Culture

WASHINGTON--The global collapse of frogs and other amphibians due to the amphibian chytrid fungus exacerbated malaria outbreaks in Costa Rica and Panama during the 1990s and 2000s, according to new research.

The findings provide the first evidence that amphibian population declines have directly affected human health and show how preserving biodiversity can benefit humans as well as local ecosystems.

"This is like a small building block showing that there could be unwanted human health consequences of amphibian collapses, and so we should really be trying to account for these impacts," said Joakim Weill, an environmental economist at the University of California Davis who will present the results Tuesday, 8 December at AGU's Fall Meeting 2020. "We really view this as an important first step leveraging this type of interdisciplinary work, trying to tease out causal relationship between environmental change and human health."

The global spread of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, an extremely virulent fungal pathogen known as amphibian chytrid fungus, has been responsible for massive worldwide die-offs of amphibians since the 1980s. A 2019 study found the fungal disease has played a role in the decline of over 500 amphibian species over the past five decades and presumably caused extinctions of 90 species. The authors of that study referred to the die-offs as "the greatest recorded loss of biodiversity attributable to a disease."

Chytrid fungal disease traveled across Costa Rica and Panama from the early 1980s through the 2000s. Both countries experienced large increases in malaria cases following this rolling collapse of amphibian populations.

In the new study, researchers investigated whether these malaria outbreaks were connected to the amphibian declines because amphibians eat mosquitoes that transmit the disease. They compared the timing and spatial extent of amphibian die-offs with malaria cases in Costa Rica and Panama at the county level from 1976 to 2016.

The researchers found a significant increase in malaria cases in these countries that started immediately after the amphibian die-offs began and peaked 5 to 6 years after. In 1980, there were fewer than 1,000 cases of malaria in the two countries, but cases began to rise in 1990 and peaked at about 7,000 in Costa Rica in the mid-1990s and 5,000 in Panama in the mid-2000s.

Malaria cases went back down after this peak, and the researchers suspect this is due to local public health interventions like spraying of insecticides.

The results show some of the first evidence that species extinctions and biodiversity loss can directly affect human health, according to the researchers.

Other environmental factors like deforestation also played a role in exacerbating the outbreaks, but no other factor had as much of an impact on malaria cases as the amphibian declines, according to the study.

"We are able to find what really seems to be this striking causal relationship between amphibian declines and malaria," Weill said. "It's pretty incredible that we are finding anything in the first place, because these are events that occurred 40 years ago and the right people were in the right place to make observations about amphibian populations and human disease that we can use today to arrive at new insights."

DETROIT (December 2, 2020) - The use of telemedicine services has shown to be exceptionally effective in meeting the health care needs of patients throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. But an analysis by Henry Ford Health System found that socioeconomic factors may affect certain patient populations on how they use the technology for accessing care.

In a Research Letter published in the Journal of the American Medical Association's Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery, Henry Ford researchers report that head and neck cancer patients who were low-income, on Medicaid or uninsured were more likely to complete a virtual visit by telephone rather than by video. They also said women with a lower median household income were less likely to complete a telemedicine visit than men in the same income bracket.

Researchers said further study was needed to explain patients' reticence with completing a video visit, which provides a more comprehensive health care assessment than a phone call with their doctor. "While virtual care may provide a promising platform for expanded access to care in some patients, it must be implemented in a way that it doesn't create barriers to already disadvantaged patient populations," said Samantha Tam, M.D., a study co-author and otolaryngologist in Henry Ford's Department of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery.

The pandemic-driven need for accessing care using telemedicine services prompted researchers to evaluate whether socioeconomic factors impacted a patient's ability to receive virtual care. In their retrospective study, they analyzed census-based socioeconomic data of head and neck cancer patients who had a telemedicine visit between March 17 and April 24, 2020 and compared the results to a similar cohort from the same time frame in 2019.

Data included patients' age, sex, race, insurance status, household income, education, marital and employment status, and English-speaking households. Patient visits were categorized by virtual visits using live audio and video, visits completed by telephone only, in-person visits and no-show or canceled visits.

Data from 401 patient encounters during the 2020 study period was collected. From those numbers, 346 encounters (86.3%) were completed by 234 patients. In-person visits consisted of 87 patients (25.1%), 170 (49.1%) were virtual visits and 89 (23.6%) were telephone visits. In comparison, the 2019 study found 551 of 582 visits (94.7%) were completed by 394 patients, with no telemedicine visits completed that year.

"We know that access to smartphones and video technology is not universal but almost everyone has access to a telephone," said Vivian Wu, M.D., a study co-author and otolaryngologist. "As virtual care expands during and after this pandemic, we must keep in mind that a phone call remains an important communication method for patients to talk to their doctor."

Since the retrospective study was observation-based, the research team did not evaluate whether patients had access to mobile "smart" phones and internet connectivity.

The Suzuki cross-coupling reaction is a widely used technique for combining organic compounds and synthesizing complex chemicals for industrial or pharmaceutical applications. The process requires the use of palladium (Pd) catalysts and, as of today, two main types of Pd-based materials are used in practice as heterogeneous catalysts.

The first is 'metal-loaded catalysts', which consist of Pd atoms (active sites) loaded onto inert supports made of oxides or carbon-based materials. They are easy to prepare and offer a large surface area with active sites where the Suzuki reaction can happen. However, these catalysts degrade quickly with use as the active sites aggregate/detach from the support. The second type is 'intermetallic catalysts'--molecules made of Pd and another metal. Though much more stable and effective under mild conditions, these catalysts make poor use of the high quantities of Pd required because few active sites actually end up exposed to the reaction medium. But what if both types of catalyst were combined to overcome their inherent limitations?

In a recent study published in ACS Catalysis, a team of scientists from Tokyo Tech, Japan, came up with a new idea for a heterogeneous catalyst. They chose nanoporous zirconium carbide (ZrC) as the support on which they grew ZrPd3 nanoparticles, which act as an intermetallic catalyst. Because both the support and the active compound have the same element (Zr), the chemical preparation of the catalyst is remarkably simple. The overall benefits, moreover, go far beyond that.

First, the new Pd-ZrC catalyst is highly stable because active sites (ZrPd3) get anchored on the nanoporous ZrC support. This strong interaction between ZrPd3 and ZrC helps enhance the overall catalytic stability, enabling re-use of the Pd-ZrC catalyst for more than 15 cycles. In addition, the Pd sites exposed do not clump together and disperse throughout the support, realizing a much larger effective area than intermetallic catalysts alone. The neat distribution of ZrPd3 over the surface of the support also means that a smaller amount of palladium is needed for the same number of active sites compared with other intermetallic catalysts--a measure referred to as Pd atom economy.

Perhaps most important is the fact that these benefits come with no strings attached; the actual performance, i.e. turnover frequency, of the new catalyst is higher than that of commercially available compounds. Professor Hideo Hosono, who led the study, explains: "Because the Pd-ZrC has both negatively charged Pd and a strong electron-donation ability, our catalyst achieved high catalytic performance for the Suzuki cross-coupling reaction even at room temperature."

Overall, the results of both the theoretical and experimental analyses conducted by the team of scientists confirm that their strategy is very promising for the development of future catalysts, as Prof Hosono remarks: "Our observations have proved the effectiveness of combining intermetallic catalysts with supports to improve upon multiple aspects simultaneously, showing that we can increase the degrees of freedom in the design of heterogeneous catalysts."

Improving catalysts is a practical way of reducing the economic and environmental costs associated with the synthesis of complex chemicals. Only time will tell how many novel catalyst designs are inspired by the strategy adopted in this study!

Climate Change as a Catalyst in Greater Cahokia

Water and air are highly mutable resources that exist in a myriad of physical states and dimensions, and due to their affectivity, these entities participate in a multitude of interactions capable of sustaining life, transforming environments, and shaping human behavior. As air and water circulate between the atmosphere and the landscape through the process of evapotranspiration, humans interact with and form relationships--or bio-cultural associations--with these substances. Facets of human life, like breathing, cooking, bathing, agriculture, and engaging with the outdoors, become intertwined with a region's hydroclimate. Interactions with air and water, in turn, influence the ways humans construct and modify their societies.

As the climate shifts, bio-cultural associations are often altered in the process. Archaeologists analyze the impacts of climate change on human history and have frequently identified correlations between the Medieval Climate Optimum--spanning from the 9th century to the 13th century--and periods of societal change.

Taking this correlation into account, Timothy R. Pauketat, in the article "When the Rains Stopped: Evapotranspiration and Ontology at Ancient Cahokia," published in the Journal of Anthropological Research, explores how the trajectory of the Medieval Climate Optimum (MCO) aligns with the history of Greater Cahokia--an ancient indigenous city in the Mississippi River valley. By analyzing air flow and precipitation levels during the MCO, Pauketat examines how evapotranspiration shaped life in the Mississippi valley and argues it played a critical role in determining the progression of Cahokian urbanism. In particular, Pauketat focuses on the fluctuating popularity of an institutionalized form of evapotranspiration--a sacred rite referred to as "Steam Bath Ceremonialism" (SBC).

Utilizing an ontological approach that emphasizes relationships between human and non-human entities, Pauketat elaborates on how the river basin's weather extremes and strong storms were interpreted as spiritual transfers of power from the atmosphere to humanity. Steam Bath Ceremonialism presents another example of transferring powerful energy. In this transubstantiation ritual, liquid water was converted into steam, and those in attendance absorbed the steam and its healing energy. While circular Cahokian steam baths initially could only be found at a few sites, medicine bundle transfers enabled the spread of steam baths to smaller, rural regions.

Widespread acceptance of Steam Bath Ceremonialism was one of many changes in Greater Cahokia during a period of urbanization Pauketat has designated as the city's "Big Bang." Around 1050 CE, new architectural styles and elements--particularly ones associated with water or lunar cycles--were embraced as the city was planned according to a precinct grid and as older villages were replaced by mounds, plazas, cypress post arrangements, religious buildings, and borrow pits. Shrines were expanded, and causeways were constructed to establish pathways to mounds with steam baths.

While Greater Cahokia was accustomed to substantial amounts of rainfall, PDSI models reveal a hydroclimatic shift throughout the 12th century, resulting in less rainfall and progressively drier conditions. Pauketat suggests the reduction in precipitation served as a catalyst for dramatic changes, such as the migration of farmers, the construction of defensive barriers, the concealment of food supplies, and the decline of Steam Bath Ceremonialism.

NEWPORT, Ore. - Fish are thriving and poachers are staying out of marine protected areas around California's Channel Islands, a new population analysis by an Oregon State University researcher shows.

The analysis estimates fish populations and harvest rates based on the numbers of larger, older fish present; fewer larger fish is an indication of higher harvesting rates. Researchers found harvest rates essentially at zero for four species of kelp forest fish inside the marine protected areas between 2003 and 2017, but found much higher rates of harvesting at unprotected sites nearby.

"We expected we would find more large fish in the marine protected areas, and that is exactly what happened," said Will White, a marine ecologist with Oregon State's Coastal Oregon Marine Experiment Station in Newport and the paper's lead author. "We looked at the data inside and outside the marine protected areas and we found that there is no evidence of fishing inside the boundaries, but there is a lot of fishing going on just outside the boundaries."

The study is believed to be the first to directly assess whether marine protected areas have eliminated harvesting of fish inside their boundaries, said White, who is also an assistant professor in the OSU College of Agricultural Sciences' Department of Fisheries and Wildlife.

The findings were published in the journal Conservation Letters. Co-authors include Mark Yamane, an undergraduate student participating in a National Science Foundation-sponsored research experience at Hatfield Marine Science Center; Kerry Nickols of California State University, Northridge; and Jennifer Caselle of the University of California, Santa Barbara. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

The state of California first established a network of 13 marine protected areas around the northern Channel Islands off the coast of southern California in 2003.

Marine protected areas that restrict or prohibit the harvest of wild populations of fish or other sea life are seen as a way to help replenish populations that have been overfished. They are an increasingly popular tool for fisheries management around the United States and throughout the world.

The assumption is that harvesting ceases in the protected areas, but determining if or how much illegal harvesting, or poaching, is occurring has been a challenge for researchers, which led White to develop a new method for analyzing fish populations.

The Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans, or PISCO, has been conducting long-term surveys of kelp forests along the West Coast for more than 20 years. PISCO researchers surveyed fish populations throughout the Channel Islands, both inside and outside the current marine protected areas, each year from 1999 through 2017.

White used that repository of data to develop the new analysis, which estimates harvest rates based on the number of larger, older fish present at a given time. The researchers were able to compare fish populations of four species of kelp forest fish year-over-year after the marine protected areas were in place.

The researchers found that overall, the harvest rates of fish in the protected areas were essentially at zero, indicating that fishing has ceased in the protected areas. Two locations showed a low harvest rate, suggesting some poaching may be occurring or that the fish in those areas may be straying outside protected boundaries, which is the more likely scenario, White said.

"In an unfished population, you'd expect to have lots of little fish, some medium fish and some really big fish. In a heavily fished area, you would have little fish and some medium fish, but not many big fish," he said. "The question is, 'Do these look like unfished populations?' and the answer is, they do."

However, in some locations outside the marine protected areas, harvest rates are much higher than expected, possibly because there is more fishing there since the marine protected areas were established. Those shifts in fishing behavior are something fisheries managers and policymakers would want to consider, as well.

"People are fishing where they are supposed to," White said, "but that may have additional repercussions."

The new analysis could be a useful tool for understanding the effectiveness of marine protected areas at a time when fisheries management officials in California and Oregon are preparing to embark on evaluations of their programs, White said. The state of California is expected to begin its review in 2022 and Oregon in 2023.

One Friday evening in 1992, a meteorite ended a more than 150 million-mile journey by smashing into the trunk of a red Chevrolet Malibu in Peekskill, New York. The car's owner reported that the 30-pound remnant of the earliest days of our solar system was still warm and smelled of sulfur.

Nearly 30 years later, a new analysis of that same Peekskill meteorite and 17 others by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has led to a new hypothesis about how asteroids formed during the early years of the solar system.

The meteorites studied in the research originated from asteroids and serve as natural samples of the space rocks. They indicate that the asteroids formed though violent bombardment and subsequent reassembly, a finding that runs counter to the prevailing idea that the young solar system was a peaceful place.

The study was published in print Dec.1 in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta.

The research began when co-author Nick Dygert was a postdoctoral fellow at UT's Jackson School of Geosciences studying terrestrial rocks using a method that could measure the cooling rates of rocks from very high temperatures, up to 1,400 degrees Celsius.

Dygert, now an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, realized that this method -- called a rare earth element (REE)-in-two-pyroxene thermometer -- could work for space rocks, too.

"This is a really powerful new technique for using geochemistry to understand geophysical processes, and no one had used it to measure meteorites yet," Dygert said.

Since the 1970s, scientists have been measuring minerals in meteorites to figure out how they formed. The work suggested that meteorites cooled very slowly from the outside inward in layers. This "onion shell model" is consistent with a relatively peaceful young solar system where chunks of rock orbited unhindered. But those studies were only capable of measuring cooling rates from temperatures near about 500 degrees Celsius.

When Dygert and Michael Lucas, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Tennessee who led the work, applied the REE-in-two-pyroxene method, with its much higher sensitivity to peak temperature, they found unexpected results. From around 900 degrees Celsius down to 500 degrees Celsius, cooling rates were 1,000 to 1 million times faster than at lower temperatures.

How could these two very different cooling rates be reconciled?

The scientists proposed that asteroids formed in stages. If the early solar system was, much like the old Atari game "Asteroids," rife with bombardment, large rocks would have been smashed to bits. Those smaller pieces would have cooled quickly. Afterward, when the small pieces reassembled into larger asteroids we see today, cooling rates would have slowed.

To test this rubble pile hypothesis, Jackson School Professor Marc Hesse and first-year doctoral student Jialong Ren built a computational model of a two-stage thermal history of rubble pile asteroids for the first time.

Because of the vast number of pieces in a rubble pile --1015 or a thousand trillions -- and the vast array of their sizes, Ren had to develop new techniques to account for changes in mass and temperature before and after bombardment.

"This was an intellectually significant contribution," Hesse said.

The resulting model supports the rubble pile hypothesis and provides other insights as well. One implication is that cooling slowed so much after reassembly not because the rock gave off heat in layers. Rather, it was that the rubble pile contained pores.

"The porosity reduces how fast you can conduct heat," Hesse said. "You actually cool slower than you would have if you hadn't fragmented because all of the rubble makes kind of a nice blanket. And that's sort of unintuitive."

Tim Swindle of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, who studies meteorites but was not involved in the research, said that this work is a major step forward.

"This seems like a more complete model, and they've added data to part of the question that people haven't been talking about, but should have been. The jury is still out, but this is a strong argument."

The biggest implication of the new rubble pile hypothesis, Dygert said, is that these collisions characterized the early days of the solar system.

"They were violent, and they started early on," he said.

A new machine learning algorithm is poised to help urban transportation analysts relieve bottlenecks and chokepoints that routinely snarl city traffic.

The tool, called TranSEC, was developed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to help urban traffic engineers get access to actionable information about traffic patterns in their cities.

WATCH: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S4bLv9CtOo
(Video by Graham Bourque | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

Currently, publicly available traffic information at the street level is sparse and incomplete. Traffic engineers generally have relied on isolated traffic counts, collision statistics and speed data to determine roadway conditions. The new tool uses traffic datasets collected from UBER drivers and other publicly available traffic sensor data to map street-level traffic flow over time. It creates a big picture of city traffic using machine learning tools and the computing resources available at a national laboratory.  

"What's novel here is the street level estimation over a large metropolitan area," said Arif Khan, a PNNL computer scientist who helped develop TranSEC. "And unlike other models that only work in one specific metro area, our tool is portable and can be applied to any urban area where aggregated traffic data is available."

UBER-fast traffic analysis

TranSEC (which stands for transportation state estimation capability) differentiates itself from other traffic monitoring methods by its ability to analyze sparse and incomplete information. It uses machine learning to connect segments with missing data, and that allows it to make near real-time street level estimations.

In contrast, the map features on our smart phones can help us optimize our journey through a city landscape, pointing out chokepoints and suggesting alternate routes. But smart phone tools only work for an individual driver trying to get from point A to point B. City traffic engineers are concerned with how to help all vehicles get to their destinations efficiently. Sometimes a route that seems efficient for an individual driver leads to too many vehicles trying to access a road that wasn't designed to handle that volume of traffic.

Using public data from the entire 1,500-square-mile Los Angeles metropolitan area, the team reduced the time needed to create a traffic congestion model by an order of magnitude, from hours to minutes. The speed-up, accomplished with high-performance computing resources at PNNL, makes near-real-time traffic analysis feasible. The research team recently presented that analysis at the August 2020 virtual Urban Computing Workshop as part of the Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (SIGKDD) conference, and in September 2020 they sought the input of traffic engineers at a virtual meeting on TranSEC.

"TranSEC has the potential to initiate a paradigm shift in how traffic professionals monitor and predict system mobility performance," said Mark Franz, a meeting attendee and a research engineer at the Center for Advanced Transportation Technology, University of Maryland, College Park. "TranSEC overcomes the inherent data gaps in legacy data collection methods and has tremendous potential." 

Machine learning improves accuracy over time

The machine learning feature of TranSEC means that as more data is acquired and processed it becomes more refined and useful over time. This kind of analysis is used to understand how disturbances spread across networks. Given enough data, the machine learning element will be able to predict impacts so that traffic engineers can create corrective strategies.

"We use a graph-based model together with novel sampling methods and optimization engines, to learn both the travel times and the routes," said Arun Sathanur, a PNNL computer scientist and a lead researcher on the team. "The method has significant potential to be expanded to other modes of transportation, such as transit and freight traffic. As an analytic tool, it is capable of investigating how a traffic condition spreads."

With PNNL's data-driven approach, users can upload real-time data and update TranSEC on a regular basis in a transportation control center. Engineers can use short-term forecasts for decision support to manage traffic issues. PNNL's approach is also extensible to include weather or other data that affect conditions on the road.

Computing power for transportation planners nationwide

Just as situational awareness of conditions informs an individual driver's decisions, TranSEC's approach provides situational awareness on a system-wide basis to help reduce urban traffic congestion.

"Traffic engineers nationwide have not had a tool to give them anywhere near real-time estimation of transportation network states," said Robert Rallo, PNNL computer scientist and principal investigator on the TranSEC project. "Being able to predict conditions an hour or more ahead would be very valuable, to know where the blockages are going to be."

While running a full-scale city model still requires high-performance computing resources, TranSEC is scalable. For example, a road network with only the major highways and arterials  could be modeled on a powerful desktop computer.

"We are working toward making TranSEC available to municipalities nationwide," said Katherine Wolf, project manager for TranSEC.

Eventually, after further development, TranSEC could be used to help program autonomous vehicle routes, according to the research team.

Have you recently wondered how social-distancing and self-isolation may be affecting your brain? An international research team led by Erin Schuman from the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research discovered a brain molecule that functions as a "thermometer" for the presence of others in an animal's environment. Zebrafish "feel" the presence of others via mechanosensation and water movements - which turns the brain hormone on.

Varying social conditions can cause long-lasting changes in animal behavior. Social isolation, for instance, can have devastating effects on humans and other animals, including zebrafish. The brain systems that sense the social environment, however, are not well understood. To probe whether neuronal genes respond to dramatic changes in the social environment, graduate student, Lukas Anneser, and colleagues raised zebrafish either alone or with their kin for different periods of time. The scientists used RNA sequencing to measure the expression levels of thousands of neuronal genes.

Tracking social density

"We found a consistent change in expression for a handful of genes in fish that were raised in social isolation. One of them was parathyroid hormone 2 (pth2), coding for a relatively unknown peptide in the brain. Curiously, pth2 expression tracked not just the presence of others, but also their density. Surprisingly, when zebrafish were isolated, pth2 disappeared in the brain, but its expression levels rapidly rose, like a thermometer reading, when other fish were added to the tank," explains Anneser.

Thrilled by this discovery, the scientists tested if the effects of isolation could be reversed by putting the previously isolated fish into a social setting. "After just 30 minutes swimming with their kin, there was a significant recovery of the pth2 levels. After 12 hours with kin the pth2 levels were indistinguishable from those seen in socially-raised animals," says Anneser. "This really strong and fast regulation was unexpected and indicated a very tight link between gene expression and the environment."

So which sensory modality do the animals use to detect others and drive changes in gene expression? "It turned out that the sensory modality that controls pth2 expression was not vision, taste or smell, but rather mechanosensation - they actually 'felt' the physical movements of the swimming neighboring fish," explains Schuman.

Sensing water movements

Fish perceive movement ("mechano-sense") in their immediate vicinity via a sensory organ called the lateral line. To test the role of mechanosensation in driving pth2 expression, the team ablated the mechanosensitive cells within the fish's lateral line. In previously isolated animals, the ablation of the lateral line cells prevented rescue of the neuro-hormone that was usually induced by the presence of other fish.

Just as we humans are sensitive to touch, zebrafish appear to be specifically tuned to swimming motion of other fish. The scientists saw changes in pth2 levels caused by water movements that is triggered by conspecifics in the tank. "Zebrafish larvae swim in short bouts. We mimicked this water stimulation by programming a motor to create artificial fish movements. Intriguingly, in previously isolated fish the artificial movements rescued pth2 levels just like the real neighboring fish," explains Anneser.

"Our data indicate a surprising role for a relatively unexplored neuropeptide, Pth2- it tracks and responds to the population density of an animal's social environment. It is clear that the presence of others can have dramatic consequences on an animal's access to resources and ultimate survival - it is thus likely that this neuro-hormone will regulate social brain and behavioral networks," concludes Schuman.

As COVID-19 surges nationwide, 78% of New York City residents believe it is likely or very likely the city will again experience a resurgence of cases similar to that seen last April. However, the November Presidential election appears to have triggered an optimism among New Yorkers: more than half feel "more hopeful" about the country's economic recovery (55%) and the government's ability to control the pandemic (58%).

These are key findings from the tracking survey of public perceptions and experiences in NYC during the COVID-19 pandemic conducted by the City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy (CUNY SPH). One thousand NYC residents were polled from November 20-22, 2020. The same panel of respondents were surveyed at the end of September and will be surveyed once more in January 2021.

"As we head into the most challenging winter of our lifetimes, this combination of clear-eyed acceptance of our current reality and cautious optimism bodes well for New York's eventual recovery," says Dr. Ayman El-Mohandes, Dean of CUNY SPH.

Asked whether the recent election had influenced their willingness to accept a COVID-19 vaccine, 43% report that it is now more likely that they will accept the vaccine compared to 18% who were less likely to take it. "This post-election boost in vaccine confidence is heartening," says Dr. Scott Ratzan, Distinguished Lecturer at CUNY SPH, "but the number of people who accept the new vaccines will still have to grow substantially if we are to curb the pandemic."

Subtle changes in indicators of mental health and trust

New Yorkers' levels of anxiety and depression held steady from September to November, with 21% of respondents feeling anxious more than half the time and 19% of respondents feeling depressed (an insignificant increases of 2% and 1% percent respectively). Notably, however, hopefulness about the future rose by 11%, with 43% of respondents feeling hopeful more than half the time.

Trust in federal and state government remained unchanged over the past three months. Only 23% of respondents say they trust that the federal government has their best interest and safety in mind, 38% feel the same about the state government. Fifteen percent (15%) trust both governments while 14% trust neither. The remaining 10% are unsure.

However, as the pandemic lingers trust in fellow citizens appears to have eroded substantially, dropping 12% since September with only 31% of respondents agreeing that "most people can be trusted."

Economic pain persists

The same percentage (30%) of New Yorkers reported they had changed their living arrangements since the pandemic began. The majority of them reported moving to cheaper housing (48%) or returning home to live with parents or family (34%). Employment numbers worsened slightly. Of those who said they had lost their jobs due to the pandemic, 48% remained unemployed in September; in November, that number has dropped slightly to 44%. Three in ten New York City households (29%) ran out of food in November before they had money to buy more, roughly the same (31%) as in September. Communities of color continue to be impacted disproportionately: 38% and 34% of Latinx and Black respondents respectively ran out of food in November before they had the money to buy more, compared to 19% of Whites.

Most New Yorkers to prefer to slow down the return to routine business and daily activities

The surge in COVID-19 cases across New York led 40% of respondents to believe normal daily activities and business operations should be rolled back or delayed, a substantial increase over September, when only 28% of respondents felt the pace of reopening was too quick. In contrast, when it came to reopening schools following the Thanksgiving holiday, just under half (49%) of respondents thought the city should keep them closed.

When considering only parents with a child in public school, over half (55%) believe that schools should remain closed following the Thanksgiving break; 20% said they believe schools should reopen while 24% were unsure.

Residents appear to be exercising greater caution in their personal behavior: compared to September, there was a 5% drop in those who worked outside of the home (47% vs. 42%) and a 7% drop in those who worked out in an indoor gym (25% vs. 18%). Only 18% of respondents participated in an indoor cultural or social event with more than 20 people present in November, compared to 25% in September.

Bluestar Genomics, an innovative company leading the development of next-generation epigenomic approaches to cancer detection, and University of Chicago today announce the publication of a genome-wide 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) map across multiple human tissue types. The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications, demonstrated the robust performance of 5hmC as a global biomarker for the detection of multiple serious illnesses, such as cancer and various chronic diseases. Unlike 5mC which is a gene repression mark, 5hmC is a gene activation mark representing one of the most prevalent pathways involved in the regulation of embryogenesis, neurological processes, and carcinogenesis. The new map advances the understanding of diverse biological drivers in various diseases, which is necessary for the development of next-generation diagnostic tests.

"While previous studies have shown that 5hmC can serve as an excellent biomarker for the diagnosis and prognosis of human diseases including cancer, the lack of a whole-body tissue map limits our global understanding of this mark and its potential tissue specificity," says Dr. Chuan He, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Chicago and the senior author of the study. "Through this collaboration with Bluestar Genomics, the new publication significantly expands our understanding of this global biomarker, delivering what we believe is the broadest reported human tissue map that catalogs 5hmC modifications. The new map confirms 5hmC as a prevalent gene activation mark for both gene bodies and enhancers with superb tissue and cell type specificity, which is key to future early diagnosis of human cancer and monitoring of human chronic diseases."

In this study, the University of Chicago scientists collaborated with Bluestar Genomics to evaluate the performance and reproducibility of 5hmC as a biomarker across 19 tissue types from multiple male and female organs. The published results demonstrate that the 5hmC profiles identified in the new map provide an unprecedented database of potential diagnostic development, specifically in cancer.

Based on a study of 96 samples representing ten major organ systems: nervous, cardiovascular, digestive, reproductive, endocrine, respiratory, urinary, integumentary, skeletal, and lymphatic, the map represents the most comprehensive examination of 5hmC as a biomarker for cancer detection. The data confirms the profiling accuracy (Spearman r = 0.82 compared with gold standard TAB-seq profiles) and reproducibility (Spearman r = 0.974) of the genome-wide 5hmC profiles obtained in various tissues, which underscores its clinical relevance and provides a unique resource to study distributions of 5hmC in the human genome.

Building on Bluestar Genomics' previously published work, the new publication highlights that 5hmC reveals known biology in human tissues by enabling the measurement of gene transcriptional and gene regulation activity with the same assay. The published map, which characterizes the genomic distributions of 5hmC in 19 human tissues derived from ten organ systems lays the foundation for the future development of diagnostic tests.

"With the ultimate goal of developing a robust cancer screening test, this map brings us a step closer to enhancing our ability to accurately read and interpret cancer signals coming from tumor tissues in cell-free DNA," says Samuel Levy, Ph.D., Chief Executive and Chief Scientific Officer at Bluestar Genomics, co-senior author of the study. "I'm proud that our work will also contribute to the broader scientific community by deepening scientists' precise understanding of the breadth of biology through the utilization of 5hmC."

Shipping pallets -- often used as display platforms in retail settings or seen as raw material for household projects -- were responsible for sending more than 30,000 people to the emergency rooms of U.S. hospitals over a recent five-year period, according to a new study.

With approximately 400 million new wooden pallets produced in the United States every year, and nearly 2 billion in use at any given time in the country, pallets are indispensable components of domestic supply chains. But they present unique hazards when used by retailers and homeowners for unintended purposes, pointed out researcher Judd Michael, Penn State Nationwide Insurance Professor of Agricultural Safety and Health.

The first-ever investigation of non-occupational injuries that occur due to unintentional contact with pallets yielded startling statistics, Michael noted. From Jan. 1, 2014, to Dec. 31, 2018, there were an estimated 30,493 people who visited hospital emergency rooms for pallet-related injuries.

To reach their conclusions, researchers combed through data in the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission's National Electronic Injury Surveillance System. That database is used for safety-related research, and similar studies using its data have examined injuries from products ranging from bunk beds to trampolines.

The National Electronic Injury Surveillance System collects emergency department data from approximately 100 hospitals selected as a probability sample for all of the more than 5,000 U.S. hospitals with emergency departments. In addition to patient demographics, incident date, emergency room diagnosis, injury location and patient disposition, the system contains brief narratives describing incident scenarios. Analysts then extrapolate data from the sample to estimate injuries across the entire U.S.

According to the data, people ages 35-44 were most likely to be injured -- 5,481 over the study years. But about 3,000 children and youth under 18 years of age were injured, and more than 4,000 people 65 years of age or older suffered injuries. The elderly, especially, were likely to suffer injuries from tripping over pallets and falling, Michael noted.

The lower extremities were the most often injured body parts in pallet-related accidents. The overall severity of injuries is likely low given the 97% discharge rate for pallet-related injuries. However, a small percentage were severe enough to require hospitalization or transfer, and there was a single fatality during this time period.

Significantly, Michael said, an estimated 3,964 persons -- accounting for approximately 14% of all pallet-related injuries -- were treated for injuries incurred while at a retail establishment. He expects the findings, recently published in the Journal of Safety Research, to be of great interest to operators of grocery stores, warehouse chains and "big-box" retailers, where pallets are often used in retail space as platforms to display merchandise.

"Based on our findings, the first obvious practical application of these results would be to eliminate pallets from being used in consumer-facing retail locations where unintentional contact could occur," he said. "Retailers can cover all floor-level pallets with a brightly colored material to make them more visible, and never leave unused pallets laying on floors."

Keeping pallets out of the hands of homeowners looking for materials to accomplish do-it-yourself projects is more problematic, Michael suggested. It would require preventing used pallets from leaking out of supply chains from manufacturer to retailer and into the possession of individuals.

"This strategy, however, would be effectively impossible given the near-ubiquitous availability of millions of used pallets that have little or no value to businesses and are discarded," he said. "Given the difficulty of preventing people from obtaining used pallets, the most appropriate preventative measures would seemingly relate to education on the dangers of used pallets."

Social media could be an effective tool to warn homeowners and counteract the increasing use of pallets for unintended residential use, Michael said. The prevalence of warm-weather injuries implies communications should be targeted during those months.

"The immense number of pallets allows for broken or beaten-up pallets to be lost from the system and grabbed by homeowners for DIY projects," he said. "Or they break up pallets for firewood or stack firewood on them. They're not careful and they get hurt."

Michael is often asked why he focused on the risks of pallets. It was a natural progression, he believes.

"Broadly speaking, in the College of Agricultural Sciences we have worked with industrial packaging for 10 to 15 years, and we've become experts in the area," he said. "We've done research on other aspects of pallet use, so this seemed like a logical extension as I have begun to work more on the safety side."

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - Quality of life is important for persons with traumatic brain injury, and new studies find it's just as important for the person's caregiver.

"Caregivers are often not the focus of treatments; It's usually about the patient or person with the condition," says Noelle E. Carlozzi, Ph.D., an associate professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation, and director of the Center for Clinical Outcomes Development and Application at Michigan Medicine.

She is the leading author of several papers included in a new special edition of Rehabilitation Psychology that examine quality of life in caregivers of persons with TBI.

"The special issue focuses on the diverse ways that caring for an individual can impact well-being, including family life, mood, physical health, sleep and social relationships," says Carlozzi, also a member of the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.

A unique tool

The papers in the special issue highlight the research team's focus on understanding the experiences of caregivers of persons with TBI, and illustrate the team's ability to efficiently capture those experiences through a tool Carlozzi created called the TBI-CareQOL Measurement System.

"We developed the TBI-CareQOL tool as a way to have standard measures for quality of life in caregivers of persons with TBI," Carlozzi says. "We're able to use the same measures across multiple studies, which allows us to compare and contrast findings to move research forward faster."

The tool was validated through previous research by Carlozzi and her colleagues, and one of its unique features is the ability to administer surveys as 'smart tests.'

"This means the individual only sees the items that are most relevant to them, since the survey administers items based on the respondent's previous answers," Carlozzi says. "This is important because it saves our respondents' time, as they're not answering questions that aren't pertinent to them. It also helps ensure we aren't collecting unnecessary data, or data that the respondent felt they had to supply an answer to even if it isn't truly applicable to them."

The papers included in the special issue utilize the TBI-CareQOL to analyze quality of life in caregivers of both military members and civilians who experience a TBI. The special issue highlights the common experiences caregivers of persons with TBI share, as well as experiences and challenges faced by caregivers for military personnel who have experienced a TBI.

"We also want to draw attention to the different problems that caregivers encounter," Carlozzi says. "While there are certainly a number of common experiences for caregivers of civilians and caregivers of service members and veterans, caregivers of military personnel often feel the need to suppress their emotions, or put on a brave face for others. They often find themselves being constantly on guard trying to protect the person with injury from further harm."

Future work

Carlozzi hopes the work included in the special issue, as well as the fact that there is little research available to physicians that focuses on the caregiver, demonstrate the need for continued research on this topic.

"We hope that all of this work will encourage clinicians to pay a bit more attention to the caregiver, even when the focus may be primarily on the person with TBI," Carlozzi says.

She also notes this research will be helpful when finding interventions for caregivers of persons with TBI.

"We need interventions to improve quality of life for caregivers, and this research can lay the groundwork for doing just that," Carlozzi says.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Research by Kai Jiao, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and in Germany has yielded fundamental insights into the causes of severe birth defects known as CHARGE syndrome cases. These congenital birth defects include severe and life-threatening heart malformations.

The researchers successfully inactivated the gene for CHD7 in the neural crest cells of mouse embryos, and then rigorously probed how this change in developing cardiac neural crest cells caused severe defects in the outflow tract and great arteries, leading to perinatal lethality. The heart defects in the embryos, and other birth defects, resembled human CHARGE syndrome defects. Human mutations in CHD7 are known to cause about 70 percent of CHARGE syndrome cases.

The study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, led by Jiao, co-corresponding author Karim Bouazoune, Ph.D., Philipps Universität Marburg, Marburg, Germany, and first author Shun Yan, Ph.D., a researcher V in Jiao's lab, also clarifies a longstanding controversy. Previous attempts by others to alter CHD7 function in neural crest cells had failed to cause heart defects in several mouse models. This study's improvement was use of better molecular scissors to delete a portion of the CHD7 gene.

A surprising finding in the current research was discovery of a new epigenetic function for CHD7, in addition to its well-established ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling activity. Chromatin is a DNA-protein complex consisting of the mammalian genome tightly wound around histone proteins to create a string of nucleosomes, like pearls on a necklace. Chromatin remodeling factors like CHD7 use the energy of ATP to remodel the chromatin, making selected genes available for expression. The turning-on and turning-off of select sets of genes is fundamental to embryonic development, during the time that a single fertilized egg grows into a complex fetus with at least 200 different types of cells, all originating from the same DNA genome, but differentiated using different gene programs.

In addition to the chromatin remodeling activity, Jiao and colleagues discovered that CHD7 acts in an ATP-independent fashion to recruit histone-modifying enzymes to target promoter or enhancer loci on the genome.

"Our findings strongly suggest that CHD7 can also directly recruit an H3K4 methyltransferase writer to target elements," said Jiao, a professor in the UAB Department of Genetics. "The dual activities of CHD7 may represent an efficient mechanism to coordinate nucleosome remodeling and H3K4 methylation at these target loci. The mutual interaction between the CHD7 nucleosome remodeler and histone methylation machinery could form a positive feedback loop to stabilize epigenetic states at target elements."

In other key findings of the study -- in addition to showing an essential cell-autonomous role for CHD7 to regulate cardiac neural crest cell development -- the researchers showed that a single point mutation in the CHD7 gene was sufficient to cause severe developmental defects and embryonic lethality in mammals. The researchers also used transcriptomic analyses to show that CHD7 fine-tunes the expression of a gene network critical for cardiac neural crest cell development. They followed that with a protein-protein interaction screen and found that CHD7 directly interacted with multiple developmental disorder-mutated proteins. One of these was WDR5, a core component of H3K4 methyltransferase complexes. That interaction with WDR5 led to the discovery of CHD7's ability to recruit histone-modifying enzymes to target promoter or enhancer loci on the genome.

The researchers say that the CHD7 protein interactome suggests CHD7 is likely implicated in an even wider range of physiological processes and human diseases than previously anticipated.

"Importantly," Jiao said, "we now provide a molecular framework of direct candidate interactors to investigate known or new CHD7 functions, as well as the molecular etiology of CHD7-associated diseases or phenotypes."

The discovery of two different functions for CHD7 also could have clinical relevance. "Our data imply that patients carrying a premature stop codon versus missense mutations will likely display different molecular alterations," Jiao said. "These patients might therefore require personalized therapeutic interventions."

ST. LOUIS - Research from Saint Louis University finds that among patients at risk for opioid misuse, the odds of receiving a schedule II opioid for non-cancer pain were similar to those not at risk, despite new prescribing guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

The study, "Comparison of Opioids Prescribed for Patients at Risk for Opioid Misuse Before and After CDC Opioid Prescribing Guidelines," by Jeffrey Scherrer, Ph.D., a professor in Family and Community Medicine at SLU, was published online Dec. 2 in JAMA Network Open.

In March 2016, the CDC issued its Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain. The guidance offered recommendations for opioid therapy in primary care patients with non-cancer pain. The guidelines were followed by a decline in opioid prescription rates.

This retrospective cohort study reviewed Optum de-identified electronic medical record data of 5 million adults distributed throughout the United States 18 months before and after CDC guidance was issued on March 15, 2016. from 2008 to 2015. Eligible patients were 18 years of age or older, did not have an HIV and cancer diagnosis and had a non-cancer painful condition that resulted in a new prescription for codeine, hydrocodone, oxycodone or tramadol.

Researchers determined if patients with benzodiazepine prescriptions, depression, anxiety or substance abuse disorders had a greater decrease in receipt of Schedule II (codeine, hydrocodone or oxycodone) versus Schedule IV (tramadol) opioids.

There were 279,435 (141,219 pre-guideline issuance and 138,216 post-guideline) eligible patients.

"Except for a 14% decrease in oxycodone prescriptions, we found no evidence for substantial changes in odds of receiving a Schedule II opioid versus tramadol in the 18 months after the CDC guidance, compared with before the guidance," Scherrer said.

The study was limited by the lack of data on dispensed prescriptions. Researchers were unable to determine whether prescriptions were appropriate to a patient's pain severity and interference.

Continued education is needed, Scherrer says, to reduce prescribing of high abuse potential opioids to patients with benzodiazepine prescriptions and comorbid psychiatric and substance abuse disorders.

Take-aways

Among patients at risk for opioid misuse, the odds of receiving a schedule II opioid for non-cancer pain, compared to receiving tramadol, in post- versus pre-guideline periods were similar to those not at risk.

In 18 months after CDC prescribing guidelines, compared to before the CDC prescribing guidelines, research found a 14% decrease in oxycodone prescriptions, relative to tramadol.

There was little change in other schedule II opioid prescribing.

The odds of receiving hydrocodone and oxycodone versus tramadol in post and pre-guideline periods in patients with psychiatric disorders did not differ significantly from patients without.

Schedule II opioids continue to be prescribed to high-risk patients 18 months after the CDC guideline.

PARAMUS, N.J. (December 2, 2020) - Clinical research presented by Octapharma USA at the 62nd American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition will highlight the investigational use of high-dose Octagam® 10% [Immune Globulin Intravenous (Human)] for the most severe COVID-19 patients. Octapharma's intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg) portfolio also will be featured in a study design poster focused on primary infection prophylaxis in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia during ASH, to be held virtually December 5 - 8 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The poster, "Use of Intravenous Immunoglobulin Therapy Reduces Progression to Mechanical Ventilation in COVID?19 Patients with Moderate to Severe Hypoxia," reports on a randomized open label study that evaluated the standard of care (SOC) plus high-dose Octagam® 10% compared to SOC alone in the treatment of COVID-19 infection. The study enrolled 33 COVID-19 patients experiencing hypoxia who were at risk of requiring mechanical ventilation. The investigator-initiated study (IIS) reported that IVIg significantly improved hypoxia and reduced hospital length of stay and progression to mechanical ventilation in patients with COVID-19 pneumonia. Principal investigator: George Sakoulas, M.D. of Sharp Memorial Hospital and the Sharp Rees-Stealy Medical Group in San Diego, Calif.

"IVIg has been used to treat patients with immune-mediated diseases for almost 40 years," said Octapharma USA President Flemming Nielsen. "Octapharma is very pleased to share this research with colleagues at ASH. Our team believes the use of IVIg in the prophylaxis of severe infections, especially in immunocompromised patients, may be an attractive therapeutic possibility for COVID-19."

Octapharma USA is conducting a larger multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under an Investigational New Drug Application. The primary objective of this study is to determine if high-dose Octagam® 10% therapy will slow or stop respiratory deterioration in patients with severe coronavirus disease. The secondary objectives of the study are to measure the effects of a high-dose of Octagam® 10% on slowing or stopping the clinical progression of COVID-19 by improving pulmonary function, quality of life, and correlated impact on metabolic factors. For more information, please visit clinicaltrials.gov (NCT04411667).

The investigational use of IVIg in Lymphocytic Leukemia is the focus of an Octapharma study design poster to be presented at ASH entitled, "The Prosid Study: Evaluating Efficacy and Safety of Intravenous Immunoglobulin 10% in Primary Infection Prophylaxis in Patients with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia." Secondary immunodeficiency (SID) occurs, among other reasons, as a consequence of hematological malignancies, most commonly in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and multiple myeloma. About 25% of patients present with SID at diagnosis of CLL and this incidence may increase to 85% during the course of disease. This increase is also due to recent advances in CLL therapy leading to cumulative immunosuppression. Infections are the main cause of morbidity and mortality in CLL patients, causing between 30% and 50% of deaths within the first year after diagnosis. IVIg is established as secondary prophylaxis to reduce infectious complications in patients with hypogammaglobulinemia. To date, no large randomized study has established efficacy of IVIg as primary prophylaxis in CLL patients with hypogammaglobulinemia although several small studies suggest an up to four-fold reduction of infection rates. This prospective, placebo-controlled study will evaluate the efficacy and safety of IVIg 10% as primary prophylaxis of infections in CLL patients with SID in a large clinical setting for the first time. Principal investigator: Anthony Mato, MD, MSCE, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, N.Y.

For more information on the ASH annual meeting, please visit hematology.org.