Culture

Biofuels are an important part of the broader strategy to replace petroleum-based gasoline, diesel, and jet fuels that we use today. However, biofuels have so far not reached cost parity with conventional petroleum fuels.

One strategy to make biofuels more competitive is to make plants do some of the work themselves. Scientists can engineer plants to produce valuable chemical compounds, or bioproducts, as they grow. Then the bioproducts can be extracted from the plant and the remaining plant material can be converted into fuel. When produced in the plant itself, bioproducts can help reduce the cost of the resulting biofuel.

But one important part of this strategy has remained unclear -- exactly how much of a particular bioproduct would plants need to make in order to make the process economically feasible?

Now researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the Department of Energy's Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), which is managed by Berkeley Lab, have provided the first definition of this amount. Their study, jointly led by Corinne Scown and Patrick Shih, was published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers first gathered information on a group of well-studied bioproducts that plants can already effectively produce -- ranging from flavors and fragrances to biodegradable plastic. Making a valuable bioproduct would help offset the cost of making biofuels and make the whole process cheaper.

"It's a really elegant solution, to be able to engineer a plant to directly accumulate a valuable bioproduct," said Scown, a researcher in JBEI and Berkeley Lab's Energy Technologies Area.

They then designed and simulated what it would take to extract these bioproducts from plant material in the context of an ethanol biorefinery. In this setting, valuable bioproducts would be extracted from the plant, while the remaining plant material would be converted into ethanol.

This helped them answer two important questions: what amount of bioproduct the plant needs to produce in order to make the process of extracting it worthwhile, and what amount needs to be made in order to reach the target ethanol selling price of $2.50 per gallon.

To their surprise, their results showed that the amount plants need to make is actually quite feasible. For example, they calculated that when accumulated at 0.6% of the biomass dry weight, a compound such as limonene -- used in flavor and fragrance -- would offer net economic benefits to biorefineries. In other words, if they can harvest 10 dry metric tons of sorghum biomass from an acre of land, they need to recover only around 130 pounds of limonene from that biomass.

"The researchers in our Feedstocks Division were surprised by how modest the target levels were," Scown said. "The levels we need to accumulate in plants to offset the cost of bioproduct recovery and drive down the price of biofuels are well within reach."

Their results show that this strategy for reducing the cost of biofuels is feasible -- but scientists shouldn't put all of their eggs in one basket, because the market for each high-value product is limited in size. Their analysis suggests that just five commercial-scale biorefineries could support the entire projected 2025 market demand for limonene. Scown said crops need to be engineered to produce a broad range of products to make sure the industry is diversified and the market is not flooded for any one product.

"With techno-economic models, this research provides new insights into the role of bioproducts in improving the economics of biorefineries," said Minliang Yang, a postdoctoral researcher at JBEI and lead author of the study.

Scown said the biggest impact of the paper is that it offers the first quantitative basis to actually implement this cost-saving strategy, providing a starting point for scientists who are attempting to engineer or breed plants that create bioproducts on their own and offset the cost of making biofuels as a result.

"I think this research is just the first step to demonstrating the future potential of engineered bioenergy feedstock crops," said Shih, Director of Plant Biosystems Design at JBEI. "I would imagine that our findings will help motivate future efforts to make biofuels economically viable."

People with aortic stenosis and a low surgical risk became eligible for a less invasive valve replacement last summer, spurring increased demand for the catheter-based procedure called TAVR. But only a subset of U.S. hospitals, including Michigan Medicine's Frankel Cardiovascular Center, are able to offer transcatheter aortic valve replacement.

New Medicare rules have lowered procedural volume requirements for hospitals who wish to offer TAVR to their patients.

But will this truly allow more people to get a TAVR who had trouble accessing the procedure before?

"We're expanding access, but we don't yet know if it's in the right areas," says Mike Thompson, Ph.D., an assistant professor of cardiac surgery at the Frankel CVC and lead author of a new research letter in JAMA Cardiology. Thompson says new TAVR offerings in rural areas could be important, but questions the need for additional hospitals performing TAVR in already crowded markets.

"Some professional associations are concerned that the restrictions may be loosed too much," Thompson says. "As we move forward, it will be important to study which hospitals begin providing TAVR, and whether they are capable of providing it in a high quality way."

Researchers have shown how a by-product of steel making can be used to both treat wastewater and make stronger concrete, in a zero-waste approach to help advance the circular economy.

Produced during the separation of molten steel from impurities, steel slag is often used as a substitute aggregate material for making concrete.

Steel slag can also be used to absorb contaminants like phosphate, magnesium, iron, calcium, silica and aluminium in the wastewater treatment process, but loses its effectiveness over time.

Engineering researchers at RMIT University examined whether slag that had been used to treat wastewater could then be recycled as an aggregate material for concrete.

The concrete made with post-treatment steel slag was about 17% stronger than concrete made with conventional aggregates, and 8% stronger than raw steel slag.

Water engineer Dr Biplob Pramanik said the study was the first to investigate potential applications for "sewage-enhanced" slag in construction material.

"The global steel making industry produces over 130 million tons of steel slag every year," Pramanik said.

"A lot of this by-product already goes into concrete, but we're missing the opportunity to wring out the full benefits of this material.

"Making stronger concrete could be as simple as enhancing the steel slag by first using it to treat our wastewater.

"While there are technical challenges to overcome, we hope this research moves us one step closer to the ultimate goal of an integrated, no-waste approach to all our raw materials and by-products."

In the study, civil and water engineering researchers found the chemical properties of the slag are enhanced through the wastewater treatment, so it performed better when used in concrete.

"The things that we want to remove from water are actually beneficial when it comes to concrete, so it's a perfect match," Pramanik said.

Civil engineer Dr Rajeev Roychand said the initial study was promising but further research was needed to implement the approach at a larger-scale, including investigating the long-term mechanical and durability properties of enhanced slag.

"Steel slag is currently not in widespread use in the wastewater treatment industry - just one plant based in New Zealand uses this by-product in its treatment approach," he said.

"But there is great potential here for three industries to work together - steel making, wastewater treatment and construction - and reap the maximum benefits of this by-product."

The lungs are constantly exposed to the external environment and maintain homeostasis by adapting to stress and tissue damage. Furthermore, lung function is known to decrease with age so respiratory failure can occur if their structure or function breaks down. It is therefore important for aging societies around the world to search for factors inside and outside the body that directly affect lung function.

The DsbA-L protein is present in many tissues of the body and is a known antioxidant. Although antioxidants generally have a protective effect on cells, it was unclear whether the DsbA-L protein helps to protect the lungs. It is known, however, that it activates adiponectin, a protein produced in adipose tissue (body fat) that helps regulate glucose levels and fatty acids, and enhances lung function. From previous human epidemiological studies, researchers from Kumamoto University knew that adiponectin activation differs depending on DsbA-L gene type (G/G, G/T, or T/T), but they did not know whether these differences affected the antioxidant function in blood or how they affected the maintenance of lung function in humans.

To answer these questions, researchers first investigated the relationship between DsbA-L gene type and changes in respiratory function over a six-year period in 318 elderly health checkup data. They found that T/T genotype carriers, whose DsbA-L expression level is considered low, had low respiratory function. Additionally, the amount of oxidized substance (oxidized albumin) in the blood varied depending on DsbA-L gene type, indicating that this gene is related to antioxidant functionality. Further analysis of the relationship between respiratory function, one of the functions of DsbA-L, and adiponectin activation found a positive correlation between the two. Previous studies showed that differences in the DsbA-L gene type were associated with reduced adiponectin activation. This combined knowledge suggests that differences in DsbA-L gene functions may cause lung function decline.

Next, the researchers examined whether DsbA-L has a direct protective effect on lung tissue. They found that decreasing the expression level of DsbA-L in human lung epithelial cells increased the degree of oxidative stress. Furthermore, a decrease in DsbA-L expression promotes the production of mucus which is known to adversely affect lung function in elderly and diseased people. These results show that DsbA-L provides pulmonary protection through direct antioxidant actions in lung epithelial cells.

These studies using human cells have revealed that DsbA-L is an important factor in pulmonary function. It affects many tissues and organs such as the blood, adipose tissue, and lungs. The authors expect that future studies focusing on the activation of DsbA-L and the differences in genotypes can be applied to promote healthy lifestyles and lung disease treatments. In particular, the Japanese population, with its relatively higher number of T/T-type carriers of DsbA-L, may see larger effects from drugs that activate DsbA-L in those carriers.

"A recent research project by our research group showed that seed extract from the 'Melinjo' tree native to Indonesia has a role in activating DsbA-L," said Associate Professor Shuto. "We believe that research using useful natural products such as this can be very promising. Furthermore, our research may contribute to the future development of precision medicine-a medical model that selects therapeutic agents according to genotype differences."

The world has been hit hard by coronavirus, and health services and authorities everywhere are struggling to reduce the spread, combat the disease and protect the population. Nevertheless, the pandemic will cost lives throughout the world. An environmental researcher from Aarhus University has studied whether there could be a link between the high mortality rate seen in northern Italy, and the level of air pollution in the same region. The short answer is "yes possibly". The long answer is in the article below.

The outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome CoronaVirus2 had its source in the Wuhan Province in China in December 2019. Since then, the coronavirus has spread to the rest of the globe, and the world is now treating patients with the disease that follows virus infection: COVID-19. The course of the disease differs for patients the world over: many experience flu-like symptoms, while many others need hospital treatment for acute respiratory infection that, in some cases, leads to death.

However, what factors affect the course of the disease and the possibilities to combat COVID-19 remains unclear, as long as there is no medical treatment or vaccine. At the moment, there are more questions than answers, and researchers all over the world are therefore working to find new insights into the global pandemic.

At Aarhus University, the environmental scientist Dario Caro from the Department of Environmental Science, and two health researchers, prof. Bruno Frediani and Dr. Edoardo Conticini, from the University of Siena in Italy have found yet another small piece in the puzzle of understanding the deadly disease. They have focused on examining why the mortality rate is up to 12% in the northern part of Italy, while it is only approx. 4.5% in the rest of the country.

They have just published an article entitled "Can Atmospheric pollution be considered as a co-factor in the extremely high level of SARS-CoV-2 lethality in Northern Italy?", in which they demonstrate a probable correlation between air pollution and mortality in two of the worst affected regions in northern Italy: Lombardy and Emilia Romagna.

The research project has been published in the scientific journal Environmental Pollution.

"There are several factors affecting the course of patients' illness, and all over the world we're finding links and explanations of what is important. It's very important to stress that our results are not a counter-argument to the findings already made. At the moment, all new knowledge is valuable for science and the authorities, and I consider our work as a supplement to the pool of knowledge about the factors that are important for the course of patients' illness," says environmental scientist Dario Caro, and clarifies that there are a number of other factors that could possibly play a role in the Italian situation:

"Our considerations must not let us neglect other factors responsible of the high lethality recorded: important co-factors such as the elevated medium age of the Italian population, the wide differences among Italian regional health systems, ICUs capacity and how the infects and deaths has been reported have had a paramount role in the lethality of SARS-CoV-2, presumably also more than pollution itself," he explains.

Different datasets show a link

The two northern Italian regions are among the most air-polluted regions in Europe. The recently published article took its outset in data from the NASA Aura satellite, which has demonstrated very high levels of air pollution across precisely these two regions. The group compared these data with the so-called Air Quality Index; a measurement of air quality developed by the European Environment Agency. The index gathers data from several thousand measuring stations all over Europe, providing a geographical insight into the prevalence of a number of pollutant sources in the EU.

The figures speak for themselves. The population of the northern Italian regions lives in a higher level of air pollution, and this may lead to a number of complications for patients with COVID-19 in the regions, simply because their bodies may have already been weakened by the accumulated exposure to air pollution when they contract the disease.

Dario Caro explains that the situation in the Italian regions has been a challenge for several years, with high levels of air pollution that have accumulated over a long period of time in the population. It is therefore unlikely that there is any reason to imagine that people in Denmark are exposed to the same factors or the same levels of pollution as people in northern Italy, where the authorities have been trying to reduce pollution levels for many years.

"All over the world, we're seeing different approaches from countries' authorities, in countries' general public health outset and in the standards and readiness of different countries' national healthcare systems. But this doesn't explain the prevalence and mortality rates that we're seeing in northern Italy compared with the rest of Italy. This feeds hope that we may have found yet another factor in understanding the high mortality rate of the disease in northern Italy," says Dario Caro.

Study from University of Warwick reveals dynamics of the protein assemblies that make up cellular 'muscles'

The dumbbell-shaped protein myosin II is similar to the one in our own muscles

New microscopy technique applied to visualise label free ensembles of myosin for first time

Self-organising ensembles could provide a model for future smart materials

The movements of cell muscles in the form of tiny filaments of proteins have been visualised at unprecedented detail by University of Warwick scientists.

In a study published in the Biophysical Journal, scientists from the University's Department of Physics and Warwick Medical School have used a new microscopy technique to analyse the molecular motors inside cells that allow them to move and reshape themselves, potentially providing new insights that could inform the development of new smart materials.

Myosin is a protein that forms the motor filaments that give a cell stability and are involved in remodelling the actin cortex inside the cell. The actin cortex is much like the backbone of the cell and gives it its shape, while the myosin filaments are similar to muscles. By 'flexing', they enable the cell to exert forces outside of it and to propagate.

Dr Darius Köster, from Warwick Medical School and corresponding author on the paper, said: "When the cell wants to contract or exert stresses on its neighbouring cells or tissue it will form stress fibres using an array of myosin and actin filaments to perform an action similar to our own muscles. In fact, our muscles are made up of the same molecules.

"But they can also form other structures. A cell is constantly remodelling itself and all these proteins are undergoing a turnover because they have a limited lifetime. A number of processes require the local remodelling of the cortex, for example, if the cell wants to move around it uses actin remodelling and myosin."

Biologists usually use a technique called optical fluorescence microscopy to analyse biological molecules. This involves adding a fluorescent protein to the molecule which is then excited so that it gives off light that can be detected and analysed. The drawback is that this technique causes phototoxicity, thereby destroying the molecule as you look at it.

To get around this stumbling block, the University of Warwick team joined forces with the Kukura lab at the University of Oxford to study a minimal cell cortex using a technique, called interferometric scattering microscopy (iSCAT), that did not require them to add fluorescent proteins to the molecules and that uses scattered light from the source molecule. By measuring the interference between that light and the light from the glass surface that the sample is placed on, the scientists can produce more sensitive and scalable imagery whilst limiting the amount of light that the molecule is exposed to. They can visualise objects at the optical resolution limit, at 200nm or 0.0002 mm, while the muscle myosin filaments are typically 0.001 mm long.

Dr Köster said: "Our minimal cell cortex rearranges itself over periods of tens of minutes, so you have to be able to follow activity at short timescales, but over long periods. And that's difficult using conventional fluorescent microscopy.

"We wanted to find out whether myosin aligns to actin and exerts tensile forces, or if it can cross over to several filaments and bring them together to contract them. With this new technique what we actually see is different regimes of fluctuations in the myosin filaments. Myosin has a dumbbell structure and when only one side binds to actin it fluctuates a lot. If both sides bind down then they are much stiffer and don't fluctuate as much.

"We found that myosin can behave in both regimes, something that wasn't possible to observe before. There are very few studies of these ensembles, others have studied single molecules at this timescale but you could only theorise how a motor ensemble works."

Lewis Mosby is a PhD student in the Department of Physics and Warwick Medical School co-supervised by Dr Marco Polin and Dr Anne Straube. He is currently studying intracellular cargo transport supported by a grant from the Leverhulme Trust led by Dr Straube. Lewis Mosby is lead author on the paper and he programmed new particle tracking software to identify both the position and the orientation of the myosin filaments.

He said: "We used a code that was developed to detect galaxies and other objects in the sky, so it was fascinating to apply that to the exact opposite end of the scale."

As well as providing insights into the general function of the cortex of mammalian cells, these molecular motors are providing a model for new technologies.

Dr Köster adds: "This is a nice example of a self-organising composite with a range of different dynamics but all built in due to the properties of the proteins. That's an interesting feature if you are looking at, for example, smart materials. It's not only self-organising but also active, taking on different shapes depending on the consumption of energy."

Atomic bomb tests conducted during the Cold War have helped scientists for the first time correctly determine the age of whale sharks.

The discovery, published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, will help ensure the survival of the species - the largest fish in the world - which is classified as endangered.

Measuring the age of whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) has been difficult because, like all sharks and rays, they lack bony structures called otoliths that are used to assess the age of other fish.

Whale shark vertebrae feature distinct bands - a little like the rings of a tree trunk - and it was known that these increased in number as the animal grew older. However, some studies suggested that a new ring was formed every year, while others concluded that it happened every six months.

To resolve the question, researchers led by researchers led by Joyce Ong from Rutgers University in New Jersey, USA, Steven Campana from the University of Iceland, and Mark Meekan from the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Perth, Western Australia, turned to the radioactive legacy of the Cold War's nuclear arms race.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the USA, Soviet Union, Great Britain, France and China conducted tests of nuclear weapons. Many of these were explosions detonated several kilometres in the air.

One powerful result of the blasts was the temporary atmospheric doubling of an isotope called carbon-14.

Carbon-14 is a naturally occurring radioactive element that is often used by archaeologists and historians to date ancient bones and artefacts. Its rate of decay is constant and easily measured, making it ideal for providing age estimates for anything over 300 years old.

However, it is also a by-product of nuclear explosions. Fallout from the Cold War tests saturated first the air, and then the oceans. The isotope gradually moved through food webs into every living thing on the planet, producing an elevated carbon-14 label, or signature, which still persists.

This additional radioisotope also decays at a steady rate - meaning that the amount contained in bone formed at one point in time will be slightly greater than that contained in otherwise identical bone formed more recently.

Using bomb radiocarbon data prepared by Steven Campana, Ong, Meekan, and colleagues set about testing the carbon-14 levels in the growth rings of two long-dead whale sharks stored in Pakistan and Taiwan. Measuring the radioisotope levels in successive growth rings allowed a clear determination of how often they were created - and thus the age of the animal.

"We found that one growth ring was definitely deposited every year," Dr Meekan said.

"This is very important, because if you over- or under-estimate growth rates you will inevitably end up with a management strategy that doesn't work, and you'll see the population crash."

One of the specimens was conclusively established as 50 years old at death - the first time such an age has been unambiguously verified.

"Earlier modelling studies have suggested that the largest whale sharks may live as long as 100 years," Dr Meekan said.

"However, although our understanding of the movements, behaviour, connectivity and distribution of whale sharks have improved dramatically over the last 10 years, basic life history traits such as age, longevity and mortality remain largely unknown.

"Our study shows that adult sharks can indeed attain great age and that long lifespans are probably a feature of the species. Now we have another piece of the jigsaw added."

Whale sharks are today protected across their global range and are regarded as a high-value species for eco-tourism. AIMS is the world's leading whale shark research body, and the animal is the marine emblem of Dr Meekan's home state, Western Australia.

Drs Ong, Meekan, and Campana were aided by Dr Hua Hsun Hsu from the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia, and Dr Paul Fanning from the Pakistan node of the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation.

Ann Arbor, April 6, 2020 - A new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, published by Elsevier, reports valuable new grip strength metrics that provide healthcare practitioners with an easy-to-perform, time-efficient screening tool for type 2 diabetes (T2DM).

Muscular weakness is known to be associated with T2DM in otherwise seemingly healthy adults, however previous research had not found a way to assess this reliably. The current study was able to identify consistent grip strength cut points relative to body weight, gender, and age group in a large nationally representative sample of participants pre-screened for comorbid conditions such as hypertension.

"As the type 2 diabetes patient population continues to increase in the United States, diagnosing this disease in its early stages is becoming increasingly more important for preventing complications caused by blood vessel damage associated with diabetes. Our study identifies the levels of handgrip strength/weakness that correlate with T2DM in otherwise healthy men and women, according to their body weights and ages. Healthcare providers now have a reliable test to detect it early before such complications set in," explained lead investigator Elise C. Brown, PhD, Department of Public and Environmental Wellness, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA.

T2DM is linked to increased cardiovascular-related morbidity and mortality. Undiagnosed prediabetes and T2DM in the US in 2017 were estimated to cost $43.4 and $31.7 billion, respectively. This economic burden highlights the need for better early detection efforts. T2DM is asymptomatic in its initial stages, and a prompt diagnosis can prevent or delay vascular complications such as neuropathy, retinopathy and nephropathy.

Researchers analyzed survey data from the 2011-2012 and 2013-2014 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to establish normalized grip strength (grip strength relative to body weight) cut points for T2DM risk. Inexpensive portable handgrip dynamometer devices were used to determine hand and forearm strength. After controlling for sociodemographics (i.e., race/ethnicity, education, poverty, sex, and age), lifestyle factors (i.e., sedentary behavior, alcohol use, and smoking status), and waist circumference, the investigators identified the grip strength levels of at-risk patients who were otherwise healthy. These levels are presented with age- and sex-specific grip strength cut points that correspond to varying body weights to increase the ease of use for practitioners as indicators of when further diabetes diagnostic testing is warranted.

For example, the cut point for women aged 50-80 years is 0.49. This means that if a 60-year old woman's combined grip strength from left and right hands was 43 kg, and her body weight was 90 kg, her normalized grip strength would be 0.478. Since this value is less than 0.49, this indicates that she is at increased risk for diabetes and further screening is warranted.

"Given the low cost, minimal training requirement and quickness of the assessment, the use of the normalized grip strength cut points in this paper could be used in routine health screenings to identify at-risk patients and improve diagnosis and outcomes," added Dr. Brown. "This type of impactful research can make a difference for practitioners and individuals and is a key focal point of what Oakland University is all about. We are trying to improve the health and wellbeing of individuals."

The ice giant Uranus' unusual attributes have long puzzled scientists. All of the planets in our Solar System revolve around the Sun in the same direction and in the same plane, which astronomers believe is a vestige of how our Solar System formed from a spinning disc of gas and dust. Most of the planets in our Solar System also rotate in the same direction, with their poles orientated perpendicular to the plane the planets revolve in. However, uniquely among all the planets, Uranus' is tilted over about 98 degrees.

Instead of thinking about the reality of stars spread in all directions and at various distances from the Earth, it is easier to understand by envisioning the celestial sphere. To picture what the celestial sphere is, look up at the night sky and imagine that all of the stars you see are painted on the inside of a sphere surrounding the Solar System. Stars then seem to rise and set as the Earth moves relative to this 'sphere'. As Uranus rotates and orbits the Sun, it keeps its poles aimed at fixed points with relation to this sphere, so it appears to roll around and wobble from an Earth observer's perspective. Uranus also has a ring system, like Saturn's, and a slew of 27 moons which orbit the planet around its equator, so they too are tipped over. How Uranus' unusual set of properties came to be has now been explained by a research team led by Professor Shigeru Ida from the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Tokyo Institute of Technology. Their study suggests that early in the history of our Solar System, Uranus was struck by a small icy planet - roughly 1-3 times the mass of the Earth - which tipped the young planet over, and left behind its idiosyncratic moon and ring system as a 'smoking gun'.

The team came to this conclusion while they were constructing a novel computer simulation of moon formation around icy planets. Most of the planets in the Solar System have moons, and these display a menagerie of different sizes, orbits, compositions and other properties, which scientists believe can help explain how they formed. There is strong evidence Earth's own single moon formed when a rocky Mars-sized body hit the early Earth almost 4.5 billion years ago. This idea explains a great deal about the Earth and its Moon's composition, and the way the Moon orbits Earth.

Scientists expect such massive collisions were more common in the early Solar System, indeed they are part of the story of how all planets are thought to form. But Uranus must have experienced impacts that were very different from Earth simply because Uranus formed so much farther from the Sun. Since the Earth formed closer to the Sun where the environment was hotter, it is mostly made of what scientists call 'non-volatile' elements, meaning they don't form gases at normal Earth-surface pressures and temperatures; they are made of rock. In contrast, the outermost planets are largely composed of 'volatile' elements, for example things like water and ammonia. Even though these would be gases or liquids under Earth-surface like temperatures and pressures, at the huge distances from the Sun the outer planets orbit, they are frozen into solid ice.

According to professor Ida and his colleagues' study, giant impacts on distant icy planets would be completely different from those involving rocky planets, such as the impact scientists believe formed Earth's Moon. Because the temperature at which water ice forms is low, the impact debris from Uranus and its icy impactor would have mostly vapourised during the collision. This may have also been true for the rocky material involved in Earth's Moon-forming impact, but in contrast this rocky material had a very high condensation temperature, meaning it solidified quickly, and thus Earth's Moon was able to collect a significant amount of the debris created by the collision due to its own gravity. In the case of Uranus, a large icy impactor was able to tilt the planet, give it a rapid rotation period (Uranus' 'day' is presently ~ 17 hours, even faster than Earth's), and the leftover material from the collision remained gaseous longer. The largest mass body, what would become Uranus, then collected most of the leftovers, and thus Uranus' present moons are small. To be precise, the ratio of Uranus' mass to Uranus' moons' masses is greater than the ratio of Earth's mass to its moon by a factor of more than a hundred. Ida and colleagues' model beautifully reproduces the current configuration of Uranus' satellites.

As Professor Ida explains, 'This model is the first to explain the configuration of Uranus' moon system, and it may help explain the configurations of other icy planets in our Solar System such as Neptune. Beyond this, astronomers have now discovered thousands of planets around other stars, so-called exoplanets, and observations suggest that many of the newly discovered planets known as super-Earths in exoplanetary systems may consist largely of water ice and this model can also be applied to these planets.'

"Do CEOs matter?" has been a perennial question in management discourse. But "the CEO effect" has been notoriously difficult to isolate -- a moving target caught in the slipstream of dynamic forces that shape firm performance.

So Morten Bennedsen, INSEAD Professor of Economics and the André and Rosalie Hoffmann Chaired Professor of Family Enterprise, along with colleagues Francisco Perez-Gonzalez (ITAM and NBER) and Daniel Wolfenzon (Columbia University and NBER) decided to find out how much CEOs matter by measuring the impact on firm performance when a CEO is absent, specifically, hospitalised.

They find, in a forthcoming paper, "Do CEOs Matter? Evidence from Hospitalization Events", soon to be published in the Journal of Finance, that the financial ramifications of CEO hospitalisation are significant.

Based on data of nearly 13,000 Danish SMEs between 1996 and 2012, Bennedsen and his co-authors find that five-to-seven day hospitalisations sent firm profitability tumbling by 7% in the year of illness. Longer hospital stays of 10 days or more wreaked even deeper damage, lowering operating return on assets (OROA) by a full percentage point.

Given that the average age of today's CEOs is between 57 and 60 (depending on the industry), hospitalization is also a sadly plausible possibility - especially so in light of the ongoing coronavirus epidemic, which is spreading rapidly and even infecting senior government officials and celebrities.

Compared to hospitalisations involving senior managers subordinate to the CEO, chief executive hospitalisations cost firms more than twice as much.

In exploring hospitalisations, their purpose was to gain more clarity on "the CEO effect" - i.e. the portion of firm-level performance directly attributable to the chief executive., but a proxy effect stemming from industry differences or even blind luck cannot be discounted.

Focusing on hospitalization enabled the study authors to gauge the CEO effect by comparing an organisation's performance during the year of the CEO's illness to that of past years under the same CEO.

To ensure the noted effects genuinely derived from the temporary loss of the CEO, the authors controlled for various other factors, including turnover among senior managers, prior health scares from the same CEO which might boost organizational preparedness, and firm performance prior to the CEO's hospitalization. None of these yielded statistically significant results, suggesting it was indeed the CEO's absence that caused the pronounced dip in performance.

However, the degree of the dip varied depending on a number of attributes. It was greater in the case of younger, better-educated and more experienced CEOs, as well as for organisations with above-average power concentration at the top of the hierarchy. Additionally, firms within rapidly expanding and human capital intensive industries - which demand more management skill - took especially heavy hits when a CEO was admitted to hospital.

Bennedsen says, "These results provide suggestive evidence of the setting in which CEO succession and contingency plans may have the most meaningful effect on performance...In addition, they point to the possibility of CEO absence as a neglected area of risk exposure, which HR managers should perhaps be aware of so they can effectively intervene if need be."

Scientists from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IPC PAS) in cooperation with the Faculty of Chemistry of the Warsaw University of Technology (WUT) have developed a new, solvent-free method for the encapsulation of drug molecules in MOF (Metal-Organic Framework) porous materials.

Nowadays, new drug delivery systems for the controlled release of biologically active molecules are instrumental in modern pharmaceutical technology. In recent years, MOFs - a class of organic-inorganic hybrid crystalline porous materials have attracted a great deal of attention as drug carriers due to their amphiphilic internal environment and tunable high and regular porosity. Traditional drug-loading methods rely on the incorporation of a particular drug by soaking an activated MOF in appropriately prepared drug solutions. This seemingly simple procedure is time consuming as it requires many steps such as the synthesis and activation of the MOF, soaking, washing and drying. Furthermore, the loading capacity of the materials obtained in this manner is usually lower than that found in currently used mesoporous silicas or organic carriers.

"What we're looking for is a rational design and synthesis of molecular building units and their controlled transformation into hybrid functional materials in bottom-up processes including both traditional wet methods and environmentally-friendly mechanochemical processes," says Janusz Lewinski, the senior author of the study.

Now, researchers at the IPC PAS and WUT have developed a new and simple solvent-free drug encapsulation method that uses a pre-assembled metal complex incorporating the drug molecule and this type of cluster acts as both the drug and MOF precursor. According to the researchers, this new approach could both dramatically improve the efficiency of drug encapsulation in MOF materials as well as opening the way to formulating a vast array of "drug@MOF" composites.

"This is a very simple and quick procedure, in which the rapid and solvent-free mechanochemical reaction provides us with a "drug@MOF" composite in just 20 minutes," said Dr. Daniel Prochowicz.

"The solvent-free mechanochemical synthesis is very simple. We need solid precursors and an electric ball mill to carry out the reaction. Then, during the grinding of the substrates, mechanical force does the job for us," says Jan Nawrocki, PhD student in the Lewi?ski Group and first author of the publication reporting the novel synthetic strategy.

The scientists point out that this proof of concept involving a pre-assembled ibuprofen-functionalized copper cluster is only the beginning of their research into more biocompatible metal clusters based, among others, on zirconium and iron ions.

"The road to bringing MOFs to the pharmaceutical market is probably still long and winding, but when they are, our method will be the most favourable from an economic point of view," says Prochowicz.

New research led by hearing scientists at Oregon Health & Science University suggests an avenue to treat and prevent intractable genetic disorders before birth.

Researchers at the Oregon Hearing Research Center, working with mice, injected a specially designed synthetic molecule into the developing inner ear of fetal mice 12 days after fertilization. The study found that the technique corrected the expression of a mutated gene that causes Usher syndrome, a disorder characterized by deafness and progressive vision loss affecting an estimated 4 to 17 of every 100,000 people.

The technique does not directly translate to clinical applications in people. However, the new research combined with previous findings suggests it may be possible to deliver the drug therapy through amniotic fluid in the womb to the fetus.

The findings will be published in the journal Nucleic Acids Research.

Scientists designed a synthetic antisense oligonucleotide, or ASO, which targets and then attaches to precise nucleic acid sequences. In this case, the molecule was designed to target pre-messenger RNA, a class of molecules that influences when, where, and how strongly genes are expressed in a cell. When scientists injected the ASO into the developing inner ear of fetal mice carrying the gene mutation, the mice developed with no symptoms of Usher syndrome.

"This shows that direct administration of the ASO to the inner ear restored hearing and balance," said senior author John V. Brigande, Ph.D., principle investigator for the Oregon Hearing Research Center at OHSU.

Researchers expect to move from a mouse model to nonhuman primates, which more closely model human hearing loss, before the technique would be ready for human clinical trials. Brigande said he expects it will be useful in potentially treating and preventing several types of congenital forms of hearing and balance disorders.

This work represents the latest in several OHSU initiatives to develop new genetic tools to address genetic conditions.

Recently, researchers in the OHSU Casey Eye Institute for the first time used another gene editing technique called CRISPR to edit genes within the human body. In 2017, OHSU researchers generated worldwide attention when they corrected a gene mutation that causes a deadly heart condition in early human embryos.

"In our complementary approach to gene editing in early-stage embryos in a dish, we seek to correct aberrant gene expression in the fetal inner ear while inside the uterus to restore hearing and balance," Brigande said. "We think both approaches have high merit."

April 03, 2020-- In a new study, researchers identified the most common characteristics of 85 COVID-19 patients who died in Wuhan, China in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic. The study reports on commonalities of the largest group of coronavirus patient deaths to be studied to date. The paper was published online in the American Thoracic Society's American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

In "Clinical Features of 85 Fatal Cases of COVID-19 From Wuhan: A Retrospective Observational Study," researchers from China and the United States report on an analysis of the electronic health records of patients with COVID-19 who died despite treatment at two hospitals in Wuhan: Hanan Hospital and Wuhan Union Hospital between Jan. 9 and Feb. 15, 2020. Wuhan, in China's Hubei Province, was the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak.

"The greatest number of deaths in our cohort were in males over 50 with non-communicable chronic diseases," stated the authors. "We hope that this study conveys the seriousness of COVID-19 and emphasizes the risk groups of males over 50 with chronic comorbid conditions including hypertension (high blood pressure), coronary heart disease and diabetes."

The researchers examined the medical records of 85 patients who had died, and recorded information on their medical histories, exposures to coronavirus, additional chronic diseases they had (comorbidities), symptoms, laboratory findings, CT scan results and clinical management. Statistical analyses were then done.

The median age of these patients was 65.8, and 72.9 percent were men. Their most common symptoms were fever, shortness of breath (dyspnea) and fatigue.

Hypertension, diabetes and coronary heart disease were the most common comorbidities. A little over 80 0 percent of patients had very low counts of eosinophils (cells that are reduced in severe respiratory infections) on admission. Complications included respiratory failure, shock, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and cardiac arrhythmia, among others. Most patients received antibiotics, antivirals and glucocorticoids (types of steroids). Some were given intravenous immunoglobulin or interferon alpha-2b.

The researchers noted: "The effectiveness of medications such as antivirals or immunosuppressive agents against COVID-19 is not completely known. Perhaps our most significant observation is that while respiratory symptoms may not develop until a week after presentation, once they do there can be a rapid decline, as indicated by the short duration between time of admission and death (6.35 days on average) in our study."

Based on their findings, eosinophilopenia - abnormally low levels of eosinophils in the blood - may indicate a poor prognosis. The scientists also noted that the early onset of shortness of breath may be used as an observational symptom for COVID-19 symptoms. In addition, they noted that a combination of antimicrobial drugs (antivirals, antibiotics) did not significantly help these patients. The majority of patients studied died from multiple organ failure.

"Our study, which investigated patients from Wuhan, China who died in the early phases of this pandemic, identified certain characteristics. As the disease has spread to other regions, the observations from these areas may be the same, or different. Genetics may play a role in the response to the infection, and the course of the pandemic may change as the virus mutates as well. Since this is a new pandemic that is constantly shifting, we think the medical community needs to keep an open mind as more and more studies are conducted."

A case study of a patient in Wuhan, China, suggests that the immunosuppressant tocilizumab may be an effective COVID-19 treatment for very ill patients who also have multiple myeloma and other blood cancers.

The report, published in Blood Advances, also suggests that blood cancer patients may have atypical COVID-19 symptoms.

The patient, a 60-year-old male who had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2015 and was on maintenance therapy, was hospitalized in February for chest tightness and shortness of breath. Although he did not show symptoms of cough or fever, he tested positive for COVID-19 and his illness was classified as severe.

Treatment with antiviral and corticosteroid therapies did not fully resolve his symptoms. On the second day in the hospital, a chest CT scan showed that the patient had ground glass opacities in his lungs, which are a characteristic of pneumonia. His levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6), a pro-inflammatory cytokine, were high. After one intravenous administration of tocilizumab, the patient's IL-6 levels decreased. Three days after tocilizumab treatment, his chest tightness had resolved; 10 days later, his CT scan had cleared and he was discharged from the hospital.

"Our patients with hematologic malignancies are immunosuppressed, which may put them at higher risk for novel coronavirus infection. What are the characteristics of COVID-19 in patients with blood cancers? What is the optimal treatment approach? Everything is unknown, and that was the motivation for this study," said Changcheng Zheng, MD, of the University of Science and Technology of China and the study's lead author.

Tocilizumab is commonly used to treat cytokine release syndrome, a systemic inflammatory response that occurs in response to treatment with certain types of immunotherapies. Dr. Zheng and his team suggest the agent may treat COVID-19 by addressing the acute severe inflammatory response, or "cytokine storm," that the virus triggers. However, they emphasize the need for more research into the potential mechanisms of action.

Dr. Zheng also suggests that because the patient had chest tightness and shortage of breath without other COVID-19 symptoms, specifically cough and fever, clinical symptoms of the virus may not be typical in patients who have hematologic malignancies.

The research team hopes this case study may offer insights and stimulate more research. "Tocilizumab was effective in the treatment of COVID-19 in this patient with multiple myeloma, but further prospective and randomized clinical trials are needed to verify the findings," said Dr. Zheng.

In March 2020, the FDA approved a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase III clinical trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of intravenous tocilizumab for the treatment of adult patients with COVID-19.

What The Viewpoint Says: Whether individuals should continue to take angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers in the context of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is discussed in this article.

Authors: Majd AlGhatrif, M.D., M.A., of the National Institutes of Health in Baltimore, is the corresponding author.

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

(doi:10.1001/jamacardio.2020.1329)

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