GOLDEN

NEWS
APRIL – JUNE 2018

SMART NEWS FOR SMART PEOPLE

EDITOR- BARUN CHATTERJEE
Email id- barunchatterjee66@gmail.com
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PREFACE
‘GOLDEN NEWS’-- the e-magazine of news
which are separated from others.
It‟s busket is filled up quite different type of
news, interesting news, news for the
development of mankind. Ongoing updation
of research news in science , health, politics &
economics are on the pages of this magazine.
In our world always incidents are being
happened. We want to take the taste of
these happenings. All the news may not be
attractive.
Here , in „GOLDEN NEWS’ our expert team
has collected some special type of news which
are something else.
We hope , our prudent reader will get some
different type flavours. The life span of the
news,selected here are not short and can be
kept in mind for long time.
‘GOLDEN NEWS’ - means the news
something new, something
different,something interesting, something
unconventional
sleep improves
memory

Scientists have long known that sleep plays an

important role in the formation and retention
of new memories. That process of memory
consolidation is associated with sudden bursts
of oscillatory brain activity, called sleep
spindles, which can be visualized and
measured on an electroencephalogram (EEG).
Now researchers reporting in Current Biology
have found that sleep spindles also play a role
in strengthening new memories when newly
learned information is played back to a person
as they sleep.
The findings provide new insight into the
process of memory consolidation during sleep.
They may also suggest new ways to help people
remember things better, according to the
researchers.
"While it has been shown previously that
targeted memory reactivation can boost
memory consolidation during sleep, we now
show that sleep spindles might represent the
key underlying mechanism," says Bernhard
Staresina of the University of Birmingham in
the United Kingdom. "Thus, direct induction of
sleep spindles -- for example, via transcranial
electrical stimulation -- perhaps combined with
targeted memory reactivation, may enable us
to further improve memory performance while
we sleep."
Sleep spindles are half-second to two-second
bursts of brain activity, measured in the 10-16
Hertz range on an EEG. They occur during non-
rapid eye movement sleep stages two and
three. Earlier studies had shown that the
number of spindles during the night could
predict a person's memory the next day.
Studies in animals also linked sleep spindles to
the process by which the brain makes new
connections. But many questions about the link
between sleep spindles and reactivated
memories during sleep remained.
Staresina along with Scott Cairney at the
University of York, UK, suspected that
experimental reactivation of memories might
lead to a surge of sleep spindles in a sleeping
person's brain. To find out, they devised an
experiment in which people learned to
associate particular adjectives with particular
objects and scenes. Some study participants
then took a 90-minute nap after their study
session, whereas others stayed awake. While
people napped, the researchers cued those
associative memories and unfamiliar
adjectives.
As expected, the researchers saw that
memory cues led to an increase in sleep
spindles. Interestingly, the EEG patterns during
spindles enabled the researchers to discern
what types of memories -- objects or scenes --
were being processed.
The findings add to evidence for an important
information-processing role of sleep spindles
in the service of memory consolidation, the
researchers say.
"Our data suggest that spindles facilitate
processing of relevant memory features
during sleep and that this process boosts
memory consolidation," Staresina says.
This new understanding of the way the brain
normally processes and strengthens
memories during sleep may help to explain how
that process may go wrong in people with
learning difficulties, according to the
researchers. It might also lead to the
development of effective interventions
designed to boost memory for important
information.
Americans slow down
the clock of age

Americans may be aging more slowly than they

were two decades ago.
A new study by University of Southern
California and Yale University researchers
suggests that at least part of the gains in life
expectancy over recent decades may be due to
a change in the rate of biological aging, rather
than simply keeping ailing people alive.
"This is the first evidence we have of delayed
'aging' among a national sample of Americans,"
said senior author Eileen M. Crimmins,
University Professor and AARP Professor of
Gerontology at the USC Leonard Davis School
of Gerontology.
As noted in the study by Crimmins and lead
author Morgan E. Levine, assistant professor
at the Yale Center for Research on Aging: "A
deceleration of the human aging process,
whether accomplished through environment or
biomedical intervention, would push the timing
of aging-related disease and disability
incidence closer to the end of life."
Using data from the National Health and
Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) III
(1988-19994) and NHANES IV (2007-2010), the
researchers examined how biological age,
relative to chronological age, changed in the
U.S. while considering the contributions of
health behaviors. Biological age was calculated
using several indicators for metabolism,
inflammation, and organ function, including
levels of hemoglobin, total cholesterol,
creatinine, alkaline phosphatase, albumin, and
C-reactive protein in blood as well as blood
pressure and breath capacity data.
While all age groups experienced some
decrease in biological age, the results suggest
that not all people may be faring the same.
Older adults experienced the greatest
decreases in biological age, and men
experienced greater declines in biological age
than females; these differences were partially
explained by changes in smoking, obesity, and
medication use, Crimmins and Levine
explained.
"While improvements may take time to
manifest, and thus are more apparent at older
ages, this could also signal problems for
younger cohorts, particularly females, who --
if their improvements are more minimal -- may
not see the same gains in life expectancy as
experienced by the generations that came
before them," said Levine, who received both
her PhD in Gerontology in 2015 and her BA in
Psychology in 2008 from USC.
Slowing the pace of aging, along with
increasing life expectancy, has important
social and economic implications. The study
suggests that modifying health behaviors and
using prescription medications does indeed
have significant impact on the health of the
population.
"Life extension without changing the aging rate
will have detrimental implications. Medical care
costs will rise, as people spend a higher
proportion of their lives with disease and
disability," Levine said. "However, lifespan
extension accomplished through a deceleration
of the aging process will lead to lower
healthcare expenditures, higher productivity,
and greater well-being."
Half a degree more
global warming
could flood out 5
million more people

The 2015 Paris climate agreement sought to

stabilize global temperatures by limiting
warming to well below 2.0 degrees Celsius
above pre-industrial levels and to pursue
limiting warming even further, to 1.5 C.
To quantify what that would mean for people
living in coastal areas, a group of researchers
employed a global network of tide gauges and a
local sea level projection framework to explore
differences in the frequency of storm surges
and other extreme sea-level events across
three scenarios: global temperature increases
of 1.5, 2.0 and 2.5 C.
They concluded that by 2150, the seemingly
small difference between an increase of 1.5 and
2.0 C would mean the permanent inundation of
lands currently home to about 5 million people,
including 60,000 who live on small island
nations.
The study, conducted by researchers at
Princeton University and colleagues at Rutgers
and Tufts Universities, the independent
scientific organization Climate Central, and ICF
International, was published in the
journal Environmental Research Letters on
March 15, 2018.
"People think the Paris Agreement is going to
save us from harm from climate change, but
we show that even under the best-case climate
policy being considered today, many places will
still have to deal with rising seas and more
frequent coastal floods," said DJ Rasmussen, a
graduate student in Princeton's Program in
Science, Technology and Environmental Policy
in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and
International Affairs, and first author of the
study.
The researchers found that higher
temperatures will make extreme sea level
events much more common. They used long-
term hourly tide gauge records and extreme
value theory to estimate present and future
return periods of extreme sea-level events
through the 22nd century. Under the 1.5 C
scenario, the frequency of extreme sea level
events is still expected to increase. For
example, by the end of the 21st century, New
York City is expected to experience one
Hurricane Sandy-like flood event every five
years.
Extreme sea levels can arise from high tides
or storm surge or a combination of surge and
tide (sometimes called the storm tide). When
driven by hurricanes or other large storms,
extreme sea levels flood coastal areas,
threatening life and property. Rising mean sea
levels are already magnifying the frequency
and severity of extreme sea levels, and
experts predict that by the end of the century,
coastal flooding may be among the costliest
impacts of climate change in some regions.
Future extreme events will be exacerbated by
the rising global sea level, which in turn
depends on the trajectory of global mean
surface temperature. Even if global
temperatures are stabilized, sea levels are
expected to continue to rise for centuries, due
to the fact that carbon dioxide stays in the
atmosphere for a long time and the ice sheets
are slow to respond to warming.
Overall, the researchers predicted that by the
end of the century, a 1.5 C temperature
increase could drive the global mean sea level
up by roughly 1.6 feet (48 cm) while a 2.0 C
increase will raise oceans by about 1.8 feet (56
cm) and a 2.5 C increase will raise sea level by
an estimated 1.9 feet (58 cm).
115,000-year-old bone
tools in China

An analysis of 115,000-year-old bone tools

discovered in China suggests that the
toolmaking techniques mastered by prehistoric
humans there were more sophisticated than
previously thought.
Marks found on the excavated bone fragments
show that humans living in China in the early
Late Pleistocene were already familiar with the
mechanical properties of bone and knew how
to use them to make tools out of carved stone.
These humans were neither Neanderthals nor
sapiens.
This major find, in which Luc Doyon of UdeM's
Department of Anthropology participated, has
just been published in the scientific
journal PLOS ONE.
"These artefacts represent the first instance
of the use of bone as raw material to modify
stone tools found at an East Asian early Late
Pleistocene site,"said Doyon. "They've been
found in the rest of Eurasia, Africa and the
Levante, so their discovery in China is an
opportunity for us to compare these artifacts
on a global scale.
Until now, the oldest bone tools discovered in
China dated back 35,000 years and consisted
of assegai (spear) points. "Prior to this
discovery, research into the technical
behaviour of humans inhabiting China during
this period was almost solely based on the
study of tools carved from stone," said Doyon.
Three types of hammers
The seven bone fragments analyzed by Luc
Doyon and his colleagues were excavated
between 2005 and 2015 at the Lingjing site in
central China's Henan province. The artifacts
were found buried at a depth of roughly 10
metres. At the time, the site was being actively
used as a water spring for animals. Prehistoric
humans likely used these water supply points
for killing and butchering their animal prey.
The bone fragments were dated using optically
stimulated luminescence (OSL), a method
widely used by geologists for dating the
sediment layers in which tools are found.
Doyon explained that the researchers
identified three types of bone retouchers,
known as soft hammers, that were used to
modify stone (or lithic) tools. The first type
was weathered limb bone fragments, mainly
from cervid metapodials, marginally shaped by
retouching and intensively used on a single
area. The second type was long limb bone
flakes resulting from the dismemberment of
large mammals, used for quick retouching or
resharpening of stone tools. And the third type
was a single specimen of an antler of an axis
deer that, close to its tip, shows impact scars
produced by percussing various lithic blanks.
The researchers have not yet determined
which hominid species the users of these
prehistoric tools belonged to, although they do
know that they lived during the same period as
Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. "The Lingjing
site yielded two incomplete human skulls that
suggest interbreeding between this species
and Neanderthals," Doyon said. "But this is a
hypothesis that remains to be confirmed
through further investigation, such as
paleogenetic studies."
At first blush, you
look happy -- or sad,
or angry

Our faces broadcast our feelings in living color

-- even when we don't move a muscle.
That's the conclusion of a groundbreaking
study into human expressions of emotion,
which found that people are able to correctly
identify other people's feelings up to 75
percent of the time -- based solely on subtle
shifts in blood flow color around the nose,
eyebrows, cheeks or chin.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences this week,
demonstrates a never-before-documented
connection between the central nervous
system and emotional expression in the face. It
also enabled researchers to construct
computer algorithms that correctly recognize
human emotion via face color up to 90 percent
of the time.
"We identified patterns of facial coloring that
are unique to every emotion we studied," said
Aleix Martinez, cognitive scientist and
professor of electrical and computer
engineering at The Ohio State University.
"We believe these color patterns are due to
subtle changes in blood flow or blood
composition triggered by the central nervous
system. Not only do we perceive these changes
in facial color, but we use them to correctly
identify how other people are feeling, whether
we do it consciously or not."
The researchers are patenting the computer
algorithms, and hope they will enable future
forms of artificial intelligence to recognize and
emulate human emotions. They have also
formed a spin-off company, Online Emotion, to
commercialize the research.
This is the latest in a series of studies in which
Martinez and his team have identified unique
forms of human facial expression. In prior
work, they identified several, previously
unknown facial expressions produced though
unique patterns of muscle movements,
including the "not face," a frown that they
determined to be a universal embodiment of
negation in human communication. What's
unusual about their latest work is that it
involves color changes that communicate
emotion without any movement of facial
muscles.
For this study, the researchers first took
hundreds of pictures of facial expressions and
separated the images into different color
channels that correspond to how human eyes
see color -- a red-green channel and a blue-
yellow channel. Via computer analysis, they
found that emotions like "happy" or "sad"
formed unique color patterns.
Regardless of gender, ethnicity or overall skin
tone, everybody displayed similar patterns
when expressing the same emotion.
To test whether colors alone could convey
emotions -- without smiles or frowns to go
along with them -- the researchers
superimposed the different emotional color
patterns on pictures of faces with neutral
expressions. They showed the neutral faces to
20 study participants and asked them to guess
how the person in the picture was feeling,
choosing from a list of 18 emotions. The
emotions included basic ones like "happy" and
"sad" as well as more complex ones such as
"sadly angry" or "happily surprised."
"Admittedly, these images look weird,"
Martinez said. "But we told people to go ahead
and guess from the list of emotions what
emotion they thought those faces were
conveying. And they guessed right most of the
time."
About 70 percent of the time, participants
thought that a neutral face that had been
colorized to look happy actually conveyed
happiness. They thought faces colorized to look
sad were actually sad about 75 percent of the
time, and neutral faces colorized to look angry
were actually angry about 65 percent of the
time. They perceived the emotion, even though
their only clue was the color superimposed on
the face, with no facial movements.
Next, researchers showed participants facial
expressions of happiness, sadness and other
emotions. This time, however, they mixed up
the colors on some of the images. For example,
they sometimes took a happy face and put
angry colors on it, or vice versa. Participants
noticed that something about the mixed up
images looked "off," even if they weren't sure
what was wrong.
"Participants could clearly identify which
images had the congruent versus the
incongruent colors," Martinez said.
The researchers used what they learned to
develop computer algorithms that could detect
emotions via face color. Given photographs of
people expressing emotion, the computer could
match face color to feeling better than the
human study participants could.
Happiness was the easiest emotion for the
computer to recognize by color alone, and it
detected the emotion with 90 percent
accuracy. Several emotions related to
happiness, such as "happily surprised," came
in second at around 85 percent. Anger was
detectable by color alone 80 percent of the
time, and sadness 75 percent of the time. Fear
was recognizable 70 percent of the time, and
the least recognizable emotion was "fearfully
disgusted," which registered only 65 percent
of the time.
The findings may ultimately inform research in
computer science, cognition, neuroscience and
even human evolution.
Language is replete with idioms that equate
face color to emotion. When we argue until
we're "blue in the face," we're angry. If we look
"green around the gills," something has
triggered our disgust. "Blushing brides" are
the very picture of happiness.
This study shows that there is some
physiological truth to these old sayings, though
the color scheme of human emotion is not as
simple as a monochromatic blue, green or red.
"There's a little bit of every color
everywhere," Martinez said. Touches of red,
green, blue and yellow characterize every
emotion -- just in slightly different amounts or
locations around the face.
Disgust, for instance, creates a blue-yellow
cast around the lips, but with a red-green cast
around the nose and forehead.
It's all the more impressive, then, that our
brains are able to decipher the meaning of
these color arrangements in an instant. We see
a smiling person with red cheeks and temples
(with a little blue around the chin) and we
automatically read their emotion as "happy."
But the same face with a slightly redder
forehead and slightly less blue chin registers
as "surprised."
Humans just may be alone among primates for
our ability to change facial color due to
emotion. It's hard to tell, because other
primates' faces are covered by hair.
Yet, in humans, nowhere else on the body are
there so many blood vessels so close to the
surface of the skin than our faces. The fact
that we evolved much less facial hair than the
apes suggests that our early ancestors may
have found some advantage to letting their
blushes show.
What about fake blushes -- ones created with
makeup?
"People have always said that we use makeup
to look beautiful or younger, but I think that it
is possible that we actually do it to appear
happier or create a positive perception of
emotion -- or a negative perception, if you
wanted to do that," Martinez said.
Now that we know a little more about the
varied colors of human facial expression, he
suggested an intriguing new possibility: We
could make "smart" cosmetics to play up
certain emotions -- or conceal them.
No evidence between
violent video games
and behavior

Researchers at the University of York have

found no evidence to support the theory that
video games make players more violent.
In a series of experiments, with more than
3,000 participants, the team demonstrated
that video game concepts do not 'prime'
players to behave in certain ways and that
increasing the realism of violent video games
does not necessarily increase aggression in
game players.
The dominant model of learning in games is
built on the idea that exposing players to
concepts, such as violence in a game, makes
those concepts easier to use in 'real life'.
This is known as 'priming', and is thought to
lead to changes in behaviour. Previous
experiments on this effect, however, have so
far provided mixed conclusions.
Researchers at the University of York
expanded the number of participants in
experiments, compared to studies that had
gone before it, and compared different types of
gaming realism to explore whether more
conclusive evidence could be found.
In one study, participants played a game where
they had to either be a car avoiding collisions
with trucks or a mouse avoiding being caught
by a cat. Following the game, the players were
shown various images, such as a bus or a dog,
and asked to label them as either a vehicle or
an animal.
Dr David Zendle, from the University's
Department of Computer Science, said: "If
players are 'primed' through immersing
themselves in the concepts of the game, they
should be able to categorise the objects
associated with this game more quickly in the
real world once the game had concluded.
"Across the two games we didn't find this to be
the case. Participants who played a car-
themed game were no quicker at categorising
vehicle images, and indeed in some cases their
reaction time was significantly slower."
In a separate, but connected study, the team
investigated whether realism influenced the
aggression of game players. Research in the
past has suggested that the greater the
realism of the game the more primed players
are by violent concepts, leading to antisocial
effects in the real world.
Dr Zendle said: "There are several
experiments looking at graphic realism in
video games, but they have returned mixed
results. There are, however, other ways that
violent games can be realistic, besides looking
like the 'real world', such as the way
characters behave for example.
"Our experiment looked at the use of 'ragdoll
physics' in game design, which creates
characters that move and react in the same
way that they would in real life. Human
characters are modelled on the movement of
the human skeleton and how that skeleton
would fall if it was injured."
The experiment compared player reactions to
two combat games, one that used 'ragdoll
physics' to create realistic character
behaviour and one that did not, in an animated
world that nevertheless looked real.
Following the game the players were asked to
complete word puzzles called 'word fragment
completion tasks', where researchers
expected more violent word associations would
be chosen for those who played the game that
employed more realistic behaviours.
They compared the results of this experiment
with another test of game realism, where a
single bespoke war game was modified to form
two different games. In one of these games,
enemy characters used realistic soldier
behaviours, whilst in the other game they did
not employ realistic soldier behaviour.
Dr Zendle said: "We found that the priming of
violent concepts, as measured by how many
violent concepts appeared in the word
fragment completion task, was not detectable.
There was no difference in priming between
the game that employed 'ragdoll physics' and
the game that didn't, as well as no significant
difference between the games that used 'real'
and 'unreal' solider tactics.
"The findings suggest that there is no link
between these kinds of realism in games and
the kind of effects that video games are
commonly thought to have on their players.
"Further study is now needed into other
aspects of realism to see if this has the same
result. What happens when we consider the
realism of by-standing characters in the game,
for example, and the inclusion of extreme
content, such as torture?
"We also only tested these theories on adults,
so more work is needed to understand
whether a different effect is evident in children
players."
Artificial
intelligence predicts
corruption
Researchers from the University of Valladolid
(Spain) have created a computer model based
on neural networks which provides in which
Spanish provinces cases of corruption can
appear with greater probability, as well as the
conditions that favor their appearance. This
alert system confirms that the probabilities
increase when the same party stays in
government more years.
Two researchers from the University of
Valladolid have developed a model with
artificial neural networks to predict in which
Spanish provinces corruption cases could
appear with more probability, after one, two
and up to three years.
The study, published in Social Indicators
Research, does not mention the provinces
most prone to corruption so as not to generate
controversy, explains one of the authors, Ivan
Pastor, to Sinc, who recalls that, in any case,
"a greater propensity or high probability does
not imply corruption will actually happen."
The data indicate that the real estate tax
(Impuesto de Bienes Inmuebles), the
exaggerated increase in the price of housing,
the opening of bank branches and the creation
of new companies are some of the variables
that seem to induce public corruption, and
when they are added together in a region, it
should be taken into account to carry out a
more rigorous control of the public accounts.
"In addition, as might be expected, our model
confirms that the increase in the number of
years in the government of the same political
party increases the chances of corruption,
regardless of whether or not the party
governs with majority," says Pastor.
"Anyway, fortunately -- he adds -, for the next
years this alert system predicts less
indications of corruption in our country. This is
mainly due to the greater public pressure on
this issue and to the fact that the economic
situation has worsened significantly during the
crisis."
To carry out the study, the authors have relied
on all cases of corruption that appeared in
Spain between 2000 and 2012, such as the
Mercasevilla case (in which the managers of
this public company of the Seville City Council
were charged) and the Baltar case (in which
the president of the Diputación de Ourense was
sentenced for more than a hundred contracts
"that did not complied with the legal
requirements").
The collection and analysis of all this
information has been done with neural
networks, which show the most predictive
factors of corruption. "The use of this AI
technique is novel, as well as that of a
database of real cases, since until now more
or less subjective indexes of perception of
corruption were used, scorings assigned to
each country by agencies such as
Transparency International, based on surveys
of businessmen and national analysts,"
highlights Pastor.
The authors hope that this study will contribute
to better direct efforts to end corruption,
focusing the efforts on those areas with the
greatest propensity to appear, as well as
continuing to move forward to apply their
model internationally.
Devastating human
impact on the Amazon
rainforest revealed

The human impact on the Amazon rainforest

has been grossly underestimated according to
an international team of researchers from
Brazil and the UK, led by Lancaster University.
They found that selective logging and surface
wildfires can result in an annual loss of 54
billion tonnes of carbon from the Brazilian
Amazon, increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
This is equivalent to 40% of the yearly carbon
loss from deforestation -- when entire forests
are chopped down.
This is the largest ever study estimating above
and below-ground carbon loss from selective
logging and ground level forest fires in the
tropics, based on data from 70,000 sampled
trees and thousands of soil, litter and dead
wood samples from 225 sites in the eastern
Brazilian Amazon.
The forest degradation often starts with
logging of prized trees such as mahogany and
ipe. The felling and removal of these large
trees often damages dozens of neighbouring
trees.
Once the forest has been logged, the many
gaps in the canopy means it becomes much
drier due to exposure to the wind and sun,
increasing the risk of wildfires spreading
inside the forest.
The combination of selective logging and
wildfires damages turns primary forests into a
thick scrub full of smaller trees and vines,
which stores 40% less carbon than
undisturbed forests.
So far, climate change policies on the tropics
have effectively been focusing on reducing
carbon emissions from deforestation only, not
accounting for emissions coming from forest
degradation.
Lead researcher Dr Erika Berenguer from
Lancaster University said: "The impacts of fire
and logging in tropical forests have always
been largely overlooked by both the scientific
community and policy makers who are
primarily concerned with deforestation. Yet
our results show how these disturbances can
severely degrade the forest, with huge
amounts of carbon being transferred from
plant matter straight into the atmosphere."
The research to be published in Global Change
Biology on June 3 was carried out by 10
researchers from 11 universities and research
institutions in Brazil and the UK.
The second author, Dr Joice Ferreira from
Embrapa in Brazil, said: "Our findings also
draw attention to the necessity for Brazil to
implement more effective policies for reducing
the use of fire in agriculture, as fires can both
devastate private property, and escape into
surrounding forests causing widespread
degradation. Bringing fire and illegal logging
under control is key to reaching our national
commitment to reducing carbon emissions."
Don't blame
adolescent social
behavior on
hormones

Reproductive hormones that develop during

puberty are not responsible for changes in
social behavior that occur during adolescence,
according to the results of a newly published
study by a University at Buffalo researcher.
"Changes in social behavior during
adolescence appear to be independent of
pubertal hormones. They are not triggered by
puberty, so we can't blame the hormones,"
says Matthew Paul, an assistant professor in
UB's Department of Psychology and lead
author of the groundbreaking paper recently
published in the journal Current Biology.
Disentangling the adolescent changes that are
triggered by puberty from those unrelated to
puberty is difficult because puberty and
adolescence occur simultaneously, but Paul
and his collaborators have found a way to
tease out the two using a seasonal-breeding
animal model.
"Puberty and adolescence are happening at the
same time. So if you want to know if one
causes the other, one of the elements must be
moved. We have no way of doing that in a
human, but we have found a way to do it using
Siberian hamsters," says Paul.
His new model, explained in the study with co-
authors Clemens Probst, a scientist at
Massachusetts General Hospital, Geert de
Vries, a professor at Georgia State University,
and Lauren Brown, a UB graduate student,
provides a basic understanding that did not
previously exist for what drives adolescent
social development.
Adolescence is a critical period of development
for individuals, notes Paul.
Complex thinking develops; many mental health
disorders arise; and it is associated with the
beginning of high-risk behaviors, like drug use.
For social behavior, it is a time when the focus
of children's social relationships shifts from
the family to peers. In other words, they stop
wanting to hang out with mom and dad. It has
been widely assumed that these changes can
be attributed to increases in gonadal
hormones at puberty.
"What we've done here is find a new way to ask
the question of how puberty plays a role in
adolescent development -- a new way to
determine which developmental changes
pubertal hormones trigger and which changes
they do not."
In conversation, we might hear puberty and
adolescence used interchangeably, yet
biologically, they are two distinct processes.
Puberty is the process by which individuals
develop the ability to reproduce. It is triggered
by the activation of the reproductive axis,
which is responsible for the development of
reproductive capability, the appearance of
secondary sexual characteristics, and the
increase in gonadal hormones.
Adolescence is broader. It encompasses
puberty, but also includes cognitive, social, and
emotional changes that occur during the
teenage years.
Because puberty and adolescence occur
concurrently, answering the fundamental
question of whether puberty causes non-
reproductive adolescent behavioral changes or
merely coincides with them has confounded
researchers -- until now.
Using a seasonal breeding species, like
Siberian hamsters, Paul is able to control the
timing of puberty.
Siberian hamsters born at the beginning of the
breeding season (when days are long) go
through puberty quickly in order to breed that
year. Those born late in the breeding season
(when days are shorter) experience a delay in
puberty so as not to give birth in the middle of
winter.
Controlling the amount of light a hamster
receives in the lab delays arrival of puberty,
which comes around 30 days of age for "long-
day" hamsters and around 100 days of age or
later for "short-day" hamsters.
With two groups going through puberty at
different times, Paul can now observe
behavioral changes in each group to determine
whether these changes are always locked to
puberty. In this study, they looked at the
transition from play-fighting to social
dominance, which is an important step for
these young animals to be able to leave home
and find their own territory (also called
dispersal).
"Play is an important behavior in many
species, especially mammals," says Paul. "It's
evolutionarily conserved, meaning it hasn't
been lost from a common ancestor as species
broke off from each other in the evolutionary
tree. Because play is expressed in so many
species, it's likely to be serving an important
function, including in humans. It also suggests
that what we learn from our hamsters will
likely be true for many other species."
If pubertal hormones were responsible for the
shift from play to dominance, this transition
would occur early for long-day hamsters and
late for short-day hamsters; always co-
occuring with puberty. But Paul found that the
transition occurred at the same time for both
groups, regardless of when they went through
puberty. For the short-day hamsters, the
transition was completed before puberty had
even begun.
"This is a surprising finding, because we tend
to think that pubertal hormones are
responsible for the changes we see during
adolescence. But our research suggests
otherwise." says Paul. "These findings are also
important for adolescent mental health --
understanding the underlying mechanisms
responsible for adolescent development will
provide insight into why so many mental health
disorders arise during this time in life."
A lifetime of regular
exercise slows down
aging

Researchers at the University of Birmingham

and King's College London have found that
staying active keeps the body young and
healthy.
The researchers set out to assess the health
of older adults who had exercised most of their
adult lives to see if this could slow down
ageing.
The study recruited 125 amateur cyclists aged
55 to 79, 84 of which were male and 41 were
female. The men had to be able to cycle 100 km
in under 6.5 hours, while the women had to be
able to cycle 60 km in 5.5 hours. Smokers,
heavy drinkers and those with high blood
pressure or other health conditions were
excluded from the study.
The participants underwent a series of tests in
the laboratory and were compared to a group
of adults who do not partake in regular
physical activity. This group consisted of 75
healthy people aged 57 to 80 and 55 healthy
young adults aged 20 to 36.
The study showed that loss of muscle mass and
strength did not occur in those who exercise
regularly. The cyclists also did not increase
their body fat or cholesterol levels with age
and the men's testosterone levels also
remained high, suggesting that they may have
avoided most of the male menopause.
More surprisingly, the study also revealed that
the benefits of exercise extend beyond muscle
as the cyclists also had an immune system that
did not seem to have aged either.
An organ called the thymus, which makes
immune cells called T cells, starts to shrink
from the age of 20 and makes less T cells. In
this study, however, the cyclists' thymuses
were making as many T cells as those of a
young person.
The findings come as figures show that less
than half of over 65s do enough exercise to
stay healthy and more than half of those aged
over 65 suffer from at least two diseases.
Professor Janet Lord, Director of the Institute
of Inflammation and Ageing at the University of
Birmingham, said: "Hippocrates in 400 BC said
that exercise is man's best medicine, but his
message has been lost over time and we are
an increasingly sedentary society.
"However, importantly, our findings debunk the
assumption that ageing automatically makes us
more frail.
"Our research means we now have strong
evidence that encouraging people to commit to
regular exercise throughout their lives is a
viable solution to the problem that we are
living longer but not healthier."
Dr Niharika Arora Duggal, also of the
University of Birmingham, said: "We hope
these findings prevent the danger that, as a
society, we accept that old age and disease are
normal bedfellows and that the third age of
man is something to be endured and not
enjoyed."
Professor Stephen Harridge, Director of the
Centre of Human & Aerospace Physiological
Sciences at King's College London, said: "The
findings emphasise the fact that the cyclists do
not exercise because they are healthy, but that
they are healthy because they have been
exercising for such a large proportion of their
lives.
"Their bodies have been allowed to age
optimally, free from the problems usually
caused by inactivity. Remove the activity and
their health would likely deteriorate."
Norman Lazarus, Emeritus Professor at King's
College London and also a master cyclist and
Dr Ross Pollock, who undertook the muscle
study, both agreed that: "Most of us who
exercise have nowhere near the physiological
capacities of elite athletes.
"We exercise mainly to enjoy ourselves. Nearly
everybody can partake in an exercise that is in
keeping with their own physiological
capabilities.
"Find an exercise that you enjoy in whatever
environment that suits you and make a habit of
physical activity. You will reap the rewards in
later life by enjoying an independent and
productive old age."
The research findings are detailed in two
papers published today in Aging Cell and are
the result of an ongoing joint study by the two
universities, funded by the BUPA foundation.
The researchers hope to continue to assess
the cyclists to see if they continue to cycle and
stay young.
Cueing newly learned
information in sleep
improves memory

Scientists have long known that sleep plays an

important role in the formation and retention
of new memories. That process of memory
consolidation is associated with sudden bursts
of oscillatory brain activity, called sleep
spindles, which can be visualized and
measured on an electroencephalogram (EEG).
Now researchers reporting in Current
Biology on March 8 have found that sleep
spindles also play a role in strengthening new
memories when newly learned information is
played back to a person as they sleep.
The findings provide new insight into the
process of memory consolidation during sleep.
They may also suggest new ways to help people
remember things better, according to the
researchers.
"While it has been shown previously that
targeted memory reactivation can boost
memory consolidation during sleep, we now
show that sleep spindles might represent the
key underlying mechanism," says Bernhard
Staresina of the University of Birmingham in
the United Kingdom. "Thus, direct induction of
sleep spindles -- for example, via transcranial
electrical stimulation -- perhaps combined with
targeted memory reactivation, may enable us
to further improve memory performance while
we sleep."
Sleep spindles are half-second to two-second
bursts of brain activity, measured in the 10-16
Hertz range on an EEG. They occur during non-
rapid eye movement sleep stages two and
three. Earlier studies had shown that the
number of spindles during the night could
predict a person's memory the next day.
Studies in animals also linked sleep spindles to
the process by which the brain makes new
connections. But many questions about the link
between sleep spindles and reactivated
memories during sleep remained.
Staresina along with Scott Cairney at the
University of York, UK, suspected that
experimental reactivation of memories might
lead to a surge of sleep spindles in a sleeping
person's brain. To find out, they devised an
experiment in which people learned to
associate particular adjectives with particular
objects and scenes. Some study participants
then took a 90-minute nap after their study
session, whereas others stayed awake. While
people napped, the researchers cued those
associative memories and unfamiliar
adjectives.
As expected, the researchers saw that
memory cues led to an increase in sleep
spindles. Interestingly, the EEG patterns during
spindles enabled the researchers to discern
what types of memories -- objects or scenes --
were being processed.
The findings add to evidence for an important
information-processing role of sleep spindles
in the service of memory consolidation, the
researchers say.
"Our data suggest that spindles facilitate
processing of relevant memory features
during sleep and that this process boosts
memory consolidation," Staresina says.
This new understanding of the way the brain
normally processes and strengthens
memories during sleep may help to explain how
that process may go wrong in people with
learning difficulties, according to the
researchers. It might also lead to the
development of effective interventions
designed to boost memory for important
information.
Existence of new
form of electronic
matter

Researchers have produced a "human scale"

demonstration of a new phase of matter called
quadrupole topological insulators that was
recently predicted using theoretical physics.
These are the first experimental findings to
validate this theory.
The researchers report their findings in the
journal Nature.
The team's work with QTIs was born out of the
decade-old understanding of the properties of
a class of materials called topological
insulators. "TIs are electrical insulators on the
inside and conductors along their boundaries,
and may hold great potential for helping build
low-power, robust computers and devices, all
defined at the atomic scale," said mechanical
science and engineering professor and senior
investigator Gaurav Bahl.
The uncommon properties of TIs make them a
special form of electronic matter. "Collections
of electrons can form their own phases within
materials. These can be familiar solid, liquid
and gas phases like water, but they can also
sometimes form more unusual phases like a
TI," said co-author and physics professor
Taylor Hughes .
TIs typically exist in crystalline materials and
other studies confirm TI phases present in
naturally occurring crystals, but there are still
many theoretical predictions that need to be
confirmed, Hughes said.
One such prediction was the existence of a new
type of TI having an electrical property known
as a quadrupole moment. "Electrons are single
particles that carry charge in a material," said
physics graduate student Wladimir Benalcazar.
"We found that electrons in crystals can
collectively arrange to give rise not only to
charge dipole units -- that is, pairings of
positive and negative charges -- but also high-
order multipoles in which four or eight
charges are brought together into a unit. The
simplest member of these higher-order
classes are quadrupoles in which two positive
and two negative charges are coupled."
It is not currently feasible to engineer a
material atom by atom, let alone control the
quadrupolar behavior of electrons. Instead, the
team built a workable-scale analogue of a QTI
using a material created from printed circuit
boards. Each circuit board holds a square of
four identical resonators -- devices that
absorb electromagnetic radiation at a specific
frequency. The boards are arranged in a grid
pattern to create the full crystal analogue.
"Each resonator behaves as an atom, and the
connections between them behave as bonds
between atoms," said Kitt Peterson, the lead
author and an electrical engineering graduate
student. "We apply microwave radiation to the
system and measure how much is absorbed by
each resonator, which tells us about how
electrons would behave in an analogous
crystal. The more microwave radiation is
absorbed by a resonator, the more likely it is
to find an electron on the corresponding
atom."
The detail that makes this a QTI and not a TI is
a result of the specifics of the connections
between resonators, the researchers said.
"The edges of a QTI are not conductive like you
would see in a typical TI," Bahl said, "Instead
only the corners are active, that is, the edges
of the edges, and are analogous to the four
localized point charges that would form what is
known as a quadrupole moment. Exactly as
Taylor and Wladimir predicted."
"We measured how much microwave radiation
each resonator within our QTI absorbed,
confirming the resonant states in a precise
frequency range and located precisely in the
corners," Peterson said. "This pointed to the
existence of predicted protected states that
would be filled by electrons to form four
corner charges."
Those corner charges of this new phase of
electronic matter may be capable of storing
data for communications and computing. "That
may not seem realistic using our 'human scale'
model," Hughes said. "However, when we think
of QTIs on the atomic scale, tremendous
possibilities become apparent for devices that
perform computation and information
processing, possibly even at scales below that
we can achieve today."
The researchers said the agreement between
experiment and prediction offered promise
that scientists are beginning to understand the
physics of QTIs well enough for practical use.
"As theoretical physicists, Wladimir and I could
predict the existence of this new form of
matter, but no material has been found to have
these properties so far," Hughes said.
"Collaborating with engineers helped turn our
prediction into reality."
The National Science Foundation and U.S. Office
of Naval Research supported this study.
Is your smile male or
female?

The dynamics of how men and women smile

differs measurably, according to new
research, enabling artificial intelligence (AI) to
automatically assign gender purely based on a
smile.
Although automatic gender recognition is
already available, existing methods use static
images and compare fixed facial features. The
new research, by the University of Bradford, is
the first to use the dynamic movement of the
smile to automatically distinguish between men
and women.
Led by Professor Hassan Ugail, the team
mapped 49 landmarks on the face, mainly
around the eyes, mouth and down the nose.
They used these to assess how the face
changes as we smile caused by the underlying
muscle movements -- including both changes
in distances between the different points and
the 'flow' of the smile: how much, how far and
how fast the different points on the face moved
as the smile was formed.
They then tested whether there were
noticeable differences between men and
women -- and found that there were, with
women's smiles being more expansive.
Lead researcher, Professor Hassan Ugail from
the University of Bradford said: "Anecdotally,
women are thought to be more expressive in
how they smile, and our research has borne
this out. Women definitely have broader smiles,
expanding their mouth and lip area far more
than men."
The team created an algorithm using their
analysis and tested it against video footage of
109 people as they smiled. The computer was
able to correctly determine gender in 86% of
cases and the team believe the accuracy could
easily be improved.
"We used a fairly simple machine classification
for this research as we were just testing the
concept, but more sophisticated AI would
improve the recognition rates," said Professor
Ugail.
The underlying purpose of this research is
more about trying to enhance machine
learning capabilities, but it has raised a
number of intriguing questions that the team
hopes to investigate in future projects.
One is how the machine might respond to the
smile of a transgender person and the other is
the impact of plastic surgery on recognition
rates.
"Because this system measures the underlying
muscle movement of the face during a smile,
we believe these dynamics will remain the
same even if external physical features
change, following surgery for example," said
Professor Ugail. "This kind of facial recognition
could become a next- generation biometric, as
it's not dependent on one feature, but on a
dynamic that's unique to an individual and
would be very difficult to mimic or alter."
Listening to happy
music may enhance
divergent creativity

Listening to happy music may help generate

more, innovative solutions compared to
listening to silence, according to a study
published September 6, 2017 in the open-
access journal PLOS ONE by Simone Ritter
from Radboud University, The Netherlands and
Sam Ferguson from the University of
Technology Sydney, Australia.
Creativity is an important quality in our
complex, fast-changing world, as it allows us to
generate innovative solutions for a wide range
of problems and come up with fresh ideas. The
question of what facilitates creative cognition
has long been studied, and while music has
previously been shown to benefit cognition,
little is known about how listening to music
affects creative cognition specifically.
To investigate the effect of music on creative
cognition, researchers had 155 participants
complete questionnaires and split them into
experimental groups. Each group listened to
one of four different types of music that were
categorized as calm, happy, sad, or anxious,
depending on their emotional valence (positive,
negative) and arousal (high, low), while one
control group listened to silence. After the
music started playing, participants performed
various cognitive tasks that tested their
divergent and convergent creative thinking.
Participants who came up with the most
original and useful solutions to a task scored
higher in divergent creativity, while
participants who came up with the single best
possible solution to a task scored higher in
convergent creativity.
The researchers found that listening to happy
music, which they define as classical music
that is positive valence and high in arousal,
facilitates more divergent creative thinking
compared to silence. The authors suggest that
the variables involved in the happy music
condition may enhance flexibility in thinking, so
that additional solutions might be considered
by the participant that may not have occurred
to them as readily if they were performing the
task in silence.
This study shows that creative cognition may
be enhanced through music, and further
research could explore how different ambient
sounds might affect creativity and include
participants of diverse cultures, age groups,
and levels of music experience. The authors
suggest that their study may also demonstrate
that music listening could promote creative
thinking in inexpensive and efficient ways in
various scientific, educational and
organizational settings.
High consumption of red
and processed meat linked
to non-alcoholic fatty liver
disease and insulin
resistance
World meat consumption has increased during
the last decades, and evidence is mounting that
high consumption of red and mainly processed
meat is unhealthy to humans and is related to
chronic diseases such as cancer, type 2
diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. A new
study published in the Journal of
Hepatology adds non-alcoholic fatty liver
disease (NAFLD) to the list.
"NAFLD is considered as the hepatic
component of the metabolic syndrome, with
insulin resistance and inflammation as key
factors in its pathophysiology," explained lead
investigator Prof. Shira Zelber-Sagi, RD, PhD,
from the School of Public Health, Faculty of
Social Welfare and Health Sciences, University
of Haifa, Israel. "Unhealthy Western lifestyle
plays a major role in the development and
progression of NAFLD, namely, lack of physical
activity and high consumption of fructose and
saturated fat. Our study looked at other
common foods in the Western diet, namely red
and processed meats, to determine whether
they increase the risk for NAFLD."
In order to test the association of type of meat
and cooking method with NAFLD and insulin
resistance, investigators undertook a cross-
sectional study among individuals 40-70 years
old who underwent screening colonoscopy at
the Department of Gastroenterology and
Hepatology in the Tel Aviv Medical Center, and
who agreed to participate in a metabolic and
hepatic screening study between 2013 and
2015.
NAFLD and insulin resistance were evaluated
by ultrasonography and homeostasis model
assessment (HOMA). Meat type and cooking
method were measured by food frequency and
detailed meat consumption questionnaires.
Unhealthy cooking methods were
characterized as frying or grilling to a level of
well done or very well done. These methods
produce heterocyclic amines (HCAs), which
are pro-inflammatory compounds, and their
intake was also calculated.
After excluding some of the participants due to
factors such as viral liver disease and alcohol
abuse, close to 800 subjects were included in
the main analysis, of whom a sub-sample of
357 subjects completed the meat
questionnaire. NAFLD was diagnosed in 38.7
percent of participants and insulin resistance
in 30.5 percent. The proportion of red and
white meat intake was about one third and two
thirds, respectively, which is similar to the
typical diet of the Israeli population. High meat
eaters were slightly younger, mainly male, had
a higher body mass index (BMI), caloric intake,
and a worse metabolic profile.
The results showed that high consumption of
red and processed meat is independently
associated with NAFLD and insulin resistance
regardless of saturated fat and cholesterol
intake and other risk factors such as BMI. In
addition, individuals who consumed large
quantities of meat cooked using unhealthy
methods and those already diagnosed with
NAFLD who consumed high HCAs had a higher
chance of having insulin resistance.
Low carb diets are frequently recommended to
prevent metabolic diseases. These low carb
diets can be very rich in animal protein,
especially meat. While meat contributes
valuable nutrients that are beneficial to health,
including protein, iron, zinc, and vitamin B12,
the current study indicates that meat should
be eaten in moderation and the type of meat
and its preparation method should be wisely
chosen.
Although the association between high red and
processed meat consumption and NAFLD
remains to be confirmed by prospective
studies, Prof. Zelber-Sagi, recommends
limiting red and processed meat consumption
in preference for healthier "white meat," such
as chicken or turkey, including fish in the diet,
and steaming or boiling food instead of grilling
or frying meat at a high temperature until it is
very well done.
"NAFLD is primarily a lifestyle-oriented
disease. With sound medical and nutritional
guidance from their clinicians, patients are
better informed and equipped to implement the
lifestyle changes needed to help reverse this
disease," remarked Prof. Zelber-Sagi.
Wandering
greenhouse gas

On the seafloor of the shallow coastal regions

north of Siberia, microorganisms produce
methane when they break down plant remains.
If this greenhouse gas finds its way into the
water, it can also become trapped in the sea
ice that forms in these coastal waters. As a
result, the gas can be transported thousands
of kilometres across the Arctic Ocean and
released in a completely different region
months later. This phenomenon is the subject
of an article by researchers from the Alfred
Wegener Institute, published in the current
issue of the online journal Scientific Reports.
Although this interaction between methane,
ocean and ice has a significant influence on
climate change, to date it has not been
reflected in climate models.
In August 2011, the icebreaker Polarstern from
the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre
for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) was
making its way through the ice-covered Arctic
Ocean, on a course that took her just a few
hundred kilometres from the North Pole. Back
then, AWI geochemist Dr Ellen Damm tested the
waters of the High North for the greenhouse
gas methane. In an expedition to the same
region four years later, she had the chance to
compare the measurements taken at different
times, and found significantly less methane in
the water samples.
Ellen Damm, together with Dr Dorothea Bauch
from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean
Research in Kiel and other colleagues,
analysed the samples to determine the
regional levels of methane, and the sources. By
measuring the oxygen isotopes in the sea ice,
the scientists were able to deduce where and
when the ice was formed. To do so, they had
also taken sea-ice samples. Their findings: the
ice transports the methane across the Arctic
Ocean. And it appears to do so differently
every year, as the two researchers and their
colleagues from the AWI, the Finnish
Meteorological Institute in Helsinki and the
Russian Academy of Science in Moscow relate
in the online journal Scientific Reports.
The samples from 2011 came from sea ice that
had started its long journey north in the
coastal waters of the Laptev Sea of eastern
Siberia nearly two years earlier, in October
2009. The samples from 2015, which had only
been underway in the Arctic Ocean half as long,
showed a markedly lower level of the
greenhouse gas. The analysis revealed that
this ice was formed much farther out, in the
deeper ocean waters. However, until now, the
climate researchers' models haven't taken into
consideration the interaction between
methane, the Arctic Ocean and the ice floating
on it.
Every molecule of methane in the air has 25
times the effect on temperature rise
compared to a molecule of carbon dioxide
released into the atmosphere by burning coal,
oil or gas. Methane in the Arctic also has an
enormous impact on warming at northerly
latitudes, and further exacerbates global
warming -- a good reason to investigate the
methane cycle in the High North more closely.
Methane is produced by cattle breeding and
rice cultivation, as well as various other
natural processes. For example, the remains of
algae and other plant materials collect on the
floor of the shallow Laptev Sea, and in other
shallow waters off the Arctic coast. If there is
no oxygen there, microorganisms break down
this biomass, producing methane. To date,
simulations have paid too little attention to the
routes of by carbon and release of methane
from the Arctic regions.
In autumn, when air temperatures drop, many
areas of open water also begin to cool. "Sea
ice forms on the surface of the Russian shelf
seas, and is then driven north by the strong
winds," explains AWI sea-ice physicist Dr
Thomas Krumpen, who also took part in the
study. The ice formation and offshore winds
produce strong currents in these shallow
marginal seas, which stir up the sediment and
carry the methane produced there into the
water column. The methane can also be
trapped in the ice that rapidly forms in these
open areas of water -- also known as polynya -
- in the winter.
"As more seawater freezes it can expel the
brine contained within, entraining large
quantities of the methane locked in the ice,"
explains AWI researcher Ellen Damm. As a
result, a water-layer is formed beneath the ice
that contains large amounts of both salt and
methane. Yet the ice on the surface and the
dense saltwater below, together with the
greenhouse gas it contains, are all pushed on
by the wind and currents. According to Thomas
Krumpen, "It takes about two and a half years
for the ice formed along the coast of the
Laptev Sea to be carried across the Arctic
Ocean and past the North Pole into the Fram
Strait between the east cost of Greenland and
Svalbard." Needless to say, the methane
trapped in the ice and the underlying saltwater
is along for the ride.
The rising temperatures produced by climate
change are increasingly melting this ice. Both
the area of water covered by sea ice and the
thickness of the ice have been decreasing in
recent years, and thinner ice is blown farther
and faster by the wind. "In the past few years,
we've observed that ice is carried across the
Arctic Ocean faster and faster," confirms
Thomas Krumpen. And this process naturally
means major changes in the Arctic's methane
turnover. Accordingly, quantifying the sources,
sinks and transport routes of methane in the
Arctic continues to represent a considerable
challenge for the scientific community.
Robotic fish can 'see'
and mimic live fish

For more than a decade, biomimetic robots

have been deployed alongside live animals to
better understand the drivers of animal
behavior, including social cues, fear,
leadership, and even courtship. The
encounters have always been unidirectional;
the animals observe and respond to the robots.
But in the lab of Maurizio Porfiri, a professor
of mechanical and aerospace engineering at
the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, the
robots can now watch back.
Porfiri and a team of collaborators tapped
advances in real-time tracking software and
robotics to design and test the first closed-
loop control system featuring a bioinspired
robotic replica interacting in three dimensions
with live zebrafish. The system allows the
robotic replica to both "see" and mimic the
behavior of live zebrafish in real time. The
results of these experiments, which represent
the first of their kind with zebrafish, were
published in Scientific Reports.
The team tested the interaction of the robotic
replica and live zebrafish under several
different experimental conditions, but in all
cases, the replica and the live fish were
separated by a transparent panel. In
preference tests, zebrafish showed greater
affinity- and, importantly, no signs of anxiety
or fear -- toward a robotic replica that
mirrored its own behavior rather than a robot
that followed a pre-set pattern of swimming.
Porfiri noted that while mirroring is a basic,
limited form of social interaction, these
experiments are a powerful first step toward
enriching the exchange between robots and
live animals. "This form of mirroring is a very
simple social behavior, in which the replica
seeks only to stay as close as possible to the
live animal. But this is the baseline for the
types of interactions we're hoping to build
between animals and robots," Porfiri said. "We
now have the ability to measure the response
of zebrafish to the robot in real time, and to
allow the robot to watch and maneuver in real
time, which is significant."
The researchers are now investigating social
interactions among live zebrafish to better
understand the animals' natural cues and
responses. "We are learning what really
matters in zebrafish social interactions, and
we can use this information to help the robot
interpret and respond appropriately, rather
than just copying what it sees," he said.
galaxies spin like
clockwork

Astronomers have discovered that all galaxies

rotate once every billion years, no matter how
big they are.
The Earth spinning around on its axis once
gives us the length of a day, and a complete
orbit of the Earth around the Sun gives us a
year.
"It's not Swiss watch precision," said
Professor Gerhardt Meurer from the UWA
node of the International Centre for Radio
Astronomy Research (ICRAR).
"But regardless of whether a galaxy is very big
or very small, if you could sit on the extreme
edge of its disk as it spins, it would take you
about a billion years to go all the way round."
Professor Meurer said that by using simple
maths, you can show all galaxies of the same
size have the same average interior density.
"Discovering such regularity in galaxies really
helps us to better understand the mechanics
that make them tick-you won't find a dense
galaxy rotating quickly, while another with the
same size but lower density is rotating more
slowly," he said.
Professor Meurer and his team also found
evidence of older stars existing out to the edge
of galaxies.
"Based on existing models, we expected to find
a thin population of young stars at the very
edge of the galactic disks we studied," he said.
"But instead of finding just gas and newly
formed stars at the edges of their disks, we
also found a significant population of older
stars along with the thin smattering of young
stars and interstellar gas."
"This is an important result because knowing
where a galaxy ends means we astronomers
can limit our observations and not waste time,
effort and computer processing power on
studying data from beyond that point," said
Professor Meurer.
"So because of this work, we now know that
galaxies rotate once every billion years, with a
sharp edge that's populated with a mixture of
interstellar gas, with both old and young
stars."
Professor Meurer said that the next
generation of radio telescopes, like the soon-
to-be-built Square Kilometre Array (SKA), will
generate enormous amounts of data, and
knowing where the edge of a galaxy lies will
reduce the processing power needed to search
through the data.
"When the SKA comes online in the next
decade, we'll need as much help as we can get
to characterise the billions of galaxies these
telescopes will soon make available to us."
Jupiter's atmospheric
beauty

In the year and a half NASA's Juno spacecraft

has been orbiting Jupiter, the science team led
by Southwest Research Institute's Dr. Scott
Bolton has discovered that the orange and
white bands that characterize Jupiter's outer
atmosphere extend thousands of miles into the
gas giant's atmosphere. The findings are part
of a four-article collection about Juno science
results in the March 8th edition of the
journal Nature.
"With Juno only about a third of the way
through its primary mission, we are being
presented with a whole new Jupiter that is
shaking up our basic understanding of giant
planets throughout the universe," said Bolton,
principal investigator of the mission and a
coauthor of the Nature papers. "Surprisingly,
the Jupiter we grew up knowing and loving,
dressed in gorgeous colorful bands across its
midsection, is now known to be beautiful down
deep as well."
The four Nature articles focus on the structure
of Jupiter's deep interior and the surprising
discovery of clusters of cyclones encircling
Jupiter's poles. One paper discusses Juno's
unique orbit, and how the spacecraft's precise
radio tracking system measures Jupiter's
gravity field.
"This Juno system is so technically advanced
that measurement capabilities have been
improved by orders of magnitude in precision,"
Bolton said. This improved accuracy allowed
scientists to detect an asymmetry in Jupiter's
structure at depths near 3,000 km. "This
asymmetry mirrors what we see in Jupiter's
cloud layer, those colorful bands that blow
across Jupiter." A second paper describes
how these belts and zones manifest themselves
as jet streams deep in Jupiter's atmosphere.
"This discovery surprised the entire team,"
Bolton said. "The Juno data show that what
seemed like a weather pattern on Jupiter
extends down well below the depth where
sunlight penetrates, which means that
something other than weather may be driving
these forces.
"In total, Jupiter's jet streams contain about 1
percent of the gas giant's mass. That means a
mass equivalent to about three Earths is
moving around Jupiter in the form of jet
streams," he continued. "That is a lot of
atmosphere to be moving with jet streams. On
Earth, our atmosphere is less than a millionth
of Earth's mass!"
A third paper looks at how the symmetric
layers of Jupiter work and reports that below
the jet stream layer, Jupiter rotates as a rigid
body. "Somehow Jupiter transitions from the
jet stream layer that rotates like the top cloud
layer to a rigid body deep inside where
everything moves together," Bolton said. "The
transition might have something to do with the
creation of Jupiter's strong magnetic field."
Understanding the transition between the
atmospheric layer and the more rigid layers
that lie beneath will be revealed during the
remainder of Juno's primary mission over the
next couple of years. The fourth paper
provided the first detailed look at how the
familiar bands give way to giant cyclones
organized in geometric patterns at both of
Jupiter's poles.
"Before Juno, scientists knew little about
Jupiter's poles due to the Earth's perspective
of the planet," he said. Previous spacecraft
flew past the gas giant at an equatorial level,
capturing wonderful views of the zones and
belts but revealing little about its polar
regions. "Turns out, Jupiter is hardly
recognizable from a polar perspective."
Visible and infrared images obtained from
above each pole during Juno's first five orbits
reveal persistent polygonal patterns of large
cyclones. In the north, eight circumpolar
cyclones surround a single polar cyclone. In
the south, one polar cyclone is encircled by
five circumpolar cyclones.
"These cyclones are huge with winds speeds as
great as 220 miles per hour," Bolton said.
"These novel features seem to exist in
harmony, close together and persistent. They
are surprisingly different from the single
storm pattern that the Cassini spacecraft
measured at Saturn's poles."
Launched in 2011, Juno arrived at Jupiter in
2016. Every 53 days, the spacecraft swings in
close to the planet, studying its auroras and
probing beneath the obscuring cloud cover to
learn more about the planet's origins,
structure, weather layer and magnetosphere.
Frequent sexual
activity can boost
brain power in older
adults

More frequent sexual activity has been linked

to improved brain function in older adults,
according to a study by the universities of
Coventry and Oxford.
Researchers found that people who engaged in
more regular sexual activity scored higher on
tests that measured their verbal fluency and
their ability to visually perceive objects and
the spaces between them.
The study, published today in The Journals of
Gerontology, Series B: Psychological and
Social Sciences, involved 73 people aged
between 50 and 83.
Participants filled in a questionnaire on how
often, on average, they had engaged in sexual
activity over the past 12 months -- whether
that was never, monthly or weekly -- as well as
answering questions about their general health
and lifestyle.
The 28 men and 45 women also took part in a
standardized test, which is typically used to
measure different patterns of brain function in
older adults, focusing on attention, memory,
fluency, language and visuospatial ability.
This included verbal fluency tests in which
participants had 60 seconds to name as many
animals as possible, and then to say as many
words beginning with F as they could -- tests
which reflect higher cognitive abilities.
They also took part in tests to determine their
visuospatial ability which included copying a
complex design and drawing a clock face from
memory.
It was these two sets of tests where
participants who engaged in weekly sexual
activity scored the most highly, with the verbal
fluency tests showing the strongest effect.
The results suggested that frequency of sexual
activity was not linked to attention, memory or
language. In these tests, the participants
performed just as well regardless of whether
they reported weekly, monthly or no sexual
activity.
This study expanded on previous research
from 2016, which found that older adults who
were sexually active scored higher on
cognitive tests than those who were not
sexually active.
But this time the research looked more
specifically at the impact of the frequency of
sexual activity (i.e. does it make a difference
how often you engage in sexual activity) and
also used a broader range of tests to
investigate different areas of cognitive
function.
The academics say further research could look
at how biological elements, such as dopamine
and oxytocin, could influence the relationship
between sexual activity and brain function to
give a fuller explanation of their findings.
Lead researcher Dr Hayley Wright, from
Coventry University's Centre for Research in
Psychology, Behaviour and Achievement, said:
"We can only speculate whether this is driven
by social or physical elements -- but an area
we would like to research further is the
biological mechanisms that may influence this.
"Every time we do another piece of research
we are getting a little bit closer to
understanding why this association exists at
all, what the underlying mechanisms are, and
whether there is a 'cause and effect'
relationship between sexual activity and
cognitive function in older people.
"People don't like to think that older people
have sex -- but we need to challenge this
conception at a societal level and look at what
impact sexual activity can have on those aged
50 and over, beyond the known effects on
sexual health and general wellbeing."
No link between
hormonal birth
control and
depression
Women face several options when it comes to
birth control, so potential side effects often
factor into their decision. Depression is a
common concern for many women, but a new
study by researchers at The Ohio State
University Wexner Medical Center is putting
patients at ease. It found there's no evidence
to support a link between hormonal birth
control and depression.
"Depression is a concern for a lot of women
when they're starting hormonal contraception,
particularly when they're using specific types
that have progesterone," said Dr. Brett Worly,
lead author of the study and OB/GYN at Ohio
State Wexner Medical Center. "Based on our
findings, this side effect shouldn't be a concern
for most women, and they should feel
comfortable knowing they're making a safe
choice."
Worly and his team reviewed thousands of
studies on the mental health effects of
contraceptives. They included data tied to
various contraception methods, including
injections, implants and pills. Similarly,
researchers reviewed studies examining the
effects of hormonal birth control on
postpartum women, adolescents and women
with a history of depression, all with the same
conclusion: there is insufficient evidence to
prove a link between birth control and
depression.
"Adolescents and pregnant moms will
sometimes have a higher risk of depression,
not necessarily because of the medicine
they're taking, but because they have that risk
to start with," said Worly. "For those patients,
it's important that they have a good
relationship with their healthcare provider so
they can get the appropriate screening done --
regardless of the medications they're on."
Worly said patient concerns are valid, and he
wants women to continue having open and
honest discussions with their doctor about
which options work for them.
"We live in a media-savvy age where if one or a
few people have severe side effects, all of a
sudden, that gets amplified to every single
person," he said. "The biggest misconception is
that birth control leads to depression. For
most patients that's just not the case."
Most women have tried at least one method of
contraception in their lives, with nearly 37
million women in the United States currently
using birth control. Sixty-seven percent of
current users have opted for a non-permanent
hormonal method such as an oral pill, but
among those, 30 percent have discontinued
their use due to dissatisfaction with potential
side effects.
Fasting diets reduce
important risk factor for
cardiovascular disease
Intermittent energy restriction diets, such as
the 5:2 diet, clears fat from the blood quicker
after eating meals than daily calorie
restriction diets – reducing an important risk
factor for cardiovascular disease, a new study
in the British Journal of Nutrition reports.
In the first study of its kind, researchers from
the University of Surrey examined the impact
of the 5:2 diet on the body’s ability to
metabolise, as well as clear fat and glucose
after a meal and they compared it to the
effects of weight-loss achieved by a more
conventional daily calorie restriction diet.
Previous studies in this field have
predominantly focused on blood risk markers
taken in the fasted state, which only tend to be,
in for the minority of the time, overnight.
During the study, overweight participants were
assigned to either the 5:2 diet or a daily
calorie restriction diet and were required to
lose five per cent of their weight. Those on the
5:2 diet ate normally for five days and for their
two fasting days consumed 600 calories, using
LighterLife Fast Foodpacks, whilst those on the
daily diet were advised to eat 600 calories less
per day than their estimated requirements for
weight maintenance (in the study women ate
approx. 1400 calories, men ate approx. 1900
calories/day).
Under the expert guidance of the team, those
on the 5:2 diet achieved 5 per cent weight-loss
in 59 days compared to those on the daily
calorie restriction diet who achieved their goal
in 73 days. 27 participants completed the
study, while approximately 20 per cent of
participants in both groups dropped out
because they either could not tolerate the diet
or were unable to attain their 5 per cent
weight-loss target.
Researchers found that participants who
followed the 5:2 diet cleared the fat
(triglyceride) from a meal given to them more
efficiently than those who undertook the daily
diet. Although there were no differences in
post meal glucose handling, researchers were
surprised to find variations between the diets
in c-peptide (a marker of insulin secretion
from the pancreas) following the meal, the
significance of which will need further
investigation.
The study also found a greater reduction in
systolic blood pressure (the pressure in your
blood vessels when your heart beats) in
participants on the 5:2 diet. Systolic blood
pressure was reduced by 9% of following the
5:2, compared to a small 2% increase among
those on the daily diet. A reduction in systolic
blood pressure reduces pressure on arteries,
potentially lessening incidences of heart
attacks and strokes.
Dr Rona Antoni, Research Fellow in Nutritional
Metabolism at the University of Surrey, said:
“As seen in this study, some of our
participants struggled to tolerate the 5:2 diet,
which suggests that this approach is not suited
to everybody; ultimately the key to dieting
success is finding an approach you can sustain
long term.
“But for those who do well and are able stick to
the 5:2 diet, it could potentially have a
beneficial impact on some important risk
markers for cardiovascular disease, in some
cases more so than daily dieting. However, we
need further studies to confirm our findings, to
understand the underlying mechanisms and to
improve the tolerability of the 5:2 diet.”
High omega-6 levels
can protect against
premature death
Could omega-6 fatty acids protect you against
premature death? The answer is yes,
according to a new University of Eastern
Finland study. While protecting against death,
omega-6 fatty acids also keep cardiovascular
diseases at bay.
"Linoleic acid is the most common
polyunsaturated omega-6 fatty acid. We
discovered that the higher the blood linoleic
acid level, the smaller the risk of premature
death," says Adjunct Professor Jyrki Virtanen
from the University of Eastern Finland,
reporting the findings in the American Journal
of Clinical Nutrition.
Although omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids
are known for their beneficial effect on blood
cholesterol levels, it has been speculated that
they may increase the risk of several chronic
diseases by promoting low-grade inflammation,
among other things. The reasoning behind this
speculation is that in the human body, linoleic
acid is converted into arachidonic acid (also an
omega-6 fatty acid) which, in turn, is
converted into various inflammation-
promoting compounds. However, omega-6
fatty acids also increase the production of
anti-inflammatory compounds, and this is why
it is challenging to determine the associations
of dietary factors with the risk of developing
disease merely by focusing on their effects on
disease risk factors.
Ongoing at the University of Eastern Finland,
the Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease Risk
Factor Study, KIHD, determined the blood fatty
acid levels of 2,480 men between 42 and 60
years of age at the onset of the study, in 1984-
1989. During an average follow-up of 22 years,
1,143 men died of disease-related causes, and
deaths due to an accident or other reasons
were excluded from the study.
When the researchers divided the study
participants into five different groups based on
their blood linoleic acid level, they discovered
that the risk of premature death was 43%
lower in the group with the highest level, when
compared to the group with the lowest level. A
more detailed analysis of the causes of death
showed that a similar association exists for
death due to cardiovascular diseases, as well
as for death due to some other reason than
cardiovascular diseases or cancer. However,
no association was observed for death due to
cancer. Similar, although slightly weaker,
associations were also observed for the blood
arachidonic acid level. Another significant
finding of the study is that the outcome is very
similar regardless of whether the study
participants suffered from cardiovascular
diseases, cancer or diabetes at the onset of
the study.
The study backs up findings from earlier
population-based studies which have linked a
higher dietary intake of linoleic acid and a
higher blood linoleic acid level to a smaller risk
of cardiovascular diseases and type 2
diabetes, without increasing the risk of cancer,
for example. The observed association of
arachidonic acid with a reduced risk of death
is a new finding.
The blood linoleic acid level is determined by a
person's diet, and the main sources of linoleic
acid are vegetable oils, plant-based spreads,
nuts and seeds. However, a person's diet will
affect his or her blood arachidonic acid level
only a little.
Growing need for
urban forests

A new USDA Forest Service study projects that

urban land in Lower 48 states will more than
double between 2010 and 2060, which will
affect forest and agricultural lands that are
being converted to urban uses as well as
expand the importance of urban forests in
relation to environmental quality and human
well-being.
A USDA Forest Service study published in
the Journal of Forestry, "U.S. Urban Forest
Statistics, Values and Projections," estimates
change in urban land on a national level and
state-by-state, and also updates data on the
value of the nation's urban forests.
Urban land increased from 2.6 percent (58
million acres) in 2000 to 3 percent (68 million
acres) in 2010; states with the greatest
amount of urban growth were in the
South/Southeast (Texas, Florida, North
Carolina, Georgia and South Carolina).
Researchers anticipate that between 2010 and
2060, urban land will increase 95.5 million
acres to 163 million acres (8.6 percent), an
area roughly the size of Montana. Eighteen
states are projected to have an increase of
over 2 million acres of urban land.
In addition to assessing change in urban areas,
lead author David Nowak of the USDA Forest
Service's Forest Inventory and Analysis
Program also updated previous estimates of
the size of the nation's urban forests, which
contribute to the health of urban populations
by producing billions of dollars in annual
benefits associated with air quality, climate
change and reduced energy use. In previous
research, Nowak has found that the health
impacts of urban forests across the nation
include the avoidance of 670 incidents of
human mortality and 575,000 incidents of
acute respiratory symptoms, among other
health impacts.
Nationally, U.S. urban forests contain an
estimated 5.5 billion trees (39.4 percent tree
cover) that produce at least $18 billion in
benefits to society.
"Urbanization and urban forests are likely to
be one the most important forest influences
and influential forests of the 21st Century,"
said Nowak. "A healthy and well-managed
urban forest can help reduce some of the
environmental issues associated with
urbanization such as increased air
temperatures and energy use, reduced air and
water quality, and increased human stress,
and ultimately help people living within and
around urban areas."
States with the greatest percent urban land
are all along the northeastern Atlantic coast,
with large populations and relatively small
state area: New Jersey, Rhode Island,
Massachusetts, Connecticut and Delaware. The
impact of current urban forests is likely
greatest in these areas due to the relatively
large proportion of urban land.
In each of the states with the greatest amount
of projected urban land growth (California,
Texas, Florida, North Carolina and
Pennsylvania), the increase in urban land over
the 50-year period is greater than the land
area of Connecticut (3 million acres).
"Research by the USDA Forest Service is
informing cities and communities as they make
decisions about managing urban forests," said
Tony Ferguson, Director of the USDA Forest
Service's Northern Research Station and the
Forest Products Laboratory. "By measuring
and monitoring urban forests, society can
better understand the value urban forests
deliver, and how urban forests and their role in
reducing pollution and reducing energy costs
changes over time."
greener
neighborhoods and
beneficial effects on
brain development

Primary schoolchildren who have been raised

in homes surrounded by more greenspace
tend to present with larger volumes of white
and grey matter in certain areas of the brain.
Those anatomic differences are in turn
associated with beneficial effects on cognitive
function. This is the main conclusion of a study
published in Environmental Health
Perspectives and led by the Barcelona Institute
for Global Health (ISGlobal), a center
supported by the "la Caixa" Foundation, in
collaboration with the Hospital del Mar (Spain)
and the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health
(UCLA FSPH).
The study was performed in a subcohort of
253 schoolchildren from the BREATHE project
in Barcelona (Spain). Lifelong exposure to
residential greenspace was estimated using
satellite-based information on the children's
addresses from birth up through to the time of
the study. Brain anatomy was studied using
high-resolution 3D magnetic resonance images
(MRI). Working memory and inattentiveness
were evaluated with computerized tests.
"This is the first study that evaluates the
association between long-term exposure to
greenspace and brain structure," says Dr.
Payam Dadvand, ISGlobal researcher and
leading author of the study. "Our findings
suggest that exposure to greenspace early in
life could result in beneficial structural
changes in the brain."
The data analysis showed that long-term
exposure to greenness was positively
associated with white and grey matter volume
in some parts of the brain that partly
overlapped with those associated with higher
scores on cognitive tests. Moreover, peak
volumes of white and grey matter in the
regions associated with greenspace exposure
predicted better working memory and reduced
inattentiveness.
Contact to nature has been thought to be
essential for brain development in children. A
previous study of 2,593 children ages 7 to 10
from the BREATHE project showed that, during
the 12-month course of the study, children who
attended schools with higher outdoor
greenspace had a greater increase in working
memory and a greater reduction in
inattentiveness than children who attended
schools with less surrounding greenness.
The Biophilia hypothesis suggests an
evolutionary bond of humans to nature.
Accordingly, green spaces are suggested to
provide children with opportunities for
psychological restoration and prompt
important exercises in discovery, creativity
and risk taking, which, in turn, are suggested
to positively influence different aspects of
brain development. Furthermore, greener
areas often have lower levels of air pollution
and noise and may enrich microbial inputs
from the environment, all of which could
translate into indirect benefits for brain
development.
"The study adds to growing evidence
suggesting that early life exposure to green
space and other environmental factors can
exert measurable and lasting effects on our
health through the life course," says co-author
Michael Jerrett, department chair and
professor of Environmental Health Sciences at
the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.
"These results also might provide clues on how
such structural changes could underlie the
observed beneficial effects of greenspace
exposure on cognitive and behavioral
development," explains Dr. Jesus Pujol, from
the Radiology unit at Hospital del Mar and co-
author of the study.
"This study adds to the existing evidence about
the benefits of transforming our cities by
increasing access to the natural environment,"
says Prof. Jordi Sunyer, an ISGlobal
researcher and last author of the study.
Further studies are needed to confirm the
results in other populations, settings and
climates, evaluate other cognitive and
neurological outcomes and examine
differences according to the nature and quality
of greenspace and children's access to and
use of them.
Bats as barometer of
climate change

Historical radar data from weather monitoring

archives have provided unprecedented access
to the behaviours of the world's largest colony
of migratory bats and revealed changes in the
animals' seasonal habits with implications for
pest management and agricultural production.
The work, which focuses on the Bracken Cave
colony in southern Texas, is the first long-term
study of animal migration using radar, say
Phillip Stepanian and Charlotte Wainwright,
meteorologists from Rothamsted Research.
The pair's findings are published today
in Global Change Biology.
"These bats spend every night hard at work for
local farmers, consuming over half of their
own weight in insects, many of which are
harmful agricultural pests, such as the noctuid
moths, corn earworm and fall armyworm,"
says Wainwright.
"Our initial goal was just to show that the
populations could be monitored remotely
without disturbing the colony. We weren't
expecting to see anything particularly
noteworthy. The results were surprising," says
Stepanian.
Millions of bats regularly migrate north from
Mexico to Bracken Cave, which is managed by
Bat Conservation International in the suburbs
of San Antonio. Using the radar data, the pair
measured the population exiting the cave
every night for 22 years, from 1995 to 2017,
enabling them to record seasonal and longer-
term changes.
"We found that the bats are migrating to Texas
roughly two weeks earlier than they were 22
years ago. They now arrive, on average, in mid
March rather than late March," says
Wainwright.
While most bats tend to have left by the end of
November, the pair discovered that about
3.5% of the summer population are now
staying for the winter, compared with less than
1% 22 years ago and, from written cave
surveys, no overwintering bats at all in the mid
1950s.
"We can't tell if the overwintering bats are
bats that arrived in March and have not
returned south, or if they migrated to Bracken
Cave from farther north," says Stepanian.
"However, the behavioural patterns indicate a
response to some environmental change, and
to the presence of insect prey earlier in the
year."
This bat study "presents a new perspective on
adaptation to global change, answering some
longstanding questions while raising many
more," conclude the pair. They also note that
"weather radar networks are key
infrastructure around much of the world...and
hold the promise of providing continental
surveillance of bat populations, as well as their
ongoing responses to global change."
Screen time before
bed linked with less
sleep, higher BMIs in
kids

It may be tempting to let your kids stay up late

playing games on their smartphones, but using
digital devices before bed may contribute to
sleep and nutrition problems in children,
according to Penn State College of Medicine
researchers.
After surveying parents about their kids'
technology and sleep habits, researchers
found that using technology before bed was
associated with less sleep, poorer sleep
quality, more fatigue in the morning and -- in
the children that watched TV or used their cell
phones before bed -- higher body mass
indexes (BMI).
Caitlyn Fuller, medical student, said the results
-- published in the journal Global Pediatric
Health -- may suggest a vicious cycle of
technology use, poor sleep and rising BMIs.
"We saw technology before bed being
associated with less sleep and higher BMIs,"
Fuller said. "We also saw this technology use
being associated with more fatigue in the
morning, which circling back, is another risk
factor for higher BMIs. So we're seeing a loop
pattern forming."
Previous research has found associations
between more technology use and less sleep,
more inattention, and higher BMIs in
adolescents. But even though research shows
that 40 percent of children have cell phones by
fifth grade, the researchers said not as much
was known about the effects of technology on a
younger population.
Fuller said that because sleep is so critical to a
child's development, she was interested in
learning more about the connection between
screen time right before bed and how well
those children slept, as well as how it affected
other aspects of their health.
The researchers asked the parents of 234
children between the ages of 8 and 17 years
about their kids' sleep and technology habits.
The parents provided information about their
children's' technology habits, sleep patterns,
nutrition and activity. The researchers also
asked the parents to further specify whether
their children were using cell phones,
computers, video games or television during
their technology time.
After analyzing the data, the researchers
found several adverse effects associated with
using different technologies right before bed.
"We found an association between higher BMIs
and an increase in technology use, and also
that children who reported more technology
use at bedtime were associated with less sleep
at night," Fuller said. "These children were also
more likely to be tired in the morning, which is
also a risk factor for higher BMIs."
Children who reported watching TV or playing
video games before bed got an average of 30
minutes less sleep than those who did not,
while kids who used their phone or a computer
before bed averaged an hour less of sleep than
those who did not.
There was also an association between using
all four types of technology before bed and
increased cell phone use at night, such as
waking up to text someone, with watching TV
resulting in the highest odds.
Fuller said the results support new
recommendations from the American Academy
of Pediatrics (AAP) about screen time for
children. The AAP recommends that parents
create boundaries around technology use,
such as requiring their kids to put away their
devices during meal times and keeping phones
out of bedrooms at night.
Dr. Marsha Novick, associate professor of
pediatrics and family and community medicine,
said that while more research is needed to
determine whether multiple devices at bedtime
results in worse sleep than just one device, the
study can help pediatricians talk to parents
about the use of technology.
"Although there are many benefits to using
technology, pediatricians may want to counsel
parents about limiting technology for their
kids, particularly at bedtime, to promote
healthy childhood development and mental
health," Novick said.

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