US Army backs ‘sleeping cap’ to help brains take out the trash

 

Rice University engineers, in collaboration with Houston Methodist and Baylor College of Medicine, are developing a noninvasive skullcap to better understand how the brain disposes of metabolic waste while the wearer sleeps. Signals will be acquired will be through electroencephalogram (EEG), rheoencephalography (REG), orbital sonography (OSG) and transcranial doppler (TCD), with modulation through transcranial/transcutaneous brain and nerve electrical simulations (TES) and low-intensity focused ultrasound pulses (LIFUP).
Illustration courtesy of the NeuroEngineering Initiative

How well does your sleeping brain prepare you for a new day? Researchers at Rice University backed by the U.S. Army Military Operational Medicine Research Program (MOMRP) are poised to find out.

Engineers at Rice University’s NeuroEngineering Initiative in partnership with the Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering (IBB) and physicians at Houston Methodist Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine will develop a “sleeping cap” to analyze the cleansing flow of fluid that drains the brain of common metabolic waste during sleep.

Rice University engineers, in collaboration with Houston Methodist and Baylor College of Medicine, are developing a noninvasive skullcap to better understand how the brain disposes of metabolic waste while the wearer sleeps. Signals will be acquired will be through electroencephalogram (EEG), rheoencephalography (REG), orbital sonography (OSG) and transcranial doppler (TCD), with modulation through transcranial/transcutaneous brain and nerve electrical simulations (TES) and low-intensity focused ultrasound pulses (LIFUP). Illustration courtesy of the NeuroEngineering Initiative

Mars’ Surface Shaped by Fast and Furious

 

Craters and river valleys on the surface of Mars.
A breached crater lake and outlet valley are outlined in white.
Credit: NASA/GSFC/ JPL ASU

On Earth, river erosion is usually a slow-going process. But on Mars, massive floods from overflowing crater lakes had an outsized role in shaping the Martian surface, carving deep chasms and moving vast amounts of sediment, according to a new study led by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin.  

The study, published in Nature, found that the floods, which probably lasted mere weeks, eroded more than enough sediment to completely fill Lake Superior and Lake Ontario.  

“If we think about how sediment was being moved across the landscape on ancient Mars, lake breach floods were a really important process globally,” said lead author Tim Goudge, an assistant professor at the UT Jackson School of Geosciences. “And this is a bit of a surprising result because they’ve been thought of as one-off anomalies for so long.”  

Crater lakes were common on Mars billions of years ago when the Red Planet had liquid water on its surface. Some craters could hold a small sea’s worth of water. But when the water became too much to hold, it would breach the edge of the crater, causing catastrophic flooding that carved river valleys in its wake. A 2019 study led by Goudge determined that these events happened rapidly.  

Remote sensing images taken by satellites orbiting Mars have allowed scientists to study the remains of breached Martian crater lakes. However, the crater lakes and their river valleys have mostly been studied on an individual basis, Goudge said. This is the first study to investigate how the 262 breached lakes across the Red Planet shaped the Martian surface as a whole. 

Geologists solve half-century mystery with a rock from almost two billion years ago

 

Quartzite with traces of burrowing animals. The scale is marked in centimeters.
Credit: Stefan Bengtson/Swedish Museum of Natural History

Geologists have been baffled by perforations in an Australian quartzite (rock), identical in shape to burrows made in sands by crustaceans; the original sandy sediment is a billion years older than the oldest known animals. An international team of scientists has now resolved the mystery.

When animals move, they leave traces, such as dinosaur footprints or the burrows of worms. These reveal how ancient animals moved, how they foraged and how they interacted with one another. Trace fossils are as old as the animal world.

Geologists were therefore stunned by the discovery in Western Australia of traces of burrowing animals in ancient quartzite, a rock type that was formed when sandy sediments were subjected to high pressures and temperatures.

“Quartzite is as hard as concrete and impossible for burrowing animals to penetrate,” said Bruce Runnegar, UCLA professor emeritus in the Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences and co-author of the new research, published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “The traces would therefore have had to be made while the sand was still loose. But the sand was deposited 1.7 billion years ago — a billion years prior to the appearance of the first animals in the fossil record, and its transformation to quartzite occurred more than 1.2 billion years ago, much earlier than the oldest animal fossils, which are less than 0.6 billion years old.”

A Swedish-Australian-Chinese-American team has now offered a solution to this riddle. The scientists present an explanation that does not require unreasonably ancient animals or concrete-chewing worms with diamond teeth.

The team measured the age of sand in the burrows using unusual radioactive minerals.

“The age turned out to be more than a billion years younger than the enclosing quartzite,” said co-author Birger Rasmussen, adjunct professor at the University of Western Australia. “The burrows could therefore have been made by animals.”

But how can animals burrow through hard quartzite? The answer was given by microscopic investigations, which showed that the grains had first separated at contact surfaces, resulting in a friable matrix, and then been fused again through later deposition of quartz, returning the rock to the state of hard quartzite.

“A similar process produced the stuff of the standing stones of Stonehenge,” Runnegar said.

A window in time had thus been opened to enable burrowing, the researchers report. Through comparisons with surrounding sedimentary strata, the scientists could date this window to about 40 million years ago, during the Eocene epoch of Earth’s history.

“Most likely, the traces were made by crustaceans, which invaded southwestern Australia during a short-lived marine transgression associated with the opening of the Southern Ocean,” said senior author Stefan Bengtson, professor emeritus and paleontologist at the Swedish Museum of Natural History.

“These trace fossils in the ‘wrong’ rocks have been a mystery for half-a-century,” Bengtson said. “We are glad to have been able to demonstrate geological processes that resolve this conundrum.”

Source/Credit: UCLA / Stuart Wolpert

en093021_01

Staying on long-term antidepressants reduces risk of relapse

 

When people stop taking antidepressants after a long period of use, just over half (56 per cent) experience a relapse within a year, compared to 39 per cent of those who stay on medication, finds a new study led by UCL and involving researchers from the universities of Bristol, Southampton, York and McMaster University in Canada.

The researchers say their findings, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, can help doctors and patients to make an informed decision together on whether or not to stop their antidepressants after recovery from a depressive episode.

The study is the first publication from a large discontinuation trial of people taking antidepressants for multiple years in primary care.

Lead author Dr Gemma Lewis (UCL Psychiatry) said: “Prescriptions of antidepressants have increased dramatically over recent decades as people are now staying on antidepressants for much longer. Until now we didn’t know whether antidepressant treatment was still effective when someone has been taking them for many years.

“We have found that remaining on antidepressants long-term does effectively reduce the risk of relapse. However, many people can stop their medication without relapsing, though at present we cannot identify who those people are.”

Over a third of COVID-19 patients diagnosed with at least one long-COVID symptom

37% of people had at least one long-COVID symptom diagnosed in the 3-6 month period after COVID-19 infection. The most common symptoms were breathing problems, abdominal symptoms, fatigue, pain and anxiety/depression.

This new study from the University of Oxford and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) investigated long-COVID in over 270,000 people recovering from COVID-19 infection, using data from the US-based TriNetX electronic health record network.

The study reports on how commonly nine core long-COVID symptoms were diagnosed, and how this rate compared to people recovering from influenza. The nine core long-COVID symptoms, occurring 90-180 days after COVID-19 was diagnosed, comprise:

Sandia-developed solar cell technology reaches space

 

This photo shows what DragonSCALES look like today. Formerly known as solar glitter when initially developed at Sandia National Laboratories, the technology has evolved since being transferred to mPower Technology.(Photo courtesy mPower Technology)

Somewhere among the glitter of the night sky is a small satellite powered by innovative, next-generation solar cell technology developed at Sandia National Laboratories.

mPower Technology’s DragonSCALES, consist of small, highly interconnected photovoltaic cells formerly known as solar glitter at Sandia. They are orbiting Earth for the first time on a Lynk Global Inc. satellite that supports direct connection to unmodified mobile phones. The satellite was launched this summer.

The technology is being evaluated as a potential solar power solution for the Lynk Global constellation fleet. Data collected will provide valuable feedback to validate the product’s performance in space.

“It’s been amazing to watch this technology emerge from the labs and become a product sought after by satellite companies and federal agencies,” said Mary Monson, Sandia’s senior manager of technology partnerships and business development.

Research finds grave concern for coral reefs

 

Sabine evaluating a potential deployment site for a mooring in Palau.

Similar to a giant sponge, the ocean absorbs a quarter of the excess CO2 produced every year from human activities (anthropogenic carbon) around the world. Carbon dioxide dissolves in the surface water and through the overturning circulation of ocean currents and mixing processes, is slowly transported into the ocean’s interior—which allows the surface ocean to absorb more CO2. In this cycle, CO2 reacts with the water molecules in the ocean to form carbonic acid in a process known as ocean acidification. Like ocean warming, an increase in ocean acidification can also have a profound impact on marine ecosystems.

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Oceanography Professor Christopher Sabine has devoted his life to understanding the connections between the ocean and anthropogenic carbon. After earning his PhD in chemical oceanography at UH Mānoa in the early 1990s, Sabine spent the next decade conducting high-quality carbon measurements in an effort to better understand where inorganic carbon is stored in the ocean.

Largest trial of antibiotic amoxicillin for treating chest infections in children finds little effect

 The largest randomized placebo-controlled trial of the antibiotic amoxicillin for treating chest infections in children - one of the most common acute illnesses treated in primary care in developed countries, has found it is little more effective at relieving symptoms than the use of no medication. The study, published in The Lancet and funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), was led by researchers from the University of Southampton and supported by centers at the Universities of Bristol, Oxford and Cardiff.

Although viruses are believed to cause many of these infections in children, whether or not antibiotics are beneficial in treatment of chest infections in children is still debated. While research so far in adults has shown that antibiotics are not effective for uncomplicated chest infections until now, there has not been the same level of research in children.

Researchers sought to test whether amoxicillin reduces the duration of moderately bad symptoms in children presenting with uncomplicated (non-pneumonic) lower respiratory tract chest infections in primary care. The trial recruited 432 children aged six months to twelve years-old with acute uncomplicated chest infections from primary care practices in England and Wales who were then randomly assigned to receive either amoxicillin or a placebo three times a day for seven days. Doctors or nurse-prescribers assessed symptoms at the start of the study and parents, with help from their children where possible, completed a daily symptom diary.

Researchers target key protein to fight inflammatory disease

 

Photo by Ivan Samkov from Pexels

For the first time, researchers have identified key molecules within the immune system that may help fight the inflammation that drives chronic diseases including cancers, sepsis and brain disease.

The University of Queensland collaborated with the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur on the study.

UQ Professor Trent Woodruff said the research investigated the part of the immune system responsible for the body’s natural response to pathogens and injury, known as the ‘complement system’.

“When activated inappropriately, the system drives inflammatory diseases such as sepsis, COVID-19, stroke, heart attacks, cancers and brain illnesses,” Professor Woodruff said.

A key protein, known as C5aR2, is a potential therapeutic target for treating chronic disease, due to its ability to moderate many immune and inflammatory processes.

“It’s been really challenging for researchers to understand how this protein is activated due to its unusual structure,” Professor Woodruff said.

“Instead of coupling with cell-signaling proteins, C5aR2 instead relies on signal regulating proteins known as β-arrestin proteins.”

“Our study investigated interactions between the C5aR2 and β-arrestin proteins, while screening for molecules that activated a connection between the two”, Professor Woodruff said.

“We found key and specific cell signals present when the C5aR2 was activated, which may act to boost the immune system’s response in inflammation.”

Co-investigator Professor Arun Shukla said the findings provided a framework for further exploration of β-arrestin proteins for their therapeutic modulation in disease.

“We are now working to progress these research findings into disease models and potentially enable scientists to design novel drug molecules targeting C5aR2 to treat inflammatory disorders”.

This study is the journal Molecular Cell, as part of an international collaboration with Professor Arun Shukla, based in India, and researchers Asuka Inoue, based in Japan, and Stéphane A. Laporte in Canada.

Source/Credit: University of Queensland

scn092821_01

Dinosaurs' ascent driven by volcanoes powering climate change

 The rise of dinosaurs coincided with environmental changes driven by major volcanic eruptions over 230 million years ago, a new study reveals.

The Late Triassic Carnian Pluvial Episode (CPE) saw an increase in global temperature and humidity - creating a major impact on the development of animal and plant life, coinciding with the establishment of modern conifers.

Researchers analyzed sediment and fossil plant records from a lake in northern China’s Jiyuan Basin, matching pulses of volcanic activity with significant environmental changes, including the CPE’s ‘mega monsoon’ climate, some 234 million to 232 million years ago.

The international research team, including experts at the University of Birmingham, today published their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) – revealing four distinct episodes of volcanic activity during this time period, with the most likely source being major volcanic eruptions from the Wrangellia Large Igneous Province, the remnants of which are preserved in western North America.