Culture

COLUMBUS, Ohio - The rapid politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic can be seen in messages members of the U.S. Congress sent about the issue on the social media site Twitter, a new analysis found.

Using artificial intelligence and resources from the Ohio Supercomputer Center, researchers conducted an analysis that covered all 30,887 tweets that members sent about COVID-19 from the first one on Jan. 17 through March 31.

The algorithm they created could correctly classify the political party of the member who sent each tweet 76 percent of the time, based only on the text of the tweet and the date it was sent.

"We found that once the parties started to figure out the political implications of the issue, polarization was evident in the tweets pretty quickly," said Jon Green, co-author of the study and doctoral student in political science at The Ohio State University.

The study was published today (June 24, 2020) in the journal Science Advances.

"It is remarkable that we could identify partisanship even when members have only 280 characters to send their messages in Twitter," said study co-author Skyler Cranmer, the Carter Phillips and Sue Henry Professor of Political Science at Ohio State.

Democrats sent out significantly more tweets (19,803) about COVID-19 than did Republicans (11,084), the study showed.

The gap in the number of tweets sent by Democratic versus Republican politicians widened after the first case of community spread was identified in California and grew further following the declaration of a national emergency.

"This suggests Democratic members were sending earlier and stronger signals to their constituents that they should be concerned about the crisis," Cranmer said.

What Democrats and Republicans tweeted about concerning the pandemic was different, too, results showed.

For example, the word "health" was used in 26 percent of Democratic tweets, but only 15 percent of Republican tweets.

Overall, Democrats were more likely to discuss public health and safety, as well as American workers, while Republicans emphasized a general need for national unity, discussed China and business, and framed the pandemic as a war.

As one component of the analysis, the researchers identified members who fell in the range of what they called "partisan overlap." Congressional members in this overlap area were those whose tweets were more likely to be confused by the algorithm with those of someone from the other party.

Only 31 percent of members fell in this area.

"That means for 69 percent of members, their tweets are more partisan than the most similar member of the other party," Green said.

Polarization was not constant over time.

In the first full week after the first mention of COVID-19, the algorithm developed by the researchers had relatively low accuracy when trying to determine whether a Democrat or a Republican wrote a particular tweet. That indicates there was little polarization.

However, polarization quickly rose, peaking during the week beginning Feb. 9. It then declined slightly in early-to-mid March before rising again in late March as the parties debated economic relief packages.

The findings suggest that Congress missed an opportunity early in the pandemic to develop a consensus that could have helped the United States respond to the crisis, Cranmer said.

"Something on the scale of COVID-19 requires a large-scale government response. The government can respond much better when it is united in its mission," he said.

Virtually screening antiviral compounds to model their interactions with the SARS-CoV-2 virus may enable scientists to more easily identify antiviral drugs that work against the virus while informing the search for viable vaccine candidates, according to a new study. By screening for interactions with certain structural domains and active sites on the virus, this structure-based approach may help scientists identify existing drugs that can be repurposed, including therapies developed to treat MERS-CoV, SARS-CoV, Ebola, and HIV. This approach may also assist with the development of new drugs and protein-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccines with fewer experiments and higher reliability than traditional methods. Information about SARS-CoV-2 reported from its recent genome sequencing has revealed key targets for drugs and vaccines, including the spike protein complex, which helps mediate viral entry into host cells, as well as the main protease, an enzyme that enables viral replication and transcription. To test how these elements of the virus' structure may be used to search virtually for prospective drugs, Pritam Kumar Panda and colleagues computationally screened 640 antiviral compounds from a database against the spike protein and main protease using AutoDock Vina, an open-source program for identifying the "best fit" orientation of a molecule that binds to a protein. The researchers then used two additional programs, UCSF Chimera and Discovery Studio Visualizer, to analyze these molecular orientations. The researchers found that an antiviral polymerase inhibitor PC786 targets several SARS-CoV-2 receptors with high affinity, making it a standout among the antiviral drugs they studied. Panda et al. also identified several additional antiviral drugs with strong binding affinities to the spike protein and main protease, revealing a number of drugs that may be candidates for further research in efforts to fight SARS-CoV-2.

An analysis of COVID-19-related tweets issued by members of Congress from January 17 through March 31, 2020 finds that Democrats and Republicans quickly polarized along party lines in their messaging about the virus on Twitter. The findings underscore the lack of political consensus as the crisis ballooned in the United States - a consensus that democratic countries rely on during emergencies. Democrats emphasized COVID-19 earlier, with the disparity between total Democratic and Republican tweets becoming pronounced after the CDC identified community spread in California on February 26, widening after the United States declared a national emergency on March 13, and later declining as the severity of the pandemic became undeniable. Democrats also tended to discuss the crisis more frequently, issuing a total of 19,803 tweets about COVID-19 during this time period while Republican Congress members issued 11,084 (a ratio of about 71 tweets per Democrat to 45 tweets per Republican). The parties also favored different word choices, resulting in messaging with different points of emphasis - Democrats most frequently used words such as "health," "leave," and "testing," while Republicans most frequently using words such as "together," "United States," "China," and "businesses." Jon Green and colleagues note that political elites in the United States have not always exhibited such polarization in times of crisis, with Republican and Democratic lawmakers issuing joint statements after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. To investigate polarization in congressional tweets during the COVID-19 crisis, Green et al. collected a list of Twitter handles (including multiple active accounts, both official and personal, for some Congress members) and merged them with data on members' partisanship and ideology. The researchers flagged tweets related to COVID-19, which they identified using a set of dictionaries consisting of terms used to identify a particular topic (for example, "COVID-19" could be identified as "covid," "coronavirus," or "the virus"). Next, they trained a random forest machine learning model to recognize partisanship using 70% of the tweets, then applied this model to predict party affiliations of the authors of the remaining 30% based on the content and timing of the tweets. The model correctly classified the partisanship of 76% of tweets based solely on the language used and the dates on which they were sent.

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A new study led by researchers at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology is the first to demonstrate that a tiny protein has a big impact on health and longevity in both animals and humans.

The researchers examined humanin, a peptide encoded in the small genome of mitochondria -- the powerhouses of the cell. From experiments in laboratory animals to measurements in human patients, the multi-site collaboration demonstrates how higher levels of humanin in the body are connected to longer lifespans and better health. It is linked to a lower risk for diseases such as Alzheimer's.

"Humanin has long been known to help prevent many age-related diseases, and this is the first time that it has been shown that it can also increase lifespan," said senior author Pinchas Cohen, professor of gerontology, medicine and biological sciences and dean of the USC Leonard Davis School.

An intriguing evolutionary history

Humanin has been found not only in human mitochondria but also throughout the animal kingdom, a sign that its related gene has been maintained, or conserved, throughout evolution. The study, which was published online in the journal Aging on June 23, examined humanin in several animal species, including worms and mice, as well as humans, including Alzheimer's patients and children of centenarians.

The results highlight the potential for humanin and other mitochondrial proteins to become treatments for age-related ailments. They also indicate that humanin may be an ancient mitochondrial signaling mechanism that is key for regulating the body's health and lifespan, said first author and USC Leonard Davis Research Assistant Professor Kelvin Yen.

More humanin, longer lifespans

Humanin levels have previously been observed to decrease with age in many species. In this new study, the scientists observed higher levels of humanin in organisms predisposed to long lives, including the famously age-resistant naked mole rat, which experiences only a very slow decline in levels of humanin circulating in the body throughout its 30-year lifespan.

In contrast, mice experience a 40% drop in humanin over the first 18 months of life, and primates such as rhesus macaques appeared to have a similarly dramatic drop in humanin between the ages of 19 and 25.

In humans, researchers observed this phenomenon of higher and more sustained levels of humanin in 18 children of centenarians, versus a control group of 19 children of non-centenarians. Individuals whose parents reach 100 years old are statistically more likely than other people to reach very old age.

In some species, including worms and mice, modifying their genes to produce higher amounts of humanin within their bodies was enough to significantly increase lifespans. But these longer-lived animals had fewer offspring. Scientists have observed a similar pattern in long-lived humans.

"This tradeoff between longevity and reproduction is thought to be due to an evolutionarily conserved balance between using energy to produce more offspring or using the energy to maintain the organism for future reproductive efforts," Yen said. "Evolutionarily speaking, the goal of life is to reproduce and then you're done, but if you can't reproduce, you should try to hang around as long as possible, and a side effect of that is longevity."

Indication of - and protection against - disease

Higher humanin levels aren't just linked to increased lifespan; lower levels may increase the risk of disease and lower resistance to toxic exposures.

The researchers analyzed samples of cerebral spinal fluid from a small number of Alzheimer's patients and control individuals without dementia and noticed that humanin levels were much lower in the Alzheimer's patients. And in newborn cord blood samples, high levels of humanin correlated with a high mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) copy number, or the number of copies of the mitochondrial genome present within each cell.

"Humanin levels are inversely correlated with a decrease in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) copy number, which in itself has been associated with a number of different diseases such as cancer, kidney disease, and cardiovascular disease," Yen said.

Potential for treatments

Cohen's laboratory was one of three groups that independently discovered humanin and has continued to unlock the secrets of the mitochondrial genome. Other promising mitochondrial peptides characterized by Cohen's team include MOTS-c, which plays a role in communication between the mitochondria and the nucleus in cells and appears to mimic the effects of exercise.

This new wide-ranging study highlights the importance of humanin as a potentially powerful regulator of lifespan and health, and harnessing it for treatments could address a variety of age-related illnesses, Cohen said.

"This study, as well as many others, suggest that humanin administration would be an effective therapeutic treatment for a large number of diseases and further solidifies the importance of the mitochondria beyond its traditional role as the 'powerhouse of the cell,'" he said.

Astronomers this month released the largest collection of sharp, detailed images of debris disks around young stars, showcasing the great variety of shapes and sizes of stellar systems during their prime planet-forming years. Surprisingly, nearly all showed evidence of planets.

The images were obtained over a period of four years by a precision instrument, the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI), mounted on the 8-meter Gemini South telescope in Chile. The GPI uses a state-of-the-art adaptive optics system to remove atmospheric blur, providing the sharpest images to date of many of these disks.

Ground-based instruments like GPI, which is being upgraded to conduct similar observations in the northern sky from the Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii, can be a way to screen stars with suspected debris disks to determine which are worth targeting by more powerful, but expensive, telescopes to find planets -- in particular, habitable planets. Several 20-, 30- and 40-meter telescopes, such as the Giant Magellan Telescope and the Extremely Large Telescope, will come online in the next couple of decades, while the orbiting James Webb Space Telescope is expected to be launched in 2021.

"It is often easier to detect the dust-filled disk than the planets, so you detect the dust first and then you know to point your James Webb Space Telescope or your Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope at those systems, cutting down the number of stars you have to sift through to find these planets in the first place," said Tom Esposito, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley.

Esposito is first author of a paper describing the results that appeared June 15 in The Astronomical Journal.

Comet belts around other stars

The debris disks in the images are the equivalent of the Kuiper Belt in our solar system, a frigid realm about 40 times farther from the sun than Earth -- beyond the orbit of Neptune -- and full of rocks, dust and ice that never became part of any planet in our solar system. Comets from the belt -- balls of ice and rock -- periodically sweep through the inner solar system, occasionally wreaking havoc on Earth, but also delivering life-related materials like water, carbon and oxygen.

Of the 26 images of debris disks obtained by the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI), 25 had "holes" around the central star that likely were created by planets sweeping up rocks and dust. Seven of the 26 were previously unknown; earlier images of the other 19 were not as sharp as those from GPI and often didn't have the resolution to detect an inner hole. The survey doubles the number of debris disks imaged at such high resolution.

"One of the things we found is that these so-called disks are really rings with inner clearings," said Esposito, who is also a researcher at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. "GPI had a clear view of the inner regions close to the star, whereas in the past, observations by the Hubble Space Telescope and older instruments from the ground couldn't see close enough to the star to see the hole around it."

The GPI incorporates a coronagraph that blocks the light from the star, allowing it to see as close as one astronomical unit (AU) from the star, or the distance of the Earth from our sun: 93 million miles.

The GPI targeted 104 stars that were unusually bright in infrared light, indicating they were surrounded by debris reflecting the light of the star or warmed by the star. The instrument recorded polarized near-infrared light scattered by small dust particles, about a thousandth of a millimeter (1 micron) in size, likely the result of collisions among larger rocks in a debris disk.

"There has been no systematic survey of young debris disks nearly this large, looking with the same instrument, using the same observing modes and methods," Esposito said. "We detected these 26 debris disks with very consistent data quality, where we can really compare the observations, something that is unique in terms of debris disk surveys."

The seven debris disks never before imaged in this manner were among 13 disks around stars moving together though the Milky Way, members of a group called the Scorpius-Centaurus stellar association, which is located between 100 and 140 parsecs from Earth, or some 400 light years.

"It is like the perfect fishing spot; our success rate was much greater than anything else we have ever done," said Paul Kalas, a UC Berkeley adjunct professor of astronomy who is second author of the paper. Because all seven are around stars that were born in the same region at roughly the same time, "that group itself is a mini-laboratory where we can compare and contrast the architectures of many planetary nurseries developing simultaneously under a range of conditions, something that we really didn't have before," Esposito added.

Of the 104 stars observed, 75 had no disk of a size or density that GPI could detect, though they may well be surrounded by debris left over from planet formation. Three other stars were observed to host disks belonging to the earlier "protoplanetary" phase of evolution.

What did our solar system look like in its infancy?

The extent of the debris disks varied widely, but most ranged between 20 and 100 AU. These were around stars that ranged in age from tens of millions of years to a few hundred million years, a very dynamic period for the evolution of planets. Most were larger and brighter than the sun.

The one star, HD 156623, that did not have a hole in the center of the debris disk was one of the youngest in the group, which fits with theories of how planets form. Initially, the protoplanetary disk should be relatively uniform, but as the system ages, planets form and sweep out the inner part of the disk.

"When we look at younger circumstellar disks, like protoplanetary disks that are in an earlier phase of evolution, when planets are forming, or before planets have started to form, there is a lot of gas and dust in the areas where we find these holes in the older debris disks," Esposito said. "Something has removed that material over time, and one of the ways you can do that is with planets."

Because polarized light from debris disks can theoretically tell astronomers the composition of the dust, Esposito is hoping to refine models to predict the composition -- in particular, to detect water, which is thought to be a condition for life.

Studies like these could help answer a lingering question about our own solar system, Kalas said.

"If you dial back the clock for our own solar system by 4.5 billion years, which one of these disks were we? Were we a narrow ring, or were we a fuzzy blob?" he said. "It would be great to know what we looked like back then to understand our own origins. That is the great unanswered question."

The researchers, in this perspective, discuss about the recent outbreak of COVID-19 throughout the world and its relation with food safety and biosecurity. This new type of pneumonia of unknown causes in the Hubei Province of China has hit public health and economy extremely hard. COVID-19 has already crossed other forms of flu and viral infections in morbidity and mortality. More than 100,000 confirmed cases had been reported, by March 6, 2020, with a mortality rate of around 3.5%. So far, more than 90 countries have reported confirmed cases of the COVID-19.

Initial epidemiological studies trace to the Huanan seafood market in China where almost half of the infected were found to be exposed to the market. Most patients had visited or come in close contact with the affected individuals from Wuhan. From previous experience with outbreaks of viral infections similar to COVID-19 (MERS-CoV, SARS-CoV) it is known that transmission through food is unlikely. Precautions are, nevertheless, necessary to avoid exposure to agents that can be the source of harboring the viral agents. Bats, for example, are recognized as natural reservoir hosts of Coronavirus. To date, over 200 novel coronaviruses have been identified in bats. And, for a fact, they are favorite indigenous protein culinary in many countries in Asia, Africa, and islands of Oceania. Also, hunting for consumption as bushmeat and medicine is common in these countries.

With the lack of clear knowledge about the source and spread of Coronavirus, it should be feasible to take precautionary measures regarding contact with potential hosts like bats. There must be check and strict measures on legal trade of likely carriers of Coronavirus and the illegal trade of bushmeat and other sources.

Eelgrass, a species of seagrass named for its long slippery texture, is one of nature's superheroes. It offers shade and camouflage for young fish, helps anchor shorelines, and provides food and habitat for many marine species.

A University of Washington study adds one more superpower to the list of eelgrass abilities: warding off the toxin-producing algae that regularly close beaches to shellfish harvests. Researchers found evidence that there are significantly fewer of the single-celled algae that produce harmful toxins in an area more than 45 feet, or 15 meters, around an eelgrass bed.

"We're not in the laboratory. The effect we're seeing is happening in nature, and it's an effect that's really widespread within this group of harmful algae. What we see is this halo of reduced abundance around the eelgrass beds," said Emily Jacobs-Palmer, a research scientist at the UW. She is the lead author of the study published this spring in the open-access journal PeerJ.

Researchers sampled five coastal sites three times in the spring and summer of 2017. Four sites were within Puget Sound and one was in Willapa Bay, on Washington's outer coast.

In addition to a traditional visual ecological survey at each site, the researchers used a type of genetic forensics to detect species that might not be easily seen or present at the time of the survey.

Scientists put on waders and walked parallel to shore in water less than knee deep while scooping up seawater samples to analyze the environmental DNA, or eDNA, present. This method collects fragments of genetic material to identify organisms living in the seawater.

The researchers sampled water from each site at the same point in the tidal cycle both inside the eelgrass bed and at regular intervals up to 45 feet away from the edge. For comparison they also surveyed a location farther away over bare seabed.

"In the DNA fragments we saw everything from shellfish to marine worms, osprey, bugs that fell in the water," Jacobs-Palmer said. "It's quite fascinating to just get this potpourri of organisms and then look for patterns, rather than deciding on a pattern that we think should be there and then looking for that."

The researchers analyzed the eDNA results to find trends among 13 major groups of organisms. They discovered that dinoflagellates, a broad class of single-celled organism, were scarcer in and around the eelgrass beds than in surrounding waters with bare seabed.

"We were asking how the biological community changes inside eelgrass beds, and this result was so strong that it jumped out at us, even though we weren't looking for it specifically," said senior author Ryan Kelly, a UW associate professor of marine and environmental affairs.

The result has practical applications, since certain species of dinoflagellate populations can spike and produce toxins that accumulate in shellfish, making the shellfish dangerous or even deadly to eat.

The phrase "harmful algal bloom" has a formal definition that was not measured for this study. But authors say the trend appeared when the overall dinoflagellate populations were high.

"I have heard people talk about a trade-off between shellfish and eelgrass, in terms of land use in Puget Sound. Now, from our perspective, there's not a clean trade-off between those things -- these systems might be able to complement one another," Kelly said.

To explore the reasons for the result, the authors looked at differences in water chemistry or current motion around the bed. But neither could explain why dinoflagellate populations were lower around the eelgrass.

Instead, the authors hypothesize that the same biological reasons why dinoflagellates don't flourish inside eelgrass beds -- likely bacteria that occur with eelgrass and are harmful to dinoflagellates -- may extend past the bed's edge.

"It was known that there is some antagonistic relationship between eelgrass and algae, but it's really important that this effect seems to span beyond the bounds of the bed itself," Jacobs-Palmer said.

The discovery of a "halo effect" by which eelgrass discourages the growth of potentially harmful algae could have applications in shellfish harvesting, ecological restoration or shoreline planning.

"These beds are often really large, and that means that their perimeter is also really large," Jacobs-Palmer said. "That's a lot of land where eelgrass is potentially having an effect."

In follow-up work, researchers chose two of the sites, in Port Gamble on the Kitsap Peninsula and Skokomish on Hood Canal, to conduct weekly sampling from late June through October 2019. They hope to verify the pattern they discovered and learn more about the environmental conditions that might allow the halo to exist.

Out beyond our solar system, visible only as the smallest dot in space with even the most powerful telescopes, other worlds exist. Many of these worlds, astronomers have discovered, may be much larger than Earth and completely covered in water — basically ocean planets with no protruding land masses. What kind of life could develop on such a world? Could a habitat like this even support life?

A team of researchers led by Arizona State University (ASU) recently set out to investigate those questions. And since they couldn’t travel to distant exoplanets to take samples, they decided to recreate the conditions of those water worlds in the laboratory. In this case, that laboratory was the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility at the DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory.

“People hardly think about astrophysics when talking about an X-ray facility. But we can use a facility like the APS to understand an object too distant for us to see.” — Dan Shim, associate professor, Arizona State University

What they found — recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — was a new transitional phase between silica and water, indicating that the boundary between water and rock on these exoplanets is not as solid as it is here on Earth. This pivotal discovery could change the way astronomers and astrophysicists have been modeling these exoplanets, and inform the way we think about life evolving on them.

Dan Shim, associate professor at ASU, led this new research. Shim leads ASU’s Lab for Earth and Planetary Materials and has long been fascinated by the geological and ecological makeup of these distant worlds. That composition, he said, is nothing like any planet in our solar system — these planets may have more than 50% water or ice atop their rock layers, and those rock layers would have to exist at very high temperatures and under crushing pressure.

“Determining the geology of exoplanets is tough, since we can’t use telescopes or send rovers to their surfaces,” Shim said. “So we try to simulate the geology in the lab.”

How does one do that? First, you need the right tools. For this experiment, Shim and his team brought their samples to two APS beamlines: GeoSoilEnviroCARS (GSECARS) at beamline 13-ID-D, operated by the University of Chicago, and High-Pressure Collaborative Access Team (HPCAT) at beamline 16-ID-B, operated by Argonne’s X-ray Science Division.

The samples were compressed in diamond anvil cells, essentially two gem quality diamonds with tiny flat tips. Place a sample between them and you can squeeze the diamonds together, increasing the pressure.

“We can raise the pressure up to multiple millions of atmospheres,” said Yue Meng, a physicist in Argonne’s X-ray Science Division and a co-author on the paper. Meng was one of the main designers of the techniques used at HPCAT, which specializes in high-pressure, high-temperature experiments.

“The APS is one of the few places in the world where you can conduct this kind of cutting-edge research,” she said. “The beamline scientists, technicians and engineers make this research possible.”

The pressure of exoplanets, Shim said, can be calculated, even though the data we have on these planets is limited. Astronomers can measure the mass and density, and if the size and the mass of the planet are known, the right pressure can be determined.

Once the sample is pressurized, infrared lasers — which can be adjusted to smaller than the width of a human blood cell — are used to heat it up. “We can bring the sample up to thousands of degrees Fahrenheit,” said Vitali Prakapenka, a beamline scientist at GSECARS, a research professor at the University of Chicago and a co-author on the paper. “We have two high power lasers that shine on the sample from both sides precisely aligned with an ultra-bright APS X-ray probe and temperature measurements along the optical paths with a sub-micron accuracy.”

The temperature of exoplanets is harder to measure, because there are so many factors that determine it: the amount of heat contained inside the planet, the age of the planet, and the amount of radioactive isotopes decaying inside the structure, giving off more heat. Shim’s team calculated a range of temperatures to work from.

Once the sample is pressurized and heated up, the APS’ ultra-bright X-ray beams (which can see through the diamonds and into the sample itself) can allow scientists to take snapshots of atomic scale structure changes during the chemical reactions as they happen. In this case, Shim and his team immersed a small amount of silica in water, increased the pressure and temperature, and monitored how the materials would react.

What they discovered is that at high temperature and pressure of about 30 gigapascals (about 300,000 times the standard atmospheric pressure on Earth), the water and rock start to merge.

“If you were to build a planet with water and rock, you would assume that the water forms a layer above rock,” he said. “What we found is that is not necessarily true. With enough heat and pressure, the boundary between rock and water becomes fuzzy.”

This is a new idea that will need to be incorporated into models of exoplanets, Prakapenka said.

“The main point is that it tells the people modeling the structure of these planets that the composition is more complicated than we thought,” Prakapenka said. “Before we believed that there was a separation between rock and water, but based on these studies, there is no sharp boundary.”

Scientists have conducted similar experiments before, Shim said, but those were predicated on an Earth-like setting with smaller increments of water. Observing this new phase transition gives modelers a better idea about the actual geological makeup of water-rich exoplanets, and also insights into what kinds of life might call those exoplanets home.

“It’s a starting point to build the way chemistry works on these planets,” Shim said. “How water interacts with rock is important for life on Earth, and therefore, it is also important to understanding the type of life that might be on some of these worlds.”

Shim acknowledges that this research is not the first thing one might picture when thinking about a light source like the APS. But it’s exactly that diversity that he said is an advantage of large-scale user facilities.

“People hardly think about astrophysics when talking about an X-ray facility,” he said. “But we can use a facility like the APS to understand an object too distant for us to see.”

Background: The characterization of COVID-19 in patients with cancer remains limited in published studies and nationwide surveillance analyses. Reports from China and Italy have raised the possibility that patients with cancer on active therapy have a higher risk of COVID-19 related severe events, although there is a knowledge gap as to which aspects of cancer and its treatment increase the risk of severe COVID-19 disease.

A team of researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) reported on the epidemiology of COVID-19 illness experienced at an NCI-designated cancer center during the height of pandemic in New York City.

Bottom Line: According to a new study from Memorial Sloan Kettering published June 24 in Nature Medicine, patients in active cancer treatment who develop COVID-19 infection don't fare any worse than other hospitalized patients. Notably, metastatic disease, recent chemotherapy, or major surgery within the previous 30 days did not show a significant association with either hospitalization or severe respiratory illness due to COVID-19. Researchers say their findings suggest that no one should delay cancer treatment because of concerns about the virus.

Author Comments: "If you're an oncologist and you're trying to figure out whether to give patients chemotherapy, or if you're a patient who needs treatment, these findings should be very reassuring," says Ying Taur, MD, PhD, an Infectious Disease Specialist at MSK.

"The course and clinical spectrum of this disease is still not fully understood and this is just one of many studies that will need to be done on the connections between cancer and COVID-19," explained Mini Kamboj, MD, Chief Medical Epidemiologist, Infection Control at MSK. "But the big message now is clear: People shouldn't stop or postpone cancer treatment."

Method and Findings: The study looked at 423 MSK patients diagnosed with COVID-19 between March 10 and April 7. Overall, 40 percent were hospitalized for COVID-19, and 20 percent developed severe respiratory illness. About 9 percent had to be placed on a mechanical ventilator, and 12 percent died. The most frequent cancer types included solid tumors such as breast, colorectal, and lung cancer. Lymphoma was the most common hematologic malignancy. Over half of the cases were metastatic solid tumors.

Similar to other studies in the general population, the researchers found that age, race, cardiac disease, hypertension, and chronic kidney disease correlated with severe outcomes. The investigators found that patients taking immunotherapy drugs called immune checkpoint inhibitors were more likely to develop severe disease and require hospitalization. Further research is required to look at the effects of these drugs. But other cancer treatments, including chemotherapy and surgery, did not contribute to worse outcomes.

Although most beer consumers can distinguish between different bitter tastes in beer, this does not appear to influence which beer they like. It seems they just like beer, regardless of the source of the bitterness.

That is the conclusion of Penn State sensory researchers who conducted multiple studies with more than 150 self-identified beer drinkers to see if they could differentiate bitterants in beer. But the question of whether humans can discriminate between types of bitterness remains controversial, according to researcher John Hayes, associate professor of food science.

"Given that countless craft breweries around the country have been very successful in selling a near-endless variety of India pale ales -- better known as IPAs -- we wanted to move past testing bitter chemicals in water to see if consumers could differentiate different bitters in a real food such as beer," he said.

To determine beer drinkers' ability to distinguish between bitter chemicals, study participants in blind taste tests were given commercially available nonalcoholic beer spiked with hop extract Isolone, quinine -- the ingredient that makes tonic water bitter -- and sucrose octaacetate, a food additive so bitter it has been used as a nail-biting and thumb-sucking deterrent.

Participants, about half men and half women, most in their 30s, took part in three experiments. In the first, researchers asked subjects to rate the amount of bitterness and other beer flavor attributes in samples using an intensity scale, to ensure the beer samples were equally bitter.

In the next experiment, beer consumers rated how samples differed from a reference on a seven-point scale. Then, to understand how each sample differed from others, participants checked attributes on a list of 13 descriptors to describe the samples.

In the final experiment, beer consumers tasted the beer samples, rated how much they liked each sample and provided a forced-choice ranking for best-liked to worst-liked.

According to Hayes, who is director of Penn State's Sensory Evaluation Center in the College of Agricultural Sciences, most participants were able to discern differences in bitterness -- even though the samples had been matched for bitterness intensity.

"But our results also show that, despite being able to differentiate between the different bitter chemicals, they were not able to verbally describe these differences, even when provided a list of attributes," he said. "Further, we found no consistent effect on liking or preference. The source of bitterness did not influence which beers they liked."

In the sampled beers, researchers attempted to match the flavor profile of a pale ale style beer, in which high bitterness is not only accepted but desired by consumers, noted lead researcher Molly Higgins, who will receive her doctoral degree in food science this August. Higgins explained that she recruited regular beer consumers because they are more likely to be aware of the various flavor profiles of beer and respond positively to the bitter qualities of samples during testing.

"What we found was unsurprising in hindsight -- beer consumers simply like beer," she said. "So, it seems that for consumers who drink IPAs, a beer just needs to have a bitter profile. For them, it's about bitterness in general, not the specific bitter quality -- if it's there, they will like it."

Higgins suggests that this finding may help in quality assurance at breweries. "Beer consumers may be more forgiving than previously believed when it comes to small variations across batches," she said.

Higgins noted that some breweries use highly trained expert tasters to evaluate each batch. If these experts detect any off notes or flaws in the final product, they may throw out an entire batch. "When breweries can establish an acceptable range for sensory attributes for their final products, they can make better decisions about how much variation is tolerable," she said.

However, there are many segments of beer consumers, Higgins added, and within the craft beer market there is a unique subgroup of consumers who are devoted to their IPAs. Those beer drinkers, she explained, doubtlessly pick up on more of the finer bitter notes created by novel blends of hops. Those consumers patronize craft breweries and are willing to try many different beers.

The bitter beer tasting study, recently published in Nutrients, was part of a larger research project conducted by Higgins at Penn State for her dissertation. Because of its sensory complexity and wide acceptance by many consumers, she contends, beer is a good model food to explore the capacity of people to perceive bitter taste.

Higgins said when people ask her why she would do this kind of a study, she points out that it's not about beer.

"The overall goal of my dissertation research was to learn more about bitterness and bitterness perception, and to better understand how individuals learn to like bitter products," she said. "We hope that understanding bitterness can guide further research that helps people incorporate healthy bitter foods into their diet. The overall goal is to look at more complex bitter foods, such as kale and broccoli, and figure out ways to increase their consumption and liking."

People with inoperable anal cancer treated with carboplatin-paclitaxel had fewer complications and lived longer than those who received another chemotherapy that has been more often administered.

The results from an international trial, published by the Journal of Clinical Oncology, suggest that carboplatin-paclitaxel become the standard of care for anal cancer, a rare disease that accounts for less than 3% of all gastrointestinal malignancies. The InterAAct trial compared carboplatin-paclitaxel with cisplatin plus 5-flourouracil (5FU).

"The InterAAct trial identifies carboplatin-paclitaxel as the optimal chemotherapy regimen in the first-line setting for inoperable anal cancer," said lead U.S. investigator Cathy Eng, MD, David H. Johnson Chair in Surgical and Medical Oncology at Vanderbilt University and co-leader of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Research Program at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. "Carboplatin-paclitaxel was associated with less toxicity and a trend toward improved survival, which suggests that it should become the standard of care for these patients and the backbone for future phase three trials."

The overall survival of patients enrolled on the carboplatin-paclitaxel arm of the clinical trial was 20 months compared to 12.3 months for those on the cisplatin-5FU arm. Carboplatin-paclitaxel was associated with significantly less adverse effects (36%) compared to cisplatin-5FU (62%).

The study enrolled 91 patients from the United States, Australia, Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom between December 2013 and November 2017. The International Rare Cancers Initiative formed the Anal Cancer Working Group to design and conduct trials with the goal of providing metastatic anal cancer patients with new treatment strategies.

Patients with inoperable anal cancer have a five-year survival rate of approximately 30%.

Paclitaxel was first documented as a treatment for advanced anal cancer in 2011 and was later combined with carboplatin. Response rates of 69% had led some clinicians to administer it as a first-line treatment, but the cisplatin-5FU regimen had been adopted internationally.

UC Davis MIND Institute researchers found an unexpected set of mental illnesses in patients with a spectrum of a rare genetic disorder. Their study revealed the need for clinicians to consider the complexities of co-existing conditions in patients with both psychological and fragile X associated disorders.

Double-hit fragile X spectrum cases

The patients had a "double-hit" condition that combined features and symptoms of fragile X syndrome and premutation disorder.

Fragile X syndrome (FXS), a rare single-gene disorder, is the leading inherited cause of intellectual disability. It is caused by a lack of the fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP) resulting from a change, called mutation, in the FMR1 gene.

In most people, the CGG section of the FMR1 gene is repeated between 10 to 40 times. In some rare cases, individuals have premutation disorder when their FMR1 gene has 55 to 200 CGG repeats. When this section expands to over 200 repeats, there is a full mutation in the gene. This full mutation causes an inability to produce FMRP and leads to FXS.

The study presented 14 cases of male patients with FMR1-gene mutations and a variety of psychiatric disorders. These patients, ages ranging between nine and 58 years, had features resembling FXS and symptoms common among premutation carriers.

FXS symptoms include hand flapping, hyperactivity, recurrent ear infections, severe anxiety and tantrums. Individuals with FXS frequently have speech and language delays, behavior challenges and symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Premutation, on the other hand, is associated with the development of neurological problems associated with aging. One example of such age-related problems is Fragile X-associated tremor ataxia syndrome (FXTAS). FXTAS is a disease characterized by progressively severe tremor and difficulty with walking and balance. Premutation is also associated with medical and psychiatric problems such as migraines, hypertension, sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome, anxiety and depression.

Neurological and developmental problems

The study found that patients with premutation had a much earlier onset of neurological problems. Some even had earlier symptoms of neurodegeneration, particularly if they had developmental delay or ASD during their childhood. They also showed trouble with their emotional processing.

"Lower levels of FMRP can cause a range of emotional processing issues," said Andrea Schneider, associate research scientist in the Department of Pediatrics and at UC Davis MIND Institute and the lead author on the study. "Some of the common emotion-related disorders we found are mood disorders, anxiety and psychotic features."

The researchers called for more studies on the association of psychosis and lower FMRP levels - especially in patients with a double hit condition. The case series also highlighted the need for clinicians to consider additional possible diagnosis for FMR1 mutations in psychiatric patients.

"Clinicians need to be aware of the physical and mental toll on patients with a FMR1 mutation who also show symptoms of psychosis or early onset of neurological problems," said Paul Hagerman, professor of biochemistry and molecular medicine at UC Davis and co-author on the study. "This understanding helps develop treatment plans that address the multiple needs of these patients."

Hartford, Conn. -- Beverage companies spent $1.04 billion to advertise sugary drinks and energy drinks in 2018, a 26% increase compared to 2013, according to Sugary Drinks FACTS 2020, a new report from the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at the University of Connecticut. The report documents continued extensive targeted advertising of sugary drinks by beverage companies directed to Black and Hispanic youth, which contributes to health disparities affecting communities of color--the same communities that have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19.

The report found that more than one-half of the total sugary drink advertising expenditures--$586 million--promoted regular soda and soda brands alone, an increase of 41% over 2013. By contrast, advertising spending for all diet and unsweetened drinks combined, including plain water and 100% juice, totaled $573 million. Advertising spending increased across a variety of sugary drink categories between 2013 and 2018--sports drink advertising increased by 24%, totaling $159 million in 2018, and advertising for sweetened iced tea almost tripled, from $38 million in 2013 to $111 million in 2018.

The report also found that companies continue to target sugary drink TV ads to Black and Hispanic youth, who have higher rates of sugary drink consumption compared to non-Hispanic White youth. Since obesity and other diet-related diseases disproportionately affect communities of color, targeted advertising of products that contribute to these negative health outcomes is especially problematic. Systemic and institutional barriers to health and opportunity also contribute to poorer health outcomes and persistent health disparities for these communities.

The report found:

In 2018, companies spent $84 million to advertise regular soda, sports drinks, and energy drinks on Spanish-language TV, an increase of 8% versus 2013 and 80% versus 2010.

Sports drink brands disproportionately advertised on Spanish-language TV, dedicating 21% of their TV advertising budgets to Spanish-language TV, compared to 10% on average for all sugary drinks.

Compared to White children and teens, Black children saw 2.1 times as many sugary drink ads and Black teens saw 2.3 times as many. Black youth exposure was particularly high for sports drinks, regular soda, and energy drinks.

"Our findings demonstrate that beverage companies continue to target their advertising to Black and Hispanic communities, which exacerbates ongoing health disparities affecting those communities" said Jennifer L. Harris, PhD, MBA, lead study author and senior research advisor at the Rudd Center. "Companies should not target communities of color with advertising that almost exclusively promotes unhealthy products and undermines efforts to improve the long-term health of young people."

Researchers used Nielsen data to identify brands in the soda, sports drink, energy drink, iced tea, fruit drink, and flavored water categories that spent at least $100,000 in advertising and that contained added sugar--excluding children's drinks previously examined in Children's Drink FACTS 2019 --and reported on diet soda and diet drinks in the same categories for comparison. Researchers collected data on the nutrition quality and advertising of sugary drinks and energy drinks by category, company, and brand, while also identifying categories, brands, and companies with TV advertising targeted to teens, Hispanic youth, and/or Black youth.

Additional top-level findings:

Teens remain a primary target audience for sugary drink advertising. From 2013 to 2018, teens' exposure to TV advertising increased for regular soda/soda brands (+1%) and iced tea (+68%), despite a 52% decline in time spent watching TV during the same time. Energy drinks and sports drinks targeted their TV advertising directly to teens, as evidenced by high ratios of ads viewed by teens versus adults.

Preschoolers' and children's exposure to sugary drink TV advertising is increasing. Preschoolers' saw 26% more TV ads for sugary drinks in 2018 than in 2013, and children's ad exposure increased by 8%. These increases occurred despite a 35% decline in average TV viewing times for preschoolers and a 42% decline for children during the same period.

Sugary drink advertising was primarily driven by PepsiCo and Coca-Cola brands. PepsiCo and Coca-Cola were responsible for 38% and 31% of all sugary drink advertising spending, respectively. PepsiCo sugary drink advertising spending increased by 28% from 2013 to 2018; Coca-Cola sugary drink advertising increased by 81% during that time period.

Four brands each spent more than $100 million to advertise sugary drinks in 2018: Coke, Pepsi, Gatorade, and Mtn Dew.

"Beverage companies have promised to take action to reduce the amount of beverage calories people consume, but at the same time they dramatically increased advertising for their full-calorie sugary drinks," said Fran Fleming-Milici, PhD, a co-author and director of marketing initiatives at the Rudd Center. "It's well past time for the industry to stop putting profits ahead of our kids' health and put their advertising dollars behind products that contribute to good health rather than undermine it."

The report authors include the following recommendations:

Beverage companies should commit to discontinue targeted marketing of sugary drinks to communities of color.

States and localities should enact excise taxes on sugary drinks and invest the resulting revenue in community-defined programs and services to reduce health and socioeconomic disparities.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should establish regulations to address unclear labeling practices, such as requiring disclosures of added sugars, low-calorie sweeteners, juice, and caffeine content on the front of product packages.

States and local municipalities should prohibit the sales of energy drinks and shots to children under age 18 and require they be placed in low-visibility locations (such as behind counters).

Grassroots and other advocacy groups should develop campaigns to highlight excessive advertising of sugary drinks, especially advertising that disproportionately targets teens and communities of color.

Healthcare professional organizations should develop campaigns aimed at children and teens to raise awareness about these harms, especially for sugary drinks that are perceived to be healthier than soda (e.g., sports drinks, iced tea, and flavored waters) and energy drinks.

A group of researchers including scientists from the RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science, University of Tokyo, Nagoya University, and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) used the spin-polarized Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the United States to show that, in polarized proton-proton collisions, neutral pions emitted in the very forward area of collisions--where direct interactions involving quarks and gluons are not applicable--still have a large degree of left-right asymmetry. This finding suggests that the previous consensus regarding the generation of particle in such collisions need to be reevaluated.

Understanding the mechanism through which particles are created in collisions involving protons has relevance for understanding cosmic ray showers, where particles entering the earth's atmosphere from outer space create particle "showers" that help us learn about astronomical phenomena that take place in the extreme environment of the universe. However, it is very difficult to study how particles are created, as the force that binds protons in the nucleus and that bind quarks and gluons into protons--the strong interaction or nuclear force--is very strong compared to other forces such as the electromagnetic force and gravity. One avenue for exploring these important challenges has involved an attribute of protons called "spin," which can be understood by analogy to the way a toy top rotates on its axis. The spin of protons can be artificially aligned, in a process that is called "polarization".

In the 1970s, accelerator experiments at Argonne National Laboratory in the United States revealed that the pions generated toward the front of collisions involving polarized protons had large left-right asymmetry. The energy of the polarized protons used in these experiments was about 10 billion electron volts (GeV). Experiments at higher energies--including one at 200 GeV using the polarized proton beam at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL) in the United States and at RHIC at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in the United States, where two beams of 100 GeV protons moving in opposite directions were collided--showed that the left-right asymmetry persisted even with high-energy polarized protons. A consensus emerged that this asymmetry was caused by direct interactions among the quarks and gluons in the protons, based on a theory called perturbative quantum chromodynamics (QCD).

However, with additional experiments at the RHIC, findings began to emerge that challenged the consensus. According to Yuji Goto, one of the authors of the current work, "At the energy of RHIC, quarks and gluons are scattered, and various particles are generated in the form of a jet. When the left-right asymmetry of the jet generated forward of the collision position at RHIC was examined, it was found that, contrary to expectations, the overall jet and the pions contained in the jet did not show a left-right asymmetry. This suggested that the cause of the left-right asymmetry was not the direct scattering of quarks and gluons."

In order to further investigate, the researchers conducted experiments, published in Physical Review Letters, where they used an electromagnetic calorimeter detector previously used in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN--known as the LHCf experiment there and the RHICf experiment at RHIC--to take a detailed look at the gamma rays generated by pion decays at the very forward region of the collision. They found, however, that the left-right asymmetry in neutral pions persists even in that very narrow area.

According to Goto, "We found that the asymmetry continues to exist at a very narrow angle from right in front of the collision, and in fact increases as the angle moves away from zero. This result necessitates a reexamination of previous theoretical interpretations. The small forward angle of the asymmetry corresponds to the energy region in which the protons cause the excited state, and the contribution of other mechanisms--diffraction and resonance--may provide a hint to the mystery."

According to Minho Kim, an International Program Associate at RIKEN and graduate student at Korea University, who was the first author of the experiment, "It was great to be able to work with the new detector, and we plan to continue our work to understand the mechanism that generates the left-right asymmetry. This is sure to give us insights into cosmic ray showers and thus help us to understand phenomena that take place in the extreme environment of the universe."

In a heart attack, a series of biochemical processes leave the heart damaged, much like a car after an accident.

There is loss of tissue that needs to be rebuilt, proteins that get crushed, muscle damage, and interruptions to blood and oxygen flow to the heart. Because the heart is not very good at repairing itself, it is important to discover ways to minimize damage in the first place.

Researchers from San Diego State University's Heart Institute discovered how one key protein in the heart can act as the knight in shining armor, reducing the damage from the attack, which could improve survival rates and heart function in those who do survive.

"The more your heart is damaged, the worse the long-term prognosis, so that's where our research is focused," said Chris Glembotski, molecular cardiologist and director of the SDSU Heart Institute. "We study how to make the heart more resilient to the damage of a heart attack, which would improve patient's recovery."

After an attack, many patients have stents put in to open up blocked arteries, which helps in the long term. But the surge of oxygen has drawbacks as well.

"The oxygen surge that occurs as soon as the stent is implanted 'stuns' the heart cells and some of them die, which increases irreparable damage to the heart. We found a protein that can minimize the stunning," said Glembotski.

Glembotski and doctoral candidate Adrian Arrieta found that the protein, MANF (mesencephalic astrocyte-derived neurotrophic factor), acts much like an automobile collision specialist, correcting other proteins that have misfolded.

MANF is among roughly 20,000 proteins in the heart. After Glembotski discovered its potential several years ago, Arrieta was assigned to explore it further.

Arrieta tested genetically modified mice them by inducing a heart attack and observing how they did with and without the protein. They fared much better when MANF was present, acting as a regulator.

"This was our first clue about the importance of MANF in the heart," Arrieta said. "It has a protective effect, but we didn't know how it protects, because it is not structurally similar to proteins that we have previously studied."

Arrieta found evidence that the initial oxidative stress after a heart attack--the overabundance of oxygen--is followed by a potentially damaging opposite effect. Reductive stress is like an overreaction where oxygen is used by the heart so quickly that it can become depleted. Arrieta found MANF decreased reductive stress-induced damage in mice.

Preventive benefits if given in the ambulance

Eventually, the researchers anticipate this discovery could lead to the protein being administered as a drug that can be given to heart attack victims intravenously by first responders.

Immediately after a heart attack there is a 'golden period' when intervention to reduce the severity and damage can significantly boost chances of not only survival but also the level of functionality that the heart regains in recovery.

"One of our most interesting discoveries is our finding that MANF is a chaperone protein that keeps other proteins functional during stress," Arrieta said. "If we could give heart attack victims more MANF, they would have less damage after a heart attack, and they would recover more quickly."

Typically, proteins have a three-dimensional shape which enables them to do their job so the heart functions properly. If this shape is lost, heart function is impacted.

"Think of misfolded proteins like a salvage yard full of crushed automobiles," Glembotski explained. "They were beautifully structured and highly functional at one point, but they become this misshapen mass. In a way, the same thing happens to proteins, either when they're old, or when they experience stress, like a car in a collision."

Next, the researchers will study MANF in the larger hearts of pigs, which respond much like humans do after a heart attack. They will also search for optimal ways to deliver MANF to the heart, again in experimental animals, as this is a critical step in the development of MANF as a drug for humans.