Culture

WASHINGTON -- Individuals who can unconsciously predict complex patterns, an ability called implicit pattern learning, are likely to hold stronger beliefs that there is a god who creates patterns of events in the universe, according to neuroscientists at Georgetown University.

Their research, reported in the journal, Nature Communications, is the first to use implicit pattern learning to investigate religious belief. The study spanned two very different cultural and religious groups, one in the U.S. and one in Afghanistan.

The goal was to test whether implicit pattern learning is a basis of belief and, if so, whether that connection holds across different faiths and cultures. The researchers indeed found that implicit pattern learning appears to offer a key to understanding a variety of religions.

"Belief in a god or gods who intervene in the world to create order is a core element of global religions," says the study's senior investigator, Adam Green, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology and Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience at Georgetown, and director of the Georgetown Laboratory for Relational Cognition.

"This is not a study about whether God exists, this is a study about why and how brains come to believe in gods. Our hypothesis is that people whose brains are good at subconsciously discerning patterns in their environment may ascribe those patterns to the hand of a higher power," he adds.

"A really interesting observation was what happened between childhood and adulthood," explains Green. The data suggest that if children are unconsciously picking up on patterns in the environment, their belief is more likely to increase as they grow up, even if they are in a nonreligious household. Likewise, if they are not unconsciously picking up on patterns around them, their belief is more likely to decrease as they grow up, even in a religious household.

The study used a well-established cognitive test to measure implicit pattern learning. Participants watched as a sequence of dots appeared and disappeared on a computer screen. They pressed a button for each dot. The dots moved quickly, but some participants - the ones with the strongest implicit learning ability - began to subconsciously learn patterns hidden in the sequence, and even press the correct button for the next dot before that dot actually appeared. However, even the best implicit learners did not know that the dots formed patterns, showing that the learning was happening at an unconscious level.

The U.S. section of the study enrolled a predominantly Christian group of 199 participants from Washington, D.C. The Afghanistan section of the study enrolled a group of 149 Muslim participants in Kabul. The study's lead author was Adam Weinberger, a postdoctoral researcher in Green's lab at Georgetown and at the University of Pennsylvania. Co-authors Zachery Warren and Fathali Moghaddam led a team of local Afghan researchers who collected data in Kabul.

"The most interesting aspect of this study, for me, and also for the Afghan research team, was seeing patterns in cognitive processes and beliefs replicated across these two cultures," says Warren. "Afghans and Americans may be more alike than different, at least in certain cognitive processes involved in religious belief and making meaning of the world around us. Irrespective of one's faith, the findings suggest exciting insights into the nature of belief."

"A brain that is more predisposed to implicit pattern learning may be more inclined to believe in a god no matter where in the world that brain happens to find itself, or in which religious context," Green adds, though he cautions that further research is necessary.

"Optimistically," Green concludes, "this evidence might provide some neuro-cognitive common ground at a basic human level between believers of disparate faiths."

Frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) is a type of dementia that appears earlier in life than Alzheimer's disease (AD). Both FTLD and AD, along with several other neurodegenerative diseases, are marked by the appearance and clustering of the protein "tau" in nerve cells. However, there is much left to be explored about this mechanism.

Now, a team of researchers from various collaborating universities and hospitals in Japan has uncovered crucial molecular details regarding tau's activity, promising to revolutionize the therapy of tau-induced neurodegenerative diseases. Their findings were recently published in the journal BRAIN.

Tau-induced neurodegenerative diseases include not only FTLD and AD, but also an array of conditions like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), and corticobasal degeneration (CBD). Many people from various age groups are affected by the tau-induced diseases, but the effective therapeutic strategy against tau aggregation is yet to be available. One reason behind this gap is that, despite a lot of effort and resource invested, the exact mechanism of the action of tau inside the cell is still unclear. Knowing this will help us pin down an appropriate treatment strategy.

The aforementioned research team, led by Dr Shinsuke Ishigaki of Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, has now discovered new layers of complexities hidden in the cellular activities of tau. The researchers report a novel role of tau that is specific for FTLD spectrum diseases, and as per their findings published in BRAIN, these finer mechanisms specifically contribute to the development of conditions such as FTLD, ALS, PSP, and CBD, but not in AD and Pick's diseases.

However, while this research puts tau in the spotlight, it all started with another related protein. Dr Ishigaki explains the reasons for arriving at their study question: "Earlier, while studying FTLD mouse models, we found two interacting proteins, fused in sarcoma (FUS) and splicing factor, proline- and glutamine-rich (SFPQ), were important for the generation of functional tau. The interaction of FUS and SFPQ inside the nucleus is disrupted due to mutations in FUS results in neurodegeneration by the accumulation of a dysfunctional variant '4-repeat tau', causing FTLD in mouse."

So how did the researchers link their findings of mouse model to the tau-induced pathogenesis in humans? They studied the interaction of SFPQ and FUS in brain autopsy samples of 142 deceased individuals with various neurodegenerative diseases like FUS-related ALS/FTLD, TDP-43-related ALS/FTLD, PSP, AD, or Pick's disease, with the latter disease used as a control to compare the results.

Using their findings, the researchers have proposed a unique model of "imbalanced accumulation of tau" in cells. As per this new model, FUS and SFPQ regulate the processing of MAPT, the gene that "codes" for tau, specifically by removing a genetic region called exon 10. In normal conditions, the balance in the ratio of variants "4-repeat tau" and "3-repeat tau" is maintained by MAPT. In disease conditions, the processing of MAPT is hampered, leading to an unchecked increase in the amount of 4-repeat tau. Interestingly, an increased level of 4-repeat tau causes FTLD spectrum diseases, but not AD or Pick's disease, in humans.

"Now that we know how tau specifically causes FTLD spectrum diseases, we can design a treatment strategy for these diseases that could 'target' the factors involved in the process, like '4-repeat tau' or FUS/SFPQ proteins," concludes Dr Ishigaki, talking about the significance of their discovery.

(LOS ANGELES) - Engineering new tissues can be used to alleviate shortages of organs in transplantation, as well as to develop physiological models for drug discovery applications. One of the emerging approaches to building tissues is through 3D Printing, where cells and materials can be combined to make inks that can generate tissue structures. One of the limitations for making new tissues is that they require oxygen to survive. This oxygen is delivered through blood vessels, which take a few days to develop in a transplanted tissue.

A collaborative team, which includes a group from the Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation (TIBI), has developed a bioink that offers a solution to this problem. This bioink can generate oxygen and deliver it to cells in 3D printed tissues to keep them alive before blood vessels penetrate the tissue. Therefore, when it is used in 3D bioprinting to construct tissue implants, the ability of cells to regenerate new tissue is greatly enhanced.

As discussed in their recent publication in Advanced Healthcare Materials, the TIBI group tested their oxygen-generating bioink extensively to optimize its chemical and physical properties. As a result, oxygen was delivered to the cells in the tissue constructs for the period necessary for blood vessels to develop fully. These blood vessels would then be able to resume their oxygen delivery functions, and the cells would have the additional support needed to grow and regenerate new tissue. The group also conducted separate experiments on tissue constructs using two different types of cells, including cardiac cells and muscle cells, and they demonstrated the positive effects of using the new bioink.

"By delivering oxygen to the implanted cells, we would be able to improve the tissue functionality and integration to the host tissue. A similar approach can be used to make functional tissues with improved survival for drug screening applications and pathophysiological studies within a long period of time," said Samad Ahadian, Ph.D., lead investigator of the Terasaki Institute team.

Such developments can result in a variety of medical applications, including the enhancement of tissue regeneration in patients who have suffered a heart attack. These patients have experienced a period in which their heart is without a sufficient supply of oxygen. Therefore, there may be damage or a higher risk of harm to parts of their cardiac tissue. Tissue implants using the new bioink may help not only to increase the survival of the affected cardiac cells but can also help to support the growth and formation of the cardiac blood vessels.

At a time when much of instruction is performed digitally and university lecture halls are often illuminated by a sea of laptops, it can be difficult to imagine that all instruction was recorded by pen and paper until about 20 years ago.

Digital technology constitutes a significant presence in education, with many advantages - especially during these corona times, when a great number of students have been forced to work from home.

But digital technology in the classroom is not without its drawbacks. A lack of concentration and absence of attention among students became too much for one Danish lecturer to bear.

"The lecturer felt as if their students' use of social media on their laptops and smartphones distracted and prevented them from achieving deeper learning. Eventually, the frustration became so great that he decided to ban all screens in discussion lessons," explains Katrine Lindvig, a postdoc at the University of Copenhagen's Department of Science Education.

Together with researchers Kim Jesper Herrmann and Jesper Aagaard of Aarhus University, she analysed 100 university student evaluations of the the lecturer's screen-free lessons. Their findings resulted in a new study that had this to say about analogue instruction:

"Students felt compelled to be present -- and liked it. When it suddenly became impossible to Google their way to an answer or more knowledge about a particular theorist, they needed to interact and, through shared reflection, develop as a group. It heightened their engagement and presence," explains Katrine Lindvig.

Without distraction, we engage in deeper learning

What explains this deeper engagement and presence when our phones and computers are stashed away?

According to Katrine Lindvig, the answer rests in the structure of our brains:

"A great deal of research suggests that humans can't really multitask. While we are capable of hopping from task to task, doing so usually results in accomplishing tasks more slowly. However, if we create a space where there's only one thing -- in this case, discussing cases and theories with fellow students -- then we do what the brain is best at, and are rewarded by our brains for doing so," she says.

Furthermore, a more analog approach can lead to deeper learning, where one doesn't just memorize things only to see them vanish immediately after an exam. According to Lindvig:

"Learning, and especially deep learning, is about reflecting on what one has read and then comparing it to previously acquired knowledge. In this way, one can develop and think differently, as opposed to simply learning for the sake of passing an exam. When discussing texts with fellow students, one is exposed to a variety of perspectives that contribute to the achievement of deep learning."

We're not going back to the Stone Age

While there are numerous advantages to engaging in lessons where Facebook, Instagram and text messages don't diminish concentration, there are also drawbacks.

Several students weren't so enthusiastic about hand-written note taking explains Katrine Lindvig.

"They got tired of not being able to search through their notes afterwards and readily share notes with students who weren't in attendance," she says.

Therefore, according to Lindvig, it is not a question of 'to screen or not to screen' -- "we're not going back to the Stone Age", as she puts it. Instead, it's about how to integrate screens with instruction in a useful way:

"It's about identifying what form best supports the content and type of instruction. In our case, screens were restricted during lessons where discussion was the goal. This makes sense, because there is no denying that conversation improves when people look into each other's eyes rather than down at a screen," Lindvig says.

Speaking to the value of screens, she adds:

"When it comes to lectures which are primarily one-way in nature, it can be perfectly fine for students to take notes on laptops, to help them feel better prepared for exams. We can also take advantage of students' screens to increase interaction during larger lectures. It's about matching tools with tasks. Just as a hammer works better than a hacksaw to pound in nails."

Perhaps as far back as the history of research and philosophy goes, people have attempted to unearth how life on earth came to be. In the recent decades, with exponential advancement in the fields of genomics, molecular biology, and virology, several scientists on this quest have taken to looking into the evolutionary twists and turns that have resulted in eukaryotic cells, the type of cell that makes up most life forms today.

The most widely accepted theories that have emerged state that the eukaryotic cell is the evolutionary product of the intracellular evolution of proto-eukaryotic cells, which were the first complex cells, and symbiotic relationships between proto-eukaryotic cells and other unicellular and simpler organisms such as bacteria and archaea. But according to Professor Masaharu Takemura of the Tokyo University of Science, Japan, "These hypotheses account for and explain the driving force and evolutionary pressures. But they fail to portray the precise process underlying eukaryotic nucleus evolution."

Prof Takemura cites this as his motivation behind his recent article published in Frontiers in Microbiology, where he looks into the recent theories that, in addition to his own body of research, have built up his current hypothesis on the subject.

In a way, Prof Takemura's hypothesis has its roots in 2001 when, along with PJ Bell, he made the revolutionary proposal that large DNA viruses, like the poxvirus, had something to do with the rise of the eukaryotic cell nucleus. Prof Takemura further explains the reasons for his inquiry into the nucleus of the eukaryotic cell as such: "Although the structure, function, and various biological functions of the cell nucleus have been intensively investigated, the evolutionary origin of the cell nucleus, a milestone of eukaryotic evolution, remains unclear."

The origin of the eukaryotic nucleus must indeed be a milestone in the development of the cell itself, considering that it is the defining factor that sets eukaryotic cells apart from the other broad category of cells--the prokaryotic cell. The eukaryotic cell is neatly compartmentalized into membrane-bound organelles that perform various functions. Among them, the nucleus houses the genetic material. The other organelles float in what is called the cytoplasm. Prokaryotic cells do not contain such compartmentalization. Bacteria and archaea are prokaryotic cells.

The 2001 hypothesis by Prof Takemura and PJ Bell is based on striking similarities between the eukaryotic cell nucleus and poxviruses: in particular, the property of keeping the genome separate in a compartment. Further similarities were uncovered after the discovery and characterization of a type of large DNA virus called "giant virus," which can be up to 2.5 μm in diameter and contain DNA "encoding" information for the production of more than 400 proteins. Independent phylogenetic analyses suggested that genes had been transferred between these viruses and eukaryotic cells as they interacted at various points down the evolutionary road, in a process called "lateral gene transfer."

Viruses are "packets" of DNA or RNA and cannot survive on their own. They must enter a "host" cell and use that cell's machinery to replicate its genetic material, and therefore multiply. As evolution progressed, it appears, viral genetic material became integrated with host genetic material and the properties of both altered.

In 2019, Prof Takemura and his colleagues made another breakthrough discovery: the medusavirus. The medusavirus got its name because, like the mythical monster, it causes encystment in its host; that is, it gives its host cell a "hard" covering.

Via experiments involving the infection of an amoeba, Prof Takemura and his colleagues found that the medusavirus harbors a full set of histones, which resemble histones in eukaryotes. Histones are proteins that keep DNA strands curled up and packed into the cell nucleus. It also holds a DNA polymerase gene and major capsid protein gene very similar to those of the amoeba. Further, unlike other viruses, it does not construct its own enclosed "viral factory" in the cytoplasm of the cell within which to replicate its DNA and contains none of the genes required to carry out the replication process. Instead, it occupies the entirety of the host nucleus and uses the host nuclear machinery to replicate.

These features, Prof Takemura argues, indicate that the ancestral medusavirus and its corresponding host proto-eukaryotic cells were involved in lateral gene transfer; the virus acquired DNA synthesis (DNA polymerase) and condensation (histones) genes from its host and the host acquired structural protein (major capsid protein) genes from the virus. Based on additional research evidence, Prof Takemura extends this new hypothesis to several other giant viruses as well.

Thus, Prof Takemura connects the dots between his findings in 2019 and his original hypothesis in 2001, linking them through his and others' work in the two decades that come in between. All of it taken together, it becomes clear how the medusavirus is prime evidence of the viral origin of the eukaryotic nucleus.

He says: "This new updated hypothesis can profoundly impact the study of eukaryotic cell origins and provide a basis for further discussion on the involvement of viruses in the evolution of the eukaryotic nucleus." Indeed, his work may have unlocked several new possibilities for future research in the field.

Critical Illness Myopathy (CIM) has taken on a new relevance as a result of the Corona virus. CIM is the specialists' term for a muscle weakness which occurs in patients being treated in intensive care for a longer period of time. In a severe case of a Covid19 infection, for example, many patients need artificial ventilation for a long time - sometimes over several weeks. CIM subsequently occurs in up to 30 percent of these patients, and this can entail symptoms of long-term paralysis, making it more difficult to take the patient off the ventilator. A group of researchers headed by Prof. Wolfgang Linke, the Director of the Institute of Physiology II at the University of Münster's Medical Faculty, has now found a potential method of treating Critical Illness Myopathy. The research results have been published in the latest issue of the journal Nature Communications.

As a result of its research, the team was able to describe for the first time what happens in an organism when the production of the muscle protein titin is suppressed in the skeletal muscle. Titin is the largest protein in humans and vertebrates, ensuring both stability and elasticity and functioning as a sensor for muscle power. The researchers deactivated titin in the organisms of mice and were able to demonstrate that after three to four weeks the animals' muscle power declined markedly. These findings can now be used in CIM research. In the case of patients on ventilation, complete immobilization - sometimes lasting weeks - means that there is no longer any incentive in the muscle to produce the muscle protein and thus to enable muscles to grow; the titin spring is defective. As a consequence, the muscle tissue shrinks.

The study now published indicates that Critical Illness Myopathy can be prevented by stretching the patient's peripheral muscles during the ventilation phase. Especially in view of the Corona pandemic and the higher number of patients needing ventilation, the Münster researchers' findings give cause for optimism.

In obese individuals, endurance exercise improves fitness and increases the number of mitochondria * and cellular respiration in skeletal muscles. However, the intervention has no effect on cellular respiration in adipose tissue. This is the result of a study by DZD researchers that has now been published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

Studies in rodents suggest that exercise not only increases the number of mitochondria and the respiratory capacity of skeletal muscles, but also in adipose tissue. In a study, researchers at the DZD in Tübingen investigated the effects of endurance training on cellular respiration in the human skeletal muscles and abdominal adipose tissue and whether there is a direct connection between increased cellular respiration and improved insulin sensitivity. For this purpose, the researchers carried out an 8-week aerobic endurance training intervention with 25 untrained test subjects (16 women, 9 men aged 29.8 ± 8.4 years) who were overweight or obese. The researchers then analyzed mitochondrial respiration in skeletal muscle fibers and in the subcutaneous adipose tissue of the abdomen.

Based on the change in insulin sensitivity after the intervention, the subjects were grouped into responders (subjects whose insulin sensitivity increased) and low responders (subjects whose insulin sensitivity did not increase significantly). In both groups, fitness, cellular respiration and the amount of mitochondrial enzymes in the skeletal muscles improved equally. The endurance training had no effect on the mitochondria in the abdominal subcutaneous adipose tissue. Another interesting finding of the study is that women exhibited higher cellular respiration in adipose tissue than men.

"Our data show that the increase in the mitochondrial respiratory capacity of the skeletal muscles after endurance training has no predictive power for the improvement of the peripheral insulin sensitivity. Furthermore, the endurance training does not increase cellular respiration in the subcutaneous adipose tissue, with a simultaneous decrease in this fat compartment," said Cora Weigert of the DZD partner Institute for Diabetes Research and Metabolic Diseases of Helmholtz Zentrum München at the University of Tübingen, summarizing the findings.

(Vienna, 09 September 2020) A common consequence of chronically high alcohol consumption is a decline in cognitive function, which can even progress to full-blown dementia. However, we do not yet fully understand how alcohol damages the brain. A research group led by Stephan Listabarth from MedUni Vienna's Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Division of Social Psychiatry, has now developed a hypothesis whereby iron deposits in the brain - resulting from alcohol-induced vitamin B1 deficiency - can be regarded as key factors in cognitive decline. The work has now been published in the leading journal "Alzheimer's and Dementia".

In Austria, around 5% of the population are alcohol dependent from the age of 15 onwards. This means that approximately 365,000 people are affected by the dangerous health consequences associated with high alcohol consumption. One of these consequences is a decline in cognitive function, especially memory and abstraction. This is then referred to as alcohol-related dementia. However, we do not yet fully understand the exact pathomechanism, that is to say the way in which the brain is damaged by alcohol.

Researchers Stephan Listabarth, Daniel König and Benjamin Vyssoki from the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Division of Social Psychiatry at MedUni Vienna and Simon Hametner from MedUni Vienna's Department of Neurology, Division of Neuropathology and Neurochemistry, have now advanced a plausible hypothesis to explain alcohol-induced brain damage: the cognitive deterioration is caused by iron deposits in the brain but the administration of vitamin B1 could protect the brain from these deposits.

We know from various neurodegenerative diseases that iron deposits in the brain are responsible for nerve tissue damage. These deposits can also be detected in specific regions of the brain (including the basal ganglia) in people who drink a lot of alcohol. The hypothesis advanced by the study authors now also offers an explanation as to why iron deposits are so prevalent in this patient group: high alcohol consumption results in elevated iron levels in the blood and also to vitamin B1 (thiamine) deficiency, which, among other things, is important for maintaining the blood-brain barrier. If these two situations coincide, more iron will be deposited inside the brain, ultimately leading to oxidative tissue damage.

This newly described role of vitamin B1 in this process could represent a huge step forward in our understanding of the development of alcohol-related neurological damage and, in particular, could offer a new point of attack for preventive and therapeutic approaches. It would then be conceivable to give continuous vitamin B1 substitutionin future, as a preventive measure.

The researchers believe it would also be useful to evaluate the use of drugs to reduce iron levels (e.g. chelators), as is already done in other neurodegenerative diseases. The authors of the current work have already started planning a prospective clinical study to validate the above-mentioned relationship between alcohol dependency, vitamin B1 deficiency and cerebral iron deposits and to provide a basis for further research in the field of alcohol-related dementia in the future.

Climate change is gaining prominence as a political and public priority. But many ambitious climate action plans foresee the use of climate engineering technologies whose risks are insufficiently understood. In a new publication, researchers from the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany, describe how evolving modelling practices are trending towards "best-case" projections. They warn that over-optimistic expectations of climate engineering may reinforce the inertia with which industry and politics have been addressing decarbonisation. In order to forestall this trend, they recommend more stakeholder input and clearer communication of the premises and limitations of model results.

The focus of the paper lies on the models underpinning the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Reports - the first port-of-call for mapping combinations of technologies, alternative pathways of deployment, and climatic impacts. The authors show how modelling of solar radiation management and carbon dioxide removal technologies tends toward "best-case" projections. According to their analysis, the poorly substantiated promises delivered by these projections influence research, policy, and industry planning in the near term and may already be entrenching carbon infrastructures. In the case of certain kinds of carbon dioxide removal, for example, the prospect of future carbon capture is sometimes wrongly seen as a substitute for present mitigation.

Climate models are not neutral

The researchers outline ways in which this trend can be forestalled. They propose mechanisms for increasing stakeholder input and strengthening political realism in modelling. "The portrayal of modelling as explorative, technically focused mappings for supporting decision making is simplistic. Modellers have to choose parameters and design scenarios. Their choices cannot be 'neutral' - scenarios reflect hidden judgments and create benchmarks for further conversation, whether in assessment, or in technology and policy development," says co-author Sean Low. For that reason, there needs to be more transparency about the ways in which models are constructed, perceived, and applied. Efforts to expand modelling "reality checks" with technology experts, social scientists, and a wide range of users are a pragmatic first step.

Glossing over fine print can lead to big problems

The scientific community must also be wary of the selective use of projections. Projections offer schemes that are stylised, optimised, and deceptively simple. By abstracting from possible technical failures and messy politics, they can create a false sense of certainty regarding the feasibility of a particular course of action. But it would be wrong to use them as alternatives to existing climate action plans or instruction manuals. Since modelling projections can offer only partial depictions of systemic risk, it is problematic if political and industry interests co-opt a stylised version for pre-existing agendas and gloss over the models' fine print.

Much governance work ahead

The authors emphasise the need for policy guardrails: "In climate governance the devil really does lie in the details. The inertia of the carbon economy requires that significant efforts are made to prevent particular and short-term interests undermining policy integrity," says co-author Matthias Honegger. In addition to more transparent modelling, a lot of careful policy development and governance work is needed to ensure that solar radiation management and carbon dioxide removal technologies play a constructive role in future climate policy.

Human impact can explain ninety-six percent of all mammal species extinctions of the last hundred thousand years, according to a new study published in the scientific journal Science Advances.

Over the last 126,000 years, there has been a 1600-fold increase in mammal extinction rates, compared to natural levels of extinction. According to the new study, this increase is driven almost exclusively by human impact.

Human impact larger than the effects of climate

The study further shows that even prehistoric humans already had a significant destructive impact on biodiversity - one that was even more destructive than the largest climatic changes of Earth's recent history, such as the last ice age.

"We find essentially no evidence for climate-driven extinctions during the past 126,000 years Instead, we find that human impact explains 96% of all mammal extinctions during that time", asserts Daniele Silvestro, one of the researchers.

This is at odds with views of some scholars, who believe that strong climatic changes were the main driving force behind most pre-historic mammal extinctions. Rather, the new findings suggest that in the past mammal species were resilient, even to extreme fluctuations in climate.

"However, current climate change, together with fragmented habitats, poaching, and other human-related threats pose a large risk for many species", says Daniele Silvestro.

Analyses based on large global data set

The researcher's conclusions are based on a large data set of fossils. They compiled and analyzed data of 351 mammal species that have gone extinct since the beginning of the Late Pleistocene era. Among many others, these included iconic species such as mammoths, sabre tooth tigers, and giant ground sloths. Fossil data provided by the Zoological Society of London were an important contribution to the study.

"These extinctions did not happen continuously and at constant pace. Instead, bursts of extinctions are detected across different continents at times when humans first reached them. More recently, the magnitude of human driven extinctions has picked up the pace again, this time on a global scale", says Tobias Andermann from the University of Gothenburg.

Extinction rates will increase further, if nothing is done

The current extinction rate of mammals is likely the largest extinction event since the end of the dinosaur era, according to the researchers. Using computer-based simulations they predict that these rates will continue to rise rapidly--possibly reaching up to 30,000-fold above the natural level by the year 2100. This is if current trends in human behavior and biodiversity loss continue.

"Despite these grim projections, the trend can still be changed. We can save hundreds if not thousands of species from extinction with more targeted and efficient conservation strategies. But in order to achieve this, we need to increase our collective awareness about the looming escalation of the biodiversity crisis, and take action in combatting this global emergency. Time is pressing. With every lost species, we irreversibly lose a unique portion of Earth's natural history", concludes Tobias Andermann.

Deposits of a protein called "Medin", which manifest in virtually all older adults, reduce the elasticity of blood vessels during aging and hence may be a risk factor for vascular dementia. Experts from the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and the Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research (HIH) at the University of Tübingen report on this in the scientific journal PNAS. The researchers regard these deposits as targets for future therapies. Their findings are based on studies in mice and the analysis of human tissue samples.

Nearly all people over the age of 50 are known to have tiny lumps of the protein Medin in the walls of their blood vessels. "These deposits are apparently a side effect of the aging process. They are predominantly found in the aorta and in blood vessels of the upper body, including those of the brain. Most surprisingly, in our study we could not only detect Medin particles in brain tissue samples from deceased individuals but also in old mice - despite the limited lifespan of these animals," said Dr. Jonas Neher, head of the current study and a scientist at the DZNE's Tübingen site and the HIH.

Medin is considered problematic, because it belongs to a group of molecules called "amyloids" that are often associated with pathological conditions. A prominent example is "amyloid beta", whose aggregates are involved in Alzheimer's disease. "It has been assumed for quite some time that Medin aggregates have an unfavorable effect on blood vessels and can contribute to vascular diseases. Recent studies support this hypothesis. According to these previous findings, older adults with vascular dementia show increased amounts of Medin deposits compared to healthy individuals," said Neher.

Sluggish vessels

However, despite these suspicious signs, there has not yet been conclusive evidence that the protein lumps are actually harmful. A research team led by Neher has now succeeded in proving this - enabled by their finding that Medin deposits also form in aging mice. Their study is the result of a collaborative effort also involving scientists from Frankfurt, Munich, Liverpool and London. "We investigated how quickly blood vessels in the brain can dilate. For this we compared aged mice that have Medin deposits with mice that genetically lack Medin and therefore do not develop Medin deposits," said Neher. Such studies are difficult to conduct in humans, he explained: "Almost all older adults have Medin aggregates. Therefore, it is almost impossible to compare people of about the same age with and without aggregates."

Neher's team observed that mice - analogous to humans - show increasing amounts of Medin particles in their blood vessels with advancing age. "In this respect, the mouse seems to adequately mimic the situation in humans," said Neher.

In mice, the researchers also found that when the brain is active and a higher blood supply is needed, blood vessels with Medin deposits expand more slowly than those without Medin. "Brain vessels with Medin appear to be less flexible and therefore react more sluggishly." However, the ability of the vessels to expand rapidly is important for regulating blood flow and providing the brain with an optimal supply of oxygen and nutrients, the researcher said. "If this ability is impaired, it can have far-reaching consequences for the functioning of organs." Medin deposits therefore seem to contribute to the deterioration of blood vessel function at an advanced age. "And this is probably not only the case in the brain, because the deposits also occur in other blood vessels and could therefore lead not only to vascular dementia but also to cardiovascular disease."

Neher cannot give a definite answer about the mechanisms by which the Medin particles act on the blood vessels. However, he does have a theory: "Fibers run in the vessel wall that allow the blood vessel to stretch and contract. Since the protein deposits are embedded in the vessel wall, they may interfere with the function of these elastic fibers."

Therapeutic target

Medin is derived in an as yet unknown way from a larger protein that is involved in the formation of new blood vessels, amongst other things. "If this precursor molecule could be stabilized with drugs, the production of Medin might be modulated. Alternatively, the break-down of Medin aggregates could be stimulated. This could help to maintain vascular and brain health in old age. However, there are no such medicines available to date," said Neher. "It is therefore important to see Medin as a risk factor that almost every older adult carries within him or herself. Although Medin affects a really large group of people, it has so far received little attention in therapy research. Our findings suggest that it should move more into the spotlight."

Researchers in Korea have successfully developed a high-efficiency large-area organic solution processable solar cell by controlling the speed at which the solution of raw materials for solar cells became solidified after being coated. The team led by Dr. Hae Jung Son from the Photo-electronic Hybrids Research Center of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) announced that they have identified the difference in the mechanism of film formation between a small area and a large area of organic solar cells in a solution process and, by resolving the issue concerning the related process technology, developed a high-efficiency large-area organic photovoltaics.

If a photovoltaic material is made in the form of paint that can be applied to any surface, such as the exterior of a building or a car, it will be possible to achieve energy self-sufficiency and provide low-cost eco-friendly energy to those suffering from energy poverty. Not only that, it will be easy to utilize space for installation of photovoltaics even on urban buildings, and ideally, the photovoltaic panels will be maintained by re-applying the "paint."

When it comes to solution processable solar cells, which work by coating the surface with the solar cell solution, the photoactive area that generates electricity still remain on a laboratory scale (less than 0.1?). When applied to a large area to produce sufficient electric power for it to be practical, there are issues related reduced performance and reproducibility due to material- and process-related limitations, and this has been an obstacle to commercialization.

Dr. Son's team at KIST revealed that commercially available organic materials become easily crystallized, which makes them unsuitable for large-area solution processes. In the case of the large-area solution process for industrial uses, the process through which the solvent in which the solar cell material is dissolved evaporates to form a film occurs slowly, thereby resulting in agglomeration and other phenomena, and this in turn lowers the efficiency of the solar cell. As for the spin coating method, which is a small-area process employed in laboratory research, the substrated is rapidly rotated during the film formation process in order to speed up the solvent evaporation, and this makes it possible to form a film without the aforementioned problem concerning reduced efficiency.

Based on this information, KIST researchers developed high-performance large-area organic photovoltaics by controlling the solvent evaporation rate following the coating step in a large-area solution process as a way to form a film optimized for solar cell performance. As a result, high-efficiency large-area organic photovoltaics with 30% higher power conversion efficiency than existing photovoltaics were attained.

Dr. Son said, "The core design principles of solar cell materials capable of high-quality large-area using the solution will accelerate the development of solution processable solar cells in the future. [This study] has contributed to not only raising the efficiency of next-generation solution processable solar cells but also the development of core technology for manufacturing large-area solar cell materials required for commercialization."

Earth is getting hotter. Huge amounts of greenhouse gases are warming the planet and altering the climate. Heat waves are harsher. Droughts are longer. And some diseases and pests are stronger than ever.

All of that is bad news for many of Earth's inhabitants. But crops are especially vulnerable. We've bred them to depend on us, and they can succumb to many threats that are likely to get worse in the next century. All as we need more food to feed a growing population.

An international group of researchers set out to test how we can help our crops adapt in the coming decades. Their idea is to use wild crop relatives.

These cousins of domestic crops look like weeds and you have probably walked past them when hiking on mountain trails. You may have even seen them in the cracks of pavement in the cities. They have lived in harsh climates without any human help since the dawn of time.

Scientists hope that using crop wild relatives in breeding programs can add resilience to our domestic crops while keeping them delicious.

"Crop wild relatives have been selected by nature over millennia to withstand the very climatic stresses that we are trying to address, and hence present a new hope," says Filippo Bassi. Bassi is a scientist in Morocco at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA).

But it can be risky to change how breeders work. "Before making the final decision to shift investments from normal breeding to the use of crop wild relatives, it is critical to make sure that there is a real advantage in doing so," Bassi says.

To test this idea, Bassi's international team of scientists, coming from Africa, Europe, Asia and South America, focused on durum wheat.

The team gathered 60 unique varieties of wheat to expose to a battery of harsh tests. These included fungal diseases, drought and high temperatures. One-third of the wheat lines the team used were developed by combining wild relatives of wheat with strong, commercial varieties.

These wild relative-derived varieties of wheat were robust compared to more conventional varieties. About a third of wild relative varieties were resistant to the fungal disease Septoria, compared to just a tenth of the others. But conventional wheat varieties were more resistant to other diseases, like leaf rust, that have been the focus of past breeding programs.

Where the wild relative wheat varieties really shone was under drought and heat stress. During drought, the wild relative lines had larger grains, a critical adaptation and market trait for this crop. And, when the nutrient nitrogen was in short supply, the wild-derived lines produced a higher yield than the other wheat varieties.

"In the case of temperature, the crop wild relative presented a clear advantage with a yield increase of 42 percent under heat stress," says Bassi. "Yield losses to heat can be drastic, and the use of crop wild relatives to breed new varieties appears to be a very strategic approach to address this climatic challenge."

But resilience isn't the whole story. We depend on crops to make food. And crops are different from their wild cousins in large part because humans have selected crops over many centuries to adapt to their needs, including a preference for making delicious foods.

That is why Bassi's team also looked at the usefulness of the 60 wheat varieties for making pasta. Here, the wild-derived wheat lines were the least suitable for pasta making. "That's a disappointment," says Bassi. "But not a deal breaker."

"This does not prove that the use of crop wild relatives will inevitably result in poor industrial quality," says Bassi. "But rather that it is important for breeders to be aware of this risk and develop breeding strategies that address this issue."

Overall, durum wheat's wild relatives appeared useful. When crossed to elite commercial varieties, they provided increased resistance to heat, drought and some diseases. These are precisely the threats facing not just durum wheat, but most major crops in a warming world. That's good news for plant breeders -- and the public.

"The crop wild relatives showed great promise in terms of climate change adaptation," says Bassi. "I hope the public will be re-assured that breeders are testing all possible opportunities to prepare agriculture for climate challenges."

PITTSBURGH--Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a new metric for evaluating how well self-driving cars respond to changing road conditions and traffic, making it possible for the first time to compare perception systems for both accuracy and reaction time.

Mengtian Li, a Ph.D. student in CMU's Robotics Institute, said academic researchers tend to develop sophisticated algorithms that can accurately identify hazards, but may demand a lot of computation time. Industry engineers, by contrast, tend to prefer simple, less accurate algorithms that are fast and require less computation, so the vehicle can respond to hazards more quickly.

This tradeoff is a problem not only for self-driving cars, but also for any system that requires real-time perception of a dynamic world, such as autonomous drones and augmented reality systems. Yet until now, there's been no systematic measure that balances accuracy and latency -- the delay between when an event occurs and when the perception system recognizes that event. This lack of an appropriate metric as made it difficult to compare competing systems.

The new metric, called streaming perception accuracy, was developed by Li, together with Deva Ramanan, associate professor in the Robotics Institute, and Yu-Xiong Wang, assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They presented it last month at the virtual European Conference on Computer Vision, where it received a best paper honorable mention award.

Streaming perception accuracy is measured by comparing the output of the perception system at each moment with the ground truth state-of-the-world.

"By the time you've finished processing inputs from sensors, the world has already changed," Li explained, noting that the car has traveled some distance while the processing occurs.

"The ability to measure streaming perception offers a new perspective on existing perception systems," Ramanan said. Systems that perform well according to classic measures of performance may perform quite poorly on streaming perception. Optimizing such systems using the newly introduced metric can make them far more reactive.

One insight from the team's research is that the solution isn't necessarily for the perception system to run faster, but to occasionally take a well-timed pause. Skipping the processing of some frames prevents the system from falling farther and farther behind real-time events, Ramanan added.

Another insight is to add forecasting methods to the perception processing. Just as a batter in baseball swings at where they think the ball is going to be -- not where it is -- a vehicle can anticipate some movements by other vehicles and pedestrians. The team's streaming perception measurements showed that the extra computation necessary for making these forecasts doesn't significantly harm accuracy or latency.

A new proposal for virtual travel, using advanced mathematical techniques and combining livestream video with existing photos and videos of travel hotspots, could help revitalize an industry that has been devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, according to researchers at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.

In a new proposal published in Cell Patterns, Dr. Arni S.R. Srinivasa Rao, a mathematical modeler and director of the medical school's Laboratory for Theory and Mathematical Modeling, and co-author Dr. Steven Krantz, a professor of mathematics and statistics at Washington University, suggest using data science to improve on existing television and internet-based tourism experiences. Their technique involves measuring and then digitizing the curvatures and angles of objects and the distances between them using drone footage, photos and videos, and could make virtual travel experiences more realistic for viewers and help revitalize the tourism industry, they say.

They call this proposed technology LAPO, or Live Streaming with Actual Proportionality of Objects. LAPO employs both information geometry - the measures of an object's curvatures, angles and area - and conformal mapping, which uses the measures of angles between the curves of an object and accounts for the distance between objects, to make images of people, places and things seem more real.

"This is about having a new kind of technology that uses advanced mathematical techniques to turn digitized data, captured live at a tourist site, into more realistic photos and videos with more of a feel for the location than you would get watching amovie or documentary," says corresponding author Rao. "When you go see the Statue of Liberty for instance, you stand on the bank of the Hudson River and look at it. When you watch a video of it, you can only see the object from one angle. When you measure and preserve multiple angles and digitize that in video form, you could visualize it from multiple angles. You would feel like you're there while you're sitting at home."

Their proposed combination of techniques is novel, Rao says. "Information geometry has seen wide applications in physics and economics, but the angle preservation of the captured footage is never applied," he says.

Rao and Krantz say the technology could help mediate some of the pandemic's impact on the tourism industry and offer other advantages.

Those include its cost-effectiveness, because virtual tourism would be cheaper; health safety, because it can be done from the comfort of home; it saves time, eliminating travel times; it's accessibility - tourism hotspots that are not routinely accessible to seniors or those with physical disabilities would be; it's safer and more secure, eliminating risks like becoming a victim of crime while traveling; and it requires no special equipment - a standard home computer with a graphics card and internet access is all that's needed to enjoy a "virtual trip."

"Virtual tourism (also) creates new employment opportunities for virtual tour guides, interpreters, drone pilots, videographers and photographers, as well as those building the new equipment for virtual tourism," the authors write.

"People would pay for these experiences like they pay airlines, hotels and tourist spots during regular travel," Rao says. "The payments could go to each individual involved in creating the experience or to a company that creates the entire trip, for example."

Next steps include looking for investors and partners in the hospitality, tourism and technology industries, he says.

If the pandemic continues for several more months, the World Travel and Tourism Council, the trade group representing major global travel companies, projects a global loss of 75 million jobs and $2.1 trillion in revenue.