Culture

Large majorities of American news audiences care about climate change and want more information from the media on the topic, according to a new report from the University of Cincinnati, in partnership with Yale University and George Mason University.

"Our findings show that for several major American news sources, a majority of their audience thinks the media should be doing more to address the issue of climate change. A majority are interested in news stories about climate change topics. In fact, our study shows fewer than 20% of Americans in any of these news audiences feel they are 'very well informed' about climate change," says the report's lead author, Abel Gustafson, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at UC.

"These findings put the ball in journalists' court," he says, because "much of their audience is saying they feel that climate change is an important issue to be covering in more depth."

The report uses three national surveys to measure public opinion on climate change among the regular audiences of Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, the Weather Channel and the national nightly network news on CBS, ABC or NBC. The survey measured many beliefs about climate change, including whether it is happening, is caused by humans, should be a high priority for elected officials and how this issue influences their choice of a candidate in the 2020 presidential election.

According to the report, majorities in each of these news audiences say global warming or protecting the environment will be important to their vote for president.
Gustafson says other takeaways from the report include:

*In each of the news audiences studied, large majorities underestimate the true strength of the scientific consensus on climate change. "Even among people who care deeply about climate change, most underestimate just how strong the scientific consensus is," he says, adding that, "Journalists can play an important role in fixing this misperception by emphasizing the strength of the scientific evidence when they cover climate change topics."

*Among the news audiences studied in this report, the Fox News audience is least accepting of climate science and thinks the issue is least important to them personally.
However, there are many differences among Fox viewers, he says. "The climate opinions of the Fox News audience are much more diverse than common stereotypes would suggest. In fact, nearly half of the regular Fox News audience say they are worried about climate change and think it should be at least a 'medium' priority for our elected government officials."

*In most news audiences, large majorities (over 80% for CNN, MSNBC and NPR) think global warming is happening, think it is human caused and are worried about it.

Overall, Gustafson says, "There's a clear gap between what people want from their news providers and what they are getting, because many Americans specifically say the media should be doing more to address this issue."

Though some believe prehistoric humans lived in harmony with nature, a new analysis of fossils shows human arrival in the Bahamas caused some birds to be lost from the islands and other species to be completely wiped out.

The researchers examined more than 7,600 fossils over a decade and concluded that human arrival in the Bahamas about 1,000 years ago was the main factor in the birds' extinction and displacement in recent millennia, although habitat fluctuations caused by increased storm severity and sea level rise could have played a role.

Many spectacular species, such as a colorful parrot, a striking scavenger called a caracara, and a number of hawks, doves, owls, and songbirds, were still found as recently as 900 years ago, and may have overlapped with people by a century before disappearing or retreating to only one or two islands in The Bahamas. "No other environmental change could explain their loss," said study co-lead Janet Franklin, a distinguished professor of botany and plant sciences at UC Riverside.

Full results of Franklin's study were published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

For example, the Abaco parrot is now only found on two islands in the Bahamas. There are many islands in between the two where the parrots now live that have the same habitat.

"We wondered why those parrots aren't found in the middle islands," Franklin said. "It turns out, they were, not that long ago." Franklin and her collaborator, ornithologist David Steadman of University of Florida, found Abaco parrot fossils were on all the islands until 1,000 years ago.

The study was also able to identify losses of bird species that lived in the Bahamas since the end of the last ice age, more than 10,000 years before people arrived. These species included a giant barn owl and giant eagle -- predators whose prey also disappeared from the islands after people arrived.

More than two thirds of the 90 bird species identified in the fossils that date from the end of the last ice age. Either they have gone altogether extinct or now only persist outside of the Bahamas.

The Bahamian islands are "treasure troves" of fossils because the limestone caves and flooded sinkholes there act as natural traps and are highly effective at preserving bones. Because they're relatively small land areas lacking mountains or steep, remote areas where plants and animals can retreat to avoid people, the islands are also places where humans can have a big impact.

Giant predator birds likely competed with people for food such as giant tortoises -- now extinct -- and hutia, the only native land mammal in the Bahamas, which resembles a large guinea pig. In addition, humans hunt birds that eat fruit, because they tend to be fatter and more delicious.

It isn't clear how much of the effect on birds is attributable to habitat change caused by people settling on the islands and how much was due to direct human predation. But Franklin said the wild habitat requires protections to preserve the animals that remain.

"The species here are the ones that survived," Franklin said. "They might be more adaptable than other birds, and less dependent on a niche or habitat that's strongly affected by human activity. But they are still vulnerable and worth conserving."

Furthermore, the researchers note in the study that "the related futures of biodiversity and humanity perhaps never have been at a crossroads more than now. The transfer of a zoonotic disease from wildlife to humans, which has resulted in a global pandemic, is directly linked to biodiversity loss."

In other words, as humans increasingly take over wild habitat, particularly rainforests, there are more opportunities for diseases to jump from wildlife to people.

"Protecting rainforests and regulating wildlife trade helps the animals and is also a component of preventing pandemics," Franklin said.

Researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) identify a gene associated with symptoms of two severe genetic conditions

Tokyo, Japan - Temple and Kagami-Ogata syndromes are serious genetic conditions that can lead to a variety of health problems with neonatal lethality, and in the case of Temple syndrome, severe growth problems occur. However, the genetic mechanisms of these illnesses are not well understood. But now, researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) have identified a gene that appears to be responsible for symptoms of both conditions, with important implications for human evolutionary genetics.

In a study published last month in Development the research team has revealed that deficiency and overproduction of Retrotransposon Gag like 1 (Rtl1), which is a mouse ortholog of the human RTL1 gene, is significantly associated with muscle symptoms in models of Temple and Kagami-Ogata syndromes, respectively.

Temple and Kagami-Ogata syndromes are characterized by unique postnatal muscle-related symptoms and prenatal placental problems. Although Rtl1 has previously been found to be responsible for prenatal placental malformations in mouse models of these conditions, the causative gene for the muscle-related symptoms has not been identified. The researchers at Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) aimed to address this in their recent study.

"Although Rtl1 is essential for maintaining placental fetal capillaries," says lead author of the study, Moe Kitazawa, "Little is known about the role of Rtl1 in other forms of muscular abnormalities."

The researchers extensively examined the role of Rtl1 in fetal muscle development at both the cellular and tissue level. They used two previously generated mouse models, one with a loss of Rtl1 to model Temple syndrome, and one with an overproduction of Rtl1 to model Kagami-Ogata syndrome.

"Our data clearly demonstrate that RTL1 is of critical physiological significance," explains Fumitoshi Ishino, senior author. "In the mouse models of both Temple and Kagami-Ogata syndrome, we detected severe but distinct abnormalities in the neonatal muscles that are necessary for respiration, such as the intercostal, abdominal, and diaphragm muscles."

Particularly, the overproduction of Rtl1 in the mouse model of Kagami-Ogata syndrome led to respiratory problems and muscle damage, resulting in neonatal death and the loss of Rtl1 was a major cause of abnormal muscle tone, such as hypotonia, and likely to be associated with feeding difficulty/poor sucking function in Temple syndrome patients.

Thus, RTL1 appears to be the major gene responsible for muscle and placental defects in these two genetic conditions.

"This is the first demonstration that a form of RTL1 specific to eutherians (placental mammals) plays an important role in fetal and neonatal muscle development," says Kitazawa.

"This work demonstrates that LTR retrotransposons, which are a specific type of mobile DNA from which RTL1 originated, have influenced a variety of eutherian-specific traits, including the skeletal muscles, placenta, and the brain. Thus, these findings have important implications for understanding the acquisition of genes throughout the process of eutherian evolution", say senior authors Kaneko-Ishino and Ishino.

A new research report reveals that 94 individuals with rare inherited immune disorders, otherwise known as primary immunodeficiency (PID), who were infected with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus had similar disease outcomes to the general population. However, admission rates to intensive care tended to be higher in PID patients and the average age of affected patients was lower than in the general population.

The study, led by the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and KU Leuven, provides information for individuals affected by PIDs, their families and clinicians. The findings also contribute to an understanding of the components of the immune system that underpin an effective coronavirus immune response.

"We wanted to find out the impact of SARS-CoV-2 infection on those individuals with rare immune disorders, a group of patients assumed to be at-risk of severe COVID-19 disease if infected with SARS-CoV-2. As PID patients are so rare, this study was only possible through a large global research collaboration across 50 centres," says Prof Stuart Tangye, Leader of the Immunity and Inflammation Research Theme at Garvan and senior author of the study.

"The findings show that pre-existing immune deficiencies were generally not found to be a significant risk factor as the rate of fatality from COVID-19 was no higher in this group than the general population. Some immune defects even appeared to be protective against the dramatic immune pathology that is frequently seen in severe disease. However, our study suggests younger male patients with PIDs are more likely to endure severe COVID-19 and require ICU admission," says Isabelle Meyts, Professor at KU Leuven, and Clinical lead of the primary immunodeficiency care program at University Hospitals Leuven.

The researchers publish the findings in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

Inborn errors of immunity

The consequences of infection with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus are vastly different across individuals. Some infected people are more at risk than others, including older individuals and those with underlying health conditions. However, little is known about those with pre-existing rare inherited immune disorders.

"There has been substantial anxiety within the PID community that their immune condition would result in a more severe clinical outcome should they contract SARS-CoV-2 and develop COVID-19," says Prof Meyts.

The researchers invited clinical immunologists from around the world who manage patients with inborn errors of immunity to complete a questionnaire, if their patients had contracted the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Data was collected from patients in the USA, UK, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and Latin America.

Of the 94 reported patients, 25 had mild disease and were treated as outpatients, while 59 (63%) required hospitalisation. Of those hospitalised, 13 required non-invasive breathing assistance, and 15 were admitted to intensive care for invasive ventilation.

Sadly, nine of the 94 patients passed away from COVID-19 (9.6%), which is within the range of global data of COVID-19 mortality (1-20%). However, admission rates to ICU were higher and the average age was lower in PID-affected patients than in the general population.

"Our findings warrant a recommendation for further stringent personal protective measures for patients affected by PIDs," says Prof Meyts.

Similar to the general population, adult patients in the study cohort who succumbed to SARS-CoV-2 infection had existing comorbidities, such as heart failure, chronic kidney or lung disease, and diabetes.

Searching for genes essential for COVID-19 defence

The study further revealed insights for the components of the immune system that may be involved in SARS-CoV-2 immune defence.

"More than half the patients we surveyed (56%) had a deficiency in their ability to produce antibodies. Surprisingly, these patients had similar outcomes to the rest of the cohort. And patients who were completely unable to produce antibodies all recovered following infection," says Prof Meyts.

The findings also revealed that patients with gene defects that resulted in the body being unable to respond to the pro-inflammatory effects of interleukin 6 (IL-6) developed little or no disease when infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. IL-6 is a signalling molecule released by the body in response to infections, and helps regulate the human immune response.

"Our findings suggest that certain forms of immune suppression, which reduce the function of IL-6, are protective against the pathological effects of the cytokine storm frequently observed in patients," says Prof Tangye.

The researchers say further studies are needed to gain a comprehensive understanding of which components of the immune system are crucial to a successful coronavirus defence. "We hope such studies will contribute to a greater understanding of COVID-19 disease progression and new therapeutic approaches," says Prof Tangye.

Astronomers from The University of Western Australia's node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) have developed a new way to study star formation in galaxies from the dawn of time to today.

"Stars can be thought of as enormous nuclear-powered processing plants," said lead researcher Dr Sabine Bellstedt, from ICRAR.

"They take lighter elements like hydrogen and helium, and, over billions of years, produce the heavier elements of the periodic table that we find scattered throughout the Universe today.

"The carbon, calcium and iron in your body, the oxygen in the air you breathe, and the silicon in your computer all exist because a star created these heavier elements and left them behind," Bellstedt said.

"Stars are the ultimate element factories in the Universe."

Understanding how galaxies formed stars billions of years ago requires the very difficult task of using powerful telescopes to observe galaxies many billions of light-years away in the distant Universe.

However, nearby galaxies are much easier to observe. Using the light from these local galaxies, astronomers can forensically piece together the history of their lives (called their star-formation history). This allows researchers to determine how and when they formed stars in their infancy, billions of years ago, without struggling to observe galaxies in the distant Universe.

Traditionally, astronomers studying star formation histories assumed the overall metallicity--or amount of heavy elements--in a galaxy doesn't change over time.

But when they used these models to pinpoint when stars in the Universe should have formed, the results didn't match up with what they were seeing through their telescopes.

"The results not matching up with our observations is a big problem," Bellstedt said. "It tells us we're missing something."

"That missing ingredient, it turns out, is the gradual build-up of heavy metals within galaxies over time."

Using a new algorithm to model the energy and wavelengths of light coming from almost 7000 nearby galaxies, the researchers succeeded in reconstructing when most of the stars in the Universe formed--in agreement with telescope observations for the first time.

The designer of the new code--known as ProSpect--is Associate Professor Aaron Robotham from ICRAR's University of Western Australia node.

"This is the first time we've been able to constrain how the heavier elements in galaxies change over time based on our analysis of these 7000 nearby galaxies," Robotham said.

"Using this galactic laboratory on our own doorstep gives us lots of observations to test this new approach, and we're very excited that it works.

"With this tool, we can now dissect nearby galaxies to determine the state of the Universe and the rate at which stars form and mass grows at any stage over the past 13 billion years.

"It's absolutely mind-blowing stuff."

This work also confirms an important theory about when most of the stars in the Universe formed.

"Most of the stars in the Universe were born in extremely massive galaxies early on in cosmic history--around three to four billion years after the Big Bang," Bellstedt said.

"Today, the Universe is almost 14 billion years old, and most new stars are being formed in much smaller galaxies."

Based on this research, the next challenge for the team will be to expand the sample of galaxies being studied using this technique, in an effort to understand when, where and why galaxies die and stop forming new stars.

Bellstedt and Robotham, along with colleagues from Australia, the UK and the United States, are reporting their results in the scientific journal the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Magnetic fields are used in various areas of modern physics and engineering, with practical applications ranging from doorbells to maglev trains. Since Nikola Tesla's discoveries in the 19th century, researchers have strived to realize strong magnetic fields in laboratories for fundamental studies and diverse applications, but the magnetic strength of familiar examples are relatively weak. Geomagnetism is 0.3-0.5 gauss (G) and magnetic tomography (MRI) used in hospitals is about 1 tesla (T = 104 G). By contrast, future magnetic fusion and maglev trains will require magnetic fields on the kilotesla (kT = 107 G) order. To date, the highest magnetic fields experimentally observed are on the kT order.

Recently, scientists at Osaka University discovered a novel mechanism called a "microtube implosion," and demonstrated the generation of megatesla (MT = 1010G) order magnetic fields via particle simulations using a supercomputer. Astonishingly, this is three orders of magnitude higher than what has ever been achieved in a laboratory. Such high magnetic fields are expected only in celestial bodies like neutron stars and black holes.

Irradiating a tiny plastic microtube one-tenth the thickness of a human hair by ultraintense laser pulses produces hot electrons with temperatures of tens of billion of degrees. These hot electrons, along with cold ions, expand into the microtube cavity at velocities approaching the speed of light. Pre-seeding with a kT-order magnetic field causes the imploding charged particles infinitesimally twisted due to Lorenz force. Such a unique cylindrical flow collectively produces unprecedentedly high spin currents of about 1015 ampere/cm2 on the target axis and consequently, generates ultrahigh magnetic fields on the MT order.

The study conducted by Masakatsu Murakami and colleagues has confirmed that current laser technology can realize MT-order magnetic fields based on the concept. The present concept for generating MT-order magnetic fields will lead to pioneering fundamental research in numerous areas, including materials science, quantum electrodynamics (QED), and astrophysics, as well as other cutting-edge practical applications.

Smartphones and wearable devices are not simple accessories for athletes. A CNRS researcher* has developed a simple mathematical model for studying the performance of endurance athletes. A recent collaboration with a scientist from the Polar Electro Oy company (Finland) made it possible to apply the model to data gathered from approximately 14,000 runners training in real conditions. According to their study, the mathematical model can estimate key physiological parameters such as maximal aerobic speed and endurance, which are known to be linked to health conditions and performance. The non-invasive gathering of this data offers new possibilities for treatments and monitoring. What's more, this model could be used to predict the future performance of athletes, such as the race time for a marathon, which would help with their recruitment for teams and competitions. The study, which appeared on October 6 in Nature Communications, opens new avenues for quantifying the health and sports performance of athletes in real conditions.

An international study led by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA-UAB) and the Department of Prehistory at the UAB has reconstructed the diets of pre-Columbian groups on the Amazon coast of Brazil, showing that tropical agroforestry was regionally variable.

During the past few decades, there has been an increased interest in the origin and evolution of pre-Columbian economies in the Amazon. However, the paucity of human remains from this period has limited our understanding of the contribution of plants, terrestrial animals and fish to individual diets and, therefore, their role in supporting population growth and cultural changes in this region before European contact.

This new study, published in Scientific Reports, used stable isotopic analysis and Bayesian Mixing Models to reconstruct the diets of human individuals living along the Brazilian Amazon coast between 1,000 and 1,800 years ago.

They found that despite the proximity to marine resources and the evidence of fishing, diets were based mainly on terrestrial plants and animals. Land mammals and plants were the main sources of caloric intake. Land animals were also the main source of dietary protein, compared to fish.

Among the taxonomically identified animals, they found rodents such as paca, cavia or cutia, a brocket deer and catfish. In the late Holocene a large variety of wild and cultivated plants such as cassava, corn, squash, among others, were consumed.

"The results call into question the widespread assumption that fish was the main economic component and the largest source of protein among pre-Columbian populations living in proximity to aquatic environments in lowland Amazonia", says Colonese. He adds that the results indicate these populations dedicated considerable efforts to hunting, forest management and plant cultivation.

"Our study provides unprecedented quantitative information on the extent to which distinct food categories from agroforestry systems fulfilled the caloric and protein requirements of populations in the pre-Columbian Amazon, and corroborates the growing consensus that these diversified subsistence economies fuelled cultural, demographic and environmental transformations in the eastern Amazon basin during the Late Holocene."

A scientist from RUDN University analysed the effect of visual impairment on a person's perception of unfamiliar sounds when learning a foreign language. The experiment showed that lack of access to visual cues makes learning difficult.Results of workpublished in the journal Medical Hypotheses.

In the traditional sense, speech perception is primarily associated with hearing. However, the visual channel is just as important - when a person sees the interlocutor, they analyze their posture, gestures, facial expression. In addition, visual information helps people perceive long and conceptually complex messages, and allows people with hearing impairments to communicate and understand each other in noisy environments. According to some studies, if only the auditory canal is available during a conversation - for example, as in people with visual impairments or when talking on the phone - the accuracy of information perception decreases. Other scholars believe that visual cues are not required for speech perception, and people with visual impairments can understand information even better by developing hearing. This can be explained by the fact that they have been using this channel for a long time as the main source of information, and therefore can analyze it more closely. For example, assess the intonation of the interlocutor, pay attention to the intermittent speech, the frequency of breathing. Young scientist from RUDN Georgios Georgiou found out whether visual impairment can affect the perception of speech when learning a foreign language.

Until now, scientists have concentrated on how a person perceives familiar sounds (that is, those that occur in his native language), while the sounds found in foreign speech can be more difficult to perceive due to the influence of the first language. Georgiou conducted an experiment to study the perception of unfamiliar sounds by people learning a second language. The subjects passed tests to distinguish and recognize sounds recorded by native speakers of a language they did not know, and were assigned to groups according to the similarity with the sounds they knew. The scientist also compared the pronunciation of students with the pronunciation of native speakers. An example of a sound that is difficult for Russians to perceive is the preposition "the" from the English language. Its pronunciation is often explained through articulation - the position of the tongue and lips in relation to the teeth, the width of the mouth opening, and so on.

According to the results of the experiment Georgiou made a conclusion, that certain types of sounds in foreign language are more difficult for visually impaired people than for students with normal vision. This is most noticeable for two or more non-native sounds that are similar in sound to each other. He argues that it will be difficult for people with visual impairments to develop stable mental representations for non-native speech sounds, or to maintain the flexibility to perceive non-standard speech solely through auditory and kinesthetic feedback. At the same time, sighted people will have more opportunities to do this because they have access to visual cues.

"People who are visually impaired are likely to have worse speech perception, especially in contexts where flexibility is required - for example, noisy environments, accented speech, and so on. This is because speech perception will function in a monomodal manner, preventing the extraction of most of the acoustic invariants found in actual movements of the vocal tract. While there is evidence against this hypothesis, much of the earlier work did not take into account several factors that may affect speech perception, while research on second language perception in people with visual impairments is limited.", -explains Georgios Georgiou, Researcher, Department of General and Russian Linguistics, Faculty of Philology, RUDN.

This hypothesis is consistent with earlier evidence that blind speakers of French in Canada reproduce native vowels with reduced acoustic contrast, and phonetic differences in speech appeared later in children with visual impairments than in children with normal vision.

Alkylation reactions are used in the petrochemical industry to obtain high-octane number components for gasolines. A chemist from RUDN University found a way to speed this process up to 24 times. To do so, he developed a catalyst based on silica and niobium. The results of his work were published in the Molecular Catalysis journal.

In the course of alkylation, an atom of hydrogen in an organic compound is replaced with other substances, the so-called alkylating agents. Alkylation is used in the chemical and petrochemical industries, for example, to obtain high-octane number components in gasolines. For the process to go on quickly and efficiently, it needs catalysts including mineral acids and zeolites--minerals that are capable of selectively releasing substances and then adsorbing them back. However, mineral (e.g. sulphuric or phosphoric) acids can be expensive and dangerous: in order to extract them from the reaction mix, one needs additional reagents that can be hard to handle. Unlike mineral acids, zeolites are safe and cheap to produce. The only problem lies in their microporous structure that limits the size of the molecules they can react with. A chemist from RUDN University created a catalyst that is free from these disadvantages and able to speed up the alkylation reaction up to 24 times. To do so, his team used niobium and SBA-15, a mesoporous ordered form of silica.

"SBA-15 materials are relevant as catalytic support due to their high surface area and pore volume in the mesopore range that convert it in an outstanding catalyst support. We aimed to evaluate the acidity of several Al-SBA-15 supported niobium oxide catalysts prepared by a mechanochemical protocol with different metal loadings," said Rafael Luque PhD, the head of the Molecular Design and Synthesis of Innovative Compounds for Medicine Science Center at RUDN University.

The team paid attention to the reductive-oxidative and acidic properties of niobium-based compounds that are important for a catalyst and decided to test niobium in an alkylation reaction. To do so, they put niobium oxide nanoparticles (that had been mechanochemically ground down to several nanometers in size) on the support. The metal content in the new material varied from 0.5% to 1% and the size of the particles was controlled with a transmission electron microscope. The team used energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy to secure even distribution of particles across the surface of the support.

To analyze the catalytic properties of the new material, the chemists carried out the reaction of toluene alkylation with benzyl alcohol and benzyl chloride that acted as alkylating agents. As a result of the experiment, the team confirmed a positive effect of niobium particles on the reaction: its time of reaction reduced from 4 hours to 10 minutes. The catalyst with lower niobium content (0.5%) turned out to be more effective due to better dispersion. The team believes that when the catalyst was synthesized, niobium oxide deposited on the support, and the more niobium, the bigger the catalyst particles turned out to be. This reduced the effective contact area of the particles and therefore had a negative impact on the material's catalytic activity.

"We managed to create a catalyst that reduces the time of alkylation reactions from several hours to just 10 minutes, is free from the chemical limitations of zeolites, and poses no danger unlike mineral acids," added Rafael Luque.

Man-made global heating has long been presented as a relatively simple chain of cause and effect: humans disrupt the carbon cycle by burning fossil fuels, thereby increase the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, which in turn leads to higher temperatures around the globe. "However, it becomes increasingly clear that this is not the end of the story. Forest fires become more frequent all over the world, release additional CO2 into the atmosphere, and further reinforce the global warming that enhanced forest fire risk in the first place. This is a textbook example of what climate scientists call a positive feedback mechanism," stresses David De Vleeschouwer, a postdoctoral researcher at MARUM - Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen.

To reveal these kind of climate-carbon cycle feedback mechanisms under natural circumstances, David De Vleeschouwer and colleagues exploited isotopic data from deep-ocean sediment cores. "Some of these cores contain sediments of up to 35 million years old. Despite their respectable age, these sediments carry a clear imprint of so-called Milankovi? cycles. Milankovi? cycles relate to rhythmic changes in the shape of the Earth's orbit (eccentricity), as well as to the tilt (obliquity) and orientation (precession) of the Earth's rotational axis. Like an astronomical clockwork, Milankovi? cycles generate changes in the distribution of solar insolation over the planet, and thus provoke cadenced climate change", explains David De Vleeschouwer. "We looked at the carbon and oxygen isotope composition of microfossils within the sediment and first used the eccentricity, obliquity and precession cadences as geological chronometers. Then, we applied a statistical method to determine whether changes in one isotope system lead or lag variability in the other isotope."

His colleague Maximilian Vahlenkamp adds: "When a common pattern in both isotope systems occurs just a little earlier in the carbon system compared to the oxygen isotope system, we call this a carbon-isotope lead. We then infer that the carbon cycle exerted control over the climate system at the time of sediment deposition." Paleoclimatologists and paleoceanographers often use carbon isotopes as an indicator of carbon-cycle perturbations, and oxygen isotopes as a proxy for changes in global climate state. Changes in the isotopic composition of these deep-sea microfossils may indicate, for example, an increase in the continental carbon storage by land plants and soils, or global cooling with a growth of ice caps.

"The systematic and time-continuous analysis of leads and lags between carbon cycle and climate constitutes the innovative character of this study. Our approach allows to sequence Earth's history at high resolution over the past 35 million years", says Prof Heiko Pälike. "We show that the past 35 million years can be subdivided in three intervals, each with its specific climate-carbon cycle modus operandi." On average, the authors found oxygen isotopes to lead carbon isotope variations. This means that, under natural conditions, climate variations are largely regulating global carbon cycle dynamics. However, the research team focused on times when the opposite was the case. Indeed, De Vleeschouwer and colleagues found a few examples of ancient periods during which the carbon cycle drove climate change on approximately 100,000-year timescales, just as it is the case now on much shorter timescales - "but then of course without human intervention," states Pälike.

During the oldest interval, between 35 and 26 million years ago, the carbon cycle took the lead over climate change mostly during periods of climate stability. "Periods of climate stability in the geologic record often have an astronomical cause. When the Earth's orbit around the sun is close to a perfect circle, seasonal insolation extremes are truncated and more equable climates are enforced," explains David De Vleeschouwer. "Between 35 and 26 million years ago, such astronomical configuration would have been favourable for a temporal expansion of the Antarctic ice sheet. We propose that under such a scenario, the intensity of glacial erosion and subsequent rock weathering increased. This is important, because the weathering of silicate rocks removes CO2 from the atmosphere, and thus ultimately controls the greenhouse effect."

But around 26 million years ago, the modus operandi radically changed. The carbon cycle took control over climate at times of climate volatility, not stability. "We believe this change traces back to the uplift of the Himalayan mountains and a monsoon-dominated climate state. When seasonal insolation extremes are amplified through an eccentric Earth orbit, monsoons can become truly intense. Stronger monsoons permit more chemical weathering, the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere and thus a carbon-cycle control over climate."

The mechanisms proposed by the authors not only explain the observed patterns in carbon and oxygen isotopes, they also provide new ideas as to how the climate system and the carbon cycle interacted through time. "Some hypotheses need further testing with numerical climate and carbon cycle models, but the process-level understanding presented in this work is important because it provides a glimpse at the machinery of our planet under boundary conditions that are fundamentally different from today's," says De Vleeschouwer. Moreover, this work also provides scenarios that can be used to evaluate the ability of climate-carbon cycle models when they are pushed to the extreme scenarios of the geologic past.

Immune cells that can recognise residual HIV-infected cells in people living with HIV (PLWH) who take antiretroviral therapy (ART) remain active for years, says a new study published today in eLife.

The findings also suggest the majority of these immune cells, called CD8+ T cells, should have the capacity to detect the HIV-infected cells that drive HIV-1 rebound following interruptions to treatment. This insight could contribute to the development of new curative strategies against HIV infection.

ART has transformed HIV-1 from a fatal disease to a chronic condition in PLWH. However, it must be taken by those with the infection for the rest of their lives, as interrupting treatment often allows the virus to rebound within weeks. This rebound results from cells harbouring HIV-1 DNA that is integrated into the human genome.

"While more than 95% of proviral DNA is unable to replicate and reactivate HIV-1, the remaining fraction that we define in our study as the 'HIV-1 reservoir' maintains its ability to produce infectious virus particles and cause viral rebound," explains lead author Joanna Warren, Postdoctoral Investigator at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, US. "The largest and most well-characterised HIV-1 reservoir resides in 'resting' CD4+ T cells, which circulate in the blood and are long-lived."

There are a couple of strategies to allow people with HIV-1 to stop ART without viral rebound. Both approaches may harness HIV-1-specific CD8+ T cells to achieve the reduction or elimination of the HIV-1 reservoir. However, variations (or mutations) in viral particles that exist in the HIV-1 reservoir may limit the capacity of these T cells to recognise and clear virus-infected cells, meaning the cells can escape detection and go on to cause viral rebound. "In our study, we wanted to determine the frequency and patterns of T-cell escape mutations in the HIV-1 reservoir of people who are on ART," Warren says.

To do this, the team measured HIV-1-specific T-cell responses and isolated reservoir virus in 25 PLWH who are on ART. Of these participants, four started on ART during acute HIV-1 infection, which means virus levels were controlled early, while the other 21 started on ART during chronic HIV-1 infection, which means considerable virus mutation occurred before virus levels were controlled.

In the HIV-1 proteome (the entire set of proteins expressed by the virus) for each participant, the team identified T-cell epitopes (regions of proteins that trigger an immune response). They sequenced HIV-1 'outgrowth' viruses from resting CD4+ T cells and tested mutations in T-cell epitopes for their effect on the size of the T-cell response. These strategies revealed that the majority (68%) of T-cell epitopes did not harbour any detectable escape mutations, meaning they could be recognised by circulating T cells.

"Our findings show that the majority of HIV-1-specific T cells in people on ART can detect HIV viruses that have the capacity to rebound following treatment interruption," concludes senior author Nilu Goonetilleke, a faculty member at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "This suggests that T cells likely help to control viral rebound and could be leveraged in future treatment strategies against HIV."

Only about one in every 170 children take them. But "orphan drugs" accounted for 1 in every 15 private insurance dollars spent on children's health care in the United States in 2018, according to a new study. That's up 65% from just five years before.

Even though insurance companies pay much of the cost of high-priced orphan drugs that treat rare childhood diseases, families' share of the cost has risen rapidly.

In fact, the study shows that out-of-pocket costs for these families were higher than those faced by adults who also take orphan drugs.

Some families spend thousands of dollars each year to buy orphan drugs, which are drugs that have received a special designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. About 1 in 8 families paid more than $2,000 a year in 2018 - double the percentage who spent that much in 2013.

The study, published in the October issue of the journal Health Affairs by researchers from the University of Michigan and Boston University, looks at private insurer payments and out-of-pocket spending on 526 orphan drugs. It used a database that every year included data about the drug costs of 4.4 to 5.8 million children age 17 and under.

The special FDA "orphan" designation is designed to incentivize drug companies to develop treatments for rare conditions. A company that receives the designation for its product has a greater amount of time when it has the exclusive rights to market the product and fend off competitors.

Certain drugs drove most of the increase

The researchers report that the prices for small-molecule drugs drove much of the increase in orphan drug spending, with a 162% rise in five years, compared with 16% for biologic drugs, which are derived from living organisms.

Just three drugs approved for the same condition account for more than 23% of all spending on orphan drugs for privately insured children in 2018, the analysis shows. All three - sold as Norditropin, Humatrope and Genotropin - were originally developed to boost the height of children with growth hormone deficiency.

But other research has shown that many children who don't have this rare condition also receive these three drugs through off-label prescribing aimed at boosting their height.

There are no clear guidelines for determining which children should receive the drugs, and insurance companies vary widely in their decisions about covering the cost of the drugs for such uses.

In some patients who died with severe COVID-19 and respiratory failure, a jelly was formed in the lungs. Researchers have now established what the active agent in the jelly is and thanks to that, this new discovery can now be the key to new effective therapies. This according to a new study at Umeå University, Sweden.

"There are already therapies that either slow down the body's production of this jelly or breaks down the jelly through an enzyme. Our findings can also explain why cortisone seems to have an effect on COVID-19," says Urban Hellman, researcher at Umeå University.

When performing lung scans on critically ill patients with COVID-19 infection, medical professionals have been able to see white patches. Additionally, the autopsies of some deceased COVID-19 patients have shown that the lungs were filled with a clear liquid jelly, much resembling the lungs of someone who has drowned. It was previously unknown where this jelly originated from.

Now though, a group of researchers at the Translational Research Centre at Umeå University have shown that the jelly consists of the substance hyaluronan, which is a polysaccharide in the glycosaminoglycan group.

The presence of hyaluronan is normal in the human body, with various functions in different tissues, but it generally acts as a useful characteristic in the connective tissue. Not least, hyaluronan is involved in the early stages of wound healing. Hyaluronan is also produced synthetically in the beauty industry for lip augmentation and anti-wrinkle treatments.

Since hyaluronan can bind large amounts of water in its web of long molecules, it forms a jelly-like substance. And it is this process that runs riot in the alveoli of COVID-19 patients' lungs resulting in the patient needing ventilator care and, in worst case, dies from respiratory failure.

Currently, a drug called Hymecromone is used to slow down the production of hyaluronan in other diseases such as gallbladder attacks. There is also an enzyme that can effectively break down hyaluronan. As an example, this enzyme can be used in the event that an unsuccessful beauty treatment needs to be terminated abruptly.

Even cortisone reduces the production of hyaluronan. In a British study, preliminary data shows positive effects on treatments with the cortisone drug Dexamethasone in severely ill COVID-19 patients.

"It has previously been assumed that the promising preliminary results would be linked to the general anti-inflammatory properties of cortisone, but in addition to those beliefs, cortisone may also reduce the production of hyaluronan, which may reduce the amount of jelly in the lungs," says Urban Hellman.

The effects of cancer treatment on a patient's body are easy to see, whether it is a lack of hair on their head, sores on their skin or a look of fatigue on their face. And while there has been a lot of discussion around these impacts, a new study looks at just how much the stress of financial hardship caused by cancer care and treatment can affect a patient's emotional, mental and physical well-being.

"There has been increasing awareness of the potential for oncology care to result in long-term financial burdens and financial toxicity to patients and their families," said Dr. Steven Coughlin, Interim Head for the Division of Epidemiology in the Department of Population Health Sciences at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University. "About 28% to 48% of cancer survivors experience financial toxicity based upon monetary measures and 16% to 73% experience financial toxicity based upon subjective measures."

Coughlin, along with Dr. Jorge Cortes, director of the Georgia Cancer Center at Augusta University, Dr. Martha Tingen, associate director of the Cancer Prevention, Control and Population Health program at the Cancer Center, and Dr. Deepak Nag Ayyala, who served as the study's biostatistician, submitted a questionnaire about financial distress to 1,000 randomly selected breast cancer patients who were treated for the disease and had completed primary therapy. They interviewed the patients using a self-administered questionnaire looking for answers to whether patients were less able to provide for the financial needs of their family, had difficulty meeting their medical expenses, did not have money to cover the cost of their co-pay for medical visits and did not have money to cover the cost of their co-pay for medications. Each question was followed by three responses, "not a problem," "somewhat a problem," or "a severe problem." A total of 164 women completed the questionnaire and returned their responses. They published their findings, "Financial Distress Among Breast Cancer Survivors" in the journal Current Cancer Reports in August.

"Looking at the results, about 8.6% of the respondents reported 'being less able to provide for the financial needs of their family' was a severe problem," Coughlin said. "Nearly 14.4% said 'difficulty in meeting medical expenses' was a severe problem. Approximately 8.4% said 'no money for cost of or co-payment for medical visits' was a severe problem. And, around 8.4% answered that 'no money for cost of or co-payment for medicine(s)' was a severe problem."

"I think the concept of financial distress is an important aspect of cancer care that I do not think we've addressed enough historically," Cortes said. "We know that as the Food and Drug Administration approves newer and better drugs for breast cancer treatment, there is frequently an increasing cost with newer drugs. And with some of those therapies having to be taken over a longer period, it can increase the level and length of financial stress."

The team hopes their findings will educate oncologists across the country about the need to discuss financial distress with patients and options they have to help with the costs associated with their care. At the Georgia Cancer Center, there is a nurse navigator and a social worker patients can meet with to find foundations and organizations that can help cover some of the costs of medical visits and medications used in their treatment.

"At the Georgia Cancer Center, we have a higher population of people living in rural areas with less access to care," Cortes said. "These people may not have the financial means to cover some of the costs of their care. So, we want to work with them to share information about financial stress and entities they can reach out to for assistance."