Culture

A small study by Canadian veterinary science experts being presented at this ESCMID Conference on Coronavirus Disease (ECCVID, held online from 23-25 September) suggests that a substantial proportion of pet cats and dogs can be infected by SARS-CoV-2 by their owners. Furthermore, in several cases pets found to be infected had COVID-19-like respiratory symptoms at the time their owner had COVID-19.

"These preliminary results suggest that a substantial proportion of pets in households of persons with COVID-19 seroconvert," says study co-author Dorothee Bienzle, Professor of Veterinary Pathology at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada.

SARS-CoV-2 has been reported to infect a range of animal species. However, neither risk factors nor susceptibility or clinical features of infection in different animal species are well defined. This study investigated the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 shedding and seropositivity in pets whose owners had COVID-19.

In this study, people who owned a cat, dog or ferret* and had a diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection or symptoms consistent with COVID-19 within a 2-week period, were invited to have their pet swabbed. If humans were outside the 2-week window of suspected infectiousness, collection of a blood sample from their pet for serology was offered. Swabbing of the nose, throat and rectum was done for PCR-testing to test for current infection in the pets, while standard blood antibody ELISA tests were used to detect recent (IgM antibodies) or past infection (IgG antibodies). Results were compared with blood stored from animals collected before December 2019, to act as a control group.

Swabs were collected from 17 cats, 18 dogs and one ferret. All PCR results (for current infection) were negative except those from one cat that were considered indeterminate. Blood samples were taken from 8 cats and 10 dogs. The results indicated presence of IgG or IgM in 4 (50%) and 3 (38%) distinct cat samples, respectively. The sample from the cat with indeterminate PCR results had a positive IgM ELISA result, indicating its infection, although not current, was extremely recent.

"All cats with an indeterminate PCR or positive antibody result were reported to have had respiratory and/or other illness by their owners around the time of the owner's COVID-19 infection," explains Professor Bienzle. "Two (20%) of dogs had positive IgG antibody results, indicating past infection, and one of these was reported to have had an episode of respiratory disease. No dogs had positive IgM results, which would have indicated more recent infection."

She concludes: "While eligible participant number was limited by relatively low human transmission rates in the study area, these preliminary results suggest that a substantial proportion of pets in households of persons with COVID-19 end up developing antibodies. Due to the narrow window of time available to detect a current infection in pets, especially if their owner is still sick and isolating, blood testing the animal at a later time to check for previous infection is preferable for assessment of human-to-animal transmission."

She adds: "Transmission from mink to humans has been reported on mink farms with a high proportion of infected animals maintained in close quarters and cared for by humans. Transmission from pets to humans has not been reported, but since the virus changes minimally or not at all after transmission from humans to animals, such reverse transmission may occur."

Regarding pet care, Prof Bienzle recommends that people infected with SARS-CoV-2 should not only keep away from other people, but also their pets. She says: "There is sufficient evidence from multiple studies, including ours, to recommend that SARS-CoV-2 infected persons should isolate from people and animals."

Her team will be studying COVID-19 antibody prevalence in other pet populations in the near future.

ITHACA, N.Y. - Pity the glycan.

These complex sugar molecules are attached to 80% of the proteins in the human body, making them an essential ingredient of life. But this process, known as glycosylation, has been somewhat overshadowed by flashier biomolecular processes such as transcription and translation.

"Glycosylation is absolutely essential for life on this planet. And yet, we still know relatively little about it," said Matthew DeLisa, the William L. Lewis Professor of Engineering in the Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. "While much attention has been given to understanding the genome and the proteome, the glycome - which represents the entire complement of sugars, either free or present in more complex molecules such as glycoproteins, of an organism - has been relatively understudied. We need new tools to advance the field forward."

DeLisa's lab has created these very tools by commandeering simple, single-celled microorganisms - namely E. coli bacteria - and engineering them to explore the complex process of glycosylation and the functional role that protein-linked glycans play in health and disease.

The group's paper, "Engineering Orthogonal Human O-linked Glycoprotein Biosynthesis in Bacteria," published July 27 in Nature Chemical Biology. The lead author is Aravind Natarajan, Ph.D. '19.

Previously, DeLisa's team used a similar cell glyco-engineering approach to produce one of the most common types of glycoproteins - those with glycan structures linked to the amino acid asparagine, or N-linked. Now the researchers have turned their attention to another abundant glycoprotein, namely O-linked, in which glycans are attached to the oxygen atom of serine or threonine amino acids of a protein.

The O-linked glycans are more structurally diverse than their N-linked cousins, and they have important implications in the development of new therapeutic treatments for diseases such as breast cancer.

"Our cell-engineering efforts were quite complicated as we not only needed to equip E. coli with the complete set of enzymes for making and attaching glycan structures to proteins, but we also had to carefully rewire native metabolic networks to ensure the availability of important glycan building blocks such as sialic acid," Natarajan said. "The addition of sialic acid to our glycoproteins is significant because this sugar residue is often crucial for targeting drugs to specific cells and increasing their circulatory half-life."

When a cell turns cancerous, it expresses certain biomarkers, including abnormally glycosylated surface proteins, that indicate the presence of cancer. DeLisa's group equipped E. coli with the machinery to produce such proteins, including one that closely resembled a prominent cancer biomarker, mucin 1 (MUC1).

"The glycosylated version of MUC1 is one of the highest-priority target antigens for cancer therapy. It's been very challenging to develop therapies against this target," said DeLisa, the paper's senior author. "But by having a biosynthetic tool like the one we've created that is capable of replicating the MUC1 structure, we're hopeful that this could provide glycoprotein reagents that could be leveraged to discover antibodies or employed directly as immunotherapies, all of which could help in the fight against certain types of cancer."

Both O-linked and N-linked glycans have also been discovered in one of the surface proteins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19. DeLisa is hopeful his group's method of bacterial cell glyco-engineering will open the door for creating glycosylated versions of this S-protein that could lead to therapeutic antibodies against the coronavirus, or the development of a subunit vaccine.

Because of their earlier work replicating N-linked glycans, the researchers were able to get the O-linked system up and running quickly. Now DeLisa's lab is primed to make proteins that carry both types of glycosylation, which is significant because many glycoproteins, such as the S-protein in SARS-CoV-2, carry both N- and O-linked glycan structures.

The researchers are also exploring ways to increase the spectrum of glycoproteins that their engineered E. coli cells can produce and the efficiency with which these products are generated.

"We think of E. coli as a clean chassis or a blank slate when it comes to protein glycosylation, because these bacteria do not normally peform glycosylation reactions like the ones we have installed," DeLisa said. "This allows construction of these pathways from the bottom up, giving us total control over the types of glycan structures that are made, and the specific sites in target proteins where they're attached. That is a level of control that is difficult to achieve with other preexisting cell-based systems or technologies for glycoprotein engineering."

September 17, 2020 - Assessing the potential for violent behavior by patients with psychiatric disorders is an essential but challenging responsibility for mental health professionals. A five-part series currently being published in the Journal of Psychiatric Practice summarizes an expert approach to screening, assessment, and management of the risk of "other-directed violence." The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

Hal S. Wortzel, MD, of the University of Colorado and colleagues outline their experience-informed approach to therapeutic risk management of the potentially violent patient. While violence risk assessment is a legal and ethical requirement, it can also be "a crucial element of the comprehensive treatment plan to achieve therapeutic goals and optimize mental health," Dr. Wortzel and coauthors write.

Model for Therapeutic Risk Assessment of Other-Directed Violence
In several situations, mental health professionals are responsible for assessing the risk for violent behaviors in patients with psychiatric disorders. In many jurisdictions, they also have a duty to warn and protect others who may be at risk of violence. Many clinicians feel they lack the training and experience needed to conduct meaningful violence risk assessments.

In a previous series of "Law and Psychiatry" columns in Journal of Psychiatric Practice, Dr. Wortzel and colleagues shared their approach to assessing the risk of self-directed violence (SDV) in potentially suicidal patients. They emphasized the benefits of therapeutic risk assessment: a patient-centered model that supports the patient's overall treatment and the therapeutic alliance with mental health professionals.

The new series shifts the focus to therapeutic risk assessment for other-directed violence (ODV) - borrowing from the SDV risk assessment skills that many clinicians already have. The series focuses on five essential elements of the therapeutic risk assessment for ODV:

Clinical Risk Assessment - Assessment starts with a clinical interview, including questions about past violent thoughts or behaviors. The authors discuss the need to explore the patient's intent and plan to harm someone, the critical distinction between "risk factors" and "warning signs" for ODV, and approach to collecting collateral data from other sources, preferably with the patient's consent.

Structured Screening or Assessment Tools - Structured tools can provide and document additional information for the clinical risk assessment. While no questionnaire or rating scale can replace the clinical interview, adding various types of tools can provide "a more nuanced, multifaceted approach" to ODV risk assessment.

Risk stratification - Using all available sources of data, the clinician stratifies the individual's risk of ODV, focusing on the severity and temporality (acute versus chronic) of the risk.

Chain analysis - Assessment of pathways related to violent thoughts and behaviors allows the clinician to design effective therapeutic strategies targeting those pathways.

Safety planning - Mental health professionals work with patients toward developing a safety plan to recognize violent thoughts and other warning signs, engage in coping strategies to prevent violent behaviors, and get help when needed.

The first and second parts of the series appear in the July-August and September-October issues of Journal of Psychiatric Practice. The remaining columns are scheduled for upcoming issues.

Dr. Wortzel and colleagues hope their series will provide a "cogent process" for conducting violence risk assessments - in a way that fulfills legal and ethical responsibilities, protects the safety of patients and potential victims, and supports the patient's overall mental health care. The authors conclude: "Providers can collaborate with their patients to gain a better understanding of their risk for both SDV and ODV and develop plans to manage this risk."

While more than 80 percent of white Evangelicals voted for President Donald Trump in 2016, their mobilization at the congregation level has since generally plateaued, and new research finds that progressive congregations have surged in their political activism, likely in direct response to Trump administration policies.

A new study by Kraig Beyerlein, University of Notre Dame associate professor of sociology, and Mark Chaves, Duke University professor of sociology, analyzes data from the National Congregations Study (NCS)-- a nationally representative sample of U.S. congregations over time -- and finds that the very congregations that should have increased their mobilization the most under Trump in fact increased it the least, including on issues for which Trump has strongly advocated, like immigration and endorsing candidates.

Even on issues that inspired religious liberty executive orders, like endorsing political candidates and wanting to do so without losing tax-exempt status, conservative and predominantly white evangelical Protestant congregations trail well behind Black Protestant churches. In addition, these churches increased their political activism the most between the Obama and Trump administrations.

With the 2020 presidential election on the near horizon, Beyerlein discusses what he and his co-researcher learned about the political engagement of U.S. congregations -- and how that may impact results on Nov. 3.

When you examine faith-based political activity at the congregation level, what are you measuring?

The NCS contains a range of political activities, such as offering opportunities for involvement during religious services, organizing voter registration drives or get-out-the-vote efforts, distributing voter guides, hosting candidates as speakers, lobbying elected officials, and mobilizing marches or protests. In more recent waves of the NCS, the cause or issue (such as immigration or poverty) for which congregations lobby or march has also been measured. And for some of these causes or issues, the NCS captures the particular side of the mobilizing effort -- pro- or anti-immigrant rights, for example.

What surprised you most about the mobilization of America's congregations during 2018-19?

This wave of the NCS asked whether congregations had endorsed candidates, and if not, whether they would do so if this action would not put their tax-exempt status at risk. Four percent of congregations had engaged in this partisan political activity, and 17 percent of those that had not said they would if tax law was changed in their favor. Combining these numbers, then, over one-fifth of congregations across the United States would endorse candidates if they were free to do so without legal repercussions.

While this number is higher than anticipated, the real surprise was the type of congregations that would be most likely to endorse candidates under this condition. Predominately white evangelical Protestant churches -- critical mobilizing sites of Trump's political base -- were the least likely, at 11 percent, despite the president signaling his approval by signing an executive order in May 2017, though the implementation of this order remains unclear. Black Protestant churches led the way, by far, in terms of both actually endorsing candidates and desiring to do so if tax law was changed. Moreover, almost half of politically liberal congregations reported that they would endorse candidates if they could. By comparison, only 11 percent of politically conservative congregations answered they would.

Thus, despite Trump's intention to promote this partisan political activity among conservative churches around the nation by attempting to change tax law, the data indicate conservative churches would be the least likely to take advantage of the opportunity to do so.

What are some of your key takeaways on the faith-based political activity of Catholic parishes, especially on immigration and sanctuary churches?

I was very excited that the 2018-19 NCS included a question asking congregations whether they had declared themselves as a sanctuary for undocumented immigrants. Up to this point, we lacked a nationally representative estimate of this important and timely congregation-based political activity.

Overall, we found 4 percent of congregations had done so at the time of the 2018-19 NCS. Even though the question asked about declaring rather than actively housing undocumented immigrants, this low number is not surprising given the costs and risks involved in latter, for which the former is a first step. For instance, government repression is a possibility, which happened to churches during the 1980s Sanctuary movement. Given the current administration's anti-immigration policies and rhetoric, it certainly seems like history could repeat itself.

Against this backdrop, it is notable that nearly a third of Catholic parishes declared themselves as a sanctuary for undocumented immigrants under the Trump regime. Combined with their relatively high levels of lobbying or marching for immigrant rights in the 2012 and 2018-19 NCS waves, it is clear that Catholic parishes are an important faith-based force to defend and uphold the human dignity of people regardless of the country in which they were born.

How does the political activity in this fourth wave of data compare to previous waves?

We observed a significant uptick in nearly half of the political activity measures repeated across NCS waves.

Importantly, we found that the post-2012 mobilizing surge was concentrated among Black Protestant churches. Not only does this reflect the historical continuity of activism within Black Protestant churches -- during the U.S. civil rights movement, for instance -- but also the fact that these churches are likely rising up to confront violence against Black people and an administration that does not represent their interests (the majority of members of Black churches vote Democrat).

On the former point, we observed from the fourth wave of the NCS that nearly half of Black Protestant churches organized a discussion about policing in the last year, which is much higher than the rate of congregations of other religious groups. Since prior waves of the NCS did not ask this question, we do not know whether this represents an increase over time for this activity in Black Protestant churches, but it is clear that this issue is of greater salience to these congregations.

Over 99% of terrestrial ice is bound up in the ice sheets covering Antarctic and Greenland. Even partial melting of this ice due to climate change will significantly contribute to sea level rise. But how much exactly? For the first time ever, glaciologists, oceanographers, and climatologists from 13 countries have teamed up to make new projections. Their modelling efforts, involving CNRS and CEA researchers (1), show that the Antarctic Ice Sheet may account for up to 30 cm of sea level rise between 2015 and 2100. However, some scenarios alternatively suggest that the volume added to the ice sheet by snowfall will surpass what is lost through melting, partially offsetting the rise--by 7.8 cm at best. This wide range in estimates (2) mainly reflects incomplete knowledge of melting that occurs on the bottom of ice shelves. But these floating glacial fringes, which can cover an area half the size of France, pen in the rest of the ice sheet. Were they to be lost, the new projections indicate that the ocean would rise several metres over 500 years. Over the same 2015-2100 period, the Greenland Ice Sheet would contribute an additional 1.5 to 14 cm, depending on the level of our greenhouse gas emissions. These findings have been discussed in a spate of scientific articles, including five published in The Cryosphere on 17 September 2020. To refine their predictions, scientists are turning to a new generation of climate models that directly integrate data on the cryosphere, in addition to atmospheric, oceanic, and biogeochemical inputs.

New research from King's College London has found that COVID-19 may be diagnosed on the same emergency scans intended to diagnose stroke. The findings have important implications in the management of patients presenting with suspected stroke through early identification of COVID-19.

In a paper published today in the American Journal of Neuroradiology, study lead and Senior Lecturer in Neuroimaging at King's College London, Dr Tom Booth said the emergency scans captured images of the top of the lungs where a fluffiness known as 'ground glass opacification' allowed COVID-19 to be diagnosed.

225 patients were examined from three London Hyper-Acute Stroke Units. The emergency stroke scan consisted of a computed tomography (CT) of the head and neck blood vessels.

Dr Booth said the results show that when the team saw these changes in the top of the lungs during the emergency scan, they were able to reliably and accurately diagnose COVID-19 and the changes also predicted increased mortality.

"This is particularly relevant given the limitations of currently available Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) testing as it takes time to complete the test and sometimes it is inaccurate," Dr Booth said. "Additionally, our data have prognostic information given the increased mortality in those with lung changes shown in our cohort. These are useful results because the changes are simple for radiologists and other doctors to see. This is "free information" from a scan intended for another purpose yet extremely valuable."

Primarily, the findings allow earlier selection of the appropriate level of personal protective equipment (PPE) and attendant staff numbers, triage to appropriate inpatient ward settings, self-isolation and contact tracing.

ITHACA, N.Y. - Cornell University systems engineers examined data from a busy New York state food bank and, using a new algorithm, found ways to better distribute and allocate food, and elevate nutrition among its patrons in the process.

"In order to serve thousands of people and combat food insecurity, our algorithm helps food banks manage their food resources more efficiently - and patrons get more nutrition," said lead researcher Faisal Alkaabneh, Cornell's first doctoral graduate in systems engineering.

Alkaabneh and his adviser, Oliver Gao, professor of civil and environmental engineering, are co-authors of "A Unified Framework for Efficient, Effective and Fair Resource Allocation by Food Banks Using an Approximate Dynamic Programming Approach," published in the journal Omega.

The researchers reviewed data of the Food Bank of the Southern Tier, which serves six counties in upstate New York. In 2019, the food bank distributed 10.9 million meals to about 21,700 people each week. Nearly 19% of its patrons are seniors and about 41% are children, according to the group's data.

Last year, the food bank distributed 2.8 million pounds of fresh fruit through 157 partner agencies, and moved about 3.4 million pounds of food through local mobile pantries.

The algorithm Gao and his team used to determine how to allocate several food categories efficiently, based upon pantry requests, demonstrated a 7.73% improvement in efficiency from 2018 to 2019, compared to standard food bank allocation practices. Their calculations also showed a 3% improvement in nutrition using a wider variety of food, Alkaabneh said.

"We hope our research is used as a baseline model for food banks improving practices," Gao said. "and boosting nutrition and policies to help people at risk for hunger."

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, researchers at MIT and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, along with their collaborators at the University of Washington, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and the Ragon Institute, have been working on a CRISPR-based diagnostic for Covid-19 that can produce results in 30 minutes to an hour, with similar accuracy as the standard PCR diagnostics now used.

The new test, known as STOPCovid, is still in the research stage but, in principle, could be made cheaply enough that people could test themselves every day. In a study appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers showed that on a set of patient samples, their test detected 93 percent of the positive cases as determined by PCR tests for Covid-19.

"We need rapid testing to become part of the fabric of this situation so that people can test themselves every day, which will slow down outbreak," says Omar Abudayyeh, an MIT McGovern Fellow working on the diagnostic.

Abudayyah is one of the senior authors of the study, along with Jonathan Gootenberg, a McGovern Fellow, and Feng Zhang, a core member of the Broad Institute, investigator at the MIT McGovern Institute and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the James and Patricia Poitras '63 Professor of Neuroscience at MIT. The first authors of the paper are MIT biological engineering graduate students Julia Joung and Alim Ladha in the Zhang lab.

A streamlined test

Zhang's laboratory began collaborating with the Abudayyeh and Gootenberg laboratory to work on the Covid-19 diagnostic soon after the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak began. They focused on making an assay, called STOPCovid, that was simple to carry out and did not require any specialized laboratory equipment. Such a test, they hoped, would be amenable to future use in point-of-care settings, such as doctors' offices, pharmacies, nursing homes, and schools.

"We developed STOPCovid so that everything could be done in a single step," Joung says. "A single step means the test can be potentially performed by nonexperts outside of laboratory settings."

In the new version of STOPCovid reported today, the researchers incorporated a process to concentrate the viral genetic material in a patient sample by adding magnetic beads that attract RNA, eliminating the need for expensive purification kits that are time-intensive and can be in short supply due to high demand. This concentration step boosted the test's sensitivity so that it now approaches that of PCR.

"Once we got the viral genomes onto the beads, we found that that could get us to very high levels of sensitivity," Gootenberg says.

Working with collaborators Keith Jerome at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Alex Greninger at the University of Washington, the researchers tested STOPCovid on 402 patient samples -- 202 positive and 200 negative -- and found that the new test detected 93 percent of the positive cases as determined by the standard CDC PCR test.

"Seeing STOPCovid working on actual patient samples was really gratifying," Ladha says.

They also showed, working with Ann Woolley and Deb Hung at Brigham and Women's Hospital, that the STOPCovid test works on samples taken using the less invasive anterior nares swab. They are now testing it with saliva samples, which could make at-home tests even easier to perform. The researchers are continuing to develop the test with the hope of delivering it to end users to help fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The goal is to make this test easy to use and sensitive, so that we can tell whether or not someone is carrying the virus as early as possible," Zhang says.

Researchers at Uppsala University have developed a new method to determine - rapidly, easily and cheaply - how effective two antibiotics combined can be in stopping bacterial growth. The new method is simple for laboratories to use and can provide greater scope for customising treatment of bacterial infections. The study is published in PLOS Biology.

Combinations of antimicrobial agents are invariably prescribed for certain infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis, HIV and malaria. Bacterial infections that are not readily treatable, such as those affecting cardiac valves and prostheses, and lung infections in cystic fibrosis, are also usually subjected to a combination of antibiotics. The effect sought, "synergism", means that the joint action of the combined agents is more effective than could in fact have been expected, based on the efficacy of the separate agents. In contrast, the opposite phenomenon - that is, two antibiotics counteracting each other's effects ("antagonism") - is undesirable. However, knowing what the combined effect will be is not always easy.

With the newly developed method known as CombiANT (combinations of antibiotics), interactions between various antibiotics can be tested on agar plates and results obtained in 24 hours. The lead author of the study, Nikos Fatsis-Kavalopoulos, developed the method at Uppsala University. It is based on creating a "concentration gradient" of antibiotics that have been cast into an agar plate, using a 3D-printed plastic disc.

On the agar plate, bacteria that have been isolated from an individual patient are then cultured to see how they react to different combinations of antibiotics.

In their study, the researchers investigated E. coli bacteria isolated from urinary tract infections. Different cultures of E. coli proved not to react in the same way to specific antibiotic combinations. A combination of antibiotics that had synergistic effects on most cultures brought about antagonism in some, with the result that the treatment for the latter group was inferior.

"This result may be of great clinical importance. Consequently, instead of assuming that synergistic and antagonistic interactions are equal for all bacterial isolates, we test individually every isolate taken from an infected patient," says Dan I. Andersson, Professor of Medical Bacteriology at Uppsala University, who is primarily responsible for the study.

Customising the drug combo in this way may be crucially important in achieving high efficacy in the treatment of infections. Being a simple, low-cost method, it is also easy to introduce and use in health care.

The uprising that erupted in fall 2019 in Chile against the post-dictatorship government may be diminished by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York.

Despite a reputation for equitable development and robust democratic institutions, post-dictatorship Chile proved incapable of guaranteeing economic and social protections for vast swaths of the population and of adequately representing their needs and policy preferences, according to René Rojas, assistant professor of human development at Binghamton University. Over the last 10 years, stagnation, intensified insecurity and oligarchic politics promoted an upsurge in popular protests that finally erupted in October 2019, as a furious and seemingly uncontainable rebellion. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, may give the post-authoritarian regime a new lease on life, as it undermines possibilities for ongoing collective action and places the prospects for meaningful reform on hold.

"As the insurgency set about to resolve its differences and confront inevitable exhaustion, the arrival of the coronavirus and its recent surge have placed mobilizations on hold, threatening to restore the fragile balance of the pre-rebellion order," wrote Rojas in a new paper in New Labor Forum. "In one swoop, the pandemic snatched from the movement its crucial weapon for securing concessions -- its capacity for disruption."

Fear of the virus and its economic consequences has stymied the uprising, and Chileans have redirected their energies toward holding on to work and whatever income they might secure. Whether the uprising can find its momentum again amidst the ongoing pandemic remains to be seen. Some developments indicate that as the pandemic reveals the inadequacy of official relief measures and re-exposes deep inequalities at the heart of the Chilean governing model, mass mobilization might retake center stage, wrote Rojas.

"The question in coming months will be whether Chile's new mass movement can regroup and win the reforms it forced onto the national agenda or whether neoliberal elites will succeed in reviving the developed world's least representative and most unequal political system," said Rojas.

Stripe rust is one of the most destructive wheat diseases in the world, especially in the United States. While the disease can be controlled by chemicals, those may be harmful to humans, animals, and the environment and the application can cost millions of dollars to wheat production. Rather than use chemicals, many farmers would prefer to grow wheat varieties that resist stripe rust and the development of such varieties is a top priority for wheat breeding programs.

To help develop these varieties, scientists from the US Department of Agriculture - Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) and Washington State University recently studied stripe rust resistance genes in 616 spring wheat varieties using the genome-wide association study approach. They used the GMS platform recently developed by the USDA-ARS Wheat Health, Genetics, and Quality Research Unit, which reduces the cost greatly compared to the Wheat SNP Chips.

"We tested the wheat varieties with five predominant strains of the wheat stripe rust pathogen under controlled greenhouse conditions and in field locations under natural infection of the pathogen, and characterized using a genotyping by multiplex sequencing (GMS) technique and molecular markers linked to previously reported stripe rust resistance genes," explained Xianming Chen. "We identified 37 genes, including 10 new genes, that show resistance to stripe rust."

Wheat growers should choose the resistant varieties identified in this study. Growing more and more resistant varieties will reduce chemical application and prevent stripe rust damage. These resistant varieties can also be used by wheat breeders to develop new varieties with improved stripe rust resistance and other desirable agronomic traits.

This study was possible due to the GMS platform developed by co-author Deven See's lab, which was considerably cheaper than other platforms. Chen was initially concerned that the platform might not identify a large number of genes associated with stripe rust resistance but was surprised to report results that were better than expected.

For more information on this important study, read "Identification of Stripe Rust Resistance Loci in U.S. Spring Wheat Cultivars and Breeding Lines Using Genome-Wide Association Mapping and Yr Gene Markers," which includes a large amount of data, such as which wheat varieties are resistant or susceptible to stripe rust and which varieties have which individual genes for stripe rust resistance. This article also includes methodology and techniques for studying important plant traits. This article was published in the August issue of Plant Disease.

Preserving terrestrial biodiversity requires more ambitious land-conservation targets to be established and met. At the same time, "bending the curve" on biodiversity loss needs more efficient food production, and healthier and less wasteful consumption and trade. If undertaken with "unprecedented ambition and coordination," these efforts provide an opportunity to reverse terrestrial biodiversity loss by 2050, according to a new study.

The research was published September 10 in Nature and forms part of the latest Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) Living Planet Report. The work was led by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), a research institute based in Austria.

"This important paper adds further evidence that food and environmental security are not incompatible," said Fabrice DeClerck, a co-author and senior scientist at the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), who co-authored 2019's EAT-Lancet report that outlined food system transitions to feed 10 billion people sustainably by 2050.

In a novel approach to explore future terrestrial biodiversity trends as affected by habitat conversion, the researchers built an ensemble of models to better understand possible future scenarios, much in the same way the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) creates future climate projections. They explore different assumptions - conservation and restoration efforts, and the impact of more sustainable food production and consumption practices - to build a timeline for a reversal in biodiversity loss.

"We wanted to assess in a robust manner whether it might be feasible to bend the curve of declining terrestrial biodiversity due to current and future land use, while avoiding jeopardizing our chances to achieve other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)," said David Leclère, the lead author and IIASA researcher. "If this were indeed possible, we also wanted to explore how to get there and, more specifically, what type of actions would be required, and how combining various types of actions might reduce trade-offs among objectives."

The study comes at a relevant time for international discussions related to climate, conservation and food systems, including the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, which is taking stock of its Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020.

The research was also featured in the 5th Global Biodiversity Outlook, released this week.

"We found that apart from increased conservation efforts, the most important actions to revert the loss of biodiversity are all related to how we manage the food system," said Mario Herrero, the chief research scientist for agriculture and food at CSIRO, Australia's national research agency. "Key transitions towards healthy and sustainable diets, renewed waste reduction efforts and increases in productivity will help enormously restore ecosystems. These are central elements where we need investment and action and are an integral part of the forthcoming World Food Summit."

How much loss is already locked in?

Even under a best-case scenario, ongoing land conversion will drive further biodiversity loss before the curve starts bending. At least a third of the projected losses in the coming years are unlikely to be avoided under any scenario. Potential biodiversity losses were found to be highest in the regions richest in biodiversity, including sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America.

The study's baseline projections for biodiversity loss - which include global and local extinctions and reductions in viable population levels for plants and animals - will be driven by the loss of about 5.3 million km2 of unmanaged forest and natural vegetation by 2050. To have a chance at reversing biodiversity loss - or bending the biodiversity curve towards restoration - about 9.8 million km2 must be restored by 2050. This implies a significant increase to the Bonn Challenge, an international agreement to bring 3.5 million km2 into restoration by 2030.

While study does not factor in the impact of climate change, the authors discuss climate's increasing role in biodiversity loss, writing:

"Land-use change is currently the largest single threat to biodiversity, but other threats will increase in importance in the future, in particular climate change."

Additionally, the "Integrated Action Portfolio" proposed by the researchers to address biodiversity loss implies doubling crop yields in SSA, which will be no easy feat. "While significant yield gaps prevailing in this region might offer opportunities, closing the yield gap in a sustainable manner will require investments and innovative policies, and might be complicated by climate change," they wrote.

"We need to adopt a zero land conversion approach," said DeClerck. "We need to realize that doubling productivity in SSA amongst others is a core contribution to the biodiversity and food security challenge, combined with producing the foods that contribute to, rather than detract from public health."

While a rapidly shifting climate is hurting biodiversity, Climate will also play a big role in the sustainable intensification of agriculture, especially in places like sub-Saharan Africa where agricultural production will need to increase considerably in order to meet land conservation goals.

Terrestrial habitats will need to be better protected, the researchers argue. Even if current global agreements to protect 17 percent of land by 2020 are more than doubled to 40 percent and include biodiversity hotspots, about half of biodiversity losses projected under the study's baseline scenario will not be avoided.

But the effectiveness of protected areas is declining as pressures on those areas are growing.

The report is not all bad news. Complementing research published in the past couple of years, the team found that integrated efforts that target habitat conservation, improved production practices and significant shifts towards healthy and less wasteful diets enable reversing the loss of biodiversity. These efforts are similarly necessary to achieve climate security and are not incompatible with global food security targets. Urgent action is needed this decade, however, to have any chance of transitioning to a net-nature positive scenario.

URBANA, Ill. - For many livestock species, artificial insemination (AI) is standard. But it can be tricky to achieve success the first time, thanks to variability in ovulation timing across the herd.

Sperm remains viable for a day or two once they reach the oviduct, the tube connecting the uterus with the ovaries, in pigs and cattle. The amount of time sperm can be stored in the oviduct has a direct bearing on AI success; if ovulation happens just outside that window, the effort and expense of AI has to be repeated.

A new University of Illinois study identifies a naturally occurring sugar that slows the maturation of sperm in pigs, opening up the possibility of extending sperm storage time within the female reproductive tract and increasing the chances of successful fertilization through AI.

"We knew there was something about the oviduct that was increasing sperm lifespan, but we didn't know what it was, exactly," says David Miller, professor in the Department of Animal Sciences at Illinois and co-author on the PLOS One study. "In this study, we discovered the molecules of the oviduct that bind sperm and increase their lifespan are complex sugars called glycans."

After screening more than 400 sugars for their capacity to hold sperm, Miller's team had an inkling glycans were a candidate for pigs. To confirm, they isolated various sugars from the pig oviduct and applied them to beads in the laboratory, mimicking the oviduct lining. Compared with other sugars, the glycan-treated beads bound more sperm.

But it wasn't just the physical act of slowing sperm down that increased their lifespan.

"We found out glycans were delaying the normal influx of calcium into sperm," Miller says. "Normally, calcium slowly comes into sperm as they mature, and that triggers them on their differentiation pathway, which makes them capable of fertilization. But binding to these immobilized sugars actually stops that calcium movement inside the cells. So it in a sense, the glycans are blocking their differentiation pathway and making them live longer."

Miller sees several potential applications for this discovery. For example, it might be possible to conduct a fertility test for sperm using glycans in the lab. Sperm whose lifespan didn't increase when exposed to glycans would likely be less fertile and could be discarded. It might also be possible, someday, to introduce supplemental glycans in the oviduct during AI to create a larger reservoir of viable sperm.

The results also extend scientists' understanding of fertility across animal species. Miller has done research to show a similar sugar binds and extends longevity in bovine sperm, and he's currently looking for genetic similarities in sperm storage organs among a wide variety of animal groups. Nature may use the same mechanisms to lengthen sperm lifespan after mating in several species.

An international team of researchers has found that some of the oldest terrain on Venus, known as tesserae, have layering that seems consistent with volcanic activity. The finding could provide insights into the enigmatic planet's geological history.

Tesserae are tectonically deformed regions on the surface of Venus that are often more elevated than the surrounding landscape. They comprise about 7% of the planet's surface, and are always the oldest feature in their immediate surroundings, dating to about 750 million years old. In a new study appearing in Geology, the researchers show that a significant portion of the tesserae have striations consistent with layering.

"There are generally two explanations for tesserae - either they are made of volcanic rocks, or they are counterparts of Earth's continental crust," says Paul Byrne, associate professor of planetary science at North Carolina State University and lead author of the study. "But the layering we find on some of the tessera isn't consistent with the continental crust explanation."

The team analyzed images of Venus' surface from NASA's 1989 Magellan mission, which used radar to image 98% of the planet through its dense atmosphere. While researchers have studied the tesserae for decades, prior to this work the layering of the tesserae hasn't been recognized as widespread. And according to Byrne, that layering would not be possible if the tesserae were portions of continental crust.

"Continental crust is composed mainly of granite, an igneous rock formed when tectonic plates move and water is subducted from the surface," Byrne says. "But granite doesn't form layers. If there's continental crust on Venus, then it's below the layered rocks we see.

"Aside from volcanic activity, the other way to make layered rock is through sedimentary deposits, like sandstone or limestone. There isn't a single place today on Venus where these kinds of rocks could form. The surface of Venus is as hot as a self-cleaning oven and the pressure is equivalent to being 900 meters (about 985 yards) underwater. So the evidence right now points to some portions of the tesserae being made up of layered volcanic rock, similar to that found on Earth."

Byrne hopes that the work will help to shed light on more of Venus' complicated geological history.

"While the data we have now point to volcanic origins for the tesserae, if we were one day able to sample them and find that they are sedimentary rocks, then they would have had to have formed when the climate was very different - perhaps even Earth-like," Byrne says.

"Venus today is hellish, but we don't know if it was always like this. Was it once like Earth but suffered catastrophic volcanic eruptions that ruined the planet? Right now we cannot say for certain, but the fact of the layering in the tesserae narrows down the potential origins of this rock."

Early in the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a small study in China produced results that influenced subsequent research on the virus. Researchers at the University of Cincinnati used the same study parameters on a much larger patient population and reached completely different findings. The study was published in the journal Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases in mid-July.

The primary theory that emerged from the 12-patient study in China was that when the virus binds to the angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), a protein on the surface of lung cells by which the virus is able to enter and infect the cell, it disrupts a vital hormonal system called the Renin-Angiotensin-Aldosterone System (RAAS).

"RAAS is the primary hormone system the body uses to regulate blood pressure and fluid volume status," says Brandon Henry, MD, with the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and co-author of the study. "It regulates your blood pressure, it regulates your fluids and it regulates your electrolytes."

Henry says much of the debate around COVID-19 research has been on the potential for danger from certain drugs, such as ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers, because of the disruption of RAAS, while other researchers are testing those same drugs as therapies in patients with COVID-19.

"We were interested in trying to figure out what's actually going on with RAAS," Henry says. "There are a lot of clinical trials targeting RAAS, but no one has really examined if it is truly affected and disturbed in these patients. That was the focus of our investigation."

When COVID-19 first hit, anyone presenting to University of Cincinnati Medical Center with potential symptoms of the virus was isolated in a separate part of the emergency department called the "Respiratory ED." A lot of those people were getting blood work done, so researchers were able to pull a blood sample from those patients.

"This sets up a nice, natural experiment where all these patients are in the ED and they all have respiratory symptoms," says Justin Benoit, MD, assistant professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the UC College of Medicine, who ran the logistics of the study.

"Some have COVID, some do not, and we don't know who does or doesn't have COVID when you're drawing the blood. Then you can start looking for differences. Since they all present similarly, when you find differences between these patient groups, you might be able to attribute that to COVID."

Benoit says the researchers' goal was to try to find pathways that are altered in patients with COVID-19 that have specific pharmacological targets that could be used in subsequent studies.

"We were trying to inform clinical trials because there are a lot of trials being proposed or up and running at UC and in other places, but most are based on theory and conjecture and not necessarily based on actual data," Benoit says.

Henry says they wanted to learn more about the main hypothesis on how COVID-19 causes severe disease in some patients. The enzyme called ACE2 breaks down a peptide called angiotensin II (AngII), which causes inflammation and restricts the vessels within the lung in models of people with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), according to Henry.

"The ACE2 enzyme that the virus uses takes AngII and converts it into another peptide called angiotensin (1-7)," says Henry. "The idea is that when the virus binds to the enzyme, its activity stops and levels of AngII start to rise dramatically. That's what propagates the severity of the infection and causes people to develop ARDS, or so the theory goes."

Reducing AngII levels is also the goal of the most commonly prescribed medication in the United States, ACE inhibitors such as enalapril or lisinopril for hypertension.

The research team measured levels of this peptide in COVID-19 patients and discovered that AngII levels were normal. Henry says based on the results of the 12-person study in China, they expected to see AngII levels that were very high, but that was not what they found in their study of 190 patients.

In a recently published follow-up study in the Journal of Medical Virology, the research team reported low levels of angiotensin (1-7) as compared to healthy controls.

"This is among the first substantial evidence supporting the hypothesis of a potential inhibition of ACE2 activity due to virus binding," Henry stated. "As angiotensin (1-7) is anti-inflammatory peptide that also dilates the vessels, low levels of this peptide due to [the coronavirus] may promote ARDS. As such, supplementation with synthetic angiotensin (1-7) may be a potential therapeutic target for treating COVID-19."

The blood samples collected in the UC Medical Center Emergency Department were analyzed by the lab run by Stefanie Benoit, MD, in the Division of Nephrology and Hypertension, wife of Justin, and co-author of the study. She says the speed at which this trial got up and running is unprecedented.

"We have dismantled a mountain and moved it 30 feet and reassembled it in three months," she says. "Everybody stepped up, it was just amazing. The lab workers got things done in two days that normally take two weeks."

Stefanie says one important aspect of this study is that it produced data that can hopefully help guide further research into the pathophysiology of COVID-19.

"We could not reproduce the data that came out of China," she says. "Our data is completely different, in the same patient population, measured at the same time, measured in the same laboratory technique. That small study is what all of this was built off of. It's kind of a warning or reminder that we are doing things now in ways they've never been done before, so we have to be thoughtful about when data comes out, what it means and how we use it."

Benoit says he was very impressed by the fast response to the need for COVID-19 research by the UC College of Medicine and its leadership, including Andrew Filak, MD, the dean of the college. The research was funded by a $50,000 grant from the UC College of Medicine Special Coronavirus Research Pilot Grant Program that was announced in early April. In all, $425,000 was awarded to 11 projects through the program which was established to rapidly support the development of innovative studies that will contribute significantly to the knowledge of COVID-19 biology or pathology.