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)
IMAGE: CHANGES IN HIMALAYAN POSITIVE RADIATIVE FORCING ON SNOW FROM LIGHT-ABSORBING PARTICLES LINKED TO INDIAN LOCKDOWN.view more
CREDIT: HOU ET AL
Diminished anthropogenic pollutant emissions during 2020 Covid-19 lockdowns reduced snowmelt in the Himalayas, according to a study. Liqiang Zhang and colleagues used multiple satellite data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI), as well as a coupled atmosphere-chemistry-snow model (GEOS-Chem-SNICAR) to explore how the sudden, dramatic reduction in particulate pollution in the region affected snow and ice melt. Snow and ice on the Tibetan plateau act as a water source for over 20% of the global population. However, ice and snow in the Himalayas have been melting at an accelerating rate in recent decades. While much of this melting is attributable to climate change, air pollution also plays a role, because dark particles of dust and soot that fall on frozen surfaces absorb solar energy and melt the nearby snow and ice. The COVID-19 pandemic created a natural experiment because the Indian national lockdown from 25 March 2020 to 31 May 2020 reduced economic and transportation activities. The authors estimate that the reduced anthropogenic pollutant emissions during the Indian lockdown was responsible for 71.6% of the reduction in radiative forcing on snow in April 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. This reduction in radiative forcing may have prevented 27 Mt in ice and snow melt. The results emphasize the power of reducing anthropogenic pollutant emissions when combating snow and ice melt, according to the authors.
For many, neighborhoods that offer children access to better resources, less crime and less violence often result in better opportunities for healthier and more prosperous lives. Indeed, researchers studying the effects of moving to “opportunity neighborhoods” argue that very point and many policymakers have taken notice. However, so far, researchers have only accounted for the neighborhoods where children grow up, ignoring the long-term effects that parents’ childhood neighborhoods have on children’s adult economic well-being.
Expanding on the relatively short-term and single-generation body of research, University of Notre Dame assistant professor of sociologySteven Alvarado used 35 years of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth from 1979 to 2014 to study what happened when multiple generations of Black, white and Latino families lived on one side of the tracks versus the other.
Somewhat surprisingly, Alvarado and his co-author, Alexandra Cooperstock, a doctoral candidate in sociology at Cornell University, found that Black families — regardless of where they lived — still ended up in similar economic circumstances as they moved into adulthood and entered the workforce.
“Any benefits accrued by growing up in more advantaged neighborhoods may be undercut by enhanced discrimination in the labor market and society at large,” the researchers wrote. “Race, not class origins, is the dominant factor governing the economic mobility of Black individuals.”
Alvarado explained that neighborhood mobility does not work as well for Blacks in the United States as it does for whites and Latinos in terms of economic development.
“When comparing Black families who were exposed to multiple generations of neighborhood disadvantage versus Black families who were not, they both end up having the same economic outcomes in adulthood,” he said. “Race still trumps class origins in America when it comes to the labor market.”
Alvarado said his study employed a novel technique not used in previous studies of the effects of neighborhood processes on economic outcomes: the examination of intergenerational associations rather than just using a single generation. The researchers linked exposure to neighborhood disadvantage in both mothers’ and children’s childhoods with the adult income of the children — which, researchers wrote, “will provide a more complete picture of neighborhood influence and expand our understanding of how inequality forms and is maintained over time.”
The longitudinal survey data allowed the researchers to link neighborhood conditions with economic outcomes across multiple generations for white, Latino and Black families.
“When comparing Black families who were exposed to multiple generations of neighborhood disadvantage versus Black families who were not, they both end up having the same economic outcomes in adulthood. Race still trumps class origins in America when it comes to the labor market.”
One of the more compelling findings of their study, researchers said, was that Latino families experienced the most positive growth in adult earnings. These findings suggest that Latinos — especially non-Black Latinos — are likely to benefit more in the long run, economically speaking, than whites or Blacks when removed from their disadvantaged neighborhoods.
“There’s definitely a lot more room for neighborhood-level opportunity to manifest into economic success for Latinos than for Blacks,” Alvarado added.
And Black residents’ incomes, the researchers said, “continue to be immune” to whether their family lives in a good neighborhood or a bad neighborhood, across generations.
“Moving Blacks to better neighborhoods could procure positive outcomes — such as improved cognitive development and behavior and decreased illicit drug use during childhood and adolescence,” Alvarado concluded. “But once it gets to the labor market, it’s a whole different story.”
The researchers argued that structural change is needed in the way that Black individuals are treated in the U.S. labor market to increase their economic success. Efforts to simply move Black residents to better neighborhoods “are unlikely to have a significant impact on racial income gaps,” they said.
Contact: Tracy DeStazio, assistant director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu
Computer scientists at the University of Waterloo have discovered a method of attack that can successfully bypass voice authentication security systems with up to a 99% success rate after only six tries.
Voice authentication – which allows companies to verify the identity of their clients via a supposedly unique “voiceprint” – has increasingly been used in remote banking, call centers and other security-critical scenarios.
“When enrolling in voice authentication, you are asked to repeat a certain phrase in your own voice. The system then extracts a unique vocal signature (voiceprint) from this provided phrase and stores it on a server,” said Andre Kassis, a Computer Security and Privacy PhD candidate and the lead author of a study detailing the research.
“For future authentication attempts, you are asked to repeat a different phrase and the features extracted from it are compared to the voiceprint you have saved in the system to determine whether access should be granted.”
After the concept of voiceprints was introduced, malicious actors quickly realized they could use machine learning-enabled “deepfake” software to generate convincing copies of a victim’s voice using as little as five minutes of recorded audio.
In response, developers introduced “spoofing countermeasures” – checks that could examine a speech sample and determine whether it was created by a human or a machine.
The Waterloo researchers have developed a method that evades spoofing countermeasures and can fool most voice authentication systems within six attempts. They identified the markers in deepfake audio that betray it is computer-generated, and wrote a program that removes these markers, making it indistinguishable from authentic audio.
In a recent test against Amazon Connect’s voice authentication system, they achieved a 10 per cent success rate in one four-second attack, with this rate rising to over 40 per cent in less than thirty seconds. With some of the less sophisticated voice authentication systems they targeted, they achieved a 99 per cent success rate after six attempts.
Kassis contends that while voice authentication is obviously better than no additional security, the existing spoofing countermeasures are critically flawed.
“The only way to create a secure system is to think like an attacker. If you don’t, then you’re just waiting to be attacked,” Kassis said.
Kassis’ supervisor, computer science professor Urs Hengartner added, “By demonstrating the insecurity of voice authentication, we hope that companies relying on voice authentication as their only authentication factor will consider deploying additional or stronger authentication measures.”
IMAGE: DAY 4 EMBRYOID SHOWING AN INNER EPIBLAST-LIKE DOMAIN MARKED IN GREEN SURROUNDED BY HYPOBLAST-LIKE CELLS MARKED IN ORANGE AND TROPHOBLAST-LIKE CELLS MARKED IN PURPLE.view more
CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
Cambridge scientists have created a stem cell-derived model of the human embryo in the lab by reprogramming human stem cells. The breakthrough could help research into genetic disorders and in understanding why and how pregnancies fail.
Published today in the journal Nature, this embryo model is an organised three-dimensional structure derived from pluripotent stem cells that replicate some developmental processes that occur in early human embryos.
Use of such models allows experimental modelling of embryonic development during the second week of pregnancy. They can help researchers gain basic knowledge of the developmental origins of organs and specialised cells such as sperm and eggs, and facilitate understanding of early pregnancy loss.
“Our human embryo-like model, created entirely from human stem cells, gives us access to the developing structure at a stage that is normally hidden from us due to the implantation of the tiny embryo into the mother’s womb,” said Professor Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, who led the work.
She added: “This exciting development allows us to manipulate genes to understand their developmental roles in a model system. This will let us test the function of specific factors, which is difficult to do in the natural embryo.”
In natural human development, the second week of development is an important time when the embryo implants into the uterus. This is the time when many pregnancies are lost.
The new advance enables scientists to peer into the mysterious ‘black box’ period of human development – usually following implantation of the embryo in the uterus – to observe processes never directly observed before.
Understanding these early developmental processes holds the potential to reveal some of the causes of human birth defects and diseases, and to develop tests for these in pregnant women.
Until now, the processes could only be observed in animal models, using cells from zebrafish and mice, for example.
Legal restrictions in the UK currently prevent the culture of natural human embryos in the lab beyond day 14 of development: this time limit was set to correspond to the stage where the embryo can no longer form a twin.
Until now, scientists have only been able to study this period of human development using donated human embryos. This advance could reduce the need for donated human embryos in research.
Zernicka-Goetz says the while these models can mimic aspects of the development of human embryos, they cannot and will not develop to the equivalent of postnatal stage humans.
Over the past decade, Zernicka-Goetz’s group in Cambridge has been studying the earliest stages of pregnancy, in order to understand why some pregnancies fail and some succeed.
In 2021 and then in 2022 her team announced in Developmental Cell, Nature and Cell Stem Cell journals that they had finally created model embryos from mouse stem cells that can develop to form a brain-like structure, a beating heart, and the foundations of all other organs of the body.
The new models derived from human stem cells do not have a brain or beating heart, but they include cells that would typically go on to form the embryo, placenta and yolk sac, and develop to form the precursors of germ cells (that will form sperm and eggs).
Many pregnancies fail at the point when these three types of cells orchestrate implantation into the uterus begin to send mechanical and chemical signals to each other, which tell the embryo how to develop properly.
There are clear regulations governing stem cell-based models of human embryos and all researchers doing embryo modelling work must first be approved by ethics committees. Journals require proof of this ethics review before they accept scientific papers for publication. Zernicka-Goetz’s laboratory holds these approvals.
“It is against the law and FDA regulations to transfer any embryo-like models into a woman for reproductive aims. These are highly manipulated human cells and their attempted reproductive use would be extremely dangerous,” said Dr Insoo Hyun, Director of the Center for Life Sciences and Public Learning at Boston’s Museum of Science and a member of Harvard Medical School’s Center for Bioethics.
Zernicka-Goetz also holds position at the California Institute of Technology and is NOMIS Distinguished Scientist and Scholar Awardee.
The research was funded by the Wellcome Trust and Open Philanthropy.
Day 4 embryoid showing an inner epiblast like domain in magenta that has apico-basal polarity (yellow apical, blue basal), similar to the epiblast of the human embryo just after implantation.
Day 6 embryoid (IMAGE)
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
Day 6 embryoid showing epiblast marker SOX2 in green, amnion marker ISL1 in purple, and primitive streak marker brachyury in orange. On rare occasions, embryoids such as this one show these aspects of anterior-posterior or dorso-ventral patterning.
Prisoners in Bolivia are trading in jaguar skins and other wild animal body parts to produce wallets, hats, and belts for sale in local markets. The fangs and bones of jaguars are being illegally exported for use as traditional Asian medicine.
The trade, which further threatens the future of this species, has been uncovered by researchers investigating reports of illegal trading at Mocoví prison, in Trinidad, Bolivia.
As the largest big cat in the Americas the jaguar (Panthera Onca) has ecological and cultural significance in the landlocked country of Bolivia, but numbers are declining fast due to reasons including habitat loss – as well as domestic and international demand for their body parts. The illegal market exists despite the fact that jaguars have been legally protected against commercial trade internationally since 1975 and nationally since 1986.
Inmates at the Bolivian prison have been buying skins of jaguars and other animals including boa constrictor snakes (Boa constrictor) directly from traders at local markets, and then selling fashion items back again at a profit in order to provide income for their daily sustenance.
According to the researchers, Neil D’Cruze, Angie Elwin, Eyob Asfaw and Roberto Vieto, writing in the Oryx, published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora, large orders for the wildlife products are being received from non-Bolivian international clients.
Videos shared on social media as recently as February this year even show the director of Mocoví prison inviting the public to visit a craft fair held at the facility to buy wildlife products – including those from jaguar parts - made by the inmates.
Dr Neil D’Cruze, Head of Wildlife Research at the International NGO, World Animal Protection said: “Our research confirms that Bolivian inmates are paid to produce jaguar wallets, hats, belts and purses from their cells. Contrary to previous anecdotal reports, the footage provided showed no evidence of inmates being coerced into this illegal activity; instead, an inmate stated that they did so willingly to ‘earn a living for daily sustenance’.”
“Illegal wildlife trade is one of the most pressing threats to wildlife conservation. To support existing efforts to protect jaguars and other wildlife in Bolivia, there is a need for improved law enforcement and political will to take action against illegal activities. In addition, awareness must be raised on how wildlife products are being produced and the effect that such production has on the wildlife and the people involved.”
All the information gathered by the authors of the report, which is peer-reviewed and published in Oryx – The International Journal of Conservation, has been passed to the Bolivian authorities.
The number of wild jaguars in Bolivia is unknown. But the trafficking of their body parts and skins remains a going problem , placing this ‘vulnerable’ species at increased risk of extinction. Photos of jaguars taken at Senda Verde, June 2022.
CREDIT
Photos: Jaguar at the Senda Verde Sanctuary. Credit: World Animal Protection/Emi Kondo.
Jaguar fangs and products made with their skins are sold in markets like El Campesino. Despite being illegal in the country to kill and sell jaguars and their by-products. Prisoners at the Mocoví prison are creating wallets, hats and belts with illegal jaguar skins inside the institution. These products are then sold in markets like El Campesino. Photos taken at El Campesino Market, June 2022.
Going over the wall: Insights into illegal jaguar product production in a Bolivian prison
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
28-Jun-2023
COI STATEMENT
All authors are employed by the animal welfare organisation World Animal Protection (NDC holds the position of Head of Animal Welfare and Research; AE is Wildlife Research Manager; EA is Wildlife Investigations Advisor; RV is Global Animal Welfare Advisor). Our results pertaining to this study were in no way influenced by our own personal views on animal welfare.
Disclaimer: AAAS and
That essential morning coffee may be a placebo
Scientists find that the boost you get from a morning coffee can’t be replicated with plain caffeine
For many people, the day doesn’t start until their coffee mug is empty. Coffee is often thought to make you feel more alert, so people drink it to wake themselves up and improve their efficiency. Portuguese scientists studied coffee-drinkers to understand whether that wakefulness effect is dependent on the properties of caffeine, or whether it’s about the experience of drinking coffee.
“There is a common expectation that coffee increases alertness and psychomotor functioning,” said Prof Nuno Sousa of the University of Minho, corresponding author of the study in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience and Field Chief Editor of the journal. “When you get to understand better the mechanisms underlying a biological phenomenon, you open pathways for exploring the factors that may modulate it and even the potential benefits of that mechanism.”
A caffeine kickstart
The scientists recruited people who drank a minimum of one cup of coffee per day and asked them to refrain from eating or drinking caffeinated beverages for at least three hours before the study. They interviewed the participants to collect sociodemographic data, and then did two brief functional MRI scans: one before and one 30 minutes after either taking caffeine or drinking a standardized cup of coffee. During the functional MRI scans, the participants were asked to relax and let their minds wander.
Because of the known neurochemical effects of drinking coffee, the scientists expected that the functional MRI scans would show that the people who drank coffee had higher integration of networks that are linked to the prefrontal cortex, associated with executive memory, and the default mode network, involved in introspection and self-reflection processes. They found that the connectivity of the default mode network was decreased both after drinking coffee and after taking caffeine, which indicates that consuming either caffeine or coffee made people more prepared to move from resting to working on tasks.
Waking up on the right side of the bed
However, drinking coffee also increased the connectivity in the higher visual network and the right executive control network - parts of the brain which are involved in working memory, cognitive control, and goal-directed behavior. This didn’t happen when participants only took caffeine. In other words, if you want to feel not just alert but ready to go, caffeine alone won’t do – you need to experience that cup of coffee.
“Acute coffee consumption decreased the functional connectivity between brain regions of the default mode network, a network that is associated with self-referential processes when participants are at rest,” said Dr Maria Picó-Pérez of Jaume I University, first author. “The functional connectivity was also decreased between the somatosensory/motor networks and the prefrontal cortex, while the connectivity in regions of the higher visual and the right executive control network was increased after drinking coffee. In simple words, the subjects were more ready for action and alert to external stimuli after having coffee.”
“Taking into account that some of the effects that we found were reproduced by caffeine, we could expect other caffeinated drinks to share some of the effects,” added Picó-Pérez. “However, others were specific for coffee drinking, driven by factors such as the particular smell and taste of the drink, or the psychological expectation associated with consuming that drink.”
The authors pointed out that it is possible that the experience of drinking coffee without caffeine could cause these benefits: this study could not differentiate the effects of the experience alone from the experience combined with the caffeine. There is also a hypothesis that the benefits coffee-drinkers claim could be due to the relief of withdrawal symptoms, which this study did not test.
“The changes in connectivity were studied during a resting-state sequence. Any association with psychological and cognitive processes is interpreted based on the common function ascribed to the regions and networks found, but it was not directly tested,” cautioned Sousa. “Moreover, there could be individual differences in the metabolism of caffeine among participants that would be interesting to explore in the future.”
Coffee consumption decreases the connectivity of the posterior DMN at rest
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
28-Jun-2023
COI STATEMENT
This study was funded by the Institute for the Scientific Information on Coffee (ISIC) (ISIC_2017_NS); ISIC did not influence the experimental design or data analysis/interpretation.
The worm that learned: Diet found to affect learning in older nematode
IMAGE: A NEMATODE, C. ELEGANS, EATS BACTERIA AS A FOOD. THE BACTERIAL DIET AFFECTS THE AGE-DEPENDENT DECLINE OF ASSOCIATIVE LEARNING ABILITY OF C. ELEGANS. THE PHOTO SHOWS A HEAD OF C. ELEGANS WITH TWO DIFFERENT BACTERIA: E. COLI (RED) AND L. REUTERI (BLUE)view more
CREDIT: KENTARO NOMA
A group from Nagoya University in Japan has discovered that when the diet of nematodes, tiny worms measuring about a millimeter or less in length, includes the bacteria Lactobacillus reuteri, the weakening of associative learning ability caused by aging does not occur. These results may suggest ways to use diet to reduce age-related cognitive decline in other animals, including humans. Their findings were published in the journal eLife.
“This research is significant in that it established a method for studying the effects of diet on brain function in aging individuals using a combination of nematodes and bacteria as food,” said Associate Professor Kentaro Noma from the Graduate School of Science at Nagoya University. “Taking advantage of the characteristics of nematodes to measure both individual lifespan and aging of brain function, we found dietary conditions that maintain brain function, but not longevity. We usually think that the decline in brain function is caused by aging, but perhaps the processes of aging of brain function and individual lifespan are controlled by different mechanisms.”
Researchers are interested in how a person can use diet to maintain healthy brain activity. However, since the effects of diet are complex, they remain a difficult topic to study. To get around this problem, researchers study simpler organisms to understand the basic mechanisms behind these processes.
Such organisms include nematodes, tiny roundworms favored by researchers because of their simple anatomy, short lifespan, and ease of genetic manipulation. The research group used the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, which has a short lifespan of only two weeks, but uses its simple nervous system to exhibit memory-learning behaviors.
Noma was especially interested in the behavior known as thermotaxis, which describes the movement of an organism toward a preferred temperature. “Nematodes seem to learn by associating the presence or absence of food with their rearing temperature,” Noma explained. When C. elegans is reared at a certain temperature with food and then placed on a temperature gradient without food, it will move toward the rearing temperature. However, if it is reared at the same temperature without food, it will not demonstrate thermotaxis toward the rearing temperature. “Therefore,” he continued, “we can use thermotaxis as an indicator of associative learning ability.”
To see whether changing diet influences learning, the researchers screened 35 different strains of lactic acid bacteria owned by Megmilk Snow Brand Co. They sought to identify possible diets that could maintain the associative learning ability of nematodes as they grew older. The researchers identified Lactobaillus reuteri, a probiotic that is studied for its potential health benefits, especially for the management of gastrointestinal disorders. This bacterium was found to be associated with the maintenance of the associative learning ability of the nematodes, while having no effect on their lifespan.
To understand how L. reuteri affects nematodes, the group identified a key protein, DAF-16 transcription factor, that regulates the functioning of neurons of nematodes fed L. reuteri. This was what they had hoped to find because the DAF-16 gene is involved in the regulation of the processes of aging and longevity.
“Since our intestines contain a myriad of bacteria, including E. coli and lactobacilli, the balance of these bacteria may also affect our brain function,” Noma said. “Furthermore, genes similar to those found in this study are also present in humans. This suggests that the mechanism that explained the effect of diet on changes in brain function with age may also exist in humans. With further research, it is possible that maintaining high brain function in old age through diet will become a reality.”
Performing arts performed in groups appears to lower anxiety and depression, according to a review of available evidence.
Researchers at the University of Exeter looked at the effect of group-based performing arts-based therapies on symptom severity, wellbeing, quality of life, functional communication or social participation. In a study published in BMJ Open, the researchers reviewed 171 studies, and took 12 forward to inclusion, which met the screening criteria.
Published from 2004 to 2021, the studies involved a total of 669 participants with anxiety and/or depression, from nine countries and covered five broad forms of performance art: dance music therapy, art therapy, martial arts-based therapies and theatre. Dance was the most studied art form, with five studies included in the review.
Led researcher Dr Max Barnish, of the University of Exeter Medical School, said: “Anxiety and depression are major global health challenges, for which we desperately need non-drug treatments that reduce symptoms. Our review found real promise across a range of studies – but this field of research has stagnated. We now need researchers to work across the performing arts to compare group therapies to each other, so we can establish which type of activity is most effective in reducing symptoms.”
Anxiety and depression severity were the outcomes that received most interest among researchers. A quarter of studies also looked at wellbeing, such as satisfaction with life, or how the arts improved people’s ability to interact socially. Only two studies looked at quality of life, while no studies looked at benefits on everyday communication. The review found that, while the field shows promise, there is plenty room for development in the evidence base.
The paper is entitled ‘Group-based active artistic interventions for adults with primary anxiety and depression: a systematic review’, and is published in BMJ Open.
JOURNAL
BMJ Open
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Systematic review
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
People
ARTICLE TITLE
Group-based active artistic interventions for adults with primary anxiety and depression: a systematic review’
