Culture

What The Study Did: The association between receipt of the bradykinin 2 (B2) receptor antagonist icatibant and improved oxygenation in patients with COVID-19 is investigated in this study.

Authors: Frank L. van de Veerdonk, M.D., Ph.D., of the Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, 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.2020.17708)

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

Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease - and while commonly dismissed due to the availability of modern treatments, it is in fact spreading at an alarming rate: Over the last decades, more than 10 million people around the world have been infected with the syphilis subspecies pallidum of the Treponema pallidum bacteria. Other treponematoses, such as yaws and bejel, are caused by other subspecies of Treponema pallidum. The origins of syphilis, which wreaked havoc in Europe from the late 15th to the 18th century, are still unclear. The most popular hypothesis so far holds Christopher Columbus and his sailors liable for bringing the disease to Europe from the New World.

Yaws already widespread in Europe

The new study indicates a fair possibility that Treponema pallidum already existed in Europe before Columbus ever set sails to America. The researchers found treponematoses in archaeological human remains from Finland, Estonia and the Netherlands. Both molecular dating of the ancient bacterial genomes and traditional radiocarbon dating of the samples were used to estimate the age of the pathogens causing these diseases. The results indicate that the genomes dated back to between the early 15th and 18th century.

In addition to the syphilis cases, the researchers found yaws in one of the individuals. Like syphilis, yaws is transmitted via skin contact, although rarely through sexual intercourse. Today, the disease is only found in tropical and subtropical regions. "Our data indicates that yaws was spread through all of Europe. It was not limited to the tropics, as it is today," says last author Verena Schünemann, professor of paleogenetics at the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine of the University of Zurich.

Genome of a previously unknown pathogen discovered

The research team also discovered something else: The skeleton found in the Netherlands contained a pathogen belonging to a new, unknown and basal treponemal lineage. This lineage evolved in parallel to syphilis and yaws but is no longer present as a modern-day disease. "This unforeseen discovery is particularly exciting for us, because this lineage is genetically similar to all present treponemal subspecies, but also has unique qualities that differ from them," says first author Kerttu Majander from UZH.

Because several closely related subspecies of Treponema pallidum existed throughout Europe, it is possible that the diseases persisted in overlapping regions, and sometimes infected the same patient. The spatial distribution in the northern periphery of Europe also suggests that endemic treponematoses had already spread widely in Europe in the early modern period.

Not just Columbus

"Using our ancient genomes, it is now possible for the first time to apply a more reliable dating to the treponema family tree," says Schünemann. The genetic analyses conducted in this study suggest that the predecessor of all modern Treponema pallidum subspecies likely evolved at least 2,500 years ago. For venereal syphilis in particular, the latest common ancestor existed between the 12th and 16th century.

According to the newly discovered diversity of treponematoses in early modern Europe, syphilis may have either originated or perhaps further developed in the Old World. "It seems that the first known syphilis breakout cannot be solely attributed to Columbus' voyages to America," concludes Schünemann. "The strains of treponematoses may have co-evolved and interchanged genetic material before and during the intercontinental contacts. We may yet have to revise our theories about the origins of syphilis and other treponemal diseases".

Researchers have shed fresh light on the evolution and function of the shapes we see in nature - using as a model the heart shaped fruits of the Capsella genus.

The natural world is full of diverse shapes from organs to whole organisms that are fitted by evolution to perform and reproduce optimally in their environment.

The Capsella seed pods with their distinctive heart-shaped shoulders offer an anatomical novelty and an excellent study system for understanding the diversity of shapes.

Earlier studies have shown that the expression of key regulatory genes is a primary driver in controlling shape evolution in organs. This new study carried out by John Innes Centre researchers adds another critical step in this pathway by revealing a modification of protein activity that is critical for organ-shape formation.

They show that the SUMO-protease HEARTBREAK (HTB) from Capsella rubella controls the activity of the key regulator of fruit development INDEHISCENT via a process called de-SUMOylation.

Only via this de-SUMOylation - a kind of molecular trimming activity - is a pathway activated which allows biosynthesis of the plant hormone auxin which in turn facilitates anisotropic cell expansion to form the heart-shaped Capsella fruit.

Professor Lars Østergaard a programme leader at the John Innes Centre and corresponding author of the paper explains the significance: "We know that the diversity in shape we observe in nature frequently is caused by changes in the position and timing of key regulatory genes: that is how a lot of variation occurs.

"What we have found is that there is this post translational effect, beyond the gene expression. This protein modification is at the basis of this type of diversity of fruit shape - and goes a long way to explain the difference for example between the fruits of Capsella and those from the related model plant Arabidopsis. This is about a modification of protein activity at a different stage than we have seen before."

Researchers used forward genetic screening - a technique to study a range of traits - which identified a mutant with compromised development of the heart-shaped fruit. The mutant was therefore named, heartbreak. They used time-lapse 3D imaging and molecular genetics to characterise the heartbreak phenotype at the cellular and molecular level.

First author Dr Yang Dong added: "We now have an entire pathway based on gene expression, hormone dynamics and post translational modification of proteins in such detail that we can test to what extent these kinds of pathways with these components are shared much wider across kingdoms and not just within the plant kingdom."

One of the next steps for the researchers is to is to translate this fundamental discovery from the research plant Capsella to the related commercial crop oilseed rape.

The research answers a key question about how these shapes appear.

But why does nature come up with such an unusual shape as the heart-shaped pods of Capsella? What is the function behind this form? The reason is still debatable, explains Professor Østergaard.

"Previously we thought these shapes might be a good functional design for seed dispersal because the shape could allow the wind to catch the seed pod walls, but our assays comparing them with Arabidopsis and oilseed rape do not reveal any great advantage of the Capsella fruit in seed dispersal. So, we don't think that can be a major factor.

"It is possible they could act like solar panels. In other words, maybe they function to capture sunlight and increase photosynthetic capacity. We know that the photosynthetic capacity of the seed pod walls can have a strong effect on seed development inside the pod and therefore on yields. So, by understanding this mechanism it does give us tools to perhaps be able to manipulate the seed pod walls in crops like oilseed rape."

Social inequalities, specifically racism and classism, are impacting the biodiversity, evolutionary shifts and ecological health of plants and animals in our cities.

That's the main finding of a review paper led by the University of Washington, with co-authors at the University of California, Berkeley, and University of Michigan, which examined more than 170 published studies and analyzed the influence of systemic inequalities on ecology and evolution. Published Aug. 13 in Science, it calls on the scientific community to focus on environmental justice and anti-racism practices to transform biological research and conservation.

"Racism is destroying our planet, and how we treat each other is essentially structural violence against our natural world," said lead author Christopher Schell, an assistant professor of urban ecology at the University of Washington Tacoma. "Rather than just changing the conversation about how we treat each other, this paper will hopefully change the conversation about how we treat the natural world."

The paper cites other studies that have found racism and other inequalities are reducing biodiversity, increasing urban heat island effects and augmenting impacts of climate crises across the United States.

For example, several studies the authors included found fewer trees in low-income and racially minoritized neighborhoods in major cities across the U.S. Less tree cover means hotter temperatures and fewer plant and animal species. Additionally, these areas tend to be closer to industrial waste or dumping sites than wealthier, predominantly white areas -- a reality that was put in place intentionally through policies like redlining, the authors explain.

Fewer trees, over decades, has led to pockets of neighborhoods that are hotter, more polluted, and have more disease-carrying pests such as rodents and mosquitoes that can survive in harsh environments. These ecological differences inevitably affect human health and well-being, the authors said.

The main purpose of the paper is to show the scientific community that fundamental practices in science are based on systems that support white supremacy and perpetuate systemic racism, the authors said. They hope their colleagues in science fields will begin to dig into the history of the various laws and practices that built present-day inequalities -- such as redlining and Jim Crow laws -- and then start to reevaluate how they run their labs and conduct their research.

"I hope this paper will shine the light and create a paradigm shift in science," Schell said. "That means fundamentally changing how researchers do their science, which questions they ask, and realizing that their usual set of questions might be incomplete."

For example, Schell said he has seen numerous papers comparing biodiversity in urban and rural areas. However, organisms in cities were often only measured in wealthier areas, negating the possibility for differences among urban neighborhoods of different income levels. That type of science, even if done unknowingly, is negligent, he said.

The authors also hope this paper paves the way for younger scientists entering the field, especially people of color, to have legitimacy in pushing for science that is centered around anti-racism and environmental justice.

"I hope many of my senior colleagues would start to rethink how they do their science," Schell said. "And for those scientists coming up, that this gives them the platform to say: 'No, this is a legitimate question: How do we reduce, minimize, abolish racism in America?'"

Ultimately, the authors said, environmental issues should be recast to encompass societal issues, which departs from what traditional, mostly white environmentalists advocate.

For example, creating affordable housing should be on every environmentalist's agenda, they explained. More secure housing, with less turnover and fewer vacant lots or construction areas, promotes ecological stability for people, animals and plants. Additionally, more equitable access to parks and greenways within cities also promotes more animal and plant biodiversity. And better public transportation to and from well-paid jobs cuts carbon emissions and reduces animal-vehicle collisions.

Notably, each of these actions benefits humans as well as plants and animals -- and all are not included in traditional definitions of environmentalism.

Schell also led a recent paper, in Nature Ecology and Evolution, that lays out tangible actions scientists can take to fight racism and white supremacy. For Schell, this includes paying everyone who works in his lab, making sure people of color are treated equitably, and advocating for women of color to hold leadership positions in professional societies and organizations. He encourages colleagues to do the same.

"I'm hopeful things are going to happen, because I have to be," he said. "We have the power to be activists in our own ways, in our own sectors, and we have the ability to motivate others to do the same."

University of Otago researchers have learnt more about how viruses operate and can evade the immune system and are now using their discovery to help learn more about COVID-19.

The recent research, led by Dr Mihnea Bostina and PhD student Sai Velamoor from the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and Otago Micro and Nano Imaging, Electron Microscopy, specifically looked at the Oryctes rhinoceros nudivirus (OrNV) virus, an important biocontrol agent against the coconut rhinoceros beetle, a devastating pest for coconut and oil palm trees in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands.

The Otago scientists found the virus used a "decoy" strategy to evade the immune system. Dr Bostina explains the findings are a small step in the bid to better understand infectious disease.

The research team is now using the same technique to investigate changes in cells infected with SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

"We have used the same technique to investigate changes in cells infected with SARS-CoV-2 and are continuing work in this area."

Dr Bostina explains that viruses that replicate and assemble inside the nucleus have evolved special approaches to modify the nuclear landscape for their advantage. The research team used electron microscopy to investigate cellular changes occurring during nudivirus infection and found a unique mechanism for how the virus works.

"Our study revealed that the virus acquires a membrane inside the nucleus of the infected cell and it gets fully equipped to infect new cells at this precise location. This is in contrast with other enveloped viruses - like coronavirus, which is also an enveloped virus - which derive their membranes from other cellular compartments.

"After it gets fully assembled, the virus uses a clever tactic of passing through different environments, packed inside various membrane structures until it gets released at the cellular membrane."

Ms Velamoor says this strategy implies that many of the viruses released by the infected cells will be enclosed in a cellular membrane while travelling inside the infected organism.

"This means they will be missed by the immune system and they can use this membrane decoy to penetrate any other type of cells, without the need of a virus specific receptor.

"It shows for the very first time a clever strategy available to insect viruses. It will be interesting to find in what measure other types of viruses - like the ones infecting humans - are also capable of carrying out a similar process."

Dr Bostina says the research demonstrates another manner in which viruses are capable of hijacking infected cells and alerts scientists to the novel mechanism of viral transmission.

"Viruses will never cease to amaze us with their indefatigable arsenal of tricks. Only by studying them can we be prepared to adequately respond when they infect us."

New research by Dr Camilla Whittington and her team at the University of Sydney has found male seahorses transport nutrients to their developing babies during pregnancy. This discovery provides an opportunity for further comparative evolutionary research.

Seahorses and their relatives are the only vertebrates that have male pregnancy. The expectant fathers incubate developing babies inside a pocket called a “brood pouch”. We know a male seahorse can have more than a thousand embryos in the pouch at once but until now, researchers had limited understanding of how the babies are fed.

“This work adds to the growing evidence that male pregnancy in seahorses could be as complex as female pregnancy in other animals, including ourselves,” said Dr Whittington, from the School of Life and Environmental Sciences. “We now know that seahorse dads can transport nutrients to the babies during pregnancy, and we think they do this via a placenta. It’s not exactly like a human placenta though - they don’t have an umbilical cord, for example. We need to do further histological work to confirm this.”

Seahorses are emerging as important model species for understanding the evolution of live-bearing reproduction, said Dr Whittington.

“We can draw some parallels between seahorse pregnancy and human pregnancy,” she said. “Seahorse dads seem to do some of the same things that human mums do, including transporting nutrients and oxygen to developing embryos, and immune modulation to protect the babies from infection.”

The research published in Journal of Comparative Physiology B was led by University of Sydney Honours student Zoe Skalkos in collaboration with Dr James Van Dyke at La Trobe University.

The study builds on previous genetic evidence suggesting that male seahorses might transport nutrients to developing embryos. This new study confirms, in the first experimental evidence of ‘patrotrophy’ (nutrient transport from dad to babies). It also identified one of the classes of nutrients being transported: energy-rich fats.

“My team is using a range of techniques to investigate the biology of seahorse pregnancy,” Dr Whittington said. “We want to understand more about the seahorse pouch and the ways it protects and supports the baby seahorses.”

Honours student Zoe Skalkos, who led the research, said: “It’s really exciting because it’s a big step in understanding the relationship between dad and baby in male pregnancy.”

Key Points:

Seahorses and their relatives are the only vertebrates that have male pregnancy. Dads incubate developing babies inside a pocket called a "brood pouch".

Male seahorses transport nutrients, including fats, to developing babies during pregnancy. The babies use these energy-rich fats for growth and development.

The new results raise the question of whether seahorse embryos can influence how much nutrition they can get from dad while they are in the brood pouch.

Scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system that recognises hand gestures by combining skin-like electronics with computer vision.

The recognition of human hand gestures by AI systems has been a valuable development over the last decade and has been adopted in high-precision surgical robots, health monitoring equipment and in gaming systems.

AI gesture recognition systems that were initially visual-only have been improved upon by integrating inputs from wearable sensors, an approach known as 'data fusion'. The wearable sensors recreate the skin's sensing ability, one of which is known as 'somatosensory'.

However, gesture recognition precision is still hampered by the low quality of data arriving from wearable sensors, typically due to their bulkiness and poor contact with the user, and the effects of visually blocked objects and poor lighting. Further challenges arise from the integration of visual and sensory data as they represent mismatched datasets that must be processed separately and then merged at the end, which is inefficient and leads to slower response times.

To tackle these challenges, the NTU team created a 'bioinspired' data fusion system that uses skin-like stretchable strain sensors made from single-walled carbon nanotubes, and an AI approach that resembles the way that the skin senses and vision are handled together in the brain.

The NTU scientists developed their bio-inspired AI system by combining three neural network approaches in one system: they used a 'convolutional neural network', which is a machine learning method for early visual processing, a multilayer neural network for early somatosensory information processing, and a 'sparse neural network' to 'fuse' the visual and somatosensory information together.

The result is a system that can recognise human gestures more accurately and efficiently than existing methods.

Lead author of the study, Professor Chen Xiaodong, from the School of Materials Science and Engineering at NTU, said, "Our data fusion architecture has its own unique bioinspired features which include a man-made system resembling the somatosensory-visual fusion hierarchy in the brain. We believe such features make our architecture unique to existing approaches."

"Compared to rigid wearable sensors that do not form an intimate enough contact with the user for accurate data collection, our innovation uses stretchable strain sensors that comfortably attaches onto the human skin. This allows for high-quality signal acquisition, which is vital to high-precision recognition tasks," added Prof Chen, who is also Director of the Innovative Centre for Flexible Devices (iFLEX) at NTU.

The team comprising scientists from NTU Singapore and the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) published their findings in the scientific journal Nature Electronics in June.

High recognition accuracy even in poor environmental conditions

To capture reliable sensory data from hand gestures, the research team fabricated a transparent, stretchable strain sensor that adheres to the skin but cannot be seen in camera images.

As a proof of concept, the team tested their bio-inspired AI system using a robot controlled through hand gestures and guided it through a maze.

Results showed that hand gesture recognition powered by the bio-inspired AI system was able to guide the robot through the maze with zero errors, compared to six recognition errors made by a visual-based recognition system.

High accuracy was also maintained when the new AI system was tested under poor conditions including noise and unfavourable lighting. The AI system worked effectively in the dark, achieving a recognition accuracy of over 96.7 per cent.

First author of the study, Dr Wang Ming from the School of Materials Science & Engineering at NTU Singapore, said, "The secret behind the high accuracy in our architecture lies in the fact that the visual and somatosensory information can interact and complement each other at an early stage before carrying out complex interpretation. As a result, the system can rationally collect coherent information with less redundant data and less perceptual ambiguity, resulting in better accuracy".

Providing an independent view, Professor Markus Antonietti, Director of Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Germany said, "The findings from this paper bring us another step forward to a smarter and more machine-supported world. Much like the invention of the smartphone which has revolutionised society, this work gives us hope that we could one day physically control all of our surrounding world with great reliability and precision through a gesture."

"There are simply endless applications for such technology in the marketplace to support this future. For example, from a remote robot control over smart workplaces to exoskeletons for the elderly."

The NTU research team is now looking to build a VR and AR system based on the AI system developed, for use in areas where high-precision recognition and control are desired, such as entertainment technologies and rehabilitation in the home.

This news release is a revision of one originally published on July 31, 2020.

Using state-of-the-art 3D microscopy and mathematics, Dr Hermes Gadêlha from the University of Bristol, Dr Gabriel Corkidi and Dr Alberto Darszon from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, have reconstructed the movement of the sperm tail in 3D with high-precision.

Using a high-speed camera capable of recording over 8,000 frames in one second, and a microscope stage with a piezoelectric device to move the sample up and down at an incredibly high rate, they were able to scan the sperm swimming freely in 3D.

"Human sperm roll as they swim, much like playful otters corkscrewing through water to swim forwards," said Dr Gadelha, head of the Polymaths Laboratory at Bristol's Department of Engineering Mathematics and an expert in the mathematics of fertility.

"The otter-like spinning of human sperm is however complex: the sperms' rapid and highly synchronised spinning causes the to tail rotate around the swimming direction, drilling into the fluid with helical waves."

"The centreline of the 3D tail shows travelling waves of changes in chirality, known in mathematics as perversion. This is similar to changes in spiralling direction we see in plant tendrils. We now know that these perversion waves are correlated to the spinning movement of the sperm's head."

Computer-assisted semen analysis systems in use today, both in clinics and for research, still use 2D views to look at sperm movement. We can now see that 2D projections of sperm swimming can introduce inaccuracies in how we see the tail's movement. Novel use of 3D microscope technology combined with mathematics, may provide fresh avenues for unlocking the secrets of human sperm swimming.

"With over half of infertility caused by male factors, understanding how the human sperm tail moves is fundamental to developing future diagnostic tools to identify unhealthy sperm," adds Dr Gadelha, whose work has previously revealed the biomechanics of sperm bendiness and the precise rhythmic tendencies that characterise how a sperm moves forward.

John Steinbeck wrote Log From the Sea of Cortez in 1951, his chronicle of an expedition with marine biologist Ed Ricketts along the coast of California and Mexico. Ricketts named several of the many new marine animals they found after Steinbeck, his friend and patron of the expedition. On a similar expedition in February 2019 to Panama's Coiba National Park in the Pacific Ocean, marine biologists from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) discovered several new, undescribed animals, genera and species never seen or photographed before, nearly every day.

Matthieu Leray, post-doctoral fellow at STRI, invited two zoologists, STRI Research Associate Arthur Anker and Paulo Pachelle, to join the expedition to Coiba. Both are based in Brazil and specialize in the identification of decapod crustaceans, such as shrimps, crabs, hermit-crabs and lobsters.

Anker named one of the new genus and species of mud-shrimps in the family Laomediidae, Strianassa lerayi, to honor both the Smithsonian in Panama and his friendship with Leray. The generic name comes from the abbreviation of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the last six letters of a morphologically similar genus, Axianassa. Since "anassa" is derived from the ancient Greek word for queen, the name of the new genus literally means "Queen of STRI."

"Arthur was able to describe three new genera and one new species of shrimp based on a week of collecting in Coiba National Park," Leray said. "This is a phenomenal contribution to our knowledge of just one group of organisms. We are in the process of identifying what we found and will announce more new species soon."

The team found the only known specimen of this new mud shrimp under a rock while snorkeling in shallow waters in the archipelago.

The site of their discovery is only a few kilometers away from the newest STRI research station on Coibita Island. Anker and Pachelle also found a small clam with a highly reduced shell, a huge mantle with papillae and long extensible foot, popularly known as a "yoyo clam." These unusually mobile and active bivalve mollusks live in symbiosis with burrowing mantis shrimps. This is the first known yoyo clam from the eastern Pacific and represents a new species of the genus Divariscintilla. Amazingly, the site where they found a single specimen of the clam is the boat "parking area" of the STRI station at Coibita. The species is now being studied by a Japanese team, all specialists in this taxonomically difficult group of mollusks.

"We are thrilled by the potential of our newest research station on Coibita," said Oris Sanjur, acting director at STRI. "The tropical eastern Pacific is still largely unexplored by specialists with knowledge of these, less obvious, organisms. At our Bocas del Toro Research Station, the director, Rachel Collin, began a program called Training in Tropical Taxonomy that brings specialists from around the world to Panama. In the past 10 years, they have identified more than 75 new species, many of which are only found in Panama. We hope to foster similar programs based at the Coibita Station."

The expedition was funded by STRI and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation as part of a much larger project called The Role of Microbes in Shaping Tropical Ecosystems. The aim of that project is to better understand how microbial communities evolve by comparing the microbes on "sister species," animals that were separated when the rise of the Isthmus of Panama divided one ocean into the Atlantic and Pacific, millions of years ago. Scientists want to better understand how closely associated microbes are with their hosts and the importance of environment and other factors in determining their presence.

The researchers thank the Coiba National Park staff and Panama's Ministry of the Environment, MiAmbiente, for the collection permits that make new discoveries like this possible.

"We collected Pachelpheus pachyacanthus and a new species of clam at the beach in Coibita in a meter of water at low tide, which to me says a lot about how rich, unique and incredibly understudied the marine fauna of Coiba National Park (and the Tropical Eastern Pacific) is," Leray said.

In addition to Strianassa lerayi, other new shrimps were discovered by the STRI team working in Coiba in 2019 and described by Arthur Anker:

Pachelpheus pachyacanthus: New genus and species of burrow-dwelling alpheid shrimp discovered on Isla Racheria (Coibita) near the boat parking area; the genus was named after Anker's friend and co-collector, Pachelle.
Unesconia coibensis: New genus and species of miniature, sponge-associated palaemonid shrimp; the genus was named after UNESCO, which declared Coiba as World Heritage Site.

Triacanthoneus blanca: Another new alpheid shrimp species named after Blanca Figueroa a former post-doc in staff scientist Aaron O'Dea's lab at STRI.

The researchers also add Leslibetaeus coibita, also a new genus and species, which was described by Anker and collaborators in 2005 when Anker was a post-doctoral fellow at STRI. The species name indicates that it was collected in Coibita, right in front of the station.

"New microbes are a dime a dozen," said Bill Wcislo, senior staff scientist and microbiome project leader along with Jonathon Eisen at the University of California Davis. "But several new host genera in a short time collecting in just one group of invertebrates. That is something remarkable. And a new species named for STRI and for Matt Leray is spectacular! It is just the tip of the iceberg for the Smithsonian's newest crown jewel."

A study from Emory Vaccine Center provides insights into why the boost in immunity from seasonal flu vaccination lasts for months but not years, unlike some childhood vaccinations.

The home base for immune cells that produce antibodies is the bone marrow. Seasonal flu vaccination does increase the number of antibody-producing cells specific for flu in the bone marrow. However, most of the newly generated cells are lost within one year, Emory researchers found.

The findings are expected to inform the design of proposed longer-lasting "universal" flu vaccines, as well as ongoing vaccine studies against SARS-CoV-2. We need a flu shot every year partly because influenza viruses that infect humans mutate and swap genes with viruses from birds and pigs, but also because of the decline over time that this study highlights.

The results are scheduled for publication Thursday, August 13 in Science.

Most vaccine studies acquire samples of participants' blood, which is where antibody-producing cells can be found for a few weeks after vaccination. Researchers led by Emory Vaccine Center director Rafi Ahmed, PhD took the extra step of obtaining bone marrow samples - a more invasive procedure.

Most people already have some flu-specific plasma cells: the type of immune cells that secrete large amounts of antibodies. So the Emory researchers needed to distinguish between antibodies made by pre-existing cells and antibodies whose production was spurred by the strains present in the seasonal vaccine.

"We were able to follow the specific cells produced by the vaccine because they produced unique antibodies that can be identified using sequencing techniques," says Carl Davis, PhD, first author of the paper and a postdoctoral fellow in Ahmed's laboratory.

"We could see that these new antibodies expanded in the bone marrow one month after vaccination and then contracted after one year. On the other hand, antibodies against influenza that were in the bone marrow before the vaccine was given stayed at a constant level over one year."

"What this shows is that just getting to the bone marrow is not enough," Ahmed says. "A plasma cell has to find a niche within the bone marrow and establish itself there, and undergo gene expression and metabolism changes that promote longevity."

The bone marrow collection was conducted from 2009-2018, in collaboration with Edmund K. Waller, MD, PhD, professor of hematology and medical oncology, medicine, and pathology at Emory University School of Medicine and Winship Cancer Institute.

In this study, 53 healthy volunteers agreed to provide bone marrow before seasonal flu vaccination and then one month after, with follow-ups for some about a year later. Vaccination increased the proportion of flu-specific cells (from an average of 0.8 percent to 1.9 percent) after a month. Yet the follow-up visit months later revealed that number had declined to baseline.

Looking for new vaccine-specific antibody-secreting cells required analyzing both the cells' DNA and examining the antibodies they make, and then tracking those cells' abundance in both blood and bone marrow. For most of the newly-generated plasma cell lineages, between 70 and 99 percent of the cells were lost after one year. Collaborators at Stanford University and at Cell Signaling contributed to this part of the project.

Some good news, especially for people participating in vaccine studies, is that the levels of antibody-secreting cells in blood correlate with long-term response in the bone marrow. So vaccine researchers can continue to monitor immune responses by looking for antibody-secreting cells in blood.

Also, vaccine additives called adjuvants could be expected to increase long-term bone marrow homing for antibody-secreting cells, Ahmed says. Standard inactivated flu vaccines do not contain adjuvants.

Adjuvants also promote the formation of germinal centers, structures in the lymph nodes where plasma cells producing high-affinity antibodies are generated. These structures may be important for encouraging long-lived plasma cell formation.

Employers in Sweden more often reject job applications from transgender people - especially in male-dominated occupations. Moreover, transgender people face discrimination from two different grounds for discrimination. This is according to a study from Linköping University that was recently published in the journal Labour Economics.

Since 2017, gender identity and gender expression is one of the seven grounds for discrimination in Swedish discrimination legislation. However, transgender people, that is, people who identify with another gender than the one they were assigned at birth, report that they are often subject to discrimination in the workplace. Economics researchers at Linköping University in Sweden have now confirmed that this is the case. Their study is the first to prove this by way of an experimental method.

"From an economic point of view, it's interesting to ask why employers don't make use of these people's skills. We wanted to find out on which grounds employers discriminate against transgender people, because in this case there are two legislative grounds for discrimination that could apply: firstly, sex, and secondly, gender identity and gender expression", says Mark Granberg, doctoral student in economics at Linköping University.

Mark Granberg carried out the study together with Ali Ahmed, professor in economics, and Per A. Andersson, doctoral student in psychology.

Previous studies show that transgender people experience workplace discrimination in various forms. In an American study from 2011, half of the transgender people reported that they had been subject to, among other things, harassment at work. But there has been a lack of experimental studies - as opposed to self-report studies - into workplace discrimination of transgender people.

The study is the first to use a correspondence test to investigate employer discrimination against transgender people. The correspondence test is a common method when studying discrimination: the participants do not physically meet the employer, they submit a written application. The Linköping researchers sent in 2,224 fictitious applications for low-skilled jobs listed on the Swedish Public Employment Service's job database. The applications stated that the applicant had undergone a name change - in some cases from a male name to another male name, and in some cases the names crossed gender boundaries, e.g. Erik became Amanda. For every application, the researchers noted whether they received a reply, and if so, what the reply was.

The results show that it was 18 per cent more likely that a cis person - a person who identifies with the gender they were assigned at birth - got a positive response from the employer, compared to a transgender person.

The results also reveal differences between female and male-dominated occupations. With regard to positive replies to applications, the researchers found that the greatest differences between cis and transgender people were in male-dominated occupations. Here, cis men received a positive reply from the employer in 44 per cent of the cases, compared to 24 per cent for the transgender women - i.e. the cis men received nearly twice as many positive replies.

In the female-dominated occupations, the discrimination appeared to depend mainly on the gender with which the applicant identified at the time of application. In occupations where men and women are more or less equally represented, the researchers saw no statistically significant differences between the applicants.

"The study shows that the legislation is not sufficient to protect this group on the labour market. It also suggests that employers discriminate based on several grounds. For instance, it is likely that a transgender man is discriminated against for being transgender in male-dominated occupations, while in female-dominated occupations, the same person would probably face discrimination for being male."

In many studies, bariatric surgery has been highlighted as an almost magical method for weight loss and reversing type 2 diabetes. One question that has remained largely unanswered is how the effect of surgery differs from the effects of a strict low-calorie diet. This question has now been examined by researchers at Lund University in Sweden in a study published in the journal Diabetes.

By monitoring individuals who underwent a six-week low-calorie diet followed by a bariatric operation, they can for the first time show why several health markers improve.

"What we previously thought was an effect of the operation is actually due to the diet", says associate professor Nils Wierup, who led the study with associate professor Peter Spégel.

In a bariatric operation, a so-called gastric bypass, a large part of the stomach and the first part of the small intestine are disconnected. The patient needs to lose weight before the operation in order to reduce the size of the liver and the amount of fat around the internal organs. This is done to reduce the risk of complications.

Normally, the patient follows a strict six-week diet of fewer than 1 000 calories per day in order to achieve the weight loss. Previous research has studied the combined effect of the diet and surgery. What has been seen, in addition to weight loss, is improved blood sugar control, which has been considered a result of an increase in the hormones GLP-1 and GIP and enhanced insulin release. As a bonus, individuals with type 2 diabetes "recovered" just days after the procedure.

In a new study, researchers at the Lund University Diabetes Centre (LUDC) and the Centre for Analysis and Synthesis (CAS) have for the first time studied the effects of the strict low-calorie diet and the operation separately. The results show that the diet alone accounted for the greatest positive effect.

"More than 90 per cent of everything that occurred, happened as a result of the diet. Very little changed after the surgery", says Peter Spégel, who works at LUDC and CAS.

By measuring several hundred metabolites in the blood (substances formed by, among other things, sugar, protein and fat in our metabolism) before and after the low calorie diet and the operation, the researchers could see that the levels of the various metabolites after the diet went in the direction expected from a reduced food intake and improved health. The surgery itself caused very minor changes.

However, a few unique changes were observed that generally were the opposite of those that happened during the diet. The researchers could link some of these effects to the stress that surgery causes for the patient, and this was supported by the fact that virtually all the changes had disappeared six weeks after the operation.

The one most surprised by the results is Nils Wierup, who previously, unlike Peter Spégel, was convinced that it was the surgical procedure and the hormonal changes that accounted for the improved effect.

"What we previously thought was linked to the gastric bypass surgery is actually not. I have had to change my viewpoint", he says.

"It was very good for this project that at the start we had such differing expectations and hypotheses on the effects bariatric surgery and diet have on metabolism. We have therefore looked very carefully at all the results to elucidate the study from all conceivable angles", adds Peter Spégel.

The results are not to be interpreted as the low-calorie diet being beneficial in itself or that the operation is unnecessary. The procedure is necessary in order for the patient to maintain a limited food intake for a long period.

"A low-calorie diet is usually not harmful. The fact that we have now shown the effects previously associated with surgery actually arise during the preceding low-calorie diet, and not as a response to the surgery, may perhaps make gastric bypass surgery less magical.

However, as a result of this, we can also point to bariatric surgery not having any negative metabolic consequences", says Peter Spégel.

"If you are seriously overweight, calorie restriction is not necessarily harmful. Gastric bypass is a good treatment method for obesity. In addition to the weight loss being more considerable and long-lasting compared to a low-calorie diet, the surgery has the added effect that the patient's diabetes reverses", states Nils Wierup.

The results also raise new questions.

"If metabolism is primarily affected by the diet and not the surgery, what then is the function of the hormones GLP-1 and GIP?", says Nils Wierup.

The answers will possibly emerge from forthcoming studies in which the researchers will conduct a long-term follow up and compare their results in a European study.

The rainforests of Southeast Asia are among the fastest declining tropical ecosystems worldwide. Researchers from 13 institutions studied an area of tropical forest in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo that had suffered heavy logging in the 1980s but was subsequently protected from further deforestation or conversion to agricultural land.

This long-term study paid special attention to the forest's capacity to rebuild biomass. The researchers found that areas left to regenerate naturally recovered by as much as 2.9 tonnes of aboveground carbon per hectare per year. "This quantitatively confirms that if degraded forests get effective protection, they can recover well naturally", says Christopher Philipson, Senior Scientist at ETH Zurich's Chair of Ecosystem Management.

More importantly, the research team found that areas of forest that underwent active restoration recovered 50% faster, from 2.9 to 4.4 tonnes of aboveground carbon per hectare per year.

The research, published today in Science, has its origins in work that Professor Mark Cutler from University of Dundee carried out in Borneo almost 25 years ago. Cutler led the project with Professor David Burslem at the University of Aberdeen, and ETH Zurich's Christopher Philipson, first author of the paper, who carried out the research at ETH Zurich and Dundee.

Fostering damaged forest

Commercial, selective logging in Sabah has been going on for decades, and has severely degraded large areas of the forest estate. While Sabah retains over 50% natural forest cover (with almost half of this area being fully protected), relatively little of this forest is in pristine condition. Restoration - particularly in heavily logged lowland forests - is considered essential to maintain biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and other ecosystem services.

"This active restoration encourages naturally diverse forest, and is therefore much more beneficial for biodiversity than monocultures or plantation forests", stresses Philipson. The approach involves cutting lianas (climbing plants that thrive in degraded forests, competing with trees and reducing seedling survival and growth) as well as weeding, and 'enrichment planting' of seedlings. The latter seeks to increase the valuable, native tree species in degraded forests that have been reduced through commercial logging. "In this way, restoration helps previously over-?used forests not only to recover carbon, but also to become ecologically sound and diverse again", Philipson says.

Carbon price doesn't cover the cost

Now, for the first time, a long time-?series dataset has demonstrated that active restoration helps forests to regenerate after disturbances. However, the current price of carbon doesn't cover the cost of restoration, and this limits the impact that restoring forests could have as a means of mitigating climate change.

"The increase in forest regrowth from restoration coupled with average global restoration costs suggests carbon prices need to be much higher. If they were around US$40-80 per tonne CO2 in accordance with the 2016 Paris climate agreement, this would be an incentive to invest in restoration," argues Dundee's Professor Cutler. He sees protecting previously logged tropical forests from further degradation or even clearance as vitally important for reducing carbon emissions and conserving biodiversity. "We must find sustainable mechanisms for funding."

Collaborative partnership on the ground

According to David Burslem, last author and Professor at the University of Aberdeen, scientists have known for some while that tropical forests can regenerate from logging if left undisturbed for long enough. But the extent of the reduction in recovery time achieved by simple low-?tech restoration techniques certainly was a surprise. "We gained this insight through a sustained investment in research by a multi-?national team over more than 20 years", Burslem says.

For this study, Philipson ventured to remote areas of forest to measure the growth and biomass accumulation of trees. His work and indeed the entire study actively involved many local staff, scientists and organisations, while the Sabah government guaranteed effective protection of the forest. "The people and community of Sabah made this project successful; I'm looking forward to seeing more endeavours like this that promote the protection and restoration of tropical forests," he says.

Scientists sound the alarm: Lockdowns may escalate the obesity epidemic
Emotional stress, economic anxiety, physical inactivity and social distance - locking down society to combat COVID-19 creates psychosocial insecurity that leads to obesity, warn three Danish researchers. Counter measures are needed if we are to keep the public both metabolically healthy and safe from the coronavirus

Rates of obesity may explode because of strategies to limit the spread of COVID-19, warn a trio of researchers at the University of Copenhagen and Aarhus University. Investment in obesity research will help inform counter strategies that people eating healthily, feeling happy and staying active, while also combatting COVID-19.

"We are concerned that policy makers do not fully understand how strategies such as lockdowns and business closures could fuel the rise of obesity - a chronic disease with severe health implications, but with few reliable treatment options," says Associate Professor Christoffer Clemmensen, from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research (CBMR), at the University of Copenhagen.

Alone, inactive and hungry

In a letter published in the scientific journal Nature Reviews Endocrinology, Clemmensen and two co-authors outlined how COVID-19 containment strategies could increase rates of obesity.

Firstly, it is well documented that people with limited economic resources are more likely eat highly-processed and energy-rich food. These foods have been shown to stimulate people's appetites, so that they end up eating more calories than they need.

"It is likely that more people will turn to these forms of food, as more people lose their jobs and experience economic hardship," says co-author Professor Michael Bang Petersen, from the Department of Political Science at Aarhus University.

Secondly, physical distancing increases anxiety by limiting our ability to socially interact. Feelings of loneliness and isolation, combined with confinement within a home setting, can impact our food behavior and lead us to overeat. This effect is compounded by lower levels of physical activity, as people are urged to work from home and venture out as little as possible.

Stopping the virus and protecting metabolic health

Co-author Professor Thorkild I.A. Sørensen from CBMR at the University of Copenhagen, stresses that we still do not exactly understand how a person's mental health and economic status end up increasing a person's risk of developing obesity.

"We know that there are links between obesity and a person's class and mental health, but we don't exactly understand how they make an impact," says Sørensen.

More research is needed to uncover the cause and effect, but the three co-authors say the scientific expectations are clear: physical distancing and rising rates of unemployment should lead us to expect increased rates of obesity.

Together they urge governments and decision makers to consider what impact COVID-19 containment strategies, such as lockdowns, will have on the public's metabolic health. With this in mind, counter strategies should be considered to ensure that the public remains healthy, happy and active - and also safe from the coronavirus.

Flavonoid compounds -- produced by the roots of some sorghum plants -- positively affect soil microorganisms, according to Penn State researchers, who suggest the discovery is an early step in developing a frost-resistant line of the valuable crop for North American farmers.

That is important because sorghum is a crop that can respond to climate change because of its high water- and nitrogen-use efficiency, according to Surinder Chopra, professor of maize genetics, and Mary Ann Bruns, professor of soil microbiology. A close relative to corn, it is the fifth most valuable cereal crop globally.

"Sorghum can be used for human food and animal feed and also can be grown as a bioenergy crop, producing more ethanol than corn when grown on marginal lands," they said. "Sorghum is better adapted than corn to stresses such as drought, salinity and heat. But increased sorghum production requires increasing its tolerance to chilling and frost stress, and this is especially true for the northeastern U.S."

Showing red flavonoids

To reach its full potential, sorghum needs to grow five months after being planted in the first week of June. If a frost occurs in early October -- which is not unusual in the U.S. Northeast -- farmers can be devastated. Because sorghum is so sensitive to being chilled, even a mild frost or an early cold snap can kill the crop.

Earlier studies by Chopra's research group in the College of Agricultural Sciences showed that sorghum produces potent flavonoids in its leaves when exposed to stresses such as fungi, insect feeding or frost. These flavonoids can allow the plant to adapt and survive. Bruns group has been working on understanding soil microbiomes in various stressed ecosystems.

Together, the researchers are testing whether interactions between those flavonoids and microorganisms in the root zone can lead to the development of sorghum varieties and compatible soil microbial additions to provide resistance to cold and frost. A collaborative effort between the two research groups enables them to connect the prevalence of plant-associated microbiomes, plant genetics and flavonoids.

In this study, researchers found evidence that plant genetic variation influences root flavonoids and the composition of the soil microbial community, and that low temperatures affect these relationships. In findings recently published in Phytobiomes Journal, they contend that plant-microbe interactions and secondary metabolite production may be important components to include for selective breeding of sorghum for frost stress tolerance.

"We think that the flavonoids can provide the needed tolerance against the stress of cold and frost," Bruns and Chopra said. "In addition, certain microorganisms present in the soil can interact with flavonoids to provide adaptability to the plant when it perceives cold or frost above ground."

The researchers grew selected lines of sorghum at Penn State's Russell E. Larson Agricultural Research Center at Rock Springs from seeds they acquired from the Grain, Forage and Bioenergy Research Laboratory maintained by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Of those "near-isogenic" lines of sorghum -- alike except for two genes involved in the production of flavonoids -- one set of lines inherently produced flavonoids, the second set lacked genes to produce flavonoids, and the third type only produced flavonoids when the plants were exposed to stress such as frost and fungal pathogens.

Researchers analyzed the community of microorganisms in the soils surrounding the roots to see if the presence or absence of flavonoids in the roots of some of the sorghum plants impacted communities of fungi and bacteria. Lead researcher Mara Cloutier, doctoral candidate in soil science and biogeochemistry, led the evaluation of microbiomes in the vicinity of the roots before and after a late-season frost.

Seed multiplication plot

The researchers analyzed roots for total flavonoids, total phenolics and antioxidant activity to determine whether sorghum genetic variation influenced root flavonoid concentrations and soil microbial communities. The researchers wanted to identify how frost affected these relationships.

"We found that a greater number of bacterial strains were correlated with total flavonoids compared with fungal species," she said. "Collectively, this study provides evidence that plant genetic variation influences root flavonoids and the soil microorganism community composition in the vicinity of the plant roots, and that these relationships are affected by frost."