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Published8 minutes agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesBy Aurelia FosterHealth reporterMindfulness, group and cognitive behavioural therapy could effectively treat menopause symptoms such as low mood and anxiety, analysis suggests.The University College London research, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, examined 30 studies involving 3,500 women in 14 countries, including the UK, the US and Australia.Draft NHS guidelines recommend offering CBT alongside or instead of HRT.It could “give GPs and patients more options”, the researchers said.HRT replaces the hormones oestrogen or progestogen or both.It is administered using gels, creams, pessaries, tablets or sprays.What does menopause do to the body?Talking therapies recommended for menopauseHot flushes menopause drug approved in UKBut psychosocial therapies such as group counselling, marital support and health-promotion coaching, as well as mindfulness and CBT, focus on developing behavioural patterns, coping strategies and relaxation techniques.And the UCL researchers say “empowering women” to develop positive thinking would probably have benefits beyond those of HRT, with CBT the most cost-effective as results can be achieved in a shorter timeframe.Some women showed “statistically significant improvements” in anxiety and depression following CBT and mindfulness therapies,compared with no or alternative treatments. CBT and group therapies improved sleep, memory, concentration.And the talking therapies could also improve quality of life and help women whose symptoms had made them less confident cope with other common challenges.Hot flushesUCL clinical-psychology-of-ageing professor Aimee Spector said: “There’s a clear link between these physical and psychological symptoms.”So a clear example is the link between hot flushes and anxiety. “When people have hot flushes, they tend to get very anxious about having them. “And that anxiety can often cause people to have more hot flushes.”Poor sleep can lead to depression because it reduces mood. “But then, when people have depression, one of the symptoms is poor sleep – so again, another cycle that we see.”What we then sometimes see is people leave, avoid situations, leave work, feel they are unable to cope, because they get into this vicious cycle. “So what CBT aims to do is to counter these negative cycles, by getting people to use strategies to think about different ways of looking at things.”They might do experiments that involve reducing avoidance, testing things out.”More on this storyHot-flushes menopause drug approved in UKPublished18 December 2023NHS talking therapy recommended for menopause woesPublished17 November 2023Sharp rise in HRT prescriptions after campaignPublished27 October 2023What is the menopause and what are the signs?Published23 March 2023Related Internet LinksUCL – London’s Global UniversityNICE – The National Institute for Health and Care ExcellenceThe BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

Published8 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Jean ChungBy Jean MackenzieSeoul correspondentOn a rainy Tuesday afternoon, Yejin is cooking lunch for her friends at her apartment, where she lives alone on the outskirts of Seoul, happily single.While they eat, one of them pulls up a well-worn meme of a cartoon dinosaur on her phone. “Be careful,” the dinosaur says. “Don’t let yourself become extinct like us.”The women all laugh.”It’s funny, but it’s dark, because we know we could be causing our own extinction,” says Yejin, a 30-year-old television producer.Neither she, nor any of her friends, are planning on having children. They are part of a growing community of women choosing the child-free life. South Korea has the lowest birth rate in the world, and it continues to plummet, beating its own staggeringly low record year after year. Figures released on Wednesday show it fell by another 8% in 2023 to 0.72. This refers to the number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime. For a population to hold steady, that number should be 2.1. If this trend continues, Korea’s population is estimated to halve by the year 2100. A ‘national emergency’Globally, developed countries are seeing birth rates fall, but none in such an extreme way as South Korea. Its projections are grim. In 50 years time, the number of working age people will have halved, the pool eligible to take part in the country’s mandatory military service will have shrunk by 58%, and nearly half the population will be older than 65. This bodes so badly for the country’s economy, pension pot, and security that politicians have declared it “a national emergency”. For nearly 20 years, successive governments have thrown money at the problem – 379.8 trillion KRW ($286bn; £226bn) to be exact. Asia is spending to boost birth rates – will it work?Couples who have children are showered with cash, from monthly handouts to subsidised housing and free taxis. Hospital bills and even IVF treatments are covered, though only for those who are married. Such financial incentives have not worked, leading politicians to brainstorm more “creative” solutions, like hiring nannies from South East Asia and paying them below minimum wage, and exempting men from serving in the military service if they have three children before turning 30. Unsurprisingly, policymakers have been accused of not listening to young people – especially women – about their needs. And so, over the past year we have travelled around the country, speaking to women to understand the reasons behind their decision not to have children.Image source, Jean ChungWhen Yejin decided to live alone in her mid-20s, she defied social norms – in Korea, single living is largely considered a temporary phase in one’s life. Then five years ago, she decided not to get married, and not to have children. “It’s hard to find a dateable man in Korea – one who will share the chores and the childcare equally,” she tells me, “And women who have babies alone are not judged kindly.” In 2022, only 2% of births in South Korea occurred outside of marriage. ‘A perpetual cycle of work’Instead, Yejin has chosen to focus on her career in television, which, she argues, doesn’t allow her enough time to raise a child anyway. Korean work hours are notoriously long. Yejin works a traditional 9-6 job (the Korean equivalent of a 9-5) but says she usually doesn’t leave the office until 8pm and there is overtime on top of that. Once she gets home, she only has time to clean the house or exercise before bed. “I love my job, it brings me so much fulfilment,” she says. “But working in Korea is hard, you’re stuck in a perpetual cycle of work.”S Korea records world’s lowest fertility rate againYejin says there is also pressure to study in her spare time, to get better at her job: “Koreans have this mindset that if you don’t continuously work on self-improvement, you’re going to get left behind, and become a failure. This fear makes us work twice as hard.” “Sometimes at the weekends I go and get an IV drip, just to get enough energy to go back to work on Monday,” she adds casually, as if this were a fairly normal weekend activity. She also shares the same fear of every woman I spoke to – that if she were to take time off to have a child, she might not be able to return to work. “There is an implicit pressure from companies that when we have children, we must leave our jobs,” she says. She has watched it happen to her sister and her two favourite news presenters. ‘I know too much’One 28-year-old woman, who worked in HR, said she’d seen people who were forced to leave their jobs or who were passed over for promotions after taking maternity leave, which had been enough to convince her never to have a baby. Both men and women are entitled to a year’s leave during the first eight years of their child’s life. But in 2022, only 7% of new fathers used some of their leave, compared to 70% of new mothers. Image source, Jean ChungKorean women are the most highly educated of those in OECD countries, and yet the country has the worst gender pay gap and a higher-than-average proportion of women out of work compared to men.Researchers say this proves they are being presented with a trade-off – have a career or have a family. Increasingly, they are choosing a career. I met Stella Shin at an afterschool club, where she teaches five-year-olds English. “Look at the children. They’re so cute,” she cooed. But at 39, Stella does not have children of her own. It was not an active decision, she says. She has been married for six years, and both she and her husband wanted a child but were so busy working and enjoying themselves that time slipped away. Now she has accepted that her lifestyle makes it “impossible”. “Mothers need to quit work to look after their child full time for the first two years, and this would make me very depressed,” she said. “I love my career and taking care of myself.”In her spare time Stella attends K-pop dance classes with a group of older women. This expectation that women take two to three years off work when they have a child is common among women. When I asked Stella whether she could share the parental leave with her husband, she dismissed me with a look. “It’s like when I make him do the dishes and he always misses a bit, I couldn’t rely on him,” she said. Even if she wanted to give up work, or juggle a family and a career, she said she could not afford to because the cost of housing is too high.Image source, Jean ChungMore than half the population live in or around the capital Seoul, which is where the vast majority of opportunities are, creating huge pressure on apartments and resources. Stella and her husband have been gradually pushed further and further away from the capital, into neighbouring provinces, and are still unable to buy their own place. Seoul’s birth rate has sunk to 0.55 – the lowest in the country.Then there is the cost of private education. While unaffordable housing is a problem the world over, this is what makes Korea truly unique.From the age of four, children are sent to an array of expensive extra-curricular classes – from maths and English, to music and Taekwondo. The practice is so widespread that to opt out is seen as setting your child up to fail, an inconceivable notion in hyper-competitive Korea. This has made it the most expensive country in the world to raise a child. A 2022 study found that only 2% of parents did not pay for private tuition, while 94% said it was a financial burden. As a teacher at one of these cram schools, Stella understands the burden all too well. She watches parents spend up to £700 ($890) per child a month, many of whom cannot afford it. “But without these classes, the children fall behind,” she said. “When I’m around the children, I want to have one, but I know too much.” Image source, Jean ChungFor some, this system of excessive private tuition cuts deeper than cost. “Minji” wanted to share her experience, but not publicly. She is not ready for her parents to know she will not be having children. “They will be so shocked and disappointed,” she said, from the coastal city of Busan, where she lives with her husband. Minji confided that her childhood and 20s had been unhappy.”I’ve spent my whole life studying,” she said – first to get into a good university, then for her civil servant exams, and then to get her first job at 28.She remembers her childhood years spent in classrooms until late at night, cramming maths, which she loathed and was bad at, while she dreamed of being an artist. “I’ve had to compete endlessly, not to achieve my dreams, but just to live a mediocre life,” she said. “It’s been so draining.”Only now, aged 32, does Minji feel free, and able to enjoy herself. She loves to travel and is learning to dive. But her biggest consideration is that she does not want to put a child through the same competitive misery she experienced. “Korea is not a place where children can live happily,” she has concluded. Her husband would like a child, and they used to fight about it constantly, but he has come to accept her wishes. Occasionally her heart wavers, she admits, but then she remembers why it cannot be. A depressing social phenomenonOver in the city of Daejon, Jungyeon Chun, is in what she calls a “single-parenting marriage”. After picking up her seven-year-old daughter and four-year-old son from school, she tours the nearby playgrounds, passing the hours until her husband returns from work. He rarely makes it home by bedtime. “I didn’t feel like I was making a major decision having children, I thought I would be able to return to work pretty quickly,” she said. But soon the social and financial pressures kicked in, and to her surprise she found herself parenting alone. Her husband, a trade unionist, did not help with the childcare or the housework. “I felt so angry,” she said. “I had been well-educated and taught that women were equal, so I could not accept this.” Image source, Jean ChungThis sits at the heart of the problem. Over the past 50 years, Korea’s economy has developed at break-neck speed, propelling women into higher education and the workforce, and expanding their ambitions, but the roles of wife and mother have not evolved at nearly the same pace. Frustrated, Jungyeon began to observe other mothers. “I was like, ‘Oh, my friend who’s raising a child is also depressed and my friend across the street is depressed too’ and I was like, ‘Oh, this is a social phenomenon’.”Image source, Jean ChungShe began to doodle her experiences and post them online. “The stories were pouring out of me,” she said. Her webtoon became a huge success, as women across the country related to her work, and Jungyeon is now the author of three published comic books. Now she says she is past the stage of anger and regret. “I just wish I’d known more about the reality of raising kids, and how much mothers are expected to do,” she said. “The reason women are not having children now is because they have the courage to talk about it.”But Jungyeon is sad, she says, that women are being denied the wonder of motherhood, because of the “tragic situation they will be forced into”. But Minji says she is grateful she has agency. “We are the first generation who get to choose. Before it was a given, we had to have children. And so we choose not to because we can.”‘I’d have 10 children if I could’Back at Yejin’s apartment, after lunch, her friends are haggling over her books and other belongings. Fatigued with life in Korea, Yejin has decided to leave for New Zealand. She woke up one morning with a lightbulb realisation that no-one was forcing her to live here. She researched which countries ranked highly on gender equality, and New Zealand emerged a clear winner. “It’s a place where men and women are paid equally,” she says, almost disbelievingly, “So I’m off.” I ask Yejin and her friends what, if anything, could convince them to change their minds. Minsung’s answer surprises me. “I’d love to have children. I’d have 10 if I could,” So, what’s stopping her, I ask? The 27-year-old tells me she is bisexual and has a same-sex partner. Image source, Jean ChungSame-sex marriage is illegal in South Korea, and unmarried women are not generally permitted to use sperm donors to conceive. “Hopefully one day this will change, and I’ll be able to marry and have children with the person I love,” she says. The friends point out the irony, given Korea’s precarious demographic situation, that some women who want to be mothers are not allowed to be.But it appears politicians might slowly be accepting the depth and complexity of the crisis. This month, South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol acknowledged that the attempts to spend their way out of the problem “hadn’t worked”, and that South Korea was “excessively and unnecessarily competitive”. He said his government would now treat the low birth rate as a “structural problem” – though how this will translate into policy is still to be seen. Earlier this month, I caught up with Yejin from New Zealand, where she had been living for three months. She was buzzing about her new life and friends, and her job working in the kitchen of a pub. “My work-life balance is so much better,” she said. She can arrange to meet her friends during the week. “I feel so much more respected at work and people are less judgemental,” she added.”It’s making me not want to go home.”Additional reporting by Leehyun Choi and Hosu Lee

Youth mental health in urban environments is significantly better when more nature is incorporated into city design.
A new study from University of Waterloo researchers suggests that forest bathing, the simple method of being calm and quiet amongst the trees, observing nature around you while breathing deeply, can help youth de-stress and boost health and well-being.
The study was the first ever to collect on-site, real-time survey data from adolescents about their emotional responses to various urban environments like a transit hub, residential streets, trails, parks, and waterways. Natural urban spaces were consistently related to significantly higher scores in positive outcomes.
“While the findings may not be surprising to most people, what’s significant is that for the first time, we’re able to specifically say this is how much anxiety is reduced when kids are by a park as opposed to by a city centre,” said Leia Minaker, associate professor in the School of Planning and director of the Future Cities Initiative.
The Future Cities Initiative is the latest in the University of Waterloo’s efforts to address the need to create healthy and prosperous urban futures for all.
After standing and looking at an urban lake for just two or three minutes, youth scores on a validated anxiousness scale decreased by nine per cent. On the other hand, their anxiousness scores were 13 per cent higher when standing in a busy downtown location for the same length of time. This is after adjusting for several other factors, including age, gender, ethnicity, mental health diagnosis, and social status.
With urbanization accelerating rapidly, it’s vital to understand urban environments’ impact on youth better. Especially given that depression and anxiety are among the leading causes of illness among adolescents.

The study found that nature motifs or patterns on buildings, natural sights in urban environments, such as lakes and public activity parks, and landscape elements, like gardens and trees, enhance positive emotional experiences for youth. While these urban characteristics are unique to adolescents, they might be interpreted differently from adults who pursue other activities. For example, adults might be more likely to walk or run in green spaces, whereas youth are more likely to skateboard or hang out.
In designing cities with health and sustainability for all age groups in mind, these findings provide clear evidence that planners, city builders, and healthcare providers can use to advocate for specific natural urban design features.
“Teens are frequently excluded from any kind of decision about the cities they live in,” Minaker said. “It’s important to get their opinions and quantify their experiences because childhood experiences influence many long-term health and disease outcomes.”
The researchers’ next step will be to find a link in the mental health data to the long-term economic and social impacts. Future research will assess the mental and physical health of kids living in high-rise apartment buildings, another area of research that is poorly understood in North America.

A new tool could reduce costs for diagnosing infectious diseases.
Biomedical researchers from The University of Texas at Austin have developed a new, less expensive way to detect nuclease digestion — one of the critical steps in many nucleic acid sensing applications, such as those used to identify COVID-19 and other infectious diseases.
A new study published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology shows that this low-cost tool, called Subak, is effective at telling when nucleic acid cleavage occurs, which happens when an enzyme called nuclease breaks down nucleic acids, such as DNA or RNA, into smaller fragments.
The traditional way of identifying nuclease activity, Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) probe, costs 62 times more to produce than the Subak reporter.
“To make diagnostics more accessible to the public, we have to reduce costs,” said Soonwoo Hong, a Ph.D. student in the lab of Tim Yeh, associate professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, who led the work. “Any improvements in nucleic acid detection will strengthen our testing infrastructure and make it easier to widely detect diseases like COVID-19.”
The research team — which also included Jennifer Brodbelt, professor of chemistry at UT Austin’s College of Natural Sciences, and MinJun Kim, professor of mechanical engineering in Southern Methodist University’s Lyle School of Engineering — replaced the traditional FRET probe with Subak reporter in a test called DETECTR (DNA endonuclease-targeted CRISPR trans reporter).
Subak reporters are based on a special class of fluorescent nanomaterials known as silver nanoclusters. They are made up of 13 silver atoms wrapped inside a short DNA strand. This organic/inorganic composite nanomaterial is too small to be visible to the naked eye and ranging from 1 to 3 nanometers (one billionth of a meter) in size.

Nanomaterials at this length scale, such as semiconductor quantum dots, can be highly luminescent and exhibit different colors. Fluorescent nanomaterials have found applications in TV displays and biosensing, such as the Subak reporters.
“We have very clear evidence from mass spectrometry that transformation from Ag13 to Ag10 underlines the green to red color conversion observed in the sample, after DNA template digestion,” Brodbelt said.
Subak reporters, which can be synthesized at room temperature in a single-pot reaction, cost just $1 per nanomole to make. In contrast, FRET probe — which employs complex steps to label a donor dye and a quencher — costs $62 per nanomole to produce.
“These highly luminescent silver nanoclusters can be called quantum dots as they show strong size-tunable fluorescence emission due to quantum confinement effect,” Yeh said. “No one can precisely tune the cluster size (and the corresponding emission color) until our demonstration of Subak,” which highlights the innovation of this research.
In addition to further testing the Subak reporter for nuclease digestion, the team also wants to investigate whether it can be a probe for other biological targets.
The work is supported by a National Science Foundation grant to Yeh and Brodbelt.

Cannabis products high in the nonintoxicating compound CBD can quell anxiety better than THC-dominant products — and without the potential side effects, new University of Colorado Boulder research suggests.
The study of 300 people, published in the journal Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research, is the first randomized trial to examine how legal, commercially available cannabis impacts anxiety symptoms.
The study comes as one in five U.S. adults suffer from an anxiety disorder, making it the most common mental illness in the country, and prescriptions for anti-anxiety medications are on the rise.
“We need more data before we can say conclusively that there are long-term, beneficial effects, but the short-term effects were very clear: CBD was associated with tension and anxiety relief with limited harm,” said senior author Cinnamon Bidwell, associate professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and the Institute of Cognitive Science.
Adults rank anxiety among the top three medical reasons (along with sleep and pain) for turning to cannabis, a.k.a. marijuana, for relief. Yet research on whether it works has been mixed.
Some studies have suggested that using cannabis too frequently or using potent products high in the intoxicating cannabinoid THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) can actually worsen anxiety long-term.
Others have shown that adding CBD to THC-heavy products might counteract some of their negative effects, including the impairment and paranoia that can emerge right after use.

To better understand the distinct short-term and long-term effects of both CBD and THC (the two primary cannabinoids, or active ingredients, in cannabis), the research team recruited 300 people with anxiety: Forty-two were not cannabis users; 258 had tried it at some point. The larger group was assigned to use one of three flower products: a THC-dominant product (24% THC and 1% CBD); a CBD-dominant product (1% THC, 24% CBD); or one with 12% CBD and 12% THC.
Federal law prohibits the possession or distribution of commercially available cannabis on college campuses, including for research purposes, so participants were directed to purchase their assigned product from a designated dispensary and use it on their own time, off-campus.
Over four weeks, participants could use the cannabis products as much and as frequently as they wanted to. On average, the study participants used the designated products three times per week.
During the study, researchers drove a mobile laboratory to each participant’s home and tested them prior to and directly after they smoked cannabis in their home.
At the end of the study period, all four groups reported decreased anxiety. But the cannabis groups saw greater reductions in perceived anxiety than the non-cannabis group, and those using CBD-dominant products showed the most improvement of all.
Surprisingly, while those in the CBD-dominant group didn’t feel impaired, they did feel less tense immediately after smoking. They were also less likely to experience paranoia immediately after use than those in the two other cannabis groups.

“Our findings suggest that THC did not increase anxiety long-term and that CBD-dominant forms of cannabis were associated with acute tension reduction that may translate to longer-term reductions in anxiety symptoms,” said Gregory Giordano, a professional research assistant at the CU Center for Health and Neuroscience, Genes and Environment (CUChange).
Bidwell noted that CBD has greater anti-inflammatory properties than THC, so it’s possible that CBD-dominant products could reduce anxiety by quelling inflammation in the brain and nerves. However, she said that even a touch of THC — 1% — can have a swift impact on mood.
While numerous prescription drugs are available for treating anxiety, many come with side effects and can lead to dependency. And both early and frequent use of THC can increase risk for cannabis-related harms, such as problem use and cognitive difficulties, Bidwell said.
“Our study suggests that CBD products may be able to relieve anxiety in the moment for adults who use them, and possibly longer-term, in a way that is meaningful and doesn’t necessarily produce the same risks or harms of THC or prescription medications,” said Bidwell. “We need more data before we can make conclusive recommendations, but this is promising news.”

Imagine if we could inhale scents that delay the onset of cancer, inflammation, or neurodegenerative disease. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside, are poised to bring this futuristic technology closer to reality.
In lab experiments, a team led by Anandasankar Ray, a professor of molecular, cell and systems biology, exposed the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) to diacetyl, a microbial volatile compound released by yeast, and found changes in gene expression in the fly’s antennae in just a few days. In separate experiments, the team found similar gene expression changes in mice and human cells.
“That exposure to an odorant can directly alter expression of genes, even in tissues that have no odorant receptors, came as a complete surprise,” Ray said. “These molecules are able to get to the cell nucleus through the cell membrane.”
Diacetyl is widely used in food and beverage flavorings. It occurs naturally in a variety of dairy products and is a natural byproduct of fermentation and brewing. While diacetyl is found in beer, wine, Greek yogurt, and many ripening fruits, it is considered unsafe to inhale at high concentrations.
“Our initial discovery was made using diacetyl, as a proof of concept, and this compound may not be the perfect candidate for therapy,” Ray said. “We are already working on identifying other volatiles that lead to changes in gene expression. Our important finding is that some volatile compounds emitted from microbes and food can alter epigenetic states in neurons and other eukaryotic cells. Ours is the first report of common volatiles behaving in this way. It opens an entire field of inquiry. The possibilities are limitless.”
The research, published in eLife, shows that alterations in gene expression and chromatin — the mixture of DNA and proteins that form chromosomes — are possible in an organism even without the organism actively consuming the volatile compound source. The source could even be at some distance from the organism.
“We have shown for the first time that some of these odor molecules to which we are exposed and are being absorbed into the cells of our skin, nose, lungs, even probably to the brain through the bloodstream are fundamentally altering gene expression,” Ray said. “Is this something to be concerned about? How is it affecting our predisposition to certain diseases? How exactly is it affecting the genes we express? These remain unanswered questions.”
Ray’s team found that diacetyl can act as an inhibitor of histone deacetylase, or HDAC, enzymes and discovered several related volatiles with similar potential. HDAC inhibitors are used as anti-cancer drugs and may find use also in treating inflammatory diseases as well as neurodegeneration. When HDACs, which are conserved in plants and animals, are inhibited, DNA gets less compactly wound in cells, leading to more gene expression.

“This opens the potential for odorant-based HDAC inhibitors to delay neurodegeneration or memory deficits in diseases,” Ray said.
In the fruit fly, Ray’s team found exposure to diacetyl volatiles substantially slowed degeneration of photoreceptor cells linked to Huntington’s disease. In transgenic mice, the team found exposure to diacetyl showed gene expression changes in lungs and brains; gene levels that are upregulated in cancers like neuroblastoma showed a significant reduction in mice exposed to diacetyl.
In human cell lines, the team found diacetyl changed acetylation levels, with higher levels of acetylation resulting in higher levels of gene expression. In further testing on human cancer cell lines, the team found exposure to diacetyl prevented proliferation of neuroblastoma.
Apart from human diseases the research has enormous implications for agriculture. Because HDACs are highly conserved, they also affect plants.
“Plants appear to have a very strong response to some of these volatiles,” Ray said. “In plants, any process that requires changes in gene expression can now be affected via exposure to this special class of odorants.”
Ray explained that the volatiles are like tiny drugs that can change levels of gene expression and exploit the plant’s genetic potential for improving growth of roots, leaves, flowers and even responses to abiotic stress like freezing and drought.

“Volatile chemicals can deliver a therapeutic dose to plants and animals, with no need for pills or injections,” he said. “They can simply be breathed in, almost giving a new meaning to scent-based therapy.”
With the help of the Office of Technology Partnerships at UCR, Ray has filed patents for volatiles that can slow down neurodegeneration and cancer and alter plant growth and responses to stress.
Last year, Ray launched a startup, Remote Epigenetics, which has the exclusive license to use these volatiles that alter gene expression. The company is headquartered in the Multipurpose Research Building on the UCR campus. The new agritech startup will focus on developing new tools for agriculture using low-cost volatiles to address several important problems.
Ray was joined in the research by Sachiko Haga-Yamanaka, Rogelio Nuñez-Flores, Christi Ann Scott, Sarah Perry, Stephanie Turner Chen, Crystal Pontrello, and Meera Goh Nair of UCR.
Ray is also the founder of another startup, Sensorygen, which works on the computational neurobiology of olfaction and taste.
The research was partially funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Agricultural Experimentation Station at UCR.

It has long been known that there is a complex interplay between genetic factors and environmental influences in shaping behavior. Recently it has been found that genes governing behavior in the brain operate within flexible and contextually responsive regulatory networks. However, conventional genome-wide association studies (GWAS) often overlook this complexity, particularly in humans where controlling environmental variables poses challenges.
In a new perspective article publishing February 27 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Rutgers University, US, the importance of integrating environmental effects into genetic research is underscored. The authors discuss how failure to do so can perpetuate deterministic thinking in genetics, as historically observed in the justification of eugenics movements and, more recently, in cases of racially motivated violence.
The authors propose expanding GWAS by incorporating environmental data, as demonstrated in studies on aggression in fruit flies, in order to get a broader understanding of the intricate nature of gene-environment interactions. Additionally, they advocate for better integration of insights from animal studies into human research. Animal experiments reveal how both genotype and environment shape brain gene regulatory networks and subsequent behavior, and these findings could better inform similar experiments with people.
“Advances in genomic technology have really illustrated how changes in the environment lead to changes not only in behavior, but in the expression of genes, in a way that’s not determined just by heredity,” said co-author Matthew Hudson, professor of crop sciences at Illinois. “We now understand that even the same genes can function very differently across individuals depending on their expression.”
Furthermore, the authors stress the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration to understand the roots of behavior, especially among the animal and human research communities. Co-author Rina Bliss, professor of sociology at Rutgers, added, “We really need these kinds of collaborations among social scientists and biologists to illuminate the complexity of gene-environment interactions, especially as they relate to human behavior.” The article also suggests that emerging technologies such as brain organoids and new forms of brain imaging will be necessary to elucidate the molecular mechanisms linking genetic and environmental influences on behavior.
Ultimately, the authors stress that a paradigm shift is needed in human social and behavioral genomics towards a nuanced comprehension of gene-environment interactions. “Studying the roots of behavior holds great potential for insights that can help better understand brain function, in health and disease. We hope this article helps researchers to make the most of the opportunities while avoiding reductionist pitfalls,” said coauthor Gene Robinson, Director of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology and professor of entomology and neuroscience at Illinois.
The authors suggest that a holistic perspective and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration could help researchers navigate the complexities of human behavior, while mitigating the risks associated with deterministic thinking in genetics.

A new study shows oxygenation levels in the placenta, formed during the last three months of fetal development, are an important predictor of cortical growth (development of the outermost layer of the brain or cerebral cortex) and is likely a predictor of childhood cognition and behaviour.
“Many factors can disrupt healthy brain development in utero, and this study demonstrates the placenta is a crucial mediator between maternal health and fetal brain health,” said Emma Duerden, Canada Research Chair in Neuroscience & Learning Disorders at Western University, Lawson Health Research Institute scientist and senior author of the study.
The connection between placental health and childhood cognition was demonstrated in previous research using ultrasound, but for this study, Duerden, research scientist Emily Nichols and an interdisciplinary team of Western and Lawson researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a far superior and more holistic imaging technique. This novel approach to imaging placental growth allows researchers to study neurodevelopmental disorders very early on in life, which could lead to the development of therapies and treatments.
“While ultrasound provides some measure of placental function, it is imprecise and prone to error, so MRI is just a bit more specific and precise,” said Nichols, lead author of the study. “You wouldn’t use MRI necessarily to diagnose placental growth restriction, you would use ultrasound, but MRI gives us a much better way to understand the mechanisms of the placenta and how placental function is affecting the fetal brain.”
The study, published today in the high impact journal JAMA Network Open, was led by Duerden and Nichols and co-authored by researchers from the Faculty of Education, Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Western Engineering and Lawson Health Research Institute.
The placenta, an organ that develops in the uterus during pregnancy, is the main conduit for oxygenation and nutrients to a fetus, and a vital endocrine organ during pregnancy.
“Anything a fetus needs to grow and thrive is mostly delivered through the placenta so if there is anything wrong with the placenta, the fetus might not be receiving the nutrients or the levels of oxygenation it needs to thrive,” said Nichols.

Poor nutrition, smoking, cocaine use, chronic hypertension, anemia, and diabetes may result in fetal growth restriction and may cause problems for the development of the placenta. Fetal growth restriction is relatively common and happens in about six per cent of all pregnancies and globally impacts 30 million pregnancies each year.
“There can be many issues related to the healthy development of the placenta,” said Duerden. “If it does not develop properly, the fetal brain may not get enough oxygen and nutrients, which may affect childhood cognition and behaviour.”
Impact, affect and change
The study revealed that a healthy placenta in the third trimester particularly impacts the cortex and the prefrontal cortex, regions of the child’s brain that are important for learning and memory.
“An unhealthy placenta can place babies at risk for later life learning difficulties, or even something more serious, like a neurodevelopmental disorder,” said Duerden. “This research can open a lot of doors as we still don’t really understand everything there is to know about the placenta. We are just scratching the surface.”
The study, funded by grants from Brain Canada, The Children’s Health Research Institute, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, BrainsCAN and the Molly Towell Perinatal Research Foundation, is also an important first step in biomarking the impact of oxygenation levels in the placenta and considering changes for expectant mothers to deal with less-than-ideal placental conditions.

While oxygenation in the placenta in the third trimester predicts fetal cortical growth (development of the outermost layer of the brain — the cerebral cortex), results of the study indicate it may not affect subcortical maturation, or the deep gray and white matter structures of the brain.
Subcortical structures in the brain, responsible for children’s temperament or motor functions such as the amygdala and basal ganglia, may be more vulnerable to factors affecting the placenta in the second trimester.
“We now have a better understanding of how the placenta affects the cortex. With this basic knowledge, we now have an idea of how these two things are related and we can identify or benchmark healthy levels that lead to brain cortical growth,” said Nichols. “The subcortical regions of the brain appear to be unaffected by placental growth, at least in the healthy samples from our study.”
Duerden, Nichols, and the team scanned pregnant women twice (during their third trimester) for the study at Western’s Translational Imaging Research Facility.
“This is one of the few datasets in the world where there are two scans collected in utero during the third trimester. There are not many groups in the world doing fetal MRI, so it is a super-rich data set that allows us to look at growth over time,” said Duerden. “Western is probably one of the few places where we can do the research because we have the expertise and the facilities to do it.”

A Fading Weapon in the H.I.V. Fight: CondomsSome H.I.V. experts worry that the public health focus on prevention medication has accelerated a decline in condom use.Feb. 27, 2024Gay and bisexual men are using condoms less than ever, and the decline has been particularly steep among those who are young or Hispanic, according to a new study. The worrisome trend points to an urgent need for better prevention strategies as the nation struggles to beat the H.I.V. epidemic, researchers said.Over the past decade, prevention medication known as PrEP has helped fuel a moderate drop in H.I.V. rates. And yet, despite persistent public health campaigns promoting the drugs, they have not been adopted in substantial numbers by Black and Hispanic men who are gay or bisexual.The use of condoms, which prevent H.I.V. as well as other sexually transmitted infections, has been declining across the board in recent years, not just among gay men, contributing to a rise in sexually transmitted infections.Researchers said that, with so much focus on PrEP, public health officials have overlooked condoms, contributing to the drop-off in their use.“The goal of promoting PrEP is a valuable one, but it has overshadowed other prevention strategies like condoms,” said Steven Goodreau, an H.I.V. expert at the University of Washington. He led the new study and co-wrote a related editorial.A spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged declining condom use, but he said the agency continues to promote them. Local health departments that receive federal money for H.I.V. prevention must include condom distribution in their strategies, for example.

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People living in ancient Eastern Arabia appear to have developed resistance to malaria following the appearance of agriculture in the region around five thousand years ago, a new study reveals.
DNA analysis of the remains of four individuals from Tylos-period Bahrain (300 BCE to 600 CE) — the first ancient genomes from Eastern Arabia — revealed the malaria-protective G6PD Mediterranean mutation in three samples.
The discovery of the G6PD Mediterranean mutation in ancient Bahrainis suggests that many people in the region’s ancient populations may have enjoyed protection from malaria. In the present day, among the populations examined, the G6PD mutation is detected at its peak frequency in the Emirates, the study indicates.
Researchers discovered that the ancestry of Tylos-period inhabitants of Bahrain comprises sources related to ancient groups from Anatolia, the Levant and Caucasus/Iran. The four Bahrain individuals were genetically more like present-day populations from the Levant and Iraq than to Arabians.
Experts from Liverpool John Moores University, the University of Birmingham Dubai, and the University of Cambridge worked with the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities and other Arabian institutes such as the Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dubai, as well as research centres in Europe, including Université Lumière Lyon 2, Trinity College Dublin, and others. The group published its findings today in Cell Genomics.
Lead researcher Rui Martiniano, from Liverpool John Moores University, commented: “According to our estimates, the G6PD Mediterranean mutation rose in frequency around five-to-six thousand years ago — coinciding with the onset of agriculture in the region, which would have created ideal conditions for the proliferation of malaria.”
Due to poor ancient DNA preservation in hot and humid climates, no ancient DNA from Arabia has been sequenced until now — preventing the direct examination of the genetic ancestry of its past populations.

Marc Haber, from the University of Birmingham Dubai, commented: “By obtaining the first ancient genomes from Eastern Arabia, we provide unprecedented insights into human history and disease progression in this region. This knowledge goes beyond historical understanding, providing predictive capabilities for disease susceptibility, spread, and treatment, thus promoting better health outcomes.”
“The rich population history of Bahrain, and more generally of Arabia, has been severely understudied from a genetic perspective. We provide the first genetic snapshot of past Arabian populations — obtaining important insights about malaria adaptation, which was historically endemic in the region,” commented Fatima Aloraifi, from the Mersey and West Lancashire NHS Trust.
Salman Almahari, Director of Antiquities and Museums at the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities, states, “Our study also paves the way for future research that will shed light on human population movements in Arabia and other regions with harsh climates where it is difficult to find well-preserved sources of DNA.”
Data gathered from the analysis of the four individuals’ remains allowed researchers to characterise the genetic composition of the region’s pre-Islamic inhabitants — insights that could only have been obtained by directly examining ancient DNA sequences.
Researchers collected ancient human remains from archaeological collections stored at the Bahrain National Museum. They extracted DNA from 25 individuals, but only four were sequenced to higher coverage due to poor preservation.
Richard Durbin, from the University of Cambridge, who supervised the project, says “It is exciting to have been able to analyse ancient human genetic data from the remarkable burial mounds of Bahrain. We would like to thank our colleagues in the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities for their support and contributions.”
The finding of malaria adaptation agrees with archaeological and textual evidence that suggested malaria was historically endemic in Eastern Arabia, whilst the DNA ancestry of Tylos-period inhabitants of Bahrain corroborates archaeological evidence of interactions between Bahrain and neighbouring regions.