Culture

Forensics specialists can use a commercial assay targeting mitochondrial DNA to accurately discriminate between wolf, coyote and dog species, according to a new study from North Carolina State University. The genetic information can be obtained from smaller or more degraded samples, and could aid authorities in prosecuting hunting jurisdiction violations and preserving protected species.

In the U.S., certain wolf subspecies or species are endangered and restricted in terms of hunting status. It is also illegal to deliberately breed wolves or coyotes with domesticated dogs.

"If it's a case where you have a whole specimen, authorities can typically identify it based on physical characteristics, though similarity between some species makes that method less than ideal," says Kelly Meiklejohn, assistant professor of forensic science at NC State and corresponding author of the research. "If you're working with cross-bred animals, or incomplete specimens, you need DNA-based methods to accurately determine what species you have."

Although some U.S. federal laboratories perform DNA-based identification of wolves and coyotes, their methods and genetic reference databases aren't publicly available. Meiklejohn partnered with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to see if it was possible to use a commercially available assay designed for dogs as a way to recover the mitochondrial genome from diverse North American canid species.

The mitochondrial genome is one of two genomes inherited from an animal's parents. Specifically, the mitochondrial genome is inherited from the mother. It is useful for species identification both because its circular shape makes it less prone to degradation, and because there are more copies of this genome per cell, increasing the chance of retrieving useful material from small or damaged samples.

The team used a method, called a 'hybridization capture,' in which about 80 base-pair long RNA fragments are used to isolate DNA for sequencing. Samples are incubated with the RNA fragments, and if there's a match, the fragment will bind with the sample's DNA. The bound DNA can be isolated and sequenced. In this case, the team used a hybridization capture panel designed for the dog mitochondrial genome.

"The fragments will bind if there is about 80% similarity, which is why we felt the dog kit would be useful for sequencing wolves and coyotes," Meiklejohn says. "Dogs only diverged from wolves around 20,000 years ago, so the mitochondrial genomes aren't that different."

They sequenced 51 samples, and were able to recover full mitochondrial genomes and successfully differentiate between four species of interest: dog, wolf, Mexican wolf, and coyote.

"Essentially, this finding means we can do more with less," Meiklejohn says. "In forensics we rarely have high quality DNA samples; they've usually been exposed to the environment and are degraded. The flexibility of this kit allows us to determine the species we're looking at, which in turn may aid in prosecuting hunting or breeding violations and protecting endangered canid species."

EAST LANSING, Mich. - Diagnosing a rare medical condition is difficult. Identifying a treatment for it can take years of trial and error. In a serendipitous intersection of research expertise, an ill patient in this case a child and innovative technology, Bachmann-Bupp Syndrome has gone from a list of symptoms to a successful treatment in just 16 months.

The paper chronicling this lightning-fast scientific response to the Bachmann-Bupp Syndrome was published in the open-access journal, eLife.

For more than 25 years, André Bachmann, professor of pediatrics in Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, had been studying the ODC1 gene. This gene and its protein product ODC, which produces polyamines are crucial for cell survival and contribute to many developmental processes, including muscle tone and motor skills in children.

Through Bachmann's research, he also knew that the drug difluoromethylornithine, or DFMO, (sometimes referred to as eflornithine), had already been successful and approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treating other diseases linked to problems with ODC like African sleeping sickness and hirsutism (excessive hair growth). It was also studied in cancer clinical trials of colon cancer and pediatric neuroblastoma.

In 2018, Caleb Bupp, a medical geneticist at Helen DeVos Children's Hospital in Grand Rapids and clinical assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Human Development in Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, had an unusual patient. Three-year-old Marley Berthoud's symptoms included a large head size, complete hair loss, low muscle tone and developmental delays. She could not hold her head up, feed herself, crawl or communicate.

When Bupp sequenced Marley's exome (the part of the human genome that contains the genetic code for making proteins), he discovered a mutation on her ODC1 gene. Bupp recalled a presentation by Surender Rajasekaran, a pediatric ICU physician at Helen DeVos and assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Human Development in the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, and Bachmann about ODC1, and he reached out to them.

Marley's ODC1 gene mutation caused her body to accumulate lots of ODC protein which was building up in her system. Bachmann knew from his previous work that DFMO deactivates ODC proteins.

"We can't stop her body from accumulating ODC protein, but we can make the protein inactive," Bachmann said.

Bupp was encouraged by Bachmann's previous research showing that DFMO was safe and had minimal side effects on patients, especially children. With her family's approval, Marley started taking DFMO in 2019. This was the first FDA-approved single-patient study in the world to treat a patient with an ODC1 mutation using DFMO.

"From the discovery of the syndrome until the patient's first dose it took less than two years," Bachmann said. "That doesn't usually happen so quickly."

While Bachmann, Bupp, Rajasekaran and Berthoud's family waited to see if DFMO would work, Marley's list of symptoms was given the official name of Bachmann-Bupp Syndrome by the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man, an online database of human genes and genetic disorders.

"This rarely happens," Bachmann said. "As of today, and still many years from now, medical students will be learning about Bachmann-Bupp Syndrome and this all started at MSU."

Since she started taking DFMO, Marley has made tremendous progress. She has gained muscle tone which means she can hold her head up, feed herself with a spoon and crawl, but the most visible sign of success has been a full head of new hair growth.

"It's astounding," Bachmann said. "When I first saw a picture of her, I couldn't believe she had grown that much hair in a year, and she managed to sled down a hill by herself."

Seeing all of this external progress was promising but Bupp wanted to go a step further to learn more about the internal changes happening inside Marley's body from the DFMO treatment. Bupp contacted Metabolon, a health technology company based in Morrisville, North Carolina, that has developed a tool for the detecting biological markers of rare diseases and response to treatment.

Metabolon's Precision Metabolomics technology could test Marley's blood samples before and during treatment to find out exactly how her body's metabolism responded to DFMO treatment and the effect the drug was having on her body.

"There is not really a regular lab test you can do to look at that, so working with Metabolon gave us that window into Marley's biochemistry that wouldn't have been possible otherwise," Bupp said. "What we saw in the numbers agreed with what we were observing with our eyes -- Her body was changing on the inside too."

The result of what was happening inside Marley's body confirmed that DFMO works and was just as impressive as what was happening on the outside.

"Now Marley is using some sign language, where previously she couldn't communicate," Bupp said. "My heart melted when she was able to give me a high five for the first time."

With more than two-thirds of American adults vaccinated with at least one dose of an authorized Covid-19 vaccine, the top U.S. health agencies retain the trust of the vast majority of the American public, as does Dr. Anthony Fauci, the public face of U.S. efforts to combat the virus, according to a new survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania.

The survey revealed growing public confidence in both the safety and effectiveness of vaccines to prevent Covid-19.

But after months of attacks on Fauci in conservative and social media, the survey found that people who said they rely on conservative and very conservative media rather than other sources were more likely to have less confidence in Fauci's trustworthiness on Covid-19 and more likely to accept misinformation about him and misinformation and conspiracy theories about the authorized Covid-19 vaccines and the novel coronavirus.

The survey also found that a growing number of Americans - more than 1 in 3 - believes that the coronavirus was created by the Chinese government as a biological weapon.

"Our analysis of the data shows that there is good news and bad news here," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. "Those who underestimate the lethality of Covid-19 or the safety of Covid-19 vaccination are less likely to accept a Covid-19 vaccination. The same is true of those who believe Covid-19 conspiracy theories. By contrast, those who trust health authorities are more likely to seek vaccination. Deceptive messages that undermine trust in a health expert such as Dr. Fauci are deeply worrisome."

The latest Annenberg Science Knowledge (ASK) survey was conducted among 1,719 U.S. adult respondents from June 2 - June 22, 2021. Data were weighted to represent the target U.S. adult population. The margin of error is ± 3.2 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. The panel survey is a follow-up to an April 2021 ASK survey with 1,941 respondents. (See the Appendix for additional data.)

Confidence in U.S. health authorities

The ASK survey found that the most trustworthy source of information for treating and preventing Covid-19 is the doctor or nurse who is an individual's primary health care provider:

Primary health care provider: 83% are confident their primary health care provider is providing trustworthy information about Covid-19;

Food and Drug Administration: 77% are confident that the FDA, which authorized emergency use of the Covid-19 vaccines available in the United States, is providing trustworthy information about treating and preventing Covid-19 - statistically about the same as the 75% in April and up significantly from 71% in August 2020 in an earlier Annenberg Public Policy Center survey;

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: 76% are confident that the CDC is providing trustworthy information on Covid-19, about the same as in April (75%) and August 2020 (72%);

Dr. Anthony Fauci: 68% overall are confident that Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is providing trustworthy advice on Covid-19, statistically about the same as in April (71%) and August 2020 (68%).

Conservative media and lower confidence

For more than a year, some prominent hosts in the conservative media have attacked Fauci's credibility. Fox News's Laura Ingraham falsely claimed on June 2, 2021, "Much of what Fauci said about this virus, the drugs that could treat it, and the measures that could be taken to slow the spread was untrue. He knew it was untrue."

The survey found that those who indicated that they rely on conservative and very conservative media have less confidence in U.S. health authorities providing trustworthy information about Covid-19 - especially Fauci.

Among people who said they rely all the time or often on ...

Very conservative media sources such as Newsmax, One America News (OAN), Gateway Pundit, Parler, or Telegram: 55% are confident about trustworthiness of the FDA, 52% are confident about the trustworthiness of the CDC, and only 38% are confident in the trustworthiness of Fauci.

Conservative media such as Fox News: Nearly 7 in 10 are confident that the CDC (68%) and FDA (69%) are providing the public with trustworthy information on Covid-19, but just over half (51%) have confidence that Fauci is doing so.

Mainstream broadcast and print news media such as CBS, ABC, and NBC News, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal news pages, and the Associated Press: 87% are confident in trustworthiness of the CDC and FDA, and 84% in Fauci.

Social media such as Facebook: 80% are confident that the CDC and FDA are providing the public with trustworthy information on Covid, and 71% have confidence that Fauci is providing trustworthy information.

Confidence in Covid-19 vaccines

In June, a growing majority of the U.S. public said the Covid-19 vaccines are safe and effective:

78% of the U.S. public believes it is definitely or probably true that Covid-19 vaccines are effective in preventing Covid-19, up significantly from 74% in April;

o Those who say this is definitely true grew to 46%, from 38% in April. (NOTE: THESE UNFILLED-IN BULLETS ARE INDENTED UNDER A REGULAR BULLET)

76% of the U.S. public believes it is definitely or probably true that it is safer to get the Covid-19 vaccine than to get Covid-19, about the same as the 75% in April;

o Those who say this is definitely true grew to 54%, from 49% in April, a significant change.

o In the presence of statistical controls, the more ideologically conservative that people described themselves as, the less likely they are to believe that it is true that it is safer to get the Covid-19 vaccine than to get Covid-19.

Conspiracy beliefs

The survey asked respondents about misinformation and conspiracy theories.

Bioweapon conspiracy theory: Over 1 in 3 people (35%) said it was true that the coronavirus was created by the Chinese government as a biological weapon, up slightly from 31% in April. Another 42% said that statement was false and 23% were not sure. (Although the origin of the coronavirus is still uncertain, there currently is no evidence it was created by the Chinese as a bioweapon.)

o In the presence of statistical controls, those who say they rely on conservative media such as Fox News or very conservative media such as OAN are more likely to believe this conspiracy theory. Those who say they rely on mainstream media are more likely to reject this theory.

Among the instances in which a conservative media outlet legitimized the Chinese bioweapon theory was Tucker Carlson's Fox News show on June 30, 2021, which featured an interview with a Chinese "coronavirus whistleblower" who claimed that Covid-19 was a "biologically engineered weapon that got out of control... " And on June 8, 2021, conservative personality Steve Bannon hosted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) on his podcast "War Room: Pandemic," where she claimed that Fauci was sending "American tax dollars" to the Chinese lab in Wuhan "to fund this research that was creating ... a virus that can spread rapidly among a population, make people sick and kill them... [with] these viruses that they experiment with like some sort of Dr. Frankenstein experiments: These are bioweapons."

In addition, while most respondents knew that a vaccine conspiracy theory involving Bill Gates and microchips was false, a worrisome number either thought it was true or were unsure:

Gates/microchip conspiracy theory: 75% correctly said it was false that the vaccine against Covid-19 developed with support from Microsoft founder Bill Gates contains microchips that can track the person who has been vaccinated, but 1 in 4 people either said this conspiracy theory was true (11%) or were not sure (14%). None of the authorized Covid-19 vaccines contain microchips and while the Gates Foundation has a partnership with BioNTech, the foundation says it did not directly invest in either the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna Covid-19 vaccines.

o In the presence of statistical controls, those who say they rely on conservative media or very conservative media are more likely to believe this claim.

Misinformation

Fauci and vaccines: Asked if it was true that Dr. Anthony Fauci of the NIH "has NO financial stake" in any Covid-19 vaccine, only 37% said it was true - a decline from the 42% who said it was true in April. Another 32% thought it was false to say Fauci had no financial stake in a Covid vaccine, and 30% were not sure. (There is no evidence Fauci has a financial stake in a Covid-19 vaccine.)

o In the presence of statistical controls, those who indicate that they rely on conservative media or very conservative media are more likely to say this is false - in other words, to reject the idea that Fauci has no financial stake in any vaccine. Those who say they rely on mainstream news are more likely to say this is true.

Give you Covid-19: 75% correctly said it was false that taking a Covid-19 vaccine can give you Covid-19 - it can't - but 1 in 4 people said it was true (14%) or were not sure (11%);

Change your DNA: 71% correctly said it was false that the Covid-19 vaccine changes people's DNA - it does not - but nearly 3 in 10 people thought it was true (12%) or were not sure (17%).

The lab leak theory

As scientists search for the origins of SARS-CoV-2, more than half the survey respondents said they believe the virus came from a lab in Wuhan, China - and got out through either a deliberate or an accidental leak. When asked which statement was closest to their view:

20% said the coronavirus was deliberately leaked from a Wuhan, China, laboratory;

33% said the coronavirus accidentally escaped through carelessness or incompetence from the Wuhan lab;

13% said the coronavirus did not originate in a lab in Wuhan, China;

34% said they were not sure.

Vaccination and prevention

Asked about prevention and vaccination, 70% of respondents said they have gotten a Covid-19 vaccine, up from 47% in April. The other 30% (442 people) said they have not been vaccinated.

Of those 442 people who have not been vaccinated,

76% said they had the information they need to decide if they want to get vaccinated, and 24% said they did not have it;

75% said they were not likely to get vaccinated (333 people) and 25% said they were likely to be vaccinated.

Those who were not likely to be vaccinated (333 people) were asked to give their reasons why and select all that applied. Due to multiple responses, the results total over 100%. Their top five reasons:

o 61% said the vaccines were still too untested or they were waiting to see what happens - which increased significantly from the 48% who gave this reason in April;

o 44% are worried about allergies and side effects;

o 43% don't trust the government;

o 36% don't trust the scientists and companies that make the vaccines;

o And 32% are "just not concerned" about coronavirus/Covid-19.

For the survey Appendix containing the methodology and additional data, click here.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center was established in 1993 to educate the public and policy makers about communication's role in advancing public understanding of political, science, and health issues at the local, state, and federal levels.

Led by Dr Jonas Warneke, researchers at the Wilhelm Ostwald Institute of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at Leipzig University have made a decisive advance in the study of one type of highly reactive particles. Based on their research, they now understand the "binding preferences" of these particles.

Their research serves as the basis for the targeted use of these highly reactive molecules, for example, to generate new molecular structures or to bind hazardous chemical "waste" and in this way dispose of it. The researchers have now published their findings in the journal Chemistry - A European Journal, and their research was featured on the cover thanks to the excellent review they received.

What molecules and people have in common

Molecules and people actually have a lot in common. There are those who are lethargic and prefer to keep to themselves, and there are those who are very active and outgoing. And then there are those who are so dissatisfied with their situation that they haphazardly attack everyone in their surroundings. If you want to get them to behave in a social manner, you must first understand the reason for their attacks. Chemists work with highly reactive compounds in a similar way. Given their exceptional reactivity, targeted syntheses (the production of a specific molecule) with these compounds are extremely difficult. If you want these highly reactive compounds to react with a specific molecule, this usually fails because they instead react with the solvent in their environment. They bind with everything that comes across their path. "But this is, in fact, the huge opportunity that these compounds offer. They are able to induce even very unreactive small molecules and atoms to react in ways that would not have been otherwise possible", explains Warneke.

Directing highly reactive compounds

For several years now, researchers at the Wilhelm Ostwald Institute have investigated a special type of highly reactive compound with twelve boron atoms that can bind even the very unreactive noble gases. Eleven boron atoms have a binding partner (called a substituent), while the twelfth boron atom carries out the attack. How can we direct these highly reactive compounds so that targeted syntheses will be possible in the future? To answer this question, the researchers produced these highly reactive compounds in the solvent-free and airless environment of a mass spectrometer and thus isolated the compounds in such a way that there were no compounds in their environment for them to attack.

In a second step, the highly reactive compounds were selectively fed reaction partners that they attacked. The researchers found that the "aggressiveness" of the compounds changed when the substituents were altered. "This wasn't surprising at first", Warneke says. "However, we then found that the propensity to attack did not simply become stronger or weaker as a result of this exchange of atoms, but instead it depended strongly on which reaction partner was present." The researchers were able to show that the substituents have a strong influence on the reactivity and trace the reaction preferences back to a very specific chemical bond that forms to varying degrees depending on the reaction partner.

This finding surprised the researchers because in chemistry this type of bond is more commonly found with metal compounds and not with the boron compounds studied, which belong to the non-metal compounds. This hypothesis was finally proven beyond reasonable doubt by special experimental and theoretical methods carried out by the early career research group under Warneke in partnership with the working groups led by Prof. Dr. Knut Asmis and Prof. Dr. Ralf Tonner, both from the Wilhelm Ostwald Institute. The group will continue its research together with its partners from Wuppertal. They hope to be able to use molecules such as carbon monoxide or nitrogen from the air in this way for targeted syntheses. But Warneke says there is still a long way to go before that happens.

We all like to think that we know ourselves best, but, given that our brain activity is largely governed by our subconscious mind, it is probably our brain that knows us better! While this is only a hypothesis, researchers from Japan have already proposed a content recommendation system that assumes this to be true. Essentially, such a system makes use of its user's brain signals (acquired using, say, an MRI scan) when exposed to a particular content and eventually, by exploring various users and contents, builds up a general model of brain activity.

"Once we obtain the 'ultimate' brain model, we should be able to perfectly estimate the brain activity of a person exposed to a specific content," says Prof. Ryoichi Shinkuma from Shibaura Institute of Technology, Japan, who was a part of the team that came up with the idea. "This could provide powerful solutions in the commercial field, such as reduce the costs of targeted advertising."

However, a major drawback presents itself at the outset: acquiring MRI scans is expensive. A typical brain scan would involve deployment and maintenance costs of an MRI, the labor costs of specialists, and the recruitment costs of a large number of participants. Faced with this challenge, Prof. Shinkuma and his team has come up with an ingenious solution: using profile information of people to infer their brain model.

In a new study published in the IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems, the team proposes a scheme that attempts to mitigate the trade-off between the performance associated with inferring the brain model from profile information and the cost of acquiring that information. "Our scheme utilizes machine learning (ML) to create a brain model based on inference of profile model," explains Prof. Shinkuma. "To reduce the cost of information collection, we make use of the feature selection capability of ML to narrow down the number of questionnaire items by estimating the extent to which each item contributes to the inference performance."

Specifically, the feature selection process quantified the contribution of a questionnaire item by attributing to it an "importance score" and then retained only those with top importance scores for the inference. This allowed the team to maintain a high inference performance while limiting the information cost at the same time.

To validate the effectiveness of their scheme, the team evaluated its performance accuracy using a brain model obtained experimentally and a profile model based on real profile information. They found that the scheme achieved nearly the same level of inference accuracy of the brain model as the case employing 209 questionnaires by using only 15-20 topmost items. This suggested that only the top 10% questionnaire items were enough for inferring the brain model.

"An important next step will be to determine the best combination of ML and feature selection method for optimizing the performance of our scheme," says an excited Prof. Shinkuma, contemplating future research directions of their work. "At the same time, we will need to reduce the total computation cost for real-world applications involving large number of users."

Looks like, in a not too distant future, our knowledge of who we are might come from the outside!

July 19, 2021 - At the organization responsible for certifying the training and skills of US urologists, achieving and maintaining diversity, equity and inclusion is more than just a "numbers game," according to a special article in Urology Practice®, an Official Journal of the American Urological Association (AUA). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

In the new article, the American Board of Urology (ABU) points out that the practice of diversity and inclusion has been a cornerstone of its values for years. However, the Board acknowledges that while progress has been made, more work remains to be done. The authors included ABU Trustees Douglas A. Husmann, MD, Martha K. Terris, MD, and Cheryl T. Lee, MD, and Executive Director J. Brantley Thrasher, MD.

Building and sustaining diversity and inclusion at ABU
The report focuses on informing ABU diplomates about initiatives to evaluate and strengthen diversity and representation on three Committees central to the ABU's mission: The Board of Trustees and the Written and Oral Examinations Committees. For several years it has been the ABU's standard of practice to perform a yearly GAP analysis, comparing and contrasting the membership of their committees to the characteristics of their constituents: practicing urologists within the United States, as defined by the American Urology Association's 2019 annual National Census.

The selection of new Committee members is subsequently based on both the individual's merit and an attempt to match or exceed the diversity ratios defined within the Census regarding gender, race, ethnicity, geography of practice, and subspecialty area. This year's evaluation revealed the ABU committee structure consisted of 85% men and 15% women, compared to 90% and 10% in the 2019 National Census, respectively.

Regarding race and ethnicity, proportions of Committee members compared to the National Census of practicing urologists were non-Hispanic White, 74% versus 81%; Asian, 22% versus 12%; Black/African American, 3% versus 2%; and Hispanic, 1% versus 4%. Regarding region of practice, the ABU assesses the proportion of US urologists practicing within a given section, and attempts to achieve a Committee structure that is equivalent or within 1 to 4 percentage points.

While counting and comparing gender and racial/ethnic representation is a necessary first step, establishing ratios has not been found to change societal behavior or attitudes substantially - and indeed may have significant negative unintended consequences. Dr. Husmann and coauthors outline a series of "continuous and structural processes" to promote a lasting culture of diversity and inclusion. Specific aims include:

Educating ABU diplomates and Committee members regarding the benefits of diversity
Educating Committee members about the concept of unconscious bias
Performing rigorous assessments of the ABU written and oral examinations to verify the absence of implicit bias
Stressing the need to mentor today's diverse constituency of young urologists to participate and eventually take over leading roles in state, regional and national committees - giving them the experience they will need to succeed as ABU Committee members
Anticipating the changing demographics of the next generation of urologists - for example, whereas only 10 percent of urologists currently in practice are women, they account for 30 percent of residents in training
Above all else, encouraging frank and open discussions regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion

Dr. Husmann and coauthors conclude: "The ability to achieve and maintaining diversity, equity, and inclusion is an imperative requiring regular attention and discussion to ensure that we continually strive to reflect the values and principles of both the public and the diplomates we serve."

Click here to read "The American Board of Urology: In Pursuit of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion."

DOI: 10.1097/UPJ.0000000000000244

A recent study in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems shows that the fruits of a type of tomato plant send electrical signals to the rest of the plant when they are infested by caterpillars. Plants have a multitude of chemical and hormonal signaling pathways, which are generally transmitted through the sap (the nutrient-rich water that moves through the plant). In the case of fruits, nutrients flow exclusively to the fruit and there has been little research into whether there is any communication in the opposite direction--i.e. from fruit to plant.

"We usually forget that a plant's fruits are living and semiautonomous parts of their mother-plants, far more complex than we currently think. Since fruits are part of the plant, made of the same tissues of the leaves and stems, why couldn't they communicate with the plant, informing it about what they are experiencing, just like regular leaves do?" says first author Dr Gabriela Niemeyer Reissig, of the Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil. "What we found is that fruits can share important information such as caterpillar attacks--which is a serious issue for a plant--with the rest of the plant, and that can probably prepare other parts of the plant for the same attack."

A tomato's defense

To test the hypothesis that fruits communicate by electrical signals, Niemeyer Reissig and her collaborators placed tomato plants in a Faraday's cage with electrodes at the ends of the branches connecting the fruits to the plant. They then measured the electrical responses before, during and after the fruits had been attacked by Helicoverpa armigera caterpillars for 24 hours. The team also used machine learning to identify patterns in the signals.

The results showed a clear difference between the signals before and after attack. In addition, the authors measured the biochemical responses, such as defensive chemicals like hydrogen peroxide, across other parts of the plant. This showed that these defenses were triggered even in parts of the plant that were far away from the damage caused by the caterpillars.

The authors emphasize that these are still early results. Their measurements provide a "big picture" view of all of the electrical signals, rather than distinguishing individual signals more precisely. It will also be interesting to see whether this phenomenon holds true for other plant species, as well as different types of threats.

That said, this novel use of machine learning appears to have very high potential for answering these and other future questions. The technique may also provide new--and possibly more environmentally friendly--approaches for insect control in agriculture.

"If studies like ours continue to advance and the techniques for measuring electrical signals in open environments continue to improve, it will be possible to detect infestation of agricultural pests quite early, allowing for less aggressive control measures and more accurate insect management," explains Niemeyer Reissig. "Understanding how the plant interacts with its fruits, and the fruits among themselves, may bring insights about how to 'manipulate' this communication for enhancing fruit quality, resistance to pests and shelf life after harvest."

High school students who participated in summer programs about public health increased their interest in pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), according to a Rutgers study.

Published in the journalPedagogy in Health Promotion, the study explored whether increasing public health awareness would motivate high school students to pursue public health careers.

Researchers found that the summer program, Public Health: Outbreaks, Communities, and Urban Studies (PHocus) offered in 2018 and 2019 increased the students' knowledge in public health, epidemiology, urban public health and global public health.

"Including interdisciplinary, authentic learning experiences in our summer program enabled students to personally connect public health disciplines with their personal experiences, as well as with population health in general," said Laura E. Liang, co-director of the PHocus Summer Experience and associate dean of academic affairs at the Rutgers School of Public Health.

While the students who went through the course in 2018 researched the 2018 influenza pandemic and those in 2019 investigated measles outbreaks in 2019, Liang says she expects future groups to examine public health through the lens of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"These personally relevant topics, supplemented by exposure to academic research practices, not only personally interested students but also aided in student learning and retention," she said.

Researchers, who point to a decline in an interest in the STEM field by middle and high school students, developed the summer program to address these issues and offer students seeking health science careers alternatives beyond becoming doctors or nurses.

Researchers said 130 students from 63 high schools participated in the week-long program, which provided insights into college plans, helped set professional goals and offered tips to taking control of their own health.

The students gave the program, which provided an overview of public health, epidemiology, and health issues particularly relevant to adolescents, such as sleep hygiene, alcohol and tobacco, as well as the careers available in the field, a 100 percent rating. More specifically, nearly 90 percent of participants in the Summer 2018 cohort and 96 percent of participants in the Summer 2019 cohort felt PHocus provided valuable insight that will assist in their collegiate and career planning. Further, approximately 65 percent of participants from each summer cohort strongly agreed that PHocus provided high-quality information and strategies.

"Through our integration of current public health faculty and community sector partners, students can create interpersonal connections with public health professionals while also experiencing these professions through their immersion in simulations and activities," said Marian Passannante, co-director of PHocus and associate dean for Education Program Development and Global Programs at the Rutgers School of Public Health. "This allows students to explore the breadth of career opportunities in public health and encourages them to begin to think about their future."

Researchers said the easily replicable program demonstrated the value in hosting similar summer programming at other institutions to address students' declining interest in STEM fields.

ROCHESTER, Minn. ? Using data from 9,859 COVID-19 infections, Mayo Clinic researchers have new insights into risk factors for younger populations, some of which differ significantly from their older counterparts. People younger than 45 had a greater than threefold increased risk of severe infection if they had cancer or heart disease, or blood, neurologic or endocrine disorders, the research found. These associations were weaker in older age groups. The study was published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

The research team studied people living in a 27-county region of Southeast Minnesota and West Central Wisconsin surrounding Mayo Clinic in Rochester diagnosed with COVID-19 between March and September 2020. The study used the Rochester Epidemiology Project, a linkage of 1.7 million medical records from multiple health care systems that provides a full picture of risks for an entire geographical region.

"Medical care is really fragmented in our country, so someone diagnosed with COVID-19 at one health care provider might end up at a totally different hospital for their severe case. If those records are not linked together, there's really not a good way for us to understand that that is even the same patient," says Jennifer St. Sauver, Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic epidemiologist and the study's first author. "By contrast, the Rochester Epidemiology Project allowed us to follow patients from the time they were diagnosed through their use of health care after that diagnosis, even if they were taken care of at different places. In addition, we could look back in their medical records to better understand all of the chronic diseases this population had even before getting diagnosed with COVID-19 and how those diseases might have contributed to more severe infections."

Among study participants, cancer was the biggest difference in risk comparing people younger and older than 45. For people younger than 45, cancer was a strong risk factor. It was not a significant factor for the older age group.

The researchers also found that people with developmental disorders, personality disorders, schizophrenia and other psychoses had the highest adjusted risk for severe COVID-19 among all chronic conditions.

Like many other studies on risk factors for COVID-19, the researchers found some races and ethnicities were at a higher risk than others. Though only 4.1% of the study population, Asian Americans had the highest risk of severe COVID-19, followed by Black Americans, who made up 11.5% of the severe cases. Hispanic ethnicity also was associated with a higher risk of severe infection.

The team studied positive PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests for COVID-19 between March 1 and Sept. 30, 2020.

The COVID in our Community Research Study is being conducted by Mayo Clinic, Olmsted County Public Health Services, Olmsted Medical Center, and Zumbro Valley Health Center. The researchers say the project would not have been possible without the Rochester Epidemiology Project.

"The Rochester Epidemiology Project allows us to study diseases, such as COVID-19, in a defined population, which provides the ability to translate our results to all people with COVID-19, not just those with the most severe disease requiring medical care," says senior author Celine Vachon, Ph.D., Chair of the Mayo Clinic Division of Epidemiology. "This type of infrastructure will allow us to follow patients who had COVID-19 in the 27-county region over time to better understand any future links to disease."

An international team of researchers led by Kumamoto and Tokyo Universities (Japan) have shown that the L452R mutation of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which is common to two mutant strains (Epsilon and Delta), is involved in cellular immunity evasion via the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) A24, and enhances viral infectivity. HLA-A24 is one of the most prominent HLA-class I alleles, especially in East/Southeast Asian populations, which might make them particularly vulnerable to coronavirus variants with this mutation.

The ongoing novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19) pandemic has, as of June 2021, infected over 150 million and killed over 3.5 million people worldwide. Vaccination drives around the world are currently underway, but there are still many unknowns, including the principles of infection pathogenesis, the principles viral replication, and the relationship between immune evasion and epidemic dynamics.

Acquired immunity can be broadly classified into humoral immunity mediated by neutralizing antibodies and cellular immunity mediated by helper and killer T cells. SARS-CoV-2 "variants of concern", such as the Alpha and Beta variants, have been studied worldwide for the possibility of humoral immunity evasion. However, cellular immunity evasion has not been reported.

In this study, the research group first used immunological experiments to demonstrate that an antigen derived from the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is strongly recognized by HLA-A24-restricted cellular immunity, which is often found in Japanese people. They then performed a large-scale (>750,000) sequence analysis of SARS-CoV-2 strains and found several important mutations in the spike protein region typically recognized by HLA-A24. These are the Y453F spike mutations found in strain B.1.1.298, which was prevalent in Denmark in 2020, and the L452R mutation in B.1.427/429 and B.1.617 (commonly known as the Epsilon and Delta variants respectively) that are currently spreading around the world. Further immunological experiments demonstrated that these mutations escape HLA-A24 cellular immunity. The researchers believe that this is the first time a "variant of concern" has been demonstrated to evade cellular immunity.

The Y453F and L452R mutations were located in the receptor binding domain of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which are crucial for gaining entry into host cells. Researchers thus examined the effects of these mutations on the infection and replication efficiency of the virus. They found that the L452R mutation enhances its membrane fusion activity, infectivity, and viral replication.

"The L452R mutation is a hallmark of the Delta variant that is currently spreading worldwide, and in Japan, about 60% of the population have HLA-A24, which is responsible for cellular immunity. The L452R mutation not only evades the HLA-A24 cellular immunity but can also enhance the infectivity of the virus," said the leader of immunology in the study, Dr. Chihiro Motozono." We have been carefully investigating the immune response against emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants in real time to monitor how the mutations affect human immunity and viral infectivity."

CT scans for patients with concussion provide critical information about their risk for long-term impairment and potential to make a complete recovery - findings that underscore the need for physician follow-up.

In a study led by UC San Francisco, researchers looked at the CT scans of 1,935 patients, ages 17 and over, whose neurological exams met criteria for concussion, or mild traumatic brain injury (TBI), at hospitals throughout the nation. While links between CT imaging features and outcome have already been established in moderate and severe TBI, the researchers believe this is the first time the link has been identified in patients with concussion, disputing earlier research that found no prognostic significance of specific types of CT abnormalities.

"Radiologists who routinely read trauma scans know intuitively that patterns of intracranial injury on CT are not random," said first author, Esther Yuh, MD, PhD, of the UCSF Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging. "We showed there are patterns of injury, that some of these are associated with worse outcome than others, and that they provide a window into mechanisms of injury that is reproducible across large studies."

The study appears online in JAMA Neurology on July 19, 2021.

"Although concussions are referred to as mild traumatic brain injuries, there is nothing mild about some concussions," said senior author Geoffrey Manley, MD, PhD, professor and vice chair of neurological surgery at UCSF and chief of neurosurgery at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. "Patients with concussion may suffer from prolonged headache, poor sleep and impaired concentration, and they are at higher risk of self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. Concussion can also contribute to depression and anxiety, and increase the risk for suicide. We need to view concussion not as an event but as a disease requiring physician follow-up after a patient is discharged from the hospital."

The participants were enrolled by the brain injury research initiative TRACK-TBI, of which Manley is the principal investigator. To enrich the number of so-called complicated concussions, the researchers drew exclusively from patients who had been seen at hospitals with level 1 trauma centers. This meant 37 percent of study participants had a positive CT, significantly more than the 9 percent of positive CTs from patients in U.S. emergency departments.

Baseball Whacks May Have Better Outcomes than Other Injuries

The most common patterns of injury, affecting more than half of CT-positive patients, were combinations of subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), subdural hematoma (SDH), and/or contusion, which may be caused by injuries such as falls from standing. Approximately 7 percent had intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH) or petechial hemorrhage, caused by rotation of the head, occurring in some sporting, scooter and automobile accidents; and 5 percent were found to have epidural hematoma (EDH) in which blood accumulates between the skull and the membrane covering the brain, often seen in sports injuries such as being hit with a baseball.

The patients, whose average age was 41 and of whom 66 percent were male, were assessed at two weeks, and at three-, six- and 12 months following injury. The researchers found that patients in the SAH/SDH/contusion group failed to make a complete recovery at 12 months post-injury and had impairments across the outcome spectrum, from mild to more severe.

Patients in the IVH/petechial hemorrhage group tended toward more severe impairments, in the lower-moderate disability range, a level that potentially affects multiple areas of function, such as employment, social and leisure activities, up to 12 months post-injury. Patients with the EDH phenotype fared significantly better and demonstrated complete recovery by their six-month assessment.

Results of the study were validated by CENTER-TBI, a parallel brain injury research group that had enrolled 2,594 participants at European trauma centers. "The confirmation of the findings in an independent cohort confirms the fidelity of our results," said Manley, adding that patients with EDH were one exception. CENTER-TBI found their incomplete recovery lingered for months longer than those patients followed by TRACK-TBI, but more severe outcomes were not seen at any point in either study.

The researchers noted that even among concussion patients who had a positive CT scan, just 39 percent receive follow-up care, including simple interventions like providing educational material at discharge. Follow-up should be routine for all 5 million concussion patients seen annually in the nation's emergency departments, including those without abnormal CT features, who would have milder symptoms and more complete recoveries, they said.

Test for Blood-Markers is Safer, More Sensitive

The researchers cautioned that these results should not be interpreted as a call to increase the use of CT, which exposes patients to radiation and increases cancer risk. Currently CTs are recommended for patients with a known or suspected concussion and loss of consciousness or amnesia and/or factors like older age, evidence of physical trauma and severe headache.

In fact, CTs may become less widely used with the recent approval by the Food and Drug Administration of a rapid hand-held blood test that Manley found was more sensitive than CT in detecting concussion. The blood test measures biomarkers associated with TBI, which were close to 52 times higher in concussion patients than in healthy participants when verified by MRI, a more definitive but costlier and less accessible scan than CT.

In addition to challenging the belief that CT features in concussion are not relevant, the researchers are also challenging the idea that concussion is "what the patient brings to the injury," said Manley, who is also affiliated with the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences. "In moderate and severe TBI, it is anecdotally taught that outcome is determined by 'what the injury brings to the patient,' while concussion is determined by baseline characteristics like age, sex and years of education. While the study confirms the importance of these characteristics, we show that in some concussion cases, poor outcomes are also attributed to 'what the injury brings to the patient.'"

What The Study Did: This study investigated the association between time spent cycling and the risk of death from cardiovascular disease or any other cause among people with diabetes.

Authors: Mathias Ried-Larsen, Ph.D., of Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen, is the corresponding author.

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

(doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2021.3836)

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

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What The Study Did: The association between daily coffee consumption and the risk of cardiac arrhythmias was evaluated in this study.

Authors: Gregory M. Marcus, M.D., M.A.S., of the University of California, San Francisco, is the corresponding author.

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(doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2021.3616)

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What The Study Did: This study included a meta-analysis that combined the results of 74 studies with 2.7 million participants to estimate how common globally dementia is in people younger than age 65.

Authors: Sebastian Köhler, Ph.D., of Maastricht University in Maastricht, the Netherlands, 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/jamaneurol.2021.2161)

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A major drought and forest fires in the Amazon rainforest killed billions of trees and plants and turned one of the world's largest carbon sinks into one of its biggest polluters.

Triggered by the 2015-16 El Niño, extreme drought and associated mega-wildfires caused the death of around 2.5 billion trees and plants and emitted 495 million tonnes of CO2 from an area that makes up just 1.2 per cent of the entire Brazilian Amazon rainforest, and 1 per cent of the whole biome.

The stark findings, discovered by an international team of scientists working for more than eight years on a long-term study in the Amazon before, during and after the El Niño, have significant implications for global efforts to control the atmospheric carbon balance.

In normal circumstances, because of high moisture levels, the Amazon rainforest does not burn. However, extreme drought makes the forest temporarily flammable. Fires started by farmers can escape their land and trigger forest fires.

According to climate predictions, extreme droughts will become more common and, until now, the long-term effects of drought and fires on the Amazon rainforest, and particularly within forests disturbed by people through activities such as selective or illegal logging, were largely unknown.

Examining the Amazonian epicentre of the El Niño - Brazil's Lower Tapajós, an eastern Amazonia area around twice the size of Belgium - the research team, led by scientists from Lancaster University, the University of Oxford, and The Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation found the damage lasts for multiple years.

The study revealed that trees and plants in drought-affected forests, as well as burned forests, continued to die at a rate above the norm for up to three years after the El Niño drought - releasing more CO2.into the atmosphere.

The total carbon emissions from the drought and fires in the Lower Tapajós region alone were higher than a whole year's deforestation within the entire Amazon. And, as a result of the drought and fires, the region released as much over a three-year period as some of the world's worst polluting countries' yearly carbon emissions - exceeding the emissions of developed countries such as the UK and Australia.

After three years, only around a third (37%) of the emissions were re-absorbed by plant growth in the forest. This shows that the Amazon's vital function as a carbon sink can be hampered for years following these drought events.

Dr Erika Berenguer, lead author of the report from Lancaster University and the University of Oxford, said: "Our results highlight the enormously damaging and long-lasting effects fires can cause in Amazonian forests, an ecosystem that did not co-evolve with fires as a regular pressure."

The scientists gathered data by regularly revisiting 21 plots across a mixture of primary forest, secondary re-growing forest and forests where people have selectively logged. The results from these plots were then extrapolated to the region.

Although previous research has shown human-disturbed forests are more susceptible to fires, it was unknown if there was any difference in the vulnerability and resilience of trees and plants in these forests when drought and fires happen.

The study showed that while many trees died in primary forest affected by drought, the loss of trees was much worse in secondary and other human-disturbed forests. The researchers found that trees and plants with lower wood density and thinner barks were more prone to dying from the drought and fires. These smaller trees are more common in human-disturbed forests.

The researchers estimate that around 447 million large trees (greater than 10cm Diameter at Breast Height) died, and around 2.5 billion smaller trees (less than 10cm DBH) died across the Lower Tapajós region.

The researchers also compared the effect on different forest types from drought alone, as well as the combined stresses of drought and fire.

Tree and plant mortality was higher in secondary forests from drought alone when compared with primary forests. Impact from drought was not higher in human-modified forests, but was significantly greater in those human-modified forests that experienced a combination of drought and fire.

Carbon emissions from those forests burned by wildfires were almost six times higher than forests affected by drought alone.

These findings highlight how interference by people can make the Amazon forests more vulnerable and underline the need to reduce illegal logging and other large-scale human disturbances of forests in the Amazon, as well as investments in fire-fighting capabilities in the Amazon.

Professor Jos Barlow of Lancaster University and the Universidade Federal de Lavras, and Principal Investigator of the research, said: "The results highlight the need for action across different scales. Internationally, we need action to tackle climate change, which is making extreme droughts and fires more likely. At the local level, forests will suffer fewer negative consequences from fires if they are protected from degradation."