Culture

A team of biologists led by Craig Albertson and Ph.D. student Chaise Gilbert at the University of Massachusetts Amherst report this week on their comparison between museum collections of cichlid fishes collected before a dam was closed in 1984 on the Tocantins River in the Amazon and contemporary specimens taken from the Tucuruí Reservoir by fishermen 34 years later.

Working with others in Brazil, Albertson's team tested the idea that these fish could be expected to show changes in body shape as a consequence to shifts in habitat and foraging behavior after the dam rapidly changed environmental conditions from a clear, flowing river to a deep, murky reservoir.

"The once-historic rapids and streams that characterized the system have disappeared from the surrounding area, which in turn has affected the abundance and variety of food sources available to native fishes," they write in Evolutionary Application this week.

Cichlid fishes are known in the scientific world for their ability to alter, in as little as a single season, aspects of body shape to match feeding conditions and other changes in the environment, Albertson says. The skeleton is especially sensitive to such environmental inputs, and studying cichlid fishes offers insights into how organisms, in general, may adapt to major human-induced environmental change.

Using geometric morphometrics, the researchers evaluated changes in six native species - from large fish-eating species to small opportunistic omnivores -across five genera representing distinct local varieties whose body shapes reflect their ecological roles.

To accomplish this, the researchers used many specimens from fish inventories collected before the dam closure in 1980-1982 now housed in the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia fish collection, plus even earlier river survey specimens housed now at the Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de São Paulo.

Albertson explains, "Our overarching hypothesis is that the damming of the Tocantins and subsequent formation of the Tucuruí reservoir has induced shifts in habitat and foraging behavior and that the anatomy of resident cichlid populations has change in ways that allow them to adapt to this novel environmental conditions. This study represents a first step toward assessing this hypothesis."

Gilbert adds, "Was anything surprising? Yes! While we expected to see changes in generalist species - those that are already predisposed toward living in a variety of habitats - we were surprised to see shape changes in the specialists as well. Evolving to specialize on a particular prey-type or habitat, can provide a competitive advantage in the near term, but it can also be an evolutionary dead end in the face of a major environmental changes."

Not only are these specialist species still found in the area, but they seem to be just as capable of changing body shape as the generalists, the authors report.

Albertson reports further thatchanges across all species "tended to be associated with functionally relevant aspects of anatomy, including head, fin and body shape." They found that the regions of the body that changed over time are exactly those most likely to allow them to survive in their new environment, he adds.

WHAT:
New findings by scientists at the National Institutes of Health and their collaborators help explain why some people with COVID-19 develop severe disease. The findings also may provide the first molecular explanation for why more men than women die from COVID-19.

The researchers found that more than 10% of people who develop severe COVID-19 have misguided antibodies?autoantibodies?that attack the immune system rather than the virus that causes the disease. Another 3.5% or more of people who develop severe COVID-19 carry a specific kind of genetic mutation that impacts immunity. Consequently, both groups lack effective immune responses that depend on type I interferon, a set of 17 proteins crucial for protecting cells and the body from viruses. Whether these proteins have been neutralized by autoantibodies or?because of a faulty gene?were produced in insufficient amounts or induced an inadequate antiviral response, their absence appears to be a commonality among a subgroup of people who suffer from life-threatening COVID-19 pneumonia.

These findings are the first published results from the COVID Human Genetic Effort, an international project spanning more than 50 genetic sequencing hubs and hundreds of hospitals. The effort is co-led by Helen Su, M.D., Ph.D., a senior investigator at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of NIH; and Jean-Laurent Casanova, M.D., Ph.D., head of the St. Giles Laboratory of Human Genetics of Infectious Diseases at The Rockefeller University in New York. Major contributions were made by Luigi Notarangelo, M.D., chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Clinical Immunology and Microbiology (LCIM); Steven Holland, M.D., director of the NIAID Division of Intramural Research and senior investigator in the NIAID LCIM; clinicians and investigators in hospitals in the Italian cities of Brescia, Monza and Pavia, which were heavily hit by COVID-19; and researchers at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland.

The wide variation in the severity of disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19, has puzzled scientists and clinicians. SARS-CoV-2 can cause anything from a symptom-free infection to death, with many different outcomes in between. Since February 2020, Drs. Su and Casanova and their collaborators have enrolled thousands of COVID-19 patients to find out whether a genetic factor drives these disparate clinical outcomes.

The researchers discovered that among nearly 660 people with severe COVID-19, a significant number carried rare genetic variants in 13 genes known to be critical in the body's defense against influenza virus, and more than 3.5% were completely missing a functioning gene. Further experiments showed that immune cells from those 3.5% did not produce any detectable type I interferons in response to SARS-CoV-2.

Examining nearly 1,000 patients with life-threatening COVID-19 pneumonia, the researchers also found that more than 10% had autoantibodies against interferons at the onset of their infection, and 95% of those patients were men. Biochemical experiments confirmed that the autoantibodies block the activity of interferon type I.

ARTICLE:
Q Zhang et al. Inborn errors of type I IFN immunity in patients with life-threatening COVID-19. Science DOI: 10.1126/science.abd4570 (2020).

P Bastard et al. Auto-antibodies against type I IFNs in patients with life-threatening COVID-19. Science DOI: 10.1126/science.abd4585 (2020).

WHO:
NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., NIAID Senior Investigator Helen C. Su, M.D., Ph.D., and Luigi Notarangelo, M.D., chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Clinical Immunology and Microbiology, are available for interviews.

CONTACT:
To schedule interviews, please contact NIAID Office of Communications, (301) 402-1663, NIAIDNews@niaid.nih.gov.

Researchers found rude emails at work can lead to significant distress for employees.

The researchers say that "active" email rudeness is overloaded with strong negative emotions. By comparison, "passive" email rudeness leaves people struggling with uncertainty.

Passive email rudeness may create problems for employees' sleep, which further puts them in a negative emotional state the next morning, thus creating a vicious cycle.

With the advent of the coronavirus pandemic and remote work on the rise, the sheer volume of email exchanges has skyrocketed. Electronic communication is efficient, but it's also distant and detached, and often can be rude.

Two studies led by a University of Illinois Chicago researcher show that dealing with rude emails at work can create lingering stress and take a toll on your well-being and family life.

The research, published by the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, suggests impolite emails can have a negative effect on work responsibilities, productivity, and can even be linked to insomnia at night, which further relate to negative emotions the next morning.

"Given the prevalent use of emails in the workplace, it is reasonable to conclude this problem is becoming an increasing concern," said lead author Zhenyu Yuan, assistant professor of managerial studies in the College of Business Administration.

In the first study, Yuan and his co-authors surveyed 233 working employees in the U.S. about their impolite email experiences and collected their appraisals. In the second study, researchers conducted a diary study to examine the spillover effects of email rudeness on well-being, including employees' trouble falling and staying asleep.

There are two forms of email rudeness, Yuan notes. Active email rudeness -- demeaning or derogatory remarks from the sender made about the recipient -- suggests to the recipient that the sender has mistreated him or her. By comparison, passive email rudeness -- such as ignoring a request or opinion from the sender -- makes it difficult to know whether the receiver simply forgot to answer the email or actually intended to ignore it.

"Because emails are securely stored, people may have a tendency to revisit a disturbing email or constantly check for a response that they requested, which may only aggravate the distress of email rudeness," Yuan explained.

To mitigate this stress, the researchers urge employees to "psychologically detach" from a stressful workday after receiving rude emails. The best option is to unplug from work after-hours. Whenever possible, managers also should set clear and reasonable expectations regarding email communications.

"It should be noted that efforts to address email rudeness should not be interpreted as the same as creating pressure for employees and managers to always check their email and respond to emails (i.e., telepressure)," Yuan concluded.

"On the contrary, setting clear and reasonable communications norms can prove effective in addressing both."

Infectious viruses come in many shapes and sizes and use slightly different attack mechanisms to make humans and animals sick. But all viruses share something in common: They can only do damage by replicating inside the cells of another organism ­- their host.

This broad, fundamental process of how viruses trick host cells into making copies of the virus has had a team of Colorado State University scientists captivated for several years. A collaboration between the labs of Monfort Professor Tim Stasevich, in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and Associate Professor Brian Munsky, in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, is on a mission to understand, in visual detail and with mathematical precision, all aspects of viral attack strategies, including how viruses invade host cell protein-making machinery. Their work, supported by grants from the National Institute of General Medicine and the W. M. Keck Foundation, could provide insight into predicting and fighting back against all manner of viral diseases.

For the first time ever, the team has shown an important mechanism in this host-attacking process, at the single-molecule level in living cells, and they have reproduced these behaviors in computational models. Their new experiments and models, published in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, reveal in unprecedented detail how viruses initiate translation of genetic material into proteins.

Hijacking the host

Since viruses do not encode their own replication machinery, they hijack that of their host cells by stealing cellular machines called ribosomes, which are essential for making proteins from the genetic material found in RNA. Many viral genomes contain special RNA structures called Internal Ribosome Entry Sites, or IRES, that capture ribosomes from the host, forcing those ribosomes to make viral proteins.

Researchers know that when IRES-related RNA translation takes place, the virus has succeeded in commandeering the host's ribosomes. The CSU researchers invented a biosensor that lights up blue when viral translation is happening, and green when normal host translation is happening, in single living cells. This design allows them to differentiate between normal host processes and viral processes, in real time.

The sensor combines the relevant bits of virus (not the whole virus) that interact with and steal host ribosomes, along with two distinct protein tags that glow the moment RNA is translated. First author and graduate student Amanda Koch spent more than a year developing the sensor, with the goal of looking at host protein RNA translation, and virus-related RNA translation, at the same time.

Luis Aguilera, a postdoctoral researcher in the Munsky group, built a detailed computational model to reproduce Koch's fluorescence microscopy videos. By analyzing Koch's data through the lens of dozens of hypotheses and millions of possible combinations, Aguilera discovered complex biochemical mechanisms that the biochemists couldn't directly see. His models showed that both healthy human RNA and viral RNA fluctuate between states that actively express proteins and those that are silent.

Cellular stress

In addition to examining viral translation in normal cells, Koch's biosensor allows the researchers to visualize the effects of different types of stress that cells undergo when being attacked by a virus, and how, where and when normal versus viral translation increase or decrease. The integration of Koch's microscopy data and Aguilera's computational models revealed that the relationship between normal and IRES-mediated translation is largely one-sided - in healthy cells, normal translation dominates, but in cells under stress, IRES translation dominates.

The Stasevich and Munsky teams envision that the combination of their unique biochemical sensors and detailed computational analyses will provide powerful tools to understand, predict, and control how future drugs might work to inhibit viral translation without affecting host translation.

Future COVID-19 applications

As the researchers look ahead to the future, they have their sights next set on COVID-19. Although SARS-CoV-2 does not contain an IRES, according to Koch "our biosensor is modular and can easily incorporate pieces of SARS-CoV-2 to explore how it uniquely hijacks host replication machinery during infection."

"We are proving, more and more, that we can look at these nuanced dynamics of how viruses are sneaking past their hosts to infect a lot of cells and make us sick," Koch said.

Typically, computer models of climate become more and more complex as researchers strive to capture more details of our Earth's system, but according to a team of Penn State researchers, to assess risks, less complex models, with their ability to better sample uncertainties, may be a better choice.

"There is a downside to the very detailed, very complex models we often strive for," said Casey Helgeson, assistant research professor, Earth and Environmental Systems Institute. "Sometimes the complexity of scientific tools constrains what we can learn through science. The choke point isn't necessarily at the knowledge going into a model, but at the processing."

Climate risks are important to planners, builders, government officials and businesses. The probability of a potential event combined with the severity of the event can determine things like whether it makes sense to build in a given location.

The researchers report online in Philosophy of Science that "there is a trade-off between a model's capacity to realistically represent the system and its capacity to tell us how confident it is in its predictions."

Complex Earth systems models need a lot of supercomputer time to run. However, when looking at risk, uncertainty is an important element and researchers can only discover uncertainty through multiple runs of a computer model. Computer time is expensive.

"We need complex models to simulate the interactions between Earth system processes," said Vivek Srikrishnan, assistant research professor, Earth and Environmental Systems Institute. "We need simple models to quantify risks."

According to Klaus Keller, professor of geosciences, multiple model runs are important because many events of concern such as floods are, fortunately, the exception, not what is expected. They happen in the tails of the distribution of possible outcomes. Learning about these tails requires many model runs.

Simple models, while not returning the detailed, complex information of the latest complex model containing all the bells and whistles, can be run many times quickly, to provide a better estimate of the probability of rare events.

"One of the things we focus on are values embedded in the models and whether the knowledge being produced by those models provides decision makers with the knowledge they need to make the decisions that matter to them," said Nancy Tuana, DuPont/Class of 1949 Professor of Philosophy and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Determining an appropriate model that can address the question and is still transparent is important.

"We want to obtain fundamental and useful insights," said Keller. "Using a simple model that allows us to better quantify risks can be more useful for decision-makers than using a complex model that makes it difficult to sample decision-relevant outcomes."

Srikrishnan added, "We need to make sure there is an alignment between what researchers are producing and what is required for real-world decision making."

The researchers understand that they need to make both the producers and users happy, but sometimes the questions being asked do not match the tools being used because of uncertainties and bottlenecks.

"We need to ask 'what do we need to know and how do we go about satisfying the needs of stakeholders and decision makers?'" said Tuana.

In 1921, Albert Einstein received the Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery that light is quantized, interacting with matter as a stream of particles called photons. Since these early days of quantum mechanics, it is known that photons also possess momentum. The photon's ability to transfer momentum was used in a novel approach by scientists of the Max Born Institute, Uppsala University, and the European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser Facility to observe a fundamental process in the interaction of x-rays with atoms. The detailed experimental and theoretical results are reported in the journal Science.

Absorption as well as emission of a photon by an atom are fundamental processes of the interaction of light with matter. Much rarer are processes in which several photons simultaneously interact with one atom. The availability of intense laser beams since the 1960s has led to the development of "nonlinear optics", which observes and utilizes such processes.

Entirely new possibilities emerge if it is possible to use nonlinear optics with x-rays instead of visible light. The use of ultrashort flashes of x-rays allows for detailed insight into the motion of electrons and atomic nuclei in molecules and solids. This perspective was one of the drivers leading to the construction of x-ray lasers based on particle accelerators in several countries. When the European x-ray free-electron laser, the European XFEL, started operation in 2017, the scientific community made an important step in that direction. Nevertheless, progress in the use of nonlinear x-ray processes to study fundamental interaction with matter has been slower than expected. "Typically, the much stronger linear processes occlude the interesting nonlinear processes", says Prof. Ulli Eichmann from Max Born Institute for nonlinear optics and short pulse spectroscopy in Berlin.

The German-Swedish research team has now demonstrated a new method allowing to observe the nonlinear processes without being disturbed by the linear processes. To this end, the team made use of the momentum that is transferred between x-rays and atoms. When crossing a supersonic atomic beam with the x-ray beam, they can identify those atoms which have undergone the so-called stimulated Raman scattering process - a fundamental nonlinear process, where two photons of different wavelength hit an atom and two photons of the longer wavelength leave the atom. The results were reported in the journal Science.

"Photons transfer momentum to an atom - completely analogous to a billiard ball hitting another one", explains Eichmann. In the stimulated Raman process, both photons leave the atom in the exact same direction as the two incident photons, hence the momentum of the atom and its direction of flight remain essentially unchanged. The much more frequent linear processes, where one photon is absorbed followed by the emission of another photon, have a different signature: as the emitted photon is typically emitted in a different direction, the atom will be deflected. Observing the direction of the atoms the scientists could thus clearly discriminate the stimulated Raman process from other processes.

"The new method opens unique possibilities when combined in the future with two time-delayed x-ray pulses of different wavelength. Such pulse patterns have recently become available at x-ray lasers, like the European XFEL", explains Dr. Michael Meyer, researcher at the European XFEL. As x-ray pulses with different wavelength allow to specifically address particular atoms in a molecule, it is possible to observe in detail how the wavefunctions of electrons in molecules evolve over time. In the long run, the scientists hope to not only observe this evolution, but to influence it via tailored laser pulses. "Our approach allows for a better understanding of chemical reactions on the atomic scale and may help to steer the reactions in a desired direction. As the movement of electrons is the essential step in chemical and photochemical reactions occurring e.g. in batteries and solar cells, our approach may give new insight in such processes as well", says Jan-Erik Rubensson, professor at Uppsala University.

In one of the first studies to comprehensively analyze Y chromosomes of humans' two closest relatives, Denisovans and Neanderthals, researchers report what prior studies have suggested: early gene flow events between archaic and modern humans led to the eventual replacement of archaic Neanderthal Y chromosomes by introgressed Homo sapiens Y chromosomes. There was no replacement of Denisovan Y chromosomes with H. sapiens Y chromosomes. "Until [this] new study ... archaeologists had only limited Y chromosome data from two Neanderthals and no information on exchanges of Y chromosomes during the early meeting," writes Mikkel Heide Schierup in a related Perspective. A growing number of ancient DNA studies on Neanderthals, Denisovans and H. sapiens suggest intertwined evolutionary and population histories, including several admixture events between early modern and archaic humans. However, ancient nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequences (mtDNA) have revealed phylogenetic discrepancies between the three groups that are hard to explain. For example, autosomal genomes show that Neanderthals and Denisovans are sister groups that split from modern humans more than 550,000 years ago. However, all but the earliest Neanderthal mtDNA samples are far more similar to those of modern humans than to those from Denisovans. These studies suggest that Neanderthals originally carried a Denisovan-like mtDNA, which was later wholly replaced through early admixture with early modern humans, likely between 350,000 and 150,000 years ago. While genomic data for the paternally inherited Y chromosome would help resolve puzzling gene flows, virtually none of the male Neanderthal and Denisovan remains studied to date contain well-preserved Y chromosome DNA. To address this gap in the data, Martin Petr and colleagues used a targeted capture-based DNA sequencing approach to enrich and extract Y chromosome sequences from the less-than-well-preserved remains of three male Neanderthals and two male Denisovans. Petr et al. found that, like maternally inherited mtDNA, modern human and Neanderthal Y chromosomes were more related to each other than to the Denisovan Y, supporting the suggestion that interbreeding between early humans and Neanderthals and subsequent selection led to the total replacement of more ancient Denisovan-like genetic material in late Neanderthals.

What The Study Did: Researchers investigated the effectiveness of using measurements of how pupils react to light as physiologic biomarker to help diagnose sports-related concussion in adolescents.

Authors: Christina L. Master, M.D., of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, is the corresponding author.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2020.3466)

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AURORA, Colo. (Sept. 24, 2020) - Some forms of blindness and visual impairment can be cured with a corneal transplant surgery using donated eye tissue. However, federal regulations in the United States and Canada severely restrict the ability of sexually active gay and bisexual men from donating their eye tissue.

Corneal donation in the United States is limited by a decades-old policy that bans men from becoming donors if they have had sex with another man in the past five years. Canada similarly bans corneal donations from men who had sex with another man during the previous 12 months.

These restrictions disqualified as many as 3,217 corneal donations from gay and bisexual men in 2018, despite a worldwide need for corneas for vision-restoring surgery and a lack of scientific evidence of harm caused by corneas from these men, according to a new study published in the September 24 issue of the journal JAMA Ophthalmology.

"With millions of people across the world in need of corneal transplants, these discarded corneas from gay and bisexual men could be used to address the shortage and safely restore vision to thousands of patients with corneal blindness or visual impairment," said lead author Michael A. Puente, MD, assistant professor of ophthalmology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

The study is the first of its kind to review how these policies have restricted corneal donations and prevented patients from receiving sight-restoring care.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's prohibition on corneal donation by men who have sex with men was instituted in May 1994, out of concern that HIV rates were disproportionately high in that demographic. At the time, HIV tests were unreliable up to six months after viral exposure. Since then, however, HIV testing has become faster and increasingly reliable, identifying infection within four to eight days of exposure. All corneal donors in the United States are required to undergo three separate HIV tests. Despite these advances, the FDA continues to require gay and bisexual corneal donors to be abstinent for five years, even if all three HIV tests are negative.

"With modern virologic testing and a better understanding of the low risk of HIV transmission through corneal transplants, this five-year deferral policy for gay men is not supported by current science," Puente said. "We ask federal regulators to reconsider these outdated policies which are depriving patients of the possibility of sight restoration."

The United States and Canada are outliers when it comes to restricting corneal donations from gay and bisexual men, the article says. Many countries, including Spain, Italy, Mexico, Chile, and Argentina, allow gay and bisexual men to donate their eye tissue just as easily as heterosexual donors. Other countries have deferral periods far shorter than five years. For example, the United Kingdom allows corneal donation by gay and bisexual men after only three months of abstinence, while the Netherlands and France only require gay and bisexual corneal donors to be abstinent for four months.

The article in JAMA Ophthalmology also reports that the risk of HIV transmission via corneal transplantation is low, further indicating that the restrictions should be reconsidered.

There has never been a reported case of HIV transmission through corneal transplant surgery. In 10 reported cases of corneal transplants from the 1980s and 1990s using tissue from donors who were found to be HIV-positive after surgery, none of the corneal recipients contracted the virus. Meanwhile, all 12 patients who received solid organ transplants, such as hearts, lungs, and kidneys, from those same donors did contract HIV, indicating that the corneas did not carry enough virus, if any, for transmission. These cases date from a time when HIV tests were unreliable, but now all corneal donors in the United States and Canada are required to undergo three separate highly reliable modern HIV tests. The cornea's avascularity likely prevents it from being a major reservoir of the virus, the JAMA Ophthalmology article says.

To calculate the number of corneal donations lost in one year due to the federal restrictions on corneal donation by gay and bisexual men, Puente and his co-authors surveyed all 65 eye banks in the United States and Canada to investigate how many potential corneal donors were disqualified in 2018 due to these federal restrictions. The survey data was gathered from May 2019 to February 2020.

Fifty-four of the 65 eye banks responded to the inquiries. Of those responding, 24 were able to provide a specific number of donation referrals that were rejected specifically due to the federal restrictions on gay and bisexual corneal donors. Using the reported data, Puente and his colleagues calculated an estimated number of potential corneal donations that were discarded in 2018 due solely to the donors' sexual orientation. They estimate it was between 1,558 and 3,217 eyes.

The need for donated corneas is substantial. An estimated 12.7 million people around the world need a corneal transplant, with only one cornea available for every 70 corneal transplants needed. Despite improvements in the reliability and efficiency of HIV tests, restrictive federal policies for cornea donations have not changed, even as limits on blood donation have been relaxed.

Prior to 2015, gay men in the United States were subject to a lifetime ban on blood donation. In 2015, an FDA review concluded that a lifetime ban was no longer scientifically justified and subsequently recommended that gay blood donors must be abstinent for one year. In April 2020, the FDA announced that blood donors should be deferred for only three months in cases when a man had sexual contact with another man. In cases of solid-organ donation, there is no deferral period at all. Meanwhile, gay corneal donors are still required to be abstinent for five years.

"If it's safe for gay men to donate their blood after three months of abstinence, I can think of no scientific reason to continue to require gay men to be abstinent for five years to donate their eyes," Puente said. "This policy can be changed without increasing the risk of HIV transmission, and I would urge authorities to act as soon as possible to help patients who are waiting for sight-restoring surgery."

During the initial phase of COVID-19 lockdown, rates of loneliness among people in the UK were high and were associated with a number of social and health factors, according to a new study published this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jenny Groarke of Queen's University Belfast, UK, and colleagues.

Loneliness is a significant public health issue and is associated with worse physical and mental health as well as increased mortality risk. Systematic review findings recommend that interventions addressing loneliness should focus on individuals who are socially isolated. However, researchers have lacked a comprehensive understanding of how vulnerability to loneliness might be different in the context of a pandemic.

In the new study, researchers used an online survey to collect data about UK adults during the initial phase of COVID-19 lockdown in the country, from March 23 to April 24, 2020. 1,964 eligible participants responded to the survey, answering questions about loneliness, sociodemographic factors, health, and their status in relation to COVID-19. Participants were aged 18 to 87 years old (average 37.11), were mostly white (92.7%), female (70.4%), not religious (57.5%) and the majority were employed (71.9%).

The overall prevalence of loneliness, defined as having a high score on the loneliness scale (ie., a score of 7 or higher out of 9), was over a quarter of respondents: 26.6%. In the week prior to completing the survey, 49% to 70% of respondents reported feeling isolated, left out or lacking companionship. Risk factors for loneliness were being in a younger age group (aOR: 4.67 - 5.31), being separated or divorced (OR: 2.29), meeting clinical criteria for depression (OR: 1.74), greater emotion regulation difficulties (OR: 1.04), and poor-quality sleep due to the COVID-19 crisis (OR: 1.30). Higher levels of social support (OR: 0.92), being married/co-habiting (OR: 0.35) and living with a greater number of adults (OR: 0.87) were protective factors.

The authors hope that these findings can inform support strategies and help to target those most vulnerable to loneliness during the pandemic.

Groarke adds: "We found that rates of loneliness during the early stages of the UK lockdown were high. Our results suggest that supports and interventions to reduce loneliness should prioritise young people, those with mental health symptoms, and people who are socially isolated. Supports aimed at improving emotion regulation, sleep quality and increasing social support could reduce the impact of physical distancing regulations on mental health outcomes."

The explosive growth of internet use leads to an explosion of the energy consumption of data centers. Vertical cavity surface emitting lasers VCSELs are key enabling devices meeting the requirements of optical interconnects in such data centers up to a few hundred meters of single or multimode fiber due to their simplicity, low cost, and large data transmission rates. Achieving larger bit rates has been the stated goal of research and development during the last years. The next challenge will be to focus on reducing the energy consumption of the lasers and drivers--a function of the bit rate. The energy cost of transmission at potentially the largest possible bit rates, use of predistortion or forward error correction needs to be compared with the energy cost of data transmission and device life time at lower bit rates. Finally, end of life considerations of the total cost of data centers will move the focus of operators of such centers.

Recently, Prof. Bimberg's group at Bimberg Chinese-German Center for Green Photonics Changchun at Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics, and Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed VCSELs emitting at 850 nm, 880 nm, 910 nm, 940 nm, which were optimized to achieve 50+ Gb/s, enabling 200+ Gb/s data transmission across a multimode fiber. This was based on the PAM2-modulation scheme without any kind of predistortion leading to a spectral efficiency around 2 bit.

Furthermore, by optimization of the maximum bit rate of a system, the device lifetime, and the system's energy consumption, this group has demonstrated that 200 Gb/s transmission also can be achieved by using eight lasers with 25 Gb/s each. At 25 Gb/s EDR is even lower than 100 fJ/bit, presenting a 75% reduction as compared to the 50 Gb/s values. For the same BR of 200 Gb/s 50% energy reduction is achieved, although the number of devices has been doubled. In addition, the current density at operating conditions is reduced by 60% and risk of device failure is reduced.

Longer device lifetime together with the reduction total energy consumption by 50% will overcompensate the cost of doubling the number of devices. Lower power consumption leads to less heat, and temperature induced roll-over of the output power occurs at larger currents. Finally, less energy for cooling needs to be provided. Thus, the end of life cost is increased dramatically by choosing two lasers at a medium bit rate instead of one laser operating at maximum technically possible bit rate.

Tsukuba, Japan - Tiny organisms head out on the highway, looking for adventure like they've ridden straight out of the 1960s rock hit, "Born to Be Wild." Researchers from Japan have discovered that while perhaps not as thrill-seeking, bacteria do indeed travel on fungal highways and pay a toll in return.

In a study published this month in Life Science Alliance, researchers from the University of Tsukuba have revealed a mutual bacterial-fungal relationship that lets bacteria travel in exchange for thiamine.

Thiamine (vitamin B1) is essential to the health of almost all living organisms, and is synthesized by bacteria, plants, fungi and some protozoans. Free thiamine is scarce in the environment, and organisms appear to have developed numerous ways of obtaining it.

"Some species have developed mutually beneficial strategies that allow them to coexist," says lead author of the study Professor Norio Takeshita. "But few strategies that satisfy the need for nutrients and physical niches have been documented. So, we examined the interaction of a fungus and a bacterium to investigate strategies that meet those needs."

To do this, the researchers used transcriptomic analyses (i.e., examining all the RNA molecules of an organism), as well as genetic, molecular mass and imaging methods, including live imaging. Stable isotope labeling was used to investigate thiamine transfer from bacteria to the fungus.

"The bacteria cultured with the fungus traveled along fungal filaments using their flagella," explains Professor Nozomu Obana, senior author. "They dispersed farther with the expansion of the fungal colony than they would have otherwise, suggesting that the fungal filaments supply space for bacteria to migrate, disperse and multiply."

The fungus in this study is a type that can synthesize thiamine on its own, but used thiamine produced by the bacteria. Because these bacteria synthesize thiamine extracellularly, neighboring bacteria and fungi in nature could uptake it and use it, saving them the cost of synthesizing it themselves.

"We're proposing a new mutualistic growth mechanism in bacterial-fungal interactions, in which the bacteria move along the fungal highway and pay thiamine as a toll to the growing fungal filaments," says Professor Takeshita.

This research and future studies will contribute to an understanding of selective microbial communication, and live imaging could be used to screen for affinities between bacteria and fungi. Research in this area could be applied to a range of settings from fermentation, biomass degradation, and the promotion of plant growth, as well as plant and human pathogenesis.

High levels of air pollution are forcing people inside to consume more electricity, subsequently causing even greater environmental problems by increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

This is according to a new study from researchers at Cardiff University who have shown that the effects are seen more in lower-income families and those from ethnic minority backgrounds.

The team say the results should encourage decision makers to think about how policy can prevent inequality from widening in terms of both health risks and financial hardships.

The study, which has been published in the journal Nature Energy, examined the energy consumption of over 4,000 residential buildings and 17,000 commercial buildings in the city of Phoenix, Arizona between 2013 and 2018.

The Phoenix metropolitan area has the highest air pollution levels in the United States, with pollution being generated from both natural sources, such as dust storms, and human activities such as energy generation and transport.

The energy consumption data from the buildings in Phoenix was compared to levels of pollution in the area, allowing the researchers to tell whether households with distinct income levels or from various ethnic groups responded to air pollution differently.

The results showed that higher levels of pollution were associated with higher electricity consumption in residential buildings, with increases mainly happening in the daytime.

Higher pollution levels also resulted in higher electricity consumption in commercial buildings in the retail and recreation industries.

"Our results indicate that when air pollution levels are high, people tend to reduce travelling and shift to indoor activities, which lead to more electricity consumption in general, whether it be from heating, cooling and lighting or the increase use of appliances" said lead author of the study Dr Pan He from Cardiff University's School of Earth and Ocean Sciences.

"Lower-income or Hispanic consumers experienced a larger increase, possibly because they have low energy efficiency in their homes and are more exposed to air pollution."

The researchers also examined the impact of high levels of air pollution on energy supplies, specifically solar panels.

It is believed that solar panels can lose their efficiency as air pollution not only absorbs and scatters the sunlight in the air, but also gets deposited on the surface of the panels which hampers their power generation.

Indeed, the results showed that air pollution reduced the power generated by solar panels in both the residential and commercial buildings, with the latter less affected potentially because the panels are better maintained and cleaned.

"Our findings show the importance of considering the interactions and feedbacks of consumer behavior and solar energy systems to air pollution issues," Dr He continued.

"A cost-benefit analysis when accounting for the damages presented in this paper could produce larger welfare gains from pollution control policies. Meanwhile, it is critical to reduce the socio-economic vulnerability in adapting to air pollution, which can be achieved by improving the energy efficiency in the homes of specific income and ethnic groups."

CAMBRIDGE, MA - September 24, 2020--This week, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the MIT Press published a new issue of Daedalus that features essays by sixteen prominent climate change witnesses, representing multiple fields, backgrounds, and generations. Guest edited by Nancy L. Rosenblum (Harvard University), the volume assembles personal narratives from men and women immersed in the greatest problem of our time, perhaps of all time.

The many and varied dangers of climate change propel scientists, doctors, public health experts, social scientists, lawyers, journalists, business consultants, and military officers to speak out from the vantage point of their specialized knowledge. We call them witnessing professionals. Their personal narratives describe paths into climate-related work, the constraints imposed on them by disciplinary boundaries and by standard codes of professional ethics, and the need to move beyond them.

Witnessing professionals act on the imperative to communicate widely what they know, and reflect on the broader ethical challenges and political demands of addressing decision-makers and the public. They build institutions to extend their work. Climate change shapes their professional identity and expands their sense of responsibility. They push the bounds of their fields and they push themselves as witnessing professionals. The authors describe painful setbacks while balancing on the knife-edge of hope.

Witnessing Climate Change includes the following essays:

"Introduction: Paths to Witnessing, Ethics of Speaking Out" by Nancy L. Rosenblum (Academy Member; Harvard University)

"On Becoming Witnessing Professionals" by Robert Jay Lifton (Academy Member; Columbia University; CUNY)

"What Is the Social Responsibility of Climate Scientists?" by Naomi Oreskes (Academy Member; Harvard University)

"Witnessing for the Middle to Depolarize the Climate Change Conversation" by Robert H. Socolow (Academy Member; Princeton University)

"The Professional Ethics of Witnessing Professionals" by Dennis F. Thompson (Harvard University)

"An Environmental Lawyer's Fraught Quest for Legal Tools to Hold Back the Seas" by Michael B. Gerrard (Columbia University)

"Racism as a Motivator for Climate Justice" by Mark A. Mitchell (George Mason University)

"From Air Pollution to the Climate Crisis: Leaving the Comfort Zone" by Patrick L. Kinney (Boston University)

"Climate in the Boardroom: Struggling to Reconcile Business as Usual & the End of the World as We Know It" by Rebecca Henderson (Academy Member; Harvard University)

"Task Force Climate Change: A Patron Saint of Lost Causes, or Just Ahead of Its Time?" by David W. Titley (U.S. Navy; Penn State University)

"Seeing Is Believing: Understanding & Aiding Human Responses to Global Climate Change" by Elke U. Weber (Academy Member; Princeton University)

"Less Talk, More Walk: Why Climate Change Demands Activism in the Academy" by Jessica F. Green (University of Toronto)

"A Conversation" by Nancy L. Rosenblum (Academy Member; Harvard University) and Rafe Pomerance (Woodwell Climate Research Center)

"The Coral Is Not All Dead Yet" by Carolyn Kormann (The New Yorker)

"Slow Disaster in the Anthropocene: A Historian Witnesses Climate Change on the Korean Peninsula" by Scott Gabriel Knowles (Drexel University)

"Let Me Tell You a Story" by Antonio Oposa Jr. (Lawyer, SEA Camp)

Researchers from HSE University compared the effect of two meditation practices - loving-kindness meditation (LKM) and compassion meditation (CM). Loving-kindness meditation turned out to be more effective when it comes to increasing happiness, but, in contrast with previous studies, compassion meditation also did not result in a growth of negative emotions. The paper was published in Mindfulness journal.

Meditation has long become a routine for many people, particularly in the US and Western Europe. It is used to restore energy, decrease stress, and find inspiration. Different types of meditation have different effects. Researchers are increasingly interested in these hardly measurable but nevertheless important differences in the impact that meditation practices have on people's emotional state.

In Buddhism, there is a group of practices called the 'four immeasurable meditations'. It includes loving-kindness meditation, compassion meditation, appreciative joy meditation, and equanimity meditation. While they differ from each other and can be used separately, they are all aimed at forming positive messages to others and oneself.

Judging by their names, loving-kindness meditation and compassion meditation may seem similar, but they also have rooted theoretical differences. While LKM is about the meditator's motivation to see others be happy, CM aims to alleviate the feeling of suffering.

The researchers sought to answer the question as to whether the outcomes of the two practices differ and what emotions they cause. They recommended that volunteers practice one of the meditations: the first group practiced LKM, and the second practiced CM. Each of the participants received a 15-min audio with the meditation practice instructions. The third, control, group, solved a crossword puzzle. Before and after the experiment, the participants completed a questionnaire, where they evaluated the emotions they were experiencing. A total of 201 American students participated in the experiment; none of them had practiced meditation before.

The study showed that the participants who practiced one of the meditations noticed a significant increase in happiness, as well as love and care for other people. LKM was more effective in increasing positive emotions and happiness.

'The higher effectiveness of loving-kindness meditation may be a sign that this type of meditation is more suitable to newcomers - those who have never tried meditation before,' said Ulyana Sirotina, one of the paper's authors. 'Compassion meditation is traditionally practiced after one has already mastered LKM.'

The researchers had assumed that CM would increase negative emotions, since the meditator is focused on suffering, but this did not happen. This conclusion contradicts an earlier study, where those practicing compassion experienced more sadness than before meditation. The researchers believe that the difference in the results may be due to differences in procedures: the instructions in the two experiments were different. While participants focused on compassion toward friends and strangers in the earlier study, this time they were also prompted to show self-compassion, which helped them deal with sadness. Self-compassion is likely a key factor responsible for positive emotions during CM, an assumption that could be evaluated in future studies.

These conclusions gave the researchers a deeper understanding of how strongly various meditation instructions may impact their emotional state. Since meditation is increasingly used by medical professionals and psychologists in clinical practice, such studies serve to enrich knowledge on the use of specific meditation approaches.