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A study conducted in Sydney during the early epidemic stage of COVID-19 has found an association between lower humidity and an increase in locally acquired positive cases. Researchers discovered a 1 percent decrease in humidity could increase the number of COVID-19 cases by 6 percent.

The research led by Professor Michael Ward, an epidemiologist in the Sydney School of Veterinary Science at the University of Sydney, and two researchers from our partner institution Fudan University School of Public Health in Shanghai, China, is the first peer-reviewed study of a relationship between climate and COVID-19 in the southern hemisphere.

"COVID-19 is likely to be a seasonal disease that recurs in periods of lower humidity. We need to be thinking if it's winter time, it could be COVID-19 time," said Professor Ward.

The study is published today in Transboundary and Emerging Diseases.

Further studies - including during winter in the southern hemisphere - are needed to determine how this relationship works and the extent to which it drives COVID-19 case notification rates.

Previous research has identified a link between climate and occurrence of SARS-CoV cases in Hong Kong and China, and MERS-CoV cases in Saudi Arabia, and a recent study on the COVID-19 outbreak in China found an association between transmission and daily temperature and relative humidity.

"The pandemic in China, Europe and North America happened in winter so we were interested to see if the association between COVID-19 cases and climate was different in Australia in late summer and early autumn," Professor Ward said.

"When it comes to climate, we found that lower humidity is the main driver here, rather than colder temperatures," Professor Ward said. "It means we may see an increased risk in winter here, when we have a drop in humidity. But in the northern hemisphere, in areas with lower humidity or during periods when humidity drops, there might be a risk even during the summer months. So vigilance must be maintained."

Why humidity matters

Professor Ward said there are biological reasons why humidity matters in transmission of airborne viruses.

"When the humidity is lower, the air is drier and it makes the aerosols smaller," he said. "When you sneeze and cough those smaller infectious aerosols can stay suspended in the air for longer. That increases the exposure for other people. When the air is humid and the aerosols are larger and heavier, they fall and hit surfaces quicker."

Method

Professor Ward and his team studied 749 locally acquired cases of COVID-19 - mostly in the Greater Sydney area of the state of New South Wales - between February 26 and March 31. The team matched the patients' postcodes with the nearest weather observation station and studied the rainfall, temperature and humidity for the period January to March 2020.

The study found lower humidity was associated with an increased case notifications; a reduction in relative humidity of 1 percent was predicted to be associated with an increase of COVID-19 cases by 6 percent.

"This means we need to be careful coming into a dry winter," Professor Ward said, adding that the average humidity in Sydney is lowest in August.

"Even though the cases of COVID-19 have gone down in Australia, we still need to be vigilant and public health systems need to be aware of potentially increased risk when we are in a period of low humidity," Professor Ward said. "Ongoing testing and surveillance remain critical as we enter the winter months, when conditions may favour coronavirus spread."

MANHATTAN, KANSAS -- An analysis of more than 200,000 spiral galaxies has revealed unexpected links between spin directions of galaxies, and the structure formed by these links might suggest that the early universe could have been spinning, according to a Kansas State University study.

Lior Shamir, a K-State computational astronomer and computer scientist, presented the findings at the 236th American Astronomical Society meeting in June 2020. The findings are significant because the observations conflict with some previous assumptions about the large-scale structure of the universe.

Since the time of Edwin Hubble, astronomers have believed that the universe is inflating with no particular direction and that the galaxies in it are distributed with no particular cosmological structure. But Shamir's recent observations of geometrical patterns of more than 200,000 spiral galaxies suggest that the universe could have a defined structure and that the early universe could have been spinning. Patterns in the distribution of these galaxies suggest that spiral galaxies in different parts of the universe, separated by both space and time, are related through the directions toward which they spin, according to the study.

"Data science in astronomy has not just made astronomy research more cost-effective, but it also allows us to observe the universe in a completely different way," said Shamir, also a K-State associate professor of computer science. "The geometrical pattern exhibited by the distribution of the spiral galaxies is clear, but can only be observed when analyzing a very large number of astronomical objects."

A spiral galaxy is a unique astronomical object because its visual appearance depends on the observer's perspective. For instance, a spiral galaxy that spins clockwise when observed from Earth, would seem to spin counterclockwise when the observer is located in the opposite side of that galaxy. If the universe is isotropic and has no particular structure -- as previous astronomers have predicted -- the number of galaxies that spin clockwise would be roughly equal to the number of galaxies that spin counterclockwise. Shamir used data from modern telescopes to show that this is not the case.

With traditional telescopes, counting galaxies in the universe is a daunting task. But modern robotic telescopes such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, or SDSS, and the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, or Pan-STARRS, are able to image many millions of galaxies automatically as they survey the sky. Machine vision can then sort millions of galaxies by their spin direction far faster than any person or group of people.

When comparing the number of galaxies with different spin directions, the number of galaxies that spin clockwise is not equal to the number of galaxies that spin counterclockwise. The difference is small, just over 2%, but with the high number of galaxies, there is a probability of less than 1 to 4 billion to have such asymmetry by chance, according to Shamir's research.

The patterns span over more than 4 billion light-years, but the asymmetry in that range is not uniform. The study found that the asymmetry gets higher when the galaxies are more distant from Earth, which shows that the early universe was more consistent and less chaotic than the current universe.

But the patterns do not just show that the universe is not symmetric, but also that the asymmetry changes in different parts of the universe, and the differences exhibit a unique pattern of multipoles.

"If the universe has an axis, it is not a simple single axis like a merry-go-round," Shamir said. "It is a complex alignment of multiple axes that also have a certain drift."

The concept of cosmological multipoles is not new. Previous space-based observatories -- such as the Cosmic Background Explorer, or COBE, satellite; the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, or WMAP mission; and the Planck observatory -- showed that the cosmic microwave background, which is electromagnetic radiation from the very early universe, also exhibits multiple poles. But the measurement of the cosmic microwave background is sensitive to foreground contamination -- such as the obstruction of the Milky Way -- and cannot show how these poles changed over time. The asymmetry between spin directions of spiral galaxies is a measurement that is not sensitive to obstruction. What can obstruct galaxies spinning in one direction in a certain field will necessarily also obstruct galaxies spinning in the opposite way.

"There is no error or contamination that could exhibit itself through such unique, complex and consistent patterns," Shamir said. "We have two different sky surveys showing the exact same patterns, even when the galaxies are completely different. There is no error that can lead to that. This is the universe that we live in. This is our home."

Cambridge, Mass. - It is well known that rates of transmission of some respiratory viruses, including influenza, tend to fall during the summer months. As COVID-19 has spread across the globe, questions have been raised about whether warming temperatures, humidity and UV index might slow, or even halt, the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. These effects on virus transmission will be important to understand as warmer months ease in and states across the country consider and implement reopening plans.

To answer these questions, researchers at Mount Auburn Hospital looked at the impact of temperature, precipitation, and UV index on COVID-19 case rates in the United States during the spring months of 2020. Published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, the findings reveal that while the rate of COVID-19 incidence does decrease with warmer temperatures up until 52 degrees F, further warmer temperatures do not decrease disease transmission significantly. A higher UV index also assists in slowing the growth rate of new cases, but the overall impact remains modest. Precipitation patterns did not appear to have any effect on virus transmission.

The research team analyzed daily reported cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection across the United States from January 22, 2020 through April 3, 2020, as tracked by John Hopkins University's COVID-19 Dashboard, and estimated associations between temperature, precipitation, UV Index, as tracked from the National Centers for Environmental Information, and rate of case increase.

"While the rate of virus transmission may slow down as the maximum daily temperature rises to around 50 degrees, the effects of temperature rise beyond that don't seem to be significant," said first author Shiv T. Sehra, MD, Director of the Internal Medicine Residency Program at Mount Auburn Hospital and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. "Based on our analysis, the modest association suggests that it is unlikely that disease transmission will slow dramatically in the summer months from the increase in temperature alone."

In addition to examining how temperature changes between January and April of 2020 impacted the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the team modeled what the impact would be if a state remained within a maximum temperature range, demonstrating five different scenarios: less than 30 degrees F, between 30-40 degrees F, between 40-50 degrees F, between 50-60 degrees F, and over 60 degrees F. The lowest rate of new cases was observed on days where the temperature was above 50 degrees F five days earlier. The highest increase in infection rates were detected on days when the maximum temperature was below 30 degrees F.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stated that the COVID-19 pandemic may worsen in the fall and winter as temperatures drop. "Our results are in line with those predictions," Sehra noted. "We also caution that the disease may get worse in the fall and winter months."

While previous studies on SARS-CoV-2 in the lab setting showed that the virus survives for shorter duration in higher temperatures and is inactivated by UV light, few have looked at the effects of temperature, precipitation or UV light on the rates of virus transmission in the community.

"To the best of our knowledge, this is probably one of the first peer-reviewed studies that examine the influence that temperature, precipitation and UV light have in terms of virus transmission in the general population across the United States," said Sehra.

The study had several important limitations and considerations. Climate data for state capitals was extrapolated to the entire state, as sourced from National Centers for Environmental Information. Also, the data in the study was collected when much of the country had maximum daily temperatures below 70 degrees F. While average summer temperatures will far exceed that in most of the country, this study cannot evaluate what effect, if any, temperatures over 70-75 degrees F may have on virus transmission.

The researchers note that during the pandemic, reporting methods of COVID-19 patient numbers have varied geographically. Containment strategies, stay-at-home policies, and access to testing, variability of testing formats, and number of tests performed also varied across states, though the study did try to account for these factors.

Some of the most essential processes on the planet involves water and energy entering and leaving cells.

The cellular doormen responsible for this access are known as aquaporins and glucose transporters, two families of proteins that facilitate the rapid and yet selective flux of water, glucose and other small substances across biological membranes.

Aquaporins are present in all kingdoms of life, demonstrating their central role in maintaining the health of all organisms. The first aquaporin was discovered in 1992, earning its discoverer, Peter Agre, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2003. Since that time, more than 450 individual aquaporins have been identified.

Computer-based experiments -- in particular molecular dynamics (MD) simulations -- have proven to be important in determining how materials permeate through channel proteins at the molecular level.

According to Liao Chen, textbook descriptions of glucose transporters have underestimated the complexity of how these proteins operate. Experiments and x-ray crystallography can only capture so much details, and computer simulations have been limited in their ability to model large-scale systems that include the membrane complexities involved in the gating, and other factors.

Chen has studied this problem using supercomputers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) for more than a decade, with increasing accuracy and complexity.

"As a theoretical physicist, I firmly believe in what Richard Feynman said: that everything that living things do can be understood in terms of the jigglings and wigglings of atoms," Chen said. "We've tried to build a bridge from the jiggling and wiggling of millions of atoms to very simple deterministic behavior of biological systems."

Since 2019, he has applied the modeling power of Frontera -- one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world -- to investigate how the aquaporins and glucose transporters in human red blood cells move water and glucose in and out of the cell.

"We're building models of membrane proteins from atoms including their immediate environment in the membrane," Chen said. "The membrane is composed of lipids and the inner and outer leaflets are asymmetrical. Qualitatively, we understand how water and glucose move, but no one has modeled the membrane correctly for quantitative accuracy that is a norm in other branches of physics. We are moving in that direction."

Chen's research has found significant differences between the results produced by simple models and the more realistic ones he uses.

"With Frontera, we have been able to get closer to reality and achieve quantitative agreement between experiments and computer simulations," he said.

Beyond the basic biological function of aquaporins and glucose transporters, these proteins are implicated in diseases such as de Vivo's syndrome, a neurological disorder, and multiple forms of cancer. In April 2020, Chen published a paper in Frontiers in Physics applying the research to a disease-causing parasite that is a useful analogue for the virus that causes malaria in humans. Researchers are also investigating the manipulation of these proteins as a treatment for certain types of cancers -- limiting the availability of needed nutrients to stop the growth of tumors.

Water movement in and out of cells involves the simplest of membrane transporters. However, the glucose transporters that conduct glucose -- which provides the energy needed by all cells -- across cell membranes are more complicated.

"The mechanism of how glucose is transported is controversial, but I believe we are now very close to the answer," Chen said.

It was long assumed glucose transporters obey the alternating access theory like many other proteins in the major facilitator superfamily. Proteins in this superfamily have two groups of transmembrane helices that are theorized to swing relative to each other. In that way, the protein can be open on the extracellular side to allow a sugar into the protein. Then the two groups swing so that protein becomes open to the intracellular side allowing the sugar to leave the protein and enter the cytoplasm. The protein keeps alternating between the conformations open to the outside and open to the inside to ferry the energy needed in cellular metabolism.

However, glucose transporters are distinct from the other members of this huge superfamily of transporter proteins. Unlike the other members that are active transporters with energy supplies available to them, glucose transporters are passive facilitators; they do not have an energy supply to enable them to operate. Chen believed glucose transporters may not obey the alternating access theory and started to examine glucose transporters 1 and 3 very closely.

"Our studies indicate that once we put this simple transporter in cells, if you use an asymmetrical membrane, the transporter does not have to go through an alternating access mechanism," Chen said. "It actually has a gate on the extracellular side that fluctuates between being open and closed based on body temperature. So that's an example of diversity in the mechanism of transporter proteins."

Chen has published two papers on this specific topic so far. Writing in ACS Chem. Neuroscience, his team provided a quantitative study of glucose transporter 3, which is common in the central nervous system and thus called the neuronal glucose transporter. In a more recent paper in Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, they suggested the new possibility for how glucose transporters operate.

Chen's team also does laboratory experiments to see the overall behavior of cell, and to get a baseline truth to compare his models to. But supercomputers are required to get to the specific mechanistic details.

In April 2020, Chen was awarded 200,000 node hours on Frontera to model the protein channels in greater detail.

"On Frontera, each core is faster and the system is massive, so we can model larger systems a lot quicker," he said. "Larger systems are a must. When you deal with small systems, you're not close to reality."

ITHACA, N.Y. - Men participated more in an active learning course in science, technology, engineering and math, while women reported lower perceptions of their scientific abilities, were more aware of gender identity and more likely to feel judged based on gender, a new Cornell-led study has found.

In "Gender Differences in Student Participation in an Active Learning Classroom," published May 26 in CBE-Life Sciences Education, researchers in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB), in the College of Arts and Sciences, analyzed student behavior in an introductory biology course at Cornell.

These results suggest that "active learning in itself is not a panacea for STEM equity," the researchers wrote. "Rather, to maximize the benefits of active learning pedagogy, instructors should make a concerted effort to use teaching strategies that are inclusive and encourage equitable participation by all students."

Doctoral students Stepfanie Aguillon and Gregor-Fausto Siegmund led the study, which included former EEB graduate student teaching assistants, lecturers and postdoctoral fellows. Cissy Ballen, a former EEB postdoc who's now at Auburn University, and Abby Drake, a senior lecturer in the department and an Active Learning Initiative fellow, were instrumental in developing the study.

The "flipped classroom" approach of the active learning model incorporates in-class activities, group work, real-time surveys and other tools to help students apply knowledge through deliberate practice during class time.

Numerous studies documenting the benefits of active learning for many demographic groups have led to a shift in teaching that requires students to interact more in the classroom, particularly in STEM courses.

"A lot of work has been done showing that the transition to active learning in this course was beneficial for students from underrepresented backgrounds," said Aguillon, who was a teaching assistant in the course during the study. "We wanted to go one step further to understand how students actually experience the classroom environment once active learning methods are used."

They focused on student gender because research suggests women participate less in interactions in front of whole classes. They sought to determine whether active learning strategies such as structured activities or clicker questions promote equitable participation by all students.

To find out, researchers observed students in this course over two semesters, recording students' interactions with the instructor across seven categories, including unprompted comments and questions; prompted responses from individuals; prompted responses from groups; and student interaction with the instructor during small group activities.

The researchers also collected student grades and conducted surveys to assess students' awareness of gender identity in the classroom (salience of gender identity) and to measure their perceptions of their own capability to undertake science tasks (self-efficacy).

Before the study, the researchers hypothesized that active learning practices such as peer discussion and clicker questions would result in parity between genders. Instead, they observed that men participated more than women in all interaction types except for group work (in one semester of the study). This result, together with men's higher rates of scientific self-efficacy and relative lack of worry about gender stereotypes, points to a need to further adjust participation plans in active learning classroom, they said.

"Research from Cornell and elsewhere suggests that active learning reduces performance gaps in STEM classes, and we thought that might translate to reducing participation gaps, as well," said Siegmund. "For us, it emphasizes that the instructor is really setting the stage for the students to act - and what that stage looks like can matter."

This study grew out of a project with Cornell's Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Program, now part of the Future Faculty and Academic Careers program.

A team of researchers, led by astrophysicist Sumner Starrfield of Arizona State University (ASU), has combined theory with both observations and laboratory studies and determined that a class of stellar explosions, called classical novae, are responsible for most of the lithium in our galaxy and solar system.

The results of their study have been recently published in the Astrophysical Journal of the American Astronomical Society.

"Given the importance of lithium to common uses like heat-resistant glass and ceramics, lithium batteries and lithium-ion batteries, and mood altering chemicals; it is nice to know where this element comes from," says Starrfield who is a Regents Professor with ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration and a Fellow of the American Astronomical Society. "And improving our understanding of the sources of the elements out of which our bodies and the solar system are made is important."

The team has gone on to determine that a fraction of these classical novae will evolve until they explode as supernovae of type Ia. These exploding stars become brighter than a galaxy and can be discovered at very large distances in the universe.

As such, they are being used to study the evolution of the universe and were the supernovae used in the mid-1990's to discover Dark Energy, which is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. They also produce much of the iron in the galaxy and solar system, an important constituent of our red blood cells, which carry oxygen throughout the body.

Classical Novae

The formation of the universe, commonly referred to as the "Big Bang," primarily formed the elements hydrogen, helium, and a little lithium. All the other chemical elements, including the majority of lithium, are formed in stars.

Classical novae are a class of stars consisting of a white dwarf (a stellar remnant with the mass of the Sun but the size of Earth) and a larger star in close orbit around the white dwarf.

Gas falls from the larger star onto the white dwarf and when enough gas has accumulated on the white dwarf, an explosion, or nova, occurs. There are about 50 explosions per year in our galaxy and the brightest ones in the night sky are observed by astronomers world-wide.

Simulations, Observations, and Meteorites

Several methods were used by the authors in this study to determine the amount of lithium produced in a nova explosion. They combined computer predictions of how lithium is created by the explosion, how the gas is ejected and what its total chemical composition should be, along with telescope observations of the ejected gas, to actually measure the composition.

Starrfield used his computer codes to simulate the explosions and worked with co-author and American Astronomical Fellow Charles E. Woodward of the University of Minnesota and co-author Mark Wagner of the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory in Tucson and Ohio State to obtain data on nova explosions using ground-based telescopes, orbiting telescopes, and the Boeing 747 NASA observatory called SOFIA.

Co-authors and nuclear astrophysicists Christian Iliadis of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and W. Raphael Hix of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and University of Tennessee, Knoxville provided insight into the nuclear reactions within stars that were essential to solving the differential equations needed for this study.

"Our ability to model where stars get their energy depends on understanding nuclear fusion where light nuclei are fused to heavier nuclei and release energy," says Starrfield. "We needed to know under what stellar conditions we can expect the nuclei to interact and what the products of their interaction are."

Co-author and isotope cosmochemist Maitrayee Bose of ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration analyzes meteorites and interplanetary dust particles that contain tiny rocks that formed in different kinds of stars.

"Our past studies have indicated that a small fraction of stardust in meteorites formed in novae," says Bose. "So the valuable input from that work was that nova outbursts contributed to the molecular cloud that formed our solar system." Bose further states that their research is predicting very specific compositions of stardust grains that form in nova outbursts and have remained unchanged since they were formed.

"This is ongoing research in both theory and observations," says Starrfield. "While we continue to work on theories, we're looking forward to when we can use NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope to observe novae and learn more about the origins of our universe."

Plant biologists have long sought a deeper understanding of foundational processes involving kinases, enzymes that catalyze key biological activities in proteins. Analyzing the processes underlying kinases in plants takes on greater urgency in today's environment increasingly altered by climate warming.

Certain "SnRK2" kinases (sucrose-non-fermenting-1-related protein kinase-2s) are essential since they are known to be activated in response to drought conditions, triggering the protective closure of small pores on leaf surfaces known as stoma. These pores allow carbon dioxide to enter leaves, but plants also lose more than 90 percent of their water by evaporation through them. Pore opening and closing functions help optimize growth and drought tolerance in response to changes in the environment.

Now, plant biologists at the University of California San Diego have developed a new nanosensor that allows researchers to monitor SnRK2 protein kinase activity in live plant cells. The SnRK2 activity sensor, or "SNACS," is described in the journal eLife.

Prior efforts to dissect protein kinase activities involved a tedious process of grinding up plant tissues and measuring kinase activities through cell extracts. More than 100 leaves were required per experiment for analyses of the stomatal pore forming "guard cells." SNACS now allows researchers to analyze changes in real time as they happen.

"Previously, it was not possible to investigate time-resolved SnRK2 activity in living plant cells," said Biological Sciences Distinguished Professor Julian Schroeder, a member of the Section of Cell and Developmental Biology and senior author of the new paper. "The SNACS sensor reports direct real-time visualization of SnRK2 kinase activity in single live plant cells or tissues."

The new biosensor is already paying dividends. The researchers describe using SNACS to provide new evidence about longstanding questions about SnRK2 and foundational interactions with carbon dioxide. The researchers show that abscisic acid, a drought stress hormone in plants, activates the kinases, but that elevated carbon dioxide does not, resolving a recently debated question.

"Our findings could benefit researchers investigating environmental stress responses in plants and analyzing how different signaling pathways interact with one another in plant cells," said Yohei Takahashi, a UC San Diego project scientist and co-corresponding author of the study. "The ability to investigate time-resolved SnRK2 kinase regulation in live plants is of particular importance for understanding environmental stress responses of plant cells."

The new nanosensor was developed using an approach pioneered by the late UC San Diego Professor Roger Tsien, in part for which he was awarded a Nobel Prize.

A paper recently published online in the journal Chest reports on a study of the palliative ventilator withdrawal (PVW) procedure performed in intensive care units (ICU) at end of life. The study's goal was to determine the level of distress patients experience and identify treatments that could bring relief. Findings show that up to one-third of PVW patients experience an episode of rapid breathing called tachypnea as a marker of distress, and administration of opiates before PVW could help with symptom control. Corey Fehnel, M.D., M.P.H., a palliative care researcher in the Hinda and Arthur Marcus Institute for Aging Research at Hebrew SeniorLife, and Assistant Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, is lead author on the paper.

On average, nearly one in five Americans will die in an ICU each year, and many of these deaths occur after the decision has been made to extubate and move from curative- to comfort-focused care. Although numerous professional societies and patient groups have advocated for improved management of ventilated ICU patients transitioning to palliative care, the process of PVW and the discomfort that patients experience has remained understudied. As a result, the practice varies widely across ICUs, and little is known about the indicators of patient distress and how to better control symptoms.

Monitoring symptoms of distress among hospitalized COVID-19 patients at end of life presents even more of a challenge. COVID-19 patients who are intubated on mechanical ventilation require providers to observe special aerosolized droplet isolation precautions. They must wear N95 masks, face shields, hats, gowns, and run HEPA filters in the room when opening the "circuit" to the ventilator or performing procedures, including extubation. These precautions make it difficult for critically ill patients to use non-verbal cues as a means of communication with their care providers.

In addition, patients are physically isolated with similar patients, and providers try to limit the number of times they enter the patient's room to prevent transmission of the virus. But most importantly, families are not allowed in the hospital to be with these patients during extubation, and they are an important part of easing patient distress and assuring patient comfort at end of life. Taken all together, the combined effect is a perfect storm of barriers to effective symptom assessment for these patients.

"We fervently hope that all patients will be comfortable at end of life in the ICU but unfortunately some people experience discomfort, and we identified one tactic to alleviate that distress," said Dr. Fehnel. "The results of this study, which point to administration of opiates before PVW and in anticipation of distress, could help with symptom control and can be readily applied to COVID-19 and all critically ill patients during this time of great need."

AUSTIN, Texas -- A new analysis of COVID-19 outbreaks in 58 cities has found that places that took longer to begin implementing social distancing measures spent more time with the virus rapidly spreading than others that acted more quickly.

In a new paper from epidemiological researchers at The University of Texas at Austin, now in press with the CDC's journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, researchers studied cities throughout China and analyzed when first cases were detected, when social distancing measures were implemented and when the outbreak was considered contained. The team found that every day a city delayed in implementing social distancing measures after the appearance of a first case added 2.4 days to the length of the outbreak.

"Every day saves time, saves effort, saves people becoming infected and probably saves lives," said Lauren Ancel Meyers, a professor of integrative biology who leads the UT Austin COVID-19 Modeling Consortium. "This is particularly important as we think about the coming weeks and months."

The findings are applicable both to communities experiencing their first outbreaks and those that may see a resurgence in the coming months, Meyers said. Waiting a week after early signs of resurgence might require about 17 more days of social distancing to slow the spread of the pandemic, according to the data.

"It will be difficult to consider strict interventions again, but acting early upon signs of resurgence will mean fewer days of social distancing orders," said Spencer Fox, associate director of the UT Austin COVID-19 Modeling Consortium and co-author on the paper.

"Our findings have implications for the timing of interventions in U.S. cities," Meyers said. "The impact of delays may be particularly important for communities that are prone to rapid transmission, such as nursing homes, colleges, schools and jails. We need concrete plans for when and how to respond to rising cases to prevent unnecessarily long and costly restrictions."

To determine when an outbreak had been contained, scientists look at case counts and determine the reproduction number, a measurement that shows how many people will be infected by one infectious person. If the reproduction number drops below 1, scientists consider the outbreak contained.

Other studies into the impact of delaying social distancing measures have used modeling to estimate a link between the time of measures being taken and the effect on outbreaks. By contrast, this study used on-the-ground data to determine the link between cities taking measures to contain the virus and rates of the virus spreading.

The study was not able to determine which social distancing measures were most effective, but it showed that the timing of the first measure, regardless of the type, had a big impact.

"We provide direct, data-driven evidence that the timing of interventions has a substantial impact on how long an outbreak lasts, how effective our interventions are and, ultimately, how many people might be infected and die from the virus," Meyers said.

Although the study looked at cities experiencing the earliest days of an outbreak, the findings are also relevant for cities in the middle of an outbreak, Meyers said.

Rockville, MD (June 1, 2020) - Each year, thousands of pounds of food are wasted and billions of dollars in food sales lost because of recalls tied to foodborne infections. Using a newly developed approach, researchers identified seasonal peaks for foodborne infections that could be used to optimize the timing and location of food inspections.

"We rely upon food producers, distributors and retailers to keep food safe in fields, grocery stores and restaurants," said Ryan B. Simpson, doctoral candidate at Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. "A lapse in food safety practices during any step in the food delivery and supply chain can jeopardize human health, waste food resources and threaten the national food economy."

Foodborne infections can be caused by a variety of pathogens, such as Listeria, Salmonella and E. Coli. A single pathogen can lead to outbreaks that peak in different states at different times. Knowing the patterns for each pathogen and state could be used to design an optimized schedule for food safety inspections.

To characterize the timing and intensity of infection peaks, Simpson and colleagues developed an analysis method that robustly determines which specific pathogens are likely to cause an outbreak at a given time.

Simpson will present the new analysis method as part of NUTRITION 2020 LIVE ONLINE, a virtual conference hosted by the American Society for Nutrition (ASN). The research was performed under the supervision of Elena N. Naumova, Chair of the Department of Nutritional Epidemiology and Data Sciences at Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.

Using their new analysis method, the researchers found that although foodborne outbreaks typically peak in July, food recalls are delayed by 1 to 2 months, peaking from mid-August through mid-September. These findings were consistent across examined states and pathogens.

Next, the researchers aim to refine their analysis method by exploring specific foods and food groups linked to foodborne outbreaks. They also plan to examine relationships between outbreaks for particular pathogens with food preparation practices and other factors.

"Our future research will provide valuable information that could help refine existing food safety policies while also aiding food producers, distributors and retailers in preventing or mitigating foodborne outbreaks," said Simpson.

A new analysis of more than 200,000 people found that eating high-quality carbohydrates, such as whole grains, was associated with a lower risk for type 2 diabetes.

"High intake of carbohydrates has been suggested to be associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes," said research team leader Kim Braun, PhD, from Erasmus University Medical Center and
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. "We looked at whether this effect is different for high-quality carbohydrates and low-quality carbohydrates, which include refined grains, sugary foods and potatoes."

Braun will present the new findings as part of NUTRITION 2020 LIVE ONLINE, a virtual conference hosted by the American Society for Nutrition (ASN).

Braun and colleagues analyzed data from three studies that followed health professionals in the U.S. over time. These included 69,949 women from the Nurses' Health Study, 90,239 women from the Nurses' Health Study 2 and 40,539 men from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Collectively, the studies represented over 4 million years of follow-up, during which almost 12,000 cases of type 2 diabetes cases were documented.

The researchers observed a lower risk of type 2 diabetes when high-quality carbohydrates replaced calories from saturated fatty acids, monounsaturated fats, polyunsaturated fats, animal protein and vegetable protein. They also found that replacing low-quality carbohydrates with saturated fats, but not with other nutrients, was associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes.

"These results highlight the importance of distinguishing between carbohydrates from high- and low- quality sources when examining diabetes risk," said Braun. "Conducting similar studies in people with various socio-economic backgrounds, ethnicities and age will provide insight into how applicable these findings are for other groups."

Due to the cancellation of the Nutrition 2020 meeting, which was to be held in Seattle, this abstract will be presented as part of ASN's virtual meeting, NUTRITION 2020 LIVE ONLINE, which will be held from June 1-4, 2020. Contact the media team for more information or register to access the virtual content.

This release may include updated numbers or data that differ from those in the abstract submitted to NUTRITION 2020 LIVE ONLINE.

Please note that abstracts presented at NUTRITION 2020 LIVE ONLINE were evaluated and selected by a committee of experts but have not generally undergone the same peer review process required for publication in a scientific journal. As such, the findings presented should be considered preliminary until a peer-reviewed publication is available.

Rockville, MD (June 1, 2020) - Results from a new study suggest that college men who play video games tend to exercise less and have poorer eating habits compared to non-gamers. Nearly 70 percent of men included in the study reported playing at least some video games.

Although research has shown that children who play video games are more likely to be overweight and eat poorly, the new study is one of the first to examine this association in college students. The findings could help colleges and universities more effectively educate students who play video games about diet and exercise.

"It's important to understand that video games are a risk factor for poor lifestyle habits that may contribute to poor health," said Dustin Moore, graduate student at the University of New Hampshire. "We know that habits developed in adolescence and early adulthood can stick with people for the rest of their lives, so if we can encourage video game users to eat healthier and exercise more, we could help them live healthier without completely giving up video games."

Moore will present the research as part of NUTRITION 2020 LIVE ONLINE, a virtual conference hosted by the American Society for Nutrition (ASN).

The new study used information collected from over 1,000 male college students ages 18 to 24 at the University of New Hampshire as a part of the ongoing College Health and Nutrition Assessment Survey (CHANAS) study directed by principal lecturer and research leader Jesse Stabile Morrell, PhD.

Students reported daily video game time in an online survey and provided diet information by recording the food they ate over two weekdays and one nonconsecutive weekend day. Physical activity was based on the average steps taken per day as tracked with a pedometer.

The survey revealed that just over 40 percent of college men play video games at least five hours per week. The researchers found that those who played video games consumed more saturated fat and sodium than non-users, which suggests they are eating more salty snacks. Gamers also consumed fewer fruits and vegetables and engaged in less physical activity than non-users.

The researchers did not observe any differences in weight for those who gamed but note that the poor lifestyle habits observed could contribute to excess weight gain and chronic disease later in life.

"The video game industry is continuing to grow at a fast pace and more people are playing than ever," said Moore. "If the findings of our study are indicative of general population, increases in video game usage could translate to increases in overweight/obesity and chronic disease in the general population, which is already a big issue."

The researchers say that more studies are needed to better understand how various factors, such as video game advertisements or the gaming media used, contributed to the findings. Following up with participants later in life would also reveal whether their habits and body weights changed as they get older.

Due to the cancellation of the Nutrition 2020 meeting, which was to be held in Seattle, this abstract will be presented as part of ASN's virtual meeting, NUTRITION 2020 LIVE ONLINE, which will be held from June 1-4, 2020. Contact the media team for more information or register to access the virtual content.

This release may include updated numbers or data that differ from those in the abstract submitted to NUTRITION 2020 LIVE ONLINE.

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Rockville, MD (June 1, 2020) - A new study of children and teens found that more than 25% of the calories they consume were considered empty - those from added sugars and solid fats. The top sources of these empty calories were soft drinks, fruit drinks, cookies and brownies, pizza, and ice cream.

"Our findings suggest a need for continued research into what children and adolescents are eating," said Edwina Wambogo, PhD, who was a recent postdoctoral Cancer Research Training Award Fellow with the National Cancer Institute. "Examining the whole landscape of available foods and beverages for children and adolescents can help inform new ways to promote healthier eating."

Wambogo, the primary investigator for the study, will present the research as part of NUTRITION 2020 LIVE ONLINE, a virtual conference hosted by the American Society for Nutrition (ASN).

The researchers used data from the 2007-2008 through 2015-2016 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to analyze diet trends for children and adolescents ages 2 to 18 years old.

"Over the time period studied, we observed a downward trend in the percent of calories coming from empty calories without any associated decrease in total calorie intake," said Wambogo. "This trend was mostly driven by declines in added sugars intake, including those from soft drinks and fruit drinks."

Despite this positive trend, the analysis revealed that for all age groups studied more than 25% of their caloric intake came from empty calories, with the percentage of empty calories increasing with age. The top food sources for these calories remained almost the same from 2007-2008 to 2015-2016. However, with increasing age, the sources shifted from beverages such as fruit drinks and flavored milks to foods such as pizza and sweet bakery products. In terms of drinks, older children and teens also tended to consume more calories from soft drinks rather than fruits drinks, flavored milks and whole milk.

Based on their findings, the researchers suggest several strategies that might be used to help children and teens consume healthier foods:

Designing interventions that target top sources of energy and empty calories.

Nutrition education that addresses hidden sources of empty calories from frequently consumed foods.

Increased marketing that promotes healthier foods to children and teens and limited marketing of less healthy foods.

Product reformulation such as reducing added sugars in beverages.

Changing the food environment to ensure availability of healthy foods and limit access to less healthy foods.

The researchers are planning a follow-up study to examine how the top sources of energy and calories consumed by this age group vary by family income. They also want to study further how added solid fats and sugars in beverages may impact intake of calories among children and adolescents.

Due to the cancellation of the Nutrition 2020 meeting, which was to be held in Seattle, this abstract will be presented as part of ASN's virtual meeting, NUTRITION 2020 LIVE ONLINE, which will be held from June 1-4, 2020. Contact the media team for more information or register to access the virtual content.

What The Study Did: Anxiety, depression, mood and fear of workplace violence were assessed in a group of young physicians in China before and during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Authors: Weidong Li, M.D., Ph.D., of Shanghai Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, China, and Srijan Sen, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, are the corresponding authors.

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

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.10705)

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

They worked in hospitals hundreds of miles from the epicenter of COVID-19. Their city of 24 million people locked down hard enough, and did enough testing, that it only had a few hundred cases of the disease.

But hundreds of young Chinese doctors in a new study still experienced a sharp drop in mood, a rise in depression and anxiety symptoms, and a doubling of their fear of workplace violence, in just the first month of the coronavirus pandemic.

The new findings, published in JAMA Network Open by an American and Chinese team, show in stark terms the potential mental toll of being a frontline healthcare worker in the time of COVID-19.

The rise in symptoms among 385 first-year medical residents in Shanghai contrasts with data from members of the previous year's crop of residents, who took part in the same study from 2018 to 2019.

Where this year's class saw sharp change across most measures of mental health and workplace violence during the first half of the training year, last year's class had stable scores at the same point in their training. Other research in Chinese and American residents has shown that the strain of first-year medical training is linked to a sharp rise in depressive symptoms over pre-residency scores.

"Even before this pandemic, the levels of depression and anxiety symptoms among our healthcare workers were high and our findings indicate that they are getting worse," says Srijan Sen, M.D., Ph.D., the University of Michigan psychiatrist and neuroscientist who leads the Intern Health Study that yielded the data. "As it is clear that this pandemic will be with us for the foreseeable future, we need to prioritize the well-being of our healthcare workers, not only for themselves, but also for the patients that will need them in the coming months and year."

Sen worked with colleagues from U-M's Michigan Neuroscience Institute, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, to gather and analyze the data.

Weidong Li, M.D., Ph.D., co-first and co-corresponding author of the new paper and a professor at SJTU, notes that typically, late winter is a time of elevated moods in China, due to the Lunar New Year celebration.

"Our findings indicate that the negative mental health effects of COVID-19 are not limited to physicians working at the center of the initial outbreak in Wuhan, but extend to other places like Shanghai, which is 500 miles away," he says. "With the numerous new cases spread worldwide, this has important implications for the way communities around the globe respond to this growing public health crisis." Li is the deputy director of the Brain Science and Technology Research Center, and vice dean of the Bio-X Institutes, at SJTU.

Elena Frank, Ph.D., director of the Intern Health Study, notes that the data provide a strong reminder about the impacts of infectious disease outbreaks on both the physical and psychological health of healthcare workers. "It's easy to forget that they face many of the same additional stresses as the rest of us - concerns about elderly or at-risk family, loss of childcare - while simultaneously managing an increased clinical workload, and all while placing themselves and their families at greater risk of infection," she says. "The potential mental health consequences of confronting such enormous pressures cannot be overlooked."

Unwitting sentinels of a pandemic's effects

When the 385 doctors in the study volunteered for the research project last summer, they were about to begin the same intense, sometimes grueling training experience that marks the start of a medical career in many countries.

A few weeks ago, data from earlier cohorts of residents was published as a preprint - a report that has not undergone peer review - by Sen and Li's colleagues. It shows a similar rise in depression symptoms happened in 7,000 first-year residents (also called interns) at more than 100 U.S. hospitals, and 1,000 Chinese first-year residents at 16 Shanghai and Beijing hospitals across three years of the study.

Like study participants before them in the U.S. and China, members of the Shanghai intern class entering 12 hospitals in August 2019 agreed to track their mood daily on a smartphone app, and every few months answer standardized questionnaires about their mental health and whether they had experienced, observed or feared physical or verbal violence in their workplace.

Little did they know that their data would give some of the clearest indications yet of the mental toll of being on the front line of a pandemic.

The new study looks at changes in scores between the surveys that the residents took in October and November 2019, and the ones they took in January and February, as the pandemic reached its peak in China. It also measures changes in daily mood between those two quarters.

Sen, who is also the associate vice president for research at U-M, and the Frances and Kenneth Eisenberg Professor of Depression and Neurosciences, has been involved in mental health programs for residents at Michigan Medicine, U-M's academic medical center.

His decade-long study has focused on first-year residents because they all start and end their training year at the same time, and have similar experiences - making them an ideal study population for the question of how intense stress affects mental health.