Culture

Women who suffer from vision, hearing or dual sensory loss are more than twice as likely to report depression and anxiety as men who experience the same issues, according to a new study by Anglia Ruskin University (ARU).

The research, which has been published in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, looked at survey data from more than 23,000 adults, where participants had self-reported whether they had suffered depression or anxiety, and also whether they experienced vision, hearing, or dual (both vision and hearing) sensory impairment.

Across the whole sample, the prevalence of depression and anxiety was between 2 and 2.56 higher in women compared to men.

Women with dual sensory impairment were almost three and a half times more likely to report depression or anxiety than those who did not have any impairments, while men with dual sensory impairment were more than two and a half times more likely to experience depression, and almost twice as likely to report anxiety than those with no impairment.

Lead author Professor Shahina Pardhan, Director of the Vision and Eye Research Institute at ARU, said: "Our study found that while sensory loss, particularly both vision and hearing loss, results in a higher number of the population reporting depression and anxiety, the association is particularly strong in women.

"This highlights the importance of interventions to address vision and hearing loss, especially in women. Some sensory loss is preventable or treatable, and clearly these issues are taking their toll not just on physical health, but mental health too."

Usually, the different areas in the cerebrum take on a very specific function. For example, they process our movements or things we see or hear, i.e. direct physical information. However, some areas of the brain come into play when dealing with more advanced mental tasks. They process incoming information that has already been pre-processed and is thus already at an abstract level.

It was already known that the inferior parietal lobe (IPL) is one of these regions in the human brain. Nevertheless, it was unclear how this area is able to process such very different functions. In a large study, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI CBS) in Leipzig and McGill University in Montreal have helped to solve this question. According to their findings, the different parts of the IPL specialize in different cognitive functions - such as attention, language, and social cognition, with the latter reflecting the ability for perspective taking. At the same time, these areas work together with many other brain regions in a process-specific way. When it comes to language comprehension, the anterior IPL in the left hemisphere of the brain becomes active. For attention, it is the anterior IPL in the right side of the brain. If, on the other hand, social skills are required, the posterior parts of the IPL in both hemispheres of the brain spring into action simultaneously. "Social cognition requires the most complex interpretation," explains Ole Numssen, first author of the underlying study, which has now been published in the journal eLife. "Therefore, the IPLs on both sides of the brain probably work together here."

Moreover, these individual sub-areas then cooperate with different regions of the rest of the brain. In the case of attention and language, each IPL subregion links primarily to areas on one side of the brain. With social skills, it's areas on both sides. Again, this shows that the more complex the task, the more intensive the interaction with other areas.

"Our results provide insight into the basic functioning of the human brain. We show how our brains dynamically adapt to changing requirements. To do this, it links specialized individual areas, such as the IPL, with other more general regions. The more demanding the tasks, the more intensively the individual areas interact with each other. This makes highly complex functions such as language or social skills possible," says Ole Numssen. "The IPL may ultimately be considered as one of the areas with which we interpret the world."

Even in great apes, Numssen says, brain regions that correspond to the IPL do not only process purely physical stimuli, but also more complex information. Throughout evolution, they seem to have always been responsible for processing increasingly complex content. However, parts of the IPL are unique to the human brain and are not found in great apes - a hint that this region has evolved in the course of evolution to enable key functions of human cognition.

The researchers from Leipzig and Montreal investigated such brain-behavior correlations with the help of three tasks that the study participants had to solve while lying in the MRI scanner. In the first task, they had to prove their understanding of language. To do this, they saw meaningful words such as "pigeon" and "house", but also words without meaning (known as pseudowords) such as "pulre", and had to decide whether it was a real word or not. A second task tested visual-spatial attention. For this task, they had to react to stimuli on one side of the screen, although they expected something to happen on the other side. The third task probed their ability for perspective taking using the so-called Sally Anne test. This is a comic strip consisting of four pictures in which two people interact with each other. A question in the end could only be answered correctly if the study participants were able to put themselves in the shoes of the respective persons.

Scientists at the University of Bonn and the caesar research center have isolated a molecule that might open new avenues in the fight against SARS coronavirus 2. The active ingredient binds to the spike protein that the virus uses to dock to the cells it infects. This prevents them from entering the respective cell, at least in the case of model viruses. It appears to do this by using a different mechanism than previously known inhibitors. The researchers therefore suspect that it may also help against viral mutations. The study will be published in the journal Angewandte Chemie but is already available online.

The novel active ingredient is a so-called aptamer. These are short chains of DNA, the chemical compound that also makes up chromosomes. DNA chains like to attach themselves to other molecules; one might call them sticky. In chromosomes, DNA is therefore present as two parallel strands whose sticky sides face each other and that coil around each other like two twisted threads.

Aptamers, on the other hand, are single-stranded. This allows them to form bonds with molecules to which conventional DNA would not normally bind and to influence their function. This makes them interesting for research into active ingredients, especially since it is now very easy to produce huge libraries of different aptamers. Some of these libraries contain millions of times more potential active ingredients than there are people living on Earth. "We used such a library to isolate aptamers that can attach to the spike protein of SARS coronavirus 2," explains Prof. Dr. Günter Mayer of the LIMES Institute (the acronym stands for "Life and Medical Sciences") at the University of Bonn.

Spike is essential for the infection

The spike protein is essential for the virus: It uses it to dock onto the cells it attacks. In the process, the protein binds to a molecule on the surface of its victims called ACE2, which effectively locks into the spike protein, much like a ski boot in a ski binding. The virus then fuses with the cell and reprograms it to produce numerous new viruses. "The vast majority of antibodies we know today prevent docking," Mayer explains. "They attach to the part of the spike protein responsible for recognizing ACE2, which is the receptor binding domain, or RBD."

The now isolated aptamer with the abbreviation SP6 also binds to the spike protein, but at a different site. "SP6 does not prevent viruses from docking to target cells," explains Prof. Dr. Michael Famulok of the LIMES Institute, who also works at the caesar research center in Bonn. "Nevertheless, it reduces the level of cell infection by the virus; we do not yet know which mechanism is responsible for this." The researchers did not use real coronaviruses in their experiments, but so-called pseudoviruses. These carry the spike protein on their surface; however, they cannot cause disease. "We now need to see if our results are confirmed in real viruses," Famulok therefore emphasizes.

New Achilles heel of coronavirus?

If so, in the medium term the work could for instance result in a kind of nasal spray that protects against coronavirus infection for a few hours. The necessary studies will certainly take months to complete. Irrespective of this, however, the results may help to better understand the mechanisms involved in infection. This is all the more important because the existing active ingredients mainly target the receptor domain. In the so-called "British mutation", this domain is altered so that it binds more strongly to ACE2. "The more such mutations accumulate, the greater the risk that the available drugs and vaccines will no longer work," stresses Günter Mayer. "Our study may draw attention to an alternative Achilles' heel of the virus."

The results are also evidence of successful cooperation: Mayer and his postdoctoral researcher Dr. Anna Maria Weber were primarily responsible for characterizing the aptamer. Prof. Famulok's group at the caesar research center was responsible for conducting the pseudovirus experiments, which were led by his colleague Dr. Anton Schmitz. Famulok and Mayer are members of the Transdisciplinary Research Areas "Life & Health" and "Building Blocks of Matter and Fundamental Interactions". Mayer also heads the Center of Aptamer Research and Development (CARD) at the University of Bonn.

Research has found that obesity and mental disorders such as depression and anxiety seem to often go hand in hand. Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and collaborating institutions are providing new insights into this association by identifying and characterizing a novel neural circuit that mediates the reciprocal control of feeding and psychological states in mouse models.

Similar to human patients, mice that consumed a high-fat diet not only became obese, but also anxious and depressed, a condition mediated by a defective brain circuit. When the researchers genetically or pharmacologically corrected specific disruptions they had observed within this circuit, the mice became less anxious and depressed and later lost excess body weight.

Interestingly, weight loss was not the result of lack of appetite, but of the animals' change of food preference. Before the treatment, the mice naturally preferred to eat a high-fat diet, but after the treatment they turned their preference toward a healthier diet with reduced fat and abundant protein and carbohydrates. The findings, published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, for the first time, not only reveal a key regulatory mechanism for coinciding obesity and mental disorders, but also suggest the possibility of a pharmacological treatment.

"Reports indicate that 43% of adults with depression are obese and that adults with mental illness are more likely to develop obesity than those who are mentally healthy," said corresponding author Dr. Qi Wu, a Pew Scholar for Biomedical Sciences, Kavli Scholar and assistant professor in pediatrics-nutrition at Baylor's Children's Nutrition Research Center. "Factors such as hormonal dysregulation, genetic deficiency and inflammation have been proposed to be involved in the connection between obesity and mental disorders. Here we provide evidence that supports the involvement of a neural component."
To investigate the neuronal circuits that could be involved in reciprocally regulating weight gain and depression or anxiety, the researchers provided mice with a high-fat diet. As expected, the animals became obese. They also developed anxiety and depression. In these mice, the team studied the function of neuronal circuits.

"We discovered in normal mice that two groups of brain cells, dBNST and AgRP neurons located in separate brain areas, form a circuit or connection to each other by extending cellular projections," said co-first author Dr. Guobin Xia, postdoctoral associate in the Wu lab. "This newly discovered circuit was malfunctioning in mice that were both obese and depressed."

"Using genetic approaches, we identified specific genes and other mediators that were altered and mediated the circuit's malfunction in the obese and depressed mice," said co-first author Dr. Yong Han, postdoctoral associate in the Wu lab.

"Importantly, genetically restoring the neural defects to normal eliminated the high fat diet-induced anxiety and depression and also reduced body weight," Xia said. "We were surprised to see that the animals lost weight, not because they lost their appetite, but because genetically-aided readjustment of the mental states changed their feeding preference from high-fat to low-fat food."

"Keeping in mind translational applications of our findings to the clinic, we investigated the possibility of restoring the novel circuit pharmacologically," Wu said. "We discovered that the combination of two clinically-approved drugs, zonisamide and granisetron, profoundly reduced anxiety and depression in mice and promoted weight loss by synergistically acting upon two different molecular targets within our newly identified brain circuit. We consider that our results provide convincing support for further studies and future clinical trials testing the value of a cocktail therapy combining zonisamide and granisetron (or a selection of their derivatives) to treat metabolic-psychiatric diseases."

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) cause oxidative stress at the cellular level. Research shows that this way, amongst others, they inhibit the germination capacity of plants, produce cytotoxins or exert toxic effects on aquatic invertebrates. Environmentally persistent free radicals (EPFR) are potential precursors of ROS because they can react with water to form these radical species. "Therefore, EPFR are associated with harmful effects on the ecosystem and human health," explains Gabriel Sigmund, the lead investigator of the study.

"Our study shows that these environmentally persistent free radicals can be found in large quantities and over a long period of time in fire derived charcoal," reports Sigmund, environmental geoscientist at the Center for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science (CMESS) at the University of Vienna. In all 60 charcoal samples from ten different fires, the researchers detected EPFR in concentrations that exceeded those typically found in soils by as much as ten to a thousand times. Other than expected, this concentration remained stable for at least five years, as an analysis of charcoal samples showed which were gathered at the same location and over several years after a forest fire. "The more stable the environmentally persistent free radicals are, the more likely it is that they will have an impact on ecosystems over longer periods of time," explains Thilo Hofmann, co-author of the study and head of the research group.

Samples from fires in forest, shrubland and grassland spanning different climates

The researchers collected charcoal samples from fires of diverse intensity in boreal, temperate, subtropical, and tropical climates. They considered forest, shrubland and grassland fires and, thus, also different fuel materials (woods and grasses). The original material and the charring conditions determine the degree of carbonization. Consequently, both indirectly influence the extent to which EPFR are formed and how persistent they are. "The analyses show that the concentration of environmentally persistent free radicals increased with the degree of carbonization," Sigmund reports. Woody fuels favored higher concentrations. For these, the researchers were also able to demonstrate the stability of EPFR over several years. "We assume that woody wildfire derived charcoal is a globally important source of these free radicals and thus potentially also of harmful reactive oxygen species," adds Hofmann.

International collaboration across disciplines

"It is our collaboration with colleagues at Swansea University in the United Kingdom that enables us to make these highly differentiated statements," explains Sigmund. The wildfire experts at Swansea University are conducting global research into the effects of fire on environmental processes such as the carbon cycle and erosion. They have collected charcoal samples from around the world and sent them to Vienna for analysis, along with information on the timing, duration and intensity of the fires. CMESS researchers analyzed the samples in collaboration with Marc Pignitter of the Faculty of Chemistry using electron spin resonance spectroscopy (ESR spectroscopy). ESR spectroscopy made it possible to quantify the environmentally persistent free radicals in the studied material and to identify their adjacent chemical structures.

Questions about consequences for the ecosystem

The study has provided insights, but also raised further questions: The fact that environmentally persistent free radicals occur in such high concentrations and remain stable over several years was surprising. In future studies, the researchers are planning to also assess the consequences this may have for the environment. "To what extent is this a stress factor for microorganisms after a fire? How does it affect an ecosystem? The study is an impetus for further research," reports Sigmund.

ITHACA, N.Y. - Water scarcity is often understood as a problem for regions experiencing drought, but a new study from Cornell and Tufts universities finds that not only can localized water shortages impact the global economy, but changes in global demand send positive and negative ripple effects to water basins across the globe.

"We are looking at water scarcity as a globally connected and multi-sector phenomenon," said Jonathan Lamontagne, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Tufts University, who co-authored the study with Patrick Reed, the Joseph C. Ford Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell. Tufts graduate student Flannery Dolan is lead author of the study, which suggests water scarcity dynamics are more complicated than traditionally acknowledged.

The study, "Evaluating the economic impact of water scarcity in a changing world," was published March 26 in Nature Communications, and uniquely captures the interdependent effects of global trade consistently with differences in regional climate policies as well as river basin-specific capacity to address water scarcity risks.

The researchers coupled physical and economic models to simulate thousands of potential climate futures for 235 major river basins - a technique known as scenario discovery - to better understand how water scarcity is a globally-connected phenomenon, with local conditions having reverberations across the globe in industries such as agriculture, energy, transportation and manufacturing.

The research found that global trade dynamics and market adaptations to regional water scarcity result in positive and negative economic outcomes for every regional river basin considered in the study.

For instance, in the lower Colorado River basin, the worst economic outcomes arise from limited groundwater availability and high population growth, but that high population growth can also prove beneficial under some climatic scenarios. In contrast, the future economic outcomes in the Indus Basin depend largely on global land-use policies.

"What is happening elsewhere in the world through differences in regional choices related to energy transitions - how land is being managed as well as different regional water demands and adaptive choices - can shape relative advantages and disadvantages of water intensive economic activities," said Reed.

Restrictions in water availability usually lead to a negative regional economic impact, but the research revealed that some regions can experience a positive economic impact if they hold an advantage over other water basins and can become a virtual exporter of water. The Orinoco basin in Venezuela, for example, usually has a reliable supply of water and is often in a relative position that can benefit when other regions are under stress, according to the researchers.

The study also found that small differences in projections for future climate conditions can yield very large differences in the economic outcomes for water scarcity.

"Human activities and market responses can strongly amplify the economic effects of water scarcity, but the conditions that lead to this amplification vary widely from one basin to the next," said Lamontagne.

A river basin can be considered economically robust if it is able to adapt to drought with alternative sources of water or adjust economic activity to limit usage. If a basin is unable to adapt its supply options and if prolonged water scarcity leads to persistent economic decline, then the researchers describe the loss in water basin adaptive capacity as having reached an 'economic tipping point.'

For example, in the Indus region in South Asia, the water supply is under stress due to heavy agricultural use and irrigation leading to unsustainable consumption of groundwater, which places it close to the tipping point.

The conditions that lead to these tipping points are highly variable from basin to basin, depending on a combination of local factors and global conditions. In the Arabian Peninsula, low groundwater availability and pricing of carbon emissions are key factors. In the lower Colorado River basin, a mixture of low groundwater availability, low agricultural productivity, and strong economic demands from the U.S. and Europe lead to tipping points.

"It is noteworthy that the lower Colorado River basin has some of the most uncertain and widely divergent economic outcomes of water scarcity of the basins analyzed in this study," said Reed. "This implies that assumed differences in regional, national and global human system conditions as well as the intensity of climate change can dramatically amplify the uncertainty in the basin's outcomes."

As climate change makes the physical and economic effects of water scarcity more challenging for policy makers to understand, the researchers hope their work will provide the basis for similar analyses and draw attention to the importance of expanded data collection to improve modeling and decision making.

PITTSBURGH, March 26, 2021 - As evidence mounts supporting the use of monoclonal antibody treatment to reduce hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19, UPMC and University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine physician-scientists are sharing the health system's experience administering the life-saving medication.

In a report published today in the scientific journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases, the UPMC/Pitt team shares how it quickly established the largest and most equitable distribution network for COVID-19 monoclonal antibody infusions across Pennsylvania. The team today also reported preliminary results confirming the treatment reduced likelihood of hospitalization and death in UPMC patients who received it.

"When administered soon after infection, this treatment can help certain people fight the virus and keep them from progressing to serious illness and death," said Ryan Bariola, M.D., associate professor in Pitt's Division of Infectious Diseases and director of the UPMC Community Hospital Antimicrobial Stewardship Efforts (CHASE) Program. "But administering these infusions comes with logistical challenges, so many health care providers opt not to offer the treatment. UPMC overcame these challenges, and we're dedicated to sharing what we learned with other medical centers, clinicians and the public."

Monoclonal--"mono" means "one" and "clonal" means "copy"--antibodies are a type of medication that seeks the COVID-19 virus in a person's body and blocks it from infecting their cells and replicating. Since late 2020, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration has granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to three monoclonal antibody treatments--one from Regeneron and two from Eli Lilly--which are given through a one-time IV infusion. This is the same type of emergency authorization given to the COVID-19 vaccines being administered in the U.S.

This therapy is most helpful when given early, especially within 10 days of infection in people at highest risk of complications from COVID-19.

The U.S. supply of monoclonal antibodies is taxpayer-funded and given without charge to the institutions that administer it. Preparing for high patient demand, UPMC created a weighted lottery to ensure fair allocation of its supply. However, demand was never high enough to trigger use of the lottery.

"This lower use surprised us, and we're still debating why demand was less than expected," said co-author Donald M. Yealy, M.D., UPMC chief medical officer and professor and chair of Pitt's Department of Emergency Medicine. "It likely had to do with so few health care providers investing in the infrastructure, staff and processes needed to administer the drug. This created lower awareness among both patients and clinicians about the life-saving benefits of monoclonal antibodies."

Initially, eligibility was limited to patients 65 years or older, or to those with a body mass index of at least 35 because those were the people studies had indicated were most likely to benefit. UPMC has since expanded eligibility to younger people with certain medical conditions that place them at higher risk for complications from COVID-19, including children, in compliance with the EUA.

To date, UPMC has treated more than 1,000 patients with monoclonal antibodies at 16 sites across the communities it serves in Pennsylvania and New York. It also provides home infusion services when needed. UPMC ensures that all proper infection prevention protocols are followed, and specifically prevents COVID-19 patients from mixing with other patients at the infusion centers.

"Monoclonal antibodies are a crucial part of the COVID-19 treatment spectrum, bridging the gap between preventive measures--such as masks, social distancing and vaccination--and the various therapies for hospitalized COVID-19 patients," said senior author Mark Schmidhofer, M.D., professor of medicine at Pitt and medical director of UPMC's Coronary Intensive Care Unit. "It's a potentially life-saving option and can keep people out of the hospital if prevention fails."

A University of Florida study of middle-aged and older adults finds those who unknowingly carry methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, on their skin are twice as likely to die within the next decade as people who do not have the bacteria.

"Very few people who carry MRSA know they have it, yet we have found a distinct link between people with undetected MRSA and premature death," said the study's lead author Arch G. Mainous III, Ph.D., a professor in the department of health services research, management and policy at the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions, part of UF Health, the university's academic health center.

The findings suggest that routine screening for undetected MRSA may be warranted in older people to prevent deaths from infection.

A third of Americans carry Staphylococcus aureus, or staph, on their skin or in nasal passages. About 1% of those people, or more than 3 million people, carry MRSA, the staph strain that is hard to treat and resistant to many antibiotics. Unless MRSA carriers develop an infection or are tested for the bacteria, they may not even know they carry it. Previous research has found that a quarter of people who carry MRSA without an active infection, known as colonized MRSA, for a year or more will eventually develop a MRSA infection.

"MRSA can be part of normal body flora, but it can lead to infection when immune systems are compromised, especially in people who are hospitalized, have underlying disease, or after antibiotic use," said Mainous, also vice chair for research in the UF College of Medicine's department of community health and family medicine.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report showed that in 2017, 119,000 Americans experienced a staph bloodstream infection and nearly 20,000 died. Hospitalized patients with colonized MRSA may be particularly vulnerable to developing an infection during a hospital stay or after discharge. Wounds, surgical incisions and use of medical devices, such as catheters, may also lead to MRSA infection among carriers.

For the study, which appears in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, researchers analyzed data from the 2001-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a large, nationally representative study that combines survey questions with laboratory testing, including nasal swabs to test for the presence of MRSA. The researchers linked data on participants ages 40-85 with data from the National Death Index to track deaths over an 11-year period. Researchers adjusted for factors including gender, race and ethnicity, health insurance, poverty-income ratio, hospitalization in the previous 12 months, and doctor diagnosis of heart disease, diabetes and asthma.

They found the mortality rate among participants without MRSA was about 18%, but among those with colonized MRSA, the mortality rate was 36%. Participants who carried staph bacteria on their skin, but not MRSA, did not have an increased risk for premature death.

Some states and hospital systems require MRSA testing for patients before hospital admission, but policies for testing and treatment of colonized MRSA, which may include use of topical or oral antibiotics, are highly variable from hospital to hospital, Mainous said.

"Without a uniform strategy, we are missing an opportunity to help prevent deaths caused by MRSA," Mainous said. "Maybe we should know who is carrying MRSA."

DETROIT - A study published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine from researchers at Henry Ford Health System has found that Henry Ford's early implementation of a universal mask policy in the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with reducing the risk of healthcare workers at Henry Ford acquiring COVID-19.

Through retrospective analysis of an internal hospital quality metric reporting analytics database that was not associated with electronic medical records, researchers discovered a correlation between the implementation of Henry Ford's universal mask policy and a significant drop in the rate at which its Healthcare workers tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. As COVID-19 diagnoses and hospitalizations across the State of Michigan continued to rise through late March 2020, the cases among Henry Ford's healthcare workers began to fall. By the time the first peak in COVID-19 cases occurred in the general population, the rate of cases among Henry Ford healthcare workers was already trending downward.

"This research reinforces the fact that mask wearing is effective in reducing the risk of acquiring COVID-19 and validated our decision early on to implement the universal mask policy, not only to protect our team members, but also to ensure they are able to care for members of the community who had contracted COVID-19," said Steven Kalkanis, M.D., CEO of Henry Ford Medical Group. "At Henry Ford Health System, our universal mask policy issued on March 26, 2020 ensured all staff, both clinical and non-clinical, received surgical or procedural masks and mandated that staff wear a mask at work while also following all other personal protective equipment requirements. Our hope is that the findings of this study continue to encourage members of the community to wear a mask in line with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations."

Healthcare workers have a threefold increased risk of reporting testing positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, compared to the general population, according to a study published in Lancet Public Health. As of March 22, 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported more than 450,000 SARS-CoV-2 infections among healthcare workers in the U.S. since the onset of the pandemic, and nearly 1,500 COVID-19 related deaths among healthcare workers.

From March 12 - August 10, 2020, 19.2% of healthcare workers at Henry Ford were symptomatic for COVID-19 and underwent SARS-CoV-2 testing. Before March 28-30 - the single changepoint in the data when the rate of new cases began to trend downward - the odds of a tested healthcare worker having a positive SARS-CoV-2 test result doubled every 4.5 - 7.5 days. After March 30, the odds of a tested healthcare worker having a positive result reduced by half every 10.5 - 13.5 days.

"This effort would not have been possible without the leadership of our executive team, including our president and CEO Wright Lassiter, III, Dr. Steven Kalkanis, chief clinical officer Dr. Adnan Munkarah, and chief operating officer Bob Riney," said Dee Dee Wang, M.D., Director of Structural Heart Imaging at Henry Ford Hospital and principal investigator of the study. "At a time when much was unknown about the novel coronavirus, this initiative truly helped keep our healthcare workers safe. I would also like to acknowledge Dr. Betty Chu, our associate chief clinical officer and chief quality officer; Dr. William O'Neill, director of our Center for Structural Heart Disease; Dr. Geehan Suleyman, medical director of Infection Control; Dr. Marcus Zervos, chief of our Infectious Disease division; and so many others who were instrumental in the creation and successful implementation of our universal mask policy."

With the arrival of COVID-variants in the community, even with COVID-19 vaccines now being rolled out, healthcare workers and community members should remain vigilant and continue to wear a mask in accordance with CDC recommendations.

Henry Ford is providing onsite expertise and oversight for the vaccine administrations, medical care and operations at the Ford Field mass vaccination site. Vaccines administered at Ford Field are in addition to Michigan's regular statewide vaccine allotment. Key facts to know:

- Will operate seven days a week from 8 a.m. - 8:30 a.m. for eight weeks

- The U.S. Air Force will provide vaccination support

- 68 vaccination pods will be set up on the Concourse at Ford Field. Vaccinations are open to those who meet the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services vaccine guidelines.

Registration and appointment scheduling are being managed by Meijer. People may register in the following ways:

- Online at clinic.meijer.com/register/CL2021

- Text EndCOVID to 75049

- Call the State of Michigan COVID hotline at 888-535-6136 (Press 1) Monday-Friday 8 a.m. - 5 p.m. and Saturday/Sunday 8 a.m. - 1 p.m.

Researchers from Queens University, Boston University, University of Toronto, University of Rochester, and Treasury Board Secretariat, Government of Canada published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that tests a simple, no-cost intervention that can double registration rates, thus helping communities gradually increase the number of prospective donors.

The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "Increasing Organ Donor Registrations with Behavioral Interventions: A Field Experiment" and is authored by Nicole Robitaille, Nina Mazar, Claire I. Tsai, Avery M. Haviv, and Elizabeth Hardy.

Current statistics on organ donation point to an ever-increasing demand, yet inadequate supply of available donors. For example, in the United States, there are over 113,000 individuals currently on the transplant waiting list and 22 people die each day waiting. And the gap between those needing transplants and those receiving them continues to widen. With thousands currently waiting for organ transplants, the need for donors is urgent. One way to address the ever-growing demand is to increase the number of individuals registered to donate. While the vast majority of people support organ donation, many do not take the steps to register.

Low registration rates are especially common in countries with explicit consent registration policies--that is, individuals must opt in to become organ donors--compared to countries with presumed consent policies--where individuals are organ donors by default but can opt out. Although some suggest changing the default may be a promising intervention, the impact on actual donations has been mixed due to, among other things, uncertainties about a deceased person's donation preferences.

Furthermore, changing registration policies involves implementation challenges and ethical considerations surrounding informed consent. To date, most jurisdictions have maintained their existing policies, thus prompting the question, what can be done within explicit consent systems to improve organ donor registration rates? Prior research provides a good understanding of predictors of organ donation attitudes and intentions, yet little is known about how to increase actual registrations.

To address these limitations, the research team conducted a field experiment in the Province of Ontario to test behavioral marketing interventions targeting information and altruistic motives in an effort to increase new organ donor registrations in a prompted choice context. Along with the interventions, the researchers streamlined the registration process (i.e., intercepting customers at the time of decision, handing out promotional materials upon arrival for customers to consider while waiting) and updated the design of the registration form to increase the saliency of their interventions (i.e., a simplified form printed on cardstock using colored accents).

The researchers say that "Our paper contributes to the limited evidence for low-cost and scalable solutions to increase organ donor registrations within the current explicit consent systems. Our field experiment demonstrates how intercepting customers with promotional materials at the right time (an information brochure and perspective-taking prompts), along with other process and design improvements, can increase new organ donor registrations" says Robitaille. Specifically, Tsai points out, "the best-performing condition, prompting perspective-taking through reciprocal altruism ("If you needed a transplant would you have one? If so, please help save lives and register today.") significantly increased actual registration rates from 4.1% in the control condition to 7.4%, an 80% increase."

Hardy add that "We were able to do so without imposing on the freedom of individuals, raising ethical concerns (i.e., changing defaults), or passing new legislation." Haviv illustrates the potential impact of their findings, saying "Assuming that everything held constant over time and we introduced our best performing intervention (reciprocal altruism) together with our process and design improvements Ontario-wide, we could expect roughly 225,000 additional new registrations annually. Given that one donor can save up to eight lives, and enhance 75 others, such an increase could make a meaningful impact on the lives of many."

Mazar concludes with "By leveraging behavioral science to design our interventions, this research contributes to understanding how to reduce the intention-action gap in the context of organ donation, improve public policy, and enhance social welfare."

Scientists at the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) and colleagues in Japan have revealed molecular mechanisms involved in eliminating unwanted cells in the body. A nuclear protein fragment released into the cytoplasm activates a plasma membrane protein to display a lipid on the cell surface, signalling other cells to get rid of it. The findings were published in the journal Molecular Cell.

"Every day, ten billion cells die and are engulfed by blood cells called phagocytes. If this didn't happen, dead cells would burst, triggering an auto-immune reaction," explains iCeMS biochemist Jun Suzuki, who led the study. "It is important to understand how dead cells are eliminated as part of our body's maintenance."

Scientists already know that dead cells display an 'eat me' signal on their surface that is recognized by phagocytes. During this process, lipids are flipped between the inner and outer parts of the cell membrane via a variety of proteins called scramblases. Suzuki and his team have already identified several of these lipid-scrambling proteins, but some of their activation mechanisms have been unclear.

To solve this, the team used an array of screening approaches to study the scrambling protein called Xkr4. The broad aim was to single out the genes that are active during cell death and to specifically zoom in on Xkr4 and its associated proteins to understand how they interact.

"We found that a nuclear protein fragment activates Xkr4 to display the 'eat me' signal to phagocytes," says iCeMS cell biologist Masahiro Maruoka, the first author of the study.

Specifically, the scientists found that cell death signals lead to a nuclear protein, called XRCC4, getting cut by an enzyme. A fragment of XRCC4 leaves the nucleus, activating Xkr4, which forms a dimer: the linking of identical pieces into configurations. Both XRCC4 binding and dimer formation are necessary for Xkr4 to ultimately transfer lipids on the cell surface to alert phagocytes.

Xkr4 is only one of the scrambling proteins. Others are activated much faster during cell death. The team now wants to understand when and why the Xkr4 pathway is specifically activated. Since it is strongly expressed in the brain, it is likely important for brain function. "We are now studying the elimination of unwanted cells or compartments in the brain to understand this process further," says Maruoka.

Presents a brief overview of the eight COVID-19 editorials published in DMPHP over the past year and using them as a framework to follow the evolution of the Pandemic over time. A review of the salient epidemiological and clinical dimensions of COVID-19 over time is given as well as a discussion of the medical and public health impacts of the disease and the interventions and policies put in place to contain and mediate the virus.

The concluding discussion questions the validity of the criteria used in selection of priority groups for vaccination in the US and notes that had a uniform program supporting the immunization of all over age 65 (accounting for 80% of COVID-19 deaths), the most lives would be spared while simultaneously cutting across all socio-economic and ethnic groups. Continuing this line of reasoning globally would provide an opportunity for the US to reburnish its humanitarian image through a vaccine diplomacy initiative with a goal to vaccinate the over 65 of every nation. To date, almost 500 million doses of vaccine have been administered; had they been targeted to the over 65 global population of some700 million, we would be well on our way to a return to the old normal.

How do different parts of the body communicate? Scientists at St. Jude are studying how signals sent from skeletal muscle affect the brain.

The team studied fruit flies and cutting-edge brain cell models called organoids. They focused on the signals muscles send when stressed. The researchers found that stress signals rely on an enzyme called Amyrel amylase and its product, the disaccharide maltose.

The scientists showed that mimicking the stress signals can protect the brain and retina from aging. The signals work by preventing the buildup of misfolded protein aggregates. Findings suggest that tailoring this signaling may potentially help combat neurodegenerative conditions like age-related dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

"We found that a stress response induced in muscle could impact not only the muscle but also promote protein quality control in distant tissues like the brain and retina," said Fabio Demontis, PhD, of St. Jude Developmental Neurobiology. "This stress response was actually protecting those tissues during aging."

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is underestimating methane emissions from oil and gas production in its annual Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks, according to new research from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). The research team found 90 percent higher emissions from oil production and 50 percent higher emissions for natural gas production than EPA estimated in its latest inventory.

The paper is published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

The research team, led by Joannes Maasakkers, a former graduate student at SEAS, developed a method to trace and map total emissions from satellite data to their source on the ground.

"This is the first country-wide evaluation of the emissions that the EPA reports to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC)," said Maasakkers, who is currently a scientist at the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research.

Currently, the EPA only reports total national emissions to the UNFCC. In previous research, Maasakkers and his collaborators, including Daniel Jacob, the Vasco McCoy Family Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Environmental Engineering at SEAS, worked with the EPA to map regional emissions of methane from different sources in the US. That level of detail was used to simulate how methane moves through the atmosphere.

In this paper, the researchers compared those simulations to satellite observations from 2010-2015. Using a transport model, they were able to trace the path of emissions from the atmosphere back to the ground and identify areas across the US where the observations and simulations didn't match up.

"When we look at emissions from space, we can only see how total emissions from an area should be scaled up or down, but we don't know the source responsible for those emissions," said Maasakkers. "Because we spent so much time with the EPA figuring out where these different emissions occur, we could use our transport model to go back and figure out what sources are responsible for those under- or over-estimations in the national total."

The biggest discrepancy was in emissions from oil and natural gas production.

The EPA calculates emission based on processes and equipment. For example, the EPA estimates that a gas pump emits a certain amount of methane, multiplies that by how many pumps are operating across the country, and estimates total emissions from gas pumps.

"That method makes it really hard to get estimates for individual facilities because it is hard to take into account every possible source of emission," said Maasakkers. "We know that a relatively small number of facilities make up most of the emissions and so there are clearly facilities that are producing more emissions than we would expect from these overall estimates."

The researchers hope that future work will provide more clarity on exactly where these emissions are coming from and how they are changing.

"We plan to continue to monitor U.S. emissions of methane using new high-resolution satellite observations, and to work with the EPA to improve emission inventories," said Jacob.

"It's important to understand these emissions better but we shouldn't wait until we fully understand these emissions to start trying to reduce them," said Maasakkers. "There are already a lot of things that we know we can do to reduce emissions."

The immune systems of all vertebrates contain specialized cells, called T cells, that play a fundamental role in protecting against fungal, bacterial, parasitic and viral infections. T cells use 'molecular sensors' called T cell receptors (TCRs) on their surface that can detect and eliminate the invading pathogens. For most of the past four decades, it was considered that there were only two T cell lineages, αβ and γδ T cells, characterized by their cell surface expressed αβ and γδ TCRs, respectively.

In a paper published today in Science, an international team of scientists at the University of New Mexico (US), Monash University (Australia), and the US National Institutes of Health, has defined a novel T cell lineage, called γμ T cells, found only in marsupials (e.g. kangaroos and opossums) and monotremes (e.g. duckbill platypus).

Evidence for the γμ TCR came with the discovery of genes encoding the TCRμ protein whilst analyzing the first complete marsupial genome, that of the South American opossum Monodelphis domestica. Oddly, distinct from conventional αβ and γδ TCRs, TCRμ was predicted to share similarity with the antibodies.

Using the Australian Synchrotron, the scientists at Monash University obtained a detailed three-dimensional image of the opossum γμTCR architecture that was unique and distinct from αβ or γδ TCRs. Noteworthy was the presence of an additional single antibody-like segment called Vμ domain with an architecture resembling to nanobodies, a unique type of antibodies. This discovery raises the possibility that γμ T cells recognize pathogens using novel mechanisms, distinct from conventional T cells.

"The discovery of a nanobody like structure in the γμ TCR has the potential to expand the immunology 'toolbox'. Indeed, nanobodies discovered in the camel family (e.g. alpacas) have recently attracted considerable interests for their development as research and diagnostic tools and more importantly as immunotherapeutics in humans to combat cancer and viral infections such as COVID-19. Marsupials may offer an alternative source of nanobodies, one that is smaller, easier and cheaper to maintain than llamas or alpacas." said Monash University Dr Marcin Wegrecki from the Biomedicine Discovery Institute, co-first author on the paper.

"Our findings further illustrate the value of exploring the world's biodiversity for novelty beyond the standard animal research models, such as laboratory mice. Modern genomic tools applied to many species have opened the door to the myriad of immunological solutions to fighting pathogens that evolution has produced." said Prof Robert Miller from the University of New Mexico, co-lead author on the paper.

"Many in-roads have been made in understanding the immune systems of humans and mice leading to the development of novel immunotherapeutic approaches enabling humans to combat highly pathogenic viruses. However, much less is understood on how immunity operates in other species that, in some cases, have been decimated by wildlife diseases. Ultimately our work may guide the development of veterinary approaches (e.g. novel vaccines) that will contribute to wildlife conservation." said Dr Jérôme Le Nours from Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute, co-lead author on the paper.

"This is a prime example of curiosity driven science leading to unexpected and transformative findings." Le Nours stated.