Culture

When the United States issued national stay-at-home guidelines in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, mobility across the country dropped significantly. New research from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) demonstrates that people may be inclined to change their behavior in response to national guidelines, more than state and local policies.

"When the next pandemic hits, we need to know what kind of policies are going to have the biggest impact on human behavior and health," said Marianna Linz, Assistant Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering and of Earth and Planetary Sciences at SEAS and senior author of the paper. "While specific, local policies based on community spread may make the most sense, we found that people seem to change their behavior more in response to national guidelines. This suggests that clear national guidelines, at least in the beginning, are going to have the biggest impact on public health."

The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The researchers used cell phone mobility data collected by Google and Unacast, a location data company, to study how far people traveled and how many people they encountered between February 24 to May 22 and June 1 to August 28.

The researchers found that in most states, grocery store and pharmacy visits peaked within a few days of March 13, the day the White House declared a state of emergency and banned travel from 26 European countries. The following weekend, after the release of national stay at home guidelines and school closures, people across the country started to stay put although most states then had only a few hundred known COVID-19 cases.

"Although many states delayed implementing stay-at-home orders, there was near uniformity in behavior at the beginning of quarantine across states," said Yihan Wu '22, an undergraduate researcher in Linz's Lab and first author of the paper. "It was really striking to see just how consistent behavior was at that time."

Similarly, when the national stay-at-home advisory ended on May 1st, there was a uniform rise in mobility across the country, even though locally many schools and offices remained closed.

"Despite different local stay-at-home orders and state reopening timelines, we see encounters increasing in a coherent way nationwide when the national guidelines expired," said Todd Mooring, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard and co-author of the study.

The researchers also looked at how weather impacted mobility and encounters during the quarantine period. Despite news stories featuring crowded beaches and packed pool parties, the data did not show systematic increases in close encounters on nice days.

"We found that while visits to parks increased on nice days during the shutdown, most people were still being cautious and avoiding encounters with other people during the national stay-at-home period," said Wu.

"While the response to COVID-19 became increasingly politicized over time, that wasn't the case in the beginning," said Linz. "Our results suggest that coherent national guidance could help contain virus transmission in the future. COVID-19 may be too politicized now, but this result will be useful to future pandemic planning."

Researchers in China, Japan, and Singapore were able to resume research much quicker than their counterparts in the US and Europe after the first covid lockdowns, results of a new international survey suggest.

Published 'Open Access' in the peer-reviewed journal Science and Technology of Advanced Materials, the findings of the 'Survey on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on research activities of materials scientists', which also included a series of podcasts with eminent experts, highlight how severe the impact of lockdowns affected researchers internationally.

33% of respondents had to shut down all equipment.

The outcomes were not uniform internationally however, as whilst labs in the UK and parts of the USA, Spain, and India were not accessible for the whole of the first lockdown, material scientists in Asian countries were able to access labs within one to two months after the first lockdown.

The conclusions - analysed by a multidisciplinary set of international experts from institutions including University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo, University of York UK, and publishers Taylor & Francis - paint a picture of the lockdowns catching many institutions off guard.

54% of scientists reported that theirs were not prepared or took considerable time to react
and only 44% had contingency plans in place.
This led to additional issues, such as 57% of respondents not receiving mental health support from their institution. In terms of mental health, 40% felt isolation throughout the initial lockdown.

Overall, though, lead author Professor Adarsh Sandhu, from University of ElectroCommunications, states the survey shows a "resilient and adaptive" response from the community.

"The survey showed the materials science community to be resilient and adaptive to overcome limitations imposed by restrictions to mobility as exemplified by the proposal for 'robot-based hubs' to perform remote chemical synthesis similar to astronomers who use remote control to move massive telescopes located all over the world."

As with the majority of the rest of the world, this scientific community (89% of them) used video teleconferencing to complete their work on a day-to-day basis. Again, like for many worldwide, this was not without its issues. Problems reported included unstable internet (nearly 50% reported this problem), an inability to have spontaneous 'coffee time' style meetings (44%), and 36% stated they suffered from fatigue after many hours of teleconferencing.

The virtual nature of work also saw approximately 64% of respondents attended virtual conferences.

One stark finding of the paper was a clear disparity between senior and junior positions, though.

"Responses from doctoral students highlighted their 'fear' and uncertainty as their work suddenly came to a halt and they worried about their careers," co-author Professor Atsufumi Hirohata, from York's Department of Electronic Engineering says.

"However, grad-students also learnt to move forward by using their time to reassess previous data with a view to publishing papers and planning their research."

The survey was carried out from March to October 2020, and, using a database provided by Taylor & Francis, was completed by 298 respondents located in 35 countries.

"Overall, we hope that the analysis from this survey will enable the global materials science community to learn from each other's experiences and move forward from the unprecedented circumstances created by the pandemic," concludes Ken Kimlicka, Global Head of Chemistry/Physics/Materials Science at Taylor & Francis.

Limitations of the research include 74.8% of respondents being male, and 16.7% of respondents being from India - nearly twice as many as from any other country represented.

As part of the wider study internationally, freely-available, online podcast interviews with eminent materials scientists who shared their local experiences during this period can be found by searching for 'The STAM Podcast' on all major providers.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Researchers have discovered a new coronavirus, found in a child with pneumonia in Malaysia in 2018, that appears to have jumped from dog to human.

If confirmed as a pathogen, the novel canine-like coronavirus could represent the eighth unique coronavirus known to cause disease in humans. The discovery also suggests coronaviruses are being transmitted from animals to humans more commonly than was previously thought.

"How common this virus is, and whether it can be transmitted efficiently from dogs to humans or between humans, nobody knows," said Gregory Gray, M.D., a professor of medicine, global health and environmental health at the Duke University.

"What's more important is that these coronaviruses are likely spilling over to humans from animals much more frequently than we know," said Gray, who led the research that appears in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. "We are missing them because most hospital diagnostic tests only pick up known human coronaviruses."

Working with visiting scholar Leshan Xiu, a Ph.D. student, Gray was on a team that in 2020 developed a molecular diagnostic tool to detect most coronaviruses from the Coronaviridae family that includes SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.

The team used that tool to examine 301 archived pneumonia cases and picked up signals for canine coronaviruses from eight people hospitalized with pneumonia in Sarawak, a state in East Malaysia.

Researchers at Ohio State, led by Anastasia N. Vlasova, grew a virus from one of the clinical specimens, and through a painstaking process of genome reconstruction, were able to identify it as a novel canine coronavirus.

"There are probably multiple canine coronaviruses circulating and spilling over into humans that we don't know about," Gray said. Sarawak could be a rich place to detect them, he said, since it's an equatorial area with rich biodiversity.

"Many of those spillovers are dead ends, they don't ever leave that first human host," Gray said. "But if we really want to mitigate the threat, we need better surveillance where humans and animals intersect, and among people who are sick enough to get hospitalized for novel viruses."

Gray said diagnostic tools like the one developed to find this virus have the potential to identify other viruses new to humans before they can cause a pandemic.

"These pathogens don't just cause a pandemic overnight," Gray said. "It takes many years for them to adapt to the human immune system and cause infection, and then to become efficient in human-to-human transmission. We need to look for these pathogens and detect them early."

Nerves release a protein at the injury site that attracts growing nerve fibers and thus keeps them entrapped there. This prevents them from growing in the right direction to bridge the injury. The research team headed by Professor Dietmar Fischer reports in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) from 25. May 2021.

There must be another cause

Three main causes for the inability of injured nerves of the central nervous system, or CNS, to regenerate have been known to date: the insufficient activation of a regeneration program in injured nerve cells that stimulates the growth of fibers, so-called axons; the formation of a scar at the site of injury that is difficult for nerve fibers to penetrate; and an inhibitory effect of molecules in the nerve on regrowing axons. "Although experimental approaches have been found in recent decades to address these individual aspects by therapeutic means, even combinatorial approaches have shown only little success," says Fischer. "So there must be other yet unknown causes for why nerve fibers in the CNS don't regenerate."

Using the optic nerve as a model, his team has now shown another cause for the regenerative failure in the CNS, which came as a surprise to the researchers. The underlying mechanism is not based on inhibition of axon growth, as in the previously identified causes, but rather on a positive effect of a protein at the site of injury of the nerve. This molecule is a so-called chemokine known as CXCL12. "The protein actually promotes the growth of axons and attracts regenerating fibers. It is, therefore, chemoattractive," explains Fischer. However, this chemoattraction turned out to be a significant problem after nerve injury in living animals.

Trapped nerve fibers

The Bochum-based scientists showed that this protein is released at the nerve's lesion site and, as a result, keeps the axons at the injured area through the chemoattractive effect. As a result, some fibers that had already regenerated across the injury site even changed direction, growing back to the injury site. The regrowing fibers thus remained trapped due to the attraction of CXCL12.

The researchers worked out this effect when they specifically eliminated the receptor for CXCL12, called CXCR4, in the retinal nerve cells, rendering them blind to this protein. "Surprisingly, this led to greatly increased fiber growth in the injured optic nerves, and axons showed significantly less regrowth back to the injury site," Dietmar Fischer points out.

A potential starting point for new drugs

The researchers then investigated where at the injury site the CXCL12 originated. They found out that about eight percent of the nerve cells in the retina produce this protein themselves, transport it along their fibers to the injury site in the optic nerve, and release it there from the severed axons. "It is still unknown why some of these nerve cells make CXCL12 and others make the receptor," says Fischer. "We don't yet understand the physiological role of the protein, but we can see that it is a major inhibitor of neural repair."

In further experiments, the Bochum-based researchers showed that knocking out CXCL12 in retinal nerve cells so that it could no longer be released at the injury site equally improved axonal regeneration into the optic nerve. "These new findings open the opportunity to develop pharmacological approaches aimed at disrupting the interaction of CXCL12 and its receptor on the nerve fibers, to free them from their captivity at the site of injury," concludes Fischer. Whether similar approaches can also promote the regeneration of axons in other areas of the injured brain or spinal cord is the subject of current studies by his team at the Department of Cell Physiology.

Herndon, Va. (May 20, 2021) - The international journal Risk Analysis has published a timely special issue for May 2021, "Global Systemic Risk and Resilience for Novel Coronavirus and COVID-19." Featuring 11 papers written for this issue over the past year, the collection represents a sampling of insights and viewpoints from scholars across risk sciences and resilience analytics to guide decision-making and operations related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 11 papers address the breadth of risk sciences represented by the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA), including risk perception, risk and resilience, human health and infection risk, and risk management strategies and economic evaluation. From a systems perspective, the multidisciplinary expertise of the SRA and its specialty groups can offer new tools for public health practitioners, infrastructure owners/operators, and policymakers to coordinate global and local, context-specific interventions, with expanded access to health information and services.

The introduction to this special issue is written by Special Issue Co-Editors, Desheng Dash Wu of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Stockholm University; Jade Mitchell of Michigan State University; and James H. Lambert of the University of Virginia. The Special Issue Co-Editors wrote the Call for Papers in January of 2020, solicited reviewers from across the Society and elsewhere, and provided the Editor-in-Chief with recommendations for the submitted manuscripts.

Here are the original research papers and perspectives included in the issue:

- The Impact of Trust and Risk Perception on the Acceptance of Measures to Reduce COVID-19 Cases, by Michael Siegrist, Larissa Luchsinger, and Angela Bearth

Researchers conducted a survey in the German-speaking part of Switzerland at the peak of confirmed COVID-19 cases during the first wave of infections in that country (March-April 2020). Their results suggest that perceived risks are important drivers for the acceptance of the government's implemented measures to control COVID-19 and for more precautionary behavior.

- Analyzing the Risk to COVID-19 Infection Using Remote Sensing and GIS, by Shruti Kanga, Gowhar Meraj, Sudhanshu, Majid Farooq, M.S. Nathawa, and Suraj Kumar Singh

This study proposes a risk-based assessment framework for analyzing risk of high transmission and prevalence for COVID-19 in spatial areas -- using integrated hazard and vulnerability components associated with the pandemic to guide effective risk mitigation. Focused on a region of Maharashtra, the study aims to serve as a baseline study to be replicated in other parts of India or the world to help eradicate the increased threat of COVID-19 in at-risk populations.

- Reinventing Cloth Masks in the Face of Pandemics, by Stephen Salter

This study points out that countries could rapidly implement Effective Fiber Mask Programs (EFMPs) to use local resources to mass-produce effective and affordable cloth masks, and to engage the public in their correct use during the COVID-19 pandemic.

- Fast and Frugal: Information Processing Related to The Coronavirus Pandemic, by Jody Chin Sing Wong, Janet Zheng Yang, Zhuling Liu, David Lee, and Zhiying Yue

This paper establishes how two different information processing modes are influenced by individuals' responsibility attribution, discrete negative emotions, and risk perception. The results revealed that information processing styles seem to be determined by social judgment surrounding the coronavirus pandemic.

- A Novel Causal Risk-Based Decision-Making Methodology: The Case of Coronavirus, by Stavros K. Stavroglou and Bilal Ayyub

The authors propose a novel risk-based, decision-making methodology capable of unveiling causal relationships between pairs of variables. This methodology offers a basis for identifying potential scenarios and consequences of the ongoing 2020 pandemic by drawing on weather variables to examine the causal impact of changing weather on the trend of daily coronavirus cases.

- Optimal Investment in Prevention and Recovery for Mitigating Epidemic Risks, by C. Derrick Huang, Milad Baghersad, Ravi S. Behara, and Christopher W. Zobel

Researchers built a mathematical model to optimize investments into two types of measures for mitigating the risks of epidemic spread: prevention/containment and treatment/recovery.

- Exploring Risks of Human Challenge Trials for COVID-19, by David Manheim

This study introduces an interactive model for exploring some risks of a SARS-COV-2 dosing study (a prerequisite for COVID-19 challenge trials). The risk estimates they use are based on a Bayesian evidence synthesis model which can incorporate new data on infection fatality risks (IFRs) to patients, and infer rates of hospitalization.

- Challenges Associated with the Response to the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Pandemic in Africa - An African Diaspora Perspective, by Andre M. N. Renzaho

This paper discusses how lessons learned during the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa help to mitigate the likelihood of a long-term devastating effect of the COVID-19 outbreak on the African continent.

- Action Levels for SARS-COV-2 in Air: Preliminary Approach, by Charles N. Haas

In this study, the dose-response curve for Coronavirus 229E is used to develop a preliminary risk-based exposure criteria for SARS-CoV-2 via the respiratory portals of entry.

- Do the Benefits of COVID-19 Policies Exceed the Costs? Exploring Uncertainties in the Age-VSL Relationship, by Lisa A. Robinson, Ryan Sullivan, and Jason F. Shogren

This study explores the implications of theory and empirical studies, which suggest that the relationship between age and value per statistical life is uncertain. The researchers found that, when applied to the U.S. age distribution of COVID-19 deaths, their approaches result in average value per statistical life estimates from $4.47 million to $10.63 million.

- On Ambiguity Reduction and the Role of Decision Analysis During the Pandemic, by David C. Rode and Paul S. Fischbeck
Experts propose that scarce testing resources should be diverted away from confirmatory analysis of symptomatic people - as lab diagnosis appears to have little decision value in treatment choice over clinical diagnosis in patients with symptoms. In contrast, the exploratory use of testing resources to reduce ambiguity in estimates of the base rate of infection appears to have significant value and great practical import for public policy purposes. (These findings highlight the important role of decision analysts in responding to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.)

Using magnets, a collaborative group have furthered our understanding of chirality.

Their research was published in the journal Physical Review Letters on April 28, 2021.

Chirality is the lack of symmetry in matter. Human hands, for example, express chirality. A mirror image of your right hand differs from your left, giving it two distinguishable chiral states.

Chirality is an important issue in a myriad of scientific fields, ranging from high-energy physics to biology.

Within our bodies, some molecules, such as amino acids, show only one chiral state. In other words, they are homo-chiral. It is crucial to understand how this information is transferred and memorized.

Chirality also shows up in magnetic structures. Helical magnets, where ordered magnetic moments are arranged into a spiral, work as models for general chirality problems because the magnetic moments are controllable objects; therefore, they can be extensively investigated in small laboratories.

The research group discovered that the chirality of the helimagnetic state is memorized as the domain wall helicity after the phase transition to an achiral ferromagnetic state at a high temperature in a helimagnet MnP.

"Our results suggest the importance of chirality in defects and dislocations in general chiral issues," says coauthor of the study Nan Jian, a graduate student at the University of Tokyo and concurrently a special research student at Tohoku University.

Nan worked along with Yoichi Nii, assistant professor at Tohoku University's Institute of Materials Research (IMR), and Yoshinori Onose, professor at Tohoku University's IMR. The group also collaborated with the Eiji Saitoh group at the University of Tokyo and Junichiro Ohe at Toho University.

UK doctors have nothing to fear from the introduction of a central register listing money or benefits they receive in addition to their NHS salary, say experts today ahead of a public meeting on the issue hosted by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for First Do No Harm and The BMJ.

Last year the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review, chaired by Baroness Julia Cumberlege, investigated harmful side effects caused by the hormone pregnancy test Primodos, the anti-epileptic drug sodium valproate, and pelvic mesh.

During the review, she heard from patients who were concerned that clinicians had been paid or otherwise incentivised by manufacturers in a way that might influence their practice.

A key recommendation was that patients should have the right to know if their doctor has links with pharmaceutical or medical device companies.

The accompanying report called for the General Medical Council (GMC) to expand its register to include a list of financial and non-pecuniary interests for all doctors. It also said manufacturers should take responsibility to ensure that they publish details of payments they make to teaching hospitals and research institutions.

In 2019, pharmaceutical companies spent over £160 million on non-research and development collaborations with healthcare organisations and healthcare professionals. Yet there is currently no central register of clinicians' financial and non-financial interests in the UK, unlike in the US.

Doctors' interests are often collected by their employer, while Sunshine UK hosts a voluntary register of doctors' interests (whopaysthisdoctor.org).

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) also has its own voluntary database called Disclosure UK. However, under data protection laws, healthcare professionals can refuse to have their name published on it.

In addition to the Cumberlege review, there is increasing support from the medical community for a central register. A survey conducted by The BMJ found that nearly 90% of medical professional bodies agree that the UK should have a mandatory and public register of doctors' interests.

And in response to the view that any register should cover all clinical decision-making staff, not just doctors, Cumberlege said "doctors are the principal decision makers in patient care, they determine the treatment, they perform surgery. So it is with doctors that we must start."

Both Margaret McCartney, a GP and health journalist, and Susan Bewley, chair of Healthwatch UK and a co-founder of Sunshine UK, believe the GMC is the only organisation suitable to hold a register of doctors' interests as it is the only organisation that holds a list of all registered doctors in the UK.

For McCartney, the aim of any central register should be to decrease bureaucracy for healthcare professionals and increase transparency for professionals and patients.

Neil Mortensen, president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, agrees that the register would need to be easy to use and not cost doctors a lot of money. "We'd need to be convinced that it was light touch, effective and that it was going to make a difference," he says.

Analyzing data obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), researchers found a galaxy with a spiral morphology by only 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang. This is the most ancient galaxy of its kind ever observed. The discovery of a galaxy with a spiral structure at such an early stage is an important clue to solving the classic questions of astronomy: "How and when did spiral galaxies form?"

"I was excited because I had never seen such clear evidence of a rotating disk, spiral structure, and centralized mass structure in a distant galaxy in any previous literature," says Takafumi Tsukui, a graduate student at SOKENDAI and the lead author of the research paper published in the journal Science. "The quality of the ALMA data was so good that I was able to see so much detail that I thought it was a nearby galaxy."

The Milky Way Galaxy, where we live, is a spiral galaxy. Spiral galaxies are fundamental objects in the Universe, accounting for as much as 70% of the total number of galaxies. However, other studies have shown that the proportion of spiral galaxies declines rapidly as we look back through the history of the Universe. So, when were the spiral galaxies formed?

Tsukui and his supervisor Satoru Iguchi, a professor at SOKENDAI and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, noticed a galaxy called BRI 1335-0417 in the ALMA Science Archive. The galaxy existed 12.4 billion years ago and contained a large amount of dust, which obscures the starlight. This makes it difficult to study this galaxy in detail with visible light. On the other hand, ALMA can detect radio emissions from carbon ions in the galaxy, which enables us to investigate what is going on in the galaxy.

The researchers found a spiral structure extending 15,000 light-years from the center of the galaxy. This is one third of the size of the Milky Way Galaxy. The estimated total mass of the stars and interstellar matter in BRI 1335-0417 is roughly equal to that of the Milky Way.

"As BRI 1335-0417 is a very distant object, we might not be able to see the true edge of the galaxy in this observation," comments Tsukui. "For a galaxy that existed in the early Universe, BRI 1335-0417 was a giant."

Then the question becomes, how was this distinct spiral structure formed in only 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang? The researchers considered multiple possible causes and suggested that it could be due to an interaction with a small galaxy. BRI 1335-0417 is actively forming stars and the researchers found that the gas in the outer part of the galaxy is gravitationally unstable, which is conducive to star formation. This situation is likely to occur when a large amount of gas is supplied from outside, possibly due to collisions with smaller galaxies.

The fate of BRI 1335-0417 is also shrouded in mystery. Galaxies that contain large amounts of dust and actively produce stars in the ancient Universe are thought to be the ancestors of the giant elliptical galaxies in the present Universe. In that case, BRI 1335-0417 changes its shape from a disk galaxy to an elliptical one in the future. Or, contrary to the conventional view, the galaxy may remain a spiral galaxy for a long time. BRI 1335-0417 will play an important role in the study of galaxy shape evolution over the long history of the Universe.

"Our Solar System is located in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way," explains Iguchi. "Tracing the roots of spiral structure will provide us with clues to the environment in which the Solar System was born. I hope that this research will further advance our understanding of the formation history of galaxies."

These research results are presented in T. Tsukui & S. Iguchi "Spiral morphology in an intensely star-forming disk galaxy more than 12 billion years ago" published online by the journal Science on Thursday, 20 May, 2021.

FRANKFURT. As first pointed out by the German astronomer Karl Schwarzschild, black holes bend space-time to an extreme degree due to their extraordinary concentration of mass, and heat up the matter in their vicinity so that it begins to glow. New Zealand physicist Roy Kerr showed rotation can change the black hole's size and the geometry of its surroundings. The "edge" of a black hole is known as the event horizon, the boundary around the concentration of mass beyond which light and matter cannot escape and which makes the black hole "black". Black holes, theory predicts, can be described by a handful of properties: mass, spin, and a variety of possible charges.

In addition to black holes predicted from Einstein's theory of general relativity, one can consider those from models inspired by string theories, which describe matter and all particles as modes of tiny vibrating strings. String-inspired theories of black holes predict the existence of an additional field in the description of fundamental physics, which leads to observable modifications in the sizes of black holes as well as in the curvature in their vicinity.

Physicists Dr Prashant Kocherlakota and Professor Luciano Rezzolla from the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Goethe University Frankfurt, have now investigated for the first time how the different theories fit with the observational data of the black hole M87* at the centre of the galaxy Messier 87. The image of M87*, taken in 2019 by the international Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, was the first experimental proof of the actual existence of black holes after the measurement of gravitational waves in 2015.

The result of these investigations: The data from M87* are in excellent agreement with the Einstein-based theories and to a certain extent with the string-based theories. Dr Prashant Kocherlakota explains: "With the data recorded by the EHT collaboration, we can now test different theories of physics with black hole images. Currently, we cannot reject these theories when describing the shadow size of M87*, but our calculations constrain the range of validity of these black hole models."

Professor Luciano Rezzolla says: "The idea of black holes for us theoretical physicists is at the same time a source of concern and of inspiration. While we still struggle with some of the consequences of black holes - such as the event horizon or the singularity - we seem always keen to find new black hole solutions also in other theories. It is therefore very important to obtain results like ours, which determine what is plausible and what is not. This was an important first step and our constraints will be improved as new observations are made".

In the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, telescopes from around the globe are interconnected to form a virtual giant telescope with a dish as big as the Earth itself. With the precision of this telescope, a newspaper in New York could be read from a street café in Berlin.

The chemical bisphenol F (found in plastics) can induce changes in a gene that is vital for neurological development. This discovery was made by researchers at the universities of Uppsala and Karlstad, Sweden. The mechanism could explain why exposure to this chemical during the fetal stage may be connected with a lower IQ at seven years of age - an association previously seen by the same research group. The study is published in the scientific journal Environment International.

"We've previously shown that bisphenol F (BPF for short) may be connected with children's cognitive development. However, with this study, we can now begin to understand which biological mechanisms may explain such a link, which is unique for an epidemiological study." The speaker is Carl Gustaf Bornehag, Professor and head of Public Health Sciences at Karlstad University. He is the project manager of the Swedish Environmental Longitudinal Mother and Child, Asthma and Allergy (SELMA) study, from which the data were taken.

External factors can cause changes in gene activity through an "epigenetic" mechanism. This means that individual genes are modified by means of "methylation". Increased methylation in a DNA segment makes it more difficult for the cellular machinery to read that specific part. As a result, expression of methylated genes is often impaired.

The scientists measured BPF levels in urine from pregnant women in the first trimester and subsequently monitored their children after birth. DNA methylation was measured in the children at age seven, and their cognitive ability was investigated. Since the fetus comes into contact with the mother's blood via the placenta, it is also exposed to substances in the mother's body.

The analyses demonstrated that in fetuses exposed to higher levels of BPF, methylation increases in a specific part of the GRIN2B gene, which has a key neurological role. Further, higher methylation was associated with lower IQ in the children. However, the study also found that there appears to be a sex difference in these children's susceptibility to BPF. The epigenetic link between BPF and cognition was observed only in boys.

"The fact that we've been able to identify DNA methylation as a potential mechanism behind BPF's effect on IQ adds an important piece of evidence in work to understand how environmental chemicals affect us on a molecular level," says Elin Engdahl, a researcher in environmental toxicology at Uppsala University and the article's lead author.

In the research group's previous study, they saw that the 25% of seven-year-olds who, during week 10 of the pregnancy, were exposed to the highest maternal levels of bisphenol F had a 2-point decline in full scale IQ compared to the 25% of children exposed to the lowest levels. This is a small difference that is inconspicuous in an individual child but, on the other hand, becomes clear on a population level.

A new study provides public health planning authorities with a method of calculating the number of COVID-19 isolation beds they would need for people experiencing homelessness based on level of infection in the city. The research holds promise for controlling spread of the virus - or future infectious diseases - in a population that is highly vulnerable and less likely than many others to access health care services.

The report, developed to support public health decision-making in Austin, Texas, was recently published by PLOS ONE. The paper's first author is an undergraduate student at The University of Texas at Austin, Tanvi Ingle, who harnessed her days in the pandemic lockdown to work with researchers in The University of Texas at Austin COVID-19 Modeling Consortium.

"Our model can help Austin and other cities ensure they have sufficient resources to protect populations experiencing homelessness during future disease outbreaks," said Lauren Ancel Meyers, director of the UT Austin COVID-19 Modeling Consortium and a professor of integrative biology. "Our calculations indicated how many hotel rooms would be needed to isolate individuals when they developed symptoms or were exposed to the virus. Given that this community generally has high contact rates, poor health care and lack of privacy, these isolation facilities were critical to preventing transmission and protecting this vulnerable population."

Projections based on the model were provided to the City of Austin during the beginning of the pandemic and helped the city finalize lease agreements for isolation facilities.

"The projections from the UT COVID-19 Modeling Consortium were invaluable to us in determining the potential impact and magnitude of support needed to prevent a catastrophic impact on people experiencing homelessness in Austin," said Dr. Mark Escott, the City of Austin's chief medical officer. "As a result, multiple area hotels were used as protective lodges to provide non-congregate sheltering to the most vulnerable members of our community."

Before the lockdown, the undergraduate first author, Ingle, served as a clinical volunteer with Dell Medical School at the C.D. Doyle Clinic, a student-run free clinic that provides care to people experiencing homelessness. When the lockdown hit, she responded to a campus-wide call for help from the newly formed UT COVID-19 Modeling Consortium. Ingle volunteered to lead a research project that could help the homeless population navigate the challenges of the pandemic.

"From my clinical experiences, I knew that the pandemic would be especially hard for people who experience homelessness since they face unique challenges in social distancing and accessing health care. Eager to help improve the situation, I collaborated with the consortium and the City of Austin to determine how many isolation rooms we should provide to help protect our unhoused neighbors from COVID-19," Ingle said.

Using the mathematical model of COVID-19 transmission developed by the consortium, the City of Austin could determine what proportion of people experiencing homelessness would need to be tested and how many of those individuals would test positive. With these parameters, they were then able to estimate the total number of individuals who would need an isolation room at any given time.

"This project was a way for me to see firsthand how clinical experiences inform scientific research that impacts public health outcomes," Ingle said. "Cities around the world will be able to adapt our framework to help shape public policies in the early stages of any pandemic."

"UT undergraduates have stepped up as researchers and leaders throughout the COVID-19 pandemic," Meyers said. "Tanvi is an inspiring example. Her calculations helped the City of Austin to protect some of its most vulnerable populations."

Scientists have discovered that the way in which neurons are connected within regions of the brain, can be a better indicator of disease progression and treatment outcomes for people with brain disorders such as epilepsy.

Many brain diseases lead to cell death and the removal of connections within the brain. In a new study, published in Human Brain Mapping, a group of scientists, led by Dr Marcus Kaiser from the School of Medicine at the University of Nottingham, looked at epilepsy patients undergoing surgery.

They found that changes in the local network within brain regions can be a better predictor of disease progression, and also whether surgery will be successful or not.

The team found that looking at connectivity within regions of the brain, showed superior results to the current approach of only observing fibre tract connectivity between brain regions. Dividing the surface of the brain into 50,000 network nodes of comparable size, each brain region could be studied as a local network with 100-500 nodes. These local networks showed distinct changes compared to a control group not suffering from epileptic seizures.

Using a non-invasive technique called diffusion tensor imaging - a special measurement protocol for Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanners - the team of scientists demonstrated that fibres within and between brain regions are removed for patients.

However, they found that connectivity within regions was a better predictor of whether surgical removal of brain tissue was successful in preventing future seizures.

Explaining the work, Dr Kaiser, Professor of Neuroinformatics at the University of Nottingham, says: "When someone has an epileptic seizure, it 'spreads' through the brain. We found that local network changes occurred for regions along the main spreading pathways for seizures. Importantly, regions far away from the starting point of the seizure, for example in the opposite brain hemisphere, were involved.

"This indicates that the increased brain activity during seizures leads to changes in a wide range of brain regions. Furthermore, the longer patients suffered, the more regions showed local changes and the more severe were these changes."

The researchers at Nottingham, Newcastle, Qingdao, Shanghai, and Munich Universities, along with the company Biomax, evaluated the scans of 33 temporal lobe epilepsy patients and 36 control subjects.

Project partners used the NeuroXM™ knowledge management platform to develop a knowledge model for high-resolution connectivity with more than 50,000 cortical nodes and several millions of connections and corresponding automated processing pipelines accessible through Biomax's neuroimaging product NICARA™.

Project manager Dr Markus Butz-Ostendorf from Biomax: "Our software can be easily employed at hospitals and can also be combined with other kinds of data from genetics or from other imaging approaches such as PET, CT, or EEG."

Commenting on the fact that local changes were more informative of surgery outcome, Professor Yanjiang Wang, who is one of the corresponding authors, and Ms Xue Chen, both from China University of Petroleum (East China), explained: "Local connectivity was not only better in overall predictions but particularly successful in identifying patients where surgery did not lead to any improvement, identifying 95% of such cases compared to 90% when used connectivity between regions".

The University of Maryland (UMD) co-published a new review paper in the Annual Review of Resource Economics to examine pollinators from both an economic and ecological perspective, providing much needed insight into the complexities of valuing pollination. Pollinators are not only a critical component of a healthy ecosystem, but they are also necessary to produce certain foods and boost crop yields. While native and wild pollinators (whether they be certain bee species, other insects and animals, or just the wind) still play an important role, managed honey bee colonies are commercially trucked around the U.S. to meet the need for pollination services in agricultural products. Recent reports of parasites, disease, and other concerns in colonies call into question the resilience of the managed honey bee rental markets, as well as how those managed bees are interacting with native pollinators. This recent collaboration with the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), and the University of North Texas (UNT) highlights the importance of characterizing the economic value of pollination services, including that of managed and wild pollinators, both for the sustainability of honey bee markets and the protection of overall ecosystem health.

"Many people don't realize that honey bees are not native to the U.S., or that they are actually a form of agricultural livestock rented out largely for their pollination services," says Erik Lichtenberg, professor in Agricultural and Resource Economics at UMD. "It used to be that you raised bees for honey, but today, pollination services account for the largest share of commercial beekeeper income, with honey as a secondary product. Agriculture is always integrated into an ecosystem, and we typically think about the managed parts without the ecosystem parts. But when we are thinking about resilience and things like climate change which is changing the ecosystem, then we have to reckon with the parts that we've tended to ignore. Getting a more holistic sense of the health of pollinators and the true resilience of the rental market is very important."

Researchers have historically struggled to put a value on pollination services, largely because of the many complex inputs into the system like wind, native versus managed pollinator interactions, weather, and even quality or health of the bees due to emerging diseases and invasive pests like varroa mites -- in addition to inputs provided by farmers. With these complexities in mind, Erik Lichtenberg teamed up with Kathy Baylis, economist and professor in geography at UCSB, and Elinor Lichtenberg, ecology professor at UNT, to take an interdisciplinary approach to reviewing the economics of pollination.

"As a pollination ecologist, it was exciting to collaborate with economists to write this review," says Elinor Lichtenberg. "One of our goals was to help ecologists understand the economics, and economists understand the ecological considerations and constraints involved. This will help develop solutions that benefit both wildlife and farmers."

Elinor Lichtenberg did her undergraduate work in biology at UMD, also spending a year working with Daniel Gruner and Dennis vanEngelsdorp in Entomology. Baylis also collaborates with vanEngelsdorp and the Bee Informed Partnership (BIP), a UMD-led nonprofit organization that conducts a nationwide annual survey each year since 2006 to assess managed honey bee health and colony loss.

"Colony collapse disorder was big in the media in 2006 when beekeepers started seeing so many of their bees dying, so people wanted to know why," explains Baylis. "With our increased reliance on managed honey bees for pollination, it really raised concerns about the resilience of the system we have in place, or the lack thereof. As it turns out, the pollination market and associated fees are quite responsive to colony health, and beekeepers have been able to meet that demand so far. The price signals are working, but there are many things that aren't really priced in yet. So a big part of this paper is to highlight the linkages where we know things are being captured, and the values that aren't being captured but should be."

Erik Lichtenberg adds, "If we are thinking about the resilience of the system of migratory managed pollination services, a lot of that system is still hidden. We see the tip of the iceberg, but we don't see what is underneath the waterline, so we'd like to take our analytical submarine and check out what's down there."

Currently, the system involves a migration route that is similar to that of farmed labor. Managed honey bee colonies start their year in central California pollinating almonds, plums, prunes, and other early blooming crops, and then are transported slowly up north to later blooming crops like apples, cucumbers, squash, and even pumpkins. The route moves up to the Pacific Northwest and then ends with the bees "summering" in the Northern Plains region to forage and recharge. This system has become increasingly important as agriculture has become more specialized and mechanized, with less habitat for native pollinators and more consumer demand for insect-pollinated crops. But, as the researchers explain, there is so much about the system we just don't understand.

"When problems like colony collapse disorder arise, to me, it feels like we are always trying to attach band aids to different parts of the dike wherever we see a crack without seeing the whole necessarily," says Baylis. "And that's a big purpose of the paper is trying to at least sketch out what the whole thing might look like."

Some of the biggest unknowns identified are the protection of forage lands and habitat for native and managed honey bee colonies, how to manage the surrounding landscape to optimize pollination services and pollinator health, and especially understanding the interactions between wild and managed pollinators. Interactions may be positive, as with native pollinators reaching higher branches in high winds while honey bees stick to lower branches, or they can be negative, like the spread of disease from managed to wild pollinators. All these inputs are especially important when considering the costs and benefits of conserving wild pollinator habitat.

"Economists and ecologists both recognize the importance of putting an economic value on inputs like clean water, clean air, biodiversity, and natural pollination, because these natural products that aren't bought and sold in the market otherwise get a default value of zero placed on them," says Baylis. "We know that is wrong, so hopefully this can draw attention to that issue. We've identified a lot of gaps here, and it is important not just for the space of bees, but more broadly for issues where part of the ecological system is managed and monetized, and other parts are not. This speaks to how we can develop a system that is responsive, resilient, and also sustainable."

Erik Lichtenberg adds, "We are excited about the follow-on work that we've identified to do. There is a lot of fascinating work to be done in this area, and we hope this review inspires people to think creatively about some of the issues we've raised."

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana - A diet that improves the biomarkers of metabolic health, and that could potentially slow the aging process, has moved a step closer to reality.

"We've known for years that restricting the amino acid methionine in the diet produces immediate and lasting improvements in nearly every biomarker of metabolic health," said Thomas W. Gettys, PhD, Professor and Director, Nutrient Sensing and Adipocyte Signaling Laboratory at Pennington Biomedical Research Center. "The problem is that methionine-restricted diets have been difficult to implement because they taste so bad."

Until now. Restricting methionine normally involves diets formulated with elemental (e.g., individual) amino acids. Individual amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. But diets made from elemental amino acids taste bad, and few are willing to tolerate the regimen.

A palatable solution emerged from a collaboration between Dr. Gettys' lab and food scientists at LSU who developed the methods to selectively delete methionine from casein, the main protein in milk and cheese. Dr. Gettys' lab then conducted the proof-of-concept testing to establish that oxidized casein could be used to implement methionine restriction without the objectionable taste of the standard elemental diet.

More than two-thirds of Americans are overweight or have obesity. More than 40 percent of adults have prediabetes or type 2 diabetes.

"A diet that offsets all the major components of metabolic disease would have an enormous impact on the nation's health, and the world's," said Han Fang, PhD, a Postdoctoral Researcher in Dr. Gettys' lab, and the lead author of the study.

A palatable, methionine-restricted diet could also ease a major frustration for those struggling to manage their weight. Each year, millions of people improve their metabolism and lose weight by reducing how much they eat. But eventually, most people gain back those pounds.

"Calorie restriction is an effective weight-management tool. But for most people it is also very, very difficult to follow long-term," said Pennington Biomedical Executive Director John Kirwan, PhD. "This struggle is one of the major reasons our scientists explore every avenue to find solutions to the obesity epidemic."

Although the oxidized casein diet represents a major advance, Gettys and his team say more research is needed. Their study, published in the journal iScience, involved mice. Translating the results to produce a methionine-restricted human diet, which is far more complex and involves multiple sources of protein, will be challenging.

In the short term, a practical solution may be to develop a palatable group of modified proteins to serve as the basis of a therapeutic diet. People would follow the diet for a limited period while under medical supervision.

New research led by the University of Kent's School of Psychology has found that some brain activity methods used to detect incriminating memories do not work accurately in older adults.

Findings show that concealed information tests relying on electrical activity of the brain (electroencephalography [EEG]) are ineffective in older adults because of changes to recognition-related brain activity that occurs with aging.

EEG-based forensic memory detection is based on the logic that guilty suspects will hold incriminating knowledge about crimes they have committed, and therefore their brains will elicit a recognition response in the EEG when confronted with reminders of their crimes.

The team of researchers at Kent led by Dr Robin Hellerstedt and Dr Zara Bergström conducted the study with 30 participants under the age of 30 and 30 participants over the age of 65. All participants undertook a concealed information test to detect if they recognised details from a mock crime they had just committed, which would indicate criminal guilt. However, only young adults showed a strong EEG recognition response to reminders of the crime, with such responses being absent in the older group. This failure to detect memories with EEG brain activity occurred even though the older group had the same knowledge about the crime as the younger group, and had just as good general recognition memory ability.

The research published by Cortex therefore suggests that EEG-based forensic memory detection tests have limited practical applications with less validity in older adults than younger populations.

Dr Bergström said: 'Our research demonstrates that EEG-based forensic memory detection in older age is impaired, even with methods that compensate for potential age differences in frequency, timing and location of brain responses.

'Further investigation is needed to examine the ability of these tests to detect concealed memories of real crimes, and whether memory detection in older age is a reflection of permanent changes in brain functioning or is influenced by motivational processes that can vary across situations. Findings could have implications for processes within the criminal justice system, such as the use of polygraph techniques, which may be vulnerable to similar limitations.'