Culture

For the first time, researchers have confirmed the detection of a collision between a black hole and a neutron star. In fact, the scientists detected not one but two such events occurring just 10 days apart in January 2020. The extreme events made splashes in space that sent gravitational waves rippling across at least 900 million light-years to reach Earth. In each case, the neutron star was likely swallowed whole by its black hole partner.

Gravitational waves are disturbances in the curvature of space-time created by massive objects in motion. During the five years since the waves were first measured, a finding that led to the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics, researchers have identified more than 50 gravitational-wave signals from the merging of pairs of black holes and of pairs of neutron stars. Both black holes and neutron stars are the corpses of massive stars, with black holes being even more massive than neutron stars.

Now, in a new study, scientists have announced the detection of gravitational waves from two rare events, each involving the collision of a black hole and a neutron star. The gravitational waves were detected by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the United States and by the Virgo detector in Italy. The KAGRA detector in Japan, joined the LIGO-Virgo network in 2020, but was not online during these detections.

The first merger, detected on January 5, 2020, involved a black hole about 9 times the mass of our sun, or 9 solar masses, and a 1.9-solar-mass neutron star. The second merger was detected on January 15, and involved a 6-solar-mass black hole and a 1.5-solar-mass neutron star. The results were published today, June 29, in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Astronomers have spent decades searching for neutron stars orbiting black holes in the Milky Way, our home galaxy, but have found none so far. "With this new discovery of neutron star- black hole mergers outside our galaxy, we have found the missing type of binary. We can finally begin to understand how many of these systems exist, how often they merge, and why we have not yet seen examples in the Milky Way," says Astrid Lamberts, a CNRS researcher at Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, in Nice, France.

The first of the two events, GW200105, was observed by the LIGO Livingston and Virgo detectors. It produced a strong signal in the LIGO detector but had a small signal-to-noise in the Virgo detector. The other LIGO detector, located in Hanford, Washington, was temporarily offline. Given the nature of the gravitational waves, the team inferred that the signal was caused by a black hole colliding with a 1.9-solar-mass compact object, later identified as a neutron star. This merger took place 900 million light-years away.

"Even though we see a strong signal in only one detector, we conclude that it is real and not just detector noise. It passes all our stringent quality checks and sticks out from all noise events we see in the third observing run," says Harald Pfeiffer, group leader in the Astrophysical and Cosmological Relativity department at Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (AEI) in Potsdam, Germany.

Because the signal was strong in only one detector, the location of the merger on the sky remains uncertain, lying somewhere in an area that is 34,000 times the size of a full moon.

"While the gravitational waves alone don't reveal the structure of the lighter object, we can infer its maximum mass. By combining this information with theoretical predictions of expected neutron star masses in such a binary system, we conclude that a neutron star is the most likely explanation," says Bhooshan Gadre, a postdoctoral researcher at the AEI.

The second event, GW200115, was detected by both LIGO detectors and the Virgo detector. GW200115 comes from the merger of a black hole with a 1.5-solar mass neutron star that took place roughly 1 billion light-years from Earth. Using information from all three instruments, scientists were better able to narrow down the part of the sky where this event occurred. Nevertheless, the localized area is almost 3,000 times the size of a full moon.

Astronomers were alerted to both events soon after they were detected in gravitational waves and subsequently searched the skies for associated flashes of light. None were found. This is not surprising due to the very large distance to these mergers, which means that any light coming from them, no matter what the wavelength, would be very dim and hard to detect with even the most powerful telescopes. Additionally, the mergers likely did not give off a light show in any case because their black holes were big enough that they swallowed the neutron stars whole.

"These were not events where the black holes munched on the neutron stars like the cookie monster and flung bits and pieces about. That 'flinging about' is what would produce light, and we don't think that happened in these cases," says Patrick Brady, a professor at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Spokesperson of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration.

Previously, the LIGO-Virgo network found two other candidate neutron star-black hole mergers. One event called GW190814, detected August 14, 2019, involved a collision of a 23-solar-mass black hole with an object of about 2.6 solar masses, which could be either the heaviest known neutron star or the lightest known black hole. Another candidate event, called GW190426, and detected on April 26, 2019, was thought to possibly be a neutron star-black hole merger, but could also simply be the result of detector noise.

Having confidently observed two examples of gravitational waves from black holes merging with neutron stars, researchers now estimate that, within one billion light-years of Earth, roughly one such merger happens per month.

"The detector groups at LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA are improving their detectors in preparation for the next observing run scheduled to begin in summer 2022," says Brady. "With the improved sensitivity, we hope to detect merger waves up to once per day and to better measure the properties of black holes and super-dense matter that makes up neutron stars."

Scientists at the University of Sydney and Japan's National Institute for Material Science (NIMS) have discovered that an artificial network of nanowires can be tuned to respond in a brain-like way when electrically stimulated.

The international team, led by Joel Hochstetter with Professor Zdenka Kuncic and Professor Tomonobu Nakayama, found that by keeping the network of nanowires in a brain-like state "at the edge of chaos", it performed tasks at an optimal level.

This, they say, suggests the underlying nature of neural intelligence is physical, and their discovery opens an exciting avenue for the development of artificial intelligence.

The study is published today in Nature Communications.

"We used wires 10 micrometres long and no thicker than 500 nanometres arranged randomly on a two-dimensional plane," said lead author Joel Hochstetter, a doctoral candidate in the University of Sydney Nano Institute and School of Physics.

"Where the wires overlap, they form an electrochemical junction, like the synapses between neurons," he said. "We found that electrical signals put through this network automatically find the best route for transmitting information. And this architecture allows the network to 'remember' previous pathways through the system."

ON THE EDGE OF CHAOS

Using simulations, the research team tested the random nanowire network to see how to make it best perform to solve simple tasks.

If the signal stimulating the network was too low, then the pathways were too predictable and orderly and did not produce complex enough outputs to be useful. If the electrical signal overwhelmed the network, the output was completely chaotic and useless for problem solving.

The optimal signal for producing a useful output was at the edge of this chaotic state.

"Some theories in neuroscience suggest the human mind could operate at this edge of chaos, or what is called the critical state," said Professor Kuncic from the University of Sydney. "Some neuroscientists think it is in this state where we achieve maximal brain performance."

Professor Kuncic is Mr Hochstetter's PhD adviser and is currently a Fulbright Scholar at the University of California in Los Angeles, working at the intersection between nanoscience and artificial intelligence.

She said: "What's so exciting about this result is that it suggests that these types of nanowire networks can be tuned into regimes with diverse, brain-like collective dynamics, which can be leveraged to optimise information processing."

OVERCOMING COMPUTER DUALITY

In the nanowire network the junctions between the wires allow the system to incorporate memory and operations into a single system. This is unlike standard computers, which separate memory (RAM) and operations (CPUs).

"These junctions act like computer transistors but with the additional property of remembering that signals have travelled that pathway before. As such, they are called 'memristors'," Mr Hochstetter said.

This memory takes a physical form, where the junctions at the crossing points between nanowires act like switches, whose behaviour depends on historic response to electrical signals. When signals are applied across these junctions, tiny silver filaments grow activating the junctions by allowing current to flow through.

"This creates a memory network within the random system of nanowires," he said.

Mr Hochstetter and his team built a simulation of the physical network to show how it could be trained to solve very simple tasks.

"For this study we trained the network to transform a simple waveform into more complex types of waveforms," Mr Hochstetter said.

In the simulation they adjusted the amplitude and frequency of the electrical signal to see where the best performance occurred.

"We found that if you push the signal too slowly the network just does the same thing over and over without learning and developing. If we pushed it too hard and fast, the network becomes erratic and unpredictable," he said.

The University of Sydney researchers are working closely with collaborators at the International Center for Materials Nanoarchictectonics at NIMS in Japan and UCLA where Professor Kuncic is a visiting Fulbright Scholar. The nanowire systems were developed at NIMS and UCLA and Mr Hochstetter developed the analysis, working with co-authors and fellow doctoral students, Ruomin Zhu and Alon Loeffler.

REDUCING ENERGY CONSUMPTION

Professor Kuncic said that uniting memory and operations has huge practical advantages for the future development of artificial intelligence.

"Algorithms needed to train the network to know which junction should be accorded the appropriate 'load' or weight of information chew up a lot of power," she said.

"The systems we are developing do away with the need for such algorithms. We just allow the network to develop its own weighting, meaning we only need to worry about signal in and signal out, a framework known as 'reservoir computing'. The network weights are self-adaptive, potentially freeing up large amounts of energy."

This, she said, means any future artificial intelligence systems using such networks would have much lower energy footprints.

What is unique about the study is the combination of interviews with current and former people in prison, custodial professionals, and healthcare providers to identify and understand barriers in delivering high-quality healthcare and support to those in custody. In addition, researchers gathered data on the number, types and stages of cancers diagnosed in patients within prisons.

Moving forward, the researchers believe that findings from this study will help inform prison cancer care policy and develop priorities for improving it within the prison system. The research was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), the research partner of the NHS, public health and social care.

Jo Armes, Reader in Cancer Care and Lead for Digital Health at the University of Surrey, who led the interviews with patients and professionals, said: "People in prison have a right to receive the equivalent standard of care as they would in the community. It is very unclear whether this is the case due to the current systems of reporting.

"Not only is the prison population increasing, but the demographic is getting older, with implications for heightened risk of developing cancer. Appropriate strategies must be in place so those in custody can be diagnosed early and access care promptly, which will also ensure effective and efficient use of NHS resources."

Professor Jo Rycroft-Malone, Director of the NIHR's Health Services and Delivery Research Programme, which funded the study, said: "This is an important area of research, and the first of its kind to investigate cancer care within English prisons, including the types and stages of the disease and the treatments available for prisoners.

"A key feature of this study is patient and public involvement - one of NIHR's key values - with former prisoners involved in research design and working as 'lived experience researchers', interviewing patients and professionals.

"This study aims to meet gaps in evidence in this area, and hopefully its findings will help improve the quality, accessibility and organisation of services for patients and assist clinicians and professionals working in prisons."

Pavan Dhaliwal, Chief Executive of Revolving Doors Agency, said: "People in contact with the criminal justice system often experience significant health inequalities -- a higher burden of disease and less access to health services. Addressing the health needs of this population can contribute to reducing inequalities in wider society.

"We are pleased to provide the lived-experience insight to this important work. People with lived- experience will bring unique perspectives, and this will, we hope, go a long way towards transforming healthcare services in prison."

Further results of the main study described in the paper will be published later in the year.

A long time ago, in two galaxies about 900 million light-years away, two black holes each gobbled up their neutron star companions, triggering gravitational waves that finally hit Earth in January 2020.

Discovered by an international team of astrophysicists including Northwestern University researchers, two events -- detected just 10 days apart -- mark the first-ever detection of a black hole merging with a neutron star. The findings will enable researchers to draw the first conclusions about the origins of these rare binary systems and how often they merge.

"Gravitational waves have allowed us to detect collisions of pairs of black holes and pairs of neutron stars, but the mixed collision of a black hole with a neutron star has been the elusive missing piece of the family picture of compact object mergers," said Chase Kimball, a Northwestern graduate student who co-authored the study. "Completing this picture is crucial to constraining the host of astrophysical models of compact object formation and binary evolution. Inherent to these models are their predictions of the rates that black holes and neutron stars merge amongst themselves. With these detections, we finally have measurements of the merger rates across all three categories of compact binary mergers."

The research will be published June 29 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. The team includes researchers from the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC), the Virgo Collaboration and the Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector (KAGRA) project. An LSC member, Kimball led calculations of the merger rate estimates and how they fit into predictions from the various formation channels of neutron stars and black holes. He also contributed to discussions about the astrophysical implications of the discovery.

Kimball is co-advised by Vicky Kalogera, the principal investigator of Northwestern's LSC group, director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) and the Daniel I. Linzer Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy in the Weinberg Colleges of Arts and Sciences; and by Christopher Berry, an LSC member and the CIERA Board of Visitors Research Professor at Northwestern as well as a lecturer at the Institute for Gravitational Research at the University of Glasgow. Other Northwestern co-authors include Maya Fishbach, a NASA Einstein Postdoctoral Fellow and LSC member.

Two events in ten days

The team observed the two new gravitational-wave events -- dubbed GW200105 and GW200115 -- on Jan. 5, 2020, and Jan. 15, 2020, during the second half of the LIGO and Virgo detectors third observing run, called O3b. Although multiple observatories carried out several follow-up observations, none observed light from either event, consistent with the measured masses and distances.

"Following the tantalizing discovery, announced in June 2020, of a black-hole merger with a mystery object, which may be the most massive neutron star known, it is exciting also to have the detection of clearly identified mixed mergers, as predicted by our theoretical models for decades now," Kalogera said. "Quantitatively matching the rate constraints and properties for all three population types will be a powerful way to answer the foundational questions of origins."

All three large detectors (both LIGO instruments and the Virgo instrument) detected GW200115, which resulted from the merger of a 6-solar mass black hole with a 1.5-solar mass neutron star, roughly 1 billion light-years from Earth. With observations of the three widely separated detectors on Earth, the direction to the waves' origin can be determined to a part of the sky equivalent to the area covered by 2,900 full moons.

Just 10 days earlier, LIGO detected a strong signal from GW200105, using just one detector while the other was temporarily offline. While Virgo also was observing, the signal was too quiet in its data for Virgo to help detect it. From the gravitational waves, the astronomers inferred that the signal was caused by a 9-solar mass black hole colliding with a 1.9-solar mass compact object, which they ultimately concluded was a neutron star. This merger happened at a distance of about 900 million light-years from Earth.

Because the signal was strong in only one detector, the astronomers could not precisely determine the direction of the waves' origin. Although the signal was too quiet for Virgo to confirm its detection, its data did help narrow down the source's potential location to about 17% of the entire sky, which is equivalent to the area covered by 34,000 full moons.

Where do they come from?

Because the two events are the first confident observations of gravitational waves from black holes merging with neutron stars, the researchers now can estimate how often such events happen in the universe. Although not all events are detectable, the researchers expect roughly one such merger per month happens within a distance of one billion light-years.

While it is unclear where these binary systems form, astronomers identified three likely cosmic origins: stellar binary systems, dense stellar environments including young star clusters, and the centers of galaxies.

The team is currently preparing the detectors for a fourth observation run, to begin in summer 2022.

"We've now seen the first examples of black holes merging with neutron stars, so we know that they're out there," Fishbach said. "But there's still so much we don't know about neutron stars and black holes -- how small or big they can get, how fast they can spin, how they pair off into merger partners. With future gravitational wave data, we will have the statistics to answer these questions, and ultimately learn how the most extreme objects in our universe are made."

Gravitational wave detectors have observed a new type of cataclysmic event in the cosmos: the merger of a neutron star with a black hole.

The phenomenon was detected twice in January 2020.

Several hypotheses could explain the existence of such mixed pairs. Further observations will be needed in order to settle the question.

Another missing piece has just been added to our knowledge of cosmic phenomena. The LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA collaborations have announced the first detection of gravitational waves (1) resulting from the 'mixed' merger between a black hole and a neutron star (2). The discovery, published on June 29, 2021 in Astrophysical Journal Letters, involves CNRS researchers working within the Virgo scientific collaboration.

Although it has only been only a few years since the very first observation of gravitational waves, the technique has yielded an extensive repertoire of phenomena involving massive cosmic objects. The LIGO and Virgo detectors have already observed mergers of pairs (or binaries) of black holes and, less frequently, of neutron stars. However, gravitational waves detected in January 2020 provide evidence of the existence of a new type of system. The signals, named GW200105 and GW200115 from their dates of detection, were produced by a process that had been predicted but never observed until now: the coalescence of 'mixed pairs' called NSBH pairs, each made up of a neutron star and a black hole (3).

Gravitational waves contain valuable information about their source, such as the mass of the components making up the binary. Analysis of the signals revealed that GW200105 resulted from the merger, some 900 million years ago, of a black hole and a neutron star, respectively 8.9 times and 1.9 times more massive than the Sun, while GW200115 originated from an NSBH pair which coalesced around 1 billion years ago, with masses 5.7 and 1.5 times greater than the Sun. The difference in mass between the components of the system indicates that they are indeed mixed binaries: the mass of the heavier object corresponds to that of a black hole while the mass of the lighter object is consistent with that of a neutron star. The difference between the two masses could also explain why no light signals were detected by telescopes. When a neutron star approaches a black hole it can theoretically be torn apart by tidal forces, causing flares of electromagnetic radiation. However, in the two cases observed, the black hole, being much more massive, could have gobbled up the neutron star in a single mouthful, leaving no trace.

Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the formation of mixed NSBH binaries. The first involves the evolution of a pair of stars in orbit around one another. Towards the end of their lives, one of the stars could become a black hole and the other a neutron star, while still rotating around each other. According to another hypothesis, that of dynamic interaction, the two components of the pair form independently in a very dense stellar medium before coming together. These results open up the way for the detection of other mixed binaries, as well as for the observation and understanding of extreme phenomena of a similar nature.

Immunologists at McMaster University have discovered a previously unknown mechanism which acts like a spider web, trapping and killing pathogens such as influenza or SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19.

The researchers have found that neutrophils, the most abundant white blood cells in the human body, explode when they bind to such pathogens coated in antibodies and release DNA outside of the cell, creating a sticky tangle which acts as a trap.

The findings, published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, are significant because little is understood about how antibodies neutralize viruses in the respiratory tract.

The discovery has implications for vaccine design and delivery, including aerosol and nasal spray technologies that could help the body head off infections before they have a chance to take hold.

"Vaccines can produce these antibodies that are present in our lungs, which are the first type of antibody to see viruses like flu or COVID-19, which infect our lungs and respiratory tracts," says the study's lead author Matthew Miller, an associate professor at McMaster's Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research and Canada's Global Nexus for Pandemics and Biological Threats. "Mechanisms that can stop the infection at the site where it enters our body can prevent the spread and serious complications."

By comparison, injectable vaccines are designed to bolster antibodies in the blood, but those antibodies are not as prevalent at the sites where infection begins.

"We should be thinking carefully about next generation COVID-19 vaccines that could be administered in the respiratory tract to stimulate antibodies. We don't have many candidates right now that are focused on raising the mucosal response," says Hannah Stacey, a graduate student in the Miller Lab and lead author of the paper, who recently won a major national scholarship from the Canadian Society for Virology for her work on COVID-19.

"If you want a lot of these antibodies that are really abundant in blood, then injections make the most sense, but if you want antibodies that are abundant in the respiratory tract, then a spray or an aerosol makes sense," she says.

Researchers caution that while the body's spider-web mechanism has the potential to be hugely beneficial, it can cause harm too, including inflammation and further illness when the web formation is uncontrollable.

They point to the early waves of the pandemic, prior to vaccinations, when these NETs, or neutrophil extracellular traps, were found in some patients' lungs, and had made their breathing more difficult.

"An immune response that is meant to protect you can end up harming you if it's not properly controlled," says Miller. "It's important to understand the balance of the immune system. If you have a lot of these antibodies before you get infected, they are likely going to protect you, but if the infection itself stimulates a lot of those antibodies it might be harmful."

INDIANAPOLIS - With the growing prevalence of chronic pain, depression, anxiety, and other symptom-based conditions, physicians and the healthcare systems for which they work are increasingly considering how to augment the care they can provide within the limited time allotted for patient appointments.

According to Regenstrief Institute Research Scientist Kurt Kroenke, M.D., writing in the Journal of General Internal Medicine (JGIM), collaborative care can and should play a major role targeting the treatment of symptoms and functional decline, both too frequently marginalized in medically oriented care delivery.

Collaborative care is a team-based model in which the patient's primary care physician is assisted in the management of specific health conditions (for example depression, anxiety or pain) by a care manager (often a nurse supervised by a physician specialist) with advanced expertise in the management of those conditions who provides care virtually.

Care managers help patients process information provided by their primary care physicians. For example, care managers can review treatment options, helping patients decide which option they prefer.

"We at Regenstrief and others have extensively studied utilizing collaborative care to provide behavioral treatments, education and care follow-up to patients with depression, anxiety and pain and we have found that it works," said Dr. Kroenke, a professor of medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine, an internationally respected pioneer in symptomology and the co-developer of the depression and anxiety scales most commonly used in primary care. "Collaborative care works because it provides patients with needed support between physician visits, augmenting medical practice via telephone or another telecare modality, making it easy for patients to fit into their schedules."

Collaborative care is becoming more common. Dr. Kroenke is currently exploring the use of collaborative care for substance abuse disorders.

"Perhaps the major reason that collaborative care hasn't gained traction outside of some large, integrated healthcare systems with multiple clinics, is because insurance companies typically have not covered augmenting physician care via telephone," said Dr. Kroenke. "But this barrier has eroded during the pandemic as telecare has been reimbursed by Medicare as well as insurance companies. And expanded use of telecare during the pandemic has also taught us to deliver virtual care more effectively and efficiently."

In addition to describing the collaborative care model and highlighting its application to patient care, "Canons of Collaborative Care" by Dr. Kroenke and Andrea Cheville, M.D., of the Mayo Clinic, provides principles for implementing collaborative care in real world clinical practice.

In a new scientific investigation headed by the German Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW), water from African and Mongolian waterholes as well as bloodmeals from Southeast Asian leeches were assessed for the ability to retrieve mammalian viruses without the need to find and catch the mammals. The scientists analysed the samples using high throughput sequencing to identify known viruses as well as viruses new to science. Both approaches proved to be suitable tools for pandemic prevention research as they allow finding and monitoring reservoirs of wildlife viruses. For example, a novel coronavirus most likely associated with Southeast Asian deer species was identified. The results are published in the scientific journal "Methods in Ecology and Evolution".

Finding and monitoring reservoirs of wildlife viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 - for which the reservoir has yet to be discovered - is challenging. Many areas which wildlife inhabit are difficult to access and the species in question are hard to find or catch. In order to prevent future pandemics such as COVID-19, new and effective methods to discover and monitor viruses circulating in wildlife are urgently needed. Environmental DNA (eDNA) and invertebrate-derived DNA (iDNA) based approaches may enhance the available toolkit to overcome these challenges, when coupled with high throughput sequencing. The team of scientists assessed water from African and Mongolian waterholes and bloodmeals from Southeast Asian leeches for the ability to retrieve viruses from both sample types. The usual limitation of such samples is that they contain only tiny amounts of low-quality DNA, particularly pathogen DNA. The author therefore used a modern "hybridisation capture" approach to fish out sequences similar to those from currently known vertebrate viruses and then sequenced them using sophisticated high-throughput techniques. This approach was successful in that it allowed the identification of known and novel viruses in both water and leech samples.

The DNA from water samples yielded several viruses common to zebras and wild ass, which were expected as these animals frequently visit the waterholes in large numbers. In the case of the viruses found in African water holes, the authors demonstrated in a related publication that the viruses are still infectious, suggesting that the water itself may be a source of viral transmission. From the Southeast Asian leeches, many known as well as novel viruses were identified. Of particular interest was a novel coronavirus previously unknown to science, which potentially represents an entirely new genus in the Coronaviridae family and seems to be associated with deer species.

"For many of the deadliest viruses such as Ebola we still don't know where they come from", says Prof Alex Greenwood, head of the Department of Wildlife Diseases. "The current pandemic demonstrates that we still know very little about the viral diversity in nature. New methods might help us to identify novel viruses and their potential hosts without the usual logistical and ethical problems associated with collecting wildlife samples directly." Environmental DNA is proving useful in a number of contexts including the characterisation of the diversity of wildlife species from inaccessible regions, the study of ancient populations and more recently in pathogen research. Environmental DNA from water and DNA derived from blood-sucking invertebrates can be useful in different environments. "Water is an essential resource for life and, particularly in areas of seasonal shortages, a concentration point for animals", Greenwood says.

"Terrestrial leeches are often highly abundant in areas of previous viral emergence in Southeast Asia and their bloodmeals can be used to identify their mammalian hosts, including the pathogens contained in their blood", adds Dr Niccolò Alfano, a former PostDoc from the Leibniz-IZW Departments of Wildlife Diseases and Ecological Dynamics, now working at the University of Pavia in Italy. "We identified mammalian viruses from five different viral families in our leech samples and more than 50 % of the samples contained mammalian viruses. Some of these, such as a porcine circovirus or a bear annellovirus could be assigned to the bearded pig and sun bear, their mammalian hosts which were also detected in the leech samples. Most interesting was the discovery of the novel coronavirus, as this showed that with our method we are able to discover viral pathogens previously unknown to science circulating in wildlife", Alfano adds. This may help to identify potentially infectious viruses at an early stage which may help to prevent potential future epidemics."

Further work will be needed to characterise the newly discovered viruses, such as sequencing their complete genomes and confirming their host-virus relationships. In addition, waterholes or leeches are not found in all environments. Soil, faeces and other invertebrates represent additional sources of nucleic acids that could be used to supplement direct animal sampling and enhance our ability to discover and monitor viruses as we go forward from the current pandemic and hopefully learn to prevent them in the future.

Metabolic activators were found to reduce recovery time by as many as 3.5 days in patients with mild-to-moderate Covid-19, according to a Swedish-British study published today in Advanced Science.

The researchers also found that treatment with the metabolic activators improved liver health and decreased the levels of inflammation, as shown by inflammatory markers.

Conducted by researchers at Science for Life Laboratory at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, in collaboration with the Sahlgrenska Academy in Gothenburg and King's College, London, the human phase three clinical study showed that patients with mild-to-moderate Covid-19--who were also receiving standard care--experienced a 3.5 day reduction in recovery time when receiving the combination of metabolic activators, nicotinamide riboside (NR), L-serine, N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC), and L-carnitine tartrate. All four activators are aimed at improving mitochondrial function. The results of the study build on findings from phase two clinical data.

Through a randomized, placebo controlled, double blind phase three clinical trial, 309 outpatients at Umraniye Teaching and Research Hospital, University of Health Sciences, Istanbul, Turkey were randomly assigned on a 3:1 basis to receive the metabolic activators or placebo. Patients received the combined activators or placebo twice a day for 14 days and clinical status was evaluated through daily telephone check-ins.

"Our phase three data shows that metabolic activators significantly improve the recovery, liver health, and markers of inflammation of patients with COVID-19," says the study's lead author, Adil Mardinoglu, professor at KTH and Kings College and research fellow at Science for Life Laboratory.

"Dysfunctional mitochondria have been implicated in worsened progression for Covid-19, and we are pleased to find that the combination of these metabolic activators helps to remedy the stress put on the body of an infected patient."

Want to have a happy relationship? Make sure both partners feel they can decide on issues that are important to them. Objective power measured by income, for example, doesn't seem to play a big role, according to a new study in the "Journal of Social and Personal relationships" by the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the University of Bamberg. Instead, how lovers perceive power dynamics in their relationship is most important for relationship satisfaction.

Power is about being able to influence people and successfully resist the attempts of others to influence you. "It sounds like a dog-eat-dog world or the world of business. But power also plays a role in romantic relationships. The feeling of being able to make decisions in a marriage, for example, has a big influence on the quality of the relationship," says Robert Körner from the Institute of Psychology at MLU. Earlier studies show that there was rarely a balance of power within couples. Most of the time, men had more influence on decisions than women.

However, traditional gender roles have changed. "Romantic relationships have become more equal - especially in western societies," says Körner. Together with Professor Astrid Schütz, a personality researcher from the University of Bamberg, he investigated how power and the perception of power impact couples. They interviewed 181 heterosexual couples who had been living together for at least one month. The respondents were between 18 and 71 years old and had been in a relationship for an average of eight years. The team investigated how actual and perceived power influence different aspects of a relationship - such as satisfaction and commitment - and how they affect the quality of that relationship. The survey included questions about the admiration for one's partner, trust, sexual satisfaction, feelings of oppression and constraint, as well as a commitment and willingness to invest in the relationship. "We also calculated the balance of power to investigate the extent to which the traits of each partner were similar to each other," Körner explains.

The results of the study show that men still had more positional power - based on higher income and higher education. The need to make decisions in general was also stronger among the men on average. Interestingly, however, the two factors did not appear to influence the quality of the relationship that the couple experienced. The same applies to the balance of power: Even if men and women within the same couple were very similar with regard to the measured traits, no connection to relationship quality could be found. "The results surprised us, as earlier research has often suggested a direct link between the balance of power and relationship-based outcomes," says Körner.

The happiest couples were those in which both partners reported a high sense of personal power. "It appears that the subjective feeling of power and the feeling of being able to act freely significantly impact the quality of the relationship," Körner concludes. In most of these couples, both sexes stated that they were able to assert their preferences when making decisions that are important to them. According to psychologist Schütz, this is not necessarily a contradiction. "Maybe this feeling extends to different aspects of the relationship. Whereas the woman might want to decide on where to go on vacation, the husband chooses where to go for dinner. One thing to keep in mind is that our sample included rather happy couples, which favours effective negotiation. In other partnerships, there is definitely potential for conflict in this respect." However, it appears that both parties need to be able to make decisions about aspects that are important to them in order to be satisfied with the relationship.

The examined tissue does not need to be marked for this. The analysis only takes around half an hour. "This is a major step that shows that infrared imaging can be a promising methodology in future diagnostic testing and treatment prediction," says Professor Klaus Gerwert, director of PRODI. The study is published in the American Journal of Pathology on 1 July 2021.

Treatment decision by means of a genetic mutation analysis

Lung tumours are divided into various types, such as small cell lung cancer, adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma. Many rare tumour types and sub-types also exist. This diversity hampers reliable rapid diagnostic methods in everyday clinical practice. In addition to histological typing, the tumour samples also need to be comprehensively examined for certain changes at a DNA level. "Detecting one of these mutations is important key information that influences both the prognosis and further therapeutic decisions," says co-author Professor Reinhard Büttner, head of the Institute of General Pathology and Pathological Anatomy at University Hospital Cologne.

Patients with lung cancer clearly benefit when the driver mutations have previously been characterised: for instance, tumours with activating mutations in the EGFR (epidermal growth factor) gene often respond well to tyrosine kinase inhibitors, whereas non-EGFR-mutated tumours or tumours with other mutations, such as KRAS, do not respond at all to this medication. The differential diagnosis of lung cancer previously took place with immunohistochemical staining of tissue samples and a subsequent extensive genetic analysis to determine the mutation.

Fast and reliable measuring technique

The potential of infrared imaging, IR imaging for short, as a diagnostic tool to classify tissue, called label-free digital pathology, was already shown by the group led by Klaus Gerwert in previous studies. The procedure identifies cancerous tissue without prior staining or other markings and functions automatically with the aid of artificial intelligence (AI). In contrast to the methods used to determine tumour shape and mutations in tumour tissue in everyday clinical practice, which can sometimes take several days, the new procedure only takes around half an hour. In these 30 minutes, it is not only possible to ascertain whether the tissue sample contains tumour cells, but also what type of tumour it is and whether it contains a certain mutation.

Infrared spectroscopy makes genetic mutations visible

The Bochum researchers were able to verify the procedure on samples from over 200 lung cancer patients in their work. When identifying mutations, they concentrated on by far the most common lung tumour, adenocarcinoma, which accounts for over 50 per cent of tumours. Its most common genetic mutations can be determined with a sensitivity and specificity of 95 per cent compared to laborious genetic analysis. "For the first time, we were able to identify spectral markers that allow for a spatially resolved distinction between various molecular conditions in lung tumours," explains Nina Goertzen from PRODI. A single infrared spectroscopic measurement offers information about the sample which would otherwise require several time-consuming procedures.

A further step towards personalised medicine

The results once again confirm the potential of label-free digital pathology for clinical use. "To further increase reliability and promote a translation of the method as a new diagnostic tool, studies with larger patient numbers adapted to clinical needs and external testing in everyday clinical practice are required," says Dr. Frederik Großerüschkamp, IR imaging project manager. "In order to translate IR imaging into everyday clinical practice, it is crucial to shorten the measuring time, ensure simple and reliable operation of the measuring instruments, and provide answers to questions that are important and helpful both clinically and for the patients."

There are spiders that eat snakes. Observations of snake-eating spiders have been reported around the world. Two researchers from Basel and the US consolidated and analyzed over 300 reports of this unusual predation strategy.

Spiders are primarily insectivores, but they occasionally expand their menu by catching and eating small snakes. Dr. Martin Nyffeler, arachnologist at the University of Basel, and American herpetologist Professor Whitfield Gibbons of the University of Georgia, USA, got to the bottom of this phenomenon in a meta-analysis. Their findings from a study of 319 occurrences of this unusual feeding behavior recently appeared in the American Journal of Arachnology.

It turns out that spiders eat snakes on every continent except Antarctica. Eighty percent of the incidents studied were observed in the US and Australia. In Europe, on the other hand, this spider feeding behavior has been observed extremely rarely (less than 1 percent of all reported incidents) and is limited to the consumption of tiny, non-venomous snakes of the blind snake family (Typhlopidae) by small web-building spiders.

Black widows are particularly successful

Incidents of snake predation by spiders have never been reported from Switzerland. A possible explanation is that Switzerland's native colubrids and vipers are too big and heavy even when freshly hatched for Swiss spiders to subdue them.

The data analysis also showed that spiders from 11 different families are able to catch and eat snakes. "That so many different groups of spiders sometimes eat snakes is a completely novel finding," Nyffeler emphasizes.

Black widows of the family Theridiidae were the successful snake hunters in about half of all observed incidents. Their potent venom contains a toxin that specifically targets vertebrate nervous systems. These spiders build webs composed of extremely tough silk, allowing them to capture larger prey animals like lizards, frogs, mice, birds and snakes.

Big catch

Another new finding from the meta-analysis: spiders can subdue snakes from seven different families. They can outfight snakes 10 to 30 times their size.

The largest snakes caught by spiders are up to one meter in length, the smallest only about six centimeters. According to the statistical analysis done by the two researchers, the average length of captured snakes was 26 centimeters. Most of the snakes caught were very young, freshly hatched animals. That some spiders are able to subdue oversized prey is attributable to their highly potent neurotoxins and strong, tough webs.

Possible insights into the effect of spider venom

Many spider species that occasionally kill and eat snakes have venom that can also be lethal to humans. That means the venom of various spider species has a similar effect on the nervous systems of snakes and humans. For this reason, observations of vertebrate-eating spiders can also be important for neurobiology, as they allow conclusions to be drawn about the mechanisms by which spider neurotoxins affect vertebrate nervous systems.

"While the effect of black widow venom on snake nervous systems is already well researched, this kind of knowledge is largely lacking for other groups of spiders. A great deal more research is therefore needed to find out what components of venoms that specifically target vertebrate nervous systems are responsible for allowing spiders to paralyze and kill much larger snakes with a venomous bite," says Martin Nyffeler.

The captured snakes are anything but helpless themselves: about 30 percent are venomous. In the US and South America, spiders sometimes kill highly venomous rattlesnakes and coral snakes. In Australia, brown snakes (which belong to the same family as cobras) often fall prey to redback spiders (Australian black widows). Martin Nyffeler says, "These brown snakes are among the most venomous snakes in the world and it's really fascinating to see that they lose fights with spiders."

Additional information

Storage of energy reserves

When a spider catches a snake, it will often spend hours or days feasting on such a large prey. Spiders have an irregular feeding pattern. When a lot of food is available, they eat in excess, only to go hungry for long periods again afterward. They store excess food as energy reserves in their body and use it to tide them over longer periods of starvation.

Still, a spider often eats only a small part of a dead snake. Scavengers (ants, wasps, flies, molds) consume what remains.

Hotels that opened their doors to homeless people in their community during lockdown generated greater positive word-of-mouth marketing than those that offered free accommodation to frontline healthcare workers, finds new University research.

However, despite the positive impact on tourists' intentions to share the good news story, the immediate impact on intention to book a visit was the reverse, with people less inclined to book a stay at a hotel that had housed homeless people.

Researchers at the Universities of Bath and Southampton were struck by news reports of the 'heart-warming initiatives' to offer free accommodation and wanted to investigate how they compared in terms of business benefit to the tourism sector.

"Our study found that hotels that provided community support in the form of free accommodation to medical professionals had little impact on how tourists felt about them, we think because showing gratitude to healthcare workers had quickly become a social norm, said Dr Haiming Hang from Bath's School of Management.

"In contrast, the hotels that offered accommodation to homeless people really seemed to move tourists and generate a feeling of warmth and a perception of the hotel as kind and generous. Going beyond the social norm was seen as a marker of genuine concern for social welfare. The hotels were rewarded with a marked intention by tourists to spread positive word of mouth."

Previous research has identified negative public perception of homeless people in terms of cleanliness and the authors of this new study believes that this stereotype could be a factor in immediate impact on intention to book.

"If hotel management can successfully communicate how they maintain high standards of cleanliness then their community initiatives should not pose a long term risk to bookings," said Dr Zhifeng Chen at the Southampton Business School. "In the long run, positive word of mouth is very important because it can attract both prospective employees and new customers."

Reported in Tourism Management, the study is unusual in examining the impact of a hotel's community support, or corporate social responsibility, during a crisis, and focusing on initiatives aimed at the local community rather than employees or shareholders.

Local communities have been noted as crucial to the success of a hotel, partly because tourists' memorable experiences are significantly influenced by the nature of the local people they meet.

Over 450 American tourists, who intended to travel after the pandemic, took part in the research and were allocated to one of three experimental scenarios that focused on a hotel's commitment to cleanliness and its cancellation policy as its responses to COVID-19; community support through donating rooms to medical professionals; or to homeless people.

The coronavirus pandemic has had a significant impact on tourism, with the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) estimating a contraction of the tourism sector by 20 to 30 per cent in 2020.

Corporate social responsibility in times of need: Community support during the COVID-19 pandemics is published in the journal Tourism Management: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261517721000832

Up to 7 million people each year receive care in an emergency department (ED) for chest pain, a symptom of a potential heart condition. Over 80 percent of chest pain patients, however, ultimately have no evidence of cardiovascular disease or acute coronary syndrome. To disincentivize patients from over-utilizing costly care, insurers and employers are increasingly opting for high-deductible health plans (HDHPs) that require significant out-of-pocket spending before coverage begins. Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute investigated whether switching to an HDHP influenced the frequency of ED visits and hospitalizations for chest pain. Their findings, published in Circulation, report a 4.3 percent decrease in ED visits for chest pain and an 11.3 percent decrease in visits that led to inpatient hospitalization based on the initial ED evaluation. Low-income patients were particularly less likely to visit the ED for chest pain and subsequently more likely to be hospitalized with a serious heart condition.

"Our research, along with past studies, has shown that lower-income patients disproportionately suffer from delays in care and worse clinical outcomes," said corresponding author Shih-Chuan Chou, MD, MPH, SM, of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Brigham. "Low-income patients need the most attention if employers or insurers are to expand the use of high-deductible plans."

In their study, the researchers used a national medical insurer database to identify more than a half a million patients aged 19-63 whose employers offered only low-deductible health plans (requiring less than $500/year of out-of-pocket spending) before mandating enrollment in an HDHP (greater than $1,000/year) the next year. A control group of nearly 6 million employees included those enrolled in a low-deductible health plan for two straight years.

The researchers did not observe significant differences in cardiac testing after ED admission between low- and high-deductible groups. However, HDHP patients living in neighborhoods with higher poverty rates had a 29.4 percent higher rate of heart attack hospitalization 30 days after their initial ED diagnosis of chest pain, compared to those with addresses in other neighborhoods.

"At the clinician level, our research certainly demonstrates that it is quite important for clinicians to be aware of patients' out-of-pocket costs, as high burdens may indicate that a patient has likely deferred care and may suffer worse outcomes," Chou said.

With 57 percent of U.S. employees enrolled in HDHPs for single coverage in 2020, the researchers emphasize that when evaluating ED patients with chest pain, particularly low-income patients with HDHPs, clinicians should account for possible delays in care preceding the patients' presentation. Going forward, the researchers hope to examine whether HDHPs are associated with patient outcomes for significant medical emergencies, such as heart attack, while also exploring on a deeper level how out-of-pocket spending influences patient-clinician interactions and discussions about testing or treatment.

"Potential solutions may be to ameliorate financial burden by funding health savings accounts, or to keep out-of-pocket costs proportional to patients' incomes," said Chou.

The exoplanet satellite hunter CHEOPS of the European Space Agency (ESA), in which the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) is participating along with other European institutions, has unexpectedly detected a third planet passing in front of its star while it was exploring two previously known planets around the same star. This transit, according to researchers, will reveal exciting details about a strange planet "without a known equivalent".

The discovery is one of the first results of CHEOPS (CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite) and the first time that an exoplanet has been seen with a period longer than 100 days transiting a star which is sufficiently bright to be seen with the naked eye. The discovery was published today in the journal Nature Astronomy.

This bright star similar to the sun, called Nu2 Lupi, is a little more than 50 light years from Earth, in the constellation of Lupus. In 2019, HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile discovered three exoplanets in this system (called b, c, and d) with masses between those of the Earth and Neptune, and with orbital periods of 11.6, 27.6 and 107.6 days respectively. Afterwards NASA's TESS satellite, designed to detect transiting planets, found that the two interior planets, b and c, transit Nu2 Lupi, making it one of the only three naked eye stars which have more than one transiting planet.

"Transiting systems such as Nu2 Lupi are of great importance in our understanding of how planets form and evolve, because we can compare several planets around the same bright star in detail", explains Laetitia Delrez, a researcher at the University of Liege (Belgium) and first author of the article.

"Our idea was to follow up previous studies of Nu2 Lupi and to observe planets b and c passing in front of Nu2 Lupi with CHEOPS, but during a transit of planet c we were amazed to see an unexpected transit of planet d, which is further out within the system", she adds.

Transits of planets give a valuable opportunity to study their atmospheres, their orbits, their sizes and their compositions. A transiting planet block out a tiny but detectable proportion of the light of its star when it passes in front of it, and it was this tiny drop in the light which led the researchers to their discovery. Because exoplanets with long periods orbit far away from their stars, the possibility of detecting a planet during transit is very small indeed, which makes the finding with CHEOPS a real surprise.

Using the high precision techniques of CHEOPS planet d was found to have some 2.5 times the radius of the Earth, and its orbital period around its star of a little over 107 days, was confirmed. In addition, using archive observations from terrestrial telescopes its mass could be estimated at 8.8 times that of the Earth.

"The amount of radiation from the star which falls onto planet d is quite small compared to many other known exoplanets. If it were in our own solar system Nu2 Lupi d would orbit between Mercury and Venus", says Mahmoudreza Oshagh, a senior postdoctoral researcher at the IAC, and a co-author of the paper. "Combined with its bright parent star, its long orbital period and its ideal situation for follow-up, this means that planet d is very exciting: it is an exceptional object, with no known equivalent, and it will certainly be a fundamental object for future studies".

The majority of long period transiting exoplanets discovered until now are orbiting stars which are too faint to allow detailed follow-up observations, which means that we know little about their properties. Nu2 Lupi is, however, sufficiently bright to be an attractive object for other powerful space telescopes such as the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the future James Webb Space Telescope, as well as major observatories on the ground. "Given its general properties and its orbit, planet d will be an exceptionally favourable objective to study an exoplanet with a moderate atmospheric temperature around a star similar to the Sun", adds Laetitia Delrez.

Combining the new data from CHEOPS with archive data from other observatories, the researchers found that planet b is mainly rocky, while planets c and d appear to have large quantities of water surrounded by hydrogen and helium gas. In fact, planets c and d contain much more water than the Earth, a quarter of the mass of each of them is water, in comparison with less than 0.1% on Earth. But this water is not liquid, it is high pressure ice, or high temperature water vapour.

"Although none of these planets would be habitable, their diversity makes the system very exciting and a great future perspective to show how these bodies formed and how they have changed with time", explains Enric Pallé, an IAC researcher and a co-author of the article. "We can also look for rings or moons within the Nu2 Lupi system, because the extreme accuracy and stability of CHEOPS could allow us to detect bodies close to the size of Mars".

CHEOPS is designed to gather high precision data of individual stars known to harbour planets, rather than to make a more general survey of possible exoplanets around many stars. This approach and accuracy are proving exceptionally useful to understand the planetary systems around the stars around us.

"These exciting results show, yet again, the major potential of this satellite", says Enric Pallé. CHEOPS will not only give us a better understanding of known exoplanets, but as shown by this result and others in the initial phase of the mission, it will enable us to discover new ones, and to reveal their secrets".