Culture

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Women CEOs in America are paid less, have shorter tenures and their companies are punished in the stock market, even when their firms are just as profitable as those run by men, according to new research from Florida State University.

In addition, women CEOs are less likely to serve as board chair of their companies, and they have a much tougher time landing the top job because there is significantly less demand for their leadership compared to men.

"This research should be eye-opening to people, and I hope they take a closer look," said Michael Holmes, FSU's Jim Moran Associate Professor of Strategic Management. "We hope this sets the record straight on past research, some of which has produced conflicting results, and now people can build on this aggregation of findings."

To set the record straight, Holmes and Assistant Professor of Management Gang Wang conducted an exhaustive study focusing on the influence of gender on CEOs' careers. The business management experts conducted a meta-analysis, examining the entire body of research completed over decades, and they pored over 158 previous studies investigating gender, companies' hiring choices, and the impact of those decisions.

One of the key findings in that body of research reveals an extreme underrepresentation of women CEOs. Only 5.4 percent of Fortune 500 companies had female CEOs in 2017, and that figure was the all-time high in the United States.

"The situation for women leaders is probably worse than you think right now," Holmes said. "Many women who become CEOs are absolute rock stars. They have graduated from elite schools and risen through the corporate ranks faster, but they get paid less, are less likely to be a firm's board chair, have shorter tenures in the job and are more likely to lead distressed firms. We wondered, 'What's going on here?'"

That question prompted Wang and Holmes to embark on a two-and-a-half-year research project, published today in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. The study identifies a number of factors that hinder female CEOs and CEO candidates among stock market investors, corporate boards, managers, and more generally, across American culture.

Wang and Holmes grouped those factors into two basic marketplace forces: demand-side and supply-side influences that combined to stifle women's ability to get CEO jobs.

Demand-side factors reduce demand for female CEOs by limiting the willingness of companies to hire women for the job. One example of that attitude is known as "in-group favoritism," a phenomenon that causes people to view others who are similar to them as more competent. In the corporate world, where men dominate leadership jobs and company boards, that attitude means leaders tend to hire people like themselves.

The FSU research also notes the hiring process for CEOs can be influenced by gender-role stereotypes. In American culture, as well as many countries worldwide, the perceived traits of a good leader, such as aggressiveness and risk-taking, are generally seen as masculine qualities.

"Because of that bias, men have advantages obtaining and succeeding in leadership positions, while women leaders are more likely to be disliked and viewed as socially inept, due to the perceived role incongruity," the researchers wrote in the paper.

The other marketplace force influencing corporate hiring decisions, according to Wang and Holmes, is a supply-side issue. They report more women choose to leave the workforce for a variety of reasons, including family changes, lack of career advancement or perhaps outright discrimination.

In addition, the study points to a larger sociological influence on hiring CEOs. Men are socialized from childhood to display traits associated with leadership -- being forceful, aggressive, even pugnacious -- and those characteristics are generally less common among women, Holmes said, perhaps because women are raised differently.

"Females are more likely socialized to care for the home or be nurturing," he said. "Men start to develop characteristics that might help them become a CEO early in childhood, whereas fewer women do. That reduces the supply of female candidates for CEO jobs."

Wang and Holmes also documented a clear bias in the stock market against women CEOs. When they used accounting metrics to compare companies with similar financial results, for example, profits, firms run by women CEOs experienced worse stock performance than those led by men.

Wang and Holmes wrote that investors and stock market analysts, most of whom are men, likely had less direct experience with women CEOs, were influenced by in-group favoritism and gender-role stereotypes, and saw more women opting out of careers. As a result, the researchers concluded those factors prompted many investors to treat the stocks of companies led by women more harshly.

"Women have come a long way in the workforce in terms of their overall numbers and acceptance, but when it comes to stock market investors evaluating a CEO and a company that they don't know, I think investors may subconsciously discount that firm because the leader is female versus male," Holmes said. "It seems when investors take an overall look at firms, biases creep in, and people may not even be aware of them."

The research team hopes future studies focus on ways to reduce biases resulting from demand-side and supply-side forces. They believe too many women either have been pushed out of careers or opted out because they faced an uneven playing field.

Their research provides practical ideas for young women who hope to become a CEO someday, such as pursuing early and fast promotions because, as their research shows, women who do break through to become CEOs are often younger with fewer years of experience than men.

"These women have earned their place at the top," Holmes said. "But the data shows things are different for women -- the workforce does not offer a level playing field.

"I hope when people read the research, they have some 'aha' moments with the findings, as well as the explanations. By showing these firms perform the same as companies led by male CEOs, let's get beyond the idea that women can't be good leaders. Clearly, they are good leaders. They often just aren't rewarded equally."

Rich Devine and John Bishoff, former FSU doctoral students, contributed to this research.

A study into some of the earliest known pottery remains has suggested that the rise of ceramic production was closely linked with intensified fishing at the end of the last Ice Age.

Scientists examined 800 pottery vessels in one of the largest studies ever undertaken, focussing mainly on Japan- a country recognised as being one of the earliest centres for ceramic innovation.

A three year study led by researchers at BioArCh, the University of York, concluded that the ceramic vessels were used by our hunter-gatherer ancestors to store and process fish, initially salmon, but then a wider range including shellfish, freshwater and marine fish and mammals as fishing intensified.

Scientists say this association with fish remained stable even after the onset of climate warming, including in more southerly areas, where expanding forests provided new opportunities for hunting game and gathering plants.

The research team were able to determine the use of a range of ceramic vessels through chemical analysis of organic food compounds that remained trapped in the pots despite ca. 10,000 years of burial.

The samples analysed are some of the earliest found and date from the end of the Late Pleistocene - a time when our ancestors were living in glacial conditions - to the post-glacial period when the climate warmed close to its current temperature and when pottery began to be produced in much greater quantity.

The study has shed new light on how prehistoric hunter-gatherers processed and consumed foods over this period - until now virtually nothing was known of how or for what early pots were used.

As part of the study, researchers recovered diagnostic lipids from the charred surface deposits of the pottery with most of the compounds deriving from the processing of freshwater or marine organisms.

Lead author, Dr Alex Lucquin, from BioArCh, Department of Archaeology, University of York, said: "Thanks to the exceptional preservation of traces of animal fat, we now know that pottery changed from a rare and special object to an every-day tool for preparing fish.

"I think that our study not only reveals the subsistence of the ancient Jomon people of Japan but also its resilience to a dramatic change in climate.

Professor Oliver Craig, from the Department of Archaeology and Director of the BioArCh research centre at York, who led the study, said: "Our results demonstrate that pottery had a strong association with the processing of fish, irrespective of the ecological setting.

"Contrary to expectations, this association remained stable even after the onset of warming, including in more southerly areas, where expanding forests provided new opportunities for hunting and gathering.

"The results indicate that a broad array of fish was processed in the pottery after the end of the last Ice Age, corresponding to a period when hunter-gatherers began to settle in one place for longer periods and develop more intensive fishing strategies"

"We suggest this marks a significant change in the role of pottery of hunter-gatherers, corresponding massively increased volume of production, greater variation in forms and sizes and the onset of shellfish exploitation."

Dr Simon Kaner, from the University of East Anglia, who was involved in the study, added: "The research highlights the benefits of this kind of international collaboration for unlocking some of the big questions about the human past, and the potential of engaging with established research networks as created by the Sainsbury Institute over the years."

The findings are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the study was funded by the AHRC. It was an international collaboration including researchers in Japan, Sweden and the Netherlands.

Imagine piloting a drone using the movements of your torso only and leaving your head free to look around, much like a bird. EPFL research has just shown that using your torso to pilot flying machines is indeed more immersive - and more effective - than using the long-established joystick. The results are published in today's issue of PNAS.

"Our aim was to design a control method which would be easy to learn and therefore require less mental focus from the users so that they can focus on more important issues, like search and rescue," says lead author Jenifer Miehlbradt of EPFL's Translational Neuroengineering Laboratory led by Bertarelli Foundation Chair Silvestro Micera. "Using your torso really gives you the feeling that you are actually flying. Joysticks, on the other hand, are of simple design but mastering their use to precisely control distant objects can be challenging."

The scientists wanted to observe how people use their bodies to pilot a flying object, in this case a drone, and determine which movements are most intuitive and natural - approaching the pilot problem from a completely new perspective.

They started by monitoring the body movements of 17 individuals thanks to 19 markers placed all over the upper body as well as their muscular activity. Each participant followed the actions of a virtual drone through simulated landscapes that passed-by as viewed through virtual reality goggles.

Motion patterns emerged and the scientists quickly established torso-related strategies for piloting drones: they found that only 4 markers - located on the torso - were needed to pilot flight simulators and real drones through a circuit of obstacles effectively.

Overall, the scientists compared their torso strategies to joystick control in 39 individuals. They found that torso drone control outperformed joystick control in precision, reliability and with minimal training sessions.

"Data analysis allowed us to develop a very simple and intuitive approach which could also be used with other populations, machines, and operations," says Micera, also at the Scuola Sant'Anna in Italy in Biomedical Engineering. He adds, "The approach significantly improves the teleoperation of robots with non-human mechanical attributes."

While the PNAS results provide a truly new and completely immersive piloting strategy with a focus on characterizing the relevant torso parameters, leaving the head, limbs, hands and feet free to perform other actions, their proof-of-concept system still requires body markers and external motion detectors in order to work.

The next steps are to make the torso strategy completely wearable for piloting flying objects. The application range is huge, from flight simulators to piloting drones and even perhaps planes of the future. A garment that implements the torso strategy into drone control without external motion detectors was developed at EPFL based on the PNAS findings.

New federal restrictions on the temporary H-1B visa, which allows high-skilled foreign workers to be employed by U.S. companies, have increased debate on the economic impacts of the program, but little is known about its effect on product innovation--until now. New research from the University of California San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy shows that hiring high-skilled workers from abroad may have a meaningful impact on the birth of new products and phasing out of older ones, with implications on both firm profIts and consumer welfare.

In a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper by Gaurav Khanna and Munseob Lee, both assistant professors of economics at the School of Global Policy and Strategy, the authors outline how these findings were uncovered through the use of a novel data set that combined data on H-1B workers and firm production.

"We found companies with higher rates of H-1B workers increased product reallocation--the ability for companies to create new products and replace outdated ones, which in turn, grows revenue," said Khanna. "This discourse could have far reaching implications for U.S. policy, the profitability of firms, the welfare of workers, and the potential for innovation in the economy as a whole."

The authors merged publicly available H-1B data on Labor Condition Applications (LCAs), which companies have to file every time they want to hire an H-1B employee, with firm-level data from the Nielsen Retail Scanner, which provides information on products. Once combined, this new dataset at the fim-by-year level between 2006 and 2015, allowed for comprehensive examination of the impact of hiring foreign workers on firm production.

The authors also point to previous studies revealing a link between immigration flows and increased patenting. Together, these findings have striking implications for the overall consequences of H-1B migration on the U.S. economy.

"There has been a lot of work by economists on the impacts of the H-1B program mostly focused on the wages and employment of native born workers, but little is known about how immigration affects production at the firm level," Lee said. "We find that hiring more immigrant workers is associated with firms introducing new products on the market."

For instance, hiring more engineers and programmers from abroad, at perhaps a lower cost, allows firms to implement incremental innovations that may lead to newer products on the market, enhancing profitability and consumer welfare.

The authors noted while previous studies of high-skill immigration impacts on innovation have focused solely on patent production, which can be a good measure of newer production processes, the advantage of this study that looks at product reallocation is that it captures incremental innovations that are not usually patented. Product reallocation--the entry and exit of products--has long been seen as an important determinant of firm-level innovation.

"We demonstrate that changes in a firm's production portfolio is connected to both high-skilled immigration and profitability," the authors wrote. "In addition, changes in consumer goods products affects the welfare of U.S. consumers."

At an archaeological site in northeastern Jordan, researchers have discovered the charred remains of a flatbread baked by hunter-gatherers 14,400 years ago. It is the oldest direct evidence of bread found to date, predating the advent of agriculture by at least 4,000 years. The findings suggest that bread production based on wild cereals may have encouraged hunter-gatherers to cultivate cereals, and thus contributed to the agricultural revolution in the Neolithic period.

A team of researchers from the University of Copenhagen, University College London and University of Cambridge have analysed charred food remains from a 14,400-year-old Natufian hunter-gatherer site - a site known as Shubayqa 1 located in the Black Desert in northeastern Jordan. The results, which are published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provide the earliest empirical evidence for the production of bread:

"The presence of hundreds of charred food remains in the fireplaces from Shubayqa 1 is an exceptional find, and it has given us the chance to characterize 14,000-year-old food practices. The 24 remains analysed in this study show that wild ancestors of domesticated cereals such as barley, einkorn, and oat had been ground, sieved and kneaded prior to cooking. The remains are very similar to unleavened flatbreads identified at several Neolithic and Roman sites in Europe and Turkey. So we now know that bread-like products were produced long before the development of farming. The next step is to evaluate if the production and consumption of bread influenced the emergence of plant cultivation and domestication at all," said University of Copenhagen archaeobotanist Amaia Arranz Otaegui, who is the first author of the study.

University of Copenhagen archaeologist Tobias Richter, who led the excavations at Shubayqa 1 in Jordan, explained:

"Natufian hunter-gatherers are of particular interest to us because they lived through a transitional period when people became more sedentary and their diet began to change. Flint sickle blades as well as ground stone tools found at Natufian sites in the Levant have long led archaeologists to suspect that people had begun to exploit plants in a different and perhaps more effective way. But the flat bread found at Shubayqa 1 is the earliest evidence of bread making recovered so far, and it shows that baking was invented before we had plant cultivation. So this evidence confirms some of our ideas. Indeed, it may be that the early and extremely time-consuming production of bread based on wild cereals may have been one of the key driving forces behind the later agricultural revolution where wild cereals were cultivated to provide more convenient sources of food."

Charred remains under the microscope

The charred food remains were analysed with electronic microscopy at a University College London lab by PhD candidate Lara Gonzalez Carratero (UCL Institute of Archaeology), who is an expert on prehistoric bread:

"The identification of 'bread' or other cereal-based products in archaeology is not straightforward. There has been a tendency to simplify classification without really testing it against an identification criteria. We have established a new set of criteria to identify flat bread, dough and porridge like products in the archaeological record. Using Scanning Electron Microscopy we identified the microstructures and particles of each charred food remain," said Gonzalez Carratero.

"Bread involves labour intensive processing which includes dehusking, grinding of cereals and kneading and baking. That it was produced before farming methods suggests it was seen as special, and the desire to make more of this special food probably contributed to the decision to begin to cultivate cereals. All of this relies on new methodological developments that allow us to identify the remains of bread from very small charred fragments using high magnification," said Professor Dorian Fuller (UCL Institute of Archaeology).

Research into prehistoric food practices continues

A grant recently awarded to the University of Copenhagen team will ensure that research into food making during the transition to the Neolithic will continue:

"The Danish Council for Independent Research has recently approved further funding for our work, which will allow us to investigate how people consumed different plants and animals in greater detail. Building on our research into early bread, this will in the future give us a better idea why certain ingredients were favoured over others and were eventually selected for cultivation," said Tobias Richter.

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. - Mobile coupons not only drive customers to spend money during a promotion -- they can encourage long-term purchase behavior as well.

New research from Binghamton University, State University at New York finds that mobile coupons can affect both short- and long-term sales goals, and that targeting customers with the right type of mobile coupon can boost revenue.

"Understanding the effect of promotions and coupons has long been of interest to marketing researchers and practitioners," said Binghamton University School of Management Assistant Professor of Marketing Chang Hee Park. "These days, mobile couponing has emerged as one of the preferred mediums for promotions, but research into the impact of mobile coupons is limited."

Instead of having to cut out coupons from the newspaper or a mailer, customers can now get mobile coupons sent directly to their phone via text messaging services. Working with data from a global beauty company that markets skincare and makeup products, Park and fellow researchers Young-Hoon Park of Cornell University and David Schweidel of Georgetown University looked at the short-term and long-term effectiveness of two different popular kinds of mobile coupons: price discount and free sample.

Mobile discount coupons were most effective in achieving short-term sales goals, increasing the likelihood that a customer would make a purchase during the actual promotion period. The discount coupons also increased the average amount customers spent during a purchase during the promotion.

Free-sample coupons also affected short-term sales goals, but researchers found that only free-sample mobile coupons had a long-term influence on purchase behavior beyond the promotion period, contributing to incremental purchases over a longer period of time.

"Offering free-sample mobile coupons may have longer-term effects because it pushes people to try a new product at no cost that they may like and buy again later. Price-discount coupons don't have that same push," Park said.

The findings highlight how which type of mobile coupon used in a promotion matters in achieving overall sales goals, he said, and that marketers should consider the long-term purchasing behavior of customers when creating strategies.

"It's easy for managers to just send out price-discount coupons because they have a large effect in the short-term. But if you're using a long-term perspective, it may be a better decision to send free-sample coupons instead," Park said. "If marketing managers are only using a short-term perspective, it results in leaving money on the table in the long term."

Park said it's also important for marketers to determine which type of mobile coupon would work best for individual customers.

"Different customers have different sensitivities to different kinds of mobile coupons, so you need to consider those differences when making your couponing strategy," he said.

Park said that while there is still much to be explored in the relatively new world of mobile promotions, his research underlines the effectiveness of targeting customers on their mobile devices.

"People check their phones constantly, and messages containing mobile coupons are hard to ignore," Park said. "Mobile promotions are effective, but in order to take the most advantage of a promotion, marketers need to look through a long-term window."

BOSTON (July 16, 2018)--Immobility in old age can lead to lower independence and quality of life and increased risk for falls and chronic disease. In the Lifestyle Interventions and Independence for Elders (LIFE) study, a large multicenter clinical trial, researchers found that a regular program of structured physical activity performed in the clinical setting could reduce mobility loss in older adults. Could this program work in a real-world environment?

In a pilot study conducted at the Somerville Council on Aging in Somerville, Mass., a team led by researchers from the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (USDA HNRCA) at Tufts University for the first time attempted to translate the physical activity benefits of the LIFE clinical trial to a community senior center setting. The results were published as a Brief Report in the Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences on July 16.

The pilot study revealed that bringing the physical activity intervention from a controlled clinical environment into a community-based setting for older adults, with minimal study exclusions, was safe and feasible. Participants who attended at least 25 percent of the scheduled weekly physical activity classes demonstrated sustained improvements in their mobility over the six-month study period. Further, the researchers noted that the physical activity program was associated with increases in executive cognitive function, improvements in quality of life, and a notable reduction (approximately 60 percent) in the occurrence of falls. No serious adverse events occurred among physical activity participants.

"The overarching objective of the pilot study was to translate the physical activity program from a rigorously controlled clinical setting to a representative, real-world environment for older adults. We wanted to test whether the physical activity intervention could be safely and effectively integrated within the existing infrastructure of the senior center," said first and corresponding author Kieran F. Reid, Ph.D., M.P.H., scientist in the Nutrition, Exercise, Physiology, and Sarcopenia Laboratory at the USDA HNRCA. "The results are very encouraging."

The six-month pilot study enrolled 40 adults age 65-89 years with mobility limitations. Half were randomly assigned to a structured program of walking, strength, flexibility and balance training; half participated in a health education control group. Adherence rates, mobility levels, cognitive function, quality of life, depressive symptoms, and risk of falling were compared between the two groups after six months.

"With an increase in prevalence of mobility limitations in a growing aging population, introducing effective physical activity interventions to a community-setting can lead to big changes for these vulnerable populations," said senior author Roger A. Fielding, Ph.D., senior scientist and director of the Nutrition, Exercise, Physiology, and Sarcopenia Laboratory at the USDA HNRCA.

The authors note some limitations of the study, including the small sample size and short duration of the intervention. The team is developing a larger-scale translational study to demonstrate the impact of a physical activity intervention in a variety of community-based settings.

MIAMI--Scientists have confirmed for the first time that radical changes of one volcano in southern Japan was the direct result of an erupting volcano 22 kilometers (13.7 miles) away. The observations from the two volcanos--Aira caldera and Kirishima--show that the two were connected through a common subterranean magma source in the months leading up to the 2011 eruption of Kirishima.

The Japanese cities of Kirishima and Kagoshima lie directly on the border of the Aira caldera, one of the most active, hazardous, and closely monitored volcanoes in southern Japan. Identifying how volcanoes interact is critical to determine if and how an eruption can influence the activity of a distant volcano or raise the threat of a new strong explosive event.

The research team from the University of Miami's (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and Florida International University analyzed deformation data from 32 permanent GPS stations in the region to identify the existence of a common magma reservoir that connected the two volcanoes.

Leading up to the eruption of Kirishima, which is located in the densely-populated Kagoshima region, the Aira caldera stopped inflating, which experts took as a sign that the volcano was at rest. The results from this new study, however, indicated that the opposite was happening--the magma chamber inside Aira began to deflate temporarily while Kirishima was erupting and resumed shortly after the activity at Kirishima stopped.

"We observed a radical change in the behavior of Aira before and after the eruption of its neighbor Kirishima," said Elodie Brothelande, a postdoctoral researcher at the UM Rosenstiel School and lead author of the study. "The only way to explain this interaction is the existence of a connection between the two plumbing systems of the volcanoes at depth."

Prior to this new study, scientists had geological records of volcanoes erupting or collapsing at the same time, but this is the first example of an unambiguous connection between volcanoes that allowed scientists to study the underlying mechanisms involved. The findings confirm that volcanoes with no distinct connection at the surface can be part of a giant magmatic system at depth.

"To what extend magmatic systems are connected is an important question in terms of the hazards," said Falk Amelung, professor of geophysics at the UM Rosenstiel School and coauthor of the study. "Is there a lot of magma underground and can one eruption trigger another volcano? Up until now there was little or no evidence of distinct connections."

"Eruption forecasting is crucial, especially in densely populated volcanic areas," said Brothelande. "Now, we know that a change in behavior can be the direct consequence of the activity of its neighbor Kirishima."

The findings also illustrate that large volcanic systems such as Aira caldera can respond to smaller eruptions at nearby volcanoes if fed from a common deep reservoir but not all the time, since magma pathways open and close periodically.

"Now, we have to look whether this connnection is particular for these volcanoes in southeastern Japan or are widespread and occurr around the world," said Amelung.

Vampires can turn humans into vampires, but to enter a human's house, they must be invited in. Researchers at the UT Southwestern Medical Center, writing in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, have uncovered details of how cells invite inside corrupted proteins that can turn normal proteins corrupt, leading to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. Understanding the molecular details of how these proteins spread from cell to cell could lead to therapies to halt disease progression.

Alzheimer's and Parkinson's are associated with particular proteins in the brain misfolding, aggregating, and inducing normal proteins to misfold and aggregate. Marc Diamond's group at UT Southwestern discovered in 2013 that to enter new cells and propagate misfolding, the disease-associated proteins tau, alpha-synuclein and amyloid-beta must bind to a type of sugar-protein molecule called heparan sulfate proteoglycan (HSPG) on the cell's surface. This binding triggers the cell to bring the corrupted protein inside. In the new study, the group sought to understand more about how this process worked.

"The question was, how specific is this (process)? Or is it not specific at all?" asked Barbara Stopschinski, the physician and researcher in Diamond's lab who oversaw the new work. What were the details of the chemical communication between HSPG and tau that triggered tau's entry into the cells? And was this process different for alpha-synuclein (associated with Parkinson's disease), amyloid-beta and tau (both associated with Alzheimer's disease)?

HSPGs can be of different sizes and structures; they can be decorated with different patterns of sugars, and the sugars can themselves contain different patterns of sulfur-containing groups (sulfate moieties). Stopschinski systematically tested how different patterns of sulfate moieties affected the binding and uptake into cells of alpha-synuclein, amyloid-beta and tau.

She found that misfolded tau could enter cells through only a very specifically decorated and modified HSPG. Amyloid-beta and alpha-synuclein, on the other hand, were more flexible in the kinds of sulfate moieties that triggered their uptake. Furthermore, Stopschinski identified the enzymes in the cells that created particular sulfation patterns in HSPGs. When these enzymes were removed, misfolded tau was no longer taken up into cells, presumably because HSPG sugar decorations and sulfation patterns changed, meaning misfolded tau no longer knew the molecular password.

The team now wants to understand whether these processes work the same way in the brain as they do in cultures of brain cells. Diamond hopes that understanding how corrupted proteins move between brain cells will lead to ways of stopping them.

"There's something very remarkable about how efficiently a cell will take up these aggregates, bring them inside and use them to make more," Diamond said. "This knowledge has important implications for our understanding how neurodegenerative diseases get worse over time. Because we have identified specific enzymes that can be inhibited to block this process, this could lead to new therapies."

American media is grappling with an image problem. Accusations of "fake news," foreign companies meddling in Facebook's data and a further polarization of how the Fourth Estate should operate in the digital age have turned journalistic ethics into a common talking point on the evening news.

In an effort to position ethics in a more objective light for examination, The University of Texas at Dallas' Dr. Angela Lee explored journalists' opinions about one another -- both their co-workers and their peers. As it turns out, they act much like the general public by trusting the actions of professionals working with them more than journalists at other outlets.

"The purpose of this study is to understand the connections between organizational ethical climate and third-person dynamic among professional journalists at leading U.S. newspaper, cable, broadcast and online-only news outlets," said Lee, assistant professor in the School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication.

Lee and her colleague, Dr. Renita Coleman, a professor in the School of Journalism at The University of Texas at Austin, developed a study to investigate whether American journalists were more or less likely to judge the actions of their co-workers as ethical or not. They then compared those results to how the same individuals felt about journalists at other news outlets.

The paper, titled "'We're more ethical than they are': Third-person and first-person perceptions of the ethical climate of American journalists," recently appeared in the journal Journalism.

"I have always been passionate about studying ways in which to not only promote news consumption among the public, but also how to promote quality, ethical news reporting among journalists," Lee said. "After all, what is the point for news consumption if content isn't worthy of people's time?"

The Way We See Ourselves and Others

The effect of media messaging on both individuals and populations has been extensively studied. A part of that body of research focuses on third-person perception (TPP), or the tendency for people to deem others as affected more by negative messaging or framing. Individuals may say that they are not affected by advertising meant to evoke sadness or pity but that other people are.

The other side of this coin is first-person perception (FPP) -- individuals see themselves as more receptive than others to positive messaging, such as intellectual appeals or public service announcements.

Their research begins to define and test TPP and FPP within a newsroom setting, where ethical decision-making is all part of the job.

"Individual differences alone are insufficient to explain moral judgment and ethical behavior; social factors, in this case, perceptions of prevailing ethical norms of the organization, must also be considered," Lee and Coleman wrote in their paper.

Scenario Testing Methods

The pair first tested a number of scenarios based on professional decisions journalists might have to make on the job. These scenarios fell into one of two categories: ethical or unethical. When possible, Lee and Coleman drew inspiration from formalized codes of ethics to ensure some salience, whether they were asking a traditional print news reporter, an online data journalist or a sports photographer.

Unethical behaviors included actions like editing certain elements of photos or videos, while ethical behaviors might include diverse or representative perspectives in a news story.

Respondents were asked to rate these behaviors for three groups: their co-workers, peers in the same industry but different news outlets, and peers in different industries. Their responses were quantified on a scale of 1 (never) to 7 (very often).

"Our theoretical contributions show that the American journalists in this study were subject to TPP and FPP when they evaluated the ethical climate of their organizations compared to others," Lee said. "Whereas they believe those closest to them act unethically less frequently than journalists in different organizations or industries, they also believe that those closest to them act ethically more frequently."

Like the general public, journalists were inclined to think other journalists are either more or less ethical, depending on how similar (e.g., close in social proximity, such as either belonging to the same organization or not) they were to the respondent.

What does this mean for news agencies? Lee and Coleman's findings could help steer a news outlet's choices toward better business practices.

"News organizations can more frequently highlight the good/ethical things their journalists have done, which may not only cultivate an organizational climate that cares about ethical news reporting, but also remind everyone in the organization that they can do better because they are better than those in other organizations or industries," Lee said.

Their research further suggests that emphasis on an increasingly ethical environment could help journalists resist the "occasional peer pressure to behave unethically."

One example from their research was the coverage of the 2015 attack in San Bernardino, California, in which photos and information of the suspects' child and mother were aired on television, an act seen as an invasion of privacy. While reporters later apologized for the ethical lapse, Lee and Coleman posit that holding up one's organization as more ethical can help reinforce standards and practices already in place, rather than admonishing someone and telling them to do better after the fact.

"Such reminders are particularly important in today's media ecology where journalists are facing greater challenges and are expected to meet more demands than ever before," Lee said.

In an article published recently in the journal Nature Communications, researchers affiliated with the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil describe the central role played by an enzyme called phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase gamma (PI3Kγ) in regulating the immune response against Trypanosoma cruzi, the protozoan parasite that causes Chagas disease.

"Our results show that the expression of PI3Kγ increases during infection by T. cruzi in both mice and humans. This appears to be essential to avoid excessive inflammation that might injure the organism and also to control heart parasitemia," said Maria Claudia da Silva, lead author of the study and a researcher at the University of São Paulo's Ribeirão Preto Medical School (FMRP-USP).

According to the authors, molecules capable of modulating the cellular signaling pathway mediated by this enzyme may in future be tested as a treatment for Chagas disease, which affects some 7 million people in Latin America - 2 million-3 million in Brazil alone.

The study was conducted at the Center for Research on Inflammatory Diseases (CRID), one of the Research, Innovation and Dissemination Centers (RIDCs) supported by the São Paulo Research Foundation - FAPESP. It was part of the master's and PhD research of Maria Claudia da Silva, supervised by João Santana da Silva and Thiago Mattar Cunha, professors at FMRP-USP.

Transmitted by insects known as triatomine or kissing bugs (mainly Triatoma infestans in South America), as well as by transfusions of blood from donors with Chagas disease and by the ingestion of contaminated food, T. cruzi stays with the patient for life. The initial acute phase of infection may be asymptomatic or may cause fever, nausea, headache, inflamed and painful lymph glands, skin rash, swollen eyelids, and enlarged liver and spleen.

Without treatment, complications can arise years later in the chronic phase. The most frequent are heart ventricle enlargement, which affects approximately 30% of patients and typically leads to heart failure, and esophagus or colon enlargement, which affects up to 10% of patients and can lead to loss of peristaltic movement and sphincter dysfunction. Most infected people remain asymptomatic even with large numbers of parasites circulating in the organism.

"In our experimental model, we used a strain of the parasite that prefers heart tissue," João Santana da Silva said. "The initial tests showed that PI3Kγ-deficient mice developed severe cardiomyopathy in the acute phase and died after a short time, but we had no idea why this happened."

In further tests, the CRID researchers found that the levels of the parasite in the blood of mice genetically modified not to express PI3Kγ were the same as in wild mice, which could express the enzyme and survive infection.

According to Santana da Silva, the mice that died from infection by T. cruzi were expected to have more parasites in their bloodstream than those that survived.

"However, when we looked at their hearts, we found that PI3Kγ-deficient mice had far higher parasitemia levels and much more severe inflammation [myocarditis]," he said. "The immune system was producing proinflammatory molecules in an uncontrolled manner, injuring the heart tissue, and even so, it was unable to kill the parasites efficiently."

Defective macrophages

During Maria Claudia da Silva's PhD research, the group investigated how the immune response to the parasite is modified by the absence of PI3Kγ. According to Cunha, studies in the literature show that the enzyme participates in a signaling pathway that plays a key role in the migration of defense cells to inflammation sites in the organism.

In the case of infection by T. cruzi, under normal conditions, signaling proteins called chemokines are produced by the parasite when it infects host cells. The chemokines activate macrophages and dendritic cells, the front line of the immune system, which migrate to the site and kill the invaders.

Although the defense mechanism is not 100% efficient, the researchers explained that it manages to keep parasitemia levels low, and most infected individuals have no symptoms during the acute phase.

"Our results show that when the signaling pathway mediated by PI3Kγ is not active in macrophages, these defense cells lose their capacity to kill the parasites and control the inflammation," Cunha said. "To prove that the problem resided specifically in macrophages, we used an animal model called conditional knockout, in which PI3Kγ is missing only in macrophages."

The CRID group did not fully elucidate the mechanism but found that without the enzyme, the macrophages produce less nitric oxide, which is required to kill the parasites and acts in conjunction with a pro-inflammatory cytokine called interferon gamma (IFNγ).

"If the macrophages don't express PI3Kγ, they can't kill the parasites even in the presence of IFNγ," Santana da Silva said.

Evidence in humans

In partnership with Edecio Cunha Neto, a researcher at USP's Medical School in São Paulo (FM-USP), the CRID team studied tissue from patients who developed cardiopathy in the chronic phase of Chagas disease and who underwent biopsy or heart transplant. They also analyzed a database containing information on all molecules expressed in the heart tissue.

The study showed that individuals with higher levels of PI3Kγ had lower levels of heart parasitemia than those who expressed less PI3Kγ, although both groups presented with myocarditis. In addition, all had higher levels of PI3Kγ and of all molecules in the pathway mediated by this enzyme than non-Chagas patients with chronic congestive heart failure.

"These findings suggest that this enzyme is also involved in control of the parasite in humans," Santana da Silva said. "In our in vitro experiments, we observed that human macrophages failed to kill the intracellular pathogen when infected with T. cruzi after treatment with the PI3Kγ inhibitor. How this happens is something we have yet to understand."

Preliminary results also show that in patients who develop cardiopathy in the chronic phase of infection by T. cruzi, there is a higher incidence of a polymorphism (a variation in the gene that encodes the enzyme) that may be associated with lower activity of PI3Kγ than in patients who develop chronic disease in other organs, such as the spleen or intestine.

"We're currently writing another paper in which we raise the hypothesis that people with a certain polymorphism in the gene that encodes PI3Kγ run a greater risk of developing cardiopathy in the chronic phase," Cunha said.

Another possible line of investigation, he added, would be to determine whether the rare cases of patients who die of sudden myocarditis during the acute phase of Chagas disease are associated with lower levels of PI3Kγ, as the researchers observed in mice.

Santana da Silva is also interested in investigating the signaling pathways that modulate PI3Kγ production in the human organism.

"Drugs are available to inhibit PI3Kγ production but not to stimulate it," he said. "We now need to investigate the regulatory pathways mediated by PI3Kγ in search of molecules that induce the release of these substances. We've already performed lab tests on some molecules that display this type of action. It's basic science, but there are potential applications for the control of parasitemia in both the acute and chronic phases."

According to Cunha, activating the enzyme "is no easy task" and could have implications for other pathological conditions. "Inhibitors of the PI3Kγ pathway are being tested for the treatment of cancer and inflammatory diseases," he said.

Thirteen patients with OXA-48-producing Klebsiella pneumoniae ST392 have been reported by Sweden and Norway between January and April 2018 - all returning travellers with prior hospital admission in Gran Canaria, Spain. Whole genome sequencing showed tight clustering between the bacterial isolates from the cases.

According to ECDC's risk assessment published today, the risk for individual travellers to acquire OXA-48-producing K. pneumoniae ST392 of the Gran Canaria cluster without healthcare contact is very low.

However, if carriers of the bacteria are admitted to a hospital in their country of origin, there is a high risk for further transmission and outbreaks if carriage is not detected and if adequate infection prevention and control measures are not in place.

Whole genome sequencing analysis indicates a common place of acquisition for the cases. Given the large number of tourists visiting Gran Canaria, one hospital may become the source of spread to other European countries when patients are transferred from one country to another, making this cluster a cross-border threat, states the report.

In 2016, more than 15 million citizens from the European Union and European Economic Area (EU/EEA), mainly from Spain, the UK and Germany, travelled to the Canary Islands according to International Air Transport Association.

OXA-48-producing K. pneumoniae is a resistant bacterium typically acquired in healthcare settings. Hospitalisation abroad and cross-border transfer of patients are well known modes of introduction of carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae (CPE), including OXA-48-producing K. pneumoniae ST392, into countries with lower prevalence.

The report suggests that hospitals in EU/EEA countries should consider taking, at hospital admission, a detailed history of all travels and hospitalisations of the patient.

All patients who are directly transferred or were hospitalised in a foreign country 12 months prior to hospital admission may be considered for screening, regardless of the CPE prevalence at place of hospitalisation.