Culture

Excessive pricing or 'price gouging' of essential hygiene and medical products during the current global pandemic could be prevented, claims a new paper from the University of Portsmouth.

The research paper, by law lecturer Dr Penny Giosa, informs academic and policy debate about excessive pricing due to Covid-19.

'Price gouging' is when businesses heavily inflate prices of products that are in high-demand. Some sellers have taken advantage of the global health crisis by increasing their prices in order to profit. This obviously has a hugely negative impact on the consumer.

Dr Giosa said: "Inflating the prices of essential items is unfair and exploitative during a global crisis. Some sellers have raised prices on items that are needed for safety, which is shocking."

Dr Giosa's work explores the provision of EU competition law, which the National Competition Authorities (NCAs) and the European Commission could enforce against excessive pricing.

The paper also investigates whether EU Member States should rely on price regulations in order to cap the wholesale and retail prices of some high-demand products due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Dr Giosa argues that imposing fines on companies that charge over the odds isn't an appropriate solution because there is no guarantee that prices won't rise again in future. Moreover, it would be very expensive for the NCAs to monitor the effectiveness of the fines resetting the prices to a 'non-excessive' level.

She argues that it would be more effective for NCAs and the European Commission to seek commitment from companies guilty of price-hiking, to discontinue their anti-competitive conduct and agree to set lower prices in future.

The article also makes a case for the application of price controls.

The free formation of prices does not always guarantee socially desirable outcomes, Dr Giosa said, "for instance in the exceptional case of emergency needs, companies may set excessive prices for necessary goods essential to consumers' continued health.

"In the case of Covid-19, facemasks are an explicit example. While in the long-run high prices should boost their supply, in the short-run there may be problems, like health workers in heavily affected countries being outbid by fearful private individuals in other countries who have a low risk of infection but high incomes."

This may result in a transfer of wealth from consumers to suppliers as well as in a reduction in total welfare to society, especially when excessive pricing regards goods necessary for public health and welfare, such as medical supplies and fuel.

With no cap on pricing, inflated prices are unlikely to disappear or reduce within a reasonable timeframe because new companies' ability to enter the market or expand production is affected.

Dr Giosa continued: "The severe economic turmoil that Covid-19 has caused means that the necessary finance for expansion of firms becomes harder to secure. Excessive prices are not self-correcting, because in the majority of cases excessive prices do not attract new entry of viable competitors, whether entry barriers into the market are high or low and whether potential entrants are informed about the incumbent firms' relative efficiency."

Astronomers studying galaxy evolution have long struggled to understand what causes star formation to shut down in massive galaxies. Although many theories have been proposed to explain this process, known as "quenching," there is still no consensus on a satisfactory model.

Now, an international team led by Sandra Faber, professor emerita of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz, has proposed a new model that successfully explains a wide range of observations about galaxy structure, supermassive black holes, and the quenching of star formation. The researchers presented their findings in a paper published July 1 in the Astrophysical Journal.

The model supports one of the leading ideas about quenching which attributes it to black hole "feedback," the energy released into a galaxy and its surroundings from a central supermassive black hole as matter falls into the black hole and feeds its growth. This energetic feedback heats, ejects, or otherwise disrupts the galaxy's gas supply, preventing the infall of gas from the galaxy's halo to feed star formation.

"The idea is that in star-forming galaxies, the central black hole is like a parasite that ultimately grows and kills the host," Faber explained. "That's been said before, but we haven't had clear rules to say when a black hole is big enough to shut down star formation in its host galaxy, and now we have quantitative rules that actually work to explain our observations."

The basic idea involves the relationship between the mass of the stars in a galaxy (stellar mass), how spread out those stars are (the galaxy's radius), and the mass of the central black hole. For star-forming galaxies with a given stellar mass, the density of stars in the center of the galaxy correlates with the radius of the galaxy so that galaxies with bigger radii have lower central stellar densities. Assuming that the mass of the central black hole scales with the central stellar density, star-forming galaxies with larger radii (at a given stellar mass) will have lower black-hole masses.

What that means, Faber explained, is that larger galaxies (those with larger radii for a given stellar mass) have to evolve further and build up a higher stellar mass before their central black holes can grow large enough to quench star formation. Thus, small-radius galaxies quench at lower masses than large-radius galaxies.

"That is the new insight, that if galaxies with large radii have smaller black holes at a given stellar mass, and if black hole feedback is important for quenching, then large-radius galaxies have to evolve further," she said. "If you put together all these assumptions, amazingly, you can reproduce a large number of observed trends in the structural properties of galaxies."

This explains, for example, why more massive quenched galaxies have higher central stellar densities, larger radii, and larger central black holes.

Based on this model, the researchers concluded that quenching begins when the total energy emitted from the black hole is approximately four times the gravitational binding energy of the gas in the galactic halo. The binding energy refers to the gravitational force that holds the gas within the halo of dark matter enveloping the galaxy. Quenching is complete when the total energy emitted from the black hole is twenty times the binding energy of the gas in the galactic halo.

Faber emphasized that the model does not yet explain in detail the physical mechanisms involved in the quenching of star formation. "The key physical processes that this simple theory evokes are not yet understood," she said. "The virtue of this, though, is that having simple rules for each step in the process challenges theorists to come up with physical mechanisms that explain each step."

Astronomers are accustomed to thinking in terms of diagrams that plot the relations between different properties of galaxies and show how they change over time. These diagrams reveal the dramatic differences in structure between star-forming and quenched galaxies and the sharp boundaries between them. Because star formation emits a lot of light at the blue end of the color spectrum, astronomers refer to "blue" star-forming galaxies, "red" quiescent galaxies, and the "green valley" as the transition between them. Which stage a galaxy is in is revealed by its star formation rate.

One of the study's conclusions is that the growth rate of black holes must change as galaxies evolve from one stage to the next. The observational evidence suggests that most of the black hole growth occurs in the green valley when galaxies are beginning to quench.

"The black hole seems to be unleashed just as star formation slows down," Faber said. "This was a revelation, because it explains why black hole masses in star-forming galaxies follow one scaling law, while black holes in quenched galaxies follow another scaling law. That makes sense if black hole mass grows rapidly while in the green valley."

Faber and her collaborators have been discussing these issues for many years. Since 2010, Faber has co-led a major Hubble Space Telescope galaxy survey program (CANDELS, the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey), which produced the data used in this study. In analyzing the CANDELS data, she has worked closely with a team led by Joel Primack, UCSC professor emeritus of physics, which developed the Bolshoi cosmological simulation of the evolution of the dark matter halos in which galaxies form. These halos provide the scaffolding on which the theory builds the early star-forming phase of galaxy evolution before quenching.

The central ideas in the paper emerged from analyses of CANDELS data and first struck Faber about four years ago. "It suddenly leaped out at me, and I realized if we put all these things together--if galaxies had a simple trajectory in radius versus mass, and if black hole energy needs to overcome halo binding energy--it can explain all these slanted boundaries in the structural diagrams of galaxies," she said.

At the time, Faber was making frequent trips to China, where she has been involved in research collaborations and other activities. She was a visiting professor at Shanghai Normal University, where she met first author Zhu Chen. Chen came to UC Santa Cruz in 2017 as a visiting researcher and began working with Faber to develop these ideas about galaxy quenching.

"She is mathematically very good, better than me, and she did all of the calculations for this paper," Faber said.

Faber also credited her longtime collaborator David Koo, UCSC professor emeritus of astronomy and astrophysics, for first focusing attention on the central densities of galaxies as a key to the growth of central black holes.

Among the puzzles explained by this new model is a striking difference between our Milky Way galaxy and its very similar neighbor Andromeda. "The Milky Way and Andromeda have almost the same stellar mass, but Andromeda's black hole is almost 50 times bigger than the Milky Way's," Faber said. "The idea that black holes grow a lot in the green valley goes a long way toward explaining this mystery. The Milky Way is just entering the green valley and its black hole is still small, whereas Andromeda is just exiting so its black hole has grown much bigger, and it is also more quenched than the Milky Way."

Recent studies indicate HIV infection heightens the risk of dental cavities - but a Rutgers researcher has found evidence that the risk of cavities comes not from HIV itself but from a weakened immune system, which could be caused by other diseases.

Modupe Coker, an epidemiologist and professor in Rutgers School of Dental Medicine's Department of Oral Biology, studies the link between dental cavities and HIV, including a high rate of children who were infected in the womb. Her research, published in Scientific Reports, sampled a total of nearly 300 children from three groups: children who have been HIV-positive since birth and whose mothers are HIV positive; HIV-negative children of HIV-positive mothers; and HIV-negative children of HIV-negative mothers.

Using blood samples, Coker measured levels of white blood cell, which indicate immunity strength. She found that for HIV-positive children whose immunity levels were normal, often due to successful antiviral treatment, the prevalence of cavities was lower. HIV-negative children with weakened immune systems, either due to malaria or other underlying conditions, were more likely to have cavities.

The findings were a surprise to Coker, given previous assumptions about HIV and dental disease. "It debunked our hypothesis but it's very exciting as it raises new ones,'' she said. "HIV infection alone might not be a significant risk factor, which was the assumption. Even though HIV kills immune cells, many children on therapy do well HIV infection alone isn't enough to suggest an increased risk for cavities. Immune status, function and competency play much bigger role.''

Coker also observed microbial differences in HIV-negative children with HIV-positive mothers. "These children looked more like the HIV-infected children early in life but later on, as they grow older, began to look like their unexposed counterparts with respect to the oral microbiota,'' she said.

Coker hopes to use her work involving dental cavities to explore genetics from a broader perspective. Her research is part of a study that examines other aspects of the microbiome in HIV-exposed or infected children, including its relationship to bacterial plaque and candida, a fungal infection that often appears in the mouth.

Korea Brain Research Institute (KBRI headed by Suh Pann-ghill) announced the discovery of the elevation of Ace2 as a SARS-CoV-2 entry receptor gene expression in elderly patients with Alzheimer's by Dr. Joo Jae-yeol and Dr. Lim Key-hwan.

The research results were published in the online version of the Journal of Infection dated June 30, and the title and authors of the paper are as follows.

*Title: Elevation of Ace2 as a SARS-CoV-2 entry receptor gene expression in Alzheimer's disease

*Author: Key-Hwan Lim(1st Author), Sumin Yang, Sung-Hyun Kim, Jae-Yeol Joo(Corresponding Author)

The novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), which has put great strain on the world with the unprecedented scale of its spread, is reportedly hitting the elderly in their 70s and older the most dangerous. Especially, recent reports shown that older people who have chronic comorbidities such as chronic obstructive pulmonary has high mortality rate.

As such, KBRI's research team investigated the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection in patients with Alzheimer's dementia through micro array data-set and total RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) in terms of perspective of brain disease.

The research team analyzed ACE2 gene expression through Big Data containing the brain tissue and blood genomic information of elderly patients with Alzheimer's disease and genome-wide association study and transcriptome analysis (RNA-seq). The research team discovered that the expression of the ACE2* gene, which is a SARS-CoV-2 binding protein for cell entry, is elevated in the elderly with Alzheimer's disease groups compared to the elderly not suffering from the disease, while also confirming the same change in the brain tissue of the Alzheimer's disease model mice.

*ACE2: Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 used by the novel coronavirus as an entry receptor to penetrate the human cell

Based on the genome analysis of Alzheimer's disease patient groups with early-stage, mild, and severe, it was identified that ACE2 gene expression was gradually elevated along with the development of Alzheimer's disease. That means, as ACE2 helps SARS-CoV-2 penetrate the human cell, its greater elevation can lead to greater infection risk.

This study is significant in that it newly highlighted the interrelation between Alzheimer's disease and SARS-CoV-2 and proved the higher vulnerability of elderly Alzheimer's patients than the elderly without Alzheimer's. The results of this study are expected to be utilized as a new diagnosis method for the elderly with underlying degenerative brain diseases.

Dr. Joo Jae-yeol, who led this study, said, "We are happy to be able to provide new information on the prevention of the transmission of the novel coronavirus as the national government-run research institute specializing in brain research. We advise that elderly patients with Alzheimer's take extra care for infection prevention and control of the novel coronavirus and that our society pay special attention to such patients."

The research team has also discovered the Ube2h gene, which specifically elevates in Alzheimer's disease patient blood, early this year and has continually proposed diverse methods of Alzheimer's disease diagnosis and prevention of the transmission of the novel coronavirus based on follow-up studies.

This research was conducted as a KBRI in-house project supported by the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT), the Basic Research Program of the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF).

It seems the universe has an odd sense of humor. While a crown-encrusted virus has run roughshod over the world, another entirely different corona about 100 million light years from Earth has mysteriously disappeared.

For the first time, astronomers at MIT and elsewhere have watched as a supermassive black hole's own corona, the ultrabright, billion-degree ring of high-energy particles that encircles a black hole's event horizon, was abruptly destroyed.

The cause of this dramatic transformation is unclear, though the researchers guess that the source of the calamity may have been a star caught in the black hole's gravitational pull. Like a pebble tossed into a gearbox, the star may have ricocheted through the black hole's disk of swirling material, causing everything in the vicinity, including the corona's high-energy particles, to suddenly plummet into the black hole.

The result, as the astronomers observed, was a precipitous and surprising drop in the black hole's brightness, by a factor of 10,000, in under just one year.

"We expect that luminosity changes this big should vary on timescales of many thousands to millions of years," says Erin Kara, assistant professor of physics at MIT. "But in this object, we saw it change by 10,000 over a year, and it even changed by a factor of 100 in eight hours, which is just totally unheard of and really mind-boggling."

Following the corona's disappearance, astronomers continued to watch as the black hole began to slowly pull together material from its outer edges to reform its swirling accretion disk, which in turn began to spin up high-energy X-rays close to the black hole's event horizon. In this way, in just a few months, the black hole was able to generate a new corona, almost back to its original luminosity.

"This seems to be the first time we've ever seen a corona first of all disappear, but then also rebuild itself, and we're watching this in real-time," Kara says. "This will be really important to understanding how a black hole's corona is heated and powered in the first place."

Kara and her co-authors, including lead author Claudio Ricci of Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago, Chile, have published their findings today in Astrophysical Journal Letters. Co-authors from MIT include Ron Remillard, and Dheeraj Pasham.

A nimble washing machine

In March 2018, an unexpected burst lit up the view of ASSASN, the All-Sky Automated Survey for Super-Novae, that surveys the entire night sky for supernova activity. The survey recorded a flash from 1ES 1927+654, an active galactic nucleus, or AGN, that is a type of supermassive black hole with higher-than-normal brightness at the center of a galaxy. ASSASN observed that the object's brightness jumped to about 40 times its normal luminosity.

"This was an AGN that we sort of knew about, but it wasn't very special," Kara says. "Then they noticed that this run-of-the-mill AGN became suddenly bright, which got our attention, and we started pointing lots of other telescopes in lots of other wavelengths to look at it."

The team used multiple telescopes to observe the black hole in the X-ray, optical, and ultraviolet wave bands. Most of these telescopes were pointed at the the black hole periodically, for example recording observations for an entire day, every six months. The team also watched the black hole daily with NASA's NICER, a much smaller X-ray telescope, that is installed aboard the International Space Station, with detectors developed and built by researchers at MIT.

"NICER is great because it's so nimble," Kara says. "It's this little washing machine bouncing around the ISS, and it can collect a ton of X-ray photons. Every day, NICER could take a quick little look at this AGN, then go off and do something else."

With frequent observations, the researchers were able to catch the black hole as it precipitously dropped in brightness, in virtually all the wave bands they measured, and especially in the high-energy X-ray band -- an observation that signaled that the black hole's corona had completely and suddenly vaporized.

"After ASSASN saw it go through this huge crazy outburst, we watched as the corona disappeared," Kara recalls. "It became undetectable, which we have never seen before."

A jolting flash

Physicists are unsure exactly what causes a corona to form, but they believe it has something to do with the configuration of magnetic field lines that run through a black hole's accretion disk. At the outer regions of a black hole's swirling disk of material, magnetic field lines are more or less in a straightforward configuration. Closer in, and especially near the event horizon, material circles with more energy, in a way that may cause magnetic field lines to twist and break, then reconnect. This tangle of magnetic energy could spin up particles swirling close to the black hole, to the level of high-energy X-rays, forming the crown-like corona that encircles the black hole.

Kara and her colleagues believe that if a wayward star was indeed the culprit in the corona's disappearance, it would have first been shredded apart by the black hole's gravitational pull, scattering stellar debris across the accretion disk. This may have caused the temporary flash in brightness that ASSASN captured. This "tidal disruption," as astronomers call such a jolting event, would have triggered much of the material in the disk to suddenly fall into the black hole. It also might have thrown the disk's magnetic field lines out of whack in a way that it could no longer generate and support a high-energy corona.

This last point is a potentially important one for understanding how coronas first form. Depending on the mass of a black hole, there is a certain radius within which a star will most certainly be pulled in by a black hole's gravity.

"What that tells us is that, if all the action is happening within that tidal disruption radius, that means the magnetic field configuration that's supporting the corona must be within that radius," Kara says. "Which means that, for any normal corona, the magnetic fields within that radius are what's responsible for creating a corona."

The researchers calculated that if a star indeed was the cause of the black hole's missing corona, and if a corona were to form in a supermassive black hole of similar size, it would do so within a radius of about 4 light minutes -- a distance that roughly translates to about 75 million kilometers from the black hole's center.

"With the caveat that this event happened from a stellar tidal disruption, this would be some of the strictest constraints we have on where the corona must exist," Kara says.

The corona has since reformed, lighting up in high-energy X-rays which the team was also able to observe. It's not as bright as it once was, but the researchers are continuing to monitor it, though less frequently, to see what more this system has in store.

"We want to keep an eye on it," Kara says. "It's still in this unusual high-flux state, and maybe it'll do something crazy again, so we don't want to miss that."

This research was funded, in part, by NASA.

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A new proof-of-concept study reports evidence that a new testing method has the potential to rapidly identify radiation sickness based on biomarkers measured through a single drop of blood. Scientists at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC - James) say the test could help save lives through early and real-time identification of the condition to enable timely clinical interventions.

Radiation sickness, or acute radiation syndrome (ARS), is a condition caused by irradiation of major volume or the entire body by a high dose of penetrating radiation in a very short time period - usually a matter of minutes. Historically, this has been most relevant through accidental exposures or mass casualty radiologic events, like the ones witnessed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II or even a reactor accident such as the one at Chernobyl in 1986.

The condition can rapidly weaken a person through its side effects and lead to death without intervention. The current diagnostic test ¬- a dicentric chromosome assay - requires three to four days to get results. ARS most often impacts the bone marrow and gastrointestinal systems early while the debilitating effects on pulmonary, cardiovascular and central nervous systems can be delayed. Death can occur in a matter of days for the most severe cases, but most patients die within several months of exposure. Rapid identification of exposure levels is critical for responding and triaging patient treatments.

"This new test uses a single drop of blood - collected from a simple finger prick - and results are ready in a few hours. It is rapid, scalable and can serve as a point-of-care-type diagnostic tool for real-time evaluation to screen a large number of individuals in a short time," says Naduparambil K. Jacob, PhD, an associate professor and scientist in the OSUCCC - James Translational Research Program.

For this test, researchers compare the relative expression of two small molecules called microRNAs in the blood. The first is microRNA-150 ¬- which Jacob's lab identified several years ago as a biomarker to measure the extent of bone marrow damage. This microRNA decreases as a function of radiation dose while the normalizer, called microRNA-23a, does not change. Comparing these two molecular measures allows scientists to quantify the actual radiation dose absorbed, and therefore the overall exposure risk.

"We measure ionizing radiation in grays. People who are exposed to two gray need to be identified and treated and it is predicted that if you are exposed to about four gray to the whole body, without timely treatment there is a 50 percent chance of survival," says Jacob.

He noted this tool would have critical relevance in responding to mass casualty disaster scenario like that Chernobyl, to identify at-risk military personnel and civilians who need immediate treatment. It also has relevance for cancer patients, especially bone marrow transplant patients and others who have intense radiation therapy, where overdosing as well as underdosing is of concern.

"Some patients develop major issues like thrombocytopenia and neutropenia as the result of radiation treatment. We can't look at a patient and determine how much radiation he or she has absorbed - but the impact can be cumulative. As a result, radiation sickness could occur weeks or months after the radiation therapy," explains Jacob. "With additional research, this new testing method could potentially help oncologists measure - in real time - absorbed radiation and intervene before radiation sickness occurs."

HOUSTON - (July 15, 2020) - Biomolecular engineers at Rice University have found a C-worthy technique that dramatically enhances the accuracy of gene editing.

The Rice lab of biomolecular engineer Xue Sherry Gao has introduced a set of tools that increase the accuracy of CRISPR-based edits in disease sequence models up to 6,000-fold compared with a current base editor, BE4max, that is considered state-of-the-art.

The work appears in the open-access journal Science Advances.

Cytosine base editors are able to convert cytosines (C) to thymines (T) in the human genome, which consists of three billion Cs, Ts, As (adenine) and Gs (guanine). The base pairs of C-G and A-T encode the genetic information in DNA. Even one incorrect base in the human genome -- a mutation -- can lead to genetic diseases.

"T-to-C mutations called single nucleotide polymorphisms account for somewhere around 38% of human pathogenic diseases," Gao said. "Cytosine base editors provide great promise to potentially treat these diseases by reversing the C mutation back to T.

"However, when there is a 'bystander' C located right upstream of the targeted C, the previous technology could not distinguish between the Cs, and both would be changed to Ts," she said. "We really only want to correct the disease-relevant C to a T and leave the bystander C unmodified.

"That provided the motivation for this project," Gao said. "We want to engineer a new cytosine base editor that can precisely modify the single targeted C while minimizing the unwanted C editing when consecutive 'CCs' are positioned in the editing window."

The Gao lab seeks to develop base editors through a series of protein-engineering efforts. The new cytosine base editors, called A3G-BEs, have dramatically increased precision by only editing the second of consecutive Cs.

To put their tests in "disease-relevant contexts," the Gao lab used their tools to modify human cells to create cystic fibrosis and several other disease model cell lines. All showed significant success at precisely creating the desired pathogenic C-to-T mutation, particularly the cystic fibrosis cells, which all three of the A3G-BE variants perfectly modified more than 50% of the time compared to 0.6% for BE4max.

The Gao lab also tested its new A3G-BEs' potential to correct mutations in disease treatment applications, including cystic fibrosis, holocarboxylase synthetase deficiency and pyropoikilocytosis, a type of anemia.

In experiments on cell models containing pathogenetic mutations, A3G-BEs significantly outperformed BE4max. In the case of holocarboxylase synthetase deficiency, the editor perfectly corrected only the target C nucleotides in more than 50% of the sequences, with a 6,496-fold higher correction than BE4max.

"We also identified 540 human pathogenic single nucleotide polymorphisms that could be precisely correctable by our A3G-BEs," Gao said. "A3G-BE also appears to decrease off-target edits (unwanted edits to other parts of the genome that could introduce mutations) at both the DNA and RNA levels." Decreasing off-targets has been a prime goal of CRISPR research.

"There are three billion base pairs in humans," she said. "I believe this technology's level of precision is going to be a significant contributor toward treating genetic disease."

When NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the Eastern Pacific Ocean, it gathered water vapor data on Tropical Depression 06E that showed it had opened up into a trough. A trough is an elongated area of low pressure.

On July 14 at 4:50 p.m. EDT (2050 UTC), NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the remnants of Tropical Depression 06E. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard Aqua gathered the water vapor content and temperature information. MODIS found minimal concentrations of water vapor and the circulation had opened up into a trough.

Water vapor analysis of tropical cyclones tells forecasters how much potential a storm has to develop. Water vapor releases latent heat as it condenses into liquid. That liquid becomes clouds and thunderstorms that make up a tropical cyclone. Temperature is important when trying to understand how strong storms can be. The higher the cloud tops, the colder and stronger the storms. TD6E showed very limited water vapor.

At 5 p.m. EDT on July 14, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said a satellite overpass "indicated that the circulation of the tropical depression was no longer closed with light and variable winds evident on its south side. Therefore, the system no longer meets the criteria of a tropical cyclone."

At 5 p.m. EDT (2100 UTC) on July 14, NHC issued their final advisory on Tropical Depression 06E. At that time, the remnants of 06E were located near latitude 18.2 degrees north and longitude 118.0 degrees west, about 615 miles (990 km) west-southwest of the southern tip of Baja California, Mexico. The remnants were moving toward the west near 17 mph (28 kph). Maximum sustained winds were near 30 mph (45 kph) and waning. The estimated minimum central pressure is 1008 millibars.

The remnants were producing a very limited amount of shower activity. The NHC said that associated convection could pulse up and down for another day until the trough moves over cooler waters.

NASA's Aqua satellite is one in a fleet of NASA satellites that provide data for hurricane research.

Tropical cyclones/hurricanes are the most powerful weather events on Earth. NASA's expertise in space and scientific exploration contributes to essential services provided to the American people by other federal agencies, such as hurricane weather forecasting.

A brief reading and writing exercise designed to alleviate worries about sense of belonging helped students at a midwestern broad-access public university with a high Hispanic population stay in school, raising continuous enrollment over 2 years by 9% among socially disadvantaged students, according to a new study. The findings suggest that social belonging interventions may decrease dropout rates at broad-access institutions, which accept more than 75% of applicants and serve many first-generation college students and racial and ethnic minority students. Although broad-access institutions provide valuable educational opportunities for disadvantaged groups, they are also plagued by low graduation rates. To investigate whether concerns about belonging (combined with financial constraints and lower levels of academic preparedness) may undermine student success at these institutions, Mary Murphy and colleagues tested the impact of a customized reading and writing exercise administered to 1,063 first-year students. While similar exercises have been tested at more selective universities with high admission standards, past assessments have tended not to focus on broad-access institutions. In addition to keeping students in school, the researchers determined that that the exercise helped disadvantaged students' GPAs to increase by 0.19 points in the semester following their participation in the exercise. Murphy et al. note that more information is needed about the specific educational contexts in which similar interventions would be conducted in order to better assess their effectiveness.

In another study, researchers demonstrated that data from 30 community and technical colleges across Washington state illustrate the same "shape" of educational inequality despite each cohort's individual differences - each institution shared the same exponential distribution of students who earn a given number of college credits. Based on these findings, Christopher Quarles and colleagues conclude that "student capital," which includes factors that a student attains from their parents, mentors, and friends to help build their capacity to succeed in school, is a finite resource within a given population - unlike intelligence, which can be built up over time. As a result, poorer and less educated populations have fewer of the resources necessary for aspiring college students to gather the social and academic skills as well as the economic resources they need to succeed. The findings suggest future student success intervention designs may work best when they build up the resources and skills that students need to succeed in college. "Social psychological interventions, done well, can provide one form of student capital to students, by giving them the mindsets that will help them succeed," Quarles added.

The so-called "love hormone" or "cuddle hormone" oxytocin is not only involved in strengthening the mother-child relationship and regulating social bonding. It also plays an important role in different mental health disorders like autism, Asperger's syndrome, social anxiety or addiction vulnerability. Furthermore, oxytocin starts labor, the birth process, and features in many aspects of sexual reproduction - as well as corresponding disorders. The hormone exerts all these effects by binding to the oxytocin receptor. Substances that target the oxytocin receptor thus have great therapeutic potential for a variety of diseases.

New drugs are difficult to develop

Since its discovery nearly 30 years ago, researchers have tried to develop drugs that bind specifically to the oxytocin receptor. However, conducting such experiments proved to be very difficult. Except for the hormone oxytocin itself, hardly any drug targeting the oxytocin receptor has been approved for clinical use. A team led by Andreas Plückthun, professor at the Department of Biochemistry of the University of Zurich (UZH), has now determined the detailed three-dimensional structure of the oxytocin receptor bound to the drug candidate retosiban, which was developed for the suppression of preterm labor.

"The elucidation of the oxytocin receptor's structure was an extremely challenging undertaking, which only succeeded thanks to a combination of directed evolution and protein engineering methods we developed over the last few years," says Plückthun. "Understanding the exact three-dimensional interaction of retosiban and the oxytocin receptor at the atomic level serves as the blueprint for developing new therapeutics that regulate the receptor's functioning."

Improved understanding of receptor mechanism

The scientists also made an additional discovery. "To allow efficient propagation of oxytocin-induced signaling, the oxytocin receptor has to interact with two additional substances - cholesterol and magnesium," says PhD candidate Yann Waltenspühl. Determining the exact receptor shape enabled the researchers to identify interaction regions for both of these substances. "The identification of these previously unknown regions fundamentally improves the understanding of the receptor mechanism," adds the first author of the study.

Boosting the development of new therapeutics for other diseases

The new findings might also be directly applicable to the very closely related vasopressin receptors. The hormone vasopressin controls the water content of body fluids and the blood pressure, and its receptors are therefore drug targets for the treatment of many diseases - from kidney disease to heart failure. Just like the oxytocin receptor, the vasopressin receptors have also been implicated in autism spectrum disorders. "Our work could thus boost the development of new drugs for a very broad range of widespread and severe human diseases," concludes Andreas Plückthun.

A new finger-stick test can use a single drop of blood to quickly estimate how much harmful radiation mice have been exposed to, according to a study. The test, which could sniff out radiation doses from hours to 1 week after exposure, could potentially address the need for a rapid and workable test to estimate radiation exposure in people after high-risk radiological events. Acute radiation syndrome is a dangerous condition that occurs when someone has been exposed to large amounts of radiation in a short period of time, usually in situations involving a nuclear reactor breakdown or the detonation of a nuclear device. Patients with acute radiation syndrome must be quickly diagnosed and treated to achieve the best clinical outcomes, as radiation exposure rapidly damages sensitive organs such as the gut and lungs. However, there are currently no FDA-approved tests that can feasibly estimate radiation doses by looking at biomarkers in blood or tissues. Marshleen Yadav and colleagues devised a new test that takes a single drop of blood and measures changes in the quantity of two microRNAs, one of which is secreted by radiation-sensitive circulating immune cells. First, the authors studied serum samples from patients with leukemia who had been exposed to radiation, and confirmed that concentrations of one of the microRNAs consistently dropped after radiation exposure. Yadav et al. then exposed mice to various doses of radiation and observed that their test could estimate doses of both gamma rays and neutrons (simulating exposure to an improvised nuclear device) from 6 hours to 7 days after exposure. The test also distinguished mice exposed to 2 Grays of radiation - considered the minimum dose that requires triage in radiological events - suggesting the approach may be especially useful for patients who have not yet begun to show symptoms.

A new method could help to track groundwater changes better than before. To this end, researchers from Potsdam and Oberlin, Ohio (USA), have compared gravity field data from the GRACE and GRACE-Follow On satellite missions with other measuring methods. They investigated the seasonal water storage in almost 250 river basins in Asia, whose water regime is dominated by monsoon. The results allow the large-scale GRACE data to be scaled down to smaller regions. The researchers report on this in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

Knowledge of underground water storage is of existential importance for agriculture as well as for the drinking water supply in many regions. These reservoirs are replenished by precipitation and seeping water, which in turn feeds rivers and lakes and allows rivers to flow in dry seasons. Measurements, however, are difficult because it is difficult to look into the earth, so one has to rely on either point values only - via boreholes and wells - or on calculations from precipitation and runoff data.

Since 2002 there has been another method of measuring groundwater changes: Via the GRACE satellite missions (from 2002 to 2017) and GRACE-Follow On (since 2018), the change in the amount of water in and on the earth can be determined on the basis of its gravity field signal. But this method also has its pitfalls. First, the mass changes measured by the GRACE-FO satellites say nothing about the depth in which the mass is located: Do lakes empty at the surface? Is the level of rivers falling? Or does water drain from deeper layers? Secondly, the GRACE-FO satellites provide data for comparatively large areas of several tens of thousands of square kilometres. It is currently not possible to resolve the gravity field data more precisely.

In a new study, Amanda H. Schmidt from Oberlin College, Ohio, together with researchers from the German Research Centre for Geosciences, is showing how different methods can be cleverly combined to obtain reliable groundwater data even for small river basins. They have examined monsoon rainfall data and seasonal water storage in almost 250 river basins in Asia. The size of the individual areas varies from one thousand to one million square kilometres. The study covers almost all of Asia.

The water balance on our planet is characterized by three main variables: precipitation, surface runoff and evaporation. The difference of these goes into or flows out of various reservoirs, e.g. the groundwater. Time series of measuring stations on rivers (hydrographs) after persistent precipitation show typical falling curves (so-called recession curves), which reflect the emptying of water reservoirs. Groundwater fluctuations can be estimated from these curves. Another method is the comparison of precipitation and runoff values by the time delay of the runoff; the temporary intermediate storage results in a so-called P-Q hysteresis. P stands for precipitation and Q for runoff. The area or size of the hysteresis loop can be used as a measure for the intermediate storage.

The study in Earth and Planetary Science Letters now shows that the P-Q hysteresis and the gravity field data of GRACE missions are strongly correlated. According to the study, both reflect seasonal groundwater changes very well. As a consequence, this means that a combination of precipitation and runoff data and GRACE gravity field data can also be used to record groundwater in catchment areas that are only about 1000 square kilometres in size.

Boston, MA -- In March of 2020, Mass General Brigham implemented a new policy: everyone working at the hospitals would be required to wear a surgical mask. At the time, the concept of universal masking was new and its potential effectiveness unclear. But now, a new study led by investigators from Brigham and Women's Hospital and published in JAMA makes it clear: after universal masking was implemented at Mass General Brigham, the rate of COVID-19 infection among health care workers dropped significantly.

"These results support universal masking as part of a multipronged, infection-reduction strategy in health care settings," said corresponding author Deepak L. Bhatt, MD, MPH, FACC, executive director of Interventional Cardiovascular Programs at the Brigham. "While we studied health care workers, the results also apply to other situations in which social distancing is not possible. For those who have been waiting for data before adopting the practice, this paper makes it clear: Masks work."

The study assessed infection rates for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, among Mass General Brigham health care workers before and after a universal masking policy was put in place system-wide. Mass General Brigham includes 12 hospitals, including Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, and 78,000 employees in Massachusetts. Using electronic medical records, Bhatt and colleagues examined data from March 1 to April 30, looking at test results for health care workers who had symptoms of COVID-19 (throughout the study period, anyone with symptoms of COVID-19 could be tested for infection). Of 9,850 health care workers tested over the study period, 1,271 (13 percent) had positive results for SARS-CoV-2.

The team compared rates during the pre-intervention period of March 1 to March 24 to the intervention period of April 11 to April 30 (the team allowed for a transition period from March 25 to April 11 to account for a lag in symptoms). Before the masking policy was implemented, the SARS-CoV-2 positivity rate increased exponentially from 0 percent to 21 percent, with cases doubling every 3.6 days. After the policy was implemented, the positivity rate decreased linearly from 15 percent to 11 percent. Case numbers continued to increase in Massachusetts throughout the study period.

In their paper, the authors outline other interventions in Massachusetts and at Mass General Brigham during the study period that may have confounded their results. They also note that during a pandemic it is likely not feasible to conduct a randomized trial to test whether universal masking alone accounts for the dramatic reversal in the SARS-CoV-2 positive rate.

"This is the most direct COVID-19 research data to this point that is based on testing of health care workers pre- and post-implementation of universal masking policies," said Dean Hashimoto, MD, the chief medical officer for Occupational Health Services at Mass General Brigham. "When our Infection Control leaders announced a universal masking policy early in the pandemic it was a bold move, especially at a time when, like all health systems, we were facing PPE shortages. But the results of this study demonstrate that requiring masks for all hospital staff regardless of role in the organization was critical to protecting our employees."

Super-agers, or individuals whose cognitive skills are above the norm even at an advanced age, have been found to have increased resistance to tau and amyloid proteins, according to research presented at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) 2020 Annual Meeting. An analysis of positron emission tomography (PET) scans has shown that compared to normal-agers and those with mild cognitive impairment, super-agers have a lower burden of tau and amyloid pathology associated with neurodegeneration, which probably allows them to maintain their cognitive performance. An image showing the comparison of tau and amyloid distribution patterns in these different cognitive aging trajectories has been selected as SNMMI's 2020 Image of the Year.

"Our cognition reflects who we are as individuals. As we age, most of us lose some of that ability," said SNMMI's Scientific Program Committee chair, Umar Mahmood, MD, PhD. "The Image of the Year provides us with insight into how we can use these PET imaging biomarkers to understand behaviors and therapies that may allow more of us age better and retain more of our cognitive abilities as we get older."

Each year, SNMMI chooses an image that best exemplifies the most promising advances in the field of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging. The state-of-the-art technologies captured in these images demonstrate the capacity to improve patient care by detecting disease, aiding diagnosis, improving clinical confidence and providing a means of selecting appropriate treatments. This year, the SNMMI Henry N. Wagner, Jr., MD, Image of the Year was chosen from more than two thousand abstracts submitted to the meeting and voted on by reviewers and the society leadership.

"The phenomenon of super-aging suggests that cognitively high-functioning individuals have extraordinary mechanisms that resist brain aging processes and neurodegeneration," said Dr. Merle Hoenig, Research Center Juelich & University Hospital Cologne, Germany. Some insights have been collected on amyloid pathology in super-agers, but there is no in vivo evidence on tau pathology due to the former lack of available imaging techniques. "We know that tau pathology is more closely associated with cognitive decline than amyloid pathology," Hoenig continued, "thus, the resistance, in particular against tau pathology, likely allows these individuals to perform cognitively above average even at advanced age."

Data from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative was utilized to create three age- and education-matched groups of 25 super-agers, 25 normal-agers and 25 patients with mild cognitive impairment, all above 80 years old. In addition, 18 younger, cognitively normal, amyloid-negative controls were included in the comparison as a reference group. 18F-AV-1451 and 18F-AV-45 PET images obtained for all individuals and researchers compared the tau and amyloid burden between the four groups. A logistic regression was performed to identify genetic and pathophysiological factors best predicting aging processes.

No significant differences between super-agers and the younger control group were observed in terms of in vivo tau and amyloid burden. The normal-ager group exhibited tau burden in inferior temporal and precuneal areas and no significant differences in amyloid burden, when compared to the younger control group. Patients with mild cognitive impairment showed both high amyloid and high tau pathology burden. Differences in amyloid burden dissociated the normal-agers from those with mild cognitive impairment, whereas lower tau burden and lower polygenic risk predicted super-agers from mild cognitive impairment patients.

"While super-agers may be able to resist aging-associated proteinopathies, in particular tau pathology, normal-agers may not and are thus exposed to inevitable cognitive decline due to the accumulation of neurotoxic tau tangles and the advancing aging process," noted Hoenig. "Moving further to the other extreme of aging, namely mild cognitive impairment, the synergistic effects of both amyloid and tau may accelerate the pathological aging process."

These results motivate further research to determine responsible resistance factors, which may also inspire the development of novel treatment concepts. "Given the multitude of factors involved in the aging process, it will certainly be challenging to develop therapeutics to tackle the factors involved. However, if we understand which individuals are resistant to dementia, this will help us identify potential pathways that promote successful aging--protecting against not only Alzheimer's disease but also other aging-associated diseases, such as vascular disease and other forms of dementia," said Hoenig.

Extinction Rebellion supporters are more likely to be new to protesting than other environmental activists, a new study shows.

Ten per cent of those who took part in the group's protests in April 2019 were first-time demonstrators, twice the proportion of "novices" at climate marches a decade before.

The research, funded by the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity, shows Extinction Rebellion activists in London last year had a much broader and more diverse age profile than has been the case in other environmental direct action protests.

Academics at the University of Exeter, Keele University, and Aston University surveyed those involved with Extinction Rebellion's mass civil disobedience actions in London in April and October 2019. They carried out 303 short face to face interviews, and also got 232 mailed back questionnaires from protestors. They also attended court hearings of 144 Extinction Rebellion activists charged with minor public order offences.

The study also shows activists who took part in Extinction Rebellion's major protests were overwhelmingly middle class, highly educated, and southern.

Around 85 per cent of those who took part in the action in London in 2019 had a degree, and a third had a postgraduate qualification. Two thirds identified themselves as middle class. A high proportion were self-employed, part-time workers, or students.

Three-quarters of those who were charged with offences lived below the Severn-Wash line traditionally separating the north and south of England.

XR activists were mostly non-metropolitan. A third of those who appeared in court were from the West Country with hotspots in Stroud, Totnes and Frome, whereas just 6 per cent of those who appeared in court after the protests were from Birmingham, Greater Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Swansea and Cardiff combined.

More women than men were present in both the major 2019 demonstrations (64.5 per cent in April, and 56.8 per cent in October).

Professor Clare Saunders, from the University of Exeter, said: "Our analysis shows one strength of Extinction Rebellion has been to involve people who are not natural protesters, and perhaps even less so natural law-breakers, but who were already persuaded of the rightness of the climate cause, and frustrated with the inability of both politicians and lifestyle environmentalism to bring about change.

"Mobilising this group enabled Extinction Rebellion to significantly expand the numbers of people willing to engage in environmental direct action, broadening its age profile, and bringing non-violent direct action on climate change into the centre of political life in the UK."

People of all ages were arrested, but more people aged 56 and over were charged with an offence (32.2 per cent) than those participating in the action as a whole (23.1 per cent).

Researchers observed hearings at the City of London Magistrates Court, on seven separate Fridays in August, September, and October 2019, witnessing the cases of around 17 per cent of those charged during the second phase of the protests.

In only two of the 144 court cases observed relating to arrests during the April 2019 protest, did protesters have any previous convictions for protest action. However, 12.4 per cent of the participants in the second October 2019 protests had previously been arrested at a protest.

The majority of protestors surveyed said they most closely identified with the Green Party (59.1 per cent), followed by Labour (15.5 per cent), There was almost no support among Extinction Rebellion activists for the Conservative Party, and very little for the Liberal Democrats.

Professor Brian Doherty, from Keele University, said: "We found Extinction Rebellion activists are much more likely to vote and be members of political parties than the general population, but they are also sceptical about the ability of political parties and government to deliver effective solutions to environmental problems."

Dr Graeme Hayes, from Aston University, said: "Protestors said they did not believe in reliance on companies and the market, governments, or lifestyle changes by individuals to solve the climate crisis. Almost all said they were protesting to raise awareness of the climate emergency, and to pressure politicians to act.

"This is a potential point of contention for Extinction Rebellion. Its strategy emphasises lobbying the government for action, but its activists do not think the government can deliver."