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Racial disparities among essential workers could be a key reason that Black Americans are more likely than whites to contract and die of COVID-19, according to researchers at the University of Utah. They found that Blacks disproportionately worked in nine vital occupations that increase their exposure to SARs-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

"There are a lot of theories why Blacks are dying at higher rates than other races during this pandemic," says Fares Qeadan, Ph.D., a U of U Health biostatistician and senior author of the study. "However, our descriptive study strongly suggests that Blacks are not dying from COVID-19 because they are genetically more susceptible, have more comorbidities, or aren't taking the necessary precautions. Instead, it's likely because they are working in jobs where they have a greater risk of coming in contact with the virus day in and day out."

The study appears in a special issue of World Medical & Health Policy.

After analyzing demographic job data, the researchers found that Blacks were nearly three times more likely than whites to work in health care support jobs such as nursing assistants or orderlies. Blacks were twice as likely to work in transportation roles such as bus drivers, movers, and taxi drivers. Also, Black Americans were more likely to serve in seven other occupations deemed essential during the pandemic: food preparation, building and grounds maintenance, police and protective services, personal care (childcare, hairstylists), office and administrative support, production (assemblers, painters, machinists), as well as social work and community services.

The researchers correlated these job classifications with COVID-19 deaths in 26 states and Washington, D.C. They concluded that all of these jobs placed workers at higher risk of infection and death from the novel disease. Police and protective services, health care support, transportation, and food preparation were among those occupations most closely correlated with COVID-19 deaths.

This finding, Qeadan says, strongly implies that Blacks are more likely to be exposed to COVID-19 on the job than whites. It also could help explain why Blacks, who only represent 6% of the population in Wisconsin, accounted for more than 36% of the state's COVID-19 deaths. Smaller but notably disproportionate COVID-19 death rates were found in other states such as California, New York, New Jersey, and Tennessee. However, the largest disparities were detected in the Midwest, where Blacks accounted for 30-40% of COVID-19 deaths in Kansas, Missouri, Michigan, and Illinois yet represented less than 15% of the populations in these states. At the time of the study in April 2020, Blacks comprise 12% of the population nationwide but 21% of COVID-19 deaths.

"I find it ironic that the people we depend on as essential workers to wipe down our counters and keep things clean are the most vulnerable among us," says Tiana N. Rogers, Ph.D., corresponding author of the study and program manager for the Sorenson Impact Center's Data, Policy, and Performance Innovation team in the David Eccles School of Business. "We need to make sure that the people doing these jobs can continue to provide for their families without having to risk their lives."

According to study co-author, Charles R. Rogers, Ph.D., an assistant professor of public health, "Black essential workers could be bringing the disease home from work and inadvertently spreading it among their family members--especially considering some Blacks live in multi-generational, high-density housing."

While this may make social distancing and other COVID-19 safety precautions more difficult, he says adhering to these guidelines is particularly important for essential workers in these situations.

Among its limitations, the study did not account for racial differences at the county or regional level within states due to a lack of access to public and desegregated data. The study's results could also have been affected by the timing of the onset of COVID-19 in various states as well as how rapidly states adopted social distancing policies. Still, the researchers believe their findings are critical for enabling timely public health strategies for pandemics moving forward.

"This study should help health practitioners better assess what is going on among essential workers who happen to be Black," Tiana Rogers says. "If we honestly don't know what is happening and where it is happening, we can't make adjustments that are equitable and give these workers the support and resources they need for survival during this crisis."

Philadelphia, September 8, 2020 - Early findings from researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) show that convalescent plasma appears to be a safe and possibly effective treatment for children with life-threatening cases of COVID-19. The results were published online Friday by the journal Pediatric Blood and Cancer.

To date, no therapies have been proven safe and effective for children who develop life-threatening complications from contracting the SARS-COV-2 virus. One possible treatment that has been explored in adults is the use of convalescent plasma, which is derived from patients who have recovered from COVID-19 and can be administered in currently ill patients to generate an antibody response that renders the virus inert. Early positive results were observed in adults who received convalescent plasma, but the treatment had not been studied in children.

"Some children who contract this virus can develop very serious complications, so even with limited data in adults, we believed it was worth exploring the use of convalescent plasma as a possible treatment option," said David Teachey, MD, senior author of the study and an attending physician, Co-Leader of the Immune Dysregulation Frontier Program, and Director of Clinical Research at the Center for Childhood Cancer Research at CHOP.

This study is the first report of convalescent plasma in children with life-threatening COVID-19 and involved researchers in a wide variety of disciplines, including immune dysregulation, transfusion medicine, infectious disease, occupational health, critical care, hematology, oncology, immunology, and rheumatology. The study involved four patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome. The researchers measured donor antibody levels and recipient antibody response prior to and following the convalescent plasma infusion to determine whether there were any adverse reactions.

In the four patients that were studied, the use of convalescent plasma was not associated with antibody-dependent enhancement, in which antibodies developed during a previous infection cause a worsened response with subsequent infections, a concern that has been described in preclinical models of other coronaviruses. Additionally, convalescent plasma did not suppress endogenous antibody response.

"We believe that convalescent plasma may provide the greatest benefit for patients who are early into their illness and have not yet generated endogenous antibodies," Teachey said. "While the small sample size of our study does not allow us to draw any definitive conclusions, we believe this method is safe and future research should include randomized controlled trials to more definitively examine how effective convalescent plasma may be in treating children infected with COVID-19."

Do the societal benefits of national monuments on US public lands outweigh the opportunity cost of forgone development and resource extraction? The answer is “yes,” according to a new study by Resources for the Future researcher Margaret Walls.

Walls’s new peer-reviewed study, published recently in Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, explains the motivation for the Antiquities Act, which is used to create national monuments; describes the myriad controversies surrounding national monument designations; and reviews the literature on societal benefits, costs, and economic impacts of monuments and other similarly protected lands.

Walls finds that the national monuments designated thus far have generated benefits in excess of costs and have not hurt local economies—in fact, in some cases, monument designations have increased the number of businesses and jobs in nearby communities. She also offers an explanation for why, in light of these findings, monuments continue to generate controversy, concluding that weak economic growth in rural areas over the last two decades is often wrongly laid at the feet of public lands policies, including the designation of monuments.

“National monuments protect important historic and cultural resources, while also providing some spectacular outdoor recreational opportunities,” says Walls. “According to my research, these benefits have outweighed any costs. Nonetheless, conflicts over how to use our public lands in the U.S. are long-standing and likely to continue in the future.”

Walls predicts that the Antiquities Act—which states that the US president may unilaterally create monuments—will continue to be put to the test. The act states that monuments “shall be confined to the smallest area compatible with proper management,” a clause which has notably been used in recent years by the Trump administration to reduce the size of two national monuments in Utah (Bears Ears and Grand Staircase–Escalante).

Children who are exposed to tobacco have higher rates of hospital admissions after visiting emergency departments or urgent care facilities, according to a new study by University of Cincinnati researchers.

The study, set to be published in October in Pediatric Research and currently available online, found that tobacco smoke exposure also increased the risk of pediatric patients having respiratory-related procedures performed while in the emergency department, as well as medications prescribed.

The groundbreaking study compared 380 children exposed to tobacco smoke with 1,140 children not exposed, matching the children in regards to age, sex, race and ethnicity, said Ashley Merianos, an associate professor in UC's School of Human Services, who led the study.

"We know that exposure to secondhand smoke is related to substantial morbidity in children. In addition to exposed children having more health care visits, I was really interested in taking a closer look at the actual resource utilization during their visits. For example, [I looked at whether] children who are exposed to tobacco smoke are more likely to have more infectious diagnostic, lab and radiologic tests during their emergency visit than children who are unexposed," she explained.

Merianos, who's long conducted similar research in the field of children and tobacco smoke exposure, expected that children exposed to tobacco would be at higher risk, but even she was surprised by the numbers, she said.

Children exposed to tobacco smoke were 24 times more likely to be admitted to the hospital than unexposed children, which Merianos says emphasizes that possible tobacco smoke exposure may contribute to related illness severity.

Children in the exposed group were also nearly eight times more likely to have suctioning performed with a BBG nasal aspirator and over seven times more likely to receive steroids during their visit.

Of children in both groups with asthma, kids exposed to tobacco smoke were 27 times more likely to receive steroids during their emergency department visit and over 15 times more likely to receive albuterol, a bronchodilator used to treat asthma attacks.

Children exposed to tobacco smoke were also at increased odds of having laboratory tests (5.72 times ordered), and radiologic tests (4.73 times), as well as various infectious diagnostic tests (2.68 times).

Children who were ages one or younger had the highest levels of exposure to tobacco smoke, likely due to their inability to leave environments in which tobacco is being smoked, explained Merianos.

Socioeconomic status was also a factor in a child's likelihood of exposure, she said.

"Nearly three-quarters of children included in the present study were public insurance recipients, a proxy of low income," said Merianos.

Despite the health implications of tobacco smoke exposure on children, Merianos says that most emergency departments don't routinely screen for tobacco smoke exposure or provide tobacco cessation counseling services or resources to families.

Doing so would be to their benefit, as well as that of the children and families they serve, she points out.

"Standardized tobacco control initiatives may help overburdened health care facilities by decreasing resource utilization attributed to tobacco smoke exposure," she concludes in her study. "Targeting children with potential tobacco smoke exposure-related chief complaints (e.g., cough) and illnesses (e.g., asthma) may also help to reduce related morbidity and potentially preventable future health care visits."

While emergency departments and urgent care facilities may provide what Merianos calls that "teachable moment" to promote smoking cessation resources for parents and caregivers, Merianos says she understands the constraints health care providers are under.

"The main reason why the resources aren't routinely being offered is due to the need to medically stabilize ill children and also due to the lack of standardized efforts and resources in place," she said. "Emergency department providers might think that primary care is the more appropriate setting, but a lot of patients in the emergency care setting don't regularly interact with their primary care provider."

Merianos' next steps are to take the data from this study and analyze it with plans to create standardized interventions and programs to offer to health care providers that will be both clinically effective and feasible, as well as engaging and meaningful for parents and patients, she said.

"Even just being able to eliminate one child's tobacco smoke exposure levels is a job well done on my part," said Merianos. "It's about bringing health promotion and disease prevention efforts to these vulnerable populations and making a positive change to the child's health, as well as the family's health."

Formerly a typhoon, Tropical Storm Haishen made landfall in South Korea on Monday, Sept. 2 and continued moving north toward China. NASA's Aqua satellite provided an infrared view of Haishen as a typhoon before landfall and a visible image after landfall as an extra-tropical storm.

Infrared View of Haishen as a Typhoon

One of the ways NASA researches tropical cyclones is using infrared data that provides temperature information. The AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a look at those temperatures in Haishen and gave insight into the size of the storm and its rainfall potential.

Cloud top temperatures provide information to forecasters about where the strongest storms are located within a tropical cyclone. Tropical cyclones do not always have uniform strength, and some sides have stronger sides than others. The stronger the storms, the higher they extend into the troposphere, and they have the colder cloud temperatures. NASA provides that data to forecasters so they can incorporate in their forecasts.

On Sept. 3 at 11:53 p.m. EDT (Sept. 4 at 0353), NASA's Aqua satellite analyzed the storm using the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument. At the time, Haishen was a Super Typhoon with maximum sustained winds near 135 knots (155 mph/250 kph) and strengthened to a Category 5 hurricane/typhoon later that day.

AIRS found coldest cloud top temperatures as cold as or colder than minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 62.2 degrees Celsius) around a very clear and open eye. NASA research has shown that cloud top temperatures that cold indicate strong storms that have the capability to create heavy rain.

Haishen Batters Kyushu, Japan

Before Typhoon Haishen made landfall, it moved past southwestern Japan, knocking out power to around 475,000 houses in Kyushu. Haishen brought very heavy rain, storm surge, flooding and landslides as it moved west of Kyushu toward South Korea. In Japan, over 100 people were reported injured, two people died and four people were reported missing.

Typhoon Haishen made its landfall in South Korea's southeastern coast on Monday, Sept. 7.

Haishen's Final Bulletin

At 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC) on Sept. 7, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JWTC) issued their final bulletin on Tropical Storm Haishen. At that time, Haishen was located near latitude 40.7 degrees north and longitude 128.9 degrees east, about 233 miles north-northeast of Osan Air Base, South Korea. Haishen was moving quickly to the north at 24 knots (28 mph/44 kph). Maximum sustained winds were near 35 knots (40 mph/65 kph). Haishen was moving north and is becoming extra-tropical.

A Visible Image of an Extra-tropical Storm

On Sept. 7 at 11:40 p.m. EDT (0340 UTC, Sept. 8), the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite provided a visible image of Extra-Tropical Storm Haishen over eastern China. Haishen's eastern quadrant extended over the northern Sea of Japan.

After landfall in South Korea and a track north to China, Haishen moved over China's Jilin Province as an extra-tropical storm. The China Meteorological Department said Haishen started to move out of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and into Heilongjiang Province at noon (local time) on Tuesday.

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided forecasters with a visible image of the latest tropical cyclone in the North Atlantic hurricane season. Tropical Storm Rene was bringing tropical-storm force winds and rain to the Cabo Verde Islands.

Cabo Verde, also known as Cape Verde, is a country consisting of a chain of islands, located about 385 miles (620 km) off the west coast of Africa.

Tropical Depression 18 developed on Monday, Sept. 7 in the far eastern North Atlantic Ocean, about 250 miles (405 km) east-southeast of the Cabo Verde Islands. By 5 p.m. EDT (2100 UTC) on Sept. 7, the depression strengthened into a tropical storm and was renamed Rene.

On Sept. 8, a Tropical Storm Warning was in effect for the Cabo Verde Islands. The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard Suomi NPP provided a visible image of Rene when it passed overhead. The imagery showed that the tropical storm has a well-defined circulation. However, the banding of thunderstorms around the center has shown no increased organization since Sept. 7.

At 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC) on Sept. 8, Tropical Storm Rene was bringing tropical-storm force winds and heavy rain to the western Cabo Verde Islands. The center of Tropical Storm Rene was located near latitude 16.5 degrees north and longitude 26.5 degrees west. Rene was moving toward the west near 16 mph (26 kph), and a motion toward the west to west-northwest is expected over the next two or three days. Maximum sustained winds are near 40 mph (65 kph) with higher gusts. The estimated minimum central pressure is 1001 millibars.

On the forecast track, the center of Rene will move away from the Cabo Verde Islands later today. Little change in strength is expected today, followed by gradual strengthening on Thursday and Friday.  Rene is forecast to become a hurricane in a couple of days.

PULLMAN, Wash. - Exercise has been shown to reduce anxiety and stress, but it may not be enough for the levels caused by COVID-19.

In a study of twins led by Washington State University researchers, people who reported increasing their physical activity after the start of COVID-19 stay-at-home orders reported higher levels of stress and anxiety than those whose activity levels stayed the same.

In the study, published recently in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers analyzed data from over 900 pairs of identical and same-sex fraternal twins from the Washington State Twin Registry. Those who reported a decrease in physical activity within two-weeks after the start of stay-at-home orders had a perceived higher level of stress and anxiety, which was expected. But surprisingly, many of the respondents who increased their physical activity felt the same way.

"Certainly, people who don't exercise know that there are associations with mental health outcomes, yet the ones that increased their exercise also reported increased anxiety and stress," said lead author Glen Duncan, a professor in WSU's Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine. "It's hard to know exactly what's going on, but it could be that they are trying to use exercise as a means to counter that stress and anxiety they're feeling because of COVID."

The twin survey was conducted from March 26 to April 5, 2020, in the early days of the pandemic. Washington State and many other states issued their first stay at home orders near the end of March in an attempt to curb the spread of COVID-19. Participants were asked about changes in their physical activity compared to one month previous. Of the survey respondents, 42% reported decreasing levels of physical activity since the COVID crisis began, and 27% said they had increased their activities. Another 31% reported no change.

Conducting the study with twins allowed the researchers to look at whether the associations between changes in physical activity and mental health were mediated by genetic or shared environmental factors, or both. Identical twins share all of their genes; fraternal twins share approximately half of their genes; and twins raised in the same family share many formative experiences.

In this study, the researchers found that the association between decreased physical activity and stress was confounded by genetic and environmental factors. The twin pairs who differed in their perceived change in physical activity--when one twin reported decreased activity while the other remained the same--did not differ in their perceived stress levels.

"It's not necessarily that exercise won't help you personally manage stress," said Duncan. "It's just that there is something genetically and environmentally linking the two."

The researchers found some association between decreased physical activity and anxiety: within a pair of twins, the sibling with decreased physical activity had higher levels of anxiety than the sibling who reported no change. In addition, anxiety levels were higher among older people and women.

Duncan and his colleagues plan to survey this population again to see if the relationships between physical activity and these mental health issues persist or change.

"At least in the short term, it seems there is not a lot of impact from either decreasing or increasing physical activity in terms of handling stress and anxiety, but that might be different after two or three months under COVID restrictions," Duncan said.

LOS ANGELES -- For some prostate cancer patients, radical treatment (surgery or radiation) are treatment standards. However, these procedures may cause side effects including urinary incontinence or impotency.

A new study from USC Urology with Keck Medicine of USC demonstrates that focal (or targeted) high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) ablation of the prostate is an effective alternative to surgery or radiation, with encouraging outcomes and shortened recovery time.

Focal HIFU ablation is an outpatient procedure that uses a focused ultrasound beam to raise the temperature inside the prostate to approximately 90 degrees Celsius (194 degrees Fahrenheit) to destroy targeted areas of prostate tissue. The procedure takes around two hours and the patients are often discharged home the same day.

The study, published in The Journal of Urology, followed 100 men in the United States who underwent a HIFU procedure for prostate cancer between 2015-2019. This is the first and largest study examining the outcomes of focal HIFU ablation as a primary treatment for prostate cancer in the United States.

During follow-up, 91% of HIFU patients successfully avoided radical treatment. Also, 73% of patients did not experience treatment failure, which the researchers defined as clinically significant cancer recurrence, metastases or mortality, or the need for additional hormone therapy, chemotherapy, surgery or radiation.

The results demonstrated that focal HIFU carries a low risk of complication and can help preserve quality of life. In fact, all patients remained continent and there was no significant decrease in sexual function. There also were no serious adverse events or major complications. Minor complications, including difficulties with urination and urinary tract infection, occurred in a small proportion of the patients, and were addressed without major interventions. Patients were typically discharged the same day as their procedure and resumed regular activities shortly thereafter.

"This positive data empowers urologists to use focal HIFU ablation to effectively address prostate cancer without the intrinsic side effects of radical treatments," says Andre Abreu, MD, urologic surgeon with Keck Medicine and first author of the study. Abreu is also an assistant professor of clinical urology and radiology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. "We hope this study encourages prostate cancer patients to talk to their doctor about all potential treatment options to ensure that they receive a personalized care plan that addresses their individual needs."

Urologists worldwide have used HIFU ablation to treat prostate cancer patients for many years; however, the technology was only approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for prostate tissue ablation in 2015. Keck Medicine was among the first U.S. institutions to use this technology following the FDA approval.

"USC Urology is dedicated to refining cancer care through collaboration and innovation," says Inderbir S. Gill, MD, founding and executive director of USC Urology and senior author of the study.

"Throughout screening, diagnosis and treatment, it is important to balance accuracy and efficacy. Our physicians will continue working toward better methods to personalize that balance for every prostate cancer patient," continues Gill, who is also Distinguished Professor and chair of the Catherine and Joseph Aresty Department of Urology, Shirley and Donald Skinner Chair in Urologic Cancer Surgery and associate dean for clinical innovation at the Keck School.

In 2010, USC Urology launched a focal therapy and image-guided surgery program to develop more accurate methods to diagnose and treat prostate cancer. Since the program's inception, USC Urology has increased its annual image-guided prostate biopsies six-fold, with the vast majority of these procedures using a combination of MRI and ultrasound imaging. Additionally, USC Urology physicians are skilled in the most innovative therapies, including focal HIFU, cryoablation and robotic prostatectomy.

USC Urology physicians also collaborate with Keck Medicine radiologists and pathologists to create tailored, multidisciplinary treatment plans for each prostate cancer patient.

This year, U.S. News and World Report ranked Keck Medicine No. 9 in the country for Urology.

PLYMOUTH MEETING, PA [September 8, 2020] -- New international research in the September 2020 issue of JNCCN--Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network adds important knowledge about how immunotherapy-related adverse events (irAEs) can impact more than one organ in a single patient. This study provides new information on how frequently multiple organ side effects occur, and reveals that multi-organ irAEs are more likely to happen sequentially rather than simultaneously.

"Multi-organ irAEs are under-recognized, under reported, and their pathophysiology is poorly understood," said lead researcher Ganessan Kichenadasse, MBBS, FRACP, Flinders Centre for Innovation in Cancer, Flinders University, in Bedford Park, Australia. "We need a concerted international effort to improve our understanding and help identify predisposing factors and prevention strategies. Treating teams should be aware of the potential for irAEs which affect multiple organs and institute plans for recognizing and managing them."

The researchers evaluated the incidence and patterns of multi-organ irAEs using individual patient data from four non-small cell lung cancer trials where patients were treated with atezolizumab, a PD-L1 inhibitor. Those four studies, known as OAK, POPLAR, BIRCH, and FIR, include investigators from around the world. Out of 1,548 patients worldwide, 27% experienced at least one adverse event; 5.4% experienced multi-organ irAEs. Skin, laboratory, endocrine, neurologic and pulmonary abnormalities represented the most common organ systems involved.

Among the 84 cases with multi-organ irAEs, 70 patients (83.3%) had two organ systems affected, 13 (15.5%) had three, and one patient had four systems affected. 86% of multi-organ irAE patients experienced these side-effects sequentially rather than concurrently. According to the results, multi-organ irAEs were generally amenable to satisfactory management, and their occurrence was associated with better overall survival rates.

"Based on the mechanisms of action for these immune checkpoint agents, tumor response and irAEs are likely to have a common pathophysiology," said Dr. Kichenadasse. "There is also probably a cumulative immune activation with every dose of immunotherapy, meaning lengthier treatment could lead to both better survival and added organ damage. However, it is important to highlight that this analysis was exploratory and hypothesis generating; these results need to be confirmed through additional research."

"This study confirms that more than one organ, at the same time or sequentially, can be affected by immune-related adverse events from checkpoint inhibitor therapy," commented Igor Puzanov, MD, MSci, FACP, Professor of Medicine, Director of the Early Phase Clinical Trials Program and Chief of Melanoma at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, who was not involved in this study. "This is worth noting for all practicing oncologists and other specialists taking care of patients who are receiving these therapies. The silver lining here is the seemingly improved overall survival we see among these patients."

Vertebrate organs organize physiological activities, and the diverse expression patterns of thousands of genes determines organ identities and functions. Because of this, the evolution of gene expression patterns plays a central role in organismal evolution.

Major organ-altering evolutionary events such as development of the hominoid brain are also associated with gene expression shifts. However, although gene duplication is well-known to play an important role in expression pattern shifts, the evolutionary dynamics of expression patterns with and without gene duplication remain poorly understood.

„An important question is whether long-term expression in one organ predisposes genes to be subsequently utilized in other organs. The answer is yes", says Dr. Kenji Fukushima from Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Bavaria, Germany. „There are preadaptive propensities in the evolution of vertebrate gene expression, and the propensity varies with the presence and type of gene duplication."

Funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation

Kenji Fukushima now reports this and other findings with his co-author David D. Pollock (University of Colorado, School of Medicine, Aurora, USA) in the journal Nature Communications.

Dr. Fukushima holds a research position at the JMU Chair for Molecular Plant Physiology and Biophysics. Here, since 2018, the Japanese evolution biologist has been building up a working group, funded with 1.6 million euros by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The renowned foundation had selected him as the winner of its Sofja Kovalevskaja Prize 2018. The award is intended for exceptionally talented young researchers.

Complex history of gene family trees

For their study the scientists amalgamated 1,903 RNA-seq datasets from 182 research projects. The date include six organs (brain, heart, kidney, liver, ovary, and testis) from 21 vertebrate species, ranging from freshwater fish and frogs to lizards, birds, rodents and humans. So they revealed a complex history of gene family trees. This allowed them to analyse the evolutionary expression of a broad set of genes.

In the world's oceans, billions of tiny marine snails (a form of plankton) commute daily between surface waters, where they feed at night, to depths of several hundred metres during the day to rest while avoiding predators. Marine snails play an important role in geochemical cycles and climate: 12-13% of the global carbonate flux occurs when the calcium carbonate shells of dead snails sink to the depths, where they dissolve and contribute to atmospheric carbon and ocean acidification. But because they are difficult to study and can't be kept in the laboratory, the behavior of these animals - which bear poetic names such as sea butterflies - is poorly known, especially for the subtropical and tropical regions where their diversity is greatest.

Here, a team of oceanographers and engineers who specialize in research at the intersection of fluid physics and biology, film the movements of tropical marine snails and analyze these both from a fluid physics and ecological perspective. They show that each species has a distinct style of swimming and sinking, beautiful to watch, depending on the shape of their shell (coiled, elongated, or round), body size, presence of flapping "wings", and speed. The smallest, slowest species have more difficulty swimming due to seawater being "stickier" and more viscous for them - in technical terms, with a lower "Reynolds number" - which affects the angle, trajectory, and stability of their movement.

"We wanted to answer how the swimming behavior of these beautiful animals is affected by their different shell shapes and sizes. We found that species with a shell shaped like an airplane wing swims faster and is more maneuverable than those with 'snail-like' coiled shells. Understanding the swimming ability of these animals is helping us better understand their ecological importance and distribution in the ocean. Further, as engineers, we hope to learn from the swimming style of these organisms to design a new generation of bio-inspired underwater vehicles," says corresponding author Dr David Murphy, Assistant Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida.

Between 2017-2019, the researchers caught multiple individuals of nine species of marine snails (0.9-13.1 mm long) at night off Bermuda, including 7 species of thecosomatous pteropods ("sea butterflies"), one species of gymnosomatous pteropods ("sea angels", which lack a shell as adults), and one species of atlantid heteropods. They transported them to the laboratory, where they recorded their behavior in a salt-water aquarium with high-speed stereophotogrammetry, a technique that tracks movement in 3D with a pair of cameras. For each species, they calculated the absolute and normalized speed (relative to body length) during active swimming and passive sinking, the frequency of wing movement, the angle of descent during sinking, the tortuosity of the path of ascent during swimming, and the Reynolds number.

They show that each species has a distinct swimming pattern, generally ascending in a saw-toothed spiral at 12-114 mm/s, or 1-24 body lengths per second - corresponding to an average-sized human male swimming at up to 40 m per second. The snails sink at similar speeds, but in a straight line, at an angle of 4-30° relative to vertical.

"We conclude that the swimming and sinking behavior of these pelagic snails corresponds strongly with shell shape and size. Tiny snails with coiled shells swim more slowly whereas larger snails with bottle-shaped or wing-shaped shells swim faster because their larger sizes allow them to overcome the effects of water viscosity. However, swimming speed does not correlate with how far these animals migrate each day, which suggests that light and temperature levels and the presence of predators and prey also play a role. We also found that the sea butterfly with the wing-shaped shell uses its shell to 'hang-glide' downwards in order to slow its sinking," says Murphy.

To study each species' depth preferences, Murphy et al. further sampled large numbers of snails with a computer-operated net, called a Multiple Opening/Closing Net and Environmental Sensing System, 0-1000 m below the surface. They used machine learning (based on images) and ribosomal DNA barcoding to determine species. Based on these results, the researchers estimate that these species travel 50-300 m per day, in a daily vertical "commute" that takes a total of 1-3.7 h per day.

"It's absolutely mesmerizing to watch these tiny, delicate animals flap their wings in really complex motions in order to essentially fly through the water. We're lucky to have high speed cameras that can slow down this motion enough for us to see it. And it's stunning to think that these sea butterflies are using the same fluid dynamics principles to fly through water that insects use to fly through air," concludes Murphy.

In a new review paper by the University of Vienna, Imperial College London, and RMIT University in Australia, researchers argue that leather made from fungi has "considerable potential" to be the best leather substitute in terms of sustainability and cost when compared to animal and plastic-derived versions.

They say that, unlike its traditional and synthetic counterparts, producing fungi-based leather uses fewer hazardous chemicals and releases less extra carbon into the atmosphere - and that the resulting fabric looks and feels like traditional leather in terms of durability and flexibility. It is also fully biodegradable when not combined with another material to make composite leather, so can be safely disposed of without leaving a plastic footprint.

The findings are published today in Nature Sustainability.

Traditional leather, made from cow hides, brings ethical issues as well as the deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions associated with livestock farming. Treating cowhides to turn it into leather, known as tanning, often uses hazardous chemicals that can leach into the environment.

Leather alternatives, like those made from plastic, are vegan in that they don't use animal hides. However, traditional synthetic leather is made using the polymers polyurethane (PU) or polyvinyl chloride (PVC), which, like most other plastics, are made from fossil fuels and are not biodegradable.

Study co-author Professor Alexander Bismarck, from the University of Vienna and Imperial's Department of Chemical Engineering, said: "We tend to think of synthetic leather, sometimes known as 'vegan leather', as being better for the environment. However, traditional leather might be ethically questionable, and both leather and plastic substitutes have issues with environmental sustainability.

"Fungi-derived leather brings none of these issues to the table, and therefore has considerable potential to be one of the the best leather substitute in terms of sustainability and cost."

Blooming possibilities

Leather substitutes can be produced from fungi by upcycling low-cost agricultural and forestry by-products like sawdust. These serve as 'feedstock' on which to grow mycelium - a matted mass of elongated fungal threads, which grow into a sheet. Within a few weeks, the fungal sheet can be harvested and physically and chemically treated by pressing and crosslinking to produce a material with a similar feel to animal leather. This material consists mainly of biodegradable chitin and glucan biopolymers.

The researchers say fungi-derived leather could be of particular interest to sustainability-conscious consumers and companies as well as to the vegan community, and that the commercial and consumer appetite for bio-derived leather alternatives like those from fungi and cellulose is growing.

Co-author Dr Mitchell Jones from the University of Vienna said: "Renewable, bio-derived clothing is a growing market, and fungal leather is becoming a promising new frontrunner in the quest for sustainable and ethical clothing."

Sheet science

The review examines the sustainability of animal and synthetic leathers and presents an overview of the first developments and commercialisation of leather substitutes derived from fungi.

According to the authors, one of the greatest challenges in the production of fungi-derived leather is in making consistently good quality mycelium sheets that exhibit uniform growth and consistent thickness, colour and mechanical properties.

Professor Bismarck said: "Substantial advances in fungi-based leathers and the growing number of companies that are producing them suggests that this new material will play a considerable role in the future of ethically and environmentally responsible fabrics." "Leather-like material biofabrication using fungi" by Mitchell Jones, Antoni Gandia, Sabu John and Alexander Bismarck, published 7 September 2020 in Nature Sustainability.

Amsterdam, September 7, 2020 - A recent study by a team based at the University of Bologna, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, has shed new light on the Minoan system of fractions, one of the outstanding enigmas tied to the ancient writing of numbers.

About 3,500 years ago, the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete developed a writing system composed of syllabic signs, called Linear A, which they sometimes used to inscribe offerings at sanctuaries and adorn their jewelry, but mainly assisted the administration of their palatial centers.

Today, this script remains largely undeciphered and includes a complex system of numerical notation with signs that indicated not only whole numbers, but also fractions (such as 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, etc.). While the whole numbers were deciphered decades ago, scholars have been debating on the exact mathematical values of the fractional signs.

Principal Investigator Silvia Ferrara, Professor of the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies of the University of Bologna, said: "We aimed to solve the problem through a lens combining different strands of research, very seldom tied together: close paleographical analysis of the signs and computational methods. In this way we realized that we could access information from a new perspective."

The members of the European Research Council project INSCRIBE (Invention of Scripts and their Beginnings), Michele Corazza, Barbara Montecchi, Miguel Valério, and Fabio Tamburini, led by Dr. Ferrara, applied a method that combines the analysis of the sign shapes and their use in the inscriptions together with statistical, computational and typological strategies to assign mathematical values to the Linear A signs for fractions.

The team first studied the rules that the signs followed on the clay tablets and other accounting documents. Two problems had so far complicated the decipherment of Linear A fractions. First, all documents containing sums of fractional values with a registered total were damaged or difficult to interpret, and second, they contradicted uses of certain signs, which suggest the system changed over time. Thus, the starting premise had to rely on documents concentrated to a specific period (ca. 1600-1450 BCE), when the numerical system was in coherent use across Crete.

To investigate the possible values of each fractional sign, the team excluded impossible outcomes with the aid of computational methods. Then all possible solutions - almost four million - were whittled down also comparing fractions that are common in the history of the world (e.g., typological data) and using statistical tests. Finally, the team applied other strategies that considered the completeness and coherence of the fractions as a system and in this way the best values were identified, with the least redundancies. The result, in this case, was a system whose lowest fraction is 1/60 and which shows the ability to represent most values of the type n/60.

The system of values suggested by the Bologna team has yielded further important implications.

The results explain how the Linear B script, adopted by the later Mycenaean Greek culture (ca. 1450-1200 BCE) from Linear A, reused some of these fractions to express units of measurement. The new results suggest that, for example, the Linear A sign for 1/10 was adapted to represent a capacity unit for measuring dry products which was, in turn, 1/10 of a larger unit. This explains a historical continuity of use from fractions to units of measurements across two different cultures.

This research aims to show that traditional methods and computational models, when used in synergy, can help us make remarkable progress into explaining some unresolved issues tied to ancient scripts that are still undeciphered.

Tohoku University Professor Taiichi Otsuji has led a team of international researchers in successfully demonstrating a room-temperature coherent amplification of terahertz (THz) radiation in graphene, electrically driven by a dry cell battery.

Roughly 40 years ago, the arrival of plasma wave electronics opened up a wealth of new opportunities. Scientists were fascinated with the possibility that plasma waves could propagate faster than electrons, suggesting that so-called "plasmonic" devices could work at THz frequencies. However, experimental attempts to realize such amplifiers or emitters remained elusive.

"Our study explored THz light-plasmon coupling, light absorption, and amplification using a graphene-based system because of its excellent room-temperature electrical and optical properties," said Professor Otsuji who is based at the Ultra-Broadband Signal Processing Laboratory at Tohoku University's Research Institute of Electrical Communication (RIEC).

The research team, which consisted of members from Japanese, French, Polish and Russian institutions, designed a series of monolayer-graphene channel transistor structures. These featured an original dual-gathering gate that worked as a highly efficient antenna to couple the THz radiations and graphene plasmons.

Using these devices allowed the researchers to demonstrate tunable resonant plasmon absorption that, with an increase in current, results in THz radiation amplification. The amplification gain of up to 9% was observed in the monolayer graphene--far beyond the well-known landmark level of 2.3% that is the maximum available when photons directly interact with electrons without excitation of graphene plasmons.

To interpret the results, the research team used a dissipative plasmonic crystal model, capturing the main trends and basic physics of the amplification phenomena. Specifically, the model predicts the increase in the channel dc current that drives the system into an amplification regime. This indicates that the plasma waves may transfer the dc energy into the incoming THz electromagnetic waves in a coherent fashion.

"Because all results were obtained at room temperature, our experimental results pave the way toward further THz plasmonic technology with a new generation of all-electronic, resonant, and voltage-controlled THz amplifiers," added Professor Otsuji.

Physicists at the University of Basel have developed a minuscule instrument able to detect extremely faint magnetic fields. At the heart of the superconducting quantum interference device are two atomically thin layers of graphene, which the researchers combined with boron nitride. Instruments like this one have applications in areas such as medicine, besides being used to research new materials.

To measure very small magnetic fields, researchers often use superconducting quantum interference devices, or SQUIDs. In medicine, their uses include monitoring brain or heart activity, for example, while in the earth sciences researchers use SQUIDs to characterize the composition of rocks or detect groundwater flows. The devices also have a broad range of uses in other applied fields and basic research.

The team led by Professor Christian Schönenberger of the University of Basel's Department of Physics and the Swiss Nanoscience Institute has now succeeded in creating one of the smallest SQUIDs ever built. The researchers described their achievement in the scientific journal Nano Letters.

A superconducting ring with weak links

A typical SQUID consists of a superconducting ring interrupted at two points by an extremely thin film with normal conducting or insulating properties. These points, known as weak links, must be so thin that the electron pairs responsible for superconductivity are able to tunnel through them. Researchers recently also began using nanomaterials such as nanotubes, nanowires or graphene to fashion the weak links connecting the two superconductors.

As a result of their configuration, SQUIDs have a critical current threshold above which the resistance-free superconductor becomes a conductor with ordinary resistance. This critical threshold is determined by the magnetic flux passing through the ring. By measuring this critical current precisely, the researchers can draw conclusions about the strength of the magnetic field.

SQUIDs with six layers

"Our novel SQUID consists of a complex, six-layer stack of individual two-dimensional materials," explains lead author David Indolese. Inside it are two graphene monolayers separated by a very thin layer of insulating boron nitride. "If two superconducting contacts are connected to this sandwich, it behaves like a SQUID - meaning it can be used to detect extremely weak magnetic fields."

In this setup, the graphene layers are the weak links, although in contrast to a regular SQUID they are not positioned next to each other, but one on top of the other, aligned horizontally. "As a result, our SQUID has a very small surface area, limited only by the constraints of nanofabrication technology," explains Dr. Paritosh Karnatak from Schönenberger's team.

The tiny device for measuring magnetic fields is only around 10 nanometers high - roughly a thousandth of the thickness of a human hair. The instrument can trigger supercurrents that flow in minuscule spaces. Moreover, its sensitivity can be adjusted by changing the distance between the graphene layers. With the help of electrical fields, the researchers are also able to increase the signal strength, further enhancing the measurement accuracy.

Analyzing topological insulators

The Basel research team's primary goal in developing the novel SQUIDs was to analyze the edge currents of topological insulators. Topological insulators are currently a focus of countless research groups all over the world. On the inside, they behave like insulators, while on the outside - or along the edges - they conduct current almost losslessly, making them possible candidates for a broad range of applications in the field of electronics.

"With the new SQUID, we can determine whether these lossless supercurrents are due to a material's topological properties, and thereby tell them apart from non-topological materials. This is very important for the study of topological insulators," remarked Schönenberger of the project. In future, SQUIDs could also be used as low-noise amplifiers for high-frequency electrical signals, or for instance to detect local brainwaves (magnetoencephalography), as their compact design means a large number of the devices can be connected in series.