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Scientists from the University of Surrey have revealed the significant improvements they are making in perovskite-based solar cells.

Perovskite solar cells have shown significant potential in reaching the efficiency limit of the widely used solar cells currently on the market by absorbing light in a broader range of wavelengths. Industry has also been paying close attention to the development of perovskite-based cells thanks to their low-cost and simple fabrication, and their efficient combination with other types of solar cells to produce tandems.

Perovskite solar cells have emerged as the heir apparent to silicon-based solar cells because of their high-power energy conversion efficiency, low development cost, and ability to be ultra-lightweight. Named after a naturally occurring mineral that shares a structurally similar chemical formula, perovskites are synthetic composites that have three-dimensional lattice crystal structures.

In a front-cover paper published by the top American Chemical Society journal Chemical Reviews, the team from Surrey's Advanced Technology Institute (ATI) summarise the recent progress in improving perovskite tandem solar cells power conversion efficiencies, including thickness adjustment of perovskite , improving the transparency of perovskite solar cells, more effective protective layers and much more. The team also highlight measurement techniques, large-scale fabrication, commercialization development and lead-related environmental issues.

In the paper, the team offer a roadmap for further progress, including strategies for the enhancement of the power conversion efficiencies, stability and reliability assessments, and potential applications.

Dr Wei Zhang, the corresponding author and Senior Lecturer in Energy Technology at ATI, said: "Perovskite tandem solar cells are at the forefront of next-generation photovoltaic technologies. Our timely review summarizes the fundamentals of this exciting research field and future applications, which are expected to accelerate the commercialization of this low-cost and high-efficiency photovoltaic product as a major competitor to the traditional crystalline silicon solar cells in the next few years."

Professor Hui Li, first-author and Visiting Professor and Advanced Newton Fellow at ATI, said: "We are excited to offer this review that is showing great potential for moving our planet towards green energy."

Professor Ravi Silva, Director of ATI at the University of Surrey, said: "We are happy to see this wonderful research finally being used for real-world applications and we look forward to continuing our collaboration on perovskite tandem solar cells, which is a research priority area at ATI."

In a series of recommendations to fix the struggling Covid-19 test, trace and isolate system in England, health researchers from University College London and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine say that pooled testing for Covid-19 could significantly increase testing capacity in a relatively short space of time and help with the identification of asymptomatic cases in key workers.

Writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, the researchers say that evaluating samples in batches rather than individually, and re-testing only the groups that come up positive means fewer tests overall would be needed. Several countries, including China, USA, Germany, Portugal, New Zealand, Rwanda, Uruguay, Israel and Vietnam have used pooled testing to considerably increase testing capacity and decrease pressure on lab reagents and operators.

As positivity rates rise, however, pooling becomes less efficient because more samples have to be tested. Co-author Alex Crozier, from the Division of Biosciences at University College London, said: "We are close to missing that window of opportunity in England unless we can control transmission quickly. For now, pooling may be best reserved for surveillance testing and asymptomatic screening of healthcare workers, care homes and hospital pre-admissions."

As well as increased investment in NHS and Public Health England labs to scale up additional testing locally and making use of unused lab capacity in universities and research institutes where possible, the recommendations include the initiation of environmental surveillance by testing wastewater as an early warning system for Covid-19 outbreaks.

The authors also recommend a major investment in people on the ground to support contact tracing. Pointing to Massachusetts where a $44 million contact tracing programme hired and trained 1,000 people to support existing local public health volunteers, the researchers write that this approach is much less costly than the UK government's £100 billion 'Operation Moonshot', and has reached 91.8% of cases and 78.8% of contacts. Recognising the important role played by superspreading events, another of the recommendations is to increase resources to enable a greater focus on identifying clusters using retrospective tracing, as seen in several countries that have been most successful such as Japan, South Korea, and Uruguay.

Another of the authors, Professor Martin Mckee, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: "England stands on the edge of a precipice: find, test, trace, isolate and support strategies need to be re-thought to have any chance of avoiding a considerable rise in cases over the coming months requiring a return to stricter social distancing measures nationwide. Our recommendations are feasible, do not require further individual sacrifice and would likely have a significant impact on driving down the reproductive number and reducing the socio-economic impact of the pandemic if they were implemented quickly."

Until mid-March 2020, the WHO, the EU as well as German authorities were convinced that the spread of the virus could not be curbed by border closures. "This belief was fatally mistaken", argues Ruud Koopmans. "Travel restrictions should be given much greater weight", he urges. "This holds true for containing upcoming waves of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as similar pandemics in the future."

The study draws on sociological accounts of network diffusion and shows that countries that are heavily exposed to international travel and tourism - such as France, Italy, and the USA - recorded significantly higher numbers of deaths. At the same time, death rates in countries more at the margins of international travel networks as well in island states remained comparatively low.

In view of this key role of international travel flows, the study examines the effects of entry bans and mandatory quarantines on COVID-19 mortality. The earlier such travel restriction measures were implemented, the greater was their limiting effect on mortality. Crucially, travel restrictions needed to be in place before the local spread of the virus had spiraled out of control. If one compares countries that imposed travel restrictions until early March to countries that implement them from mid-March onward or not at all, mortality within the first group is an estimated62 percentage points lower than in the second group.

Among the early adopters of travel restrictions with significantly lower death rates are countries such as Australia, Israel and the Czech Republic. Germany, which introduced its first travel restrictions on 16 March, belongs to the late-adopter group, but countries such as Great Britain, France or Brazil responded even later.

The study shows that the type of travel restriction also plays a role. Mandatory quarantines for incoming travelers were more effective than entry bans. A plausible explanation is that entry bans often include exceptions for both citizens and permanent residents. By contrast, quarantine measures tend to apply to all incoming travelers, regardless of their nationality or country of residence. The study further shows that targeted travel restrictions (represented in the study by entry bans and mandatory quarantines for travelers from China or Italy) were more effective than restrictions targeted against all foreign countries.

The study has been published as a WZB Discussion Paper:

New research published in Anaesthesia (a journal of the Association of Anaesthetists) reveals the much higher risk of mortality faced by COVID-19 patients in intensive care who have chronic kidney disease (CKD) or, those who develop new (acute) kidney injury (AKI) as a result of developing COVID-19.

CKD is a type of kidney disease in which kidney function declines over a period of months to years, and is more common in older people. There are five stages of the disease, ranging from early stages (1 and 2) in which people initially have no symptoms, through to the more serious stages 3 to 5, which can be associated with complications such as high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and heart disease. CKD stage 5 is termed end stage kidney failure which must be treated with either dialysis (at home or in hospital), involving complex filtering machinery that takes over the blood-cleaning functions of the kidneys, or with a kidney transplant.

AKI is an abrupt loss of kidney function that takes place over seven days or less, and can have several causes, including the damage and inflammation caused by the COVID-19 virus itself, loss of blood flow to the kidneys, damage from pharmaceutical drugs or other ingested/injected substances, or by anything obstructing the flow of urine in the urinary tract.

This new study, led by Dr Sanooj Soni from Imperial College London, UK, and colleagues, examined the association between AKI and CKD with clinical outcomes in 372 patients with COVID-19 admitted to four regional intensive care units (ICUs) in the UK between 10 March 23 July 2020 (Hammersmith Hospital, London; St Mary's Hospital, London; Charing Cross Hospital, London; and Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham). The average age of the patients was around 60 years, and 72% of them were male. Also of note was the fact that the majority of patients were of Black, Asian of Ethnic Minority (BAME) background (281 patients, 76%).

A total of 216 (58%) patients had some form of kidney impairment (45% developed AKI during their ICU stay, while 13% had pre-existing CKD), while 42% had no CKD or AKI. The patients who developed AKI had no history of serious kidney disease before their ICU admission (known from blood tests either at admission to hospital or from their medical records), suggesting that the AKI was directly related to their COVID-19 infection.

The authors found that patients with no kidney injury or disease had a mortality of 21% (32/156 patients). Those with new onset AKI caused by the COVID-19 virus had a mortality of 48% (81/168), whilst for those with pre-existing CKD (Stages 1-4) mortality was 50% (11 /22). In those patients with end-stage kidney failure (i.e. CKD stage 5), where they already required regular out-patient dialysis, mortality was 47% (9 of 19 patients). Mortality was greatest in those patients with kidney transplants, with 6 out of 7 patients (86%) dying, highlighting that these patients are an extremely vulnerable group.

The investigators also examined the rates of renal replacement therapy, a form of hospital dialysis, due to COVID-19 in these ICU patients with kidney injury. Out of 216 patients with any form of kidney impairment, 121 (56%) patients required renal replacement therapy (see Table 2 full paper). Of the 48 survivors who needed dialysis for the first time during their ICU stay, 9 patients (19%) had to continue with dialysis after discharge from ICU, suggesting COVID-19 may lead to chronic kidney problems.

"To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive analysis of outcomes in critically unwell COVID-19 patients in the UK with kidney failure, particularly in patients with pre-existing chronic kidney disease," say the authors.

The authors note their surprise that mortality in patients with end-stage kidney failure and on dialysis, who normally have worse outcomes in many other diseases, was similar to that in patients with less severe kidney disease and COVID-19 associated AKI. This finding may suggest that such patients benefit equally from ICU admission and thus the threshold for admission should be calibrated accordingly in any future COVID-19 surge. Put another way, these results suggest that patients on dialysis with COVID-19 appear as likely to survive as patients with less serious CKD or AKI and can be considered for admission to an ICU bed.

However, the authors recommend caution interpreting these results due to selection bias - meaning that in this study only patients who were cared for in ICU during the peak of the last surge were included and other patients with end stage kidney failure, who may have been too unwell for admission to ICU, were not. This may have contributed to these findings of similar mortality in patients with end-stage kidney failure compared to those with less serious forms of CKD and AKI.

The reasons for the increased mortality in patients with kidney problems are not clearly understood. There are several theories, including that the COVID-19 virus causes endotheliitis, an inflammation of the blood vessels in the kidneys, which is similar to the problem COVID-19 is known to cause in the lungs. Other reports have suggested that there could be direct kidney injury from the cytokine-induced immune system inflammatory response (where the body is overwhelmed by its own immune response, the so-called cytokine storm), and also death of kidney tissue related to multi-organ failure caused by COVID-19.

The authors conclude: "Our data demonstrate that kidney disease and failure in critically ill patients with COVID-19 are common, and associated with high mortality. However, important differences exist between stages of acute and chronic kidney disease in how they affect mortality in patients with COVID-19 and patients who have had a kidney transplant are an extremely vulnerable group. In view of this, attention needs to be paid to COVID-19 patients with any form of kidney disease or injury, and every effort made to prevent progression of this disease or injury to reduce mortality in this cohort of patients."

Leesburg, VA, October 16, 2020--According to an article in ARRS' American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), secondary interpretations of body MRI at tertiary care centers identify a high rate of discrepancies--with primary errors being interpretive in origin--suggesting that subspecialty interpretations should be encouraged, and institutions should provide adequate resources for these interpretations to occur.

"We retrospectively identified 395 secondary MRI reports from January 2015 to December 2018 that were labeled as body MRI examinations at a tertiary care center," explained lead author Danielle E. Kostrubiak from the University of Vermont Medical Center.

After exclusions for erroneous categorization and no extant outside report, Kostrubiak and colleagues compared the outside reports with the secondary interpretations, categorizing cases as either discrepancy or no discrepancy. Subdividing the discrepancies according to the most likely reason for error via previously published categories, these categories were further divided into perceptive and cognitive errors.

"Of the 357 cases remaining after 38 exclusions," Kostrubiak et al. wrote, "246 (68.9%; 95% CI, 63.8-73.7%) had at least one discrepancy between the original outside report and the secondary interpretation provided at our institution."

The most common error type contributing to both overall and primary discrepancy was faulty reasoning (a cognitive error characterized by misidentifying an abnormality), which occurred in 34.3% of the total discrepancies (95% CI, 29.0- 40.0%) and 37.8% of the primary discrepancies.

The most common error type contributing to a second discrepancy was a type of perception error called satisfaction of search, which occurred in 37.0% of the second discrepancies and 15.0% (95% CI 11.2- 19.6%) of the overall discrepancies.

"We are not aware of any studies that have specifically focused on secondary interpretations of body MRI analyzed by type of likely error, and to our knowledge, ours is the largest MRI sample size published to date," the authors of this AJR article concluded.

Although the innate subjectivity of error classification stands to limit similar studies, Kostrubiak and team acknowledged that related research should become progressively easier to conduct as medical practices adopt more detailed electronic medical records.

"The next step," they wrote, "would be to explore how these discrepancies may impact patient outcomes and overall cost to the system associated with these radiologic errors."

A soil scientist from RUDN University discovered the effect of fertilization on the ability of the soil to retain carbon. To understand this mechanism, he and his team studied the movement of organic carbon in the soil of rice paddies. The results of the study can help increase the fertility of the paddies while at the same time reducing the volume of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. An article about the study was published in the Soil Biology and Biochemistry journal.

The main reason for global climate change is the increasing amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. CO2 prevents thermal emissions from leaving our planet, and the so-called greenhouse effect occurs. Being able to absorb up to 10% of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (which amounts to approximately 20,000 megatons of carbon in 25 years), soils could mitigate this effect. A soil scientist from RUDN University studied the mechanism of carbon retention in the soils of rice paddies that account for 40% of natural atmospheric carbon absorption in China. According to him, the ability of the soil to retain carbon depends, among other factors, on its structure and the presence of fertilizers.

"The soils of rice paddies play an important role in mitigating the consequences of global warming and contribute a lot to the retention of carbon. The most effective way to study the processes that lead to the accumulation of organic carbon in the soil is to measure the concentration of its isotopes. We used this method to find out how mineral and organic fertilizers affect carbon flows between fractions of different density in rice paddy soils," said Yakov Kuzyakov, the Head of the Center for Mathematical Modeling and Design of Sustainable Ecosystems at RUDN University.

The team studied three groups of soils with different types of fertilizers: azophoska, or nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium fertilizer, was added to the first group; the second one contained azophoska with straw, and the third--azophoska with organic supplements. The content of carbon in the soils and its movement between density fractions was determined based on the ratio of 13C and 12? isotopes. The second and the third group showed better carbon retention results: after fertilization, their carbon content grew by 69%, while the increase in the first group amounted to 30%.

The scientists also paid attention to the changes in soil structure under the influence of fertilizers and the effect of such changes on carbon retention. Fertilizers consolidate the structural elements of the soil, and the number of large soil particles (over 0.25 mm in diameter) grows. Soils of medium density showed the highest carbon retention efficiency after fertilization: the amount of accumulated carbon increased by 70% compared to unfertilized soils. Less dense soil fractions showed a 21-56% increase, and carbon retention in dust and clay grew by 24-49%.

"We confirmed that fertilizers support organic carbon retention in the soil. Knowing this, we could better understand the processes that lead to the accumulation of soil carbon in rice paddies. These agricultural ecosystems already play an important role in world food security and now can also help us combat climate change," addedYakov Kuzyakov.

Researchers at uOttawa have created a new method to measure the temporal evolution of electric fields with optical frequencies. The new approach, which works in ambient air, facilitates the direct measurement of the field waveform and could lead to breakthroughs in high-speed electronics.

To learn more, we talked to Aleksey Korobenko, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physics at the University of Ottawa, and lead author of "Femtosecond streaking in ambient air", an article recently published in the journal Optica.

Please tell us about this research project.

"The aim of our project is to resolve the electric field oscillations in a light pulse. This allows one to control the motion of electrons in quantum systems on shortest time scales and may lead to important applications such as petahertz electronics -- that are a million times faster than typical modern processors.

Such a measurement was first achieved using a technique called attosecond streaking -- a generalization of the long-known conventional streak camera. When irradiated with a short electromagnetic pulse, the gas molecules give up their electrons that continue their motion, experiencing the pull from the field of a second, "streaking," pulse. Measuring the velocity that the electrons acquire due to this pull allows one to reconstruct the streaking pulse on attosecond time scales."

What did you discover?

"In our work we demonstrated that instead of measuring the velocities of individual electrons in low-density gas samples, which requires high vacuum conditions and/or a complicated setup, one can simply measure the current induced in air plasma under ambient conditions. We probe this current using a pair of metal electrodes. which facilitates a much simpler and faster measurement of a light wave oscillation."

Why is it important?

"We can access the time scales of the optical field oscillations in an inexpensive, fast and robust way. Owing to its simplicity, our method can become a useful tool for the ultrashort lasers research community, aiding the development of a next generation petahertz electronics."

How was this research conducted?

"The experiments were carried out using a unique, state-of-the-art, high-power laser generating ultrashort pulses from the visible to the infrared spectrum. Performing a measurement of these pulses under different experimental conditions, we benchmarked our method against the established measurement techniques."

Is there anything you'd like to add?

"Yes, this study is an international collaboration with researchers from the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, the Max-Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Germany and the Joint Attosecond Science Lab (NRC and uOttawa). Researchers of Canadian, Russian, German, American, Iranian, Chinese and French nationality participated in the project.

The research was conducted in the Joint Attosecond Science Laboratory, which is jointly operated by the University of Ottawa and the National Research Council."

Regeneration of functional new neurons to repair injured human brain is a long-term unsolved problem up till today. The lack of neuroregeneration is one of the major reasons why so many brain disorders such as stroke and Alzheimer's disease do not have a cure yet. A research team led by Prof. Gong Chen at Jinan University (Guangzhou, China) published a work on October 9th in Neural Regeneration Research, providing unambiguous data that brain internal astrocytes are directly converted into neurons through lineage tracing studies. Using brain internal astrocytes, a type of supporting cells to neurons, to directly convert into new neurons is an innovative brain repair technology that may benefit millions of patients worldwide.

Human brain has two major types of cells, neurons and glial cells. Neurons cannot divide and therefore don't have self-regeneration capability, but glial cells can divide and self-regenerate. Prof. Chen's team has previously demonstrated through a series of works that brain internal glial cells can be directly converted into neurons through NeuroD1-based gene therapy. Many other labs have also confirmed such direct glia-to-neuron conversion in the brain, spinal cord, and retina. However, some people, both inside and outside the regenerative medicine field, still have some benefit of the doubt on direct glia-to-neuron conversion and demand more evidence to support such ground-breaking discoveries.

In this study, Chen's team employs transgenic reporter mice that can faithfully trace astrocytic lineage to unambiguously demonstrate that astrocytes can be converted directly into neurons in adult mouse brain. "We crossed Aldh1l1-CreERT2 mice with Ai14 mice and administered tamoxifen to induce Cre-mediated recombination so that many astrocytes will be lineage-traced permanently by red fluorescent protein tdTomato", explained by the first author and a postdoctoral fellow Dr. Zongqin Xiang. "Then, we injected AAV expressing neural transcription factor NeuroD1 under astrocytic promoter GFAP into the mouse cortex, and detected clear expression of NeuroD1 in the tdTomato-labeled astrocytes at 7 days post viral infection", added by the co-first author and a PhD student Mr. Liang Xu. "Most excitingly, at 135 days post NeuroD1 infection (experiments delayed by COVID-19), we observed that many NeuroD1-expressing tdTomato-labeled astrocytes had now been converted into NeuN-positive neurons with typical neuronal morphology. This experiment provides unambiguous evidence on in vivo astrocyte-to-neuron conversion", concluded by Prof. Gong Chen.

Besides AAV viral system, Chen's team employed another viral system, the retroviral system, to further demonstrate such direct glia-to-neuron conversion process. "While AAV has the advantage of low immunogenicity and relatively safe as a gene therapy vector for the treatment of neurological disorders, its capability to infect both neurons and glial cells may cause confusion if AAV dosing and promoter are not used properly," said Prof. Wenliang Lei, a co-corresponding author of the work. "We therefore employed retroviral vectors to express NeuroD1 exclusively in dividing glial cells, and we were able to further confirm that the newly generated neurons were directly converted from dividing glial cells", added Prof. Lei.

With two lines of unambiguous data in hand, Chen's team went on to address some confusions in the field caused by some improperly designed experiments and high dosing of AAV used by some labs. "A recent work challenged the field of in vivo glia-to-neuron conversion based on one set of experiments using high dose of AAV that produced artifacts in the mouse cortex," said Prof. Wen Li, another co-corresponding author of the work. "We demonstrated in this work that when an appropriate dosage of AAV was used, the artifacts of so-called leakage can be minimized if not completely avoided", added Prof. Li.

"For newcomers entering into this exciting in vivo glia-to-neuron conversion field, we highly recommend all investigators using different viral systems at different dosing, and performing both in vitro and in vivo studies to prove or disprove any hypothesis," Prof. Chen provided insightful comments as a leader of this emerging new field. "With the addition of this indisputable evidence from lineage tracing studies, we believe that this exciting in vivo glia-to-neuron conversion technology will provide an unprecedented opportunity to repair damaged brain with internal glial cells", Prof. Chen concluded with unwavering confidence.

Red dwarfs are the coolest kind of star. As such, they potentially allow liquid water to exist on planets that are quite close to them. In the search for habitable worlds beyond the borders of our solar system, this is a big advantage: the distance between an exoplanet and its star is a crucial factor for its detection. The closer the two are, the higher the chance that astronomers can detect the planet from Earth.

"But these stars are rather small and emit little light compared to most other stars, such as our Sun", Brice-Olivier Demory, lead author of the study and Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Bern explains. These factors make them challenging to observe in detail. Without the proper instruments, any planets that might orbit them could easily be overlooked - especially terrestrial planets, like Earth, that are comparably small.

A dedicated telescope

One instrument, with which it is possible to study red dwarfs and their planets closely, is the Mexico-based SAINT-EX telescope, co-operated by the NCCR PlanetS. SAINT-EX is an acronym that stands for Search And characterIsatioN of Transiting EXoplanets. The project has been named in honor of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Saint-Ex), the famous writer, poet and aviator.

The SAINT-EX Observatory is a fully robotic facility hosting a 1-metre telescope. It is equipped with instrumentation specifically suited to enable high-precision detection of small planets orbiting cool stars. Now, this specialization pays off: earlier this year, the telescope was able to detect two exoplanets orbiting the star TOI-1266, located around 120 light years from Earth. The research, published recently in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, provides a first impression of their characteristics.

A peculiar pair

Compared to the planets in our solar system, TOI-1266 b and c are much closer to their star - it takes them only 11 and 19 days respectively to orbit it. However, as their host star is much cooler than the Sun, their temperatures are not very extreme: the outer planet has approximately the temperature of Venus (although it is 7 times closer to its star than Venus is to the Sun). The two planets are of similar density, possibly corresponding to a composition of about a half of rocky and metallic material and half water. This makes them about half as rocky as Earth or Venus but also far rockier than Uranus or Neptune.

In size, the planets clearly differ from each other. The inner planet, TOI-1266 b, measures up to a little under two-and-a-half times the Earth's diameter. This makes it a so-called "sub-Neptune". The outer planet, TOI-1266 c, is just over one-and-a-half times the size of our planet. Thus, it belongs to the category of "super-Earths".

This places the two planets at the edges of the so-called radius-valley, as Brice-Olivier Demory explains: "Planets between about the radius of TOI-1266 b and c are quite rare, likely because of the effect of strong irradiation from the star, which can erode their atmospheres". Yilen Gómez Maqueo Chew, SAINT-EX Project Coordinator and researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico adds: "Being able to study two different types of planets in the same system is a great opportunity to better understand how these different sized planets come to be".

Good timing and help from the embassy

Having this opportunity, especially this year, is anything but a given. The scientists were fortunate enough to be able to complete their observations shortly before the Covid-19-related lockdown in Mexico. Shortly after the observations were made, the observatory had to be closed due to the consequences of the pandemic. This has not changed until today. The scientists hope to resume operations of SAINT-EX in the next few months and to target the next red dwarf and its potential planets. "Also, the Mexican Embassy in Bern was a great help in facilitating the discussions with the Mexican government and in providing continued support to the project", says Demory.

SAINT-EX - Search and characterisation of exoplanets

SAINT-EX is an international collaboration which had its kick-off meeting in the National Astronomical Observatory in San Pedro Martir (MEX) in September of 2016. The project's principal investigator is Prof. Brice-Olivier Demory, from the Center for Space and Habitability of the University of Bern in Switzerland and National Center of Competence in Research PlanetS; the project's coordinator and leader in Mexico is Dr. Yilen Gomez Maqueo Chew from the Instituto de Astronomía of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM). Also, part of the project are Prof. Willy Benz from the National Center of Competence in Research PlanetS, Prof. François Bouchy from the University of Geneva in Switzerland, Dr. Michaël Gillon from the University of Liège in Belgium, Prof. Kevin Heng from the University of Bern in Switzerland, Prof. Didier Queloz from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and Cambridge in the UK, and Dr. Laurence Sabin, also from Instituto de Astronomía de Astronomía in UNAM. SAINT-EX has been funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Universities of Bern, Geneva, Liège and Cambridge as well as UNAM. SAINT-EX also received support from the National Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT) through the National Laboratories call for proposals for the National Astronomical Observatory of San Pedro Martir.

Bernese space exploration: With the world's elite since the first moon landing

When the second man, "Buzz" Aldrin, stepped out of the lunar module on July 21, 1969, the first task he did was to set up the Bernese Solar Wind Composition experiment (SWC) also known as the "solar wind sail" by planting it in the ground of the moon, even before the American flag. This experiment, which was planned and the results analysed by Prof. Dr. Johannes Geiss and his team from the Physics Institute of the University of Bern, was the first great highlight in the history of Bernese space exploration. Ever since Bernese space exploration has been among the world's elite. The numbers are impressive: 25 times were instruments flown into the upper atmosphere and ionosphere using rockets (1967-1993), 9 times into the stratosphere with balloon flights (1991-2008), over 30 instruments were flown on space probes, and with CHEOPS the University of Bern shares responsibility with ESA for a whole mission. The successful work of the Department of Space Research and Planetary Sciences (WP) from the Physics Institute of the University of Bern was consolidated by the foundation of a university competence center, the Center for Space and Habitability (CSH). The Swiss National Fund also awarded the University of Bern the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS, which it manages together with the University of Geneva.

DURHAM, N.C. -- We know that the coronavirus behind the COVID-19 crisis lived harmlessly in bats and other wildlife before it jumped the species barrier and spilled over to humans.

Now, researchers at Duke University have identified a number of "silent" mutations in the roughly 30,000 letters of the virus's genetic code that helped it thrive once it made the leap -- and possibly helped set the stage for the global pandemic. The subtle changes involved how the virus folded its RNA molecules within human cells.

For the study, published Oct. 16 in the journal PeerJ, the researchers used statistical methods they developed to identify adaptive changes that arose in the SARS-CoV-2 genome in humans, but not in closely related coronaviruses found in bats and pangolins.

"We're trying to figure out what made this virus so unique," said lead author Alejandro Berrio, a postdoctoral associate in biologist Greg Wray's lab at Duke.

Previous research detected fingerprints of positive selection within a gene that encodes the "spike" proteins studding the coronavirus's surface, which play a key role in its ability to infect new cells.

The new study likewise flagged mutations that altered the spike proteins, suggesting that viral strains carrying these mutations were more likely to thrive. But with their approach, study authors Berrio, Wray and Duke Ph.D. student Valerie Gartner also identified additional culprits that previous studies failed to detect.

The researchers report that so-called silent mutations in two other regions of the SARS-CoV-2 genome, dubbed Nsp4 and Nsp16, appear to have given the virus a biological edge over previous strains without altering the proteins they encode.

Instead of affecting proteins, Berrio said, the changes likely affected how the virus's genetic material -- which is made of RNA -- folds up into 3-D shapes and functions inside human cells.

What these changes in RNA structure might have done to set the SARS-CoV-2 virus in humans apart from other coronaviruses is still unknown, Berrio said. But they may have contributed to the virus's ability to spread before people even know they have it -- a crucial difference that made the current situation so much more difficult to control than the SARS coronavirus outbreak of 2003.

The research could lead to new molecular targets for treating or preventing COVID-19, Berrio said.

"Nsp4 and Nsp16 are among the first RNA molecules that are produced when the virus infects a new person," Berrio said. "The spike protein doesn't get expressed until later. So they could make a better therapeutic target because they appear earlier in the viral life cycle."

More generally, by pinpointing the genetic changes that enabled the new coronavirus to thrive in human hosts, scientists hope to better predict future zoonotic disease outbreaks before they happen.

"Viruses are constantly mutating and evolving," Berrio said. "So it's possible that a new strain of coronavirus capable of infecting other animals may come along that also has the potential to spread to people, like SARS-CoV-2 did. We'll need to be able to recognize it and make efforts to contain it early."

INFORMS Journal Information Systems Research New Study Key Takeaways:

Increasing telemedicine availability in the emergency room (ER) significantly reduces the average patients' hospital stay.

Using telemedicine if there is a demand surge or supply shortage rapidly decreases ER hospital stays.

Using telemedicine to reduce a patient's length of stay is a result of the reduction of wait times.

CATONSVILLE, MD, October 16, 2020 - Telemedicine has become more common given the current global pandemic. COVID-19 has limited doctor's office and hospital visits to ensure safety for everyone. But rather than diminish the quality of care, new research in the INFORMS journal Information Systems Research finds that increasing wider use of telemedicine in the emergency room (ER) can yield positive results for patients and providers alike.

The study, "Does Telemedicine Reduce Emergency Room Congestion? Evidence from New York State," looks at all emergency room visits in New York from 2010 to 2014. The researchers found, on average, telemedicine availability in the ER significantly reduces average patients' length of stay (LOS), which is partially driven by the flexible resource allocation.

Overcrowding in ERs is a common and nagging problem. It not only is costly for hospitals, but also compromises care quality and patient experience. Study authors Susan Lu of Purdue University, Shujing Sun of the University of Texas at Dallas and Huaxia Rui of the University of Rochester say finding ways to improve ER care delivery is important, as long as it actually works.

"The adoption of telemedicine leads to a larger reduction in ER length of stay when there is a demand surge or supply shortage," said Lu, a professor in the Krannert School of Management at Purdue. "This improvement does not come at the expense of care quality or patient cost."

The authors replicated their findings using annual U.S. hospital data and found that ER telemedicine adoption also significantly reduced average patients' waiting time, which suggests that the LOS reduction partially comes from the reduction of waiting time.

According to the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, from 2000 to 2015, the number of ER visits in the United States increased by more than 25%. This congestion in the ER can have a number of negative implications from unhappy patients, decreased productivity by doctors because they're overworked, and increased financial costs because of unnecessary tests.

According to information published in February 2019 by the American Hospital Association, 76% of U.S. hospitals use various telemedicine technologies to connect patients and providers.

This research article shows more specifically the impact telemedicine can have in reducing ER congestion and provides positive implications.

"The current pandemic has shown hospitals the great promise of telemedicine application and hopefully the unexpected enrollment of such policies alongside this research can help get the process underway to help more healthcare facilities utilize this technology in ERs and elsewhere," said Lu. "Policymakers can play a role as well by reducing regulatory barriers that inhibit more expansive use of telemedicine and by creating incentives that encourage hospitals to more broadly adopt telemedicine in emergency rooms."

Astudy published in the journal Psychological Science found that young adults--contrary to how they are sometimes portrayed in the media--tend to make highly rational decisions when it comes to selecting potential romantic partners.

This is not to say that young adults make risk-free choices, but they appear to consider both the risks and benefits of their sexual behavior in a highly consistent and thoughtful manner.

"There is a tendency to view sexual decision making in young adults as a highly variable and somewhat random process, more influenced by hormones or impulsivity than rational processes," said Laura Hatz, a doctoral candidate at the University of Missouri and lead author of the study. "Our study suggests, however, that young adults are highly consistent in their choices, balancing potential partners' level of attractiveness against the potential risk for sexually transmitted infection."

The research involved presenting 257 participants with hypothetical "sexual gambles" in which a photo of a potential partner's face was shown alongside an associated, though purely hypothetical, risk of contracting a sexually transmitted infection. Nearly all participants in the study made consistently rational choices, as defined by established models of psychological behavior. Prior research has shown that, in general, individuals tend to use what are known as heuristic decision strategies--cognitive shortcuts that may ignore some information--to make choices in life.

Hatz and her colleagues found that even individuals who could be identified as classic heuristic decision makers for monetary-based choices became rational decision makers when similar choices were framed as sexual choices.

In a novel research study conducted by a team from the Neuroregeneration Institute at McLean Hospital, investigators believe they have found key brain cell type changes involving lipids, inflammation, and the development of Parkinson's disease (PD). Their findings appear in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

"Our study emphasizes the importance of cooperative use, storage, and transport of lipids between brain cell types in Parkinson's disease. Mechanisms involved in balancing cellular lipids--especially neutral lipids--such as we have characterized here, have been relatively understudied in the neurodegenerative diseases," explained Oeystein R. Brekk, PhD, an assistant neuroscientist at the Neuroregeneration Institute and first author of the study. "However, a wealth of knowledge already exists on such cellular lipid use, and consequences of lipid variations in other organs. For example, most people will know lipids from the role they play in increased risk for cardiovascular disease. Like the cardiovascular disease models, our Parkinson's disease and lipid-induced PD animal models point to lipid dependent pathological processes inside the brain, meaning we see dysregulation of the lipids and increased neuroinflammation."

In their study, Brekk and the McLean team demonstrate concurrent lipid changes in dopaminergic neurons and their neighboring brain glial cells, such as microglia and astrocytes in Parkinson's disease brains. Specifically, microglia and astrocytes showed abnormal patterns of intracellular lipid storage, which were significantly correlated with the accumulation of lipids within the dopaminergic neurons, the most vulnerable brain cells to the disease process. Overall lipid triglyceride content was statistically linked to a lipid-induced inflammatory stress marker in the brain tissue of PD patients. A remarkably similar brain cell and pathological picture was seen in an experimental animal model that simulates a Parkinson's disease genetically linked enzymatic loss-of-function in the glucocerebrosidase gene, leading to glycosphingolipid accumulation.

The work shows that microglia, which to a large extent are controlling macrophage and immune functions in the brain, are overloaded with lipids in Parkinson's disease, while astrocytes that normally supply lipids for maintenance and growth, on average, are losing some of that lipid content. At the same time, the neurons are accumulating lipids in an inverse linear fashion relative to the surrounding astrocytes. Moreover, the study shows that there is a statistically significant link between a molecule known as GPNMB. This stress immune response molecule is linked to astrocytes that typically appears to quench some of the inflammatory signals that are associated with lipid accumulation and overall triglyceride levels in the substantia nigra region of the brain.

"Remarkably, we can model these new findings in Parkinson's disease versus healthy aging, microglia and astrocyte interactions in the vulnerable brain regions, precisely by mechanisms that block a lysosomal lipid breakdown pathway, shown to be a strong risk factor for developing PD," said senior author Dr. Ole Isacson, founding director of the Neuroregeneration Institute at McLean Hospital and professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. "These results support our lipid-inflammation hypothesis in the causation of Parkinson's disease initiation and progression and may help us discover and develop new therapies by leaving behind conventional thinking about PD pathology, which to some extent has been limited to neurons and protein aggregates."

According to Isacson, the next steps include exploring how these lipid cell-cell interactions in the brain are both adaptive and pathological over time and how such cell mechanisms can lead to Parkinson's disease and Lewy body dementia.

The mental effects of pandemics on people can arise not only from the burden of preventive measures, the fear of contracting and cure but also coping with the exponential deaths. It was predicted in 2018 that the next major outbreak and its containment challenges might not be due to a lack of preventive technologies but to emotional contagion, which could erode trust in government, causing serious economic and social disruption. It is thus crucial to understand the relationship between risk communication and psychological responses especially in the ascending phase of pandemic, at which public emotions and behaviours in response to the epidemic change rapidly. In it is in this vein that, psychologists at the International Joint Laboratory of Cognitive and Behavioural Scienc (iLCBC) at Zhengzhou Normal University have carried a research on the relationship between psychological responses and risk communication during the early phase of COVID-19 pandemic to answer the following questions: What is the public reaction to epidemic outbreaks in the early phase? How does the effective exchange of real-time risk information impact them over time? What are the characteristics of these effects under different risk intensities?

Data was collected from 26th Jan 2020 (at which time 30 Provinces launched the First-level response to major public health emergencies in China, 56 deaths had occurred, and 2,014 cases were confirmed worldwide) until 17th February 2020 (1,775 deaths and 71,429 confirmed cases worldwide) with the mean test-retest interval of 16 days, by inviting community residents from two provincial capitals: Wuhan and Zhengzhou.

The findings of the study showed that risk communication in the initial stage of the outbreak mitigated the susceptibility to emotional contagion, and that this interaction had a larger influence on the epidemic frontline (i.e., Wuhan). Furthermore, prevention activities were predicted by the quality of risk communication, suggesting that preventive behaviours taken were closely linked to the efficient and timely transmission of information related to the epidemic. While researchers have found that effective risk communication may reduce susceptibility to emotional contagion and is a significant means of alleviating public anxiety, it has shown some inconsistencies to previous findings in that there is a reciprocal correlation between anxiety and risk communication, which means that the emotional component may build resistance to risk communication.

In January 2020, Wuhan became the battlefront in the fight against COVID-19 and was the focus of global attention. The data provides some of the first follow-up records regarding mental health during the COVID-19 outbreak. According to Dr Zheng Jin, Director of the iLCBC, "Officials trying to circumvent chaos or panic by withholding information are more harmful than the public behaving irrationally in a public health emergency" he says, "Pre-crisis planning is expected to create a transparent, open and honest flow of information."

URBANA, Ill. - Fast and reliable internet access is fundamental for research and development activity around the world. Seamless connectivity is a privilege we often take for granted. But in developing nations, technological limitations can become stumbling blocks to efficient communication and cause significant disadvantages.

Pete Goldsmith, director of the Soybean Innovation Lab at University of Illinois, works closely with partner organizations in several African countries. He noticed that his African colleagues were often dealing with technological problems that made communication very challenging. For example, sometimes they had to rely on their cell phones because their institution's internet access was unreliable.

Goldsmith teamed up with two IT experts at U of I, former Chief Information Officer Paul Hixson and Director of Research IT and Innovation Tracy Smith, to investigate technological challenges facing institutions in developing countries.

"Connectivity is the oxygen organizations run on," Hixson says. "It's such a basic requirement that it's often not even recognized as an issue. But lack of connectivity severely hinders an organization's ability to perform simple functions, conduct research, and compete for grants."

Goldsmith, Hixson, and Smith conducted an in-depth case study of information communication technology (ICT) infrastructure at the Savannah Agricultural Research Institute (SARI), a leading research station in Ghana and a close collaborator of SIL.

The case study included focus groups, interviews, and a technological analysis of SARI's equipment and connectivity. Based on this study, the research team developed the ICT Health Checkup, an assessment procedure for IT administrators to methodically assess the current state of their system, identify gaps affecting performance, and document steps for remediation.

The ICT Health Checkup tool systematically evaluates four key elements of ICT infrastructure. The first step focuses on connectivity and bandwidth, identifying the required bandwidth to accommodate the institution's needs and whether the institution has an uninterrupted fiber-based connection to the global internet. The second step analyzes core physical infrastructure, including dependable electricity, local network design, and both wired and wireless connectivity capabilities.

The third step looks at available intranet service offerings for researchers such as local storage, data backup procedures, access control, security procedures, email service, and cloud access. Finally, the fourth step deals with the human resources and technical support requirements for planning and managing the institution's IT infrastructure.

"With this tool, institutions can go through a checklist, and at each point there is a 'stoplight'. If it's red, you know there is something that needs to be fixed, because there are conditions that will act as a block and you can't go on until they are fixed - until there's a green light. So turning things from red to green at each step is crucial; methodically going through each step at a time and making sure it's fixed before moving on to the next one," Hixson explains.

The researchers compare the ICT Health Checkup to a medical health exam; it measures the current conditions and can be used as a benchmarking tool to measure improvements.

Goldsmith says the tool can be used to empower organizations so they can be self-sufficient. "With proper connectivity you can manage and store research data, compete for grants, and manage awards," he notes. "It's the foundation that allows institutions to participate fully in a global context."

The research team is currently expanding the study, collecting data from nine institutions and five networking organizations operating in three countries, in order to create a more robust picture of internet connectivity challenges and potential solutions across Africa.

They are also collaborating with the National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) in each of the sub-Saharan African countries that SIL operates in. These African NRENs are comparable to Internet2, which has been an instrumental partner in the expansion and adoption of advanced computing technologies at U of I and is one of the leading NRENs in the U.S., serving the country's research and higher-education communities.

"With the ICT health checkup, our partner African NRENs now have an actual assessment tool they can use with their member institutions. It's becoming a continent-wide approach as they are starting to adopt this new instrument created at the U of I to be their benchmark and measurement tool," Goldsmith says.

"The U of I is ideally positioned to provide this knowledge, because of the university's continued leadership in the computational and network administration space," he adds. "Now we are extending that to have real impact overseas."