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Today, scientists from all over the world face the task of creating optical switches. These devices will allow for transmitting information in binary code with the help of light, which in the future will be useful for the development of ultrafast optical memory cells. ITMO University scientists have demonstrated how to create, using a femtosecond laser, an all-optical switch based on a metal-organic framework which can be synthesized in vitro and is usually used in chemistry for gas absorption. The research has been published in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

Physicists, engineers and programmers from all over the world are increasingly talking about the prospects of so-called optical memory elements. These might replace modern devices, in which information is processed based on the movement of electrons. It is expected that computing elements operating on photons will work faster, more efficiently, and most importantly, consume less energy. But in order to get closer to bringing these bold plans to life, it is necessary to solve a number of theoretical and engineering problems. One of them is achieving reliable, energy-efficient, and low-cost light control.

"All of today's digital electronics are built on so-called triggers," explains Nikita Kulachenkov, a junior research associate at ITMO University and one of the paper's authors. "These are devices for switching between two states, 0 and 1. For optical devices which might in the future take the place of our electronic devices, we also need a special switch."

One of the options for such a switch comes in the form of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). This is a class of functional materials which combine the properties of crystal lattice substances and organic compounds. But for the purposes of developing optical computing devices, the most important aspect is that some MOFs contain special photochromic compounds capable of changing their optical properties when exposed to light. This process, however, usually takes place over a relatively long period of time, from several minutes to several days, which puts significant limitations on the practical application of such structures as switchers.

A group of scientists from ITMO University's Russian-French laboratory, headed by Valentin Milichko, decided to take a different path - the researchers used standard metal-organic frameworks that don't contain any photochromic compounds and have for a long time been used in the chemical industry.
"We decided, why not use a group of MOFs that demonstrate the property of changing their structure under external stimuli such as pressure, temperature or others," says Nikita Kulachenkov. "Among these metal-organic frameworks was HKUST-1. It was very well-researched in the field of gas absorption, but no one could ever have thought that its properties, and consequently its structure, could undergo significant changes when exposed to light."

Experiments with HKUST-1 metal-organic frameworks have shown that when subjected to an ultra-short pulse of an infrared laser, this MOF suddenly starts to transmit less light. "The number of photons passing through the MOF decreased by about a hundred times," explains Nikita Kulachenkov. "The switch-over period amounted to several dozen milliseconds. This is two to three orders better than offered by existing MOF-based organic systems."

Physics-wise, this change has the following explanation - the femtosecond impact generated by the infrared laser is enough to, in effect, evaporate the water from the metal-organic framework. This leads to the MOF becoming less transparent for the laser-emitted light. But once you turn off the light, the framework reabsorbs water molecules from the air and returns to its initial state.

In influencing the trajectory of the pandemic stage of an emerging pathogen, a population’s susceptibility to a novel disease is more influential than climate factors like humidity. The results – based on a model informed by climate-dependence of known coronaviruses – may inform researchers’ effort to understand the likely trajectory of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, including as summer and its associated temperature and humidity changes, hoped for to bring respite from the pandemic, set in in parts of the world. Preliminary evidence suggests that climate factors like humidity may impact the transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Yet, whether these factors could substantially alter the pandemic trajectory over the remainder of 2020 remains a question, given that a population’s high susceptibility (or low immunity) to the virus is also a core influence. To better understand this, Rachel Baker and colleagues used a climate-driven epidemiological model fitted with U.S. data on four other circulating and seasonal coronaviruses. In simulations of their model in different cities in high latitudes and tropical locations, they found that even in tropical cities, with conditions that should hinder virus transmission, outbreak growth remained significant. Following their analyses, the authors report that while climate effects may drive modest changes to the peak size and duration of the pandemic, summer weather will not likely limit pandemic growth, as the pandemic trajectory is modulated more by population susceptibility to the illness. In a further, preliminary analysis of how non-pharmaceutical control measures (including shelter-at-home orders) influence spread of SARS-CoV-2, the authors report these measures may moderate the pandemic-climate interaction to some extent, by removing susceptible people from the population. The results suggest that population susceptibility remains the driving factor in SARS-CoV-2 spread over summer and suggest that, unless effective control measures are maintained, significant numbers of COVID-19 cases in the coming months are likely even in more humid and warmer climates.

Philadelphia, May 18, 2020 - Genomic selection has become a critical tool for the dairy industry around the world since genomic evaluations were first implemented in the United States and Canada in 2009. The 2019 ADSA Annual Meeting featured the Joint ADSA/Interbull Breeding and Genetics Symposia titled "Ten Years of Genomic Selection" and "Data Pipelines for Implementation of Genomic Evaluation of Novel Traits." Because of genomic selection's importance to dairy science, the Journal of Dairy Science invited the speakers to submit articles and share information from these symposia with a wider audience.

"The rapid uptake of genomic selection has had a dramatic effect on the dairy industry," guest editor Filippo Miglior, PhD, of the Centre for Genetic Improvement of Livestock at the University of Guelph, said. "These two symposia were developed to provide a comprehensive overview of the last 10 years of genomic selection and how genomics has provided the opportunity to develop new data pipelines for novel traits now under selection worldwide."

The symposium "Ten Years of Genomic Selection" started by reviewing progress from the development of the cattle reference genome to modern 50k SNP chips for implementation of genomic evaluation and selection. Once applied only to males for prediction of progeny performance, genomic selection is now widely used to predict future performance of cows and embryos.

Although genomic selection has allowed for rapid acceleration of genetic progress, it has also resulted in a rapid accumulation of homozygosity in the dairy cattle population. Better understanding is needed to ensure that genetic progress is achieved while maintaining genetic variance. The final presenter discussed the development of single-step genomic evaluations and possible reasons for biases in single-step evaluations.

The symposium "Data Pipelines for Implementation of Genomic Evaluation of Novel Traits" highlighted initiatives to pool data across countries or organizations to exploit the potential of accurate genomic evaluation for novel and expensive traits. It started by examining relationships between feed efficiency traits and how those traits should be incorporated into selection indices, followed by discussion of genomic selection in three countries.

A data pipeline was developed for the collection of hoof health data across Canada, which led to the creation and implementation of a single-step genomic evaluation for multiple hoof health traits. In the United States, health evaluations are now included in net merit selection indices so producers can predict which animals will be most resistant to common diseases. Genomic selection has allowed Australia to focus on traits that reduce the environmental impact of the dairy industry and improve the adaptability of dairy cows to climate change.

"Over the last 10 years, dairy scientists have waded through the brave new world of genomics, and resulting discoveries have brought about tremendous gains in the genetic selection and improvement of dairy cattle," editor in chief Paul Kononoff, PhD, of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said. "The genetic progress is chronicled in this collection of papers, which describe the never-before-seen application and pairing of traditional bench-top science and quantitative data analysis. The Journal of Dairy Science is honored to publish these papers and excited to see how they spur continued scientific discovery,"

The symposium papers are published as part of the June issue of the Journal of Dairy Science.

Local variations in climate are not likely to dominate the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a Princeton University study published May 18 in the journal Science.

The researchers found that the vast number of people still vulnerable to the strain of coronavirus causing the pandemic -- SARS-CoV-2 -- and the speed at which the pathogen spreads means that climate conditions are only likely to make a dent in the current rate of infection.

"We project that warmer or more humid climates will not slow the virus at the early stage of the pandemic," said first author Rachel Baker, a postdoctoral research associate in the Princeton Environmental Institute (PEI). "We do see some influence of climate on the size and timing of the pandemic, but, in general, because there's so much susceptibility in the population, the virus will spread quickly no matter the climate conditions."

The rapid spread of the virus in Brazil, Ecuador, Australia, and other nations in the tropics and the Southern Hemisphere -- where the virus began during the summer season -- provides some indication that warmer conditions will indeed do little to halt the pandemic, Baker said.

"It doesn't seem that climate is regulating spread right now," Baker said. "Of course, we do not yet directly know how temperature and humidity influence the virus' transmission, but we think it is unlikely that these factors could completely halt transmission based on what we see among other viruses."

Experience with other viruses suggests that, without a vaccine or other control measures, COVID-19 will likely only become responsive to seasonal changes after the supply of unexposed hosts is reduced, said co-author Bryan Grenfell, the Kathryn Briger and Sarah Fenton Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Public Affairs and associated faculty in PEI.

"Previously circulating human coronaviruses such as the common cold depend strongly on seasonal factors, peaking in the winter outside of the tropics," Grenfell said. "If, as seems likely, the novel coronavirus is similarly seasonal, we might expect it to settle down to become a winter virus as it becomes endemic in the population. Exactly how depends on a lot of complex factors for a given location."

The pandemic's trajectory over the next several months will be influenced by "both human-induced factors -- such as non-pharmaceutical interventions to reduce contact -- as well as fundamental biological uncertainties, such as the strength and duration of immunity following infection," Grenfell said. "As knowledge of the immune response develops, we hope to be able to project its interaction with seasonality more accurately."

Baker and Grenfell conducted the study with second author Wenchang Yang, an associate research scholar in geosciences; Gabriel Vecchi, professor of geosciences and the Princeton Environmental Institute; and C. Jessica Metcalf, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and public affairs.

The study authors are all affiliated with PEI's Climate Change and Infectious Disease initiative. The same team published a paper in December examining how climate conditions influence annual outbreaks of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

For the study in Science, the researchers ran simulations on how the pandemic would respond to various climates across the globe. Having been discovered in late 2019, COVID-19's response to warmer weather is not well known. The researchers instead ran three scenarios based on what is known about the role seasonal variations have on the occurrence of similar viruses.

The first scenario assumed that the novel coronavirus has the same climate sensitivity as influenza, based on a prior model from laboratory studies that highlighted the importance of low humidity to promote spread. In the second and third scenarios, the virus was given the same climate dependence and length of immunity as human coronaviruses OC43 and HKU1, which are two causes of the common cold.

In all three scenarios, climate only became a mitigating factor when large portions of the human population were immune or resistant to the virus.

"The more that immunity builds up in the population, the more we expect the sensitivity to climate to increase," Baker said. "If you run the model long enough, you have a big pandemic and the outbreak settles into seasonal infection. We're assuming that if the same climate drivers apply to COVID-19, this would be the outcome."

The researchers also ran a simulation that accounted for the average impact of control measures such as social distancing. The results suggested that the longer these measures are in place and slow the transmission of COVID-19, the more sensitive the virus becomes to warmer weather.

"The next step is to test our model by comparing future changes in the pandemic curve with detailed measurements of local climate, control measures and other local variables in different climatic regions," Metcalf said. "We also aim to extend our initial model ---- which mainly captures transmission in cities -- to more rural areas."

The study also has broader implications for refining the integration of meteorological information into understanding disease outbreaks, Vecchi said.

"We are currently exploring the extent to which weather and climate predictions can help provide improved information about the likely course of this disease," Vecchi said. "Weather is only one of many factors. A deeper, interdisciplinary understanding of the interplay of multiple factors that impact disease evolution -- disease dynamics, weather and socioeconomic drivers, including mitigation measures undertaken by society --is needed."

When it comes to wine, the chemistry must be right to get the best taste and sensation.

To help winemakers with that chemistry, a team of researchers at Washington State University has made it easier to test the chemical makeup of their red wine to get the vino they're looking for.

In a paper released last month in the journal Molecules, the scientists presented a new model that allows winemakers to get measurements in their wine that previously required difficult, tedious, or expensive testing.

"Some of the testing methods are very difficult for people in a winery's lab to do during harvest," said Jim Harbertson, a WSU associate professor of enology and the corresponding author on the paper. "The industry asked us to come up with alternate ways to get information. We love chemistry, but most people don't want to do that."

The model allows wine labs to do measurements of phenolics that are typically out of reach for most. Phenolics give red wine its important sensory characteristics, like mouthfeel and color. They also provide antioxidants to the wine.

"This is basically a simplification of lengthy tests," Harbertson said. "It took us several years and a huge amount of work and math, but we've corroborated the results of the model and it works well."

So now winemakers can conduct relatively simple tests, run the results through the new WSU-created algorithm, and get accurate predictions on the mouthfeel and color of the wine produced for consumers.

"Technicians and winemakers in a winery lab will have a much easier time doing the work and getting useful results," Harbertson said.

To make it more helpful to winemakers, Harbertson used research funds to make the academic paper, which he co-wrote with WSU colleagues Chris Beaver and Tom Collins, open access, or available to anyone, online. The goal is to help all wineries in Washington and around the country make better wine.

"This is for the people who make the wine that people drink," he said. "This provides winemakers with a new tool for measuring the components of wine and will ultimately help consumers have better wines to drink."

New research from CSHL scientists suggests that cigarette smoke spurs the lungs to make more ACE2 (angiotensin-converting enzyme 2), the protein that the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19 grabs and uses to enter human cells. The findings, reported May 16, 2020 in the journal Developmental Cell, may explain why smokers appear to be particularly vulnerable to severe infections. The analysis also indicates that the change is reversible, suggesting that quitting smoking might reduce the risk of a severe coronavirus infection.

From the early stages of the current pandemic, scientists and clinicians have noted dramatic differences in how people respond to infection with SARS-CoV-2. Most infected individuals suffer only mild illness, if they experience any at all. But others require intensive care when the sometimes-fatal virus attacks. Three groups, in particular, have been significantly more likely than others to develop severe illness: men, the elderly, and smokers.

With most laboratory experiments on hold due to the pandemic, CSHL Fellow Jason Sheltzer and Joan Smith, an engineer at Google, turned to previously published data to seek possible explanations for these disparities. They were curious whether the vulnerable groups might share some key feature related to the human proteins that the coronavirus relies on for infection.

"We started gathering all the data we could find," Sheltzer says, explaining that he and Smith focused first on comparing gene activity in the lungs across different ages, between the sexes, and between smokers and nonsmokers. "When we put it all together and started analyzing it, we saw that both mice that had been exposed to smoke in a laboratory and humans who were current smokers had significant upregulation of ACE2."

While they found no evidence that age or sex impacts ACE2 levels in the lungs, the influence of smoke exposure was surprisingly strong, Sheltzer says. The change appears to be temporary, however: the data revealed that the level of ACE2 in the lungs of people who had quit smoking was similar to that of non-smokers.

Sheltzer, Smith, and colleagues also found that the most prolific producers of ACE2 in the airways are mucus-producing cells called goblet cells. Smoking is known to increase the prevalence of such cells, a change that can protect the airways from irritants but--by amplifying the amount of ACE2 in the lungs--may also increase vulnerability to SARS-CoV-2.

Far below the Earth's surface, about 1,800 miles deep, lies a roiling magmatic region sandwiched between the solid silicate-based mantle and molten iron-rich core: The core-mantle boundary. It's a remnant of olden times, the primordial days about 4.5 billion years ago when the entire planet was molten, an endless sea of magma. Although the region's extreme pressures and temperatures make it difficult to study, it contains clues about the mysterious origin story of the world as we know it.

"We're still trying to piece together how the Earth actually started to form, how it transformed from a molten planet to one with living creatures walking around on its silicate mantle and crust," says Arianna Gleason, a scientist at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. "Learning about the strange ways materials behave under different pressures can give us some hints."

Now, scientists have developed a way to study liquid silicates at the extreme conditions found in the core-mantle boundary. This could lead to a better understanding of the Earth's early molten days, which could even extend to other rocky planets. The research was led by scientists Guillaume Morard and Alessandra Ravasio. The team, which included Gleason and other researchers from SLAC and Stanford University, published their findings this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"There are features of liquids and glasses, in particular silicate melts, that we don't understand," says Morard, a scientist at the University of Grenoble and Sorbonne University in France. "The problem is that molten materials are intrinsically more challenging to study. Through our experiments we were able to probe geophysical materials at the extremely high temperatures and pressures of deep Earth to tackle their liquid structure and learn how they behave. In the future we will be able to use these types of experiments to recreate the first moments of Earth and understand the processes that shaped it."

Hotter than the sun

At SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray free-electron laser, the researchers first sent a shockwave through a silicate sample with a carefully tuned optical laser. This allowed them to reach pressures that mimic those at the Earth's mantle, 10 times higher than previously achieved with liquid silicates, and temperatures as high as 6,000 Kelvin, slightly hotter than the surface of the sun.

Next, the researchers hit the sample with ultrafast X-ray laser pulses from LCLS at the precise moment the shockwave reached the desired pressure and temperature. Some of the X-rays then scattered into a detector and formed a diffraction pattern. Just like every person has their own set of fingerprints, the atomic structure of materials is often unique. Diffraction patterns reveal that material fingerprint, allowing the researchers to follow how the sample's atoms rearranged in response to the increase of pressure and temperature during the shockwave. They compared their results to those of previous experiments and molecular simulations to reveal a common evolutionary timeline of glasses and liquid silicates at high pressure.

"It's exciting to be able to gather all these different techniques and get similar results," says SLAC scientist and co-author Hae Ja Lee. "This allows us to find a combined framework that makes sense and take a step forward. It's very comprehensive compared to other studies."

Connecting the atomistic to the planetary

In the future, the LCLS-II upgrade, as well as upgrades to the Matter in Extreme Conditions (MEC) instrument where this research was performed, will allow scientists to recreate the extreme conditions found in the inner and outer core to learn about how iron behaves and the role it plays in generating and shaping Earth's magnetic field.

To follow up on this study, the researchers plan to perform experiments at higher X-ray energies to make more precise measurements of the atomic arrangement of liquid silicates. They also hope to reach higher temperatures and pressures to gain insight into how these processes unfold in planets bigger than Earth, so-called super-Earths or exoplanets, and how the size and location of a planet influences its composition.

"This research allows us to connect the atomistic to the planetary," Gleason says. "As of this month, more than 4,000 exoplanets have been discovered, about 55 of which are positioned in the habitable zone of their stars where it's possible for liquid water to exist. Some of those have evolved to the point where we believe there's a metallic core that could generate magnetic fields, which shield planets from stellar winds and cosmic radiation. There are so many pieces that need to fall into place for life to form and be sustained. Making the important measurements to better understand the construction of these planets is crucial in this age of discovery."

Sometimes scientists begin research and find exactly what they expected. Other times they discover something unexpected. Such was the case for a group of scientists studying plant stress responses who stumbled upon a new mutation.

"The discovery of this mutation was actually a surprise," said first author Matt Neubauer. "And by trying to better understand this new mutation, and what effect it had on plant stress responses, we uncovered new information about how different plant stress regulators function."

These scientists were working on a stress-regulating gene known as ENHANCED DISEASE RESISTANCE1 (EDR1) when they identified a new gain-of-function mutation in a second gene named PHYTOALEXIN DEFICIENT4 (PAD4), a gene that regulates plant responses to biotic stress.

"PAD4 has been studied for a long time, but this is the first time a gain-of-function mutation has been identified," said Neubauer. "We named this mutation pad4-13. It occurred as a spontaneous mutation in the edr1-mutant background and enhances cell death during fungal infection. We believe it was selected during backcrossing of the original edr1 mutant because it enhances the visible edr1 mutant phenotype, powdery mildew-induced cell death."

They also found that this mutation makes the PAD4 protein more active, which in turn enables plants to have a stronger resistance response to pathogen infection. This is unique, as all previously discovered pad4 mutations are loss-of-function and make plants more susceptible to bacterial, oomycete, and fungal pathogens.

The scientists also discovered one more significant detail about plant stress regulators. It has been established that PAD4 interacts with a partner protein known as EDS1 (for ENHANCED DISEASE SUSCEPTIBILITY) to turn on plant stress responses. Through this research, scientists found that EDR1 blocks PAD4 from interacting with EDS1, which could provide a way to turn off or dampen stress responses.

"The discovery that EDR1 may directly regulate PAD4 enhances our knowledge of how plants control stress responses," said Neubauer, while acknowledging that there is still more to learn. "Ultimately we were unable to show how this new mutation makes PAD4 more active."

Enzymes Edit SARS-CoV-2 RNA in the Body, Perhaps Fueling the Virus' Evolution

Two human deaminase enzymes edit the RNA of the SARS-CoV-2 virus when it enters a patient's body, with implications for the evolution of the virus and the spread of the infection, according to a new study. The findings provide a first step towards understanding how RNA editing affects the replication of the virus responsible for the current COVID-19 pandemic - a potentially significant process, since post-infection viral genome editing in the host is suspected to have influenced the evolution of other viruses, including Rubella. Salvatore Di Giorgio and colleagues note that by comparing sites in the SARS-CoV-2 genome that are edited with those that are mutated, scientists may be able to identify strategies to target the virus with new therapies. Mammals express two different deaminase families - ADARs and APOBECs - that alter the basic nucleotide building blocks of viral RNA (or, in the latter case, sometimes DNA intermediates) by removing an amino group from their nucleobase components. However, it has not been known whether this innate virus-counteracting process operates against coronaviruses. To assess whether RNA editing may be involved in the body's response to SARS-CoV-2 infections, Di Giorgio et al. analyzed single nucleotide variants in RNA sequencing datasets from fluid extracted from the lungs of patients diagnosed with COVID-19. While they observed low numbers of mutation events, the researchers did identify nucleotide changes (adenosine to inosine, and cytosine to uracil) that may be attributed to RNA editing. To better understand whether RNA editing could be the cause for mutations acquired through evolution, the researchers also compared genomes from SARS-CoV-2, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV. They suggest that a sizable percentage of mutations in each of these coronavirus strains may have been caused by deaminase enzymes. The authors speculate that, if these enzymes are indeed involved in the human response to SARS-CoV-2 infection, a genetic variation that affects two forms of APOBEC - known to be common in the Chinese population - could play a role in the spread of the infection.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A Florida State University researcher has used new detection methods to identify 85 previously unknown submarine landslides that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico between 2008 and 2015, leading to questions about the stability of oil rigs and other structures, such as pipelines built in the region.

Assistant Professor Wenyuan Fan in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science has published a new paper in the journal Geophysical Research Letters that identifies these landslides and the risks they pose to coastal communities.

"The observed landslides suggest a possible tsunami hazard for coastal communities along the Gulf of Mexico and that seabed infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico, including oil platforms and pipelines, is also at risk from the landslides," Fan said.

Fan and his colleagues measured data from seismic stations across the United States. They found that out of the 85 landslides they identified, 10 occurred spontaneously without preceding earthquakes. The other 75 occurred almost instantly after the passage of surface waves caused by distant earthquakes. Some of these were considered rather small earthquakes, Fan added.

The finding was a surprise for Fan and his colleagues, he noted. In trying to better understand lesser-known earthquake processes, he had designed a method to capture earthquake data that would help him get a better look at continuous waveforms. That led him to seismic sources in the Gulf of Mexico.

"There are few active faults in the Gulf, and the seismicity is scarce in the region," he said. "This puzzled me and concerned me because we live close to the Gulf. With the question and the concern, I looked into the details of these seismic sources and eventually concluded that they are likely to be submarine landslides."

Fan said currently he and his colleagues do not have any real-time data related to damage from these events and that most of the landslides were in the deep-water region of the Gulf. The ability to detect and locate these submarine landslides suggests that scientists may be able to adapt researchers' methods for hazard monitoring in the future though.

It is not uncommon to find aluminum in municipal water systems. It's part of a treatment chemical used in some water treatment processes. Recently, however, it has been discovered in lead scale, deposits that form on lead water pipes.

The aluminum presence in pipes is both unsurprising and, in the quantities researchers saw in water pipes, not a health concern, according to Daniel Giammar, the Walter E. Browne Professor of Environmental Engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. But no one had looked at how it might affect the larger municipal system.

In particular, Giammar wanted to find out, "What is that aluminum doing to the behavior of the lead in the scale?" As long as the lead is bound to the scale, it doesn't enter the water system.

Giammar and a team ran several experiments and found that, in a lab setting, aluminum does have a small but important effect on lead's solubility under certain conditions. Their results were published in late April in Environmental Science & Technology. The paper was selected as "ACS Editor's Choice" by the American Chemical Society, which makes it available to the public for free.

The experiments were carried out in large part by visiting PhD student Guiwei Li, who was able to complete the work during his brief stay at Washington University before returning to the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In simplified models, the researchers took a look at how phosphate, aluminum and a combination of the two, affected a strip of lead in a jar of water with a composition close to that of water found in many water systems. The aim: to better understand lead's solubility, or the amount that would dissolve and make its way into the water when impacted by those chemicals.

In the jar in which only aluminum was added, there was no effect on the solubility of the lead strip; lead had dissolved into the water at a concentration of about 100 micrograms per liter.

In the jar in which only phosphate was added, the concentration of lead in the water decreased from about 100 micrograms per liter to less than one.

In the jar in which both aluminum and phosphate were added, the concentration of lead in the water decreased from about 100 micrograms per liter to about 10 micrograms per liter.

Ten micrograms of lead per liter of water is still below drinking water standards, Giammar said, but it's still more lead in the water than was seen in the jar without aluminum. "This tells us what our next experiment should be," he said. His lab will do these experiments with real lead pipes, as they have done in the past.

"This showed us things that were surprising," he said. "Some people would have thought that aluminum wasn't doing anything because it's inert. But then in our work, we saw that it actually affects lead solubility."

Below please find a summary and link(s) of new coronavirus-related content published today in Annals of Internal Medicine. The summary below is not intended to substitute for the full article as a source of information. A collection of coronavirus-related content is free to the public at http://go.annals.org/coronavirus.

1. Tocilizumab for Hemophagocytic Syndrome in a Kidney Transplant Recipient with COVID-19

Studies suggest that many patients with COVID-19 and acute respiratory distress syndrome experience a cytokine storm characterized by fever; hyperferritinemia; and a massive release of inflammatory cytokines, including interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor-α, and monocyte chemoattractant proteins. These findings led to the hypothesis that biological agents targeting specific cytokine or inflammatory pathways may improve the respiratory outcomes of patients with the most severe forms of COVID-19. Researchers from the University Hospital of Toulouse; Toulouse, France, tested this hypothesis on a severely ill patient on a ventilator for COVID-19. They treated the patient with tocilizumab as salvage therapy, instead of etoposide, and the patient improved dramatically. Read the full text: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/L20-0419.

Media contacts: A PDF for this article is not yet available. Please click the link to read full text. The lead author, Stanislas Faguer, MD, PhD, can be reached at faguer.s@chu-toulouse.fr.

Humans have been wondering whether we alone in the universe since antiquity.

We know from the geological record that life started relatively quickly, as soon our planet's environment was stable enough to support it. We also know that the first multicellular organism, which eventually produced today's technological civilization, took far longer to evolve, approximately 4 billion years.

But despite knowing when life first appeared on Earth, scientists still do not understand how life occurred, which has important implications for the likelihood of finding life elsewhere in the universe.

In a new paper published in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences today, David Kipping, an assistant professor in Columbia's Department of Astronomy, shows how an analysis using a statistical technique called Bayesian inference could shed light on how complex extraterrestrial life might evolve in alien worlds.

"The rapid emergence of life and the late evolution of humanity, in the context of the timeline of evolution, are certainly suggestive," Kipping said. "But in this study it's possible to actually quantify what the facts tell us."

To conduct his analysis, Kipping used the chronology of the earliest evidence for life and the evolution of humanity. He asked how often we would expect life and intelligence to re-emerge if Earth's history were to repeat, re-running the clock over and over again.

He framed the problem in terms of four possible answers: Life is common and often develops intelligence, life is rare but often develops intelligence, life is common and rarely develops intelligence and, finally, life is rare and rarely develops intelligence.

This method of Bayesian statistical inference--used to update the probability for a hypothesis as evidence or information becomes available--states prior beliefs about the system being modeled, which are then combined with data to cast probabilities of outcomes.

"The technique is akin to betting odds," Kipping said. "It encourages the repeated testing of new evidence against your position, in essence a positive feedback loop of refining your estimates of likelihood of an event."

From these four hypotheses, Kipping used Bayesian mathematical formulas to weigh the models against one another. "In Bayesian inference, prior probability distributions always need to be selected," Kipping said. "But a key result here is that when one compares the rare-life versus common-life scenarios, the common-life scenario is always at least nine times more likely than the rare one."

The analysis is based on evidence that life emerged within 300 million years of the formation of the Earth's oceans as found in carbon-13-depleted zircon deposits, a very fast start in the context of Earth's lifetime. Kipping emphasizes that the ratio is at least 9:1 or higher, depending on the true value of how often intelligence develops.

Kipping's conclusion is that if planets with similar conditions and evolutionary time lines to Earth are common, then the analysis suggests that life should have little problem spontaneously emerging on other planets. And what are the odds that these extraterrestrial lives could be complex, differentiated and intelligent? Here, Kipping's inquiry is less assured, finding just 3:2 odds in favor of intelligent life.

This result stems from humanity's relatively late appearance in Earth's habitable window, suggesting that its development was neither an easy nor ensured process. "If we played Earth's history again, the emergence of intelligence is actually somewhat unlikely," he said.

Kipping points out that the odds in the study aren't overwhelming, being quite close to 50:50, and the findings should be treated as no more than a gentle nudge toward a hypothesis.

"The analysis can't provide certainties or guarantees, only statistical probabilities based on what happened here on Earth," Kipping said. "Yet encouragingly, the case for a universe teeming with life emerges as the favored bet. The search for intelligent life in worlds beyond Earth should be by no means discouraged."

In the latest CUNY SPH COVID-19 tracking survey, New Yorkers gave convincing evidence that the city is not yet testing enough people and set high expectations for the safety measures they feel are necessary for them to return to work outside their homes. They are also uncertain about reopening public schools, colleges or universities in the fall. These are the major findings of the ninth city and statewide tracking survey from the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy (CUNY SPH), conducted May 15-17.

Almost a quarter (23%) of New York residents reported that one or more persons in their household has been sick with fever or symptoms consistent with COVID-19 since the coronavirus struck, but only half of those people were tested and more than three quarters of them tested positive for COVID-19.

There were stark differences based on race and ethnicity: one or more people were sick at home in 36% of Hispanic/Latinx households compared to 23% of Caucasian, 13% African American and 12% Asian ones. Of those who were tested for coronavirus, the highest percentage of people testing positive were Hispanic/Latinx (a startling 90%), followed by African Americans (65%), Caucasians (58%) and Asians (50%).

"These results indicate that at present we are still testing only the sickest New Yorkers," said Dr. Ayman El-Mohandes, Dean of CUNY SPH. "If our goal is to reopen the city safely, most of those tested should be testing negative, which would mean that the spread of the virus is on the decline. We cannot open up until we ramp up our testing of people without symptoms, and conduct thorough follow-up contact tracing."

Despite the decline in confirmed cases and hospitalizations in the city, New Yorkers' concerns about the virus remain high. Just more than half (51%) of residents believe that they are at high or very high risk of contracting COVID-19. Almost seven out of ten (69%) are either opposed to or uncertain about reopening public schools in the fall.

Before the virus struck, 26% of employed New Yorkers were working from home. That number has shot up to 70% since the epidemic, and 40% of people who are currently working from home say they would prefer to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. The majority of respondents working from home now are Asian (54%) or Caucasian (51%) compared to African American (35%) and Hispanic/Latinx (23%). Working at home also correlates with educational level. Of those who have undergraduate or post-graduate degrees, more than 60% are working from home, compared to 30% with some college and 22% with high school educations.

When this subgroup was asked why they would not want to return to work outside the home, their primary concern (76%) was fear of bringing the virus home to their families, while 69% reported anxiety about using public transportation like buses and subways. A similar number (68%) said they feared getting sick themselves.

The survey also asked all respondents what precautions they felt needed to be in place to make them feel safer at work. The greatest number (84%) said that the availability of a vaccine or medicine against coronavirus or regular sanitization of the workplace would make them more confident, followed closely (82%) by requiring that face masks be worn at work at all times. Further preferences for workplace precautions were also favored by substantial majorities:

79% wanted people who enter building/workplace to report any symptoms

77% wanted greater spacing between people

77% wanted workplace testing and tracing

72% wanted people's temperatures to be taken as they entered the building

Many New Yorkers are uncertain about their future work. More than one in five (21%) believe there will no longer be a demand for their product or service when the economy reopens. About one in four who lost their jobs or were furloughed as a result of the epidemic plan to change their career path.

Of the 22% of New Yorkers who reported being furloughed or laid off, three in five (61%) said they had filed applications for unemployment benefits. Of those that applied, half (50%) are still waiting for their first check, 41% have received benefits and 9% were rejected.

Seventeen percent (17%) of our respondents classified themselves as self-employed or small business owners. Of those, 42% report applying for an SBA Economic Injury Disaster Loan or Paycheck Protection Program. Nearly everyone that applied was accepted, and two-thirds (67%) said they had received their loans. An additional 16% reported that they received their loans but will return the money, since they were unable to meet the conditions. A further 16% are waiting to hear the status of their applications.

The complete survey results and related commentary can be found at https://sph.cuny.edu/research/covid-19-tracking-survey/week-10 and JHC Impact, an initiative of the Journal of Health Communication: International Perspectives.

Survey methodology:

The CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy (CUNY SPH) survey was conducted by Emerson College Polling from May 15-17, 2020 (week 10). This tracking effort started March 13-15 (week 1), and continued with questions fielded March 20-22 (week 2) and March 27-29 (week 3), April 3-5, 2020 (week 4), April 10-12, 2020 (week 5), April 17-29 (week 6), April 24-26, 2020 (week 7), May 1-3, 2020 (week 8).

The sample for the NY Statewide and New York City results were both, n=1,000, with a Credibility Interval (CI) similar to a poll's margin of error (MOE) of +/- 3 percentage points. The data sets were weighted by gender, age, ethnicity, education and region based on the 2018 1-year American Community Survey model. It is important to remember that subsets based on gender, age, ethnicity and region carry with them higher margins of error, as the sample size is reduced. In the New York City results, data was collected using an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system of landlines (n=475), SMS-to-online (n=327) and an online panel provided by MTurk and Survey Monkey (n=197). In the Statewide results, data was collected using an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system of landlines (n=469), SMS-to-online (n=319) and an online panel provided by MTurk and Survey Monkey (n=212).

In the statewide survey regions were broken out into the following:

Region 1: Long Island 14.7% (USC1-4), Shirley, Seaford, Glen Cove, Garden City

Region 2: NYC 45.3% (USC 5-16) Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Staten Island, Bronx

Region 3: Upstate 40% (USC 17-27): Albany, Harrison, Carmel, Rhinebeck, Amsterdam, Schuylerville, Utica, Corning, Irondequoit, Buffalo, Rochester

LA JOLLA--(May 18, 2020) Many cancer medications fail to effectively target the most commonly mutated cancer genes in humans, called RAS. Now, Salk Professor Geoffrey Wahl and a team of scientists have uncovered details into how normal RAS interacts with mutated RAS and other proteins in living cells for the first time. The findings, published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on May 18, 2020, could aid in the development of better RAS-targeted cancer therapeutics.

"RAS proteins have been studied for decades because the RAS gene is changed (mutated) in so many cancers, yet there are still new things to be learned as we develop more sophisticated tools to study the problem," says Wahl, co-corresponding author, professor in Salk's Gene Expression Laboratory and holder of the Daniel and Martina Lewis Chair. "We have identified a new mechanism for regulating RAS enzyme activity that will help inform therapeutic strategies for inhibiting the mutated RAS proteins involved in cancer."

The family of RAS genes helps to regulate cell communication ("signaling") and growth. However, prior research suggests mutated RAS deviates from normal RAS in its ability to regulate processes that drive tumor growth across multiple types of cancer, including the majority of pancreatic cancers. Scientists have long attempted to target cancer-related RAS activity but this has proved very difficult. Efforts to understand which proteins normal and mutated RAS interact with in the cell have also given contradictory answers due to the difficulty of replicating the cellular environment in a test tube. And while previous studies have suggested that normal RAS proteins can bind to mutated RAS proteins to suppress tumor growth, exactly how these interactions happened was unknown.

"We improved upon an existing genetic technology developed by our lab, which allows us to study RAS protein interactions instantaneously in living cells," says Yao-Cheng (Leo) Li, Salk project scientist who led this study. "The key to understanding the function of RAS is being able to accurately analyze protein interactions on the cell membrane. This new technology allows us to do that."

Similar to watching a soccer team effortlessly execute a complicated play, the team used their high-powered genetic tool (which enables interacting proteins to light up, like fireflies) to examine how RAS interacted with other proteins, as well as with its mutated form, within living cells. They found that close proximity on the cell membrane was required for one RAS protein to interact with other RAS proteins, behavior the team coined "membrane association facilitated interactions" (MAFI). The cell membrane is required for RAS interactions with itself and some other proteins that localize to the same place on the cell membrane, which is why such interactions were not previously found in test tube studies.

The team also unexpectedly discovered a new mechanism for regulating the quantity of RAS proteins in the cell. They found that if they positioned a small fragment of a protein that interacts strongly with RAS on the membrane, MAFI would enable this protein to bind RAS very tightly, and this could inhibit RAS function better, creating an inactive RAS complex. The cell has a mechanism for detecting and eliminating inactive RAS complexes using small structures called lysosomes to perform this "housecleaning." Because the cell died as a result of eliminating the RAS proteins, this new and unexpected finding may aid in the development of new cancer therapeutics.

"These findings define new mechanisms of RAS signaling regulation" says Nikki Lytle, an author of the paper and Salk postdoctoral fellow. "This provides an unexpected model for RAS suppression, which could lead to new strategies for targeting mutated RAS in the future."

In the future, the researchers hope their discovery can be utilized to develop a new class of RAS-targeted therapeutics, which may require drug delivery through cutting-edge approaches involving nanoparticles or viruses that can target malignant cells.