Annual Review of Medicine, Volume 68

January 30, 2017February 3, 2017 Suzanne K. Moses Journal News med

View the full table of contents for the Annual Review of Medicine, Volume 68.

Fehr’s article “Middle East Respiratory Syndrome” caught my eye with a section heading that sounded like it could be an absurdist art film title: “The Camel Connection.” It actually references a transmission vector for this relatively new respiratory problem. Since reading this article, I have learned a lot more about MERS from two different podcast discussions about possible vaccines and how to keep it from spreading through larger areas. Identifying the camels as vectors has also revealed some other interesting information:

Thus, many other animals found in the Arabian Peninsula, such as goats, horses, chickens, sheep, poultry, and camels, were tested for MERS-CoV seropositivity. Only dromedary camels were found to be positive for anti-MERS-CoV antibody. Dromedary camels are present throughout Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, and camels at these sites were shown to be seropositive with rates as high as 80% in some populations (reviewed in 47). Surprisingly, serum samples from as far back as 1982 in Africa and 1992 in Saudi Arabia were positive for MERS-CoV antibodies. This suggests that MERS-CoV has infected camels for an extended period of time and raises the question of why MERS was not detected in patients in Saudi Arabia before 2012.

me68-ebola-treatment-units This volume also includes two articles about Ebola—which is often mentioned as an example of a virus that has spread through a remarkably large area. The first article is an interesting look back at the recent outbreak in West Africa that we now know began in 2013. “Ebola: Anatomy of an Epidemic” by Lo et al. is a fantastic guide to the geography and timeline of the outbreak and identifies the various vectors of transmission. I particularly appreciated the discussion of the geopolitical response to the outbreak:

Following these events, Ebola suddenly seemed potentially dangerous far beyond West Africa, and the epidemic was discussed at the highest political levels internationally. Ebola was debated on the floor of the United Nations (UN), and the Security Council described it as a threat to peace and security. In September 2014, the UN Secretary General established the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) to scale up the response on the ground in the heavily affected countries, coordinating the delivery of logistic, technical, and financial support. This gesture not only conveyed the perceived gravity of the situation but also lack of confidence in WHO’s organizational capacity for emergency response to the crisis. Hitherto, the only disease to have received such high-level attention internationally was AIDS, which had a specific United Nations structure (UNAIDS) established for its response.

The second article about Ebola, “Toward an Effective Ebola Virus Vaccine” by Keshwara et al., looks forward at long-term control of the virus. I always thought of vaccines as a single type of preventative, and found myself particularly interested in reading about the various kinds of vaccines being worked on by various researchers—DNA vaccines, virus-like particles and nanoparticle vaccines, adenovirus-based vaccines, etc. The authors explain why researchers are testing so many vaccines:

From a public health perspective, it is beneficial to pursue diverse vaccine strategies to increase the likelihood of creating a successful vaccine against EBOV. In the context of prevention in endemic regions, it is not always logistically feasible to rely on recurrent vaccination. An ideal vaccine would elicit desired immunity and protection from a single, unadjuvanted shot with no serious adverse effects.

Sometimes an article title catches my ear a full year before I get to see the final version. This was the case with Mamtani & Morrow’s article in this volume, “Why Are There So Many Mastectomies in the United States?” Like so many others, I have a family history with cancer, and my interest is often peaked by articles about new treatments and therapies. In this case, the article looks at a disconnect between the known benefits and risks of this treatment and the number of related surgeries, and though this article doesn’t offer answers it does a great job of providing context for the questions:

Patients at high risk for multiple primary breast cancers, such as those discussed above, are considered medically appropriate candidates for bilateral mastectomy. However, an increasing number of average-risk women are choosing both unilateral mastectomy and CPM. Although high mastectomy rates were initially attributed to surgeons failing to offer BCT to patients, an increasing body of evidence indicates that patient choice is the major determinant of mastectomy rates.

The comment section is open, and I’d love to hear what articles you found interesting!

Suzanne K. Moses is Annual Reviews’ Senior Electronic Content Coordinator. For 15+ years, she has played a central role in the publication of Annual Reviews’ online articles. Not a single page is posted online without first being proofed and quality checked by Suzanne.

Rabbits Riding Elephants | Annual Review of Linguistics, Volume 3

January 26, 2017February 3, 2017 Suzanne K. Moses Journal News linguist

Browse the full table of contents for the Annual Review of Linguistics, Volume 3.

In the course of proofing articles for a volume, there is sometimes a figure or a phrase that just jumps off the screen and grabs my attention. That was the case with the rabbits riding elephants photo from Crain’s “Acquisition of Quantifiers.” I spent my lunch break reading about the differences between how adults and children respond to sentences with quantifiers because I am endlessly fascinated by child development and language acquisition. In this case, when asked to look at the four rabbits riding elephants (with one extra elephant without a rider) the subjects were asked “Is every rabbit riding an elephant?” children ages 4-6 sometimes answer no, while adults answer yes. The article goes beyond rabbits and elephants to give a historical overview of the research on quantifiers, and I was surprised by how long ago that research had started (more than 50 years ago!) as well as how complicated the subject proved to be:

Structural principles on anaphoric dependencies were expected to be in place from the earliest stages of acquisition. Linguists subsequently proposed that the difficulties children experience in assigning noncoreference in sentences with referential NPs are not due to their lack of syntactic knowledge, but rather reflect problems in executing certain pragmatic principles that govern the assignment of noncoreference to pronouns.

Sixteen years ago I moved from rural Virginia to urban California. Among the many shocks (where did the weather go?), I was dismayed to find my soft southern accent flattening out. It’s certainly not gone, as you can tell if you happen to encounter me after I have a phone call with my mother or when I’m especially tired, but you might understand my curiosity regarding Dodsworth’s article “Migration and Dialect Contact.” My attention was particularly drawn to the short section about this type of rural to urban migration:

When speakers of rural dialects migrate to a well-established urban area, the features of their rural dialects often do not survive in their children’s speech; in other words, rural features do not survive the leveling process resulting from dialect contact, as described above. By contrast, when a city’s population grows substantially as the result of rapid migration from a variety of places, including other cities, the local dialect itself may be attenuated in favor of either a national standard or a mixed variety….

As you can see, the article is more about groups of people than about individuals—although it doesn’t address my case specifically, I still found it interesting. If you’re interested in dialects specifically there’s an article by Schreier you should investigate: “Dialect Formation in Isolated Communities.” This one is about a different type of population movement that results in the formation of a new community. Here I found it interesting that the new dialect doesn’t necessarily need an isolated group: “isolation is of course not a prerequisite for NDF, and that new dialects (or koinés) may in fact emerge in urban high-contact scenarios as well. These processes have been documented in suburban overspills….”

If you have a recommendation for a good Introduction to Linguistics textbook, or a story of accent shift, please leave me a comment below!

Congratulations to Daniel S. Nagin, winner of the 2017 NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing

January 25, 2017April 29, 2017 Liz Allen Awards general

We are pleased to announce that the winner of the 2017 National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Award for Scientific Reviewing, presented this year in criminology, is Daniel S. Nagin. Dr. Nagin is the Teresa and H. John Heinz III University Professor of Public Policy and Statistics at Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University, USA, and a Committee Member of the Annual Review of Criminology (which will publish in 2018).

He will receive his award during the Annual Meeting of the NAS in Washington, DC on Sunday, April 30, 2017 at 2pm (follow the live webcast #NAS154). Eva Emerson, Senior Editor (forthcoming digital magazine), and Samuel Gubins, Editor-in-Chief Emeritus, will attend the ceremony.

The NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing was established in 1977 through a gift from Annual Reviews together with the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) to recognize the importance of reviews to the scientific method. Annual Reviews currently sponsors the award in its entirety.

The award recognizes authors whose publications have reviewed important subjects of research, rendering a significant service to science and influencing the course of scientific thought. Since its establishment, the award has been presented to 39 recipients, two who have gone on to win a National Medal of Science in the Biological Sciences and two who proceeded to win a Nobel Prize.

Dr. Nagin is being honored for exemplary reviews of the scientific literature on the crime-prevention effects of criminal and civil sanctions. These reviews have altered the course of criminological theory and empirical research, and have greatly informed analysis of public policy. His work appears in many leading publications, including Annual Reviews, which is publishing an article and response from him in the 2017 volume of the Annual Review of Law and Social Science.

Annual Reviews is a nonprofit publisher dedicated to synthesizing and integrating knowledge for the progress of science and the benefit of society. To find out how we create our highly cited reviews and stimulate discussion about science, please watch this short video.

The NAS is a private, nonprofit society of distinguished scholars. Established by an Act of Congress, signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, the NAS is charged with providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology. The NAS is committed to furthering science in America, and its members are active contributors to the international scientific community.

The Annual Review of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Volume 57

January 24, 2017February 3, 2017 Suzanne K. Moses News pharmtox

Check out the full tables of content for Annual Review of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Volume 57.

I have an ongoing fascination with articles that examine how real clinicians work and relate to patients. So it’s no surprise that I would up rereading the article Lavoie et al.’s “Changing Provider Behavior in the Context of Chronic Disease Management: Focus on Clinical Inertia.” It focuses specifically on chronic diseases. It’s a tremendously interesting and sometimes frustrating article. See for example this paragraph on treatment of asthma:

Despite the availability of guidelines for the treatment of asthma and robust evidence that following guideline recommendations improves outcomes, provider adherence to CPGs to manage asthma is poor. For example, a retrospective study of asthma care delivered to 345 patients at a tertiary adult emergency department (ED) in Canada reported 69.6% overall compliance with guidelines . Controller (i.e., inhaled corticosteroid) use was prescribed in only one-third of children and adults in the ED and on discharge. Studies have also shown that in the nonacute care setting, few physicians prescribe ongoing daily controller medication or written self-management plans, even in adults and children with a recent acute care visit for asthma. Moreover, even when they are prescribed, the cumulative duration of available prescriptions coversless than 50% of the follow-up period.”

In other cheerful news there is the article, “Will There Be a Cure for Ebola?”, by Cardile et al. It provides this answer in the introduction: “Identification of a cure, therefore, may be approached from the perspective of prevention, treatment, or eradication. Only smallpox and rinderpest have been eradicated from nature. The prospect of EBOV eradication is untenable at this time, given our incomplete understanding of potential reservoir hosts and subsequent initial transmission from reservoir hosts to humans.” However, the control and prevention of the disease is looking more promising.”

Coleman’s article “The Discovery of Suvorexant, the First Orexin Receptor Drug for Insomnia” provides some good news for those who suffer from insomnia, “Unlike GABAA receptor modulators, DORAs promote both non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and REM sleep, do not disrupt sleep stage–specific quantitative electroencephalogram spectral profiles, and allow somnolence indistinct from normal sleep. The preservation of cognitive performance and the ability to arouse to salient stimuli after DORA administration suggest further advantages over historical therapies.”

Let’s head into the weekend with a happy article about relaxation and the relationship between the brain’s stress and reward circuits. Say Volkow’s wonderfully titled article “Don’t Worry, Be Happy: Endocannabinoids and Cannabis at the Intersection of Stress and Reward.” I was intrigued by the introduction to this article: “The search for a state of mental relaxation and well-being is one of the factors driving the widespread consumption of cannabis. The most frequently abused illicit substance worldwide, cannabis is consumed regularly by about 2.4% of the world population (approximately 181 million people in 2013).” This is a really interesting look at how cannabis interacts with our stress and reward centers and why it works to relax some people.

The Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics, Volume 49

January 20, 2017February 3, 2017 Suzanne K. Moses News fluid

Take a look at the full table of contents for the Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics, Volume 49.

Volume 49 opens with a biography: “An Appreciation of the Life and Work of William C. Reynolds” by Moin and Homsy. Written by people who knew Reynolds and his work very well, it’s full of fond memories and appreciation for a teacher and friend. I especially liked this paragraph:

As a scientist, Reynolds was the ultimate independent thinker, a self-starter, do-it-yourselfer, a hands-on problem solver, and, in the most favorable sense of the term, a micromanager. In following his own intuition, Bill might have reinvented the proverbial wheel, but in the process he found novel and exciting ideas and designs that enriched the engineering field and inspired the people around him. He was a true believer in the familiar maxim (which he repeated quite often) that “if you want it done right, you had better do it yourself.” He designed his own house and once told one of us (G.M.H.) who was undertaking a similar venture that “sure, you’ll make mistakes, but they will be your mistakes.” Not a natural delegator, he immersed himself in many diverse projects with boundless energy and indefatigable enthusiasm. In the words of his son Russell, Bill felt that “anything worth doing was worth overdoing.”

cloud-top

One of my favorite things to do on planes is to stare at the tops of clouds because they look so very solid from up there. Reading Mellado’s article “Cloud-Top Entrainment in Stratocumulus Clouds,” I learned a lot about what happens at that top boundary layer between clear sky and cloud. As with most topics in the Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics, it’s very complicated and equation heavy. Perhaps the most interesting thing I learned is that what seems like a clear boundary isn’t: “the boundary of a cloud is an elusive concept: Clouds are dilute and disperse suspensions of droplets in moist air, and what looks like a sharp boundary from far away is a transition region scattered with cloud filaments of various sizes and various microphysical properties.” So now on planes I’ll have a completely new series of things to distract me as I stare at clouds.

When I first encountered the article “Vapor Bubbles” by Prosperetti, I was surprised to discover that something I think of as ordinary is actually tremendously complicated:

…geysers, hydrothermal vents, and volcanic eruptions are all phenomena intimately associated with vapor bubbles. The destruction caused by boiling liquid expanding vapor explosions (BLEVEs) is occasionally featured in the media. The phenomenon occurs when a liquid-filled tank is accidentally exposed to fire, which causes the pressure to rise so much that the tank ruptures. A rarefaction wave propagating in the liquid causes rapid vaporization, which results in an even stronger pressure buildup with a violent dispersion of the tank’s contents.

That’s something to remember when watching the fire creep ever closer to the tanker truck in the next blockbuster!

Finally, Stevens & Meneveau’s article “Flow Structure and Turbulence in Wind Farms” gave me a different way of thinking about wind energy. I’m a fan of wind farming in general, but had never given much thought to the ways the turbulent flow coming from the turbine could affect the rest of the turbines. It’s really interesting how it impacts decisions about wind farm layout.

The Annual Review of Marine Science, Volume 9

January 19, 2017February 3, 2017 Suzanne K. Moses News marine

Explore the table of contents for Annual Review of Marine Science Volume 9.

I’d like to advise you to go immediately and read every article in the new volume of the Annual Review of Marine Science, but realistically I know nobody is going to have that kind of time. So the challenge is how to give you a feel for the volume without mentioning every article? I’m going to have to go with what interests me and there are a couple of articles I can point to that pinged higher on my radar.

ma9-fukushima Starting with the big story – Buesseler et al.’s “Fukushima Daiichi–Derived Radionuclides in the Ocean: Transport, Fate, and Impacts.” I followed the Fukushima disaster pretty closely at the time, and have even read some follow-up articles afterward, but somehow I managed to avoid thinking about the effects of all that radiation on the water. This article does a great job of laying out the timeline of the disaster and following the ways the radiation made it into the surrounding water.

There are four major sources of FDNPP – derived radionuclides to the environment (Figure 1). The largest and earliest source was the initial venting and explosive releases of gases and volatile radionuclides to the atmosphere, which led to fallout on both land and the ocean. Atmospheric fallout peaked around March 15; transport models suggested that more than 80% of the fallout was on the ocean surface, with the highest deposition in coastal waters near the FDNPPs, although there are no atmospheric fallout data over the ocean to measure this directly. Subsequent to the atmospheric fallout was the somewhat smaller direct discharge of contaminated material to the ocean during emergency cooling efforts at the FDNPPs that resulted in runoff over land, enhanced flow of contaminated groundwater, and stagnant water leakage from the basement of the reactor buildings into the ocean. This secondary release process peaked around April 6, 2011….

Next, I recommend a somewhat lighter subject, Malanotte-Rizzoli’s “Venice and I: How a City Can Determine the Fate of a Career.” When I consider our autobiographies, I often think about how one decision can influence an entire career. Here we have a scientist whose sees her career as being shaped by one city:

Apart from sections obviously focused on the scientific milestones of my career, what else should I write about myself? Should I focus on being a female scientist in the late 1960s in a fully male‐dominated world? Should I focus on comparing the academic and research environments in the United States and Italy and what they would offer to a woman at the beginning of her career?….Then a simple fact struck me: The reason I moved from theoretical physics to physical oceanography at the beginning of my career was simply the city in which I grew up—Venice. Venice was the cornerstone of my career at the beginning and has again become a major cornerstone in recent years.

Finally, I can’t leave out Law’s article “Plastics in the Marine Environment” because it’s too important. This article does an excellent job of laying out the questions about plastics in the ocean and providing some groundwork for the answers:

Ultimately, stakeholders and policymakers want to know how big the problem is, how widespread the harm is, and what the best prevention or mitigation strategies are. Scientific inquiry into these questions is not new, but systematic study of the sources, pathways, transformations, impacts, and sinks of plastics in the marine environment has rapidly accelerated only in the last decade.

The Annual Review of Psychology, Volume 68

January 18, 2017January 18, 2017 Suzanne K. Moses Journal News psych

Suzanne K. Moses is Annual Reviews’ Senior Electronic Content Coordinator. For 15+ years, Suzanne has played a central role in the publication of Annual Reviews’ online articles. Not a single page is posted online without first being proofed and quality checked by Suzanne.

For years now, Suzanne has sent a company-wide email to announce the publication of each new volume. These emails provide insight into the variety, depth, and quality of the articles. Her messages are thoughtful, discerning, playful, and deeply personal. They remind us all of the beauty and wonders of science; all the reasons we do what we do.

We’ve now asked Suzanne to share her volume announcements with our readers. We hope you enjoy this new series of posts!

Anna Rascouët-Paz
Online Media Editor

View the full table of contents for Annual Review of Psychology, Volume 68.

Like many, I grew up thinking that memories were a perfect record of what happened in my life. Discovering that we rewrite our own memories all the time was a very strange moment for me. I’ve come to believe that memory is a slippery and somewhat dangerous thing; we have to trust our own minds, but we also need to recognize that those same minds have a vested interest in protecting themselves. The autobiography of Elizabeth Loftus, “Eavesdropping on Memory,” is a fantastic inside look at studying memory. It is a honest and open look at her thoughts, and it feels intensely personal. It isn’t often that an autobiography moves directly onto my personal top ten list upon first reading—but this one did. It’s impossible to skim, and I found it difficult to pull a single quote that captures the writing style for you.

I soon discovered I wasn’t particularly interested in mathematical psychology, but I never missed the required Friday seminar sessions where faculty and fellow graduate students discussed their research findings, even though my mind was elsewhere. I would often sit in the back and write letters to my relatives. Sometimes I actually got some sewing done (e.g., hemming skirts that needed to be shortened) to the sound of voices discussing the latest developments in mathematical learning theory.

I also enjoyed Metcalfe’s “Learning from Errors” because I find the idea that being willing to experiment and make mistakes leads to better learning and understanding overall is rather uplifting. One aspect of this I particularly found interesting was regarding immediate versus delayed feedback about errors:

The study found that college students performed equally well in the immediate and delayed feedback conditions, whereas children in grades 3 to 5 did better when the feedback was delayed. Interestingly, Kulik & Kulik (1988) noted that whether delayed or immediate feedback produced better results differed between studies conducted in the classroom and those in the laboratory. Lab studies tended to show that delayed feedback was better, whereas classroom studies favored immediate feedback. They concluded, however, that the real difference between these studies was whether the learners paid attention to the feedback. Students in the classroom are highly engaged in knowing the answers to questions right after taking a test.

ps680627-f1 Finally, I want to point out that this volume of the Annual Review of Psychology has something for everyone and an article for nearly every situation. Have you ever had the impulse to really analyze your close relationships? Let me suggest Finkel’s article “The Psychology of Close Relationships: Fourteen Core Principles.” You might learn new and exciting things about how relationships are constructed.

Or have you ever felt uncomfortable interacting with a robot? Been caught treating your furby as a living pet? Then you may want to look at Broadbent’s “Interactions With Robots: The Truths We Reveal About Ourselves.” It’s interesting to flip the usual lens and ask what these interactions say about us.

Reengineering our website: why, what, and how?

January 9, 2017January 26, 2017 Liz Allen Redesign general

Every website needs a periodic refresh as the digital landscape is constantly evolving. Here at nonprofit publisher Annual Reviews, six years have elapsed since our last major redesign, and we wanted to upgrade our user experience. We are pleased to announce a number of site enhancements that will benefit our online community.

For readers:

Automatic optimization of on-screen experience for all devices and screen sizes, and seamless pairing to an institutional subscription
New article layout and functionality facilitates rapid scanning for easier online reading
Search functionality provides more flexible filtering with improved image, author, and multimedia results

For authors:

A new section highlights information for preparing the review that you were invited to write, including journal-specific requirements

For librarians:

Dedicated section provides improved, centralized navigation to Librarian and Agent resources
Specialized functions for account administration remain unchanged but we have enhanced account security

“We are delighted to offer our end-users and stakeholders a more modern, adaptable and intuitive experience,” said Director of Technology Paul Calvi. “This reengineering has been made possible thanks to the partnership between the talented crew here at Annual Reviews, our design agency Interactive Strategies and advances in our online publishing platform, Literatum by Atypon Systems Inc”.

new_logo Some of you may have noticed that our logo has also evolved. Our goal here was to make it just a little easier to read online. As for the different stripes, they represent the colored bindings of our print editions which have been such an important part of our history.

We welcome your feedback via Twitter or Facebook.

Vision Science: How Do We See in 3D?

January 9, 2017February 14, 2017 Liz Allen News vision

How do we see in 3D when we start with a 2D projection on our retinas? How can a flat painting give the illusion of depth and perspective?

In the video describing his latest article in Annual Reviews, Andrew Welchman, a researcher at the University of Cambridge, explains how our neurons put all this information together to produce 3D views.

Read the full article from the Annual Review of Vision Science.

Vera Rubin, Who Proved Dark Matter’s Existence, Dies

January 3, 2017January 20, 2017 Suzanne K. Moses News astro

Dr. Rubin stood as a constant reminder of the sexism that is still such a problem in many scientific fields. There were petitions and protests and demands that she be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for her discoveries, and now she never will be.

This is how the autobiographical article she wrote for the 2011 Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics begins:

My life has been an interesting voyage. I became an astronomer because I could not imagine living on Earth and not trying to understand how the Universe works. My scientific career has revolved around observing the motions of stars within galaxies and the motions of galaxies within the Universe. In 1965, if you were very lucky and interested in using telescopes, you could walk into a research laboratory that was building instruments that reduced exposure times by a factor of 10 and end up making remarkable discoveries. Women generally required more luck and perseverance than men did.

The full text is available for free:

An Interesting Voyage

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Month: January 2017