Culture

"It's exciting. I love this stuff!" said Bashar Badran, Ph.D. "This is so fun."

Not many researchers get the chance to float, weightless, 32,000 feet above the Earth. Medical University of South Carolina scientists usually conduct research in labs - controlled settings where they can carefully repeat experiments to double-check results. But with an eye toward what real astronauts might experience in future space travel, a few scientists recently took to the skies to do brain research in zero gravity.

Neuroradiologist Donna Roberts, M.D., and neuroscientist Badran collaborated on the project to conduct transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, on themselves and a group of volunteer assistants, mostly from the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in the MUSC College of Medicine.

Roberts has spent years studying how zero gravity and microgravity affect the human brain - in fact, that was her motivation for going to medical school. This experiment was primarily a test case to show that TMS could be safely used in zero gravity and to compare participants' results under the force of Earth's gravity to their results in zero gravity.

During a TMS procedure, a magnetic pulse is sent through the skull into the brain to stimulate electrical activity. The pulse is highly localized - it doesn't reach the entire brain. The TMS administrator places a coil over the subject's head; when the subject's thumb twitches, the administrator knows the TMS coil is in the right spot.

Here on Earth, TMS is FDA approved for hard-to-treat depression. Scientists at MUSC and elsewhere are also investigating using TMS for post-traumatic stress disorder; to treat cravings and pain in people under treatment for opioid use disorder; and in physical and mental rehab for stroke patients. Depression could be a concern for people on long-term missions far from Earth who don't expect to set foot on solid ground for years, and Roberts and Badran said TMS could be a useful and space-saving tool to pack on long-term space missions, rather than an entire pharmacy's worth of medications.

"Ultimately, you don't want to go to Mars or an interplanetary mission with all these medications. And you can't easily set up a chemistry lab to synthesize all of them. So TMS would be a very clear, easy solution for neuropsychiatric issues. That's the long 20-year vision," Badran said.

It also has the potential to keep astronauts in good shape cognitively on long-term flights so they're ready to get to work when they land on the moon or the red planet.

But first, researchers must figure out what a "normal" reading in zero gravity should look like.

It's already known that medications metabolize differently when a person is in space. Astronauts who take sleeping pills, for example, have to figure out through trial and error the proper dosage in space, Roberts said.

And Roberts' previous research, comparing astronauts' brain MRIs before and after a trip to the International Space Station, showed physical changes in the brain that correlated to changes in the astronauts' motor skills and cognitive performance.

"If there were a way to keep the brain in shape on the way to Mars, that would be very useful. That's why NASA is interested in this technology. But in order to use it in space, we have to understand, 'Is there a difference in the way astronauts respond to it here on Earth versus up in space?' just like the difference they experience in medications. So that was what this study was really based on," she said.

And this is where the scientists got to have a little fun. To test TMS in zero gravity, they would board a special plane operated by Zero Gravity Corporation, which offers zero gravity flights for personal adventure, media productions and research.

The plane, dubbed G-Force One, flies a series of arcs, heading upward at 45 degrees and then back down at 45 degrees. For the brief 20 to 30 seconds between going up and coming down, everyone in the plane becomes weightless. Anything not bolted down floats up. And that mere 20- to 30-second window was the time during which Roberts and Badran had to run their TMS test.

They would have a total of 30 arcs, or parabolas, to work with. There were 10 people in their group, split between men and women, and each person needed to do the test at least twice to get a good sample.

But first, there were some logistics to overcome. In the lab, there can be a lot of fussing with the equipment to get the coil to the exact right spot on someone's head. With such a short window for performing the test on the plane, there wouldn't be time to futz with the machinery. They needed a foolproof way to ensure the coil would be in the right place at the right time.

"We all really focused on the small things," Badran said. "This study was really a one-shot deal. The flight was prebooked. Everything was set. We had a fixed start date, a fixed time period to do the experiment and everything had to go perfectly - and everything hinged on creating this thing that didn't exist."
So Badran got hold of a motorcycle helmet and a Dremel saw and got to work. He found he could fit a TMS coil into a niche he cut into the helmet, but the contraption was too heavy and wobbly to be practical.

Next, he turned to using fiberglass casting tape, the same material used to make casts for broken bones. Each participant sat for a fitting, and Badran crafted a lightweight, durable helmet that fit the individual's head, with an attachment area for the TMS coil that ensured the magnetic pulse would reach the right spot on that individual's brain - no tinkering required.

Roberts and Badran's volunteer team consisted of people from the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences with experience administering TMS, since they all would need to take turns as both subjects and administrators. They wanted people who were roughly the age of actual astronauts, so the average age was in the 30s.

"Everyone that was a flier, they didn't just get to come and fly and have fun. They were actively part of the research team, too," Badran said.

Roberts and Badran knew they had one chance to make the experiment work. These flights are costly, and the bulk of the research grant was going toward that expense. In each 20 to 30 seconds of weightlessness, they would need to start the software on their computers, which would send a signal to the coil, register a thumb twitch and then report back that the TMS had worked. If it didn't register a thumb twitch, then the system would increase power and send another signal until a thumb twitch registered. But if it didn't work at all, they would have to troubleshoot on the fly - or face the possibility of the entire experiment being a complete failure.

The MUSC group shared the flight with three other organizations conducting space research. Because the TMS machines pulled power from the aircraft, Badran had to run a test on the ground first, at full power, to ensure they wouldn't overload the plane. It was pretty close, he said, but the flight crew gave them the go-ahead. So up they went.

The handcrafted helmets performed beautifully. They got at least three measurements for each person, which they could compare to multiple measurements taken on the ground before and after the flight. And as a bonus, the experiment was way more fun than your typical lab experiment.

Their paper, published Sept. 21 in Nature Microgravity, shows that less electromagnetism was needed in zero gravity than on Earth to induce a thumb twitch. That suggests neurophysical changes happening in the brain, but there are several possible explanations, ranging from the brain physically shifting within the skull to neurons reacting more strongly to stimulation. There's more to be learned, they said.

It's an issue near to Roberts's heart, as she has argued multiple times, most recently in an opinion piece in The Lancet Neurology, for more research into brain changes in space explorers.

Having shown that TMS is possible in zero gravity, the team is well-equipped to continue finding answers to these questions.

One feature of the COVID-19 virus that makes it so difficult to contain is that it can be easily spread to others by a person who has yet to show any signs of infection. The carrier of the virus might feel perfectly well and go about their daily business--taking the virus with them to work, to the home of a family member, or to public gatherings.

A crucial part of the global effort to stem the spread of the pandemic, therefore, is the development of tests that can rapidly identify infections in people who are not yet symptomatic.

Now, Caltech researchers have developed a new type of multiplexed test (a test that combines multiple kinds of data) with a low-cost sensor that may enable the at-home diagnosis of a COVID infection through rapid analysis of small volumes of saliva or blood, without the involvement of a medical professional, in less than 10 minutes.

The research was conducted in the lab of Wei Gao, assistant professor in the Andrew and Peggy Cherng department of medical engineering.. Previously, Gao and his team have developed wireless sensors that can monitor conditions such as gout, as well as stress levels, through the detection of extremely low levels of specific compounds in blood, saliva, or sweat.

Gao's sensors are made of graphene, a sheet-like form of carbon. A plastic sheet etched with a laser generates a 3D graphene structure with tiny pores. Those pores create a large amount of surface area on the sensor, which makes it sensitive enough to detect, with high accuracy, compounds that are only present in very small amounts. In this sensor, the graphene structures are coupled with antibodies, immune system molecules that are sensitive to specific proteins, like those on the surface of a COVID virus, for example.

Previous versions of the sensor were impregnated with antibodies for the hormone cortisol, which is associated with stress, and uric acid, which at high concentrations causes gout. The new version of the sensor, which Gao has named SARS-CoV-2 RapidPlex, contains antibodies and proteins that allow it to detect the presence of the virus itself; antibodies created by the body to fight the virus; and chemical markers of inflammation, which indicate the severity of the COVID-19 infection.

"This is the only telemedicine platform I've seen that can give information about the infection in three types of data with a single sensor," Gao says. "In as little as a few minutes, we can simultaneously check these levels, so we get a full picture about the infection, including early infection, immunity, and severity."

Established COVID-testing technologies usually take hours or even days to produce results. Those technologies also require expensive, complicated equipment, whereas Gao's system is simple and compact.

So far, the device has been tested only in the lab with a small number of blood and saliva samples obtained for medical research purposes from individuals who have tested positive or negative for COVID-19. Though preliminary results indicate that the sensor is highly accurate, a larger-scale test with real-world patients rather than laboratory samples must be performed, Gao cautions, to definitively determine its accuracy.

With the pilot study now completed, Gao next plans to test how long the sensors last with regular use, and to begin testing them with hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Following in-hospital testing, he would like to study the suitability of the tests for in-home use. Following testing, the device will need to receive regulatory approval before it is available for widespread use at home.

"Our ultimate aim really is home use," he says. "In the following year, we plan to mail them to high-risk individuals for at-home testing. And in the future, this platform could be modified for other types of infectious disease testing at home."

PHILADELPHIA -- A new, rare genetic form of dementia has been discovered by a team of Penn Medicine researchers. This discovery also sheds light on a new pathway that leads to protein build up in the brain -- which causes this newly discovered disease, as well as related neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's Disease -- that could be targeted for new therapies. The study was published today in Science.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by a buildup of proteins, called tau proteins, in certain parts of the brain. Following an examination of human brain tissue samples from a deceased donor with an unknown neurodegenerative disease, researchers discovered a novel mutation in the Valosin-containing protein (VCP) gene in the brain, a buildup of tau proteins in areas that were degenerating, and neurons with empty holes in them, called vacuoles. The team named the newly discovered disease Vacuolar Tauopathy (VT)--a neurodegenerative disease now characterized by the accumulation of neuronal vacuoles and tau protein aggregates.

"Within a cell, you have proteins coming together, and you need a process to also be able to pull them apart, because otherwise everything kind of gets gummed up and doesn't work. VCP is often involved in those cases where it finds proteins in an aggregate and pulls them apart," Edward Lee, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. "We think that the mutation impairs the proteins' normal ability to break aggregates apart."

The researchers noted that the tau protein they observed building up looked very similar to the tau protein aggregates seen in Alzheimer's disease. With these similarities, they aimed to uncover how this VCP mutation is causing this new disease -- to aid in finding treatments for this disease and others. Rare genetic causes of diseases can very often offer insight into more prevalent ones.

The researchers first examined the proteins themselves, in addition to studying cells and an animal model, and found that the tau protein buildup is, in fact, due to the VCP mutation.

"What we found in this study is a pattern we've never seen before, together with a mutation that's never been described before," Lee said. "Given that this mutation inhibits VCP activity, that suggest the converse might be true -- that if you're able to boost VCP activity, that could help break up the protein aggregates. And if that's true, we may be able to break up tau aggregates not only for this extremely rare disease, but for Alzheimer's disease and other diseases associated with tau protein aggregation."

Sitting atop power transformers are wavy shaped bushing systems that play a critical role in supplying communities with electricity. However, these objects are also susceptible to breaking during earthquakes. Once damaged, bushings can cause widespread outages and burden the state with expensive repairs.

In a recent study, Texas A&M University researchers have shown that during high seismic activity, the structural integrity of bushing systems can be better maintained by reinforcing their bases with steel stiffeners. Also, by using probability-based loss assessment studies, they found that the economic burden due to damage to bushing systems from earthquakes is up to 10 times lower for steel-reinforced transformer bushing systems compared to other bushing configurations.

"Transformer bushing systems are vital to electrical substation networks, and these components are especially vulnerable in high-seismic regions, like in California or parts of the northeast," said Dr. Maria Koliou, assistant professor in the Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. "We have conducted a full risk and loss assessment of the impact of damaged bushings in terms of cost and time to recovery for electrical power networks."

The details of the study are provided in the July issue of the journal Structure and Infrastructure Engineering.

An electrical bushing is a sleeve-like covering that surrounds a conductor carrying a high voltage electrical current. Generally found at close proximity to transformers or circuit breakers, these systems ensure that electric currents do not leak out of metal wires. Thus, bushings are made of insulators, porcelain in particular, and are filled with mineral oil.

Despite their ability to withstand strong electric fields, bushings are brittle and can crack easily in the event of high seismic activity. Consequently, any damage to them is an electrical hazard. More extensive structural injuries to the bushing system can cause widespread power outages and high replacement costs.

One possible way to mitigate damage and thereby repair is by strengthening the bushing with steel plates. Just like a strong foundation can improve a building's stability, steel flexural stiffeners as close as possible to the bushing base has been shown to improve bushing stability during earthquakes. However, Koliou said a more comprehensive analysis of the impact of seismic vulnerability on bushing systems in terms of recovery costs has been lacking.

To address this gap, Koliou and her graduate student, Andrew Brennan, conducted a probabilistic analysis to compare the economic losses incurred from the damage of bushings for different intensities of ground motions. They investigated bushings of different geometries representative of medium- and high-voltage scenarios. More importantly, some bushings had steel plate stiffeners and others did not in their original designs.

Koliou and Brennan found that the economic losses for the earthquake intensities considered in the study were 33-55% lesser when the bushings' bases are reinforced with steel plates. In fact, the expected annual losses for bushings without the steel stiffeners were at least 2.5-10 times larger when subjected to different ground motions.

"Our results show that steel stiffeners are effective at preventing bushings from damage, but what 'effective' means for a structural engineer can have little meaning for someone who is not. We wanted to generalize our findings in more practical terms for stakeholders other than engineers," said Koliou. "And so, we quantified the benefit of using steel stiffeners in terms of a dollar value and the time it would take to recover for a variety of earthquake scenarios, which is more easily interpretable."

Although there is still uncertainty about the clinical benefits and role of convalescent plasma to treat COVID-19, new research suggests that the earlier plasma is collected after the donor's recovery from COVID-19, the better, as antibodies start to disappear after three months of symptom onset. The results, which authors say may also have implications for vaccine design and for prevalence studies in communities trying to gauge how many people have recovered from the virus, are published today in the journal Blood.

When someone is infected with a virus, their body makes antibodies to fight the infection. After recovery, antibodies may remain in a person's blood plasma for months or even years. In convalescent plasma treatment, people who are newly ill - in this case with the coronavirus - receive plasma from a recovered person in the hopes that it will bolster their own ability to fight off the virus and limit its severity.

"While many clinical trials are underway to better understand whether convalescent plasma is clinically beneficial for treating COVID-19, a key question is at what time point is it most effective to collect donor plasma based on the presence of antibodies that help fight the virus," said Renée Bazin, PhD, of the Héma-Québec blood center (Canada) and author of the study. "Based on our findings, antibodies against the new coronavirus are not eternal."

This small study, which drew from 282 COVID-19 plasma donors in Quebec, Canada, followed 15 adults (11 males and 4 females) who were diagnosed with and subsequently recovered from COVID-19. While symptoms ranged from mild to severe, none of these donors were hospitalized for their COVID-19 infection. Participants each donated their plasma between four and nine times with the first donation occurring between 33 and 77 days after symptom onset and the last donation between 66 and 114 days.

Dr. Bazin said the present study is one of the first longitudinal analyses to show that people who were seropositive - that is, they had produced antibodies against the virus that causes COVID-19 - become seronegative, which means there were no detectable antibodies after a certain point. The decline in antibodies over time appears unrelated to the number of times someone donated blood plasma and is, instead, due to the elapsed time since the infection and a natural waning of the immune response. All 15 donors showed decreases in antibodies at the same time, around 88 days, and half of the detectable antibodies decreased within 21 days afterward.

"The antibodies disappear rapidly, so people recovering from COVID-19 who want to donate blood plasma should not wait too long once they become eligible to donate," said Dr. Bazin.

For this analysis, the research team focused on antibodies to one target for the virus called the receptor binding domain (RBD). RBD is a protein on the surface of the virus that acts like a key. It binds to the ACE-2 receptor on the surface of cell, in turn, unlocking a door through which the virus enters and infects the cell. But the immune system can develop RBD antibodies that inhibit the protein's ability to fit into and open the door through the ACE-2 receptor, thereby preventing the virus from entering the cells.

"Based on our findings, clinicians should ideally use plasma that is collected early on after a donor's onset of symptoms and check for the presence of antibodies before giving donor plasma to a patient," said Dr. Bazin.

She noted that nearly 7% of the original 282 donors did not have detectable antibodies at their first donation and this proportion doubled when considering donors who waited more than 11 to 12 weeks after symptom onset before donating.

Of course, understanding the drop-off of antibodies following natural infection with COVID-19 has practical applications not only to help inform policies for when convalescent plasma is most effective (i.e. before immune response starts to decline), but it may also have implications for seroprevalence studies that gauge how many people in a community have antibodies against the virus. "Based on our findings, if antibodies wane three to four months after a peak of infection, we could underestimate the prevalence of the infection in communities or populations," said Dr. Bazin.

Researchers plan to follow plasma blood donors over time and while they did not select for specific plasma (for example, those with only high antibody titers) for this analysis, future studies will try to determine if certain plasma is more beneficial.

Tests for skin treatments could be screened using flatworms rather than other animals such as rabbits, according to new research.

A team at the University of Reading and Newcastle University have found that planaria, a type of flatworm, can be used as a reliable alternative for testing topical skin products used to treat human tissues such as the eyes, nose or vagina to ensure that they are not harmful.

The paper, published in Toxicology in Vitro, shows how the use of a fluorescent dye mixed with a potential skin product is absorbed through the outer layers of skin in the planaria.

The tests are cheaper and more ethical than existing animal tests, because planaria are readily available and easily cultured in a laboratory - and don't experience suffering. While other tests are carried out on human skin cells in a petri dish, the new screening method would provide a more accurate test of how the potential skin product would interact with living tissue.

Professor Vitaliy Khutoryanskiy, a Professor of Formulation Science at the University of Reading said:

"Developing more ethical alternatives to tests that others do on rabbits, known as the Draize test, has been a major challenge, especially in relation to evaluating products for sensitive human tissue. Our tests with flatworms show that there are potential ways to screen skin irritants in a more ethically responsible way.

"While the vast majority of cosmetic skin products are no longer tested on animals, it remains critical that new developments for clinical treatments are tested robustly and we hope that we can find solutions that consign the Draize test to history. We also hope to continue planaria research and develop further tests for probe irritation potential of chemicals to other human tissues."

A series of tests with the flatworms looked at whether they can be used to screen for products that are irritants to human skin. Two of the methods, which involved observing the movement of the worms when exposed to known irritants and measuring acute toxicity were not useful.

However, there was a positive result in tests which used the common fluorescent dye alongside short-term and low concentration exposure to various chemicals. The planaria which were exposed to known human skin irritants had significant levels of the fluorescent dye under their skin.

About Planaria:

Planaria are a freshwater-living flatworms which are already widely used in scientific research. They are advanced invertebrates with a primitive brain and share similar features with the vertebrate nervous system found in animals including mammals, examples of the ways that planaria are used include testing the neurotoxicity of potentially hazardous substances. Planaria have a simple but well-characterised epidermal membrane similar to skin that acts as the first point of contact between the worm and a foreign substance.

With the help of ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have found six galaxies lying around a supermassive black hole when the Universe was less than a billion years old. This is the first time such a close grouping has been seen so soon after the Big Bang and the finding helps us better understand how supermassive black holes, one of which exists at the centre of our Milky Way, formed and grew to their enormous sizes so quickly. It supports the theory that black holes can grow rapidly within large, web-like structures which contain plenty of gas to fuel them.

"This research was mainly driven by the desire to understand some of the most challenging astronomical objects -- supermassive black holes in the early Universe. These are extreme systems and to date we have had no good explanation for their existence," said Marco Mignoli, an astronomer at the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in Bologna, Italy, and lead author of the new research published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The new observations with ESO's VLT (https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/paranal-observatory/vlt/) revealed several galaxies surrounding a supermassive black hole, all lying in a cosmic "spider's web" of gas extending to over 300 times the size of the Milky Way. "The cosmic web filaments are like spider's web threads," explains Mignoli. "The galaxies stand and grow where the filaments cross, and streams of gas -- available to fuel both the galaxies and the central supermassive black hole -- can flow along the filaments."

The light from this large web-like structure, with its black hole of one billion solar masses, has travelled to us from a time when the Universe was only 0.9 billion years old. "Our work has placed an important piece in the largely incomplete puzzle that is the formation and growth of such extreme, yet relatively abundant, objects so quickly after the Big Bang," says co-author Roberto Gilli, also an astronomer at INAF in Bologna, referring to supermassive black holes.

The very first black holes, thought to have formed from the collapse of the first stars, must have grown very fast to reach masses of a billion suns within the first 0.9 billion years of the Universe's life. But astronomers have struggled to explain how sufficiently large amounts of "black hole fuel" could have been available to enable these objects to grow to such enormous sizes in such a short time. The new-found structure offers a likely explanation: the "spider's web" and the galaxies within it contain enough gas to provide the fuel that the central black hole needs to quickly become a supermassive giant.

But how did such large web-like structures form in the first place? Astronomers think giant halos of mysterious dark matter are key. These large regions of invisible matter are thought to attract huge amounts of gas in the early Universe; together, the gas and the invisible dark matter form the web-like structures where galaxies and black holes can evolve.

"Our finding lends support to the idea that the most distant and massive black holes form and grow within massive dark matter halos in large-scale structures, and that the absence of earlier detections of such structures was likely due to observational limitations," says Colin Norman of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, US, also a co-author on the study.

The galaxies now detected are some of the faintest that current telescopes can observe. This discovery required observations over several hours using the largest optical telescopes available, including ESO's VLT. Using the MUSE (https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/paranal-observatory/vlt/vlt-instr/muse/) and FORS2 (https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/paranal-observatory/vlt/vlt-instr/fors/) instruments on the VLT at ESO's Paranal Observatory in the Chilean Atacama Desert, the team confirmed the link between four of the six galaxies and the black hole. "We believe we have just seen the tip of the iceberg, and that the few galaxies discovered so far around this supermassive black hole are only the brightest ones," said co-author Barbara Balmaverde, an astronomer at INAF in Torino, Italy.

These results contribute to our understanding of how supermassive black holes and large cosmic structures formed and evolved. ESO's Extremely Large Telescope, currently under construction in Chile, will be able to build on this research by observing many more fainter galaxies around massive black holes in the early Universe using its powerful instruments.

The number of alien (non-native) species, particularly insects, arthropods and birds, is expected to increase globally by 36% by the middle of this century, compared to 2005, finds new research by an international team involving UCL.

Published in Global Change Biology, the study also predicts the arrival of around 2,500 new alien species in Europe, which translates to an increase of 64% for the continent over the 45-year period.

The research team led by the German Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre hope it should be possible to reduce this number with stricter biosecurity regulations.

Alien species are those that humans have moved around the world to places where they do not naturally occur. More than 35,000 such species had been recorded by 2005 (the date of the most recent comprehensive global catalogue). Some of these aliens can go on to become invasive, with damaging impacts to ecosystems and economies. Alien species are one of the main drivers of extinctions of animals and plants.

Co-author Professor Tim Blackburn (UCL Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research and the Institute of Zoology, ZSL) said: "Our study predicts that alien species will continue to be added to ecosystems at high rates through the next few decades, which is concerning as this could contribute to harmful biodiversity change and extinction.

"But we are not helpless bystanders: with a concerted global effort to combat this, it should be possible to slow down or reverse this trend."

For the study, the research team developed a mathematical model to calculate for the first time how many more aliens would be expected by 2050, based on estimated sizes of source pools (the species that could end up becoming invasive) and dynamics of historical invasions, under a 'business-as-usual' scenario that assumes a continuation of current trends.

The model predicts a 36% increase in the number of alien plant and animal species worldwide by 2050, compared to 2005 levels.

The study identifies high levels of variation between regions. The largest increase is expected in Europe, where the number of alien species will increase by 64% by the middle of the century. Additional alien hotspots are predicted to include temperate latitudes of Asia, North America, and South America. The lowest relative increase in alien species is expected in Australia.

Europe will also see the largest increase in absolute numbers of alien species, with around 2,500 new aliens predicted.

Lead author Dr Hanno Seebens (Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, Germany) said: "These will primarily include rather inconspicuous new arrivals such as insects, molluscs, and crustaceans. In contrast, there will be very few new alien mammal species such as the well-known raccoon."

Co-author Dr Franz Essl (University of Vienna) added: "Increases are expected to be particularly large for insects and other arthropods, such as arachnids and crustaceans. We predict the number of aliens from these groups to increase in every region of the world by the middle of the century - by almost 120% in the temperate latitudes of Asia."

The study also predicts that the rate of arrival of alien species will continue to increase, at least in some animal groups. Globally, by 2050, alien arthropod and bird species in particular will arrive faster than before, compared to the period 1960 - 2005. In Europe, the rate of new alien arrivals is expected to increase for all plant and animal groups except mammals.

Neither a reversal nor even a slowdown in the spread of alien species is in sight, as global trade and transport are expected to increase in the coming decades, allowing many species to infiltrate new habitats as stowaways.

Dr Seebens said: "We will not be able to entirely prevent the introduction of alien species, as this would mean severe restrictions in international trade.

"However, stricter regulations and their rigorous enforcement could greatly slow the flow of new species. The benefits of such measures have been shown in some parts of the world. Regulations are still comparatively lax in Europe, and so there is great potential here for new measures to curtail the arrival of new aliens."

Precariously balanced rocks (PBRs) are formations found throughout the world where a slender boulder is balanced precariously on a pedestal boulder. They form as blocks preserved on cliffs, or when softer rocks erode and leave the harder rocks behind. They can also form when landslides or retreating glaciers deposit them in strange positions.

Despite their delicate balancing act, many PBRs - like the Brimham Rocks in Yorkshire, or Chiricahua National Monument in Arizona - have survived earthquake shaking over thousands of years. They can therefore tell us the upper limit of earthquake shaking that has occurred since they were first formed - shaking that, were it strong enough, would have caused them to topple.

By tapping into ancient geological data locked within Californian PBRs, Imperial College London researchers have broken ground on a new technique to boost the precision of hazard estimates for large earthquakes by up to 49 per cent.

Earthquake hazard models estimate the likelihood of future earthquakes in a given location. They help engineers decide where bridges, dams, and buildings should be built and how robust they should be - as well as informing earthquake insurance prices in high-risk areas.

The findings are published today in AGU Advances.

Lead author Anna Rood, from Imperial's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, said: "This new approach could help us work out which areas are most likely to experience a major earthquake. PBRs act like inverse seismometers by capturing regional seismic history that we weren't around to see, and tell us the upper limit of past earthquake shakes simply by not toppling. By tapping into this, we provide uniquely valuable data on the rates of rare, large-magnitude earthquakes."

Current earthquake hazard estimates rely largely on observations like proximity to fault lines and how seismically active a region has been in the past. However, estimates for rarer earthquakes that have occurred over periods of 10,000 to 1,000,000 years are extremely uncertain due to the lack of seismic data spanning those timescales and subsequent reliance on rocky assumptions.

By counting rare cosmic ray-generated atoms in PBRs and digitally modelling PBR-earthquake interactions, Imperial researchers have created a new method of earthquake hazard validation that could be built into existing models to finetune their precision.

Rock clocks

To tap into the seismology of the past, the researchers set out to determine the fragility (likelihood of toppling due to ground shaking) and age of PBRs at a site near to the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in coastal California.

They used a technique called cosmogenic surface exposure dating - counting the number of rare beryllium atoms formed within rocks by long-term exposure to cosmic rays - to determine how long PBRs had existed in their current formation.

They then used 3D modelling software to digitally recreate the PBRs and calculate how much earthquake ground shaking they could withstand before toppling.

Both the age and fragility of the PBRs were then compared with current hazard estimates to help boost their certainty.

They found that combining their calculations with existing models reduced the uncertainty of earthquake hazard estimates at the site by 49 per cent, and, by removing the 'worst-case-scenario' estimates, reduced the average size of earthquakes estimated to happen once every 10,000 years by 27 per cent. They also found that PBRs can be preserved in the landscape for twice as long as previously thought.

They conclude that this new method reduces the amount of assumptions, and therefore the uncertainty, used in estimating and extrapolating historic earthquake data for estimates of future risk.

Study co-author Dr Dylan Rood, of Imperial's Department of Earth Science and Engineering, said: "We're teetering on the edge of a breakthrough in the science of earthquake forecasting. Our 'rock clock' techniques have the potential to save huge costs in seismic engineering, and we see them being used broadly to test and update site-specific hazard estimates for earthquake-prone areas - specifically in coastal regions where the controlling seismic sources are offshore faults whose movements are inherently more difficult to investigate."

The team are now using their techniques to validate hazard estimates for southern California - one of the most hazardous and densely populated regions of the United States.

Anna said: "We're now looking at PBRs near major earthquake faults like the San Andreas fault near Los Angeles. We're also looking at how to pinpoint which data - whether it be fault slip rates or choice of ground shaking equations - are skewing the results in the original hazard models. This way we can improve scientists' understanding of big earthquakes even more."

The Arctic is warming two or three times faster than the rest of the planet. This amplified warming is due to several factors, but the relative importance of each one remains still unclear. "We do know, however, that clouds could play an important role," says Julia Schmale, an EPFL professor who heads the Extreme Environments Research Laboratory and holds the Ingvar Kamprad Chair. "By reflecting the sun's rays back into space or trapping heat close to the Earth's surface like a blanket, clouds help either cool off or warm up the planet."

Schmale - along with scientists from the Paul Scherrer Institute's Laboratory of Atmospheric Chemistry and Stockholm University's Department of Environmental Science and Bolin Centre for Climate Research - spent several weeks collecting data near the North pole in August and September 2018, as part of the US-Swedish expedition Arctic Ocean 2018 on board the Swedish icebreaker Oden. The scientists measured the chemical and physical properties of atmospheric molecules and aerosol particles to better understand the conditions leading to cloud formation.

How aerosols are formed in the Arctic

"One of our objectives was to investigate how new aerosol particles could form in the Arctic atmosphere," says Andrea Baccarini, a PhD student at the Paul Scherrer Institute and now scientific collaborator in the extreme Environments research Laboratory. "Under the right conditions, gas molecules condense together into small clusters that can grow, eventually forming aerosols." If these aerosols grow even just a small amount larger, they can function as cloud condensation nuclei, which are essential for cloud formation.

In the Arctic summer and fall, the concentration of aerosols is extremely low. "The contribution of newly formed aerosols can be extremely important and even a small change in aerosol concentration in the high Arctic could have a major impact on cloud formation or alter clouds' radiative properties," says Baccarini. It is also still not clear how important local aerosol processes are to cloud formation in comparison to regional or long-range transport, for example. "With this expedition, we could investigate the exact sources of aerosol particles that are needed to form clouds" adds Paul Zieger, an assistant professor at Stockholm University who led the research project on aerosol-cloud processes of the 2018 expedition.

Iodic acid appears in early fall

The research team found that iodic acid, a chemical compound which had not previously been observed in the region, triggers the formation of new aerosols between late summer and early fall. "There is less ice in the Arctic at the end of the summer, a lot of open water and the concentration of iodic acid is very low at that point," says Schmale. "Towards the end of August the temperature drops and the water starts refreezing, marking the beginning of the so called freeze-up period. This is when the iodic acid concentration sharply increases leading to frequent new aerosol particle formation events''.

The team developed a simple model to explain the variability of iodic acid in the atmosphere, which largely depends on local meteorological conditions. They were also able to describe the full chain of events that leads all the way from new particle formation to clouds, from the gas molecule that initially creates a particle to the formation of cloud condensation nuclei. "Observing and describing this process under real-world conditions was an extremely rare opportunity", says Schmale.

Memphis, Tenn. (September 30, 2020) - Researchers at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center working with colleagues at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston have found that some antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, are more protective than others, when it comes to reinfection.

This information, discovered from the joint study and published online in the Journal of Clinical Investigation's JCI Insight, has implications for the overall understanding of the virus and whether infection actually does trigger immunity, according to Michael Whitt, PhD, associate dean of the Office of Medical Education in the UTHSC College of Medicine, chair of the Department of Medical Education, and a professor and former chair of the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Biochemistry. Dr. Whitt is one of the principal investigators on the antibody study, which is ongoing at UTHSC.

Dr. Whitt and his laboratory team, which includes three fourth-year medical students and two Master of Medical Laboratory Science students, used an assay or test procedure developed in his lab roughly 25 years ago to study the infection mechanism of Ebolavirus. They applied that assay to study infection of and immunity generated against SARS-CoV-2. Dr. Whitt was contacted by researchers at MD Anderson to use his assay to test for the presence of neutralizing antibodies in samples from 134 hospitalized COVID patients and 464 healthy individuals obtained between June 2017 and June 2020.

"We ended up running samples for them (MD Anderson), and those data are presented in the paper," Dr. Whitt said. "Companies have developed assays to show whether people have SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, but these assays only provide a yes or no answer. So why is our work important? We can determine the amount of neutralizing antibody present in the blood, and neutralizing antibodies are the ones that can prevent the individual from becoming infected. If you have an antibody to an internal component of the virus, then that means you have been infected, but those antibodies won't prevent infection.

"Neutralizing antibodies are directed to the spike (S) protein, which is responsible for the binding of the virus to receptors on a host cell and for entry of the virus into the cell," Dr. Whitt explained. "However, not all antibodies to the S protein have neutralizing activity, so it is only a subset of antibodies to the S protein that can prevent infection. One of the questions we wanted to address is, do all people who have had the disease, COVID-19, generate neutralizing antibodies? That answer is clearly, no. The other question is, for those who do produce neutralizing antibodies, how much do they make?"

Further research will help answer questions about immunity. This is vital to plans for reopening the community.

"What we don't know is how much neutralizing antibody is needed to prevent infection or reinfection," Dr. Whitt said. "Just because you have detectable antibodies doesn't mean that you're protected from infection."

As a medical educator, Dr. Whitt said he is proud that the research in his lab has included students. "I think that speaks to the academic and training opportunities here at UTHSC," he said.

Along with Dr. Whitt, researchers in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Biochemistry at UTHSC are working on ways to test the general population in Memphis for the SARS-CoV-2 antibody. Professor Maria Gomes-Solecki, DVM, and her team have developed and are vetting a prototype ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay), a blood test that could be used to mass-test antibodies in the community that would signal individual exposure.

Colleen Jonsson, PhD, professor and the Van Vleet Chair of Excellence in Virology and director of the Regional Biocontainment Laboratory at UTHSC, is leading the efforts with live SARS-CoV-2 to identify neutralizing antibodies and therapeutics to treat COVID-19. Dr. Jonsson is the lead investigator on a protocol to perform testing of the general population in Memphis for the SARS-CoV-2 antibodies.

As many as 800 million children have dangerously high lead values in their blood. The neurotoxin can cause permanent brain damage.

The huge international numbers come from a new report from Pure Earth and UNICEF. Pure Earth works to solve pollution problems that can be harmful to humans.

"A child's earliest years of life are characterized by rapid growth and brain development. This makes children particularly vulnerable to harmful substances in the environment," says Kam Sripada, a postdoc at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) who has contributed to the report.

Sripada collaborates with international organizations to research social health inequalities, especially among children.

"Exposure to lead during pregnancy and early in life can lead to a child never reaching his or her potential," she says.

Sripada works at NTNU's Center for Global Health Inequalities Research (CHAIN) in collaboration with the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and UNICEF.

Lead is an element, but also a powerful neurotoxin that can cause damage at a level as low as five micrograms of lead per decilitre of blood. Lead poisoning can be acute, and can cause everything from stomach pain to brain damage, coma and death.

But lead poisoning can also come on slowly, because it accumulates in the body over a long period of time. The most common symptom is lethargy due to anaemia. High lead levels can attack blood and bone marrow, the nervous system and the kidneys.

Lead poisoning can also contribute to a lower IQ and behavioural problems that can last a lifetime.

"Lead is a health threat to children in every single country in the world. However, children in low- or middle-income countries are the most vulnerable, especially in South Asia and among marginalized groups in general. There are major social differences when it comes to lead exposure and other environmental toxins that we need to address," says Sripada.

A lot of the lead comes from lead-acid batteries that are not responsibly recycled. The number of motor vehicles has tripled in low- and middle-income countries in the last 20 years, which in turn has led to a sharp increase in lead-containing batteries. About half of the batteries are not properly recycled or recovered.

Water pipes, industry, paint and a number of household products such as canned foods, contaminated spices, make-up and toys also contribute. Lead that was previously used in gasoline is still found in the soil to this day.

Indirectly, countries can suffer enormous income losses as the children grow up with these sources of lead exposure. As adults, they often are not able to contribute optimally to the societal economy.

"This is a report with global significance," says NTNU Professor Terje Andreas Eikemo, who heads CHAIN.

Both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States believe that the situation requires international measures, such as more information and strengthening of the health care system in several countries.

"This report shines the spotlight on lead as an important global environmental and health problem that is especially tied to children's health and development," says Heidi Aase, who heads the NeuroTox study at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

The NeuroTox study examines relationships between environmental toxins in the mother's womb, including lead, and various measures of brain development. ADHD, autism and cognitive functions are considered in a large sample of Norwegian children. Environmental toxins found in the mother's body during pregnancy can affect the baby's development.

CHAIN will use the NeuroTox study to study relationships between socio-economic factors, such as income, education and living conditions, and levels of lead and other environmental toxins in pregnant women and their children.

"The UNICEF report and other studies show that poverty is associated with higher lead levels and an increased risk of harmful effects on health. We'll investigate whether this picture applies to pregnant women and children in Norway as well," says Aase.

The research results from NeuroTox and CHAIN can also be used in different ways internationally, such as to prevent social inequality in health including the harmful effects of environmental toxins.

The average blood levels of lead in children from low- and middle-income countries in the UNICEF report are far higher than in Norwegian children. Nevertheless, the report has calculated that many Norwegian children may have lead levels above the limit that we know has harmful effects on brain development.

"This is concerning," says NeuroTox researcher Gro Dehli Villanger.

Studies show that damage to the brain and nervous system can occur at far lower lead levels than the limit used in the report.

"As of today, no value limit has been established that is considered safe and therefore the number of children affected could be much higher both in Norway and in other countries," says Villanger.

Source: The toxic truth. Children's exposure to lead pollution undermines a generation of future potential. https://www.unicef.org/reports/toxic-truth-childrens-exposure-to-lead-pollution-2020

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--September 30, 2020--Unlike most T cells, which launch immune responses against foreign molecules, regulatory T cells are the peacekeepers of the human immune system, damping down inflammatory reactions when they're not needed. Now, researchers at Gladstone Institutes, in collaboration with scientists at UC San Francisco (UCSF) and the Technical University of Munich (TUM), have mapped out the networks of genes that help differentiate regulatory T cells from other T cells. Their findings could lead to immune therapies that strengthen or weaken the function of regulatory T cells.

"Piecing together the genetic networks that control the biology of regulatory T cells is a first step toward finding drug targets that change the function of these cells to treat cancer and autoimmune diseases," says Director of the Gladstone-UCSF Institute of Genomic Immunology Alex Marson, MD, PhD, a senior author of the study.

All T cells, named because they develop in the thymus gland, have similar receptors on their surfaces and play a role in the immune responses that destroy viruses, bacteria, and some cancer cells. But regulatory T cells have a distinct function, acting as a brake to suppress other T cells so that immune reactions don't go overboard. Studies in mice have suggested that increasing the number of regulatory T cells--and therefore putting stronger "brakes" on the immune system--might help subdue symptoms of autoimmune diseases. On the other hand, blocking regulatory T cells, or lifting these molecular brakes, is suspected to help the immune system better fight cancer.

Therapies that boost populations of regulatory T cells--by removing the cells from patients' bodies, expanding them, and infusing them back in--are already being tested in people with autoimmune disease, including type 1 diabetes, and organ transplant recipients. So far, however, such treatments generally haven't involved actually altering the function of the immune cells.

"Most of our previous knowledge about regulatory T cells is from mouse models," says Kathrin Schumann, a co-first and co-corresponding author of the paper and former UCSF postdoctoral fellow, now an assistant professor at the Technical University of Munich. "We wanted to genetically dissect human regulatory T cells to better understand how they're wired and how we can manipulate them. Once we understand the functions of each gene, we can precisely edit cells to treat disease."

In the new study, published in the journal Nature Immunology, Marson, Schumann, and their collaborators used CRISPR-based gene-editing technology to alter regulatory T cells, selectively removing any of 40 different transcription factors. The 40 transcription factors--master genes that control the activation of many other genes--were chosen because previously published data had already hinted that they might perform specific functions in the regulatory cells compared to other T cells.

The researchers then focused on the 10 transcription factors that had the strongest effect in this initial screen, and looked across tens of thousands of genes to see which ones were turned on or off in the altered cells. In all, they performed this analysis on 54,424 individual regulatory T cells.

By analyzing the subsets of genes activated or silenced by these 10 original transcription factors, the team put together vast networks of genetic programs involved in the biology of regulatory T cells. Among the most surprising results, the study revealed that the little-studied transcription factor HIVEP2 has a strong effect on regulatory T cell function. In follow-up studies in mice, the scientists found that removing the HIVEP2 gene reduced the ability of the regulatory T cells to quell inflammation.

"This was a significant hit," said Sid Raju, a co-first author of the paper and former UCSF computational biologist who is now a graduate student at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. "This gene had really never been implicated in regulatory T cell biology before."

The team also says their study acts as a proof-of-principle for how powerful the combination of CRISPR gene editing and the analysis of individually edited cells can be in studying the genetics of human biology and human disease.

"Now, we can theoretically take any specialized cell from the body and start removing individual genes and study the consequences on the cells in much finer detail than ever before," says Marson. "This really opens up human cells removed from the body as a tractable experimental system."

The cathedral in Odense, Denmark, has for nine centuries held the relics of the Danish King St. Canute the Holy and his brother Benedikt. They were both murdered here in AD 1086, and just a few years later, in AD 1100, King Canute was sanctified.

The history of the relics has been that of turmoil at times, varying from initial worship of the Catholic believers to being walled up and hidden after the protestant reformation in AD 1536.

Since the 19th century the brothers' wooden shrines have been on display in the cathedral as heritage objects of national importance.

Now, researchers have examined some of the textiles in the two shrines. They conclude that King Canute's shrine no longer holds the precious silk textiles placed in it at his enshrinement.

In stead it is likely that the textiles from his brother's shrine at some point have been moved to King Canute's shrine.

The shrines of Canute and Benedikt have long been a puzzle in Danish history. They both contain several well-preserved textiles of silk and linen and the question is: How old are the textiles and what is their historical context?

According to historical sources, both brothers were covered in valuable textiles when enshrined. Sources have described how Canute's shrine in AD 1536 was lined with beautiful and rare silk.

Decades later, both shrines were walled up in the cathedral, placed vertically so that the bones and textiles lay in a heap at the bottom of each shrine, and hereafter there are no reportings of the precious textiles in King Canute's shrine when it was re-examined in AD 1694 and AD 1833.

- It is tempting to suggest that the king's precious textiles have been stolen at some point after AD 1582, says professor and an expert in archaeometry, Kaare Lund Rasmussen from University of Southern Denmark.

When the two shrines were removed from their walled up hiding places and prepared to be put on display in 1874, researchers at the time were puzzled by the absence of valuable textiles in King Canute's shrine - his brother Benedikt had the more valuable textiles - and they declared themselves unable to judge in which of the shrines the found fabrics belonged.

They decided to move the best textiles from Benedikt's shrine to King Canute's shrine, so that he could be presented with the most beautiful, most precious textiles when on display under a glass lid.
Professor Kaare Lund Rasmussen and colleagues have performed chemical analysis of the textiles in both shrines and conclude that they are of the same age, and that their age fit with AD 1086, when the two brothers were enshrined.

- Put together with historical sources this convinces us that today, King Canute lies in his shrine with what is actually his brother's burial textiles, says professor Kaare Lund Rasmussen.

Among the textiles, intended for Benedikt but later placed with Canute, are a pillow with birds and a textile called the Eagle Silk.

- They are exquisite and beautiful, but King Canute's textiles must have been even more exquisite, says Kaare Lund Rasmussen.

According to senior researchers at the Danish National Museum, Ulla Kjær and Poul Grinder-Hansen, the luxurious silks may have been sent from South Italy to the shrines in Denmark by King Canute's widow, Edel, possibly brought home by Canute's half-brother, King Erik 1. Ejegod.

At the time of Canute's canonization and enshrinement, silk weaving in Europe was not yet established outside the boundaries of the Byzantine Empire and silk was both a precious and much-coveted import article.

HARTWELL, Georgia--A new survey among vascular access (VA) and emergency department (ED) clinicians has revealed significant levels of variation in ultrasound-guided peripheral IV (UGPIV) practices and supply use across hospitals and alternate care settings. Published in the September issue of the Journal of the Association for Vascular Access, the findings carry critical implications for patient safety.

A total of 1,475 VA and ED practitioners responded to the survey, which was designed to gain better insight into clinicians' current practices regarding UGPIV insertion. The survey also identified inconsistencies in supply use across hospital departments. The survey was conducted by Nancy Moureau, RN, PhD, an internationally recognized expert and consultant in vascular access and CEO of PICC Excellence.

"Identifying gaps and variations in clinical practice forms the basis of quality initiatives intended to improve patient safety. This survey revealed clinically meaningful differences in all variables for UGPIV procedures and supplies," said Dr. Moureau. "Aseptic technique is essential for minimizing contamination, but its effectiveness is diminished if it's not done in a consistent manner. Often inconsistencies in supply usage point to variation in policy application and the potential for substandard practices. The survey results suggest a need for clinical education on the application of UGPIV guidelines, and for greater scrutiny over supplies and techniques in order to promote standardization."

The lack of consistency revealed by the survey is apparent in respondents' varied use of transducer protection and gel. To minimize contamination during UGPIV insertions, current guidelines -- such as those from the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine -- recommend use of a transducer cover and single-use gel packets (sterile or non-sterile). According to the survey, however, just 59 percent of VA clinicians and 11 percent of ED clinicians always use a sterile probe cover during UGPIV procedures, and only 64 percent of VA personnel and 13 percent of ED personnel use sterile gel. In addition, more than 22 percent of respondents stated that they vary between multi-use gel bottles and single-use gel packets, both sterile and non-sterile.

The survey results also highlight issues resulting from the presence of gel in the area of the sterile insertion site. Among the respondents, 41 percent of VA clinicians and 51 percent of ED clinicians reported instances of inadequate gel removal, which results in securement and dressing adherence issues. Poor adherence of dressings can lead to catheter failure and accidental dislodgement. Over half of all VA personnel (52 percent) said they felt that aseptic technique is often compromised by post-procedure gel clean-up.

PIV insertion is the most commonly performed invasive medical procedure among hospitalized patients. Over 70 percent of acute care patients require IV access at some point during their stay. According to Dr. Moureau, up to 60 percent of those patients may be considered to have difficult vascular access (DiVA). These patients frequently require ultrasound guidance in order to successfully achieve peripheral access and receive necessary treatments.

"This study confirms that the lack of consistent, evidence-based guidelines regarding ultrasound-guidance for PIV insertions has led to a great deal of fragmentation, and shows that clinicians are confused over when and how to use this technology in a way that protects patient safety," said emergency vascular access expert Jon Bell, RN, MSN, VA-BC. "There needs to be an objective standard for identifying difficult access patients, as well as a multi-disciplinary effort to conduct research to determine the best practices that will minimize harm to the patient."

The use of ultrasound may increase the risk of contamination during PIV insertions if certain guidelines are not followed to maintain a sterile insertion site and use the appropriate supplies (gel and transducer protection). According to Dr. Moureau, a specialty gel-free insertion dressing that separates the transducer and gel from the insertion site (UltraDrape, Parker Labs) may address and even mitigate many of these issues while reducing the cost of performing UGPIV insertions. In this study, 9 percent of survey respondents reported use of this gel separation safety dressing.

The survey results align with recent concerns from the healthcare quality and safety organization, ECRI (Plymouth Meeting, PA). The nonprofit technology assessment group addressed the issue of standardization in its list of top patient safety concerns for 2020, writing that "policies and education must align across care settings to ensure patient safety."

ECRI also included the use of point-of-care ultrasound in its briefing on 2020 Top 10 Health Technology Hazards, and noted that the rapid adoption of this technology across various care settings has left many organizations struggling to keep up with appropriate safety measures.