Culture

MOSCOW, Idaho -- Feb. 9, 2021 -- Breastfeeding women with COVID-19 do not pass along the SARS-CoV-2 virus in their milk but do transfer milk-borne antibodies that are able to neutralize the virus, a multi-institutional team of researchers led by the University of Idaho reported.

The team analyzed 37 milk samples submitted by 18 women diagnosed with COVID-19. None of the milk samples were found to contain the virus, but nearly two-thirds of the samples did contain two antibodies specific to the virus.

"Taken together, our data do not support maternal-to-infant transmission of SARS-CoV-2 via milk," the researchers reported Tuesday in the journal mBio published by the American Society for Microbiology." These results support recommendations to continue breastfeeding during mild-to-moderate maternal COVID-19 illness."

U of I researchers Michelle "Shelley" McGuire and Mark A. McGuire led the work funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Shelley is a nutrition researcher focused on human milk and directs U of I's Margaret Ritchie School of Family and Consumer Sciences. Mark is a lactation physiologist and directs the Idaho Agricultural Experiment Station. Both are on the faculty of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. Their research is featured on the CALS website, The Vandal Theory podcast and in U of I presentations.

The research team also includes scientists from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry;Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School; University of Rochester Medical Center; and Washington State University. The team now has enrolled nearly 50 women who were diagnosed with COVID-19 and has followed their progress with the disease for as long as two months.

The initial study published in mBio reported on the first group of 18 women who submitted milk samples. Results from the larger study funded by both the Gates Foundation and the National Science Foundation are forthcoming, but the researchers are confident that they will support, expand and confirm the initial findings, Shelley said.

Earlier, the McGuires and their colleagues published a related review of scientific studies focused on coronaviruses in human milk and found that scant evidence exists about their presence or absence.

That work, published in Maternal & Child Nutrition in May, found only one study that tested human milk for the SARS coronavirus after that virus was detected in 2003. The review found no efforts to detect the subsequent and deadlier MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) coronavirus in human milk.

The dearth of knowledge spurred this multi-university effort, which is informing national and global guidance related to COVID-19 and breastfeeding, Shelley said.

Li-ion batteries (LIBs) are widely used in various mobile electronics. Concerns of global warming and climate change have recently boosted the demand for LIBs in electric vehicles and solar photovoltaic output smoothing. Si has been studied as an active material with a high theoretical capacity of 3578 mAh/g, which is around ten times higher than that of graphite (372 mAh/g).

Now, a team of researchers at Osaka University has used flake-shaped Si nanopowder wrapped by ultrathin graphite sheets (GSs) to fabricate LIB electrodes with high areal capacity and current density.

Generally treated as industrial waste, Si swarf is generated at a rate of 100,000 tons per year globally from Si ingots that are produced from silica through processes at 1000~1800°C. Water-based coolants and fixed abrasive grain wire saws are paving the way to the use of Si swarf as an anode active material with a high capacity at a reduced cost.

Nano carbon materials have been applied to Si electrodes to improve electrical conductivity and cyclability. Many strategies for dealing with large volume change of Si electrodes at relatively high costs have been demonstrated. However, the Si electrodes do not combine all the requirements for high electrode performance, namely reduced cost, environmental friendliness of materials and processes, and circular economy.

"In this study, Si/graphite sheet composites from Si swarf and expanded graphite are used as the active material with reduced cost and thermal budget (Fig. 1). Si nanopowder is dispersed and wrapped between GSs fabricated from expanded graphite (Fig. 2)," explains first author Jaeyoung Choi. "GS bridges are formed across cracks and suppress cracking and peeling-off of Si. Agglomerated GSs wrap Si/GS composites, and work as stable frameworks that secure electrolyte paths and buffer spaces for Si volume change."

The Si/GS composite structure and the delithiation limitation improve the cyclability up to 901 cycles at 1200 mAh/g. The areal delithiation capacity and current density of the Si/GS electrodes linearly increase to 4 mAh/cm2 and 5 mA/cm2, respectively, with the mass loading for more than 75 cycles (Fig. 3), while thick electrodes with C-coated Si fabricated in C2H4 are not competitive.

"Si anode batteries with high capacity and high current density have the potential to be used in electric vehicles. This potential, combined with increasing generation of Si swarf as industrial waste, will allow our work to contribute to reduced greenhouse gas emissions and the achievement of SDGs," says corresponding author Taketoshi Matsumoto.

In research on solar energy and climatology, "clear sky" or "cloudless" conditions are very important. For instance, the number of clear-sky days (number of days having an average cloud cover less than 10%) is a key parameter of solar resource assessments. The instantaneous surface irradiance is highly affected by cloud variations, based on which clear-sky detection (CSD) methods can be developed. However, a general tendency in common among all CSD methods is the detection accuracy deteriorates when aerosol loading increases.

"The lack of accurate clear-sky detection data makes it difficult to assess existing clear-sky detection methods in polluted areas," explains Liu Mengqi, a PhD student from the group of Prof. Xiang'ao Xia at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, and also the first author of a paper recently published in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters.

Prof. Xia and his team evaluated 21 CSD methods by using five years of 1-min surface irradiance and visually inspected total-sky imager data at Xianghe--a heavily polluted station on the North China Plain.

According to the research of Prof. Xia, CSD methods with higher cloudy-sky detection accuracy rates produce lower clear-sky accuracy rates, and vice versa. Moreover, when aerosol loading increases, the CSD accuracy rate decreases significantly.

"Our results provide scientific guidance to existing clear-sky detection methods that are currently not applicable in polluted conditions," says Prof. Xia. "In the future, this will give us the opportunity not only to improve existing methods, but also hopefully to propose a new clear-sky detection method."

Adult progenitor cells are present in the Drosophila fly as early as its larvae stage. These cells are the only ones that are maintained throughout development and they are responsible for giving rise to adult tissues and organs. Headed by Jordi Casanova (also an IBMB-CSIC researcher), the Development and Morphogenesis in Drosophila lab at IRB Barcelona has identified the headcase (hdc) gene as responsible for the unique characteristics of these adult progenitor cells.

"In our study, mainly using the powerful genetic tools available in Drosophila, we were able to show that this gene regulates the development of the organism, including the stages of metamorphosis, by controlling the growth, proliferation, survival and resistance to stress of adult progenitor cells," Casanova explains.

The headcase gene is homologous to the human HECA gene, and it plays a key role in cancer, acting as a tumour suppressor in both organisms, as it slows down cell cycle.

The link between stress and cancer

Besides identifying headcase as an essential gene for adult progenitor cells, the researchers led by Casanova have also characterised its mechanisms of action. In addition to its participation in hormone-stimulated growth control, this gene is also involved in the stress response and it maintains an equilibrium between these two processes.

"The finding that the headcase gene confers stress protection opens up a new avenue to be explored regarding the role of human HECA as it could also act as a stress protector and its absence may induce stress conditions that favour the initiation and progression of cancer," says Panagiotis Giannios, postdoctoral researcher and first author of the paper.

Animal owners frequently report concerns and worries relating to caring for their animal during the pandemic, new research suggests.

The study, by the University of York, also revealed owners had increased their appreciation of their animals during the first lockdown phase. The notion that people "could not live without" their animals and that they were a "godsend" or a "lifeline" in the pandemic was frequently expressed.

The study has been investigating the role of animals as sources of emotional and physical support during the pandemic. More than 40 per cent of UK households are estimated to own at least one animal.

There was consensus among participants that companion animals constituted a reliable source of support, providing unconditional love, affection and companionship. Animals were frequently perceived as being able to enhance mood, reduce stress, and help people to cope generally with the COVID-19 lockdown phase. However, the study also showed that animal ownership may result in significant concerns that might have outweighed the benefits in some cases.

Dr Elena Ratschen from the Department of Health Sciences said: "The findings complement and extend previous insights into the impact of human-animal interaction with both companion and non-companion animals".

Dr Emily Shoesmith also from the Department of Health Sciences added: "What was interesting was many owners perceived their animal as helping them cope with the first lockdown phase, offering an important source of emotional support. However, concerns and worries relating to caring for their animal during this time were frequently reported and were likely to have exacerbated feelings of stress for the owner".

Nearly 6,000 people across the UK took part in the research which asked participants a series of questions during the first lockdown, including outcomes related to mental health, wellbeing and loneliness; the human-animal bond and human-animal interactions.

The final item of the survey invited free-text responses, allowing participants to describe any experiences of their human-animal relationships during the first lockdown phase. Four main themes were identified, including: the positive impact of animal ownership during the Covid-19 lockdown phase, concerns relating to animal ownership, grief and loss of an animal during the Covid-19 lockdown, and the impact of engaging with non-companion animals.

Some participants said that their animals helped them cope with mental health conditions. One respondent said her dog helped "keep my anxiety levels down by talking to her when I'm out and breaking my focus on anything negative. I am terrified of catching COVID-19 but having the dog keeps me mentally and physically better in the current environment."

Another respondent described how different animal species provided emotional support in different ways: "All my animals have helped keep me motivated, calm and happy during this time, not just the one I am closest to. Different species have different qualities: the dog is a close companion, but reptiles are interesting and calming to watch and guinea pigs are entertaining. General pet care tasks give purpose and structure to my day."

Other people reported that their animals were able to provide unique emotional support as a result of their ability to respond to their owners in an intuitive manner, especially in times of distress. One participant said: "My whippet has really picked up on this, he stays by my side constantly and feeds and mirrors my emotions. He is hyper vigilant to my needs giving lots of attention and affection."

Many participants also commented that animal ownership encouraged and promoted physical activity, especially for owners of dogs and horses. One respondent said "My dogs means I go out every day for exercise. Without them, I don't think I'd go out at all during this time."

However, a number of participants expressed that despite the bond with their animal, this was not a replacement for human social contact, that had been considerably restricted during the lockdown phase. One person said: "My dogs and cats are not a replacement for human contact, which I am sorely missing. But they have been a welcome distraction and have given me something to focus on and stopped me from feeling so lonely."

Negative aspects to animal ownership during lockdown were also described by a number of participants. Owners expressed they were often worried or concerned about various elements of ownership, including the possibility of animals carrying the Covid-19 virus, access to veterinary care, caring for their animals, and concerns about their animal experiencing separation-related problems upon their return to work. It was apparent that these concerns often exacerbated stress in participants due to the responsibilities and potential additional financial cost of animal ownership.

Arranging alternative care for an animal whilst the owner was working outside of the home was often cited as a concern of animal ownership. Many people, primarily dog owners, noted that animal care that was readily available prior to lockdown had since been restricted, and this had resulted in feelings of anxiety. Some participants suggested that it would be beneficial for animal care to be easily accessible for key workers in the context of increased working hours.

Due to financial uncertainty, participants expressed their concern over buying pet food and other necessities or worried about being able to provide healthcare if required and maintaining their animal's insurance. One respondent said "I worry for their health and wellbeing during these times, with the concern over financial difficulties if work becomes scarcer. They are important members of our family."

There was also a general sense that interactions with wildlife and frequent contact with nature had a positive impact on mental health. Some participants suggested that seeing an animal in their natural environment provided opportunities for distraction from their inner feelings of distress due to the pandemic.

Understanding the interaction of organisms in the evolution of species is an important topic in ecology. Insects and plants, for example, are two large groups on earth that are linked by a variety of interactions. Since the mid-20th century, theories linking this diversity and specific interactions have proliferated.

The development of new technologies and new methods has made it possible to study the interaction between plants and insects in greater detail and to reveal the impact of these interactions on their respective evolution. In a new study, an international team of researchers, including botanist Prof. Stefan Wanke of TU Dresden, has established the link between ecological changes, genome-level adaptations and macroevolutionary consequences, confirming the importance of ecological interactions as drivers of evolution over long periods of time.

Butterflies belonging to the family Papilionidae are an exemplary group for this question. These butterflies specialize in the consumption of poisonous plants, with about 30% of the species feeding exclusively on plants in the family Aristolochiaceae.

Consumption of such plants gives the caterpillars of these butterflies an advantage, as they secrete the plants' toxins, which in turn make them poisonous. However, the larvae themselves do not suffer any harm from the toxin.

"We knew before we started this study that certain genes of the cytochrome P450 family in the Papillonidae are partly responsible for the adaptation to plants, especially for the detoxification of toxic compounds. However, many different genes are probably involved overall, because in addition to detoxification, this adaptation requires that the female butterfly is able to recognize its preferred plant, or also that the caterpillars can develop and survive normally in this environment" explains Prof. Wanke. Scientists had long suspected that evolutionary changes in plants must have an influence on many insect genes. From this, the international team first deduced the relationships between different Papilionidae species and reconstructed their host-plant preferences over time. This allowed them to show that Papilionidae feed on plants belonging to the family Aristolochiaceae and, in particular, the pipevine genus Aristolochia.

Based on the global distribution of these two groups of insects and plants, it was then possible to estimate the historical biogeography - the movement in time and space - of Papilionidae and Aristolochiaceae species. The researchers discovered that both groups originated in the Northern Hemisphere about 55 million years ago and subsequently spread throughout the world.

In the case of the Papilionidae, this migration has been accompanied by major changes in host plants since their emergence. The study of Papilionidae species confirmed that various host-plant shifts were generally associated with accelerated species diversification of the butterflies. In other words, more species emerged as a result of host plant change than when the host plant was retained.

"Despite our knowledge of the role of key genes such as detoxification genes in the resistance against plant defense mechanisms, our results suggest a more global effect of host plant change on the evolution of Papilionidae. The host plant changes are complex and therefore require a number of adaptations, probably affecting different genes not directly related to the detoxification of toxic compounds," Prof. Wanke describes the interactions that still need to be deciphered, especially on the genetic level.

CHAPEL HILL, NC - Publishing their work in Nature, scientists at the UNC School of Medicine and UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health found that the orally administered experimental drug EIDD-2801 halts SARS-CoV-2 replication and prevents infection of human cells in a new in vivo lab model containing human lung tissue.

Separate phase 2 and 3 clinical trials are ongoing to evaluate EIDD-2801 safety in humans and its effect on viral shedding in COVID-19 patients.

The number of new COVID-19 cases continues to rise in many parts of the world, with the highest incidence in the United States. Although some highly efficacious vaccines have been authorized for emergency use, it may take considerable time to reach target vaccination levels needed for herd immunity due to the logistics of vaccine manufacturing, shipping, storage, and distribution as well as public acceptance.

Also, SARS-CoV-2 variants have emerged which appear to have increased transmissibility and have added more challenges to ensure vaccine viability. Therefore, alternative treatments and preventive approaches that can be widely and rapidly implemented are urgently needed to curb the risk for COVID-19 related hospitalization and death in multiple settings including nursing homes and long-term care facilities.

Mouse models can be useful in studying highly pathogenic human coronaviruses including SARS-CoV-2 and compounds that might control infection. But human coronaviruses do not replicate in mice unless researchers alter the virus, genetically modify the mice, or introduce the individual human receptor genes into mice so the virus can infect cells. Such mouse models have added to the scientific community's understanding of coronavirus infection and disease progression, but none of these models possess the diverse human cells found in human lungs where viral infection can cause severe disease. UNC scientists created a solution to this problem - a line of mice with human lung tissue that includes all the primary human cells infected when individuals fall ill with COVID-19.

Immune-deficient mice implanted with human lung tissue (LoM) allowed for replication of SARS-CoV-2, which resulted in infection that recapitulates several features of early diffuse lung damage seen in COVID-19 patients. In addition, acute SARS-CoV-2 infection induced a robust and sustained Type I interferon and inflammatory cytokine/chemokine response.

To evaluate the therapeutic efficacy of EIDD-2801 for COVID-19, the researchers administered EIDD-2801 to LoM starting 24 hours or 48 hours post SARS-CoV-2 exposure and every 12 hours thereafter.

"We found that EIDD-2801 had a remarkable effect on virus replication after only two days of treatment - a dramatic, more than 25,000-fold reduction in the number of infectious particles in human lung tissue when treatment was initiated 24 hours post-exposure," said senior author J. Victor Garcia, PhD, professor of medicine and director of the International Center for the Advancement of Translational Science. "Virus titers were significantly reduced by 96% when treatment was started 48 hours post-exposure."

Next, the researchers tested the ability of EIDD-2801 to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection by administering the drug 12 hours prior to SARS-CoV-2 exposure and every 12 hours thereafter.

"Remarkably, we found that EIDD-2801 pre-exposure prophylaxis significantly inhibited SARS-CoV-2 replication - reducing virus titers in the human lung tissues of LoM by over 100,000 fold in two independent experiments," said co-first author Angela Wahl, PhD, assistant professor of medicine and assistant director of the International Center for the Advancement of Translational Science.

Bats are the presumed source of SARS-CoV-2 and the highly pathogenic human coronaviruses SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, all of which emerged into the human population within the past two decades.

"We show that LoM allow for the in vivo study of all recently emerged human coronaviruses in a single platform," said co-first author Lisa Gralinski, PhD, assistant professor of epidemiology. "Our model allows researchers to directly compare infection between human coronaviruses and the effectiveness of potential preventative and therapeutic approaches."

Gralinski, added, "We also show efficient replication of endogenous bat coronaviruses in LoM human lung tissue without the need for prior adaptation of the viruses, confirming that bats harbor viruses that are capable of directly infecting humans without the need for further adaptation."

"Previously, we demonstrated that EIDD-2801 is also efficacious against SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV infection in vivo and in primary human airway epithelial cultures," said Ralph Baric, PhD, the William Kenan Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and the UNC School of Medicine. "Overall, these results indicate that EIDD-2801 may not only be efficacious in treating and preventing COVID-19, it could also prove to be highly effective against future coronavirus outbreaks as well."

A study of women who were new mothers in the late 1970s found that those who were given longer, paid maternity leave lived healthier lives as they entered middle age.

While universal paid maternity leave is now available in many Western European nations, this has not always been the case. A new study by University of Georgia economist Meghan Skira looked at the health of Norwegian mothers before and after paid maternity leave became law in 1977. She found that the health benefits of leave continued for years after their children were born.

Skira, an associate professor in the Terry College of Business, worked with economist Aline Bütikofer of the Norwegian School of Economics and Julie Riise of the University of Bergen on the study. Their paper, "The Impact of Paid Maternity Leave on Maternal Health," is online in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy and appears in the journal's February 2021 print edition.

Public health studies and some economic studies have found positive short-term benefits for women and children of extended postnatal leave, but the approach by Skira and her co-authors was different. They were able to analyze the longer term health effects of paid maternity leave for thousands of Norwegian women both before and after leave laws were implemented in July 1977.

"This sharp change in who was eligible for paid maternity leave provides a nice natural experiment," said Skira. "It provides an environment where we can examine the causal health effects of paid leave. Our findings show that having access to paid leave leads to important health benefits for mothers around age 40."

The women who gave birth after July 1977 were in better health across the board as they hit middle age, but the biggest gains in health were seen among low-income women who may not have been able to afford to take the full amount of unpaid leave available before the change.

Skira and her co-authors examined biometric data like body mass index, blood pressure, cholesterol levels and rates of diabetes combined with self-reported rates of pain, mental health, tobacco use and exercise habits to paint a comprehensive picture of women's health at 40.

The women who had access to paid leave had 2.5% to 3.7% lower BMI than those who did not have access. They were 10% less likely to have high blood pressure. They were 16% to 18% less likely to smoke and 14% to 20% more likely to exercise regularly.

"We know that women are healthier at 40, but we don't know exactly why. We did not find significant changes in income or employment among the women who had access to the reform, so the health improvements are unlikely due to income effects. We speculate that a reduction in stress, more time to recover from childbirth, and perhaps breastfeeding played a role," she said. "More research on exactly why maternal health improved would be valuable."

The study does draw clear causation between women staying home after giving birth and being healthier as they enter middle age.

"In a typical observational study, you would be worried that those who take more leave are different in ways that might make their health better or worse," Skira said. "Those who take longer leave may be wealthier or have more family support. On the other hand, those who have more postpartum health problems may take more leave. But here, because there is this sharp change in access to paid leave for everyone, the concerns about selection into leave-taking are minimized."

This was possible because the Norwegian Institute of Public Health collects health data on its citizens around age 40 as a way to benchmark the nation's well-being. Because of the so-called Age 40 Program, Skira and her co-authors had access to a tremendous set of birth, health and income data for the women who gave birth immediately before and after the law changed in 1977.

Norway expanded its paid leave policies again in 1987 and 1992, but those expansions marginally improved women's health at age 40, Skira said.

"There does seem to be evidence of diminishing returns to leave length," Skira said. "But maternal health is only one dimension of maternity leave to consider -- effects on children's outcomes, women's labor market attachment and employers are also important."

As the mothers of 1977 continue to age, Skira hopes to examine their use of long-term sick leave and disability insurance to see if the health benefits they gained in middle age made a difference in their quality of life as they entered retirement. It's too early to tell what the long-term benefits of this policy shift will be, she said.

"While things have changed since the late 1970s, understanding the effects of this policy change is important since it extended leave benefits from a level similar to what the U.S. offers today under the Family and Medical Leave Act," Skira said. "Our results, therefore, may inform the current debate over family leave policy."

BROOKLYN, New York, Monday, February 8, 2021 -- A holy grail for orthopedic research is a method for not only creating artificial bone tissue that precisely matches the real thing, but does so in such microscopic detail that it includes tiny structures potentially important for stem cell differentiation, which is key to bone regeneration.

Researchers at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering and New York Stem Cell Foundation Research Institute (NYSF) have taken a major step by creating the exact replica of a bone using a system that pairs biothermal imaging with a heated "nano-chisel." In a study, "Cost and Time Effective Lithography of Reusable Millimeter Size Bone Tissue Replicas with Sub-15 nm Feature Size on a Biocompatible Polymer," which appears in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, the investigators detail a system allowing them to sculpt, in a biocompatible material, the exact structure of the bone tissue, with features smaller than the size of a single protein -- a billion times smaller than a meter. This platform, called, bio-thermal scanning probe lithography (bio-tSPL), takes a "photograph" of the bone tissue, and then uses the photograph to produce a bona-fide replica of it.

The team, led by Elisa Riedo, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NYU Tandon, and Giuseppe Maria de Peppo, a Ralph Lauren Senior Principal Investigator at the NYSF, demonstrated that it is possible to scale up bio-tSPL to produce bone replicas on a size meaningful for biomedical studies and applications, at an affordable cost. These bone replicas support the growth of bone cells derived from a patient's own stem cells, creating the possibility of pioneering new stem cell applications with broad research and therapeutic potential. This technology could revolutionize drug discovery and result in the development of better orthopedic implants and devices.

The research, "Cost and time effective lithography of reusable millimeter size bone tissue replicas with sub-15 nm feature size on a biocompatible polymer," appears in Advanced Functional Materials.

In the human body, cells live in specific environments that control their behavior and support tissue regeneration via provision of morphological and chemical signals at the molecular scale. In particular, bone stem cells are embedded in a matrix of fibers -- aggregates of collagen molecules, bone proteins, and minerals. The bone hierarchical structure consists of an assembly of micro- and nano- structures, whose complexity has hindered their replication by standard fabrication methods so far.

"tSPL is a powerful nanofabrication method that my lab pioneered a few years ago, and it is at present implemented by using a commercially available instrument, the NanoFrazor," said Riedo. "However, until today, limitations in terms of throughput and biocompatibility of the materials have prevented its use in biological research. We are very excited to have broken these barriers and to have led tSPL into the realm of biomedical applications."

Its time- and cost-effectiveness, as well as the cell compatibility and reusability of the bone replicas, make bio-tSPL an affordable platform for the production of surfaces that perfectly reproduce any biological tissue with unprecedented precision.

"I am excited about the precision achieved using bio-tSPL. Bone-mimetic surfaces, such as the one reproduced in this study, create unique possibilities for understanding cell biology and modeling bone diseases, and for developing more advanced drug screening platforms," said de Peppo. "As a tissue engineer, I am especially excited that this new platform could also help us create more effective orthopedic implants to treat skeletal and maxillofacial defects resulting from injury or disease."

A 'biological age' score predicts that being male, overweight, a smoker and having depression all contribute to biological aging, a study published today in eLife reports.

Aging can be measured in different ways. While chronological age is measured by date of birth, scientists have developed a range of measurements to determine our biological age. These include measuring the length of telomeres (little caps on the end of our chromosomes that shorten as we grow older), chemical changes to our DNA (epigenetics), and changes to the proteins and metabolites in our bodies (proteomic and metabolomic measures).

Although studies have linked these individual measurements to physical and mental health, it is not known whether they influence each other - or whether they have a cumulative effect on our overall well being as we age. This new research is the first to combine these individual measurements of biological age and show how they link with mental and physical health.

"To develop a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying biological aging, we wanted to examine how indicators of biological aging relate to each other, how they link to determinants of physical and mental health, and whether a combined biological clock, made up of all age indicators is a better predictor of health," explains lead author Rick Jansen, Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychiatry, Amsterdam UMC, the Netherlands.

The team used blood samples from nearly 3,000 people taking part in the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety. They applied computer modelling to create individual biological aging indicators based on five commonly used measurements: telomere length, epigenetics, gene levels, metabolites and proteomics. The five indicators were then linked back to different factors such as sex, lifestyle factors and known physical and mental disorders such as depression.

Of the five biological aging indicators, only three were found to significantly interact in individuals, such that an increase in one indicator also paralleled an increase in the other. There were many overlapping and distinct links between particular aging indicators and specific lifestyle factors or diseases. But being male, having a high body mass index (BMI), smoking and having metabolic syndrome were most consistently linked with more advanced biological aging.

The team also confirmed that depression was linked to more advanced aging measured by epigenetics, gene levels and proteomics. This suggests that biological aging is linked to both mental and physical health.

When they combined all five measures into a composite score of biological age, they found more and stronger associations for the composite score than for each individual biological aging indicator. This composite score had greater associations with BMI, sex, smoking, depression severity and metabolic syndrome, highlighting the interplay between different systems on cumulative biological aging.

"Our work suggests that biological aging indicators largely track distinct, but partially overlapping, aspects of the aging process," concludes senior author Brenda Penninx, Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology at the Department of Psychiatry, Amsterdam UMC. "Taken together, our findings contribute to the understanding and identification of biological age determinants - important for the development of outcomes for clinical and population-based research."

Social conflicts, from policy debates to family disagreements, can easily devolve into angry words and personal attacks. Such heated confrontations, however, seldom resolve disagreements and can entrench opposing views.

A better approach to resolving interpersonal disagreements is to embrace characteristics that psychological scientists associate with wisdom, like intellectual humility, diverse viewpoints, and open-mindedness.

But applying these elements of wisdom can be difficult, especially during confrontations. The trick, according to new research published in the journal Psychological Science, is to train yourself in advance to reason about interpersonal conflicts in a wiser manner.

"People typically fail to reason wisely when facing social conflicts, so we designed an intervention to help them," said Igor Grossmann, director of the Wisdom and Culture Lab at the University of Waterloo, Canada, and the lead author on the paper. "Our fundamental idea was to train people to see situations from a more detached, third-person perspective. This approach enables people to recognize the limits to their knowledge, acknowledge different ways the conflict may play out, and consider and balance multiple viewpoints."

The researchers' intervention is based on a rhetorical device called "illeism"--the practice of referring to oneself in the third person. Rather than saying "I feel hurt and angry," a person might tell themselves, for example, "He feels hurt and angry."

According to the researchers, by switching perspective from the first to the third person, a person becomes better able to evaluate their own knowledge and appreciate alternative views.

"A third-person viewpoint, however, is not the typical default position during a conversation or interaction," said Grossmann. "We believed that through practice and training it can be possible to slowly inculcate this more wisdom-centered approach into a person's conflict-resolution techniques."

To test their hypothesis, the researchers conducted two field experiments.

In the first, participants were given an initial in-lab assessment to gauge their thoughts about a hypothetical social-conflict situation. They were then instructed to keep a month-long daily journal in which they wrote about each day's significant events. One group of participants wrote about their reflections in the first person. A second group did the same but in the third person.

At the end of the month, the participants were given a second in-lab assessment to see if the writing exercise impacted their reflections about another hypothetical social-conflict situation. The results revealed that the third-person writing group had developed a more wisdom-centric approach to how they thought about conflict. The first-person writing group showed much less change.

The second experiment involved a similar one-week writing assignment and evaluation, but it added a third group of participants who were given no instruction on how to write about their experiences. The results of the second experiment supported the conclusions of the first.

"Our research demonstrated effectiveness of the illeist diary writing for a change in wisdom compared to first-person and no-instruction diary reflections," said Grossmann. "After the intervention, distanced self-reflection led to incremental shifts in wise reasoning about personally challenging interactions."

The data suggest that this increase in wise reasoning occurred in part because distanced self-reflection broadened people's typically narrow self-focus. This research provides the first empirical evidence for the trainability of wisdom in daily life when working through challenging interactions.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- A new study finds that providing people who have recently given birth access to long-acting reversible methods of contraception, such as intrauterine devices and contraceptive implants, could help prevent them from unintentionally falling pregnant in the following months.

The study -- which analyzed the effects of a 2012 Medicaid policy implemented in South Carolina -- found that expanded access to particular forms of birth control were especially helpful in preventing unintended pregnancies among adolescents who had just given birth, giving them more control over their own futures.

"The ability to control whether and when you become pregnant is a basic human right, since pregnancy and childbirth have enormous implications for social and economic life trajectories," said Maria Steenland, an assistant professor of population studies (research) at Brown University who is affiliated with the Population Studies and Training Center.

Steenland conducted the study, published on Friday, Feb. 5, in Health Affairs, along with three colleagues at Harvard University's medical and public health schools.

Steenland said that in 2012, South Carolina's Medicaid program became the first in the United States to reimburse hospitals for the provision of immediate postpartum long-acting reversible contraception (LARC). LARCs, which prevent pregnancy for extended periods of time without any effort on the patient's part, include intrauterine devices, arm implants and hormonal injections.

Before the state enacted the policy, she said, patients who had just given birth and wanted immediate postpartum contraception had few options; LARCs were only available if they were willing to come back to the hospital for a separate outpatient procedure, and birth control pills are not considered medically safe to use early in the postpartum period. As a result, 59% chose to use no highly or moderately effective method of contraception; 22% chose a short-acting method, such as spermicide; and 13% chose sterilization, which is irreversible.

To examine the impact of the new policy, the study analyzed data on more than 150,000 Medicaid-insured South Carolina women between ages 12 and 50 who gave birth from 2010 to 2014. They found that in the medical facilities that began to offer LARCs after the policy change, use of highly effective contraception among postpartum patients shot up among adolescents, who are particularly vulnerable to closely spaced, higher-risk repeat pregnancies. Among Medicaid patients age 12 to 19, the rate of immediate postpartum LARC use increased by more than 6 percentage points between March 2012 and November 2014. Across all age groups, the total percentage of Medicaid patients who opted for postpartum LARCs nearly quadrupled in two and a half years. In some facilities, medical workers were providing LARCs to up to 20% of all postpartum patients.

"Contraceptive choice is based on many factors, such as side effects, reversibility and effectiveness," Steenland said. "Our study shows that making these new contraceptive methods available can make it easier for patients to find a method that meets their needs and preferences, and ultimately it can give them more agency in deciding whether and when to become pregnant again."

Less encouraging, Steenland said, was the researchers' discovery that as of 2014, fewer than half of South Carolina facilities had begun to offer immediate postpartum LARCs to patients, despite the policy change.

"We found that few hospitals began offering immediate postpartum LARCs after the policy change, indicating that Medicaid reimbursement is only a first step to making these options available," she said.

Steenland and her coauthors recommended that facilities and the state Medicaid program take further policy steps to make long-acting contraception more widely available -- especially given that many studies, including one of their own, show that when LARCs are available and free, more patients opt to use them and rates of unintended pregnancy decrease.

Women whose household drinking water contained nitrate had babies that weighed, on average, 10 grams less than babies born to mothers where household water had no detectible nitrate, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago and Aarhus University.

The study, which is published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, followed pregnant women living in Denmark. The researchers found that even low nitrate levels -- about half of the allowable level set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA -- caused an adverse effect.

"While the effects of elevated nitrate levels on infant health are known, little research has been done on the impact of lower levels of nitrate in drinking water may have on neonates," said Vanessa Coffman, UIC visiting research specialist at the School of Public Health and lead author on the paper. "This is a critical data gap if we want to assess the adequacy of our current water standards for nitrate."

Drinking water becomes contaminated by nitrate when fertilizers seep into drinking water sources. High levels of nitrate in tap water can cause infant methemoglobinemia -- a potentially fatal condition known as blue baby syndrome in which a baby's skin turns blue -- as nitrate prevents hemoglobin in the blood from carrying oxygen. For this reason, the EPA set standards for nitrate in drinking water at 10 parts per million, to reduce the risk of blue baby syndrome. In Denmark, the allowable level of nitrate in drinking water is similar.

In the largest study of the association between nitrate in drinking water and birth weight, Coffman and colleagues estimated maternal nitrate exposure for 852,348 live births in Denmark from 1991 to 2011. They linked home addresses with nitrate data from a national water quality monitoring database with data from Danish registries on infant birth weight, length and head circumference -- these registries offer an unparalleled resource for epidemiologists, as they are some of the most complete in the world, with national health care data and robust individual demographics and environmental data spanning decades.

The researchers found that levels of nitrate in maternal drinking water were associated with birth weight, but the weight differences were small but important. Babies born to mothers whose drinking water was estimated to contain about half of the allowable level of nitrates were on average 10 grams lighter than babies born to households where drinking water nitrate levels were undetectable. The researchers also observed a decrease in body length with increasing nitrate concentrations in drinking water. No effect was observed on head circumference.

"This difference in weight and body length is small but could have an impact on health if the baby is underweight to begin with for other reasons. Birthweight is a critical marker for health, as it can have a life-long impact on health and development," Coffman said.

In 2018, a faulty electric transmission line ignited the Camp Fire in Northern California, ultimately consuming 239 square miles and several communities, including the town of Paradise, which was 95 percent destroyed. At least 85 people died.

Structures have been rebuilt, but some things are worse. In a paper published February 2, 2021 in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, scientists at University of California San Diego, with colleagues elsewhere, describe chronic mental health problems among some residents who experienced the Camp Fire in varying degrees.

Direct exposure to large-scale fires significantly increased the risk for mental health disorders, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, the scientists wrote.

"We looked for symptoms of these particular disorders because emotionally traumatic events in one's lifetime are known to trigger them," said senior author Jyoti Mishra, PhD, professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine and co-director of the Neural Engineering and Translation Labs at UC San Diego. Pre-existing childhood trauma or sleep disturbances were found to exacerbate mental health problems, but factors like personal resilience and mindfulness appeared to reduce them.

"We show climate change as a chronic mental health stressor. It is not like the pandemic, in that it is here for a period of time and can be mitigated with vaccines and other measures. Climate change is our future, and we need immediate action to slow down the changes being wreaked upon the planet, and on our own wellbeing."

Mishra, with collaborators at California State University, Chico and University of South Carolina, conducted a variety of mental health assessments on residents who had been exposed to the Camp Fire six months after the wildfire and those much farther away. Roughly two-thirds of those tested were residents who lived in or around Chico, a Northern California city located approximately 10 to 15 miles of the center of the Camp Fire. The remaining third were San Diego residents living approximately 600 miles from the wildfire and presumably unimpacted.

The researchers found that the Northern California residents experienced measurable increases in PTSD, depression and anxiety disorders, which were worsened by proximity and exposure to the Camp Fire or by previous adverse experiences involving childhood trauma, such as abuse and neglect.

Chronic mental health problems fanned by the wild fire were ameliorated, however, by physical exercise, mindfulness and emotional support, all of which may contribute to personal resilience and the ability to bounce back after stressful life events.

The worrisome thing is that stressful life events like the Camp Fire are becoming more frequent, due to climate change, said study co-author Veerabhadaran Ramanathan, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric and Climate Sciences at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

"Since the 1970s, fire extent in California has increased by 400 percent," said Ramanathan. "While a faulty transmission line may have lit the Camp Fire in 2018, it is part of an overall disastrous multi-decadal trend fueled by human-caused climate warming. Through evaporative drying of the air, the soil and the trees, warming acts as a force multiplier. By 2030, the warming is likely to amplify by 50 percent. This surprising, if not shocking, study identifies mental illness as a grave risk for the coming decades."

Not just in California, but the world, write the authors.

"Unchecked climate change projected for the latter half of this century may severely impact the mental wellbeing of the global population. We must find ways to foster individual resiliency," wrote the study authors.

Photoionization of water involves the migration and solvation of electrons, with many transient and highly active intermediates. The process results in a large blue shift in the absorption spectrum, from the THz or gigahertz region to the visible range. While the behavior of low-density quasifree electrons excited by small pump power density has been investigated extensively, we still know little about the transient evolution of photoexcited plasma in liquid water. Valuable insights were recently provided by an international research team in a study published in Advanced Photonics.

According to Liangliang Zhang, physics professor at Capital Normal University in Beijing and one of the senior authors on the study, the physical mechanism of plasma evolution on the ultrafast sub-picosecond scale in liquid water is considered as an extension of the theory of gas plasma. But laser-induced plasma in liquid water is accompanied by more complex and stronger nonlinear effects than those in gas, since water has a higher nonlinear coefficient, a lower excitation threshold, and a higher electron density. These differences promise the possibility of unlocking new technologies and applications, encouraging researchers to explore the potential physical mechanism of photoexcited plasma in liquid water.

Water solvent electrons?

Zhang's team induced plasma in a stable free-flowing water film by using 1650-nm femtosecond laser pulses. They focused these intense terahertz (THz) pulses to probe at the sub-picosecond scale the temporal evolution of quasifree electrons of laser-induced plasma in water. THz wave absorption with a unique two-step decay characteristic in the time domain signature was demonstrated, indicating the significance of electron solvation in water.

Using the Drude model combined with the multilevel intermediate model and particle-in-a-box model, the researchers simulated and analyzed the quasifree electrons to obtain key information such as the frequency-domain absorption characteristics and solvation ratio. Remarkably, as the quasifree electron density increased, the traps related to the bound states appeared to saturate, resulting in a large number of quasifree electrons that cannot be completely solvated. According to Zhang, "This work provides insights on the fundamental aspects of the charge transport process in water and lays a foundation for further understanding of the physicochemical properties and transient evolution of femtosecond-laser-pulse-excited plasma in water."