Culture

HAMILTON, ON, March 3, 2021 -- Evolutionary forces drive a glaring gender imbalance in the occurrence of many health conditions, including autism, a team of genetics researchers has concluded.

The human genome has evolved to favour the inheritance of very different characteristics in males and females, which in turn makes men more vulnerable to a host of physical and mental health conditions, say the researchers responsible for a new paper published in the Journal of Molecular Evolution.

Their analysis shows that while there are certain conditions that occur only in women (cervical cancer and ovarian cancer, for example), or much more frequently in women (such as multiple sclerosis), men are more prone to medical conditions overall and, as a result, on average die sooner than women.

"Our cells have memories and they carry the accumulation of all the changes our ancestors have experienced over millions of years," says Rama Singh, a McMaster biology professor who wrote the paper with his son, Karun Singh, an associate professor of neuropathology at the University of Toronto, and Shiva Singh (no relation), a biology professor at Western University.

The researchers looked at autism as an illustration of the general tendency for men to develop medical conditions more often than women. Though women and men inherit the same genetic blueprints from their parents, the way those blueprints are expressed is very different, depending on sex.

"If women and men were any more different, they would be different species," jokes Rama Singh, the paper's corresponding author.

The researchers' work is part of a growing movement toward exploring genomic influences on health, using hereditary patterns to understand and project health impacts on individuals and populations.

"One of the reasons I think this is interesting is that it offers a perspective that is not well represented in the medical literature," says Karun Singh. "This is a really good example of the perspective that geneticists and evolutionary biologists can add to health research."

The paper explores hereditary forces that have evolved over millions of years, favoring mate selection and reproduction in the early years of male sexual maturity at the expense of longer-term well-being.

Though human behaviour regarding mate selection has changed, those genetic characteristics remain and continue to be expressed in the health and development of modern men.

Women, the researchers say, typically live longer and are less vulnerable to most health conditions because their genetic makeup has evolved in reaction to the unhealthy characteristics of the male genome, creating better immunity and greater longevity.

Understanding human health through the lens of genomics can and should guide the search for treatments and preventions, the researchers say.

Though the origins of mental health conditions are more complex, they are influenced by the same evolutionary factors, the authors say. Women are more prone to depression and anxiety, for example, while men are more likely to develop anti-social disorders.

In autism, male-female imbalance is especially pronounced. Boys are as much as four times more likely to have some form of autism and are also more likely to have severe symptoms.

Evolution appears to have created a higher threshold that protects more women from developing the condition, the authors say.

While autism is not solely attributable to inherited characteristics, it appears that boys are more likely to inherit characteristics that render them more vulnerable to environmental, developmental and other factors, creating more pathways that can lead to autism.

A rapid microbiological point-of-care test to diagnose respiratory infections has proved popular with GPs and could reduce antibiotic prescribing in primary care, according to a National Institute for Health Research funded study by researchers at the Centre for Academic Primary Care, University of Bristol.

There are high rates of antibiotic prescribing in primary care and the UK government has called for the introduction of rapid diagnostics to curb overuse.

The RAPID-TEST study, published in the journal Family Practice today [4 March] evaluated the use of the BioFire® Filmarray® v1.7 (bioMérieux) microbiological point-of-care test in four GP practices in the South West of England over a six-week period.

The test uses swabs from the nose and back of the throat and gives results in around 65 minutes. It can detect 17 different types of respiratory virus and three atypical respiratory bacteria. It does not test for the most typical bacteria that cause respiratory infections because these can also live harmlessly in the nose and throat.

The aim of the study was to assess the feasibility of using the test in primary care in preparation for a clinical trial, to find out what GPs and nurses thought about using it, and whether test results changed clinical decisions about diagnosis and treatment.

Of the 93 patients tested (median age 29), 58 per cent had at least one virus, 37 per cent tested negative for any virus or bacteria, three per cent had an inconclusive result and two per cent had an atypical bacteria. Before the test, clinicians prescribed antibiotics to 35 per cent of patients who, after the test, were found to have no pathogen, and to 25 per cent of patients who, after the test, were found to have a virus, demonstrating the potential of the tests to reduce unnecessary antibiotic prescribing.

The study also found that clinicians changed the diagnosis in one in five patients following testing, and they were more certain of the diagnosis after testing, especially when a virus or bacterium was detected.

During interviews, GPs and nurses said they liked the test and found it easy to use but wanted results faster and to be able to test for typical bacteria.

Alastair Hay, Professor of Primary Care at the Centre for Academic Primary Care, who led the study, said: "Point-of-care tests for multiple respiratory viruses and bacteria are available in the UK but mainly used in hospital settings. Our study is the first to assess the feasibility of their use in primary care. The results show the potential of these tests to improve diagnostic certainty and reduce unnecessary antibiotic prescribing, which is vital in the global fight against antimicrobial resistance.

"This was a small-scale feasibility study and clinical trials are now needed to see if these point-of-care tests can safely and cost-effectively reduce antibiotic prescribing in primary care."

Lord Jim O'Neill, Chair Chatham House, who led an independent review into antimicrobial resistance in the UK from late 2014 to September 2016, said: "I have long since believed in quick, affordable, state-of-the-art, point-of-care diagnostics, so I hugely welcome this study and its findings. I hope this unlocks so much more in the area, which is crucial to meeting the challenge of antimicrobial resistance."

A healthy system of gut bacteria, or microbiota, is crucial to health: Gut bacteria not only aid with digestion, but also play an important role in the body's immune response. Infants, however, are not born with full-fledged gut microbiota, which makes it difficult for them to fight off intestinal infections.

Although little is known about how the immune system develops during infancy, new research from the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine's Department of Biomedical Sciences and Pathobiology sheds significant new light on the subject.

A research team from principal investigator Xin Luo's lab used rodent subjects to show a causal relationship between neonatal antibody production and the mother's microbiota. The team's paper, "Regulation of Neonatal IgA Production by the Maternal Microbiota," was recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the official journal of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Our study identifies the maternal microbiota -- harmless bacteria living in mom's milk, for example -- as a source of education for the infant's antibody response. In particular, we have found that the most abundant antibody in the human body that protects us from infections, IgA, can be educated by a specific bacterium in mom's milk, Lactobacillus reuteri, which is also a commonly used probiotic," said Luo, associate professor of immunology in the Department of Biomedical Sciences and Pathobiology.

Studies of IgA production typically focus on adult subjects, without addressing the effects of mothers' microbiota on the development of the immune response. Conversely, this study examined neonatal mice nursing from dams with different microbiotas and measured the changes in the neonatal mice's IgA production.

Using germ-free mice from the veterinary college's gnotobiotic rodent facility, the researchers determined that L. reuteri is one of the neonatal IgA-inducing bacteria in the maternal microbiota. In turn, raising an infant's IgA production through L. reuteri might result in a more robust immune response to pathogens. Particularly because a strain of L. reuteri isolated from human breast milk was used for the study, the findings have the potential to be translated to human medicine.

"It will be interesting to see if human maternal microbiota have similar mechanisms with mice in educating neonatal immune response, especially the mucosal immunity," said first author Qinghui Mu (Ph.D. '18), a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University's School of Medicine and former doctoral student in Luo's lab. "IgA is vital for the prevention of enteric pathogens, and IgA inducible bacteria may be supplemented as probiotics for preventing an infant's enteric infections."

The next step is to determine the effects that these newly produced antibodies have on the neonatal immune response. "Early perturbation of microbiota is linked to autoimmune diseases. It's not completely clear whether the observed immunological changes could affect autoimmune development, but if we can identify microbes that enhance early defenses without setting off self-reactivity, then we could potentially use them to protect infants from infections," said first author Brianna Swartwout, a Ph.D. candidate in the Translational Biology, Medicine, and Health Graduate Program and a member of Luo's lab.

The goal of the research, Luo said, is to better understand the benefits of microbes in order to recommend solutions, such as probiotics, that could strengthen the neonatal immune system. These efforts could lead to new strategies in medicine -- and healthier babies.

Scientists at the Francis Crick Institute and UCL have identified the trigger of a key cellular change in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a type of motor neurone disease. The findings could help develop new treatments for many neurological diseases with the same change, including Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

When the nervous system is injured, diseased or infected, star-shaped cells, called astrocytes, undergo 'reactive' changes in their behaviour. Whilst some of these reactive astrocytes become protective, others become harmful and damage surrounding motor neurons.

Reactive astrocytes are observed in various neurodegenerative diseases including ALS, but there is a lack of understanding about what causes astrocytes to undergo this change.

In their research, published in Nucleic Acids Research today (4th March), the scientists
compared ALS-diseased astrocytes with healthy astrocytes to uncover how the diseased cells become reactive. These cells were grown from human induced pluripotent stem cells - master stem cells - which can be directed to differentiate into any cell in the human body.

They found that key to the astrocyte change in diseased cells is an increase in the removal of introns (non-coding sections of genetic information) from RNA in a process called splicing. The team identified that in healthy astrocytes there are some RNAs that normally retain certain introns however in diseased cells these particular introns are spliced out.

This has dramatic consequences on the cell's actions as when these introns are cut out of RNA, the remaining exons (coding sections of genetic information) are used as a recipe for building proteins and some of these proteins play a role in the astrocytes changing.

Rickie Patani, senior author, group leader at the Crick, Professor at UCL's Queen Square Institute of Neurology and a consultant neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, says: "Understanding how astrocytes undergo this transformation is a really exciting step forward. It brings us closer to potentially being able to control and prevent astrocytes from becoming harmfully reactive. While there's still a long way to go, we're hopeful that developing such a treatment is possible and that it could even potentially be used across all neurological conditions in which an increase in reactive astrocytes is also documented, including Parkinson's and Alzheimer's."

ALS is a rapidly progressing degenerative disease. Patients commonly suffer loss of movement, speech and eventually the ability to breathe, and most people only live 3 to 5 years after diagnosis. There are currently no treatments that can meaningfully alter the prognosis.

But understanding key cellular changes associated with ALS could help develop new therapies to slow disease progression.

Oliver Ziff, lead author and clinical fellow at the Crick, UCL's Queen Square Institute of Neurology and a neurology registrar at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, says: "Our group have previously shown that splicing is decreased in ALS motor neurons, so when we found the opposite in ALS astrocytes we were intrigued. In fact, increased splicing is what we find in other immune cells when they become activated or angry. This raises the possibility that ALS astrocytes inflict a toxic immune insult on the nervous system and opens new therapeutic avenues for treating ALS."

The researchers will continue this work to further understand the molecular mechanisms involved when astrocytes become reactive with the ambition of developing an intervention that could be used by doctors to slow disease progression.

DURHAM, N.H.-- In business, as in life, it is important to make a good first impression and according to research at the University of New Hampshire a positive initial trust interaction can be helpful in building a lasting trust relationship. Researchers found that trusting a person early on can have benefits over the life of the relationship, even after a violation of that trust.

"It's not just an old adage, first impressions really do matter especially when it comes to trust," said Rachel Campagna, assistant professor of management. "During an initial interaction, one of the most important and immediate factors people consider about another person is trustworthiness. It can impact their willingness to accept risk and vulnerability and can help develop future perceptions and behaviors like cooperation, whether it be for work, negotiations or partnerships. Where it gets more complex is after a significant gap in time between interactions."

In their paper, recently published in the journal Human Relations, the researchers found that if trust is established in a first meeting but soon after someone violates that trust, people tend to be more forgiving because they automatically revert back to that initial impression. However, what they found equally interesting was that if people were not trusted during a first meeting, or they got off on the wrong foot, and had the opportunity to further violate that trust but did not, they were actually the most trusted when encountered again in the future.

"A good example is engaging in a negotiation with a salesperson and there is questionable trust on that first meeting," says Campagna. "But when the two people meet again to finish the negotiation, like sign contracts, the customer learns that the salesperson did something to help them that wasn't expected. That simple act is an opportunity to mend any negative first trust impression and may even strengthen it with actions like future referrals."

There is much debate within trust literature about initial trustworthiness perceptions without any consistent answers. Some previous theories suggest that initial trust can be fleeting, lasting only for the first few moments of an interaction. Other research suggests it has more of a lasting influence. To help reconcile the spectrum of different findings, the researchers conducted three studies at different phases of a relationship - one field study that examined initial interactions and consequences between teams and then two follow up experimental studies after a two-week period that tested the impact of initial trust and perceptions following an exchange in which the trustworthiness of a counterpart plays a critical role.

"While we found that a good first trust impression is important it was interesting to see that even if someone has a bad day and gets off on a bad foot, there are opportunities to build and strengthen the trust, which can be important to both parties", said Campagna.

In earlier days of the COVID-19 pandemic, before diagnostic testing was widely available, it was difficult for public health officials to keep track of the infection's spread, or predict where outbreaks were likely to occur. Attempts to get ahead of the virus are still complicated by the fact that people can be infected and spread the virus even without experiencing any symptoms themselves.

When studies emerged showing that a person testing positive for COVID-19 -- whether or not they were symptomatic -- shed the virus in their stool, "the sewer seemed like the 'happening' place to look for it," said Smruthi Karthikeyan, PhD, an environmental engineer and postdoctoral researcher at University of California San Diego School of Medicine.

From July to November 2020, Karthikeyan and team, led by Rob Knight, PhD, professor and director of the Center for Microbiome Innovation at UC San Diego, sampled sewage water to see if they could detect SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. They could. But concentrating the wastewater proved to be a bottleneck -- it's a slow and laborious multi-step process.

Now, in a paper published March 2, 2021 in mSystems, the researchers describe how they have automated wastewater concentration with the help of liquid-handling robots. They demonstrated their system's robustness by comparing it to existing methods and showing that they can predict COVID-19 cases in San Diego by a week with excellent accuracy, and three weeks with fair accuracy, just using city sewage.

San Diego County has only one primary wastewater treatment plant, located on the coast in the city's Point Loma neighborhood. All excrement flushed away by San Diego's approximately 2.3 million residents, including those on the UC San Diego campus, ends up there.

Seven days a week, Karthikeyan or a colleague drove down to the treatment plant to pick up wastewater samples that had been collected and stored for them by on-site lab technicians. They brought the samples to Knight's lab on the UC San Diego School of Medicine campus in La Jolla.

"Unfortunately, we can't just directly test wastewater samples the way we would samples from patient nasal swabs," Karthikeyan said. "That's because the samples we get are highly diluted -- just think of the number of people contributing to the waste stream, plus all the junk that gets flushed and makes it to the sewer system."

Back in the lab, the researchers process the sewage using their robotic platform. The system extracts RNA -- the genetic material that makes up the genomes of viruses like SARS-CoV-2 -- from the samples, and runs polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to search for the virus' signature genes. The automated, high-throughput system can process 24 samples every 40 minutes. Later the same day, Karthikeyan adds the data to a digital dashboard that tracks new positive cases.

According to Knight, the technique is faster, cheaper and more sensitive than other approaches to wastewater surveillance. The team is able to identify a single COVID-19 case in a building of approximately 500 people.

Wastewater monitoring key to UC San Diego's Return to Learn program

The researchers and students in Knight's lab are no strangers to dealing with stool samples. The team has long been known for their studies of the gut microbiome -- the unique communities of microbes that live in our gastrointestinal tracts. People all over the world participate in their research program, The Microsetta Initiative (aptly abbreviated "TMI"), by mailing their fecal swabs to Knight's UC San Diego lab. The crowdsourced project has allowed the team to study the many factors that might influence the makeup of a person's gut microbiome, and the many ways it influences our health.

In the spring of 2020, Knight's team quickly pivoted their focus to look for one particular microbe: SARS-CoV-2. Soon the team formed an integral part of UC San Diego's Return to Learn program, an evidence-based approach that has allowed the university to continue to offer on-campus housing and in-person classes and research opportunities. With approximately 10,000 students on campus, the many components of the program have kept COVID-19 case rates much lower than the surrounding community and most college campuses, maintaining a positivity rate of less than 1 percent.

Return to Learn relies on three pillars: risk mitigation, viral detection and intervention. Knight's team and their collaborators play a big role in viral detection on campus. They help screen for the asymptomatic presence of SARS-CoV-2 in students and staff (often self-collected using test kits available from vending machines), on surfaces and in wastewater.

The team continues to collect samples daily from more than 100 wastewater samplers on the UC San Diego campus, which cover more than 300 buildings. Approximately one month after the campus detection system came online in summer 2020, a positive case was detected in the Revelle College area one Friday afternoon. The campus community was notified within 14 hours and targeted messages were sent to people associated with the affected buildings, recommending they be tested for the virus as soon as possible. More than 650 people were tested for COVID-19 that weekend.

As a result, two asymptomatic individuals were identified as being positive for COVID-19. After the campus promptly notified them, they self-isolated before an outbreak could occur. Now, wastewater screening results are available on a public dashboard and positive samples are being sequenced to track the emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants. The Return to Learn program, including wastewater testing, has become a model for other universities, K-12 school districts and regions.

"As the barrier to entry and operate continues to drop, we hope wastewater-based epidemiology will become more widely adopted," Knight said. "Rapid, large-scale infectious disease early alert systems could be particularly useful for community surveillance in vulnerable populations and communities with less access to diagnostic testing and fewer opportunities to distance and isolate -- during this pandemic, and the next."

Healthy human bodies are good at regulating: Our temperatures remain around 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, no matter how hot or cold the temperature around us. The sugar levels in our blood remain fairly constant, even when we down a glass of juice. We keep the right amount of calcium in our bones and out of the rest of our bodies.

We couldn't survive without that regulation, called homeostasis. And when the systems break down, the results can cause illness or, sometimes, death.

In presentations at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting, researchers argued that mathematics can help explain and predict those breakdowns, potentially offering new ways of treating the systems to prevent or fix them when things go wrong. The meeting was held virtually earlier this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Homeostasis "is a biological phenomenon and biological systems wouldn't work without it," said Marty Golubitsky, one of the presenters and a distinguished professor of natural and mathematical sciences at The Ohio State University. "And if you had detailed, accurate mathematical models, you could numerically explore those systems, find places where this control really happens, and then you could estimate how things go wrong and how you might be able to correct it."

Scientists have a good handle on the biological reasons why that regulation happens: Certain systems in our bodies have to remain constant in order to function and keep our bodies alive. The math behind it, though, is less certain.

But understanding homeostasis - including predicting changes to it and calculating ways to keep the body regulated despite breakdowns in the body's systems that manage those regulations - could be a way to provide targeted medical care to people who need it, said Janet Best, co-author of some of the research behind the presentations and professor of mathematics at Ohio State.

"This is part of precision medicine," said Best, who is also co-director of Ohio State's Mathematical Biosciences Institute. "People are different, and you need a model that can work on different people. And we think that's what we've developed here."

Researchers at the MBI and at other institutions who study how math and biology intersect have built models to explain how the body maintains homeostasis in a variety of systems. At the heart of those models is a graph, a mathematical concept that seeks to explain how objects relate to one another. (If you took algebra or geometry in high school, you likely learned some of the basics of graph theory.)

Golubitsky and Best said that graph theory can help explain and predict changes to homeostasis in the body. That explanation, they say, could be useful for biologists and others looking for ways to intervene when homeostasis breaks down. That breakdown causes a number of problems - too much glucose in a person's blood, for example, or not enough calcium in their bones.

The AAAS presentations focused both on a graph that models how the body regulates dopamine levels through homeostasis and how graph theory helps identify properties of graphs that can help predict homeostasis. Golubitsky and Best described how dopamine and the enzymes that break it down can be represented as a mathematical formula associated with a graph.

They showed that, by calculating changes in the nodes, it might be possible to calculate or predict changes in dopamine levels. That approach could be expanded to other systems, Golubitsky said, though future study is needed to know for sure. That study is already underway, he said.

"Homeostasis is an important enough area in biology that if mathematics can contribute anything, it's a success," he said.

Using the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans, researchers at the University of Cologne have developed an 'aging clock' that reads the biological age of an organism directly from its gene expression, the transcriptome. Bioinformatician David Meyer and geneticist Professor Dr Björn Schumacher, director of the Institute for Genome Stability in Aging and Disease at the CECAD Cluster of Excellence in Aging Research and the Center for Molecular Medicine Cologne (CMMC), describe their so-called BiT age (binarized transcriptomic aging clock) in the article 'BiT age: A transcriptome based aging clock near the theoretical limit of accuracy' in Aging Cell.

We are all familiar with chronological age - our age since birth. But biological age can differ from it, at times significantly. Everyone ages differently. Scientists can use aging clocks to determine an organism's biological age. Until now, aging clocks such as Horvath's epigenetic clock have been based on the pattern of methylations, small chemical groups that attach to DNA and change with age. Using the transcriptome, the new clock takes into consideration the set of genes that are read from DNA (messenger RNA) to make proteins for the cell.

Until now, the transcriptome was considered too complex to indicate age. Sometimes genes transcribe a particularly large amount of mRNA, sometimes less. Hence, so far it has not been possible to develop precise aging clocks based on gene activity. Meyer and Schumacher's new approach uses a mathematical trick to eliminate the differences in gene activity. The binarized transcriptome aging clock divides genes into two groups - 'on' or 'off' - thus minimizing high variation. This makes aging predictable from the transcriptome. 'Surprisingly, this simple procedure allows very accurate prediction of biological age, close to the theoretical limit of accuracy. Most importantly, this aging clock also works at high ages, which were previously difficult to measure because the variation in gene activity is particularly high then,' said Meyer.

BiT age is based exclusively on approximately 1,000 different transcriptomes of C. elegans, for which the lifespan is precisely known. Model organisms such as the nematode provide a controllable view of the aging process, allowing biomarkers to be discovered and the effects of external influences such as UV radiation or nutrition on longevity to be studied.

The new aging clock allows researchers to accurately predict the pro- and anti-aging effects of gene variants and various external factors in the nematode at a young age. The aging clock also showed that genes of the immune response as well as signalling in neurons are significant for the aging process. 'BiT age can also be applied to predict human age quickly and with very high accuracy. Measuring biological age is important to determine the influence of environment, diet or therapies on the aging process and the development of age-related diseases. This clock could therefore find wide application in aging research. Since BiT age is based purely on gene activity, it can basically be applied to any organism,' Schumacher explained.

Alexandria, Va., USA -- The clinical picture of COVID-19 in various target organs has been extensively studied and described, but relatively little is known about the characteristics of oral cavity involvement. The study "Frequent and Persistent Salivary Gland Ectasia and Oral Disease After COVID-19" published in the Journal of Dental Research (JDR), investigated the presence and prevalence of oral manifestations in COVID-19 survivors.

Researchers at the Università Vita Salute San Raffaele, Milan, Italy, profiled the oral involvement in 122 COVID-19 survivors, hospitalized and followed up at a single referral visit after a median 104 days from hospital discharge. The researchers found that oral manifestations, specifically salivary gland ectasia, were unexpectedly common being detectable in 83.9% and 43% of COVID-19 survivors, respectively. Salivary glands were defined as being ectasic when they appeared swollen, with a patent duct, and no pus leaking. Salivary gland ectasia reflected the hyperinflammatory response to SARS-CoV-2, as demonstrated by the significant relationship with C-reactive protein and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) levels at hospital admission, and with the use of antibiotics during acute disease. Both LDH levels and antibiotic administration survived as independent predictors of salivary gland ectasia in a multivariable analysis. Temporomandibular joint abnormalities, facial pain and masticatory muscle weakness were also common.

"This retrospective and prospective cohort study of COVID-19 survivors revealed that residual damage of the oral cavity persists in the vast majority of the more severely affected patients far beyond clinical recovery," said JDR Editor-in-Chief Nicholas Jakubovics, Newcastle University, England. "This suggests that the oral cavity represents a preferential target for SARS-CoV-2 infection. Further studies are needed to clarify the connection between SARS-CoV-2 infection and oral disorders."

HOUSTON - (March 3, 2021) - In one of the first studies of its kind, an analysis of camera-trap data from 15 wildlife preserves in tropical rainforests has revealed a previously unknown relationship between the biodiversity of mammals and the forests in which they live.

Tropical rainforests are home to half of the world's species, but with species going extinct at a rapid pace worldwide, it's difficult for conservationists to keep close tabs on the overall health of ecosystems, even in places where wildlife is protected. Researchers found that observational data from camera traps can help.

"In general, rainforest ecosystems are extremely diverse, and our study shows that mammal communities in rainforests can be predictably different, and these differences may be controlled, in part, by differences in plant productivity in forests," said Rice's Daniel Gorczynski, a graduate student in biosciences and corresponding author of a study featured on the cover of the Royal Society's flagship biological research journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Gorczynski and more than a dozen co-authors, including his Ph.D. adviser, Rice ecologist Lydia Beaudrot, analyzed camera-trap photos from the Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring Network (TEAM), which uses motion-activated cameras to monitor species trends in tropical forests in Asia, Africa and South America.

Beaudrot, an assistant professor of biosciences, said the study's scientific contributions demonstrates the importance of having the same data collection replicated on the ground in forests all around the world.

"The TEAM data are an incredible resource for basic and applied ecology and conservation," she said. "Given the pace of tropical forest loss, it is more important now than ever to use standardized camera-trap data to understand environmental and anthropogenic effects on wildlife."

For each site, the researchers gathered data about all species of terrestrial mammals with an average body mass greater than 1 kilogram. All the mammal species studied at each site were treated as a single community, and data was compiled for communities with as many as 31 species and as few as five. The researchers also compiled the known functional traits for each species, such as body size, reproductive habits and diet. The combined functional traits of species in a community were used to calculate the community's "functional diversity," or the variety of roles in the forest's overall ecosystem that were filled by that community's species.

"We found that species with unique characteristics -- for example, species that are very large or eat unique foods -- are relatively more common in forests with high productivity," Gorczynski said, referring to the measure ecologists use to characterize the overall rate of plant growth within a forest. The research also showed that species with unique characteristics were less common at sites with low productivity.

"Higher productivity is thought to make rare resources, like certain food types that unique species often eat, more readily available, which unique species can capitalize on," he said. "And because they are unique, they don't have to compete as much with other species for rare resources, and they can persist at higher abundances."

The species that are considered unique vary by site, he said. Examples include elephants, tapirs and ground-dwelling monkeys.

Gorczynski said this relationship between mammal functional diversity and productivity had not been previously shown.

"Most studies of rainforest mammals rely on range maps, which don't give you an idea of how common different species are," he said. "We were able to find this relationship because we used camera trap observations. The observational data gives us an idea of how common different species are, which allows us to compare the relative abundances of species with different traits."

Study co-author Jorge Ahumada, a wildlife scientist at Conservation International, said the study also shows that destructive human activities, like deforestation, decrease the diversity of species' traits in protected areas.

"We found that in areas where local species extinctions have been documented due to significant deforestation or poaching, such as in Korup National Park in Cameroon, large carnivores like leopards and golden cats are the first to go," Ahumada said. "Without these apex predators, entire food chains can be thrown out of balance. Eventually, populations of smaller herbivores will skyrocket, forcing more competition for the same limited resources."

He said "simply counting the number of species in a tropical forest does not provide a full picture" of biodiversity or ecosystem health.

The researchers said more data science studies are needed to understand the ramifications of local species extinctions and address other fundamental questions in conservation, ecology and wildlife biology.

Additional co-authors include Chia Hsieh and Jadelys Tonos Luciano of Rice; Santiago Espinosa of both the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí in Mexico and the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador; Steig Johnson of the University of Calgary in Canada; Francesco Rovero of both the University of Florence in Italy and the MUSE-Science Museum in Trento, Italy; Fernanda Santos of the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi in Brazil; Mahandry Hugues Andrianarisoa of Centre ValBio in Madagascar; Johanna Hurtado Astaiza of the Organization for Tropical Studies in Costa Rica; Patrick Jansen of both the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and Wageningen University in the Netherlands; Charles Kayijamahe of the International Gorilla Conservation Program in Rwanda; Marcela Guimara?es Moreira Lima of the Federal University of Pará in Brazil; and Julia Salvador of the Wildlife Conservation Society in Ecuador.

The research was funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, HP, the Northrop Grumman Foundation and other donors.

TEAM data was provided by the TEAM Network, a collaboration between Conservation International, the Smithsonian Institute and the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Bands and artists on independent record labels get less than their fair share of access to the most popular playlists on streaming platforms such as Spotify - argues a new paper from the University of East Anglia.

The paper, published today, looks at whether streaming platforms offer a level playing field for artists and record labels.

It finds that major labels have an unfair advantage when it comes to playlist access - and that they take the lion's share of subscription revenue as a result.

As a possible remedy, the research team suggests changing the payment system, so that royalties generated by individual listener subscriptions go direct to the labels, bands and artists they are listening to.

They also recommend more transparency in how playlists are created and how the algorithms behind music recommendations work.

Finally, they recommend greater transparency about contracts and say that major labels with financial stakes in streaming platforms should be forced to divest.

Not overhauling the system, they say, is likely stifle innovation and creativity in the long run - which will in turn impact both the industry and consumers.

Prof Peter Ormosi, from UEA's Norwich Business School and Centre for Competition Policy, said: "Music streaming has become the most important route to market recorded music, and this position is likely to strengthen in future.

"Music streaming platforms like Spotify pay the labels royalties that are calculated on a pro rata basis, as a proportion of the revenues associated with the streams of their content.

"We wanted to see how streaming platforms support or distort fair competition between different types of recorded music and their creators - whether they offer a level playing field for artists and labels.

"A level playing field is important not only for artists but also, over the longer term, for consumers. If competition is distorted it risks inhibiting innovation, variety and the prospects of upcoming and more niche artists.

"Creativity and innovation are vital for the music industry - if streaming platforms stifle this, it will be bad for the whole industry and consumers in the long run."

The team studied in detail how streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music operate - including how streaming revenues are split between major and independent labels and artists, the role of playlists, and how some major labels also hold shares in streaming platforms.

Co-author Prof Amelia Fletcher, also from UEA's Norwich Business School and Centre for Competition Policy, said: "Playlists on music streaming platforms play a central role in disseminating music to consumers. As such, it is important for ensuring fair competition that independent artists have fair access to playlists.

"But our research suggests that independent label artists are getting less than their fair share of access to the most popular playlists.

"While the vast majority of playlists are curated by Spotify, the shares of the major labels' own proprietary playlists may exacerbate the situation.

"This disproportionately lesser access is likely to have a direct impact on revenues for independent labels and their artists as well as an indirect impact on the sustainability of this important segment of the market in the future.

Co-author Daniel Antal, founder of Reprex, a big data startup focusing on the music industry,said: "The impact of playlists on royalty payments is likely to be accentuated under a pro-rata royalty allocation system.

"We recommend that the payment system should be reformed by moving from the pro-rata payment system to a user-centric remuneration, where the royalties generated by an individual user's subscription is simply split between what they choose to listen to.

"We would also encourage greater transparency of contracts, once they are agreed, to help ensure fair treatment, or alternatively that competition authorities should allow industry-wide negotiation by labels, as is already carried out for performance and mechanical royalties on the composition side of the split.

"Finally, we note that some of the majors have residual equity stakes in Spotify. For example Universal holds a 3.5 per cent stake and Sony Music a 2.9 per cent stake, in Spotify. And Deezer is part-owned by Access Industries which in turn owns Warner Music Group.

"Requiring divestment of such stakes could also be helpful in ensuring that streaming platforms have the right incentives to ensure a level playing field."

Coastal communities at the forefront of climate change reveal valuable approaches to foster adaptability and resilience, according to a worldwide analysis of small-scale fisheries by Stanford University researchers.

Globally important for both livelihood and nourishment, small-scale fisheries employ about 90 percent of the world's fishers and provide half the fish for human consumption. Large-scale shocks -- like natural disasters, weather fluctuations, oil spills and market collapse -- can spell disaster, depending on the fisheries' ability to adapt to change. In an assessment of 22 small-scale fisheries that experienced stressors, researchers revealed that diversity and flexibility are among the most important adaptive capacity factors overall, while access to financial assets was not as important for individual households as it was at the community scale. The research was published Jan. 23 in the journal Climatic Change.

"The idea of assets not being essential at the household level is an empowering finding because we looked at a lot of places in developing nations without a lot of assets," said lead author Kristen Green, a PhD student in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER) at Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth). "It shows we can invest in non-financial or non-asset-based adaptive mechanisms, and fishers can still adapt."

Focusing on response mechanisms

The researchers measured adaptive capacity using a new framework with three response pathways: adapt, react and cope. Adaptation is defined as proactive planning or taking collective action, reaction as an unplanned response, and coping as passive acceptance of consequences. The team of 11 study authors determined whether or not each fishery community or household had capacity in the areas of knowledge, assets, diversity and flexibility, governance and institutions, and natural capital.

"These adaptive capacity domains don't work in isolation -- it's the recipes or combinations that are important for successful adaptation," Green said.

While previous research has calculated a quantitative or numerical resilience score for different regions and sectors, the focus on community response is fairly new, according to senior author Larry Crowder, the Edward Ricketts Provostial Professor and professor of biology in Stanford's School of Humanities and Sciences.

"Millions of people are dependent on making a living in small-scale fisheries, and some of them are currently doing it better than others," said Crowder, who is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. "If we can identify the features that allow communities and individuals to be better prepared for those perturbations -- in other words, to have an adaptive response -- then we can try to build that capacity in communities that don't have it."

In one case study in their analysis, a tropical island in Vanuatu exhibited flexibility when a cyclone disrupted fishery reefs, infrastructure and fisher livelihoods. Because the fishers had agency over management of the marine area, they were able to temporarily open a previously closed section to maintain food supply and income.

"Part of our findings run counter to the emerging conventional wisdom that making specialists of fisherman is a good thing," Crowder said. "Historically, these fishers were generalists, and our findings suggest they're more able to adapt to fluctuating circumstances if they can maintain that generalist fishing approach."

Incorporating diverse needs

The researchers found that diversity and flexibility were important at every scale, for both community and household adaptive capacity in responding to acute and chronic stressors -- for example, being able to diversify fishing portfolios or shift to other means of income. In addition to climate stressors, the researchers assessed responses to biological, economic, political and social changes, as well as environmental degradation and overfishing. The patterns that emerged from the study may be applied to adaptive capacity in other sectors, such as agriculture or manufacturing.

Using a broad "way of life" approach allowed the co-authors to consider what factors drive behavior, such as culture, heritage or spending time with their families -- not necessarily economics.

"From a Western perspective, sustainability would be a nice thing to have happen. But for people in these communities that are highly resource-dependent, it's not nice -- it's necessary," Crowder said. "Their future is potentially compromised if they and we don't help figure out how to make those lifestyles more sustainable in the long term."

The analysis revealed several examples of how Western-style management -- such as imposing fixed protection areas or maximizing one product that will make the most money -- doesn't always work for small-scale fisheries.

Nature Communications Publishes Paper by Lundquist Institute Investigator Dr. Wei Yan and Colleagues on New Promising Compound for Male Contraceptive Pill

The Lundquist Institute researchers discovered a natural compound that exhibits almost ideal male contraceptive effects in pre-clinical studies

LOS ANGELES (March 3, 2021) -- In a new paper published by Nature Communications, The Lundquist Institute (TLI) Investigator Wei Yan, MD, PhD, and his research colleagues spell out an innovative strategy that has led to the discovery of a natural compound as a safe, effective and reversible male contraceptive agent in pre-clinical animal models. Despite tremendous efforts over the past decades, the progress in developing non-hormonal male contraceptives has been very limited.

The compound is triptonide, which can be either purified from a Chinese herb called Tripterygium Wilfordii Hook F, or produced through chemical synthesis. Single daily oral doses of triptonide induce altered sperm having minimal or no forward motility with close to 100% penetrance and consequently male infertility in 3-4 and 5-6 weeks. Once the treatment is stopped, the males become fertile again in ~4-6 weeks, and can produce healthy offspring. No discernable toxic effects were detected in either short- or long-term triptonide treatment. All of their data suggest that triptonide is a highly promising non-hormonal male contraceptive agent for men because it appears to meet all of the criteria for a viable contraceptive drug candidate, including bioavailability, efficacy, reversibility and safety. A battery of biochemical analyses suggest that triptonide targets one of the last steps during sperm assembly, leading to the production of altered sperm without vigorous motility required for fertilization.

"Thanks to decades of basic research, which inspired us to develop the idea that a compound that targets a protein critical for the last several steps of sperm assembly would lead to the production of nonfunctional sperm without causing severe depletion of testicular cells", said Dr. Yan. "We are very excited that the new idea worked and that this compound appears to be an ideal male contraceptive. Our results using non-injurious studies on lower primates suggest triptonide will be an effective treatment for human males as well. Hopefully, we will be able to start human clinical trials soon to make the non-hormonal male contraceptive a reality."

"Dr. Yan's discovery represents a major leap forward in the field", said Drs. Christina Wang and Ronald Swerdloff, who are TLI co-Principal Investigators helping lead NIH-supported advanced clinical trials on hormone-based birth control approaches. "The more contraceptive methods available, the better, as we will want a family of pharmaceutical products to safely and effectively meet the family planning needs of men and couples at different stages of their reproductive lives, with differing ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds and economic means," emphasized Wang and Swerdloff.

ITHACA, N.Y. - How might people's political ideology affect their perception of race?

Previous research by Amy Krosch, assistant professor of psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences, has shown that white people who identify themselves as political conservatives tend to have a lower threshold for seeing mixed-race Black and white faces as Black.

More often than liberals, Krosch found, white political conservatives show a form of social discrimination termed "hypodescent" - categorizing multiracial individuals as members of the "socially subordinate" racial group.

In new research published Feb. 22 in Philosophical Transactions of Royal Society B, Krosch used neuroimaging to show that this effect seems to be driven by white conservatives' greater sensitivity to the ambiguity of mixed-race faces rather than a sensitivity to the Blackness of faces; this sensitivity showed up in a neural region often associated with affective reactions.

Taken together, these study results suggest white political conservatives might overcategorize mixed-race faces as Black not because of an aversion to Blackness, but because of an affective reaction to racial mixing more generally, Krosch said. The study appears in a special issue about political neuroscience.

"We knew from our previous work that conservatives tend to categorize more mixed-race faces as their 'socially-subordinate' race, or according to hypodescent," Krosch said, "a principle closely related to notorious 'one-drop' rules, used to subjugate individuals with any nonwhite heritage by denying them full rights and liberties under the law from the earliest days of American slavery through the Civil Rights Era."

In the new study, Krosch said, she and the other researchers wanted to figure out why this is the case: "Specifically, we wanted to know if conservatives and liberals differ in the way they are literally seeing, thinking or feeling about mixed-race faces."

Mixed-race faces vary on at least two critical dimensions, Krosch wrote: "Do conservative and liberals differ in their sensitivity to the racial content or racial ambiguity of such faces? Such questions are difficult to separate in behavioral investigations but might be critical to understanding the link between ideology and hypodescent."

In the new study, the researchers used functional neuroimaging (fMRI) - a proxy for blood flow in regions of the brain - to examine the role of neural mediators of political ideology on discriminatory hypodescent regarding mixed-race faces.

Forty-one self-identified white participants self-reported political ideology on an 11-point scale before the neuroimaging. Members of this ideologically diverse group of individuals were presented with computer-generated face images that ranged from 100% white to 100% Black at 10% increments while neuroimaging captured brain activity.

"Of primary interest was a specific neural region - the insula - because of its relevance in independent investigations of ideology, race and ambiguity," Krosch wrote. The insula plays a key role in emotional processing, and the anterior insula is associated with processing ambiguity, so it might also be associated with political ideology and hypodescent, she wrote.

In the results, conservatives exhibited a lower threshold for seeing mixed-race faces as Black and this was related to their higher sensitivity to racial ambiguity in the anterior insula. Conservatives also made decisions faster than liberals. Together, these results indicate that conservatives might feel an aversion to racial ambiguity of any kind which causes them to resolve racial ambiguity "quickly and in the most culturally accessible or hierarchy-affirming way - that is, according to hypodescent," Krosch writes.

Notably, conservatives and liberals did not differ in their responses to ambiguity or face Blackness in brain regions related to lower-level visual processing or social cognition. "Rather than visually perceiving or thinking about mixed-race faces differently, conservatives might maintain a stricter boundary around whiteness (compared to liberals) because of the way they feel about racial ambiguity," Krosch wrote.

These results advance understanding of the role of political ideology in race categorization, Krosch wrote.

"They also help to explain how and why multiracial individuals are often categorized as members of their most subordinate racial group - a phenomenon that enhances their vulnerability to discrimination and exacerbates existing racial inequalities," Krosch wrote. "Given the myriad societal consequences of minority-group categorization and the large number of people who are potentially vulnerable to biased categorization, understanding the processes by which ideology reinforces the racial status quo is critically important."

As COVID-19 lockdowns and quarantines are lifted, businesses are now faced with the challenge of how to keep their employees who are returning to work motivated and engaged.

A study led by a University of Illinois Chicago researcher shows that both employees and managers have an important part to play in promoting employee engagement during the pandemic.

The research, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, suggests employee engagement and performance are the highest when employees are mentally prepared for their return to work and their managers are strongly committed to employees' health and safety at work.

"Given the turmoil and distress during lockdowns and quarantines, employees may have trouble reconnecting with their work. We wanted to find out what factors could help employees effectively stay engaged at work upon return. This is an important topic because highly engaged employees tend to intrinsically enjoy their work and outperform others," says lead author Zhenyu Yuan, assistant professor of managerial studies in the UIC College of Business Administration.

In the study, Yuan and his co-authors surveyed more than 350 employees from the original epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic -- Wuhan, China -- where many employees were returning to work after the strict city-wide lockdown was lifted.

According to the research, employees first need to mentally reconnect with their work.

"As employees are physically returning to work, they also need to be mentally prepared to reconnect," Yuan explained. "For example, employees are encouraged to spend some time reviewing work progress and set work priorities for upcoming tasks before coming back to work. This is similar to the warm-up before a workout. With some mental 'warm-up,' employees will find it easier to reconnect and re-engage at work."

Further, managers also have a critical role to play, Yuan added. With the continuous health threat of the coronavirus, employees can get easily overwhelmed and distracted in the workplace. Therefore, managers need to take concrete measures to promote workplace health and safety so that employees feel safe at work.

"Managers' commitment to safety can't be merely lip service," he said. "They should set a good example themselves by clearly communicating, enforcing, and promoting workplace health and safety protocols."

Importantly, the researchers found these two factors work synergistically.

"Engagement and performance were highest only when both conditions are met," Yuan said. "This reinforces the idea that managers can't simply expect their employees to be devoted to work without providing effective support for their health and safety."

Given that their study was based on data collected from Wuhan, China, Yuan cautioned about the applicability of their findings across different countries and regions.

"Depending on how the virus has spread and been managed in different places, other factors are also important to consider," he said. "But we think our key finding holds regardless of locations. That is, managers and employees are in this together -- they need to work together to promote engagement, workplace productivity, and safety. This will be critical as businesses and employees try to rebound from the economic toll of the current pandemic."