Culture

May 26, 2020 - Early in the pandemic, American Indian Reservations have experienced a disproportionately high incidence of COVID-19 infections: four times higher than in the US population, reports a study in the July/August issue of the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice. The special issue of JPHMP focuses on COVID-19, with commentaries and scientific articles describing the pandemic in the United States and globally. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

Lack of indoor plumbing is a strong risk factor for COVID-19 in tribal communities, while the incidence appears lower in households that speak English only, according to the new research led by Desi Rodriguez-Lonebear, PhD, of UCLA. "These key findings have implications for communication, implementation, and success of recommendations such as hand washing and state/tribal stay-at-home orders in American Indian Reservation communities," the researchers write.

Insights on Factors Affecting COVID-19 Incidence on American Indian Reservations

Using publicly reported information on COVID-19 cases, along with reservation-level data from a previous national survey, Dr. Rodriguez-Lonebear and colleagues analyzed household and community characteristics associated with rates of COVID-19 in tribal communities. The study focused on 287 American Indian Reservations and tribal homelands (in Oklahoma) with an average population of about 12,500.

As of April 20, 2020, these communities had a total of 861 COVID-19 cases. About 60 percent of cases were in the Navajo Nation. At that time, the incidence of COVID-19 was more than four times higher for people living on a reservation, compared to the United States as a whole: 0.24 versus 0.057 cases per 1,000 people.

On analysis of household and community factors, the number of COVID-19 cases was substantially higher on American Indian Reservations where a higher percentage of homes lacked complete indoor plumbing. The researchers write, "While some reservation communities have elected not to pursue full plumbing facilities for historical, cultural and environmental reasons, there are certainly solutions, like providing potable water and hand sanitizer, that could improve critical sanitation needs."

The number of COVID-19 cases was lower on reservations with a high percentage of English-only households - highlighting the need for public health campaigns in Indigenous languages. "This is of particular concern given there are 150 different Indigenous languages spoken by more than 350,000 people in the US today," according to the authors.

Along with household plumbing and language, overcrowding has been identified as a potential infection risk factor. However, at least early in the pandemic, overcrowding - defined as more than one person per room - was not related to COVID-19 incidence on American Indian reservations.

Due to its timing, the study could not address how reservation-level conditions affect the risk of death from COVID-19. Any such analysis would have to consider the unique circumstances surrounding healthcare access and infrastructure in tribal communities. "With inadequate public health infrastructure, limited medical resources, and high rates of poverty, communities on Indian reservations are poorly equipped to manage a pandemic like COVID-19," Dr. Rodriguez-Lonebear and coauthors write.

The researchers outline the implications for policy and practice addressing the impact of COVID-19 on American Indian reservations - including the need for access to potable water and communication of critical health information in Indigenous languages. Dr. Rodriguez-Lonebear and colleagues conclude: "In the long-term, increase direct public health funding to tribes for infrastructure development and secure American Indian household access to environmental health infrastructure such as indoor plumbing, where desired."

CHAPEL HILL, NC - May 26, 2020 - How hepatitis A virus (HAV) manages to enter liver cells called hepatocytes and initiate infection had remained a mystery for fifty years until now. University of North Carolina School of Medicine researchers designed experiments using gene-editing tools to discover how molecules called gangliosides serve as de facto gatekeepers to allow the virus entry into liver cells.

The research, published in Nature Microbiology, has revealed gangliosides as a key player in HAV and has led to several other questions, such as how exactly viral RNA transitions between different compartments in human liver cells to replicate and cause disease.

"Discovering that gangliosides are essential receptors for HAV infection adds an interesting plot twist to the hepatitis A story," said senior author Stanley Lemon, MD, professor of medicine and microbiology at the UNC School of Medicine and member of the UNC Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases. "Gangliosides are structurally similar across mammalian species, unlike proteins, which helps explain cross-species transmission of ancient hepatoviruses. Understanding what helps a virus jump from one animal species to another is incredibly important, as evidenced so plainly by the current Covid-19 pandemic."

HAV was discovered nearly 50 years ago, and although there is a vaccine, there is no treatment. The virus still infects more than 1.4 million people globally each year, and in recent years has been causing increasing numbers of hepatitis cases in the United States, some fatal. Many people experience very mild or no symptoms, especially children. Patients with symptoms, which can last eight weeks and sometimes longer, often experience nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, jaundice, fever, and abdominal pain. After initial infection, 10 to 15 percent of infected individuals experience a recurrence of symptoms during the first six months. Acute liver failure is rare, but more common in elderly people.

HAV infects people through mechanisms similar to other viruses; it interacts with receptor molecules on the surface of human cells to gain entry. Knowing the receptor for a virus not only helps researchers understand how the virus enters cells, but also creates opportunities to design antivirals to block the interaction to prevent or treat disease.

Among the five known hepatitis viruses that cause acute or chronic liver disease in humans, receptors have been identified for hepatitis C virus and hepatitis B virus. For hepatitis A, the identity of the receptor remained elusive. The black sheep of the picornavirus family, it uniquely exists in two modes: as nonenveloped (naked) viruses (nHAV), comprised of a protein shell called a capsid surrounding an RNA genome; or as 'quasi-enveloped' viruses (eHAV), in which capsids containing the viral genome are cloaked inside host cell membranes.

Once inside the liver, eHAV is released from infected hepatocytes to circulate in the blood, whereas naked nHAV particles are shed in feces. Both virus types are infectious. Being cloaked with host-derived membranes gives eHAV an advantage in evading antibody responses, while the naked virion is extraordinarily stable and spreads readily in the environment. But how did each virus get into liver cells and the blood in the first place?

Years ago, the human protein TIM1 was reported to be a receptor for HAV. The gene that encodes this protein even bears the official name HAV cellular receptor 1 (HAVCR1). But recent studies in Lemon's laboratory showed that cells lacking TIM1 still allow HAV infection.

To find a more likely culprit for the receptor, Anshuman Das, PhD, a postdoc in the Lemon lab at the time of this research and now at Duke University., used CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to knock out approximately 20,000 genes in cultured cells to find which human genes are essential for the virus to invade. They identified five particular genes, all of which were required by the virus. Turns out, these genes encode enzymes or transporters that make possible the synthesis of gangliosides. (Transporters are molecules that traffic chemicals across channels inside cells.)

Gangliosides are sugary fatty acid molecules. The enzyme ceramide glucosyltransferase creates gangliosides. And the gene UGCG encodes for that enzyme.

"UGCG was the lead culprit of the five genes that lit up our screen using CRISPR-Cas9," Lemon said.

The researchers then knocked out UGCG, which prevented HAV infection. They also treated liver-derived cells with a chemical inhibitor of ceramide glucosyltransferase to prevent both eHAV and nHAV infection.

The researchers then injected synthetic HAV RNA directly into cells to discover that the viral RNA replicated well, suggesting that gangliosides were required for entry of the virus into cells, but not needed for it to make copies of its genome, or new virus particles, once it gets into cells.

Subsequent experiments revealed that - in the absence of gangliosides - both naked and quasi-enveloped HAV particles do in fact get part way into the cell, but they end up getting stuck in a compartment called the lysosome. Viral replication does not occur. When the researchers added back gangliosides, the accumulated viruses used the gangliosides to exit the lysosome and continue their invasion of the cell, ending up releasing their genomes into the cell cytoplasm where the virus then began to replicate.

"This means gangliosides are essential for a late-step entry of HAV into cells," said Anshuman Das, PhD, a postdoc in the Lemon lab at the time of this research and now at Duke University. "They function as true receptors."

Although questions remain, the researchers say that understanding the role of gangliosides may open up new avenues for prevention and possibly even treatment of hepatitis A.

The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the social, educational and health care disparities already plaguing the nearly 40 million Americans the U.S. Census Bureau estimates are living in poverty. Perhaps the hardest hit members of that population, say three pediatricians at Johns Hopkins Children's Center and Children's National Hospital, are children from low-income households who are experiencing major disruptions in already inconsistent routines and less-than-adequate resources critical to learning, nutrition and social development because of restrictions in place to curb the spread of the disease.

In a viewpoint article published in the May 13 issue of JAMA Pediatrics, the physicians provide examples of how efforts to keep COVID-19 in check have disproportionally impacted the nearly 1 in 5 U.S. children whose family incomes are below the poverty level.

"For example, many school districts are engaging in distance learning during the pandemic, but there is wide variability in the ability to access quality educational instruction, digital technology and internet service, especially by rural and urban students," says Megan Tschudy, M.D., M.P.H., assistant medical director at the Harriet Lane Clinic of Johns Hopkins Children's Center and assistant professor of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "In some urban areas, as many as one-third of students are not participating in online classes because of challenges accessing the internet."

The authors cite other difficulties that COVID-19 policies and regulations have placed on children from low-income households, including missing months of school by a student population commonly burdened by chronic absenteeism, the inability to get nutritious meals previously provided before and during school hours, and removal of key resources available at schools such as "consistent and caring adults who can help build resiliency and offer holistic support."

To counter the increased disparities brought about by the pandemic and help prevent children from low-income households "experiencing consequences for a lifetime," the authors recommend that future COVID-19 legislation target child health and well-being. They say that this effort should include expanding services and increasing funding for health and nutrition assistance programs, improving child tax credits, and expanding access to high-speed internet and versatile electronic devices so that all children can participate in distance learning.

Beneficial strains of bacteria residing in our guts, genital tracts, and skin have been shown to play a role in human health, and now, researchers publishing May 26 in the journal Cell Reports suggest that some of these "good" bacteria also have a niche in our noses. They found that people with chronic nasal and sinus inflammation had fewer lactobacilli in their upper respiratory tract than healthy controls and were able to identify a specific strain of the bacteria that has evolved to better survive the oxygen-rich environment of the nose. As a part of their study, the researchers developed a proof-of-concept nasal spray that could deliver lactobacilli to the nose, where the bacteria were able to colonize the upper respiratory tract of healthy volunteers.

Senior author Sarah Lebeer of the University of Antwerp became interested in the microbiota of the nose when her mother underwent a surgery for lifelong problems with headaches and chronic rhinosinusitis. "My mother had tried many different treatments, but none worked. I was thinking it's a pity that I could not advise her some good bacteria or probiotics for the nose," recalled Lebeer, who was previously studying gut and vaginal probiotics. "No one had ever really studied it."

To see whether the bacteria we associate with gut health also play a role in the health of the upper respiratory tract, Lebeer and her Procure team (http://www.procureproject.be/) compared nose bacteria between 100 healthy individuals and 225 chronic rhinosinusitis patients. They looked at the prevalence of 30 different families of bacteria in the upper respiratory tract of their participants and found that the healthy people had a greater abundance of lactobacilli than the patients--up to 10 times more in some parts of the nose. Lactobacilli are well-known beneficial, rod-shaped bacteria that have pathogen-inhibiting properties because they produce lactic acid through sugar fermentation, but these bacteria had never been studied in detail in the nose.

The researchers took a closer look and discovered a specific strain of the Lacticaseibacillus that not only showed some anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial effects against pathogens but also unique features that enables the strain to better adapt to the environment of the nose. Although most lactobacilli prefer to grow in the absence of oxygen, the identified strain showed unique genes making it able to cope with the higher oxidative stress levels in the nose. Moreover, the researchers observed the bacteria covered with flexible, hair-like tubes called fimbriae, which allow them to adhere to the surface cells in the nose, indicating an interaction between the bacteria and host.

The researchers then sought to verify their findings in vivo. However, "one limitation is that there are actually no real good animal models or mechanistic models to study the interaction of nose bacteria and human host," says Lebeer. "The microbiome of the nose of mice compared with humans, it's certainly different. Also, mice are nose breathers and they don't get chronic rhinosinusitis; they have fewer allergies and inflammations."

But the results from the lab, and the long history of safe use of lactobacilli, allowed the researchers to study the bacteria in humans instead of animal models. The team created a kind of "probiotic nasal spray" with a selected lactobacillus strain in a special formulation for 20 healthy volunteers. Introducing bacteria to the nose can be challenging, because it's so good at filtering out foreign substances; any substance introduced to the nose usually disappears within 15 minutes. However, after two weeks of administering the spray twice daily, the bacteria stayed in the nose longer than 15 minutes--they colonized the nose for up to two weeks without adverse effects. The study of the spray was not set up to look at beneficial effects, although anecdotally some participants mentioned having fewer nasal problems and said they could breathe better.

The next step for the researchers is to understand whether the fimbriae and the ability to endure oxidative stress are key to beneficial anti-inflammatory properties of the strain, as well as to identify which antimicrobial molecules the strain produces in addition to lactic acid. Ultimately, the team's goal is to develop therapeutics based on nasal probiotics to improve the symptoms of sinusitis patients.

"Sinusitis patients don't have a lot of treatment options," says Lebeer, and with the treatments that are available, problems such as antibiotic resistance and side effects often arise. "We think that certain patients would benefit from remodeling their microbiome and introducing beneficial bacteria in their nose to reduce certain symptoms. But we still have a long way to go with clinical and further mechanistic studies."

What The Study Did: The fit and filtration efficiency of disposable N95 masks after sterilization by cobalt-60 gamma irradiation are examined in this quality improvement study.

Authors: Avilash Cramer, M.S., of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology in Charlestown, Massachusetts, is the corresponding author.

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

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.9961)

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

Bottom Line: The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has concluded that current evidence is insufficient to make a recommendation regarding primary care-based behavioral counseling interventions to prevent illicit drug use (including nonmedical use of prescription drugs) in children, adolescents and young adults. The USPSTF routinely makes recommendations about the effectiveness of preventive care services and this recommendation is consistent with its 2014 statement, although it now includes young adults ages 18-25. Illicit drug use, defined as the use of substances (not including alcohol or tobacco products) that are illegally obtained or involve nonmedical use of prescription medications, contributes to the leading causes of death among young people ages 10-24.

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

(doi:10.1001/jama.2020.6774)

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

Note: More information about the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, its process, and its recommendations can be found on the newsroom page of its website.

What The Study Did: This randomized clinical trial evaluated the effect of a workplace wellness program that included health screenings, wellness activities and financial incentives on employee health, health beliefs and medical use after 12 and 24 months among 4,800 employees at a large U.S. university.

Authors: David Molitor, Ph.D., of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is the corresponding author.

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

(doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2020.1321)

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

The UK has the highest level of obesity in Europe, in fact it's estimated half the population could be obese by 2050. Obesity is a significant risk factor for increased morbidity and mortality

Fasting, has been a trend in recent years to maintain a healthy weight, the body responds to fasting using autophagy, a cellular self-recycling process

The proteins required for autophagy to work during fasting have been identified by researchers from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick

Understanding how the proteins work means researchers can activate autophagic pathways to help people maintain a normal body weight

As modern life-styles and high calorie diets drive the UK's obesity levels up, researchers from the University of Warwick have found how cells respond to fasting and activate the process called autophagy, which means a healthier lifestyle can be promoted to help people maintain a healthy body weight.

The UK has the highest level of obesity in Western Europe, with its levels having more than trebled in the last 30 years, it is estimated that more than half of the population could be obese by 2050 in UK. Obesity is a significant risk factor for increased morbidity and mortality. The cause of the rapid rise in obesity has been blamed on modern lifestyles, including high-calorie diet.

Intermittent fasting, alternate-day fasting, and other forms of periodic caloric restriction are beneficial to maintain a healthy body weight and have gained popularity during the last few years. To respond to fasting, cells use autophagy, a cellular self-recycling process.

A team of researchers led by Professor Ioannis Nezis from the School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick, discovered how cells activate autophagy genes during fasting. In the paper titled 'Regulation of expression of autophagy genes by Atg8a-interacting partners Sequoia, YL-1 and Sir2 in Drosophila', published in the journal Cell Reports on the 26th May, Dr Anne-Claire Jacomin, Dr Stavroula Petridi, PhD student Marisa Di Monaco and Professor Ioannis Nezis have discovered proteins which are required for the transcription of autophagy genes.

The proteins are called Sequoia, YL-1 and Sir2, these proteins interact with the cytoplasmic autophagy-related protein Atg8a. These interactions recruit Atg8a in the nucleus to control the transcription of autophagy genes. This is the first study that uncovers a nuclear role of the cytoplasmic protein Atg8a.

Lead author of the research Professor Ioannis Nezis, from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick, comments:

"Understanding the molecular mechanisms of activation of autophagy genes during fasting will help us to use interventions to activate the autophagic pathways to maintain a normal body weight and promote healthy well-being."

WASHINGTON, May 26, 2020 -- Affecting up to 4% of patients older than 65 years, atrial fibrillation ranks among the most common heart conditions. Described by health professionals as an "irregularly irregular" heart rhythm, episodes of atrial fibrillation continue to prove difficult to predict.

An international team of researchers, led by Boon Leong Lan, at Monash University Malaysia, has proposed a way to define cardiac state and has studied the dynamics of the state before the cardiac rhythm changes from normal sinus to AF rhythm and vice versa. The work, appearing in Chaos, by AIP Publishing, and based on critical transition theory, looks to provide an early warning for those with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation with potential implications for future wearable devices.

The paper points a path forward for better screening for paroxysmal atrial fibrillation and may lead to more successful interventions when an atrial fibrillation episode has started.

"The flickering of the cardiac state could provide an early warning for the onset of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation for patients who are wearing a device that can measure the heartbeats accurately to monitor their cardiac state," said Lan. "This early warning would be useful if there is a medicine that the patient could take to prevent the onset."

It is not obvious how the cardiac state should be defined using just the electrocardiogram time series data. Lan said that their definition of the cardiac state, which is based on the changes between successive beat-to-beat intervals, was inspired by his previous work. He and his collaborator previously discovered that the distribution of the beat-interval changes can discriminate subjects with sustained atrial fibrillation from healthy ones very well.

Their new approach shows the cardiac state flickers back and forth between near normal and near atrial fibrillation states, resulting in a bimodal distribution of states before atrial fibrillation starts or terminates.

Others have proposed that dynamical transitions in a host of different realms from climate to stock markets to medicine are preceded by critical slowing down as the tipping point is reached. In critical slowing down, the rate of recovery from even a small perturbation approaches zero.

Lan and colleagues found that critical slowing down did not precede the onset of atrial fibrillation.

Lan is optimistic their method of defining the state of a complex system can be adapted to study critical transition in other chronic episodic diseases, such as epileptic seizure, asthma and ulcers, and other complex systems like an electrical power system or climate system.

He and his group are currently studying the changes in the brain state before epileptic seizures using their approach.

Early Muslim communities in Africa ate a cosmopolitan diet as the region became a trading centre for luxury goods, the discovery of thousands of ancient animal bones has shown.

Halal butchery practices became common when Islam spread through Ethiopia as vibrant communities developed because of the import and export of products around the Red Sea, and to Egypt, India, and the Arabian Peninsula, archaeologists have found.

New excavations at three sites in the east of the country completed by the University of Exeter and the Ethiopian Authority for Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage have uncovered around 50,000 animal bones dating from the eighth/ninth centuries onwards, and showing people living there at this early time ate a Muslim diet 400 years before major Mosques or burial sites were built in the 12th century.

The team, led by Professor Timothy Insoll, and involving archaeozoologist Jane Gaastra from the University of Exeter's Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies, found the first evidence in Africa for ancient halal butchery during the excavations, at Harlaa, Harar, and Ganda Harla.

Previous excavations led by Professor Insoll have revealed the Mosques and burial sites, as well as the remains of luxury materials such as ceramics from China and Egypt, marine shell from the Red Sea and beads from India.

Harlaa was established in the 6th and 7th centuries before Islam arrived in Ethiopia. It was abandoned in the 15th century when Harlaa and Ganda Harlaa were established, possibly because of plague or environmental change, and with the increasing spread of Islam better places to farm could be lived in.

During the period from which the animal bones date people may have been using smaller Mosques not yet discovered by archaeologists, and built larger buildings for worship as Muslim communities grew.

Professor Insoll said: "We didn't expect to find bones of this quality and quantity. They are so well preserved that we can clearly see both cuts and evidence of wear. We've also found bones in both residential areas and places of work.

"This is significant new information about people's religious identity at the time. It shows in the early days of Islam in the region people were just starting to adopt religious practices, so were sometimes pragmatic and didn't follow all of them."

Analysis of wear on the bones show cattle were used for ploughing and turning grinding stones, and other species such as camels, horses, and donkeys, may have been used as pack animals to carry trade goods and other commodities. Analysis of the age data of cattle bones at Harlaa indicated 80 to 90 per cent of animals survived beyond 3 years of age, showing they were kept for milk or for work rather than bred to eat.

Archaeologists found the remains of pigs in Harlaa and Ganda Harlaa, which could have been domesticated or wild, unexpected in an Islamic area, as pigs are haram, ot forbidden in Islamic halal diet. This suggests the region was cosmopolitan, with visitors and residents from different areas and with different religions. Another explanation could be that early Muslims in the area ate pork during this period for practical reasons. No pig remains were found at Harar, which was a city of Muslim scholarship and pilgrimage. Similar halal butchery techniques were used in all three sites, showing the influence of Muslim traders who arrived in the area and the spread of Islam to first Harlaa, and then Harar and Ganda Harla.

People also ate and hunted warthog, bushpig, aardvark, porcupine, hare, gennet, mongoose and leopard.

At Harlaa researchers also found evidence of marine fish imported from the Red Sea some 120 kilometres away. These had all been processed prior to being sent to Harlaa, either in dried or salted form to preserve them. This was indicated by the complete absence of fish heads showing these had been removed, probably at the Red Sea coast. No local freshwater fish species were found suggesting the people eating the fish were used to a sophisticated diet.

Similar animal body portions were found at each site, indicating wealth or status may not have been a factor in access to meat.

The study, published in the Journal of African Archaeology, indicates that the discarded remains of meals eaten many hundreds of years ago can provide very important information on diet, but also religious conversion, trade, and the use of animals for transport and work purposes in Islamic societies in Africa which have been largely neglected by archaeologists.

This release has been removed by request of the submitting institution. Please contact Valérie Geneux for more information: valerie.geneux@epfl.ch

Smart devices that measure electrical signals from your skin have the potential to tell you about your stress levels, help your sports performances and allow you to track your emotions.

An international team of researchers from Sweden and the UK have developed an innovative way of interpreting biological signals produced by the conductance of our skin. Using data obtained using a Philips wrist-worn wearable sensor device that also include an accelerometer to measure movement, the researchers’ system displays information in the form of colourful spiral graphics in real time on a smart phone, as well as a recording of data, for the wearer to interpret and reflect on.

Skin conductance is a measure of how much someone sweats, indicating their emotional reactions as well as physical reactions and is the basis for technologies such as lie detectors.

The prototype visualisation system called ‘Affective Health’, was developed by experts in Human-Computer Interaction looking into how new and emerging computer technologies, such as those using data extracted from sensors on the skin, can be used to design engaging visualisations on smart phones.

Dr Pedro Sanches, senior researcher at KTH - Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm, and lead researcher on the study said:

“Our bodies produce a wide range of signals that can be measured. Many useful devices that measure these signals, which we call biodata, have proliferated over the years – such as heart-rate monitors for sports. However, there are other areas of biodata that are yet to be fully developed – such as skin conductance or perspiration levels. Making sense of these kinds of biodata is not easy. People are unfamiliar with this kind of information and it is not clear how people would want to use it, or interact with devices that present this biodata.”

A study group of 23 people were given the Affective Health prototype to use for a month. Importantly, the researchers deliberately did not tell the participants what the devices were useful for. Instead, they gave guidelines that Affective Health could collect information relating to both physical and emotional reactions, how increased sweating increased the conductivity, and how this was represented by different colours. Participants were left to decide the best ways of using the technology.

The researchers found that this open design stage of the study, without providing pre-specified uses, led to some participants using the system as a tool to measure, and help manage, their stress levels.

While others, including elite athletes, used the device to get information on their training and recovery regimes.

Other uses included logging information on their lives, and tracking emotions. But interestingly, few would use the technology for more than one purpose.

Prof Kristina Höök, of Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden said:

“We were surprised at how much the wearers’ initial categorisation of the system coloured how they used it. If they looked upon it as a sports tool, they did not even ’see’ the data that spoke of stress or emotional reactions. If they looked upon it as an emotion measuring tool, they did not see the data that spoke of social processes or exertion due to sports activities.

“It was also interesting to see how some would avoid engaging with data that spoke against their ideas of their personality traits. One person looked upon himself as a calm person, but in the data, there were plenty of peaks. He just could not reconcile those with his impression of himself.”

Although the open design phase helped reveal several different practices Affective Health prototypes could be used for, the prototype lacked some of the functions needed to make it a good tool for a specific role – such as a sports training system, or as a stress management tool.

The researchers found the need for a second, more tailored, step in the design process to make devices specific to particular roles.

The research is part of the AffecTech: Personal Technologies for Affective Health, Innovative Training Network, which is funded through the European Union’s Horizon2020 programme and led by Professor Corina Sas of Lancaster University’s School of Computing and Communications.

Professor Sas, said: “The study revealed insights for designers of emerging wearable technologies, and in particular of biodata-based wearable devices. Design is crucially important to help users understand their bodily responses.

“Our results suggest the value of a two-step approach for designing new technologies that present bio-data that are unfamiliar to users. A deliberately open initial design stage allows users to develop their own ideas of how these kinds of products could be used. This is followed by a second step that tailors the functions of the device for specific activities, such as wellbeing, health or productivity.”

Many businesses turned to remote workers to continue their operations after states issued stay-at-home orders to reduce COVID-19 infections, a trend that is likely to accelerate long after the coronavirus is controlled.

To help companies ease the transition online, USC researchers studied the challenges to increasing the use of crowdwork -- a manifestation of the gig economy in which companies offer ad-hoc, mundane tasks to prospects via a website. The move minimizes disruptions that organizations would experience as a result of COVID-19 or other crises.

The study, conducted in September 2019 through a collection of task responses via Amazon's Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing platform, shows that workers will need more autonomy over tasks and a clearer sense of purpose to perform often mundane work at a high level -- advantages that AI assistance offers.

"Crowdwork functions similarly to Uber, but it is used to perform online tasks like clean data, train artificial intelligence and moderate content," said Gale Lucas, research assistant professor at the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. "As unemployment rates continue to skyrocket, it will likely become even more popular in serving as a stopgap during the current shutdown and as the economy changes due to COVID-19. We need to improve crowdwork and make it more efficient, which could involve new types of supervision assistance using AI."

The findings were presented on May 11 via the International Conference On Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems in New Zealand. A video presentation will be publicly available.

With the continuous development of AI technologies, employees and gig workers increasingly encounter software algorithms that assist in assigning their work. Many tasks performed by managers -- such as hiring, evaluations and setting compensation -- will increasingly use AI as a tool to help perform these functions.

These newly automated supervisory duties, called algorithmic management, already play a major role at companies like UPS, Uber and Amazon that outsource tasks to a large pool of online workers.

New research from ICT and Fujitsu Laboratories shows that to enhance worker motivation in a crowdwork environment, worker autonomy and transparency in regard to how completed tasks have been solved is imperative.

Perceptions of autonomy can enhance productivity, especially when the work holds intrinsic meaning for workers, yet crowdwork often seems meaningless. According to the researchers, "More problematically, the meaning of the work is sometimes hidden due to security or experimental control, like when the workers serve as subjects in a scientific experiment. Enhancing user motivation and performance through human-agent interaction is an important challenge, not only for algorithmic management but in other AI disciplines, including educational technology, personal health maintenance, computer games, personal productivity monitoring and crowdsourcing."

To test the management applications, ICT researchers conducted an online experiment investigating how perceptions of autonomy and the meaningfulness of work shape crowdworker motivation. Yuushi Toyoda, senior researcher for Fujitsu Laboratories, and USC researchers Jonathan Gratch and Lucas examined alternative techniques to maintain crowdworker motivation when their work is additionally managed by an algorithm.

"Given that system designers might be designing autonomous agents that perform some management tasks in the context of algorithmic management, understanding how workers might respond to these systems, especially in remote work conditions, could provide essential guidance for designers," Toyoda said.

The team found that workers are more motivated when their work has meaning and algorithmic management is framed in a way that highlights worker autonomy. For example, when performing a tedious task like counting the number of infected blood cells on a laboratory slide, workers perform better when they are told about a societally meaningful goal -- such as curing an infectious disease -- and when feedback supports autonomy with helpful prompts and queries.

"We found that when people knew the goal was to help cure a disease, they actually overreported the number of infected cells. Their desire to see the work succeed actually undermined the usefulness of their work," said Gratch, director for virtual human research at ICT and a professor of computer science at USC Viterbi.

In contrast, when the work holds no meaning, productivity is only enhanced when algorithmic management falls back on authoritative managerial control, framing the algorithm as a boss that commands conformity rather than promotes autonomy. That can be a challenge, as it is not always possible to provide the meaning behind a task because this information can sometimes bias results, the researchers said.

The new findings highlight the importance of autonomy and meaningfulness in a crowdwork environment and contribute to the growing body of literature in algorithmic management and human-AI interaction. Ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft currently use algorithmic management via an app that gives employees freedom in scheduling and routes, and findings by the USC research team suggest ways such systems can be improved.

What is important when you choose a home? Space, security, light - or a combination of these? Like humans, animals make choices about where to live that have important implications for their livelihoods. But unlike humans, animals do not easily reveal the basis of their choice.

Now, researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Konstanz and the University of Konstanz have created a paradigm that can disentangle the strands of animal decision-making. By using CT scanning, 3D modelling and 3D printing, they have created artificial shelters that vary in precise ways, and used these structures to reveal the underlying preferences of animals.

The findings are reported in a paper by Humboldt post-doctoral fellow, Dr. Aneesh Bose; bachelor students of the University of Konstanz, Johannes Windorfer and Alex Boehm; and Alex Jordan, Principal Investigator in the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the DFG Cluster of Excellence "Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour" at the University of Konstanz. The study also included co-authors from the University of Basel.

Studying shelter selection

Aneesh Bose, a postdoc in Jordan's lab and co-first author of the study points out that the choices an animal makes, especially when it comes to choosing a home, can have major implications for the choosing animal. "A shelter can serve many ecological roles, a place to rear babies, hide from predators, perform social behaviour," says Bose. "But just looking at the choices animals make doesn't give us a correct answer of what they want because they are constrained by what's available to them."

The problem with studying shelter selection in the wild is that many traits in nature are linked. A bigger shelter (for example a burrow, den, hole, or shell), could be better for rearing offspring, while a bigger shelter entrance opens the way for more predators to enter. However, bigger shelters often have bigger entranceways, and many animals are unable to physically alter the structures they encounter and choose amongst in the wild. Therefore, pinpointing the function behind an animal's preferences for shelter structures requires circumventing the constraints of the natural world where traits are often correlated.

3D models of shells

The researchers devised an experimental framework that enabled methodical appraisal of the possible traits of importance. Selecting a species of shell-dwelling cichlid fish (Neolamprologus multifasciatus) from Lake Tanganyika, Africa, they used high resolution CT scanning on a range of the snail shells that the fish use as shelters. From the scans, 3D models of the structures were created wherein certain features of the shells were manipulated independently of each other. The models were 3D printed to create accurate shell replicas and then offered to fish in choice experiments.

Fish showed preferences for exaggerated shells that bore dimensions that do not exist, or rarely exist, in nature. Fish preferred shells that were fully intact and either enlarged, lengthened, or had widened apertures. Notably, fish were able to distinguish chirality - the direction of coiling - in the shells provided, always favouring shells with the same chirality as those that exist in their natural habitat. The important finding was that, for fish, not every home structural feature is equal. In fact, they preferred shell intactness more than shell length, which was itself preferred more heavily than entrance size. These are facets of the fish's decision-making process that could not be ascertained without such a controlled, manipulative experiment.

Understanding animal behaviour

"The innovation of our study is that we have been able to 3D print a biological structure with precisely controlled dimensions, rather than using samples of real shells, which are limited in how they can be manipulated," says Windorfer, a bachelor student and co-lead author on the study. "And that way we escape the confines of the natural world."

Jordan, senior author on the study says: "Our ultimate goal is to understand why animals choose the things they do, so first we have be certain we know what they choose. For example, I choose my beer based on taste, and I don't really care about the bottle it comes in. But someone watching me might notice that all my favourite beers come in green bottles, and conclude I prefer green bottles."

"If we are to avoid making the same mistake in animal behaviour, we need to figure out a different way. Our study shows how you can experimentally dissociate linked traits and gives us a very powerful experimental framework to explore the ultimate basis of animal decision-making."

The transmission of cultures from generation-to-generation is only found in a few species besides humans. Chimpanzees are one such species and exhibit a large diversity of cultural and tool use behaviours. Although these behaviours have been well documented at a handful of long term research sites, the true cultural repertoire of chimpanzees across populations is still poorly understood. To better understand this diversity, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, initiated the 'Pan African Programme: The Cultured Chimpanzee' (PanAf) in 2010. Using a standardized protocol, researchers set up camera traps, collected samples and recorded ecological data at over 40 temporary and long-term research sites across Africa.

Prior to this study, termite fishing was thought to occur in only two forms with one or multiple tools, from either above-ground or underground termite nests. By carefully observing the techniques required to termite fish at ten different sites, lead author Christophe Boesch created a catalogue of behaviours (ethogram) for each chimpanzee in the study.

What was found was 38 different technical elements making up the various termite fishing techniques, all of which were combined in different ways in each of the chimpanzee communities. In addition, individuals in the same community shared more of the termite fishing technical elements, and unique combinations of the technical elements, when compared to chimpanzees from other groups.

Surprising diversity

"The diversity of techniques seen in chimpanzee termite fishing was a huge surprise to me. Not only does each community have a very unique way of fishing, they also combine a number of different elements into specific termite fishing etiquettes", explains Christophe Boesch."The most striking examples of this are how the Wonga Wongue chimpanzees of Gabon usually lie down on their sides to termite fish, while the Korup chimpanzees in Cameroon lean on their elbows, and the ones from Goualougo in the Republic of Congo sit while fishing."

Because the communities of chimpanzees live in similar habitats with access to the same resources, ecological differences could mostly be ruled out to explain the observed differences. "This supports the idea that chimpanzees are capable of imitating social techniques in 'how to termite fish' which goes beyond alternative explanations such as each individual reinventing termite fishing each time they learn it", explains co-author Ammie Kalan.

Conforming to the group

Much like in human etiquette, not everything is about increased efficiency but rather about conforming to what the rest of the group is doing. In humans, this is observed in the different chopstick cultures across Asia. "For example, in Thailand and Japan not only are chopsticks somehow shaped differently, but the way they hold them differ as well, and this is very reminiscent of what we see here with chimpanzees. In La Belgique in Cameroon, chimpanzees fashion their stick by opening the fibers to obtain a long brush and then rest the termite-covered stick on their wrist while they eat. On the other hand, at another site in Cameroon called Korup, the chimpanzees do not make a brush at all and use their mouth to shake the inserted stick while it is in the mound", explains Christophe Boesch.

In humans, cultural variation has been documented in hundreds of different populations which is one explanation for why chimpanzee culture seems so limited in comparison. "What we knew before about chimpanzees came from at most 15 communities", notes co-author Hjalmar Kuehl. "Through the PanAf we have been able to study many more communities and by this we are able to learn more about the richness of chimpanzee diversity and culture and could demonstrate that there is so much more to discover out there."

Further analyses of videos and other data collected from the PanAf are currently underway. "Termite fishing and other cultural behaviours of wild chimpanzees can be observed first hand by signing onto our citizen science platform Chimp&See", says co-author Mimi Arandjelovic. "At Chimp&See citizen scientists can watch the over one million video clips the PanAf has recorded from all across Africa of chimpanzees, gorillas, elephants, buffalo, leopards and many more species. Visit http://www.chimpandsee.org and you could be a citizen scientist contributing to analyzing data and help with further discoveries in the wild!"