Culture

Geneva, 27 May 2021 - A total investment in nature of USD 8.1 trillion is required between now and 2050 - while annual investment should reach USD 536 billion annually by 2050 - in order to successfully tackle the interlinked climate, biodiversity, and land degradation crises, according to the State of Finance for Nature report released today.

The report finds that annual investments in nature-based solutions will have to triple by 2030 and increase four-fold by 2050 from the current investments into nature-based solutions of USD 133 billion (using 2020 as base year).

The authors of the report - produced by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Economics of Land Degradation (ELD) Initiative hosted by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in collaboration with Vivid Economics - urge Governments, financial institutions and businesses to overcome this investment gap by placing nature at the heart of economic decision-making in the future. They stress the need to rapidly accelerate capital flows to nature-based solutions by making nature central to public and private sector decision-making related to societal challenges, including tackling the climate and biodiversity crises.

Unlocking the potential of nature-based solutions to close the finance gap by 2050

Structural transformations are needed to close the USD 4.1 trillion finance gap between now and 2050, by building back more sustainably in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, but also by repurposing harmful agricultural and fossil fuel subsidies and creating other economic and regulatory incentives. Investing in nature supports human, animal and planetary health, improves quality of life, and creates jobs. However, nature currently only accounts for 2.5% of projected economic stimulus spending in the wake of Covid-19. Private capital will also have to be scaled up dramatically to close the investment gap. Developing and scaling up revenue flows from ecosystem services and using blended finance models as a means to crowd in private capital are among the suite of solutions needed to make this happen, which also requires risk-sharing from private sector entities.

"Biodiversity loss is already costing the global economy 10 percent of its output each year. If we do not sufficiently finance nature-based solutions, we will impact the capacities of countries to make progress on other vital areas such as education, health and employment. If we do not save nature now, we will not be able to achieve sustainable development," said UNEP Executive Director, Inger Andersen.

"The report is a wake-up call for Governments, financial institutions and businesses to invest in nature -- including reforestation, regenerative agriculture, and restoration of our Ocean," she said, adding that countries and leaders of industry will have an opportunity to do so at the upcoming summits related to climate, biodiversity, land degradation and food systems, and in the context of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030).

Investing smarter: Reimagine, recreate, restore

Forest-based solutions alone, including the management, conservation and restoration of forests, will require USD 203 billion in total annual expenditure globally, according to the report. That is equivalent to just over USD 25 per year for every citizen in 2021. The report calls for coupling investments in restoration action with financing conservation measures. This could result in forest and agro-forestry (the combination of food production and tree growing) area increases of approximately 300 million hectares by 2050, relative to 2020.

The upcoming summits on climate, biodiversity, land degradation and food systems, as well as the launch of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration on 5 June 2021 provides an opportunity to harness political and business momentum to align the economic recovery with the Paris Agreement and the anticipated post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, and thus be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5° C above pre-industrial levels, as well as halting and reversing the loss of biodiversity.

Making nature a business and investment case

The report's authors say the annual investment of the private sector in nature-based solutions was equal to USD 18 billion in 2018. Private finance only accounts for 14%, including capital mobilized through sustainable agricultural and forestry supply chains, private equity investments, biodiversity offsets financed by private sectors, philanthropic capital, private finance leveraged by multilateral organizations and forest and other land use-related carbon markets.

In climate finance, private sector investment accounts for most capital flows (56% according to the Climate Policy Initiative). The scaling up of private capital for nature-based solutions is one of the central challenges of the next few years with a specific focus on investing in nature to support sustainable economic growth in the 21st century.

Investors, developers, market infrastructure makers, customers and beneficiaries can play roles in creating a market where nature-based solutions access new sources of revenue, increases resilience of commercial activities, reduces costs or contributes to reputation and purpose.

While a number of private sector-led initiatives have already emerged, the report stresses the need for companies and financial institutions to increasingly be part of the solution by sharing the risk and committing to boost finance and investment in nature-based solutions in an ambitious way and with clear, time-bound targets. While investments in nature-based solutions cannot be a substitute for deep decarbonization of all sectors of the economy, they can contribute to the required pace and scale of climate change mitigation and adaptation.

NEW YORK (May 26, 2021) -- About 12,000 bacteria and viruses collected in a sampling from public transit systems and hospitals around the world from 2015 to 2017 had never before been identified, according to a study by the International MetaSUB Consortium, a global effort at tracking microbes that is led by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators.

For the study, published May 26 in Cell, international investigators collected nearly 5,000 samples over a three-year period across 60 cities in 32 countries and six continents. The investigators analyzed the samples using a genomic sequencing technique called shotgun sequencing to detect the presence of various microbes, including bacteria, archaea (single-celled organisms that are distinct from bacteria), and viruses that use DNA as their genetic material. (Other types of viruses that use RNA as their genetic material, such as SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, would not have been detected with the DNA analysis methods used in this pre-pandemic study.)

This field of research has important implications for detecting outbreaks of both known and unknown infections and for studying the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant microbes in different urban environments.

"Every time you sit down in the subway, you are likely commuting with an entirely new species," said senior author Dr. Christopher Mason, co-director of the WorldQuant Initiative for Quantitative Prediction and a professor of physiology and biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Mason is also co-founder and a paid consultant of Biotia and Onegevity Health, and a paid speaker for WorldQuant LLC.

The current study led to the discovery of 10,928 viruses and 748 bacteria that are not present in any reference databases.

Dr. Mason founded MetaSUB (short for Metagenomics and Metadesign of Subways and Urban Biomes) in 2015, along with Dr. Evan Afshin, who was then an undergraduate student at Macaulay Honors College at Queens College and is now a clinical fellow in physiology and biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine and a paid consultant for Onegevity Health. The newly released study was led by Drs. Mason, David Danko, a Weill Cornell Graduate School doctoral student in Dr. Mason's lab during the study, and Daniela Bezdan, who was a research associate in computational biomedicine at Weill Cornell Medicine at that time.

By collecting samples of microbes and analyzing their genes--collectively known as the microbiome--the researchers hope to learn more about the bacteria, viruses and other microorganisms that live among humans. For example, the research may help to identify the emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains. Predicting antibiotic resistance from genetic sequences alone is challenging, but the researchers were able to map some genes known to be linked to resistance, quantify their abundance and confirm the genetic markers' ability to confer resistance. They found that some cities had more resistance genes than others, and that there might be city-specific signatures for some of these genes.

Antimicrobial resistance remains a major global health challenge. "While further research is needed, this dataset demonstrates the value and potential for microbiome mapping and monitoring, and the insights it can provide physicians, scientists and public health officials," Dr. Afshin said.

Moreover, learning about the small molecules and proteins made by microbes could also lead to the discovery of new antibiotics as well as other molecules that have the potential to be developed as drugs. Many antibiotics and drugs that are currently in use have been derived from microbial sources. Discoveries made about new microbial species could also lead to new laboratory tools and approaches, such as novel ways to use the molecular editing tool known as CRISPR. In this study, the researchers found 838,532 novel CRISPR arrays--snippets of viral DNA found inside bacteria--and 4.3 million new peptides (small proteins).

Due to these sampling efforts, Dr. Mason said that he can predict with about 90 percent accuracy where a person lives, just by sequencing the DNA on their shoes. Many factors were found to influence a city's microbiome, including overall population and population density, elevation, proximity to the ocean and climate. The findings about these distinct signatures could enable future forensic studies.

"A microbiome contains molecular echoes of the place where it was collected. A coastal sample may contain salt-loving microbes while a sample from a densely populated city may show striking biodiversity," Dr. Danko said.

Drs. Mason and Afshin began collecting and analyzing microbial samples in the New York City subway system in 2013. After they published their first findings, dubbed PathoMap, they were contacted by researchers from around the world who wanted to do similar studies for their own cities. The international interest inspired Dr. Mason's lab to create MetaSUB and recruited Daniela Bezdan as the research director. "We needed internationally accepted protocols, logistics and collaboration agreements with scientists, vendors, government offices and philanthropic foundations for potentially 100 cities in 20 countries," Bezdan said.

Today MetaSUB continues to grow and has expanded to collecting RNA and DNA samples from air, water and sewage, in addition to hard surfaces. This has led to a $5 million grant on wastewater sequencing and viral tracking across three states (Florida, New York and Wisconsin), and which is part of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's new National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS).

The group also oversees projects such as Global City Sampling Day (gCSD), held every year on June 21, and has done wide-ranging studies including a comprehensive microbial analysis of Rio de Janeiro before, during and after the 2016 Summer Olympics. Many of the samples analyzed in the current study were collected on Global City Sampling Day in 2016 and 2017. The New York City sampling effort was conducted with support from the Weill Cornell Medicine Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSC), in collaboration with senior CTSC program manager Jeff Zhu. Dr. Mason and his colleagues are currently preparing for this year's event.

"When we started in 2015, the consortium consisted of 16 cities; six years later we have more than 100 cities. It's great to have this group of curious, self-starting and enthusiastic co-investigators," said Dr. Mason, who is also professor of computational genomics in computational biomedicine in the HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud Institute for Computational Biomedicine at Weill Cornell Medicine.

"Although samples are collected all over the world, much of the analysis is done right here in New York City at Weill Cornell Medicine," said Dr. Mason. The analysis and assemblage of sequences also leveraged Bridges and Bridges-2, Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) supercomputers at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. MetaSUB researchers in Switzerland (Drs. Andre Kahles and Gunnar Rätsch) used these assemblies and raw data to build a searchable, global DNA sequence portal (MetaGraph) that indexed all known genetic sequences (including MetaSUB data). The portal maps any known or newly discovered genetic elements to their location on Earth and can aid in the discovery of new microbial interactions and putative functions.

DNA isolation from samples were largely performed with support from Zymo Research and Promega, and sequenced in collaboration with Dr. Shawn Levy at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, Dr. Klas Udekwu from Stockholm University and the New York Genome Center. Future and ongoing studies will look at RNA and DNA with long reads and spatial-imaging methods, as well as trace the metabolites from the global sites, and continue to update the planetary-scale genetic map.

May 26, 2021 - Social media sites - especially Instagram - have revolutionized the way plastic surgeons market their practice. These platforms allow surgeons to post testimonials, educational videos, and before-and-after photos. This information can help to guide patients in making decisions about whether to undergo cosmetic surgery and which plastic surgeon to choose, based on factors like the surgeon's experience and results achieved.

However, patient perceptions of plastic surgeons' skills may also be affected by implicit bias - based solely on the ethnicity of the surgeon's name. "In our survey of responses to otherwise-identical Instagram posts, the plastic surgeon's name significantly affected perceptions of surgeon competence," comments lead author Ash Patel, MB, ChB, of Albany (N.Y.) Medical Center.

"The findings remind us that implicit bias plays a critical role in our day-to-day actions, whether or not we realize it," Dr. Patel adds. The study appears in the June issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).

The researchers created a set of mock Instagram posts showing before-and-after photos of a breast augmentation patient. The posts were identical in every way - except for the plastic surgeon's name. Versions of the post used female or male names typical of eight different racial/ethnic groups: African, Caucasian or Jewish American, East or South Asian, Black, Latinx, and Middle Eastern.

Online survey participants were presented with one of the mock Instagram posts and asked to rate their perceptions of the plastic surgeon's competence and how likely they would be to let the surgeon operate on them (recruitment likelihood). The analysis included ratings from nearly 3,000 respondents.

Overall ratings of the surgeons' competence were similar for names representing different racial ethnic groups. However, there were some significant differences related to the respondents' racial/ethnic group.

"Caucasian Americans and Latinxs were the only two ethnic groups to show in-group favoritism," Dr. Patel comments. "That may be especially important, as these two ethnicities comprise about 80 percent of cosmetic surgery patients in the United States."

Surgeons with female names received higher ratings of perceived competence and higher recruitment likelihood scores. Yet female respondents assigned lower recruitment likelihood scores, for both male and female surgeons.

Social media has generated intense interest in cosmetic plastic surgery - with high stakes for plastic surgeons seeking to market their practice online. The new study is the first to examine the effects of implicit bias in social media related to plastic surgery.

Overall, the survey finds that the plastic surgeon's apparent gender and ethnicity do not affect how likely the general population is to choose that surgeon. However, the findings suggest more favorable perceptions of surgeons of the same racial/ethnic group, specifically among Caucasian American and Latinx raters.

"Combatting implicit bias is challenging, as these associations are subconscious and not necessarily ones that we can acknowledge as present." Dr. Patel comments. "We need to look at new approaches to encourage patients to make decisions about plastic surgeons based on board certifications, qualifications, and experience - not on race or ethnicity."

Over half of the UK's arts and cultural venues and organisations believe they are at risk due to the decline in income during the pandemic, a new study from the University of Sheffield, University of Kent, and the Chartered Institute of Fundraising has shown.

The only study of its kind, 'Dealing with the crisis: Creativity and resilience of arts and cultural fundraisers during Covid-19' (28 May 2021), gathered information about how arts and cultural fundraisers were impacted by, and managed the Covid-19 pandemic during 2020.

Many artists, organisations and venues rely on fundraising as a significant part of their income, using a range of events and activities to fund creative projects, alongside raising funds through patrons, donations, memberships and subscriptions.

The study has highlighted a number of risks which threaten to harm the diversity and richness of the sector due to the impact of the pandemic.

Almost two thirds of fundraisers (62 per cent) surveyed in the study, expected their organisation's income to fall during the pandemic, with nearly half (47 per cent) reporting the social restrictions during the pandemic meant many of their revenue generating programmes had been postponed.

Some key findings of the report included:

79 per cent of respondents said that their fundraising activity overall has decreased

66 per cent of organisations said they had postponed planned arts and cultural projects and programmes

64 per cent said financial support in 2021 and beyond was very important to the survival of the sector

89 per cent said supporting organisations unable to access emergency funding was important

Reports of increased workload and stress also highlighted the concern that if staff welfare issues are not addressed, there will be a real risk of a significant loss of talent from the sector in the future.

Dr Marta Herrero, from the University of Sheffield's Management School, led the study. She said: "The social restrictions in place during most of the pandemic made a lot of normal fundraising activities impossible for a wide variety of arts and cultural organisations.

"Closures of venues and cancelled events left a gaping hole in the finances of many in the sector, with fundraisers having to quickly find new and flexible ways to raise money in an accessible way to ensure the survival of their organisation."

The research did however, find examples of arts and cultural fundraisers adapting and responding to new ways of working, taking new approaches and changing their fundraising activities during the pandemic. A total of 55 per cent of fundraisers said new approaches to digital offers for members and supporters had met, or exceeded their expectations; with many commenting on having the digital infrastructure to hold events and programmes online meant they were able to broaden their audiences.

The authors of the study are now calling on the government to provide substantial support, in the hope that the findings will be able to inform policy on how best to allocate financial resources; as some smaller or independent organisations are falling between the gaps of emergency support available.

Dr Herrero, said: "So many of us interact with and benefit from arts, cultural and heritage organisations regularly, such as museums, live music venues, visiting sites of historical interest, or even attending events and activities run by community groups.

"But a significant number of fundraisers report that the sector needs continued financial support, and for furlough and recovery fund schemes to be accessible for all to ensure its survival in the medium and long term.

"Whilst resilience and innovation continue to be key skills characteristic of the fundraising profession in the face of prolonged funding cuts, only with this kind of support will they be able to safeguard the richness of our cultural life here in the UK and create a sustainable sector akin to pre-Covid levels."

Martin Kaufman, Chair of the Chartered Institute of Fundraising RAISE Steering Committee said: "This survey is the first time that the collective voice of UK cultural fundraisers has been heard during the pandemic.

"There are important lessons to be learnt from what the respondents have told us. These need to be taken up by the government and everyone who wants fundraising for arts and heritage to play a critical role in ensuring that cultural activity itself will not just recover but thrive into the future. This survey was conducted in 2020, but what it has to tell us is still of continuing and significant relevance."

Children with ADHD are generally treated with medication and/or behavioral treatments. However, medication-alone is insufficient in a quarter to a third of the children. For that reason, the scientists investigated whether a mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) would have a positive effect on children who did not respond sufficiently to other ADHD treatments. MBIs can elicit positive effects on psychological symptoms and behavior of children and parents.

In the study, two groups of children between the ages of eight and sixteen were compared. One group received only regular care (CAU, care-as-usual), and the other group also received MYmind, the mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) with at least one parent. They did this training for a period of eight weeks.

A striking result was that parents especially benefited from this training. There was an increase in mindful parenting, self-compassion and an improvement in mental health among the parents. These effects were still visible six months after the end of the training. In the children, there were some effects on ADHD symptoms, anxiety, and autistic traits, but effects were small. Yet, a subgroup appeared to benefit: One in three children reliably improved on self-control following MYmind, whereas only one in ten improved when following only regular care.

Professor of Environmental Sensitivity in Health and psychologist Corina Greven of Radboudumc, the Donders Institute and Karakter says that usual interventions for children with ADHD typically do not target mental health of parents, although they often struggle with parenting stress, anxiety or own ADHD symptoms. "While effects in children were small, we still found effects in the parents. Interviewing families , our team also discovered that many families reported important improvements in family relationships and insight in and acceptance of ADHD. We need to go broader than just looking at whether an intervention reduces symptoms, and include additional outcomes that families find important." The study was conducted in collaboration with the Radboud Center for Mindfulness.

New insights into the ability of DNA to overcome harmful genetic changes have been discovered by scientists at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the University of Lausanne and their collaborators. The team found that 26 per cent of harmful mutations were suppressed by naturally occurring variants in at least one wild yeast strain. In each instance examined in detail, a single 'rescue mutation' was responsible for cancelling out another mutation that would have threatened the organism's survival.

The study, published today (27 May 2021) in Molecular Systems Biology, provides important information about how DNA variants can suppress undesirable genetic changes. If confirmed in humans, this biological phenomenon could have an important role in genetic diseases such as cancer or rare developmental disorders, and explain why certain patients suffer from more severe disease than others.

Mutations are changes to the letters of DNA that form the genetic code of multi-cellular organisms. They can be a result of errors when DNA replicates during cell division, or the influence of environmental exposures such as ultraviolet light. While most mutations will have no significant effect on how the cell functions, some can be harmful and lead to genetic diseases such as cancer. Other mutations can be beneficial and contribute to genetic diversity in a species through the natural process of evolution1.

With six billion letters of DNA in the human genome, the implications of natural genetic variation are vast. As a result, the precise effect of mutations on the function of genes and cells is not fully understood. Mutations that are harmful in one individual may have no negative effect on another. In some cases, this is because the healthy or resilient individuals carry additional mutations, called suppressors, which counteract harmful DNA changes.

In this study, researchers at the University of Toronto screened 1,106 temperature-sensitive alleles2 from 580 essential genes3 in 10 wild yeast strains to see if natural genetic variation would allow the yeast to grow when exposed to an unfavourably high temperature.

They found that 26 per cent of the 580 essential genes could be circumvented by natural variants in at least one wild yeast strain. Yeast colonies that continued to grow were then sequenced at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, in order to search for specific mutations that could be suppressing the temperature-sensitive allele.

Professor Jolanda van Leeuwen, a senior author of the paper from the University of Lausanne, said: "The proportion of harmful mutations in essential genes that could be supressed was unexpected, and because we only sampled a small fraction of wild yeast strains the percentage of mutations that can be suppressed by natural variants is likely to be much higher. The frequency of suppression suggests it could make an important contribution in other contexts as well - including, potentially, for human disease."

Researchers at the University of Lausanne examined 10 instances of suppression in detail to better understand the suppression effect and how it protected cells. To their surprise, in each case a single mutation was responsible for suppressing the temperature-sensitive allele and enabling cells to live and reproduce.

Dr Leopold Parts, a senior author of the paper from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: "In biology, explanations tend to be complex, so it's unusual to find a single 'smoking gun'. We might have expected a number of genes to combine to overcome a serious genetic defect like the temperature-sensitive allele, so for this to be the result of a single mutation is very surprising."

Work is already underway at the Sanger Institute to conduct a similar study in human cells to see how relevant these findings are to the human genome, using commercially available human cell lines from healthy donors. If the same biological phenomenon is at play, it could provide valuable information about how genetic diseases arise and whether 'rescue mutations' might one day help clinicians to treat these diseases.

Millions of surgical procedures performed each year would not be possible without the aid of general anesthesia, the miraculous medical ability to turn off consciousness in a reversible and controllable way.

Researchers are using this powerful tool to better understand how the brain reconstitutes consciousness and cognition after disruptions caused by sleep, medical procedures requiring anesthesia, and neurological dysfunctions such as coma.

In a new study published in the journal eLife, a team led by anesthesiologists George Mashour, M.D., Ph.D. of University of Michigan Medical School, Michigan Medicine, Max Kelz, M.D., Ph.D. of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, and Michael Avidan, MBBCh of the Washington University School of Medicine used the anesthetics propofol and isoflurane in humans to study the patterns of reemerging consciousness and cognitive function after anesthesia.

In the study, 30 healthy adults were anesthetized for three hours. Their brain activity was measured with EEG and their sleep-wake activity was measured before and after the experiment. Each participant was given cognitive tests--designed to measure reaction speed, memory, and other functions--before receiving anesthesia, right after the return of consciousness, and then every 30 minutes thereafter.

The study team sought to answer several fundamental questions: Just how does the brain wake up after profound unconsciousness--all at once or do some areas and functions come back online first? If so, which?

"How the brain recovers from states of unconsciousness is important clinically but also gives us insight into the neural basis of consciousness itself," says Mashour.

After the anesthetic was discontinued and participants regained consciousness, cognitive testing began. A second control group of study participants, who did not receive general anesthesia and stayed awake, also completed tests over the same time period.

Analyzing EEG and test performance, the researchers found that recovery of consciousness and cognition is a process that unfolds over time, not all at once. To the investigators' surprise, one of the brain functions that came online first was abstract problem solving, controlled by the prefrontal cortex, whereas other functions such as reaction time and attention took longer to recover.

"Although initially surprising, it makes sense in evolutionary terms that higher cognition needs to recover early. If, for example, someone was waking up to a threat, structures like the prefrontal cortex would be important for categorizing the situation and generating an action plan," says Kelz.

The EEG readings revealed that the frontal regions of the brain were especially active around the time of recovery. Importantly, within three hours of being deeply anesthetized for a prolonged period of time, participants were able to recover cognitive function to approximately the same level as the group that stayed awake during that time. Furthermore, their sleep schedule in the days after the experiment did not appear to be affected.

"This suggests that the healthy human brain is resilient, even with a prolonged exposure to deep anesthesia. Clinically, this implies that some of the disorders of cognition that we often see for days or even weeks during recovery from anesthesia and surgery--such as delirium--might be attributable to factors other than lingering effects of anesthetic drugs on the brain," says Avidan.

This striking image showcases the unusually contorted appearance of NGC 2276, an appearance caused by two different astrophysical interactions -- one with the superheated gas pervading galaxy clusters, and one with a nearby galactic neighbour.

The interaction of NGC 2276 with the intracluster medium -- the superheated gas lying between the galaxies in galaxy clusters -- has ignited a burst of star formation along one edge of the galaxy. This wave of star formation is visible as the bright, blue-tinged glow of newly formed massive stars towards the left side of this image, and gives the galaxy a strangely lopsided appearance. NGC 2276's recent burst of star formation is also related to the appearance of more exotic inhabitants -- black holes and neutron stars in binary systems.

On the other side of the galaxy from this burst of new stars, the gravitational attraction of a smaller companion is pulling the outer edges of NGC 2276 out of shape. This interaction with the small lens-shaped galaxy NGC 2300 has distorted the outermost spiral arms of NGC 2276, giving the false impression that the larger galaxy is orientated face-on to Earth [1]. NGC 2276 and its disruptive companion NGC 2300 can both be seen in the accompanying image, which shows a wider view of the interacting galaxies.

NGC 2276 is by no means the only galaxy with a strange appearance. The Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies -- a catalogue of unusual galaxies published in 1966 -- contains a menagerie of weird and wonderful galaxies, including spectacular galaxy mergers, ring-shaped galaxies, and other galactic oddities. As befits an unusually contorted galaxy, NGC 2276 has the distinction of being listed in the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies twice -- once for its lopsided spiral arms and once for its interaction with its smaller neighbour NGC 2300.

Researchers from the Single-Cell Center at the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed a technique to sort and sequence the genome of bacteria in soil one bacterial cell at a time, while also identifying what its function is in the soil environment.

Their study was published in the journal mSystems on May 27.

Soil is home to a vast and complex microbiome, which features arguably the highest genomic diversity and widest heterogeneity of metabolic activities of cells on Earth. In turn, these metabolic activities can in principle provide the foundation for industrial production of numerous compounds of value.

The ability to pinpoint "who is doing what" in the soil microbiome has until now been extremely difficult at the resolution of a single cell, as normally a great many cells, typically millions of them, have had to be analyzed at the same time.

In 2020, researchers from the QIBEBT Single-Cell Center developed a bacteria-profiling technique called Raman-Activated Gravity-driven single-cell Encapsulation and Sequencing, or RAGE sequencing. This sequencing technique uses laser "tweezers" and takes advantage of the properties of gravity to permit analysis of bacteria cells one by one. The form and structure of a bacterium are then investigated using 'Raman spectroscopy', a method of analysis that uses how light interacts with the chemical bonds in a molecule to enable identification.

They have now developed their RAGE sequencing technique into a new scientific instrument they are calling a Raman-activated Cell Sorter-Sequencer or RACS-Seq. It is the first instrument in the world that can pinpoint "who is doing what" at precisely one-cell resolution in complex ecosystem. And they applied it to the bacteria in soil.

The Raman spectra of a single cell offers an intrinsic biochemical fingerprint, and this in turn can be used as a proxy of its metabolic activity. When this single-cell Raman spectra (SCRS) is coupled with probing of the isotopes involved in this activity, the technique can reveal the amount of chemical from the cell's environment that it is taking up.

Isotopes are often used as a way to track or trace chemical processes. Deuterium, for example, is an isotope of hydrogen with one neutron (regular hydrogen has zero neutrons), and is found in heavy water (water molecules where the regular hydrogen is replaced by deuterium: D2O instead of H2O).

By feeding the bacteria with heavy water, the general metabolic activity of the cells can be tracked via Raman spectra. The technique can also detect not only uptake of D2O but also different isotopes of carbon or nitrogen. This can even reveal the particular cellular profile of synthesis of biological molecules.

This metabolic tracking can then be linked via the RAGE technique to individual cells whose genome can be sequenced.

"This should allow researchers to 'mine' soil to find bacteria of interest that are in the business of producing particular carotenoids, lipids, polysaccharides, protein and even antibiotics," said JING Xiaoyan, a microbiome scientist with the QIBEBT Single-Cell Center and the article's lead author.

The researchers now want to further improve the throughput of their technique, at a few cells per minute currently, to speed up and fully automate the process.

"Our goal ultimately is to keep optimizing the RACS-Seq instrument, so that it becomes a universal and highly versatile tool for precisely probing target cells or metabolic activities of interest," added XU Jian, the article's corresponding author and Director of the QIBEBT Single-Cell Center. "And not just from soil, but from any other complex natural ecosystem."

What does quark-gluon plasma - the hot soup of elementary particles formed a few microseconds after the Big Bang - have in common with tap water? Scientists say it's the way it flows.

A new study, published today in the journal SciPost Physics, has highlighted the surprising similarities between quark-gluon plasma, the first matter thought to have filled the early Universe, and water that comes from our tap.

The ratio between the viscosity of a fluid, the measure of how runny it is, and its density, decides how it flows. Whilst both the viscosity and density of quark-gluon plasma are about 16 orders of magnitude larger than in water, the researchers found that the ratio between the viscosity and density of the two types of fluids are the same. This suggests that one of the most exotic states of matter known to exist in our universe would flow out of your tap in much the same way as water.

The matter that makes up our Universe is made of atoms, which consist of nuclei with orbiting electrons. Nuclei consist of protons and neutrons known collectively as nucleons and these in turn consist of quarks interacting via gluons. At very high temperatures - about one million times hotter than the centre of the Sun- quarks and gluons break free from their parent nucleons and instead form a dense, hot soup known as quark-gluon plasma.

It is thought that shortly after the Big Bang the early universe was filled with incredibly hot quark gluon plasma. This then cooled microseconds later to form the building blocks of all the matter found within our universe. Since the early 2000s scientists have been able to recreate quark-gluon plasma experimentally using large particle colliders, which has provided new insights into this exotic state of matter.

The ordinary matter we encounter on a daily basis are thought to have very different properties to the quark-gluon plasma found in the early beginnings of the Universe. For example, fluids like water are governed by the behaviour of atoms and molecules that are much larger than the particles found in quark-gluon plasma, and are held together by weaker forces.

However, the recent study shows that despite these differences the ratio of viscosity and density, known as the kinematic viscosity, is close in both quark-gluon plasma and ordinary liquids. This ratio is important because the fluid flow does not depend on viscosity alone but is governed by the Navier-Stokes equation which contains density and viscosity. Therefore, if this ratio is the same for two different fluids these two fluids will flow in the same way even if they have very different viscosities and densities.

Importantly, it's not just any liquid viscosity that coincides with the viscosity of quark-gluon plasma. Indeed, liquid viscosity can vary by many orders of magnitude depending on temperature. However, there is one very particular point where liquid viscosity has a nearly-universal lower limit. Previous research found that in that limit, fluid viscosity is governed by fundamental physical constants such as the Planck constant and the nucleon mass. It is these constants of nature that ultimately decide whether a proton is a stable particle, and govern processes like nuclear synthesis in stars and the creation of essential biochemical elements needed for life. The recent study found that it is this universal lower limit of viscosity of ordinary fluids like water which turns out to be close to the viscosity of quark-gluon plasma.

Professor Kostya Trachenko, Professor of Physics at Queen Mary University of London and author of the recent paper, said: "We do not fully understand the origin of this striking similarity yet but we think it could be related to the fundamental physical constants which set both the universal lower limit of viscosity for both ordinary liquids and quark-gluon plasma."

"This study provides a fairly rare and delightful example of where we can draw quantitative comparisons between hugely disparate systems," continues Professor Matteo Baggioli from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. "Liquids are described by hydrodynamics, which leaves us with many open problems that are currently at the forefront of physics research. Our result shows the power of physics to translate general principles into specific predictions about complex properties such as liquid flow in exotic types of matter like quark-gluon plasma."

Understanding quark-gluon plasma and its flow is currently at the forefront of high-energy physics. Strong forces between quarks and gluons are described by quantum chromodynamics, one of the most comprehensive physical theories that exist. However whilst quantum chromodynamics provides a theory of strong nuclear force, it is very hard to solve and understand quark-gluon plasma properties using this alone.

"It is conceivable that the current result can provide us with a better understanding of the quark-gluon plasma," added Professor Vadim Brazhkin from the Russian Academy of Sciences. "The reason is that viscosity in liquids at their minimum corresponds to a very particular regime of liquid dynamics which we understood only recently. The similarity with the QGP suggests that particles in this exotic system move in the same way as in tap water."

Twenty scientists from 14 countries warn of a hidden "pandemic within the pandemic" in two current publications. On the one hand, physical activity levels have gone down significantly, on the other hand, psychological well-being has suffered. "Governments and those responsible for health systems should take our findings seriously," emphasizes the author team, headed by Dr Jan Wilke from the Institute for Sport Sciences at Goethe University Frankfurt.

About 15,000 people in participating countries answered standardised questionaires as part of an international survey. In April/May 2020, they reported physical activity levels (13,500 participants) as well as their mental and physical well-being (15,000 participants) before and during the pandemic-related restrictions.

Older individuals especially affected

"The results show drastic reductions in physical activity and well-being," says Wilke. More than two thirds of those questioned were unable to maintain their usual level of activity. Moderate exercise decreased by an average of 41 percent according to self-reported data - this includes anything that increases heart rate and breathing, such as brisk walking, running, cycling or even strenuous gardening.

The proportion of vigorous exercise during which people sweat and clearly run out of breath fell by a similar amount (42 percent). The effects were somewhat higher among professional athletes and particularly active people, as well as comparatively young and old people. The decline in activity was particularly noticeable among people over 70 years of age, who were 56 to 67 percent less active than before. "We know that physical inactivity, especially in older people, can lead to changes that are difficult to reverse after only two weeks - for example, in body fat percentage or insulin sensitivity," warn the study authors.

Exercise helps prevents disease and reduces mortality

The WHO recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of intensive physical activity per week - 81 percent of the study participants achieved this before the pandemic, but only 63 percent during the lockdowns. Yet sufficient exercise can reduce mortality by up to 39 per cent, as a 2015 study showed. Data suggests that too little exercise plays a role in about one in ten premature deaths, because physical activity reduces the likelihood of, for example, high blood pressure, metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes, and cancer.

Exercise is known to activate the immune system because it promotes blood circulation and activates lymphocytes and messenger substances (cytokines) that are important for immune defence. Studies show that physically active people are less susceptible to influenza, rhino and herpes viruses and respiratory infections in general. So it may be that exercise also offers protection against severe COVID-19 by reducing risk factors such as obesity. Physical health and exercise also reduce the risk of mental health problems such as depression and anxiety disorders.

Mental well-being drastically reduced

In another part of the study, the team of authors asked about mental well-being during the pandemic restrictions. 73 percent of the study participants stated that their well-being had deteriorated. The perceived quality of life as measured by the WHO well-being Index, which measures mood, relaxation, activity, rest and interest, dropped on average from 68 percent before the pandemic to 52 percent during the first lockdown phase.

Above all, people felt less "active and full of energy" and led a life less "filled with interesting things". The proportion of very low scores indicating a possible risk of depression tripled from 15 to 45 percent. "These effects were stronger among women and younger people, " the study says. "More attention should be paid to the needs of women in particular, as they are significantly more vulnerable."

Nonetheless, 14 to 20 percent of the respondents also stated that their health had improved - the authors see more family time, greater work autonomy, fewer business trips or a changed perception of health as possible reasons. "But a large part of the population may still be suffering from barely visible health effects of the pandemic," the team of authors warns.

This could also translate into rising health costs: According to US data, the annual expenditure for inactive or insufficiently active people increases by 1200 and 600 euros respectively - this would add up to two to four million euros after one year just for the 3104 people from the survey who did not exercise enough during the lockdown.

The results of these first multinational studies are likely to be relevant for an estimated four billion people worldwide who were affected by the restrictions of the first coronavirus wave in the spring of 2020. However, the data was predominantly collected through electronic media, so populations without internet were not included. Also, no differentiation was made according to factors such as living environment, education and social status. In addition, the data is based on self-assessments, not measurements, which may distort retrospective perceptions in particular. "Nevertheless, our results show that the issues of physical activity and well-being belong on the policy agenda," Wilke emphasises.

"Governmental and health-related decison-makers need to develop strategies to mitigate the loss of physical activity," write the authors. They suggest better public education, creating exercise opportunities with a low likelihood of infection, or offering effective home exercise programmes. Among numerous other health facets, this would have a particularly positive effect on mental well-being.

Negative effects similar to those observed in these studies should be avoided at all costs in future pandemics. "Unfortunately, physical activity and exercise do not have a strong lobby and are usually neglected in public discourse," says Wilke. "Yet they can greatly help us to better cope with the pandemic."

Ant workers that are infected with a tapeworm live much longer than their uninfected nest-mates. Parasitic infections are usually harmful to their hosts, but there are some exceptions. According to the results of a multi-year scientific study, ants of the species Temnothorax nylanderi show exceptionally high survival rates when infected with a tapeworm. "The lifespan of the infected ants is significantly prolonged. According to our observations, such workers have a survival rate similar to that of queens," said Professor Susanne Foitzik of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), leader of the study. Queens of this species can live for up to 20 years, while female workers rarely reach the age of two. Among possible explanations for this extended lifespan are the change in the physiology of infected ants caused by the parasites and the fact that infected workers are better supplied with food.

Social care in the nest linked to longer life

In the case of ants, there is a stark divergence in lifespan between female castes. Many ant queens can survive for several decades. They spend almost all their lives safely in the nest where they are cared for by the workers, their daughters. In contrast, ant workers live for only a few weeks or months or, in rare cases, a few years. The infertile workers carry out all tasks in the nest, starting in brood care and progressing to riskier activities outside the colony as they grow older, such as foraging for food. The high life expectancy of queens is due to their low mortality rate, which is attributable to the high levels of social care they receive, their safe environment, and the activation of physiological repair mechanisms.

These factors may also contribute to the extremely high survival rates of Temnothorax-nylanderi workers infected with a tapeworm. This species of ant is common in Central Europe and forms small colonies on the forest floor, inside acorns or wooden branches. The insects are relatively small, with a body length of just two to three millimeters. They serve as an intermediate host for the tapeworm Anomotaenia brevis, whereby a single ant can be infected by up to 70 parasitic larvae. The parasites survive in the hemolymph, the body fluid of insects. Their complex life cycle is completed once they have been ingested by a woodpecker that feeds on the ants.

The research team led by Professor Susanne Foitzik looked at the long-term consequences of the parasitic infection by collecting ant colonies from forests around Mainz and observing them in the laboratory. "We tracked the survival rate of the workers and queens in both infected and uninfected ant colonies over three years, until more than 95 percent of the uninfected workers had died," explained Foitzik. At that point, over half of the infected workers were still alive - exhibiting a survival rate practically identical to that of the long-lived queens. "It is quite extraordinary that a parasite can trigger such a positive change in its host. This lifespan extension is very unusual," emphasized the JGU-based evolutionary biologist.

Infected workers differ in appearance, behavior, and physiology

The infected ants are easily distinguished from their brown nest-mates due to their lighter, yellow color, an effect that results from their cuticle being less pigmented. They are also less active and receive enhanced care from other workers in the nest. "The infected insects get more attention and are fed, cleaned, and looked after better. They even benefit from slightly more care than the nest's queen," explained Professor Susanne Foitzik. The tests also revealed that infected ants have metabolic rates and lipid levels similar to those of younger ants. It would seem that these ants remain in a permanent juvenile stage as a result of the infection. This is likely down to both the tapeworm larvae altering the expression of ant genes that affect aging and to the parasites' release of proteins containing antioxidants into the ants' hemolymph.

Even though the mystery of their long life has not yet been fully resolved, the behavior of the infected ants themselves does not seem to be the decisive factor. The research team, which included scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing and Tel Aviv University, found no evidence that the insects actively beg for better care. However, chemical signals on the cuticle of infected ants were found to elicit more attention of their nest-mates. "The infected insects live a life of luxury, but the fact that they receive more social care cannot alone account for their prolonged lifespan," concluded Foitzik. The scientists will undertake further research in order to identify the factors, particularly on the molecular and epigenetic level, behind the infected workers death-defying attributes.

A new discovery by University of Guelph researchers may ultimately help in devising new therapies and improving quality of life for people with Parkinson's disease.

By showing how entangled proteins in brain cells enable the neurodegenerative disease to spread, the researchers hope their findings will lead to drugs that halt its progression, said PhD candidate Morgan Stykel, first author of a paper published this month in Cell Reports.

Parkinson's disease is the world's fastest-growing neurodegenerative disease and Canada has some of the world's highest rates, according to Parkinson Canada. Its exact cause is unknown.

Current therapies only treat symptoms rather than halting the disease, said Dr. Scott Ryan, a professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology who led the study.

Parkinson's disease can be triggered by the misfolding of a protein called alpha-synuclein that accumulates in a part of the brain called the substantia nigra. The disease causes loss of nerve cells in the brain that produce dopamine, a chemical messenger that helps control motor function.

Misfolded alpha-synuclein aggregates and eventually spreads to other parts of the brain, impairing areas responsible for other functions such as mood and cognition.

The U of G team used stem cells to model neurons with and without Parkinson's disease and look at the effects of synuclein mutations.

They discovered that in Parkinson's neurons, misfolded synuclein binds to another protein called LC3B. Normally, LC3B targets misfolded proteins to be degraded. In Parkinson's disease, the study showed, LC3 gets trapped in the protein aggregates and is inactivated.

Without degradation, the cells eject the aggregates, which then spread to nearby neurons, propagating the disease throughout the brain.

"Normally misfolded proteins are degraded. We found a pathway by which synuclein is being secreted and released from neurons instead of being degraded," said Ryan. "We hope to turn the degradation pathway back on and stop the spread of disease."

The team showed that activating LC3B restores degradation, enabling cells to clear the misfolded proteins and prevent disease spread.

"Regular protein turnover is part of a healthy cell," said Stykel. "With Parkinson's disease, that system is not working properly."

Ryan said their finding could help in devising therapies.

"We may not be able to do anything about brain regions that are already diseased, but maybe we can stop it from progressing. We might be able to turn the degradation pathway back on and stop the spread of the disease."

He cautioned that other biochemical pathways are also likely involved in the spread of the disease through the brain. Still, the finding provides a target for potential drug development.

"Most current therapies centre around increasing the release of dopamine, but that works for a brief period and has a lot of side effects," said Ryan.

This research may help improve quality of life for Parkinson's patients. Many patients are diagnosed in their 40s or 50s, meaning that they live with the progressive disease for decades.

"Reduced quality of life can be a huge burden on patients, their families and the health-care system," he said.

In the largest genetic analysis of depression to date, Veterans Affairs researchers identified many new gene variants that increase the risk for depression. The groundbreaking study helps researchers better understand the biological basis of depression and could lead to better drug treatments.

The study involved genetic data on more than 300,000 participants of VA's Million Veteran Program (MVP), along with more than a million subjects from other biobanks, including 23andMe. With such a large participant pool, the researchers were able to spot trends in genetic risk of depression not previously known.

Co-primary investigator Dr. Joel Gelernter, a researcher with the VA Connecticut Healthcare System and Yale University School of Medicine, explained the significance of the findings. "This study uncovered more of the genetic architecture of depression than was previously known," he said. "This implicates new regions of the genome for more targeted investigation and allows us to use this information to identify drugs that are currently approved for other indications and might be repurposed for treatment of depression."

The findings appear in the May 27, 2021, issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Major depressive disorder is the most common psychiatric disorder. About 20% of the U.S. population experiences depression. Over 300 million people worldwide, 4% of the global population, have depression. For U.S. Veterans, that rate is 11%.

Previous research has shown that genetics play a large role in depression risk. To gain more insight into exactly what genes are involved, VA researchers and colleagues assembled a large dataset to perform a genome-wide association study (GWAS). A GWAS compares the genomic codes of many people to see what gene variants people with a particular condition tend to have in common. This project was the first genomic study of depression to include more than a million participants.

The researchers first analyzed the genomes of over 250,000 MVP participants of European ancestry. They then combined the findings with previous analyses from several other genetic repositories--the UK Biobank, FinnGen, and 23andMe. The other biobanks added more subjects, for a total of more than 1.2 million participants, to the primary study.

The analysis revealed 178 loci--specific parts of the genome--that are involved in a person's risk for depression. The finding includes 77 loci not detected in previous research.

The analysis also identified 223 single -nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) at these 178 locations that appear to affect a person's depression risk. An SNP is a specific variation of a single DNA building block.

The researchers also examined the genomes of nearly 60,000 Veterans of African ancestry in the MVP database. They found that 125 of the SNPs identified in the European ancestry group (61%) directly affected the African ancestry participants' risk for depression.

The team validated the results by checking them against 1.3 million additional samples from 23andMe, a private genetic testing company. This check confirmed the findings of the initial analysis. By combining such large databases, the researchers were able to draw broader and more accurate conclusions. "One of the underappreciated elements of GWAS is how reproducible the findings are," explained co-lead author Dr. Daniel Levey of the VA Connecticut Healthcare System and Yale University School of Medicine. "Now that we've achieved adequate power, we are finding great consistency in findings from different groups study. We hope this consistency provides a stable foundation for new discoveries that can improve treatments."

Further analysis revealed genetic overlap between depression and several other psychiatric conditions, which has been suggested by other studies. Depression shares genetic risk factors with anxiety disorders and PTSD, as well as with risky behavior and cannabis use disorder, the study found.

The findings could be used to identify new drug therapies for treating depression, according to the researchers. By identifying what genes are involved in depression, researchers may be able to repurpose existing drugs that are known to act on these genes. For example, riluzole, a drug used to treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), could be of interest for depression. It works on one of the genes identified by the MVP study.

Gelernter explained how MVP makes groundbreaking studies such as this possible. "This study, like many before it, highlights the value of the MVP sample in identifying genes for common genetic traits, especially those that are important in the veteran population. Another unique value of the MVP is that it allows us to study populations other than Europeans. We didn't find nearly as much in African-ancestry subjects as in European-ancestry, but we made a good start, and our results will be of great value in future meta-analysis efforts," he said. "This is a critical advantage of the MVP."

Together, the results greatly add to the understanding of how depression operates and who is most at risk. As the researchers explain, "This study sheds light into the genetic architecture of depression and provides new insight into the interrelatedness of complex psychiatric traits."

URBANA, Ill. - As the owner of a human body, you're carrying trillions of microbes with you everywhere you go. These microscopic organisms aren't just hitching a ride; many of them perform essential chemical reactions that regulate everything from our digestion to our immune system to our moods.

One important set of reactions relates to fat absorption via bile acids. Our livers make these acids to help digest fats and fat-soluble vitamins as they travel through the small intestine. Near the end of the small intestine, microbes convert the acids into new forms, which can either be beneficial or harmful.

New research from the University of Illinois identifies the last in a set of microbial genes involved in these conversions.

"Locating these bacterial genes will allow mechanistic studies to determine the effect of bile acid conversion on host health. If we find this is a beneficial reaction, therapeutic strategies can be developed to encourage production of these bile acids in the gastrointestinal tract," says Jason Ridlon, associate professor in the Department of Animal Sciences at U of I and corresponding author of a new article in Gut Microbes.

Microbes produce enzymes that flip the orientation of three hydroxyl groups on bile acid molecules. Flipping them into different configurations rearranges the acid molecules into forms that can be harmful or beneficial. Ridlon and other scientists had already identified the genes for two of these enzymes, but one was still unknown.

To find the missing gene, Ridlon and his collaborators looked back in time. Previous research links the flipping of a specific hydroxyl group - one attached to a location on the acid molecule known as carbon-12 - with a microbe called Clostridium paraputrificum.

"We knew from literature published a few decades ago what species this function was reported in. We confirmed it in a strain of Clostridium paraputrificum that we have in our culture collection. This function is known to be catalyzed by certain enzymes known as reductases," Ridlon says.

"Using the genome sequence of Clostridium paraputrificum, we identified all the candidate reductases, engineered the genes into E. coli and determined which reductase was able to flip the polar group on bile acids," he adds.

The research team then searched for similar sequences in the human microbiome.

"We were able to identify the gene in numerous bacterial species that were previously unknown to have this bile acid metabolizing function. This is helpful for human microbiome researchers because the field is moving towards trying to link function with disease. Now we know the precise DNA sequences that encode an enzyme that flip carbon-12 of bile acids," Ridlon says.

The researchers haven't yet figured out if flipping the hydroxyl group at carbon-12 is a good or a bad thing. In the "good" category, the flip may play a role in detoxifying harmful bile acids such as deoxycholic acid (DCA) and lithocholic acid (LCA), chemicals known to damage DNA and cause cancers of the colon, liver, and esophagus. But Ridlon notes that "good vs. bad" framing oversimplifies reality.

"While we tend to think of DCA and LCA as 'bad,' the context is very important. Infection by Clostridium difficile (C. diff) seems to correlate with low levels of DCA and LCA, for instance, so these bile acids seem to be protective in preventing unwanted colonizers. Chronic high levels of DCA and LCA due to Western lifestyle are 'bad,' however, so it is a balancing act," he says. "A major goal of this research is trying to establish and maintain a 'Goldilocks zone' of bile acids - not too much or too little."

While there is still more to learn, Ridlon says identifying and characterizing these new microbial genes responsible for bile acid conversion is a major step forward for gut health.