Culture

A new study suggests that the status of award nominees combined with the level of social connection that they have with members of a judging panel can work both ways towards determining how successful they are - depending on whether or not they are judged publicly or privately.

Professor Simone Ferriani, Professor at the Business School (formerly Cass) and University of Bologna, Professor Gino Cattani from NYU Stern, Professor Erik Aadland from BI Norwegian Business School and Denise Falchetti, Postdoctoral Associate at Boston University evaluated results from eight years of The Silver Tag Awards - Norway's most prestigious monthly digital advertising industry awards - as well as interviews with members of awarding panels to determine factors that ultimately influence success in different settings.

The researchers uncovered three key variables that have significant effects on success:

Status - the extent to which award candidates are held in high regard in the industry

Social connection - the extent to which jury members or decision-makers and award candidates have worked together in the past

Publicity of criteria - the extent to which single jurors' choices are public and open to scrutiny from others in the industry or private and invisible to others

The study indicated that high status and close social proximity to members of a judging panel only significantly impact an individual's chances of winning if deliberations are held in private, and can even have a negative effect in publicly-scrutinised panels for fear of accusations of favouritism. In other words, bias towards certain award entries and nominees is only truly prevalent in settings where judges are not required to explain their decisions.

The authors explained how the study's findings have further-reaching consequences for equality and transparency in public life. Professor Ferriani said:

"Understanding how award allocations may change with the degree of scrutiny to which they are subjected should encourage accountability and transparency in a wider spectrum of decision-making.

"High-status individuals are often assumed to be more competent, more powerful and more frequently attended to.

"Existing evidence would therefore suggest that they are granted more recognition than their lower-status counterparts, but our findings show that this status can work against these individuals as well as for them."

Professor Cattani said:

"The results of our study have implications for many peer-based evaluative settings, including the distribution of prizes, awarding of contracts, approving competitive research and development projects, allocating scientific funding and appointing senior roles - to name a few.

"To avoid favouritism and preferential treatment from creeping into the evaluative process, companies and decision-makers need to design more transparent and fair procedures, such as the creation of an evaluative committee, to mitigate such biases."

Differences in the microstructure of the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), a region in the brain that plays an important role in processing food and other reward stimuli, predict increases in indicators of obesity in children, according to a study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and nine other institutes, all part of the National Institutes of Health. The paper, published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is based on data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. The ABCD Study will follow nearly 12,000 children through early adulthood to assess factors that influence individual brain development and other health outcomes.

Findings from this study provide the first evidence of microstructural brain differences that are linked to waist circumference and body mass index (BMI) in children. These microstructural differences in cell density could be indicative of inflammatory processes triggered by a diet rich in high fat foods.

"We know that childhood obesity is a key predictor of adult obesity and other poor health outcomes later in life," said Nora D. Volkow, M.D., director of NIDA. "These results extend previous animal studies to reveal what may prove to be a vicious cycle in which diet-related inflammation in brain striatal regions promotes further unhealthy eating behaviors and weight gain."

Evidence from past human imaging studies has demonstrated the relationship between the NAcc and unhealthy eating behavior in adults. In this study, the researchers leveraged new diffusion MRI imaging techniques to examine the cellular structure of areas that comprise the striatal reward pathway in the brain to investigate disproportionate weight gain in youth.

This study included data from 5,366 ABCD Study participants, ages 9- to 10-years-old at baseline, of whom 2,133 returned for a one-year follow-up visit. The mean waist circumference of the participants, used here as a measure of body fat, increased an average of 2.76 centimeters per participant from the baseline through the one-year follow-up. The researchers used a noninvasive MRI technique to show that an alleged marker of cellular density in the NAcc reflected differences in waist circumference at baseline and predicted increased waist circumference at one-year follow-up.

Because the ABCD Study is longitudinal, it will allow to assess if this association holds or changes over the course of adolescent development, and what factors may influence this trajectory.

Obesity in the United States affects approximately 35% of children and adolescents and is associated with negative health consequences, mentally and physically, as well as higher mortality rates. Children who are obese have more than a fivefold likelihood of becoming obese as adults. Predictive models of weight gain in youth, coupled with knowledge about factors that could impact this trajectory, would benefit public health and individual wellbeing.

NASA's Terra satellite obtained visible imagery as Tropical Storm Delta made landfall in Louisiana and moved northeastward soaking the U.S. southeast and Mid-Atlantic states.

NASA Satellite View: Delta's Organization

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Storm Delta on Oct. 11 at 1:30 p.m. EDT. The storm still appeared circular in imagery. At the time, it was centered over northern Alabama. At the time Terra passed overhead, Delta had weakened to a tropical depression with maximum sustained winds near 25 mph (35 kph).

Visible imagery from NASA's Terra satellite captured from Oct. 9 to Oct. 12 were compiled into an animation. The animation showed the landfall and movement of Tropical Storm Delta. Delta dissipated over the southeastern U.S. and its remnants moved into the Atlantic states. The animation was created using NASA's Worldview product at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Delta's Landfall on Oct. 9

National Weather Service Doppler radar imagery, Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft data, and surface observations indicated on Oct. 9 that Delta made landfall near Creole, Louisiana, around 7 p.m. EDT with estimated maximum sustained winds of 100 mph (155 kph).  Delta was a category 2 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.

Delta's Final Advisory

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) issued the final advisory on Delta at 11 p.m. EDT on Oct. 11 (Oct. 12 at 0300 UTC). At that time, the center of Post-Tropical Cyclone Delta was located near latitude 34.5 degrees north and longitude 84.1 degrees west. It was just 60 miles (95 km) north-northeast of Atlanta, Georgia. The post-tropical cyclone was moving toward the east near 15 mph. Maximum sustained winds were near 15 mph (30 kph) with higher gusts.

NHC said, "Some further weakening is possible tonight as a new surface low develops in the Carolinas, and Delta's surface low is expected to be absorbed by this new low pressure area on Monday, Oct. 12."

About NASA's Worldview and Terra Satellite

NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) Worldview application provides the capability to interactively browse over 700 global, full-resolution satellite imagery layers and then download the underlying data. Many of the available imagery layers are updated within three hours of observation, essentially showing the entire Earth as it looks "right now."

NASA's Terra satellite is one in a fleet of NASA satellites that provide data for hurricane research.

Tropical cyclones/hurricanes are the most powerful weather events on Earth. NASA's expertise in space and scientific exploration contributes to essential services provided to the American people by other federal agencies, such as hurricane weather forecasting.

For updated forecasts, visit: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov

By Rob Gutro
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Ankush Gosain, MD, PhD, of Le Bonheur Children's Hospital and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center has focused his research on determining the mechanisms underlying abnormal development of the enteric nervous system in Hirschsprung disease. Gosain recently published a new study in The FASEB Journal delineating interactions between migrating neural crest cells and the extracellular matrix in a model of Hirschsprung disease using a variety of in vitro and in vivo approaches.

Neurons in the wall of the gastrointestinal tract comprise the enteric nervous system, which controls gut motility, digestion, secretion and absorption. During development, neural crest cells, the precursors of neurons in the enteric nervous system, migrate throughout the digestive tract to provide innervation. However, in Hirschsprung disease, neural crest cells fail to migrate into the distal colon, resulting in a lack of innervation in this region. This lack of innervation is a common cause of neonatal bowel obstruction, which can progress to bowel distension, Hirschsprung-associated enterocolitis and death.

Gosain and colleagues specifically focused on abnormalities in laminin expression as laminin is a potential regulator of interactions between migrating neural crest cells and the extracellular matrix in the developing enteric nervous system. The investigators used a mouse model of Hirschsprung disease, the endothelin receptor B knockout mouse, to tease out specific changes in laminin expression.

In the knockout mice, the gene encoding laminin β1 was upregulated more than two fold. By contrast, the receptor for laminin β1, LAMR, showed decreased expression in samples from knockout mice and human patients with Hirschsprung disease. Application of exogenous laminin-111 suppressed NCC migration in an organ culture model, whereas YIGSR, a laminin β1 analog, promoted NCC migration. YIGSR also upregulated expression of LAMR and enhanced NCC migration in midgut slice culture. When LAMR expression was silenced, the beneficial effect of YIGSR was abolished. Furthermore, YIGSR application resulted in colonization of the distal colon in 80% of ex vivo organ cultures from endothelin receptor B knockout mice.

These experiments indicate alterations in LAMR contribute to neural crest cell migration failure in enteric nervous system development. The investigators think YIGSR maysselectively enhance neural crest cell migration through LAMR with LAMR bindingsincreasing LAMR expression and preferentially promoting migration. These results addsto the current body of literature showing interactions between neural crest cells and the extracellular matrix are involved in enteric nervous system development with the extracellular matrix representing a potential target for intervention in Hirschsprung disease.

The experience of police violence is associated with mental and emotional trauma distinct from that caused by other kinds of violence, creating a public health crisis for communities most affected.

Simply put, the experience of police violence puts Black, Latino, Indigenous, and sexual minority communities at higher risk of distinct mental health problems, in addition to greater risk of death at the hands of police, according to the paper.

The study is authored by a group of researchers at several universities, including UC Riverside, who have been examining the mental health effects of police violence at the population level for several years.

"It's a public health issue because police violence is not experienced equally in our society but instead has a disproportionate effect on the mental health of racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities," said Bruce Link, a UC Riverside distinguished professor of sociology and public policy. "The point of our paper is to indicate why the experience of police violence is uniquely stressful and therefore particularly impactful."

Psychologists agree that trauma spurs biological or psychological changes that manifest over time as psychiatric symptoms, particularly when the trauma is sexually or physically violent. Research on stressful life events, especially uncontrollable events, has attempted to provide a broader framework for how stress may affect a person's usual activities, goals, and values, but until recently this approach has not been applied to police violence.

Link, along with Jordan DeVylder of Fordham University and Lisa Fedina of the University of Michigan, reviewed numerous studies of the effects of police violence on mental health in a paper called "Impact of police violence on mental health: a theoretical framework," and identified eight factors distinct to police violence in America.

Police violence is state sanctioned

Unlike most other forms of violence, police violence in America is embedded in a history of state-enforced practices that permitted cruel, unusual, and dehumanizing punishment of individuals deemed to be from so-called "dangerous classes," particularly Blacks. Communities of color and LGBTQ communities have been historically subjected to discriminatory laws, such as Jim Crow laws and sodomy laws, which permitted harassment and excessive and fatal force against individuals from these communities.

The police are a pervasive presence

Police are everywhere, especially in low-income communities of color. People who have experienced violent or stressful encounters with police have no way to avoid being around constant reminders of these painful experiences, or the fear of future encounters.

There are limited options for recourse

People who have experienced police violence have few options for redress. They must report incidents to the same police departments that abused them in the first place. Police are authorized to use force in a wide variety of situations and survivors have to prove that the violence was not legitimate. Because they have few options for reporting an incident, for legal recourse, or for advocacy services and referrals to mental health treatment, any mental health symptoms they have may worsen over time.

Police culture deters internal accountability

Violence committed through institutions, rather than interpersonal relationships, is supported by organizational cultures that condone it. Police often maintain a code of silence around violence and therefore often fail to hold each other accountable. This amounts to gaslighting survivors who do report incidents, potentially worsening mental health symptoms.

Police violence alters deeply held beliefs

Many Americans are taught that police protect them and their communities from various dangers and help in emergencies. A single violent encounter can shatter this belief for an individual, but when police violence is the norm, instead of an isolated incident, the community at large loses trust in the police as an institution and, often correctly, comes to regard them as part of the problem.

Racial and economic disparities in exposure

Police violence is disproportionately directed at people of color, especially Blacks and Latinos, potentially leading to diminished feelings of self-worth and value within American society.

Police violence is stigmatizing

Because police are allowed to use force in many situations, survivors of police violence are often blamed for the encounter. Their actions are heavily scrutinized and faulted to justify the officers' actions, especially by members of groups that benefit from the social order policing upholds. Moreover, many people have friends and relatives who work as police officers, making it feel like a betrayal to report incidents of police violence.

Police are typically armed

Unlike police in many countries, American police carry firearms and police departments have become heavily militarized. Police are given broad latitude to determine when and how to deploy force. Every interaction with police holds the possibility of violence, and for communities subjected to routine overpolicing, this threat brings additional challenges for mental health.

The researchers call for a framework to examine the mental health consequences of police violence that takes into account these points. However, implicit in their analysis are solutions for the public health crisis caused by police violence, such as demilitarizing police, holding police accountable when untoward events occur, ending the overpolicing of communities of color, providing better reporting options and support for survivors of police violence, and policies that build mutual trust between police and the communities they are meant to serve.

A team of researchers from the Florida State University College of Medicine has found that an amino acid produced by the brain could play a crucial role in preventing a type of epileptic seizure.

Temporal lobe epileptic seizures are debilitating and can cause lasting damage in patients, including neuronal death and loss of neuron function.

Sanjay Kumar, an associate professor in the College of Medicine's Department of Biomedical Sciences, and his team are paving the way toward finding effective therapies for this disease.

The research team found a mechanism in the brain responsible for triggering epileptic seizures. Their research indicates that an amino acid known as D-serine could work with the mechanism to help prevent epileptic seizures, thereby also preventing the death of neural cells that accompanies them.

The team's findings were published in the journal Nature Communications.

The temporal lobe processes sensory information and creates memories, comprehends language and controls emotions. Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is the most common form of epilepsy in adults and is not improved with current anti-epileptic medications.

"A hallmark of TLE is the loss of a vulnerable population of neurons in a particular brain region called the entorhinal area," Kumar said. "We're trying to understand why neurons die in this brain region in the first place. From there, is there anything that we can do to stop these neurons from dying? It's a very fundamental question."

To help further understand TLE pathophysiology, the Kumar lab studies underlying receptors in the brain. Receptors are proteins located in the gaps, or junctions, between two or more communicating neurons. They convert signals between the neurons, aiding in their communication.

Kumar and his team discovered a new type of receptor that they informally named the "FSU receptor" in the entorhinal cortex of the brain. The FSU receptor is a potential target for TLE therapy.

"What's striking about this receptor is that it is highly calcium-permeable, which is what we believe underlies the hyperexcitability and the damage to neurons in this region," Kumar said.

When FSU receptors allow too much calcium to enter neurons, TLE patients experience epileptic seizures as neurons become overstimulated from the influx. The overstimulation, or hyperexcitability, is what causes neurons to die, a process known as excitotoxicity.

The research team also found that the amino acid D-serine blocks these receptors to prevent excess levels of calcium from reaching neurons, thereby preventing seizure activity and neuronal death.

"What's unique about D-serine, unlike any other drugs that are out there, is that D-serine is made in the brain itself, so it's well-tolerated by the brain," Kumar said. "Many medications that deal with treating TLE are not well-tolerated, but given that this is made in the brain, it works very well."

With assistance from Michael Roper's lab in the FSU Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, the research team found that D-serine levels were depleted in epileptic animals, indicating that TLE patients may not produce D-serine like they should.

"The loss of D-serine essentially removes the brakes on these neurons, making them hyperexcitable," Kumar said. "Then, the calcium comes in and causes excitotoxicity, which is the reason why neurons die. So, if we provide the brakes -- if we provide D-serine -- then you don't get that loss of neurons."

Kumar's research points to neuroinflammation as the cause for diminished D-serine levels in the entorhinal cortex of the brain. D-serine is typically produced by glial cells, but neuroinflammation experienced as part of TLE causes cellular and molecular changes in the brain that can prevent it from being produced.

The next step in exploring D-serine as a viable therapy is investigating potential administration techniques.

"We have to find creative ways to administer D-serine to that particular region of the human brain," Kumar said. "Getting it to that right place is the challenge. We have to look at what effect it has when administered locally to that region of the brain compared to systemically through an IV, for example."

TLE often results from an injury such as a concussion or other traumatic brain injury. When administered to the appropriate region, D-serine has been shown to work in preventing the secondary effects of such an injury.

"A pie-in-the-sky type idea is a hypothetical scenario where you were to have a nebulizer, or have people inhale D-serine, go play football, and if they experience a concussion, no neurons would be lost because the D-serine would provide a sort of cushion just in case there is a traumatic brain injury that can lead to loss of neurons in the temporal lobe," Kumar said.

"There are some very interesting questions to ask and solve," he added. "The important thing is that we've outlined the basic bread-and-butter mechanisms of why D-serine works. What we've established is the discovery of the receptors, discovery of the antagonist for these receptors (D-serine), how it works and how to prevent the emergence of TLE. The mechanisms and pathophysiology are as relevant to the animal model as they are to human beings, and that's where the excitement lies."

URBANA, Ill. - For vegetable growers, weeds can mean lost income from reduced yield and foreign plant matter contaminating the harvest. But for many crops, particularly vegetable legumes, weed management options are very limited.

Cover crops such as cereal rye reduce weed competition in grain soybean, but most vegetable legume growers have yet to adopt the practice due to the potential for reduced germination and yield in thick cover crop residue. However, a new study from the University of Illinois and USDA Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) shows early-terminated rye could be a promising part of an integrated weed management program for some vegetable legumes, including edamame.

"In general, the more cover crop biomass you have, the better the weed suppression. We found a sweet spot in an earlier experiment with edamame when we terminated rye at tillering and then planted into the stubble. The rye provided measurable weed suppression without harming the crop," says Marty Williams, USDA-ARS ecologist and affiliate professor in the Department of Crop Sciences at Illinois. "We wanted to follow that up with yield experiments for edamame, and decided to broaden to some mainstream vegetable legumes including snap bean and lima bean."

Williams and his research team looked at weed density and biomass in bare soil and in plots planted with a rye cover crop terminated at tillering, about a month before vegetable crops were planted. For three growing seasons, the researchers either sprayed weeds with one of the few registered herbicides; hand-pulled weeds in addition to spraying; or left weeds alone to grow. Then they gathered information on weed suppression, crop establishment and yield, as well as soil moisture and nitrogen.

In edamame and snap bean, early-terminated rye reduced weed biomass by 53% and 73%, respectively, compared with bare soil. And, consistent with his earlier studies, Williams found no reductions in edamame establishment or yield. Yet, the results for snap bean and lima bean were not as rosy. Both lost yield when planted in rye residue, and weed density and biomass actually increased for lima bean, compared with bare soil.

"We found the early-terminated rye system worked well in edamame. The rye suppressed weed biomass without impacting the crop." Williams says. "For lima bean, the system failed. For snap bean, there is room for improvement."

He suspects the poor performance in lima and snap bean is related to the crops' weak ability to fix nitrogen in soils depleted of the nutrient by the cover crop. In turn, poor crop growth and canopy development favored the weeds.

"We had a problem with crop establishment in lima bean in the rye stubble," Williams says. "And while snap bean established well, crop growth was hampered by the nitrogen-starved environment in rye stubble - one of the key traits providing weed suppression."

Edamame, like soybean, can grow without applied nitrogen because it benefits from symbiosis with nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Williams' group is currently doing follow-up research to exploit biological nitrogen fixation in snap bean, which would have implications beyond weed management.

Although early-terminated rye worked well in edamame, the cover crop didn't eliminate the need for other weed control measures.

"Early-terminated rye alone is not going to solve all weed problems," Williams says. "It reduced the weed load, but did not eliminate it. Early-terminated rye roughly halved the weeds compared to bare soil. The weed load was further reduced by using an herbicide, too. Hand-weeding, while generally used as a last-resort tactic, was used in this system to entirely eliminate interference with the crop and weed seedbank additions. That combination is the most effective approach."

The closer people are physically to one another, the higher the chance for exchange, of things like ideas, information, and even infection. Now researchers at MIT and Boston Children's Hospital have found that, even in the microscopic environment within a single cell, physical crowding increases the chance for interactions, in a way that can significantly alter a cell's health and development.

In a paper published today in the journal Cell Stem Cell, the researchers have shown that physically squeezing cells, and crowding their contents, can trigger cells to grow and divide faster than they normally would.

While squeezing something to make it grow may sound counterintuitive, the team has an explanation: Squeezing acts to wring water out of a cell. With less water to swim in, proteins and other cell constituents are packed closer together. And when certain proteins are brought in close proximity, they can trigger cell signaling and activate genes within the cell.

In their new study, the scientists found that squeezing intestinal cells triggered proteins to cluster along a specific signaling pathway, which can help cells maintain their stem-cell state, an undifferentiated state in which can quickly grow and divide into more specialized cells. Ming Guo, associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, says that if cells can simply be squeezed to promote their "stemness," they can then be directed to quickly build up miniature organs, such as artificial intestines or colons, which could then be used as platforms to understand organ function and test drug candidates for various diseases, and even as transplants for regenerative medicine.

Guo's co-authors are lead author Yiwei Li, Jiliang Hu, and Qirong Lin from MIT, and Maorong Chen, Ren Sheng, and Xi He of Boston Children's Hospital.

Packed in

To study squeezing's effect on cells, the researchers mixed various cell types in solutions that solidified as rubbery slabs of hydrogel. To squeeze the cells, they placed weights on the hydrogel's surface, in the form of either a quarter or a dime.

"We wanted to achieve a significant amount of cell size change, and those two weights can compress the cell by something like 10 to 30 percent of their total volume," Guo explains.

The team used a confocal microscope to measure in 3D how individual cells' shapes changed as each sample was compressed. As they expected, the cells shrank with pressure. But did squeezing also affect the cell's contents? To answer this, the researchers first looked to see whether a cell's water content changed. If squeezing acts to wring water out of a cell, the researchers reasoned that the cells should be less hydrated, and stiffer as a result.

They measured the stiffness of cells before and after weights were applied, using optical tweezers, a laser-based technique that Guo's lab has employed for years to study interactions within cells, and found that indeed, cells stiffened with pressure. They also saw that there was less movement within cells that were squeezed, suggesting that their contents were more packed than usual.

Next, they looked at whether there were changes in the interactions between certain proteins in the cells, in response to cells being squeezed. They focused on several proteins that are known to trigger Wnt/β-catenin signaling, which is involved in cell growth and maintenance of "stemness."

"In general, this pathway is known to make a cell more like a stem cell," Guo says. "If you change this pathway's activity, how cancer progresses and how embryos develop have been shown to be very different. So we thought we could use this pathway to demonstrate how cell crowding is important."

A "refreshing" path

To see whether cell squeezing affects the Wnt pathway, and how fast a cell grows, the researchers grew small organoids -- miniature organs, and in this case, clusters of cells that were collected from the intestines of mice.

"The Wnt pathway is particularly important in the colon," Guo says, pointing out that the cells that line the human intestine are constantly being replenished. The Wnt pathway, he says, is essential for maintaining intestinal stem cells, generating new cells, and "refreshing" the intestinal lining.

He and his colleagues grew intestinal organoids, each measuring about half a millimeter, in several Petri dishes, then "squeezed" the organoids by infusing the dishes with polymers. This influx of polymers increased the osmotic pressure surrounding each organoid and forced water out of their cells. The team observed that as a result, specific proteins involved in activating the Wnt pathway were packed closer together, and were more likely to cluster to turn on the pathway and its growth-regulating genes.

The upshot: Those organoids that were squeezed actually grew larger and more quickly, with more stem cells on their surface than those that were not squeezed.

"The difference was very obvious," Guo says. "Whenever you apply pressure, the organoids grow even bigger, with a lot more stem cells."

He says the results demonstrate how squeezing can affect a organoid's growth. The findings also show that a cell's behavior can change depending on the amount of water that it contains.

"This is very general and broad, and the potential impact is profound, that cells can simply tune how much water they have to tune their biological consequences," Guo says.

Going forward, he and his colleagues plan to explore cell squeezing as a way to speed up the growth of artificial organs that scientists may use to test new, personalized drugs.

"I could take my own cells and transfect them to make stem cells that can then be developed into a lung or intestinal organoid that would mimic my own organs," Guo says. "I could then apply different pressures to make organoids of different size, then try different drugs. I imagine there would be a lot of possibilities."

In cities, humans replace the natural ground cover with roofs, pavement and other artificial materials that are impervious to water. These surfaces significantly change how the land absorbs and releases energy and cause the urban heat island effect, a phenomenon where developed areas get hotter than nearby rural areas. As climate change pushes many cities towards dangerous temperatures, planners are scrambling to mitigate excessive heat.

One strategy is to replace artificial surfaces with vegetation cover. In water-limited regions such as Utah, a state with one of the lowest annual rainfall rates in the United States, municipalities have to balance the benefit of cooler temperatures with using precious water for irrigation.

A new University of Utah study will make those decisions easier for the semi-arid Salt Lake Valley, the largest metropolitan area in Utah located in the northern part of the state. The researchers used 60 sensors to analyze the microclimate in five locations throughout the valley. They found that neighborhoods dominated by impervious surfaces were warmer and drier than the urban parks--up to 2 degrees warmer in both the daytime and nighttime.

"It's intuitive--we've all stood in a parking lot on a hot summer day, and you feel the heat from the ground. And when you're standing on a lawn, it's cooler," said lead author Carolina Gomez-Navarro, postdoctoral researcher at the U. "But we need to back up intuition with data to determine the best strategy for our semi-arid cities."

Gomez-Navarro and the team measured the temperature and humidity inside five parks and in their adjacent residential areas from June through August in 2016. They also analyzed how the surrounding landscape impacted air temperature. Surprisingly, they found that lawns reduced daytime and nighttime temperatures even more than trees did. While trees provide shade, lawns and turfgrass act like a swamp cooler--water moves through the plant, evaporating from tiny holes in the leaves and cooling the air.

Much of the heat that builds up during the day dissipates at night. The more open the land, the better heat can escape into the atmosphere. An area with many trees acts like a greenhouse, trapping heat close to the ground. The study concluded that a mixture of dispersed trees and grass is the most effective way to cool temperatures in the Salt Lake Valley.

"Understanding how ground cover impacts temperature is crucial for city planners to weigh the benefits and costs of its landscape design," said Gomez-Navarro. "This land used to be a valley of bushes and bare soil. Any vegetation we add is going to need lots of irrigation and modify the landscape in many ways."

The paper was published on October 13, 2020 in the journal Agricultural and Forest Meteorology.

Is the grass always greener?

Gomez-Navarro focused on five parks and the adjacent neighborhoods throughout the Salt Lake Valley: Hunter (northwest), Lone Peak (southeast), Midvale City (south central), Southridge (northwest) and Sugar House (northeast). Each location had 12 sensors that measured temperature and humidity: six within the park and six in the residential areas. Gomez-Navarro analyzed ground cover in a 10-meter diameter around each sensor using satellite images to estimate the percentage of the roofs, pavement, trees or turfgrass. She found that the more turfgrass in a given area, the lower the temperature.

She analyzed canopy cover by taking photos of the sky above each sensor with a fish eye lens. She used software that calculated the area that trees obstructed the sky. She found that the more open the landscape, the hotter the daytime temperature. The more canopy cover, the more shade reduced temperature.

The authors expected there to be temperature and humidity differences between the parks and neighborhoods. They were surprised, however, that turfgrass had nearly the same impact on air temperature as trees. It seems counterintuitive because of the difference between air temperature and perceived temperature. Perceived temperature is how humans feel the environment. Wind, air temperature, humidity and solar radiation all factor into how comfortable we are.

"We didn't measure human comfort in this study, but we know that the amount of solar radiation on our skin has a big impact on the perceived temperature," said Gomez-Navarro. "Even if the air temperature is the same, we feel much cooler under the shade of a tree because it blocks some of the radiation."

Smart city planning

Next, Gomez-Navarro will study how different landscapes directly affect how humans feel comfortable in their environment, and how plant cover type affect soil water loss.

"It's going to keep getting hotter and parks can be a refuge from the heat. But exactly how many degrees can they cool the air? And what should we plant to maximize this cooling?" said co-author Diane Pataki, professor of biology at the U. "It's getting easier and cheaper to measure temperature all over parks and neighborhoods, and we're going to need this information to make good decisions about future park designs."

Watching high quality nature programmes on TV can uplift people's moods, reduce negative emotions, and help alleviate the kind of boredom associated with being isolated indoors, according to a new study published today in the Journal of Environmental Psychology.

The research has also shown that experiencing nature in virtual reality could have even larger benefits, boosting positive feelings and increasing people's connection to the natural world.

Under laboratory conditions, researchers from the University of Exeter first induced feelings of boredom in 96 participants by asking them to watch a video in which a person describes their work at an office supply company. They then experienced scenes of an underwater coral reef in one of three different ways: on TV; in a VR headset using 360o video; and in a VR headset using computer generated interactive graphics.

The team found that all viewing methods minimised negative feelings such as sadness, as well as significantly reducing boredom. However, only the interactive virtual reality experience led to increases in positive feelings, such as happiness, and strengthened how connected people felt to nature.

Nicky Yeo, lead researcher on the study, believes the findings could have important implications for populations facing extended periods at home. She said:

"Our results show that simply watching nature on TV can help to lift people's mood and combat boredom. With people around the world facing limited access to outdoor environments because of COVID-19 quarantines, this study suggests that nature programmes might offer an accessible way for populations to benefit from a 'dose' of digital nature."

The team worked with the BBC Natural History Unit to create their experimental conditions, which featured several scenes from the Blue Planet II series, including unseen 360o footage. Their findings support initiatives seeking to bring the therapeutic potential of nature to people at home, such as BBC Four's recent Mindful Escapes series.

Dr Mathew White, co-author of the study, said:

"We're particularly excited by the additional benefits immersive experiences of nature might provide. Virtual reality could help us to boost the wellbeing of people who can't readily access the natural world, such as those in hospital or in long term care. But it might also help to encourage a deeper connection to nature in healthy populations, a mechanism which can foster more pro-environmental behaviours and prompt people to protect and preserve nature in the real world."

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, NAFLD, affects nearly one in four adults in Europe and the U.S. Earlier research has demonstrated an increased risk of death in patients with NAFLD and advanced fibrosis or cirrhosis. Now, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and Massachusetts General Hospital in the U.S. show that mortality increases with disease severity, but even mild fatty liver disease is linked to higher mortality. The findings have been published in the scientific journal Gut.

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is often caused by obesity and affects nearly 25 percent of U.S. and European adults. It represents the most common cause of chronic liver disease in Western countries. Small clinical studies have demonstrated that among patients with NAFLD, advanced liver fibrosis is the most important histological predictor of mortality, but until now, population-level data have been missing from cohorts with liver histology.

Given the growing burden of NAFLD, researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Massachusetts General Hospital matched 10,568 individuals with biopsy-confirmed NAFLD to general population controls through Sweden's comprehensive, nationwide registers. They found that all stages of NAFLD were associated with excess mortality risk, even early stages of disease. This risk was driven primarily by deaths from extra-hepatic cancer and cirrhosis, while the risks of cardiovascular mortality or hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) mortality were relatively modest.

Patients with NAFLD had a 93 percent increased risk of all-cause mortality, but the numbers varied with disease severity. The risk increased progressively from the mildest form of NAFLD (simple steatosis), to non-fibrotic steatohepatitis (NASH), to non-cirrhotic fibrosis and to severe NAFLD with liver cirrhosis.

"This is the first nationwide cohort study with detailed liver histology data to confirm that NAFLD contributes to an increased risk of all-cause mortality," says first author, Tracey G. Simon, researcher and hepatologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. "These findings should be used to develop more targeted interventions designed to reduce mortality, in patients with NAFLD. We need public health strategies that prevent both extra-hepatic cancer and NAFLD progression to cirrhosis, for this rapidly growing population."

The study builds on the ESPRESSO cohort (Epidemiology Strengthened by Histopathology Reports in Sweden). Histopathology data from more than two million people have been linked to nationwide Swedish registers such as the Patient Register, the Cause of Death Register, the Prescribed Drug Register and the Cancer Register.

"Through contacting all pathology departments in Sweden, we have managed to construct a nationwide gastrointestinal histopathology cohort that allows us to examine a range of gastrointestinal diseases, including NAFLD," says last author Jonas F. Ludvigsson, pediatrician at Örebro University Hospital and professor at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet. "The current study on NAFLD and risk of death is the 17th study published this year that takes advantage of the ESPRESSO cohort."

The human blood meal is a favorite recipe for female mosquitoes. So drawn to its taste, they can't help but bite--and in the process they spread diseases that claim 500,000 lives each year.

Yet scientists aren't sure how the insects can even sense the complex taste of blood, or how they know that this, of all things, is something to gorge on. Nothing else, not even sweet nectar, makes them pump as ferociously as when they're draining our veins. "When a female mosquito punctures the skin, she sucks so hard that the capillaries sometimes collapse. It's a behavior she specifically reserves for blood," says Leslie Vosshall, neuroscientist at Rockefeller.

Now Vosshall and her colleagues have discovered what turns on this powerful blood pump. In a study published in Neuron, the team describes a unique group of neurons in the female mosquito's syringe-like stylet that don't seem to care about simple tastes like sweet or salty. Rather, they activate only when sugar, salt, and other components of blood are all present at once.

"These neurons break the rules of traditional taste coding, thought to be conserved from flies to humans," says Veronica Jové, a graduate student in Vosshall's lab who led the study. "We knew that the female stylet was unique, but nobody had ever asked what its neurons like to taste."

Homemade blood recipe

Vosshall, Jové, and colleagues began by perfecting their blood recipe. They started with sheep blood, which the mosquitoes swarmed to imbibe. When they exchanged the blood for sugar and saline solutions, the mosquitoes were no longer interested--even in the presence of heat and carbon dioxide, two cues that tell mosquitoes that humans are nearby. The scientists then served their picky eaters a mixture of glucose, salt, sodium bicarbonate, and adenosine triphosphate. The mosquitoes dined with gusto.

To see what's special about the combination of these four ingredients, the researchers first tested how mosquito stylets responded to each component. "There are two neat rows of sensory neurons on both sides of the stylet," Jové says. "We delivered just the tiniest microfluidic drop to the tip of the stylet, and recorded which neurons responded."

Glucose, a sugar that is prominent in both nectar and blood, did not consistently activate any stylet neurons. The other three ingredients, which are unique to blood, each individually activated a specific group of neurons. But one prominent cluster of neurons did not respond to any individual ingredient; it only activated when the entire blood recipe was delivered at once--almost like being unable to taste coffee, milk, or sugar individually, unless all ingredients are stirred together.

The scientists call this group the integrator neurons because they seem to combine signals from several taste components, acting as the final arbiters in the decision to activate the pump for blood rather than nectar or water.

A syringe that can taste blood

Of the forty neurons lining a mosquito's stylet, only half appear to be activated by blood. Future studies will examine the function of those remaining neurons, which may be involved in detecting unique flavors that appear only when the stylet pierces a capillary.

The findings have far-reaching implications for basic science. The study opens the door to further examination of a novel form of taste detection, and provides fascinating insight into how specialist species like mosquitoes develop unique feeding strategies. "The real beauty of this study is: how cool is it that we found a syringe that can taste blood?!" says Vosshall.

A hormone that influences when and how frequently animals eat also appears to affect memory, USC scientists have found.

The study was published in the journal Current Biology on Sept. 17.

Animals and humans have the hormone ghrelin in their stomachs. Ghrelin tells animals, as well as humans, when they are hungry and helps regulate their metabolism, but scientists have never been certain how exactly it works.

To learn more about how ghrelin influences hunger, metabolism and memory, researchers at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences collaborated with international scientists on a study on rats.

They disrupted the ability of the ghrelin hormone to communicate to the vagus nerve, a nerve that signals from the gut to the brain, and then monitored the impact on their feeding and cognitive behaviors.

The rats were not anxious, but they began eating more frequently, said the study's lead and corresponding author Scott Kanoski, an Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at USC Dornsife.

The lack of ghrelin signaling to the vagus nerve "not only disrupted their blood glucose regulation, but they also gained more weight," Kanoski said.

"But it didn't seem to be affecting how much food they ate," he added. Instead, "they increased their frequency of eating, so that they consumed more meals and they compensated for that by reducing the size of their meals."

"We think that the increased eating frequency is related to their memory impairment. Memory from when you last ate will influence how soon you eat again. It led the rats in our study to eat sooner," said Kanoski.

Although the rats were able to remember where they had gotten food, they appeared to have forgotten that they had just eaten. Their stomachs were also slower to empty.

"The animals were impaired in a certain type of memory, called episodic memory," said study co-author Elizabeth Davis who was a post-doctoral researcher in Kanoski lab at USC Dornsife. "This is the type of memory that helps you remember your first day of school, or what you ate for breakfast yesterday.?

Davis said scientists are trying to learn more about ghrelin signaling through the vagus nerve because it may help researchers develop better therapies for metabolic-related diseases such as obesity and diabetes or other metabolic diseases, as well as others such as epilepsy and Alzheimer's disease.

However, "a great deal of further research will be needed to uncover how manipulation of ghrelin signaling through the vagus nerve may be valuable in human medicine," said Davis, who recently left USC for a private pharmaceutical company after completing her post-doctoral degree in biological sciences.

Dendritic spines are small protrusions from a neuron's dendrite membrane, where contact with neighboring axons is formed to receive synaptic input. These spines have different sizes, shapes, and density. Changes in the characteristics of the dendritic spines are associated with learning and memory and could be a feature of neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's disease and Huntington's disease. Due to the prominent importance of synaptic contacts, researchers put efforts into reliable visualization and analysis of the dendritic spines. Latter requires dividing them into groups based on the key morphological parameters.

Scientists from Peter the Great St.Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU) in collaboration with UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, TX, examined a novel approach to analyzing the dendritic spine shapes. Unlike the standard approach of dividing them into three or four predefined subclasses, they suggest considering the clusterization approach. The perspective and potential limitations of using a clusterization approach were published in the journal Frontiers in Synaptic Neuroscience.

Methods for analyzing and understanding the morphology of dendritic spines are critically important for many fields of neuroscience. Between axonal bouton and spines, there is a contact zone for transmission of information from one neuron to another. Despite the fact that neurons and dendrites are rather stable structures, the synaptic spines are very plastic and prone to changes.

"Dendritic spines are quite separate structures living on their own terms. They could change in response to neuronal activity. The strength and number of synaptic connections are correlated with learning and memory. Decreasing in quality or number of synaptic contacts could be a diagnostic feature of early-stage pathological processes. The first symptoms of neurodegeneration could appear much later because our brain has a certain margin of safety", - said Ekaterina Pchitskaya, postdoctoral fellow of Laboratory of molecular neurodegeneration at SPbPU.

Scientists studied relationships between dendritic spines shape, density, and functions. Previous studies mostly rely on the classification approach. It suggests that spines are divided into fixed categories such as thin, mushroom, and stubby. Mushroom spines have a large head and a small neck, separating them from a dendrite. They form strong synaptic connections, have a long lifetime, and thought to be connected with long-term memory. Thin spines have a similar structure, but their head is smaller relative to the neck. Researchers suppose they are responsible for forming new memories. Stubby spines usually do not have a neck. They are known to be the predominant types in the early stages of postnatal development but also could be found in adults as the result of the disappearance of the mushroom spines.

"We concluded that the classification approach is quite rough and suggest to address the highly dynamic nature of spines as a continuum of different shapes. Because of this, we decided to apply algorithms that rely on clusterization. We know quite well the association between the main dendritic subclasses and their functionality. Now there is a challenge to find a link between a concrete shape and functions of the spines", - added Ekaterina Pchitskaya.

Different types of microscopy were applied to obtain images of spines from cultured neurons, fixed brain slices, and intact brain tissue. These include two-photon, confocal, laser, and super-illumination or SIM microscopy. In previous studies, images of the dendritic spines were mainly investigated in 2D projection.

Scientists noted that research of the clusterization approach in dendritic spines' analysis is still at the early stage but is a very perspective approach that will be further developed by scientists in near future. "The size of dendritic spines is very small and comparable to the resolution of a confocal microscope. We need to achieve high-quality 3D images to define the key morphological parameters that will allow us to collect important data on dendritic spines changes. Thus we would be able to apply different algorithms of the clusterization and compare results", - noted Ekaterina Pchitskaya.

Natural killer T (NKT) cells, a type of immune cells known for their potent anti-cancer properties in murine tumor models, have been developed into a novel form of immunotherapy to treat patients with cancer.

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have genetically modified human NKT cells with a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) that enables them to specifically recognize and attack neuroblastoma, a form of childhood cancer. Expressed with the CAR is interleukin-15 (IL-15), a natural protein that supports NKT cell survival.

In the study, appearing in Nature Medicine, researchers present interim results from an ongoing clinical trial showing that the modified cells are safe, localize to tumors, and, in one of three patients, induced an objective response with regression of bone metastatic lesions.

Enhancing the tumor-fighting capabilities of NKT cells

The earliest CAR-modified cells were immune T cells. CAR T cells have been proven to be effective in treating certain types of leukemia and lymphoma. However, a number of challenges have been encountered in attempts to treat solid tumors with CAR T cells. Preclinical studies have demonstrated that NKT cells offer a novel approach that may enhance CAR-directed cancer immunotherapy.

"In addition to being able to effectively combat tumors in mouse models, the presence of NKT cells within solid tumors is associated with favorable outcomes in cancer patients," said co-corresponding author Dr. Leonid Metelitsa, professor of pediatric oncology at Baylor and Texas Children's Hospital and member of Baylor's Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Previous work has shown that NKT cells have a spectrum of anti-tumor activities. For instance, these cells migrate to tumor sites where they kill tumor-associated macrophages, a type of immune cell that can promote tumor growth and metastasis. Moreover, NKT cell activation indirectly promotes an anti-tumor response mediated by two other types of immune cells, NK and T cells.

"We think that NKT cells have substantial potential to serve as valuable contributors to the fight against cancer," said co-corresponding and first author Dr. Andras Heczey, assistant professor of pediatric oncology at Baylor and Texas Children's and member of the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center. "For the last 10 years, we have been focused on enhancing these cells' tumor-fighting abilities with the ultimate goal of bringing them to the clinic."

Preparing NKT for clinical trials

The journey to develop NKT cells into a form of immunotherapy involved finding solutions for a number of challenges. For example, NKT cells represent a low percentage of the cells in the blood, so Metelitsa, Heczey and their colleagues developed methods to grow NKT cell populations to clinical scale with high purity.

Although NKT cells can combat tumors in several ways, they all seem to be indirect. "Working with Dr. Gianpietro Dotti at UNC, we gave NKT cells a tool - the CAR - that enables them to attack tumors directly," Metelitsa said. "We also equipped them with IL-15, an additional tool to help them survive in the patient while they fight the tumor."

"The field of CAR cellular immunotherapy for cancer has been focused to date primarily on the manipulation of T lymphocytes," said Dotti, professor and director of cancer cellular immunotherapy at UNC Lindberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. "Based on previous clinical evidence that NKT infiltration within the tumor correlates with favorable clinical outcomes, we decided to leverage this intrinsic property of NKTs and to arm them with an additional bullet - the so-called CAR - to further potentiate their capacity to destroy the tumor."

With all these innovations in hand, the researchers moved on to test CAR NKT cells in patients with neuroblastoma in a clinical trial.

Clinical results

The clinical trial is ongoing, and results from the first three patients with heavily pre-treated, relapsed/refractory metastatic neuroblastoma are presented in this study. The patients were treated with CAR NKT cells, engineered from the patient's own white blood cells at the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Baylor and Texas Children's. Researchers engineered 95 percent pure NKT cells, a portion of which was armed with CAR-IL15.

"Our initial results show that NKT cells can be expanded to clinical scale with high purity, genetically engineered to express a CAR and IL15, and used to safely treat patients with advanced neuroblastoma," Metelitsa said.

"In addition, we found that CAR-IL15 NKT cells can be detected in the peripheral blood, where they expand postinfusion, traffic to bone metastases and the bone marrow, and exert anti-tumor activity," Heczey said. "We observed an objective response, elimination of at least 50 percent of metastases, in one of the patients."

Dr. Antonio Montalbano and other co-authors from Immunai, a company specializing in single-cell technologies and AI approaches for immunology, applied its state-of-the-art technology platform that allows for the analysis of all genes at the single-cell level in the CAR-NKT patient products. These analyses revealed new information about the heterogeneity of human NKT cells and molecular details of their therapeutic modifications. The researchers discovered nine subsets of NKT cells, and that the CAR receptor seemed to go preferentially to one set identified as cluster 3. Further studies will help understand the implications of these findings.

"Our study shows that it is possible to employ immune cells with natural anti-tumor capabilities and enhance their tumor fighting power with designer synthetic receptors, opening the possibility of applying this strategy to combat hard-to-treat solid tumors," Metelitsa said.

"By leveraging Immunai's end-to-end platform of artificial intelligence and computational analysis, we were able to zero in on CAR engineered NKT cells from the patients at the single-cell level. The findings from this study are critical toward developing more precise and effective therapies for cancer patients," said Montalbano, genomics technologies lead at Immunai. "We're looking forward to continuing our research with Baylor with the goal of advancing therapeutic discoveries, accelerating drug development and improving patient outcomes."

The NKT platform developed in this research at Baylor has been licensed to Kuur Therapeutics to advance clinical development.

"The Baylor-Kuur Therapeutics relationship is generating exactly the type of outcomes that we had envisioned at the outset," said Shawn Davis, vice president and chief ventures officer at Baylor. "The modified NKT platform developed in the Metelitsa laboratory is differentiated from other cell therapy platforms, offering novel routes for the treatment of cancers that have posed challenges for immunotherapeutic approaches. The encouraging findings announced today support the potential of NKT platform to provide promising alternatives, particularly for the treatment of solid tumors."