Category: Science

Health plays a role in older adults’ vulnerability to scams, a new poll suggests.

According to the poll, three out of every four older adults say they have experienced a fraud attempt by phone, text, email, mail, or online in the last two years. Three in 10 say they’ve been victims of at least one scam.

The poll reveals an especially strong link between an older adult’s health and their vulnerability to scams—both being able to spot one and becoming the victim of one.

Across the board, people aged 50 to 80 who reported being in fair or poor physical or mental health, those with disabilities, and those who rate their memory as fair or poor were more likely than others their age to say they’d experienced fraud.

Whether or not they’d actually experienced fraud, older adults with health issues were more likely to lack confidence in their ability to spot a scam.

The results from the University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging also suggest vulnerability among older adults who live alone or have lower incomes.

“Our findings of a strong connection between scam vulnerability and health adds important new data to ongoing efforts to reduce the devastating toll of scams on older adults’ finances and well-being,” says poll director Jeffrey Kullgren. “We also found that no matter what their health status, older adults feel strongly that government and businesses should do more to educate and protect against scams.”

The poll team asked a national sample of adults age 50 to 80, and an additional group of adults in this age range in Michigan, about scam-related experiences in the last two years and about attitudes toward scam awareness and prevention.

In general, 75% of respondents reported experiencing a scam attempt at least once in the last two years, and 39% of this group said the scammers had succeeded in one or more ways.

Specifically, 25% of those who experienced a scam attempt said scammers had compromised their bank or credit card account, or another type of account, 15% said they had an account get hacked, 9% lost money, and 3% had their identity stolen.

Scam effects on older adult well-being

When the poll team broke down the results by health status among those who had experienced a scam attempt, they found stark differences.

About 50% of older adults who had been targeted by a scam and who called their physical or mental health fair or poor, or said they have a health problem or disability that limits daily activities, reported experiencing fraud, compared with 35% to 38% of those in better health or with no limits on their daily activities.

AARP offers information and support for fraud victims through its Fraud Watch Network program.

There was also a gap in scam experiences by income, with 46% of those who have annual household incomes under $60,000 more likely to report that they’d experienced fraud from a scam, compared with 36% of those with higher incomes.

Older adults who said their mental health is fair or poor were much more likely to say that experiencing a scam had a major impact on their financial, mental, or physical well-being, with 41% saying so compared with 10% of those who rated their mental health as good or excellent.

The difference in scam impact was smaller, but still significant, between older adults who said they have fair or poor memory and those who do not, those who have a health problem or disability that limits daily activities and those without such limitations, those with household incomes under $60,000 compared with those with higher incomes, and those who live alone compared with those who live with others.

Who can spot a scam?

More than half (57%) of older adults expressed uncertainty about their ability to spot a scam.

Again, health status mattered, with more than 65% of those in fair or poor physical or mental health, or with fair or poor memory, reporting this uncertainty compared with about 55% of those in better health or with better self-rated memory. Also, 63% of women said they’re somewhat, not very confident, or not at all confident they can spot a scam, compared with 49% of men.

When the poll team asked older adults about their interest in learning more about how to spot and avoid scams, and their feelings about needing more protection from scams, the response was nearly universal.

In all, 83% of people age 50 to 80 said they want to know more about how to protect themselves—including 90% of those who said they aren’t very confident they can spot a scam. And 97% of older adults agreed that policymakers need to do more to protect people from scams, while 96% agreed that companies should do more.

Even those who said they were confident they can spot a scam, and those who said they had not experienced fraud in the past two years, were just as likely as their peers to agree with these statements.

“It stands to reason that older adults with health challenges experience fraud more than those without these challenges,” says Kathy Stokes, AARP’s director of fraud prevention programs. “Fraud criminals are master manipulators of emotion, and anyone can experience a scam regardless of age, education, or income. When it comes to fraud susceptibility it’s less about who you are and more about how you are when you are targeted.”

AARP offers information and support for fraud victims through its Fraud Watch Network program.

The poll is based at the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation and supported by AARP and Michigan Medicine, the University of Michigan’s academic medical center.

The poll report is based on findings from a nationally representative survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for IHPI and administered online and via phone in July and August 2023 among 2,657 adults aged 50 to 80. The sample was subsequently weighted to reflect the US population. For the Michigan poll, responses from 314 Michigan respondents in the national sample were combined with responses from an additional 237 Michigan adults aged 50 to 80.

Source: University of Michigan

Natural forest recovery could capture approximately 226 gigatonnes of carbon, but only if we also reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a new study shows.

The study highlights the critical importance of forest conservation, restoration, and sustainable management in moving towards international climate and biodiversity targets.

The researchers stress that this potential can be achieved by incentivizing community-​driven efforts to promote biodiversity.

The forest carbon potential has been a highly controversial topic. Four years ago, a study published in the journal Science found that the restoration of forests could capture over 200 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon—which could draw down approximately 30% of excess anthropogenic carbon.

While this study elevated a discussion about the role of nature in fighting climate change, it also raised concerns around the adverse environmental impacts of mass tree plantations, carbon offsetting schemes, and greenwashing. While some scientific studies have supported the scale of this finding, others argued that this forest carbon estimate could be up to 4 or 5 times too high.

To address this controversial topic, researchers led by the Crowther Lab at ETH Zurich joined forces to build an integrated assessment using a comprehensive range of approaches, including vast ground-sourced data and satellite datasets.

Forest carbon capture

Due to ongoing deforestation, the total amount of carbon stored in forests is ~328 Gt below its natural state.

Of course, much of this land is used for extensive human development including urban and agricultural land. However, outside of those areas, researchers found that forests could capture approximately 226 Gt in regions with a low human footprint if they were allowed to recover. Approximately 61% of this potential can be achieved by protecting existing forests, so that they can recover to maturity. The remaining 39% can be achieved by reconnecting fragmented forest landscapes through sustainable ecosystem management and restoration.

“Most of the world’s forests are highly degraded. In fact, many people have never been in one of the few old growth forests that remain on Earth,” says Lidong Mo, a lead author of the study published in the journal Nature. “To restore global biodiversity, ending deforestation must be a top priority.”

The dataset revealed that biodiversity accounts for approximately half of the global forest productivity. As such, the researchers highlighted that, to achieve the full carbon potential, restoration efforts should include a natural diversity of species. In addition, sustainable agricultural, forestry, and restoration practices that promote biodiversity have the greatest potential for carbon capture.

‘A fundamentally social endeavor’

The authors stress that responsible restoration is a fundamentally social endeavor. It includes countless actions such as conservation, natural regeneration, rewilding, silviculture, agroforestry, and all other community-driven efforts to promote biodiversity. It requires equitable development, driven by policies that prioritize the rights of local communities and Indigenous people.

“We need to redefine what restoration means to many people,” says senior author Thomas Crowther, a professor at ETH Zurich. “Restoration is not about mass tree plantations to offset carbon emissions.

“Restoration means directing the flow of wealth towards millions of local communities, Indigenous populations, and farmers that promote biodiversity across the globe. Only when healthy biodiversity is the preferred choice for local communities will we get long-term carbon capture as a biproduct.”

The researchers conclude that ecologically responsible forest restoration does not include the conversion of other ecosystems that would not naturally contain forests.

“Global restoration is not only about trees,” says Constantin Zohner, a senior researcher at ETH Zurich. “We have to protect natural biodiversity in all ecosystems including grasslands, peatlands, and wetlands that are equally essential for life on Earth.”

This study brings to light the critical importance of natural, diverse forests in contributing to 30% of carbon drawdown potential. However, forests cannot be a substitute for cutting fossil fuel emissions. If emissions continue to rise, the study warns, then on-going droughts, fires, and warming will threaten forests and limit their ability to absorb carbon.

“My biggest fear is that corporations misuse this information as an excuse to avoid cutting fossil fuel emissions. The more we emit, the more we threaten nature and people. There can be no choice between reducing emissions and protecting nature because we urgently need both. We need nature for climate, and we need climate action for nature!” says Crowther.

Source: ETH Zurich

Researchers want to alter the formulation of concrete by adopting an “ultra-​green concrete” approach.

Concrete is the most widely used building material worldwide, providing the foundation of our modern society’s infrastructure. It is partially recyclable and can even absorb CO₂ from the atmosphere during the curing process.

However, the amount of CO₂ released during the manufacturing process far exceeds the amount that can be reabsorbed later. This is why the concrete industry generates around 8% of global CO₂ emissions—more than the aviation and shipping industry combined.

Franco Zunino, a senior scientist at the Institute for Building Materials at ETH Zurich, hopes to change that with a new project.

2-fold strategy for better concrete

Concrete consists of a mixture of cement, aggregates, and water. Traditional cement is composed of about 95% clinker and 5% gypsum. To produce cement, limestone and clay are burned into clinker in a kiln heated to 1,450°Celsius (about 2,642 Fahrenheit), which inevitably releases CO₂ due to the chemical decomposition of limestone. The huge amount of energy required by the kiln further worsens cement’s carbon footprint.

EPFL has already launched its Limestone Calcined Clay Cements (LC3) project, in which Zunino is actively involved and which has set a new standard in cement production. It has developed a cement formulation using 50% clinker and a combination of calcined clay and limestone that has cut CO₂ emissions by around 40%.

However, improving the formulation of concrete can bring about a significant increase in these environmental benefits. This is where Zunino’s Ultra Green Concrete (UGC) project at the ETH civil, environmental, and geomatic engineering department (D-BAUG) comes in.

Zunino pursues a two-fold strategy for the new green concrete: first, reducing the clinker content, i.e. the amount of clinker per unit of cement; second, lowering the ratio of cement in the concrete. This dual strategy offers flexibility in tailoring low-carbon concrete compositions to individual markets.

“The ideal would be to implement both at the same time; but the individual components are independent of each other. In some markets, it may be difficult to implement both aspects of the dual strategy, as production capacity and infrastructure need to be put in place. However, it is possible to implement at least one of them and still save reduce CO₂ emissions,” Zunino says.

Calculations have shown that the CO₂ emissions of Ultra Green Concrete can be reduced from 300 kg per cubic meter to about 80–100 kg per cubic meter. Depending on the application, up to two-thirds of CO₂ emissions could be consequently saved without compromising material performance.

Although the researcher emphasizes that there is no such thing as inherently climate-neutral or carbon-negative concrete, he believes there are no excuses for the industrialized world not to adopt this new and more sustainable building material right away.

Cost-effective concrete

One reason for the reluctance might be that the concrete industry is not particularly innovative. Concrete has proven to be highly successful due to being cost-effective, safe, and user-friendly. According to Zunino, “green concrete” could be even cheaper than conventional concrete. The proportion of expensive components is lower, while the quality and thus price of the concrete remain the same. This creates financial incentives for using more environmentally friendly material.

Safety aspects are also important, of course, Zunino says.

“Anyone who builds a house wants to use a material that insures it will stand for a hundred years. But we have to ask ourselves whether this really makes sense in view of the enormous CO₂ emissions involved. Could we instead use a material that meets the structure’s required life cycle but emits significantly less CO₂? In a climate-crisis scenario, one tonne of CO₂ saved today is more valuable than the same tonne saved in 50 years.”

Low-carbon cement is even more durable than conventional cement, Zunino says. There are currently about seven large-scale cement plants worldwide producing cement using the LC3 approach. He expects that number to exceed 40 in the coming years.

“Demand for concrete will increase in the future. We can offer assistance by developing improved concrete mixtures with a lower cement content and thus still achieve our environmental goals.” Zunino is convinced that LC3 will be the most widely used type of cement worldwide ten years from now.

A paper on the work appears in RILEM Technical Letters.

Source: Mira Wecker for ETH Zurich

BREMEN, Germany — Europe needs to choose its space priorities wisely and work to boost capabilities or face suffering overreach, a leading official says.

“A lot of people will not like what I’m going to say now. I think that we do not have the budget and we do not have some capabilities, in industry as well as science, to start now,” Walther Pelzer, director-general of the German Space Agency (DLR), said during a keynote speech at Space Tech Expo Europe in Bremen, Germany, Nov. 14. 

“A human-rated launcher, a European commercial Space Station, a communication constellation, and deep space science missions. If we try to do them all at once, we will end up with mediocre results,” Pelzer said.

The European Space Agency stated earlier this month it wanted a “paradigm shift” in launch. It has opened a competition for cargo launches to the International Space Station. The European Union meanwhile plans for a multi-orbit connectivity constellation named IRIS². ESA has also signed an agreement with Airbus and Voyager on the Starlab commercial space station. Europe is also seeking greater autonomy in space.

“We should be world leaders in special areas we think are strategic for Europe. We shouldn’t try to do everything,” Pelzer later reiterated. 

Asked by the audience why Europe does not hold lofty ambitions as with the U.S., China and even India, Pelzer opined that big ambitions are good, but reiterated that Europe needs to make sure it is smart in what it tries to do.

“In the long run, of course we should be on a high level with the USA with China and actually above India from my point of view. But in this way, we have to be smart. And this means that we have to come up with a European strategy.” 

This, Pelzer says, requires first of all identifying core strategic needs, then to invest and then to excel.

“We have no industry which will be able to actually put big ambitions into practice. We don’t have the science space to put it into practice. Actually, if we look at the programs we have in place right now, we see that sometimes we struggle with the current programs with regards to capabilities.” Pelzer said.

“So we have to adjust our visions to our capabilities, increase our capabilities, and vice versa.”

Pelzer also sees progress, which is discernible in lunar exploration. “Europe is a strong partner of the USA, we are a strong partner within [the] Artemis program. And for the first time we actually are part of the value chain and we are apart which is not dispensable. 

“So without Europe, the U.S. and NASA are not going to the moon. We are on a different level, it’s not like 20 years or 15 years ago.” 

ESA’s major contributions to Artemis include the European Service Module (ESM) for the Orion spacecraft and the International Habitation module (I-Hab) for the lunar Gateway.

Beyond this, Pelzer wants to see missions in which Europe is the leader and NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), for example, as important partners, rather than vice versa. ESA’s JUICE mission to Jupiter, he says, is a role model showing that Europe can lead.

“This is, from my point of view, the future of a strong Europe in space.”

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The melting of Greenland’s glaciers have increased fivefold in the past 20 years, a new study shows.

They are currently losing 25 meters (around 82 feet) every year. In the 80s and 90s, glaciers shrank by an average of about five meters a year.

Researchers say the finding eliminates any lingering doubts about the impact of climate change on Greenland’s more than 20,000 glaciers.

The study appears in Nature Climate Change.

The new study shows the response of Greenland’s glaciers to climate change over a 130-year period. The past two decades stand out in particular, as melting during this period increased even more dramatically.

A number of studies in recent years have shown that Greenland’s largest glaciers are under massive pressure due to climatic changes and rising temperatures. However, doubts remained about the extent of the melting glaciers, of which there are approx. 22,000 in Greenland, partly due to inadequate measurement methods.

“In this article, we make it clear that Greenland’s glaciers are all melting, and that things have moved exceptionally fast over the past 20 years. There is no doubt about the extent anymore and actually no reason to investigate the claim further,” says Anders Bjørk, assistant professor in the from geosciences and natural resource management department at the University of Copenhagen.

Greenland glacier melting is in ‘full swing’

According to the researcher, previous doubts were warranted to a certain extent. Indeed, the possibilities of investigating and documenting the extent to which glaciers melted away over extended periods of time were limited prior to the era of satellite imagery.

For example, only one of Greenland’s approximately 22,000 glaciers was continuously monitored using so-called mass balance measurements, which began in the mid-1990s. At the same time, there were areas of Greenland covered by glacier that seemed unaffected by rising temperatures just a few years back.

“Previously, we saw areas in northern Greenland, for example, that were lagging behind and melting less compared to the hardest hit glaciers. This generated a bit of doubt about how serious things were in these areas. At the same time, no one before us had ever shed light on such a long period of time, which precipitated doubts as well. But now, the picture is conclusive: The melting of all glaciers is in full swing, there is no longer any doubt,” Bjørk says.

To gain a full overview, the researchers closely studied 1,000 of Greenland’s glaciers, a representative amount for the entire country. They tracked the melting of glaciers over the past 130 years using satellite images and 200,000 old aerial photos from the Danish National Archives, which had previously been used to make maps.

“Slightly more than 1,000 glaciers is an enormous number to study, but we did so because we simply wanted to be absolutely certain to get a comprehensive picture of developments over the last 130 years,” says says Max Twining-Ward, a geography student, who conducted his bachelor-thesis on the project and digitized thousands of glaciers in the process.

While there is no longer much reason to look into whether glaciers are melting or not, the development still needs to be closely monitored, Bjørk says. Over the past twenty years, melting glaciers have contributed to about 21% of observed sea level rise.

“Of course, we’ll be keeping a close eye on developments. We’re in a new era where glaciers are generally in retreat, with major consequences for sea levels that will rise faster and faster,” Bjørk says.

Less ice, less water

Paradoxically, the melting of glaciers in Greenland will lead to a lack of water. Glaciers will reach a point at which they become so small that meltwater rivers will be diminished or disappear altogether. Among other things, this means that Greenland’s ecosystems will change and that renewable energy will face unforeseen hurdles.

“Today, there is already a very real problem in Greenland that the sites where hydroelectric power plants were built 15-20 years ago, based upon the melt from smaller glaciers, do not get enough water because the ice is gone and not being formed again,” Bjørk says.

As to the extent of the melt that the study represents, Bjørk says, “I think it’s quite disturbing. Because we’re well aware of where this is headed in the future. Temperatures will continue to rise and glaciers will melt faster than they do now.

“But our study also shows that glaciers respond to climate change very quickly, which is in itself positive because it tells us that it’s not too late to minimize warming. Everything that we can do to reduce CO₂ emissions now will result in slower sea level rise in the future.”

Source: University of Copenhagen

Researchers have identified a gene expressed during regeneration that is critical for muscle repair.

The key human skeletal muscle gene was also found in a subset of muscle fibers that were able to support human muscle stem cells after transplantation.

Although skeletal muscle is one of the most regenerative organ systems, there exists a need to improve regeneration for the more than 400 chronic muscle disorders and injuries that present clinically, including rotator cuff injuries and certain muscle disorders like Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) or congenital muscular dystrophy.

The study appears in the journal Nature Cell Biology. Michael H. Hicks, assistant professor in the department of physiology and biophysics at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine, is the co-corresponding author of the study, along with April D. Pyle, professor in the department of microbiology, immunology, and molecular genetics at UCLA.

“With our discovery, the development of ‘muscle in a dish’ is one step closer to reality,” says Hicks. “We’ve been researching this for years, and it’s implication for treating disease and muscle disorders and tears are immense.”

Muscle repair

When confronted with an injury, our muscles naturally do a good job at repairing themselves. However, in severe injuries and genetic muscular diseases the muscle is unable to meet the demands of regenerating new tissues. Researchers say one solution is to take the cells from a dish and replicate how a healthy human body repairs muscle as newly generated muscle made in a lab can support stem cells better than the exhausted muscle tissue.

One disorder the Hicks lab hopes to treat with their lab-grown muscle progenitors is tears to the rotator cuff muscles, which affects up to 30% of people over the age of 65.

Damage to the rotator cuff muscles and tendon result in loss of mobility, prolonged hospitalization, and increased dependency on health care providers. Even after surgical attachment of the rotator cuff tendon to the bone, the muscle often fails to regenerate or incompletely regenerates, leading to decreased function.

Stem cell niches

Hicks has funding from the UCI Anti-Cancer Challenge to use his approach for muscle reconstruction after radiation therapy for cancer survivors.

“Muscle stem cells are exposed to significant doses of radiation during radiotherapeutic management of cancer,” says Hicks. “The use of ionizing radiation has the potential to damage muscle stem cells and limit the recovery of muscle mass following disuse or overtime with age.”

Muscle stem cells are supported within anatomically defined specialized compartments, termed niches, that regulate their balance of self-renewal and differentiation over a person’s lifetime. The ability to establish new stem cells niches is essential for long-term cell therapies, in which transplanted muscle stem cells must balance the formation of new muscle fibers and maintain the stem cell pool to respond to future injuries.

Researchers demonstrated the formation of regenerating human myofibers following transplantation are a key source of niche emergence from transplanted human cells, which has previously been overlooked.

“This subset of regenerating muscle fibers resulted in a 50-fold better ability to support transplanted muscle progenitor cells,” said Pyle. “It would be interesting to determine whether myofibers in homeostasis or in disease settings could be stimulated to make skeletal muscle more regenerative and less susceptible to broad range of diseases.”

The researchers further characterized the interaction of transplanted muscle progenitor cells with the subset of muscle fibers a unique gene called ACTC1 using a new technology called spatial RNA sequencing. The equipment recently obtained by the UCI Genomics Research and Technology Hub, has a powerful ability to perform segmentation of cell types directly adjacent to one another and to obtain RNA information from those cell types.

“We tailored a high-dimensional spatial analysis platform to identify how transplanted human progenitor cells and myofibers in a mouse were communicating,” says Ben Clock, a graduate student involved in the study.

Next steps

In the future, the team plans to dive deeper into restored muscle function including assessing the ability of the newly formed human muscles to connect with the motor neurons to restore motor control to the transplanted cells.

The Hicks lab at the UCI School of Medicine is pursuing both basic and translational avenues as their next steps. The ability to generate these muscle stem cells in the lab is currently under patent review by the US, Europe, and Japan. Hicks and Pyle also have plans to start a company to translate muscle stem cells for patients.

In a previous study from 2017, Hicks and Pyle made strides to create and repair skeletal muscle, termed progenitor cells, in the lab with gene editing. Yet to date, retention of human muscle progenitors after transplantation from cells grown in the lab has proven challenging.

Results from this study have identified several key receptors and ligand candidates on the muscle progenitor cells that could allow for them to interact with the myofibers, but these candidates will need to be validated before they can be used as therapeutic targets to improve muscle regeneration.

The study had funding from the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the NIH National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NAIMS), the UCI Institute for Clinical and Translational Science, and the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

Source: UC Irvine

A new study finds that mild anxious or depression symptoms in fathers were associated with fewer behavioral difficulties in the first years of elementary school and better scores on a standardized IQ test in their kids.

Many parents experience stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms throughout their lives, particularly during times of transition, such as pregnancy and children’s entry into school. Studies have generally found that high levels of anxiety and depression in parents are linked to poorer behavioral and cognitive outcomes in children.

“Our study shows that both mothers’ and fathers’ well-being are important to promote the cognitive-behavioral development of their children, and that they are potentially complementary,” says Tina Montreuil, associate professor in the educational and counseling psychology department at McGill University.

Depression and anxiety in dads

While the role of mothers’ stress, anxiety, and depression on children’s behavioral and cognitive development is well established, less is known about the connection between fathers’ mental health and children’s development.

For the study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, researchers examined if paternal anxiety and depressive symptoms, measured during their partner’s pregnancy, and again six to eight years later, are associated with children’s cognitive function and behavior. They studied this association in a community sample, where parental levels of self-reported anxious and depressive symptoms were variable and typically less severe than among a clinically diagnosed population.

The first assessments, made during pregnancy and in infancy, included parental mental health and psychosocial measures, such as the parents’ highest level of education, relationship satisfaction, and parenting perceptions.

Researchers conducted the ancillary study investigation at the critical age of six to eight years, when children are in the early elementary school years and expected to make increased use of their behavioral and cognitive skills.

“Our findings show that fathers’ reported symptoms of anxiety and/or depression were not associated with worse behavioral and cognitive outcomes in their children, as previously found in other studies,” says first author Sherri Lee Jones, a research associate at Douglas Research Centre who was a postdoctoral fellow and research associate at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) during the study.

More specifically, the researchers found that slightly higher levels of depressive symptoms reported by fathers when their partner was pregnant were associated with fewer behavioral and emotional difficulties in their child at about six to eight years of age.

This included children being able to sit still for long periods of time, infrequently losing their temper, and having a good attention span, as reported by parents in questionnaires. In contrast, higher symptoms of anxiety and depression among mothers were associated with poorer childhood behavioral outcomes, both at birth and during middle childhood.

At the childhood assessment, slightly higher but still mild paternal anxious and depressive symptoms were both associated with slightly higher scores of cognitive functions in the 6–8 year old children. This was also in contrast to the patterns found among mothers.

Adapting to parenthood

The researchers point out that their findings may not be generalizable to parents who are experiencing clinical levels of depression and anxiety, and that none of the factors they examined could explain the associations between the father’s mental health symptoms and the child’s outcomes.

“More studies are needed to understand the respective roles and the combined contribution of parents in child development,” says Montreuil, who is also a scientist in the Child Health and Human Development Program at RI-MUHC.

“Our findings, like others, point to the importance of coaching individuals transitioning into parenthood. They also highlight the importance of parental attunement. This term refers to the parent’s ability to respond adaptively to their child signals, by attentively adjusting their response to the child’s needs, in a given situation.”

“Since greater parental attunement is associated to child cognitive and social competencies, one potential explanation is that the fathers in our study sample may have shown greater attunement to their child to ‘compensate’ for environmental risk factors, such as maternal depressive or anxiety symptoms, or others known predictors,” Montreuil says.

Source: McGill University

TAMPA, Fla. — Avanti Communications is in talks to procure capacity from a low Earth orbit (LEO) operator to transform into a provider of multi-orbit broadband services, the British regional geostationary satellite operator announced Nov. 10.

Kyle Whitehill, Avanti’s CEO, told SpaceNews the company is in the final contractual stages of a deal he expects to announce in coming months that would expand its presence worldwide.

“Our new global positioning means we will have the ability to provide coverage worldwide,” Whitehill said, “we will be led by the needs of our customers.”

Avanti has a fleet of five geostationary satellites, giving it Ka-band broadband coverage across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Instead of investing in new satellites to contribute to a glut of capacity coming to the market, Whitehill said Avanti is now prioritizing strategic partnerships where it can add value by bringing in services that manage this capacity.

Africa has been a key focus for the company as it seeks to expand across areas that are challenging for connectivity providers, partly because of low average revenue per user. 

Avanti is currently deploying managed services in South Africa and Nigeria, Whitehill said, and the deal with the undisclosed LEO operator would see the company offer these services to customers worldwide.

Customers would get an integrated connectivity service with more network management for their needs, he said, while the LEO operator would benefit from Avanti’s distribution, local market knowledge, customer relationships, and on-the-ground managed service delivery capabilities.

The strategy shift comes after Avanti adjusted its business in 2019 to move away from consumer broadband to focus more on cellular backhaul, governments, and selling capacity to other satellite operators.

Avanti did not disclose other details about negotiations with what it said was a leading LEO operator.

Whitehill said Avanti aims to bring multi-orbit services into use next year, suggesting SpaceX’s Starlink or OneWeb is the LEO operator as other broadband constellations in development are years away from global commercial service.

Starlink’s sprawling network has been seen as a mounting threat for regional geostationary players, and others have also expressed a willingness to partner in LEO to meet soaring demand for connectivity. 

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Researchers have solved the mystery of a poorly understood sperm structure called the cytoplasmic droplet, or CD.

The CD is an expanded cytoplasm—watery, gel-like cell contents enclosed by cell membrane—found close to the head, at the neck of the sperm of all mammals, including humans. This new genetic model is the first of its kind.

Despite being first discovered more than 100 years ago, it’s been unclear how the CD forms and what its function is due to the lack of molecular and genetic tools to study it.

Scientists have often disregarded it, but it can’t be ignored anymore, says Chen Chen, an associate professor in the department of animal science and the Reproductive and Developmental Sciences Program in Michigan State University’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

“Our new study using mice shows that the CD is indeed an actively forming organelle purposefully designed to regulate sperm maturation and fertility,” Chen says. “It acts as a ‘storage room’ to pack up critical proteins needed for sperm function before its long journey to reach the egg. It’s like packing for a trip to Mars—the spaceship needs to load up everything needed for the journey before leaving Earth.”

Chen and his research team discovered a novel protein trafficking system within the developing sperm that actively transports essential proteins via small membrane vesicles to the CD—the sperm storage room. This process is controlled by a gene called SYPL1. The SYPL1 protein resides on these membrane vesicles and plays a pivotal role in directing them to reach the CD. You can think of these vesicles as cargo trucks delivering protein cargos to the sperm storage room, Chen says.

Chen notes that when the SYPL1 gene is deleted in mice, this protein trafficking system collapses, and critical metabolic enzymes and essential proteins fail to be shipped to the CD, resulting in an empty CD devoid of vesicles—something he had never seen before. Consequently, without major CD contents, mutant sperm lose their motility and ability to cope with osmotic changes—they bend, leading to infertility.

“I believe this study represents a breakthrough in understanding the CD formation and its potential function,” Chen says. “At the cellular level, it helps us realize that there is a specialized protein trafficking system that actively transports cargos to the CD for future use by sperm for their journey to the egg.

“Fundamentally, this finding will change people’s misconception about this mysterious sperm structure. It will open new avenues for research on the CD as a biomarker for fertility in humans and animals and, possibly, on targeting this novel pathway for fertility control.”

The study appears in the journal Nature Communications, and the research was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health and MSU AgBioResearch. Chen’s team also includes collaborators from the University of Illinois, McGill University, and China Agricultural University.

Source: Michigan State University

A new scientific technique could significantly improve the reference frames that millions of people rely upon each day when using GPS navigation services, research shows.

For the first time, researchers have formed a radio interferometer between a GPS antenna and receiver and a large radio telescope. The new technique leverages a type of radio interferometer, a device that measures the difference in arrival time of radio waves emitted by distant astronomical sources, with antennas that detect and record the emission.

The team used an approach called Very Long Baseline Interferometry to use the sensitivity of the radio telescope to increase the GPS receiver’s sensitivity. This additional sensitivity enabled them to extend the reach of the receivers to observe powerful jets of radiation and particles generated by supermassive black holes up to 5 billion light-years away.

The discovery will improve a variety of critical scientific measurements, from tracking small movements of land in earthquake-prone areas to understanding sea level change.

“The ability to reference new sources directly to GPS antennas paves the way for improvements in geodetic reference frames, which underpin modern navigation in applications from smartphones to national security,” says Johnathan York, a research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin’s Applied Research Laboratories.

“Improving reference frames to meet the millimeter-level consistencies demanded by a variety of important Earth science applications is critical for taking the next steps in robust precision positioning.”

Using data collected at the Very Long Baseline Array facility in Fort Davis, Texas, and the nearby McDonald Geodetic Observatory, the researchers were able to demonstrate multiple detections of these powerful extragalactic jets.

The detections extend the distance of signals referenced to a GPS antenna from satellites found about 20,000 kilometers (about 12,427 miles) away to astronomical objects 5 billion light-years from Earth. This distance is equivalent to flying to a GPS satellite and back about 1 quintillion (a 1 followed by 18 zeros) times, or an increase of 18 orders of magnitude.

“Expanding the reach of a scientific instrument is common—scientists are always trying to push their instruments to the limit—but a leap at 18 orders of magnitude is certainly extraordinary,” says Leonid Petrov, lead scientist for the Space Geodesy Project at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Observations using this novel combination of antennas and receivers will improve the accuracy of geodetic reference frames, which use a large set of locations measured by positioning techniques such as GPS to establish a common coordinate framework.

Future research will explore the connections between GPS positioning and the positioning based on observations of distant astronomical sources carried out by radio telescopes. Unifying these techniques will further help researchers to improve the geodetic reference frames that define how positions are measured in reference to Earth.

The study is published in in Radio Science. Additional coauthors are from UT Austin and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Source: Karen Adler for UT Austin