New study sows doubt about the composition of 70 percent of our universe

Until now, researchers have believed that dark energy accounted for nearly 70 percent of the ever-accelerating, expanding universe. For many years, this mechanism has been associated with the so-called cosmological constant, developed by Einstein in 1917, that refers to an unknown repellant cosmic power.

But because the cosmological constant—known as dark energy—cannot be measured directly, numerous researchers, including Einstein, have doubted its existence—without being able to suggest a viable alternative.

Until now. In a new study by researchers at the University of Copenhagen, a model was tested that replaces dark energy with a dark matter in the form of magnetic forces.

“If what we discovered is accurate, it would upend our belief that what we thought made up 70 percent of the universe does not actually exist. We have removed dark energy from the equation and added in a few more properties for dark matter. This appears to have the same effect upon the universe’s expansion as dark energy,” explains Steen Harle Hansen, an associate professor at the Niels Bohr Institute’s DARK Cosmology Centre.

Photo of dark matter, which is invisible to the eye, but here illustrated with a blue color. Photo: Nasa/Esa

The universe expands no differently without dark energy

The usual understanding of how the universe’s energy is distributed is that it consists of five percent normal matter, 25 percent dark matter and 70 percent dark energy.

In the UCPH researchers’ new model, the 25 percent share of dark matter is accorded special qualities that make the 70 percent of dark energy redundant.

“We don’t know much about dark matter other than that it is a heavy and slow particle. But then we wondered—what if dark matter had some quality that was analogous to magnetism in it? We know that as normal particles move around, they create magnetism. And, magnets attract or repel other magnets—so what if that’s what’s going on in the universe? That this constant expansion of dark matter is occurring thanks to some sort of magnetic force?” asks Steen Hansen.

In 1572, the Danish physicist Tycho Brahe discovered this supernova called Stella Nova. By measuring the distance from this supernova and other novas, researchers later on concluded, that the universe is expanding constantly and with accellerating speed. Photo: NASA/CXC/SAO

Computer model tests dark matter with a type of magnetic energy

Hansen’s question served as the foundation for the new computer model, where researchers included everything that they know about the universe—including gravity, the speed of the universe’s expansion and X, the unknown force that expands the universe.

“We developed a model that worked from the assumption that dark matter particles have a type of magnetic force and investigated what effect this force would have on the universe. It turns out that it would have exactly the same effect on the speed of the university’s expansion as we know from dark energy,” explains Steen Hansen.

However, there remains much about this mechanism that has yet to be understood by the researchers. And it all needs to be checked in better models that take more factors into consideration. As Hansen puts it:

“Honestly, our discovery may just be a coincidence. But if it isn’t, it is truly incredible. It would change our understanding of the universe’s composition and why it is expanding. As far as our current knowledge, our ideas about dark matter with a type of magnetic force and the idea about dark energy are equally wild. Only more detailed observations will determine which of these models is the more realistic. So, it will be incredibly exciting to retest our result.

Contact:

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Lab-made hexagonal diamonds stiffer than natural diamonds

Nature’s strongest material now has some stiff competition. For the first time, researchers have hard evidence that human-made hexagonal diamonds are stiffer than the common cubic diamonds found in nature and often used in jewelry.

Named for their six-sided crystal structure, hexagonal diamonds have been found at some meteorite impact sites, and others have been made briefly in labs, but these were either too small or had too short of an existence to be measured.

Now scientists at Washington State University’s Institute for Shock Physics created hexagonal diamonds large enough to measure their stiffness using sound waves. Their findings are detailed in a recent paper in Physical Review B.

“Diamond is a very unique material,” said Yogendra Gupta, director of the Institute for Shock Physics and corresponding author on the study. “It is not only the strongest—it has beautiful optical properties and a very high thermal conductivity. Now we have made the hexagonal form of diamond, produced under shock compression experiments, that is significantly stiffer and stronger than regular gem diamonds.”

Yogendra Gupta

Researchers have long wanted to create a material stronger than natural diamonds, which could have a variety of uses in industry. While many theorized that hexagonal diamonds would be stronger, the WSU study provides the first experimental evidence that they are.

Lead author Travis Volz, now a post-doctoral researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, focused his dissertation work at WSU on the creation of hexagonal diamonds from graphite. For this study, Volz and Gupta used gunpowder and compressed gas to propel small graphite disks about the size of a dime at a speed of around 15,000 miles per hour onto a transparent material. The impact produced shockwaves in the disks that very rapidly transformed them into hexagonal diamonds.

Immediately after impact the researchers produced a small sound wave and used lasers to measure its movement through the diamond. Sound moves faster through stiffer material. Previously sound moved fastest through cubic diamond; in the lab-created hexagonal diamonds it moved faster.

Each process happened in several billionths of a second, or nanoseconds, but the researchers were able to make the stiffness measurements before the high velocity impact destroyed the diamond.

Stiffness is the ability of a material to resist deformation under a force or pressure— for instance, a rock is stiffer than rubber as rubber will bend when pressed. Hardness is the resistance to scratching or other surface deformations.

Generally stiffer materials are also harder, said Volz. While the researchers weren’t able to scratch the diamonds to test hardness directly, by measuring the diamonds’ stiffness, they can make inferences about their hardness.

If the science advances to the point where lab-made hexagonal diamonds can be created and recovered, they could have a range of uses.

“Hard materials are useful for machining capabilities,” said Volz. “Diamond has been used for a long time in drill bits, for example. Since we found that the hexagonal diamond is likely harder than the cubic diamond, it could be a superior alternative for machining, drilling or any type of application where the cubic diamond is used.”

While the industrial advantages are clear, Gupta said it is still possible hexagonal diamonds could one day be used on engagement rings. Currently lab-made cubic diamonds have less value compared to their natural peers, but hexagonal diamonds would likely be more novel.

“If someday we can produce them and polish them, I think they’d be more in-demand than cubic diamonds,” said Gupta. “If somebody said to you, ‘look, I’m going to give you the choice of two diamonds: one is lot more rare than the other one.’ Which one would you pick?”

Media contacts:

• Yogendra Gupta, WSU Institute for Shock Physics, 509-335-7217, ymgupta@wsu.edu
• Sara Zaske, WSU News and Media Relations, 509-335-4846, sara.zaske@wsu.edu

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B.1.1.7 variant of COVID-19 virus spreading rapidly in United States

The faster-spreading B.1.1.7 variant of SARS-CoV-2 first detected in the United Kingdom, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, is quickly on its way to becoming the dominant variant of the virus in the United States, according to a study from scientists at Scripps Research and the COVID-19 test maker Helix.

The findings, which appear today in Cell, suggest that future COVID-19 case numbers and mortality rates in the United States will be higher than would have been otherwise. The analysis suggests that the variant, which has been detectable in an increasing proportion of SARS-CoV-2 samples, is 40-50 percent more transmissible than SARS-CoV-2 lineages that were previously dominant. Other studies have found evidence that the B.1.1.7 variant may be about 50 percent more likely to cause fatal COVID-19.

“B.1.1.7 rapidly became the dominant SARS-CoV-2 variant in the U.K. and other countries after its emergence late last year, and the U.S. is now on a similar trajectory,” says study co-senior author Kristian Andersen, PhD, a professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research and director of Infectious Disease Genomics at the Scripps Research Translational Research Institute. “We need immediate and decisive action to minimize COVID-19 morbidity and mortality.”

In addition to Andersen, the other senior author was William Lee, PhD, vice president of science at Helix, which provides PCR-based COVID-19 testing to organizations across the United States. The study was also authored by Nicole Washington, PhD, associate director of research at Helix, and Karthik Gangavarapu of the Andersen Lab.

“B.1.1.7 has a doubling rate of a little over a week and an increased transmission rate of 40-50 percent, which means it could have a meaningful impact on public health,” says Lee. “It is critical that we continue to monitor the spread of this and other emerging variants, but our current level of surveillance is inadequate and lags behind that of other countries. We need a more comprehensive national SARS-CoV-2 genomics surveillance program to address this.”

The B.1.1.7 variant emerged in southern England last year and has since become the dominant variant in the U.K. In December, Andersen’s team at Scripps Research with colleagues at University of California, San Diego confirmed the first evidence of the variant in California.

A pattern of dominance

The B.1.1.7 variant contains several mutations, including several in the gene that encodes the viral spike protein. These mutations increase the spike’s ability to bind to the ACE2 receptor on human cells. Although there is no evidence yet that the B.1.1.7 variant can evade COVID-19 vaccines, public health officials fear its relatively high rate of spread will significantly worsen the pandemic before vaccines can end it.

Standard swab tests for the coronavirus check for distinctive genetic sequences at three sites on the viral genome; the B.1.1.7 variant, due to its mutations, shows up as positive for two of those sites, but negative for the third site, which is within the virus’s spike gene.

The new analysis of roughly 500,000 Helix test results since July 2020 revealed that this two-of-three pattern, known as S-gene target failure, or SGTF, became consistently evident at a low frequency (0.2 percent) in mid-October. By the third week of February, it had risen to a frequency of 10.6 percent and was detected in patients from 25 different U.S. states and territories.

The SGTF pattern can occur with other SARS-CoV-2 variants that have spike gene mutations, but the researchers found by sequencing every SGTF sample they had from December through February, 662 of the 986 samples (67 percent) contained the B.1.1.7 variant. This suggests that the SGTF pattern on the swab tests can provide a quick albeit rough indication of B.1.1.7 prevalence.

Variant entered the country many times

The analysis also indicated that B.1.1.7 since December has accounted for a rapidly rising proportion of SGTF results—for example, reaching about 95 percent in California by mid-January. In addition to the 659 B.1.1.7 cases they detected via the SGTF method the researchers found three other cases of the B.1.1.7 variant among samples gathered as part of unbiased SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance efforts in California.

The 662 instances of B.1.1.7 sequenced in the study were from samples gathered in 10 U.S. states, although the researchers note that other testing labs covering a total of 33 U.S. states and territories have by now reported to the CDC at least one B.1.1.7 case.

The researchers’ family tree-type analysis of the detected B.1.1.7 sequences show the variant has been introduced to the U.S. multiple times since at least late November 2020, especially in California and Florida, and in periods coinciding with increased travel, including Thanksgiving week.

The scientists also found that the variant, on the whole, appears to be spreading 40-50 percent faster than the variants of SARS-CoV-2 that previously dominated. They estimated that by the first week of February 2021, B.1.1.7 made up about 4.3 percent of COVID-19 cases in the U.S., including 4.2 percent of cases in California and about 11.5 percent of cases in Florida.

“B.1.1.7 is almost certainly destined to become the dominant SARS-CoV-2 lineage in many states by March,” Andersen says.

Support for the study was provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (75D30121P10258, 75D30120C09795), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (3U19AI135995-03S2, U19AI135995, U01AI151812), the National Institutes of Health (UL1TR002550), the Innovative Genomics Institute, and the New Frontiers in Research Fund provided by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

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Cone snails use sexual enticements to lure prey out of hiding

Cone snails aren’t glamorous. They don’t have svelte waistlines or jaw-dropping good looks. Yet, some of these worm-hunting gastropods are the femme fatales or lady killers of the undersea world, according to a new study conducted by an international team of researchers, including University of Utah Health scientists.

The researchers say the snails use a previously undetected set of small molecules that mimic the effects of worm pheromones to drive marine worms into a sexual frenzy, making it easier to lure them out of their hiding places so the snails can gobble them up.

“In essence, these cone snails have found a way to turn the natural sex drive of their prey into a lethal weapon,” says Eric W. Schmidt, Ph.D., the study’s senior author and a professor of medicinal chemistry at U of U Health. “What’s exciting about this finding is that they are doing it using an interesting set of small molecules that could one day inspire the development of new types of medications to alleviate pain and other conditions.”

The study appears in Science Advances.

Cone snails use a harpoon-like tooth at the end of their proboscis to inject venom into prey, instantly paralyzing them. Then, they slowly reel the immobilized animal into their mouths. For decades, scientists have been fascinated by this process. In particular, they’re intrigued by the chemical makeup of various venoms the snails use to disable prey and are exploring ways to reconfigure these substances into useful human medications.

Most scientists have focused their research on cone snails that hunt fish. The venoms from these gastropods are mainly composed of tiny protein segments called peptides. These peptides can be used to develop drugs, However, because of their structural composition, they can only be used as injectable drugs and can’t be taken orally.

In this new research, Schmidt and colleagues turned their attention to C. imperialis, a species of cone snail that primarily hunts Platynereis dumerili, more commonly known as a fire worm. The research team discovered that C. imperialis, or imperial cone, produces small chemicals that powerfully mimic the pheromones that trigger sexual activity in fire worms. The discovery of small molecules in the imperial cone could broaden the snail’s usefulness in medical research since about 80 percent of drugs are derived from small molecules.

In laboratory experiments, one of these chemicals—called conazolium A—sparked mating behavior in female worms, causing them to swim in tight, tail-chasing circles before they released their eggs. Genuanine, a chemical akin to uric acid, had a similar effect on male fire worms, prompting them to eject their sperm.

The researchers aren’t quite sure how this approach works in the wild, but they suspect that it could be a two-step process: First, the imperial cone exposes the fire worm to its fake sex pheromones, making it is easier to coax the worm out of its hiding spot (usually a coral reef). Then, like other cone snails, it harpoons the worm with a peptide-based venom to disable it.

But there’s a catch: mature worms are only sexually active for a short time that coincides with a full moon.

“If you expose the worms when they are either immature or not sexually active, the mimic pheromones don’t have any effect,” says Joshua Torres, Ph.D., lead author of the study and a former U of U Health graduate student. “The snails have to use other hunting techniques in these incidences.”

In fact, in their laboratory experiments, the researchers needed to use artificial moon light to induce sexual responses among the worms to cone snail pheromones. As a result, the researchers caution that how cone snails actually hunt in the wild and how these compounds fit into that quest remains largely unknown.

Moving forward, Schmidt and Torres are intrigued by the potential of using the small molecules produced by the imperial cone snail to lure worms out of hiding as a starting point for the development of new drugs.

This study, “Small-molecule Mimicry Hunting Strategy in the Imperial Cone Snail, Conus Imperialis,” appears in Science Advances. In addition to Drs. Schmidt and Torres, University of Utah scientists Zhenjian Lin, Maren Watkins, Paula Florez Salcedo, Robert P. Baskin, Shireen Elhabian, Helena Safavi-Hemami, Dylan Taylor, Jortan Tun, Noel Saguil, Yixin Fang, and Bladomero M. Olivera contributed to this research. Other researchers involved in this study include those representing the University of Copenhagen, University of the Philippines, University of Hawaii, the University of Wollongong, and the Marine Biology Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The National Institutes of Health supported this study.

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Tires turned into graphene that makes stronger concrete

This could be where the rubber truly hits the road.

Rice University scientists have optimized a process to convert waste from rubber tires into graphene that can, in turn, be used to strengthen concrete.

The environmental benefits of adding graphene to concrete are clear, chemist James Tour said.

“Concrete is the most-produced material in the world, and simply making it produces as much as 9% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions,” Tour said. “If we can use less concrete in our roads, buildings and bridges, we can eliminate some of the emissions at the very start.”

Recycled tire waste is already used as a component of Portland cement, but graphene has been proven to strengthen cementitious materials, concrete among them, at the molecular level.

While the majority of the 800 million tires discarded annually are burned for fuel or ground up for other applications, 16% of them wind up in landfills.

“Reclaiming even a fraction of those as graphene will keep millions of tires from reaching landfills,” Tour said.

The “flash” process introduced by Tour and his colleagues in 2020 has been used to convert food waste, plastic and other carbon sources by exposing them to a jolt of electricity that removes everything but carbon atoms from the sample.

Those atoms reassemble into valuable turbostratic graphene, which has misaligned layers that are more soluble than graphene produced via exfoliation from graphite. That makes it easier to use in composite materials.

Rubber proved more challenging than food or plastic to turn into graphene, but the lab optimized the process by using commercial pyrolyzed waste rubber from tires. After useful oils are extracted from waste tires, this carbon residue has until now had near-zero value, Tour said.

Rice scientists optimized a process to turn rubber from discarded tires into turbostratic flash graphene.  Courtesy of the Tour Research Group

Tire-derived carbon black or a blend of shredded rubber tires and commercial carbon black can be flashed into graphene. Because turbostratic graphene is soluble, it can easily be added to cement to make more environmentally friendly concrete.

The research led by Tour and Rouzbeh Shahsavari of C-Crete Technologies is detailed in the journal Carbon.

The Rice lab flashed tire-derived carbon black and found about 70% of the material converted to graphene. When flashing shredded rubber tires mixed with plain carbon black to add conductivity, about 47% converted to graphene. Elements besides carbon were vented out for other uses.

The electrical pulses lasted between 300 milliseconds and 1 second. The lab calculated electricity used in the conversion process would cost about $100 per ton of starting carbon.

The researchers blended minute amounts of tire-derived graphene — 0.1 weight/percent (wt%) for tire carbon black and 0.05 wt% for carbon black and shredded tires — with Portland cement and used it to produce concrete cylinders. Tested after curing for seven days, the cylinders showed gains of 30% or more in compressive strength. After 28 days, 0.1 wt% of graphene sufficed to give both products a strength gain of at least 30%.

“This increase in strength is in part due to a seeding effect of 2D graphene for better growth of cement hydrate products, and in part due to a reinforcing effect at later stages,” Shahsavari said.

Rice graduate student Paul Advincula is lead author of the paper. Co-authors are Rice postdoctoral researcher Duy Luong and graduate student Weiyin Chen, and Shivaranjan Raghuraman of C-Crete. Tour is the T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of computer science and of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice.

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory supported the research. Read the abstract at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0008622321003249.

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Kumon or Montessori? It may depend on your politics

Whether parents prefer a conformance-oriented or independence-oriented supplemental education program for their children depends on political ideology, according to a study of more than 8,500 American parents by a research team from Rice University and the University of Texas at San Antonio.

“Conservative parents have a higher need for structure, which drives their preference for conformance-oriented programs,” said study co-author Vikas Mittal, a professor of marketing at Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business. “Many parents are surprised to learn that their political identity can affect the educational choices they make for their children.”

Supplemental education programs include private tutoring, test preparation support and educational books and materials as well as online educational support services. The global market for private tutoring services is forecasted to reach $260.7 billion by 2024, and the U.S. market for tutoring is reported to be more than $8.9 billion a year. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are more than 100,000 businesses in the private education services industry. Supplemental education program brands are among the top 500 franchises in Entrepreneur magazine’s 2020 rankings, and they include popular providers such as Kumon (ranked No. 12), Mathnasium (No. 29) and Huntington Learning Center (No. 39).

For over five decades, education psychologists have utilized two pedagogical orientations — conformance orientation and independence orientation. A conformance orientation is more standardized and guided, emphasizing lecture-based content delivery, knowledge and memorization, frequent use of homework assignments, standardized examinations with relative evaluation and classroom attendance discipline and rules. In contrast, an independence orientation features discussion-based seminars and student-led presentations, an emphasis on ideas rather than facts, use of multimodal interaction instead of books, and highly variable and unstructured class routines. The two approaches do not differ in terms of topics covered in the curriculum or the specific qualities to be imparted to students.

The research team asked parents about their preferences for different programs framed as conformance- or independence-oriented. In five studies of more than 8,500 parents, conservative parents preferred education programs that were framed as conformance-oriented, while liberal parents preferred independence-oriented education programs. This differential preference emerged for different measures of parents’ political identity: their party affiliation, self-reported political leaning and whether they watch Fox or CNN/MSNBC for news.

“By understanding the underlying motivations behind parents’ preferences, educational programs’ appeal to parents can be substantially enhanced,” Mittal said. “Supplemental tutoring will be a major expenditure and investment for parents grappling with their child’s academic performance in the post-pandemic era. Informal conversations show parents gearing up to supplement school-based education with tutoring. Despite this, very little research exists about the factors that affect parents’ preference for and utilization of supplemental education.”

Mittal cautioned that these results do not speak to ultimate student performance. “This study only speaks to parents’ preferences but does not study ultimate student achievement,” he said.

The paper, “Political Identity and Preference for Supplemental Educational Programs,” which is forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing Research, was co-authored by professor Jihye Jung of UTSA. It can be downloaded at https://doi.org/10.1177/00222437211004252.

To schedule an interview with Mittal or to request a copy of the study, contact Jeff Falk, director of national media relations at Rice, at jfalk@rice.edu or 713-348-6775.

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Herpesvirus Triggers Cervical Cancer Affecting Nearly 1 in 4 Adult Sea Lions

After more than three decades of research, scientists have proven that the cancer affecting up to one in four adult California sea lions necrospied at The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, CA, is caused by a sexually transmitted herpesvirus. The cancer, known as sea lion urogenital carcinoma, has clear parallels to cervical cancer in humans and provides a helpful model for human cancer study.

Scientists have long suspected this cancer was associated with a virus, but this is the first study to prove this theory. The study, which was published in Animals, an open-access, peer-reviewed journal, concluded that genital herpesvirus is a driving factor in the development of sea lion urogenital carcinoma. The research also suggests there is an underlying trigger or event that causes the virus to induce cancer in some infected sea lions and not others. Wild California sea lions have among the highest prevalence of a single type of cancer in any mammal, including humans.

A second recently published paper (Sea lions are dying from a mysterious cancer. – Los Angeles Times, latimes.com) led by the same team showed that pollutants such as PCBs and DDT play a significant role as co-factors in the development of this cancer. This is particularly relevant to Southern California where there is a large DDT dumpsite in the Southern California bight which is also where the majority of the sea lion population gather each year to give birth and raise their pups (How the waters off Catalina became a DDT dumping ground – Los Angeles Times, latimes.com).

“The confirmation that this is a virally induced cancer combined with the knowledge that contaminants play a significant role in the cancer’s development means that we can use these sea lions as a naturally occurring disease model to better understand how cancer develops and spreads in all species, including humans,” says Dr. Alissa Deming, the lead author of the study who completed this work during her Ph.D. studies at University of Florida in Gainesville, FL., while she was a Research Fellow at The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, CA. (Dr. Deming is now Director of Clinical Medicine at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach, CA.)

The Marine Mammal Center is the world’s largest marine mammal hospital and has been on the forefront of researching and understanding cancer in California sea lions and its connection to both ocean and human health. Since cancer in sea lions was first discovered in 1979, researchers have found that between 18-23 percent of adult sea lions admitted to the Center’s hospital have died of the fatal disease. In 2010, the Center brought together an array of international researchers to form the Sea Lion Cancer Consortium to further investigate this disease, many of whom helped co-author the paper.

“This research is critical as these sea lions may hold the key to understanding virally induced cancers as well as how cancer metastasizes, or spreads through the body,” says Dr. Pádraig Duignan, Director of Pathology at The Marine Mammal Center and a co-author on the study. “This knowledge is an important link that could help scientists better understand various cancers in people.” Most cancers are caused by an accumulation of several factors, making it challenging to study cancer in traditional laboratory models. However, wild sea lions experience multiple layers of stressors including infectious agents, exposure to pollutants, nutrition, and environmental influences, all of which are much more representative of how cancer develops in the “real world.”

According to Duignan, “the cancer begins in the sea lion’s genital tract and aggressively spreads throughout the sea lion’s body, resulting in death, often from kidney failure.” Because of the advanced state of cancer by the time these patients strand on beaches and are rescued by rehabilitation centers, euthanasia is the only humane option. “This cancer is devastating to see in California sea lions. They come to the hospital in end-stage disease,” says Dr. Deming.

The paper was the result of an international, cross-discipline effort, combining multiple techniques from a variety of specialists to unlock the mysteries of this disease. The research relied on novel techniques using RNAscope® Technology and Base Scope, tools that allow researchers to pinpoint high viral gene expression within tumor tissue but not in surrounding healthy tissue.

“Our study was the first time that this revolutionary technique has been used on a marine mammal species,” says Dr. Kathleen Colegrove, Clinical Professor of the Zoological Pathology Program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and a key researcher on the study. “This proved that the virus was integral to cancer development and was not just being detected in the reproductive tracts or tissue as a bystander.”

Tumor analysis was conducted at the University of Illinois, University of Florida, North Carolina State University and University of St. Andrews in Scotland. The research work was funded by the Geoffrey C. Hughes Foundation Research Fellowship, the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation joint program for the Ecology of Infectious Disease, the National Marine Fisheries Service Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Program, and the Natural Environment Research Council.

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Even after late start, anti-inflammatory drug protects against lethal inflammation from COVID

Mount Sinai researchers have found that a widely available and inexpensive drug targeting inflammatory genes has reduced morbidity and mortality in mice infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. In a study published today in the journal Cell, the team reported that the drug, Topotecan (TPT), inhibited the expression of inflammatory genes in the lungs of mice as late as four days after infection, a finding with potential implications for treatment of humans.

“So far, in pre-clinical models of SARS-CoV-2, there are no therapies–either antiviral, antibody, or plasma–shown to reduce the SARS-CoV-2 disease burden when administered after more than one day post-infection” says senior author Ivan Marazzi, PhD, Associate Professor of Microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “This is a huge problem because people who have severe COVID19 and get hospitalized, often do not present symptoms until many days after infection. We took a different approach, and sought to find a potential therapy that can be used during later stages of the disease. We found that the TOP1 inhibitors given days after the infection can still limit the expression of hyper-inflammatory genes in the lungs of infected animals and improve infection outcomes.” Moreover, says Dr. Marazzi, topotecan (TPT), an FDA-approved Topoisomerase I (TOP1) inhibitor, as well as its derivatives, are inexpensive clinical-grade inhibitors available in most countries around the world for use as antibiotic and anti-cancer agents.

Although the pathophysiology of SARS-CoV-2 is not yet fully understood, scientists have observed that the virus triggers excess production of cytokines and chemokines–chemicals which are secreted by cells of the immune system to help fight infection. An exaggerated immune system response, which characteristically occurs in the lungs of COVID-19 patients, can flood the infected area with white blood cells, resulting in inflammation, possible tissue damage, organ failure, and death. Reduction of the inflammatory state in such patients could therefore improve their clinical outcomes.

In a previous study published in Science in 2016, the same group at Mount Sinai found that inhibiting the activation of inflammatory genes could help prevent animal deaths from viral and bacterial infections and suggested this could be a potent strategy against future pandemics. The current study, led by Mount Sinai along with partners from Singapore, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, the United States, and other global sites, expands on that earlier work to show how epigenetic therapy (which addresses the chemical modifications that influence gene expression) could be harnessed against severe cases of COVID-19.

The team’s research suggests that many other anti-inflammatory agents are less effective against COVID-19 because they target only a single inflammatory mediators, such as IL6 or IL1, or a specific gene expression program. “The fact is, a multitude of inflammatory genes and signaling pathways are dysregulated during a SARS-CoV-2 infection,” explained lead author Jessica Sook Yuin Ho, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at Icahn Mount Sinai. “We demonstrated that TOP1 inhibitors were able to broadly or systemically dampen inflammatory gene expression in animal models, regardless of the gene or activation pathway.”

Co-author Mikhail Spivakov, PhD, head of the Functional Gene Control group at the MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences added, “We found that infection prompts extensive changes in the 3D connections between inflammatory genes and the ‘molecular switch’ regions that control their expression. This may partially explain why inhibiting topoisomerase, a protein that helps reshape DNA, helps dampen the cells’ hyper-inflammatory response.”

The safety and efficacy of this treatment strategy in humans will soon be evaluated at clinical sites around the world, including India, where a trial recently began and Singapore, where the National Medical Research Council of Singapore has also funded a phase 1 clinical trial of topoisomerase 1 inhibition in COVID-19. The World Health Organization (WHO) is also expected to play an important role in subsequent studies.

“Findings from our work suggest that repurposing the TOP1 inhibitor could be a valuable global strategy for treating severe cases of COVID-19,” emphasizes Dr. Marazzi. “Particularly attractive is the fact that TPT is already FDA-approved and that its derivatives are inexpensive, with generic formulations existing throughout the world. This makes these drugs readily accessible and available for immediate use in both developing and developed countries across the world.”

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Screams of ‘joy’ sound like ‘fear’ when heard out of context

People are adept at discerning most of the different emotions that underlie screams, such as anger, frustration, pain, surprise or fear, finds a new study by psychologists at Emory University. Screams of happiness, however, are more often interpreted as fear when heard without any additional context, the results show.

PeerJ published the research, the first in-depth look at the human ability to decode the range of emotions tied to the acoustic cues of screams.

“To a large extent, the study participants were quite good at judging the original context of a scream, simply by listening to it through headphones without any visual cues,” says Harold Gouzoules, Emory professor of psychology and senior author of the study. “But when participants listened to screams of excited happiness they tended to judge the emotion as fear. That’s an interesting, surprising finding.”

First author of the study is Jonathan Engelberg, an Emory Ph.D. student of psychology. Emory alum Jay Schwartz, who is now on the faculty of Western Oregon University, is co-author.

The acoustic features that seem to communicate fear are also present in excited, happy screams, the researchers note. “In fact, people pay good money to ride roller coasters, where their screams no doubt reflect a blend of those two emotions,” Gouzoules says.

He adds that the bias towards interpreting both of these categories as fear likely has deep, evolutionary roots.

“The first animal screams were probably in response to an attack by a predator,” he says. “In some cases, a sudden, loud high-pitched sound might startle a predator and allow the prey to escape. It’s an essential, core response. So mistaking a happy scream for a fearful one could be an ancestral carryover bias. If it’s a close call, you’re going to err on the side of fear.”

The findings may even provide a clue to the age-old question of why young children often scream while playing.

“Nobody has really studied why young children tend to scream frequently, even when they are happily playing, but every parent knows that they do,” Gouzoules says. “It’s a fascinating phenomenon.”

While screams can convey strong emotions, they are not ideal as individual identifiers, since they lack the more distinctive and consistent acoustic parameters of an individual’s speaking voice.

“It’s just speculative, but it may be that when children scream with excitement as they play, it serves the evolutionary role of familiarizing a parent to the unique sound of their screams,” Gouzoules says. “The more you hear your child scream in a safe, happy context, the better able you are to identify a scream as belonging to your child, so you will know to respond when you hear it.”

Gouzoules first began researching the screams of non-human primates, decades ago. Most animals scream only in response to a predator, although some monkeys and apes also use screams to recruit support when they are in a fight with other group members. “Their kin and friends will come to help, even if some distance away, when they can recognize the vocalizer,” he says.

In more recent years, Gouzoules has turned to researching human screams, which occur in a much broader context than those of animals. His lab has collected screams from Hollywood movies, TV shows and YouTube videos. They include classic performances by “scream queens” like Jaime Lee Curtis, along with the screams of non-actors reacting to actual events, such as a woman shrieking in fear as aftershocks from a meteor that exploded over Russia shake a building, or a little girl’s squeal of delight as she opens a Christmas present.

In previous work, the lab has quantified tone, pitch and frequency for screams from a range of emotions: Anger, frustration, pain, surprise, fear and happiness.

For the current paper, the researchers wanted to test the ability of listeners to decode the emotion underlying a scream, based solely on its sound. A total of 182 participants listened through headphones to 30 screams from movies that were associated with one of the six emotions. All of the screams were presented six times, although never in sequence. After hearing a scream, the listeners rated how likely it was associated with each of six of the emotions, on a scale of one to five.

The results showed that the participants most often matched a scream to its correct emotional context, except in the case of screams of happiness, which participants more often rated highly for fear.

“Our work intertwines language and non-verbal communication in a way that hasn’t been done in the past,” Gouzoules says.

Some aspects of non-verbal vocal communication are thought to be precursors for language. The researchers hypothesize that it may be that the cognitive underpinnings for language also built human capacity in the non-verbal domain. “It’s probably language that gives us this ability to take a non-verbal vocalization and discern a wide range of meanings, depending on the acoustic cues,” Gouzoules says.

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Yoga only goes so far: How overhauling patient records can curb physician burnout

Judges don’t do court stenography. CEOs don’t take minutes at meetings. So why do we expect doctors and other health care providers to spend hours recording notes — something experts know contributes to burnout?

“Having them do so much clerical work doesn’t make sense,” said Lisa Merlo, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychiatry and director of wellness programs at the University of Florida College of Medicine.  “In order to improve the health care experience for everyone, we need to help them focus more on the actual practice of medicine.”

Physician burnout affects patients, too. Stressed doctors are less compassionate and more likely to make mistakes. Clinicians who leave the field or cut back hours reduce patient access to care, and replacing doctors in the midst of a physician shortage drives up costs.

“We can’t ignore burnout and expect doctors to just keep picking up the slack,” Merlo said.

Electronic health records — or EHRs — have enabled better, faster and more accurate communication among health care providers. But the time required to populate them can mean less interaction with patients and more time after hours typing notes, which can be more driven by insurance requirements than usefulness in patient care.

To find solutions, Merlo teamed up with Oliver Nguyen, a research coordinator and IT specialist in the College of Medicine, to evaluate 35 studies of records-related burnout, looking for common threads. Their study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, is part of a special issue on physician burnout.

“The longer clinicians spend on records, especially after hours or on weekends, the more it’s associated with burnout,” Nguyen said.

As the pandemic stretches health care workers ever thinner, “we’re beyond the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Merlo said. “The system has survived for so long because physicians step up and get the work done out of a sense of altruism and dedication to their patients. But there’s only so long you can sustain that.”

Physician wellness initiatives have increased during the pandemic, often focusing exclusively on self care. But “adding more yoga classes is not going to address a clinician working on electronic health records at home at 11 p.m.,” Merlo said.

Streamlining record-keeping could help. So when Nguyen approached Merlo about optimizing electronic records, she was eager to collaborate. With colleagues at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the U.S. Navy, Moffitt Cancer Center, the University of South Florida and the University of Central Florida, they uncovered several potential solutions that could help physicians. (Another study looked at nurse burnout; future research will include other health care providers.)

Their recommendations:

• Share the load

Overflowing inboxes contribute to burnout. As the pandemic shifts some office visits to videoconference, email and phone communication, “inboxes are blowing up,” Nguyen said.  A shared inbox that allows office staff to triage messages that don’t require a doctor’s input, such as insurance questions, can help.

•  Revisit policy

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services launched the Patients over Paperwork initiative in part to reduce the documentation requirements. If it shows promising results for reducing records burden, Nguyen and Merlo say, it could serve as a model for private insurers to emulate.

• Create power users

Even when they’re familiar with an EHR interface, doctors might not know about time-saving features like templates and bookmarks. An optimization team that offers proactive support can streamline time spent in the system.

• Collaborate on design

“Usability continues to be a struggle for physicians,” Nguyen said. More input from users can help when it comes to designing EHRs, as well as selecting and implementing them.

“The good news is, a lot of the issues can be fixed,” Merlo said. “If we invest in these resources, we can make this better for patients, for health care providers, for everybody.”

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In the deep sea, the last ice age is not yet over

Gas hydrates are a solid compound of gases and water that have an ice-like structure at low temperatures and high pressures. Compounds of methane and water, so-called methane hydrates, are found especially at many ocean margins – also in the Black Sea. In addition to a possible use as an energy source, methane hydrate deposits are being investigated for their stability, as they can dissolve with changes in temperature and pressure. In addition to releases of methane, this can also have an impact on submarine slope stability.

During a six-week expedition with the German research vessel METEOR in autumn 2017, a team from MARUM and GEOMAR investigated a methane hydrate deposit in the deep-sea fan of the Danube in the western Black Sea. During the cruise, which was part of the joint project SUGAR III “Submarine Gas Hydrate Resources” jointly funded by the BMWi and BMBF, the gas hydrate deposits were drilled using the mobile seafloor drilling device MARUM-MeBo200. The results of the investigations, which have now been published in the international journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, have provided the scientists with new insights into changes in the stability of gas hydrates.

“Based on data from previous expeditions, we selected two working areas where, on the one hand, methane hydrate and free methane gas coexist in the upper 50 to 150 metres of the hydrate stability zone and, on the other hand, a landslide and gas seeps were found directly at the edge of the gas hydrate stability zone”, explains Prof. Dr. Gerhard Bohrmann, expedition leader from MARUM and co-author of the study. “For our investigations we used our drilling device MARUM-MeBo200 and broke all previous depth records with a maximum depth reached of almost 145 metres”.

In addition to obtaining samples, the scientists were, for the first time, also able to carry out detailed in situ temperature measurements down to the base of the gas hydrate stability under the seabed. Previously, this baseline was determined using seismic methods, from which the so-called “bottom simulating reflector” (BSR) was obtained as an indicator of this base. “However, our work has now proven for the first time that the approach using the BSR does not work for the Black Sea”, explains Dr. Michael Riedel from GEOMAR, lead author of the study. “From our point of view, the gas-hydrate stability boundary has already approached the warmer conditions in the subsurface, but the free methane gas, which is always found at this lower edge, has not yet managed to rise with it”, Riedel continues. The reasons for this could be attributed to the low permeability of the sediments, which means the methane gas is still “stuck” down there and can only rise very, very slowly under its own power, according to the scientist.

“However, our new analyses of the seismic data have also shown that in a few places the methane gas can break through the BSR. There, a new BSR is just establishing itself over the ‘old’ reflector. This is new and has never been seen before”, says Dr Matthias Haeckel, co-author of the study from GEOMAR. “Our interpretation is that the gas can rise in these places, as disturbances in the seabed here favour the flow of gas”, Haeckel continues.

“In summary, we have found a very dynamic situation in this region, which also appears to be related with the development of the Black Sea since the last ice age”, says Michael Riedel. After the last glacial maximum (LGM), the sea level rose (pressure increase), and when the global sea level rose above the threshold of the Bosporus, salty water from the Mediterranean Sea was able to propagate into the Black Sea. Before that, this ocean basin was basically a freshwater lake. In addition, global warming since the LGM has caused a temperature rise of the bottom water in the Black Sea. The combination of these three factors – salinity, pressure and temperature – had drastic effects on the methane hydrates, which decompose as a result of these effects. The current study exemplifies the complex feedbacks and time scales that induce climate changes in the marine environment and is therefore well suited to estimate the expected consequences of today’s more rapid global warming – especially on the Arctic gas hydrate deposits.

Cruise leader Gerhard Bohrmann summarizes: “At the end of the SUGAR-3 programme, the drilling campaign with MeBo200 in the Black Sea showed us once again very clearly how quickly the methane hydrate stability in the ocean deposits also changes with environmental fluctuations”.

Reference:

Riedel, M., T. Freudenthal, J. Bialas, C. Papenberg, M. Haeckel, M. Bergenthal, T. Pape, and G. Bohrmann, 2021: In-situ borehole temperature measurements confirm dynamics of the gas hydrate stability zone at the upper Danube deep sea fan, Black Sea. Earth and Planetary Sci. Lett., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2021.116869.

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Synthetic mucus can mimic the real thing

More than just a sign of illness, mucus is a critical part of our body’s defenses against disease. Every day, our bodies produce more than a liter of the slippery substance, covering a surface area of more than 400 square meters to trap and disarm microbial invaders.

Mucus is made from mucins — proteins that are decorated with sugar molecules. Many scientists are trying to create synthetic versions of mucins in hopes of replicating their beneficial traits. In a new study, researchers from MIT have now generated synthetic mucins with a polymer backbone that more accurately mimic the structure and function of naturally occurring mucins. The team also showed that these synthetic mucins could effectively neutralize the bacterial toxin that causes cholera.

The findings could help give researchers a better idea of which features of mucins contribute to different functions, especially their antimicrobial functions, says Laura Kiessling, the Novartis Professor of Chemistry at MIT. Replicating those functions in synthetic mucins could eventually lead to new ways to treat or prevent infectious disease, and such materials may be less likely to lead to the kind of resistance that occurs with antibiotics, she says.

“We would really like to understand what features of mucins are important for their activities, and mimic those features so that you could block virulence pathways in microbes,” says Kiessling, who is the senior author of the new study.

Kiessling’s lab worked on this project with Katharina Ribbeck, the Mark Hyman, Jr. Career Development Professor of Biological Engineering, and Richard Schrock, the F.G. Keyes Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, who are also authors of the paper. The lead authors of the paper, which appears today in ACS Central Science, are former MIT graduate student Austin Kruger and MIT postdoc Spencer Brucks.

Inspired by mucus

Kiessling and Ribbeck joined forces to try to create mucus-inspired materials in 2018, with funding from a Professor Amar G. Bose Research Grant. The primary building blocks of mucus are mucins — long, bottlebrush-like proteins with many sugar molecules called glycans attached. Ribbeck has discovered that these mucins disrupt many key functions of infectious bacteria, including their ability to secrete toxins, communicate with each other, and attach to cellular surfaces.

Those features have led many scientists to try to generate artificial versions that could help prevent or treat bacterial infection. However, mucins are so large that it has been difficult to replicate their structure accurately. Each mucin polymer has a long backbone consisting of thousands of amino acids, and many different glycans can be attached to these backbones.

In the new study, the researchers decided to focus on the backbone of the polymer. To try to replicate its structure, they used a reaction called ring-opening metathesis polymerization. During this type of reaction, a carbon-containing ring is opened up to form a linear molecule containing a carbon-carbon double bond. These molecules can then be joined together to form long polymers.

In 2005, Schrock shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work developing catalysts that can drive this type of reaction. Later, he developed a catalyst that could yield specifically the “cis” configuration of the products. Each carbon atom in the double bond usually has one other chemical group attached to it, and in the cis configuration, both of these groups are on the same side of the double bond. In the “trans” configuration, the groups are on opposite sides.

To create their polymers, the researchers used Schrock’s catalyst, which is based on tungsten, to form cis versions of mucin mimetic polymers. They compared these polymers to those produced by a different, ruthenium-based catalyst, which creates trans versions. They found that the cis versions were much more similar to natural mucins — that is, they formed very elongated, water-soluble polymers. In contrast, the trans polymers formed globules that clumped together instead of stretching out.

Mimicking mucins

The researchers then tested the synthetic mucins’ ability to mimic the functions of natural mucins. When exposed to the toxin produced by Vibrio cholerae, the elongated cis polymers were much better able to capture the toxin than the trans polymers, the researchers found. In fact, the synthetic cis mucin mimics were even more effective than naturally occurring mucins.

The researchers also found that their elongated polymers were much more soluble in water than the trans polymers, which could make them useful for applications such as eye drops or skin moisturizers.

Now that they can create synthetic mucins that effectively mimic the real thing, the researchers plan to study how mucins’ functions change when different glycans are attached to the backbones. By altering the composition of the glycans, they hope to develop synthetic mucins that can dampen virulence pathways of a variety of microbes.

“We’re thinking about ways to even better mimic mucins, but this study is an important step in understanding what’s relevant,” Kiessling says.

In addition to the Bose grant, the research was funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

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Selenium supplementation protects against obesity and may extend lifespan

Adding the nutrient selenium to diets protects against obesity and provides metabolic benefits to mice, according to a study published today in eLife.

The results could lead to interventions that reproduce many of the anti-aging effects associated with dietary restriction while also allowing people to eat as normal.

Several types of diet have been shown to increase healthspan – that is, the period of healthy lifespan. One of the proven methods of increasing healthspan in many organisms, including non-human mammals, is to restrict dietary intake of an amino acid called methionine.

Recent studies have suggested that the effects of methionine restriction on healthspan are likely to be conserved in humans. Although it might be feasible for some people to practice methionine restriction, for example, by adhering to a vegan diet, such a diet might not be practical or desirable for everyone. In the current study, a research team from the Orentreich Foundation for the Advancement of Science (OFAS), Cold Spring, New York, US, aimed to develop an intervention that produces the same effects as methionine restriction, while also allowing an individual to eat a normal, unrestricted diet.

An important clue for developing such a treatment is that methionine restriction causes a decrease in the amounts of an energy-regulating hormone called IGF-1. If a treatment could be found that causes a similar decrease in IGF-1, this might also have beneficial effects on healthspan. Previous research has shown that selenium supplementation reduces the levels of circulating IGF-1 in rats, suggesting that this could be an ideal candidate.

The team first studied whether selenium supplementation offered the same protection against obesity as methionine restriction. They fed young male and older female mice one of three high-fat diets: a control diet containing typical amounts of methionine, a methionine-restricted diet, and a diet containing typical amounts of methionine as well as a source of selenium. For both male and female mice of any age, the authors found that selenium supplementation completely protected against the dramatic weight gain and fat accumulation seen in mice fed the control diet, and to the same extent as restricting methionine.

Next, they explored the effects of the three diets on physiological changes normally associated with methionine restriction. To do this, they measured the amounts of four metabolic markers in blood samples from the previously treated mice. As hoped, they found dramatically reduced levels of IGF-1 in both male and female mice. They also saw reductions in the levels of the hormone leptin, which controls food intake and energy expenditure. Their results indicate that selenium supplementation produces most, if not all, of the hallmarks of methionine restriction, which suggests that this intervention may have a similar positive effect on healthspan.

To gain insight into the beneficial effects of selenium supplementation, the researchers used a different organism – yeast. The two most widely used measurements of healthspan in yeast are chronological lifespan, which tells us how long dormant yeast remain viable, and replicative lifespan, which measures the number of times a yeast cell can produce new offspring. The team previously showed that methionine restriction increases the chronological lifespan of yeast, so they tested whether selenium supplementation might do the same. As it turned out, yeast grown under selenium-supplemented conditions had a 62% longer chronological lifespan (from 13 days to 21 days) and a replicative lifespan extended by nine generations as compared with controls. This demonstrates that supplementing yeast with selenium produces benefits to healthspan detectable by multiple tests of cell aging.

“One of the major goals of aging research is to identify simple interventions that promote human healthspan,” notes senior author Jay Johnson, Senior Scientist at OFAS. “Here we present evidence that short-term administration of either organic or inorganic sources of selenium provides multiple health benefits to mice, the most notable of which being the prevention of diet-induced obesity. In the long term, we expect that supplementation with these compounds will also prevent age-related disease and extend the overall survival of mice. It is our hope that many of the benefits observed for mice will also hold true for humans.”

This study will be included in eLife’s Special Issue on Aging, Geroscience and Longevity. To view all articles published in the Special Issue, visit https://elifesciences.org/collections/6d673315/aging-geroscience-and-longevity-a-special-issue.

Media contacts

Emily Packer
e.packer@elifesciences.org
+441223855373

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Preconditions for life existed 3.5 billion years ago

Microbial life already had the necessary conditions to exist on our planet 3.5 billion years ago. This was the conclusion reached by a research team after studying microscopic fluid inclusions in barium sulfate (barite) from the Dresser Mine in Marble Bar, Australia. In their publication “Ingredients for microbial life preserved in 3.5-billion-year-old fluid inclusions,” the researchers suggest that organic carbon compounds which could serve as nutrients for microbial life already existed at this time. The study by first author Helge Mißbach (University of Göttingen, Germany) was published in the journal Nature Communications. Co-author Volker Lüders from the GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences carried out carbon isotope analyses on gases in fluid inclusions.

Fluid inclusions show potential for prehistoric life

Lüders assesses the results as surprising, although he cautions against misinterpreting them. “One should not take the study results as direct evidence for early life,” says the GFZ researcher. Rather, the findings on the 3.5-billion-year-old fluids showed the existence of the potential for just such prehistoric life. Whether life actually arose from it at that time cannot be determined. Based on the results, “we now know a point in time from which we can say it would have been possible,” explains Lüders.

Australian barites as geo-archives

Fluid inclusions in minerals are microscopic geo-archives for the migration of hot solutions and gases in the Earth’s crust. Primary fluid inclusions were formed directly during mineral growth and provide important information about the conditions under which they were formed. This includes the pressure, temperature and the solution composition. In addition to an aqueous phase, fluid inclusions can also contain gases whose chemistry can persist for billions of years. The fluid inclusions examined in this study were trapped during crystallization of the host minerals. The fluid inclusions investigated in this study originate from the Dresser Mine in Australia. They were trapped during crystallisation of the host minerals of barium sulphate (barite). The research team analysed them extensively for their formation conditions, biosignatures and carbon isotopes.

In the course of the analyses, it turned out that they contained primordial metabolism – and thus energy sources for life. The results of Lüders’ carbon isotope analysis provided additional evidence for different carbon sources. While the gas-rich inclusions of gray barites contained traces of magmatic carbon, clear evidence of an organic origin of the carbon could be found in the fluid inclusions of black barites.

Follow-up research is possible

“The study may create a big stir,” Lüders says. Organic molecules of this type have not yet been found so far in fluid inclusions in Archean minerals. At the same time, however, he says the study is just a first step. Lüders says, “The ever-increasing sensitivity of measuring instruments will provide new tools for the study of solid and fluid micro inclusions in minerals. Measurements of bio signatures and isotope ratios are likely to become increasingly accurate in the near future.”

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Forward Looking Thoughts: Monographs in a post-COVID World

A year into a global pandemic Cathy Holland, our Director of Global Publisher Business Development, looks ahead at how the pandemic has changed the state of open monographs in a post-COVID world.

SEE MORE POSTS IN THIS STATE OF OPEN MONOGRAPHS SERIES

This month marks one year since everything started shutting down due to COVID-19. In March of 2020 I, along with many others in our industry, had planned to attend the London Book Fair, but that was not to be. While many parts of life were shutting down, scholarly content was opening up, and in particular, monographs. In April, Charles Watkinson wrote that many publishers, and particularly University Presses, had started to make monographs, journals, and other types of content freely available for a period of time.

As the pandemic lingers on even though 2020 is OVER in all senses of the word, we thought it would be interesting to look ahead and predict what may come next for monographs in a post-pandemic world. My personal prediction is that we will see more grants for monographs include earmarked funds for getting works published. This may take a year or even two, but what we have seen through this pandemic is that ‘Open’ is here to stay, and this will need to be supported.

We asked various industry experts to share their thoughts. Here’s what they had to say:

Please join our enthusiastic book group! We would love to amplify more voices on all topics concerning books, monographs, edited works, and more. If you are interested in sharing your thoughts with the wider scholarly communications and research community and would like to write about a topic please reach out to Suze Kundu.

SEE MORE POSTS IN THIS STATE OF OPEN MONOGRAPHS SERIES

DOI for this blog series: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12347939

The post Forward Looking Thoughts: Monographs in a post-COVID World appeared first on Digital Science.

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Fasting acts as a diet catalyst

One in four Germans suffers from metabolic syndrome. Several of four diseases of affluence occur at the same time in this ‘deadly quartet’: obesity, high blood pressure, lipid metabolism disorder and diabetes mellitus. Each of these is a risk factor for severe cardiovascular conditions, such as heart attack and stroke. Treatment aims to help patients lose weight and normalise their lipid and carbohydrate metabolism and blood pressure. In addition to exercise, doctors prescribe a low-calorie and healthy diet. Medication is often also required. However, it is not fully clear what effects nutrition has on the microbiome, immune system and health.

A research group led by Dr Sofia Forslund and Professor Dominik N. Müller from the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association (MDC) and the Experimental and Clinical Research Center (ECRC) has now examined the effect a change of diet has on people with metabolic syndrome. The ECRC is jointly run by the MDC and Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin. “Switching to a healthy diet has a positive effect on blood pressure,” says Andras Maifeld, summarising the results. “If the diet is preceded by a fast, this effect is intensified.” Maifeld is the first author of the paper, which was recently published in the journal “Nature Communications”.

Broccoli over roast beef

Dr Andreas Michalsen, Senior Consultant of the Naturopathy Department at Immanuel Hospital Berlin and Endowed Chair of Clinical Naturopathy at the Institute for Social Medicine, Epidemiology and Health Economics at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, and Professor Gustav J. Dobos, Chair of Naturopathy and Integrative Medicine at the University of Duisburg-Essen, recruited 71 volunteers with metabolic syndrome and raised systolic blood pressure. The researchers divided them into two groups at random.

Both groups followed the DASH (Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension) diet for three months, which is designed to combat high blood pressure. This Mediterranean-style diet includes lots of fruit and vegetables, wholemeal products, nuts and pulses, fish and lean white meat. One of the two groups did not consume any solid food at all for five days before starting the DASH diet.

On the basis of immunophenotyping, the scientists observed how the immune cells of the volunteers changed when they altered their diet. “The innate immune system remains stable during the fast, whereas the adaptive immune system shuts down,” explains Maifeld. During this process, the number of proinflammatory T cells drops, while regulatory T cells multiply.

A Mediterranean diet is good, but to also fast is better

The researchers used stool samples to examine the effects of the fast on the gut microbiome. Gut bacteria work in close contact with the immune system. Some strains of bacteria metabolise dietary fibre into anti-inflammatory short-chain fatty acids that benefit the immune system. The composition of the gut bacteria ecosystem changes drastically during fasting. Health-promoting bacteria that help to reduce blood pressure multiply. Some of these changes remain even after resumption of food intake. The following is particularly noteworthy: “Body mass index, blood pressure and the need for antihypertensive medication remained lower in the long term among volunteers who started the healthy diet with a five-day fast,” explains Dominik Müller. Blood pressure normally shoots back up again when even one antihypertensive tablet is forgotten.

Blood pressure remains lower in the long term – even three months after fasting

Together with scientists from the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research and McGill University, Montreal, Canada, Forslund’s working group conducted a statistical evaluation of these results using artificial intelligence to ensure that this positive effect was actually attributable to the fast and not to the medication that the volunteers were taking. They used methods from a previous study in which they had examined the influence of antihypertensive medication on the microbiome. “We were able to isolate the influence of the medication and observe that whether someone responds well to a change of diet or not depends on the individual immune response and the gut microbiome,” says Forslund.

If a high-fibre, low-fat diet fails to deliver results, it is possible that there are insufficient gut bacteria in the gut microbiome that metabolise fibre into protective fatty acids. “Those who have this problem often feel that it is not worth the effort and go back to their old habits,” explains the scientist. It is therefore a good idea to combine a diet with a fast. “Fasting acts as a catalyst for protective microorganisms in the gut. Health clearly improves very quickly and patients can cut back on their medication or even often stop taking tablets altogether.” This could motivate them to stick to a healthy lifestyle in the long term.

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The Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC)

The Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association (MDC) was founded in Berlin in 1992. It is named for the German-American physicist Max Delbrück, who was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. The MDC’s mission is to study molecular mechanisms in order to understand the origins of disease and thus be able to diagnose, prevent and fight it better and more effectively. In these efforts the MDC cooperates with the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) as well as with national partners such as the German Center for Cardiovascular Research and numerous international research institutions. More than 1,600 staff and guests from nearly 60 countries work at the MDC, just under 1,300 of them in scientific research. The MDC is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (90 percent) and the State of Berlin (10 percent), and is a member of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers. http://www.mdc-berlin.de

Scientific contacts

Dr. Sofia Forslund
Head of Host-microbiome factors in cardiovascular disease Lab
Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association (MDC)
sofia.forslund@mdc-berlin.de

Dr. Andras Maifeld
Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association (MDC)
Tel.: +49 30 450540558
andras.maifeld@mdc-berlin.de

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