Culture

A 2-month-old infant diagnosed with COVID-19 experienced reversible myocardial injury and heart failure, similar to COVID-19 related heart issues seen in adults, according to a case published in JACC: Case Reports. The infant recovered with normal heart function and was discharged with no heart failure medications.

Since the earliest reports of COVID-19 in China, there have been indications of myocardial injury in some patients. In early cohorts of adult patients hospitalized with COVID -19, studies showed as many as between 20-28% of patients showing evidence of myocardial injury. Most of the patients with myocardial injury had pre-existing cardiovascular disease.

In this case, a 2-month-old infant presented with choking and bluish discoloration of the skin after feeding. The child had no history of fever, cough, upper respiratory tract infection symptoms, diarrhea, vomiting or decreased feeding prior to the first presentation. The patient was born pre-maturely at 33 weeks and stayed in the NICU for three weeks, including one week of nasal continuous positive airway pressure.

The patient's initial COVID-19 test was negative, but a repeat test was positive. An ECG showed myocardial injury due to the viral infection and heart failure symptoms exacerbated by the viral infection. Tests ruled out all other possible viral causes for the myocardial injury. The patient required fluid resuscitation and inotropic support for hypotension, as well as mechanical ventilation for respiratory failure. The patient also received remdesivir under a compassionate use order.

"The presentation and clinical course of this patient mirrors four case reports of acute myocardial injury reported in adult patients with COVID-19," said Madhu Sharma, MD, lead author of the case report and a pediatric cardiologist at The Children's Hospital at Montefiore. "Most children with COVID-19 are either asymptomatic or have mild symptoms, but our case shows the potential for reversible myocardial injury in infants with COVID-19. Testing for COVID-19 in children presenting with signs and symptoms of heart failure is very important as we learn more about the impact of this virus."

Pathology reports on more than 50 killer whales stranded over nearly a decade in the northeast Pacific and Hawaii show that orcas face a variety of mortal threats--many stemming from human interactions.

A study analyzing the reports was published today in the journal PLOS ONE. The study findings indicate that understanding and being aware of each threat is critical for managing and conserving killer whale populations. It also presents a baseline understanding of orca health.

The study was conducted by a team of marine mammal and orca specialists led by the British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture and coordinated through the SeaDoc Society, a Washington-based program of the University of California, Davis' School of Veterinary Medicine. The lead author, Dr Stephen Raverty, and coauthor, Dr John Ford, are adjunct professions at the University of British Columbia Institute of Oceans and Fisheries and Department of Zoology, respectively.

The whales include those from healthy populations as well as endangered species, such as the southern resident whales regularly sighted off the coasts of British Columbia, Washington and Oregon.

Of 52 whales stranded between 2004 and 2013, causes of death were determined for 42 percent. For example, one calf died from sepsis following a halibut hook injury. Another starved from a congenital facial deformity. Two whales died from the blunt force trauma of vessel strikes. Additional causes of death include infectious disease and nutritional deficiencies.

'We can do better'

Despite there being no singular common cause of death, the study found a common theme: Human-caused deaths occurred in every age class -- from juveniles to subadults and adults.

"In British Columbia, we lost nine southern resident killer whales: 2 adults, 2 subadults and 1 calf died from trauma; one was a confirmed propeller strike, with one adult and two subadults from suspected ship strikes," said lead author Stephen Raverty, a veterinarian pathologist with the BC Ministry of Agriculture and adjunct professor at UBC's Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries. "One of these iconic species passed away from an infection secondary to satellite tagging. Another death was due to natural causes and the other two undetermined. Half of the southern killer whale deaths identified in this study were caused by human interactions."

"Nobody likes to think we're directly harming animals," said co-author and SeaDoc Society Director Joe Gaydos, a wildlife veterinarian with the Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center in the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. "But it's important to realize that we're not just indirectly hurting them from things like lack of salmon, vessel disturbance or legacy toxins. It's also vessel strikes and fish hooks. That humans are directly killing killer whales across all age classes is significant; it says we can do a better job."

In 2004, Raverty and Graydos co-developed a standardized killer whale necropsy protocol. Revised in 2014 with help from Judy St. Leger, a pathologist working for SeaWorld, this guide helped improve examinations of deceased whales.

"The results from systematic necropsies of dead killer whales in this review is unique and will establish critical baseline information to assess future mitigation efforts," Raverty said. "This work contributes to a better understanding of the impacts that ongoing human activities and environmental events have on killer whales."

The authors acknowledge the report is an incomplete picture of orca health and mortality. Necropsies can only be performed on whales found in an adequate state to receive them, and even then, the cause of death cannot always be determined. But the report offers one of the most comprehensive looks yet at the multitude of human and environmental threats affecting killer whales and can help inform strategies to better protect them.

Nagoya University scientists have furthered understanding of how plants make a common pigment that might have medicinal applications. They published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports.

"We studied black soybeans and found a new biosynthetic precursor of the most common anthocyanin in plants," says Kumi Yoshida of Nagoya University, who led the study and specializes in natural products chemistry.

Anthocyanins are plant pigments with anti-oxidant activities. They are responsible for many of the red through purple to blue colors found in flowers, fruits, vegetables and roots. Scientists are currently researching their medicinal potential for treating metabolic diseases like diabetes and obesity. But so far, anthocyanins can only be extracted from plants. Scientists want to be able to synthesize large amounts of the pure compounds to accelerate research into their potential benefits, which requires understanding how plants make them.

The most common anthocyanin is cyanidin-3-O-glucoside (Cy3G). Scientists already know quite a lot about how it is made in plants. However, recent research has cast doubt on part of its biosynthetic pathway. Yoshida and her team investigate how plants synthesize pigments, and set out to clarify how Cy3G is made in black soybeans. Normally, the immature seed is green in its pod. Over the course of two months, it turns black due to the accumulation of Cy3G. Exposing the immature green seed to light and air accelerates this process, causing it to turn black within a day.

Yoshida and a team of scientists from Nagoya University and the National Institute of Health Sciences in Japan took advantage of this rapid transformation and analysed the molecular contents in the seed before, during and at the end of the color change of exposed seeds. They specifically focused on Cy3G and another compound called tetrahydroxyflav-2-en-3-ol-O-glucoside (2F3G), which was identified by another research team a few years ago.

Yoshida and her team found that very immature true-green seeds did not contain Cy3G or 2F3G. However, just before they begin to change color, 2F3G can be found in the seed coat. This is followed by an increase in Cy3G and a subsequent decrease in 2F3G. The scientists found that the black seeds in the final stage had a large amount of Cy3G but no 2F3G. They concluded this means 2F3G is a precursor of Cy3G. Further analyses indicated the conversion from 2F3G to Cy3G occurs in the vacuoles of the seed coat and might not be catalysed by an enzyme previously thought to be involved in Cy3G synthesis.

The team next aims to clarify the full steps of Cy3G synthesis in the black soybean and to determine whether these steps are the same in other plants.

Non-invasive microscopic techniques such as optical coherence microscopy and two-photon microscopy are commonly used for in vivo imaging of living tissues. When light passes through turbid materials such as biological tissues, two types of light are generated: ballistic photons and multiply scattered photons. The ballistic photons travel straight through the object without experiencing any deflection and hence is used to reconstruct the object image. On the other hand, the multiply scattered photons are generated via random deflections as the light passes through the material and show up as speckle noise in the reconstructed image. As the light propagates through increasing distances, the ratio between multiply scattered and ballistic photons increases drastically, thereby obscuring the image information. In addition to the noise generated by the multiply scattered light, optical aberration of ballistic light also causes contrast reduction and image blur during the image reconstruction process.

Bone tissues in particular have numerous complex internal structures, which cause severe multiple light scattering and complex optical aberration. When it comes to optical imaging of the mouse brain through an intact skull, the fine structures of the nervous system are hard to visualize due to strong speckle noise and image distortion. This is problematic in neuroscience research, where the mouse is widely used as a model organism. Due to the limitation of the currently used imaging techniques, the skull has to be removed or thinned to microscopically investigate the neural networks of brain tissues underneath.

Hence other solutions have been suggested to achieve deeper imaging of living tissues. For example, three-photon microscopy has been successfully used to image neurons beneath the mouse skull in recent years. However, three-photon microscopy is limited by a low laser repetition rate as it employs an excitation window in the infrared range, which can damage the living tissue during in vivo imaging. It also has excessive excitation power, which means photobleaching is more extensive in comparison to the two-photon approach.

Recently, a research team led by Prof. CHOI Wonshik at the Center for Molecular Spectroscopy and Dynamics within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in Seoul, South Korea made a major breakthrough in deep-tissue optical imaging. They developed a novel optical microscope that can image through an intact mouse skull and acquire a microscopic map of neural networks in the brain tissues without losing spatial resolution.

This new microscope is termed as a reflection matrix microscope, and it combines the powers of both hardware and computational adaptive optics (AO), which is a technology originally developed for ground-based astronomy to correct optical aberrations. While conventional confocal microscope measures reflection signal only at the focal point of illumination and discard all out of focus light, the reflection matrix microscope records all the scattered photons at positions other than the focal point. The scattered photons are then computationally corrected using a novel AO algorithm called closed-loop accumulation of single scattering (CLASS), which the team developed back in 2017. The algorithm exploits all scattered light to selectively extract ballistic light and correct severe optical aberration. Compared to the most conventional AO microscopy systems, which require bright point-like reflectors or fluorescent objects as guide stars similarly to the use of AO in astronomy, the reflection matrix microscope works without any fluorescent labeling and without depending on the target's structures. In addition, the number of aberration modes that can be corrected is more than 10 times greater than that of the conventional AO systems.

The reflection matrix microscope has a great advantage in that it can be directly combined with a conventional two-photon microscope that is already widely used in the life science field. To remove the aberration experienced by the excitation beam of the two-photon microscope, the team deployed hardware-based adaptive optics within the reflection matrix microscope to counteract the aberration of the mouse skull. They showcased the capabilities of the new microscope by taking two-photon fluorescence images of a dendritic spine of a neuron behind the mouse skull, with a spatial resolution close to the diffraction limit. Normally a conventional two-photon microscope cannot resolve the delicate structure of the dendrite spine without removing the brain tissue from the skull entirely. This is a highly significant achievement, as the South Korean group demonstrated the first high-resolution imaging of neural networks through an intact mouse skull. This means that it is now possible to investigate the mouse brain in its most native states.

Research professor YOON Seokchan and graduate student LEE Hojun, who conducted the study, said, "By correcting the wavefront distortion, we can focus light energy on the desired location inside the living tissue." "Our microscope allows us to investigate fine internal structures deep within living tissues that cannot be resolved by any other means. This will greatly aid us in early disease diagnosis and expedite neuroscience research."

The researchers set their next research direction to minimize the form factor of the microscope and increase its imaging speed. The goal is the development of a label-free reflective matrix microscope with high imaging depth for use in clinics.

Vice director CHOI Wonshik said, "Reflection matrix microscope is the next-generation technology that goes beyond the limitations of conventional optical microscopes. This will allow us to widen our understanding of the light propagation through scattering media and expand the scope of applications that an optical microscope can explore."

New parents often expect their baby to start sleeping through the night around the time they reach six months of age. But according to a new study led by McGill Professor Marie-Helene Pennestri, parents should view sleep consolidation as a process, instead of a milestone to be achieved at a specific age. Tracking 44 infants over a period of two weeks, she found that sleeping patterns vary greatly - not only for different babies, but also night to night for the same baby.

In the study published in Sleep Medicine, researchers asked mothers to keep a sleep diary about their six-month-old infant for two weeks. On average, mothers reported that their infant slept 6 hours consecutively for about 5 nights out of a two-week period, and 8 consecutive hours for about 3 nights out of the same period. Half of the infants, however, never slept 8 hours consecutively.

"Although previous research has shown that infants start sleeping through the night at different stages of development, little is known about individual sleep patterns night after night," says Marie-Helene Pennestri, who is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology at McGill University and researcher at the Hopital en sante mentale Riviere-des-Prairies (CIUSSS-NIM).

Effects of breastfeeding and co-sleeping

The researchers also found that some parental practices were related to variability in sleep patterns. For example, breastfeeding and co-sleeping were associated with more variability in sleep patterns night to night. While this finding is consistent with many studies, the researchers note that other factors could explain this occurrence. For instance, mothers who are breastfeeding and co-sleeping are more likely to observe their infant's night awakenings, even though these awakenings are not necessarily problematic or disturbing.

"Parents are often exposed to a lot of contradictory information about infant sleep. They shouldn't worry if their baby doesn't sleep through the night at a specific age because sleep patterns differ a lot in infancy," says Pennestri. She also notes that parents and clinicians should both be aware that occasional sleeping through the night does not necessarily indicate a consolidation of this behavior.

"One important piece of the puzzle is understanding parents' perceptions and expectations of infant sleep. In future research, we hope to explore what 'sleeping through the night' really means to them," says Pennestri.

A team of researchers led by members of the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) has analyzed previously collected data to infer the true nature of a compact object--found to be a rotating magnetar, a type of neutron star with an extremely strong magnetic field--orbiting within LS 5039, the brightest gamma-ray binary system in the Galaxy.

Including former graduate student Hiroki Yoneda, Senior Scientist Kazuo Makishima and Principal Investigator Tadayuki Takahashi at the Kavli IMPU, the team also suggest that the particle acceleration process known to occur within LS 5039 is caused by interactions between the dense stellar winds of its primary massive star, and ultra-strong magnetic fields of the rotating magnetar.

Gamma-ray binaries are a system of massive stars and compact stars. They were discovered only recently, in 2004, when observations of very-high-energy gamma-rays in the teraelectronvolt (TeV) band from large enough regions of the sky became possible. When viewed with visible light, gamma-ray binaries appear as bright bluish-white stars, and are indistinguishable from any other binary system hosting a massive star.

However, when observed with X-rays and gamma-rays, their properties are dramatically different from those of other binaries. In these energy bands, ordinary binary systems are completely invisible, but gamma-ray binaries produce intense non-thermal emission, and their intensity appears to increase and decrease according to their orbital periods of several days to several years.

Once the gamma-ray binaries were established as a new astrophysical class, it was quickly recognized that an extremely efficient acceleration mechanism should operate in them. While the acceleration of TeV particles requires tens of years in supernova remnants, which are renowned cosmic accelerators, gamma-ray binaries boost electron energy beyond 1 TeV in just tens of seconds. Gamma-ray binaries can thus be considered one of the most efficient particle accelerators in the Universe.

In addition, some gamma-ray binaries are known to emit strong gamma-rays with energies of several megaelectron volts (MeV). Gamma-rays in this band are currently difficult to observe; they were detected from only around 30 celestial bodies in the whole sky. But the fact that such binaries emit strong radiation even in this energy band greatly adds to the mystery surrounding them, and indicates an extremely effective particle acceleration process going on within them.

Around 10 gamma-ray binaries have been found in the Galaxy thus far--compared to more than 300 X-ray binaries that are known to exist. Why gamma-ray binaries are so rare is unknown, and, indeed, what the true nature of their acceleration mechanism is, has been a mystery--until now.

Through previous studies, it was already clear that a gamma-ray binary is generally made of a massive primary star that weighs 20-30 times the mass of the Sun, and a companion star that must be a compact star, but it was not clear, in many cases, whether the compact star is a black hole or a neutron star. The research team started their attempt by figuring out which is generally the case.

One of the most direct pieces of evidence for the presence of a neutron star is the detection of periodic fast pulsations, which are related to the neutron star rotation. Detection of such pulsation from a gamma-ray binary almost undoubtedly discards the black hole scenario.

In this project, the team focused on LS 5039, which was discovered in 2005, and still keeps its position as the brightest gamma-ray binary in the X-ray and gamma-ray range. Indeed, this gamma-ray binary was thought to contain a neutron star because of its stable X-ray and TeV gamma-ray radiation.

However, until now, attempts to detect such pulses had been conducted with radio waves and soft X-rays--and because radio waves and soft X-rays are affected by the primary star's stellar winds, detection of such periodical pulses had not been successful.

This time, for the first time, the team focused on the hard X-ray band (>10 keV) and observation data from LS 5039 gathered by the hard X-ray detector (HXD) on board the space-based telescopes Suzaku (between September 9 and 15, 2007) and NuSTAR (between September 1 and 5, 2016)--indeed, the six-day Suzaku observation period was the longest yet using hard X-rays.

Both observations, while separated by nine years, provided evidence of a neutron star at the core of LS 5039: the periodic signal from Suzaku with a period of about 9 seconds. The probability that this signal arises from statistical fluctuations is only 0.1 percent. NuSTAR also showed a very similar pulse signal, though the pulse significance was lower--the NuSTAR data, for instance, was only tentative. By combining these results, it was also inferred that the spin period is increasing by 0.001 s every year.

Based on the derived spin period and the rate of its increase, the team ruled out the rotation-powered and accretion-powered scenarios, and found that the magnetic energy of the neutron star is the sole energy source that can power LS 5039. The required magnetic field reaches 10^{11} T, which is 3 orders of magnitude higher than those of typical neutron stars.

This value is found among so-called magnetars, a subclass of neutron stars which have such an extremely strong magnetic field. The pulse period of 9 seconds is typical of magnetars, and this strong magnetic field prevents the stellar wind of the primary star from being captured by a neutron star, which can explain why LS 5039 does not exhibit properties similar to X-ray pulsars (X-ray pulsars usually occur in X-ray binary systems, where the stellar winds are captured by its companion star).

Interestingly, the 30 magnetars that have been found so far have all been found as isolated stars, so their existence in gamma-ray binaries was not considered a mainstream idea. Besides this new hypothesis, the team suggests a source that powers the non-thermal emission inside LS 5039--they propose that the emission is caused by an interaction between the magnetar's magnetic fields and dense stellar winds.

Indeed, their calculations suggest that gamma-rays with energies of several megaelectronvolts, which has been unclear, can be strongly emitted if they are produced in a region of an extremely strong magnetic field, close to a magnetar.

These results potentially settle the mystery as to the nature of the compact object within LS 5039, and the underlying mechanism powering the binary system. However, further observations and refining of their research is needed to shed new light on their findings.

Cephalopods' exceptional ability to hide into any background has inspired researchers to replicate their fascinating ability to camouflage in the infrared (IR) and visible spectrum. Recent advances offered a number of physical mechanisms to reproduce the cloaking functionalities of cephalopods. However, most of works focused on either camouflaging in the visible or IR camouflage range only: not dual modes in a single device structure that can readily switch between the visible and IR mode according to a suitable situation.

Recently, Prof. Seung hwan Ko's group in Seoul National University in Republic of Korea demonstrated the visible-to-IR active ands camouflage skin that provides an on-demand cloaking platform both in daylight and at night with a single input variable: Temperature (T). The soft thermoelectric device that is capable of active cooling and heating serves as a backbone structure to fine-tune the surface of each pixel and thereby enables thermal camouflage in the IR range by matching the ambient temperature. The Ko's group further extended the camouflage range to the IR-to-visible spectrum by incorporating thermochromic liquid crystal at the surface that changes light reflectance (R) based on the device temperature, enabling the expressing a variety of colors by controling temperature. The camouflage system as a whole encompasses the two independent spectrums into a 'full spectrum' with a single soft structure by controlling temperature.

In addition to the device capability to camouflage during both day and night, the device is highly 'pixelized'. This way, the camouflage skin can blend into the sophisticated thermal and chromic background or even camouflage when it is in the transient motion from one background to another. Finally, the group demonstrated the actual artificial camouflage skin on the human epidermis that is capable of camouflaging into 1. sophsticated backgroun such as bush or 2. when moving from one background to another both in the IR and visible spectrum.

Anxiety disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are disabling psychiatric conditions and the major contributors to global burden of nonfatal illness. The lifetime prevalence of anxiety disorders in adults under 60 years ranged from approximately 30-35%, whereas the lifetime prevalence of in the general population is estimated at 2-3% for full OCD but over 25% for OCD symptoms. OCD is characterized by uncontrollable, reoccurring thoughts (called obsessions) and/or ritualized, repetitive behaviors (compulsions) that are aimed at getting rid of the obsessions and seeking relief from the anxiety caused by obsessions, indicating a close correlation between anxiety and OCD. Indeed, anxiety disorders have been reported epidemiologically as the most frequent comorbid conditions with OCD. Therefore, common pathologies may be present in anxiety disorders and OCD, and elucidation of the shared neural substrates will lead to greater insight into their pathophysiology and treatment.

In a study recently published in PNAS, Dr. Jing-Ning Zhu's group in Nanjing University reports that a glutamatergic neuronal circuitry from the prelimbic prefrontal cortex (PrL) to the nucleus accumbens (NAc) core is responsible for co-occurrence of anxiety- and obsessive-compulsive-like behaviors. Notably, activation of the histamine presynaptic H3 heteroreceptor localized in the PrL-NAc glutamatergic terminals ameliorates stress-induced anxiety and obsessive-compulsive-like behaviors.

The nucleus accumbens (NAc) is a well-known brain structure in the basal ganglia limbic loop, which is critical for the emotional and motivational regulation. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) targeting the NAc core has been found to improve obsessive-compulsive symptoms and decrease ratings of anxiety in patients suffering from treatment-resistant OCD or depression. In previous studies, Jing-Ning Zhu's group has reported that DBS can induce an increase in histamine release in the subthalamic nucleus to alleviate Parkinsonian motor deficits. Here, they create a new transgenic rat strain expressing Cre recombinase in the histamine-producing neurons, restrictedly localized in the tuberomammillary nucleus of the hypothalamus, and find that selective optogenetic activation of histaminergic afferent inputs in the NAc core remarkably improves anxiety as well as obsessive-compulsive-like behaviors induced by restraint stress. The amelioration effects of histamine on anxiety and obsessive-compulsive-like behaviors are mediated by the suppression of glutamatergic rather than GABAercigc transmission in the NAc core via presynaptic H3 heteroreceptors. Although the authors reveal that histamine H3 presynaptic receptor is expressed and localized in the glutamatergic terminals in NAc core from the PrL, basolateral amygdala, and ventral hippocampus, only the PrL-NAc pathway is the circuit mediating the co-occurrence of anxiety- and obsessive-compulsive-like behaviors. Chemogenetic inhibition of the PrL-NAc glutamatergic circuit significantly prevents the anxiogenic and obsessive-compulsive-like behaviors induced by acute restraint stress. Interestingly, microinjection of histamine or selective H3 receptor agonist RAMH locally into the NAc core alleviates both anxiety- and obsessive-compulsive-like phenotypes induced by optogenetic activation of PrL-NAc glutamatergic circuit.

Effective pharmacological interventions for the comorbidity of anxiety and OCD are still lacking. Presynaptic histamine H3 receptor, selectively acting on glutamatergic neurotransmission, may provide a potential target for the treatment of anxiety and OCD. Notably, several agonists for H3 receptor, including RAMH and its prodrugs, have entered clinical trials and been proved safe. Therefore, developing strategies, such as pharmacological and/or DBS therapy, for targeting H3 receptor/histaminergic afferents in the NAc core or PrL-NAc glutamatergic circuit may pave a new path for clinical treatment of anxiety disorders and OCD.

New class of living plant-based sensor interfaces wild-type plants with engineered optical nanosensors, able to detect arsenic levels as low as 0.2 parts per billion

Arsenic is a heavy metal highly toxic to humans and the ecosystem - inorganic arsenic in rice is estimated by some to lead to 50,000 premature deaths a year

This novel approach can be used to monitor arsenic uptake in any plant, as well as to convert any non-genetically modified plant to an environmental sensor to monitor soil arsenic levels, enabling applications in agricultural research and environmental monitoring

Readouts from these new nanosensors can be obtained quickly via portable, inexpensive electronics such as Raspberry Pi-based platforms

Singapore, 2 December 2020 - Scientists from Disruptive & Sustainable Technologies for Agricultural Precision (DiSTAP), an Interdisciplinary Research Group (IRG) at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT's research enterprise in Singapore, have engineered a novel type of plant nanobionic optical sensor that can detect and monitor, in real-time, levels of the highly toxic heavy metal arsenic in the belowground environment. This development provides significant advantages over conventional methods used to measure arsenic in the environment and will be important for both environmental monitoring and agricultural applications to safeguard food safety, as arsenic is a contaminant in many common agricultural products such as rice, vegetables, and tea leaves.

This new approach is described in a paper titled, "Plant Nanobionic Sensors for Arsenic Detection", published recently in Advanced Materials. The paper was led by Dr Tedrick Thomas Salim Lew, a recent graduate student of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and co-authored by Michael Strano, co-lead principal investigator of DiSTAP and Carbon P. Dubbs Professor at MIT, as well as Minkyung Park and Jianqiao Cui, both Graduate Students at MIT.

Arsenic and its compounds are a serious threat to humans and ecosystems. Long-term exposure to arsenic in humans can cause a wide range of detrimental health effects, including cardiovascular disease such as heart attack, diabetes, birth defects, severe skin lesions, and numerous cancers including those of the skin, bladder, and lung. Elevated levels of arsenic in soil as a result of anthropogenic activities such as mining and smelting is also harmful to plants, inhibiting growth and resulting in substantial crop losses. More troublingly, food crops can absorb arsenic from the soil, leading to contamination of food and produce consumed by humans. Arsenic in belowground environments can also contaminate groundwater and other underground water sources, the long-term consumption of which can cause severe health issues. As such, developing accurate, effective, and easy-to-deploy arsenic sensors is important to protect both the agriculture industry and wider environmental safety.

These novel optical nanosensors developed by SMART DiSTAP exhibit changes in their fluorescence intensity upon the detection of arsenic. Embedded in plant tissues with no detrimental effects on the plant, these sensors provide a non-destructive way to monitor the internal dynamics of arsenic taken up by plants from the soil. This integration of optical nanosensors within living plants enables the conversion of plants into self-powered detectors of arsenic from their natural environment, marking a significant upgrade from the time- and equipment-intensive arsenic sampling methods of current conventional methods.

Lead author Dr Tedrick Thomas Salim Lew said, "Our plant-based nanosensor is notable not only for being the first of its kind, but also for the significant advantages it confers over conventional methods of measuring arsenic levels in the belowground environment, requiring less time, equipment, and manpower. We envisage that this innovation will eventually see wide use in the agriculture industry and beyond. I am grateful to SMART DiSTAP and Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory (TLL), both of which were instrumental in idea generation, scientific discussion as well as research funding for this work."

Besides detecting arsenic in rice and spinach, the team also used a species of fern, Pteris cretica, which can hyperaccumulate arsenic. This species of fern can absorb and tolerate high levels of arsenic with no detrimental effect - engineering an ultrasensitive plant-based arsenic detector, capable of detecting very low concentrations of arsenic, as low as 0.2 parts per billion (ppb). In contrast, the regulatory limit for arsenic detectors is 10 parts per billion. Notably, the novel nanosensors can also be integrated into other species of plants. This is the first successful demonstration of living plant-based sensors for arsenic and represents a groundbreaking advancement which could prove highly useful in both agricultural research (e.g. to monitor arsenic taken up by edible crops for food safety), as well as in general environmental monitoring.

Previously, conventional methods of measuring arsenic levels included regular field sampling, plant tissue digestion, extraction and analysis using mass spectrometry. These methods are time-consuming, require extensive sample treatment, and often involve the use of bulky and expensive instrumentation. SMART DiSTAP's novel method of coupling nanoparticle sensors with plants' natural ability to efficiently extract analytes via the roots and transport them allows for the detection of arsenic uptake in living plants in real-time with portable, inexpensive electronics, such as a portable Raspberry Pi platform equipped with a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera, akin to a smartphone camera.

Co-author, DiSTAP co-lead Principal Investigator, and MIT Professor Michael Strano added, "This is a hugely exciting development, as, for the first time, we have developed a nanobionic sensor that can detect arsenic - a serious environmental contaminant and potential public health threat. With its myriad advantages over older methods of arsenic detection, this novel sensor could be a game-changer, as it is not only more time-efficient but also more accurate and easier to deploy than older methods. It will also help plant scientists in organizations such as TLL to further produce crops that resist uptake of toxic elements. Inspired by TLL's recent efforts to create rice crops which take up less arsenic, this work is a parallel effort to further support SMART DiSTAP's efforts in food security research, constantly innovating and developing new technological capabilities to improve Singapore's food quality and safety."

The research is carried out by SMART and supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore under its Campus for Research Excellence And Technological Enterprise (CREATE) programme.

A Machine Learning Solution for Designing Materials with Desired Optical Properties
Berkeley Lab researchers' method can also quickly calculate optical properties of most materials
By Julie Chao

Understanding how matter interacts with light - its optical properties - is critical in a myriad of energy and biomedical technologies, such as targeted drug delivery, quantum dots, fuel combustion, and cracking of biomass. But calculating these properties is computationally intensive, and the inverse problem - designing a structure with desired optical properties - is even harder.

Now Berkeley Lab scientists have developed a machine learning model that can be used for both problems - calculating optical properties of a known structure and, inversely, designing a structure with desired optical properties. Their study was published in Cell Reports Physical Science.

"Our model performs bi-directionally with high accuracy and its interpretation qualitatively recovers physics of how metal and dielectric materials interact with light," said corresponding author Sean Lubner.

Lubner notes that understanding radiative properties (which includes optical properties) is equally important in the natural world for calculating the impact of aerosols such as black carbon on climate change.

The machine learning model proposed in this study was trained on spectral emissivity data from nearly 16,000 particles of various shapes and materials that can be experimentally fabricated.

"Our machine learning model speeds up the inverse design process by at least two to three orders of magnitude as compared to the traditional method of inverse design," said co-author Ravi Prasher, who is also Berkeley Lab's Associate Director for Energy Technologies.

Mahmoud Elzouka, Charles Yang, and Adrian Albert, all scientists in Berkeley Lab's Energy Technologies Area, were also co-authors.

A New Data Milestone for CUORE Experiment in Italy
CUORE collects a record volume of data for an experiment using solid crystals to search for an ultrarare process
By Glenn Roberts Jr.

Surrounded by lead and also shielded by nearly a mile of rock from the natural bombardment of particles at the Earth's surface, the CUORE experiment has amassed the largest dataset yet for a project of its kind, which is using solid crystals to detect a theorized event that would answer a big question about how matter won out over antimatter in our universe. It would also tell us whether ghostly particles called neutrinos, which pass through most matter uninterrupted, are essentially their own antiparticles.

The data collected by CUORE, the Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events, now represents more than a "ton-year" of data (equivalent to a year's worth of data if the crystals weighed one ton) collected by a solid-state (crystal vs. liquid or gas) detector for an experiment of its kind, based on the weight of its detector crystals. CUORE has an array of 988 detector crystals. Its crystals each weigh about 1.6 pounds, and in total they weigh about 0.8 ton.

Located at Gran Sasso National Laboratory (Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, or LNGS, operated by the Italian Nuclear Physics Institute, INFN) in central Italy, CUORE has reached a milestone in surpassing the data collected for comparable experiments by about 10 times, said Yury Kolomensky, U.S. spokesperson for the CUORE collaboration and senior faculty scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).

The experiment is designed to detect a theorized, never-before-seen nuclear decay process known as neutrinoless double-beta decay, occurring in atoms of tellurium-130, a radioactive isotope in the detector crystals. An isotope is a form of an element with more or fewer neutrons (uncharged particles) in its nucleus than is standard.

CUORE has carried out its ultrasensitive search without interruption since March 19. It operates near absolute zero, the coldest temperature in the known universe. The CUORE collaboration plans to operate the experiment for another few years, and then upgrade it to CUPID - a new, even more sensitive detector. Berkeley Lab will lead the U.S. participation in the international CUPID project.

Thanks to this work, as the journal Trends in Plant Science recently noted, it is now known that functional amyloids serve biological functions in representatives of almost all large groups of living organisms: bacteria, archaea, animals, fungi, and plants.

This fundamental finding could help improve the nutritional value of plant seeds and even reduce allergenicity of legume seeds in the future.

On the packaging of more than a half of snacks and sweets, which may not contain nuts at all, a warning phrase is often found: 'It may contain traces of peanuts.' Some people are so allergic to this product that the smallest particles of the peanut or even its powder causes an unpleasant and sometimes dangerous reaction: from a simple rash to severe swelling. Peanut seeds contain many proteins, some of which can cause allergies. One of the most potent allergens is vicilin, which is found in various legumes, including peanuts and peas.

The study was conducted by the team of researchers from: St Petersburg University; the All-Russian Research Institute for Agricultural Microbiology; the Institute of Cytology of the Russian Academy of Sciences; the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Biophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Kazan Federal University; and the University of Burgundy (France). The research findings are published in the journal PLOS Biology. The scientists managed to show by experiments for the first time (previously they managed to predict this using bioinformatic algorithms) that the seeds of garden pea contain
amyloid-like aggregates of storage proteins - amyloid fibrils. They were previously found in bacteria, archaea, animals and fungi, but were first found in plants. Interestingly, most of the amyloids in pea seeds are formed by the aforementioned protein vicilin.

'Vicilin is one of the most important food allergens found in legumes. The mechanism of its allergenicity can potentially be associated with the amyloid properties of this protein that we have discovered. We have shown that storage proteins, which are the main reservoir of nutrients for the embryo, accumulate in seeds as amyloids. In the future, studying these mechanisms could help create less allergenic varieties of peas, peanuts, and other legumes,' said Anton Nizhnikov, the corresponding author of the research, Associate Professor at the Department of Genetics and Biotechnology at St Petersburg University, Laboratory Head at the All-Russian Research Institute of Agricultural Meteorology

'Interestingly, according to our bioinformatic data, the storage proteins of seeds not only of peas, but of a number of plants that do not belong to legumes, turned out to be abundant in sites that are prone to the formation of amyloids, that is, compact and stable fibrillar aggregates. This explains the ability of seeds to survive various unfavourable conditions and germinate after many years,' noted Kirill Antonets, the first author of the research, Associate Professor at the Department of Cytology and Histology at St Petersburg University, Senior Research Associate at the All-Russian Research Institute of Agricultural Meteorology.

Another possible applied value of this work is the creation of plant cultures with super nourishing seeds in the future. The in vitro experiments performed by the scientists have shown that mammals cannot completely digest plant amyloids: they cannot be broken down by digestive enzymes. As Anton Nizhnikov explains, amyloids significantly impair the nutritional value of seeds. It is therefore important to understand how the formation of amyloids in plant seeds can be reduced in order to obtain varieties with a larger amount of common proteins. Such crops can become particularly useful and nutritious for humans.

'Today we are also studying the amyloids of root nodule bacteria. These are the microorganisms that can enter into symbiosis with legumes and bind atmospheric nitrogen so that plants can receive more nutrients,' said Anton Nizhnikov. 'There is an assumption that amyloids can also play an important role in a mutually beneficial symbiotic process. At least root nodule bacteria, as we have shown, also have amyloids. We hope that our findings will be of benefit to the development of plant biology and microbiology, as well as for agriculture.'

For reference: a special fibrillar aggregate of proteins - amyloids - has become known for its association with a number of diseases caused by abnormal protein aggregation, known as amyloidosis. In these severe diseases, monomeric soluble proteins are converted into polymeric fibrillar deposits that form amyloid 'plaques' in various tissues and organs. In total, there are more than 40 human diseases associated with amyloids, and they are very
difficult to treat or are completely incurable.

However, as this research also confirms, in recent decades, scientists around the world have been finding more and more evidence that amyloids function in healthy organisms. This form of protein makes it possible to 'conserve' and stabilise various substances. Moreover, it acts as a kind of structural 'template'. This happens not only in plants. For example, in humans and animals, some of the hormones are stored precisely in the form of amyloids,
while other functional amyloids are involved in melanin biosynthesis and the formation of long-term memory.

Researchers led by Josef Lazar of the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IOCB Prague) have demonstrated that molecules of fluorescent proteins act as antennas with optical properties (i.e. the ability to absorb and emit light) dependent on their spatial orientation. First discovered in jellyfish, fluorescent proteins are nowadays widely used in studies of molecular processes in living cells and organisms. The newly described properties of these molecules will find applications in basic biological research as well as in novel drug discovery. A team of researchers from IOCB Prague, the Institute of Microbiology, and the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Czech Academy of Sciences has published its findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

To achieve these results, the researchers produced sufficient amounts of fluorescent proteins by using genetically modified bacteria, identified the conditions under which the proteins form crystals, and determined the atomic structure of the crystals. Employing a unique microscope developed within the group, they then measured how these crystals absorb and emit light, and from the data they calculated the directional properties of the individual molecules. This allowed them to verify that the fluorescent protein molecules do not behave as tiny luminescent dots, as they are often mistakenly assumed, but rather as miniature antennas. Much like antennas for radio, WiFi, and television transmission, these molecules only absorb light from certain directions. Likewise, they only emit light in certain directions. The researchers also succeeded in precisely establishing these directions.

See the animation: https://youtu.be/cyB7z8UCUSk

The possibility of fluorescent protein molecules behaving as antennas capable of absorbing extraneous light had been assumed, but it long proved difficult to confirm, and that limited its applications. The obstacles have been overcome by Josef Lazar of IOCB Prague and his team, which specializes in the development and use of advanced optical microscopy methods.

"Based on the findings of other laboratories and our own, we suspected that fluorescent protein molecules likely behaved as antennas. Nonetheless, we were surprised to see just how true that analogy is and how accurately we were able to establish the directions from which these molecules absorb light and emit it," says Josef Lazar.

The fact that fluorescent protein molecules function as miniature antennas is interesting not only as a curiosity of physics - it can also have important practical applications. Attaching a fluorescent protein to some other protein of interest means attaching a miniature antenna to it that can then be used to establish, in detail, changes in the shape of the molecules of the protein of interest, directly in a living cell. Such changes in molecular shape can be induced by a drug, for instance. The present discovery will thus find applications in the study of important physiological processes at the molecular level as well as in novel drug discovery.

"The significance of our finding lies in the fact that even though fluorescent protein molecules are widely used in biological research, their ability to behave like antennas isn't fully appreciated yet, nor is it really being put to use. Knowledge of the directional properties of fluorescent proteins can lead to new ways of using these useful molecules," explains Lazar.

In collaboration with other groups at IOCB Prague, Josef Lazar's team is already attempting to apply the present findings in, for example, the study of the physiological effects of insulin and the development of insulin substitutes for peroral use. Another example of a possible application of the present discovery is the tracing of electrical signals in nerve cells, which could prove beneficial in the study of the brain and neurological diseases.

(Boston)-- In a multi-group collaborative involving the National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratories (NEIDL), the Center for Regenerative Medicine (CReM), and the Center for Network Systems Biology (CNSB), scientists have reported the first map of the molecular responses of human lung cells to infection by SARS-CoV-2. By combining bioengineered human alveolar cells with sophisticated, highly precise mass spectrometry technology, Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) researchers have identified host proteins and pathways in lung cells whose levels change upon infection by the SARS-CoV-2, providing insights into disease pathology and new therapeutic targets to block COVID-19.

They found a crucial type of protein modification called "phosphorylation" becomes aberrant in these infected lung cells. Phosphorylation of proteins play a major role in regulating protein function inside the cells of an organism and both protein abundance and protein phosphorylation are typically highly controlled processes in the case of normal/healthy cells. However, they discovered that SARS-CoV-2 throws the lung cells into disarray, causing abnormal changes in protein amounts and frequency of protein phosphorylation inside these cells. These abnormal changes help the virus to multiply eventually destroy the cells. The destruction of infected cells may result in widespread lung injury.

According to the researchers, as soon as the SARS-CoV-2 enters the lung cells, it rapidly begins to exploit the cell's core resources, which are otherwise required for the cell's normal growth and function. "The virus uses these resources to proliferate while evading attack by the body's immune system. In this way new viruses form which subsequently exit the exhausted and brutally damaged lung cell, leaving them to self-destruct. These new viruses then infect other cells, where the same cycle is repeated," explains corresponding author Andrew Emili, PhD, professor of biochemistry at BUSM.

The researchers examined lung alveolar cells from one to 24 hours after infection with SARS-CoV-2 to understand what changes occur in lung cells immediately (at one, three and six hours after infection by SARS-CoV-2) and what changes occur later (at 24 hours after infection). These changes were then compared to uninfected cells. All proteins from infected and uninfected alveolar cells, corresponding to the different time-points were extracted and labelled with unique barcoding tags called "tandem mass tag." These tags, which can be accurately detected only by a mass spectrometer, permit robust quantification of protein and phosphorylation abundance in cells.

"Our results showed that in comparison to normal/uninfected lung cells, SARS-CoV-2 infected lung cells showed dramatic changes in the abundance of thousands of proteins and phosphorylation events," said Darrell Kotton, MD, professor of pathology & laboratory medicine at BUSM and director of the CReM.

"Moreover, our data also showed that the SARS-CoV-2 virus induces a significant number of these changes as early as one hour post infection and lays the foundation for a complete hijack of the host lung cells," adds Elke M?hlberger, PhD, associate professor of microbiology and principal investigator at the NEIDL.

"There are important biological features specific to lung cells that are not reproduced by other cell types commonly used to study viral infection," said Andrew Wilson, MD, associate professor of medicine at BUSM and CReM investigator. "Studying the virus in the context of the cell type that is most damaged in patients is likely to yield insights that we wouldn't be able to see in other model systems."

The researchers also analyzed their data to identify prospective opportunities for COVID-19 treatment and found that at least 18 pre-existing clinically approved drugs (developed originally for other medical conditions/diseases) can be potentially re-purposed for use towards COVID-19 therapy. These drugs have shown exceptional promise to block the proliferation of the SARS-CoV-2 in lung cells.

Sophia Antipolis, 2 December 2020: Fourteen drinks a week is linked with a higher risk of health problems including stroke and embolism in patients with atrial fibrillation, according to research published in EP Europace, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).1

"Our study suggests that atrial fibrillation patients should avoid heavy alcohol consumption to prevent stroke and other complications," said author Dr. Boyoung Joung of Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea.

The study included 9,411 patients with atrial fibrillation from 18 tertiary hospitals covering all geographical regions of South Korea. Patients were categorised into four groups according to their weekly alcohol consumption (one drink contains 14 grams of alcohol): abstainer/rare (0 grams/less than one drink), light (less than 100 grams/7 drinks), moderate (100-200 grams/7-14 drinks), and heavy (200 grams/14 drinks or more).

A total of 7,455 (79.2%) patients were classified as abstainer/rare, 795 (8.4%) as light, 345 (3.7%) as moderate, and 816 (8.7%) as heavy alcohol consumption.

Patients were followed-up for a median of 17.4 months for adverse events, which included stroke, transient ischaemic attack, systemic embolism (a blood clot in a limb or organ), and hospitalisation for rate or rhythm control of atrial fibrillation or for heart failure management. The researchers recorded how many patients experienced any of these events and calculated the incident rate (number of events per 100 person-years). Incident rates were 6.73, 5.77, 6.44, and 9.65 in the abstainer/rare, light, moderate, and heavy drinkers, respectively.

The researchers compared the risk of adverse events in the light, moderate, and heavy drinkers to the abstainer/rare group. Heavy drinking was associated with a 32% increased risk compared with the abstainers and rare drinkers. No significant association was observed for light or moderate alcohol consumption.

Dr. Joung said: "Our study did not find any significant association between light or moderate drinking and complications. A significant deleterious relationship with heavy drinking was identified, suggesting that heavy alcohol consumption should be avoided."

Subgroup analyses showed that the impact of heavy drinking was more pronounced in patients with low stroke risk2 compared to those at moderate or high stroke risk. Similarly, heavy drinking was associated with a greater likelihood of unfavourable outcomes in patients without high blood pressure compared to those with high blood pressure. Higher risks were also observed in patients not using beta-blockers or antiplatelet medications compared to those taking the drugs.

Dr. Joung said: "The findings indicate that heavy drinking is particularly detrimental for atrial fibrillation patients who are considered less vulnerable to complications. Clinicians should ask patients about their alcohol consumption and take it into account when calculating their stroke risk."

He concluded: "While heavy drinking should be strongly discouraged among atrial fibrillation patients, moderate drinking seems to be safe."

Autonomous systems are affecting virtually all aspects of society, so future designs must be guided by a broad range of societal stakeholders. That’s according to a new report led by scientists in the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin.

Ufuk Topcu of the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics led a yearlong effort involving more than 100 autonomy experts nationwide in the completion of a report titled “Assured Autonomy: Path Toward Living With Autonomous Systems We Can Trust.”

From spacecraft design to health care, vehicles to smart-cities planning, autonomous systems help us determine how society should run as a matter of routine. Yet the safety, security and regulation of these systems are still not prioritized.

“The management of autonomous systems needs to be at the crossing of science, technology, society, policy and governance,” Topcu said.

Commissioned by The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) — enabling high-impact research through state, industry and academic engagement within the computing community — the report begins by listing technologies that have disrupted society in the past. From the printing press “democratizing knowledge” to the industrial revolution “replacing man with machine” to more recently, the internet making instant global communications a given.

We are now witnessing the age of autonomous systems, where both humans and human intelligence can live harmoniously with machines and machine intelligence, assuming the right approach is taken now.

“Science and technology have always disrupted the status quo,” the report said. “But these systems are different from earlier technologies. Replacing humans and human intelligence with machines and machine intelligence is replacing within existing frameworks of laws, ethics, morality, norms, as well as an existing technology.”

With autonomy, a technical flaw in the software of a system, for example, can’t be seen as merely a bug. “That bug could be a potential violation of law and/or morality,” Topcu said.

The challenges faced require interdisciplinary approaches. “Autonomous systems are not just engineering marvels. They have an influence on individuals, groups, and even the culture as a whole,” said Art Markman of UT’s College of Liberal Arts and director of the IC2 Institute. “Engaging experts from a range of disciplines, including the humanities and the social and behavioral sciences, will be a crucial step to avoid unintended consequences of the deployment of new technologies.”

The direction taken by autonomous technologies is currently guided almost exclusively by scientists and engineers. According to Karen Willcox, director of the Oden Institute, it is time to “stretch our interdisciplinary thinking beyond the STEM fields.”

“Autonomy is a prime example of a domain where the interdisciplinary approaches of computational science - weaving together rigorous mathematical modeling with advanced computing and domain expertise - will play a critical role in developing better, safer systems,” Willcox said.

“But there is an urgent need to build deep collaborations in research and education with humanists and social scientists. This is a challenging but exciting future prospect.”

The core recommendation of the report is the creation of a network of institutes that can easily share ideas, concerns and, ultimately, develop a regulatory and quality assurance framework that underpins future advancements. The CCC calls for the implementation of a national research strategy for assurance with stakeholders in government, academia, industry and society all playing their part.

“Autonomy is a socioeconomic opportunity as well as a challenge, and the public will both perceive and be affected by it unevenly,” Topcu said.

The broader impact of autonomous technologies is a growing priority for researchers at UT Austin.

“Both basic and applied research in autonomous and AI technologies, particularly at UT, is increasingly focused on values-based designs,” said interim Vice President for Research Alison R. Preston. “Outlining the potential value of new technologies at the earliest design stages can limit the potential for unintended, negative consequences once a new technology is deployed. Understanding how to design autonomous systems that provide value to multiple stakeholders requires true collaboration, not just within any one university but among them. I’m proud that the Oden Institute is helping lead that charge.”

“Assured Autonomy: Path Toward Living With Autonomous Systems We Can Trust” is the product of several workshops facilitated by Ufuk Topcu and participating members of the CCC organizing committee: Nadya Bliss and Nancy Cooke (Arizona State University), Missy Cummings (Duke University), Ashley Llorens (Johns Hopkins University), Howard Shrobe (MIT), and Lenore Zuck (University of Illinois at Chicago).