Take a glass thread a thousand times thinner than a human hair. Use it as a wire between two metals. Hit it with a laser pulse that lasts a millionth of a billionth of a second.

Remarkable things happen.

The glass-like material is transformed ever so briefly into something akin to a metal. And the laser generates a burst of electrical current across this tiny electrical circuit. It does so far faster than any traditional way of producing electricity and in the absence of an applied voltage. Further, the direction and magnitude of the current can be controlled simply by varying the shape of the laser — by changing its phase.

Now a University of Rochester researcher — who predicted laser pulses could generate ultrafast currents along nanoscale junctions like this in theory — believes he can explain exactly how and why scientists succeeded in creating these currents in actual experiments.

“This marks a new frontier in the control of electrons using lasers,” says Ignacio Franco, assistant professor of chemistry and physics. He has collaborated with Liping Chen, a postdoctoral associate in his group, and with Yu Zhang and GuanHua Chen at the University of Hong Kong on a computational model to recreate and clarify what happened in the experiment. This work, funded by Franco’s NSF CAREER award, is now published in Nature Communications.

“You will not build a car out of this, but you will be able to generate currents faster than ever before,” Franco says. “You will be able to develop electronic circuits a few billionths of a meter long [nanoscale] that operate in a millionth of a billionth of a second [femtosecond] time scale. But, more importantly, this is a wonderful example of how differently matter can behave when driven far from equilibrium. The lasers shake the nanojunction so hard that it completely changes its properties. This implies that we can use light to tune the behavior of matter.”

This is exactly what the US Department of Energy had in mind when it listed the control of matter at the level of electrons — and understanding matter “very far away” from equilibrium — among its key challenges for the nation’s scientists.

Read more here.

Men with advanced cancer are 30 percent less likely than women to consider palliative care, according to a Medical Center study.

Researchers believe the findings reflect social norms about gender roles — as well as widespread messages in the media and society about “fighting” cancer. Often men see themselves as the family protector, said the study’s lead author, Fahad Saeed, a palliative care specialist and assistant professor of medicine and public health sciences. When struck with a serious illness they usually want to be cast as a “fighter” or a “warrior,” and may view palliative care as giving up, he explained.

“There is an ethos of ‘fight, fight, fight,’ and there is nothing wrong with that,” said Timothy E. Quill, an internationally recognized pioneer in palliative care. “But if all you do is fight and you ignore the emotional and spiritual aspects of what’s happening, it’s a missed opportunity to look at life in a different way.”

Scientists analyzed data from 383 individuals with advanced cancer between the ages of 22 and 90, who had been asked about their preferences for palliative care. Response options were: definitely no, possibly no, unsure, possibly yes, and definitely yes.

The analysis accounted for other factors such as aggressiveness of the cancer, age, race, and financial status, but gender was the only factor that significantly influenced preference for palliative care, according to the study, which was published in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management.

The research is consistent with other studies showing that men also are less likely to sign do-not-resuscitate orders at the end of life, Saeed said. For this study, palliative care was defined as “comfort care, focusing on quality of life.” All of the patients had advanced cancer.

Read more here.

Generally, children who experience recurrent destructive conflicts between their parents are at a higher risk of later developing mental health problems. However, a new longitudinal study published in Child Development finds that strong sibling bonds can offset the negative effects of parental strife.

Conducted by researchers from Rochester, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and the University of Notre Dame, the study finds that adolescents who witnessed high levels of acrimony between their parents had greater distressed responses to parental conflict a year later. Those responses, in turn, predicted mental health problems in the subsequent year. Yet, the researchers show that teens with strong sibling relationships are protected from experiencing this kind of distress in response to later parental disagreements and fights.

The researchers looked at 236 adolescents and their families recruited through local school districts and community centers in a moderately sized metropolitan area in the northeastern United States and a small city in the midwestern United States. The families were followed over the course of three years—with families being measured at three intervals when their children were first 12, then 13, and finally 14 years old. The study’s multi-method design relied on observations, semi-structured interviews with mothers about the relationship of the closest-aged siblings, and surveys.

The researchers caution that the families studied were mostly white and middle class, hence their findings should not be generalized to families of all races or socioeconomic status.

“Children may be using their siblings as sources of protection and emotional support—that is, as attachment figures,” says lead author Patrick Davies, a professor of psychology.

Read more here.

A series of awards from the American Heart Association (AHA) to a team of Medical Center researchers will focus on the development of new treatments to thwart the damage in the brain caused by stroke.

One of the research projects brings together experts in stroke, cardiovascular biology, platelet biology, and peptide chemistry. Marc Halterman with the Center for Neurotherapeutics Discovery, Scott Cameron and Craig Morrell with the Aab Cardiovascular Research Institute, and Bradley Nilsson with the Department of Chemistry will focus on the role that platelets play in acute brain injury and inflammation during stroke.

Platelets serve an important role in protecting against blood loss and repairing injured blood vessels. However, during a stroke the inflammatory properties of platelets can interfere with the restoration of blood flow once the clot in the brain is removed, particularly in micro-vessels, which can lead to permanent damage of brain tissue.

The research team will build synthetic peptides that activate platelets to study the phenomenon – which is called no-reflow – in an effort to identify specific switches within platelets that can be turned off and limit the cells’ inflammatory functions without blocking their ability to prevent bleeding.

Two AHA pre-doctoral fellowship awards to Kathleen Gates and Jonathan Bartko in Halterman’s lab will support research that examines the link between an immune system response triggered by stroke in the lungs that can exacerbate damage in the brain and investigate the cellular mechanisms that determine whether or not brain cells die following stroke.

A final AHA award to the Halterman lab will seek to identify new drug targets by focusing on specific proteins activated during stroke that are suspected to play an important role in determining the survival of neurons.

Jinjiao Wang, an assistant professor at the School of Nursing, who has been named a fellow at the Research Career Institute in the Mental Health of Aging (CIMA). She is one of 25 scholars from across the country chosen to participate in the yearlong mentoring program sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health and the Weill Cornell Institute of Geriatric Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University.

Chen Zhang, a postdoctoral research associate at the School of Nursing, who has been named a 2018 Health Disparities Research Institute Scholar by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.

The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program to the Western Hemisphere nations offers scholars the opportunity to work within strong networks that facilitate the efficient movement of knowledge, ideas, and technology throughout the region.

There are more than 50 awards to the Western Hemisphere for the 2019–20 Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program. Visit the 2019–20 Catalog of Awards to learn more. The application deadline is Wednesday, August 1.

A workshop on Developmental Programming of Disease — an increasingly recognized basis for diseases and disorders that occur throughout life — will focus on current understanding of mechanisms that underlie early life programming, ranging from glucocorticoids, germ cell imprinting, immune cell programming, the gut microbiome, and nutrition.

The workshop, from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. September 27 in the Class of ’62 Auditorium, is offered by the Department of Environmental Medicine and the University’s Environmental Health Science Center.

The morning session will include presentations of cutting edge research, and the afternoon session will include breakout group discussions addressing interrelated issues, including limitations of our current understanding, cumulative exposure/stressors, intervention/prevention approaches and future research directions. These discussions will be shared back to the group at large, and the workshop will end with a wine and cheese reception from 4 to 5:30 p.m.

The workshop is free and open to all. Registration is requested for ordering refreshments. Read more about the workshop here.

Youngchae Lee, political science, “Three Essays on Developing Countries and Foreign Direct Investment.” 2 p.m. July 17, 2018. Harkness 329. Advisor: Randall Stone.

Esat Doruk Cetemen, economics, “Essays on Dynamic Games.” 12:30 p.m., July 18, 2018. Harkness 113. Advisors: Paulo Barelli and Srihari Govindan.

Matthew John Payea, biochemistry, “Characterization of tRNA Quality Control Pathways in Yeast.” 1 p.m., July 24, 2018. Neuman Room (1-6823), Medical Center. Advisor: Eric Phizicky

July 17: CIRC Summer School begins. Classes in programming languages and data analysis skills. VISTA Collaboratory. Click here to learn more and to register.

July 18:  “Physics of Complex Systems.” Gourab Ghoshal, assistant professor of physics. Data Science Summer Colloquium Series, Goergen Institute for Data Science. Noon to 1 p.m., Wegmans Hall 1400. Open to all faculty, staff, students, and community members. Lunch included.

Aug. 1: Deadline to submit initial applications for Environmental Health Sciences Center funding of up to $30,000 for pilot projects relevant to the theme, “Environmental Agents as Modulators of Human Disease and Dysfunction.” Submit initial applications to Pat Noonan-Sullivan. Additional Information.

Sept. 27: Workshop on Developmental Programming of Disease, focusing on current understanding of mechanisms that underlie early life programming. 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Class of ’62 Auditorium. Offered by the Department of Environmental Medicine and the University’s Environmental Health Science Center. Free and open to all. Registration is requested for ordering refreshments. Read more here.