Culture

People with 'silent' COVID-19 infection have as much coronavirus in their noses and throats as those with symptoms, reveals research published online in the journal Thorax.

Given how many of these people there are---a fifth of those infected, the study findings show--they may have a key role in driving the spread of COVID-19, warn the researchers, who go on to suggest that this warrants extending testing provision.

People infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, but who don't have symptoms, still carry potentially transmissible virus, known as the viral load.

But just how large this viral load might be, and to what extent it might contribute to the spread of the virus, isn't clear.

To try and find out, the researchers compared the viral load of 213 people, all of whom had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, but not all of whom had symptoms of COVID-19 infection.

Following a large cluster outbreak of COVID-19 in Daegu City, South Korea, early on in the pandemic, the close contacts of this cluster (a religious group) were traced. This uncovered more than 3000 cases of COVID-19, ranging in symptom severity from none to severe.

Those with mild or no symptoms were admitted to dedicated care facilities for isolation and monitoring. The 213 participants in this study had been admitted to one such facility.

They were classified as symptomless if they had none of the following: fever; chills; muscle pain (myalgia); fatigue; runny nose (rhinorrhea); blocked nose; loss of taste or smell; sore throat; swallowing difficulties; cough; phlegm production; coughing up blood; headache; dizziness; loss of appetite; nausea; vomiting, abdominal pain; and diarrhoea.

Before the isolation period--an average of 6 days from the first swab test--around a fifth (41; 19%) people didn't developed any symptoms: 39 (95%) of them had a further nose and throat swab test, 13 days, on average, after their initial diagnosis, to measure viral load.

Of the remaining 172 (81%) with mild symptoms, 144 were retested, adding up to a total of 183 who were included in the final analysis.

Over half of those without symptoms (21; 54%) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, as did nearly two thirds of those with mild symptoms (92; 64%). There was no significant difference in the viral load, however, between the two groups.

This is an observational study, and the researchers caution that positive swab test results don't necessarily indicate the presence of live virus.

Further studies are needed to clarify whether the persistence of viral DNA in people without any symptoms warrants precautionary quarantine measures, they say.

Most of the participants were also in their 20s and 30s so the findings might not apply to other age groups, they suggest.

Nevertheless, they point out: "Considering that most asymptomatic individuals with COVID-19 are likely to go unnoticed by healthcare workers and continue to reside within communities, such individuals may act as an essential driving force for the community spread of COVID-19 and the ongoing pandemic state."

Until such time as it becomes clear how long, and to what extent, symptomless people might be infectious, testing should be extended to certain groups as a precautionary measure, recommend the researchers.

In a linked podcast, lead author Professor Sung-Han Kim explains: "Our data add further support to the general public use of face masks, regardless of the presence of symptoms, and suggest that the scope of SARS-CoV-2 testing should be expanded to include asymptomatic individuals in high-risk settings, such as nursing homes or healthcare facilities."

Individuals from Black and Hispanic backgrounds in the United States are twice as likely to test positive for COVID-19 than their White counterparts, according to new research in PLOS Medicine.

Led by researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Yale University, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the study found this disparity even after accounting for factors such as underlying health conditions, where they live and where they receive care.

However, the study, which used the health records of approximately six million people, did not find a race/ethnicity difference in the amount of people who died 30 days after testing positive.

The researchers say the findings highlight the urgent need for improved strategies to contain and prevent further outbreaks in racial and ethnic minority communities in the US, principally focused on testing and getting individuals into care.

Previous research in the UK, led by LSHTM, found that those from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds had a substantially higher risk of in-hospital death from COVID-19, while a study in the US found that Black individuals were overrepresented in coronavirus hospitalisations and deaths in a sample of 3,481 patients.

Christopher Rentsch from LSHTM and study lead author said: "Most studies investigating racial and ethnic disparities to date have focused on hospitalised patients, or have not characterized who received testing and those who tested positive. In this study, we compared patterns of testing and test results for COVID-19 and subsequent mortality by race and ethnicity in the Department of Veterans Affairs, the largest integrated healthcare system in the United States."

The Department of Veterans Affairs comprises more than 1,200 points-of-care nationally including hospitals, medical centres, and community outpatient clinics. Around nine million individuals access VA care each year, which for most is free-of-charge. It is the closest system the US has to the NHS.

The team looked at all individuals who were in care just prior to the coronavirus epidemic in the US. They then followed them to identify who was tested, who tested positive, and who died within 30 days after testing positive for COVID-19.

At each of these three stages they then looked to see if there were differences between three groups: Black, Hispanic, and White individuals.

Between 8 February to 22 July 2020, 254,595 individuals were tested and 16,317 tested positive for COVID-19. Black (10.2% testing positive) and Hispanic (11.4%) individuals were more than two times as likely to test positive than their White counterparts (4.4%). Among those who tested positive, 1,057 died within 30 days, but there was no difference by race/ethnicity group.

Christopher Rentsch said: "Minority individuals who received a positive COVID-19 test did not appear to have worse outcomes. However, our findings suggest these communities face a substantial excess burden of COVID-19 infection."

The study also found substantial variation in the disparity between Black and White individuals in testing positive by geographic region, with stronger disparity observed in the Midwest than all other regions, and disparity most attenuated in the West.

While the disparity between Black and White individuals slightly decreased over the study period, it was highest in locations that experienced an early or resurgent outbreak of COVID-19. Interestingly, the disparity between Hispanic and White individuals in testing positive was consistent across time, geographic region, and outbreak pattern.

The team weren't able to fully explain the reasons behind the disparities in their data. Previous reports have highlighted that members of racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to live in densely populated areas or multi-generational households, and work in essential industries, including high-contact jobs.

Christopher Rentsch said: "Understanding what is driving these disparities is vital so that strategies can be tailored to curb the disproportionate epidemics in minority communities.

"Going forward, we are exploring whether racial and ethnic disparities exist at other key stages in the clinical course of COVID-19, from hospitalisation to intubation. We appeal to other researchers who have the data to do so as well. This will provide essential information to design effective interventions."

The researchers acknowledge limitations of their work, including that the study used electronic health records, which did not include detailed data on socioeconomic status (e.g., type of employment, income, number of individuals in household) that may help explain some of the disparities they identified. Also, women represented a small proportion (9%) of individuals in the sample.

A special session at this week's ESCMID Conference on Coronavirus Diseases (ECCVID, held online 23-25 September) will see a new review of the evidence presented to address the difficult issue of school closures and reopenings. The session has been co-organised with the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC), Stockholm, Sweden.

"Children are more likely to have mild or asymptomatic infection, meaning that infection may go undetected or undiagnosed based on testing strategies," says presenter Jonathan Suk of ECDC. (see full slide presentation link below)

He will add that decisions on control measures in schools should be made consistently with decisions on other physical distancing and public health response measures within the community as a whole, saying: "Schools are unlikely to be worse propagating environments than occupational or leisure activities with similar densities of people with proper measures in place."

He adds: "Closures of childcare and educational institutions are unlikely to be an effective single control measure for community transmission of COVID-19 and cannot be justified based on protecting the health of children, most of whom develop very mild, if any, disease from COVID-19."

However he cautions: "The infectiousness of asymptomatic children is unknown. While very few significant outbreaks of COVID-19 have been documented in schools, they do occur and may be difficult to detect due to the relative lack of symptoms in children."

In another presentation, Dr Chiara Reno of the University of Bologna, Italy, will say that "policy makers have the task of balancing the pros and cons of the school reopening strategy, taking into account psychological, educational and social consequences for children and their families." (see full slide presentation link below)

She will discuss that so far of all cases of COVID-19 reported (EU/EEA and UK, as of 26 July) only 4% were children (0-18 years), of which 24% were under 5 years of age, 32% between 5 and 11 years and 44% between 12 and 18 years.

"Children are more likely to have asymptomatic or mild infection, with better overall outcomes than adults," she explains. "Transmission potential was shown in both children and adolescents, but further research needs to be done on clinical infectiousness."

She cautions: "Infants and neonates are more vulnerable to severe COVID-19. Pre-existing medical conditions have been suggested as a risk factor for severe disease and ICU admission in children and adolescents."

In her talk, she will also discuss the negative consequences of school closures on children's health. For example, some evidence reports that children and adolescents are at high risk of depression and anxiety both during isolation from school and their friends, and even after isolation / lockdown periods end. She will also discuss the uneven behaviour of schools worldwide in lockdown, and inequitable access to online classes for schools that closed in lockdown.

"The coronavirus lockdown exposed Italy's digital divide, since one in three households does not have access to a personal computer," explains Dr Reno. "Even in Japan, only a handful of schools and other educational institutions moved their classes online. A new government project there is aiming to boost IT infrastructure and improve remote learning capabilities."

She will say that the contagion rate in educational settings is strongly correlated to the spread of the infection in the community. "Implementation of strict infection control measures is crucial (physical distancing, use of masks, proper management of indoor air, hand hygiene, respiratory etiquette, and cleaning," explains Dr Reno.

"There is no single completely effective intervention, but a mix of interventions variously combined and contextualised. Targeted strategies for different age groups will be more effective since younger children can be very different to older children and adolescents. Active surveillance activities, rapid response by public health professionals with early detection of cases and contact tracing must be put in place."

She concludes: "As we lack strong evidence on when and how schools should be closed and/or reopened, it is important to concede uncertainty. We have to contrast misinformation and create trust - social sciences have shown us that acknowledging uncertainty will actually increase trust much more than painting things as certain."

"Policy makers cannot delay their decisions... we need to form a strong alliance and effective communication channels between policy makers, researchers and community members, making the way forward for schools a shared decision-making process."

A number of studies have shown how playing video games can lead to structural changes in the brain, including increasing the size of some regions, or to functional changes, such as activating the areas responsible for attention or visual-spatial skills. New research from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) has gone further to show how cognitive changes can take place even years after people stop playing.

This is one of the conclusions from the article published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. The study involved 27 people between the ages of 18 and 40 with and without any kind of experience with video gaming.

"People who were avid gamers before adolescence, despite no longer playing, performed better with the working memory tasks, which require mentally holding and manipulating information to get a result," said Marc Palaus, who has a PhD from the UOC.

The article stems from Palaus' doctoral thesis, which was supervised by Elena Muñoz and Diego Redolar, researchers in the UOC Faculty of Health Sciences' Cognitive NeuroLab. They were co-authors of the article alongside Raquel Viejo, another researcher from the group.

The results show that people without experience of playing video games as a child did not benefit from improvements in processing and inhibiting irrelevant stimuli. Indeed, they were slower than those who had played games as children, which matched what had been seen in earlier studies.

Likewise, "people who played regularly as children performed better from the outset in processing 3D objects, although these differences were mitigated after the period of training in video gaming, when both groups showed similar levels," said Palaus.

Combining transcranial magnetic stimulation

The study lasted a month and the researchers analysed participants' cognitive skills, including working memory, at three points: before starting the training in video gaming, at the end of the training, and fifteen days later. The video game used was Nintendo's Super Mario 64.

The study also included 10 sessions of transcranial magnetic stimulation. This is non-invasive brain stimulation through the skin without the need to get to the brain tissue that temporarily changes the brain's activity.

"It uses magnetic waves which, when applied to the surface of the skull, are able to produce electrical currents in underlying neural populations and modify their activity," explained Palaus.

The researchers wanted to find out if combining video gaming and this kind of stimulation would improve cognitive performance, but that didn't turn out to be the case. There are a number of possible causes, including the experimental nature of the parameters for the stimulation.

"We aimed to achieve lasting changes. Under normal circumstances, the effects of this stimulation can last from milliseconds to tens of minutes. We wanted to achieve improved performance of certain brain functions that lasted longer than this," said Palaus.

Strengthening cognitive skills

In this case, the video game used was a 3D platform adventure, but there are many genres of video game which can influence cognitive functions differently.

According to Palaus, what most have in common is that they involve elements that make people want to continue playing, and that they gradually get harder and present a constant challenge. "These two things are enough to make it an attractive and motivating activity, which, in turn, requires constant and intense use of our brain's resources."

"Video games are a perfect recipe for strengthening our cognitive skills, almost without our noticing." Nonetheless, he stressed that these improvements only have a limited effect on performance of other activities not linked to video gaming, as is the case with most cognitive training.

A review of studies (meta-analysis) presented at this year's ESCMID Conference on Coronavirus Diseases (ECCVID, online 23-25 September) shows that 40% of healthcare workers who test positive for COVID-19 were asymptomatic, raising the risk of silent transmission in healthcare settings.

The study is by Dr Sergio Gómez-Ochoa, Cardiovascular Foundation of Colombia, Floridablanca, Colombia, Professor Oscar H Franco and Dr Taulant Muka from the Institute Of Social And Preventive Medicine (ISPM), University Of Bern, Switzerland, and colleagues, and is to be published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

"Health care workers (HCW) are at the frontline response to the new coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), exposing themselves to a higher risk of acquiring the disease, and subsequently, exposing patients and colleagues," says study co-author Professor Oscar H Franco. The authors aimed to systematically review the evidence on the prevalence, risk factors, clinical characteristics, and prognosis of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection among HCW.

Searches in Embase, Pubmed, LILACS, MedxRiv and Google Scholar databases (up to July 8th, 2020) were performed. Preprint and peer-reviewed published articles of any language reporting the prevalence of COVID-19 in HCW and evaluating the risk factors, clinical characteristics, and clinical outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 infection among HCW were included. Two reviewers independently selected the studies, extracted the data, and assessed the quality of evidence. Estimates were pooled using a random-effects meta-analysis.

A total of 97 studies, including 230,398 HCW across 24 countries, met the inclusion criteria. From the screened HCW using PCR testing and the and the presence of antibodies, the estimated prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection was 10% and 7%, respectively.

The study shows that 48% of those testing positive for COVID-19 were nurses, followed by physicians (25%) and other HCW (23%). Most of the COVID-19 positive medical personnel were working in regular/non-surgical/non-COVID wards during the screening (43%), followed by 24% in the operating room, 16% in the emergency room and 9% in ICU, with 29% reporting 'other' locations.

"Loss of taste and smell (anosmia), fever and muscle pain were identified as the only symptoms significantly associated with SARS-CoV-2 positivity among HCW," explains co-author Dr Taulant Muka. Pooled data from 15 studies showed, that among RT-PCR positive HCW, 40% did not show symptoms at time of diagnosis. Finally, 1 in 20 (5%) of the COVID-19 positive HCW developed severe clinical complications, and 1 in 200 (0.5%) died.

Dr Muka says: "Healthcare workers suffer a significant burden from COVID-19. A significant proportion of healthcare workers are positive for COVID-19 while asymptomatic, which leads to the silent transmission of the disease. The symptoms associated with COVID-19 in HCW could be used as an indicator for screening in settings with limited testing capacities.

Professor Franco concludes: "Because we might miss a large proportion of COVID-19 cases if screening targets only symptomatic HCW, universal screening for all exposed HCW regardless of symptoms should be the standard strategy. While more research is needed to understand specific interventions that can help reducing SARS-CoV-2 infection among healthcare personnel, it is clear that providing healthcare workers with adequate personal protective equipment and training is essential."

New research presented at this this week's ESCMID Conference on Coronavirus Diseases (ECCVID, online 23-25 September) suggests that the poor outcomes and higher death rates in cancer patients with COVID-19 could be due to them generally being older and having more underlying conditions, rather than due to the cancer itself. The study is by Dr Maria Rüthrich, Jena University Hospital, Germany, and colleagues.

In their study, the authors used data from the LEOSS (Lean European Open Survey for SARS-CoV-2 Infected Patients) Registry. The German Society of Infectious Diseases (DGI) created this registry aiming to provide scientists and doctors with reliable clinical data to enable them to answer numerous urgent questions, such as when do COVID-19 patients develop severe symptoms? what is the best possible treatment? or which measures have been successful up to now? Under the new initiative, all the collected data will be available to the scientific community for use in crowd-based analyses.

The authors retrospectively analysed a cohort of 435 patients with cancer and COVID-19 from a total of 3071 patients enrolled between March and August 2020. Baseline characteristics include socio-demographics, comorbidity according to Charlson Comorbidity Index (a measurement of number of underlying conditions) (CCI), ECOG score (measure of functional status in cancer patients) and outcome of COVID-19.

Clinical manifestation of COVID-19 was described in four phases: uncomplicated (asymptomatic/mild symptoms), complicated (need for oxygen supplementation), critical (need for life supporting therapy) and recovery (improvement/ discharge).

The median observational period was 14 days, and the median duration of hospitalisation 15 days. The most common age category was 76 - 85 (36.5%), 176 (41%) pts were female. Mean CCI was 4.65, and 44/187 (23.5%) pts had an ECOG of over 2, indicating cancer patients who are capable of limited self-care and confined to bed or chair for more than 50% of the day. Solid tumors were seen in 59% of patients, and lymphoma and leukemia in 18% and 11%, respectively.

A total of 193 patients (54%) had an active malignant disease and 96 (22%) had received anti-cancer treatment within the last 3 months before testing positive for SARS-CoV-2. At detection of SARS-CoV-2, 272 (63%) pts were in an uncomplicated phase of COVID-19 disease. Progression to complicated/ critical phases of COVID-19 was seen in 206 (55%) pts, while 119 (28%) pts received critical care. A total of 78 of these 119 pts (66%) needed mechanical ventilation. COVID-19 mortality rate was 23%, while men were twice as likely to die as women (28% vs 14%). Additionally, active cancer disease (e.g. recurrent or metastatic cancer, pts receiving anti-cancer therapy) was associated with a higher mortality attributed to COVID-19 than in patients without active cancer disease (27% vs 17%)

Compared with non-cancer patients, the distribution of age and comorbidity differ significantly. Thus, patients without cancer were younger (most frequent age category 56 - 65) and had less comorbidity (CCI 1.12 vs 1.59). Survival at 30 days was worse in cancer patients (70%) versus those without cancer (77%), and mortality rate higher (23% vs 14%). However, after adjustments for age, sex and comorbidity, survival and mortality attributed to COVID-19 were comparable to non-cancer patients.

Dr Rüthrich concludes: "Even though survival and COVID-19 mortality of both groups appeared to be comparable, after adjusting for age, sex and comorbidity, our results show that cancer patients are at higher risk of more serious disease and death due to being generally older than non-cancer patients with COVID-19, and also having more underlying conditions. It does not appear to be the cancer itself that is leading to these poor outcomes."

We process language differently depending on whether we are reading alone or in the company of another person, according to a study carried out by teachers and researchers from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) and the Carlos III Health Institute (ISCIII) and published in Cortex.

The results of recording electrical activity in the brain indicated that when we read in company, our language processing is more heuristic, i.e. more global, controlled, integrated and possibly more creative.

"However, when we read alone, our language processing is more algorithmic, in other words, more automatic, limited and subject to rules", explained Laura Jiménez Ortega, a researcher in the Department of Psychobiology at the UCM and the UCM-ISCIII Centre for Evolution and Human Behaviour.

To compare the effect of company and solitude on language comprehension, the researchers measured electrical brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG).

Participants read texts containing syntactic or semantic errors, half of them in solitude and the other half in company. Those reading in company showed activity in the precuneus, an area of the brain involved in social and attentional processing. In addition, their language comprehension was more global and integrated compared with that of subjects reading alone.

In the social situation, syntactic errors elicited a pattern of electrical activity characteristic of semantic processing (N400), which is considered more heuristic and integrated. However, electrical brain activity in subjects reading alone showed a LAN pattern, characteristic of early, automatic processing.

The social isolation caused by the current coronavirus pandemic has created an unprecedented opportunity, prompting researchers to change perspective and conduct more research into social aspects of behaviour and language comprehension.

"Given that company favours a more creative and integrated understanding whereas isolation leads to more detailed and systematic processing, we need to start thinking more about the impact of social interaction in research, in education and in professional settings where language comprehension is fundamental", concluded Jiménez Ortega.

Millions of ibis and birds of prey mummies, sacrificed to the Egyptian gods Horus, Ra or Thoth, have been discovered in the necropolises of the Nile Valley. Such a quantity of mummified birds raises the question of their origin: were they bred, like cats, or were they hunted? Scientists from the CNRS, the Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 and the C2RMF (1) have carried out extensive geochemical analyses on mummies from the Musée des Confluences, Lyon. According to their results, published on 22nd September 2020 in the journal Scientific Reports, they were wild birds.

Mammals, reptiles, birds: the tens of millions of animal mummies deposited as offerings in the necropolises of the Nile Valley bear witness to an intense religious fervour, and to the practices of collecting and preparing animals that undoubtedly contributed significantly to the economy from the Old Kingdom (3rd millennium BC) to Roman Egypt (1st-3rd centuries AD). However, the origin of these animals and the methods of supply remain unknown. For some tamed species, such as the cat, breeding was probably the most efficient way of supplying large numbers of animals for mummification. But unlike cats, bird mummies cover all stages of development, from egg to adult, which may indicate more opportunistic sourcing practices.

In order to determine the origin -- breeding or hunting -- of the mummified birds, tiny fragments of feathers, bones and embalming strips were taken from 20 ibis and birds of prey mummies from the collections of the Musée des Confluences, Lyon. If these birds, which migrate in the wild, had been bred, their diet would have been homogeneous, of local origin and reflected in the uniform isotopic composition (2) of the animal remains, regardless as to whether that diet had been produced specifically or derived from that of coexisting humans.

The various tissues were therefore dated using the carbon-14 method; and the isotopic compositions of oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, sulfur and strontium were measured, interpreted in terms of food sources and compared with those of contemporaneous human mummies. However, far from being homogeneous, these isotopic compositions showed a high variability and "exotic" signatures compared to those of ancient Egyptian humans: the birds were wild, migrating seasonally out of the Nile Valley.

These results, combined with that of a genetic study carried out by another team (3), suggest the mass hunting and capture of birds as documented on certain tomb frescoes (for example on the wall of Nakht's tomb in the Theban Necropolis). Indeed, the Egyptians probably exerted a significant ecological pressure on wild bird populations long before the decline in avifauna observed today.

The Heteroptera are a large group of insects. However, not all of its representatives are widely known as true bugs. For example, it includes a pond water strider (Gerris lacustris), which is very common in Russia. 'Most often, when it comes to these insects, people imagine blood-sucking bed bugs. They bring the rest of the bugs into disrepute, but most of these insects do not bite. The bug we discovered belongs to the plant bugs (Miridae) and it also does not feed on human blood,' says Veronica Tyts, the first author of the research, a first-year master's student in the biology programme at St Petersburg University.

Borneo, also known as Kalimantan, is the third-largest island in the world. About 1% of the island's territory is occupied by the state of Brunei Darussalam where Ulu Temburong National Park is located. Its tropical forests remain practically intact and preserve an amazing variety of flora and fauna. Here Claas Damken, a research participant from Jalan Universiti, Brunei Darussalam, Brunei, collected the Heteroptera, which were later sent to Anna Namyatova, the second author, for identification.

'This collection included very important samples for us. Within the large family of the Miridae, there is a subfamily that I specialise in. Most of its representatives are extremely rare in different collections. The fact is that in nature they live in the forest floor and have a cryptic lifestyle. At the same time, the sample from Brunei turned out to be relatively large: nine specimens are representing the monotypic new genus Tatupa. Monotypic means that only one species belongs to it - Tatupa grafei. It is highly probable that the bug is endemic, that is, it does not live anywhere except the island of Borneo,' says Veronica Tyts.

Tatupa grafei belongs to the relatively small Rhinocylapus-complex, currently comprising 24 species. Its representatives vary in colour and have huge antennae, often twice longer than a body. The Tatupa grafei bug is golden and spotted. It is noteworthy that in the Rhinocylapus-complex, sexual dimorphism is very common: the male can be half the size of the female. Before copulation, the males sit on the back of the female and 'ride' it for some time.

'At the same time, the males and females of Tatupa grafei are the same size. Their body length, without antennae, is approximately five millimetres. Of course, there is a compelling question: why one part of the group is characterised by sexual dimorphism, while the other does not. In the future, we would like to find an answer to it as well,' notes Veronika Tyts.

Most aspects of the behaviour of the Tatupa grafei bugs are unknown due to the extremely small number of its representatives. These insects are often found on fungi growing on rotten wood. Because of this, it has been suggested that these bugs feed on fungi, but whether this is true remains to be explored. It is also possible that Tatupa grafei eats smaller insects, which feed on fungi. The third version is that the bug menu can be mixed and consist of both fungi and insects. The answers to these questions can be given by observing Tatupa grafei bugs in a natural environment, but it is pretty tricky to carry it out.

The genus name Tatupa is a random combination of letters. The scientists could not come up with a suitable name for it for a long time. It was important that no animal has the same name. Additionally, the scientists needed to find out if the word Tatupa exists in any languages and what it means. It turned out that there was only one hit on the Internet - in an episode of a Polish television game where its participants are busy coining new words. The species is named after the Brunei professor Ulmar Grafe, who had provided significant support to the scientists.

'The planet's biodiversity is a great treasure that we, unfortunately, are constantly losing. It is important to find and describe new types of living organisms to preserve them - if not in their natural habitat, then at least in the vast knowledge database created by mankind. Moreover, each of these creatures has a specific role in the global ecosystem. And the more ramified the connections in it, the higher its stability. Therefore, the small bug we discovered may play a significant role in the ecosystem of the island of Borneo,' says Veronica Tyts.

Alongside Veronica Tyts, Fedor Konstantinov, Candidate of Biology and Associate Professor of the Department of Entomology at St Petersburg University, took part in the discovery and description of Tatupa grafei. Other authors of the research were: the already mentioned Claas Damken; Anna Namyatova, a senior research associate at the All-Russian Research Institute of Plant Protection; and Rodzay A. Wahab, a lecturer at Jalan Universiti, Brunei Darussalam, Brunei.

Colour photographs of Tatupa grafei were taken at the Department of Entomology of St Petersburg University using a camera attached to a stereo microscope. The rest of the images were created using a scanning electron microscope of the resource centres of the Research Park of St Petersburg University 'The Centre for Molecular and Cell Technologies' and 'The Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis'. Aleksei Miroliubov, a centre engineer, rendered significant assistance to the scientists.

The authors of the publication are currently continuing the research, which will result in a long paper on the phylogeny of rare bugs from the Rhinocylapus-complex. The researchers plan to build a phylogenetic tree that will reflect the probable evolutionary relationships of organisms. To achieve this, a morphological analysis of insects and an analysis of their DNA markers have been carried out. As for the specimens, seven of the nine provided specimens will return to their homeland in Brunei, while the other two will remain in the large collection of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

September 22, 2020 - A geocoding approach - linking routinely collected public health data to neighborhood socioeconomic factors - shows consistently higher rates of COVID-19 illness and death among people living in more-disadvantaged communities, reports a study in the November/December Journal of Public Health Management and Practice. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

"Our study provides evidence of stark social inequities in COVID-19 outcomes at both the county and ZIP Code levels in the United States," comments Jarvis T. Chen, ScD, of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston. "These marked disparities speak to how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting vulnerable populations and exacerbating existing health inequities."

Socioeconomic Factors Affecting COVID-19 Outcomes - Geocoding Provides New Insights

Dr. Chen and coauthor Nancy Krieger, PhD, analyzed county- and ZIP Code-level data on COVID-19 outcomes - deaths, confirmed cases, and percent positive cases - in New York City and Illinois, as of May 5, 2020. At that time, New York and Illinois were among the "hotspots" for COVID-19 cases and deaths in the United States.

The researchers applied an established geocoding method to analyze COVID-19 outcomes in terms of key neighborhood socioeconomic factors, including the percentage of residents living in poverty, percentage with household crowding, and percentage of persons of color (other than non-Hispanic white).

These and other area-based socioeconomic measures (ABSMs) have been shown to be strong indicators of disparities across a wide range of health outcomes. The ASBMs were developed as part of the Public Health Disparities Geocoding Project, established to address the lack of information on socioeconomic factors in most public health surveillance data.

The analysis showed consistently higher levels of COVID-19 outcomes for residents of more socioeconomically disadvantaged areas. County-level data showed higher rates of COVID-19 deaths in areas with more people living in poverty, increased household crowding, and more people of color. The COVID-19 death rate was about five times higher than in counties with the highest percentage of people of color.

Analysis of fine-resolution ZIP Code data showed higher rates of confirmed COVID-19 cases for all ABSMs. In Illinois, the rate of COVID-19 diagnosis was five times higher in ZIP Codes with the highest percentage of people of color.

ZIP Code data from New York City also showed similar disparities, even with the City's much higher infection rates. The rate of positive COVID-19 tests was more than 60 percent higher in ZIP Codes with the highest percentage of people with poverty-level incomes.

There's an urgent need for real-time data to help in identifying community groups at highest risk of COVID-19 infection, serious illness, and death. Routinely collected public health data include little or no information on socioeconomic factors that can have an important impact on COVID-19 risks. Data on race/ethnicity is more often collected but is missing for many patients.

Geocoding health records and linking them to US Census data on neighborhood factors, including the use of ABSMs, can compute valid estimates of socioeconomic disparities in health. "Looking across the US, people living in the most impoverished, crowded, and racially and economically polarized counties are experiencing substantially elevated rates of COVID-19 infection and death," Drs. Chen and Krieger write.

State and local health departments can easily apply the same methods to routinely collected surveillance data using an Excel spreadsheet or R code available from the authors' website: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/thegeocodingproject/covid-19-resources/.

Dr. Chen comments: "Our cost-effective straightforward methodology and results can motivate and guide state and local health departments to generate data relevant to monitoring inequities in COVID-19 outcomes and guiding resource allocation to mitigate these inequities."

A new study suggests that the messages Black girls hear at home about being Black, and about being Black women in particular, can increase or decrease their risk of exhibiting the symptoms of depression. Positive messages - and positive feelings about being Black - were associated with a decreased likelihood of symptoms of depression; negative messages about Black women were associated with a greater risk of symptoms of depression.

"Black teenage girls are more likely to report symptoms of depression than Black boys or white teens," says McKenzie Stokes, first author of a paper on the work and a Ph.D. student at North Carolina State University. "We wanted to learn more about some of the factors that may contribute to that higher rate of depression."

"Identifying and understanding these factors is an important step in addressing depression in Black girls in a meaningful way," says Elan Hope, co-author of the paper and an associate professor of psychology at NC State.

The researchers drew on in-depth, national survey data from 287 Black girls between the ages of 13 and 17.

Specifically, the researchers were interested in aspects of racial socialization related to how Black caregivers talk to their children about taking pride in being Black and being Black women.

Study participants were asked how frequently they heard positive messages from their primary caregivers about being Black and about being Black women. Study participants were also asked how frequently they heard oppressive messages about Black women.

The survey also asked study participants about emotional symptoms associated with depression, such as apathy and sadness.

The researchers found that the more positive messages study participants received about being Black and being Black women, the more positive they felt about being Black and the fewer depressive symptoms they reported. However, the more oppressive messages study participants heard about being Black women, the more likely they were to report symptoms of depression.

"Our findings highlight the importance of avoiding negative stereotypes about Black women," Hope says. "Because we found that those negative remarks had an effect even in households that reported positive messages about being Black and being Black women.

"For example, when people say they don't want to go into the sun, because they don't want to get any darker, what is a child with dark skin supposed to think when hearing that? These sorts of remarks, even when the speaker is referring only to herself or himself, can adversely affect the attitudes of Black girls toward their own blackness."

"This work also highlights the potential value of incorporating gender-specific messages into existing programs and interventions aimed at addressing mental health in Black youth by fostering Black pride," Stokes says.

Much of life on planet Earth today relies on oxygen to exist, but before oxygen was present on our blue planet, lifeforms likely used arsenic instead. These findings are detailed in research published today in Communications Earth and Environment.

A key component of the oxygen cycle is where plants and some types of bacteria essentially take sunlight, water and CO2 and convert them to carbohydrates and oxygen which are then cycled and used by other organisms that breathe oxygen. This oxygen serves as a vehicle for electrons, gaining and donating electrons as it powers through the metabolic processes. However, for half of the time life has existed on Earth, there was no oxygen present and for the first 1.5 billion years we really do not know how these systems worked, says lead author of the study and UConn Professor of Marine Sciences and Geosciences Pieter Visscher.

Light-driven, photosynthetic organisms appear in the fossil record as layered carbonate rocks called stromatolites dating to around 3.7 billion years ago, says Visscher. Stromatolite mats are deposited over the eons by microbial ecosystems, with each layer holding clues about life at that time. There are contemporary examples of microbes that photosynthesize in the absence of oxygen using a variety of elements to complete the process, however it is not clear how this happened in the earliest life forms.

Theories as to how life's processes functioned in the absence of oxygen have mostly relied on hydrogen, sulfur, or iron as the elements that ferried electrons around to fulfill the metabolic needs of organisms.

Visscher explains these theories are contested, for example photosynthesis is possible with iron but researchers do not find evidence of that in the fossil record before oxygen appeared some 2.4 billion years ago. Hydrogen is mentioned yet the energetics and competition for hydrogen between different microbes shows it is highly unfeasible.

Arsenic is another theoretical possibility, and evidence for that was found in 2008. Visscher says the link with arsenic was strengthened in 2014 when he and colleagues found evidence of arsenic-based photosynthesis in deep time. To further support their theory, the researchers needed to find a modern analog to study the biogeochemistry and element cycling.

Finding an analog to the conditions on early Earth is a challenge for a number of reasons, besides the fact that oxygen is abundant on modern earth. For instance, the evidence shows early microbes captured atmospheric carbon and produced organic matter at a time when volcanic eruptions were frequent, UV light was intense in the absence of the ozone layer, and oceans were essentially a toxic soup.

Another challenging aspect of working within the fossil record, especially those as ancient as some stromatolites, is that there are few left due to the cycling of rock as continents move and time marches on. However, a breakthrough happened when the team discovered an active microbial mat, currently existing in the harsh conditions in Laguna La Brava in the Atacama Desert in Chile.

The mats have not been studied previously but present an otherworldly set of conditions, like those of early Earth. The mats are in a unique environment which leaves them in a permanent oxygen-free state at high altitude where they are exposed to wild, daily temperature swings, and high UV conditions. The mats serve as powerful and informative tools for truly understanding life in the conditions of early Earth.

Visscher explains, "We started working in Chile, where I found a blood red river. The red sediments are made up by anoxogenic photosynthetic bacteria. The water is very high in arsenic as well. The water that flows over the mats contains hydrogen sulfide that is volcanic in origin and it flows very rapidly over these mats. There is absolutely no oxygen."

The team also showed that the mats were making carbonate deposits and creating a new generation of stromatolites. The carbonate materials also showed evidence for arsenic cycling - that arsenic is serving as a vehicle for electrons -- proving that the microbes are actively metabolizing arsenic much like oxygen in modern systems. Visscher says that these findings, along with the fossil evidence gives a strong indication of what was seen on early earth.

"Arsenic-based life has been a question in terms of does it have biological role or is it just a toxic compound?" says Visscher. That question appears to be answered, "I have been working with microbial mats for about 35 years or so. This is the only system on Earth where I could find a microbial mat that worked absolutely in the absence of oxygen."

Visscher points out that an important tool they used to perform this research is similar to one onboard the Mars Perseverance rover, currently en route to Mars.

"In looking for evidence of life on Mars they will be looking at iron and probably they should be looking at arsenic also."

Topographically sketched catchment areas are a spatial unit based on the shapes of the earth's surface. They show how human activities and climate change influence the available quantities of water. Knowledge of these units is fundamental to sustainable water management. However, due to underground connections, some catchment areas accumulate water from areas beyond their topographic boundaries, while others are effectively much smaller than their surface topography would suggest. Currently, most hydrological modelling strategies do not take these groundwater connections into account, but assume that the catchments are independent of their surroundings. For this reason, Dr. Yan Liu and Assistant Professor Dr. Andreas Hartmann from the Chair of Hydrological Modeling and Water Resources at the University of Freiburg, together with a team of researchers from the University of Bristol in England and Princeton University in the US, have introduced the Effective Catchment Index (ECI). Using this new metric, they were able to determine how topographic and actual catchment areas differ when analyzing a global data set. The team recently published the results in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

Using the ECI, the team led by Liu and Hartmann was able to demonstrate that the assumption of a closed water balance, i.e. that the level of a river changes only through precipitation and evaporation from its topographic area, for example, does not apply to a considerable number of catchments around the world. Every third catchment studied has an effective catchment area that is even greater than twice or less than half its topographical area. The scientists recognized that these areas influence or are influenced outside their topographical boundaries by water management activities such as pumping groundwater and, for example, deforestation or reforestation.

With their analysis, the researchers show that the ECI they have redefined is suitable for investigating how drought can spread across topographical boundaries as a result of water exchange. It can also be used in the analysis of the effects of climate and land use changes on cross-boundary water exchange. "This is how we have seen where we need to further investigate underground networks across topographical boundaries in order to support sustainable water management," says Hartmann.

In 2016, a supercomputer beat the world champion in Go, a complicated board game. How? By using reinforcement learning, a type of artificial intelligence whereby computers train themselves after being programmed with simple instructions. The computers learn from their mistakes and, step by step, become highly powerful.

The main drawback to reinforcement learning is that it can't be used in some real-life applications. That's because in the process of training themselves, computers initially try just about anything and everything before eventually stumbling on the right path. This initial trial-and-error phase can be problematic for certain applications, such as climate-control systems where abrupt swings in temperature wouldn't be tolerated.

Learning the driver's manual before starting the engine

The CSEM engineers have developed an approach that overcomes this problem. They showed that computers can first be trained on extremely simplified theoretical models before being set to learn on real-life systems. That means that when the computers start the machine-learning process on the real-life systems, they can draw on what they learned previously on the models. The computers can therefore get on the right path quickly without going through a period of extreme fluctuations. The engineers' research has just been published in IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems.

"It's like learning the driver's manual before you start a car," says Pierre-Jean Alet, head of smart energy systems research at CSEM and a co-author of the study. "With this pre-training step, computers build up a knowledge base they can draw on so they aren't flying blind as they search for the right answer."

Slashing energy use by over 20%

The engineers tested their approach on a heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system for a complex 100-room building using a three-step process. First, they trained a computer on a "virtual model" built from simple equations that roughly described the building's behavior. Then they fed actual building data (temperature, how long blinds were open, weather conditions, etc.) into the computer, to make the training more accurate. Finally, they let the computer run its reinforcement-learning algorithms to find the best way to manage the HVAC system.
Broad applications

This discovery could open up new horizons for machine learning by expanding its use to applications where large fluctuations in operating parameters would have important financial or security costs.

Recently computer scientists at USC Institute of Technologies (ICT) set out to assess under what conditions humans would employ deceptive negotiating tactics. Through a series of studies, they found that whether humans would embrace a range of deceptive and sneaky techniques was dependent both on the humans' prior negotiating experience in negotiating as well as whether virtual agents where employed to negotiate on their behalf. The findings stand in contrast to prior studies and show that when humans use intermediaries in the form of virtual agents, they feel more comfortable employing more deceptive techniques than they would normally use when negotiating for themselves.

Lead author of the paper on these studies, Johnathan Mell, says, "We want to understand the conditions under which people act deceptively, in some cases purely by giving them an artificial intelligence agent that can do their dirty work for them."

Nowadays, virtual agents are employed nearly everywhere, from automated bidders on sites like eBay to virtual assistants on smart phones. One day, these agents could work on our behalf to negotiate the sale of a car, argue for a raise, or even resolve a legal dispute.

Mell, who conducted the research during his doctoral studies in computer science at USC, says, "Knowing how to design experiences and artificial agents which can act like some of the most devious among us is useful in learning how to combat those techniques in real life."

The researchers are eager to understand how these virtual agents or bots might do our bidding and to understand how humans behave when deploying these agents on their behalf.

Gale Lucas, a research assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and at USC ICT, as well as the corresponding author on the study published in the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, says, "We wanted to predict how people are going to respond differently as this technology becomes available and gets to us more widely."

The research team, consisting of Mell, Sharon Mozgai, Jonathan Gratch and Lucas, conducted three separate experiments, focusing on the conditions under which humans would opt for a range of ethically dubious behaviors. These behaviors included tough bargaining (aggressive pressuring), overt lies, information withholding, manipulative use of negative emotions (feigning anger), as well as rapport building and appealing through use of sympathy. Part of these experiments involved negotiations with non-human, virtual agents and programming virtual agents as their proxies.

The researchers found that people were willing to engage in deceptive techniques under the following conditions:

If they had more prior experience in negotiation

If they had a negative experience in negotiation (as little as 10 minutes of a negative experience could affect their intention to use more deceptive practices in future negotiations)

If they had less prior experience in negotiation, but were employing a virtual agent to negotiate for them

Say the authors, "How humans say they will make decisions and how they actually make decisions are rarely aligned." When people programmed virtual agents to make decisions, they acted similarly to as if they had engaged a lawyer as a representative and through this virtual representative, were more willing to resort to deceptive tactics.

"People with less experience may not be confident that they can use the techniques or feel uncomfortable, but they have no problem programming an agent to do that," says Lucas.

Other outcomes: when humans interacted with a virtual agent who was fair, they were fairer, but when the virtual agent was nicer or nasty in terms of its emotional displays, participants did not change their willingness to engage in deceptive practices.

The researchers also gleaned some insights about human behavior in general.

Compared to their willingness to endorse the more deceptive techniques including overt lies, information withholding, and manipulative use of negative emotions, "people really don't have any problem with being nice to get what they want or being tough to get that what they want," says Lucas, which suggests that these apparently less deceptive techniques are considered more morally acceptable by the participants.

The work has implications for ethics on technology use and for future designers. The researchers say, "If humans, as they get more experience, become more deceptive, designers of bots could account for this."

Lucas notes, "As people get to use the agents to do their bidding, we might see that their bidding might get a little less ethical."

Mell adds, "While we certainly don't want people to be less ethical, we do want to understand how people really do act, which is why experiments like these are so important to creating real, human-like artificial agents."