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Biofuel CCS Plant Inches Us Closer to Negative Carbon Emissions

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 The first large-scale plant to take the carbon captured by photosynthesis and bury it underground opened last week, an important step in efforts to remove CO
 
 2
 
 from the atmosphere.
 

 Agricultural processor and ethanol producer Archer Daniel Midland (ADM) has flipped the switch on the Illinois Industrial Carbon Capture and Storage. The facility, based in Decatur, Illinois, produces corn-based ethanol and injects the waste CO
 
 2
 
 into deep underground storage. It’s not clear if the process will be net negative—that is, remove more greenhouse gas than it produces—though it is an important first step.
 
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<img alt="" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/fullsizeoutput_3a.width-990_MHLcIwe.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Corn-based fuels, coupled with carbon capture and store technology, could help mitigate climate change.
 
 </figcaption>
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 The facility begins by capturing the CO
 
 2
 
 produced during the fermentation process that converts corn to ethanol, which can be used as a transportation fuel. The gas is then compressed into liquid form and stored in a saline water table a mile and a half underground.
 

 Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, also known as BECCS,
 <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/tech/beccs/">
 isn’t a new idea
 </a>
 . But the ADM plant is the first large-scale project in the world to focus on biofuels and to take the CO
 
 2
 
 produced by burning or processing plant matter and store it.
 

 The
 <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/tech/beccs/">
 Petra Nova project
 </a>
 , the other leading, operational CCS facility is in Texas and opened in January. The facility captures CO
 
 2
 
 emitted from burning coal for electricity and uses the stream of gas to boost production from old oil fields.
 

 While CCS plays an important role in climate change mitigation plans proposed by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, not everyone is supportive of the technology. Timothy Searchinger, senior fellow at the World Resources Institute and an outspoken critic of biofuels, argues that the impact of carbon-emitting fuels like coal, gasoline, or bioenergy cannot be neutralized by CCS.
 

 The new plant is projected to store 1.1 million tons of CO
 
 2
 
 every year for five years. ADM says Mt. Simon Sandstone, the geologic formation where the carbon from the Decatur project will be stored, has the capacity to hold billions more. Here’s Chris Mooney,
 <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/04/10/the-quest-to-capture-and-store-carbon-and-slow-climate-change-just-reached-a-new-milestone/?tid=ss_tw&amp;utm_term=.1b650c7a1083">
 reporting
 </a>
 for The Washington Post:
 
<blockquote>

 Unlike in some other CCS projects, the carbon dioxide will not be used for the purposes of so-called “enhanced oil recovery” from depleted oil fields, Greenberg [a researcher at the Illinois State Geological Survey] said. This may add to the economic viability of CCS technology, but has drawn criticism because it promotes further use of fossil fuels.
 

 The Energy Department praised the initiative. “Today’s announcement marks a major step forward for the advancement of industrial carbon capture and storage technologies,” said Doug Hollett, Acting Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy.
 
</blockquote>

 While researchers aren’t sure whether the ADM project will prove to be carbon negative just yet, they’re excited to find out. They say this technology is critical to limiting the planet’s warming and could serve as a model for reducing industrial carbon emissions elsewhere.
 
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 Photo credit:
 <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/unitedsoybean/9622303883/">
 United Soybean Board/Flickr
 </a>

Five new subatomic particles have been uncovered by LHC.

LHC Discovers Five New Particles at the Same Time

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 Physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have discovered five new subatomic particles that “have been hiding in plain sight for years,” according to one of the researchers working at the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. By studying their properties, physicists may be able to develop a better understanding of how all matter is bound together.


 The particles are varied, high-energy forms of the Omega-c baryon—a subatomic particle made up of three smaller building blocks called quarks. Until now, physicists suspected but had not been able to verify the existence of the different forms of the Omega-c baryon.


 While the Omega-c baryon has been more mysterious, scientists know more about other baryons, the most common of which are neutrons and protons. These particles, along with their component quarks, are glued together by the nuclear “strong force,” which keeps the atom in tact.


 Quarks come in six “flavors”: up, down, strange, charm, top, and bottom. Neutrons and protons contain up and down quarks.

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 Here’s Pallab Ghosh, reporting for BBC News:

<blockquote>

 The Omega-c baryon is in the same family of particles as the neutron and proton, but it can be thought of as a more exotic cousin. It too is made up of quarks but they are called “Charm” and “Strange”, and they are heavier versions of the Up and Down quarks.

</blockquote>

 By studying how the two “strange” and one “charm” quark are bound together to make up the Omega-c baryon, physicists hope to shed more light on the strong force, which in turn will help us understand why neutrons and protons bind into the nuclei of atoms and not fly apart into space.


 CERN, the organization that runs the LHC, notes that the observation of five new particles at the same time is “a rather unique event.” The team has published detailed results
 <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04639">
 on the arXiv
 </a>
 .

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 Photo credit: LHCb collaboration

Physicists hope that high-energy forms of the Omega-c baryon will help us understand why matter sticks together.

Birth Defects 20 Times Higher for Women Infected with Zika

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 Infants of mothers who were infected with the Zika virus in 2016 were 20 times more likely to be born with birth defects than those born just a few years before the epidemic.
 

 The rate of severe birth defects for healthy mothers in 2013 and 2014 was just three out of 1,000 live births. The most common defects were brain abnormalities and microcephaly—a condition where an infant’s head is significantly smaller than those of babies of the same sex and age.
 
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<figcaption>Zika is suspected to have a direct link to microcephaly, shown here on the right (compare to the normal-sized brain, on the left).
 
 </figcaption>
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 But among the 442 women likely infected with Zika, 26 fetuses and infants had similar defects—a rate of about 60 out of 1,000. This included live births, miscarriages, and abortions.
 

 The finding comes from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Zika Pregnancy Registry—which was created after the outbreak to track infected, pregnant women—and the results
 <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6608a4.htm?s_cid=mm6608a4_w">
 were published
 </a>
 in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. To compare the birth outcomes of women infected with Zika, the CDC compared them birth defects recorded in in Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Georgia.
 

 But even that significantly higher rate may be underestimating the number of potential cases. Here’s Jessica Glenza, reporting for The Guardian:
 
<blockquote>

 Experts have warned that infection rates
 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/17/zika-virus-outbreaks-us-testing-difficulties-mosquitoes">
 could be much higher
 </a>
 than publicly acknowledged. When Zika was first found in the US, testing for the virus was difficult and time-consuming, and no region was undertaking pre-emptive surveillance.
 

 “We know there are at least 300-plus documented cases in south Florida and south Texas, but again because we did not do active surveillance for
 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/zika-virus">
 Zika virus
 </a>
 infection on the Gulf coast Texas or Florida where
 
 Aedes aegypti
 
 mosquitoes are, we still don’t know what the consequences of the 2016 epidemic were,” said Hotez.
 

 “We’ll have to wait and see if babies are born with severe neurologic defects starting around May or June, because it’s a delayed epidemic. There’s a lag.”
 
</blockquote>

 Though the method of comparing the outcomes of Zika-affected pregnancies to data from three state registries isn’t ideal, the results offer insight into the considerable risk the Zika virus poses. The study emphasizes the need to keep birth defects registries and continue population-based surveillance to interpret data about Zika-affected defects.
 
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 Join the scientists who saw Zika coming as they trace the origins of this devastating virus.
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 Further limitations of the study include the fact that not every American woman infected with Zika was followed in the pregnancy registry, and some of those who contracted the virus while traveling never developed physical symptoms. A number tests were also inaccurately administered and had to be redone.
 

 The CDC continues to discourage pregnant women from traveling to Zika-affected areas, reiterating the danger of Zika infection during pregnancy.
 
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 Image credit:
 <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Microcephaly.png">
 PLoS Biology / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.5)
 </a>

The Nightmare of Sleep Paralysis

“I was facing my clothes rack where I have a bunch of stuff hanging off of it,” Brandon Tan says. “And since it was dark, my bags and jackets were kind of morphed into black figures.”


 Tan, a New York City-based writer, says that that night—with eyes wide-open and lips sealed—he struggled to move his own body. Quickly, nightmarish hallucinations began taking over his auditory and sensory perceptions, blurring the line between dream and reality. “I just kept hearing really mischievous giggling and really creepy screaming,” he says. “And it felt like there were really strong gusts of wind in my room, but the window was completely shut.”


 Jackie Monoson can sympathize. But unlike Tan, who is new to the experience of sleep paralysis, Monoson, a video editor living in New York City, says she has experienced it on and off for several years now, especially during times of high stress. She recalls one episode in particular, which occurred during finals week of her senior year at New York University: “I felt like as I was falling asleep, I was also waking up,” she says. “I was in my dorm, and I knew that my roommate was in the room, but I couldn’t yell out.”


 Not long after her first few encounters, Monoson turned to the internet for help. Per the advice of an online sleep paralysis forum, during episodes, Monoson learned to focus on moving smaller muscles—like wiggling her toes—to break from the feeling of paralysis.


 Sleep paralysis affects millions every year, and studies estimate that more than half of the global population will experience at least one episode in their lifetimes. Despite the prevalence, however, the disorder is poorly understood.


 Baland Jalal, a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge and current fellow at Harvard University, says the lack of scientific research into sleep paralysis likely stems from a place of confusion—no one really knows what to make of it.


 “People understand what it means to have OCD and to wash your hands several times a day,” Jalal says, “But what does it mean if somebody saw a ghost in their room?”


 Now, though, neuroscientists like Jalal are diving in and discovering that there may be more to sleep paralysis and its opposite—known as REM sleep disorder—than we thought. What for many years has been brushed off as no more than a bad dream or perhaps a trick of the moonlight might help us unlock what happens in our brains during sleep.

<h2>
 What is Sleep Paralysis?
</h2>

 Though we don’t know much about the details of sleep paralysis, we do know the basics. It happens when falling asleep or waking up. During an episode, a person becomes aware of their surroundings but is unable to move or speak. It’s like the mind is wide-awake, but the body didn’t get the memo.


 During a sleep cycle, which typically lasts one to two hours, our brains traverse five stages. The first four make up non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. The fifth and final stage is when REM takes place. It is also when sleep paralysis sets in. REM, which occurs approximately 90 minutes into a sleep cycle, is when the brain is most active, producing the most vivid and emotionally-charged dreams. “If you look at the pattern of neural activity in someone in REM sleep and compare that guy to a wakeful person, the brains of these two people look indistinguishable,” Jalal says. “Occasionally, the brain of the guy in REM looks more active than the guy who is awake.”

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 During sleep paralysis, a chilling sense of suffocation sets in.

</div>

 During REM, our body regularly inhibits its motor neurons, paralyzing itself to prevent us from acting out REM’s elaborate visions and causing harm. Normally, the person is immersed in sleep and doesn’t notice they can’t move. Individuals with sleep paralysis, though, are wholly aware of their immobility. Panicky, unsuccessful efforts to sit upright or lift an arm can make things worse, making people’s bodies stiff or exacerbating pressure points.


 Breathing also factors in—when awake, breathing patterns are typically irregular because they’re affected by speech, emotion, and exercise. But in REM, the body is in full control. So during sleep paralysis when people instinctually try to regain control of their breathing and realize they can’t, a chilling sense of suffocation sets in.


 Combined, these symptoms create an overwhelming fear that our brains can’t ignore. When awake, the amygdala—the emotion and threat center of the brain—quickly confirms or rejects feelings of danger. However, during sleep paralysis, the amygdala doesn’t have the right information to determine whether or not a threat is genuine. Unsure of what dangers to believe, the subject is left feeling vulnerable and helpless.

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<h2>
 Supernatural Theories
</h2>

 It would be easy to dismiss sleep paralysis as a side-effect of our sleep-deprived society, but the phenomenon isn’t limited to the United States. Globally there are over 100 words—in various languages—used to describe sleep paralysis. Generations of people have attributed their experiences to everything from alien abductions to parasitic attacks. Different countries associate sleep paralysis with varied levels of danger. And research has found that the more threatened people are by sleep paralysis, the likelier the episodes are to reoccur.


 Culture seems to play a role. Consider the differences in sleep paralysis between Denmark and Egypt, for example: Danes have a very mild aversion to the sleep paralysis and brush the episodes off as trivial incidents, Jalal says. On the other hand, in Egypt, there’s an overwhelming fear of death by sleep paralysis. He says the story of Jinn, the spirit-like being that torments victims when the body is powerless, instills both a psychological and conditioned physiological fear that makes Egyptians more susceptible to waking up during REM. This leads to longer, more intense, and—most importantly—cyclic episodes. As a result, Jalal has found that sleepers in Cairo were three times more likely than those in Copenhagen to experience sleep paralysis.

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 Psychologists and neuroscientists are trying to disrupt and prevent sleep paralysis in Egypt by using culturally adapted cognitive behavioral therapy (CA-CBT). By utilizing psycho-social interventions, which hone in on emotional and social therapy methods, experts are trying to modify cultural perceptions about sleep paralysis. So far, the results are inconclusive.


 Sleep paralysis is similarly distressing in other cultures. Take the Caribbean myth of
 
 kokma
 
 , where the souls of unbaptized babies roam around, smothering slumberers. The Turkish call it
 
 karabasan
 
 , during which sufferers are visited by demons. During a typical episode of
 
 karabasan
 
 , the Turks say a wicked, supernatural entity wearing a wide-brimmed hat enters into the room and strangles the victim with its hands. Snatching the hat, according to some versions of the story, is the only way to prevent the spirit from returning.

<h2>
 Glitch of the Brain
</h2>

 Ordinary triggers like sleep deprivation, increased stress, and irregular sleep patterns can prompt sleep paralysis—which explains why the phenomenon is most common in students and individuals with mental health disorders.


 It’s common for people to keep their sleep paralysis experiences to themselves.


 Last May, Dan Denis, postdoctoral student in the Center for Sleep and Cognition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, found that sleep paralysis is most prevalent in individuals with anxiety-specific conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder and panic disorder. In his
 <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1087079217301120">
 literature review
 </a>
 , Denis and his colleagues investigated the relationship between sleep paralysis and its associated variables including substance use, stress and trauma, genetic influences, and personality. After analyzing hereditary factors, the team also found genetic risk to be a factor for higher rates of sleep paralysis.

<div class="pullquote">

 “Asians in the U.S. have very high rates,” Jalal says, “White people have the least rates. So there’s certainly a genetic component that plays in.”

</div>

 Denis says yet another reason why sleep paralysis is under-researched is because it’s common for people to keep their sleep paralysis experiences to themselves. “They might feel nervous to talk about it. And when they do talk about it, a lot of doctors and medical professionals haven’t heard of it or aren’t sure what it is.”

<h2>
 Maybe Rats Can Help
</h2>

 At the University of Toronto, neuroscientists have turned to rats for answers. By measuring the electrical activity in facial muscles of rats experiencing sleep paralysis, they identified the neurotransmitter and receptor mechanisms responsible.


 The team
 <a href="https://www.utoronto.ca/news/how-sleep-paralysis-works">
 found
 </a>
 that two brain chemical systems, gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and glycine, were working together to cause muscle paralysis during REM. Studying these chemicals’ role in sleep paralysis could help us better understand the disorder and its counterparts, including REM sleep disorder, says John Peever, a neuroscientist and author of the study. REM sleep disorder, as opposed to sleep paralysis, can lead to physical—and sometimes violent—enactments of intense REM dreams.


 More troubling, according to Peever, the team found that “
 <a href="https://www.utoronto.ca/news/how-sleep-paralysis-works">
 80%
 </a>
 of people who have [REM sleep disorder] eventually develop a neurodegenerative disease, such as Parkinson’s disease.” Studying GABA and glycine could give scientists windows into understanding and eventually treating these diseases.


 Peever says that he has studies currently under review that look at what parts of the brain seem to glitch during REM sleep disorder and cause the uncontrollable movement. He says that understanding both the roles of neurotransmitters and the brain processes involved in sleep-related paralysis would allow scientists to figure out how to alter the systems to help prevent sleep disorders across the spectrum.

<h2>
 Exploring Treatments
</h2>

 Today, though, treatment for REM sleep disorder is hard to come by. It is abundantly clear to anyone who runs a quick Google search that there isn’t much out there. The most recommended remedy is a general dose of “improved sleep hygiene.”


 Some studies have attempted to treat sleep paralysis in a roundabout way. Trials for gamma hydroxybutyrate, an anti-sleep medication, have been conducted to treat individuals with narcolepsy, a disorder that causes excessive drowsiness throughout the day. Because sleep paralysis is a common symptom of narcolepsy, the trials did show some promise. Yet there haven’t been any official drug tests specifically for patients with sleep paralysis.

<div class="pullquote">

 Sleep paralysis can unlock secrets about sleep.

</div>

 Jalal is trying something else, and it seems to be working. In an effort to reduce the anxiety brought on by sleep paralysis, Jalal developed one of the first-ever systemic therapies called
 <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4731518/">
 Meditation-Relaxation Therapy
 </a>
 , or MR. The first of the four-step process is what Jalal calls “reappraisal of situation.” It’s a test of willpower that requires the person to develop an objective stance on the situation. “Tell yourself it’s temporary,” he says. The next two steps call for an emotional and psychological distancing from the paralysis. By focusing on something positive, one subverts the perception of inevitable catastrophe.


 “The brain has limited attention capacities. You can only attend to so many things in your environment,” Jalal says. “So by focusing all the attention on something positive, it’s very hard to attend to negative bodily stimuli.”

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 The final step is muscle relaxation. Despite the natural reaction to resist the feeling of paralysis, Jalal recommends loosening up and simply waiting for the moment to pass. Ultimately Jalal hopes that, by psychologically distancing themselves from the uneasy sensations, individuals with sleep paralysis will develop new circuits in their brains. With consistency, his mindfulness techniques should make the episodes more bearable. Eventually, he predicts that episodes will pass with ease.


 Jalal believes MR could help other sleep disorders like insomnia and nightmare sleep disorder, too. “You basically challenge some of the catastrophic cognitions and fear imagery that may contribute to nightmares.”


 “Sleep paralysis can unlock secrets about sleep and particularly how the transitioning of REM sleep and non-REM sleep occurs,” Jalal says.
 
 And though there is currently no magic pill to cure sleep paralysis, by better understanding its components—REM sleep and the shutdown of muscle movement—a definite treatment for the enigmatic condition may not be far off.


 “The first time you kind of hear about it, it doesn’t really sound like a real thing,” says Denis, the sleep and cognition postdoc. “It sounds like something crazy, like horror movie kind of story.”


 Photo credit:
 <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mizzmurray/4231066788">
 Lisa Murray / Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)
 </a>
 , Public Domain

Neuroscientists are discovering that there may be more to sleep paralysis than we once thought.

What’s the Deal with Toast and Cancer?

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 Burnt toast and well-roasted potatoes may increase the risk of cancer, and according to British public health officials, we should avoid eating them. But just how worried should we be?
 

 On Monday, the United Kingdom’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) launched their “Go for Gold” campaign, encouraging families to aim for a golden yellow color when cooking starchy foods, like bread and root vegetables, and avoid over-browning.
 
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<figcaption>Burnt toast contains a carcinogen called acrylamide.
 
 </figcaption>
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 The campaign hopes to minimize exposure to a potentially harmful chemical called acrylamide, a natural compound that forms when starchy foods are baked, roasted, fried, toasted, or grilled above 250˚ F. Higher cooking temperatures and longer cooking times can further increase levels of acrylamide.
 

 Aside from bread and potatoes, acrylamide is found in coffee, crackers, and cereal-based baby food. It can also be found in tobacco smoke and various industrial sealants.
 

 Previous studies in mice have shown that high doses of acrylamide can heighten the risk of neurological damage and cancer in animals. Human studies have delivered incomplete or inconsistent results, but taken as a whole, they have led experts to believe the chemical could likely have the same effect. The International Agency for Research on Cancer considers acrylamide a probable human carcinogen.
 

 While evidence of human cancer risk has yet to be proven, FSA research shows that people in all age-groups are consuming more than what experts are comfortable with. They argue that it’s better to be safe than sorry. Here’s Haroon Siddique,
 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/23/toast-thats-a-bit-too-brown-may-cause-cancer-say-authorities">
 reporting for the Guardian
 </a>
 :
 
<blockquote>

 FSA director of policy Steve Wearne said: “You can’t point to individual people and say that person has cancer because of the amount of acrylamide in their diet but because the mechanisms by which it does have this effect in animals are similar to the mechanisms you would expect to occur in humans it’s not something we can ignore.”
 
</blockquote>

 But some experts have found the public campaign unnecessary and the dangers of acrylamide overly dramatized.
 <a href="http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-cancer/diet-and-cancer/food-controversies#food_controversies0">
 Cancer Research UK
 </a>
 , while acknowledging the potential risks of over-browning certain foods, found “there is no strong evidence linking acrylamide and cancer.” The organization found multiple well-established risks including obesity, smoking, and drinking to be much more pressing.
 

 Here’s David Spiegelhalter,
 <a href="https://fullfact.org/health/how-dangerous-burnt-toast/">
 writing for the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication
 </a>
 at the University of Cambridge:
 
<blockquote>

<a href="http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-cancer/bodyweight-and-cancer/bodyweight-facts-and-evidence#bodyweight_facts1">
 Cancer Research UK
 </a>
 say that “researchers estimate that overweight and obesity are behind around 18,000 cases of cancer each year in the UK.” In stark contrast, the FSA provide no estimate of the current harm caused by acrylamide, nor the benefit from any reduction due to people following their advice.
 
</blockquote>

 Some exposure to acrylamide is inevitable, and in a nod to reality, the FSA does not recommend that people abandon potatoes or bread altogether. Since most people are unaware of the dangers—or even presence—of acrylamide in foods, the FSA says their campaign aims to increase public awareness and share simple steps to reduce acrylamide consumption including:
 
<ul>
<li>
 Aim for a golden yellow color or lighter when cooking starchy foods
 </li>
<li>
 Avoid over-heating packaged foods by carefully following cooking instructions
 </li>
<li>
 Eat a balanced diet
 </li>
<li>
 Store raw potatoes in a cool, dark place as opposed to the fridge which can increase overall acrylamide levels
 </li>
</ul>

 The FSA says that while the risk is not significant, it is one that can be easily reduced. “We are not saying to people to worry about the occasional piece of food or meal that’s overcooked. This is about managing risk across your lifetime,” Wearne told the Guardian.
 
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New Malaria Vaccine 100% Effective, But May Be Difficult to Scale

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 Today, a human trial for a malaria vaccine reported up to 100% protection for ten weeks following the last dose, a potential breakthrough for a vexing disease.
 



 While this vaccine has been trialed before, it has never been this effective. The key appears to be how the vaccine was delivered—directly into the bloodstream as opposed to into a muscle, as most vaccines are.
 

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<img alt="" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/blood-draw.width-990_79cwAGT.jpg"/>
<figcaption>The new technique, which delivers the vaccine into the vein, is similar to drawing blood.
 
 </figcaption>
</figure>


 The trial consisted of 35 participants who had never been exposed to malaria. They were first injected with varying doses of the vaccine, which uses weakened malaria-causing parasites
 


 Plasmodium falciparum
 


 , along with chloroquine, an antimalarial drug. Participants were then infected with the same strain of malaria used in the vaccine. The results were
 <a href="http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature21060">
 published today
 </a>
 in the journal Nature.
 



 “I think it’s among some of the best malaria protection data,” said Dan Barouch, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, “but we have to keep in mind it is in a controlled human challenge study. So, whether it can be extrapolated for protection against malaria in the field remains to be determined.”
 



 In earlier trials, scientists used weakened live malaria parasites delivered via mosquitoes to induce an immune response, which then imparted protection in more than 90% of participants. This study experimented with direct venous inoculation (DVI), a different method of administering vaccines that injects the vaccine directly into an individual’s vein.
 



 Dr. Stephen Hoffman, CEO and chief scientific officer of Sanaria, Inc., and the lead author of the study, says DVI is similar to drawing blood. While it requires more skill than the standard poke-in-the-arm immunization technique, he said that DVI is less painful and less uncomfortable. “Thus far, it has proved to be extremely well tolerated, much better tolerated than when you give a vaccine in your muscle—and safe, with no adverse events associated with it,” Hoffman said.
 



 Researchers found that three high doses of the vaccine administered every four weeks delivered the best results. Nine out of the nine participants (100%) given high doses were immune for at least ten weeks after the final dosage. Lowering the dose significantly reduced the efficacy, and speeding it up slightly—with doses delivered three times every five days instead of every week—dropped the number protected to five out of eight participants (63%).
 



 DVI is logistically more difficult than traditional routes of immunization, Barouch said, which may pose challenges in moving the vaccine out of the lab. “There’s a number of immunologic reasons why they chose to administer the vaccine intravenously, but clearly that will be a downside in terms of upscaling the vaccine approach.”
 



 Last year, the countries spent hundreds of millions of dollars on malaria control efforts. And despite the efforts and investments of global health organizations, there were still an estimated 214 million cases of malaria and 438,000 deaths, more than two-thirds of which were children under the age of five. As mosquitoes develop resistance to insecticide, vaccines remain the most cost-effective, long-lasting approach to fight and possibly eliminate the disease.
 



 Though these findings are a step in the right direction, the vaccine still has more hurdles to surmount, including research into whether the DVI can be used as part of a mass vaccination strategy. In future clinical trials, Hoffman and his colleagues said they will explore how long the protection lasts, whether it’s effective  in diverse populations, and how it responds to different forms of exposure and strains of malaria.
 



 “We want to prove, incontrovertibly, before we unleash a vaccine, that the vaccine has the performance characteristics that no one will argue about,” Hoffman said. “This is the best result so far, but it’s still a very tough parasite with a tough problem worldwide. We’re under no illusions that this won’t be difficult.”
 

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 Photo credit: CDC

AI Translation Could Speed Rare Language Research—and Save Lives

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 Language barriers are slowly becoming a thing of the past thanks to artificial intelligence. Google’s newest machine translation system converts speech directly into the text of another language, greatly speeding the process by removing the intermediate transcription step.
 



 Google’s offering isn’t the first real time speech-to-text options. Skype, for example, rolled out a live translation feature in 2014. The difference, though, is that Skype’s and others’ translate from a transcribed version of the audio.
 

 Errors in speech recognition could result in incorrect transcription and, therefore, translation.
 

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<img alt="" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/slack-imgs.com_.width-990_GIQY5Yg.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Google's latest take on speech-to-text translation could bridge international communication.
 
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 Google’s deep-learning research team, Google Brain, is essentially cutting out the middle step which has the potential to lead to quicker, more accurate translations. The system was developed by analyzing hundreds of hours of Spanish audio along with the corresponding English text. By using several layers of neural networks, or computer algorithms that mirror the human brain, wavelengths of the spoken Spanish were linked to the corresponding chunks of written English. It’s the computer equivalent of your ears hearing Spanish while your brain understands the words as English.
 



 Here’s Matty Reynolds,
 <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2126738-google-uses-neural-networks-to-translate-without-transcribing/">
 reporting
 </a>
 for New Scientist:
 

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 After a learning period, Google’s system produced a better-quality English translation of Spanish speech than one that transcribed the speech into written Spanish first. It was evaluated using the BLEU score, which is designed to judge machine translations based on how close they are to that by a professional human.
 



 The system could be particularly useful for translating speech in languages that are spoken by very few people, says
 
<a href="http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/sgwater/">

 Sharon Goldwater
 
</a>

 at the University of Edinburgh in the UK.
 



 International disaster relief teams, for instance, could use it to quickly put together a translation system to communicate with people they are trying to assist. When an earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, says Goldwater, there was no translation software available for Haitian Creole.
 

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 Not only could this system come in handy for international disaster relief teams, but it could also be used to translate rare languages that are seldom written down. For example, Goldwater is currently using similar methods to translate Arapaho, a Native American language spoken only by about 1,000 people of the Arapaho tribe. She is also working on translating Ainu, which is spoken by a small portion of the Japanese population.
 



 The new approach isn’t ready for prime time, but with additional training on bigger data sets, it could set a new standard for machine translation.
 

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 Photo credit:
 <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/unicphoto/9897998006/">
 United Nations / Bo Li.
 </a>

Annette Choi

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