Culture

New research released from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus proposes that Alzheimer's disease may be driven by the overactivation of fructose made in the brain.

The study was published in the Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience and outlined the hypothesis that Alzheimer's disease is driven largely by Western culture that has resulted in excessive fructose metabolism in the brain.

The paper brought together an interdisciplinary team of neurologists, neuorscientists and experts on sugar metabolism, and presents evidence from extensive data and research conducted in Alzheimer's disease that links high fructose levels in the brain to the disease. It also helps explain associations, such as why diabetes and obesity are associated with an increased risk for Alzheimer's disease.

"In essence, we propose that Alzheimer's disease is a modern disease driven by changes in dietary lifestyle in which fructose can disrupt cerebral metabolism and neuronal function," said author Richard Johnson, MD, professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine on the CU Anschutz Medical Campus.

Johnson outlines data that showcases the overactivation of cerebral fructose metabolism that can drive Alzheimer's disease. The source of fructose is largely from endogenous production in the brain. Thus, the reduction in mitochondrial energy production is hampered by neuronal glycolysis that is inadequate, resulting in progressive loss of cerebral energy levels required for neurons to remain functional and viable.

"By outlining consistent evidence, we're hoping to inspire researchers to continue exploring the relationship between fructose in the brain and Alzheimer's disease. New treatments aimed at inhibiting intracerebral fructose metabolism could provide a novel way to prevent and treat this disease," Johnson adds.

In one of the scenarios outlined by Johnson and his collaborators, glucose hypometabolism increased oxidative stress, and a progressive loss of mitochondria occured, leading eventually to neuronal dysfunction and death. In this scenario, the amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles are part of the inflammatory response and participate in injury, but are not the central factors driving the disease. Johnson mentions that theoretically, inhibiting enzymes in the brain that are involved in fructose production or metabolism might provide novel ways to prevent and treat Alzheimer's disease.

The natural world is astonishingly complex. After centuries of study, scientists still have much to learn about how all the species in an ecosystem coexist, for example. New research on microbial communities published in Nature Communications helps light the way to answering this fundamental question in ecology.

"What I wanted to know is, sure communities are very complicated, there are many species interacting, but if we try to describe the most important forces shaping this community, what are they?" says author Jacopo Grilli, a biological physicist at the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy and a former Omidyar Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute in the U.S.

Grilli, whose work focuses on understanding complex phenomena by using simple rules, knew that to begin to answer that question, he needed to focus on ecological communities from many different environments, and for which a wealth of data already existed. It's far easier to study a glass of ocean water or a spoonful of soil than a patch of forest, he explains. "Ecology is traditionally a data-poor discipline. But in the case of microbial communities, it's much easier to get a lot of data on these communities, across several conditions," Grilli says. "Microbial communities are everywhere. They are all around us, outside and inside us. So they contribute to many fundamental ecological processes around the world, and they determine in some part our health and well-being. Their impact on our lives and on our planet is immense."

In parsing the abundance and diversity of bacteria in a variety of tiny worlds using a simple mathematical model, Grilli's research suggests that environmental variability is the main determinant of whether a species is present or absent in a microbial community, and that environmental change -- such as a change in temperature or nutrients -- is the primary driver of fluctuations in the abundance of a species. "That sort of suggests the players are different -- the species that are in our gut versus the species that are in the ocean are different -- but the forces that shape them are the same," Grilli says.

He also identified three key laws that help explain how the number of species in an ecosystem fluctuates over time. These laws can be used to predict a species presence or absence and the diversity in a system.

While the size, complexity, and dearth of data for, say, a forest ecosystem makes it difficult to extrapolate the findings to other systems, Grilli says these laws can be used as a starting point for investigations of bigger ecosystems.

"When we look at these bacterial communities, the number of individuals is huge compared to the forest next to our backyard," he says. For example, the number of bacterial cells in our colon is ten times the number of trees in the world. "So when we understand something about the ecology of bacteria, we are looking at the ecology of something that is at the spatial and temporal scale of our planet. Every hypothesis in the context of micro-communities provides a starting point for other communities. And it's obvious why, in a time when we see a huge decline in biodiversity at the global scale, understanding something more about ecology and in such a large scale is important."

Grilli is now building on this work to better understand interactions among microbial species.

Grilli adds that while he is the sole author of the paper, the research was informed by input from the many scientists from diverse disciplines he met while he was a fellow at SFI. "If I didn't spend the time at SFI, where I had the opportunity to discuss and collaborate, I don't think this paper would have existed," he says. "It's the result of many conversations and the environment."

In a new study published in the esteemed journal JAMA researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital have examined the association between a positive SARS-CoV-2 test during pregnancy and complications in mothers and their newborn babies. Almost two out of three pregnant women who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 were asymptomatic and the researchers found no higher prevalence of complications during delivery or of ill-health in the neonates. However, preeclampsia was more common in infected women.

On 25 March, Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden launched a screening programme (PCR test) for the new coronavirus for all women admitted for delivery. The researchers behind the present study have collected these data and linked them to data from the Swedish Pregnancy Register for all 2,682 women who gave birth at the hospital between March 25 and July 24, 2020.

In order to investigate the association between test positivity and medical outcomes in both mother and neonate, the researchers compared test-positive women with test-negative women, matching the two groups for age, BMI, parity, educational level, country of birth, smoking status, co-habitation and pre-pregnancy health status.

A total of 156 women (5.8 per cent) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. Out of these women, 65 per cent were asymptomatic. That the majority of test-positive pregnant women were asymptomatic is in line with other research results where screening has been used. There was no statistically significant difference in terms of mode of delivery, haemorrhage, use of epidural, preterm birth, length of hospital stay or breastfeeding between infected and not infected women. Nor was there any difference between the groups regarding the infants' Apgar scores or birth weight.

Women who tested positive for the new coronavirus had, for reasons that remain unclear, a lower prevalence of induced labour (18.7 per cent, as opposed to 29.6 per cent in the test-negative women) and a higher prevalence of preeclampsia (7.7 per cent versus 4.3 per cent).

"One possible reason for the latter is that both preeclampsia and COVID-19 impact several organs and can present similar symptoms," says the study's lead author Mia Ahlberg, midwife at Theme Women's Health, Pregnancy and Childbirth, Karolinska University Hospital, and researcher at the Department of Medicine, Karolinska Institutet (Solna).

The fact that the majority of the test-positive women were asymptomatic likely affect the results of the study, Dr Ahlberg explains.

"The proportion of women with symptoms was too small to be able to investigate if these women have a higher risk of complications," she says. "There are several reports of pregnant women who develop severe COVID-19 with adverse outcomes. Larger studies should be conducted to be able to identify if women with symptoms and different degrees of symptoms constitute a risk group for adverse outcomes such as preterm birth."

The study also showed that the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 was higher in women with lower education (14.2 per cent with 12 years' schooling) and higher in women born in Africa or the Middle East (10.0 per cent) than in women born in the Nordic countries, including Sweden (3.9 per cent).

LOWELL, Mass. - In the wake of outrage across the nation and racial justice protests spurred by the deaths and injuries of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Jacob Blake and other Black Americans, more than half of Americans believe policing in the country is not fair, according to a new national poll released today by the UMass Lowell Center for Public Opinion.

The center conducted an independent, nonpartisan national survey asking 1,000 respondents about race, discrimination and systemic racism and found from policing, to the economy to the workplace, race divides Americans' views of many issues.

A majority of American adults polled think that policing in this country is not fair - 51 percent say that Blacks are treated less fairly than whites in their interactions with police, compared to 41 percent who say they are treated the same. Another 7 percent say whites are treated less fairly than Blacks. Among Black respondents, the perception that Blacks are treated less fairly is higher, at 73 percent, while nearly half of white respondents, 48 percent, think Blacks are treated less fairly than whites.

Among white respondents, there is a clear split in answers to this question by party identification, ideology, age and how a respondent scores on racial resentment, a metric political scientists often use to represent symbolic racism. Democrats, liberals, Americans younger than 50, and those who score low on the racial resentment scale are all far more likely than Republicans, conservatives, Americans older than 50, and those scoring high in racial resentment to think that Blacks are treated less fairly than whites by the police, the poll found.

When asked about police shootings and the effect on public discourse, Americans are divided: About 44 percent believe such an incident raises important issues about race that should be discussed, but 43 percent said police shootings are getting too much attention. Only 14 percent of Blacks surveyed said shootings are getting more attention than they deserve and 70 percent of Blacks thought shootings raised important issues on race. Four in 10 whites say shootings raise important issues but 49 percent say they are receiving undue attention. Racially resentful white Americans overwhelmingly (88 percent) said shootings caused race to get attention that was overblown. Racially progressive white Americans almost unanimously agreed that such incidents raised important issues about race.

The poll found many different experiences reported by respondents in their interactions with police based on race, whether white, Black or Latino. Fifteen percent of all respondents said they were treated poorly by police because of their race, nearly equal numbers said they received preferential treatment (12 percent) because of their race, while the vast majority reported no difference in treatment because of their race. However, Black respondents (38 percent) were more than five times as likely as white respondents (7 percent) to say they were treated poorly by the police because of their race. Similar results were seen for Hispanic/Latino respondents, 31 percent of whom reported being treated poorly by police because of their race. Only 7 percent of white respondents said they were treated poorly because of their race.

"This finding is particularly noteworthy. The idea in this country that there is discrimination in law enforcement does not come from the news for many people of color - it comes from personal experiences," said Joshua Dyck, director of the Center for Public Opinion and associate professor of political science.

As a remedy to such issues, a majority of Americans polled do not support efforts to defund the police. Fifty-four percent said police budgets should be left as they are. However, a majority of Blacks polled, 52 percent, support reallocating funds from police budgets.

When asked about creating a citizen review board at the municipal level made up of racially representative community members to review police actions, the majority of Americans polled - 65 percent - favor or strongly favor the idea. The idea is more popular among Blacks (52 percent) vs. whites (33 percent).

A central tenet of the American Dream is that hard work brings about professional success, but Blacks are less likely to say they can access jobs and Black respondents were twice as likely to say that they strongly disagree with the notion that their hard work directly contributes to their success (18 percent of Blacks vs. 9 percent of whites).

Blacks surveyed also reported having to work harder to get their jobs.

Overall, a slight majority of all Americans polled said that Blacks often face hurdles such as discrimination when looking for a job. Fifty-three percent of Americans say Blacks face job discrimination, 13 percent are unsure and 34 percent say there is no discrimination. Eighty-three percent of Blacks polled said that Blacks face discrimination and only 7 percent say Blacks have the same chance as whites, compared to 41 percent of whites who said Blacks and whites have the same chance.

Overall, 56 percent of Americans polled favor affirmative action programs and 44 percent oppose them. Eighty-four percent of Blacks polled are in favor of affirmative action.

A third of Americans, overall, believe that Blacks and whites are treated differently on the job and 58 percent said there is equal treatment. There was marked difference in the opinions of Blacks and whites polled: 64 percent of whites said everyone receives equal treatment, compared to 21 percent of blacks. Seventy-three percent of Blacks polled said Blacks are treated less fairly, compared to 26 percent of whites. Asked if they were ever treated differently at work because of their race, 76 percent of whites said no compared to 40 percent of Black respondents. Fifty-two percent of Black respondents said they have at some point on the job been treated poorly because of their race, compared to 15 percent of white respondents.

When asked how Blacks and whites are treated in shops or businesses, 60 percent of Americans said they feel both are treated the same, but while 66 percent of whites believe that is the case, only 25 percent of Blacks agree. Sixty-three percent of Blacks polled said they are treated less fairly.

Thirty-four percent of Americans said they believe that the educational playing field is equal. Eighty-one percent of Black respondents said they see education as unequal and only 10 percent said their children have the same opportunity as white children. Whites are four times as likely to believe America's children start out on equal footing: 41 percent of whites believe the quality of education is the same for Black and white students and less than a majority (44 percent) recognizes education as a cause of inequality.

The poll found Americans are divided about government action to improve the social and economic condition of Blacks. A slight plurality of respondents says some help is needed (43 percent), but the majority (57 percent) are either undecided or opposed to systemic help. Blacks are more likely than whites to support government intervention on their behalf (66 percent vs. 40 percent) and are half as likely to say no government help is warranted (21 percent vs. 40 percent).

"To me the biggest take-away from this survey is that our data show that whites do not connect the disadvantages faced by Blacks to their own advantage. Whites have yet to understand the full extent of the privileges structural racism bestows upon them. While many whites readily say that Blacks are discriminated against, they do not see how the lack of opportunity for Blacks translates into more opportunities for whites," said Mona Kleinberg, assistant professor of political science who designed and analyzed the poll, along with political science major Lindsey Kilpatrick of Manilus, N.Y., and Maddi Hertz, a 2020 graduate from Andover. "Making the connection that when one group receives less another group gets more is what whites need to see more clearly if we want to end white dominance in the U.S."

"By studying what people believe and highlighting differences through in-depth scientific public opinion polling, we are seeking to add to ongoing and much-needed discussions in this country of racism, social justice and discrimination. Our poll uncovers much in the different perspectives and experiences of whites and Blacks, and in the varying policy attitudes of Americans who believe that we have serious problems with racism and discrimination in this country and those who do not. We hope that this information is useful to the ongoing discourse on how to make our society a more just and equitable one," said Dyck.

More detailed poll results - including how ideology and the concept of "racial resentment" affect views - are available at http://www.uml.edu/polls, along with topline and methodology. The independent, nonpartisan poll was conducted by the UMass Lowell Center for Public Opinion using the latest technology and highest standards. The center is a member of the American Association for Public Opinion Research's Transparency Initiative and presents events and polls on political and social issues that provide unique opportunities for civic engagement, experiential learning and research.

The poll surveyed 1,000 American adults. The poll was designed and analyzed by the Center for Public Opinion and fielded by YouGov from Aug. 20 through Aug. 25. The adjusted margin of error is plus or minus 4.0 percent. Full poll methodology is available at http://www.uml.edu/polls.

UMass Lowell is a national research university offering its more than 18,000 students bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in business, education, engineering, fine arts, health, humanities, sciences and social sciences. UMass Lowell delivers high-quality educational programs and personal attention from leading faculty and staff, all of which prepare graduates to be leaders in their communities and around the globe. http://www.uml.edu

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Viral and bacterial pathogens wield pathogenic or virulent proteins that interact with high-value targets inside human cells, attacking what is known as the host interactome. The host interactome is the network map of all the protein-protein interactions inside cells.

Such networks have been studied in organisms as diverse as plants, humans and roundworms, and they show a similarity to social networks like Facebook or airline route maps. In Facebook, a few people will have a huge number of friend connections, some will have many, and a vast majority will have much fewer. Similarly, airlines have a few hubs that many passengers pass through on the way to their destinations.

Host interactomes show a limited number of high-powered hubs -- where a protein has a large number of connections -- and a limited number of important bottlenecks, which are sites with a large number of short paths to a node. These are key targets for pathogens as they seek to seize control of the infected cell, so it can rewire the cell's flow of information and cause disease.

University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers, led by Shahid Mukhtar, Ph.D., associate professor of biology in the UAB College of Arts and Sciences, have now built an interactome that includes the lung-epithelial cell host interactome integrated with a SARS-CoV-2 interactome. Applying network biology analysis tools to this human/SARS-CoV-2 interactome has revealed potential molecular mechanisms of pathogenesis for SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. The UAB research, published in the journal iScience, identified 33 high-value SARS-CoV-2 therapeutic targets, which are possibly involved in viral entry, proliferation and survival to establish infection and facilitate disease progression. These molecular insights may foster effective therapies, using combinations of existing drugs, for patients with COVID-19.

So far in 2019, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has killed nearly 1 million people worldwide and 200,000 in the United States.

The UAB researchers took many steps to generate the Calu-3-specific human-SARS-CoV-2 interactome, or CSI, that was the starting point for their network biology analyses.

They began from a comprehensive human interactome of experimentally validated protein-protein interactions, posted online in 2015, and then manually curated other protein-protein interactions from four subsequent interactome studies. The resulting human interactome contained 18,906 nodes and 444,633 "edges" -- the term for the links between protein nodes.

From two 2020 studies, the researchers compiled an exhaustive list of 394 host proteins that interact with the novel human coronavirus; these host proteins were called SARS-CoV-2 interacting proteins, or SIPs. The SIPs included 332 human proteins associated with the peptides of SARS-CoV-2 and 62 host proteins interacting with the viral factors of other human coronaviruses, including SARSCoV and MERS-CoV, the causes of SARS and MERS, which could also aid understanding the molecular pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2

By querying these 394 SIPs in the human interactome, they generated a subnetwork of 12,852 nodes and 84,100 edges that covered first and second neighbors of the 373 SIPs.

Finally, they filtered these interactions in the context of temporal changes during COVID-19 infection, using a high-resolution temporal transcriptome derived from cultured human airway epithelial cells, or Calu-3, treated with SARSCoV and SARS-CoV-2 over time. Integrating this Calu-3 expression data with the SIPs-derived protein-protein interaction subnetwork resulted in a Calu-3-specific human-SARS-CoV-2 interactome, or CSI, that contained 214 SIPs interacting with their first and second neighbors, and forming a network of 4,176 nodes and 18,630 edges.

The CSI had a power law degree distribution with a few nodes harboring increased connectivity compared to a random network, and thus exhibited properties of a scale-free network, similar to the other, previously generated human-viral interactomes.

The robust, high-quality CSI was then further utilized for network-aided architectural and functional pathway analyses.

Topological clustering and pathway enrichment analysis showed that the SARS-CoV-2 virus attacks central nodes of the host-viral network that participate in core functional pathways. Network centrality analyses discovered 33 high-value SARS-CoV-2 targets for possible drug therapy; these targets are possibly involved in viral entry, proliferation and survival to establish infection and facilitate disease progression. A probabilistic modeling framework elucidated critical regulatory circuitry and molecular events pertinent to COVID-19, particularly the host modifying responses and cytokine storm.

"In summary," Mukhtar said, "our integrative network topology analyses led us to elucidate the underlying molecular mechanisms and pathways of SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis." Mukhtar's lab continues to work on network medicine and artificial intelligence to battle COVID-19 and other human inflammatory diseases.

The Gerontological Society of America's highly cited, peer-reviewed journals are continuing to publish scientific articles on COVID-19. The following were published between August 28 and September 21; all are free to access:

Societal Views of Older Adults as Vulnerable and a Burden to Society During the COVID-19 Outbreak: Results from an Israeli Nationally Representative Sample: Research report in The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences by Ella Cohn-Schwartz, PhD, and Liat Ayalon, PhD

A Thematic Analysis of Weibo Topics (Chinese Twitter Hashtags) regarding Older Adults During the COVID-19 Outbreak: Research report in The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences by Wanyu Xi, Wenqian Xu, Xin Zhang, and Liat Ayalon

Older Adults’ Experience of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Stresses and Joys: Research article in The Gerontologist by Brenda R. Whitehead, PhD, and Emily Torossian, BA

Caremongering and Assumptions of Need: The Spread of Compassionate Ageism During COVID-19: Forum article in The Gerontologist by Deanna Vervaecke, BSc (Hons), and Brad A. Meisner, PhD

Challenges Experienced by Older People During the Initial Months of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Research article in The Gerontologist by Allison R. Heid, PhD, Francine Cartwright, BS, Maureen Wilson-Genderson, PhD, and Rachel Pruchno, PhD

COVID-19 as a Stressor: Pandemic Expectations, Perceived Stress, and Negative Affect in Older Adults: Research report in The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences by Brenda R. Whitehead, PhD

Estimating older adult mortality from COVID-19: Research report in The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences by Andy Sharma, PhD

University of Alberta scientists have uncovered the formation mechanism behind a class of mineral deposits that have been hotly contested until now. The findings shed new light on how iron deposits, among others, form--and this new understanding can aid geologists in the hunt for more ore.

"Most mineral deposits are formed by circulation of hot water; whereas some are formed by crystallization from a magma," said Matthew Steele-MacInnis, assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Science. "In the case of Iron oxide-apatite deposits, nobody has been able to agree on how they are deposited, but our study now shows they are deposited from a very unusual liquid dominated by calcium carbonate and sulfate."

The substance is a magma in a sense, explains Steele-MacInnis, but an unusual one and a formation process unknown until this study--led by PhD student Wyatt Bain under MacInnis' supervision-- and this context gives geologists new clues to guide the hunt for ore.

"The origins and chemical properties of ore-forming fluids are key parameters that determine whether a mineral deposit will form. In this case, our results show that the fluids that form iron oxide-apatite deposits are sourced by a very particular process: melting of limestones and/or salt deposits by injection of magma," said Steele-MacInnis.

The results can be directly applied in exploration, explains Steele-MacInnis. Geologists looking for iron oxide-apatite deposits should target areas where magmatic rocks have been emplaced into sedimentary basins containing limestones or salt deposits.

And while the findings have the most immediate relevance for the hunt for iron deposits, Steele-MacInnis explains that this new understanding also has implications for some of our most cutting-edge technology.

"Iron oxide-apatite deposits have been mined for some years as sources of iron, which is probably the single most important metal for industrial applications and infrastructure," said Steele-MacInnis. "But in recent years, these deposits have become even more attractive, because they commonly are enriched in key high-tech metals like rare Earth elements, which are critical to green-energy production and electronics."

DARIEN, IL - Weighted blankets are a safe and effective intervention in the treatment of insomnia, according to Swedish researchers who found that insomnia patients with psychiatric disorders experienced reduced insomnia severity, improved sleep and less daytime sleepiness when sleeping with a weighted chain blanket.

Results of the randomized, controlled study show that participants using the weighted blanket for four weeks reported significantly reduced insomnia severity, better sleep maintenance, a higher daytime activity level, and reduced symptoms of fatigue, depression and anxiety. Participants in the weighted blanket group were almost 26 times more likely to experience a decrease of 50% or more in their insomnia severity compared with the control group, and they were nearly 20 times more likely to achieve remission of their insomnia. Positive results were maintained during a 12-month, open follow-up phase of the study.

"A suggested explanation for the calming and sleep-promoting effect is the pressure that the chain blanket applies on different points on the body, stimulating the sensation of touch and the sense of muscles and joints, similar to acupressure and massage," said principle investigator Dr. Mats Alder, consultant psychiatrist in the department of clinical neuroscience at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. "There is evidence suggesting that deep pressure stimulation increases parasympathetic arousal of the autonomic nervous system and at the same time reduces sympathetic arousal, which is considered to be the cause of the calming effect."

The study is published in the Sept. 15 issue of the
Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.

The study involved 120 adults (68% women, 32% men) previously diagnosed with clinical insomnia and a co-occurring psychiatric disorder: major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or generalized anxiety disorder. They had a mean age of about 40 years.

Participants were randomized to sleep for four weeks at home with either a chain-weighted blanket or a control blanket. Participants assigned to the weighted blanket group tried an 8-kilogram (about 17.6 pounds) chain blanket at the clinic. Ten participants found it to be too heavy and received a 6-kilogram (about 13.2 pounds) blanket instead. Participants in the control group slept with a light plastic chain blanket of 1.5 kilograms (about 3.3 pounds). Change in insomnia severity, the primary outcome, was evaluated using the Insomnia Severity Index. Wrist actigraphy was used to estimate sleep and daytime activity levels.

Nearly 60% of weighted blanket users had a positive response with a decrease of 50% or more in their ISI score from the baseline to the four-week endpoint, compared with 5.4% of the control group. Remission, a score of seven or less on the ISI scale, was 42.2% in the weighted blanket group, compared with 3.6% in the control group.

After the initial four-week study, all participants had the option to use the weighted blanket for a 12-month follow-up phase. They tested four different weighted blankets: two chain blankets (6 kilograms and 8 kilograms) and two ball blankets (6.5 kilograms and 7 kilograms). After the test, and they were freely allowed to choose the blanket they preferred, with most selecting a heavier blanket. Only one participant discontinued the study due to feelings of anxiety when using the blanket. Participants who switched from the control blanket to a weighted blanket experienced a similar effect as patients who used the weighted blanket initially. After 12 months, 92% of weighted blanket users were responders, and 78% were in remission.

"I was surprised by the large effect size on insomnia by the weighted blanket and pleased by the reduction of levels of both anxiety and depression," said Adler.

In a related commentary, also published in the September issue of JCSM, Dr. William McCall writes that the study results support the psychoanalytic "holding environment" theory, which states that touch is a basic need that provides calming and comfort. McCall urges providers to consider the impact of sleeping surfaces and bedding on sleep quality, while calling for additional research into the effect of weighted blankets.

For an issue once expected to occur mostly in patients with severe COVID-19, heart conditions following SARS-CoV-2 infection are much more prevalent, writes Eric Topol in a Perspective. This became especially visible following cardiac involvement in young healthy athletes who had experienced mild COVID-19. "It is vital to determine what drives this pathogenesis," says Topol. He highlights unique attributes of the virus that have resulted in it damaging the hearts of COVID-19 patients both directly (for example, through heart muscle cells) and indirectly (for example, by infecting endothelial cells that line the blood vessels to the heart). He overviews the diverse spectrum of cardiovascular issues the virus has produced - ranging from limited necrosis of heart cells to cardiogenic shock (an often-fatal inability to pump enough blood). Topol notes that recent studies of COVID-19 patients undergoing MRI or echocardiography of the heart have provided some new insights about cardiac involvement, together raising concerns that heart involvement is far more prevalent than once thought, for this disease. But overall, he says, there have been minimal cardiac imaging studies in people who test positive for the virus. This and other factors - like the lack of cardiovascular assessments for people experiencing "long-COVID" - contribute to a fundamental and large hole in our knowledge base of how this virus impacts this major organ. "It would not be surprising in the future for patients to represent with cardiomyopathy of unknown etiology and test positive for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies," he writes. He says the most intriguing question in this space is why certain individuals experience heart issues after virus infection have when others don't. Whether it's a result of an individual's inflammation response, an autoimmune phenomenon, or some other explanation needs to be clarified, says Topol. He notes how the global spread of this disease and the "panoply of disease manifestations" will make this a truly daunting task.

While cannabis use during pregnancy is on the rise, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have found evidence that the resulting children are more likely to have psychopathology in middle childhood.

The team's analysis are the first steps in studying the effects of cannabis on children as attitudes surrounding its use change rapidly -- recreational adult cannabis use is now legal in 11 states and the District of Columbia. Patterns of usage, too, are changing; one of the fastest-growing subsets of cannabis users may come as a surprise: the pregnant.

"There have been increasingly permissive and lenient attitudes toward cannabis use among pregnant people," said Sarah Paul, a clinical psychology graduate student. "It has skyrocketed in the past few years," she added, with data indicating a quick rise from 3% to 7% past-month use.

"Unfortunately, despite the increase in use, we know remarkably little about the potential consequences of prenatal cannabis exposure," Paul said. "Prior studies have linked prenatal cannabis exposure to birth-related outcomes such as lower birth weight and infant characteristics like disrupted sleep and movement. Relatively fewer studies have examined behavior and problems as children age," and, she said, "findings have been tenuous due to inconsistent replication and an inability to account for potential confounding variables."

Working with Ryan Bogdan, associate professor of psychological & brain sciences in Arts & Sciences, and director of the Brain Lab at Washington University, and faculty from the School of Medicine, a team of researchers led by Paul and Alexander Hatoum, a postdoc research scholar, poured through data to examine what, if any, effect maternal use of cannabis during pregnancy may have on children.

Their findings were published today in JAMA Psychiatry.

They looked at data from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Study (ABCD Study), an ongoing longitudinal study of nearly 12,000 children ages 9-11 and their parent or caregiver from 22 sites across the United States that began in 2016.

The researchers grouped participants into three mutually exclusive groups: Children who were not exposed to cannabis prenatally; children who were prenatally exposed to cannabis before the pregnancy was known, but not after; and children who had been exposed to cannabis after the pregnancy was known, regardless of exposure before.

The receptors that cannabis influences are not known to be expressed prior to five- to six-weeks' gestation. Researchers expected associations with the children's outcomes would only be present if cannabis exposure happened once those receptors had been expressed. Most people said they learned of their pregnancy after about seven weeks, which aligned with the time of endocannabinoid type 1 receptor expression.

The group hypothesized that prenatal exposure, regardless of when it occurred, would be characterized by adverse outcomes in childhood, but that only continued exposure after the pregnancy was known would have an independent association with these outcomes (after considering potential confounds -- things such as family history of psychopathology, whether alcohol or tobacco or prenatal vitamins were used during the pregnancy, as well as whether children had tried alcohol, among a host of others).

The data showed children who were exposed to cannabis in the womb (regardless of when that exposure occurred) were slightly more likely to have adverse outcomes. They had elevated psychopathology -- more psychotic-like experiences; more problems with depression and anxiety as well as impulsivity and attention; and social problems as well as sleep disturbance. They also had lower cognitive performance, lower indices of global brain structure during middle childhood as well as lower birth weight.

However, when the researchers included important familial, pregnancy and child-related covariates, Bogdan said, "This is when things got really interesting. All associations with prenatal exposure only prior to maternal knowledge of pregnancy were nowhere near significantly associated." This suggests that the association between prenatal cannabis exposure during early stages of pregnancy may not be independent of these confounding factors.

"Cutting to the chase ... clinicians and dispensaries should discourage cannabis use among those who are pregnant or are considering becoming pregnant.

"However, when we look at exposure after maternal knowledge of pregnancy, which corresponds to when endocannabinoid type 1 receptors are expressed in the fetal brain, the associations with child psychopathology largely remain -- these children tend to have more psychotic-like experiences, more impulsivity and attention problems, and social problems," he said. "This raises the intriguing possibility that prenatal cannabis exposure may plausibly impact child behavior. It in no way shows causation, but documenting that effects are independent of common confounding factors provides incremental support for potential causation."

"There are certainly other plausible reasons for this pattern of results," Hatoum said. It could be that the behaviors are a byproduct of genetic and environmental similarity and not causally related to cannabis use.

"However, that our measures of these potential confounds accounted for the associations with use prior to maternal knowledge, but not after, suggests that prenatal cannabis exposure may independently contribute, in a small way, to child outcomes," he said. "Potential causation underlying this association should be further evaluated using experimental non-human animal models, additional replication and other approaches (e.g., siblings discordant for exposure)."

"Cutting to the chase, my interpretation of these findings, is that clinicians and dispensaries should discourage cannabis use among those who are pregnant or are considering becoming pregnant," Bogdan said.

"Being attentive to substance use problems among family members and providing them with support and access to help is critical for anyone regardless of pregnancy status," Bogdan said. "Learning of one's pregnancy may produce additional reason to stop use. Someone who has just learned of a pregnancy and has previously used cannabis, might think, well I have already exposed the fetus to cannabis, so I may as well not stop. The current data might provide the clinician and parent-to-be with evidence that stopping after learning of the pregnancy may reduce the likelihood of negative outcomes among their children."

At the same time, Bogdan said, "It is also important not to stigmatize expecting parents who may be experiencing difficulties. Quitting substance use during pregnancy, which is already a challenging time, may not be straightforward. Physician support and empirical paradigms for quitting during pregnancy will be important. Lastly, couples who are planning to have a child may wish to consider combatting cannabis use before they begin attempting to conceive and the additional stressors of pregnancy begin to mount."

From a public health perspective, Bogdan suggested looking to the highly effective public health campaigns and clinician attention directed at reducing the use of tobacco and alcohol during pregnancy. In fact, he said, "This study found that prenatal cannabis exposures were more strongly and consistently associated with adverse child outcomes than prenatal tobacco or alcohol exposure."

Holocaust survivors have exhibited a wide range of emotional reactions to, and ways of dealing with, the COVID-19 pandemic. Some are dealing well with the current crisis while some experience considerable difficulties. The way they cope with the current crisis is largely derived from how they deal with their traumatic memories of the Holocaust.

For many Holocaust survivors COVID-19 pandemic health policy guidelines are reminiscent of various adverse conditions that existed during the Holocaust, among them prolonged isolation and separation from family members, but particularly the omnipresent risk of contracting infectious disease.

Previous studies have shown that survivors are more sensitive to various post-Holocaust stressful events, especially those that echo a past primary trauma. In a new study, Bar-Ilan University researchers examined whether exposure to specific Holocaust adversities would be related to amplified psychological reactions to COVID-19.

The study, recently published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, focused on 127 Holocaust survivors and Jews of European descent who did not experience the Holocaust. All of them were born before 1945. Respondents were interviewed during the period of the gradual exit from Israel's first lockdown (April to June 2020).

PTSD and loneliness were more prevalent among survivors who contracted infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and dysentery during the Holocaust relative to older adults who did not experience the Holocaust (38.5% vs. 0% for PTSD; 53.8% vs. 22.6% for loneliness). Moreover, and surprisingly, worries related to COVID-19 were more frequent among survivors who contracted infectious diseases during the Holocaust (46.2%) relative to other survivors (22.1%) or those who were not exposed to the Holocaust (6.5%).

"We believed that most Holocaust survivors would manifest increased psychological distress during the pandemic because many of them still cope with PTSD symptoms and other impairments. However, heightened distress was evident mainly in a sub-group of survivors whose lives were endangered by infectious disease during the Holocaust," says Prof. Amit Shrira, of the MA Program in Gerontology and the Interdisciplinary Department of Social Sciences at Bar-Ilan University, who led the study in collaboration with Maya Frenkel-Yosef from the Nini Czopp Association, which provides social services to Dutch-Israeli Holocaust survivors and their families, and Bar-Ilan University PhD student Ruth Maytles. "Most other survivors manifested impressive resilience and were similar in some markers of psychological distress to older adults who were not directly exposed to the Holocaust."

Shrira, who also studies intergenerational transmission of trauma, and colleagues are currently analyzing data from a new study focusing on how descendants of Holocaust survivors are coping with the current pandemic.

Aerospace engineering graduate student Pranay Thangeda relies on the bus system in Champaign-Urbana to get to class and other meetings. He wanted to understand why, despite arriving at the bus stop well ahead of the schedule, he was sometimes late. He developed a tool that considers transportation variables weighed against how great a margin of error bus riders are willing to accept. The basic concept can also apply to getting a lunar rover where it needs to be, and with a high degree of reliability.

"I was following the real-time bus schedule but still ended up being late to my destination almost half of the time and being early the other half. I wanted to know what was happening," said Thangeda, who studies under faculty member Melkior Ornik in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.

Thangeda realized that most navigation apps only cared about the expected travel time: they only announce how long the trip is expected to take. If the expected travel time is 20 minutes but half of the time it takes them 10 minutes and half of the time takes 30 minutes, that is often unacceptable--the rider would be late half of the time.

"We started the research with Pranay's experience: sometimes bus riders care about reliability and not just the expected fastest route. They want to have a 90 percent or 95 percent certainty that they'll get there in time for their meeting," Ornik said.

When Thangeda and Ornik began building the model, they wanted real time data and a lot of it.

"We could have collected our own data, but I noticed that MTD's website had a good web application programming interface with open access, so we reached out to their operations manager," Thangeda said. "We met with Jay Rank at MTD's office, talked over the data and he got it for us in less than a week. He and Evan Alvarez were both very gracious and accommodating. We used the data to train the model to determine the underlying distribution of travel times on different road segments and their correlation."

Thangeda said there were a lot of variables to consider in the data.

"Each factor has its own unique implications on the distribution and uncertainties," Thangeda said. "Variations in pedestrian traffic, changes to road conditions due to the weather, bus breakdowns, and other conditions. What we focused on is how these factors are distributed by using the overall distribution of historical data and live data from all the bus apps available. That enhanced the model and reduces the uncertainty making it more feasible to predict what's going to happen next."

This first step in the research resulted in a proof-of-concept implementation.

"We showed the model can calculate the tradeoff between reliability and expectation between any starting bus stop and destination," Thangeda said. "The next step would be to develop an app so users can get the optimum route from any starting point to any ending point. Developing an app will depend upon resources and the time to create it."

Ornik said they'd like to develop an app that provides complimentary functionality to currently available apps.

"Google Maps has a public transit planner. You enter your starting and ending points and it tells you the route it wants you to take. But that route might be expected to be fast but have a low reliability. We want users to be able to set their starting and ending point, the exact time they need to be there, and a tolerance such as I'm okay with being late 5 percent of the time," Ornik said.

Given that many of the current apps are free, Ornik added that there's no incentive to develop a new app. "The hope is however that this work can steer us toward an academic or industry transport partnership," he said.

Thangeda and Ornik both described some surprises in the research.

"There were a few surprises in the data," Thangeda said. "We have a static model of the entire city that's updated every three months. There were a few errors that had to be fixed. There was also some noise possibly because of the way the sensors on the buses publish the data. Sometimes the stops were recorded in an uneven order, so we had to spend a lot of time on pre-processing the data."

Ornik said he was surprised at a specific point-to-point solution the tool recommended for a trip from downtown Urbana to the Illinois Terminal in Champaign where connections can be made to Amtrak and other bus services.

"Champaign-Urbana is a fairly tame environment in terms of traffic--there isn't a rush hour or even the high pedestrian numbers you have in cities like Chicago or New York City," Ornik said. "And yet, if you want to be more certain about your arrival time, it is better to take the Orange line that takes a longer route on University Avenue and avoids campus than to take the Green line that goes through campus. That route becomes questionable because of the large fluctuation of students on campus, which increases the variance of travel times. Consequently, it makes sense to take the Orange. I never thought of that. It was very satisfying to work with these data and demonstrate specific practical features like this one in Champaign-Urbana."

Ornik said the study only looked at peak times when school is in session. The Green line may be a good choice during the summer months when the student population in C-U is lower.

The same issues addressed in the study can be said of car travel.

"We are looking for ways to translate this work further away from public transit," Ornik said. "The big difference with cars is that there are no fixed routes. In a car, if you realize that the traffic is moving slowly you can switch to a different road. In a bus, there's not much you can do."

This work was partially funded by a 2018 NASA Early Stage Innovation Award, which is not directly related to public transit but has to do with optimal planning.

"The original case study was on a lunar rover which has the same principles," Ornik said. "The rover has an origin and a destination. We look at the reliability and expectation tradeoffs between the expected amount of energy or the expected amount of time that the rover will take to reach its destination based on the terrain and what we know of the agent's energy consumption. There's also the question of reliability. Can I ensure, not just expect, that the rover will reach its destination without running out of energy. I want hard guarantees here."

As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, researchers are working overtime to develop vaccines and therapies to thwart SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the disease Many efforts focus on the coronavirus spike protein, which binds the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) on human cells to allow viral entry. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Central Science have uncovered an active role for glycans -- sugar molecules that can decorate proteins -- in this process, suggesting targets for vaccines and therapies.

Before the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein can interact with ACE2 on a human cell, it changes shape to expose its receptor binding domain (RBD), the part of the protein that interacts with ACE2. Like many viral proteins, the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein has a thick coat of glycans on its surface. These glycans, which are attached at specific sites, help shield the viral proteins from the host immune system. Rommie Amaro and colleagues at University of California San Diego, Maynooth University (Ireland) and the University of Texas at Austin wondered whether certain glycans in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein might also be active players in the process leading to infection.

To find out, the researchers used structural and glycomic data to build molecular dynamics simulations of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein embedded in the viral membrane. The computer models, which presented a detailed snapshot of every atom in the spike glycoprotein, revealed that N-glycans linked to the spike protein at certain sites (N165 and N234) helped stabilize the shape change that exposes the RBD, which could help promote infection. The simulations also identified regions of the spike protein that weren't coated by glycans and thus could be vulnerable to antibodies, especially after the shape change. In laboratory experiments using biolayer interferometry, the team showed that mutating the spike protein so that it no longer had glycans at N165 and N234 reduced binding to ACE2. These results lay the foundation for new strategies to fight the pandemic threat, the researchers say.

PRICE, UTAH, USA - Some 92 to 66 million years ago, as the Age of Dinosaurs waned, giant marine lizards called mosasaurs roamed an ocean that covered North America from Utah to Missouri and Texas to the Yukon. The air-breathing predators were streamlined swimmers that devoured almost everything in their path, including fish, turtles, clams and even smaller mosasaurs.

Coloradoan Gary Thompson discovered mosasaur bones near the Delta County town of Cedaredge in 1975, which the teen reported to his high school science teacher. The specimens made their way to Utah's Brigham Young University, where, in 1999, the creature that left the fossils was named Prognathodon stadtmani.

"I first learned of this discovery while doing background research for my Ph.D.," says newly arrived Utah State University Eastern paleontologist Joshua Lively, who recently took the reins as curator of the Price campus' Prehistoric Museum. "Ultimately, parts of this fossil, which were prepared since the original description in 1999, were important enough to become a chapter in my 2019 doctoral dissertation."

Upon detailed research of the mosasaur's skeleton and a phylogenetic analysis, Lively determined the BYU specimen is not closely related to other species of the genus Prognathodon and needed to be renamed. He reclassified the mosasaur as Gnathomortis stadtmani and reports his findings in the most recent issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

His research was funded by the Geological Society of America, the Evolving Earth Foundation, the Texas Academy of Science and the Jackson School of Geosciences at The University of Texas at Austin.

"The new name is derived from Greek and Latin words for 'jaws of death,'" Lively says. "It was inspired by the incredibly large jaws of this specimen, which measure four feet (1.2 meters) in length."

An interesting feature of Gnathomortis' mandibles, he says, is a large depression on their outer surface, similar to that seen in modern lizards, such as the Collared Lizard. The feature is indicative of large jaw muscles that equipped the marine reptile with a formidable biteforce.

"What sets this animal apart from other mosasaurs are features of the quadrate - a bone in the jaw joint that also forms a portion of the ear canal," says Lively, who returned to the fossil's Colorado discovery site and determined the age interval of rock, in which the specimen was preserved.

"In Gnathomortis, this bone exhibits a suite of characteristics that are transitional from earlier mosasaurs, like Clidastes, and later mosasaurs, like Prognathodon. We now know Gnathomortis swam in the seas of Colorado between 79 and 81 million years ago, or at least 3.5 million years before any species of Prognathodon."

He says fossil enthusiasts can view Gnathomortis' big bite at the BYU Museum of Paleontology in Provo, Utah, and see a cast of the skull at the Pioneer Town Museum in Cedaredge, Colorado. Reconstructions of the full skeleton are on display at the John Wesley Powell River History Museum in Green River, Utah, and in BYU's Eyring Science Center.

"I'm excited to share this story, which represents years of effort by many citizen scientists and scholars, as I kick off my new position at USU Eastern's Prehistoric Museum," Lively says. "It's a reminder of the power of curiosity and exploration by people of all ages and backgrounds."

Predatory bacteria, capable of invading and consuming harmful bugs such as E .coli and Salmonella, use a unique tool to help them escape the cell they have invaded without harming themselves, according to a new study.

Researchers at the Universities of Birmingham and Nottingham have identified a particular enzyme used by the bacteria to rupture the cell wall of its prey bacteria and exit without damaging its own cell wall. Their findings are published in Nature Communications.

The bacterium, called Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus, is important because the types of cells they attack - Gram negative bacteria - are responsible for many infections that are resistant to currently available antibiotics. This means predatory bacteria could have the potential to be harnessed as a therapy against these infections.

Discovering precisely how Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus succeeds in invading, and then escaping its prey cells is an important step in this process.

The enzyme they discovered seems like a well-known enzyme called a lysozyme- one of the earliest- ever studied enzymes and found in human tears and saliva; but this one has a twist where it has changed to do something surprising.

"Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus is known for its ability to invade prey bacteria and stay inside the cell for a few hours, effectively eating the bacteria alive," explains Dr Andrew Lovering, of the University of Birmingham's School of Biosciences. "At the end of this process, the predator is able to break the prey open and escape. Because the walls of both the predator and prey cells are made of very similar molecules, we wanted to find out how the predator was able to cut the cell wall material of the prey cell and get out without damaging itself in the process."

The team already knew part of the answer lay in an early action by the predator bacteria to remove a particular molecule, from the cell wall of the prey. This created a 'marker' identifying the prey wall material as different to the predator. This suggested subsequent action by a particular type of enzyme known as a lysozyme might be at work. Lysozymes are a family of enzymes which are known to play a role in the breakdown of cell walls of certain bacteria. This particular lysozyme had evolved and been changed in the predatory bacterium to take on the task of rupturing the uniquely modified cell wall to enable the escape to take place.

Identifying precisely which lysozyme had been diversified for this role was the result of painstaking work by PhD students Hannah Somers and Chris Harding, working with Swiss National Science Foundation Fellow Dr Simona Huwiler.

Professor Liz Sockett, from the University of Notttingham's School of Life Sciences and co-lead author of the paper, said: "Checking the timing of when the Bdellovibrio used each of its lysozymes in predation, and hours at the microscope seeing what happened to prey-escape when each lysozyme was missing, gave us strong hunch which might be the important one for escape."

"When we looked closely at the lysozyme it was clear we were on the right path," says Dr Lovering. "It looked like a conventional lysozyme but with a warped active site, which meant it was unable to recognise the wall material unless it had been modified and marked by the Bdellovibrio bacteria."

The next step was to confirm that the lysozyme was only active against the modified cell wall and the team worked with Dr Patrick Moynihan, also in the School of Biosciences at the University of Birmingham, on tests to verify this. This showed it to be a novel lysozyme with a different target to all those lysozymes previously studied in science.

Dr Simona Huwiler, in Professor Sockett's lab then carried out a series of experiments with the predator bacteria showing clearly how adding this novel lysozyme during the predation process led to the predator falling out from the prey cell early before finishing its meal. So the novel lysozyme is the key to exit.

"Understanding the mechanism and actions of this novel lysozyme may help us use it directly against pathogens which modify their own cell walls to resist the lysozymes in saliva and tears. It is is also an important step towards being able to use predatory bacteria themselves in new therapies against problematic bacteria," adds Professor Sockett.