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An international team of physicists led by the University of Minnesota has discovered that a unique superconducting metal is more resilient when used as a very thin layer. The research is the first step toward a larger goal of understanding unconventional superconducting states in materials, which could possibly be used in quantum computing in the future.

The collaboration includes four faculty members in the University of Minnesota's School of Physics and Astronomy--Associate Professor Vlad Pribiag, Professor Rafael Fernandes, and Assistant Professors Fiona Burnell and Ke Wang--along with physicists at Cornell University and several other institutions. The study is published in Nature Physics, a monthly, peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the Nature Research.

Niobium diselenide (NbSe2) is a superconducting metal, meaning that it can conduct electricity, or transport electrons from one atom to another, with no resistance. It is not uncommon for materials to behave differently when they are at a very small size, but NbSe2 has potentially beneficial properties. The researchers found that the material in 2D form (a very thin substrate only a few atomic layers thick) is a more resilient superconductor because it has a two-fold symmetry, which is very different from thicker samples of the same material.

Motivated by Fernandes and Burnell's theoretical prediction of exotic superconductivity in this 2D material, Pribiag and Wang started to investigate atomically-thin 2D superconducting devices.

"We expected it to have a six-fold rotational pattern, like a snowflake." Wang said. "Despite the six-fold structure, it only showed two-fold behavior in the experiment."

"This was one of the first times [this phenomenon] was seen in a real material," Pribiag said.

The researchers attributed the newly-discovered two-fold rotational symmetry of the superconducting state in NbSe2 to the mixing between two closely competing types of superconductivity, namely the conventional s-wave type--typical of bulk NbSe2--and an unconventional d- or p-type mechanism that emerges in few-layer NbSe2. The two types of superconductivity have very similar energies in this system. Because of this, they interact and compete with each other.

Pribiag and Wang said they later became aware that physicists at Cornell University were reviewing the same physics using a different experimental technique, namely quantum tunneling measurements. They decided to combine their results with the Cornell research and publish a comprehensive study.

Burnell, Pribiag, and Wang plan to build on these initial results to further investigate the properties of atomically thin NbSe2 in combination with other exotic 2D materials, which could ultimately lead to the use of unconventional superconducting states, such as topological superconductivity, to build quantum computers.

"What we want is a completely flat interface on the atomic scale," Pribiag said. "We believe this system will be able to give us a better platform to study materials to use them for quantum computing applications."

In addition to Pribiag, Fernandes, Burnell, Wang, the collaboration included University of Minnesota physics graduate students Alex Hamill, Brett Heischmidt, Daniel Shaffer, Kan-Ting Tsai, and Xi Zhang; Cornell University faculty members Jie Shan and Kin Fai Mak and graduate student Egon Sohn; Helmuth Berger and László Forró, researchers at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland; Alexey Suslov, a researcher at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Fla.; and Xiaoxiang Xi, a professor at Nanjing University in China.

The University of Minnesota research was supported primarily by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through the University of Minnesota Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC). The research at Cornell was supported by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and NSF. The work in Switzerland was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Clinical research on COVID-19 has boomed in the 18 months since the disease first appeared. Countless papers have looked at the topic from almost every possible angle, including methods of detection.

For a new paper published in the journal Clinical Microbiology Reviews, a team of researchers led by Concordia engineers sifted through hundreds of papers on COVID-19 detection tools and technologies. They wanted to categorize and understand what exists, what is lacking and what can be improved. The result is a thorough assessment of the field citing almost 600 separate papers that cover an extensive body of literature.

"The upsurge of publications and new technologies in a very short time made it very difficult to follow for anyone interested in the topic," says the study's primary investigator and lead author Hamid Tali, a PhD student in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering.

"Our study looks at these technologies' performance characteristics, their challenges and the gaps in our current knowledge and future directions. We describe the lessons learned throughout the pandemic on the diagnostics of this virus, which will be helpful in the case of a future pandemic."

The authors believe that the paper provides a rich "one-stop shop" resource for people interested in the topic, including experts in clinical microbiology and non-experts who want to know more about different methods.

"Having such a comprehensive review on this gigantic subject in a single place is of great value as it will significantly save time from researchers. It will help them grasp the state-of-the-art technologies in this area as fast as possible, get inspired and directed about current challenges and better define their research objectives," Tali adds.

Sana Anbuhi, an assistant professor of chemical and materials engineering, is the paper's senior author. She and Jason LeBlanc of Dalhousie University are the corresponding authors. Zubi Sadiq and Oyejide Oyewunmi of Concordia and Carolina Camargo, Bahareh Nikpour, Narges Armanfard and Selena Sagan of McGill University are co-authors.

ASSURED is the goal

The authors point out that the explosion of detection techniques and tools -- some of questionable quality -- came from the need to expand testing rapidly while supply chains were disrupted by the virus's global spread. Some techniques are more accurate; others are more affordable. Some require sophisticated lab equipment; others do not.

The World Health Organization's internationally recognized ASSURED criteria for point-of-care diagnostic devices helped them assess the various tests being used. The acronym stands for affordable, sensitive, specific, user-friendly, rapid and robust, equipment-free and deliverable to end users. This helped the researchers determine the strengths and weaknesses of the existing diagnostic tools.

"Some sensors are sensitive and specific, meaning they detect the presence of COVID-19 but they are not user-friendly or need bulky machinery and highly trained people to operate it," Anbuhi explains. She says the most effective tools in use now are nucleic acid amplification tests, which are highly effective at detecting ribonucleic acid (RNA).

Engineers for health

The researchers hope that identifying current weaknesses in our diagnostic tools will help avoid the need of adopting drastic measures like lockdowns and shuttering the economy when the next pandemic emerges.

"We hope that this will help guide researchers toward an ideal device that can be used by anyone, anywhere at a very low cost," Tali says.

Finally, the authors note that engineers rarely publish a paper in a journal for clinical microbiologists.

"The diagnostics of COVID-19 is an interdisciplinary subject. And so writing a comprehensive review required collaboration across four different research groups, each with its own area of expertise."

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- Supermassive black holes, or SMBHs, are black holes with masses that are several million to billion times the mass of our sun. The Milky Way hosts an SMBH with mass a few million times the solar mass. Surprisingly, astrophysical observations show that SMBHs already existed when the universe was very young. For example, a billion solar mass black holes are found when the universe was just 6% of its current age, 13.7 billion years. How do these SMBHs in the early universe originate?

A team led by a theoretical physicist at the University of California, Riverside, has come up with an explanation: a massive seed black hole that the collapse of a dark matter halo could produce.

Dark matter halo is the halo of invisible matter surrounding a galaxy or a cluster of galaxies. Although dark matter has never been detected in laboratories, physicists remain confident this mysterious matter that makes up 85% of the universe's matter exists. Were the visible matter of a galaxy not embedded in a dark matter halo, this matter would fly apart.

"Physicists are puzzled why SMBHs in the early universe, which are located in the central regions of dark matter halos, grow so massively in a short time," said Hai-Bo Yu, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at UC Riverside, who led the study that appears in Astrophysical Journal Letters. "It's like a 5-year-old child that weighs, say, 200 pounds. Such a child would astonish us all because we know the typical weight of a newborn baby and how fast this baby can grow. Where it comes to black holes, physicists have general expectations about the mass of a seed black hole and its growth rate. The presence of SMBHs suggests these general expectations have been violated, requiring new knowledge. And that's exciting."

A seed black hole is a black hole at its initial stage -- akin to the baby stage in the life of a human.

"We can think of two reasons," Yu added. "The seed -- or 'baby' -- black hole is either much more massive or it grows much faster than we thought, or both. The question that then arises is what are the physical mechanisms for producing a massive enough seed black hole or achieving a fast enough growth rate?"

"It takes time for black holes to grow massive by accreting surrounding matter," said co-author Yi-Ming Zhong, a postdoctoral researcher at the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago. "Our paper shows that if dark matter has self-interactions then the gravothermal collapse of a halo can lead to a massive enough seed black hole. Its growth rate would be more consistent with general expectations."

In astrophysics, a popular mechanism used to explain SMBHs is the collapse of pristine gas in protogalaxies in the early universe.

"This mechanism, however, cannot produce a massive enough seed black hole to accommodate newly observed SMBHs -- unless the seed black hole experienced an extremely fast growth rate," Yu said. "Our work provides an alternative explanation: a self-interacting dark matter halo experiences gravothermal instability and its central region collapses into a seed black hole."

The explanation Yu and his colleagues propose works in the following way:

Dark matter particles first cluster together under the influence of gravity and form a dark matter halo. During the evolution of the halo, two competing forces -- gravity and pressure -- operate. While gravity pulls dark matter particles inward, pressure pushes them outward. If dark matter particles have no self-interactions, then, as gravity pulls them toward the central halo, they become hotter, that is, they move faster, the pressure increases effectively, and they bounce back. However, in the case of self-interacting dark matter, dark matter self-interactions can transport the heat from those "hotter" particles to nearby colder ones. This makes it difficult for the dark matter particles to bounce back.

Yu explained that the central halo, which would collapse into a black hole, has angular momentum, meaning, it rotates. The self-interactions can induce viscosity, or "friction," that dissipates the angular momentum. During the collapse process, the central halo, which has a fixed mass, shrinks in radius and slows down in rotation due to viscosity. As the evolution continues, the central halo eventually collapses into a singular state: a seed black hole. This seed can grow more massive by accreting surrounding baryonic -- or visible -- matter such as gas and stars.

"The advantage of our scenario is that the mass of the seed black hole can be high since it is produced by the collapse of a dark matter halo," Yu said. "Thus, it can grow into a supermassive black hole in a relatively short timescale."

The new work is novel in that the researchers identify the importance of baryons--ordinary atomic and molecular particles -- for this idea to work.

"First, we show the presence of baryons, such as gas and stars, can significantly speed up the onset of the gravothermal collapse of a halo and a seed black hole could be created early enough," said Wei-Xiang Feng, Yu's graduate student and a co-author on the paper. "Second, we show the self-interactions can induce viscosity that dissipates the angular momentum remnant of the central halo. Third, we develop a method to examine the condition for triggering general relativistic instability of the collapsed halo, which ensures a seed black hole could form if the condition is satisfied."

Over the past decade, Yu has explored novel predictions of dark matter self-interactions and their observational consequences. His work has shown that self-interacting dark matter can provide a good explanation for the observed motion of stars and gas in galaxies.

"In many galaxies, stars and gas dominate their central regions," he said. "Thus, it's natural to ask how the presence of this baryonic matter affects the collapse process. We show it will speed up the onset of the collapse. This feature is exactly what we need to explain the origin of supermassive black holes in the early universe. The self-interactions also lead to viscosity that can dissipate angular momentum of the central halo and further help the collapse process."

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. -- A new approach to studying conjugated polymers made it possible for an Army-funded research team to measure, for the first time, the individual molecules' mechanical and kinetic properties during polymerization reaction. The insights gained could lead to more flexible and robust soft electronic materials, such as health monitors and soft robotics.

Conjugated polymers are essentially clusters of molecules strung along a backbone that can conduct electrons and absorb light. This makes them a perfect fit for creating soft optoelectronics, such as wearable electronic devices; however, as flexible as they are, these polymers are difficult to study in bulk because they aggregate and fall out from solution.

"Conjugated polymers are a fascinating class of materials due to their inherent optical and electronic properties which are dictated by their polymer structure," said Dr. Dawanne Poree, program manager, U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, known as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory. "These materials are highly relevant to a number of applications of interest to Army and DoD including portable electronics, wearable devices, sensors, and optical communication systems. To date, unfortunately, it has been difficult to develop conjugated polymers for targeted applications due to a lack of viable tools to study and correlate their structure-property relationships."

With Army funding, researchers at Cornell University employed an approach they pioneered on other synthetic polymers, called magnetic tweezers, that allowed them to stretch and twist individual molecules of the conjugated polymer polyacetylene. The research was published in the journal Chem.

"Through the use of novel single-molecule manipulation and imaging approaches, this work provided the first observations of single-chain behaviors in conjugated polymers which lays the foundation for the rational design and processing of these materials to enable widespread application," Poree said.

Previous efforts to address the solubility of conjugated polymers have often relied upon chemical derivatization, in which the structures are modified with functional groups of atoms. However, that approach can affect the polymer's innate properties.

"The conjugated polymer is really a prototype," said Dr. Peng Chen, the Peter J.W. Debye professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Cornell. "You always modify it to tailor it for applications. We are hoping everything we measured - the fundamental properties of synthesis kinetics, the mechanical property - become benchmark numbers for people to think about other polymers of the same category."

In 2017, Chen's group was the first to use the magnetic tweezers measurement technique to study living polymerization, visualizing it at the single-molecule level. The technique had already been used in the biophysics field for studying DNA and proteins, but no one had successfully extended it to the realm of synthetic polymers.

The process works by affixing one end of a polymer strand to a glass coverslip and the other end to a tiny magnetic particle. The researchers then use a magnetic field to manipulate the conjugated polymer, stretching or twisting it, and measuring the response of a single polymer chain that grows.

The amounts are so small, they stay soluble in solution, the way bulk amounts normally would not.

The team measured how long chains of conjugated polymers, which consist of hundreds of thousands of monomer units, grow in real time. They discovered these polymers add a new monomer per second, a much faster growth than their nonconjugated analogs.

"We found that while growing in real time, this polymer forms conformational entanglements," Chen said. "All polymers we have studied form conformational entanglements, but for this conjugated polymer this conformational entanglement is looser, allowing it to grow faster."

By pulling and stretching individual conjugated polymers, so-called force extension measurements, the researchers were able to assess their rigidity and better understand how they can bend in different directions while remaining conjugated and retaining electron conductivity.

They also discovered the polymers displayed diverse mechanical behaviors from one individual chain to the next-behaviors that had been predicted by theory but never observed experimentally.

The findings highlight both the uniqueness of conjugated polymers for a range of applications as well as the strength of using a single-molecule manipulation and imaging technique on synthetic materials.

"Now we have a new way to study how these conjugated polymers are made chemically and what is the fundamental mechanical property of this type of material," Chen said. "We can study how these fundamental properties change when you start tailoring them for application purposes. Maybe you can make it more mechanically flexible and make the polymer longer, or adjust the synthesis condition to either synthesize the polymer in a faster or slower way."

DALLAS (SMU) -- A team of SMU biological scientists has confirmed that P-glycoprotein (P-gp) has the ability to remove a toxin from the brain that is associated with Alzheimer's disease.

The finding could lead to new treatments for the disease that affects nearly 6 million Americans. It was that hope that motivated lead researchers James W. McCormick and Lauren Ammerman to pursue the research as SMU graduate students after they both lost a grandmother to the disease while at SMU.

In the Alzheimer's brain, abnormal levels of amyloid-β proteins clump together to form plaques that collect between neurons and can disrupt cell function. This is believed to be one of the key factors that triggers memory loss, confusion and other common symptoms from Alzheimer's disease.

"We were able to demonstrate both computationally and experimentally that P-gp, a critical toxin pump in the body, is able to transport this amyloid-β protein," said John Wise, associate professor in the SMU Department of Biological Sciences and co-author of the study published in PLOS ONE.

"If you could find a way to induce more P-glycoprotein in the protective blood-brain barrier for people who are susceptible to Alzheimer's disease, perhaps they could take such a treatment and it would help postpone or prevent the onset of the disease," he said. Wise stressed that the theory needs more research.

The SMU (Southern Methodist University) study also provides strong evidence for the first time that P-gp may be able to pump out much larger toxins than previously believed.

P-gp is nature's way of removing toxins from cells. Similar to how a sump pump in your house removes water from the basement, P-gp swallows harmful drugs or toxins within the cell and then spits them back outside the cell.

"You find P-gp wherever the body is looking to protect an organ from toxins, and the brain is no exception," explained co-author Pia Vogel, SMU professor and director of SMU's Center for Drug Discovery, Design and Delivery.

Amyloid-β's large size created questions about whether P-glycoprotein could actually inhale it and pump it back out.

"Amyloid-β is maybe five times bigger than the small, drug-like molecules that P-glycoproteins are well-known to move. It would be like taking New York pizza and trying to stuff that whole slice in your mouth and swallow it," Wise said.

The fact that P-gp appears to be able to do just that "greatly expands the possible range of things that P-gp can transport, which opens the possibility that it may interact with other factors that were previously thought impossible," said McCormick, a former SMU graduate student in biological sciences.

The research was personal

SMU researchers might never have investigated the link between P-gp and amyloid-β proteins if not for McCormick's dogged pursuit of the connection. The Ph.D. student, who graduated in 2017, had seen preliminary work suggesting that P-gp might play a role in pulling amyloid protein out of the brain and asked his faculty advisors, Vogel and Wise, if he could take some time to check it out.

The professors concede they first tried to discourage him because they were more focused on P-gp's role in creating resistance to chemotherapy in cancer patients. However, McCormick was "passionate," about figuring out if P-gp might be able to shield someone from getting Alzheimer's, Vogel said.

He devoted hours of his own time to use a computer-generated model of P-glycoprotein that he and Wise created. The model allows researchers to dock nearly any drug to the P-gp protein and observe how it would behave in P-gp's "pump." Vogel, Wise and other SMU scientists have been studying the protein for years to identify compounds that might reverse chemotherapy failure in aggressive cancers.

McCormick completed the computational work with the help of his fiancé, Ammerman, who got her Ph.D in biology from SMU in May.

Together, they ran multiple simulations of the P-gp protein using SMU's high performance computer, ManeFrame II, and found that each time, P-gp was able to "swallow" amyloid-β proteins and push them out of cells.

"For the scientist in me, it was just absolutely amazing that this pump could consume something that big," Vogel said. "John [Wise] and I did not predict that would be possible."

Two in vitro experiments confirmed the computational work

The researchers conducted two experiments in the lab to confirm the computational results.

In one experiment, Ammerman used lab-purchased amyloid-β proteins that had been dyed fluorescent green, allowing them to be easily spotted easily in a microscope. In multiple trials, Ammerman exposed human cells to these amyloid-β proteins. She used two types of human cells -- one where P-gp was strongly expressed and one where P-gp was not. This allowed Ammerman to test the difference between the two and see if P-gp was pumping amyloid-β out.

The amyloid proteins were clearly shown to be pushed out of the human cells that had overexpressed P-gp in them, supporting the theory that P-gp removes amyloid proteins on contact.

Another in vitro experiment reached the same conclusion from a different direction. Former graduate student Gang (Mike) Chen worked in SMU's Center for Drug Discovery, Design and Delivery to show that an Alzheimer's-linked amyloid-β caused changes in the P-gp's usage of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), indicating that there was a physical interaction between the two.

ATP hydrolysis produces the energy that P-gp uses to transport toxins or drugs out of the cell. When no toxins are present, P-gp's rate of ATP stays pretty low. When challenged with transporting cargo, P-gp's ATP hydrolysis activity usually increases quite dramatically.

"Even though our work can't help our grandparents, I hope that it might help others in the future," Ammerman said. "The more we know, the more power we have - and researchers after us - to address and target these devastating diseases."

A new study looking at the way human cells activate the immune system in response to SARS-CoV-2 infection could open the door to even more effective and powerful vaccines against the coronavirus and its rapidly emerging variants keeping the global pandemic smoldering.

Researchers from Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard say it’s the first real look at exactly what types of “red flags” the human body uses to enlist the help of T cells—killers sent out by the immune system to destroy infected cells. Until now, COVID vaccines have been focused on activating a different type of immune cell, B cells, which are responsible for creating antibodies. Developing vaccines to activate the other arm of the immune system—the T cells—could dramatically increase immunity against coronavirus, and importantly, its variants.

In their findings, published in Cell, the researchers say current vaccines might lack some important bits of viral material capable of triggering a holistic immune response in the human body. Based on the new information, “companies should reevaluate their vaccine designs,” says Mohsan Saeed, a NEIDL virologist and the co-corresponding author of the paper.

Saeed, a BU School of Medicine assistant professor of biochemistry, performed experiments on human cells infected with coronavirus. He isolated and identified those missing pieces of SARS-CoV-2 proteins inside one of the NEIDL’s Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) labs. “This was a big undertaking because many research techniques are difficult to adapt for high containment levels [such as BSL-3],” Saeed says. “The overall coronavirus research pipeline we’ve created at the NEIDL, and the support of our entire NEIDL team, has helped us along the way.”

Saeed got involved after he was contacted by genetic sequencing experts at the Broad Institute, computational geneticists Pardis Sabeti and Shira Weingarten-Gabbay. They hoped to identify fragments of SARS-CoV-2 that activate the immune system’s T cells. 

“The emergence of viral variants, an active area of research in my lab, is a major concern for vaccine development,” says Sabeti, a leader in the Broad Institute’s Infectious Disease and Microbiome Program. She is also a Harvard University professor of systems biology, organismic and evolutionary biology, and immunology and infectious disease, as well as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

“We swung into full action right away because my laboratory had [already] generated human cell lines that could be readily infected with SARS-CoV-2,” Saeed says. The group’s efforts were spearheaded by two members of the Saeed lab: Da-Yuan Chen, a postdoctoral associate, and Hasahn Conway, a lab technician.

From the outset of COVID pandemic in early 2020, scientists around the world knew the identity of 29 proteins produced by SARS-CoV-2 virus in infected cells—viral fragments that now make up the spike protein in some coronavirus vaccines, such as the Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. Later, scientists discovered another 23 proteins hidden inside the virus’ genetic sequence; however, the function of these additional proteins was a mystery until now. The new findings of Saeed and his collaborators reveal—unexpectedly and critically—that 25 percent of the viral protein fragments that trigger the human immune system to attack a virus come from these hidden viral proteins.

How exactly does the immune system detect these fragments? Human cells contain molecular “scissors”—called proteases—that, when the cells are invaded, hack off bits of viral proteins produced during infection. Those bits, containing internal proteins exposed by the chopping-up process—like the way the core of an apple is exposed when the fruit is segmented—are then transported to the cell membrane and pushed through special doorways. There, they stick outside the cell acting almost like a hitchhiker, waving down the help of passing T cells. Once T cells notice these viral flags poking through infected cells, they launch an attack and try to eliminate those cells from the body. And this T cell response isn’t insignificant—Saeed says there are links between the strength of this response and whether or not people infected with coronavirus go on to develop serious disease.

“It’s quite remarkable that such a strong immune signature of the virus is coming from regions [of the virus’ genetic sequence] that we were blind to,” says Weingarten-Gabby, the paper’s lead author and postdoctoral fellow in the Sabeti lab. “This is a striking reminder that curiosity-driven research stands at the basis of discoveries that can transform the development of vaccines and therapies.”

“Our discovery … can assist in the development of new vaccines that will mimic more accurately the response of our immune system to the virus,” Sabeti says.

T cells not only destroy infected cells but also memorize the virus’ flags so that they can launch an attack, stronger and faster, the next time the same or a different variant of the virus appears. That’s a crucial advantage, because Saeed and his collaborators say the coronavirus appears to delay the cell’s ability to call in immune help.

“This virus wants to go undetected by the immune system for as long as possible,” Saeed says. “Once it’s noticed by the immune system, it’s going to be eliminated, and it doesn’t want that.”

Based on their findings, Saeed says, a new vaccine recipe, incorporating some of the newly discovered internal proteins making up the SARS-CoV-2 virus, would be effective in stimulating an immune response capable of tackling a wide swath of newly emerging coronavirus variants. And given the speed with which these variants continue to appear around the world, a vaccine that can provide protection against all of them would be a game changer. 

In a study of more than 10,600 adult patients hospitalized with COVID-19, women had significantly lower odds than men of in-hospital mortality. They also had fewer admissions to the intensive care unit and less need for mechanical ventilation. Women also had significantly lower odds of major adverse events, including acute cardiac injury, acute kidney injury, and venous thromboembolism, according to an article in the peer-reviewed Journal of Women's Health. Click here to read the article now.

"This comprehensive analysis is the largest study to date that directly assesses the impact of sex on COVID-19 outcomes," stated Rachel-Maria Brown, MD, Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, and coauthors. "Our study strongly demonstrates female sex to be associated with lower odds of in-hospital outcomes, major adverse effects and all-cause mortality as compared to male sex after controlling for confounding variables." The authors propose some of the protective factors that may contribute to these findings.

In the accompanying editorial entitled "Lessons Learned from COVID-19 Sex Disparities," Annabelle Santos Volgman, MD, Rush University Medical Center, and coauthors, suggest various mechanisms by which female sex may confer a protective advantage against COVID-19 infection. One advantage may be the extra X chromosome, which carries multiple genes responsible for innate and adaptive immunity.

Volgman and coauthors emphasize that "although women have less mortality risk with COVID-19, we need to exercise caution not to send a message to deliver subpar care to women with COVID-19 or decrease measures to prevent their infection. Our evolving knowledge should not reduce attention paid to women admitted for COVID-19."

EAST LANSING, Mich. - The original Star Trek television series took place in a future when space is the final frontier, but humanity hasn't reached that point quite yet.

As researchers like Michigan State University entomologists Sarah Smith and Anthony Cognato are reminding us, there's still plenty to discover right here on Earth.

Working in Central and South America, the duo discovered more than three dozen species of ambrosia beetles -- beetles that eat ambrosia fungus -- previously unknown to science. Smith and Cognato described these new species on June 16 in the journal ZooKeys.

The Spartans also selected an unusual naming theme named in deference to the female beetles who have helped their species survive and thrive by boldly going where they hadn't before.

Many of the new species are named for iconic female science fiction characters, including Nyota Uhura of "Star Trek"; Kara "Starbuck" Thrace from the 2000s "Battlestar Galactica" TV series; and Katniss Everdeen from "The Hunger Games" books and movies.

"One of our colleagues from London was asking if it's good to name a species after popular characters, if the popularity would backfire and make people think this is frivolous," said Cognato, director of the Albert. J. Cook Arthropod Research Collection. He's also an entomology professor with appointments in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and the College of Natural Science.

"But overall, our colleagues think it's a good thing," Cognato said. "It gives us a chance to talk about taxonomy -- the science of classifying organisms -- and about diversity."

Understanding the world's biodiversity is one of the major drivers of this and related research. Scientists estimate that there are 10 million nonbacterial species in the world and that humans have classified only about 20% of those.

"And some are lost before they're ever discovered," said Smith, who is the curator of the A. J. Cook Arthropod Research Collection. When people disrupt native ecosystems with farming and mining, for example, undiscovered species can face extinction before researchers know about them.

For this project, the team did some of its field work in Peru, where illegal gold miners can be particularly devastating to forests. "They're turning the forest into a wasteland" Smith said. "It may never recover."

Working in such threatened areas, Smith and Cognato are helping identify beetle species before it's too late, as well as characterizing a rich variety of physical traits and behaviors.

To be clear, they did this field work long before the pandemic struck, starting around 2008. But it takes time to perform the thorough investigations required to ensure that a species is indeed distinct from its closely related cousins.

"With South America, it can be really hard to know whether a species is new or not, just because the fauna is so poorly studied," Smith said.

With the stay-at-home orders in effect, she and Cognato had time to focus on projects that had been simmering on the backburner, such as this one that details ambrosia beetles they had collected belonging to the genus Coptoborus.

These tiny beetles make their homes by boring into trees. Once inside, they sustain their nests by cultivating fungus that serves as food. There, a mother produces many female offspring and one or two dwarfed males. The main job of those males is to mate with their sisters, creating a new generation of females prepared to disperse and produce a new brood. This all leads to another reason for studying these beetles: they can become pests.

These females arrive at trees ready to bore inside, start a fungus farm and reproduce. Though most prefer to nest in dead or dying parts of trees, some can attack fully healthy trees that are ecologically and economically important. For example, there are species within the genus known to attack balsa trees in Ecuador, the world's leading exporter of balsa wood.

And if tree-dwelling beetles find their way into nonnative habitats, they can pose large threats to trees that have no natural defenses against the insects. Michiganders are all too familiar with the emerald ash borer, which has claimed millions of ash trees in the state. Another nonnative species of fungus-farming beetle devastated redbay laurels and avocado trees in the Southern U.S.

By identifying species abroad, in their native habitats, researchers including Smith and Cognato are helping the U.S. better prepare for if and when a new pest shows up here. And, historically speaking, Coptoborus beetles are hardy travelers.

Their ancestors originated about 20 million years ago, likely in Southeast Asia, before emigrating and making homes across much of the tropics.

"That's one of the reasons we chose to name them after female sci-fi characters. Not to anthropomorphize too much, but you have these adventurous females that were blown off their log or had their wood-encased home thrown into the ocean by a mudslide," Cognato said. If these mated females made it to a new land, they could start a new population, allowing the species to proliferate.

"Along the way, there were so many ways to die, but they ended up colonizing an entire continent."

Fast forward to now and there are thousands of ambrosia beetle species, including more than 70 of the Coptoborus genus -- and counting. In christening the new beetles, Smith and Cognato got some inspiration by finding similarities between the beetle and its namesake.

For instance, the C. uhura was given its name because its reddish color, reminiscent of the uniform worn by Nichelle Nichols's Uhura character in the original "Star Trek" TV series.

And Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley character in the "Alien" film franchise had a shaved head in the movie "Alien 3." One of the beetles, now named C. ripley, was also glabrous, or without hair.

Other names were selected because the duo just liked the characters and found them inspiring. For example, the C. scully beetle was named after Dana Scully, Gillian Anderson's character on "The X-Files."

The character is also behind what's known as the "Scully Effect." By showing a successful female scientist on TV, the show helped raise awareness of science, technology, engineering and mathematics -- or STEM -- professions among young women.

In their paper, Smith and Cognato wrote, "We believe in the 'Scully Effect' and hope future female scientists, real and fictional, continue to inspire children and young adults to pursue STEM careers."

Smith and Cognato also took the opportunity to name some beetles in honor of real-life people who have made an impact on their work and their lives.

For example, the C. erwini, is named after a renowned entomologist and friend Terry Erwin, who passed away in 2020. Erwin helped popularize a technique called canopy fogging to collect beetle specimens living in treetops.

"Without his dedication to canopy fogging, this species and most of those described in this publication may never have been discovered," Smith and Cognato wrote in their study, which is part of a special issue in memory of Erwin, who was also editor-in-chief of ZooKeys.

Also, the C. bettysmithae is named after Smith's grandmother, Catherine "Betty" Smith. Sarah remembers Betty's incredible strength in battling cancer and her help fostering her granddaughter's scientific interest.

"My grandmother supported me a lot with entomology," Smith said. "I used to spend many weekends with her, and she'd take me out to catch dragonflies."

Now, she and Cognato are out catching and characterizing insects that are new to science. In doing so, they're helping protect native ecosystems, painting a more complete picture of the planet's bountiful biodiversity and even drawing some attention to the power of naming and classifying things.

"Taxonomy was probably one of the first sciences of humans. You can find evidence of it throughout history and across cultures," Cognato said.

This naming likely started so humans could easily share information about which plants were safe to eat and which animals were dangerous. This is still valuable information today, but naming has evolved to help us appreciate even more dimensions of life on Earth.

Think about being a kid in a park or backyard, Cognato said, and the innate desire to know and name the animals there, say, robins or squirrels. Classification builds connection.

"It helps us communicate and it helps us live better," Cognato said. "It helps us understand the world and biodiversity."

'God forbid we need this, but we'll be ready'

Medication would be taken early in the disease, so you don't get as sick

Future drug could also treat common cold

CHICAGO --- Scientists are already preparing for a possible next coronavirus pandemic to strike, keeping with the seven-year pattern since 2004.

In future-looking research, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine scientists have identified a novel target for a drug to treat SARS-CoV-2 that also could impact a new emerging coronavirus.

"God forbid we need this, but we will be ready," said Karla Satchell, professor of microbiology-immunology at Feinberg, who leads an international team of scientists to analyze the important structures of the virus. The Northwestern team previously mapped the structure of a virus protein called nsp16, which is present in all coronaviruses. This new study provides critical information that could aid drug development against future coronaviruses as well as SARS-CoV-2.

"There is great need for new approaches to drug discovery to combat the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic and infections from future coronaviruses," Satchell said.

"The idea is this future drug would work early in the infection," Satchell said. "If somebody around you gets the coronavirus, you would run to the drugstore to get your medication and take it for three or four days. If you were sick, you wouldn't get as sick."

The paper was published in Science Signaling.

Satchell's team has mapped or 'solved' three new protein structures in three-dimensional views and discovered a secret identifier in the machinery that helps the virus hide from the immune system.

They discovered a coronavirus-specific pocket in the protein, nsp16, that binds the virus-genomic fragment held in place by a metal ion. The fragment is used by the coronavirus as the template for all the viral building blocks.

For this reason, Satchell said, there is potential to make a drug to fit this unique pocket that would block function of this protein from the coronavirus. It would not block the function of a similar protein from human cells that lacks the pocket. Thus, such a drug would only target the invader protein.

Nsp16 is considered one of the key viral proteins that could be inhibited by drugs to stop the virus shortly after a person gets exposed. The goal is to stop the virus early before people get too sick. Since little research was done on nsp16, Satchell's team has worked to generate key information about this protein and is collaborating with chemists who will use the information to design drugs against the protein.

While some of the coronavirus proteins vary a lot, nsp16 is nearly the same across most of them. The unique pocket discovered by Satchell's group is present in all the different coronavirus members. This means that drugs designed to fit this pocket should work against all coronaviruses, including a virus that emerges in the future. And it should work against the common cold that is caused by a coronavirus.

Satchell envisions any drug developed from her team's discovery of the coronavirus pocket would be part of a treatment cocktail taken by patients early in the course of the disease. That could include drugs similar to Remdesivir, a drug that prevents the virus from producing the template for the building blocks that is necessary for it to replicate itself.

The team behind the discovery

The Northwestern team in the Center for Structural Genomics of Infectious Diseases (CSGID) expressed, purified and crystallized this protein. The idea of the project came from first study author George Minasov, research associate professor of microbiology-immunology at Feinberg. He worked with Feinberg research associate professor Ludmilla Shuvalova to crystallize the protein and also with post-doctoral fellow Monica Rosas-Lemus, who developed an assay to test the function of the protein based on information from the structure.

The team collaborated with Purdue University investigator Andrew Mesecar, who helped with biochemistry assays. Data on the structure was collected by the Life Sciences Collaborative Access Team at the Advanced Photon Source of Argonne National Laboratories by Joseph Brunzelle. Minasov solved the structure from the collected data. This project is one of many carried out by the CSGID to use structural biology to understand the biology of the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Overall, the center has made significant contributions to the development of vaccines, drugs and diagnostics. The international team has solved more than 70 different viral structures to reveal viral protein structure, interactions with possible drugs and interactions with antibodies. This work is made freely available to the global community to use to accelerate efforts to design new treatments against coronavirus to combat COVID-19 and future pandemics.

Researchers at the National Eye Institute (NEI) have determined how certain short protein fragments, called peptides, can protect neuronal cells found in the light-sensing retina layer at the back of the eye. The peptides might someday be used to treat degenerative retinal diseases, such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD). The study published today in the Journal of Neurochemistry. NEI is part of the National Institutes of Health.

A team led by Patricia Becerra, Ph.D., chief of the NEI Section on Protein Structure and Function, had previously derived these peptides from a protein called pigment epithelium-derived factor (PEDF), which is produced by retinal pigment epithelial cells that line the back of the eye.

"In the eye, PEDF protects neurons from dying. It prevents the invasion of blood vessels, it prevents inflammation, it has antioxidant properties--all these are beneficial properties," said Becerra, the senior author of the study. Her studies suggest that PEDF is part of the eye's natural mechanism for maintaining eye health. "PEDF may have a role for treating eye disease. If we want to exploit the protein for therapeutics, we need to separate out the regions responsible for its various properties and determine how each of them works."

The team used a well-known cell culture model system where immature retinal cells are isolated from the eyes of newborn rats and grown in a dish with minimal nutrients. The system includes not only the retina's light-sensing photoreceptors, but additional types of neurons that help the retina process and transmit visual information to the brain.

"Our model system - using cells isolated from the animal - lets us tease out the individual processes and mechanisms behind PEDF's protective effects," said Germán Michelis, graduate student and the study's first author.

The PEDF protein has functionally distinct domains. The Becerra lab previously found that each domain can work independently. One area, which is called the 34-mer because it is formed by 34 amino acid building blocks, halts blood vessel growth. Aberrant blood vessel growth is central to retinal diseases such as AMD and diabetic retinopathy. The second PEDF domain, called the 44-mer, provides anti-death signals to retinal neurons. The 44-mer can also stimulate neurons to grow neurites, finger-like projections that help the neurons communicate with their neighbors. A shorter version of the 44-mer of only 17 amino acids (17-mer) has identical activities.

Michelis and colleagues tested whether the 44-mer could protect immature retinal cells in a dish. Without the presence of proteins and other cells in their usual retinal environment, immature photoreceptors quickly die but can be preserved with PEDF.

They found that both the 44-mer and 17-mer were as capable of saving these photoreceptors as full-length PEDF.

The researchers also found that PEDF activity appears to be most needed at a specific point in photoreceptor cell development. Light detection takes place in a part of the photoreceptor known as the outer segment, where light-sensing opsin proteins are concentrated. The scientists found that when a photoreceptor cell is just beginning to create its outer segments, PEDF triggers the movement of opsin into the budding outer segment, where it belongs.

Along with photoreceptors, the retina is packed with several other types of neurons, which work together to process visual signals. Via neurites, amacrine neurons form connections, called synapses, to the cells that forward these visual signals to the brain. Becerra and colleagues found that PEDF stimulates amacrine cells to develop neurites in their cell culture model and that the 44-mer and 17-mer were at least as effective - or better - at stimulating these connections than the native protein.

Further, the 44-mer and 17-mer peptides work by binding to a protein receptor (PEDF-R) on the surface of neurons. PEDF activates PEDF-R, which processes molecules like docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), an omega-3 fatty acid critical for babies' development and for eye health. PEDF-R was discovered previously by the Becerra lab.

"We've known for a long time that DHA is important for retinal health. We think PEDF signaling might be a key component of regulating omega-3 fatty acids like DHA, both during eye development and in maintaining the eye's health over time," said Becerra. "We're hoping that we can harness some of these protective effects in a peptide-based therapeutic approach in the near future."

During the first several months of the pandemic -- when communities locked down, jobs were lost, PPE was scarce and store shelves were cleared --thousands of people turned to online crowdfunding to meet their needs.

But a new University of Washington analysis of requests and donations to the popular crowdfunding site GoFundMe, along with Census data, shows stark inequities in where the money went and how much was donated.

A study published June 15 in Social Science & Medicine found more than 175,000 COVID-19-related GoFundMe campaigns in the U.S., raising more than $416 million, from January through July 2020. Researchers found that affluent and educated communities created more fundraising campaigns, and received more in return, than other communities with fewer resources.

What's more, researchers found that campaign success, overall, was hard to come by. Some 43% of campaigns didn't receive a single donation. More than 90% of campaigns didn't meet their goals.

Researchers say the study reveals the challenges inherent to online crowdfunding, as well as its capacity to reinforce existing socioeconomic divides.

"Our study shows that even though COVID-19 had an impact across the country, the places that benefitted most from crowdfunding were the places that already had the most resources available," said the study's lead author, Mark Igra, a graduate student in sociology at the UW.

While some results may not be surprising from an economic standpoint -- people in wealthier communities likely have more money to donate to charitable causes -- researchers say the results highlight other factors contributing to campaign success. For example, people in more educated communities are likely better able to tap into existing social networks to raise money -- whereas in communities where education is lower the needs may be greater, but residents may have fewer connections to affluent donors, and fewer campaigns reach their goals.

Other recent research has explored online crowdfunding specific to medical needs, finding that campaigns are common, but often unsuccessful, in communities where health care resources and insurance coverage are lacking. This study is believed to be the first to examine online crowdfunding as a broader crisis response, and its impacts on inequality.

In examining COVID-19-related fundraising campaigns that mentioned a need associated with the pandemic, such as a lost job and a need for food or rent money, researchers eliminated those that were part of a GoFundMe program providing matching funds for businesses, leaving about 164,000 campaigns to sort through. Because demographic data about crowdfunding users is hard to come by, researchers analyzed campaign data at a county level and compared it with other county-level socioeconomic characteristics using U.S. Census data. Among their findings:

The median campaign goal was $5,000, with a median of two donations and only $65 raised.

The top 1% of campaigns received nearly one-quarter of all the money raised.

As COVID-19 cases and unemployment rose in a variety of communities, more fundraising campaigns were created in communities with higher education and income levels.

Counties where 35% of residents are college graduates can expect about 50% more campaigns than counties where only 12% are graduates.

Counties with a median household income of at least $130,000 raised nearly $150 million, almost three times as much as counties with a median income of $19,000 to $47,000, even though the populations of those counties are about the same.

A keyword search of GoFundMe campaign requests found that those identifying business and medical needs yielded more donations than those campaigns that mentioned personal financial needs.

GoFundMe's approach of highlighting and promoting certain campaigns, whether those tied to a high-profile person or those that are gaining attention and growing at a faster rate, means success begets success, researchers said.

Co-author Nora Kenworthy, an associate professor of nursing and health studies at UW Bothell, said the study shows who's able to leverage resources in a crisis, and that the nature of online crowdfunding as a social media platform exacerbates the dynamics of a crisis.

"During the pandemic, there's been a lot of talk of communities supporting communities, but we need to ask, where does that happen, for whom, and who gets left out?" said Kenworthy. "The more we rely on social media platforms to shape that community response, the more we are blinded to where help is not happening and who's not getting assistance."

That's not to say crowdfunding doesn't serve a valuable purpose, the authors point out. It's more a sign "that we shouldn't shy away from more structural solutions," Kenworthy said, such as government-run programs that could cast a wider net than crowdfunding can cover.

"People's fundamental needs for health and well-being shouldn't be dependent on such an unpredictable source of funds. It's really a question of what is our shared commitment to the things people should have, regardless of whether they can be successful at crowdfunding," Igra said. "It's a good thing that people are helping, but people who aren't being helped aren't visible."

Microplastic pollution of waterways has become a huge concern, with the tiny pieces of plastic entering food webs and potentially having harmful effects on animals and people. In addition, microplastics can act as breeding grounds for antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Now, researchers reporting in Environmental Science & Technology have analyzed antibiotic-resistance genes (ARGs) on five types of microplastics at different locations along the Beilun River in China, finding much higher abundances in urban than rural regions.

In rivers, major sources of microplastics include textile fibers from laundering, water bottle fragments, and films from bags and wrappers. Also prevalent in rivers are antibiotic-resistant bacteria and ARGs, introduced through wastewater discharge and urban or agricultural runoff. Microplastics can act as a favorable surface for bacteria to colonize and grow into biofilms, where they can spread ARGs among themselves. Li Cui and colleagues wanted to examine the prevalence and diversity of ARGs on microplastics in the Beilun River, which flows from mountainous rural areas through Chinese and Vietnamese cities before entering the Beibu Gulf.

The researchers immersed samples of five kinds of microplastics in the Beilun River at 14 sites with different urbanization levels. After 30 days, they collected the microplastics and used high-throughput quantitative polymerase chain reaction to analyze almost all types of ARGs and the mobile genetic elements that help spread them among bacteria. The detected ARGs conferred resistance to almost all major classes of antibiotics used in humans and animals. The abundance of these genes and genetic elements increased by about 1,000 times from rural to urban areas. In addition, the diversity of ARGs increased. Of the five types of plastics, polypropylene had the highest abundance of ARGs and the greatest risk of spreading the genes, possibly because of its larger surface area and ability to release dissolved organic matter. These results indicate that urbanization introduces many new ARGs into rivers from sources such as sewage, the researchers say.

The old cousins of the common woodlice were crawling on Irish land as long as 360 million years ago, according to new analysis of a fossil found in Kilkenny.

The research, published today (00.01 Wednesday 16 June) in the science journal Biology Letters, used state-of-the-art modern imaging technology to create a new picture of the Oxyuropoda - a land-based creature larger than the modern woodlice - using a fossil found in Kiltorcan, Co Kilkenny in 1908.

Lead researcher Dr Ninon Robin, a postdoctoral researcher at University College Cork's (UCC) School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences said that their work advances science's understanding of when land-dwelling species of crustaceans roamed the earth, and what they looked like.

Dr Robin said:

"Woodlice, and their relatives form a group of crustaceans named peracarids that are as species-rich as the more famous group comprising krill, crabs and shrimps named eucarids. From their ancestral marine habitat some peracarids have, unlike eucarids, evolved fully terrestrial ground-crawling ecologies, inhabiting even commonly our gardens, for example pillbugs and sowbugs, which are very common in Ireland.

"Using new modern imaging techniques, we determined that Oxyuropoda was actually a peracarid crustacean, even the oldest known one; which supports the theory that woodlice cousins were already crawling on Irish lands at that very early time, 360 million years ago.

"From previous genomic and molecular studies, scientists had suggested that this group ofcrustaceans must have appeared around 450 million years ago. However their fossils were very rare in the Paleozoic era, which was 560-250 million years ago, so we had no idea at all how they looked at that time, nor if they were marine or yet terrestrial.

"Our work is an advance in the field of the evolution of invertebrate animals, especially crustaceans, and in our knowledge of the timing of their colonisation of land," she said.

The fossil that formed the basis of this research was found in 1908 in a quarry at Kiltorcan, Co Kilkenny. The site has been internationally known since the mid 19th-century as the location of a number of plant, freshwater bivalve, fish, and crustacean fossils.

Québec produces more strawberries than any other Canadian province. Strawberries are delicate and difficult to keep fresh. In response to this challenge, Monique Lacroix, a professor at at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), and her team have developed a packaging film that can keep strawberries fresh for up to 12 days. The team's findings on how this film protects against mould and certain pathogenic bacteria have been published in Food Hydrocolloids.

The innovative film is made of chitosan, a natural molecule found in shellfish shells. This food industry by-product contains key antifungal properties that curb mould growth. The packaging film also contains essential oils and nanoparticles, both of which possess antimicrobial properties.

"Essential oil vapours protect strawberries. And if the film comes into contact with strawberries, the chitosan and nanoparticles prevent mould and pathogens from reaching the fruit's surface," said Professor Lacroix, expert in sciences applied to food.

Among other things, the packaging could be inserted into blotting paper the industry currently uses for strawberries.

Versatile protection

The formula developed for this packaging film has the added advantage of being effective against several types of pathogens. The team tested the film on four microbial cultures. "Our work has shown the film's effectiveness against Aspergillus niger, a highly resistant mould that causes substantial losses during strawberry production," said Lacroix.

This type of bioactive packaging also showed antimicrobial efficacy against the pathogens Escherichia coli, Listeria monocytogenes, and Salmonella Typhimurium, which come from contamination during food handling and are a major source of concern for the food industry.

Benefits of irradiation

Professor Lacroix and her team also combined the packaging film with an irradiation process. When packaging film was exposed to radiation, team members noted longer shelf life, cutting the level of loss in half compared to the control (without film or irradiation). On day 12, the team recorded a 55% loss rate for the control group of strawberries, 38% for the group with the film, and 25% when irradiation was added.

Irradiation not only extended shelf life, it also helped preserve or increased the quantity of polyphenols in the strawberries. These molecules give strawberries their colour and have antioxidant properties.

Researchers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) discovered a titanic galactic wind driven by a supermassive black hole 13.1 billion years ago. This is the earliest-yet-observed example of such a wind to date and is a telltale sign that huge black holes have a profound effect on the growth of galaxies from the very early history of the Universe.

At the center of many large galaxies hides a supermassive black hole that is millions to billions of times more massive than the Sun. Interestingly, the mass of the black hole is roughly proportional to the mass of the central region (bulge) of the galaxy in the nearby Universe. At first glance, this may seem obvious, but it is actually very strange. The reason is that the sizes of galaxies and black holes differ by about 10 orders of magnitude. Based on this proportional relationship between the masses of two objects that are so different in size, astronomers believe that galaxies and black holes grew and evolved together (coevolution) through some kind of physical interaction.

A galactic wind can provide this kind of physical interaction between black holes and galaxies. A supermassive black hole swallows a large amount of matter. As that matter begins to move at high speed due to the black hole's gravity it emits intense energy, which can push the surrounding matter outward. This is how the galactic wind is created.

"The question is when did galactic winds come into existence in the Universe?" says Takuma Izumi, the lead author of the research paper and a researcher at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). "This is an important question because it is related to an important problem in astronomy: how did galaxies and supermassive black holes coevolve?"

The research team first used NAOJ's Subaru Telescope to search for supermassive black holes. Thanks to its wide-field observation capability, they found more than 100 galaxies with supermassive black holes in the Universe more than 13 billion years ago.

Then, the research team utilized ALMA's high sensitivity to investigate the gas motion in the host galaxies of the black holes. ALMA observed a galaxy HSC J124353.93+010038.5 (hereafter J1243+0100), discovered by the Subaru Telescope, and captured radio waves emitted by the dust and carbon ions in the galaxy.

Detailed analysis of the ALMA data revealed that there is a high-speed gas flow moving at 500 km per second in J1243+0100. This gas flow has enough energy to push away the stellar material in the galaxy and stop the star formation activity. The gas flow found in this study is truly a galactic wind, and it is the oldest observed example of a galaxy with a huge wind of galactic size. The previous record holder was a galaxy about 13 billion years ago; so this observation pushes the start back another 100 million years.

The team also measured the motion of the quiet gas in J1243+0100, and estimated the mass of the galaxy's bulge, based on its gravitational balance, to be about 30 billion times that of the Sun. The mass of the galaxy's supermassive black hole, estimated by another method, was about 1% of that. The mass ratio of the bulge to the supermassive black hole in this galaxy is almost identical to the mass ratio of black holes to galaxies in the modern Universe. This implies that the coevolution of supermassive black holes and galaxies has been occurring since less than a billion years after the birth of the Universe.

"Our observations support recent high-precision computer simulations which have predicted that coevolutionary relationships were in place even at about 13 billion years ago," comments Izumi. "We are planning to observe a large number of such objects in the future, and hope to clarify whether or not the primordial coevolution seen in this object is an accurate picture of the general Universe at that time."