Culture

Children who experience neglect are seven times more likely than other abuse victims to have a teen pregnancy say University of Queensland researchers.

A study of the long-term impact of child abuse and neglect found that neglect was one of the most severe types of maltreatment when compared to emotional, sexual and physical abuse.

UQ researcher Emeritus Professor Jake Najman said the 20-year study found neglected children had the highest rates of teen pregnancy, and were at a three-to five-fold increased risk of failing school, unemployment, delinquency, anxiety, depression, psychosis and cannabis abuse problems.

"Although most children in our study experienced multiple types of maltreatment, child neglect and emotional abuse were specifically linked to the worst outcomes," Emeritus Professor Najman said.

"Neglected children, in particular, experienced higher rates of promiscuity, cannabis abuse and visual hallucinations as a result of their maltreatment."

Child neglect was defined in the study as not providing the child with necessary physical requirements (food, clothing or a safe place to sleep) and emotional requirements (comfort and emotional support) a child should receive, as determined by the Queensland Government's Department of Child Safety.

The study found children who experienced emotional abuse were also worse off than sexually or physically abused children.

"Emotionally abused kids were particularly prone to experiencing harassment, psychosis and injecting drugs," he said.

The researchers looked at data from 8000 women and children beginning in pregnancy and continuing into early adulthood.

Emeritus Professor Najman initiated the data project called Mater Hospital-University of Queensland Study of Pregnancy (MUSP) in 1981.

The study, led by UQ medical school and PhD graduate Dr Lane Strathearn, anonymously linked the data with state government reports of child abuse and neglect to examine how child maltreatment was associated with a broad range of outcomes over two decades, including cognitive, educational, psychological, sexual and physical health, and addiction.

Data showed that sexual and physical abuse led to fewer negative outcomes overall.

"Sexual abuse victims experienced early sexual activity, teen pregnancy, depressive symptoms, and post-traumatic stress disorder, but to a lesser severity than neglected children," he said.

"Physical abuse specifically tended to result in delinquency and externalising behavior problems as well as drug abuse."

Emeritus Professor Najman said the findings stressed the need to prioritise support for at-risk parents and young children.

"These problems are extremely serious and difficult to treat in adulthood," he said

"We need to do all that we can to prevent them from happening in the first place.

"Other studies have shown that simple interventions, such as nurses doing home visits for pregnant women and new mothers, can reduce rates of child maltreatment and help prevent some of these negative outcomes."

September 17, 2020 - SEOUL, South Korea - A new study conducted by IVI in collaboration with SK bioscience shows that single-dose and two-dose regimens of Vi-DT typhoid conjugate vaccine (TCV) are safe and immunogenic in children 6-23 months of age, a group with high rates of typhoid fever in resource-limited settings. The findings from this study newly published online in The Lancet's EClinicalMedicine describe the successful completion and analysis of a Phase II clinical trial of Vi-DT six months after vaccination.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends TCVs for use in endemic settings with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance providing the vaccines to eligible countries. However, with only one TCV pre-qualified by the WHO, demand currently exceeds supply. This study is a critical step toward gaining licensure and WHO-prequalification of an additional TCV to increase the global stockpile.

"Our findings show that a single dose of conjugated Vi-DT vaccine is safe and provides anti-Vi seroconversion rates similar to the two-dose regimen in children between 6 months and 2 years of age," said Dr. Birkneh Tilahun Tadesse, a Research Scientist at the International Vaccine Institute (IVI), which conducted the study at the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine in Manila, the Philippines.

"This is an important advance considering the significant burden of disease in infants and young children, and our goal remains developing a safe, single-dose vaccine with long-lasting immunogenicity to protect more children against typhoid fever," said Dr. Sushant Sahastrabuddhe, Director of the Typhoid Program at IVI.

Increasing global supply of typhoid conjugate vaccines

Vi-DT was developed at IVI and its technology was transferred in 2013 to SK bioscience in South Korea for manufacturing and commercialization. A Phase I safety trial of Vi-DT was first conducted in the Philippines with participants 2-45 years of age and showed that the vaccine was safe and immunogenic four weeks after first dose. Following the successful completion of a Phase II trial with infants under 2 years, large-scale Phase III studies with a single-dose of Vi-DT have started in the Philippines and Nepal in 2020.

The WHO recommends programmatic use of typhoid vaccines to prevent and control typhoid fever with preference for TCVs for their longer-lasting protection, fewer doses, and suitability for children under 2. (1) For treatment, antibiotics are currently the frontline intervention for typhoid fever, but drug-resistant typhoid has emerged across Asia and Africa, highlighting the need for sufficient supply of TCV and sustainable vaccination programs.

DALLAS (SMU) - Think spending time with your kids and spouse is the key to your happiness? You may actually be happier getting together with your friends, said SMU psychology professor Nathan Hudson. 

Hudson's research finds that people report higher levels of well-being while hanging with their friends than they do with their romantic partner or children. In fact, being around romantic partners predicted the least amount of happiness among these three groups, reveals a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.   

Hudson stressed, however, that the finding has more to do with the activity than the person it is shared with. That's because people tend to spend more of their time doing enjoyable activities with friends than they do with family members, who occasionally find themselves together doing unpleasant tasks like chores or caretaking duties.   

"Our study suggests that this doesn't have to do with the fundamental nature of kith versus kin relationships," he said. "When we statistically controlled for activities, the 'mere presence' of children, romantic partners, and friends predicted similar levels of happiness. Thus, this paper provides an optimistic view of family and suggests that people genuinely enjoy their romantic partners and children." 

More than 400 study participants were asked to think back on times with their friends or family - identify the activity they shared - and rate whether those experiences left them feeling various emotions, such as happy, satisfied, and with a sense of meaning. Each emotion was rated from 0 (almost never) to 6 (almost always).  

This information and other responses about how study participants felt at different times allowed Hudson and his co-authors, Richard E. Lucas and M. Brent Donnellan, to estimate rates of happiness with their friends and family. Lucas and Donnellan are both from Michigan State University.

The activities people most frequently perform while they're with their romantic partners include socializing, relaxing, and eating. People tend to do similar activities when they are with their friends, too. They just do a lot more of these enjoyable tasks while hanging with their friends and a lot less housework, the study found. For instance, 65 percent of experiences with friends involved socializing, but only 28 percent of the time shared with partners. 

Spending time with their children also meant more time doing things that had a negative association, such as housework and commuting.  

However, the activity that people reported most often with their offspring - childcare - was viewed positively. And overall, people report feeling similar levels of well-being while in the presence of friends, partners, and children once the activity was taken out of the equation.    

There's a lesson here, Hudson said. "It's important to create opportunities for positive experiences with romantic partners and children - and to really mentally savor those positive times. In contrast, family relationships that involve nothing but chores, housework, and childcare likely won't predict a lot of happiness."

Children who take oral steroids to treat asthma or autoimmune diseases have an increased risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, and blood clots, according to Rutgers researchers.

The study, which was published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, examined the records of more than 933,000 US children from ages 1 to 18 with or without autoimmune diseases, such as inflammatory bowel disease, juvenile arthritis or psoriasis. Among those without an autoimmune disease, about two in three children who received prescriptions for steroids had evidence of asthma.

"The rates of diabetes, high blood pressure and blood clots from oral steroids have been studied in large populations of adults. However, there are reasons to think these findings might be different in children, who not only tend to take steroids differently than adults but also have much lower baseline risks of developing these same cardiovascular and metabolic conditions. This study allowed us to put numbers on the association between oral steroids and rare, but potentially serious, complications in children," said study author Daniel Horton, an assistant professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

The researchers found that children who were receiving high steroid doses experienced these complications at much higher rates than children taking low doses or who had taken steroids previously. Among the complications studied, high blood pressure occurred most commonly with steroid treatment. All of these complications were more common among children with autoimmune diseases, independent of the steroid effect.

"While children receiving high-dose steroids were at substantially higher risk for developing diabetes, high blood pressure or blood clots relative to children not taking these medicines, the absolute risks of these complications were still small. The vast majority of children taking brief courses of steroids for conditions such as asthma, for instance, will not experience these complications," Horton said.

Researchers have gained a better understanding of the complexity of the environment in which T cells thrive and, by extension, the tolerance mechanisms of these cells which are an obstacle to cellular immunity.

Published in Nature Communications, the new study was directed by Dr. Marie-Ève Lebel, a post-doctoral intern at the Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital Research Centre, which is part of the Centre intégré universitaire de santé et de services sociaux de l'Est-de-l'Île-de-Montréal (CIUSSS-EMTL).

Ms. Lebel works in the laboratory of Dr. Heather Melichar, a researcher at CR-HMR and assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology, Infectiology and Immunology at Université de Montreal.

Carried out in collaboration with researchers at the Lady Davis Institute of McGill University and at Harvard University, Lebel's work promises to improve the efficacy of cell therapy.

T cells are an important component of the immune system, which allows the body to be protected against infections, as well as contributing to eliminating cancer cells that are recognized as being foreign to the organism.

The use of the immune system to destroy tumour cells, called immunotherapy, has not only allowed for an increase in the survival rate of cancer patients, but has also meant a cure for patients with advanced stage cancer and/or those patients for whom traditional therapies have failed.

Nevertheless, several obstacles can hinder the efficacy of immunotherapy due to T cell tolerance mechanisms that produce a state of immune non-response to a specific antigen. Lebel has focused on understanding these tolerance mechanisms in order to counteract the inability of certain T cells to attack diseased cells.

She and her colleagues have been able to identify certain factors that influence the development of T cells by better understanding the environment in which they develop and the interaction between cells.

Ultimately, these elements have a major impact on the body´s capacity to control an infectious agent, or even the growth of tumour cells.

"This discovery is a powerful scientific breakthrough, as these results will help us identify new targets and approaches to increase the anti-cancer activity of T cells in order to improve the survival of our patients," said Dr. Denis Claude Roy, director of the Institut universitaire en hémato-oncologie et en thérapie cellulaire (IUHOTC) and the Centre d'excellence en thérapie cellulaire (CETC) Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital, in Montreal.

BACKGROUND

Tracking the passage of time to the second is critical for motor control, learning and cognition, including the ability to anticipate future events. While the brain depends on its circadian clock to measure hours and days, the circadian clock does not have a second hand.

Instead the brain measures seconds through changing patterns of cellular activity. Much like a line of falling dominoes, each neuron activates the next, and time is marked by the neuron that is currently active. By analogy, if a sequence of falling dominoes takes 10 seconds from start to finish, one can deduce that 5 seconds has elapsed when the middle domino falls.

FINDINGS

UCLA neuroscientists introduced mice to two different scents. The mice learned that one odor predicted the arrival of a sweet liquid reward after three seconds, while the other odor predicted a reward after six seconds. The mice started licking the spout earlier in anticipation of the reward after they sniffed the first scent than when they smelled the second.

Recordings in the striatum and premotor cortex of the brain revealed that changing patterns of neural activity in both regions encoded time--consistent with the notion that the brain has multiple clocks. But the pattern in the striatum was closer to the sequence of falling dominoes--a pattern referred to as a neural sequence--compared to the patterns in a motor area that provides input to the striatum.

IMPLICATIONS

Timing is a fundamental part of human behavior, learning and thought. By revealing how and where the brain counts and represents seconds, the UCLA discovery will deepen scientists' understanding of normal and abnormal brain function.

What The Study Did: Researchers in this observational study examined the association between wearing eyeglasses daily and susceptibility to COVID-19.

Authors: Yiping Wei, M.D., Ph.D., and Jianjun Xu, M.D., Ph.D., of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University in Nanchang, China, are the corresponding authors.

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

(doi:10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2020.3906)

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

For most vertebrates, losing a limb is permanent, but a lucky few species -- such as salamanders and tadpoles -- have the ability to completely regrow complex body parts. Understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying this phenomenon may be the key to developing new kinds of regenerative medicine, giving us the power to heal spinal cord injuries and other severely damaged tissues.

A new study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B from researchers at the University of Chicago and Universidade Federal do Pará explores this regenerative ability in the tails of West African lungfish for the first time, and finds that the process shares many of the same traits as tail regeneration in salamanders. Their results indicate that this trait was likely found in a common ancestor - and provide a new opportunity for better understanding and harnessing the mechanisms of limb regrowth.

The inspiration for this research grew out of a postdoctoral fellowship in the Shubin Lab at UChicago. After completing his postdoctoral studies in evolutionary biology, Igor Schneider, PhD, accepted a faculty position in Belém, Brazil, where he found the diversity of the Amazon rainforest at his fingertips. He became interested in exploring evolutionary traits in new animal models and ultimately narrowed his focus to regenerative biology. He began exploring mechanisms of regeneration in the lungfish - first in South American species, and then in West African lungfish.

"When we're talking about how a salamander regrows a lost tail, we're talking about regrowing all sorts of tissues," said Schneider, an Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at the Universidade Federal do Pará and a Visiting Associate Professor of Organismal Biology at UChicago. "Vertebrae, spinal cord, muscle, it's a very complex structure. Mammals, birds and most reptiles can't regenerate tissue like that, but salamanders can. We know some of the biology of how that happens, but we don't really know much about how it evolved, or when. Did our ancestors have the ability to regenerate a lost limb? Did we lose this capacity as mammals, or did salamanders get lucky enough to invent it later on?"

One way to answer this question is to determine whether or not the trait existed in the common ancestor between humans and salamanders. To do this, the researchers took a phylogenetic approach, looking for additional relatives that possess a similar regenerative trait. Lungfish are unique in that they are "our closest fish cousin," Schneider said. "They can regenerate their tails, but they are also our closest relative in the water. This lets us explore whether or not this regenerative ability was also likely to be present in our common ancestor, without having to go too deep into our phylogenetic tree."

Lungfish represent an ideal model for more reasons than one. "These animals have the right anatomy to study this question and can also be easily managed in the lab," said Neil Shubin, PhD, the Robert R. Bensley Distinguished Service Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at UChicago. "Lungfish are much more closely related to humans than other common species that have regenerative abilities, like zebrafish. For instance, lungfish have a humerus in their fin, just like the bone in our upper arms. They have lungs that are similar to ours. There is a suite of characteristics suggesting that these animals are much more closely related to us than zebrafish."

The investigators were initially challenged with establishing the lungfish as a model from the ground up, learning how to care for the fish in a laboratory setting, sampling tissue and obtaining DNA sequencing data to get a clearer picture of the animal's genetics, and testing new antibodies and techniques in a brand-new species.

What they found was that the West African lungfish could not only fully regenerate a lost tail, but that the regeneration used similar molecular mechanisms to the limb regrowth seen in amphibians. This includes a critical signaling molecule, Shh, which plays a key role in the growth and organization of the brain and body during embryonic development. This provides support for the hypothesis that this type of regeneration was present in a common ancestor of these species -- and of humans.

But perhaps even more interesting than the similarities in regeneration processes are the differences. "What I found particularly intriguing were some of the aspects of tail regrowth that are unique to the lungfish," said Schneider. "These animals are known for having gigantic genomes -- up to 40 times as large as a human's -- because their genomes contain a lot of virus-derived DNA elements, called transposons. During regeneration, some of those genes turn on, but we don't know if it's just because they're close to other key genes in this process, or if it's because these genes are actively involved in regeneration. Some of this has been seen in amphibian regeneration as well, so it begs the question of whether or not these transposons play a particular role in regeneration."

In addition to providing insights on the evolutionary origin of this trait, the researchers say this new animal model will help further the field of regenerative medicine. "Often, when you have limited models, you'll try to understand a process very well in a given species, and then extrapolate what you learn to other species," Schneider said. "But you might encounter things that are unique to the species you're studying that won't always apply to other animals. Understanding phenomena like regeneration in a comparative way, looking at how other organisms are doing this, can help us find general themes in regeneration."

Further clarifying the evolution of limb regeneration in lungfish and other species, along with their underlying mechanisms, may uncover new treatments for severe wounds, spinal cord injuries and amputations. "Ultimately, we're trying to understand the ancestral tool kit used by these species to conduct the regeneration process," said Shubin. "This will help us figure out what parts of that tool kit we as humans have lost, at the genetic and cellular level, and more importantly, what parts can we recreate?"

The study, "Salamander-like tail regeneration in the West African lungfish," was supported by the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development Universal Program (Grant 403248/2016-7), the CAPES-Humboldt Foundation Fellowship, CAPES/DAAD PROBRAL (Grant 88881.198758/2018-01), MCTIC/FINEP/FNDCT/AT Amazonia Legal to I.S. This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001. Additional authors include Kellen Matos Verissimo, Aline Cutrim Dragalzew, Sylvain Darnet, Wainna Renata Barroso Mendes, Ciro Ariel dos Santos Neves, Erika Monteiro dos Santos, Cassia Nazare de Sousa Moraes, and Josane de Freitas Sousa of the Universidade Federal do Pará; Louise Neiva Pereze of the Universidade Federal do Pará and the Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science; Nadia Belina Fröbisch of the Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science; Gayani Senevirathne of the University of Chicago; and Ahmed Elewa of the Karolinska Institute.

DALLAS - Sept. 15, 2020 - Conditions related to obesity, including inflammation and leaky gut, leave the lungs of obese patients more susceptible to COVID-19 and may explain why they are more likely to die from the disease, UTSW scientists say in a new article published online in eLife. They suggest that drugs used to lower inflammation in the lungs could prove beneficial to obese patients with the disease.

COVID-19, caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, varies widely in clinical severity: Some patients are asymptomatic while others have devastating forms that have led to more than 905,000 deaths worldwide.

Several pre-existing conditions have been shown to increase the risk of COVID-19 severity, including obesity and Type 2 diabetes - two conditions that often go hand-in-hand, says Philipp Scherer, Ph.D., director of the Touchstone Center for Diabetes Research and a professor of internal medicine and cell biology at UT Southwestern.

For example, he highlights the Dallas County data that reports the disturbing fact that 47 percent of patients who have died from COVID-19 from March to August had diabetes. In addition, 31 percent of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in the county during that same period had diabetes and 17 percent were obese without diabetes (see graphic).

Correlations have been found in many other countries between obesity and COVID-19 deaths. However, the mechanisms behind why obesity contributes to severe COVID-19 are unknown.

Scherer and his colleagues, including Manasi Shah, M.D., an endocrinology fellow at UTSW, and Ilja L. Kruglikov, Ph.D., Dr.Sci., a researcher at Wellcomet GmbH in Karlsruhe, Germany, explore this phenomenon in the new opinion piece.

One idea for the increased risk, they suggest, is that fat has high amounts of ACE2 receptors, entryways for the SARS-CoV-2 virus on cells. The increased numbers of these receptors in obese patients could lead to a higher viral load, a factor thought to lead to poor outcomes for COVID-19 patients.

These ACE2 receptors can be shed into circulation and end up in the lungs, specifically increasing SARS-CoV-2 concentration in lung tissue. In addition, the increased ACE2 expression in obese individuals spurs an imbalance in chemical signals that induce inflammation, fibrosis, and leaky blood vessels, all of which have the potential to cause a more severe COVID-19 infection.

However, Scherer and his colleagues note other conditions linked with obesity are even more powerful contributors to increased disease severity. One of these is a higher overall inflammatory state that tends to accompany obesity, which primes many tissues - including the lungs - for a poor response to infection. Another is the "leaky gut" that's also typically present in obese individuals: Their intestinal cell lining develop gaps, allowing small amounts of intestinal contents to spill into circulation.

Among these contents leaking out are intestinal bacteria and their toxins, including lipopolysaccharide (LPS), a protein produced by gram-negative bacteria such as intestinal Escherichia coli that cause a severe inflammatory response. Studies have shown that obese individuals have elevated levels of both bacteria and LPS in their lung tissue - even in the absence of infection.

When these patients are infected with COVID-19, Scherer and his colleagues hypothesize, it pushes an already vulnerable system over the edge. Synergistic interactions between damage caused by the virus, damage already present from intestinal flora that migrated to the lungs from a leaky gut, and an elevated inflammatory state could lead to a more severe infection than in the absence of these factors.

"It's all about the system already being primed," Scherer says. "When the virus comes into this system, the lungs are already at risk. More damage and more inflammation could push these patients over the edge and cause a perfect storm."

He notes that dexamethasone, a steroid that's already shown promise in clinical trials, could be especially helpful in obese patients. This treatment reduces inflammation systemically, taking a broad approach to reducing this damaging state. A more targeted approach might be to use PPAR? agonists, a class of drugs that have multiple effects including lowering inflammation, reducing ACE2 expression, lowering blood sugar, reducing LPS levels in circulation, and preventing fat cells in the lung from converting into a fibrotic cell type that can impair breathing. Unlike dexamethasone, PPAR? agonists don't impair immunity and have fewer common side effects.

"There may be an overabundance of currently proposed treatments for COVID-19," Scherer says. "However, we believe our suggestions are very much based on facts and could have a high chance of improving outcomes while avoiding any harm."

Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have found a completely new method to check the electronic properties of oxide materials. This opens the door to even tinier components and perhaps more sustainable electronics.

"We found a completely new way to control the conductivity of materials at the nanoscale," says Professor Dennis Meier at NTNU's Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

One of the best aspects of the new method is that it does not interfere with other properties of the material, like previous methods did. This makes it possible to combine different functions in the same material, which is an important advance for nanoscale technology.

"What's really great is that this project is being run from NTNU and involves people from several departments. We also benefit from key facilities like the NanoLab and the TEM (transmission electron microscopy) Gemini Centre. This interdisciplinary approach shows what we can do when we work together," Meier says.

A new article in the journal Nature Materials addresses the findings. The article has attracted international attention even before being printed.

The possibilities offered by the discovery were discussed in the August issue of Nature Materials by leading experts in the field.

We rarely think about the technology that lies behind turning on a light bulb or our use of electrical appliances. The control of charged particles on a minute scale is simply part of everyday life.

But on a much smaller nanoscale, scientists are now routinely able to manipulate the flow of electrons. This opens up possibilities for even smaller components in computers and mobile phones that use barely any electricity.

A basic problem remains, however. You can simulate nanoscale electronic components, but some of the most promising concepts seem mutually exclusive. This means that you can't combine multiple components to create a network.

"Utilizing quantum phenomena requires extreme precision to maintain the right ratio of different substances in the material while changing the chemical structure of the material, which is necessary if you want to create artificial synapses to simulate the properties of nerve pathways as we know them from biology," Meier says.

Collaborative interdepartmental efforts, led by Professor Meier, have succeeded in circumventing some of these problems by developing a new approach.

"The new approach is based on exploiting 'hidden' irregularities at the atomic level, so-called anti-Frenkel defects," Meier says.

The researchers have managed to create such defects themselves, thus enabling an insulating material to become electrically conducting.

Defects in the material are related to its various properties. However, the anti-Frenkel defects can be manipulated in such a way that changes in the conductivity do not affect the actual structure of the material or change its other properties, such as magnetism and ferroelectricity.

"Maintaining the structural integrity makes it possible to design multifunctional devices using the same material. This is a big step towards new technology on a nanoscale," says Meier.

The research team includes Professor S. M. Selbach from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Professors Antonius T. J. van Helvoort and Jaakko Akola and Associate Professors Per Erik Vullum and David Gao from the Department of Physics, and Associate Professor Jan Torgersen from the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering.

Another advantage of the new approach is that researchers can erase components on a nanoscale using a simple heat treatment. Then you can change or upgrade the components in the material afterwards.

"Maybe we'll be able to use our electronic gadgets longer instead of recycling them or throwing them away. We can just upgrade them instead. This is fundamentally much more environmentally friendly," Meier says.

Planning is already underway for further attempts to combine different components. This work will be carried out by the FACET group at NTNU's Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

The work is supported by the European Research Council through an ERC Consolidator Grant that Meier received last year. The renowned Center for Quantum Spintronics (QuSpin) is also involved. The goal is to utilize both charge and spin in the electrons to give us a more environmentally friendly future.

"You have to eat!" It's a sentiment that illustrates how central food is to Italian culture, but the woman who uttered these words also happens to be struggling with bulimia nervosa.

Carmela* is one of many Italian-Australian women who has a conflicted relationship with food which is inextricably linked to culture, according to University of South Australia researcher Michelle Caruso.

The social work PhD student has undertaken the first study looking at how Italian culture can influence women's experiences of disordered eating in contemporary Australia.

In her interviews with Italian-Australian women in Adelaide, Caruso explored how many of the women were 'plied with food' as young children, with meals linked to family, culture and identity.

"Many of these women were not allowed to determine their own food consumption during childhood, adolescence and even into adulthood," Caruso explains. "Food was habitually pushed and forced onto them, resulting in early conflicts which have manifested as eating issues in their later years."

She deliberately uses the term "disordered eating," linking it to culture, in contrast to "eating disorder," which infers a medical or psychiatric condition.

"Women diagnosed with binge eating, anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are typically treated based on psychiatry. One of the greatest weaknesses of the psycho-medical approach is its failure to contextualise the disordered eating experiences of women from diverse cultural backgrounds," Caruso says.

The researcher chose Italian women for her study, but her findings could equally apply to many other migrant women with entrenched cultural beliefs around food, she says.

Previous research shows that Italian women have a higher prevalence of disordered eating than women in comparable European countries such as Spain, Germany and the Netherlands.

Caruso identified three key themes central to the women in her study: "il cibo è tutto, il cibo è amore" (food is everything, food is love), "fare la bella figura" (to make a good impression), and "il mio piatto" (it's my plate).

"All expressions illustrate the significant cultural symbolism and meanings attached to food in Italy. In the Italian culture, everything is cooked with love. Food and feeding are important processes which help build and maintain relationships, connections and a sense of home and belonging," Caruso says.

"The childhood memories of the women I interviewed are mostly positive, connected to pleasure, love, safety, protection and comfort. But the women also expressed a sense of lacking autonomy, control and personal power associated with their consumption of food. This led to an ongoing complex, conflicted connection with food.

"Through their disordered eating experiences, the women in this study were able to construct a sense of power, control and self-agency, where they were able to decide what to consume or reject."

The relationship with food is so central to the Italian culture that many families are unwilling to accept that food has anything but positive connotations, Caruso says.

"In the eyes of an Italian mother or grandmother, rejecting food is akin to personal rejection. And because women with disordered eating don't want to bring shame or embarrassment on their family, they are unlikely to admit they have a problem and know their family probably won't accept it if they do try to discuss it."

Australia - like many western cultures - puts a high value on female thinness, while Italian culture values food and eating together, placing significant conflicting pressures on women from Italian backgrounds, Caruso says.

"Migrants hold onto their food practices so tightly when they migrate to another country. It's a way of staying connected with their identity and their culture."

Caruso says it's time that health practitioners and ethnic communities recognised the part that culture plays in disordered eating and ensured that women were given the appropriate support.

Humans, like other animals, have the ability to constantly adapt to new situations. Researchers at the Brain Research Institute of the University of Zurich have utilized a mouse model to reveal which neurons in the brain are in command in guiding adaptive behavior. Their new study contributes to our understanding of decision-making processes in healthy and infirm people.

Greetings without handshakes, mandatory masks in trains, sneezing into elbow crooks - the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically illustrates how important it can be for humans to shed habitual behaviors and to learn new ones. Animals, too, must be capable of rapidly adapting to changes in environmental conditions.

"The plasticity of the brain forms the foundation of this ability," says Fritjof Helmchen, the co-director of the Brain Research Institute at the University of Zurich, who also heads the Neuroscience Center Zurich. "But the biological processes that enable this amazing feat are still poorly understood." Helmchen's team has now successfully taken a first step towards illuminating these processes. Their study, just published in the scientific journal Nature, demonstrates that the orbitofrontal cortex, a region of the cerebral cortex that sits behind the eyes, is capable of reprogramming neurons located in sensory areas.

Observing brain cells in the act of relearning

In their experiments with mice, the researchers simulated a relearning process under controlled conditions and investigated what happens in the brain at the level of individual neurons during that process. The researchers first trained the animals to lick every time they touched a strip of coarse-grit sandpaper with their whiskers and rewarded the response with a drink of sucrose water. However, the mice were not allowed to lick when they brushed their whiskers against fine-grain sandpaper; if they did, they were punished with a mild irritating noise. Once the mice understood how to perform their task, the tables were then turned. The reward was now delivered after whisking against fine-grain and not coarse-grit sandpaper. The mice quickly learned this new, opposite behavior pattern after little practice.

A higher authority remaps cells

During the training, the neuroscientists employed molecular biological and imaging techniques to analyze the function of individual neurons in the brain cortices involved. Their analysis revealed that a group of brain cells in the orbitofrontal cortex is particularly active during the relearning process. These cells have long axons that extend into the sensory area in mice that processes tactile stimuli. The cells in this area initially followed the old activity pattern, but some of them then adapted to the new situation. When specific neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex were deliberately inactivated, relearning was impaired and the neurons in the sensory area no longer exhibited modification in their activity.

"We were thus able to demonstrate that a direct connection from the orbitofrontal cortex to sensory areas of the brain exists and that some neurons get remapped there," explains Helmchen. "The plasticity of those cells and the instructions they receive from the higher-order orbitofrontal cortex appear to be crucial to behavioral flexibility and our ability to adapt to new situations."

"It has long been known that the orbitofrontal cortex is involved in decision-making processes". It is in charge, to a certain degree, of enabling us to react appropriately and successfully to exogenous circumstances. "But the neural circuits underlying this function were unknown until now," says Abhishek Banerjee, lead author of the study, now an Associate Professor at Newcastle University, UK. "This mode of communication and control across distant areas of the brain is truly remarkable."

Understanding disorders better

The researchers believe that the fundamental processes they observed in mice take place in a similar way in the human brain as well. "This deepened knowledge about complex brain processes involved in decision making is important," explains Helmchen. "Our research findings may contribute to a better understanding of brain disorders in which the flexibility in decision making is impaired, as it is, for example in various forms of autism and schizophrenia." Clearly, he says, having difficulties or being unable to adapt one's behavior poses a severe problem for affected people.

Researchers at the Western Pacific Tropical Research Center at the University of Guam have documented what biologists call a "host shift" of the coconut rhinoceros beetle in Guam. The beetle, first documented as an invasive species in Guam in 2007, has been devastating the island's ubiquitous coconut trees and is now also burrowing into Guam's endangered native cycad tree, Cycas micronesica. The results were published in June in Volume 13 of the Communicative & Integrative Biology journal.

The fact that coconut trees were the second most abundant tree on the island prior to the beetle's invasion was one factor that enabled the beetle's explosive population growth. The sustained efforts to develop an effective biological control program have not been effective, allowing the pest to establish a foothold throughout the island.

"Our initial alarm after documenting the CRB burrowing activity on cycad trees was the fact that Guam's cycad species was actually the most abundant tree on the island only 20 years ago," said Irene Terry, one of the authors of the study. "Where else have the most abundant and second most abundant forest species been threatened by the recent invasion of one non-native herbivore?"

The authors used direct measurements of starch concentrations of the plant tissues to show that the island's heavily damaged coconut trees have declined in starch content so greatly that the host shift may have occurred in order to exploit the large doses of starch that are available in the cycad stems.

"The CRB behaviors that we documented fit the 'ecological fitting theory,' which states that shifting to a new host species is due to compatible resources or signals in the new host," said Terry, who has been studying the relationships among insect herbivores and the native cycad plant since 2005. This kind of host shift is opportunistic and may occur without any co-evolution processes.

Prior to the beetle's host shift, the cycad population on Guam was already suffering from chronic damage by numerous non-native insect and mammal herbivores, resulting in 96% mortality of the cycad population in the past 15 years. The WPTRC cycad team's sustained research has revealed that the severity of damage by each herbivore species has exhibited an undulating pattern, with the most severe damage at any point in time changing from species to species.

"When the CRB damage in our managed gardens began showing up on several cycad species, we knew that it was only a matter of time before the CRB host shifts included Guam's native cycad," said Benjamin Deloso, who curates the University of Guam's interpretive cycad garden.

The beetle's burrowing activity in managed gardens at the University of Guam also includes highly diverse cycad species that originate from Asia, Australia, Central America, and the Caribbean regions.

"The damaged species included two families and four genera, so the dietary needs of the coconut rhinoceros beetle appear to be met at the cycad Order level," Deloso said.

The unexpected addition of the coconut rhinoceros beetle to the list of cycad herbivores reveals the need for continued observation of the cycad population by species experts so conservationists can best understand which of the threats are most in need of mitigation.

The authors discussed the absence of international cycad experts from the contemporary conservation projects as a component of why the damage from the beetle was able to become established throughout the island without notice, and the continued absence of international experts from ongoing funded conservation projects will increase the probability of local extinction of the only native gymnosperm species in the region.

Researchers have shown how industries could work together to recycle cigarette butts into bricks, in a step-by-step implementation plan for saving energy and solving a global littering problem.

Over 6 trillion cigarettes are produced each year globally, resulting in 1.2 million tonnes of toxic waste dumped into the environment.

RMIT University researchers have previously shown fired-clay bricks with 1% recycled cigarette butt content are as strong as normal bricks and use less energy to produce.

Their analysis showed if just 2.5% of global annual brick production incorporated 1% cigarette butts, this would offset total cigarette production each year.

The research team has now developed a detailed plan for bringing the brickmaking and waste management industries together, to implement cigarette butt recycling into bricks at mass scale.

Lead researcher Associate Professor Abbas Mohajerani said cigarette butts were saturated with toxic chemicals, including over 60 known to cause cancer.

"Firing butts into bricks is a reliable and practical way to deal with this terrible environmental problem, while at the same time cutting brickmaking production costs," Mohajerani said.

"We need to do far more to stop cigarette butts from polluting our streets, rivers and oceans, and prevent them leaching harmful toxins into our environment.

"Our ultimate goal is a world free of cigarette butt pollution: our industry implementation plan outlines the practical steps needed to bring this vision to reality."

The plan, published in a special issue of the journal Materials, shows how cigarette butts can be collected and recycled on an industrial scale.

Different incorporation methods are outlined - using whole butts, pre-shredded butts, or a pre-mix where the butts have already been incorporated into other brickmaking materials.

Requirements for maintaining health and safety are also methodically detailed, with analysis showing how risks can be mitigated for both industrial brickmaking and handmade bricks.

The new study also details for the first time the types of harmful bacteria found on cigarette butts, analyses how heavy metals can leach from them into the environment and examines the energy value of butts in the brickmaking process.

Energy savings

By analysing the butts' energy value, the team in the School of Engineering at RMIT showed the incorporation of 1% cigarette butt content would reduce the energy required to fire bricks by 10%.

"It takes up to 30 hours to heat and fire bricks, so this is a significant financial saving," Mohajerani said.

It can take many years for cigarette butts to break down, while heavy metals like arsenic, chromium, nickel and cadmium trapped in the filters leach into soil and waterways.

During firing, however, these metals and pollutants are trapped and immobilised in the bricks.

Bricks made with cigarette butts are also lighter and provide better insulation - meaning reduced household heating and cooling costs.

About 25 to 30 billion filtered cigarettes are smoked in Australia each year, with about 7 billion butts littered.

Mohajerani, who has spent over 15 years researching sustainable methods for cigarette butt recycling, has also developed technology for incorporating butts into asphalt concrete.

He said the technical solutions would need to be backed up by more stringent laws and harsher littering penalties.

"Local authorities would also need to provide more specialised bins for cigarette butts, to both prevent littering and enable smooth collection for the brickmaking process," he said.

"My dream is a dedicated brickmaking recycling facility in every country, that can recycle butts and solve this pollution problem for good."

Climatic conditions are changing at an unprecedented rate, affecting mainly fish, amphibians and reptiles, ectothermic animals that are unable to generate their own internal heat. With heat waves and rising temperatures, these organisms experience not only increased growth rates and heat stress, but also further ageing.

Fish, amphibians and reptiles are animals known as ectotherms, which means they cannot actively control their internal temperature and are regulated by that of the environment. Faced with an increase in temperature caused by climate change, these organisms will experience a rise in their body temperature that will have serious consequences for them.

In fact, environmental changes are already altering them, as several studies have shown over the last few years. Their growth rates are already faster when temperatures are higher, and they are subject to heat stress from extreme events such as heat waves.

"Heat waves take animals out of their thermal preferences, to the point even of reaching their temperature tolerance limits. The longer and more frequent the heat waves, the greater their impact on the physiology of ectotherms," Germán Orizaola, researcher at the Joint Institute for Biodiversity Research of the University of Oviedo, explains to SINC.

Now, this expert, together with an international team of scientists, has reviewed other effects of the temperature increase on fish, amphibians and reptiles in the scientific literature. The results of this opinion article, published in the journal Global Change Biology, suggest that there will be a climate change impact on their ageing rates.

"Higher growth rates will generate physiological imbalances in ectotherms, increasing, for example, oxidative damage to the proteins and DNA, which may also affect the telomeres, the repeated sections of non-coding DNA located at the ends of chromosomes," says Orizaola.

Telomeres, which provide stability and protect coding sequences from loss at the end of the chromosome, can be shortened or lost each time a cell splits. The faster a cell divides and the higher the levels of oxidative stress, the faster the length of the telomere is eroded.

"As telomeres protect DNA, the faster the telomeres are lost, the faster the cells degrade and the body ages. This clear link between climate change and ageing is described for the first time in our article," the researcher explains.

Shorter life expectancy in populations

This rapid ageing caused by climate change can have serious consequences for natural populations. "One rather clear consequence is that if the life expectancy of individuals in a population is reduced, their ability to produce offspring may be compromised," warns Orizaola.

With a reduced lifespan, any external phenomenon such as a severe drought, flood, disease, or heat wave will reduce the recovery capacity of populations and the time to produce enough offspring will decrease. Furthermore, as scientists stress, the effects on the ageing of a species can affect other species that are part of its ecological network, for example, if it affects the number of prey, competitors, parasites, etc.

"This is a field that has barely been explored so far, but everything indicates that it could be another of the possible problems facing wildlife that is exposed to climate change," stresses the co-author from the University of Oviedo. To his mind, knowing the effects of the climate crisis on ectotherm ageing would help to design better conservation and management programmes.

"For example, if a species (say, a fish) is caught for commercial reasons, it is important to know that climate change can reduce its lifespan when catch rates are defined and population demographics are evaluated," he says.

On the other hand, species that are already endangered and with a small population size may be even more threatened if life expectancy is to be reduced, so conservation measures should be implemented. With other species, whose habitat may be affected by rising temperatures, "it may be necessary to consider relocating these individuals to a more suitable habitat," the scientist concludes.