Culture

A recent study has shown that a UV light technology already used to prevent the spread of other airborne diseases in buildings has the potential to be effective against Covid-19.

The research, published in the journal PeerJ, found that upper room UV germicidal irradiation (UVGI) can kill SARS-CoV-2 virus particles, which can be transmitted by aerosolised droplets that float in the air.

UVC is known to be very effective at 'killing', or inactivating, microorganisms however this type of UV light is harmful to humans. Upper room UVGI cleverly uses UVC light to create an irradiation field above the heads of room occupants so it can disinfect the air whilst keeping people within the room safe.

The study, led by researchers from Queen Mary University of London and Leeds Beckett University, tested the feasibility of upper room UVGI to reduce Covid-19 transmission by analysing historical published data examining the effect of UV irradiation on coronaviruses. Evaluating all the data, the research team showed that SARS-CoV-2 virus particles found in the air are likely to be susceptible to UVC, and also that the levels of UVC light required to inactivate the virus would be practical and safe for upper room applications.

It is now becoming widely accepted that transmission of SARS-CoV-2 virus particles through tiny respiratory droplets, is one of the main ways Covid-19 spreads between people. The risk of airborne transmission is especially high in poorly ventilated buildings and there is an urgent need for technologies to reduce the spread of Covid-19 within these spaces.

Professor Clive Beggs, Emeritus Professor of Applied Physiology at Leeds Beckett University, said: "Now we know that Covid-19 infection can occur from airborne exposure to the virus, finding ways to minimise the risk of transmission, particularly in buildings is becoming increasingly important. Whilst we know wearing masks and opening windows are effective ways to minimise the spread of Covid-19 indoors, these measures aren't always practical, especially in winter."

"Upper room UVGI is already a well-established technology and has proven effective to prevent the spread of other diseases such as measles and tuberculosis within buildings. This study shows that we have good reason to believe this technology could also protect indoor spaces such as offices, or restaurants and bars, and help to allow us to start to return to 'normal' life in a safe way."

Dr Eldad Avital, Reader in Computational (& Experimental) Fluids and Acoustics at Queen Mary, said: "Now it becomes more of an engineering problem of how we can use this technique to prevent the spread in buildings. This is where computational fluid dynamics becomes important as it can start to address questions around how many UVGI lights are needed and where they should be used. One thing we know is particularly important for these systems is air movement, so for them to work effectively in poorly ventilated spaces, you might need to use ceiling fans or other devices to ensure that larger aerosol particles are adequately irradiated."

The research team are now focusing their efforts on understanding how UV air disinfection technologies could be put into practice. One project they're currently working on will investigate the use of a low-cost air purifier system to 'disinfect' air based on the UVC technology. "The idea is that air could be taken out of the room using an air purifier and disinfected with UVC light, before the 'clean' air is then put back into the room," said Dr Avital.

"Another interesting area we're looking into is using ionisers to disinfect the air. These systems release negative ions into the air which latch on to positive ions, such as viruses, making them heavier. This causes them to fall to the ground or onto surfaces, where they can then be removed using normal cleaning approaches."

A new study reports that, for several species of oceanic sport fish, individual fish that are caught, released and recaught are more likely to be caught again than scientists anticipated. The findings raise some interesting questions for policy makers tasked with preserving sustainable fisheries.

The study makes use of data from tagging programs, in which researchers tag fish and release them into the wild. When those fish are caught, and the tag information is returned to the researchers, it can give scientists information that informs fishery policies.

"Fisheries researchers who work in tagging programs have long noticed that certain fish seem to get caught repeatedly, and we set out to determine the implications of this phenomenon," says Jeff Buckel, co-author of the study and a professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State University.

To that end, researchers examined decades' worth of Atlantic coast tagging datasets on four fish species: black sea bass (Centropristis striata), gray triggerfish (Balistes capriscus), red grouper (Epinephelus morio), and Warsaw grouper (Hyporthodus nigritus). Using a computational model, the researchers determined that - for the black sea bass and both types of grouper - survival was significantly higher after the second, third, and fourth release as compared to the first release.

"Think of it this way," says Brendan Runde, first author of the study and a Ph.D. student at NC State. "Let's say you tagged 1,000 fish and recaptured 100 of them for a first time. After re-releasing those 100 fish, you would only expect to recapture 10 of them a second time. But that's not what we're seeing. We're seeing much higher numbers of fish getting recaptured after the second time.

"Our hypothesis is that this increase in catch rate stems from selection for robust individuals," Runde says.

In other words, because some fish don't survive the first release, and you can't catch a dead fish, the fish that were robust enough to survive their first encounter were more likely to survive following catch-and-release events.

The finding could have a significant impact on stock assessments, which inform fishery policies.

"One might assume that every catch and release in a recreational fishery is a unique fish," Buckel says. "So that if 5 million black sea bass were caught and released in a given year, that would mean there were at least 5 million black sea bass in a fishery. For these three species of fish and likely many others, that's just not true. At least some of those 5 million catches were the same fish getting caught over and over again."

"Reliable estimates of how many unique fish are released are critical to accurately assessing the health of the population," says Kyle Shertzer, a co-author of the study and stock assessment scientist at NOAA Fisheries.

"On the positive side, the study also suggests that for many species fish mortality from being released appears lower than we thought," Buckel says. "For those species, if a fish survives its first release, it has an even better chance of surviving subsequent releases."

"We think that the issues raised by our findings are likely relevant for many marine fish stock assessments that rely on catch-and-release data - though this will vary based on the species and the details of how each stock assessment is performed," Runde says.

For the first time ever, craniofacial growth in children can be studied comprehensively using data from six historic adolescent growth studies. Researchers from the University of Missouri School of Medicine analyzed more than 15,000 cranial radiographs from nearly 2,000 participants to create the Craniofacial Growth Consortium Study (CGCS). The mission of the CGCS is to provide translational evidence-based outcomes to help shape critical research and clinical care of patients with craniofacial conditions.

"This study presents an unparalleled opportunity to examine craniofacial growth from childhood into adulthood," said principal investigator Richard Sherwood, PhD, professor and Vice Chair of Research of pathology and anatomical sciences and professor of orthopaedic surgery. "While the six existing studies have been used for decades to quantify and describe growth, there has never been a detailed comparison of the growth trajectories among the studies."

Sherwood said the combined dataset provides a unique opportunity for detailed investigation of craniofacial growth. The ultimate goals of the research is to develop individualized predictions of future growth for use by clinicians to optimize treatment timing.

Researchers collected data from multiple radiographs for each child, taking care to ensure reliable accuracy. After analyzing all of the images in each of the studies, researchers used a powerful Bayesian longitudinal statistical approach to model growth curves for craniofacial measures and estimate growth milestones. Those milestones include the age of peak growth velocity and the age of cessation of growth within each of the six studies

"We were pleasantly surprised by the considerable consistency among the six studies," Sherwood said. "There was great similarity regarding growth milestone estimates and the overall shape of the growth curve. These similarities suggest there is only minor variation among studies resulting from differences in protocol, sample or geographic origin."

Because there is no systematic difference between growth of the six original studies, Sherwood is confident that the data can be combined and analyzed as a single collection.

"The CGCS gives us a better representation of normal variation in craniofacial growth than we have ever had," Sherwood said. "Our next step is to develop prediction models that will be useful to clinicians in developing treatment regimens."

The replacement of lost neurons is a holy grail for neuroscience. A new promising approach is the conversion of glial cells into new neurons. Improving the efficiency of this conversion or reprogramming after brain injury is an important step towards developing reliable regenerative medicine therapies. Researchers at Helmholtz Zentrum München and Ludwig Maximilians University Munich (LMU) have identified a hurdle towards an efficient conversion: the cell metabolism. By expressing neuron-enriched mitochondrial proteins at an early stage of the direct reprogramming process, the researchers achieved a four times higher conversion rate and simultaneously increased the speed of reprogramming.

Neurons (nerve cells) have very important functions in the brain such as information processing. Many brain diseases, injuries and neurodegenerative processes, are characterized by the loss of neurons that are not replaced. Approaches in regenerative medicine therefore aim to reconstitute the neurons by transplantation, stem cell differentiation or direct conversion of endogenous non-neuronal cell types into functional neurons.

Researchers at Helmholtz Zentrum München and LMU are pioneering the field of direct conversion of glial cells into neurons which they have originally discovered. Glia are the most abundant cell type in the brain and can proliferate upon injury. Currently, researchers are able to convert glia cells into neurons - but during the process many cells die. This means that only few glial cells convert into functional nerve cells, making the process inefficient.

Exploring new approaches

Magdalena Götz and her team investigated potential hurdles in the conversion process and took a new route: While most studies have focused on the genetic aspects of direct neuronal reprogramming, they decided to study the role of mitochondria and cell metabolism in this process. This was inspired by their previous work in collaboration with Marcus Conrad's group at Helmholtz Zentrum München showing that cells die due to excessive reactive oxygen species in the conversion process.

"We hypothesized that if we were able to help reprogramming the metabolism of glia cells towards the metabolism of a neuron, this could improve the conversion efficiency", explains Gianluca Russo, first-author of the study. Given their previous data, the researchers focused on mitochondria, the cell's powerhouse. The group extracted mitochondria from neurons and astrocytes (a specific type of glia cell) of mice and compared them by studying their proteins in collaboration with Stefanie Hauck's group of proteomic experts at Helmholtz Zentrum München. Surprisingly, they found that mitochondria of neurons and astrocytes differ in 20 percent of their proteome. This means that between astrocytes and neurons every fifth mitochondrial protein is different.

Reprogrammed neurons activate neuron-enriched mitochondrial proteins at a late stage

"Knowing how different the mitochondrial proteome of neurons is from astrocytes, we needed to see if and when neurons converting from astrocytes actually acquire the mitochondrial proteome of a neuron or not", says Giacomo Masserdotti, co-last author of the study. In a standard reprogramming process, glia cells like astrocytes convert to neurons within a few days and develop into functional neurons within two weeks. "It was striking that cells showed mitochondrial proteins, which are typical for neurons, relatively late in the reprogramming process, only after one week. Since most cells die before this time, this could be a hurdle. In addition, cells that failed to be reprogrammed, still expressed astrocyte-enriched mitochondrial proteins." With this new insight, the researchers hypothesized that the failure of turning on neuronal mitochondrial proteins may be blocking the conversion process.

Improving and accelerating the conversion through metabolism

To overcome this hurdle, the group employed CRISPR/Cas9 technology in close cooperation with Stefan Stricker's and Wolfgang Wurst's groups at Helmholtz Zentrum München. With new gene activation tools developed by this group, neuron-enriched mitochondrial proteins could be activated at an early stage of the reprogramming process of astrocytes to neurons. By manipulating one to two mitochondrial proteins only, the researchers gained four times more reprogrammed neurons. On top of that, the neurons appeared and matured faster, as revealed by continuous live imaging.

"I was amazed that changing the expression of few mitochondrial proteins actually drives the speed of reprogramming", says Magdalena Götz, the lead author of the study. "This shows how important the cell-type-specific differences of mitochondrial proteins are. And indeed, together with our proteome experts at Helmholtz Munich, we are discovering further organellar differences between cell types that reach up to 70 percent. This will pave the way to further improve the reprogrammed neurons to resemble as much as possible endogenous neurons also after brain injury in vivo."

Until now, it was unclear whether a survived SARS-CoV-2 infection or COVID-19 leads to a persistent immunological memory and thus can protect against a new infection. Several studies had shown that SARS-CoV-2 specific antibodies are only detectable for a few months in many people who have survived COVID-19 and may therefore only provide temporary protection against re-infection. A research team at the Medical Center - University of Freiburg led by Dr. Maike Hofmann, Dr. Christoph Neumann-Haefelin and Prof. Dr. Robert Thimme has now been able to show: after recovery from SARS-CoV-2 infection, immune cells are formed which remain in the body and could mediate a rapid immune response in case of re-infection. The Freiburg study was published in the online edition of the renowned scientific journal Nature Medicine on November 12, 2020.

"These so-called memory T-cells after SARS-CoV-2 infection look similar to those after a real flu. We are therefore confident that the majority of people who have survived SARS-CoV-2 infection have some protection against re-infection with SARS-CoV-2," explains Dr. Hofmann, a scientist at the Department of Medicine II at the Medical Center - University of Freiburg.

Professor Thimme, Medical Director of the Department of Medicine II, emphasizes how important a good translational research environment such as that at the Medical Center - University of Freiburg is in the current situation: "In order to obtain robust research results within a few months, close networking between clinic and science at the highest level is a basic requirement: On the one hand, patients with COVID-19 are treated on our wards and continue to be cared for in a special outpatient clinic even after the infection has healed. On the other hand, our clinic has great expertise in the analysis of immune cells in viral infections such as hepatitis B and C."

The Medical Center - University of Freiburg is not involved in the development of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2. However, Dr. Neumann-Haefelin, Head of the Gerok Liver Center at the University Hospital Freiburg, is optimistic: "Our results suggest that immunity against SARS-CoV-2 can be achieved after an infection. Similarly, vaccines currently being tested in trials could provide significant protection against SARS-CoV-2".

"The deciphering of complex immune responses has long been part of the research focus of the University and the Medical Center - University of Freiburg. Thanks to the high scientific quality onsite, we can now make an important contribution to the corona pandemic," says Prof. Dr. Norbert Südkamp, Dean of the Medical Faculty at the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg.

A team of scientists from the University of Leeds have developed a new hydrogel that has significant potential for oral care products that can help with dry mouth relief.

The team developed this bio-inspired lubricant to act as an alternative to saliva without additional lipid content. For instance, dry mouth syndrome or xerostomia pose a limitation to the lubrication of oral surfaces in absence of natural saliva, while extra lipid intake is undesirable for these patients especially for the elderly population, where this syndrome is prevalent.

Additionally the developed formulation can be potentially used to replicate the lubricating properties of fat content in food products, providing the possibility of decreasing caloric content, without sacrificing sensory related attributes.

The synergistic superlubricity of the novel microgel-reinforced hydrogel offers a unique prospective towards the fabrication of biocompatible aqueous lubricants for dry mouth therapy or design of non-obesogenic nutritional technologies.

Principal Investigator Anwesha Sarkar, Professor of Colloids and Surfaces at Leeds, said, "The excelling lubrication performance of this patented microgel-reinforced hydrogel is attributed to the synergistic interactions between the proteinaceous microgels and the biopolymeric hydrogel with benefits of both viscous and boundary lubrication."

"The development of this bio-inspired aqueous lubricant technology as alternative to saliva is a high priority. To date, such superlubricity is not achieved by any other commercial dry mouth therapies as they lack boundary lubrication properties.

"With the help of ERC Proof of Concept Funding, we are now collaborating with Nexus at the University of Leeds and expect to license this technology soon to industries to ultimately provide sustained relief to dry mouth patients."

DALLAS - Nov. 17, 2020 - Research presented today by UT Southwestern cardiologists at the annual American Heart Association (AHA) Scientific Sessions 2020 showed that Black and Hispanic people were more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than white patients, and that nonwhite men with cardiovascular disease or risk factors were more likely to die.

In one of the conference's late-breaking research sessions, James de Lemos, M.D., a professor of internal medicine who holds a distinguished chair in cardiology at UTSW, discussed COVID-19 Cardiovascular Disease Registry: Design, Implementation, and Initial Results.

The American Heart Association COVID-19 Cardiovascular Disease Registry was created by volunteers and AHA staff and launched in the spring at the outset of the pandemic. To date, the registry has gathered records on more than 22,500 patients from 109 U.S. health care centers in 34 states, including data points on patient demographics, cardiovascular risk factors, comorbidities, medications prior to admission, treatments during hospitalization, disease severity measures, and laboratory results.

In a related study, Racial and Ethnic Differences in Treatment and Outcomes for Patients Hospitalized with COVID-19: Findings from the American Heart Association COVID-19 Cardiovascular Disease Registry, deLemos and his team studied 8,000 COVID-19 patients who were hospitalized from Jan. 17 to July 22. This group was treated at 88 hospitals. One-third were Hispanic, 25.5 percent were non-Hispanic Black, 6.3 percent were Asian, and 35.2 percent were non-Hispanic white. Black patients were younger with higher rates of obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes, and were also more likely to require a ventilator or kidney dialysis than white patients.

"The results highlight the disproportionate burden of COVID-19 among Black and Hispanic patients, and imply there are factors in the U.S. that existed prior to hospitalization that are driving these disparities in COVID hospitalization and death," says de Lemos, who served as co-chair of the steering committee for the registry.

In another late-breaking session, Ann Marie Navar, M.D., Ph.D., reported that a review of nearly 20,000 patients revealed that cardiovascular disease or CVD risk factors in COVID-19 patients dramatically increased the risk of in-hospital mortality. The risk of death was particularly high for older, nonwhite men.

Navar's research team studied electronic health records from 54 health systems that use a COVID-19 database provided by Cerner, a health information technology firm. The results, measured from January to May and shared in "Impact of Cardiovascular Disease on Outcomes Among Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients: Results From >14,000 Patients Across the U.S.," showed that in-hospital mortality ranged from 28.5 percent for patients with hypertension to 28.6 percent for those with diabetes, 25.5 percent for those with coronary artery disease, and 38.4 percent for those with heart failure.

Just 1.5 percent of the patients had a stroke while hospitalized for COVID-19, but the mortality rate was 56 percent among this group. Similarly, 5 percent of patients had a heart attack, and 55.5 percent of these individuals died during their hospital stay.

"These data reflect what doctors and nurses on the front lines in hospitals across the U.S. are actually seeing, where more than 1 in 15 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 does not make it home," says Navar. She conducted the research at the Duke Clinical Research Institute before joining UT Southwestern as an associate professor of internal medicine and population and data sciences.

DALLAS, Nov. 17, 2020 -- A new American Heart Association collaborative model for COVID-19 research, using data from the new AHA COVID-19 Cardiovascular Disease Registry, found Hispanic and Black adults with COVID-19 were far more likely to be hospitalized than their white counterparts, as were people with obesity and COVID-19, according to three late-breaking research studies presented today at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2020. The virtual meeting is Friday, November 13 - Tuesday, November 17, 2020, and is a premier global exchange of the latest scientific advancements, research and evidence-based clinical practice updates in cardiovascular science for health care worldwide.

The AHA COVID-19 Cardiovascular Disease Registry: Design, Implementation, and Initial Results

This abstract details the structure, implementation and initial results of the new American Heart Association COVID-19 Cardiovascular Disease Registry. Identifying a need to rapidly collect and provide insights into patients hospitalized with the novel coronavirus, volunteer leaders and staff of the American Heart Association created the registry within weeks of the declaration of the global pandemic. Hospitals began uploading patient records into the registry before the end of April. As of September 9, 2020, health data for more than 17,000 patients from 101 U.S. health care centers in 33 states have been saved in the registry.

More than 200 data points are collected on each patient record submitted to the registry, including patient demographics, cardiovascular risk factors and other comorbidities, medications prior to admission and treatments received during hospitalization including emerging COVID-19 therapies. In addition, disease severity measures, such as the need for intensive care unit management, mechanical ventilation or mechanical circulatory support, are being captured. Extensive serial laboratory data (information from blood tests, nasal swabs, saliva samples or other tests) are also being collected, including cardiovascular and inflammatory biomarkers, as well as results of cardiovascular testing performed during hospitalization.

The COVID-19 CVD Registry is powered by the American Heart Association's Get With The Guidelines® program and pools de-identified health data about patients treated for COVID-19 at hospitals across the country. The data is available for research and analysis through the Association's cloud-based Precision-Medicine Platform. The Precision Medicine Platform allows multiple teams of investigators to pursue different questions using the registry's data simultaneously, which expands research capacity, reduces costs and shortens the time to discovery and sharing of new information.

"We call it 'burst science,'" said James A. de Lemos, M.D., an author of all three studies and co-chair of Association's COVID-19 CVD Registry Steering Committee. "With this robust library of data on patients hospitalized and treated for COVID-19 here in the U.S., we can conduct many more analyses and research projects in a much shorter period of time."

"The registry is allowing quick collection, analysis and distribution of important information during this pandemic," said de Lemos, who is a professor of medicine and the Sweetheart Ball-Kern Wildenthal, M.D., Ph.D., distinguished chair in cardiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. "And these collaborative efforts have implications for accelerating and sharing research beyond the current COVID-19 pandemic."

de Lemos noted that "the rates of heart attack, heart failure and stroke in patients with COVID-19 were lower than we had expected," based on preliminary reports from smaller studies.

Co-authors are David Morrow, M.D., M.P.H.; Tracy Wang, M.D., M.H.S., M.Sc.; Fatima Rodriguez, M.D., M.P.H.; Heather Alger, Ph.D.; Christine Rutan, B.A.; Steven Bradley, M.D., M.P.H.; Mitchell S. V. Elkind, M.D. M.S.; and Sandeep Das, M.D., M.P.H. Author disclosures are in the abstract.

Racial and Ethnic Differences in Treatment and Outcomes for Patients Hospitalized with COVID-19: Findings from the American Heart Association COVID-19 Cardiovascular Disease Registry

Researchers reviewed the data from about 8,000 patients with COVID-19 treated at 88 hospitals across the U.S. between Jan. 17-July 22, 2020. They found significant racial and/or ethnic differences:

Among hospitalized COVID-19 patients in the registry, 33.0% were Hispanic, 25.5% were non-Hispanic Black, 6.3% were Asian and 35.2% were non-Hispanic white.

On average, Hispanic patients were 12 years younger, and Black patients were nine years younger than white patients.

Hispanic patients were more likely to not have health insurance.

Black patients had higher rates of obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes and prior cerebrovascular disease.

Black patients also were more likely to require a ventilator or kidney dialysis.

Asian patients had the longest duration from symptom onset to hospital admission - an average of seven days, compared with five days among the other three population groups.

"The results highlight the disproportionate burden of COVID-19 especially among Black and Hispanic communities and imply there are factors in the U.S. that existed prior to a coronavirus diagnosis that are driving these disparities," said the study's lead author Fatima Rodriguez, M.D., M.P.H., an assistant professor in cardiovascular medicine at Stanford University Medical Center in Palo Alto, California.

The manuscript of this study is simultaneously published today in Circulation, the flagship journal of the American Heart Association.

Co-authors are Nicole Solomon, Ph.D.; Sandeep Das, M.D., M.P.H.; David Morrow, M.D., M.P.H.; Steven Bradley, M.D., M.P.H.; Mitchell S. V. Elkind, M.D., M.S.; Joseph Williams, B.S.; DaJuanicia Simon, M.S.; Roland Matsouaka, Ph.D.; Divya Gupta, M.D.; Ty Gluckman, M.D.; Marwah Abdalla, M.D., M.P.H.; Michelle A. Albert, M.D., M.P.H.; Clyde W. Yancy, M.D., M.Sc.; and Tracy Y. Wang, M.D., M.H.S., M.Sc. Author disclosures are in the abstract.

Association of Body Mass Index with Death, Mechanical Ventilation, and Cardiovascular Outcomes in COVID-19: Findings from the AHA COVID-19 Cardiovascular Disease Registry Analysis of data for about 8,000 patients in the registry found obesity in patients with COVID-19 is associated with a higher risk of blood clots and death, as well as a greater need for a ventilator.

Almost half (44%) of the patients were obese or severely obese. Rates of obesity, and particularly severe obesity (for this study, a Body Mass Index (BMI) >40 kg/m2 was the criteria for obesity) were much higher among patients in the COVID-19 registry than in a general population sample of U.S adults. The researchers noted this indicates that obesity is an important risk factor for needing hospitalization with COVID-19.

Compared with their peers who did not have obesity, severely obese patients were, on average, nearly 18 years younger and more likely to be Black. They also had about a 30% higher relative risk of in-hospital death.

Researchers also noted the relative risks of death and assisted breathing treatment (a mechanical ventilator) were highest among patients younger than age 50. This indicates that patients with severe obesity who were younger were not protected against the most critical complications of COVID-19.

"Overall, the new American Heart Association COVID-19 Cardiovascular Disease Registry illustrates COVID-19 prevention strategies are needed to specifically target Black and Hispanic communities, as well people with obesity, in order to reduce the risks of hospitalization and death," de Lemos said. "These groups should receive priority when a coronavirus vaccine becomes available."

A new study from researchers at the University of Chicago has found that neuronal population dynamics in the motor cortex are very different during reaching and grasping behavior, challenging a popular theory that indicated intrinsic, dynamic patterns control motor behaviors.

Prior research examining neural population dynamics in the motor cortex of macaque monkeys had shown that during the planning and execution of a reaching movement with the arm, populations of neurons exhibited rotational dynamics -- cascades of smooth and orderly waves of neuronal activity that pass through the motor cortex.

This population-level behavior has been interpreted as showing that the motor cortex acts as a pattern generator that drives muscles to give rise to movements.

"In the previous work on reaching, my colleagues and I showed that brain areas that control movement act like a little machine for generating muscle commands," said co-author Matthew Kaufman, PhD, an assistant professor of organismal biology and anatomy at UChicago. "That is, the activity followed mathematical "rules" that let it act like a music box, to get each muscle's commands timed correctly relative to the others."

Researchers suggested that these activity patterns represent a general principle of neuronal activity within the motor cortex, and that these elegant dynamics are a property of the neural circuits.

"The activity pattern is a bit like a domino effect," explained senior author Sliman Bensmaia, PhD, the James and Karen Frank Family Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at UChicago. "The idea is that as the behavior starts, it's like knocking over that first domino, and then all the rest will fall in order. If you set it back up, it'll do the same sequence again."

However, this new research, looking instead at hand-grasping behavior rather than arm-reaching behavior, did not see such a neat pattern. The study, published Nov. 17 in E-Life, examined neural activity in the motor cortex.

"We wanted to know whether the same type of neural dynamics was present during hand movements, which involve a very different effector, producing very different movements," said co-first author Aneesha Suresh, PhD, a former graduate student in the Bensmaia lab. "We recorded neural activity in the motor cortex of monkeys as they performed a reach task and a grasp task to compare the dynamics of the two motions."

In contrast to past results, the investigators found that grasping behaviors instead produced less orderly neuronal activity patterns at the population level and little evidence of the rotational dynamics seen with reaching motions.

"We expected neurons in this network to be activated in orderly, predictable sequences, like the ones thought to drive the arm as it reaches toward a target," said co-first author James Goodman, PhD, now a postdoctoral scientist at the German Primate Center. "Instead, the patterns of activity we saw during grasping were far more complex and chaotic, in some respects suggesting an especially important role for the senses of touch and proprioception during hand movements."

These results make sense in the context of the differences between reaching movements and grasping movements. "Conceptually, the jobs that the arm and the hand do are different," said co-author Nicholas Hatsopoulos, PhD, a professor of organismal biology and anatomy and neurology at UChicago. "The arm moves the hand and brings the hand to different locations for actions like waving or reaching for a cup. The hand, on the other hand, is usually involved in manipulating objects such as grasping things, typing on a keyboard, and so on."

This study raises new questions, such as why this elegant activity pattern exists for reaching movements but not for grasping, and whether similar patterns exist for other types of movement patterns. "The brain uses this kind of pattern for reach, and the implication was that the brain would use it for other movements, too, and that maybe the pattern applies even in other systems," said Bensmaia. "But we've shown that this pattern doesn't generalize everywhere, and then the question is, how general is it, really?"

Hershey, Pa. -- Cannabidiol (CBD) oils are equally or less effective at inhibiting the growth of certain cancer cells compared to pure CBD, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers. The results of their recent study indicate that future research into the clinical applications of cannabinoids should include an analysis of whether the pure cannabinoid compound or intact plant material is more effective at achieving the therapeutic effect.

The researchers evaluated whether CBD oils were better than pure CBD at inhibiting the growth of different cancer cell lines. They studied brain, skin and colorectal cancers -- using two cell lines for each cancer type -- and found that pure CBD was able to reduce cell viability in three of the six cell lines tested and that the effect was cell line specific and not specific to select cancers. None of the CBD oils tested were able to reduce viability to a greater extent than pure CBD.

Prior research found that CBD or tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) can reduce cancer cell viability in some cancer cell models. Proponents of medical marijuana argue that there is an additive effect between the various compounds in the plant material that increases its therapeutic efficacy compared to individual, pure cannabinoid compounds. Kent Vrana, professor and chair of the Department of Pharmacology, said the study did not support this concept, known as the "entourage" effect.

"Based on our results, we recommend that specific investigations on the entourage effect be carried out when determining the therapeutic uses of medical marijuana and other cannabinoid products," Vrana said.

Wesley Raup-Konsavage, co-author of the study published in the journal Medical Cannabis and Cannabinoids, said the study was carefully designed so that the amounts of CBD oil used for testing had an equivalent amount of CBD as the pure CBD in the experiments. The researchers obtained three types of CBD oil with certificates of analysis and had their composition verified by a third party laboratory. Equal concentrations of CBD were used to treat the six cell lines.

After evaluating the viability of the treated cell lines, researchers determined that the CBD had an effect on one of each of the colorectal cancer, melanoma and glioblastoma cell lines tested. The viability of the other cell lines tested was not significantly reduced.

Because a previous study evaluating the use of THC for treating breast cancer cells suggested that there is an entourage effect in that context, Vrana cautioned that careful testing of cannabinoids should be done for each proposed therapeutic context.

"Pure CBD had the ability to reduce certain cancer cell types' viability in this study," Vrana said. "It would be reckless for a consumer to assume that a CBD oil product off the shelf could have the same effects for them, which is why careful studies around the entourage effect are needed for each intended therapeutic application."

Vrana said that even if there were cases where the entourage effect were proven for therapeutic uses, cannabinoid products are unregulated and consumers would not be able to know in many cases whether an off-the-shelf or off-the-street product had the right components to result in the desired therapeutic outcome.

"The variability in composition and activities of botanical extracts highlights difficulties in assessing their therapeutic potential compared to pure chemical compounds," Vrana said. Raup-Konsavage and Vrana plan to continue investigating the "entourage" effect of cannabinoids in other therapeutic applications.

Learning a language later in life changes how the two halves of the brain contribute. As skills improve, language comprehension changes hemisphere specialization, but production does not, according to new research published in JNeurosci.

The two sides of the brain don't evenly split labor for every function. In most people, language relies on the left hemisphere, but the right hemisphere can take over after an injury to the left. The right hemisphere can also contribute when learning a new language, making it unclear if the left hemisphere is actually specialized for language.

Gurunandan et al. used fMRI to compare neural activity between hemispheres in adult language learners while reading, listening, and speaking in their native and new languages. In the earlier stages of language learning, native and new languages looked quite similar in the brain, but in advanced learners, the two languages were more distinct. The native and new languages were able to recruit opposite hemispheres for comprehension but speaking either language remained reliant on the left hemisphere. These results suggest production is hard-wired to the left hemisphere, while comprehension is more flexible. This may explain why it is more difficult to learn to speak a new language as an adult, even though it is possible to learn to understand it quite well.

Many diseases, such as COVID-19, have made the jump from animals to people with serious consequences for the human host. An international research team, including researchers from the University of Göttingen, says that more epidemics resulting from animal hosts are inevitable unless urgent action is taken. In order to protect against future pandemics which might be even more serious, they call for governments to establish effective legislation addressing wildlife trade, protection of habitats and reduction of interaction between people, wildlife and livestock. Their review was published in Trends in Ecology & Evolution.

An infectious disease caused by a pathogen - such as a bacterium, virus or parasite - that has jumped from an animal to a human is known as "zoonosis". In the last thirty years, the majority of human pathogens which have caused substantial damage to human health and economies have originated from wildlife or livestock. Such diseases include Ebola, AIDS and SARS. COVID-19 is among the latest of these zoonotic diseases and is currently a pandemic that has resulted in more than a million deaths worldwide.

Two primary factors that facilitate such outbreaks are wildlife trade and fragmentation of natural habitat, both of which increase the frequency and potential for direct contact between humans and wildlife. Animals in wildlife markets are often housed in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions that create the perfect environment for pathogens to jump to humans. In addition, natural habitats are being cleared to meet the growing demands of an increasing human population, which puts livestock and people in closer contact with the wild hosts of potential zoonotic pathogens. Addressing these two factors could help prevent future zoonotic diseases.

Recognising that COVID-19 may have emerged from wildlife markets, the governments of China, Vietnam and Korea have all introduced some form of regulation to control wildlife trade since the outbreak, each of which goes some way to supporting wildlife conservation. These actions provide examples for other countries to consider. The authors, however, advise against a sudden blanket ban on wildlife markets as this will have a disproportionately high negative impact on disadvantaged, migrant and rural populations that depend on such markets for their subsistence. Rather, a range of measures should be considered, including governments working with local communities to create and maintain alternative means of subsistence before appropriate bans - specifically on live animals and non-food wildlife products - are considered.

"The coronavirus pandemic has inevitably focussed our energy on managing the disease. But in order to prevent the next outbreak - whatever form that might take - there needs to be recognition that people's relationship with the natural world must change," explains co-author Dr Trishna Dutta, University of Göttingen, Department of Wildlife Sciences. She goes on to say, "There needs to be urgent action to regulate the trade of wildlife and reduce consumer demand for wildlife parts and products. This should be done in tandem with protecting native ecosystems and reducing the wildlife-livestock-human interface which originally sparked this pandemic."

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- March through May saw a significant increase in deaths over previous years - and not just from COVID-19, says a new study from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

When deaths attributed to COVID-19 were removed from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention totals, the death rate in several demographics outpaced the same period in 2019, the study found. The timeframe represents the first three months of response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.

Sheldon H. Jacobson, a professor of computer science and of the Carle Illinois College of Medicine, and Janet Jokela, the head of the department of internal medicine and acting regional dean of the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Urbana, published their findings in the journal Public Health.

"We know that the pandemic is selectively taking lives. It also seems to be causing ancillary deaths that are not directly caused by COVID-19, but are a consequence of the fact that we have COVID-19 in our society, in our health care system, in our jobs, in our lives. We're trying to capture those effects as data," Jacobson said.

The researchers used publicly available data from the CDC that are sorted by age and gender. Full numbers for 2019 are not yet publicly available, so the researchers calculated 2019 death estimates using 2018 CDC data and 2019 population estimates from the Census Bureau. They then compared those numbers with the CDC's provisional non-COVID-19 death numbers for 2020.

Even though the researchers chose a more stringent measure of statistical significance than commonly used in such analyses, they found a significant increase in excess deaths in 2020 for men between 15 and 59 years of age, and for women between 25 and 44.

"Although we don't know why, deaths increased to a greater degree than expected. As someone who has spent their career in medicine and public health, this concerns me," Jokela said. "The concern is that excess deaths will continue to occur during the pandemic, whether it's because people are delaying care for other conditions or because some COVID-19 deaths are going undetected. This is a phenomenon that requires ongoing monitoring and investigation."

There was, however, one demographic that saw a decrease in deaths - females between the ages of 5 and 14.

"The only explanation we can come up with is that if you look at the deaths that occur in that age group, the preponderance of them are accidents. Thus, the shutdowns in much of the country appear to have had a protective effect on young girls," Jacobson said.

Jacobson and Jokela continue to monitor the data as the CDC updates it. They plan to perform a six-month analysis for March through August, and eventually the whole year. They also urge public health officials to make data available and study non-COVID-19 causes of death to gain insights into the factors leading to excess deaths in each demographic.

"Is it because people are neglecting routine medical exams? Are they delaying treatment for other conditions, such as cancer or heart disease? Are mental health issues going unaddressed? Information about the causes of death in different age groups would be very useful, because then we can look at the appropriate countermeasures to reduce preventable deaths," Jacobson said.

Editor's note:

To contact Sheldon H. Jacobson, call 217-244-7275; email shj@illinois.edu.

To contact Janet Jokela, call 217-244-5955; email: jokela@illinois.edu.

The paper "Non-Covid-19 excess deaths by age and gender in the United States during the first three months of the Covid-19 pandemic" is available online.

UCLA researchers using a model of airway tissue created from human stem cells have pinpointed how smoking cigarettes causes more severe infection by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in the airways of the lungs.

The study, led by scientists at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA and published in Cell Stem Cell, will help researchers better understand COVID-19 risks for smokers and could inform the development of new therapeutic strategies to help reduce smokers' chances of developing severe disease.

Cigarette smoking is one of the most common causes of lung diseases, including lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and most demographic studies of COVID-19 patients have indicated that current smokers are at increased risk of severe infection and death. But the reasons why have not been entirely clear.

To help understand how smoking affects SARS-CoV-2 infection on a cellular and molecular level, Dr. Brigitte Gomperts partnered with co-senior authors Vaithilingaraja Arumugaswami, an associate professor of molecular and medical pharmacology, and Kathrin Plath, a professor of biological chemistry, to recreate what happens when the airways of a current smoker are infected with SARS-CoV-2.

The team utilized a platform known as an air-liquid interface culture, which is grown from human airway stem cells and closely replicates how the airways behave and function in humans. The airways, which carry air breathed in from the nose and mouth to the lungs, are the body's first line of defense against airborne pathogens like viruses, bacteria and smoke.

"Our model replicates the upper part of the airways, which is the first place the virus hits," said Gomperts, a professor pulmonary medicine and member of the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. "This is the part that produces mucus to trap viruses, bacteria and toxins and contains cells with finger-like projections that beat that mucus up and out of the body."

The air-liquid interface cultures used in the study were grown from airway stem cells taken from the lungs of five young, healthy, nonsmoking tissue donors. To replicate the effects of smoking, the researchers exposed these airway cultures to cigarette smoke for three minutes per day over four days.

"This type of model has been used to study lung diseases for over a decade and has been shown to mimic the changes in the airway that you would see in a person who currently smokes," said Gomperts, who is also vice chair of research in pediatric hematology-oncology at the UCLA Children's Discovery and Innovation Institute.

Next, the group infected the cultures exposed to cigarette smoke -- along with identical cultures that had not been exposed -- with live SARS-CoV-2 virus and the two groups were compared. In the models exposed to smoke, the researchers saw between two and three times more infected cells.

Digging further, the researchers determined that smoking resulted in more severe SARS-CoV-2 infection, at least in part, by blocking the activity of immune system messenger proteins called interferons. Interferons play a critical role in the body's early immune response by triggering infected cells to produce proteins to attack the virus, summoning additional support from the immune system, and alerting uninfected cells to prepare to fight the virus. Cigarette smoke is known to reduce the interferon response in the airways.

"If you think of the airways like the high walls that protect a castle, smoking cigarettes is like creating holes in these walls," Gomperts said. "Smoking reduces the natural defenses and that allows the virus to set in."

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Urban planners may soon have a new way to measure traffic congestion. By capturing the different routes by which vehicles can travel between locations, researchers have developed a new computer algorithm that helps quantify regions of congestion in urban areas and suggests ways around them.

The study, published in the Journal of Physics: Complexity, used traffic speeds from taxis in New York City to demonstrate how road infrastructure and driver behavior can create complex road networks that differ among cities.

"Ride-hailing and ride-sharing services, and eventually autonomous vehicles, are disrupting traffic patterns in cities," said Richard Sowers, a professor of mathematics and of industrial and enterprise systems engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and lead author of the study. "We identified a need for a tool that could help urban planners understand how and why this happens."

The team approached the issue by designing a computer algorithm to capture the topology - or relationship between the different routes between locations - of road networks. "Roads form complex networks, and the field of topological data analysis seemed to offer the right tools to study travel paths that commuters choose," Sowers said.

"We found that the most significant traffic bottlenecks in Manhattan seem to arise as a result of the city's structural layout," said study co-author Daniel Carmody, who recently completed a Ph.D. in mathematics at the U. of I. "For example, the fact that a bridge enters Manhattan at a latitude where traffic is already limited due to Central Park slows traffic in the area considerably."

The researchers performed a comparative analysis using traffic patterns in Chengdu, China, to test if the algorithm works equally well in areas with different layouts. Manhattan has a long and thin structure, while Chengdu is round. There are significant differences in the way traffic moves between these two different setups, the researchers said.

"The bottlenecks in Chengdu seem to arise due to the function of the buildings in a particular area," Carmody said. "For example, it is hard to travel in and out of the central business district in Chengdu because of the sheer volume of traffic alone. Beltways, or faster streets around congested areas, have emerged in circles around this area, which is not surprising because this feature was intentionally built into the city."

In Manhattan, the bridges and tunnels that form the entry and exit points cause traffic slowdowns. However, in lower Manhattan, where drivers seem to obey the lower posted speed limits, traffic moves more smoothly, forming a new traffic beltway with the southern end of Central Park acting as a barrier between lower and central Manhattan.

"It surprised us that there is an emergent beltway in such a congested area of Manhattan," Carmody said. "This indicates that, unlike in Chengdu, beltways seem to arise from driver behavior even when they aren't part of the structural plan of a traffic network."

Click here to see a video of how the algorithm defines connected routes, finds pathways around congested areas and compares traffic in different cities.

The researchers envision this technology giving urban planners a means to quantify traffic patterns, leading to better mitigation, Sowers said. "As methods of transportation evolve, new problems will emerge, and we hope that our tools will give planners new ways to measure what is going on with city traffic."