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A new learning system developed by MIT researchers improves robots' abilities to mold materials into target shapes and make predictions about interacting with solid objects and liquids. The system, known as a learning-based particle simulator, could give industrial robots a more refined touch -- and it may have fun applications in personal robotics, such as modelling clay shapes or rolling sticky rice for sushi.

In robotic planning, physical simulators are models that capture how different materials respond to force. Robots are "trained" using the models, to predict the outcomes of their interactions with objects, such as pushing a solid box or poking deformable clay. But traditional learning-based simulators mainly focus on rigid objects and are unable to handle fluids or softer objects. Some more accurate physics-based simulators can handle diverse materials, but rely heavily on approximation techniques that introduce errors when robots interact with objects in the real world.

In a paper being presented at the International Conference on Learning Representations in May, the researchers describe a new model that learns to capture how small portions of different materials -- "particles" -- interact when they're poked and prodded. The model directly learns from data in cases where the underlying physics of the movements are uncertain or unknown. Robots can then use the model as a guide to predict how liquids, as well as rigid and deformable materials, will react to the force of its touch. As the robot handles the objects, the model also helps to further refine the robot's control.

In experiments, a robotic hand with two fingers, called "RiceGrip," accurately shaped a deformable foam to a desired configuration -- such as a "T" shape -- that serves as a proxy for sushi rice. In short, the researchers' model serves as a type of "intuitive physics" brain that robots can leverage to reconstruct three-dimensional objects somewhat similarly to how humans do.

"Humans have an intuitive physics model in our heads, where we can imagine how an object will behave if we push or squeeze it. Based on this intuitive model, humans can accomplish amazing manipulation tasks that are far beyond the reach of current robots," says first author Yunzhu Li, a graduate student in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). "We want to build this type of intuitive model for robots to enable them to do what humans can do."

"When children are 5 months old, they already have different expectations for solids and liquids," adds co-author Jiajun Wu, a CSAIL graduate student. "That's something we know at an early age, so maybe that's something we should try to model for robots."

Joining Li and Wu on the paper are: Russ Tedrake, a CSAIL researcher and a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS); Joshua Tenenbaum, a professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences; and Antonio Torralba, a professor in EECS and director of the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab.

Dynamic graphs

A key innovation behind the model, called the "particle interaction network" (DPI-Nets), was creating dynamic interaction graphs, which consist of thousands of nodes and edges that can capture complex behaviors of so-called particles. In the graphs, each node represents a particle. Neighboring nodes are connected with each other using directed edges, which represent the interaction passing from one particle to the other. In the simulator, particles are hundreds of small spheres combined to make up some liquid or a deformable object.

The graphs are constructed as the basis for a machine-learning system called a graph neural network. In training, the model over time learns how particles in different materials react and reshape. It does so by implicitly calculating various properties for each particle -- such as its mass and elasticity -- to predict if and where the particle will move in the graph when perturbed.

The model then leverages a "propagation" technique, which instantaneously spreads a signal throughout the graph. The researchers customized the technique for each type of material -- rigid, deformable, and liquid -- to shoot a signal that predicts particles positions at certain incremental time steps. At each step, it moves and reconnects particles, if needed.

For example, if a solid box is pushed, perturbed particles will be moved forward. Because all particles inside the box are rigidly connected with each other, every other particle in the object moves the same calculated distance, rotation, and any other dimension. Particle connections remain intact and the box moves as a single unit. But if an area of deformable foam is indented, the effect will be different. Perturbed particles move forward a lot, surrounding particles move forward only slightly, and particles farther away won't move at all. With liquids being sloshed around in a cup, particles may completely jump from one end of the graph to the other. The graph must learn to predict where and how much all affected particles move, which is computationally complex.

Shaping and adapting

In their paper, the researchers demonstrate the model by tasking the two-fingered RiceGrip robot with clamping target shapes out of deformable foam. The robot first uses a depth-sensing camera and object-recognition techniques to identify the foam. The researchers randomly select particles inside the perceived shape to initialize the position of the particles. Then, the model adds edges between particles and reconstructs the foam into a dynamic graph customized for deformable materials.

Because of the learned simulations, the robot already has a good idea of how each touch, given a certain amount of force, will affect each of the particles in the graph. As the robot starts indenting the foam, it iteratively matches the real-world position of the particles to the targeted position of the particles. Whenever the particles don't align, it sends an error signal to the model. That signal tweaks the model to better match the real-world physics of the material.

Next, the researchers aim to improve the model to help robots better predict interactions with partially observable scenarios, such as knowing how a pile of boxes will move when pushed, even if only the boxes at the surface are visible and most of the other boxes are hidden.

The researchers are also exploring ways to combine the model with an end-to-end perception module by operating directly on images. This will be a joint project with Dan Yamins's group; Yamin recently completed his postdoc at MIT and is now an assistant professor at Stanford University. "You're dealing with these cases all the time where there's only partial information," Wu says. "We're extending our model to learn the dynamics of all particles, while only seeing a small portion."

New York, NY--April 17, 2019--Engineering bacteria to intelligently sense and respond to disease states, from infections to cancer, has become a promising focus of synthetic biology. Rapid advances in genetic engineering tools have enabled researchers to "program" cells to perform various sophisticated tasks. For example, a network of genes can be wired together to form a genetic circuit in which cells can be engineered to sense the environment and modulate their behavior or produce molecules in response.

Recent research has found that many bacteria selectively colonize tumors in vivo, prompting scientists to engineer them as programmable vehicles, biological "robots" in other words, to deliver anticancer therapeutics. Researchers are also developing new, "smart" medicines by programming bacteria to tackle other diseases, such as gastrointestinal disease and infections. Key to advancing such "living medicines" is being able to identify the best therapeutic candidates.

However, while current synthetic biology tools can create an enormous number of programmed cells, researchers' dependence on animal-based testing has greatly limited the number of therapies that can be tested and how quickly. In fact, the ability to rapidly engineer new therapies for humans far outpaces the throughput of animal-based testing, creating a major bottleneck for clinical translation.

Researchers at Columbia Engineering report today in PNAS that they have developed a system that enables them to study tens to hundreds of programmed bacteria within mini-tissues in a dish, condensing the time of study from months to days. As a proof of concept, they focused on testing programmed antitumor bacteria using mini-tumors called tumor spheroids. The speed and high throughput of their technology, which they call BSCC for "bacteria spheroids co-culture," allows for stable growth of bacteria within tumor spheroids enabling long-term study. The method can also be used for other bacteria species and cell types. The team, led by Tal Danino, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, says that, to their knowledge, this study is the first to rapidly screen and characterize bacteria therapies in vitro and will be a useful tool for many researchers in the field.

VIDEO: https://youtu.be/fBMiMXqcvaU

"We're very excited at how efficient BSCC is and think it will really accelerate engineered bacterial therapy for clinical use," Danino says. "By combining automation and robotics technology, BSCC can test a large library of therapies to discover effective treatments. And because BSCC is so broadly applicable, we can modify the system to test human samples as well as other diseases. For example, it will help us personalize medical treatments by creating a patient's cancer in a dish, and rapidly identify the best therapy for the specific individual."

The researchers knew that while many bacteria can grow inside a tumor because of the reduced immune system there, bacteria are killed outside the tumor where the body's immune system is active. Inspired by this mechanism, they searched for an antibacterial agent that can mimic the bacteria "killing" effect outside the spheroids.

They developed a protocol to use the antibiotic gentamicin to grow bacteria inside spheroids that are similar to tumors in the body. Using BSCC, they then rapidly tested a broad range of programmed anticancer bacterial therapies made of various types of bacteria, genetic circuits, and therapeutic payloads.

"We used 3D multicellular spheroids because they recapitulate conditions found in the human body, such as oxygen and nutrient gradients--these can't be made in a traditional 2D monolayer cell culture," says the paper's lead author Tetsuhiro Harimoto, who is a PhD student in Danino's lab. "In addition, the 3D spheroid provides bacteria with enough space to live in its core, in much the same way that bacteria colonize tumors in the body, also something we can't do in the 2D monolayer culture. Plus, it's simple to make large numbers of 3D spheroids and adapt them for high-throughput screening."

The team used the BSCC's high-throughput system to rapidly characterize pools of programmed bacteria and then to quickly narrow down the best candidate for therapeutic use. They discovered a potent therapy for colon cancer, using a novel bacterial toxin, theta toxin, combined with an optimal drug delivery genetic circuit in attenuated bacteria Salmonella Typhimurium. They also found new combinations of bacterial therapies that can improve anticancer efficacy even more.

The researchers compared their BSCC results to those found in animal models, and found similar behavior of bacteria in those models. They also discovered that their top candidate, theta toxin, is more potent than therapies created in the past, demonstrating the power of BSCC's high-throughput screening.

While Danino's group focused on cancer therapy in this study, they hope to expand BSCC to characterize bacteria-based therapeutics for various diseases, including gastrointestinal disease and infections. Their ultimate goal is to use these new bacterial therapies in clinics around the world.

Researchers from Drexel University and Trinity College in Ireland, have created ink for an inkjet printer from a highly conductive type of two-dimensional material called MXene. Recent findings, published in Nature Communications, suggest that the ink can be used to print flexible energy storage components, such as supercapacitors, in any size or shape.

Conductive inks have been around for nearly a decade and they represent a multi-hundred million-dollar market that is expected to grow rapidly into the next decade. It's already being used to make the radiofrequency identification tags used in highway toll transponders, circuit boards in portable electronics and it lines car windows as embedded radio antennas and to aid defrosting. But for the technology to see broader use, conductive inks need to become more conductive and more easily applied to a range of surfaces.

Yury Gogotsi, PhD, Distinguished University and Bach professor in Drexel's College of Engineering, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, who studies the applications of new materials in technology, suggests that the ink created in Drexel's Nanomaterials Institute is a significant advancement on both of these fronts.

"So far only limited success has been achieved with conductive inks in both fine-resolution printing and high charge storage devices," Gogotsi said. "But our findings show that all-MXene printed micro-supercapacitors, made with an advanced inkjet printer, are an order of magnitude greater than existing energy storage devices made from other conductive inks."

While researchers are steadily figuring out ways to make inks from new, more conductive materials, like nanoparticle silver, graphene and gallium, the challenge remains incorporating them seamlessly into manufacturing processes. Most of these inks can't be used in a one-step process, according to Babak Anasori, PhD, a research assistant professor in Drexel's department of Materials Science and Engineering and co-author of the MXene ink research.

"For most other nano inks, an additive is required to hold the particles together and allow for high-quality printing. Because of this, after printing, an additional step is required - usually a thermal or chemical treatment - to remove that additive," Anasori said. "For MXene printing, we only use MXene in water or MXene in an organic solution to make the ink. This means it can dry without any additional steps."

MXenes are a type of carbon-based, two-dimensional layered materials, created at Drexel in 2011, that have the unique ability to mix with liquids, like water and other organic solvents, while retaining their conductive properties. Because of this, Drexel researchers have produced and tested it in a variety of forms, from conductive clay to a coating for electromagnetic interference shielding to a near-invisible wireless antenna.

Adjusting the concentration to create ink for use in a commercial printer was a matter of time and iteration. The solvent and MXene concentration in the ink can be adjusted to suit different kinds of printers.

"If we really want to take advantage of any technology at a large scale and have it ready for public use, it has to become very simple and done in one step," Anasori said. "An inkjet printer can be found in just about every house, so we knew if we could make the proper ink, it would be feasible that anyone could make future electronics and devices."

As part of the study, the Drexel team, working with researchers at Trinity College, who are experts in printing, put the MXene ink to the test in a series of printouts, including a simple circuit, a mirco-supercapacitor and some text, on substrates ranging from paper to plastic to glass. In doing so, they found that they could print lines of consistent thickness and that the ink's ability to pass an electric current varied with its thickness - both important factors in manufacturing electronics components. And the printouts maintained their superior electric conductivity, which is the highest among all carbon-based conductive inks, including carbon nanotubes and graphene.

This all amounts to a very versatile product for making the tiny components that perform important, but often overlooked functions in our electronics devices - jobs like keeping the power on when the battery dies, preventing damaging electrical surges, or speeding the charging process. Providing a higher-performing material and a new way to build things with it could lead not only to improvements to our current devices, but also the creation of entirely new technologies.

"Compared to conventional manufacturing protocols, direct ink printing techniques, such as inkjet printing and extrusion printing, allow digital and additive patterning, customization, reduction in material waste, scalability and rapid production," Anasori said. "Now that we have produced a MXene ink that can be applied via this technique, we're looking at a world of new opportunities to use it."

Leonardo da Vinci's world-renowned "Mona Lisa" painting of Lisa Gherardini has captivated millions since it was created in the early 1500s, including experts in the medical community. For years, scientists and physicians have studied the discoloration of Gherardini's skin, the thickness of her neck, and her enigmatic smile to hypothesize about her health during the Renaissance time period.

The most recent published theory suggests she suffered from severe hypothyroidism, or underactive thyroid. The cardiologist cites her yellow skin, the enlarged appearance of her thyroid gland, and lack of eyebrows as symptoms to support his theory. He also writes that her mysterious smile may represent a hint of resulting psychomotor retardation and muscle weakness.

Not so fast, said Michael Yafi, MD, a pediatric endocrinologist at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).

"I felt a personal responsibility to defend the "Mona Lisa" and the fascinating lady the painting portrays," said Yafi, the director of the Division of Pediatric Endocrinology at McGovern Medical School and a specialist with UT Physicians, the clinical practice of UTHealth. "She has inspired thousands of people over the past few centuries. I couldn't have the public thinking she had hypothyroidism, when it seems to me she was euthyroid, meaning her thyroid was normal. So, I decided to give her a fresh 21st-century medical opinion."

Yafi's opinion was recently published in Hormones-International Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism. In it, he explains that the documentation of thyroid disease is well known in art history, and this painting doesn't match the countless other depictions of goiters, or enlargements of the thyroid gland.

"Artists often depicted what they saw in society. Sculptures from the ancient Andean and Egyptian civilizations recorded endemic goiters in areas of environmental iodine deficiency, like the Tuscany region where Gherardini lived. Ancient Greek art represents this symptom as well, as do several poetic works and even Shakespearean literature. If Gherardini had a goiter from iodine deficiency, it would have been severe and more clearly demarcated in the painting like the other historical representations; a talented painter like da Vinci would have had no problem expressing it," Yafi said.

Yafi also points out that many of da Vinci's paintings depict women without eyebrows, so it's not conclusive to attribute that feature to underactive thyroid.

Additionally, he says the yellowing of the skin only develops after a long duration of the disease. Typically, having long-term hypothyroidism would have severely affected fertility, but Gherardini is known to have given birth to five children, including one only months before sitting for the painting.

"The discoloration could simply be attributed to the age of the artwork, as well as the varnish applied by the artist. Furthermore, the painting was stolen and then hidden away for almost three years, and someone also once vandalized it with acid in an act of sabotage," Yafi said.

And as for the mysterious smile and the proposal that it's caused by muscle weakness:

"Making a diagnosis of hypothyroidism on the basis of subtle and vague features in an old painting is, needless to say, risky," Yafi said. "Hypothyroid myopathy, or muscle tissue disease, manifests in muscles that are closer to the body's midline. It is usually severe, which means that it would have prevented Gherardini from posing with a straight back. Moreover, there are plenty of people who have an asymmetric smile, but this does not necessarily mean that they are hypothyroid."

Yafi, an avid art lover and active member of Houston's art community, enjoys studying the intersection between art and medicine. His second medical diagnosis of a famous piece of art, this time focused on Edward Munch's "The Scream," was just published in Hektoen International, A Journal of Medical Humanities.

"Artists and art interpreters throughout history were able to detect many diagnoses and conditions, even before doctors. However, they weren't always correct," he said. "The artwork or person in the artwork may need a second opinion, or even third or fourth, based on current medical or scientific discoveries. It's always best to keep an open mind."

Star Trek's Spock would not be surprised: People are "illogical." New research exploring American liberals and conservatives shows that regardless of political affiliation, tribal instincts kick in and people's ability to think logically suffers when it comes to arguments related to their political belief systems. When confronted with the unsound reasoning of opposing groups, people become better able to identify flawed logic.

The research was recently published in Social Psychological and Personality Science.

In their first study, the researchers studied ideological belief bias - the tendency to judge logical arguments based on the believability of their conclusions rather than whether or not the arguments' premises support the conclusions - effects among 924 liberals and conservatives from YourMorals.org. Visitors to the site evaluated the logical soundness of classically structured logical syllogisms supporting liberal or conservative beliefs. Of 16 syllogisms, half were structured as sound arguments, and half unsound.

On average, participants correctly judged 73% of the syllogisms. But their ability to judge correctly depended on their political views.

"Liberals were better at identifying flawed arguments supporting conservative beliefs and conservatives were better at identifying flawed arguments supporting liberal beliefs," says Anup Gampa (University of Virginia), a lead coauthor of the paper.

In a second study, they observed ideological belief bias effects among 1,489 participants from ProjectImplicit.org. The participants in this study were trained in logical reasoning before evaluating political syllogisms using language similar to what they might encounter in popular media.

Even with the training, the ability to analyze arguments fell into the same patterns. The authors found similar patterns of bias in a nationally representative sample containing 1,109 liberals and conservatives.

In the era of fake news, these logical fallacies can be even more potent.

"When two sides don't share a common view of even seemingly objective facts, these differences become embedded in our collective reasoning ability," says Sean Wojcik (University of California, Irvine), a lead coauthor of the paper. "Our biases drive us apart not only in our disagreements about political and ideological worldviews, but also in our understanding of logic itself."

Both Gampa and Wojcik agree that in our political world, "we might not be as vigilant as we think" about the logical grounding of our own beliefs and "we might be unreasonably harsh about the logical grounding of the belief of those we disagree with."

Despite this, being able to hear the other side can open us to our own flawed arguments, suggest the researchers.

Philadelphia, April 17, 2019 - To improve the treatment of children with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), investigators have developed a sophisticated way to analyze the microbial and metabolic contents of the gut. A report in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics, published by Elsevier, describes how a new battery of tests enables researchers to distinguish patients with IBS from healthy children and identifies correlations between certain microbes and metabolites with abdominal pain. With this information, doctors envision tailoring nutritional and targeted therapies that address a child's specific gastrointestinal problems.

"This research highlights the importance of the microbiome-gut-brain axis and our understanding of chronic abdominal pain. Development of new disease classifiers based on microbiome data enables precision diagnostics to be developed for IBS and similar disorders. Although other studies have found differences in the gut microbiomes of patients with IBS, this study is the first to combine deep microbiome analysis with development of new diagnostic strategies," explained James Versalovic, MD, PhD, of the Department of Pathology & Immunology at Baylor College of Medicine and the Department of Pathology at Texas Children's Hospital, Houston, TX, USA. The term microbiome refers to the genetic material of all the microbes--bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and viruses--that live on and inside the human body.

Samples for this study were obtained from 23 preadolescent children with IBS (age 7 to 12 years) and 22 healthy controls. Participants were asked to maintain daily pain and stool diaries for two weeks and to provide stool (fecal) samples.

Investigators found that there are differences in bacterial composition, bacterial genes, and fecal metabolites in children with IBS compared to healthy controls. In addition to identifying correlations of these factors with abdominal pain, they generated a highly accurate classifier using metagenomic and metabolic markers that distinguishes children with IBS from healthy controls with 80 percent or greater accuracy. This classifier assesses specific metabolites, types of bacteria, functional pathways, and other factors. "This disease classifier represents a significant advance in the diagnosis of IBS and could be clinically impactful," commented Dr. Versalovic.

This microbiome-based classifier can potentially help identify subpopulations of children with IBS that are more likely to benefit from microbiome-related therapies including diet modification, while guiding others to alternative appropriate treatment plans. The investigators also provide insights into how specific microbiome-related findings may be related to abdominal pain, thus opening up potential novel treatment approaches.

A chronic disease that is evaluated clinically can be stratified in the future based on differences in the composition and function of the intestinal microbiome. Dr. Versalovic envisions that these findings will begin to usher in an era of metagenomics-based, data-driven precision diagnostics for IBS and other functional gastrointestinal disorders. "Microbiome-based diagnosis and disease stratification of patients with IBS means that we create hope for tailored nutrition and targeted therapies in the future, leading to better outcomes for patients with chronic disease," noted Dr. Versalovic.

IBS is a disruptive gastrointestinal condition characterized by bloating, changes in bowel habits, and pain that affects up to 20 percent of the world's population (children and adults). Increasing evidence indicates that the onset and symptoms of IBS are related to the gut microbiome. Deficiencies or excesses of specific gut microbes or metabolites may contribute to the disease process of IBS.

LA JOLLA, CALIF. - April 17, 2019 - Lying within our muscles are stem cells, invisible engines that drive the tissue's growth and repair. Understanding the signal(s) that direct muscle stem cells to spring into action could uncover new ways to promote muscle growth. However, these mechanisms are poorly understood.

Now, scientists from Sanford Burnham Prebys have uncovered a molecular signaling pathway involving Stat3 and Fam3a proteins that regulates how muscle stem cells decide whether to self-renew or differentiate--an insight that could lead to muscle-boosting therapeutics for muscular dystrophies or age-related muscle decline. The study was published in Nature Communications.

"Muscle stem cells can 'burn out' trying to regenerate tissue during the natural aging process or due to chronic muscle disease," says Alessandra Sacco, Ph.D., senior author of the paper and associate professor in the Development, Aging and Regeneration Program at Sanford Burnham Prebys. "We believe we have found promising drug targets that direct muscle stem cells to 'make the right decision' and stimulate muscle repair, potentially helping muscle tissue regeneration and maintaining tissue function in chronic conditions such as muscular dystrophy and aging."

Muscle wasting occurs as part of the natural aging process, called sarcopenia, or due to genetic diseases such as muscular dystrophy. Sarcopenia affects nearly 10 percent of adults over the age of 50 and nearly half of individuals in their 80s. The condition leads to loss of independence and contributes to falls, a leading cause of accidental death in people age 65 or older. Muscular dystrophies are a group of more than 30 genetic diseases characterized by progressive muscle weakness and degeneration. A cure does not exist.

Muscle stem cells select between two fates over a person's lifetime: Either differentiate to become adult muscle cells or self-renew to replenish the stem cell population. Accumulating evidence shows that mitochondrial respiration (cellular breathing) is a key switch that drives muscle stem cells to differentiate, an energy-intensive process, instead of self-renew.

In the study, the scientists used mouse models to demonstrate that Stat3 promotes mitochondrial respiration. Because Stat3 regulates many cellular processes, the scientists combed through genes expressed during muscle growth to find additional proteins regulated by Stat3 that might serve as more specific targets.

These efforts uncovered the protein Fam3a. Further work conducted, including generating a mouse model and cell lines that lack Fam3a, demonstrated that the protein is required for muscle stem cell differentiation and muscle growth. The researchers also showed that Fam3a is secreted by muscle cells during muscle repair, and treatment with the protein restored mitochondrial respiration and stem cell differentiation in muscle stem cells that lacked Stat3--all demonstrating the integral role of Fam3a in determining muscle stem cells' fate.

"As the number of people over the age of 65 rises due to the aging of the baby-boomer generation, it is important to not only extend life span but also health span--the years we can remain healthy and active," says David Sala, Ph.D., the first author of the paper and a postdoctoral researcher in the Sacco laboratory. "The ability to boost and maintain muscle tissue function can help more people live an active and independent life. The results of our research can also find applications for muscle wasting disorders such as muscular dystrophy."

The scientists are already conducting preclinical studies to validate Fam3a as a therapeutic target. They also hope their findings could apply to stem cells that differentiate to create other tissues, which could help treat other degenerative tissue diseases.

A large, multi-ethnic genome-wide association study (GWAS) of asthma identified novel associations with potential relevance for asthma susceptibility in older adults of diverse racial backgrounds. The study, "Large-scale, multi-ethnic genome wide association study identifies novel loci contributing to asthma susceptibility in adults," appears in the April issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

Asthma affects over 300 million persons globally and susceptibility to asthma is influenced by environmental and genetic risk factors. "Identifying the genetic variants associated with asthma through GWAS is crucial for determining the genetic basis of asthma" said co-first author Joanne Sordillo, ScD, MS, Research Scientist at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute. "It's also necessary to understand how genetic heterogeneity underlying asthma risk may be influenced by ethnic background, using large, multi-racial patient populations."

Researchers conducted an asthma GWAS in the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Genetic Epidemiology Research in Adult Health and Aging (GERA) cohort, using a total of 68,623 asthma cases and non-asthmatic controls. Study results found a novel potential mechanism for asthma susceptibility by the gene, IL1RL1. Study investigators believe this could be associated with asthma susceptibility through introduction of a new binding site for micro RNA, a small non-coding RNA molecule, that regulates expression of this locus. The study also replicated 16 novel associations with asthma susceptibility in the non-Hispanic white populations, all of which were annotated to either HLA-DQA1, a major histocompatibility complex gene, or IL18R1/IL1RL1. Study results showed no overlap in genome-wide asthma associations across the four ethnic groups, suggesting that unique biological pathways may contribute to asthma susceptibility within older adults of different ethnicities.

"This study contributes novel and unique associations with asthma within four major human ethnic groups and represents one of the largest GWAS of asthma conducted to date" said senior author Ann Chen Wu, MD, MPH, Associate Professor of Population Medicine at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute and Harvard Medical School.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- A team that studies how biological structures such as cactus spines and mantis shrimp appendages puncture living tissue has turned its attention to viper fangs. Specifically, the scientists wanted to know, what physical characteristics contribute to fangs' sharpness and ability to puncture?

They report their findings in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

Like most venomous snakes, vipers have fangs that function primarily as hypodermic needles, said University of Illinois postdoctoral researcher Stephanie Crofts, who conducted the analysis of viper fangs with U. of I. animal biology professor Philip Anderson. But vipers - a group that includes rattlesnakes, asps and puff adders - tend to have hinged jaws that fold the fangs up into their mouths for storage.

Viper fangs are smooth and efficient, Anderson said.

"They typically don't have to hold on very long," he said. "They sink their fangs in and out, and they're done."

The researchers wanted to know which characteristics of the fangs made them good at puncturing.

"The question was: How do we measure sharpness?" Crofts said. "Intuitively, we think we know what is sharp and what isn't, but in biology, we have to measure specific morphological traits."

The Field Museum in Chicago lent the researchers fangs from a variety of species. The team used 28 viper fangs for its tests.

For each fang, the researchers measured the angle of the tip (was it wide or narrow?), how rounded the tip is, and its surface area. They mounted each fang to a machine that can apply and measure the force required to puncture something - in this case, cubes of ballistics gel of uniform size and density.

Mechanical engineers on the team also manufactured a series of metal punches with varying tip angles, degrees of bluntness and surface areas, and the team also tested those using the same methods.

"With the punches, we could very tightly control the different parameters," Crofts said. "It was a way of isolating those different metrics."

The tests revealed that the angle of a fang's tip contributed the most to sharpness. Even a narrow fang with a rounded tip tended to perform better than a wider fang that was intact - not rounded or dulled - at its end.

"The narrowness of the tip angle is what's really important," Crofts said. "I found that a little surprising, because most measures of sharpness focus on the roundedness of the tip. That does come into play, but it's secondary to that overall angle."

"This study tells us what aspect of shape to measure when we want to measure sharpness," Anderson said. "Whether we're looking at biological systems or other systems, the tip angle appears to be the primary factor driving sharpness."

A novel type of body awareness training helps women recover from drug addiction, according to new research from the University of Washington. People in the study made marked improvement, and many improvements lasted for a year.

It's the first time the mindfulness approach has been studied in a large randomized trial as an adjunct treatment. The training helps people better understand the physical and emotional signals in their body and how they can respond to these to help them better regulate and engage in self-care.

"We could teach this intervention successfully in eight weeks to a very distressed population, and participants not only really learned these skills, they maintained increases in body awareness and regulation over the yearlong study period," said Cynthia J. Price, a research associate professor in the UW School of Nursing and lead author of the study. "The majority of participants also reported consistent use of MABT skills, on a weekly basis, over the duration of the study."

And likely due to using the skills learned in the intervention, the women showed less relapse to drug and alcohol use compared to those who didn't receive the intervention, Price said. The findings were published in March in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

The training included one-on-one coaching in an outpatient setting, in addition to the substance use disorder treatment the women were already receiving. The intervention is called Mindful Awareness in Body-oriented Therapy (MABT) and combines manual, mindfulness and psycho-educational approaches to teach interoceptive awareness and related self-care skills. Interoceptive awareness is the ability to access and process sensory information from the body.

Researchers studied 187 women at three Seattle-area locations. The cohort, all women in treatment for substance use disorder (SUD), was split into three relatively equal groups. Every group continued with their regular SUD treatment. One group received SUD treatment only, another group was taught the mindfulness technique in addition to treatment, and the third group received a women's education curriculum in addition to treatment in order to test whether the additional time and attention explained any positive study outcomes.

Women were tested at the beginning, and at three, six and 12 months on a number of factors including substance use, distress craving, emotion regulation (self-report and psychophysiology), mindfulness skills and interoceptive awareness. There were lasting improvements in these areas for those who received the MABT intervention, but not for the other two study groups.

"Those who received MABT relapsed less," Price said. "By learning to attend to their bodies, they learned important skills for better self-care."

UBC researchers have determined the majority of men struggle when it comes to understanding the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer.

Professors Joan Bottorff and John Oliffe are scientists with UBC's Men's Health Research Program. Together, while studying men's knowledge or literacy of prostate cancer, they realized many are in the dark when it comes to what they know about the disease. And, more importantly, what direction to take after diagnosis.

"In terms of health literacy, there is a long history of people saying men are not up to speed," says Oliffe. "This includes their knowledge when it comes to understanding prescription drugs and dosages, whether they know the stages of a disease and how they apply the knowledge they have."

Health literacy is the ability to access, understand and use health-related information to make informed decisions and manage personal health. However, when it comes to prostate cancer, the information is overwhelming for many men, adds research coordinator and study lead author Cherisse Seaton.

"Our research looks at how men apply the knowledge they have," she says. "Quite often there is so much information out there and it's complex in terms of choice."

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among Canadian men and it has a high survival rate. However, says Seaton, low health literacy is considered a risk factor for poor health and poor decision-making.

"Men have some big decisions to make after diagnosis," says Seaton. "Not all prostate cancers are aggressive and it can be challenging to predict if a patient has slow-growing cancer or one that is aggressive. The patients have to decide what type of treatment course to follow. To do that they need to be well informed and understand of all the options."

A common treatment option--active surveillance --calls for no surgery or active treatments. The goal is to wait out the disease while consulting regularly with a doctor. While active surveillance can be an option, the study shows more than 91 per cent of men surveyed opted for treatment.

"There are some men who just really want to get rid of the cancer regardless of what they are told," says Bottorff, who teaches in UBC Okanagan School of Nursing. "They go forward with the surgery or a more aggressive treatment than they might need, quite often from fear or lack of knowledge. These active treatment options have considerable side effects and we believe the better the men's health literacy, the better they will do when it comes to making informed choices and avoiding decisional regret."

Although research shows men rate their understanding of health information highly, many feel they do not have enough information to manage their personal health.

To help with men's health literacy for prostate cancer, the Men's Health Research team created an interactive website titled If I Were Tom. The site, Oliffe explains, is useful for men right after diagnosis. A number of videos follow fictional patient named Tom through the prostate test, diagnosis and a treatment decision. Site visitors can make decisions with Tom, and learn of the many options available. The interactive website also shares messages from survivors, health care providers and family members.

"Our research showed that even though men had a lot of interaction with health care providers, and there are tools out there, they still felt they needed more information," says Bottorff. "Clearly, we need to find other ways to connect men with the information they are looking for. This website is an effort to address those information needs in a way that is accessible to men."

The narratives we tell about the past often feature a cast of familiar main characters: kings and rulers, warriors and diplomats -- men who made laws and fought wars, who held power over others in their own lands and beyond. When women enter our stories, we rarely afford them much agency. But across the globe in a variety of societies, royal women found ways to advance the issues they cared about and advocate for the people important to them.

In a recent paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Research, anthropologist Paula Sabloff analyzes the archeological and written records of eight premodern states separated by both time and space, detailing ways that queen rulers and main wives took political action. Her comparative analysis reveals similar patterns in the societies despite the fact that they were isolated from one another.

Sabloff's analysis includes three types of regions: independent states or city-states (including the Mari Kingdom of Old Babylonia, 2000-1600 BC, and Protohistoric Hawai'i, AD 1570-1788); empires (Old Kingdom Egypt, 2686-2181 BC, Late Shang China, 1250-1046 BC, the Aztec Empire, AD 1440-1520, and the Inca Empire, AD 1460-1532); and states in regions that contained both states and empires (Late Classic Maya, AD 600-800, and Postclassic Zapotec, AD 1050-1500).

As Sabloff described in another recent paper, women were often used as bargaining chips, used to form strategic alliances between states through marriage. "Here are examples of, even when women were pawns in marriage, they still ended up with a lot of power," she says. She found remarkable similarities in the types of power that royal women used.

"Queen rulers held nearly the same political power as kings," she explains. "Main wives were active players in determining succession, governing the polity, building inter- and intrapolity alliances, and expanding or defending territory." These women also exerted influence by obligating courtiers and tradesmen through patron-client relationships, interceded on behalf of their relatives, and sometimes spied on or conspired against their royal husbands.

"Political agency wasn't just about waging war," says Sabloff. "It was about being able to influence policy, to influence who is on the throne. There were levels of agency, but hers was right behind his."

BOSTON (April 15, 2019, 5:00 a.m. ET)--The Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) mandatory added sugar labeling policy for packaged foods and beverages, set to take effect between 2020 and 2021, could be a cost-effective way to generate important health gains and cost-savings for both the healthcare system and society in the U.S., according to a new modeling study led by researchers from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University and the University of Liverpool. The analysis is the first to estimate the potential health and economic impacts of the new label.

In 2016, the FDA announced several mandatory changes to the Nutrition Facts label in order to provide consumers with enhanced nutritional information. Among the changes was adding the grams and percent Daily Value of added sugar content, which would help consumers limit calories from added sugar in accordance with the recommendations of the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

The study, published today in Circulation, estimates that the FDA's added sugar label could prevent or postpone nearly 1 million cases of cardiometabolic disease, including heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes, over a 20-year period. When combined with possible industry reformulations to reduce added sugar content in packaged foods and beverages, the label could prevent or postpone nearly 3 million cases of cardiovascular disease and diabetes over the same time period. Cost-effectiveness of each scenario was evaluated from a healthcare perspective (accounting for policy costs and medical costs) and from a societal perspective (further accounting for informal care costs and lost productivity costs). Both scenarios were estimated to be cost-effective within five years and cost-saving within seven years.

Specifically, the analysis estimates that the added sugar label could:

Prevent or postpone 354,400 cases of cardiovascular disease and 599,300 cases of diabetes;

Gain 727,000 quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs); and

Save $31 billion in net healthcare costs and $61.9 billion in societal costs. Policy costs were estimated to be $1.7 billion.

Taking into consideration possible reformulation by the food industry, the analysis yielded greater corresponding gains, estimating that the new label could:

Prevent or postpone 708,800 cases of cardiovascular disease and 1.2 million cases of diabetes;

Gain 1.3 million QALYs; and

Save $57.6 billion in net healthcare costs and $113.2 billion in societal costs. Policy costs, including industry reformulation costs, were estimated to be $4.3 billion.

"The added sugar label is an important policy step toward reducing consumption of foods and beverages with high added sugar contents, improving health, and lowering healthcare spending," said Renata Micha, R.D., Ph.D., the study's co-senior and corresponding author and research associate professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. "These findings have important implications for individuals, policy makers and the food industry alike. Modest industry reformulation would be a powerful way to maximize potential benefits, highlighting industry's critical role in being part of the solution."

While some companies have begun listing added sugar content, the 2018 deadline for compliance has been extended to 2020 for large manufacturers and 2021 for small manufacturers.

"Informing consumers about what is in their sugary drinks, cakes, and sweets will help them decide what they want to eat for their health now and later," said Martin O'Flaherty, M.D., Ph.D., co-senior author and professor in epidemiology at the University of Liverpool. "Full implementation of the label before 2021 could help maximize health and economic gains."

The researchers note that Americans consume more than 15 percent of their total calories from added sugars and overconsumption of added sugars is linked to an increased risk of cardiometabolic diseases. These diseases pose large health and economic burdens for the society and the healthcare system. Food labeling could be an effective strategy to support informed consumer choice and reduce added sugar intake, while further stimulating industry reformulation, as supported by recent experience with trans fat labeling in the U.S.

The researchers used a validated microsimulation model (IMPACT) to estimate the potential health impact, costs, and cost-effectiveness of the FDA's added sugar label based on the two scenarios, which were compared with a "no intervention" baseline scenario over a 20-year timeframe (2018-2037). The model generated a sample representative of the U.S. adult population and utilized data from the two most recent National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey cycles (2011-2014), CDC Wonder, meta-analyses, and other validated sources.

The model evaluated health benefits and cost-savings from cardiometabolic health outcomes; increased healthcare costs from competing diseases could reduce cost-effectiveness, while other health benefits would further contribute to health gains and cost-savings.

DALLAS, April 15, 2019 -- A label showing added sugars content on all packaged foods and sugary drinks could have substantial health and cost-saving benefits in the United States over the next 20 years, according to a new study published in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation. Using a validated model, researchers were able to estimate a significant reduction in cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes cases from 2018 to 2037, if such a mandated addition to the Nutrition Label was implemented.

Poor diet, especially with overconsumption of sugar, is a known, preventable cause of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced an added sugars-labeling requirement on the Nutrition Facts label in 2016.

"The purpose of our study was to estimate the impact of the FDA's added sugars label on reducing sugar intake and preventing diabetes and cardiovascular disease," says Renata Micha, R.D., Ph.D., of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston. "Our results indicate that timely implementation of the added sugars label could reduce consumption of foods and beverages with added sugars, which could then lead to an improvement in health and a reduction in healthcare spending."

The study was conducted as part of a National Institutes of Health-funded initiative, Food-PRICE, at Tufts University to identify nutrition strategies that can have the greatest impact on improving diet and health in the U.S.

The researchers predict that between 2018 and 2037, the added sugars label would prevent more than 354,000 cardiovascular disease cases and lead to almost 600,000 fewer cases of type 2 diabetes. The estimated reduction in net healthcare costs would be more than $31 billion, after policy costs have been factored in, and not including societal costs, such as lost productivity.

"We and others have shown that food labeling can be an effective strategy to support informed consumer choice and effectively change consumer behavior," said Micha.

The study authors believe that the added sugars label would likely encourage food and beverage-makers to reformulate their products. As a result, they calculate the impact to be twice as great as having the added sugars label alone, at more than 700,000 fewer cases of cardiovascular disease and 1.2 million fewer diabetes cases, with net healthcare cost savings of more than $57 billion.

In explaining the potential effect that a mandated added sugars label would have on sugar content, Micha points to recent experience with food manufacturers who reduced or removed trans fats from their products following trans-fat labeling on products in the U.S. "That suggests that mandated labeling of added sugars content would stimulate the food industry to reduce sugar in their products," she said.

"Clear, easy-to-understand nutrition labels help guide everyone on the path to healthy eating," says Linda Van Horn, PHD, RDN., American Heart Association volunteer expert and Professor and Chief of Nutrition in the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, in Chicago. "Consumers are better empowered to make more informed food choices that will help reduce their risk for heart disease and stroke and live longer, healthier lives."

Although there have been recent declines in sugar consumption, mainly from sugary drinks, Americans still consume more than 300 calories per day from added sugar. The largest single source is sugary drinks, followed by cookies, cakes and pastries, candies and ice cream.

"Our findings may be conservative and underestimate the full health and economic impacts. The model only evaluated health benefits and cost-savings from diabetes and cardiovascular disease outcomes," said Micha, who added that impact on other health concerns could further contribute to health benefits and reduced costs.