Culture

NASA's Mars rovers have been one of the great scientific and space successes of the past two decades.

Four generations of rovers have traversed the red planet gathering scientific data, sending back evocative photographs, and surviving incredibly harsh conditions -- all using on-board computers less powerful than an iPhone 1. The latest rover, Perseverance, was launched on July 30, 2020, and engineers are already dreaming of a future generation of rovers.

While a major achievement, these missions have only scratched the surface (literally and figuratively) of the planet and its geology, geography, and atmosphere.

"The surface area of Mars is approximately the same as the total area of the land on Earth," said Masahiro (Hiro) Ono, group lead of the Robotic Surface Mobility Group at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) -- which has led all the Mars rover missions -- and one of the researchers who developed the software that allows the current rover to operate.

"Imagine, you're an alien and you know almost nothing about Earth, and you land on seven or eight points on Earth and drive a few hundred kilometers. Does that alien species know enough about Earth?" Ono asked. "No. If we want to represent the huge diversity of Mars we'll need more measurements on the ground, and the key is substantially extended distance, hopefully covering thousands of miles."

Travelling across Mars' diverse, treacherous terrain with limited computing power and a restricted energy diet -- only as much sun as the rover can capture and convert to power in a single Martian day, or sol -- is a huge challenge.

The first rover, Sojourner, covered 330 feet over 91 sols; the second, Spirit, travelled 4.8 miles in about five years; Opportunity, travelled 28 miles over 15 years; and Curiosity has travelled more than 12 miles since it landed in 2012.

"Our team is working on Mars robot autonomy to make future rovers more intelligent, to enhance safety, to improve productivity, and in particular to drive faster and farther," Ono said.

NEW HARDWARE, NEW POSSIBILITIES

The Perseverance rover, which launched this summer, computes using RAD 750s -- radiation-hardened single board computers manufactured by BAE Systems Electronics.

Future missions, however, would potentially use new high-performance, multi-core radiation hardened processors designed through the High Performance Spaceflight Computing (HPSC) project. (Qualcomm's Snapdragon processor is also being tested for missions.) These chips will provide about one hundred times the computational capacity of current flight processors using the same amount of power.

"All of the autonomy that you see on our latest Mars rover is largely human-in-the-loop" -- meaning it requires human interaction to operate, according to Chris Mattmann, the deputy chief technology and innovation officer at JPL. "Part of the reason for that is the limits of the processors that are running on them. One of the core missions for these new chips is to do deep learning and machine learning, like we do terrestrially, on board. What are the killer apps given that new computing environment?"

The Machine Learning-based Analytics for Autonomous Rover Systems (MAARS) program -- which started three years ago and will conclude this year -- encompasses a range of areas where artificial intelligence could be useful. The team presented results of the MAARS project at hIEEE Aerospace Conference in March 2020. The project was a finalist for the NASA Software Award.

"Terrestrial high performance computing has enabled incredible breakthroughs in autonomous vehicle navigation, machine learning, and data analysis for Earth-based applications," the team wrote in their IEEE paper. "The main roadblock to a Mars exploration rollout of such advances is that the best computers are on Earth, while the most valuable data is located on Mars."

Training machine learning models on the Maverick2 supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), as well as on Amazon Web Services and JPL clusters, Ono, Mattmann and their team have been developing two novel capabilities for future Mars rovers, which they call Drive-By Science and Energy-Optimal Autonomous Navigation.

ENERGY-OPTIMAL AUTONOMOUS NAVIGATION

Ono was part of the team that wrote the on-board pathfinding software for Perseverance. Perseverance's software includes some machine learning abilities, but the way it does pathfinding is still fairly naïve.

"We'd like future rovers to have a human-like ability to see and understand terrain," Ono said. "For rovers, energy is very important. There's no paved highway on Mars. The drivability varies substantially based on the terrain -- for instance beach versus. bedrock. That is not currently considered. Coming up with a path with all of these constraints is complicated, but that's the level of computation that we can handle with the HPSC or Snapdragon chips. But to do so we're going to need to change the paradigm a little bit."

Ono explains that new paradigm as commanding by policy, a middle ground between the human-dictated: "Go from A to B and do C," and the purely autonomous: "Go do science."

Commanding by policy involves pre-planning for a range of scenarios, and then allowing the rover to determine what conditions it is encountering and what it should do.

"We use a supercomputer on the ground, where we have infinite computational resources like those at TACC, to develop a plan where a policy is: if X, then do this; if y, then do that," Ono explained. "We'll basically make a huge to-do list and send gigabytes of data to the rover, compressing it in huge tables. Then we'll use the increased power of the rover to de-compress the policy and execute it."

The pre-planned list is generated using machine learning-derived optimizations. The on-board chip can then use those plans to perform inference: taking the inputs from its environment and plugging them into the pre-trained model. The inference tasks are computationally much easier and can be computed on a chip like those that may accompany future rovers to Mars.

"The rover has the flexibility of changing the plan on board instead of just sticking to a sequence of pre-planned options," Ono said. "This is important in case something bad happens or it finds something interesting."

DRIVE-BY SCIENCE

Current Mars missions typically use tens of images a Sol from the rover to decide what to do the next day, according to Mattmann. "But what if in the future we could use one million image captions instead? That's the core tenet of Drive-By Science," he said. "If the rover can return text labels and captions that were scientifically validated, our mission team would have a lot more to go on."

Mattmann and the team adapted Google's Show and Tell software -- a neural image caption generator first launched in 2014 -- for the rover missions, the first non-Google application of the technology.

The algorithm takes in images and spits out human-readable captions. These include basic, but critical information, like cardinality -- how many rocks, how far away? -- and properties like the vein structure in outcrops near bedrock. "The types of science knowledge that we currently use images for to decide what's interesting," Mattmann said.

Over the past few years, planetary geologists have labeled and curated Mars-specific image annotations to train the model.

"We use the one million captions to find 100 more important things," Mattmann said. "Using search and information retrieval capabilities, we can prioritize targets. Humans are still in the loop, but they're getting much more information and are able to search it a lot faster."

Results of the team's work appear in the September 2020 issue of Planetary and Space Science.

TACC's supercomputers proved instrumental in helping the JPL team test the system. On Maverick 2, the team trained, validated, and improved their model using 6,700 labels created by experts.

The ability to travel much farther would be a necessity for future Mars rovers. An example is the Sample Fetch Rover, proposed to be developed by the European Space Association and launched in late 2020s, whose main task will be to pick up samples dug up by the Mars 2020 rover and collect them.

"Those rovers in a period of years would have to drive 10 times further than previous rovers to collect all the samples and to get them to a rendezvous site," Mattmann said. "We'll need to be smarter about the way we drive and use energy."

Before the new models and algorithms are loaded onto a rover destined for space, they are tested on a dirt training ground next to JPL that serves as an Earth-based analogue for the surface of Mars.

The team developed a demonstration that shows an overhead map, streaming images collected by the rover, and the algorithms running live on the rover, and then exposes the rover doing terrain classification and captioning on board. They had hoped to finish testing the new system this spring, but COVID-19 shuttered the lab and delayed testing.

In the meantime, Ono and his team developed a citizen science app, AI4Mars, that allows the public to annotate more than 20,000 images taken by the Curiosity rover. These will be used to further train machine learning algorithms to identify and avoid hazardous terrains.

The public have generated 170,000 labels so far in less than three months. "People are excited. It's an opportunity for people to help," Ono said. "The labels that people create will help us make the rover safer."

The efforts to develop a new AI-based paradigm for future autonomous missions can be applied not just to rovers but to any autonomous space mission, from orbiters to fly-bys to interstellar probes, Ono says.

"The combination of more powerful on-board computing power, pre-planned commands computed on high performance computers like those at TACC, and new algorithms has the potential to allow future rovers to travel much further and do more science."

August 18, 2020 - Edison, NJ -- Researchers at Hackensack Meridian Health, New Jersey's largest and most comprehensive health network, have utilized its statewide observational database of more than 5,000 hospitalized COVID-19 patients to show that a drug normally used in rheumatoid arthritis and cancer treatments, tocilizumab, improves hospital survival in critically-ill patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU).

The findings were published in The Lancet Rheumatology on Aug. 14, and Hackensack Meridian Health researchers have updated the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other national leaders of the findings to potentially accelerate improved outcomes.

"Our clinicians and researchers at Hackensack Meridian Health have moved quickly and intelligently since the start of this global health crisis," said Robert C. Garrett, FACHE, chief executive officer of Hackensack Meridian Health. "Their work in treating this terrible virus, and learning more about it each day, continues to benefit thousands of patients as the pandemic continues."

The study included 630 patients who were admitted to the ICUs of 13 Hackensack Meridian Health hospitals from March 1 to April 22 - the height of the pandemic in New Jersey. Among other treatments, tocilizumab was considered for off-label usage for the patients whose respiratory symptoms were declining; many of whom were requiring mechanical ventilator support. In the observational study 210 patients received tocilizumab, and the other 420 did not.

COVID-19 has three phases: the early or viral phase (with fast viral replication), the pulmonary phase (marked by inflammation and pneumonia as the body tries to fight the virus in the lungs) and the inflammatory phase (in which excessive inflammation reaches and affects many organs and patients are often in the ICU). As part of both the pulmonary and inflammatory phases the immune system is "supercharged" and secretes in the blood numerous cytokines, particularly interleukin (IL)-6, which induces further inflammation. Tocilizumab is a monoclonal antibody, which binds and blocks the interleukin (IL)-6 receptor and helps damper the inflammatory response. The activity of tocilizumab was first shown in chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, where a similar phenomenon of overactive and growing T cells induce a "cytokine storm." This provided a rationale to try tocilizumab in COVID-19 patients.

The findings showed a statistically-significant decrease in hospital-related deaths among the patients who received the tocilizumab: a roughly 36 percent decrease in hospital-related mortality among the ICU patients who received the drug, as compared with patients in the ICU who didn't receive it. The data from the outcomes was adjusted to account for multiple factors, including comorbidities, and was assessed using statistical survival models.

Importantly, it appeared that higher levels of a blood test marker of inflammation, C-reactive protein, could predict which ICU patients might benefit most from the tocilizumab therapy, potentially allowing doctors to tailor therapy to those most in need.

"These real-time findings have helped to point us the way forward," said Ihor Sawczuk, M.D., FACS, Hackensack Meridian Health regional president, Northern Market and chief research officer. "Our clinicians and scientists were at the forefront of COVID research from the beginning of the pandemic."

The results are based on evidence collected in the HMH Universal Observational Database for COVID-19, or RE-COV-RY, which compiles outcomes from 13 Hackensack Meridian Health hospitals throughout New Jersey, using electronic health records (EHRs).

The outcomes division of the John Theurer Cancer Center (JTCC) at Hackensack University Medical Center, under the leadership of Dr. Stuart Goldberg and Dr. Andrew Ip, created a database to guide the analysis of more than 3,000 patients admitted to Hackensack Meridian Health facilities for urgent care. The database has been used to constantly assess COVID-19 treatments over the last several months, including the most promising and high-profile drugs and interventions.

"We need to know more as soon as possible," said Stuart Goldberg, M.D., hematologist/oncologist and chief of the Division of Outcomes and Value Research at John Theurer Cancer Center at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey. "Our database has allowed us to rapidly expand our knowledge of COVID-19 throughout the Hackensack Meridian Health hospital network. We are moving fast to help guide interventions - and potentially save lives."

The lead co-authors on this study are John Theurer Cancer Center hematologist-oncologists Andrew Ip, M.D., from the Division of Outcomes and Value Research and Noa Biran, M.D., from the Division of Myeloma. Both had experience with tocilizumab as part of the JTCC active CAR-T cell transplant program and recognized the potential of this immune modulating therapy in COVID-19.

"This is a great example of our science having impact far beyond cancer," said Andre Goy, M.D., M.S., physician-in-chief of Oncology, Hackensack Meridian Health.

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite kept an eye on Hurricane Genevieve overnight and provided infrared imagery to forecasters who were monitoring the storm's strength, structure and size. Because Genevieve is close to the coast of western Mexico, warnings and watches were still in effect.

NASA's Night-Time View of Genevieve

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard Suomi NPP provided a nighttime image of Hurricane Genevieve on Aug. 18 at 8 p.m. EDT (Aug. 19 at 0000 UTC).The hurricane's eye was still visible and well defined. It was surrounded by powerful thunderstorms, although deep convection is generally lacking over the southwestern portion of the circulation.  The image was created using the NASA Worldview application.

Warnings and Watches on Aug. 19

NOAA's National Hurricane Center issued a Hurricane Warning for the southern Baja California peninsula from Los Barriles to Todos Santos, Mexico. A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for the west coast of the Baja California peninsula from north of Todos Santos to Cabo San Lazaro, and a Tropical Storm Watch is in effect for the east coast of the Baja California peninsula from Los Barriles to La Paz.

Hurricane Genevieve's Status on Aug. 19

At 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC), the center of Hurricane Genevieve was located near latitude 20.9 degrees north and longitude 109.7 degrees west. That puts the eye about 140 miles (225 km) south of the southern tip of Baja California, Mexico. The estimated minimum central pressure is 959 millibars. Genevieve was moving toward the north-northwest near 9 mph (15 kph).

Maximum sustained winds are near 115 mph (185 km/h) with higher gusts.  Genevieve is a category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.

The NHC Forecast for Genevieve

NOAA's NHC forecast noted, "Gradual weakening is forecast over the next couple of days, but Genevieve is expected to remain a strong hurricane while it passes west of the southern Baja California peninsula. A turn toward the northwest is expected this afternoon or tonight, with this motion continuing through Friday night.  On the forecast track, the center of Genevieve is expected to move near but just southwest of the southern portion of the Baja California peninsula tonight and Thursday, and move away from the peninsula on Friday."

About NASA's EOSDIS Worldview

NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) Worldview application provides the capability to interactively browse over 700 global, full-resolution satellite imagery layers and then download the underlying data. Many of the available imagery layers are updated within three hours of observation, essentially showing the entire Earth as it looks "right now."

NASA Researches Earth from Space

For more than five decades, NASA has used the vantage point of space to understand and explore our home planet, improve lives and safeguard our future. NASA brings together technology, science, and unique global Earth observations to provide societal benefits and strengthen our nation. Advancing knowledge of our home planet contributes directly to America's leadership in space and scientific exploration.

For updated forecasts, visit: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov

By Rob Gutro 
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Young gay men who are uncomfortable discussing sexual issues with their primary care providers and experience health care discrimination are less likely to seek coordinated care, leading to missed opportunities for early diagnosis of chronic and mental health issues, according to Rutgers researchers.

The study, published in the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Social Services, examined the types of health care facilities that young gay men use, their preference for coordinated health care and their satisfaction with the care provided.

Researchers found that dissatisfaction with health care - due to discrimination based on race, ethnicity, economic status or sexual orientation - greatly impacted how and where people seek medical care.

"Oftentimes, once gay patients disclose their sexual orientation, providers do not know how to respond in a sensitive way and many patients leave the encounter less likely to disclose this information in future visits," said Marybec Griffin, assistant professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health. "Even if the disclosure conversation is successful, many providers lack the knowledge of gay men's health issues, which translates to inappropriate screening and prevention service, including the low levels of HPV vaccination and site-specific STI [sexually transmitted infection] testing."

The Center for Health, Identity, Behavior and Prevention Studies researchers surveyed 800 young gay men in New York City between the ages of 18 and 29 who reported their health care usage and satisfaction across three factors: facility type, coordination of health care and satisfaction with care provided. They found that the health care system does not fully address the health care needs of gay men.

Participants who had prior experiences of discrimination in health care settings were less likely to seek care from a single provider and were more likely to be dissatisfied with health care as a result.

Those who had disclosed their sexual orientation and were comfortable discussing sexual activity with their health care provider were more likely to agree that their health care needs were being adequately addressed. Creating safe spaces that encourage disclosure of sexual orientation builds trust between patients and providers and allows for relevant screening and preventive services that young gay men need, researchers found.

The study also found that health care cost and convenience play an important role in accessing care. Participants who had a primary care provider were less likely to use walk-in models of health care, such as emergency rooms and urgent care facilities, indicating that once satisfactory care is established, patients will not doctor-shop or use more convenient types of care, allowing an ease of access and more anonymity for STI testing and treatment.

"As the use of non-traditional health care facilities like urgent care centers increases, it is important that providers in these settings are aware of the health care needs of gay men," said Perry N. Halkitis, dean of the Rutgers School of Public Health. "Providers in these settings should be trained on proper screening protocols for gay men, including sensitivity around soliciting information on sexual orientation and behaviors."

Alzheimer's disease is one of the most common causes of dementia, and while most people might know someone who is affected by it, the genetic factors behind the disease are less known. A new study by investigators from Brigham and Women's Hospital uncovered a group of closely related genes that may capture molecular links between Alzheimer's disease and Limbic-predominant Age-related TDP-43 Encephalopathy, or LATE, a recently recognized common brain disorder that can mimic Alzheimer's symptoms. LATE is often combined with Alzheimer's disease to cause a more rapid cognitive decline. The study's results are published in Neuron.

"Genetic variants that regulate other genes' expressions are thought to play an important role in human disease, but genome-wide discovery of these variants has been difficult given the large numbers of genes and genetic variants that have to be tested," said Philip De Jager, MD, PhD, formerly of the Brigham. De Jager is now the chief of the Division of Neuroimmunology at Columbia University and senior author of the study. "We decided to leverage a previously developed data-driven approach to group closely correlated genes together into gene modules so that we can focus on the expression of 47 gene modules, rather than targeting more than 13,000 individual brain-expressed genes."
Gene expression is the process in which the information encoded in a gene is used to assemble a protein. The investigators conducted a genome-wide screen of genetic variants that regulate gene expression using 494 autopsied brain samples from the Religious Orders Study (ROS) and the Rush Memory and Aging Project (MAP), community-based clinical-pathologic studies of aging and Alzheimer's disease. They observed that two genes, named TMEM106B and RBFOX1, regulate gene expression in the aging brain. The research team replicated their finding in an independent dataset from the Mayo RNAseq study, and analyzed clinical, autopsy, and genetic data to connect their findings with brain diseases that cause dementia.

The authors note that the study mainly analyzed people whose average age was close to 90 at their time of death and brain donation. Therefore, the study results should be interpreted cautiously outside of this context, and further studies are required to investigate whether their findings could be extended to other TDP-43 related conditions that affect younger patients, such as frontotemporal dementia and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
The research team also found that amyloid-β accumulation, a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease, and the TMEM106B risk variant both increased the expression of the same set of genes that are important in the function of lysosome, a cell compartment specializing in cellular waste removal. In turn, the increased expression of lysosomal genes correlated with LATE neuropathological change in human brain.
"It is becoming increasingly apparent that the frequent coexistence of Alzheimer's disease and LATE is not a coincidence," said Hyun-Sik Yang, MD, of the Division of Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology at the Brigham, who is the first author of the study. "We should further investigate the shared molecular links between Alzheimer's and LATE, so that one day we can treat and even prevent two of the most common causes of dementia in our rapidly aging population."

Researchers from Skoltech, INRIA and the RIKEN Advanced Intelligence Project have considered several state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms for the challenging tasks of determining the mental workload and affective states of a human brain. Their software can help design smarter brain-computer interfaces for applications in medicine and beyond. The paper was published in the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Magazine.

A brain-computer interface, or BCI, is a link between a human brain and a machine that can allow users to control various devices, such as robot arms or a wheelchair, by brain activity only (these are called active BCIs) or can monitor the mental state or emotions of a user and categorize them (these are passive BCIs). Brain signals in a BCI are usually measured by electroencephalography, a typically noninvasive method of recording electrical activity of the brain.

But there is quite a long way from raw continuous EEG signals to digitally processed signals or patterns that would have the ability to correctly identify a user's mental workload or affective states, something that passive BCIs need to be functional. Existing experiments have shown that the accuracy of these measurements, even for simple tasks of, say, discriminating low from high workload, is insufficient for reliable practical applications.

"The low accuracy is due to extremely high complexity of a human brain. The brain is like a huge orchestra with thousands of musical instruments from which we wish to extract specific sounds of each individual instrument using a limited number of microphones or other sensors," Andrzej Cichocki, professor at the Skoltech Center for Computational and Data-Intensive Science and Engineering (CDISE) and a coauthor of the paper, notes.

Thus, more robust and accurate EEG classification and recognition of various brain patterns algorithms are badly needed. Cichocki and his colleagues looked at two groups of machine learning algorithms, Riemannian geometry based classifiers (RGC) and convolutional neural networks (CNN), which have been doing quite well on the active side of BCIs. The researchers wondered whether these algorithms can work not just with so-called motor imaginary tasks, where a subject imagines some movements of limbs without any real movement, but for workload and affective states estimation.

They ran a competition of sorts among seven algorithms, two of which the scientists designed themselves by further improving well-performing Riemannian methods. The algorithms were tested in two studies, one with a typical arrangement for BCIs where algorithms were trained on data from a specific subject and later tested on that same subject, and one that was subject-independent -- a much more challenging setup, since our brain waves could be quite different. Real EEG data was taken from earlier experiments done by Fabien Lotte, a coauthor of the paper, and his colleagues, as well as from DEAP, an existing database for emotion analysis.

The scientists found, for instance, that an artificial deep neural network outperformed all its competitors quite significantly in the workload estimation task but did poorly in emotion classification. And the two modified Riemannian algorithms did quite well in both tasks. Overall, as the paper concludes, using passive BCIs for affective state classification is much harder than for workload estimation, and subject-independent calibration leads, at least for now, to much lower accuracies.

"In the next steps, we plan to use more sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) methods, especially deep learning, which allow us to detect very tiny changes in brain signals or brain patterns. Deep neural networks can be trained on the basis of a large set of data for many subjects in different scenarios and under different conditions. AI is a real revolution and is also potentially useful for BCI and recognition of human emotions," Cichocki said.

Below please find a summary and link(s) of new coronavirus-related content published today in Annals of Internal Medicine. The summary below is not intended to substitute for the full article as a source of information. A collection of coronavirus-related content is free to the public at http://go.annals.org/coronavirus.

"Remote misses" may create a false sense of invulnerability to COVID-19

It has been theorized that population-wide traumatic experiences can result in emotional and behavioral changes through a mechanism known as "passive adaptation to danger," in which near misses result in more cautious behavior. However, in the case of COVID-19, many in the public may have more remote misses, causing them to develop a false sense of security. Dr. Ahmad Mourad from Duke University School of Medicine explores this phenomenon and provides historical examples of population-wide responses to other large-scale, traumatic events. Read the full text: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-4984.

Media contacts: A PDF for this article is not yet available. Please click the link to read full text. The lead author, Ahmad Mourad, MD, can be reached directly at ahmad.mourad@duke.edu.

As the novel coronavirus continues to spread around the world, so do the concerns of breastfeeding mothers. Although there have been no documented cases to date of an infant contracting COVID-19 as a result of consuming infected breast milk, the critical question of whether there is potential for this form of transmission remains. In a recent study, researchers from University of California San Diego School of Medicine and University of California Los Angeles collaborated to find the answer.

The study, published August 19, 2020 in the online edition of JAMA, examined 64 samples of breast milk collected by the Mommy's Milk Human Milk Research Biorepository from 18 women across the United States infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Although one sample tested positive for viral RNA, subsequent tests found that the virus was unable to replicate, and thus unable to cause infection in the breastfed infant.

"Detection of viral RNA does not equate to infection. It has to grow and multiply in order to be infectious and we did not find that in any of our samples," said Christina Chambers, PhD, MPH, co-principal investigator of the study, professor of pediatrics at UC San Diego School of Medicine, director of Mommy's Milk Human Milk Research Biorepository and co-director of the UC San Diego Center for Better Beginnings. "Our findings suggest breast milk itself is not likely a source of infection for the infant."

The current recommendations to prevent transmission while breastfeeding are hand hygiene and sterilizing pumping equipment after each use.

"In the absence of data, some women infected with SARS-CoV-2 have chosen to just not breastfeed at all," said Grace Aldrovandi, MD, co-principal investigator of the study, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital and a professor of pediatrics in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UC Los Angeles. "We hope our results and future studies will give women the reassurance needed for them to breastfeed. Human milk provides invaluable benefits to mom and baby."

Early breastfeeding is associated with a reduced risk of sudden infant death syndrome and obesity in children, as well as improved immune health and performance on intelligence tests. In mothers, breastfeeding has been associated with lower risks for breast and ovarian cancer, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.

The researchers also mimicked conditions of the Holder pasteurization process commonly used in human donor milk banks by adding SARS-CoV-2 to breast milk samples from two different donors who were not infected. The samples were heated to 62.5°C for 30 minutes and then cooled to 4°C. Following pasteurization, infectious virus was not detected in either sample.

"This is a very positive finding for donor milk, which so many infants, especially those born premature, rely on," said Chambers. "Our findings fill in some important gaps, but more studies are needed with larger sample sizes to confirm these findings."

Chambers said future work will not only look at whether breast milk is free of the virus, but also whether it contains active antiviral components. For example, antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 that women may produce after exposure to the virus and then transfer to their infants through breast milk, protecting them from COVID-19.

Plastic waste in the ocean is an increasing problem for wildlife, including seabirds who frequently mistake it for food. However, ingested plastic does not just pose physical risks for such birds. A new study in open-access journal Frontiers in Environmental Science is the first to show that plastic waste can release chemicals into the stomach oil of seabirds over time, potentially posing a threat to their health. The findings highlight the importance of reducing plastic pollution in our oceans and dealing with our waste responsibly.

With ever increasing levels of plastic polluting the ocean and beaches, this waste is a growing threat to marine wildlife. Many seabirds confuse plastic with food, and it can pose physical risks such as intestinal blockages. However, ingested plastic can stay in birds' intestines for long periods, and scientists are concerned that such plastic could release harmful chemicals.

"I've been working on northern fulmars for almost 10 years," said Susanne Kühn of Wageningen Marine Research in the Netherlands. "As these seabirds ingest plastics regularly, and 93% of the fulmars from the North Sea have some plastic in their stomachs, it is important to understand the potential harm this could cause."

Kühn and colleagues set out to investigate whether plastic waste could release chemicals after being eaten by fulmars. They aimed to replicate the conditions found in the fulmar stomach, and the plastic debris that fulmars ingest. The researchers obtained a nutrient-rich liquid found in the fulmar stomach, known as stomach oil, from hunters in the Faroe Islands who traditionally catch and eat these birds.

"Previous studies have typically used uniform plastic pellets, sometimes artificially contaminated, which is not representative of plastic found in the sea," explained Kühn. "Instead, we went beach combing and found a variety of plastic types and shapes to create a marine plastic sample that a fulmar might realistically ingest."

The researchers incubated the plastic samples in stomach oil and mimicked the conditions found in the fulmar stomach in terms of temperature and agitation. They performed chemical analysis on the oil at different time points to see whether chemicals had leached out of the plastic over time.

Concerningly, the study revealed that the plastic released a variety of chemicals in the stomach oil over time, in some cases for over three months. These were chemicals added by plastic manufacturers during the production process, including plasticizers, flame retardants and stabilizers.

Strikingly, the stomach oil, which came from fulmar chicks, already had some plastic-derived chemicals in it before the experiments, as the chicks' parents may have been feeding them plastic. The long-term health implications for the birds are unclear, but previous studies have reported that several of the leached chemicals can disrupt hormone release and reproduction and may have genetic effects in birds.

You may be familiar with distressing images of birds caught in plastic packaging or fishing line, but this study reveals that discarded plastic could also have long-term toxic effects on seabirds. "I hope that these results will increase awareness of the various negative effects of plastic debris in the oceans," said Kühn. "We urgently need to reduce the amount of plastic in the marine environment."

Shipwrecks act as artificial reefs and provide a substrate and nutrients for a great diversity of microorganisms, which can contribute to either the deterioration or preservation of the ship. Precisely how diverse such communities are, and how they are organized, is still unknown. Here, researchers from East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, identify the bacteria associated with a shipwreck from the 1960s. They find a highly diverse community on the wreck, consisting of at least 4,800 OTUs (Operational Taxonomic Units, roughly corresponding to species) from 28 bacterial phyla, including nitrogen-, carbon-, sulfur-, and iron-cycling species. Microbial community composition strongly differed between locations within the site, suggesting niche partitioning, in the same way that fungal species specialize in particular microhabitats within a forest, based on the local abiotic and biotic environment. The results are published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Microbiology.

The 50-m-long wreck, called the Pappy Lane, represents the remains of the steel-hulled USS LCS(L)(3)-123, built in 1944 as a WWII warship and abandoned after running aground in the 1960s in the shallows of the Pamlico Sound lagoon, North Carolina, after a second career a barge. DNA sequencing of 14 samples from across the site - visibly corroded and visibly preserved shipwreck debris, drilled shipcores, nearby sediment, and surrounding seawater - revealed notable differences in composition and metabolic capacities of the local microbial communities living on and around the shipwreck, as well as the microbial communities living on different parts of the ship. The authors explain this diversity as evidence of niche partitioning, driven by small-scale variability in the abiotic environment, for example iron content, exposure to oxygen, and traces of hydrocarbons from a former fueltank.

Present across the shipwreck and abundant where corrosion was observed, were iron-oxidizing ("iron-eating") Proteobacteria, which may contribute to biocorrosion. These included a new strain of the marine iron-oxidizing Zetaproteobacteria, with the apt name Mariprofundus ferrooxydans O1. Genomic analysis showed that the metabolic capacities of this strain include iron oxidation, carbon fixation in both oxygen-rich and -poor environments, and nitrogen fixation, indicating that it contributes to the cycling of metals and nutrients in the shipwreck environment.

This research also has wider implications for future resource management and the development of conservation strategies for shallow water shipwrecks across all coastlines.

"We have learned that iron-oxidizing bacteria that produce rust are widespread on these shipwrecks, causing corrosion and deterioration of the wreck-site. These microbes are more abundant in areas where we see corrosion occurring, which makes them likely indicators of where further deterioration may occur. In order to prevent this damage, we can design strategies for early detection, stopping their growth and limit further biocorrosion by other microbes," says corresponding author Dr Erin Field, Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at East Carolina University.

The results of this study point towards the need to adapt future conservation efforts to the unique situation of each shipwreck, taking into account original construction materials, environmental factors and time spent in water.

"Historically, shipwreck sites were treated as a single environment, but our research goes deeper, showing that there are different microbial communities within single wreck-sites and associated with the wreck itself. As such, we need to tailor conservation efforts to each shipwreck in order to more effectively mitigate biocorrosion and deterioration," explains Dr Field.

This study highlights the importance of increasing the understanding of the role of biocorrosion in the deterioration of shipwrecks and the need for more research into the microbial ecosystem of shipwrecks.

"While there is well-developed literature on the impact of galvanic corrosion on shipwrecks and historic ships, the role certain microbes play in corrosion is less well-understood. It is hoped that this article helps decipher the mechanisms of biocorrosion that could one day also lead to the development of protective measures and conservation strategies," concludes Dr Nathan Richards, Professor and Director of Maritime Studies in the Department of History at East Carolina University and co-author of the study.

August 19, 2020 - Sorghum, a common food item in regions of Africa and Asia, has one missing puzzle piece. The missing piece? Protein digestibility, which researchers in the Department of Agronomy at Kansas State University are trying to find.

"Sorghum is an important food crop grown in Africa," said Tesfaye Tesso. "It grows well in their climate because it requires less moisture and nutrients than other crops." Tesso is a researcher at Kansas State University.

The biggest flaw of sorghum is how difficult it is for people and animals to digest its protein. Once the problem is solved, sorghum will provide more nutrients to those who eat it. It will also increase the value of the crop for farmers.

With the goal of improving global hunger and food security, Tesso and his team began their research. While there are many aspects of the plant that may affect protein digestibility, the group narrowed their focus to the protein itself.

"Sorghum protein digestibility is affected by a lot of different pieces," said Tesso. "We focused on the characteristics of sorghum protein that may be associated with digestibility."

The research group selected 40 varieties of sorghum, including some with high digestibility and some with low digestibility. These varieties will help the team understand what genes are behind the difference in sorghum digestibility.

"Our goal was to look at the DNA that codes for all of the seed storage proteins, called kafirins," said Tesso. Then researchers identified differences in these codes, which could be a cause for digestibility differences.

"Three out of the four kafirins we identified were linked to high protein digestibility, while the other one had lower digestibility," said Tesso. "Identifying these factors is one important piece of a very complex puzzle."

Moving forward, this research may lay foundation for enhancing protein digestibility through breeding. By understanding the genes associated with protein digestibility, scientists can watch for these genetic variations in sorghum plants, which will then have the desired traits.

Since protein digestibility is complex and affected by multiple factors, there is still more work to be done, according to Tesso. With their new ability to easily identify digestibility, researchers now have the power to select sorghum with other desired traits.

Not only will identifying this missing puzzle piece be beneficial to people in third-world countries, but it will also help United States livestock producers.

"Sorghum can be a feed ingredient for pigs," said Tesso. "The low protein digestibility affects what the animal gets from their diet. By improving the protein digestibility, livestock farmers can save costs on protein supplementation, which enhances the competitiveness of both the livestock and sorghum industries."

In the United States, sorghum farmers will have a higher valued product and livestock owners will have a better feed ingredient. Internationally, countries with developing agriculture will be able to aid in the fight against hunger and malnutrition.

A study of 181 patients at 16 sites across the country who test negative for two antibodies long known to cause muscle-weakening myasthenia gravis, found that about 15% test positive for one of two newly discovered antibodies that also attack the point of communication between nerves and muscle.

About 13% tested positive for antibodies to both LRP4 and agrin, proteins critical to healthy nerve-muscle communication, investigators report in the journal Muscle & Nerve about the largest group of patients examined for the new antibodies.

Those who tested positive for antibodies to LRP4, agrin or both, tended to be sicker when diagnosed and have a more severe disease course, investigators at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University report.

The investigators hope that learning more about antibodies that cause the disease will lead to treatments that target specific antibodies, which should reduce side effects and further improve efficacy.

Patients in the new study had no evidence of long-established antibodies for the receptor for acetylcholine, a chemical released by neurons, which activates muscle cell receptors, or MuSK, an enzyme that supports the clustering of these receptors on the surface of muscle cells and is essential to maintain the function of acetylcholine receptors.

Rather patients recruited for the study had been termed "double negative." Now the investigators say the roughly 85% of study participants who also tested negative for LRP4 and agrin are more accurately termed "quad negative."

Despite increased disease severity, better than 80% of patients with LRP4 and agrin antibodies had their disease moderated by standard therapy that includes a drug that increases acetylcholine levels by decreasing its breakdown as well as immunosuppressive drugs that reduce the body's overall production of antibodies.

All four now-established antibodies that cause myasthenia gravis fit together in a puzzle with the neuromuscular junction as their target, says Dr. Michael H. Rivner, MCG neurologist specializing in neuromuscular disease. "They are all functionally related to the neuromuscular junction even though they do different things," says Rivner, who directs the Electrodiagnostic Medicine Laboratory at MCG's adult teaching hospital AU Medical Center.

He and Dr. Lin Mei, chair of the Department of Neurosciences and Allen C. Holmes Professor of Neurological Diseases at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, are long-time collaborators and co-corresponding authors of the new study.

Mei's lab discovered the newer targets, reporting LRP4 antibodies as a new cause of myasthenia gravis in 2013 and agrin antibodies as associated with the disease the next year. Those findings filled important knowledge gaps in how the brain and muscle connect during development and continue to interact lifelong.

For our muscles to contract, they have to get a message from our nerves at the neuromuscular junction, which becomes the target of antibodies in myasthenia gravis. During development, agrin is released by motor neurons to direct construction of the synapse where nerves and muscles connect, then binds to the LRP4 receptor to activate MuSK, an enzyme on the muscle cell surface, which enables a clustering of receptors that are then activated by acetylcholine. While agrin and MuSK work together, they don't directly communicate, which is where LRP4 comes in. Mei's lab found that agrin communicates with LRP4 on the muscle cell surface, then recruits MuSK to join the conversation. LRP4 and MuSK become major components of the receptor needed for the muscle cell to receive the message agrin is sending.

LRP4 and agrin antibodies have been found in patients, and shown to produce myasthenia gravis in laboratory animals but there has been limited published data on their effect in humans.

Previously, about 10% of patients had no evidence of the two other antibodies already known to cause the disease. But they did have classic clinical symptoms such as general fatigue, blurred vision, drooping eyelids, generalized muscle weakness that gets worse with muscle use and, at its most aggressive, problems breathing, swallowing, even talking. When most patients first come to the doctor, it's because they are having problems with their droopy eyes and double vision, Rivner says, as the small muscle fibers and motor units that control them are ready targets for the antibodies.

In the newly published findings, about 70% of patients with the antibodies -- compared with nearly 43% without them -- had generalized symptoms of muscle weakness when they first sought medical care for those symptoms an average of 11 years ago.

Those with the antibodies also had a significantly higher severity of disease, including more eye problems, based on the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America's scale, with the state of disease classified as moderate to severe for 75% of the antibody positive patients compared with about 40% of the antibody negative individuals.

At their sickest, about half the patients with the antibodies had a mix of symptoms including difficulty with swallowing and speech, moving their arms and legs and breathing in additon to eye problems. "They started out sicker and became sicker," Rivner says. Twice as many patients in the antibody positive group needed mechanical ventilation support at some point, 11% versus 5% in the antibody negative group.

Regardless of their antibody status, patients were treated with standard therapies for myasthenia gravis including the drug pyridostigmine to improve muscle strength by blocking the breakdown of acetylcholine, plasma exchange to help clear circulating antibodies, and immunosuppressive drugs like prednisone. And most responded well to therapy, the investigators say.

The fact that patients respond to immunosuppressive drugs indicates they are making antibodies, Rivner says, which likely includes the "quad negative" patients. Immunotherapy helps diminish the immune system's attack on the neuromuscular junction, which can enable recovery of this communication point between nerves and muscle and help restore function to patients.

Next steps include analyzing five-year data on an even larger number of patients. They would also like to compare disease severity to patients with the longer-established antibodies.

About 80% of patients with myasthenia gravis have antibodies to the acetylcholine receptor and about 10% have antibodies to MuSK. The investigators chose to look at patients categorized as "double negative" to ensure that those antibodies were not a factor in their disease, Rivner says. However, he suspects many patients with those longer-established antibodies also have one or both of the newer ones.

It's not a surprise to anyone that numerous vertebrate species are being sold at different wildlife markets, but at the moment there is still no comprehensive understanding of how much people are involved in those actions in Laos (Lao PDR), nor what the impact on local wildlife populations really is.

The majority of Laotians live in rural areas and their income largely depends on wildlife. Since wildlife products are used as one of the major food sources, numerous species of terrestrial vertebrates are currently being offered at local markets.

Across the tropical regions, mammals and birds have been vanishing, with recent models estimating up to 83% decline by 2050. Furthermore, wild-caught reptiles have been reported from Southeast Asian wildlife markets for over 20 years, with Laos occupying the position of a very popular source.

Due to the large number of native endemic species, Lao PDR should assume the responsibility to introduce conservation measures to keep control over the predicted population declines. At the moment, the regulations on wildlife use and trade in Laos are mostly based on the Lao Wildlife and Aquatic Law, which, however, largely disregards international statuses of the species and other biological factors.

Stricter and reinforced legislation is needed in the fields related to wildlife trade and consumption, since such practices are not only causing biodiversity loss, but also suggested to pose a great threat of wildlife-associated emergence of zoonotic parasites and pathogens to humans. As an immediate example, the outbreak of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) is primarily considered to be a consequence of human consumption of wild animals.

An international group of students and scientists, led by Professor Dr. Thomas Ziegler at the University of Cologne and the Cologne Zoo (Germany), has conducted a number of extensive surveys on wildlife markets (66 observational surveys at 15 trade hubs) and households (63 households at 14 sites) in the Khammouane Province of Laos. The key question of the survey was: "Which species are traded and to what extent?" The results of the study are published in the open-access journal Nature Conservation.

The surveys showed overlaps between the most traded species at wildlife markets and those of highest conservation importance.

As for the households, approximately 90% of the surveyed respondents confirmed the use of wildlife. For the majority of the population, wildlife harvesting was found to be important for their livelihood and trapping activities were mostly aimed at self-consumption / subsistence. The reason for this could be explained by the prices of domesticated meat, which can be three times as higher as those of wildlife products.

The demand for the species on the wildlife market remained the same over time, according to the opinions of 84,1% of respondents, while the availability of wild meats was reported to have decreased, due to increasing price.

"We recommend local authorities to assess the markets within the province capital Thakhek in particular, as they showed the highest quantity of wild meats. The markets at Namdik and Ban Kok turned out to be very active trade hubs for wildlife as well, regardless of the vertebrate group. The loss of certain species may cause a cascade of unforeseeable effects in the ecosystems. Therefore, the biodiversity of tropical Southeast Asian countries like Lao PDR must be protected.", shares Dr. Thomas Ziegler.

To help the local population to avoid the crisis related to the change of activity and growing unemployment, scientists propose to introduce new activities in the region.

"Eco-tourism presents a great opportunity to combine conservation efforts and an alternative source of income. Former hunters with excellent knowledge of the forest and wildlife habitats can serve as professional wildlife tour guides or their involvement in the Village Forest Protection Group could help to protect natural resources in Laos", suggests Dr. Thomas Ziegler.

Researchers have designed a new X-ray classification system for adult idiopathic scoliosis that can more precisely define which parts of the spine need correction, an achievement that could enhance treatment, communication, and analysis of spinal deformities affecting older patients, according to a study published in Spine Deformity in August.

The team of researchers, led by James D. Lin, MD, MS, a spine surgeon at The Mount Sinai Hospital and Assistant Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said their modern approach to the X-ray classification system could provide a more universal and standard assessment of adult scoliosis.

"This classification system provides a new language for clinicians and researchers, helping us reliably categorize and communicate the radiographic features of adult idiopathic scoliosis, in order to more effectively facilitate treatment and further analysis," said Dr. Lin. "This will help researchers and surgeons scrutinize past results from prior surgeries and refine future treatment."

Scoliosis is a sideways curvature of the spine, a condition that affects an estimated six million people in the United States. Many develop it in adolescence, but only a small percentage of adolescent cases require surgery. While adult scoliosis can be the natural progression of adolescent scoliosis, adults can also develop it for the first time; those cases are called adult degenerative scoliosis. The symptoms and surgical treatment can differ significantly for older patients; for example, adults often experience more pain from the condition.

The new method builds on the Lenke classification system for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis, which is widely used to define six curve types but is not applicable to adults. The new three-component method maintains the curve types from the Lenke classification and introduces assessments of the global alignment and lumbosacral curve, two features that more commonly deteriorate in older patients.

In the study, 12 spine surgeons used the new classification system to grade 30 cases twice, which resulted in near-perfect agreement in the assessment of the patients. This latest method to classify adult scoliosis could improve treatment options because it helps define the different areas of the spine that need to be corrected and fused, and there is currently no widely accepted X-ray classification system for the complex condition.

"The development of a new classification system, led by Dr. Lin, strengthens our efforts at the Spine Center at The Mount Sinai Hospital to provide innovative and customized treatment for patients with spinal disorders and injuries," said Andrew Hecht, MD, Chief of Spine Surgery for the Mount Sinai Health System and The Mount Sinai Hospital, and Director of the Spine Center at Mount Sinai. "The new method ensures that we have a more exhaustive, thorough, and rigorous benchmark in how we analyze and treat adults with spinal conditions throughout the Mount Sinai Health System, but also for our colleagues throughout the entire orthopedic community, helping us all to provide exceptional care."

Leading coma experts have created an ambitious plan to help doctors better care for comatose patients and answer that most awful question: "Will my loved one wake up?"

The three-part plan outlines key steps physicians and researchers should take in the coming years to improve patient care and deepen our understanding of coma and other conditions that reduce consciousness. The plan was developed by a blue-ribbon scientific advisory council as part of the Neurocritical Care Society's Curing Coma Campaign, a major effort launched in 2019.

"We now have the tools to understand comatose patients in a way we haven't in the past. This opens the door to ask the question, 'Can we improve consciousness in patients in a coma?'" said advisory council member and lead author J. Javier Provencio, MD, director of UVA Health's Nerancy Neuroscience Intensive Care Unit. "This research endeavor aims to help patients and families dealing with the consequences of brain damage gain clarity about the current chances for improvement and maintain hope that, in the future, there will be treatments to help recover consciousness."

The Coma Plan's Three Pillars

The plan's first recommendation is to better classify and understand different types of coma and their causes. Current treatments are limited in part because it is difficult for physicians to distinguish between different underlying mechanisms of impaired consciousness, the researchers say. This makes it challenging to predict whether patients will recover.

To improve this, they suggest several different classifications. For example, coma without underlying physical damage, such as those caused by drug overdoses or seizures, are often reversible using available treatments. Those must be treated differently than coma with causes such as brain injuries. Another category is particularly tricky - coma with hidden physical causes. Better categorization of common coma "endotypes" will help physicians with their diagnoses and treatment decisions, the council says.

The council also urges the development of better indicators of patient prognosis. These indicators, known as biomarkers, already play important roles in guiding treatment. But more sophisticated ones are needed to understand the complex interactions occurring inside the brain. This will help doctors guide patients to better outcomes and advise families on how well their loved one will recover.

Finally, the council urges clinical trials of new therapies to promote recovery of consciousness for intensive-care patients who are in comas or suffering from other forms of reduced consciousness.

"We envision that a principled, mechanistic approach to predicting and measuring responses to new therapies in the ICU could allow clinicians to provide targeted treatments that are personalized to each patient, ensuring that each patient is given the best possible chance to recover consciousness in the ICU and beyond," the council members write in a new paper outlining their recommendations.

"Coma is the most severe manifestation of brain injury," Provencio said. "With this initiative, we hope to be able to treat patients in a coma the way we treat patients with strokes and heart attacks. In the future, having impaired consciousness from brain injury won't be the lifelong medical condition it is now."