Tech

A new national survey, looking at how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted young US adults' loneliness, reveals "significant depressive symptoms" in 80% of participants.

Over 1,000 Americans aged 18-35 took part in the online anonymous questionnaire, which also asked the subjects to report on their anxiety and substance use.

The analysed findings, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, show that "alarming" levels of loneliness are associated with significant mental health issues, asapproximately 61% of respondents reporting moderate (45%) to severe (17%) anxiety.

Meanwhile, 30% of interviewees disclosed harmful levels of drinking. And, although only 22% of the respondents reported using drugs, 38% of these reported severe drug use.

Therefore, a response with mental health care provision is "imperative", lead author Professor Viviana Horigian, from the University of Miami, states.

"The convergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the loneliness and addiction epidemics in the US is here to stay," she said.

"These young adults are the future of our nation's social fabric. They need to be given access to psychological help, coupled with the development and dissemination of brief online contact-based interventions that encourage healthy lifestyles.

"Addressing mental health and substance use problems in young adults, both during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, is an imperative."

And co-author Renae Schmidt adds: "As we invest in developing the sense of cohesion and social connectedness in these generations, we can address social and physical resiliency in our communities at large.

"Students need sustaining online delivery of [relevant] coursework, increasing counseling services, and deploying outreach through telehealth services. For young adults not engaged in school, aggressive patient outreach by primary care physicians should be used to ensure screening and intervention, also via telehealth. Access to psychological help coupled with the development and dissemination of brief online contact-based interventions that encourage healthy lifestyles."

The online, 126-item, survey was carried out between April 22 and May 11. 1,008 participants took part, with the average age 28 and 86% being over 23.

Each symptom (loneliness, anxiety, depression, alcohol use, drug use) was measured against internationally recognized scoring systems.

To examine the associations between loneliness and the mental health conditions highlighted, the researchers used a model which looked at the direct effects of both loneliness and social connectedness on depression, anxiety, alcohol use, and drug use. They also looked at the indirect effects of loneliness and social connectedness on alcohol and drug use working through anxiety and depression. In addition, they characterized relationships in pre-COVID and post-COVID behaviors and psychosocial symptomatology.

The results show that most participants who reported an increase in feelings of loneliness also indicated an increase in drinking (58%), drug use (56%), anxiety (76%), and depression (78%), and a decrease in feelings of connectedness (58%).

Looking at general increases of mental health issues or substance use due to the pandemic, most issues were recorded by participants as rising, with their feelings of loneliness going up by 65%, lack of connectedness 53%, alcohol use 48%, drug use 44%, anxiety 62%, and depression 64%.

Overall, an "alarming" 49% of respondents reported a great degree of loneliness.

Most respondents (80%) reported drinking alcohol, with 30% revealing harmful and dependent levels of drinking. 19% of respondents reported binge drinking at least weekly and 44% reported binging at least monthly.

The team hopes that the results will now be used to guide intervention efforts.

"Social prescribing, which draws from and promotes usage of community resources, also shows promise of improving social and psychological wellbeing," Professor Horigian adds.

"This could be positioned to then encourage service to others, bringing social comfort and reward as a result of connecting with others in need.

"These efforts, and others, can help to alleviate the problems of loneliness and its manifestations; yet it may take an integrated, multi-faceted, and concerted approach, rooted, and supported by mental health prevention and wellbeing promotion boosted by workforce development and research on intervention development, to readdress these trajectories."

A new study led by Australia's national science agency CSIRO, has found 95.5 per cent of current entries in GISAID, the world's largest novel coronavirus genome database, do not contain relevant patient information -- a critical piece of the puzzle to understand the virus and how it is evolving.

The researchers have used this finding to develop a standardised data collection template, which can be implemented on repositories like GISAID, without identifying the patient and making it easier for clinical teams treating patients to share more of their knowledge.

This enables the scientific community to access important information including symptoms, vaccine status and travel history and in doing so build a more complete picture of the impact of COVID-19 on each patient.

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is one of the most sequenced viruses in history, with over 200,000 sequences on GISAID as of 16 November 2020.

The last 100,000 sequences of the virus were uploaded in the past two months, a global record.

The study, a collaboration with GISAID and other academic partners, proposes a standardised data collection method to help scientists and clinicians around the world gather and share vital information in the fight against COVID-19.

CSIRO researcher and senior author of the paper Dr S.S. Vasan, who is also Honorary Professor at the University of York, UK, said it is critical to collect the 'patient journey' in as much detail as possible to understand the impact of virus evolution on the disease and its consequences.

"We urgently need de-identified patient data associated with these virus genome sequences in order to decipher whether disease outcomes are due to a mutation, or multiple mutations, in the virus or host factors such as age, gender and co-morbidities," Dr Vasan said.

"It's very likely this information is known to the clinical teams who treated the patient but does not make its way to public repositories such as GISAID, due to the number of steps involved."

Recognising this need for clinical data, GISAID made 'patient status' a compulsory field for uploading virus sequences since 27 April 2020.

However, the study showed a lack of digital infrastructure for collecting clinical information has hampered progress.

It also identified the need for a standardised vocabulary and mechanism for linking in with health systems as key factors for capturing the necessary information.

Lead author and CSIRO researcher Dr Denis Bauer, who is also Honorary Associate Professor at Macquarie University, Sydney, said with the adoption of the study's proposed data collection template, future sequences shared through the GISAID initiative could contain more meaningful de-identified patient information.

"We have identified steps in the clinical health data acquisition cycle and workflows that likely have the biggest impact in the data-driven understanding of this virus," Dr Bauer said.

"Following the 'Fast Healthcare Interoperable Resource' implementation guide, we have introduced an ontology-based standard questionnaire consistent with the World Health Organization's recommendations."

Barwon Health's Director of Infectious Diseases Professor Eugene Athan welcomed the new data collection template.

"Barwon Health is leading a study on the long-term biological, physiological and psychological effects of COVID-19, in partnership with CSIRO and Deakin University, and we intend to implement this mechanism for our data collection and reporting," Prof Athan said.

"Having a simplified and standardised approach to sharing relevant patient information alongside genome sequences will enable critical research into COVID-19 and comparisons between different studies and population sets.

"I encourage clinicians and scientists around the world to share, wherever possible, de-identified patient information and clinical outcomes using this template to support ongoing research efforts."

Current state-of-the-art techniques have clear limitations when it comes to imaging the smallest nanoparticles, making it difficult for researchers to study viruses and other structures at the molecular level.

Scientists from the University of Houston and the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center have reported in Nature Communications a new optical imaging technology for nanoscale objects, relying upon unscattered light to detect nanoparticles as small as 25 nanometers in diameter. The technology, known as PANORAMA, uses a glass slide covered with gold nanodiscs, allowing scientists to monitor changes in the transmission of light and determine the target's characteristics.

PANORAMA takes its name from Plasmonic Nano-aperture Label-free Imaging (PlAsmonic NanO-apeRture lAbel-free iMAging), signifying the key characteristics of the technology. PANORAMA can be used to detect, count and determine the size of individual dielectric nanoparticles.

Wei-Chuan Shih, professor of electrical and computer engineering at UH and corresponding author for the paper, said the smallest transparent object a standard microscope can image is between 100 nanometers and 200 nanometers. That's mainly because - in addition to being so small - they don't reflect, absorb or "scatter" enough light, which could allow imaging systems to detect their presence.

Labeling is another commonly used technique; it requires researchers to know something about the particle they are studying - that a virus has a spike protein, for example - and engineer a way to tag that feature with fluorescent dye or some other method in order to more easily detect the particle.

"Otherwise, it will appear as invisible as a tiny dust particle under the microscope, because it's too small to detect," Shih said.

Another drawback? Labeling is only useful if researchers already know at least something about the particle they want to study.

"With PANORAMA, you don't have to do the labeling," Shih said. "You can view it directly because PANORAMA does not rely on detecting the scattered light from the nanoparticle."

Instead, the system allows observers to detect a transparent target as small as 25 nanometers by monitoring light transmission through the gold nanodisc-covered glass slide. By monitoring changes in the light, they are able to detect the nearby nanoparticles. The optical imaging system is a standard bright-field microscope commonly found in any lab. There is no need for lasers or interferometers which are required in many other label-free imaging technologies.

"The size limit has not been reached, according to the data. We stopped at 25 nm nanoparticles simply because that is the smallest polystyrene nanoparticle on the market," Shih said.

By studying the site of a spectacular stellar explosion seen in April 2020, a Chalmers-led team of scientists have used four European radio telescopes to confirm that astronomy's most exciting puzzle is about to be solved. Fast radio bursts, unpredictable millisecond-long radio signals seen at huge distances across the universe, are generated by extreme stars called magnetars - and are astonishingly diverse in brightness.

For over a decade, the phenomenon known as fast radio bursts has excited and mystified astronomers. These extraordinarily bright but extremely brief flashes of radio waves - lasting only milliseconds - reach Earth from galaxies billions of light years away.

In April 2020, one of the bursts was for the first time detected from within our galaxy, the Milky Way, by radio telescopes CHIME and STARE2. The unexpected flare was traced to a previously-known source only 25 000 light years from Earth in the constellation of Vulpecula, the Fox, and scientists all over the world coordinated their efforts to follow up the discovery.

In May, a team of scientists led by Franz Kirsten (Chalmers) pointed four of Europe's best radio telescopes towards the source, known as SGR 1935+2154. Their results are published today in a paper in the journal Nature Astronomy.
http://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-01246-3

"We didn't know what to expect. Our radio telescopes had only rarely been able to see fast radio bursts, and this source seemed to be doing something completely new. We were hoping to be surprised!", said Mark Snelders, team member from the Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam.

The radio telescopes, one dish each in the Netherlands and Poland and two at Onsala Space Observatory in Sweden, monitored the source every night for more than four weeks after the discovery of the first flash, a total of 522 hours of observation.

On the evening of May 24, the team got the surprise they were looking for. At 23:19 local time, the Westerbork telescope in the Netherlands, the only one of the group on duty, caught a dramatic and unexpected signal: two short bursts, each one millisecond long but 1.4 seconds apart.

Kenzie Nimmo, astronomer at Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy and ASTRON, is a member of the team.

"We clearly saw two bursts, extremely close in time. Like the flash seen from the same source on April 28, this looked just like the fast radio bursts we'd been seeing from the distant universe, only dimmer. The two bursts we detected on May 24 were even fainter than that", she said.

This was new, strong evidence connecting fast radio bursts with magnetars, the scientists thought. Like more distant sources of fast radio bursts, SGR 1935+2154 seemed to be producing bursts at random intervals, and over a huge brightness range.

"The brightest flashes from this magnetar are at least ten million times as bright as the faintest ones. We asked ourselves, could that also be true for fast radio burst sources outside our galaxy? If so, then the universe's magnetars are creating beams of radio waves that could be criss-crossing the cosmos all the time - and many of these could be within the reach of modest-sized telescopes like ours", said team member Jason Hessels (Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy and ASTRON, Netherlands).

Neutron stars are the tiny, extremely dense remnants left behind when a short-lived star of more than eight times the mass of the Sun explodes as a supernova. For 50 years, astronomers have studied pulsars, neutron stars which with clock-like regularity send out pulses of radio waves and other radiation. All pulsars are believed to have strong magnetic fields, but the magnetars are the strongest known magnets in the universe, each with a magnetic field hundreds of trillions of times stronger than the Sun's.

In the future, the team aims to keep the radio telescopes monitoring SGR 1935+2154 and other nearby magnetars, in the hope of pinning down how these extreme stars actually make their brief blasts of radiation.

Scientists have presented many ideas for how fast radio bursts are generated. Franz Kirsten, astronomer at Onsala Space Observatory, Chalmers, who led the project, expects the rapid pace in understanding the physics behind fast radio bursts to continue.

"The fireworks from this amazing, nearby magnetar have given us exciting clues about how fast radio bursts might be generated. The bursts we detected on May 24 could indicate a dramatic disturbance in the star's magnetosphere, close to its surface. Other possible explanations, like shock waves further out from the magnetar, seem less likely, but I'd be delighted to be proved wrong. Whatever the answers, we can expect new measurements and new surprises in the months and years to come", he said.

EPFL engineers have developed an advanced encoding and decoding system that allows fiber optic sensors to send data up to 100 times faster and over a wider area. "Unlike conventional sensors that take measurements at a given point, like thermometers, fiber optic sensors record data all along a fiber," says Luc Thévenaz, a professor at EPFL's School of Engineering and head of the Group for Fibre Optics (GFO). "But the technology has barely improved over the past few years."

Used widely in safety applications

Fiber optic sensors are commonly used in hazard detection systems, such as to spot cracks in pipelines, identify deformations in civil engineering structures and detect potential landslides on mountain slopes. The sensors can take temperature readings everywhere a fiber is placed, thereby generating a continuous heat diagram of a given site - even if the site stretches for dozens of kilometers. That provides crucial insight into possible accidents before they happen.

Improving signal quality

Working in association with the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, two GFO engineers - postdoc Zhisheng Yang and PhD student Simon Zaslawski - developed a new system for encoding and decoding data sent along the fibers. With their method, sensors can receive higher-energy signals and decode them faster, resulting in measurements taken more rapidly and over a larger area. Their research has just been published in Nature Communications.

The engineers describe their system as working like an echo. If you shout a single word, you hear that word back. But if you sing out a song, what you hear back is a blend of sounds that are hard to distinguish. You would need a "key" to decipher the sounds and make them intelligible. Fiber optic sensors function in a similar manner, except that an instrument sends out light pulses - rather than sounds - along a fiber. Signals bounce back up the fiber and a device decodes them, turning the signals into usable data.

To make the sensors more efficient, Yang and Zaslawski grouped the light pulses into sequences so that the signals bounce back with greater intensity. However, that didn't solve the "echo" problem - that is, finding a key to make the signals readable. So they developed a method for encoding the data sent along a fiber; their method employs special genetic optimization algorithms to cope with imperfections. "Other systems are either limited in scope or expensive," says Thévenaz. "But with ours, you just have to add a software program to your existing equipment. No need to adapt your sensors or use complex devices."

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Dairy cows, exposed for a few years to drinking water contaminated with heavy metals, carry more pathogens loaded with antimicrobial-resistance genes able to tolerate and survive various antibiotics.

That's the finding of a team of researchers that conducted a study of two dairy herds in Brazil four years after a dam holding mining waste ruptured, and it spotlights a threat to human health, the researchers contend.

The study is the first to show that long-term persistence of heavy metals in the environment may trigger genetic changes and interfere with the microorganism communities that colonize dairy cows, according to researcher Erika Ganda, assistant professor of food animal microbiomes, Penn State.

"Our findings are important because if bacterial antimicrobial resistance is transferred via the food chain by milk or meat consumption, it would have substantial implications for human health," she said. "What we saw is, when heavy metal contamination is in the environment, there is potential for an increase of so-called 'superbugs.'"

A declaration from the World Health Organization supports Ganda's assertion, saying that resistance to antimicrobials is one of the top 10 global public health threats facing humanity. Antimicrobial resistance occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites change over time and no longer respond to medicines, making infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death.

A South American environmental calamity triggered the research. Known as the Mariana Dam disaster, in 2015 the Fundao Tailings Dam suffered a catastrophic failure and released more than 11 billion gallons of iron ore waste. The huge wave of toxic mud flowed into the Doce River basin surrounding Mariana City in Minas Gerais, a state in southeast Brazil.

Following this catastrophe, the team analyzed the consequences of long-term exposure to contaminated drinking water on dairy cattle.

To reach their conclusions, researchers identified bacterial antimicrobial-resistance genes in the feces, rumen fluid and nasal passages of 16 dairy cattle in the area contaminated by the iron ore waste four years after the environmental disaster. Researchers compared samples taken from those animals to analogous samples from 16 dairy cattle on an unaffected farm, about 220 miles away.

The microorganism community in the cattle continuously exposed to contaminated water differed in many ways from that of the cows not exposed to heavy metals, noted researcher Natalia Carrillo Gaeta, doctoral student and research assistant in the Department of Preventive Veterinary Medicine and Animal Health, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The relative abundance and prevalence of bacterial antimicrobial-resistance genes were higher in cattle at the heavy metals-affected farm than in cattle at the non-contaminated farm, she pointed out.

The data, published today (Nov. 16) in Frontiers in Microbiology, suggest that exposure to heavy metal contamination results in the selection of bacteria that have resistance genes to heavy metals, biocides and several drugs, Gaeta explained. "We found that bacterial antimicrobial-resistance genes are most readily detected in fecal samples."

The link between heavy metal concentration in the environment and increased prevalence of antibiotic resistance in bacteria has been seen before, Ganda said. It's known as "co-resistance phenomenon" and is characterized by the closeness between different types of resistance genes located in the same genetic element.

"As a result of this connection, the transfer of one gene providing heavy metal resistance, may occur in concert with the transfer of the closest gene, providing antibiotic resistance, she said. "Consequently, some resistance mechanisms are shared between antibiotics and heavy metals."

Ganda's research group in the College of Agricultural Sciences works with the one-health perspective, which focuses on the interaction between animals, people and the environment. She believes this research presents a good description of a one-health problem.

"In this Brazilian environmental disaster, not only were several people and animals killed by the devastating flood caused by the dam rupture, but the contamination persisted in the environment and made it into dairy cows, that could potentially pose another risk for humans," Ganda said. "If these animals are colonized, resistant bacteria could also make it to humans and colonize them through the food chain."

A combination of innate differences and diet-induced changes to the reward system may predispose some mice to overeat, according to research recently published in JNeurosci.

Food is fuel, but the rising levels of sugar and fat in modern diets make the brain treat it as a reward. One brain region called the ventral pallidum (VP) serves as a hub between reward areas and the hypothalamus, a region involved in feeding behavior. Intertwining food and reward can lead to overeating and may be a contributing factor to diet-induced obesity.

Gendelis, Inbar, et al. measured electrical activity in the VP of mice with unlimited access to high fat, high sugar food for several months. Eating the unhealthy diet changed the electrical properties of VP neurons: the membrane voltage and firing rate decreased, making it harder for neurons to send messages to each other. The change was more pronounced in the mice that gained the most weight. The same set of electrical bursts strengthened synapses in weight gainers but weakened them in mice that gained the least weight. These signaling differences may be innate and not caused by the unhealthy diet itself: the same plasticity differences appear between mice with natural high and low food-seeking behavior even without exposure to an unhealthy diet.

Shantanu Chakrabartty's laboratory has been working to create sensors that can run on the least amount of energy. His lab has been so successful at building smaller and more efficient sensors, that they've run into a roadblock in the form of a fundamental law of physics.

Sometimes, however, when you hit what appears to be an impenetrable roadblock, you just have to turn to quantum physics and tunnel through it. That's what Chakrabartty and other researchers at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis did.

The development of these self-powered quantum sensors from the lab of Chakrabartty, the Clifford W. Murphy Professor in the Preston M. Green Department of Systems & Electrical Engineering, was published online Oct. 28 in the journal Nature Communications.

The roadblock that inspired this research is the threshold effect.

"Imagine there is an apple hanging from a tree," Chakrabartty said. "You can shake the tree a little bit, but the apple doesn't fall. You have to give it enough of a tug to shake the apple loose." That tug is akin to a threshold energy. "It's the minimal amount of energy needed to move an electron over a barrier." If you cannot move the electron over the barrier, you cannot create current.

But naturally occurring quantum mechanical phenomenon move electrons across barriers all the time. The research team took advantage of this to build a self-powered device that, with a small initial energy input, can run on its own for more than a year.

This is how it's built:

The device is simple and inexpensive to build. All it requires is four capacitors and two transistors.

From these six parts, Chakrabartty's team built two dynamical systems, each with two capacitors and a transistor. The capacitors hold a small initial charge, about 50 million electrons each.

They added a transducer to one of the systems and coupled it to the property they were measuring. In one application, the team measured ambient micromotion using a piezoelectric accelerometer, a type of transducer that turns mechanical energy (such as movement of molecules in the air) into electric signals.

This is what you need to know:

Quantum physics. At least some of the more unusual properties of subatomic particles, particularly tunneling.

Imagine a hill, Chakrabartty said. "If you want to get to the other side, you have to physically climb the hill. Quantum tunneling is more like going through the hill."

The beauty of this, he said, is that when the hill is a certain shape, you get very unique, dynamical properties that could last for years.

In this case, the "hill" is actually a barrier called a Fowler-Nordheim tunneling barrier. It's positioned between the plate of a capacitor and a semiconductor material; it's less than 100 atoms thick.

By building the barrier in a certain way, Chakrabartty said, "you can control the flow of electrons. You can make it reasonably slow, down to one electron every minute and still keep it reliable." At that rate, the dynamical system runs like a timekeeping device -- without any batteries -- for more than a year.

This is how it works:

To measure ambient motion, a tiny piezoelectric accelerometer was connected to the sensor. Researchers mechanically shook the accelerometer; its motion was then transformed into an electric signal. This signal changed the shape of the barrier, which, thanks to the rules of quantum physics, changed the rate at which the electrons tunneled through the barrier.

To make sense of what happened, the process needs to be read as a sort of backward Rube Goldberg machine.

The probability that a certain number of electrons will tunnel through the barrier is a function of the barrier's size. The size of the barrier is determined by the energy produced by the piezoelectric transducer, which in turn, is determined by the magnitude of the acceleration -- how much it shook.

By measuring the sensor capacitors' voltage and counting how many electrons were missing, Darshit Mehta, a PhD student in Chakrabartty's lab and the lead author on the paper, was able to determine the total acceleration energy.

Of course, to be put to practical use, these extremely sensitive devices would likely be moving around -- on a truck, keeping track of the ambient temperature of in cold-chain management of vaccines, for example. Or in your blood, monitoring glucose.

That's why each device is actually two systems, a sensing system and a reference system. At the outset, the two are nearly identical, only the sensing system was connected to a transducer while the reference system was not.

Both systems were engineered so that electrons tunneled at the same rate, destined to deplete their capacitors identically had there not been any outside forces at play.

Because the sensing system was affected by signals it received from the transducer, its electrons tunneled at different times than the reference system. After the experiments, the research team read the voltage in both the sensing and reference system capacitors. They used the difference in the two voltages to find the true measurements from the transducer.

For some applications, this final result is sufficient. The next step for Chakrabartty's team is to overcome the computational challenge of more precisely recreating what happened in the past -- how exactly were the electrons affected? When did an electron tunnel through the barrier? How long did it take to tunnel?

One of the goals of Mehta's PhD thesis is to use multiple devices to reconstruct the past. "The information is all stored on the device, we just have to come up with clever signal processing to solve this," Chakrabartty said.

Ultimately, these sensors hold promise for everything from continuous monitoring of glucose levels inside the human body, to possibly recording neural activity without using batteries.

"Right now, the platform is generic," Chakrabartty said. "It just depends on what you couple to the device. As long as you have a transducer that can generate an electrical signal, it can self-power our sensor-data-logger."

A simple method developed at KAUST uses laser beams to create graphene electrodes that have better performance than those produced through older methods.

Electrodes consisting of graphene, an atypical form of carbon, may transform the way electroactive substances are detected and measured in numerous fields ranging from food safety and clinical diagnosis to environmental monitoring1,2,3.

Graphene comprises multiple ultrathin and highly ordered sheets of interconnected honeycomb-shaped rings of carbon atoms. This multilayered architecture provides the material with exceptional electronic properties, especially electrical conductivity and electrocatalytic activity, as well as physical features that are useful for making electrochemical sensors.

Typically, graphene electrodes are produced by peeling off individual sheets from graphite or depositing a reactive gaseous mixture of precursors onto a substrate. However, these approaches involve time-consuming, multistep synthesis and isolation processes; plus, they struggle to control stacking and oxidation of the sheets.

To improve on technically challenging and expensive approaches, researchers from Khaled Salama's lab, in collaboration with others, developed a simple and scalable method that converts polymer or carbon precursor films into graphene electrodes using a laser beam. This mask-free method produces uniform, three-dimensional multilayered electrodes that combine high porosity and surface area, necessary for next-generation electrochemical sensor and biosensor platforms.

Salama's team and collaborators from the Hassan II University of Casablanca, Morocco, incorporated laser-derived graphene (LDG) electrodes in sensing platforms for major sources of antioxidants called phenolic compounds and related electroactive biomolecules².

All tested compounds showed higher electrocatalytic activity on the graphene-based platforms than on conventional systems using carbon electrodes.

"The graphene-based platforms showed excellent performance for detecting paracetamol, a common drug," says Abdellatif Ait Lahcen, a postdoc from Salama's Lab. They also distinguished paracetamol in a commercially available tablet that combines the drug with the antioxidant ascorbic acid, which often produces interferences in typical electrochemical analyses.

An evaluation of the electrochemical behavior of a set of hormones and neurotransmitters called catecholamines also provided insight into the mechanisms of oxidation-reduction reactions of these compounds.

There are many electrode modification approaches that can boost sensor performance. Biological receptors, such as enzymes, nucleic acids and antibodies, provide target-specific sensors, but they require complex surface immobilization techniques.

Potential alternatives are emerging for these natural receptors. Synthetic polymers known as molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) are durable and easy to prepare. KAUST researchers plan to optimize the fabrication of the sensors and expand their applications to other biomolecules and disease biomarkers. "We are developing MIP-modified biomimetic sensors for the early detection of breast cancer biomarkers," Ait Lahcen says.

The researchers modified LDG electrodes with MIPs to fabricate a cheap sensor for the detection of bisphenol A (BPA) in water and plastic samples³. The modification involved synthesizing polypyrrole under applied voltage in the presence of BPA molecules, which acted as templates and left imprints in the polymer when removed. The sensor displayed higher sensitivity and selectivity toward BPA than similar substances, such as estradiol, epinephrine and bisphenol F.

"Combining LDG electrodes with MIPs will lead to new highly sensitive and selective electrochemical sensors," says Tutku Beduk, a Ph.D. student from Salama's lab.

Salama believes that these MIP-based sensors will help ensure that water remains clean, pure and toxin-free.

The investigational drug evinacumab reduced low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol--the so-called "bad" cholesterol--by 50 percent in patients with severe hypercholesterolemia whose condition is resistant to standard treatments, a phase 2 study from the Icahn School of Medicine of Mount Sinai and other global academic sites has found. Results from the study sponsored by Regeneron, are being presented as "late breaking science" at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2020 on Sunday, November 15, and simultaneously published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Evinacumab is a fully human monoclonal antibody that works through a different mechanism than existing drugs to bring dangerously high cholesterol to normal levels when combined with maximally-tolerated lipid-lowering therapies in people with familial hypercholesterolemia, a common inherited condition that is difficult to treat.

"Our study assessing the safety and efficacy of evinacumab shows that it can lower LDL cholesterol by half in patients unable to attain target guidelines despite maximally tolerated lipid lowering therapy," says principal investigator Robert Rosenson, MD, Professor of Medicine (Cardiology) and Director of Cardiometabolic Disorders at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. "Evinacumab is a fully human monoclonal antibody that inhibits angiopoietin like protein 3 (ANGPLT3) and lowers LDL cholesterol through an LDL receptor independent pathway. Genetic studies have shown that people who are missing or have low levels of ANGPTL3 are known to have very low lifelong levels of LDL cholesterol and rarely suffer from atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease."

In the United States, approximately 7 percent of adults have been diagnosed with severe hypercholesterolemia, which is defined as having untreated LDL cholesterol at levels greater than or equal to 190 mg per deciliter. Familial hypercholesterolemia is present in 1 in 313 people, but it is far more common in patients with early-onset cardiovascular disease, occurring in 1 in 15. The 2018 American Heart Association/American Congress of Cardiology recommends an LDL cholesterol goal of less than or equal to 70 mg per deciliter in patients with very high risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, and more aggressive targets have been established by the European Society of Cardiology guideline with recommendations to lower LDL cholesterol to 55 mg/dL or below. These goals have proven difficult for patients with hypercholesterolemia to reach through standard "triple therapy" of a high-intensity statin, a PCSK9 inhibitor, and ezetimibe, a drug that limits the absorption of cholesterol from the intestine.

"There's an unmet need for agents that address refractory hypercholesterolemia through a pathway that's independent of the LDL receptor," explains Dr. Rosenson. "If approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, evinacumab may potentially fills that clinical gap for patients, by reducing severely elevated LDL cholesterol."

The phase 2 multi-center, double-blinded, placebo-controlled study of evinacumab included 272 patients with primary hypercholesterolemia including a majority having a diagnosis of heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (HeFH). HeFH is an inherited form of hypercholesterolemia most often caused by mutations in the LDL receptor gene. The research team found that subcutaneous administration of the agent at 450 mg weekly resulted in LDL cholesterol lowering of 56 percent, and 52.9 percent at 300 mg weekly compared to the placebo group. With monthly intravenous administration of evinacumab at 15 mg/kg, LDL cholesterol reduction was 50.5 percent compared to the placebo group. All patients receiving evinacumab were on background lipid-lowering therapies.

Evinacumab was well-tolerated among most patients. One patient treated with subcutaneous evinacumab had difficulty breathing, and another had a mild anaphylactic reaction. Both stopped the medication and their symptoms improved with other treatment. Two deaths
were reported in the trial but were linked to underlying health conditions.

"Our study demonstrates that a regimen of either subcutaneous or intravenous evinacumab can have a significant impact on LDL cholesterol," notes Dr. Rosenson. "If approved for use in this setting, evinacumab could potentially arm cardiologists with a major new add-on therapy to bring patients with HeFH to or closer to their cholesterol-lowering goal."

Evinacumab is under regulatory review in the United States and the European Union as an adjunct to other lipid-lowering therapies in patients with homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia, another form of familial hypercholesterolemia.

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill (November 13, 2020) - Parents of children with food allergies find their children are often bullied by classmates, as well as parents of other children and teachers. A new study being presented at this year's virtual American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI) Annual Scientific Meeting shows that nearly one in five parents of food-allergic kids are the target of bullying by a multitude of sources.

"We know children are often bullied about their food allergies," says Dannielle Brown, MHS, lead author of the study. "What we weren't aware of was how many parents are bullied by multiple sources. Of the 252 parents or guardians we surveyed, more than 17% said they had been bullied."

Parents of children 4-17 years (school-age children) in the survey found it was helpful to take action to stop the bullying. 13% of parents/guardians spoke with their child, 7% spoke with the offender or the offender's parent, 17% spoke with a teacher and 15% spoke with a principal or administrator. Almost 50% of those who did something to stop food allergy bullying said it was helpful.

Another important finding in the survey was that while there were no significant differences in the percentages of Black and white children who were bullied around food allergies, Black children experienced non-food allergy-related bullying twice as frequently.

"No child or their parent should be bullied because of their food allergies," says food allergy researcher Ruchi Gupta, MD, MPH, ACAAI member and one of the lead researchers on the study. "And it's of course equally important that Black children with food allergies not be bullied for additional reasons. Having a food allergy puts tremendous stress on the entire family and any form of bullying makes life that much harder."

Presentation Title: Food Allergy-Related Bullying and School Policy Among Black and White Children in the FORWARD Study
Presenter: Dannielle Brown, MHS

One of the unintended consequences of the COVID-19 lockdowns in England earlier this year has been a 25 per cent increase in the prescription of antibiotics by dentists, according to a new study published today in the British Dental Journal (BDJ). Prescription rates were the highest in London, with an increase of 60 per cent for the same period and the lowest increases, less than 10 per cent, were in the South-West of England.

Antibiotic resistance (ABR) is a global problem that poses a significant threat to health and wealth, due to prolonged illnesses, longer hospital stays and increased mortality. The World Health Organization (WHO) has highlighted the urgency of tackling ABR by including it in the five platforms to global health and well-being. ABR is a problem that affects everyone and needs tackling urgently. If ABR continues to increase, it is estimated that infections resistant to drugs will be the number one cause of death globally within the next 30 years.

The WHO's annual World Antimicrobial Awareness Week is held from November 18-24.

Antibiotics do not cure toothache. Most dental infections are amenable to treatment by a dental procedure to remove the source of the infection without the need for antibiotics. In normal times, antibiotic-only treatment plans are rarely appropriate. Unnecessary use of antibiotics drives the development and spread of resistant infections.

"Antibiotics are life-saving drugs; when people really need them, they really need to work," said Dr Wendy Thompson, author of the BDJ study, clinical academic in primary dental care at the University of Manchester and member of the FDI ABR Working Group.

"Infections that are resistant to antibiotics pose a serious risk to patient safety--which is why the large rise in dental antibiotic prescribing (over 25 per cent in the three months of April to June) is a huge concern. After years of a downward trend, restricted access to dental care due to COVID-19 drove this sudden increase. We must guard against it happening again when the UK finds itself in another lockdown environment.

"We live in especially challenging times. Patients waiting for access to care often receive more antibiotics than those patients who receive the right treatment immediately. As dental care provision returns to a 'new normal' in the COVID-19 era, it is important to ensure access to high-quality, urgent dental care and to optimize the use of antibiotics."

'Slow-motion pandemic'

Acknowledging the urgency of the situation, FDI has released today its White Paper, The essential role of the dental team in reducing antibiotic resistance, which is supported by an online library of resources and accompanied by a massive open online course (MOOC). The paper is an important step forward in acknowledging that dentists around the world must be recognized for their role in preventing and treating dental infections and empowered to optimize their antibiotic prescribing.

"We are staring down a slow-motion pandemic and urgent collective action is needed to slow it down," said Dr Gerhard K. Seeberger, president of FDI.

"Moving forward, the dental profession has a clear responsibility to engage, commit and contribute to global, national and local efforts to tackle antibiotic resistance."

A group of researchers from the Institute of Neurosciences UMH-CSIC, in Alicante, led by Dr. Eloísa Herrera, has discovered a genetic program essential for the formation of bilateral circuits, such as the one that makes possible 3D vision or the one enabling motor coordination. The finding, carried out in mice, is published today in Science Advances.

This new study not only clarifies how images are transmitted from the retina to the brain in order to see in 3D, but also helps us to understand how laterality is established in other neuronal circuits, such as the one that allows us to coordinate movements at both sides of the body, Dr. Herrera explains.

The work also reveals the important role of a protein known as Zic2 in the regulation of a signaling pathway called Wnt, which is fundamental for the correct development of the embryo and is highly conserved among species, from fruit flies to humans, including mice, in which this study has been carried out.

This pathway is usually altered in pathological scenarios such as spina bifida or other disorders associated with incomplete closure of the neural tube as well as in several types of cancer. The new details described in this work about the regulation of this pathway through Zic2 will help to understand the origin of this type of pathologies to try to prevent their appearance.

3D VISION

The ability to perceive the 3D world and respond appropriately to external stimuli largely depends on a type of neural circuits known as bilateral that communicate the two brain hemispheres and are essential for many of the tasks we perform daily.

These bilateral circuits require both the crossing of one part of the nerve fibers to the contralateral brain hemisphere from which they originate and the permanence of the other half in its originating hemisphere. "The genetic program we have identified ensures that part of the neurons located in the retina carry visual information to the opposite brain hemisphere, and the action of a protein called Zic2 turns off this program in another group of retinal neurons so that the visual signal also reaches the same hemisphere," explains Eloísa Herrera.

Years ago, Dr. Eloísa Herrera's group discovered that Zic2 makes bilateralism possible by ensuring that part of the extensions of the neurons (axons) remain in the same hemisphere from which they originated. And in this new work, they describe that in order to ensure that the axons remain in the same hemisphere, Zic2 turns off the genetic program that makes them cross over to the opposite hemisphere.

"This finding has allowed us to identify the contralateral program and observe that it shares common elements with a well-known signaling pathway, called Wnt, which is also involved in many other processes of the embryonic development," highlights Eloísa Herrera, who directs the group of "Development and assembly of bilateral circuits in the nervous system" at the Institute of Neurosciences UMH-CSIC in Alicante.

INFORMATION CROSSOVER

This discovery has been made in the visual pathway of mice, which is similar to the visual pathway of other mammals, including our species. Each of the two optical nerves that connect the retinas to the brain is formed by a multitude of nerve fibers. The two optic nerves converge in an X-shaped structure, called the optic chiasm, located at the base of the brain. Here takes place the crossing of information between both cerebral hemispheres that makes possible the vision in 3D.

"Each eye sends visual information to both sides of the brain because about half of the axons of the neurons located in the retina cross the mid-brain line to connect with the opposite hemisphere, while the other half avoids this crossing to project into the brain hemisphere on the same side from which they came. This anatomical organization allows the brain to fuse the slightly different images it receives from each eye to create the sensation of three-dimensionality," explains Dr. Herrera.

It is precisely at the optic chiasm where Zic2 acts as a switch to turn off the genetic program that allows the axons to pass to the other brain hemisphere. This "switch on the pathway" is crucial for the brain to create a three-dimensional image from two flat images coming from the retina.

Datacenters could benefit from lower cooling costs in part to ultra-fast electro-optic modulators developed by researchers in Japan using a polymer that is stable even at temperatures that would boil water.

Reported in the journal Nature Communications, the silicon-polymer hybrid modulators can transmit 200 gigabits of data per second at up to 110 °C and could enable optical data interconnections that are both extremely fast and reliable at high temperatures, reducing the need for cooling and expanding applications in harsh environments like rooftops and cars.

Demand for high-speed data transmission such as for high-definition media streaming has exploded in recent years, and optical communications are central to many of the necessary data connections. A critical component is the modulator, which puts data on a beam of light passing through an electro-optic material that can change its optical properties in response to an electric field.

Most modulators currently use inorganic semiconductors or crystals as the electro-optic material, but organic-based polymers have the advantages that they can be fabricated with excellent electro-optic properties at a low cost and operated at low voltages.

"Polymers have great potential for use in modulators, but reliability issues still need to be overcome for many industry applications," explains Shiyoshi Yokoyama, professor of Kyushu University's Institute for Materials Chemistry and Engineering and leader of the research collaboration.

One challenge is that parts of the molecules in the polymer layer must be organized through a process called poling to obtain good electro-optic properties, but this organization can be lost when the layer gets warm enough to begin softening--a point referred to as the glass transition temperature.

However, if the modulators and other components can operate rapidly and reliably even at high temperatures, datacenters could run warmer, thereby reducing their energy usage--nearly 40% of which is currently estimated to go toward cooling.

Employing a polymer they designed to exhibit superb electro-optic properties and a high glass transition temperature of 172 °C through the incorporation of appropriate chemical groups, the research team achieved ultra-fast signaling at elevated temperatures in a silicon-polymer hybrid modulator based on a Mach-Zehnder interferometer configuration, which is less sensitive to temperature changes than some other architectures.

In the modulators, composed of multiple layers including the polymer and silicon, an incoming laser beam is split into two arms of equal length. Applying an electric field across the electro-optic polymer in one of the arms changes the optical properties such that the light wave slightly shifts. When the two arms come back together, interference between the modified and unmodified beams changes the strength of the mixed output beam depending on the amount of phase shift, thereby encoding data in the light.

Using a simple data signaling scheme of just on and off states, rates of over 100 Gbit/s were achieved, while a more complicated method using four signal levels could achieve a rate of 200 Gbit/s.

This performance was maintained with negligible changes even when operating the devices over temperatures ranging from 25 °C to 110 °C and after subjecting the devices to 90 °C heat for 100 hours, demonstrating the robustness and stability of the modulators over an extraordinarily wide range of temperatures.

"Stable operation even when the temperature fluctuates up to 110 °C is wonderful," says Yokoyama. "This temperature range means operation in controlled environments such as datacenters, even at higher than normal temperatures, and many harsh environments where temperature is not well controlled is possible."

The current devices are millimeter sized, making them relatively large compared to other designs, but the researchers are looking into ways to further reduce the footprint for incorporation of a dense arrays of such modulators in a small area.

"This kind of performance shows just how promising polymers are for future telecommunications technologies," Yokoyama states.

Metal-ion hybrid capacitors combine the properties of capacitors and batteries. One electrode uses the capacitive mechanism, the other the battery-type redox processes. Scientists have now scrutinized the role of anions in the electrolyte. The results, which have been published in the journal Angewandte Chemie, reveal the importance of sulfate anions. Sulfate-based electrolytes gave zinc-ion hybrid capacitors outstanding performance and extra-long operability.

Capacitors can uptake and release an enormous amount of charge in a short time, whereas batteries can store a lot of energy in a small volume. To combine both properties, scientists are investigating hybrid electrochemical cells, which contain both capacitor- and battery-type electrodes. Among these cells, researchers have identified metal-ion hybrid capacitors as especially promising devices. Here, the positive electrode includes pseudocapacitive properties, which means it can also store energy in the manner of a battery, by intercalation of the metal ions, while the negative electrode is made of a redox-active metal.

However, their electrolyte has long been neglected, says Chunyi Zhi who is investigating battery materials together with his team at the City University of Hong Kong. The researchers believe the type of electrolyte anion affects the performance of the device. "Paying more attention to the introduction of appropriate anions can effectively improve the power and energy density of a capacitor," they say.

The researchers focused their attention on zinc-ion capacitors. This cell type consists of a zinc metal anode and a cathode made of titanium nitride nanofibers. The nanofibers are robust, and their porous surface allows the electrolyte to infiltrate. The scientists argue that the electrolyte anions, when attached to the titanium nitride surface, make the material more conductive. Moreover, the adsorbed anions may directly contribute to the charging process. The charging of the hybrid capacitor involves the extraction of the intercalated zinc ions.

Zhi and his colleagues compared the effects of three electrolyte anions: sulfate, acetate, and chloride. They looked at both their binding to the electrode surface and the performances of the electrochemical cells. It was a clear result.

The scientists reported that the sulfate anions stood out among the three anions. They observed that cells based on a zinc sulfate electrolyte performed best, and the sulfates bound stronger to the titanium nitride surface than the other anions. Moreover, sulfate-treated electrodes showed the lowest self-discharging. The authors attributed the findings to the electronic effects of sulfate. Its electron-pulling nature provides tight binding to the surface atoms and prevents the electrode from self-discharging, the authors concluded.

For a zinc-sulfate-based zinc-ion hybrid capacitor, the scientists reported high-performance operation for more than nine months. Moreover, these devices are flexible, which is especially useful for portable electronics. The scientists tested the device in an electronic watch and found excellent performance.