Culture

Soil scientists can't possibly be everywhere at once to study every bit of soil across the planet. Plus, soils are constantly changing.

Conditions like weather and land use have a major impact on soil over time. So, to understand everything about soil, we would need to be continuously studying soil around the world. Since this isn't possible, soil scientists are turning to math to predict what happens at the soil's surface.

Soil models - just like economic models - are helpful to predict trends and make suggestions. An example might be the impact of climate change on water processes in the soil. Models help fill in the gaps of measured data.

Since soil is a complex environment, a soil model consists of many pieces that represent different processes. One important aspect of soil models - how water interacts with soil at the land surface - was recently discussed by a group of almost 30 scientists. Their work was recently published in Vadose Zone Journal.

Water infiltration at the land surface is a crucial area of study. Infiltration refers to what fraction of the water is getting absorbed by the soil. Being able to predict if precipitation will run over the soil surface or soak in is crucial in land management decisions. It affects aspects of land management like erosion control. It is also important in making sure we have a safe and clean water supply. Land surface models can help scientists predict and simulate the water and energy cycles from the soil's surface into the atmosphere.

Each piece of a land surface model is important. The study team found that information about infiltration warrants more attention in land surface models.

In order to be truly useful, land surface models need to include loads of information. This includes soil structure, soil moisture and temperature, precipitation, terrain, plants, and more. Scientists use the information to calculate the Earth's climate or see how land use changes may affect it.

Harry Vereecken, Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany, was the lead author of this effort. "The review found important gaps in the current treatment of infiltration processes in land surface models," says Vereecken. "Current models don't account for the effect of structural properties on soil water dynamics. Also, we saw the lack of a consistent framework to upscale infiltration processes from different scales and the large diversity in approaches to describing them."

The group is calling on scientists to work together and lend their skills to better include this information in land surface models. This is so the models better reflect the reality of what's happening at the Earth's surface.

Their review was a way to compile scientific research from over a long period of time and give suggestions about where soil scientists should focus their efforts next. In looking over lots of research, they found there's no consistent way to predict infiltration. They also found that some aspects of soil that affect infiltration are often ignored.

"The climate and Earth sciences community typically operate at a larger scale than the soil science community," Vereecken explains. "Soil scientists have mostly worked at smaller scales, such as plot to field scale to study processes and often did not include atmospheric processes in their studies. We wanted to write about the importance of these communities coming together. This is the first review ever that addressed the handling of infiltration processes in these models."

He adds that they hope their work provides a common understanding about how infiltration processes are dealt with in land surface models. While it can be difficult to quantify these complex processes and combine them into larger models, it's important in studying the state of the planet. Both groups need each other. Without soil scientists working on a smaller scale, others won't have data for their models.

"Because soil exerts a key control on climate-related processes, it can add relevance to the research we are doing as soil scientists," Vereecken says. "We hope this can serve as a kind of reference paper for other scientists and connect those that work on different aspects of land surface models."

When the daily stress of parenting becomes chronic it can turn into parental burnout, an intense exhaustion that leads parents to feel detached from their children and unsure of their parenting abilities, according to research published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. This type of burnout can have serious consequences for both parent and child, increasing parental neglect, harm, and thoughts about escape.

"In the current cultural context, there is a lot of pressure on parents," says lead researcher Moïra Mikolajczak of UCLouvain. "But being a perfect parent is impossible and attempting to be one can lead to exhaustion. Our research suggests that whatever allows parents to recharge their batteries, to avoid exhaustion, is good for children."

Mikolajczak and coauthors James J. Gross of Stanford University and Isabelle Roskam of UCLouvain became interested in the issue through their clinical encounters with good parents who, as a result of their exhaustion, had become the opposite of what they were trying to be. Although previous research had explored the causes of parental burnout, relatively little was known about its consequences. The researchers decided to directly examine the outcomes associated with parental burnout in two studies that followed parents over time.

In the first study, Mikolajczak and colleagues recruited parents through social networks, schools, pediatricians, and other sources to participate in research on "parental well-being and exhaustion." The parents, mostly French-speaking adults in Belgium, completed three batches of online surveys spaced about 5.5 months apart.

The surveys included a 22-item measure of parental burnout that gauged parents' emotional exhaustion, emotional distancing, and feelings of inefficacy; a six-item measure that gauged their thoughts about escaping their family; a 17-item measure that gauged the degree to which they neglected their childrens' physical, educational and emotional needs; and a 15-item measure that gauged their tendency to engage in verbal, physical, or psychological violence.

Because many of the questions asked about sensitive topics, the researchers also measured participants' tendency to choose the most socially desirable responses when confronted with probing questions.

A total of 2,068 parents participated in the first survey, with 557 still participating at the third survey.

Participants' data revealed a strong association between burnout and the three variables -- escape ideation, parental neglect, and parental violence -- at each of the three time points.

Parental burnout at the first and second survey was associated with later parental neglect, parental violence, and escape ideation. The researchers found that parental burnout and parental neglect had a circular relationship: Parental burnout led to increased parental neglect, which led to increased burnout, and so on. Parental violence appeared to be a clear consequence of burnout.

Importantly, all of these patterns held even when the researchers took participants' tendency toward socially desirable responding into account.

A second online study with mostly English-speaking parents in the UK produced similar findings.

Together, the data suggest that parental burnout is likely the cause of escape ideation, parental neglect, and parental violence.

"We were a bit surprised by the irony of the results," says Mikolajczak. "If you want to do the right thing too much, you can end up doing the wrong thing. Too much pressure on parents can lead them to exhaustion which can have damaging consequences for the parent and for the children."

Additional studies are needed to confirm and extend these findings with broader samples and measures. Nonetheless, the robust pattern of results suggests that there are important lessons to be learned from these findings, the researchers say.

"Parents need to know that self-care is good for the child and that when they feel severely exhausted, they should seek help. Health and child services professionals need to be informed about parental burnout so that they can accurately diagnose it and provide parents with the most appropriate care. And those engaged in policy and public health need to help raise awareness and lift the taboo on parental burnout, which will encourage parents to seek the help they need," Mikolajczak concludes.

PULLMAN, Wash. - For start-up companies looking to launch a new product, hiring star inventors who are accomplished and have a strong record of performance seems like a no brainer.

After all, having more expertise on an innovation team should lead to more product innovation, right?

Unfortunately, product innovation efforts often stall when star inventors and company founders work within the same teams, according to new research from Washington State University, University of Washington and Texas A&M University.

"When you have high-powered innovation teams, members need to be able to work together and be able to defer to each other," said Amrita Lahiri, lead author and assistant professor of management, information systems, and entrepreneurship at Washington State University's Carson College of Business.

"Conflicts may arise when you have team members who both think they are the experts," she said.

Researchers examined the relationship between founders and star employees in product innovation teams, how well they collaborate, and what impact those relationships have on the organization's ability to launch new products.

"We found that the presence of both the star employee and the founder within a company has a positive effect on the firm's performance, but when you have both of them together on a team, the outcomes can become diminished," said Lahiri.

According to Lahiri, start-up companies should consider the following when hiring extremely accomplished inventors or "star" employees for product innovation teams, especially when the founder is also on the team:

Establish a clear chain of command within the team

Hire star employees who have prior experience working in new ventures 

If you are a founder-inventor, be adaptable to change

Establish a clear chain of command

According to Lahiri, founders' influence in an organization comes from their position in the firm's hierarchy, whereas "star" employees' influence typically comes from their record of past work and accomplishments.

Conflict can arise when the roles within a team are not clearly defined, as the influence of power comes from different positions and previous experiences. This may lead to disagreements about the team's direction and how to best meet their objectives--thus stalling the innovation process.

Hire star employees who have previous start-up experience

The type of organization where a star employee has previously worked can also affect how well founders and star employees collaborate.

"Someone who has been previously employed by another small organization is typically much better off in a start-up setting," Lahiri said.

Inventors who have worked for other start-ups have experience working in more informal, collaborative settings, simply because of how start-ups operate.

In fact, researchers observed start-ups that hired star employees with previous start-up experience launched more products compared to startups that brought in star employees from larger organizations.

If you are a founder, be adaptable to change

Finally, no matter who is on the product innovation team, founders must remain adaptable to change.

"I find in my broader research that a founder's role and the expectations of investors change as the venture evolves," Lahiri said.

In the early stages of the start-up, a founder may need to be more hands-on in product development, she said. However, as the organization evolves, the founder needs to shift more attention toward managerial aspects.

"It is important for founders to be aware that their roles will change over time and willing to delegate," Lahiri said.

Emails, instant messaging, app notifications, RSS feeds, and a plethora of social networks inundate almost every aspect of daily life from work to home or just keeping in touch socially. Some people average more than four information technology (IT) switches per minute. This barrage of IT interruptions makes it increasingly difficult to focus on the task-at-hand.

Legend has it that millennials, specifically the "Net Generation," use many technologies simultaneously, masterfully switching from one to the next. They claim that it's easy and that they can do it much better than older generations. Research, so far, hasn't proven this claim and the consequences of these incessant interruptions on attention and performance.

Florida Atlantic University researchers in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science are one of the first to examine this phenomenon in college-age students. The study provides some of the first results on whether or not "Net Genners," who have grown up with widespread access to technology, are developing greater digital literacy than generations before them, and if this has enriched them with an ability to switch their attention more efficiently.

For the study, researchers simulated a typical working environment, complete with IT interruptions, to allow them to track the effects on participants' inhibitory processes. One hundred and seventy-seven mostly college-age participants were divided into three groups: those who received IT interruptions; those who did not, and a control group. Researchers compared the three groups' accuracy and response time on completing tasks, gauging their level of anxiety.

Results, published in the journal Applied Neuropsychology: Adult, indicate that there is no need to "pardon these interruptions," at least for this younger generation.

Findings show that switching between technologies did not deplete or diminish performance in the group that had the IT interruptions compared to the control group or the group that did not receive IT interruptions. Unexpectedly, however, researchers discovered diminished performance in the participants from the group that did not receive any IT interruptions.

All three groups reported low levels of anxiety during the study. Seventy-five percent of two of the groups reported their anxiety as "not at all" or "a little bit," and the researchers did not find any significant differences between groups.

"We were really surprised to find impaired performance in the group that did not receive any information technology interruptions. It appears that the Net Generation thrives on switching their attention and they can do it more efficiently because information technology is woven throughout their daily lives," said Mónica Rosselli, Ph.D., senior author, professor and assistant chair of psychology in FAU's Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, and a member of the FAU Brain Institute (I-BRAIN), one of the University's four research pillars. "Because younger generations are so accustomed to using instant messaging, pop-ups like the ones we used for our study, may blend into the background and may not appear surprising or unplanned, and therefore may not produce anxiety."

Prior research in the general population has found that it takes about 25 minutes to return to an original task following an IT interruption and 41 percent of these interruptions result in discontinuing the interrupted task altogether. Emails alone cause about 96 interruptions in an eight-hour day with an added one-and-a-half hours of recovery time per day.

Results of the new FAU study sheds light on younger generations who have commonly used instant messaging as a major communication tool and this communication preference may reveal a perception gap between generations.

"How we adapt to technology and leverage it to our advantage by deciding what information we attend to at any given moment has substantial implications on our ability to remain valuable and productive in our respective work and education domains," said Deven M. Christopher, co-author and a graduate psychology student at FAU. "Results from our study may provide a basis for further research, especially because younger generations are developing in a more connected world than preceding generations."

A study published on August 27 in Frontiers in Pharmacology found that general probiotic use in the U.S. could save the health care payer and the economy around $1.4 billion in medical bills and lost productivity due to acute respiratory tract infections (RTIs).

RTIs include influenza-like illnesses (ILIs) with symptoms ranging from mild cold to the more serious flu. Although most acute RTI episodes resolve on their own, RTIs result in a high number of doctor visits and pose a heavy burden on society and the health care system.

The systematic reviews by York Health Economics Consortium (YHEC) and Cochrane Collaborative reported probiotics use was associated with reduced number and duration of ILIs, antibiotic courses used and days absent from work.

"We wanted to assess how much the use of probiotics in the management of common acute RTIs could contribute to savings in healthcare costs in the U.S.," said Daniel Tancredi, co-author on the study, an associate professor at the Department of Pediatrics and a researcher at the Center for Healthcare Policy and Research at UC Davis.

An economic model simulating general probiotics use by the U.S. population

The authors developed an economic model to estimate the cost savings of general use of probiotics in the U.S. They created a simulation (1:1000 scale) reproducing a population representative of the national demographics. They tailored the model to account for age, vaccination status, smoking status and time spent in shared indoor environments, such as daycare for children or shared offices for adult workers.

They estimated the number of ILI cases, the duration of illness, the costs associated with doctor visits and the number of days missed from school or work. For these estimates, they used the 2017-18 Influenza Season of FluView from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other national databases.

The researchers modeled the illness experience for the simulated population under two scenarios: one where everyone uses probiotics and one where no one does. They did a simulated model based on the Cochrane Collaborative review and another based on the YHEC review. The Cochrane review accounted for reductions both in number of episodes of RTIs and disease duration, allowing for the estimation of the cost savings associated with fewer doctor visits. The YHEC review could only quantify savings associated with fewer sick days due to RTI.

Cost savings

"Although flu-like illnesses usually resolve on their own after one or two weeks, there is great benefit in reducing ILI incidence and duration," said Irene Lenoir-Wijnkoop, first author on the study and senior scientist in public health nutrition at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. "Less sickness means reduced suffering and significant cost savings from health care expenses and sick absences."

In the Cochrane scenario, the analysis showed that if everyone in the U.S. took probiotics, health care payers would save $373 million in RTI-associated medical bills in one year. These savings include the cost of more than two million courses of antibiotic prescriptions averted and correspond to a decrease of 54.5 million sick days. When counting the savings from reduced productivity loss of 4.2 million workdays, the total savings for society would amount to $1.4 billion.

In the YHEC scenario, generalized probiotic use could save $784 million per year for averted productivity loss related to absence from work due to illness.

"Because both reviews included studies from different strains of probiotics, including both effective and ineffective ones, our results are based on an estimated average effect," said Tancredi of UC Davis. "With more evidence on which probiotics are effective in protecting against RTIs, it would be possible generate more definitive estimates of the potential cost savings associated with their use."

Misfolded proteins must be promptly eliminated as they can form toxic aggregates in cells. Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich biologists have studied how this process is triggered in mitochondria and identified a general alarm signal that activates it.

Proteins can perform their biological functions only if they fold into the correct three-dimensional form. As a rule, this conformation is largely determined by the amino-acid sequence of a protein, but many proteins require accessory factors to fold properly. If protein folding is perturbed (as in the presence of oxidative stress, for instance), not only do inactive proteins accumulate, they can also give rise to highly toxic aggregates. However, cells have evolved a quality-control mechanism that monitors protein folding. If a misfolded protein is detected, a process known as the Unfolded Protein Response (UPR) is activated, which ensures that the protein is degraded and normal cell function is restored. Using the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans as their experimental model, LMU biologists led by Stéphane Rolland have asked how this stress response is triggered in mitochondria, and identified a fundamental mechanism that regulates the UPR in these organelles. Their findings appear in the leading journal Cell Reports.

The UPR machinery is found in several of the diverse membrane-bounded intracellular compartments found in eukaryotic cells, so that errors in protein folding anywhere in the cell can be swiftly dealt with. The mitochondria, which provide the cell with chemical energy, represent one such compartment. Earlier studies on C. elegans had indicated that the transcription factor ATFS-1 plays an important role in initiating the UPR in these organelles. Normally, ATFS-1 is imported into the mitochondria and rapidly degraded. However, when mitochondria are under stress, the protein is re-routed to the cell nucleus. There it activates the transcription of genes which code for proteins that implement the UPR in mitochondria. Moreover, this signaling pathway has been evolutionarily conserved, at least in part, from nematodes to mammals.

"Up to now, the precise nature of the signal that triggers this cellular stress response was not fully understood," Rolland explains. "We therefore carried out an extensive genome-wide screen designed to systematically identify all the genes and biological processes that are involved in the activation of the UPR in mitochondria." The screen showed that inactivation of 171 genes activate the UPR in mitochondria, and many of their protein products are localized in mitochondria. Furthermore, inactivation of many of these genes leads to a reduction in the level of the electrochemical potential across the mitochondrial inner membrane. This drop in mitochondrial membrane potential is accompanied by a decrease in the rate of protein import into the organelle, which is then followed by activation of the UPR. "We believe that the decrease of mitochondrial membrane potential serves as a general signal for the induction of the mitochondrial UPR," says Rolland.

Mitochondrial proteins contain a N-terminal amino-acid sequence that is responsible for their targeting to mitochondria. These so called mitochondrial targeting sequences can be "strong" or "weak" depending on their amino-acid composition. While proteins with "strong" mitochondrial targeting sequences can be imported into mitochondria even with a low membrane potential, proteins with "weak" mitochondrial targeting sequences cannot. Rolland and colleagues propose that the transcription factor ATFS-1, which has a "weak" mitochondrial targeting sequence, acts as a sensor, which detects and reacts to a decline in mitochondrial membrane potential. If the potential becomes abnormally low, import of ATSF-1 into the mitochondria is blocked. The resulting rise in its concentration in the cytoplasm then leads to its uptake into the nucleus, where it activates the transcription of genes necessary for the mitochondrial UPR. The proteins encoded by these genes have "strong" mitochondrial targeting sequences and can therefore be imported into mitochondria despite their low membrane potential in order to restore mitochondrial function.

Scientists from Basel have investigated the activity of stem cells in the brain of mice and discovered a key mechanism that controls cell proliferation. According to the researchers, the gene regulator Id4 controls whether stem cells remain in a state of rest or enter cell division. The results were published in Cell Reports and may be relevant for treating neurodegenerative disease in human brains.

Whether stem cells also occur in the human brain has long been controversial. Today, it is considered certain that the brain can form new neurons throughout life. The stem cells that have been found to be behind this process are restricted to specialized regions in the brain, so-called niches, which provide key signals that regulate stem cell self-renewal and differentiation. With increasing age, however, the stem cells become increasingly inactive and divide less frequently. They transition into a "quiescent" or dormant state.

Hyperactive signaling pathway inhibits cell division

So far, it was unclear why stem cells in the adult and aged brain fall into a state of rest. A research team led by Prof. Verdon Taylor from the Department of Biomedicine at the University of Basel has now discovered which factors block entry of stem cells into cell division. They were investigating the so-called Notch signaling pathway in more detail, a pathway central for regulating stem cell activity in the brain.

The study shows that the Notch2 signaling pathway controls the expression of a specific transcription regulator called Id4. Once expressed, Id4 inhibits the division of stem cells and blocks the production of new neurons in the hippocampus of the adult brain. Notch2 signaling maintains high levels of Id4 in some neural stem cells, and thereby explains why these stem cells increasingly enter a state of rest in the adult and geriatric brain.

As the brain ages, the Notch2-Id4 pathway enters into a state of hyperactivity, presenting a strong molecular brake that inhibits stem cell activation and neuron production. Conversely, inactivation of this pathway releases the brake and enables the production of new neurons - even in the brain of geriatric mice.

Reversible resting state

The results show that the stem cells in the mammalian brain are in a reversible resting state regulated by signals and factors in the niche. By manipulating the signaling pathway, the production of new nerve cells can be specifically stimulated.

The study provides important information on the basic mechanisms of neurogenesis in the adult mouse brain. Since the Notch signaling pathway is widespread and occurs in most organisms, the researchers hope that the findings can also be transferred to humans. In this way, brain damage caused by degenerative and neuropsychiatric diseases could be repaired in the future.

Dementia and marital status could be linked, according to a new Michigan State University study that found married people are less likely to experience dementia as they age.

On the other hand, divorcees are about twice as likely as married people to develop dementia, the study indicated, with divorced men showing a greater disadvantage than divorced women.

In one of the first studies of its kind, Hui Liu, professor of sociology, and colleagues analyzed four groups of unmarried individuals: divorced or separated; widowed; never married; and cohabiters. Among them, the divorced had the highest risk of dementia.

The study, published in The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, comes at a time when 5.8 million people in the U.S. are living with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias, costing $290 billion, according to the Alzheimer's Association. It's a serious public health concern, Liu said.

"This research is important because the number of unmarried older adults in the United States continues to grow, as people live longer and their marital histories become more complex," Liu said. "Marital status is an important but overlooked social risk/protective factor for dementia."

Liu and her follow researchers analyzed nationally representative data from the Health and Retirement Study, from 2000 to 2014. The sample included more than 15,000 respondents ages 52 and older in 2000, measuring their cognitive function every two years, in person or via telephone.

The researchers also found differing economic resources only partly account for higher dementia risk among divorced, widowed and never-married respondents, but couldn't account for higher risk in cohabiters. In addition, health-related factors, such as behaviors and chronic conditions, slightly influenced risk among the divorced and married, but didn't seem to affect other marital statuses.

"These findings will be helpful for health policy makers and practitioners who seek to better identify vulnerable populations and to design effective intervention strategies to reduce dementia risk," Liu said.

Researchers have successfully created a model of the Universe using artificial intelligence, reports a new study.

Researchers seek to understand our Universe by making model predictions to match observations. Historically, they have been able to model simple or highly simplified physical systems, jokingly dubbed the "spherical cows," with pencils and paper. Later, the arrival of computers enabled them to model complex phenomena with numerical simulations. For example, researchers have programmed supercomputers to simulate the motion of billions of particles through billions of years of cosmic time, a procedure known as the N-body simulations, in order to study how the Universe evolved to what we observe today.

"Now with machine learning, we have developed the first neural network model of the Universe, and demonstrated there's a third route to making predictions, one that combines the merits of both analytic calculation and numerical simulation," said Yin Li, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, University of Tokyo, and jointly the University of California, Berkeley.

A comparison of the accuracy of two models of the Universe. The new deep learning model (left), dubbed D3M, is much more accurate than an existing analytic method (right) called 2LPT. The colors represent the error in displacement at each point relative to the numerical simulation, which is accurate but much slower than the deep learning model.

At the beginning of our Universe, things were extremely uniform. As time went by, the denser parts grew denser and sparser parts became sparser due to gravity, eventually forming a foam-like structure known as the "cosmic web." To study this structure formation process, researchers have tried many methods, including analytic calculations and numerical simulations. Analytic methods are fast, but fail to produce accurate results for large density fluctuations. On the other hand, numerical (N-body) methods simulate structure formation accurately, but tracking gazillions of particles is costly, even on supercomputers. Thus, to model the Universe, scientists often face the accuracy versus efficiency trade-off.

However, the explosive growth of observational data in quality and quantity calls for methods that excel in both accuracy and efficiency.

To tackle this challenge, a team of researchers from the US, Canada, and Japan, including Li, set their sights on machine learning, a cutting-edge approach to detecting patterns and making predictions. Just as machine learning can transform a young man's portrait into his older self, Li and colleagues asked whether it can also predict how universes evolve based on their early snapshots. They trained a convolutional neural network with simulation data of trillions of cubic light years in volume, and built a deep learning model that was able to mimic the structure formation process. The new model is not only many times more accurate than the analytic methods, but is also much more efficient than the numerical simulations used for its training.

"It has the strengths of both previous [analytic calculation and numerical simulation] methods," said Li.

Li says the power of AI emulation will scale up in the future. N-body simulations are already heavily optimized, and as a first attempt, his team's AI model still has large room for improvement. Also, more complicated phenomena incur a larger cost on simulation, but not likely so on emulation. Li and his colleagues expect a bigger performance gain from their AI emulator when they move on to including other effects, such as hydrodynamics, into the simulations.

"It won't be long before we can uncover the initial conditions of and the physics encoded in our Universe along this path," he said.

People who work in the swine sector have declared war on what is known as Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus (PRRSV), responsible for millions in losses, not only in Spain, but throughout the world. Although it was discovered in the 90s, in recent years the sector has faced the emergence of new, more virulent strains that have, in some instances, devastated farms' entire pig populations. Fighting against this disease today is very difficult, as each of the strains of this virus behaves differently, so no effective vaccine against it has been developed.

A research group from the University of Córdoba, led by Professor Librado Carrasco, has been researching this virus for years with the aim of helping to develop vaccines that reduce mortality in the pig sector. But, for this, it is important to seek out similarities between strains. "In our last study we compared two strains, one of low virulence, on which we had been working since the discovery of the disease; and another of great virulence that is much less known," explains Irene M. Rodríguez Gómez, one of the group's researchers.

The study was carried out at the Animal Health Research Center in the province of Barcelona, always under the control of the ethical committee, not only at the University of Córdoba, but also of the one established by the Generalitat de Catalunya (regional government) to oversee the use of animals for scientific purposes. Three groups of pigs were used. The first was infected with the low-virulence strain, and the second with the high-virulence strain. The third, used as a control group, helped determine the normal parameters of an uninfected animal.

The study lasted 13 days, during which temperatures and blood samples were taken daily, and clinical symptoms observed. On the day of their euthanasia a bronchoalveolar lavage (a procedure to obtain information about the airway cells) was performed, and lung samples were taken. In addition, other organs were used for other studies.

"The results indicated that the high-virulence strain caused earlier and greater damage than did the low-virulence strain," explains the researcher. In addition to the analysis of the symptoms and the lesions observed in the infected pigs, an exhaustive study of what happened with the cells in which the virus was housed, or macrophages, was carried out.

"A reduction in this type of cells was observed in the lungs," says Irene Rodríguez. "These cells are of great importance when it comes to defending the organ, so their reduction causes the lung to be exposed to secondary infections, mainly bacterial, giving rise to other processes, such as bronchopneumonia." The study also determined that high-virulence strains attacked not only the lungs, but also the organs of the lymphatic system, such as the thymus, or bone marrow, which was not perceived in the low-virulence strain.

A study from King's College London has found that people who drank red wine had an increased gut microbiota diversity (a sign of gut health) compared to non-red wine drinkers as well as an association with lower levels of obesity and 'bad' cholesterol.

In a paper published today in the journal Gastroenterology, a team of researchers from the Department of Twin Research & Genetic Epidemiology, King's College London explored the effect of beer, cider, red wine, white wine and spirits on the gut microbiome (GM) and subsequent health in a group of 916 UK female twins.

They found that the GM of red wine drinkers was more diverse compared to non-red wine drinkers. This was not observed with white wine, beer or spirits consumption.

First author of the study, Dr Caroline Le Roy from King's College London said: "While we have long known of the unexplained benefits of red wine on heart health, this study shows that moderate red wine consumption is associated with greater diversity and a healthier gut microbiota that partly explain its long debated beneficial effects on health."

The microbiome is the collection of microorganisms in an environment and plays an important role in human health. An imbalance of 'good' microbes compared to 'bad' in the gut can lead to adverse health outcomes such as reduced immune system, weight gain or high cholesterol.

A person's gut microbiome with a higher number of different bacterial species is considered a marker of gut health.

The team observed that the gut microbiota of red wine consumers contained a greater number of different bacterial species compared to than non-consumers. This result was also observed in three different cohorts in the UK, the U.S. And the Netherlands. The authors took into account factors such as age, weight, the regular diet and socioeconomic status of the participants and continued to see the association.

The authors believe the main reason for the association is due to the many polyphenols in red wine. Polyphenols are defence chemicals naturally present in many fruits and vegetables. They have many beneficial properties (including antioxidants) and mainly act as a fuel for the microbes present in our system.

Lead author Professor Tim Spector from King's College London said: "This is one of the largest ever studies to explore the effects of red wine in the guts of nearly three thousand people in three different countries and provides insights that the high levels of polyphenols in the grape skin could be responsible for much of the controversial health benefits when used in moderation."

The study also found that red wine consumption was associated with lower levels of obesity and 'bad' cholesterol which was in part due to the gut microbiota.

"Although we observed an association between red wine consumption and the gut microbiota diversity, drinking red wine rarely, such as once every two weeks, seems to be enough to observe an effect. If you must choose one alcoholic drink today, red wine is the one to pick as it seems to potentially exert a beneficial effect on you and your gut microbes, which in turn may also help weight and risk of heart disease. However, it is still advised to consume alcohol with moderation," added Dr Le Roy.

Bystander Ethics and Good Samaritanism: A Paradox for Learning Health Organizations
James E. Sabin, Noelle M. Cocoros, Crystal J. Garcia, Jennifer C. Goldsack, Kevin Haynes, Nancy D. Lin, Debbe McCall, Vinit Nair, Sean D. Pokorney, Cheryl N. McMahill-Walraven, Christopher B. Granger, and Richard Platt

For years, health care leaders, ethicists, and researchers have urged the creation of learning health organizations that would integrate knowledge from patient-care data to continuously im-prove the quality of care. The authors describe their experience with an ongoing re¬search study that provided insight into one of the challenges that will have to be dealt with in creating these organizations. The oversight team argued that the ethical principle of beneficence did not allow the researchers to be "bystanders" in relation to a control group receiving suboptimal care. In response, the re¬searchers designed a "workaround" that allowed the project to go for¬ward. Specifically, they changed the research protocol so that researchers would never be in the position of knowing whether a patient should be receiving a particular medication but was not. The authors propose that what they call "bystander ethics" will create challenges for the kinds of quality-improvement re¬search that learning health care organizations are designed to do.

Other Voices: Emily A. Largent and Stephanie R. Morain critique the researchers' workaround, explaining why they find it inadequate.

Homeless, Ill, and Psychiatrically Complex: The Grueling Carousel of Cassandra Lee
Laura Guidry-Grimes

Cassandra Lee had a history of pulling out lines and tubes and a distaste of warming blankets. Her admission to the hospital marked her 30th over the past year. Many of the challenges facing the hospi¬tal caring for her were not unique: significant psychiatric issues, prolonged nonadherence to medical advice, and end-of-life decision-making combined to create an ethically dense and vexing situ¬ation. Lee, like so many patients, was suffering because of system failures. Guidry-Grimes is an assistant professor in the department of medical humanities and bioethics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

Policy and Politics--Out of the Freezer and into the Policy Fire: Quandaries in Reproductive Cryopreservation
Rebecca Feinberg

The field of assisted reproduction is advancing rapidly and is ripe for regulation and guidance. In 2018, over 4,000 frozen eggs and embryos were lost to approximately 1,000 patients at Ahuja University Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, due to an accidental thaw of a cryopreservation tank. A class-action lawsuit has been filed. The precedent that will be set by the case is significant for both past events and future possibilities and is core to the discussion of policy involving the cryopreservation of gametes and embryos. Feinberg is a teaching assistant professor in the College of Science and Health and the College of Law at DePaul University.

Also in this issue:

Clinical Trial Portfolios: A Critical Oversight in Human Research Ethics, Drug Regulation, and Policy

When No One Notices: Disorders of Consciousness and the Chronic Vegetative State

Perspective: The Tyranny of Hope

In Practice - Patient as Gift

Those who study and treat disorders of the mind - such as neuroscientists, psychiatrists and therapists - are in a position of influence. Their decisions and actions have the potential to impact individuals at the deepest levels by affecting our memories and even how we see ourselves. Such professionals "...occupy positions of intellectual authority" as neuroscientist and artist Ann E. Fink writes. Their choices can have profound consequences.

History, both distant and recent, provide numerous examples of the use and misuse of this power. Consider the continuously evolving Code of Ethics for the American Psychological Association (APA) and the criticism)the organization received for its involvement in the post-911 torture of prisoners held Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, among others. That the APA spoke out last week) in opposition to the U.S. administration's announcement that migrants detained at the U.S. border can be held indefinitely highlights the importance of ethics to the mental health field.

In her latest paper - written and illustrated as a comic-book - Fink, a professor of practice in Lehigh University's Department of Biological Sciences, urges both scientists and clinicians working on mental health issues to think critically about not only the biological meaning but the social meaning of trauma. In "Fanon's Police Inspector," published in AJOB Neuroscience, she offers a bioethical inquiry into the social obligations of studying and treating trauma through an examination of a true story told by Martinique-born psychiatrist Frantz Fanon in his 1961 book The Wretched of the Earth.

In the book, Fanon, a French-educated black man who practiced medicine in French-colonized Algeria during its war for independence, writes about a patient: a white, male, European police inspector who is employed in torture on behalf of the colonial government. The inspector who, as Fink writes, would likely meet the current standards of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), seeks help because he cannot stop beating up his wife and children, "...even his twenty-month old baby." The inspector asks the doctor "...to help him torture...with a total peace of mind."

"Fanon writes about the mechanisms and the psychological function of violence in a colonized people?what that means for their identity and their transformation and their well-being," says Fink. "Fanon would have viewed this case through the lens of a mental health practitioner, so it would have been all about what's happening developmentally in the colonized and the colonizer. What kind of pathology is taking place in individuals in this rotten, dehumanizing climate where basic developmental functions and needs of the self, such as interpersonal attachment needs, cannot be met, cannot develop in any healthy way?"

Fink, who studies learning and memory systems and the cellular mechanisms associated with PTSD, read Fanon's book, an analysis of the dehumanizing effects of colonization, and thought: "What does this mean for the type of research we are doing into PTSD and how we hope to apply it in the world? What does it mean for treating PTSD in a similar context today that might involve treating a person in a violent, dehumanizing context?" She chose to present her bioethical inquiry in comic-book form because a lot of what she wanted to convey was so visual.

Fink is part of a growing movement known as Graphic Medicine, a term that refers to academics and clinicians working at the intersection of healthcare and comics. A common thread among them is the belief that comics are a compelling, powerful and accessible way to deliver illness narratives or to engage in other health care discourse with researchers, providers, patients and their family members - especially around difficult and complex subjects.

Fink writes that while the scenario presented in the police inspector case study would be considered unacceptable and unethical by current frameworks, it raises the following question: "Is it possible, in a colonized Algeria struggling for its national sovereignty, to treat the European police inspector in a meaningful way?"

"This case and this question," she writes, "serve as a starting point for a larger ethical inquiry into the social dimensions of traumatic stress. What are the responsibilities of clinicians treating such traumatized individuals? Of researchers who define the biomedical boundaries of traumatic stress? What particular rights apply to people suffering from PTSD, and for what actions can they be found culpable? Finally, what collective social responsibilities arise from understanding trauma, and how might researchers and clinicians weigh these against responsibilities to the individual?"

Fink illustrates the possible paths the psychiatrist Fanon could have chosen regarding the treatment of his patient. This "decision tree" also points to what the potential paths might reveal about the "...implicit priorities rooted in the intersections of culture, race, gender and medical authority."

For example, one path outlines treating the inspector's PTSD so that he is able to return to his job as a torturer. Another path suggests that Fanon could treat his patient's PTSD in order to stop the abuse of his spouse and children. Each path carries with it an inherent prioritization of some individuals' suffering over others: the inspector, his wife and children, for example, or the Algerian victims of his torture. The Algerian victims, a man and a woman, are drawn as inhabiting different versions of various, based on their gender and race, "...of invisibility and vulnerability to terror."

The inspector himself is drawn as having two distinct roles: ill person and perpetrator. "He is a pawn in this violent system," says Fink. "There's also a child victim...which makes him a bully. It's a very complex situation. People are both the oppressors and the oppressed in almost every situation and you are doing a disservice if you don't see and address both?as well as see both in yourself."

In addition to adding an impactful visual element, Fink says that there is something about the comic book form that lends itself to exploring answers to questions that are difficult, both conceptually and emotionally.

"It allows you to start with the big picture, or understanding of the problem, allowing you to see a whole situation just visually," says Fink. "In the article, you have these questions about the police inspector, how you think about this person's mental health in the context of child abuse and these very, very heavy things that are happening in the story. And I think a visual flow of it - if you do it thoughtfully - can give you a way to take in the entire situation without having to explain it or argue about it at first."

The visual narrative that results from the extremes inherent in the police inspector case study offers an access point to understanding broader themes of moral obligation presented to researchers and practitioners on a more regular basis.

At the conclusion of the paper, Fink writes that "...the analysis of PTSD presented here entails moral obligations for practitioners of neuroscience that extend beyond the laboratory or clinic: To address, at its root, the political, gendered and racialized violence that represents the overwhelming causal factor in disorders of traumatic stress. To refuse to support or participate in practices that exploit and brutalize individuals and entire cultures. To social change that prioritizes these commitments."

She acknowledges both the difficulty and the importance of confronting these issues in the history of the brain sciences.

"It is a call for people to think carefully about how they do research, how they write about it, how it's applied, how they talk about identity," says Fink "Up until recently, those in neuroscience didn't have to be very socially conscious. We did not have to educate ourselves about the interactions of science and social identity. But researchers must develop that kind of critical consciousness. It is a call to clinicians as well to grapple with these issues."

Scientists find unusual behaviors in colloidal crystals.

Atoms have a positively charged center surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged particles. This type of arrangement, it turns out, can also occur at a more macroscopic level, giving new insights into the nature of how materials form and interact.

In a new study from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, scientists have examined the internal structure of a material called a colloidal crystal, which consists of a highly ordered array of larger and smaller particles interspersed in regular arrangements. A greater knowledge of how colloidal crystals are structured and behave could help scientists determine the applications to which they are best suited, like photonics.

“The smaller particles essentially act like a glue that holds the larger particle arrangement together,” — Byeongdu Lee, Argonne X-ray physicist.

In pioneering research outlined in a recent issue of Science, scientists tethered smaller particles to larger ones using DNA, allowing them to determine how the smaller particles filled in the regions surrounding the larger ones. When using particles as small as 1.4 nanometers — extremely small for colloidal particles — scientists observed an exciting effect: The small particles roamed around regularly ordered larger particles instead of remaining locked in an ordered fashion.

Because of this behavior, the colloidal crystals could be designed to lead to a variety of new technologies in the field of optics, catalysis, and drug delivery. The small particles have the potential to act as messengers, carrying other molecules, electric current or information from one end of a crystal to another.

“The smaller particles essentially act like a glue that holds the larger particle arrangement together,” said Argonne X-ray physicist and study author Byeongdu Lee. “With only a few beads of glue, the best position to place them is on the corners between the larger particles. If you add more glue beads, they would overflow to the edges.”

The small particles that sit on the corners tend to stay still — a configuration Lee called localization. The additional particles that are on the edges have more freedom of movement, becoming delocalized. By being tethered to larger particles and with the ability to be both localized and delocalized, the small particles act as “electron equivalents” in the crystal structure. The delocalization of small particles, which the authors called metallicity, had not been observed so far in colloidal particle assemblies.

Additionally, since the small particles delocalize in part, the effect creates a material that challenges most traditional definitions of a crystal, according to Lee.

“Normally, when you change the composition of a crystal, the structure changes as well,” he said. “Here, you can have a material that is able to maintain its overall structure with different proportions of its components.”

To image the structure of the colloidal crystals, Lee and his colleagues used the high-brightness X-ray beams provided by Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source (APS), a DOE Office of Science User Facility. The APS offered a key advantage in that it allowed the scientists to observe the structure of the crystal directly in solution. “This system is only stable in solution, once it dries, the structure deforms,” Lee said.

Help may be on the way for people who might lose contact with reality through a psychotic disorder, such as schizophrenia.

People who may hear and see things that are not there could have symptoms of psychosis, better known as psychotic disorders. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have found neurological markers in the human brain that can be used to detect people at-risk for developing psychotic disorders and to understand when this risk has been successfully treated.

"Psychotic disorders like schizophrenia are often lifelong and disabling for individuals," said John Kerns, professor of psychology in the MU College of Arts and Science. "These disorders have major public health and societal costs greater than cancer. A major goal of our current research is to understand the nature of psychosis risk so we can prevent years of suffering."

Researchers said psychotic disorders are associated with increased levels of dopamine -- a chemical released by nerve cells -- in a subregion of the brain called the striatum. This area is wired to process positive versus negative feedback for learning, often resulting in a person's thoughts and actions based on what they've experienced in the past. Therefore, researchers suggest that psychotic disorders involve a faulty feedback in learning that then drives a person's faulty beliefs and perceptions. However, measuring levels of dopamine in people is costly, invasive and not feasible in everyday clinical practice. In this new study, MU researchers used an MRI at MU's Brain Imaging Center and found that people at risk for psychotic disorders exhibit evidence of dysfunction in the striatum.

"This dysfunction is most evident when performing tasks where people need to learn from positive and negative feedback," Kerns said. "For instance, we have found that the risk for psychotic disorders involves increased activation in the striatum for positive feedback, and negative feedback involves decreased activation in the same subregion of the brain."

Researchers believe this pattern of activation could explain symptoms of psychotic disorders. For example, activation resulting from increased positive feedback could make a person's assumption seem truer than it really is, meanwhile activation from decreased negative feedback could make someone less likely to discard negative ideas. The team will conduct future research to examine how well an MRI can predict the risk of psychotic disorders and whether prevention treatments can 'normalize' MRI scans. They hope that their research will help prevent psychotic disorders, improve the lives of millions of people and greatly reduce public health costs.