Culture

Awareness of guidelines to prevent COVID-19 is high among young asthma sufferers but around a third do not comply with them, according to a new survey published in the Journal of Asthma. The results also reveal that a fifth of asthmatics believe they have no risk of suffering from COVID-19.

While asthma patients can be assumed to be at higher risk of developing respiratory complications from COVID-19, little is known about their adherence to prevention measures. To find out more, Professor Francisco Vázquez-Nava of the Autonomous University of Tamaulipas, in Mexico, and colleagues surveyed 2,372 young adults aged 16-24 years from the Tampico-Madero-Altamira area, northwest of Mexico City, via an emailed questionnaire.

The researchers found that more than half (53.1%) of all respondents were not complying with the guidelines for COVID-19 prevention. Of those with asthma (12.2%), 100% were aware of the guidelines and measures established to prevent COVID-19 but 30.8% said they did not comply with them. A fifth (20.4%) of asthmatic participants believed they had no risk of suffering from COVID-19, and 3.8% stated that the disease did not exist.

Being male, a smoker and believing that COVID-19 is not more severe for people suffering from asthma made respondents less likely to follow measures for the prevention of COVID-19. The authors believe this is the first study to show such a relationship.

The study also found that 44.3% of patients with asthma hadn't received instructions from their doctor about the measures they should take to prevent COVID-19, and 20.4% were not advised by their treating doctor about the
use of medications to control asthma during the pandemic. This is of particular concern as 20.4% of the
asthmatic participants thought they had no risk of suffering from COVID-19, and 3.8% stated that the disease did not exist.

"Our results show that a substantial percentage of asthma patients do not comply with COVID-19 mitigation
measures. Moreover, an important proportion of asthmatic patients smoke and consider that COVID-19 is not a serious disease for them. It's important that people who suffer from asthma be advised by a health professional during the COVID-19 outbreak regarding compliance with basic measures of protection against the disease and the timely use of medications for asthma control," the authors conclude.

A joint research project of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), the University of Siegen, Forschungszentrum Jülich, and the Elettra Synchrotron Trieste has achieved a new milestone for the ultra-fast control of magnetism. The international team has been working on magnetization configurations that exhibit chiral twisting. Chirality is a symmetry breaking, which occurs, for example, in nature in molecules that are essential for life. Chirality is also referred to as handedness, since hands are an everyday example of two items that - arranged in a mirror-inverted manner - cannot be superimposed onto each other. Magnetization configurations with a fixed chirality are currently investigated intensively due to their fascinating properties such as enhanced stability and efficient manipulation by current. These magnetic textures thus promise applications in the field of ultrafast chiral spintronics, for example in ultrafast writing and controlling of chiral topological magnetic objects such as magnetic skyrmions, i.e., specially twisted magnetization configurations with exciting properties.

The new insights published in Nature Communications shed light on the ultrafast dynamics after optical excitation of chiral spin structures compared to collinear spin structures. According to the researchers' findings, the chiral order restores faster compared to the collinear order after excitation by an infrared laser.

The research team performed small angle x-ray scattering experiments on magnetic thin film samples stabilizing chiral magnetic configurations at the free electron laser (FEL) facility FERMI in Trieste in Italy. The facility provides the unique possibility to study the magnetization dynamics with femtosecond time resolution by using circular left polarized or right polarized light. The results indicate a faster recovery of chiral order compared to collinear magnetic order dynamics, which means that twists are more stable than straight magnetic configurations.

Cooperation with leading international partners as the cornerstone of successful research

"We have worked on this experiment for a long time. Now that we know that the ultrafast dynamics of chiral and collinear spin structures differs, we can focus on tackling the dependence of ultrafast dynamics on material properties such as the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, an interaction that can lead to the stabilization of chiral spin structures," said Nico Kerber of the Institute of Physics at Mainz University, lead author of the article.

"We are especially grateful to our Italian colleagues who performed a part of the experiment during the first coronavirus lockdown in Europe. These additional scans were vital for our study and we are happy that video support and the mail-in of samples worked out here. But we are also looking forward to being able to perform these experiments again in person with our colleagues at FERMI," added Professor Christian Gutt from the University of Siegen, corresponding author of the paper.

"I am very happy to see the next step taken to enable the use of chiral magnetization configurations in novel spintronic devices. The international collaboration with major facilities such as FERMI is crucial to enable such work. Collaborations like this are a cornerstone of our graduate education programs and research centers," emphasized Professor Mathias Kläui from JGU, supervisor of the first author and director of the Dynamics and Topology (TopDyn) excellence project. "We foster these collaborations with funding from the Collaborative Research Center CRC/TRR 173 Spin+X, the two graduate programs Materials Science in Mainz (MAINZ) and Max Planck Graduate Center with Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (MPGC), and the TopDyn research area."

In cells transfer RNA (tRNA) translates genetic information from the encoding messenger RNA (mRNA) for protein synthesis. New results from ultrafast spectroscopy and in-depth theoretical calculations demonstrate that the complex folded structure of tRNA is stabilized by magnesium ions in direct contact with phosphate groups at the RNA surface.

RNA structures consist of long sequences of nucleotides which are composed of a nucleobase, e.g., adenine, uracil, cytosine or guanine, a negatively charged phosphate group, and a sugar unit. The phosphate groups together with the sugars form the backbone of the macromolecule which exists as a folded structure in the cellular environment, the so-called tertiary structure. The tertiary structure of tRNA from yeast has been determined by x-ray diffraction and is shown in Figure 1. For maintaining this structure, a basic prerequisite for its cellular function, the repulsive electric force between the negatively charged phosphate groups needs to be compensated by positively charged ions and by water molecules of the environment. How this works at the molecular level has remained unclear so far, there are conflicting pictures of ion and water arrangements and interactions in the scientific literature.

Scientists from the Max-Born-Institute in Berlin have now identified contact pairs of positively charged magnesium ions and negatively charged phosphate groups as a decisive structural element for minimizing the electrostatic energy of tRNA and, thus, stabilizing its tertiary structure. Their study which has been published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry B, combines spectroscopic experiments and detailed theoretical calculations of molecular interactions and dynamics.

Molecular vibrations of the phosphate groups serve as noninvasive probes of the coupling between tRNA and its aqueous environment. The frequency and infrared absorption strength of such vibrations directly reflects the interactions with ions and water molecules. Vibrational spectroscopy of tRNA samples of different magnesium content together with two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy in the femtosecond time domain allow for discerning specific local geometries in which phosphate groups couple to ions and the water shell (Figure 2). The presence of a magnesium ion in the immediate neighborhood of a phosphate group shifts the asymmetric phosphate stretching vibration to a higher frequency and generates a characteristic infrared absorption band used for detection of the molecular species.

Experiments at different concentrations of magnesium ions show that a single tRNA structure forms up to six contact ion pairs, preferentially at locations where the distance between neighboring phosphate groups is small and the corresponding negative charge density high. The contact ion pairs make the decisive contribution to lowering the electrostatic energy and, consequently, stabilizing the tertiary tRNA structure. This picture is confirmed in a quantitative way by an in-depth theoretical analysis. The ion pairs impose an electrical force on water molecules nearby and orient them in space, again reducing the electrostatic energy. In contrast, mobile ions in the first five to six water layers around tRNA make a smaller contribution to stabilizing tRNA structure.

The new results give detailed quantitative insight in the electric properties of a key biomolecule. They underscore the high relevance of molecular probes for elucidating the relevant molecular interactions and the need for theoretical descriptions at the molecular level.

For a caterpillar that lives surrounded by ants, there are two ways of avoiding attack: going unnoticed or offering the ants a sugary treat in exchange for protection. This is the main conclusion of a study funded by FAPESP (São Paulo Research Foundation) and published in Ecological Entomology.

Based on chemical analysis of interacting plants, caterpillars and ants, researchers in Brazil affiliated with the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) and the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) found that some caterpillars are chemically very similar to the plants on which they live and feed and that this helps them hide from ants. However, there are chemically different species that have developed a strategy of coexistence through the production of a caloric reward for the ants.

"Ants prey on many insects that live on plants and establish mutualist interactions that benefit both ants and plants. To live on plants that have ants, caterpillars develop strategies that enable them to coexist with the ants. There are many advantages to living near ants. Many ants are aggressive and limit the occurrence of certain organisms. So if any animal is able to live close to ants without being attacked by them, it may acquire an adaptive advantage," said Lucas Augusto Kaminski, a researcher in UFRGS's Zoology Department and principal investigator for the study.

He did part of the research during a postdoctoral internship at UNICAMP's Institute of Biology with a scholarship from FAPESP and collaboration by José Roberto Trigo, a professor at the institute who died in 2017 and was also supported by FAPESP. The first author of the article is Luan Dias Lima, who performed the other part of the research while studying for a doctorate at UFRGS.

Selective pressure

In the 2000s, Trigo published scientific articles that showed how cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) come under selective pressure from ants. CHCs cover the cuticle (outermost layer) of virtually all insects and plants, serving as a waterproofing agent and communication signal. Ants have limited vision and perceive the world chemically, via their feelers or antennae. Some species of caterpillar and insects like leafhoppers have evolved so as to present the same CHCs as the plants on which they live, and ants do not perceive them as different from the plants, unwittingly protecting them against attackers. This type of relationship can be classified as commensalism - beneficial for the caterpillar and neutral for the ant.

In the latest study, the researchers used mass spectrometry and gas chromatography to compare CHC composition in six caterpillar species, three plant species, and two ant species. The caterpillars were all myrmecophilous ("ant-loving").

The results of the analysis showed about 95% similarity in caterpillar and plant CHCs in most cases, and no similarity with ant CHCs. The conclusion had to be that chemical camouflage was involved. This was as the researchers expected. However, in some cases, the similarity was much lower, between 34% and 55%, so that the caterpillars concerned must be entirely "visible" to ants.

"This information apparently led nowhere," Kaminski said. The researchers now had an insight: What if the very conspicuousness of these species was an evolutionary advantage? Then they noticed another difference.

Some caterpillars are known to have organs dedicated to interacting with ants, such as structures that produce substrate vibrations and minute bristles (setae) used in chemical communication. Other key organs include glands that produce a sugary liquid as a caloric reward for ants.

In camouflaged species, production of this "nectar" was scant or the glands were inert. In conspicuous species, these organs were well-developed and produced a significant amount of the fluid.

"If a caterpillar stays hidden, it doesn't need to give ants anything, but if it produces a reward it must be conspicuous. What's involved here is the evolution of the caterpillar's communication with the ant," Barbosa said.

According to the authors, these characteristics may lead species with nectar-producing glands to become more and more chemically similar. The phenomenon is known as mimicry and is common among insects.

Resembling a poisonous or reward-giving species, for example, may be an adaptive advantage. The researchers now propose that a kind of reward-based mimicry may also occur in chemical terms.

The summer 2018 eruption of K?lauea Volcano on the Island of Hawai'i was one of the most significant in the volcano's history, collapsing a large portion of the summit caldera, erupting massively from its flank and triggering a magnitude 6.9 earthquake in the process. Through it all, scientists at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory were installing new geophysical stations, processing data and making real-time reports to local authorities and neighborhoods.

In the journal Seismological Research Letters, U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Brian Shiro and colleagues describe their unprecedented efforts to observe and analyze a volcano that was destroying instruments and severing data connections. The paper is part of the journal's upcoming focus section on monitoring during crisis.

The researchers had been monitoring signs of imminent eruption before the 30 April 2018 collapse of the Pu'u '?'? vent, which had been erupting continually since 1983. Within a few hours, an unexpected magma intrusion began migrating through the volcano's East Rift Zone, and "we knew this would not be the next episode of the Pu'u '?'? eruption," said Shiro. "Within a day or so when the intrusion was approaching the populated area of Leilani Estates, we knew this could potentially be devastating."

When the 2018 event was finished, lava had covered a 35-kilometer square area and 716 structures had been destroyed by the flow, displacing more than 2,500 people. Sulfur dioxide emissions rates were among the highest measured on the island and more than 60,000 earthquakes were recorded.

Shiro and others at the observatory sprang into action to continue monitoring the volcano even as lava, fires, ashfall and collapsing cliffs destroyed geophysical monitoring stations. They also deployed new temporary stations to the sparsely instrumented lower East Rift Zone. The team was able to respond quickly by leveraging capacities that had been established earlier, they write.

Since 2014, the observatory had been building portable solar power and electronic systems for monitoring stations that could be delivered by pickup truck and helicopter slings. They had also designed the island's network structure so that data could be quickly rerouted in case of station or network relay failure. And only four months before the eruption, the observatory had rebuilt and migrated all its seismic data processing systems to live on virtual machines that could be backed up to cloud servers.

"To monitor a hazard, we need both the instruments in the field to collect the data and a way to get the data back to the scientists and decision makers to make use of it. Having a pre-assembled set of stations ready for rapid deployment can be a key capability to help monitor an emerging, changeable hazard," Shiro explained.

In the wake of multiple earthquakes during May 2018, the researchers had to permanently evacuate their facilities at the volcano's summit, setting up two temporary facilities in Hilo. "This is where the virtual machines or VMs came in handy for HVO," said Shiro. "Since we had to evacuate our facility, threatening our data center, we were able to easily move those VMs elsewhere and assure no downtime with data processing."

Shiro recalls discussing the dangers with the scientist in charge at HVO in mid-May 2018. The flank eruption was devastating, he said, but he thought the bigger problems might come at the summit. "Within a few days from that conversation she made the call to abandon the facility as the seismic shaking only continued to worsen," he said. "It was the right call given the emerging evidence of structural damage that had begun to show and worsened over the next three months."

The scientists divided into three main teams to collect data in the field, to analyze and interpret the data and to communicate and coordinate with government officials and communities. The observatory's full-time staff of 29 grew to 90, with people joining from other USGS offices, universities and volunteers.

"In a sense, the staff members of all five USGS volcano observatories acted as one for the K?lauea response, providing valuable cross-training for everyone and helping us all get to know one another so that we will be even better prepared for the next crisis," Shiro said.

Accidental shootings of unarmed victims are tragically common, and sometimes they happen because the shooter misperceived the victim as also having a gun.

Nearly a decade ago, cognitive psychologist Jessica Witt wondered if the mere act of wielding a firearm could bias someone to perceive another person as wielding one, too - and more importantly, if such a bias could be scientifically measured. A series of experiments later, Witt and her research team concluded, yes and yes.

The team has recently published a new set of experiments further underscoring what they call the "gun embodiment effect" in the journal Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications. Their original research was published in 2012 when Witt, now a professor in CSU's Department of Psychology, was a researcher at Purdue University. For this recent study, they've replicated the experiments with larger sample sizes and more confidence in their claims that the gun bias exists; that it can be measured via controlled laboratory experiments; and that it seems universal - that is, not changed by an individual's prior experiences, general attitudes about firearms, or personality traits.

"To prove something is universal, you have to rule out all possible alternatives," said Witt, an expert in the intricate links between human vision and cognition. "We have not done that yet, but we have some really good first steps."

Speed and accuracy

Witt's team recruited over 200 CSU students to help suss out the original hypothesis. Participants, holding either a fake gun or a spatula, were hooked up to a motion-tracking system. The system recorded both the speed and accuracy of their reactions to images on a screen of people holding either a gun or a neutral object - in this case, a shoe.

The researchers found strong evidence that when holding a gun, participants were a little slower to make their judgment about whether the other person was also holding a gun. The difference was about 8 milliseconds - a small effect, but it was unmistakable. They read this result as the person needing to take the time to inhibit a primed response caused by carrying a gun themselves.

They also found that holding a gun affected participants' accuracy, with a 1% greater likelihood to misperceive the other person as having a gun too. "It's as if, when they're holding a gun, they are prone to see a gun," Witt said.

The effects they saw in the lab were mercifully small. "But if you have this small effect, and put it on a national scale, and you talk about how many people have guns in this country, even these small effects are important," Witt said. "For example, if 100 officers wielding guns interact with 10 unarmed people a day for 100 days, in these 100,000 interactions, our data suggest there were will be 1,000 misperceptions of an unarmed person as holding a gun."

Addressing the replication problem

The subtlety of the gun embodiment effect challenged Witt's team to strengthen their original work, in part in response to the replication crisis in psychology experiments that's plagued so many research teams. "Our study ended up serving as a replication check and revision to our earlier claims," Witt said.

They hope they can next dive into what circumstances might change the bias for people holding guns. For this recent test, they looked at a host of possibilities, like participants' attitudes toward guns, personality traits, and measures of their impulsivity. None of these individual circumstances seemed to change the gun bias, but the absence only sparks more questions. For example, does the bias change depending on the situation? If the shooter is scared? Or fatigued?

If she can secure more funding, Witt hopes to answer such questions, and delve into them using a more diverse sample among the general public, with better representation across ages, races, education levels and prior experiences with guns.

Securing food supplies around the globe is a major challenge facing humanity, especially in light of the predicted increase in the world's population to almost ten billion people by 2050 and the effects of climate change. Greater crop diversity in agriculture is seen as a stabilising factor for food security. Yet crop diversity alone is not sufficient. In an article for Nature, a team of researchers coordinated by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) argue that it is also essential that crops differ in their temporal production patterns.

Crop diversity is a key factor in securing agricultural production. Having a wider variety of crops reduces the risk of total harvest failure when certain crops are affected by plant diseases and protects against poor harvests resulting from extreme weather events, such as droughts, or pest infestation. "However, asynchrony is at least equally important in securing production," says Lukas Egli, UFZ agroecologist and first author of the study. Differences in the temporal sequence in which crops are sown and harvested on arable land or the variation in phenology, i.e. differing development over time during the vegetation period, are both examples of factors that lead to greater asynchrony. "The more heterogeneously crops are distributed in time and respond to the effects of extreme events, natural disasters and economic crises, the less the agricultural production of a country as a whole will fluctuate," says Egli. For example, when different types of crops become ready to harvest at the same time this increases the likelihood of the entire harvest being destroyed in a storm or flood. Asynchrony prevents such total failure, for instance by varying sowing and harvesting times, growing crops with different climate and cultivation requirements and mixed cropping.

The analysis of data from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) revealed that India, Mexico and China are among the countries with a high level of production stability and asynchrony, whereas Russia, Australia and Argentina have a low level of stability and asynchrony. At present, one observes that asynchrony in agriculture is decreasing at the global level. "Globalised agricultural markets allow crop failures in one region to be compensated by trade with other regions. Trade itself is therefore a stabilising factor and could make the cultivation of a wide variety of crops with different growth patterns seem less important," says Prof Dr Ralf Seppelt, UFZ landscape ecologist and co-author. Nevertheless, countries should give greater consideration to highly diversified and asynchronous crops than they have done in the past to make food production less vulnerable to the uncertainties of the global market.

Cockroaches are notorious for their abilities to survive and reproduce, much to humanity's chagrin. In addition to scurrying around at night, feeding on human and pet food, and generating an offensive odor, the pests can transmit pathogens and cause allergic reactions. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Journal of Proteome Research have identified neuropeptides produced by the American cockroach (Periplaneta americana) that could someday be targeted by new, more selective and effective pesticides.

Neuropeptides are small proteins produced by neurons or endocrine cells that send messages to other cells. In insects, neuropeptides often act as neurotransmitters, hormones or growth factors, influencing an organism's development, growth, metabolism, behavior and reproduction. Therefore, disrupting these processes by targeting neuropeptides or their receptors is a potential new approach to pest control. Recently, Na Li and colleagues determined the genome sequence of P. americana. Now, they wanted to use this sequence, combined with peptide analysis, to characterize the neuropeptides of the American cockroach and study how their expression varies by tissue, developmental stage and sex.

The researchers searched the P. americana genome for genes predicted to encode neuropeptides and found 67 potential neuropeptide precursor genes. Then, they isolated peptides from four different cockroach tissues. Using mass spectrometry, the team identified 35 neuropeptides that were predicted by the genome sequence, as well as one new neuropeptide that hadn't been previously predicted or identified. Some of them were expressed in only a single tissue, whereas others were found in many tissues. Neuropeptide expression also varied between developmental stages and sexes, with most neuropeptides being more abundant in adult males. One neuropeptide, called sNPF, that was more highly expressed in females appeared to stimulate feeding behaviors, the researchers say, so it could be an attractive target for pest control measures.

Future novel hybrid energy systems could lead to paradigm shifts in clean energy production, according to a paper published last week in Joule.

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) three applied energy laboratories -- Idaho National Laboratory (INL), the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) -- co authored the paper describing such integrated energy systems.

Their effort outlines novel concepts to simultaneously leverage diverse energy generators -- including renewable, nuclear, and fossil with carbon capture -- to provide power, heat, mobility and other energy services. The historic collaboration between the nation's Nuclear Energy, Renewable Energy and Fossil Energy labs aims to address a grand national challenge from an objective, holistic perspective.

"The design of integrated energy systems is a significant challenge -- and opportunity," INL Director Mark Peters, Ph.D., said. "The collaboration by the three applied national laboratories, and the setup and operation of real-world experiments at their testing facilities, represents a comprehensive and focused effort that is transparent and objective. This work will help realize future advanced energy systems that should help our nation expand affordable energy options and significantly contribute to wide-scale decarbonization efforts."

The new article presents an objective new framework for engineering-based modeling and analysis to support complex optimization of energy generation, transmission, services, processes and products, and market interactions.

In short, it outlines a viable path forward for hybrid energy systems. Such systems are capable of leveraging multiple energy sources to maximize the value of each. They do this by creating higher-value products, delivering lower-emission energy to industry, and better coordinating demand with energy production.

"Working together, researchers at the nation's applied energy laboratories have identified critical synergies among different power generation sources, which will be vital to transforming our energy economy. We look forward to advancing these creative solutions, collaboratively," said Martin Keller, Ph.D., director of NREL.

The paper describes one example of the multi-input, multi-output nature of these systems: a hypothetical, tightly coupled industrial energy park that uses heat and electricity from highly flexible advanced nuclear reactors, small-scale fossil generators, and renewable energy technologies to produce electricity and hydrogen from electrolysis.

"In this scenario, depending on market pricing, electricity and or heat could be sold into the grid, used on-site or stored for later distribution and use," said David C. Miller, Ph.D., NETL's senior fellow for strategic systems analysis & engineering and co-author of the article. "Furthermore, the output streams could also be used to produce hydrogen or other valuable chemicals and products."

This flexibility could provide an abundant supply of clean energy for a larger net-zero-emission energy system. Such systems could support sectors of the economy that are more difficult to decarbonize, such as industry and transportation.

"Considering complementary attributes among various energy technologies opens up new opportunities for asset use optimization that meet multiple energy services and maximize economic value," said Douglas Arent, Ph.D., NREL's executive director, strategic public-private partnerships and the study's lead author.

Groundwork for the article began in 2018, when NETL, NREL and INL hosted the first tri-lab workshop in response to DOE Deputy Secretary Mark Menezes' call for more coordinated work across the DOE applied energy labs. Building off knowledge gained during that collaboration, a focused workshop was held in April 2019 on the priority topic Modeling & Analysis of Current & Future Energy Systems. A third tri-lab workshop, held July 31-Aug. 1, 2019, focused on addressing the science and technology challenges associated with the design, development and deployment of new and advanced materials and components that will enable integrated hybrid energy systems.

"The National Energy Technology Laboratory is proud to partner with INL and NREL in this foundational work," NETL Director Brian J. Anderson, Ph.D., said. "The complimentary expertise across the three labs are bringing revolutionary ideas to the table on how to design and optimize integrated energy systems of the future."

As illustrated by the NETL-NREL-INL research to date, the design of hybrid energy systems will require input from experts across the spectrum of energy research. To this end, the body of work by the three applied national laboratories, including the tri-lab workshops and the recent Joule article, represent a significant step forward toward realizing the advanced energy systems of the future.

"The national laboratories offer a diversity of expertise that will allow us to achieve effective, cross-sector collaboration that is necessary to solve the true energy and environment grand challenges of our time," said Shannon Bragg-Sitton, Ph.D., INL lead for integrated energy systems and co-author of the article.

In an article published in Conservation Science and Practice, scientists highlight an overlooked but science-backed and nature-based solution to help countries tackle key environmental and sustainable development concerns. The low-cost root crop cassava, nicknamed 'Rambo root' for its rugged appearance and resilient attributes, produces the highest amount of calories per hectare in most tropical countries, can withstand increasing temperatures and thrives in poor soils.

Worldwide, land degradation occurs over a quarter of the earth's ice?free land area. Consequences include infertile land where food and other crops cannot grow; biodiversity loss; increased pollution and clogged waterways; flooding and species decline. Roughly 40% of Colombia is affected by degradation, especially in conflict-areas, but the research has implications for other tropical countries with a similar context, say authors.

"Cassava has garnered a reputation for depleting nutrients in the soil," said Ma. Eliza J. Villarino, a researcher at the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). "Evidence suggests it could potentially revive degraded land and make it productive anew, generating numerous positive socioeconomic and environmental impacts with proper crop management."

Relatively easy to grow, cassava would be ideal for farmers to grow on abandoned agricultural or pasture land; allowing other crops such as cacao or coffee to be established afterward - especially in Colombia's conflict areas as an alternative to illicit coca farming, say authors. Land planted with cassava could help revive soils for farmers to cultivate other income-generating crops like soybean, corn or legumes.

"Cassava has potential to restore degraded land, which in turn could lower greenhouse gas emissions, alleviate hunger and reduce poverty," said Villarino. "The solution could generate livelihoods and market opportunities, and even promote peace because countries with significant degraded areas are also those that are mired in or emerging from conflict."

Augusto Castro Nunez, a land-use and climate expert at the Alliance and leader of the Sustainable Land Use Systems project, added, "In Colombia, there is a link between illegal crops, cattle ranching, deforestation and conflict. We acknowledge that scaling up production of any commodity risks an increase in deforestation and biodiversity loss, and we need to do more research. But what we know is that we need something new; what has been done to prevent deforestation is not working, and this is something new."

Market analysis is needed to understand the viability of a cassava starch market, but authors suspect that cassava could also absorb cadmium, a metal found in the soil, high levels of which prevent some cacao growers in Colombia and other parts of Latin America from exporting their cacao. If cassava can mitigate cadmium content in cacao, these producers, who are often in conflict-prone areas, could supply foreign markets such as the European Union. Cassava could also replace starch from crops like maize and soybeans, two often?linked commodities that have caused deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.

The Alliance's Mayesse Da Silva, a soils expert co-leader of the Climate & Low-Cadmium (Clima-LoCa) project, said, "Studies in Brazil have shown that cassava has high heavy metal content when planted in heavy-metal contaminated areas. We therefore suspect cassava might help absorb heavy metals from the soil and mitigate heavy metal contamination in cocoa while helping cocoa producers generate income from selling cassava while cocoa is not productive yet, since cassava takes six months to harvest and cocoa up to three years. However, this is only a hypothesis and requires further research."

Luis Augusto Becerra, a cassava expert at the Alliance, said, "Cassava can offer a solution to put back degraded land while helping nature and farmers, pulling carbon out of the atmosphere and locking it into the soil or convert it into to food. If properly managed, cassava can help smallholder farmers move to a forest-based agriculture for improved environmental outcomes, where high value fruit tree like cacao can be grown, also boosting incomes."

At a glance:

Study in mice reveals how memory neurons reorganize after new experiences

Researchers identify genes neurons use to rewire inputs received from other neurons

This allows networks of disparate neurons to coordinate activity, a possible mechanism for memory consolidation and recall

Findings shed light on molecular underpinnings of long-term memory

On a late summer day in 1953, a young man who would soon be known as patient H.M. underwent experimental surgery. In an attempt to treat his debilitating seizures, a surgeon removed portions of his brain, including part of a structure called the hippocampus. The seizures stopped.

Unfortunately, for patient H.M., so too did time. When he woke up after surgery, he could no longer form new long-term memories, despite retaining normal cognitive abilities, language and short-term working memory. Patient H.M.'s condition ultimately revealed that the brain's ability to create long-term memories is a distinct process that depends on the hippocampus.

Scientists had discovered where memories are made. But how they are made remained unknown.

Now, neuroscientists at Harvard Medical School have taken a decisive step in the quest to understand the biology of long-term memory and find ways to intervene when memory deficits occur with age or disease.

Reporting in Nature on Dec. 9, they describe a newly identified mechanism that neurons in the adult mouse hippocampus use to regulate signals they receive from other neurons, in a process that appears critical for memory consolidation and recall.

The study was led by Lynn Yap, HMS graduate student in neurobiology, and Michael Greenberg, chair of neurobiology in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS.

"Memory is essential to all aspects of human existence. The question of how we encode memories that last a lifetime is a fundamental one, and our study gets to the very heart of this phenomenon," said Greenberg, the HMS Nathan Marsh Pusey Professor of Neurobiology at HMS and study corresponding author.

The researchers observed that new experiences activate sparse populations of neurons in the hippocampus that express two genes, Fos and Scg2. These genes allow neurons to fine-tune inputs from so-called inhibitory interneurons, cells that dampen neuronal excitation. In this way, small groups of disparate neurons may form persistent networks with coordinated activity in response to an experience.

"This mechanism likely allows neurons to better talk to each other so that the next time a memory needs to be recalled, the neurons fire more synchronously," Yap said. "We think coincident activation of this Fos-mediated circuit is potentially a necessary feature for memory consolidation, for example, during sleep, and also memory recall in the brain."

Circuit orchestration

In order to form memories, the brain must somehow wire an experience into neurons so that when these neurons are reactivated, the initial experience can be recalled. In their study, Greenberg, Yap and team set out to explore this process by looking at the gene Fos.

First described in neuronal cells by Greenberg and colleagues in 1986, Fos is expressed within minutes after a neuron is activated. Scientists have taken advantage of this property, using Fos as a marker of recent neuronal activity to identify brain cells that regulate thirst, torpor and many other behaviors.

Scientists hypothesized that Fos might play a critical role in learning and memory, but for decades, the precise function of the gene has remained a mystery.

To investigate, the researchers exposed mice to new environments and looked at pyramidal neurons, the principal cells of the hippocampus. They found that relatively sparse populations of neurons expressed Fos after exposure to a new experience. Next, they prevented these neurons from expressing Fos, using a virus-based tool delivered to a specific area of the hippocampus, which left other cells unaffected.

Mice that had Fos blocked in this manner showed significant memory deficits when assessed in a maze that required them to recall spatial details, indicating that the gene plays a critical role in memory formation.

The researchers studied the differences between neurons that expressed Fos and those that did not. Using optogenetics to turn inputs from different nearby neurons on or off, they discovered that the activity of Fos-expressing neurons was most strongly affected by two types of interneurons.

Neurons expressing Fos were found to receive increased activity-dampening, or inhibitory, signals from one distinct type of interneuron and decreased inhibitory signals from another type. These signaling patterns disappeared in neurons with blocked Fos expression.

"What's critical about these interneurons is that they can regulate when and how much individual Fos-activated neurons fire, and also when they fire relative to other neurons in the circuit," Yap said. "We think that at long last we have a handle on how Fos may in fact support memory processes, specifically by orchestrating this type of circuit plasticity in the hippocampus."

Imagine the day

The researchers further probed the function of Fos, which codes for a transcription factor protein that regulates other genes. They used single-cell sequencing and additional genomic screens to identify genes activated by Fos and found that one gene in particular, Scg2, played a critical role in regulating inhibitory signals.

In mice with experimentally silenced Scg2, Fos-activated neurons in the hippocampus displayed a defect in signaling from both types of interneurons. These mice also had defects in theta and gamma rhythms, brain properties thought to be critical features of learning and memory.

Previous studies had shown that Scg2 codes for a neuropeptide protein that can be cleaved into four distinct forms, which are then secreted. In the current study, Yap and colleagues discovered that neurons appear to use these neuropeptides to fine-tune inputs they receive from interneurons.

Together, the team's experiments suggest that after a new experience, a small group of neurons simultaneously express Fos, activating Scg2 and its derived neuropeptides, in order to establish a coordinated network with its activity regulated by interneurons.

"When neurons are activated in the hippocampus after a new experience, they aren't necessarily linked together in any particular way in advance," Greenberg said. "But interneurons have very broad axonal arbors, meaning they can connect with and signal to many cells at once. This may be how a sparse group of neurons can be linked together to ultimately encode a memory."

The study findings represent a possible molecular- and circuit-level mechanism for long-term memory. They shed new light on the fundamental biology of memory formation and have broad implications for diseases of memory dysfunction.

The researchers note, however, that while the results are an important step in our understanding of the inner workings of memory, numerous unanswered questions about the newly identified mechanisms remain.

"We're not quite at the answer yet, but we can now see many of the next steps that need to be taken," Greenberg said. "If we can better understand this process, we will have new handles on memory and how to intervene when things go wrong, whether in age-related memory loss or neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease."

The findings also represent the culmination of decades of research, even as they open new avenues of study that will likely take decades more to explore, Greenberg added.

"I arrived at Harvard in 1986, just as my paper describing the discovery that neuronal activity can turn on genes was published," he said. "Since that time, I've been imagining the day when we would figure out how genes like Fos might contribute to long-term memory."

Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) is the most common health care-associated infection in the United States, causing an estimated 12,800 deaths each year. The deadly and notoriously stubborn superbug, C. diff has been hard to spot and harder to stop. In 2017, two organizations leading the war on C. diff updated their guidelines for assessing patients and the severity of their infections. Now a University of Houston team, led by Kevin Garey, professor of pharmacy practice and chair of the UH College of Pharmacy Department of Pharmacy Practice and Translational Research, has proven that specific updates were well advised. Garey is reporting his findings in the journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases.

"Whenever changes to national guidelines are based on expert opinion only, that is an opportunity to do a research project to see if those experts were correct," said Garey, who was, in fact, one of the experts at the table. Such was the case for the 2017 guidelines from The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) whose guidelines for C. diff treatment and diagnosis are widely considered one of the most influential on the planet, according to Garey.

The change in the guidelines revolved around how to assess damage to the kidney caused by the fluid loss associated with severe CDI. Kidney damage can be detected when blood levels show increased creatinine, a waste product formed when creatine in muscles breaks down. A normal range for serum creatinine (SCr) level is generally below one milligram per deciliter of blood (1mg/dL).

"There are several ways to use creatinine to determine if someone has kidney damage. A common method is to use at least a 50% increase in creatinine from a previous measurement, but in many cases this prior measurement doesn't exist," said Garey.

For the new guidelines, IDSA and SHEA recognized this problem and chose another method to determine kidney damage; namely simply using a creatinine value above 1.5 mg/dL at the time of infection to indicate kidney damage. However, this change was based on expert opinion and had not been tested scientifically.

Garey and his team of UH pharmacy students, postdocs, research scientists and faculty set out to prove the criteria was valid, and they found remarkable success in the new severity classification.

"Using the new single creatinine measurement above 1.5 to define CDI severity was fourfold more predictive in identifying patients likely to die during their hospitalization," said Garey. "When combined with increased white blood cell count, another severity predictor, the newly revised severity predictor was twofold better at predicting mortality."

The newly revised severity assessment allows doctors to understand when they have a severely ill patient at high risk for mortality and tailor treatment accordingly.

Garey and team studied 705 adult patients hospitalized with CDI in several hospitals around Houston.

"The revised SCr criterion was independently associated with increased odds of mortality when analyzed as a single criterion and combined with WBC as per the IDSA-SHEA severity guidelines," reports Garey.

Equally great, said Garey, is that UH students did much of the work. "This is a wonderful demonstration that professional pharmacy students can learn science and at the same time provide meaningful science to the world. You can sleep easier at night knowing UH is looking through the fine details of guidelines and making sure recommendations are correct," said Garey.

Syracuse, N.Y. - A new study published recently in ScienceDirect by researchers from Syracuse University and SUNY Upstate Medical University shows that California residents who receive services for intellectual and development disabilities (IDD) have lower COVID-19 case rates but a higher case-fatality rate than the general population.

And where these residents live is important: The lower case rate is being driven by those with IDD who live in their own home or a family home, while those living in congregate settings are more likely to be diagnosed with, and die from, the virus.

The study, "COVID-19 Outcomes among People with Intellectual and Developmental Disability in California: The importance of Type of Resident and Skilled Nursing Care Needs," was published Dec. 5 by ScienceDirect's Disability and Health Journal.

Utilizing publicly available California data on COVID-19 outcomes for people receiving IDD services (early May through Oct. 2, 2020), the researchers determined outcomes based on seven types of residence - differentiated by the number of residents and level of skilled nursing care provided - and compared these results to the larger California published outcomes.

Most of California's residents are under new stay-at-home orders as the country's most populous state continues breaking its coronavirus records and hospital capacity drops to critically low levels in the southern half of the state. The researchers say the new study shows that people with IDD, especially those living in congregate settings, are at an increased risk during this perilous time and need to be prioritized when COVID-19 vaccines are allocated.

"Among people with IDD who are living in their own home or a family home, the case rate is lower than the state overall, and their case-fatality rate is only slightly higher than that of the state," said researcher Scott Landes, an associate professor of Sociology at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and a research affiliate for the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion. "People with IDD living in congregate settings, as expected, are not faring as well.

"For those people with IDD living in congregate settings, the degree to which the case rate is higher is related to the number of people in the type of residence - settings with more residents have higher case rates - while the case-fatality rate is substantially higher for those living in settings that provide skilled nursing care, likely indicating a higher prevalence of pre-existing conditions," Landes said.

The study was conducted by Landes; Dr. Margaret Turk, Distinguished Service Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at SUNY Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, N.Y.,; and Ashlyn Wong, a graduating senior in the Department of Sociology at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

The researchers found that COVID-19 outcomes for Californians receiving IDD services varied significantly by type of resident and skilled nursing care needs; there were higher rates of diagnosis in settings with a larger number of residents, and higher case-fatality and mortality rates in settings that provided 24-hour skilled nursing care.

"Diagnosis with COVID-19 among Californians receiving IDD services appears to be related to number of individuals within the residence, while adverse COVID-19 outcomes were associated with level of skilled nursing care," Landes said. "When data is available, future research should examine whether these relationships persist even when controlling for age and pre-existing conditions."

Was burial of the dead practiced by Neandertals or is it an innovation specific to our species? There are indications in favour of the first hypothesis but some scientists remain sceptical. For the first time in Europe, however, a multi-disciplinary team led by researchers at the CNRS and the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle (France) and the University of the Basque Country (Spain) (1) has demonstrated, using a variety of criteria, that a Neandertal child was buried, probably around 41,000 years ago, at the Ferrassie site (Dordogne). Their study is published in the journal Scientific Reports on 9th December 2020.

Dozens of buried Neandertal skeletons have been discovered in Eurasia, leading some scientists to deduce that, like us, Neandertals buried their dead. Other experts have been sceptical, however, given that the majority of the best-preserved skeletons, found at the beginning of the 20th century, were not excavated using modern archaeological techniques.

It is within this framework that an international team (1) led by paleoanthropologists Antoine Balzeau (CNRS and Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, France) and Asier Gómez-Olivencia (University of the Basque Country, Spain), analysed a human skeleton from one of the most famous Neandertal sites in France: the La Ferrassie rock shelter, Dordogne. After six Neandertal skeletons were discovered at the beginning of the 20th century, the site delivered a seventh between 1970 and 1973, belonging to a child of around two years old. For almost half a century, the collections associated with this specimen remained unexploited in the archives of the Musée d'archéologie nationale.

Recently, a multidisciplinary team, assembled by the two researchers, reopened the excavation notebooks and reviewed the material, revealing 47 new human bones not identified during excavation and undoubtedly belonging to the same skeleton. The scientists also carried out a thorough analysis of the bones: state of preservation, study of proteins, genetics, dating, etc. They returned to La Ferrassie in the hope of finding further fragments of the skeleton; although no new bones were discovered, using the notebooks of their predecessors, they were able to reconstruct and interpret the spatial distribution of the human remains and the rare associated animal bones.

The researchers showed that the skeleton had been buried in a sedimentary layer which inclined to the west (the head, to the east, was higher than the pelvis), while the other stratigraphic layers of the site inclined to the north-east. The bones, which were relatively unscattered, had remained in their anatomical position. Their preservation, better than that of the bison and other herbivores found in the same stratum, indicates a rapid burial after death. Furthermore, the contents of this layer proved to be earlier than the surrounding sediment (2). Finally, a tiny bone, identified as human by the proteins and as Neandertal by its mitochondrial DNA, was directly dated using carbon-14. At around 41,000 years old, this makes it one of the most recent directly dated Neandertal remains.

This new information proves that the body of this two-year-old Neandertal child was purposefully deposited in a pit dug in a sedimentary layer around 41,000 years ago; however, further discoveries will be necessary to understand the chronology and geographical extension of Neandertal burial practices.

In a new study, published online in the journal American Chemical Society (ACS) Applied Polymer Materials, scientists at Texas A&M University reported they have designed a hydrogel membrane that may be used to house optical glucose sensing materials, toward building a biosensor for monitoring sugar levels in diabetics.

By incorporating dangling, comb-type molecular chains within a type of hydrogel called poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) or poly NIPAAm for short, they showed that the membrane could prevent leakage of small-sized molecules, like the ones for glucose-sensing, while still allowing glucose to freely diffuse in and out.

When ready for clinical use, the researchers said these membranes could be used to form biosensors that could be easily implanted under the skin of the wrist and might offer a more comfortable alternative to transdermal implants, which sit partially outside the skin. Moreover, unlike transdermal implants that need to be changed every few weeks, this type of subcutaneous implant may only need to be replaced every few months.

"We've done a lot of work on hydrogel materials looking at mechanical properties and foreign body reactions, but our grand goal has always been to use poly NIPAAm membranes to build a subcutaneous glucose biosensor," said Dr. Melissa Grunlan, professor and holder of the Charles H. and Bettye Barclay Professorship in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. "In this study, we have been able to fine-tune the diffusion properties of these hydrogels that we have previously identified as a promising candidate for building long-term functioning glucose biosensors."

Poly NIPAAms are a class of organic hydrogels that have a soft texture, like contact lenses. One of their attractive properties is that they can undergo cyclical swelling and deswelling with small temperature fluctuations in the body. Since their surface is dynamically changing with temperature, they deter the attachment of cells and biomolecules. This active, self-cleaning mechanism makes poly NIPAAm hydrogels appealing for implants since they minimize the attack from the immune system.

To use the poly NIPAAm membrane for monitoring blood sugar, it must house enough glucose-sensing molecules or assays. Furthermore, the longevity of the hydrogel also depends on the membrane's ability to retain these assay molecules without their leaking out.

"Think about the NIPAAm hydrogel like a knitted sweater where the spaces between the meshes are formed by the crossing stitches. Right now, these spaces or windows in the hydrogels are too big, letting the assay molecules go right through," said Grunlan. "If the assays keep leaching out this way, we're not going to have a long functioning sensor."

Therefore, Grunlan and her team focused their efforts in fine-tuning the properties of poly NIPAAms to limit the leaking of glucose-sensing molecules while still allowing the glucose to freely diffuse through the hydrogel.

To decrease the size of gaps, the researchers inserted dangling molecules of different charges, lengths and concentrations to the poly NIPAAm hydrogel. When incorporated into the hydrogel, these molecules create comb-shaped barriers, whose teeth are designed to block diffusion of small assay-sized molecules. To test if this comb-like architecture can limit diffusion of glucose sensors, they also put within the hydrogel, fluorescently tagged molecules called dextrans, which served as proxies for glucose-sensing molecules. Next, they placed the hydrogel into water and measured the amount of fluorescence in the water due to the leaking of dextrans from the hydrogel.

The researchers found that when they used a negatively charged molecule called poly(2-acrylamido-2-methyl-1-propanesulfonic acid) or PAMP, the combs prevented the diffusion of dextrans. Furthermore, they also observed that glucose molecules were unhindered in their flow in and out of the hydrogel.

Grunlan noted that now that they have proof-of-concept that their hydrogels can curb leaking of small dextrans, the next step in their research would be to build a biosensor with glucose-sensing molecules contained within the membrane.

"Even though our present study did not involve actual sensing molecules, it very conclusively and precisely shows you what comb architectures can do for hydrogels to limit diffusion," said Grunlan. "This was a systematic study to show the effectiveness of our approach and the possibility of extending our findings to other areas of research other than glucose sensing for which hydrogels with limited diffusion need to be designed."