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The large, error-correcting quantum computers envisioned today could be decades away, yet experts are vigorously trying to come up with ways to use existing and near-term quantum processors to solve useful problems despite limitations due to errors or "noise."

A key envisioned use is simulating molecular properties. In the long run, this can lead to advances in materials improvement and drug discovery. But not with noisy calculations confusing the results.

Now, a team of Virginia Tech chemistry and physics researchers have advanced quantum simulation by devising an algorithm that can more efficiently calculate the properties of molecules on a noisy quantum computer. Virginia Tech College of Science faculty members Ed Barnes, Sophia Economou, and Nick Mayhall recently published a paper in Nature Communications detailing the advancement.

Quantum computers are expected to be able to carry out certain kinds of calculations far more efficiently than the "classical" computers in use today. They are similar to classical computers, however, in that they run algorithms by applying sequences of logic gates -- in this case, "quantum gates," which together form quantum circuits -- to bits of information. For today's noisy quantum computers, the problem has been that so much noise would accumulate within a circuit that the computation would degrade and render any subsequent calculations inaccurate. Scientists have had difficulty designing circuits that are both shorter and more accurate.

The Virginia Tech team addressed this issue by developing a method that grows the circuit in an iterative way. "We start with a minimal circuit, then grow it as we add on logic gate after logic gate in short circuits until the computer finds the solution," said Mayhall, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry.

A second major benefit of the algorithm is that Barnes, Economou, and Mayhall designed it to adapt itself based upon the molecular system being simulated. Different molecules will dictate their own circuits, uniquely tailored to them.

The interdisciplinary collaboration between Virginia Tech's departments of Chemistry and Physics -- Barnes, Economou, and Mayhall and a team of graduate students and postdocs from both departments -- have received grants from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy totaling more than $2.8 million.

Virginia Tech and IBM recently established a partnership that gives the researchers access to IBM's quantum computing hardware. "Our team at Virginia Tech is really excited for the next steps in our work," said Economou, an associate professor in the Department of Physics, "which include implementing our algorithm on IBM's processors."

A mutant worm with a change in one mitochondrial gene produces more reactive oxygen species (ROS), which can be harmful to cells by causing oxidative stress. However, this mutant worm is able to live twice as long as the wild type. Professor Dr. Aleksandra Trifunovic and her team at the CECAD Cluster of Excellence in Aging Research at the University of Cologne showed for the first time that this longevity is driven by a detoxification pathway, directly regulated by the level of ROS. What makes these results more compelling is that this pathway, which is necessary for the cells to get rid of unwanted unnatural substances, is conserved throughout the animal kingdom and important, for example, in the liver for the drug metabolism. The study 'KLF-1 orchestrates a xenobiotic detoxification program essential for longevity of mitochondrial mutants' was now published in the journal Nature Communications.

Mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cells. They produce energy using oxygen during a process called respiration. The side effect of this process is the occurrence of reactive oxygen species or ROS, which are always a by-product of respiration. During aging, mitochondria go through wear and tear, reducing their capability to keep ROS production under control. Some scientists even believe that aging is a consequence of damage inflicted by ROS. Indeed, as we age, more ROS and other toxic metabolites are produced.

Detoxification pathways remove toxic metabolites in three steps. In the first phase, the metabolites are recognized and modified, so that they can be neutralized during the second phase, and eliminated from the cell during the third phase. The whole machinery to keep the degradation going is extremely energy-consuming and it is kept under tight transcriptional control. Usually it is only turned on when needed.

Dr Marija Herholz, the leading scientist of the recent study, showed that one transcription factor plays an important role: 'When we deleted KLF-1, the mutant lost its longevity and returned to a normal lifespan, while at the same time the detox pathway was shut off. This shows that KLF-1 keeps the pathway working and is important for the longevity of the organism.' But the longer life of the mutants has some downsides too: 'We could see that the mutants move slower and develop slower, since they make less energy and have to support the complex detox machinery running,' Herholz added.

So far, ROS were mostly seen as something bad, disturbing the cells. Newer research shows that ROS plays an important role as a signalling molecule. Within the study the researchers could show that higher levels of antioxidants given to the worms lead to a decreased lifespan by removing ROS and therefore blocking the signalling pathway. 'The public perception of ROS in a solely negative way is therefore not backed by scientific findings,' said Marija Herholz. 'Indeed, if the levels of antioxidants are too high, this might be harmful, as our study shows.'

In following studies, the researchers want to have a closer look at what exactly happens on the molecular level before and after activation of the signalling pathway.

Future wireless data networks will have to reach higher transmission rates and shorter delays, while supplying an increasing number of end devices. For this purpose, network structures consisting of many small radio cells will be required. To connect these cells, high-performance transmission lines at high frequencies up to the terahertz range will be needed. Moreover, seamless connection to glass fiber networks must be ensured, if possible. Researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) use ultra-rapid electro-optical modulators to convert terahertz data signals into optical signals. This is reported in Nature Photonics (DOI: 10.1038/s41566-019-0475-6).

While the new 5G cellular network technology is still tested, researchers are already working on technologies for the next generation of wireless data transmission. "6G" is to reach far higher transmission rates, shorter delays, and an increased device density, with artificial intelligence being integrated. On the way towards the sixth generation cellular network, many challenges have to be mastered regarding both individual components and their interaction. Future wireless networks will consist of a number of small radio cells to quickly and efficiently transmit large data volumes. These cells will be connected by transmission lines, which can handle tens or even hundreds of gigabits per second per link. The necessary frequencies are in the terahertz range, i.e. between microwaves and infrared radiation in the electromagnetic spectrum. In addition, wireless transmission paths have to be seamlessly connected to glass fiber networks. In this way, the advantages of both technologies, i.e. high capacity and reliability as well as mobility and flexibility, will be combined.

Scientists of the KIT Institutes of Photonics and Quantum Electronics (IPQ), Microstructure Technology (IMT), and Radio Frequency Engineering and Electronics (IHE) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics IAF, Freiburg, have now developed a promising approach to converting data streams between the terahertz and optical domains. As reported in Nature Photonics, they use ultra-rapid electro-optical modulators to directly convert a terahertz data signal into an optical signal and to directly couple the receiver antenna to a glass fiber. In their experiment, the scientists selected a carrier frequency of about 0.29 THz and reached a transmission rate of 50 Gbit/s. "The modulator is based on a plasmonic nanostructure and has a bandwidth of more than 0.36 THz," says Professor Christian Koos, Head of IPQ and Member of the Board of Directors of IMT. "Our results reveal the great potential of nanophotonic components for ultra-rapid signal processing." The concept demonstrated by the researchers will considerably reduce technical complexity of future radio base stations and enable terahertz connections with very high data rates - several hundred gigabits per second are feasible.

Figure:

Seamless integration of wireless links into fiber-optical networks is the key to high-performance data networks: future cellular networks will consist of many small radio cells that can be connected flexibly by high-performance THz transmission links. At the receiver, THz signals can be converted directly into optical signals with the help of ultra-rapid plasmonic modulators and transmitted via glass fiber networks.

PITTSBURGH, July 25, 2019 - Pinch yourself. If you feel pain, it's thanks to specialized nerve endings in the skin. And, in a surprising discovery, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine demonstrated that pain-sensing nerves also help fight skin infections and prevent its spread, suggesting a new type of immunity. The findings, based on studies in mice, were published today in the journal Cell.

"These pain sensing nerves can detect pathogens, and for the first time, we've shown that they activate an immune response and also signal protective immunity in sites adjacent to the infection," said Daniel Kaplan, M.D., Ph.D., professor of dermatology and immunology at Pitt's School of Medicine and the senior author of the study. "This demonstrates that the immune and nervous systems work synergistically for host defense. These findings also could have important implications for developing more specific therapies for autoimmune skin diseases like psoriasis."

Until about a decade ago, pain was thought to have evolved as a way for your body to tell you to stay away from a particular stimulus or to signal a problem with its function, like an injury. More recently however, researchers have shown that it may play an important role in immunity against some pathogens.

In the study, Kaplan and first author Jonathan Cohen, an M.D./Ph.D. student in Kaplan's lab, collaborated with Pitt neurobiology professors and pain experts Kathy Albers, Ph.D., and Brian Davis, Ph.D., to develop an optogenetic mouse model where pain sensing neurons in the skin could be activated by shining blue light.

They first showed that just activating these neurons released a small protein called CGRP, which recruited different types of immune cells to the site. This suggested that neurons detecting skin pathogens on their own kickstart an immune response even before sentry immune cells could.

Then in the same mouse model, they infected the animals with either Candida albicans, a fungus that causes candidiasis, commonly known as thrush, or Staphylococcs aureus, a common bacterium that can turn deadly under certain conditions.

Using optogenetics and chemical nerve blockers, the researchers showed through a series of elegant experiments that when the fungus infected the skin at one location, the nerves not only detected and initiated an immune response to fight the infection, but also sent a signal toward the spinal cord. Those signals then boomeranged back to skin at areas around the infection to activate immune defenses in anticipation, thereby preventing the infection from spreading.

The researchers called this new nerve-driven protective mechanism "anticipatory immunity."

"The advantage of involving the nervous system is that it can communicate information across a space in a span of milliseconds, compared to hours or days for the immune cells to do the same function," said Jonathan Cohen, an M.D./Ph.D. student in Kaplan's lab and the first author of the study. "It's the difference between sending Paul Revere to warn of the British advance and sending a telegram to do the same."

Kaplan says that while it remains to be seen how the findings translate to humans, they have interesting implications for autoimmune diseases of barrier tissues like the skin or gut.

"Understanding this really new type of immunity raises the intriguing question of whether we could develop a drug to selectively suppress excessive autoimmune inflammation in specific tissues, avoiding the negative side effects that come with using a broad immunosuppressant that affects the entire body," he says.

Additional authors on the study included Tara N. Edwards, Ph.D., Andrew W. Liu, Toshiro Hirai, Ph.D., Marsha Ritter Jones, M.D., Ph.D., Yao Li, Ph.D., Shiqun Zhang, Ph.D., Jonhan Ho, M.D., Brian M. Davis, Ph.D., and Kathryn M. Albers, Ph.D., all of Pitt; and Jianing Wu of Tsinghua University in China.

When metabolism is slowed, fruit flies without any microRNAs survive to become normal adults

Slowed metabolism gives developing organisms time to adjust to mistakes

Study could explain why caloric restriction is linked to longevity and why animals bred for hyper-growth have developmental problems

EVANSTON, Ill. -- Just by slowing their metabolism, mutant fruit flies can go from zero to hero.

In a new Northwestern University study, researchers slowed mutant fruit flies' metabolic rates by 50%, and the expected detrimental effects of many mutations never manifested. After experimentally testing fruit flies' many different genetic mutations, the researchers found the same result each time.

"When the flies developed at a normal rate, developmental problems occurred," said Northwestern's Richard Carthew, who led the experimental research. "When we slowed the rate, developmental problems disappeared. They develop slower and grow slower, but, otherwise, they are normal animals."

"This upends the paradigm of everything we know about development," added Northwestern's Luís Amaral, who led the computational research. "We have always thought that if you 'break' some genes, there will be serious developmental consequences. It turns out that's not true for some genes -- as long as you also slow the metabolism of the growing organism."

The research could explain a number of factors, such as why factory-farmed chickens that are bred for hyper growth have more developmental problems or why caloric restriction is linked to longevity.

The study will publish on July 25 in the journal Cell. Carthew is a professor of molecular biosciences in Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics in the Feinberg School of Medicine. Amaral is the Erastus O. Haven Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering in Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering.

In perhaps the study's most striking discovery, researchers found that fruit flies -- with slowed metabolic rates -- could live without any microRNAs, which was previously thought impossible. Found in all plant and animal species, microRNAs play a key role in regulating gene expression. To put it simply: microRNAs control development, physiology and behavior.

"We know from 20 years of research, microRNAs are essential for life. If you didn't have any microRNAs, you would be dead. Simple as that," Carthew said. "In our study, we slowed down the metabolism of fruit flies that were not making any microRNAs whatsoever. They survived, they grew and they became normal adults.

"Our result concludes that this entire family of gene regulators is not essential," he added. "All you have to do is slow metabolism by roughly 50%."

Nobel laureate Thomas Hunt Morgan first noted the connection between diet and genetic mutations in 1915. When he raised mutant fruit flies on limited amounts of poor food, Morgan noticed that some mutations were never expressed.

"He thought it was interesting, but he had no explanation," Carthew said.

Carthew and Amaral now believe the answer is feedback control. Common in biology, engineering, economics and many other fields, feedback control enables complex systems to adjust performance in order to meet a desired response. After completing hundreds of experiments across several years, the Northwestern duo believes that a slower metabolism gives the animals' systems time to correct errors.

"When you look at all the different proteins and genes that interact within a cell, you can get overwhelmed by all the components and the interactions among them," Amaral said. "If you are growing fast and something goes wrong, it can be catastrophic. You need these complex networks because they increase redundancy to prevent catastrophe.

"But if you are growing slowly, you might not need such a complex system," he said. "You have more time to adjust to mistakes and react to changes."

In other words, if you give the system more time, it will eventually get to where it needs to be. Carthew, who is also a member of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, said this finding could eventually be applied to cancer.

"Tumors extremely metabolically active," he said. "Tumors soak up an enormous amount of energy, which is why cancer patients are often exhausted. We could potentially think about ways to target the metabolism of cancer cells. Maybe by slowing their metabolic rate, we could stop the oncogenic mutations in tumor cells from expressing their cancer phenotype."

Nearly three years later, it's rare to read a postmortem of the 2016 presidential election that doesn't include at least a passing mention of one of the electorate's more elusive unicorns: the Obama-to-Trump voter.

It's estimated that around 9% of voters who supported Barack Obama in 2012 crossed party lines to endorse Donald Trump in 2016 -- but why? According to a team of researchers that included Loren Collingwood, an associate professor of political science at the University of California, Riverside, the reasons behind so-called "vote switching" might be more complicated than originally expected.

Along with UCLA's Tyler Reny and Princeton University's Ali Valenzuela, Collingwood examined a set of untested hypotheses proposed as explanations for Trump's success in recruiting previous supporters of Obama, in particular.

The researchers first focused their analysis on whether a sizable number of white voters had switched from Obama to Trump in 2016, and if those same voters mainly identified as working class. They also evaluated whether concerns related to race and immigration or economic anxiety were more likely to be associated with vote switching in 2016.

They found that among white voters, a nontrivial number of those who identified as working class, as well as a nontrivial amount of those who didn't, switched their votes in 2016. Moreover, among both classes of white voters, switching was more likely to be associated with attitudes toward race and immigration than economic factors. Their findings were published in the journal Public Opinion Quarterly.

"This paper is the first to thoroughly examine the correlates of vote switching in the 2016 election," Collingwood's team wrote. "Our findings suggest that the United States may be in the midst of further electoral realignment as partisan voting continues to polarize around issues of race and immigration."

The researchers suggested that over the past decade, a handful of elements -- including rapid Latino population growth and the two-term presidency of the nation's first black president -- further contributed to partisan polarization around issues of race and immigration.

Likewise, as the Republican Party became known as the party of wealthy elites, the Democratic Party grew increasingly reliant on minority voters. Those factors, coupled with the collapse of American manufacturing, left white, working-class voters feeling alienated from both parties -- and essentially created a void for a candidate like Trump to fill.

To learn more about those voters, the researchers reviewed data from a survey sample of more than 64,000 people representative of the U.S. adult population.

They discovered that although most of the respondents included remained loyal to the same party in 2012 and 2016, about 6% of white working-class voters and 2.4% of white non-working-class voters switched to Trump in 2016. In contrast, only 2% of white working-class voters and 3.1% of white non-working-class voters switched from supporting Mitt Romney in 2012 to Hillary Clinton in 2016.

"Given that there were over 50.5 million white non-working-class voters and over 46.4 million working-class white voters in 2016, these percentages are not trivial and suggest that, in raw numbers, many more working-class whites than non-working-class whites switched their votes in 2016 from Obama to Trump and far fewer from Romney to Clinton," the researchers wrote.

From there, the team sought to better understand the rationale behind the switches. They weighed voters' responses to two batteries of questions: one related to acknowledgement of race and racism, and another that gauged support for a range of immigration policy proposals.

The researchers then compared voters' levels of "economic marginality" by measuring self-reported family income relative to each respondent's surrounding economic environment.

Their results illuminated some of vote switching's more ambiguous aspects. First, they observed that pronounced attitudes toward race and immigration were defining attributes of voters who switched in either direction. Moreover, both working-class and non-working-class whites were more likely to switch to Trump if they demonstrated strong racially conservative or punitive immigration views, regardless of economic status.

"White voters who held punitive immigration or racially conservative views were more likely to switch to Trump in the 2016 election than those with pro-immigration or racially liberal views, who were more likely to switch to Clinton," the researchers wrote.

"While more working-class whites switched to Trump and more non-working-class whites to Clinton, the associations between their symbolic racial and immigration attitudes and vote switching were not substantively different," they added. "We find little evidence that economic dislocation and marginality were significantly related to vote switching in 2016."

The researchers noted that while their findings might tell a different story than established media narratives, such results could be indicative of an era of partisan realignment. White voters, including vote switchers, may be sorting into new parties primarily based on their stances toward issues of race and immigration. And, as communities continue to diversify, it's possible both parties will become even more polarized around such issues.

An international team of scientists have observed a previously unclear inflammatory mechanism caused by airborne particles that can worsen asthma symptoms, it has been reported in Toxicological Sciences.

As the world gets more and more industrialized, the risk of developing respiratory diseases increases. Very small particles released from industry and vehicle fumes are harmful to our health but exactly how is still unclear. In a collaborative study, researchers in Japan, the US and Germany have uncovered one mechanism that can exaggerate inflammation in response to diesel fumes and worsen symptoms of respiratory diseases.

Tiny particles in the air are released from vehicles with diesel exhausts, factories or urban landscapes. People living in urban or industrial areas have a higher risk of developing diseases such as asthma. However, the mechanism behind how asthma develops is very complicated, explains Associate Professor Yasuhiro Ishihara of the Graduate School of Integrated Sciences for Life, Hiroshima University. Many different factors can trigger asthma, such as genetics and allergies, but Ishihara speculates that:

"If we know the mechanism maybe we can prevent particle-induced asthma,"

Research teams from Hiroshima University, the University of California and the Leibniz Research Institute identified a cell receptor that was activated by these particles, called AhR. This receptor promotes the production of inflammatory molecules to get rid of toxins in the body (such as fumes and diesel particles). It is found on cells in organs that are in contact with air, such as the skin, the gut and lungs. AhR's function is to detoxify the body, but overactivation of this receptor can often cause health problems.

In their study, the group stimulated human and mice immune cells with diesel particles that activated AhR. The cells produced IL-33, a chemical messenger that promotes inflammation. To confirm that the levels of IL-33 were caused by AhR the researchers blocked signals from AhR in the cells and no IL-33 was found.

The researchers concluded that AhR activation by airborne particles can make symptoms of diseases like asthma more severe. Diesel fumes aggravate immune cells to release chemicals that promote inflammation.

Ishihara states that even though this is a promising finding and opens the door to a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of these diseases, the best way to avoid these is to "escape". Even if you are not living right beside a factory or lots of vehicles, airborne particles can be distributed by the wind.

"This is an urgent issue in our drastically developed world." emphasizes Ishihara.

Though scientists are performing great research to improve our quality of urban life, living in the countryside could still be the best bet for avoiding particle-based asthma.

Researchers from the University of Notre Dame and Emory University published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines whether price-based recovery incentives after service failures retain customers in the long run.

The study, forthcoming in the September issue of the Journal of Marketing and titled "The Unintended Consequence of Price-based Service Recovery Incentives," is authored by Vamsi K. Kanuri and Michelle Andrews.

Subscription-based service providers often provide customers with price-based incentives to recover from service failures. For instance, after receiving complaints of a verified service failure, contractual service providers such as newspaper firms and internet companies generally reduce the price of the service for consumers who contact them. This recovery tactic has been shown to satisfy angry customers in the short-term and may even be necessary to alleviate the stress customers experience following a service failure. However, whether recovery incentives actually retain customers in the long-term, such as after contracts end, remains unknown.

A new study in the Journal of Marketing explores whether it is in service providers' best interests to offer these recovery incentives. The authors examined 6,919 contract renewal decisions from a large U.S. newspaper firm involving subscribers who experienced service delivery interruptions, were then offered varying levels of discounts, and then made renewal decisions at the end of the contract period.

Results indicate that price-based incentives after service failures are negatively associated with the likelihood that subscribers renew their service contracts at the end of the contract period. Thus, a solution that can address service failures in the short-term may backfire by hurting contract renewals in the long-term. Kanuri adds, "We find that this effect of recovery incentives on renewal likelihoods may vary. Specifically, reminding subscribers of the original price of the service through the touchpoints the firm has after the recovery can reduce the negative effect of recovery incentives." Discounting the price of the subscription renewal and increasing the amount of time between when the firm issued the service recovery and when subscribers have to make renewal decisions can each also reduce the negative effect of price-based service recoveries on renewal likelihoods.

"Our findings document how firm recovery attempts can affect subscribers' reference price during the contractual relationship," Andrews explains. While recovery incentives may be necessary to address customer dissatisfaction in the short-term, the study proposes several ways subscription-based service providers can reduce the negative effect of recovery incentives on customers' desire to renew relationships after contracts end.

WASHINGTON -- After learning that a warning of a missile headed to Hawaii was a false alarm, the most anxious local Twitter users calmed down more quickly than less anxious users, according to a study of tweets before, during and after the event, published by the American Psychological Association.

"Can a false alarm of an impending disaster itself be a form of trauma? Our results suggest that the experience may have a lingering impact on some individuals well after the threat is dispelled," said Nickolas Jones, PhD, of the University of California, Irvine, and lead author of the study published in the journal American Psychologist. "While those who before the alert had exhibited the least anxiety took the longest to stabilize, at approximately 41 hours, and the medium-anxiety group took 23 hours, the individuals who had exhibited the greatest anxiety before the alert stabilized almost immediately."

In January 2018, residents of Hawaii received an alert from the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency over radio, television and smartphones warning that a ballistic missile was headed toward the state, that people should seek shelter and that the alert was "NOT A DRILL." A second message was transmitted 38 minutes later stating that there was no missile threat and that the original message had been a false alarm.

To better understand the psychological effects of event on the population, Jones and his colleague Roxane Cohen Silver, PhD, also of the University of California, Irvine, collected more than 1.2 million posts on Twitter from more than 14,000 users who followed local Twitter accounts across the state of Hawaii from six weeks before to 18 days after the event. Tweets were scanned for 114 words associated with anxiety (e.g., afraid, scared, worried). Each tweet that contained an anxiety-associated word was given a score of one and all others scored zero. The researchers then grouped users based on their tweets prior to the false alarm as low, medium or high anxiety.

Anxiety expressed on Twitter rose approximately 3.4% every 15 minutes during the false alarm and decreased after the all clear. What the researchers found interesting was how long it took anxiety levels to stabilize in the various groups after the event and what those new baseline levels were.

While the group that exhibited low anxiety prior to the alert showed a new baseline anxiety level 2.5% higher after the event, the group who exhibited high anxiety prior to the alert had a baseline that was 10.5% lower afterward.

"We were surprised about our findings for the high prealert anxiety group," said Silver. "The literature suggests that people who experience negative psychological states, like anxiety, before a large-scale trauma, are at an increased risk for negative psychological consequences afterwards. However, those individuals who before the alert generally expressed much more anxiety on a daily basis than anyone else in the sample seem to have benefited from the false missile alert instead."

Silver believes the decrease in anxiety levels for the high-anxiety group may have been because the threat of imminent death put their day-to-day stressors into perspective.

"Anxious individuals may have more to appreciate when they experience a near miss and thus express less anxiety on social media after having 'survived' what would have undoubtedly been construed as a deadly situation," she said.

"Free and open access to public Twitter data, coupled with Hawaii's false missile alert, provided us with an opportunity to study, for the first time, how several thousand people responded psychologically to the threat of an inescapable, impending tragedy," said Jones. "Although it is fortunate we were able to study this phenomenon without loss of life, we show that, for many users, the anxiety elicited by this false alarm lingered well beyond the assurance that the threat was not real, which may have health consequences over time for some individuals. Our findings also highlight how important it is for emergency management agencies to communicate with the public they serve about potential threats and mishaps in emergency communications."

When cells change to a more specialized type, we call this process cellular differentiation. Scientists have revealed that protein secretions by skin cells known as keratinocytes control the differentiation of subsurface skin fat cells. This discovery could potentially help to treat obesity. Associate Professor Takehiko Ueyama and Professor Naoaki Saito at the Biosignal Research Center of Kobe University led the research team, and the findings were published on July 24 in the online edition of the Journal of Investigative Dermatology.

There are two main types of fat cells: white adipose tissue or "white fat" that stores energy and contributes to obesity, and brown adipose tissue or "brown fat" that consumes energy and helps prevent obesity. White fat can convert to brown fat in the "browning" phenomenon.

Researchers already knew about signaling from subsurface skin fat cells to keratinocytes that promotes cell differentiation. However, there were no clear reports about signaling in the opposite direction (see Figure 1).

In this study, the team found that genetically altered mice with Rac molecules removed from their keratinocytes had extremely thin layers of skin fat (see Figure 2). The team carried out comprehensive genetic analysis of the Rac-deficient mice, comparing them with wild-type mice, and found that the Rac-deficient keratinocytes had notably low levels of six growth factor proteins. When they applied these growth factors to fat precursor cells, they found that simultaneous treatment of factors BMP2 and FGF21 encouraged differentiation into white fat cells, and suppressed differentiation into brown fat cells (see Figure 2). They were able to substitute the effects of BMP2 and FGF21 with a culture medium of human-derived keratinocytes, proving that the growth factor proteins secreted in human keratinocytes contribute to differentiation of fat cells.

We already knew that FGF21 promotes differentiation into brown fat cells, but this study showed that BMP2 inhibits this process. This means that suppressing BMP2 can decrease the number of white fat cells and increase brown fat cells. The team also discovered that simultaneous application of both BMP2 and FGF21 causes fibroblasts - skin pluripotent cells that can produce fat precursor cells - to differentiate into fat cells.

This study proved the existence of differentiation signaling (BMP2 and FGF21 from keratinocytes/skin cells/epidermal cells to fat cells) in the opposite direction to the previous reports (from fat cells to keratinocytes). It shows that paracrine-based differentiation signaling occurs in both directions between cells in the epidermal (surface skin) and intradermal (subsurface skin) layers. This also revealed the potential for transforming the type and composition of subsurface fat cells by controlling the signals from surface skin to subsurface skin and fat layers.

Obesity is a growing problem in modern societies. One way to tackle this disease is influencing the body's metabolism by changing the ratios of white fat cells to brown fat cells. This study revealed that BMP2 and FGF21 secreted from keratinocytes regulate the ratios of skin fat cells. By adjusting levels of BMP2 and FGF21, we could potentially control the ratio of white to brown fat cells. This could include a skin-based anti-obesity treatment - for example, developing a cream to be absorbed through the skin.

CHICAGO--July 25, 2019--High empathy scores could become part of the criteria for getting into medical school, according to research published in The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association.

The study gauged empathy levels of 16,149 new matriculants and first- through fourth-year medical students, establishing a set of national norms, which serve as a bench mark for assessing future applicants' suitability to the profession.

Researchers say the national norms can help to distinguish between two applicants with similar academic qualifications, and identify students who might need additional educational remedies to bolster their level of empathy.

"Testing for empathy should not replace the traditional admissions process," says Mohammedreza Hojat, PhD, a research professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Sidney Kimmel Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University and lead author on this study. "However, it can add great value in helping medical schools select individuals who rank high on empathic orientation toward patient care as well as academic capabilities."

Research indicates that physicians with higher levels of empathy demonstrate greater clinical competence and deliver better patient outcomes than less empathetic doctors.

"When patients feel like their doctor cares about and understands them, they are more likely to trust," Hojat explains. "Patients who trust their doctors are more likely to reveal more about their lifestyle and other factors relevant to their illness, allowing for more accurate diagnoses and appropriate treatments."

Patient compliance also improves when trust develops in physician-patient relationship , meaning patients are more likely to follow instructions, including taking medication and changing harmful habits.

A growing field of study

Hojat and his team cross-sectional study assessed empathy scores at all levels of medical school education for more than 16,000 osteopathic medical students across 41 campuses. This nationwide study developed national norms in empathy for the first time, allowing researchers to examine a number of issues, including differences in empathy among students in different years of medical school.

"Some studies with allopathic medical students showed that once they move from the first two years in medical school and into the clinical years, when they actually work with patients, their empathy begins to decline," says Hojat. "It's interesting to see if that pattern of decline can also be observed in osteopathic medical students and to explore reasons for such changes, and study approaches to enhance and retain empathy in physicians-in-training."

To better understand the causes of these changes and their impact on academic performance and clinical competence, Hojat and his team are undertaking a prospective longitudinal study to follow up a cohort of students entering medical schools in the coming academic year (2019- 2020) as they progress through medical school from matriculation to graduation.

Ribosomes, the essential machinery used for protein synthesis is recycled after each one round of translation. An enzyme called ABCE1 is responsible for this process and turns out to be remarkably plastic as Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich biophysicists report.

Ribosomes translate the genetic information, which is first transcribed into messenger RNAs by polymerases, into the corresponding sequences of amino acids that define the structure and function of specific cellular proteins. Ribosomes are therefore indispensable for maintenance and specialized functions of all cell types. They bind sequentially to individual mRNAs and progressively decode their nucleotide sequences. When a ribosome has reached the end of an mRNA or becomes stalled along the way for one reason or another, it must be actively released, i.e., recycled to enable binding to another mRNA for a new round of synthesis. In all organisms (except bacteria), the highly conserved protein enzyme ABCE1 conducts these essential recycling processes, which involves the dissociation of the two ribosomal subunits. Using a biophysical method based on the fluorescence resonance transfer (FRET), which allows one to measure distances between specific amino acids in a protein even dynamically, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich biophysicist Thorben Cordes, together with Robert Tampé (Frankfurt University) and researchers at the University of Groningen (Netherlands), has now shown that ABCE1 adopts a surprisingly wide range of structural conformations during the course of ribosome recycling. The new findings appear in the journal Cell Reports.

ABCE1 is an ATPase, i.e., an enzyme that catalyzes the conversion of the energy-rich molecule ATP (with three phosphates) into ADP (with two phosphates), and it uses the released energy to split the ribosome into its two constituent subunits. "Recent structural and functional data have shown that dissociation of the ribosome requires conformational changes - how ATP and Ribosome binding were, however, coupled to structural change was unclear. But exactly this is essential for the diverse functions of ABCE1," Cordes explains. He and his team have used an integrative biophysical approach - including the single-molecule FRET method - to characterize the conformational dynamics of ABCE1.

The results revealed that each of the two ATP binding sites in ABCE1 can adopt not just two, but three conformational states - open, intermediate and closed - which are always in a dynamic equilibrium. The interaction of ABCE1 with the both ribosome and ATP alters the structural dynamics of the two ATP-binding sites, and this results in a complex set of distinct states and state transitions, in which ribosome and ATP shift the equilibrium into the direction of the closed conformation. "We believe that the different conformations play functionally distinct roles, not only in the dissociation of the ribosome, but also in the other functions mediated by ABCE1," Cordes says.

Cichlids (Cichlidae) are a group of small to medium-sized fish that are ubiquitous in
freshwater habitats in the tropics. They are particularly notable in exhibiting a wide range of
morphological and behavioral specializations, such as various modes of parental care,
including mouthbrooding. Some species (mainly members of the genus Tilapia) have
achieved fame as culinary delicacies and are of considerable economic significance. Cichlids
have undergone rapid diversification in Africa, which is home to at least 1100 species. This
process has been especially prominent in the Great Lakes in East Africa's Rift Valley (Lakes
Tanganyika, Malawi and Victoria), where it is referred to as the East African Radiation.

"Cichlid diversification in East Africa has become a central paradigm in evolutionary biology.
As a consequence, dating the onset of the process and understanding the mechanisms that
drive it are issues of great interest to evolutionary biologists and paleobiologists," says LMU
paleontologist Professor Bettina Reichenbacher, who is also member of the GeoBio-Center
at LMU. Fossils from the area provide the sole source of direct evidence that would allow one
to determine the timing and trace the course of lineage diversification within the group.
However, the search for cichlid fossils has proven to be both arduous and extremely time-
consuming. Indeed, only about 20 fossil species of cichlids from Africa have yet been
formally described.

In a study that appears in the online journal Scientific Reports, a team of researchers led by
Bettina Reichenbacher now describes a new fossil cichlid, which the authors assign to the
new genus Oreochromimos. The name derives from the fact that the specimens, which the
team discovered in Central Kenya, show similarities to members of the Tribe Oreochromini
(hence the element 'mimos', meaning 'mimic', in the genus name), which are widely
distributed in Africa today. "Determining whether or not the fossils could be assigned to any
of the extant cichlid lineages was particularly challenging," says Stefanie Penk, first author of
the study and a doctoral student in Reichenbacher's group. The difficulties are rooted in the
great diversity of the modern cichlid fauna in Africa, and the fact that even distantly related
species may be morphologically very similar to each other. "The architecture of the skeleton
in cichlids is pretty conservative. All of them have a similar basic form, which undergoes very
little change during speciation," Reichenbacher explains. In collaboration with Dr. Ulrich K.
Schliewen, co-author of the new paper, Curator of Fishes at the Bavarian State Collection for
Zoology in Munich (SNSB-ZSM) and also a member of the GeoBio-Center at LMU, the team
adopted the 'best-fit approach' to the classification of the fossil specimens. This requires
comparison of the fossil material with all the relevant modern lineages of cichlids. In light of
their contemporary diversity, that might seem an impossible task. But thanks to Schliewen's
knowledge - and the range of comparative material represented in the collection under his
care - the strategy succeeded.

A unique glimpse of the past

Reichenbacher and colleagues recovered the Oreochromimos material from a fossil-fish
Lagerstätte in Kenya's Tugen Hills, which lie within the Eastern Branch of the East African
Rift System. This site provides a unique window into the region's past. The volcanic and
sedimentary rocks deposited here date back 5-20 million years. They were overlain by
younger material and subsequently uplifted to altitudes of as much as 2000 m by tectonic
forces. As a result, the fossil-bearing rocks exposed in the Tugen Hills are either inaccessible
to exploration or have been lost to erosion in other parts of Africa. Consequently, the strata
here contain a unique assemblage of fossils. Undoubtedly the best known finds so far excavated are the 6-million-year-old remains of a hominin species, which has been named Orrorin tugenensis (orrorin means 'original man' in the local language).
But cichlid fossils are also among the paleontological treasures preserved in these
sedimentary formations - and they are at the heart of Reichenbacher's Kenya Project, which
began in 2011. The material collected so far was recovered in cooperation with Kenya's
Egerton University, and is now on loan to LMU's Department of Earth and Environmental
Sciences for further study.

The Oreochromimos specimens are about 12.5 million years old, which makes this genus the
oldest known fossil representative of the Tribe Oreochromini. It therefore qualifies as the
oldest fossil clade yet assigned to the Haplotilapiini, the lineage which gave rise not only to
most of the species that constitute the present-day diversity of African cichlids, but also to the East African Cichlid Radiation in the Great Lakes of the Rift Valley. With their use of an innovative approach to comparative systematics, the authors of the new study have provided
a basis for the taxonomic assignment of future finds of fossil cichlid material. "With the aid of this dataset, it will be possible to classify fossil cichlids much more reliably than before and thus to shed new light on their evolutionary history," says Bettina Reichenbacher.

An international collaboration led by scientists mainly at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology (TUAT) , Japan, has found that bone and muscle mass are regulated by the altered gravity. The experiments were done in space using Kibo, a ISS module developed by JAXA, and on the ground.

The researchers published their results on April 29th in the journal, Scientific Reports.

The research team explored the maintenance of the bone and muscle mass of mice among the opposite living circumstances of microgravity and hypergravity. "We examined the effects of 2G hypergravity on the ground and artificial 1G gravity in space for the effect of bone and muscle mass using newly developed centrifuge devices", said Dr Masaki Inada, corresponding author on the paper and Associate Professor in the Department of Biotechnology and Life Science, Institute of Global Innovation Research at TUAT.

The team found that changing gravity with a physical load of own body weight altered the bone mass of forefoot (humerus) especially in fourth-foot walk animals (tetrapods) such as mice. For example, lower gravity, which was in space, showed loss in some bones such as the humerus and tibia. In addition, more gravity, which was in 2G on the ground artificially created by the centrifuge device, made more muscle such as the lower leg muscles (muscles from knee to ankle).

"Then we continuously examine to find the mechano-sensing factors regulated by mechanical stress in the mice for altered living circumstances of the gravity", said Dr Inada. "To find forth dependent mechano-sensor results in controlling bone and muscle mass could be applied for novel drug development for the bone and muscle of skeletal diseases with disuse ability such as sarcopenia and osteoporosis."

Research by Drexel University and the University of Colorado at Boulder suggests that imposing fees on energy producers that emit greenhouse gas could improve the health and financial well-being of the Rocky Mountain region.

Using sophisticated modeling programs that can project atmospheric concentrations of ozone, a ground-level pollutant, by considering factors like current emissions from power plants, weather trends and changes in energy production, the team compared the effects of four scenarios on the Rocky Mountain region of 2030. Their findings were recently published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Looking closely at coal, oil and natural gas production regions in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and northern New Mexico - a region in the midst of planning its energy production transition over the next several decades - the team proposed four energy production policy scenarios, any of which could very well be in effect by 2030.

"Opportunities to produce power through newly accessible oil and gas as well as renewable resources have increased rapidly in the Rocky Mountain region, which has a growing population," said Shannon Capps, PhD, an assistant professor in Drexel's College of Engineering who helped conduct the research. "The region needs more electricity and has choices about how to produce it. This analysis helps people understand the implications of different choices, some imbedded in infrastructure that will shape climate and air quality in lasting ways."

The first is a baseline scenario in which current transitions away from coal energy and toward natural gas, including the planned closing of several coal plants and the creation of new natural gas extraction sites, are taken into consideration.

Two scenarios consider the effects of changes in the cost of energy production from natural gas - either that it will be more expensive to produce than coal or that it will continue to be less expensive.

The final scenario considers the possibility of fees being imposed on the producers of greenhouse gas - a policy that has been proposed by the previous administration's Clean Power Plan and proponents of the Green New Deal.

The group used recent results from energy grid modeling under the different scenarios to calculate realistic emissions of greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide and methane -, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) for atmospheric modeling programs that determine the associated amount of ozone. The team then employed a tool created by the Environmental Protection Agency to determine how the ozone in each scenario would affect the health of people in the region and also calculated the social costs of the associated greenhouse gas emissions.

Their research predicts that in all scenarios, other than the one in which natural gas production becomes less costly, greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced following the closure of plants - whether by planned retirement - in the 2030 baseline scenario - or as a cost-saving measure - in the "expensive gas" and "greenhouse gas fees" scenarios.

While this might not be a surprising finding at this point in our collective understanding of energy production and sustainability, the health and financial ripple effects of these changes are stark, according to the research.

"The reduction in ozone from 2011 to the 2030 baseline scenario is estimated to reduce total mortalities (sum of short-term and long-term mortalities) by about 200 annual deaths," according to the study.

Metrics that associate an economic impact with mortality rate calculate that the health benefits of this scenario would equate to $2 billion.

Mortality rates continue to improve under a scenario where fees are imposed on producers of greenhouse gas, along with an additional economic benefit of $200 million.

Conversely, if gas prices were to fall - resulting in greater use of it, and increased emissions - the model predicts a spike in mortality rate that correlates to an $80 million reduction in the economic gains expected by 2030.

The study highlights the difficult decisions facing policymakers when it comes to sourcing energy. For example, while shifting away from coal consumption toward natural gas and oil reduces carbon dioxide emissions, those benefits are offset by an increase in methane, sulfur dioxide and VOCs associated with the extraction and use of those sources.

A policy that puts fees on greenhouse gas-emitting energy producers could be met with opposition, but it could also drive market forces toward greater use of energy from renewable sources like wind and solar, which are abundant in the region - with the co-benefit of reducing emissions from gas and oil operations.

"This type of research continues to be important as other regions in the U.S. and abroad have access to similar technology for oil and gas extraction, as well as renewable energy production. The outcomes of this study ought to drive careful consideration of those choices," Capps said.