Culture

That many novel network- and cloud-dependent services will have become commonplace in the next few years is evident. This includes highly demanding technological feats like 8K video streaming, remote virtual reality, and large-scale data processing. But, it is also likely that today's network infrastructures won't make the cut unless significant improvements are made to enable the advanced, "killer" 5G applications expected in the imminent 5G era.

So, instead of having cloud service providers (CSPs) and mobile network operators (MNOs) like Google and like Verizon independently improve their systems, what if they actively collaborated to achieve common goals? In a recent paper published in IEEE Network, a team of scientists, including Prof Jeongho Kwak from Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology in Korea, explored the benefits and challenges of implementing a system focused on MNO-CSP collaboration.

In their study, the scientists propose an overarching system architecture in which both CSPs and MNOs share information and exert unified control over the available network, computing, and storage resources. Prof Kwak explains, "The proposed architecture includes vertical collaboration from end devices to centralized cloud systems and horizontal collaboration between cloud providers and network providers. Hence, via vertical-horizontal optimization of the architecture, we can experience holistic improvement in the services for both current and future killer applications of 5G." For example, by having MNOs share information about current traffic congestions and CSPs inform MNOs about their available computing resources, a collaborative system becomes more agile, flexible, and efficient.

Through simulations, the research team went on to demonstrate how CSP-MNO collaboration could bring about potential performance improvements. Moreover, they discussed the present challenges that need to be overcome before such a system can be implemented, including calculating the financial incentives for each party and certain compatibility issues during the transition to a collaborative system architecture.

Embracing collaboration between CSPs and MNOs might be necessary to unlock many of the features that were promised during the early development of 5G. Prof Kwak concludes, "We envision unconstrained use of augmented or virtual reality services and autonomous vehicles with almost zero latency. However, this ideal world will be possible only through the joint optimization of networking, processing, and storage resources."

One thing is clear: "teamwork," among various service providers, is essential if we are to keep up with the current Information Age.

Rare research on the effects of a pandemic undertaken during an ongoing disaster shows that COVID-19 has severely affected people's daily emotional lives and mental health, increasing their stresses the longer lockdowns, fear of getting sick and financial strains continue.

Having a lower education level and speaking English as a second language further reduced resilience and hindered people's ability to cope, suggests new University of California, Davis, research based on surveys that began in April -- just a few weeks after lockdowns started in the United States.

"This is some of the first information we have on resilience in the face of COVID-19," said Clare Cannon, assistant professor in the Department of Human Ecology at UC Davis and co-author on the study. "Our hypothesis, for our continuing research, is that it's getting worse. The longer this goes on, the less resilient we are going to be."

Cannon and researchers at Tulane University surveyed 374 people online, using social media, websites and other outlets, mostly in the United States, over a 10-week period beginning in April. More research is planned as the pandemic progresses.

Those surveyed were asked about previous disaster experience, their resilience, their perceived stress, their current situation as it relates to COVID-19, and personal and household demographics. The online Qualtrics survey took an estimated 10 minutes to complete.

Respondents in the current study had filled out questionnaires before masks were mandatory, before closures were prolonged, before large job losses had occurred and prior to full realization that the world was experiencing a global economic recession and deadly public health crisis, she added. Additionally, fewer people, at the time of the survey, had experienced family illness and loss to COVID-19 as would be the case now and in future surveys, Cannon said.

The study's authors sought to look at the role of perceived stress, assess demographic variables and add to the literature on disasters, infectious disease and resilience. Their article was published this month in the journal Sustainability.

Contact with others is stressful

Historically, in environmental disasters (such as hurricanes), people find comfort in asking for and getting help from neighbors and friends. However, this kind of dependence and interaction increased stress for people in the survey, Cannon said. That's because in a pandemic, contact with others increases their risks and fears of getting sick, she said.

"There seems to be a real fear of contagion," Cannon said. "There's something unique about it being an infectious disease in that people pose a risk to each other. If we need things from other people, it increases our stress."

"The more that people perceive stress the less resilient they are."

Research on pandemics and their effects on people is scant, given that it's been a century since a pandemic the size of COVID-19 has occurred. Additionally, very little research has taken place during a pandemic, researchers said.

A population facing uncertainty

The findings showed that just 28 days, on average, into the pandemic two-thirds of survey respondents reported moderate to high levels of stress. Most of the respondents were female (75 percent), well-educated, white and employed at the time.

"It begs the question," researchers wrote in their article, "of whether populations with less social capital and fewer financial resources would be reporting even higher levels of stress and lower levels of resilience."

The authors said the research points to the need for solutions for a population facing so much uncertainty.

"Given the findings from the study, governments must mitigate the associated risks of a pandemic by providing the needed resources for individuals, households, and communities to maintain resilience over a long period of time," the authors concluded. "The uncertain end of COVID-19 requires governments to offer a buffer against the pandemic impact and to ultimately reduce stress to create optimal health and well-being for citizens facing adversity."

Is concern about climate change a luxury? According to a new survey by researchers at Stanford University, Resources for the Future, and ReconMR, perhaps not.

The survey, which polled a representative national sample of 999 American adults from May 28 through August 16, 2020, finds that Americans believe in and care about climate change as much as ever—despite the challenges created and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, the personal importance that Americans attach to climate change is at an all-time high.

The first installment in a six-part series, Climate Insights 2020: Surveying American Public Opinion on Climate Change and the Environment explores in depth how Americans think about climate change and what they want done about it. The report gives policymakers and the public a ‘pulse-check’ on American public opinion amid historic upheaval as numerous issues, from racial injustice to mass unemployment, compete for national attention.

“We continue to see huge majorities of Americans believing that climate change is real and a threat, and passion about the issue is at an all-time high. No doubt, this issue will weigh heavily in the minds of a substantial number of Americans when they cast their ballots in November,” report co-author and Stanford University professor Jon Krosnick said. “People are more sure than they’ve ever been.”

The topline findings:

Opinions on climate change have become increasingly entrenched. The past 20 years have seen huge majorities believing in the existence of global warming, and people have become increasingly sure that their viewpoint is correct on this issue.
The “issue public”—the group of people who care deeply about climate change—has grown. More Americans than ever are likely to consider climate change while voting. The percentage of Americans to whom global warming is an “extremely personally important” issue has more than doubled since 2006 to 25%.
The COVID-19 pandemic has not diminished support for climate change mitigation, with 82% of Americans saying the US government should act on climate change.
81% of Americans believe Earth has been warming over the past 100 years, and more than three-quarters believe Earth’s temperature will go up over the next 100 years.
Three-quarters of Americans report having seen the effects of global warming firsthand.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has been a unique test for how people feel about climate change when faced with a different global crisis,” said Ray Kopp, RFF Vice President for Research and Policy Engagement. “The argument that we can’t do anything about climate change without crashing the economy, or that we need to just focus on the pandemic and not do anything on climate right now simply doesn’t resonate with Americans.”

An international collaboration between leading respiratory scientists, immunologists and clinicians, led by Centenary UTS Centre for Inflammation, has completed the first comprehensive review of all relevant animal and cellular models of SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19.

The review, published in Mucosal Immunology, aims to provide a head-to-head comparison of existing disease models, including in the background of predisposing chronic diseases, and discusses the pre-clinical pipeline for the testing of new and targeted preventions and treatments for COVID-19 patients.

The researchers say that clinical trials have been hampered by the lack of this type of information derived from fundamental research.

Lead author, Dr Matt Johansen from Centenary UTS Centre for Inflammation said that everyone understands COVID-19 is causing a major "once-in-a-century global pandemic" and that there is a race to develop vaccines and identify the most effective treatments.

"Using representative animal models of SARS-CoV-2 infection, including in the background of chronic diseases such as obesity and diabetes, with validation of findings in primary human cells and tissues is the most efficient strategy," Dr Johansen said

"By discussing all the available models and their pro's and con's, this will enable other readers to make informed decisions about the advantages of each model and the suitability to their applications," he said.

Among the key points of the review are that the clearest predictor of mortality is age, with the case fatality rate rising dramatically over 60 years of age. Other predisposing factors for heightened mortality are being male, social deprivation, and chronic disease particularly chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cardiovascular disease (CVD), obesity and diabetes.

Director of the Centenary UTS Centre for Inflammation and senior author, Professor Phil Hansbro said "Understanding the complex interactions between people with underlying diseases is critical to finding the most effective treatments for those susceptible individuals."

"A key issue is why some individuals progress to more severe lower respiratory disease but others do not, and currently scientists aren't really sure why".

"Within the Centre for Inflammation, one of the things we are trying to do is use cellular and animal models to comprehensively decipher why some people get more severe disease than others" Prof Hansbro said.

Alfred the Great, King of Wessex from 871 and King of the Anglo-Saxons from 886 to 899, is widely touted as establishing England's first Royal fleet but research led by Flinders Medieval Studies PhD candidate Matt Firth has found evidence that the Anglo-Saxons' first recorded naval victory occurred 20 years before Alfred was crowned King of Wessex and 24 years before his first recorded naval victory.

The research - Kingship and Maritime Power in 10th?Century England, by Matthew Firth and Erin Sebo - has been published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology (DOI: 10.1111/1095-9270.1242).

"The nationalistic rhetoric that as grown up around the Royal Navy and its central role in British Empire identity since at least the 18th century has given rise to some questionable 'facts' around its origins," says Firth.

"The idea that Alfred founded the navy is widespread - and the claim has been uncritically reproduced by such reputable authorities as the National Museum of the Royal Navy, Encyclopædia Britannica and BBC's history webpage."

Firth and Dr Erin Sebo from Flinders University's College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences embarked on studies to identify how important naval power was to early medieval kings, and began finding evidence to question Alfred the Great's status as the founder of the Royal Navy.

Using a combination of tenth-century historical texts and the growing archaeological evidence for medieval ship design, the new research shows that Alfred was not the first English monarch to coordinate a fleet to defend the country against Viking attack.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles report an engagement in 851 involving an ealdorman Elchere and King Æthelstan of Kent (839-c.853), who reputedly defeated a Viking force near Sandwich - the first recorded instance of a victory for an English fleet. It implies that a tradition of defensive naval action existed from at least the reign of Alfred's father, Æthelwulf of Wessex (839-858).

The first recorded naval engagement of Alfred's reign is an attack on a fleet of seven ships in 875; the second being a skirmish with a flotilla of only four vessels in 882.

There is also evidence that the legend bestowed on Alfred the Great as a naval visionary has greatly elevated his capabilities and successes at sea.

"Alfred's ship designs, as described in the records, were impractical and failed as a maritime force in its first naval battle against more experienced Viking sailors," says Firth.

Maritime power was important to good kingship, but there is little evidence of continuity between the ad hoc fleets of the 10th-century and the emergence of a Royal Navy.

"Suggestions of vast patrol fleets maintained by his successors are both logistically and technologically impossible," says Firth.

The new research also sheds fresh light on the famous burial ships of medieval England and Scandinavia - a topical archaeological issue because of new discoveries in Iceland and Norway in the past 18 months.

Similarities in burial configuration and in ship design across these regions demonstrate ongoing cultural contact, resulting in comparable technological innovations in warship design between England and Scandinavia, and common cultural attitudes to the importance and prestige of sea-power.

Queensland University of Technology (QUT) researchers have created a new molecular coupling tool employing both green light and pH triggers that has potential for use in applications such as drug delivery and 3D cell culture platforms.

Their research has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

The researchers designed photoreactive molecules that enabled them to couple together, using green light as the fuel, polymers commonly used in medical and industrial applications. They then controlled the molecules' photoreactivity by changing pH (the measure of how acid or alkaline a substance is).

It is the first time pH has been used as an on/off switch for a green light-activated, catalyst-free chemical process.

The green light used was also the longest wavelength of light (up to 500 nanometres) employed to date to control a catalyst-free photochemical bond-forming reaction.

To demonstrate the application potential of this photochemical innovation, the team produced a range of hydrogels with varying mechanical properties. Hydrogels are commonly used in contact lenses, tissue engineering scaffolds, as drug delivery carriers, and for cell biology studies.

The research was conducted by lead author and QUT PhD chemistry researcher Kubra Kalayci, Australian Research Council (ARC) DECRA Fellow Dr Hendrik Frisch, Research Fellow Dr Vinh Truong, and ARC Laureate Fellow Professor Christopher Barner-Kowollik from QUT's Soft Matter Materials Laboratory in the Science and Engineering Faculty Centre for Materials Science.

Professor Barner-Kowollik said scientists were constantly seeking to move further away from using harsh UV light to activate chemical reactions.

"Our photochemical innovation is another example of what is called red-shifting - moving through the colours of light in the spectrum, from blue to green towards red, to light that has longer wavelengths," he said.

"In the past, most of these types of photochemical reactions were triggered by harsh UV (ultra-violet) light. But that prevents applications in a biological context because UV light has so much energy it kills cells.

"Dentistry is an example of one of the areas that has shifted. Initially dentists were using UV lamps. Now anyone who has had a filling probably knows that the dentist uses a little lamp with longer wavelength blue light for curing.

"The longer the wavelength of light the better, in principle. The radiation is less harmful, so it can be used for biological applications, and it allows for deeper light penetration. For dentistry, that means better and more uniform curing.

"But it is also more difficult to do, because the longer the wavelength of light the less energy you have to drive the chemical reaction.

"Adding an additional stimulus with the green light, such as we have with varying the pH as a reversible on-off switch for the reaction, provides the opportunity for better regulation. This is especially important for drug delivery systems, where the drug needs to be released under a specific pH, as pH varies throughout the human body.

"This is also a catalyst-free reaction. It means there's no helper molecule to make it happen. That's important for biological application as well because in many cases helper molecules contain metal, and you don't want something that could leach out, or something that is found to be cytotoxic or carcinogenic."

To investigate the new green light-pH coupling tool's suitability for biomaterials engineering, Ms Kalayci said the research team created hydrogels with different properties.

"These showed that green light allowed higher penetration depths, resulting in fabrication of thicker hydrogels," she said.

Dr Truong said cells cultured inside the hydrogels "showed the process for creating the gels was non-toxic, and the cells also remained viable for several days".

The team believes the new coupling tool has a range of other potential applications.

"For example, in the context of personalised medicine," Dr Truong and Dr Frisch said. "You might want to use our reaction to attach a cancer drug to a specific part of a molecule to deliver the drug in a way that is suited to a particular patient."

Professor Barner-Kowollik said it was also another step towards achieving "molecular surgery".

"What chemists hope to do is be able to 'operate' on one part of a molecule without affecting anything else," he said.

"So, for example, if you had a protein, a large complex molecule, we'd like to be able to use light like a chemical scalpel and very delicately go in and change part of that molecule without affecting any other part. That provides many potential applications."

Applications could include, Dr Truong said, "looking at the selective crosslinking of DNA to study the underlying mechanism of a cancer, looking for avenues for targeted treatment, or creating dynamic hydrogel scaffolds to study cell interactions for tissue regeneration therapy.

"Using light, we are providing chemical tools to be able to achieve these aims."

Several new papers in Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, published by Oxford University Press, suggest successful treatments for COVID-19.

Three articles all researched the use of sofosbuvir and daclatasvir for the treatment of COVID-19. These three papers come from Iran, which has developed its own pill containing sofosbuvir and daclatasvir, and is in a position to test this in a large clinical trial as Iran is a massively impacted country, reporting some 2500 cases and 200 deaths a day.

Currently no effective antiviral therapy has been found to treat COVID-19. The aim of the trials was to assess if the addition of sofosbuvir and daclatasvir, a drug combination commonly used for the treatment of hepatitis C, improved clinical outcomes in patients with moderate or severe COVID-19.

In one trial, researchers recruited 66 patients and allocated them to either the treatment group or the control group. Clinical recovery within 14 days was achieved by 88% in the treatment group and 67% in the control group. The treatment group had a significantly shorter median duration of hospitalization (6 days) than the control group (8 days). Cumulative incidence of hospital discharge was significantly higher in the treatment group versus control. Three patients died in the treatment group and five in the control group. No serious adverse events were reported.

In another study, subjects suffering from COVID-19 were divided into two groups with one group receiving ribavirin and the other receiving sofosbuvir/daclatasvir. All participants also received the recommended national standard treatment which, at that time, was lopinavir/ritonavir and single-dose hydroxychloroquine.

The results indicated that median duration of stay was five days for the sofosbuvir/daclatasvir group and nine days for the ribavirin group. The mortality in the sofosbuvir/daclatasvir group was 6% and 33% for the ribavirin group. The relative risk of death for patients treated with sofosbuvir/daclatasvir was 0.17%.

The results of these studies suggest that the addition of sofosbuvir and daclatasvir to standard care may reduce the duration of hospital stays for COVID-19 patients compared to standard care alone.

"Despite the encouraging initial results, it is too early to reach a verdict. Larger, well-designed studies are required to confirm our results," said Shahin Merat, the lead author of one of the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy articles. "A network of five randomised clinical trials has been set up, to test sofosbuvir plus daclatasvir in over 2000 patients with COVID-19, in Iran, Brazil, Egypt, and South Africa. By October, we should know if this treatment could be approved for worldwide use."

Many COVID-19 patients develop acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), a life-threatening condition where the lungs cannot provide the body's vital organs with enough oxygen. Patients with ARDS are usually placed on ventilators to help get enough oxygen into their bodies. Now, new research presented at the 'virtual' European Respiratory Society International Congress [1] has found that having fewer different types of fungi in the lungs is linked to increased severity of disease in ARDS patients.

The human microbiome [2] is made up of tiny organisms such as bacteria, viruses and fungi. Presenting her research to the meeting, Ms Noel Britton, a PhD candidate at the University of Pittsburgh, USA, said that up to now researchers had tended to concentrate on studying the effects of bacteria on human health, partly because the microbiome is primarily composed of bacteria and there are technical difficulties in extracting enough fungi to study.

"In terms of numbers of cells, fungi are outnumbered by bacteria by several orders of magnitude," she said. "Additionally, while it is now well established that the lungs play host to a distinct and dynamic microbiome, they don't represent a rich environment for microbes to thrive, and they generally have many fewer microbes than the gut--the body site where scientists have focused the most microbiome research. It can be difficult to pick up a signal from such a low mass of fungi and to be sure that the sequences identified are not due to contamination in the laboratory.

"We wanted to carry out this research as acute respiratory distress syndrome is characterised by a hyper-inflammatory over-reaction of the immune system and we know that fungi can be involved in activating and regulating the human immune system. There are no known therapies for the successful treatment of ARDS and very little is known about why some patients have a hyper-inflammatory response. The diversity of the microbiome, and specifically of fungi, may play an important role in understanding why some patients develop ARDS and some do not."

Ms Britton and her colleagues enrolled 202 mechanically-ventilated patients in the study between October 2011 and September 2019. As far as they know, none of these patients had COVID-19 but they are continuing to enrol patients through the pandemic and a future analysis will look at those with confirmed COVID-19.

Of the 202 patients in this analysis, 21% had a diagnosis of ARDs, the average age was 50 years old and 61% were women. The researchers collected mucus-based secretions from the trachea (the main airway leading down to the lungs) and extracted DNA to analyse in the laboratory using a technique called next generation sequencing.

Ms Britton said: "We identified about 100 different types of fungi in the lungs of mechanically-ventilated, critically ill patients. The diversity was quite low in all of the samples, but in samples in which a single species dominated, the diversity was very low. A large number of patients had samples that were dominated by a single fungal species from the Candida type; this made up more than 50% of the fungi present in these samples and it is known to be involved in causing disease in humans."

Fungal diversity was lower in ARDS patients than in those without the disease. In ARDS patients, shock, sepsis and organ failure were associated with lower diversity. Decreased diversity was linked with worse injury to the lungs, more intensive treatment and elevated levels of a protein called pentraxin-3, which is an indicator of inflammation and disease severity.

"The association of lower fungal diversity with clinical markers of disease severity is an important finding because it provides evidence for a relationship between the lung microbiome and clinical outcomes in critical illness," said Ms Britton. "We will continue to investigate this further because there is much that is not understood about the development and treatment of ARDS and this study may point us towards an important diagnostic or treatment-based discovery."

It is not known how fungal (or other microorganism) diversity develops, but fungi are most likely to enter the lungs through inhaling tiny amounts of saliva into the lungs.

"As the human body's second-largest mucosal surface area, roughly the same size as a tennis court, human lungs are constantly exposed to fungi through inhalation," said Ms Britton. "Airborne fungi are especially prevalent, comprising up to 50,000 spores per cubic metre of air, and so the respiratory tract is exposed to a wide variety. Inhaled fungi can be extremely diverse and include species known to be disease-causing as well as those believed to be harmless in humans."

Tobias Welte, who was not involved in the research, is the European Respiratory Society Past President, Professor of Pulmonary Medicine and Director of the Department of Pulmonary and Infectious Diseases at Hannover University School of Medicine, Germany. He said: "In the last few years much attention has focused on the microbiome, particularly in the gut, and its relationship to a variety of health problems. Fungi are harder to study than other components of the lung microbiota, such as bacteria and viruses, but we're starting to see more evidence that they also have a role in chronic lung disease.

"The finding from this study, that less diversity in the mycobiome is linked to worse outcomes for patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome, is fascinating. It's too early to know what this might mean for patients and their doctors, but it has the potential to lead to new diagnostic tests and better treatments."

Medication for high blood pressure could improve Covid-19 survival rates and reduce the severity of infection - according to new research from the University of East Anglia.

Researchers studied 28,000 patients taking antihypertensives - a class of drugs that are used to treat hypertension (high blood pressure).

They found that the risk of severe Covid-19 illness and death was reduced for patients with high blood pressure who were taking Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme inhibitors (ACEi) or Angiotensin Receptor Blockers (ARB).

Lead researcher Dr Vassilios Vassiliou, from UEA's Norwich Medical School, said: "We know that patients with cardiovascular diseases are at particular risk of severe Covid-19 infection. But at the start of the pandemic, there was concern that specific medications for high blood pressure could be linked with worse outcomes for Covid-19 patients.

"We wanted to find out what the impact of these medications is for people with Covid-19.

"We therefore studied the outcomes for patients taking antihypertensives - looking particularly at what we call 'critical' outcomes such as being admitted to intensive care or being put on a ventilator, and death."

The research was led by UEA in collaboration with the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital.

The team analysed data from 19 studies related to Covid-19 and ACEi and ARB medications. The meta-analysis involved more than 28,000 patients and is the largest and most detailed such study to date.

They compared data from Covid-19 patients who were taking ACEi or ARB medications with those who were not - focusing on whether they experienced 'critical' events (admission to intensive care and invasive or non-invasive ventilation) and death.

Dr Vassiliou said: "We found that a third of Covid-19 patients with high blood pressure and a quarter of patients overall were taking an ACEi/ARBs. This is likely due to the increasing risk of infection in patients with co-morbidities such as cardiovascular diseases, hypertension and diabetes.

"But the really important thing that we showed was that there is no evidence that these medications might increase the severity of Covid-19 or risk of death.

"On the contrary, we found that there was a significantly lower risk of death and critical outcomes, so they might in fact have a protective role - particularly in patients with hypertension.

"Covid-19 patients with high blood pressure who were taking ACEi/ARB medications were 0.67 times less likely to have a critical or fatal outcome than those not taking these medications.

"As the world braces itself for a potential second wave of the infection, it is particularly important that we understand the impact that these medications have in Covid-19 patients.

"Our research provides substantial evidence to recommend continued use of these medications if the patients were taking them already.

"However, we are not able to address whether starting such tablets acutely in patients with Covid-19 might improve their prognosis, as the mechanism of action might be different," he added.

A unique study has analyzed in detail how EU agricultural subsidies flow down to the local level. The new data show that most income support payments go to intensively farmed regions already above median EU income, while climate-friendly and biodiverse farming regions, as well as poorer regions, are insufficiently funded. Consequently, the majority of payments are going to the regions causing the most environmental damage and the farmers in the least need of income support.

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the EU's largest budget item, averaging EUR 54 billion annually. It is well known that over 80% of payments are going to only 20% of farmers, but to what extent these payments support policy goals is poorly understood, due to a lack of transparency and complex reporting.

"Our analysis shows that at least €24 billion per year goes to income support in the richest regions, while the poorest regions with the most farm jobs are being left further behind. That misspent money would more than cover the €20 billion per year needed to meet the EU's Biodiversity Strategy", says Kimberly Nicholas, study author from the Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS) in Sweden.

The researchers created a unique database that maps the geographical location and purpose of CAP payments for the first time. It includes individual payments to all farmers in the EU from 2015. This detailed breakdown allowed analyzing and mapping how CAP money is spent across its nine modern goals and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

"By revealing the extreme concentration of payments to relatively wealthy regions, we hope this study can catalyse radical change in the distribution of CAP funding towards needs-based income support and sustainable development", says Mark Brady, an economist from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Lund University.

"We show in black-and-white that current spending is exacerbating, rather than reducing income inequality among farmers, and that payments intended to support rural development are going to urban areas like London. Current payments primarily support farming regions causing the most climate pollution, with the least biodiversity-friendly farming and fewest farm jobs", he continues.

With CAP currently up for reform, the researchers believe their results are timely, as the opportunity exists for re-allocating funds to meet the massive social and environmental challenges highlighted in existing policy goals, as well as creating a more sustainable food system and vibrant rural societies.

"Right now, the farming regions with the highest greenhouse gas emissions from intensive livestock production are getting paid to pollute. Farm payments should be needs and results-based to ensure social and environmental benefits. The EU has an obligation to harmonize reporting of CAP spending data, tracked using more relevant indicators, to ensure public spending actually provides public benefits", concludes Kimberly Nicholas.

The blood vasculature in the brain is a highly ramified, complex but well-organized vessel network. During development, the pathfinding of growing vessels is critical for the patterning of the brain vasculature. However, its underlying mechanism still remains elusive.

A research team led by Dr. DU Jiulin of the Institute of Neuroscience, Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology (CEBSIT), Chinese Academy of Sciences, has revealed that Ca2+ activities mediated by mechanosensitive Piezo1 channels regulate the pathfinding of growing brain vessels in larval zebrafish.

The formation of the brain vasculature is initiated by vessel invasion from the surrounding perineural vascular plexus around the ventral neural tube during early development, and then the brain vasculature is expanded by the continuous emergence and growth of newborn vessels from preexisting ones, a process known as angiogenesis.

Endothelial tip cells (ETCs) located at the forefront of growing vessels usually extend a few motile primary branches and many dynamical fine filopodia, navigate through tissue microenvironments, and steer angiogenic sprouts to their appropriate targets. This process of ETC pathfinding is critical for the proper patterning of the vasculature in the brain as well as in all other organs, but its underlying mechanism still remains largely unknown.

To investigate the cellular and molecular mechanism underlying ETC pathfinding, Dr. DU's group first monitored the entire process of ETC pathfinding during brain vascular development through in vivo long-term time-lapse simultaneous imaging of both the morphological dynamics and Ca2+ activity of ETCs in larval zebrafish.

They found that before reaching target vessels, ETCs frequently extended and retracted subcellular primary branches, leading to continuous changes in the direction of ETC migration and vessel growth.

Interestingly, branches of ETCs exhibited spontaneous local Ca2+ transients at different frequencies during pathfinding, with high- and low-frequency local Ca2+ transients associated with branch retraction and extension, respectively.

Then the researchers examined the causal relationship between local Ca2+ transients and fate determination of ETC branches via local manipulation of Ca2+ concentration at ETC branches, and found that high- and low-frequency Ca2+ transients were necessary and sufficient for the retraction and extension of ETC branches, respectively.

Furthermore, they investigated the origin of local Ca2+ activities of ETCs, and discovered that mechanosensitive Piezo1 cationic channels were preferentially expressed on ETC branches and activated by tissue stiffness-associated mechanical force. "They mediated local Ca2+ activities of ETC branches, thus regulating the retraction and extension of ETC branches," said Dr. DU.

Mutating piezo1 largely diminished local Ca2+ transients of ETC branches, impaired the pathfinding of ETCs, and therefore disrupted the patterning of the brain vasculature.

Finally, the researchers showed that the protease calpain and nitric oxide synthase mediated the effects of Piezo1-mediated Ca2+ activities on ETC branch retraction or extension, respectively.

This study reveals that Piezo1 and downstream Ca2+ signaling act as molecular bases for ETC pathfinding and highlights a novel function of Piezo1 and Ca2+ in vascular development.

STONY BROOK, NY, August 21, 2020 - China is the world's largest producer and consumer of coal. A team of international scientists led by Stony Brook University's Gang He, PhD, contend that China needs to transition away from coal to help the world achieve global decarbonization and improve the nation's environmental and human health. They outline steps that can be taken for an albeit difficult, yet just and quicker transition away from coal in a perspective paper published in One Earth.

The study proposes a political-socio-economic perspective targeting an integrated value chain to highlight a few overarching strategies and implementing policies accelerating China's transition away from coal. This is different from the conventional discussion on coal transition, which usually centers on air pollution, carbon emission and competition from renewables.

"Our paper is an effort to include in the overall discussion the employment and social justice impacts, including environmental justice, of such a transition," said Dr. He, Assistant Professor in the Department of Technology and Society in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Stony Brook University.

"The benefits of China's transition away from coal is huge. We estimate that the most aggressive coal-transition pathway could reduce premature death related to coal combustion by 224,000 in 2050, compared to the business-as-usual scenario," says Dr. He. "Similarly, our maximum estimated reduction in water consumption, arguably the most vital of all resources, is about 4.3 billion m3 in 2050."

The researchers argue that for a rapid transition away from coal, China needs to take these steps: 1) Retire coal generating plants earlier and cancel newly planned coal projects. 2) Reduce the nation's coal consumption beyond the massive power sector. 3) A rapid transition presents economic and social challenges that should be met with new economic opportunities. 4) Attempt to align the motivations and incentives of key business and government stakeholders, which are often not coordinated.

Dr. He emphasizes that a successful coal transition would involve changes that must take into account the well-being and economic security of some three million people who work in coal mining-related jobs in China, as well as another 500,000 who work within the coal power industry. A just transition away from coal, the authors write, also needs to accommodate low-income groups that rely on abundant, cheap and readily available coal for basic electricity and heating service.

To start the transition, the authors propose the creation of a dedicated task force charged with facilitating action plans to be carried out and a process that serves the best interests of affected stakeholders and China's diverse population.

What The Study Did: The potential for contract tracing to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the context of reduced physical distancing under different assumptions for case detection, tracing and quarantine efficacy is examined in this mathematical modeling study.

Authors: Joshua A. Salomon, Ph.D.,of the Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, California, is the corresponding author.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.19217)

Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - An upcoming NASA mission could find that there are more rogue planets - planets that float in space without orbiting a sun - than there are stars in the Milky Way, a new study theorizes.

"This gives us a window into these worlds that we would otherwise not have," said Samson Johnson, an astronomy graduate student at The Ohio State University and lead author of the study. "Imagine our little rocky planet just floating freely in space - that's what this mission will help us find."

The study was published today in he Astronomical Journal.

The study calculated that NASA's upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could find hundreds of rogue planets in the Milky Way. Identifying those planets, Johnson said, will help scientists infer the total number of rogue planets in our galaxy. Rogue, or free-floating, planets are isolated objects that have masses similar to that of planets. The origin of such objects is unknown, but one possibility is they were previously bound to a host star.

"The universe could be teeming with rogue planets and we wouldn't even know it," said Scott Gaudi, a professor of astronomy and distinguished university scholar at Ohio State and a co-author of the paper. "We would never find out without undertaking a thorough, space-based microlensing survey like Roman is going to do."

The Roman telescope, named for NASA's first chief astronomer who was also known as the "mother" of the Hubble telescope, will attempt to build the first census of rogue planets, which could, Johnson said, help scientists understand how those planets form. Roman will also have other objectives, including searching for planets that do orbit stars in our galaxy.

That process is not well-understood, though astronomers know that it is messy. Rogue planets could form in the gaseous disks around young stars, similar to those planets still bound to their host stars. After formation, they could later be ejected through interactions with other planets in the system, or even fly-by events by other stars.

Or they could form when dust and gas swirl together, similar to the way stars form.

The Roman telescope, Johnson said, is designed not only to locate free-floating planets in the Milky Way, but to test the theories and models that predict how these planets formed.

Johnson's study found that this mission is likely to be 10 times more sensitive to these objects than existing efforts, which for now are based on telescopes tethered to the Earth's surface. It will focus on planets in the Milky Way, between our sun and the center of our galaxy, covering some 24,000 light years.

"There have been several rogue planets discovered, but to actually get a complete picture, our best bet is something like Roman," he said. "This is a totally new frontier."

Rogue planets have historically been difficult to detect. Astronomers discovered planets outside Earth's solar system in the 1990s. Those planets, called exoplanets, range from extremely hot balls of gas to rocky, dusty worlds. Many of them circle their own stars, the way Earth circles the sun.

But it is likely that a number of them do not. And though astronomers have theories about how rogue planets form, no mission has studied those worlds in the detail that Roman will.

The mission, which is scheduled to launch in the next five years, will search for rogue planets using a technique called gravitational microlensing. That technique relies on the gravity of stars and planets to bend and magnify the light coming from stars that pass behind them from the telescope's viewpoint.

This microlensing effect is connected to Albert Einstein's Theory of General Relativity and allows a telescope to find planets thousands of light-years away from Earth--much farther than other planet-detecting techniques.

But because microlensing works only when the gravity of a planet or star bends and magnifies the light from another star, the effect from any given planet or star is only visible for a short time once every few million years. And because rogue planets are situated in space on their own, without a nearby star, the telescope must be highly sensitive in order to detect that magnification.

The study published today estimates that this mission will be able to identify rogue planets that are the mass of Mars or larger. Mars is the second-smallest planet in our solar system and is just a little bigger than half the size of Earth.

Johnson said these planets are not likely to support life. "They would probably be extremely cold, because they have no star," he said. (Other research missions involving Ohio State astronomers will search for exoplanets that could host life.)

But studying them will help scientists understand more about how all planets form, he said.

"If we find a lot of low-mass rogue planets, we'll know that as stars form planets, they're probably ejecting a bunch of other stuff out into the galaxy," he said. "This helps us get a handle on the formation pathway of planets in general."

Prof. MENG Wenxiang's group from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences recently reported a new mechanism by which microtubule networks instruct neuronal polarity.

The study, published in PNAS, deepens the understanding of the fundamental question of neuroscience, "What microtubular factor is decisive in the establishment of neuronal polarity?"

A typical mature neuron has one axon and multiple dendrites, forming the physical basis of neuronal function. In neurons, the establishment of axon/dendrite polarity is regulated by a variety of factors, including the polarization of signaling regulators and cytoskeletons. Microtubules are the final performer in this process. However, how microtubules instruct axon/dendrite differentiation has been unclear.

In this study, the researchers found that CAMSAP1, a microtubule minus-end binding protein, is an indispensable factor in neuronal multipolar-bipolar transition and radial migration.

Collaborating with WANG Yingchun's group, the researchers demonstrated that the polarity regulatory factor MARK2 kinase phosphorylated the serine at amino acid 1485 of CAMSAP1 and thereby regulated the ability of CAMSAP1 to bind and protect microtubule minus-ends.

This finding shows that the asymmetric distribution of microtubule-associated CAMSAP1 is a trigger in neurons and controls neuronal polarization by creating an unbalanced distribution of microtubules among neuronal processes.

"In fact, in the early stage of neuronal polarization, it was the unbalanced stability of the noncentrosomal microtubule minus-ends that caused the asymmetric distribution of microtubules, which in turn promoted the changes of stability or modification of microtubules," said Dr. ZHOU Zhengrong, the first author of the study. "Our research answers a question that has long plagued neuroscientists, that is, whether the stability and acetylated modification of microtubules are the decisive factors in establishing neuronal polarity."