Culture

A new study reveals that school fitness tests have little impact on student attitudes to PE - contrary to polarised views on their merits - and for many students, fitness testing during PE may be wasting valuable class time when used in isolation from the curriculum.

The new research, led by scientists from Louisiana State University and Adelphi University, published in Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, suggests that rather than increasing students' enjoyment of PE or putting them off the subject, there is little association between fitness tests and student attitudes and emotions towards PE. This finding contradicts the strongly held beliefs of both proponents and critics of the tests.

"Our results show that extreme views on this controversial subject may be unfounded, since fitness tests neither put students off PE nor encourage a positive outlook on participation," says Kelly Simonton from Louisiana State University.

"What's more, school fitness tests are rarely used to educate students about fitness and they're often implemented poorly, so we cannot help but think that class time would be better spent in equipping students with knowledge and skills that more closely support the PE curriculum," he says.

Previous studies have claimed either intense positive or negative effects, based on students' and teachers' memories of fitness tests. The purpose of the new research was to examine how girls' and boys' performances in fitness tests predict future attitudes and emotions towards PE. The authors focused on the impact on enjoyment, anger and boredom towards PE. A total of 273 students across four US middle schools filled out an attitudes survey and emotions inventory within two weeks of completing a Fitnessgram™ assessment. According to previous studies, as students progress through middle and high school, positive attitudes to PE decline, especially among girls.

Results were mixed across different elements of the assessment. In the PACER test for cardiovascular endurance, both boys and girls who ran more laps were less likely to report anger towards PE. Boys' success was associated with greater enjoyment of PE, whereas girls' success was not associated with more positive attitudes. Girls who performed well in the sit-and-reach test - to measure flexibility - reported favourable attitudes, while there was no effect on higher-performing boys. Meanwhile, performing well in the curl-up test - to assess abdominal strength - actually increased rates of anger towards PE for both sexes.

The researchers also measured the size of the effects. They found that fitness test performance explained only 12% of variation in boys' enjoyment and anger towards PE and in girls it was even lower, at 4%. Feelings of boredom towards PE were hardly impacted at all by success in the tests. The authors note that these results provide a stark contrast to the passionate debate surrounding the impact that fitness tests might have on student experiences of PE.

The researchers suggest, however, that fitness testing could have more impact if implemented as part of a fitness education curriculum.

They also note several limitations to the study. The data were collected at one time point so they were unable to measure changes in attitude over time. The teachers involved did not follow recommendations about integrating fitness tests into the curriculum. For example, scores were not shared with parents or guardians and were not used to help students learn about or to develop their fitness. Students did not compare their results to previous tests and the data collected were not used to monitor student health. It therefore remains to be seen whether better implementation could produce a stronger correlation between fitness tests and student attitudes to PE.

Journal

Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy

DOI

10.1080/17408989.2019.1628932

Statins are known to reduce the risk of further problems in patients of any age who have already suffered heart problems or stroke. However, until now it has not been clear how effective their use is in preventing such events occurring in healthy people aged 75 and over, with no previous history of cardiovascular disease.

Now, a nationwide study of 120,173 people in France, who were aged 75 between 2012 and 2014 and had been taking statins continuously for two years, has found those who stopped taking their statins had a 33% increased risk of being admitted to hospital with heart or blood vessel problems during an average follow-up period of 2.4 years.

The study, which is published in the European Heart Journal [1] today (Wednesday), is the first to evaluate the impact of discontinuing statins taken for primary prevention in older people. Dr Philippe Giral, an endocrinologist specialist in prevention of cardiovascular disease at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital (part of Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris), Paris, France, who led the research said that although further, randomised studies are needed before guidelines can be updated, he would advise elderly people who are taking statins to prevent cardiovascular disease to continue taking them.

"To patients, we would say that if you are regularly take statins for high cholesterol, we would recommend you don't stop the treatment when you are 75. To doctors, we would recommend not stopping statin treatment given for primary prevention of cardiovascular diseases in your patients aged 75," he said.

The researchers analysed data from the French national health insurance claims database and information on hospital diagnoses and clinical procedures. They were able to get comprehensive information on statin use, especially as statins are available by prescription only, for the whole of the French population. They looked specifically at all patients who had turned 75 between 2012 and 2014, who had been taking statins for at least 80% of the time in the previous two years. They included only people with good cardiovascular health in the analysis. They excluded all those who had been diagnosed with cardiovascular disease and anyone who was taking other medications to treat or prevent heart or blood vessel problems.

The researchers followed the 120,173 patients for a maximum of four years (an average of 2.4 years). During this time 14.3% (17,204 people) stopped taking statins for at least three consecutive months, and 4.5% (5,396 people) were admitted to hospital for a cardiovascular problem.

Those who discontinued their statins had a 33% increased risk of any cardiovascular event. The association was stronger for admissions to hospital for heart problems; there was a 46% increased risk of a coronary event, while the increased risk of a blood vessel problem, such as stroke, was 26%.

Dr Giral said: "We estimated that an extra 2.5 cardiovascular events per 100 people would occur within four years among those who discontinued their statins at the age of 75 years compared to those who continued taking their statins."

The researchers stress that this is an observational, retrospective, non-randomised study and therefore cannot show that discontinuing statins can cause a heart attack or stroke, only that it is associated with it. However, they say that extensive health-related patient information was used to improve their estimates of the association and their results are consistent with the known relationship between cholesterol levels and cardiovascular risk.

Co-author of the study, Professor Joël Coste, epidemiologist at Cochin Hospital (also part of Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris), said: "While we wait for results from randomised controlled trials, carefully conducted observational studies such as this can provide useful information for doctors and patients, and can contribute to establishing more precise guidelines on the use of statins for primary prevention in the elderly."

The researchers found an unexpectedly low statin discontinuation rate (14.3%) among the people they studied, but believe this is probably due to the fact that they included only people who had been taking statins continuously for the previous two years. A recent meta-analysis of data from 40 countries found a 40% non-adherence rate among statin users aged 65 years and older [2], and the overall French population of 75-year-olds, from which the people in this study were derived, had a similar rate of non-adherence among statin users: 44% had not taken statins for at least 80% of the time in at least one of the preceding two years.

People discontinue their statin treatment for a number of reasons, not all of which are known. In this study the researchers identified reasons such as other health problems, cancer, admission to hospital, or changes in daily care (such as admission to a nursing home, problems with feeding). Adverse side effects can also be a reason why people might stop taking statins.

Limitations of the study include the fact that statin use was defined by prescriptions dispensed, although the researchers point out that as the patients regularly had prescriptions dispensed to them, they would be unlikely not to take the medication; the researchers did not have information on patients' socio-economic status, their lifestyles, cholesterol levels at the start of the period being studied, tobacco use, obesity and frailty; and they did not have precise information on the reasons why people stopped taking statins.

TORONTO, July 31, 2019 -- Palaeontologists at the Royal Ontario Museum and University of Toronto have uncovered fossils of a large new predatory species in half-a-billion-year-old rocks from Kootenay National Park in the Canadian Rockies. This new species has rake-like claws and a pineapple-slice-shaped mouth at the front of an enormous head, and it sheds light on the diversity of the earliest relatives of insects, crabs, spiders, and their kin. The findings were announced July 31, 2019, in a study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Reaching up to a foot in length, the new species, named Cambroraster falcatus, comes from the famous 506-million-year-old Burgess Shale. "Its size would have been even more impressive at the time it was alive, as most animals living during the Cambrian Period were smaller than your little finger," said Joe Moysiuk, a graduate student based at the Royal Ontario Museum who led the study as part of his PhD research in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto. Cambroraster was a distant cousin of the iconic Anomalocaris, the top predator living in the seas at that time, but it seems to have been feeding in a radically different way," continued Moysiuk.

The name Cambroraster refers to the remarkable claws of this animal, which bear a parallel series of outgrowths, looking like forward-directed rakes. "We think Cambroraster may have used these claws to sift through sediment, trapping buried prey in the net-like array of hooked spines," added Jean-Bernard Caron, Moysiuk's supervisor and the Richard M. Ivey Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum.

With the interspace between the spines on the claws at typically less than a millimeter, this would have enabled Cambroraster to feed on very small organisms, although larger prey could also likely be captured, and ingested into the circular tooth-lined mouth. This specialized mouth apparatus is the namesake of the extinct group Radiodonta, which includes both Cambroraster and Anomalocaris. Radiodonta is considered to be one of the earliest offshoots of the arthropod lineage (today including all animals with an exoskeleton, a segmented body and jointed limbs).

The second part of the species name falcatus was given in tribute to another of Cambroraster's distinctive features: the large shield-like carapace covering its head, which is shaped like the Millennium Falcon spaceship from the Star Wars films. "With its broad head carapace with deep notches accommodating the upward facing eyes, Cambroraster resembles modern living bottom-dwelling animals like horseshoe crabs. This represents a remarkable case of evolutionary convergence in these radiodonts," Moysiuk explained. Such convergence is likely reflective of a similar environment and mode of life--like modern horseshoe crabs, Cambroraster may have used its carapace to plough through sediment as it fed.

Perhaps even more astonishing is the large number of specimens recovered. "The sheer abundance of this animal is extraordinary," added Dr. Caron, who is also an Assistant Professor in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and Earth Sciences at the University of Toronto, and the leader of the field expeditions that unearthed the new fossils. "Over the past few summers we found hundreds of specimens, sometimes with dozens of individuals covering single rock slabs."

Based on over a hundred exceptionally well-preserved fossils now housed at the Museum, researchers were able to reconstruct Cambroraster in unprecedented detail, revealing characteristics that had not been seen before in related species.

"The radiodont fossil record is very sparse; typically, we only find scattered bits and pieces. The large number of parts and unusually complete fossils preserved at the same place are a real coup, as they help us to better understand what these animals looked like and how they lived," said Dr. Caron. "We are really excited about this discovery. Cambroraster clearly illustrates that predation was a big deal at that time with many kinds of surprising morphological adaptations."

Fossils from the Cambrian period, particularly from sites like the Burgess Shale, record a dramatic "explosion" of biodiversity at this time, culminating in the evolution of most of the major groups of animals that survive today. But, the story has far more intricacy than a straight line leading from simple ancestors to the vast diversity of modern species. "Far from being primitive, radiodonts show us that at the very outset of complex ecosystems on Earth, early representatives of the arthropod lineage rapidly radiated to play a wide array of ecological roles," remarked Moysiuk.

The fossils were found at several sites in the Marble Canyon area in Kootenay National Park, British Columbia, which have been discovered by ROM-led field teams since 2012, with some of the key specimens unearthed just last summer. These sites are about 40 kilometers away from the original Burgess Shale fossil site in Yoho National Park that was first discovered in 1909. What is also exciting for researchers is the realization that there is a large new area in northern Kootenay National Park worth scientific exploration, holding the potential for the discovery of many more new species.

The Burgess Shale fossil sites are located within Yoho and Kootenay National Parks and are managed by Parks Canada. Parks Canada is proud to work with leading scientific researchers to expand our knowledge and understanding of this key period of earth history and to share these sites with the world through award-winning guided hikes. The Burgess Shale was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980 due to its outstanding universal value, and is now part of the larger Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site.

A hormone that is released in our brain when we fall in love also makes starfish turn their stomach inside out to feed, according to a new study from Queen Mary University of London.

Oxytocin, more commonly known as the 'love hormone', is important for sexual reproduction in humans, other mammals and even nematode worms, but this study shows that in the common European starfish (Asterias rubens) it is important for feeding.

The findings, published in the journal BMC Biology, could play an important role in controlling the feeding behavior of the crown of thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci), which feeds on coral and is having a devastating impact on the Australian Great Barrier Reef.

Based on this study the researchers know that oxytocin-type molecules have been acting in the nervous systems of animals for over half-a-billion years.

However, the effects on feeding can be very different in different animal types - in starfish oxytocin-type molecules seem to be important for normal feeding to occur whereas studies on mice have revealed that oxytocin inhibits feeding behaviour.

Professor Maurice Elphick, lead author of the study from Queen Mary University of London, said: "Our study has provided important new evidence that oxytocin-type molecules are important and ancient regulators of feeding in animals. So oxytocin is much more than a 'love hormone' - perhaps especially for animals like starfish that don't fall in love!"

Esther Odekunle, formerly a PhD student at Queen Mary University of London, added: "If the 'love hormone' plays a role in the feeding behaviour of the crown of thorns starfish, then this research may provide a basis for the development of novel chemical methods to control their appetite for coral."

To investigate the role of the hormone, the researchers had to inject it into the starfish to see if anything happened.

Within a few minutes the injected starfish started bending their arms and adopted a 'humped' posture similar to the posture used when they are feeding. Furthermore, it caused the starfish to evert their stomach out of their mouth.

This was an interesting combination of effects because starfish feed naturally by climbing on top of prey such as mussels or oysters and adopting a rigid humped posture so that they can employ the pulling power of lots of tiny tube feet on the underside of each arm to pull apart the two valves of their prey.

Having created a tiny gap, the starfish then evert their stomach out of their mouth, through the gap and into the body of the prey - where they proceed to digest the soft tissues of the prey into a soup-like mixture, which is then drawn back into the starfish as food.

When all of the prey tissue has been digested the starfish withdraws its stomach back into its mouth, leaving behind an empty shell and moving off to find its next victim.

Professor Elphick said: "What is fascinating is that injecting the hormone in starfish induces what is known as fictive feeding. The starfish are behaving as if they are feeding on a mussel or an oyster but no mussel or oyster is there to be eaten."

The researchers found that the effect of the hormone is so powerful it made starfish 2-3 times slower at righting themselves when flipped over. This is an important defense behavior in nature as they can be upturned by strong waves.

What they also found was that both the hormone and its receptor are found in many regions of the starfish body - including the central nervous system and the stomach. These findings are consistent with the striking effects of the oxytocin-like molecule on starfish behaviour.

Researchers from the University of Paderborn and University of Rostock, both in Germany, published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines how the purchase of a gift may promote future brand loyalty with the gifted brand.

The study, forthcoming in the September issue of the Journal of Marketing and titled "Gift Purchases as Catalysts for Strengthening Customer-Brand Relationships," is authored by Andreas Eggert, Lena Steinhoff, and Carina Witte.

Companies are constantly looking for new ways to engage customers with their brands and to build deep and lasting customer-brand relationships. While gifts have been recognized as an effective means to build interpersonal relationships, they can also jump-start customer-brand relationships. The purchase of gifts may engage customers deeply with the gifted brand and promote their future brand loyalty. Also, in contrast with most of marketing's relationship-building instruments, encouraging customers' gifting behavior does not trigger any considerable costs, but instead generates instant returns.

The research team first conducted a field study with an international retailer of beauty products. The hypothesis is that customers purchasing gifts display higher future purchase behaviors towards the brand. The researchers expected that these positive effects would decrease for customers with more purchase experience.

Key findings include:

Gift buyers spend 63% more in the year following a gift purchase than a matched sample of customers who purchase the brand for their personal use.

Gift buyers increase their purchase frequency (25%), spend more per shopping trip (41%), and engage in more cross-buying (49%). The sales lift is particularly pronounced among new customers with little prior purchase experience with the focal brand.

Receiving assistance during the gift purchase process and branded gift wrapping represent two gift purchase design characteristics which increase the effect.

Here is the story behind these findings. Laden with symbolic meaning, gift purchases create buying situations with special importance for customers' identity and are critical touchpoints during customer journeys. Eggert explains that "With so much at stake, gift purchases can deepen the customer relationship with the brand, with positive impacts on key customer metrics like attitude strength and future purchase behaviors. Our research suggests that gift purchases are an opportunity for retailers to engage customers with their brand."

Marketing managers can leverage gift purchases as effective relationship-building marketing instruments in retail settings. First, managers should identify products to position as gifts and promote them as such. Marketing managers should systematically highlight selected products in marketing communications and offer promotional incentives for consumers looking for a gift. Second, managers should target new rather than experienced customers with gift purchase promotions. Third, managers should facilitate the gift selection process. Retail store managers should train and encourage frontline employees to assist customers proactively in the gift selection process, to stimulate customer gratitude. Firms might also develop advanced online filters to help customers identify an appropriate product for specific gift-giving occasions. Fourth, retailers should make their brand more prominent on gift packaging. By providing high-quality, branded gift packaging, retailers can strengthen their customers' public commitment to the brand and stimulate long-lasting attitudinal and behavioral performance outcomes. Finally, retailers should encourage existing customers to recommend the brand to their peers for upcoming gift giving occasions.

Technology companies could be doing much more to protect individuals and organisations from the threats posed by phishing, according to research by the University of Plymouth.

However, users also need to make themselves more aware of the dangers to ensure potential scammers do not obtain access to personal or sensitive information.

Academics from Plymouth's Centre for Security, Communications and Network (CSCAN) Research assessed the effectiveness of phishing filters employed by various email service providers.

They sent two sets of messages to victim accounts, using email content obtained from archives of reported phishing attacks, with the first as plain text with links removed and the second having links retained and pointing to their original destination.

They then examined which mailbox it reached within email accounts as well as whether they were explicitly labelled in any way to denote them as suspicious or malicious.

In the significant majority of cases (75% without links and 64% with links) the potential phishing messages made it into inboxes and were not in any way labelled to highlight them as spam or suspicious. Moreover, only 6% of messages were explicitly labelled as malicious.

Professor Steven Furnell, leader of CSCAN, worked on the study with MSc student Kieran Millet and Associate Professor of Cyber Security Dr Maria Papadaki.

He said: "The poor performance of most providers implies they either do not employ filtering based on language content, or that it is inadequate to protect users. Given users' tendency to perform poorly at identifying malicious messages this is a worrying outcome. The results suggest an opportunity to improve phishing detection in general, but the technology as it stands cannot be relied upon to provide anything other than a small contribution in this context."

The number of phishing incidents has risen dramatically since they were first recorded in 2003. In fact, global software giant Kaspersky Lab reported that its anti-phishing system was triggered 482,465,211 times in 2018, almost double the number for 2017.

It is also a significant problem for businesses, with 80% telling the Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2019 that they have encountered 'Fraudulent emails or being directed to fraudulent websites' - placing this category well ahead of malware and ransomware.

Phishing is designed to trick victims into divulging sensitive information, such as identity and financial-related data, and the threat can actually take several forms:

Bulk-phishing - where the approach is not specially targeted or tailored toward the recipient;

Spear-phishing - where the message is targeted at specific individuals or companies and tailored accordingly;

Clone-phishing - where the scammers take a legitimate email containing an attachment or link, and replace it with a malicious version;

Whaling - in these cases the phishing is specifically targeted towards high value or senior individuals.

Professor Furnell, who has previously led various projects relating to user-facing security, added: "Phishing has now been a problem for over a decade and a half. Unfortunately, just like malware, it's proven to be the cyber security equivalent of an unwanted genie that we can't put back in the bottle. Despite many efforts to educate users and provide safeguards, people are still falling victim. Our study shows the technology can identify things that we would ideally want users to be able to spot for themselves - but while there is a net, it clearly has big holes."

In the fraught world of today's immigration debates, ethnic enclaves are a rare point where both sides converge. Immigration restrictionists look at these communities, where immigrants speak their own languages and shop, work, and worship among themselves, and worry that the newcomers won't adopt their society's norms and values. Immigration advocates, meanwhile, think enclaves risk funneling their residents into an underclass and blocking access to economic opportunity.

These concerns are especially present in Europe, where more than 2 million people have applied for asylum since 2015, and where several countries disperse refugees across locations in part to discourage the growth of enclaves.

While unease about ethnic enclaves is widespread and deeply rooted, it's based more on optics than evidence. Now, a new study reveals that these fears may be misguided: Regional ethnic networks can actually make it easier for newcomers to gain a foothold in the local economy.

Researchers from the Immigration Policy Lab at ETH Zurich and Stanford University studied recent asylum seekers in Switzerland, and found that they were more likely to be employed if they lived close to a larger group of people who share their background. A 10 percent increase in the size of the ethnic network boosted employment by 2 percent within the first years after arrival.

"Our study shows that ethnic networks can catalyze the economic integration of refugees," said Linna Martén, a researcher at Sweden's Uppsala University. She led the study alongside Jens Hainmueller, a Stanford political science professor, and Dominik Hangartner, associate professor of public policy at ETH Zurich. "These networks can play an important role in supporting refugees as they navigate the host country's labor market during the critical first few years after their arrival."

The findings suggest that ethnic communities are not necessarily the barrier to integration that many believe them to be, and they offer new insights into an underappreciated support system refugees rely on as they rebuild their lives in a new country.

Insights from Switzerland

Switzerland offered the researchers a golden opportunity to uncover the influence of asylum seekers' social networks. First, since the country allocates asylum seekers virtually randomly across its 26 member states, or cantons, they could compare asylum seekers who were similar in just about every way except for the canton they landed in. (Partly because of this policy, Switzerland does not have "enclaves" in the traditional sense, but cantons do vary widely in their concentrations of various immigrant groups.) If the asylum seekers could choose where to live, those who opted for areas with plenty of their fellow countrymen might look very different from those who preferred to live outside these communities, and it would be impossible to isolate the effect of the networks from the many other things distinguishing the two groups.

Second, Switzerland requires refugees with "subsidiary protection" to stay put for at least five years, which means their exposure to these ethnic communities remains stable as the different groups are followed over time.

Switzerland also provided richly detailed data on each refugee. In addition to demographic profiles, the government recorded their employment status at the end of each year, their employer, the date they began working, and the kind of job they held. And the data allowed the researchers to measure refugees' social networks not just by country of origin but also by ethnicity and language--potentially important distinctions for countries whose diverse populations live within the same borders but have little else in common.

When the researchers homed in on refugees who arrived between 2008 and 2013, and tracked each new cohort for five years, a subtle but persistent trend emerged. Refugees who were assigned to live in cantons that happened to have greater numbers of people like themselves (whether shared nationality, language, or ethnicity) found jobs sooner and held those jobs more consistently. Women, who usually have employment rates of just 8 percent on average, benefitted the most from proximity to members of their own social group.

While early employment tends to be a stepping stone toward longer-term integration, it isn't a guarantee. Newcomers may be industrious but stuck doing unskilled work within their ethnic community. Yet when the researchers looked more closely at those who were employed, they found no sign that they were clustering in low-wage jobs.

Could it simply be that places with lots of immigrants are friendlier to refugees? Apparently not: When "network" was defined just by the number of immigrants, and not the number specifically with the same background, there was no positive effect on employment.

Networks and Newcomers

The likely explanation, the researchers thought, was that news of job opportunities spreads by word of mouth among members of the same social group. The data, it turned out, suggested this dynamic. Whenever refugees shared the same employer, they were also highly likely to share their ethnicity, country of origin, or language. Of those who were working, 60 percent had an employer who had hired at least one other person from their country in the past, and the share of co-national coworkers was more than twice as high within firms as within work sectors. In other words, refugees from, say, Somalia don't gravitate toward specific sectors, such as restaurant work or construction, to the same extent as they gather around specific employers.

These findings point to a practical value of ethnic networks, something that may be lost when asylum seekers and refugees are widely dispersed. Imagine you've just landed in a new place that bears very little resemblance to your home country. One of the first things you're likely to do is seek out people from home who can help you navigate and get settled. Those connections can give you tips for your job search, put in a good word with their boss, or provide an introduction to someone who can open doors. While social networks can be helpful for any immigrant, they may be especially important for refugees, who may have experienced trauma at home and face stress and uncertainty as they await a decision on their asylum applications.

At a time when unprecedented numbers of people around the world have been forced from their homes, the countries receiving them are intently focused on refugee integration, often with a focus on their employment. What would they do differently if they appreciated how ethnic networks can help channel refugees into work and self-sufficiency? Allowing refugees to tap into these organic support systems wouldn't cost much money or require the creation and administering of elaborate new programs, but it could make a difference. Ultimately, policymakers tasked with integrating these vulnerable populations must consider not just how to share the responsibility among different regions but also how to set them up for success.

Babies who have persistent fluid-filled areas in their kidneys during gestation are likely to present with urinary tract problems and to be admitted to hospital in early childhood, according to new research published by Shantini Paranjothy and colleagues at Cardiff University, UK in the open access journal PLOS Medicine on July 30.

In the UK, pregnant women have a scan at 20 weeks to identify any structural abnormalities in the developing fetus. Some of the findings in the scan are indicators of later health problems, and although fluid-filled areas of the kidneys are sometimes seen, it is not known whether this is a reliable indicator of future adverse health outcomes. The population-based cohort study on which the new research is based linked ultrasound scans with data on hospital admissions in the first 3 years of life, and the findings could be used to develop counselling for parents and care pathways in cases where the fluid-containing areas, known as renal pelvis dilatation, are observed.

The researchers used the Welsh Study of Mothers and Babies prospective, population-based cohort and included 21,239 children in their analysis. In 7.6 of every 1,000 babies, mild-to-moderate dilatation was seen at the 20-week scan, and the risk of hospital admission was more than 7 times greater in those children with renal pelvis dilatation than in those without (conditional hazard ratio 7.23, 95% CI 4.31-12.15). Risks were increased in those with later dilatation, but in most children dilatation did not persist and hospital admission rates related to urinary tract symptoms were similar to those in children with no dilatation.

Despite the large size of the study, the number of cases (138) was relatively small and so statistical power was limited. Protocols for reporting and management of renal pelvis dilation are in development, and further studies should examine whether other characteristics at the 20-week scan could improve detection of renal pathology during antenatal screening.

RNA -- the short-lived transcripts of genes -- from the "Tumat puppy", a wolf of the Pleistocene era has been isolated, and its sequence analyzed in a new study by Oliver Smith of the University of Copenhagen and colleagues publishing on July 30 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology. The results establish the possibility of examining a range of RNA transcripts from ancient organisms, a possibility previously thought to be extremely unlikely because of the short lifespan of RNA.

DNA, which encodes the "hard copy" of genes, is known to survive for thousands of years under favourable conditions. But RNA -- the short-lived working copy of a gene, which is transcribed from DNA in the cell and forms the instructions for making proteins -- is rapidly broken down in living tissue by a suite of recycling enzymes. That instability typically continues after death, and because of that, researchers have generally assumed that the likelihood of finding intact an ancient cell's complement of RNA -- its transcriptome -- was vanishingly small. But there have been a few exceptions, mostly in plants, which led the authors to ask whether there might be ancient animal transcriptomes well-preserved enough to be sequenced.

They isolated and analyzed RNA from liver tissue of a 14,300-year-old canid, possibly a wolf or partially domesticated wolf-like creature, that had been preserved in Siberian permafrost until its discovery, as well as tissue from two 19th- and 20th-century wolves for comparison. Using a variety of transcriptomic techniques and quality control measures, the team showed that the RNA sequenced from the Pleistocene-era canid was truly representative of the animal's RNA, with many liver-specific transcripts that matched more modern samples from both wolves and dogs.

The Siberian canid's transcriptome is the oldest RNA sequenced by far, surpassing the next oldest transcriptome by at least 13,000 years. The authors note that unlike paleo-genomics, paleo-transcriptomics is unlikely to become routine, because even in the best conditions, RNA is not as well preserved as DNA.

Nonetheless, there are likely to be a large number of other naturally frozen specimens for which deciphering the transcriptome is possible, opening up for researchers not just the genes of ancient organisms, but the flux of cellular activity encoded by the transcriptome.

"Ancient DNA researchers have previously been reluctant to attempt to sequence ancient RNA because it is generally more unstable than DNA, and more prone to enzymatic degradation," said Dr Smith. "However, following our recent successes in sequencing ancient RNA from plant material, we speculated that a well-preserved animal specimen, frozen in the permafrost, just might retain enough material to sequence. To our delight, we found that not only did we find RNA from various tissues, but in some case the signal was so strong that we could distinguish between tissues in a way that makes biological sense.

"Knowing that RNA acts as an intermediary between DNA and proteins, both of which are more stable, it might be tempting to ask, 'so what?'. But we think the future of ancient RNA has great potential. For example, many of the most clinically relevant viruses around today have RNA genomes, and the RNA stage is often crucial to understanding the intricacies and complexities of gene regulation. This might have repercussions when discussing the environmental stresses and strains that drive evolution."

AUSTIN, Texas -- People who cheat on their spouses are significantly more likely to engage in misconduct in the workplace, according to a study from the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

The researchers looked at the records of police officers, financial advisers, white-collar criminals and senior executives who used the Ashley Madison marital infidelity website. Operating under the slogan "Life is short. Have an affair," Ashley Madison advertises itself as a dating service for married people to have "discreet encounters." Despite promises of discreetness, the data were put in the public domain through a hack in 2015 that included 36 million user accounts, including 1 million paid users in the United States.

The study, "Personal Infidelity and Professional Conduct in 4 Settings," by McCombs finance faculty members John M. Griffin and Samuel Kruger, along with Gonzalo Maturana of Emory University, found that Ashley Madison users in the professional settings they studied were more than twice as likely to engage in corporate misconduct.

"This is the first study that's been able to look at whether there is a correlation between personal infidelity and professional conduct," Kruger said. "We find a strong correlation, which tells us that infidelity is informative about expected professional conduct."

The researchers investigated four study groups totaling 11,235 individuals using data on police officers from the Citizens Police Data Project, data on financial advisers from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority BrokerCheck database, data on defendants in SEC cases from the Securities and Exchange Commission's litigation release archives, and data on CEOs and CFOs from Execucomp.

Even after matching misconduct professionals to misconduct-free individuals with similar ages, genders and experiences and controlling for a wide range of executive and cultural variables, the researchers found that people with histories of misconduct were significantly more likely to use the Ashley Madison website.

Their findings suggest a strong connection between people's actions in their personal and professional lives and provide support for the idea that eliminating workplace sexual misconduct may also reduce fraudulent activity.

"Our results show that personal sexual conduct is correlated with professional conduct," Kruger said. "Eliminating sexual misconduct in the workplace could have the extra benefit of contributing to more ethical corporate cultures in general."

Greater brand-brand competition alone will likely not lower list prices of brand-name drugs in the US, according to a study published July 30 in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine by Ameet Sarpatwari of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and colleagues.

US prescription drug spending has increased sharply over the last decade, with higher launch prices of new brand-name drugs and routine price increases on older brand-name drugs. Promoting greater brand-brand competition, which occurs between brand-name drugs indicated for the same condition, has been proposed to address high drug prices. Yet many examples exist of price increases following the introduction of brand-name competition, casting doubt on its effectiveness in the pharmaceutical market. To better understand the economic impact of brand-brand competition, Sarpatwari and colleagues systematically reviewed the peer-reviewed literature for studies of how new drug market entry affects prices of drugs within the same class for patients with the same indications. They searched PubMed and EconLit for original studies on brand-brand competition in the US market published in English between 1990 and April 2019, and found 10 studies evaluating a wide range of drug classes.

None of the 10 studies found that brand-brand competition lowered the list price of existing brand-name drugs within a class. The findings of two studies suggested that such competition may help restrain how new drug prices are set, however. Other studies found evidence that brand-brand competition was mediated by the relative quality of competing drugs and the extent to which they are marketed, with safer or more effective new drugs and greater marketing associated with higher intra-class list prices. According to the authors, the findings suggest that policies to promote brand-brand competition in the US pharmaceutical market, such as accelerating approval of non-first-in-class drugs, will probably not result in lower drug list prices in the absence of additional structural reforms.

Researchers at the Toyohashi University of Technology have successfully fabricated a binder-less tin phosphide (Sn4P3)/carbon (C) composite film electrode for lithium-ion batteries via aerosol deposition. The Sn4P3/C particles were directly solidified on a metal substrate via impact consolidation, without applying a binder. Charging and discharging cycling stabilities were improved by both complexed carbon and controlled electrical potential window for lithium extraction. This finding could help realize advanced lithium-ion batteries of higher capacity.

Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries are widely used as a power source in portable electronic devices. They have recently attracted considerable attention because of their potential to be employed in large-scale as a power source for electric vehicles and plugin hybrid electric vehicles and as stationary energy storage systems for renewable energy. To realize advanced Li-ion batteries with higher energy density, anode materials with higher capacity are required. Although a few Li alloys such as Li-Si and Li-Sn, whose theoretical capacity is much higher than that of graphite (theoretical gravimetric capacity = 372 mAh/g), have been extensively studied, they generally result in poor cycling stability due to the large variation in volume during charging and discharging reactions.

Tin phosphide (Sn4P3) (theoretical gravimetric capacity = 1255 mAh/g) with layered structure, generally used as a high-capacity alloy-based anode material for Li-ion batteries, has an averaged operation potential of -0.5 V vs. Li/Li+. Reports indicate that complexing carbon materials with nano-structured Sn4P3 particles significantly enhance the cycling stability. Generally, electrodes used in batteries are fabricated by coating a slurry comprising electrode active materials, conductive carbon additives, and binders on metallic foils. For carbon complexed Sn4P3 (Sn4P3/C) anodes (such as those reported in the literature), the weight fraction of the active materials in an electrode is decreased by approximately 60-70 % because of the use of significant quantities of conductive additives and binders to achieve stable cycling. Consequently, the gravimetric specific capacity per electrode weight (including those of conductive carbon additives and binders) is decreased significantly.

Researchers at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Information Engineering, Toyohashi University of Technology, have successfully fabricated a binder-less Sn4P3/C composite film electrode for Li-ion battery anodes via aerosol deposition (AD). In this process, the Sn4P3 particles are complexed with acetylene black using simple ball-milling method; the obtained Sn4P3/C particles are then directly solidified on a metal substrate via impact consolidation without adding any other conductive additives or binders. This method enables enhancement of the fraction of Sn4P3 in the composite to above 80%. Furthermore, structural change of the composite electrode is reduced and cycling stability is improved for both complexed carbon and controlled electrical potential window for lithium extraction reaction. The Sn4P3/C composite film fabricated by the AD process maintains gravimetric capacities of approximately 730 mAh/g, 500 mAh mAh/g, and 400 mAh mAh/g at 100th, 200th, and 400th cycles, respectively.

The first author Toki Moritaka is quoted as saying, "Although optimizing the deposition conditions was difficult, useful information on enhancement of cycling stability of the Sn4P3/C composite film electrode fabricated by the AD process was obtained. The complexed carbon functions not only as a buffer to suppress the collapse of electrodes caused by the large variation in volume of Sn4P3, but also as an electronic conduction path among the atomized active material particles in the composite."

"This process is an effective means to increase the capacity value per electrode weight. We believe there is scope for improvement of the electrochemical performance by the size and content of the carbon in Sn4P3/C used in composite film fabrication by the AD process. We are now trying to optimize the complexed carbon content and increase the composite film thickness," quotes Associate Professor Ryoji Inada.

The findings of this study may contribute to the realization of advanced Li-ion batteries of higher capacity. Moreover, because not only Li but Na can also be stored in and extracted from Sn4P3 by similar alloying and dealloying reactions, the Sn4P3 electrode can be employed in next-generation Na-ion batteries at much lower costs.

The more rainfall a region in sub-Saharan Africa gets, the more mosquitoes proliferate there and the more likely its residents will sleep under their insecticide-treated bed nets to prevent malaria transmission, a new study from the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs suggests. CCP is based at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

While it has become clear in recent years that net use is higher in the rainy season than in the dry season, the results, published this month in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, are the first to quantify this phenomenon. This new data will allow malaria control programs to see what times of year net use is lagging and use the information to intensify behavior change messages to boost net use before malaria transmission peaks, even if it doesn't seem like the mosquitoes are biting yet.

"What we are seeing by studying rainfall patterns is that in places with year-round rainfall, which means year-round malaria transmission, people who have bed nets are using them all year, which is great news," says CCP's Hannah Koenker, PhD, MPH, who led the study.

In countries with a dry season, the new data show that net use peaks six to eight weeks after rains begin, which corresponds with the time it takes mosquitoes to breed and build up their populations. Malaria transmission can happen before then, however. "By better understanding seasonal patterns of net use, we can make more informed decisions about how to most effectively deploy nets and when it makes sense to heavily promote their use," she says.

To conduct the research, Koenker and her colleagues brought together data from multiple years of net use surveys from countries across sub-Saharan Africa, and assessed monthly net use using large datasets of precipitation, temperature, demographics and malaria incidence to better understand when and where people use their nets throughout the year.

Koenker says the findings make it clear that those who study and promote net use must consider the time of year that these assessments take place. If a survey is done in the rainy season and the next is conducted in the dry season, it may appear that net use has dramatically fallen off, when it is in fact part of the normal seasonal cycle of net use. Likewise, she says, increases in net use from survey to survey could be skewed if the second survey is simply conducted when it is rainier.

"We all need to take the season into account when interpreting data around net use," Koenker says.

In addition, she says, "it is critical to use social and behavior change interventions that encourage people who have nets to use them during times when transmission is just starting, and when the rains stop but transmission is still happening. This may mean that some programs may need to redirect behavior change efforts toward the dry season, and work to convince people that it is worthwhile to use their nets even when mosquito abundance and perceived risk may be quite low."

The World Health Organization estimates that between 2000 and 2015 the rate of new malaria cases declined by 37 percent globally and malaria deaths fell by 60 percent, with 6.2 million lives saved. Three quarters of those gains can be attributed to interventions such as insecticide-treated bed nets.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Anyone can express their commitment to the environment through individual efforts, but some pro-environmental or "green" behaviors may be seen as either feminine or masculine, which Penn State researchers say may have social consequences.

In a series of studies, the researchers evaluated specific pro-environmental behaviors that previous research suggested were seen as either "feminine" or "masculine" and examined whether they affected how people were perceived.

They found that men and women were more likely to question a man's sexual orientation if he engaged in "feminine" pro-environmental behaviors, such as using reusable shopping bags. They were also more likely to question a woman's sexual orientation if she engaged in "masculine" pro-environmental behaviors, such as caulking windows.

Additionally, men were more likely to avoid women who were interested in "masculine" pro-environmental behaviors.

Janet K. Swim, professor of psychology, said it is important to understand these social consequences because they may hold people back from engaging in behaviors that could ultimately help the environment.

"There may be subtle, gender-related consequences when we engage in various pro-environmental behaviors," Swim said. "People may avoid certain behaviors because they are managing the gendered impression they anticipate others will have of them. Or they may be avoided if the behaviors they choose do not match their gender."

According to the researchers, environmentalism in general may be seen as feminine because it fits in with women's traditional role as caregivers. Yet, particular pro-environmental behaviors can align with traditional feminine or masculine roles.

"Behaviors don't just help us accomplish something concrete, they also signal something about who we are," Swim said. "Line drying clothes or keeping tires at proper pressures may signal that we care about the environment, but if those behaviors are seen as gendered, they may signal other things, as well."

In three studies with a total of 960 participants, the researchers assessed impressions and avoidance of men and women engaging in "feminine" and "masculine" behaviors.

During the first two studies, participants read fictional summaries of a person's daily activities, which included either feminine, masculine or neutral pro-environmental behaviors. Participants then rated whether the person had masculine or feminine traits and guessed what the person's sexual orientation might be.

"Reflecting the tendency to see environmentalism as feminine, all the people were rated as more feminine than masculine regardless of the behaviors they did," Swim said. She also noted that the tendency was strongest when either women or men engaged in feminine behaviors.

The researchers found that participants whose behaviors conformed to their gender were seen as more heterosexual than those whose behaviors did not conform to their gender, which may suggest participants were using traditional gender roles as clues to sexual identity.

Additionally, the researchers indicated that while participants did not view the nonconformists as gay or lesbian, their ratings suggested that on average they were uncertain about whether the person was heterosexual.

"If being seen as heterosexual is important to a person, that person may prioritize gender-conforming over gender-nonconforming pro-environmental behaviors in anticipation of how others might see them," Swim said.

The researchers did a third study to examine whether people avoided others based on the other person's pro-environmental behavior preferences. In a room with several other people, participants completed a digital survey where they indicted which environmental topics they would like to discuss with a partner.

The participants were then given a list of what they believed to be the topic preferences of four other participants. The list included a woman and a man who preferred discussing gender-conforming behaviors, as well as a woman and a man who preferred gender-nonconforming behaviors. The participants were then asked to rank whom they would prefer to be partnered with in order of preference.

The researchers found that women avoided men more than women, as well as people who were interested in masculine rather than feminine behaviors. According to the researchers, although women's partner preferences showed gender biases, these preferences did not seem to be based on whether other's behaviors conformed to gender roles or not.

In contrast, the researchers found that men were more likely to distance themselves from women engaging in masculine behaviors than any of the other three potential partners. They were equally interested in partnering with women engaging in feminine behaviors and men who engaged in masculine or feminine behaviors.

The researchers said these results suggested that compared to men, women were more likely to experience negative social consequences from men for engaging in non-gender role-conforming pro-environmental behaviors.

"We were surprised that it was only women who experienced being avoided if they engaged in nonconforming gender-role behaviors," Swim said. "We can't say why this is happening, but it is a social consequence. Women may be experiencing this negative feedback and might not know why."

The researchers said that the paper -- recently published in the journal Sex Roles -- underlines the importance of continuing to study gender stereotypes surrounding environmentalism and its associated behaviors. They added that activists and policymakers who are trying to promote pro-environmental behaviors may want to take these pressures to conform to gender roles into account as possible barriers.

In the future, Swim said she and her fellow researchers will continue to study the effects of pro-environmental behaviors, such as whether social repercussions affect whether a person is willing to do a behavior or not.

AURORA, Colo. (July 30, 2019) - A pair of new journal articles by researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine indicate that both genetic and environmental factors play significant roles in the onset of vitiligo, an autoimmune disease that results in the loss of color in blotches of skin.

The findings also show that while the tools for scientific understanding of the genetic basis of a complex disease like vitiligo have advanced, there are still many other as-yet unidentified factors that contribute to vitiligo's onset.

"Vitiligo has been perhaps the easiest of all complex diseases to sort out," said senior author Richard A. Spritz, MD, director of the Human Medical Genetics Program and professor of pediatrics at the CU School of Medicine. "Through years of previous studies, we have identified what could be called a 'vitiligo parts list' of 50 common contributory genes/risk variants."

Spritz and his co-authors reviewed two types of vitiligo cases - simplex and multiplex. In most instances, vitiligo appears in individuals with no family history of the disease, which are referred to as the simplex cases. In the multiplex cases, there are other family members with vitiligo.

A paper by Spritz and his co-authors in the American Journal of Human Genetics combines the 50 vitiligo common risk variants together to make a vitiligo "genetic risk score," and then compared the simplex and multiplex cases.

"The paper could be called a first chapter to the 'vitiligo instruction manual,'" Spritz said. "We found that the vitiligo genetic risk score is higher in the multiplex families than in the simplex cases, and the more affected relatives in the family the higher the risk score. That means that vitiligo in multiplex families and simplex cases is basically the same, but that the families with multiple affected relatives have higher genetic risk. That means that the same treatments probably will be effective in both types of cases."

That finding complicates the ability of scientists and physicians who want to predict who might be affected by vitiligo. Simplex cases and multiplex cases seem to mostly involve the same underlying genetic variants, with different patients just having different combinations of genetic risk variants. Such a finding complicates the use of predictive personalized medicine to diagnose and treat complex diseases, Spritz said, because there doesn't appear to be genetically-defined patient subgroups with different underlying biology who might thus respond differentially to personalized treatments.

In addition to Spritz, the authors of the article are Genevieve H.L. Roberts, a PhD candidate in human medical genetics and genomics at CU Anschutz Medical Campus at the time of writing the article; Subrata Paul, a PhD candidate in statistics at CU Denver; Daniel Yorgov, PhD, assistant professor of applied statistics at Purdue University Fort Wayne; and Stephanie Santorico, PhD, professor and director of statistical programs at the Colorado School of Public Health. This research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health.

In the second article, which is published as a letter to the editor in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, Spritz and his co-authors note that the average age of the onset of vitiligo in patients has changed dramatically over past decades.

"Vitiligo converted from being principally a pediatric-onset to principally an adult-onset disease over the period 1970-2004," Spritz said. "That is amazing. Our genes haven't changed over that period of time; altered genes or even gene effects don't seem to be the cause. This must reflect some beneficial environmental change that somehow delays or reduces vitiligo triggering in people who are genetically susceptible. What was it? We don't know."

The authors write that one or more environmental changes seem to have altered triggering of vitiligo and delayed disease onset, with a similar pattern both in North America and in Europe. "While this apparently beneficial change provides an extraordinary inroad to discover vitiligo environmental triggers, the number of potential candidates is enormous," Spritz and his colleagues write.

Among just a few of the possibilities in the United States: The Clean Air Acts of 1963 and 1970, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963, the Water Quality Act of 1969, the establishment of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in 1970. Globally, sunscreens with sun protection factor ratings were introduced in 1974. Even eating habits may contribute. The authors note that yogurt consumption became more common in the early 1970s, which potentially altered the gut microbiome for many people.