Culture

Information security policies (ISP) that are not grounded in the realities of an employee's work responsibilities and priorities exposes organizations to higher risk for data breaches, according to new research from Binghamton University, State University of New York.

The study's findings, that subcultures within an organization influence whether employees violate ISP or not, have led researchers to recommend an overhaul of the design and implementation of ISP, and to work with employees to find ways to seamlessly fit ISP compliance into their day-to-day tasks.

"The frequency, scope and cost of data breaches have been increasing dramatically in recent years, and the majority of these cases happen because humans are the weakest link in the security chain. Non-compliance to ISP by employees is one of the important factors," said Sumantra Sarkar, associate professor of management information systems in Binghamton University's School of Management. "We wanted to understand why certain employees were more likely to comply with ISP than others in an organization."

Sarkar, with a research team consisting of Anthony Vance of Temple University, Balasubramaniam Ramesh of Georgia State University, Menelaos Demestihas of Wellstar Kennestone Hospital and Daniel Thomas Wu of Emory University School of Medicine, sought to determine how subcultures influence compliance, specifically within healthcare organizations.

"Every organization has a culture that is typically set by top management. But within that, you have subcultures among different professional groups in the organization," said Sarkar. "Each of these groups are trained in a different way and are responsible for different tasks."

Sarkar and his fellow researchers focused on ISP compliance within three subcultures found in a hospital setting - physicians, nurses and support staff.

The expansive study took years to complete, with one researcher embedding in a hospital for over two years to observe and analyze activities, as well as to conduct interviews and surveys with multiple employees.

Because patient data in a hospital is highly confidential, one area researchers focused on was the requirement for hospital employees to lock their electronic health record (EHR) workstation when not present.

"Physicians, who are dealing with emergency situations constantly were more likely to leave a workstation unlocked. They were more worried about the immediate care of a patient than the possible risk of a data breach," said Sarkar. "On the opposite end, support staff rarely kept workstations unlocked when they were away, as they felt they were more likely to be punished or fired should a data breach occur."

Researchers concluded that each subculture within an organization will respond differently to the organization-wide ISP, leaving organizations open to a higher possibility of data breaches.

Their recommendation - consult with each subculture while developing ISP.

"Information security professionals should have a better understanding of the day-to-day tasks of each professional group, and then find ways to seamlessly integrate ISP compliance within those job tasks," said Sarkar. "It is critical that we find ways to redesign ISP systems and processes in order to create less friction."

In the context of a hospital setting, Sarkar recommends touchless, proximity-based authentication mechanisms that could lock or unlock workstations when an employee approaches or leaves a workstation.

Researchers also found that most employees understand the value of ISP compliance, and realize the potential cost of a data breach. However, Sarkar believes that outdated ISP compliance measures have the potential to put employees in a conflict of priorities.

"There shouldn't be situations where physicians are putting the entire hospital at risk for a data breach because they are dealing with a patient who needs emergency care," he said. "We need to find ways to accommodate the responsibilities of different employees within an organization."

Brazil has more than 286,000 community health workers integrated into the national primary healthcare program. These professionals form a broad network serving 75% of the population, especially low-income families who lack medical insurance and are the most adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Back in March, researchers at Imperial College London noted Brazil's network of community health workers as a valuable asset that could assure an effective response to the pandemic. According to the article, the service they provide sets an example to be followed by other countries. But the response was not effective, there was no national plan, and the service provided by community health workers wasn't considered essential to control the disease until July. They weren't even considered health professionals and so weren't given personal protective equipment [PPE], just to take one example," said Gabriela Lotta, a professor at Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV). Lotta is affiliated with the Center for Metropolitan Studies (CEM) , one of the Research, Innovation and Dissemination Centers (RIDCs) funded by São Paulo Research Foundation - FAPESP.

In collaboration with researchers at Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz, a leading public health research institution linked to the Brazilian Ministry of Health), the University of York (UK) and the London School of Economics, Lotta authored an article published in the Comment section of The Lancet warning that community health workers in Brazil were being treated with neglect during the pandemic.

"Several countries have community health workers, but the researchers at Imperial College London focused on Brazil's advantage in this respect because it was one of the first countries to create such a network as an integral part of primary care and the national health system [in Brazil, Sistema Único de Saúde, SUS]. In most countries community health workers aren't part of the official health system but belong to NGOs or civic associations," Lotta told.

Thanks to this structural feature, she added, Brazil's community health workers would have been able to perform important functions during the pandemic, "provided they had PPE, training, the backing of governmental policy, support, and recognition of their significance".

Three tiers of government

For Lotta, neglect of community health workers exemplifies the effect on cities of the lack of a national plan to combat the pandemic: although the service they provide is run by local authorities, the federal government is responsible for funding and other support mechanisms.

"There are huge disparities among Brazilian cities," Lotta said. "Municipalities find their hands are tied if they lack the funding and other resources to determine a strategy on their own. There has to be a national plan, with substantial transfers from the federal government to fund community health workers. It's up to local government to execute. Of course, if a city has resources it can use them, but the federal government should shoulder most of the burden and set the policy. That includes defining whether community health workers are health professionals or not and whether they should get hazard pay. All these decisions have to apply to the entire national health service."

During the first four months of the pandemic, Lotta continued, community health workers received neither training nor PPE. They were at last classed as key workers only on July 21, 2020, when President Bolsonaro signed Law 14,023/2020.

"Because there was no national plan and they weren't even classed as health professionals, only 9% received infection control training and PPE. Their union says some 100 have died from COVID-19, but the actual number may be three times higher," Lotta said.

Brazil has one of the world's highest death tolls of nurses, nursing assistants, and nurse technicians affected by COVID-19, according to the International Council of Nurses (ICN). In its last update, Brazil's Federal Nursing Council (COFEN) pointed to 441 deaths. The number of physicians who died from the disease had reached 244 by September, according to the São Paulo Physicians Union.

"The law is positive, although it has yet to be implemented," Lotta said. "Better late than never. At least there's a legal measure that says community health workers are entitled not to go out to work if they aren't given PPE. They had no such right before. They were very vulnerable."

Nevertheless, she added, the law does not automatically solve the problems of community health workers or ensure they play an effective role in combating the pandemic. "It's an important contribution, but it won't necessarily translate into better policy," she said. "Even with this law in place, local governments lack the means to prioritize community health workers in fighting the pandemic until a strategic plan and a funding scheme are established."

Key functions, key workers

Among the functions that could be performed by community health workers during the pandemic, Lotta highlighted key activities such as tracing contacts of infected people, combating fake news by disseminating trustworthy information, and monitoring social isolation in confirmed cases.

"They already act as health educators. They live in the communities where they work and are seen as trustworthy and legitimate," she said. "Keeping their neighbors well-informed about personal hygiene, and the importance of face covering and social isolation is an effective way to neutralize fake news. A few cities have community health workers circulating in cars with loudspeakers to give out this kind of information."

Contact tracing would not be a problem for them, Lotta argued. "They already did something very similar to contact tracing when they monitored people's healthcare requirements. In the few Brazilian cities that have had contact tracing it's been done by community health workers," she said.

They could staff telephone banks to call patients with the disease who are isolated at home and assess their need for hospitalization if local authorities supplied thermometers and pulse oximeters, she added.

They could also man the roadblocks set up at the entrances to many cities. "The disease was transmitted to many small and medium towns by visitors who were infected but had no symptoms, especially if the locality was a tourist attraction," Lotta said. "Some local authorities installed roadblocks manned by community health workers, who took people's temperature as they arrived by car and told them about the measures in place to deal with the pandemic. Of course, in this case, they will have had to supply PPE and support of other kinds. We have the structure, and if such apparently simple but crucial measures were universally applied they would have a positive impact in terms of containing transmission of the virus."

DURHAM, N.C. - Researchers know that texting programs can greatly benefit young children's literacy. Now new research shows that parents' participation in such programs can be boosted exponentially with one simple tweak: automatic enrollment, combined with the ability to opt out.

The new research from the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy appears in the Journal of Child and Family Studies.

In recent years, mounting research evidence has shown texting to be an effective, low-cost, scalable approach for engaging parents in their children's learning. Some studies suggest text message interventions via tips for parents on how to support their child's development can put young children's learning 2-3 months ahead.

Yet getting parents to enroll in these beneficial programs can be challenging. With that in mind, researchers designed a study to test strategies for increasing program participation.

In the study, researchers from Duke, New York University and Brooklyn College compare different enrollment options for the text-based early literacy program, Talk to Your Baby. The text-based 26-week course is designed to promote early language development for children from birth to age 3.

The researchers studied 405 mothers who were receiving newborn home visiting services through a free, city-wide program in New York City. Using a randomized controlled study, the researchers tested whether changing the enrollment option from opt-in to opt-out affects mothers' take up and completion of the early literacy program. Participants were predominantly low-income and racially and ethnically diverse.

Results show that when automatically enrolled with a voluntary option to opt out, 88.7 percent of study participants stayed in the program for the full 26 weeks. In contrast, only 1 percent of mothers in the control group -- who heard about the program through conventional recruitment flyers -- voluntarily enrolled in the program. The findings suggest parents' desire to participate in the program may be high but their ability to follow through is challenging, researchers said.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, these programs and other digital strategies for reaching parents can be especially beneficial, the researchers say.

"A lot of time is spent in developing excellent and developmentally appropriate content for these programs and relatively little time is spent understanding how to make it easy for parents to engage," said Lisa A. Gennetian, lead author of the study and Pritzker Associate Professor of Early Learning Policy Studies at Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy. "Preserving parents' choice to enroll in programs, especially those that are universally accessible and free, matters and we learned from this study that automatic enrollment minimizes burden on parents and can have enormous benefits in ways that do not interfere with their freedom."

The study is the among the first to show that automatic enrollment is a promising strategy for increasing participation in early language and learning programs.

The study also showed the decision to stay in the program or opt out remained consistent for various subgroups. For instance, it made no difference whether this was a first birth or whether the other received public benefits. Such characteristics are sometimes cited as interfering with program participation.

"Opt-out strategies are liberally used in many aspects of our life, from organ donations to decisions about retirement benefits, and they are effective when done carefully," Gennetian said. "Why wouldn't we make life easier for parents and apply the same strategy of automatic enrollment with the ease of opting out?"

BOSTON - The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted virtually every aspect of cancer care and research- from introducing new risks for cancer patients to disrupting the delivery of cancer treatment and the continuity of cancer research, a review of scientific literature shows. The report, by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and other institutions, suggests that while COVID-19 has complicated the treatment of cancer patients, it has also spurred creative solutions to challenges in clinical care, and research into the new disease is benefiting from insights gained over years of cancer research.

While much remains to be learned about the intersection of cancer and COVID-19, the new paper, published online by Cancer Cell, represents the most comprehensive survey to date about what physicians have learned, and what research is suggesting, about the interrelationship between the two diseases, the authors say.

"COVID-19 has been responsible for killing more than one million people worldwide. Among those most at risk of developing severe forms of the illness are patients with cancer," says Ziad Bakouny, MD, MSc, of Dana-Farber, the co-lead author of the study with Jessica Hawley, MD, of Columbia University Medical Center. "Research into why patients with cancer are at heightened risk is moving very quickly. In this paper, we look at the state of the science in this area and others related to these two illnesses."

The paper summarizes findings in four areas: the interconnected biology of cancer and COVID-19; changes in patient care prompted by the pandemic; effects on cancer research; and insights from cancer research applicable to the treatment of COVID-19.

COVID-19 and cancer biology

In patients with cancer, COVID-19 can be especially harsh. This is likely because many patients have a weakened immune system - either as a result of the cancer itself or the therapies used to treat it - and are therefore less able to fight off infection by the novel coronavirus. Several studies have examined whether systemic cancer therapies such as chemotherapy and targeted therapies increase patients' vulnerability to COVID-19. The results so far are mixed, Bakouny says, possibly because such studies have focused on systemic therapies as a group rather than on specific agents. Future studies will attempt to tease out the effects of particular drugs.

One of the most dangerous consequences of COVID-19 is an overaggressive immune response known as a "cytokine storm," which can damage lung and other tissues. Patients with cancer treated with immune-stimulating therapies such as immune checkpoint inhibitors, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies and bi-specific T-cell engagers (BiTEs) are at risk for complications if the immune response produced by these therapies results in an attack on normal, healthy tissue. Patients treated with CAR T-cell therapies and BiTEs, in particular, can develop a side effect known as cytokine release syndrome, which is similar to the cytokine storm in patients with COVID-19. Researchers have theorized that COVID-19 could exacerbate cytokine release syndrome in patients treated with certain immunotherapies, but studies have not definitely shown that this is happening, the new report states.

Although patients may be understandably concerned about facing an increased risk from COVID-19 as a result of cancer therapy, they shouldn't let this deter them from seeking treatment for their cancer, Bakouny says. "Therapies for cancer can prolong life and even be curative in many cases," he remarks. "It's very important to be mindful of the goals of therapy and discuss with your doctor the risks and benefits of therapy in your own particular case."

COVID-19 and cancer care

Around the world, efforts to thwart the spread of COVID-19 included steps to decrease in-person visits between patients and physicians. Among these was a jump in the use of telemedicine, which, some studies indicate, can be just as effective as in-person meetings. One study involving patients with breast cancer found that telehealth was associated with a higher quality of life and less depression and distress compared with usual care. While virtual visits offer a variety of benefits - less need to travel to physician appointments and incur the costs and inconvenience associated with travel - they're valuable only insofar as they don't take the place of in-person visits for exams, treatment, or diagnosis, research shows.

"It is also important to consider the unintended consequences of widespread adoption of technology," Bakouny says. "There is a serious potential risk of compounding health disparities between patients of different socioeconomic status, if telehealth services are mandated."

On the negative side, studies have shown a sharp decline in cancer diagnoses and screening during the peak of the pandemic. One study found that routine screening dropped by 85-90%. Delays in diagnosing cancer are likely to have long-term ripple effects. A British study estimates that, because of diagnostic delays, deaths five years from now may be 4-17% higher, depending on tumor type, than they would have been had the pandemic not occurred.

COVID-19 and cancer research

To limit the opportunities for viral transmission, many research centers enacted policies limiting the number of lab workers allowed on-site, putting many studies on hold. For the most part, research projects funded by government appropriations have not been hobbled by the pandemic, but some projects supported by private philanthropy face a funding gap. COVID-19 has drastically decreased donations to cancer-focused philanthropic organizations. The American Cancer Society, for example, expects a $200 million decrease in donations this year and has not been able to accept applications for research grants for the Fall grant cycle.

Clinical cancer research, in which potential new therapies are tested in patients, has also experienced difficulties as a result of COVID-19. Some cancer centers halted enrollment on clinical trials entirely during the height of the pandemic. A survey of dozens of clinical investigators in March found that nearly 60% of respondents had halted screening and/or enrollment in certain trials, and that half of their institutions had ceased collection of blood and other tissue for research purposes.

Despite these challenges, investigators found a variety of ways to adapt to straitened circumstances so trials could continue. These included leveraging telehealth to limit in-person visits, use of e-signatures for trial documentation, shipping oral medications to trial participants rather than requiring them to be picked up at the clinic, and allowing laboratory tests to be done at outside labs.

"The relaxation of some of the regulatory requirements associated with clinical research has been accomplished without compromising patient safety," Bakouny remarks. "Many investigators see this as a plus - something that could be part of clinical research going forward, to reduce the cost of trials and facilitate the arrival of new therapies for patients."

COVID-19 and lessons from cancer

Some promising approaches to treating COVID-19 have come, perhaps surprisingly, from cancer research, the paper's authors write. While cancer and COVID-19 are fundamentally different in their origin, development, and effect on the body, some of the insights gained in decades of research in cancer are showing relevance to fighting the new coronavirus.

A variety of drugs used to alleviate cytokine release syndrome in cancer patients are being evaluated for effectiveness against cytokine storm in patients with COVID-19. Other drugs in the anti-cancer arsenal are undergoing tests of their potential value against COVID-19. An example is acalabrutinib, which is used in the treatment of lymphoid cancers. In one trial, it resulted in rapid improvements in oxygen requirements and a sharp drop in inflammation in patients with COVID-19.

Another potential point of connection between cancer and COVID-19 involves a protein called TMPRSS2. When the coronavirus is breathed in, it binds to lung cells and is split by TMPRSS2, allowing it to enter and infect the cells. Research has shown that in prostate cancer, TMPRSS2 is regulated by the androgen receptor, a cell structure that signals the cell to grow in response to androgen. The androgen receptor is found not only on prostate cells but on cells of the lung as well. It isn't clear yet whether the receptor regulates TMPRSS2 in lung tissue, but if it does, it could open the way to a new treatment for COVID-19. Androgen-targeting therapies already used to treat prostate cancer could block TMPRSS2 from entering lung cells, preventing COVID-19 at its source.

"Since the start of the pandemic, we've accumulated a substantial amount of evidence about the dynamic between cancer and COVID-19," Bakouny remarks. "This review gave us an opportunity to take a step back and take stock of what we've learned - to get a sense of the most promising directions for patients, as well as where more study is needed, what we need to dig deeper into."

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- Robots can be amazing tools for search-and-rescue missions and environmental studies, but eventually they must return to a base to recharge their batteries and upload their data. That can be a challenge if your robot is an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) exploring deep ocean waters.

Now, a Purdue University team has created a mobile docking system for AUVs, enabling them to perform longer tasks without the need for human intervention.

The team also has published papers on ways to adapt this docking system for AUVs that will explore extraterrestrial lakes, such as those of Jupiter and Saturn's moons.

"My research focuses on persistent operation of robots in challenging environments," said Nina Mahmoudian, an associate professor of mechanical engineering. "And there's no more challenging environment than underwater."

Once a marine robot submerges in water, it loses the ability to transmit and receive radio signals, including GPS data. Some may use acoustic communication, but this method can be difficult and unreliable, especially for long-range transmissions. Because of this, underwater robots currently have a limited range of operation.

"Typically these robots perform a pre-planned itinerary underwater," Mahmoudian said. "Then they come to the surface and send out a signal to be retrieved. Humans have to go out, retrieve the robot, get the data, recharge the battery and then send it back out. That's very expensive, and it limits the amount of time these robots can be performing their tasks."

Mahmoudian's solution is to create a mobile docking station that underwater robots could return to on their own. A video describing this research is available on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kS0_-qc_r0.

"And what if we had multiple docks, which were also mobile and autonomous?" she said. "The robots and the docks could coordinate with each other, so that they could recharge and upload their data, and then go back out to continue exploring, without the need for human intervention. We've developed the algorithms to maximize these trajectories, so we get the optimum use of these robots."

A paper on the mission planning system that Mahmoudian and her team developed has been published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. The researchers validated the method by testing the system on a short mission in Lake Superior.

"What's key is that the docking station is portable," Mahmoudian said. "It can be deployed in a stationary location, but it can also be deployed on autonomous surface vehicles or even on other autonomous underwater vehicles. And it's designed to be platform-agnostic, so it can be utilized with any AUV. The hardware and software work hand-in-hand."

Mahmoudian points out that systems like this already exist in your living room. "An autonomous vacuum, like a Roomba, does its vacuum cleaning, and when it runs out of battery, it autonomously returns to its dock to get recharged," she said, "That's exactly what we are doing here, but the environment is much more challenging."

If her system can successfully function in a challenging underwater environment, then Mahmoudian sees even greater horizons for this technology.

"This system can be used anywhere," she said. "Robots on land, air or sea will be able to operate indefinitely. Search-and-rescue robots will be able to explore much wider areas. They will go into the Arctic and explore the effects of climate change. They will even go into space."

Findings from a new study among mice show a diet high in dried plum (prunes) completely prevents bone loss associated with spinal cord injury (SCI), while also restoring some of the bone lost following SCI. These findings are a remarkable addition to a decades-long, growing body of evidence that indicates a positive connection between dried plums and bone health.

In addition to the new SCI study, previous clinical research has demonstrated a favorable bone response to prunes among post-menopausal women, along with animal-based research that shows a similar positive response among those exposed to radiation - such as astronauts in space.

"We are seeing an exciting 'dried plum effect' on bones," said Bernard Halloran, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, University of California - San Francisco (UCSF). "In a variety of unique research scenarios, dried plum is consistently associated with a favorable bone response. No other compound appears to have the same degree of
positive impact."

The latest study, Dried Plum Mitigates Spinal Cord Injury-induced Bone Loss in Mice, was published in the July 2020 issue of the Journal of the Orthopaedic Research Society - Spine. The research was led by Halloran and Xuhui Liu, M.D., San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Orthopedic Surgery, UCSF.

The researchers conducted two separate experiments. In a prevention experiment, they looked at dietary supplementation with dried plum for mitigating the loss of bone induced by SCI. Then, in a recovery experiment, they examined if a dried plum diet could restore bone lost after SCI.

"This evaluation is particularly important as individuals who suffer SCI experience extremely rapid bone loss," said Liu. "The SCI-related bone loss then leads to an increased risk of fractures, osteoporosis, and overall morbidity and mortality."

Experiment #1: Dried Plum Prevents SCI-related Bone Loss

Liu explains that in the prevention evaluation, mice underwent SCI and were fed a diet containing 25% dried plum by weight or a control diet for up to four weeks. In vivo microCT scanning was performed three times, including at base line (immediately before SCI) and two and four weeks after SCI.

According to the findings, the dried plum diet completely prevented bone loss compared to control diets. In contrast, the control group diet resulted in 53% and 71% loss of bone volume at two and four weeks post injury, respectively.

Experiment #2: Dried Plum Restores Some SCI-related Bone Loss

In the recovery experiment, mice were divided into groups and fed a control diet for two or four weeks. Another group was fed a control diet for two weeks to allow bone loss and then switched to the dried plum diet for an additional two weeks. The findings reveal that after only two weeks, the dried plum diet partially restored bone that had already been lost to the SCI. Bone strength was also greater in the mice switched to the dried plum diet when compared to the mice fed the control diet for four weeks.

"There are two types of cells involved with bone metabolism - osteoblasts and osteoclasts. Osteoblasts help to build new bone, while osteoclasts are essentially 'bone eaters,'" and function to tear down bone," said Liu. "At this time, we believe that dried plum functions to inhibit the bone-eating osteoclasts and this results in more bone."

Following the animal study, a pilot clinical trial providing SCI patients with dried plum did not show bone response among those experiencing SCI years prior to the trial. However, investigators indicate that additional research is needed among patients immediately following SCI to determine if dried plum can mitigate the loss of bone and bone strength as it did in the newly injured mice.

Dried Plum Polyphenols Potentially Key in Positive Bone Response

According to Halloran and Liu, it remains unclear what bioactive compounds in dried plum are responsible for the beneficial effects on bone. However, the researchers suggest that the polyphenol content in dried plums may play a role.

Non-polyphenolic compounds in dried plum may also be involved, such as vitamin K and manganese. Both nutrients are recognized as contributing to the maintenance of normal bone. Future work will focus on identifying and isolating the bioactive factors in dried plums.

"In summary, dietary supplementation with dried plum or products derived from dried plum may prove to help slow the loss of bone induced by SCI, as well as to improve other bone-related conditions," said Halloran. "The consistency of bone response to dried plum is remarkable, especially considering that dried plums are a whole food approach to healthy eating, as well as being readily available, economical, safe and - by all indications - effective in supporting healthy bones."

Researchers from the University of Iowa may have discovered a safe new way to manage blood sugar non-invasively. Exposing diabetic mice to a combination of static electric and magnetic fields for a few hours per day normalizes two major hallmarks of type 2 diabetes, according to new findings published Oct. 6 in Cell Metabolism.

"We've built a remote control to manage diabetes," says Calvin Carter, PhD, one of the study's lead authors and a postdoc in the lab of senior author Val Sheffield, MD, PhD, professor of pediatrics, and of ophthalmology and visual sciences at the UI Carver College of Medicine. "Exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMFs) for relatively short periods reduces blood sugar and normalizes the body's response to insulin. The effects are long-lasting, opening the possibility of an EMF therapy that can be applied during sleep to manage diabetes all day."

The unexpected and surprising discovery may have major implications in diabetes care, particularly for patients who find current treatment regimens cumbersome.

The new study indicates that EMFs alter the balance of oxidants and antioxidants in the liver, improving the body's response to insulin. This effect is mediated by small reactive molecules that seem to function as "magnetic antennae."

Serendipity and Collaboration

The initial finding was pure serendipity. Sunny Huang, Carter's co-lead author and an MD/PhD student interested in metabolism and diabetes, needed to practice taking blood from mice and measuring blood sugar levels. Carter offered to let her borrow some of the mice he was using to study the effect of EMFs on brain and behavior in the animals.

"It was really odd because normally these animals have high blood sugar and type 2 diabetes, but all of the animals exposed to EMFs showed normal blood sugar levels," Huang says. "I told Calvin, 'There's something weird going on here.'"

The finding that these mice had normal blood sugar levels after EMF exposure was doubly strange because the mice had a genetic modification which made them diabetic.

"That's what sparked this project," Carter confirms. "Early on, we recognized that if the findings held up, they could have a major impact on diabetes care."

The findings held up. Carter and Huang, working with Sheffield and UI diabetes expert Dale Abel, MD, PhD, chair of the UI Department of Internal Medicine, found that the combined wireless application of static magnetic and electric fields modulates blood sugar in three different mouse models of type 2 diabetes. The team also showed that exposure to such fields, approximately 100 times that of the Earth's, during sleep, reversed insulin resistance within three days of treatment.

EMFs and Redox Biology

EMFs are everywhere; telecommunications, navigation, and mobile devices all use them to function. EMFs are also used in medicine, in MRIs and EEGs, for example. However, very little is known about how they affect biology. On their hunt for clues to understand the mechanisms underlying the biological effects of EMFs on blood sugar and insulin sensitivity, Carter and Huang reviewed literature from the 1970s investigating bird migration. They found that many animals sense the Earth's electromagnetic field and use it to orient themselves as well as for navigation.

"This literature pointed to a quantum biological phenomenon whereby EMFs may interact with specific molecules. There are molecules in our bodies that are thought to act like tiny magnetic antenna, enabling a biological response to EMFs," Carter says. "Some of these molecules are oxidants, which are studied in redox biology, an area of research that deals with the behavior of electrons and reactive molecules that govern cellular metabolism."

The team collaborated with Douglas Spitz , PhD, and Gary Buettner, PhD, UI professors of radiation oncology, and Jason Hansen, PhD, from Brigham Young University, all internationally recognized experts in redox biology, to help probe the action of an oxidant molecule called superoxide, which is known to play a role in type 2 diabetes.

Their experiments suggest that EMFs alter the signaling of superoxide molecules, specifically in the liver, which leads to the prolonged activation of an antioxidant response to rebalance the body's redox set point and the response to insulin.

"When we remove superoxide molecules from the liver, we completely block the effect of the EMFs on blood sugar and on the insulin response. The evidence suggests that superoxide plays an important role in this process," Carter adds.

Aiming for Human Studies

In addition to the mouse studies, the researchers also treated human liver cells with EMFs for six hours and showed that a surrogate marker for insulin sensitivity improved significantly, suggesting that the EMFs may also produce the same anti-diabetic effect in humans.

Carter and Huang are energized by the possibility of translating the findings to human patients with type 2 diabetes. In terms of safety, the World Health Organization considers low energy EMFs safe for human health. The UI study also found no evidence of any adverse side effects in mice.

The team is now working on a larger animal model to see if the EMFs produce similar effects in an animal that has a more similar size and physiology to humans. They also plan to conduct studies to understand the redox mechanism underlying the effects of EMFs. Their ultimate goal is to move into clinical trials with patients to translate the technology into a new class of therapies. With that goal in mind, Carter, Huang, and Carter's twin brother, Walter, have created a startup company called Geminii Health, with help from the UI Office for the Vice President of Research.

"Our dream is to create a new class of non-invasive medicines that remotely take control of cells to fight disease," Carter says.

The multidisciplinary research team also included scientists from the UI Departments of Radiology, Neuroscience and Pharmacology, Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, and Physics and Astronomy, as well as colleagues from Vanderbilt University.

LA JOLLA--As scientists around the world develop life-saving COVID-19 vaccines and therapies, many are still wondering exactly why the disease proves deadly in some people and mild in others.

To solve this puzzle, scientists need an in-depth understanding of how the body's many types of immune cells respond to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

A new international study led by scientists at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI), The University of Liverpool and the University of Southampton is the first to give a detailed snapshot of how the body's CD4+ T cells respond to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Among the findings, their work suggests that early in the illness, patients hospitalized with severe cases of COVID-19 develop a novel T cell subset that can potentially kill B cells and reduce antibody production.

The study, published on October 6, 2020, in Cell, provides a crucial foundation for further detailed analysis--and shows the power of a cutting-edge technique called single-cell RNA sequencing (RNA-seq).

Zooming in on individual cells

"This study employs single-cell RNA-seq to analyze RNA molecules expressed by CD4+ T cells that specifically recognize SARS-CoV-2" says LJI Associate Professor Pandurangan Vijayanand, M.D., Ph.D., who led the study with long-time collaborator Christian H Ottensmeier, M.D., Ph.D., FRCP, professor at the University of Liverpool and adjunct professor at LJI. "This lets us show, for the first time, the complete nature of the cells that respond to this virus."

"This is the beginning," says Ottensmeier, a physician scientist who co-led the study. "We needed to have a reference to look back at for further studies, and this work is novel, timely, detailed, innovative--and open."

Vijayanand and his colleagues at LJI have pioneered the use of single-cell RNA-seq in immunology. RNA-seq gives researchers a new window into the gene expression patterns that can make each person's immune response to a virus different. For the new study, the researchers focused on CD4+ T cells, which play many critical roles in fighting infection.

"CD4+ T cells play a central role in orchestrating the immune response," says study co-first author Benjamin Meckiff, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow at LJI. "They are a heterogeneous population of immune cells carrying out a wide range of functions, and we have been able to specifically analyze their response to SARS-CoV-2."

Vijayanand and Ottensmeier had planned to use single-cell RNA-seq to analyze CD4+ T cells from patients hospitalized for influenza this year. When the pandemic hit, the researchers applied in early March for approval to use samples from COVID-19 patients as well.

"We were collecting appropriate samples very early on in the pandemic," says Vijayanand.

The researchers studied samples from 40 COVID-19 patients in two groups. The hospitalized group included 22 patients (with nine treated in the ICU). The non-hospitalized group had 18 patients who had experienced milder COVID-19 symptoms.

The scientists used single-cell RNA-seq to analyze the types of CD4+ T cells that respond to SARS-COV-2 in these patients. Each type of T cell has a role in fighting viruses: some (the "helper" CD4+ T cells) alert the body to infection and recruit other immune cells, while others (TFH cells) signal B cells to make antibodies. Finally, some (Tregs) do the important job of inhibiting other T cells, keeping the immune system from damaging the body's own tissues.

"There are multiple flavors of T cells that respond to this virus," says Vijayanand.

The researchers caution that human studies are only correlative and cannot conclude that certain T cell populations are driving disease severity. They do believe some findings warrant a closer look.

For example, the scientists found that hospitalized patients have higher levels of "cytotoxic" TFH cells, which could potentially make an infection worse. Instead of doing their job and helping B cells make antibodies, the cytotoxic TFH cells seen in this study were very similar to cells that have been seen killing B cells in previous studies. The researchers then examined SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody concentrations in patients. Those with dysfunctional TFH cells also had fewer antibodies.

"The TFH cells in hospitalized patients displayed gene signatures that suggest they are dysfunctional and aren't giving the help to B cells that we would expect," says Meckiff.

A baseline for future investigations

Overall, the study gives the scientific community a starting place to explore CD4+ T cell responses to SARS-CoV-2, and the work establishes a baseline for comparing responses in people over time or with different disease severities. To support these efforts, the researchers made their data immediately available online, just two months after the project began.

"We had to be quick," says study co-first author Ciro Ramírez-Suástegui, a bioinformatics specialist at LJI. "Having the data available for everyone is essential."

"There's definitely more to explore," adds study co-author Vicente Fajardo, an LJI research technician who spearheaded the bioinformatics analysis alongside Ramírez-Suástegui.

In fact, the data and the research method could be important for more than infectious disease research. Ottensmeier explains that a better understanding of how the body responds to viruses can also guide future research into cancer immunotherapies, which would use the body's own immune system to target and kill cancer cells.

"With this study, we levied our long-standing collaboration for a new human health puzzle," says Ottensmeier. "Going forward, we can extend this understanding of what's going on in the blood in response to new viruses to understanding what goes on in the tissue when our immune system deals with cancer."

Ottensmeier and Vijayanand are working on further analysis of COVID-19 patients and also plan to expand their collaboration with the wider University of Liverpool community.

The presence of diamonds in an outcrop atop an unrealized gold deposit in Canada's Far North mirrors the association found above the world's richest gold mine, according to University of Alberta research that fills in blanks about the thermal conditions of Earth's crust three billion years ago.

"The diamonds we have found so far are small and not economic, but they occur in ancient sediments that are an exact analog of the world's biggest gold deposit--the Witwatersrand Goldfields of South Africa, which has produced more than 40 per cent of the gold ever mined on Earth," said Graham Pearson, researcher in the Faculty of Science and Canada Excellence Research Chair Laureate in Arctic Resources.

"Diamonds and gold are very strange bedfellows. They hardly ever appear in the same rock, so this new find may help to sweeten the attractiveness of the original gold discovery if we can find more diamonds."

Pearson explained that ex-N.W.T. Geological Survey scientist Val Jackson alerted his group to an unusual outcropping on the Arctic coast that has close similarities to the Witwatersrand gold deposits.

Pearson said this outcrop of rocks, known as conglomerates, are basically the erosion product of old mountain chains that get deposited in braided river channels.

"They're high-energy deposits that are good at carrying gold, and they're good at carrying diamonds," he said. "Our feeling was if the analogies are that close, then maybe there are diamonds in the Nunavut conglomerate also."

Pearson said finding new diamond deposits in Canada's North is critical in Canada continuing to host a $2.5-billion-per-year diamond mining industry.

So, on a hunch, Pearson used the last of his Canada Excellence Research Chair funding that brought him to the U of A, along with funding from the Metal Earth Project and the National Science Foundation, and--accompanied by post-doctoral diamond researcher Adrien Vizinet and former U of A grad student Jesse Reimink, now a professor at Penn State University--travelled to Nunavut.

Once at the site, the group--with the assistance of Silver Range Resources, whose CEO Mike Power is also a U of A alumnus--bashed off a modest 15 kilograms of the conglomerate and dated these rocks using the state-of-the-art mass spectrometry equipment at the U of A, which established their deposition to be about three billion years ago.

The group promptly delivered their samples to the Saskatchewan Research Council, the world leader in quantifying how many diamonds are in a rock.

Pearson remembers the precise moment about a year later, when the council's Cristiana Mircea, who visits Edmonton to teach Diamond Exploration Research Training School (DERTS) students about diamond indicator mineral identification, matter-of-factly told him the sample produced three diamonds.

"My jaw hit the floor," said Pearson. "Normally people would take hundreds of kilograms, if not tons of samples, to try and find that many diamonds. We managed to find diamonds in 15 kilos of rock that we sampled with a sledgehammer on a surface outcrop."

Though the diamonds found are quite small--less than a millimetre in diameter--he said the geologic implications are immense.

First, Pearson said there must have been kimberlite or rock like kimberlite present to carry diamonds to the Earth's surface in the ancient Earth--a notion many people have doubted.

Kimberlite pipes are the passageways that allow magma to erupt diamonds and other rocks and minerals from the mantle through the crust and onto the Earth's surface.

It also helps us understand under what conditions these peculiar kimberlite rocks can form.

Pearson said an Italian collaborator, Fabrizio Nestola from the University of Padua, managed to find an inclusion--a non-diamond mineral--in one of the diamond samples. From that, Suzette Timmerman, a researcher in the Canadian Centre for Isotopic Microanalysis and a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship recipient, began building a theory that the diamonds had to be derived from a small, deep but cool lithospheric root, which is the thickest part of the continental plate.

"This is something completely unexpected from what we think conditions were like three billion years ago on Earth," said Pearson.

He explained that stable diamonds exist only in cool parts of the mantle, so it suggests there must have been very deep, perhaps 200-kilometre-thick cold roots beneath parts of the continent very early in Earth's history.

Pearson said despite the U of A's expertise in dating diamonds around the world, there's always an argument about the relationship between the inclusion and the diamond deposit.

"Here, there's no argument because we know when those rocks were eroded onto the Earth's surface," he said.

"It tells us there's an older source, a primary source of diamonds that must have been eroded to form this diamond-plus-gold deposit," he said.

This also means mining diamonds in the area would not necessarily require very deep mines, if more economic outcrops of these rocks can be found.

"We went up there on a float plane, bashed a piece of rock off with a sledgehammer and found three diamonds," he said. "That's actually one of the most astounding parts of this discovery."

He added that the provincial government, through Alberta Innovates, clearly realized universities can help a lot in expanding and diversifying Alberta's economy into the mining sector.

"The government's investment enables us to chase hunches that might otherwise be difficult for industry to go and look at."

Pearson pointed to the Collaborative Research and Training Experience grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, which almost instantly turned the U of A into the world's leading diamond research institution thanks to the formation of DERTS.

"Alberta has several potential diamond deposits and areas ripe for further exploration," he said. "I believe the University of Alberta can play a key role in helping to find and establish diamond and other mineral mines in Alberta."

Pearson said more research is continuing on similar nearby outcrops being developed by Silver Range Resources in collaboration with the Metal Earth Project, the Nunavut government and Penn State University, to establish the extent of the diamonds and gold in these rocks, and the possible primary sources of these minerals.

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have built a squid-like robot that can swim untethered, propelling itself by generating jets of water. The robot carries its own power source inside its body. It can also carry a sensor, such as a camera, for underwater exploration.

The researchers detail their work in a recent issue of Bioinspiration and Biomimetics.

"Essentially, we recreated all the key features that squids use for high-speed swimming," said Michael T. Tolley, one of the paper's senior authors and a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC San Diego. "This is the first untethered robot that can generate jet pulses for rapid locomotion like the squid and can achieve these jet pulses by changing its body shape, which improves swimming efficiency."

This squid robot is made mostly from soft materials such as acrylic polymer, with a few rigid, 3D printed and laser cut parts. Using soft robots in underwater exploration is important to protect fish and coral, which could be damaged by rigid robots. But soft robots tend to move slowly and have difficulty maneuvering.

The research team, which includes roboticists and experts in computer simulations as well as experimental fluid dynamics, turned to cephalopods as a good model to solve some of these issues. Squid, for example, can reach the fastest speeds of any aquatic invertebrates thanks to a jet propulsion mechanism.

Their robot takes a volume of water into its body while storing elastic energy in its skin and flexible ribs. It then releases this energy by compressing its body and generates a jet of water to propel itself.

At rest, the squid robot is shaped roughly like a paper lantern, and has flexible ribs, which act like springs, along its sides. The ribs are connected to two circular plates at each end of the robot. One of them is connected to a nozzle that both takes in water and ejects it when the robot's body contracts. The other plate can carry a water-proof camera or a different type of sensor.

Engineers first tested the robot in a water testbed in the lab of Professor Geno Pawlak, in the UC San Diego Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Then they took it out for a swim in one of the tanks at the UC San Diego Birch Aquarium at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

They demonstrated that the robot could steer by adjusting the direction of the nozzle. As with any underwater robot, waterproofing was a key concern for electrical components such as the battery and camera.They clocked the robot's speed at about 18 to 32 centimeters per second (roughly half a mile per hour), which is faster than most other soft robots.

"After we were able to optimize the design of the robot so that it would swim in a tank in the lab, it was especially exciting to see that the robot was able to successfully swim in a large aquarium among coral and fish, demonstrating its feasibility for real-world applications," said Caleb Christianson, who led the study as part of his Ph.D. work in Tolley's research group. He is now a senior medical devices engineering at San Diego-based Dexcom.

Researchers conducted several experiments to find the optimal size and shape for the nozzle that would propel the robot. This in turn helped them increase the robot's efficiency and its ability to maneuver and go faster. This was done mostly by simulating this kind of jet propulsion, work that was led by Professor Qiang Zhu and his team in the Department of Structural Engineering at UC San Diego. The team also learned more about how energy can be stored in the elastic component of the robot's body and skin, which is later released to generate a jet.

With its dazzling system of icy rings, Saturn has been a subject of fascination since ancient times. Even now the sixth planet from the sun holds many mysteries, partly because its distance away makes direct observation difficult and partly because this gas giant (which is multiple times the size of our planet) has a composition and atmosphere, mostly hydrogen and helium, so unlike that of Earth. Learning more about it could yield some insights into the creation of the solar system itself.

One of Saturn's mysteries involves the massive storm in the shape of a hexagon at its north pole. The six-sided vortex is an atmospheric phenomenon that has been fascinating planetary scientists since its discovery in the 1980s by the American Voyager program, and the subsequent visit in 2006 by the U.S.-European Cassini-Huygens mission. The storm is about 20,000 miles in diameter and is bordered by bands of winds blowing up to 300 miles per hour. A hurricane like it doesn't exist on any other known planet or moon.

Two of the many scientists-turned-interplanetary-storm-chasers working to uncover the secrets of this marvel are Jeremy Bloxham, the Mallinckrodt Professor of Geophysics, and research associate Rakesh K. Yadav, who works in Bloxham's lab in Harvard's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. In a recently published paper in PNAS, the researchers began to wrap their heads around how the vortex came to be.

"We see storms on Earth regularly and they are always spiraling, sometimes circular, but never something with hexagon segments or polygons with edges," Yadav said. "That is really striking and completely unexpected. [The question on Saturn is] how did such a large system form and how can such a large system stay unchanged on this large planet?"

By creating a 3D simulation model of Saturn's atmosphere, Yadev and Bloxham believe are they closing in on an answer.

In their paper, the scientists say that the unnatural-looking hurricane occurs when atmospheric flows deep within Saturn create large and small vortices (aka cyclones) that surround a larger horizontal jet stream blowing east near the planet's north pole that also has a number of storms within it. The smaller storms interact with the larger system and as a result effectively pinch the eastern jet and confine it to the top of the planet. The pinching process warps the stream into a hexagon.

"This jet is going around and around the planet, and it has to coexist with these localized [smaller] storms," said Yadav, the study's lead author. Think of it like this: "Imagine we have a rubber band and we place a bunch of smaller rubber bands around it and then we just squeeze the entire thing from the outside. That central ring is going to be compressed by some inches and form some weird shape with a certain number of edges. That's basically the physics of what's happening. We have these smaller storms and they're basically pinching the larger storms at the polar region and since they have to coexist, they have to somehow find a space to basically house each system. By doing that, they end up making this polygonal shape."

The model the researchers created suggests the storm is thousands of kilometers deep, well beneath Saturn's cloud tops. The simulation imitates the planet's outer layer and covers only about 10 percent of its radius. In a monthlong experiment the scientists ran, the computer simulation showed that a phenomenon called deep thermal convection -- which happens when heat is transferred from one place to another by the movement of fluids or gases -- can unexpectedly give rise to atmospheric flows that create large polar cyclones and a high-latitude eastward jet pattern. When these mix at the top it forms the unexpected shape, and because the storms form deep within the planet, the scientists said it makes the hexagon furious and persistent.

Convection is the same force that causes tornadoes and hurricanes on Earth. It's similar to boiling a pot of water: The heat from the bottom transfers up to the colder surface, causing the top to bubble. This is what is believed to cause many of the storms on Saturn, which, as a gas giant, doesn't have a solid surface like Earth's.

"The hexagonal flow pattern on Saturn is a striking example of turbulent self-organization," the researchers wrote in the June paper. "Our model simultaneously and self-consistently produces alternating zonal jets, the polar cyclone, and hexagon-like polygonal structures similar to those observed on Saturn."

What the model didn't produce, however, was a hexagon. Instead, the shape the researchers saw was a nine-side polygon that moved faster than Saturn's storm. Still, the shape serves as proof of concept for the overall thesis on how the majestic shape is formed and why it has been relatively unchanged for almost 40 years.

Interest in Saturn's hexagon storm goes back to 1988, when astronomer David A. Godfrey analyzed flyby data from the Voyager spacecraft's 1980 and 1981 Saturn passes and reported the discovery. Decades later, from 2004 to 2017, NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured some of the clearest and best-known images of the anomaly before plunging into the planet.

Relatively little is known about the storm because the planet takes 30 years to orbit the sun, leaving either pole in darkness for that time. Cassini, for instance, only took thermal images of the storm when it first arrived in 2004. Even when the sun shines on Saturn's northern pole, the clouds are so thick that light doesn't penetrate deep into the planet.

Regardless, many hypotheses exist on how the storm formed. Most center on two schools of thought: One suggests that the hexagon is shallow and only extends hundreds of kilometers deep; the other suggests the zonal jets are thousands of kilometers deep.

Yadev and Bloxham's findings build on the latter theory, but need to include more atmospheric data from Saturn and further refine their model to create a more accurate picture of what's happening with the storm. Overall, the duo hope their findings can help paint a portrait of activity on Saturn in general.

"From a scientific point of view, the atmosphere is really important in determining how quickly a planet cools. All these things you see on the surface, they're basically manifestations of the planet cooling down and the planet cooling down tells us a lot about what's happening inside of the planet," Yadav said. "The scientific motivation is basically understanding how Saturn came to be and how it evolves over time."

Challenging a 75-year-old notion about how and when reptiles evolved during the past 300 million-plus years involves a lot of camerawork, loads of CT scanning, and, most of all, thousands of miles of travel. Just check the stamps in Tiago R. Simões ' passport.

Simões is the Alexander Agassiz Postdoctoral Fellow in the lab of Harvard paleontologist Stephanie Pierce. From 2013 to 2018, he traveled to more than 20 countries and more than 50 different museums to take CT scans and photos of nearly 1,000 reptilian fossils, some hundreds of millions of years old. It amounted to about 400 days of active collection, helping form what is believed to be the largest available timeline on the evolution of major living and extinct reptile groups.

Now, a statistical analysis of that vast database is helping scientists better understand the evolution of these cold-blooded vertebrates by contradicting a widely held theory that major transitions in evolution always happened in big, quick (geologically speaking) bursts, triggered by major environmental shifts. The findings are described in a recently published paper in Nature Communications.

In it, researchers show that the evolution of extinct lineages of reptiles from more than 250 million years ago took place through many small bursts of morphological changes, such as developing armored body plans or wings for gliding, over a period of 50 million years instead of during a single major evolutionary event, as previously thought. They also show that the early evolution of most lizard lineages was a continuously slower and more incremental process than previously understood.

"It wasn't a sudden jump that kind of established the wide diversity that we see today in reptiles," Simões said. "There was an initial jump, but relatively small, and then a sustained increase over time of those rates [of evolution] and different diversity values."

Evidence of this has been seen in other types of animals, but this is the first time it's been seen in reptiles -- one of the most diverse animals on the planet, with more than 10,000 different species and a dizzying variety of abilities and traits. Consider how some lizard species can freeze solid overnight then thaw the next morning, or how turtles grow protective armor.

The findings run contrary to the evolutionary theory of adaptive radiation that Harvard paleontologist George G. Simpson popularized in the 1940s, which sought to explain the origins of the planet's biological diversity. Adaptive radiation has been the focus of intense investigation for decades, but wasn't until recent years that the technology, methods, and data have existed to precisely measure rapid rates of evolution in the fossil record in terms of different animal species, morphologies, and at the molecular level using DNA.

Researchers of this study also included Pierce, the Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and curator of vertebrate paleontology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology; Oksana Vernygora, a graduate student from the University of Alberta in Canada; and Professor Michael Wayne Caldwell at Alberta.

Simões traveled to almost all of the world's major natural history museums to collect the data for the study, including the national natural history museums in London, Paris, Berlin, Ottawa, Beijing, and Tokyo. In the U.S., he visited the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology.

The scientists believe that by understanding how animals evolve over longer periods of time, they can glean a number of lessons on ecology and how organisms are affected by environmental changes. Using the database, researchers can determine when major reptile lineages or morphologies originated, see how those changes affected reptile DNA, and learn important lessons about how species were impacted by historical events.

Reptiles, for instance, have survived three major mass extinction events. The biggest was the Permian-Triassic mass extinction about 250 million years ago that killed about 90 percent of the planet's species, earning it the moniker the Great Dying. It's believed to have been caused by a buildup of natural greenhouse gases.

The timeline researchers created found that the rates at which reptiles were evolving and the anatomical differences among them before the Great Dying were nearly as high as after the event. However, it was only much after the Great Dying that reptiles became dominant in many ecosystems and extremely diverse in terms of the number of different species.

That finding cemented that fast rates of anatomical change don't need to coincide with genetic diversity or an abundance of species (called taxonomic diversity), and further rebutted adaptive radiation as the only explanation for the origin of new animal groups and body plans. The researchers also note that it took reptiles almost 10 million years to recover to previous levels of anatomical diversity.

"That kind of tells you on the broad scheme of things and on a global scale how much impact, throughout the history of life, sudden environmental changes may have," Simões said.

Further evidence that contradicted adaptive radiation included similar but surprising findings on the origins of snakes, which achieved the major aspects of their skinny, elongated body plans early in their evolution about 170 million years ago (but didn't fully lose their limbs for another 105 million years). They also underwent rapid changes to their skulls about 170 to 165 million years ago that led to such powerful and flexible mouths that today they can swallow whole prey many times their size. But while snakes experienced the fastest rates of anatomical change in the history of reptile evolution, these changes did not coincide with increases in taxonomic diversity or high rates of molecular evolution as predicted by adaptive radiations, the researchers said.

The scientists weren't able to pinpoint why this mismatch happens, and suggested more research is needed. In particular they want to understand how body plans evolve and how changes in DNA relate to it.

"We can see better now what are the big changes in the history of life and especially in the history of reptile life on Earth," Simões said. "We will keep digging."

AURORA, Colo. -- Olfactory sensory neurons are nasal neurons that make use of hundreds of different types of odorant receptors to analyze odorous chemicals in our external world and send that information to our brain. These neurons have the unusual ability to undergo turnover throughout life - a process understood to happen due to the special vulnerability of these neurons to environmental insults, such as viruses.

The paper, out today from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and published in Cell Reports, explores whether this process has a function beyond just replacement. After lessening odors though one side of the nose, researchers examined the birth rates of different subtypes of olfactory sensory neurons in mice to determine how odor stimulation can affect the regeneration process. Results show that diminished odor stimulation reduces the number of newly-generated neurons that express particular odorant receptors, indicating a selective alteration in the neurogenesis of these neuron subtypes.

"This is surprising because when a new neuron is born, the receptor that it chooses, and thus its subtype, is thought to be random" said Stephen Santoro, PhD, University of Colorado School of Medicine assistant professor and lead author. "Our results show that the birth of some neurons depends on odor stimulation. These findings challenge the current model that the subtype identities of new neurons are random. We think this paper provides evidence that what is currently understood about how olfactory sensory neurons develop is incomplete. It also provides hints that life-long olfactory sensory neurogenesis may have an important adaptive function in addition to simple repair."

The discovery of stimulation-dependent neurogenesis may also have implications for understanding how our sense of smell changes as we age. "One of the reasons we're interested in better understanding how olfactory sensory neurogenesis is controlled is because, as we age, the rate of olfactory neurogenesis slows down, resulting in a phenomenon known as age-related olfactory dysfunction in a large percentage of people," says Santoro. "An impaired sense of smell is a big problem in terms nutrition and safety. Smell is important for stimulating appetite; and without it, people can't discriminate foods that may be harmful. This problem is recognized as a significant quality-of-life issue."

NOAA/NASA's Suomi NPP satellite captured another startling image of the August Complex of fires that has grown to over 1,000,000 acres burned (1,006,140 acres total) and because of that grim milestone the complex has been dubbed a "gigafire." The August Complex is only 58% contained. Inciweb reports that: "In the northeast zone, active behavior continues. Structures in Hidden Valley, Trinity Pines/Post Mountain, Wildwood and Platina are threatened by fire spread. Short range spotting and fire spread toward Hidden Valley has increased potential for impact to structures."

Another view that can be captured by Suomi NPP satellite is a false-color image. The false-color image is collected by the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) instrument suite using corrected reflectance bands. Burned areas or fire-affected areas are characterized by deposits of charcoal and ash, removal of vegetation and/or the alteration of vegetation structure. When bare soil becomes exposed, the brightness in Band 1 may increase, but that may be offset by the presence of black carbon residue; the near infrared (Band 2) will become darker, and Band 7 becomes more reflective. When assigned to red/brown in the image, Band 7 will show burn scars as deep or bright reddish brown depending on the type of vegetation burned, the amount of residue, or the completeness of the burn. It is hard to see clearly due to the massive amounts of smoke covering the landscape.

Inciweb reports the following weather concerns for this fires: "Hot and dry conditions persist. Smoke remains very thick in the lower valleys with visibility reduced under a mile. Temperatures will be 88-93 in the valleys and 75 to 80 in the higher elevations. The humidity will be 10-15% with 4-8 mph wind."

A new report suggests that lingering "brain fog" and other neurological symptoms after COVID -19 recovery may be due to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), an effect observed in past human coronavirus outbreaks such as SARS and MERS.

People who have recovered from COVID-19 sometimes experience lingering difficulties in concentration, as well as headaches, anxiety, fatigue or sleep disruptions. Patients may fear that the infection has permanently damaged their brains, but researchers say that's not necessarily the case.

A paper co-authored by clinical professor and neuropsychologist Andrew Levine, MD, of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and graduate student Erin Kaseda, of Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, in Chicago, explores the historical data on survivors of previous coronaviruses, which caused severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS).

The paper was published in The Clinical Neuropsychologist.

"The idea is to raise awareness among neuropsychologists that PTSD is something you might want to consider when evaluating persistent cognitive and emotional difficulties among COVID-
19 survivors," said Dr. Levine.

"When we see someone for neuropsychological testing, we expect them to be at their best, relatively speaking," Dr. Levine said. "If we identify a psychiatric illness during our evaluation, and if we believe that condition's symptoms are interfering with their ability to perform at their best, we would want that treated first, and then retest them once it's under control."

If the symptoms are due, even partially, to a psychiatric condition such as PTSD, treatment will help manage those symptoms, and provide a clearer view of any underlying brain issues.

"Once they have treatment, and hopefully have some remission of their psychiatric symptoms, if the cognitive complaints and the deficits on neuropsychological tests are still there, then that's more evidence that something else is going on," Kaseda said. "It's going to be important for clinicians across the board to be keeping up with the literature that's coming out, to make sure they have the most up to date information as these survivors are starting to present for neuropsychological testing."

Kaseda began pursuing this question based on her experience working with patients with mild traumatic brain injury, such as concussion. "When these symptoms persist for months or years after the original injury, it's much more likely to be due to the presence of a psychiatric disorder," she said.

A review of data from the SARS and MERS outbreaks showed that those survivors had heightened risk for PTSD.
In the case of COVID-19, the symptoms of PTSD may arise in response to the invasive measures needed to treat the patients, including intubation and ventilation, which can be traumatic for fearful patients. Other times, delirium causes patients with COVID-19 to suffer hallucinations, and the memory of these terrifying sensations continues to plague the recovered patient.

In addition to patients who have been hospitalized, frontline health-care providers can be similarly affected due to the constant stress and fear they face at work. And for some people, the anxiety of living through a pandemic, being isolated from friends, and battling the constant fear of an invisible threat can deliver a similar blow to thinking and memory skills.

While a PTSD diagnosis might not sound like good news, there are many available treatments for the disorder, including psychotherapy and medications. By comparison, researchers are still working to understand the direct neurological effects of COVID-19. "Treatment options (for COVID) are still quite a way's out, because it's still an evolving situation," Kaseda said.

"We don't actually know anything yet from survivors of COVID-19," Kaseda said. "Until we have that data, it's very hard to say what actual percentage of patients are going to have cognitive complaints because of direct effects of the virus, because of medical intervention, or because of psychiatric concerns."