Culture

BOSTON - In the most comprehensive study of COVID-19 pediatric patients to date, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Mass General Hospital for Children (MGHfC) researchers provide critical data showing that children play a larger role in the community spread of COVID-19 than previously thought. In a study of 192 children ages 0-22, 49 children tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, and an additional 18 children had late-onset, COVID-19-related illness. The infected children were shown to have a significantly higher level of virus in their airways than hospitalized adults in ICUs for COVID-19 treatment.

"I was surprised by the high levels of virus we found in children of all ages, especially in the first two days of infection," says Lael Yonker, MD, director of the MGH Cystic Fibrosis Center and lead author of the study, "Pediatric SARS-CoV-2: Clinical Presentation, Infectivity, and Immune Reponses," published in the Journal of Pediatrics. "I was not expecting the viral load to be so high. You think of a hospital, and of all of the precautions taken to treat severely ill adults, but the viral loads of these hospitalized patients are significantly lower than a 'healthy child' who is walking around with a high SARS-CoV-2 viral load."

Transmissibility or risk of contagion is greater with a high viral load. And even when children exhibit symptoms typical of COVID-19, like fever, runny nose and cough, they often overlap with common childhood illnesses, including influenza and the common cold. This confounds an accurate diagnosis of COVID-19, the illness derived from the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, says Yonker. Along with viral load, researchers examined expression of the viral receptor and antibody response in healthy children, children with acute SARS-CoV-2 infection and a smaller number of children with Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C).

Findings from nose and throat swabs and blood samples from the MGHfC Pediatric COVID-19 Biorepository carry implications for the reopening of schools, daycare centers and other locations with a high density of children and close interaction with teachers and staff members. "Kids are not immune from this infection, and their symptoms don't correlate with exposure and infection," says Alessio Fasano, MD, director of the Mucosal Immunology and Biology Research Center at MGH and senior author of the manuscript. "During this COVID-19 pandemic, we have mainly screened symptomatic subjects, so we have reached the erroneous conclusion that the vast majority of people infected are adults. However, our results show that kids are not protected against this virus. We should not discount children as potential spreaders for this virus."

The researchers note that although children with COVID-19 are not as likely to become as seriously ill as adults, as asymptomatic carriers or carriers with few symptoms attending school, they can spread infection and bring the virus into their homes. This is a particular concern for families in certain socio-economic groups, which have been harder hit in the pandemic, and multi-generational families with vulnerable older adults in the same household. In the MGHfC study, 51 percent of children with acute SARS-CoV-2 infection came from low-income communities compared to 2 percent from high-income communities.

In another breakthrough finding from the study, the researchers challenge the current hypothesis that because children have lower numbers of immune receptors for SARS-CoV2, this makes them less likely to become infected or seriously ill. Data from the group show that although younger children have lower numbers of the virus receptor than older children and adults, this does not correlate with a decreased viral load. According to the authors, this finding suggests that children can carry a high viral load, meaning they are more contagious, regardless of their susceptibility to developing COVID-19 infection.

The researchers also studied immune response in MIS-C, a multi-organ, systemic infection that can develop in children with COVID-19 several weeks after infection. Complications from the accelerated immune response seen in MIS-C can include severe cardiac problems, shock and acute heart failure. "This is a severe complication as a result of the immune response to COVID-19 infection, and the number of these patients is growing," says Fasano, who is also a professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School (HMS). "And, as in adults with these very serious systemic complications, the heart seems to be the favorite organ targeted by post-COVID-19 immune response," adds Fasano.

Understanding MIS-C and post-infectious immune responses from pediatric COVID-19 patients is critical for developing next steps in treatment and prevention strategies, according to the researchers. Early insights into the immune dysfunction in MIS-C should prompt caution when developing vaccine strategies, notes Yonker.

As MGHfC pediatricians, both Yonker and Fasano are constantly fielding questions from parents about the safe return of their children to school and daycare. They agree that the most critical question is what steps the schools will implement "to keep the kids, teachers, and personnel safe." Recommendations from their study, which includes 30 co-authors from MGHfC, MGH, HMS, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, include not relying on body temperature or symptom monitoring to identify SARS-CoV-2 infection in the school setting.

The researchers emphasize infection control measures, including social distancing, universal mask use (when implementable), effective hand-washing protocols and a combination of remote and in-person learning. They consider routine and continued screening of all students for SARS-CoV-2 infection with timely reporting of the results an imperative part of a safe return-to-school policy.

"This study provides much-needed facts for policymakers to make the best decisions possible for schools, daycare centers and other institutions that serve children," says Fasano. "Kids are a possible source of spreading this virus, and this should be taken into account in the planning stages for reopening schools."

Fasano fears that a hurried return to school without proper planning could result in an uptick in cases of COVID-19 infections. "If schools were to reopen fully without necessary precautions, it is likely that children will play a larger role in this pandemic," the authors conclude.

Most effort in origins of life research is focused on understanding the prebiotic formation of biological building blocks. However, it is possible early biological evolution relied on different chemical structures and processes, and these were replaced gradually over time by aeons of evolution. Recently, chemists Irena Mamajanov, Melina Caudan and Tony Jia at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) in Japan borrowed ideas from polymer science, drug delivery, and biomimicry to explore this possibility. Surprisingly, they found that even small highly branched polymers could serve as effective catalysts, and these may have helped life get started.

In modern biology, coded protein enzymes do most of the catalytic work in cells. These enzymes are made up of linear polymers of amino acids, which fold up and double-back on themselves to form fixed three-dimensional shapes. These preformed shapes allow them to interact very specifically with the chemicals whose reactions they catalyse. Catalysts help reactions occur much more quickly than they would otherwise, but don't get consumed in the reaction themselves, so a single catalyst molecule can help the same reaction happen many times. In these three-dimensional folded states, most of the structure of the catalyst doesn't directly interact with the chemicals it acts on, and just helps the enzyme structure keep its shape.

In the present work, ELSI researchers studied hyperbranched polymers - tree-like structures with a high degree and density of branching which are intrinsically globular without the need for informed folding - which is required for modern enzymes. Hyperbranched polymers, like enzymes, are capable of positioning catalysts and reagents, and modulating local chemistry in precise ways.

Most effort in origins of life research is focused on understanding the prebiotic formation of modern biological structures and building blocks. The logic is that these compounds exist now, and thus understanding how they could be made in the environment might help explain how they came to be. However, we only know of one example of life, and we know that life is constantly evolving, meaning that only the most successful variants of organisms survive. Thus it may be reasonable to assume modern organisms may not be very similar to the first organisms, and it is possible prebiotic chemistry and early biological evolution relied on different chemical structures and processes than modern biology to reproduce itself. As an analogy with technological evolution, early cathode-ray TV sets performed more or less the same function as modern high definition displays, but they are fundamentally different technologies. One technology led to the creation of the other in some ways, but it was not necessarily the logical and direct precursor of the other.

If this kind of 'scaffolding' model for biochemical evolution is true, the question becomes what sort of simpler structures, besides those used in contemporary biological systems, might have helped carry out the same sorts of catalytic functions modern life requires? Mamajanov and her team reasoned that hyperbranched polymers might be good candidates.

The team synthesised some of the hyperbranched polymers they studied from chemicals which could reasonably be expected to have been present on early Earth before life began. The team then showed that these polymers could bind small naturally occuring inorganic clusters of atoms known as zinc sulfide nanoparticles. Such nanoparticles are known to be unusually catalytic on their own.

As lead scientist Mamajanov comments, 'We tried two different types of hyperbranched polymer scaffolds in this study. To make them work, all we needed to do was to mix a zinc chloride solution and a solution of polymer, then add sodium sulfide, and "voila," we obtained a stable and effective nanoparticle-based catalyst.'

The team's next challenge was to demonstrate that these hyperbranched polymer-nanoparticle hybrids could actually do something interesting and catalytic. They found that these metal sulfide doped polymers that degrade small molecules were especially active in the presence of light, in some cases they catalysed the reaction by as much as a factor of 20. As Mamajanov says, 'So far we have only explored two possible scaffolds and only one dopant. Undoubtedly there are many, many more examples of this remaining to be discovered.'

The researchers further noted this chemistry may be relevant to an origins of life model known as the 'Zinc World'. According to this model, the first metabolism was driven by photochemical reactions catalysed by zinc sulfide minerals. They think that with some modifications, such hyperbranched scaffolds could be adjusted to study analogues of iron or molybdenum-containing protein enzymes, including important ones involved in modern biological nitrogen fixation. Mamajanov says, 'The other question this raises is, assuming life or pre-life used this kind of scaffolding process, why did life ultimately settle upon enzymes? Is there an advantage to using linear polymers over branched ones? How, when and why did this transition occur?'

The majority of today's plant-based food is a product of plant breeding. U.S. public plant breed-ing programs often focus on crops that are important to society but may be less profitable than crops that drive the bottom line for large businesses. Studies over recent decades have reported a reduction in capacity of such programs.

A survey of 278 public sector plant breeding programs in 44 U.S. states, led by the U.S. Plant Breeding Coordinating Committee, was reported recently in an article published in Crop Sci-ence.

Programs reported significantly declining personnel hours, with many reporting that budget shortfalls or uncertainty "endangered or severely constrained" their ability to support key per-sonnel, infrastructure and operations, and access to technology. Graduate student and postdoc positions were typically the most at risk, impacting the pipeline of future breeders into both public and private sectors. Almost half of program leaders were nearing retirement age.

Public plant breeding programs are at risk of disappearing without reinvigorated, stable, long-term access to funding, technology, knowledge, and expertise. If the trajectory of declining budgets and reduced staffing and expertise in public plant breeding continues, U.S. plant breed-ing capacity as a whole (both public and private) and, more broadly, U.S. food security, natural resource resilience, and public health will erode.

Adapted from Coe, MT, Evans, KM, Gasic, K, Main, D. Plant breeding capacity in U.S. public institutions. Crop Science. 2020; 1- 13.

Unsustainable trade of species is a major pathway for the introduction of invasive alien species at distant localities and at higher frequencies. It is also a major driver of over-exploitation of wild native populations. In a new study, published in the peer-reviewed open-access scholarly journal Neobiota, scientists estimated the desire of Australians to own non-native and/or illegal alien pets and the major trends in this practice. In addition, the team suggests ways to improve biosecurity awareness in the country.

Over the last two decades, Australia has been experiencing an increased amount of non-native incursions from species prominent in the international pet trade, such as rose-ringed parakeets, corn snakes and red-eared sliders. On many occasions, these animals are smuggled into the country only to escape or be released in the wild.

In general, the Australian regulations on international pet trade are highly stringent, in order to minimise biosecurity and conservation risks. Some highly-desirable species represent an ongoing conservation threat and biosecurity risk via the pet-release invasion pathway. However, lack of consistent surveillance of alien pets held, legally or otherwise, in Australia remains the main challenge. While there are species which are not allowed to be imported, they are legal for domestic trade within the country. Pet keepers have the capacity to legally or illegally acquire desired pets if they are not accessible through importation, and the number of such traders is unquantified.

Since keeping most of the alien pets in Australia is either illegal or not properly regulated, it is really difficult to quantify and assess the public demand for alien wildlife.

"We obtained records of anonymous public enquiries to the Australian Commonwealth Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment relating to the legality of importation of various alien taxa. We aimed to investigate whether species desired in Australia were biased towards being threatened by extinction, as indicated by broader research on pet demand or towards being invasive species elsewhere, which would indicate trade-related biosecurity risks", shares the lead author Mr. Adam Toomes from the University of Adelaide.

According to the research team's analysis, pets desired by Australians are significantly biased towards threatened species, invasive species and species prominent in the U.S. pet trade.

"This novel finding is of great concern for biosecurity agencies because it suggests that a filtering process is occurring where illegally smuggled
animals may already be "pre-selected" to have the characteristics that are correlated with invasive species," warns Mr. Adam Toomes.

However, the bias towards species already traded within the U.S. suggests that there is potential to use this as a means of predicting future Australian desire, as well as the acquisition of pets driven by desire. Future research from the Invasion Science & Wildlife Ecology Group at The University of Adelaide will investigate whether Australian seizures of illegal pets can be predicted using U.S. trade data.

SALT LAKE CITY -- Self-collected saliva and deep nasal swabs collected by healthcare providers are equally effective for detecting SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, according to a new study conducted by ARUP Laboratories and University of Utah (U of U) Health.

The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, represents one of the largest prospective specimen type comparisons to date, said Julio Delgado, MD, MS, ARUP chief medical officer. Other studies, including one from the Yale School of Public Health, have reached similar conclusions but with markedly fewer patients and specimens.

Researchers also found that specimens self-collected from the front of the nose are less effective than deep nasal swabs for virus detection. This finding prompted a subsequent study that has not yet been published in which researchers learned they could improve the sensitivity of anterior nasal swab testing to 98% by combining an anterior nasal swab with a swab collected from the back of the throat.

The results have important implications for patients and providers. The collection process for saliva and anterior nasal specimens is less invasive than the deep nasal, or nasopharyngeal, swab. In addition, both specimen types can be self-collected, reducing the risk of exposure for healthcare workers who collect nasopharyngeal specimens, said Kimberly Hanson, MD, MPH, section chief of clinical microbiology at ARUP and the primary author of the study.

"Saliva and nasal swab self-collection can resolve many of the resource and safety issues involved in SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic testing," Delgado said.

ARUP and U of U Health anticipate being able to start offering testing on saliva in some U of U Health clinical settings in early September. They already are using anterior nasal swabs in combination with throat swabs to test some asymptomatic individuals.

COVID-19 testing on these alternatives to nasopharyngeal swabs will increase with time, Delgado said. "From the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, ARUP has worked to build capacity for high-quality COVID-19 testing," he said. "Our goal is to make this testing available to hospitals and healthcare systems nationwide."

Hanson and her colleagues analyzed more than 1,100 specimens from 368 volunteers at the U of U Health Redwood Health Center drive-through testing site from late May through June. Volunteers self-collected saliva that they spit into a tube and swabbed from the front of both nostrils to produce specimens for testing. The researchers compared test results from these specimen types with test results from nasopharyngeal swabs healthcare providers collected from the volunteers. Discrepant results across specimens collected from the same patient triggered repeat testing using a second polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based platform.

The study showed that SARS-CoV-2 was detected in at least two specimen types in 90% of the patients who tested positive for the virus.

As a standalone alternative specimen to nasopharyngeal swabs, saliva proved to be an excellent option, Hanson said. Positivity rates for saliva specimens were nearly the same as those for nasopharyngeal specimens.

The research showed that self-collected nasal swabs, when used alone, can miss nearly 15% of infections, which prompted researchers' further study combining them with oropharyngeal, or throat swabs.

The research is an example of how ARUP and U of U Health continue to explore new methods to serve patients and the community as well as keep healthcare workers safe, said Richard Orlandi, MD, chief medical officer for ambulatory health at U of U Health. "We appreciate the researchers at ARUP, as well as the staff and patients at our Redwood testing center who have participated in this discovery," he said. "This exciting advance reflects ARUP's and U of U Health's innovative spirit and the benefits of our partnership."

Boston, MA - Widespread layoffs amid the COVID-19 pandemic threaten to cut off millions of people from their employer-sponsored health insurance plans. But the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will protect many of these people and their families from losing coverage, according to a new study.

The Perspective article in the New England Journal of Medicine, co-authored by Harvard University PhD student Sumit Agarwal (also of Brigham and Women's Hospital) and Benjamin Sommers, professor of health policy and economics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, will be published online August 19, 2020.

To quantify the ACA's effect on changes in health insurance coverage after job loss, the researchers looked at data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, a set of large-scale surveys of families and individuals, their medical providers, and employers across the U.S. The analysis compared the trajectories of 1,350 adults who lost their jobs before 2014--the year that the ACA's Medicaid and marketplace provisions, aimed at increasing health insurance coverage, went into effect--with the trajectories of 1,103 adults who lost their jobs in 2014 or later. The researchers examined the insurance status of these participants during the first three months and the last three months that they were surveyed.

Between 2011 and 2013, job loss was associated with an average health insurance coverage loss of 4.6 percentage points, the analysis found. The proportion of participants with any coverage decreased from 66.3% to 61.7%.

But after the ACA went into effect--when the overall coverage rate was much higher to begin with (76.2%)--job loss was no longer linked to an increase in the uninsured rate. Large gains in Medicaid (8.9 percentage points) and marketplace coverage (2.6 percentage points) nearly fully offset the reduction in employer-sponsored insurance for people who left or lost their job, according to the authors. Overall, the implementation of the ACA was associated with a 6.0-percentage-point net increase in the likelihood of having coverage after a job loss.

"These results indicate the critical role that the ACA will play in alleviating coverage losses related to the Covid-associated recession," the authors wrote.

The authors noted that insurance coverage gaps remain even with the ACA, and that the law's future is still uncertain amid a Supreme Court challenge from 18 Republican state attorneys general and the Trump administration, who are arguing that the law is unconstitutional.

"In the current context of millions of Americans losing their jobs and an ongoing pandemic, overturning the ACA would most likely be devastating to patients, clinicians, hospitals, and state economies," the authors wrote. "The very virus that has brought about record unemployment levels is the same agent that makes health insurance--and the new options created under the ACA--more important than ever."

Gastric bypass surgery is the most effective therapy to treat or reverse type 2 diabetes in severely obese patients. Many achieve remission of diabetes following surgery and no longer require diabetes medications. This observation has led to the theory that gastric bypass surgery has unique, weight loss-independent effects in treating diabetes, but this has remained a longstanding question in the field. Now, new research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis indicates that weight loss after surgery, rather than the surgery itself, drives metabolic improvements, such as the remission of diabetes.

The researchers studied severely obese patients with diabetes who had gastric bypass surgery and then lost 18% of their body weight. In a patient who weighs 250 pounds, for example, that would be 45 pounds. The investigators compared those patients with others who also were severely obese with diabetes but had lost the same percentage of body weight through diet alone.

After reaching their weight-loss goals, members of both groups experienced similar improvements in metabolism -- such as lower blood sugar levels throughout the day, better insulin action in the liver, muscle and fat tissue, and reductions in the need for insulin and other diabetes medications. Since the group that lost weight through diet alone did just as well as the surgery group, the researchers concluded the improvements were due to weight loss alone, rather than to any physiological changes that resulted from the surgery itself.

The study is published August 20 in The New England Journal of Medicine.

"It has been presumed that gastric bypass surgery has therapeutic, metabolic effects that result in better glucose control and even remission of diabetes beyond the effects expected from weight loss alone," said principal investigator Samuel Klein, MD, director of Washington University's Center for Human Nutrition. "But we found gastric bypass surgery improves metabolic function by causing weight loss. There were no differences in the reduction of diabetes medications or in the rate of diabetes remission between surgery patients and those who lost equivalent amounts of weight through diet alone."

More than 40% of adult Americans are obese, and close to one in 10 is severely obese. Each year more than 250,000 people in the U.S. undergo bariatric surgery to help them lose weight. The gold standard procedure, called Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, has been the most successful operation in terms of total weight loss and long-term maintenance.

In this procedure, surgeons working laparoscopically use part of a patient's football-size stomach to create a pouch the size of a ping pong ball that is connected directly to the the small intestine, bypassing much of the upper portion of the small intestine. In this study, the gastric bypass procedures were performed by bariatric surgeons, J. Chris Eagon, MD, an associate professor of surgery, and Shaina R. Eckhouse, MD, an assistant professor of surgery.

Klein's team compared 11 gastric bypass surgery patients who had diabetes with 11 others who had diabetes and achieved equivalent weight loss with diet alone. The average age of patients in the diet group was about 55, while the average in the surgery group was 49. Those in the surgery group lost an average of 51 pounds, while those in the diet group lost an average of 48 pounds. All study patients maintained that weight loss for several weeks before follow-up studies were performed.

Over a 24-hour period, the researchers used sophisticated techniques in a hospital setting to measure study subjects' metabolic responses to meals. They measured insulin sensitivity in the liver, in fat tissue and in muscle tissue. They also analyzed the response of insulin-secreting beta cells in the pancreas and blood fatty acid concentrations, all of which contribute to the development of type 2 diabetes.

"It has been suggested that weight loss induced by gastric bypass surgery is different from weight loss induced by a low-calorie diet, based on the fact that certain factors -- such as increased bile acid concentrations, decreased branched-chain amino acid concentrations and alterations in the gut microbiome -- are different in surgery patients and may be responsible for the unique therapeutic effects of gastric bypass surgery," Klein said. "We found all of those factors were, in fact, different after weight loss in surgery patients than in patients who lost weight through diet alone. Yet those changes were not associated with any physiologically or clinically important metabolic benefits."

According to Klein, also the William H. Danforth Professor of Medicine and Nutritional Science and chief of the Division of Geriatrics and Nutritional Science, the loss of weight is the reason for improvements in metabolic function and reversal of diabetes. Weight loss through dieting produces the same beneficial metabolic effects as weight loss following surgery.

In an accompanying editorial in the journal about the paper, researchers from Tufts University, Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of Maine write that the study "delivers a straightforward and important message for both clinicians and patients -- reducing adipose tissue volume, by whatever means, will improve blood glucose control in persons with type 2 diabetes."

"However, losing 18% of body weight with diet therapy alone is extraordinarily difficult and unrealistic for most people with obesity," Klein explained. "In contrast, gastric bypass surgery leads to marked and sustained long-term weight loss, which makes it a potent therapy for people with diabetes."

Klein's study was focused on the effects of gastric bypass surgery on metabolic function, and did not look at other medical complications associated with obesity.

"Our study does not exclude the possibility that gastric bypass surgery has unique weight loss-independent effects on important clinical outcomes such as arthritis, lung function or cancer risk, which were not assessed. But when it comes to metabolic health, gastric bypass surgery is effective because it causes weight loss," he said.

A study involving older adults with pre-existing major depressive disorder living in Los Angeles, New York, Pittsburgh, and St Louis found no increase in depression and anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Researchers from five institutions, including UCLA, found that the older adults, who were already enrolled in ongoing studies of treatment resistant depression, also exhibited resilience to the stress of physical distancing and isolation. The findings were published in peer-reviewed journal, The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

"We thought they would be more vulnerable to the stress of COVID because they are, by CDC definition, the most vulnerable population," said Helen Lavretsky, MD, a professor-in-residence of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA. "But what we learned is that older adults with depression can be resilient. They told use that coping with chronic depression taught them to be resilient"

For the study, researchers conducted interviews with the participants, all of whom were over the age of 60, with an average age of 69, during the first two months of the pandemic. Using two screening assessments of depression and anxiety, PHQ-9 and PROMIS, researchers found no changes in the participants' depression, anxiety or suicidality scores before and during the pandemic.

Researchers further determined that:

Participants were more concerned about the risk of contracting the virus than the risks of isolation.

While all maintained physical distance, most did not feel socially isolated and were using virtual technology to connect with friends and family.

While they were coping, many participants said their quality of life was lower, and they worry their mental health will suffer with continued physical distancing.

Participants were upset by the inadequate governmental response to the pandemic.

Based on the findings, the study authors wrote that policies and interventions to provide access to medical services and opportunities for social interaction are needed to help older adults maintain mental health and quality of life as the pandemic continues.

Lavretsky said many participants reported their quality of life to be lower, and they worried that their mental health will suffer with continued physical distancing. She said further research is needed to determine the impact of the pandemic over time.

She added that the findings offer takeaways for others while weathering the pandemic. "These older persons living with depression have been under stress for a longer time than many of the rest of us. We could draw upon their resilience and learn from it."

The study identified several self-care and coping strategies used by the participants, which included maintaining regular schedules; distracting themselves from negative emotions with hobbies, chores, work or exercise; and using mindfulness to focus on immediate surroundings and needs without thinking beyond the present.

The authors further emphasized that access to mental health care and support groups, and continued social interaction are needed to help older adults whether the pandemic.

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Policy reforms and technological improvements could drive seafood production upward by as much as 75% over the next three decades, research by Oregon State University and an international collaboration suggests.

The findings, published today in Nature, are important because by 2050 the Earth will have an estimated 9.8 billion human mouths to feed, a 2 billion increase in population from 2020. Seafood has the potential to meet much of the increased need for protein and nutrients, researchers say.

Marine ecologist Jane Lubchenco, university distinguished professor in the OSU College of Science, joined scientists from the United States, China, Chile, Mexico, Japan, South Africa, Spain, Norway, Argentina and Malaysia in analyzing how much food the ocean could be expected to sustainably produce 30 years from now.

Examining the sea's primary food-producing sectors - wild fisheries and the mariculture of finfish such as tuna and snapper as well as bivalves like clams and oysters - the researchers determined estimates of "sustainable supply curves" that take into consideration ecological, economic, regulatory and technological limitations. Mariculture means cultivating marine organisms for food and other products in coastal seawater environments or the open ocean.

The scientists framed those supply curves against future demand scenarios to predict how much food the ocean, which presently accounts for just 17% of the animal production industry, could supply as the global population swells.

"As mariculture technology improves and policies surrounding the ocean and its resources are reformed, food from the sea could increase by between 21 million and 44 million metric tons annually," said Lubchenco, a former administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "Those increases amount to between 12% and 25% of the estimated animal protein increases needed to feed the almost 10 billion people expected to live on the Earth in 2050. Rising incomes and shifts in food preferences will greatly increase demand for nutritious food in the coming decades, and the ocean can be a big part of meeting that demand."

Producing more and more food from land-based crops is challenging because of declining yield rates and competition for land and water, Lubchenco notes, as well as various environmental and health concerns associated with large-scale agriculture.

And while land-derived seafood - freshwater aquaculture and inland fisheries - plays an important role in the global food picture, its expansion faces some of the same hurdles and causes some of the same problems.

"Land-based sources of fish and other foods are certainly part of the solution, but we show that sustainable food from the sea can play a major role in global food supply and food security as well," Lubchenco said. "Stories of overfishing, pollution and unsustainable mariculture give the impression that it is impossible to sustainably increase the supply of food from the sea. But unsustainable practices, regulatory barriers and other constraints may be limiting seafood production - meaning shifts in policies and practices could benefit both conservation and food production. We've seen, for example, how changes in policy in U.S. fisheries resulted in significantly reducing overfishing and rebuilding wild stocks, thus increasing the abundance of fish in U.S. waters as well as fishery yields."

Lubchenco and colleagues including lead author Christopher Costello of the University of California, Santa Barbara, describe four primary routes to sustainably increasing ocean-based food production: Better management of wild fisheries, which account for 80% of the sea's meat production; reforms for policies governing mariculture; improvements in feeds used in mariculture; and shifts in demand to drive increased production from all ocean food sectors.

Nutritionally diverse and less environmentally burdensome than land-based food production, seafood is uniquely positioned to help feed the Earth's growing population, Lubchenco said. And directing resources away from subsidies that enhance fishing capacity toward building institutional and technical capacity for fisheries research, management and enforcement will be a key step.

"The potential for increased global production from wild fisheries hinges on maintaining fish populations near their most productive levels," Lubchenco said. "For overfished stocks, that means adopting or improving management practices that prevent overfishing and allow depleted stocks to rebuild."

Seventy-five percent of mariculture production requires some feed inputs, like fishmeal and fish oil, derived from wild forage fisheries. But alternatives like terrestrial plant- or animal-based proteins, seafood processing waste, microbial ingredients, insects, algae and genetically modified plants are in the works - innovations that could decouple mariculture from wild fisheries.

And the largest potential for expansion of food from the sea will come from the farming of bivalves.

"We have shown that the sea can be a much larger contributor to sustainable food production than is currently the case, via a collection of plausible and actionable mechanisms," Lubchenco said.

A new analysis published in Public Administration found that student graduation rates improve as more faculty employed by a college or university share sex and race/ethnic identities with students.

The analysis focuses on the concept of intersectionality, which seeks to understand how aspects of a person's social and political identities--such as gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, and physical appearance--may combine to create aspects of discrimination and privilege.

The findings demonstrate an opportunity to help marginalized students: by hiring faculty with shared intersectional identities.

"We are the first study to show how the intersectional identity of the representative can improve the outcomes of the represented," said author Daniel L. Fay, MPA, PhD, of Florida State University. "Studies of representation should not overlook the importance of intersectional representation. Women or men of color serving as elected officials, political appointees, and managers can best represent and improve the outcomes for women or men of color, respectively.

Dr. Fay noted that future studies should look beyond race/ethnicity and sex to examine the effects of the intersection of other identities.

WOODS HOLE, Mass. - The flashy Flamboyant Cuttlefish is among the most famous of the cephalopods (octopus, squid, and cuttlefish) - but it is widely misunderstood by its legions of fans.

A new paper from the Roger Hanlon laboratory at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, sets the record straight.

"This animal is well known in the Internet community, has been on TV many times, and is popular in public aquariums," Hanlon says. "In almost all cases, [its skin] is showing this brilliantly colorful flamboyant display."

But Hanlon's field studies in Indonesia, reported here, tell a different and richer story. "It turns out in nature, flamboyant cuttlefish are camouflaged nearly all of the time. They are nearly impossible to find," he says. In the blink of an eye, they can switch from some of "best camouflage known in the cephalopods" to their dazzling flamboyant display. But they only use this display on certain occasions: For elaborate male courtship rituals; or when males are fighting over a female; or to flash briefly at a threatening object when it approaches too close, presumably to scare it away.

"The flamboyant display is common when a diver approaches close enough to photograph, which is why the public may think this species always looks so colorful," Hanlon says. "But it is rare to see this species in flamboyant display in the wild."

A Flamboyant Courtship

The courtship displays by male flamboyant cuttlefish (Metasepia pfefferi) are among the most elaborate of all cephalopods! This study reveals new observations about the sex life of the flamboyant cuttlefish -- from courtship to mating to egg laying - gleaned from hours of video taken during many SCUBA dives in Indonesia with teams of volunteers.

Males, which tend to be significantly smaller than females, approach and court a camouflaged female with flamboyant displays and elaborate rituals, which include "waves" (rapidly waving three pairs of arms while displaying "passing cloud") and "kisses" (male darts forward and briefly, gently touches his arms to hers).

Females generally ignore males while they are courting; they stay camouflaged and motionless or just keep on foraging and hunting. Male courtship goes on non-stop for prolonged periods (6 to 52 minutes observed in this study).

In three observations, two males competed simultaneously for a female. Males can display flamboyant courtship signaling on one side of the body while flashing white (signaling aggression) on the other side toward the rival male.

In one case, male competition ended abruptly when one of the males, while facing the female and waving and kissing, backed into a camouflaged scorpionfish and was eaten! "Sex can have a real cost," Hanlon notes.

Females were choosy and often rejected courting males. Female receptivity was obvious when she widely spread her first three pairs of arms (while standing on the fourth pair of arms). The male would then swim within the arm crown and quickly deposit spermatophores in the buccal region where the seminal receptacle is located. Average duration of mating was only 2.89 seconds.

After fertilization, the successful male guarded the female for a while but not, curiously, up to egg laying, as is common with other cuttlefish. When another male was present, mate guarding was aggressive.

The female lays her eggs while camouflaged and staying still. She then pushes her eggs under a coconut shell and affixes them to the inside of the shell. When the hatchlings exit the egg case and jet away, they are fully formed and capable of camouflage and signaling.

Flamboyance for Secondary Defense

The primary mode of defense for both male and female Metasepia pfefferi is camouflage, and they remain camouflaged almost all the time. If a predator or threatening object (such as a diver) comes too close, though, the cuttlefish will flash the flamboyant display - switching from camouflaged to flamboyant in 700 milliseconds!

Elaborate Dynamic Signaling Rivaling That of Any Vertebrate

The vibrant colors (white, yellow, red and brown) of the flamboyant display are combined with apparent "waves" of dark brown color that produce a dazzling and dizzying kaleidoscope of motion, color, and patterning. The fast neural control of many thousands of chromatophore organs in the skin enable this unique signaling capability - all turned on or off in less than a second, and changed depending on the behavioral context of the courtship, or in the case of defense, the fish predators that discover them.

"Birds are renowned for highly evolved visual displays that depend partly on dramatic postural changes (with wings of different color and pattern, in particular), yet this invertebrate cuttlefish species has evolved equally dramatic and complex displays mainly with its skin coloration," Hanlon says.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- How we adapt to aging late in life may be genetically influenced, according to a study led by a psychologist at the University of California, Riverside.

The research, published in Aging Cell, has implications for how epigenetic factors relate to aging. Epigenesis is a process in which chemicals attached to DNA control its activity. Epigenetic changes, which can be passed on to offspring, may be critical to accelerated aging as well as declines in cognitive and physical functioning that often accompany aging. Epigenetic modifications resulting in altered gene expression may occur due to a number of biological processes, including one the researchers focused on: DNA methylation.

In DNA methylation, methyl groups are added to the DNA molecule. DNA has four different types of nucleotides: A, T, G, and C. DNA methylation occurs at the C bases of eukaryotic DNA. Changes in DNA methylation correlate strongly with aging.

Chandra Reynolds, a professor of psychology at UCR and her colleagues considered DNA methylation across a 10-year span in 96 pairs of same-sex aging Swedish and Danish twins -- the first longitudinal twin study to establish the extent to which genetic and environmental influences contribute to site-specific DNA methylation across time.

They found individual differences in blood DNA methylation measured at more than 350,000 sites in the aging twins across the epigenome are partly heritable in late life and longitudinally across a decade -- ages 69 to 79. These findings can help scientists better understand the genetic and environmental contributions to the stability and dynamics of methylation in aging and sets a stage for future work in diverse populations.

"We also found methylation sites previously associated with age and included in methylation 'clocks' are more heritable than the other remaining sites," said Reynolds, an expert on cognitive aging, who led the research. "The sites evidencing the greatest heritability reside in genes that participate in immune-inflammatory as well as neurotransmitter pathways. Sites that show less stability in methylation across 10 years reside in genes that participate in stress-related pathways."

The finding that age-related sites are among the most heritable supports the genetic regulation of biological aging rates, including regulation of how well people respond to environmental challenges, such as exposures to viruses like SARS-Cov-2, the virus that spreads COVID-19.

"Altered methylation patterns have been observed with aging, and as methylation differences may result in part from our experiences and behavior, they may be modifiable," Reynolds said. "Our results highlight that even in late life, amid the 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,' some of the individual differences in methylation are moderately heritable and contribute to methylation patterns 10 years later."

Reynolds further explained that genetic influences contribute to stability while nonshared factors accumulate in importance with age, signaling an increasing diversity of how people respond to environmental exposures. Heritability is due generally to stable genetic contributions, she said, but with an increasing role of nonshared environmental factors -- those unique to a person and not shared with her siblings -- across age.

According to Reynolds, DNA methylation sites related to aging are more heritable overall. This is consistent with the genetic regulation of biological aging rates, perhaps including sites in genes involved in immune-inflammatory pathways and neurotransmitter pathways, and explains how people adapt to health and aging conditions.

"The most heritable sites may participate in these pathways, which suggests that adaptions to aging and senescence may be differentially impacted by genetic background," she said. "That the most heritable or familial sites lie within genes that participate in immune-inflammatory pathways suggests that how we adapt to aging processes, including resistance to -- or challenges from -- illness, may be partly genetically regulated."

Between 2017 and 2030, an estimated 6.8 million fewer female births will be recorded in India than would be by chance, due to sex-selective abortions, according to a new study published August 19, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Fengqing Chao of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia, and colleagues.

There has been a reported imbalance in India in the sex ratio at birth (SRB) since the 1970s due to the emergence of prenatal sex selection and the cultural preference for male babies. Unlike other countries affected by such imbalances, India is unique in its regional diversity of sex ratio imbalance. Previous projections of sex ratio at birth in India have been constructed at the national level or were based primarily on expert opinion rather than reproducible modeling.

In the new study, researchers projected the SRB in the largest 29 Indian States and Union Territories (UTs), which covered 98.4% of the total population of India as of the year 2011.

Among the 21 Indian States/Uts with high quality birth data, 17 showed a positive effective of son preference on the SRB, with the highest SRBs concentrated in the most northwestern States/UTs. In particular, the effect of son preference is statistically significant in nine States/UTs. For the whole of India, summing up the 29 state-level projections, the cumulative number of missing female births during 2017 to 2030 is projected to be 6.8 million (95% CI 6.6-7.0 million). The average annual number of missing female births between 2017 and 2025 is projected to be 469,000 (456,000-483,000) per year and is projected to increase to 519,000 (485,000-552,000) per year for the time period 2026 to 2030. The projects represent an essential input for population projection models in India, especially at the sub-national level.

The authors add: "We project that the highest deficits in female births will occur in Uttar Pradesh, with a cumulative number of missing female births of 2 million from 2017 to 2030. The total female birth deficits during 2017-2030 for the whole of India is projected to be 6.8 million."

A new study of Black residents of four distinct U.S. cities reveals variations in genetic ancestry and social status that underscore the inadequacy of using skin color as a proxy for race in research. Dede Teteh of City of Hope Medical Center in Duarte, California, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on August 19, 2020.

Social science and biomedical research often treat the U.S. Black population--people of recent African descent, including African American, African, and Caribbean persons--as a homogeneous group, using skin color as a proxy for race. However, this approach ignores geographic variations in ancestry and social attainment that could provide more nuanced information.

In a first-of-its-kind study, Teteh and colleagues analyzed and compared skin color, genetic ancestry, and social attainment of 259 Black residents of Norman, Oklahoma; Cincinnati, Ohio; Harlem, New York; and Washington, DC. Each of these cities has a unique history that has shaped its racial structure today.

Statistical analysis revealed between-city differences in ancestry, skin pigmentation, and social attainment. It also showed that men were more likely to be married if they had darker skin color, and women if they had lighter skin color. People with darker skin color and a greater degree of West African ancestry were more likely to have attained graduate degrees and professional jobs than people with lighter skin.

These findings highlight and deepen understanding of the complexity and heterogeneity of race, ancestry, and social attainment in the U.S., especially variations between geographic regions. While the sample size is small, this study supports the importance of considering local social context and genetic ancestry when conducting social science or biomedical research.

The authors add: "This study expands our knowledge of the complexity of race, ancestry, and social attainment across four cities in the United States. Our findings support the heterogeneity of the African American population in the U.S. due to regional differences and local history. Thus, the African American population should not be viewed as a singular entity, but as individual groups with their own local social histories and genetic backgrounds."

MINNEAPOLIS - Disturbed sleep patterns do not cause Alzheimer's disease but people who are at high genetic risk of developing Alzheimer's disease may be more likely to be a "morning person," have shorter sleep duration and other measures of sleep disturbance and are less likely to have insomnia, according to a study published in the August 19, 2020, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

"We know that people with Alzheimer's disease often report depression and various sleep problems, like insomnia," said study author Abbas Dehghan, Ph.D., of Imperial College London in the United Kingdom. "We wanted to find out if there are causal relationships between different sleep patterns and depression and Alzheimer's."

To evaluate the relationship between different sleep patterns, major depressive disorder, and Alzheimer's disease, researchers analyzed the result of different genetic studies collected from databases that included: 21,982 people diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease who were compared to 41,944 without Alzheimer's disease; 9,240 with major depressive disorder who were compared to 9,519 without major depressive disorder; and 446,118 people with measurements of sleep-related characteristics.

Risk of Alzheimer's was determined based on genetic studies where Alzheimer's was diagnosed by autopsy or clinical examination.

Researchers analysed the genetic information using a study design called Mendelian randomization that can determine if there is cause and effect.

Researchers found no evidence that sleep-related characteristics caused Alzheimer's disease. They also found no evidence of cause and effect between major depressive disorder and Alzheimer's.

Researchers did find a small association between the following: people with twice the genetic risk for Alzheimer's disease were 1% more likely to call themselves "morning people" compared to people at lower genetic risk; and people with twice the genetic risk of Alzheimer's had a 1% lower risk of insomnia. However, this effect of this association is small and shows only a possible link, not cause and effect.

A limitation of the study was that most of the people in the study were of European ancestry, so the results may not apply to the people of different ethnicity.