Culture

Sophia Antipolis, France - 1 Sept 2020: Fainting affects one in two people during their lifetime. Those with recurrent episodes are often afraid to socialise or go to work. Today researchers report the first effective therapy. The late breaking research is presented at ESC Congress 2020.1

Fainting is caused by a fall in blood pressure and/or number of heart beats. In some patients, a trigger is identified - for example emotional stress, standing in a hot, crowded space or sitting up too quickly - and they have warning signs such as weakness, nausea, and dizziness. But in many others, especially older adults, no trigger is found and there are no warning signs.

"This unpredictability raises the risk of falls and even serious trauma and people end up in the emergency room," said principal investigator Professor Michele Brignole of the Faint and Fall Programme, Istituto Auxologico, Milan, Italy. "If it happens repeatedly, it has a major impact on quality of life - at the same magnitude as a chronic disease."

Currently there is no specific therapy and patients usually receive only generic advice on prevention, such as keeping hydrated, avoiding hot crowded environments, tensing the muscles, and lying down. But prevention is particularly difficult if there are no warning signs.

The BIOSync CLS study examined whether a pacemaker could prevent unpredictable fainting caused by missed heart beats. Patients with this particular cause of fainting were identified using tilt testing. This involves lying on a table that is slowly tilted upward to simulate standing up. Blood pressure and heart rate are monitored during the examination.

The study included 128 patients aged 40 and above who had fainted at least twice in the previous year with no warning signs. A tilt test showed that fainting was caused by missed heart beats.

All study participants received a pacemaker - but they were randomly allocated to having the pacemaker switched on (pacing group) or switched off (control group). They were then followed-up for fainting episodes.

During a median follow-up of 11.2 months, more than half of patients (53%) in the control group fainted compared to just 16% in the pacing group. This translated into a 77% lower risk of fainting in the pacing group.

The researchers estimated that at two years, two-thirds (68%) of the control group would have a fainting episode compared to one-fifth (22%) of the pacing group. A pacemaker would provide a 77% relative risk reduction of fainting over two years and a 46% absolute risk reduction.

Just over two patients (2.2) would need to receive a pacemaker to prevent fainting. Put another way, if 11 patients received a pacemaker, fainting could be avoided in five patients.

Implanting the pacemaker caused minor adverse events in five patients (4%) such as lead-related complications.

Professor Brignole said: "Our study shows that pacing can be an effective treatment for selected people with unpredictable fainting episodes. Tilt testing is a simple and non-invasive way to identify people who could benefit. We hope this new treatment option will enable these patients to resume a normal life without fear of blackouts."

SAN DIEGO AND WASHINGTON, DC -- As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to put lives and livelihoods at risk, 1 in 2 Americans say they fear a major health event could lead them to file for bankruptcy, marking a 5% increase since 2019. The new research comes from the West Health-Gallup U.S. Healthcare Study, an ongoing series of surveys on the impact of high healthcare costs on American lives.

The survey found the fear of bankruptcy runs even higher for members of minority groups and younger people. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of people of color report being extremely concerned or concerned about bankruptcy, a 12% increase over last year. Fifty-five percent of adults 18 to 29-years-old share these concerns, up from 33% in 2019.

"Rising healthcare costs continue to pose a significant threat to millions of Americans and the pandemic has only made the situation worse," said Tim Lash, chief strategy officer of West Health. "With so many Americans fearing they are but one health event away from bankruptcy, it's more urgent than ever for policy makers to finally address the healthcare cost crisis before it gets even more out of control."

Amid rising concerns about health-related bankruptcy, 15% of adults report that at least one person in their household currently has medical debt that will not be repaid - either in full or in part - within the next 12 months. This includes 12% of White adults and 20% of non-White adults. This kind of medical debt is highest among those in households with annual incomes less than $40,000 (28%).

Another 26% of Americans report that they would need to borrow money to pay a $500 medical bill - a number that grows to 43% among people of color and 46% among those living in households with annual incomes less than $40,000 per year.

Drug Pricing Continues to be Top Issue for 35% of Voters

The high cost of healthcare is likely to continue to play a big role in this year's election. The share of Americans citing lower prescription drug costs as the single most important issue or among the most important issues influencing their vote in 2020 has increased by 5 percentage points, to 35%, from February. The issue remains particularly important among non-White adults (48% vs. 29% for White adults), as well as among households with less than $40,000 in annual income (52%).

"These latest findings illustrate the widespread extent of concern about how catastrophic health events can create financial ruin and the disproportionate impact felt by non-White Americans," said Dan Witters, Gallup senior researcher. "As election season intensifies, the lived experiences and priority that Americans place on healthcare cost issues will be very hard for candidates and leaders to ignore."

The new results are based on interviews with 1,007 U.S. adults conducted between July 1 and July 24, 2020. Read the full findings, including a methodology statement, here.

Immune cells called 'natural killer' (NK) cells could be a powerful weapon for fighting lung cancer, according to Australian researchers.

Studying preclinical and patient samples of small cell lung cancer (SCLC), the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute team revealed that NK cells - but not T cells - are essential for slowing the aggressive spread of the cancer. 'Supercharging' the NK cells further boosted their cancer-fighting abilities.

The discovery offers hope for better treatments for people with SCLC, many of whom only survive a few months after their diagnosis because of the cancer's aggressive spread.

The research was published in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology by a team led by Walter and Eliza Hall Institute researchers Dr Sarah Best, Mr Jonas Hess and Dr Kate Sutherland in collaboration with Associate Professor Melissa Davis and Professor Nick Huntington (now at Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute) and Dr Daniel Steinfort, a respiratory physician at The Royal Melbourne Hospital.

At a glance

- NK and T cells are immune cells that can fight cancer, and were shown by our researchers to infiltrate the tumours of some patients with SCLC, an aggressive form of lung cancer.

- Using preclinical models, the team showed that NK cells - but not T cells - were critical for limiting SCLC spread, and 'supercharging' the NK cells enhanced their effectiveness.

- The findings suggest that immunotherapies that harness NK cells might be effective treatments for SCLC.

Harnessing the immune system

SCLC is the most aggressive type of lung cancer, and is often detected after the disease has begun to spread, or metastasise. While people with SCLC will initially benefit from chemotherapy, these cancers rapidly develop resistance and the average patient survival is only a matter of months, Dr Best said.

"New treatments are urgently needed for SCLC," she said. "There had been interest in harnessing the immune system to fight lung cancer - a line of treatment called immunotherapy. To date, T cell immunotherapies have been most investigated but unfortunately these do not seem to help in SCLC.

"T cells are not the only cancer-fighting immune cell - NK cells can also attack tumour cells. Therefore we decided to investigate which forms of immunotherapy might hold most promise for people with SCLC."

The team started by looking at markers of anti-cancer immunity in patient SCLC samples.

"We looked at tumours to understand which immune cells were present," Dr Best said.

"These analyses revealed that there is a wide variability between patients in the relative amounts of NK and T cells within tumours. The presence of these cells in tumours suggests there is an anti-cancer response underway."

The importance of NK cells

To understand whether NK or T cells could slow the spread of SCLC, the team looked at laboratory models of the disease that lacked either NK or T cells, said Mr Hess, who is a PhD student.

"We discovered that the loss of NK cells made SCLC tumours spread more, while the loss of T cells did not impact disease spread," he said. "This suggested that NK cells, but not T cells, are important for limiting metastasis of SCLC. Indeed, if we activated - or 'supercharged' - NK cells by adding the cytokine IL-15, they were even better at limiting SCLC spread.

"Activating T cells as well as NK cells further reduced SCLC spread, suggesting these two cell types can work together," Mr Hess said.

Dr Sutherland said the research provided a clear rationale for pursuing NK cell-based immunotherapies as a potential treatment for SCLC. "To date, T cell-based immunotherapies have been advanced more for other cancers, but not for SCLC," she said.

"Our study suggests that immunotherapies that harness NK cell's tumour-fighting capabilities might be more effective for SCLC. We think NK cell-based immunotherapies could be an effective supplement to chemotherapy, slowing disease spread and extending the survival of SCLC patients."

Some patients may benefit more from NK cell-based immunotherapies than others, Dr Sutherland said.

"Bioinformatic analyses revealed a lot of variability in the amount of immune cells infiltrating patient SCLC tumours. We think this could mean that some SCLCs - those with more immune cell infiltration - could be particularly sensitive to NK cell-based immunotherapies," she said.

Using the venom from 312 honeybees and bumblebees in Perth Western Australia, Ireland and England, Dr Ciara Duffy from the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research and The University of Western Australia, tested the effect of the venom on the clinical subtypes of breast cancer, including triple-negative breast cancer, which has limited treatment options.

Results published in the prestigious international journal npj Precision Oncology revealed that honeybee venom rapidly destroyed triple-negative breast cancer and HER2-enriched breast cancer cells.

Dr Duffy said the aim of the research was to investigate the anti-cancer properties of honeybee venom, and a component compound, melittin, on different types of breast cancer cells.

"No-one had previously compared the effects of honeybee venom or melittin across all of the different subtypes of breast cancer and normal cells.

"We tested honeybee venom on normal breast cells, and cells from the clinical subtypes of breast cancer: hormone receptor positive, HER2-enriched, and triple-negative breast cancer.

"We tested a very small, positively charged peptide in honeybee venom called melittin, which we could reproduce synthetically, and found that the synthetic product mirrored the majority of the anti-cancer effects of honeybee venom," Dr Duffy said.

"We found both honeybee venom and melittin significantly, selectively and rapidly reduced the viability of triple-negative breast cancer and HER2-enriched breast cancer cells.

"The venom was extremely potent," Dr Duffy said.

A specific concentration of honeybee venom can induce 100% cancer cell death, while having minimal effects on normal cells.

"We found that melittin can completely destroy cancer cell membranes within 60 minutes."

Melittin in honeybee venom also had another remarkable effect; within 20 minutes, melittin was able to substantially reduce the chemical messages of cancer cells that are essential to cancer cell growth and cell division.

"We looked at how honeybee venom and melittin affect the cancer signalling pathways, the chemical messages that are fundamental for cancer cell growth and reproduction, and we found that very quickly these signalling pathways were shut down.

"Melittin modulated the signalling in breast cancer cells by suppressing the activation of the receptor that is commonly overexpressed in triple-negative breast cancer, the epidermal growth factor receptor, and it suppressed the activation of HER2 which is over-expressed in HER2-enriched breast cancer," she said.

Western Australia's Chief Scientist Professor Peter Klinken said "This is an incredibly exciting observation that melittin, a major component of honeybee venom, can suppress the growth of deadly breast cancer cells, particularly triple-negative breast cancer.

"Significantly, this study demonstrates how melittin interferes with signalling pathways within breast cancer cells to reduce cell replication. It provides another wonderful example of where compounds in nature can be used to treat human diseases", he said.

Dr Duffy also tested to see if melittin could be used with existing chemotherapy drugs as it forms pores, or holes, in breast cancer cell membranes, potentially enabling the entry of other treatments into the cancer cell to enhance cell death.

"We found that melittin can be used with small molecules or chemotherapies, such as docetaxel, to treat highly-aggressive types of breast cancer. The combination of melittin and docetaxel was extremely efficient in reducing tumour growth in mice."

Dr Duffy's research was conducted as part of her PhD undertaken at Perth's Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research at the Cancer Epigenetics laboratory overseen by A/Prof. Pilar Blancafort.
"I began with collecting Perth honeybee venom. Perth bees are some of the healthiest in the world.

"The bees were put to sleep with carbon dioxide and kept on ice before the venom barb was pulled out from the abdomen of the bee and the venom extracted by careful dissection," she said.

While there are 20,000 species of bees, Dr Duffy wanted to compare the effects of Perth honeybee venom to other honeybee populations in Ireland and England, as well as to the venom of bumblebees.

"I found that the European honeybee in Australia, Ireland and England produced almost identical effects in breast cancer compared to normal cells. However, bumblebee venom was unable to induce cell death even at very high concentrations.

One of the first reports of the effects of bee venom was published in Nature in 1950, where the venom reduced the growth of tumours in plants. However, Dr Duffy said it was only in the past two decades that interest grew substantially into the effects of honeybee venom on different cancers.

In the future, studies will be required to formally assess the optimum method of delivery of melittin, as well as toxicities and maximum tolerated doses.

SMU Office of Research and Tech Transfer - In response to the rapidly evolving COVID-19 pandemic, the Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA) issued a call on March 13th for rapid and impactful proposals to understand the psychological and behavioural aspects of the pandemic. Singapore Management University (SMU) Assistant Professor of Psychology (Education) Andree Hartanto was invited to participate in the project.

"My contribution was to comment on the research proposal before the study began, do pilot testing on the study with researchers from other labs, and run the actual study in Singapore," Professor Hartanto told the Office of Research and Tech Transfer.

The PSA is a globally distributed network of over 500 psychological science laboratories, representing over 70 countries on all six continents, that coordinates data collection for democratically selected studies. Its mission is to accelerate the accumulation of reliable and generalisable evidence in psychological science, reducing the gap between truth about human behaviour and mental processes and our current understanding.

Accepted for publication

The research project broadly aims to provide suggestions on how to best ensure compliance with health-promoting behaviours and manage negative feelings associated with the pandemic, as the mitigation of a pandemic depends on how the population, as a whole, engage in behaviours that limit the spread of the virus.

While the study is due to be completed later this year, it has already been accepted for publication in principle by Nature Human Behaviour, an online-only monthly journal dedicated to the best research into human behaviour from across the social and natural sciences.

"The remarkable part about this project is that the proposal was accepted as a registered report at Nature Human Behaviour, meaning that regardless of whether the results are positive or negative, it will still be published there," Professor Hartanto enthuses.

Professor Hartanto appointed Nadyanna Majeed, a fourth-year SMU undergraduate in Psychology and his former independent study student, as the lead investigator for the project at SMU. "I believe it will provide a unique and important learning opportunity for Nadya as an undergraduate, and as she fast tracks to graduate school in August this year."

As the lead investigator, Nadya tells the Office of Research & Tech Transfer that she is responsible for all aspects of the study in Singapore, where SMU is the only participating institution. "It includes roles such as recruiting participants, running the actual study, and also administrative tasks such as making sure the participants receive their remuneration."

The study

Apart from the research team at SMU, there are over 100 other labs from various countries collaborating on data collection for this project. The project is made up of three sub-studies, each focusing on a different aspect.

The first sub-study draws on insights from behavioural science and public health, and seeks to understand if message framing in terms of gains (e.g. protecting others) versus losses (e.g. endangering others) can improve policy support, information seeking, and intentions to engage in preventative behaviour related to COVID-19.

The second sub-study is related to coping with negative emotions, as negative emotions triggered by the COVID-19 outbreak can have detrimental effects on people's health and well-being. One way in which people cope with negative emotions is by employing emotion-regulation strategies that alter the strength of their emotional responses. This sub-study compares the effectiveness of various coping strategies related to distressing information about the pandemic, such as photographs of sick people in the news.

The last sub-study aims to test the effectiveness of different types of messages encouraging social distancing. Nadya explains: "Specifically, we compare the effectiveness of an autonomy-supportive message, which strives to take the person's perspective and provide rationale and structure for the desired behaviour, versus a controlling message, which uses more pressuring, prescriptive language, versus no specific message where the objective or factual information is presented in a neutral tone, without any extra affirmation."

Methodology

Research studies in SMU are normally conducted in the psychology lab, but due to COVID-19, the team is unable to carry out their study in person. Instead, the study is conducted online. Participants are recruited through SMU's subject pool system and are assigned to a bundle of sub-studies randomly and within each sub-study, they are also randomly assigned to a condition as the study uses a within-subjects design.

"Participants are assigned to one of two bundles: the message-framing bundle which comprises two sub-studies, or the emotion-regulation bundle," Nadya clarifies. "To complete all three sub-studies would not be feasible as it would take up too much time for each participant."

In the first sub-study in the message-framing bundle, participants are randomly assigned to either a gain condition where behaviours are framed as protecting others, or a loss condition where the behaviours are framed as endangering others. Participants are shown messages that are framed accordingly. Then, they are asked about their attitudes and opinions about relevant health policies and their desire to seek more information related to the pandemic, and their intentions to engage in preventative behaviours against COVID-19.

In the second sub-study, participants are randomly assigned to read either a supportive message, a controlling message, or a neutral message. The supportive message stresses the rationale behind and structure of the desired behaviour of social distancing, and takes on a more understanding and sympathetic tone, whereas with the controlling message, pressurising language is used to coerce people into complying. After viewing their assigned message, participants report whether they would or would not comply with the social distancing measures.

In the emotion-regulation bundle, participants are randomly assigned to and taught a coping strategy, which they will then use throughout the experiment. They are shown a series of distressing photographs of COVID-19 taken from news agencies around the world, and are asked to use their assigned coping strategy to regulate their emotions.

Benefits of the study

Nadya believes that the way a message is framed and how we choose to cope in a crisis is important because it can have impacts on how relevant organisations may choose to enact their policies. Governments or health authorities can use the knowledge from the study to better address their citizens or patients by creating effective messages in their press releases, infographics, and information on their websites, so as to increase compliance with important behaviours such as social distancing and wearing masks. Ultimately, these measures are important in helping to slow the spread of the virus.

"Virus transmission cannot be addressed alone. We've seen during this pandemic that the whole population must work together to reduce the spread. Ensuring that messages are effective is important in preventing even more people from getting sick and losing their lives, as even one individual choosing not to cooperate can endanger their whole community," Nadya argues.

She adds: "The results from the emotion-regulation study can be used by mental health professionals such as counselors, psychologists, and social workers to help individuals cope with distressing events. Not just with regard to this pandemic, but also in general. From this study, we can see which strategies are more effective than others. It's important that we find effective coping strategies so that people can find the best ways to cope."

In 19th-century Sweden, workers' wages rose faster than in other European countries. By 1900, they were among the highest in Europe, and the steepest rise of all had been for those who earned least. This is shown by new research at Uppsala University: a study published in he Journal of Economic History.

"Historians often describe Sweden in the late 19th century as a poor country. Our results show the need for a more nuanced view. Although poverty did exist, of course, great changes were under way, and unskilled labourers seem to have been among those who benefited most from the upward trend."

The speaker, Johan Ericsson, is a researcher at the Department of History, Uppsala University. He and his colleagues have surveyed Swedish pay trends in the building and construction industry in the period 1831-1900. By using such sources as wage statistics from the Board of Public Buildings (the precursor to the National Property Board Sweden) and published research on the subject, they were able to compile figures on wages for four categories of construction workers: handymen, carpenters, bricklayers and the draught-horse drivers who transported the materials.

The results show that wage rates were increasing throughout Sweden, and pay differentials among occupational categories were shrinking. During the period, unskilled handymen's real wages rose most rapidly: by 176 per cent.

For corresponding workers in cities like Amsterdam, Antwerp, Paris and London, wages increased by between 40 and 90 per cent in the same period. This meant that the Swedish handymen's wages at the century's end were some 30 per cent higher than those of their counterparts in Paris, Amsterdam and Antwerp. Wages in London, which were the highest in Europe, were some 12 per cent higher than those of average labourers in Sweden.

This international comparison was feasible once the researchers had recalculated wages in terms of welfare ratios. In brief, this meant working out the quantity of certain products that an individual wage could purchase.

The researchers' conclusions are that a labour market with high mobility, combined with mass emigration to America that reduced the supply of unskilled labour, can explain why Swedish pay rates rose so rapidly.

"One intriguing observation is that workers' wages increased faster than average incomes in society. These days, there's a lot of talk about how globalisation and technological development are making the workers' situation relatively worse. However, our findings show that this is no natural law. On the contrary, it seems that Swedish workers in this period were favoured by trends like that," says Jakob Molinder of the Department of Economic History at Uppsala University.

People may report a reduced feeling of responsibility when they comply with orders in situations of asymmetric power, such as hierarchies. Previous research has shown that complying with orders reduces the sense of agency, that is, the feeling that you are the author of your own actions and thus responsible for the outcomes. Obeying orders also reduces the brain's processing of the outcomes of actions, compared to outcomes that are chosen freely. These results could help to explain why people can commit atrocious acts under coercion. The sense of agency, and feeling of responsibility for the outcomes of their action could be attenuated, as the brain reduces outcome processing, compared to scenarios where individuals decide for themselves on a course of action. The authors note that the psychological finding of feeling a reduced sense of agency under coercion should be considered quite distinct from the important legal and moral questions about the extent to which people are responsible for their actions when coerced.

These effects have been shown in experiments with adult volunteers, for whom coercion should be a rare (and generally illegal) occurrence. In contrast, some social structures, such as the armed forces, rely on strict hierarchical organization where people are required to follow orders. The professional role of military personnel implies compliance to hierarchical authority, based on the mandate society has given to that authority. In the present research published in Nature Communications today, the authors wondered to what extent the hierarchical organization of military environments might influence the experience of agency and outcome processing. "We wanted to investigate how a military environment would affect our experimental measures of agency and outcome processing. We also wanted to compare results for different military ranks: the officers who typically give orders, and subordinates who receive them", explains Dr. Emilie Caspar, first author of the present study. "Officers are trained to be accountable for their own actions, and also for the actions of troops under their command. We predicted that their experience of being a responsible agent might therefore be enhanced, compared to subordinates.", she adds.

In the present study, the authors used a simple laboratory paradigm, in which two volunteers respectively took turns in the role of 'agents' or 'victims'. The word 'victim' is used figuratively to define the role in the experiments, which followed ethical permissions, informed consent, and the declaration of Helsinki. Thus, all participants were always free to end their participation at any time, without giving reasons, and without personal or professional consequences for them. Agents were either free to decide to administer or not a mildly painful shock to the 'victim' in exchange for a +0.05€ monetary reward, or were coercively instructed by an experimenter to inflict or not the same shock. During the task, the authors used an implicit measure of the sense of agency based on time perception, and also recorded the brain activity of agents with an electroencephalogram. The team calculated a 'coercion effect', defined as the difference between the coercion condition and the free-choice condition. In a first study, the authors tested a group of civilians and a group of junior cadets, that is, officers in their first year of military training.

"Results of this study showed that for civilians, we replicated previous results. A useful implicit marker of sense of agency is the experience that your action and its outcome are compressed together in time. The interval between actions and outcomes that were freely chosen seemed shorter than the interval between the same actions and the same outcomes in a coercive condition. So, civilian participants appeared to have a reduced sense of agency in the coercive condition compared to the free-choice condition. However, for junior military cadets, there was no coercion effect: they showed no difference in our measure of agency between a condition in which they were following orders and a condition in which they could freely decide which action to execute", reports prof. Axel Cleeremans, co-senior author of the study. These results could reflect the negative influence of working in a highly hierarchical context on the sense of agency.

In a second study, the authors compared three groups of military personnel: junior cadets, privates with an average of 5 years' military experience, and senior cadets who had reached the rank of first lieutenant; again after 5 years' military experience - but this time of officer training. Results again showed no coercion effect on agency for junior cadets, and also showed no coercion effect for privates.

However, the senior cadets showed the standard coercion effect, with more agency in the free-choice condition than in the coercion condition. Further, senior cadets also had no attenuation in a brain measure of outcome processing, while privates did. Thus, working in a military environment, and position within the military hierarchy, both seemed to have a detrimental effect on sense of agency and outcome processing.

Importantly, these results are not simply explained by a selection process favouring junior cadets with a high sense of agency. An additional analysis conducted 3 years after the second study found that junior cadets who most attenuated sense agency and outcome processing in the free-choice condition relative to seniors were in fact those who persevered in the military, while those who maintained a high agency and outcome processing were more likely to leave.

"These results have deep societal implication, both for civilian society and hierarchical organizations such as the military" says Prof. Patrick Haggard, co-Senior author of the study. "If they are followed up in longitudinal studies, they open the possibility of training the sense of individual responsibility, which could have major benefits". Dr. Major Salvatore Lo Bue, coauthor of the study and professor at the Royal Military Academy of Belgium added: "The contemporary soldier operates in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environments in which he/she sometimes has to make critical decisions on his/her own. He/she does not simply execute orders given by others. Insights about the underlying mechanisms of agency in the military environment can help to tailor the training to enable the soldier to make the swift switch between obedience when required, and making his/her own decisions when necessary."

Researchers at the Smart-Aging Research Center (IDAC) at Tohoku University have developed an innovative training protocol that, utilizing immersive virtual reality (IVR), leads to real physical and cognitive benefits.

We all know that physical exercise is crucial for overall well-being and helps postpone aging-related disorders; what is more surprising is that physical exercise can have beneficial effects not only on the body but on cognitive functions too. Unfortunately, physical activities are not always possible for people suffering or recovering from long-term diseases.

IVR, which allows the creation of a realistic virtual world that we can explore with our virtual body, can help solve this problem. It sounds unreal, but the illusion is so effective that even with the person sitting and the virtual body walking, the person thinks he/she is moving - it even generates comparable physiological reactions.

Professor Ryuta Kawashima, director of IDAC, led the team of researchers to explore whether or not virtual training can have similar benefits on cognitive functions as physical exercise. Healthy, young participants underwent the virtual training protocol. Wearing an IVR headset while sitting, they saw a virtual body (also called an avatar) displayed in the first person perspective. This created the illusory feeling of being the avatar itself. The virtual body alternated between 30 seconds of walking and 30 seconds of running for 8 minutes.

Researchers found that participants' heart rate increased coherently with the virtual movements, despite the fact that subjects were completely still; more importantly, cognitive functions (specifically, executive functions) and their neural basis were tested before and after the virtual training. The results showed that participants improved their cognitive performance (specifically, they were faster), as also confirmed by the increased activation of the brain-related areas (specifically, the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex).

"The application of immersive virtual reality for clinical purposes is often doubted because it was originally designed for entertainment," says Professor Dalila Burin, who developed and conducted the experiment. "But this study proves that training protocols in IVR can be useful for people with motor impairments to have comparable benefits to real physical activity." Professor Burin adds, "It is also beneficial for people who want to start exercising in an entertaining and safe way."

By introducing the virtual reality technology in the cognitive neuroscience field, researchers aim to provide clinical solutions for patients and also contribute to theoretical models of body representation and motor control.

Ultraviolet B (UVB) is used as an effective therapy for individuals with psoriasis and atopic dermatitis because it has an immunosuppressive effect. The immune system develops to protect the body from infection or cancer. Its activation affects many physiological functions. Regulatory T (Treg) cells, expressing CD25 and Foxp3, constitute about 5-10% of peripheral CD4+T cells and work as brake on the immune system through the suppression of various immune responses. Researchers from Nagoya City University previously showed that skin Treg cells were expanded by UVB up to about 60% of CD4+T cells. Here they found that UVB-expanded skin Treg (UVB-skin Treg) cells had a healing function. UVB-skin Treg cells expressed proenkephalin (PENK), an endogenous opioid precursor, and amphiregulin (AREG), the epidermal growth factor receptor ligand, which promoted wound healing in vivo and keratinocyte outgrowth in a skin explant assay. Their results provide a new implication in developing a novel therapy using PENK+UVB-skin Treg cells.

A new study published in the journal Pediatrics found that young adults aged 18-26 who used legal performance-enhancing substances were significantly more likely to report several problematic alcohol use and drinking-related risk behaviors seven years later. This relationship was especially strong among men.

The study, which analyzed a sample of over 12,000 U.S. participants from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), highlights the need for more research and government oversight and regulation of legal performance-enhancing substances.

"The results from our study are concerning given the common use of legal performance-enhancing substances among young people, particularly boys and men," says lead author Kyle T. Ganson, PhD, MSW, assistant professor at the University of Toronto's Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work.

Performance-enhancing substances can be legal, such as creatine monohydrate or protein powders, or illegal, such as anabolic-androgenic steroids. Research has consistently shown adverse health and social outcomes due to the illegal use of unprescribed steroid use, but few studies have been conducted to identify outcomes associated with legal performance-enhancing substance use.

The researchers found that men who used legal performance-enhancing substances were more likely to experience five alcohol use problems and risk behaviors. This included binge drinking, getting hurt or engaging in risky behaviors while under the influence of alcohol, experiencing legal problems while under the influence of alcohol, continued alcohol use despite emotional or physical health problems, and reduced activities and socialization that interfered with alcohol use.

"Risky alcohol use is a serious problem for adult men, who have higher rates of death associated with alcohol use compared to women," said Dr. Ganson. "Problematic alcohol use ultimately impedes economic and employment success, and increases health care and law enforcement costs."

Ganson hypothesizes that the social pressure that boys and men feel to achieve a lean and muscular body type may explain the different results between genders. "For most boys and men, this body ideal is unattainable, leading to performance-enhancing substance use," he says. "This body image contrasts with the thin ideal for girls and women."

There are other reasons to be concerned about legal performance-enhancing substances as well.

"Legal performance-enhancing substances are unregulated by the Food and Drug Administration," said senior author Jason M. Nagata, MD, MSc, assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco's Department of Pediatrics. "These substances are also commonly mislabeled and may contain harmful ingredients, such as anabolic steroids, which can lead to heart, liver, and kidney problems and worsen mental health."

An earlier study, led by Dr. Nagata and published in JAMA Pediatrics, also showed a relationship between legal performance-enhancing substances and later use of illegal anabolic-androgenic steroids.

The study's authors say health professionals and policy makers need to adjust their practices and goals to account for the gateway-like relationship they have observed between alcohol use and legal performance-enhancing substances.

"Health professionals should screen for these behaviors and counsel young people about potential health risks," says Ganson. "We also need state and federal policymakers to begin to take these substances seriously and recognize the adverse effects they have on youth."

Several states, including Massachusetts, California, and New York are making efforts to regulate the sale of these substances to young people.

"These legislative efforts are a great start and we need to get them passed into law," says Ganson. "I hope that we see more efforts from federal regulators."

In a study published in PNAS, researchers used conservation biology and genomics to discover that the New Guinea singing dog, thought to be extinct for 50 years, still thrives. Scientists found that the ancestral dog population still stealthily wanders in the Highlands of New Guinea. This finding opens new doors for protecting a remarkable creature that can teach biologists about human vocal learning. The New Guinea singing dog can also be utilized as a valuable and unique animal model for studying how human vocal disorders arise and finding potential treatment opportunities. The study was performed by researchers at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health, Cenderawasih University in Indonesia, and other academic centers.

The New Guinea singing dog was first studied in 1897, and became known for their unique and characteristic vocalization, able to make pleasing and harmonic sounds with tonal quality. Only 200-300 captive New Guinea singing dogs exist in conservation centers, with none seen in the wild since the 1970s.

"The New Guinea singing dog that we know of today is a breed that was basically created by people," said Elaine Ostrander, Ph.D., NIH Distinguished Investigator and senior author of the paper. "Eight were brought to the United States from the Highlands of New Guinea and bred with each other to create this group."

According to Dr. Ostrander, a large amount of inbreeding within captive New Guinea singing dogs changed their genomic makeup by reducing the variation in the group's DNA. Such inbreeding is why the captive New Guinea singing dogs have most likely lost a large number of genomic variants that existed in their wild counterparts. This lack of genomic variation threatens the survival of captive New Guinea singing dogs. Their origins, until recently, had remained a mystery.

Another New Guinea dog breed found in the wild, called the Highland Wild Dog, has a strikingly similar physical appearance to the New Guinea singing dogs. Considered to be the rarest and most ancient dog-like animal in existence, Highland Wild Dogs are even older than the New Guinea singing dogs.

Researchers previously hypothesized that the Highland Wild Dog might be the predecessor to captive New Guinea singing dogs, but the reclusive nature of the Highland Wild Dog and lack of genomic information made it difficult to test the theory.

In 2016, in collaboration with the University of Papua, the New Guinea Highland Wild Dog Foundation led an expedition to Puncak Jaya, a mountain summit in Papua, Indonesia. They reported 15 Highland Wild Dogs near the Grasberg Mine, the largest gold mine in the world.

A follow-up field study in 2018 allowed researchers to collect blood samples from three Highland Wild Dogs in their natural environment as well as demographic, physiological and behavioral data.

NHGRI staff scientist Heidi Parker, Ph.D., led the genomic analyses, comparing the DNA from captive New Guinea singing dogs and Highland Wild Dogs.

"We found that New Guinea singing dogs and the Highland Wild Dogs have very similar genome sequences, much closer to each other than to any other canid known. In the tree of life, this makes them much more related to each other than modern breeds such as German shepherd or bassett hound," Dr. Parker said.

According to the researchers, the New Guinea singing dogs and the Highland Wild Dogs do not have identical genomes because of their physical separation for several decades and due to the inbreeding among captive New Guinea singing dogs--not because they are different breeds.

In fact, the researchers suggest that the vast genomic similarities between the New Guinea singing dogs and the Highland Wild Dogs indicate that Highland Wild Dogs are the wild and original New Guinea singing dog population. Hence, despite different names, they are, in essence, the same breed, proving that the original New Guinea singing dog population are not extinct in the wild.

The researchers believe that because the Highland Wild Dogs contain genome sequences that were lost in the captive New Guinea singing dogs, breeding some of the Highland Wild Dogs with the New Guinea singing dogs in conservation centers will help generate a true New Guinea singing dogs population. In doing so, conservation biologists may be able to help preserve the original breed by expanding the numbers of New Guinea singing dogs.

"This kind of work is only possible because of NHGRI's commitment to promoting comparative genomics, which allows researchers to compare the genome sequences of the Highland Wild Dog to that of a dozen other canid species," Dr. Ostrander said.

Although New Guinea singing dogs and Highland Wild Dogs are a part of the dog species Canis lupus familiaris, researchers found that each contain genomic variants across their genomes that do not exist in other dogs that we know today.

"By getting to know these ancient, proto-dogs more, we will learn new facts about modern dog breeds and the history of dog domestication," Dr. Ostrander said. "After all, so much of what we learn about dogs reflects back on humans."

The researchers also aim to study New Guinea singing dogs in greater detail to learn more about the genomics underlying vocalization (a field that, to date, heavily relies on birdsong data). Since humans are biologically closer to dogs than birds, researchers hope to study New Guinea singing dogs to gain a more accurate insight into how vocalization and its deficits occur, and the genomic underpinnings that could lead to future treatments for human patients.

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. (August 31, 2020)--Warning witnesses about the threat of misinformation--before or after an event--significantly reduces the negative impact of misinformation on memory, according to new research performed at Tufts University.

The study, published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), revealed that warnings can protect memory from misleading information by influencing the reconstructive processes at the time of memory retrieval. The researchers also found that when making accurate "memory decisions" participants in the study who were warned about the threat of misinformation displayed increased content-specific neural activity in regions of the brain associated with the encoding of actual event details. Likewise, warnings reduced content-specific neural activity in brain regions associated with the encoding of misleading event details.

The authors said the findings could have important implications for improving the accuracy of everyday memory and eyewitness testimony as part of the legal system.

"Memory is notoriously fallible and susceptible to error but our results show that a simple alert about possible misinformation is an effective tool to help eyewitnesses think back to the actual experience--with accuracy," said Ayanna Thomas, a psychology professor in the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts, who is a co-author and co-principal investigator of the study. "We expect this work could enhance interview procedures and protocols, specifically within the U.S. criminal justice system, which would benefit as a public entity from low-cost interview practices to improve the accuracy of eyewitness reports."

The study involved a total of 161 people who engaged in two experiments--one behavioral and one using neuroscientific methods--in which they watched a silent film depicting a crime and responded to a test of recognition memory. In the first experiment, participants listened to an audio narrative that described the crime which included consistent details, misleading details and neutral details. After the audio narrative, participants were given a final recognition memory test that assessed memory for the original witnessed event. Importantly, participants were randomly assigned into one of three warning groups: no warning, pre-warning and post-warning.

The results demonstrated that people who were warned about the inaccuracy of the retelling were less susceptible to the misinformation than people who were not warned. The researchers also found that there was little difference whether participants were warned before or after.

The second experiment involved a neuroimaging analysis designed to investigate the mechanisms by which warnings influence memory accuracy in the context of misinformation. In this evaluation, participants completed the identical tasks as they did in the first experiment but completed the final memory test while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The researchers found warnings not only increased reinstatement of visual activity associated with witnessing the actual crime but also decreased reinstatement of auditory activity associated with hearing misleading post-event information.

"This suggests that warnings increase memory accuracy by influencing whether we bring back to mind details from accurate or inaccurate sources of information," said Elizabeth Race, a psychology professor at Tufts who also serves as a co-author and co-principal investigator of the study. Additionally, the strength of the content-specific cortical reactivation in visual and auditory regions predicted behavioral performance and the susceptibility of memory to misinformation.

"Together, these results provide novel insight into the nature of memory distortions due to misinformation and the mechanisms by which misinformation errors can be prevented," said Jessica M. Karanian, first and corresponding author of the study, who was a postdoctoral fellow at Tufts while conducting the research and is now an assistant professor of psychology at Fairfield University. "The adoption of these interview practices by police departments might protect the integrity of eyewitness accounts and improve the likelihood of just outcomes for all involved."

Past research on memory retrieval found that both prospective and retrospective warnings were able to mitigate the negative effect of misinformation on memory. However, this study not only affirms the beneficial effect of warning using a realistic scenario, such as testifying in a criminal case, but also demonstrates that prospective warnings can reduce misinformation errors in the context of repeated testing.

According to the Innocence Project, false eyewitness reports have contributed to approximately 70 percent of wrongful convictions. Despite efforts by the U.S. Department of Justice to create evidence-based standards in interview practices across police departments, the majority of surveyed police departments have not implemented such recommendations due to challenges in providing training and/or a lack of resources.

The researchers noted that since eyewitnesses are often interviewed and questioned multiple times throughout an investigation, a third party--such as a police office or an attorney--could provide a warning to an eyewitness that alerts them to the possibility of inaccuracies in post-event information that they might encounter in the future. The misinformation they might encounter could come from sources in the news, on social media or from a co-witness.

"We can envision the establishment of a new protocol for witness questioning in which witnesses are warned about the unreliability of subsequently-encountered information upon completing an initial interview," said Karanian. "We could also imagine that such pre-warnings might be useful if provided at the beginning of some interviews that may include unverified information reported by co-witnesses."

The research was a collaboration between Thomas's Cognitive Aging and Memory Lab at Tufts University, which investigates interactions between memory and metamemory to better understand the important role metamemory plays in memory acquisition, distortion and access; and Race's Integrative Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at Tufts, which uses a combination of cognitive neuroscience methods to answer questions about the neural mechanisms underlying human learning and memory.

ATLANTA - AUGUST 31, 2020 - A new American Cancer Society study finds health insurance coverage disruptions in the prior year led to issues with healthcare access and affordability for currently insured cancer survivors. The study appears in the Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Little is known about the effects of health insurance coverage disruptions on access to healthcare among cancer survivors. To learn more, investigators led by Jingxuan Zhao, MPH, estimated the prevalence of health insurance coverage disruptions and evaluated their associations with access to healthcare and affordability among cancer survivors aged 18-64 years in the United States using national data from years 2011 to 2018. Health insurance coverage disruption was measured as self-reports of any time in the prior year without coverage.

They found that approximately 260,000 currently insured cancer survivors aged 18-64 years had coverage disruptions in 2018. Among privately and publicly insured survivors, those with coverage disruptions were less likely to report all preventive services use, including blood pressure check, blood cholesterol check, flu shot, and dental care, compared to those continuously insured (16.9% vs 36.2%; 14.6% vs 25.3%, respectively). Currently insured survivors with private or public coverage were also more likely to report any problems with care affordability (55.0% vs 17.7%; 71.1% vs 38.4%, respectively) and any cost-related medication nonadherence (39.4% vs 10.1%; 36.5% vs 16.3%, respectively), such as skipping, taking less, and delaying medication to save money, compared to those continuously insured (all p

"Our findings in this study are especially relevant because widespread unemployment and potential loss of employer-based private health insurance coverage due to the COVID pandemic can also result in coverage disruptions. More cancer survivors may experience coverage disruptions, which may adversely affect their access to care and affordability," writes Zhao.

New research shows that counties with a greater decline in workplace cell phone activity during stay-at-home orders showed a lower rate of COVID-19 infections. The researchers believe patterns they saw in publicly available cell phone location data could be used to better estimate COVID-19 growth rates and inform decision-making when it comes to shutdowns and "reopenings." This research was published today in JAMA Internal Medicine.

"It is our hope that counties might be able to incorporate these publicly available cell phone data to help guide policies regarding re-opening throughout different stages of the pandemic," said the study's senior author, Joshua Baker, MD, MSCE, an assistant professor of Medicine and Epidemiology. "Further, this analysis supports the incorporation of anonymized cell phone location data into modeling strategies to predict at-risk counties across the U.S. before outbreaks become too great."

Baker and the other researchers, including the study's lead author Shiv T. Sehra, MD, an assistant professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School, used location data from cell phones - which were de-identified and made publicly available by Google - to analyze activity across up to 2,740 counties in the United States between early January and early May 2020. This data was broken up into locations where the activity took place, ranging from workplaces, to homes, retail stores, grocery stores, parks, and transit stations. Roughly between 22,000 and 84,000 points of data were analyzed for each day in the study period.

The idea was to compare where cell phone activity took place as a proxy to show where people, themselves, spent their time. This data was compared between two time periods: the first in January and February, before COVID-19's outbreak in the United States, then mid-February through early May, during the virus' initial surges and when stay-at-home orders were enacted.

Intuitively, they noted an increase in time spent at home, while visits to the workplace dropped significantly, along with a decline in visits to retail locations (such as stores and restaurants) and transit stations.

They saw that in counties where there was initially a higher density of cases, visits to workplaces, as well as retail locations and transit stations, fell more sharply than counties less affected by COVID-19. At the same time, in these counties, there was a more prominent spike in activity at homes.

In addition, the researchers saw that the counties where workplace activity fell the most had the lowest rates of new COVID-19 cases in the days that followed. Lag-times of 5, 10 and 15 days were observed to allow time for COVID-19's incubation period, but the lower infection rates held across the range.

Moving forward, Baker hopes more work can be done to vet cell phone data to see if they can be specifically used to predict COVID-19 hotspots and guide decision-making.

"It will be important to confirm that cell phone data is useful in other stages of the pandemic beyond initial containment," Baker said. "For example, is monitoring these data helpful during the reopening phases of the pandemic, or during an outbreak?"

Past its immediate importance for COVID-19, Baker sees future utility for this type of data.

"They do have the potential to help us better understand behavioral patterns which could help future investigators predict the course of future epidemics or perhaps monitor the impact of different public health measures on peoples' behaviors," he said.

Our job seems easy when compared with that of our cells. While they are hard at work, breaking some molecules and building others, we mainly have to do one thing - feed them. But what exactly should we feed them? This is not an easy problem to solve considering the constant competition happening inside. Whereas some cell types, like fat-cells, crave lipids, others may prefer protein or sugars. How does the brain factor in all competing demands and spits out a decision when faced with difficult choices like: steak or ice cream?

Now, in a study performed in fruit flies, a team of scientists at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown in Portugal, make a surprising discovery. Their results, published today (August 31st) in the scientific journal Nature Metabolism, reveal that changes in the nutritional requirements of sex cells make female flies crave sugar. Until now, this phenomenon was mainly described in pathological conditions, namely cancer. Its discovery in the normal physiological process of egg formation, provides important insight into the link between fertility and nutrition.

Cells with a sweet tooth

How can a small group of cells influence the behaviour of an entire organism? "A hint to the answer comes from oncology. When a cell becomes cancerous, it turns on cellular machinery that preferentially consumes sugar and turns it into building blocks necessary for cell multiplication. This process, where the cell changes its 'dietary preference' and function, is called metabolic reprogramming, and it is key for tumour growth.", says Carlos Ribeiro, a principal investigator at Champalimaud and a senior author of the study.

"This phenomenon was also recorded in non-pathological processes, mainly related to development. However, it was not known whether the cells' metabolic transformation could hijack the feeding decisions of the organism", adds Ribeiro. "This is what we set out to explore."

Ribeiro, together with Zita Santos, the other senior author of the study, chose to focus on the reproductive system of the fruit fly, specifically on the process of egg generation. "An egg begins with a single sex cell, which divides, multiplies and grows. The descendants of this original cell transform into the different cell types that together make up the complete egg", Santos explains.

When the team examined the cells throughout the egg's assembly process, they discovered that just like cancer cells, they were undergoing metabolic reprogramming. But not only that, they were activating the exact same cellular mechanism cancer cells use to promote cell proliferation by increasing their sugar consumption. In other words, they developed a sweet tooth.

"We were fascinated by these results", says Santos. "They explain previous reports showing that the female's sex-cells absorb a high proportion of sugars eaten by the animal. And they also fit well with the role of the egg, which needs to synthesise nutrients for a developing embryo."

Driving food choice from below the belt

These encouraging results drove the team to test whether the metabolic reprogramming of the sex cells in the ovary influences the animal's food choice. When they compared the dietary preferences of normal female flies with flies that are unable to produce eggs, they observed a robust difference. "The group of sterile flies had a significantly lower appetite for sugar!"

Moreover, when the team manipulated the cells' ability to metabolise sugar, both the production of eggs and the animals' sugar appetite were affected. "This demonstrates that it's not the cells themselves that generate the change in behaviour, but their metabolic programme. It is this specific programme that drives the flies to obtain the fuel they need for egg production.

How do the cellular changes in the ovary reach the brain and change the flies' behaviour? To answer this question, the team investigated the expression of fit. This small molecule is produced in the fat tissue that surrounds the fly's brain. The more Fit a fly has in her system, the less she cares for sweets.

Again, the team discovered a clear difference between normal and sterile females. Fit levels were significantly higher in the infertile group. "This is a strong indication that the effect of the sex cells on the brain is mediated by Fit. We still don't know how the communication between the ovary and the brain's fat tissue happens, but we are looking into it", Santos adds with a smile.

Diet and Fertility

Together, the team's findings outline a novel mechanism by which the metabolism of a small group of cells in the ovary controls the feeding behaviour of the animal. Could these results be relevant for the field of fertility?

Santos and Ribeiro have recently received a pilot award by the Global Consortium for Reproductive Longevity and Equality to investigate the answer to this question. At the basis of their approach lies an original idea: reversing the process.

"It's a kind of a chicken and egg concept", says Santos. "What comes first: metabolic reprogramming, or changes in food preference? We discovered that the metabolic reprogramming of the cells causes the female to consume more sugar, which she needs to generate eggs. We wonder what happens during aging. Could changes in metabolism explain fertility decline? And if so, would we be able to influence the fly's fertility as she ages by manipulating her diet?"

As Santos explains, female flies, similarly to women, experience age-related infertility. She hypothesises that changes in the ovarian metabolic programmes drive reproductive decline and that this phenomenon can be reduced or even reversed using targeted dietary interventions.

"We will explore this hypothesis in the fruit fly by using a combination of single-cell RNA sequencing and metabolomics. In parallel, we will characterise the cellular outcomes of ovarian decline and monitor the feeding behaviour of these animals. This will allow us to devise dietary strategies to reverse the identified alterations and increase reproduction in older female flies. We believe that this is a powerful path to identify potentially reversible processes underlying reproductive age-related decline. Also, since this is a mechanism that is shared by cancer cells, our findings may also be relevant for treating cancer", Ribeiro Concludes.