Serious eating disorder ARFID is highly heritable, according to new twin study

Cynthia Bulik, PhD, founding director of the UNC Center of Excellence for Eating Disorders, is senior author of the article published in JAMA Psychiatry.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of University of North Carolina School of Medicine

ARFID is a serious eating disorder that leads to malnutrition and nutritional deficiencies. Researchers estimate that between one to five percent of the population is affected by the eating disorder.

Unlike anorexia, ARFID is not about the patient’s experience of their own body and fear of gaining weight. Instead, the disease is characterized by the avoidance of certain types of food due to a sensory discomfort because of the characteristics or appearance of food, or for example, the fear of choking, a food poisoning phobia or lack of appetite.

17,000 pairs of twins involved in the study

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and the University of North Carolina School of Medicine have now investigated the importance of genetic factors for developing ARFID. A cohort of almost 17,000 pairs of twins in Sweden born between 1992 and 2010 participated in the study. A total of 682 children with ARFID between the ages of six and twelve years could be identified.

A quasiparticle that can transfer heat under electrical control

Because thermal conductivity in this class of materials can be changed with application of an external electric field at room temperature, they hold promise for use in heat switches for everyday applications, like collection of solar power.
Photo Credit: American Public Power Association

Scientists have found the secret behind a property of solid materials known as ferroelectrics, showing that quasiparticles moving in wave-like patterns among vibrating atoms carry enough heat to turn the material into a thermal switch when an electrical field is applied externally.

A key finding of the study is that this control of thermal conductivity is attributable to the structure of the material rather than any random collisions among atoms. Specifically, the researchers describe quasiparticles called ferrons whose polarization changes as they “wiggle” in between vibrating atoms – and it’s that ordered wiggling and polarization, receptive to the externally applied electrical field, that dictates the material’s ability to transfer the heat at a different rate.

“We figured out that this change in position of these atoms, and the change of the nature of the vibrations, must carry heat, and therefore the external field which changes this vibration must affect the thermal conductivity,” said senior author Joseph Heremans, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, materials science and engineering, and physics at The Ohio State University. 

319-million-year-old fish preserves the earliest fossilized brain of a backboned animal

 

Video Credit: University of Michigan

The CT-scanned skull of a 319-million-year-old fossilized fish, pulled from a coal mine in England more than a century ago, has revealed the oldest example of a well-preserved vertebrate brain.

The brain and its cranial nerves are roughly an inch long and belong to an extinct bluegill-size fish. The discovery opens a window into the neural anatomy and early evolution of the major group of fishes alive today, the ray-finned fishes, according to the authors of a University of Michigan-led study scheduled for publication Feb. 1 in Nature.

The serendipitous find also provides insights into the preservation of soft parts in fossils of backboned animals. Most of the animal fossils in museum collections were formed from hard body parts such as bones, teeth and shells.

The CT-scanned brain analyzed for the new study belongs to Coccocephalus wildi, an early ray-finned fish that swam in an estuary and likely dined on small crustaceans, aquatic insects and cephalopods, a group that today includes squid, octopuses and cuttlefish. Ray-finned fishes have backbones and fins supported by bony rods called rays.

A new way to explore proton’s structure with neutrinos yields first results

One of two magnetic focusing horns used in the beamline at Fermilab that produces intense neutrino beams for MINERvA and other neutrino experiments.
Photo Credit: Reidar Hahn, Fermilab

Physicists used MINERvA, a Fermilab neutrino experiment, to measure the proton’s size and structure using a neutrino-scattering technique.

For the first time, particle physicists have been able to precisely measure the proton’s size and structure using neutrinos. With data gathered from thousands of neutrino-hydrogen scattering events collected by MINERvA, a particle physics experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, physicists have found a new lens for exploring protons. The results were published today in the scientific journal Nature.

This measurement is also important for analyzing data from experiments that aim to measure the properties of neutrinos with great precision, including the future Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, hosted by Fermilab.

“The MINERvA experiment has found a novel way for us to see and understand proton structure, critical both for our understanding of the building blocks of matter and for our ability to interpret results from the flagship DUNE experiment on the horizon,” said Bonnie Fleming, Fermilab deputy director for science and technology.

SwRI investigations reveal more evidence that Mimas is a stealth ocean world

Resized Image using AI by SFLORG
Image Credit: Courtesy of NASA/JPL/SSI/SwRI

When a Southwest Research Institute scientist discovered surprising evidence that Saturn’s smallest, innermost moon could generate the right amount of heat to support a liquid internal ocean, colleagues began studying Mimas’ surface to understand how its interior may have evolved. Numerical simulations of the moon’s Herschel impact basin, the most striking feature on its heavily cratered surface, determined that the basin’s structure and the lack of tectonics on Mimas are compatible with a thinning ice shell and geologically young ocean.

“In the waning days of NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn, the spacecraft identified a curious libration, or oscillation, in Mimas’ rotation, which often points to a geologically active body able to support an internal ocean,” said SwRI’s Dr. Alyssa Rhoden, a specialist in the geophysics of icy satellites, particularly those containing oceans, and the evolution of giant planet satellite systems. She is the second author of a new Geophysical Research Letters paper on the subject. “Mimas seemed like an unlikely candidate, with its icy, heavily cratered surface marked by one giant impact crater that makes the small moon look much like the Death Star from Star Wars. If Mimas has an ocean, it represents a new class of small, ‘stealth’ ocean worlds with surfaces that do not betray the ocean’s existence.”

Soil tainted by air pollution expels carbon

How climate change is fueling itself
Photo Credit: Nöel Puebla

New UC Riverside research suggests nitrogen released by gas-powered machines causes dry soil to let go of carbon and release it back into the atmosphere, where it can contribute to climate change. 

Industrial manufacturing, agricultural practices, and significantly, vehicles, all burn fossil fuels that release nitrogen into the air. As a result, levels of nitrogen in Earth’s atmosphere have tripled since 1850. The research team wanted to understand whether this extra nitrogen is affecting soil’s ability to hold onto carbon and keep it from becoming a greenhouse gas.

“Because nitrogen is used as a fertilizer for plants, we expected additional nitrogen would promote plant growth as well as microbial activity, thereby increasing carbon put into soils,” said Peter Homyak, study co-author and assistant professor in UCR’s Department of Environmental Sciences. 

In dryland soil, the type that covers much of Southern California, this is not what they saw.

Instead, the team found that under certain conditions, extra nitrogen causes dryland soil to acidify and leach calcium. Calcium binds to carbon, and the two elements then leave the soil together. This finding is detailed in the journal Global Change Biology. 

Learning with all your senses: Multimodal enrichment as the optimal learning strategy of the future

Illustration Credit: John Hain

Neuroscientist Katharina von Kriegstein from Technische Universität Dresden and Brian Mathias from the University of Aberdeen have compiled extensive interdisciplinary findings from neuroscience, psychology, computer modelling and education on the topic of "learning" in a recent review article in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences. The results of the interdisciplinary review reveal the mechanisms the brain uses to achieve improved learning outcome by combining multiple senses or movements in learning. This kind of learning outcome applies to a wide variety of domains, such as letter and vocabulary acquisition, reading, mathematics, music, and spatial orientation.

Many educational approaches assume that integrating complementary sensory and motor information into the learning experience can enhance learning, for example gestures help in learning new vocabulary in foreign language classes. In her recent publication, neuroscientist Katharina von Kriegstein from Technische Universität Dresden and Brian Mathias of the University of Aberdeen summarize these methods under the term "multimodal enrichment." This means enrichment with multiple senses and movement. Numerous current scientific studies prove that multimodal enrichment can enhance learning outcomes. Experiments in classrooms show similar results.

A new tool for examining processes in the cerebellum

The Bochum research team: Bianca Preissing, Lennard Rohr, Ida Siveke and Tatjana Surdin (from left)
Photo Credit: © RUB, Marquard

Light can start a signal cascade in the cerebellum. This also illuminates processes that play an important role in cerebellar diseases.

Processes in the cerebellum are involved in various diseases that affect motor learning. A new tool developed by a Bochum working group helps to investigate this better: a light-activated protein that is coupled with part of an exciting receptor. Thanks to this optogenetic tool, light can activate a signaling pathway in the nerve cells of the cerebellum and observe its effects. So, the group around Dr. Ida Siveke from the working group of Prof. Dr. Stefan Herlitze at the Ruhr University Bochum show that the signal path is involved in cerebellar-controlled motor learning. The researchers report in the iSience journal.

Solid material that 'upconverts' visible light photons to UV light photons could change how we utilize sunlight

Low-intensity visible blue light or lower energy photons being converted into higher energy UV photons using a solid film formed on a round glass substrate, developed by researchers at Tokyo Tech
 Image Credit: Prof. Yoichi Murakami

Ultraviolet (UV) light has higher energy photons than visible light and, thus, has more applications. Tokyo Tech researchers have now developed a brilliant innovation—a solid-state material that can stably and efficiently upconvert sunlight- intensity visible light photons to UV light photons. This photon upconversion (UC) material can utilize visible light to successfully drive reactions that would conventionally need UV light, broadening the spectrum of utility for the former.

The importance of solar power as a renewable energy resource is increasing. Sunlight contains high-energy UV light with a wavelength shorter than 400 nm, which can be broadly used, for example, for photopolymerization to form a resin and activation of photocatalysts to drive reactions that generate green hydrogen or useful hydrocarbons (fuels, sugars, olefins, etc.). The latter of these is often called "artificial photosynthesis." Photocatalytic reaction by UV light to efficiently kill viruses and bacteria is another important application. Unfortunately, only about 4% of terrestrial sunlight falls within the UV range in the electromagnetic spectrum. This leaves a large portion of sunlight spectrum unexploited for these purposes.

FAT4 Gene Mutations Cause Many Abnormalities in the Lymphatic System

A mutation in a gene can disrupt the lymphatic system
Photo Credit: Sangharsh Lohakare

Defects in this gene cause everything in the body to swell - even the brain

Mutations in the FAT4 gene can cause Hennekam syndrome, which is characterized by various abnormalities of the lymphatic system. An international team of scientists from Russia (Ural Federal University), Afghanistan, Pakistan and China used molecular dynamic modeling to demonstrate the pathogenicity of the identified mutations. The data obtained will help to determine the predisposition to diseases associated with FAT4 gene activation. The study was supported by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation in the framework of the Priority 2030 program and published in the journal Informatics in Medicine Unlocked.

"Hennekam syndrome is a relatively rare (less than 1,000 cases have been reported worldwide) inherited disorder caused by mutations in three different genes - FAT4, ADAMTS3, CCBE1. Abnormalities in the lymphatic system cause everything in the body - including the brain - to swell. This is due to impaired lymphatic transport and, as a result, a large accumulation of protein-rich fluid in the intercellular space. As a result, any affected organ can increase in volume. Signs of this syndrome can also be developmental disorders, strange body deformities, a flat face with swollen eyelids," says Mikhail Bolkov, Senior Researcher at the Department of Immunochemistry at the Ural Federal University and the Institute of Immunology and Physiology, Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.