Culture

New Rochelle, NY, May 21, 2020 "What is autistic burnout has been a term frequently used by autistic adults? Its characteristics, and what may cause or alleviate it, are discussed in Autism and Adulthood.

Autistic adults use the term to describe a chronic state of exhaustion, loss of skills, and reduced tolerance to stimulus. These characteristics are long-lasting and permeate peoples lives.

According to the study, autistic adults say chronic life stress and a mismatch of expectations and abilities without adequate supports is very difficult. Autistic burnout had a negative impact on autistic adults health, capacity to live independently, and quality of life, including suicidal behavior.

Autistic burnout has been a matter of extreme and under-examined urgency for far too long. I hope our work opens a new avenue of research into understanding, relieving, and preventing it in our community, says coauthor Dora Raymaker, PhD, Portland State University.

While the autistic community frequently talks about autistic burnout, the concept has been almost completely absent in the scientific and clinical literature. Its time we start listening to autistic adults and pay attention to what may be an important mediator of poor outcomes, says senior author, Christina Nicolaidis, MD, MPH, Portland State University and Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, Oregon, and Editor-in-Chief of Autism in Adulthood.

Scientists have identified specific compounds from the Brazilian peppertree -- a weedy, invasive shrub in Florida -- that reduce the virulence of antibiotic-resistant staph bacteria. Scientific Reports published the research, demonstrating that triterpenoid acids in the red berries of the plant "disarm" dangerous staph bacteria by blocking its ability to produce toxins.

The work was led by the lab of Cassandra Quave, an assistant professor in Emory University's Center for the Study of Human Health and the Emory School of Medicine's Department of Dermatology. The researchers' laboratory experiments provide the first evidence that triterpenoid acids pack a punch against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, known as MRSA.

The Brazilian peppertree (Schinus terebinthifolia), native to South America, is also abundant in Florida, where it forms dense thickets that crowd out native species. "It is a noxious weed that many people in Florida hate, for good reason," Quave says. "But, at the same time, there is this rich lore about the Brazilian Peppertree in the Amazon, where traditional healers have used the plant for centuries to treat skin and soft tissue infections."

Quave, a leader in the field of medical ethnobotany and a member of the Emory Antibiotic Resistance Center, studies how indigenous people incorporate plants in healing practices to uncover promising candidates for new drugs.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls antibiotic resistance "one of the biggest public health challenges of our time." Each year in the U.S., at least 2.8 million people get antibiotic-resistant infections, leading to more than 35,000 deaths.

"Even in the midst of the current viral pandemic of COVID-19, we can't forget about the issue of antibiotic resistance," Quave says. She notes that many COVID-19 patients are receiving antibiotics to deal with secondary infections brought on by their weakened conditions, raising concerns about a later surge in antibiotic-resistant infections.

In 2017, the Quave lab published the finding that a refined, flavone-rich mix of 27 compounds extracted from the berries of the Brazilian peppertree inhibits formation of skin lesions in mice infected with MRSA. The extract works not by killing the MRSA bacteria, but by repressing a gene that allows the bacteria cells to communicate with one another. Blocking that communication prevents the cells from taking collective action, which essentially disarms the bacteria by preventing it from excreting the toxins it uses to damage tissues. The body's immune system then stands a better chance of healing a wound.

That approach is different from the typical treatment of blasting deadly bacteria with drugs designed to kill them, which can help fuel the problem of antibiotic resistance. Some of the stronger bacteria may survive these drug onslaughts and proliferate, passing on their genes to offspring and leading to the evolution of deadly "super bugs."

For the current paper, the researchers wanted to narrow down the scope of 27 major compounds from the berries to isolate the specific chemicals involved in disarming MRSA. They painstakingly refined the original compounds, testing each new iteration for its potency on the bacteria. They also used a series of analytical chemistry techniques, including mass spectrometry, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and X-ray crystallography to gain a clear picture of the chemicals involved in the anti-virulence mechanism.

The results showed that three triterpenoid acids worked equally well at inhibiting MRSA from forming toxins in a petri dish, without harming human skin cells. And one of the triterpenoid acids worked particularly well at inhibiting the ability of MRSA to form lesions on the skin of mice. The researchers also demonstrated that the triterpenoid acids repressed not just one gene that MRSA uses to excrete toxins, but two genes involved in that process.

"Nature is the best chemist, hands down," Quave says. She adds that weeds, in particular, tend to have interesting chemical arsenals that they may use to protect them from diseases so they can more easily spread in new environments.

The research team plans to do further studies to test the triterpenoid acids as treatments for MRSA infections in animal models. If those studies are promising, the next step would be to work with medicinal chemists to optimize the compounds for efficacy, delivery and safety before testing on humans.

"Plants are so incredibly complex chemically that identifying and isolating particular extracts is like picking needles out of haystacks," Quave says. "When you're able to pluck out molecules with medicinal properties from these complex natural mixtures, that's a big step forward to understanding how some traditional medicines may work, and for advancing science towards a potential drug development pathway."

May 21, 2020 - How should orthopaedic surgeons respond to the COVID-19 pandemic? A review in The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery analyzes evidence and strategies for managing the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus - including critical lessons from past pandemics. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

"Controlling the spread of COVID-19 has become the singular focus on several countries, with unprecedented international collaboration and rapid dissemination of emerging scientific evidence," according to the rapid evidence review by Mohit Bhandari, MD, PhD, FRCSC, and colleagues of McMaster University, Hamilton, Ont., Canada. In a comprehensive review, they identify and analyze available evidence on the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19 - Emerging Evidence and Evolving Strategies

Although the global spread and societal impact of SARS-CoV-2 may seem unprecedented, it is the third major outbreak of coronavirus infection to occur in less than 20 years - following severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2002-03 and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in 2012.

Symptoms of COVID-19 - most commonly fever and cough - appear an average of five days after infection and almost always within 11.5 days. Evidence suggests that about 20 percent of cases are severe or critical, while about 88 percent have abnormal findings on chest CT scans. Estimates of mortality vary but may approach four percent in confirmed cases of COVID-19. Older patients and those with comorbid conditions, such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes, are at higher risk of death.

There is currently no specific treatment for COVID-19. Trials are underway to evaluate antivirals and other potentially beneficial medications; some of these treatments "may be trialed if available in severe cases." The race is on to develop an effective vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, with several potential targets being evaluated. However, as the authors write, "[A] vaccine that is ready for widespread use is likely still months, possibly years, away."

In the meantime, hygiene, social distancing, and isolation measures are needed to curb virus transmission. Experience suggests that these measures have been effective in "flattening the curve" of viral transmission - as demonstrated by the textbook example of the 1918 influenza pandemic. In that historic epidemic as in the SARS pandemic, a second wave of infections occurred after relaxation of containment measures.

"It is essential that we continue these practices, as the outbreak is currently expected to last for many more months and we must be mindful of the lessons learned from past pandemics to prevent a second wave from occurring," according to Dr. Bhandari and colleagues. That's especially important in limiting the spread of SARS-Cov-2 by asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic individuals.

Guiding Surgeons Through the Pandemic

The authors summarize recent guidance to surgeons and other frontline healthcare professionals, including postponing or cancelling elective or nonemergency surgical procedures; shifting inpatient tests or procedures to outpatient settings, if possible; and taking steps to conserve available resources and healthcare capacity. The review includes recommended steps for necessary surgery in patients with COVID-19.

Dr. Bhandari is Editor-in-Chief of OrthoEvidence, a global online source for high quality and timely orthopedic-only, evidence-based summaries. In partnership with JBJS, OrthoEvidence has created a COVID-19 Resource Center, offering podcasts, original content, links to critical breaking studies, and global perspectives on COVID-19 from orthopaedic surgeons around the world on how they're responding to the pandemic.

"Data is the differentiator in this global crisis," Dr. Bhandari writes in a message to the OrthoEvidence community. "We are proud to stand with our community to provide as much evidence as we can to help you all make important decisions for your communities and your patients."

Click here to read "Novel Coronavirus COVID-19: Current Evidence and Evolving Strategies."
DOI: 10.2106/JBJS.20.00396

In a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), senior author, Steven J. Mentzer, MD, thoracic surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and a team of international researchers examined seven lungs obtained during autopsy from patients who died of COVID-19. They compared this group to seven autopsied lungs obtained from patients who died of acute respiratory distress syndrome secondary to influenza A (H1N1) infection as well as to 10 age-matched uninfected control lungs.

Both COVID-19 and influenza are the same category of virus and both infect the respiratory tract. While the lungs shared some common features, there were distinctive features related to blood vessels seen in the lungs of patients who had died of COVID-19.

Researchers observed that COVID-19 damaged the endothelial cells (vascular lining cells), causing severe endothelial injury. Patients with COVID-19 showed widespread blood clotting as well as new vessel growth -- the latter likely a result of the body's response to the virus. The team saw signs of a distinctive pattern of pulmonary vascular disease progression in some cases of COVID-19 compared to that of equally severe influenza virus infection.

Some of the key points are highlighted below:

COVID-19 is a respiratory virus that causes a vascular disease.

The damage to vascular cells helps explain the serious blot clotting observed in patients.

A unique response, intussusceptive angiogenesis (IA), is the way the body compensates for the thrombosis and blood vessel damage.

Damaged blood vessels may also underlie other problems seen, such as COVID toe, children with Kawasaki, stroke, and other seemingly unrelated problems seen with COVID-19.

This study shows the need for more research on angiogenesis and the vascular effects of COVID-19.

Group work and cooperation are crucial in everyday life. As such, it is important to explore the avenues by which synchrony within a group may enhance cohesion and influence performance.

What role can music play in this effort? In an interdisciplinary study published today in the journal Scientific Reports researchers report their discovery that while drumming together, aspects of group members' heart function - specifically the time interval between individual beats (IBI) -- synchronized.

This physiological synchronization was recorded during a novel musical drumming task that was especially developed for the study in a collaboration between social-neuroscientists and scholars from the Music Department at Israel's Bar-Ilan University.

The drumming involved 51 three-participant groups in which IBI data were continuously collected. Participants were asked to match their drumming -- on individual drumming pads within an electronic drum set shared by the group -- to a tempo that was presented to the group through speakers. For half of the groups, the tempo was steady and predictable, and thus, the resulting drumming and its output were intended to be synchronous. For the other half, the tempo changed constantly and was practically impossible to follow, so that the resulting drumming and musical output would be asynchronous. The task enabled the researchers to manipulate the level of behavioral synchronization in drumming between group members and assess the dynamics of changes in IBI for each participant throughout the experiment.

Following this structured drumming task, participants were asked to improvise drumming freely together. The groups with high physiological synchrony in the structured task showed more coordination in drumming in the free improvisation session.

Analysis of the data demonstrated that the drumming task elicited an emergence of physiological synchronization in groups beyond what could be expected randomly. Further, behavioral synchronization and enhanced physiological synchronization while drumming each uniquely predicts a heightened experience of group cohesion. Finally, the researchers showed that higher physiological synchrony also predicts enhanced group performance later on in a different group task.

"Our results present a multi-modal behavioral and physiological account of how synchronization contributes to the formation of the group bond and its consequent ability to cooperate," says Dr. Ilanit Gordon, head of the Social Neuroscience Lab at Bar-Ilan University's Department of Psychology and a senior researcher at the University's Gonda (Goldschmied) Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, who led the study together with Prof. Avi Gilboa and Dr. Shai Cohen, of the Department of Music. "A manipulation in behavioral synchrony and emerging physiological coordination in IBI between group members predicts an enhanced sense of cohesion among group members."

"We believe that joint music making constitutes a promising experimental platform for implementing ecological and fully interactive scenarios that capture the richness and complexity of human social interaction," says Prof. Gilboa, of the Department of Music, who co-authored the study. "These results are particularly significant due to the crucial importance of groups to action, identity and social change in our world."

Senior author Professor Bryce Vissel, from the UTS Centre for Neuroscience & Regenerative Medicine, said his team used novel behavioural, molecular and computational techniques to investigate memories that have not been well-formed, and how the brain deals with them.

He explained, "For memories to be useful, they have to have been well-formed during an event - that is, they have to accurately reflect what actually happened.

"However, in the real world many memories are likely to be inaccurate - especially in situations where the experience was brief, sudden or highly emotional, as can often occur during trauma. Inaccurate memories can also occur when the memory is poorly encoded, potentially as a result of subtle differences in how each person processes memory or because of disease like Alzheimer's or dementia."

Lead author Dr Raphael Zinn said, "Our findings are exciting because they show that memory updating mechanisms that become activated after recall can refine and improve memories.

"Surprisingly, we found that the same process can, in some circumstances, lead to incorrect updating of the memory. We also identify one molecular mechanism, called reconsolidation, which could be mediating this process.

"This suggests we might be able to target such updating mechanisms therapeutically to treat memory and anxiety disorders where memory formation is poor."

The 6-year study shows that the same mechanism that updates poor memories can also severely distort them if it occurs in the wrong situation.

Professor Vissel said these findings could be useful for understanding memory fallibility in everyday life; fear and memory disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); and situations where accurate recall is critical, like witness testimony in courtrooms.

"While these findings come from studies in mice, this research is likely to apply across many animals with developed brains, including other mammals and humans. They might also tie in with dementias, where the main memory-related problem is an apparent inability to form accurate new memories.

"Why is memory fallible? Our study suggests that when an individual forms a poor memory, the brain reactivates the memory in a similar situation and then updates it. Sometimes a poorly formed memory can be wrongly reactivated in a similar, but irrelevant, situation. The brain may then update the memory from that irrelevant situation, causing the memory to become incorrect - rather than creating a new and entirely different memory of the new situation."

WASHINGTON--COVID-19 infection may cause subacute thyroiditis, according to a new case study published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

Subacute thyroiditis is an inflammatory thyroid disease characterized by neck pain and is usually preceded by an upper respiratory tract infection. It may be caused by a viral infection or a post-viral inflammatory reaction, and many viruses have been linked to the disease.

SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) has emerged as a pandemic with severe respiratory symptoms and may involve other organs. More than 3 million cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed worldwide.

"We reported the first case of subacute thyroiditis after SARS-CoV-2 infection," said Francesco Latrofa, M.D., of the University Hospital of Pisa in Pisa, Italy. "Physicians should be alerted about the possibility of this additional clinical manifestation related to COVID-19."

The clinicians examined an 18-year-old woman who was infected with COVID-19 after being exposed by her father. She completely recovered from COVID-19, testing negative a few days later, but started experiencing some additional symptoms. The young woman had neck and thyroid pain, fever and an increased heart rate. She was sent back to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with subacute thyroiditis. She had normal thyroid functioning and imaging just one month earlier.

"Because of the chronological association, SARS-CoV-2 may be considered accountable for the onset of subacute thyroiditis," Latrofa said.

What The Study Did: The implementation of surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 is examined in this case series that describes symptoms of COVID-19 among residents and staff of an independent/assisted living community.

Authors: Alison C. Roxby, M.D., M.Sc., of the University of Washington in Seattle, 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.2020.2233)

Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest 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.

Winter may be behind us, but do you remember the challenge of waking up on those cold, dark days? Temperature affects the behavior of nearly all living creatures, but there is still much to be learned about the link between sensory neurons and neurons controlling the sleep-wake cycle.

Northwestern University neurobiologists have uncovered a clue to what's behind this behavior. In a study of the fruit fly, the researchers have identified a "thermometer" circuit that relays information about external cold temperature from the fly antenna to the higher brain. They show how, through this circuit, seasonally cold and dark conditions can inhibit neurons within the fly brain that promote activity and wakefulness, particularly in the morning.

"This helps explains why -- for both flies and humans -- it is so hard to wake up in the morning in winter," said Marco Gallio, associate professor of neurobiology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. "By studying behaviors in a fruit fly, we can better understand how and why temperature is so critical to regulating sleep."

The study, led by Gallio and conducted in Drosophila melanogaster, will be published on May 21 in the journal Current Biology.

The paper describes for the first time "absolute cold" receptors residing in the fly antenna, which respond to temperature only below the fly's "comfort zone" of approximately 77 degrees Fahrenheit. Having identified those neurons, the researchers followed them all the way to their targets within the brain. They found the main recipients of this information are a small group of brain neurons that are part of a larger network that controls rhythms of activity and sleep. When the cold circuit they discovered is active, the target cells, which normally are activated by morning light, are shut down.

Drosophila is a classic model system for circadian biology, the area in which researchers study the mechanisms controlling our 24-hour cycle of rest and activity. The focus of much current work is on how changes in external cues such as light and temperature impact rhythms of activity and sleep and how the cues reach the specific brain circuits that control these responses.

While detection of environmental temperature is critical for small "cold-blooded" fruit flies, humans are still creatures of comfort and are continually seeking ideal temperatures. Part of the reason humans seek optimal temperatures is that core and brain temperatures are intimately tied to the induction and maintenance of sleep. Seasonal changes in daylight and temperature are also tied to changes in sleep.

"Temperature sensing is one of the most fundamental sensory modalities," said Gallio, whose group is one of only a few in the world that is systematically studying temperature sensing in fruit flies. "The principles we are finding in the fly brain -- the logic and organization -- may be the same all the way to humans. Whether fly or human, the sensory systems have to solve the same problems, so they often do it in the same ways."

Gallio is the corresponding author of the paper. Michael H. Alpert, a postdoctoral fellow in Gallio's lab, and Dominic D. Frank, a former Ph.D. student in Gallio's lab, are the paper's co-first authors.

"The ramifications of impaired sleep are numerous -- fatigue, reduced concentration, poor learning and alteration of a myriad of health parameters -- yet we still do not fully understand how sleep is produced and regulated within the brain and how changes in external conditions may impact sleep drive and quality," Alpert said.

The study, a collaborative effort many years in the making, was performed in the Gallio lab by a range of scientists at different stages of their careers, ranging from undergraduate students to the principal investigator.

"It is crucial to study the brain in action," Frank said. "Our findings demonstrate the importance of functional studies for understanding how the brain governs behavior."

Overall, the study heavily relied on the ability to study both the activity of neurons and the role of these neurons on behavior. To do this, the researchers developed new tools and used a combination of functional and anatomical studies, neurogenetic and behavioral monitoring approaches to conduct these experiments in both wild type and transgenic flies.

In the first 30 days since seeing their first patient, the number of children testing positive to COVID-19 at an Australian tertiary paediatric hospital has been low and none who contracted the virus required in-hospital treatment, according to a new study.

The research, led by the Murdoch Children's Research Institute (MCRI) and published in Emergency Medicine Australasia, is the first Australian study to examine the rate of COVID-19 in children and adolescents presenting to an Australian hospital.

MCRI's Dr Laila Ibrahim said the study was reassuring for parents with children presenting to hospital with the usual childhood acute respiratory illnesses such as asthma, croup and bronchiolitis, that at this time it was very unlikely they have COVID-19.

Dr Ibrahim said parents should also not delay seeking hospital treatment for their children due to fears of contracting the virus.

"The data shows that many worried parents are coming to the hospital when their child has a cough or fever, but of over 400 children tested, only four tested positive to COVID-19," she said.

"This study shows that Australia has responded extremely well to the threat. Hospitals are a safe place with a very low risk of being exposed to COVID-19, and community transmission over the course of the study period was also low."

But Dr Ibrahim said despite the low number of cases to date locally, overseas data had shown that children could still become severely unwell with COVID-19 and there shouldn't be complacency.

The four-week study included 434 patients, aged 0-18 years, who presented with COVID-19 symptoms to the emergency department or the respiratory infection clinic of a major paediatric hospital. The study started after the first positive case was confirmed at the hospital on March 21.

None of the four positive children were admitted to hospital, developed severe symptoms or had significant additional medical conditions. They all recovered within two weeks after experiencing mild upper respiratory symptoms like a sore throat. Only one was managed under the Hospital-in-the-Home program.

MCRI Dr Shidan Tosif, who oversaw follow-up with the families, said the data highlighted the success of outpatient management for COVID-19 positive patients.

"The patients were not admitted to hospital after having a clinical assessment, knowing that their COVID-19 test may later return a positive result," he said. "We were confident that treating children with COVID-19 in the home was the best option."

Dr Tosif said so far there were no reported cases of the multisystem inflammatory syndrome similar to Kawasaki disease that have been described overseas.

"Australians have participated so well in physical distancing measures that we expect to see no or low numbers of patients with this rare complication, even though we are watching very, very carefully for it," he said.

Why is sex so popular? The question of why so many organisms reproduce sexually has mystified evolutionary biologists since before Darwin, who wrote that "The whole subject is as yet hidden in darkness." In a recent article in Genome Biology and Evolution titled "What's genetic variation got to do with it? Starvation-induced self-fertilization enhances survival in Paramecium," the authors suggest that the molecular mechanisms underlying sex and the stress response may be more tightly coupled than previously appreciated, providing a new explanation for the widespread prevalence of sex in nature.

The existence of sex has puzzled biologists for over a century. Compared to asexual reproduction, sex has several disadvantages. The foremost of these is that each sexual organism produces only half as many offspring as asexual individuals. For example, if each adult has two children, two asexual individuals can produce four offspring, while two sexual individuals--one male and one female--produce only two offspring between them. From an evolutionary perspective, this is a staggering cost, even without taking into account other disadvantages of sex, such as the need to find a mate and the potential dangers of doing so (especially if you're a male praying mantis or black widow spider).

Despite these costs, sex is widespread, with an estimated 99% of eukaryotes (cells with nuclei) reproducing sexually at least some of the time. This paradox has resulted in a number of hypotheses attempting to explain the near ubiquity of sex. According to Francesco Catania, lead author of the new study and a research group leader at the University of Münster, one popular explanation is that sex produces genetic diversity--this is why you and your siblings are not identical to your parents. The argument is that this genetic diversity may produce some individuals that are better adapted to changing or harsh environments. In contrast, asexual reproduction generally produces offspring that are each identical to the parent.

The single-celled ciliate Paramecium tetraurelia provides a fascinating counterpoint to this argument, as it can undergo both asexual reproduction and a version of sexual reproduction that notably does not produce genetic diversity (i.e. a kind of selfing). For most of their life cycle, paramecia reproduce asexually, with each cell splitting into two. When a cell reaches sexual maturity however, each paramecium may produce two identical sexual nuclei--similar to the nuclei that are present in sperm and egg cells. If another paramecium is not around to mate and exchange nuclei with, these two nuclei fuse with each other. The result is a type of sexual self-fertilization that can result in daughter cells that are genetically identical to their parents. Thus, in Paramecium, sexual reproduction can be uncoupled from the generation of genetic diversity, suggesting that there are other potential benefits to sex in this organism. Catania and his coauthors realized that this makes Paramecium a unique model in which to investigate and potentially identify these other benefits.

To identify other reasons that P. tetraurelia may engage in sex, the researchers followed cultures of paramecia over the course of eight days, beginning immediately after self-fertilization (day 0) and continuing past the point at which the cells again became capable of sexual reproduction (on day 6). Each day, they subjected a subset of cells to stress by heating them to a high temperature for just over a minute. Interestingly, they found that cells that had just undergone self-fertilization or that were preparing for sexual reproduction (day 0 and day 6 cells) survived the heat shock more often than those that were rapidly reproducing asexually. This survival advantage could explain why paramecia continue to engage in sex despite the fact that no new diversity is generated, and it suggests an underappreciated benefit of sex: enhanced survival in the face of stress.

This finding hints at a mechanistic link between sex and the stress response. The authors point out that many heat shock proteins, which are most well-known for their role in protecting against stress, are also involved in cellular processes associated with reproductive development and sex. It may therefore be that the increased expression of such proteins during sexual reproduction provides added protection from stressors.

How common is this relationship between sex and stress? While some aspects of Paramecium biology are unique, Catania notes that many unicellular and multicellular organisms engage in self-fertilization and, after several generations of this process, may produce offspring that are copies of their parents. In addition, many proteins involved in reproduction and the stress response are ancient and highly conserved across eukaryotes. Thus, a connection between sex and stress may be widespread, a finding that could have far-reaching implications. According to Catania, the results of their study lead to several new hypotheses about the origin and maintenance of sex: "First, the intimate association between the stress response and sex may have contributed to the persistence of sex in nature. Furthermore, these two pathways, often treated as unrelated, might in fact share a common evolutionary origin."

Catania notes that additional studies in other organisms will be needed to test these ideas. However, there is reason to believe that their results may be generalizable to other species. "Over the years, research on Paramecium has yielded important insights in many areas of biology. This model has a lot more to offer despite its unusual biology, and we argue that it can be successfully used to gain new insights into many biological phenomena."

WASHINGTON, D.C. (May 21, 2020) - Americans' confidence in medical scientists has grown since the coronavirus outbreak first began to upend life in the United States, as have perceptions that medical doctors hold very high ethical standards, according to a new Pew Research Center report. But there are growing partisan divisions over the risk the coronavirus poses to public health, as well as public confidence in the scientific and medical community and the role such experts are playing in public policy.

The new report - based on two national surveys conducted April 29-May 5 among 10,957 U.S. adults and April 20-26 among 10,139 U.S. adults, both using the Center's American Trends Panel - finds that 43% of U.S. adults say they have a great deal of confidence in medical scientists to act in the best interests of the public, up from 35% who said the same before the outbreak. But public confidence has turned upward for Democrats, not Republicans. Among Democrats and those leaning to the Democratic Party, 53% have a great deal of confidence in medical scientists to act in the public interest, up from 37% in January 2019. But among Republicans and those who lean Republican, 31% express a great deal of confidence in medical scientists, roughly the same as in 2019 (32%). As a result, there is now a 22 percentage point difference between partisan groups when it comes to trust in medical scientists.

A majority of U.S. adults (59%) believe social distancing measures are helping a lot to slow the spread of the coronavirus, though Democrats are more likely to say this than Republicans (69% vs. 49%). And, when asked about possible reasons for the ongoing presence of new infections in the U.S., partisans diverge, particularly when it comes to the role of testing. Three-quarters of Democrats (75%) consider too little testing a major factor behind new disease cases in the U.S. compared with 37% of Republicans.

Other key findings include:

43% say their state government's policies to control the spread of the coronavirus have been influenced a great deal by evidence from public health experts, compared with 26% who say the same about federal government policies. About twice as many Republicans (38%) as Democrats (17%) think federal policies to control the spread of the coronavirus have been influenced a great deal by evidence from public health experts.

Democrats in states with stay-at-home orders are particularly likely to say public health experts are influencing policy. A majority of Democrats (57%) living in states where stay-at-home orders or other restrictions were in place as of May 5 say evidence from public health experts has a great deal of influence on their state's policies, while about half as many Democrats (28%) living in states where restrictions were lifted by May 5 or were never in place say the same. But Republicans' views on this issue are similar regardless of their state's stay-at-home orders; 38% say evidence from public health experts has a great deal of influence on their state's policies to control COVID-19.

Roughly half of Americans (49%) believe the share of people with coronavirus is higher in the U.S. than in most other nations, but Democrats are more likely to hold this view. Overall, 66% of Democrats think this, compared with 30% of Republicans. Education also tends to align with beliefs on this question among Democrats, but not Republicans. About seven-in-ten Democrats with a postgraduate degree (72%) say the share of coronavirus infections is higher in the U.S. than in other nations, compared with 61% of Democrats with a high school diploma or less. But among Republicans there is no difference in views on this issue across education levels.

60% of U.S. adults say scientists should take an active role in science-related policy debates, but Democrats remain more likely than Republicans to hold this view (75% vs. 43%). The balance of opinion has shifted among both partisan groups when it comes to the public's role. A majority of U.S. adults now say that public opinion should not play an important role guiding science-related policy decisions "because these issues are too complex"; 55% hold this view in the new survey, up from 44% in 2019.

About three-quarters of U.S. adults (76%) say that, in thinking about the coronavirus outbreak, they see scientific developments as more important. Just 4% say they see such developments as less important, and another 19% say the outbreak has made no difference in the level of importance.

These are among the findings from the new report, which is based on two national surveys conducted on the Center's American Trends Panel. Questions about public confidence in scientists to act in the best interests of the public and questions about ethical standards of medical doctors were drawn from a survey of 10,139 U.S. adults conducted April 20-26, 2020. The margin of error for that full sample is plus or minus 1.5 percentage points. The rest of the data in the report is drawn from a survey of 10,957 adults conducted April 29 to May 5, 2020. The margin of error for that full sample is plus or minus 1.4 percentage points.

The skeleton of an extinct 'fish lizard' locked in a glass case over 16ft from the ground for the last 100 years has finally been studied, thanks to a selfie stick on a fishing rod.

The 145 million year old Nannopterygius is a species of ichthyosaur, which swam the seas of our planet for about 76 million years. It is on display in the Natural History Museum, London, but its glass cabinet is hung too high for easy examination.

Russian palaeontologist Nikolay Zverkov was desperate to see the London specimen as he thought some of the Russian ichthyosaurs might be similar.

It turns out he was right and that this particular species of swimming prehistoric reptile was common in its day, the Jurassic period.

To photograph and assess the skeleton, Nikolay attached a digital camera on a selfie stick to a fishing rod and connected it to a PC via a very long USB cable. He passed the photos on to University of Portsmouth palaeontologist Megan Jacobs who was working on Ichthyosaurs for her Master's Degree.

Megan and Nikolay have now published a paper on the findings in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

Megan said: "Nicolay obtained excellent detailed photographs which significantly expand our knowledge of Nannoptergyius enthekiodon.

"I realised that fossil expert Dr Steve Etches had also discovered examples of Nannoptergyius near to where the original specimen was found and he'd also discovered other examples across the UK.

"Finally being able to study this enigmatic animal has shown that it was actually very common and widespread in the Late Jurassic occurring not only in England, but also in European Russia and in the Arctic."

Thanks to this new study, several more specimens of Nannopterygius have been found in museum collections across the UK - in Oxford, Cambridge and in the Etches Collection in Kimmeridge, Dorset, as well as in Russia and Norway, showing this animal to be much more common than previously thought, and making it one of the most widespread of any similar swimming reptile.

University of Portsmouth Professor of Palaeobiology, Dave Martill, a world leading expert who supervised Megan's research, said: "We previously only had detailed knowledge of a type of ichthyosaur called Ophthalmosaurus, which was known from hundreds of specimens, including well-preserved skeletons from the Middle Jurassic Oxford Clay Formation of England.

"The excellent data available for Ophthalmosaurus contrasted with the impoverished record of other Middle and Late Jurassic ichthyosaurs, so being able to access the Nannopterygius - a formerly inaccessible specimen - has given us fascinating new insight into a particular species of ichthyosaur we knew very little about."

Nikolay added: "For decades the scientific community thought that Nannopterygius was the rarest and most poorly known ichthyosaur of England. Finally we can say that we know nearly every skeletal detail of these small ichthyosaurs, and that these animals were widespread. The answer was very close - we just needed a fishing rod."

As the cell's protein factory, the ribosome is the only natural machine that manufactures its own parts. That is why understanding how the machine, itself, is made, could unlock the door to everything from understanding how life develops to designing new methods of drug production. An intensive, long research effort at the Weizmann Institute of Science has now demonstrated the self-synthesis and assembly of the small subunit of a ribosome -30S - on a surface of a chip.

Prof. Roy Bar-Ziv and Staff Scientist Dr. Shirley Shulman Daube of the Institute's Chemical and Biological Physics Department have been working on this project for around seven years. One of the main challenges to such a project is the sheer number of different molecules the cell must produce to make the subunit: The core is a long strand of RNA, and 20 different proteins must be attached to the strand. These get organized by the weak chemical forces between the protein molecules and the RNA - repelling at some points and attracting in others - and the whole structure thus relies on the proper manufacture and organization of each component. Add to that another six proteins that are not part of the structure, but act as chaperones to assist in the assembly. That makes at total of a least 27 different genes - one to encode each component or chaperone - that must work together to make the subunit.

Together with postdoctoral fellow Dr. Michael Levy, who led the current study, and research student Reuven Falkovich, the team produced the subunits on tailored chips that Bar-Ziv has developed in his lab. Ultimately, they succeeded in mimicking the natural process of synthesizing the parts and assembling them into the ribosome subunits. The tiny chips in Bar-Ziv's lab are based on densely-packed DNA strands attached at one end to the surface. In the beginning, the team used all 27 genes needed to reproduce the 30S subunit of a ribosome from an E coli bacterium. The components were caught in "molecular traps" placed near their genes, and this improved the efficiency of the process and enabled the scientists to observe the production process in real time. Then they took a step back, allowing the various parts to autonomously assemble themselves into the ribosomal units, without outside direction or interference.

Molecular hierarchy

In the beginning, Bar-Ziv and Shulman Daube found they could make the components, but getting them to self-assemble, as the natural structures do, was a challenging hurdle. Over the course of the next seven years and hundreds of trials, the scientists tracked down the proper placement of the genes on the chips. Something like the organization of genes in the chromosome, the genes on the chip had to be positioned in the right locations, and in the proper relative quantities. This, it turned out, was crucial to the overall orchestration of the complex assembly process. Each time, the scientists would attach a different constellation of genes to the chips, narrowing down the possibilities until they had a composition that could mimic that natural process of subunit production as well as self-assembly. In nature, subunit assembly is a hierarchal process. In the course of their experiments, the scientists were able to break down the assembly to the individual steps to prove that the end result was a self-assembled subunit, and to observe the roles of the chaperones in this process.

Bar-Ziv and Shulman Daube believe that this new insight into producing complex, multi-component structures could pave the way to creating all sorts of other complex, molecular structures - existing ones as well as those not yet found in nature. Thus, for example, structures found in disease-causing bacteria might be produced for the purpose of safely testing and manufacturing drugs, vaccines or diagnostics without using whole, infectious bacteria. In the future, the self-assembly method could lead to the development of new kinds of vaccines, as well as assembly lines for various complex molecules for different industries.

Scientists from the UK, Europe and the USA, including experts from the University of Birmingham, have published a vitamin D consensus paper warning against high doses of vitamin D supplementation.

According to the study, there is currently insufficient scientific evidence to show vitamin D can be beneficial in preventing or treating Covid-19. Its authors advise that the population adhere to Public Health England guidance on supplementation.

Following unverified reports that high doses of vitamin D (higher than 4000IU/d) could reduce the risk of contracting Covid-19 and be used to successfully treat the virus, the new report published in the journal BMJ, Nutrition, Prevention and Health, investigated the current scientific evidence base on the vitamin and its use in treating infections. Vitamin D is a hormone, produced in the skin during exposure to sunlight, and helps regulate the amount of calcium and phosphate in the body, which are needed to keep bones, teeth and muscles healthy.

Professor Sue Lanham-New, Head of the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Surrey and lead author of the study, said: “An adequate level of vitamin D in the body is crucial to our overall health, too little can lead to rickets or the development of osteoporosis but too much can lead to an increase in calcium levels in the blood which could be particularly harmful.”

Examining previous studies in this field scientists found no evidence of a link between high dose supplementation of vitamin D in helping to prevent or successfully treat Covid-19 and cautioned against over supplementation of the vitamin, without medical supervision, due to health risks. Scientists concluded that assertions about the benefit of the vitamin in treating the virus are not currently supported by adequate human studies and are based on findings from studies that did not specifically examine this area.

Claims of a link between vitamin D levels and respiratory tract infections were also examined by scientists. Previous studies in this area have found that lower vitamin D status is associated with acute respiratory tract infections however limitations of the findings of these studies were identified. Findings from the majority of studies were based on data gathered from population groups in developing countries and cannot be extrapolated to populations from more developed countries due to external factors. Scientists believe that there is currently no firm link between vitamin D intake and resistance to respiratory tract infections.

Professors Carolyn Greig and Martin Hewison from Birmingham University, are co-authors on the paper. Professor Greig says: “Most of our vitamin D comes from exposure to sunlight, however for many people, particularly those who are self-isolating with limited access to sunlight during the current pandemic, getting enough vitamin D may be a real challenge. Supplementing with vitamin D is recommended but should be done under the current UK guidance.

“Although there is some evidence that low vitamin D is associated with acute respiratory tract infections, there is currently insufficient evidence for vitamin D as a treatment for COVID-19 and over-supplementing must be avoided as it could be harmful.”

Professor Judy Buttriss, Director General British Nutrition Foundation and also a co-author of the paper said: “In line with the latest Public Health England guidance on vitamin D, we recommend that people consider taking a vitamin D supplement of 10 micrograms a day during the winter months (from October to March), and all year round if their time outside is limited.

“Levels of the vitamin in the body can also be supplemented through a nutritionally balanced diet including foods that provide the vitamin, such as oily fish, red meat, egg yolk and fortified foods such as breakfast cereals, and safe sunlight exposure to boost vitamin D status.”