# data[].attributes.headline
It's a one-way street for sound waves in this new technology

# data[].attributes.subject
It's a one-way street for sound waves in this new technology

# data[].attributes.body
Sabra McBride
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190403135011.htm

# data[].attributes.body
Morgan Skinner

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Children who learn how to swim at a young age are reaching many developmental milestones earlier than the norm.

Researchers from the Griffith Institute for Educational Research surveyed parents of 7000 under-fives from Australia, New Zealand and the US over three years.

A further 180 children aged 3, 4 and 5 years have been involved in intensive testing, making it the world's most comprehensive study into early-years swimming.

Lead researcher Professor Robyn Jorgensen says the study shows young children who participate in early-years swimming achieve a wide range of skills earlier than the normal population.

"Many of these skills are those that help young children into the transition into formal learning contexts such as pre-school or school.

"The research also found significant differences between the swimming cohort and non-swimmers regardless of socio-economic background.

"While the two higher socio-economic groups performed better than the lower two in testing, the four SES groups all performed better than the normal population.

The researchers also found there were no gender differences between the research cohort and the normal population.

As well as achieving physical milestones faster, children also scored significantly better in visual-motor skills such as cutting paper, colouring in and drawing lines and shapes, and many mathematically-related tasks. Their oral expression was also better as well as in the general areas of literacy and numeracy.

"Many of these skills are highly valuable in other learning environments and will be of considerable benefit for young children as they transition into pre-schools and school."

The study is a joint project between Griffith University, Kids Alive Swim Program and Swim Australia.

Report: http://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/470251/early-year-swim-interim-report-2012.pdf

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
child psychology; k-12 education; child development; learning disorders; infant and preschool learning; numeracy; literacy; educational psychology

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Children who swim start smarter, study suggests

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Children who learn how to swim at a young age are reaching many developmental milestones earlier than the norm. Researchers from the Griffith Institute for Educational Research surveyed parents of 7000 under-fives from Australia, New Zealand and the US over three years.

# data[].attributes.body
Jack O'Donnell

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Staten Island residents have another reason to apply insect repellent and obsessively check for ticks this spring and summer: the population of a new, potentially dangerous invasive pest known as the Asian longhorned tick has grown dramatically across the borough, according to Columbia University researchers. And the tick -- which unlike other local species can clone itself in large numbers -- is likely to continue its conquest in the months ahead.

"The concern with this tick is that it could transmit human pathogens and make people sick," explains researcher Maria Diuk-Wasser, an associate professor in the Columbia University Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology, who studies ticks and human disease risk.

In a new study appearing in the April issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, Diuk-Wasser and colleagues provide the most exhaustive local census of the new species to date -- and suggest the Staten Island infestation is far more advanced than previously known.

The researchers found the species Haemaphysalis longicornis in 7 of 13 parks surveyed in 2017 and in 16 of 32 in 2018. In one park, the density of the ticks per 1000 square meters rose almost 1,698 percent between 2017 and 2018, with the number of ticks picked up in the sample area rising from 85 to 1,529. They also found the ticks on anesthetized deer from the area.

The news comes less than a year after the New York City Department of Health announced the discovery of the first member of the species in the city -- a single tick -- found on southern Staten Island last August.

The tick, native to Asia and Australia, had been identified in the months prior to the Staten Island sighting in New Jersey, West Virginia, North Carolina and Arkansas and just a few weeks earlier in Westchester County. The Westchester sighting prompted a number of state senators to send a letter urging state health officials to act aggressively to stop the spread of the new species.

Public health officials are particularly concerned because the longhorned tick is notorious for its ability to quickly replicate itself. Unlike deer ticks, the common local variety known for carrying Lyme disease, the female Asian longhorned can copy itself through asexual reproduction in certain environmental conditions, or reproduce sexually, laying 1,000-2,000 eggs at a time. They are typically found in grass in addition to the forested habitats that deer ticks prefer, adding a new complication to public health messaging. The Columbia analysis suggests that the public warnings may have come too late.

"The fact that longhorned tick populations are so high in southern Staten Island will make control of this species extremely difficult," says Meredith VanAcker, a member of Diuk-Wasser's lab who collected the data as part of her Ph.D. thesis. "And because females don't need to find male mates for reproduction, it is easier for the population to spread."

The threat these new arrivals pose to human health is still unknown. In Asia, there have been reports of ticks passing on a virus that can cause a number of diseases, including hemorrhagic fever and ehrlichiosis, a bacterial illness that can cause flu-like symptoms and lead to serious complications if not treated.

The arrival of the species on Staten Island adds another unwelcome dimension to the region's tick woes, which have grown dramatically in recent years. Thanks to an expanding deer population, Lyme disease spread through deer ticks has reached epidemic proportions in some areas of the Northeast. Deer ticks (also called black-legged ticks) are capable of disseminating six other human pathogens.

The first Asian long-horned tick in the U.S. was identified in New Jersey in 2013. A large population was later found on sheep in Mercer County, New Jersey. Diuk-Wasser became aware of the potential danger when a doctor at a Westchester clinic removed a tick from a patient and sent it in for identification. The discovery of the first human bite prompted widespread alarm.

By then, the Columbia team was already in the midst of an extensive "tick census" on Staten Island to determine how the landscape connectivity between urban parks influenced the spread of disease.

The Asian longhorned is easy to miss because it resembles a rare native species of rabbit tick. VanAcker spent months combing areas of Staten Island for ticks, dragging a square-meter corduroy cloth over leaf litter and examining it every 10 to 20 meters Diuk-Wasser, post-doctoral student Danielle Tufts and other members of the Diuk-Wasser lab found huge numbers of them on the bodies of unconscious deer that had been captured and anesthetized by wildlife authorities.

VanAcker found her collections were overflowing with the new species, leading to publication of the current study in Emerging Infectious Diseases. Her work on landscape connectivity, slated to appear in the June issue of the same journal, drives home the difficult decisions facing policymakers as they attempt to arrest the spread of the new species and others like it.

"The easier it is for deer to maneuver through urban landscapes between parks, the more likely the ticks are to spread to new areas," Diuk-Wasser says. "This suggests that the emphasis on urban wildlife corridors has a previously unappreciated downside for human health."

This study was supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
spiders and  ticks; new species; animals; endangered animals; exotic species; ecology; environmental policy; environmental awareness

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
New Yorkers brace for self-cloning Asian longhorned tick: Researchers warn that NYC's Asian longhorned tick population is larger than previously known

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A new study maps out the increase and spread of the Asian longhorned tick, a new species identified last summer in Westchester and Staten island. What's particularly alarming is that the tick is notorious for its ability to quickly clone itself through asexual reproduction, or reproduce sexually, laying 1,000-2,000 eggs at a time.

# data[].attributes.headline
Sleep Problems, Alzheimer’s Disease Are Linked, But Which Comes First?

# data[].attributes.subject
Sleep Problems, Alzheimer’s Disease Are Linked, But Which Comes First?

# data[].attributes.body
Sullivan Rembert
http://www.the-aps.org/mm/hp/Audiences/Public-Press/2019/11.html

# data[].attributes.body
Ian Weiler

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Adult depression has long been associated with shrinkage of the hippocampus, a brain region that plays an important role in memory and response to stress. Now, new research has linked participation in team sports to larger hippocampal volumes in children and less depression in boys ages 9 to 11.

# data[].attributes.headline
Migraines linked to Cardiovascular problems 

# data[].attributes.subject
Migraines linked to Cardiovascular problems 

# data[].attributes.body
Cassidy Perry

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Migraine is associated with increased risks of cardiovascular problems (conditions affecting the heart and blood vessels) including heart attacks, stroke, blood clots and an irregular heart rate, say researchers in a study published by The BMJ today.

Although the absolute risks were low, the findings suggest that "migraine should be considered a potent and persistent risk factor for most cardiovascular diseases in both men and women," say the authors.

Around one billion people worldwide are affected by migraine. It has considerable impact on quality of life and imposes a substantial burden on society.

Previous studies have suggested a link between migraine and stroke and heart attacks, particularly among women, but the link between migraine and other heart problems are less well known.

In a bid to rectify this, researchers from Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark and Stanford University, USA set out to examine the risks of heart conditions including heart attacks; stroke; peripheral artery disease (narrow arteries which reduce blood flow to limbs); blood clots and fast and irregular heart rates in people who experience migraines compared with people who don't.

The researchers collected patient data from the Danish National Patient Registry over a 19 year period, from 1995 to 2013.

They compared data from over 51,000 people who had been diagnosed with migraine with over 510,000 people who were migraine free. For each person with migraine, they matched 10 people of the same age and gender who were migraine free.

The average age for migraine diagnosis was 35 years, and 71% of participants were women.

Over a period of 19 years, the researchers found that migraine was positively associated with heart attack, stroke, blood clots and irregular heart rate.

For example, for every 1,000 patients, 25 patients with migraine had a heart attack compared with 17 migraine free patients and 45 patients with migraine had an ischaemic stroke (blood clot in the brain) compared with 25 migraine free patients.

These associations persisted after taking account of body mass index and smoking. No meaningful association was found with peripheral artery disease or heart failure.

The associations, particularly for stroke, were stronger in the first year of diagnosis than the long term, in patients with migraine aura (warning signs before a migraine, such as seeing flashing lights) than in those without aura, and in women than in men.

This is an observational study, so no firm conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect, and the authors cannot rule out the possibility that other unknown factors, such as physical activity, may have influenced the results. However, key strengths include the large sample size and long term follow up.

The authors outline reasons why migraine might increase cardiovascular disease risk. For example, people with migraine often use anti-inflammatory drugs, which are associated with increased risks of heart problems, while immobilisation related to migraine attacks may increase the risk of blood clots.

They note that current guidelines do not recommend use of anti-clotting drugs such as aspirin to treat migraine, but call on clinicians to "consider whether patients at particularly high risk of heart disease would benefit from anticoagulant treatment."

"Migraine should be considered a potent and persistent risk factor for most cardiovascular diseases" they say. "Ultimately, it will be important to determine whether prevention strategies in patients with migraine can reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease" they conclude.

"We now have plenty of evidence that migraine should be taken seriously as a strong cardiovascular risk marker" but "action to reduce risk is long overdue," argue Professor Tobias Kurth and colleagues in a linked editorial. "Unfortunately, funding for migraine research has been seriously neglected," they say, and they call on public research agencies to "act quickly by investing in prospective studies to accomplish this goal."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
headache research; heart disease; stroke prevention; vioxx; headaches; stroke; caregiving; disorders and syndromes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Migraine linked to increased risk of cardiovascular problems

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Migraine is associated with increased risks of cardiovascular problems (conditions affecting the heart and blood vessels) including heart attacks, stroke, blood clots and an irregular heart rate, say researchers in a study published by The BMJ today.

# data[].attributes.headline
Study finds test of protein levels in the eye a potential predictor of (future) Alzheimer's disease

# data[].attributes.subject
Study finds test of protein levels in the eye a potential predictor of (future) Alzheimer's disease

# data[].attributes.body
Chandler Kelley

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Low levels of amyloid-β and tau proteins, biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease (AD), in eye fluid were significantly associated with low cognitive scores, according to a new study published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease. Led by researchers at Boston Medical Center, the study is the first to connect these known AD protein biomarkers in the eye to mental status. These findings indicate that proteins in the eye may be a potential source for an accessible, cost-effective test to predict future Alzheimer's disease.

Diagnosing and starting treatment for AD before symptoms begin is key to managing the disease, because by the time symptoms appear it is often too late for current treatments to have any meaningful effect. Abnormal amounts of amyloid-β and tau proteins are biomarkers of AD, and deposits of amyloid proteins in the brain begin many years prior to symptoms of the disease. Previous research has shown an association between low levels of amyloid-β and tau proteins found in the cerebrospinal fluid obtained by lumbar puncture tests and preclinical AD, when pathological changes of AD present in the brain, but before the onset of clinical symptoms. However, lumbar puncture tests are expensive and inconvenient for many patients to undergo.

In this study, researchers used samples of eye fluid from 80 patients who were previously scheduled for eye surgery. The fluid extracted during these surgeries is typically discarded. Researchers tested the eye fluid to determine the levels of amyloid-β and tau proteins, and correlated those levels to the results of a baseline cognitive test. Low levels of these biomarker proteins were significantly associated with lower cognitive scores among the patients.

"These findings could help us build an accessible, and minimally invasive test to determine Alzheimer's disease risk, especially among patients with eye disease," says Lauren Wright, MD, first author on the study and ophthalmology fellow at BMC. "We noted that some of the participants who had low levels of protein biomarkers in their eye fluid already had signs of mild to moderate dementia based on their cognitive scores."

These results reaffirm previous studies suggesting that patients with eye disease are at-risk for the development of AD, and suggest that further investigation in patients with eye disease may yield results that could be generalizable to larger populations.

"This is a great step in discovering the eye's potential role in diagnosing preclinical Alzheimer's disease, and further study is needed comparing protein biomarkers in the eye with more in-depth neurological testing," adds Manju Subramanian, MD, senior author, principal investigator, and ophthalmologist at BMC.

This study was funded in part by the Clinical Sciences Research and Development Merit Award from the Department of Veterans Affairs, the National Institute of Aging (RF1AF054156) and a generous donation from the family of James Hamblett.

Journal Reference:

Lauren M. Wright, Thor D. Stein, Gyungah Jun, Jaeyoon Chung, Kate McConnell, Marissa Fiorello, Nicole Siegel, Steven Ness, Weiming Xia, Kelley L. Turner, Manju L. Subramanian. Association of Cognitive Function with Amyloid-β and Tau Proteins in the Vitreous Humor. Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, 2019; DOI: 10.3233/JAD-181104

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
alzheimer's research; eye care; healthy aging; diseases and conditions; alzheimer's; dementia; intelligence; huntington's disease

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Study finds test of protein levels in the eye a potential predictor of (future) Alzheimer's disease

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Low levels of amyloid-beta and tau proteins, biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease, in eye fluid were significantly associated with low cognitive scores, according to a new study. These findings indicate that proteins in the eye may be a potential source for an accessible, cost-effective test to predict future Alzheimer's disease.

# data[].attributes.body
Maggie Pedone

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Since the historic finding of gravitational waves from two black holes colliding over a billion light years away was made in 2015, physicists are advancing knowledge about the limits on the precision of the measurements that will help improve the next generation of tools and technology used by gravitational wave scientists.

Louisiana State University Department of Physics & Astronomy Associate Professor Thomas Corbitt and his team of researchers now present the first broadband, off-resonance measurement of quantum radiation pressure noise in the audio band, at frequencies relevant to gravitational wave detectors, as reported today in the scientific journal Nature.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, or NSF, and the results hint at methods to improve the sensitivity of gravitational-wave detectors by developing techniques to mitigate the imprecision in measurements called "back action," thus increasing the chances of detecting gravitational waves.

Corbitt and researchers have developed physical devices that make it possible to observe -- and hear -- quantum effects at room temperature. It is often easier to measure quantum effects at very cold temperatures, while this approach brings them closer to human experience. Housed in miniature models of detectors like LIGO, or the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, located in Livingston, La., and Hanford, Wash., these devices consist of low-loss, single-crystal micro-resonators -- each a tiny mirror pad the size of a pin prick, suspended from a cantilever. A laser beam is directed at one of these mirrors, and as the beam is reflected, the fluctuating radiation pressure is enough to bend the cantilever structure, causing the mirror pad to vibrate, which creates noise.

Gravitational wave interferometers use as much laser power as possible in order to minimize the uncertainty caused by the measurement of discrete photons and to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio. These higher power beams increase position accuracy but also increase back action, which is the uncertainty in the number of photons reflecting from a mirror that corresponds to a fluctuating force due to radiation pressure on the mirror, causing mechanical motion. Other types of noise, such as thermal noise, usually dominate over quantum radiation pressure noise, but Corbitt and his team, including collaborators at MIT, have sorted through them. Advanced LIGO and other second and third generation interferometers will be limited by quantum radiation pressure noise at low frequencies when running at their full laser power. Corbitt's paper in Nature offers clues as to how researchers can work around this when measuring gravitational waves.

"Given the imperative for more sensitive gravitational wave detectors, it is important to study the effects of quantum radiation pressure noise in a system similar to Advanced LIGO, which will be limited by quantum radiation pressure noise across a wide range of frequencies far from the mechanical resonance frequency of the test mass suspension," Corbitt said.

Corbitt's former academic advisee and lead author of the Nature paper, Jonathan Cripe, graduated from LSU with a Ph.D. in physics last year and is now a postdoctoral research fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology:

"Day-to-day at LSU, as I was doing the background work of designing this experiment and the micro-mirrors and placing all of the optics on the table, I didn't really think about the impact of the future results," Cripe said. "I just focused on each individual step and took things one day at a time. [But] now that we have completed the experiment, it really is amazing to step back and think about the fact that quantum mechanics -- something that seems otherworldly and removed from the daily human experience -- is the main driver of the motion of a mirror that is visible to the human eye. The quantum vacuum, or 'nothingness,' can have an effect on something you can see."

Pedro Marronetti, a physicist and NSF program director, notes that it can be tricky to test new ideas for improving gravitational wave detectors, especially when reducing noise that can only be measured in a full-scale interferometer:

"This breakthrough opens new opportunities for testing noise reduction," he said. The relative simplicity of the approach makes it accessible by a wide range of research groups, potentially increasing participation from the broader scientific community in gravitational wave astrophysics."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
black holes; cosmic rays; astrophysics; sun; quantum physics; physics; albert einstein; thermodynamics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Since the historic finding of gravitational waves from two black holes colliding over a billion light years away was made in 2015, physicists are advancing knowledge about the limits on the precision of the measurements that will help improve the next generation of tools and technology used by gravitational wave scientists.

# data[].attributes.headline
Artificial intelligence can predict premature death, study finds

# data[].attributes.subject
Artificial intelligence can predict premature death, study finds

# data[].attributes.body
Kaylee Patterson

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Computers which are capable of teaching themselves to predict premature death could greatly improve preventative healthcare in the future, suggests a new study by experts at the University of Nottingham.

The team of healthcare data scientists and doctors have developed and tested a system of computer-based 'machine learning' algorithms to predict the risk of early death due to chronic disease in a large middle-aged population.

They found this AI system was very accurate in its predictions and performed better than the current standard approach to prediction developed by human experts. The study is published by PLOS ONE in a special collections edition of "Machine Learning in Health and Biomedicine."

The team used health data from just over half a million people aged between 40 and 69 recruited to the UK Biobank between 2006 and 2010 and followed up until 2016.

Leading the work, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Data Science, Dr Stephen Weng, said: "Preventative healthcare is a growing priority in the fight against serious diseases so we have been working for a number of years to improve the accuracy of computerised health risk assessment in the general population. Most applications focus on a single disease area but predicting death due to several different disease outcomes is highly complex, especially given environmental and individual factors that may affect them.

"We have taken a major step forward in this field by developing a unique and holistic approach to predicting a person's risk of premature death by machine-learning. This uses computers to build new risk prediction models that take into account a wide range of demographic, biometric, clinical and lifestyle factors for each individual assessed, even their dietary consumption of fruit, vegetables and meat per day.

"We mapped the resulting predictions to mortality data from the cohort, using Office of National Statistics death records, the UK cancer registry and 'hospital episodes' statistics. We found machine learned algorithms were significantly more accurate in predicting death than the standard prediction models developed by a human expert."

The AI machine learning models used in the new study are known as 'random forest' and 'deep learning'. These were pitched against the traditionally-used 'Cox regression' prediction model based on age and gender -- found to be the least accurate at predicting mortality -- and also a multivariate Cox model which worked better but tended to over-predict risk.

Professor Joe Kai, one of the clinical academics working on the project, said: "There is currently intense interest in the potential to use 'AI' or 'machine-learning' to better predict health outcomes. In some situations we may find it helps, in others it may not. In this particular case, we have shown that with careful tuning, these algorithms can usefully improve prediction.

"These techniques can be new to many in health research, and difficult to follow. We believe that by clearly reporting these methods in a transparent way, this could help with scientific verification and future development of this exciting field for health care."

This new study builds on previous work by the Nottingham team which showed that four different AI algorithms, 'random forest', 'logistic regression', 'gradient boosting' and 'neural networks', were significantly better at predicting cardiovascular disease than an established algorithm used in current cardiology guidelines. This earlier study is available here.

The Nottingham researchers predict that AI will play a vital part in the development of future tools capable of delivering personalised medicine, tailoring risk management to individual patients. Further research requires verifying and validating these AI algorithms in other population groups and exploring ways to implement these systems into routine healthcare.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
today's healthcare; health policy; personalized medicine; workplace health; computer modeling; neural interfaces; computer programming; hacking

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Artificial intelligence can predict premature death, study finds

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Computers which are capable of teaching themselves to predict premature death could greatly improve preventative healthcare in the future, suggests a new study by experts at the University of Nottingham. The team of healthcare data scientists and doctors have developed and tested a system of computer-based 'machine learning' algorithms to predict the risk of early death due to chronic disease in a large middle-aged population.

# data[].attributes.body
Brendan Ridlon
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190311173145.htm

# data[].attributes.body
Kevin Kelleher
Galapagos has 10x more Alien marine life than initially anticipated. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190328080354.htm

# data[].attributes.headline
NIH to test experimental drug to curb opioid cravings

# data[].attributes.subject
NIH to test experimental drug to curb opioid cravings

# data[].attributes.body
Abby Weaver

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Early stage trial opens at Clinical Center.

A clinical trial of an experimental drug designed to treat cravings associated with opioid use disorder (OUD) has begun in the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. The Phase I trial in healthy adults will assess the safety of the experimental compound, ANS-6637, and how it is processed in the body when given with another drug that is processed by the same liver enzyme pathway. The NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is helping to conduct the trial, which is funded through NIH's Helping to End Addiction Long-Term ( HEAL) Initiative, a comprehensive program to accelerate research efforts to stem the public health crisis of OUD.

"Opioid drugs play an important role in controlling pain, but have strong potential for misuse, as evidenced by the opioid epidemic gripping every region of the United States. Opioid misuse and addiction are associated with high-risk behaviors that may lead directly or indirectly to infections with HIV or hepatitis C virus, to other illnesses, and to premature death," said NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. "Because substance use disorders and certain infectious diseases are often intertwined, infectious disease physicians must understand and be prepared to address both issues in order to provide optimal care for their patients."

Opioid use causes a surge of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain, and habitual use 'rewires' the brain's reward system, possibly generating irresistible cravings to both opioids and associated cues, like injecting equipment or drug use partners.

"At this time, there are few pharmacological interventions that specifically target the cravings felt by some patients who have physical dependence or opioid use disorder," noted Henry Masur, M.D., chief of the Clinical Center's Critical Care Medicine Department, and a principal investigator in the new trial. "This trial will lay the groundwork for future studies; together these may lead to effective treatments for the drug cravings that impede the pursuit of sobriety."

ANS-6637 is being developed by Amygdala Neurosciences, Inc. Pre-clinical studies in animals suggest that the compound inhibits the dopamine surge that accompanies opioid use in persons with OUD, without impacting the background levels of dopamine required for normal brain functions.

The trial will enroll up to 50 healthy adults aged 18 through 65 years. Participants will stay in the Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, for 10 days and return for a final outpatient visit after one week. On the first day, volunteers will receive a single dose of the licensed drug midazolam. Midazolam was chosen because its processing by the body is well understood, acting as a template for liver metabolism. They will receive no drug on day two. On study days three through seven, volunteers will receive 600 milligrams of ANS-6637 each day. On day eight, participants will receive midazolam and ANS-6637 together to see how the investigational agent affects midazolam levels. This in turn will help researchers understand how ANS-6637 is processed by the body, setting up the next phase of scientific investigation in patients with OUD.

"Opioid use disorder is a treatable medical illness that, much like in the early days of HIV, has been held back from scientific advancement by stigma and misconception," said Sarah Kattakuzhy, M.D., associate investigator and assistant professor at the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. "With the support of the HEAL Initiative and NIAID, we can now assess a novel potential therapeutic in the treatment of OUD. If proven effective, ANS-6637 could be part of a comprehensive package of services, including harm reduction, opioid agonist therapy and behavioral interventions, enabling us to offer our patients the highest level of evidence-based therapy." Dr. Kattakuzhy and colleagues are planning further study of ANS-6637 as a treatment for OUD in clinical trials at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Additional details about the study, Influence of ANS-6637 on midazolam pharmacokinetics in healthy volunteers, are available on clinicaltrials.gov using the identifier NCT03831971.

NIAID conducts and supports research - at NIH, throughout the United States, and worldwide - to study the causes of infectious and immune-mediated diseases, and to develop better means of preventing, diagnosing and treating these illnesses. News releases, fact sheets and other NIAID-related materials are available on the NIAID website.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.
NIH...Turning Discovery Into Health®
###

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
NIH to test experimental drug to curb opioid cravings

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Early stage trial opens at Clinical Center. A clinical trial of an experimental drug designed to treat cravings associated with opioid use disorder (OUD) has begun in the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center.

# data[].attributes.body
Caroline Manning
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180802141744.htm

# data[].attributes.body
Annie Ronan

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A woman in Scotland can feel virtually no pain due to a mutation in a previously-unidentified gene, according to a research paper co-led by UCL.

She also experiences very little anxiety and fear, and may have enhanced wound healing due to the mutation, which the researchers say could help guide new treatments for a range of conditions, they report in the British Journal of Anaesthesia.

"We found this woman has a particular genotype that reduces activity of a gene already considered to be a possible target for pain and anxiety treatments," said one of the study's lead researchers, Dr James Cox (UCL Medicine).

"Now that we are uncovering how this newly-identified gene works, we hope to make further progress on new treatment targets."

At age 65, the woman sought treatment for an issue with her hip, which turned out to involve severe joint degeneration despite her experiencing no pain. At age 66, she underwent surgery on her hand, which is normally very painful, and yet she reported no pain after the surgery. Her pain insensitivity was diagnosed by Dr Devjit Srivastava, Consultant in Anaesthesia and Pain Medicine at an NHS hospital in the north of Scotland and co-lead author of the paper.

The woman tells researchers she has never needed painkillers after surgery such as dental procedures.

She was referred to pain geneticists at UCL and the University of Oxford, who conducted genetic analyses and found two notable mutations. One was a microdeletion in a pseudogene, previously only briefly annotated in medical literature, which the researchers have described for the first time and dubbed FAAH-OUT. She also had a mutation in the neighbouring gene that controls the FAAH enzyme.

Further tests by collaborators at the University of Calgary, Canada, revealed elevated blood levels of neurotransmitters that are normally degraded by FAAH, further evidence for a loss of FAAH function.

The FAAH gene is well-known to pain researchers, as it is involved in endocannabinoid signalling central to pain sensation, mood and memory. The gene now called FAAH-OUT was previously assumed to be a 'junk' gene that was not functional. The researchers found there was more to it than previously believed, as it likely mediates FAAH expression.

Mice that do not have the FAAH gene have reduced pain sensation, accelerated wound healing, enhanced fear-extinction memory and reduced anxiety.

The woman in Scotland experiences similar traits. She notes that in her lifelong history of cuts and burns (sometimes unnoticed until she can smell burning flesh), the injuries tend to heal very quickly. She is an optimist who was given the lowest score on a common anxiety scale, and reports never panicking even in dangerous situations such as a recent traffic incident. She also reports memory lapses throughout life such as forgetting words or keys, which has previously been associated with enhanced endocannabinoid signalling.

The researchers say that it's possible there are more people with the same mutation, given that this woman was unaware of her condition until her 60s.

"People with rare insensitivity to pain can be valuable to medical research as we learn how their genetic mutations impact how they experience pain, so we would encourage anyone who does not experience pain to come forward," said Dr Cox.

The research team is continuing to work with the woman in Scotland, and are conducting further tests in cell samples, in order to better understand the novel pseudogene.

"We hope that with time, our findings might contribute to clinical research for post-operative pain and anxiety, and potentially chronic pain, PTSD and wound healing, perhaps involving gene therapy techniques," said Dr Cox.

"The implications for these findings are immense," said Dr Srivastava.

"One out of two patients after surgery today still experiences moderate to severe pain, despite all advances in pain killer medications and techniques since the use of ether in 1846 to first 'annul' the pain of surgery. There have already been unsuccessful clinical trials targeting the FAAH protein -- while we hope the FAAH-OUT gene could change things particularly for post-surgical pain, it remains to be seen if any new treatments could be developed based on our findings."

"The findings point towards a novel pain killer discovery that could potentially offer post-surgical pain relief and also accelerate wound healing. We hope this could help the 330 million patients who undergo surgery globally every year," Dr Srivastava said.

"I would be elated if any research into my own genetics could help other people who are suffering," the woman in Scotland commented.

"I had no idea until a few years ago that there was anything that unusual about how little pain I feel -- I just thought it was normal. Learning about it now fascinates me as much as it does anyone else."

Lead funding for the study came from the Medical Research Council and Wellcome.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
pain control; fibromyalgia; joint pain; joint health; ptsd; caregiving; brain injury; anxiety

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Woman with novel gene mutation lives almost pain-free

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A woman in Scotland can feel virtually no pain due to a mutation in a previously-unidentified gene, according to a research article. She also experiences very little anxiety and fear, and may have enhanced wound healing due to the mutation, which the researchers say could help guide new treatments for a range of conditions.

# data[].attributes.headline
Children's violent video game play associated with increased physical aggressive behavior

# data[].attributes.subject
Children's violent video game play associated with increased physical aggressive behavior

# data[].attributes.body
Thomas Mataconis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Violent video game play by adolescents is associated with increases in physical aggression over time, according to a Dartmouth meta-analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Although most researchers on the subject agree that playing violent video games appears to increase physical aggression, a vocal minority continues to dispute this. To examine issues raised by the counterclaims on this topic, Dartmouth researchers conducted a meta-analysis of 24 studies from around the world from 2010 to 2017 with over 17,000 participants, ages nine to 19 years-old. The studies all examined how violent video game play affected changes in real-world physical aggression over time, ranging from three months to four years. Examples of physical aggression included incidents such as hitting someone or being sent to the principal's office for fighting, and were based on self-reports by children, parents, teachers and peers.

Dartmouth's study examined three specific critiques of the literature on video game play and aggression:

To address claims that previous meta-analyses overestimate the association of violent video game play and aggression because they include "non-serious" measures of aggression, this meta-analysis was limited to studies that measured reports of overt, physical aggression over time. Despite this more stringent criterion, findings supported the hypothesis that playing violent games is associated with subsequent increases in physical aggression.

To investigate claims that effects are often inflated because many studies do not take into account other variables predictive of aggressive behavior, Dartmouth researchers compared analyses that included or did not include information on such variables and found that taking these data into account had only a minor effect on the size of the observed relation between violent video game play and aggression.

To evaluate claims that the estimated effect of violent game play on aggression is inflated because of a bias against publishing studies that fail to find a relation of violent game play and aggression, Dartmouth researchers conducted a variety of different tests and found no evidence of publication bias.

In addition to providing evidence that violent video game play is associated with increased aggression over time, the study also reports that this effect appears to be significantly different for various ethnic groups: the largest effect was observed among white participants, with some effect noted among Asians and no effect observed among Hispanics. Although speculative, the authors suggest that this effect may reflect a greater emphasis on maintaining empathy toward victims of aggression among Eastern and Hispanic cultures in contrast to an emphasis on "rugged individualism" in Western cultures.

"Although no single research project is definitive, our research aims to provide the most current and compelling responses to key criticisms on this topic. Based on our findings, we feel it is clear that violent video game play is associated with subsequent increases in physical aggression," said lead author Jay G. Hull, the Dartmouth Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences, and associate dean of faculty for the social sciences at Dartmouth.

"The most notable critic of the violent video game aggression literature conducted studies in primarily Hispanic populations and found no evidence of this association. If all of my studies showed null findings, I too, would be skeptical," said co-author James D. Sargent, the Scott M. and Lisa G. Stuart Professor of Pediatric Oncology and director of the C. Everett Koop Institute at Dartmouth. "I hope our findings prompt skeptics to reevaluate their position, especially since some of our other research indicates that violent video game play may increase deviance with implications for multiple risk behaviors," added Sargent.

The study builds on the research team's growing body of work that investigates the impact of video games on children's behavior, including the link between mature-rated, risk-glorifying video games and deviant behavior (e.g., smoking, drinking, and risky sex) and the association between playing these type of video games and reckless driving among teens.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
anger management; child development; numeracy; engineering; physics; weapons technology; video games; artificial intelligence; educational technology

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Children's violent video game play associated with increased physical aggressive behavior

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Violent video game play by adolescents is associated with increases in physical aggression over time, according to a Dartmouth meta-analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Although most researchers on the subject agree that playing violent video games appears to increase physical aggression, a vocal minority continues to dispute this.

# data[].attributes.headline
Mind Melding: Understanding the Connected, Social Brain

# data[].attributes.subject
Mind Melding: Understanding the Connected, Social Brain

# data[].attributes.body
Kate Ruberti

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Parents may often feel like they are not "on the same wavelength" as their kids. But it turns out that, at least for babies, their brainwaves literally sync with their moms when they are learning from them about their social environment. In a new study being presented at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society's (CNS) annual meeting in San Francisco this week, researchers found that how well babies' neural activity syncs with their moms' predicts how well they learn social cues about new toys.

"Despite the fact that this is such a powerful learning mechanism, surprisingly little is known about how the human brain performs social learning," says Victoria Leong, of the University of Cambridge. "When we connect neurally with others, we are opening ourselves to receiving information and influence from others."

In a body of new work being presented at the CNS meeting, cognitive neuroscientists are starting to shed light on the social brain and new ways to study it. "We're this massively social species and yet the field of neuroscience has focused on the brain in isolation," says Thalia Wheatley of Dartmouth College, who is chairing a symposium on the topic at CNS. "There's this huge gap in knowledge about how our brains work in concert with other minds."

Dissatisfied by the classical neuroimaging studies that put people in dark, loud, and isolated brain scanning machines to understand the human mind, Wheatley is working to come up with new methods to understand how brains behave in a social context. Social brains interact like a dance, Wheatley and Leong say, where partners take their own steps but move in concert, continuously adjusting and adapting.

At the CNS meeting, scientists presented work on the mother-infant and other social connections, as well as how even fruit flies have vivid social lives that require a new neural understanding.
The mother-baby connection
"There is no substitute for being physically present and in the moment to connect with an infant." That's the key message to come out of the new work by Leong and colleagues.

In the study, her team looked at how mothers' emotional responses toward novel toys affected their infants' decisions to interact with the toys. Infants wearing wireless EEG technology would watch their mothers, who were also wearing wireless EEG, show either a positive emotion -- e.g. smiling and saying "I like this" -- or a negative emotion toward an object -- e.g. frowning and saying "I don't like this." The babies would then choose which object to play with.

The researchers analyzed whether the level of "neural synchrony" between the mother and infant predicted how the infant would respond to a toy. "We found that stronger neural synchrony predicted a higher likelihood of social learning by the infant," Leong says. Neural synchrony is when brainwaves from two people follow predictable patterns with respect to each other. The researchers found that social signals like eye contact were associated with increased synchrony and improved social learning, though Leong says that there is still much work to be done in teasing apart exactly what leads to the neural synchrony.

Conducting EEG work with infants is challenging, Leong says, but rewarding. If they are ready and interested in the task, that resulting data is "like pure nectar. You feel like you've been granted exclusive backstage access to one of the most exciting reality shows on the planet," Leong says. "But on the other hand, if they are having a tummy ache, or are teething, or would just rather be left alone, this sentiment is expressed loudly, firmly, and with escalating urgency until the nice lady who is trying to put on a funny hat with wires retreats into a corner."

For Leong, the work has wide significance for classroom learning, social bonding, and developmental disorders. "I am interested in understanding what happens when parents or children fail to synchronize with each other, which may occur in certain mental health difficulties and developmental disorders, and the impact that this might have on learning and development in the longer term," she explains.
Common bonds
"The overarching goal of the symposium is to show that we and other species are social and there's something really important about looking at a brain in its social context," says Thalia Wheatley of Dartmouth. "We can't fully understand the human mind or any other social mind without understanding what happens in interaction."

While humans are an undisputedly social species, a growing amount of research is also showing sociality in unexpected species. "Most people don't think of fruit flies, for example, as being social at all," Wheatley says.

But, as Giovanni Bosco, also of Dartmouth College, will present at CNS, fruit flies communicate with each other with their wing patterns, and understanding their communication is key to understanding them. "Many fruit fly behavioral paradigms need to be revisited given our new appreciation of how social these animals are," Bosco says, because fruit flies used in research are raised in isolation and then do not behave as they would in nature. Simple strategies like co-housing them quickly changes their communication and behavior.

New methods are needed to better understand the social mind across species, Wheatley says. Indeed, says Leong, understanding interpersonal neural signals is "a new frontier that is ripe for exploration." Wheatley is currently working on a new method that allows people in fMRI scanners to talk to each other at the same time across different sites. "We are excited about creating new tools that will open up new ways to study the brain in interaction."

The symposium "An Emerging Neuroscience of Social Connectedness" is taking place at the CNS annual meeting in San Francisco.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
psychology; social psychology; relationships; brain-computer interfaces; learning disorders; child development; infant and preschool learning; intelligence

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Mind melding: Understanding the connected, social brain

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Parents may often feel like they are not 'on the same wavelength' as their kids. But it turns out that, at least for babies, their brainwaves literally sync with their moms when they are learning from them. In a new study, researchers found that how well babies' neural activity syncs with their moms' predicts how well they learn social cues about new toys.

# data[].attributes.headline
E-cigarettes linked to heart attacks, coronary artery disease and depression

# data[].attributes.subject
E-cigarettes linked to heart attacks, coronary artery disease and depression

# data[].attributes.body
Kaitlin Reilly

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/01/30/689905296/survey-finds-higher-risk-of-stroke-among-e-cigarette-users

# data[].attributes.body
Courtney Doi

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
from research organizations
Credit: Manoela Romanó de Orte
Tiny fragments of plastic in the ocean are consumed by sea anemones along with their food, and bleached anemones retain these microfibers longer than healthy ones, according to new research from Carnegie's Manoela Romanó de Orte, Sophie Clowez, and Ken Caldeira.

Their work, published by Environmental Pollution, is the first-ever investigation of the interactions between plastic microfibers and sea anemones. Anemones are closely related to corals and can help scientists understand how coral reef ecosystems are affected by millions of tons of plastic contaminating the world's oceans.

One of the most-common types of plastics in the ocean are microfibers from washing synthetic clothing and from the breakdown of maritime equipment such as ropes and nets. Microfibers are found across all the world's oceans and are beginning to appear in fish and shellfish consumed by humans.

"Plastic pollution is a serious and growing problem for our oceans and the animals that live in them," Romanó de Orte said. "We wanted to understand how these long-lived contaminants are affecting fragile coral reef ecosystems. Plastics could be confused by the organisms for food and could also be carriers of other harmful contaminants. Since sea anemones are closely related to corals, we decided to study sea anemones in the laboratory to better understand effects of plastics on corals in the wild."

Most laboratory research on plastic pollution uses tiny beads of plastic, not microfibers. So Romanó de Orte, Clowez, and Caldeira set out to determine whether microfibers are ingested by healthy sea anemones and by those that have lost the symbiotic algae that provide them with nutrients, a condition called bleaching. On corals reefs, bleaching is caused by increasing ocean temperatures due to global climate change.

The research team introduced three different kinds of microfibers -- nylon, polyester, and polypropylene -- to both unbleached and bleached sea anemones both alone and mixed with brine shrimp.

They found that when introduced alone, nylon was consumed by about a quarter of the unbleached anemones and the other two microfibers were not taken up at all. But when the microfibers were mixed with brine shrimp, about 80 percent of the unbleached anemones ingested all three microfibers. For the bleached anemones, 60 percent consumed nylon and 20 percent consumed polyester with no food present, and 80 percent took up all three microfibers when mixed with brine shrimp.

It took longer for the bleached anemones to expel the microfibers after ingesting them than it did for the healthy anemones, although all microfibers were gone by the third day. However, in a natural marine environment, anemones and coral would continually be reintroduced to new microfibers, making the contamination a chronic condition of their existence.

"Our work suggests that plastic pollution and climate change are packing a one-two punch for coral reefs," Caldeira explained. "When the reefs are bleached by hot ocean temperatures, the organisms are more likely to eat and retain plastic microfibers. It looks like the effects of global warming and of ocean pollution don't just add together, they multiply."

Journal Reference:

Manoela Romanó de Orte, Sophie Clowez, Ken Caldeira. Response of bleached and symbiotic sea anemones to plastic microfiber exposure. Environmental Pollution, 2019; DOI: 10.1016/j.envpol.2019.02.100

Cite This Page:

Below are relevant articles that may interest you. ScienceDaily shares links with scholarly publications in the TrendMD network and earns revenue from third-party advertisers, where indicated.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
marine biology; fish; sea life; fisheries; environmental awareness; global warming; ecology; oceanography

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sea anemones are ingesting plastic microfibers: Tiny fragments of plastic in the ocean are consumed by sea anemones along with their food

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Tiny fragments of plastic in the ocean are consumed by sea anemones along with their food, and bleached anemones retain these microfibers longer than healthy ones, according to new research. The work is the first-ever investigation of the interactions between plastic microfibers and sea anemones, which are closely related to corals.