GRAVE ROBBERY, TOMB RAIDER, ANTIQUTIES THEFT, 

BY CHRISTIAN COMPANY

DOJ seized the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet - a portion of the epic of Gilgamesh - from Hobby Lobby

aharoun@businessinsider.com (Azmi Haroun,Haven Orecchio-Egresitz) 

© Justin Sullivan/Getty Images The Department of Justice recovered the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet from Hobby Lobby. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The Department of Justice announced that it seized a tablet from the Epic of Gilgamesh.

According to the DOJ, the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet was smuggled into the US and then auctioned off.

The ancient tablet had been bought by Oklahoma-based arts and craft superstore Hobby Lobby.

The Department of Justice announced on Tuesday that it had recovered the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet, a rare portion of the epic of Gilgamesh, from Oklahoma-based arts and crafts superstore Hobby Lobby.


The epic of Gilgamesh is considered one of the most ancient works of literature and originally comes from Iraq. According to the Department of Justice, the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet was smuggled into the US, and an international auction house sold the tablet to Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. The company put the tablet on display at the Museum of the Bible.

Law enforcement seized the tablet from the museum in 2019.

"Forfeiture of the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet demonstrates the Department's continued commitment to eliminating smuggled cultural property from the U.S. art market," Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr. said in a written statement. "Thwarting trade in smuggled goods by seizing and forfeiting an ancient artifact shows the department's dedication to using all available tools, including forfeiture, to ensure justice."

The tablet measures approximately 6 inches by 5 inches and is written in the Akkadian language, the DOJ said.

It first fell into the hands of a US antiquities dealer in 2003 after he bought it from the family member of a London coin dealer, according to the DOJ. At the time the tablet was encrusted with dirt and unreadable. That dealer and a US cuneiform expert then shipped the tabled into the US without declaring its contents, according to the DOJ complaint.

When it arrived in the US, experts figured out it was a portion of the Gilgamesh epic.

About five years later, that dealer then sold the tablet with a false provenance letter - a document detailing the past ownership of an artwork - stating that it had been inside a box of miscellaneous ancient bronze fragments purchased in a 1981 auction.

The letter traveled with the tablet throughout several sales in several countries, before one of the new owners provided the letter to the Auction House in London, according to the DOJ.

In 2014, the Auction House sold the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet to Hobby Lobby in a private sale and an Auction House employee carried it on a flight from London to the US.

Ultimately Hobby Lobby consented to the tablet's forfeiture based on the tablet's illegal importations into the US in both 2003 and 2014.

The Museum of the Bible, founded by Hobby Lobby's controversial president, has been plagued by scandal.

News broke in 2017 that museum chairman and Hobby Lobby president Steve Green had been involved in smuggling ancient Iraqi artifacts into the United States. The museum has also faced backlash on certain exhibits, such as the decision to display the Confederate flag and pro-slavery texts in an attempt to understand the Bible's role in the Civil War

"This forfeiture represents an important milestone on the path to returning this rare and ancient masterpiece of world literature to its country of origin," said Jacquelyn M. Kasulis, acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. "This Office is committed to combating the black-market sale of cultural property and the smuggling of looted artifacts."

Radiation Blast That Hit Earth Was Record-Breaking Energy Burst From Dying Star

Scientists have detected a record-breaking blip of high-energy radiation from a collapsing star.

© Damian Gillie/Construction Photography / Avalon / Getty Radio telescopes seen at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory in the U.K., July 2006. Scientists detect gamma-ray bursts from deep space using special telescopes.

Using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, astronomers picked up what is known as a gamma-ray burst, or GRB, that had raced towards Earth from deep space. It has been named GRB 200826A.

GRBs are typically created when something incredibly energetic happens somewhere in space, and are divided into two types—long GRBs and short GRBs.

Short GRBs are generated when two dense stars, or even a star and a black hole, join together in an event that can be as rapid as two seconds or less. Long GRBs are generated when massive stars collapse.

But GRB 200826A, detected in August 2020, surprised scientists because it was short but also appears to have come from the collapse of a star.

It's thought to be the shortest GRB ever detected that has been produced in this way.

It was also incredibly powerful. The amount of energy emitted by that single gamma-ray burst was equal to all of the energy released by the entire Milky Way galaxy over the same time period—multiplied by 14 million times.

Tomás Ahumada, a doctoral student at the University of Maryland who co-authored a research paper about GRB 200826A, said it was one of the most energetic short-duration GRB's ever documented.

Stars collapse when they run out of hydrogen—the fuel that keeps them burning. Without this fuel, they begin to fall into themselves because of their huge internal mass.

As the material inside the star rushes in on itself, it releases two powerful jets of radiation in opposite directions. If one of these jets is pointed directly at the Earth, scientists can detect it with specially-designed telescopes and work out where in the universe it came from.

After detecting GRB 200826A, astronomers studied the patch of sky the burst seemed to have come from and saw that it came from a galaxy 6.6 billion light years away, meaning the gamma-ray burst would have taken around half the age of the universe to reach us.

The astronomers also found the afterglow from the star's collapse, known as a supernova, which suggested the source of the GRB was indeed a collapsing star and not a binary merger event typically associated with short GRBs.

The shortness of the burst also suggests that the star only just managed to produce them, which may help scientists explain why they spot many more supernovae than they do GRBs. Ahumada's report, published in the journal Nature Astronomy on Monday, concludes: "Our discovery is consistent with the hypothesis that most collapsars fail to produce ultra-relativistic jets."

Very-high energy gamma-ray emission detected from blazar TXS 1515–273

by Tomasz Nowakowski , Phys.org

Multi-wavelength light curve of TXS 1515–273. Credit: MAGIC Collaboration, 2021.

An international team of astronomers has carried out multi-wavelength observations of a blazar known as TXS 1515–273; they detected very-high energy (VHE) gamma-ray emission from this source for the first time. The finding is detailed in a paper published July 20 on arXiv.org.

Blazars, classified as members of a larger group of active galaxies that host active galactic nuclei (AGN), are the most numerous extragalactic gamma-ray sources. Their characteristic features are relativistic jets pointed almost exactly toward the Earth. Based on their optical emission properties, astronomers divide blazars into two classes: flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) that feature prominent and broad optical emission lines, and BL Lacertae objects (BL Lacs), which do not.

At a redshift of 0.1285, TXS 1515–273 is a blazar of BL Lac class. Previous observations of this object found that it has a photon index of about 2.0, which suggests that it may be an extreme high frequency-peaked blazar (EHBL). In general, EHBLs are excellent targets to search for new extragalactic VHE gamma-ray emission.

In the beginning of 2019 a flaring activity in the high-energy (HE) gamma-ray band started from TXS 1515–273. Hoping to detect VHE gamma-ray emission, a team led by researchers from the Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov (MAGIC) telescope collaboration commenced a multi-wavelength observational campaign of this source.

"A MWL [multi-wavelength] campaign on TXS 1515–273 was organized at the end of February 2019. During the flaring activity, the source was observed in different energy bands, ranging from radio to VHE gamma rays. Simultaneous or quasi-simultaneous observations were carried out by KVA, Swift, XMM, NuSTAR and MAGIC in order to investigate the location of the SED [spectral energy distribution] peaks and look for evidence of extreme behavior during the flare," the astronomers wrote in the paper.

MAGIC observed TXS 1515–273 between February 27 and March 5, 2019, which resulted in a significant detection of this blazar in the VHE gamma-ray band. The average integral VHE flux of TXS 1515–273 was measured to be approximately 6 percent of the Crab nebula flux above 400 GeV.

The astronomers detected an hour-scale variability in the X-ray fluxes of TXS 1515–273 and a clear change in the spectral shape between XMM-Newton and NuSTAR observations. The data from the X-ray variability timescales allowed the team to determine the synchrotron peak frequency of the blazar. The results suggest that the source is a flaring high, but not extreme, synchrotron peaked object.

Studying the jet of TXS 1515–273, the researchers found no new components or moving components. This is consistent with what is generally seen in other TeV blazars with high synchrotron peak frequency.

As part of the study, the scientists also modeled the broadband SED from radio to VHE gamma rays.

"We applied a simple one-zone model, which could not reproduce the radio emission and the shape of the optical emission, and a two-component leptonic model with two interacting components, enabling us to reproduce the emission from radio to VHE band," the authors of the paper explained.

Research investigates variability of the blazar Mrk 421

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More information: First detection of VHE gamma-ray emission from TXS 1515–273, study of its X-ray variability and spectral energy distribution, arXiv:2107.09413 [astro-ph.HE] arxiv.org/abs/2107.09413

© 2021 Science X Network

Largest known comet is heading close enough to us to become visible

Astronomers have discovered the largest known comet, and it's about a thousand times more massive than others.

© J. da Silva/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA This illustration shows Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein as it might look in the outer solar system.

Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein, so named because it was found by University of Pennsylvania department of physics and astronomy graduate student Pedro Bernardinelli and Professor Gary Bernstein, is between 62 to 124 miles (100 to 200 kilometers) across. The team announced the discovery in June.

This unusual comet will make its closest approach to our sun in 2031, but you'll likely need a large amateur telescope to see it.

The giant comet, also known as C/2014 UN271, is from the outskirts of our solar system and has been making its way toward our sun for millions of years. This is also the most distant comet to be discovered on its inbound journey, which will provide scientists a chance to observe and study it for years to come.

Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein was found in six years of data collected by the Dark Energy Camera, which is located on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The data collected by this camera feeds into The Dark Energy Survey, a collaboration of more than 400 scientists across seven countries and 25 institutions.

The camera, also known as DECam, is helping to map 300 million galaxies across the night sky -- but it also captures glimpses of comets and trans-Neptuinan objects, or icy celestial bodies that reside along the outskirts of the solar system, beyond Neptune's orbit.

Bernardinelli and Bernstein used algorithms at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to identify trans-Neptunian objects. During their work, the astronomers traced 32 detections to one object.

Comets are icy relics that were kicked out of the solar system when the giant planets formed and migrated to their current configurations. As comets approach our sun during their orbits, their ices evaporate, creating their signature appearance.

Comets include a nucleus, or the solid "dirty snowball" at its center. Comas are the gaseous clouds that form around the nucleus as the comet's ices evaporate. The evaporating gas and dust is pushed behind the comet as well, creating two tails illuminated by sunlight. These tails can be hundreds or even millions of miles in length.

Images of the object taken between 2014 and 2018 did not show a cometary tail. But within the past three years, the object grew a tail, which officially makes it Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein.

Observations made using the Las Cumbres Observatory network of telescopes around the globe helped confirm the status of the active comet.

"Since we're a team based all around the world, it just happened that it was my afternoon, while the other folks were asleep. The first image had the comet obscured by a satellite streak, and my heart sank. But then the others were clear enough and gosh: there it was, definitely a beautiful little fuzzy dot, not at all crisp like its neighbouring stars!" said Michele Bannister, astronomer at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, in a statement.

The comet's journey started over 3.7 trillion miles (6 trillion kilometers) away from the sun, or 40,000 astronomical units. The distance between Earth and the sun is one astronomical unit. For reference, Pluto is 39 astronomical units from the sun.

The comet came from the Oort Cloud of objects, an isolated group of icy objects that are more distant than anything else in our solar system. Scientists believe this is where comets come from, but they have never actually observed an object within the Oort Cloud.

The Oort Cloud is located between 2,000 and 100,000 astronomical units from the sun. Eventually, NASA spacecraft like Voyager 1 and 2, as well as New Horizons will reach the Oort Cloud. But by the time they do, their power sources will have been dead for centuries.

Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein is currently about 1.8 billion miles (3 billion kilometers) away -- about the distance of Uranus from the sun -- and at its closest point in 2031, it will be just a bit more than Saturn's distance to the sun.

"We have the privilege of having discovered perhaps the largest comet ever seen — or at least larger than any well-studied one — and caught it early enough for people to watch it evolve as it approaches and warms up," Bernstein said in a statement. "It has not visited the planets in more than 3 million years."

This unusual opportunity to study an inbound comet will allow astronomers a chance to better understand the origin and composition of the comet. It may be just one of many giant comets originating in the Oort Cloud.

 

Three dwarf spheroidal galaxies are found to rotate

Peer-Reviewed Publication

INSTITUTO DE ASTROFÍSICA DE CANARIAS (IAC)

 

IMAGE: FORNAX DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXY view more 

CREDIT: ESO/DIGITIZED SKY SURVEY 2.

An international team of astrophysicists from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), the University of La Laguna (ULL) and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI, USA) has discovered the presence of transverse rotation (in the plane of the sky) in three dwarf spheroidal galaxies, a very faint type of galaxies and difficult to observe, which are orbiting round the Milky Way; this helps to trace their evolutionary history. The finding was made using the most recent data from the GAIA satellite of the European Space Agency. The results of the study have just been published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS).

Dwarf galaxies have a particular interest for cosmology. The standard cosmological model suggests that this type of galaxies was the first to form. Many of them, the majority, have been destroyed and cannibalized by large galaxies such as the Milky Way. However, those that remain can be studied and contain valuable information about the early Universe.

One subclass of dwarf galaxies are the dwarf spheroidals. They are very diffuse, with low luminosity, they contain large proportions of dark matter and little or no gas. Since their discovery they have been deeply studied. However, their internal kinematics are still little known, due to the technical difficulties needed for their detailed study.

Various previous studies have shown that the dwarf spheroidals do not have patterns of internal rotation, but their stars move on random orbits predominantly towards and away from the centre of the galaxy. But the galaxies within the other major sub-class of dwarfs, the irregulars, have large quantites of gas, and in some cases do have internal rotation. These differences suggest a different origin for the two types of dwarfs, or to a very different evolutionary history in which interactions with large galaxies, in our case with the Milky Way, have played a crucial role in eliminating the internal rotation of the spheroidals.

To carry out their present research, the team of astrophysicists form the IAC and the STScI have used the latest data from ESA’s Gaia to study the internal kinematics of six dwarf spheroidal galaxies, satellites of the Milky Way, and have discovered the presence of transverse rotation (in the plane of the sky) in three of them: Carina, Fornax, and Sculptor.  These are the first detections of this type of rotation in dwarf spheroidal galaxies, except for the Sagittarius spheroidal, which is strongly distorted by the gravitational potential of the Milky Way, and is therefore not representative of its type.

“The importance of this result is because, in general, the internal kinematics of galaxies, in this case their rotation, is an important tracer of their evolutionary history, and of the conditions in which the system was formed”, explains Alberto Manuel Martínez-García, doctoral student at the IAC and the ULL, and first author of the article.

“Although the standard model of cosmology assumes that the dwarf galaxies were the first to form, it is not clear if they are simple systems or whether those we observe are formed by the agglomeration of other even simpler systems, smaller and older. The presence of rotation suggests the second option. It also suggests a common origin for all dwarf galaxies, those that are  at present rich in gas (the irregulars) and those which are not (the spheroidals)”, explains Andrés del Pino, researcher at the STScI and a co-author of the article.

“The Gaia satellite has revolutionised our knowledge of the Milky Way and its neighbourhood, giving us very precise measurements of the positions and motions of almost two thousand million stars.  Although the data from Gaia are used mainly to study our Galaxy, this ESA mission has also opened a new window on the study of the satellite galaxies of the Milky Way, giving specific access to their internal kinematics”, says Antonio Aparicio, a researcher at the IAC and the ULL and a co-author of the article.

Even so, according to the researchers, studies based on Gaia data entail many technical difficulties. In the first place, one must determine which of the stars in the database really belong to the satellite galaxies, and which to the Milky Way itself, as the latter tend to contaminate the sample. The problem is that although the data to be analysed are limited to the region and the angular size of the spheroidal under study, which is the equivalent of one quarter of the angular diameter of the Moon, the vast majority of the stars detected in this area belong to the Milky Way and therefore indeed contaminate the sample.

In addition, the distance of the spheroidals studied, which is up to some half a million light-years, and the low intrinsic luminosity of their stars, imply that the measurements are affected by a considerable level of noise. For all these reasons the analysis of the data requires a thorough filtration and a deep analysis of the different observational parameters to be able to reach reliable conclusions.

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Members of the research team involved in this study, which forms a part of the doctoral thesis of Alberto Manuel Martínez-García, include Andrés del Pino Molina (STScI, director of the thesis), Antonio Aparicio Juan (IAC-ULL, director of the thesis), Roeland P. van der Marel (STScI, Center for Astrophysical Sciences, at the Johns Hopkins University) and Laura L. Watkins (ESA mission to AURA, STScI).

Article: Alberto Manuel Martínez-García, Andrés del Pino, Antonio Aparicio, Roeland P. van der Marel, Laura L. Watkins. “Internal rotation of Milky Way dwarf spheroidal satellites with Gaia Early Data Release 3”. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, July 8, 2021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stab1568

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JOURNAL

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

DOI

10.1093/mnras/stab1568

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Internal rotation of Milky Way dwarf spheroidal satellites with Gaia Early Data Release 3

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Jun-2021

 

International experts call for a unified public health response to NAFLD and NASH epidemic

Patients with obesity or type 2 diabetes are at a higher risk of developing NAFLD and NASH.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN GASTROENTEROLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

Bethesda, MD (July 26, 2021) -- There is an urgent need to develop and implement effective screening, diagnosis and treatment strategies for patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), common liver conditions with a rising burden in the U.S. and globally. This is particularly important for the most at-risk patients, those with diabetes and obesity.

As a critical first step, the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) -- in collaboration with seven professional associations -- convened an international conference of 32 experts to develop a multidisciplinary action plan to improve care for the growing population of patients with NAFLD and NASH. Today, the recommendations from this meeting have been co-published in four leading journals: Gastroenterology, Diabetes Care, Metabolism: Clinical and Experimental, and Obesity: The Journal of the Obesity Society.

Key findings from this special report:

• Patients with obesity or type 2 diabetes are at a higher risk of developing NAFLD/NASH with diabetes being a major risk factor for worse disease severity and progression to cirrhosis (permanent damage to the liver).

• Primary care providers are critical to managing this growing epidemic. They should be the first line for screening patients at risk, stratifying patients based on their risk for advanced fibrosis, and providing effective management and referrals.

• The guiding principle for risk stratification is to rule out advanced fibrosis by simple, noninvasive fibrosis scores (such as NAFLD fibrosis score or Fibrosis-4 Index). Patients at intermediate or high risk may require further assessment with a second-line test -- elastography, or a serum marker test with direct measures of fibrogenesis.

• Because NAFLD is not an isolated disease but a component of cardiometabolic abnormalities typically associated with obesity, insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes, the cornerstone of therapy is lifestyle-based therapies (altered diet, such as reduced-calorie or Mediterranean diet and regular, moderate physical activity), and replacing obesogenic medications to decrease body weight and improve cardiometabolic health. Patients with diabetes who also have NASH may benefit from certain antidiabetic medications (i.e, pioglitazone, semaglutide) that treat not only their diabetes, but also reverse steatohepatitis and improve cardiometabolic health.

• Optimal care of patients with NAFLD and NASH requires collaboration among primary care providers, endocrinologists, diabetologists, obesity medicine specialists, gastroenterologists and hepatologists, to tackle both the liver manifestations of the disease and the comorbid metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular risk, as well as screening and treating other comorbid conditions (e.g., obstructive sleep apnea).

NAFLD is one of the most common causes of liver disease, affecting over 25% of the population globally, and more than 60% of patients with type 2 diabetes. While NASH -- a more severe form of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease -- is less common, it is estimated to impact 4.9 million to 21 million Americans and more than 100 million individuals worldwide. NAFLD and NASH are thought of as "silent diseases," meaning they have few or no symptoms. If they go untreated and worsen, patients may experience severe liver damage and require liver transplantation. Catching NAFLD and NASH early can help manage the disease and prevent complications. Learn more.

Read the special report: Preparing for the NASH Epidemic: A Call to Action.

To learn more about the development of this publication, visit NASH.gastro.org.

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Media contacts:

Courtney Reed, media@gastro.org, American Gastroenterological Association

Chanel Carrington, ccarrington@obesity.org, The Obesity Society

Cristos Mantzoros, cmantzor@bidmc.harvard.edu, Endocrine Society

Heather Norton, hnorton@diabetes.org, American Diabetes Association

About the AGA Institute

The American Gastroenterological Association is the trusted voice of the GI community. Founded in 1897, AGA has grown to more than 16,000 members from around the globe who are involved in all aspects of the science, practice and advancement of gastroenterology. The AGA Institute administers the practice, research and educational programs of the organization.http://www.gastro.org.

AGA is now on Instagram.

Like AGA on Facebook.

Follow us on Twitter

Check out our videos on YouTube.

Join AGA on LinkedIn.

About The Obesity Society

The Obesity Society (TOS) is the leading organization of scientists and health professionals devoted to understanding and reversing the epidemic of obesity and its adverse health, economic and societal effects. Combining the perspective of researchers, clinicians, policymakers and patients, TOS promotes innovative research, education and evidence-based clinical care to improve the health and well-being of all people with obesity. For more information, visit http://www.obesity.org.

About the American Diabetes Association

Every day more than 4,000 people are newly diagnosed with diabetes in America. More than 122 million Americans have diabetes or prediabetes and are striving to manage their lives while living with the disease. The American Diabetes Association (ADA) is the nation's leading voluntary health organization fighting to bend the curve on the diabetes epidemic and help people living with diabetes thrive. For 80 years the ADA has been driving discovery and research to treat, manage and prevent diabetes, while working relentlessly for a cure. We help people with diabetes thrive by fighting for their rights and developing programs, advocacy and education designed to improve their quality of life. Diabetes has brought us together. What we do next will make us Connected for Life. To learn more or to get involved, visit us at diabetes.org or call 1-800-DIABETES (1-800-342-2383). Join the fight with us on Facebook (American Diabetes Association, Twitter (@AmDiabetesAssn) and Instagram (@AmDiabetesAssn).

About Gastroenterology

Gastroenterology is the most prominent journal in the field of gastrointestinal disease. As the official journal of the AGA Institute, Gastroenterology delivers up-to-date and authoritative coverage of both basic and clinical gastroenterology. Regular features include articles by leading authorities and reports on the latest treatments for diseases. Original research is organized by clinical and basic-translational content, as well as by alimentary tract, liver, pancreas, and biliary content.

About Obesity

Obesity is the official journal of The Obesity Society and is the premier source of information for increasing knowledge, fostering translational research from basic to population science, and promoting better treatment for people with obesity. With an Impact Factor of 5.002, Obesity publishes important peer-reviewed research and cutting-edge reviews, commentaries, and public health and medical developments.

About Metabolism: Clinical and Experimental

Metabolism (Editor-in-Chief Christos S. Mantzoros, MD, DSc, PhD h.c. mult) promotes excellence in research by publishing high-quality original research papers, fast-tracking cutting-edge papers, research brief reports, mini-reviews, and other special articles related to all aspects of human metabolism. https://www.metabolismjournal.com/

About Diabetes Care

Diabetes Care, a monthly journal of the American Diabetes Association (ADA), is the highest-ranked, peer-reviewed journal in the field of diabetes treatment and prevention research. Dedicated to increasing knowledge, stimulating research and promoting better health care for people with diabetes, the journal publishes original research on human studies in clinical care, education and nutrition; epidemiology, health services and psychosocial research; emerging treatments and technologies; and pathophysiology and complications. Diabetes Care also publishes the ADA's recommendations and statements, clinically relevant review articles, editorials and commentaries. Topics covered are of interest to clinically oriented physicians, researchers, epidemiologists, psychologists, diabetes care and education specialists and other health care professionals. Access Diabetes Care at http://www.care.diabetesjournals.org and follow on Facebook (ADA Journals) and Twitter (@ADA_Journals).

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JOURNAL

GASTROENTEROLOGY

 WHITE MIDDLE CLASS BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION

Goal-setting and positive parent-child relationships reduce risk of youth vaping

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH

 

IMAGE: FELLOW, DIVISION OF ADOLESCENT AND YOUNG ADULT MEDICINE, UPMC CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PITTSBURGH. view more 

CREDIT: UPMC

PITTSBURGH, July 26, 2021 - Adolescents who set goals for their future and those with strong parental support are less likely to use e-cigarettes and other tobacco products, according to a study by UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh and University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine physician-scientists.

The research, published today in the journal Pediatrics, suggests that strategies to prevent youth vaping may be different from what works to dissuade youth from smoking cigarettes.

"The use of e-cigarettes by young people is at epidemic proportions, with 27% of youth surveyed saying they'd vaped in the last 30 days," said lead author Nicholas Szoko, M.D., a fellow in the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at UPMC Children's. "And a lot of the traditional methods we think of for counseling youth on the dangers of tobacco and drug use may not apply to vaping. Pediatricians and parents need a better understanding of what motivates adolescents to eschew e-cigarettes."

Szoko and his colleagues analyzed anonymous questionnaires administered in partnership with the Allegheny County Health Department and completed by 2,487 high school students in Pittsburgh Public Schools. The surveys asked questions to ascertain if and how often the students used e-cigarettes or other tobacco products, and to determine if any of four "protective factors" validated by previous research were associated with a lower likelihood of vaping or smoking.

The protective factors examined were:

• Future orientation: A person's beliefs, hopes and goals related to the future.
• Parental monitoring: Parent-child interactions and communication.
• Social support: The ability to rely on friends and peers.
• School connectedness: A sense of belonging and inclusion at school.

In the study, positive future orientation and high levels of parental monitoring were both linked with a 10% to 25% lower prevalence of recently or ever vaping, compared to peers with lower scores on those protective factors. There was no link between social support or school connectedness and use of e-cigarettes.

All four protective factors were associated with lower prevalence of smoking or use of other tobacco products, but none were linked to intent to quit using tobacco products. This suggests that once young people begin to use tobacco, quitting may be more difficult to promote. The researchers note that these findings should be explored to develop improved youth tobacco prevention efforts, but that it isn't surprising that the results for vaping weren't exactly the same as for smoking.

"E-cigarettes are positioned and marketed differently than tobacco cigarettes. They've been popularized as tools for smoking cessation, and previous research has found the various flavors and trendy ads for vaping are attractive to youth," said Szoko. "We also know that vaping primes adolescents to transition to smoking cigarettes and other substance use. So, it stands to reason that we may need different approaches to keep kids from vaping, than we use to stop them from smoking."

Senior author Alison Culyba, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., assistant professor of pediatrics, public health, and clinical and translational science at Pitt, noted that frameworks already exist to help clinicians use future orientation and encourage parental monitoring when providing health care to young people, which bodes well for developing e-cigarette intervention programs to strengthen these protective factors.

"Future orientation is something very tangible that pediatricians and other health care providers can talk with teens about in the clinic--motivational interviewing is something we're very comfortable doing with our patients," said Culyba, also an adolescent medicine physician and director of the Empowering Teens to Thrive program at UPMC Children's. "And we can help parents to navigate their roles as their children become pre-teens and teens, and help encourage open conversations with their kids about what they're encountering."

CAPTION

Assistant professor of pediatrics, public health, and clinical and translational science, University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences.

CREDIT

UPMC

Additional authors on this research are Maya I. Ragavan, M.D., Susheel K. Khetarpal, and Kar-Hai Chu, Ph.D., all of Pitt or UPMC, or both.

This research was supported by The Heinz Endowments, The Grable Foundation and National Institutes of Health grants KL2TR001856, UL1TR001857, K23HD098277-01.

To read this release online or share it, visit http://www.upmc.com/media/news/072621-Szoko-Vape-Protective-Pediatrics [when embargo lifts].

About UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh

Regionally, nationally, and globally, UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh is a leader in the treatment of childhood conditions and diseases, a pioneer in the development of new and improved therapies, and a top educator of the next generation of pediatricians and pediatric subspecialists. With generous community support, UPMC Children's Hospital has fulfilled this mission since its founding in 1890. UPMC Children's is recognized consistently for its clinical, research, educational, and advocacy-related accomplishments, including ranking in the top 10 on the 2021-2022 U.S. News Honor Roll of America's Best Children's Hospitals. UPMC Children's also ranks 15th among children's hospitals and schools of medicine in funding for pediatric research provided by the National Institutes of Health (FY2019).

About the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine

As one of the nation's leading academic centers for biomedical research, the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine integrates advanced technology with basic science across a broad range of disciplines in a continuous quest to harness the power of new knowledge and improve the human condition. Driven mainly by the School of Medicine and its affiliates, Pitt has ranked among the top 10 recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health since 1998. In rankings recently released by the National Science Foundation, Pitt ranked fifth among all American universities in total federal science and engineering research and development support.

Likewise, the School of Medicine is equally committed to advancing the quality and strength of its medical and graduate education programs, for which it is recognized as an innovative leader, and to training highly skilled, compassionate clinicians and creative scientists well-equipped to engage in world-class research. The School of Medicine is the academic partner of UPMC, which has collaborated with the University to raise the standard of medical excellence in Pittsburgh and to position health care as a driving force behind the region's economy. For more information about the School of Medicine, see http://www.medschool.pitt.edu.

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JOURNAL

PEDIATRICS

DOI

10.1542/2020-000123

 

Quitting smoking after lung cancer diagnosis may extend life without cancer recurrence

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS

Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of the embargo not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf of the organization they represent.

Quitting smoking after lung cancer diagnosis may extend life without cancer recurrence

Abstract: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-0252

Editorial: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-2997

URL goes live when the embargo lifts

A prospective cohort study found that quitting smoking after being diagnosed with early-stage non-small cell lung cancer may slow disease progression and decrease mortality. Given that about half of all smokers continue to smoke after a lung cancer diagnosis, these findings present an opportunity to improve overall and progression-free survival in this type of cancer. The study is published in Annals of Internal Medicine.

More than 80% of patients with non-small cell lung cancer have a history of smoking, and about half are current smokers at the time of diagnosis. There is limited evidence that smoking cessation may improve survival, so many patients may feel it is too late to quit once they've been diagnosed with lung cancer.

Researchers from the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization, in collaboration with the N.N. Blokhin National Medical Research Centre of Oncology in Russia, recruited 517 adults who currently smoked when diagnosed with early-stage non-small cell lung cancer from 2 sites in Moscow, Russia to determine whether quitting smoking after diagnosis affects the risk for disease progression and mortality. The participants were interviewed at the start of the study to ascertain medical and lifestyle history, including tumor characteristics, and the amount of lifetime smoking, and then followed each year for an average of 7 years to record any changes in their smoking behavior, treatments, and disease status. Of 517 patients who were smoking when diagnosed with lung cancer, less than half quit (44.5%), and very few relapsed. The patients who quit smoking were more likely to live longer overall (6.6 years vs. 4.8. years), live longer without lung cancer (5.7 vs. 3.9 years) and have a longer time to death from lung cancer (7.9 vs. 6 years).

According to the authors, these results show that even after being diagnosed with lung cancer, there is still significant benefit to quitting smoking. Physicians should make their lung cancer patients aware that quitting smoking can extend life overall and extend life without cancer recurrence.

Media contacts: For an embargoed PDF, please contact Angela Collom at acollom@acponline.org. To speak with the lead author, Mahdi Sheikh, MD, please contact Véronique Terrasse, at terrassev@iarc.fr.

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JOURNAL

Annals of Internal Medicine

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are 

 

Functional diversity of mangrove invertebrates

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

The low functional diversity of invertebrates inhabiting mangrove forests indicates that these ecosystems are among the most vulnerable on the planet, according to a study. Mangroves have dwindled at alarming rates worldwide. Although these ecosystems support a broad range of invertebrates, little is known about the impact of mangrove deforestation on the functional diversity and resilience of resident fauna. Shing Yip Lee and colleagues compiled a dataset of 209 crustacean species and 155 mollusk species from 16 mangrove forests around the world. The authors classified the species into 64 functional entities based on unique combinations of functional traits. More than 60% of the locations showed no functional redundancy on average, with most functional entities consisting of only one species. Comparison with other datasets revealed that mangroves ecosystems are among those with the lowest recorded faunal functional redundancy. On average, 57% of functional entities are fulfilled by a single species, suggesting that even a modest local loss of invertebrate diversity could significantly harm mangrove functionality and resilience. According to the authors, studying the functional diversity of the resident faunal assemblages is crucial for assessing mangrove vulnerability to environmental change and for designing effective management, conservation, and restoration plans.

Article #20-16913: "A functional analysis reveals extremely low redundancy in global mangrove invertebrate fauna," by Stefano Cannicci et al.

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

 

Comb construction in honey bees

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

 

IMAGE: HONEYCOMB PHOTOGRAPHED IN THE FIELD. view more 

CREDIT: IMAGE CREDIT: MICHAEL L. SMITH.

A study explores comb-building behavior in honeybees. Honeybees construct perfectly hexagonal honeycombs but may encounter challenges in achieving this architecture. Using automated image analysis of naturally built honeycombs, Michael Smith and colleagues examined building challenges that bees face during nest construction as well as the methods bees use to solve such challenges. The authors analyzed more than 19,000 individual comb cells built by 12 colonies. Worker bees preemptively changed their building behavior to create space for large hexagonal cells, built irregular cell shapes arranged in patterns, and changed both the tilt, size, and number of walls to overcome various building challenges. Challenges arise naturally in colonies, such as when workers transition from building small hexagons to large hexagons or when bees must merge two independent pieces of comb together. The authors report that some comb-building challenges were exceptionally difficult for bees, such as merging combs with unaligned cells. When minor adjustments proved unsuccessful, workers constructed pairs and triplets of nonhexagonal cells, while conserving wax. The findings contradict the view of honeybees as comb-building automatons and instead suggest that the insects are skilled architects, according to the authors.

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Article #21-03605: "Imperfect comb construction reveals the architectural abilities of honeybees," by Michael L. Smith, Nils Napp, and Kirstin H. Petersen.

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

CAPTION

Photograph of honeycomb, with color overlay showing the cell tilt of each hexagonal cell. Bees have merged three pieces of comb (worker comb at left and right; drone comb at center).

CREDIT

Image credit: Michael L. Smith.

CAPTION

Honeycomb photographed in the lab. Two pieces of worker-produced comb have been merged together almost flawlessly.

CREDIT

Image credit: Michael L. Smith.