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Large galaxies are known to strip the gas that occupies the space between the stars of smaller satellite galaxies.

In research published today, astronomers have discovered that these small satellite galaxies also contain less 'molecular' gas at their centres.

Molecular gas is found in giant clouds in the centres of galaxies and is the building material for new stars. Large galaxies are therefore stealing the material that their smaller counterparts need to form new stars.

Lead author Dr Adam Stevens is an astrophysicist based at UWA working for the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) and affiliated to the ARC Centre of Excellence in All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D).

Dr Stevens said the study provides new systematic evidence that small galaxies everywhere lose some of their molecular gas when they get close to a larger galaxy and its surrounding hot gas halo.

"Gas is the lifeblood of a galaxy," he said.

"Continuing to acquire gas is how galaxies grow and form stars. Without it, galaxies stagnate.

"We've known for a long time that big galaxies strip 'atomic' gas from the outskirts of small galaxies.

"But, until now, it hadn't been tested with molecular gas in the same detail."

ICRAR-UWA astronomer Associate Professor Barbara Catinella said galaxies don't typically live in isolation.

"Most galaxies have friends," she says.

"And when a galaxy moves through the hot intergalactic medium or galaxy halo, some of the cold gas in the galaxy is stripped away.

"This fast-acting process is known as ram pressure stripping."

The research was a global collaboration involving scientists from the University of Maryland, Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, University of Heidelberg, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, University of Bologna and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Molecular gas is very difficult to detect directly.

The research team took a state-of-the-art cosmological simulation and made direct predictions for the amount of atomic and molecular gas that should be observed by specific surveys on the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico and the IRAM 30-meter telescope in Spain.

They then took the actual observations from the telescopes and compared them to their original predictions.

The two were remarkably close.

Associate Professor Catinella, who led the Arecibo survey of atomic gas, says the IRAM 30-meter telescope observed the molecular gas in more than 500 galaxies.

"These are the deepest observations and largest sample of atomic and molecular gas in the local Universe," she says.

"That's why it was the best sample to do this analysis."

The team's finding fits with previous evidence that suggests satellite galaxies have lower star formation rates.

Dr Stevens said stripped gas initially goes into the space around the larger galaxy.

"That may end up eventually raining down onto the bigger galaxy, or it might end up just staying out in its surroundings," he said.

But in most cases, the little galaxy is doomed to merge with the larger one anyway.

"Often they only survive for one to two billion years and then they'll end up merging with the central one," Dr Stevens said.

"So it affects how much gas they've got by the time they merge, which then will affect the evolution of the big system as well.

"Once galaxies get big enough, they start to rely on getting more matter from the cannibalism of smaller galaxies."

COVID-19 infection in pregnancy is not associated with stillbirth or early neonatal death, according to a new study.

However the research, from over 4000 pregnant women with suspected or confirmed COVID-19, also found women who had a positive test were more likely to have a premature birth.

The research, led by scientists from Imperial College London and published in the journal Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology, used data from the UK and the USA.

The study team looked at data from 4004 pregnant women who had suspected or confirmed COVID-19. Of these women, 1606 were from the UK, from a data registry called PAN-COVID, while 2398 were from the US, from the American Academy of Pediatrics SONPM data registry.

PAN-COVID was funded by the Medical Research Council, UK National Institute for Health Research and the NIHR Imperial Biomedical Research Centre.

All the women gave birth between January-August 2020.

The research found that no babies died from COVID-19 in the study. There was also no increase in risk of stillbirth or low birth weight.

However, both the UK and US data suggested a higher risk of pre-term birth (defined as birth before 37 weeks).

In the UK data, 12 per cent of women with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 had a pre-term delivery - 60 per cent higher than the national average rate of 7.5 per cent. In the US data, 15.7 per cent of women had a pre-term birth, 57 per cent higher than the US national average of 10 per cent.

The study team say part of this association may be due to doctors deciding to deliver the baby early due to concerns about the effect of COVID-19 infection on mother and baby. The rate of spontaneous pre-term birth was lower than expected.

Professor Christoph Lees, senior author of the study from Imperial's Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction, said: "The finding that COVID-19 infection does not increase the risk of stillbirth or baby death is reassuring. However, a suspected or confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis was linked to a higher risk of preterm birth, and it isn't entirely clear why."

Dr Ed Mullins, co-author from Imperial's Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction, added: "This study supports the prioritisation of vaccination for women who are pregnant or who plan to become pregnant, and existing measures that protect women in pregnancy from infection, in order to reduce pre-term birth."

The proportion of babies born to mothers with confirmed COVID-19, and who subsequently tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus (which causes COVID-19) was 2 per cent in the UK study, and 1.8 per cent in the US study.

The majority of women in the study had no pre-existing conditions such as diabetes or a respiratory condition such as asthma.

In the UK study eight of the women died, while four women died in the US study.

The study team say that although these death rates are higher than expected for women giving birth, they are similar to the expected death rates seen among adults with a confirmed COVID-19 infection. This suggests that women in pregnancy are not at a higher risk of death from COVID-19 than non-pregnant women.

Among women in the UK arm of the study, 66.5 per cent were European or North American, 1.9 per cent were Middle Eastern, 1.1 per cent were North African, 4.2 per cent were African south of the Sahara or Caribbean, 7.5 per cent were from the Indian subcontinent, and 9.2 per cent were South East Asian. Among the US arm of the study 37 per cent were white, 25 per cent were Black or African, 4.1 per cent were Asian, 0.4 per cent were American Indian or Alaska Native American.

Professor Fiona Watt, Executive Chair of Medical Research Council, which helped fund the study, said: "It is obviously critical to understand how COVID-19 affects different groups of people. We're proud to have funded the present study in which, for the past year, researchers have monitored the health of a substantial number of pregnant women and their babies. The study's findings, that there is no increased risk of stillbirth and early neonatal death in women who contracted COVID-19 while pregnant, are reassuring. However, the study highlights the need for more research to determine if, or how, COVID-19 affects maternal outcomes or premature birth."

The American Academy of Pediatrics SONPM data registry was led by Professor Mark Hudak.

The Centre for Trials Research at Cardiff University was responsible for building the online database, data management and the statistical analyses. Julia Townson, Senior Research Fellow and co-author from Cardiff University said: "I am delighted that the Centre for Trials Research at Cardiff University has been able to collaborate with Imperial College London on this important research. It has been a mammoth undertaking by the team, requiring a rapid build of the database and web page, as well as cleaning and analysing the data."

ITHACA, N.Y. - Critics claim environmental regulations hurt productivity and profits, but the reality is more nuanced, according to an analysis of environmental policies in China by a pair of Cornell economists.

The analysis found that, contrary to conventional wisdom, market-based or incentive-based policies may actually benefit regulated firms in the traditional and "green" energy sectors, by spurring innovation and improvements in production processes. Policies that mandate environmental standards and technologies, on the other hand, may broadly harm output and profits.

"The conventional wisdom is not entirely accurate," said Shuyang Si, a doctoral student in applied economics and management. "The type of policy matters, and policy effects vary by firm, industry and sector."

Si is the lead author of "The Effects of Environmental Policies in China on GDP, Output, and Profits," published in the current issue of the journal Energy Economics. C.-Y. Cynthia Lin Lawell, associate professor in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management and the Robert Dyson Sesquicentennial Chair in Environmental, Energy and Resource Economics, is a co-author.

Si mined Chinese provincial government websites and other online sources to compile a comprehensive data set of nearly 2,700 environmental laws and regulations in effect in at least one of 30 provinces between 2002 and 2013. This period came just before China declared a "war on pollution," instituting major regulatory changes that shifted its longtime prioritization of economic growth over environmental concerns.

"We really looked deep into the policies and carefully examined their features and provisions," Si said.

The researchers categorized each policy as one of four types: "command and control," such as mandates to use a portion of electricity from renewable sources; financial incentives, including taxes, subsidies and loans; monetary awards for cutting pollution or improving efficiency and technology; and nonmonetary awards, such as public recognition.

They assessed how each type of policy impacted China's gross domestic product, industrial output in traditional energy industries and the profits of new energy sector companies, using publicly available data on economic indicators and publicly traded companies.

Command and control policies and nonmonetary award policies had significant negative effects on GDP, output and profits, Si and Lin Lawell concluded. But a financial incentive - loans for increasing renewable energy consumption - improved industrial output in the petroleum and nuclear energy industries, and monetary awards for reducing pollution boosted new energy sector profits.

"Environmental policies do not necessarily lead to a decrease in output or profits," the researchers wrote.

That finding, they said, is consistent with the "Porter hypothesis" - Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter's 1991 proposal that environmental policies could stimulate growth and development, by spurring technology and business innovation to reduce both pollution and costs.

While certain policies benefitted regulated firms and industries, the study found that those benefits came at a cost to other sectors and to the overall economy. Nevertheless, Si and Lin Lawell said, these costs should be weighed against the benefits of these policies to the environment and society, and to the regulated firms and industries.

Economists generally prefer market-based or incentive-based environmental policies, Lin Lawell said, with a carbon tax or tradeable permit system representing the gold standard. The new study led by Si, she said, provides more support for those types of policies.

"This work will make people aware, including firms that may be opposed to environmental regulation, that it's not necessarily the case that these regulations will be harmful to their profits and productivity," Lin Lawell said. "In fact, if policies promoting environmental protection are designed carefully, there are some that these firms might actually like."

A new study suggests that a hormone known to prevent weight gain and normalize metabolism can also help maintain healthy muscles in mice. The findings present new possibilities for treating muscle-wasting conditions associated with age, obesity or cancer, according to scientists from the University of Southern California Leonard Davis School of Gerontology.

The research, published this month in the American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism, addresses the related problems of age and obesity-induced muscle loss, conditions which can lead to increased risk of falls, diabetes and other negative health impacts. It also adds to a growing number of findings describing beneficial effects of MOTS-c, a mitochondrial-derived peptide that is known to mimic the effects of exercise.

In this study, treating mice on a high-fat diet with MOTS-c helped prevent obesity-associated muscle atrophy by decreasing levels of myostatin, a protein that inhibits muscle growth-- myostatin levels were 40% lower in MOTS-c treated mice compared to control mice. The researchers also found that higher MOTS-c levels in humans were correlated with lower levels of myostatin.

The mice findings show MOTS-c improves not only metabolic function but muscle mass as well.

Through molecular analysis, the researchers also identified the specific signaling pathway regulated by MOTS-c, demonstrating for the first time "that MOTS-c modulates the CK2-PTEN-AKT-FOXO1 pathway to inhibit myostatin expression and muscle wasting," and suggesting that the exercise mimetic effect of MOTS-c may be derived from its previously unknown role as a myostatin inhibitor, according to the paper.

"Knowing the signaling pathway affected by MOTS-c is really important to the discovery of possible treatments," says corresponding author Su Jeong Kim, a research associate professor at the USC Leonard Davis School. "This insight provides a target for potential drug development efforts and can be rapidly translated into clinical trials of MOTS-c and related analogues."

Though several other myostatin inhibitors have been identified, they have yet to successfully reduce muscle wasting conditions in clinical trials. This may be because improving muscle mass alone is not enough, say the USC researchers. They believe boosting mitochondrial function is also key and say that MOTS-c-derived treatments could be especially promising in this regard.

Co-corresponding author Pinchas Cohen, professor of gerontology, medicine and biological sciences and dean of the USC Leonard Davis School, along with Changhan David Lee, assistant professor at the USC Leonard Davis School, first described MOTS-c and its effects on metabolism in 2015. Their mice studies have shown that MOTS-c administration improves both high-fat diet- and aging-induced insulin resistance as well as exercise capacity and median life span.

"Taken together, our work suggests that MOTS-c can address mitochondrial dysfunction," says Cohen. "This study can help improve healthy aging by opening up new avenues for research on how to treat conditions such as insulin resistance-induced skeletal muscle atrophy as well as other muscle-wasting conditions, including sarcopenia."

DALLAS, Feb. 22, 2021 -- Twelve weeks of exercise training improved artery health and function in middle-aged and older men (ages 50-70 years) with low-to-normal testosterone levels, while testosterone therapy provided no benefits to the arteries, according to new research published today in Hypertension, an American Heart Association journal.

The natural aging process for men includes decreased testosterone and physical activity levels decline with age, leading to declines in artery health and function. Testosterone replacement therapy is often used to combat the symptoms of decreasing testosterone levels, including low energy, reduced muscle mass and reduced vigor. In the absence of any new clinical indications, testosterone sales have increased 12-fold globally in the past decades.

"The global increase in testosterone use has been very large, particularly among middle-aged and older men who might see it as a restorative hormone to increase energy and vitality," said study author Daniel J. Green, Ph.D., Winthrop Professor and cardiovascular exercise physiology researcher in the School of Human Sciences at The University of Western Australia in Perth, Australia. "However, previous studies are mixed as to whether replacement testosterone is beneficial or not, or whether it provides additional benefit over and above the effects of an exercise program."

Green and colleagues evaluated men ages 50 to 70 years old, with no history of cardiovascular disease, higher than normal waist circumferences and testosterone levels that were in the low to normal range. The researchers also excluded current smokers, men currently on testosterone treatment or men on medications that would alter testosterone concentrations. At the beginning and end of the study, researchers measured artery function using a method that increases blood flow inside an artery. This assesses whether the inner lining of the artery is healthy and can help the artery to increase in size or dilate.

The 12-week study included 78 men randomized into four groups: 21 men received topical testosterone and completed a supervised exercise program including aerobic and strength exercises two to three times a week; 18 men received testosterone with no exercise; 20 men received a placebo and no exercise; and 19 men received a placebo with exercise. The exercise training was supervised in a research gymnasium at Fiona Stanley Hospital in Perth, and the program was overseen by an Accredited Exercise Physiologist (AEP).

The researchers found:

Testosterone treatment increased the levels of the hormone to above average levels in 62% of men in the groups that received the treatment.

Exercise training also increased testosterone level; however, the levels were highest among the men in the groups who received the testosterone supplement.

Artery function and health improved in the groups who received exercise training; but no improvement was found in those who received testosterone without exercise training.

Artery function in response to testing improved by 28% in the group who received exercise without testosterone, and by 19% in the group who received a combination of testosterone and exercise.

The researchers did not see changes in other tests that stimulated muscle cells in the middle of the artery wall, following exercise training, testosterone treatment or the combination of the two.

"The results of our study suggest that if you are a healthy but relatively inactive middle-aged or older man with increased abdominal girth, and you are worried about your risk of heart attack, stroke or diabetes, then an exercise program with some support and supervision can help to improve the function and health of your arteries," Green said. "Testosterone therapy may have some benefits, for example in increasing muscle mass in the legs, however, we didn't find any benefits in terms of artery function, which is a determinant of future cardiovascular risk."

Green noted that the study's small size is a limitation, and this research lays the foundation for larger studies that could lead to health recommendations for men.

England's salt reduction programme will have led to nearly 200,000 fewer adults developing heart disease and £1.64 billion of healthcare cost savings by 2050, according to research by Queen Mary University of London.

However, the researchers warn that the recent stalling of salt reduction programmes is endangering the potential health gains, as salt intake remains significantly higher than recommended levels.

Excess salt intake is strongly linked with raised blood pressure and increased risks of cardiovascular disease, as well as kidney disease, gastric cancer and osteoporosis. Raised blood pressure is responsible for half of the burden of ischemic heart disease and more than 60 per cent of strokes.

In 2003 to 2010, the Food Standards Agency, in collaboration with the food industry, established salt reduction targets in over 85 food categories, which involved reformulating processed foods, product labelling and public awareness campaigns. Consequently, average population-level salt intake reduced by 15 per cent in the period 2000 to 2011, with the decline attributed to food companies reformulating their products.

The new research, published in the journal Hypertension, used 2000-2018 population survey salt intake data and disease burden data to project the impact of the salt reduction programme, and found that:

The 2003 to 2018 salt reduction programme in England achieved an overall salt intake reduction of 1 gram/day per adult, from 9.38 grams/day in 2000 to 8.38 grams/day in 2018.

If 2018 salt intake levels are maintained, by 2050 the programme would have led to 193,870 fewer adults developing premature cardiovascular disease (comprising 83,140 cases of premature ischemic heart disease and 110,730 premature strokes), and £1.64 billion of health care cost savings for the adult population of England.

If the World Health Organization recommended salt intake of 5 grams/day is achieved by 2030 in England, these benefits could double, preventing a further 213,880 premature cardiovascular disease cases and further health and social care savings to the UK government of £5.33 billion.

Lead researcher Professor Borislava Mihaylova from Queen Mary University of London said: "Our results are striking because of the large health benefits that we see with an effective government policy of reducing salt in everyday food products.

"These gains could be seriously endangered if the policy is weakened. The stalling of salt reduction efforts in the past few years is now eating away at the potential population health gains and is costing our health service dearly.

"Over the last few years, quantities of salt in diets have remained steady at levels much higher than recommended. If we can reduce our salt intake to the recommended 5g per day, we will double health benefits and healthcare savings by the year 2050."

Professor Graham MacGregor, Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at Queen Mary University of London and Chairman of Action on Salt said: "This study shows the enormous health benefits and cost effectiveness of the gradual reduction in salt intake in the UK that occurred between 2003-2011. Since then, the food industry has stopped reducing the excessive amounts of salt they add to our food (80 per cent of our intake) due largely to government inaction. It's now time for Downing Street to take decisive measures in forcing the food industry to comply. If not, many more thousands of people will suffer unnecessary strokes and heart attacks."

The authors say that the salt reduction programme in England was highly successful until 2011 because of the government pressure on industry to reduce salt content, but that this changed from 2011 to 2017 once it continued under the Department of Health as part of the Public Health Responsibility Deal. Few of the proposed actions were implemented under the Responsibility Deal and the programme failed to achieve the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence's recommended salt intake targets of 6 grams/day per adult by 2015.

The food industry in the UK is still producing high-salt products in spite of strong evidence that it is technologically feasible and commercially viable to produce lower-salt products, and there is ample room for incremental reductions in their salt content, according to the researchers.

To get back on track, they say the programme will benefit from (1) a strict enforcement of salt reduction targets, for example, through legislation or financial penalties for food companies failing to comply; (2) setting more stringent salt targets; and (3) extending salt targets to the out-of-home sector, which remain lenient and lack the proper monitoring mechanisms.

Despite the high-quality data on population-level salt intake and disease burden used, the study has a number of limitations. The sample size for measuring sodium excretion from 24-hour urine collections (the most accurate way to assess salt intake) was small. There is also a lack of salt intake data in children. The long study period may present a further limitation due to the uncertainty in model parameters, assumptions on continuity of the salt reduction programme, and evolution of cardiovascular disease and salt intake trends.

Stress was the most common reason teachers cited for leaving the profession before and during the pandemic, according to a RAND Corporation survey of nearly 1,000 former public-school teachers. Three of four former teachers said work was often or always stressful in the most recent year in which they taught in a public school.

In fact, teachers cited stress nearly twice as often as insufficient pay as a reason for quitting. Most former teachers went on to take jobs with less or equal pay, with 3 in 10 taking jobs with no health insurance or retirement benefits.

COVID-19 appears to have exacerbated teachers' stress. Almost half of public-school teachers who left the profession early and voluntarily since March 2020 listed COVID-19 as the main reason for their departure. COVID-19 has elevated stress by forcing teachers to work more hours and navigate an unfamiliar remote environment, made worse by frequent technical problems.

"Different COVID-19 stressors affected pandemic teachers differently," said Melissa Diliberti, lead author of the report and an assistant policy researcher at RAND, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization. "Insufficient pay and childcare responsibilities drove out younger teachers under 40, while older teachers were more likely to say health conditions made them leave."

Those still in education report the top attractions about their new education jobs are more flexibility in their schedules and a better work climate. Of teachers who left the profession and are currently employed, about 3 in 10 hold a non-education-related job, 3 in 10 have a different type of teaching position, and the rest are in non-teaching education jobs.

There is some good news for school districts: A substantial share of former public-school teachers are willing to come back to the profession under certain conditions.

"Despite the many reasons public school teachers left, about half of those who left primarily because of COVID-19 said they would be willing to come back once most staff are vaccinated or there was regular rapid COVID-19 testing of staff and students," said Heather Schwartz, co-author and director of the Pre-K to 12 educational systems program at RAND.

The survey was conducted in December 2020 using the RAND American Educator Panels, nationally representative samples of educators who provide their feedback on important issues of educational policy and practice.

BINGHAMTON, NY -- There are millions of unplugged oil wells in the United States, which pose a serious threat to the environment. Using drones, researchers from Binghamton University, State University of New York have developed a new method to locate these hard-to-locate and dangerous wells.

New York State has an estimated 35,000 abandoned oil or gas wells, while Pennsylvania has more than 600,000 dating back to the early days of drilling. Overall, the United States has an estimated 2 million orphaned wells. These wells pose multiple risks. They release methane into the atmosphere, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, along with chemicals such as benzene, carbon tetrachloride and chloroform. Through sunlight-driven chemical reactions, methane also increases tropospheric ozone, which is considered a pollutant connected with respiratory distress.

"If all the orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells in New York State were plugged, the equivalent of nearly 750,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide could be removed from the atmosphere, which is the equivalent of removing the cars of Buffalo for one year," said Timothy de Smet, Geophysics and Remote Sensing Laboratory Director at Binghamton University.

There are economic reasons to plug gas wells, too; left uncapped, these wells make it difficult to re-stimulate older oil fields with newer technologies such as hydraulic fracturing, according to the article.

Plugging the wells is the right thing to do -- but first you need to find them.

In 1879, New York State became the second state in the country to require plugging wells after their useful life has ended. But that plugging requirement was poorly enforced until modern regulations came to the state in 1963, and what constituted "plugging" in those early days was crude by modern standards.

The greatest concentration of unplugged wells lies in the western part of the state, especially near the border with Pennsylvania and in southwestern counties such as Cattaraugus. Currently, state Department of Conversation staff must go out on foot to identify and plug these wells, an incredibly slow and inefficient process for even a small area.

Long before the invention of satellites and global positioning systems (GPS), locations were recorded on crude hand-drawn maps, which are often inaccurate, de Smet said. Sometimes these maps under-report well sites, or record wells that ended up never being drilled. That is, where the maps exist at all.

"Some areas are completely undocumented," de Smet said.

To find abandoned wells, researchers outfitted a drone with a magnetometer that can detect magnetic anomalies in the wells' metal casings, pinpointing their location.

But before the technology could be deployed in the larger field, they first needed to do multiple smaller test trials to ensure that the process works as intended. For example, every drone has a unique magnetic and electromagnetic interference signal that needs to be compensated for, de Smet explained.

Assistant Professor of Geological Sciences and Environmental Studies Alex Nikulin and de Smet have been testing the technology as a way to detect unexploded ordnance in Ukraine, and used advanced signal processing methods to determine the optimal parameters necessary to increase the signal-to-noise ratio. In previous experiments, they also tested flight elevations over the tree canopy.

They finally tried out the well-detecting drone at a Cattaraugus County site where 11 wells had previously been mapped on foot. It worked: In just over three hours, they located 72 wells.

"We could actually have flown the drone faster and for longer missions, but this was actually the first time we'd tested this, so we were pretty conservative with mission planning," de Smet said.

Long-term, the DEC plans to adopt this strategy to locate abandoned wells, which the agency will then plug.

"Our method is pretty much the most reliable method to find them," de Smet said.

Also contributing to this research were then-graduate student Natalia Romanzo, as well as Nathan Graber and Charles Dietrich from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and Andrii Puliaiev of the drone company UMT.

Young pregnant women, who appear to have fully recovered from an acute injury that reduced their kidney function, have higher rates of significant problems like preeclampsia and low birthweight babies, problems which indicate their kidneys have not actually fully recovered.

Now scientists have developed a rodent model that is enabling studies to better understand, identify and ideally avoid this recently identified association, they report in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

"We are talking about a population of young women that we usually think about as protected and healthy, and they are not if they have had a kidney insult," says Dr. Jennifer C. Sullivan, pharmacologist and physiologist in the Department of Physiology at the Medical College of Georgia and interim dean of The Graduate School at Augusta University. "We think there is injury, potentially even years later, in some of these young women that we are not seeing, and we need to be able to quantify how much injury is still there."

Acute kidney injuries, or AKIs, result from the rapid, temporary loss of adequate oxygen-rich blood to the organ that constantly filters our blood of toxins and resorbs essentials like water, glucose and potassium. An AKI can result from a literal blow to the kidney, like a car accident, from pharmaceuticals like the chemotherapy drug cisplatin, or from a major surgery or sickness that puts you in intensive care, like COVID-19, which is known to have a direct effect on the kidney.

The incidence of AKI has been on the increase, and the COVID pandemic very likely will accelerate that, says Dr. Ellen E. Gillis, senior postdoctoral fellow in Sullivan's lab and the study's corresponding author. A COVID-related AKI is associated with high mortality and considered an independent risk factor for death in patients with COVID. In fact, the clear emerging relationship was the focus of the virtual 25th Consensus Conference of the Acute Disease Quality Initiative.

"Any loss of blood flow to the kidneys can result in reduced function and an AKI," says Gillis. Pregnancy is one of the biggest stressors the kidneys face, she says. "Basically every system in your body changes during pregnancy."

Their new model is helping identify how calamity can occur when the two conditions collide, even if they are separated by years.

During pregnancy, maternal circulation must support fetal circulation so cardiac output increases, total body volume increases as well as plasma volume so the kidneys have an increased load to filter, Gillis says. "There is an increase in plasma volume to ensure the high metabolic demands of both baby and mother are met," Sullivan adds. In this scenario, the baby actually gets preferential protection.

Two recent clinical studies and their new model suggest that even years later, some young women have lingering damage that can prevent these usual responses and protections. It can happen despite the fact that the mother's kidney function appeared normal before pregnancy, including normal creatinine levels, a waste product that healthy kidneys filter from your blood that is measured in the blood and/or urine as a standard assessment of kidney function.

Two clinical studies, one published in 2017 and the second a year later, looked at women an average age of 30, often years out from their AKI with multiple assessments that indicated their kidneys had recovered. The research led by Massachusetts General Hospital found significant increases in problems with both mother and baby, including preeclampsia, low birthweight and loss of the baby.

The MCG scientists now report the same findings in their animal model: they experience an AKI, they recover based on usual measures of kidney function, but problems with the mother and/or baby still occur.

Their model closely mimics what happens in humans: a period of compromised blood flow to the kidney followed by restoration of blood flow, called ischemia reperfusion injury, a known, common cause of AKI in humans, followed by a recovery period in which, again like the young women, creatinine levels returned to normal.

They monitored the rats throughout pregnancy, and watched uterine artery resistance go up, uterine blood flow go down and babies born smaller because they were not getting adequate nutrition. The uterine artery provides most of the blood to the uterus, where the baby develops, and should enlarge significantly during pregnancy.

"Typically during pregnancy your vasculature relaxes and blood pressure decreases to accommodate this increase in plasma volume," Gillis says. "You should see relaxation and vasodilation of the uterine artery," Sullivan adds. Normally there is some new blood vessel growth for the placenta to accommodate the demand, but not in the mother's kidneys. "The kidneys just have to work harder, which normally isn't a problem," Sullivan adds. But the previously injured kidney, which has functioned fine for the woman alone, may not be up for this additional significant task.

"You should see changes in the vasculature to promote increased perfusion, increased delivery to the pups. There are a lot of things that should be happening that the gross measurements we make today suggest aren't happening," Sullivan says.

Rather in their model, and in the young women, pregnancy appears to induce renal insufficiency, driving up levels of creatinine in the blood as well as urea, a byproduct of protein metabolism from your body and the food you eat, whose increased blood levels indicate kidney problems and/or high meat consumption. Creatinine levels should decrease in pregnant women because of that increased plasma volume, but the limited clinical trials have shown they go up in women who have had AKIs.

Plasma volume, which should double, increases some, but not sufficiently, Gillis says. They don't yet know the exact mechanism for why plasma volume increase is insufficient, but suspect it's because the kidneys just can't handle the volume. Sullivan notes there is crosstalk between the kidneys, uterus and placenta that the previous insult to the kidney appears to change. Sodium retention is one way to increase plasma volume, so problems with sodium transport by the kidneys following an AKI could be an issue.

The rat mothers also have more waste product in their blood, another indicator the kidneys are not working at a premium. In fact, the high creatinine levels they are seeing would indicate that pregnancy itself has caused another AKI, Gillis says. The scientists note that it's widely acknowledged that creatinine levels are not an ideal indicator of kidney function, and one of the goals of their work is to find a better biomarker and better treatment.

Gillis is now exploring whether regulatory T cells, which help protect the fetus from the mother's immune system during pregnancy and also should increase in number in pregnancy, are part of the problem. Regulatory T cells can, for example, produce the powerful blood vessel dilator nitric oxide, and they don't see the increase in these calming T cells in their new model. Perhaps the AKI generated an altered inflammatory response that decreases the ability to prompt this important increase in regulatory T cells, Gillis says. If that is the problem, more regulatory T cells, an approach which already has been studied in humans, for example, to better protect their transplanted organ, could be given to help, Sullivan says.

They note that preeclampsia and low birthweight have long been concerns, just not concerns associated with the kidneys. "We thought of them being placental disease," Sullivan says.

Still there have been known overlaps. AKIs increase the risk for chronic kidney disease, women are more likely to get chronic kidney disease and issues occurring during pregnancy may be one of the reasons, they say. Women with poor kidney function are known to have difficulties with pregnancy, but these young women are considered to be recovered from their kidney injury, the scientists emphasize.

And they are concerned the newly discovered association will only increase with rates of both AKI and maternal death on the rise. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that death rates of pregnant women are on the rise in the United States, which has the highest maternal mortality among developed countries.

COVID could worsen the problem. A study of more than 5,000 veterans hospitalized with COVID, for example, indicated that about 32% developed an AKI and that nearly half of them did not have fully recovered kidney function at discharge from the hospital. Veterans with an AKI were at increased risk of death and Black veterans were at most risk.

The first looks at pregnancy outcomes following what appeared to be full recovery from an AKI was a retrospective study of women who had babies between 1998 and 2016. It found that women who had an AKI had an increased rate of preeclampsia -- the worse the AKI, the greater the preeclampsia risk -- and that their infants were born at an earlier gestational age and were more likely to be small for their gestational age. The emerging association of AKI and preeclampsia and adverse fetal outcomes held even when matched with women of a similar age, race, body mass index and blood pressure -- including rates of preexisting hypertension -- at their first prenatal visit. Creatinine levels the six months before conception also were similar in the nearly 40% of the women on whom that data was available.

Gillis last year received a K99 Pathway to Independence Award from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute to develop a model to further explore why pregnant women who seemed to recover from their acute kidney injury, had these associated problems.

Outcomes for an individual with an AKI include hypertension and chronic kidney disease, potentially including the need for kidney dialysis. Preeclampsia is the most common complication of pregnancy and typically occurs in women with a previously healthy blood pressure. Traditional risk factors have actually included not having children as well as obesity and hypertension.

Read the full study.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - Automotive recalls are occurring at record levels, but seem to be announced after inexplicable delays. A research study of 48 years of auto recalls announced in the United States finds carmakers frequently wait to make their announcements until after a competitor issues a recall - even if it is unrelated to similar defects.

This suggests that recall announcements may not be triggered solely by individual firms' product quality defect awareness or concern for the public interest, but may also be influenced by competitor recalls, a phenomenon that no prior research had investigated.

Researchers analyzed 3,117 auto recalls over a 48-year period -- from 1966 to 2013 -- using a model to investigate recall clustering and categorized recalls as leading or following within a cluster. They found that 73 percent of recalls occurred in clusters that lasted 34 days and had 7.6 following recalls on average.

On average, a cluster formed after a 16-day gap in which no recalls were announced. They found 266 such clusters over the period studied.

"The implication is that auto firms are either consciously or unconsciously delaying recall announcements until they are able to hide in the herd," said George Ball, assistant professor of operations and decision technologies and Weimer Faculty Fellow at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business. "By doing this, they experience a significantly reduced stock penalty from their recall."

Ball is co-author of the study, "Hiding in the Herd: The Product Recall Clustering Phenomenon," recently published online in Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, along with faculty at the University of Illinois, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Minnesota and Michigan State University.

Researchers found as much as a 67 percent stock market penalty difference between leading recalls, which initiate the cluster, and following recalls, who follow recalls and hide in the herd to experience a lower stock penalty.

This indicates a "meaningful financial incentive for auto firms to cluster following recalls behind a leading recall announcement," researchers said. "This stock market penalty difference dissipates over time within a cluster. Additionally, across clusters, the stock market penalty faced by the leading recall amplifies as the time since the last cluster increases."

The authors also found that firms with the highest quality reputation, in particular Toyota, triggered the most recall followers.

"Even though Toyota announces some of the fewest recalls, when they do announce a recall, 31 percent of their recalls trigger a cluster and leads to many other following recalls," Ball said. "This number is between 5 and 9 percent for all other firms. This means that firms are likely to hide in the herd when the leading recall is announced by a firm with a stellar quality reputation such as Toyota.

"A key recommendation of the study is for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to require auto firms to report the specific defect awareness date for each recall, and to make this defect awareness date a searchable and publicly available data field in the auto recall dataset NHTSA provides online," Ball added. "This defect awareness date is required and made available by other federal regulators that oversee recalls in the U.S., such as the Food and Drug Administration. Making this defect awareness date a transparent, searchable and publicly available data field may discourage firms from hiding in the herd and prompt them to make more timely and transparent recall decisions."

In a world as diverse as our own, the journey towards a sustainable future will look different depending on where in the world we live, according to a recent paper published in One Earth and led by McGill University, with researchers from the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

"There are many regional pathways to a more sustainable future, but our lack of understanding about how these complex and sometimes contradictory pathways interact (and in particular when they synergize or compete with one another) limits our ability to choose the 'best' ones," says Elena Bennett, a professor in the Department of Natural Resource Sciences at McGill University and the lead author on the paper."For this reason, we suggest that the global community needs to envision a diversity of desirable futures, nurture small seeds of sustainability, and work together to navigate the emerging pathways to sustainability."

Four different ways that local changes combine to result in global outcomes: aggregation, compensation, learning, and contagion

The researchers call for new approaches to exploring and creating a sustainable future that more fully account for regional complexity; provide space for local and regional actors to imagine how they might act to help create better futures; and that foster action towards those futures. More specifically, the paper argues that:

Different regions of the world, with different contexts and values, will follow different pathways towards greater sustainability.

This variety will produce tensions and opportunities as the outcomes of regional pathways interact.

Navigating these changes requires understanding of how regional pathways interact with global processes to produce better outcomes for people and nature

A patchwork of approaches to imagining a sustainable future for "Patchwork Earth"

To increase capacity to navigate towards a more sustainable future on a so-called "patchwork earth", the authors propose that science and policy should do a better job of:

Envisioning diverse desirable futures. They call for a greater plurality in our understanding of what might constitute a desirable future for different people in different places, and a better understanding of the potential conflicts, opportunities, trade-offs and synergies between pursuing different visions in different places.

Nurturing seeds of sustainability. They point to the need to nurture the growth of seeds of desirable futures and deconstruct the institutions and organizations that impede their growth.

Navigating emerging pathways. They also argue that in order to avoid having local actions derailed by other local or global initiatives, scientists, policymakers and practitioners need to work together in ongoing processes of adaptive action, learning, and reflection to identify and engage with unexpected surprises, conflicts and trade-offs as they emerge.

But while these different local and regional pathways might on their own achieve the globally-agreed-upon Sustainable Development Goals or other important local objectives, how they are influenced by each other and by global processes is difficult to predict.

Scenario planning that engages with multi-scale complexity

For example, a focus on global policies and a desire to use well-established global models means that current planning methods ignore national and local dissimilarities, questions, and challenges.

The authors point to methods that engage with multi-scale complexity, such as those pioneered by the Seeds of Good Anthropocenes project. Here, participants develop radical positive visions of the future based on existing real-world 'seeds' of a better future - innovations such as tribal parks, urban rewilding, and community land ownership that aim to address social-ecological challenges but are not yet mainstream.

"Incorporating more of the diversity and complexity of the world in our thinking about the future, and better understanding the opportunities and tensions that may arise can help increase our collective capacity to transform towards a more sustainable and just world for all," adds co-author Garry Peterson, who is part of Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Scenarios and models task force and hopes such insights can be used to develop pluralistic and diverse nature-centered scenarios for IPBES.

Muscle is the largest organ that accounts for 40% of body mass and plays an essential role in maintaining our lives. Muscle tissue is notable for its unique ability for spontaneous regeneration. However, in serious injuries such as those sustained in car accidents or tumor resection which results in a volumetric muscle loss (VML), the muscle's ability to recover is greatly diminished. Currently, VML treatments comprise surgical interventions with autologous muscle flaps or grafts accompanied by physical therapy. However, surgical procedures often lead to a reduced muscular function, and in some cases result in a complete graft failure. Thus, there is a demand for additional therapeutic options to improve muscle loss recovery.

A promising strategy to improve the functional capacity of the damaged muscle is to induce de novo regeneration of skeletal muscle via the integration of transplanted cells. Diverse types of cells, including satellite cells (muscle stem cells), myoblasts, and mesenchymal stem cells, have been used to treat muscle loss. However, invasive muscle biopsies, poor cell availability, and limited long-term maintenance impede clinical translation, where millions to billions of mature cells may be needed to provide therapeutic benefits.

Another important issue is controlling the three-dimensional microenvironment at the injury site to ensure that the transplanted cells properly differentiate into muscle tissues with desirable structures. A variety of natural and synthetic biomaterials have been used to enhance the survival and maturation of transplanted cells while recruiting host cells for muscle regeneration. However, there are unsolved, long-lasting dilemmas in tissue scaffold development. Natural scaffolds exhibit high cell recognition and cell binding affinity, but often fail to provide mechanical robustness in large lesions or load-bearing tissues that require long-term mechanical support. In contrast, synthetic scaffolds provide a precisely engineered alternative with tunable mechanical and physical properties, as well as tailored structures and biochemical compositions, but are often hampered by lack of cell recruitment and poor integration with host tissue.

To overcome these challenges, a research team at the Center for Nanomedicine within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in Seoul, South Korea, Yonsei University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) devised a novel protocol for artificial muscle regeneration. The team achieved effective treatment of VML in a mouse model by employing direct cell reprogramming technology in combination with a natural-synthetic hybrid scaffold.

Direct cell reprogramming, also called direct conversion, is an efficient strategy that provides effective cell therapy because it allows the rapid generation of patient-specific target cells using autologous cells from the tissue biopsy. Fibroblasts are the cells that are commonly found within the connective tissues, and they are extensively involved in wound healing. As the fibroblasts are not terminally differentiated cells, it is possible to turn them into induced myogenic progenitor cells (iMPCs) using several different transcription factors. Herein, this strategy was applied to provide iMPC for muscle tissue engineering.

In order to provide structural support for the proliferating muscle cells, polycaprolactone (PCL), was chosen as a material for the fabrication of a porous scaffold due to its high biocompatibility. While salt-leaching is a widely used method to create porous materials, it is mostly limited to producing closed porous structures. To overcome this limitation, the researchers augmented the conventional salt leaching method with thermal drawing to produce customized PCL fiber scaffolds. This technique facilitated high-throughput fabrication of porous fibers with controlled stiffness, porosity, and dimensions that enable precise tailoring of the scaffolds to the injury sites.

However, the synthetic PCL fiber scaffolds alone do not provide optimal biochemical and local mechanical cues that mimic muscle-specific microenvironment. Hence the construction of a hybrid scaffold was completed through the incorporation of decellularized muscle extracellular matrix (MEM) hydrogel into the PCL structure. Currently, MEM is one of the most widely used natural biomaterials for the treatment of VML in clinical practice. Thus, the researchers believe that hybrid scaffolds engineered with MEM have a huge potential in clinical applications.

The resultant bioengineered muscle fiber constructs showed mechanical stiffness similar to that of muscle tissues and exhibited enhanced muscle differentiation and elongated muscle alignment in vitro. Furthermore, implantation of bioengineered muscle constructs in the VML mouse model not only promoted muscle regeneration with increased innervation and angiogenesis but also facilitated the functional recovery of damaged muscles. The research team notes: "The hybrid muscle construct might have guided the responses of exogenously added reprogrammed muscle cells and infiltrating host cell populations to enhance functional muscle regeneration by orchestrating differentiation, paracrine effect, and constructive tissue remodeling."

Prof. CHO Seung-Woo from the IBS Center for Nanomedicine and Yonsei University College of Life Science and Biotechnology who led this study notes: "Further studies are required to elucidate the mechanisms of muscle regeneration by our hybrid constructs and to empower the clinical translation of cell-instructive delivery platforms."

Periodic pulses of light forming a comb in the frequency domain are
widely used for sensing and ranging. The key to the miniaturisation of
this technology towards chip-integrated solutions is the generation of
dissipative solitons in ring-shaped microresonators. Dissipative solitons
are stable pulses circulating around the circumference of a nonlinear
resonator.

Since their first demonstration, the process of dissipative soliton
formation has been extensively studied and today it is rather
considered as textbook knowledge. Several directions of further
development are actively investigated by different research groups
worldwide. One of these directions is the generation of solitons in
coupled resonators. The collective effect of many resonators promises
better performance and control over the frequency combs, exploiting
another (spatial) dimension.

But how does the coupling of additional resonators change the soliton
generation process? Identical oscillators of any kind, affecting each
other, can no longer be considered as a set of distinct elements. Due to
the hybridisation phenomenon, the excitation of such a system
influences all its elements, and the system has to be treated as a whole.
The simplest case when the hybridisation takes place is two coupled
oscillators or, in molecular terminology, a dimer. As well as coupled
pendulums and atoms forming a molecule, modes of coupled optical
microresonators experience hybridisation but, in contrast to other
systems, the number of involved modes is large (typically from tens to
hundreds). Therefore, solitons in a photonic dimer are generated in
hybridised modes involving both resonators, which adds another
degree of control if one has access to hybridisation parameters.

In a paper published at Nature Physics, researchers from the laboratory of Tobias J. Kippenberg at EPFL, and IBM Research Europe led by Paul Seidler, demonstrated the generation of dissipative solitons and, therefore, coherent frequency combs in a photonic molecule made of two microresonators. The generation of a soliton in the dimer implies two counter-propagating solitons in both resonator rings. The
underlying electric field behind every mode of the dimer resembles two
gears turning in opposite directions, which is why solitons in the
photonic dimer are called Gear Solitons. Imprinting heaters on both
resonators, and thereby controlling the hybridisation, authors
demonstrated the real-time tuning of the soliton-based frequency
comb.

Even the simple dimer arrangement, besides the hybridised (gear)
soliton generation, has demonstrated a variety of emergent
phenomena, i.e. phenomena not present at the single-particle
(resonator) level. For instance, researchers predicted the effect of
soliton hopping: periodic energy exchange between the resonators forming the dimer while maintaining the solitonic state. This phenomenon is the result of simultaneous generation of solitons in both hybridised mode families whose interaction leads to energy oscillation. Soliton hopping, for example, can be used for the generation of configurable combs in the radio-frequency domain.

"The physics of soliton generation in a single resonator is relatively wellunderstood today," says Alexey Tikan a researcher at the Laboratory of Photonics and Quantum Measurements, EPFL. "The field is probing other directions of development and improvement. Coupled resonators are one of a few such perspectives. This approach will allow for the employment of concepts from adjacent fields of Physics. For example, one can form a topological insulator (known in solid state physics) by coupling resonators in a lattice, which will lead to the generation of robust frequency combs immune to the defects of the lattice, and at the same time profiting from the enhanced efficiency and additional degrees of control. Our work makes a step towards these fascinating ideas!"

Researchers from California Polytechnic State University and University of Oregon published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines the potential benefits for firms and consumers of pick-your-price (PYP) over pay-what-you-want (PWYW) and fixed pricing strategies.

The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "The Control-Effort Trade-Off in Participative Pricing: How Easing Pricing Decisions Enhances Purchase Outcomes" and is authored by Cindy Wang, Joshua Beck, and Hong Yuan.

Over the past few decades, marketers have experimented with pricing strategies that delegate some or all of the price determination to consumers. Their goal is to engage consumers, boost sales, enhance brand loyalty, and contribute to a sellers' overall competitive position. However, in recent years many firms, including Priceline.com, Panera Bread, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, have abandoned their once-famous use of participative pricing and reverted to fixed prices.

The research team pins down and theorizes a tension that consumers experience when they evaluate a purchase that involves participative pricing. On one hand, consumers are attracted to the economically advantageous pricing terms (i.e., pay anything, including $0) that permit them to maximize their utility. On the other hand, consumers must decide the final price, which takes effort. Building on this control-effort proposition, the researchers predict an overall negative effect of a pay-what-you-want (PWYW) pricing strategy because of the high effort involved in deciding the final price. They also predict an overall positive effect of a novel pick your price (PYP) strategy, which allows consumers to choose a price from a set of options. PWYW and PYP both enhance feelings of pricing control, but PYP does not increase pricing effort since consumers find it relatively easy to make constrained choices. The study investigates the effects of PWYW and PYP with five studies in a variety of contexts (e.g., retail food, health services, financial services, entertainment, and household products).

Some primary results from a field study that involves actual purchases and profit outlines establish the strong performance of PYP relative to fixed prices and PWYW. Findings from lab experiments further validate that compared to a fixed price, PWYW decreases purchase intentions because of the high pricing effort, even though it confers full pricing control. However, because PYP provides a sense of pricing control but not pricing effort, it consequently increases purchase intentions. These effects hold regardless of the price level (high vs. low). Additionally, shopping motives (to save money or time) influence the effects of PWYW and PYP on purchase intentions. As Wang explains, "When consumers are motivated to save money, the advantages of pricing control are amplified and the costs of pricing effort are minimized; thus, both PWYW and PYP increase purchase intentions relative to a fixed price. Alternatively, when consumers are motivated to save time, the disadvantages of pricing effort are enhanced and the advantages of pricing control are attenuated. Hence, under such conditions, PWYW performs worse than fixed price and PYP and fixed price's performance are comparable." Also, single (vs. multiple) purchase decisions serve as a crucial factor, such that the positive effect of PYP on purchase choice attenuates over multiple purchase decisions because they require a great deal of effort. Lastly, in a parallel investigation in donation contexts, both PWYW and PYP perform significantly better than a fixed price strategy.

By adopting a consumer perspective on participative pricing, this study explains why PWYW might decrease purchases and specifies when PWYW and PYP will be more or less effective. Beck says that "Managers can selectively implement PWYW and PYP to enhance their pricing performance. Adopting PWYW strategies requires careful consideration, and even if marketing research were to indicate that consumers favor higher pricing control, the execution might fail due to consumers' reluctance to expend effort to determine their own prices. Alternatively, firms might benefit more generally from adopting PYP strategies."

Consumers' willingness to exert pricing effort also varies across shopping contexts. For example, the research suggests PWYW is more effective when consumers are motivated to save money, such as during the holiday season. Yet PWYW likely is less effective for busy consumers just seeking to get their holiday shopping done quickly. For online stores that emphasize monetary savings, both PYP and PWYW could be more effective than conventional fixed prices. Contexts that involve donations are another scenario for which participative pricing, especially PWYW, promises benefits; consumers already expect to expend effort for the benefit of others.

What The Study Did: Persistent symptoms among adults with COVID-19 up to nine months after illness onset were analyzed in this study.

Authors: Helen Y. Chu, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of Washington in Seattle, is the corresponding author.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.0830)

Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.