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Surrey, B.C. Canada and Rochester, Minn., U.S. (April 22, 2021) - Neuroscience researchers at Mayo Clinic Orthopedics and Sports Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota, U.S., the Health and Technology District and Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada have published the latest results of their ongoing multi-year hockey concussion study examining changes in subconcussive cognitive brain function in male youth ice hockey players.

The research team monitored brain vital signs during pre- and post-season play in 23 Bantam (age 14 or under) and Junior A (age 16 to 20) male ice-hockey players in Rochester, Minnesota.

"Brain vital signs" translates complex brain waves measured using portable electroencephalography (EEG) at the rink-side, into simple, fast, user-friendly and intuitive results that provide an objective evaluation of cognitive brain function. Called the ABCs of brain function, brain vital signs track three well-established neural responses for Auditory sensation (using a response called the N100), Basic attention (using a response called the P300), and Cognitive processing (using a response called the N400).

The study builds on 2019 results published in Brain: A Journal of Neurology that confirmed significant brain vitals sign changes shortly after concussions were diagnosed in Junior A players. Key results of this study showed undetected impairments remained when players were cleared to return to play using current clinical concussion protocols. Notably, the initial study also reported sensitivity to subconcussive impairments in those players who did not sustain a concussion diagnosis over the course of the season.

The current second phase of the study replicated these results and added the Bantam age group. The latest findings were recently published in the peer-reviewed journal Brain Communications in the advanced articles section.

The results of this new Brain Communications study showed:

Significant brain vital sign changes in N100 Auditory sensation and N400 Cognitive processing responses for the pre-to-post season comparison across both groups.

Differences between the Bantam and Junior A ice hockey players showed more changes in the Junior A group.

Importantly, the subconcussive changes were significantly correlated with the number of head impacts over the season across both age groups and consequently showed more subconcussive changes in brain vital signs.

A subconcussive impact is a mechanical force transmitted to the brain below the threshold for a diagnosis of an acute concussive injury. The effects of these low-magnitude impacts may not even be noticeable to the player or to observers on the sideline. Head impacts in the sport of ice hockey typically result from player-to-player or player-to-boards contact due to body checking, collisions and fighting . Some of these impacts are the consequence of foul play, but many of these events also result from routine, legal on-ice behavior.

"Concussion in sports is a major concern for many and our research has shown that having an objective physiological measure of brain function at rink-side is key to detection and managing concussive impacts," says Dr. Aynsley Smith, principal investigator of the study and Associate Professor of Orthopedics at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

The study, funded in part by USA Hockey, was co-led by Dr. Michael Stuart, Professor of Orthopedics at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. It is also part of a larger concussion research team within Mayo Clinic that includes neurology research leadership from Dr. David Dodick, Professor of Neurology at Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S.

Canadian collaborators include neuroscientist Dr. Ryan D'Arcy, an SFU professor and co-founder of the Health and Technology District in Surrey B.C. and Dr. Shaun Fickling, a biomedical engineer, a recent SFU PhD graduate and lead author of the study.

"Our research has shown that repetitive subconcussive impacts triggered compounding effects in brain function changes, which underscores the importance of shifting our thinking and understanding of concussions as a singular acute-injury model to a spectrum of head-impact exposure and effects over time," says Dr. Fickling.

The US-Canadian concussion research team is continuing to advance their collaborative effort.

Says Dr. D'Arcy, "In medicine: you can't treat what you can't measure. With breakthroughs on measurement challenges, we hope to now accelerate treatment innovations for prevention, acute care and extended care concussion management - for all people across a range of different applications. Our partnership is moving into incredibly exciting future steps - stay tuned."

Living away from community and country, Aboriginal families of children with severe burns also face critical financial stress to cover the associated costs of health care and treatment, a new study shows.

An Australian study, led by Flinders researchers Dr Courtney Ryder and Associate Professor Tamara Mackean, found feelings of crisis were common in Aboriginal families with children suffering severe burns, with one family reporting skipping meals and others selling assets to reduce costs while in hospital.

The economic hardship was found to be worse in families who live in rural areas - some households travelling more than five hours for treatment, creating undue financial strain.

Participants included families from SA, NSW and Queensland who are already part of the larger-Australia-wide Coolamon study on burns injuries in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

Their children had sustained severe burns that required at least one night in hospital and follow up care.

So far, the Coolamon study has explored the health inequity of burns incidents and severity in Aboriginal children, with hospitalisation rates found to be 2-3 times greater than other Australian children.

This research conducted by Flinders University in conjunction with The George Institute for Global Health and UNSW School of Population Health also found Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children spent five times longer in hospital.

Dr Courtney Ryder, from Flinders University's College of Medicine and Public Health, says out-of-pocket health expenditure are costs not covered by Medicare or health insurance, and could include gap payments, pharmaceutical costs, and travel costs such as transport, car parking, food, and accommodation.

She says results were "astounding" with some families reaching credit card limits, not paying other bills or even selling assets to get by.

"Even though we have Medicare, there are always additional out-of-pocket expenses for health care, and I don't think it's understood the depth or breadth of cost for those Aboriginal families who have a child with an acute burns injury," Dr Ryder says.

"Burns injuries are quite intensive, very invasive and require a lot of follow up. While the expenses might be as simple as sterilised water and bandages, quite often there are additional expenses such as costs associated with travelling away from home.

"One family spoke about having to spend $700 each time they went to town, and they were even staying with family close to the tertiary setting."

Participants also reported not being made aware of government initiatives, such as the Patient Assisted Travel Scheme (PATS), aimed at South Australians who need to travel more than 100km to access medical services.

Dr Ryder says a review of PATS is needed, as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders often face barriers in accessing the scheme, including families who still live in regional areas but within the 100km range.

"There was one family who, because of where they were located, couldn't get assistance through PATS," she says.

"They were having to travel for an hour or more every day to the hospital, then there were parking costs and time spent away from work, so it was still significant."

Despite the stress and financial burden reported by participants, they often commented on the significant role their family networks played in helping and keeping them away from significant financial burden.

The human immune defense is based on the ability of white blood cells to accurately identify disease-causing pathogens and to initiate a defense reaction against them. The immune defense is able to recall the pathogens it has encountered previously, on which, for example, the effectiveness of vaccines is based. Thus, the immune defense the most accurate patient record system that carries a history of all pathogens an individual has faced. This information however has previously been difficult to obtain from patient samples.

The learning immune system can be roughly divided into two parts, of which B cells are responsible for producing antibodies against pathogens, while T cells are responsible for destroying their targets. The measurement of antibodies by traditional laboratory methods is relatively simple, which is why antibodies already have several uses in healthcare.

"Although it is known that the role of T cells in the defense response against for example viruses and cancer is essential, identifying the targets of T cells has been difficult despite extensive research," says Satu Mustjoki, Professor of Translational Hematology.

AI helps to identify new key-lock pairs

T cells identify their targets in a key and a lock principle, where the key is the T cell receptor on the surface of the T cell and the key is the protein presented on the surface of an infected cell. An individual is estimated to carry more different T cell keys than there are stars in the Milky Way, making the mapping of T cell targets with laboratory techniques cumbersome.

Researchers at Aalto University and the University of Helsinki have therefore studied previously profiled key-lock pairs and were able to create an AI model that can predict targets for previously unmapped T cells.

"The AI model we created is flexible and is applicable to every possible pathogen - as long as we have enough experimentally produced key-lock pairs. For example, we were quickly able to apply our model to coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 when a sufficient number of such pairs were available," explains Emmi Jokinen, M.Sc. and a Ph.D. student at Aalto University.

The results of the study help us to understand how a T cell applies different parts of its key to identify its locks. The researchers studied which T cells recognize common viruses such as influenza-, HI-, and hepatitis B -virus. The researchers also used their tool to analyze the role of T-cells recognizing hepatitis B, which had lost their killing ability after the progression of hepatitis to hepatic cell cancer.

The study has been published in the scientific journal PLOS Computational Biology.

A new life for published data with novel AI models

Tools generated by AI are cost-effective research topics.

"With the help of these tools, we are able to make better use of the already published vast patient cohorts and gain additional understanding of them," points out Harri Lähdesmäki, Professor of Computational Biology and Machine Learning at Aalto University.

Using the artificial intelligence tool, the researchers have figured out, among other things, how the intensity of the defense reaction relates to its target in different disease states, which would not have been possible without this study.

"For example, in addition to COVID19 infection, we have investigated the role of the defense system in the development of various autoimmune disorders and explained why some cancer patients benefit from new drugs and some do not", reveals M.D. Jani Huuhtanen, a Ph.D. student at the University of Helsinki, about the upcoming work with the new model.

New research by the University of New England's Palaeoscience Research Centre suggests juvenile tyrannosaurs were slenderer and relatively faster for their body size compared to their multi-tonne parents.

The research, published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, analysed a collection of fossilised tyrannosaur footprints to learn more about the way these animals aged and how they moved.

UNE PhD student and study leader, Nathan Enriquez -- in international collaboration with the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum, University of Alberta, Royal Ontario Museum, University of Bologna and the Grande Prairie Regional College -- believes the findings contribute a new line of evidence to previous findings based on bone anatomy and computer models of muscle masses.

"The results suggest that as some tyrannosaurs grew older and heavier, their feet also became comparably more bulky," Mr Enriquez said.

"Fully grown tyrannosaurs were believed to be more robust than younger individuals based on their relatively shorter hind limbs and more massive skulls, but nobody had explored this growth pattern using fossil footprints, which are unique in that they can provide a snapshot of the feet as they appeared in life, with outlines of the soft, fleshy parts of the foot that are rarely preserved as fossils.

Footprints can be ambiguous and hard to interpret correctly -- the shape of a footprint may be influenced by the type of ground surface that is stepped on and the motions of the animal making the footprints. In addition, the exact identity of the animal may not always be clear. These challenges have previously limited the use of fossil footprints in understanding dinosaur growth.

The answer lay in the Grande Prairie region of Northern Alberta, Canada, where the research team worked with well-preserved samples of footprints of different sizes that are suggested to belong to the same type of animal.

"We explored a remote dinosaur footprint site where we discovered a new set of large carnivorous dinosaur footprints within very similar rocks to those which have produced tyrannosaur tracks in the past," Mr Enriquez said.

"Based on the relatively close proximity between these discoveries and their nearly equivalent ages -- about 72.5 million years old -- we suggest they may indeed belong to the same species.

"We were also careful to assess the quality of preservation in each footprint, and only considered specimens which were likely to reflect the shape of the actual feet that produced them."

Once the team had a suitable sample, they analysed the outlines of each specimen using a method called geometric morphometrics. This process removes the effect of overall size differences between each footprint and shows what the most important differences in track shape are.

"The greatest difference in shape was found to be the relative width and surface area of the heel impression, which significantly increased in size between smaller and larger footprints," Mr Enriquez said.

"The smaller tracks are comparably slender, while the biggest tyrannosaur tracks are relatively broader and had much larger heel areas. This makes sense for an animal that is becoming larger and needs to support its rapidly increasing body weight. It also suggests the relative speed of these animals decreased with age.

"Increasingly bulky feet in the adults aligns with previous suggestions that juvenile tyrannosaurs would have been faster and more agile for their body size in comparison to their parents, and means that we can add footprints as another line of evidence in the debate over tyrannosaur growth.

"Lastly, it demonstrates the usefulness of footprints for investigating a potentially wider range of ideas about the lives of extinct species than has been considered previously."

Over the last 60 years, scientists have been able to observe how and when genetic information was replicated, determining the existence a "replication timing program", a process that controls when and in what order segments of DNA replicate. However, scientists still cannot explain why such a specific timing sequence exists. In a study published today in Science, Dr. David Gilbert and his team have answered this 60-year-old question.

"Why would cells care about the order in which they replicate DNA?" asked lead scientist Dr. Gilbert. "After all - all cells need to replicate all their DNA. Our hypothesis has been that it's not just DNA that replicates, but all of the regulatory molecules that read the DNA replicate as well." Dr. Gilbert further hypothesized that there might be a purpose behind the replication timing program and process because "mother nature would not squander this opportunity to control how the DNA is read."

"The time at which you replicate provides an ideal time at which to choose whether to maintain all the regulatory factors and continue with the same functional interpretation of the information in DNA or change it to elicit new functions," explains Dr. Gilbert.

Over the last 13 years, Dr. Gilbert and his team showed that each type of cell had a unique replication timing program and that diseased cells had distinct alterations in the program. In this study, Dr. Gilbert and his team looked at how changes in the replication timing program impact the packing of DNA with its regulatory factors, collectively known as the epigenome. The epigenome are regulatory factors that are believed to control the "identity" of the cell, and the functions that the cell will perform.

By eliminating a protein called RIF1, that helps to regulate DNA replication, they found that the replication program was severely and sometimes, almost completely gone so that all segments of chromosomes were replicating at different times in different cells. Without RIF1, if cells were prevented from replicating DNA, their epigenomes were fine. However, as soon as the DNA started to replicate, the regulatory molecules that associate with the DNA became incorporated incorrectly and worsened with each round of DNA replication. Eventually, the 3-dimensional folding of the chromosomes was also altered.

Dr. Gilbert suggests that when the epigenome is disrupted by altering the replication timing program, the cells might no longer perform their normal functions, or they may perform inappropriate functions. These inappropriate functions may have a large and negative impact on a person's health.

"We and others have shown previously that the program is altered in many diseases," says Dr. Gilbert. "Our lab recently showed specific patterns of altered timing that were linked statistically to poor outcomes in pediatric leukemia, and in another study to diseases of premature aging."

Thus, the replication timing program provides a whole new genre of molecular pathways and biomarkers that lead to and identify disease states. This could lead to earlier diagnoses and more accurate prognoses for patients.

While Dr. Gilbert's work has answered one important question, he does not plan to stop here. "We think that the epigenome... is not [only] essential for a cell to just maintain its identity, but we hypothesize that it is critical for cells to turn into other cell types."

Testing this hypothesis is crucial for the fields of stem cell research and the therapeutic application of stem cells. Dr. Gilbert is currently using human stem cells to test how a disrupted replication timing affects development of these cells into liver cells, heart cells, and neurons. The results from this study will provide valuable information for human health and disease studies in the future.

NEW YORK, NY--A new imaging technique developed by scientists at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital captures movies of receptors on the surface of living cells in unprecedented detail and could pave the way to a trove of new drugs. 

The researchers used the technique to zoom in on individual receptor proteins on the surface of living cells to determine if the receptors work solo or come together to work as pairs. This work appeared in the April issue of Nature Methods.

"If two different receptors come together to form a dimer with distinctive function and pharmacology, this might allow for a new generation of drugs with greater specificity and reduced side effects," says Jonathan Javitch, MD, PhD, the Lieber Professor of Experimental Therapeutics in Psychiatry at VP&S.  

G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) are some of medicine's most important molecules: About one-third of today's drugs work by targeting a GPCR. The possibility that GPCRs form heterodimers--consisting of two different flavors of GPCR--is an especially exciting prospect for the development of better drugs.

"The potential of GPCR heterodimers for improved pharmacotherapies, including for disorders such as schizophrenia and depression, is exciting and has drawn us to the field," Javitch says.

But for decades, scientists have hotly debated whether most GPCRs form dimers or work alone. Much of this impasse stemmed from the relatively poor spatial resolution of current techniques. Different GPCRs in a cell have been captured near each other, but it was unclear if the receptors were working together.

"The controversy over receptor dimerization has only grown fiercer with conflicting data from different labs using different methods," Javitch says.

Using a new, more powerful technique based on single-molecule fluorescence resonance energy transfer (smFRET), Javitch and Scott C. Blanchard from St. Jude Children's and Weill Cornell show that dimers can be tracked as they move on the cell surface and how long they last. This method takes advantage of a change in fluorescence that occurs when proteins, labeled with different fluorescent markers, are extremely close to each other. The resolution in this approach is more than 10 times greater than previous techniques. 

This new and exciting technique entails multiple innovations in dyes, labeling technology, protein engineering, imaging, and software that enabled tracking of individual and coupled receptors. 

Not only does this method detect GPCR dimers, it also allows, for the first time, a clear view of how receptors in a living cell change shape when activated. This will provide researchers a better understanding of how drugs can differentially impact the same receptors. 

"With this method, we can now explore receptor interactions and activation mechanisms with unprecedented resolution, giving us an opportunity to investigate new therapeutic approaches," Javitch says.

PHILADELPHIA, PA - The first National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Cancer Institute (NCI)-funded clinical study examining stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) in the treatment of oligometastatic breast, prostate, and non-small cell lung (NSCLC) cancers displayed evidence that SBRT can be safely used to treat patients who have multiple metastases. These results were recently published in JAMA Oncology.

The results of the Phase I NRG-BR001 trial, conducted by the NCI National Clinical Trials Network group NRG Oncology, indicate that SBRT treatment in standard doses was safe for 35 evaluable patients with a median of 3 metastases. There were no dose-limiting toxicities and over 50% of trial participants were alive at 2 years following treatment.

"Prior to this trial, little to no evidence was available to support that SBRT is a safe and tolerable treatment option for patients who have multiple metastases. Researchers have hypothesized that SBRT could improve survival outcomes for this patient population; however, it was imperative we determine the safety of this procedure, appropriate dose and scheduling, and how to coordinate across multiple centers the quality assurance of the procedures prior to testing its efficacy," stated Steven J. Chmura, MD, PhD, of the Department of Radiation and Cellular Oncology at the University of Chicago Comprehensive Cancer Center and the lead author of the NRG-BR001 manuscript. "To ensure safety, this trial used an extensive radiation QA process to test the accuracy of treating moving tumors and was the first NRG trial to require the use of 3D image guidance during treatment for soft tissue tumors."

NRG-BR001 enrolled up to 6 evaluable patients for each of the following 7 selected anatomic locations: bone/osseous (BO), spinal/paraspinal (SP), peripheral lung (PL), central lung (CL), abdominal/pelvic (AP), mediastinal/cervical lymph node (MC), and liver (L). As a single patient could contribute to more than one location, the safety question was able to be answered with 35 evaluable patients from the 42 enrolled trial participants. Patients were required to have 3-4 metastases or 2 metastases in close proximity to each other. SBRT starting dose was 50 GY over 5 fractions for the CL and MC groups, 45 GY over 3 fractions for the PL, AP, and L groups and 30 Gy over 3 fractions for the BO and SP group. Additional patients would be accrued as needed at defined de-escalated doses if any of the starting doses were not deemed to be safe.

The 35 evaluable patients had breast (n=12), NSCLC (n=10), and prostate (n=13) cancers. No dose de-escalations were needed. There were 8 instances of grade 3 adverse events. There were no treatment-related deaths.

SBRT for multiple metastases is now utilized in multiple ongoing Phase II and III NCI-sponsored trials. Follow-up research should be done in long surviving oligometastatic patients.

"These are important data from the multicenter study, confirming that complicated stereotactic body radiotherapy to multiple sites is safe and feasible. We eagerly await the results of ongoing, larger randomized trials to demonstrate how effective this is when compared to drug therapy alone for metastatic cancer," stated Mitchell Machtay, MD, the Associate Dean for Clinical Cancer Research at the Penn State College of Medicine and the interim Group Chair for NRG Oncology.

Like tree rings, cave stalagmites are a portal to a prehistoric Earth, and now scientists from UNSW Sydney have found they are consistently reliable as time trackers the world over.

In a global investigation into the growth properties of stalagmites distributed across the world, the scientists found that while growth fluctuations due to climate events are evident in the shorter period, stalagmite growth over the longer periods - tens of thousands of years - are surprisingly linear.

"Our new global analysis shows that we can consider stalagmite growth as being like a metronome and very constant over hundreds and thousands of years," says Professor Andy Baker, UNSW School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences.

"Sometimes extreme weather events can disturb this metronome for a few years, making the growth a bit faster or slower, and we can use that to explore climate variations.

"But in general, stalagmite growth is predictable and it is this unique property that makes them so valuable to researchers - you can tell the time in the past by using the very regular growth rings that are widely present across the globe."

Stalagmites, which grow from cave floors as water drips from stalactites at the cave ceiling, are the result of chemicals carried by the water in solution that turns to solid form in the cave. They are built by layers of calcite crystals, which may be perfectly stacked one on top of the other if nothing disturbs the growth.

"But in reality, there are many disturbances in caves," says Prof. Baker.

"Tiny particles from the soil above and trace elements of chemicals can disturb the stacking to create pores between growing crystals or even slightly change their shape in the morphology - or fabric - of the growing crystals."

STEADY GROWTH

Scientists have used stalagmites as gauges of different parts of the planet's conditions over millennia for some time, but whether all stalagmites grew the same way in caves of different climatic conditions remained unknown - until now.

"Before this analysis, we did not have evidence that stalagmites are only found in regions with seasonal precipitation, nor was it obvious that the stalagmite growth rate is relatively unchanging over time and that this is a ubiquitous property," Prof. Baker says.

"What we have learned is that for an environmental signal to be preserved in stalagmite laminae thickness variations, a large perturbation to weather patterns is required - such as prolonged wet or dry years associated El Niño or La Niña.

"But in regions where there is a seasonality of precipitation, the long-term constant growth rate of laminated stalagmites provides an unparalleled capacity for precise chronology building."

The researchers found that between different locations around the world, warmer climates tended towards more stalagmite growth over time, while colder climates saw growth slowed.

But the research showed that the majority of stalagmite samples, irrespective of location, followed a linear growth over the timescale of tens of thousands of years.

"The 'global average stalagmite' increased in height by about one metre over the last 11,000 years," Prof. Baker says.

SNAPSHOT OF THE PAST

Analysing the way the laminae are organised can help scientists read environmental conditions and weather events of the distant past. In seasonal climates, these changes in the fabric can occur at regular intervals, producing layers they call 'annually laminated stalagmites'. But when extreme weather events occur, as happens with the El Niño/La Niña Southern Oscillation phenomenon involving mega-droughts, bushfires and flooding events, variations of thicknesses of stalagmite laminae can provide vital clues.

"We can use other chemical evidence in stalagmites to obtain records of past environmental change, and know exactly when this happened," says Prof. Baker.

"For example, at UNSW we are reconstructing fire histories from cave stalagmites for the first time. Working in Western Australia, and using stalagmites that have these continuous laminae and regular growth, we can identify how often fires have occurred in the past from the traces left behind from the soluble part of bushfire ash that gets transported to the stalagmite by drip water."

The researchers say that they still have limited understanding on how crystals grow within each lamina, so future studies could investigate the internal structure of the laminae and the crystal growth mechanisms involved.

The analysis was published in the April issue of Reviews of Geophysics journal.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Attempts at restricting people's mobility to control the spread of COVID-19 may be effective only for a short period, researchers said. A new study examines people's mobility for seven months during the pandemic in the United States using publicly available, anonymized mobile phone data.

Reported in the Journal of Transport Geography, the study alerts authorities to the need for more manageable travel restrictions and policies that reduce COVID-19 exposure risk to essential workers - who, because they are required to be physically present at their workplaces, remained highly mobile during the pandemic.

The longitudinal study is one of the first to compare mobility data using a broad range of people over an extended period, rather than a cross section of data from a single point in time, the researchers said.

"The longitudinal approach allowed us to differentiate between two distinct waves over our study period: a first wave from March to June and a second wave from June to September," said Junghwan Kim, a graduate student in geography and geographic information science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who led the research with Mei-Po Kwan, a geography professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and Kim's doctoral adviser at the U. of I. "This approach also allowed us to look for relationships between mobility change and various social, spatial, policy and political factors."

The study used mobile device data from 2,639 of the 3,000 U.S. counties, excluding those with too little data, those with excessively high mobility levels and those with incomplete demographic data.

"We found that, overall, mobility declined sharply in March and April but quickly recovered to the pre-pandemic mobility levels from April through June, forming a V-shaped data curve," Kim said. "During the second wave that occurred between June and September, we saw very little change in mobility despite the COVID-19 pandemic becoming more severe."
A closer look at the data showed that mobility changes are associated with political partisanship, poverty, mobility restriction and high COVID-19 case numbers, the researchers said.

The team found that people's mobility in Democratic Party-leaning counties was slower to recover than in Republican Party-leaning counties; that counties with more poor people showed only a slight decrease in mobility throughout the study period; and that statewide COVID-19 mobility restrictions were more effective during March and April than from April to June.

"The political result not only corroborates the findings from similar studies but also reflects how the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been highly politicized," Kim said. "The results that show that the working poor were traveling almost normally during the pandemic - likely because they tend to make up a large percentage of essential workers - is a problem that needs to be addressed."

There are limitations to this type of study, the researchers said, including the anonymous nature of mobile device data, which protects user privacy but hampers the ability to obtain more accurate individual-level data. Additionally, this type of data does not account for complex interactions between human mobility and COVID-19 severity.

"Considering that mobility is a critical component of people's daily lives in modern societies, such as the U.S., we hope that policymakers can carefully design and implement pandemic-control policies that people will find easier to follow," Kim said.

Grass crops are able to bend the rules of evolution by borrowing genes from their neighbours, giving them a competitive advantage, a new study has revealed.

Research, led by the University of Sheffield, is the first to show that grasses can incorporate DNA from other species into their genomes through a process known as lateral gene transfer.

The stolen genetic secrets give them an evolutionary advantage by allowing them to grow faster, bigger or stronger and adapt to new environments quicker. These findings could inform future work to create crops that are more resistant to the effects of climate change and help to tackle food security problems.

The Sheffield team studied grasses, which include some of the most economically and ecologically important plants, such as the most globally cultivated crops wheat, maize, rice and barley.

Dr Luke Dunning, senior author of the research from the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield, said: "Grasses are taking an evolutionary shortcut by borrowing genes from their neighbours. By using genetic detective work to trace the origin of each gene, we found over 100 examples where the gene had a significantly different history to the species it was found in.

"The findings may make us as a society reconsider how we view GM technology, as grasses have naturally exploited a very similar process. If we can determine how this process is happening it may allow us to naturally modify crops and make them more resistant to climate change.

"What we are seeing is not hybridisation, but the consequences are similar. Lateral gene transfer can move genetic information across wider evolutionary distances, which means it can potentially have even bigger impacts.

"Whilst only a relatively small proportion of genes are transferred between species, this process potentially allows grasses to cherry pick information from other species. This likely gives them huge advantages and may allow them to adapt to their surrounding environment quicker.

Samuel Hibdige, first author of the research and PhD Researcher from the University of Sheffield, said: "We still don't know how this is happening or what the full implications are. But, we know it is widespread in grasses, a family of plants that provide a majority of the food we eat.

"We detected foreign DNA in a wide range of grasses with all kinds of life history strategies indicating it is not restricted to those with a specific trait. However, we did detect a statistical increase in species which possess certain kinds of modified stems called rhizomes."

Since Darwin, much of our understanding of evolution has been based on the assumption that common descent is the rule for plant and animal evolution, with genetic information passed from parents to offspring.

The team's next steps will be to determine the biological mechanism behind this phenomenon and to investigate whether this is an ongoing process in crops that contributes to the differences we observe between crop varieties.

A new species of deep-sea dwelling dumbo octopus called Grimpoteuthis imperator sp. nov. has been described using a combination of MRI, micro-CT and minimally invasive gene analysis rather than traditional dissection methods. The findings are presented in the open access journal BMC Biology.

The single specimen, which was identified as a mature male, was named G. imperator because it was discovered in the northern part of the Emperor Seamounts, an undersea mountain ridge in the Northwest Pacific Ocean. In addition to the scientific name in Latin, the authors suggest possible common names for this new species such as Emperor dumbo, Dumbo impérial (French), and Kaiserdumbo (German).

Finned or dumbo octopods, although considered rare organisms, form a significant part of the megafauna in deep-sea habitats down to at least 7,000 m depth. Current methods used to describe new cephalopod species often require dissection to examine internal organs, which involves damage to or even partial destruction of a specimen and may thus preclude analysis of singular, endangered, rare, or otherwise valuable organisms.

Alexander Ziegler and Christina Sagorny at Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Germany combined non-invasive methods including digital photography, standardized measurements, high-field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and micro-computed tomography (micro-CT), with minimally-invasive tissue sampling for DNA analysis to gather morphological as well as molecular information on the specimen collected during R/V SONNE's scientific cruise SO-249 BERING. Using this novel combination of non-invasive and minimally invasive techniques allowed the authors to describe a large zoological specimen for the first time without damaging it.

The authors were able to identify details including shell and gill shape, digestive tract morphology, as well as more minute structures such as the nervous system and sensory organs, but also morphological characters so far not used in the description of octopus species, such as the shape of the systemic heart. By using micro-CT, which is more suitable than MRI for visualization of chitinous tissues, the authors were also able to build the first interactive 3D model of a cephalopod beak.

Characteristics including shell form, fin position, and arm length identified the specimen as belonging to the genus Grimpoteuthis. However, the number of suckers, half-orange-shaped gills, and details of the shell differentiate it from all previously described Grimpoteuthis species.

Alexander Ziegler said: "The MRI and micro-CT datasets we have obtained here and which are publicly available from the repository MorphoBank could be used for further analyses that would not have been possible to this extent using conventional, invasive techniques. This may allow other researchers to draw conclusions about the life style and behaviour of hard-to-observe deep sea organisms."

A radically reformed approach to education, in which different subjects teach connected themes, like climate change or food security, is being proposed by researchers, who argue that it would better prepare children for future crises.

In a newly-published study, education researchers from the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh argue that there is a compelling case for a drastic shake-up of the school curriculum, so that subjects are no longer taught independently of one another. Instead, they argue that the arts and sciences should 'teach together' around real-world problems, and in a manner rooted in pupils' lived experiences.

The model draws inspiration from Renaissance polymaths like Leonardo Da Vinci, who worked across disciplinary boundaries in pursuit of deeper knowledge. Similar, 'trans-disciplinary' approaches are already used in well-regarded education systems such as Finland's. The idea also echoes recent calls by the youth campaign, Teach the Future, to break down subject silos to teach climate change.

The academic paper, in the journal Curriculum Perspectives, also presents evidence from two recent projects in which pupils appeared to benefit from an approach to teaching which blurred subject boundaries.

One, which invited South African teenagers from disadvantaged settings to create 'math-artworks', produced evidence that as well as increasing their familiarity with key mathematical principles, the project also enabled pupils to understand more about the relevance of maths in their own lives. In the second case study, primary school children in Aberdeen showed a deeper understanding of food security and environmental protection issues after learning to grow food in their school grounds.

Pam Burnard, Professor of Arts, Creativities and Education at the University of Cambridge, said: "If we look at the amazing designs that Da Vinci produced, it's clear he was combining different disciplines to advance knowledge and solve problems. We need to encourage children to think in a similar way because tomorrow's adults will have to problem-solve differently due to the existential crises they will face: especially those of climate, sustainability, and the precarity of life on Earth."

Dr Laura Colucci-Gray, of the University of Edinburgh's School of Education and Sport, said: "The nature of these problems calls for a radically different approach to knowledge. We are proposing a move from the idea of a curriculum as something children are just 'given' to a curriculum 'in-the-making', in response to transformations that will define their lives."

The paper contributes to an emerging field called 'STEAM' education. This seeks to reinsert the 'A' of arts into national attempts to encourage the uptake of STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), in response to a critical skills gap in related areas of the economy.

Some educationists argue that the emphasis on STEM is devaluing other subjects, and that arts disciplines are also powerful tools for delivering the problem-solving skills society needs. "For education to reflect that requires a major shift away from linear conceptions where subjects are taught separately, and towards a situation where they are inseparable," Burnard said.

In their alternative model, the researchers suggest giving schools greater freedom to determine how to meet general study targets set by the curriculum. Teachers and leadership teams would make collective decisions and share practices about how to engage pupils with unifying, cross-curricular themes, such as environmental sustainability.

They add that this might also involve the imaginative use of space and resources, and closer links between schools and their communities to connect learning to pupils' lived experiences beyond the classroom.

Evidence is also emerging that a transdisciplinary approach enhances pupils' acquisition of key skills. In the math-artwork project cited in the study, students in South Africa were asked to create art which showed the links between maths and the world around them. Subsequent analysis of the 113 submissions showed that pupils had applied principles such as measurement, ratio and proportion, and geometry in their creations.

The researchers also found, however, that participants had engaged deeply with the meaning of maths at a level rarely seen in conventional lessons. One especially powerful example, by a 16-year-old male student, was entitled The Stressed Vitruvian Man, inspired by Da Vinci's The Vitruvian Man. Like Da Vinci, the young artist's work was partly a study of the proportions of the human body, but at the same time, the student used it to comment on both the potential, and dangers, of creating a society built on mathematical principles alone.

Similarly, the primary school pupils in Aberdeen showed a deepened understanding of issues like food production and natural resource management when they were given the opportunity to take responsibility for a small piece of land in their school. Researchers found that the survival of plants became personal to the pupils, rather than just an abstract concept that they had learned about in science lessons. It also introduced them to other, related ethical challenges which those lessons rarely address: such as how to produce enough food when space is limited.

Any attempted reimagining of education along transdisciplinary lines would require children's attainment to be measured differently, the researchers add. "It would require a system of testing which measures how children are internalising ideas and what they are expressing - not just what they know," Burnard said. "That may be an uncomfortable idea for some, but it is the sort of radical thinking we need if education is going to prepare young people for the future."

SINGAPORE, 22 April 2021 - A multidisciplinary team of researchers from Duke-NUS Medical School and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore discovered a new mitochondrial peptide called MOCCI that plays an important role in regulating inflammation of blood vessel and immunity. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, revealed how one gene encoded two molecules that provide two-pronged protection following viral infection.

Chronic and excessive inflammation of the blood vessels, known as vascular inflammation, can lead to tissue damage and cardiovascular diseases such as atherosclerosis and fibrosis. Although some therapies have shown promising results in clinical trials, they have considerable side effects, such as immunosuppression leading to increased risk of infection, and limited efficacy. Therefore, more effective treatments are urgently needed.

"In this study, we aimed to identify new targets to combat inflammation in the lining of blood vessels. Specifically, we wanted to target small naturally-produced peptides that have not been studied before," explained Assistant Professor Lena Ho, from the Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases Programme at Duke-NUS, who led the team that included Associate Professor Ashley St John, Assistant Professor Owen Rackham and Senior Research Fellow Dr Cheryl Lee.

The Duke-NUS team, in collaboration with colleagues from the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology at A*STAR Singapore, investigated a group of peptides called Mito-SEPs that localise in mitochondria, the cellular organelles well-known for their role in cellular energy production. After observing that Mito-SEPs appear to be involved in regulating inflammation, they screened cells from the lining of human aortic blood vessels to uncover peptides involved in this process.

They found a new peptide, which they named MOCCI--short for Modulator of Cytochrome C oxidase during Inflammation--that is made only when cells undergo inflammation and infection.

To their surprise, they discovered that MOCCI is a hitherto unknown component of Complex IV, a part of a series of enzymes in the mitochondria responsible for energy production, called the electron transport chain. During inflammation, MOCCI incorporates into Complex IV to dampen its activity. Collaborating with Assoc Prof St John at Duke-NUS, the researchers found that this dampening is required to reduce inflammation following viral infection.

"Our finding that the composition of the electron transport chain changes in response to inflammation is novel. MOCCI in essence repurposes part of the energy production centre in the cell to regulate inflammation," said Dr Lee, the lead author of this study.

The researchers also discovered that MOCCI is made together with a micro-RNA molecule called miR-147b. The two molecules are made from different sections of the same gene. MOCCI originates from the sequence of the gene that codes for proteins, while miR-147b is made from the non-coding section.

While the miR-147b molecule also exerts anti-inflammatory effects, it actively prevents viruses from replicating at the same time. This implies that MOCCI and miR-147b function in tandem to help to control viral infection and suppress inflammation.

"This dual-pronged strategy is an elegant mechanism that the body has put in place to prevent excessive and potentially tissue-damaging inflammation during infection, such as the cytokine storm seen in COVID-19 infection, and colitis" said Asst Prof Ho. "The gene encoding MOCCI is one of the first genes described to have both coding and non-coding functions. The fact these dual functions are coordinated to achieve a concerted biological outcome is a significant finding in cell biology."

Professor Patrick Casey, Senior Vice-Dean for Research at Duke-NUS, commented, "Medicine and healthcare advance with the aid of new discoveries in fundamental research. This study by Asst Prof Ho and her collaborators provides valuable insight on inflammation and immunity--a topic that has become even more important in the context of COVID-19."

The researchers say the next step is to explore how to develop targeted pharmacological treatments that can mimic the anti-inflammatory effects of MOCCI and miR147b. They also plan to investigate the role of MOCCI in common chronic inflammatory diseases such as colitis and psoriasis.

Substantial proportions of pregnant and postpartum women scored high for symptoms of anxiety, depression, loneliness and post-traumatic stress in relation to COVID-19 in a survey carried out in May and June 2020, according to a new study published this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Karestan Koenen and Archana Basu of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, US, and colleagues.

Pregnant and postpartum women face unique challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic that may put them at elevated risk of mental health problems. These include concerns about greater severity of COVID-19 disease, potential infection of newborns and increased risk of adverse neonatal outcomes. Perinatal mental health problems are a critical public health issue which can adversely impact not only women's own health but also infant outcomes, mother-infant bonding, and later offspring health.

In the new study, researchers carried out an anonymous, online, cross-sectional survey of pregnant and postpartum women in 64 countries between May 26, 2020 and June 13, 2020. The survey was available in twelve languages and was advertised in social media and online parenting forums. Participants gave information on demographics, COVID-19 exposure and worries, information seeking behavior, COVID-19 prevention behaviors, and mental health symptoms. The mental health symptoms reported in the study were based on modified screening questionnaires rather than a clinical diagnosis.

The study found that, of 6,894 participants, a substantial number scored at or above the cut-off for elevated anxiety/depression (2,138, or 31 percent), loneliness (3,691, or 53 percent), and post-traumatic stress in relation to COVID-19 (2,979, or 43 percent), despite the fact that only 117 women (2 percent) had been diagnosed with COVID-19 and only 510 (7 percent) had been in contact with someone with COVID-19. These numbers were higher than rates of post-traumatic stress, anxiety and depression previously reported for the general population during the pandemic, or for perinatal and postpartum women prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Information seeking from any source--including social media, news or word-of-mouth--five or more times a day was associated with more than twice the odds of elevated post-traumatic stress in relation to COVID-19 and anxiety/depression. For example, checking social media more than five times a day was associated with 2.25 times higher odds of elevated post-traumatic stress (95%CI 1.92-2.65) and 2.83 times higher odds of anxiety/depression (95%CI 2.39-3.34). In addition, being very worried about COVID-19 was strongly associated with elevated post-traumatic stress (OR 4.75, 95%CI 3.34-6.87) and anxiety/depression (OR 1.51, 95% CI 1.09-2.13). The majority of participants reported engaging in COVID-19 prevention behaviors (e.g., 93.3 percent reported practicing hand hygiene and 84.5 percent reported wearing a face mask) but these behaviors were not associated with anxiety/ depression symptoms. The authors suggest that COVID-19 prevention behaviors are central to containing the viral spread and mitigating physical health risk, but public health campaigns and medical care systems also need to explicitly address the impact of COVID-19 related stressors on mental health in perinatal women.

The authors add: "Our results suggest that globally, pregnant women and new moms' mental health is still another casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic. Maternal mental health and wellbeing is critical for mothers and foundational for healthy child development. There is an urgent need for maternal mental health to be fully integrated into standard prenatal and postpartum care."

Time seems to pass more slowly in the UK COVID-19 lockdown - especially for people who are depressed, shielding or dissatisfied with social interactions