Culture

In the human body, proteins sometimes occur in fibrillar aggregates called amyloids. Although certain amyloids are known to have a biological function, amyloid formation is often associated with pathologies, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. Understanding how exactly amyloid fibrils form is crucial for gaining insights into the development of such diseases and for advancing with treatment approaches. Now, Takahiro Watanabe-Nakayama from Kanazawa University, Kenjiro Ono from Showa University, and colleagues have investigated the formation process of particular amyloid fibrils using a technique enabling visualization of growth over time. The scientists specifically looked at the effect of cross-seeding ('mixing') different proteins forming aggregates, and found variations in elongation rates and the structures of the fibrils.

The researchers studied alpha-synuclein, a protein abundant in the human brain. They looked at what happened when letting wild-type alpha-synuclein molecules -- the natural, most abundant variant -- form aggregates, and also how aggregation is different when introducing (cross-seeding) mutant variants associated with Parkinson's disease. In addition, the scientists examined the influence of the pH level of the microenvironment in which fibril growth takes place.

By means of high-speed atomic-force microscopy (HS-AFM), Watanabe-Nakayama, Ono and colleagues could record fibril aggregation at nanometer resolution and high video rate for various cases. First, the scientists looked at the growth of single variant types (self-seeding). They found that mutants produced more aggregates, or that they aggregated faster at neutral pH than the wild-type variants. Another observation was that elongation was faster at lower pH (5.8, i.e. acidic) than at higher pH (7.4, i.e. basic).

For cross-seeding, different scenarios can occur. Fibril growth can be accelerated or slowed down, or even stopped. The morphology of the original seed can be preserved, but it also happens that the structure of the resulting fibril is different -- typical structural forms are 'straight' or 'spiral'. The researchers checked that fibril structure and dynamics as observed with HS-AFM correspond to the processes in solution by means of fluorescence experiments; similar conclusions were obtained.

The findings of Watanabe-Nakayama, Ono and colleagues are relevant for better understanding amyloid-related diseases. Quoting the researchers: "Cross-seeding combined with variations in elongation rates has the effect of increasing the structural diversity of the resulting assemblies. This diversity may be reflected in distinct neurotoxic effects for various [protein] assemblies."

WASHINGTON-(August, 3, 2020)- A recent meningitis case treated at Children's National Hospital raises serious concerns about a rise in antibiotic resistance in the common bacterium that caused it, researchers from the hospital write in a case report. Their findings, published online August 3 in the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Disease Society, could change laboratory and clinical practice across the U.S. and potentially around the globe.

Neisseria meningitidis is the leading cause of bacterial meningitis in adolescents and an important cause of disease in younger children as well, say case report authors Gillian Taormina,D.O., a third year fellow in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Children's National, who was on service for this recent case, and Joseph Campos, Ph.D., D(ABMM), FAAM, director of the Microbiology Laboratory and the Infectious Diseases Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory at Children's National. As standard clinical practice in the U.S., they explain, patients who are thought to have this infection are typically treated first with the broad spectrum antibiotic ceftriaxone while they wait for a microbiology lab to identify the causative organism from blood or cerebrospinal fluid samples. Once the organism is identified as N meningitidis, patients are typically treated with penicillin or ampicillin, antibiotics with a narrower spectrum of activity that's less likely to lead to ceftriaxone resistance. Family members and other close contacts are often prophylactically treated with an antibiotic called ciprofloxacin.

Because N. meningitidis has historically been sensitive to these antibiotics, most laboratories do not perform tests to confirm drug susceptibility, Dr. Campos says. But the protocol at Children's National is to screen these isolates for penicillin and ampicillin resistance with a rapid 5-minute test. The isolate from Dr. Taormina's five-month-old patient -- a previously healthy infant from Maryland who came to the Children's National emergency room after six days of fever and congestion -- yielded surprising results: N. meningitidis grown from the patient's blood was positive for beta-lactamase, an enzyme that destroys the active component in the family of antibiotics that includes penicillin and ampicillin. This isolate was also found resistant to ciprofloxacin.

"The lab used a rapid test, and after just a few minutes, it was positive," Dr. Campos says. "We did it again to make sure it was accurate, and the results were reproducible. That's when we knew we needed to share this finding with the public health authorities."

Dr. Campos, Dr. Taormina and their colleagues sent samples of the antibiotic-resistant bacteria first to the Washington, D.C. Public Health Laboratory and the Maryland Department of Health, and later to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). When the CDC asked other state laboratories to send their own N. meningitidis samples to be tested, 33 were positive for beta-lactamase. And like the bacterium isolated from Dr. Taormina's patient, 11 of these were also resistant to ciprofloxacin.

"These bacteria wouldn't have been susceptible to the common antibiotics that we would normally use for this infection," Dr. Taormina says, "so it's entirely possible that the infections caused by these bacteria could have been treated inappropriately if doctors used the standard protocol."

Dr. Taormina says that her patient cleared his infection after staying on ceftriaxone, the original antibiotic he'd been prescribed, for the recommended seven days. His six family members and close contacts were prophylactically treated with rifampin instead of ciprofloxacin.

Although this case had a positive outcome, Dr. Campos says it raises the alarm for other N. meningitidis infections in the U.S., where antibiotic resistance is a growing concern. The danger is even higher in other countries, where the vaccine that children in the U.S. commonly receive for N. meningitidis at age 11 isn't available.

In the meantime, Drs. Taormina and Campos say their case highlights the need for the appropriate use of antibiotics, known as antibiotic stewardship, which is only possible with close partnerships between infectious disease doctors and microbiology laboratories.

"Our lab and the infectious diseases service at Children's National interact every day on cases like this to make sure we're doing the best job we can in diagnosing and managing infections," says Dr. Campos. "We're a team."

Researchers from Texas Christian University, University of Arizona, University of Oregon, and Portland State University published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines the effect of corporate activism on financial and other types of performance to empower managers with insights they can use to chart their company's course in today's marketplace.

The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "Corporate Sociopolitical Activism and Firm Value" and is authored by Yashoda Bhagwat, Nooshin L. Warren, Joshua T. Beck, George F. Watson IV.

In 2014, a group of concerned mothers demanded that Chipotle prohibit guns in its restaurants. The company agreed and uproar ensued among a divided customer base as strong opinions opposing and favoring the policy translated into boycotts and buycotts. Chipotle is not alone in its controversy. Other examples include when Nike famously took a stand in support of Black Lives Matter, Delta cut ties with the NRA, Target publicly supported transgender rights, Amazon stopped selling confederate flags, and J.C. Penney supported LGBTQ+ families. Corporations have historically avoided contentious issues, but many are now responding to growing expectations that they become advocates.

These activities are called Corporate Sociopolitical Activism (CSA), defined as a firm's public demonstration (statements and/or actions) of support for--or opposition to--one side of a partisan sociopolitical issue. CSA reflects a shift. For decades, corporations have strived to be socially responsible (known as "CSR"), which involves broadly favored activities such as donating to charity or limiting pollution. Also, firms have lobbied to change laws in ways that favor their operations (known as corporate political activity [CPA]). Now some firms are going beyond these traditional, performance-enhancing activities to engage in CSA with unknown outcomes.

The researchers investigate how customer and investor responses to CSA affect firm performance. Bhagwat explains that "We argue that CSA publicly signals a firm's sociopolitical values and increases uncertainty among investors for at least two reasons. First, CSA may deviate from the political values of key stakeholders--customers, employees, and state government legislators. Second, CSA signals a shift in a firm's strategic commitments. Firms focusing more on sociopolitical issues may divert resources (money, time, attention) from other more profit-oriented activities." Thus, CSA has a negative effect overall on a firm's stock return. However, the effect of CSA varies highly and can even be positive.

To better understand the range of CSA outcomes, the study examines several contingency factors. First, it tested the extent to which CSA deviates from the political values of its stakeholders. Results indicate that highly misaligned CSA that deviates from the values of customers, employees, and state lawmakers results in a 2% stock decline, on average. Alternatively, highly aligned CSA can increase stock returns by nearly 1%, on average.

Second, it examined how the implementation of CSA signals a firm's commitment to activism. Warren says that "The more strategically committed a firm seems to be, the more uncertain investors become. CSA that takes the form of an action (vs. a statement), is delivered by the CEO (vs. another executive), is motivated purely on moral terms (vs. rationalized as being good for business), or is conducted alone (vs. in a coalition with multiple other firms) signals stronger commitment and, ultimately, a more negative impact on a firm's near-term stock price."

Importantly, the study also examines the impact of CSA on next-quarter and next-year sales growth. Findings are generally consistent with the stock return results and demonstrate the high potential of CSA. When CSA is aligned across stakeholders, it can result in an 8% increase in next-quarter sales growth and a 12% increase in next-year sales growth. This is presumably because well-aligned CSA works to strengthen relationships with customers, employees, and state lawmakers who fundamentally agree with the firm's stance.

The researchers advise managers navigating these unchartered waters to: (1) pick CSA they feel confident supporting and that aligns with the values of key stakeholders; (2) prepare for a short-term stock drop, realizing that activism has the potential to hurt or enhance stock price and sales growth; and (3) persuade stakeholders that CSA serves the interests of society and the company because customers will reward CSA they believe in.

Customers should be aware that their values matter and play a key role in whether activism is successful for firms. Investors should recognize sociopolitical activism as a new firm activity and that while it may risk backlash, it may also lead to tangible positive financial outcomes, particularly when aligned with customers.

Researchers from City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Baptist University, and The Chinese University of Hong Kong published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that offers consumer insights to guide marketing teams' communication of products' negatively framed attributes.

The study forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing is titled "When Less is More: How Mindset Influences Consumers' Responses to Products with Reduced Negative Attributes" and is authored by Vincent Chi Wong, Lei Su, and Howard Pong-Yuen Lam.

As companies embrace sustainability and circular economy concepts, they are transforming products and services to reduce negative impacts. By so doing, they can help preserve the environment for future generations, burnish their corporate social responsibility credentials, and, ideally, drive sales with values-based consumers. But is it true that sustainability claims increase sales?

The study challenges this common intuition and finds that a marketing claim of reducing negative product properties may be interpreted by consumers in one of two ways: 1) view the claim as improving the product relative to its previous state; or 2) draw attention to a negative product feature that might otherwise have been overlooked. Moreover, whether such claims have positive or negative influence depends on whether consumers interpret such claims through an incremental or entity mindset. Consumers with an incremental mindset (i.e., the tendency to think of attributes as malleable) take a trend-based view of a reduction in negative attributes, which results in improved product evaluations. In contrast, consumers with an entity mindset (i.e., attributes are unlikely to change) view these claims negatively.

The researchers first manipulated consumers' mindsets by exposing them to marketing materials such as advertising slogans, promotional direct mail, and spokespersons' quotes. Results show that activating consumers' incremental (vs. entity) mindset leads to more favorable evaluations for luncheon meat with sodium nitrite reduced by 30%, for frozen mussels with reduced microplastic content, and for antidiabetic drugs with reduced side effects. In other studies, the researchers measured consumers' chronic incremental and entity mindsets and show that those with a dominant incremental (vs. entity) mindset preferred stereo speakers with 50% less non-recyclable materials, bottled water with plastic materials reduced by 35%, and yogurt with 50% reduced sugar. Ironically, communicating a reduced negative attribute leads to poorer sales compared to no communication for consumers with an entity mindset.

The findings have managerial marketing implications. Wong explains, "Our research provides new techniques in marketers' toolbox to activate more easily consumers' incremental versus entity mindsets as a controllable variable. In addition, companies intuitively expect that promoting a reduction in negative attributes should benefit sales as opposed to doing nothing. Our findings imply that communicating a reduced negative attribute might have unintended consequences if consumers approach it with the wrong mindset." Accordingly, marketers should estimate the potential risks of such communications and carry out such communication strategically (along with properly activating consumers' mindset).

Su adds that, "Marketers may also strategically induce these mindsets to fight against competitors." To entice consumers from a competitor's product that claims a reduction of a negative attribute, marketers may activate an entity mindset using advertising slogans (e.g., De Beers' "A diamond is forever"). Moreover, slogans for significant social events can also temporarily prime different mindsets (e.g., Barack Obama's "Change we can believe in" likely activated an incremental mindset). Marketers can strategically leverage such social events as opportunities to promote products containing reduced negative attributes. "Importantly, individuals in Western countries (e.g., Americans) typically hold entity beliefs whereas those in Eastern countries (e.g., Chinese) typically hold incremental beliefs by default. Thus, promotion strategies for products with reduced negative attributes need to be customized across cultures," says Lam. Similarly, consumers' incremental versus entity mindset can be traced to demographic, geographic, or political ideology information. Marketers need to consider these factors when promoting products with a reduced negative attribute.

In the midst of a global pandemic, eating well in a sustainable way is more important now than ever, Flinders University experts say.

'Eating local' and growing your own fruit and vegetables can save money, provide families and local producers with vital income - and also improve health and immunity.

“The COVID-19 pandemic provides many good reasons to eat in healthier and more sustainable ways,” says Flinders University researcher Associate Professor Kaye Mehta.

“Gardening or being part of a community gardening or local food swap group lifts social connection, reduces anxiety and stress, and improves mental health by nurturing plants out in the fresh air.”

In a new study, the researchers warn the Australian diet is not sustainable, with high rates of eating meat, excessive packaging and food waste and unhealthy consumption levels.

But how much time do people spend weighing up food decisions for their nutritional content, environmental sustainability and fairness, ask Flinders University nutrition and public health experts in a new paper in the Health Promotion Journal of Australia.

“At the supermarket and when you eat out, do you investigate where the food comes from? In an ideal world, food supply would not only be healthy but also be environmentally and socially sustainable,” Associate Professor Mehta says.

“Our dietary choices are made within a complex, powerful and unsustainable food system which contributes to rising problems of food insecurity, malnutrition, chronic disease, climate change, loss of biodiversity, and unfair food trade practices,” she says in the new study of food literacy awareness at Flinders University.

The researchers put these questions to the test by running a two-week online course examining aspects of the food system, including:

The links between food production and greenhouse gas emissions

The environmental effects of ‘food miles', or distance travelled by the produce

Power, profits and fair prices for farmers

The association between the industrial food system and current public health nutrition problems, and more.

The 47 participants of the online course – all staff and students of Flinders University – found their understanding of the food system and their attitudes towards food purchases changed to consider social and environmental sustainability, as well as health.

“Food choices that help the environment will also be healthier because people will eat more locally produced vegetables and fruits, less meat and less processed foods,” says dietitian-nutritionist Associate Professor Mehta, from the Flinders University Caring Futures Institute.

The study – the culmination of almost a decade of research into ‘food literacy’ and the effects of our food system – shows how much more can be done to improve our food supply and personal food decisions so that every bite we take considers the food’s origins and cumulative impact on the planet.

Lead researcher Associate Professor Mehta, from the Caring Futures Institute at Flinders University, says “food system literacy has not been a focus of food and nutrition

Education, in spite of growing public interest in sustainable eating”.

“Food system literacy is an opportunity for people to make better food choices that are good for their health as well as the environment and farmers.”

Are we "Waiting for Godot"- A Metaphor for Covid-19 "Waiting for Godot", one of the greatest works of the Theater of the Absurd is used to illustrate the dystopic nature of our approach to COVID-19. The continued use of a lab test to inappropriately define a "case" and the use of that measure to define the health impacts of the pandemic is discussed. Given the broad variability in COVID-19 tests and their characteristics, coupled with the estimated prevalence of the disease further clouds the validity of conclusions drawn from testing to date. The continued unqualified reporting of this statistic does little to guide appropriate intervention policies but does continue to fuel the levels of public fear. Much of the conflict over appropriate policies revolves around waiting for a vaccine that, like Godot, may never arrive. The contribution of Herd Immunity in decreasing the transmission rate is also addressed as is the concept of individual risk.

Going forward we not only have to accept the fact that we are war with the virus but also the fact that war generates casualties. The most prevalent casualties of this conflict have become the 55 million K-12 school children who are, ironically, essentially immune. To continue this travesty on what might be an illusion of hope is akin to systematic child abuse.

A new study led by NorthShore University HealthSystem (NorthShore) and the University of Chicago took a novel approach to identifying SNPs influencing the risk of neuropsychiatric disorders like schizophrenia, bipolar and major depressive disorder, the institutions announced today. The findings, published in the current issue of Science, significantly advance understanding of the genetics of neuropsychiatric disorders and offer a path to translating genetic discoveries into novel disease biology and better clinical treatments.

Current approaches to genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in neuropsychiatry have advanced the identification of many single-base pair changes in the DNA (single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs) associated with an increased risk of developing a psychiatric condition. However, these studies don't necessarily determine which of these SNPs are linked to functional changes in gene expression, and which might actually play a role in the disease.

In this study, the researchers were interested in identifying SNPs that directly affected how readily available DNA is for gene expression (chromatin accessibility). To find these candidates, they first identified SNPs that were heterozygous in their patient samples -- that is, they had one variant of the SNP from their mother and a different copy from their father. SNPs that were differentially accessible were dubbed "allele-specific open chromatin" or ASoC, variants.

The study was led by Jubao Duan, PhD, the Charles R. Walgreen Research Chair and director of functional genomics of psychiatry at NorthShore, who is also an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at the University of Chicago.

"Much like a mixed jar of peanut butter and plain M&M's that look alike but taste very different, functional disease variants in DNA appear similar and novel approaches are required to identify them," said first author Siwei Zhang, PhD, a research scientist at NorthShore. "Since we can't taste DNA the way we do M&M's, we had to find other ways to separate the functional SNPs from the non-functional. We reasoned that the presence of risk alleles might change the local accessibility of chromatin, and they did."

Investigators used human blood samples to create induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and turned those iPSCs into different kinds of neuronal cells that model developing human brain cells. They then took a look at chromatin accessibility of DNA sequences in the neurons.

Profiling the ASoC variants identified thousands of potentially functional SNPs, a large fraction of which were associated with changes in the expression of nearby genes. The majority of these ASoC SNPs were found in closed chromatin regions of post-mortem brains, thus highlighting the unique value of using iPSC-derived neurons as a neurodevelopmental cellular model to link a functional SNP to psychiatric disease.

Further analysis demonstrated that these ASoC variants are more likely to be causally linked to a range of neuropsychiatric traits, allowing the researchers to prioritize the study of specific SNPs in genomic regions associated with schizophrenia risk.

"Using ASoC to identify functional SNP has some advantages over other, more conventional approaches," said Xin He, PhD, an assistant professor of human genetics at the University of Chicago, who co-led the computational analysis in the study. "This is because ASoC SNPs likely affect chromatin accessibility directly, while many traditionally identified SNPs associated with gene expression aren't necessarily functional. Compared with potentially functional SNPs identified with other methods, our ASoC SNPs showed much stronger enrichment for psychiatric disease risk variants."

In a proof-of-principle experiment, the scientists were also able to edit the genome of their iPSCs using CRISPR and determined that editing an ASoC SNP frequently led to changes in nearby gene expression. This led the researchers to nominate putative causal genes in several schizophrenia disease regions, which can be explored in future studies for their role in causing the neuropsychiatric illness.

"Although schizophrenia and other neuropsychiatric disorders involve multiple risk genes that each have a small effect on disease risk and likely act in gene networks, our findings offer important insights that may advance an area of medicine with tremendous potential," said Dr. Duan. "We hope to continue harnessing multi-dimension genomic datasets and stem cell models to unravel how these devastating disorders are caused by genes and interactions with environmental factors such as stress or infection during early neurodevelopment."

How hard is it to pick the next Usain Bolt, Ian Thorpe or Anna Meares? Finding a world champion often falls to talent scouts and involves years of hard work, but could it be as simple as a 35-second body scan?

A new paper by University of South Australia sports scientist Professor Grant Tomkinson analyses how a $7500 3D portable whole-body scanner can identify sporting talent for particular codes and monitor body changes in athletes to ensure they are performing at their peak.

Prof Tomkinson, an adjunct researcher at UniSA based in the United States, has tested the reliability of a 3D whole-body scanner to measure athletes' shape and composition, comparing it with X-rays, MRIs and manual tests, which involve bone calipers and girth tapes.

Anthropometry has been used for decades to identify talent, improve sports performance and health, but manual assessments and x-rays have their drawbacks, Prof Tomkinson says.

"3D scanning is less invasive than manual tests, and because it is fast, large samples can be easily measured, there is no need for physical contact, it doesn't require a lot of expertise and it can measure body surface areas and volumes," he says. "And, unlike x-rays, it doesn't emit any potentially harmful radiation."

Prof Tomkinson and a team from the University of North Dakota scanned 49 athletes (30 women and 19 men), subjecting them to a series of 35-second scans, extracting millions of measurements within 2 mm accuracy.

All that is required is a 3D camera, a turntable and measurement extraction software.

"3D scans measure both cross-sectional areas and volumes and surface areas so they are generally better predictors of sporting success than manual tests," he says.

In a few seconds a 3D body scan can measure the length of an arm and leg, the circumference of a thigh, or a body girth, as well as detect any asymmetries, such as scoliosis, or different leg lengths, which can affect the body's musculature.

One of the main ways to select athletes for specific sports is to compare their body size and shape with the general population. For example, 3D body scans of elite rowers show that the best male rowers have much larger chests than the general population and elite female rowers have larger thighs than most women.

Similarly, marathon runners have a very defined physique - they are shorter, lighter, have longer legs relative to their torso and are leaner than the average person.

3D whole-body scanning has recently been used in several large anthropometric surveys of military personnel and the general population, but there is scant reliable anthropometric data on athletes beyond traditional manual measures, Prof Tomkinson says.

"Tracking changes in whole body and lean mass using 3D scanning would be an inexpensive and safer alternative to x-rays and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and could potentially be used to identify talent earlier and refine training to improve performance," Prof Tomkinson says.

The rate of COVID-19 transmission in New South Wales (NSW) educational settings was extremely limited during the first wave of COVID-19, research findings published today in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health have shown.

Researchers from the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance (NCIRS) and the University of Sydney released their preliminary findings from this work from January to April 2020.

The Lancet publication today contains detailed analysis on COVID-19 spread in 25 educational settings (15 schools and 10 childcare settings) in Term 1. Additional data from Term 2 and 3 are also available today.

Lead author Professor Kristine Macartney said the study showed transmission rates in NSW schools and early childhood education and care (ECEC) services were minimal, particularly between children and from children to adults.

"This is the first comprehensive population-based assessment of coronavirus transmission in educational settings worldwide," Professor Macartney said.

"COVID-19 transmission in schools appears to be considerably less than that seen for other respiratory viruses, such as influenza.

"This supports the previous findings that COVID-19 transmission in educational settings can be kept low and manageable in the context of an effective pandemic response that includes contact tracing and quarantine, and temporary school closures for cleaning if someone is found to be infected.

"It is also consistent with other data that show lower rates, and generally milder disease, in children than in adults.

"However, it is important to view these findings in the context of the NSW outbreak. Higher rates of transmission may occur in areas with higher levels of virus transmission in the community or with less rigorous public health and community response."

In Term 1 and 2 there have been 33 initial cases of COVID-19 confirmed at 31 of NSW's 7700 schools and ECEC services, with 25 sites in Term 1 and six during Term 2 affected.

In Term 1 and 2, a total of 16 students and 17 adult staff were the first cases who tested positive for the virus.

Out of 1333 close contacts in primary and high schools, just five (0.4%) possible secondary infections were recorded across Terms 1 and 2: one primary student, two high school students, one primary teacher and one high school teacher.

Initial cases were also seen in 11 ECEC services across Term 1 and 2, with 13 possible secondary infections recorded out of 636 close contacts.

All 13 secondary cases (7 children and 6 staff) were linked to an outbreak at a single ECEC service early in Term 1 that started initially in staff members. No secondary cases were identified in the other 10 ECEC services.

This observational study is continuing in Term 3 in NSW (July - September). Data for Term 3 is preliminary but as at 3 August, there have been 11 cases (3 staff members and 8 students) with two secondary infections being recorded in one primary school and one ECEC service.

"We know anyone of any age can be infected and potentially spread the virus," Prof Macartney said.

"But understanding how the virus spreads in our context will assist modellers, policymakers, healthcare providers, and the public to understand the risk of COVID-19 in educational settings and help in decision making around school closures and re-openings."

Memory loss among older Australians is on the rise as the Baby Boomer generation enters retirement - but a new technique tested by Flinders University researchers that investigates cognitive skills through eye-tracking technology may be used to help incorporate all older people's preferences into aged care policy and practice.

Current estimates indicate that up to 20% of people in developed countries aged 65 and over have mild cognitive impairment (MCI), with these percentages predicted to rise markedly by 2050. This greatly compromises their ability to communicate efficiently - particularly when it comes to filing official forms.

Researchers from Flinders University have used eye-tracking technology to investigate the information processes adopted by older people with and without MCI.

Outpatients at Adelaide memory clinics July 2017 and June 2018 were asked to read the same materials, involving written choices about their preferences for alternative states of quality of life. These were designed to mirror the types of official forms issued to aged-care patients when assessing quality of care and quality of life outcomes. Misunderstanding such materials could potentially lock out people with dementia, MCI or poor memory from making best-informed decisions about their care.

Eye-tracking technology was used to map how each person focused as they read, which can represent good and poor cognition.

The eye tracking technology identified the relationships between cognitive capacity, task complexity and the extent of is the tendency for participants to simplify the choice situation by overlooking or ignoring one or more of the attributes presented. This tactic to take short-cuts to cope with cognitive demands is referred to as attribute non-attendance (ANA).

"This exploratory study provided important insights into the information processes adopted by older people with varying levels of cognitive functioning," says lead researcher Kaiying Wang. "It also helped our team to identify those who needed more help in formulating their decisions."

Recent advances in econometric modelling of health valuation data have demonstrated the added value of capturing ANA information, especially to help data analysis and improve the precision of model estimates.

The researchers have found that eye-tracking technology can usefully inform the design, conduct and econometric modelling of quality of life assessments, which will help to guide health and aged care policy and practice in determining where resources should be targeted to maximise quality of life benefits for older people.

"This new eye tracking technology will help us to find new ways to drive the inclusivity of older people with cognitive impairment and dementia in these important assessments", says Professor Julie Ratcliffe of Flinders University's College of Nursing and Health Sciences.

"It is very important that older people's preferences about quality of care and quality of life are used to inform economic evaluation of policy and practice in health and aged care."

To improve our understanding of the physical mechanisms involved and provide an observational basis for model validation, Dr. Licheng Feng (National Marine Environmental Forecasting Center) and colleagues set out to diagnose the atmospheric and oceanic factors that could have been responsible for the second-year cooling in the 2017/18 La Niña event. They have had their findings published in Advances of Atmospheric Sciences (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-020-0028-4).

"ENSO [El Niño-Southern Oscillation] is the major mode of interannual variability in the tropical Pacific climate system," explains Dr Feng, "and its influences are not limited to regional climate; they can induce worldwide climatic, ecological and societal anomalies. Accurate prediction of ENSO can provide a physical basis for short-term climate prediction. However, real-time prediction of ENSO remains problematic and challenging, with most models failing to predict the Niño3.4 SST cooling when initialized from early-mid 2017. Thus, it is important to study the factors determining the cooling in 2017, and understand the processes involved."

By using the ERA5 and GODAS (Global Ocean Data Assimilation System) products, atmospheric and oceanic factors were examined that could have been responsible for the second-year cooling, including surface wind and the subsurface thermal state. A time sequence is described to demonstrate how the cold SSTAs were produced in the central-eastern tropical Pacific in late 2017. Both the wind stress anomalies and the subsurface cold anomalies played an important role in the second-year cooling of the 2017/18 La Niña event.

"Compared with the 2011/12 La Niña event, the 2017/18 La Niña event shows three differences," says Dr Feng. "First, the effects of the western Pacific warm waters were weak; secondly, the negative SSTAs first emerged in the far-eastern equatorial Pacific in fall 2017; and lastly cold anomalies on both sides of the equator played the same role during the 2017/18 La Niña event. These differences show the diversity of La Niña events," concludes Dr. Feng.

"Future work may be needed to diagnose more reanalysis data to confirm the results," he adds.

Researchers from The Ohio State University published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines whether to focus sharing economy marketing communications on the platform or on the provider.

The study, forthcoming in the the Journal of Marketing, is titled "Providers vs. Platforms: Marketing Communications in the Sharing Economy" and is authored by John Costello and Rebecca Walker Reczek.

Over the past decade, a growing number of firms have found success using a peer-to-peer (P2P) business model (e.g., Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, and TaskRabbit). P2P brands are expected to drive much of the sharing economy's future growth, with experts projecting a market size of $335 billion by 2025 for the overall sharing economy, up from $14 billion in 2014. Marketing communications represent the company's "voice" to consumers and offer a key way to shift consumers' purchase perceptions and behaviors. Although P2P brands face many important decisions about their marketing communications, a new study in the Journal of Marketing explores one specific, but consequential, decision for P2P marketers: whether to focus on the platform or on the provider in marketing communications. Both strategies are used among P2P brands in the marketplace, but existing research offers no insight into whether platform- or provider-focused communications are more effective and why.

Consumers interact with two distinct entities in a P2P purchase. The first is the platform, typically a for-profit firm that acts as an intermediary for exchange between consumers and providers of goods and services. The second is a peer provider, an individual who offers a good or service and connects with the consumer through the platform. We find the P2P model leads consumers to perceive high provider-firm independence where providers are viewed as relatively independent from the platform(s) on which they offer goods/services. Given the perceived independence of the provider and firm for P2P firms, P2P marketing managers may choose to focus on either entity in their marketing communications.

Through experiments and a field study conducted in collaboration with a real P2P company, the research team demonstrates that when P2P brands use provider-focused marketing communications versus platform-focused marketing communications, consumers perceive a purchase as helping an individual provider to a greater extent. This mental shift increases consumers' likelihood of purchase and app download as well as willingness to pay (WTP). Costello explains that "This is because provider-focused marketing communications in this context lead consumers to think about their purchase from the provider's perspective. We call this tendency an empathy lens, which is being aware of another person's internal state or putting oneself in the place of another. We also show that our effects do not extend to traditional firms because consumers do not view these purchases through an empathy lens."

These findings have practical implications for marketing managers of P2P brands, public policymakers, and consumers. From a managerial perspective, they identify the importance of provider-focused marketing communications as a way to drive important brand outcomes and should be particularly helpful for marketers at start-up P2P brands. These new brands face increased spending from established P2P brands and a relatively high failure rate, thus making informed decisions about marketing communications particularly important.

The research also suggests that there may be an opportunity for policymakers to educate consumers about how their perceptions about P2P purchases may be influenced by firm actions like marketing communications, and thus may not match economic reality. Reczek says that "Our studies show that consumers often view purchases from for-profit P2Ps as helping an individual provider. However, this perception could have negative consequences for providers. For example, if consumers already believe they are helping through their purchases, they may be less willing to support regulations that help protect these individuals financially or may be less willing to provide other support such as tipping." This point is particularly timely as experts recently reported that the threat of COVID-19 has dramatically decreased the usage of popular peer-to-peer (P2P) brands like Uber and Lyft, leaving many P2P providers in a difficult financial position. While some P2P brands are pivoting to services like food delivery to keep drivers active, consumers should remember that perceptions of helping do not always match reality.

New results achieved by combining big data captured by the Subaru Telescope and the power of machine learning have discovered a galaxy with an extremely low oxygen abundance of 1.6% solar abundance, breaking the previous record of the lowest oxygen abundance. The measured oxygen abundance suggests that most of the stars in this galaxy formed very recently.

To understand galaxy evolution, astronomers need to study galaxies in various stages of formation and evolution. Most of the galaxies in the modern Universe are mature galaxies, but standard cosmology predicts that there may still be a few galaxies in the early formation stage in the modern Universe. Because these early-stage galaxies are rare, an international research team searched for them in wide-field imaging data taken with the Subaru Telescope. "To find the very faint, rare galaxies, deep, wide-field data taken with the Subaru Telescope was indispensable," emphasizes Dr. Takashi Kojima, the leader of the team.

However, it was difficult to find galaxies in the early stage of galaxy formation from the data because the wide-field data includes as many as 40 million objects. So the research team developed a new machine learning method to find such galaxies from the vast amount of data. They had a computer repeatedly learn the galaxy colors expected from theoretical models, and then let the computer select only galaxies in the early stage of galaxy formation.

The research team then performed follow-up observations to determine the elemental abundance ratios of 4 of the 27 candidates selected by the computer. They have found that one galaxy (HSC J1631+4426), located 430 million light-years away in the constellation Hercules, has an oxygen abundance only 1.6 percent of that of the Sun. This is the lowest values ever reported for a galaxy. The measured oxygen abundance suggests that most of the stars in this galaxy formed very recently. In other words, this galaxy is undergoing an early stage of the galaxy evolution.

"What is surprising is that the stellar mass of the HSC J1631+4426 galaxy is very small, 0.8 million solar masses. This stellar mass is only about 1/100,000 of our Milky Way galaxy, and comparable to the mass of a star cluster in our Milky Way," said Prof. Ouchi of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and the University of Tokyo. This small mass also supports the primordial nature of the HSC J1631+4426 galaxy.

The research team thinks that there are two interesting indications from this discovery. First, this is the evidence about a galaxy at such an early stage of galaxy evolution existing today. In the framework of the standard cosmology, new galaxies are thought to be born in the present universe. The discovery of the HSC J1631+4426 galaxy backs up the picture of the standard cosmology. Second, we may witness a new-born galaxy at the latest epoch of the cosmic history. The standard cosmology suggests that the matter density of the universe rapidly drops in our universe whose expansion accelerates. In the future universe with the rapid expansion, matter does not assemble by gravity, and new galaxies won't be born. The HSC J1631+4426 galaxy may be the last generation galaxy in the long cosmic history.

Maunakea, Hawaii - Astronomers using two Maunakea Observatories - Subaru Telescope and W. M. Keck Observatory - combined with the power of machine learning, have discovered a nearby galaxy that has broken the record for having the lowest level of oxygen ever seen. The researchers measured its oxygen abundance at only 1.6 percent that of the Sun, suggesting the galaxy, named HSC J1631+4426, only recently started making stars.

The study will be published in the August 3, 2020 issue of The Astrophysical Journal and is available in preprint format on arXiv.org.

Young galaxies like HSC J1631+4426 are rare; most galaxies in the modern universe are already mature. Standard Cosmology predicts there may still be a few star-forming galaxies today, but they are difficult to detect.

"To find these very faint, rare galaxies, deep, wide-field imaging data taken with the Subaru Telescope was indispensable," said Takashi Kojima of the University of Tokyo Institute for Cosmic Ray Research and lead author of the study.

However, the wide-field data detected 40 million objects. To comb through the vast amount of data and zero in on galaxies that are just beginning to form stars, the research team developed a new machine learning method. They 'taught' a computer to repeatedly learn the galaxy colors expected from theoretical models and select only galaxies in the early stage of galaxy formation.

The computer identified 27 candidates; the research team performed follow-up observations on four of them, using Keck Observatory's DEep Imaging and Multi-Object Spectrograph (DEIMOS) as well as Subaru Telescope's Faint Object Camera and Spectrograph (FOCAS) to determine the candidate galaxies' elemental abundance ratios, distances, and mass.

The spectroscopic data revealed that one of them, HSC J1631+4426, is an extremely metal-poor galaxy with the lowest oxygen abundance ever reported. The researchers also determined its location to be relatively close - just 430 million light-years away in the constellation Hercules - and that the galaxy is tiny.

"What's surprising is the stellar mass of the HSC J1631+4426 galaxy is very small, 0.8 million solar masses, which is only about 1/100,000 of our Milky Way, and comparable to the mass of a star cluster in our galaxy," said co-author Masami Ouchi, a professor at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and the University of Tokyo.

"Low-mass, young, metal-poor galaxies found near us are important because they resemble primordial galaxies, making HSC J1631+4426 one of the best local labs for studying in detail what the first galaxies were like in the early universe, shortly after the Big Bang," said John O'Meara, chief scientist at Keck Observatory.

The Big Bang created two main elements: hydrogen and helium. As such, the earliest galaxies are expected to have few 'metals' like oxygen (in astronomy, elements heavier than hydrogen and helium are called 'metals'). Oxygen-poor galaxies found today serve as analogs for galaxies born shortly after the Big Bang, thus helping astronomers better understand how galaxies formed and evolved in the early universe.

The research team finds two interesting indications from the discovery of HSC J1631+4426. First, it provides evidence supporting the Standard Cosmology prediction that young, star-forming galaxies do in fact exist in the present universe.

Second, the study indicates this could be the latest epoch of the cosmic history where we may witness a newborn galaxy. The Standard Cosmology suggests the density of matter drops as the expansion of the universe accelerates. This would lead to a future universe where matter does not assemble by gravity, and new galaxies won't be born. Thus, HSC J1631+4426 may be the last generation galaxy of its kind in the long cosmic history.

This news release has been revised and republished by the University of Bristol Press Office on Aug. 12, 2020. Please see the revised version here.