Culture

Growing perennial grasses on abandoned cropland has the potential to counteract some of the negative impacts of climate change by switching to more biofuels, according to a research group from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

Researchers consider increased use of biofuels to be an important part of the solution to reduce CO2 emissions. But the production of plants for biofuels can have some unfortunate trade-offs.

Now, the NTNU researchers have come up with a scenario that would put less pressure on food production and plant and animal life.

"We can grow perennial grasses in areas that until recently were used for growing food but that are no longer used for that purpose," explains Jan Sandstad Næss, a PhD candidate at the Industrial Ecology Programme at NTNU. These areas are usually still potentially cultivable and have the advantage that they are already connected to farms, which means that the infrastructure is in place and they are close to markets.

The results from the study have now been published in Nature Sustainability.

Biofuels come in several varieties. Common to all is that plants are broken down and transformed into a product we can use as fuel in vehicles and machines, for example.

But corn, wheat, rapeseed and soybeans that become biofuels instead of food affect people's ability to feed themselves, making the choice for biofuels ethically questionable. Wild areas cleared to grow biofuels can compromise biodiversity.

In many of the scenarios that the researchers explored, the production of biofuels would not compete with food production or wilderness, but would use cropland that has been abandoned due to more efficient food production or because plant foods replace more land-intensive meat production.

The least controversial option for producing biofuels is the use of waste from industry, agriculture and forestry, but this does not generate nearly enough biofuel.

If we use areas that already have limited value for other purposes, the cultivation of biofuels will become more attractive for more people.

Until now, no one has calculate the extent of areas available for this type of grass cultivation. Næss and his colleagues Professor Francesco Cherubini and researcher Otávio Cavalett investigated the question by examining satellite images from around the world. Cherubini is also director of NTNU's Industrial Ecology Programme.

"We found 83 million hectares, or 830 000 square kilometres, of areas that until recently were used for food production but now no longer are," Sandstad Næss said.

These locations roughly correspond to the land area of Sweden and Norway combined, including Svalbard, or the equivalent of five per cent of the area currently used for food production worldwide.

These are areas that have been heavily affected by humans, so many species are already gone. Grass production could increase biodiversity.

The research group believes that most of these areas can be used to grow perennial grasses for biofuels instead of leaving them unused by humans. However, there is a large variation in how much this can cover of future biofuel demand.

Biofuel production on abandoned cropland "could provide the energy equivalent of between 6 and 39 exajoules each year. This corresponds to between 11 and 68 per cent of today's bioenergy needs and 2 to 47 per cent of the production of biofuels in 2050, given the assumption that we limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius," says Cavalett.

How much biofuel people can grow depends on many local factors and on how the areas are managed. Negative environmental impacts need to be weighed against the need for energy.

"We could generate around 20 exajoules every year if we increase land area by only 3 per cent and water use by 8 per cent. That scenario would mean we wouldn't disturb areas that are especially critical for biodiversity or that require a lot of irrigation," says Cherubini.

The researchers believe that growing perennial grasses for biofuels would simultaneously revitalize rural areas and provide more sources of income for farmers.

But this option won't happen by itself. Communities need to determine local climatic conditions and water availability, as well as local value chains and what kind of grass is best to grow there. These decisions therefore require that local and regional authorities collaborate to implement such a plan.

DURHAM, N.C. - Researchers at Duke and Mt. Sinai have identified a molecular mechanism that prevents a viral infection during a mother's pregnancy from harming her unborn baby.

When a person becomes infected by a virus, their immune system sends out a chemical signal called type I interferon, which tells surrounding cells to increase their anti-viral defenses, including making more inflammation.

This response helps to prevent the virus from copying itself and gives the adaptive immune system more time to learn about the new invader and begin to hunt it down.

A pregnant woman who encounters a virus generates these same signals to protect herself, but if those signaling molecules and the resulting inflammation were able to cross the placenta and reach the fetus, they would lead to serious developmental abnormalities and even fetal death.

But this generally doesn't happen, except for the Zika virus and a handful of other viruses known to replicate inside the fetus and harm it. (Despite almost 100 million reported cases of COVID-19 to date around the world, there is no strong evidence that the virus which causes the disease, SARS-CoV-2, poses a threat to fetuses.)

The research team found a mechanism that protects the fetus from the harm the mother's immune response to a virus could cause. In a paper appearing Jan. 15 in Science, they identify a key player in this pathway as a cell-surface estrogen receptor called GPER1 that is especially abundant in the placenta and fetal tissues.

"This likely explains why many maternal infections during pregnancy don't hurt the fetus," said study leader Nicholas Heaton, an assistant professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology in the Duke School of Medicine.

Having arrived at GPER1 as a possible candidate for this effect by a series of screens, the researchers found GPER1 receptors concentrated in the placenta, where the mother's blood supply passes oxygen and nutrients over to the fetus. Estrogen levels are much higher during pregnancy, making the GPER1 receptor even better able to suppress interferon signaling in the placenta and developing fetus.

The researchers tried blocking this particular estrogen receptor in pregnant mice with a compound called G15. They found changes in the placenta during influenza A virus infection or G15 treatment, which led to slightly smaller mouse pups. But with both G15 and influenza virus present, the pups were dramatically smaller and many were stillborn.

They also tested mouse pregnancies with Zika and influenza B virus infections and saw that the addition of the G15 treatment again led to many more fetal defects.

"If we disable the GPER1 pathway, even normally benign maternal infections (like flu) will now cause major fetal developmental issues," Heaton said.

Heaton calls it a pathway because his team doesn't yet understand how GPER1 provides this protection. They suspect the receptor triggers other downstream mechanisms that come into play.

Heaton said the beauty of this system being concentrated around the baby is that it protects the fetus from inflammation, while leaving the rest of the mother's tissues more able to use interferon to fight the virus.

The researchers are next going to pursue tests of whether "hyperactivating" the GPER1 pathway would be a way to protect fetal development when a mother becomes virally infected.

Initially earmarked for covert military operations, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones have since gained tremendous popularity, which has broadened the scope of their use. In fact, "remote pilot" drones have been largely replaced by "autonomous" drones for applications in various fields. One such application is their usage in rescue missions following a natural or man-made disaster. However, this often requires the drones to be able to land safely on uneven terrain--which can be very difficult to execute.

"While it is desirable to automate the landing using a depth camera that can gauge terrain unevenness and find suitable landing spots, a framework serving as a useful base needs to be developed first," observes Dr. Chinthaka Premachandra from Shibaura Institute of Technology (SIT), Japan, whose research group studies potential applications of camera-based quadrocopter drones.

Accordingly, Dr. Premachandra and his team set out to design an automatic landing system; they have detailed their approach in their latest study published in IEEE Access. To keep things simple, they upgraded a standard radio control (RC)-based drone with necessary hardware and software and equipped it with a simple 2D camera for the detection of a symbolized landing pad.

"The challenges in our project were two-fold. On the one hand, we needed a robust and cost-effective image-processing algorithm to provide position feedback to the controller. On the other, we required a fail-safe switch logic that would allow the pilot to abort the autonomous mode whenever required, preventing accidents during tests," explains Dr. Premachandra.

Eventually, the team came up with a design that comprised the following components: a commercial flight controller (for attitude control), a Raspberry Pi 3B+ (for autonomous position control), a wide-angle modified Raspberry Pi v1.3 camera (for horizontal feedback), a servo gimbal (for camera usage control), a Time-of-Flight (ToF) module (as feedback sensor for the drone height), a multiplexer (for switching between manual and auto modes), an "anti-windup" PID controller (for height control), and two PD controllers (for horizontal movement control).

In addition, they implemented an image-processing algorithm that detected a distinctive landing symbol (in the shape of "H") in real time and converted the image pixels into physical coordinates, which generated a horizontal feedback. Interestingly, they found that introducing an adaptive "region of interest" helped speed up the computation of the camera's vertical distance to the landing symbol, greatly reducing the computing time--from 12-14 milliseconds to a meagre 3 milliseconds!

Following detection, the system accomplished the landing process in two steps: flying towards the landing spot and hovering over it while maintaining the height, and then actually landing vertically. Both these steps were automated and therefore controlled by the Raspberry Pi module.

While examining the landing, the research team noticed a disturbance in landing behavior, which they attributed to an aerodynamic lift acting on the quadrocopter. However, this problem could be overcome by boosting the gain of the PID controller. In general, performance during the landing process indicated a properly functioning autonomous system.

With these results, Dr. Premachandra and his team look forward to upgrading their system with a depth camera and thus enabling drones to find even more applications pertaining to daily life. "Our study was primarily motivated by the application of drones in rescue missions--But it shows that drones can, in future, find use in indoor operations such as indoor transportation and inspection, which can reduce a lot of manual labor," concludes Prof. Premachandra.

New Rochelle, NY, January 20, 2020--SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, blocks the processes of innate immune activation that normally direct the production and/or signaling of type I interferon (IFN-I) by the infected cell and tissues. IFN-I is a key component of host innate immunity that is responsible for eliminating the virus at the early stage of infection, as summarized in a recent review article in Journal of Interferon & Cytokine Research (JICR). By suppressing innate immunity, the virus replicates and spreads in the body unchecked, leading to the disease known as COVID-19. Click here to read the article now.

"SARS-CoV-2 utilizes various approaches to evade host IFN-I response, including suppression of IFN-I production and IFN-I signaling," state Hongjie Xia and Pei-Yong Shi, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. "Viruses defective in antagonizing IFN-I response, in combination with replication-defective mutations, could potentially be developed as live attenuated vaccine candidates."

"Targeting innate immunity is highly attractive for therapeutic and vaccine strategies aimed at controlling SARS-CoV-2 infection and protecting against COVID-19. By revealing how the virus blocks innate immune programs we can then build approaches to restore these processes and enhance antiviral immunity," says Journal of Interferon & Cytokine Research Editor-in-Chief Michael Gale Jr., Department of Immunology and Center for Innate Immunity and Immune Disease, University of Washington.

Other COVID-related articles in this issue of Journal of Interferon & Cytokine Research include a review by Benjamin Liu and Harry Hill on the role of host immune and inflammatory responses in COVID-19 cases with underlying primary immunodeficiency. Primary immunodeficiency patients are highly vulnerable to virus infections including SARS-CoV-2. The authors conclude that routine intravenous immunoglobulin therapy may provide some protective effects to patients with primary immunodeficiency.

Ricardo Pereda and coauthors explore the therapeutic effectiveness of interferon alpha 2b treatment for COVID-19 patient recovery. They showed that interferon treatment decreases the likelihood of intensive care stay and increases patient survival after severe or critical disease.

In a Nature Reviews Endocrinology article authors from the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD) highlight the interconnection of obesity and impaired metabolic health with the severity of COVID-19. First, they provide information about the independent relationships of obesity, disproportionate fat distribution and impaired metabolic health with the severity of COVID-19. Then they discuss mechanisms for a complicated course of COVID-19 and how this disease may impact on the global obesity and cardiometabolic pandemics. Finally, they provide recommendations for prevention and treatment in clinical practice and in the public health sector to combat these global pandemics.

Norbert Stefan, Andreas Birkenfeld and Matthias Schulze summarize and discuss data from large and well-performed studies that investigated independent relationships of obesity with the severity of COVID-19. Thereby, they can disentangle the contribution of obesity, visceral fatness and impaired metabolic health for the course of COVID-19. In this respect they found convincing evidence that obesity and overt diabetes, but also visceral obesity and even mild hyperglycemia, represent important risk factors for the disease course. Thus, these risk factors most probably may have an additive effect on the severity of COVID-19.

Then they discuss the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 infection on organ function, focusing on the cardiometabolically relevant tissues and organs as the vessel wall, heart, kidneys, liver, gut and pancreas. Thereby, they address both, the immediate damage of COVID-19 to the organs and the long-term effects of the disease, most probably boosting the development of obesity and cardiometabolic diseases. Thus, obesity and cardiometabolic diseases do not only trigger a more severe course of COVID-19, the SARS-CoV-2 infection does promote the development of these conditions.

The authors further highlight how treatment of obesity and impaired cardiometabolic health helps to avert a severe COVID-19 in patients infected with SARS-CoV-2. In this respect health professionals and politicians should now, more than ever, promote the health benefits of physical activity and support efforts to implement programmes and policies to facilitate increased physical activity and to promote a healthy diet. This might not only be relevant to directly reduce the burden of COVID-19 related morbidity and mortality among those infected, but may also be important in the context of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination, where response should be carefully evaluated in patients with obesity and/or diabetes mellitus, because of a potentially reduced or shortened response.

Despite being the subject of increasing interest for a whole century, how preeclampsia develops has been unclear - until now.

Researchers believe that they have now found a primary cause of preeclampsia.

"We've found a missing piece to the puzzle. Cholesterol crystals are the key and we're the first to bring this to light," says researcher Gabriela Silva.

Silva works at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's (NTNU) Centre of Molecular Inflammation Research (CEMIR), a Centre of Excellence, where she is part of a research group for inflammation in pregnancy led by Professor Ann-Charlotte Iversen.

The findings are good news for the approximately three per cent of pregnant women in Norway who get this disease. Worldwide, preeclampsia is a leading cause of illness and death in both mother and foetus.

In a preeclamptic pregnancy, the placenta does not develop properly, and the baby sometimes also receives too little nutrition.

The symptoms of preeclampsia are often mild, but in some cases the condition becomes so severe that the baby needs to be delivered prematurely.

Preeclampsia does not disappear until the baby is born. Since no one has understood why the condition occurs, the current treatment is to monitor and alleviate the symptoms.

Silva believes that future treatment will now become more effective.

"A pregnancy is actually a kind of natural inflammatory condition, and in the case of preeclampsia, the inflammation has become too strong and leads to disease," Silva says.

Women who have had preeclampsia have an increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease later in life.

It was precisely this connection that led the researchers to choose to examine cholesterol in pregnant women with preeclampsia. Cholesterol is a major cause of cardiovascular disease.

Cholesterol crystals are found in plaque that clogs blood vessels. The crystals are formed when bad cholesterol accumulates in the blood vessel walls. Studies have shown that cholesterol crystals are a particularly powerful initiator of inflammation in the body and can cause the blood to clot.

Cholesterol crystals are identified as harmful substances in the body that need to be cleared out. But the defence cells that come in to do the job aren't able to break them down. They call for reinforcements, and more immune cells come in, to no avail. The immune response runs wild, and the inflammatory process escalates.

Silva found that the inflammation was at its highest in the region called the maternal-foetal interface, where the mother's cells come into direct contact with foetal cells. This happens in the placenta and uterine wall.

"This direct contact means that the inflammation directly affects the communication between mother and foetus and contributes to even greater inflammation in the mother," says Silva.

Cholesterol levels are high in all pregnant women, because both the foetus and the placenta need cholesterol. But levels were even higher in women with preeclampsia. They also had much more of the bad cholesterol, which is the type of cholesterol found in people who are at high risk for cardiovascular disease.

Silva went to great lengths to solve the riddle. She used tissue samples from a biobank that the research group at CEMIR has built up, and included placenta samples from 90 women with preeclampsia obtained immediately after birth. The researchers therefore had tissue samples from both the uterine wall and the placenta. The samples were examined using advanced microscopes.

It has taken years of research to arrive at the result.

Future treatment for preeclampsia may simply include cholesterol-lowering medications, such as statins, but further research is needed to clarify their effects.

"Some women have an increased risk of preeclampsia right from the start. They should be followed up with a cholesterol check. This isn't done regularly today, but it should be done regularly in the future. The use of statins during pregnancy is not recommended now, but several clinical studies are looking more closely at this and are showing that pravastatin, for example, can be safe to use during pregnancy," says Silva.

The results of a randomised clinical trial with the longest follow up to date show that metabolic surgery is more effective than medications and lifestyle interventions in the long-term control of severe type 2 diabetes.

The study, published today in The Lancet, also shows that over one-third of surgically-treated patients remained diabetes-free throughout the 10-year period of the trial. This demonstrates, in the context of the most rigorous type of clinical investigation, that a "cure" for type 2 diabetes can be achieved.

Researchers from King's College London and the Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli IRCCS, Rome, Italy report the 10-year outcomes of a trial that compared metabolic surgery with conventional medical and lifestyle interventions in patients with type 2 diabetes.

The study involved 60 patients with advanced type 2 diabetes and treated at a major academic hospital in Rome, Italy. The patients randomly underwent drugs plus lifestyle interventions or metabolic surgery (gastric bypass or biliopancreatic diversion). At the start of the study, all patients had severe disease, with poorly controlled blood sugar levels and more than five years history of diabetes.

The results of the study show that 37.5% of surgically-treated patients were able to maintain non-diabetic glycaemia without need for diabetes medication - a condition referred to as diabetes remission - for the duration of the 10-year study period. In 2009, American Diabetes Association defined "cure" of diabetes as a continued state of disease remission for more than five years.

Professor Francesco Rubino, senior author of the report and Chair of Bariatric and Metabolic Surgery at King's College London and a consultant surgeon at King's College Hospital in London said: "The findings from this study provide the most robust scientific evidence yet that full-blown type 2 diabetes is a curable disease, not inevitably progressive and irreversible. In addition to represent a major advance in the treatment of diabetes, metabolic surgery is our best lead to the elusive cause of the disease".

Compared to conventional medical treatment, surgery also resulted in better overall metabolic control, lower cardiovascular risk, better kidney function and quality of life. Notably, patients treated surgically had a significant lower incidence of diabetes-related complications, including cardiac, renal, and neurological adverse events. Metabolic surgery also reduced medication usage, including drugs for diabetes, high blood pressure and dyslipidaemia.

The study investigated the early and long-term safety of the different intervention strategies. Patients who underwent biliopancreatic diversion had more incidences of serious adverse events, including events associated to both disease and intervention, compared to subjects in both other groups. Patients treated by conventional medical therapy had significantly higher incidence of serious adverse events compared to patients who underwent surgery by Roux-en-Y gastric bypass.

Professor Geltrude Mingrone, first author of the report, Professor of Medicine at the Catholic University of Rome and a Professor of Diabetes and Nutrition at King's College London said: "These data corroborate the notion that surgery can be a cost-effective approach to treating type 2 diabetes. The evidence is now more than compelling that metabolic surgery should be considered as a main therapeutic option for the treatment of patients with severe type 2 diabetes and obesity."

Previous studies had shown that bariatric or weight loss surgery can induce long-term remission of diabetes in patients with very severe obesity; however, most patients who undergo traditional weight loss surgery have typically mild or recent-onset diabetes. This trial shows the potential curative effect of metabolic surgery for patients with severe disease.

Diabetes is one of the leading causes of mortality and morbidity in Western societies and significantly increases the risk of severe COVID-19 and mortality from the virus. Despite the evidence that surgery can rapidly and dramatically improve diabetes, less than 1% of surgical candidates have access to metabolic surgery in most countries. Furthermore, metabolic surgery operations have been suspended for even longer than other elective surgical procedures during the current pandemic.

Professor Rubino added: "Metabolic surgery is arguably the most effective available therapy for type 2 diabetes and can be a life-saving option for many patients. It should be appropriately prioritized in times of pandemic and beyond."

Amsterdam, NL, January 21, 2021 - The bacterial gut microbiome is strongly associated with Parkinson's disease (PD), but no studies had previously investigated he role of fungi in the gut. In this novel study published in the Journal of Parkinson's Disease, a team of investigators at the University of British Columbia examined whether the fungal constituents of the gut microbiome are associated with PD. Their research indicated that gut fungi are not a contributing factor, thereby refuting the need for any potential anti-fungal treatments of the gut in PD patients.

"Several studies conducted since 2014 have characterized changes in the gut microbiome," explained lead investigator Silke Appel-Cresswell, MD, Pacific Parkinson's Research Centre and Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health and Division of Neurology, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia. "Most existing studies, however, employ bacterial-specific sequencing. To date, a potential role for the fungal constituents of the gut microbiome, also known as the "mycobiome," has remained unexplored."

In order to investigate whether the fungal constituents of the gut microbiome are associated with PD researchers enrolled 95 PD patients and 57 controls from the Pacific Parkinson's Research Centre (PPRC) at the University of British Columbia. Participants provided a single fecal sample and completed a two-hour study visit during which their PD symptoms were assessed.

Analysis determined that the fungal microbiome in PD did not essentially differ from that of matched controls, and there were no strong associations between gut fungi and PD symptoms.

Fungi were very sparse among participants' fecal microbiomes. After filtering, 106 of the 152 participants (64/95 PD and 42/57 control) remained for downstream compositional analysis; the remainder had virtually no detectable fungal genomic content. Most of the genera identified were environmental or dietary in origin.

Saccharomyces was by far the most dominant fungal genus detected. Although these investigations did not reveal any significant role for gut fungi in PD, interestingly, lower overall fungal abundance (relative to bacteria) in the PD gut were observed, which might reflect a less hospitable environment of the gut in PD.

This paper plays an important role by answering the call by the PD research community and funding organizations to publish negative results, crucial to avoid investing precious research funding into likely futile endeavors and providing a more balanced reflection of data in the field.

"The data are an important piece in the puzzle of understanding the overall role of the gut microbiome in PD," continued Dr. Appel-Cresswell. "PD patients can rest assured that gut fungal overgrowth, or dysbiosis, is likely not a contributing factor to any of their PD symptoms, both motor and non-motor."

"The gut microbiome in PD continues to be an exciting field of research where we are just at the beginning of unraveling potential mechanisms. It will be important to publish negative results as well as positive findings along with detailed methods to have a realistic reflection of the data in the literature to accelerate discovery," she concluded.

PD is a slowly progressive disorder that affects movement, muscle control, and balance. It is the second most common age-related neurodegenerative disorder affecting about 3% of the population by the age of 65 and up to 5% of individuals over 85 years of age. In recent years, more attention has been given to the gut as a key player in the initiation and progression of PD.

The cause of the inflammatory lung disease sarcoidosis is unknown. In a new study, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have investigated whether a type of immune cell called a monocyte could be a key player in sarcoidosis pathogenesis and explain why some patients develop more severe and chronic disease than others. The study, which is published in The European Respiratory Journal, opens new possibilities for future diagnostic and therapeutic methods.

Sarcoidosis is an inflammatory disease that in 90 percent of cases affects the lungs, but can also attack the heart, skin and lymph system. The cause of the disease is not yet established, and there is currently no cure.
Common symptoms of acute sarcoidosis are high fever, purple patches on the lower legs, swollen ankles and muscular/arthritic pain.

While some 30 percent of patients recover after a couple of years, others can suffer extensive lung damage that in exceptional cases requires a lung transplant.
Approximately 16,000 people live with the disease in Sweden, and 1,200 are newly diagnosed every year, making the Sweden the most affected in the world. Most patients are between 30 and 60 years of age.

In a new study, researchers at Karolinska Institutet, Karolinska University Hospital and Umeå University have shown how certain white blood cells called monocytes could be a vital marker in understanding the inflammatory process of sarcoidosis.

Although monocytes are part of the immune system, they can, under certain circumstances, aggravate the inflammatory process in body tissue. Knowledge of the part played by monocytes in sarcoidosis has so far been limited.

The researchers also found that the higher level of monocytes in people diagnosed with the disease makes it possible to assess the risk of a more progressive disease process. With the results come new possibilities for identifying biomarkers for sarcoidosis and for more personalised care.

"If we identify at an earlier stage who risks being seriously affected by the disease, it can hopefully lead to prophylactic and more efficacious treatment," says the paper's last author Anna Smed Sorensen, docent at the Department of Medicine, Solna, Karolinska Institutet. "Eventually, our research could mean fewer cases of chronic sarcoidosis."

Scientists have been pondering if the microbiome of plants is due to nature or nurture. Research at Stockholm University, published in Environmental Microbiology, showed that oak acorns contain a large diversity of microbes, and that oak seedlings inherit their microbiome from these acorns.

"The idea that seeds can be the link between the microbes in the mother tree and its offspring has frequently been discussed, but this is the first time someone proves the transmission route from the seed to the leaves and roots of emerging plants", says Ahmed Abdelfattah, researcher at the Department of Ecology Environment and Plant Sciences (DEEP) at Stockholm University.

The microorganisms found on the seed are often valuable for the plant, promoting its growth and protecting it against certain diseases. Each plant species harbours a distinct microbial community, with some of the microbes living on its surface and others inside the plant's tissues.

The finding also means that since the microorganisms from the seed are there first, they can constitute a barrier which influences subsequent colonization by other microbes from the environment. The experiment was done in oaks, since it's one of the most abundant tree species in the Swedish and European forests.

"The microorganisms from the seed are also expected to be very important for plant health and functioning", says Ahmed Abdelfattah.

The fossil record indicates that plants have been associated with fungi and bacteria - constituting the microbiome - for more than 400 million years. Several species the scientists found on the oak seeds are already shown by other studies to be involved in the protection against several plant pathogens, growth-promotion, nitrogen-fixing, and the detoxification or biodegradation of toxic environmental pollutants.

Demonstrating inheritance under natural conditions is challenging since seeds are exposed to and dependent on their surrounding environment when they sprout, especially the soil, which is a microbially rich environment. Therefore, it's nearly impossible to differentiate between which microorganism actually come from the seed or from the soil. The research team therefore used a novel culturing device, to grow oak seedlings in a microbe-free condition and keep the leaves separated from the roots. This allowed them to be certain that the microorganisms came from the seed, and that they could demonstrate that some seed microorganisms migrate to the roots, and some others to the leaves.

"Plant leaves and roots are already known to harbor distinct microbial communities, as shown by several recent studies. In this study however, we were surprised to see that it is also true at an early stage of the plant development, and that the seed could, at least partially, be responsible for these differences", Says Ahmed Abdelfattah

"Several breeding companies are taking into consideration the seed microbiome in their programs hoping to have super plants with better genes and better microbes. One technique used, is to treat seeds with beneficial microorganism with the aim that those microbes will eventually colonize the plant and exert their effects throughout the plant's life", says Ahmed Abdelfattah.

The next step for the research team is now to discern which is the major source of the of the microbiome - the environment or the seed.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- In 2018, passengers onboard a flight to Australia experienced a terrifying 10-second nosedive when a vortex trailing their plane crossed into the wake of another flight. The collision of these vortices, the airline suspected, created violent turbulence that led to a free fall.

To help design aircraft that can better maneuver in extreme situations, Purdue University researchers have developed a modeling approach that simulates the entire process of a vortex collision at a reduced computational time. This physics knowledge could then be incorporated into engineering design codes so that the aircraft responds appropriately.

The simulations that aircraft designers currently use capture only a portion of vortex collision events and require extensive data processing on a supercomputer. Not being able to easily simulate everything that happens when vortices collide has limited aircraft designs.

With more realistic and complete simulations, engineers could design aircraft such as fighter jets capable of more abrupt maneuvers or helicopters that can land more safely on aircraft carriers, the researchers said.

"Aircraft in extreme conditions cannot rely on simple modeling," said Carlo Scalo, a Purdue associate professor of mechanical engineering with a courtesy appointment in aeronautics and astronautics.

"Just to troubleshoot some of these calculations can take running them on a thousand processors for a month. You need faster computation to do aircraft design."

Engineers would still need a supercomputer to run the model that Scalo's team developed, but they would be able to simulate a vortex collision in about a tenth to a hundredth of the time using far less computational resources than those typically required for large-scale calculations.

The researchers call the model a "Coherent-vorticity-Preserving (CvP) Large-Eddy Simulation (LES)." The four-year development of this model is summarized in a paper published in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics.

"The CvP-LES model is capable of capturing super complex physics without having to wait a month on a supercomputer because it already incorporates knowledge of the physics that extreme-scale computations would have to meticulously reproduce," Scalo said.

Former Purdue postdoctoral researcher Jean-Baptiste Chapelier led the two-year process of building the model. Xinran Zhao, another Purdue postdoctoral researcher on the project, conducted complex, large-scale computations to prove that the model is accurate. These computations allowed the researchers to create a more detailed representation of the problem, using more than a billion points. For comparison, a 4K ultra high definition TV uses approximately 8 million points to display an image.

Building off of this groundwork, the researchers applied the CvP-LES model to the collision events of two vortex tubes called trefoil knotted vortices that are known to trail the wings of a plane and "dance" when they reconnect.

This dance is extremely difficult to capture.

"When vortices collide, there's a clash that creates a lot of turbulence. It's very hard computationally to simulate because you have an intense localized event that happens between two structures that look pretty innocent and uneventful until they collide," Scalo said.

Using the Brown supercomputer at Purdue for mid-size computations and Department of Defense facilities for large-scale computations, the team processed data on the thousands of events that take place when these vortices dance and built that physics knowledge into the model. They then used their turbulence model to simulate the entire collision dance.

Engineers could simply run the ready-made model to simulate vortices over any length of time to best resemble what happens around an aircraft, Scalo said. Physicists could also shrink the model down for fluid dynamics experiments.

"The thing that's really clever about Dr. Scalo's approach is that it uses information about the flow physics to decide the best tactic for computing the flow physics," said Matthew Munson, program manager for Fluid Dynamics at the Army Research Office, an element of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's Army Research Laboratory.

"It's a smart strategy because it makes the solution method applicable to a wider variety of regimes than many other approaches. There is enormous potential for this to have a real impact on the design of vehicle platforms and weapons systems that will allow our soldiers to successfully accomplish their missions."

Scalo's team will use Purdue's newest community cluster supercomputer, Bell, to continue its investigation of complex vortical flows. The team also is working with the Department of Defense to apply the CvP-LES model to large-scale test cases pertaining to rotorcrafts such as helicopters.

"If you're able to accurately simulate the thousands of events in flow like those coming from a helicopter blade, you could engineer much more complex systems," Scalo said.

(Boston)--While aging is an unavoidable biological process with many influencing factors that results in visible changes to the hair, there is limited literature examining the characteristics of hair aging across the races. Now a new study describes the unique characteristics of hair aging among different ethnicities that the authors hope will aid in a culturally sensitive approach when making recommendations to prevent hair damage during one's life-time.

Among the findings: hair-graying onset varies with race, with the average age for Caucasians being mid-30s, that for Asians being late 30s, and that for Africans being mid-40s. Caucasians and Asians typically experience damage to the distal hair shaft, while African-Americans see damage occurring closer to the hair root. Postmenopausal changes include decreased anagen (active or growing) hairs in the frontal scalp, lower growth rates and smaller hair diameters.

Similar to skin, hair aging comprises both intrinsic aging, which includes the natural physiological changes that occur with time, and extrinsic aging, or changes associated with environmental exposures and physical stress caused by daily grooming.

"Despite a similar chemical composition, the structural properties of hair vary between different ethnicities and, consequently, the aging of hair differs as well. As the population ages and becomes more diverse, it is of greater necessity to understand the hair aging process in different types of hair," says corresponding author Neelam Vashi, MD, associate professor of dermatology at Boston University School of Medicine and director of the Boston University Cosmetic and Laser Center at Boston Medical Center.

The researchers performed a literature search among 69 publications to review what is known about changes in hair structure over time, focusing on the differences in hair aging according to ethnic background. Information regarding hair structure, aging characteristics and responses to extrinsic damage together with differences between races and ethnicities was collected.

According to the researchers, the role of hair for both protection and cosmetic improvement makes it incredibly important to ones' physical and mental well-being. "A thorough understanding of the unique characteristics of hair aging among different races and ethnicities is essential for the appropriate management of mature patients," adds Vashi.

LAWRENCE -- The COVID-19 pandemic has created new perils and challenges for people experiencing substance use disorders and addictive behaviors. Social distancing and isolation can trigger loneliness, anxiety and depression. These circumstances have put some "recreational users" at risk for developing addictions and caused some in recovery from addictions to relapse.

At the same time, the pandemic has made it nearly impossible for mutual-help (e.g., AA, NA) recovery groups to gather in person, forcing a scramble to provide remote support through platforms like Zoom.

Now, researchers at the Cofrin Logan Center for Addiction Research and Treatment at the University of Kansas Life Span Institute have published their experience making SMART Recovery groups available via computer and telephone to the community in Douglas County. Their paper appears this month in the peer-reviewed Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment.

According to lead author Dr. Bruce Liese, professor of family medicine and psychiatry at the University of Kansas Medical Center and clinical director at the Cofrin Logan Center, his team established seven weekly in-person SMART Recovery group meetings at various community institutions prior to the pandemic. These meetings took place at the Lawrence Public Library, KU, the Douglas County jail, Mirror Inc. and the Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center.

"It's a free mutual help group, somewhat like a 12-step program, where people support and help each other," Liese said. "The difference is that SMART Recovery is based on scientific principles and evidence - particularly evidence about addiction, treatment, what works and what doesn't work. It's based on Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and readiness-to-change research. I believed SMART Recovery would be perfect because, coming out of the university, our program had to be based on scientific evidence."

Growth of the in-person meetings was slow at first, but soon KU researchers tallied 229 different participants who attended these groups for help with chemical and behavioral addictions ranging from addictions to alcohol, methamphetamine, cannabis, opioids, nicotine and gambling.

But that all changed once the pandemic took hold in March last year.

"They had to close the library and other facilities where we were meeting," Liese said. "Thanks to the SMART Recovery central office, we returned online with funding for Zoom meetings from their office. And at first, we went through the same thing -- meetings with just one person. But over the past months we've had upwards of 20 people in online meetings. So, it has grown again. SMART Recovery was very generous in providing us with a Zoom account. Once again, we can have as many meetings as the community needs. We have two active meetings in the community now: on Wednesdays and Fridays from 5 to 6:30 pm."

As with in-person SMART Recovery meetings, the virtual meetings are led by volunteer facilitators drawn from the community and university, who receive online and live (Zoom) training.

"The SMART Recovery central office offers a facilitator training program online for people who are interested in facilitating these groups," Liese said. "The online training involves at least 20 hours of watching videos, reading and taking exams ... so it's a pretty massive endeavor. I took the online training right away and found it interesting and stimulating. It focuses on what works, what doesn't work, while emphasizing the importance of interpersonal relationship skills. The training teaches active listening so people know you're hearing what they're saying. It made sense to do this kind of training in the community. SMART's excellent online training enabled us to quickly develop these free groups as a safety net for those who need one."

Soon after starting online meetings, Liese was determined to make meetings available to people who didn't have the high-speed internet access needed for the Zoom platform. So, he extended the remote SMART Recovery meetings to the telephone as well, a service called SMARTline.

"I see up to 30 patients a week on Zoom as a faculty member and clinician in the Family Medicine Clinic at KU Medical Center," he said. "But I have some patients who have no computers or no computer capabilities. I offer telephone visits to them. I thought we could do this for SMART Recovery. So, we came up with SMARTline: a service for anyone with a phone who is struggling with addiction. SMARTline, also based on SMART Recovery principles, is offered every single day of the week from 4 to 8 p.m. If you dial 785-550-0764 you will get to talk to a SMARTline volunteer."

Liese's co-author and collaborator in establishing SMART Recovery groups in Douglas County is project coordinator Corey Monley, at the Cofrin Logan Center for Addiction and Research Treatment.

"He is so vital to the process -- we've had so many logistical demands that could never have been met without his hard work," Liese said. "He's the project coordinator and a volunteer. He runs the group on Fridays. He is the brightest, hardest-working person I've ever had in a position like this. He graduated from KU a couple of years ago. He's applying to Ph.D. programs. This is his first publication, and his work in this area is very likely to be the foundation for the rest of his career."

Liese said he is grateful to the Douglas County Community Foundation and the Douglas County Commission, which provided funding for SMART Recovery facilitator training and supervision. He also appreciates Lawrence Public Library and describes it as "a wonderful community partner." The library has donated meeting space for training and group meetings and treated group participants as valued guests.

Liese said he's learned a lot from his experience running SMART Recovery groups during the pandemic. For example, he now fully understands that flexibility and ongoing communication with stakeholders, as well as people in recovery, are keys to sustaining a program during challenging times.

"We have learned that telehealth is effective for all kinds of psychological services," he said. "But we found it was difficult, with agencies closed, to let people know where to find us. Back when somebody could pick up an information card at the library and slip it into their pocket, it made it a lot easier. We've also learned the importance of establishing advanced plans, and being light on your feet, ready for what's needed instead of remaining stuck in what you're used to doing. Getting everyone involved -- stakeholders and the public -- is gigantic. And continuing to recruit volunteers has been especially important during COVID."

People seeking help with substance use disorders and other behaviors can contact SMART Recovery in Douglas county by dialing 785-550-0764. They can also reach out to Liese via email. A list of Zoom meetings can be found here.

The study concludes that vegan diet has a broad effect on children's metabolism. Serum biomarker levels for vitamins A and D, cholesterol forms and essential amino acids were significantly lower in children on vegan diet compared to age-adjusted omnivores. In addition, docosahexaenoic acid is absent from vegan diet. The results were recently published in a high-profile international scientific journal EMBO Molecular Medicine.

Vegan diets gain popularity especially among young adults, and through choices of the families vegan diet is becoming more common in young children, too. The motives behind choosing a vegan lifestyle are ecological, ethical and health-related: vegan diets exclude all animal-based products. It is recommended that full vegan diet is always supplemented with vitamin B12, vitamin D and iodine, and based on individual assessment the supplementation for calcium, vitamin B2, iron and zinc may be needed.

Except for vitamin D, the study did not find differences between diet groups in the levels of these nutrients in young children. All of the participated vegan children used regular vitamin B12, and all but one used regular vitamin D and iodine supplementation, indicating that Finnish vegan families are well familiar with the previously known nutritional requirements of vegan diets. However, current nutritional recommendations are based on studies conducted on adult vegans, and previous studies on metabolic effects of vegan diets in children do not exist.

In their recently published article Topi Hovinen, MD, and Liisa Korkalo, PhD, together with the multidisciplinary team led by academy professor Anu Suomalainen-Wartiovaara and docent Maijaliisa Erkkola studied comprehensively the nutrition and metabolism of 40 healthy children in daycares of Helsinki. The children were following a vegan, vegetarian or omnivore diet according to the choice of their families. Their nutritional intake, metabolic biomarkers and micronutrient statuses were extensively studied.

The children on a fully vegan diet were found to have significantly lower vitamin D levels compared to children without a special diet despite having regular vitamin D supplementation and blood samples being collected in late summer. Surprisingly, also their vitamin A status was lowered. Levels for LDL and HDL cholesterol, essential amino acid and docosahexaenoic acid, a fatty acid with a central role in development of visual function, were low while folate levels were remarkably high in vegan children.

According to the researchers, the new findings motivate further and larger studies on the health consequences of a vegan diet in young children.

"Our results indicate that the health effects of strict diets on children cannot be extrapolated from studies on adults. In addition to vitamin D intake, attention must be paid to adequate intake of vitamin A and protein from various sources." says Topi Hovinen.

"The vegan families were active to participate in our study. This is important, because without such voluntary contribution of the families it is not possible to undertake this kind of studies", emphasizes Liisa Korkalo.

ARLINGTON, Va. (Jan. 21, 2021) -- A new research agenda developed by 40 leading experts in healthcare epidemiology and infectious diseases defines the critical areas of study to inform clinical practice, policy, and prevention strategies for COVID-19 and future pandemics. "COVID-19 Research Agenda for Healthcare Epidemiology," published today in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, identifies the gaps in the understanding of the epidemiology, transmission, and individual as well as public health consequences of viral diseases that were revealed through some of the worst phases of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The emergence and rapid world-wide spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has led to unprecedented loss of life and socio/economic disruption. The scientific community has risen to this challenge and published an enormous body of work over the past year informing our response to the pandemic and leading to evolving guidelines for treatment, testing, and prevention," said Lona Mody, MD, an author of the research agenda. "Looking to the future, the community still has much to learn. We must be intentional with our approach to improve how we prevent and treat COVID-19 and other viral illnesses."

The SHEA Research Committee assembled a working group of experts in the field of healthcare epidemiology to identify immediate research priorities in epidemiology, outbreak investigation, surveillance, isolation precaution practices, personal protective equipment, environmental contamination and disinfection, drug and supply shortages, antimicrobial stewardship, healthcare personnel occupational safety, and return to work policies. The thought leaders highlighted three critical research questions in each of these 10 areas.

Among the most pressing areas for research, include:

Understanding the spread of the virus through asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic patients infected with COVID-19.

Determining how risk factors impact disease severity, as well as understanding long-term cardiometabolic, respiratory, neurological, and psychological impacts of the virus.

Developing tools to identify outbreaks more rapidly in hospitals, nursing homes, and other healthcare settings leading to early interventions to curtail outbreaks.

Improving the understanding of personal protective equipment, or PPE, including socio-behavioral reasons for not following PPE guidance, as well as the continued need for PPE during and after the pandemic.

"This research agenda calls for translational studies from laboratory-based basic science research to well-designed, large-scale studies and health outcomes research," said Deverick Anderson, MD, MPH, the senior author of the research agenda. "To undertake this work, funding organizations must make COVID-19 research their highest priority."

The authors note that this research agenda, while a significant tool for shaping the direction of the scientific literature, represents expert opinion at a moment in time during the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic. They note that priorities may shift as the pandemic evolves and as vaccines and other therapeutics become available.