Culture

Nanoscience - Blowing the whistle on COVID-19

Collaborators at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center are developing a breath-sampling whistle that could make COVID-19 screening easy to do at home.

The technology incorporates a unique hydrogel material to capture aerosols from exhaled breath and preserve the samples, which could either be sent to a lab for analysis or, for a fully at-home approach, transferred to an accompanying test kit that could detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.

"Our motivation is to put actionable information in the hands of users to help them make timely decisions, such as whether to go to work or school, quarantine, or seek medical care," said UTHSC's Dr. Scott Strome.

The user-friendly testing format is suitable for a broad range of users, including children and the elderly. The prototype was 3D printed at ORNL's Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences and designed for low-cost mass production.

Media contact: Ashley Huff, 865.241.6451, huffac@ornl.gov

Image: https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/2021-01/covid_whistle_tag_no_logo.png
Caption: Researchers at ORNL's Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center partnered to design a COVID-19 screening whistle for convenient home testing. Credit: Michelle Lehman/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Isotopes - Welding advances

A better way of welding targets for Oak Ridge National Laboratory's plutonium-238 production has sped up the process and improved consistency and efficiency. This advancement will ultimately benefit the lab's goal to make enough Pu-238 - the isotope that powers NASA's deep space missions - to yield 1.5 kilograms of plutonium oxide annually by 2026.

ORNL began using an orbital welder inside a protective glovebox for the weld that closes the hollow tube containing neptunium feedstock - the last step before these targets are irradiated in ORNL's High Flux Isotope Reactor to produce Pu-238.

The new computer-controlled orbital welder produces welds that do not require hand finishing, thereby shortening the time to complete welding jobs from a week to about a day.

"The time saved really adds up as we work toward our production goals," said ORNL's Robert Wham. Plutonium oxide is the power source for Perseverance, NASA's Mars rover.

Media contact: Kristi Nelson Bumpus, 865.253.1381, bumpuskl@ornl.gov

Image: https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/2021-01/2021-P00361.jpg
Caption: The orbital welder makes a clean seam on hollow targets, eliminating the need for hand-finishing and reducing the amount of time staff spend in the glovebox. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Video: https://youtu.be/I1fiLKrH9JY
Caption: ORNL welder Devin Johnson uses a new orbital welder to seal a hollow target in a glovebox in the lab's Radiochemical Engineering Development Center. The new welder makes a clean seam on the metal target, eliminating the need for hand-finishing afterward. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Hydropower - More than megawatts

A new Department of Energy report produced by Oak Ridge National Laboratory details national and international trends in hydropower, including the role waterpower plays in enhancing the flexibility and resilience of the power grid.

Much of this flexibility stems from pumped storage hydropower, or PSH, where reservoirs store water at higher elevations for on-demand electricity generation. PSH contributes 93% of grid-scale energy storage - more than batteries and all other technologies combined.

Interest has grown in PSH as a least-cost option for energy storage applications requiring long discharge cycles of four to 16 hours, with the project pipeline doubling over the last five years and new projects being explored in 21 states.

"Our analysis found that hydropower punches above its weight in terms of providing ancillary services like frequency regulation and reserves compared to its percentage of installed capacity," said ORNL's Rocio Uria-Martinez. "Hydropower's dispatchable nature provides critical benefits in filling gaps in power supply and addressing peak demand."

Media contact: Kim Askey, 865.576.2841, askeyka@ornl.gov

Image: https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/2021-01/WMMPA%20Pella%20Marion%20790.JPG
Caption: The latest data show hydropower represents 6.6% of all electricity generated and 38% of electricity from renewables produced in the United States. Pictured is the Red Rock Hydroelectric Project in Marion County, Iowa. Credit: Missouri River Energy Services

Ten months into COVID-19 living, people are adapting to speaking from behind, and understanding others who are wearing, a cloth face mask, University of California, Davis, researchers suggest in a new study.

Researchers in the Department of Linguistics at UC Davis and University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, investigated how well speech is understood from those speaking while wearing a cloth mask. Due to social distancing measures, speakers for the study consisted of individuals from the same household, who recorded sentences while face-masked and non-face-masked. The researchers tested how well a separate group of listeners, 63 individuals at UC Davis, could understand these productions. They found that masked speech was not more difficult to understand. And in some cases, understanding was improved.

"Strikingly, when speakers are instructed to 'speak clearly' while wearing a face-mask, their speech is even better understood by listeners (compared to when the speakers are unmasked)," said the study's lead author, Michelle Cohn, a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in linguistics at UC Davis.

"Results from the current study revealed that wearing a fabric face mask does not uniformly affect speech intelligibility across styles. ... speakers are dynamically assessing listener difficulty and adapting their 'clear' speech accordingly," she said.

The study, "Intelligibility of face-masked speech depends on speaking style: Comparing casual, clear, and emotional speech," investigated the impact of wearing a fabric face mask on speech comprehension, an under-explored topic that can inform theories of speech production. It was published online in the journal Cognition in January.

Speakers, who were members of the same household, produced sentences in three speech styles (casual, clear, positive-emotional) while in both masked and unmasked conditions. Audio-recording equipment was mailed to their home.

In the experiment, researchers added background noise to a recording of a variety of sentences being spoken. The ambient noise made it more difficult to understand speakers, mimicking, for example, the circumstances at crowded supermarkets or in public, Cohn said.

These recordings were played to listeners who completed the experiment online. (Listeners were all native speakers of American English recruited from a UC Davis psychology pool.) Their task was to listen carefully to each sentence, and type the last word that they heard.

For example, after hearing the sentence: "Miss Brown might consider the coast," the participant would type "coast" if they heard the word correctly, or perhaps "toast" if they heard it incorrectly. For "casual" and "smiled" speech, listeners were less able to identify words when the speakers were wearing a fabric face mask, compared to when they were not wearing one, researchers found.

The results showing that most people could, however, adapt their speaking and listening skills can be used to produce practical public recommendations for face-masked speech adaptations in everyday situations. By instructing talkers to "speak clearly" the disadvantages of face-masked speech in noisy conditions can be overcome, researchers said.

"Further, the results highlight the adaptive nature of human speech, and help us to understand why it is a successful communication tool, even in situations where listening is difficult," Cohn said.

Yale researchers are developing a skin cancer treatment that involves injecting nanoparticles into the tumor, killing cancer cells with a two-pronged approach, as a potential alternative to surgery.

The results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"For a lot of patients, treating skin cancer is much more involved than it would be if there was a way to effectively treat them with a simple procedure like an injection," said Dr. Michael Girardi, professor and vice chair of dermatology at Yale School of Medicine and senior author of the study. "That's always been a holy grail in dermatology -- to find a simpler way to treat skin cancers such as basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma."

For the treatment, tumors are injected with polymer-based nanoparticles carrying a chemotherapy agent. Key to the treatment's success is that the nanoparticles are bioadhesive -- that is, they bind to the tumors and remain attached long enough to kill a significant number of the cancer cells.

"When you inject our nanoparticles into a tumor, it turns out that they're retained within that tumor very well," said co-author Mark Saltzman, the Goizueta Foundation Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Chemical and Environmental Engineering, and professor of physiology. "They accumulate and bind to the tumor matrix, so one single injection lasts for a very long time -- the particles stay there and slowly release the compounds. You need that to get rid of the lesion."

For comparison, the same drug was injected freely into tumors of control models without the nanoparticles. They found that the tumors were significantly more diminished when the drugs were delivered by nanoparticles.

Also critical to the therapy is that the treatment can be combined with an agent that stimulates the body's immune system.

"I call the phenomenon 'kill and thrill,'" Girardi said. "You don't want to just kill the cells and leave them there, you want to stimulate the immune system to clean up the mess and also react against cells that might not have been killed directly. So it's a two-pronged attack on the cancer."

In many cases, ridding tumors with an injection could eliminate the need for surgery, the researchers said. It may also then avoid potential wound infections and other complications. Additionally, some patients with other medical conditions are poor candidates for surgery.

An injection-based therapy would also mean that patients could have multiple tumors treated in a single visit.

"In these studies, we did just a single injection, and that's how we'd like it to work clinically," Saltzman said. "You go to a dermatologist, they see a lesion and inject into it, and it's gone and you don't have to come back."

Saltzman's lab, which specializes in nanoparticles, worked to optimize the particles' drug-carrying ability to deliver as much of the chemotherapy agent in a single dose as possible. Because the contents of the nanoparticle remain at the site of the tumor, the delivery system allows for the use of particularly powerful drugs. Conventional chemotherapy affects the entire body and can have severe side effects, so the toxicity of drugs is more limited.

Both Yale Cancer Center members, Girardi and Saltzman are working with the start-up company Stradefy Biosciences Inc., which plans to advance the technology's preclinical development and then conduct clinical trials.

"Mike and Mark have been doing outstanding science together for a number of years," said Brian R. Dixon, president and CEO of Stradefy. "It's really hard to beat that kind of team. We believe that their groundbreaking work is going to lead to truly helpful therapies for patients."

A new study from scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, Germany, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing shows that the potential genetic burden of mutations arising from retrogenes is significantly greater than originally thought.

Genetic information is stored in DNA and transcribed as mRNA. The mRNA is usually translated into proteins. However, it has long been known that mRNA can also be reverse transcribed to DNA and integrated back into the genome. Such cases are referred to as retrogenes. In an article, a team from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön and the Zoological Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing now reports that this process was previously underestimated by at least a factor of one thousand and that it is an important new mutation mechanism.

There are two main reasons for this. On one hand, the common search algorithms used in genome sequence analysis do not usually take new insertions of retrogenes into account. These therefore remain hidden in the mass of data. Only with an optimized algorithm like the one developed by the scientists can these insertions be systematically discovered. On the other hand, the authors showed that most of the insertions are relatively short-lived. In previous genome comparisons between species, they appear to be comparatively rare.

Mutation by retrogenes is usually harmful

For this most recent study, it was therefore crucial to examine populations that have only recently developed. The authors found that mouse populations that have been separated for only about 3000 years carry different retrogenes (i.e. in each population, retrogenes emerge at a very high rate but are also lost again comparatively quickly). This is because retrogenes can be harmful - even if they are integrated into non-coding DNA. If retrogenes are transcribed back into mRNA (as is the case for most of them), this new mRNA can negatively influence the mRNA of the gene from which they originated. The retrogene thus acts as a regulatory mutation, which is usually harmful.

The scientists show that the genetic burden of this mechanism is higher than that of the point mutations, which until now have been the primary focus of investigations. They therefore suggest that the search for disease-causing mutations also take the retrogene mechanism into account.

When different groups of people come into contact, what's the key to motivating advantaged racial groups to join historically disadvantaged racial minority groups to strive for racial equality and social justice? It's a complex conundrum studied for years by social scientists like Linda Tropp, professor of social psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Her latest research, published in the International Journal of Intercultural Relations, tested and supported Tropp and colleagues' proposition that having open communication about group differences is a crucial pathway.

While greater contact between racial groups is typically associated with less prejudice, it hasn't been clear what may lead members of advantaged racial groups to take concrete actions to promote equality and change society. Prior research suggests that advantaged racial groups prefer to focus on commonalities between groups rather than discuss group differences, which may not lead to action to change the status quo.

Tropp, who for more than two decades has studied how members of different groups experience contact with each other, theorized that communicating openly about power differences across racial lines might well be the game-changing catalyst for white Americans to be moved to do something to address racial inequality.

"The prevailing assumption is that members of advantaged groups don't want to talk about group differences in power. It's not a pleasant or comfortable thing for us to do; but it's a valuable and worthwhile thing, and we need to grow accustomed to doing it," Tropp says. "And the more we talk about group differences in power, the more we can become motivated to take action and support policies that would benefit groups other than our own."

The researchers conducted studies in two distinct national contexts to test their hypothesis that "the more [that] members of advantaged groups do communicate with members of disadvantaged groups about group differences in power..., the more willing they should be to take action to promote intergroup equality."

In the first study, 259 white Americans completed online surveys in 2015 that examined how they, as advantaged group members, communicate about group differences with Black Americans. Analysis of the findings "offers initial support for our hypothesis that greater contact with Black people would predict Whites' greater willingness to engage in collective action for racial justice through the pathway of greater communication about group differences in power," the paper states.

In the second study, conducted in Turkey, 267 Turks - the advantaged majority group - completed surveys about their contact and communication with Kurds, the disadvantaged ethnic minority group that has suffered a long history of human rights violations and ongoing discrimination in Turkey. This study also confirmed the significance of communicating about power differences.

The next step is to examine how members of advantaged racial groups communicate about group differences in power, and how members of disadvantaged racial groups respond to these discussions with the racial majority.

"Our views of the world are a function of our lived experience," Tropp says. "The mere act of being willing to listen and accept the validity of the experiences of people who are different from you is a profound step toward bridging difference and building unity."

New drivers between the ages of 15 and 25 account for nearly half of the more than one million road deaths that occur worldwide each year, according to the World Health Organization. Educational programs often use fear-based messaging and films of crash scenes to reduce risky driving behavior among young people. But does this "scary" approach work?

A new study published in the journal Risk Analysis suggests that fear-based messaging fails to reduce risky driving behavior, while fear-based Virtual Reality (VR) films depicting a violent collision may actually lead young drivers to take more chances behind the wheel.

A team of psychologists led by University of Antwerp researcher Clara Alida Cutello, PhD, conducted a study of 146 students who had been legally driving for less than five years. The researchers examined the impact of both content (fear vs. positive) and delivery mode (2D vs. VR) of driver safety intervention programs.

Fear-based driver ed films often show terrible crash scenes in graphic detail. The assumption behind this approach is that arousing a sense of fear by depicting a serious consequence such as death will persuade young people to drive more carefully. Positively framed films take the opposite approach, using humor and empathy and modeling safe driving behaviors that result in positive consequences.

Three tests were used to gauge the risk-taking behavior of the young drivers before and after participating in the intervention program. One was a Driver Behavior Questionnaire. The other was the Vienna Risk-Taking Test on traffic, which asks participants to watch video clips of driving situations from the point of view of the driver and choose whether they view a situation as too risky. For example, choosing whether to pass another car in icy conditions. A third test was a 21-item Emotional Arousal Scale that measured the level of emotional arousal (such as feeling afraid) after watching a film.

The results showed that participants who viewed the fear-based VR film reported riskier driving behaviors afterward, while those who viewed a positively framed VR film exhibited the greatest reduction in risky driving behavior. This finding supports other research that has shown that exposing participants to an extreme and graphic collision tends to activate defensive mechanisms, such as paying attention for a shorter time, disengaging, rejecting a message, and an increase in risky behaviors.

"Fear appeals have been used in many health and environmental campaigns, such as smoking, anti-drug, safe sex, and HIV prevention campaigns," says Dr. Cutello. "Further experimental research is needed to determine whether the use of fear is effective."

Are Gut Microbes the Key to Unlocking Anxiety
A mouse study suggests the genetic contribution to anxiety is partially mediated by the gut microbiome
By Greta Lorge

The prevalence of anxiety disorders, already the most common mental illness in many countries, including the U.S., has surged during the novel coronavirus pandemic. A study led by researchers in Berkeley Lab's Biosciences Area provides evidence that taking care of our gut microbiome may help mitigate some of that anxiety.

The team used a genetically heterogeneous lineage of mice known as the Collaborative Cross (CC) to probe connections among genes, gut microbiome composition, and anxiety-like behavior. They first categorized 445 mice across 30 CC strains as high or low anxiety based on their behavior in the light/dark box assay: a box with two compartments - one transparent and illuminated, the other black and unilluminated - connected by an opening. The degree to which rodents' innate aversion to brightly lit, open spaces supersedes (or doesn't) their instinct to explore a novel environment is a rough analog for high (or low) anxiety.

The researchers then performed genome-wide association study (GWAS) analysis, comparing high and low anxiety mice, and also analyzed and compared gut microbiome composition in high versus low anxiety animals. They identified specific genetic variants and families of gut microbes associated with anxiety-like behavior, including host genes that influence anxiety indirectly by modulating the abundance of specific microorganisms in the gut.

"We hope this study will inform future research to evaluate treatments for anxiety that take into account both host genome and microbiome," said co-lead author Antoine Snijders, a staff scientist in the Biological Systems and Engineering Division.

The study was conducted in collaboration with Dr. Xiaoqing Jin, a visiting scholar from Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University.

A Detailed Look Inside Tsetse Flies
3D imaging at Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source provides new insights into reproductive biology of parasite-carrying flies

To better understand the unique reproductive biology of tsetse flies, which are carriers of the parasites that cause a deadly infection known as African sleeping sickness, researchers explored the intact organs and tissues of tsetse flies using a powerful 3D X-ray imaging technique at Berkeley Lab.

The imaging technique provided new insights into how the flies' specialized biology governs mating and reproductive processes, including female flies' unique lactation and their delivery of a single fully developed larvae per birthing cycle - whereas most other insect species lay eggs. The ALS produces X-rays and other forms of light for a broad range of simultaneous scientific experiments.

Fly samples were prepared at various stages of the reproductive cycle, and researchers are ultimately aiming to couple the imaging data with gene expression and biochemical data from the same stages of this cycle.

"We want to understand what changes are happening during this process, how the process is being mediated, and if it can be manipulated to artificially repress females in the wild from mating," said Geoffrey Attardo, an assistant professor of entomology and nematology at UC Davis - which would ideally curb disease transmission. In 2015, about 3,500 people died from African sleeping sickness, and about 11,000 people are now estimated to be infected. The infection is fatal if it is left untreated by medication.

Attardo led a study, published in the journal Insects, detailing the ALS imaging work. The ALS experiments yielded better results than expected, he said.

While some other techniques require dissection and staining processes that introduce damage to the delicate samples, "This project allowed us to create a detailed 3D visualization of the reproductive tissues in their native context, with minimal experimental manipulation," he said.

The ALS experiments provided a first, detailed look at the intact structure of a sperm-delivery structure called a spermatophore that fully occupies a female fly's uterus after mating, for example, and detailed imaging of other reproductive-tract tissues relevant to lactation and birth.

"I love that as a staff member at the ALS, I can help enable science that makes a difference in the world," said Dula Parkinson, an ALS staff scientist and Diffraction and Imaging Program leader who participated in the study.

Pioneering Framework Could Reduce Energy Demand in Buildings
Researchers make the case for shifting how we think about heating and cooling needs in buildings
By Kiran Julin

Heating and cooling buildings is a large part of global energy demand and a significant source of CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions, and in the coming decades the energy demand for heating and cooling - also known as thermal energy - is expected to grow considerably. Scientists and engineers have made many advances in lowering building energy demand by improving energy efficiency in building technologies and reducing energy loss through the building walls and windows.

Now, researchers are concerned that simply tackling the problem through energy-efficient technology and design will reach its practical limits. So researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and UC Berkeley have pioneered a new framework that determines the minimum thermal energy required to keep building occupants comfortable.

In a study recently published in the journal Joule they make the case for calculating the theoretical minimum thermal load in order to dramatically lower the energy required for heating and cooling buildings.

"Our work shows that current thermal loads in buildings are more than an order-of-magnitude higher than the theoretical minimum thermal load," said Ravi Prasher Berkeley Lab's Associate Lab Director for Energy Technologies and the corresponding author of the paper. "In fact, the theoretical minimum thermal load showed that in residential buildings the energy used for heating or cooling an entire building for occupant comfort could be between 19 to 40 times lower."

The theoretical minimum thermal load does not calculate the amount of heating or cooling that would be needed to make an uncomfortable space comfortable, but rather it sets up a new baseline for occupant comfort with different building parameters. By calculating this baseline, the researchers are identifying the physical limit for reduced thermal energy use, that is, the point at which further reduction in thermal energy would cause occupant discomfort.

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AI Finds More Than 1,200 Gravitational Lensing Candidates
Berkeley Lab researchers among participants in effort, which could double the number of known lenses

A research team with participation by Berkeley Lab physicists has used artificial intelligence to identify more than 1,200 possible gravitational lenses - objects that can be powerful markers for the distribution of dark matter. The count, if all of the candidates turn out to be lenses, would more than double the number of known gravitational lenses.

Gravitational lenses result from large celestial objects, like galaxies or galaxy clusters, that bend the path of light traveling from more distant galaxies. When these chance alignments are almost perfect, this creates false images that can include rings, partial rings, multiple images, and other illusions.

The lenses can tell us about the contribution of dark matter in those distant, lensed objects, as we can only witness dark matter through its gravitational effects on visible matter. And that could help unravel one of the biggest mysteries in the universe, as dark matter accounts for an estimated 85% of the total mass of the universe.

All of the candidate lenses - discovered using a form of artificial intelligence known as deep residual neural networks - are considered to be of the strong variety, meaning they exhibit highly visible lensing effects. A study detailing the new lensing candidates has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, and a preprint is available at arXiv.org.

"I really thought it would be many years before anyone would find this many gravitational lenses," said David Schlegel, a senior physicist at Berkeley Lab who participated in this study. "It's just amazing to know that you're seeing, very clearly, space itself being warped by a massive object." Schlegel also participated in an earlier study that turned up 335 new strong lensing candidates.

Researchers used a sample of 632 observed lenses and lens candidates, and 21,000 non-lenses to train the deep neural networks used in the study. The sample set was obtained from two sky surveys: the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS) and Dark Energy Survey (DES). About 1 in 10,000 massive galaxies was expected to be a strong gravitational lensing candidate.

The DECaLS survey was one of three surveys that was conducted in preparation for the startup of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), a Berkeley Lab-led experiment that will help us to better understand dark energy, which is driving the universe apart at an accelerating rate.

Researchers used computing resources at Berkeley Lab's National Energy Research Scientific Computer Center (NERSC) for their data analysis. NERSC is a DOE Office of Science user facility.

EL PASO, Texas - An effort led by Lin Li, Ph.D., assistant professor of physics at The University of Texas at El Paso, in collaboration with students and faculty from Howard University, has identified key variants that help explain the differences between the viruses that cause COVID-19 and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

A team comprised of researchers from UTEP and the historically Black research university in Washington, D.C., discovered valuable data in comparing the fundamental mechanisms of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and SARS-CoV-2 -- also known as COVID-19 -- to better understand how these viruses attack the human body. Their findings are published in an article titled "Spike Proteins of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 Utilize Different Mechanisms to Bind with Human ACE2" that recently appeared in the scientific journal Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences.

"We are very excited and interested in the timely work that Dr. Li and his collaborators have reported," said Robert Kirken, Ph.D., dean of UTEP's College of Science. "As the SARS-COV2 continues to evolve through its passage by infected humans, the rapid identification and assessment of these mutants using the research and testing approaches they have established will be critically important for the development of new vaccines and therapeutics."

In comparing the viruses, researchers found that both are very similar in sequence and almost identical in structure. Using computational approaches, they were also able to identify mutations of SARS-CoV that make SARS-CoV-2 significantly more contagious and prone to cause serious infections.

"We found that because of mutations, the binding from SARS-CoV-2 to the human cell is much stronger compared with SARS-CoV," Li said. "This might be one of the reasons why SARS-CoV-2 is spreading much faster and is difficult to control. SARS-CoV-2 also uses a much smarter strategy to attack the human cell than SARS-CoV. For example, when SARS-CoV infects or binds to the human cell, it uses several key residues or amino acids to do so, while SARS-CoV-2 uses more residues, making it more robust and easier to completely hijack the human cell.

"We identified the most important residues for SARS-CoV-2 to bind to the human cell. This type of data is key for drug development to cure or treat infections caused by these types of viruses. These fundamental rules and features can also be used for future disease control when perhaps 10 years from now, there's a SARS-CoV-3 or 4."

Researchers from both universities focused on examining one of the virus' four main proteins, known as the spike protein, that initiates infection to the human body. They discovered that from SARS-CoV to SARS-CoV-2 there is an interesting change in mechanism of the binding domain of the spike protein.

"The binding domain needs to flip out so that it can bind to the human cell, but we found some strange mutations that happened. Like the hinge of a door, the binding domain may affect the flip mechanism of SARS-CoV-2. It may be more flexible, making it easier to bind to the human cell," Li said.

The team included an interdisciplinary mix of undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and faculty from both UTEP and Howard University. Yixin Xie, a UTEP graduate student and research assistant, served as the paper's first author, and led the calculation and analysis portions of the project while working closely with other UTEP and Howard University students remotely due to the pandemic.

In the future, the goal of the team is to expand their research to study the mechanisms of all four proteins to better understand the inner workings of these viruses even more to help combat COVID-19 and related viruses.

Oxford, February 2, 2021 - In an upcoming issue of the Journal of Medical Imaging and Radiation Sciences, published by Elsevier, undergraduate researchers from the University of Alberta's Radiation Therapy Program in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry describe how LGBTQ2SPIA+ patients face unique cancer risks, including fear of discrimination, higher incidence of certain cancer sites, and lower screening rates, resulting in more cancers detected at later stages.

"I understand that there are different gender pronouns, I do not understand them all."

To discover the knowledge, attitudes, and practice behaviors of the healthcare professionals treating these patients, the authors surveyed Radiation Therapists (RTs)--key members of the cancer treatment team who are responsible for planning and delivering radiation therapy. In addition to the highly technical aspects of the job, RTs explain procedures, answer questions, comfort patients, and provide emotional support during the treatment journey, making these professionals a natural point of education and support for LGBTQ2SPIA+ patients.

Results suggest there are knowledge gaps and inconsistencies when caring for this patient population. Over 70 percent of respondents were unfamiliar with all terms associated with LGBTQ2SPIA+, and the same percentage were unsure if specific resources were available for the LGBTQ2SPIA+ population at their cancer center. This uncertainty affects the care given to these patients, either limiting RT's interactions with this community or being unable to provide specific side effect management education, a crucial part of the RT role.

Despite clear evidence of the RT community desiring LGBTQ2SPIA+-specific care, a significant portion of respondents stated that all patients should be treated equally, and therefore no practice adaptation is required. Most respondents reported being comfortable caring for the LGBTQ2SPIA+ community, despite the majority also asserting that they have had inadequate education in this area.

However, the survey found an overall willingness to improve practice behaviors, with 86.9 percent of total respondents interested in receiving more education on this topic. As one respondent stated:

"I can't really think of 'how' I am actively creating a safe environment for disclosing their sexual orientation, nor do I know how to properly create that environment....I can definitely say that I am non-judgmental of their life choices if it comes up in conversation, etc., but I really don't know what more I should be doing, admittedly. Further training or information on how to better create a safe environment for patients would be beneficial."

The authors conclude that future research should examine the experiences of LGBTQ2SPIA+ patients from their perspective. To provide truly patient-centered care, LGBTQ2SPIA+-targeted resources for both patients and radiation therapists need to be considered a priority.

Beaten ballots: political participation dynamics amidst police interventions is the title of the academic article by Toni Rodon and Marc Guinjoan, lecturers of Political Sciences at UPF and the UB, respectively, which seeks to look in greater depth at the effects of police interventions regarding political participation, taking the "repression-mobilization" nexus debate as a starting point.

The study, published recently in the Cambridge University Press journal Political Science Research and Methods, focuses on the analysis of the referendum on independence held in Catalonia on 1 October 2017, when despite the police crackdown, 2,286,217 people voted, representing 44% of the electorate.

The research stresses the study of an aspect that has been largely ignored in the academic literature: the spatial dynamics triggered by violence in political mobilization. That is, whether the police violence on participants has a positive or a negative effect at the places where it occurs and nearby areas.

Toni Rodon, a professor with the UPF Department of Political and Social Sciences and member of the Research and Expertise Centre for Survey Methodology (RECSM-UPF), and Marc Guinjoan, a doctor of Political and Social Sciences from UPF and currently a postdoctoral researcher at the UB Institutions and Political Economy Research Group (IPERG), claim that, in the referendum of 1-O, "although the police raids had a negative impact on local participation, it induced positive spillover effects in nearby areas". According to them, "our findings indicate heterogeneity in spatial dynamics: police actions encouraged people to go to vote in nearby areas, but it also mobilized the residents of these neighbouring areas, especially those with less incentives to go to vote".

The study uses quantitative and qualitative methods with aggregate data relating to polling stations that were visited by the police (with or without violence), a geo-survey conducted by the Centre d'Estudis d'Opinió (CEO - centre conducting surveys on public opinion) a few days after the referendum, and interviews held with members of the police forces. These interviews have enabled the authors to ascertain the micromechanisms of the logic behind the police action, which facilitated their research.

Moving to neighbouring areas and the activation of new voters in protest

The study estimates that although the state police forces managed to reduce the number of votes cast in the municipalities where they took action (around 14-15 percentage points, on average), participation in surrounding areas increased. The greatest effect was felt in municipalities some ten kilometres from the affected spots, where turnout was 6.2% higher than average. About 25 percent of this increase in participation was due to the activation of new voters, while the remaining 75 per cent can be explained by people living in areas raided by the police who travelled to neighbouring areas, which was possible due to the 'universal census' whereby any voter could vote at any polling station.

Among the "new voters", the authors calculate that there was a large proportion of undecided or ambivalent voters, not clearly in favour of Catalan independence but with dual sense of national identity. "Our interpretation of this pattern is that some people who identify equally with Catalonia and Spain, for whom the likelihood of participating in the referendum or travelling to another town to vote was low, became angry and mobilized after seeing police violence in neighbouring municipalities", the researchers assert. According to Toni Rodon, "police violence did not make certain people change from being unionists/federalists to Catalan separatists overnight, but it did mobilize them as a means of protest or civil disobedience".

The police went from following general instructions to acting randomly

Another section of the study focuses on analysing the patterns followed by police action, i.e., why the police went to some areas and not to others: "Before finding out the effects of police actions on participation, we needed to know if their treatment (police violence) was random. Otherwise, it would have been very difficult to identify the effect of violence on participation", Toni Rodon states. And he adds: "As the interviews reveal, the police logically designed an initial plan that was not random (let us recall their actions at the polling stations where the pro-independence leaders voted, for example). However, the day's events ended up making many of their actions random".

The study shows that there is no common policy variable or one that indicates a particular pattern regarding police intervention, either with respect to municipality size or density, turnout for previous elections or support for separatism, profile of the citizens, etc. The agents interviewed acknowledged that the plans changed suddenly the morning of the referendum, once the difficulty had been realized of closing polling stations and confiscating ballot boxes due to the mobilization by the citizens and the activation of the 'universal census'. "The initial goal of preventing a large number of voters from voting suddenly became unviable", the researchers affirm.

Toni Rodon and Marc Guinjoan emphasize that the conclusions they have drawn with this study are very close in line with recent research that has been conducted in other contexts that tends to demonstrate that "police brutality often fails to change what 'partisans think, but this does not mean that they will not react against it when they find it excessive".

Experts predict that autonomous vehicles (AVs) will eventually make our roads safer since the majority of accidents are caused by human error. However, it may be some time before people are ready to put their trust in a self-driving car.

A new study in the journal Risk Analysis found that people are more likely to blame a vehicle's automation system and its manufacturer than its human driver when a crash occurs.

Semi-autonomous vehicles (semi-AVs), which allow humans to supervise the driving and take control of the vehicle, are already on the road. For example, the 2020 Tesla Model S offers an Autopilot system, and the 2020 Cadillac CT6 has a Super Cruise system. In both, the driver must be ready to take control of the car at any moment.

However, this new study suggests that questions are likely to arise regarding blame, responsibility, and compensation when a semi-AV is involved in a collision.

Researchers led by Peng Liu, an associate professor in the College of Management and Economics at Tianjin University, conducted experiments to measure participants' responses to hypothetical semi-AV crashes. When an accident was caused by a vehicle's automated system, participants assigned more blame and responsibility to the automation and its manufacturer and indicated that the victim should be compensated more, compared to a crash caused by a human driver. They also judged the automation-caused crash to be more severe and less acceptable than one caused by a human, regardless of the seriousness of the crash (involving an injury or fatality).

Liu and his colleagues call this bias against automated systems "blame attribution asymmetry." It indicates the tendency for people to over-react to automation-caused crashes, possibly owing to the higher negative affect, or feelings and emotions, evoked by these crashes. Negative emotions such as anger can amplify attributions of legal responsibility and blame.

The authors point out that the same kind of affect-induced blame attribution asymmetry may come into play in other cooperative situations involving humans and machines. For example, surgeons working with medical robots and pilots working with military drones.

Policymakers and regulators need to be aware of people's potential over-reaction to crashes involving AVs when they set policies for deploying and regulating them, particularly with regard to financial compensation for victims injured or killed by automated systems. "According to our findings, they might need to consider the possibility that to lay people, victims of AV crashes should be compensated more than commonly calculated," the authors write.

A policy that allows what people feel are "unsafe" semi-AVs on roads could backfire as the inevitable accidents that will occur may deter more people from adopting them. To change people's negative attitudes about semi-AVs, Liu argues that "public communication campaigns are highly needed to transparently communicate accurate information, dispel public misconceptions, and provide opportunities to experience semi-AVs."

In a previous study, Liu and his colleagues conducted a field experiment where 300 participants experienced being a passenger in a semi-AV. "This direct experience led to a significant increase in trust and a reduction in negative feelings and emotions about semi-AVs," he says.

The complex mechanics determining how galaxies spin, grow, cluster and die have been revealed following the release of all the data gathered during a massive seven-year Australian-led astronomy research project.

The scientists observed 13 galaxies at a time, building to a total of 3068, using a custom-built instrument called the Sydney-AAO Multi-Object Integral-Field Spectrograph (SAMI), connected to the 4-metre Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) at Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales. The telescope is operated by the Australian National University.

Overseen by the ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D), the project used bundles of optical fibres to capture and analyse bands of colours, or spectra, at multiple points in each galaxy.

The results allowed astronomers from around the world to explore how these galaxies interacted with each other, and how they grew, sped up or slowed down over time.

No two galaxies are alike. They have different bulges, haloes, disks and rings. Some are forming new generations of stars, while others haven't done so for billions of years. And there are powerful feedback loops in them fuelled by supermassive black holes.

"The SAMI survey lets us see the actual internal structures of galaxies, and the results have been surprising," said lead author Professor Scott Croom from ASTRO 3D and the University of Sydney.

"The sheer size of the SAMI Survey lets us identify similarities as well as differences, so we can move closer to understanding the forces that affect the fortunes of galaxies over their very long lives."

The survey, which began in 2013, has already formed the basis of dozens of astronomy papers, with several more in preparation. A paper describing the final data release - including, for the first time, details of 888 galaxies within galaxy clusters - was published today on the arxiv pre-print server and in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

"The nature of galaxies depends both on how massive they are and their environment," said Professor Croom.

"For example, they can be lonely in voids, or crowded into the dense heart of galactic clusters, or anywhere in between. The SAMI Survey shows how the internal structure of galaxies is related to their mass and environment at the same time, so we can understand how these things influence each other."

Research arising from the survey has already revealed several unexpected outcomes.

One group of astronomers showed that the direction of a galaxy's spin depends on the other galaxies around it, and changes depending on the galaxy's size. Another group showed that the amount of rotation a galaxy has is primarily determined by its mass, with little influence from the surrounding environment. A third looked at galaxies that were winding down star-making, and found that for many the process began only a billion years after they drifted into the dense inner-city regions of clusters.

"The SAMI Survey was set up to help us answer some really broad top-level questions about galaxy evolution," said co-author Dr Matt Owers from Macquarie University in Australia.

"The detailed information we've gathered will help us to understand fundamental questions such as: Why do galaxies look different depending on where they live in the Universe? What processes stop galaxies forming new stars and, conversely, what processes drive the formation of new stars? Why do the stars in some galaxies move in a highly ordered rotating disk, while in other galaxies their orbits are randomly oriented?"

Professor Croom added, "The survey is finished now, but by making it all public we hope that the data will continue to bear fruit from many, many years to come."

Co-author Associate Professor Julia Bryant from ASTRO 3D and the University of Sydney said: "The next steps in this research will make use of a new Australian instrument - which we've called Hector - that will start operation in 2021, increasing the detail and number of galaxies that can be observed."

When fully installed in the AAT, Hector will survey 15,000 galaxies.

A combination of genetic mutations may explain the higher incidence of and poorer outcomes from pediatric leukemia in Hispanic and Latino children, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers. They said a novel therapeutic drug combination - as well as testing for these mutations - may help address the disparity.

Hispanic and Latino children are between 1.2 and 1.75 times more likely to develop B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL), the most common childhood cancer, than non-Hispanic and Latino children. They also have a 40% higher death rate than their counterparts after correcting for socioeconomic factors. Dr. Sinisa Dovat, a researcher and pediatric oncologist at Penn State Children's Hospital and Penn State Cancer Institute, partnered with Dr. Gordana Raca of Children's Hospital Los Angeles and Kimberly J. Payne of Loma Linda University to understand the biology behind this health disparity after prior research suggested that there may be an increased frequency of a type of genetic mutation in Hispanic and Latino children with B-ALL.

The researchers studied 239 pediatric patients with B-ALL at Children's Hospital Los Angeles and found two types of genetic mutations - a deletion of the IKZF1 gene (IKZF1) which holds instructions for cells to make the IKAROS protein and a rearrangement, or translocation, of the gene with instructions for producing the CRLF2 protein - occurred more frequently in Hispanic and Latino children. IKZF1 deletion occurred two times more frequently in those children - making it the most frequent genetic alteration that signals poor prognosis of B-ALL. There was a four-fold increased incidence of CRLF2 translocations in Hispanic and Latino children, as compared to non-Hispanic and Latino children.

"These mutations offer an explanation for the poor prognosis and increased incidence of B-ALL in Hispanic and Latino children and offer us insight into this pediatric cancer health disparity," Dovat said.

The researchers found that 11% of Hispanic and Latino children had both mutations compared to 0% of their counterparts. Almost all of the Hispanic and Latino children with B-ALL who had a specific type of CRLF2 translocation also had an IKZF1 deletion, while a large number of them had an IKZF1 deletion without that specific type of CRLF2 translocation. According to Dovat, these results suggest that IKZF1 deletion precedes or predisposes the CRLF2 gene to mutation. The findings were published today, Feb. 2, in Leukemia.

Dovat said that further research is needed to understand the biological mechanisms for why these gene mutations happen more frequently in Hispanic and Latino children.

"Sequencing these genes in Hispanic and Latino children with B-ALL is essential to help pediatric oncologists determine a prognosis for these patients and develop appropriate treatment plans," Dovat said. "Treatments that can restore the function of the IKAROS protein could be an efficient treatment for leukemia."

In a companion study, also published today in Leukemia, Dovat and colleagues outlined a treatment strategy that may be beneficial to patients suffering from this health disparity. It involves targeting a protein, mTOR, that when over produced, can lead to resistance to chemotherapy and poor prognosis.

"The CRLF2 mutation, often found in Hispanic and Latino children with B-ALL, leads to increased activity of mTOR, which has been associated with poor outcomes," Dovat said. "We proposed that an effective treatment regimen would hinder the activity of the mTOR protein, but also target the gene that carries the instructions for making mTOR by restoring the function of the IKAROS protein."

The researchers developed a combination therapy, starting with a drug that restores the function of IKAROS by inhibiting another protein called casein kinase 2 (CK2). When CK2 is prevented from carrying out its function, the IKAROS protein can keep mTOR from being produced. The team also used a second drug called rapamycin to inactivate mTOR proteins already present in cancer cells.

Dovat and his colleagues evaluated this approach in the lab by using the combination, and each drug individually, on cancer cells from Hispanic and Latino patients. They also later tested the approach against each drug individually and in combination in an animal model of leukemia using cancer cells from Hispanic and Latino pediatric B-ALL patients. They found that in both instances, the combination of two drugs proved more effective against leukemia than either drug individually. These studies laid the groundwork for a Phase I clinical trial with this treatment and provided a new paradigm for similar approaches to treat cancer using dual targeted treatments.

"We've identified a new approach for treating high-risk B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia," Dovat said. "Our work established the foundation for clinical testing of a new combination therapy that may address health disparities and benefit patients who suffer from pediatric leukemia."

Hormone therapy commonly is given as a targeted treatment for women whose cancer cells carry receptors for estrogen. But the therapy only works for about half of all patients. Until now, there hasn't been a good way to reliably predict who will benefit and who will not.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown they can distinguish patients likely or unlikely to benefit from hormone therapy using an imaging test that measures the function of the estrogen receptors in their cancer cells. In a small phase 2 clinical trial, the researchers showed that the cancers of all patients with working estrogen receptors remained stable or improved on hormone therapy, and progressed in all women with nonfunctional estrogen receptors. The findings, published Feb. 2 in Nature Communications, could help doctors choose among treatment options and reduce the chances that women would receive a therapy unlikely to help.

"If breast cancer in a patient is estrogen receptor-positive, doctors will usually recommend hormone therapy even though they know it will only work for slightly more than half the patients," said senior author Farrokh Dehdashti, MD, the Drs. Barry A. and Marilyn J. Siegel Professor of Radiology at Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology (MIR). "When hormone therapy works, it's typically quite effective, and it has milder side effects than some other therapies, and that's why oncologists and patients want to try it first. But we need to narrow down who is likely to benefit, and there really hasn't been a reliable test to accomplish that."

Approximately four out of five breast cancers - some 250,000 per year in the United States - are labeled "estrogen receptor-positive," meaning that the cancer cells carry estrogen receptors and the tumor grows in response to the naturally occurring hormone estrogen. Hormone therapy is designed to stop the effects of estrogen on the tumor.

A variety of drugs can be prescribed as hormone therapy, and doctors choose a treatment regimen depending on the patient and the specifics of that person's disease. Aromatase inhibitors prevent the body from making estrogen and are usually the first treatment chosen for hormone therapy. Fulvestrant blocks the estrogen receptor on cancer cells. These drugs usually are given to postmenopausal women. Pre-menopausal women often are given different hormone therapies because their ovaries still are producing large amounts of estrogen.

Doctors have long suspected that the difference between women who respond to hormone therapy and those who don't comes down to whether the estrogen receptors on their cancer cells are working properly. If the receptors are present but nonfunctional, targeting them is unlikely to have much effect.

Dehdashti and colleagues, including co-authors Barry A. Siegel, MD, a professor of radiology, and Cynthia Ma, MD, PhD, a professor of medicine, set about measuring the functionality of estrogen receptors by taking advantage of a link between the estrogen receptor and a receptor for another hormone: progesterone. When estrogen receptors are stimulated, cells respond by increasing the number of progesterone receptor molecules on their surfaces.

Co-author John Katzenellenbogen, PhD, a chemist at the University of Illinois, designed an imaging agent to probe the number of progesterone receptors on the surface of cancer cells, in collaboration with the late Michael Welch, PhD, then a professor of radiology at Washington University. The compound, 21-[18F] fluorofuranylnorprogesterone (FFNP), attaches to progesterone receptors and can be detected with a positron emission tomogrophy (PET) scan. When more progesterone receptors are present, the PET signal is higher.

The researchers recruited 43 postmenopausal women with estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer. Most (86%) had metastatic disease, while 14% had locally advanced or locally recurrent disease. The majority (72%) already had received some form of treatment before the start of the study. Their prior treatment was most often a hormone therapy-based regimen.

The women underwent a PET scan using FFNP, followed by three doses of estrogen over a 24-hour period, and then a second PET scan a day after the estrogen treatment.

For 28 women, the PET signal in the tumor increased considerably after exposure to estrogen, indicating that their estrogen receptors were working and had responded to the hormone by triggering an increase in progesterone receptor numbers. Fifteen women showed little to no change in progesterone receptor numbers after estrogen treatment.

Then, the researchers followed the participants for six months or longer as they underwent hormone therapy as recommended by their individual oncologists. The disease of all 15 women whose tumors had not responded to estrogen worsened within six months. Of the women whose tumors had responded, 13 remained stable and 15 improved.

"The goal of therapy is to control or improve disease, so if the therapy is likely to be ineffective, it should not be given to a patient," said Dehdashti, who is also senior vice chair and division director of nuclear medicine at MIR. "We observed 100% agreement between the response to estrogen challenge and the response to hormone therapy, even though the participants were on a variety of treatment regimens. This method should work for any therapy that depends on a functional estrogen receptor, and it could provide valuable information to oncologists deciding how best to treat their patients."

The researchers are now in the process of setting up a larger phase 2 clinical trial with collaborators at other institutions to verify their results.

Temperature rise due to climate change has negatively affected labour productivity in the past decades and will keep damaging it, potentially at a higher extent than what has been estimated in the literature up to now. In South Africa, a future scenario with severe climate change will feature a reduction of per capita GDP of up to 20% by the end of the century, compared to an idealized future without the impacts of a changing climate.

This is what emerges from the study "Climate change and development in South Africa: the impact of rising temperatures on economic productivity and labour availability", coordinated by the CMCC Foundation and RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment (EIEE) and conducted in collaboration with the Athens University of Economics and Business, recently published in the Journal Climate and Development.

In the first phase of the research, through the analysis of empirical data, researchers analysed how temperature change driven by climate change has affected the productivity of the labour in South Africa in the past. They used a longitudinal survey of South African households conducted between 2008 and 2015 to obtain key information about the relationship between weekly maximum temperatures and working hours in the same week.

The results show that climate stressors have differentiated impacts on workers from various sectors. Increasing temperatures reduce the availability of workers in industries with high exposure to heat, such as farming, construction, fishing and mining: the so-called "low-skilled labour". On the other hand, workers of sectors like the manufacturing, or office work ("high-skilled"), which are conducted indoor, are less affected by the temperature rise.

"We wanted to understand whether temperature changes affect how much people can work in a given week and if those who work inside have a climate advantage" explains Dr. Shouro Dasgupta, a researcher at the CMCC Foundation and EIEE, co-author of the study. "And this is something the findings confirmed: labour availability initially increases with temperature until it reaches its peak and then decreases as temperature increases beyond the maximum point. However, the optimal maximum temperature maximizing weekly labour supply is 26.2?C for low-skilled workers while it is 28.2?C for high-skilled workers. Those who work inside can work until the temperature is a little higher, because they are less exposed to heat".

The second step of the study was to use these empirical data to run an Overlapping Generations model to investigate the future and project the extent to which the expected warming will affect labour productivity in South Africa. "In the literature, we find two research approaches that are clearly separate from each other" affirms Dr. Soheil Shayegh, a researcher at the CMCC Foundation and EIEE, the lead author of the paper. "One approach relies on empirical data and builds statistical relationships between indicators based on the data. This is what we used in the first phase of our research, building on survey data from the past to establish statistical relationships between temperature and labour supply. The other approach uses Overlapping Generations models, mathematical models that we use to forecast the future of our economies based on assumptions about decision-makers' behaviour and choices, and usually not based on forecasted data. In this research, by marrying these two methodologies and building on survey data, we were able to answer a set of complex questions about the effect of climate change on labour markets that are interesting not just for South Africa, but probably for every country" says Shayegh.

The decrease in labour availability has a ripple effect on other parts of the economy, from wages' variations to the productivity of outputs, the researchers explain. The model suggests that, by the end of the century, the wage gap between high-skilled and low-skilled labour will reduce, with the lowest skilled labour receiving more relative wages. This is a consequence of the decrease in the relative availability of low-skilled to high-skilled labour due to the rising temperature, which increases the scarcity (and, consequently, the salary) of low-skilled workers.

"The wage gap is closing because the wages of low-skilled workers are improving, and this is good news. But when you step back and look at the bigger picture, in the whole economy, something else is happening" explains Shayegh. "We see that economic damages are much larger. Climate change is not only impacting the labour supply: it is also damaging the productivity of all sectors".

In summary, increasing demand for low-skilled labour, coupled with a reduction in economic productivity due to climate change, reduces the wage gap between high-skilled and low-skilled labour but reduces overall output per adult. Under a severe climate scenario, the study shows that GDP per capita drops by about 20% by the end of the century, compared to the baseline case without climate change.

"It is important to note that we only considered the impact of climate change through gradual rising of average and maximum temperatures" specifies Dasgupta. "Other climate factors such as precipitation, sea-level rise, or climate shocks such as floods or droughts are not considered in this study. Therefore, it is safe to assume that we have provided a conservative estimate of the climate change damages on productivity and welfare - in a scenario without climate action".