Culture

The Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have designed and additively manufactured a first-of-its-kind aluminum device that enhances the capture of carbon dioxide emitted from fossil fuel plants and other industrial processes.

Solutions for reducing global emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases such as CO2 address the continued use of low-cost, domestic fossil fuel resources while mitigating potential climate impacts.

The team tested the novel circular device, which integrates a heat exchanger with a mass-exchanging contactor, inside a 1-meter-tall by 8-inch-wide absorption column consisting of seven commercial stainless-steel packing elements. The 3D-printed intensified device was installed in the top half of the column between the packing elements.

Additive manufacturing made it possible to have a heat exchanger within the column, as part of the packing elements, without disturbing the geometry, thus maximizing the contact surface area between the gas and liquid streams.

"We call the device intensified because it enables enhanced mass transfer (the amount of CO2 transferred from a gas to a liquid state) through in-situ cooling," said Costas Tsouris, one of ORNL's lead researchers on the project. "Controlling the temperature of absorption is critical to capturing carbon dioxide."

ORNL's device focuses on a key challenge in conventional absorption of carbon using solvents: the process typically produces heat that can limit its overall efficiency. By using additive manufacturing, researchers were able to custom design a multifunctional device that greatly improves the process efficiency by removing excess heat while keeping costs low.

Absorption, one of the most commonly used and economical methods for capturing CO2, places a flue-gas stream from smokestacks in contact with a solvent, such as monoethanolamine, known as MEA, or other amine solutions, that can react with the gas.

When CO2 interacts with the solvent, it produces heat that can diminish the capability of the solvent to react with CO2. Reducing this localized temperature spike in the column through cooling channels helps increase the efficiency of CO2 capture.

"Prior to the design of our 3D printed device, it was difficult to implement a heat exchanger concept into the CO2 absorption column because of the complex geometry of the column's packing elements. With 3D printing, the mass exchanger and heat exchanger can co-exist within a single multifunctional, intensified device," said ORNL's Xin Sun, the project's principal investigator.

Embedded coolant channels were added inside the packing element's corrugated sheets to allow for heat exchange capabilities. The final prototype measured 20.3 centimeters in diameter, 14.6 centimeters in height, with a total fluid volume capacity of 0.6 liters. Aluminum was chosen as the initial material for the intensified device because of its excellent printability, high thermal conductivity, and structural strength.

"The device can also be manufactured using other materials, such as emerging high thermal conductivity polymers and metals. Additive manufacturing methods like 3D printing are often cost-effective over time because it takes less effort and energy to print a part versus traditional manufacturing methods," said Lonnie Love, a lead manufacturing researcher at ORNL, who designed the intensified device.

The prototype demonstrated that it was capable of substantially enhancing carbon dioxide capture with the amine solution, which was chosen because its highly reactive to CO2.

In results published in the AIChE Journal, ORNL researchers conducted two separate experiments -- one that varied the CO2-containing gas flow rate and one that varied the MEA solvent flow rate. The experiments aimed to determine which operating conditions would produce the greatest benefit to carbon capture efficiency.

Both experiments produced substantial improvements in the carbon capture rate and demonstrated that the magnitude of the capture consistently depended on the gas flow rates. The study also showed a peak in capture at 20% of carbon dioxide concentration, with percent of increase in capture rate ranging from 2.2% to 15.5% depending on the operating conditions.

"The success of this 3D printed intensified device represents an unprecedented opportunity in further enhancing carbon dioxide absorption efficiency and demonstrates proof of concept," Sun said.

Future research will focus on optimizing operating conditions and device geometry to produce additional improvements in the carbon capture absorption process.

More than 650 wildfires are blazing in California after unprecedented lightning strikes, storms, and a heatwave that has set new records in the state and NASA's Terra satellite captured the smoke-engulfed state on Aug. 24, 2020.

The two largest fires still burning the state are both named after the firefighting units that are battling them and the fact that both began with lightning strikes. The LNU Lightning Complex and the SCU Lightning Complex are both located in northern California. The LNU (Lake Napa Unit) Lightning Complex has burned 347,630 acres and is 21% contained and the SCU (Santa Clara Unit) Lightning Complex has consumed 343,965 acres and is 10% contained according to the CAL Fire website. These two fires are now second and third on the list of California's largest wildfires.

Even discounting these fires there are still hundreds of other fires burning across the state as can be seen in this Terra satellite image taken on Aug. 24, 2020. Red dots litter the landscape designating areas which are most likely fires--so many fires, in fact, that the dots blur together and individual fire are no longer visible.

More insidious than the fires is the smoke that rises from the landscape. This aerosol image below shows not only California being affected by the heavy smoke as seen in the visible image above, but the smoke has traveled across much of the United States affecting areas from California all the way to Minnesota and Nebraska and air currents will undoubtedly carry the smoke across the entire U.S.

The aerosol index provides information about the presence of particles in the air. According to NASA Worldview: "The Aerosol Index is a unitless range from =5.00, where 5.0 [deepest red] indicates heavy concentrations of aerosols that could reduce visibility or impact human health. The Aerosol Index layer is useful for identifying and tracking the long-range transport of volcanic ash from volcanic eruptions, smoke from wildfires or biomass burning events and dust from desert dust storms, even tracking over clouds and areas of snow and ice." In this image deep red areas can be seen in California but can also be seen as far east as Minnesota meaning the heavy aerosols do not necessarily diminish as they travel on the air currents.

When doctors are the same race as their patients, it can sometimes forge a sense of comfort that helps to reduce anxiety and pain, particularly for Black patients, new research from the University of Miami suggests.

In a study recently published in the academic journal Pain Medicine, and led by Steven R. Anderson, recent psychology Ph.D. graduate, and Elizabeth Losin, assistant professor of psychology, groups of non-Hispanic white, Hispanic, and Black patients participated in a simulated doctor's appointment. Patients were given a mildly painful series of heat stimulations on their arm by a medical trainee playing the role of a doctor to simulate a painful medical procedure. Participants indicated how intense their pain was throughout the procedure and researchers also measured the patients' physiological responses to the painful experience using sensors on the patients' hands.

Some of the patients were paired with a doctor who identified as the same race and ethnicity as they did, which is called "racial/ethnic concordance," while others were not. After the experience, researchers compared the pain levels of the group paired with same race/ethnicity doctors with those paired with a doctor of a different race/ethnicity. The most intriguing results came from the Black patients who were paired with Black doctors.

"Black patients paired with Black doctors reported experiencing less pain across several types of measures than Black patients paired with Hispanic or non-Hispanic white doctors," said Losin, who leads the Social and Cultural Neuroscience lab.

Additionally, Losin said that data from the sensors showed the Black patients' physical responses to pain were also lower when they were paired with a doctor of their own race.

"This provides some evidence that Black patients were showing a benefit of having a doctor of their own race at multiple levels--showing pain relief in both their communication and their physiology," Losin said.

The idea to investigate the role of racial concordance in the doctor-patient relationship came from previous research that shows that there are major disparities between racial and ethnic groups in terms of the level of pain experienced from medical conditions and procedures, according to the researchers.

Typically, Black and Hispanic populations report more pain from medical conditions and in pain research studies, compared to non-Hispanic white populations. Also, previous research has suggested that when a patient has a doctor who shares their demographics in terms of gender, race, or language, it can influence peripheral health outcomes like the patient's satisfaction and their adherence to medication. That led Losin's team to investigate whether racial/ethnic concordance between doctor and patient would go deeper to affect the patient's pain level as well.

"There are fewer studies about doctor-patient concordance and its effect on direct health outcomes like pain," Losin said.

To understand why Black patients experienced reduced pain and pain-related bodily responses with a doctor of the same race, the researchers delved into some of the introductory surveys given to the patient participants, Anderson noted, and found a big clue.

"The factor that really differentiated the Black patients from the other groups was that Black patients were much more likely to say they had experienced racial or ethnic discrimination or were currently concerned about it," he said.

What's more, the Black patients who reported experiencing and worrying more about discrimination showed the greatest reductions in their bodily responses to pain when they had doctors of their own race, Anderson said.

"Together these findings suggest that perhaps one reason why Black patients may have had a reduced physiological response to pain when they had Black doctors was because they were less anxious about the possibility of being discriminated against," Losin said. "We know that anxiety is closely tied to pain."

Although non-Hispanic white and Hispanic patients were included in the study as well, whether or not they had a doctor of their own race didn't seem to make a difference for their pain. This was what the study authors expected for the white patients but found surprising for Hispanic patients, who also have been found to report more pain than non-Hispanic whites in previous research studies.

One possible reason Hispanic patients didn't show the same pain reduction benefit of having an own-race doctor as Black patients did, is that on average the Hispanic patients didn't actually perceive the Hispanic doctors to be more similar to them in terms of their race or ethnicity than the Black or non-Hispanic white doctors. This is likely due to the high cultural and national heterogeneity among Hispanic/Latino Americans and suggests more research is needed into what factors related to the doctor-patient relationship may help decrease pain for Hispanic patients.

Losin and Anderson said their study highlights a potential benefit of having more Black physicians in the medical profession: it could mean a reduction in pain disparities.

As of 2019, only around 5 percent of physicians identified as African American and Hispanic respectively, which means that most Black patients will rarely get to experience the benefits of seeing a physician that looks like them and understands their life experiences.

"Physician diversity initiatives are often seen as beneficial for improving patient comfort and satisfaction, but with our study we have evidence that there may be direct health consequences to not having a diverse work force as well," Anderson said. "Our study speaks to the importance of physician diversity in improving health outcomes."

In the wake of the George Floyd killing and other incidents of racially motivated police violence, communities across the country are examining the practices of their local police departments more closely. Some are undertaking comprehensive training and education programs to address racial bias on their forces.

New research conducted in Vermont shows that, while anti-bias police trainings resulted in small improvements in some police departments in the state, they did not by and large alter police behavior.

The research, conducted by University of Vermont Economics professor Stephanie Seguino, Cornell University visiting associate professor Nancy Brooks and Pat Autilio, data analyst, examined data from eight Vermont police departments and builds on a 2017 statewide study of police traffic stops in Vermont.

In the earlier study, using 2015 data, researchers found that Black drivers were four times more likely and Hispanic drivers three times more likely to be searched by police than white drivers. Despite the higher search rate, Black and Hispanic drivers were less likely to be found with contraband compared to white drivers. Arrest rates of Black drivers were also disproportionately higher.

The new studies examine police stops by agencies in seven Vermont towns and cities and by the Vermont State Police, using four additional years of data, including 2019.

The studies found that racial disparities in traffic stop outcomes have persisted, with Black drivers still much more likely to be stopped and searched than white drivers and less likely, in all but one town, to be found with contraband during a search.

In addition, stop rates for all drivers were found to vary widely across agencies, which affects the magnitude of the disparate impact on Black drivers.

In some cases, disparities have widened since the 2017 study was published.

For town by town data, see table at the end end of the press release here: https://www.uvm.edu/uvmnews/news/new-study-despite-years-training-police-departments-vermont-still-exhibit-widespread

The fact that such little progress has been made can be disheartening but speaks to the depth of the challenge. "Racial bias in the United States is systemic, and negative stereotypes about people of color are deeply rooted," Seguino said. "Without sustained attention and commitment, the problem is very difficult to eradicate."

The research studies did show evidence of modest progress in some police departments.

The Vermont State Police has been a leader in investing in training and the use of data; after the earlier study, the agency dramatically improved the quality of its data collection to detect racial disparities. While the 2019 data for the state police showed a widening of some disparities, that followed several years of gradual declines in disparate outcomes. South Burlington has also seen declines in arrest and search rate disparities.

While the earlier study prompted some agencies to engage in anti-bias training and other measures to address racial disparities in policing, other agencies across the state have been slow to act on the racial disparities found in the data.

A key factor in reducing unequal treatment is leadership's commitment to eliminating unjustified disparities and addressing officers' racial bias," Seguino said. "Colonel Birmingham of the Vermont State Police and Chief Burke of South Burlington Police Department have articulated that commitment. The Vermont State Police has gone a step further by using traffic stop data as a way to hold a mirror up to itself, sharing results with its troopers, and linking performance evaluations of its commanders to their effectiveness in promoting bias-free policing.

The data suggest that such efforts show promise but may require more time to bear fruit in closing racial gaps. "Recent attention to the problem of anti-Black bias in policing," Autilio said, "has the potential to hasten change."

The fact that the traffic stop disparities are widespread in Vermont, a state known for its progressive attitudes and policies, is telling, Brooks said.

"It makes clear that racial bias and negative racial stereotypes permeate our country, regardless of where you are," she said. "No state is immune."

CHICAGO: Surgical patients are more likely to experience a postoperative infection if they have low health literacy, which is a limited capacity to understand and act on health information, according to results of a new study presented at the American College of Surgeons (ACS) 2020 Quality and Safety Conference VIRTUAL.

The study was performed by researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Hospital who looked at data from 270 patients undergoing colon and rectal operations. They found the odds of having an infectious complication within a month after the operation were 4.5 times higher in patients with low health literacy compared with patients whose health literacy was adequate.

"It's important to understand that patients with limited health literacy might be at higher risk for an infection after surgery, so we can start to understand why and design interventions and tools to better support those patients," said lead investigator Lauren Theiss, MD, a third-year surgical resident at UAB School of Medicine.

Low or limited health literacy is common among U.S. adults and may affect health outcomes in many ways, according to the government's Healthy People 2020.1 Although patient-level factors such as education, socioeconomic status, older age, and language and cultural barriers can contribute to low health literacy,2 the complexity of the health information that patients receive also contributes to the problem.3

"For many patients, the surgical journey can be very confusing," said Daniel Chu, MD, FACS, a colorectal surgeon at UAB Medicine and the study's senior investigator.

Impact of study results

Dr. Chu said their research findings help fill the gaps in surgeons' knowledge about the relationship of low health literacy to surgical outcomes.

The authors of prior studies suggest that low health literacy is linked to a longer hospitalization4 and an increased rate of minor complications.5 Their new study findings, Dr. Theiss said, show that "some of the infections are very, very serious."

Infections ranged from pneumonia, septic shock, and deep-space infections inside the belly to superficial wound infections and urinary tract infections.

Infections are among the most common preventable postoperative complications, the Patient Safety Network reports.6

Besides 30-day complications, the investigators collected data on the length of hospital stay, readmissions, and deaths recorded from 2018 to 2019 in the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP®) database. The NSQIP database is the leading nationally validated, risk-adjusted, outcomes-based program to measure and improve the quality of surgical care.

Using NSQIP data and medical records, the research team also studied patients' compliance rates with the hospital's enhanced recovery program (ERP). This program employs a collection of best practices that global research findings show improve surgical outcomes, Dr. Theiss said.

The researchers assessed health literacy using the four-question Brief Health Literacy Screening Tool. Among 270 patients, most (78.9 percent, or 213) had adequate health literacy, 38 patients (14.1 percent) had marginal health literacy, and 19 patients (7 percent) had low health literacy, the researchers reported.

Dr. Theiss said that there was a significant difference in the rate of infectious complications but no statistically significant difference in other complications or outcomes analyzed. Whereas postoperative infection occurred in 13.6 percent of patients with adequate health literacy, 36.8 percent of those with low health literacy had an infection postoperatively, according to the study abstract. After controlling for multiple factors that may influence infection rates, the researchers still found a higher risk of postoperative infection in patients with low health literacy (odds ratio, 4.49).

They were unable to determine from the dataset whether infections occurred in the hospital or at home after the patients left the hospital, she said.

Surprisingly, ERP compliance did not differ by health literacy level, including for preoperative bowel preparation, Dr. Theiss said. However, she explained that they studied the rate of prescription of bowel-emptying preparations, not patients' compliance with using the bowel preparation. If low health literacy patients have difficulty correctly taking the bowel preparation, it could place them at higher risk of infections after surgery.

Creating a health-literate surgical program

The UAB surgery department is working to improve surgical patient outcomes by "creating a more health-literate surgical program," Dr. Theiss said. "Our goal is not to modify a patient's health literacy, but modify the way that we interact and communicate with patients and provide them with health information."

They are creating this program in several ways, she said. They revised patient education and discharge materials to be more easily understandable and more visual. Also, through a patient engagement app, some patients receive helpful educational content and checklists throughout their surgical experience. With permission, the researchers are recording and studying patient-surgeon conversations during visits to find ways to teach providers how to better communicate with patients.

Furthermore, if patients do not understand the health information the surgeon has provided, they should communicate that to the provider, Dr. Theiss said. "But the burden should not be on the patient. As providers, we should interact with patients assuming they have limited health literacy. It's our responsibility to engage patients and make sure they understand what's being communicated to them."

Many health literacy toolkits are available, Dr. Chu said, and interventions can be as simple as a surgeon speaking more slowly and illustrating a surgical procedure by drawing it on a piece of paper.

"The beautiful thing about health literacy is that interventions can be done without a lot of money or new technologies," he said.

A re-analysis of fossils from one of Europe's most significant paleontological sites reveals a wide diversity of animal species, including a large terrestrial monkey, short-necked giraffe, rhinos and saber-toothed cats.

These and other species roamed the open grasslands of Eastern Europe during the early Pleistocene, approximately 2 million years ago. Ultimately, the researchers hope the fossils will provide clues about how and when early humans migrated to Eurasia from Africa. Reconstructions of past environments like this also could help researchers better understand future climate change.

"My colleagues and I are excited to draw attention back to the fossil site of Gr?unceanu and the fossil potential of the Olte? River Valley of Romania," said Claire Terhune, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Arkansas. "It's such a diverse faunal community. We found multiple animals that hadn't been clearly identified in the area before, and many that are no longer found in Europe at all. Of course, we think these findings alone are interesting, but they also have important implications for early humans moving into the continent at that time."

About 124 miles west of the Romanian capital of Bucharest, the Olte? River Valley, including the the important site of Gr?unceanu, is one of Eastern Europe's richest fossil deposits. Many Olte? Valley fossil sites, including Gr?unceanu, were discovered in the 1960s after landslides caused in part by deforestation due to increased agricultural activity in the area.

Archeologists and paleontologists from the Emil Racovi?? Institute of Speleology in Bucharest excavated the sites soon after they were discovered. Fossils were recovered and stored at the institute, and scholarly publications about the sites flourished in the 1970s and 1980s. But interest in these fossils and sites waned over the past 20 to 30 years, in part because many records of the excavations and fossils were lost.

Since 2012, the international team, including Terhune and researchers from Romania, the United States, Sweden and France, has focused on this important fossil region. Their work has included extensive identification of fossils at the institute and additional field work.

In addition to the species mentioned above, the researchers identified fossil remains of animals similar to modern-day moose, bison, deer, horse, ostrich, pig and many others. They also identified a fossil species of pangolin, which were thought to have existed in Europe during the early Pleistocene but had not been solidly confirmed until now. Today, pangolins, which look like the combination of an armadillo and anteater and are among the most trafficked animals in the world, are found only in Asia and Africa.

HOUSTON - (Aug. 24, 2020) - A chameleonlike protein in neurons can change its mind, and in the process change our brains.

Scientists at Rice University and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) uncovered new clues in the protein CPEB3 as part of their dogged pursuit of the mechanism that allows humans to have long-term memories.

The study by Rice theoretical biophysicist Peter Wolynes and Neal Waxham, a neurobiologist at UTHealth's McGovern Medical School, provides insight into a positive feedback loop between forming the actin backbones that give dendritic spines their shape and flexibility and the actin-binding domains in CPEB3, a functional prion that binds RNA which also forms long-lived aggregates that may indeed store the stuff that memories are made of.

Protein-folding models by Wolynes and his group at Rice's Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP) and experiments at UTHealth turned up previously unknown structural details for CPEB3 and how it binds to actin, as reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper.

In the process, they also examined the key role played by a protein known as SUMO, a regulator that attaches to and detaches from other proteins in cells to modify their functions. The researchers suspect it helps to regulate when and how CPEB3's chameleonlike ends (the N-terminus and C-terminus) bind to either SUMO or the flexible, filamentous actin (f-actin) spines in dendritic spikes.

CPEB3 proteins are soluble when attached to SUMO, which also buries their actin-binding sites. But during synaptic activity, they can be "deSUMOylated" and become available to bind with the hydrophobic binding pockets along f-actin filaments.

The models show that when attracted to actin, CPEB3 transitions from a coiled coil of helices into a beta sheet structure that "zips" into a hairpin configuration that allows it to aggregate with other CPEB3 proteins.

Upon aggregation, CPEB3 appears to translate its target messenger RNAs, which include actin mRNA that strengthens the synaptic junctions essential to memory, completing the positive loop.

"This is a more ambitious project than the actin-CaM kinase study, where we also simulated a really huge actin system with a really huge protein," Wolynes said. In that study, published a year ago, CTBP researchers modeled how a central protein (CaMKII) holds parallel actin filaments together, a state that could be visualized in an electron microscope by Waxham's lab.

Now the researchers are defining the structural details that allow CPEB3 to bind to either actin or SUMO, but not both. "One of the main aspects of this paper is to reconcile those two quite different parts of the story," he said. "We think the CPEB terminals are chameleonlike because they let the molecule choose whether it will interact with the SUMO or with the actin.

"We're not to the end of the story yet," Wolynes said. "But the latest results put us in a reasonable place to say more about the mechanism."

fibrillation manage their symptoms, according to research presented today at ESC Congress 2020.1

Atrial fibrillation is the most common heart rhythm disorder. One in four middle-aged adults in Europe and the US will develop the condition, which causes 20-30% of all strokes and increases the risk of death by 1.5-fold in men and 2-fold in women. Reduced quality of life is common, and 10-40% of patients are hospitalised each year.2

Symptoms of atrial fibrillation include palpitations, racing or irregular pulse, shortness of breath, tiredness, chest pain and dizziness.

"The symptoms of atrial fibrillation can be distressing. They come and go, causing many patients to feel anxious and limiting their ability to live a normal life," said study author Dr. Naresh Sen of HG SMS Hospital, Jaipur, India.

This study investigated whether yoga could ease symptoms in patients with atrial fibrillation. The study enrolled 538 patients in 2012 to 2017. Patients served as their own controls. For 12 weeks they did no yoga, then for 16 weeks patients attended 30-minute yoga sessions every other day which included postures and breathing. During the yoga period, patients were also encouraged to practice the movements and breathing at home on a daily basis.

During both study periods, symptoms and episodes of atrial fibrillation were recorded in a diary. Some patients also wore a heart monitor to verify atrial fibrillation episodes. Patients completed an anxiety and depression survey3 and a questionnaire4 assessing their ability to do daily activities and socialise, energy levels and mood. Heart rate and blood pressure were also measured. The researchers then compared outcomes between the yoga and non-yoga periods.

During the 16-week yoga period, patients experienced significant improvements in all areas compared to the 12-week non-yoga period. For example, during the non-yoga period, patients experienced an average of 15 symptomatic episodes of atrial fibrillation compared to eight episodes during the yoga period. Average blood pressure was 11/6 mmHg lower after yoga training.

Dr. Sen said: "Our study suggests that yoga has wide-ranging physical and mental health benefits for patients with atrial fibrillation and could be added on top of usual therapies."

WASHINGTON -- Voters who express prejudice against minorities and women are still more likely to support candidates who most closely align with their ideologies, regardless of the race or sex of such candidates, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

"There is some evidence that has already cast doubt on the conventional view that racial and gender prejudice hurts politicians who are Black and female," said author Hui Bai, a doctoral candidate at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. "This research shows that how citizens' prejudice plays a role in their political preferences is more nuanced than many people think. Overall, the perceived ideology of the candidate determines whether the candidate will be popular among racists and sexists. Whether the candidate is Black or white, a man or a woman, does not seem to matter."

The research was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Bai analyzed data from six surveys, three of which were nationally representative, comprising more than 44,800 individuals. Some of the surveys were conducted by independent third parties, and others were partially designed and/or conducted by Bai himself. Each survey included a series of questions designed to measure racism and sexism. For example, the surveys asked participants to rate how unintelligent they think Black people are and how favorably they feel about Black people as ways of measuring racism. To measure sexism, the surveys asked questions such as whether participants think women's place should be in the home as opposed to having a role in society equal to men.

The surveys also asked participants to rate their support of politicians. Some surveys asked about real-life politicians: Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Ben Carson, Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina. Other surveys asked participants to rate their support for hypothetical candidates. Bai also looked at national survey data collected during election cycles from 1972 to 2016 that measured support for congressional and presidential candidates and included items that measured racism and sexism.

Across all the surveys, participants who scored high in prejudice were significantly more likely to support both real and hypothetical conservative candidates, which Bai did not find surprising. What was interesting was that the candidates' race and gender did not seem to matter at all. There was no significant change in support from prejudiced participants when the conservative candidate was Black or a woman compared with when the conservative candidate was white or a man.

"When it comes to supporting a political candidate, the results suggest that ideology is the primary factor that determines whether citizens' prejudice benefits or undermines their support for the politicians, not the politicians' demographic background," said Bai.

"The great insight of this research is that it gets us past the idea that the chief political consequences of racism and sexism are merely to make voters more hostile to candidates of color and to candidates who are women," said Christopher Federico, PhD, Bai's doctoral adviser at UMN. "Rather, the results pretty consistently indicate that racist and sexist attitudes are associated with support for candidates who are less sympathetic to egalitarian goals or who promise to preserve a status quo that includes racial and gender inequality."

However, one type of demographic that still played a role was religious identity. In the last survey, Bai changed the items to measure prejudice against Muslims and then asked participants to rate their support for hypothetical candidates who were either liberal or conservative, and either Muslim or Christian. He found that while, once again, participants with greater prejudice were more likely to support the conservative candidate, there was a significant decrease in support for the Muslim candidates compared with the Christian candidates. This may be because religious identity, unlike race or sex, is an ideology itself, according to Bai.

DALLAS - Aug. 20, 2020 - A pregnant mother who tested positive for COVID-19 transmitted the virus causing the disease to her prematurely born baby, UT Southwestern physicians report. Both were treated and recovered.

The case, detailed in an article published last month in The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, adds to a growing body of evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 virus can be transmitted in utero. It also underscores the importance of limiting COVID-19 exposure for pregnant women.

"Especially with the rising prevalence of the virus here in Texas, it's very important to bring to the forefront this finding that mothers and infants can be affected by COVID-19, transmission can occur during pregnancy, and pregnant mothers need to protect themselves," says Amanda Evans, M.D., an assistant professor of pediatrics specializing in infectious diseases at UT Southwestern and senior author of the paper. "We don't know whether there are any long-term effects of COVID-19 infection in babies."

Although more than 20 million people around the world have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 - the virus that causes COVID-19 - data on how the virus affects pregnant women have been limited. An early study out of Wuhan, China, concluded that SARS-CoV-2 transmission from mother to baby was unlikely, since the researchers found no copies of the virus in any amniotic fluid, umbilical cord blood, or breast milk. But a handful of more recent studies have suggested there may be isolated instances in which such viral transmission does occur during pregnancy.

In the case described in the paper, a woman who was 34 weeks pregnant visited the emergency room with signs of premature labor and was admitted to the COVID unit at Parkland Memorial Hospital when she tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. While she did not have the typical respiratory symptoms associated with COVID-19, she did have a fever and diarrhea, which suggested possible viral infection.

"At that time, we were doing universal testing of anyone with the most common symptoms of COVID-19, including respiratory symptoms and gastrointestinal symptoms" says Wilmer Moreno, M.D., an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UTSW who was involved in the case.

The woman, who did not know how she acquired the virus, remained hospitalized because of her COVID-19 diagnosis. Three days after admission, her water broke. Following an eight-hour labor in early May, she gave birth to a healthy 7-pound, 3-ounce girl.

"The baby really did fine the first 24 hours of life," says Julide Sisman, M.D., an associate professor of pediatrics who cared for the newborn and first author of the paper. "But because she was prematurely born to a COVID-19-positive mother, we did admit her to the NICU in a special area away from other babies."

About 24 hours after birth, the newborn developed a fever that spiked, and she also showed signs of respiratory distress, including an abnormally high breathing rate and lower levels of oxygen in her blood. Sisman and her colleagues ran tests for viruses and bacteria. While other tests came back negative, a COVID-19 test was positive at both 24 and 48 hours after birth.

"At that time, the knowledge we had was that transmission doesn't occur in utero, so we really weren't expecting that at all," says Sisman.

To help pin down how and when the transmission between mother and baby occurred, Dinesh Rakheja, M.D., a UTSW professor of pathology who holds the John Lawrence and Patsy Louise Goforth Chair in Pathology, analyzed the placenta from the pregnancy.

"We found signs of inflammation and evidence that the baby had been stressed," says Rakheja. "And then, to look for the virus, we did tests beyond those routinely done."

He and his colleagues first examined thin slices of the placenta under an electron microscope, spotting structures that looked like viruses. Then they tested small samples of the placenta for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Currently available commercial tests for the COVID-19 virus all rely on bodily fluids, rather than solid tissues, to test for the virus. So Rakheja co-opted a test that had originally been developed for the 2003 SARS virus. Adapted for the new coronavirus, the immunohistochemical test enabled the pathologist to identify the nucleocapsid protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Neither the mother nor the baby had severe enough symptoms to warrant treatment other than oxygen and fluids, and both fully recovered. The baby stayed in the hospital for three weeks and was then released.

"About a week later, I followed up with the family and the baby was doing really great, and still gaining weight," says Evans. "The mom was also doing well."

More data - including not only individual case reports but large cohort studies - are needed to better understand how COVID-19 affects both pregnant women and babies, the physicians agree. At UTSW, the case increased awareness that it's possible for newborns to be born already harboring the virus.

"The fact that this can occur, even if rare, illustrates how important it is to limit exposure for mothers and newborns," says Moreno. "Anything, like telemedicine visits, that can eliminate the need for mom to be around other people will be very helpful."

Six black-naped terns -- a coastal seabird found in the Pacific and Indian Oceans -- have given researchers a glimpse into how they navigate tropical typhoons.

The research team based in Japan published their analysis on May 30 in Marine Biology, a Springer journal.

"Our goal was to examine the migration characteristics of the black-naped terns from the Okinawa Islands," said paper author Jean-Baptiste Thiebot, project researcher at the National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR) in Japan. "The bird is listed as vulnerable by Japan's Ministry of Environment."

Thiebot and the team were specifically interested in finding where the birds spend their winters and how they manage to cross the Philippine Sea. The body of water lays just south of Japan, covering an area of two million square miles that suffers from frequent and strong typhoons.

"The birds have to cross the Philippine Sea during the peak of typhoon season," Thiebot said.

The birds nest near Okinawa in mid-May, lay their eggs in June, and the hatchlings are ready to leave the nest near the end of August. The adults then spend September traveling to their wintering sites south of the Philippine Sea -- but, it appears the time and path of travel depends on typhoon season.

The researchers outfitted a total of 20 terns with geographic logging trackers in 2012 and 2017. Of those 20, the researchers were able to collect movement data from two terns from 2012 to 2014 and from four birds from 2017 to 2018.

"The two birds tracked in years of medium-high typhoon activity from 2012 to 2014 seemed to target a stopover area in the northern Philippines several days after a typhoon hit," Thiebot said. "By contrast, in 2017, no strong typhoon hit in August, and the four study birds departed 23.8 days later, but moved significantly quicker with little or no stopover."

Despite when they left the breeding grounds, the birds always arrived in the Indonesian islands south of the Philippine Sea within four days of October 1.

"The terns seemed to adjust the timing and path of their migration according to the level of typhoon activity," Thiebot said. "It is likely that terns respond to the typhoon activity because the storms modify the birds' feeding conditions at the water surface."

The terns may use environmental cues, such as the low infrasound storms emit, to time their migration, according to Thiebot. The researchers plan to record the infrasound levels at the breeding area to test this hypothesis, and they hope to further study the terns' migration across years of typhoon activity to refine their understanding.

Researchers from the University's National Marine Science Centre have demonstrated that imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid insecticide, can impact the feeding behaviour of prawns in a laboratory environment, leading to nutritional deficiency and reduced flesh quality.

"The sobering thing with this study is that it shows that the exposure of prawns to high concentrations of neonicotinoids can have such a significant impact," said lead author and PhD candidate Peter Butcherine whose study focussed on adult black tiger prawns.

"If they are not well managed, these chemicals have the potential to affect the productivity and sustainability of cultured and capture prawn fisheries."

This latest study builds on Peter's earlier work reviewing the risk of neonicotinoid exposure to the shrimp aquaculture industry where he identified a significant problem with these water-soluble pesticides increasingly being detected in coastal waters worldwide.

Prawns and shrimp are in the same animal phylum (category) as insects and therefore share similarities in the nervous system that is the main target for neonicotinoids, explained Professor Kirsten Benkendorff, co-author and Director of the National Marine Science Centre based at Coffs Harbour.

"This means prawns and shrimp are highly vulnerable if they become exposed to high levels of neonicotinoids, either through contaminated water or feed, which often contains plant-based material," Professor Benkendorff said.

Imidacloprid is an agricultural insecticide used in Australia. Peter's research provides evidence that exposure to imidacloprid, at environmentally-relevant concentrations in food or water, leads to decreased food consumption and a loss of weight, as well as changes in the lipid composition of the flesh.

"This laboratory-based study indicates that cultured and wild prawns could be impacted in areas affected by high levels of neonicotinoid pesticide run-off," Peter said.

Sydney rock oysters are also impacted by imidacloprid, according to the findings of a separate study co-authored by Professor Benkendorff.

"These two studies indicate both crustaceans and molluscs are vulnerable to insecticides, weakening their immune system and leaving them susceptible to disease," Professor Benkendorff said.

Professor Benkendorff said further study is required to understand the range of pesticides in Australian waterways and their impacts on estuarine environments.

"Our research identifies the need for effective management of pesticide use and run-off from intensive agriculture in coastal areas with productive seafood industries," she said.

BEER-SHEVA, Israel...August 24, 2020 - Wastewater containing coronaviruses may be a serious threat, according to a new, global study led by researchers from the Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU).

The new paper, published in Nature Sustainability, by an international collaboration of 35 researchers, evaluates recent studies on coronaviruses in wastewater and previous airborne infectious diseases, including SARS and MERS. The goal is to evaluate potential threats, avenues of research and possible solutions, as well as garner beneficial perspectives for the future.

"There is ample reason to be concerned about how long coronaviruses survive in wastewater and how it impacts natural water sources," says lead author Dr. Edo Bar-Zeev of the BGU Zuckerberg Institute. "Can wastewater contain enough coronaviruses to infect people? The simple truth is that we do not know enough and that needs to be rectified as soon as possible."

Bar-Zeev, and his postdoc student, Anne Bogler, together with other renowned researchers, indicate that sewage leaking into natural watercourses might lead to infection via airborne spray. Similarly, treated wastewater used to fill recreational water facilities, like lakes and rivers, could also become sources of contagion. Lastly, fruits and vegetables irrigated with wastewater that were not properly disinfected could also be an indirect infection route.

The research team recommends immediate, new research to determine the level of potential infection, if any, and how long coronaviruses last in various bodies of water and spray.

"Wastewater treatment plants need to upgrade their treatment protocols and in the near future also advance toward tertiary treatment through micro- and ultra-filtration membranes, which successfully remove viruses," Bar-Zeev and his colleagues say.

At the same time, wastewater can serve as a canary in a coal mine because it can be monitored to track COVID-19 outbreaks. Coronaviruses start showing up in feces before other symptoms like fevers and coughs show up in otherwise asymptomatic people. Regular monitoring, therefore, can give authorities advance warning of hot spots. BGU researchers recently completed a pilot study in Ashkelon, Israel using new methodology to detect and trace the presence of the virus and calculate its concentration to pinpoint emerging COVID-19 hotspots. Other BGU researchers are working on developing water nanofiltration technologies.

The origins of birds and their flight was a major event in the history of life. A wealth of spectacular fossils has demonstrated that birds are theropod dinosaurs, with Pennaraptora being the most relevant subgroup to transition from non-avian dinosaurs to birds. Here we announce the publication of a landmark journal volume on pennaraptoran theropods (Figure 1) edited by HKU Research Assistant Professor Dr. Michael Pittman (Vertebrate Palaeontology Laboratory, Division of Earth and Planetary Science & Department of Earth Sciences) and Prof. Xing Xu of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment (Beijing, China), who both specialise in these animals (see Notes).

Pennaraptora comprises of birds as well as the pennaceous feathered dromaeosaurids ('raptors'), troodontids, scansoriopterygids and oviraptorosaurians (Figures 2 and 3). Fossils and insights from living birds and crocodilians show that many important avian traits originated deep within theropod evolutionary history, accumulating over a significant period of time and portion of the evolutionary tree, often in a complex mosaic way. These traits include 'warm-bloodedness', unique reproductive strategies as well as flight itself. Key features necessary for flight appeared among pennaraptoran theropods including: a long, robust and sideways-facing arm; a refined "flight-ready" brain; and large, vaned flight feathers. Proxies for modern flight capability, modelling work and functional morphology support flight and near-flight capabilities among paravian pennaraptorans, with powered flight evolving independently multiple times.

Breaking new ground in the field

To deepen our understanding of avian and flight origins as well as other important pennaraptoran evolutionary events, the International Pennaraptoran Dinosaur Symposium (IPDS) was held at the University of Hong Kong between March 29 and April 1, 2018, to make substantial advances in our understanding of pennaraptoran palaeobiology and evolution (see Notes). These efforts culminated in a special volume just published in the prestigious journal Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, entitled 'Pennaraptoran Theropod Dinosaurs: Past Progress and New Frontiers', edited by Dr. Pittman and Prof. Xu. "The volume documents past progress, works toward consensus on key unresolved issues, breaks new ground in the field and identifies priority areas for future research", said Dr. Pittman. Asked about who was involved, Prof. Xu replied, "The volume involved 49 experts from more than 10 countries whose views cover much of the current discussion on pennaraptoran palaeobiology and evolution." The volume is made up of 14 chapters organised in three sections:

Section 1. Fossil Record, Systematics, and Biogeography surveys the pennaraptoran fossil record and draws attention to what new discoveries would help to answer pressing questions in the field. It also presents the current state of pennaraptoran evolutionary relationships (Figure 2), providing the context needed to understand pennraptoran evolution. This section includes the first quantitative analysis of the spatial distribution of coelurosaurian theropods through time (palaeobiogeography; Figure 3), which allowed key tectonic drivers of their evolution to be identified.

Section 2. Anatomical Frontiers focuses on recent discoveries in pennaraptoran anatomy, particularly of the hand and head (Figure 4). It explores the implications this knowledge has and will have on our understanding of pennaraptoran palaeobiology and evolution. These discoveries involve a wide range of adopted approaches, including geometric morphometrics, mechanical advantage calculations, and evo-devo approaches as well as the evolutionary context provided in section one.

Section 3. Early Flight Study: Methods, Status, and Frontiers begins by detailing the methods currently available for studying early theropod flight and discusses the priorities to address in future methodological development work. Then recent advances in soft-tissue imaging are married with quantitative methods of early flight study to create a new framework on which to build (Figure 5). This section also covers recent efforts to identify the small pennaraptorans that first took to the skies, what their flight capabilities were and how their flight might have been acquired. A new broader context is proposed for flight behaviour as part of a functional landscape. Wing-assisted incline running (WAIR), a behaviour seen in modern birds that is proposed as an early stage of flight development, is argued as a later innovation based on a study of modern ostriches.

Asked about the significance of the volume, contributor Dr. Daniel J Field of Cambridge University (Department of Earth Sciences) said, "This is a landmark volume that advances our understanding of pennaraptoran dinosaurs and identifies key areas to address in the years ahead." Contributor Dr. T Alexander Dececchi of Mount Marty University (Department of Biology) added, "The volume is of particular interest to dinosaur palaeontologists and ornithologists, but its findings will also excite the general public."

A research team led by neurobiologist Professor Claire Jacob has identified an important mechanism that can be used to control the restoration of myelin sheaths following traumatic injury and in degenerative diseases. With the insights gained, the researchers were able to regenerate damaged myelin sheaths in mice by treating them with the active substance theophylline, thereby restoring their nerve cell function. The groundbreaking findings are the result of research carried out at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.

Neurons are composed of axons, i.e., long fiber-like extensions that transmit signals to other cells. Many of them are surrounded by a myelin sheath, a thick fatty layer that protects them and helps to transfer stimuli rapidly. Without myelin, the functional capacity of neurons - and therefore of the whole nervous system - is limited and neurons can easily degenerate. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is one of the diseases associated with myelin sheath degradation. MS patients suffer successive episodes of demyelination resulting in a progressive loss of function of their nervous system. Remyelination of the axons can prevent this.

The aim is to restore the axons' protective myelin coating

Intact myelin sheaths are a prerequisite for the healthy functioning of the peripheral and central nervous systems. If the peripheral nervous system (PNS) is damaged, in an accident involving injury to the arms or legs for example, the axons and their myelin sheaths can recover relatively well. "Regeneration of the PNS is quite efficient, although it could be improved," said Professor Claire Jacob, pointing out that even young people do not experience complete regeneration.

However, the central nervous system (CNS) is completely different in this regard as there is no efficient restoration of the axons and therefore of the myelin sheath after a lesion. This means that CNS injuries usually result in permanent paralysis - as in the case of MS when loss of myelin leads to axon degeneration. MS is the most common neurodegenerative disease of the CNS and is attributable to the degradation of the myelin sheath of neurons. The occurrence of successive lesions can cause permanent loss of function of the CNS if myelin sheath restoration is inefficient. The capacity of the body to remyelinate decreases dramatically with age. "In order to promote the restoration of myelin, we need to understand the process that controls the mechanism," emphasized Jacob.

In the recent project, her research group investigated how remyelination occurs in both peripheral and central nervous systems of mice. "First, we wanted to understand the process that blocks remyelination. We subsequently studied how to counteract this blocking effect." The neuroscientists identified a protein called eEF1A1 as a key factor in the process and found that eEF1A1 activated by acetylation prevents the remyelination process, but if eEF1A1 is deactivated by deacetylation, myelin sheaths can be rebuilt. The protein that deacetylates eEF1A1 is the enzyme called histone deacetylase 2 (HDAC2).

Theophylline promotes myelin reconstruction in both peripheral and central nervous systems

"Once we understood this process, we decided to try to control it by boosting the HDAC2 activity and its synthesis in cells," said Jacob. This was achieved by using the active substance theophylline, which is also present in tea leaves and has long been used in the treatment of asthma. In a mouse model, the use of theophylline over a period of four days resulted in significant recovery. Restoration of myelin sheaths was particularly impressive in the PNS, where they recovered completely. Regeneration also improved in the CNS, as there was rapid and efficient rebuilding of myelin sheaths in both young and old mice. A low dose of the active substance was sufficient to trigger the improvements - a big plus with regard to the known side effects of theophylline, which occur at higher doses.

"In summary, this study [...] shows that theophylline, by activating HDAC2, promotes eEF1A1 deacetylation, increases [...] remyelination speed and efficiency after lesion of the PNS and CNS, thus appearing as a very promising compound to test in future translational studies to accelerate and promote remyelination after traumatic lesions or in the context of demyelinating disorders," write the authors in their paper published in Nature Communications. Currently, funding for corresponding clinical trials in patients is being sought, while a patent application has already been filed.

Professor Claire Jacob has been researching the development of myelin, axon injuries, and their regeneration for 16 years - previously at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and since October 2018 as head of the Cellular Neurobiology Group at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.