Culture

Individuals who self-identify as Republicans became more skeptical of a potential COVID-19 vaccine and other inoculations, such as the flu shot, over the course of the pandemic, reveals a new study by the University of California San Diego’s Rady School of Management.

The paper, published in PLOS ONE, measured general attitudes toward vaccines and assessed whether study participants would get a potential COVID-19 vaccine as well as the seasonal flu shot. It also gauged trust in media.

“We found Republicans became increasingly vaccine hesitant and less trusting of media from March to August of 2020, while Democrats’ views on the two topics stayed the same,” said lead author Ariel Fridman, a PhD candidate in behavioral marketing at the Rady School.

The study also measured the perceived threat of the COVID-19 virus and where participants got their news. 

Republicans consistently viewed the virus to be less threatening than Democrats. Among Democrats, the perceived threat of COVID-19 grew greater with time, while there was no change among Republicans.

The most commonly checked news sources for Republicans was Fox News, followed by Facebook or Instagram. For Democrats, CNN was the most popular news source, followed by The New York Times.

“Our data offers one potential explanation for the polarization of threat perception: Republican and Democratic participants in our study reported consuming different sources of information,” write Fridman and co-authors, Ayelet Gneezy, associate professor in behavioral sciences and marketing at the Rady School and Rachel Gershon, assistant professor of marketing at the Rady School.

The researchers recruited 1,018 respondents using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform and asked them to complete surveys in March, April, May, June, July and August of 2020.

“When we started the study in March, early in the pandemic before the first lockdowns, we were expecting people to begin viewing vaccines more favorably because they were seeing the huge threat of a new disease and inoculations are the one thing that could get us out of this mess,” said Fridman. “We were anticipating to document people coming together on the issue, but found the exact opposite.”

He added, “We didn’t expect the paper to be political in nature. We collected a lot of demographic data such as age, gender, race, income, etc. It just happened to be that political party was the best predictor of the divergent trends.”

The study ended in August before a vaccine for the novel coronavirus was approved in December 2020. Despite the safety and efficacy of the vaccines, the research supports continuing evidence of vaccine hesitancy among conservative voters.

A Monmouth poll earlier in April showed that 36 percent of Republicans said they had received at least one shot of the vaccine — compared with 67 percent of Democrats and 47 percent of Independents — and 43 percent of Republicans said they would likely never get the vaccine.

Unique to the PLOS ONE study is that it surveyed the same set of participants over time. The surveys drew participants from every U.S. state (except Wyoming) with ages ranging from 18 to 82. About 50 percent of respondents were male and the other half were female. 

The research reveals an overall rise in vaccine hesitancy, but it is primarily driven by Republicans. It points to the larger role that ideology can play in public health crises.

“We now know that political affiliation is an important predictor of how communities respond to public health concerns,” the authors noted. “If we understand which areas and communities where vaccine hesitancy may be rising, it can help inform effective communication and health interventions.”

The COVID-19 and vaccine hesitancy: A longitudinal study paper was supported by UC San Diego’s Global Health Institute.

Journal

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0250123

The discovery of ancient kumara pits just north of Dunedin dating back to the 15th century have shone a light on how scientific evidence can complement mātauranga Maori around how and where the taonga were stored hundreds of years ago.

A new study published in the science journal PLOS ONE reports that early Polynesians once stored kumara - American sweet potato - in pits dug into sand dunes at Purākaunui, eastern Otago, less than 30km north of Dunedin. The pits were first discovered in 2001 and are found over 200km south of the currently accepted South Island limit of cooler-climate Māori kumara storage.

These Purākaunui features have the novel form of semi-subterranean, rectangular pits used for the cool seasonal storage of live kumara roots in bulk, known as rua kumara. Research into their age, contents and context has been led by Associate Professor Ian Barber of the University of Otago's Archaeology Programme with the support of university grants and a Marsden award, and the input of radiocarbon expert and co-author Professor Tom Higham of Oxford University.

The research was carried out with the approval and engagement, through successive hui, of Purākaunui Block owners and Kāti Huirapa Runaka ki Puketeraki as manawhenua.

In this historic study, statistical modelling has dated the Purākaunui pits by radiocarbon to the very tight range of 1430-1460 CE at 95% probability, making it some of the most accurate carbon dating to have taken place in New Zealand thanks to advanced technology. Researchers believe rua kumara were stored there due to the discovery of microscopic starch granules with distinctive kumara characteristics from secure deposits at the base of the pits.

The find, Polynesia's southern-most ancient kumara dicovery adds incredible weight to local Māori oral history and tradition that has been considered enigmatic if not overlooked by archaeologists. A number of these traditions refer to southern kumara loss or failure, but some reference kumara memories, atua (deities), stores and cultivations notably from the North Otago Huriawa Peninsula headland and pā less than 30km north of Purākaunui. Ancient rua kumara discovered along the same coastline represent an intriguing connection between these traditions and archaeology.

Purākaunui Block Incorporation chairperson Nicola Taylor says there is significant excitement surrounding the significant research.

"This confirms for us at Purākaunui the importance of our very long history and connection with the land," she says.

"These findings reinforce our very long association with the land and contribute to our own compilation of stories designed to capture the history for future generations."

Those sentiments were echoed by Kāti Huirapa Runaka ki Puketeraki manager Suzanne Ellison.

"Ian's research has been really interesting for the Runaka to follow & with the confirmation via carbon dating of the kumara pit at Purākaunui, it is very affirming about traditions and mātauraka relating to Huriawa Peninsula," Ellison says.

Associate Professor Barber says the study highlights the important connection between te ao Māori and traditional archaeological practices.

"We hope to have modelled respect as much as science in the engagement of Māori knowledge and archaeology," he says.

Associate Professor Barber says there are some questions that still remain about whether the stored kumara roots were imported from warmer northern localities or harvested locally in microclimate production.

"However the dark, sandy archaeological soil at Purākaunui suggests it may have been used for ancient cultivation."

In either case, this discovery represents the earliest securely dated rua kumara in Aotearoa. It joins a small number of examples of American kumara in Polynesia dated securely before explorer Christopher Columbus' navigations. He says the tight chronology also identifies and places the rua kumara storage at around the time of moa extinction, perhaps as mitigation for the loss of this valuable food source.

Two teams have created a new generation of highly specific CAR T cells, which safely cleared solid tumors in mice with mesothelioma, ovarian cancer, and the deadly brain cancer glioblastoma while outlasting and outperforming conventional CAR T cell designs. The results suggest these cells could minimize the risk of dangerous side effects and address the traditionally poor performance of CAR T cells against solid tumors in the clinic. CAR T cells are genetically modified human T cells and have shown impressive performance in patients with leukemia. However, CAR T cells don't work as well against solid tumors, as these cancers lack molecular targets that the cells can easily recognize. Furthermore, the targets that do exist also frequently appear on healthy tissues, meaning that CAR T cells can have devastating side effects in patients with solid tumors. To address these obstacles for the treatment of glioblastoma, Joseph Choe and colleagues engineered new "prime-and-kill" molecular circuits for synNotch-CAR T cells, a cell design that only activates when it recognizes tumor antigens. The circuits integrate receptors that recognize multiple "imperfect" tumor antigens, including either the EGFRvIII receptor on glioblastoma cells or the protein MOG in healthy brain tissue. The receptors prime and activate the CAR T cells only when all the antigens are present, meaning the CAR T cells only target cancerous cells in the nervous system. The synNotch-CAR T cells shrunk glioblastoma tumors and maintained remission in mice without affecting other tissues, while more traditional CAR T cells were either ineffective or couldn't prevent tumor recurrence. Similarly, Axel Hyrenius-Wittsten and colleagues engineered synNotch-CAR T cells bearing receptors that recognize ALPPL2, a protein that appears specifically on solid tumors such as mesothelioma. This design showed strong effects and extended survival in mouse models of mesothelioma and ovarian cancer. Compared with traditional cells, the synNotch-CAR T cell designs also showed fewer signs of exhaustion, a state where CAR T cells lose their effectiveness over time. "These circuits essentially give improved capability for nuanced recognition of a tumor ... and thus open up many new possibilities for how to recognize and attack tumors in safer and more specific ways," Choe et al. say.

The number of distinctive sources and voices on the internet is proven to be in long-term decline, according to new research.

A paper entitled 'Evolution of diversity and dominance of companies in online activity' published in the PLOS ONE scientific journal has shown between 60 and 70 percent of all attention on key social media platforms in different market segments is focused towards just 10 popular domains.

In stark contrast, new competitors are struggling to survive against such dominant players, with just 3 percent of online domains born in 2015 still active today, compared to nearly 40 percent of those formed back in 2006.

The researchers say if these were organic lives, the infant mortality rate would be considered a crisis.

Paul X. McCarthy, a co-author of the paper and Adjunct Professor from UNSW Sydney's Engineering faculty, said: "The internet started as a source of innovation, new ideas and inspiration, a technology that opens up the playing field. But it is now becoming a medium that actually stifles competition, promotes monopolies and the dominance of a small number of players.

"The results indicate the end state of many new industries is likely to be more concentrated than in the analogue economy. With a winner-takes-most outcome for many.

"It means that there's not as much natural competition in established domains, for example in retail with Amazon or in music with Spotify. This may lead to non-competitive behaviour by market leaders such as price discrimination and the use of market power to control suppliers and stifle potential future rivals.

"That is why some see a new role for market regulators to step in here."

The research team, which also included Dr Marian-Andrei Rizoiu from UTS, Sina Eghbal from ANU, and Dr Daniel Falster and Xian Gong from UNSW, performed a large-scale longitudinal study to quantify the distribution of attention given in the online environment to competing organisations.

They tallied the number of external links to an organisation's main domain posted on two large social media channels, namely Reddit and Twitter, as a proxy for online attention towards an organisation.

More than 6 billion user comments were analysed from Reddit, dating back to 2006, while the Twitter data comprised 11.8 billion posts published since 2011. In total, a massive trove of 5.6Tb data was analysed from over a decade of global activity online -- a data set more than four times the size of the original data from the Hubble Space Telescope.

And the results proved that over the long run, a small number of competitive giants are likely to dominate each functional market segment, such as search, retail and social media.

For example, the top 10 most popular domains mentioned on Reddit received around 35% of all links in 2006, which grew to 60% in 2019. On Twitter, the top 10 domains grew from 50% in 2011 to 70% in 2019.

The paper notes: "If there are too few competitors or a small number of players become too dominant within any economic sector, there emerges the potential for artificially high prices and constraints to supply. Even more importantly, in the long-term, this gives rise to constraints on innovation."

Co-author Dr. Marian-Andrei Rizoiu, who leads the Behavioural Data Science lab at the UTS Data Science Institute, said: "This research indicates the environment for new players online is becoming increasingly difficult. In the way pine trees sterilise the ground under their branches to prevent other trees competing with them, once they are established dominant players online crowd out competitors in their functional niche.

"Diversity of sources is in long term decline and although the worldwide web continues to grow, the attention is focused on fewer and few organisations.

"Attention online is a new form of currency. This new research illustrates that using a variety of analytic techniques and large-scale, global, longitudinal data, we can reveal patterns hitherto unseen on a global scale."

The research team's review of data going back 15 years allowed them to observe some specific dynamics that often play out when a new online market or function starts to flourish.

At first, there is a great burst of diverse businesses that appear and attempt to serve the market. After that comes a development phase when the number of competitors peaks and then starts to dwindle.

Finally, in the maturity phase, there is a significant reduction in diversity as users converge around at a single dominant organisation - such as Google in terms of web searching and Amazon for online shopping.

Co-author Dr Daniel Falster, who leads his own lab in Evolutionary Ecology in the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences at UNSW, said: "As with the natural environment, we can see the birth, growth and survival patterns of companies online when we look at them on a large enough scale.

"Now we can see consistent patterns of competitive dynamics that are becoming clearer and clearer. The loss of diversity is a cause for concern."

Despite the findings, Professor McCarthy believes there are still opportunities for new global business to emerge and thrive.

"Businesses looking to grow and expand in the online world should be focused on innovation and collaboration - two salient features of many of the biggest winners in the digital economy," he said.

"This new research - inspired in part by ecology - illustrates while 'species diversity' is in decline, there are also many new functional openings continually emerging in the jungle with global potential."

WASHINGTON, D.C., (April 28, 2021) - Two new studies, presented today as late-breaking clinical science at the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography & Interventions (SCAI) 2021 Scientific Sessions, provide new treatment insights for cardiogenic shock (CS) patients. A study of the SCAI cardiogenic shock stages consensus document confirms the accuracy of the shock classification. In addition, an analysis of the National Cardiogenic Shock Initiative demonstrates use of a shock protocol emphasizing early use of mechanical circulatory support may lead to improved survival for patients with CS.

CS is a rare, life-threatening condition in which the heart stops pumping enough blood to supply the vital organs of the body, and is the most common cause of death in patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Despite advancements in pharmacological, mechanical and clinical interventions, the overall in-hospital mortality rate for patients with CS is 39%. For patients 75 years and older, the mortality rate increases to 55%.

Analysis of SCAI Shock Stages Consensus Statement

A 2019 joint SCAI consensus statement proposed a new classification system describing the stages of CS, from A to E, to standardize classification of the disease. To understand if the SCAI shock stages provide mortality risk classification, an analysis of studies in PubMed was conducted examining clinical outcomes.

Researchers identified 14 manuscripts of more than 15,000 patients presenting with CS, cardiac arrest (CA) or those admitted to the cardiac intensive care unit. The studies examined seven separate definitions of the SCAI shock stages, and each study demonstrated a stepwise increase in short-term (in-hospital or 30-day) mortality with each higher SCAI shock stage.

Findings show mortality varying across shock stage (A, 1-5%; B, 0-34%; C, 11-54%; D, 24-68%; E, 42-77%) and increased with additional risk factors including the presence of CA, systemic inflammation, poor hemodynamics, worsening shock and older age.

"These findings confirm the efficacy of the SCAI shock stage classification, allowing physicians a staged approach to communicate with their colleagues and the broader heart team how sick a patient is in a very consistent way," said lead researcher Jacob Jentzer, MD, critical care specialist, Mayo Clinic. "Our analysis should enhance physician confidence in the protocol to appropriately identify high-risk and low-risk patients, ultimately helping tailor therapy based on level of shock to improve patient outcomes."

Final Update to the National Cardiogenic Shock Initiative

The National Cardiogenic Shock Initiative, a single-arm, prospective, multi-center study assessing outcomes of early mechanical circulatory support (MCS) in acute myocardial infarction and cardiogenic shock (AMICS) in patients treated with percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), reveals improved survival rates when using early MCS.

Between July 2016 and December 2020, 73 sites enrolled 406 patients with AMICS who were treated using a standard protocol emphasizing invasive hemodynamic monitoring and early initiation of MCS. The average patient age was 64 (±12 years), 24% were female and 67% were admitted in shock.

Results found that early use of MCS and invasive hemodynamics is associated with an increased patient procedural survival (99%), survival to discharge (79%), survival to 30-days (77%), and survival to 1-year (62%) for patients presenting in stage C/D shock and 98%, 49%, 46%, 32% for patients in stage E shock (p=0.01).

"Cardiogenic shock is the leading cause of death in heart attack patients and outcomes have not improved over the past two decades," said lead author Babar Basir, DO, director of acute mechanical circulatory support at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, MI. "With early use of MCS coupled with hemodynamic monitoring we have the potential to increase survival to 80%, and save 20,000 life per year in the United States."

Study investigators call for further research to build on their findings and connect best practices for different stages of CS. With additional data, researchers hope to provide a benchmark for clinicians to use when treating CS patients, ultimately standardizing care.

New research shows that physical activity equivalent to 100 PAI a week can counteract excessive weight gain.

PAI stands for Personal Activity Intelligence and tracks how physically active you are throughout the week. You can measure PAI with just about any device that can measure heart rate.

The activity metric has been developed by the Cardiac Exercise Research Group (CERG) at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) under the leadership of NTNU Professor Ulrik Wisløff.

"Previously, we found that 100 PAI a week can give us a longer and healthier life without cardiovascular disease. Our new study shows that PAI can also help people maintain a healthy body weight," says researcher Javaid Nauman at NTNU's Department of Circulation and Imaging and the UAE University College of Medicine and Health Sciences in the United Arab Emirates.

Nauman is one of the researchers behind a recent article in The Lancet Regional Health - Europe. The study includes more than 85 000 healthy Norwegians who have been followed for more than 20 years.

Personal Activity Intelligence

PAI measures all physical activity that causes the heart rate to increase above a certain level. The higher the heart rate, the faster you earn PAI points.

The PAI algorithm calculates a weekly score based on your personal profile and variations in heart rate over the period. The PAI score can easily be measured with the free PAI Health app that is available for both iPhone and Android, for example.

Less weight gain by maintaining 100 PAI

The new study has obtained its data from the HUNT Study - a large-scale, longitudinal population health study in Norway. This study is one of the largest and lengthiest health surveys in the world. Trøndelag county residents number 240 000 in the research centre database, with even more participants since the start in 1984.

Of the total participants, 85 000 were weighed and asked about their level of physical activity as many as three times through 2008.

On average, participants' body weight increased by about eight kilos between 1984 and 2008 for both women and men who participated at each follow-up. Important to note is that the weight gain was significantly lower among individuals who were physically active enough to achieve at least 100 weekly PAIs during the period.

But there is still hope for those of us who haven't been as active all our lives. The study shows that even people who weren't physically active in the 1980s, but who increased their activity levels in the 1990s and in the 2000s, managed to avoid excessive weight gain.

Effective strategy

Overweight and obesity are a major health problem that contributes to nearly five million deaths worldwide each year.

"We already know that physical activity is an effective strategy to minimize or prevent weight gain in adults. The new study, and previous PAI studies, indicate that PAI can guide people so that they get enough physical activity each week to avoid the health hazards of excessive weight gain," says researcher Nauman.

More sleep could offset children's excess indulgence over the school holidays as new research from the University of South Australia shows that the same decline in body mass index may be achieved by either extra sleep or extra exercise.

The striking new finding is part of a study that shows how children can achieve equivalent physical and mental health benefits by choosing different activity trade-offs across the 24-hour day.

Conducted in partnership with the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, and supported by the National Heart Foundation of Australia, the team examined the optimal balance between children's physical activity, sleep, and sedentary time across the 24-hour day to better inform tailored lifestyle choices.

On a minute-for-minute basis, moderate-to-vigorous physical exercise was shown to be 2-6 times more potent than sleep or sedentary time.

While exercise has a greater and faster impact on physical health and wellbeing, children may be able to achieve the same 7.4% reduction in body mass index (BMI) by either:

exercising 17 more minutes (moderate-to-vigorous exercise) OR

sleeping an extra 52 minutes OR

reducing their sitting or sedentary time by an extra 56 minutes.

Similarly, children may significantly improve their mental health by either:

exercising 35 minutes more (moderate-to-vigorous exercise), OR

sleeping an extra 68 minutes OR

reducing their sitting or sedentary time by 54 minutes.

The study assessed 1179 children aged 11-12 years, from the cross-sectional Child Health CheckPoint Study. Physical wellbeing was measured via BMI, waist girth and body fat; mental wellbeing was measured via self-reported responses on the Paediatric Quality of Life Inventory.

Lead researcher, UniSA's Dr Dot Dumuid, says that the findings provide options for busy families looking to get the most value out of their day.

"There are many competing time demands in modern families ¬- whether it's after school soccer, music lessons, or simply walking the family dog, finding the time to fit everything into a single day, can be a challenge," Dr Dumuid says.

"International guidelines suggest that children need 9-11 hours' sleep, 60 minutes of physical exercise, and no more than two hours of recreational screen time per day, yet only seven percent of children are regularly meeting these goals.

"With so many competing priorities and commitments, it's helpful to know which activities deliver the greatest 'bang for your buck'.

"In this research we calculated how much sleep, sedentary time, light exercise, and moderate-to-vigorous exercise was associated with the same improvements in mental health, physical health and academic achievement.

"For families with very little available time, small increases in moderate-to-vigorous exercise could be an option to improve children's health and wellbeing; alternatively an earlier night could equally deliver the same health benefits - importantly, it's the flexibility that these findings offer that make them so valuable.

"Exploring trade-offs between children's activities is a promising way for families to make healthy choices that suit their regular family schedule."

The Heart Foundation's Director of Physical Activity, Adjunct Professor Trevor Shilton, said the Heart Foundation was happy to support such an innovative approach to investigating children's physical health and mental wellbeing.

"This study confirms that physical activity is the quickest and most effective way to deliver benefits for children's physical health and mental wellbeing. But the findings also offer some flexibility for families," Professor Shilton says.

"Helping young people make healthy choices and helping families create an environment that supports them in these choices can improve their quality of life in the future, as well as reducing their risk of chronic diseases, such as heart disease."

Collagen is a protein found widely in almost all cells of animals, and scientifically can be used to learn much about an animal's life history including human being in the present or in the past. Scientists at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN) and Japan Fisheries Research and Education Agency (FRA), Japan, prove this point for Japanese flounder by measuring isotope ratios in vertebral-bone collagen. The new study, which can be read in Marine Biology, shows that there exist behavioral groups of fish with different migrating and/or feeding patterns.

A school of fish will decide their habitat on fundamental needs for survival, such as food availability and safety for reproduction and nursing offspring. Multiple methods have been applied for tracing fish movement, such as telemetry, tagging or analysis of otolith. Examining the stable isotope ratios in several body parts, however, provides unique insights on fish life history.

"Juveniles are interesting, because this is the stage when the fish leave the nursery and begin exploring deeper parts of the sea. Even in adults, however, life-span records are well preserved in their vertebral centrum, cone-shaped layered structure in fish vertebra, as the form of stable isotope ratios of several elements. It allows us to reconstruct individual migration and feeding history," said RIHN ex-researcher Dr. Yoshikazu Kato, the lead author of the study.

Kato and his colleagues examined a wild population of Japanese flounder (aralichthys olivaceus) in Sendai Bay, off the Pacific coast of northern Japan. The fish was chosen for their important commercial status in Japan.

The migratory and feeding habits of the fish have been well studied in the past, but little is known about how their habits change with age and are diverse among individuals that belongs genetically uniformed group.

Adult fishes were collected at four sampling sites in the bay. Then, carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes of collagen in their vertebral centrum were analyzed chronologically. A non-linear time series analysis using both stable isotope ratios distinguished fishes collected at a site from fishes at the other three sites, suggesting these fishes used a different habitat and/or diet throughout most of their lifetimes. By analyzing stable isotope ratios of nitrogen in amino acids, Kato and his colleagues also detected migrations from shallow nursery to deeper habitats and changes of their foods.

These findings, Kato notes, suggest that when considering effective management and conservation policies, scientists should recognize that not all Japanese flounder will respond the same.

"Our findings indicated that Paralichthys olivaceus are not just a homogenous group in behavior but of at least two different groups who have different migration patterns. As their habitat changes, either naturally or through man-made effects, we expect these behavioral groups will respond differently," he said.

Studying the violent collisions of black holes and neutron stars may soon provide a new measurement of the Universe's expansion rate, helping to resolve a long-standing dispute, suggests a new simulation study led by researchers at UCL (University College London).

Our two current best ways of estimating the Universe's rate of expansion - measuring the brightness and speed of pulsating and exploding stars, and looking at fluctuations in radiation from the early Universe - give very different answers, suggesting our theory of the Universe may be wrong.

A third type of measurement, looking at the explosions of light and ripples in the fabric of space caused by black hole-neutron star collisions, should help to resolve this disagreement and clarify whether our theory of the Universe needs rewriting.

The new study, published in Physical Review Letters, simulated 25,000 scenarios of black holes and neutron stars colliding, aiming to see how many would likely be detected by instruments on Earth in the mid- to late-2020s.

The researchers found that, by 2030, instruments on Earth could sense ripples in space-time caused by up to 3,000 such collisions, and that for around 100 of these events, telescopes would also see accompanying explosions of light.

They concluded that this would be enough data to provide a new, completely independent measurement of the Universe's rate of expansion, precise and reliable enough to confirm or deny the need for new physics.

Lead author Dr Stephen Feeney (UCL Physics & Astronomy) said: "A neutron star is a dead star, created when a very large star explodes and then collapses, and it is incredibly dense - typically 10 miles across but with a mass up to twice that of our Sun. Its collision with a black hole is a cataclysmic event, causing ripples of space-time, known as gravitational waves, that we can now detect on Earth with observatories like LIGO and Virgo.

"We have not yet detected light from these collisions. But advances in the sensitivity of equipment detecting gravitational waves, together with new detectors in India and Japan, will lead to a huge leap forward in terms of how many of these types of events we can detect. It is incredibly exciting and should open up a new era for astrophysics."

To calculate the Universe's rate of expansion, known as the Hubble constant, astrophysicists need to know the distance of astronomical objects from Earth as well as the speed at which they are moving away. Analysing gravitational waves tells us how far away a collision is, leaving only the speed to be determined.

To tell how fast the galaxy hosting a collision is moving away, we look at the "redshift" of light - that is, how the wavelength of light produced by a source has been stretched by its motion. Explosions of light that may accompany these collisions would help us pinpoint the galaxy where the collision happened, allowing researchers to combine measurements of distance and measurements of redshift in that galaxy.

Dr Feeney said: "Computer models of these cataclysmic events are incomplete and this study should provide extra motivation to improve them. If our assumptions are correct, many of these collisions will not produce explosions that we can detect - the black hole will swallow the star without leaving a trace. But in some cases a smaller black hole may first rip apart a neutron star before swallowing it, potentially leaving matter outside the hole that emits electromagnetic radiation."

Co-author Professor Hiranya Peiris (UCL Physics & Astronomy and Stockholm University) said: "The disagreement over the Hubble constant is one of the biggest mysteries in cosmology. In addition to helping us unravel this puzzle, the spacetime ripples from these cataclysmic events open a new window on the universe. We can anticipate many exciting discoveries in the coming decade."

Gravitational waves are detected at two observatories in the United States (the LIGO Labs), one in Italy (Virgo), and one in Japan (KAGRA). A fifth observatory, LIGO-India, is now under construction.

Our two best current estimates of the Universe's expansion are 67 kilometres per second per megaparsec (3.26 million light years) and 74 kilometres per second per megaparsec.
The first is derived from analysing the cosmic microwave background, the radiation left over from the Big Bang, while the second comes from comparing stars at different distances from Earth - specifically Cepheids, which have variable brightness, and exploding stars called type Ia supernovae.

Dr Feeney explained: "As the microwave background measurement needs a complete theory of the Universe to be made but the stellar method does not, the disagreement offers tantalising evidence of new physics beyond our current understanding. Before we can make such claims, however, we need confirmation of the disagreement from completely independent observations - we believe these can be provided through black hole-neutron star collisions."

The study was carried out by researchers at UCL, Imperial College London, Stockholm University and the University of Amsterdam. It was supported by the Royal Society, the Swedish Research Council (VR), the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

Oxytocin and arginine vasopressin are two hormones in the endocrine system that can act as neurotransmitters and regulate -in vertebrates and invertebrates- a wide range of biological functions, such as bonding formation, breastfeeding, birth or arterial pressure. Biochemists in the pregenomic era, named these genes differently in different species, due to small protein coding differences.

A new study carried out by the University of Barcelona (UB) and the Rockefeller University, published in the journal Nature, has analysed and compared the genome of 35 species representing all vertebrate lineages and reached the conclusion that both hormones stem from a common ancestral gene.

These high-quality genomes were obtained thanks to the use of innovative genome sequencing technologies in the context of the Vertebrate Genomes Project. Based on these findings, the researchers propose a new universal nomenclature, based on their identified evolutionary history for these genes. According to the authors of the study, the proposal allows for a new nomenclature that is universal across vertebrates, both for the hormone-genes and their receptors, therefore easing the species comparative research.

The paper is part of the doctoral thesis by Constantina Theofanopoulou, carried out at the UB under the co-supervision of Cedric Boeckx, ICREA researcher at the Institute of Complex Systems of the UB (UBICS) and Erich D. Jarvis, professor at the Rockefeller University.

Terminological confusion between species

The study results from problems the first author of the study, Constantina Theofanopoulou, became aware of in the literature of these genes, when analysing the role of oxytocin in the vocal learning ability in songbirds. "When analysing the scientific literature to find previous work on this gene, we observed that when talking about birds, scientists used the term 'mesotocin', instead of 'oxytocin'. Different names, like 'isotocin' or 'neurophysin' were used in other vertebrate species, such as turtles, frogs or fish. An equally confusing nomenclature was the one used for their respective receptors, making it very difficult to understand which gene is which in different species and lineages", says Constantina Theofanopoulou. In this context, the researchers aimed to find out which genes were truly orthologous to each other in different species. To do so, they used the genome assemblies generated by the Vertebrates Genome Project, an international collaboration led by Erich Jarvis, from the Rockefeller University. In the first phase, Theofanopoulou and the research team compared the genomes and specifically the order of genes around their genes of interest. They studied up to sixty genes around the genes of interest, as well as all the genes of the chromosomes where these genes are located. They sought to find out whether the order of genes -called synteny- was conserved across species, something that would shed light to the evolutionary history of these genes.

The new high-quality assemblies were more than helpful since, as Theofanopoulou says, "Most genomes so far have had low quality, meaning millions of mistakes, parts of genes being absent or incorrectly assembled. These errors can have direct consequences on the scientific findings".

Genes with a common ancestor

The results, together with other phylogenetic analyses carried out during the study, show that genes that the researchers of this study now call oxytocin and vasotocin -that code for the homonymous hormones- are paralogous, that is, they come from a local duplication of a common ancestral gene. "Our findings suggest that the oxytocin gene is a duplication of the vasotocin gene -historically called vasopressin- that took place after the divergence of jawed vertebrates from jawless vertebrates. This simultaneously means that, if we had understood the evolution of these genes from the very beginning, we would most likely not have used different names to refer to them, as we see in other gene families, where we use the same root name for all its gene-members (e.g., FOXP) and different numbers to differentiate them (e.g., FOXP1, FOXP2 etc.)", highlights Constantina Theofanopoulou.

Given the results, the researchers propose a universal nomenclature in which oxytocin and vasotocin are used for these genes in all jawed vertebrates, and vasotocin for the only gene present all jawless vertebrates and closely related invertebrates. In this proposal, the common origin of both genes would be represented through the shared suffix -tocin, while the parology would be displayed through the different prefixes (oxy- and ¬vaso-). Following this new proposed nomenclature, what is currently called oxytocin, mesotocin, isotocin, glumitocin, valitocin, aspargtocin and neurophysin in different lineages, would be now called oxytocin universally. As for what is currently named vasotocin, vasopressin, neurophysin 2 and phenypresin in different species, would now be called vasotocin for all species.

This proposal also includes a universal nomenclature for the receptors of both genes, being oxytocin and vasotocin receptors (OTR and VTRs). Therefore, what has traditionally been called oxytocin receptor (OXTR) in mammals, vasotocin 3 receptor (VT3) and mesotocin receptor (MTR) in birds and frogs, and isotocin receptor (ITR) in fish, would be now called oxytocin receptor (OTR) in all cases.

Evolutionary history of oxytocin and vasotocin

The study also identified six main receptors of oxytocin and vasotocin in jawed vertebrates, with two of them being present already in the hagfish, two additional in lampreys, which have four receptors in total, and two more in jawed, which display six receptors in total. This pattern suggests that these receptors have first evolved through one round of whole genome duplication that gave rise to the four receptors we find in jawless vertebrates, like the lampreys, and that afterwards either smaller-scale segmental duplications or another whole genome duplication gave rise to the six receptors in jawed vertebrates.

This is the second time researchers find evidence for a scenario with one round of whole genome duplication, instead of two. The hypothesis that vertebrate genomes have evolved through two rounds of whole genome duplication has not been challenged in almost fifty years. "Our data show more support for the one round of whole genome duplication-idea. If the two rounds of whole genome duplication were the case, we would expect to find eight in total and not six receptors in jawed vertebrates. Of course, gene loss is very common, so that's why we can't exclude a two round-scenario, but we did not find any genomic sign of gene loss in any of the jawed vertebrate genomes we studied", notes the researcher.

The next step would be to get this new nomenclature, which is based on the evolutionary history of genes, adopted. "This is the first time that such a universal change affecting so many genes and species is being presented. Regardless of whether this proposal will be adopted or not, researchers will now have a guide on the genetic orthologies among species, which will make their research much easier", concludes Constantina Theofanopoulou.

According to the researchers, three songs from a playlist are enough to identify the person who chose the songs. Hence, companies like YouTube and Spotify can accumulate a great deal of information about their users based only on their musical preferences.

The study was led by Dr. Ori Leshman of the Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of Education at Tel Aviv University and Dr. Ron Hirschprung of the Department of Management and Industrial Engineering at Ariel University. The study was published in the journal Telematics and Informatics.

The study included about 150 young people (all undergraduate students), in 4 groups of about 35 people each. Participants were asked to identify group members based on only three songs from their favorite playlist. The variety of the students' musical preferences was wide and very diverse, including, for example, both old and new Israeli music (from Sasha Argov to Kaveret, Zohar Argov, Omer Adam and Hanan Ben Ari), classic rock and pop (from the Beatles and Pink Floyd to Beyonce and Ariana Grande), Israeli and international hip hop (from Kendrick Lamar and Eminem to Hadag Nahash and Tuna) and more. The analysis of the choices was carried out according to a mathematical model developed by the scholars.

The findings surprised even the researchers. The analysis of the data showed that the group members were able to identify the study participants according to their musical taste at a very high level of between 80 and 100%, even though the group members did not know each other well and had no prior knowledge of each other's musical preferences.

Dr. Leshman and Dr. Hirschprung explain: "Music can become a form of characterization, and even an identifier. It provides commercial companies like Google and Spotify with additional and more in-depth information about us as users of these platforms. In the digital world we live in today, these findings have far-reaching implications on privacy violations, especially since information about people can be inferred from a completely unexpected source, which is therefore lacking in protection against such violations. Visiting YouTube is perceived by the ordinary person as an innocuous act, but this study shows that it can reveal a lot about that person. On the other hand, this knowledge can be used as a bridge between people and perhaps in the future lead to the creation of new diagnostic methods and fascinating intervention programs that will make use of people's favorite music."

PITTSBURGH, April 28, 2021 - Asthma exacerbations rose following a catastrophic Christmas Eve fire two years ago that destroyed pollution controls at the Clairton Coke Works--the largest such facility in the nation, a University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health analysis concludes.

The study, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, was possible because of a collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh Asthma and Environmental Lung Health Institute at UPMC and the Allegheny County Health Department, with funding from The Heinz Endowments.

"In addition to verifying that people living within a 10-mile radius of the coke works had higher rates of asthma exacerbations and use of albuterol rescue medication than those living outside the radius, we learned that nearly half of the people with asthma closest to the fire were unaware of the pollution problem and, therefore, unable to take steps to avoid exposure," said lead author Brandy Byrwa-Hill, M.S., a Ph.D. student in Pitt Public Health's Department of Environmental and Occupational Health.

The Clairton Coke Works is located in a suburb south of Pittsburgh and produces highly refined coal, or "coke," which is used as fuel in the manufacture of steel. Creating coke results in several air pollutants, which are minimized through the plant's pollution controls. On Dec. 24, 2018, a fire destroyed the pollution controls, and, for 102 days, the plant emitted sulfur dioxide at levels 25 times greater than typical emissions.

Byrwa-Hill and the Pitt Public Health team used the Pitt Asthma Institute Research (AIR) registry to quickly collect information from 39 asthma patients living within 10 miles of the coke works and 44 patients living beyond that radius in the six weeks after the fire.

During the pollution control breach, participants who lived closest to the plant had an 80% increased risk of worsened asthma symptoms compared with those furthest from the plant. The difference normalized after the plant was repaired.

Despite news reports and alerts from the Allegheny County Health Department urging people with certain health conditions to take precautions, 44% of the participants were unaware of the excessive pollution.

"When we asked the participants if they would want to know about an environmental disaster, of course they said they would," said senior author James Fabisiak, Ph.D., associate professor of environmental and occupational health and director of the Center of Health Environments and Communities at Pitt Public Health. "Our study reveals that there is a need for a more robust notification system that uses many modes of communication so people can make informed, timely decisions to protect their health."

In addition, the study highlighted the benefit of having a pre-existing registry of well-characterized, geographically identified asthma patients willing to participate in research, said co-senior author Sally Wenzel, M.D., chair of Pitt Public Health's Department of Environmental and Occupational Health.

"I'd encourage any city or county that is home to a significant point source of air pollution to create a similar registry," said Wenzel, who also directs Pitt's Asthma and Environmental Lung Health Institute at UPMC. "People with asthma are particularly sensitive to air pollution, and their experience can be informative to all of us when it comes to maintaining healthy air quality."

Researchers have discovered an explanation for why cerebral cavernous malformations (CCMs)--clusters of dilated blood vessels in the brain--can suddenly grow to cause seizures or stroke. Specifically, they found that a specific, acquired mutation in a cancer-causing gene (PIK3CA) could exacerbate existing CCMs in the brain. Furthermore, repurposing an already existing anticancer drug showed promise in mouse models of CCMs in improving brain-vascular health and preventing bleeding into the brain tissue.

Previous studies linked the initial formation of CCMs to various environmental factors, including differences in the gut microbiome, and inactivating mutations in three specific genes collectively known as the "CCM complex." While these changes are enough to cause small malformations to form in the brain, they didn't explain why some suddenly expand in size, resulting in seizures or stroke.

Using mouse genetic models of CCM formation, the researchers discovered that it is the additional "hit" that stimulates the known cancer-causing gene PIK3CA and leads to the rapid growth of existing CCMs. When they examined resected human CCM tissue, they saw the same genes were involved, which supports the idea of a "cancer-like" mechanism for accelerated blood vessel malformation growth in which small quiescent CCMs become "malignant" after a new gene mutation occurs.

In cancer, the PIK3CA mutation results in an increase in PI3K-mTOR signaling, which is a well-established drug target for the treatment of tumors. Rapamycin is an FDA-approved drug that inhibits that same signaling pathway and has been used to treat malformations in the veins and lymphatic system. Here, rapamycin significantly reduced CCM formation in genetic mouse models, suggesting it could be potentially used as a treatment.

The study was led by Mark L. Kahn, M.D. at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. His team continues to study what causes CCM formation and growth, and proposes that further analyses of human CCM lesions and clinical testing of rapamycin and similar drugs is necessary to determine whether this mechanism can be a target for therapy.

A comprehensive study from Uppsala University demonstrates that socioeconomic deprivation modifies genetic effects on higher education and abstract reasoning. The paper illustrates how genes play a greater role in educational attainment in more socioeconomically deprived regions of the United Kingdom. The study was recently published in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Education is an important factor in an individual's life and strongly linked to economic outcomes and quality of life. The likelihood of completing higher education is partly determined by genetic factors. Common genetic variants have previously been estimated to contribute 11-13% of the variance in whether an individual completes higher education. This heritability is an estimate of how much a trait is influenced by genes.

In the current study, scientists at Uppsala University assessed the heritability of higher educational attainment and performance on a verbal and numerical reasoning test. Heritability was compared across the socioeconomic spectrum in more than 350,000 participants in the UK Biobank cohort.

The researchers found that common genetic variants contributed 13% of the variance in the least socioeconomically deprived, but almost 26% in the most deprived. "We were surprised to find that the heritability was higher in participants from more socioeconomically deprived regions of the UK. This is the opposite of what previous twin studies have found," says the lead author of the study, Dr Mathias Rask-Andersen. This type of difference in heritability across the socioeconomic spectrum is likely to represent an interaction between genes and the environment, where socioeconomic deprivation modifies genetic effects.

Previous studies in the field have mainly been performed in small twin cohorts from the United States. According to Dr Rask-Andersen, the contrasting results of the current study indicate that national differences may influence genetic effects. For instance, differences in access to and quality of education across the socioeconomic spectrum may play an important role, as well as welfare support systems and healthcare.

The current study illustrates how the environment determines how an individual's genetic makeup is propagated. "More and more studies demonstrate that environmental factors influence genetic effects," explains Dr Åsa Johansson, group leader at the Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology at Uppsala University. "We have previously seen similar gene-environment interactions for other traits, such as body mass index, and it is likely that interactions also exist for many human diseases."

In the long run, gene-environment interactions offer an additional layer of information on the contribution of genetics to human traits and diseases. Identifying these interactions can potentially lead to more precise forms of interventions, not only for preventing and treating disease, but also for increasing the likelihood of successful educational outcomes.

The results from this study also have implications for notions of equality of outcome and opportunity. "The larger influence of genetic factors in more socioeconomically deprived regions could reflect greater challenges for higher education in these regions," says Dr Rask-Andersen. "Someone who is more vulnerable due to genetic factors would then face even greater challenges in a more socioeconomically deprived region."

How the study was conducted:

UK Biobank is a cross-sectional cohort of almost half a million UK residents aged 40-70 years old who were recruited in 2006-2010. Participants answered extensive questionnaires and were tested for abstract verbal and numerical reasoning. Educational attainment was determined from the self-reported professional qualifications of each participant. The level of socioeconomic deprivation for each participant was assessed from census data. Each participant was thus assigned a score for socioeconomic deprivation based on their place of residence. Each participant was genotyped and the effects of genetic variants on educational attainment and abstract reasoning were determined by association tests, providing an estimate of the effect of each genetic variant on educational attainment and abstract reasoning. The researchers divided the cohort into five quintiles based on socioeconomic deprivation and performed association tests in each quintile. The heritability in each quintile was then estimated by examining how much the genetic effects contributed to the outcomes. The researchers then compared heritabilities between quintiles.

The degree of acidity or alkalinity of a substance is crucial for its chemical behavior. The decisive factor is the so-called proton affinity, which indicates how easily an entity accepts or releases a single proton. While it is easy to measure this for molecules, it has not been possible for surfaces. This is important because atoms on surfaces have very different proton affinities, depending on where they sit.
Researchers at TU Wien have now succeeded in making this important physical quantity experimentally accessible for the first time: Using a specially modified atomic force microscope, it is possible to study the proton affinity of individual atoms. This should help to analyze catalysts on an atomic scale. The results have been published in the scientific journal Nature.

Precision instead of average

"All previous measurements of surface acidity had one severe drawback," says Prof. Ulrike Diebold from the Institute of Applied Physics at TU Wien. "Although the surface atoms behave chemically differently, one could only ever measure the average value."

Thus it is not known which atoms contributed to chemical reactions, and to what extent, which makes it impossible to adjust the atomic scale of the surface to favor certain chemical reactions. But that is exactly what is needed, for example, when looking for more effective catalysts for hydrogen production.

"We analyzed surfaces made of indium oxide. They are particularly interesting because there are five different types of OH groups with different properties on the surface," says Margareta Wagner, who carried out these measurements in Prof. Diebold's lab.

With a special trick it was possible to study these OH groups individually: The researchers placed a single OH group at the tip of an atomic force microscope. This tip was then positioned specifically over one particular atom on the surface. A force then acts between the OH group on the tip and the OH group directly below it on the indium oxide surface, and this force depends sensitively on the distance between them.

"We vary the distance between the tip and the surface and measure how this changes the force," explains Margareta Wagner. "This gives us a characteristic force curve for each OH group on the surface of a material." The shape of this force curve provides information about how well the respective oxygen atoms on the indium oxide surface hold their protons - or how easily they will release them.

In order to obtain an actual value for the proton affinity, theoretical work was necessary. This was carried out by Bernd Meyer at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. In elaborate computer simulations it was possible to show how the force curve of the atomic force microscope can be translated in a simple and precise way into those quantities that are needed in chemistry.

Nanostructure determines the quality of catalysts

"This is quite crucial for the further development of catalysts," says Bernd Meyer. "We know that atoms of the same type behave quite differently depending on their atomic neighbors and the way they are incorporated into the surface." For example, it can make a big difference whether the surface is perfectly smooth or has steps on an atomic scale. Atoms with a smaller number of neighbors sit at such step edges, and they can potentially significantly improve or worsen chemical reactions.

"With our functionalized scanning force microscope tip, we can now precisely investigate such questions for the first time," says Ulrike Diebold. "This means that we no longer have to rely on trial and error, but can precisely understand and improve chemical properties of surfaces."