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Do we have free choice or are our decisions predetermined? Is physical reality local, or does what we do here and now have an immediate influence on events elsewhere? The answers to these questions are sought by physicists in the Bell inequalities. It turns out that free choice and local realism can be skilfully measured and compared. The results obtained reveal surprising relationships of a fundamental and universal nature, going far beyond quantum mechanics itself.

Causality, locality, and free choice are related by a few simple formulas known as Bell's inequalities. The sophisticated experiments in quantum optics over the past few decades have unquestionably proved that these inequalities are broken. Today, physicists are faced with a dilemma: should we accept a vision of the real world in which we question the assumption about the free choice of the experimenter, or reject the assumption of locality of the experiments? Scientists from the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow (IFJ PAN), the British City University of London (CUL) and the German Technische Hochschule Mittelhessen in Giessen (THM) have confronted this problem. The results of their research that go far beyond physics alone are discussed in an article just published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

"Realism is a physical concept in which we describe the world in terms of cause-and-effect relationships. Locality means that actions cannot disseminate instantaneously. So if physical reality is to meet the requirements of local realism, the result of the experiment will be influenced only by what is in its immediate vicinity, and not by what is happening right now in a distant galaxy," explains Dr. Pawel Blasiak, the first author of the article.

Free choice, an apparently typically philosophical concept, can also be treated as a physical or even mathematical problem. In this approach, free choice refers to the variables that describe the parameters of an experiment, i.e. what we measure in the laboratory. We assume that we can choose these variables freely, regardless of what has happened in the past.

As part of a vision of the world in which local realism and free choice apply, one can derive Bell's inequalities and then conduct an experiment to verify them. The main ideas can be illustrated as follows. Alice and Bob work in laboratories at opposite ends of the galaxy. One day each of them receives a box. They place the boxes on their tables and at a certain point, open them carefully. A spinning coin bursts out of the box, which each of the experimenters presses down on the table with their palms. Alice and Bob now note whether the coin has landed heads up or tails up. Soon, more similar shipments arrive. After a while, Alice and Bob have a long list of observations in which they press down the coins in various ways. Neither sees anything unusual in their data: heads and tails appear on their lists in a purely random manner.

The situation changes dramatically when Alice and Bob meet at the Intergalactic Science Congress. They compare their data and suddenly it turns out that in the same observations, when Alice's coin landed tails up, Bob's coin always landed heads up - and vice versa. So, they both assume that it is not a coincidence and that the correlations they observe must be attributed to some common cause lurking in the past of both objects sent from the same source. The mysterious shipper of the boxes could have simply instructed each coin how to land when pressed against the table in a given way. If that were really so, Alice and Bob could guess this instruction and announce a spectacular discovery. Unfortunately, their efforts come to nothing!

Desperate, Alice and Bob ask the genius theoretician John for help. He first asks what assumptions the two scientists have adopted in their work as true and certain. "We believe that the correlations we observed should be explicable by a series of causes and effects propagating over time," says Alice. Bob clarifies, "We also think that no cause immediately affects the experiment if it is far enough away from the laboratory." They both firmly believe that the way they open the boxes is not imposed on them in any way and they are absolutely convinced that they are the ones making the decision about how they press down on the coin. To their great surprise, John calmly explains that all these assumptions cannot be reconciled with the correlations they observe.

In fact, Bell's inequalities were discovered by the Northern Irish physicist John Stewart Bell in 1964. He was inspired by the famous problem of "spooky-action-at-a-distance", posed by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen in 1935. In physical experiments, where the role of the coins is played by photons and heads and tails are their polarizations observed in various directions, these inequalities are indeed broken. Contemporary physics, therefore, has a fundamental dilemma: is it better to abandon the idea of local realism, or perhaps question the free choice of scientists? Few physicists are willing to question realism that presupposes causation in line with the arrow of time. So either something is "not quite right" with the assumption of local realism or with the free choice of the experimenters.

"The fact that reality is breaking Bell's inequality provokes us to ask intriguing questions. For example: how often, while maintaining full locality, would we have to break free choice to recreate the correlations observed in the experiments? With each measurement, most of the time, or maybe just sometimes? Similarly, if we retain free choice, how often would we have to break locality?" wonders Dr. Blasiak.

The results of the Polish-British-German group's research bring a surprising answer. It turns out that in order to recreate the recorded correlations, whilst maintaining free choice locality should be broken just as often as free choice whilst maintaining locality. For some (unknown) reason, nature does not favour either locality or free choice in the slightest.

The scientists managed to derive formulas to calculate how often Alice and Bob would have to break locality or free choice to recreate the observed correlations (in quantum mechanics and not only). In particular, it turns out that the formalism of quantum mechanics enforces that with maximum entanglement between photons, the breaking of locality or free choice occurs with each measurement (which generalizes the previous results concerning locality itself).

"The most interesting thing is that Bell's theorem is not a statement of quantum mechanics at all, but of the theory of probability, so it has a universal character. The theorems proved by us are also not limited to quantum physics itself, but apply to all situations dealing with correlations concerning separable systems," emphasises Dr. Blasiak.

"Apart from physics in the strict sense, the breaking of locality or free choice does not have to be dramatic. In research on human behaviour, it would be enough for Alice to whisper something to Bob to violate locality," notes Prof. Emmanuel Pothos, a psychologist at CUL. Another example is given by Prof. Christoph Gallus, economist at THM: "If Alice and Bob are players on the stock market, their choices may be correlated simply by using certain public information."

The universality of the dependencies found opens the door to very practical applications, such as the study of the mechanisms of information flow in complex systems. It is worth emphasizing that the general nature of these sorts of considerations comes from the very nature of the question about the causes of the observed correlations, which is fundamental and common to the whole of science.

The genome is tightly organised (packaged) within the cell nuclei. This three-dimensional (3D) genome organisation is fundamental, given that it regulates gene expression.

A study led by scientists at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) now demonstrates using mice models that the 3D organisation of the genome is extremely dynamic during the formation of male germ cells (precursors of spermatozoa) and that alterations in this structure can affect fertility.

The research, published in Nature Communications, describes the 3D genome organisation in germ cells of wild populations of house mice (Mus musculus domesticus) with chromosomal rearrangements, alterations in the genome which change the structure of chromosomes. The study represents a significant advance in research into mechanisms generating and regulating the structure and function of the genome during the formation of gametes (oocytes and sperm).

Sexually-reproducing organisms produce haploid gametes (with one single set of chromosomes) through two consecutive cell divisions preceded by one only round of genome replication. During this process (called meiosis), the organisation of the genome is tightly regulated to allow for recombination, a fundamental mechanism that maintains the genetic diversity of the organism through the exchange of the progenitors' homologous chromosomes, while at the same time allowing the resulting chromosomes to be transmitted integrally, with no alterations in their structure and/or number, to the next generation.

"The study shows that both the dynamics of the genome organisation during the formation of gametes and the recombination is affected by the presence of chromosomal rearrangements", explains Aurora Ruiz-Herrera, Associated Professor at the Department of Cellular Biology, Physiology and Immunology and the Institute of Biotechnology and Biomedicine (IBB) of the UAB, and head of the research. "We detected that these chromosomal rearrangements affect chromosome folding within the nucleus of the germ cells, thus altering the pairing pattern of homologous chromosomes and meiotic recombination. These results will pave the way for new investigations into the genetic mechanisms responsible for infertility."

"The results point to the importance of the three-dimensional genomic context in which the recombination takes place, where factors such as chromosomal reorganizations can shape the genomic makeup of a given species", explains Covadonga Vara, member of the research group coordinated by Aurora Ruiz-Herrera and co-author of the paper.

According to scientists, determining the mechanisms regulating the structure and function of the genome during the formation of gametes is fundamental, given that the deregulation of this process can cause disorders such as infertility and an alteration in the number of chromosomes, such as trisomy-21.

An international team, led by researchers from Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) in Barcelona, Spain, David Andreu and Rafael Maldonado, has developed a peptides family that allows delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main component of Cannabis sativa, to fight pain in mice without side effects. The study, published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, was carried out together with researchers from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ??the University of Barcelona, and the University of Lisbon.

At present, there are two main types of pain relievers prescribed based on the severity of the pain. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs, such as ibuprofen or paracetamol) are often used to treat mild pain, while opioids are used for severe pain. These, although effective, have significant addictive potential. A therapeutic window is not covered between these extremes, as there is a lack of safe and effective drugs to treat moderate chronic or neuropathic pain (such as that caused by nerve damage for people with diabetes or herpes). In this scenario, cannabis-derived drugs have an excellent opportunity to provide relief, but their therapeutic use is limited by their side effects, including problems with memory and other cognitive functions.

THC produces analgesia by binding to cannabinoid type 1 (CB1) receptors. However, these receptors interact with the serotonin receptor 5HT2A, and this interaction causes memory loss when THC is present. To address this problem, the interaction between the two receptors must be avoided. That is why scientists from the Proteomics and Protein Chemistry Research Group and the Neuropharmacology-Neurophar Laboratory have designed and produced peptides that interrupt the interaction between the two receptors, so the THC can ease pain without activating the serotonin receptor.

In a previous study, when researchers injected a peptide into the brains of mice, the memory problems caused by THC decreased. Based on molecular dynamics simulations and current pharmaceutical chemistry strategies, the researchers have optimized the original prototype by developing a smaller peptide with high stability, allowing oral administration while increasing its ability to cross the blood-brain barrier to access and act on brain cells.

After administering mice with the peptide orally, along with an injection of THC, they assessed pain threshold and memory capacity. Mice treated with both THC and the optimized peptide obtained the benefits of THC in relieving pain and also showed better memory compared to those treated with THC alone. "Our results suggest that the optimized peptide is an ideal candidate for reducing the cognitive side effects of pain treatment with cannabis derivatives," says Rafael Maldonado, Professor of Pharmacology in the Department of Experimental and Health Sciences (DCEXS) at UPF.

"Given the results obtained so far, the team is motivated to advance in the development of this promising candidate discovered," explains David Andreu, UPF Professor of Chemistry.

"The INNOValora programme will allow us to partially cover the proof-of-concept experiment in chronic pain that we need to ensure investors' participation in the project," says Maria Gallo, a PhD student from the Proteomics and Protein Chemistry group at the DCEXS-UPF, whose doctoral thesis recapitulates much of the project's experimental work.

"We envision the use of the peptide in combination with THC as the first drug approved by the EMA / FDA for the treatment of chronic pain," concludes Rafael Maldonado.

These results have been the basis for an international patent application that is expected to be transferred to the pharmaceutical sector once the preclinical and clinical validation experiments required by drug regulations are completed.

The high-power and long-pulse operation of tokamak will cause excessive particle flux and heat load on the divertor target plate. The surface of the target plate will be subject to intense sputtering, and the thermal load of the target plate will exceed the material/component limit.

The sputtered atoms generated by the damage of the target plate may be transported to the core plasma, degrading the quality of the fusion plasma and increasing the difficulty of plasma stability control.

Recently, the EAST group of Institute of Plasma Physics, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS), reported their new findings about the influence of different impurity gases (Ar and Ne) seeding on the divertor plasma state and the core plasma confinement.

Their study was published in Nuclear Fusion on April 29.

"We conducted the experiment with the upper single null configuration with ITER-like tungsten divertor, and achieved stable partial energy detachment around the upper outer strike point," said YANG Zhongshi, a specialist in nuclear physics, "whether we seeded Ne or Ar from the upper outer divertor target, the result was prominent." In this way, they also observed that the material sputtering was well suppressed.

However, there was no detachment on the upper inner divertor with Tet around strike point remaining > 10 eV with either Ar or Ne seeding from the upper outer divertor. Ar seeding always causes confinement degradation in the partial energy detachment state. "There is a slight confinement improvement with Ne seeding." Said YANG.

These results provide a feasible physical experiment program for realizing and maintaining the steady-state plasma under the conditions of the tungsten divertor, solving the problem of steady-state thermal load and sputtering of the target plate, and ensuring the stable operation of the EAST under high-power long-pulse conditions.

"Pretty" parrots are more likely to be snatched up for Indonesia's illegal wildlife trade, a new study reveals.

The findings not only expose the key drivers behind the country's illegal trade in these birds, but offer lessons for the potential emergence and spread of infectious diseases that jump from animals to humans - like COVID-19 and avian flu.

The study, involving researchers from The Australian National University (ANU), analysed two decades worth of data on the illegal trade of parrots in Southeast Asia.

The researchers found some key reasons parrots were at risk of being poached - with a bird's attractiveness and the ability to sell it on legal markets being two main motivations.

"High demand for parrots as pets, and their removal from the wild for the trade have significantly contributed to their severe decline worldwide," co-author Professor Rob Heinsohn from ANU said.

"One-third of the nearly 400 parrot species are threatened by extinction today.

"But while the trade is vast, not every parrot species is at equal risk of being traded."

The team used a popular criminological model to analyse the factors associated with traded parrots in Indonesia, the country shown to be most in need of parrot conservation.

They found several key factors were good indicators of trade variation: whether it was possible to legally export the parrot species; the attractiveness of the species, including its colour, brightness, size and ability to mimic sounds; and whether the species lived in an area of high human population density.

"This suggests that demand and opportunity-based factors together can partially explain the illegal parrot trade in Indonesia," lead author, Professor Stephen Pires from Florida International University, said.

"It indicates people are targeting attractive species that are easier to sell in licit markets, and that there is a cross-cultural preference for particular parrot species, especially ones that have been historically overexploited."

The overlap between the domestic and international trade of certain Indonesian parrot species suggests a high number of wild-caught birds are mislabelled as 'captive-bred' so they can be legally exported.

"More efficient law enforcement is needed urgently," Professor Heinsohn said.

"Further strategies to reduce the trade of parrots could take the form of nest protection, as well as educational campaigns targeting children and consumers."

The study has been published in Biological Conservation.

Microfluidic chips hold great promise for unparalleled applications in pathogen detection and cancer diagnosis. Such devices often require nanoscale thin films for the filtering of liquid samples, as well as power devices or chemical stimulus that control its flow direction. However, many challenges still remain with most precedent mechanisms, including complicated fabrication processes, limitations of materials, and undesired damage on samples.

A research team, led by Professor Taesung Kim in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UNIST presented the evaporation-driven transport-control of small molecules in gas-permeable and low-aspect-ratio nanoslits, wherein both the diffusive and advective mass transports of solutes are affected by solvent evaporation through the nanoslit walls.

Unlike the existing method, the new technique has drawn considerable attention as a multi-functional core technology that enables the active and versatile control of small molecules, such as valving, concentrating, pumping, and filtering abilities on a chip, without damaging samples.

In this study, the research team experimentally characterized the effect of evaporation flux on the mass transport of small molecules in various nanoslit-integrated micro/nanofluidic devices. Their findings showed that the transport of small molecules along the nanoslit was largely governed by the evaporation flux and nanoslit length. They also performed numerical simulations to theoretically support the experimental results with the advection and diffusion model, thereby enabling the description of the transport with the nondimensionalized diffusion coefficient and evaporation flux.

They further demonstrated that evaporation-driven transport control in nanoslit-based micro/nanofluidic devices can be used as a molecule-valve, -concentrator, -pump, and -filter, showing remarkable potential for a variety of applications in micro/nanofluids.

Researchers also employed their previous cracking-assisted photolithography to fabricate a global, evaporation-controlled, micro/nanofluidic device (GECMN) integrated with a gas-permeable, PDMS-based nanoslit, which permitted diffusive mass transport but suppressed pressure-driven flow via high hydraulic resistance.

Their findings have been published in the online version of Nature Communications on February 26, 2021. This study has been supported by a National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant, funded by the Korean Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT).

Everything from the production of fertilisers and plastics, to liquid fuels and pharmaceuticals require an important chemical reaction known as hydrogenation. This is a process involving the addition of hydrogen to unsaturated chemical bonds. Enhancing the rate of hydrogenation can lead to higher yields for industries and lower environmental impacts.

Now, a team of scientists, led by Associate Professor Yan Ning from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS), has come up with a method to increase the rate of ethylene hydrogenation by more than five times compared to typical industrial rates.

The team achieved this using a radically different approach. Unlike most current hydrogenation processes that use a static solid catalyst to speed up the reaction, the technique developed by NUS researchers applies oscillating electric potentials to a commercial hydrogenation catalyst, which then dramatically increased the hydrogenation rate of ethylene to ethane.

"Such enhancements in the rates or selectivity of chemical reactions are instrumental in making a chemical process more efficient. Our work demonstrates a more direct and cost-effective way of optimising catalyst performance that is beyond conventional methods," Assoc Prof Yan said.

The team's groundbreaking work was published in JACS Au on 14 April 2021.

Enhancing hydrogenation catalysis with oscillating electric potentials

Most hydrogenation catalysts have been developed over many centuries, but the development of new catalysts has been typically limited to conventional material design approaches. A few studies have shown that catalysis can be promoted by applying electric potentials to the catalyst. While these methods have already improved the selectivity and activity of heterogeneous catalysts under static conditions, the use of dynamic external stimuli has been underexplored.

The new findings by the NUS team offer an advanced engineering tool using oscillating electric potentials to promote the rate of chemical reactions without the development of new catalytic materials.

To achieve this, the NUS team carried out experiments using a commercial palladium catalyst in a laboratory-scale electrochemical reactor, and observed a rate enhancement of five times under optimal dynamic conditions. They managed to correlate the rate enhancement with the double-layer capacitance - an indicator of the local electric field strength at the catalyst-electrolyte interface - by using different electrolyte solutions. The properties of the catalyst changed periodically and continuously, which sped up the steps involved in the ethylene hydrogenation reaction.

The researchers conducted further kinetic experiments, which suggested that the enhancement could be related to the partial removal of strongly adsorbed hydrogen from the catalyst surface at a negative potential, and the subsequent adsorption and hydrogenation of ethylene at a positive potential.

The team's findings illustrate the feasibility of using oscillating potentials to improve the catalytic rate of a relatively simple hydrogenation reaction. A similar approach could be extended to control the activity and selectivity of a wide range of catalytic reactions.

Next steps

The NUS team is conducting more studies to improve their understanding of the fundamental principles behind their new technique. They are also looking to further develop their approach into a general strategy for enhancing catalysts beyond their 'static optimum'.

Great tits living in cities are genetically different from great tits in the countryside. This is what researchers have found in a unique study, where they examined populations of great tits in nine large European cities.

The researchers compared the city bird genes with the genes of their relatives in the countryside. It did not matter if the great tits lived in Milan, Malmö or Madrid: in order to handle an environment created by humans, the birds evolved in a similar way.

Different gene types linked to important biological functions such as cognition and various behaviours regulated by serotonin, including aggression and circadian rhythms, were found to have been selected and passed on from generation to generation. In rural populations, these behaviours are also important, however, the gene types that control them are different.

"This indicates that these behaviours, and cognition, are very important in order to live in urban environments with a lot of stress in the form of noise pollution, lights at night, air pollution and constant proximity to people", says Caroline Isaksson, Senior Lecturer at Lund University, who led the study together with her former doctoral student Pablo Salmon.

The study is the largest that has been done on how urban environments affect the genome, and thus the genetic material of the animals that live there. In total, 192 great tits were examined among populations in Malmö, Gothenburg, Madrid, Munich, Paris, Barcelona, Glasgow, Lisbon and Milan. For each urban population, the researchers had a control group of great tits living nearby, but in a rural environment. Blood samples have been taken from all of the birds and analysed genetically.

"We have analysed more than half a million single-nucleotide polymorphisms (snips) spread over the entire genome. There were a handful of genes that had clearly changed in response to the urban environment", says Caroline Isaksson.

Great tits are common throughout Europe, and it has long been known that they are quite similar genetically. Despite this, researchers have now identified clear genetic differences between great tits in the city and great tits in the countryside.

"That we see such a clear urban selection across the board, in an otherwise genetically similar European great tit, is surprising", concludes Caroline Isaksson.

When the United States issued national stay-at-home guidelines in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, mobility across the country dropped significantly. New research from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) demonstrates that people may be inclined to change their behavior in response to national guidelines, more than state and local policies.

"When the next pandemic hits, we need to know what kind of policies are going to have the biggest impact on human behavior and health," said Marianna Linz, Assistant Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering and of Earth and Planetary Sciences at SEAS and senior author of the paper. "While specific, local policies based on community spread may make the most sense, we found that people seem to change their behavior more in response to national guidelines. This suggests that clear national guidelines, at least in the beginning, are going to have the biggest impact on public health."

The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The researchers used cell phone mobility data collected by Google and Unacast, a location data company, to study how far people traveled and how many people they encountered between February 24 to May 22 and June 1 to August 28.

The researchers found that in most states, grocery store and pharmacy visits peaked within a few days of March 13, the day the White House declared a state of emergency and banned travel from 26 European countries. The following weekend, after the release of national stay at home guidelines and school closures, people across the country started to stay put although most states then had only a few hundred known COVID-19 cases.

"Although many states delayed implementing stay-at-home orders, there was near uniformity in behavior at the beginning of quarantine across states," said Yihan Wu '22, an undergraduate researcher in Linz's Lab and first author of the paper. "It was really striking to see just how consistent behavior was at that time."

Similarly, when the national stay-at-home advisory ended on May 1st, there was a uniform rise in mobility across the country, even though locally many schools and offices remained closed.

"Despite different local stay-at-home orders and state reopening timelines, we see encounters increasing in a coherent way nationwide when the national guidelines expired," said Todd Mooring, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard and co-author of the study.

The researchers also looked at how weather impacted mobility and encounters during the quarantine period. Despite news stories featuring crowded beaches and packed pool parties, the data did not show systematic increases in close encounters on nice days.

"We found that while visits to parks increased on nice days during the shutdown, most people were still being cautious and avoiding encounters with other people during the national stay-at-home period," said Wu.

"While the response to COVID-19 became increasingly politicized over time, that wasn't the case in the beginning," said Linz. "Our results suggest that coherent national guidance could help contain virus transmission in the future. COVID-19 may be too politicized now, but this result will be useful to future pandemic planning."

Researchers in China, Japan, and Singapore were able to resume research much quicker than their counterparts in the US and Europe after the first covid lockdowns, results of a new international survey suggest.

Published 'Open Access' in the peer-reviewed journal Science and Technology of Advanced Materials, the findings of the 'Survey on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on research activities of materials scientists', which also included a series of podcasts with eminent experts, highlight how severe the impact of lockdowns affected researchers internationally.

33% of respondents had to shut down all equipment.

The outcomes were not uniform internationally however, as whilst labs in the UK and parts of the USA, Spain, and India were not accessible for the whole of the first lockdown, material scientists in Asian countries were able to access labs within one to two months after the first lockdown.

The conclusions - analysed by a multidisciplinary set of international experts from institutions including University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo, University of York UK, and publishers Taylor & Francis - paint a picture of the lockdowns catching many institutions off guard.

54% of scientists reported that theirs were not prepared or took considerable time to react
and only 44% had contingency plans in place.
This led to additional issues, such as 57% of respondents not receiving mental health support from their institution. In terms of mental health, 40% felt isolation throughout the initial lockdown.

Overall, though, lead author Professor Adarsh Sandhu, from University of ElectroCommunications, states the survey shows a "resilient and adaptive" response from the community.

"The survey showed the materials science community to be resilient and adaptive to overcome limitations imposed by restrictions to mobility as exemplified by the proposal for 'robot-based hubs' to perform remote chemical synthesis similar to astronomers who use remote control to move massive telescopes located all over the world."

As with the majority of the rest of the world, this scientific community (89% of them) used video teleconferencing to complete their work on a day-to-day basis. Again, like for many worldwide, this was not without its issues. Problems reported included unstable internet (nearly 50% reported this problem), an inability to have spontaneous 'coffee time' style meetings (44%), and 36% stated they suffered from fatigue after many hours of teleconferencing.

The virtual nature of work also saw approximately 64% of respondents attended virtual conferences.

One stark finding of the paper was a clear disparity between senior and junior positions, though.

"Responses from doctoral students highlighted their 'fear' and uncertainty as their work suddenly came to a halt and they worried about their careers," co-author Professor Atsufumi Hirohata, from York's Department of Electronic Engineering says.

"However, grad-students also learnt to move forward by using their time to reassess previous data with a view to publishing papers and planning their research."

The survey was carried out from March to October 2020, and, using a database provided by Taylor & Francis, was completed by 298 respondents located in 35 countries.

"Overall, we hope that the analysis from this survey will enable the global materials science community to learn from each other's experiences and move forward from the unprecedented circumstances created by the pandemic," concludes Ken Kimlicka, Global Head of Chemistry/Physics/Materials Science at Taylor & Francis.

Limitations of the research include 74.8% of respondents being male, and 16.7% of respondents being from India - nearly twice as many as from any other country represented.

As part of the wider study internationally, freely-available, online podcast interviews with eminent materials scientists who shared their local experiences during this period can be found by searching for 'The STAM Podcast' on all major providers.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Researchers have discovered a new coronavirus, found in a child with pneumonia in Malaysia in 2018, that appears to have jumped from dog to human.

If confirmed as a pathogen, the novel canine-like coronavirus could represent the eighth unique coronavirus known to cause disease in humans. The discovery also suggests coronaviruses are being transmitted from animals to humans more commonly than was previously thought.

"How common this virus is, and whether it can be transmitted efficiently from dogs to humans or between humans, nobody knows," said Gregory Gray, M.D., a professor of medicine, global health and environmental health at the Duke University.

"What's more important is that these coronaviruses are likely spilling over to humans from animals much more frequently than we know," said Gray, who led the research that appears in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. "We are missing them because most hospital diagnostic tests only pick up known human coronaviruses."

Working with visiting scholar Leshan Xiu, a Ph.D. student, Gray was on a team that in 2020 developed a molecular diagnostic tool to detect most coronaviruses from the Coronaviridae family that includes SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.

The team used that tool to examine 301 archived pneumonia cases and picked up signals for canine coronaviruses from eight people hospitalized with pneumonia in Sarawak, a state in East Malaysia.

Researchers at Ohio State, led by Anastasia N. Vlasova, grew a virus from one of the clinical specimens, and through a painstaking process of genome reconstruction, were able to identify it as a novel canine coronavirus.

"There are probably multiple canine coronaviruses circulating and spilling over into humans that we don't know about," Gray said. Sarawak could be a rich place to detect them, he said, since it's an equatorial area with rich biodiversity.

"Many of those spillovers are dead ends, they don't ever leave that first human host," Gray said. "But if we really want to mitigate the threat, we need better surveillance where humans and animals intersect, and among people who are sick enough to get hospitalized for novel viruses."

Gray said diagnostic tools like the one developed to find this virus have the potential to identify other viruses new to humans before they can cause a pandemic.

"These pathogens don't just cause a pandemic overnight," Gray said. "It takes many years for them to adapt to the human immune system and cause infection, and then to become efficient in human-to-human transmission. We need to look for these pathogens and detect them early."

Nerves release a protein at the injury site that attracts growing nerve fibers and thus keeps them entrapped there. This prevents them from growing in the right direction to bridge the injury. The research team headed by Professor Dietmar Fischer reports in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) from 25. May 2021.

There must be another cause

Three main causes for the inability of injured nerves of the central nervous system, or CNS, to regenerate have been known to date: the insufficient activation of a regeneration program in injured nerve cells that stimulates the growth of fibers, so-called axons; the formation of a scar at the site of injury that is difficult for nerve fibers to penetrate; and an inhibitory effect of molecules in the nerve on regrowing axons. "Although experimental approaches have been found in recent decades to address these individual aspects by therapeutic means, even combinatorial approaches have shown only little success," says Fischer. "So there must be other yet unknown causes for why nerve fibers in the CNS don't regenerate."

Using the optic nerve as a model, his team has now shown another cause for the regenerative failure in the CNS, which came as a surprise to the researchers. The underlying mechanism is not based on inhibition of axon growth, as in the previously identified causes, but rather on a positive effect of a protein at the site of injury of the nerve. This molecule is a so-called chemokine known as CXCL12. "The protein actually promotes the growth of axons and attracts regenerating fibers. It is, therefore, chemoattractive," explains Fischer. However, this chemoattraction turned out to be a significant problem after nerve injury in living animals.

Trapped nerve fibers

The Bochum-based scientists showed that this protein is released at the nerve's lesion site and, as a result, keeps the axons at the injured area through the chemoattractive effect. As a result, some fibers that had already regenerated across the injury site even changed direction, growing back to the injury site. The regrowing fibers thus remained trapped due to the attraction of CXCL12.

The researchers worked out this effect when they specifically eliminated the receptor for CXCL12, called CXCR4, in the retinal nerve cells, rendering them blind to this protein. "Surprisingly, this led to greatly increased fiber growth in the injured optic nerves, and axons showed significantly less regrowth back to the injury site," Dietmar Fischer points out.

A potential starting point for new drugs

The researchers then investigated where at the injury site the CXCL12 originated. They found out that about eight percent of the nerve cells in the retina produce this protein themselves, transport it along their fibers to the injury site in the optic nerve, and release it there from the severed axons. "It is still unknown why some of these nerve cells make CXCL12 and others make the receptor," says Fischer. "We don't yet understand the physiological role of the protein, but we can see that it is a major inhibitor of neural repair."

In further experiments, the Bochum-based researchers showed that knocking out CXCL12 in retinal nerve cells so that it could no longer be released at the injury site equally improved axonal regeneration into the optic nerve. "These new findings open the opportunity to develop pharmacological approaches aimed at disrupting the interaction of CXCL12 and its receptor on the nerve fibers, to free them from their captivity at the site of injury," concludes Fischer. Whether similar approaches can also promote the regeneration of axons in other areas of the injured brain or spinal cord is the subject of current studies by his team at the Department of Cell Physiology.

Herndon, Va. (May 20, 2021) - The international journal Risk Analysis has published a timely special issue for May 2021, "Global Systemic Risk and Resilience for Novel Coronavirus and COVID-19." Featuring 11 papers written for this issue over the past year, the collection represents a sampling of insights and viewpoints from scholars across risk sciences and resilience analytics to guide decision-making and operations related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 11 papers address the breadth of risk sciences represented by the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA), including risk perception, risk and resilience, human health and infection risk, and risk management strategies and economic evaluation. From a systems perspective, the multidisciplinary expertise of the SRA and its specialty groups can offer new tools for public health practitioners, infrastructure owners/operators, and policymakers to coordinate global and local, context-specific interventions, with expanded access to health information and services.

The introduction to this special issue is written by Special Issue Co-Editors, Desheng Dash Wu of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Stockholm University; Jade Mitchell of Michigan State University; and James H. Lambert of the University of Virginia. The Special Issue Co-Editors wrote the Call for Papers in January of 2020, solicited reviewers from across the Society and elsewhere, and provided the Editor-in-Chief with recommendations for the submitted manuscripts.

Here are the original research papers and perspectives included in the issue:

- The Impact of Trust and Risk Perception on the Acceptance of Measures to Reduce COVID-19 Cases, by Michael Siegrist, Larissa Luchsinger, and Angela Bearth

Researchers conducted a survey in the German-speaking part of Switzerland at the peak of confirmed COVID-19 cases during the first wave of infections in that country (March-April 2020). Their results suggest that perceived risks are important drivers for the acceptance of the government's implemented measures to control COVID-19 and for more precautionary behavior.

- Analyzing the Risk to COVID-19 Infection Using Remote Sensing and GIS, by Shruti Kanga, Gowhar Meraj, Sudhanshu, Majid Farooq, M.S. Nathawa, and Suraj Kumar Singh

This study proposes a risk-based assessment framework for analyzing risk of high transmission and prevalence for COVID-19 in spatial areas -- using integrated hazard and vulnerability components associated with the pandemic to guide effective risk mitigation. Focused on a region of Maharashtra, the study aims to serve as a baseline study to be replicated in other parts of India or the world to help eradicate the increased threat of COVID-19 in at-risk populations.

- Reinventing Cloth Masks in the Face of Pandemics, by Stephen Salter

This study points out that countries could rapidly implement Effective Fiber Mask Programs (EFMPs) to use local resources to mass-produce effective and affordable cloth masks, and to engage the public in their correct use during the COVID-19 pandemic.

- Fast and Frugal: Information Processing Related to The Coronavirus Pandemic, by Jody Chin Sing Wong, Janet Zheng Yang, Zhuling Liu, David Lee, and Zhiying Yue

This paper establishes how two different information processing modes are influenced by individuals' responsibility attribution, discrete negative emotions, and risk perception. The results revealed that information processing styles seem to be determined by social judgment surrounding the coronavirus pandemic.

- A Novel Causal Risk-Based Decision-Making Methodology: The Case of Coronavirus, by Stavros K. Stavroglou and Bilal Ayyub

The authors propose a novel risk-based, decision-making methodology capable of unveiling causal relationships between pairs of variables. This methodology offers a basis for identifying potential scenarios and consequences of the ongoing 2020 pandemic by drawing on weather variables to examine the causal impact of changing weather on the trend of daily coronavirus cases.

- Optimal Investment in Prevention and Recovery for Mitigating Epidemic Risks, by C. Derrick Huang, Milad Baghersad, Ravi S. Behara, and Christopher W. Zobel

Researchers built a mathematical model to optimize investments into two types of measures for mitigating the risks of epidemic spread: prevention/containment and treatment/recovery.

- Exploring Risks of Human Challenge Trials for COVID-19, by David Manheim

This study introduces an interactive model for exploring some risks of a SARS-COV-2 dosing study (a prerequisite for COVID-19 challenge trials). The risk estimates they use are based on a Bayesian evidence synthesis model which can incorporate new data on infection fatality risks (IFRs) to patients, and infer rates of hospitalization.

- Challenges Associated with the Response to the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Pandemic in Africa - An African Diaspora Perspective, by Andre M. N. Renzaho

This paper discusses how lessons learned during the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa help to mitigate the likelihood of a long-term devastating effect of the COVID-19 outbreak on the African continent.

- Action Levels for SARS-COV-2 in Air: Preliminary Approach, by Charles N. Haas

In this study, the dose-response curve for Coronavirus 229E is used to develop a preliminary risk-based exposure criteria for SARS-CoV-2 via the respiratory portals of entry.

- Do the Benefits of COVID-19 Policies Exceed the Costs? Exploring Uncertainties in the Age-VSL Relationship, by Lisa A. Robinson, Ryan Sullivan, and Jason F. Shogren

This study explores the implications of theory and empirical studies, which suggest that the relationship between age and value per statistical life is uncertain. The researchers found that, when applied to the U.S. age distribution of COVID-19 deaths, their approaches result in average value per statistical life estimates from $4.47 million to $10.63 million.

- On Ambiguity Reduction and the Role of Decision Analysis During the Pandemic, by David C. Rode and Paul S. Fischbeck
Experts propose that scarce testing resources should be diverted away from confirmatory analysis of symptomatic people - as lab diagnosis appears to have little decision value in treatment choice over clinical diagnosis in patients with symptoms. In contrast, the exploratory use of testing resources to reduce ambiguity in estimates of the base rate of infection appears to have significant value and great practical import for public policy purposes. (These findings highlight the important role of decision analysts in responding to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.)

Using magnets, a collaborative group have furthered our understanding of chirality.

Their research was published in the journal Physical Review Letters on April 28, 2021.

Chirality is the lack of symmetry in matter. Human hands, for example, express chirality. A mirror image of your right hand differs from your left, giving it two distinguishable chiral states.

Chirality is an important issue in a myriad of scientific fields, ranging from high-energy physics to biology.

Within our bodies, some molecules, such as amino acids, show only one chiral state. In other words, they are homo-chiral. It is crucial to understand how this information is transferred and memorized.

Chirality also shows up in magnetic structures. Helical magnets, where ordered magnetic moments are arranged into a spiral, work as models for general chirality problems because the magnetic moments are controllable objects; therefore, they can be extensively investigated in small laboratories.

The research group discovered that the chirality of the helimagnetic state is memorized as the domain wall helicity after the phase transition to an achiral ferromagnetic state at a high temperature in a helimagnet MnP.

"Our results suggest the importance of chirality in defects and dislocations in general chiral issues," says coauthor of the study Nan Jian, a graduate student at the University of Tokyo and concurrently a special research student at Tohoku University.

Nan worked along with Yoichi Nii, assistant professor at Tohoku University's Institute of Materials Research (IMR), and Yoshinori Onose, professor at Tohoku University's IMR. The group also collaborated with the Eiji Saitoh group at the University of Tokyo and Junichiro Ohe at Toho University.

UK doctors have nothing to fear from the introduction of a central register listing money or benefits they receive in addition to their NHS salary, say experts today ahead of a public meeting on the issue hosted by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for First Do No Harm and The BMJ.

Last year the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review, chaired by Baroness Julia Cumberlege, investigated harmful side effects caused by the hormone pregnancy test Primodos, the anti-epileptic drug sodium valproate, and pelvic mesh.

During the review, she heard from patients who were concerned that clinicians had been paid or otherwise incentivised by manufacturers in a way that might influence their practice.

A key recommendation was that patients should have the right to know if their doctor has links with pharmaceutical or medical device companies.

The accompanying report called for the General Medical Council (GMC) to expand its register to include a list of financial and non-pecuniary interests for all doctors. It also said manufacturers should take responsibility to ensure that they publish details of payments they make to teaching hospitals and research institutions.

In 2019, pharmaceutical companies spent over £160 million on non-research and development collaborations with healthcare organisations and healthcare professionals. Yet there is currently no central register of clinicians' financial and non-financial interests in the UK, unlike in the US.

Doctors' interests are often collected by their employer, while Sunshine UK hosts a voluntary register of doctors' interests (whopaysthisdoctor.org).

The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) also has its own voluntary database called Disclosure UK. However, under data protection laws, healthcare professionals can refuse to have their name published on it.

In addition to the Cumberlege review, there is increasing support from the medical community for a central register. A survey conducted by The BMJ found that nearly 90% of medical professional bodies agree that the UK should have a mandatory and public register of doctors' interests.

And in response to the view that any register should cover all clinical decision-making staff, not just doctors, Cumberlege said "doctors are the principal decision makers in patient care, they determine the treatment, they perform surgery. So it is with doctors that we must start."

Both Margaret McCartney, a GP and health journalist, and Susan Bewley, chair of Healthwatch UK and a co-founder of Sunshine UK, believe the GMC is the only organisation suitable to hold a register of doctors' interests as it is the only organisation that holds a list of all registered doctors in the UK.

For McCartney, the aim of any central register should be to decrease bureaucracy for healthcare professionals and increase transparency for professionals and patients.

Neil Mortensen, president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, agrees that the register would need to be easy to use and not cost doctors a lot of money. "We'd need to be convinced that it was light touch, effective and that it was going to make a difference," he says.