Culture

One would expect that entrepreneurs who pitch their startup ideas with passion are more apt to entice investors. Now there's scientific proof the two are connected: enthusiasm and financial backing.

According to new research from Case Western Reserve University, the brains of potential investors are wired to pay closer attention to entrepreneurs who pitch with passion.

Researchers examined investors' neural responses to entrepreneurs' pitches, conducting a randomized experiment that explored the response of investors' brains using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)--finding a causal relationship between passion of the pitcher and interest from investors.

"No one has ever invested in a startup they ignored," said Scott Shane, the A. Malachi Mixon III Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies in the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve.

"Founder passion is essential to establishing investor attention, and our study demonstrates measurable neural effects that offer a biological explanation for their tendency to react positively to enthusiasm and emotion of entrepreneurs," said Shane, lead author of the paper, published in the Journal of Business Venturing.

By showing such energy in pitching their business ideas, entrepreneurs can considerably increase neural engagement in potential investors--increasing the odds these financiers will support a new, untested venture by having strong, measurable effects on their decision-making.

"Most of time investors just say 'no,'" said Shane. "In fact, the vast majority of entrepreneurs never receive a dime from external investors.

"Entrepreneurs should know: More engaged brains are more likely to meaningfully evaluate pitches," he said. "We believe our data makes a strong argument that displays of passion trigger heightened engagement that, in turn, makes investors more likely to write a check."

The experiment

Videos of pitches--identical in content but different in delivery--were randomly assigned to investors inside an fMRI machine. Depending on the passion-level of the pitch, investors' brains reacted differently: Heightened displays of passion increased investor fixation on the stimulus (the pitch) to override distractions--and demonstrate a causal effect of displayed passion on investor interest.

Investors randomly assigned a pitch with high founder passion resulted in informal investor interest increasing by 26%, relative to the same pitch delivered with low passion;

Data from fMRIs showed investor neural responses to entrepreneurs' high-passion pitches increased investor neural engagement by 39% over lower founder passion.

"More engaged brains are more likely to meaningfully evaluate pitches--and not play on their phones or think about lunch--which should result in more favorable investor assessments," said Shane.

While it's possible that other mechanisms may be present in the brains of investors--such as inferring from passion that entrepreneurs may be more capable or competent--the experiment showed that passion is a key mechanism because it causes investors to pay attention, said Shane.

Practicing passion

The findings offer strong implications for the practice of entrepreneurship.

"Pitching with enthusiasm and passion--these are skills that can be taught," said Shane. "Flat, unenthusiastic pitches are the enemy of attracting investor attention and to succeeding in a competitive, cutthroat environment."

Each year, hundreds of thousands of early-stage entrepreneurs, who often lack established track records, offer pitches--widely recognized as the gateway to investor funding--to financiers across the globe.

The study focused on Informal investors--referred to as "family, friends and foolhardy strangers" by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor -- who account for most startup investments, investing $1 trillion globally between 2012-2015, according to the organization.

CHAPEL HILL, NC - A new study published today in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research shows how bones in mammals are negatively impacted by calorie restriction, and particularly by the combination of exercise and calorie restriction. Maya Styner, MD, associate professor of medicine at the UNC School of Medicine, is the senior author on the study.

"These findings were somewhat of a surprise for us," Styner said. "Past studies in mice have shown us that exercise paired with a normal calorie diet, and even a high calorie diet, is good for bone health. Now we're learning this isn't true for exercise along with a calorie-restricted diet."

Styner's research focuses on the fat in bone marrow of mice. Although fat in the bone is poorly understood, to date it is thought to be harmful to bones of mammals, including humans, because it makes bone weaker. Less fat is usually an indication of better bone health. Styner's past studies have looked at the effects of calorie consumption on bone marrow fat, along with the role exercise plays. She's found that in obesity caused by excess calories, the amount of bone marrow fat is increased. Exercise in both obese and normal weight mice decreased bone marrow fat and improved the density of bones.

The latest study looked at what happens to bone marrow fat and overall bone health when restricting calories. There were four groups of mice in all - a group on a regular diet (RD), a group on a calorie-restricted (CR) diet, a RD group that exercised, and a CR group that exercised. Mice in the CR group ate 30 percent less than what RD mice ate.

For context in humans, according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), a 'moderately active' woman around the age of 30 should consume 2,000 calories per day. A 30 percent reduction would equal a diet of 1,400 calories per day, which is around the amount suggested to most women trying to lose weight at a rate of one pound a week.

Styner found that mice in the CR group lost weight, but also had an increase in bone marrow fat.

"This was mild caloric restriction, and we found a significant increase of fat in the bone marrow," Styner said. "This group also had a decrease in bone quantity - they had less bone overall due to the cut in calories."

Both CR groups of mice were given supplements of vitamins and minerals to match the amount the RD group received from the extra food they ate. This, Styner says, is an indication that the effect on bone health was from calorie restriction, and not a lack of nutrients.

When exercise was introduced to the CR group, bone marrow fat decreased as it had in previous studies, but the overall quantity and quality of bone decreased as well. Instead of making bones more robust, exercise made bones more fragile when paired with calorie restriction.

"Looking at this from a human perspective, even a lower calorie diet that is very nutritionally sound can have negative effects on bone health, especially paired with exercise," said Styner. "This is important for women to consider because as we age our bone health starts to naturally decline. Your calorie intake and exercise routine can have a great impact on the strength of your bones and your risk for break or fracture."

Styner says her team is now planning to conduct more research to understand the purpose of bone marrow fat and why it is affected by diet and exercise. This study was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS).

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists have identified a molecule that plays a pivotal role in determining the fate of cells under stress, much like a Roman emperor deciding the fate of gladiators in the coliseum. The findings appear today in the journal Nature and suggest a possible new approach for treatment of autoinflammatory and other diseases.

The molecule is DDX3X, an enzyme that when mutated is involved in a variety of cancers, such as those of the breast, lung and brain, including medulloblastoma, the most common malignant pediatric brain tumor. DDX3X mutations are also associated with DDX3X syndrome, which is characterized by intellectual disabilities, seizures, autism, poor muscle tone and slower physical development.

Researchers have determined that DDX3X also sits at the crossroads between life and death in stressed cells. The molecule helps regulate the innate immune response, which is part of the immune system's first-responder system. Investigators reported evidence that the availability of DDX3X influences how cells interpret and respond to various stressors with measures meant to ensure cell survival or cell death.

"The findings make DDX3X an attractive target for designing drugs that modify the stress response and restore balance to prevent chronic inflammation and other diseases," said corresponding author Thirumala-Devi Kanneganti, Ph.D., a member of the St. Jude Department of Immunology. The co-corresponding author is Richard Gilbertson, M.D., Ph.D., formerly of St. Jude and now of Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute.

Stress response

Investigators knew stressed cells needed DDX3X to form membrane-less compartments called stress granules. Stress granules are essential for cell survival. In this study, scientists showed DDX3X was also critical for formation of another membrane-less compartment that led to cell death via a programmed inflammatory cell death pathway.

"The results represent a major advance in understanding innate immunity and the cell-stress response, demonstrating that DDX3X-mediated interplay between two membrane-less compartments allows for different cell fates," Kanneganti said.

Inflammation

Kanneganti's laboratory has a long-standing research interest in the inflammatory cell stress response, particularly a multi-protein complex called the NLRP3 inflammasome.

Infections and other stressors activate NLRP3. Activation leads to formation of a membrane-less compartment in cells and secretion of molecules called cytokines that promote inflammation. The process also drives the inflammatory cell death pathway called pyroptosis. Over-activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome gives rise to cancers and autoinflammatory diseases such as atherosclerosis and type-2 diabetes.

Because cells also respond to stress with formation of stress granules, Kanneganti and her colleagues were curious about a possible connection between inflammasome activation and stress granule assembly.

The search led to DDX3X.

The evidence

Working first in white blood cells called macrophages in the laboratory and then in mice with myeloid cells that lacked the Ddx3x gene, researchers reported for the first time that DDX3X interacts with NLRP3 and promotes inflammasome activation.

Further research revealed that stress granule formation inhibited the NLRP3 inflammasome by sequestering DDX3X. That limited the molecule's availability for NLRP3 inflammasome activation and function. Pro-inflammatory cytokine production declined along with cell death via pyroptosis.

"The findings suggest that competition for DDX3X between stress granules formation and NLRP3 inflammasome activation allows macrophages to interpret stress signals and choose their fate," said Parimal Samir, Ph.D., of St. Jude.

Added Kesavardhana Sannula, Ph.D., of St. Jude: "Our model is that formation of stress granules specifically inhibits the availability of DDX3X to activate the NLRP3 inflammasome, inhibiting the pyroptosis cell death pathway."

In The Little Prince, the classic novella by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the titular prince lives on a house-sized asteroid so small that he can watch the sunset any time of day by moving his chair a few steps.

Of course, in real life, celestial objects that small can't support life because they don't have enough gravity to maintain an atmosphere. But how small is too small for habitability?

In a recent paper, Harvard University researchers described a new, lower size limit for planets to maintain surface liquid water for long periods of time, extending the so-called Habitable or "Goldilocks'' Zone for small, low-gravity planets. This research expands the search area for life in the universe and sheds light on the important process of atmospheric evolution on small planets.

The research was published in the Astrophysical Journal.

"When people think about the inner and outer edges of the habitable zone, they tend to only think about it spatially, meaning how close the planet is to the star," said Constantin Arnscheidt, A.B. '18, first author of the paper. "But actually, there are many other variables to habitability, including mass. Setting a lower bound for habitability in terms of planet size gives us an important constraint in our ongoing hunt for habitable exoplanets and exomoons."

Generally, planets are considered habitable if they can maintain surface liquid water long enough to allow for the evolution of life, conservatively about one billion years. Astronomers hunt for these habitable planets within specific distances of certain types of stars -- stars that are smaller, cooler and lower mass than our Sun have a habitable zone much closer than larger, hotter stars.

The inner-edge of the habitable zone is defined by how close a planet can be to a star before a runaway greenhouse effect leads to the evaporation of all the surface water. But, as Arnscheidt and his colleagues demonstrated, this definition doesn't hold for small, low gravity planets.

The runaway greenhouse effect occurs when the atmosphere absorbs more heat that it can radiate back out into space, preventing the planet from cooling and eventually leading to unstoppable warming until its oceans turn to steam in the atmosphere.

However, something important happens when planets decrease in size: as they warm, their atmospheres expand outward, becoming larger and larger relative to the size of the planet. These large atmospheres increase both the absorption and radiation of heat, allowing the planet to better maintain a stable temperature. The researchers found that atmospheric expansion prevents low-gravity planets from experiencing a runaway greenhouse effect, allowing them to maintain surface liquid water while orbiting in closer proximity to their stars.

When planets get too small, however, they lose their atmospheres altogether and the liquid surface water either freezes or vaporizes. The researchers demonstrated that there is a critical size below which a planet can never be habitable, meaning the habitable zone is bounded not only in space, but also in planet size.

The researchers found that the critical size is about 2.7 percent the mass of Earth. If an object is smaller than 2.7 percent the mass of Earth, its atmosphere will escape before it ever has the chance to develop surface liquid water, similar to what happens to comets in the Solar System today. To put that into context, the Moon is 1.2 percent of Earth mass and Mercury is 5.53 percent.

The researchers were also able to estimate the habitable zones of these small planets around certain stars. Two scenarios were modeled for two different types of stars: a G-type star like our own Sun and an M-type star modeled after a red dwarf in the constellation Leo.

The researchers solved another long-standing mystery in our own solar system. Astronomers have long wondered whether Jupiter's icy moons Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto would be habitable if radiation from the sun increased. Based on this research, these moons are too small to maintain surface liquid water, even if they were closer to the Sun.

"Low-mass waterworlds are a fascinating possibility in the search for life, and this paper shows just how different their behaviour is likely to be compared to that of Earth-like planets," said Robin Wordsworth, Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering at SEAS and senior author of the study. "Once observations for this class of objects become possible, it's going to be exciting to try to test these predictions directly."

INDIANAPOLIS, September 11, 2019--According to a new study by Indiana University School of Medicine doctors, providing adolescents seeking birth control the ability to obtain a long-acting reversible contraceptive on the same day as their clinic visit could lead to significant cost savings for insurance providers.

Published today in the journal JAMA Network Open, the study was the work of three IU School of Medicine faculty--Tracey A. Wilkinson, MD, MPH, Stephen M. Downs, MD, MS, and Brownsyne Tucker Edmonds, MD, MPH, MS.

In the study, the researchers worked to determine what the cost savings would be by providing same-day access to long-acting reversible contraception, from the perspective of insurance companies, in particular, Medicaid, to adolescents. Considered the most effective contraception for adolescents, long-acting reversible contraception, or LARC, include intrauterine contraceptives (IUCs) and implants.

According to Wilkinson, who joined the faculty at IU School of Medicine four years ago, the lack of clinics in Indiana offering same-day access to these contraceptives came as a surprise when she began her work in the state as a health services researcher.

"When I landed in Indiana, I quickly realized there were very few clinical sites providing same-day LARC. They are more expensive, but they are very effective, because they don't require any user dependence in order to work," Wilkinson said. "As I started to piece together what the barriers were, one of the biggest seemed to be cost."

Teaming with Downs and Tucker Edmonds, Wilkinson said the group set out to create a cost minimization model to determine the cost to an insurance company when a patient is required to come back to the clinic for subsequent visits to receive their desired contraceptive.

Drawing on their work as members of the Medicaid Medical Advisory Cabinet at IU School of Medicine--a group of physicians who provide research-based policy advice to Indiana's Office of Medicaid Policy and Planning--Downs and Tucker Edmonds joined Wilkinson in compiling data that would help them come up with a policy that could show a cost savings to Medicaid.

Using data from previous studies, the group worked through all of the scenarios that could result from an adolescent seeking same-day LARC. With each step, the group calculated what the cost would be to the payer--looking into the cost of the device, the cost of delivering a baby, the cost of an annual visit, and so on.

"We thought about the typical young woman seeking contraception and drew a branching tree representing all of the things that might happen if she could or could not get it that day," Downs said. "The research literature tells us how likely all of those things are, and we know from medical claims how much they cost. With the resulting tree we can compare the average cost we'd expect if contraception is immediately available or not."

Through their work, the group found that same-day LARC placement led to overall lower costs to the payer--$2,016 on average--compared with placement at a later visit--$4,133 on average. Additionally, they found that the numbers of unintended pregnancies and abortions decreased in association with providing same-day placement.

A cost-saver for the insurance companies and Medicaid, Tucker Edmonds asserted that the practice of providing patients access to same-day LARC also could help improve Hoosier health.

"We know that LARC is highly effective at preventing unintended pregnancy. Unintended pregnancy is associated with poor pregnancy outcomes, such as premature birth, which is a leading cause of infant mortality," said Tucker Edmonds. "Seeing as unintended pregnancy, premature birth, and infant mortality disproportionately impact women and infants of color and low income populations, it stands to reason that by improving access to same-day LARC, Medicaid could not only cut costs, but could potentially also improve health disparities related to prematurity and infant mortality."

In the paper, the researchers came up with four recommendations for state Medicaid officials from the data compiled through their study:

Provide bonus payments for clinicians to incentivize same-day contraceptive access. Doing so would overcome the reimbursement-to-cost differential that leads to the two-visit strategy and mitigate carrying-cost concerns.

Create a single, uniform reimbursement structure, preferably as a medical benefit, to mitigate some of the procedural delays that occur when a device has to be ordered for an individual patient as opposed to being used for any presenting patient.

Pursue a strategy to purchase LARC devices in bulk and distribute devices up front to clinics desiring to provide same-day LARC access.

Develop a policy whereby LARC devices that were ordered for a specific patient but ultimately unused after a certain time could be used for another patient.

Moving forward from the study, Wilkinson said she hopes the findings will help push the needle forward in helping provide access to same-day contraceptives of all kinds to women when and if they need it.

"Access matters, and any barrier to access means that fewer people will actually get to that finish line," Wilkinson said. "When you have people who desire contraception not being able to access it, the outcomes of all our communities are less than ideal. Planned pregnancies are healthier pregnancies, so having same-day access to all forms of contraception is vital."

BEND, Ore. - The hoary bat, the species of bat most frequently found dead at wind power facilities, is declining at a rate that threatens its long-term future in the Pacific Northwest, according to a novel and comprehensive research collaboration based at Oregon State University - Cascades.

The findings, published today in Ecology and Evolution, result from modeling based on field surveys across Oregon and Washington that began in 2003.

Bat population declines are problematic for a host of reasons. Bats provide ecosystem services in many environments worldwide including pollination, pest control and seed dispersion. They are one of the most diverse groups of mammals but not well understood, and have recently become at great risk from wind energy production and from the invasive bat disease white-nose syndrome.

"Bats are very difficult to study, and doing strategic conservation of bats is greatly impeded by lack of basic information about the status and trend of populations across large regions," said Tom Rodhouse, the study's lead author.

The OSU-Cascades' Northwestern Bat Hub, which produced the study, uses a collaborative, multi-agency approach for doing coordinated summertime surveys for bats across the Northwest.

Rodhouse, an ecologist with the National Park Service and courtesy member of OSU's Department of Animal and Rangeland Sciences faculty, and co-author Roger Rodriguez, who directs the Northwestern Bat Hub, have assembled a broad coalition of state, federal and tribal scientists.

"The Bat Hub provides a center of gravity for multiple organizations to work together, pool resources and expertise, and accomplish region-wide science and conservation," said Rodriguez, adding that "it is unusual to generate this kind of cooperation in wildlife studies, but bats are so widespread and the threats to bats so great that this is absolutely essential to save them."

On behalf of its partners, the Bat Hub is implementing the North American Bat Monitoring Program, known as NABat, in the Pacific Northwest.

"Drawing on data accumulated through Bat Hub monitoring, our paper reports evidence that the hoary bat is declining in the Northwest," said Rodhouse, one of NABat's key architects. "The study also looked for, but did not find, evidence of decline for the little brown bat, which has been heavily impacted in eastern North American by white-nose syndrome."

White-nose syndrome is a fungal condition that does not affect people but is devastating to bats. It was first identified in 2006 and has killed millions of bats in North America, mainly in the continent's eastern half.

"White-nose syndrome was documented in the Northwest in 2016 and may not yet have caused regional impact to the little brown bat," Rodhouse said. "However, the discovery of hoary bat decline is consistent with the hypothesis that the longer history of wind power development, spread over a larger geographic area, has impacted that species through collision and barotrauma. These hypotheses can be evaluated and updated over time within the OSU-Cascades Bat Hub framework of collaborative monitoring."

Barotrauma refers to injuries caused by rapid changes in atmospheric pressure such as may occur around the blades of a wind turbine. Examination of dead bats collected near turbines often reveals signs of the internal hemorrhaging associated with barotrauma rather than collision.

"The rate of hoary bat decline is worrisome and, if persistent over the next few years, represents a major threat to long-term persistence of the species in the region," Rodhouse said.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- A new study finds that the muscles in bats' wings

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- A new study finds that the muscles in bats' wings operate at a significantly lower temperature than their bodies, especially during flight.

Past research suggests that in most other creatures, including humans, muscles involved in exercise become warmer in response to movement. But the small muscles of a bat's wing are uniquely vulnerable to heat loss during flight, as they're covered by only a thin layer of skin -- and warming them up would be inefficient from the standpoint of energy use.

"We tend to assume that warm-blooded animals are warm all the time," said Brown University Ph.D. student Andrea Rummel, who authored the study alongside Brown biologists Sharon Swartz and Richard Marsh. "But this research shows that warm-blooded animals have a lot more variation in body temperature than we expected. That has implications for how animals are moving around, including humans."

The findings, published in Biology Letters on Wednesday, Sept. 11, offer context on a previous study by the team, which found that bat wing muscles are much less sensitive to cold temperatures compared to the muscles of a typical mammal. When muscles cool down, they contract and relax more slowly, so they don't work as well. That's true for bats too, but to a much lesser extent. Even as their wing muscles cool during flight, they successfully maintain the rapid wingbeats and the fast, coordinated muscular contractions they require in order to remain airborne.

"We know that bats are able to support super high-performance locomotion with muscles that are really cold," Rummel said. "The fact that their muscles are cold indicates that there are probably other small mammals and small birds that are also moving around really well with cold muscles -- and presumably they all have some muscular adaptation, behavioral adaptation or other physiological adaptation that helps them do that."

Understanding any of these mechanisms could help scientists to improve the regulation of human exercise in the cold, or even in heat, she added. "There's a lot we don't know about how to maximize exercise performance and how to keep people safe during strenuous exercise and in extreme conditions," Rummel said.

Marsh said that the group's work could enhance understanding of muscle performance for people in specific professions as well.

"Particularly for workers like fishermen, who operate in cold water, and for other people who have to do outdoor jobs, there are issues with the small muscles in the hand and forearm," he said. "So there's an interest in quantifying those aspects and figuring out the effects of cold on muscle."

To conduct their research, the team used temperature sensors inserted into the wings of bats. Ultimately, they found that the biceps and forearm muscles were significantly cooler than the core body muscles, and this temperature difference became even more pronounced immediately after the bats began flying -- especially in the forearm muscles, which were about 12 degrees Celsius cooler than the core during flight.

Now that they've confirmed that bat wing muscles operate at uniquely low temperatures and appear to be less susceptible to cold-related performance deficits, the researchers will work to explore the muscles' intrinsic properties. Specifically, they will look more closely at a protein called myosin, a key building block of muscle. Myosin is present in both bat and human muscle, but genetic or environmental factors may have influenced the myosin in bat wings to develop reduced sensitivity to cold.

The researchers also plan to use electromyography in order to evaluate the wing muscles' activation patterns while the bats are flying.

"One of the possible mechanisms to cope with cold," said Marsh, "is to simply activate more muscle. So if your muscles tend to get slow, you can compensate to a certain extent by activating more of the volume of the muscle. That's one possible mechanism that we hope to look at in bats."

An in-depth analysis of the skull biomechanics of a giant extinct kangaroo indicates that the animal had a capacity for high-performance crushing of foods, suggesting feeding behaviors more similar to a giant panda than modern-day kangaroo.

The new findings, published in PLOS ONE, support the hypothesis that some short-faced kangaroos were capable of persisting on tough, poor-quality vegetation, when more desirable foods were scarce because of droughts or glacial periods.

"The skull of the extinct kangaroo studied here differs from those of today's kangaroos in many of the ways a giant panda's skull differs from other bears," said Rex Mitchell, post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Arkansas. "So, it seems that the strange skull of this kangaroo was, in a functional sense, less like a modern-day kangaroo's and more like a giant panda's."

Mitchell used computed tomography scans to create three-dimensional models of the skull of Simosthenurus occidentalis, a well-represented species of short-faced kangaroo that persisted until about 42,000 years ago. Working with the models, Mitchell performed bite simulations to examine biomechanical performance. The resulting forces at the jaw joints and biting teeth were measured, as well as stress experienced across the skull during biting.

Mitchell compared the findings from the short-faced kangaroo to those obtained from models of the koala, a species alive today with the most similar skull shape. These comparisons demonstrated the importance of the extinct kangaroo's bony, heavily reinforced skull features in producing and withstanding strong forces during biting, which likely helped the animal crush thick, resistant vegetation such as the older leaves, woody twigs and branches of trees and shrubs. This would be quite different than the feeding habits of modern Australian kangaroos, which tend to feed mostly on grasses, and would instead be more similar to how giant pandas crush bamboo.

"Compared to the kangaroos of today, the extinct, short-faced kangaroos of ice age Australia would be a strange sight to behold," Mitchell said.

They included the largest kangaroo species ever discovered, with some species estimated to weigh more than 400 pounds. The bodies of these kangaroos were much more robust than those of today -- which top out at about 150 pounds -- with long muscular arms and large heads shaped like a koala's. Their short face offered increased mechanical efficiency during biting, a feature usually found in species that can bite harder into more resistant foods. Some species of these extinct kangaroos had massive skulls, with enormous cheek bones and wide foreheads.

"All this bone would have taken a lot of energy to produce and maintain, so it makes sense that such robust skulls wouldn't have evolved unless they really needed to bite hard into at least some more resistant foods that were important in their diets," Mitchell said.

The short face, large teeth, and broad attachment sites for biting muscles found in the skulls of the short-faced kangaroo and the giant panda are an example of convergent evolution, Mitchell said, meaning these features probably evolved in both animals for the purpose of performing similar feeding tasks.

Mitchell is also affiliated with the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, where he performed the analyses during his doctoral studies.

As plants expand into new open habitats, geographical and climatic factors may matter more than species-specific traits, according to a study published September 11, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Miki Nomura of the University of Otago in New Zealand, and colleagues.

Humans have substantially modified the global land surface, with deforestation being the most widespread land cover change. As human activity converts original closed forest habitat to a more open habitat, ecosystems change accordingly. In this study, Nomura and colleagues investigated the relative roles of geographic features, climate characteristics and species-specific traits in determining the ability of plant species to take advantage of recently opened habitats in New Zealand. They used 18 herbaceous species of the genus Acaena (Rosaceae), which are predominantly found in open habitats, and examined their current prevalence in naturally-open and recently-opened habitats across New Zealand, noting each species' ability to disperse into new areas as well as examining the geography and climate of each habitats.

The researchers found that the species studied differed in their ability to colonize newly opened habitat. However, while a species' specific ability to disperse into new areas did affect how well it colonized the habitat, geographic and climatic factors were more important. For example, habitats opened up by recent human activity appear to be characterized by warmer and wetter climatic conditions than naturally-open habitat, and plants adapted to these conditions were especially able to colonize such areas.

According to the authors, understanding how species respond to such structural habitat change is important for predicting how ongoing land cover change may influence future ecosystems.

The authors add: "To explain the variations in the studied species' ability to colonize new habitats, the spatial arrangement of habitats and the climate conditions were more important than dispersal ability."

The enormous black hole at the center of our galaxy is having an unusually large meal of interstellar gas and dust, and researchers don't yet understand why.

"We have never seen anything like this in the 24 years we have studied the supermassive black hole," said Andrea Ghez, UCLA professor of physics and astronomy and a co-senior author of the research. "It's usually a pretty quiet, wimpy black hole on a diet. We don't know what is driving this big feast."

A paper about the study, led by the UCLA Galactic Center Group, which Ghez heads, is published today in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The researchers analyzed more than 13,000 observations of the black hole from 133 nights since 2003. The images were gathered by the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile. The team found that on May 13, the area just outside the black hole's "point of no return" (so called because once matter enters, it can never escape) was twice as bright as the next-brightest observation.

They also observed large changes on two other nights this year; all three of those changes were "unprecedented," Ghez said.

The brightness the scientists observed is caused by radiation from gas and dust falling into the black hole; the findings prompted them to ask whether this was an extraordinary singular event or a precursor to significantly increased activity.

"The big question is whether the black hole is entering a new phase -- for example if the spigot has been turned up and the rate of gas falling down the black hole 'drain' has increased for an extended period -- or whether we have just seen the fireworks from a few unusual blobs of gas falling in," said Mark Morris, UCLA professor of physics and astronomy and the paper's co-senior author.

The team has continued to observe the area and will try to settle that question based on what they see from new images.

"We want to know how black holes grow and affect the evolution of galaxies and the universe," said Ghez, UCLA's Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Astrophysics. "We want to know why the supermassive hole gets brighter and how it gets brighter."

The new findings are based on observations of the black hole -- which is called Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A* -- during four nights in April and May at the Keck Observatory. The brightness surrounding the black hole always varies somewhat, but the scientists were stunned by the extreme variations in brightness during that timeframe, including their observations on May 13.

"The first image I saw that night, the black hole was so bright I initially mistook it for the star S0-2, because I had never seen Sagittarius A* that bright," said UCLA research scientist Tuan Do, the study's lead author. "But it quickly became clear the source had to be the black hole, which was really exciting."

One hypothesis about the increased activity is that when a star called S0-2 made its closest approach to the black hole during the summer 2018, it launched a large quantity of gas that reached the black hole this year.

Another possibility involves a bizarre object known as G2, which is most likely a pair of binary stars, which made its closest approach to the black hole in 2014. It's possible the black hole could have stripped off the outer layer of G2, Ghez said, which could help explain the increased brightness just outside the black hole.

Morris said another possibility is that the brightening corresponds to the demise of large asteroids that have been drawn in to the black hole.

No danger to Earth

The black hole is some 26,000 light-years away and poses no danger to our planet. Do said the radiation would have to be 10 billion times as bright as what the astronomers detected to affect life on Earth.

Astrophysical Journal Letters also published a second article by the researchers, describing speckle holography, the technique that enabled them to extract and use very faint information from 24 years of data they recorded from near the black hole.

Ghez's research team reported July 25 in the journal Science the most comprehensive test of Einstein's iconic general theory of relativity near the black hole. Their conclusion that Einstein's theory passed the test and is correct, at least for now, was based on their study of S0-2 as it made a complete orbit around the black hole.

Ghez's team studies more than 3,000 stars that orbit the supermassive black hole. Since 2004, the scientists have used a powerful technology that Ghez helped pioneer, called adaptive optics, which corrects the distorting effects of the Earth's atmosphere in real time. But speckle holography enabled the researchers to improve the data from the decade before adaptive optics came into play. Reanalyzing data from those years helped the team conclude that they had not seen that level of brightness near the black hole in 24 years.

"It was like doing LASIK surgery on our early images," Ghez said. "We collected the data to answer one question and serendipitously unveiled other exciting scientific discoveries that we didn't anticipate."

Fine motor skills - used for eating, writing and buttoning clothing - may be a strong predictor for identifying whether children with autism are at risk for long-term language disabilities, according to a Rutgers-led study.

The study, in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, highlights the association between fine motor skills and their later language development in young speech-delayed children with autism who, at approximately age three, are nonverbal or using primarily single words to communicate.

In an American sample of language-delayed children with autism, researchers found that nearly half had extremely delayed fine motor skills. Of this group, 77.5 percent who had extremely delayed motor skills continued to have language disabilities in later childhood or young adulthood. By contrast, 69.6 percent of children who demonstrated less impaired fine motor skills overcame their language delays by late childhood or young adulthood.

In a second study of Canadian children with autism, researchers found that those with extremely delayed fine motor skills made fewer gains in expressive language.

"Language development is complex. Many interventions for young children with autism focus on language intervention or social skills," said lead researcher Vanessa Bal, the Karmazin and Lillard Chair in Adult Autism at Rutgers University-New Brunswick's Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology. "But our findings indicate it may be useful for clinicians and parents to assess fine motor skills and build opportunities for these skills to be further developed, in order to help with language development."

The researchers analyzed data from existing studies that used different standardized developmental tests to assess fine motor skills through tasks that require children to manipulate small objects, such as picking up Cheerios or stacking small blocks.

The first analyses focused on 86 children with autism recruited to an American study from before their second birthday to age 19. The replication study was conducted using data from a Canadian study that followed 181 children with autism from two to four years of age, until age 10.

The Rutgers-led researchers analyzed the American study and found the link between fine motor skills and later language ability. They replicated the findings in the Canadian study sample. Replication in independent samples, using different developmental tests of fine motor skills is a strength of this study and underscores the potential importance of the findings.

Annapolis, MD; September 11, 2019--As the global food supply faces the dual challenge of climate change and a growing human population, innovative minds are turning to a novel source for potential solutions: insects.

While insects are commonly understood in their roles as either pests or pollinators in agricultural settings, a burgeoning movement in both research and industry circles is looking to insects as a food source themselves, both for human consumption and as feed for livestock. A new special issue of the Annals of the Entomological Society of America, published today, showcases a collection of the latest research on insect agriculture for food and feed.

Globally, the use of insects as food and feed is far more common than it is in North America, where insect agriculture evolves around just a few species: crickets Acheta domesticus and Gryllodes sigillatus, mealworms (Tenebrio molitor), and black soldier flies (Hermetia illucens). Yet, more than 1 million insect species are known to science--a clear indication of the room for growth in the field.

Jeffery Tomberlin, Ph.D., professor of entomology at Texas A&M University, specializes in the study of black soldier flies and served as co-lead editor for the special collection in Annals of the ESA, alongside Valerie Stull, Ph.D., a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Global Health Institute and co-founder of the collaborative MIGHTi (Mission to Improve Global Health Through Insects) Project.

"I am thrilled to see the development of this new sector in agriculture," Tomberlin says. "While the industry is less than 20 years old as related to mass production, its value is expected to exceed $8 billion within the next few years. In fact, I would not be surprised to see the industry increase in value beyond $50-100 billion by 2050. I truly believe this industry will not only bolster the global ag sector but also protect the environment while creating jobs and saving lives."

The special collection in Annals of the ESA highlights the active and diverse research avenues in which insects as food and feed--or, entomophagy--is now being explored and where it will likely continue as the movement continues to grow, such as the cultural and economic aspects of human consumption of insects as food, health implications of insect consumption, optimization and industrialization of insect agriculture, and identification and biological knowledge of insect species suitable for farming.

Articles in the collection include:

A Special Issue on Insects as Feed and Food as Tribute to Dr. Marianne Clopton Shockley (14 August 1975 to 12 March 2019)

Eating Insects Athens Conference 2018 and the North American Coalition for Insect Agriculture

Impact of Larval Competition on Life-History Traits of the Black Soldier Fly (Diptera: Stratiomyidae)

How to Reply to Some Ethical Objections to Entomophagy

Insect Food Products in the Western World: Assessing the Potential of a New 'Green' Market

Approaches for Utilizing Insect Protein for Human Consumption: Effect of Enzymatic Hydrolysis on Protein Quality and Functionality

Crude Protein, Amino Acid, and Iron Content of Tenebrio molitor (Coleoptera, Tenebrionidae) Reared on an Agricultural Byproduct from Maize Production: An Exploratory Study

Insect Composition and Uses in Animal Feeding Applications: A Brief Review

The Cultural Importance of Edible Insects in Oaxaca, Mexico

The Colonial/Imperial History of Insect Food Avoidance in the United States

The Need for Alternative Insect Protein in Africa

Adult Reproductive Tract Morphology and Spermatogenesis in the Black Soldier Fly (Diptera: Stratiomyidae)

The conductivity of dual layers of graphene greatly depends on the states of carbon atoms at their edges; a property which could have important implications for information transmissions on quantum scales.

Made from 2D sheets of carbon atoms arranged in honeycomb lattices, graphene displays a wide array of properties regarding the conduction of heat and electricity.

When two layers of graphene are stacked on top of each other to form a 'bilayer', these properties can become even more interesting. At the edges of these bilayers, for example, atoms can sometimes exist in an exotic state of matter referred to as the 'quantum spin Hall' (QSH) state, depending on the nature of the interaction between their spins and their motions, referred to as their 'spin-orbit coupling' (SOC). While the QSH state is allowed for 'intrinsic' SOC, it is destroyed by 'Rashba' SOC. In an article recently published in EPJ B, Priyanka Sinha and Saurabh Basu from the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati showed that these two types of SOC are responsible for variations in the ways in which graphene bilayers conduct electricity.

For nanoribbons of bilayer graphene, whose edge atoms are arranged in zigzag patterns, the authors showed that the bands of electron energies which are allowed and forbidden are significantly different to those found in monolayer graphene. For intrinsic SOC, the QSH state even caused atoms in the zigzag to have a gap between these bands, which disappeared in odd atoms. However, this asymmetry disappeared for Rashba SOC, which changed the relationship between the energy required to add an electron to the bilayer, and its conductivity.

This conduction sensitivity to the states of edge atoms shows that graphene bilayers could be particularly useful for spintronics applications. This field studies how quantum spins can be used to efficiently transmit information, which is of particular interest to researchers in fields like quantum computing. Sinha and Basu also found that the characteristic SOC behaviours they uncovered persisted with or without voltage across the bilayers, which dispelled theories that this aspect could prevent the QSH state from forming. Their work furthers our knowledge of graphene bilayers, potentially opening up new areas of research into their intriguing properties.

The prediction of molecular reactions triggered by light is to date extremely time-consuming and therefore costly. A team led by Philipp Marquetand from the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Vienna has now presented a method using artificial neural networks that drastically accelerates the simulation of light-induced processes. The method provides new possibilities for a better understanding of biological processes such as the first steps of carcinogenesis or ageing processes of matter. The study appeared in the current issue of the journal "Chemical Science", also including an accompanying illustration on one of its covers.

Machine learning plays an increasingly important role in chemical research, e.g. in the discovery and development of new molecules and materials. In this study, researchers from Vienna and Berlin show how artificial intelligence enables efficient photodynamics simulations. To understand photo-induced processes, such as photosynthesis, human visual perception or skin cancer, "we need to understand the motion of molecules under the influence of UV light. In addition to classical mechanical calculations, we also need quantum mechanics that is computationally extremely demanding and therefore cost-intensive," says Philipp Marquetand, author of the study and scientist at the Institute of Theoretical Chemistry.

With previous methods, researchers were only able to predict the fastest photo-induced processes in the picosecond range (1 picosecond = 0.000 000 000 001 seconds) - with computation times of several months. The new method uses artificial intelligence to simulate over longer periods, in the range of one nanosecond (1,000 picoseconds), with considerably less computation time.

Learning neural networks

In their approach, the researchers use artificial neural networks, i.e. mathematical models that imitate the functioning of our brain. "We teach our neuronal network the complex quantum-mechanical relationships by performing a few calculations beforehand and passing the knowledge on to the neural network," says first study author and uni:docs fellow, Julia Westermayr from the Institute of Theoretical Chemistry. Based on its knowledge, the self-learning neural networks will then be able to predict what will happen more quickly.

As part of the study, the researchers carried out photodynamics simulations of a test molecule called methylenimmonium cation - a building block of the molecule retinal that enables our visual processes. "After two months of computing, we were able to reproduce the reaction for one nanosecond; based on previous methods, the simulation would have taken about 19 years," says PhD student Julia Westermayr.

A Proof of Concept

In the nanosecond range, the majority of photochemical processes take place: "With our strategy, we are entering a new dimension of prediction. In principle, the approach we are presenting can be applied to a wide range of smaller molecules, including DNA building blocks and amino acids," says Philipp Marquetand.

In the next step, the researchers want to use their method to describe the amino acid tyrosine. Tyrosine occurs in most proteins, and it is suspected to promote blindness and skin ageing after being damaged under the influence of light. According to the study authors, the presented strategy in general could foster better predictions of light-controlled processes in all respects, including material ageing and photosensitive drugs.

New research suggests that the right to a fair trial can be undermined by benefits associated with pleading guilty, and that such benefits are putting pressure on vulnerable defendants to admit to crimes they did not commit.

Between 2016 and 2017, 76.9 per cent of defendants - 78.1 per cent of defendants in the magistrates' court, and 70.1 per cent of defendants in the Crown Court - in England and Wales pleaded guilty rather than opting to go to trial.

Dr. Rebecca Helm, from the University of Exeter Law School, surveyed ninety legal professionals practicing criminal law in England or Wales.

Dr Helm identified two incentives to plead guilty that were particularly problematic - the ability to avoid the high time and cost involved in trial, and the ability to secure immediate release from custody - and her study says these incentives are likely to be leading innocent defendants in England and Wales to plead guilty.

Those who took part in the survey suggested that defendants plead guilty due to the prohibitive time and cost involved in trial. Going to trial is significantly more expensive than pleading guilty, and involves a significantly higher time commitment. In 2016 the average time of a court case involving a not guilty plea was 13.8 hours, compared to 1.6 hours for those who pleaded guilty. This is likely to be particularly important if a defendant has insecure employment, or dependents who require care.

Ninety percent of the surveyed legal professionals said they had experience of advising clients who they believed had pleaded guilty as a result of the significantly lower cost and time involved compared to trial. Sixty-one percent thought that this included innocent as well as guilty defendants.

A total of 83 per cent of surveyed legal professionals said that they had experience advising clients who could get out of jail by pleading guilty but would have to remain in jail awaiting trial if they pleaded not guilty. The poor conditions in remand prisons left their clients "desperate" to get out so they could resume life, employment and education and care for dependents.

Dr Helm said: "It's not practical to get rid of procedures where people waive their trial rights. But it is also important that all those involved in the justice system appreciate the potential for defendant rights to be infringed, and work to protect defendants in guilty plea systems."

"More needs to be done to protect vulnerable defendants. The state has an obligation to ensure they have a fair trial, and the option of a full trial and pleading not-guilty should be accessible to them. This may be facilitated, for example, through the provision of financial assistance, or, monitoring devices to allow release on bail."

The study makes policy suggestions to protect vulnerable defendants, including ensuring that exercising the right to trial is not significantly costlier and more time consuming than pleading guilty, and also suggests that defendants who plead guilty when faced with problematic incentives may have the right to appeal their convictions under the European Convention on Human Rights.