Raising the minimum wage by $1 could lead to a substantial decrease in the number of reported cases of child neglect, research shows.

“When caregivers have more disposable income, they’re better able to provide a child’s basic needs…”

Congress is considering increases to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, and several state and city governments have enacted or are considering minimum wages higher than the federal rate.

A $1 increase would result in 9,700 (9.6 percent) fewer reported cases of child neglect annually as well as a likely decrease in cases of physical abuse, says Lindsey Rose Bullinger of Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

“Money matters,” Bullinger says. “When caregivers have more disposable income, they’re better able to provide a child’s basic needs such as clothing, food, medical care, and a safe home. Policies that increase the income of the working poor can improve children’s welfare, especially younger children, quite substantially.”

Bullinger and her colleague reached their conclusions by analyzing nine years of child maltreatment reports from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System. More than 30 states had minimum wages exceeding the federal requirement by an average of $1 during the study period, allowing the researchers to track changes in the number of reports to child protective service agencies with increases in the minimum wage.

To protect kids from neglect, think holistically

The substantial decrease in child neglect cases is concentrated among toddlers and school-age children, but changes in the minimum wage had little impact on reports of neglect of teenagers. The researchers found no variation based on a child’s race.

One measure before Congress would increase the wage from $7.25 to $10.10, and several cities are looking at wages as high as $15.

“We can’t say for sure that there would be even fewer cases of child maltreatment if hourly pay were that high, but our findings point in that direction,” Bullinger says.

Most research on the minimum wage has focused on its effects on the economy and poverty. Too often, policymakers have overlooked the impact on human health and well-being, Bullinger says. She directed a previous research project that found that increases in the minimum wage resulted in a drop-off in teen births.

Minimum wage hikes help some workers, not others

Bullinger’s complete findings were published in the journal Children and Youth Services Review. Kerri Raissian of the University of Connecticut also contributed to the research.

Source: Indiana University

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Recently experiencing severe weather events such as floods, storms, and drought can make people more inclined to support policies aimed at adapting to the effects of climate change, but not by much and not for long.

“Extreme weather is much less significant than other factors when it comes to attitudes about climate.”

The relationship between exposure to extreme weather and support for climate policies is small, a new study finds. And it fades quickly; a month after an extreme weather event, there was no effect.

“People respond to recent weather, whether it’s temperature spikes, severe storms, or other events,” says David Konisky, an associate professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University and an author of the study. “But the effects are small. Extreme weather is much less significant than other factors when it comes to attitudes about climate.”

A warming climate is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It seems to follow that experiencing extreme weather would make people more supportive of policies to adapt to climate change. The study suggests that may happen, but only for the short term and not to the extent that may have been expected.

Konisky says the effect of experiencing extreme weather pales next to other factors that influence attitudes toward climate policies, such as one’s political beliefs and party affiliation.

“People are pretty certain of where they stand on climate change, and extreme weather does not really move the needle much,” he says.

How to know if climate change caused the weather

The researchers examined survey responses from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study and correlated them with data from the National Weather Service’s Storm Events Database. They focused on three policies for climate adaptation: restrictions on coastal development, limits on outdoor residential water use and regulation of stormwater runoff from residential property.

All three policies enjoyed considerable support, but respondents who had experienced recent extreme weather expressed only modestly stronger support than other respondents.

The researchers also looked for correlations between extreme weather events and support for policies to adapt to those particular events—for example, coastal flooding and restrictions on coastal development. There too, they found only modest correlations.

The study included a wide variety of severe weather events, Konisky says, and its findings may not entirely apply to headline-grabbing events like the Texas flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey or the threat to Florida by Hurricane Irma. But it suggests that even catastrophic weather may not change attitudes as much as many people expect.

Why so little grassroots action against climate change?

The study appears in the journal Global Environmental Change. Additional authors are from American University, Australian National University, and Temple University.

Source: Indiana University

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A nonpsychoactive compound in cannabis called cannabidiol, or CBD, appears to protect against the long-term negative psychiatric effects of THC, the primary psychoactive ingredient in cannabis.

Other research has shown that long-term use of cannabis increases adolescent drug users’ risk for certain psychiatric and neurological disorders, such as schizophrenia. The risk to teens is greater than ever since selective breeding of plants to produce higher levels of THC over the past several decades has substantially increased exposure to the compound.

While THC levels rose 300% from 1995 to 2014, the levels of CBD have declined 60%.

“This study confirms in an animal model that high-THC cannabis use by adolescents may have long-lasting behavioral effects,” says lead author of the new study Ken Mackie, professor in the Indiana University College of Arts and Sciences’ psychological and brain sciences department.

“It also suggests that strains of cannabis with similar levels of CBD and THC would pose significantly less long-term risk due to CBD’s protective effect against THC.”

THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, is the chemical in cannabis that causes the “high” experienced during its use. Cannabis with higher levels of THC possess lower levels of the protective CBD, and vice versa, due to a biological link between THC and CBD production in the plant. An analysis of cannabis seized by the US Drug Enforcement Administration found that while THC levels rose 300 percent from 1995 to 2014, the levels of CBD have declined 60 percent.

In contrast to THC, CBD does not cause a “high.” It is also an important ingredient in medical cannabis. For example, CBD appears useful as a treatment for some forms of severe childhood epilepsy, and its use for severe epilepsy was approved by the Indiana legislature this year.

“This is the first study in a rigorously controlled animal model to find that CBD appears to protect the brain against the negative effects of chronic THC,” says Mackie, director of the Linda and Jack Gill Center for Biomolecular Science at the university.

“This is especially important since heavy use of cannabis with higher levels of THC poses a serious risk to adolescents.”

Will legal pot because a public health problem?

To conduct their study, the researchers divided adolescent or adult male mice into five groups. Three groups received 3 milligrams per kilogram of body weight of either THC, CBD, or THC with CBD every day for three weeks. The other two groups received a placebo or no treatment.

All mice were then tested for signs of impaired memory, obsessive-compulsive behaviors, and anxiety immediately following treatment as well as six weeks after treatment.

The mice exposed to THC alone showed signs of impaired memory and increased obsessive-compulsive behavior immediately after treatment. The adolescent group still experienced these changes six weeks after treatment, whereas the adult group did not. Both groups experienced a long-term increase in anxiety.

By contrast, adult and adolescent mice exposed to CBD alone showed no behavioral changes immediately or six weeks after treatment. Most significantly, mice in both age groups that received CBD with THC exhibited no short- or long-term behavioral changes. These results suggest that long-term use of cannabis strains containing similar amounts of CBD and THC may be less harmful than long-term use of high-THC strains.

The National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse supported the work, which appears in the journal Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research.

Source: Indiana University

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A new chemical principle allows scientists to accurately predict how effectively engineered molecules will perform in solution.

“…we want to make molecules that will work in practice to help solve problems in the real world.”

The discovery could advance the long-term storage of nuclear waste, an increasingly burdensome and costly task for the public and private agencies that protect people from these harmful chemicals.

“This work represents a major step forward in the effort to engineer specially designed nanostructures by providing a new, highly accurate method to predict how these molecules will behave in solution,” said lead author Amar Flood, a professor in the chemistry department at Indiana University.

Flood says the study addresses the fact that it is nearly impossible to predict how efficiently an engineered molecule will perform in the real world. This is because chemists can currently only design molecules to function in isolation, despite the fact that molecules exist in combination—or “in solution”—with other molecules. Salt water, for example, is a solution of salt in water.

He compares the situation to designing a machine in outer space and then placing it at the bottom of the ocean. The waterlogged device will not function the same as the original design.

This is especially serious because creating artificial molecules to serve a specific function requires extremely precise design—like building a lock to fit a key.

For example, a special molecule developed by Flood’s lab, called a cyanostar, consists of a five-sided star-shaped lattice of carbon and nitrogen atoms with an empty center—the “lock”—whose specific shape causes negatively charged molecules such as phosphates and nitrates—the “key”—to catch in the center and break off from their previous host. If the solution fills up or warps the lock, the key might no longer work.

Structures such as the cyanostar are also known as “receptor molecules” because they are specially designed to receive specific molecules.

In addition to accomplishing nuclear waste reduction, this technology may be used to remove chloride from water—a part of the process used to convert seawater into freshwater—to eliminate excess chemical fertilizers from soil, or to gather lithium ions used in renewable power.

Cheap carbon ‘roses’ pull radioactivity from water

With the methods reported in the paper, Flood says, chemists can start to design new molecular reactions with the end goal in mind. Specifically, the new principle finds that the attraction between receptor molecules and negatively charged ion molecules is based on the dielectric constant of the solvent in which they’re combined. A dielectric constant is a measurement of a substance’s ability to stabilize electrical charge.

To test their method, the researchers applied their newly developed chemical principle to triazolophane—a molecule designed to extract chloride from surrounding molecules—in combination with chemical solvents commonly used in reactions to remove unwanted ions from other liquids. In each case, the principles discovered by Flood’s group accurately predicted the molecules’ effectiveness.

The primary researcher responsible for the method is Yun Liu, a doctoral student in Flood’s lab.

“The current paradigm only works for molecular designs on the drawing board, in theory, ” Liu says. “But we want to make molecules that will work in practice to help solve problems in the real world.”

The team also notes that the ability to accurately predict how a molecule will function in solution will assist in the development of highly accurate computer simulations to rapidly test chemically engineered molecules designed to achieve specific effects.

Solar solution may make nuclear waste storage safer

The US Department of Energy supported the work, which appears in the journal CHEM.

Source: Indiana University

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While the US birth rate hasn’t changed for teenage girls in the last two generations, researchers have found that teenage parenthood has changed over time.

The researchers analyzed parenthood, education, and income statistics over a long time span from two groups of about 10,000 people—those born in 1962-64 and those born in 1980-82. These are the key findings:

• Teen fathers and mothers came increasingly from single-mother families with disadvantaged backgrounds.
• The proportion of teen mothers or fathers living with their partners didn’t change, but far fewer were married.
• The birth rates to teenage girls across the two groups didn’t change, but the reported rate of teenage fatherhood increased, a seemingly contradictory conclusion. For example, 1.7 percent of the men in the older group were fathers by the time they were 17, while in the younger group, nearly double that number were dads. About 8 percent of the 17-year-old females in both groups were mothers.

The researchers offer several theories for the reported growth in the number of teenage fathers.

“In what might be called the ‘cougar effect,’ we may be seeing more young males partnering with older females,” says researcher Maureen Pirog of Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs. In the media, television shows such as Cougar Town and Extreme Cougar Wives and dating websites like CougarLife.com have popularized this phenomenon.

Pirog says that other factors could explain the reported increase in teenage paternity. State child support enforcement offices are aggressively working to establish paternity, made easier by the simplicity and lower cost of genetic paternity tests and the now-commonplace practice of establishing paternity in the hospital.

It is also possible that teenage girls are selecting male partners who are closer to their own age. Reporting for teenage males may have improved because the stigma associated with non-marital parenting decreased between the two generations.

Whatever the reason, it is a worrisome trend because teen fathers are less likely than older men to provide financial support and a stable home environment to their children.

But there are encouraging data points in the findings, the researchers say. Teen parents are staying in school longer, and there has been an uptick in their income level.

Sell birth control pills over the counter to teens?

“What hasn’t changed over time is the need for well-funded Head Start programs and pre-K programs so that teen mothers can continue their work or study,” Pirog says. “High schools need to foster programs targeted at those at the greatest risk of unintended pregnancy and unprepared parenting.”

Pirog’s co-researchers are from Korea University and Columbus State University in Georgia.

The article appears in the journal Child Youth Care Forum.

Source: Indiana University

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Salmon play a significant role in shaping mountain landscapes, according to a new study that shows that when they spawn, the earth moves. But it only happens over the course of hundreds of thousands or even millions of years.

For a new paper in Geomorphology, Brian Yanites, an assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Indiana University, and colleagues modeled the effect of spawning salmon on riverbed erosion and calculated how it affects mountain landscapes.

Researchers combined the fact that spawning salmon stir up sediment in riverbeds and accelerate the erosion of river channels with mathematical formulations of sediment transport and erosion to show how their presence reshapes mountains and valleys.

“While the influence of salmon reproduction on sediment transport has been known, this is the first paper that has suggested the process could influence the height and shape of the landscape over long timescales and large spatial scales, such as the extent of a mountain range,” Yanites says.

And it’s not just a little bit, either. Researchers calculated that a landscape where salmon spawn could be up to 30 percent lower than a comparable landscape with no salmon present.

Salmon hatch in fresh water, live their lives in oceans, then return to rivers and streams to spawn. Female salmon turn on their sides and flap their tails to build nests, called redds, in which they lay eggs. Males then fertilize the eggs, which develop and hatch. In building the nests, the female salmon stir up sediment and help expose the riverbed, leading to more erosion nearby and downstream.

Some salmon are more potent mountain-movers than others. Different species prefer to build redds in different types of sediment, from the coarse grains found in the upper reaches of streams to the finer grains found downstream.

Chinook salmon will spawn in a wider range of grain sizes than sockeye and pink species; therefore, chinook can disrupt longer reaches of rivers and streams and have a greater impact on erosion.

Why ‘normal’ salmon don’t get as many parasites

The study suggests salmon are at the center of a cycle of the building up and wearing down of mountains. Mountains are built by tectonic processes that lift rocks to higher elevations. In the Pacific Northwest, scientists believe, mountain-building created distinct environments that led to species “radiation”—the evolution of distinct salmon species from a common ancestor.

Those species, through their spawning, contribute to erosion that wears down the very mountains that allowed the species to develop in the first place.

“More species means a wider range of grain size in which spawning can occur and therefore a greater impact on erosion,” Yanites says. “Thus we suggest that the radiation of salmon species in the Pacific Northwest may have lowered the elevation of mountains in the region.”

Alexander Fremier, an associate professor in the School of the Environment at Washington State University. Elowyn Yager, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Idaho, is a coauthor.

Source: Indiana University

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New research may provide a path toward non-addictive pain relief, which could be critical in fighting the opioid addiction crisis in the United States.

In a pre-clinical study with mice, researchers discovered that the use of compounds called positive allosteric modulators, or PAMs, enhances the effect of pain-relief chemicals the body naturally produces in response to stress or injury.

The study also significantly strengthens preliminary evidence about the effectiveness of these compounds first reported at the 2016 Society for Neuroscience Conference in San Diego, California.

“Our study shows that a PAM enhances the effects of these pain-killing chemicals without producing tolerance or decreased effectiveness over time, both of which contribute to addiction in people who use opioid-based pain medications,” says study leader Andrea G. Hohmann, a chair of neuroscience and professor in the Indiana University-Bloomington psychological and brain sciences department.

“We see this research as an important step forward in the search for new, non-addictive methods to reduce pain.”

Painkillers and overdoses

Over 97 million Americans took prescription painkillers in 2015, with over two million reporting problems with the drugs. Drug overdoses are the number one cause of death for Americans under 50, outranking guns and car accidents and outpacing the HIV epidemic at its peak.

“These results are exciting because you don’t need a whole cocktail of other drugs to fully reverse the pathological pain…”

Medical researchers are increasingly studying positive allosteric modulators because they target secondary drug receptor sites in the body. By contrast, “orthosteric” drugs—including cannabinoids such as delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and opioids such as morphine—influence primary binding sites, which means their effects may “spill over” to other processes in the body, causing dangerous or unwanted side effects.

Rather than acting as an on/off switch, PAMs act like an amplifier, enhancing only the effects of the brain’s own natural painkillers, thereby selectively altering biological processes in the body that naturally suppress pain.

Meet ‘PAM’

The researchers used a PAM that amplified two brain compounds—anandamide and 2-arachidonoylglycerol—commonly called “endocannabinoids” because they act upon the CB1 receptor in the brain that responds to THC, the major psychoactive ingredient in cannabis.

Although the PAM compound enhanced the effects of the endocannabinoids, the study found that it did not cause unwanted side effects associated with cannabis—such as impaired motor functions or lowered body temperature—because its effect is highly targeted in the brain.

Can this new painkiller evade the flaws of opioids?

The pain relief was also stronger and longer-lasting than drugs that block an enzyme that breaks down and metabolizes the brain’s own cannabis-like compounds. The PAM alone causes the natural painkillers to target only the right part of the brain at the right time, as opposed to drugs that bind to every receptor site throughout the body.

The PAMs also presented strong advantages over the other alternative pain-relief compounds tested in the study: a synthetic cannabinoid and a metabolic inhibitor. The results of the analysis suggested these other compounds’ remained likely to produce addiction or diminish in effectiveness over time.

While researchers conducted the study with mice, Hohmann says it’s been shown that the human body releases endocannabinoids in response to inflammation or pain due to nerve injury. The compounds may also play a role in the temporary pain relief that occurs after a major injury.

“These results are exciting because you don’t need a whole cocktail of other drugs to fully reverse the pathological pain in the animals,” Hohmann says. “We also don’t see unwanted signs of physical dependence or tolerance found with delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol or opioid-based drugs. If these effects could be replicated in people, it would be a major step forward in the search for new, non-addictive forms of pain relief.”

The PAM used in the study was GAT211, a molecule that coauthor Ganesh Thakur at Northeastern University designed and synthesized.

Pain relief after a car crash: Ibuprofen or opioids?

The lead author of the study is Richard A. Slivicki, a graduate student in Hohmann’s lab in the IU Program in Neuroscience and department of psychological and brain sciences. Additional authors of the study are from Indiana University; Northeastern University; and the University of Aberdeen, Scotland.

The National Institutes of Health supported the work, which appears in the journal Biological Psychiatry.

Source: Indiana University

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Scientists report a new method to determine how bacteria sense contact with surfaces, an action that triggers the formation of biofilms—multicellular structures that cause major health issues in people and threaten critical infrastructure, such as water and sewer systems.

It’s estimated that biofilms contribute to about 65 percent of human infections and cause billions in medical costs each year. They infamously played a role in unsafe coliform levels in the water supply of 21 million Americans in the early 1990s and, more recently, likely played a role in several outbreaks of Legionnaire’s disease in Flint, Michigan. They also regularly contribute to global cholera outbreaks.

Biofilms cause serious damage in industry, including clogging water filtration systems or slowing down cargo ships by “biofouling” the vehicles’ hulls, costing an estimated $200 billion per year in the US alone. There are also beneficial biofilms, such as those that aid digestion or help break down organic matter in the environment.

The researchers, led by Indiana University biology professor Yves Brun, discovered the way bacteria detect and cling to surfaces. The researchers also discovered a method to trick bacteria into thinking they are sensing a surface.

The team showed that bacteria use ultra-thin hair-like appendages called pili that extend from the cell and retract dynamically to feel and stick to surfaces and ultimately produce biofilms. The pili stop moving after sensing a surface, after which the bacteria start producing an extremely sticky substance, or “bioadhesive,” that drives attachment to surfaces and biofilm formation.

To fool the bacteria into sensing a surface, Brun’s team attached a large maleimide molecule to the pili to effectively block the hair-like structures’ movement.

“It’s like trying to pull a rope with a knot in the middle through a hole—the maleimide molecule can’t pass through the hole the cell uses to extend and retract the pili,” says Courtney Ellison, the study’s lead author and a PhD student in Brun’s lab.

“These results told us the bacteria sense the surface like how a fisherman knows their line is stuck under water,” Brun adds. “It’s only when they reel in the line that they sense a tension, which tells them their line is caught. The bacteria’s pili are their fishing lines.”

Dyed ‘limbs’

The discovery, which appears in the journal Science, is possible due to the team’s new method to observe how bacteria use pili to spread biofilms. They accomplished this observation with expertly delivered fluorescence dyes—delivered on the back of smaller maleimide molecules—that revealed the movement of these microscopic “limbs.”

“By using fluorescent dyes to label these microscopic structures, we’re able to produce images that show the first direct evidence of the role that pili play to detect surfaces,” Brun says.

In order to observe the movement of pili, the team had to overcome a challenge: how to visualize the extremely thin structures and their movement. They did this by substituting a single amino acid within the chain of amino acids that comprise the pili with another amino acid called a cysteine. The maleimide, which delivered the fluorescent dyes to the pili proteins, binds to the cysteine. The maleimide is also the molecule used to deliver the large molecule to the cysteine in the pili protein to physically block the pili movement.

Use biofilm’s own enzymes to defeat its ‘armor’

“It’s like switching on a light in a dark room,” Ellison says. “Pili are composed of thousands of protein subunits called pilins, with each protein in the chain composed of amino acids arranged like a tangled mess of burnt-out Christmas lights. Swapping out a single light can illuminate the whole string.”

More pili

Engineering a cysteine molecule that could replace an amino acid in the pilins without affecting the pili’s overall behavior was a major challenge, she adds. The researchers used Caulobacter crescentus bacteria, which are common to lab experiments.

“We also used this method in this study to visualize the three types of pili produced by Vibrio cholerae, a bacterium that causes cholera,” says study coauthor Ankur Dalia, an assistant professor of biology. “Pili are critical to many aspects of Vibrio’s virulence, and we are now using this powerful tool to understand how they use them.”

Magnetic nanoparticles can bust biofilms

Next, Brun and colleagues hope to unravel precise mechanisms that link pili movement and bioadhesive production, as the two processes appear related but the exact nature of the connection remains unknown.

“The more we understand about the mechanics of pili in biofilm formation and virulence, the more we can manipulate the process to prevent harm to people and property,” Brun says.

Additional coauthors of the study are from Indiana University, Emory University, and City University of New York-Brooklyn College.

Support for the study came from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

Source: Indiana University

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Broadening the geographic range where a number of deceased-donor kidneys would be available would increase the number of transplants, research shows.

This shift would also improve the lives of patients unlikely to receive one based on where they live, according to the new study.

“Where you are located is very important in terms of how long you’re going to wait for your kidney.”

“The problem is there is a big disparity across different geographies,” says Mazhar Arikan, associate professor of supply chain management in the University of Kansas School of Business. “In more congested or populous regions, the patients have a longer wait time. In the less-congested regions, you don’t need to wait as long. Where you are located is very important in terms of how long you’re going to wait for your kidney.”

Arikan is a coauthor of the study in the journal Production and Operations Management with Rodney P. Parker, associate professor of operations management at Indiana University Kelley School of Business, and others. Based on their analysis, the researchers suggest that changing the geographic allocation of so-called lower-quality kidneys could result in anywhere from 58 to 174 additional kidney transplants per year to help more patients get off dialysis treatments and live more normal lives.

“That is a very high number because it is the equivalent of adding one medium-sized transplant center to the system,” Arikan says. “The policy change is very beneficial for patients. You can increase the supply by just making a small change.”

Low on the list

Most of the existing operations research literature looked at changing the demand for kidneys, such as how people are prioritized on waiting lists, but Arikan says the researchers wanted to look at potential inefficiencies in the supply and if there would be a way to get more kidneys to more people on waiting lists.

There are roughly 100,000 US patients with end-stage renal disease who are waiting for a transplant.

To start they analyzed the effects of a 2014 policy change in the United States that allowed for lower-quality kidneys—considered the bottom 15 percent of available organs—to be offered more widely in a region immediately without seeking patients only in the immediate area.

Before 2014, when a kidney became available, it was first offered to people on a list who lived in the immediate geographic area, and if no willing recipient turned up, it would be offered to patients on a list in a broader area around the region.

Organ quality varies from donor to donor based on the person’s health conditions and age, and most deemed to be in the bottom 15 percent of quality are not procured. Furthermore, these not procured lower-quality organs are most likely to be concentrated in some areas of the country—likely less populous regions—where patients can afford to be more selective of the quality of organs they accept, Arikan says.

“Patients in less-congested regions are going to be more picky compared to people in New York or Los Angeles because they are more willing to accept a kidney offer,” he says.

Blocking key cells could protect organ transplants

There are roughly 100,000 US patients with end-stage renal disease who are waiting for a transplant, according to the researchers, and most likely must rely on costly and inconvenient dialysis treatments that influence how they function daily, Arikan says.

“It’s not easy to go to a dialysis center and spend time there,” he says. “Once they have a kidney, that gives them a chance to return to their normal life.”

Low-quality organs

The researchers found making more low-quality organs available within a regional network adds 58 kidney transplants per year to patients who likely would not get one. They project making low-quality organs available for donation to patients nationally would add 129 or 174 transplants per year, depending on if the bottom 15 percent or the bottom 20 percent of quality organs would be made available.

Moral views about organ sales can change

Medical researchers might need to examine more about the logistics of conducting transplants of patients who wouldn’t immediately live near the kidney that becomes available, but there are organizations that do provide assistance to transplant patients and donors, including flights for evaluation and surgeries.

Arikan says it is valuable to find that sharing more organs more broadly can lead to a significant increase in organ supply, especially for those who live in congested areas and are on long waiting lists.

“They don’t even get offers. They just wait because they are so far at the back of the line,” Arikan says. “This policy change would really give them some kind of hope.”

Source: University of Kansas

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Discovery of a previously undetected link between the gene that causes fragile X syndrome and uncontrolled tissue growth could shed light on what’s behind the physical and mental impairments the disorder causes, researchers report.

An inheritable genetic condition, fragile X syndrome is estimated to cause mild to moderate intellectual disabilities in 1 in 4,000 to 5,000 males and 1 in 6,000 to 8,000 females. It also causes physical abnormalities such as large brain size and weight at birth, unusually fast growth in height, gastrointestinal issues, and a high risk of obesity.

For the study, scientists removed the same protein that’s missing in people with fragile X syndrome from the intestines of fruit flies to model the disease.

“To our knowledge, this is the first study to find a stem-cell-based mechanism by which a protein that is absent in people with fragile X syndrome limits excessive organ growth,” says lead author Arthur Luhur, a research associate in the biology department at Indiana University. “This could represent a root cause for the gastrointestinal problems seen in people with the condition.”

Similarly, Luhur says the stem-cell-based mechanism could cause symptoms seen in other parts of the body in fragile X syndrome, such as accelerated height growth from unrestrained activity in the bones’ stem cells or mental problems caused by excess neurons.

He also notes that basic biological research into fragile X syndrome’s non-neurological symptoms is important since these effects are understudied—and therefore undertreated—compared to problems with mental development.

‘Cars without brakes’

Fragile X syndrome is caused by an error in a single gene in the X chromosome called FMR1. Typically, the FMR1 gene creates a protein called FMRP. In individuals with fragile X syndrome, an abnormality in this gene causes the body to “silence” the production of FMRP.

The researchers found that the absence of FMRP causes a higher rate of cellular growth—driven by symmetric stem cell division. Typically, this process is balanced by asymmetric stem cell division, when old cells are replaced with new ones.

“The cells that lacked FMRP acted like cars without brakes,” says senior author Nicholas Sokol, an associate professor of biology. “They were ready to divide more often and more quickly, and they tended to divide symmetrically, causing the intestine to be bigger than normal.”

The discovery grew from the researchers’ earlier research into another gene, called LIN-28, that also appeared to affect growth in the intestinal cells in fruit flies. During that study, researchers came across evidence that FMRP—the protein encoded by the gene that causes fragile X syndrome—played a role in the same biomolecular pathway as LIN-28.

The earlier study found that lower levels of LIN-28 reduced insulin receptors in the intestines. The reduced number of insulin receptors slowed cellular growth.

Treatment for Fragile X could target this protein

The new study found that stem cells from the intestines of flies whose genes contained the genetic mutation for fragile X syndrome activated these insulin receptors at a higher rate than normal cells.

Moreover, scientists found that higher levels of FMRP affected LIN-28 levels, but not vice versa, suggesting that FMRP plays a controlling role in the biological pathway.

Opening doors

The research may also open doors to research on new treatments of fragile X syndrome, Luhur says. For example, the study found that reducing the insulin-signaling activity in fruit flies’ intestines using genetic interventions or changes in nutrition could restore normal cell growth.

The connection between insulin receptor activity and intestinal growth may also provide new insight into other research, which has shown that the FDA-approved diabetes drug Metformin seems to alleviate some of the neurological symptoms of fragile X syndrome.

“The next step is conducting additional research on FMR1 and LIN-28 in animals to learn more about their biochemical relationship and their effect on metabolism in the body,” Luhur says. “These are important questions for understanding how their interaction affects physiology and human health.”

How to reduce subtle symptoms of fragile X

Researchers report their findings in the journal Cell Reports. The National Institutes of Health supported the work.

Source: Indiana University

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Many studies cite seasonal changes to explain why birth rates peak in September—a “baby boom” nine months after the holidays. But new research finds that spikes in pregnancies are actually rooted in society, not biology.

The evidence comes from the “collective unconscious” of web searches and Twitter posts that researchers now use to reveal our hidden desires and motivations.

“The rise of the web and social media provides the unprecedented power to analyze changes in people’s collective mood and behavior on a massive scale,” says Luis M. Rocha, a professor in the Indiana University School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, who co-led the study. “This study is the first ‘planetary-level’ look at human reproduction as it relates to people’s moods and interest in sex online.”

The study, which appears today in the journal Scientific Reports, draws upon data from nearly 130 countries that included sex-related Google search terms from 2004 to 2014 and 10 percent of public Twitter posts from late 2010 to early 2014.

The analysis revealed that interest in sex peaks significantly during major cultural or religious celebrations—based upon a greater use of the word “sex” or other sexual terms in web searches. These peaks broadly corresponded to an increase in births nine months later in countries with available birth-rate data.

The end of Ramadan, too

Moreover, the effect was observed in two different cultures, with the greatest spike occurring during major holiday celebrations: Christmas in Christian-majority countries and Eid-al-Fitr, the celebration that marks the end of Ramadan, in Muslim-majority countries.

Thanksgiving and Easter did not generate the same mood and online interest in sex.

The use of data from the Northern and Southern hemispheres is notable since past analyses tended to focus on smaller geographic areas in the Western and Northern hemispheres. The case of Eid-al-Fitr is significant because the holiday does not occur on the same day each year, but the measured effect still shifts accordingly, following a clear cultural pattern.

Because the seasons are reversed on opposites sides of the globe, and peak birth rates and online interest in sex did not change based on geography, the researchers concluded the relationship between these effects is unrelated to biological shifts caused by changes in daylight, temperature, or food availability.

“We didn’t see a reversal in birth rate or online interest in sex trends between the Northern and Southern hemispheres—and it didn’t seem to matter how far people lived from the equator,” Rocha says. “Rather, the study found culture—measured through online mood—to be the primary driver behind cyclic sexual and reproductive behavior in human populations.”

In the ‘family mood’

To understand the higher interest in sex during holidays, the researchers also conducted a sophisticated review of word choices in Twitter posts—known as a “sentiment analysis”—to reveal that, collectively, people appear to feel happier, safer, and calmer during the holidays.

When these collective moods appear on other occasions throughout the year, the analysis also found a corresponding increase in online interest in sex. Interestingly, Thanksgiving and Easter did not generate the same mood and online interest in sex.

“We observe that Christmas and Eid-Al-Fitr are characterized by distinct collective moods that correlate with increased fertility,” Rocha says. “Perhaps people feel a greater motivation to grow their families during holidays when the emphasis is on love and gift-giving to children. The Christmas season is also associated with stories about the baby Jesus and holy family, which may put people in a loving, happy, ‘family mood.'”

6 weird secrets of mistletoe

The study’s results are notable for reasons beyond curiosity about the rise in babies born nine months after the holidays. For example, Rocha says the findings could help public health researchers pinpoint the best dates to launch public awareness campaigns encouraging safe sex in developing countries lacking in reliable birth-rate data.

“The strong correlation between birth rates and the holidays in countries where birth-rate data is available—regardless of hemisphere or the dominant religion—suggests these trends are also likely to hold true in developing nations,” he adds. “These types of analyses represent a powerful new data source for social science and public policy researchers.”

Additional contributors to the study are from Indiana University and Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência in Portugal. The Portuguese researchers first came across the unexpected patterns in online searches related to sex, later collaborating with the Indiana University researchers due to their expertise in web analysis.

Partial support for the work came from the National Institutes of Health, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology.

Source: Indiana University

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Americans are evenly divided on whether a business should be able to deny service to same-sex couples, a new study suggests.

The study examines public views on the conflict between anti-discrimination laws and legal protections for speech and religion, a topic under debate by courts and legislatures. The Supreme Court heard recent arguments in a Colorado case in which a baker refused—on religious grounds—to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. The court is expected to rule by June 2018.

“The finding challenges the idea that denial of service to same-sex couples is all about religious freedom.”

But people who support denying service don’t necessarily see it as a matter of religious freedom, the study finds. They are as likely to support a business that denies service for reasons unrelated to religion as one that does so because of religious beliefs.

“The finding challenges the idea that denial of service to same-sex couples is all about religious freedom,” says Brian Powell, professor of sociology at Indiana University and lead author of the study that appears in Science Advances.

“People may oppose same-sex marriage because of their beliefs, but their views about denial of service have nothing to do with whether the denial is for religious reasons,” he says.

In other findings:

• There was surprisingly strong support for the idea that businesses should be able to deny services to interracial couples, even though laws prohibit racial discrimination. Researchers asked about interracial couples to compare with findings for same-sex couples.
• Respondents made a clear distinction between self-employed individuals and corporations. They were twice as likely to say a self-employed person could deny service as they were to support a business chain whose owners objected to serving same-sex or interracial couples.

Researchers asked a representative sample of more than 2,000 people to respond to vignettes in which a photographer refused to take wedding pictures. In random versions of the vignette, the photographer was self-employed or worked for a chain business, the couple was same-sex or interracial, and the reason for denying service was religious or nonreligious.

It was striking that two in five respondents supported denying service to an interracial couple, Powell says. Over half said a self-employed photographer should be able to refuse service to an interracial couple, while fewer than one-fourth said a corporation should be allowed to do so.

“Race is a protected category, and despite that, many people say you can deny service,” Powell says.

Also, while 61 percent of respondents said a self-employed photographer could deny service to a same-sex couple or interracial couple, only 31 percent said a corporation could deny service.

How same-sex marriage laws may save teens’ lives

Powell says the result suggests public views are not aligned with the Supreme Court’s 2014 Hobby Lobby decision, which said that closely held corporations had the same rights as individuals to deny their employees contraceptive insurance coverage because of the owners’ religious objections.

“Americans don’t believe that. They make a clear distinction between corporations and self-employed people,” Powell says.

In the study, respondents didn’t favor religious reasons for denying service over other reasons. In open-ended questions, Powell says, many took a libertarian view that a self-employed individual should be able to deny service to anyone for any reason. In contrast, others viewed denial of service as discrimination and said businesses should serve everyone.

Source: Indiana University

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A star 550 light years from Earth is slowly consuming its “offspring”—crushing one or more planets in its orbit into vast clouds of gas and dust—according to a new study.

The discovery that RZ Piscium—located in the constellation Pisces—is an insatiable “eater of worlds” may shed light on a brief but volatile period in the history of many solar systems, including our own.

“We know it’s not uncommon for planets to migrate inward in young solar systems since we’ve found so many solar systems with ‘hot Jupiters’—gaseous planets similar in size to Jupiter but orbiting very close to their stars,” says Catherine Pilachowski, chair of the astronomy department at Indiana University Bloomington and coauthor of the study, which appears in The Astronomical Journal.

“This is a very interesting phase in the evolution of planetary systems, and we’re lucky to catch a solar system in the middle of the process since it happens so quickly compared to the lifetimes of stars,” Pilachowski says.

Doomed worlds that fly too close to their sun—only to be ripped apart by its tidal forces—are officially known as “disrupted planets.” In the case of RZ Piscium, the material near the sun-like star is being slowly pulled apart to create a small circle of debris about the same distance from the star as the planet Mercury’s orbit is from our sun.

“Based on our observations, it seems either that we’re seeing a fairly massive, gaseous planet being pulled apart by the star, or perhaps two gas-rich planets that have collided and been torn apart,” Pilachowski says.

Even solar systems whose planets are not lost to their sun are unstable in their early history, since newly born planets interact strongly with one another—as well as their sun—through gravity, she adds.

In our solar system, for example, some astronomers speculate that Uranus and Neptune swapped orbits about 4 billion years ago. But erratic orbits tend to stabilize over time, falling into regular patterns.

This discovery “helps us understand why some young solar systems survive—and some don’t.”

In the new study, Pilachowski, an expert on the analysis of light spectrum from distant stars to determine their temperature, gravity, and elemental composition, was responsible for determining the gravitational strength near RZ Piscium’s surface.

Her findings helped shed light on the star’s radius and brightness, both of which suggest a young star in the midst of a freewheeling solar system with unstable planets.

This is significant because researchers weren’t sure of RZ Piscium’s age. The debris field around a star can result from either the erratic orbits in young solar systems or the destruction of planets that occurs as an old star grows before collapsing and dying.

Extreme galaxy merger makes stars in a ‘frenzy’

Pilachowski’s analysis of the star’s light also helped determine the amount of lithium in the star, marking the star as a relatively young 30 million to 50 million years. Astronomers can use lithium levels to estimate a star’s age because the element declines over time.

Further, researchers discovered that the star’s temperature is about 9,600 degrees Fahrenheit (5,330 degrees Celsius)—only slightly cooler than our sun’s. Another sign of the star’s relative youth: It produces X-rays at a rate roughly 1,000 times greater than our sun.

“This discovery really gives us a rare and beautiful glimpse into what happens to many newly formed planets that don’t survive the early dynamical chaos of young solar systems,” Pilachowski says. “It helps us understand why some young solar systems survive—and some don’t.”

This is what happens when stars eat rocky planets

Researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology led the study. Other researchers from Indiana University; the University of California, Irvine; the University of California, Los Angeles; Haverford College; and Ithaca College are coauthors.

The team investigated the star using the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton satellite, the Shane 3-meter telescope at Lick Observatory in California, and the 10-meter Keck I telescope at W.M.

Source: Indiana University

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A new study provides the strongest evidence yet that nearly imperceptible changes in how people move can be used to diagnose neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism.

The study’s results, reported in Scientific Reports, suggest a more accurate method to diagnose autism. Current assessments depend on highly subjective criteria, such as a lack of eye movement or repetitive actions. There is no existing medical test for autism, such as a blood test or genetic screening.

“We’ve found that every person has their own unique ‘movement DNA,'” says senior author Jorge V. José, professor of physics at Indiana University Bloomington. “The use of movement as a ‘biomarker’ for autism could represent an important leap forward in detection and treatment of the disorder.”

It’s estimated that 1 percent of the world’s population, including 3.5 million children and adults in the United States, are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, which is the country’s fastest-growing developmental disability.

Unlike diseases diagnosed with medical tests, autism remains dependent upon symptoms whose detection may vary based upon factors such as the person conducting the assessment. The assessments are also difficult to administer to very young children, or to people with impairments such as lack of verbal skills, potentially preventing early interventions for these groups. Early intervention has been shown to play an important role in successful treatment of autism.

“Our work is focused on applying novel data analytics to develop objective neurodevelopmental assessments for autism, as well as other neurodevelopmental disorders,” says Di Wu, a PhD student and the lead author of the study. “We really need to narrow the gap between what physicians observe in patients in the clinic and what we’re learning about movement within the field of neuroscience.”

To conduct the study, the researchers examined over 70 volunteers as they moved their arm to touch an object on a screen. The volunteers included 30 individuals previously diagnosed with autism, ages 7 to 30, including a girl with no verbal skills. The group also included 15 neurotypical adults, ages 19 to 31; six neurotypical children; and 20 neurotypical parents of volunteers with autism.

After the assessment, each volunteer received a “score” based on the level of hidden speed fluctuations in their movement. A lower score indicated a greater risk for autism, with numbers under a certain threshold corresponding to previous diagnosis of autism. The greater amount of fluctuation in the movement of the individuals with autism was possibly related to the level of “noise” naturally produced by random neuron firings in the brain, for which neurotypical individuals seem to develop stronger compensation methods.

Head motions offer better way to detect autism in girls

Eighteen of the 30 individuals in the study with autism underwent assessment before the experiment, using four standard psychiatric tests for autism. In each case, the movement-based diagnoses corresponded to these qualitative-based assessments, which are rarely in complete agreement.

The volunteers who scored lower on the scale also exhibited more severe forms of autism. Currently there is no standard accepted quantitative metric to diagnose the disorder’s severity. Also, lower-than-average scores in several of the volunteers’ parents, who did not have an autism diagnosis themselves, suggested that movement could possibly be used to assess a neurotypical parent’s risk for children with autism, José says.

The volunteers’ movements were captured using high-speed, high-resolution sensors to track fluctuations in movement invisible to the naked eye. The study also tracked changes in speed and position of the arm at every point in movement, as opposed to a single variable—the top movement of the arm’s velocity—examined in a previously published study from the team. The new motion data strengthens evidence for movement as a biomarker for autism.

How babies learn to walk holds potential clues to autism

Next, the researchers aim to conduct movement assessments on more people, including more research on the parents of children with autism to better understand the connection between lower parental scores on the movement assessment and their children’s risk for autism.

John I. Nurnberger Jr., professor of psychiatry and director of the Institute of Psychiatric Research at the IU School of Medicine, provided access to volunteers with autism, as well as medical expertise, to the study. An additional major contributor to the study was Elizabeth Torres at Rutgers University.

Partial funding came from the National Science Foundation, the Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation, and New Jersey Governor’s Council for Medical Research and Treatment of Autism.

Source: Indiana University

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Among self-identified US Christians, positive attitudes about the environment and environmental stewardship have not increased, according to new research.

David Konisky of Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs analyzed 20 years of survey results from Gallup public opinion polls.

He found that not only is environmentalism not increasing, there are signs it is actually in decline.

…the likelihood that a Christian survey respondent expressed a great deal of concern about climate change dropped by about a third between 1990 and 2015.

For example, Konisky’s analysis of the survey responses from 1990 through 2015 indicates that Christians, compared to atheists, agnostics, and individuals who do not affiliate with a religion, are less likely to prioritize environmental protection over economic growth, and they are more likely than others to believe global warming is exaggerated.

For example, the likelihood that a Christian survey respondent expressed a great deal of concern about climate change dropped by about a third between 1990 and 2015.

The pattern generally holds across Catholic, Protestant, and other Christian denominations and does not vary depending on levels of religiosity.

“This relationship between religion and the environment is significant because of the increasing importance of climate change,” Konisky says. “There may come a time when religious leaders and faith-based organizations generate more interest in protecting the environment and more willingness to demand action, but we haven’t seen it yet.”

The current lack of enthusiasm comes despite high-profile calls for action such as the encyclical letter on the environment released by Pope Francis in 2015 and despite initiatives led by Evangelical Protestant groups, such as the formation of the Evangelical Environmental Network.

Some Americans consult religion about science questions

While those efforts are relatively recent, Konisky says there is a historical divide in how Christians view their relationship to the planet.

“Some believe in the importance of stewardship and practice an ethic of ‘creation care,’ while others believe in human dominion over the Earth, a belief that undermines any obligation to protect the environment,” he explains.

Konisky says more research is needed to determine whether that belief in human dominion or some other aspect of how people experience religion is influencing a reduced concern for the environment.

His study appears in the journal Environmental Politics.

Source: Indiana University

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Researchers have discovered that a certain kind of molecule can break through the shells viruses use to protect their DNA.

The molecule could aid in the fight against the hepatitis B virus, which can cause liver failure and liver cancer.

It’s estimated that 2 billion people worldwide have had a hepatitis B virus infection in their lifetime, with about 250 million—including 2 million Americans—living with chronic infection. Although a vaccine exists, there is no cure.

The study, which appears in the journal eLife, explains how the structure of the hepatitis B virus changes when bound to an experimental drug. Members of this new class of antiviral drug are now in clinical trials.

“Our discovery suggests that this same drug could attack hepatitis B virus on multiple fronts—both preventing replication and killing new copies of the virus,” says senior author Adam Zlotnick, a professor in the Indiana University Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences’ molecular and cellular biochemistry department. “If we’re smart, we can take advantage of the multiple ways this drug can work at the same time.”

A virus reproduces by hijacking a host’s cellular machinery to produce more of the virus. The majority of viruses protect their genetic material—DNA or RNA—inside a protein shell called a capsid.

“…viral capsids aren’t as impenetrable as previously thought…”

For the past 20 years, Zlotnick’s lab has conducted research to stop viral infections by studying the physics of viruses, focusing on how capsids are formed.

“The reaction is a bit like throwing a deck of cards in the air to build the Taj Mahal—a highly complex structure seemingly emerging from chaos,” Zlotnick says.

Zlotnick’s work helped discover a class of molecules called core protein allosteric modulators, or CpAMs, that disrupt capsid protein assembly.

CpAM molecules attack viruses by causing their shells to assemble incorrectly, interrupting the life cycle of the virus. Previously, CpAMs were seen as only able to disrupt a virus during formation of the capsid, after which its DNA was protected inside a hard casing.

Hijacked ‘forklifts’ let this virus invade our cells

This new study, however, finds the molecule can break apart the shell even after it has already assembled.

To make their discovery, researchers bound the CpAM to a chemical called TAMRA—a crimson-colored dye used in some red lipstick—to make it fluorescent and easier to detect in experiments. Using cryo-electron microscopy, they found the small CpAM molecule could make the large, soccer ball-shaped virus capsid bend and distort.

“The big implication is viral capsids aren’t as impenetrable as previously thought,” Zlotnick says. “The other implication, which may be even more important, is that if this type of interference works against hepatitis B virus, it might also work against other viruses.

“About half of known virus families have soccer ball-like capsids; examples include polio and herpes,” he adds. “This study may lead to better treatments against them since the mechanisms behind capsid disruption could lead to drugs against any of them.”

Zlotnick also is the co-founder of Assembly Biosciences, a NASDAQ-listed company, which has CpAMs in clinical trials. Although the molecule used in this study isn’t one of the molecules under clinical trial, Zlotnick says the mechanism sheds light on the behavior of the experimental drugs.

How this common virus evades the immune system

Next, Zlotnick hopes to conduct similar studies on the CpAMs under clinical trial.

Additional authors are from Indiana University and Assembly BioSciences. The National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases funded the work.

Source: Indiana University

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The neurotransmitter glutamate may play a role in some alcohol cravings, report researchers.

Alcohol dependence and alcohol use disorders occur in about 30 percent of all Americans, taking a severe toll on people’s lives, as well as on the health care system and economy. Ninety percent of all attempts to cure the dependence or abuse of alcohol result in relapse within four years. Sights, sounds, and situations associated with past drinking experiences are the primary triggers of these relapses.

“Scientists can now confidently target glutamate levels in the brain as they develop new treatments for alcoholism and other forms of addiction.”

“This is the first study to document changes in glutamate levels during exposure to alcohol cues in people with alcohol use disorders and shines a spotlight on glutamate levels as an important target for new therapies to treat the condition,” says Sharlene Newman, a professor in Indiana University’s Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences’ psychological and brain sciences department.

The study, recently published in the Journal of Alcohol and Alcoholism, builds on research by scientists such as George Rebec, a professor emeritus in the psychological and brain sciences department who previously found that sights and sounds associated with addictive substances such as cocaine or alcohol affect glutamate levels in the brains of rats addicted to these substances. These sights and sounds are called “cues” because they elicit a craving for the previously abused substance.

“Glutamate is the real workhorse of all transmitters in the brain,” Rebec says. “Dopamine is the more popularly known neurotransmitter, a lack of which contributes to depression, anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and Parkinson’s disease—but it actually accounts for less than 5 percent of all synaptic activity. By contrast, glutamate accounts for about 50 percent of this activity and is especially involved in the reward-motivation circuits integral to addiction.”

To conduct the new study, researchers enlisted 35 subjects, 17 with alcohol use disorder and 18 without the disorder. Then they measured concentrations of glutamate using a technology called magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

Brain scans suggest this therapy eases alcohol cravings

The study found a decrease of the chemical in the brain of people with alcohol abuse disorder after they were shown cues associated with drinking—such as a photo of alcohol in a glass—compared to when they viewed neutral photos. Individuals without the disorder showed no change in glutamate levels when viewing the same images.

“We recognized we could measure glutamate levels in the human brain using magnetic resonance spectroscopy,” says Newman, who led the collaboration between her department’s addiction researchers to build upon Rebec’s previous work in animals. “Scientists can now confidently target glutamate levels in the brain as they develop new treatments for alcoholism and other forms of addiction.”

Additional authors of the study are from Indiana University and Purdue University.

The National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute funded the study in part.

Source: Indiana University

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A drug already proven safe for use in people may prevent opioid tolerance and physical dependence when used in combination with opioid-based pain medications, according to a new study in mice.

Researchers have discovered that a compound previously tested to treat osteoarthritis pain appears to block neuropathic pain and decrease signs of opioid dependence.

When drug manufacturer Eli Lilly and Co. conducted human trials of the drug to treat osteoarthritis pain, they found that the drug lacked efficacy. Researchers had not, however, tested the drug’s use in treating other kinds of pain and lessening opioid dependence.

“The potential to quickly begin using this compound in combination with opioid-based medication to treat pain and reduce addiction makes this discovery very significant,” says lead investigator Andrea G. Hohmann, a chair of neuroscience and professor in the Indiana University Bloomington psychological and brain sciences department. “We already know this drug is safe for use in people, so moving into human trials will not require as many regulatory hurdles.”

The need for non-addictive alternatives to opioid-based pain medication is urgent due to the rapid rise in overdose deaths over the past decade. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 64,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2016, including from illicit drugs and prescription opioids.

To test the potential of the experimental drug to treat pain and reduce addiction symptoms, the scientists administered the compound and the opioid morphine to male mice with neuropathic pain. While morphine initially reduced the pain, mice quickly developed tolerance to morphine’s effectiveness, similar to people who require higher doses of opioid over time to achieve relief.

When a low dose of the experimental drug was combined with morphine, however, the mice no longer became tolerant to morphine, and that lack of tolerance remained even after researchers discontinued the experimental drug. The researchers also found the experimental drug could produce sustained pain relief on its own at higher doses.

In another experiment, researchers gave mice either morphine alone or morphine in combination with the experimental drug, and then treated them with naloxone, which blocks the effect of opioids and induces opioid withdrawal symptoms. Remarkably, Hohmann says, the experimental drug also decreased the severity of these symptoms.

Gene variant linked to opioid addiction found in Euro Americans

Together, these results suggest the experimental drug could, in combination with opioids, prevent tolerance, allowing satisfactory pain treatment with fewer side effects, or wean opioid-tolerant individuals off these drugs.

The researchers chose to explore the failed osteoarthritis drug because they had previously found that the compound acted in a unique way upon a target in the body known to play a role in pain relief.

The researchers report their findings in the journal Molecular Pharmacology. The National Institute on Drug Abuse and National Cancer Institute contributed support for the work.

Source: Indiana University

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Discovery of a previously undetected link between the gene that causes fragile X syndrome and uncontrolled tissue growth could shed light on what’s behind the physical and mental impairments the disorder causes, researchers report.

An inheritable genetic condition, fragile X syndrome is estimated to cause mild to moderate intellectual disabilities in 1 in 4,000 to 5,000 males and 1 in 6,000 to 8,000 females. It also causes physical abnormalities such as large brain size and weight at birth, unusually fast growth in height, gastrointestinal issues, and a high risk of obesity.

For the study, scientists removed the same protein that’s missing in people with fragile X syndrome from the intestines of fruit flies to model the disease.

“To our knowledge, this is the first study to find a stem-cell-based mechanism by which a protein that is absent in people with fragile X syndrome limits excessive organ growth,” says lead author Arthur Luhur, a research associate in the biology department at Indiana University. “This could represent a root cause for the gastrointestinal problems seen in people with the condition.”

Similarly, Luhur says the stem-cell-based mechanism could cause symptoms seen in other parts of the body in fragile X syndrome, such as accelerated height growth from unrestrained activity in the bones’ stem cells or mental problems caused by excess neurons.

He also notes that basic biological research into fragile X syndrome’s non-neurological symptoms is important since these effects are understudied—and therefore undertreated—compared to problems with mental development.

‘Cars without brakes’

Fragile X syndrome is caused by an error in a single gene in the X chromosome called FMR1. Typically, the FMR1 gene creates a protein called FMRP. In individuals with fragile X syndrome, an abnormality in this gene causes the body to “silence” the production of FMRP.

The researchers found that the absence of FMRP causes a higher rate of cellular growth—driven by symmetric stem cell division. Typically, this process is balanced by asymmetric stem cell division, when old cells are replaced with new ones.

“The cells that lacked FMRP acted like cars without brakes,” says senior author Nicholas Sokol, an associate professor of biology. “They were ready to divide more often and more quickly, and they tended to divide symmetrically, causing the intestine to be bigger than normal.”

The discovery grew from the researchers’ earlier research into another gene, called LIN-28, that also appeared to affect growth in the intestinal cells in fruit flies. During that study, researchers came across evidence that FMRP—the protein encoded by the gene that causes fragile X syndrome—played a role in the same biomolecular pathway as LIN-28.

The earlier study found that lower levels of LIN-28 reduced insulin receptors in the intestines. The reduced number of insulin receptors slowed cellular growth.

Treatment for Fragile X could target this protein

The new study found that stem cells from the intestines of flies whose genes contained the genetic mutation for fragile X syndrome activated these insulin receptors at a higher rate than normal cells.

Moreover, scientists found that higher levels of FMRP affected LIN-28 levels, but not vice versa, suggesting that FMRP plays a controlling role in the biological pathway.

Opening doors

The research may also open doors to research on new treatments of fragile X syndrome, Luhur says. For example, the study found that reducing the insulin-signaling activity in fruit flies’ intestines using genetic interventions or changes in nutrition could restore normal cell growth.

The connection between insulin receptor activity and intestinal growth may also provide new insight into other research, which has shown that the FDA-approved diabetes drug Metformin seems to alleviate some of the neurological symptoms of fragile X syndrome.

“The next step is conducting additional research on FMR1 and LIN-28 in animals to learn more about their biochemical relationship and their effect on metabolism in the body,” Luhur says. “These are important questions for understanding how their interaction affects physiology and human health.”

How to reduce subtle symptoms of fragile X

Researchers report their findings in the journal Cell Reports. The National Institutes of Health supported the work.

Source: Indiana University

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Many studies cite seasonal changes to explain why birth rates peak in September—a “baby boom” nine months after the holidays. But new research finds that spikes in pregnancies are actually rooted in society, not biology.

The evidence comes from the “collective unconscious” of web searches and Twitter posts that researchers now use to reveal our hidden desires and motivations.

“The rise of the web and social media provides the unprecedented power to analyze changes in people’s collective mood and behavior on a massive scale,” says Luis M. Rocha, a professor in the Indiana University School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, who co-led the study. “This study is the first ‘planetary-level’ look at human reproduction as it relates to people’s moods and interest in sex online.”

The study, which appears today in the journal Scientific Reports, draws upon data from nearly 130 countries that included sex-related Google search terms from 2004 to 2014 and 10 percent of public Twitter posts from late 2010 to early 2014.

The analysis revealed that interest in sex peaks significantly during major cultural or religious celebrations—based upon a greater use of the word “sex” or other sexual terms in web searches. These peaks broadly corresponded to an increase in births nine months later in countries with available birth-rate data.

The end of Ramadan, too

Moreover, the effect was observed in two different cultures, with the greatest spike occurring during major holiday celebrations: Christmas in Christian-majority countries and Eid-al-Fitr, the celebration that marks the end of Ramadan, in Muslim-majority countries.

Thanksgiving and Easter did not generate the same mood and online interest in sex.

The use of data from the Northern and Southern hemispheres is notable since past analyses tended to focus on smaller geographic areas in the Western and Northern hemispheres. The case of Eid-al-Fitr is significant because the holiday does not occur on the same day each year, but the measured effect still shifts accordingly, following a clear cultural pattern.

Because the seasons are reversed on opposites sides of the globe, and peak birth rates and online interest in sex did not change based on geography, the researchers concluded the relationship between these effects is unrelated to biological shifts caused by changes in daylight, temperature, or food availability.

“We didn’t see a reversal in birth rate or online interest in sex trends between the Northern and Southern hemispheres—and it didn’t seem to matter how far people lived from the equator,” Rocha says. “Rather, the study found culture—measured through online mood—to be the primary driver behind cyclic sexual and reproductive behavior in human populations.”

In the ‘family mood’

To understand the higher interest in sex during holidays, the researchers also conducted a sophisticated review of word choices in Twitter posts—known as a “sentiment analysis”—to reveal that, collectively, people appear to feel happier, safer, and calmer during the holidays.

When these collective moods appear on other occasions throughout the year, the analysis also found a corresponding increase in online interest in sex. Interestingly, Thanksgiving and Easter did not generate the same mood and online interest in sex.

“We observe that Christmas and Eid-Al-Fitr are characterized by distinct collective moods that correlate with increased fertility,” Rocha says. “Perhaps people feel a greater motivation to grow their families during holidays when the emphasis is on love and gift-giving to children. The Christmas season is also associated with stories about the baby Jesus and holy family, which may put people in a loving, happy, ‘family mood.'”

6 weird secrets of mistletoe

The study’s results are notable for reasons beyond curiosity about the rise in babies born nine months after the holidays. For example, Rocha says the findings could help public health researchers pinpoint the best dates to launch public awareness campaigns encouraging safe sex in developing countries lacking in reliable birth-rate data.

“The strong correlation between birth rates and the holidays in countries where birth-rate data is available—regardless of hemisphere or the dominant religion—suggests these trends are also likely to hold true in developing nations,” he adds. “These types of analyses represent a powerful new data source for social science and public policy researchers.”

Additional contributors to the study are from Indiana University and Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência in Portugal. The Portuguese researchers first came across the unexpected patterns in online searches related to sex, later collaborating with the Indiana University researchers due to their expertise in web analysis.

Partial support for the work came from the National Institutes of Health, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology.

Source: Indiana University

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