Culture

WASHINGTON, January 26, 2021 -- The positions of air inlets and outlets in confined spaces, such as elevators, greatly affect airborne virus transmission. In Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, researchers from University of Nicosia in Cyprus show while air purifiers would be expected to help, they may actually increase the spread.

Air quality in small spaces can quickly degrade without ventilation. However, adding ventilation will increase the rate at which air, possibly laden with viruses, can circulate in the small space. Elevator manufacturers have added air purifiers to take care of this problem, but the systems have not been designed to account for their effect on overall air circulation.

Air purifiers use ultraviolet radiation to kill viruses and other microbes, but they also circulate air, sucking it in and exhausting cleaned air. This adds to overall circulation, an aspect that has not been considered in previous research.

Previous work from the scientists indicated droplets of saliva can travel 18 feet in five seconds when an unmasked person coughs. The authors extended the same model to examine the effects of face masks and weather conditions.

Investigators carried out calculations for a 3D space equivalent to an elevator capable of holding five people. A mild cough was simulated at one position in the space, and air inlets and outlets were added in various locations to study their influence on circulation. An air purifier was also included in the simulation.

"We quantified the effect of air circulation on airborne virus transmission and showed that installing an air purifier inside an elevator alters the air circulation significantly but does not eliminate airborne transmission," said author Dimitris Drikakis.

The investigators found the risk of airborne virus transmission is lowest for low ventilation rates.

"This is due to reduced flow mixing inside the elevator," said author Talib Dbouk. "Regulatory authorities should thus define the minimum ventilation required depending on the type of building."

The study looked at the role of an air purifier, considering only the air intake and exhaust associated with the purifier, but not the mechanism inside the purifier that kills the virus. Even with an air purifier in place, airborne virus transmission is still significant.

"Our results show that installing an air purifier may increase the droplet spread," Drikakis said. "The air intake integrated inside the purifier equipment induces flow circulation that can add to the transport of contaminated saliva droplets in the cabin."

The observed effect increases with the number of infected persons in the elevator. Restricting the number of people allowed in an elevator would minimize the spread of the virus as would better design of air purifier and ventilation systems.

PITTSBURGH, Jan. 26, 2021 - The mechanism by which acute viral respiratory infections promote secondary bacterial growth and infection in the airways depends on iron-carrying extracellular sacs secreted by the cells lining the host's airways, report researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in a paper published today in Cell Reports.

The sacs, or "vesicles," which carry iron bound to a protein called transferrin, associate with bacterial cells and supply them with essential nutrients, promoting the growth of expansive bacterial communities. The finding gives us a glimpse into how bacteria exploit the host's defense system against pathogens and can offer a new way for creating therapies to prevent secondary bacterial infections in the clinical setting.

"The development of chronic bacterial infections often is preceded by acute viral infections, and such co-infections increase patients' likelihood of death or lifelong disability," said senior author Jennifer Bomberger, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics at Pitt. "We wanted to understand what it is that the virus is doing that allows bacteria to get a foothold in the patient's airways."

Preventing and controlling secondary lung infections by increasingly antibiotic-resistant bacteria, such as Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, remains a challenging problem in health care. According to reviews of historic autopsy reports, more than 90% of deaths during the 1918 influenza pandemic likely resulted from secondary bacterial pneumonia and, to this day, up to 30% of adults hospitalized with viral community-acquired pneumonia develop bacterial co-infections.

To study the mechanism of viral-bacterial interactions in chronic lung disease, the Pitt researchers used a model of respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, and P. aeruginosa co-infection, the severity of which depends on P. aeruginosa's ability to form biofilms--large communities of bacteria encased in a polymeric matrix.

Using in vitro studies and fluorescent imaging, scientists showed that the production and secretion of extracellular vesicles--two processes that routinely occur in different cell types in the body, including the respiratory epithelium--are boosted by an acute viral infection. Crucially, these vesicles directly associate with P. aeruginosa biofilms and promote their growth.

"Extracellular vesicles naturally occur in the body and are used by the organism as a communication tool," said Bomberger. "It seems that bacteria co-opted this process for their own benefit."

While the exact mechanism of how extracellular vesicles attach to bacteria remains to be explored, researchers found that vesicles carry protein-bound iron on their surface, supplying bacteria with necessary nutrients.

"It would be interesting to see the implications this mechanism has for the host's immune response," said Matthew Hendricks, Ph.D., a lead author of the paper and a former graduate student in Bomberger's laboratory. "If extracellular vesicles can shield bacteria from the immune cells, that could decrease the host's ability to detect the infection and help bacteria evade the immune response."

It also appears that the mechanism of extracellular vesicle-dependent interaction between viruses and bacteria is universal for different types of viruses, including other respiratory viruses and viruses that attack other mucosal locations, such as the gastrointestinal tract.

Tokyo, Japan - Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have created a new tungsten-substituted vanadium oxide catalyst for breaking down harmful nitrogen oxides in industrial exhaust. Their new catalyst material works at lower temperatures and does not suffer major drops in performance when processing "wet" exhaust, resolving a major drawback in conventional vanadium oxide catalysts. They found that the unaggregated dispersal of atomic tungsten in the original crystal structure plays a key role in how it functions.

Selective catalytic reduction (SCR) is an essential technology for keeping air clean. Industrial exhaust is passed through catalytic units and reacted with a reductant to convert harmful nitrogen oxides into nitrogen and water. High levels of nitrogen oxides not only harm crops and vegetation, but can directly harm people, exacerbating asthma and other respiratory problems. This makes the wide, efficient deployment of SCR technology particularly important for society.

But conventional SCR catalysts have many issues that impact performance and efficiency. For vanadium oxide catalysts which use ammonia as the reductant, a big limiting factor is performance at different temperatures. Conventional vanadium oxide catalysts work best at 200 to 400 degrees Celsius. In a boiler system, this means units have to be placed close to the combustion chamber, making them more susceptible to damage from ash. In previous work, a team led by Professor Toru Murayama of Tokyo Metropolitan University created a new "bulk" vanadium oxide catalyst that works efficiently at 100 to 150 degrees Celsius. However, lower temperatures led to another issue - water vapor. At lower temperatures, industrial exhaust typically contains 10-20% water vapor by volume. Since vanadium oxide catalysts suffer from a severe drop in performance when the gas is "wet," further breakthroughs were required to make the most of this new catalytic material.

Now, the same team have solved this issue by creating a new, "tungsten-substituted" bulk vanadium oxide catalyst. By replacing some of the vanadium in the crystalline structure of the catalyst with tungsten, they discovered it was no longer susceptible to large drops in performance. At 150 degrees Celsius, while the team's previous bulk vanadium oxide catalyst suffered a conversion rate drop from 82 to 47% when the gas was wet, the new tungsten-substituted catalyst's performance only dropped from >99% conversion to 94%. This makes the material ideal for processing real industrial exhaust.

However, more tungsten did not necessarily mean better performance. The team found that the unaggregated atomic dispersion of the right amount of tungsten was vital. Both tungsten and vanadium need to work together: in wet conditions, the tungsten-substituted material made more sites available for the production of ammonium ions which could then react with nitrogen oxides near neighboring vanadium ions. The team hope their insights into the mechanism and the superior performance of their catalyst under realistic conditions will lead to new industrial SCR products and cleaner air in the not-too-distant future.

VANCOUVER, Wash. -When entrepreneurs dream up ideas for new businesses, cannabis use might help, and hinder, their creativity, according to a new study in the Journal of Business Venturing by Washington State University researchers.

The study found that cannabis-using entrepreneurs generated new business ideas such as a weightless, gravity-free virtual reality workout, that were more original, but less feasible, compared to those who do not use cannabis.

"Originality and feasibility are both crucial in entrepreneurship--one without the other limits potential value creation," said Benjamin Warnick, lead author of the study and assistant professor in the Department of Management, Information Systems and Entrepreneurship at the WSU Carson College of Business.

Warnick and colleagues found the increased originality and decreased feasibility of cannabis users' business ideas relative to non-users only surfaced for entrepreneurs who reported relatively strong passion for exploring new business ideas. The effect was absent for cannabis-using entrepreneurs with experience founding more than one business.

For the study, Warnick led a team of WSU researchers including Alexander Kier, assistant professor of entrepreneurship in the Carson College of Business, Carrie Cuttler, assistant professor of psychology, and Emily LaFrance, recent WSU psychology Ph.D. graduate.

The 254 entrepreneurs who participated in the study completed a new venture ideation task, generating as many ideas for a new business as possible based on virtual reality technology. The entrepreneurs also answered questions about the extent of their business experience, passion for entrepreneurship and cannabis use patterns.

A panel of experts then rated the originality and feasibility of the idea each entrepreneur identified as their best.

For the purposes of their study, the researchers separated the entrepreneurs into cannabis users and non-users. The cannabis users reported using the drug an average of nearly 20 times in the past month.

The WSU scientists' work could ultimately play a role in helping entrepreneurs and the business community determine if, when and how cannabis use may be beneficial or detrimental to the venture creation process.

"This is the first study we know of that looks at how any kind of drug use influences new business ideation," said Warnick, "But there is still much to explore in this area."

Warnick noted that the cognitive effects of chronic cannabis use have been shown to last for up to a month--including increased impulsivity and free-thinking tendencies.

Results of the current study held whether or not the cannabis users reported being high at the time of the experiment, but the authors call for future research to consider how being high might influence entrepreneurs' creativity via a randomized experiment.

While the results of the study suggest the effects of marijuana use may have some benefits in the early brainstorming stages of the venture ideation process, the researchers stressed the importance of grounding creativity in reality to successfully launch a new company.

"Our results suggest that cannabis-using entrepreneurs might benefit from non-users' insights to develop the feasibility of their ideas," Kier said. "This may be especially true for cannabis users who tend to get very excited about coming up with new ideas or don't have much experience founding new businesses, since others can serve as a grounding influence, providing a reality-check on their ideas."

As legalization of cannabis continues across the country and the stigma of the drug fades, the researchers hope their work will help paint a clearer picture of the implications of cannabis use among entrepreneurs.

"Clearly there are pros and cons to using cannabis that deserve to be investigated further," Warnick said. "As the wave of cannabis legalization continues across the country, we need to shed light on the actual effects of cannabis not only in entrepreneurship but in other areas of business as well."

The battle to stop false news and online misinformation is not going to end any time soon, but a new finding from MIT scholars may help ease the problem.

In an experiment, the researchers discovered that fact-checking labels, when attached to online news headlines, actually work better after people read false headlines, compared to when they precede the headline or accompany it.

"We found that whether a false claim was corrected before people read it, while they read it, or after they read it influenced the effectiveness of the correction," says David Rand, an MIT professor and co-author of a new paper detailing the study's results.

Specifically, the researchers found, when "true" and "false" labels were shown immediately after participants in the experiment read headlines, it reduced people's misclassification of those headlines by 25.3 percent. By contrast, there was an 8.6 percent reduction when labels appeared along with the headlines, and a 5.7 percent decrease in misclassification when the correct label appeared beforehand.

"Timing does matter when delivering fact-checks," says Nadia M. Brashier, a cognitive neuroscientist and postdoc at Harvard University, and lead author of the paper.

The paper, "Timing Matters When Correcting Fake News," appears this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The authors are Brashier; Rand; Gordon Pennycook, an assistant professor of behavioral science at University of Regina's Hill/Levene Schools of Business; and Adam Berinsky, the Mitsui Professor of Political Science at MIT and the director of the MIT Political Experiments Research Lab.

To conduct the study, the scholars ran experiments with a total of 2,683 people, who looked at 18 true news headlines from major media sources and 18 false headlines that have been debunked by the fact-checking website snopes.com. Treatment groups of participants saw "true" and "false" tags before, during, or after reading the 36 headlines; a control group did not. All participants rated the headlines for accuracy. One week later, everyone looked at the same headlines, without any fact-check information at all, and again rated the headlines for accuracy.

The findings confounded the researchers' expectations.

"Going into the project, I had anticipated it would work best to give the correction beforehand, so that people already knew to disbelieve the false claim when they came into contact with it," Rand says. "To my surprise, we actually found the opposite. Debunking the claim after they were exposed to it was the most effective."

But why might his approach -- "debunking" rather than "prebunking," as the researchers call it -- get the best results?

The scholars write that the results are consistent with a "concurrent storage hypothesis" of cognition, which proposes that people can retain both false information and corrections in their minds at the same time. It may not be possible to get people to ignore false headlines, but people are willing to update their beliefs about them.

"Allowing people to form their own impressions of news headlines, then providing 'true' or 'false' tags afterward, might act as feedback," Brashier says. "And other research shows that feedback makes correct information 'stick.'" Importantly, this suggests that the results might be different if participants did not explicitly rate the accuracy of the headlines when being exposed to them -- for example, if they were just scrolling through their news feeds.

Overall, Berinsky suggests, the research helps inform tools that social media platforms and other content providers could use, as they look for better methods to label and limit the flow of misinformation online.

"There is no single magic bullet that can cure the problem of misinformation," says Berinsky, who has long studied political rumors and misinformation. "Studying basic questions in a systematic way is a critical step toward a portfolio of effective solutions. Like David, I was somewhat surprised by our findings, but this finding is an important step forward in helping us combat misinformation."

The use of online messaging and social media apps among Singapore residents has spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) study has found.

Three in four respondents (75%) said that their use of WhatsApp during the pandemic increased. This was followed by Telegram (60.3%), Facebook (60.2%) and Instagram (59.7%).

Accompanying this spike is videoconferencing fatigue, found the NTU Singapore study, which surveyed 1,606 Singapore residents from 17 to 31 December last year. Nearly one in two Singapore residents (44%) said they felt drained from videoconferencing activities, which became more frequent during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Some 86% of the respondents reported that their use of videoconferencing tools increased during the pandemic.

The increased use of online communication tools could in part be driven by feelings of isolation, said the researchers. When asked how often they felt they lacked companionship, 35% of the respondents indicated they have felt this way sometimes, while 19% felt this way often or very often. Some 32% also reported feeling left out sometimes, while 18% said they felt left out often or very often.

The nationwide online study looking at the new normal following the COVID-19 outbreak is commissioned by the Centre for Information Integrity and the Internet (IN-cube), a new research centre at NTU's Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information (WKWSCI) and conducted by a local polling company.

Associate Professor Edson C. Tandoc Jr., the Director at IN-cube, said: "The significant correlation between the use of online communication tools and feelings of isolation from the survey results may help explain why most of our respondents reported an increase in their use of online communication tools in the past few months, as they turn to these tools to feel connected to others even when physical interactions have to be limited.

"Social interaction through these online communication tools definitely brings about new challenges. Some may feel as if they are always on call at work or among their friends. Others may be uncomfortable with turning their cameras on during a video call or may not have a stable internet connection. With these difficulties and limitations in mind, we need to be mindful of our expectations of others when we are using these tools or when we ask others to use them."

Cautious optimism about the COVID-19 situation

The IN-cube survey also found that nearly two in three (63.1%) Singapore residents think that the COVID-19 situation will improve this year, with six in 10 (60.6%) looking forward to travel out of Singapore.

One in four respondents also indicated plans to make high-value purchases after the pandemic, such as buying luxury bags, cars or property.

However, this optimism about the COVID-19 situation improving comes with a tinge of caution. Some 68.7% said they would likely or very likely continue to avoid places with large public gatherings while 68.5% said they would continue to engage in social distancing even after the pandemic is over.

Face masks may also remain commonplace, as 64% said they would continue to wear face masks outdoors even after COVID-19, while 62% said they are likely or very likely to continue to work from home whenever possible, even after the pandemic.

NTU Assistant Professor Edmund Lee, Assistant Director at IN-cube, said: "The intention of Singaporeans to avoid large public gatherings - even though they believe that COVID-19 situation will improve - is a positive indication that people are still remaining vigilant as they adapt to the new normal.

"The challenge is how we can avoid becoming victims of our own success, ensuring that people do not get 'COVID-19 fatigue' and let their guard down as Singapore gradually opens up to the world."

Launched today, IN-cube aims to contribute to promoting information integrity - the creation and sharing of accurate, reliable, and relevant information - in online spaces, especially in an era of misinformation and disinformation, through timely, rigorous, and relevant research that links academics, policymakers, industry players, and the public.

Professor Joseph Liow, Dean of NTU's College of Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences said: "In this age of fake news, understanding why people seek information, how they do it, and how they use the information is therefore important. For instance, it is important to track an increase in the use of social media and messaging apps, since these spaces are also breeding grounds for fake news. Through IN-cube, we hope to keep track of information behaviour in Singapore on a regular basis and understand their implications, such as on our well-being, and also tackle the issues that arise in a timely and relevant manner. This study by IN-cube about the new normal, looking into public sentiments, is just the first step."

Assoc Prof Tandoc, who is also from NTU WKWSCI, said: "Our collective experience of this pandemic as a community will have long-term effects on our social behaviour and interactions. This is something we are interested to find out and hope to keep track of at our new research centre, especially as health experts warn of future pandemics if we keep up with the same human activities that drive climate change and biodiversity loss. We believe that documenting long-term behavioural changes due to COVID-19 can inform policy and industry, such as how we respond as a community to accelerating shifts to online shopping and e-learning as well as to increased reliance on online tools for information."

Although the protein ITIH4 is found in large amounts in the blood, its function has so far been unknown. By combining many different techniques, researchers from Aarhus University have discovered that ITIH4 inhibits proteases in the innate immune system via an unknown mechanism. The research results have just been published in the prestigious scientific journal Science Advances.

Proteases are enzymes that cleave other proteins. Most often, proteases occur in cascade networks, where a particular event triggers a chain reaction in which several proteases cleave and thereby activate each other. Most well known is probably the coagulation cascade, which causes clotting of our blood when a vessel is punctured.

But a similar network of proteases called the complement system is found in our blood and tissues. Activation of the complement system leads to the elimination of disease-causing organisms, cancer cells, and our own dying cells. To prevent the complement system from attacking our healthy cells, it is kept under close control by proteins which inactivate the proteases after a short time; these control proteins are called protease inhibitors.

At the Department of Biomedicine at Aarhus University, Professor Steffen Thiel and PhD student Rasmus Pihl wanted to investigate which other proteins in our blood the so-called MASP proteases from the complement cascade interact with. With the help of the mass spectrometry group at the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Aarhus University, led by Professor Jan J. Enghild, they found to their surprise that two MASP proteases formed a strong complex with the ITIH4 protein.

ITIH4 forms a complex with the MASP-1 and MASP-2 enzymes

"I was highly surprised when I saw the first data from our partners, showing that ITIH4 could form a complex with the MASP-1 and MASP-2 enzymes. At Biomedicine, we have been studying these two proteases for 25 years, and ITIH4 has simply never been on the radar. But it made good sense, as proteins similar to ITIH4 act as inhibitors of other proteases," says Rasmus Pihl.

Rasmus and Steffen now began a systematic study of how ITIH4 affects MASP-1 and MASP-2. It turned out that when ITIH4 formed a complex with the MASP-1 and MASP-2 enzymes, these could still cleave small proteins, while large proteins could not be cleaved when ITIH4 inhibited MASP-1 and MASP-2.

Their colleagues Jan J. Enghild and Gregers R. Andersen at the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics nearly fell out of their chair when they learned about their discovery.

Since the 1980s, researchers at the department have characterized another protease inhibitor called A2M exactly with this property. Had their colleagues at Biomedicine now discover that ITIH4 functions similar to A2M?

To characterize in detail how ITIH4 inhibits the MASP proteases, Rasmus Pihl isolated both free ITIH4 and ITIH4 bound to the MASP-1 protease. By the use of X-ray small-angle scattering and electron microscopy, these samples were studied by postdoc Rasmus Kjeldsen Jensen and Professor Gregers Rom Andersen at Molecular Biology and Genetics. They showed that ITIH4 makes contact with the MASP-1 protease via a so-called von Willebrand domain, which matched nicely with the results from the Department of Biomedicine. This is a completely new mechanism for inhibiting proteases, and entirely different from the way A2M inhibits proteases.

"There is very little knowledge about ITIH4, but it is known that under various pathological conditions, the protein can be cleaved. Our results show that such a cleavage is absolutely necessary for the way ITIH4 can function as an enzyme inhibitor," explains Professor Steffen Thiel."

Gregers Rom Andersen explains: "By using cryo-electron microscopy, we now try to understand in detail how ITIH4 inhibits MASP-1 and MASP-2 via this new inhibition mechanism. We already know that when ITIH4 is cleaved, it forms a complex with both MASP-1 and another ITIH4 molecule. We are very excited to see how it takes place."

At one point, Winston Churchill expressed: "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened. "As a researcher, it is absolutely necessary to maintain curiosity. It is deeply fascinating to work with proteins and mechanisms that are completely new and undescribed. This also means that we do not know where we end up in terms of describing whether ITIH4 has a significance in connection with clinical situations," says Steffen Thiel.

The new results have led to a grant from the Novo Nordisk Foundation to continue the collaboration between the two departments.

Authors from the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD) presented data showing that the longevity gene mammalian Indy (mINDY) is involved in blood pressure regulation in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI) insight. Reduced expression of mINDY, which is known to extend life span in lower organisms and to prevent from diet induced obesity, fatty liver and insulin resistance in mice, has now been shown to lower blood pressure and heart rate in rodents. The authors provided mechanistic insights for the underlying physiological mechanism based on in vivo data in a genetic knock out model as well as microarray and in vitro studies. Furthermore, the hypothesis is supported by confirming critical effects in vitro using a small molecule inhibitor of mINDY. The authors conclude that deletion of mIndy recapitulates beneficial cardiovascular and metabolic responses to caloric restriction, making it an attractive therapeutic target.

Andreas Birkenfeld and colleagues provide a comprehensive study showing that mIndy deletion attenuates sympathoadrenal support of blood pressure and reduced arterial blood pressure and heart rate in a muine knockout model. Blood pressure was assessed invasively using intra-arterial pressure probes over several days. Urinary analysis for catecholamines and metanephrines as well as unbiased transcriptomic analysis of adrenal glands identified the affected biosynthetic pathways. Indeed, catecholamine biosynthesis was attenuated in mINDY-KO adrenals, whereas plasma steroids and steroid hormone synthesis were unaffected.

In vitro studies on an adrenal cell line supported this hypothesis. mIndy codes for a is a carboxylic acid transporter protein expressed in plasma membrane. Citrate, the main substrate of the mINDY transporter, increased catecholamine content, while pharmacological inhibition of mINDY by a small molecule inhibitor blunted the effect.

The study provided further insights into the physiological mechanisms of the beneficial effects of reducing mINDY activity which is known to protect from diet and aging induced metabolic diseases by mechanisms akin to caloric restriction. Therefore, the data showed a novel mechanism contributing to a cardiometabolic cross talk and further supporting mINDY as a promising target for the whole spectrum of metabolic syndrome components, including increased blood pressure.

Theories were introduced as far back as the 1960s about the possible existence of superheavy elements. Their most long-lived atomic nuclei could give rise to a so-called "island of stability" far beyond the element uranium. However, a new study, led by nuclear physicists at Lund University, shows that a 50-year-old nuclear physics manifesto must now be revised.

The heaviest element found in nature is uranium, with a nucleus containing 92 protons and 146 neutrons. The nuclei of heavier elements become more and more unstable due to the increased number of positively charged protons. They therefore decay faster and faster, usu-ally within a fraction of a second.

A "magical" combination of protons and neutrons may however lead to elements with rapidly increasing lifetimes. Just such a "magical" number of protons has long been predicted for the element flerovium, which has the atomic number 114 in the periodic table. In the late 1960s a theory was introduced by Lund physicist Sven-Gösta Nilsson, among others, that such an island of stability should exist around the then still undiscovered element 114.

"This is something of a Holy Grail in nuclear physics. Many dream of discovering something as exotic as a long-lived, or even stable, superheavy element", says Anton Såmark-Roth, doctoral student of nuclear physics at Lund University.

Inspired by Nilsson's theories, the researchers have studied the element flerovium in detail and made ground-breaking discoveries. The experiment was conducted by an international research team led by Dirk Rudolph, a professor at Lund University.

Within the framework of the research programme FAIR Phase-0 at the particle accelerator facility GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, Germany, up to 6x1018 (6 000 000 000 000 000 000) calcium-48 atomic nuclei were accelerated to 10 percent of the speed of light. They bombarded a thin film of rare plutonium-244 and, through atomic nuclear fusion, flerovium could be created, one atom at a time. In the 18-day-long experiment, the research team then registered radioactive decay of some tens of flerovium nuclei in a detection device specially developed in Lund.

Through the exact analysis of decay fragments and the periods within which they were released, the team could identify new decay branches of flerovium. It was shown that these could not be reconciled with the element's previously predicted "magical" properties.

"We were very pleased that all the technology surrounding our experimental set-up worked as it should when the experiment started. Above all, being able to follow the decay of several flerovium nuclei from the control room in real time was very exciting", says Daniel Cox, postdoc in nuclear physics at Lund University.

The new results, published in the research journal Physical Review Letters, will be of considerable use to science. Instead of looking for the island of stability around the element 114, the research world can focus on other as yet undiscovered elements.

"It was a demanding but, of course, very successful experiment. Now we know, we can move on from element 114 and instead look around element 120, which has not been discovered yet. Now the voyage to the island of stability will take a new course", concludes Anton Såmark-Roth.

An international research collaboration, involving scientists from the UK, US and Spain, has shed new light on the usefulness of digital contact tracing (DCT) to control the spread of Covid-19.

The study, published today in Nature Communications, assessed the effectiveness of the Spanish DCT app, Radar COVID, following a 4-week experiment conducted in the Canary Islands, Spain between June-July 2020.

For the experiment, funded by the Secretary of State of Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence (SEDIA), the researchers simulated a series of Covid infections in the capital of La Gomera, San Sebastián de la Gomera, to understand whether the Radar COVID app technology could work in a real-world environment to contain a Covid-19 outbreak.

They found that over 30 per cent of the population adopted the technology and it was able to detect around 6.3 close-contacts per infected individual, which was over two times higher than the national average detected using manual contact tracing alone.

However the researchers suggest that the app's success is dependent on effective national and local communications campaigns to encourage people to download and use the app in the first place.

Dr Lucas Lacasa, Reader in Applied Mathematics at Queen Mary University of London and author of the study, said: "Whilst digital contact tracing has been suggested as a valuable complement to manual tracing programmes, and even already been adopted in several countries, until now we haven't had any real experimental evidence to prove the effectiveness of this technology."

"Overall our results were positive and show that the technology works and if accompanied by appropriate communications campaigns, it should reach the levels of adoption and compliance needed to support other non-pharmaceutical interventions to contain outbreaks."

DCT relies on the use of mobile phone apps to trace contacts and notify individuals of recent contact with others who have recently tested positive for Covid-19. It has already been introduced in countries worldwide to support manual contract tracing efforts but until now their usefulness in real-world outbreak settings has not been tested.

Aside from the effectiveness of these approaches several other concerns have been raised regarding their use such as the potential detection of a high number of false close-contacts, low adoption and adherence, and privacy issues.

"Some of the concerns from the healthcare sector around DCT relates to whether these apps could trigger avalanches of false close-contacts, and as a result false positives that could overwhelm primary healthcare resources," said Professor Alex Arenas, Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics at Universitat Rovira I Virgili (Spain), and author of the study. "However we didn't see this in our experiment and the number of close-contacts detected was about the same amount we'd expect from existing data. We also saw that the adoption was above the threshold needed for the app to be efficient."

Radar COVID is a Bluetooth-mediated DCT technology based on the Apple/Google protocol. The technology adopts a privacy-by-design approach, aiming to maintain user anonymity with features such as a lack of login or identification requirements and the user's ability to remove or de-activate the app at any time.

Dr Lacasa added: "Whilst from a user perspective the privacy preserving features of this app are beneficial, it severely limits the amount of data that we could collect to accurately assess its performance. So whilst our results are very promising they need to be treated with caution and further analysis is required to understand to what extent having the app triggers behaviour change, for example how many of those that receive an alert but decide not to follow up with primary care actually still self-isolate."

Individual variations in how the immune system responds to SARS-CoV-2 appear to impact the severity of disease. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have now been able to show that patients with severe COVID-19 have significantly elevated levels of a certain type of immune cells in their blood, called myeloid-derived suppressor cells. The study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation may bring an increased understanding of how early immune responses impact disease severity.

Most individuals with COVID-19 develop mild to moderate symptoms and recover without needing hospital treatment. In severe cases, however, COVID-19 can lead to respiratory failure or even death. It is not yet known why the severity of disease varies so much between patients.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet, Karolinska University Hospital, Stemirna Therapeutics in Shanghai, and Stanford University in the United States have now studied one type of immune cell, monocytic myeloid-derived suppressor cells, or M-MDSC, and their potential role in COVID-19.

T cells are part of the immune system and play an important part in the body's protection against viral infections such as COVID-19. M-MDSCs have been shown to increase in other inflammatory conditions, and their suppressive effect on T cell activity has been established.

The role of M-MDSC in respiratory infections, however, is largely unknown. Since low levels of T cells are a hallmark of COVID-19, it is of interest to understand the role of M-MDSCs in this disease.

The study consisted of 147 patients with mild to fatal COVID-19 who were sampled repeatedly from blood and the respiratory tract. These were then compared with patients with influenza and healthy individuals.

The results show that patients with severe COVID-19 have significantly elevated levels of M-MDSCs in blood compared with milder cases and healthy individuals. COVID-19 patients had fewer T cells in blood than healthy subjects, and they showed signs of impaired function.

The analysis also showed that the levels of M-MDSCs early in the course of disease seemed to reflect subsequent disease severity.

"Our results help increase the understanding of what causes severe COVID-19 and is an important piece of the puzzle in understanding the connection between the early, innate immune system, which includes M-MDSC, and the later, adaptive immune system, which includes T cells. There is also a strong clinical connection, as you could potentially use the results to find new biomarkers for severe illness", says Anna Smed Sorensen, associate professor at the Department of Medicine, Solna, Karolinska Institutet, and the study's last author.

An inherent limitation of the study is the number of patients and amount of sample material that could be collected, why each sample was used as efficiently as possible.

"The next step in our research is to further study the connection between different parts of the immune system, such as M-MDSC, T cells, and antibodies", says Anna Smed Sorensen.

Canada could be sitting on a significant untapped resource, as the number of PhD holders in this country rises, but persistent barriers make it hard for them to put their skills to work. According to a new expert panel report from the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA), PhD graduates play a critical role in the Canadian economy, but many are missing out on important opportunities to contribute their expertise and bolster growth and innovation.

"The growing number of PhD graduates in Canada could represent a significant opportunity to drive innovation and increase our competitiveness in a global economy," said M. Elizabeth Cannon, O.C., PhD, FRSC, FCAE, Chair of the Expert Panel. "The difficulties graduates face raise important questions about the nature of PhD education in Canada, and this report considers how stakeholders influence the experience of PhDs and what could be done to address the challenges they confront after graduation."

PhDs are increasingly faced with career-stalling roadblocks as they attempt to enter the labour market. The traditional path to the professoriate is available to fewer and fewer people, and meaningful jobs outside the academy have not materialized fast enough to fill that gap. A skills mismatch ? between what PhDs are trained for during their studies and what employers are seeking ? may contribute to the problem and make the bridge from academia to outside employment difficult to navigate. At the same time, PhD graduates may be unaware of their skills and have a hard time describing their value to potential employers.

"This report shines a light on the lived experiences of students, contributing to a better understanding of the career transition challenges they encounter," said Eric M. Meslin, PhD, FRSC, FCAHS, President and CEO of the CCA. "Addressing their integration into the labour force is essential, particularly in the era of COVID-19 when the need for their complex problem-solving skills takes on even greater urgency."

The Panel found earnings and employment for PhD graduates vary significantly based on discipline and gender, and men earn more across all disciplines. Women are more likely to be unemployed or find themselves in temporary or part-time employment.

Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada asked the CCA to examine the main roadblocks faced by PhD students in Canada as they transition into the labour market, and how these challenges differ by field of study.

Degrees of Success details the challenges faced by PhDs as they begin their careers, key factors contributing to these challenges, and promising practices to address them.

"74 percent of the respondents consider the national vaccination strategy to be appropriate," says BfR-President Professor Dr. Dr. Andreas Hensel. "This indicates that the strategy is accepted."

While some regulations, such as the cancellation of events or the quarantine measures, have always been met with approval in recent months, other measures are now less accepted. Whereas shortly before Christmas, 84 percent of the respondents considered the contact restrictions to be appropriate, 74 percent say so in the current survey. Over the same period, approval of the closure of shops fell by ten percentage points to 56 percent.

In the previous months, around 60 percent of the respondents said they felt well-informed about what was happening regarding the coronavirus. However, since the beginning of 2021, the perceived informedness has been declining. In the current survey, just under half of the population felt well or very well informed about what was happening. About one-fifth said they felt badly or very badly informed.

Across all age groups, common protective measures such as wearing a mask and keeping more distance to other people continue to be implemented by the vast majority. However, there are differences in the perceived controllability of an infection with the coronavirus. For example, 32 percent of 14- to 39-year-olds say they are not sure whether they can protect themselves from an infection. In the age group 60 and older, this figure stands at 20 percent.

An international group of scientists is predicting markedly different outcomes for different species of coral reef fishes under climate change - and have made substantial progress on picking the 'winners and losers'.

Associate Professor Jodie Rummer from James Cook University's ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies co-authored a study that exposed two species of coral reef fishes to elevated temperatures and measured their responses over time.

"We collected five-lined cardinalfish and redbelly yellowtail fusilier from the Great Barrier Reef, and under controlled conditions in the laboratory at JCU, slowly raised the temperature in their aquaria by 3.0?C.

"This temperature range spans the average summer temperatures experienced in the northern Great Barrier Reef. We then routinely measured 18 physiological traits in both species over five weeks," she said.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts sea surface temperatures are expected to rise by 2.0-4.8?C by the end of the 21st century, but this is also resulting in the increasing frequency and severity of extreme heatwaves experienced worldwide.

"Over just a few days, these heatwaves can increase water temperatures by as much as 5?C above seasonal average temperatures, and such heatwaves can last for several weeks," said Dr Rummer.

She said the fusilier exhibited rapid responses to thermal stress, with nearly immediate changes detected in gill morphology and blood parameters. But the cardinalfish response was delayed, and they seemed far less able to adjust to the elevated temperatures.

Importantly, the team identified seven parameters across both species that may be useful as biomarkers for evaluating how fast and to what extent coral reef fishes can cope with elevated temperatures.

"Our findings greatly improve our current understanding of the physiological responses associated with ongoing thermal threats and disturbances, including which species may be most at risk," said co-author Assistant Research Professor Jacob Johansen, from the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology.

The researchers said the study is timely, given the rapid decline of tropical coral reefs worldwide, including the unprecedented and repeated mass coral bleaching and mortality events on the Great Barrier Reef in 2016, 2017, and 2020 - all caused by summer heatwaves.

"Climate change winners and losers will ultimately be determined by their capacity to compensate for thermal stress over both the short term of days, weeks, and months, but also over the longer term of years, decades, and centuries," said co-author Assistant Professor Lauren Nadler from Nova Southeastern University in the United States.

"Our findings are immensely useful for scientists but also for managers, conservation planners, and policy makers charged with protecting these important ecosystems, not to mention communities who rely on coral reef fishes for food, culture, jobs, and livelihoods.

"Collectively, we need to have an indication of which species are going to survive and which will be most vulnerable to climate change so we can take action. The decisions we make today will determine what coral reefs look like tomorrow," Dr Rummer said.

DALLAS (SMU) - A new study suggests children on the autism spectrum may be more likely to misinterpret healthy arguments between their parents as being negative, compared to children who aren't on the autism spectrum.

That means they may be missing out on an opportunity to learn from their parents how to handle conflict constructively, researchers Naomi Ekas and Chrystyna Kouros said.

"Children can learn how to best handle conflict from watching their parents," said Kouros, associate professor of psychology at SMU (Southern Methodist University). "Seeing parents respectfully problem-solve during a disagreement provides children with examples of how to resolve conflict in a healthy way. But children on the autism spectrum may be missing the chance to benefit from those interactions."

"Children on the autism spectrum reacted more negatively to interparental conflict that we generally think of as being less harmful to children's development, compared to non-autistic kids," said Ekas, lead researcher and an associate professor of psychology at Texas Christian University. "It is possible that these children are misinterpreting the conflict as being more negative than it is."

Kouros and Ekas have received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to further study this topic. They are conducting a larger study of 118 children on the autism spectrum and their parents.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) affects an estimated 1 in 54 children in the United States. The range and severity of symptoms can vary widely. Common characteristics include difficulty with communication, difficulty with social interactions and repetitive behaviors.

Based on their initial findings, Ekas and Kouros said parents of autistic kids may need to ensure their child understands when a conflict has ended and that their parents have resolved their difference. They also recommended teaching autistic children to recognize differences between conflicts that are destructive, like ones that involve yelling, versus constructive ones, where parents talk through a disagreement.

"This may help them navigate conflict with peers as well," Ekas said.

For the study, Ekas and Kouros arranged for autistic and non-autistic children to watch videos of actors pretending to be parents. In one video, the "parents" were seen having a disagreement in a way that psychologists would consider constructive - they showed respect to each other, spoke calmly, and used problem-solving. The children also watched a video of a destructive argument, where the parents aimed insults or threats at each other.

After viewing the videos children answered questions about how they felt and what they would do if they were in the room. Researchers found autistic children reacted more negatively to parents who fought constructively than did children who were not diagnosed with autism.

There was no significant difference in how kids perceived the destructive arguments, according to a study published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. Both groups rated destructive arguments very negatively.

The findings are particularly troubling, because research shows that parents of children on the autism spectrum may have higher rates of marital discord compared to parents of children who don't have autism.

The study is based on surveys taken by 21 children with autism and 29 non-autistic children, who were recruited from the Dallas-Fort Worth community through schools, flyers and online advertisements. Children in the study ranged from age between 8 and 13 years old.

To be included in the autism group, children had to be clinically-diagnosed as having the neurodevelopmental disorder.