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What The Article Says: Current best evidence about COVID-19 vaccines, immunity and whether SARS-CoV-2 will become an endemic or seasonal virus is summarized in this Viewpoint.

Authors: Carlos del Rio, M.D., of the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, is the corresponding author.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jama.2021.3760)

Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

New research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis indicates that three new, fast-spreading variants of the virus that cause COVID-19 can evade antibodies that work against the original form of the virus that sparked the pandemic. With few exceptions, whether such antibodies were produced in response to vaccination or natural infection, or were purified antibodies intended for use as drugs, the researchers found more antibody is needed to neutralize the new variants.

The findings, from laboratory-based experiments and published March 4 in Nature Medicine, suggest that COVID-19 drugs and vaccines developed thus far may become less effective as the new variants become dominant, as experts say they inevitably will. The researchers looked at variants from South Africa, the United Kingdom and Brazil.

"We're concerned that people whom we'd expect to have a protective level of antibodies because they have had COVID-19 or been vaccinated against it, might not be protected against the new variants," said senior author Michael S. Diamond, MD, PhD, the Herbert S. Gasser Professor of Medicine. "There's wide variation in how much antibody a person produces in response to vaccination or natural infection. Some people produce very high levels, and they would still likely be protected against the new, worrisome variants. But some people, especially older and immunocompromised people, may not make such high levels of antibodies. If the level of antibody needed for protection goes up tenfold, as our data indicate it does, they may not have enough. The concern is that the people who need protection the most are the ones least likely to have it."

The virus that causes COVID-19, known as SARS-CoV-2, uses a protein called spike to latch onto and get inside cells. People infected with SARS-CoV-2 generate the most protective antibodies against the spike protein.

Consequently, spike became the prime target for COVID-19 drug and vaccine developers. The three vaccines authorized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency use in the U.S. -- made by Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson -- both target spike. And potent anti-spike antibodies were selected for development into antibody-based drugs for COVID-19.

Viruses are always mutating, but for nearly a year the mutations that arose in SARS-CoV-2 did not threaten this spike-based strategy. Then, this winter, fast-spreading variants were detected in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Brazil and elsewhere. Sparking concern, the new variants all carry multiple mutations in their spike genes, which could lessen the effectiveness of spike-targeted drugs and vaccines now being used to prevent or treat COVID-19. The most worrisome new variants were given the names of B.1.1.7 (from the U.K.), B.1.135 (South Africa) and B.1.1.248, also known as P.1 (Brazil).

To assess whether the new variants could evade antibodies made for the original form of the virus, Diamond and colleagues, including first author Rita E. Chen, a graduate student in Diamond's lab, tested the ability of antibodies to neutralize three virus variants in the laboratory.

The researchers tested the variants against antibodies in the blood of people who had recovered from SARS-CoV-2 infection or were vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine. They also tested antibodies in the blood of mice, hamsters and monkeys that had been vaccinated with an experimental COVID-19 vaccine, developed at Washington University School of Medicine, that can be given through the nose. The B.1.1.7 (U.K.) variant could be neutralized with similar levels of antibodies as were needed to neutralize the original virus. But the other two variants required from 3.5 to 10 times as much antibody for neutralization.

Then, they tested monoclonal antibodies: mass-produced replicas of individual antibodies that are exceptionally good at neutralizing the original virus. When the researchers tested the new viral variants against a panel of monoclonal antibodies, the results ranged from broadly effective to completely ineffective.

Since each virus variant carried multiple mutations in the spike gene, the researchers created a panel of viruses with single mutations so they could parse out the effect of each mutation. Most of the variation in antibody effectiveness could be attributed to a single amino acid change in the spike protein. This change, called E484K, was found in the B.1.135 (South Africa) and B.1.1.248 (Brazil) variants, but not B.1.1.7 (U.K.). The B.1.135 variant is widespread in South Africa, which may explain why one of the vaccines tested in people was less effective in South Africa than in the U.S., where the variant is still rare, Diamond said.

"We don't exactly know what the consequences of these new variants are going to be yet," said Diamond, also a professor of molecular microbiology and of pathology & immunology. "Antibodies are not the only measure of protection; other elements of the immune system may be able to compensate for increased resistance to antibodies. That's going to be determined over time, epidemiologically, as we see what happens as these variants spread. Will we see reinfections? Will we see vaccines lose efficacy and drug resistance emerge? I hope not. But it's clear that we will need to continually screen antibodies to make sure they're still working as new variants arise and spread and potentially adjust our vaccine and antibody-treatment strategies."

Texas A&M University College of Medicine ressearchers have recently discovered that cytisine -- a smoking cessation drug commonly used in Europe -- reduces the loss of dopamine neurons in females. These findings provide potential evidence for the use of the drug to treat Parkinson's disease or stop its progression in women.

Sara Zarate and Gauri Pandey, graduate students from the lab of Rahul Srinivasan, assistant professor in the Department of Neuroscience & Experimental Therapeutics, are co-first authors of the research. Their findings are published in the Journal of Neurochemistry.

There are approximately 10 million people worldwide living with Parkinson's disease, a neurodegenerative disorder that leads to a variety of symptoms that can include difficulty walking, tremors, shaking and others unrelated to movement. These symptoms start to develop when at least 50 percent of dopamine neurons in an individual's brain are dead or impaired. Currently, there is no cure for Parkinson's and no treatment that can stop or prevent the loss of these dopamine neurons that are needed for the body to move.

About a decade ago, Srinivasan became interested in trying to understand why smokers and people who consume tobacco chronically are at a lower risk for developing Parkinson's disease.

"Based on epidemiological studies, this phenomenon has been known for about 60 years," Srinivasan said. "But people really don't understand why that is, because tobacco and smoke contain so many different chemicals. One of the chemicals obviously is nicotine, and that explains the addictive properties of tobacco and cigarette smoke. So, I started to study the potential role of nicotine in this protective effect against Parkinson's disease."

Given the fact that it is very difficult to conduct human and animal trials using nicotine due to severe side-effects, Srinivasan decided to test cytisine as an alternative to nicotine. Cytisine is a smoking cessation drug with properties similar to nicotine, but with very few side effects in people.

"What cytisine does is it binds to target receptors but doesn't activate them as efficiently as nicotine," Srinivasan said. "It keeps the receptors 'occupied' and 'chaperones' them to the surface of the neuron. Since cytisine is a natural compound, is available quite freely and is pretty cheap, I decided to test this concept of chaperoning in an animal model of the disease to see if it works."

During experiments, the team artificially induced Parkinson's disease in animal models. During that time, they either gave them saline (salt water) or cytisine. Then, the researchers performed a series of behavioral experiments in order to see if there was any sort of protective effect on the animal models that were given cytisine.

Their findings showed that there was a protective effect both in terms of reducing the Parkinsonian behaviors and also in terms of reducing the number of dopamine neurons lost. However, the protective effect of cytisine occurred only in female animal models, and not in the males. They discovered that the combination of cytisine and estrogen produces a stronger protective effect than cytisine and no estrogen. This explains why the effect only occurred in female animal models, since males do not have appreciable amounts of estrogen.

Although their findings currently only apply to females, Srinivasan hopes to find solutions for males and postmenopausal females, too.

"What is really interesting is that there are non-feminizing compounds that have been developed and are being researched right now that can activate the receptors that estrogen activates," Srinivasan said. "The goal right now is to understand how estrogen triggers the protection in female animal models. Once we fully understand this component, then we can bring in these non-feminizing estrogen analogs, and we will potentially have a combination therapy of cytisine and a non-feminizing estrogen analog for men."

The next step for Srinivasan and his team is to solidify and confirm the role of estrogen specifically as a protective effect against Parkinson's disease.

"At the face of it, this drug is ready to be used today in women with Parkinson's, but as is true for all drugs, you cannot get approval for a drug until you understand what the mechanism of the actual drug is exactly, which is our next step," Srinivasan said. "This first paper is the description of a protective effect and a potential mechanism for cytisine against Parkinson's disease. The next steps are to nail down the mechanisms by which this is happening, the role of estrogen specifically. Once we do that, we will use cytisine for women before menopause or cytisine combined with non-feminizing estrogen analogs for both men and women, including women after menopause."

Plants, fungi, and bacteria produce natural products that function, among other things, as defenses that are deployed against predators and competitors. In medicine, these compounds are used for antibiotics, cancer drugs, and cholesterol reducers. The team working with associate professor Dr. Robin Teufel and Dr. Britta Frensch of the Institute of Biology II of the Faculty of Biology of the University of Freiburg was able, together with researchers from the ETH Zürich in Switzerland, to shed light on the key role of three enzymes that are involved in synthesizing a class of natural products. The researchers are publishing their findings in the latest edition of "Nature Communications."

Actinobacteria produce many natural products, such as those that are known as aromatic polyketides. The Freiburg researchers examined how actinobacteria - aided by enzymes - were able to synthesize such bioactive substances from simple, molecular components. Teufel and his team were able to illuminate the key roles played by three enzymes in the biosynthesis of rubromycins, which belong to the most structurally complex aromatic polyketides.

The researchers discovered that the enzymes drastically restructure a chemical precursor molecule. Through this process they create the carbon backbone of the rubromycins, which is key to the diverse, pharmacological effects of these compounds. Using chemical and biochemical methods, the researchers succeeded in examining the functions of the enzymes more closely and identifying several previously unknown intermediates in the biosynthesis of the rubromycins. Teufel explains, "We've made important findings about the ways such enzymes control the formation of complex natural products in microorganisms. These findings could play a central role in applying bioengineering to make new types of bioactive rubromycin-polyketides."

Many species might be left vulnerable in the face of climate change, unable to adapt their physiologies to respond to rapid global warming. According to a team of international researchers, species evolve heat tolerance more slowly than cold tolerance, and the level of heat they can adapt to has limits.

In a study published in the Nature Communications, McGill professor Jennifer Sunday and her co-authors wanted to understand how species' thermal limits have evolved. To examine variation across the tree of life, the researchers developed the largest available database compiling thermal tolerances for all types of organisms (GlobTherm database).

The researchers found that first and foremost, a species' thermal tolerance is linked to the current climate where they live. "It's logical that thermal limits mostly match a species' present-day climate but tracing the evolutionary history of thermal limits can reveal how species got to be where they are today," says Sunday, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology.

The researchers also found that tolerance to cold has evolved much faster than tolerance to heat, particularly in endotherms as compared to ectotherms and plants. Endothermic animals are those that generate metabolic heat to regulate their own body temperature - for example, mammals and birds - while ectothermic animals are those that regulate their body temperature using external heat sources, like reptiles, fishes and invertebrates.

One cause of this disparity could be that heat tolerance has reached an evolutionary barrier, called an 'attractor,' beyond which further evolution is constrained or selected against. "This is very concerning because it suggests that the vast majority of species will not be able to adapt fast enough to survive the unprecedented rate of contemporary climate change," says co-author Joanne Bennett of Leipzig University and University of Canberra.

The results of this study are particularly relevant to conservation management, say the researchers. Protecting and creating areas that provide refuges for biodiversity from upper temperature extremes is a key strategy for conservation managers.

SAN ANTONIO, March 4, 2021 -- People who have had major sinus surgery should consult their ENT doctor before undergoing COVID-19 swab testing, new research indicates.

Likewise, those performing swab testing should ask whether the patient has had extensive sinus or skull base surgery, said Philip G. Chen, MD, study senior author from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio).

"If so, other modes of testing such as at the back of the throat should be performed," said Dr. Chen, associate professor of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery in the university's Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine.

JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery published the study March 4.

Online information about COVID nasopharyngeal swabs lacks information warning those with prior extensive sinus or skull base surgery, Dr. Chen said.

"Not one site of the 200 we searched online had information cautioning against blind nasopharyngeal swab testing in those with a history of sinus or skull base surgery," he said.

Asked how often swabbing is done incorrectly, Dr. Chen said, "We really don't know that. But in a review of videos online by Higgins, et al., the authors found that about half of the videos on how to perform COVID-19 nasopharyngeal swabs were incorrect."

Issues include incorrect angling of the swab and inappropriate depth of insertion. If the swab angle is too high, a puncture may occur. The sinuses can protect the skull base to a degree, Dr. Chen said.

Injury from incorrect nasopharyngeal swab technique, while rare, may include cerebrospinal fluid leakage or severe bleeding.

Polymerase chain reaction via nasopharyngeal swabs is a test frequently used to detect SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Dr. Chen is a board-certified, fellowship-trained rhinologist -- the only fellowship-trained physician of this rare specialization in San Antonio. Rhinologists are ear, nose and throat (ENT) subspecialists who have unique interest and expertise in medical and surgical treatment of nasal and sinus disorders.

March 4, 2021 -- COVID?19 has altered the labor market for millions of people, including public health graduates, yet an analysis of job postings for Master's level public health graduates showed that job postings remained at the same levels as before the pandemic, according to a new study at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. The findings are published in the International Journal of Health Planning and Management.

"Due to the crucial role of disease prevention in responding to and recovering from the COVID?19 pandemic, assessing the public health workforce remains critically important," said Heather Krasna, MS, EdM, assistant dean of career services at Columbia Mailman School, and lead author of the study. "Fortunately, the job market for master's level public health graduates has not been as negatively impacted by the COVID?19 pandemic as compared with the broader job market." Alternatively, overall job postings nationally dropped by up to 30 percent in the U. S. due to the pandemic.

An analysis of more than 38,533 job postings for master's level public health grads found that there were 92 different occupations which sought to hire public health graduates or that existed within the public health workforce.

To pinpoint changing employer demands associated with COVID?19, the researchers analyzed 24,516 postings from March 2019 to October 2019 - pre-COVID -- and compared them with 24,845 postings from March 2020 to October 2020 in the COVID era. The study utilized a job postings database, maintained by Burning Glass (BG) Technologies.

"Through an analysis of job postings in two timeframes, before COVID?19 and during the COVID?19 pandemic, we can assess whether demand for public health graduates has changed during the COVID?19 pandemic," said Krasna. "While there is no doubt that the labor market for millions of people changed with COVID-19, including public health graduates, it is notable that there were several hundred more job postings for public health graduates in the COVID-era, compared to pre-COVID jobs."

Pharmaceutical companies and insurance firms increased their numbers of job postings for public health graduates, while nonprofits and academia have seen job postings drop during COVID-19. Since the pandemic, up to 28 percent of job postings for public health graduates were in fields outside of the job definitions which have traditionally been listed as part of the public health workforce.

According to Krasna and colleagues, with this latest analysis, workforce planners and academic institutions can help identify possible workforce gaps, ensure that curriculum addresses the current needs of organizations hiring public health graduates, and provide insights to academia for curricula innovation.

The data also show a shortfall of positions for approximately 19 percent of Master's level public health graduates entering into government after graduation. This mismatch--in which not enough public health graduates are entering government to fill critical public health workforce shortages--may have serious repercussions for the ability of the governmental public health agencies to respond to public health crises including COVID?19.

The jobs with the fastest increases in hiring during the COVID?19 era focus on statistics and epidemiology, program management, computer?related positions, community health workers, and individuals managing clinical trials or research programs. An increased need for Chief Executives highlights the need for leadership training to meet the COVID?19 pandemic's management challenges or replace retiring public health executives. Universities preparing public health graduates can utilize this analysis to discern real?time job market requirements of employers, noted Krasna.

Humans and animals alike constantly size up one another. In the workplace, a new employee quickly learns which coworkers are the most respected -- and therefore hold more power. Big brothers boss around little brothers. In nature, a dominant male chimpanzee fights off would-be intruders. Even fish and octopi interact within social hierarchies.

These pecking orders have been studied within the behavioral ecology world for almost 100 years. How individuals interact can affect access to food and mates -- even survival -- and insights into those behaviors can lead to better management of threatened and endangered populations. But few studies have explored what the animals that live within these dominance hierarchies actually know about each other. The more animals know about each other, the more they may be able to optimize their aggression. New research, published March 3 in PNAS, offers the first big-picture look at information in these animal systems.

Using a new computational method, the researchers examined existing data on aggression -- the earliest from a 1934 pigeon study -- in 172 social groups across 85 species in 23 orders, looking for social dominance patterns. They found three main aggression strategies employed by individuals: simply fighting any lower-ranked opponents; specializing in fighting "close competitors" ranked just below themselves; and bullying opponents ranked much lower. The majority of the groups fell into the first category, where aggression could be explained by animals following a basic dominance hierarchy, but several groups used the more information-rich close competitors or bullying strategies to fine-tune their choice of opponents.

Rank clearly influences how one individual treats another, says biologist Elizabeth Hobson, the lead author of the study. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Cincinnati and was formerly a Complexity Postdoctoral Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute, where she conducted much of the research.

"What we're able to do with our computational approach is to get new insight into how animals are managing conflict within the groups, and the kind of information that informs those decisions," she says. Simon DeDeo of Carnegie Mellon University and the Santa Fe Institute and Dan Mønster of Aarhus University in Denmark also contributed to the work.

Some of the results took the team by surprise. For example, it turns out that pronghorn -- a speedy North American ungulate prized for its graceful gait -- can be bullies. "They look so cute, right?" says Hobson. "You don't expect them to have a bullying strategy in their group."

Another unexpected insight was that social dominance patterns can vary from group to group within the same species. For example, one group of African elephants behave according to a close competitor hierarchy, while another group exhibits bullying behavior.

It's unclear why dominance strategies sometimes differ among groups, but this and other studies suggest that they can change according to the context in which individuals interact.

For example, "it may be that you have near rivals, so you might have to have conflict to sort that out," DeDeo says.

Hobson says she hopes the study will inspire other researchers to look at how social information is used within and across species. This could provide a foundation for answering even bigger questions about how social complexity arises in animals, and how animals evolved the cognitive skills to enact these social dominance patterns.

As you scroll through Amazon looking for the perfect product, or flip through titles on Netflix searching for a movie to fit your mood, auto-generated recommendations can help you find exactly what you're looking for among extensive offerings.

These recommender systems are used in retail, entertainment, social networking and more. In a recently published study, two researchers from The University of Texas at Dallas investigated the informative role of these systems and the economic impacts on competing sellers and consumers.

"Recommender systems have become ubiquitous in e-commerce platforms and are touted as sales-support tools that help consumers find their preferred or desired product among the vast variety of products," said Dr. Jianqing Chen, professor of information systems in the Naveen Jindal School of Management. "So far, most of the research has been focused on the technical side of recommender systems, while the research on the economic implications for sellers is limited."

In the study, published in the December 2020 issue of MIS Quarterly, Chen and Dr. Srinivasan Raghunathan, the Ashbel Smith Professor of information systems, developed an analytical model in which sellers sell their products through a common electronic marketplace.

The paper focuses on the informative role of the recommender system: how it affects consumers' decisions by informing them about products about which they otherwise may be unaware. Recommender systems seem attractive to sellers because they do not have to pay the marketplace for receiving recommendations, while traditional advertising is costly.

The researchers note that recommender systems have been reported to increase sales on these marketplaces: More than 35% of what consumers purchase on Amazon and more than 60% of what they watch on Netflix result from recommendations. The systems use information including purchase history, search behavior, demographics and product ratings to predict a user's preferences and recommend the product the consumer is most likely to buy.

While recommender systems introduce consumers to new products and increase the market size -- which benefits sellers -- the free exposure is not necessarily profitable, Chen said.

The researchers found the advertising effect causes sellers to advertise less on their own, and the competition effect causes them to decrease their prices. Sellers also are more likely to benefit from the recommender system only when it has a high precision.

"This means that sellers are likely to benefit from the recommender system only when the recommendations are effective and the products recommended are indeed consumers' preferred products," Chen said.

The researchers determined these results do not change whether sellers use targeted advertising or uniform advertising.

Although the exposure is desirable for sellers, the negative effects on profitability could overshadow the positive effects. Sellers should carefully choose their advertising approach and adopt uniform advertising if they cannot accurately target customers, Chen said.

"Free exposure turns out to not really be free," he said. "To mitigate such a negative effect, sellers should strive to help the marketplace provide effective recommendations. For example, sellers should provide accurate product descriptions, which can help recommender systems provide better matching between products and consumers."

Consumers, on the other hand, benefit both directly and indirectly from recommender systems, Raghunathan said. For example, they might be introduced to a new product or benefit from price competition among sellers.

Conversely, they also might end up paying more than the value of such recommendations in the form of increased prices, Raghunathan said.

"Consumers should embrace recommender systems," he said. "However, sharing additional information, such as their preference in the format of online reviews, with the platform is a double-edged sword. While it can help recommender systems more effectively find a product that a consumer might like, the additional information can be used to increase the recommendation precision, which in turn can reduce the competition pressure on sellers and can be bad for consumers."

The researchers said that although significant efforts are underway to develop more sophisticated recommender systems, the economic implications of these systems are poorly understood.

"The business and societal value of recommender systems cannot be assessed properly unless economic issues surrounding them are examined," Chen said. He and Raghunathan plan to conduct further research on this topic.

Observations of galactic rotation curves give one of the strongest lines of evidence pointing towards the existence of dark matter, a non-baryonic form of matter that makes up an estimated 85% of the matter in the observable Universe. Current assessments of galactic rotation curves are based upon a framework of Newtonian accounts of gravity, a new paper published in EPJ C, by Gerson Otto Ludwig, National Institute for Space Research, Brazil, suggests that if this is substituted with a general relativity-based model, the need to recourse to dark matter is relieved, replaced by the effects of gravitomagnetism.

The main role of dark matter, Ludwig points out in the paper, has historically been to resolve the disparity between astrophysical observations and current theories of gravity. Put simply, if baryonic matter?--?the form of matter we see around us every day which is made up of protons, neutrons and electrons?--?is the only form of matter, then there shouldn't be enough gravitational force to prevent galaxies from flying apart.

By disregarding general relativistic corrections to Newtonian gravity arising from mass currents, and by neglecting these mass currents, Ludwig asserts these models also miss significant modifications to rotational curves?--?the orbital speeds of visible stars and gas plotted against their radial distance from their galaxy's centre. This is because of an effect in general relativity not present in Newton's theory of gravity?--?frame-dragging or the Lense Thirring effect. This effect arises when a massive rotating object like a star or black hole 'drags' the very fabric of spacetime along with it, in turn giving rise to a gravitomagnetic field.

In this paper, Ludwig presents a new model for the rotational curves of galaxies which is in agreement with previous efforts involving general relativity. The researcher demonstrates that even though the effects of gravitomagnetic fields are weak, factoring them into models alleviates the difference between theories of gravity and observed rotational curves?--?eliminating the need for dark matter. The theory still needs some development before it is widely accepted, with the author particularly pointing out that the time evolution of galaxies modelled with this framework is a complex problem that will require much deeper analysis.

Ludwig concludes by suggesting that all calculations performed with thin galactic disk models performed up until this point may have to be recalculated, and the very concept of dark matter itself, questioned.

In recent years, researchers have begun using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) not just for better understanding the neural bases of psychiatric illness, but also for experimental treatment of depression, ADHD, anxiety, PTSD, substance use disorder, and schizophrenia with a technique called real-time fMRI neurofeedback.

While rtfMRI-NF has emerged in recent years as a promising experimental intervention, it's also a costly procedure that requires extensive technical setup to allow for real-time analysis. That's why a quantitative data review was overdue.

A team of University of Rochester psychologists set out to determine if rtfMRI-NF can help a person regulate neural activity in a way that might improve psychiatric illness: David Dodell-Feder, an assistant professor with dual appointments in the Department of Psychology and the Department of Neuroscience at the University's Medical Center, together with Emily Dudek, who after graduating from Rochester became Dodell-Feder's full-time lab manager, looked at 17 relevant studies that included a total of 410 participants. The findings of their meta-analysis have been published in the journal Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews.

According to lead author Dudek, their review found that when people were shown their own brain patterns in real time, they were able to regulate activity in specific regions of the brain. "This training, known as neurofeedback, offers an exciting and novel treatment method for psychiatric illness."

Coauthor Dodell-Feder agrees that the findings are "very promising," especially because there are very few treatments, psychopharmacological included, that specifically target neural circuits known to contribute to psychopathology.

Yet, there are caveats: the data show less clear evidence that volitional control over the brain regions targeted by neurofeedback translates to an improvement in a person's symptoms or cognitive impairments. For example, when analyzing the impact of rtfMRI-NF on symptoms, the team found an approximately 60 percent chance that a randomly selected person who received rtfMRI-NF showed improvement in symptoms compared to a randomly selected person who received a placebo procedure.

"It's not a slam dunk," says Dodell-Feder, whose main research focuses on how humans navigate the social world and how those processes go awry in people with schizophrenia.

Moreover, the analysis of publication bias--that's the team's attempt to estimate whether there are other studies that have not been published and which may have failed to find an impact of rtfMRI-NF on symptoms--suggests that the positive effect on symptoms may even be smaller than 60 percent.

The team analyzed symptom and cognition data in a variety of ways, and some analyses, especially those that looked at outcomes over a wide spread of mental illnesses--such as anxiety, depression, and psychosis--were more favorable. For example, they found clearer evidence that rtfMRI-NF may improve a person's responses to aversive situations or context, such as fear, anxiety, and loss.

For their meta-analysis, Dodell-Feder and Dudek evaluated rtfMRI-NF in two contexts: first when participants were regulating their brain's response while receiving neurofeedback in so-called training sessions, and second when participants were regulating without neurofeedback in so-called transfer sessions to see if the previously learned regulation could be maintained in daily life.

Indeed, patients across a range of mental illnesses were able to use a neurofeedback signal delivered through rtfMRI to self-regulate neural activity in the targeted region. Next, the team examined whether people can truly learn to control certain brain regions and whether they can regulate the targeted regions even when neurofeedback is not available.

Findings in a nutshell

rtfMRI-NF has a medium-sized effect on neural activity during a person's regulation training

rtfMRI-NF has a large-sized effect after training when no neurofeedback is provided

rtfMRI-NF has a small-sized effect for behavioral outcomes, such as symptoms and cognition

"Ultimately we want people to be able to take what they learn in the scanner during the training sessions to use in their day-to-day life," says Dodell-Feder. "If they can do that, it shows that the neurofeedback is meaningful, that they are taking something away from it, and that they can now apply that experience--even without neurofeedback."

The analysis of so-called transfer scans--taken at a follow-up session--found that participants were able to intentionally control targeted brain regions even in the absence of a neurofeedback signal. The data indicated that while rtfMRI-NF has a moderate impact on targeted regions during training, that impact increases later when the neurofeedback signal is not provided.

"We believe this provides relatively strong evidence that volitional control over neural processes that are specifically targeted during training is possible," says Dudek, who is now a clinical research coordinator at the Brain Injury Research Center of Mount Sinai in New York City. "This volitional control was also present in contexts in which no feedback was provided."

Together, the data suggest a positive impact of rtfMRI-NF on brain and behavioral outcomes, although more research is needed to determine how exactly it works, under what circumstances, and for whom specifically, says Dodell-Feder.

Texas A&M University researchers have recently shown superior performance of a new oxide dispersion strengthened (ODS) alloy they developed for use in both fission and fusion reactors.

Dr. Lin Shao, professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering, worked alongside research scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Hokkaido University to create the next generation of high-performance ODS alloys, and so far they are some of the strongest and best-developed metals in the field.

ODS alloys consist of a combination of metals interspersed with small, nanometer-sized oxide particles and are known for their high creep resistance. This means that as temperatures rise, the materials keep their shape instead of deforming. Many ODS alloys can withstand temperatures up to 1,000 C and are typically used in power generation and engines within aerospace engineering, as well as cutlery.

The nuclear community has a high need for reliable and durable materials to make up the core components of nuclear reactors. The material must be high strength, radiation tolerant and resistant to void swelling (materials develop cavities when subjected to neutron radiation, leading to mechanical failures).

Nuclear researchers like Shao are consistently seeking to identify quality creep-resistant and swelling-resistant materials for their use in high-temperature reactors.

"In general, ODS alloys should be resistant to swelling when exposed to extreme neutron irradiation," said Shao. "However, the majority of commercial ODS alloys are problematic from the beginning."

This is because almost all commercial ODS alloys are based on the ferritic phase. Ferritic alloys, classified by their crystalline structure and metallurgical behavior, have good ductility and reasonable high-temperature strength. However, the ferritic phase is the weakest phase when judged by its swelling resistance, therefore making the majority of commercial ODS alloys fail in the first line of defense.

Shao, known internationally for his pioneering work in radiation materials science, directs the accelerator laboratory for testing alloys under extreme irradiation conditions. Shao and his research team collaborated with the Japanese research group at Hokkaido University led by Dr. Shigeharu Ukai to develop various new ODS alloys.

"We decided to explore a new design principle in which oxide particles are embedded in the martensitic phase, which is best to reduce void swelling, rather than the ferritic phase," said Shao.

The resulting ODS alloys are able to survive up to 400 displacements per atom and are some of the most successful alloys developed in the field, both in terms of high-temperature strength and superior-swelling resistance.

Details of the complete project were published in the Journal of Nuclear Materials along with the most recent study. The team has since conducted multiple studies and attracted the attention from the U.S. Department of Energy and nuclear industry. The project resulted in a total of 18 journal papers and two doctoral degree dissertations.

If you dunk a tea bag repeatedly into your mug or open a cream-filled cookie to lick the filling, you might find coping with pandemic isolation a bit easier than others.

A UC Riverside-led study has found people who adopt unique rituals to make everyday tasks more meaningful might feel less lonely.

"We found that something as simple as preparing tea in a certain way, as long as it's interpreted as a ritual, can make the experience more meaningful," said Thomas Kramer, a professor of marketing at UC Riverside's School of Business. "This makes people feel less lonely."

The paper, published in the Journal of Marketing Research, addressed the fact that people who experience chronic loneliness often feel their lives lack meaning. Rituals create meaning. Most rituals occur in celebratory, social, or religious group settings and draw upon and reinforce shared cultural values. But rituals are also an important part of consumer culture. These rituals do not draw from shared cultural values and might be created by marketers or individual consumers. Marketers have long known that rituals facilitate relationships with consumers and brands and between consumers themselves.

Kramer and co-authors Xuehua Wang, an associate professor of marketing at East China Normal University; and Yixia Sun, an assistant professor of marketing at Zhejiang University; sought to find out if rituals around everyday consumer products could also help people feel less lonely by imbuing use of the products with meaning.

"Nobody in marketing has ever looked at rituals with private meaning," Kramer said. "A lot has been done on what they do, for example, promoting self-control. But no one has looked at whether or not idiosyncratic, private rituals provide meaning in the context of consumer products."

After asking participants questions designed to assess their degree of chronic loneliness, the researchers told participants that consumers often adopt rituals around the consumption of everyday products. They asked about rituals the participants practice and asked them either to imagine or actually use the product in either the ritualistic way, such as the familiar "twist-lick-dunk" technique for eating cream-filled cookies, or engaging with the product the way they usually did.

They found that the participants who experienced the most chronic loneliness also habitually engaged in the most rituals around consumer products. Moreover, participants who completed activities the researchers designed to induce loneliness felt less lonely after completing a real or imagined act of ritualized consumption. They also indicated that they felt their life had more meaning after the action.

The findings show that consumers might engage more strongly with brands that create rituals around purchasing or using products because they find meaning and a sense of community. The authors also suggest that governments can do more to reduce widespread loneliness by promoting rituals that do not include particular product options and add meaning to lives devoid of meaning.

"Many people are trying to find structure right now because everything is so chaotic," Kramer said. "The implications of our study are that if you feel lonely, find a ritual. It doesn't have to be elaborate. It can help you feel less lonely by providing a sense of meaning and purpose."

The authors note that though participants felt less lonely immediately after using the product, they did not follow up to determine how long this feeling lasted. They also note idiosyncratic consumption rituals might not be advisable for individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorders.

COVID-19 pandemic has increased loneliness and other social issues, especially for women, Mayo research finds

ROCHESTER, Minnesota -- Social distancing guidelines have reduced the spread of COVID-19, but lockdowns and isolation also have created or aggravated other well-being concerns, reports new research. Mayo Clinic investigators found a significant increase in loneliness and a decrease in feelings of friendship during the pandemic. The study, published Feb. 20 in the journal Social Science & Medicine, also showed disproportionate negative effects among women and those with poorer health.

The researchers say that while physical distance is important during the pandemic, distance within and among relationships can cause undue harm to a person's mental health and well-being. The decision to close businesses and schools, and cancel social gatherings and events ? while effective at slowing the spread of disease ? can have unintended social, mental, financial and substance abuse issues.

"A conscious effort should be made to make meaningful social connection with others," says Jon Ebbert, M.D., a Mayo Clinic internal medicine physician and senior author of the study. "During times of social strain and stress, it is important to not only be helpful to one another, but also be present."

To measure changes during the pandemic, the researchers compared survey results from 1,996 patients who completed a questionnaire in February 2018 and again during the stay-at-home orders throughout much of the U.S. in May 2020. The questions were split into six areas of support: emotional, logistical (helping with daily tasks), friendship, loneliness, perceived rejection and perceived hostility.

Women reported higher levels of loneliness during the pandemic, compared to men. The researchers hypothesize that one contributing factor could be that women's employment was significantly more likely to have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to U.S. unemployment data.

"The workplace is often a place of social networking and support. Furthermore, as jobs transitioned from the workplace to the home setting, this could have further strained social connections for women," says lead author Lindsey Philpot, Ph.D., a health services researcher and epidemiologist in the Department of Medicine at Mayo Clinic.

The largest change was a decrease in friendships, followed by an increase in loneliness.

"Personal connection comes in many forms. We may be observing that during an infectious pandemic, women may suffer a greater burden of loneliness," Dr. Ebbert says. "All of us should remember to focus on friendships to remain resilient during significant changes in social structures."

It's not all bad news, though, as there was an increase in emotional and logistical support, and a decrease in perceived hostility, the team found. However, those who had poorer health to begin with said their emotional support decreased. The researchers did not observe any changes in perceived rejection.

"Individuals with more health problems may experience the greatest negative impact on emotional support during significant social change when these may be times they need it the most," Dr. Ebbert says.

The researchers say their findings are supported by the stress buffering hypothesis, which concludes that social relationships can be a buffer during stressful times.

"Prior to physical distancing directives, we benefited from passive social interaction ? interacting with fellow parents at basketball practice or PTA meetings, chatting with colleagues between meetings," Dr. Philpot says. "Physical distancing requires us to be more intentional about reaching out, connecting, and spending (virtual) time with others. So consider scheduling a virtual coffee date with a friend, joining or hosting an online trivia night, or picking up the phone and calling a family member or friend."

Astronomers using the recently installed instrument MAROON-X on Gemini North have determined the mass of a transiting exoplanet orbiting the nearby star Gliese 486. As well as putting the innovative new instrument through its paces, this result, when combined with data from the TESS satellite, precisely measures key properties of a rocky planet that is ideal for follow-up observations with the next generation of ground- and space-based telescopes.

The exoplanet-hunting instrument MAROON-X has obtained its first scientific result from its new home at the 8.1-meter Gemini North telescope, part of the international Gemini Observatory, a program of NSF's NOIRLab [1]. Shipped from the University of Chicago in mid-2019, the instrument arrived at Gemini in a collection of wooden packing crates. Despite exhausting 12-hour shifts in the thin air at an altitude of 4300 meters (14,000 feet), the MAROON-X team successfully constructed and installed the instrument in a six-month process known as commissioning. The assembled instrument takes advantage of Gemini North's location on Maunakea in Hawai'i -- one of the best observing sites on the planet.

"It's been an intense six-month stretch," explained Jacob Bean, head of the University of Chicago team behind MAROON-X. "We've spent ten years developing the instrument and with MAROON-X now installed on Gemini we will start to get real insights into habitable worlds around other stars."

The technical core of MAROON-X lies at the end of a bundle of fibers trailing from behind the main mirror of Gemini North to a small room several floors below. Inside this temperature-controlled room and encased in a vacuum chamber, a collection of high-precision optical devices forms the spectrometer at the heart of MAROON-X. This spectrometer measures variations in the light from distant stars to detect the subtle influence of orbiting worlds -- making MAROON-X an outstanding exoplanet hunter [2].

MAROON-X's first science result determined the mass of the newly discovered rocky planet Gliese 486 b, which orbits Gliese 486, a star smaller and dimmer than our own Sun [3]. The planet has a mass roughly three times that of the Earth, but has a similar density. The composition of this newly discovered exoplanet is not its only distinguishing feature -- its relative closeness to Earth makes it an ideal candidate for observations with the next generation of astronomical technology.

"The proximity of this exoplanet is exciting because it will be possible to study it in more detail with powerful telescopes such as the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope and the various Extremely Large Telescopes such as the GMT and TMT," explained Trifon Trifonov, lead author of the paper reporting this discovery. "Within the next few years, we hope to use transit spectroscopy to search for signs of an atmosphere and possibly determine this planet's surface composition."

MAROON-X was developed to find and characterize exactly this type of exoplanet -- rocky worlds around nearby stars whose atmospheres are suitable for follow-up investigation using future instruments. As well as next-generation telescopes, MAROON-X was designed to work alongside NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). In the case of Gliese 486 b, the team used MAROON-X measurements and additional data from the CARMENES [4] spectrograph at the Calar Alto Observatory to determine the exoplanet's mass, and combined this with the planetary radius measured by the TESS mission to find the density of Gliese 486 b -- revealing it to be a rocky super-Earth.

"MAROON-X provides a new, valuable addition to Gemini's visiting instrument program. Demonstrating exciting precision and sensitivity, it is available for use by the astronomical community to discover and characterize new worlds," said National Science Foundation Division of Astronomical Sciences Program Officer Martin Still.

MAROON-X's capabilities are already popular amongst the astronomical community, with a surge of requests for observation time following the instrument's commissioning. Four long observation campaigns have already been completed despite the impact of COVID-19, as MAROON-X can be operated fully remotely. In fact, the observations of Gliese 486 b were some of the first observations obtained with Gemini North after it restarted operations in May 2020. Even without astronomers on site, the capabilities of Gemini and MAROON-X have been impressive -- the instrument can detect exoplanets around stars that are 150 times fainter than those visible to the naked eye.

"This result demonstrates the unprecedented capability of MAROON-X," concluded Jacob Bean. "This is only our first result, and as we find more we will determine what kinds of rocky planets are out there, ultimately helping us learn more about the formation and evolution of the Earth."