Culture
With so many COVID-19 models being developed, how do policymakers know which ones to use? A new process to harness multiple disease models for outbreak management has been developed by an international team of researchers. The team describes the process in a paper appearing May 8 in the journal Science and was awarded a Grant for Rapid Response Research (RAPID) from the National Science Foundation to immediately implement the process to help inform policy decisions for the COVID-19 outbreak.
While an effective vaccine for the SARS-CoV-2 virus is likely many months away, development could be accelerated by conducting controlled human infection (CHI) studies - which are increasingly being considered by the scientific community due to the urgent need. In a Policy Forum, Seema Shah and colleagues outline an ethical framework for conducting CHI studies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In CHI studies, a small number of willing participants are deliberately exposed to infection to rapidly gather data on the efficacy of experimental vaccine candidates or treatments.
Controlling spatter during laser powder bed fusion - a form of 3D printing that uses metal as a medium - reduces random defects and increases the overall reliability of built parts. New technologies capable of 3D printing metallic materials are poised to revolutionize manufacturing, particularly for advanced aerospace and biomedical applications. One such technology - laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) - uses a high-power laser to melt and fuse metallic powders layer-by-layer to produce an intricate 3D part.
In a world where movements of non-native animal species are drastically disrupting whole ecosystems and causing economic harm and environmental change, it is becoming increasingly important to understand the features that allow them to colonize new habitats.
What The Study Did: The clinical characteristics of men with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) whose semen tested positive for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) are examined in this observational study.
Authors: Weiguo Zhao, M.D., of the Eighth Medical Center of Chinese People's Liberation Army General Hospital in Beijing, and Shixi Zhang, M.D., of the Shangqiu Municipal Hospital in Shangqiu City, Henan Province, China, are the corresponding authors.
NEW YORK, May 7, 2020 -- A newly published study in Current Biology reveals surprising findings about the function of circadian network neurons that undergo daily structural change. The research could lead to a better understanding of how to address circadian rhythm disruptions in humans and facilitate preventing a host of associated health problems, including increased risk for cancer and metabolic syndrome.
Neural stem cells are not only responsible for early brain development - they remain active for an entire lifetime. They divide and continually generate new nerve cells and enable the brain to constantly adapt to new demands. Various genetic mutations impede neural stem cell activity and thus lead to learning and memory deficits in the people affected. Very little has hitherto been known about the mechanisms responsible for this.
Enzyme regulates brain stem cell activity
What The Viewpoint Says: The considerations and challenges affecting the palliative care specialty and delivery of palliative care in the COVID-19 era, as well as potential solutions, are discussed in this Viewpoint.
Authors: Ambereen K. Mehta, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of California, Los Angeles, in Santa Monica, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamaoncol.2020.1938)
What The Article Says: This essay discusses similarities between a doctor's experiences with diagnoses of cancer and COVID-19.
Author: Urvi A. Shah, M.D., of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, is the author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamaoncol.2020.1848)
Repurposing existing medicines focused on known drug targets is likely to offer a more rapid hope of tackling COVID-19 than developing and manufacturing a vaccine, argue an international team of scientists in the British Journal of Pharmacology today.
Tsukuba, Japan - Collective behaviors are the result of dynamic local interactions between individual members of the collective. While the actions of a collective are readily observable, the interactions remain hidden and have traditionally been difficult to analyze. Now, researchers from the University of Tsukuba applied integrated information theory to understand how varying sizes of a collective of fish affect the interactions between its individual members.
Tsukuba, Japan - The germline is the cell lineage of an organism that passes on its genetic material to its progeny. Genetic damage to the germline can cause developmental defects and even death of that same progeny. It is thought that biological mechanisms exist that ensure that aberrant germline cells are eliminated to maintain germline integrity, although the specific molecular basis for this is unknown.
Scientific team found a new metabolism regulation system for the brown adipose tissue using the kallikrein-kinin hormonal system, so far related to the physiology of the renal and cardiovascular system and inflammation and pain processes. This molecular auto-control system of lipidic metabolism, so far unknown, could help prevent the damaging effects derived from an excessive activation of the brown adipose tissue.
According to Carlos García Meca and Andrés Macho Ortiz, researchers at NTC-UPV, this new symmetry allows the conservation of the linear moment between dramatically different physical systems. This paves the way to designing pioneering optical, acoustic and elastic devices, including invisible omnidirectional, polarization-independent materials, ultra-compact frequency shifters, isolators and pulse-shape transformers.
As the COVID-19 pandemic enters its third month, businesses in the United States are marketing unlicensed and unproven stem-cell-based "therapies" and exosome products that claim to prevent or treat the disease. In Cell Stem Cell on May 5, bioethicist Leigh Turner describes how these companies are "seizing the pandemic as an opportunity to profit from hope and desperation."