That’s why a team of researchers, including one at the University of Missouri, utilized a motion-sensor video game, Recovery Rapids, to allow patients recovering from a stroke to improve their motor skills and affected arm movements at home while checking in periodically with a therapist via telehealth.

The researchers found the game-based therapy led to improved outcomes similar to a highly regarded form of in-person therapy, known as constraint-induced therapy, while only requiring one-fifth of the therapist hours. This approach saves time and money while increasing convenience and safety as telehealth has boomed in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“As an occupational therapist, I have seen patients from rural areas drive more than an hour to come to an in-person clinic three to four days a week, where the rehab is very intensive, taking three to four hours per session, and the therapist must be there the whole time,” said Rachel Proffitt, assistant professor in the MU School of Health Professions. “With this new at-home gaming approach, we are cutting costs for the patient and reducing time for the therapist while still improving convenience and overall health outcomes, so it’s a win-win. By saving time for the therapists, we can also now serve more patients and make a broader impact on our communities.”

Traditional rehab home exercises tend to be very repetitive and monotonous, and patients rarely adhere to them. The Recovery Rapids game helps patients look forward to rehabilitation by completing various challenges in a fun, interactive environment, and the researchers found that the patients adhered well to their prescribed exercises.

“The patient is virtually placed in a kayak, and as they go down the river, they perform arm motions simulating paddling, rowing, scooping up trash, swaying from side to side to steer, and reaching overhead to clear out spider webs and bats, so it’s making the exercises fun,” said Rachel Proffitt, assistant professor in the MU School of Health Professions. “As they progress, the challenges get harder, and we conduct check-ins with the participants via telehealth to adjust goals, provide feedback and discuss the daily activities they want to resume as they improve.”

Nearly 800,000 Americans have a stroke each year according to the CDC, and two-thirds of stroke survivors report they cannot use their affected limbs to do normal daily activities, including making a cup of coffee, cooking a meal or playing with one’s grandchildren.

“I am passionate about helping patients get back to all the activities they love to do in their daily life,” Proffitt said. “Anything we can do as therapists to help in a creative way while saving time and money is the ultimate goal.”

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A team led by Roya Zandi, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Riverside, has developed a theory and performed a series of simulations that may help explain how a virus finds its native genome and how capsids form around it and not around other RNAs in the cell.

“A better understanding of how capsids form is of vital importance to material scientists and a crucial step in the design of engineered nano-shells that could serve as vehicles for delivering drugs to specific targets in the body,” Zandi said.

The researchers’ work, published in ACS Nano, shows that the interplay of the mechanical properties of proteins, the size of the genome, and the strength of the interaction between the genome and capsid proteins can significantly modify the symmetry, structure, and stability of the capsid.

When a virus enters a cell, the capsid breaks open to release the genome, which then uses the cell’s reproductive machinery to replicate. The newly formed genomes begin to acquire their capsids, a process mainly driven by the attractive electrostatic interaction between the positive charges on capsid proteins and the negative charges on the genomes. But how the virus selects and packages its native RNA inside the crowded environment of a host cell cytoplasm in the presence of many nonviral RNA and other polymers has remained a mystery.

The simulations run by Zandi’s team show that capsid proteins could, in theory, pick any nonviral genome to encapsulate. But the viral genome, she said, is best suited for capsid proteins to form a shell around due to an interplay of energies at the molecular level.

“The stress distribution of the capsid proteins is lower when the capsids encapsulate their own genome, the one for which they were coded,” Zandi said. “The energy of the whole system is lower. While smaller nonviral RNAs are available in the cell in plenty, the capsid proteins are inclined toward forming a shell around a viral RNA because the resulting soccer ball-like shell has a lower stress distribution.”

Zandi said the work lays out a systematic comparison of theory and experiments, which will allow a better understanding of the role of RNA in the capsid assembly pathway, stability, and structure.

“A deeper understanding of the role of the genome in virus assembly mechanisms could lead to design principles for alternative antivirals,” she said.

The new work is an early step in understanding viral assembly. The process is not well understood because viruses measure in nanometers and the assembly occurs in milliseconds.

“Theoretical work and simulations are necessary to understand how a virus grows,” Zandi said.

Zandi was joined in the research by graduate student Sanaz Panahandeh at UCR; Siyu Li at Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory in China; and Bogdan Dragnea at Indiana University, Bloomington. Li is a former graduate student at UCR.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.

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Materials provided by University of California – Riverside. Original written by Iqbal Pittalwala. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

To highlight the common view that men aren’t deemed sexist when they’re rude to both men and women, researchers asked subjects to share their perceptions of tweets from former President Donald Trump lambasting men and women, fictitious stories of managers’ treatment of male and female employees, and surveys of sexist behavior. 

According to the study, being a jerk to men creates “an illusion of impartiality, giving sexist perpetrators plausible deniability.” This can lead people to falsely conclude that gender bias doesn’t underlie rude behavior, making them less likely to recognize sexism. 

“We found that a man does not seem sexist if he treats everyone — both men and women — poorly,” said Peter Belmi, associate professor of leadership and organizational behavior at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business and lead author of the study. “This is problematic because sexism and rudeness are not mutually exclusive. Men who are sexist can be — and often are — rude toward other men.”

The research shows that gender blindness can be exploited to refute accusations of sexism, he added. For example, perpetrators may highlight instances in which they’ve been rude to men as evidence that they aren’t sexist. 

A popular understanding of sexism is discrimination toward women based solely on their sex. Under this definition, a man would not be sexist if he were a jerk to both sexes. The researchers defined sexism more broadly, however, as attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors that reflect, foster, or promote negative or pejorative stereotypes about women.

“Men may believe that rather than ‘supporting women,’ an alternative solution to creating gender parity is to ‘treat everyone horribly,'” Belmi added. 

He emphasized that previous research has focused on gender blindness’s benefit in fostering workplace gender diversity and inclusion. The current study highlights the shortcomings of this ideology. 

The researchers conducted a series of studies, using online participants and students from professional schools, to determine whether sexism is tougher to recognize when men express rudeness to other men as well as women. 

A two-part survey of about 1,100 employed men measured their self-reported rudeness toward male and female colleagues at work and their attitudes and beliefs about women. 

Another study asked participants to read tweets written by Trump during his presidency that contained sexist comments about women; some participants also read tweets that berated men. 

Next, the researchers asked participants to read a series of stories, some about managers making sexist comments to female workers and others about managers speaking rudely to male subordinates, too. Participants were also asked to identify whether those managers needed gender-bias and anger-management training. 

In each experiment, participants failed to recognize sexism when the perpetrator was rude or berating to men. However, they identified sexist behavior when only women were treated poorly. In other words, “equal-opportunity jerks” were viewed as gender blind. Also, the more participants perceived an offender being a jerk to other men, the more they diminished the need for gender-bias training. 

“When a sexist manager is rude toward men, it may appear as though he is not sexist,” Belmi said. “Thus, women victimized by his behavior will have a more difficult time proving that he is sexist. Rudeness can therefore protect perpetrators.”

The findings show that rudeness across genders creates a barrier to addressing sexism. The researchers suggested that future studies should examine whether rudeness can conceal other types of discrimination — for example, by creating illusions of colorblindness or authenticity.

“Blatant, unambiguous, and obvious forms of sexist conduct continue to exist,” Belmi said. “Our findings suggest that one reason for their persistence is that observers may not recognize that everyday acts of rudeness can serve as a convenient mask for bias against women.” 

New research from the University of Georgia shows that physical activity could help protect your cognitive abilities as you age. And it doesn’t have to be intense exercise to make an impact.

“This finding isn’t saying, ‘If you’re older, you need to go out there and start running marathons,'” said Marissa Gogniat, lead author of the study and a recent doctoral graduate in psychology from the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. “This is saying if you get more steps, if you’re moving around your environment a little bit more, that can be helpful to your brain health and keep you more independent as you age.”

Exercise improves brain function

Published in Sport Sciences for Health, the study followed 51 older adults, tracking their physical activity and fitness measurements. The participants performed tests specifically designed to measure cognitive functioning and underwent MRIs to assess brain functioning.

They also wore a device that measured the intensity of the wearer’s physical activity, number of steps taken and distance covered. The researchers assessed fitness through a six-minute walking test, during which participants walked as quickly as they could to cover the most distance possible within the time limit.

“We’ve always been told it’s good to exercise, but I think this is some evidence that exercise can actually change your brain,” Gogniat said. “And that impacts the way you’re able to function in your daily life.”

Brain networks improve with physical activity

The brain is made up of a bunch of distinct networks. Those networks are in constant communication, sending information to each other.

But different parts of the brain are active at different times. The network that is active when the body is at rest, for example, flips off when a person starts trying to complete a task. At that time, another network kicks on.

While one of these networks is active, the other should be shut off. If it’s not, that’s a sign that a person’s brain isn’t functioning as well as it should be.

These networks are the key to being able to perform basic tasks in daily life, such as remembering important information and exhibiting self-control. But as people age, these tasks often become more difficult.

This study was the first to examine how these networks interact with physical activity and fitness to impact how the brain functions.

“This paper is exciting because it gives us some evidence that when people whose brain networks aren’t functioning optimally engage in physical activity, we see improvement in their executive function and their independence,” Gogniat said. “We’re not saying you need to radically change your life.

“Maybe just take the stairs on the way to work. Stand up and walk around a little bit more. That’s where you get the most bang for your buck, not crazy, high-intensity exercise.”

The study was co-authored by Talia Robinson, Kharine Jean and Stephen Miller, from UGA’s Department of Psychology.

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Materials provided by University of Georgia. Original written by Leigh Beeson. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

The team utilized genome alignment tools to compare the most recent drafts of human and chimpanzee genomes, meticulously scanning for novel genetic elements unique to humans. Beginning with the smallest human chromosome, chromosome 21, the researchers were surprised to find a large region of human-unique DNA, called 21p11, that harbors several orphan microRNA genes.

Although the team found that the long arm of human chromosome 21 aligns well with that of other extant ape species, the short arm aligned poorly, suggesting that this region of the human genome has recently and substantially diverged from that of other primates.

According to their analysis of prehistoric human genomes, these changes predate the divergence of Neanderthals and modern humans. The genes also show little to no sequence-based variation within the modern human population. The team therefore theorized that the microRNA (miRNA) genes found in that region [miR3648 and miR6724] likely evolved in the time since the chimpanzee and human lineages split, sometime in the last seven million years, and are specific to humans.

Using computational tools, the team discovered with a high degree of likelihood that the predicted gene targets of the relevant miRNAs are related to embryonic development. Both miR3648 and miR6724 have been detected in tissues throughout the human body, including the brain, and may conceivably play a role in the evolution of humankind’s most unique organ. The findings point to the intriguing idea that these microRNA genes contributed to the distinct evolution of our species and the uniqueness of humankind.

“Understanding the genetic basis for human uniqueness is an important undertaking because, despite sharing nearly 99% of our DNA sequences with the chimpanzee, we’re remarkably different organisms,” said student researcher José Galván. “Small post-transcriptional regulatory elements like miRNAs and siRNAs [small interfering RNA] are under-appreciated and often misunderstood in the effort to understand our genetic differences.”

Thanks to their small size and structural simplicity, miRNA genes have fewer barriers to de novo creation than other gene types. MicroRNA genes can be extremely prolific in their regulation of other genes, meaning that modest changes to DNA sequence can result in wide-ranging impacts to the human genome. The creation of miR3648 and miR6724 serve as excellent examples of this process. This study revealed a new possible mechanism for the creation of new miRNA genes through duplications of rRNA genes, which calls for further research on how general this phenomenon may be.

The study’s co-authors include Dr. Nathan H. Lents, Professor of Biology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Dr. Hunter Johnson, Associate Professor of Mathematics at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and a team of undergraduate student researchers: Jessica A. Blandino, Beatriz C. Mercado, José A. Galván, and William J. Higgins.

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