Culture

For their research, the researchers have obtained data on 25 patients from organizations such as Eurordis, the Spanish Rare Diseases Federation (FEDER) and the Rare Diseases Patients' Association of Iran with the goal of including testimonials from different territories with different health systems.

The term used to refer to formal representations of knowledge that establish the different concepts of a specific field and the relationships between them is ontology. In such representations, it is important to use an open-source data format and international standards in order to ensure that this representation is accessible in all spheres. The ontology performed by the UOC uses an open source code and is based on standards defined by the World Health Organization (WHO).

A tool for understanding patients that goes beyond treatments

The research is described in the article "Biomedical Holistic Ontology for Patients With Rare Diseases", published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. Lead researcher Laia Subirats explained that its value lies in "the fact that a single ontology integrates not just medical information but also information about other aspects that affect patients' lives, such as environmental, geographical and psychological factors, their social relations and their interests. It also includes information taken from Twitter, which gives us social data. The end result is an improved understanding of the patient and access to new data about the patient's interaction with the disease. Viewed in this light, we can say that it is a holistic ontology". Subirats is a course instructor at the UOC's Faculty of Computer Science, Multimedia and Telecommunications, a collaborator with the University's Applied Data Science Lab (ADaS Lab) and a researcher at Eurecat. In 2018, she was included in the list of the 100 most influential women in Spain, in the Top 100 Female Leaders awards.

One of the shortcomings of the ontologies used for rare diseases is that they provide information about the patients separately, without including all the necessary information in a single tool. The ontology developed by the UOC researchers overcomes this shortcoming and provides a useful tool for health professionals, patients and other healthcare stakeholders.

As one of the other members of this research team, Jordi Conesa, who also teaches at the Faculty of Computer Science, Multimedia and Telecommunications and is a researcher with the UOC's SmartLearn group, explained: "We know that medical and genetic information ontologies must be integrated in order to perform personalized translational analyses for each patient. However, we have taken this a step further, as we believe that it is necessary to create holistic ontologies that also contain data about other significant factors affecting patients, including psychosocial, demographic, geographical, and time- and social relations-related information. Health - and the available treatments - is not just something that exists within the confines of our bodies; it is also influenced by the environment. With this ontology, we can now include the environment, and also other factors that impact on the quality and intensity of potential treatments."

Psychologist and researcher Manuel Armayones has also taken part in this research. A member of the UOC's eHealth Center, the Psychology, Health and Network (PSiNET) research group and the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, Armayones considered that it was "very significant that data from patients' associations have been taken into account, as they are usually the health system's least-used resource. If there is one field where data from all possible sources should be considered, it is the rare diseases and, especially, the ultrarare diseases".

No matter how soft and cozy, beds that have gone up in flames are a source of some of the deadliest fires in the U.S. As large pieces of furniture loaded with combustible cushioning materials, beds are substantial fuel sources for home fires. Once ignited, mattress fires can grow quickly, creating life-threatening situations in bedrooms or entire houses within minutes.

A 2007 standard for mattress flammability from the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), known as 16 CFR Part 1633, sought to curb the danger of bed fires sparked by flames, which caused an estimated 95 deaths annually from 2002-2005. But because of how infrequently consumers replace mattresses, the researchers who helped to develop the standard spent years in the dark about whether the safety requirements were living up to expectations.

Now, enough data has accumulated for researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to estimate that the standard prevented 65 deaths from bed fires annually in 2015 and 2016. That number is expected to rise as more mattresses are replaced with the newer, standard-compliant models.

"What we've got here is a clear case of fire researchers, manufacturers and regulators all working together, getting the science right, getting commercially acceptable versions of the mattresses right and getting the regulation right," said NIST research scientist Richard Gann. "It all came together, and as a result we have a real success story for the country."

Long before 2007, other standards were in place to crack down on a leading cause of bed fires in cigarettes, but they left the grave threat of flaming ignition sources, like lighters, matches or pieces of burning furniture, largely unaddressed.

To close that gap, the International Sleep Products Association (ISPA) -- the trade association for the mattress industry -- approached NIST about laying the groundwork for a new mattress flammability standard that would eliminate, or at least greatly reduce, the casualties from bed fires.

Gann and his colleagues leapt at the opportunity and set out to devise a realistic and practical way for manufacturers to test mattress flammability.

Since bed fires typically start with the ignition of blankets, sheets and other bedclothing items, the researchers aimed to replicate the danger they posed to mattresses. Gann and his team assembled several sets of bedclothes, set them ablaze and gauged the heat release rate (HRR) -- an indicator of how intensely something burns, measured in watts -- of each.

They used the HRR data to create a special test apparatus composed of twin propane burners that could mimic fires generated by an off-the-shelf set of bedclothes. With the burners, manufacturers could test their mattresses against conditions similar to real-world bedroom fires.

While the researchers developed this new test method, manufacturers experimented with fire-resistant fabrics -- such as those used in firefighter uniforms -- and implemented them into prototypes to lower their HRR.

But how much lower would the HRR of a mattress need to be? The limit had to be low enough to ensure that burning mattresses would not spark a "flashover," wherein a fire makes a room so hot that all other combustible items in it -- chairs, clothes, etc. -- suddenly and simultaneously ignite, Gann said.

To find the limit, they measured how much heat it would take to ignite small pieces of material, each representing an item commonly found in bedrooms, such as wooden furniture or softer items like upholstery or curtains. The researchers then burned both prototype and commercially available mattresses, measuring the flow of heat to several spots around the room.

With the two data sets, the team discovered that mattresses with a peak HRR of about 600 kilowatts (kW) or more would produce enough heat to reliably ignite soft materials almost anywhere in an ordinary bedroom. While the commercial king- and twin-sized beds they tested had peak HRRs far above this value, one prototype fared much better.

"The manufacturers made some prototypes and they worked. When they sent them here, we tested them," Gann said. "Four megawatts. One megawatt. And then down to 400 kilowatts for a king-size bed. In the world of fire safety, that's a game changer."

When mattresses burn below 400 kW, the odds of flashover decrease substantially, the researchers found. To prevent mattresses from coming close to this threshold, the CPSC's standard requires that mattresses maintain an HRR under 200 kW after being ignited by the burning-bedclothes-simulating burners.

By the time the standard became effective on July 1, 2007, mattresses that met the new requirements were widely available. But did this change actually translate into lives saved? If so, how many lives was it saving? Gann was eager to know, but when he set out two years later to find the answers, he learned that there was a colossal roadblock in the way.

Mattresses remain with their original owners for 10 to 12 years on average. And after that, they are often passed on to children or get refurbished and find a new life back on the market, Gann said. This meant it would take years before enough standard-compliant mattresses found their way into homes. With so little data available at the time, Gann had to wait this one out.

Returning to the issue 10 years later, now with a wealth of information available about fire incidents (fires, injuries and deaths) from the National Fire Incident Reporting System and mattress sales from ISPA, Gann brought aboard NIST economists Stanley Gilbert and Dave Butry, who have developed statistical methods to finally put numbers to the standard's effects.

One of their approaches was to compare the total number of incidents caused by bed fires in 2005 and 2006 combined to the number in 2015 and 2016. They didn't just look at the raw values, though. If other fire-influencing factors -- like the number of homes with smoke alarms -- were not identical between the two time periods, the comparison could be unfair.

To isolate the effect of the standard from other factors, Gilbert and Butry compared the outcomes of bed fires to upholstered furniture fires, as the combustible materials in both types of fires are similar. Because the standard is exclusively about mattresses, any spike or dip that only appeared in the bed fire numbers, but not upholstered furniture fires, would probably have been driven by the standard.

The researchers crunched the numbers and were pleased to identify several strong indicators suggesting that the standard was doing its job and doing it well.
They found that, relative to upholstered furniture fires, the number of bed fires from 2015 and 2016 combined was 12% lower than in 2005 and 2006. In those 10 years, injuries decreased by 34% and, much to the delight of the researchers, deaths plummeted by 82%.

Evidence mounted further in support of the standard as the researchers examined the mattress sales data alongside fire incidents.

The researchers used the sales data to create mathematical models that could estimate how many pre-standard mattresses were being replaced with new ones. The models point to the standard as the likely source of the benefits, as the mattress replacements and reductions in casualties closely mirrored each other throughout the years.

"We used several different approaches to look at the data, and they all pointed to the same conclusion; the standard saves lives," Gilbert said.

Ryan Trainer, president of ISPA, which was involved in developing and implementing 16 CFR Part 1633, also voiced appreciation that the standard has borne fruit.

"The mattress industry has collaborated with NIST and CPSC to develop a standard that is based on sound science, reflects real world risks, improves safety and is practical for manufacturers to adopt," Trainer said. "We are gratified that NIST's analysis of national fire statistics shows that since Part 1633 was implemented, the number of bed fires ignited by open-flame heat sources, and especially the deaths and injuries from those fires, have dropped so significantly."

In a study of women aged 80 years and older, living in locations with higher exposures to air pollution was associated with increased depressive symptoms. The findings are published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

When looking at individual air pollutants, a team led by investigators from of the University of Southern California found that long-term exposure to nitrogen dioxide or fine particulate air pollution was associated with increased depressive symptoms, but with only a small effect. Results also suggested that depressive symptoms might play a role in linking long-term air pollution exposure to memory decline more than 10 years after the exposure.

"This is the first study showing how air pollution exposures affect depressive symptoms as well as the interrelationship between the symptoms and subsequent memory decline that had not been found in older people aged less than 80 years," said lead author Andrew Petkus, PhD.

Senior author Jiu-Chiuan Chen, MD, ScD, added, "We know late-life exposures to ambient air pollutants accelerate brain aging and increase the dementia risk, but our new findings suggest the oldest-old populations may respond to air pollution neurotoxicity in a different way that needs to be investigated further."

An article published in Bioethics examines the topic of research fatigue--or psychological and emotional exhaustion both towards and as a result of participating in research. The article is meant to initiate a conversation about research fatigue experienced by marginalized communities and how the research community should respond to it.

As global interconnectivity facilitates an increasing amount of research and studies on hard-to-reach communities, research fatigue is likely to grow. Analyzing and addressing the ethical aspects of research fatigue can help mitigate its impacts on marginalized and vulnerable communities and on the quality of scientific research itself.

Research fatigue in marginalized communities is a systemic issue that requires systemic responses, noted the article's author, Florence Ashley, of the University of Toronto. "No one wants to be the reason why their colleague can't recruit enough participants for their study. No one wants to be the reason why studies that would promote social justice don't get completed, and thereby contribute to ongoing inequalities," they said. "Researchers and research ethics committees should ensure that studies are responsive to the needs of the researched community and tailored in all ways to minimize research fatigue."

A study published in Ecological Applications suggests that nature around one's home may help mitigate some of the negative mental health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

An online questionnaire survey completed by 3,000 adults in in Tokyo, Japan, quantified the link between five mental-health outcomes (depression, life satisfaction, subjective happiness, self-esteem, and loneliness) and two measures of nature experiences (frequency of greenspace use and green view through windows from home).

More frequent greenspace use and the existence of green window views from the home were associated with increased levels of self-esteem, life satisfaction, and subjective happiness, as well as decreased levels of depression and loneliness.

"Our results suggest that nearby nature can serve as a buffer in decreasing the adverse impacts of a very stressful event on humans," said lead author Masashi Soga, PhD, of The University of Tokyo. "Protecting natural environments in urban areas is important not only for the conservation of biodiversity, but also for the protection of human health."

Food allergies are a big problem. About 7% of children and 2% of adults in the U.S. suffer from some kind of food allergy. These allergies cost a whopping $25 billion in health care each year. Then there's the time lost at school or work. And there's the risk of serious complications, even death.

It's critical to find ways to reduce the suffering caused by food allergies. Food processing companies already spend a lot of effort to label products so people can avoid items they're allergic to. But what if we could do better? What if we could enjoy the foods we like without worrying they might trigger a health crisis?

That's the focus of Eliot Herman's work. Herman has spent his career studying why plants trigger allergic reactions and how to reduce the chance of them being triggered. Herman is a member of the Crop Science Society of America and recently presented his work at the virtual 2020 ASA-CSSA-SSSA Annual Meeting.

"Food allergies are an important societal issue. By altering food and by treating sensitive individuals, this can be mitigated, improving their lives and impacting the total medical expenditure in the U.S.," says Herman.

Herman focuses particularly on soybeans. Soybean allergies especially affect children and infants. And because soybean products like oil and protein are used in countless food products, it's hard to avoid.

Earlier in his career, Herman found the protein made by soybeans that is responsible for most soybean allergies. Now, he has dedicated his work to understanding why this protein is so aggravating and how we can reduce it in the crop.

To do so, he's turning to animal models. Pigs sometimes have a soybean allergy very similar to that of humans. Herman worked with a research team that bred pigs that are extra sensitive to soybeans. Testing new crops on allergic children wouldn't be possible. But these pigs can be used to see how well plant breeders have done at removing allergenic proteins from soybean seeds.

That's a feat that Herman has done not once, but twice. Previously, Herman partnered with the company DuPont to produce a line of soybeans that couldn't make the most allergenic protein.

They made this soybean line using genetic engineering. This new soybean was a genetically modified organism (GMO), and there was also demand for a non-GMO soybean without the allergenic protein.

So Herman went back to the drawing board. He worked with his colleagues to find a line from the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) national soybean collection that naturally didn't make the allergenic protein. That means no genetic engineering would be necessary. They then crossed that line of soybeans with a more commonly grown soybeans to create a new, productive soybean with reduced allergic sensitivity.

"This new soybean is intended to be a low-allergen prototype to be tested as a conventional, non-GMO line to mitigate the allergic response for consumers," says Herman.

The hypersensitive pigs can now be used to test if these low-allergen soybeans are safe enough for allergic individuals. That wouldn't only be good for allergic people who want to safely eat more items from the grocery store. It would also be good news for animals.

Since pigs are often fed soybeans, a low-allergen soybean could reduce their own allergic response. Dogs also have a high prevalence of allergic reactions to soybean, which is used in some dog foods. So reducing the crop's allergenicity would be good for man's best friend, too.

"Food has been recognized as medicine since ancient times. By reducing soybean's allergens, we hope to produce positive a medical outcome for humans and animals," says Herman.

Surgeons' preoperative expectations were more accurate than patients' expectations in predicting patient-reported outcomes two years after lumbar spine surgery, according to a longitudinal study by investigators at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS). Most patients had higher expectations than their surgeons did, with many anticipating complete improvement after seeking additional information beyond that provided by their surgeons.

Lower back pain is complex, requiring accurate diagnosis and careful consideration of treatment options. Mechanical problems, such as a muscle strain from heavy lifting or twisting, a sudden jolt in a car accident, a herniated disc from stress on spinal bones or joint degeneration due to osteoarthritis, are typical causes of lower back pain. Most patients do not require surgery and are treated with medications to relieve pain and reduce inflammation. Surgical options are considered for back pain that does not respond to other therapies.

"There have been tremendous advances in spine surgery over the past 20 years, including minimally invasive and robotic approaches, new implants and bone grafting methods," says Federico P. Girardi, MD, an attending orthopaedic surgeon at HSS. "However, despite clinical assessment and improvements seen on postoperative imaging, some patients report they are not doing well compared to others with similar conditions who received the same surgeries. That has been very frustrating for surgeons because our goal is to optimize patient outcomes."

"Patients decide to pursue lumbar spine surgery to relieve symptoms, improve their quality of life and avoid further disability," says Carol A. Mancuso, MD, FACP, a general internist and clinical epidemiologist at HSS. "Unrealistically high or low expectations are problematic, predisposing patients to poor outcomes if they become discouraged with recovery, abandon rehabilitation or ignore recommended lifestyle modifications that reduce disease progression."

To understand the gap between expectations and patient-reported outcomes, Dr. Girardi, Dr. Mancuso and colleagues developed the HSS Lumbar Spine Surgery Expectations Survey in 2013 with input from hundreds of patients on the surgical outcome factors that matter most to them. The comprehensive, validated tool evaluates patients' expectations for symptom relief, resuming activities, and importantly, psychological well-being, which previous surgeon-oriented surveys did not capture. The HSS Lumbar Spine Surgery Expectations Survey is one of several patient-centered tools developed by Dr. Mancuso and HSS researchers used worldwide and considered the gold standard for measuring patients' expectations with orthopedic surgery.

For their recent study, published online ahead of print on November 4, 2020 in the journal Spine, Dr. Girardi, Dr. Mancuso and colleagues asked 402 patients and their surgeons to preoperatively assess their expectations of patient-reported surgical outcomes using the HSS Lumbar Spine Surgery Expectations Survey. The researchers surveyed patients again, two years after surgery, to evaluate the degree of fulfillment of their expectations.

Patients participating in the study were 55 years of age, on average. Most had a degenerative spine condition and had experienced symptoms for a year or longer. About one-quarter had undergone previous spine surgery, and one-third were taking opioids to relieve leg and back pain. The extent of surgical procedures spanned from the removal of a single, herniated disc to more complex operations such as a five-level anterior-posterior decompression, instrumentation and fusion.

Responses to the HSS Lumbar Spine Surgery Expectations Survey generate a score on a scale of 0 to 100, where a higher score indicates higher expectations. Patients' average preoperative score in the study was 73 (ranging from 20 to 100), much higher than surgeons' average score of 57 (ranging from 16 to 100).

Next, the investigators determined whether surgeons or patients' presurgical expectations more closely predicted postoperative fulfillment of those expectations as reported by patients. The proportion of expectations fulfilled was .79 for patients, indicating that they were satisfied overall. Dr. Mancuso's previous research found that a ratio of .6 or higher corresponds with satisfaction with surgical results. However, the surgeons' ratio was 1.01, meaning that their predictions for patient-reported outcomes were highly accurate and more accurate than patients' presurgical estimates. In 73 percent of cases, surgeons either predicted patients' reported outcomes exactly, or patients surpassed surgeons' expectations.

"HSS spine surgeons very accurately predicted patient-reported outcomes two years after surgery, indicating that they are adept at integrating complex clinical, surgical and psychological factors that matter most to patients," says Dr. Mancuso. "Getting this right is an indicator of providing high-quality and high-value care."

Overall, surgeons and patients agreed on the same areas of improvement. However, expectations for the degree of improvement differed. Surgeons expected surgery would lead to a little, moderate, or a lot of improvement, based on their clinical expertise treating hundreds of patients. However, 84 percent of patients had higher expectations than their surgeons, often expecting complete improvement. The investigators interviewed patients about the source of their expectations and discovered they had amplified their surgeons' guidance with information they obtained from family, friends, coworkers and the internet.

"Our study underscores that there is room for improvement in patient education and that patients should rely on their surgeon's expertise when forming expectations of lumbar spine surgery," Dr. Girardi says. "At HSS, we recognize that expectations for surgical outcomes are affected by many factors and develop evidence-based, individualized treatment plans. Patients need to realize that anecdotal stories from social contacts or the internet are often not relevant to their situation."

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Machine learning has been used widely in the chemical sciences for drug design and other processes.

The models that are prospectively tested for new reaction outcomes and used to enhance human understanding to interpret chemical reactivity decisions made by such models are extremely limited.

Purdue University innovators have introduced chemical reactivity flowcharts to help chemists interpret reaction outcomes using statistically robust machine learning models trained on a small number of reactions. The work is published in Organic Letters.

"Developing new and fast reactions is essential for chemical library design in drug discovery," said Gaurav Chopra, an assistant professor of analytical and physical chemistry in Purdue's College of Science. "We have developed a new, fast and one-pot multicomponent reaction (MCR) of N-sulfonylimines that was used as a representative case for generating training data for machine learning models, predicting reaction outcomes and testing new reactions in a blind prospective manner.

"We expect this work to pave the way in changing the current paradigm by developing accurate, human understandable machine learning models to interpret reaction outcomes that will augment the creativity and efficiency of human chemists to discover new chemical reactions and enhance organic and process chemistry pipelines."

Chopra said the Purdue team's human-interpretable machine learning approach, introduced as chemical reactivity flowcharts, can be extended to explore the reactivity of any MCR or any chemical reaction. It does not need large-scale robotics since these methods can be used by the chemists while doing reaction screening in their laboratories.

"We provide the first report of a framework to combine fast synthetic chemistry experiments and quantum chemical calculations for understanding reaction mechanism and human-interpretable statistically robust machine learning models to identify chemical patterns for predicting and experimentally testing heterogeneous reactivity of N-sulfonylimines," Chopra said.

This work aligns with other innovations and research from Chopra's labs, whose team members work with the Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization to patent numerous technologies. To find out more information about their patented inventions, contact otcip@prf.org.

"The unprecedented use of a machine learning model in generating chemical reactivity flowcharts helped us to understand the reactivity of traditionally used different N-sulfonylimines in MCRs," said Krupal Jethava, a postdoctoral fellow in Chopra's laboratory, who co-authored the work. "We believe that working hand-to-hand with organic and computational chemists will open up a new avenue for solving complex chemical reactivity problems for other reactions in the future."

Chopra said the Purdue researchers hope their work will pave the way to become one of many examples that will showcase the power of machine learning for new synthetic methodology development for drug design and beyond in the future.

"In this work, we strived to ensure that our machine learning model can be easily understood by chemists not well versed in this field," said Jonathan Fine, a former Purdue graduate student, who co-authored the work. "We believe that these models have the ability not only be used to predict reactions but also be used to better understand when a given reaction will occur. To demonstrate this, we used our model to guide additional substrates to test whether a reaction will occur."

It will come as no surprise to anyone living in Phoenix, Arizona, that 2020 has been a record-breaking year for high temperatures. According to the National Weather Service, in 2020 the Phoenix area has surpassed all previous years for average high temperatures and excessive heat warnings.

With the combined oppressive heat and COVID-19 restrictions on travel and indoor activities like movies and restaurants, many people have turned to urban parks for outdoor recreation.

And while Phoenix area parks can serve as an oasis for residents, the irrigation needed to keep parks lush and cooler comes at a high cost of water consumption.

To determine this cost, a team of scientists led by hydrologist Enrique R. Vivoni of Arizona State University's (ASU) School of Earth and Space Exploration and School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment spent a year collecting data on weather conditions, evapotranspiration and soil water at Encanto Golf Course in Phoenix. The results of their study have been recently published in Geophysical Research Letters.

Studying the Oasis Effect

Vivoni and his team identified that the park showed what meteorologists call the "oasis effect," which refers to the creation of a microclimate that is cooler than a surrounding dry area due to the evaporation of a water source.

"The word 'oasis' may conjure up the image of a pool of water surrounded by palm trees in a sandy desert," says Vivoni. "But this same effect occurs in urban parks when heat from the surrounding neighborhood is transported by winds into the park, increasing the evaporation rates."

To measure the oasis effect at Encanto Golf Course, Vivoni and his team used special sensors at a weather station located within the park. These sensors measured water and energy fluxes along with carbon dioxide exchanges depicting plant photosynthesis and respiration.

Vivoni and graduate students Mercedes Kindler, Zhaocheng Wang, and Eli Pérez-Ruiz worked together on the sensor deployment, data analysis and use of satellite-based products to monitor the park conditions.

"We set up at Encanto Park in February 2019 and all of our instruments were operational by the next month," says Kindler. "For a year, we conducted weekly or bi-weekly visits to the sites for data collection and station maintenance. It has been a great experience working on this research project, since it has allowed us to learn more about water and energy fluxes at an urban golf course."

Their notable findings were two-fold. First, the oasis effect led to unexpectedly high evaporative losses during the night. Second, the oasis effect was related to the evaporation of soil water and irrigation water, and not to the activity of plants and grasses in the park.

"Because of the oasis effect, when we irrigate our urban parks at night, we lose vast amounts of water and we see increased carbon dioxide emissions, which could lead to higher global warming potential," says Vivoni. "This has important implications for water conservation and greenhouse gas emission management in desert cities such as Phoenix."

While additional studies are needed to determine when during the day it would be preferable to irrigate, making this management change would decrease evaporative loss and the carbon dioxide emissions (which contribute to global warming) during hot, dry, windy days.

It also remains to be determined how widespread this effect is within Phoenix. Given the large number of parks and golf courses, however, it is anticipated that the results of this study will yield important regional consequences to be considered by state, county and city agencies.

Bacteria living symbiotically within the Hawaiian bobtail squid can direct the host squid to change its normal gene-expression program to make a more inviting home, according to a new study published in PLoS Biology by researchers at the University of Hawai'i (UH) at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST).

Nearly every organism and environment hosts a collection of symbiotic microbes--a microbiome--which are an integral component of ecological and human health. In bacteria, small RNA (sRNA) is a key element influencing gene expression in the microscopic organisms, however, there has been little evidence that beneficial bacteria use these molecules to communicate with their animal hosts.

In the new study, lead author Silvia Moriano-Gutierrez, a postdoctoral fellow in the Pacific Biosciences Research Center at SOEST, and co-authors found a specific bacterial sRNA that is typically responsible for quality control of the production of protein in the bacterium plays an essential role in the symbiosis between Vibrio fischeri and the squid.

The Hawaiian bobtail squid recruits V. fischeri to inhabit the squid's light-organ, as the bacterium are luminescent and camouflage the squid during its nighttime hunting.

Through RNA-sequencing, the scientists found in squid's blood sRNA sequences that were produced by bacteria inhabiting the light-organ and found a high concentration of a specific sRNA within the host cells lining the crypts where the bacteria live.

"The presence of this particular sRNA results in a 'calming' the immune reaction of the squid, which will increase the opportunity for the bacteria to persistently colonize the host tissue, and deliver their beneficial effects," said Dr. Moriano-Gutierrez. "This work reveals the potential for a bacterial symbiont's sRNAs not only to control its own activities but also to trigger critical responses that promote a peaceful partnership with its host."

The researchers, including co-author and UH Mānoa undergraduate Leo Wu, determined the bacteria load sRNA into their outer membrane vesicles, which are transported into the cells surrounding the symbiont population in the light organ--decreasing the squid's antimicrobial activities in just the right location.

"It was unexpected to find a common bacterial sRNA that had evolved for a house-keeping function in the bacterium to be specifically recruited into a bacterium-host communication during the initiation of symbiosis," said Dr. Moriano-Gutierrez.

"We anticipate that a host's recognition and response to specific symbiont sRNAs will emerge as a major new mode of communication between bacteria and the animal tissues they inhabit," said Dr. Moriano-Gutierrez. "Other symbiont RNAs that get into host cells remain to be explored."

Research from UCLA scientists and colleagues from other institutions finds that people with Parkinson's disease who lack meaningful social interactions may be at an increased risk for severe symptoms related to the disease.

The study, which was published in the journal NPJ Parkinson's Disease, evaluated not only the social and emotional life of patients, but also their nutrition and exercise habits.

Over a 5-year period, from 2014-2019, researchers at UCLA, the University of Washington and Bastyr University collected information from 1,500 people with Parkinson's disease. Study participants were surveyed most recently in December. Participants who reported being most lonely, also reported exercising less, were less likely to follow healthier diets and experienced a lower quality of life.

"That surprised us," says study author Dr. Indu Subramanian, a neurologist at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and director of the Southwest Veteran Affairs Parkinson's Disease Research, Education and Clinical Centers.

"One of the most detrimental things is actually being lonely," Subramanian says. The negative impact of loneliness on symptom severity, she says, was as large as the positive effect from exercise.

Millions of people have curtailed their social interactions to stay safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. While this is good practice for avoiding a virus, the resulting isolation and loneliness can create a health hazard that could be particularly hard on people with Parkinson's disease who sometimes limit interactions due to adverse disease symptoms such as tremor.

Subramanian and the rest of the team recently sent out a new survey to the study participants to collect data about how the pandemic has affected their symptoms.

Even patients who have happy family lives can suffer from loneliness, she adds, though that may seem counterintuitive.

People thrive in three spheres of social interaction: One is the intimate connection of a marriage or partnership; the next wider sphere is a circle of friends; and the third is belonging to a group with a shared sense of identity.

"For people with Parkinson's disease, they may be in a support group. It could even be something like a book club," Subramanian says.

To support that shared sense of identity during the pandemic, Subramanian started a virtual support group, which meets two to three times a week, for people with Parkinson's disease.

"It's called social prescribing, because you literally prescribe to your patients to be more socially connected," Subramanian says. "It's actually grown into an international group of patients. People have grown to enjoy and connect through it. Some people have told me it's the only social thing they do at all."

New Rochelle, NY, November 17, 2020--COVID-19 can directly cause neurologic symptoms and long-term neurological disease. Elevations of blood biomarkers indicative of brain injury have been reported in the blood and cerebrospinal fluid of COVID-19 patients. Clinical application of blood biomarkers to improve medical management of COVID-19 patients is reported in the peer-reviewed Journal of Neurotrauma. Click here (http://doi.org/10.1089/neu.2020.7332) to read the article now.

"The COVID-19 pandemic poses significant risks for acute and persistent neurological deficits, as well as possible increased risk for neurodegenerative diseases," state Ronald Hayes, PhD, Banyan Biomarkers, and coauthors. "The use of blood biomarkers of brain injury integrated with additional existing diagnostic tools with big dataset analytics could provide timely, cost effective approaches to address this increasingly urgent unmet medical need."

"Although presented in the context of a review article, the manuscript represents so much more," says John Povlishock, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Neurotrauma. "The paper concisely reviews the increased risks of the COVID-19 patient for persistent neurological deficits, psychiatric disorders, and potential neurodegenerative diseases, while describing mechanisms of the CNS penetrance and action of the virus. The paper provides not only an assessment of the challenges presented by the effects of COVID-19 on the brain, but also provides specific recommendations to address them. In all, this review masterfully argues that many of the technologies needed to probe the effects of the COVID-19 virus on the brain are in hand and can be rapidly applied."

A new study from researchers at the University of Bath and Natural History Museum looking at the diversity of dinosaurs shows that they were not in decline at the time of their extinction by an asteroid hit 66 million years ago.

The researchers say that had the impact not happened, dinosaurs might have continued to dominate the Earth.

Dinosaurs were widespread globally at the time of the asteroid impact at the end of the Late Cretaceous period, occupying every continent on the planet and were the dominant form of animal of most terrestrial ecosystems.

However, it is still contentious amongst paleobiologists as to whether dinosaurs were declining in diversity at the time of their extinction.

Statistical modelling

In order to address this question, the research team collected a set of different dinosaur family trees and used statistical modelling to assess if each of the main dinosaur groups was still able to produce new species at this time.

Their study, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, found that dinosaurs were not in decline before the asteroid hit, contradicting some previous studies. The authors also suggest that had the impact not occurred, dinosaurs might have continued to be the dominant group of land animals on the planet.

First author of the study, Joe Bonsor, is undertaking his PhD jointly at the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath and the Natural History Museum.

He said: "Previous studies done by others have used various methods to draw the conclusion that dinosaurs would have died out anyway, as they were in decline towards the end of the Cretaceous period.

"However, we show that if you expand the dataset to include more recent dinosaur family trees and a broader set of dinosaur types, the results don't actually all point to this conclusion - in fact only about half of them do."

Sampling bias

It is difficult to assess the diversity of dinosaurs due to gaps in the fossil record. This can be due to factors such as which bones are preserved as fossils, how accessible the fossils are in the rock to allow them to be found, and the locations where palaeontologists search for them.

The researchers used statistical methods to overcome these sampling biases, looking at the rates of speciation of dinosaur families rather than simply counting the number of species belonging to the family.

Joe Bonsor said: "The main point of our paper is that it isn't as simple as looking at a few trees and making a decision - The large unavoidable biases in the fossil record and lack of data can often show a decline in species, but this may not be a reflection of the reality at the time.

"Our data don't currently show they were in decline, in fact some groups such as hadrosaurs and ceratopsians were thriving and there's no evidence to suggest they would have died out 66 million years ago had the extinction event not happened."

Whilst mammal existed at the time of the asteroid hit, it was only due to the extinction of the dinosaurs that led to the niches being vacated, allowing mammals to fill them and later dominate the planet.

DALLAS, Nov. 17, 2020 — Patients who are hospitalized with heart failure can reduce their odds of requiring re-hospitalization, a heart transplant or death by repeatedly reviewing recorded audio messages about self-care at home, according to late breaking research presented today at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2020. The virtual meeting is Friday, November 13 – Tuesday, November 17, 2020, and is a premier global exchange of the latest scientific advancements, research and evidence-based clinical practice updates in cardiovascular science for health care worldwide.

“My Recorded On-Demand Audio Discharge Instructions (MyROAD®)” is a re-playable audio card containing information for patients with heart failure who have been discharged from the hospital. The MyROAD audio card begins with a general statement and then has four sections about diet, physical activity, medication and self-monitoring behaviors specific to heart failure to help answer frequently asked questions about the condition and what to expect at home.

“Patients may be tired, confused and worried about being able to follow provider orders and/or without family members at the time they are discharged, so they may lack the ability to carefully hear, understand and ask questions about instructions for self-care at home. Handing out more paperwork may not be the answer. In addition, some patients have health literacy issues, poor eyesight or they do not have access to the internet to get heart failure information. We needed a new way to provide this potentially life-saving information,” says the study’s lead author Nancy M. Albert, Ph.D., C.C.N.S., C.H.F.N., C.C.R.N., N.E.-B.C., FAHA, associate chief nursing officer of the Office of Nursing Research and Innovation at the Cleveland Clinic Health System and a clinical nurse specialist at the Kaufman Center for Heart Failure at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio.

Researchers performed a randomized controlled trial of about 1,000 patients (average age 72.8 years, 58.7% male) who were hospitalized with heart failure at four sites in Northeast Ohio. Upon discharge, patients either received usual care or the MyROAD audio card with a demonstration on how to operate it plus usual care. Patients were encouraged to keep the card visible and share it with family members. Researchers followed up at 30, 45, 90 and 180-day intervals after hospital discharge. Both patient groups were similar in demographics, medical history and heart failure factors.

Findings of the study indicate:

Patients who received MyROAD had a 27% decrease in the odds of visiting the emergency department for any cause one month after their initial hospital discharge and a 29% drop at the 45-day mark.
MyROAD users were 40% less likely to need a heart-assist device, receive a heart transplant or die from any cause at three months after discharge.
Patients in the MyROAD group were also nearly 50% less likely to die from heart failure at 90-days after discharge if they had received the MyROAD® card.
All causes of death dropped by more than 40% among the group of patients who received the MyROAD® card compared to the group who received usual care.

Researchers note that although the readmission rates among the MyROAD® group were lower at 30 and 45 days when compared with the usual care group, it was not a statistically significant difference. However, when they assessed all-cause hospitalization, emergency department visits or death, the odds of an event were reduced by 25% at 30 days and 30% at 45 days. Researchers believe there is an opportunity to improve outcomes by providing patients and family with clear, consistent messages (as was delivered with the audio card).

“It is important for patients who are discharged to home after a hospital stay to understand that by carrying out specific physical activity, diet, medication and self-monitoring behaviors, they may improve their lifespan and be less likely to require a future emergency department visit,” said Albert. “These results may spur innovative methods of enhancing discharge information and early home care. More research is needed to learn how we can optimize care to prevent post-discharge healthcare utilization.”

LOS ANGELES (Nov. 17, 2020) -- A study led by the Cedars-Sinai Department of Neurosurgery has identified certain regions in the retina - the lining found in the back of the eye - that are more affected by Alzheimer's disease than other areas. The findings may help physicians predict changes in the brain as well as cognitive deterioration, even for patients experiencing the earliest signs of mild impairment.

"These clues can occur very early on in the progression of Alzheimer's disease - several decades before symptoms appear," said Maya Koronyo-Hamaoui, PhD, associate professor of Neurosurgery and Biomedical Sciences and co-corresponding author of the study. "Detecting these signs can help diagnose the disease more accurately, allowing for earlier and more effective treatment intervention."

Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia, a group of brain disorders characterized by a general loss of mental abilities, including memory, judgment, language and abstract thinking.

The findings of the new study, published in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring, were from a clinical trial involving people older than 40 who were showing signs of cognitive decline.

In the trial, investigators used a noninvasive technique known as sectoral retinal amyloid imaging to capture retinal images in participants. The retina, which is directly connected to the brain, is the only central nervous system tissue accessible for patient-friendly, high-resolution and noninvasive imaging.

The images were then analyzed using a new process that could identify certain peripheral regions in the retina that corresponded better to brain damage and cognitive status. In studying the images, scientists could detect patients with an increased buildup of retinal amyloid protein, signifying a higher likelihood of developing Alzheimer's disease or cognitive impairments.

These findings build upon pioneering research in 2010 in which Koronyo-Hamaoui and her team identified a pathological hallmark of Alzheimer's disease, amyloid beta-protein deposits, in retinal tissues from deceased patients. The team then developed a methodology to detect retinal amyloid beta-protein plaques in living patients suffering from the disease.

In another research study, this one involving laboratory mice, that was recently published in the journal Aging Cell, Koronyo-Hamaoui, premed student Jonah Doustar and others on the research team, further validated the role of the retina in displaying hallmark signs of Alzheimer's disease and identified a potential treatment to combat the disease.

"We found that increased levels of retinal amyloid-beta peptides correlated with levels found in brain tissues, even in the latest stages of Alzheimer's disease," said Koronyo-Hamaoui. "We also suggested a particular type of immune-modulation therapy that may combat the disease by reducing toxic proteins and harmful inflammation in the brain and, in return, enhancing a protective type of immune response that preserved the connections between neurons, which are tightly connected to cognition."

Both studies show promise for diagnosing and treating Alzheimer's disease, a condition affecting more than 5.5 million people in the U.S., said Keith Black, MD, professor and chair of the Department of Neurosurgery

"This work may guide future brain and retinal imaging studies to detect Alzheimer's disease, assess disease progression and identify first-ever treatment options," Black said.