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University of Calgary scientists have discovered how to capture "live" images of immune cells inside the lungs. The group at the Snyder Institute for Chronic Diseases at the Cumming School of Medicine is the first in the world to find a way to record, in real time, how the immune system battles bacteria impacting the alveoli, or air sacs, in the lungs of mice. The discovery has already provided new insights about the immune systems' cleaners, called alveolar macrophages. Once thought to be stationary, the scientists observed the macrophages at work, crawling over, between and around the alveolar spaces in search of bacteria and viruses.

"It makes sense that macrophages would move around, but we could only hypothesise this because we couldn't see them in action. Now we can," says Dr. Paul Kubes, PhD, principal investigator. "There are many more alveoli in the lungs than macrophages, and these tiny cleaners are very efficient at servicing every air sac."

The researchers say the job the macrophages do is quite simple. Think of a hotel, where there are more rooms than cleaning staff. The staff use hallways to clean and keep things in order. Inside the lungs, there is a corridor that provides a space between the alveoli. The macrophages use this space to move around to destroy any foreign particles including bacteria and viruses impacting the air sacs.

The scientists needed to conquer three major obstacles in order to capture live images of this immune cell at work. The team needed to develop a way to capture an image from air to liquid to air again, they needed to stabilize the lungs long enough to get a clear picture, and they needed to find a way to identify and mark the macrophages.

"This work is a culmination of years of research by scientists around the world. We pulled everything together, combining and refining many imaging techniques," says Arpan Neupane, PhD candidate and first author on the study. "Even six years ago, this would not have been possible."

The ability to see macrophages at work has revealed something else: the scientists watched as the powerful cleaners became paralyzed and stopped doing their important job.

"We know when someone is battling a serious infection, especially a respiratory virus like flu or COVID-19, they often develop a secondary infection which can lead to death," says Kubes. "With this new imaging technique, we were able to see what's happening with the macrophages during this process."

It turns out, at a certain point during the battle against infections, the efficient cleaners become paralyzed making it easier for new infections to take root and flourish.

"The next step in our research is to find out why this is happening so that we can develop targeted therapies to kick start the macrophages into action again," says Kubes.

What would you do if you knew how long you had until Alzheimer's disease set in? Don't despair. New research from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests one defense against this virulent form of dementia -- for which no treatment currently exists -- is deep, restorative sleep, and plenty of it.

UC Berkeley neuroscientists Matthew Walker and Joseph Winer have found a way to estimate, with some degree of accuracy, a time frame for when Alzheimer's is most likely to strike in a person's lifetime.

"We have found that the sleep you're having right now is almost like a crystal ball telling you when and how fast Alzheimer's pathology will develop in your brain," said Walker, a UC Berkeley professor of psychology and neuroscience and senior author of the paper published today, Sept. 3, in the journal Current Biology.

"The silver lining here is that there's something we can do about it," he added. "The brain washes itself during deep sleep, and so there may be the chance to turn back the clock by getting more sleep earlier in life."

Walker and fellow researchers matched the overnight sleep quality of 32 healthy older adults against the buildup in their brains of the toxic plaque known as beta-amyloid, a key player in the onset and progression of Alzheimer's, which destroys memory pathways and other brain functions and afflicts more than 40 million people worldwide.

Their findings show that the study participants who started out experiencing more fragmented sleep and less non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) slow-wave sleep were most likely to show an increase in beta-amyloid over the course of the study.

Although all participants remained healthy throughout the study period, the trajectory of their beta-amyloid growth correlated with baseline sleep quality. The researchers were able to forecast the increase in beta-amyloid plaques, which are thought to mark the beginning of Alzheimer's.

"Rather than waiting for someone to develop dementia many years down the road, we are able to assess how sleep quality predicts changes in beta-amyloid plaques across multiple timepoints. In doing so, we can measure how quickly this toxic protein accumulates in the brain over time, which can indicate the beginning of Alzheimer's disease," said Winer, the study's lead author and a Ph.D. student in Walker's Center for Human Sleep Science at UC Berkeley.

In addition to predicting the time it is likely to take for the onset of Alzheimer's, the results reinforce the link between poor sleep and the disease, which is particularly critical in the face of a tsunami of aging baby boomers on the horizon.

While previous studies have found that sleep cleanses the brain of beta-amyloid deposits, these new findings identify deep non-REM slow-wave sleep as the target of intervention against cognitive decline.

And though genetic testing can predict one's inherent susceptibility to Alzheimer's, and blood tests offer a diagnostic tool, neither offers the potential for a lifestyle therapeutic intervention that sleep does, the researchers point out.

"If deep, restorative sleep can slow down this disease, we should be making it a major priority," Winer said. "And if physicians know about this connection, they can ask their older patients about their sleep quality and suggest sleep as a prevention strategy."

The 32 healthy participants in their 60s, 70s and 80s who are enrolled in the sleep study are part of the Berkeley Aging Cohort Study headed by UC Berkeley public health professor William Jagust, also a co-author on this latest study. The study of healthy aging was launched in 2005 with a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

For the experiment, each participant spent an eight-hour night of sleep in Walker's lab while undergoing polysomnography, a battery of tests that record brain waves, heart rate, blood-oxygen levels and other physiological measures of sleep quality.

Over the course of the multi-year study, the researchers periodically tracked the growth rate of the beta-amyloid protein in the participants' brains using positron emission tomography, or PET scans, and compared the individuals' beta-amyloid levels to their sleep profiles.

Researchers focused on the brain activity present during deep slow-wave sleep. They also assessed the study participants' sleep efficiency, which is defined as actual time spent asleep, as opposed to lying sleepless in bed.

The results supported their hypothesis that sleep quality is a biomarker and predictor of disease down the road.

"We know there's a connection between people's sleep quality and what's going on in the brain, in terms of Alzheimer's disease. But what hasn't been tested before is whether your sleep right now predicts what's going to happen to you years later," Winer said. "And that's the question we had."

And they got their answer: "Measuring sleep effectively helps us travel into the future and estimate where your amyloid buildup will be," Walker said.

As for next steps, Walker and Winer are looking at how they can take the study participants who are at high risk of contracting Alzheimer's and implement methods that might boost the quality of their sleep.

"Our hope is that if we intervene, then in three or four years the buildup is no longer where we thought it would be because we improved their sleep," Winer said.

"Indeed, if we can bend the arrow of Alzheimer's risk downward by improving sleep, it would be a significant and hopeful advance," Walker concluded.

ITHACA, N.Y. - New research from Cornell University developed potential roadmaps for how the coronavirus infects organs and identifies what molecular factors could help facilitate or restrict infection.

"The data suggest that it's not just a respiratory disease," said lead author Cedric Feschotte, molecular biology professor. "It's much broader than that and has the potential to affect many other organs. Our analyses suggest that there is a wide range of cellular vulnerabilities."

The study maps the expression of 28 human genes dubbed "SCARFs" - SARS-Cov-2 and Coronavirus-Associated Receptors and Factors. By looking at the single-cell RNA expression of these genes, they can predict which tissues and cell types are most vulnerable to coronavirus infection - in both adults and embryos.

The team analyzed the RNA expression of healthy human tissues to develop a comprehensive profile of the molecular factors that both facilitate and restrict SARS-CoV2 infection.

Without the immune system's ability to respond quickly, Feschotte said, naturally occurring restriction factors already present in the tissues represent the body's main line of defense against SARS-CoV-2.

Mapping the different entry points for the virus also is essential for trying to predict where the virus will go after it enters the body. Moreover, by pinpointing the molecular routes of infection, other researchers can use those areas as targets for developing drugs to overcome the infection.

The study indicates alternate entry paths for how the virus could enter the lungs, central nervous system and heart. Their research also supports emerging clinical data that shows SARS-CoV-2 also infects the intestines, kidney and placenta. They noted that specific groups of cells within the prostate and testes are likely to be permissive for SARS-CoV-2 and may help explain male-specific vulnerabilities.

As part of this project, the team also developed an open-access, user-friendly web interface where anyone can look up the single-cell RNA expressions of SCARFs. This will facilitate easy access to data that will help scientists around the world.

New Orleans, LA - A team of LSU Health New Orleans radiologists investigated the usefulness of chest x-rays in COVID-19 and found they could aid in a rapid diagnosis of the disease, especially in areas with limited testing capacity or delayed test results. Their findings are published in Radiology: Cardiothoracic Imaging, available here.
"In mid to late March of this year, when COVID-19 cases were spiking in New Orleans, we recognized an unusual pattern on chest x-rays that seemed to correlate with COVID positivity," notes David Smith, MD, Associate Professor of Clinical Radiology at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine.
The radiologists conducted a retrospective study of nearly 400 persons under investigation (PUI) for COVID-19 in New Orleans. They reviewed the patients' chest X-rays along with concurrent reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) virus tests. Using well-documented COVID-19 imaging patterns, two experienced radiologists categorized each chest x-ray as characteristic, nonspecific, or negative in appearance for COVID-19.
The radiologists found a characteristic chest x-ray appearance is highly specific (96.6%) and has a high positive predictive value of 83.8% for SARS-CoV-2 infection in the setting of pandemic.

"The presence of patchy and/or confluent, band-like ground glass opacity or consolidation in a peripheral and mid-to-lower lung zone distribution on a chest radiograph is highly suggestive of SARS-CoV-2 infection and should be used in conjunction with clinical judgment to make a diagnosis," says Bradley Spieler MD, Associate Professor of Diagnostic Radiology and Vice Chairman of Research in the Department of Radiology at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine.

"The chest radiograph, while low in sensitivity, can indicate COVID-19 in patients whose radiographs exhibit characteristic COVID-19 findings, when used in concert with clinical factors," adds John-Paul Grenier, MD, an LSU Health New Orleans Radiology Resident. "While not a substitute for RT-PCR virus tests or Chest CT, radiographs could provide a rapid, cost-effective diagnosis of COVID-19 in a subset of infected patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. The utility of this technique is described in the context of known disadvantages of RT-PCR, considered the gold standard in COVID-19 diagnosis, and Chest CT, which is currently not recommended for COVID-19 diagnosis. "

"This discovery is useful to aid in diagnosis in the setting of pandemic spread of COVID-19, especially when adequate testing is lacking," says Dr. Smith.

"We believe this work has great potential to aid all health care providers in the fight against COVID-19," concludes Dr. Spieler.

Catherine Batte, MS, from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Louisiana State University, also collaborated on the study.

"The COVID-19 pandemic has been especially tough on the people of New Orleans," declares Dr. Grenier. "We hope that the insights we've gained from studying this disease in our community can be used to help other communities across the globe."

Little is known about what determines strategy implementation around quality improvement (QI) in small and medium-sized primary care practices. New research led by George Mason University's College of Health and Human Services found that independent, physician-owned practices, adopted more QI strategies than hospital-owned practices and community clinics.

Dr. Tulay Soylu, currently assistant professor of instruction at Temple University, led the study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine in collaboration with George Mason faculty for her dissertation in Mason's Health Services Research PhD Program. The study was a component of a larger practice-level intervention, Heart of Virginia Healthcare, which provided technical assistance to primary care practices in Virginia to improve cardiovascular care. An observational study design surveyed 175 small and medium-sized primary care practices in Virginia to examine how practice characteristics (such as location, size, ownership, and whether they were part of accountable care organizations) and practice readiness to change affected quality improvement (QI) efforts.

The study found that independent, physician-owned practices adopted more changes than hospital-owned practices and community clinics. "The independent practices focused more on patient care coordination (such as developing a care plan and managing medication) rather than organizational improvement strategies (such as optimizing teams or workflow,)" explains Soylu. Community clinics appear to need additional time to implement QI activities, as they face greater financial challenges and often serve sicker patients.

"Adopting evidence-based QI strategies should be part of transforming primary care so practice can track population health, enhance patient experiences and outcomes, reduce costs, and improve provider experience," explains Soylu. "A strong foundation of primary care is essential for the US healthcare system and the COVID-19 pandemic has underscore this need," explains Soylu.

This study provides empirical evidence to primary care practices and policymakers, which highlights the importance of the strategy implementation variation by practice characteristics. QI authorities should consider these characteristics before designing a QI intervention.

If naked mole-rats were human, they would be prescribed hearing aids. With six mutations in genes associated with hearing, naked mole-rats can barely hear the constant squeaking they use to communicate with one another. This hearing loss, which is strange for such social, vocal animals, is an adaptive, beneficial trait, according to new findings published in the journal Current Biology.

Naked mole-rats are East African hairless mammals that are bald and wrinkly with buck teeth. They live in underground colonies and their social structure resembles that of bees -- there are soldiers, workers and a queen. A lot of cooperation is required for a mole-rat colony to function. Naked mole-rats need to decide where to dig, how to defend the colony, and how to convey the location of food sources, and much of this is accomplished by vocal communication.

"Naked mole-rats are constantly chirping and squeaking," said Thomas Park, professor of biological sciences and neuroscience at the University of Illinois Chicago and one of the lead authors on the paper.

Park has been studying naked mole-rats for decades and has described some of their odd traits, such as their ability to thrive under conditions of low oxygen underground and their high tolerance for pain.

"We were curious about their hearing since they are so vocal, but research had suggested that their hearing is actually quite bad," Park said.

Park and colleagues tested the hearing of mole-rats using technology similar to that used for testing human hearing. They performed an auditory brain stem response test, during which electrodes placed on the scalp pick up signals indicative of sound being processed in the brain. The researchers found the signals were weak, confirming naked mole-rats have poor hearing. In fact, "their hearing is so bad that they would be candidates for hearing aids if they were people," Park said.

Once the hearing loss was confirmed, Park and colleagues turned to the mole-rats' genetics and found six mutations in genes associated with hearing loss in humans.

"The fact that there were so many of these mutations strongly suggests that these mutations were selected for because they are adaptive in some way," Park explained.

The researchers also found the naked mole-rats lacked cochlear amplification, a process by which specialized cells in the inner ear help amplify sound signals before those signals are sent to the brain. Cochlear amplification is aided by cells called outer hair cells, which are located in the inner ear. Without proper functioning of these cells, sounds are severely dampened.

"If the naked mole-rats didn't have these mutations, the constant noise they produce could actually kill the hair cells responsible for hearing," Park said.

Hair cells receive auditory vibrations and send signals to the brain where they are interpreted as sound. Really loud sounds actually kill hair cells, which, unlike other types of cells, can't regenerate. Park said this is why hearing loss in most mammals is progressive.

"Because the naked mole-rats lack functional cochlear amplification, the sounds they hear don't ever get up to a level where they are lethal to hair cells, and so the naked mole-rats can withstand this constant cacophony without going totally deaf," Park said. "They are the only mammals we know of that lack cochlear amplification."

The new findings suggest that mole rats may be a good animal model to investigate hearing loss in humans.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Some male butterflies go to extreme lengths to ensure their paternity - sealing their mate's genitalia with a waxy "chastity belt" to prevent future liaisons. But female butterflies can fight back by evolving larger or more complex organs that are tougher to plug. Males, in turn, counterattack by fastening on even more fantastic structures with winglike projections, slippery scales or pointy hooks.

It's a battle that pits male and female reproductive interests against one another, with the losing sex evolving adaptations to thwart the winner's strategies.

Could this sexual one-upmanship ultimately result in new species? It's a longstanding hypothesis and one that would help explain how butterflies became so diverse. But it has proven difficult to test.

Ana Paula dos Santos de Carvalho, a doctoral student in the Kawahara Lab at the Florida Museum of Natural History, tackled the question in a study of mating plugs in brush-footed butterflies. She traced the trait's evolution and analyzed the rate at which new species appeared across the Acraeini tribe, a group of about 300 species. Unexpectedly, lineages with and without mating plugs evolved at the same rate, suggesting other factors such as habitat may be responsible for driving the insects' diversity.

"I was expecting to see an association between plugs and new species appearing faster, but my work suggested there was no link at all," Carvalho said. "Other studies had proposed a connection between sexual conflict and diversity, so these results came as a surprise."

Found in about 1% of butterfly species, external mating plugs, also known as sphragis, can resemble a scab or a blob of petroleum jelly in some species while others take astonishingly architectural forms.

But they all serve the same purpose: enforcing female monogamy. Because a female butterfly fertilizes the majority of her eggs with sperm from her last partner, males have a vested interest in blocking rivals. Females, however, stand to benefit by mating with more than one male. Another partner may provide higher-quality sperm, and multiple mating events can increase the genetic diversity of offspring. Plus, females get a health boost from the nutrients included in males' sperm packets.

To help guarantee their own successors, males in plug-producing species omit the courtship behavior that often precedes mating in other butterflies. Instead, "males pursue the females, grab them midair and drag them to the ground," Carvalho said. After depositing their sperm, males excrete a pre-molded mating plug, which hardens on the female's abdomen.

Plugs may indirectly constrain males as well. Making a mating plug is an expensive investment of time and resources, potentially limiting how many females a male can inseminate, she said.

Whether females can remove the plug requires further study, but in her fieldwork and museum specimen analysis, Carvalho noted the structures were often partially broken or missing in species with smaller, more delicate plugs. In species with large, complex plugs, she usually found the structures intact and rarely encountered a female without one - a sign that males may be "winning."

But Carvalho's study revealed some female victories as well. In the evolutionary family tree she constructed for Acraeini butterflies, she found evidence that mating plugs originated once across the tribe and were subsequently lost in some species, suggesting a successful female counteroffensive. Wide variations in the shape and size of female genitalia also hint at attempts to render mating plugs ineffective.

"Butterflies and moths continue to surprise us," said study co-author Akito Kawahara, curator at the Florida Museum's McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity. "This study suggests we still have a lot to learn about what drives insect diversity and the role sexual conflict plays in evolution."

PHILADELPHIA (September 3, 2020) - Adolescence is a difficult period of development, made more complex for those with Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). The challenges of managing multiple doses of daily insulin administration, blood glucose monitoring, dietary and exercise requirements, can make self-care difficult and complicate outcomes. Adolescents with T1DM often have poorer diabetes outcomes than others, indicating that glucose control is difficult for them to maintain.

Data show that 88 percent of teens own a cell phone and more than 50 percent text with friends daily. Therefore, mobile technolgoies could be a key to helping adolescents more fully engage with their T1DM self-care.

In an article in the Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology, researchers outline their study combining text messaging with MyDiaText? and financial incentives designed to help improve outcomes for adolescents with T1DM. The study results showed persistent engagement with and potential for increase in self-care using this intervention. MyDiaText? was developed in 2012 by a collaboration with the School of Nursing, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

"We have demonstrated that text messaging is a promising method by which to engage adolescents with T1D who have suboptimal control, in their self-care and deserves further investigation. There remains a need to develop a digital health intervention that significantly impacts glycemic control in this population" writes Terri H. Lipman, PhD, CRNP, FAAN, the Miriam Stirl Endowed Term Professor of Nutrition, Professor of Nursing of Children and Assistant Dean for Community Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (Penn Nursing). Lipman is the senior author of the article. The article, "A Text Messaging Intervention with Financial Incentive for Adolescents with Type 1 Diabetes" is set for publicaiton this fall but is now available online here.

ITHACA, N.Y. - People enjoy witnessing extraordinary individuals - from athletes to CEOs -extend long runs of dominance in their fields, but they aren't as interested in seeing similar streaks of success by teams or groups, according to new research from Cornell University.

"Individual success inspires awe in a way that team success does not," said co-author Thomas Gilovich, professor of psychology at Cornell. "[Individual success] makes us hopeful that human potential isn't as limited as thought it was. If that height is reached by a team, its cause is seen as more diffuse and isn't as exciting."

In a new study, Gilovich and lead author Jesse Walker conducted nine studies involving 2,625 Americans. In one study, they examined people's view on the success of Usain Bolt, the Jamaican sprinter who won the 100-meter dash in the last three Olympics. Bolt was also a member of a team that won the gold medal in the 4x100-meter relay at those same Olympic games.

Many more people reported they would prefer to see Bolt win the gold medal in the individual event in the next Olympics than in the relay event, results showed.

The preference for seeing individual streaks doesn't just apply to famous athletes in familiar sports. Studies showed people supported individual runs of dominance over team dominance in the British Quizzing Championship and in the best closure rates on homicide cases in U.S. police departments.

This preference has implications in the business world, as well. In one study, participants read about electronic components manufacturer AVnet, one of the 350 largest companies in America.

Participants who read that AVnet's success could be attributed to its CEO thought the company should command a greater share of the market than did the participants who were told the company's success was tied to a group of executives.

Other studies by the researchers looked at why people feel differently about individual versus team winning streaks. They found that people attributed individual streaks of success to the people themselves, while team success was attributed to situational factors.

"We're now looking at how this effect might influence people's reactions to economic inequality and policies designed to alleviate it," Gilovich said. "Are people less troubled by evidence of inequality expressed as big gaps between individuals than expressed as big gaps between groups?"

Adding noise to enhance a weak signal is a sensing phenomenon common in the animal world but unusual in manmade sensors. Now Penn State researchers have added a small amount of background noise to enhance very weak signals in a light source too dim to sense.

In contrast to most sensors, for which noise is a problem that should be suppressed, they found that adding just the right amount of background noise can actually increase a signal too weak for sensing by normal sensors, to a level that can reach detectability.

Although their sensor, based on a two-dimensional material called molybdenum disulfide, detects light, the same principle can be used to detect other signals, and because it requires very little energy and space compared to conventional sensors, could find wide adaptation in the coming Internet of Things (IoT). IoT will deploy tens of millions of sensors to monitor conditions in the home and factories, and low energy requirements would be a strong bonus.

"This phenomenon is something that is frequently seen in nature," says Saptarshi Das, an assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics. "For example, a paddlefish that lives in muddy waters cannot actually find its food, which is a phytoplankton called Daphnia, by sight. The paddlefish has electroreceptors that can pick up very weak electric signal from the Daphnia at up to 50 meters. If you add a little bit of noise, it can find the Daphnia at 75 meters or even 100 meters. This ability adds to the evolutionary success of this animal."

Another interesting example is the jewel beetle, which can detect a forest fire at 50 miles distance. The most advanced infrared detector can only detect at 10 to 20 miles. This is due to a phenomenon these animals use called stochastic resonance.

"Stochastic resonance is a phenomenon where a weak signal which is below the detection threshold of a sensor can be detected in the presence of a finite and appropriate amount of noise," according to Akhil Dodda, a graduate student in engineering science and mechanics and co-first author on a new paper appearing this week in Nature Communications.

In their paper, the researchers demonstrate the first use of this technique to detect a subthreshold photonic signal.

One possible use being considered is for troops in combat. Army personnel in the field already carry very bulky equipment. It is unfeasible to add the heavy, power-hungry equipment required to enhance a subthreshold signal. Their technique is also applicable in resource-constrained environments or beneath the ocean where people want to monitor very weak signals. It could also be used in volcanic locations or to monitor earthquakes in time to give an alarm.

"Who would have thought that noise could play a constructive role in signal detection? We have challenged tradition to detect otherwise undetectable signals with miniscule energy consumption. This can open doors to a totally unexplored and ignored field of noise enhanced signal detection," said Aaryan Oberoi, a graduate student from the Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics and co-first author on the paper.

Their next step is to demonstrate this technique on a silicon photodiode, which would make the device very scalable. Any state-of-the art sensor can be enhanced by this concept, Das says.

Researchers develop first-ever battery-free, energy-harvesting, interactive device

Looking and feeling like an 8-bit Nintendo Game Boy, the device can play games straight from their original cartridges

Ultimate goal of battery-free computing is to reduce society's reliance on batteries, which are costly, environmentally hazardous and end up in landfills

EVANSTON, Ill. -- A hand-held video game console allowing indefinite gameplay might be a parent's worst nightmare.

But this Game Boy is not just a toy. It's a powerful proof-of-concept, developed by researchers at Northwestern University and the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in the Netherlands, that pushes the boundaries of battery-free intermittent computing into the realm of fun and interaction.

Instead of batteries, which are costly, environmentally hazardous and ultimately end up in landfills, this device harvests energy from the sun -- and the user. These advances enable gaming to last forever without having to stop and recharge the battery.

"It's the first battery-free interactive device that harvests energy from user actions," said Northwestern's Josiah Hester, who co-led the research. "When you press a button, the device converts that energy into something that powers your gaming."

"Sustainable gaming will become a reality, and we made a major step in that direction -- by getting rid of the battery completely," said TU Delft's Przemyslaw Pawelczak, who co-led the research with Hester. "With our platform, we want to make a statement that it is possible to make a sustainable gaming system that brings fun and joy to the user."

The teams will present the research virtually at UbiComp 2020, a major conference within the field of interactive systems, on Sept. 15.

Hester is an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and computer science in Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering. Pawelczak is an assistant professor in the Embedded Software Lab at TU Delft. Their team includes Jasper de Winkel and Vito Kortbeek, both Ph.D. candidates at TU Delft.

The researchers' energy aware gaming platform (ENGAGE) has the size and form factor of the original Game Boy, while being equipped with a set of solar panels around the screen. Button presses by the user are a second source of energy. Most importantly, it impersonates the Game Boy processor. Although this solution requires a lot of computational power, and therefore energy, it allows any popular retro game to be played straight from its original cartridge.

As the device switches between power sources, it does experience short losses in power. To ensure an acceptable duration of gameplay between power failures, the researchers designed the system hardware and software from the ground up to be energy aware as well as very energy efficient. They also developed a new technique for storing the system state in non-volatile memory, minimizing overhead and allowing quick restoration when power returns. This eliminates the need to press "save" as seen in traditional platforms, as the player can now continue gameplay from the exact point of the device fully losing power -- even if Mario is in mid-jump.

On a not-too-cloudy day, and for games that require at least moderate amounts of clicking, gameplay interruptions typically last less than one second for every 10 seconds of gameplay. The researchers find this to be a playable scenario for some games -- including Chess, Solitaire and Tetris -- but certainly not yet for all (action) games.

Although there is still a long way to go before state-of-the-art 21st century hand-held game consoles become fully battery-free, the researchers hope their devices raise awareness of the environmental impact of the small devices that make up the Internet of Things. Batteries are costly, environmentally hazardous and they must eventually be replaced to avoid that the entire device ends up at the landfill.

"Our work is the antithesis of the Internet of Things, which has many devices with batteries in them," Hester said. "Those batteries eventually end up in the garbage. If they aren't fully discharged, they can become hazardous. They are hard to recycle. We want to build devices that are more sustainable and can last for decades."

Leesburg, VA, September 3, 2020--According to ARRS' American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), nearly half (47.7%) of the research articles published in major radiology journals declared funding--a proportion that has increased from 17% of articles in 1994 and 26.9% published between 2001 and 2010.

"Most funded articles received support from federal sponsors or nonprofit foundations, whereas only a minority of funded articles were supported by private industry," explained first author Rayan H.M. Alkhawtani from the department of radiology, nuclear medicine, and molecular imaging at University Medical Center Groningen in The Netherlands.

And as Alkhawtani et al. concluded, "funding was not associated with a higher citation rate."

The Dutch team included a total of 600 consecutive original research articles published between January and October 2016 in three large journals: AJR, Radiology, and European Radiology. Using linear regression analysis to ascertain the association between research funding and citation rate, adjustments were made for the following seven factors:

journal,

continent of origin of first author,

subspecialty,

study findings included in article title,

number of authors,

immediate open access publication,

time since publication online.

Finding that funding was declared in 286 of 600 (47.7%) included articles, the authors of this AJR "Original Research" article identified the six most significant funding sources:

federal sponsorship (29.4%),

nonprofit foundation (16.4%),

both federal sponsorship and nonprofit foundation (16.1%),

private industry (10.1%),

intramural institutional research funding (9.8%),

other combinations of funding sources (18.2%).

"Articles with first authors whose continent of origin was Europe (p

Meanwhile, the team noted that articles published in Radiology were significantly more frequently funded (p

Ultimately, citation rate was not significantly different between funded and unfunded articles (p = 0.166), and in the adjusted linear regression analysis, funding was not significantly associated with citation rate (β coefficient, ?0.31; 95% CI, ?3.27 to 2.66; p = 0.838).

Short-term flooding from extreme storm events poses a serious transportation challenge in U.S. cities. This problem--which is anticipated to grow over the next century with our global climate crisis--is often hardest on vulnerable populations, including low-income and minority neighborhoods. The latest report from the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), led by Courtney Crosson of University of Arizona (UA), advances national research methods for assessing flood vulnerability and prioritizing transportation improvement investments to ensure that no community is left stranded when the next flood occurs.

Crosson and fellow researchers Daoqin Tong (Arizona State University) and Yinan Zhang (UA) conducted a flood vulnerability assessment of the City of Tucson, Arizona's multi-modal transportation system in low-income and minority neighborhoods. They identified priority locations for Tucson to invest in improvements to mitigate urban transportation system flooding, and are now working with city and regional agencies to implement those findings. This project also serves as a proof of concept to advance national research methods aimed at reducing the mobility impacts of chronic flooding.

Download the final report: https://ppms.trec.pdx.edu/media/project_files/NITC-SS-1262_Urban_Transportation_System_Flood_Vulnerability_Assessment_FZOGs2O.pdf

EFFECTIVE USE OF GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE IN LOW-INCOME NEIGHBORHOODS

Green infrastructure is a growing urban trend where stormwater is managed by expanding permeable areas of natural vegetation throughout a city. This approach to water management is intended to protect, restore, or mimic the natural water cycle. Crosson's research team found that building comprehensive neighborhood-scale green infrastructure in the right-of-way is effective at increasing multi-modal access in moderate flooding conditions.

This green infrastructure solution did not address the mobility issues that result from extreme flooding. Rather than municipalities selecting areas that have the highest volumes of flooding or the highest volume of resident complaints, funds for green infrastructure should be invested in low-income neighborhoods subject to moderate flooding in order to achieve the greatest improvement of multimodal access.

Of the areas studied, 93% were part of census tracts with median household incomes below the Tucson average. Researchers intentionally focused on low-income neighborhoods, since too often people living in those areas are hardest hit by the impacts of natural disasters. Previous research in this area has focused heavily on the vulnerability of the transportation infrastructure alone, largely ignoring the people in the communities. A NITC project funded in 2020 will develop a new methodology that incorporates community socioeconomic vulnerability in the evaluation of transportation infrastructure vulnerabilities for cities and regions facing hazards.

RESEARCH METHOD FOR ASSESSING FLOOD VULNERABILITY IN TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE

Stage One - Estimate Flood Conditions in Low-Income Neighborhoods: Researchers estimated flood conditions for a 5-year, 1-hour storm event (meaning a flood from a rainstorm lasting one hour, of a size that occurs roughly every five years) using FLO-2D flood modeling software and a digital elevation model constructed using LiDAR data. This hydrological analysis was performed both at the city-scale and at a 20-foot grid resolution.

Stage Two - Identify Multimodal Transportation Priorities: The team then analyzed neighborhood transportation vulnerability. Using the results from their flood model, they looked at overall transportation system performance across three modes (driving, bicycling and transit). Data from the most recent 10 years of vehicular counts, bicycle counts, and bus stop ridership were used to identify the top ten priority locations for flood mitigation, based where usage was highest for each of the three modes.

Stage Three - Perform Green Infrastructure Scenario Analyses: Lastly, they took those top ten sites for each of the three modes of transportation and performed thirty green infrastructure scenario analyses. They wanted to see the change in transportation network accessibility after the same flood conditions, but with comprehensive neighborhood-scale green infrastructure in place. To do this, they used ArcGIS Hydrology Analysis to find the "pour points," or places where water flows out of the area. Then they altered their model to include roadside basins (following design standards from NACTO and Pima County) to control this flow.

Based on these model results, researchers identified five key green infrastructure design performance priorities.

FIVE KEY DESIGN PRIORITIES FOR GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE TO MAXIMIZE MULTIMODAL ACCESSIBILITY

These five principles can be used by transportation planners and engineers, hydrologists, flood managers, and urban designers when approaching and evaluating project sites and investments to maximize the impact on increased multimodal accessibility.

Prioritize Upstream Mitigation - Across the thirty scenarios, the priority segments with the greatest improved transportation access were in areas that had substantial upstream mitigation. This suggests that green infrastructure should not only be implemented directly adjacent to priority transit locations, but also (and sometimes more importantly) implemented upstream of the priority segment.

Prioritize Moderate Flooding - Across the thirty scenarios, the greatest impacts on improved transportation access were in areas that received moderate flooding, in comparison to areas of extreme flooding. Often municipalities and transportation agencies are motivated to place green infrastructure installations in rights-of-way adjacent to areas where there are the greatest flooding concerns and highest volume of resident complaints. But to help with extreme flooding, larger implementations (such as underground stormwater piping or large basins) would need to be implemented in concert with smaller investments. When budget is limited to neighborhood-scale investments, in order to visibly show an impact on reducing flooding and increasing accessibility to the multimodal network, moderately flooded sites are the best candidates.

Prioritize Network Gains - When selecting project sites, it is critical to consider the network gains that can be accomplished by concentrating the green infrastructure within an area. By addressing the flooding issue in one street or sidewalk segment, other downstream flooding concerns may be helped as well.

Prioritize Large Right-of-Way Areas - Across the thirty sites and segments, the largest impacts often occurred when there was a substantial amount of right-of-way available for implementation of green infrastructure. Taken into consideration with the other design principles, the area (and corresponding volume) of the available right-of-way can make a large difference in total flood reduction success.

Prioritize Pedestrian Travel Locations - The greatest impacts of green infrastructure on accessibility were in pedestrian access to bus stops. The width of these designated areas to mitigate were smaller in the pedestrian cases compared to bicycle and vehicle cases. Acting as a buffer between road and pedestrian walking areas, the green infrastructure most successfully supported greater access.

IMPLICATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH AND PRACTICE

The research expects direct outcomes on future planning decisions made by the City of Tucson Department of Transportation, Tucson Water, Planning & Development Services, and Pima County Regional Flood Control District (RFCD). The NITC researchers on this project have met with the Director of Tucson Department of Transportation and RFCD, and the leadership of both agencies have expressed great interest in the research findings for upcoming decision-making around the allocation of green infrastructure funds for roadway flooding mitigation.

This research can serve as a proof of concept for a larger, long-term project to advance national research methods to reduce the impact of chronic flooding on the multi-modal transportation network. Future research should assess impact across time durations (rather than simple peak event calculations) and work to optimize green infrastructure implementation across multiple benefits for multiple modes of transportation (rather than individual modes).

By systematically prioritizing these projects in the right-of-way, cities can move toward increased transportation network accessibility and expanded equity.

This research was funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities, with additional support from Pima County Flood Control and Tucson Water.

The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) is one of seven U.S. Department of Transportation national university transportation centers. NITC is a program of the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University. This PSU-led research partnership also includes the Oregon Institute of Technology, University of Arizona, University of Oregon, University of Texas at Arlington and University of Utah. We pursue our theme -- improving mobility of people and goods to build strong communities -- through research, education and technology transfer.

HOUSTON - (Sept. 3, 2020) - Nature's speed limits aren't posted on road signs, but Rice University physicists have discovered a new way to deduce them that is better -- infinitely better, in some cases -- than previous methods.

"The big question is, 'How fast can anything -- information, mass, energy -- move in nature?'" said Kaden Hazzard, a theoretical quantum physicist at Rice. "It turns out that if somebody hands you a material, it is incredibly difficult, in general, to answer the question."

In a study published today in the American Physical Society journal PRX Quantum, Hazzard and Rice graduate student Zhiyuan Wang describe a new method for calculating the upper bound of speed limits in quantum matter.

"At a fundamental level, these bounds are much better than what was previously available," said Hazzard, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy and member of the Rice Center for Quantum Materials. "This method frequently produces bounds that are 10 times more accurate, and it's not unusual for them to be 100 times more accurate. In some cases, the improvement is so dramatic that we find finite speed limits where previous approaches predicted infinite ones."

Nature's ultimate speed limit is the speed of light, but in nearly all matter around us, the speed of energy and information is much slower. Frequently, it is impossible to describe this speed without accounting for the large role of quantum effects.

In the 1970s, physicists proved that information must move much slower than the speed of light in quantum materials, and though they could not compute an exact solution for the speeds, physicists Elliott Lieb and Derek Robinson pioneered mathematical methods for calculating the upper bounds of those speeds.

"The idea is that even if I can't tell you the exact top speed, can I tell you that the top speed must be less than a particular value," Hazzard said. "If I can give a 100% guarantee that the real value is less than that upper bound, that can be extremely useful."

Hazzard said physicists have long known that some of the bounds produced by the Lieb-Robinson method are "ridiculously imprecise."

"It might say that information must move less than 100 miles per hour in a material when the real speed was measured at 0.01 miles per hour," he said. "It's not wrong, but it's not very helpful."

The more accurate bounds described in the PRX Quantum paper were calculated by a method Wang created.

"We invented a new graphical tool that lets us account for the microscopic interactions in the material instead of relying only on cruder properties such as its lattice structure," Wang said.

Hazzard said Wang, a third-year graduate student, has an incredible talent for synthesizing mathematical relationships and recasting them in new terms.

"When I check his calculations, I can go step by step, churn through the calculations and see that they're valid," Hazzard said. "But to actually figure out how to get from point A to point B, what set of steps to take when there's an infinite variety of things you could try at each step, the creativity is just amazing to me."

The Wang-Hazzard method can be applied to any material made of particles moving in a discrete lattice. That includes oft-studied quantum materials like high-temperature superconductors, topological materials, heavy fermions and others. In each of these, the behavior of the materials arises from interactions of billions upon billions of particles, whose complexity is beyond direct calculation.

Hazzard said he expects the new method to be used in several ways.

"Besides the fundamental nature of this, it could be useful for understanding the performance of quantum computers, in particular in understanding how long they take to solve important problems in materials and chemistry," he said.

Hazzard said he is certain the method will also be used to develop numerical algorithms because Wang has shown it can put rigorous bounds on the errors produced by oft-used numerical techniques that approximate the behavior of large systems.

A popular technique physicists have used for more than 60 years is to approximate a large system by a small one that can be simulated by a computer.

"We draw a small box around a finite chunk, simulate that and hope that's enough to approximate the gigantic system," Hazzard said. "But there has not been a rigorous way of bounding the errors in these approximations."

The Wang-Hazzard method of calculating bounds could lead to just that.

"There is an intrinsic relationship between the error of a numerical algorithm and the speed of information propagation," Wang explained, using the sound of his voice and the walls in his room to illustrate the link.

"The finite chunk has edges, just as my room has walls. When I speak, the sound will get reflected by the wall and echo back to me. In an infinite system, there is no edge, so there is no echo."

In numerical algorithms, errors are the mathematical equivalent of echoes. They reverberate from the edges of the finite box, and the reflection undermines the algorithms' ability to simulate the infinite case. The faster information moves through the finite system, the shorter the time the algorithm faithfully represents the infinite.
Hazzard said he, Wang and others in his research group are using their method to craft numerical algorithms with guaranteed error bars.

"We don't even have to change the existing algorithms to put strict, guaranteed error bars on the calculations," he said. "But you can also flip it around and use this to make better numerical algorithms. We're exploring that, and other people are interested in using these as well."

There are good reasons to be worried about indoor air quality right now, in light of COVID-19. In addition to transmitting infectious agents, indoor spaces can also be a source of harmful chemicals in consumer products. A new analysis of indoor spaces on college campuses finds dust in classrooms and lecture halls harbors high levels of toxic flame retardants used in furniture raising health concerns from everyday exposures.

"The coronavirus pandemic has revealed that indoor spaces have an enormous impact on people's health," says lead author Kathryn Rodgers, MPH, a staff scientist at Silent Spring Institute. "So, it's critical that we find ways to reduce harmful exposures and create the healthiest indoor environments we can."

Scientists have long raised concerns about the use of flame retardants in products because the chemicals are linked with a range of health problems including thyroid disease, infertility, decreased IQ, and cancers. What's more, the chemicals don't stay put. Studies show flame retardants migrate out of furniture, accumulate in dust, and end up in people's bodies.

Reporting September 3 in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters, Rodgers and her colleagues collected dust from classrooms and lecture halls on four college campuses in New England. Some of the spaces adhered to older, outdated standards for furniture flammability (TB117 and TB133), which resulted in manufacturers adding large amounts of flame retardants to furniture. Others followed the more recent updated standard (TB117-2013) that allows for furniture free of toxic chemicals.

The researchers detected 43 different types of flame retardants and found the composition of flame retardants varied from space to space based on the flammability standard the different schools followed. Overall, flame retardant levels were significantly higher in spaces with outdated furniture meeting TB117 and/or TB133 than in spaces meeting the newer TB117-2013 standard.

In older TB133 classrooms, levels of a phased-out flame retardant and its replacement (BDE 209 and DBDPE) were three and eight times higher, respectively, than the highest levels previously reported in indoor spaces in the United States. That report came from an earlier study by Silent Spring that looked at dust in college dorm rooms.

The team also detected the carcinogen TDCIPP and a structurally similar flame retardant called TCIPP in rooms meeting the newer standard, likely due to the chemicals' widespread use in many other materials such as plastics, rubber, and textiles.

"This is an important study and the first to evaluate the impact of the new TB117-2013 standard on flame retardant levels in dust," says Arlene Blum, executive director of the Green Science Policy Institute. "It shows that updating an obscure fire standard leads to lower levels of harmful flame retardants and healthier indoor spaces."

Despite evidence that flame retardants do not improve fire safety, independent standard-setting organizations and some industry groups maintain their necessity in furniture. Yet, there are other ways of achieving fire safety without resorting to toxic chemicals, says Rodgers. Non-chemical methods, such as automatic sprinklers, smoke detectors, smoking bans, and the use of inherently less-flammable materials are effective and don't impact human health, she says.

In recent years, TB117-2013 has become the de facto national standard across the U.S. As a result, furniture free of flame retardants is now widely available and some schools have begun replacing their furniture with healthier products. However, given furniture's long lifespan, on the order of 10 to 15 years, these changes can take time and not every school has the means to make the switch.

"For schools with fewer resources, replacing all their furniture may not be an option," says co-author Robin Dodson, ScD, an environmental exposure scientist at Silent Spring. "Still, there are steps staff and students can take to limit their exposure to flame retardants on campus."

Keeping dust levels low, vacuuming regularly with a vacuum that has a HEPA filter, drawing fresh air from the outside into the building, and washing hands frequently especially before eating, are effective at reducing harmful exposures and maintaining a healthy environment, says Dodson.

Findings from the study are not just relevant to colleges, the researchers note, but other spaces as well such as offices, libraries, and hospitals. "Large institutions fill their spaces with lots of furniture, so it's important for these groups to be mindful of how their choices in furniture can affect people's health," says Rodgers.

The new study is part of a larger initiative called the Healthy Green Campus project, which educates colleges on the health risks posed by everyday toxic chemicals in products and offers guidance on how schools can reduce their chemical footprint.