Culture

Wednesday, 14 October 2020: Scientists have developed, for the first time, a score that can accurately predict which patients will develop a severe form of Covid-19.

The study, led by researchers at RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, is published in The Lancet's translational research journal EBioMedicine.

The measurement, called the Dublin-Boston score, is designed to enable clinicians to make more informed decisions when identifying patients who may benefit from therapies, such as steroids, and admission to intensive care units.

Until this study, no Covid-19-specific prognostic scores were available to guide clinical decision-making. The Dublin-Boston score can now accurately predict how severe the infection will be on day seven after measuring the patient's blood for the first four days.

The blood test works by measuring the levels of two molecules that send messages to the body's immune system and control inflammation. One of these molecules, interleukin (IL)-6, is pro-inflammatory, and a different one, called IL-10, is anti-inflammatory. The levels of both are altered in severe Covid-19 patients.

Based on the changes in the ratio of these two molecules over time, the researchers developed a point system where each 1-point increase was associated with a 5.6 times increased odds for a more severe outcome.

"The Dublin-Boston score is easily calculated and can be applied to all hospitalised Covid-19 patients," said RCSI Professor of Medicine Gerry McElvaney, the study's senior author and a consultant in Beaumont Hospital.

"More informed prognosis could help determine when to escalate or de-escalate care, a key component of the efficient allocation of resources during the current pandemic. The score may also have a role in evaluating whether new therapies designed to decrease inflammation in Covid-19 actually provide benefit."

The Dublin-Boston score uses the ratio of IL-6 to IL-10 because it significantly outperformed measuring the change in IL-6 alone.

Despite high levels in blood, using only IL-6 measurements as a Covid-19 prognostic tool is hindered by several factors. IL-6 levels within the same patient vary over the course of any given day, and the magnitude of the IL-6 response to infection varies between different patients.

Countries that sign up to improved financial transparency over oil, gas, and mining revenues benefit from significant reductions in carbon emissions, a new study by the University of Sussex Business School reveals.

Members of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) have seen their carbon emissions reduce by 13% on average between 2000 and 2014 while the world average carbon footprint per capita grew by 23% over the same period, reveals the research from the Sussex Energy Group.

Study author Professor Benjamin K Sovacool said while the relationship between EITI membership and carbon reductions is not necessarily deterministic, the scheme allowed countries to use recovered funds no longer lost to corruption to invest in more sustainable forms of energy and other environmental practices.

More than half of countries signing up to EITI have used it to address environmental payments, highlight environmental policies, and promote better natural resource and environmental management.

Prof Sovacool, Professor of Energy Policy at the University of Sussex Business School, said: "The EITI has induced changes throughout the industry without the need for more standard tools or approaches such as carbon permits, environmental standards, timetables, and mandates.

"The initiative challenges property rights concerning information about oil, gas, and minerals; prior to its creation, data on revenues was not in the public domain. Putting it there has focused attention on companies, generated press stories, sparked dialogue with local communities, and given investors and regulators ways to measure relative performance."

The study compared the performance of the first 12 countries to attain EITI Candidacy Status against the median of 218 countries between 2000 and the most recent data available in 2020 on social, economic, and political metrics using a unique World Bank dataset.

The study found that EITI countries performed better than the global average on benchmarks related to regulatory quality, rule of law, control of corruption, foreign direct investment, and interest rates.

Researchers found correlations between EITI membership and considerable growth in energy infrastructure investment and declines in rates of extreme poverty.

While the world saw a significant deterioration in regulatory quality over the past two decades of almost 50%, EITI countries slipped by only 4%. Similarly in terms of rule of law, most countries saw a median decline in performance of 60%, but EITI countries dropped by only 5%.

However EITI countries did not see universal improvement against the world average on all metrics. They performed worse in terms of voice and accountability, political stability and violence, governmental effectiveness, energy investment, and poverty gap.

EITI countries saw a 235 % decline in political stability while globally this improved by more than 11%. Countries on average enjoyed a 226% increase in private sector investment in energy, EITI countries just 30%.

Prof Sovacool believes the EITI's limited impact on economic governance is in part due to the scheme's narrow view of transparency, covering only a minor fraction of public sector revenues and excluding wider dimensions of the sector, such as environmental impact assessments, project siting, or community relocation, are not covered.

The EITI also only focuses on government oil revenue and not government spending, where the corruption is often far worse, the study author said.

The EITI is also flawed because of its voluntary approach which means countries are not legally mandated to adhere to the principles of transparency and face no fines, criminal charges, or other sanctions for noncompliance, Prof Sovacool explained.

He added: "The EITI is an important and necessary ingredient of a dish for sustainable development in natural resource dependent countries, but it is far from a complete diet. While it may enhance economic governance and foreign direct investment, EITI membership does not lead to increased stability, reduced poverty or improved democracy.

"But our findings do suggest that, when left to their own devices, corporations and governments in resource rich countries need not always race to the bottom to lower standards and perpetuate the resource curse."

Human impacts on the Lower Lakes of the Murray River estuary have made its ecosystem more vulnerable to drought, according to findings by University of Sydney geoscientists.

The new science shows that since the construction of the Goolwa Barrages in 1940, which effectively cut the estuarine ecosystem off from the ocean, the risk of acidification of its waters has increased.

Researchers led by Dr Thomas Job from the School of Geosciences said their findings need to be taken into account when setting environmental baselines for the management of the Murray estuary. Their work is published in The Holocene journal.

"The Millennium Drought from 1996 to 2010 saw historic lows in Lake Albert's water levels," Dr Job, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sydney, said. "This triggered widespread oxidation of exposed sulfide minerals, causing surface waters to become acidic."

Without ocean water entering the system during drought, as would have occurred before the Goolwa Barrages were built, lake levels can drop to low levels, causing major acidification.

"This isn't just an estimate," lead author on the paper Dr Job said. "We have seen direct evidence for this in the recent geological record going back thousands of years: droughts leave historic fingerprints deep in the lake sediments. We see these fingerprints more distinctly in sediments deposited after the barrages were built."

Increased acidity dissolves metals from soils into the lake waters, lowering water quality. Eventually, these metals end up back in the lake sediments.

"We looked at the geologic record for these metals. Combining these new data with our understanding of the shape of the lake system over time, we have created a more dynamic picture of how the system formed and how it responds to changes in climate," Dr Job said.

"We hope this information will improve management of the Murray-Darling estuary."

WETLAND OF INTERNATIONAL IMPORTANCE

Rather than looking to precolonial conditions, current baselines used by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority aim to conserve the system with reference to 1985, when the estuary was listed as a Wetland of International Importance under the Ramsar Convention.

Critically, this is after changes to the ecosystem that locked in its vulnerability to acidification during drought.

"When we look at the complexity of the Albert and Alexandrina lakes, it's important that baselines capture they system's natural conditions. Previous models have struggled to identify how the system has changed over time," Dr Job said.

Contested interpretations of the estuary's formation and uncertainty surrounding the sustainability of current water usage practice for farming and domestic use mean that a robust understanding of how the system has evolved is required.

"Half of Australia's farming - and two-thirds of its irrigated agriculture - relies on careful management of the Murray-Darling system," Dr Job said.

By combining environmental chemistry with studies of the system's geomorphology, Dr Job and colleagues found previously hidden complexity and dynamism in how the lakes formed.

"It's not clear yet what this means for how we manage the precious water resources of our greatest river system, but we are getting a much better understanding of how complex - and how sensitive to change - the Murray estuary is," Dr Job said.

The new model also shows that before about 5400 years ago, Lake Albert experienced very different conditions, due to higher sea levels and a more direct southern connection to the ocean, increasing tidal influences and inflows of saltwater.

"We have updated two previous studies, one published in 1994 and the other in 2007," Dr Job said. "Ours is the first to incorporate the historic environmental chemistry of the lakes."

The research team hopes the improved historic picture of Murray estuary can be applied to the environmental management of the system.

The researchers say that the ecological health and function of Lake Albert, and the degree to which it has been altered, should be measured with reference to its natural estuarine state before the Goolwa Barrages cut the lakes off from tidal brackish waters and changed the system's hydrology.

Lustrous metallic paints are used to enhance the beauty of many products, such as home decorations, cars and artwork. But most of these pigments owe their sheen to flakes of aluminum, copper, zinc or other metals, which have drawbacks. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Omega have developed organic-only dyes that can form films resembling gold or bronze, without the need for metals.

In paints, metal flakes tend to settle to the bottom of the can, requiring regular stirring during use and storage. Multiple coats of metallic paint are often needed to provide good coverage, which adds weight to the object being painted. Also, when used in ink-jet printers, metallic pigments can clog ink nozzles. For these and other reasons, researchers are trying to develop nonmetallic, organic paints with metal-like luster. But so far, few candidates have displayed all of the desired qualities of solubility in solvents, good film-forming properties and excellent stability over time. Katsuyoshi Hoshino and colleagues from Chiba University in Japan recently introduced a perchlorate-doped 3-methoxythiophene oligomer that checked all of these boxes, but it had to be dissolved in solvents that are considered unsafe for painters. To develop an industrially acceptable metal-effect dye, the researchers wanted to make and test chloride-doped 3-methoxythiophene oligomers.

The team made two different versions of the chloride-doped oligomers, which, unlike their previously reported perchlorate-doped counterpart, dissolved in water. They coated glass plates with solutions of the new dyes and allowed them to dry. The two chloride-doped oligomers produced lustrous gold- or bronze-like films, respectively, but they each had a non-glossy dark stain, which resembled a coffee ring stain, near the center. Although more research is needed to determine how to prevent this stain from forming, both films had higher reflectance than the one made by the perchlorate-doped oligomer. The paints are soluble in water but can be made water-resistant by dehydration, which makes their industrial implementation feasible. The new dyes could be used in commercial ink-jet printers, and they also might someday be implemented in organic electronic systems, the researchers say.

The growing global demand for palm oil has led to a rapid spread of oil palm monoculture plantations in South East Asia. This is often associated with the loss of natural habitat and biodiversity. Oil palm monocultures are uniformly structured and therefore offer little space for different species. Diversification using indigenous tree species can contribute to maintaining biodiversity. A research team from the University of Göttingen (Germany) and the University of Jambi (Indonesia) has now shown that such diversification can be encouraged with the help of information campaigns and free seedlings. The study has been published in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.

Oil palm plantations cultivated by smallholder farmers account for about 40 percent of the total area of oil palms in Indonesia, which means they are an important target group for interventions. The study of the interdisciplinary German-Indonesian Collaborative Research Centre "EFForTS" involved 800 smallholder farmers. "Smallholder farmers have little access to information, advice and high-quality seeds," says study director Professor Meike Wollni, agricultural economist at the University of Göttingen. "Yet, there is a high level of interest in diversification, especially with native fruit trees, as expressed by the local population in focus group discussions."

Against this background, the researchers divided the participants in the study into different treatment groups. The groups received information and/or tree seedlings. The results show that the two measures being investigated increase the number of trees planted in smallholder oil palm plantations. "We see that both interventions motivate a small group of individuals to plant many trees," says first author Dr Katrin Rudolf from the University of Göttingen. "However, to reach a large number of farmers, it is necessary to distribute seedlings. Here, the farmers' preferences should be taken into account when selecting tree species in order to increase the tree survival."

Identifying policies to improve the environmental impact of oil palm cultivation is highly relevant in the context of ongoing species loss, according to the authors. In addition to the supply side, however, the demand side should be considered when designing policies. Consumers could, for example, contribute to the costs incurred through certification of more environmentally friendly plantations.

PHILADELPHIA - As the search for successful Alzheimer's disease drugs remains elusive, experts believe that identifying biomarkers -- early biological signs of the disease -- could be key to solving the treatment conundrum. However, the rapid collection of data from tens of thousands of Alzheimer's patients far exceeds the scientific community's ability to make sense of it.

Now, with funding expected to total $17.8 million from the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health, researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania will collaborate with 11 research centers to determine more precise diagnostic biomarkers and drug targets for the disease, which affects nearly 50 million people worldwide. For the project, the teams will apply advanced artificial intelligence (AI) methods to integrate and find patterns in genetic, imaging, and clinical data from over 60,000 Alzheimer's patients -- representing one of the largest and most ambitious research undertakings of its kind.

Penn Medicine's Christos Davatzikos, PhD, a professor of Radiology and director of the Center for Biomedical Image Computing and Analytics, and Li Shen, PhD, a professor of Informatics, will serve as two of five co-principal investigators on the five-year project.

"Brain aging and neurodegenerative diseases, among which Alzheimer's is the most frequent, are highly heterogeneous," said Davatzikos. "This is an unprecedented attempt to dissect that heterogeneity, which may help inform treatment, as well as future clinical trials."

Diversity within the Alzheimer's patient population is a crucial reason why drug trials fail, according to the Penn researchers.

"We know that there are complex patterns in the brain that we may not be able to detect visually. Similarly, there may not be a single genetic marker that puts someone at high-risk for Alzheimer's, but rather a combination of genes that may form a pattern and create a perfect storm," said Shen. "Machine learning can help to combine large datasets and tease out a complex pattern that couldn't be seen before."

That is why the project's first objective will be to find a relationship between the three modalities (genes, imaging, and clinical symptoms), in order to identify the patterns that predict Alzheimer's diagnosis and progression -- and to distinguish between several subtypes of the disease.

"We want to redefine the term 'Alzheimer's disease.' The truth is that a treatment that works for one set of patients, may not work for another," Davatzikos said.

The investigators will then use those findings to build a predictive model of cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease progression, which can be used to steer treatment for future patients.

This undertaking will also utilize data from the Alzheimer's Disease Sequencing Project, an NIH-funded effort led by Gerard Schellenberg, PhD, and Li-San Wang, PhD, at Penn, along with colleagues from 40 research institutions. That project aims to identify new genomic variants that contribute to -- as well as ones that protect against -- developing Alzheimer's.

ITHACA, N.Y. - An injury to the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) can lead to severe osteoarthritis in both animal and human patients. Now, a new interdisciplinary study on the protein that lubricates our joints says that lubricant may actually be a precursor of joint disease.

The paper, published Oct. 7 in Scientific Reports, is the first that investigates the role of a protein, known as lubricin, in ACL-type injuries in dogs. It may also have larger implications for similar injuries in humans as well as the potential for treatments and therapeutics.

"Lubricin is crucial for normal joint function and the lubrication of cartilage," said Heidi Reesink, Ph.D. '16, the Harry M. Zweig Assistant Professor in Equine Health at the College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) and senior author on the paper. "We know that if a person or animal doesn't make that protein, they will develop devastating joint disease affecting all the major weight-bearing joints."

Lubricin is universal to mammals, including humans, though there is conflicting data regarding its role in joint injuries. Reesink's study found that, in canine patients that had suffered a ligament tear in the knee, lubricin increased within the joint - the opposite of conventional assumptions in medicine. "The dogma in this field has been that lubricin decreases in joint disease," Reesink said.

In three canine patients that had a joint injury, lubricin dramatically increased in the time between their initial injury but before any signs of arthritis in their X-rays.

"This indicates that the presence of increased lubricin might actually be a biomarker for predicting future osteoarthritis," said Reesink. "We also saw increased lubricin in dogs months to years after they injured their ACLs, suggesting that lubricin might be an indicator of ongoing joint instability."

Reesink said increased lubricin could consequently be a signal for clinicians to intervene or try a different treatment approach.

Reesink and her collaborators laid the groundwork for this new study by completing a systematic review of the literature surrounding lubricin in both human and veterinary medicine. The review waspublished this summer in the journal Osteoarthritis and Cartilage.

The overall finding of the review: There is no unified consensus on how lubricin is altered in other domestic veterinary species and in human joint injury, demonstrating the need for further study - which Reesink's new paper has done.

"In looking at horses and dogs, we're seeing the same pattern," she said. "The strongest piece of data would be to show it in humans as well."

Reesink and her collaborators worked with the Cornell Veterinary Biobank to obtain samples. The biobank supports CVM researchers as well as scientists across the globe, using biological samples collected from both ill and healthy animals at the Cornell University Hospital for Animals (CUHA). The samples are processed, catalogued and provided to researchers, which accelerates biomedical research.

Among the motivators for this study, said Reesink, is that a large number of cases in the small animal orthopedic section at CUHA is knee ligament injury, which is common in dogs.

"We can help both animals and humans by potentially coming up with better diagnostics, by more fully understanding how these molecules work and designing therapies beneficial to both, by taking advantage of these naturally occurring cases and improving orthopedic care," Reesink said.

In the veterinary realm, Reesink's team plans to do a follow-up longitudinal study in dogs, examining multiple time points in a patient's injury, treatment and recovery process. They also hope to draw similar connections in human ACL and other orthopedic injuries.

Currently, Reesink is examining parallel samples from both the Cornell Veterinary Biobank and the Hospital for Special Surgery, using funding from a pilot grant from the Weill Cornell Medicine Clinical and Translational Science Center.

How we respond to stress has been a source of scientific research since the term was introduced more than 70 years ago. While the analysis of human stress response has provided valuable insight, new work from University of South Florida researchers is offering a novel perspective on how other vertebrates may regulate flexibility in coping with stress.

When a person experiences stress, a variety of physiological responses kick in through a combination of molecular regulation, hormone secretion and the activation of the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. These responses lead to changes in certain physical characteristics, such as increased blood pressure and heart rate, as well as thought responses that affect how a person perceives and reacts to a stressful situation.

These physiological patterns are well-studied in human beings and have provided tremendous advancements in our understanding of the human body, as well as the long-term impact stress can have on mental health. It's insight that USF postdoctoral researcher Cedric Zimmer hopes to advance in other vertebrates dealing with a variety of environmental stressors in nature.

Zimmer is the lead author of a new paper published this week in the prestigious journal, BioScience. It examines the role a specific molecule, FKBP5, plays in the flexible regulation of stress response.

That focus on flexibility, as it pertains to stress, is a key component in this latest USF project and represents a still-emerging area of stress research. Flexibility refers to an organism's ability to produce and implement best coping strategies based on the current situation and past experiences. Researchers believe the molecule, FKBP5, has a fundamental role in this process.

"This molecule plays a critical function in a person's ability to cope with stress and the flexibility of this response in order to appropriately respond to a current stressful situation," Zimmer said. "So, what we've done is really bring together a tremendous amount of that academic research to develop a new framework for how any vertebrate deals with stress and their propensity to flexibly cope with these stressors."

This work was published through a collaboration between several USF College of Public Health research groups led by Lynn "Marty" Martin, Monica Uddin and Derek Wildman.

While this publication provides an early framework for continued research, Martin believes it could be crucial in understanding the broader impacts of human influence on the environment. When humans and animals interact in ways they haven't before, that can have obvious effects on nature, but also unintended consequences to us.

"Stress influences the immune systems of animals, which then changes the way they pump out pathogens into the environment," Martin said. "And when those pathogens can also infect humans, as is the case for West Nile virus, Salmonella and many others, the importance of understanding stress in animals is not only critical for their wellbeing, but for ours as well."

Researchers hope this work can help further the understanding of the role FKBP5 molecules play in regulating stress response flexibility and long-term impacts that has on a vertebrate's ability to cope with stress.

Washington, DC - October 9, 2020 - COVID-19 remains stubbornly inconsistent. More than a million people have died and 35 million have been diagnosed, but a large fraction of people infected with the coronavirus--about 45%, according to recent estimates--show no symptoms at all.
 

A retrospective study of 52 COVID-19 patients, published this week in mSphere, an open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, may help researchers better understand why not everyone show symptoms of the disease. The study's authors found that asymptomatic patients hosted viral loads comparable to those of symptomatic patients, but asymptomatic patients showed higher levels of lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell responsible for immune responses), cleared the viral particles faster, and had lower risks of long-term complications. Further analyses suggested the interaction between the virus and the immune system likely played a role in that process.
 

"Our findings suggested an important role for lymphocytes, especially T cells, in controlling virus shedding," said virologist Yuchen Xia, Ph.D., at Wuhan University's School of Basic Medical Sciences, in China, who worked on the new study.
 

The wide range of COVID-19 symptoms is well documented. Asymptomatic carriers, on the other hand, often go undiagnosed but can still shed the virus and spread it to others. Understanding why some patients get sick and others don't is one of the most important challenges in curbing the pandemic, Xia said. "They may cause a greater risk of virus transmission than symptomatic patients, posing a major challenge to infection control."
 

Xia and his colleagues studied throat swabs and blood samples collected from patients at Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, including 27 who had been admitted for complications related to COVID-19 and 25 asymptomatic patients who had been admitted for other reasons but tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus upon arrival. The researchers used the throat swabs to assess viral load, and on the blood samples they ran tests to measure immunoglobins, cytokines, and immune cells.
 

Although both groups of patients had comparable viral loads, asymptomatic patients showed a statistically significant increase in number of CD4+ cells, white blood cells that fight infection, compared to symptomatic patients. Like previous studies, the new analysis also showed that symptomatic patients were more likely to show impaired liver function than asymptomatic patients. In contrast to other work, however, the new research did not find significant differences in cytokine levels between the two groups.
 

Xia's group recently began collaborating on a larger follow-up study with researchers in Germany, analyzing blood samples from more than 100 patients with severe COVID-19 symptoms and 30 patients with mild symptoms. They also plan to conduct animal studies to better understand the role of T cells in viral shedding.
 

Xia said he hopes this study will bring attention to the importance of including transmission from asymptomatic people in widespread efforts to curb the pandemic. "More public health interventions and a broader range of testing may be necessary to control COVID-19," he said.

Climate change poses a threat to the world's subsistence crops. Heatwaves, which are likely to intensify according to climate evolution predictions, are generating levels of heat stress that are damaging to agricultural production. Identifying resistant crop varieties is therefore crucial to ensuring people's food security and farmers' resilience. To date, many studies have been conducted on varietal improvement, which involves developing and selecting plants with the required characteristics. Few, however, have examined intraspecific diversity, which is defined as the degree of genetic variety that exists within the same species.

For the present study, the international team focused on the sweetpotato - the fifth most produced crop in the world, after corn, wheat, rice, and cassava. This tuber is grown for its hardiness and tolerance to climatic shocks, and has great potential to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations as part of the Horizon 2030 Agenda: it is grown in areas prone to erosion to protect agricultural land (SDGs 12 and 15); it has a high nutritional value, as well as higher content than most staple foods in vitamins A and C, calcium, iron, dietary fibre, and protein (SDGs 2 and 3); its flexible planting and harvesting schedules mean it is less labour-intensive to grow and thus is particularly adaptable to human migration (SDGs 10 and 16).

Traditional local varieties perform well under heat stress

As part of CGIAR's research program on roots, tubers and bananas (RTB), the researchers assessed the heat-stress tolerance of 1,973 different varieties of sweetpotato from the CIP's sweet-potato 'genebank'. The collection of cultivars from 50 different countries comprised modern and traditional varieties, as well as breeding lines, developed in vitro and then planted in fields irrigated under controlled conditions on a 2.5 ha test site in the coastal desert region of north Peru. Analysis of the roots and foliage data allowed the effect of repeated exposure to extreme temperatures - greater than 35°C - on the plants' performance to be measured.

Result: "132 cultivars, of which 65.9% were traditional local varieties, demonstrated good heat tolerance. These are therefore promising candidates for selection as high-yield, heat-tolerant varieties," explains Bettina Heider, a researcher with CIP and lead author of the study.

"This mass screening, carried out on an unprecedented geographical scale (America, Africa, Asia), proved crucial to identifying the heat-stress tolerance characteristics of the sweetpotato, for the purpose of a deeper molecular characterization of specific genes," explains Olivier Dangles, an ecologist at IRD and co-author of the study.

"Intraspecific diversity - the result of hundreds of years of co-evolution between farmers and their crops - is proving critical in the face of climate change," he continues. "It emphasizes the role of agrobiodiversity in the resilience of tropical agricultural systems."

Farmers will need help to adapt

"Our results also suggest that the temperature of the canopy and the level of carotenoids could be the appropriate markers for selecting heat-stress tolerant lines," adds Emile Faye, researcher in spatial agroecology at CIRAD. "However, participatory experiments need to be conducted in different contexts, to test the efficacy and economic viability of the varieties identified."

Intraspecific diversity offers more options to farmers, therefore, for managing climate risks and increasing the resilience of their farming systems. The study authors recommend that this knowledge be shared with farmers, so that they adopt high-yield varieties that also offer higher nutritional value.

Scientist Ian Tannenbaum has spent most of his career working in clinical microbiology but was excited to transition to agricultural microbiology when he was offered a chance to conduct the first assessment of the perennial ryegrass microbiome and how it changes during plant maturation and seed production.

"The concepts of the project were very interesting to me and unlike anything I'd previously worked on," said Tannenbaum, who is affiliated with the Centre for AgriBioscience and La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia. "This was my first series of experiments aimed at understanding the natural bacterial assembly of a plant microbiome."

Tannenbaum's most surprising discovery? Finding a stable bacterial microbiome within surface-sterilized ryegrass seeds that almost disappears when the plant matures but returns in a new generation of seed.

"Our findings suggest that a portion of microbiome recruited by the parent plant was inherited by the following generation of seed, which demonstrates microbiome transmissibility," Tannenbaum explained. "The microbiome of the mature plant can be used as a snapshot of the following seed generations."

Working alongside a team of researchers, Tannenbaum found that the microbiome within perennial ryegrass seeds was predominantly comprised of a class of bacteria known as Gammaproteobacteria. In germinated seeds, the bacterial population was influenced by the presence of a resident fungal endophyte, which appeared to impact the abundance of some bacteria strongly enough to result in different seed microbiome between those with the fungal endophyte and those without.

They also compared the impact of soil by studying plants grown in potting mix and a sand/vermiculite mixture. Both soil types were strong determiners of the mature plant microbiomes. Many bacterial species were shared between the two soil types but differed greatly in their relative abundance.

Finally, the team assessed the microbiome of the following generation of seed generated from the plants grown in either mixture. The microbiome profile of the new seed was more reflective of the seed microbiome of the parent. However, additional classes were observed and determined to have been recruited from the growth environment by the parent plant and transmitted to the seed.

A pharmacist-led, new digital intervention that improves patient safety when prescribing medication in general practice reduced rates of hazardous prescribing by more than 40* per cent, 12 months after it had been introduced to 43 GP practices in Salford, finds a new study**. Due to its success, plans are underway to roll it out across Greater Manchester.

Prescribing and medication are one of the biggest causes of patient safety incidents and the third WHO Global Patient Safety Challenge is focussed on Medication without Harm***. The SMASH**** intervention addresses this. It was developed by researchers at the National Institute for Health Research Greater Manchester Patient Safety Translational Research Centre (NIHR GM PSTRC), which is a partnership between The University of Manchester and Salford Royal hospital in collaboration with The University of Nottingham.

Pharmacists working in general practice use the SMASH dashboard to identify patients who are exposed to potentially hazardous prescribing. For example, patients with a history of internal bleeding may be prescribed medications such as aspirin which could increase the risk of further internal bleeds without prescribing other treatments to protect them. SMASH identifies this and warns healthcare professionals about it, who can then decide on a possible course of action.

The intervention is unique due to its ability to provide near real time feedback to prescribers as it updates every evening.

Professor Darren Ashcroft, Research Lead for the Medication Safety theme at the GM PSTRC, said: "We worked with the Safety Informatics theme at the GM PSTRC to develop then test SMASH. It is designed to improve patient safety in general practice by reducing potential problems made when prescribing medication and inadequate blood-test monitoring. It brings together people and data to reduce these common medication safety problems that all too often can cause serious harm.

"It works when a GP practice has a clinical pharmacy team. These teams working in general practices across Salford used the insights identified by SMASH to become "Champions for Change". In doing so, they achieved marked improvements in rates of hazardous prescribing over the 12 month study period. Importantly, at the end of the 12 month study the success of the intervention was sustained which is encouraging. Our efforts are now focussed on scaling up the SMASH intervention to benefit the whole Greater Manchester population."

The researchers monitored SMASH in each of the GP practices where it was trialled for a year and evaluated its success.

Professor Niels Peek, Research Lead for the Safety Informatics theme at the GM PSTRC, said: "SMASH capitalises on the unique digital infrastructure that already existed in Salford and will soon be available for 2.8 million people in Greater Manchester. This will create an integrated health system that continuously learns and improves the quality of its services."

The intervention builds on the principles of PINCER, an intervention developed by The University of Nottingham and The University of Manchester, and supported by the GM PSTRC. SMASH uses a set of 13 prescribing safety indicators developed by experts for PINCER. An example is the prescription of an oral non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), without also prescribing an ulcer healing drug, to a patient aged over 65.

PINCER is proven to reduce hazardous prescribing and has been rolled out by Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs) to 40% of GP practices in England as part of co-ordinated approach to reduce medication errors in primary care by the national AHSN Network. Due to the success of SMASH in Salford, Health Innovation Manchester, the organisation responsible for accelerating proven innovation into Greater Manchester's health and social care services and part of the AHSN Network, is currently working to roll it out across Greater Manchester.

Amanda Risino, Chief Operating Officer at Health Innovation Manchester, said: "SMASH is a great innovation and there is a huge opportunity to be realised by sharing this innovation across the Greater Manchester city region. Not only will it help patients at direct risk of medication-related harm, but by also using data from multiple health and social care organisations we can drive improvements in prescribing safety and effectiveness across all care settings."

London, 13th October 2020: On October 10 2020, on the occasion of World Mental Health Day, Cactus Communications (CACTUS), a technology company accelerating scientific advancement, released its much-anticipated global survey report on mental health, wellbeing, and fulfilment among researchers. The survey, which was conducted from October 2019 to July 2020 in seven languages, saw a phenomenal response of over 13,000 participants globally, with strong representation from the top 10 research-producing countries, making it the largest and most diverse survey of its kind among researchers. With 13 active and former academics as collaborators, the initiative was supported by various research-associated institutes and organizations such as IndiaBioscience, SciELO, and India Alliance, with Shift Learning as the analytics & reporting partner, Dragonfly Mental Health as an independent consultant, and Vitae and Euraxess as report amplification partners.

Commenting on the report, Abhishek Goel, Co-Founder and CEO, CACTUS, said, "While the world is constantly looking at researchers for answers and solutions, especially during a crisis like the ongoing pandemic, there is very little knowledge available about the life of a researcher. Through our conversations with researchers over the years, we understand that the academic environment is harsh, competitive, and rife with failure and rejection, and that mental health in academia is a serious issue that needs a concerted global focus. Through the Cactus Foundation, which aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, we hope to create a better world for researchers, and we believe this survey is an important first step. By highlighting the pressures and the joy and stress triggers for researchers at this global scale, we hope this survey can eventually pave the way for a more nurturing and fulfilling research culture."

Speaking about the global diversity of the survey population, Clarinda Cerejo, Senior Director, Thought Leadership, CACTUS, said, "While mental health at the workplace has become a global topic of discussion, this topic is still considered taboo in many countries, and academia in particular has traditionally lacked the structure and organization required to address mental health concerns systemically. While we always thought of the survey as immensely important, we are humbled by the kind of global participation we have received from researchers across career stages and even from regions where mental health discussions are not commonplace. This makes us believe that researchers want to speak up and use their voice to drive change, and that research institutions want to pay heed. We hope that this survey marks the beginning of an important global conversation and that all decision makers working with researchers draw on its insights to implement more researcher-friendly work policies".

Through this survey, CACTUS aims to raise awareness about mental health in academia globally, urging research organizations and universities internationally to openly talk about and address this issue.

The full survey report contains interesting insights about the lives of researchers as well as the overall culture in academia. It offers a global researcher perspective on which aspects of their work bring researchers joy and fulfilment, which ones make them feel stressed and overwhelmed, and the kind of support they would like to receive from universities and research institutions, among other topics. To read the full survey report, you can download it here for free: https://bit.ly/3dlbGsv

LA JOLLA, CA--A team co-led by scientists at Scripps Research has found that the main sensor protein enabling our sense of touch also underlies the feeling of having a full bladder and makes normal bladder function possible.

The discovery, published Oct. 14 in Nature, marks a key advance in basic neurobiology and may also lead to better treatments for bladder control and urination problems, which are common especially among the elderly.

"We tend to take urination for granted, and it has been under-studied, yet it's a huge burden when something goes wrong with this system," says the study's lead author Kara Marshall, PhD, a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Neuroscience at Scripps Research. "Now we've identified a crucial part of how urination normally works."

Marshall and her colleagues focused in this study on the PIEZO2 protein, a "mechanosensor" that detects the physical stretching of tissues where it resides. They found that PIEZO2 is expressed in cells of the bladder and is necessary for normal urinary continence and functioning in both mice and humans.

"Who would have imagined that the same mechanosensor protein enabling our sense of touch also alerts us that our bladder is full?" says co-senior author Ardem Patapoutian, PhD, Professor and Presidential Endowed Chair in Neurobiology at the Dorris Neuroscience Center at Scripps Research, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

In 2010, Patapoutian and his lab first identified PIEZO2 and its sister protein PIEZO1 as mechanosensors that sense mechanical distortions of tissues. For that feat, among others, Patapoutian was a co-recipient of the prestigious 2020 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience.

Like most sensor proteins, the PIEZOs are ion-channel proteins, which are embedded in their host cell's outer membrane and, when triggered by a stimulus, allow a flow of charged atoms into the cell. Sensor ion-channel proteins are usually found in sensory neurons in the skin, joints and other organs. On a given neuron, when enough of these channels open to admit ion flows, the neuron will fire a nerve signal to the brain.

For PIEZOs, the stimulus that triggers the opening of the ion channel is the stretching of the cell membrane due to mechanical forces on the local tissue. In studies over the past decade, Patapoutian and his colleagues have shown that PIEZO2 is expressed is different organs and tissues throughout the body. For example, they exist in lung tissues to sense lung stretch and help regulate breathing, in blood vessels to sense blood pressure and in the skin to mediate the sense of touch.

The new study was a collaboration with Alexander Chesler, PhD, and Carsten Bönnemann, MD, senior investigators at the National Institutes of Health. Chesler and Bönnemann, and their colleagues, have been studying people born with genetic mutations that result in the functional loss of PIEZO2. These individuals suffer various impairments in sensory pathways known to be PIEZO2-related.

For the study, NIH investigators found that these PIEZO2-deficient individuals, in addition to their other sensory deficits, lack the normal sense of having a full bladder. They typically urinate on a schedule to avoid incontinence and have trouble completely emptying their bladder when they do urinate.

Patapoutian, Marshall and their colleagues showed in experiments that the loss of PIEZO2 has similar effects in mice. The urinary tract uses PIEZO2 protein in both bladder sensory neurons and in bladder-lining cells called umbrella cells to detect stretch and facilitate urination, indicating a two-part sensor system. As they determined in experiments, bladder neurons in mice normally respond robustly with nerve signals when the bladder is filled but are almost completely silent during bladder filling if they lack PIEZO2.

The mice lacking PIEZO2 in their lower urinary tracts also showed abnormal urination reflexes in the muscles controlling the urethra, the duct in which urine flows from the bladder. That suggests that in mice and most likely in people, the mechanosensor protein is needed both for normal bladder-stretch sensation and for normal urination.

The team is currently following up with research on the distinct roles of bladder neurons and umbrella cells, and how they signal to each other. They are also investigating the possible roles of other mechanosensors, such as PIEZO1, in bladder control and urination.

"Mice without PIEZO2 had clear urination deficits, but ultimately were still able to urinate, so that suggests another mechanosensory protein may be involved," Marshall says.

ADELPHI, Md. -- Researchers with the U.S. Army Futures Command are part of a team that tested alternative ways to measure COVID-19 antibody levels, resulting in a process that is faster, easier and less expensive to use on a large scale. Their method holds promise for accurately identifying potential donors who have the best chance of helping infected patients through convalescent plasma therapy.

Dr. Jimmy Gollihar, biochemist and biotechnologist for the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's Army Research Laboratory at CCDC ARL South in Austin, Texas, and chief technology officer of the Bioindustrial Manufacturing Innovation Institute, in collaboration with Dr. John Dye at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, and collaborators at Houston Methodist, Pennsylvania State University and the University of Texas at Austin, sought to find alternatives to measuring virus neutralization, or VN, titers. These titers are the gold standard of COVID-19 antibody testing, as VN antibodies in the blood have been shown to correlate with levels of protective immunity.

According to the researchers, this kind of antibody testing is not widely available as it is technically complex and requires days to set up, run and interpret. Thus, the team looked to another type of test, called enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays, or ELISAs.

According to Gollihar, ELISAs are standard quantitative tests used to measure the amount of antibody to a particular antigen in a given sample.

"ELISAs are standard assays that can be performed in almost any academic or medical laboratory," Gollihar said. "This is important in emergency care centers treating critically ill patients. The assays can also be used for serological monitoring of the disease."

Specifically, scientists looked at the relationship of anti-spike ectodomain, or ECD, and anti-receptor binding domain, or RBD, antibody titers in the bloodstream. The spike ECD and RBD proteins are components of the much-talked-about spike protein made by SARS-CoV-2 and are critical to how the virus enters the body, spreads and causes COVID-19 disease.

Gollihar's specific roles included coordinating the plasma sample delivery from Houston Methodist, scaling production and purification of the antigens, and setting up the collaboration with USAMRIID for live virus neutralization testing under biocontainment conditions. He also helped transition the ELISA assay to Houston Methodist's automation team.Dye and his team performed neutralization assays on all the specimens in a Biosafety Level 3 laboratory at USAMRIID. Their work determined that the relative amount of antibody in the bloodstream of COVID-19 patients is linked to their ability to control viral infection; essentially, the more severe the disease, the higher the levels of neutralizing antibody present. This information provides potential benchmarks for a clinical product for convalescent plasma treatment studies; it could also be used to assess how well a vaccine recipient may respond to a subsequent infection.

The researchers found that the ELISA tests had an 80 percent or greater probability of predicting VN titers at or above the Food and Drug Administration-recommended levels for COVID-19 convalescent plasma.

"In all, we discovered that high titer ELISAs correlate well to virus neutralization and can be used as a surrogate for screening convalescent plasma," Gollihar said.

In addition, the researchers found that convalescent donors maintain high levels of immunity over the course of many weeks, and that frequent plasma donations did not cause a significant decrease in antibody or virus neutralization levels.

Perhaps most surprising, the researchers said, is that they identified 27 individuals from the surveillance cohort with high enough antibody titers to indicate that some asymptomatic individuals may have plasma suitable for therapeutic use and may have a degree of relative immunity against SARS-CoV-2.

"This collaboration between the Army, Houston Methodist and our partners in academia shows the incredible diversity of complementary capabilities we can deploy in responding to a worldwide pandemic," Dye said.

The team's findings are described in a paper titled, "Convalescent plasma anti-SARS-CoV-2 spike protein ectodomain and receptor binding domain IgG correlate with virus neutralization," featured in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.