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For some COVID-19 patients, the body's immune response may be as destructive as the virus that causes the disease. The persistent high fevers, severe respiratory distress, and lung damage seen in some critically ill patients are all signs of an immune system in overdrive.

Now, a new clinical trial will test a treatment that targets this overactive immune response, says Howard Hughes Medical Investigator Bert Vogelstein. He and his team at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine are currently recruiting individuals for the trial, which includes patients ages 45 to 85 at the Johns Hopkins Hospital who have COVID-19 but who aren't on a ventilator or in the ICU.

Their treatment, a common type of prescription drug called an alpha blocker, might break a cycle of hyperinflammation before it ramps up, their findings from mouse studies and a recent analysis of medical claims data suggest.

"The approach we're advocating involves treating people who are at high risk early in the course of the disease, when you know they're infected but before they have severe symptoms," says Vogelstein. If the trial's results suggest the drug is safe and effective against COVID-19, it could potentially help many people recover safely at home and lessen the strain on hospital resources, he says.

Runaway reaction

A hyperactive immune response isn't unique to COVID-19. People with autoimmune diseases and cancer patients receiving immunotherapy can experience similar symptoms. These responses are referred to as macrophage activation syndrome, cytokine release syndrome - or simply "cytokine storms."

When macrophages (and some other kinds of immune cells) detect virus particles, they send out alert messages by releasing various proteins known as cytokines. Those cytokines recruit other immune cells to the scene ­- an inflammatory response that, in moderation, helps the body fight off a virus. But macrophages can also release other signaling molecules, called catecholamines, that amplify this response further, triggering the release of more cytokines. The result is a runaway feedback loop, like a snowball getting bigger as it barrels down a hill.

"It seems that once this process starts, there's this inability to properly switch it off," says Maximilian Konig, a rheumatologist at Hopkins who is helping to coordinate the trial.

Before COVID-19 hit, Vogelstein's team was already exploring ways to ease the hyperinflammatory immune response in cancer patients treated with immunotherapy. The researchers were interested in drugs called alpha blockers, which are widely prescribed for prostate conditions and high blood pressure - and also interfere with the cell signaling that triggers cytokine storms. In theory, alpha blockers might stop a cytokine storm before it starts.

Giving mice with bacterial infections an alpha blocker lessened cytokine storms and decreased deaths, Vogelstein's team reported in the journal Nature in 2018. And, the researchers found, the treatment didn't seem to harm other aspects of the immune response.

Staving off the storm

As the COVID-19 pandemic escalated in the United States over the past few months and severely ill patients presented with cytokine storm symptoms, the idea of testing alpha blockers in humans has become more urgent, Vogelstein's team recently argued in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

To obtain approval for an alpha blocker clinical trial, Vogelstein's team first surveyed medical claims data. They combed through records from people hospitalized for pneumonia and acute respiratory distress and analyzed whether patients' outcomes were better if they had been taking alpha blockers for unrelated conditions. The team's tentative conclusion: taking alpha blocker drugs correlated to a lower risk of death from respiratory distress.

On its own, that's not strong enough evidence to prescribe the drug for a wholly new disease like COVID-19, says Susan Athey, an economist at Stanford University who collaborated with Vogelstein's team on the claims analysis. But it helps bolster the case for the team's clinical trial.

In the trial, COVID-19 patients will take gradually increasing doses of an alpha blocker called prazosin, sold under the brand name Minipress, over six days, says Chetan Bettegowda, a neurosurgeon at Hopkins who is helping to design and run the trials. Then, the team will evaluate whether people who received this treatment had a lower ICU admission rate or ventilator use than patients who received the standard treatment. They'll follow each patient for 60 days, but preliminary data from the first patients could be available within weeks to months, Bettegowda says.

If the trial's results suggest alpha blockers are safe and effective, the team hopes to run a second trial with patients who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 but are not yet hospitalized. They're also encouraging colleagues at other hospitals to join their clinical trial efforts, to gather patient data more quickly.

This treatment, if it works, would be a secondary form of prevention, Vogelstein says, mitigating symptoms before they become severe, rather than stopping infection in the first place. "Eventually, hopefully, a vaccine will be produced, and that will be the essence of prevention," he says. "But until vaccines are available, secondary prevention makes a lot of sense."

Is the reporting of media outlets biased in favor of firms that advertise with them? A new study looked at the relationship between advertising by car manufacturers in U.S. newspapers and news coverage of car safety recalls in the early 2000s. The study found that newspapers provided less coverage of recalls issued by manufacturers that advertised more regularly in their publications than of recalls issued by other manufacturers that did not advertise, and this occurred more frequently when the recalls involved more severe defects.

The study was conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, Loyola Marymount University, Brown University, and the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics (GSE). It appears in Management Science.

"Because media coverage affects a variety of outcomes, it's vital that news outlets provide unbiased and accurate information to consumers so they can make well-informed decisions," says Ananya Sen, assistant professor of information systems and economics at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College, who coauthored the study. "Our findings demonstrate a robust supply-side bias due to advertising revenue, one that may be quite dangerous."

Advertising accounts for nearly 80 percent of newspapers' total revenue in the United States, with total ad spending by the automotive sector surpassing $20 billion in 2006. The study's authors contend that newspapers' reliance on advertising raises concerns that editorial decisions may be vulnerable to the influence of advertisers, especially large ones.

It is difficult to separate advertiser bias from bias related to the preferences and demands of consumers, and few studies have assessed market conditions that might minimize such biases. This study overcame these challenges by analyzing media bias in the context of car safety recalls, a situation in which advertisers and readers arguably have opposing preferences in terms of coverage. In addition, by looking at numerous U.S. newspapers, the study provides ample heterogeneity in the level of competition between newspapers across different local news markets, which allowed researchers to draw policy conclusions.

Researchers collected information on all car safety recalls issued in the United States by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) between 2000 and 2014, focusing on recalls from the nine largest manufacturers in the U.S. auto market. Then they collected data on the number of articles about recalls published over the same period in 115 U.S. daily newspapers, both national and local, finding a total of more than 13,600 articles.

The study also collected information on monthly advertising spending in these newspapers by car manufacturers and local dealers. To measure local demand for information about recalls by specific manufacturers, the study used survey data on the distribution of car ownership by brand and geographic area. As a proxy for the presence of online competitors, the study collected information on the time of entry of Craigslist, the world's largest online platform for classified ads, into different U.S. newspaper markets. Finally, researchers counted nationwide fatalities associated with vehicle crashes provided by NHTSA.

The study concluded that newspapers provided less coverage of recalls from manufacturers that bought more advertising in the previous two years. Specifically, higher spending on advertising was associated with a lower probability that the newspaper published any article on the recalls, and for those newspapers that did publish information about recalls, fewer articles were published. The bias was strongest when small newspapers published ads from local car dealers. The effect was stronger for recalls that involved a large number of vehicles and that involved more severe defects.

The study also found that readers who owned cars by a manufacturer that issued a recall wanted more information about the issue, while advertisers wanted to minimize this information.

In addition, the study found that the advent of online platforms (such as Craigslist) and the subsequent deterioration of the financial situation of many newspapers have weakened editorial independence and resulted in a greater ability of advertisers to deter negative content.

The introduction to the market of Craigslist and companies like it has reduced the amount of advertising revenue newspapers receive from classified advertising. This has resulted in newspapers relying more heavily on corporate advertisers which, in turn, has strengthened the influence of these advertisers, the study concluded.

However, competition between newspapers may reduce the amount of favorable coverage given to a manufacturer, the study found.

"The vulnerability of newspapers to be influenced by advertisers and the role of market structure have implications for policymakers," explains Graham Beattie, assistant professor of economics at Loyola Marymount University, who coauthored the study. "Regulators should formulate rules that limit such conflicts of interest through policies such as limiting concentration of media ownership and encouraging competition between media outlets."

Charlottesville, Va. - Xu Yi, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Virginia, collaborated with Yun-Feng Xiao's group from Peking University and researchers at Caltech to achieve the broadest recorded spectral span in a microcomb.

Their peer-reviewed paper, "Chaos-assisted two-octave-spanning microcombs," was published May 11, 2020, in Nature Communications, a multidisciplinary journal dedicated to publishing high-quality research in all areas of the biological, health, physical, chemical and Earth sciences.

Yi and Xiao co-supervised this work and are the corresponding authors. Co-authors include Hao-Jing Chen, Qing-Xin Ji,Qi-Tao Cao, Qihuang Gong at Peking University, and Heming Wang and Qi-Fan Yang at Caltech. Yi's group is sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation. Xiao's group is funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China and National Key Research and Development Program of China.

The team applied chaos theory to a specific type of photonic device called a microresonator-based frequency comb, or microcomb. The microcomb efficiently converts photons from single to multiple wavelengths. The researchers demonstrated the broadest (i.e., most colorful) microcomb spectral span ever recorded. As photons accumulate and their motion intensifies, the frequency comb generates light in the ultraviolet to infrared spectrum.

"It's like turning a monochrome magic lantern into a technicolor film projector," Yi said. The broad spectrum of light generated from the photons increases its usefulness in spectroscopy, optical clocks and astronomy calibration to search for exoplanets.

The microcomb works by connecting two interdependent elements: a microresonator, which is a ring-shaped micrometer-scale structure that envelopes the photons and generates the frequency comb, and an output bus-waveguide. The waveguide regulates the light emission: only matched speed light can exit from the resonator to the waveguide. As Xiao explained, "It's similar to finding an exit ramp from a highway; no matter how fast you drive, the exit always has a speed limit."

The research team figured out a smart way to help more photons catch their exit. Their solution is to deform the microresonator in a way that creates chaotic light motion inside the ring. "This chaotic motion scrambles the speed of light at all available wavelengths," said co-author and Peking University research team member Hao-Jing Chen. When the speed in the resonator matches that of the output bus-waveguide at a specific moment, the light will exit the resonator and flow through the waveguide.

The team's adoption of chaos theory is an outgrowth of their previous study on chaos-assisted broadband momentum transformation in deformed microcavity, which was published in Science in 2017 (Science 358, 344-347).

This research builds on UVA Engineering's strengths in photonics. The Charles L. Brown Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering has a solid foundation in semiconductor materials and device physics that extends to advanced optoelectronic devices. Yi's microphotonics lab conducts research on high-quality integrated photonic resonators, with a dual focus on microresonator-based optical frequency combs and continuous-variable-based photonic quantum computing.

"The introduction of chaos and cavity deformation not only provides a new mechanism, but also an additional degree of freedom in designing photonic devices," Yi said. "This could accelerate optics and photonics research in quantum computing and other applications that are vital to future economic growth and sustainability."

Noises produced by European spiny lobsters - known as antennal rasps - may be detectable up to 3 km underwater, according to a study in Scientific Reports. The sound, created when lobsters rub an extension of their antenna against a 'file' below their eyes, may be used for communication or to deter predators. Its detection could help conservation efforts, the study suggests. 

Youenn Jézéquel and colleagues recorded 1,560 antennal rasps produced by 24 spiny lobsters in the Bay of Saint Anne du Portzic, France. The sounds were recorded using eight underwater microphones placed between 0.5 and 100 m away from the lobsters. The authors found that only large individuals could be recorded at 100m distance, whereas intermediate, small and very small individuals could not be recorded at distances above 50, 20 and 10 m, respectively. Based on these measurements, the expected loss of sound intensity over distance and the levels of background noise present during the experiment, the authors estimated that rasps produced by large lobsters may be detectable up to 400m away. The authors speculate that in conditions of low background noise, rasps produced by the largest individuals (13.5 cm long) could be detected up to 3 km away.

The findings demonstrate that antennal rasps could be used to detect and survey populations of spiny lobsters from kilometres away. As the species is scarce in European waters due to decades of overfishing, non-invasive tools, such as acoustic monitoring, are needed to better manage this vulnerable species, according to the authors.

WASHINGTON -- Researchers have developed a way to use smartphone images of a person's eyelids to assess blood hemoglobin levels. The ability to perform one of the most common clinical lab tests without a blood draw could help reduce the need for in-person clinic visits, make it easier to monitor patients who are in critical condition, and improve care in low- and middle-income countries where access to testing laboratories is limited.

"Our new mobile health approach paves the way for bedside or remote testing of blood hemoglobin levels for detecting anemia, acute kidney injury and hemorrhages, or for assessing blood disorders such as sickle cell anemia." said research team leader Young Kim from Purdue University. "The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly increased awareness of the need for expanded mobile health and telemedicine services."

Kim and colleagues from the University of Indianapolis, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in the US and Moi University School of Medicine in Kenya report the new approach in Optica, The Optical Society's journal for high impact research.

The researchers used software to transform the built-in camera of a smartphone into a hyperspectral imager that reliably measures hemoglobin levels (a measure of the oxygen-carrying capacity of blood) without the need for any hardware modifications or accessories. A pilot clinical test with volunteers at the Moi University Teaching and Referral Hospital showed that prediction errors for the smartphone technique were within 5 to 10 percent of those measured with clinical laboratory blood.

Kim's lab focuses on developing healthcare technologies that are first designed and tested in the resource-limited settings of low- and middle-income countries. These innovations are then applied to important health challenges in developed countries such as the US.

"This new technology could be very useful for detecting anemia, which is characterized by low levels of blood hemoglobin," said Kim. "This is a major public health problem in developing countries, but can also be caused by cancer and cancer treatments."

Spectral information from a smartphone

Spectroscopic analysis is commonly used to measure blood hemoglobin content because it has a distinct light absorption spectrum, or fingerprint, in the visible wavelength range. However, this type of analysis typically requires bulky and costly optical components.

The researchers created a mobile health version of this analysis by using an approach known as spectral super-resolution spectroscopy. This technique uses software to virtually convert photos acquired with low-resolution systems such as a smartphone camera into high-resolution digital spectral signals.

The researchers selected the inner eyelid as a sensing site because microvasculature is easily visible there; it is easy to access and has relatively uniform redness. The inner eyelid is also not affected by skin color, which eliminates the need for any personal calibrations.

To perform a blood hemoglobin measurement with the new technique, the patient pulls down the inner eyelid to expose the small blood vessels underneath. A healthcare professional or trained person then uses the smartphone app developed by the researchers to take pictures of the eyelids. A spectral super-resolution algorithm is applied to extract the detailed spectral information from the camera's images and then another computational algorithm quantifies the blood hemoglobin content by detecting its unique spectral features.

The mobile app includes several features designed to stabilize smartphone image quality and synchronize the smartphone flashlight to obtain consistent images. It also provides eyelid-shaped guidelines on the screen to ensure that users maintain a consistent distance between the smartphone camera and the patient's eyelid. Although the spectral information is currently extracted using an algorithm on a separate computer, the researchers expect that the algorithm could be incorporated into the mobile app.

Clinical testing

The researchers tested the new technique with 153 volunteers who were referred for conventional blood tests at the Moi University Teaching and Referral Hospital. They used data from a randomly selected group of 138 patients to train the algorithm, then tested the mobile health app with the remaining 15 volunteers. The results showed that the mobile health test could provide measurements comparable to traditional blood tests over a wide range of blood hemoglobin values.

In a separate clinical study, the mobile app is being used to assess oncology patients at the Indiana University Simon Cancer Center. The researchers are also working with the University of Rwanda to conduct further studies and are planning to partner with the Shrimad Rajchandra Hospital in India to use the mobile health tool to assess nutritional status, anemia, and sickle cell disease in their patients.

"Our work shows that data-driven and data-centric light-based research can provide new ways to minimize hardware complexity and facilitate mobile health," says Kim. "Combining the built-in sensors available in today's smartphones with data-centric approaches can quicken the tempo of innovation and research translation in this area."

Gravitational-wave researchers at the University of Birmingham have developed a new model that promises to yield fresh insights into the structure and composition of neutron stars.

The model shows that vibrations, or oscillations, inside the stars can be directly measured from the gravitational-wave signal alone. This is because neutron stars will become deformed under the influence of tidal forces, causing them to oscillate at characteristic frequencies, and these encode unique information about the star in the gravitational-wave signal.

This makes asteroseismology -- the study of stellar oscillations -- with gravitational waves from colliding neutron stars a promising new tool to probe the elusive nature of extremely dense nuclear matter.

Neutron stars are the ultradense remnants of collapsed massive stars. They have been observed in the thousands in the electromagnetic spectrum and yet little is known about their nature. Unique information can be gleaned through measuring the gravitational waves emitted when two neutron stars meet and form a binary system. First predicted by Albert Einstein, these ripples in spacetime were first detected by the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) in 2015.

By utilising the gravitational wave signal to measure the oscillations of the neutron stars, researchers will be able to discover new insights into the interior of these stars. The study is published in Nature Communications.

Dr Geraint Pratten, of the University of Birmingham's Gravitational Wave Institute, is lead author of the study. He explained: "As the two stars spiral around each other, their shapes become distorted by the gravitational force exerted by their companion. This becomes more and more pronounced and leaves a unique imprint in the gravitational wave signal.

"The tidal forces acting on the neutron stars excite oscillations inside the star giving us insight into their internal structure. By measuring these oscillations from the gravitational-wave signal, we can extract information about the fundamental nature and composition of these mysterious objects that would otherwise be inaccessible."

The model developed by the team enables the frequency of these oscillations to be determined directly from gravitational-wave measurements for the first time. The researchers used their model on the first observed gravitational-wave signal from a binary neutron star merger - GW170817.

Co-lead author, Dr Patricia Schmidt, added: "Almost three years after the first gravitational-waves from a binary neutron star were observed, we are still finding new ways to extract more information about them from the signals. The more information we can gather by developing ever more sophisticated theoretical models, the closer we will get to revealing the true nature of neutron stars."

Next generation gravitational wave observatories planned for the 2030s, will be capable of detecting far more binary neutron stars and observing them in much greater detail than is currently possible. The model produced by the Birmingham team will make a significant contribution to this science.

"The information from this initial event was limited as there was quite a lot of background noise that made the signal difficult to isolate," says Dr Pratten. "With more sophisticated instruments we can measure the frequencies of these oscillations much more precisely and this should start to yield some really interesting insights."

ROCKVILLE, Md., May 21, 2020--Just a few weeks before the first cases of COVID-19 were made public, a group of more than 100 leaders in health and medicine was imagining the future of health innovation and factors that could determine its success or failure. A recurring theme was the increasing frequency of global crises that could lead to widescale disturbances and force healthcare leaders to collaborate and deliver truly global health solutions. This hypothetical series of events, now beginning to play out in real time, is described--alongside other future-oriented scenarios--in a new report released today by the U.S. Pharmacopeia (USP) and the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence (MIT CCI).

The report--Trust or Consequences 2040: Will Innovations in Health and Medicine Deliver?--describes the changing environment for medical breakthroughs leading up to 2040 and the importance of trust in encouraging adoption. It addresses major questions such as "What developments will shape people's health between now and 2040?" and "How will trust be critical in ensuring these developments help people everywhere live longer and healthier?" The report also identifies risks to health systems and medicine supply chains worldwide, opportunities to improve global health and consequences that threaten to undermine public trust in medicine.

"New health threats will emerge with significant impact on the delivery of healthcare throughout the world," forecasted Roy Guharoy, system vice president of pharmacy, Baptist Health System and professor of medicine, University of Massachusetts Medical School. "The current global supply chain is fragile and infested with many problems, as evidenced by frequent drug shortages. A solid infrastructure for the global supply chain is critical to ensure availability of medications to meet the needs of patients around the world."

In April, as the pandemic was spreading, USP and MIT CCI asked the experts a follow-up question: "The COVID-19 pandemic has surfaced vulnerabilities in the global healthcare supply chain. Given this, what is the single biggest issue that should be addressed to ensure the availability of safe, quality medical products?"
Participants identified drug supply chain resiliency and shortages across the medical device and supplies sectors as crucial issues to tackle. They also offered a variety of solutions, which will be released in a future report.

"Many of the challenging issues we face in healthcare are recurring and persistent. Trust or Consequences 2040 points out that we must plan for the healthcare future we want, or we risk an erosion of trust and failure to fully benefit from promising innovations in health and medicine," said Ronald T. Piervincenzi, chief executive officer of USP. "During the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, trust is needed to ensure the integrity of our medicines and the global medicines supply chain. The decisions we make now, and in the months following this crisis, will have a lasting impact on the future of healthcare, trust in medicine and in building resilient supply chains."

The consequences of erosion or collapse of trust are dire. Patients may not seek out medicines already proved to be safe and effective, leaving them vulnerable to bad actors. They may avoid needed healthcare or neglect to adhere to prescribed medical treatments. They may turn to unproven or risky alternatives rather than qualified health professionals and quality-assured medical products--all to devastating effect.

The report presents four potential future worlds that could emerge by the year 2040, and which are greatly influenced by new advances in technology--notably big data and artificial intelligence (AI)--as well as access to healthcare.

Scaling the tried and true. A series of rolling crises spur effective global collaboration to address health concerns broadly. Meanwhile, medical advances based on big data and AI occur gradually and are implemented incrementally. As a result, the focus is on baseline care provided to all.

Dangerous uncertainty. Problems with big data and AI lead to devastating healthcare failures. Unequal distribution of access means only the rich receive the most advanced treatments while people of modest means turn to therapies informed by traditional folkways. The efficacy and safety of science-based medicine are called into question.

A world of difference. The successful application of big data and AI leads to rapid advances in personalized medicine and prevention, diagnosis and treatment informed by genetic information. Not everyone has access to the fruits of these innovations. Disparities between and within nations perpetuate a "haves" versus "have nots" dynamic.

Solving tomorrow's problems. Smart and deliberate innovation is broadly distributed. Advances in big data and AI help create effective, inexpensive genetic diagnostic tools that are applied globally. Diseases become more predictable and, informed by new insights about why illness occurs, the focus of healthcare evolves to emphasize prevention. New treatments also emerge. Technological advances not only lead to remarkable new therapies but also contribute to curbing increases in healthcare costs.

Trust or Consequences 2040 also suggests how public quality standards for medical products could help promote trust in health and medicine in the future--as they have for 200 years. In the most positive future outcome, diverse entities--standards-setting organizations like USP, caregivers, government entities and commercial providers active in the healthcare sector--work together to develop the new standards and oversight practices required to guarantee the safety and effectiveness of future medicines and products. Standards could also help address inequities in patient care by enabling the faster dissemination of best medical practices.

"This report inspires recognition of the importance of the public's trust and guards against the dangers that rapid change sometimes presents," said Kathleen Kennedy, executive director of MIT CCI. "We are grateful to the many prominent expert participants from around the world who shared their insights, which will help global, national and local leaders as they make important choices now during the COVID-19 outbreak and well into the future."

Why can some people eat as much as they want, and still stay thin?

In a study published today in the journal Cell, Life Sciences Institute Director Dr. Josef Penninger and a team of international colleagues report their discovery that a gene called ALK (Anaplastic Lymphoma Kinase) plays a role in resisting weight gain.

"We all know these people, who can eat whatever they want, they don't exercise, but they just don't gain weight. They make up around one per cent of the population," says senior author Penninger, professor in the department of medical genetics and a Canada 150 research chair.

"We wanted to understand why," adds Penninger. "Most researchers study obesity and the genetics of obesity. We just turned it around and studied thinness, thereby starting a new field of research."

Using biobank data from Estonia, Penninger's team, including researchers from Switzerland, Austria, and Australia, compared the genetic makeup and clinical profiles of 47,102 healthy thin, and normal-weight individuals aged 20-44. Among the genetic variations the team discovered in the thin group was a mutation in the ALK gene.

ALK's role in human physiology has been largely unclear. The gene is known to mutate frequently in several types of cancer, and has been identified as a driver of tumour development. "Our work reveals that ALK acts in the brain, where it regulates metabolism by integrating and controlling energy expenditure," says Michael Orthofer, the study's lead author and a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Molecular Biology in Vienna.

When Penninger's team deleted the ALK gene in flies and mice, both were resistant to diet-induced obesity. Despite consuming the same diet and having the same activity level, mice without ALK weighed less and had less body fat.

As ALK is highly expressed in the brain, its potential role in weight gain resistance make it an attractive mark for scientists developing therapeutics for obesity.

The team will next focus on understanding how neurons that express ALK regulate the brain at a molecular level, and determining how ALK balances metabolism to promote thinness. Validating the results in additional, more diverse human population studies will also be important.

"It's possible that we could reduce ALK function to see if we did stay skinny," says Penninger. "ALK inhibitors are used in cancer treatments already, so we know that ALK can be targeted therapeutically."

If an unconscious person responds to smell through a slight change in their nasal airflow pattern - they are likely to regain consciousness. This is the conclusion from a new study conducted by Weizmann Institute scientists and colleagues at the Loewenstein Rehabilitation Hospital, Israel. According to the findings, published in the journal Nature, 100% of the unconscious brain-injured patients who responded to a "sniff test" developed by the researchers regained consciousness during the four-year study period. The scientists think that this simple, inexpensive test can aid doctors in accurately diagnosing and determining treatment plans according to the patients' degree of brain injury. The scientists conclude that this finding once again highlights the primal role of the sense of smell in human brain organization. The olfactory system is the most ancient part of the brain, and its integrity provides an accurate measure of overall brain integrity.

Following severe brain injury, it is often difficult to determine whether the person is conscious or unconscious, and current diagnostic tests can lead to an incorrect diagnosis in up to 40% of cases. "Misdiagnosis can be critical as it can influence the decision of whether to disconnect patients from life support machines," says Dr. Anat Arzi, who led the research. "In regard to treatment, if it is judged that a patient is unconscious and doesn't feel anything, physicians may not prescribe them painkillers that they might need." Arzi commenced this research during her doctoral studies in the group of Prof. Noam Sobel of the Weizmann Institute of Science's Neurobiology Department and continued it as part of her postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge's Department of Psychology.

The "consciousness test" developed by the researchers - in collaboration with Dr. Yaron Sacher, Head of the Department of Traumatic Brain Injury Rehabilitation at Loewenstein Rehabilitation Hospital - is based on the principle that our nasal airflow changes in response to odor; for example, an unpleasant odor will lead to shorter and shallower sniffs. In healthy humans, the sniff-response can occur unconsciously in both wakefulness and sleep.

The study included 43 brain-injured patients in the Loewenstein Rehabilitation Hospital. The researchers briefly placed jars containing various odors under the patients' noses, including a pleasant scent of shampoo, an unpleasant smell of rotten fish, or no odor at all. At the same time, the scientists precisely measured the volume of air inhaled through the nose in response to the odors. Each jar was presented to the patient ten times in random order during the testing session, and each patient participated in several such sessions. "Astonishingly, all patients who were classified as being in a 'vegetative state' yet responded to the sniff test, later regained consciousness, even if only minimal. In some cases, the result of the sniff test was the first sign that these patients were about to recover consciousness - and this reaction was observed days, weeks and even months prior to any other signs," says Arzi. Moreover, the sniff response not only predicted who would regain consciousness, it also predicted with about 92% accuracy who would survive for at least three years.

"The fact that the sniff test is simple and potentially inexpensive makes it advantageous," explains Arzi. "It can be performed at the patients' bedside without the need to move them - and without complicated machinery."

A mindful tennis game

After a severe head injury, patients may fall into a comatose state - their eyes are closed and they do not have sleep-wake cycles. A coma usually lasts for about two weeks, after which there may either be a rapid improvement and return to consciousness, deterioration leading to death, or it could lead to a condition defined as "disorder of consciousness." When spontaneous eye opening occurs but there is no evidence that the patients are aware of themselves or their surroundings, they are then diagnosed as being in a "vegetative state." Alternatively, if a patient displays consistent signs of awareness, even if they are minimal and unstable, the patient will be classified as being in a "minimally conscious state." The gold standard diagnostic tool for assessing the level of consciousness is the Coma Recovery Scale (Revised), which examines responses to various stimuli: eye movements while tracking an object; turning the head toward a sound; response to pain, among others. Since the rate of diagnosis errors may reach up to 40%, it is recommended to repeat the test at least five times.

However, misdiagnosis may also occur when the test is conducted repeatedly. "In a well-known study, a patient diagnosed as being in a 'vegetative state' following a car accident was scanned in an MRI machine. While in the scanner, the researchers asked the patient to imagine that she was playing tennis and observed that her brain activity was similar to the brain activity of healthy people when they also imaged playing a tennis game. Suddenly, they realized: 'hold on a minute, she's there. She hears us and is responding to our requests. She simply has no way of communicating'," says Arzi. "There are also known cases of people who were diagnosed in a 'vegetative state,' but when they regained consciousness, they were able to recount in detail what was occurring while supposedly vegetative. Diagnosing the level of consciousness of a patient who has suffered a severe head injury is a major clinical challenge. The sniff test we have developed may provide a simple tool to tackle this challenge."

New York, NY--May 21, 2020--Waves, whether they are light waves, sound waves, or any other kind, travel in the same manner in forward and reverse directions--this is known as the principle of reciprocity. If we could route waves in one direction only--breaking reciprocity--we could transform a number of applications important in our daily lives. Breaking reciprocity would allow us to build novel "one-way" components such as circulators and isolators that enable two-way communication, which could double the data capacity of today's wireless networks. These components are essential to quantum computers, where one wants to read a qubit without disturbing it. They are also critical to radar systems, whether in self-driving cars or those used by the military.

A team led by Harish Krishnaswamy, professor of electrical engineering, is the first to build a high-performance non-reciprocal device on a compact chip with a performance 25 times better than previous work. Power handling is one of the most important metrics for these circulators and Krishnaswamy's new chip can handle several watts of power, enough for cellphone transmitters that put out a watt or so of power. The new chip was the leading performer in a DARPA SPAR (Signal Processing at RF) program to miniaturize these devices and improve performance metrics. Krishnaswamy's group was the only one to integrate these non-reciprocal devices on a compact chip and also demonstrate performance metrics that were orders of magnitude superior to prior work. The study was presented in a paper at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference in February 2020, and published May 4, 2020, in Nature Electronics.

"For these circulators to be used in practical applications, they need to be able to handle watts of power without breaking a sweat," says Krishnaswamy, whose research focuses on developing integrated electronic technologies for new high-frequency wireless applications. "Our earlier work performed at a rate 25 times lower than this new one--our 2017 device was an exciting scientific curiosity but it was not ready for prime time. Now we've figured out how to build these one-way devices in a compact chip, thus enabling them to become small, low cost, and widespread. This will transform all kinds of electronic applications, from VR headsets to 5G cellular networks to quantum computers."

Traditional "one-way" devices are built using magnetic materials, such as ferrites, but these materials cannot be integrated into modern semiconductor fabrication processes because they are too bulky and expensive. While creating non-reciprocal components without the use of magnetic materials has a long history, advancements in semiconductor technology have brought it to the forefront. Krishnaswamy's group has been focused on developing time-varying circuits, specifically circuits driven by a clock signal, that have been shown to achieve non-reciprocal responses.

The original discovery was made in 2017, when Krishnaswamy's PhD student, Negar Reiskarimian, who is now an assistant professor at MIT and co-author of the Nature Electronics study, was experimenting with a new type of circuit called an N-path filter. She was trying to build a different kind of device called a duplexer, which enables simultaneous transmission and reception but at two separate frequencies. In playing around with that circuit, she connected it in a loop and saw this non-reciprocal circulation behavior.

"At first we didn't believe what we were seeing and were convinced the simulator was broken," Krishnaswamy says. "But when we took the time to understand it, we realized that this was something new and really big."

Over the past four years, Krishnaswamy's group has been primarily focused on the applications of non-reciprocity in wireless applications, such as full-duplex wireless. Now, having developed this promising new compact chip, they are turning their attention to quantum computing. Quantum computers use components such as circulators and isolators to read qubits without disturbing them. Magnetic circulators and isolators are currently used in these cryogenic quantum computers, but they are large in size and expensive, posing one of the bottlenecks to realizing quantum computers with a large number of qubits. Krishnaswamy's group is looking into using superconducting Josephson Junctions, the same technology used to make the qubit, to realize chip-scale cryogenic circulators that can be directly integrate with qubits, dramatically reducing cost and size.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- The microbes that inhabit our bodies are influenced by what we eat, drink, breathe and absorb through our skin, and most of us are chronically exposed to natural and human-made environmental contaminants. In a new paper, scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign review the research linking dozens of environmental chemicals to changes in the gut microbiome and associated health challenges.

The review is published in the journal Toxicological Sciences.

The paper includes sections on compounds used in manufacturing consumer goods, including the bisphenols found in plastic food packaging, and phthalates, which are used in everything from vinyl flooring to plastic films. It also describes the science associated with exposure to persistent organic pollutants and heavy metals. POPs include chemicals like PCBs; perfluorochemicals, which are used in nonstick cookware and food packaging; flame retardants known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers; and pesticides and herbicides.

"More than 300 environmental contaminants or the metabolic byproducts of those contaminants have been measured in human urine, blood or other biological samples," said Jodi Flaws, a U. of I. professor of comparative biosciences who led the analysis with Ph.D. student Karen Chiu. "Chemicals such as bisphenols, phthalates and some pesticides, persistent organic pollutants and heavy metals can alter hormone metabolism and are associated with adverse health outcomes."

The negative health effects linked to these chemicals include reproductive and developmental defects, Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular dysfunction, liver disease, obesity, thyroid disorders and poor immune function, the researchers report.

Dozens of studies have explored how chemical exposures affect health, and scientists are now turning their attention to how these chemicals influence gut microbes. The studies reviewed in the new paper were conducted in rats, mice, fish, dogs, chickens, cows, human adults and infants, honey bees and other organisms.

Studies have found that exposure to bisphenols, which are detectable in the urine of more than 90% of adults in the United States, increases levels of Methanobrevibacter bacteria in the male gut. These microbes have been shown - in humans and in mice - to boost their host's ability to extract more energy from food.

"This raises a strong possibility that BPA-induced weight gain is caused at least partially by BPA-induced changes in the gut microbiome," the researchers wrote.

Phthalates are plasticizers and stabilizers that easily leach into foods. Eating phthalate-contaminated foods is the primary route of exposure in humans. Like bisphenols, phthalates are endocrine disruptors, meaning that they interfere with normal hormone-signaling in the body.

High phthalate exposure in human newborns is associated with changes in the gut microbiome and altered immune responses to vaccination. In mice, exposure to phthalates during puberty appears to inhibit the microbial synthesis of butyrate, a metabolite that is essential for intestinal health, immune regulation and neurological function.

Persistent organic pollutants are oily organic chemicals that can persist in the environment for years or decades.

"Recent studies have investigated the impact of POP exposure on the gut microbiota during developmental, juvenile and adult stages in a variety of animals, including mice, fish and humans," the researchers wrote.

Studies have found that exposure to PCBs is associated with microbial shifts in the gut and increased gut permeability, intestinal inflammation and cognitive problems. Once used as coolants, PCBs were banned in the U.S. in 1978 but persist in the environment.

Perfluorochemicals are used in nonstick cookware, food packaging and stain-resistant carpets. One study linked PFCs to changes in the gut microbiome and impaired lipid metabolism in female - but not male - fish and their offspring. The microbiome shifts persisted in the offspring, and the young fish suffered higher mortality than those whose mothers were not exposed to PFCs.

Studies have found that exposure to glyphosate herbicides alters the bacterial makeup of the gut microbiome in cattle, rodents and honey bees. It increased anxious and depressive symptoms in mice and was associated with an increase in pathogenic bacteria in cattle. The pesticide chlorpyrifos affects microbial populations in male rodents and fish exposed during development and adulthood, and also causes inflammation and oxidative stress in the gut.

"All of these data together suggest that exposure to many of these environmental chemicals during various stages of life can alter the gut microbiome in ways that influence health," Chiu said. "The pathologies associated with altered microbiomes after exposure to environmental chemicals include immune dysfunction, altered carbohydrate and lipid metabolism, and neurological and behavioral impairments. We are also seeing that these effects highly depend on an individual's sex and age."

NUI Galway's Socio-Economic Marine Research Unit (SEMRU) has released a report that presents estimates of the value of domestic coastal and marine tourism in the Republic of Ireland.

While annual expenditure figures are produced for the overall domestic tourism market by the Central Statistics Office, information on marine and coastal specific domestic tourism activity is more difficult to obtain. According to the findings in this report the average expenditure per coastal day trip in 2018 was €95. The equivalent for coastal overnight trips was €310. Total expenditure by domestic tourists in coastal areas was estimated to be €698 million in 2018, which represents 35% of the total expenditure by domestic tourists that year. The marine related activity expenditure on overnight trips, or what might truly be referred to as domestic marine tourism, is estimated to have generated revenue of €381 million with €172 million of this being spent on water-based activities.

Dr Stephen Hynes, co-author of the report and Director of SEMRU based at the Whitaker Institute for Innovation and Societal Change at NUI Galway, said: "While the results presented in this report are from a time that precedes the current Covid 19 crisis they nevertheless highlight the economic contribution that domestic marine tourism and leisure activity makes under normal circumstances to coastal regions, particularly those regions outside the capital. Also, given that it is likely that the overseas tourism market will take much longer to recover, and Irish residents' travel abroad will also be curtailed, the industry should be examining how they can maximise the return from the domestic tourism market this year and next."

To generate information on domestic coastal and marine tourism in Ireland SEMRU carried out a household survey of residents in 2019, funded by the Marine Institute through its Marine Research Programme. As well as expenditure patterns the survey also examined participation rates amongst domestic residents in a variety of marine activities and where Irish residents went for overnight coastal visits in the reference year 2018. The survey consisted of face-to-face interviews with a representative sample of over a 1000 households.

Based on the results of the survey, 77% of respondents had actively engaged in marine related activities, on either day or overnight trips, during the year 2018. The most popular land-based coastal activities were walking/running along the coast/beach/cliffs/etc., beach or seaside trips, and coastal sightseeing. The most popular water-based activities were sea swimming, surfing, recreational boating of different types and sea angling. Significant differences in participation rates were observed across a number of socio-demographic classifications including age, social class and education attainment levels. The results also indicate that domestic tourists* undertake the majority of their marine activities on the West and South coasts of Ireland.

The report argues that given the observed differences in marine activity participation rates across the social classes, a worthy policy objective would be ensuring that all sections of society have the opportunity to access the well-being and mental health benefits that are known to come from interaction with the marine environment. Given the current crisis this is more important than ever. It also offers an opportunity to develop new marine tourism offerings focused on the expanding consumer demand for wellness services and products.

According to Dr Hynes consideration should be also be given by coastal tourism and leisure operators to the fact that marine active tourists have been shown to spend more and stay longer than the average tourist: "As we point out in the report, while the overseas market is often the main focus of the development agencies, the domestic marine tourism market offers significant opportunities for growth. Given the sector will, for the present, have to focus on the domestic side of the market in the short to medium term, now is the ideal opportunity to explore innovations in delivering new visitor experiences and marine tourism products aimed at the home market."

The reported spatial pattern for domestic resident participation in marine related activities is also interesting from a marine spatial planning perspective. Unlike the overseas tourism market research carried out by SEMRU previously, where the majority of the marine activity undertaken was found to have been in the southern half of the western sea board, the distribution of marine activities undertaken was much more evenly spread out for the domestic tourism market.

Commenting on the report, Professor Alan Ahearne, Director of the Whitaker Institute at NUI Galway said: "The World Tourism Organization is forecasting that international tourist arrivals could plunge 60-80% this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic and may remain at depressed levels next year. Tourism in Ireland will be looking to domestic demand for recovery -- and the evidence points to the huge potential for coastal and marine tourism to contribute to rebooting activity in this sector."

For more information on SEMRU and to download the full report, please visit http://www.nuigalway.ie/semru/.

DURHAM, N.C. - Engineers at Duke University and the New York University's Tandon School of Engineering have demonstrated a method for ensuring that an increasingly popular method of genetic identification called "DNA fingerprinting" remains secure against inadvertent mistakes or malicious attacks in the field.

The technique relies on introducing genetic "barcodes" to DNA samples as they are collected and securely sending information crucial to identifying these barcodes to technicians in the laboratory. The system shows one way to guarantee that a sample taken in the field, transported to a lab and processed for genetic identification is genuine.

The results appear online on May 14 in the journal IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security.

"If you think about conventional encryption techniques, like security for a smartphone, there's usually a passcode that only one person knows," said Mohamed Ibrahim, a system-on-chip design engineer at Intel Corporation and recent Duke electrical and computer engineering PhD graduate. "Our idea is to inject non-harmful material into genetic samples immediately when they are collected in the field that act as a similar password. This would ensure that the samples are authentic when they reach the processing stage."

DNA fingerprinting is a method of identifying a specific person, organism or disease based on only a small amount of genetic material. While about 99.9 percent of the DNA between two unrelated humans is the same, that still leaves around three million base pairs that are different. And within that potentially identifying dataset, certain short segments of DNA sequences are much more likely than others to vary in composition from person to person.

Rather than sequencing a person's entire genome, which still costs more than $1,000 a pop, scientists can target a handful of these short sequences for identification. In DNA fingerprinting, a technique called polymerase chain reaction (PCR) replicates the genetic sequences at these sites repeatedly so that they can easily be read. Based on the specific combinations of nucleic acids at these various sites, genetic samples can be matched to their sources. While it may seem like data from hundreds of these sites would be needed to make a definitive match, they vary so much from person to person that the Federal Bureau of Investigations currently recommends that only 13 are necessary.

As the popularity of this technique and the PCR technology underlying it increases, multiple companies are in a race to simplify the process and create cheaper solutions. And as these devices become smaller, more complex and more automated, it may create more opportunities to attack the process. Recent studies suggest that these opportunities raise unprecedented security concerns, creating a whole new category of potential weaknesses that has been dubbed "cyberbiosecurity threats."

"Researchers have identified a diverse array of cyberbiosecurity threats over the past few years," said Krishnendu Chakrabarty, the John Cocke Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke. "Our main goal is to become a part of the community trying to address these threats by focusing on one of the most vulnerable time periods, which is before a sample even gets to the lab."

In their new paper, Chakrabarty, Ibrahim, Tung-Che Liang, a current doctoral student in Chakrabarty's laboratory, Ramesh Karri, professor of electrical and computer engineering at NYU Tandon, and Kristin Scott, adjunct assistant professor of molecular genetics and microbiology at Duke, demonstrate the usefulness of a genetic barcode to ensure samples taken in the field are not swapped or otherwise tampered with on their way to the laboratory.

Relying on the genetic PCR expertise of Scott and working out of her laboratory, the researchers first added two short stretches of synthetic DNA to genetic samples bound for DNA fingerprinting. Because they are synthetic, they can be made in almost any combination of the four available DNA base pairs imaginable. And at 280 and 190 base pairs each, the chances of correctly guessing the genetic combination is vanishingly small.

"We analyzed the conditions an adversary needs to satisfy to undermine the barcoding system," said Karri, who is a co-founder and co-chair of the NYU Center for Cyber Security. "These conditions are related to the physical characteristics of the molecular barcode. By linking these conditions back to how barcodes are generated and the expansiveness of the search space, we show that the probability that an adversary can discover the barcode is negligibly low."

Meanwhile, the primers needed to amplify each barcode are sent securely to the technicians in the laboratory. For a PCR machine to repeatedly copy a specific segment of DNA, it first must know how that sequence starts and ends. Primers provide that information, and without it, an attacker would have no chance of amplifying the correct barcodes.

Once the technicians finish an initial PCR run with the samples and primers provided, the two barcodes appear as peaks or lines in the resulting genetic data, depending on the method being used to identify them. To make sure the samples are authentic and not tampered with, the technicians must simply make sure these two barcodes appear as expected.

"When the right primers are used to unlock a barcode, you should get a positive result," said Ibrahim. "If you don't, then that means that the sample is not genuine. Some sort of switching or alteration has occurred."

While this system currently relies on information being transmitted securely to the laboratory, the researchers say there are ways that the genetic barcodes could be streamlined into the technology. For example, the barcodes could be correlated in some way to the samples being sent, and technicians could look up the correct primers to use from a database. With the proper hardware, the idea could also conceivably be translated into the chips running the DNA analysis themselves.

"This work is an excellent example of multiple disciplines coming together to develop new solutions to existing real-world problems," said Scott.

Researchers have succeeded in detecting anti-avian influenza virus antibody in blood serum within 20 minutes, using a portable analyzer they have developed to conduct rapid on-site bio tests. If a suitable reagent is developed, this technology could be used to detect antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the causative virus of COVID-19.

Avian influenza is a poultry disease caused by influenza A virus infection. Rapid initial response for a suspected infection and continuous surveillance are essential to mitigate the damage from highly pathogenic, transmittable pathogens such as avian influenza viruses.

Generally, the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method is used to detect the viral genome, but its complicated procedure requires a considerable amount of time. Another method involves detecting antibodies produced in the body in reaction to virus infection. However, widely used antibody detection methods can be inaccurate because the antibodies' existence is generally determined by eyesight.

The group, including Keine Nishiyama, a doctoral student at Hokkaido University's Graduate School of Chemical Science and Engineering, and Professor Manabu Tokeshi of the university's Faculty of Engineering, conducted this study to develop a new method and analyzer capable of rapid, facile and selective detection of antibodies. The method is based on conventional fluorescence polarization immunoassay (FPIA) but applies a different measurement mechanism to make the analyzer much smaller and portable. The analyzer weighs only 5.5 kilograms.

The combined use of liquid crystal molecules, an image sensor and the microfluidic device makes it possible to simultaneously examine multiple samples and reduces the volume of each sample required. Liquid crystal molecules are capable of controlling the polarization direction of fluorescent light, while the microfluidic device has a number of microchannels as a measurement vessel.

The group also developed a reagent to detect anti-H5 avian influenza virus antibody, a fluorescein-labeled protein that binds only with the antibody. The reagent was made by reproducing hemagglutinin (HA) protein fragments, which are expressed on the surface of H5 avian influenza virus, through gene recombination and by labeling fluorescent molecules to the fragments.

To make the measurement, serum collected from birds was mixed with the reagent and left for 15 minutes. The mixture was injected into the microfluidic device and measured with the portable fluorescence polarization analyzer. Molecular movements of the reagent bound with the antibody will be smaller in the liquid, producing a different degree of polarization from the reagent not bound with the antibody. The system can detect anti-H5 avian influenza virus antibody with only 2 microliters of serum sample and within 20 minutes.

"Our analyzer could be used to conduct other bio tests if suitable reagents are developed," says Tokeshi. The group has already successfully detected mycotoxin and drug constituents. "By reproducing fragments of spike proteins expressed in the novel coronavirus, and using them as the reagent, the analyzer should be able to detect anti-coronavirus antibodies."

Most technologies today rely on devices that transport energy in the form of light, radio, or mechanical waves. However, these wave-guiding channels are susceptible to disorder and damage, either in manufacturing or after they are deployed in harsh environments.

Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Grainger College of Engineering have experimentally demonstrated a new way to transport energy even through wave-guides that are defective, and even if the disorder is a transient phenomenon in time. This work could lead to much more robust devices that continue to operate in spite of damage.

Gaurav Bahl, associate professor in mechanical science and engineering, and Taylor Hughes, physics professor, published their findings in Nature Communications. This important work was led by postdoctoral researcher Inbar Grinberg, also in mechanical science and engineering.

Their article, "Robust temporal pumping in a magneto-mechanical topological insulator," details the demonstration of a topological pump, a system that produces on-demand, robust transport of mechanical energy when it is periodically driven in time. The researchers built the topological pump using a one-dimensional magneto-mechanical artificial material, composed of springs, masses, and magnets.

The inspiration for the pump came from Nobel-prize winning physicist David Thouless' work from 1983, in which he proposed a scheme to achieve quantized transport of single particles, e.g. electrons, through a periodic potential, e.g. a chain of atoms. The underlying principle is to make gradual, periodic modulations to the structure of the chain as a function of time. At the completion of each period of the pumping cycle, a single particle must enter the chain on one end, and simultaneously a single particle must exit the other end of the chain. This reliably occurs even if the chain of atoms has some moderate amount of disorder.

This type of system is termed a pump because its technical description evokes a vision of an Archimedes Screw, a hand-cranked water pump with historical references dating back to ancient Egypt.

The Grainger researchers took Thouless' idea and implemented it into a mechanical topological pump. A notable distinction is that their pump transports mechanical energy, not particles or water, across the entire chain in one period of the pumping cycle. Moreover, the pump operates successfully even if the chain has significant amount of disorder in space or time. To complete the analogy to a water screw pump, the researchers powered their demonstration with a rotating crank shaft.

"Ultimately, we would like to extend this demonstration to produce similarly resilient wave-guides for light, sound, and electricity," explained Bahl. "The dream is to put a signal in on one end of a one-dimensional channel, and have guaranteed transport to the other end, in a robust fashion whenever the user wants it. We believe that topological pumps are a great way to do that."

Optical fiber and copper lines form the backbone of all our communication technologies. Presently, moderate damage along such communication channels - e.g. anything but complete disconnection - can reduce signal strength and even produce undesirable reflections, which adversely affect the amount of data that these channels can carry.

The research team believes that topological pumping could be a great solution in these scenarios.