Culture

Predicting influenza outbreaks just got a little easier, thanks to a new A.I.-powered forecasting tool developed by researchers at Stevens Institute of Technology.

By incorporating location data, the A.I. system is able to outperform other state-of-the-art forecasting methods, delivering up to an 11% increase in accuracy and predicting influenza outbreaks up to 15 weeks in advance.

Past forecasting tools have sought to spot patterns by studying the way infection rates change over time but Yue Ning, who led the work at Stevens, and her team used a graph neural network to encode flu infections as interconnected regional clusters. That allows their algorithm to tease out patterns in the way influenza infections flow from one region to another, and also to use patterns spotted in one region to inform its predictions in other locations.

"Capturing the interplay of space and time lets our mechanism identify hidden patterns and predict influenza outbreaks more accurately than ever before," said Ning, an associate professor of computer science. "By enabling better resource allocation and public health planning, this tool will have a big impact on how we cope with influenza outbreaks."

Ning and her team trained their A.I. tool using real-world state and regional data from the U.S. and Japan, then tested its forecasts against historical flu data. Other models can use past data to forecast flu outbreaks a week or two in advance, but incorporating location data allows far more robust predictions over a period of several months. Their work is reported in the Oct. 19 - 23 Proceedings of the 29th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management.

"Our model is also extremely transparent -- where other A.I. forecasts use 'black box' algorithms, we're able to explain why our system has made specific predictions, and how it thinks outbreaks in different locations are impacting one another," Ning explained.

In the future, similar techniques could also be used to predict waves of COVID-19 infections. Since COVID-19 is a novel virus, there's no historical data with which to train an A.I. algorithm; still, Ning pointed out, vast amounts of location-coded COVID-19 data are now being collected on a daily basis. "That could allow us to train algorithms more quickly as we continue to study the COVID-19 pandemic," Ning said.

Ning is now working to improve her influenza-forecasting algorithm by incorporating new data sources. One key challenge is figuring out how to account for public health interventions such as vaccination education, mask-wearing and social distancing. "It's complicated, because health policies are enacted in response to outbreak severity, but also shape the course of those outbreaks," Ning explained. "We need more research to learn about how health policies and pandemics interact."

Another challenge is identifying which data genuinely predicts flu outbreaks, and which is just noise. Ning's team found that flight traffic patterns don't usefully predict regional flu outbreaks, for instance, but that weather data was more promising. "We're also constrained by the information that's publicly available," Ning said. "Having location-coded data on vaccination rates would be very helpful, but sourcing that information isn't easy."

So far, the A.I. tool hasn't been used in real-world health planning, but Ning said that it's just a matter of time until hospitals and policymakers begin using A.I. algorithms to deliver more robust responses to flu outbreaks. "Our algorithm will keep learning and improving as we collect new data, allowing us to deliver even more accurate long-term predictions," Ning said. "As we work to cope with future pandemics, these technologies will have a big impact."

A new study led by the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa's Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) revealed that diversity in Hawaiian corals is likely driven by co-evolution between the coral host, the algal symbiont, and the microbial community.

As coral reef ecosystems have rapidly collapsed around the globe over the past few decades, there is widespread concern that corals might not be able to adapt to changing climate conditions, and much of the biodiversity in these ecosystems could be lost before it is studied and understood. Coral reefs are among the most highly biodiverse ecosystems on earth, yet it is not clear what drives speciation and diversification in the ocean, where there are few physical barriers that could separate populations.

The team of researchers used massive amounts of metagenomic sequencing data to try to understand what may be some of the major drivers of adaptation and variation in corals.

"Corals have incredible variation with such a wide range of shapes, sizes, and colors that it's really hard for even the best trained experts to be able to sort out different species," said Zac Forsman, lead author of the study and HIMB assistant researcher. "On top of that, some corals lose their algal symbionts, turning stark white or 'bleached' and die during marine heatwaves, while a similar looking coral right next to it seems fine. We wanted to try to better understand what might be driving some of this incredible variation that you see on a typical coral reef."

Forsman and colleagues examined genetic relationships within the coral genus Porites, which forms the foundation and builds many coral reefs around the world. They were able to identify genes from the coral, algal symbionts, and bacteria that were most strongly associated with coral bleaching and other factors such as the shape (morphology) of the coral colony. They found relatively few genes associated with bleaching, but many associated with distance from shore, and colony morphologies that dominate different habitats.

"We sought out to better understand coral bleaching and place it in the context of other sources of variation in a coral species complex. Unexpectedly, we found evidence that these corals have adapted and diverged very recently over depth and distance from shore. The algal symbionts and microbes were also in the process of diverging, implying that co-evolution is involved. It's like we caught them in the act of adaptation and speciation."

"These corals have more complex patterns of variation related to habitat than we could have imagined and learning about how corals have diversified over various habitats can teach us about how they might adapt in the future," he explained. "Since variation is the raw material for adaptation, there is hope for the capacity of these corals to adapt to future conditions, but only if we can slow down the pace of loss."

VANCOUVER, Wash. - Reports of racial discrimination against Asians and Asian-Americans have increased since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States, coinciding with an increase in reported negative health symptoms.

That's according to a new paper written by Washington State University researchers recently published in the journal Stigma and Health.

"When COVID hit, we were quickly hearing anecdotes on social media and in traditional media about Asian-Americans experiencing a variety of racial abuse," said Sara Waters, an assistant professor in WSU's Department of Human Development on the Vancouver campus.

To look into the scope of those anecdotes, Waters and her graduate student, Suyeon Lee, a Ph.D. candidate in WSU's Prevention Science program, created a survey. Over 400 people responded, with almost 30% saying they experienced more discrimination since the pandemic started and 40% experienced more health impacts.

"We expected that people who experience racism would report more health issues," Waters said. "But we were surprised by just how much that increased."

The racial discrimination was above and beyond the increased stress levels experienced by the general public, Waters said.

The survey contained questions about four mental and physical health outcomes: anxiety, depressive and physical symptoms, and sleep difficulties. It also asked people to provide specific examples of racial discrimination they faced. Responses ranged from microaggressions, like people glaring or changing lines at a supermarket, to more direct actions.

"Some of those were very hard to read," Waters said. "One person described walking past a group of children who told her to go back to her country and called her 'Coronavirus.' Another was threatened with a knife. Terms like 'kung flu' and 'China virus' were very common in responses. Words used often by people in leadership positions in our country are filtering down."

Experiencing those kinds of abuse impacts a person's mental and physical health in a variety of ways. For physical health, Lee and Waters asked people to rate any increases in symptoms like headaches, backaches, nausea, and other general physical maladies. For sleep difficulties, they used the established Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index.

"Sleep can be an important indicator of mental well-being," Waters said.

One way the survey results showed people can buffer the impact that discrimination has on health is by having social support.

Respondents who reported increased discrimination, but also report having more social support, had fewer health, especially depression, symptoms.

"That's another problem. In this era of quarantine and social distancing, it can be harder to get that beneficial social support," Waters said.

The researchers conducted their survey over a few weeks in May and June, starting roughly two months after the pandemic hit the U.S.

At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, there were high hopes that hot summer temperatures could reduce its spread. Although summer didn't bring widespread relief, the connection between the weather and COVID-19 continues to be a hot topic.

The link between weather and COVID-19 is complicated. Weather influences the environment in which the coronavirus must survive before infecting a new host. But it also influences human behavior, which moves the virus from one host to another.

Research led by The University of Texas at Austin is adding some clarity on weather's role in COVID-19 infection, with a new study finding that temperature and humidity do not play a significant role in coronavirus spread.

That means whether it's hot or cold outside, the transmission of COVID-19 from one person to the next depends almost entirely on human behavior.

"The effect of weather is low and other features such as mobility have more impact than weather," said Dev Niyogi, a professor at UT Austin's Jackson School of Geosciences and Cockrell School of Engineering who led the research. "In terms of relative importance, weather is one of the last parameters."

The research was published Oct. 26 in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

Co-authors are Sajad Jamshidi, a research assistant at Purdue University, and Maryam Baniasad, a doctoral candidate at Ohio State University.

The study defined weather as "equivalent air temperature," which combines temperature and humidity into a single value. The scientists than analyzed how this value tracked with coronavirus spread in different areas from March to July 2020, with their scale ranging from U.S. states and counties, to countries, regions and the world at large.

At the county and state scale, the researchers also investigated the relationship between coronavirus infection and human behavior, using cellphone data to study travel habits.

The study examined human behavior in a general sense and did not attempt to connect it to how the weather may have influenced it. At each scale, the researchers adjusted their analyses so that population differences did not skew results.

Across scales, the scientists found that the weather had nearly no influence. When it was compared with other factors using a statistical metric that breaks down the relative contribution of each factor toward a particular outcome, the weather's relative importance at the county scale was less than 3%, with no indication that a specific type of weather promoted spread over another.

In contrast, the data showed the clear influence of human behavior -- and the outsized influence of individual behaviors. Taking trips and spending time away from home were the top two contributing factors to COVID-19 growth, with a relative importance of about 34% and 26% respectively. The next two important factors were population and urban density, with a relative importance of about 23% and 13% respectively.

"We shouldn't think of the problem as something driven by weather and climate," Jamshidi said. "We should take personal precautions, be aware of the factors in urban exposure."

Baniasad, a biochemist and pharmacist, said that assumptions about how coronavirus would respond with weather are largely informed by studies conducted in laboratory settings on related viruses. She said that this study illustrates the importance of studies that analyze how the coronavirus spreads through human communities.

"When you study something in lab, it's a supervised environment. It's hard to scale up to society," she said. "This was our first motivation to do a more broad study."

Marshall Shepherd, an atmospheric sciences professor at the University of Georgia who was not part of the study, said that the research offers important insights about weather and coronavirus across scales.

"This important work clarifies some of the innuendo about weather-COVID-19 connections and highlights the need to address science challenges at the appropriate scales," Shepherd said.

Niyogi said that one of the key lessons of the coronavirus pandemic is the importance of analyzing phenomena at the "human scale"-- the scale at which humans live their day-to-day lives. He said that this research is an example of this type of perspective.

"COVID, it is claimed, could change everything," Niyogi said. "We have been looking at weather and climate outlooks as a system that we scale down, down, down and then seeing how it might affect humans. Now, we are flipping the case and upscaling, starting at human exposure scale and then going outwards. This is a new paradigm we will need for studying virus exposure and human environmental modeling systems involving new sensing and AI-like techniques."

DES PLAINES, IL -- A study published in the most recent issue of Academic Emergency Medicine (AEM), journal showed an increased risk of restraint use in Black patients compared with white patients in the emergency setting. The risk was not increased in other races or Hispanic/Latino ethnicity.

The lead author of the single-center study is Dr. Kristina Schnitzer MD, a psychiatrist in the Schizophrenia Clinical and Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital and an instructor at Harvard Medical School. The findings of the study are discussed with two of the authors in episode 43 of AEM Early Access, a FOAMed podcast collaboration between the Academic Emergency Medicine Journal and Brown Emergency Medicine.

The increased risk of restraint was present in Black patients after controlling for other variables, including repeated visits, using a specialized regression technique. Concerning data also showed that 7-8 percent of all patients with psychosis or bipolar disorder, and six percent of all homeless patients were restrained. The study also identifies that there is an increased risk of patients to be restrained who are on public insurance or uninsured.

The study results warrant a careful examination of current practices and potential biases in utilization of restraint in emergency settings.

AUSTIN, Texas -- A new type of soil created by engineers at The University of Texas at Austin can pull water from the air and distribute it to plants, potentially expanding the map of farmable land around the globe to previously inhospitable places and reducing water use in agriculture at a time of growing droughts.

As published in ACS Materials Letters, the team's atmospheric water irrigation system uses super-moisture-absorbent gels to capture water from the air. When the soil is heated to a certain temperature, the gels release the water, making it available to plants. When the soil distributes water, some of it goes back into the air, increasing humidity and making it easier to continue the harvesting cycle.

"Enabling free-standing agriculture in areas where it's hard to build up irrigation and power systems is crucial to liberating crop farming from the complex water supply chain as resources become increasingly scarce," said Guihua Yu, associate professor of materials science in the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Each gram of soil can extract approximately 3-4 grams of water. Depending on the crops, approximately 0.1 to 1 kilogram of the soil can provide enough water to irrigate about a square meter of farmland.

The gels in the soil pull water out of the air during cooler, more humid periods at night. Solar heat during the day activates the water-containing gels to release their contents into soil.

The team ran experiments on the roof of the Cockrell School's Engineering Teaching Center building at UT Austin to test the soil. They found that the hydrogel soil was able to retain water better than sandy soils found in dry areas, and it needed far less water to grow plants.

During a four-week experiment, the team found that its soil retained approximately 40% of the water quantity it started with. In contrast, the sandy soil had only 20% of its water left after just one week.

In another experiment, the team planted radishes in both types of soil. The radishes in the hydrogel soil all survived a 14-day period without any irrigation beyond an initial round to make sure the plants took hold. Radishes in the sandy soil were irrigated several times during the first four days of the experiment. None of the radishes in the sandy soil survived more than two days after the initial irrigation period.

"Most soil is good enough to support the growth of plants," said Fei Zhao, a postdoctoral researcher in Yu's research group who led the study with Xingyi Zhou and Panpan Zhang. "It's the water that is the main limitation, so that is why we wanted to develop a soil that can harvest water from the ambient air."

The water-harvesting soil is the first big application of technology that Yu's group has been working on for more than two years. Last year, the team developed the capability to use gel-polymer hybrid materials that work like "super sponges," extracting large amounts of water from the ambient air, cleaning it and quickly releasing it using solar energy.

The researchers envision several other applications of the technology. It could potentially be used for cooling solar panels and data centers. It could expand access to drinking water, either through individual systems for households or larger systems for big groups such as workers or soldiers.

TORONTO, ON - The era of COVID-19 and the need to constantly wash one's hands and sanitize things have brought microbes to new levels of scrutiny, particularly for their impact on an individual's health.

While associations between microbes and their hosts, from the beneficial - think probiotics in yogurt - to the harmful - such as with viruses spread by touch - have long been known, little is known about how microbes evolve and how their evolution affects the health of their hosts.

Now, researchers at the University of Toronto and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have found that as microbes evolve and adapt to their unique hosts, they become less beneficial to hosts of other genotypes.

The findings suggest that there is probably not one universally healthy microbiome. Rather, transplanted microbes might need time to adapt to a new host before they bring benefits.

"There is this prevailing idea that the 'survival of the fittest' means that individuals should reap the benefits others have to offer without reciprocating," says Megan Frederickson, associate professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto, and senior author of a study published in Science. "We found that over time, microbes became better adapted to their hosts through the evolution of more, rather than less, cooperation."

The researchers, led by Frederickson and lead author Rebecca Batstone, a graduate of Frederickson's lab and now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, set out to learn what happens to microbes when paired with the same host across multiple generations of that host.

Their first step was to grow several hundred specimens of the clover-like Medicago truncatula plant in a greenhouse, giving each an initial mixture of two strains of the nitrogen-fixing bacteria Ensifer meliloti. Subsequently, they re-planted new seeds into the same pots, and repeated the process for a total of five plant generations.

After a year in the greenhouse, the researchers grew a new batch of plants, and tested the evolved microbes on them, mixing and matching different evolved microbes and different hosts. They compared how well the plants grew and how many associations they formed when they were given the original or evolved microbes, and when they were given microbes that evolved on different hosts.

Finally, the researchers sequenced the entire genomes of original and evolved microbes to see how they differed genetically.

"When we put microbes from the beginning and the end of the experiment back onto hosts, we found they did best with the same hosts they evolved on, suggesting they adapted to their local host," said Batstone. "The derived microbes were more beneficial when they shared an evolutionary history with their host."

The researchers say the finding suggests that evolution might favour cooperation and that scientists might be able to use experimental evolution in a laboratory setting to make microbes that provide more benefits to their hosts.

"When plants or even animals arrive in new environments, perhaps as invasive species or because they are responding to a changing climate, the microbes they encounter may be initially poor partners. But these microbes might rapidly adapt and develop a more beneficial relationship," said Frederickson.

North America's beloved Monarch butterflies are known for their annual, multi-generation migrations in which individual insects can fly for thousands of miles. But Monarchs have also settled in some locations where their favorite food plants grow year round, so they no longer need to migrate.

Micah Freedman, a graduate student at the Center for Population Biology at UC Davis, took a deep dive into museum collections to see how migration has shaped the species. Monarchs are native to North America, but have also established non-migrating populations in the Caribbean, Central and South America, and islands in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. These island-hopping butterflies may have been blown by storms before being lucky enough to reach dry land.

Monarchs that established new, non-migrating populations also had those larger wings. But over time, the wings of these colonists got smaller.

Selection at work in opposing directions

The shift between longer and shorter wings shows two opposite selection forces at work, Freedman and colleagues wrote in a paper published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Migration selects for longer, larger forewings while non-migration seems to relax this and lead to smaller wings.

Alternatively, wing size could be influenced by other environmental factors depending on where butterflies are hatched and grow up. To test this, Freedman raised Monarch butterflies from non-migrating populations in Hawaii, Guam, Australia and Puerto Rico outdoors in Davis, California alongside native migrating Monarchs. The non-migrating butterflies retained their smaller wings, showing that the effect is due to genetics and not the rearing environment.

"Our findings provide a compelling example of how migration-associated traits may be favored during the early stages of range expansion, and also the rate of reductions in those same traits upon loss of migration," the authors wrote.

Today, the imminent climate change crisis demands a shift from conventionally used fossil fuels to efficient sources of green energy. This has led to researchers looking into the concept of "personalized energy," which would make on-site energy generation possible. For example, solar cells could possibly be integrated into windows, vehicles, cellphone screens, and other everyday products. But for this, it is important for the solar panels to be handy and transparent. To this end, scientists have recently developed "transparent photovoltaic" (TPV) devices--transparent versions of the traditional solar cell. Unlike the conventionally dark, opaque solar cells (which absorb visible light), TPVs make use of the "invisible" light that falls in the ultraviolet (UV) range.

Conventional solar cells can be either "wet type" (solution based) or "dry type" (made up of metal-oxide semiconductors). Of these, dry-type solar cells have a slight edge over the wet-type ones: they are more reliable, eco-friendly, and cost-effective. Moreover, metal-oxides are well-suited to make use of the UV light. Despite all this, however, the potential of metal-oxide TPVs has not been fully explored until now.

To this end, researchers from Incheon National University, Republic of Korea, came up with an innovative design for a metal-oxide-based TPV device. They inserted an ultra-thin layer of silicon (Si) between two transparent metal-oxide semiconductors with the goal of developing an efficient TPV device. These findings were published in a study in Nano Energy, which was made available online on August 10, 2020 (ahead of the scheduled final publication in the December 2020 issue). Prof Joondong Kim, who led the study, explains, "Our aim was to devise a high-power-producing transparent solar cell, by embedding an ultra-thin film of amorphous Si between zinc oxide and nickel oxide."

This novel design consisting of the Si film had three major advantages. First, it allowed for the utilization of longer-wavelength light (as opposed to bare TPVs). Second, it resulted in efficient photon collection. Third, it allowed for the faster transport of charged particles to the electrodes. Moreover, the design can potentially generate electricity even under low-light situations (for instance, on cloudy or rainy days). The scientists further confirmed the power-generating ability of the device by using it to operate the DC motor of a fan.

Based on these findings, the research team is optimistic that the real-life applicability of this new TPV design will soon be possible. As for potential applications, there are plenty, as Prof Kim explains, "We hope to extend the use of our TPV design to all kinds of material, right from glass buildings to mobile devices like electric cars, smartphones, and sensors." Not just this, the team is excited to take their design to the next level, by using innovative materials such as 2D semiconductors, nanocrystals of metal-oxides, and sulfide semiconductors. As Prof Kim concludes, "Our research is essential for a sustainable green future--especially to connect the clean energy system with no or minimal carbon footprint."

PITTSBURGH, Nov. 2, 2020 - University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine scientists have discovered the fastest way to identify potent, neutralizing human monoclonal antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

The method--as well as a trio of successful animal studies on an antibody called "Ab1"--are described today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Ab1 is on track for human clinical trials by early next year.

At any given time, the human body contains up to 10 billion different antibodies. With samples from a few hundred people, senior author Dimiter Dimitrov, Ph.D., director of Pitt's Center for Antibody Therapeutics (CAT), and his team over the last several years built multiple libraries containing a total of 1 trillion human antibodies. With such a large number, odds are that these libraries contain an effective antibody against any pathogen--the challenge is in identifying the right antibodies in the libraries, something the Pitt team has mastered.

"Making a diverse antibody library is an art," said co-author John Mellors, M.D., chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Pitt and UPMC. "Not everyone can do it. Dr. Dimitrov and his team not only identified potential therapies in record time, before most Americans were even aware that a pandemic was looming, but by publishing their method, they've also better prepared the world for future emerging diseases."

In contrast, the major method used this year to identify antibodies that neutralize SARS-CoV-2 was to find patients who have recovered from COVID-19, isolate their cells that produce antibodies against the virus and extract the antibodies from those cells. Large numbers of antibodies then must be screened to find those that bind most tightly to the virus, which adds more time to the discovery process. So while the Pitt team had identified Ab1 back in February, major companies didn't have their monoclonal antibodies until the end of March or early April.

When Chinese scientists published the genetic sequence for SARS-CoV-2 in January of this year, Dimitrov's team rapidly generated the virus's receptor binding domain--part of the spike protein that attaches to human cells--and used it as "bait" to pan their multiple libraries of monoclonal antibodies. Dimitrov decided to focus only on the receptor binding domain as a bait because his team was the first to identify it during the original SARS outbreak in 2003 and show that it is the most important part of the spike protein to attract potent neutralizing antibodies.

Like prospectors trying to find gold in rivers of silt during the California Gold Rush, Dimitrov's team panned their libraries against the spike protein receptor binding domain in February, quickly washing away useless antibodies and homing in on the most promising candidates, which block the virus from binding to the ACE2 receptor. The team struck "gold" in just six days.

Ab1 is a fully human monoclonal antibody that neutralizes SARS-CoV-2 by tightly binding to the virus, preventing it from infecting human cells. In tests on hamsters, regular mice and mice genetically engineered to express the human ACE2 receptor--the entry point of SARS-CoV-2 into cells--Ab1 was highly effective at preventing and treating COVID-19 or its animal analogue. Ab1 currently is in production and could be added to Operation Warp Speed or other human clinical trials as early as January 2021.

"The main differences between our rapid 'panning' method and the 'screening' process used by most companies this year to discover antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 is that panning is much quicker than screening, and we don't have to wait for infected patients to recover and make antibodies," Dimitrov said. "We found our monoclonal antibody in under a week in February, which validated how well our panning methods work. This will save precious time in getting antibody therapy into people the next time a deadly virus emerges."

Last month, Mellors and Dimitrov announced the discovery of Ab8, a smaller-sized but very potent antibody isolated from their antibody libraries by Wei Li, Ph.D., assistant director of the Center for Antibody Therapeutics, who also discovered Ab1. Ab8 isn't as far along in development as Ab1, but being a smaller molecule, it could potentially be administered subcutaneously or even through inhalation, which might make it more practical for widespread use.

Global warming of 2°C would lead to about 230 billion tonnes of carbon being released from the world's soil, new research suggests.

Global soils contain two to three times more carbon than the atmosphere, and higher temperatures speed up decomposition - reducing the amount of time carbon spends in the soil (known as "soil carbon turnover").

The new international research study, led by the University of Exeter, reveals the sensitivity of soil carbon turnover to global warming and subsequently halves uncertainty about this in future climate change projections.

The estimated 230 billion tonnes of carbon released at 2°C warming (above pre-industrial levels) is more than four times the total emissions from China, and more than double the emissions from the USA, over the last 100 years.

"Our study rules out the most extreme projections - but nonetheless suggests substantial soil carbon losses due to climate change at only 2°C warming, and this doesn't even include losses of deeper permafrost carbon," said co-author Dr Sarah Chadburn, of the University of Exeter.

This effect is a so-called "positive feedback" - when climate change causes knock-on effects that contribute to further climate change.

The response of soil carbon to climate change is the greatest area of uncertainty in understanding the carbon cycle in climate change projections.

To address this, the researchers used a new combination of observational data and Earth System Models - which simulate the climate and carbon cycle and subsequently make climate change predictions.

"We investigated how soil carbon is related to temperature in different locations on Earth to work out its sensitivity to global warming," said lead author Rebecca Varney, of the University of Exeter.

State-of-the-art models suggest an uncertainty of about 120 billion tonnes of carbon at 2°C global mean warming.

The study reduces this uncertainty to about 50 billion tonnes of carbon.

Co-author Professor Peter Cox, of Exeter's Global Systems Institute, said: "We have reduced the uncertainty in this climate change response, which is vital to calculating an accurate global carbon budget and successfully meeting Paris Agreement targets."

Why do most viral epidemics spread cyclically in autumn and winter in the globe's temperate regions? According to an interdisciplinary team of researchers of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, the University of Milan, the Lombardy regional agency for the environment and the Don Gnocchi Foundation, the answer is intimately related to our Sun: their theoretical model shows that both the prevalence and evolution of epidemics are strongly correlated with the amount of daily solar irradiation that hits a given location on the Earth at a given time of the year. The work of the Italian team was recently published in the iScience journal.

"Our model offers a simple answer to an important, yet still unsolved, scientific question", says Fabrizio Nicastro, INAF researcher and PI of the work. "Why do many viral respiratory epidemics, such as influenza, develop cyclically during autumn and winter only in the temperate regions of the globe's northern and southern hemispheres, while they seem to be present at all times - albeit with lower prevalence compared to the seasonal cycles in the temperate regions - in the equatorial belt? And what triggers and determines such seasonality? In our work, we propose that what causes the seasonality of airborne-transmitted epidemics is exactly the same mechanism that causes seasons on our Planet: the amount of daily solar irradiation on the Earth".

It is well known that ultraviolet (UV) light is able to deactivate viruses and bacteria of many different kinds. The solar UV light that reaches the Earth must therefore have some disinfecting power on the exposed parts of the Planet. The efficiency of the UV deactivation of a particular virus or bacterium depends on the virus or bacterium itself, but, for a given location on Earth, it is undoubtedly greater when the solar irradiation is stronger (summer) and lower when the solar irradiation is weaker (winter). Such cyclicality of the solar disinfecting action, with annual frequency, is able to constructively resonate with another frequency typical of epidemics: the loss of immunity of the virus's host due to its antigenic shift/drift. The combination of these two mechanisms triggers the seasonality of epidemics, on timescales that range from a few years to tens of years, depending on the antigenic frequency.

The model proposed by the Italian researchers reproduces the seasonality observed in different locations of the Earth accurately for epidemics with an intrinsic reproductive number (R0) lower than about 2 - an influenza typically has R0~1 - and is also able to model epidemics with a much larger intrinsic reproductive number, such as the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic with R0?3-4. These models predict high-intensity intermittent initial cycles, which eventually stabilize (on timescales that depend on the antigenic-shift frequency) onto seasonally-synchronized, moderate-intensity annual cycles.

"From an epidemiologic point of view, these models clarify an important and long-standing mystery: why do influenza epidemics disappear every year when the number of susceptible individuals is still very far from that needed to trigger the herd immunity mechanism?", adds Mario Clerici, Immunologist at the University of Milan and the Don Gnocchi Foundation.

"The Italian data of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemics can also be described accurately by our model - concludes Nicastro - but the predictive power of the model depends critically (other than on the implementation of new restriction measures) on the exact UV-B/A lethal doses for the Covid-19 virus, which our collaboration is about to measure".

Everything you ever really needed to know you learned back in kindergarten - that old saying gets some scientific support in a new study by researchers at Canada's Université de Montréal and Université Sainte-Anne.

"We've known for years that getting off to a good start in kindergarten leads to better achievement over the long-term," said lead author Caroline Fitzpatrick, an assistant professor of psychology at USA, in Nova Scotia.

"But now with our study we can really lock in the idea that early childhood skills help you achieve success and adopt a healthier lifestyle in emerging adulthood. And that's promising for society as a whole."

The study was published today in Pediatrics.

"Many children begin kindergarten inadequately prepared to benefit from classroom instruction," said senior author Linda Pagani, a professor at UdeM's School of Psycho-Education.

"Those who go in unprepared risk struggling throughout their academic journey. They arrive without the necessary tools in terms of cognitive skills, social skills and motor skills from physical activity", added Pagani, who is also Senior researcher at CHU Sainte-Justine pediatric hospital in Montreal.

Math skills important

Fitzpatrick and Pagani examined associations between kindergarten readiness and academic, psychological and health risks that mainfested themselves when a child reached the end of high school.

"Kindergarten math skills contributed to better end-of high-school achievement and a lower dropout risk, and that was supported by observations from teachers, who also noted a reduced risk of substance abuse later on, said Fitzpatrick.

"Kindergarten classroom engagement also predicted involvement in physical activity and a 65-per-cent drop in the risk of a child being overweight by age 17," added Pagani, who worked on the study with UdeM postdoctoral researcher Elroy Boers.

The authors came to their conclusions after examining Institut de la statistique du Québec data from a cohort of 2,000 children born in 1997 or 1998 who were part of the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Child Development .

At age 5, trained examiners assessed each child's knowledge of numbers and their receptive vocabulary. Each spring, teachers reported kindergarten classroom engagement, such as how a child did tasks, followed directions and worked with others. At age 17, participants reported on their academic grades, their feelings of connectedness, whether they abused drugs or alcohol, their involvement in physical activity, and their height and weight. The drop-out risk was also estimated for each participant based on their grades retention and engagement at school.

Confounding factors discarded

The researchers then analyzed the data to identify any significant link between kindergarten readiness and academic, psychological and health risks by the end of high school. They attempted to discard possible confounding factors by adjusting their analyses for key indicators in the children (their sex, weight per gestational age, non-verbal IQ and internalizing and externalizing behaviors) and in their families (parental involvement, maternal depression, immigration status, family configuration and socioeconomic status).

"Early childhood readiness forecasts a later protective edge in emerging adulthood and suggests that youngsters who begin school with the right preparedness gain a lifestyle advantage," said Fitzpatrick. "Our findings show a way to eliminate the established link between underachievement and disease by providing children with the conditions that will promote kindergarten readiness."

Added Pagani: "Promoting kindergarten readiness seems, over the long-term, to help reduce the lifestyle risks generated by dropping out of high school. Therefore, policies to promote and preserve children's early skills, such as providing stimulating childcare and diminishing family adversity, may thus represent a valuable policy strategy for governments to invest in."

Scientists from an international group led by the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences and Yokohama City University have discovered that a pair of proteins play a key role in allowing an important type of functional non-coding RNA, known as SINEUPs, to act to promote their target messenger RNA.SINEUPs are a recently discovered type of RNA that work specifically to amplify the production of proteins by messenger RNAs, and hence could be important for developing therapeutics for diseases where a certain protein is insufficiently synthesized.

While it was once believed that DNA was simply transcribed into RNA which was then translated into proteins, it is now known that RNA plays a more complex role. While nearly all DNA is transcribed into RNA, it turns out that only 30% of RNA is translated into proteins. The remaining 70% play roles such as enhancing gene expression, epigenetic regulation and--in the case of SINEUPs--up-regulating the production of proteins by target RNA.

The current research, published in Nucleic Acids Research, looks at a certain type of non-coding RNA, known as SINEUPs. These are essentially "genetic parasites" that have incorporated themselves as repeating elements within the genome. Though it is understood that they function to amplify the activity of the messenger RNAs that they are associated with, the mechanism behind this activity remained a mystery.

According to Hazuki Takahashi of the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences, one of the corresponding authors of the paper, "We wanted to figure out the mechanism for the action of SINEUPs. Understanding how these RNAs work would be a tremendous breakthrough, because there are a number of diseases caused by a failure of genes to create sufficient quantities of a certain protein, and knowing how SINEUPs function could provide us with a way to remedy this."

The group did have clues from their previous research. They had noted that the SINEUPs only affected the action of their target messenger RNA when they had been transported, together with the messenger RNA, out of the cell nucleus and into the cytosol where the protein production takes place.

Through a series of experiments involving both natural SINEUPs and artificial SINEUPs fitted with a fluorescent protein to allow the team to examine their movements, they discovered that a pair of RNA binding proteins, called PTBP1 and HNRNPK, interact with the SINEUPs both to allow their transport and to make it possible for them to act upon the messenger RNA. These two proteins are quite interesting as they have been found to work together in a variety of biological functions such as maintaining the pluripotency of cells. They are also biologically very important, as it has been shown that knocking out the HNRNPK gene in mice is lethal embryonically.

According to Piero Carninci of the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences, the leader of the research group, "We are very pleased to have discovered the role of these binding proteins in the activities of SINEUPs. Because of the ability of SINEUPs specifically to modulate the translation of targeted mRNAs as needed, they are ideal for future therapies in humans where increasing the level of a specific protein could have a therapeutic effect. There are hundreds of diseases that would benefit from SINEUPs treatments, caused by deficiency of one functional copy of a gene: these diseases are known with the general terms of haploinsufficiencies. In addition, SINEUPs have potential to enhance currently limited antibody drug production. Understanding the mechanism of SINEUPs and other functional long non-coding RNAs mechanism is a very important first step for future applications of these RNAs for improving human health."

A study published today in the journal Science Advances has revealed that the United States ranks as high as third among countries contributing to coastal plastic pollution when taking into account its scrap plastic exports as well as the latest figures on illegal dumping and littering in the country. The new research challenges the once-held assumption that the United States is adequately "managing" - that is, collecting and properly landfilling, recycling or otherwise containing - its plastic waste. A previous study using 2010 data that did not account for plastic scrap exports had ranked the United States 20th, globally, in its contribution to ocean plastic pollution from mismanaged waste.

Using plastic waste generation data from 2016 - the latest available global numbers - scientists from Sea Education Association, DSM Environmental Services, University of Georgia, and Ocean Conservancy calculated that more than half of all plastics collected for recycling (1.99 million metric tons of 3.91 million metric tons collected) in the United States were shipped abroad. Of this, 88% of exports went to countries struggling to effectively manage, recycle, or dispose of plastics; and between 15-25% was low-value or contaminated, meaning it was effectively unrecyclable. Taking these factors into account, the researchers estimated that up to 1 million metric tons of U.S.-generated plastic waste ended up polluting the environment beyond its own borders.

"For years, so much of the plastic we have put into the blue bin has been exported for recycling to countries that struggle to manage their own waste, let alone the vast amounts delivered from the United States," said lead author Dr. Kara Lavender Law, research professor of oceanography at Sea Education Association. "And when you consider how much of our plastic waste isn't actually recyclable because it is low-value, contaminated or difficult to process, it's not surprising that a lot of it ends up polluting the environment."

Using 2016 data, the paper also estimated that 2-3% of all plastic waste generated in the U.S. - between 0.91 and 1.25 million metric tons - was either littered or illegally dumped into the environment domestically. Combined with waste exports, this means the United States contributed up to 2.25 million metric tons of plastics into the environment. Of this, up to 1.5 million metric tons of plastics ended up in coastal environments (within 50 km of a coastline), where proximity to the shore increases the likelihood of plastics entering the ocean by wind or through waterways. This ranks the United States as high as third globally in contributing to coastal plastic pollution.

"The United States generates the most plastic waste of any other country in the world, but rather than looking the problem in the eye, we have outsourced it to developing countries and become a top contributor to the ocean plastics crisis," said Nick Mallos, senior director of Ocean Conservancy's Trash Free Seas® program and a co-author of the study. "The solution has to start at home. We need to create less, by cutting out unnecessary single-use plastics; we need to create better, by developing innovative new ways to package and deliver goods; and where plastics are inevitable, we need to drastically improve our recycling rates."

The study noted that although the United States accounted for just 4% of the global population in 2016, it generated 17% of all plastic waste. On average, Americans generated nearly twice as much plastic waste per capita as residents of the EU.

"Previous research has provided global values for plastic input into the environment and coastal areas, but detailed analyses like this one are important for individual countries to further assess their contributions," said Dr. Jenna Jambeck, Distinguished Professor at the University of Georgia's College of Engineering and a co-author of the study. "In the case of the United States, it is critically important that we examine our own backyard and take responsibility for our global plastic footprint."

"For some time, it has been cheaper for the United States to ship its recyclables abroad rather than handle them here at home, but that has come at great cost to our environment," said Natalie Starr, principal at DSM Environmental Services and a co-author of the study. "We need to change the math by investing in recycling technologies and collection programs, as well as accelerating research and development to improve the performance and drive down the costs of more sustainable plastics and packaging alternatives to address the current challenge."