Culture

DALLAS, TEXAS (May 6, 2020) - A new study by an international team from the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas and Hokkaido University and Okayama University of Science in Japan further explores the proliferation of the most commonly occurring duck-billed dinosaur of the ancient Arctic as the genus Edmontosaurus. The findings also reinforce that the hadrosaurs - known as the "caribou of the Cretaceous" - had a huge geographical distribution of approximately 60 degrees of latitude, spanning the North American West from Alaska to Colorado.

The scientific paper describing the find - titled "Re-examination of the cranial osteology of the Arctic Alaskan hadrosaurine with implications for its taxonomic status" - has been posted in PLOS ONE, an international, peer-reviewed, open-access online publication featuring reports on primary research from all scientific disciplines. The authors of the report are Ryuji Takasaki of Okayama University of Science in Japan; Anthony R. Fiorillo, Ph.D. and Ronald S. Tykoski, Ph.D. of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, Texas; and Yoshitsugu Kobayashi, Ph.D. of Hokkaido University Museum in Japan. To read the entire manuscript and view renderings, go to https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0232410.

"Recent studies have identified new species of hadrosaurs in Alaska, but our research shows that these Arctic hadrosaurs actually belong to the genus Edmontosaurus, an abundant and previously recognized genus of duck-billed dinosaur known from Alberta south to Colorado," said Takasaki.

The report states that anatomical comparisons and phylogenetic analyses clearly demonstrate that attribution of the Alaskan hadrosaurines to a unique genus Ugrunaaluk is inappropriate, and they are now considered as a junior synonym of Edmontosaurus, a hadrosaurines genus previously known from lower latitude North America roughly in between northern Colorado (N40?) to southern Alberta (N53?).

The fossils used for this study were found primarily in the Liscomb Bonebed, Prince Creek Formation of the North Slope of Alaska, the location of the first dinosaur fossils discovered in the Arctic.

The team's research also show that the plant-eating hadrosaurs were taking over parts of North America during the Cretaceous, suggesting that Edmontosaurus was likely an ecological generalist.

"In other words, Edmontosaurus was a highly successful dinosaur that could adapt to a wide variety of environmental conditions," said Fiorillo. "It's not unrealistic to compare them to generalized animals today - such as mountain sheep, wolves and cougars in terms of their range and numbers - that also roam greater geographic distributions."

Members of this team also found ties to Kamuysaurus japonicus, a new genus species they discovered near Hokkaido, Japan, and named in 2019.

"Combined with the newly named Kamuysaurus of Japan, Alaska Edmontosaurus shows that this group of hadrosaurs, the Edmontosaurini, were widely distributed in the northern circum-Pacific region, meaning that they were incredibly successful dinosaurs," said Kobayashi. "It's fascinating to think they likely used the ancestral Bering Land Bridge between Asia and North America for migration in a manner similar to mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses and early humans."

Edmontosaurus belong to a clade Edmontosaurini as Kamuysaurus, a recently described hadrosaurine dinosaur from Japan, suggesting that Edmontosaurini widely distributed along the northern circum-Pacific region. North America and Asia were connected by Beringia during the Late Cretaceous, and some dinosaurs are believed to have traveled to the North American continent this way. Edmontosaurini is one of the dinosaur groups that may have ventured the North America-to-Asia pathway and adapted to the Arctic environment. Those creatures that stayed in North America evolved to Edmontosaurus, and those that stayed in Asia and moved on to Japan are believed to have evolved to Kamuysaurus.

"This study is a wonderful example of why paleontologists need to be more aware of how individual growth and life stage of fossils matter when we try to interpret the anatomical features preserved in them. If you don't, you run the risk of erroneously erecting a new 'genus' or species based on juvenile traits that will change or vanish as the individual creature grows up - and winds up being an adult of an already-known 'genus' or species!," said Tykoski. "Our study shows that was probably the case with these juvenile duck-billed dinosaurs from the ancient Arctic of Alaska."

Over the last six years a group of Estonian geneticists led by Associate Professor Agne Velthut-Meikas and a PhD student Ilmatar Rooda from TalTech Department of Chemistry and Biotechnology have studied genes previously associated primarily with female hormone synthesis and ovarian follicle development. The findings suggest that these genes may play a far more complex role in oocyte maturation than previously assumed.

For viable oocyte maturation and generation of new life, bidirectional communication, i.e. signaling must take place between the cells in the ovary. Prior to ovulation, an oocyte resides in a follicle, which is a small fluid-filled sac that ruptures at ovulation, releasing the oocyte into the oviduct. For oocyte maturation and its release from the follicle, the oocyte as well as the follicle cells surrounding it, i.e. granulosa cells, must exchange signals with each other over a certain period of time. These granulosa cells also produce hormones that are essential for successful adherence of the embryo to the wall of the uterus and the survival of early pregnancy.

Associate Professor Velthut-Meikas says, "Among other things, the production and functioning of two proteins in ovarian granulosa cells is required. These important proteins are the follicle stimulating hormone receptor FSHR and aromatase." FSHR receives the signal of a follicle-stimulation hormone from the pituitary gland, leading to the ovarian follicle growth and granulosa cell proliferation. Aromatase is the key enzyme responsible for biosynthesis of the steroid hormone estradiol (female sex hormone) in granulosa cells. Mutations or rearrangements in their genes or deviations in the production of these proteins cause infertility in women, because the ovary is not functioning, the oocytes are not maturing nor released from the ovary.

"Our study showed that these genes produce, in addition to the hitherto known proteins, also small RNA molecules (microRNAs), which, by binding to their target genes, determine whether these target genes play their intended role in a cell. The microRNA targets we studied are responsible for processes crucial for female fertility - maintenance of the oocyte reserve, hormone production and ovulation," Velthut-Meikas says.

Thus, in addition to the abovementioned proteins, previously undescribed short microRNA molecules are synthesized from FSHR and aromatase genes. The targets of the microRNA derived from the FSHR gene play essential roles in the activation of ovarian follicle development and oocyte maturation. The targets of the microRNA derived from the aromatase gene are involved in activating changes in the ovarian tissue required for the ovulation process. Both microRNAs presumably regulate also the synthesis of steroid hormones in the ovary, which affect, in addition to the ovary, also the functioning of other tissues - the endometrium, adipose tissue, mammary glands, etc.

"The findings of the study provide new information on the ovarian function which is important for a more accurate diagnosis of the causes of female infertility and for the development of new treatment options. The new knowledge can be used in infertility clinics to improve ovarian stimulation procedures prior to in vitro fertilization, which would significantly improve the effectiveness of infertility treatment. The global trend to preserve the fertility of cancer patients is also a highly topical issue. This involves a process, where part of the patient's ovarian tissue is frozen before chemotherapy that destroys the follicles, so that after the treatment the woman can still conceive her biological children. The process of resuming oocyte maturation from frozen tissue needs to be investigated further," Agne Velthut-Meikas says.

FOSH is rapidly gaining momentum as part of a global "open design movement", whereby the free release of information on customized research hardware, such as design, schematics and bill of materials are easily accessible anywhere with an internet connection.

This information can then be fed into 3D printing devices for hassle-free and cost-effective manufacturing which, after the initial investment of a 3D printer, would only be as expensive as the raw printing materials. This enables rapid and much less expensive hardware to be produced, which can be produced rapidly at scale, such as ventilators during the current pandemic.

The study is the first national-level one of its kind, and the group included Ismo Heikkinen, Hele Savin, Jouni Partanen and Jukka Seppälä from Aalto, and visiting Fulbright Finland professor, Joshua Pearce, from Michigan Technological University. Pearce explains the reason behind using Finland as the country to base their study on, 'Finland has a superior education system which is focused on specializations in science, and it has a very approachable scale. However, in saying that, the approach of strategic support of open hardware design applies to any country'.

Pearce and his colleagues looked at all the research infrastructures & facilities in Finland and calculated the savings in a scenario where all of the research hardware (that is over 10K in value) would be converted to free & open source.' We looked at the infrastructure that made the most sense to open source first and then determined how much could be saved on research capital costs alone'.

FOSH research priorities for Finland would include developing open-source transmission electron microscopes and scanning electron microscopes

The study concluded that conservatively speaking, FOSH development of two-electron microscopy tools would save Finland over 40m€ so equivalent level of nano-scale imaging could be obtained. Similarly, millions of Euros would be saved nation-wide, while significantly strengthening Finland's atomic layer deposition (ALD)-related research excellence.

Overall, the results indicate Finnish science funders could save millions of Euros annually on scientific equipment purchases if all hardware costing over 10,000€/item is converted to FOSH. Furthermore, the majority of this would become 'on shore' production, currently carried out by equipment manufacturers in other countries.

Pearce says, 'I believe it's of significant national/European interest. We have looked at how Finland could strategically alter how science funding is allocated to save millions of Euros a year while getting better equipment, reducing imports, and improving the national economy'.

Pearce explains that the money saved from FOSH will prove invaluable elsewhere in the research, 'Instead of doing the same amount of science innovation for less money - the concept we were using was to do more science innovation for the same amount of money. Maybe even ten times more! The idea was if x-million is allocated for equipment instead of spending x-amount to purchase the equipment, you will spend a fraction of it to do open-source hardware design. Then in the next year instead of buying one tool, you could buy ten or more of the same thing and help many more researchers go faster'.

Pearce points out, 'In my lab, we have saved hundreds of thousands easily. In the paper - the open hardware that already exists has saved substantial money. Estimates on open-source syringe pumps alone are that they have saved scientists millions and that is only one device. Hardware X, the open hardware journal for science, just published its 100th design - and in general, those devices are saving about 90% off the purchase cost of proprietary tools. Frankly, spending money to buy black-box hardware is a waste of money if there is an open-source option'.

Quantum technology was once considered to be something very expensive and available only to the largest research centers. However, in our days it's widely used in many applications, and one of them is magnetic resonance imaging.

"The magnetic moments associated with the nuclear spins of the protons of 1H and 13C act as sensors that are extremely sensitive to various pathologies. The ability to control and read quantum spin states lies at the basis of quantum technology," says co-author Sergei Orlinskii, Leading Research Associate of the Rheological and Thermochemical Research Lab.

One of the promising areas here is the use of crystalline matrices with optically active spin centers, which makes it possible to convert electronic and nuclear spin states into an optical quantum. The implementation of a number of such projects in Russia, the USA, and Europe has already led to the creation of quantum cryptography devices and quantum sensors of submicron spatial resolution. 3D crystal matrices, such as diamond or silicon carbide, are used. Today, a new task for the scientific community around the world is to obtain and study systems that are fundamentally different from 3D matrices, namely, 2D crystals with vander Waals interaction.

In search of a solution, scientists applied optical and microwave spectroscopy methods and demonstrated the possibility of optical polarization and reading of electronic spin color centers in boron nitride. The work was carried out jointly with German and Australian colleagues.

"At room temperatures, a coherent control of the populations of optically polarized triplet sublevels of the center was implemented and a microscopic model of this center was proposed - a boron vacancy in a negative charge state," explains Orlinskii.

The results demonstrate that vander Waals materials can be used as a new platform for the further development of quantum technologies on the atomic scale.

The public would comply with major changes to medical advice - but would then be less likely to follow other new guidelines in the future, research shows.

High levels of deference towards doctors means most people would obey reformed advice about taking antibiotics. However, the study suggests reforms to public health policy should be made sparingly as this risks undermining future compliance.

The research also shows people who think they know better than scientists and medics are less likely to follow new medical guidelines, and this group would benefit from health messages being communicated in a different way.

Academics from the University of Exeter, the University of Utah, and Stony Brook University ran an experiment to test if people would be willing to change the way they take antibiotics - stopping when they feel better instead of the long-standing advice to complete a full course. Recently experts have argued for this revision as there is little evidence taking a full pack prevents bacteria from developing resistance to antibiotics. This advice is not a current medical recommendation. The aim of the study was not to advocate for or against any position, but to understand how the public may respond to a possible dramatic shift in official health advice.

A total 1,263 people took part in the experiment, which was conducted online. Half were given a message that patients should complete their course no matter what. The other half were given a message that patients should stop treatment when they feel better.

Researchers found the UK public would follow this changing advice about antibiotic use. Compared to the standard "complete the course" message, telling people to stop early on average shifted personal beliefs (a shift of 16%) and behavioural intent (a shift of 19%) in the intended direction towards this instruction. This was particularly the case if they had more respect for doctors. The change in advice had no effect on perceived credibility of experts.

Participants rated their own medical knowledge relative to both scientists and doctors. People with a high degree of deference to experts in these ratings were more likely to follow the new advice. Those who didn't have much respect for experts were less likely to update factual beliefs about antibiotics and less likely to take up new recommendations. More generally, they were less likely to respond to either the old or new advice.

Dr Ben Lyons, from the University of Utah, who led the study, said: "Our research shows changes to medical advice need to be made sparingly, something the medical profession already aims to do. We have found people will take new instructions on board, despite their previous beliefs, but they also don't like uncertainty.

"Resistance to new guidelines is strongest among members of the public who believe they know more than experts. As a result, some messages may need to be tailored to better reach this group, as they won't be receptive to advice which only suggest they defer to authority."

Professor Jason Reifler, from the University of Exeter, a member of the research team, said: "Given the existential threat to global health posed by antibacterial resistance it is essential to measure public opinion about antibiotics. We have found the public would be willing to follow important, specific health recommendations even if they represent a shift from current practice, but this may make them less likely to comply with other advice in the future."

Before taking part in the experiment 64 per cent of people correctly agreed that antibiotics can kill bacteria, but 38 per cent incorrectly agreed that they can kill viruses, and 20 per cent incorrectly agreed that they work on most coughs and colds. Concern about antibacterial resistance was high; just over two-thirds - 67.5 per cent agreed that they are worried about this issue, with 20.51 per cent strongly agreeing.

The mental well-being of the elderly refers to how they perceive their everyday existence, i.e., if their outlook is positive or negative, which, in turn, makes their life pleasant or unpleasant.

The positive feeling of emotional well-being allows people to live fully and feel integrated in society; moreover, people enjoying good mental health are better capacitated to recover from sudden illness, change or misfortune.

A study by researchers at the University of Barcelona and Pompeu Fabra University focuses on a field that has been little studied to date: the association between the main variables related to the satisfactory mental well-being of the elderly and the rural or urban characteristics of the environment in which they live.

The study, published recently in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, has been conducted jointly by Manuela Alcañiz and Maria-Carme Riera-Prunera, researchers at the Department of Econometrics, Statistics and Applied Economics at the University of Barcelona, and Aïda Solé-Auró, a researcher of the Sociodemography research group (DemoSoc) at the Department of Political and Social Sciences UPF.

"The perception that older people living in rural areas have with regard to the limitations of health and ageing is associated with less deterioration of mental well-being, while living in urban areas is related with an increased risk of suffering emotional problems attributable to economic difficulties or a low level of education", say the authors, who argue that encouraging older people to live in rural areas could lead to greater well-being in later life.

Qualitative research carried out on the basis of the Health Survey of Catalonia

The research was carried out by taking cross-sectional microdata between 2015 and 2017 from the Health Survey of Catalonia (ESCA), an official survey administered to the entire population residing in Catalonia, which is conducted continuously throughout the year. The sample, which is representative of the overall population, included 2,621 individuals (1,219 men and 1,402 women) aged 65 and over living in municipalities classified as rural, semi-urban and urban.

They all personally responded to a questionnaire, providing information on the health and lifestyles of individuals in relation to a wide range of socio-demographic factors. The results were measured using the Short Warwick-Edinburgh scale of mental well-being (SWEMWBS), which allowed extracting indicators of mental well-being.

The study sought to identify factors that may influence the mental well-being of older people in the study area, assess the extent to which the rurality of the municipality of origin is associated with significantly different values within the scale of mental well-being, and whether the magnitude of this association depends on aspects related to the individual's socio-demographic, health and lifestyle characteristics.

Some of therisk factors identified by the authors are demographic factors, economic status, self-perceived health, physical health burden, functional limitations and dependence, social support, family burden, physical activity and sleep hours. "Variables related to health status, personal autonomy and social support appear to be strongly associated with mental well-being", the researchers affirm.

The final results show that a higher level of rurality is associated with a better level of mental well-being. Thus, while in urban areas 21.4% of the sample individuals had deficient scores, this percentage was 17.4% for semi-rural and 12.9% for rural residents.

Importance of integral social policies

The study affirms that social policies should seek to address not only health problems but also well-being in all its facets, including the field of mental health, and in both urban and rural environments. This comes under one of the major challenges facing society today, which is to ensure quality of life during ageing, a period of life which is affecting an increasingly large population.

"Our results reinforce the belief that good social welfare policies are crucial. Policy makers must try to plan the specific provision of services to cover different geographic areas that present different demographic patterns", the authors conclude.

Scientists have made a pivotal breakthrough in advancing our understanding of how bacteria move and perform genetic exchange - that could potentially lead to the development of new antimicrobial drugs.

A team of researchers from the University of Exeter's Living Systems Institute and the University of Frankfurt has made a crucial discovery around the structures of long filaments - hair like appendages - called type IV pili found on the surface of bacteria.

Type IV pili are known to play an important role in how bacteria proliferate and form biofilms, through movement, genetic exchange, adhesion and communicating with other cells.

Genetic exchange occurs when cells take up DNA - the molecule that encodes an organisms' genetic code - from their environment.

DNA transfer plays a vital role in the bacteria's ability to become resistant to treatments. There are antibiotic resistance genes, for example, that get shared and thus render the treatment useless.

In this new research, scientists have discovered that the bacterium Thermus thermophilus can produce two types of type IV pili - one specialised for movement and one for genetic exchange.

The pioneering research could allow scientists to target the two functions independently, for example by developing new drugs that stop bacteria from moving or becoming resistant to antibiotics.

The study is published in leading journal Nature Communications on Wednesday, May 6th 2020.

Dr Vicki Gold, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter and lead author of the paper said: "It will now be important to investigate if this phenomenon is a universal principle occurring in other bacteria expressing type IV pili. This would pave the way for the development of antimicrobials aimed to target a particular mechanism."

Type IV pili are protrusions that are found across the surface of a bacterial cell, and are made up of thousands of copies of one protein.

In the new study, the researchers used cryo-electron microscopy to determine structures of both type IV pili in unprecedented detail. The technique allowed the researchers to gather a vast array of detailed images of the structures in different orientations to create a detailed, 3D picture.

The discovery that one of the pili is composed of a previously uncharacterised protein means that scientists are able to target the different functions to determine what is important for microbial proliferation and genetic exchange.

As a result, they are able to conduct experiments to see how well bacteria proliferate, or take up DNA, when certain type of pilus formation are artificially impeded.

Alexander Neuhaus, first author of the research and also from the University of Exeter said: "It is going to be interesting to discover how exactly the two pili fulfil their different functions and how bacteria control their production. Knowledge of these mechanisms could lead to new strategies for combatting bacterial infection."

A University of Saskatchewan (USask) research team has uncovered how bats can carry the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronavirus without getting sick--research that could shed light on how coronaviruses make the jump to humans and other animals.

Coronaviruses such as MERS, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), and more recently the COVID19-causing SARS-CoV-2 virus, are thought to have originated in bats. While these viruses can cause serious and often fatal disease in people, for reasons not previously well understood, bats seem unharmed.

"The bats don't get rid of the virus and yet don't get sick. We wanted to understand why the MERS virus doesn't shut down the bat immune responses as it does in humans," said USask microbiologist Vikram Misra.

In research just published in Scientific Reports, the team has demonstrated for the first time that cells from an insect-eating brown bat can be persistently infected with MERS coronavirus for months, due to important adaptations from both the bat and the virus working together.

"Instead of killing bat cells as the virus does with human cells, the MERS coronavirus enters a long-term relationship with the host, maintained by the bat's unique 'super' immune system," said Misra, corresponding author on the paper. "SARS-CoV-2 is thought to operate in the same way."

Misra says the team's work suggests that stresses on bats--such as wet markets, other diseases, and possibly habitat loss--may have a role in coronavirus spilling over to other species.

"When a bat experiences stress to their immune system, it disrupts this immune system-virus balance and allows the virus to multiply," he said.

The research was carried out at USask's Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization--International Vaccine Centre (VIDO-InterVac), one of the world's largest containment level 3 research facilities, by a team of researchers from USask's Western College of Veterinary Medicine and VIDO-InterVac.

"We see that the MERS coronavirus can very quickly adapt itself to a particular niche, and although we do not completely understand what is going on, this demonstrates how coronaviruses are able to jump from species to species so effortlessly," said VIDO-InterVac scientist Darryl Falzarano, who co-led the bat study, developed the first potential treatment for MERS-CoV, and is leading VIDO-InterVac's efforts to develop a vaccine against COVID-19.

So far, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has infected more than 3.5 million people worldwide and killed seven per cent of those infected. In contrast, the MERS virus infected nearly 2,500 people in 2012 but killed one in every three people infected. There is no vaccine for either SARS-CoV-2 or MERS. While camels are the known intermediate hosts of MERS-CoV, bats are suspected to be the ancestral host.

Coronaviruses rapidly adapt to the species they infect, Misra said, but little is known on the molecular interactions of these viruses with their natural bat hosts. A 2017 USask-led study showed that bat coronaviruses can persist in their natural bat host for at least four months of hibernation.

When exposed to the MERS virus, bat cells adapt--not by producing inflammation-causing proteins that are hallmarks of getting sick, but rather by maintaining a natural antiviral response, a function which shuts down in other species, including humans. Simultaneously, the MERS virus also adapts to the bat host cells by very rapidly mutating one specific gene, he said.

Operating together, these adaptations result in the virus remaining long-term in the bat but being rendered harmless until something--such as disease or other stressors--upsets this delicate equilibrium.

Next, the team will turn its focus to understanding how the bat-borne MERS virus adapts to infection and replication in camelid (a group of even-toed ungulates that includes camels) and human cells.

"This information may be critical for predicting the next bat virus that will cause a pandemic," said Misra.

To restart surgeries cancelled because of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, Canada needs to adopt single-entry models (SEMs) with team-based care, argues a commentary https://www.cmaj.ca/content/cmaj/early/2020/05/06/cmaj.200791.full.pdf in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

As non-emergent surgical services resume, returning to 'business as usual' will not be acceptable," write Drs. David Urbach and Danielle Martin, Women's College Hospital and the University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario. "The capacity to perform scheduled surgery will be severely constrained as hospitals are continuously but variably stressed by recurring waves of COVID-19 and grapple with the health care workforce, supply chain of equipment and medications, and potential for virus transmission for the foreseeable future."

Single-entry models provide equitable access for patients, with a single entry point to a queue that directs patients to the next available surgeon based on the urgency of their procedure and their priority in the queue. These models reduce wait times for specialist services. Team-based care further reduces wait times for surgeries, while also providing surgeons with equitable access to operating rooms.

Many hospitals in Europe and the United States use these models, and some Canadian examples include obstetrics, cardiac surgery and transplanation services.

Barriers to adoption include reluctance of surgeons and other health care providers, belief in the importance of the established surgeon-patient relationship, and concerns around professional autonomy and financial security.

The authors acknowlege these concerns, but nevertheless suggest SEMs are fair, efficient and provide a patient-centred approach to the significant challenges we are facing.

"Surgeons should join health system and hospital leaders and public policy-makers in adopting this approach as a surgery recovery plan in the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, and seize this once-in-a-generation opportunity to kindle a broader transformation of surgical services for a sustainable and ethical health system in Canada," the authors conclude.

"Confronting the COVID-19 surgery crisis: time for transformational change" is published May 6, 2020.

Podcast: https://soundcloud.com/cmajpodcasts/200791-com

Heart failure and cancer are conditions with a number of shared characteristics. A new study published in the Journal of Internal Medicine found that in patients with heart failure, several known tumor markers can also be indicators of heart failure severity and progression.

In the study, researchers measured six markers that are indicators for various cancers-- including ovarian, breast, lung, pancreatic, colorectal, and germ cell cancers--in 2,079 patients with heart failure.

Several of the markers correlated strongly with known heart failure markers and also predicted which patients were most likely to die prematurely.

"Our study provides further fuel to the notion that cancer and cardiovascular disease are related, as we now demonstrate that pathways that are sensed by tumor markers are apparently also dysregulated in heart failure," said senior author Rudolf A. de Boer MD, PhD, of the University Medical Centre Groningen, in The Netherlands.

A study of over 4 million children and adolescents in the U.S. enrolled in Medicaid found that those who rely on urgent care centers for more than a third of their outpatient health care needs had fewer visits to primary care providers. This may result in missed opportunities for preventative services, such as vaccinations, and identification and management of chronic conditions, such as obesity or asthma. Findings were published in JAMA Network Open.

"Routine well-child care plays an essential role in ensuring children's optimal growth and development," says lead author Rebecca Burns, MD, Medical Director of Urgent Care at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and Assistant Professor in Pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "While urgent care facilities may serve to increase access for acute care needs, high reliance on these facilities could have the unintended consequence of displacing important services that children receive in regular primary care settings. If this were to occur, it could lead to concerning health impacts down the road."

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends multiple well-child care visits per year for children younger than 3 years of age and yearly primary care visits for older children and adolescents.
Urgent care sites are a growing option for patients to address acute healthcare needs, including low-acuity illnesses and injuries. The number of these sites has increased from nearly 7,000 in 2015 to over 9,000 in 2019.

In their study, Dr. Burns and colleagues found that high reliance on urgent care centers was associated with age, race and presence of chronic conditions. Children 6-12 years of age were more likely to have high reliance on urgent care compared with adolescents (13-18 years of age). White children had the highest reliance on urgent care compared to black or Latino children. Children with chronic conditions were less likely to have high reliance on urgent care for their healthcare needs.

"Our study did not differentiate between the types of urgent care centers that were used," says Dr. Burns. "Urgent care centers operating within a particular healthcare system may allow urgent care providers to access the patient's medical record and facilitate communication with the primary care provider, which can make a big difference in ensuring continuity of care. We need further research to understand the factors contributing to a high reliance on urgent care and to assess the impact that this reliance may have on a child's relationship with their medical home."

BELTSVILLE, MARYLAND, May 6, 2020--A new freeze-resistant Trichinella species has been discovered in wolverines by Agricultural Research Service scientists and their colleagues. Trichinella are parasites that cause the disease trichinosis (formally referred to as trichinellosis), which people can get by eating raw or undercooked meat from infected animals.

Before the advent of modern biosafety practices, Americans risked infection from a spiralis from contaminated pork. Residual risk exists when consuming wild game infected with this, or other species of Trichinella.

Freezing pork for three days generally kills T. spiralis but will not kill freeze-resistant varieties endemic to the Arctic. This study indicates freeze-resistance in this newly discovered species.

This is the first species of Trichinella discovered since 2012, and the 13th species identified since the genus was discovered in 1835.

The new species, now named Trichinella chanchalensis (and nicknamed "oddball"), was found in 14 of 338 wolverine samples tested. About 70 percent of the wolverine samples were infected by some Trichinella species. The samples were all provided by Canadian authorities that oversee trappers and/or game meat food safety in that country.

Wolverines, the largest member of the weasel family, are found mostly in northern Canada, Alaska, Nordic countries in Europe and throughout western Russia and Siberia.

"They make an excellent sentinel species to help us understand the scope of Trichinella in the environment," said ARS research zoologist Peter Thompson who led the study. "A wolverine can have a home range of about 1,000 miles and will eat just about anything it can kill or scavenge, including caribou, moose, ground squirrels and other rodents as well as carnivores such as foxes and even other wolverines." Thompson is with the ARS Animal Parasitic Diseases Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland.

When the researchers first saw the new freeze-resistant Trichinella, they sought to understand if there had been interbreeding between T. nativa and T6, another freeze-resistant variety that is closely related to T. nativa.

By sequencing the newly discovered Trichinella species' complete genome, it was shown that its DNA is about 10 percent different from any other Trichinella. By comparison, human and chimpanzee DNA only differ by 1 percent.

"Evolutionarily, the evidence shows that Trichinella chanchalensis split off from the other known Trichinella species about 6 million years ago, making it a very old species among Trichinella," Thompson said. "That brings up the question of how T. nativa and T6 got their freeze resistance. Did the trait evolve more than once or is there some other mechanism at work?"

The ARS Animal Parasitic Diseases Laboratory, which is part of the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, has a long history of helping provide the scientific basis for regulations that in the past ensured cured and cooked pork products were safe and reliable. Some of the lab's accomplishments include:

Discovered that Trichinella can be reduced in pork by proper freeze methods, leading to new, effective meat inspection control measures in the first decade of the 20th century.

Established the standards for using salt, moisture, pH and temperature to effectively treat fermented, dry-cured pork sausage for Trichinella.

Assisted in the development of the best management practices for raising pigs to essentially eliminate the chances of domestic pork being infected with Trichinella.

Created the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test to specifically identify Trichinella species using a small DNA sample.

NEW YORK...May 6, 2020 - In the aftermath of President Trump's election, there were many media reports of so-called "Trump Depression" among liberal Americans. However, according to a new study by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers, his election did not cause a wave of long-term depression.

The study, "Political Depression? A Big-Data, Multi-Method Investigation of Americans' Emotional Response to the Trump Presidency," published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, relied on self-reporting and several big-data sources to investigate both Democrat and Republican's emotional response to the Trump presidency.

"The main question we wanted to answer is, can a political loss, a symbolic loss, cause depression?," says Almog Simchon, a Ph.D. student at the BGU Symbolic Cognition and Interaction Lab in the Department of Psychology. "If any loss could cause that, we figured that it would be Hillary Clinton's devastating defeat."

The researchers first conducted an initial survey of 507 self-identified Republicans and Democrats, which specifically mentioned the election. They found that Democrats reported feeling more depressive symptoms after rather than before the election. Republicans, on the other hand, reported experiencing less depression after the election than before.

However, the researchers wanted to determine whether the election cue was influencing their responses, so they conducted a second survey of 481 Republicans and Democrats. Without mentioning the election, they asked participants to respond to the depression questionnaire focusing on the years 2015-2018. They found no difference between Republican and Democratic participants when using this methodology.

The researchers are not suggesting that liberals were dishonest when they initially said that the results of the election made them depressed. "Emotions are complex, and different methods tell different parts of the story; this is why we took a multimethod approach and examined the reaction to the election using several additional methods," says Simchon.

To avoid some of the issues of self-reported data on which the surveys were based, the researchers also examined four objective measures that can predict depression. They analyzed 10.5 million Tweets using a machine learning-based model and found that signs of increased depression among liberals lasted only several days after the election.

They also analyzed depression-related search behavior on Google, examined the proportion of antidepressant consumption in Medicaid data, and analyzed daily surveys of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Across all of these analyses, the same picture emerged - the results of the election did not give rise to an immediate spike in depression rates among Democrats.

"Broadly speaking, our data suggest that America did not get more depressed because of Trump, at least in the first year after his election," says Prof. Michael Gilead, who heads the BGU Symbolic Cognition and Interaction Lab in the Department of Psychology.

While the study examined large-scale trends, the findings do not eliminate the notion that after Trump's victory pockets of U.S groups experienced an increase in depression. "Findings [in studies from other researchers] show that psychological distress among people of color and other marginalized groups may have increased as a result of the Trump presidency," Gilead says. "Our analyses focused on the differences between Democrats and Republicans; but there may be more to this interpretation. The results do not mean that many Democrats didn't feel anger, sadness and hopelessness in the aftermath of the election; however, I think that the results do suggest that our public discourse should be more cautious of pathologizing normal psychological reactions."

Gilead believes that it is possible that many Democrats actually found a sense of meaning and purpose in their resistance to the Trump administration. "It is a bit counterintuitive, but negative events may also sometimes alleviate depression," he says.

Over half of a cohort of 23-35-year-old black women from Detroit had detectable levels of organochlorine pesticides in their blood, possibly from tobacco, alcohol, and water.

A new Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) study published in the journal Environmental Research finds detectable levels of DDE (what DDT becomes when metabolized in the body) and other banned organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) in the blood of over 60 percent of a cohort of black women of reproductive age in the Detroit area, with higher levels in women who smoked cigarettes daily, drank more alcohol, and drank more water.

Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and other OCPs were banned decades ago. But they can dissolve into a person's body fat, and remain there for years, causing hormonal and metabolic issues, and even brain development issues from in-utero exposure.

"If cigarettes, alcohol, and drinking water are in fact exposing black women to pesticides, this matters!" says study lead author Dr. Olivia Orta, a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Epidemiology at BUSPH.

"The sources that we identified as potential OCP correlates should be tested for pesticide contamination," she says, "especially drinking water."

However, Orta cautions that the study was not able to distinguish between bottled and tap water, or test participants' tap water for these chemicals, so "we do not want to suggest that black women in Detroit reduce their water consumption in response to our study findings," she says. Instead, the study points to the importance of water monitoring--which has been notoriously inequitable, as seen in nearby Flint--and the need to test for OCPs in tap and bottled water as well as in alcohol and tobacco, she says.

Orta and colleagues used data from the Study of Environment, Lifestyle, and Fibroids (SELF), a prospective cohort study of reproductive-age black women recruited from the Detroit metropolitan area from 2010 to 2012. For the current study, the researchers analyzed blood samples from 742 fibroid-free participants, given when they entered the study, and their responses to questionnaires about health histories, demographics, behaviors, and other factors.

The researchers found detectable levels of four OCPs--dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDE), hexachlorobenzene (HCB), oxychlordane, and trans-nonachlor--in over 60 percent of the participants.

Adjusting for the other factors, the researchers found that heavy alcohol use was associated with 7-9 percent higher concentrations of DDE, oxychlordane, and trans-nonachlor in the women's blood plasma. Current smoking was associated with 10-19 percent higher concentrations of all four OCPs, and was highest for women who smoked ten or more cigarettes a day. Women who drank five or more glasses of water per day had 8-15 percent higher concentrations of all four OCPs, but especially trans-nonachlor, compared to women who drank two glasses of water or fewer per day.

The researchers also found evidence of exposure when the women were infants in the late 1970s and early-to-mid 1980s, the period when these pesticides were being banned. Study participants who were older had higher OCP concentrations, with each five-year age increment associated with 24 percent higher oxychlordane and 26 percent higher trans-nonachlor concentrations. Women who had been breastfed had 15 percent higher concentrations of DDE, 14 percent higher oxychlordane, and 15 percent higher trans-nonachlor than women who hadn't been breastfed.

NEW YORK CITY, May 6, 2020 -- From avocado plants to baker's yeast, humans to zebras, sexually reproducing organisms must create germ cells that contain half the number of chromosomes found in a typical body cell. When these germ cells -- such as sperm and egg -- come together during fertilization, the regular number of chromosomes is restored.

The biological process that produces germ cells is a type of cell division called meiosis. As a result of meiosis, each germ cell contains only one copy of each of the paired chromosomes found in a body cell. (In humans, that's 23 chromosomes versus the usual 46).

In addition to reducing the chromosome number, meiosis also shuffles the genetic material on the maternal and paternal chromosomes that are found in each of our cells. The chromosomes break and then swap segments by crossing over with one another before being divvied up into daughter cells. This shuffling is why you and your siblings look different despite having the same parents: The sperm and egg that came together to make you each contained a unique combination of maternal and paternal chromosomes.

Meiosis is one of the most important processes in all of biology, yet much has remained mysterious about its fundamentals. In particular, it has long been a question how small chromosomes don't get lost in the shuffle of breaking and recombining when competing with chromosomes ten times their size.

"We've known for a while that smaller chromosomes have a higher rate of DNA double-strand breaks -- the breaks that initiate recombination," says Scott Keeney, a molecular biologist in the Sloan Kettering Institute and a newly elected member of the National Academy of Sciences. "But it was unclear how small chromosomes manage to punch above their weight in terms of making these breaks."

Now, he says, a team from his lab has solved the puzzle. Hajime Murakami, a Senior Research Scientist in the Keeney lab, led the research and is a co-corresponding author, along with Dr. Keeney, on a new paper describing their findings published May 6 in the journal Nature.

Don't You, Forget about Me

For chromosomes, recombination is not just an effective means of generating genetic diversity. It's also crucial for proper segregation of chromosomes into germs cells. If this recombination does not occur, then the segregation of chromosomes occurs randomly and can result in an unequal distribution of chromosomes into daughter cells. Having the wrong number of chromosomes in an egg or sperm is called an aneuploidy and is a main cause of birth defects.

The first step of recombination is breaking the two strands of the DNA double helix -- called a double-strand break (DSB). Special proteins (including one called Spo11, which Dr. Keeney discovered more than two decades ago) create DSBs in chromosomes. The maternal and paternal members of each chromosome pair then find one another, and the non-broken chromosome is used as a template to repair the break in the broken chromosome.

After this process of breaking and repair, the maternal and paternal chromosomes are essentially tied together, such that if you pulled on one you would bring its partner with it. It turns out that this temporary tying of the knot is a crucial part of the way that cells know that the two members of the chromosome pair are ready to be split up into different cells. Every chromosome pair, therefore, needs at least one DSB to ensure it gets segregated properly.

"If DSB formation were a random process, happening blindly across all chromosomes, then you would expect that very small chromosomes would sometimes get skipped over," Dr. Murakami says. "But that does not typically happen."

If fact, he says, small chromosomes have a higher rate of breaking and recombining than longer chromosomes for a given length of DNA.

Dr. Keeney, Dr. Murakami, and their colleagues now show how this happens: By recruiting more of the proteins that break chromosomes to initiate recombination, and holding on to them for longer, little chromosomes ensure that they aren't forgotten.

Giving Small Chromosomes a Boost

The researchers came to their conclusions through a series of elegant experiments conducted in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a simple eukaryotic organism with 16 chromosomes, including three that are very small. In one experiment they asked: what would happen if you made a short chromosome long by attaching it to a longer neighbor; would it still behave like a short chromosome in terms of recruiting the breaking factors? The answer was yes.

They also asked what would happen if you made a long chromosome short by chopping it in half; would it behave like a short chromosome? It didn't. These results show that there is a factor that is intrinsic to a little chromosome that determines its behavior, rather than its size per se.

This extra "boost" that small chromosomes have helps explain how they can punch above their weight, ensuring recombination on every chromosome, no matter how small.

About Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK):

As the world's oldest and largest private cancer center, Memorial Sloan Kettering has devoted more than 135 years to exceptional patient care, influential educational programs and innovative research to discover more effective strategies to prevent, control and, ultimately, cure cancer. MSK is home to more than 20,000 physicians, scientists, nurses and staff united by a relentless dedication to conquering cancer. Today, we are one of 51 National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers, with state-of-the-art science and technology supporting groundbreaking clinical studies, personalized treatment, and compassionate care for our patients. We also train the next generation of clinical and scientific leaders in oncology through our continually evolving educational programs, here and around the world. Year after year, we are ranked among the top two cancer hospitals in the country, consistently recognized for our expertise in adult and pediatric oncology specialties. http://www.mskcc.org.

Journal

Nature