It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, July 05, 2020
Algae as living biocatalysts for a green industry
RUHR-UNIVERSITY BOCHUM
IMAGE: ALGAE HOLD GREAT POTENTIAL FOR ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY ENERGY PRODUCTION. view more
CREDIT: RUB, MARQUARD
Better still: living algae can be used as biocatalysts for certain substances, and they bring the co-substrate along, producing it in an environmentally friendly manner through photosynthesis. The team published its report in Algal Research on 17. June 2020.
It's a question of 3D structure
Many chemical substances in cosmetics, food or medicines can assume slightly different three-dimensional structures, with only one of them generating the desired fragrance or medical effect. The chemical production of the right substances is often not environmentally friendly, as it requires high temperatures or special solvents. In nature, however, certain proteins do exist that produce the required product at mild temperatures and in water. In the process, they often generate exactly the 3D structure of the substance that is needed by the industry.
These so-called old yellow enzymes, OYEs for short, owe their name to their naturally yellow colour. They occur in bacteria, fungi and plants, are in part well studied and offer considerable potential for a bio-based economy. However, they have one disadvantage: in order to carry out their reaction, they need the co-substrate NADPH (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate). In living cells, this small molecule is generated through metabolic processes, whereas its chemical production is very expensive; as a result, the commercial use of OYEs is thwarted.
OYEs from unicellular green algae: two birds with one stone
The research team from Bochum has discovered several OYEs in unicellular green algae. "For a broad application, industry needs OYEs that can also produce unusual molecules," explains Professor Thomas Happe, Head of the Photobiotechnology research group at RUB. "Algae possess very complex metabolic pathways and are therefore ideal sources for novel biocatalysts." The researchers analysed algal OYEs in the test tube and showed that they are able to convert many commercially viable substances. "The exciting thing is that living algae can also carry out the reactions needed in the industry," points out PhD student Stefanie Böhmer, lead author of the study. "Since algae produce NADPH using photosynthesis, i.e. with sunlight, the co-substrate of the OYEs is supplied in an environmentally friendly and cost-effective way."
Promising collaboration
The authors point out that the study demonstrates the importance of the collaboration between researchers from different disciplines, and that the industry can be a valuable partner who initiates basic research. Four researches from the Research Training Group "Micon - Microbial substrate conversion", which is funded by the German Research Foundation, contributed their expertise to the study. The project was the brainchild of Solarbioproducts Ruhr, a spin-off established by Wirtschaftsförderungsgesellschaft Herne and Thomas Happe with the aim of developing concepts for environmentally friendly algae biotechnologies. "We have taken a big step towards a green industry," concludes Happe. "This would not have been possible without collaboration."
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Funding
The study was funded by the German Research Foundation in the Research Training Group GRK 2341 Microbial Substrate Conversion Micon, the Chembiocat project funded by the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Research NRW, and Wirtschaftsförderungsgesellschaft Herne.
Original publication
Stefanie Böhmer, Christina Marx, Álvaro Gómez-Baraibar, Marc M. Nowaczyk, Dirk Tischler, Anja Hemschemeier, Thomas Happe: Evolutionary diverse Chlamydomonas reinhardtii old yellow enzymes reveal distinctive catalytic properties and potential for whole-cell biotransformations, in: Algal Research, 2020, DOI: 10.1016/j.algal.2020.101970
Typhoon changed earthquake patterns
Intensive erosion influenced seismicity
GFZ GEOFORSCHUNGSZENTRUM POTSDAM, HELMHOLTZ CENTRE
IMAGE: IMAGES FROM A SATELLITE (LANDSAT) SHOW MASSIVE EROSION AFTER THE TYPHOON MORAKOT HIT TAIWAN. THIS INFLUENCED SEISMICITY IN THE AFFECTED REGIONS. view more
CREDIT: NASA/LANDSAT
The Earth's crust is under constant stress. Every now and then this stress is discharged in heavy earthquakes, mostly caused by the slow movement of Earth's crustal plates. There is, however, another influencing factor that has received little attention so far: intensive erosion can temporarily change the earthquake activity (seismicity) of a region significantly. This has now been shown for Taiwan by researchers from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences in cooperation with international colleagues. They report on this in the journal Scientific Reports.
The island in the western Pacific Ocean is ah the edge of the Asian continent. 11 years ago, Typhoon Morakot reached the coast of Taiwan. This trnyway one of the most tectonically active regions in the world, as the Philippine Sea Plate collides witopical cyclone is considered the one of the worst in Taiwan's recorded history.
Within only three days in August 2009, three thousand litres of rain fell per square metre. As a comparison, Berlin and Brandenburg receive an average of around 550 liters per square meter in one year. The water masses caused catastrophic flooding and widespread landsliding. More than 600 people died and the immediate economic damage amounted to the equivalent of around 3 billion euros.
The international team led by Philippe Steer of the University of Rennes, France, evaluated the earthquakes following this erosion event statistically. They showed that there were significantly more small-magnitude and shallow earthquakes during the 2.5 years after typhoon Morakot than before, and that this change occurred only in the area showing extensive erosion. GFZ researcher and senior author Niels Hovius says: "We explain this change in seismicity by an increase in crustal stresses at shallow depth, less than 15 kilometres, in conjunction with surface erosion". The numerous landslides have moved enormous loads, rivers transported the material from the devastated regions. "The progressive removal of these loads changes the state of the stress in the upper part of the Earth's crust to such an extent that there are more earthquakes on thrust faults," explains Hovius.
So-called active mountain ranges, such as those found in Taiwan, are characterized by "thrust faults" in the underground, where one unit of rocks moves up and over another unit. The rock breaks when the stress becomes too great. Usually it is the continuous pressure of the moving and interlocking crustal plates that causes faults to move. The resulting earthquakes in turn often cause landslides and massively increased erosion. The work of the GFZ researchers and their colleagues now shows for the first time that the reverse is also possible: massive erosion influences seismicity - and does so in a geological instant. Niels Hovius: "Surface processes and tectonics are connected in the blink of an eye." The researcher continues: "Earthquakes are among the most dangerous and destructive natural hazards. Better understanding earthquake triggering by tectonics and by external processes is crucial for a more realistic assessment of earthquake hazards, especially in densely populated regions."
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Original study: Steer, P. et al. "Earthquake statistics changed by typhoon-driven erosion"; Scientific Reports; DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-67865-y
Science fiction becomes fact -- Teleportation helps to create live musical performance
UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH
IMAGE: DR ALEXIS KIRKE (RIGHT) AND SOPRANO JULIETTE POCHIN DURING THE FIRST DUET BETWEEN A LIVE SINGER AND A QUANTUM SUPERCOMPUTER view more
CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH
Teleportation is most commonly the stuff of science fiction and, for many, would conjure up the immortal phrase "Beam me up Scotty".
However, a new study has described how its status in science fact could actually be employed as another, and perhaps unlikely, form of entertainment - live music.
Dr Alexis Kirke, Senior Research Fellow in the Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research at the University of Plymouth (UK), has for the first time shown that a human musician can communicate directly with a quantum computer via teleportation.
The result is a high-tech jamming session, through which a blend of live human and computer-generated sounds come together to create a unique performance piece.
Speaking about the study, published in the current issue of the Journal of New Music Research, Dr Kirke said: "The world is racing to build the first practical and powerful quantum computers, and whoever succeeds first will have a scientific and military advantage because of the extreme computing power of these machines. This research shows for the first time that this much-vaunted advantage can also be helpful in the world of making and performing music. No other work has shown this previously in the arts, and it demonstrates that quantum power is something everyone can appreciate and enjoy."
Quantum teleportation is the ability to instantaneously transmit quantum information over vast distances, with scientists having previously used it to send information from Earth to an orbiting satellite over 870 miles away.
In the current study, Dr Kirke describes how he used a system called MIq (Multi-Agent Interactive qgMuse), in which an IBM quantum computer executes a methodology called Grover's Algorithm.
Discovered by Lov Grover at Bell Labs in 1996, it was the second main quantum algorithm (after Shor's algorithm) and gave a huge advantage over traditional computing.
In this instance, it allows the dynamic solving of musical logical rules which, for example, could prevent dissonance or keep to ¾ instead of common time.
It is significantly faster than any classical computer algorithm, and Dr Kirke said that speed was essential because there is actually no way to transmit quantum information other than through teleportation.
The result was that when played the theme from Game of Thrones on the piano, the computer - a 14-qubit machine housed at IBM in Melbourne - rapidly generated accompanying music that was transmitted back in response.
Dr Kirke, who in 2016 staged the first ever duet between a live singer and a quantum supercomputer, said: "At the moment there are limits to how complex a real-time computer jamming system can be. The number of musical rules that a human improviser knows intuitively would simply take a computer too long to solve to real-time music. Shortcuts have been invented to speed up this process in rule-based AI music, but using the quantum computer speed-up has not be tried before. So while teleportation cannot move information faster than the speed of light, if remote collaborators want to connect up their quantum computers - which they are using to increase the speed of their musical AIs - it is 100% necessary. Quantum information simply cannot be transmitted using normal digital transmission systems."
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Prospective teachers misperceive Black children as angry
Study findings suggest ramifications for Black youth
AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION
Prospective teachers appear more likely to misperceive Black children as angry than white children, which may undermine the education of Black youth, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.
While previous research has documented this effect in adults, this is the first study to show how anger bias based on race may extend to teachers and Black elementary and middle-school children, said lead researcher Amy G. Halberstadt, PhD, a professor of psychology at North Carolina State University. The study was published online in the APA journal Emotion.
"This anger bias can have huge consequences by increasing Black children's experience of not being 'seen' or understood by their teachers and then feeling like school is not for them," she said. "It might also lead to Black children being disciplined unfairly and suspended more often from school, which can have long-term ramifications."
In the study, 178 prospective teachers from education programs at three Southeastern universities viewed short video clips of 72 children ages 9 to 13 years old. The children's faces expressed one of six basic emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise or disgust. The clips were evenly divided among boys or girls and Black children or white children. The sample was not large enough to determine whether the race or ethnicity of the teachers made a difference in how they perceived the children.
The prospective teachers were somewhat accurate at detecting the children's emotions, but they also made some mistakes that revealed patterns. Boys of both races were misperceived as angry more often than Black or white girls. Black boys and girls also were misperceived as angry at higher rates than white children, with Black boys eliciting the most anger bias.
Anger bias against Black children can have many negative consequences. While controlling for other factors, previous research has found that Black children are three times more likely to be suspended or expelled from school than white children. Black children's negative experiences at school also could contribute to the disparate achievement gap between Black and white youth that has been documented across the United States, Halberstadt said.
Those in the study also completed questionnaires relating to their implicit and explicit racial bias, but their scores on those tests didn't affect the findings relating to Black children. However, those who displayed greater racial bias were less likely to misperceive white children as angry.
"Even when people are motivated to be anti-racist, we need to know the specific pathways by which racism travels, and that can include false assumptions that Black people are angry or threatening," Halberstadt said. "Those common racist misperceptions can extend from school into adulthood and potentially have fatal consequences, such as when police officers kill unarmed Black people on the street or in their own homes."
Previous research with adults in the United States has found that anger is perceived more quickly than happiness in Black faces, while the opposite effect was found for white faces. Anger also is perceived more quickly and for a longer time in young Black men's faces than young white men's faces.
"Over the last few weeks, many people are waking up to the pervasive extent of systemic racism in American culture, not just in police practices but in our health, banking and education systems," Halberstadt said. "Learning more about how these problems become embedded in our thought processes is an important first step."
Participants in the study were predominantly female (89%) and white (70%), mirroring the gender and race of most public-school teachers across the country. The study didn't include enough people of color from any single race or ethnicity (Hispanic 9%, Asian 8%, Black 6%, Biracial 5%, Native American 1%, and Middle Eastern 1%) to analyze separate findings based on the race or ethnicity of the participants.
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Article: "Racialized Emotion Recognition Accuracy and Anger Bias of Children's Faces," by Amy G. Halberstadt, PhD, Alison N. Cooke, PhD, Dejah Oertwig, MA, and Shevaun D. Neupert, PhD, North Carolina State University; Sherick Hughes, PhD, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; and Pamela W. Garner, PhD, George Mason University, Emotion, published online July 2, 2020.
The American Psychological Association, in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. APA's membership includes nearly 121,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people's lives.
HERBALISM
In mouse study, black raspberries show promise for reducing skin inflammation
Early findings indicate eating the fruit could help with skin allergies
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Eating black raspberries might reduce inflammation associated with skin allergies, a new study indicates.
In a study done with mice and published earlier this month in the journal Nutrients, researchers found that a diet high in black raspberries reduced inflammation from contact hypersensitivity - a condition that causes redness and inflammation in the skin.
"A lot of times, treatments are directly applied to the skin - things like steroids," said Steve Oghumu, senior author on the paper and an assistant professor of pathology at The Ohio State University.
"And it was interesting that the mere consumption of a fruit can achieve the same effects."
The researchers put a group of mice on a diet that incorporated black raspberries - equivalent to a single serving per day for humans. They also kept a control group, where mice were fed the same diet, but without black raspberries.
Three weeks after the diets began, the researchers exposed one of each mouse's ears to irritants that caused contact hypersensitivity. Then, they measured the reductions in swelling, comparing the ears of each mouse.
They found that in mice fed a diet that included black raspberries, swelling went down compared to the mice that did not eat black raspberries.
The researchers found that the black raspberries appear to modulate dendritic cells, which act as messengers to the body's immune system, telling the immune system to kick in or not - essentially whether to create inflammation or not.
"The immune system is very complex, with multiple players, and so once you begin to identify the unique cells that are being affected by the berries then it helps us to see how berries are inhibiting inflammation," Oghumu said. "A lot of the bad effects that we see are not always due to the pathogens or allergens themselves, but are due to the way our body responds to these triggers."
In the case of contact hypersensitivity, for example, a person's skin encounters an allergen and the body responds by flooding the area with cells that cause inflammation and itchiness.
"And so one way to manage these types of diseases is controlling that response, and that is one of the things black raspberries appear to be able to do," he said.
Oghumu and colleagues in his lab have been studying the effects of black raspberries on inflammation for years. A diet rich in black raspberries has shown promise in reducing inflammation associated with some types of cancer, and Oghumu and his team have wondered if fruit might also help reduce inflammation in other conditions.
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This study is an early indication that those benefits might exist, Oghumu said. He noted that more work needs to be done to determine what specific properties of black raspberries lead to a decrease in inflammation.
This work was funded by an internal grant from the Ohio State Foods for Health initiative. Other Ohio State researchers on this study include Kelvin Anderson, Nathan Ryan, Arham Siddiqui, Travis Pero, Greta Volpedo and Jessica L. Cooperstone.
A scientific measure of dog years
CELL PRESS NEWS RELEASE
IMAGE: THIS GRAPHIC DEPICTS THE EPIGENETIC TRANSLATION FROM DOG AGE TO HUMAN AGE. view more
CREDIT: IDEKER LAB, UC SAN DIEGO
How old is your tail-wagging bundle of joy in human years? According to the well-known "rule of paw," one dog year is the equivalent of 7 years. Now, in a study published July 2, in the journal Cell Systems, scientists say it's wrong. Dogs are much older than we think, and researchers devised a more accurate formula to calculate a dog's age based on the chemical changes in the DNA as organisms grow old.
Dogs share the same environment as their owners and receive almost the same standard of health care as humans, providing a unique opportunity for scientists to understand aging across species. Like humans, dogs follow similar developmental trajectories that lead them to grey and become more susceptible to age-related diseases over time. However, how they age on a molecular level is more complicated--aging rapidly at first and slowing down later in life.
"In terms of how physiologically mature a 1-year-old dog is, a 9-month-old dog can have puppies. Right away, you know that if you do the math, you don't just times seven," says senior author Trey Ideker (@TreyIdeker) of the University of California, San Diego. "What's surprising is exactly how old that one-year-old dog is--it's like a 30-year old human."
Human and dog DNA, which codes who we are, doesn't change much throughout the course of life, but chemical marks on the DNA, called methylation marks, do. Ideker considers these marks like wrinkles in the genome. "I tend to think of it very much like when you look at someone's face and guess their age based on their wrinkles, gray hair, and other features," he says. "These are just similar kinds of features on the molecular level."
The researchers studied 104 Labrador retrievers spanning from few-week-old puppies to 16-year-old dogs with the help of two canine experts, Danika Bannasch of the University of California, Davis, and Elaine Ostrander of the National Institutes of Health. They compared the changes in the methylation pattern to humans.
The comparison revealed a new formula that better matches the canine-human life stages: human age = 16 ln(dog age) + 31. Based on the new function, an 8-week-old dog is approximately the age of a 9-month-old baby, both being in the infant stage where puppies and babies develop teeth. The average 12-year lifespan of Labrador retrievers also corresponds to the worldwide life expectancy of humans, 70 years.
"I like to take my dogs on runs, and so I'm a little bit more sympathetic to the 6-year-old now," says Ideker, who realized that his dog is pushing 60 according to the new calculation.
In both species, they found that the age-driven methylation largely happens in developmental genes that are hotly fired up to create body plans in utero and regulating childhood development. By the time one becomes an adult and stops growing, "you've largely shut off these genes, but they're still smoldering," says Ideker. "If you look at the methylation marks on those developmental genes, they're still changing."
Focusing on the smoldering developmental genes, the team developed a clock that can measure age and physiological states across different species, while other methylation-quantifying age-predicting methods only do well in one species. Ideker also noted that future investigation in different dog breeds with various lifespans could provide more insight into the new clock. The clock may not only serve as a tool to understand cross-species aging but also apply as clinical practice for veterinarians to take proactive steps to treat animals.
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This work is supported by the following: the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, the Maxine Adler Endowed Chair Funds, and the Intramural Program of the National Human Genome Research Institute.
Cell Systems (@CellSystemsCP) is a monthly journal published by Cell Press devoted to systems biology. Cell Systems papers use approaches from physics, engineering, mathematics, and computer science to address salient biological questions. Visit: http://www.cell.com/cell-systems. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.
Gender gaps in STEM college majors emerge in high school
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
ITHACA, N.Y. - Although studies have shown that women are more likely than men to enter and complete college in U.S. higher education, women are less likely to earn degrees in science, technology, engineering and math fields.
In new research, Kim Weeden, the Jan Rock Zubrow '77 Professor of the Social Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University, traces the discrepancy in college majors back to gender differences that emerge early in high school.
Weeden is corresponding author of "Pipeline Dreams: Occupational Plans and Gender Differences in STEM Major Persistence and Completion," published in Sociology of Education. Co-authors are Dafna Gelbgiser of Tel Aviv University and Stephen L. Morgan of Johns Hopkins University.
THE FAILURE OF CAREER PREP AND TRACKING IN NORTH AMERICAN EDUCATION
The researchers found that gender differences in high school students' occupational plans - where they see themselves at age 30 - have a large effect on gender differences in STEM outcomes in college, whereas gender differences in high school grades, math test scores, taking advanced math and science courses, self-assessed math ability, and attitudes toward family and work account for only a small percentage of the gap between female and male STEM major graduates.
"Gender differences in academic achievement in high school and in work-family orientation are 'zombie explanations': They refuse to die, no matter how weak the empirical evidence for them," said Weeden, director of the Center for the Study of Inequality.
Gender differences in plans emerge very early in students' academic careers, Weeden added, "even among students who do well in math and science and have similar orientation to work and family."
The researchers analyzed data from the Educational Longitudinal Surveys (ELS), a data set collected by the U.S. Department of Education that tracked students who were high school sophomores in 2002 through 2012.
"The ELS cohort is one of the first to complete its schooling after women's college completion rates began to exceed men's and when the gender composition of the STEM workforce became a significant focus of policy and discussions about higher education," the researchers wrote.
The gender differences in occupational plans are substantial. Among high school senior boys, 26% planned to enter STEM or biomed occupations, compared with 13% of girls, while 15% of girls planned to enter nursing or similar health occupations compared with 4% of boys.
At the college level, gender disparities show up not only among those completing a STEM major, but also among those who persist in STEM after declaring a STEM major as a college sophomore. Among all college entrants, 18% of men compared with 8% of women completed STEM/biomedical majors. Among college sophomores who declared STEM majors, 42.5% of women went on to complete a STEM baccalaureate degree, compared with 58.2% of men.
The results suggest that efforts to reduce gender differences in STEM outcomes need to begin much earlier in students' educational careers. This is hard to do, Weeden said, because of persistent cultural messages and a gender-segregated adult workforce that reinforce young men's and women's beliefs - whether accurate or not - about the types of occupations where they will be welcome and rewarded fairly.
"University-based programs to support students in STEM are worthwhile," Weeden said, "but they can't really be expected to reverse all the social and cultural influences on the plans that young men and young women form well before college."
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Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.
Nitrous oxide may bring relief to veterans suffering from PTSD, new study suggests
LAUGHING GAS ANOTHER SIXTIES PARTY DRUG FINDS A USEFUL FUTURE
For military veterans suffering from PTSD, symptoms such as anxiety, anger and depression can have a devastating impact on their health, daily routine, relationships and overall quality of life.
"Effective treatments for PTSD are limited," said anesthesiologist Peter Nagele, MD, chair of the Department of Anesthesia & Critical Care at UChicago Medicine and co-author of the paper. "While small in scale, this study shows the early promise of using nitrous oxide to quickly relieve symptoms of PTSD."
The findings, based on a study of three military veterans suffering from PTSD and published June 30 in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, could lead to improved treatments for a psychiatric disorder that has affected thousands of current and former members of the U.S. military.
For this new study, three veterans with PTSD were asked to inhale a single one-hour dose of 50% nitrous oxide and 50% oxygen through a face mask. Within hours after breathing nitrous oxide, two of the patients reported a marked improvement in their PTSD symptoms. This improvement lasted one week for one of the patients, while the other patient's symptoms gradually returned over the week. The third patient reported an improvement two hours after his treatment but went back to experiencing symptoms the next day.
"Like many other treatments, nitrous oxide appears to be effective for some patients but not for others," explained Nagele, who is himself a veteran of the Austrian Army and grateful to have identified an opportunity to help other veterans. "Often drugs work only on a subset of patients, while others do not respond. It's our role to determine who may benefit from this treatment, and who won't."
The next step for the team is to determine whether nitrous oxide effects are replicated in a larger sample under randomized, controlled conditions and whether the effects benefit specific PTSD domains (http://ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT04378426). If these findings are replicated in independent samples, it may be feasible that nitrous oxide can be implemented to achieve rapid symptom reduction while longer-term PTSD treatments like psychotherapy or pharmacology are allowed to take effect over a longer time course.
Nagele is a pioneer in the field of using nitrous oxide to treat depression. Most commonly known for its use by dentists, nitrous oxide is a low-cost, easy-to-use medication. Although some patients may experience side effects like nausea or vomiting while receiving nitrous oxide, the reactions are temporary.
Exactly how and why nitrous oxide relieves symptoms of depression in some people has yet to be fully understood. Most traditional antidepressants work through a brain chemical called serotonin. Nitrous oxide, like ketamine, an anesthetic that recently received FDA-approval in a nasal spray form to treat major depression, works through a different mechanism, by blocking N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors.
A 2015 landmark study by Nagele found that two-thirds of patients with treatment-resistant depression experienced an improvement in symptoms after receiving nitrous oxide.
For his next study, Nagele is researching the ideal dose of nitrous oxide to treat intractable depression. Study participants with treatment-resistant depression received different doses of nitrous oxide so that Nagele and his team could compare each dose's effectiveness and side effects. The study is being funded by the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation.
Marine alga from the Kiel Fjord discovered as a remedy against infections and skin cancer
GEOMAR research group successfully applies bioinformatics methods and machine learning in marine drug discovery
HELMHOLTZ CENTRE FOR OCEAN RESEARCH KIEL (GEOMAR)
IMAGE: BALTIC SEA SEAWEED FUCUS VESICULOSUS AND ITS FUNGAL SYMBIONT WERE INVESTIGATED IN THIS STUDY. view more
CREDIT: LARISSA BÜDENBENDER
Healing with the help of marine organisms is no utopia. Already 12 life-saving drugs, e.g. against cancer, have been developed from marine organisms and their symbiotic microbiota. Their high potential for drug development is hampered by the lengthy and costly discovery process. The research group of the Marine Natural Product Chemistry Research Unit at GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, supported by computer-aided automated approaches, has now successfully discovered marine molecules as potential remedies against infections and skin cancer in an alga and its fungal symbiont originating from the Kiel Fjord.
The search process for marine active ingredients starts with the extraction of marine macro- and microorganisms, followed by the purification and characterization of their novel and bioactive chemical constituents, which are intended to be used for the development of new therapeutics. "One of the biggest pitfalls in drug research is the isolation of already described natural molecules, using the 'classical' bioactivity-guided isolation process", explains Prof. Dr. Deniz Tasdemir, head of Research Unit Marine Natural Product Chemistry at GEOMAR and GEOMAR Centre for Marine Biotechnology. "This approach is complicated and often prone to failures", Dr. Tasdemir continues.
In her research group, she addressed this problem through automated, computer-based approaches in combination with bioactivity screenings. In a one-year study, it was found that the brown alga Fucus vesiculosus (bladder wrack) from the Kiel Fjord, inhibits the pathogenic bacterium Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which causes hospital infections.
"Algorithm-based bioinformatics strategies and machine learning tools have enabled us to map the massive metabolome of brown alga and at the same time predict the molecular clusters responsible for their antibiotic activity", said Dr. Larissa Büdenbender, a former postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Tasdemir's group and first author of one of the two articles now published in the journal Marine Drugs. The algorithms applied in this study group together the molecular families in complex networks based on their chemical similarity scores in mass spectrometry analyses, and together with in silico machine learning tools, help us to chemically identify the known and new compounds already in the extract. After the first rapid chemical fractionation step of the extract, a bioinformatic programme is used to predict the bioactivity score of molecules according to their relative abundance in the fractions. These bioactive compounds are isolated. "The classical discovery approach from extraction to characterization of bioactive ingredients of the alga would normally take 3-4 years. These automated tools helped us to accelerate the targeted discovery of new natural antibiotics down to some months", emphasizes Prof. Tasdemir.
"In nature, bladder wrack is often under strong pressure from fouling and biofilm formation by millions of microorganisms found in seawater. Therefore, membrane-bound compounds, as we identified in this study, are of high ecological importance for self-protection of the alga. Such molecules, which perform a critical function in natural space, often display related activities against human pathogens. Since bladder wrack is an edible seaweed, such activities make it an attractive candidate not only as a source of drugs, but also for food supplements or food protection", says Prof. Tasdemir. Next, we will be investigating the application potential of bladder wrack in food industry.
Many fungi also live in symbiosis on the surfaces and inside of seaweed. These are also promising sources for the discovery and development of new drugs. Bicheng Fan, a PhD student of Professor Tasdemir, has isolated more than 120 symbiotic fungi from bladder wrack and has studied the fungus Pyrenochaetopsis sp. in detail, as it efficiently kills melanoma-type skin cancer cells with low cytotoxicity and has a very rich chemical inventory. Bicheng also used computer-aided automated approaches to isolate special molecules with a rare chemical scaffold. The study was also recently published in Marine Drugs.
According to Prof Tasdemir, this is only the second chemical study on the previously completely unexplored fungal genus Pyrenochaetopsis. "Fungi, which we isolated from bladder wrack and fermented in optimized laboratory conditions, are an established source of natural anti-cancer agents. We have found several novel natural products here, which we named as pyrenosetins A and B, that have a high potential for fighting skin cancer", the chemist continues.
"Nature is the source of more than half of all modern medicines that we use today. Access to the revolutionary genomics, metabolomics, bioinformatics and machine learning tools will enable, in an unprecedented way, new and rapid discovery of marine compounds, and more rational and efficient use for subsequent drug development with industrial partners"," Professor Tasdemir concludes.
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Stemming the spread of misinformation on social media
A simple 'nudge' encourages people to share more truthful COVID-19 content online
ASSOCIATION FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
The bad news, not that anyone needs more of it: The dangers of COVID-19 could worsen if misinformation on social media continues to spread unchecked. Essentially, what people choose to share on social media about the pandemic could become a life-or death decision.
The good news? Though there is no practical way to fully stem the tide of harmful misinformation on social media, certain tactics could help improve the quality of information that people share online about this deadly disease.
New research reported in the journal Psychological Science finds that priming people to think about accuracy could make them more discerning in what they subsequently share on social media. In two studies that included more than 1,700 participants, researchers found that when people are asked directly about accuracy, they become more adept at recognizing truth from falsehoods than they otherwise would be.
"People often assume that misinformation and fake news is shared online because people are incapable of distinguishing between what is true and what is false," said Gordon Pennycook, with the University of Regina, Canada, and lead author on the paper. "Our research reveals that is not necessarily the case. Instead, we find that people tend to share false information about COVID-19 on social media because they simply fail to think about accuracy when making decisions about what to share with others."
This inattention to accuracy, he notes, is often compounded by what the researchers consider "lazy" thinking, at least as it pertains to considering the truth of news content on social media.
For their research, Pennycook and his team acquired a list of 15 false and 15 true headlines related to COVID-19. The veracity of the headlines was determined by using various fact-checking sites like snopes.com, health information from mayoclinic.com, and credible news sites like livescience.com. The headlines were presented to the participants in the form of Facebook posts. The participants were then asked if they thought the posts were accurate or if they would consider sharing them.
In the first of the two studies, Pennycook and his colleagues found that people often fail to consider accuracy when deciding what to share on social media, and they are more likely to believe and share falsehoods if they rely more on intuition or have less scientific knowledge than others.
In the second study, the researchers found that simply asking participants to rate the accuracy of one non-COVID-related headline at the beginning of the study-subtly nudging them to think about the concept of accuracy later in the study-more than doubled how discerning they were in sharing information.
These results, which are in line with previous studies on political fake news, suggest that a subtle mental nudge that primes the brain to consider the accuracy of information in general improves people's choices about what to share on social media.
"We need to change the way that we interact with social media," said Pennycook. "Individuals need to remember to stop and think about whether something is true before they share it with others, and social media companies should investigate potential ways to help facilitate this, possibly by providing subtle accuracy nudges on their platform."
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APS is the leading international organization dedicated to advancing scientific psychology across disciplinary and geographic borders. Our members provide a richer understanding of the world through their research, teaching, and application of psychological science. We are passionate about supporting psychological scientists in these pursuits, which we do by sharing cutting-edge research across all areas of the field through our journals and conventions; promoting the integration of scientific perspectives within psychological science and with related disciplines; fostering global connections among our members; engaging the public with our research to promote broader understanding and awareness of psychological science; and advocating for increased support for psychological science in the public policy arena.
Psychological Science, the flagship journal of APS, is the leading peer-reviewed journal publishing empirical research spanning the entire spectrum of the science of psychology. For a copy of this article, "Fighting COVID-19 Misinformation on Social Media: Experimental Evidence for a Scalable Accuracy-Nudge Intervention," and access to other research in Psychological Science, contact news@psychologicalscience.org. Pennycook, G., et. al, (2020) Fighting COVID-19 misinformation on social media: Experimental evidence for a scalable accuracy nudge intervention. Psychological Science, https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620939054
