Toward the end of her life, the Austrian-born Jewish scientist Rudolphina Menzel acknowledged a horrifying reality: the dog-training techniques she pioneered had been used by the Nazis to commit atrocities.

“I suffered a lot knowing that my students in Austria and Germany were using the knowledge they acquired from me to use dogs to exterminate my people and other peoples,” she said in an interview roughly 10 years before her death in 1973.

“She had to constantly negotiate a shifting kaleidoscope of political, scientific, and cultural considerations…”

But in one of the more remarkable ironies of 20th-century history, Menzel also trained the dogs that helped create the state of Israel. She was a trailblazing Zionist pioneer.

A new book, Canine Pioneer: The Extraordinary Life of Rudolphina Menzel (Brandeis Press, 2023), chronicles Menzel’s life and career, exploring her seminal role in the development of cynology (the scientific study of the domestic dog) and modern Jewish, European, and Middle Eastern history.

Edited by the anthropologist Susan M. Kahn, the book details Menzel’s role in training the dogs used by the German military and police in the 1920s and early 1930s—and how she helped the fledgling Zionist state secure its independence from Britain and win the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

“Rudolphina’s long, complicated, and eventful life was peppered with triumphs, marred by tragedies, and suffused with ideological tensions,” Kahn writes. “She had to constantly negotiate a shifting kaleidoscope of political, scientific, and cultural considerations in order to realize her extraordinarily ambitious scientific goals and activist objectives.”

Zionist and scientist

Menzel was born in 1891 to an upper-middle-class, assimilated Jewish Viennese family.

During childhood, she chanced on a discarded copy of the Zionist newspaper Die Welt and developed what became a lifelong commitment to the cause. By the time she earned her doctorate in chemistry from the University of Vienna in 1914, she was also an ardent socialist.

After she and her husband Rudolph settled in the northern Austrian city of Linz following World War I, Menzel met Austrian veterinarian and renowned dog breeder Joseph Bodingbauer. He gave the Menzels their first dog, a robust, brindle-colored boxer she named Mowgli.

Kahn details how and why Menzel transformed her love of dogs into a serious professional undertaking that enabled her to investigate scientific questions and solve societal problems.

She quickly mastered the burgeoning scientific field of cynology and designed an original, 16-year research study where she observed and recorded the daily behaviors of hundreds of boxers, taking note of which behavioral traits were genetic and how the environment shaped their temperament.

She also became fascinated with the dimensions of canine perception, particularly olfaction. In a landmark 1930 paper, she demonstrated that with the right training, dogs could discern the individual scents of particular human beings. She then trained her dogs to recognize a person’s smell at different times and under different conditions, making them ideal for tracking criminals and suspects.

Rise of the Nazis

Inevitably, Menzel’s work drew the interest of the German and Austrian police and military. She worked as a sought-after consultant and lectured to both groups on her techniques for breeding and training dogs that were obedient, intelligent, and skilled at police work.

It was standard practice to train police dogs in a foreign language so criminals or prisoners could not communicate with them. Menzel, whose Zionism inspired her to learn Hebrew, trained her dogs to obey commands in the language.

In 1934, a year after Hitler came to power, Menzel stopped working for Austria and Germany. But her dogs and training methods remained used by authorities well after the Nazis rose to power. It’s likely that some of the hounds deployed by the Nazis were, at least originally, trained to obey commands in Hebrew.

After the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, local authorities in Menzel’s hometown ordered the “immediate removal of the Jewish kennel” on her property. In August of that year, she and her husband fled to Palestine with forged papers, taking only two of their hundreds of boxers.

Menzel in Palestine

Many early Zionist settlers were socialists and considered having pets a bourgeois habit out of keeping with the pioneering ethos. In addition, Jews in general had long had an ambivalent relationship with the canine species. The Hebrew Bible and the rabbinical commentaries in the Talmud depict dogs as unclean. In Eastern Europe, “du bist a hunt mit di oyern”—”you are a dog with ears” in Yiddish—was considered one of the worst insults.

Menzel changed all this by persuading Zionists that dogs could be much more than pets. They could be workers that protected Jewish lives and property. “Help us reclaim the dog for our people,” she wrote to her fellow Jews in Palestine in 1943. “Make room for a new pioneering path to reclaim the dog for the building of our country.”

Many of the dogs in Palestine were feral and free-roaming. Menzel, who coined the term Canaan dogs to describe them, bred and trained them. She discovered that some of these so-called “pariah dogs” could be loyal, intelligent, resourceful, and forgiving.

During World War II, Menzel worked with the British, equipping them with dogs to detect the mines the Germans laid in North Africa. But she made them promise never to use the animals against the Jews in Palestine, still under British control.

Menzel’s dogs were also used to detect intruders and patrol Jewish land, protecting against the Palestinians fighting Zionist settlers. When the 1948 war broke out against the surrounding Arab nations, her dogs were deployed by the Haganah, the main Zionist military organization. They transported messages by following scent trails laid between command centers and soldiers in the field. They also carried medical supplies and ammunition in saddles on their backs.

Columns of military dogs marched through the streets of Haifa and Tel Aviv in the 1949 victory parades.

Dogs “were tools that built the country no less than the plow, the tractor, the gun, and the water tower,” Menzel later wrote.

A change of focus

In the early 1950s, Menzel radically shifted the focus of her work and began training seeing-eye dogs. She founded the Israel Institute for Orientation and Mobility of the Blind, the first guide-dog institute in the Middle East and undertook extensive studies of the mobility needs of people with visual disabilities in Israel.

Menzel’s death went largely unnoticed, and her contributions to cynology were all but forgotten. This may be because of sexism or because most of her scientific work was never translated into English and failed to find a broader audience.

Kahn sees her book as an important first step to lifting Rudolphina Menzel out of obscurity.

Source: Brandeis University

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We know whether or not we like a song after listening to it for only a few seconds, a new study shows.

The findings, which offer new insights into cognitive processing, reveal music perception of parts of an artist’s work are representative of the whole.

“Over the course of any given song, the acoustic properties change dramatically, but that doesn’t seem to matter much to the listeners,” says Pascal Wallisch, a clinical associate professor at New York University’s Center for Data Science and the senior author of the study, which will appear in the journal Music Perception. “We can determine within five seconds or less whether or not we will like it.”

Music industry platforms, such as iTunes, Amazon, and Pandora, aim to influence consumers’ buying choices with excerpts of songs. But it’s not clear if these snippets are sufficient for listeners to determine if they like the tunes or not. Also less understood is the larger significance of the particular passage of a sampled song.

Previous research has relied on short excerpts in the methodology. However, it’s uncertain if responses to excerpts are similar to those for an entire song.

To address these questions, the researchers conducted an experiment that included a diverse sample of approximately 650 university undergraduate students and New York City area residents.

In these sessions, participants listened to over 250 complete songs as well as excerpts from these songs lasting five, 10, or 15 seconds. The researchers also varied the portion of the songs that were excerpted, capturing the intro, outro, chorus, and verse portions.

The musical genres included popular songs on Billboard’s music charts over the last 80 years as well as music from a wide range of genres such as classical, country, jazz, hip-hop, rock, electronic, and R&B/soul.

In the experiment, the participants were asked to rate how much they liked a particular song or clip (”Hate it,” ”Strongly dislike it,” “Slightly dislike it,” ”Indifferent,” ”Slightly like it,” ”Strongly like it,” ”Love it”) and to rate their familiarity with it in response to this question: ”How often have you heard this before?” (”Never,” ”Once,” ”More than once,” ”Multiple times,” ”Too many to count”).

Overall, the results showed that participants’ preferences for songs—whether they listened to a clip or the entire song—aligned, indicating that clip preference ratings predicted like or dislike for entire songs. Notably, the length of the clip did not make any difference in the assessments of listeners.

The researchers considered the possibility that listening order could have affected the results: Was there a higher correlation of preference when the participants heard the complete song before hearing the excerpt (indicating that hearing an entire song affected how the clip was subsequently rated)?

Indeed, the correlation for song preference was higher when the complete song was heard before the excerpt than it was when the complete song followed it. But, the authors write, a correlation between preference for an excerpt and that for an entire song was very strong, even if the excerpt was heard first.

The researchers add that recognition of a song may have had some impact on preference, but note that only about a fifth of the songs were recognized by the participants. They conclude that while “unrecognized clips that were presented before the song were least predictive of the song preference rating,” such clips are “still far more predictive than one would expect from random chance.”

“This finding might have wide-ranging implications for our understanding of what properties of songs evoke certain emotions in listeners,” observes Wallisch. “The fact that a small excerpt is enough to tell us if we like it or hate it, suggests that we respond more to the general vibe that a song brings to us rather than its musical notes per se.”

Sara Philibotte, Stephen Spivack, Nathaniel Spilka, and Ian Passman—all NYU undergraduates at the time of the study—were part of the research team. The study received supported, in part, from the Dean’s Undergraduate Research Fund at NYU.

Source: NYU

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A new tool for noninvasive imaging can help illuminate hard-to-access structures and processes in the brain.

The small-molecule dye, or fluorophore, is the first of its kind that can cross the blood-brain barrier. What’s more, it allowed the researchers to differentiate between healthy brain tissue and a glioblastoma tumor in mice.

“This could be very useful for imaging-guided surgery, for example,” says Han Xiao, assistant professor of chemistry, biosciences, and bioengineering at Rice University. “Using this dye, a doctor could determine where the boundary is between normal brain tissue versus tumor tissue.”

If you’ve been to an aquarium or a nightclub, you’ve probably noticed the colorful glow that some objects or surfaces emit under a black light. Known as fluorescence, this glowing effect can be useful for rendering visible things that otherwise go unnoticed.

“Fluorescence imaging has been applied for imaging cancer in different parts of our body,” Xiao says. “The advantages of a fluorescence probe include high resolution and the ability to adapt the probe to read for different substances or activities.”

The deeper a tissue or organ is, the longer the wavelengths needed to discern the presence of fluorescent small molecules. For this reason, the second near-infrared (NIR-II) channel with wavelengths of 1,000 to 1,700 nanometers is especially important for deep-tissue imaging. For reference, visible light wavelengths range from 380 to 700 nanometers.

“Our tool is really valuable for deep imaging because it functions in the NIR-II region,” Xiao says. “In contrast to NIR-II wavelengths, fluorescent effects within the visible spectrum or with near-infrared wavelengths between 600 and 900 nanometers (NIR-I) will only get you skin-deep.”

Brain imaging poses a particular challenge not only because of tissue depth and accessibility, but also because of the blood-brain barrier, a layer of cells that acts as a very selective filter to restrict the passage of substances from the circulatory system to the central nervous system.

“People always want to know what exactly is happening in the brain, but it’s very hard to design a molecule that can penetrate the blood-brain barrier. Up to 98% of small-molecule drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cannot,” Xiao says.

“Generally speaking, the reason a NIR-II dye molecule tends to be big is because it is a conjugated structure with many double bonds,” he continues. “This is a true problem and the reason why we have been unable to use fluorescence in brain imaging until now. We tried to address this issue by developing this new dye scaffold that is very small but has a long emission wavelength.”

Unlike the other two known NIR-II dye scaffolds, which are not capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier, the one Xiao and Zhen Cheng of Stanford University developed is more compact, which makes it a great candidate for probes or drugs targeting the brain. “In the future, we could modify this scaffold and use it to look for a lot of different metabolites in the brain,” Xiao says.

Beyond the brain, the dye has much greater lasting power than indocyanine green, the only NIR small-molecule dye approved by the FDA for use as a contrast agent. A longer lifespan means researchers have more time to record the fluorescent trace before it disappears.

“When exposed to light, the indocyanine green dye trace deteriorates in seconds, whereas our dye leaves a stable trace for more than 10 minutes,” Xiao says.

The study appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Support was provided by the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas, the National Institutes for Health, the Department of Defense, the Robert A. Welch Foundation, the National Science Foundation, a Hamill Innovation Award, the John S. Dunn Foundation Collaborative Award, and the Stanford University Department of Radiology.

Source: Rice University

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A combination of silver nanoparticles and antibiotics may offer a way to fight against antibiotic-resistant bacteria, a new study shows.

Researchers hope to turn the discovery into viable treatment for some types of antibiotic-resistant infections that kill more than a million people globally each year.

“When I first saw the result, my first thoughts were, ‘Wow, this works!'”

For centuries, silver has been known to have antimicrobial properties. However, silver nanoparticles—microscopic spheres of silver small enough to operate at the cellular level—represent a new frontier in using the precious metal to fight bacteria.

In the new study, published in Frontiers in Microbiology, the researchers tested whether commercially available silver nanoparticles boost the power of antibiotics and enable these drugs to counter the very bacteria that have evolved to withstand them.

“We found that the silver nanoparticles and a common class of broad-spectrum antibiotics called aminoglycosides work together synergistically,” says senior author Daniel Czyz, an assistant professor in the microbiology and cell science department at the University of Florida/Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS).

“When combined with a small amount of silver nanoparticles, the amount of antibiotic needed to inhibit the bacteria decreased 22-fold, which tells us that the nanoparticles make the drug much more potent,” Czyz explains. “In addition, aminoglycosides can have negative side effects, so using silver nanoparticles could allow for a lower dose of antibiotic, reducing those side effects.”

The findings were both surprising and exciting, says first author Autumn Dove, a doctoral candidate studying microbiology and cell science in the UF/IFAS College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. “When I first saw the result, my first thoughts were, ‘Wow, this works!'” she says.

Over the last several decades, overuse of antibiotics had led to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and a decline in the effectiveness of traditional antibiotic drugs, the researchers say. The study’s findings indicate that silver nanoparticles have the potential to renew the effectiveness of some of these drugs.

“Let’s say you get a bad burn on your hand, and it gets infected with one of these resistant strains of bacteria,” Dove says. “It’s possible that dressing that burn with a combination of silver nanoparticles and antibiotics could both clear that infection and prevent those resistant bacteria from spreading elsewhere.”

Though antibiotics mainly target bacteria, they can also damage human and animal cells. Using a microscopic worm called C. elegans, the researchers confirmed that the silver nanoparticles did not also make the antibiotic more toxic to non-bacterial cells.

Building off the study’s promising findings, the scientists next plan to seek FDA authorization for clinical trials and work with UF Innovate to patent an antimicrobial product that uses silver nanoparticles.

The silver nanoparticles used in the study were manufactured by the Natural Immunogenics Corporation, which helped fund the study through the UF Industry Partnerships Matching Grant Program.

Source: University of Florida

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The average time of escalation to high-intensity drinking occurs within two years of when a teen first tries alcohol.

High-intensity drinking is defined as eight or more drinks in a row for women and 10 or more drinks in a row for men.

Teens who initiated high-intensity drinking at younger ages or who had a faster escalation to high-intensity drinking were at greater risk.

The findings, published in JAMA Pediatrics, also indicate that having a family history of alcohol problems and not attending a four-year college by age 20 are associated with starting high-intensity drinking earlier.

Researchers followed a national sample of adolescents from the Monitoring the Future study who, as 12th grade students in 2018, reported alcohol use in the past 30 days. This group of 451 participants was surveyed again in 2020 at age 20 as part of the Young Adult Daily Life Study.

The analysis focused on the grade level of initiating any alcohol use, first binge drinking (4+ drinks for women and 5+ drinks for men), and first high-intensity drinking.

Respondents disclosed current consumption rates and high-intensity drinking frequency, as well as personal background information including sex, race/ethnicity, family history of alcohol problems, and college status.

Attention to heavy alcohol consumption often tends to focus on drinking in college, where parties, tailgates, and other events foster this behavior.

But the fact that there is heavy drinking in high school suggests that “waiting until college for intervention may be too late for some people because these patterns have already started for many of them,” says lead author Megan Patrick, a research professor at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.

“Additionally, young adults who do not attend college are often overlooked but are also in need of intervention resources,” she says. “I think it’s important to be aware of when teens start drinking, and whether and how quickly they escalate to heavier drinking so we can appropriately target prevention and intervention efforts.”

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the National Institute on Drug Abuse funded the work.

Source: University of Michigan

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In the run-up to the United States Supreme Court issuing a ruling on affirmative action, an expert explains the practice’s role in higher education.

The Supreme Court heard arguments in the fall over the use of affirmative action in admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina and is expected to release decisions in the cases in the coming months.

Below, Cara McClellan of the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School talks about how the practice has benefitted institutions and how the diversity it brings has helped colleges and universities fulfill their educational missions.

McClellan is the founding director and practice associate professor of the Advocacy for Racial and Civil (ARC) Justice Clinic, the Penn Carey’s newest in-house clinic, which provides students with hands-on experience working in civil rights litigation and policy advocacy to combat systemic racism.

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Higher temperatures cause a pathogenic fungus known as Cryptococcus deneoformans to turn its adaptive responses into overdrive, research finds.

This increases its number of genetic changes, some of which might presumably lead to higher heat resistance, and others perhaps toward greater disease-causing potential.

Bacteria and viruses have been drivers of deadly global pandemics and annoying infections. But the pathogens we haven’t had to reckon with as much—yet—are the fungi.

Pathogenic fungi (Candida, Aspergillus, Cryptococcus, and others) are notorious killers of immune-compromised people. But for the most part, healthy people have not had to worry about them, and the vast majority of the planet’s potentially pathogenic fungi don’t do well in the heat of our bodies.

But all that may be about to change.

The findings show that higher heat makes more of the fungus’ transposable elements, or jumping genes, get up and move around within the fungal DNA, leading to changes in the way its genes are used and regulated. The findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“These mobile elements are likely to contribute to adaptation in the environment and during an infection,” says Asiya Gusa, postdoctoral researcher in molecular genetics and microbiology in the Duke University School of Medicine. “This could happen even faster because heat stress speeds up the number of mutations occurring.”

This may ring a bell with viewers of the new HBO series The Last of Us, where a dystopian hellscape is precipitated by a heat-adapted fungus that takes over humans and turns them into zombies. “That’s exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about—minus the zombie part!” says Gusa, who just watched the first episode and who will join the Duke faculty as an assistant professor later this year.

“These are not infectious diseases in the communicable sense; we don’t transmit fungi to each other,” Gusa says. “But the spores are in the air. We breathe in spores of fungi all the time and our immune systems are equipped to fight them.”

Fungal spores are generally larger than viruses, so your existing stock of face masks against COVID would probably be sufficient to stop them. That, and your body heat, for now.

“Fungal diseases are on the rise, largely because of an increase in the number of people who have weakened immune systems or underlying health conditions,” Gusa says. But at the same time, pathogenic fungi may be adapting to warmer temperatures as well.

Working in the lab of professor Sue Jinks-Robertson, Gusa led research that focused on three transposable elements that were particularly active under heat stress in C. deneoformans. But there are easily another 25 or more transposable elements in that species that could mobilize, she says.

The team used “long-read” DNA sequencing to see changes that might otherwise have been missed, Gusa says. Computational analysis allowed them to map transposons and then see how they had moved. “We have improved tools now to see these movements that were previously hiding in our blind spots.”

Heat stress sped the mutations up. Following 800 generations of growth in laboratory medium, the rate of transposon mutations was five-times higher in fungi raised at body temperature (37 Celsius) compared with fungi raised at 30C.

One of the transposable elements, called T1, had a tendency to insert itself between coding genes, which could lead to changes in the way genes are controlled. An element called Tcn12 often landed within the sequence of a gene, potentially disrupting that gene’s function and possibly leading to drug resistance. And a third kind, Cnl1, tended to land near or in the telomere sequences at the ends of chromosomes, an effect which Gusa says isn’t fully understood.

The mobilization of transposable elements also appeared to increase more in fungi living in mice than in lab culture. “We saw evidence of all three transposable elements mobilizing in the fungus genome within just ten days of infecting the mouse,” Gusa says. The researchers suspect that the added challenges of surviving in an animal with immune responses and other stressors may drive the transposons to be even more active.

“This is a fascinating study, which shows how increasing global temperature may affect the fungal evolution in unpredictable directions,” says Arturo Casadevall, chair of molecular microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins University. “As the world warms, transposons in soil fungi like Cryptococcus neoformans could become more mobile and increase genomic changes in ways that could enhance virulence and drug resistance. One more thing to worry about with global warming!”

The next phase of this research will be looking at pathogens from human patients who have had a relapsing fungal infection. “We know that these infections can persist and then come back with potential genetic changes.”

It’s time to get serious about pathogenic fungi, Gusa says. “These kinds of stress-stimulated changes may contribute to the evolution of pathogenic traits in fungi both in the environment and during infection. They may be evolving faster than we expected.”

The National Institutes of Health supported the research.

Source: Duke University

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Young adults who feel down or depressed are more likely to develop cardiovascular disease and have poor heart health, according to a new study.

The researchers analyzed data from more than a half million people between the ages of 18 and 49. Their findings add to a growing body of evidence connecting cardiovascular disease (CVD) with depression among young and middle-aged adults, and suggest the relationship between the two could begin in early adulthood.

The study in the Journal of the American Heart Association also found that young adults who self-reported feeling depressed or having poor mental health days had higher rates of heart attacks, strokes, and risk factors for heart disease compared with their peers without mental health issues.

“When you’re stressed, anxious, or depressed, you may feel overwhelmed, and your heart rate and blood pressure rises. It’s also common that feeling down could lead to making poor lifestyle choices like smoking, drinking alcohol, sleeping less, and not being physically active—all adverse conditions that negativity impact your heart,” says Garima Sharma, associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Medicine and senior author of the study.

Sharma and her colleagues looked at data from 593,616 adults who participated in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a self-reported, nationally representative survey conducted between 2017 and 2020.

The survey included questions about whether they have ever been told they have a depressive disorder, how many days they experienced poor mental health in the past month (0 days, 1–13 days, or 14–30 days), whether they had experienced a heart attack, stroke, or chest pain, and if they had cardiovascular disease risk factors.

Risk factors include high blood pressure, high cholesterol, being overweight/obese, smoking, diabetes, and poor physical activity and diet. People who had two or more of these risk factors were considered to have suboptimal cardiovascular health.

One in five adults self-reported having depression or frequently feeling low, with the study noting that there could have been higher rates during the last year of the study, which was the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percentage of US adults who experienced depression or anxiety jumped from 36.4% to 41.5% during the first year of the pandemic, with the highest spike among people ages 18 to 29.

The study revealed that, overall, those who self-reported several days of feeling down had a stronger link to cardiovascular disease and poor heart health. Compared with people who reported no poor mental health days in the past 30 days, participants who reported up to 13 poor mental health days had 1.5 times higher odds of CVD, while those with 14 or more days of poor mental health had double the odds. Associations between poor mental health and CVD did not differ significantly by gender or urban/rural status.

“The relationship between depression and heart disease is a two-way street. Depression increases your risk of heart issues, and those with heart disease experience depression,” says lead author Yaa Adoma Kwapong, a postdoctoral research fellow at Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease.

“Our study suggests that we need to prioritize mental health among young adults and perhaps increase screening and monitoring for heart disease in people with mental health conditions and vice versa to improve overall heart health.”

Kwapong says this new study only provides a snapshot of cardiovascular health among young people with depression, and that new studies need to look at how depression affects cardiovascular health over time.

No conflicts of interest were reported by the authors relating to this study. Partial funding for this study came from the American Heart Association.

Source: Johns Hopkins University

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New research uncovers a source of inaccuracy in custom satisfaction surveys.

Customer satisfaction surveys blip into our daily lives after dental appointments, haircuts, and calls with IT. For businesses, these short questionnaires are intended to provide feedback and make improvements.

But the findings demonstrate that perceptions of customer service don’t always align with the actual service provided. Results from three studies found consumers belonging to underrepresented racial and ethnic groups rated poorer quality service less negatively than white consumers did.

“Our research shows that perhaps we need to move beyond assumptions and not just rely on a five-point customer satisfaction survey to help address discrimination,” says Samantha Cross, associate professor of marketing at Iowa State University and coauthor of the paper in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research.

Cross explains that employees have assumptions as to whether someone is a viable customer, and the customer has assumptions about good service. These assumptions come from our specific backgrounds and experiences and the treatment of our wider ethno-racial group in society.

Customers who have experienced poor service more frequently in the past may have lower expectations than those who have not. Someone with an already low bar may rate an interaction with an employee as acceptable while someone with a high bar rates it as unacceptable.

Cross and her coauthors say these differences make it harder to catch unfair treatment through customer satisfaction surveys—especially in financial services.

“When you’re in line at a grocery store, you can see how other people are being treated and compare it to your treatment. You also have the ability to compare your experience with previous interactions at grocery stores,” says Cross. “That’s much harder if you’re applying for a loan or buying a car for the first time.”

Unlike the grocery store example, interactions with financial service providers tend to be one-on-one, behind closed doors.

The authors emphasize that differences in service can have long-lasting impacts, even when customers don’t perceive discrimination. Along with the possibility of becoming desensitized, indifferent, or accepting of poorer treatment, customers could miss out on a loan to start a business or face more hurdles to get a mortgage.

Bank visits

In the first study, the researchers selected nine male participants of similar age, height, body build, attractiveness, and education who were all small business owners in Los Angeles, California. The participants understood basic business and banking terminology and were knowledgeable about the local economy. Three were Black; three were Hispanic; three were white.

The participants wore identical clothing, including a shirt with an embedded video camera, and visited banks to request a $60,000 to $70,000 loan for a fictional computer service business. The university institutional review board and state attorney general’s office in California consented to the recording of the interactions between the study participants and bank officers. The participants went to multiple banks and completed a survey after each visit (e.g., level of assistance they received, types of information provided.)

Survey results from a total of 69 bank visits showed overall satisfaction was consistent across the Black, Hispanic, and white participants. But when the researchers analyzed the video recordings frame-by-frame, they found significant differences in the interactions.

Black and Hispanic participants often waited longer at banks to meet with the lender and received less one-on-one time than their white counterparts. Bank loan officers, 90% of whom were white, more often gave white participants a handshake and asked their name (80%) compared to Black and Hispanic participants (63% and 66%, respectively.)

Loan officers were also more likely to offer the white participants a seat and maintain eye contact with them compared to the Black and Hispanic participants. White participants more often received an application, documents about the bank’s interest and fees, and other sales-pitch statements at the end of the meeting. In the encounters where loan officers appeared to have the same racial background as the Black and Hispanic participants, the researchers say the interactions were more welcoming and friendlier.

Customer service on video

In the second study, the researchers showed 83 participants a two-minute video from the first study of a strongly negative interaction with a white bank officer. The participants did not know the racial or ethnic background of the participant from the first study who was in the room with the bank officer. They then filled out a scaled survey about the behavior of the bank officer and shared their own basic demographic data.

The researchers found participants who identified as belonging to an underrepresented ethno-racial group evaluated the strongly negative service encounter less negatively than white consumers.

A similar experiment with 240 participants and two short videos (i.e., one positive encounter, the other negative) showed similar results. With the negative interaction, participants from underrepresented ethno-racial groups rated the encounter higher than white participants. With the positive interaction, there was no significant difference in the ratings.

“Research uncovers and dissects, and then we have to decide what do we do with it,” says Cross.

To help ensure customers are being treated the same, Cross and her coauthors say managers could train employees to follow “behavioral scripts.” This could be as simple as making sure all customers receive a friendly greeting, wait within a certain time frame, and receive the same handouts.

The researchers say employee performance evaluations could also include video or audio recordings of their interactions with customers. A third party could review the employee’s tone of voice, facial expressions, and other nonverbal cues to discuss improvements. Recordings could also be useful in training sessions to discuss microaggressions.

Source: Iowa State University

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People experiencing long-lasting effects from COVID-19—known as “long COVID” or post-COVID conditions—are susceptible to developing only seven health symptoms for up to a year following the infection.

They are: fast-beating heart, hair loss, fatigue, chest pain, shortness of breath, joint pain, and obesity.

To develop their findings, researchers reviewed Oracle Cerner real-world data from electronic medical records containing de-identified information for medical research purposes.

After examining data from a total of 52,461 patients at 122 health care facilities across the United States, the researchers selected the top 47 most commonly reported health symptoms from long COVID to examine for the study.

Then, the researchers looked for any comparisons in the reported health symptoms—many also shared by other viral respiratory infections—among people in three different subgroups:

• People diagnosed with COVID-19 but do not have any common viral respiratory infections like influenza or pneumonia
• People with common viral respiratory infections but do not have COVID-19
• People who do not have COVID-19 or any other common viral respiratory infections.

“Despite an overwhelming number of long COVID symptoms previously reported by other studies, we only found a few symptoms specifically related to an infection from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19,” says Chi-Ren Shyu, director of the University of Missouri Institute for Data Science and Informatics and corresponding author of the study, published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases.

“Before we examined the data, I thought we would find an ample amount of the symptoms to be specifically associated with long COVID, but that wasn’t the case.”

Shyu, who is also a professor in the electrical engineering and computer science department, says the results could benefit ongoing efforts by fellow researchers to study various impacts of COVID-19.

“Now, researchers will be able to better understand how SARS-CoV-2 may mutate or evolve by creating new connections that we may not have known about before,” Shyu says. “Going forward we can use electronic medical records to quickly detect subgroups of patients who may have these long-term health conditions.”

The findings will give health care providers much-needed information about what to ask and look for when visiting with a patient who has symptoms of long COVID, says coauthor Adnan Qureshi, a professor of neurology in the School of Medicine, and doctor of neurology with MU Health Care.

Qureshi says the study’s results could also benefit researchers examining other aspects of COVID-19, such as the impact of the virus on the brain or the immune system. He says the concept of long COVID was developed after clinicians started noticing a group of people who were dubbed “survivors” of COVID-19 were “not necessarily normal anymore.”

“The survivors still have symptoms that are at times disabling and preventing them from going back to work or the activities of their daily life,” Qureshi says.

“This is not because the COVID-19 infection is still active, but instead the infection has caused long-term consequences, or sequelae, in the form of a post-COVID syndrome that could persist for months or even years. Our research was able to identify long-term sequelae that are distinctive to COVID-19 and separate the post-COVID syndrome from other post-viral syndromes.”

Additional coauthors are from the University of Minnesota and the University of Missouri.

The National Institutes of Health supported the work. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funding agencies.

Source: University of Missouri

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A new effort significantly reduces the number of unnecessary CT scans in children, limiting exposure to harmful radiation and reducing health care costs with no negative effect on outcomes.

Every time a child gets a computed tomography (CT) scan from a hospital they are exposed to radiation that—according to research—creates a 1-in-1,000 risk of developing a fatal tumor later in life.

These CT scans—which use several x-ray images and computer processing to create cross sectional images—are important to get a precise diagnosis in specific situations, but carry extra risks and additional costs that are best avoided if other methods are possible.

“Clinicians often feel compelled to do a CT scan and not risk missing something really important,” says Derek Wakeman, associate professor in the departments of surgery and pediatrics at the Pediatric Trauma Center at the University of Rochester Medicine Golisano Children’s Hospital (GCH).

“But, there are alternative ways to rule out conditions without a CT scan. If a child is awake and alert, we don’t necessarily need a CT scan to determine concussion risk. If blood work looks normal and the child does not have significant abdominal pain, we can often omit an abdominal CT. For possible cervical spine injuries, x-rays can help pick up significant injuries.”

For the initiative, described in the Journal of Pediatric Surgery, the researchers adapted existing CT scan guidelines and developed new ones around four areas of the body: head, neck, chest, and abdomen/pelvis.

“Guidelines have always been available for these areas, but the methods in which our department rigorously applied them, tracked the results, and looked to continuously improve are unique,” says Wakeman.

After adapting guidelines for these four body regions, clinicians examined the CT scanning rates prior to the initiative (01/2016-06/2017) and after implementation (07/2017-08/2021) to determine how many scans were not indicated by the guidelines.

Before the program launched, 61 patients underwent 171 CT scans, of which 87 scans (51%) were not indicated by guidelines. Post-implementation, 363 patients had 531 scans and only 134 CTs (25%) were not indicated.

This significant reduction of CT scans has multiple benefits for patient safety and operational efficiency, Wakeman says. “It reduces a lot of waste in the system and more importantly minimizes exposure to radiation, as young children are at a much greater risk of injury from this exposure than adults.”

The study estimated that a total of 146 children were spared excessive radiation with no clinically significant missed injuries since the guidelines were implemented. The GCH clinical teams achieved this by using alternative means of diagnosis, while still applying best-practices, for the different areas of the body. Existing guidelines were more widely adapted for head, neck, and abdomen/pelvis, while new guidelines were developed at GCH for the chest area.

In addition to preventing unnecessary exposure to radiation, charges related to scans in the GCH emergency department decreased from $1,490.31 per patient to $408.21 per patient, saving an estimated $218,000 in total medical costs for this group of children.

Implementing these changes required a collective education effort among all the teams to review and revise guidelines, and then the guidelines were integrated into the technological process to diagnose patients.

“It’s built into the culture now. People know it’s safe to utilize this approach and they’re not going to miss clinical injuries,” says Wakeman.

Source: University of Rochester

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Male alcohol use has a significant negative influence on in vitro fertilization success rates, increasing patient financial burden and emotional stress, new research indicates.

The new study in Molecular Human Production is part of a research program focused on understanding how male drinking prior to conception contributes to the development of alcohol-induced birth defects and disease.

The researchers say this particular study highlights the importance of expanding fertility and pre-pregnancy messaging to emphasize the reproductive danger of alcohol use by both parents, not just the mother.

Couples struggling with fertility are increasingly using assisted reproductive technologies (ART) like in vitro fertilization (IVF) to have children. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 2% of all babies born in the United States are conceived using ART, which would mean one in 50 babies were conceived using ART in 2021, according to the CDC’s provisional births data.

These statistics highlight the growing importance of looking at both parents’ contributions to fertility and pregnancy outcomes, says Michael Golding, an associate professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences’ veterinary physiology and pharmacology department at Texas A&M University.

“We say to the woman, ‘You need to be careful of what you eat. You need to stop smoking. You need to be doing all these different things to improve fertility,'” Golding says. “We don’t say anything to the man, and that’s a mistake, because what we’re seeing here is that the couple’s odds of success with their IVF procedure are increasing simply by addressing both parents’ health habits.”

Golding’s research used a mouse model to determine the effects of a potential father’s drinking on IVF pregnancy outcomes. The model included a control group that represented males who do not drink, a group that represented males who participate in chronic drinking at the legal limit, and a group that represented males who participate in chronic drinking at one-and-a-half times the legal limit.

The results reveal that the more a male drinks before providing sperm for an IVF pregnancy, the less likely the pregnancy will be successful.

“Seeing the negative effects in both the legal limit group and the group drinking at one-and-a half times the legal limit revealed that as alcohol dose increases, things get worse,” Golding says. “That really surprised me. I didn’t think that it would be that cut and dry. That really emphasized that even very modest levels of exposure were breaking through and having an impact on conception, implantation, and overall IVF pregnancy success rates.”

Alexis Roach, a PhD candidate helping conduct research in Goldings’ lab and the study’s first author, says their findings and other research conducted in Golding’s lab challenge the primarily maternal-focused narrative of previous IVF research. She also says it’s important to make the findings of this research accessible to the public.

“The most important aspect of this research is that it makes it clear that everybody plays a role in achieving successful pregnancy outcomes, even though the general assumption is that it’s just women,” Roach says. “The most important thing to take away from this is that if you’re a male considering having a family, abstain from alcohol until your wife gets pregnant.”

The research concludes that male alcohol use hinders an embryo’s ability to successfully implant in the uterus and reduces IVF embryo survival rates. The research also reveals more questions about fetal development and paternal drinking.

Golding’s lab is continuing to research these questions and the paternal aspects of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, a group of conditions that can occur when a person is exposed to alcohol before birth. His work aims to provide a holistic look at understanding fetal development and pregnancy by examining the father’s role.

For now, he says the next step in improving IVF pregnancy outcomes is getting the discoveries from this research into the hands, eyes, and ears of the people considering ART to help start their own families.

“It is important to remember that couples struggling with fertility who have chosen to pursue IVF are under intense emotional and financial pressure, which is associated with a feeling of helplessness,” Golding says.

“Our study demonstrates that drinking alcohol is an unrecognized factor that negatively impacts IVF pregnancy success rates. Therefore, as alcohol use is easily changed, our study identifies a shared action item that can empower the couple to work together toward their goal of becoming pregnant.”

Source: Rachel Knight for Texas A&M University

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Neanderthal noses were less sensitive to urine and sweat than ours are, research finds.

The noses of hunting-and-gathering Denisovans on the Asian steppes were particularly sensitive to energy-rich honey, according to the findings.

Though we can’t really know what these two extinct human species perceived or preferred to eat, the new study reveals a bit more about what they might have been able to smell.

Using a technique that lets researchers test smell sensitivity on odor receptors grown in a lab dish, researchers Claire de March of CNRS Paris Saclay University and Hiroaki Matsunami of Duke University were able to compare the scents-abilities of three kinds of humans. Their work appears in the journal iScience.

Drawing from published databases of genomes, including ancient DNA collections amassed by 2022 Nobel Prize winner Svante Pääbo, the researchers were able to characterize the receptors of each of the three human species by looking at the relevant genes.

“It is very difficult to predict a behavior just from the genomic sequence,” says de March, who did the work as a postdoctoral research associate at Duke. “We had the odorant receptor genomes from Neanderthal and Denisovan individuals and we could compare them with today’s humans and determine if they resulted in a different protein.”

So then they tested the responses of 30 lab-grown olfactory receptors from each hominin against a battery of smells to measure how sensitive each kind of receptor was to a particular fragrance.

The laboratory tests showed the modern and ancient human receptors were essentially detecting the same odors, but their sensitivities differed.

The Denisovans, who lived 30,000 to 50,000 years ago, were shown to be less sensitive to the odors that present-day humans perceive as floral, but four times better at sensing sulfur and three times better at balsamic. And they were very attuned to honey.

“We don’t know what Denisovans ate, but there some reasons why this receptor has to be sensitive,” says Matsunami, who is a professor of molecular genetics and microbiology in the Duke School of Medicine. Contemporary hunter-gatherers such as the Hadza of Tanzania are famous for their love of honey, an essential high-calorie fuel.

Neanderthals, who were still around up to 40,000 years ago and who apparently swapped a few genes with modern humans, were three times less responsive to green, floral, and spicy scents, using pretty much the same receptors we have today. “They may exhibit different sensitivity, but the selectivity remains the same,” Matsunami says.

“The Neanderthal odorant receptors are mostly the same as contemporary humans, and the few that were different were no more responsive,” de March adds.

Odor receptors have been linked to ecological and dietary needs in many species and presumably evolve as a species changes ranges and diets.

“Each species must evolve olfactory receptors to maximize their fitness for finding food,” Matsunami says. “In humans, it’s more complicated because we eat a lot of things. We’re not really specialized.”

The lab has also used their cell-based scent tester for seeing genetic variation among modern humans. “Some people can smell certain chemicals, but others can’t,” Matsunami says. “That can be explained by functional changes.”

Funding for this research came from the National Institutes of Health and the US National Science Foundation.

Source: Duke University

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Researchers have developed a flying device that can land on tree branches to take samples.

This opens up a new dimension for scientists previously reserved for biodiversity researchers.

Ecologists are increasingly using traces of genetic material left behind by living organisms in the environment, called environmental DNA (eDNA), to catalogue and monitor biodiversity. Based on these DNA traces, researchers can determine which species are present in a certain area.

Obtaining samples from water or soil is easy, but other habitats—such as the forest canopy—are difficult for researchers to access. As a result, many species remain untracked in poorly explored areas.

Researchers at ETH Zurich; the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow, and Landscape Research WSL; and the company SPYGEN partnered to develop the special drone.

The drone is equipped with adhesive strips. When the aircraft lands on a branch, material from the branch sticks to these strips. Researchers can then extract DNA in the lab, analyze it, and assign it to genetic matches of the various organisms using database comparisons.

But not all branches are the same: they vary in terms of their thickness and elasticity. Branches also bend and rebound when a drone lands on them. Programming the aircraft in such a way that it can still approach a branch autonomously and remain stable on it long enough to take samples was a major challenge for the roboticists.

“Landing on branches requires complex control,” explains Stefano Mintchev, professor of environmental robotics at ETH Zurich and WSL. Initially, the drone does not know how flexible a branch is, so the researchers fitted it with a force sensing cage. This allows the drone to measure this factor at the scene and incorporate it into its flight maneuver.

Researchers have tested their new device on seven tree species. In the samples, they found DNA from 21 distinct groups of organisms, or taxa, including birds, mammals, and insects. “This is encouraging, because it shows that the collection technique works,” says Mintchev, coauthor of the study.

The researchers now want to improve their drone further to get it ready for a competition in which the aim is to detect as many different species as possible across 100 hectares of rainforest in Singapore in 24 hours.

To test the drone’s efficiency under conditions similar to those it will experience at the competition, Mintchev and his team are currently working at the Zoo Zurich’s Masoala Rainforest.

“Here we have the advantage of knowing which species are present, which will help us to better assess how thorough we are in capturing all eDNA traces with this technique or if we’re missing something,” Mintchev says.

For this event, however, the collection device must become more efficient and mobilize faster. In the tests in Switzerland, the drone collected material from seven trees in three days; in Singapore, it must be able to fly to and collect samples from 10 times as many trees in just one day.

Collecting samples in a natural rainforest, however, presents the researchers with even tougher challenges. Frequent rain washes eDNA off surfaces, while wind and clouds impede drone operation.

“We are therefore very curious to see whether our sampling method will also prove itself under extreme conditions in the tropics,” Mintchev says.

The research appears in Science Robotics.

Source: ETH Zurich

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The usual stereotypes about who experiences eating disorders are false, research shows.

The study finds that boys living in disadvantaged circumstances—not just girls from wealthy backgrounds—are at increased risk of disordered eating, particularly if they have underlying genetic risk factors.

“This is critical information for health care providers who might not otherwise screen for or recognize disordered eating in this population,” said Megan Mikhail, lead author of the study and a PhD candidate in the Michigan State University clinical psychology program. “It is also important for the public to recognize that eating disorders can affect everyone, including people who do not fit the historical stereotypes.”

The study published in the Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science, is the first to look at associations between multiple forms of disadvantage and risk for disordered eating in boys, as well as how disadvantage may interact with biological risks to affect disordered eating in boys.

Using a large population-based sample of male twins from the Michigan State University Twin Registry, the researchers found that boys from more disadvantaged backgrounds reported greater disordered eating symptoms and had earlier activation of genetic influences on disordered eating, which could lead to increased long-term risk.

The population-based sample allowed the researchers to avoid overlooking individuals who may not be able to afford access to mental health care. They examined factors such as parental income, education, and neighborhood disadvantage to see how those factors related to disordered eating symptoms in the boys. Since all the participants were twins, researchers were also able to study genetic influences on disordered eating.

“This research is particularly relevant following the COVID-19 pandemic when many families experienced financial hardship,” says Kelly Klump, professor of psychology and coauthor of the study. “Those financial stressors are putting many young people at risk for an eating disorder, so it’s vital that there be increased screening and access to care for these young people.”

Source: Michigan State University

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Here are five questions and expert answers about relationships during the Valentine’s Day season.

February 14 can be a pleasant or painful reminder about the relationships in your life. From romantic partnerships to deep friendships, the hyper-focus around how we connect with others is on full display.

Tristan Martin is an assistant teaching professor of marriage and family therapy in Syracuse University’s Falk College. Clinically, in private practice, Martin provides support for the LGBTQ community, with specialization in supporting gender transition. He teaches classes in family therapy and has a research focus on transgender sexuality within the intersection of relational and erotic diversity.

Here, Martin answers five questions about relationships, approaching the topic of therapy with your partner, and dealing with loneliness around Valentine’s Day:

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Researchers have uncovered how a unique, fast synapse keeps us from falling over.

The sensory organs that allow us to walk, dance, and turn our heads without dizziness or loss of balance contain specialized synapses that process signals faster than any other in the human body, they report.

In a discovery more than 15 years in the making, the neuroscientists, physicists, and engineers describe the mechanism of the synapses. Their work paves the way for research that could improve treatments for vertigo and balance disorders that affect as many as 1 in 3 Americans over age 40.

The new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences describes the workings of “vestibular hair cell-calyx synapses,” which are found in organs of the innermost ear that sense head position and movements in different directions.

“Nobody fully understood how this synapse can be so fast, but we have shed light on the mystery,” says Rob Raphael, a Rice University bioengineer and coauthor of the study.

Synapses are biological junctions where neurons can relay information to one another and other parts of the body. The human body contains hundreds of trillions of synapses, and almost all of them share information via quantal transmission, a form of chemical signaling via neurotransmitters that requires at least 0.5 milliseconds to send information across a synapse.

Prior experiments had shown a faster, “nonquantal” form of transmission occurs in vestibular hair cell-calyx synapses, the points where motion-sensing vestibular hair cells meet afferent neurons that connect directly to the brain. The new research explains how these synapses operate so quickly.

In each, a signal-receiving neuron surrounds the end of its partner hair cell with a large cuplike structure called a calyx. The calyx and hair cell remain separated by a tiny gap, or cleft, measuring just a few billionths of a meter.

“The vestibular calyx is a wonder of nature,” says coauthor Anna Lysakowski of the University of Illinois Chicago. “Its large cup-shaped structure is the only one of its kind in the entire nervous system. Structure and function are intimately related, and nature obviously devoted a great deal of energy to produce this structure. We’ve been trying to figure out its special purpose for a long time.”

From the ion channels expressed in hair cells and their associated calyces, the authors created the first computational model capable of quantitatively describing the nonquantal transmission of signals across this nanoscale gap. Simulating nonquantal transmission allowed the team to investigate what happens throughout the synaptic cleft, which is more extensive in vestibular synapses than other synapses.

“The mechanism turns out to be quite subtle, with dynamic interactions giving rise to fast and slow forms of nonquantal transmission,” Raphael says. “To understand all this, we made a biophysical model of the synapse based on its detailed anatomy and physiology.”

The model simulates the voltage response of the calyx to mechanical and electrical stimuli, tracking the flow of potassium ions through low-voltage-activated ion channels from pre-synaptic hair cells to the post-synaptic calyx.

Raphael says the model accurately predicted changes in potassium in the synaptic cleft, providing key new insights about changes in electrical potential that are responsible for the fast component of nonquantal transmission; explained how nonquantal transmission alone could trigger action potentials in the post-synaptic neuron; and showed how both fast and slow transmission depend on the close and extensive cup formed by the calyx on the hair cell.

Coauthor Ruth Anne Eatock of the University of Chicago says, “The key capability was the ability to predict the potassium level and electrical potential at every location within the cleft. This allowed the team to illustrate that the size and speed of nonquantal transmission depend on the novel structure of the calyx. The study demonstrates the power of engineering approaches to elucidate fundamental biological mechanisms, one of the important but sometimes overlooked goals of bioengineering research.”

Coauthor Imran Quraishi of Yale University began constructing the model and collaborating with Eatock in the mid-2000s when he was a graduate student in Raphael’s research group and she was on the faculty of Baylor College of Medicine.

His first version of the model captured important features of the synapse, but he says gaps in “our knowledge of the specific potassium channels and other components that make up the model was too limited to claim it was entirely accurate.”

Since then, Eatock, Lysakowski, and others discovered ion channels in the calyx that transformed scientists’ understanding of how ionic currents flow across hair cell and calyx membranes.

Quraishi says, “The unfinished work had weighed on me,” and he was both relieved and excited when Chenrayan Govindaraju, a PhD student in applied physics at Rice, joined Raphael’s lab and resumed work on the model in 2018.

“By the time I started on the project, more data supported nonquantal transmission,” Govindaraju says. “But the mechanism, especially that of fast transmission, was unclear. Building the model has given us a better understanding of the interplay and purpose of different ion channels, the calyx structure, and dynamic changes in potassium and electric potential in the synaptic cleft.”

Raphael says, “One of my very first grants was to develop a model of ion transport in the inner ear. It is always satisfying to achieve a unified mathematical model of a complex physiological process. For the past 30 years—since the original observation of nonquantal transmission—scientists have wondered, ‘Why is this synapse so fast?’ and, ‘Is the transmission speed related to the unique calyx structure?’ We have provided answers to both questions.”

He says the link between the structure and function of the calyx “is an example of how evolution drives morphological specialization. A compelling argument can be made that once animals emerged from the sea and began to move on land, swing in trees and fly, there were increased demands on the vestibular system to rapidly inform the brain about the position of the head in space. And at this point the calyx appeared.”

Raphael says the model opens the door for a deeper exploration of information processing in vestibular synapses, including research into the unique interactions between quantal and nonquantal transmission.

He says the model could also be a powerful tool for researchers who study electrical transmission in other parts of the nervous system, and he hopes it will aid those who design vestibular implants, neuroprosthetic devices that can restore function to those who have lost their balance.

The research had support from the National Institutes of Health, the Hearing Health Foundation, and a seed grant from Rice University’s ENRICH program.

Source: Rice University

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Obstructive sleep apnea may be linked to low bone mineral density in adults, according to a new study.

The findings are crucial for individuals with sleep apnea, as low bone mineral density is an indicator of osteoporosis—a condition in which bones become weak and brittle.

In addition to increasing the risk of fractures, low bone mineral density also affects oral health, causing teeth to become loose and dental implants to fail, says senior author Thikriat Al-Jewair, associate professor of orthodontics in the University at Buffalo School of Dental Medicine and director of the school’s Advanced Education Program in Orthodontics.

For the study, published in the Journal of Craniomandibular and Sleep Practice, the researchers used cone beam computed tomography (CBCT)—a type of X-ray—to measure bone density in the head and neck of 38 adult participants, half of whom had obstructive sleep apnea.

When controlling for age, sex, and weight, the participants with obstructive sleep apnea had significantly lower bone mineral density than the participants without the condition.

Obstructive sleep apnea, which is characterized by difficulty breathing while asleep, can cause hypoxia (low levels of oxygen in the body), inflammation, oxidative stress, and shortened breathing patterns. Each of these symptoms may have a chronic negative effect on bone metabolism and, ultimately, bone density, says Al-Jewair.

“While the link between obstructive sleep apnea and low bone mineral density has yet to be fully explored, this study offers new evidence on their connection that could have several implications for orthodontic treatment,” says Al-Jewair, who is also assistant dean for equity, diversity, and inclusion in the UB School of Dental Medicine.

“If a patient has been diagnosed with sleep apnea, this can influence treatment planning and management. CBCT imaging has become an integral part of daily orthodontic practice and could be used as a screening tool for low bone mineral density,” she says.

“Orthodontists could then inform their patients of their propensity for low bone mineral density and encourage them to seek further consultation with their physician, as well as warn the patient of possible adverse outcomes, increased risks and effects on treatment time.”

Future research with larger sample sizes is needed, says Al-Jewair.

Source: University at Buffalo

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Coffee with milk may have an anti-inflammatory effect in humans, a new study shows.

Researchers found that a combination of proteins and antioxidants doubles the anti-inflammatory properties in immune cells. They hope to be able to study the health effects on humans.

Whenever bacteria, viruses, and other foreign substances enter the body, our immune systems react by deploying white blood cells and chemical substances to protect us.

This reaction, commonly known as inflammation, also occurs whenever we overload tendons and muscles and is characteristic of diseases like rheumatoid arthritis.

Antioxidants known as polyphenols are found in humans, plants, fruits, and vegetables. This group of antioxidants is also used by the food industry to slow the oxidation and deterioration of food quality and thereby avoid off flavors and rancidity. Polyphenols are also known to be healthy for humans, as they help reduce oxidative stress in the body that gives rise to inflammation.

But much remains unknown about polyphenols. Relatively few studies have investigated what happens when polyphenols react with other molecules, such as proteins mixed into foods that we then consume.

In a new study, researchers investigated how polyphenols behave when combined with amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. The results have been promising.

“In the study, we show that as a polyphenol reacts with an amino acid, its inhibitory effect on inflammation in immune cells is enhanced,” says Marianne Nissen Lund, a professor in the food science department at the University of Copenhagen, who headed the study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

“As such, it is clearly imaginable that this cocktail could also have a beneficial effect on inflammation in humans. We will now investigate further, initially in animals. After that, we hope to receive research funding which will allow us to study the effect in humans.”

Twice the inflammation-fighting power

To investigate the anti-inflammatory effect of combining polyphenols with proteins, the researchers applied artificial inflammation to immune cells. Some of the cells received various doses of polyphenols that had reacted with an amino acid, while others only received polyphenols in the same doses. A control group received nothing.

The researchers observed that immune cells treated with the combination of polyphenols and amino acids were twice as effective at fighting inflammation as the cells to which only polyphenols were added.

“It is interesting to have now observed the anti-inflammatory effect in cell experiments. And obviously, this has only made us more interested in understanding these health effects in greater detail. So, the next step will be to study the effects in animals,” says senior author Andrew Williams of the veterinary and animal sciences department.

Anti-inflammatory coffee and milk

In previous studies, the researchers demonstrated that polyphenols bind to proteins in meat products, milk, and beer. In another new study, they tested whether the molecules also bind to each other in a coffee drink with milk. Indeed, coffee beans are filled with polyphenols, while milk is rich in proteins.

“Our result demonstrates that the reaction between polyphenols and proteins also happens in some of the coffee drinks with milk that we studied. In fact, the reaction happens so quickly that it has been difficult to avoid in any of the foods that we’ve studied so far,” says Nissen Lund.

Therefore, the researcher does not find it difficult to imagine that the reaction and potentially beneficial anti-inflammatory effect also occur when other foods consisting of proteins and fruits or vegetables are combined.

“I can imagine that something similar happens in, for example, a meat dish with vegetables or a smoothie, if you make sure to add some protein like milk or yogurt,” says Nissen Lund.

Industry and the research community have both taken note of the major advantages of polyphenols. As such, they are working on how to add the right quantities of polyphenols in foods to achieve the best quality. The new research results are promising in this context as well.

“Because humans do not absorb that much polyphenol, many researchers are studying how to encapsulate polyphenols in protein structures which improve their absorption in the body,” says Nissen Lund. “This strategy has the added advantage of enhancing the anti-inflammatory effects of polyphenols.”

Additional coauthors are from the Technical University of Dresden in Germany. Independent Research Fund Denmark funded the work.

Source: University of Copenhagen

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Researchers are using fluorescence lifetime to shed new light on a peptide associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

Through a new approach using time-resolved spectroscopy and computational chemistry, the researchers found experimental evidence of an alternative binding site on amyloid-beta aggregates. The finding opens the door to the development of new therapies for Alzheimer’s and other diseases associated with amyloid deposits.

Amyloid plaque deposits in the brain are a main feature of Alzheimer’s. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates Alzheimer’s will affect nearly 14 million people in the US by 2060.

“Amyloid-beta is a peptide that aggregates in the brains of people that suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, forming these supramolecular nanoscale fibers, or fibrils” says Angel Martí, a professor of chemistry, bioengineering, and materials science and nanoengineering at Rice University and faculty director of the Rice Emerging Scholars Program. “Once they grow sufficiently, these fibrils precipitate and form what we call amyloid plaques.

“Understanding how molecules in general bind to amyloid-beta is particularly important not only for developing drugs that will bind with better affinity to its aggregates, but also for figuring out who the other players are that contribute to cerebral tissue toxicity,” he adds.

The Martí group had previously identified a first binding site for amyloid-beta deposits by figuring out how metallic dye molecules were able to bind to pockets formed by the fibrils. The molecules’ ability to fluoresce, or emit light when excited under a spectroscope, indicated the presence of the binding site.

Time-resolved spectroscopy, which the lab used in its latest discovery, “is an experimental technique that looks at the time that molecules spend in an excited state,” Martí says. “We excite the molecule with light, the molecule absorbs the energy from the light photons and gets to an excited state, a more energetic state.”

This energized state is responsible for the fluorescent glow. “We can measure the time that molecules spend in the excited state, which is called lifetime, and then we use that information to evaluate the binding equilibrium of small molecules to amyloid-beta,” Martí says.

In addition to the second binding site, the lab and collaborators from the University of Miami uncovered that multiple fluorescent dyes not expected to bind to amyloid deposits in fact did.

“These findings are allowing us to create a map of binding sites in amyloid-beta and a record of the amino acid compositions required for the formation of binding pockets in amyloid-beta fibrils,” Martí says.

The fact that time-resolved spectroscopy is sensitive to the environment around the dye molecule enabled Martí to infer the presence of the second binding site.

“When the molecule is free in solution, its fluorescence has a particular lifetime that is due to this environment. However, when the molecule is bound to the amyloid fibers, the microenvironment is different and as a consequence so is the fluorescence lifetime,” he explains. “For the molecule bound to amyloid fibers, we observed two different fluorescence lifetimes.

“The molecule was not binding to a unique site in the amyloid-beta but to two different sites. And that was extremely interesting because our previous studies only indicated one binding site. That happened because we were not able to see all the components with the technologies we were using previously,” he adds.

The discovery prompted more experimentation. “We decided to look into this further using not only the probe we designed, but also other molecules that have been used for decades in inorganic photochemistry,” he says.

“The idea was to find a negative control, a molecule that would not bind to amyloid-beta. But what we discovered was that these molecules that we were not expecting would bind to amyloid-beta at all actually did bind to it with decent affinity.”

The findings will also affect the study of “many diseases associated with other kinds of amyloids: Parkinson’s, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Type 2 diabetes, systemic amyloidosis,” Marti says.

Understanding the binding mechanisms of amyloid proteins is also useful for studying nonpathogenic amyloids and their potential applications in drug development and materials science.

“There are functional amyloids that our body and other organisms produce for different reasons that are not associated with diseases,” Martí says. “There are organisms that produce amyloids that have antibacterial effects. There are organisms that produce amyloids for structural purposes, to create barriers, and others that use amyloids for chemical storage. The study of nonpathogenic amyloids is an emerging area of science, so this is another path our findings can help develop.”

The research appears in Chemical Science.

The National Science Foundation and the family of the late Professor Donald DuPré, a Houston-born Rice alumnus and former professor of chemistry at the University of Louisville, supported the research.

Source: Rice University

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