Culture

Published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, researchers in the Climate Intervention Biology Working Group -- including Jessica Hellmann from the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment -- explored the effect of solar climate interventions on ecology.

Composed of climate scientists and ecologists from leading research universities internationally, the team found that more research is needed to understand the ecological impacts of solar radiation modification (SRM) technologies that reflect small amounts of sunlight back into space. The team focused on a specific proposed SRM strategy -- referred to as stratospheric aerosol intervention (SAI)) -- to create a sulfate aerosol cloud in the stratosphere to reduce a portion of incoming sunlight and radiation. In theory, this cloud could be controlled in size and location.

SAI is like placing tiny reflective particles in the atmosphere to bounce a portion of the solar radiation back to space, so that some of the radiation does not reach -- and warm -- Earth.

The team emphasizes that greenhouse gas emissions reduction and conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem functions must be the priority.

"We are just starting to consider the risks and benefits of geoengineering, and it's critical that we include ecosystems in cost-benefit studies", said Hellmann, director at the U of M Institute on the Environment. "We should only pursue geoengineering if its benefits strongly outweigh its downsides. Because our efforts to stem climate change are modest and slow, the case for considering geoengineering is growing, and this paper represents the ecologists chiming in to the geoengineering conversation."

The complexity of cascading relationships between ecosystems and climate under SAI -- in combination with the timing, amount, length and termination of SAI scenarios -- means that SAI is not a simple thermostat that turns down the heat a couple of degrees. Other potential effects of SAI include shifts in rainfall and increases in surface UV rays. While SAI might cool an overheated Earth, it would not be able to counter all of the effects of rising atmospheric CO2, such as halting ocean acidification.

"When we approach complex questions like these, there is a broad scale, theoretical understanding of the inherent patterns of biodiversity across the surface of Earth, but this understanding is often informed by finer-scale experiments that test the biological and physical mechanisms underlying those patterns," said Phoebe Zarnetske, study co-lead and an associate professor in Michigan State University's Department of Integrative Biology and the Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior program.

"I hope the paper can convince ecologists that research about nature's responses to solar geoengineering is not just important, but also interesting -- touching on core ecological questions about topics as varied as photosynthesis and animal migration," said U of M alum Shan Kothari, who contributed to the study during his time at the College of Biological Sciences before going to the University of Montreal.

Kothari said that an example of how other scientists can consider the study's findings is to contemplate the unique conditions resulting from solar geoengineering scenarios that may aid or impede the ability for ecosystems to store carbon. He added that such research could help the international community consider solar geoengineering with a stronger awareness of the potential risks and benefits involved.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Race associates with the risk of death from end-stage heart failure. So, identifying the molecular determinants of that risk may help the pursuit of the novel diagnosis and prognosis of heart failure, and its therapy.

A University of Alabama at Birmingham study of end-stage heart-failure patients has found that cytosine-p-guanine, or CpG, methylation of the DNA in the heart has a bimodal distribution among the patients, and that race -- African American versus Caucasian -- was the sole variable in patient records that explained the difference. A subsequent look at the census tracts where the patients lived showed that the African American subjects lived in neighborhoods with more racial diversity and poverty, suggesting that the underlying variable may be a socioeconomic difference.

Methylation of DNA is a form of epigenetics, an indirect method of gene regulation that can change with gene-environment interaction. Previously the Wende laboratory has shown that these DNA modifications differentiate ischemic and non-ischemic heart failure.

The current UAB study included a pilot cohort of 11 heart-failure patients, followed by a testing cohort of 31 heart-failure patients, all of them male. The heart muscle tissue for the study was obtained when patients underwent surgery to install a left ventricular assist device, or LVAD -- a small mechanical pump carried outside the body that helps a weakened heart pump blood. During the surgery, a piece of the left ventricle is excised; it is otherwise discarded but could be used for this study.

Heretofore, epigenetics has been an underexplored source of heterogeneity among patients with end-stage heart failure. The UAB researchers found differential promoter hyper-methylation of genes involved in fatty acid metabolism among African American heart muscle samples, relative to Caucasian samples, and also higher expression of lipogenesis genes. Such metabolic perturbations are a pathological hallmark of end-stage heart failure, as the heart gets more of its energy from glycolysis -- that is from glucose sugar -- as it fails.

This finding generated two hypotheses, says Adam R. Wende, Ph.D., the associate professor in the UAB Department of Pathology who led the study: 1) that the epigenetic remodeling of cardiac gene regulation determines the therapeutic potential of LVADs, and 2) that epigenetic reprogramming of cardiac gene regulation constitutes a mechanism that may influence responsiveness to LVAD-induced cardiac unloading, meaning possible improvement of the heart as the pump takes over part of the work.

In contrast to the hyper-methylated promoters, the genes that had differentially hypo-methylated promoters, or lower levels of methylation, in African American hearts disproportionately represented inflammatory signaling cascades.

Additionally, the UAB researchers did a retrospective analysis of deaths from any cause in the 31 testing cohort patients two years after heart pump implantation. African Americans had a significantly higher rate of death, eight of 15 patients, versus Caucasians, two of 14.

The need for better treatment of heart failure is great. Only half of heart-failure patients respond to medical management, and African Americans experience worse clinical outcomes than any United States race or ethnicity.

"African Americans with heart failure are hospitalized at a rate 2.5-times higher than other races or ethnicities," Wende said. "Furthermore, despite a threefold higher mortality from heart-failure complications, the prevalence of heart failure among African Americans continues to increase."

"It is estimated that 3.6 percent of this community will live with heart failure by 2030, exceeding the predicted prevalence of any other race or ethnicity in America," Wende said. "Therefore, it is paramount to identify and address the issues that underly these disturbing racial differences in heart-failure morbidity and mortality."

The UAB researchers noted the limitation that this was a single-center study; but Wende said, "Nevertheless, we provide preliminary evidence that socioeconomic factors are likely associated with racial differences in cardiac DNA methylation among men with end-stage heart failure."

More than 20 years after the discovery of the parkin gene linked to young-onset Parkinson's disease, researchers at The Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa may have finally figured out how this mysterious gene protects the brain.

Using human and mouse brain samples and engineered cells, they found that the parkin protein works in two ways. First, it acts like a powerful antioxidant that disarms potentially harmful oxidants in the brain, including dopamine radicals. Second, as the brain ages and dopamine radicals continue to build up, parkin sequesters these harmful molecules in a special storage site within vulnerable nerve cells, so they can continue to function normally throughout our lifespan.

In people with mutations in both copies of the parkin gene, these protective effects are missing, and as a result Parkinson's develops before the age of 40 years. If confirmed, the results could point the way towards the development of new treatments.

"If we could deliver antioxidants or a healthy copy of the parkin gene into the brains of people with these mutations, this could help slow down or even halt early-onset Parkinson's," said co-corresponding author and scientific project manager Dr. Julianna Tomlinson.

"What we don't know yet is whether such an approach could also benefit individuals with late-onset Parkinson's that is not linked to the parkin gene," added co-corresponding author Dr. Michael Schlossmacher, neurologist and Director of Neuroscience at The Ottawa Hospital. "We are eager to investigate this."

With a lethal, airborne virus spreading fast, hospitals had to change how they treated patients and policies for how caregivers provided that treatment. But for maternity patients and nurses some of those changes had negative outcomes, according to a new University of Washington study.

"We found that visitor restrictions and separation policies were harming families and nurses. The effects for patients included loneliness, isolation and mistrust, while nurses described mistrust and low morale," said Molly Altman, lead author of the study and assistant professor in the UW School of Nursing.

Importantly, Altman added, both nurses and patients described how COVID "amplified existing racially biased and disrespectful care experiences for Black women and birthing people, in part due to loss of protection and advocacy that support people provide."

The study, published March 31 in Global Qualitative Nursing Research, involved in-depth interviews with 15 patients from Washington state and 14 nurses from Washington, New York, Georgia and Michigan. Nearly half of participants in both groups self-identified as BIPOC and for slightly more than half this was their first birth.

Under COVID-19 restrictions, patients experienced a shift from in-person visits, a source of social and emotional support, to virtual conversations or telehealth and more perfunctory exchanges in offices with physical distancing. Pregnancy education and group classes all moved online, while family and friends were excluded from patient care when in the hospital or clinic. Meanwhile, nurses experienced shifting policies and procedures that led to a collective mistrust of management and administration.

In the interviews, researchers wrote, patient responses focused on how hospital adaptations "were inadequate to meet their needs" and, in addition to mistrust, nurse responses focused on how inconsistencies in policies and policy implementation affected their ability to "safely care for patients."

Here are a few verbatim transcriptions of statements patients gave researchers (with minor edits):

About telehealth ...

I want to be able to actually have a check-in and actually have a doctor be able to check everything's fine and make sure the baby's heartbeat is still okay or see how my uterus is measuring and things like that that are more concrete. ... I see the phone conversation just more being like, "Is everything okay," and me saying "Yes" and then that kind of being it.

Communication with providers ...

We don't talk about how this is affecting us or what it means for the future. It's just they leave you hanging like, "Okay, well I'm guessing everything's okay so I'm just going to walk on out of here." But if you could just say something nice, concise and brief but meaty it would be perfect.

Education and nursing support ...

I lost ... the classes that we were supposed to need. I was so excited to join those classes because I could get a chance to meet with other mothers that we may build connections, right? But because of COVID we just don't have the chance of doing that.

People were there [in labor] to support me and to make sure I was okay and then I felt like postpartum everyone disappeared.

Racial bias ...

Being [a person] of color, you already kind of deal with the standoffish approach from certain people and so like ... the virus kind of gives [them] that reason to, it's just like that. It's like even though I already feel this way, now I have a reason to act this way.

I'm an educated Black woman. I'm a nurse. I know what's going on with my body and I know how this stuff works and I still feel like so inferior, like to my [birth] team. That's crazy to me.

Following are a few verbatim transcriptions of statements nurses gave researchers (with minor edits):

Lack of planning ...

I was disappointed to see that in the, at least a month, more like six weeks since we'd had just the one COVID patient, that not a lot had been done to prepare in the meantime, both on a national scale and just at our hospital.

Policy changes ...

I felt like at times on my shift, policies would change literally every 15 to 30 minutes. You do something one way and you get an email within the hour that this now has changed and we're doing this procedure this way and it was just constant like nobody knows what they're doing so it was very stressful.

Morale problems ...

I'm just doing everything for this patient and then I'm not thinking about my own family. Even if I [say] let whatever happen to me ... I have responsibilities for my family too. I'm not just a nurse, right? I'm a mother. When I took the oath to be a nurse, before that maybe I took an oath to be a good mother.

[a patient complained and] that stung because I remember going to my manager's room that day and asking for more supplies so that I could go into the room more frequently without having to break the gowns and reuse the gowns and she said, "You use what you have and I'm not giving you anything else."

Racial bias ...

[obstetrical resident physician] went in to go talk to [a patient] about the need for induction and instead of including the father in the conversation or even introducing herself, she went in, completely turned her back on the dad ... I've been there 10 years and I have never seen that with any Caucasian couple.

"We need to really center the voices and experiences of marginalized people, especially BIPOC, in policy. We need to ensure that communication is transparent and that we are trustworthy to the groups we develop policies for -- patients, nurses, the public, everyone," said Meghan Eagen-Torkko, study co-author and assistant professor in UW Bothell School of Nursing and Health Studies. "We have to stop thinking of policy as a top-down process, because Covid has shown us quite clearly that this doesn't work."

How many species of birds are there in the world? It depends on whose count you go by. The number could be as low as 10,000 or as high as 18,000. It's tough to standardize lists of species because the concept of a "species" itself is a little bit fuzzy.

That matters because conserving biodiversity requires knowing what diversity exists in the first place. So biologists, led by University of Utah doctoral candidate Monte Neate-Clegg of the School of Biological Sciences, set out to compare four main lists of bird species worldwide to find out how the lists differ--and why. They found that although the lists agree on most birds, disagreements in some regions of the world could mean that some species are missed by conservation ecologists.

"Species are more than just a name," Neate-Clegg says. "They are functional units in complex ecosystems that need to be preserved. We need to recognize true diversity in order to conserve it."

The results are published in Global Ecology and Biogeography.

On the origin of species

The definition of a species isn't clear-cut. Some scientists define populations as different species if they're reproductively isolated from each other and unable to interbreed. Others use physical features to delineate species, while yet others use genetics. Using the genetic definition produces many more species, but regardless of the method, gray areas persist.

"Species are fuzzy because speciation as a process is fuzzy," Neate-Clegg says. "It's a gradual process so it's very difficult to draw a line and say 'this is two species' vs. 'this is one species.'"

Also, he says, physical features and genetic signatures don't always diverge on the same timescale. "For example," he says, "two bird populations may diverge in song and appearance before genetic divergence; conversely, identical populations on different islands may be separated genetically by millions of years."

Comparing the lists

At this point in the story, it's time to introduce four lists, each of which purports to include all the bird species in the world. They are:

The Howard and Moore Checklist of the Birds of the World
The eBird/Clements Checklist of Birds of the World
The BirdLife International Checklist of the Birds of the World
The International Ornithological Community (IOC) World Bird List

"Being active field ornithologists who are always trying to ID bird species means that one is always faced with the issue of some species being on one list but not the other," says Çağan Şekercioğlu, associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences. "So our field experience very much primed us to think about this question and inspired us to write this paper."

The lists have different strengths depending on their application. The BirdLife International list, for example, integrates with the IUCN Red List, which reports on species' conservation status. The IOC list is updated by experts twice a year, Şekercioğlu says. The list is open access with comparisons to other major lists, and changes are documented transparently.

"But as a birdwatcher, I use eBird all the time, which uses the Clements checklist, and that dataset is very powerful in its own right," Neate-Clegg says. "So there is no single best option."

One example of the disagreement between lists might be the common bird Colaptes auratus. The eBird list calls it the northern flicker, a woodpecker. But the BirdLife International list delineates the eastern population as the yellow-shafted flicker and the western population as the red-shafted flicker.

In 2020, Neate-Clegg and his colleagues read a study that compared the raptor species on each list, finding that only 68% of species were consistent among all four lists.

"We thought it would be interesting to investigate taxonomic agreement for all 11,000 bird species," Neate-Clegg says. "More importantly, we wanted to try and work out what species characteristics led to more or less taxonomic confusion."

They began by collecting the most recent version of each list (the IOC checklist is updated biannually, the researchers write, and the Clements and BirdLife lists annually, while Howard and Moore has not been updated since 2014) and trimming them down to exclude subspecies and any extinct species. Using a few other data processing rules, they assigned a single name to every possible species across all four lists. Then the comparisons began.

Where the lists agree and disagree

The researchers found that the four lists agreed on the vast majority of bird species--89.5%. For the remaining 10.5%, then, they started to look for patterns that might explain the disagreement. Some of it was likely geographical. Birds from the well-studied Northern Hemisphere were more likely to find agreement than birds from the relatively understudied Southeast Asia and the Southern Ocean.

Some of it was habitat-based. Agreement was higher for large, migratory species in relatively open habitats.

"I think the most surprising result was that agreement was not lower for highly forest-dependent species," Neate-Clegg says. "We expected these denizens of the rainforest floor to be the most cryptic and hard to study, with more uncertainty on their taxonomic relationships. Yet we found it was actually species of intermediate forest dependency that had lower taxonomic agreement. We believe that these species move about just enough to diverge, but not so much that their gene pools are constantly mixing."

And part of the issue with species classification on isolated islands, such as those in Southeast Asia and the Southern Ocean, was a phenomenon called "cryptic diversification." Although islands can foster species diversification because of their isolation, sometimes two populations on different islands can appear very similar, even though their genes suggest that they've been isolated from each other for millions of years. So, depending on the definition, two populations could count as two species or as only one.

"In addition," Neate-Clegg says, "it's very hard to test the traditional biological species concept on island fauna because we cannot know whether two populations can interbreed to produce fertile young if they are geographically isolated."

Why it matters

So what if some people disagree on species designations? Conservation actions are usually on the species level, Neate-Clegg says.

"If a population on one island goes extinct, people may care less if it's 'just a subspecies,'" he says. "And yet that island is potentially losing a functionally unique population. If it was recognized as a full species it might not have been lost."

Neate-Clegg hopes the study points ornithologists towards the groups of species that merit additional attention.

"We also want conservation biologists to recognize that cryptic diversity may be overlooked," he adds, "and that we should consider units of conservation above and below the species level."

A new analysis of lung epithelial cells from COVID-19 patients reveals how the protective complement branch of the immune system, which usually plays roles in both innate and adaptive immunity, can convert to a harmful system during COVID-19. Blocking excessive complement activity in lung epithelial cells with a combination of existing chemotherapy and antiviral medications - ruxolitinib and remdesivir, respectively - helped normalize the production of complement proteins by infected lung epithelial cells in human cell culture experiments, the researchers found. Thus, the drug duo could serve as a promising strategy to treat damaging inflammation during severe COVID-19, the authors say. Overactivation of complement proteins can contribute to diseases such as acute respiratory distress syndrome, and increasing evidence suggests that excessive complement responses also correlate with disease severity in patients with severe COVID-19. However, it remains unclear what rewires this normally protective system into a dangerous one during severe COVID-19. To dig into this question, Bingyu Yan and colleagues analyzed bulk and single cell RNA-sequencing data from blood and lung tissues of patients with COVID-19 and compared them with those from healthy controls. In COVID-19 patients, the complement system was one of the most highly induced pathways in lung epithelial cells infected by SARS-CoV-2, as indicated by the high expression of genes that control expression and activation of complement protein C3. Further analyses showed that the IFN-JAK1/2-STAT1 inflammatory pathway and NF-κB transcription factor were highly involved in the transcription of complement genes in infected lung epithelial cells. Blocking these pathways using the cancer chemotherapy drug ruxolitinib helped normalize expression of complement and IFN-controlling genes in human lung epithelial cell lines. Combining ruxolitinib with the antiviral drug remdesivir additionally blocked NF-κB activity, inhibiting overproduction of C3a by infected cells and further normalizing the transcription and production of complement protein fragments. This heightened understanding of the complement system's contribution to COVID-19 could drive the discovery of much-needed treatments, the authors say.

WYOMISSING, Pa. -- Teaching people to become entrepreneurs requires more than just passing on entrepreneurial skills, according to a team of Penn State Berks-led researchers. Would-be entrepreneurs also need to understand -- and negotiate -- the barriers that they might face.

In a study, researchers built a multidimensional model to measure the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education. The model not only includes teaching entrepreneurial skills, but also addresses the students' intentions to start a business and their perceptions of the barriers they might encounter when starting a business.

"There are a lot of studies in the literature that focus on, for example, how entrepreneurship education influences the students' competence in starting a business," said Abdullah Konak, professor of information sciences and technology. "But, our model does not look at it from one perspective. We look at it from three perspectives -- competencies, intentions and barriers. What we found was that entrepreneurship education helps to increase the students' skills. If those skills help to reduce the barriers, then it increases their intentions to start a business."

Traditionally, much of entrepreneurship education offers students lessons to develop skills, for example, offering them an understanding of finance, marketing, intellectual property and team management, Konak added. However, the acquisition of these skills may not directly lead people to start businesses.

"There are a lot of reasons why people don't want to become entrepreneurs, but one of those reasons is that they see barriers," said Konak, who is also an Institute for Computational and Data Sciences associate. "Maybe they're not sure on how to start a business, maybe they're worried it will take too much time, maybe they think they don't know the domain well enough -- there are a lot of issues."

According to the researchers, who report their findings in a recent issue of Studies in Educational Evaluation, lessons can be designed so that they not only teach entrepreneurial skills, but also show that barriers may not be as daunting as the students believe.

"For example, take a simple step, like registering a business," said Konak. "One lesson we use is to have the students go to a government website and search for company names and whether the business they are visualizing is registered. Then, the students learn the steps of what it takes to register a business in Pennsylvania. This is a very simple assignment, but I think it helps them remove a barrier."

Entrepreneurism helps the economy in several ways, said Konak, who worked with Haibin Liu, associate professor at the Institute of Employment and Entrepreneurship Education at Northeast Normal University, who was also the paper's first author, and Sadan Kulturel-Konak, professor of management information systems and the director of Flemming Creativity, Entrepreneurship and Economic Development (CEED) Center at Penn State Berks. Liu visited Penn State Berks between 2018 and 2020 to collaborate with Kulturel-Konak and Konak on entrepreneurship education.

First, entrepreneurism drives economic development and growth, he said.

"There is a real strong connection between well-being of people, economic growth and entrepreneurial activity," said Konak. "Entrepreneurial activity is how we grow the economy -- not just in the U.S., but globally. A lot of people might think of entrepreneurism as just a money-making activity, but it's actually about growing the entire pie for everyone."

He added that entrepreneurship education can also help established businesses by training employees to become more innovative workers.

"Our goal in entrepreneurship education is not just about starting up businesses, but it's actually about instilling an innovative mindset in our students," Konak said. "That's the broader goal of entrepreneurship education."

The researchers collected data from 416 college students at two different campuses of a major Chinese university located in China. The students were business, engineering and social sciences undergraduate students who participated in a four-month entrepreneurship education program. The participants were asked a series of questions about their participation in entrepreneurship education programs, their intentions to become an entrepreneur and their understanding of entrepreneurial barriers.

Penn State Berks has a long history of entrepreneurship studies, said Konak. The Flemming Creativity, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Development Center (CEED) Center, for example, was established in the fall of 2011 to inspire an entrepreneurial spirit and innovative thinking in the Penn State Berks local community.

In the future, the team plans to continue to develop and refine these models of entrepreneurship education.

Eight months after mild COVID-19, one in ten people still has at least one moderate to severe symptom that is perceived as having a negative impact on their work, social or home life. The most common long-term symptoms are a loss of smell and taste and fatigue. This is according to a study published in the journal JAMA, conducted by researchers at Danderyd Hospital and Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.

Since spring 2020, researchers at Danderyd Hospital and Karolinska Institutet have conducted the so-called COMMUNITY study, with the main purpose of examining immunity after COVID-19. In the first phase of the study in spring 2020, blood samples were collected from 2,149 employees at Danderyd Hospital, of whom about 19 percent had antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. Blood samples have since then been collected every four months, and study participants have responded to questionnaires regarding long-term symptoms and their impact on the quality of life.

In the third follow-up in January 2021, the research team examined self-reported presence of long-term symptoms and their impact on work, social and home life for participants who had had mild COVID-19 at least eight months earlier. This group consisted of 323 healthcare workers (83 percent women, median age 43 years) and was compared with 1,072 healthcare workers (86 percent women, median age 47 years) who did not have COVID-19 throughout the study period.

The results show that 26 percent of those who had COVID-19 previously, compared to 9 percent in the control group, had at least one moderate to severe symptom that lasted more than two months and that 11 percent, compared to 2 percent in the control group, had a minimum of one symptom with negative impact on work, social or home life that lasted at least eight months. The most common long-term symptoms were loss of smell and taste, fatigue, and respiratory problems.

"We investigated the presence of long-term symptoms after mild COVID-19 in a relatively young and healthy group of working individuals, and we found that the predominant long-term symptoms are loss of smell and taste. Fatigue and respiratory problems are also more common among participants who have had COVID-19 but do not occur to the same extent," says Charlotte Thålin, specialist physician, Ph.D. and lead researcher for the COMMUNITY study at Danderyd Hospital and Karolinska Institutet. "However, we do not see an increased prevalence of cognitive symptoms such as brain fatigue, memory and concentration problems or physical disorders such as muscle and joint pain, heart palpitations or long-term fever."

"Despite the fact that the study participants had a mild COVID-19 infection, a relatively large proportion report long-term symptoms with an impact on quality of life. In light of this, we believe that young and healthy individuals, as well as other groups in society, should have great respect for the virus that seems to be able to significantly impair quality of life, even for a long time after the infection," says Sebastian Havervall, deputy chief physician at Danderyd Hospital and PhD student in the project at Karolinska Institutet.

The COMMUNITY study will now continue, with the next follow-up taking place in May when a large proportion of study participants are expected to be vaccinated. In addition to monitoring immunity and the occurrence of re-infection, several projects regarding post- COVID are planned.

"We will, among other things, be studying COVID-19-associated loss of smell and taste more closely, and investigate whether the immune system, including autoimmunity, plays a role in post-COVID," says Charlotte Thålin.

The Mfd protein repairs bacterial DNA, but can also, to scientists' surprise, promote mutation.

Bacterial mutations can lead to antibiotic resistance.

Understanding this second "role" of the Mfd protein opens up opportunities for combating antibiotic resistance, and also the resistance of tumours to anti-cancer drugs and therapies.

Using a specialized protein, all bacteria are capable of rapidly and effectively repairing damage to their DNA from UV. However, this mutation frequency decline (Mfd) protein plays another role and causes mutations. A team involving scientists from CNRS, ENS-PSL and supported by Inserm has demonstrated and described this phenomenon. Better understanding of mutations opens up prospects in the fight against resistance to antibiotics and anti-cancer therapies. This study was published in PNAS on 5 April 2021.

DNA can undergo many degradations, including UV degradation. Just as a landslide on a railway track will prevent a train from passing, the damage generated by UV rays is an obstacle to RNA polymerase, a protein that travels along the length of DNA to read its instructions. RNA polymerase being blocked at any point prevents damage from being repaired. To restore the "track", bacteria possess the Mfd protein that clears the blocked RNA polymerase, and then recruits other proteins to help with the repairs, avoiding mutations.

Biologists from the Institut de Biologie de l'ENS (CNRS/ENS - PSL/INSERM) have just solved the mystery behind a previously lesser-known role of this protein. It is involved in the formation of DNA areas where mutations appear more easily.

The cell machinery involving the Mfd protein normally repairs DNA, but when a bacterium faces certain stressors, such as the presence of an antibiotic, it takes another route: Mfd grips to an active RNA polymerase as it scrolls through DNA, rather than clearing a blocked RNA polymerase. Once bound together, the two proteins unwind the double DNA helix rapidly and on a large scale, forcing it open. The opening of the two DNA strands creates a favourable environment for the formation of particular zones facilitating mutations: R-loops.

R-loops are still poorly understood structures, but they are the source of many mutations: scientists have shown that nearly half of the mutations in bacteria are due to these structures. As antibiotic resistance is born from mutations, this work, which demonstrates the link between Mfd and R-loops, opens up new perspectives in the fight against antibiotic resistance.

The research team also points out that Mfd has equivalents in the various branches of life and that this mutation mechanism is probably universally present. In humans, for example, the protein homologous to Mfd is involved in accelerated ageing and evolution of tumor resistance to chemotherapy. Scientists believe that a mechanism similar to R-loop formation could occur in cancer cells, introducing mutations that can make them resistant to treatment.

Philadelphia, April 7, 2021 - Building family child care home providers' (FCCH) self-efficacy--an individual's belief in their ability to manage their situation--for healthy eating is an important component of health promotion and can buffer the impact of stress on their diet quality, according to a new study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, published by Elsevier.

"The FCCH provider is an important source of child care in this country. A lot of families from lower-income environments use the FCCH because of its affordability and location," said Dianne Ward, EdD, of the Department of Nutrition, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.

FCCH providers can experience multiple stressors including work-life balance, lack of social support from other early care and education professionals, and difficulties managing all aspects of both child care and business operations, often with little to no assistance.

To understand the potential determinants of the health of FCCH providers, a group at risk for high stress, poor sleep, and obesity, researchers examined stress levels, sleep quality, and diet self-efficacy of 166 licensed FCCH providers over the age of 18 from central North Carolina.

The study's results showed diet self-efficacy moderating the FCCH provider stress-diet quality relationship. When stress was low, diet quality was similar among individuals across all levels of diet self-efficacy. With higher stress, those with high diet self-efficacy seem to cope with the stress and have a better diet quality. In contrast, those with low diet self-efficacy seem to be negatively affected by stress and have a poorer diet quality.

"As nutrition professionals, we often get caught up in telling people what to eat. We need to remember to facilitate the how to eat. We need to give people the confidence that they can select, consume, and obtain the right food, and that if they do, they can have a healthy diet. The study underscored how important diet self-efficacy really is," noted Dr, Ward.

A generation of talented but disadvantaged children are being denied access to higher education because academic success in lower and middle-income countries is continually 'protected by wealth', a study has found.

The research, which used data from around 3,500 young people in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam, shows that promising but poorer students 'fall away' during their school years, as challenges associated with their socio-economic circumstances gradually erode their potential. Among children who showed similar levels of ability aged 8, for example, the wealthiest were often over 30 percentage points more likely than the least-wealthy to enter all forms of tertiary education: including university, technical colleges, and teacher training.

Even when they focused only on students who complete secondary school with comparable levels of learning, the researchers found that those from wealthier backgrounds were still more likely to progress to higher education. They describe their findings, reported in the British Education Research Journal, as indicative of the 'protective effect' of wealth in relation to academic advantage.

The study was undertaken by the Research in Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. Dr Sonia Ilie, its lead author, said: "In many lower-income countries, low socio-economic status is a continual barrier to young people's attainment. What is clear is that these inequalities in higher education access have nothing to do with ability: this is about systems which are consistently failing poorer children."

The data used in the research was from Young Lives, an international childhood poverty study which is tracking two cohorts of young people from Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam. The Cambridge researchers focused on the group born in 1994/5. Young Lives includes information about education and attainment at ages 8, 12, 15, 19 and 22, and importantly therefore includes the many young people in lower-income countries who may enter higher education after age 19.

The researchers started by comparing basic entry rates into higher education among the poorest 25% and wealthiest 25% of participants. The percentage point gap between these quartiles was 45 in both India and Peru, 41 in Vietnam, and 17 in Ethiopia.

They then analysed higher education progression rates among increasingly comparable groups of students. First, they focused on those with similar demographic characteristics (for example, those specifically from urban settings). They then progressively added more information about their education to examine students who were both in school, and achieving certain attainment levels, aged 8, 12 and 15.

The gap between the poorest and richest students' likelihood of enrolling in higher education narrowed steadily as each level of information was factored in. Given the disparity in the 'raw' wealth gap, this indicates that children from poor backgrounds often fail to progress because they drop out, or under-achieve, throughout primary and secondary school.

Crucially, however, a gap still existed between rich and poor even among students who finished secondary school with comparable levels of learning. The size of the remaining gap reflected the complexities of each country's higher education systems, but showed that at the same level of schooling and learning, wealth played this protective effect.

The study also analysed the progress of 'high-promise' children. The researchers identified all children who had achieved a certain level of literacy at age 8, and then used numeracy and maths scores to compare the educational trajectories of the richest and poorest among this group.

Overall, the attainment gap between high-promise children from the top and bottom wealth quartiles widened during school, even though their test scores were similar at age 8. Ultimately, many more high-promise children from the richest quartile entered higher education compared with the poorest: the percentage point gap between the two groups was 39 in Peru, 32 in India and Vietnam, and 15 in Ethiopia.

"Even among children who do well to begin with, poverty clearly becomes an obstacle to progression," Ilie said. "The reverse also applies: if they are wealthy, even children with initially lower levels of learning catch up with their poorest peers. This is what we mean by the protective effect of wealth."

The study says that the first priority in addressing the higher education wealth gap should be targeted investment in primary education for the very poorest. This is already an emerging policy focus in many lower-income countries, where disadvantaged children, even if they go to school, often have poor learning outcomes. The reasons for this, documented in several other studies, include limited educational resources and support at home, and practical difficulties with school attendance.

The findings also indicate, however, that targeted support should continue during secondary education, where wealth-related barriers persist. In addition, the residual wealth gap even among those who finish secondary school highlights a need for initiatives that will reduce the cost of higher education for disadvantaged students.

The study suggests that means-tested grants may be one viable solution, but further evidence is required. It also warns that at present, taxation-based funding for higher education will essentially 'subsidise a socio-economic elite', while tuition fees will further prohibit access for the poorest.

Professor Pauline Rose, Director of the REAL Centre, said: "If we want to equalise opportunities at the point of entry into higher education, we have to intervene early, when the wealth gaps emerge. This study shows that targeted and sustained interventions and funding are needed for the poorest students not only in their earliest years, but throughout their educational careers."

School-based interventions that target students with, or at risk of, academic difficulties in kindergarten to grade 6 have positive effects on reading and mathematics, according to an article published in Campbell Systematic Reviews.

The review analyzed evidence from 205 studies, 186 of which were randomized controlled trials, to examine the effects of targeted school-based interventions on students' performance on standardized tests in reading and math.

Peer-assisted instruction and small-group instruction by adults were among the most effective interventions. The authors noted that these have substantial potential to boost skills in students experiencing academic difficulties.

"It is exciting to see that there are many interventions with substantial impacts on math and reading skills, especially in these times when many students have not been able to attend school and the number of students who need extra help may be even larger than usual," said lead author Jens Dietrichson, PhD, of VIVE, the Danish Center for Social Science Research. "It is also interesting that there is large variation: far from all interventions have positive effects, and there are substantial and robust differences between the types of interventions. Thus, schools can boost the skills of students with difficulties by implementing targeted interventions, but it matters greatly how they do it."

In addition to causing blood sugar imbalances, type 1 diabetes can contribute to nerve damage and sensory abnormalities--a condition call neuropathy--and has been linked to a higher risk of bone fractures. A new study published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research has examined the effects of type 1 diabetes and diabetic neuropathy on the skeleton.

Investigators found that type 1 diabetes and diabetic neuropathy have various impacts on bone structure, but these effects do not fully explain the higher fracture risk in patients with type 1 diabetes.

The results suggest that the increase in the risk of fractures in type 1 diabetes is multifactorial, with both skeletal and non-skeletal features involved.

"It is important to investigate what leads to an increased risk of fractures in type 1 diabetes. Our results suggest that in addition to bone features, balance and muscle strength also play a role," said lead author Tatiane Vilaca, MD, PhD, of the University of Sheffield, in the U.K. "These findings could help improve approaches to fracture prevention."

Steroids are essential for treating children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a type of cancer of the blood and bone marrow, but they can cause severe side effects such as psychological reactions and sleep problems. An analysis of all relevant studies published to date indicates that there's insufficient high-quality research investigating the risk factors for these side effects.

The analysis, which is published in Psycho-Oncology, included 24 studies. The authors of the analysis noted that overall, there is little evidence regarding risk factors for steroid-induced psychological reactions and sleep problems in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and the quality of evidence is low. However, evidence suggests that the type and dose of steroids are not related to psychological reactions, but may be related to sleep problems. Younger patients seem at risk for behavioral problems and older patients for sleep problems.

"There is a lot to gain in the prevention and treatment of steroid-induced psychological and sleep problems, and recognition comes first," said senior author Raphaële R.L. van Litsenburg, MD, PhD, of the Princess Máxima Center in The Netherlands. "A standardized registration of these side effects and their risk factors is warranted for future studies."

The COVID-19 pandemic and the global response to it have changed many of the interactions that humans have with nature, in both positive and negative ways. A perspective article published in People and Nature considers these changes, discusses the potential long-term consequences, and provides recommendations for further research.

The authors of the article note that the pandemic constitutes a 'global natural experiment' in human-nature interactions that, without seeking to downplay or ignore its tragic consequences, provides a rare opportunity to produce in-depth knowledge about these interactions and to help establish actions that can have positive effects for both humans and nature.

"Although undeniably tragic, the COVID-19 pandemic may offer an invaluable opportunity to explore an appropriate future relationship between people and nature," said lead author Masashi Soga, PhD, of the University of Tokyo.