The study is issued by researchers from the University of Illinois Chicago who have been studying the effects of early life binge drinking on health later in life.

In prior research, the UIC team found that binge drinking in adolescence alters brain chemistry at the enhancer region of the Arc gene — for activity-regulated cytoskeleton-associated protein immediate-early gene — and decreases Arc expression in the amygdala of both rodents and humans. This epigenetic reprogramming of the Arc gene in the brain’s emotion and memory center contributes to a predisposition to anxiety and alcohol use disorder in adulthood.

In the new study, the researchers show that this epigenetic reprogramming, which persists throughout life, actually can be reversed with gene editing.

“Early binge drinking can have long-lasting and significant effects on the brain and the results of this study offer evidence that gene editing is a potential antidote to these effects, offering a kind of factory reset for the brain, if you will,” said study senior author Subhash Pandey, the Joseph A. Flaherty Endowed Professor of Psychiatry and director of the Center for Alcohol Research in Epigenetics at UIC.

Pandey and his team used a gene-editing tool called CRISPR-dCas9 in their experiments to manipulate the histone acetylation and methylation processes at the Arc gene in models of adult rats. These processes make genes more or less accessible for activation.

First, the researchers studied adult rats with intermittent alcohol exposure in their adolescence, corresponding to about age 10 to 18 in human years. They observed that when dCas9 was used to promote acetylation, a process that loosens chromatin and allows transcription factors to bind to the DNA, Arc gene expression normalized. And, indicators of anxiety and alcohol consumption decreased.

Anxiety was measured through behavioral testing, such as by documenting the exploratory activity of rats placed in maze tests, and preference for alcohol was measured by monitoring the amount of liquid consumed when the rats were presented with a choice of two bottles consisting of options such as tap water, sugar water and varying concentrations of alcohol (3%, 7% and 9%).

In a second model, the researchers studied adult rats without early alcohol exposure. When inhibitory dCas9 was used to promote methylation, which tightens chromatin and prevents transcription factors from binding to DNA, Arc expression decreased and indicators of anxiety and alcohol consumption increased.

“These results demonstrate that epigenomic editing in the amygdala can ameliorate adult psychopathology after adolescent alcohol exposure,” the authors report.

“Adolescent binge drinking is a serious public health issue, and this study not only helps us better understand what happens in developing brains when they are exposed to high concentrations of alcohol but more importantly gives us hope that one day we will have effective treatments for the complex and multifaceted diseases of anxiety and alcohol use disorder,” said Pandey, who is also a senior research career scientist at Jesse Brown VA Medical Center. “That this effect was seen bidirectionally validates the significance of the Arc enhancer gene in the amygdala in epigenetic reprogramming from adolescent binge drinking.”

The research was supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (U01AA019971, U24AA024605, P50AA022538, and F32AA027410) and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

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Materials provided by University of Illinois Chicago. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

“The United States is the largest exporter and donor of field corn around the world,” said Felicia Wu, a John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor and an international expert on food safety in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition and the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at MSU. “Here in the U.S., we consume field corn in the form of corn chips, corn flakes, corn grits and corn tortillas; as opposed to sweet corn, which is frozen, canned and eaten off the cob. Field corn is also used for animal feed and for ethanol production.”

The fungi Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus produce aflatoxin which can infect peanuts, tree nuts and corn. Aflatoxin not only degrades corn quality but can also cause health problems for humans and animals depending on the amount and length of time it is ingested. While aflatoxin contamination occurs annually in the southern United States because of the hot and dry climate, it has rarely been a serious problem in the Corn Belt region of the U.S.

“When we ran our near-term climate model scenarios, we found that between 2031-2040, aflatoxin is going to become more of a problem in the U.S. Corn Belt in the Midwest,” Wu said. “The last time there was a serious problem was in 2012 when we had an unusually hot and dry summer throughout the Midwest; particularly Iowa, Illinois and Indiana.”

Wu’s research was published April 5, 2022 in the journal Environmental Research Letters. Co-authors on the paper include her former doctoral student Jina Yu (Hong Kong Baptist University), David Hennessy (Iowa State University) and Jesse Tack (Kansas State University).

Hot and dry conditions encourage fungi spores to be airborne which increases their chances of contaminating crops. Water helps plants withstand stress that makes them vulnerable to harmful fungi. Steps growers, grain elevators and processors can take to reduce the risk of aflatoxin contamination include storing corn harvests in cool, dry conditions and keeping crops irrigated to the extent possible given declining water tables.

Researchers are already using both biotechnological and conventional breeding techniques to develop hybrid crops that can withstand drought, insect damage and fungal infections. In many parts of the world, corn growers are using biocontrol to reduce aflatoxin. Biocontrol infects plants with Aspergillus fungi which is unable to produce aflatoxin because this these fungi competitively exclude the fungi that produce aflatoxin.

Another possibility shifts crop production further north or further south geographically where the climate is cooler or wetter to reduce aflatoxin risk. That, however, impacts farms that have been passed down for generations.

For consumers concerned about eating field corn and their aflatoxin risk, Wu suggests eating your greens and garlic. “Green leafy vegetables are good for your overall health,” Wu said. “Chlorophyll has a sandwich molecular structure that traps aflatoxin molecules so that humans excrete them before the toxin can enter our bloodstream.”

Also, cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, kale and allium vegetables like garlic, onions and leeks can help detoxify carcinogens in our bodies.

“We predict seeing an increase in aflatoxin problems over the next 10-20 years,” Wu said. “So, we need to rely on technologies and a whole suite of interventions that can reduce the problem.”

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Materials provided by Michigan State University. Original written by Emilie Lorditch. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

The findings, published in The Laryngoscope, show that only 1 in 7 subsequently needed surgery for injuries that weren’t resolved with vocal therapy and other conservative management. Researchers determined which vocal injuries were most common by sex, age, training, and professional/amateur status, and what kinds of treatment these patients subsequently required.

“When you’re an injured singer, especially when you depend on singing for your livelihood, the stakes are really high. Injured singers are often reluctant to talk about their injury or ask questions among their colleagues or community because injuries carry a stigma,” said study leader Lesley Childs, M.D., Associate Professor of Otolaryngology — Head and Neck Surgery and Medical Director of the Voice Center at UT Southwestern. “There are many opportunities for misinformation, so we wanted to gather data to help dispel myths and counsel our patients on the facts.”

Toward that end, Dr. Childs and her colleagues, including UTSW resident physician Ashwin Rao, M.D., and Ted Mau, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Otolaryngology — Head and Neck Surgery, reviewed charts of all singers who sought care for vocal injuries at the Voice Center between 2011 and 2019. A total of 438 patients between ages 8 and 78 who had never undergone prior surgery to correct vocal fold injuries were seen during this period.

Searching for patterns, the researchers discovered that the most prevalent injury by far was nodules, a callous-like injury that affected 58% of these singers, followed by blister-like injuries called pseudocysts, as well as polyps, cysts, and vocal fold hemorrhages. Although female singers were more likely to develop nodules and pseudocysts, polyps and cysts were more common in male singers. Polyps developed more frequently with age in female patients, while young male singers were more likely to develop nodules.

Dr. Childs and her colleagues found that professional status and a lack of prior vocal training were the greatest risk factors. Professional singers who had not taken voice lessons were eight times more likely to need surgery than amateur singers with prior voice lessons.

Although the increased risk among professional singers is probably due to the greater amount of singing time overall, the link with vocal training is unclear, Dr. Childs said. Training may increase vocal proficiency, and a history of voice lessons might make it easier for the injured to follow vocal therapy protocols.

Regardless, she added, the data can help physicians reassure patients who seek help at the Voice Center.

“For amateur and professional singers alike, vocal injuries can be devastating, but our study suggests that these injuries need not be career-ending,” Dr. Childs said. “With conservative management, most singers can get back on track.”

UT Southwestern’s Voice Center, one of the largest in the South, employs a collaborative, multidisciplinary team of passionate voice care specialists to care for injured singers. Several members of the Voice Center are singers themselves: Dr. Childs is a classically trained soprano with experience in various professional chamber ensembles as well as recording for Walt Disney Records, and all six of the Voice Center’s speech language pathologists are singers.

“We’re very proud that we can offer this personal experience to our patients and speak the unique language that singers use,” she said.

That’s because it is, in fact, sugar — very thin layers of confectioners’ sugar from the grocers, burnt to a state called carbon black, interspersed between only slightly thicker layers of silica, which is the most common material on Earth, and baked. The result resembles a fine layer cake, or more precisely, the organic and inorganic layering of a seashell, each layer helping the next to contain and mitigate shock.

“A material that can survive a variety of insults — mechanical, shock and X-ray — can be used to withstand harsh environmental conditions,” said Sandia researcher Guangping Xu, who led development of the new coating. “That material has not been readily available. We believe our layered nanocomposite, mimicking the structure of a seashell, is that answer.”

Most significantly, Xu said, “The self-assembled coating is not only lightweight and mechanically strong, but also thermally stable enough to protect instruments in experimental fusion machines against their own generated debris where temperatures may be about 1,500 C. This was the initial focus of the work.”

“And that may be only the beginning,” said consultant Rick Spielman, senior scientist and physics professor at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics at the University of Rochester, credited with leading the initial design of Sandia’s Z machine, one of the destinations for which the new material is intended. “There are probably a hundred uses we haven’t thought of.” He envisions possible electrode applications delaying, rather than blocking, surface electron emissions. Aiding the nuclear survivability mission

The coating, which can be layered on a variety of substrates without environmental problems, was the subject of a Sandia patent application in June 2021, an invited talk at a pulsed power conference in December 2021 and again in a recent technical article in MRS Advances, of which Xu is lead author.

The work was done in anticipation of the increased shielding that will be needed to protect test objects, diagnostics and drivers inside the more powerful pulsed power machines of the future. Sandia’s pulsed-power Z machine — currently the most powerful producer of X-rays on Earth — and its successors will certainly require still greater debris protection against forces that could compare to numerous sticks of dynamite exploding at close range. Chad McCoy loads sample coatings at Sandia’s Z machine

Physicist Chad McCoy at Sandia National Laboratories’ Z machine loads sample coatings into holders. When Z fires, researchers will observe how well particular coatings protect objects stacked behind them. (Photo by Bret Latter) Click the thumbnail for a high-resolution image.

“The new shielding should favorably impact our nuclear survivability mission,” said paper author and Sandia physicist Chad McCoy. “Z is the brightest X-ray source in the world, but the amount of X-rays is only a couple percent of the total energy released. The rest is shock and debris. When we try to understand how matter — such as metals and polymers — interacts with X-rays, we want to know if debris is damaging our samples, has changed its microstructure. Right now, we’re at the limit where we can protect sample materials from unwanted insults, but more powerful testing machines will require better shielding, and this new technology may enable appropriate protection.”

Other, less specialized uses remain possibilities.

The inexpensive, environmentally friendly shield is light enough to ride into space as a protective layer on satellites because comparatively little material is needed to achieve the same resilience as heavier but less effective shielding currently in use to protect against collisions with space junk. “Satellites in space get hit constantly by debris moving at a few kilometers per second, the same velocity as debris from Z,” McCoy said. “With this coating, we can make the debris shield thinner, decreasing weight.”

Thicker shield coatings are durable enough to strengthen the walls of pressurized vessels when added ounces are not an issue. Dramatic cost reduction anticipated

According to Guangping, the material cost to fabricate a 2-inch diameter coating of the new protective material, 45 millionths of a meter and microns thick, is only 25 cents. In contrast, a beryllium wafer — the closest match to the thermal and mechanical properties of the new coating, and in use at Sandia’s Z machine and other fusion locations as protective shields — costs $700 at recent market prices for a 1-inch square, 23-micron-thick wafer, which is 3,800 times more expensive than the new film of same area and thickness.

Both coatings can survive temperatures well above 1,000 C, but a further consideration is that the new coating is environmentally friendly. Only ethanol is added to facilitate the coating process. Beryllium creates toxic conditions, and its environs must be cleansed of the hazard after its use. How testing proceeded

The principle of alternating organic and inorganic layers, a major factor in seashell longevity, is key to strengthening the Sandia coating. The organic sugar layers burnt to carbon black act like a caulk, said Sandia manager and paper author Hongyou Fan. They also stop cracks from spreading through the inorganic silica structure and provide layers of cushioning to increase its mechanical strength, as was reported 20 years ago in an earlier Sandia attempt to mimic the seashell mode.

Greg Frye-Mason, Sandia campaign manager for the Assured Survivability and Agility with Pulsed Power, or ASAP, Laboratory Directed Research and Development mission campaign funding the research, initially had his doubts about the carbon insertion.

“I thought that the organic layers would limit applicability since most degrade by 400 to 500 C,” he said.

But when the carbon-black concept demonstrated robustness to well over 1,000 C, the positive result overcame the largest risk Frye-Mason saw as facing the project.

Seashell-like coatings initially tested at Sandia varied between a few to 13 layers. These alternating materials were pressed against each other after being heated in pairs, so their surfaces crosslinked. Tests showed that such interwoven nanocomposite layers of silica with the burnt sugar, known as carbon black after pyrolysis, are 80% stronger than silica itself and thermally stable to an estimated 1,650 C. Later sintering efforts showed that layers, self-assembled through a spin-coating process, could be batch-baked and their individual surfaces still crosslinked satisfactorily, removing the tediousness of baking each layer. The more efficient process achieved very nearly the same mechanical strength.

Research into the coating was funded by ASAP to develop methods to protect diagnostics and test samples on Z and on next-generation pulsed power machines from flying debris.

“This coating qualifies,” Frye-Mason said.

A new study published in BioMedical Engineering draws a link between mental illness and widely fluctuating blood pressure, which can lead to cardiovascular disease and organ damage.

UniSA researcher Dr Renly Lim and colleagues from Malaysian universities say there is clear evidence that mental illness interferes with the body’s autonomic functions, including blood pressure, heart rate, temperature and breathing.

“We reviewed 12 studies on people with anxiety, depression and panic disorders and found that, regardless of age, mental illness is significantly associated with greater blood pressure variations during the day,” Dr Lim says.

“We also found that for people who are mentally ill, their heart rate does not adapt to external stressors as it should.

“Contrary to what many people think, a healthy heart is not one that beats like a metronome. Instead, it should adjust to withstand environmental and psychological challenges. A constantly changing heart rate is actually a sign of good health.”

Reduced heart rate variation (HRV) is common in people with mental illness and indicates that the body’s stress response is poor, exacerbating the negative effects of chronic stress.

Unlike a person’s heart rate — how many times a heart beats in a minute — which is usually consistent, HRV is more complex and is the time between two heartbeats, which should change according to external stressors.

“What we aim for is not a constantly changing heart rate but a high heart rate variation. This is achieved through a healthy diet, exercise, low stress and good mental health.”

Low HRV occurs when a person’s body is in fight-or-flight mode, easily stressed and common in people with chronic diseases, including cardiovascular and mental health problems.

While large blood pressure variations (BPV) during the day are not ideal, at night the systolic pressure should dip by between 10-20 per cent to allow the heart to rest. The researchers found that in people with mental health issues, their blood pressure does not drop sufficiently at night.

The reduced dipping — under 10 per cent — can be caused by many factors, including autonomic dysfunction, poor quality of sleep and disrupted circadian rhythms that regulate the sleep-wake cycle.

“The takeout from this study is that we need to pay more attention to the physical impacts of mental illness,” Dr Lim says.

“It is a major global burden, affecting between 11-18 per cent (one billion) of people worldwide. Since mental illness can contribute to the deterioration of heart and blood pressure regulation, early therapeutic intervention is essential.”

The research was undertaken at the University of Malaya, University of South Australia, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, and Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman.

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Materials provided by University of South Australia. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Storms in the Sahel region, which can reach over 100km in size, have become more extreme since the 1980s due to global warming, with more intense rainfall.* Severe flooding during the monsoon from June to September causes human and livestock deaths, plus damages property and infrastructure, leaving thousands of people without homes and livelihoods.

State-of-the-art weather forecast models struggle to predict where new storms will hit and how strong they will be, which makes it difficult to provide warnings to people in affected areas so they can protect their property and livestock or get out of harm’s way.

National forecasting agencies in Africa can already make predictions of how storms will behave in the next couple of hours by observing current atmospheric conditions, and analysing hundreds of historical storms.

Now, thanks to a recent breakthrough by UKCEH scientists, they can make these short-term forecasts, known as ‘nowcasts’, for six hours ahead and with a higher degree of accuracy. The new research found drier soils can increase the intensity of storms when they are on the move, affecting where they travel and the amount of rainfall they produce.

These novel nowcasting predictions and related satellite observations for West Africa are available via UKCEH’s new free portal, which has been funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

National forecasters can interpret the data and make localised forecasts, sending out warnings to people in areas that are expected to be hit by a storm. Last year, as part of a trial of the nowcasting tool, forecasters in Senegal used it to issue a severe weather warning to the public via text message.

Dr Steven Cole of UKCEH says: “The portal is a great example of how new scientific understanding can be translated into useable real-time tools by working with forecasters. Importantly, this will support communities in West Africa to better manage flood risk from intense rainfall.”

A recent study found that using data about land surface temperatures improves predictions about the path and strength of an approaching mesoscale convective system (MCS) up to 12 hours ahead. These ‘megastorms’ can be bigger than the size of England and unleash over 100mm of rainfall in just an hour.

“We found a surprising level of predictability of storms from land surface temperatures when testing our methodology on historical data, and West African forecasters are finding our approach very useful for their work,” says Professor Chris Taylor of UKCEH.

“We would expect mesoscale convective systems elsewhere in the world to also be influenced by drier soils. Therefore, our methodology could potentially be used to improve storm and flood warning systems in tropical regions such as South Asia and Australia, as well as parts of USA and South America.”

The new nowcasting portal allows forecasters to observe storm clouds in near real-time via satellite and compare them with historical storm behaviour, plus view data on current land surface conditions. The online tool then uses these data, updated every 15 minutes, to calculate the probability of a mesoscale convective system reaching different areas of the Sahel between the current time and six hours ahead.

UKCEH scientists are continuing to work with forecasting services in West Africa to increase the advance warning time and its reliability by combining more factors influencing storm behaviour within their nowcast modelling, in addition to land surface temperature. These include soil moisture, atmospheric humidity, wind conditions and the amount of rainfall there has been in preceding days.

As part of a collaboration with ANACIM, the national meteorological service in Senegal, UKCEH has also developed short-term forecasts of potential flood impacts and risk in Dakar which are available on the portal. It also hopes to work with other forecasting services to provide this service for other areas.