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)
Tuesday, July 25, 2023
New prostate cancer biomarkers provide hope to millions of men
IMAGE: UNISA SCIENTIST PROFESSOR DOUG BROOKSview more
CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA
University of South Australia researchers have identified three new biomarkers for prostate cancer to help identify and differentiate potentially aggressive cases of the disease which kills more than 300,000 men each year.
An international team of scientists led by UniSA Professor of Molecular Medicine Doug Brooks has made the breakthrough, which assists pathologists when visualising prostate cancer in patient tissue samples.
The new biomarkers, when used together, will assist clinicians in determining which patients require immediate, radical treatment compared to those who need close monitoring.
With more than one million men diagnosed with prostate cancer worldwide each year, the research breakthrough is significant.
The UniSA-based team has collaborated with the Australian company Envision Sciences on the technology to improve patient management and treatment outcomes.
“It is anticipated this will lead to long-term improvements in the way prostate cancer is diagnosed and graded,” Prof Brooks says.
“The biomarkers are remarkably sensitive and specific in accurately visualising the progress of the cancer and confirming its grade. This discovery has led to the commercial development of a test designed to determine how advanced and aggressive the cancer is and whether immediate treatment is needed.”
Envision Sciences, which funded the development and translation of the technology at UniSA, has signed a commercialisation agreement with the largest tissue diagnostic pathology company in the US, Quest Diagnostics, to take the technology into clinical practice.
Pending a successful outcome in the US, it is expected that clinical trials using the innovative technology will be undertaken in Australia.
Describing the breakthrough as “life saving,” UniSA Deputy Vice Chancellor Research and Enterprise Professor Marnie Hughes-Warrington AO says the partnership between UniSA and Envision Sciences is an exciting development in cancer research.
“This technology represents a shift in the way clinicians can grade and predict the aggressiveness of prostate cancer. We look forward to seeing the difference it makes in coming years.”
The research has been published in the journal Cancers.
Notes to editors
A world-class multidisciplinary team is involved in the prostate cancer research project, including teams from UniSA, Trinity College Dublin, University of Adelaide, Flinders Medical Centre, Aquesta Pathology Qld, and Otago University NZ.
A study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society found that immediately after retirement, white adults tended to experience a significant decline in cognitive function, whereas Black adults experienced minimal cognitive decline. White men showed the steepest post-retirement cognitive decline across sex/race combinations, whereas Black women showed the least decline.
White women performed better cognitively at retirement than other race/sex subgroups, and after retirement, their cognitive functioning declined at a rate that was slightly less than the average for this study. Results were adjusted for sociodemographics and physical and mental health indicators.
Finally, the study—which included 2,226 US participants followed for up to 10 years—revealed greater post-retirement cognitive decline among individuals who attended college compared with those who did not.
“The results seem to point to the possibility that better job opportunities could lead to greater cognitive losses after retirement whereas exposure to lifelong structural inequalities may actually ease transition to retirement with respect to cognitive aging,” said lead author Ross Andel, PhD, of Arizona State University’s Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation.
Additional Information NOTE: The information contained in this release is protected by copyright. Please include journal attribution in all coverage. For more information or to obtain a PDF of any study, please contact: Sara Henning-Stout, newsroom@wiley.com.
About the Journal Journal of the American Geriatrics Societyis the go-to journal for clinical aging research. We provide a diverse, interprofessional community of healthcare professionals with the latest insights on geriatrics education, clinical practice, and public policy—all supporting the high-quality, person-centered care essential to our well-being as we age.
About Wiley Wiley is a knowledge company and a global leader in research, publishing, and knowledge solutions. Dedicated to the creation and application of knowledge, Wiley serves the world’s researchers, learners, innovators, and leaders, helping them achieve their goals and solve the world's most important challenges. For more than two centuries, Wiley has been delivering on its timeless mission to unlock human potential. Visit us at Wiley.com. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.
New research published in Contemporary Economic Policy indicates that Disability Insurance (DI) may improve economic opportunities for children whose parents have health conditions that limit work.
The study included 52,575 parent-child pairs in the United States. When investigators examined economic mobility patterns for children whose parents reported work-limiting disability, they found that children had less upward economic mobility and more downward mobility relative to children of non-limited parents. Children of parents initially awarded DI experienced a negligible mobility gap relative to peers whose parents never applied for DI but more upward mobility than peers of parents who were initially denied, but later awarded, DI benefits.
“Around 25% of our sample kids have a parent reporting a work-limiting disability,” said corresponding author Katie Jajtner, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Our findings provide suggestive evidence that earlier access to income support through Disability Insurance for parents with chronic and severe work limitations may mitigate economic mobility disadvantages their children typically face.”
Additional Information NOTE: The information contained in this release is protected by copyright. Please include journal attribution in all coverage. For more information or to obtain a PDF of any study, please contact: Sara Henning-Stout, newsroom@wiley.com.
About the Journal First published in 1982, Contemporary Economic Policypublishes scholarly research and analysis on important policy issues facing society. The journal provides insight into the complexity of policy decisions and communicates evidence-based solutions in a form accessible to economists and policy makers. Contemporary Economic Policy provides a forum for debate by enhancing our understanding of key issues and methods used for policy analysis.
About Wiley Wiley is a knowledge company and a global leader in research, publishing, and knowledge solutions. Dedicated to the creation and application of knowledge, Wiley serves the world’s researchers, learners, innovators, and leaders, helping them achieve their goals and solve the world's most important challenges. For more than two centuries, Wiley has been delivering on its timeless mission to unlock human potential. Visit us at Wiley.com. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.
Functional Family Therapy is a family-based intervention for youth with behavior problems, and although it’s been implemented in 45 states in the U.S and in nine other high-income countries, a recent analysis of published and unpublished studies found that the therapy is not consistently more or less effective than other treatments, including various forms of individual, family, and group interventions.
The authors of the analysis, which is published in Campbell Systematic Reviews and included 20 studies, also noted that there is insufficient evidence to draw conclusions about the effects of Family Functional Therapy compared with no treatment.
“Functional Family Therapy is actively marketed as a 'scientifically proven' or 'evidence-based' program, but there are serious concerns about the quality of the evidence for FFT and available evidence does not support claims that FFT is consistently more effective than other treatments,” said corresponding author Julia H. Littell, PhD, Professor Emerita of Bryn Mawr College.
Dr. Littell and her colleagues looked at the best available studies and found that they all had some serious risks of bias. “At least three-quarters of these studies did not fully report their results. Some FFT studies have not made any of their results public. Available data show that results are inconsistent within and across FFT studies,” she said. “Also, information on the cost effectiveness of FFT appears to be based on inflated estimates of treatment effects; therefore, claims about FFT's cost effectiveness are not convincing.”
Additional Information NOTE: The information contained in this release is protected by copyright. Please include journal attribution in all coverage. For more information or to obtain a PDF of any study, please contact: Sara Henning-Stout, newsroom@wiley.com.
About the Journal Campbell Systematic Reviews is an open access journal prepared under the editorial control of the Campbell Collaboration. The journal publishes systematic reviews, evidence and gap maps, and methods research papers.
About Wiley Wiley is a knowledge company and a global leader in research, publishing, and knowledge solutions. Dedicated to the creation and application of knowledge, Wiley serves the world’s researchers, learners, innovators, and leaders, helping them achieve their goals and solve the world's most important challenges. For more than two centuries, Wiley has been delivering on its timeless mission to unlock human potential. Visit us at Wiley.com. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.
A randomized controlled trial conducted in Canada and published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry found that Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP), a nurse-home visiting program, improved child language and mental health at age 2 years when compared with existing services. Rates of child injuries and maternal subsequent pregnancies were similar in the two groups.
This real-world effectiveness trial involved sustained research-policy-practice collaborations from 2011–2022. Investigators successfully reached/enrolled and sustained engagement with 739 participants (368 NFP, 371 comparison) and their 737 children for 2.5 years of each families’ participation.
“We are thrilled to provide new evidence showing that early adverse childhood experiences can be prevented,” said corresponding author and Co-Principal Investigator, Nicole L. A. Catherine, PhD, of Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Additional Information NOTE: The information contained in this release is protected by copyright. Please include journal attribution in all coverage. For more information or to obtain a PDF of any study, please contact: Sara Henning-Stout, newsroom@wiley.com.
About the Journal The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (JCPP) is widely recognised to be the leading international journal covering both child and adolescent psychology and psychiatry. JCPP publishes the highest quality clinically relevant research in psychology, psychiatry and related disciplines.
About Wiley Wiley is a knowledge company and a global leader in research, publishing, and knowledge solutions. Dedicated to the creation and application of knowledge, Wiley serves the world’s researchers, learners, innovators, and leaders, helping them achieve their goals and solve the world's most important challenges. For more than two centuries, Wiley has been delivering on its timeless mission to unlock human potential. Visit us at Wiley.com. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.
Effectiveness of nurse-home visiting in improving child and maternal outcomes prenatally to age two years: A randomised controlled trial (British Columbia Healthy Connections Project)
IMAGE: LISA BISCHOFF ANALYSES EUROSCEPTIC NOVELS PUBLISHED BY BRITISH AUTHORS LONG BEFORE BREXIT.view more
CREDIT: RUB, MARQUARD
Eurosceptic dreams of an independent UK and nightmares of faceless EU bureaucrats are not confined to the world of politics, public opinion and the media. Those tropes have also found their way into the literary domain. From 1973 till now, around a dozen novels about the European integration project have been published in Britain. The threat of ever closer union and the fear of a European Superstate, as they prevail in political and media discourses find their expression also in these narratives. In her book “British Novels and the European Union: DysEUtopia”, which is based on her research carried out during her PhD at Ruhr University Bochum, Lisa Bischoff analyses eight Eurosceptic novels, asking: How is the EU represented in British fiction?
“Overall, the novels, mostly political thrillers, paint a grim picture of the future European Union and can clearly be assigned to the Eurosceptic tradition – some even anticipate Brexit”, summarizes Bischoff her findings. Most of the novels have been written by authors who are well-known in politics and society. They include, for example, Michael Dobbs, known for the “House of Cards” or Stanley Johnson, father of Boris Johnson.
Eurosceptic attitudes are not confined to the domain of non-fiction.
CREDIT
RUB, Marquard
The Fear of a European Superstate
In the novels, Britain has become a member of a federal, fully-integrated EU superstate. In the course of the novels, the protagonists decide to rebel against the alleged misdoings of the EU. In some, this leads to Brexit.
The novels thereby reflect and draw from established cultural, economic and political arguments and tropes that can be found, for instance, in speeches by Margaret Thatcher or David Cameron. In line with these discourses, the supranational system of the EU – depicted as a federal superstate and excessive bureaucracy – is represented as a threat to Britain’s political system, its institutions and principles. The depictions are further powered by historical narratives, myths and specific readings of British and European history. “Especially myths of origins and stories about war time heroes, Westminster parliament or the Second World War hold great sway in the novels”, explains Bischoff.
DysEUtopia
What is more, the Eurosceptic novels do not only reflect and expose, but rather extrapolate Eurosceptic fears, representing the EU as a nightmarish dystopian state. “In my book, I call them dysEUtopias”, says Bischoff. The dys-EUtopian states are marked, for instance, by constant surveillance, fearsome security services, media censorship, propaganda and the re-writing of history. “They bear close resemblance with the societies depicted in classic dystopian fiction by Orwell or Huxley”, explains Bischoff.
The novels thus carry Eurosceptic fears to a next level. By focusing on novels, Bischoff’s book attributes a potentially transformative role to fiction. She is convinced: “Even if the novels’ potential to influence political attitudes and opinions is hard to quantify, they provide us with worthwhile insights into how people feel, think and argue about EU politics and EU membership. The analysis of these representations also helps us to understand the underlying tensions of the Brexit vote.”
IMAGE: A NEW STUDY BY RESEARCHERS FROM KOREA IDENTIFIES TWO TYPES OF STOCKS WITH HIGH TAIL RISK—STOCKS WITH FREQUENT LARGE LOSSES (HIGH TAIL-FATNESS) AND THOSE WITH INFREQUENT BUT LARGE LOSSES (LOW TAIL-FATNESS). THE LTM PHENOMENON OCCURS DUE TO THE INVESTOR’S OVERCONFIDENCE IN THE LATTER STOCKS.view more
CREDIT: PROFESSOR CHEOLJUN EOM FROM PUSAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY
Left-tail risk (LT) stocks are those whose returns fall into the extreme end on the left side of the return distribution. In the hopes of mean-reverting to the normal price, investors usually hold on to these stocks. However, contrary to mean-reverting expectations, these stocks that have experienced extreme losses and high tail risks in the past tend to continue declining in the future, resulting in financial losses. This phenomenon, referred to as left-tail momentum (LTM), appears to challenge the traditional notion of a positive relationship between risk and return.
To investigate this market anomaly, a team of researchers, led by Prof. Eom from the School of Business at Pusan National University in South Korea, have recently re-verified the LTM phenomenon in the Korean stock markets through a cross-sectional comparison of all stocks by examining extreme risk situations. Their work was made available online on 10 February 2023 and published in Volume 87 of the International Review of Financial Analysis journal on 01 May 2023.
The researchers analyzed stock returns from July 2000 to June 2021 and standardized the distributions of these returns to cross-sectionally compare all stocks in the same criterion. By aligning the returns of all stocks within a predetermined threshold, they established a fair basis for comparing risks across different stocks. Their analysis revealed two types of LT stocks: those with fatter tails, reflecting higher tail risk and more frequent extreme losses, and those with thin tails, indicating relatively low tail risk and infrequent extreme losses.
The researchers then proceeded to investigate the LTM phenomenon within these groups by utilizing a measure called Value-at-Risk (VaR), which represents the boundary value associated with a specific probability in the distribution of stock returns. By utilizing VaR, they were able to assess the magnitude of potential financial losses, taking into consideration the tail-fatness property of the stock return distributions.
They found that the LTM phenomenon is not observed for all stocks that have experienced extreme losses in the past, but rather only for stocks with thin tails—stocks that have lower tail risk and have experienced extreme losses infrequently in the past. These results challenge previous assumptions, demonstrating that the LTM phenomenon does not contradict the conventional positive relationship between risk and return.
“If the fat tail property is viewed as a frequent occurrence of extreme losses, it can be interpreted as a high tail risk. Since LTM phenomenon was clearly observed only in stocks with a thin tail distribution, it is difficult to see it as evidence that violates the positive relationship between risk and return in traditional financial theory,” emphasize the researchers.
Overall, the research reveals that the LTM phenomenon is driven by investors overvaluing stocks with low left-tail risks compared to those with high left-tail risks. “This study looks forward to an interesting discourse in further studies investigating whether the LTM phenomenon that involves a low left-tail risk can be explained in terms of the risk–return trade-off relationship,” conclude the researchers.
About the institute Pusan National University, located in Busan, South Korea, was founded in 1946, and is now the no. 1 national university of South Korea in research and educational competency. The multi-campus university also has other smaller campuses in Yangsan, Miryang, and Ami. The university prides itself on the principles of truth, freedom, and service, and has approximately 30,000 students, 1200 professors, and 750 faculty members. The university is composed of 14 colleges (schools) and one independent division, with 103 departments in all.
About the authors Cheoljun Eom is a professor at the School of Business at Pusan National University in South Korea. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) from 1999–2000, and worked in Hyundai Investment and Security Co. Ltd. as a manager from 2001–2002, where he developed the total asset allocation system. His research interests include asset pricing, portfolio optimization, financial econometrics, and econophysics. He has published more than 90 papers in the field of Finance and Interdisciplinary Science. After winning an award of 2009 Best Researcher in Pusan National University, he has received a few research excellence awards, and recently won the Korea Financial Investment Association Outstanding Paper Award at the 2023 joint conference with the Allied Korea Finance Associations.
Yunsung Eom is a professor at the School of Business at Hansung University in Seoul, South Korea. He graduated from the Department of Fine Arts and the Department of Business Administration at Seoul National University and also obtained his master's and doctoral degrees in Finance there. He has conducted research as a visiting scholar at the University of Washington and the Economic Research Institute, Bank of Korea. His research interests include behavioral finance, market microstructure, investments, and algorithmic trading. His most cited research is “The disposition effect and investment performance in the futures market,” which is published in the Journal of Futures Markets in 2009.
Jong WonPark has been a professor of Finance at the College of Business at the University of Seoul since 2005. Before joining UOS, Professor Park was an assistant and associate professor at the College of Business at Cheju National University. He obtained his Ph.D. in Finance from Seoul National University in March 1995. His research interests focus on empirical asset pricing, market volatility, capital markets and anomalies, derivatives/risk management, retirement and public pension, corporate finance, market regulation, and macro-finance.
Left-tail momentum and tail properties of return distributions: A case of Korea
A cool way to keep things cool: the electrocaloric effect
The electrocaloric effect (ECE) can be a key process to look into for giving current cooling systems a much-needed revamp, turning a necessary but harmful process into something more environmentally benign.
IMAGE: HEAT IS PUMPED FROM A COLD LOAD, TC, TO A HEAT SINK, TH* TO COOL WITHOUT THE USE OF COMPRESSORS.view more
CREDIT: Q.M. ZHANG, TSINGHUA UNIVERSITY
As necessary as cooling technologies are, we’re still operating on an outdated technology that can be considered a significant contributor to global warming and greenhouse gas emissions. Currently, vapor compression cycle-based cooling (VCC) is the standard for reliable cooling of air conditioning and refrigeration, but by switching to electrocaloric cooling (EC) researchers are hoping to create a more environmentally friendly, scalable and compressor-free method of cooling to benefit businesses, families and the environment.
The researchers published their work in iEnergy on June 29. The study highlights the electrocaloric effect (ECE) and how it can work to produce a cleaner, high-efficiency way of cooling without all of the harmful greenhouse gas emissions that a standard VCC process would add to the atmosphere.
The ECE can be explained as a reversible change of a dielectric material when it’s been exposed to a controlled change in the applied electric field. A dielectric material, like ceramic which is used in this study, poorly conducts electricity but supports electrostatic fields, which is the catalyst for changing the polarization, or charge, of a field to induce the desired results of cooling. The reversible nature of this change allows for heat distribution and cooling to occur.
In order to have a large ECE the change in entropy needs to be sufficiently large, too. Entropy can be quantified as thermal energy that is ready to be made useful by converting it into mechanical work. This is where ferroelectric materials become advantageous to use. To have a high-efficiency product, the desired “operating window” where the largest change in the electrostatic field can be achieved, is just above the ferroelectric-paraelectric phase transition. Essentially, this transition phase consists of two oppositely “charged” polarized fields, yielding the large change in entropy, or disorder, needed.
“These EC materials and device research reveals the promise of ferroelectric materials in generating giant ECE at low electric fields and EC cooling devices achieving high performance,” said Q.M. Zhang, first author and researcher of the study.
Simply put, the EC material used is heated past the temperature of the heat sink, and when the two materials make contact, a temperature equilibrium is reached; this is achieved by putting the energy into the field around the objects, not the objects themselves. By using ferroelectric materials a large ECE can be seen under relatively low electric fields which can achieve a compressor-free system, lending to a cooling device that can be much more scalable to meet the needs of families and businesses alike.
“The electrocaloric cooling is attractive as an alternative to the VCC cooling. EC cooling is environmentally benign, compressor-free, highly scalable, and has the potential of achieving higher efficiency than VCC cooling” Zhang said.
While EC cooling is still being developed and researched as a practical way of cooling, a large portion of work that can be done on the EC coolers is developing lead-free materials, as currently the best-performing EC ceramics are lead-based. The lead-based ferroelectrics generate a higher amount of cooling in a shorter amount of time, but lead is a toxic substance, and generally, its use will not be well received by the public.
Another goal is to improve the thermal conductivity of the EC coolers. Since using lead isn’t the optimal choice, the performance of the ferroelectric component ideally would be improved to reduce heat loss and increase operating power. Achieving these goals and developing EC coolers that can be utilized in commercial and residential areas might aid in the global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and move forward with cleaner cooling technology.
Xin Chen of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Materials Research Institute at Pennsylvania State University, Wenyi Zhu and Q.M. Zhang of the Materials Research Institute and Department of Electrical Engineering at Pennsylvania State University contribute to this research.
The U.S. Office of Naval Research supported this research.
iEnergy (Published by Tsinghua University Press), has multiple meanings, intelligent energy, innovation for energy, internet of energy, and electrical energy due to “i” is the symbol of current. iEnergy, publishing quarterly, is a cross disciplinary journal aimed at disseminating frontiers of technologies and solutions of power and energy. The journal publishes original research on exploring all aspects of power and energy, including any kind of technologies and applications from power generation, transmission, distribution, to conversion, utilization, and storage. iEnergy provides a platform for delivering cutting-edge advancements of sciences and technologies for the future-generation power and energy systems.
Established in 1980, belonging to Tsinghua University, Tsinghua University Press (TUP) is a leading comprehensive higher education and professional publisher in China. Committed to building a top-level global cultural brand, after 42 years of development, TUP has established an outstanding managerial system and enterprise structure, and delivered multimedia and multi-dimensional publications covering books, audio, video, electronic products, journals and digital publications. In addition, TUP actively carries out its strategic transformation from educational publishing to content development and service for teaching & learning and was named First-class National Publisher for achieving remarkable results.
