence strains attacked not only the lungs, but also the organs of the lymphatic system, such as the thymus, or bone marrow, which was not perceived in the low-virulence strain.

A study from King's College London has found that people who drank red wine had an increased gut microbiota diversity (a sign of gut health) compared to non-red wine drinkers as well as an association with lower levels of obesity and 'bad' cholesterol.

In a paper published today in the journal Gastroenterology, a team of researchers from the Department of Twin Research & Genetic Epidemiology, King's College London explored the effect of beer, cider, red wine, white wine and spirits on the gut microbiome (GM) and subsequent health in a group of 916 UK female twins.

They found that the GM of red wine drinkers was more diverse compared to non-red wine drinkers. This was not observed with white wine, beer or spirits consumption.

First author of the study, Dr Caroline Le Roy from King's College London said: "While we have long known of the unexplained benefits of red wine on heart health, this study shows that moderate red wine consumption is associated with greater diversity and a healthier gut microbiota that partly explain its long debated beneficial effects on health."

The microbiome is the collection of microorganisms in an environment and plays an important role in human health. An imbalance of 'good' microbes compared to 'bad' in the gut can lead to adverse health outcomes such as reduced immune system, weight gain or high cholesterol.

A person's gut microbiome with a higher number of different bacterial species is considered a marker of gut health.

The team observed that the gut microbiota of red wine consumers contained a greater number of different bacterial species compared to than non-consumers. This result was also observed in three different cohorts in the UK, the U.S. And the Netherlands. The authors took into account factors such as age, weight, the regular diet and socioeconomic status of the participants and continued to see the association.

The authors believe the main reason for the association is due to the many polyphenols in red wine. Polyphenols are defence chemicals naturally present in many fruits and vegetables. They have many beneficial properties (including antioxidants) and mainly act as a fuel for the microbes present in our system.

Lead author Professor Tim Spector from King's College London said: "This is one of the largest ever studies to explore the effects of red wine in the guts of nearly three thousand people in three different countries and provides insights that the high levels of polyphenols in the grape skin could be responsible for much of the controversial health benefits when used in moderation."

The study also found that red wine consumption was associated with lower levels of obesity and 'bad' cholesterol which was in part due to the gut microbiota.

"Although we observed an association between red wine consumption and the gut microbiota diversity, drinking red wine rarely, such as once every two weeks, seems to be enough to observe an effect. If you must choose one alcoholic drink today, red wine is the one to pick as it seems to potentially exert a beneficial effect on you and your gut microbes, which in turn may also help weight and risk of heart disease. However, it is still advised to consume alcohol with moderation," added Dr Le Roy.

Bystander Ethics and Good Samaritanism: A Paradox for Learning Health Organizations
James E. Sabin, Noelle M. Cocoros, Crystal J. Garcia, Jennifer C. Goldsack, Kevin Haynes, Nancy D. Lin, Debbe McCall, Vinit Nair, Sean D. Pokorney, Cheryl N. McMahill-Walraven, Christopher B. Granger, and Richard Platt

For years, health care leaders, ethicists, and researchers have urged the creation of learning health organizations that would integrate knowledge from patient-care data to continuously im-prove the quality of care. The authors describe their experience with an ongoing re¬search study that provided insight into one of the challenges that will have to be dealt with in creating these organizations. The oversight team argued that the ethical principle of beneficence did not allow the researchers to be "bystanders" in relation to a control group receiving suboptimal care. In response, the re¬searchers designed a "workaround" that allowed the project to go for¬ward. Specifically, they changed the research protocol so that researchers would never be in the position of knowing whether a patient should be receiving a particular medication but was not. The authors propose that what they call "bystander ethics" will create challenges for the kinds of quality-improvement re¬search that learning health care organizations are designed to do.

Other Voices: Emily A. Largent and Stephanie R. Morain critique the researchers' workaround, explaining why they find it inadequate.

Homeless, Ill, and Psychiatrically Complex: The Grueling Carousel of Cassandra Lee
Laura Guidry-Grimes

Cassandra Lee had a history of pulling out lines and tubes and a distaste of warming blankets. Her admission to the hospital marked her 30th over the past year. Many of the challenges facing the hospi¬tal caring for her were not unique: significant psychiatric issues, prolonged nonadherence to medical advice, and end-of-life decision-making combined to create an ethically dense and vexing situ¬ation. Lee, like so many patients, was suffering because of system failures. Guidry-Grimes is an assistant professor in the department of medical humanities and bioethics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

Policy and Politics--Out of the Freezer and into the Policy Fire: Quandaries in Reproductive Cryopreservation
Rebecca Feinberg

The field of assisted reproduction is advancing rapidly and is ripe for regulation and guidance. In 2018, over 4,000 frozen eggs and embryos were lost to approximately 1,000 patients at Ahuja University Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, due to an accidental thaw of a cryopreservation tank. A class-action lawsuit has been filed. The precedent that will be set by the case is significant for both past events and future possibilities and is core to the discussion of policy involving the cryopreservation of gametes and embryos. Feinberg is a teaching assistant professor in the College of Science and Health and the College of Law at DePaul University.

Also in this issue:

Clinical Trial Portfolios: A Critical Oversight in Human Research Ethics, Drug Regulation, and Policy

When No One Notices: Disorders of Consciousness and the Chronic Vegetative State

Perspective: The Tyranny of Hope

In Practice - Patient as Gift

Those who study and treat disorders of the mind - such as neuroscientists, psychiatrists and therapists - are in a position of influence. Their decisions and actions have the potential to impact individuals at the deepest levels by affecting our memories and even how we see ourselves. Such professionals "...occupy positions of intellectual authority" as neuroscientist and artist Ann E. Fink writes. Their choices can have profound consequences.

History, both distant and recent, provide numerous examples of the use and misuse of this power. Consider the continuously evolving Code of Ethics for the American Psychological Association (APA) and the criticism)the organization received for its involvement in the post-911 torture of prisoners held Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, among others. That the APA spoke out last week) in opposition to the U.S. administration's announcement that migrants detained at the U.S. border can be held indefinitely highlights the importance of ethics to the mental health field.

In her latest paper - written and illustrated as a comic-book - Fink, a professor of practice in Lehigh University's Department of Biological Sciences, urges both scientists and clinicians working on mental health issues to think critically about not only the biological meaning but the social meaning of trauma. In "Fanon's Police Inspector," published in AJOB Neuroscience, she offers a bioethical inquiry into the social obligations of studying and treating trauma through an examination of a true story told by Martinique-born psychiatrist Frantz Fanon in his 1961 book The Wretched of the Earth.

In the book, Fanon, a French-educated black man who practiced medicine in French-colonized Algeria during its war for independence, writes about a patient: a white, male, European police inspector who is employed in torture on behalf of the colonial government. The inspector who, as Fink writes, would likely meet the current standards of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), seeks help because he cannot stop beating up his wife and children, "...even his twenty-month old baby." The inspector asks the doctor "...to help him torture...with a total peace of mind."

"Fanon writes about the mechanisms and the psychological function of violence in a colonized people?what that means for their identity and their transformation and their well-being," says Fink. "Fanon would have viewed this case through the lens of a mental health practitioner, so it would have been all about what's happening developmentally in the colonized and the colonizer. What kind of pathology is taking place in individuals in this rotten, dehumanizing climate where basic developmental functions and needs of the self, such as interpersonal attachment needs, cannot be met, cannot develop in any healthy way?"

Fink, who studies learning and memory systems and the cellular mechanisms associated with PTSD, read Fanon's book, an analysis of the dehumanizing effects of colonization, and thought: "What does this mean for the type of research we are doing into PTSD and how we hope to apply it in the world? What does it mean for treating PTSD in a similar context today that might involve treating a person in a violent, dehumanizing context?" She chose to present her bioethical inquiry in comic-book form because a lot of what she wanted to convey was so visual.

Fink is part of a growing movement known as Graphic Medicine, a term that refers to academics and clinicians working at the intersection of healthcare and comics. A common thread among them is the belief that comics are a compelling, powerful and accessible way to deliver illness narratives or to engage in other health care discourse with researchers, providers, patients and their family members - especially around difficult and complex subjects.

Fink writes that while the scenario presented in the police inspector case study would be considered unacceptable and unethical by current frameworks, it raises the following question: "Is it possible, in a colonized Algeria struggling for its national sovereignty, to treat the European police inspector in a meaningful way?"

"This case and this question," she writes, "serve as a starting point for a larger ethical inquiry into the social dimensions of traumatic stress. What are the responsibilities of clinicians treating such traumatized individuals? Of researchers who define the biomedical boundaries of traumatic stress? What particular rights apply to people suffering from PTSD, and for what actions can they be found culpable? Finally, what collective social responsibilities arise from understanding trauma, and how might researchers and clinicians weigh these against responsibilities to the individual?"

Fink illustrates the possible paths the psychiatrist Fanon could have chosen regarding the treatment of his patient. This "decision tree" also points to what the potential paths might reveal about the "...implicit priorities rooted in the intersections of culture, race, gender and medical authority."

For example, one path outlines treating the inspector's PTSD so that he is able to return to his job as a torturer. Another path suggests that Fanon could treat his patient's PTSD in order to stop the abuse of his spouse and children. Each path carries with it an inherent prioritization of some individuals' suffering over others: the inspector, his wife and children, for example, or the Algerian victims of his torture. The Algerian victims, a man and a woman, are drawn as inhabiting different versions of various, based on their gender and race, "...of invisibility and vulnerability to terror."

The inspector himself is drawn as having two distinct roles: ill person and perpetrator. "He is a pawn in this violent system," says Fink. "There's also a child victim...which makes him a bully. It's a very complex situation. People are both the oppressors and the oppressed in almost every situation and you are doing a disservice if you don't see and address both?as well as see both in yourself."

In addition to adding an impactful visual element, Fink says that there is something about the comic book form that lends itself to exploring answers to questions that are difficult, both conceptually and emotionally.

"It allows you to start with the big picture, or understanding of the problem, allowing you to see a whole situation just visually," says Fink. "In the article, you have these questions about the police inspector, how you think about this person's mental health in the context of child abuse and these very, very heavy things that are happening in the story. And I think a visual flow of it - if you do it thoughtfully - can give you a way to take in the entire situation without having to explain it or argue about it at first."

The visual narrative that results from the extremes inherent in the police inspector case study offers an access point to understanding broader themes of moral obligation presented to researchers and practitioners on a more regular basis.

At the conclusion of the paper, Fink writes that "...the analysis of PTSD presented here entails moral obligations for practitioners of neuroscience that extend beyond the laboratory or clinic: To address, at its root, the political, gendered and racialized violence that represents the overwhelming causal factor in disorders of traumatic stress. To refuse to support or participate in practices that exploit and brutalize individuals and entire cultures. To social change that prioritizes these commitments."

She acknowledges both the difficulty and the importance of confronting these issues in the history of the brain sciences.

"It is a call for people to think carefully about how they do research, how they write about it, how it's applied, how they talk about identity," says Fink "Up until recently, those in neuroscience didn't have to be very socially conscious. We did not have to educate ourselves about the interactions of science and social identity. But researchers must develop that kind of critical consciousness. It is a call to clinicians as well to grapple with these issues."

Scientists find unusual behaviors in colloidal crystals.

Atoms have a positively charged center surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged particles. This type of arrangement, it turns out, can also occur at a more macroscopic level, giving new insights into the nature of how materials form and interact.

In a new study from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, scientists have examined the internal structure of a material called a colloidal crystal, which consists of a highly ordered array of larger and smaller particles interspersed in regular arrangements. A greater knowledge of how colloidal crystals are structured and behave could help scientists determine the applications to which they are best suited, like photonics.

“The smaller particles essentially act like a glue that holds the larger particle arrangement together,” — Byeongdu Lee, Argonne X-ray physicist.

In pioneering research outlined in a recent issue of Science, scientists tethered smaller particles to larger ones using DNA, allowing them to determine how the smaller particles filled in the regions surrounding the larger ones. When using particles as small as 1.4 nanometers — extremely small for colloidal particles — scientists observed an exciting effect: The small particles roamed around regularly ordered larger particles instead of remaining locked in an ordered fashion.

Because of this behavior, the colloidal crystals could be designed to lead to a variety of new technologies in the field of optics, catalysis, and drug delivery. The small particles have the potential to act as messengers, carrying other molecules, electric current or information from one end of a crystal to another.

“The smaller particles essentially act like a glue that holds the larger particle arrangement together,” said Argonne X-ray physicist and study author Byeongdu Lee. “With only a few beads of glue, the best position to place them is on the corners between the larger particles. If you add more glue beads, they would overflow to the edges.”

The small particles that sit on the corners tend to stay still — a configuration Lee called localization. The additional particles that are on the edges have more freedom of movement, becoming delocalized. By being tethered to larger particles and with the ability to be both localized and delocalized, the small particles act as “electron equivalents” in the crystal structure. The delocalization of small particles, which the authors called metallicity, had not been observed so far in colloidal particle assemblies.

Additionally, since the small particles delocalize in part, the effect creates a material that challenges most traditional definitions of a crystal, according to Lee.

“Normally, when you change the composition of a crystal, the structure changes as well,” he said. “Here, you can have a material that is able to maintain its overall structure with different proportions of its components.”

To image the structure of the colloidal crystals, Lee and his colleagues used the high-brightness X-ray beams provided by Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source (APS), a DOE Office of Science User Facility. The APS offered a key advantage in that it allowed the scientists to observe the structure of the crystal directly in solution. “This system is only stable in solution, once it dries, the structure deforms,” Lee said.

Help may be on the way for people who might lose contact with reality through a psychotic disorder, such as schizophrenia.

People who may hear and see things that are not there could have symptoms of psychosis, better known as psychotic disorders. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have found neurological markers in the human brain that can be used to detect people at-risk for developing psychotic disorders and to understand when this risk has been successfully treated.

"Psychotic disorders like schizophrenia are often lifelong and disabling for individuals," said John Kerns, professor of psychology in the MU College of Arts and Science. "These disorders have major public health and societal costs greater than cancer. A major goal of our current research is to understand the nature of psychosis risk so we can prevent years of suffering."

Researchers said psychotic disorders are associated with increased levels of dopamine -- a chemical released by nerve cells -- in a subregion of the brain called the striatum. This area is wired to process positive versus negative feedback for learning, often resulting in a person's thoughts and actions based on what they've experienced in the past. Therefore, researchers suggest that psychotic disorders involve a faulty feedback in learning that then drives a person's faulty beliefs and perceptions. However, measuring levels of dopamine in people is costly, invasive and not feasible in everyday clinical practice. In this new study, MU researchers used an MRI at MU's Brain Imaging Center and found that people at risk for psychotic disorders exhibit evidence of dysfunction in the striatum.

"This dysfunction is most evident when performing tasks where people need to learn from positive and negative feedback," Kerns said. "For instance, we have found that the risk for psychotic disorders involves increased activation in the striatum for positive feedback, and negative feedback involves decreased activation in the same subregion of the brain."

Researchers believe this pattern of activation could explain symptoms of psychotic disorders. For example, activation resulting from increased positive feedback could make a person's assumption seem truer than it really is, meanwhile activation from decreased negative feedback could make someone less likely to discard negative ideas. The team will conduct future research to examine how well an MRI can predict the risk of psychotic disorders and whether prevention treatments can 'normalize' MRI scans. They hope that their research will help prevent psychotic disorders, improve the lives of millions of people and greatly reduce public health costs.

Crows can voluntarily control the release and onset of their calls, suggesting that songbird vocalizations are under cognitive control, according to a study published August 27 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Katharina Brecht of the University of Tübingen, and colleagues.

Songbirds are renowned for their acoustically elaborate songs; these show a degree of flexibility, potentially indicating that they are under conscious control. However, the observed variability in vocalizations might simply be driven by involuntary mechanisms, and need not be based on cognitive control. In the new study, Brecht and colleagues directly tested the idea that songbirds deliberately control their calls, in the sense that they can be emitted or inhibited at will, as opposed to being knee-jerk responses to food, mates, or predators.

The findings show that trained carrion crows (Corvus corone), songbirds of the corvid family, can exert control over their calls in a goal-directed manner. In a detection task, three male carrion crows rapidly learned to emit calls in response to a visual cue (colored squares) with no inherent meaning ("go-trials"), and to withhold calls in response to another cue. Two of these crows were then trained on a task with the cue colors reversed, in addition to being rewarded for withholding vocalizations to yet another cue ("nogo-trials").

Vocalizations in response to the detection of the go-cue were precise timed and highly reliable in all three crows. The crows also quickly learned to withhold calls in nogo-trials, showing that vocalizations weren't produced by an anticipation of a food reward in correct trials. According to the authors, further work is needed to evaluate the neurobiological basis of such cognitive vocal control in birds.

"Our study shows that crows can be thaught to control their vocalizations, just like primates can, and that their vocalizations are not just a reflexive response. This finding not only demonstrates once again the cognitive sophistication of the birds of the crow family. It also advances our understanding of the evolution of vocal control."

A team of Argentinian scientists from the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) made the discovery after studying a coprolite taken from a rock-shelter in the country's mountainous Catamarca Province, where the remains of now extinct megafauna have previously been recovered in stratigraphic excavations.

Radiocarbon dating revealed that the coprolite and thus the parasitic roundworm eggs preserved inside dated back to between 16,570 and 17,000 years ago, towards the end of the last Ice Age.

At that time, the area around the shelter at Peñas de las Trampas in the southern Andean Puna was thought to have been wetter than today, making it a suitable habitat for megafauna like giant ground sloths, and also smaller herbivores like American horses and South American camelids which the pumas may have preyed on.

Ancient mitochondrial DNA analysis was used to confirm the coprolite came from a Puma (Puma concolor) and that the eggs belonged to Toxascaris leonina, a species of roundworm still commonly found in the digestive systems of modern day cats, dogs and foxes.

The study, published in the journal Parasitology, explains that the extremely dry, cold and salty conditions which took hold at the Peñas de las Trampas site since the onset of the Holocene would have helped to reduce the breakdown of the DNA, allowing it to be preserved.

Led by Romina Petrigh and Martín Fugassa, the study was carried out by an interdisciplinary team including archaeologists and biologists and is part of a project that views ancient faeces as important paleobiological reservoirs.

Dr Petrigh, from the National University of Mar del Plata and CONICET, said: "While we have found evidence of parasites in coprolites before, those remains were much more recent, dating back only a few thousand years. The latest find shows that these roundworms were infecting the fauna of South America before the arrival of the first humans in the area around 11,000 years ago."

She added: "I was very happy when I discovered how old this DNA was. It's difficult to recover DNA of such an old age as it usually suffers damage over time. Our working conditions had to be extremely controlled to avoid contamination with modern DNA, so we used special decontaminated reagents and disposable supplies. Several experiments were performed to authenticate the DNA sequences obtained and the efforts of the team of researchers who participated was essential."

The discovery marks a number of firsts: it represents the oldest record of an ancient DNA sequence for a gastrointestinal nematode parasite of wild mammals, the oldest molecular parasite record worldwide, and also a new maximum age for the recovery of old DNA of this origin.

For Dr Petrigh, the findings also cast light on both the past and the present. She said: "This work confirms the presence of T. leonina in prehistoric times, presumably even before that of humans in the region, and it represents the oldest record in the world. The common interpretation is that the presence of T. leonina in American wild carnivores today is a consequence of their contact with domestic dogs or cats, but that should no longer be assumed as the only possible explanation.

"Our aDNA studies have also confirmed the presence of pumas in the southern Puna at the end of the Pleistocene. This has significant implications for the natural history of the region, as well as for inferring the ecological context immediately before - as far as is known - the first human explorers ventured into the area."

She added: "The large number of eggs of T. leonina and its larva state in the puma coprolite analysed here indicate the high infective capacity of this parasite, involving a high risk for carnivores and for humans."

In recent years there has been a surge in studies looking at the biologic effects of different kinds of fasting diets in both animal models and humans. These diets include continuous calorie restriction, intermittent fasting, and alternate-day fasting (ADF). Now the largest study of its kind to look at the effects of strict ADF in healthy people has shown a number of health benefits. The participants alternated 36 hours of zero-calorie intake with 12 hours of unlimited eating. The findings are reported August 27 in the journal Cell Metabolism.

"Strict ADF is one of the most extreme diet interventions, and it has not been sufficiently investigated within randomized controlled trials," says Frank Madeo, a professor of the Institute of Molecular Biosciences at Karl-Franzens University of Graz in Austria. "In this study, we aimed to explore a broad range of parameters, from physiological to molecular measures. If ADF and other dietary interventions differ in their physiological and molecular effects, complex studies are needed in humans that compare different diets."

In this randomized controlled trial, 60 participants were enrolled for four weeks and randomized to either an ADF or an ad libitum control group, the latter of which could eat as much as they wanted. Participants in both groups were all of normal weight and were healthy. To ensure that the people in the ADF group did not take in any calories during fast days, they underwent continuous glucose monitoring. They were also asked to fill in diaries documenting their fasting days. Periodically, the participants had to go to a research facility, where they were instructed on whether to follow ADF or their usual diet, but other than that they lived their normal, everyday lives.

Additionally, the researchers studied a group of 30 people who had already practiced more than six months of strict ADF previous to the study enrollment. They compared them to normal, healthy controls who had no fasting experience. For this ADF cohort, the main focus was to examine the long-term safety of the intervention.

"We found that on average, during the 12 hours when they could eat normally, the participants in the ADF group compensated for some of the calories lost from the fasting, but not all," says Harald Sourij, a professor at the Medical University of Graz. "Overall, they reached a mean calorie restriction of about 35% and lost an average of 3.5 kg [7.7 lb] during four weeks of ADF."

The investigators found several biological effects in the ADF group:

* The participants had fluctuating downregulation of amino acids, in particular the amino acid methionine. Amino acid restriction has been shown to cause lifespan extension in rodents.

They had continuous upregulation of ketone bodies, even on nonfasting days. This has been shown to promote health in various contexts.

They had reduced levels of sICAM-1, a marker linked to age-associated disease and inflammation.

They had lowered levels of triiodothyronine without impaired thyroid gland function. Previously, lowered levels of this hormone have been linked to longevity in humans.

They had lowered levels of cholesterol.

They had a reduction of lipotoxic android trunk fat mass--commonly known as belly fat.

"Why exactly calorie restriction and fasting induce so many beneficial effects is not fully clear yet," says Thomas Pieber, head of endocrinology at the Medical University of Graz. "The elegant thing about strict ADF is that it doesn't require participants to count their meals and calories: they just don't eat anything for one day."

The investigators point to other benefits that ADF may have, compared with continuous calorie restriction. Previous studies have suggested calorie-restrictive diets can result in malnutrition and a decrease in immune function. In contrast, even after six months of ADF, the immune function in the participants appeared to be stable.

"The reason might be due to evolutionary biology," Madeo explains. "Our physiology is familiar with periods of starvation followed by food excesses. It might also be that continuous low-calorie intake hinders the induction of the age-protective autophagy program, which is switched on during fasting breaks."

Despite the benefits, the researchers say they do not recommend ADF as a general nutrition scheme for everybody. "We feel that it is a good regime for some months for obese people to cut weight, or it might even be a useful clinical intervention in diseases driven by inflammation," Madeo says. "However, further research is needed before it can be applied in daily practice. Additionally, we advise people not to fast if they have a viral infection, because the immune system probably requires immediate energy to fight viruses. Hence, it is important to consult a doctor before any harsh dietary regime is undertaken."

In the future, the researchers plan to study the effects of strict ADF in different groups of people including people with obesity and diabetes. They also plan to compare ADF to other dietary interventions and to further explore the molecular mechanisms in animal models.