Culture

In 2019, the number of registered campylobacter infections increased by almost a fifth and studies show that many of the campylobacter outbreaks recorded that year were caused by chicken meat. These are some of the findings from the annual report on the incidence of zoonoses in Denmark for 2019.

Campylobacter has long been the bacteria that is to blame for the highest number of foodborne illnesses cases in Denmark. This trend continued in 2019 where 5,389 illness cases were registered. This is an 18.5% increase compared to the previous year and it is the third consecutive year that the number of campylobacter cases has increased.

This is one of the findings from the 2019 annual report on the incidence of zoonoses--disesases that can be transmitted from animals and food to humans. The report was prepared by the National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark, in cooperation with Statens Serum Institut and the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration.

An increase in registered campylobacter outbreaks

The large increase in campylobacter cases is due to an unusually large outbreak related to Danish chicken meat. Chicken meat was also the source in five other outbreaks, while the source is unknown in three further outbreaks. The remaining campylobacter cases in 2019 are registered as sporadic--that is, they have no identifiable connection.

During 2019, Statens Serum Institut and the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration continuously analyzed and compared campylobacter from both patients and Danish chicken meat. Data show that campylobacter cases are more often related to outbreaks than previously thought, and as such the number of disease outbreaks related to campylobacter is higher than in previous years. According to the data, almost one third of all patients have a campylobacter infection that can be attributed to chicken meat.

"We are surprised that analyses of patient samples using whole genome sequencing show that the campylobacter cases to a greater extent are part of outbreaks, which can be traced back to the same food source, and that the majority of these outbreaks can be attributed to chicken. This knowledge provides new opportunities to prevent infection in Denmark," Head of Unit Eva Møller Nielsen at Statens Serum Institut says.

The large number of illness cases has led the industry to initiate a range of initiatives aimed at reducing the occurrence of campylobacter in the food production chain.

Focus on controlling campylobacter in Denmark and the EU

The importance of controlling campylobacter is also recognized at EU level, where an expert group under the European Food Safety Authority, EFSA, has assessed various options for controlling infection with the bacteria in the production of broilers. The results show that controlling campylobacter on farms is complicated and that no silver bullet exists.

"Given that we in the expert group have not found one single solution to solve the problem, it is paramount that authorities, the industry and researchers have access to reliable data, which can guide efforts to reduce the incidence of illness in humans," Head of Research Group and Senior Advisor at the National Food Institute, Johanne Ellis-Iversen says.

Tick-borne diseases

Data from the annual report stress that it is wise to keep an eye out for ticks after a nature trip: According to a study from the University of Copenhagen of just over 1,000 ticks collected in Gribskov--a forest situated north of Copenhagen--approximately one in four ticks carry the disease borrelia, while one in five ticks carry at least two different zoonoses.

Research suggests that humans are at greater risk if they are bitten by a tick that has been infected with more than one zoonosis. Some of the infections, which an infected tick can cause weaken the human immune system making it easier for other zoonoses to establish themselves in the body.

The study from the University of Copenhagen underlines how important it is for doctors to consider whether a patient may have been infected with other diseases when the patient is diagnosed with and treated for an infection caused by a tick bite.

In the first study of its kind, University of Illinois Chicago researchers have found associations among disrupted sleep, elevated blood pressure and changes in the gut microbiome.

The research aimed to determine whether a 28-day period of disrupted sleep changed the microbiota in rats. The gut microbiota refers to the collection of microorganisms living in the intestines. The researchers also sought to identify biological features associated with undesirable arterial blood pressure changes.

The results were published in Physiological Genomics.

Using rats, the researcher disrupted their sleep periods. Rats are nocturnal, so the experiments were designed to interfere with their daytime sleep periods.

Telemetry transmitters measured the rats' brain activity, blood pressure and heart rate. Fecal matter also was analyzed to examine changes in the microbial content.

The research idea was generated by several of the paper's authors who are or have been health care providers with night-shift schedules.

"When rats had an abnormal sleep schedule, an increase in blood pressure developed -- the blood pressure remained elevated even when they could return to normal sleep. This suggests that dysfunctional sleep impairs the body for a sustained period," Maki said.

Undesirable changes also were found in the gut microbiome -- the genetic material of all bacteria living in the colon.

Contrary to her initial hypothesis, Maki found that the gut microbiome changes did not happen immediately, but instead took a week to show unfavorable responses such as an imbalance among different types of bacteria including an increase in microbes associated with inflammation.

"When the sleep disruption stopped, everything did not come back to normal immediately," Maki said. "This research shows a very complex system with the presence of multiple pathological factors."

This was initial research, and studies will continue to examine pathways involving the gut microbiome and metabolites produced by gut bacteria. The researchers will see exactly how sleep characteristics are changed and how long blood pressure and gut microbiome alterations persist. Researchers will then determine how this information translates to humans.

"We hope to find an intervention that can help people who are at risk for cardiovascular disease because of their work and sleep schedules. People will always have responsibilities that interrupt their sleep. We want to be able to reduce their risk by targeting the microbiome with new therapies or dietary changes," Fink said.

A lopsided merger of two black holes may have an oddball origin story, according to a new study by researchers at MIT and elsewhere.

The merger was first detected on April 12, 2019 as a gravitational wave that arrived at the detectors of both LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory), and its Italian counterpart, Virgo. Scientists labeled the signal as GW190412 and determined that it emanated from a clash between two David-and-Goliath black holes, one three times more massive than the other. The signal marked the first detection of a merger between two black holes of very different sizes.

Now the new study, published today in the journal Physical Review Letters, shows that this lopsided merger may have originated through a very different process compared to how most mergers, or binaries, are thought to form.

It's likely that the more massive of the two black holes was itself a product of a prior merger between two parent black holes. The Goliath that spun out of that first collision may have then ricocheted around a densely packed "nuclear cluster" before merging with the second, smaller black hole -- a raucous event that sent gravitational waves rippling across space.

GW190412 may then be a second generation, or "hierarchical" merger, standing apart from other first-generation mergers that LIGO and Virgo have so far detected.

"This event is an oddball the universe has thrown at us -- it was something we didn't see coming," says study coauthor Salvatore Vitale, an assistant professor of physics at MIT and a LIGO member. "But nothing happens just once in the universe. And something like this, though rare, we will see again, and we'll be able to say more about the universe."

Vitale's coauthors are Davide Gerosa of the University of Birmingham and Emanuele Berti of Johns Hopkins University.

A struggle to explain

There are two main ways in which black hole mergers are thought to form. The first is known as a common envelope process, where two neighboring stars, after billions of years, explode to form two neighboring black holes that eventually share a common envelope, or disk of gas. After another few billion years, the black holes spiral in and merge.

"You can think of this like a couple being together all their lives," Vitale says. "This process is suspected to happen in the disc of galaxies like our own."

The other common path by which black hole mergers form is via dynamical interactions. Imagine, in place of a monogamous environment, a galactic rave, where thousands of black holes are crammed into a small, dense region of the universe. When two black holes start to partner up, a third may knock the couple apart in a dynamical interaction that can repeat many times over, before a pair of black holes finally merges.

In both the common envelope process and the dynamical interaction scenario, the merging black holes should have roughly the same mass, unlike the lopsided mass ratio of GW190412. They should also have relatively no spin, whereas GW190412 has a surprisingly high spin.

"The bottom line is, both these scenarios, which people traditionally think are ideal nurseries for black hole binaries in the universe, struggle to explain the mass ratio and spin of this event," Vitale says.

Black hole tracker

In their new paper, the researchers used two models to show that it is very unlikely that GW190412 came from either a common envelope process or a dynamical interaction.

They first modeled the evolution of a typical galaxy using STAR TRACK, a simulation that tracks galaxies over billions of years, starting with the coalescing of gas and proceeding to the way stars take shape and explode, and then collapse into black holes that eventually merge. The second model simulates random, dynamical encounters in globular clusters -- dense concentrations of stars around most galaxies.

The team ran both simulations multiple times, tuning the parameters and studying the properties of the black hole mergers that emerged. For those mergers that formed through a common envelope process, a merger like GW190412 was very rare, cropping up only after a few million events. Dynamical interactions were slightly more likely to produce such an event, after a few thousand mergers.

However, GW190412 was detected by LIGO and Virgo after only 50 other detections, suggesting that it likely arose through some other process.

"No matter what we do, we cannot easily produce this event in these more common formation channels," Vitale says.

The process of hierarchical merging may better explain the GW190412's lopsided mass and its high spin. If one black hole was a product of a previous pairing of two parent black holes of similar mass, it would itself be more massive than either parent, and later significantly overshadow its first-generation partner, creating a high mass ratio in the final merger.

A hierarchical process could also generate a merger with a high spin: The parent black holes, in their chaotic merging, would spin up the resulting black hole, which would then carry this spin into its own ultimate collision.

"You do the math, and it turns out the leftover black hole would have a spin which is very close to the total spin of this merger," Vitale explains.

No escape

If GW190412 indeed formed through hierarchical merging, Vitale says the event could also shed light on the environment in which it formed. The team found that if the larger of the two black holes formed from a previous collision, that collision likely generated a huge amount of energy that not only spun out a new black hole, but kicked it across some distance.

"If it's kicked too hard, it would just leave the cluster and go into the empty interstellar medium, and not be able to merge again," Vitale says.

If the object was able to merge again (in this case, to produce GW190412), it would mean the kick that it received was not enough to escape the stellar cluster in which it formed. If GW190412 indeed is a product of hierarchical merging, the team calculated that it would have occurred in an environment with an escape velocity higher than 150 kilometers per second. For perspective, the escape velocity of most globular clusters is about 50 kilometers per second.

This means that whatever environment GW190412 arose from had an immense gravitational pull, and the team believes that such an environment could have been either the disk of gas around a supermassive black hole, or a "nuclear cluster" -- an incredibly dense region of the universe, packed with tens of millions of stars.

"This merger must have come from an unusual place," Vitale says. "As LIGO and Virgo continue to make new detections, we can use these discoveries to learn new things about the universe."

[Lakewood, Colorado; Bridgewater, New Jersey; September 1, 2020] The American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) and the American Association of Feline Practitioners (AAFP) convened a panel of experts to update the 2013 AAFP Feline Vaccination Advisory Panel Report. The release of the 2020 AAHA/AAFP Feline Vaccination Guidelines provides updated recommendations and the most current information for feline vaccinations.

The Task Force approached the update with evidence-based recommendations and peer-reviewed literature on feline vaccinations. "Working together with these two organizations affords our veterinary community exposure to the wisdom of colleagues who are dedicated to increasing the standard of care for cats," said Amy ES Stone, DVM, PhD, Chair of the 2020 AAHA/AAFP Feline Vaccination Guidelines Task Force.

The guidelines stress the need for an expanded understanding by veterinary professionals of individualized feline risk factors to determine a proper preventive healthcare plan. Practitioners are encouraged to gain better insight into feline patients' risk factors, which may include life stage, environment, and lifestyle.

Veterinarians should use these guidelines in conjunction with their own clinical experience and expert opinion, while considering the needs of the individual patient. "Cats used to be vaccinated for certain diseases based solely on whether they went outside or not. Those times have changed," said AAHA Senior Veterinary Officer Heather Loenser, DVM. "We need to tailor vaccine protocols for individual pets, rather than basing vaccination decisions on a single factor."

"We no longer can simply ask a client if the cat is 'indoors' or 'outdoors,'" said Kelly St. Denis, MSc, DVM, DABVP (Feline Practice), and 2020 AAFP President. "A client may not correctly interpret what they might consider brief or low-risk outdoor access, which may contain information that contributes to your risk assessment. We need to ask if the cat has free access to outdoors; do they ever sit on a patio or in a cateo; do they have access to a balcony or open window; do they go anywhere outside of the home such as a friend's house or boarding facility; are they ever walked on a leash? A risk assessment of the other cats living in the home is also critical as these risks extend to all other cats in the house. By asking these questions you can better review the cat's risk for safety, nutrition, behavior, and zoonotic disease."

The guidelines provide resources for the entire veterinary practice team to utilize including:

A lifestyle-based feline vaccine calculator

FAQs and tips for client and staff education

Recommendations for core and noncore vaccines for pet and shelter-housed cats

A webinar summarizing the must-see and clinically important sections of the guidelines (available in October)

With these new guidelines, the team can educate pet owners about vaccination protocols and the overall importance to feline wellbeing, provide proper vaccine recommendations for pet and shelter cats, and have open conversations to address clients' questions or concerns.

The team from Marien Hospital and the department of Virology of Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) as well as the Clinic for Infectious Diseases, the Clinic of Anesthesiology and the Institute for Virology of University Medicine Essen studied specific antibodies and T cells occurring in recovered, seriously ill and deceased Covid-19 patients. The researchers identified comparable immune reactions in clinical follow up. They report their findings in the journal Cell Reports Medicine from 29 August 2020.

How the immune system fights viruses

Antibodies and T lymphocytes are among the most important elements of the immune defence against viruses. The antibodies prevent viruses from entering the host cell by binding to certain virus receptors. They also mark the infected cells for other players in the immune system, which are able to kill the infected cells. Virus-specific T lymphocytes, on the other hand, can kill infected cells directly and highly efficiently.

During the last weeks, some studies have been published on the analysis of these cell-killing Sars-Cov-2 specific T cells in patients with Covid-19. The studies demonstrated detection of such cells in patients recovered from Covid-19 suggesting their protective antiviral effect. On the other hand, some studies indicate that an excessive immune response might be the cause of severe Covid-19. The role of Sars-Cov-2 specific T-cells in this exaggerated immune response is unclear.

Critically ill patients have the same or stronger immunity as recovered patients

In the current study, the research team analysed immune responses in Covid-19 patients during the disease progress. "This is how we wanted to investigate the role of T cells and antibodies in controlling the infection and the disease," explains Nina Babel, who headed the study. "The novel aspect of our study is that we analysed Sars-Cov-2 specific T-cells and antibodies in relation to disease progression and viral clearance. We found that a strong T-cell and antibody response could be detected not only in patients with mild Covid-19 patients who had recovered from the virus infection." Similar or even stronger immunity to Sars-Cov-2 was found in patients who had been critically ill and who suffered Covid-19-related lung failure.

"The total number of specific immune cells as well as their functionality was not better in patients who survived Covid-19 than in those who died from it," says Dr. Ulrik Stervbo, head of laboratory at the Centre for Translational Medicine. There was also no difference in the strength and functionality of the immune response between patients who still suffered from and those who had cleared a Sars-Cov-2 infection.

Excessive immune response plays an important role

"Even though further studies will be necessary to understand the specific mechanism of Covid-19 development, our data suggest that excessive Sars-Cov-2-specific T cell response can cause immunopathogenesis leading to Covid-19-related lung failure," points out Nina Babel. "The results of current studies on the successful application of immunosuppressive therapies in Covid-19 support this hypothesis," concludes Professor Timm Westhoff, Director of Medical Clinic I at Marien Hospital Herne.

Sophia Antipolis, France - 1 Sept 2020: Heart patients hospitalised with COVID-19 can safely continue taking angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs), according to the BRACE CORONA trial presented in a Hot Line session today at ESC Congress 2020.1

ACE inhibitors and ARBs are commonly taken by heart patients to reduce blood pressure and to treat heart failure. There is conflicting observational evidence about the potential clinical impact of ACE inhibitors and ARBs on patients with COVID-19.2 Select preclinical investigations have raised concerns about their safety in patients with COVID-19. Preliminary data hypothesise that renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) inhibitors could benefit patients with COVID-19 by decreasing acute lung damage and preventing angiotensin-II-mediated pulmonary inflammation.

Given the frequent use of these agents worldwide, randomised clinical trial evidence is urgently needed to guide the management of patients with COVID-19.

Membrane-bound angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) is the functional receptor for SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).3 ACE2 expression may increase due to upregulation in patients using ACE inhibitors and ARBs.4

The BRACE CORONA trial was an academic-led, phase 4, randomised study testing two strategies: temporarily stopping the ACE inhibitor/ARB for 30 days versus continuing ACE inhibitors/ARBs in patients who were taking these medications chronically and were hospitalised with a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19. The primary outcome was the number of days alive and out of hospital at 30 days.

Patients who were using more than three antihypertensive drugs, or sacubitril/valsartan, or who were haemodynamically unstable at presentation were excluded from the study.

The trial enrolled 659 patients from 29 sites in Brazil. All participants were chronically using an ACE inhibitor or ARB and were hospitalised with COVID-19. Patients were randomly allocated to stopping the ACE inhibitor/ARB for 30 days or continuing the ACE inhibitor/ARB.

The average number of days alive and out of hospital was 21.9 days for patients who stopped ACE inhibitors/ARBs and 22.9 days for patients who continued these medications. The average ratio of days alive and out of hospital between the suspending and continuing groups was 0.95 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.90 to 1.01, p=0.09). The average difference between groups was -1.1 days (95% CI -2.33 to 0.17).

The proportion of patients alive and out of hospital by the end of 30 days in the suspending ACE inhibitor/ARB group was 91.8% versus 95% in the continuing group. A similar 30-day mortality rate was seen for patients who continued and suspended the ACE inhibitor/ARB (2.8% versus 2.7%, respectively with a hazard ratio of 0.97).

"This is the first randomised data assessing the role of continuing versus stopping ACE inhibitors and ARBs in patients with COVID-19," said principal investigator Professor Renato Lopes of Duke Clinical Research Institute, Durham, US. "In patients hospitalised with COVID-19, suspending ACE inhibitors and ARBs for 30 days did not impact the number of days alive and out of hospital."

He concluded: "Because these data indicate that there is no clinical benefit from routinely interrupting these medications in hospitalised patients with mild to moderate COVID-19, they should generally be continued for those with an indication."

Scientists have developed a new theory as to how hearing loss may cause dementia and believe that tackling this sensory impairment early may help to prevent the disease.

Hearing loss has been shown to be linked to dementia in epidemiological studies and may be responsible for a tenth of the 47 million cases worldwide.

Now, published in the journal Neuron, a team at Newcastle University, UK, provide a new theory to explain how a disorder of the ear can lead to Alzheimer's disease - a concept never looked at before.

It is hoped that this new understanding may be a significant step towards advancing research into Alzheimer's disease and how to prevent the illness for future generations.

Newcastle experts considered three key aspects; a common underlying cause for hearing loss and dementia; lack of sound-related input leading to brain shrinking; and cognitive impairment resulting in people having to engage more brain resources to compensate for hearing loss, which then become unavailable for other tasks.

The team propose a new angle which focuses on the memory centres deep in the temporal lobe. Their recent work indicates that this part of the brain, typically associated with long-term memory for places and events, is also involved in short-term storage and manipulation of auditory information.

They consider explanations for how changes in brain activity due to hearing loss might directly promote the presence of abnormal proteins that cause Alzheimer's disease, therefore triggering the disease.

Professor Tim Griffiths, from Newcastle University's Faculty of Medical Sciences, said: "The challenge has been to explain how a disorder of the ear can lead to a degenerative problem in the brain.

"We suggest a new theory based on how we use what is generally considered to be the memory system in the brain when we have difficulty listening in real-world environments."

Work on mechanisms for difficult listening is a central theme for the research group, including members in Newcastle, UCL and Iowa University, that has been supported by a Medical Research Council programme grant.

Dr Will Sedley, from Newcastle University's Faculty of Medical Sciences, said: "This memory system engaged in difficult listening is the most common site for the onset of Alzheimer's disease.

"We propose that altered activity in the memory system caused by hearing loss and the Alzheimer's disease process trigger each other.

"Researchers now need to examine this mechanism in models of the pathological process to test if this new theory is right."

The experts developed the theory of this important link with hearing loss by bringing together findings from a variety of human studies and animal models. Future work will continue to look at this area.

Astronomers have known for two decades that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, but the physics of this expansion remains a mystery. Now, a team of researchers at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa have made a novel prediction--the dark energy responsible for this accelerating growth comes from a vast sea of compact objects spread throughout the voids between galaxies. This conclusion is part of a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal.

In the mid-1960s, physicists first suggested that stellar collapse should not form true black holes, but should instead form Generic Objects of Dark Energy (GEODEs). Unlike black holes, GEODEs do not 'break' Einstein's equations with singularities. Instead, a spinning layer surrounds a core of dark energy. Viewed from the outside, GEODEs and black holes appear mostly the same, even when the "sounds" of their collisions are measured by gravitational wave observatories.

Because GEODEs mimic black holes, it was assumed they moved through space the same way as black holes. "This becomes a problem if you want to explain the accelerating expansion of the universe," said UH Mānoa Department of Physics and Astronomy research fellow Kevin Croker, lead author of the study. "Even though we proved last year that GEODEs, in principle, could provide the necessary dark energy, you need lots of old and massive GEODEs. If they moved like black holes, staying close to visible matter, galaxies like our own Milky Way would have been disrupted.''

Croker collaborated with UH Mānoa Department of Physics and Astronomy graduate student Jack Runburg, and Duncan Farrah, a faculty member at the UH Institute for Astronomy and the Physics and Astronomy department, to investigate how GEODEs move through space. The researchers found that the spinning layer around each GEODE determines how they move relative to each other. If their outer layers spin slowly, GEODEs clump more rapidly than black holes. This is because GEODEs gain mass from the growth of the universe itself. For GEODEs with layers that spin near the speed of light, however, the gain in mass becomes dominated by a different effect and the GEODEs begin to repel each other. "The dependence on spin was really quite unexpected," said Farrah. "If confirmed by observation, it would be an entirely new class of phenomenon."

The team solved Einstein's equations under the assumption that many of the oldest stars, which were born when the universe was less than 2 percent of its current age, formed GEODEs when they died. As these ancient GEODEs fed on other stars and abundant interstellar gas, they began to spin very rapidly. Once spinning quickly enough, the GEODEs' mutual repulsion caused most of them to 'socially distance' into regions that would eventually become the empty voids between present-day galaxies.

This study supports the position that GEODEs can solve the dark energy problem while remaining in harmony with different observations across vast distances. GEODEs stay away from present-day galaxies, so they do not disrupt delicate star pairs counted within the Milky Way. The number of ancient GEODEs required to solve the dark energy problem is consistent with the number of ancient stars. GEODEs do not disrupt the measured distribution of galaxies in space because they separate away from luminous matter before it forms present-day galaxies. Finally, GEODEs do not directly affect the gentle ripples in the afterglow of the Big Bang, because they are born from dead stars hundreds of millions of years after the release of this cosmic background radiation.

The researchers were cautiously optimistic about their results. "It was thought that, without a direct detection of something different than a Kerr [Black Hole] signature from LIGO-Virgo [gravitational wave observatories], you'd never be able to tell that GEODEs existed," said Farrah. Croker added, "but now that we have a clearer understanding of how Einstein's equations link big and small, we've been able to make contact with data from many communities, and a coherent picture is beginning to form."

According to Runburg, whose primary research interest is unrelated to GEODEs, "the most exciting consequence, for me, is that previously disconnected communities of researchers now have common ground. When different communities work together, the whole always becomes something greater than the sum of the parts."

It is a well-known problem: too rarely do nature conservation initiatives, recommendations or strategies announced by politicians lead to people really changing their everyday behaviour. A German-Israeli research team led by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) has investigated the reasons for this. According to the team, the measures proposed by politicians do not sufficiently exploit the range of possible behavioural interventions and too rarely specify the actual target groups, they write in the journal Conservation Biology.

The protection of pollinating insects is a major issue in international nature conservation policy. Stirred up by scientific findings on high population losses of insect groups such as bees or butterflies, which, for example, affect pollination services in agriculture, Europe is putting insect protection at the forefront of environmental policy. Many governments in Europe have presented national strategies to ensure that pollinators are maintained. A team of researchers from UFZ, iDiv and Technion - Israel Institute of Technology analysed the available eight national strategy papers to protect pollinators in terms of behavioural change interventions. The result: "Nature conservation policies to preserve pollinators are often too ineffective in this respect and change little in people's behaviour," says first author and environmental psychologist Dr. Melissa Marselle, who is conducting research at the UFZ and iDiv on the impact of biodiversity on human health.

The scientists coded around 610 behavioural measures in the strategy papers. Using the "Behaviour Change Wheel" theory, which originates from health psychology and integrates 19 different behavioural models, the scientists categorized the behavioural measures for pollinator conservation into the nine different types of interventions - i.e. measures that could change people's behaviour. According to this, most of the 790 or so behavioral measures for pollinator conservation (23 percent) can be assigned to the behaviour change interventions of education and awareness raising, followed by structural measures such as planting hedges, sowing flower strips in fields or creating green spaces in the city (19 percent). Only around four percent of the behavioural measures for pollinator conservation can be summarized under the intervention of modeling, for example, peer-to-peer learning or the use of best-practice examples from farmers who work in exemplary fashion. Other little-mentioned behavioural interventions for pollinator conservation were incentive systems for farmers or municipalities (three percent) and statutory regulations (two percent). Interventions that create a financial cost to discourage a certain behaviour, such as additional taxes on the use of pesticides, did not appear in any of the policy papers for pollinator conservation.

"This shows that national biodiversity strategies focus primarily on educational and structural measures and neglect other effective instruments," says Melissa Marselle. "Educational measures to impart knowledge and to create understanding are important. But relying on education alone is not very effective if you really want to change environmental behaviour. It would be more effective to link it to a wider range of other measures." For example, clearly identifying supply chains and producer principles on labels can encourage many people to buy an organic or pollinator-friendly products - even at a higher price. Stronger financial incentives for farmers who operate sustainably would also be effective, and the certification of sustainable buildings could be linked to the use of pollinator-friendly plants as flower beds. Taxes and additional costs for consumers also ensure rapid changes in behaviour: In the UK, for example, a compulsory levy on the purchase of plastic bags has led to a decline in their use.

A further shortcoming of the strategy papers was identified as the fact that in 41 percent of the behavioural measures for pollinator conservation the target groups whose behaviour needs to change were not named and specified. The objectives are often very well described, but mostly revolve around the question of how certain actions change the environment. However, it is often not defined in more detail to whom the actions are directed and who should implement them: the public, farmers or local authorities? It could be more effective to first consider what the different actors can do, with the help of behavioural researchers, and then, building on that, to consider measures to achieve certain goals.

There are currently several important opportunities to write nature conservation strategies better. For example, the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030, which the EU Commission adopted in May 2020, needs to be translated into national policies. In addition, at the next conference of the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) next year in China, global biodiversity targets for the following years will be negotiated. "Against this background, it is crucial to understand how policies need to be formulated in order to achieve effective implementation of international nature conservation policies", says Prof. Aletta Bonn, who heads the Department of Ecosystem Services at UFZ and iDiv with a research focus on interaction of people and nature.

CINCINNATI - Scientists studying neuronal energy metabolism found evidence that the loss of an important energy regulator called AMPK in neural stem cells or glial cells called astrocytes causes neuronal death in laboratory rodents. They also discovered that AMPK loss in neural stem cells or neurons causes spontaneous brain seizures in the animals.

Publishing their findings in Cell Reports, the multi-institutional research team--led by Cincinnati Children's cancer biologist Biplab Dasgupta, PhD--said deleting AMPK from astrocyte brain cells led to severe disruption of glucose and lactate metabolism in neurons. The clue came from the first ever magnetic resonance spectroscopy studies in brain-specific AMPK deletion mice done at the University of Minnesota (UM).

The collaborative study, which included Raghu Rao, MD, and Ivan Tkac, PhD, at UM, revealed that AMPK deleted mice have about 40 percent lower lactate levels, a key result that was verified in cultured astrocytes.

The findings that AMPK deleted neurons demonstrate spontaneous seizures and are vulnerable to low dose seizure-inducing agents came from the neurology laboratory of Christina Gross, PhD, of Cincinnati Children's, and appear to suggest that the popular antidiabetic drug metformin (that also activates AMPK) may mitigate epileptic seizures. Metformin is currently being tested preclinically in laboratory rodents, according to Dasgupta, a principal investigator in the Cancer and Blood Diseases Institute.

"Very little is known about how astrocytes regulate glycolysis to generate lactate and supply it to neurons to support their metabolism and proper functioning," Dasgupta said. "We show for the first time that AMP kinase (AMPK) is the bottom line of the mechanism that controls astrocytic glycolysis and lactate production in the brain. And we show that interfering with this process does little harm to astrocytes but damages neurons."
Neuronal metabolism is critical to every aspect of our lives and functioning. The question of whether glial cells like astrocytes are necessary for proper neuron metabolism and survival has been debated in the scientific field for decades.

Researchers in the current study set out to make progress toward settling that debate and they used a long list of experimental procedures to come up with some new answers. Importantly, the results obtained in mouse brains from the Dasgupta lab were recapitulated in the brains of the fruit fly Drosophila where using six different models of AMPK deletion.

Study co-author Dr. Stefanie Schirmeier at the University of Münster in Germany found that AMPK deletion in the fly glia causes neuronal death and reduces lifespan of the mutant flies. This and other results, including conservation of these functions in human astrocytes, make it possible that AMPK-controlled lactate metabolism provides life support for neurons in people, according to the researchers.

Bethesda, MD (September 1, 2020) -- The American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) published new clinical guidelines outlining an evidence-based approach for the initial gastrointestinal evaluation of chronic iron deficiency anemia in asymptomatic patients. Iron deficiency anemia is extremely common worldwide, and a gastrointestinal cause should be considered in all patients without an obvious cause for their anemia.

"Iron deficiency anemia is encountered commonly in clinical practice, yet there is significant practice variability among physicians evaluating these patients," said Cynthia W. Ko, lead guideline author from University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle. "We're pleased to introduce this guideline, which will walk gastroenterologists through the recommended management of these patients to ensure we find and address early any underlying risk of serious diseases and provide the best possible outcomes for our patients."

Key guideline recommendations:

1. AGA strongly recommends that clinicians carefully document the presence of each iron deficiency and anemia prior to endoscopic evaluation.

2. AGA strongly recommends that gastroenterologists perform bidirectional endoscopy on asymptomatic men and postmenopausal women with iron deficiency anemia. AGA conditionally offers the same recommendation for premenopausal women and encourages shared decision making with these patients. If a patient has GI symptoms, diagnostic evaluation should be tailored accordingly. EGD/colonoscopy (or colonoscopy/EGD) should be performed at the same sitting.

3. Perform non-invasive testing for Helicobacter pylori and celiac disease in asymptomatic patients with iron deficiency anemia prior to bidirectional endoscopy. If positive, begin treatment. AGA recommends against performing routine gastric or duodenal biopsies if non-invasive tests are negative.

4. In uncomplicated asymptomatic patients with iron deficiency anemia and in whom no source of potential blood loss is identified after initial evaluation with bidirectional endoscopy and non-invasive testing, a trial of iron supplementation is recommended before routine evaluation of the small bowel with video capsule endoscopy. 

Biological sex influences the effect of amyloid beta on alterations to tau protein characteristic to Alzheimer's disease, suggesting a role for estradiol in preventing the disease in women, report scientists in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease

Amsterdam, September 1, 2020-Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common neurodegenerative disease and the leading cause of dementia. It affects more women than men. A new study published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease indicates that factors such as age, reproductive stage, hormone levels, and the interplay with other risk factors should be considered in women and proposes a role for early menopausal estrogen replacement to protect against the development of AD.

"The risk of developing AD as well as its progression and severity are known to be very different in men and women," explained co-lead investigator Elena Tamagno, PhD, Department of Neuroscience and Neuroscience Institute of Cavalieri Ottolenghi Foundation (NICO), University of Torino, Torino, Italy. "Recent epidemiological studies showed that two thirds of AD patients are women, and this fact cannot be attributed only to their higher life expectancy. The loss of estradiol might be one of the factors leading to declining cognitive function in women."

Hallmarks of AD are the accumulation of amyloid beta peptides in amyloid plaques, and the aggregation of modified tau protein to form neurofibrillary tangles. Tau proteins are abundant in nerve cells and perform the function of stabilizing microtubules, and are pathologically altered in AD. To examine the hypothesis that biological sex influences the effect of amyloid beta 42 (AB42) peptides on these changes to tau protein, investigators gave intraventricular injections of nanomolecular concentrations of AB42 to transgenic mice expressing the wild-type human tau (hTau). In a previous study the investigators had noted that female mice did not show the alterations of tau protein characteristic of AD. In the current study they demonstrated that AB42 caused the pathological form of tau in ovariectomized female mice, but not in control females, and that estrogen replacement reversed this effect through an antioxidant activity and a decrease of tau phosphorylation.

"Our study indicates that factors such as age, reproductive stage, hormone levels, and the interplay with other risk factors should be considered in women, in order to identify the best appropriate treatment in prevention of cognitive impairment," commented co-lead investigator Massimo Tabaton, MD, Unit of Geriatric Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine and Medical Specialties (DIMI), University of Genova, Genova, Italy. "Our results suggest that an early postmenopausal estrogen replacement may be protective against AD."

"Linking estrogen deficiency to the tau changes of AD provides the missing mechanistic link to the greater risk of AD in women and significantly suggests therapeutic avenues to reduce AD," added George Perry, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease and Semmes Foundation Distinguished University Chair in Neurobiology at The University of Texas at San Antonio.

AD is a major social and health problem. In the United States, approximately 5.5 million people are affected, and the number is growing as a result of the increase in life expectancy. The prevalence of dementia worldwide is estimated at 24 million people, which is expected to double by 2050. AD is characterized by progressive cognitive decline usually beginning with impairment in the ability to form recent memories, but inevitably affecting all intellectual functions and leading to complete dependence for basic functions of daily life and premature death. Women are more likely to develop the disease, independent of their longer life expectancy: one in six women over 65 develops AD, compared with one in 11 men.

Even though recognised in the Mediterranean Sea, the Macropodia czernjawskii spider crab was ignored by scientists (even by its namesake Vladimir Czernyavsky) in the regional faunal accounts of the Black Sea for more than a century. At the same time, although other species of the genus have been listed as Black sea fauna, those listings are mostly wrong and occurred either due to historical circumstances or misidentifications.

Now, scientists re-describe this, most likely, only species of the genus occurring in the Black Sea in the open-access journal Zoosystematics and Evolution.

The spider crab genus Macropodia was discovered in 1814 and currently includes 18 species, mostly occurring in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. The marine fauna of the Black Sea is predominantly of Mediterranean origin and Macropodia czernjawskii was firstly discovered in the Black Sea in 1880, but afterwards, its presence there was largely ignored by the scientists.

After the revision of available type specimens from all available collections in the Russian museums and the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt-on-Main, as well as newly collected material in the Black Sea and the North-East Atlantic, a research team of scientists, led by Dr Vassily Spiridonov from Shirshov Institute of Oceanology of Russian Academy of Sciences, re-described Macropodia czernjawskii and provided the new data on its records and updated its ecological characteristics.

"The analysis of the molecular genetic barcode (COI) of the available material of Macropodia species indicated that M. czernjawskii is a very distinct species while M. parva should be synonimised with M. rostrata, and M. longipes is a synonym of M. tenuirostris", states Dr Spiridonov sharing the details of the genus analysis.

All Macropodia species have epibiosis and M. czernjawskii is no exception: almost all examined crabs in 2008-2018 collections had significant epibiosis. It normally consists of algae and cyanobacteria and, particularly, a non-indigenous species of red alga Bonnemaisonia hamifera, officially reported in 2015 at the Caucasian coast of the Black Sea, was found in the epibiosis of M. czernjawskii four years earlier.

"It improves our understanding of its invasion history. Museum and monitoring collections of species with abundant epibiosis (in particular inachid crabs) can be used as an additional tool to record and monitor introduction and establishments of sessile non-indigenous species," suggests Dr Spiridonov.

ADELPHI, Md. -- A new, miniature, low-frequency antenna with enhanced bandwidth will enable robust networking among compact, mobile robots in complex environments.

In a collaborative effort between the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's Army Research Laboratory and the University of Michigan, researchers developed a novel design approach that improves upon limitations of conventional antennas operating at low frequencies--demonstrating smaller antennas that maintain performance.

Impedance matching is a key aspect of antenna design, ensuring that the radio transmits power through the antenna with minimal reflections while in transmit mode--and that when the antenna is in receive mode, it captures power to efficiently couple to the radio over all frequencies within the operational bandwidth.

"Conventional impedance matching techniques with passive components--such as resistors, inductors and capacitors--have a fundamental limit, known as the Chu-Wheeler limit, which defines a bound for the maximum achievable bandwidth-efficiency product for a given antenna size," said Army researcher Dr. Fikadu Dagefu. "In general, low-frequency antennas are physically large, or their miniaturized counterparts have very limited bandwidth and efficiency, resulting in higher power requirement."

With those challenges in mind, the researchers developed a novel approach that improves bandwidth and efficiency without increasing size or changing the topology of the antenna.

"The proposed impedance matching approach applies a modular active circuit to a highly miniaturized, efficient, lightweight antenna--overcoming the aforementioned Chu-Wheeler performance limit," said Army postdoctoral researcher Dr. Jihun Choi. "This miniature, actively matched antenna enables the integration of power-efficient, low-frequency radio systems on compact mobile agents such as unmanned ground and aerial vehicles."

The researchers said this approach could create new opportunities for networking in the Army.

The ability to integrate low-frequency radio systems with low size, weight, and power--or SWAP--opens the door for the exploitation of this underutilized and underexplored frequency band as part of the heterogeneous autonomous networking paradigm. In this paradigm, agents equipped with complementary communications modalities must adapt their approaches based on challenges in the environment for that specific mission. Specifically, the lower frequencies are suitable for reliable communications in complex propagation environments and terrain due to their improved penetration and reduced multipath.

"We integrated the developed antenna on small, unmanned ground vehicles and demonstrated reliable, real-time digital video streaming between UGVs, which has not been done before with such compact low-frequency radio systems," Dagefu said. "By exploiting this technology, the robotic agents could coordinate and form teams, enabling unique capabilities such as distributed on-demand beamforming for directional and secure battlefield networking."

With more than 80 percent of the world's population expected to live in dense urban environments by 2050, innovative Army networking capabilities are necessary to create and maintain transformational overmatch, the researchers said. Lack of fixed infrastructure coupled with the increasing need for a competitive advantage over near-peer adversaries imposes further challenges on Army networks, a top modernization priority for multi-domain operations.

While previous experimental studies demonstrated bandwidth enhancement with active matching applied to a small non-resonant antenna (e.g., a short metallic wire), no previous work simultaneously ensures bandwidth and radiation efficiency enhancement compared to small, resonant antennas with performance near the Chu-Wheeler limit.

The Army-led active matching design approach addresses these key challenges stemming from the trade-off among bandwidth, efficiency and stability. The researchers built a 15-centimeter prototype (2 percent of the operating wavelength) and demonstrated that the new design achieves more than threefold bandwidth enhancement compared to the same antenna without applying active matching, while also improving the transmission efficiency 10 times compared to the state-of-the-art actively matched antennas with the same size.

"In the design, a highly accurate model captures sharp impedance variation of the highly miniaturized resonant antenna" Choi said. "Based on the model, we develop an active matching circuit that enhances bandwidth and efficiency simultaneously while ensuring the circuit is fully stable."

The team published their research, A Miniature Actively Matched Antenna for Power-Efficient and Bandwidth-Enhanced Operation at Low VHF, authored by Drs. Jihun Choi, Fikadu Dagefu, Brian Sadler, and Prof. Kamal Sarabandi, in the peer-reviewed journal Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Transactions on Antennas and Propagation.

"This technology is ripe for future development and transition to our various partners within the Army," Dagefu said. "We are optimistic that with the integration of aspects of our heterogeneous networking research, this technology will further develop and will be integrated into future Army communications systems."

Misfiring brain cells that control key parts of the mouth and tongue may be creating swallowing difficulties in children with neurodevelopmental disorders, according to neuroscientists with Virginia Tech and George Washington University.

In research using a mouse model of a genetic childhood disorder known as DiGeorge syndrome, scientists found brain cells called motor neurons that directly control the tongue muscles were firing spontaneously, out of sync with the mechanisms that should control their activity.

Finding ways to calm the motor neurons responsible for moving the tongue could lead to improved function in very young children who have difficulty swallowing, eating, or making sounds, but the scientists said more research is needed before developing therapies.

"We are continuing to make the case that activity of the motor neurons that command the movement of key parts of the mouth, tongue, and pharynx are disrupted by the same mechanisms causing genetic neurodevelopmental disorders," said Anthony-Samuel LaMantia, senior co-author of the study, a developmental neurobiologist, and a professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC. "Our goal is to learn about the causes of these symptoms to help children as early in life as possible."

The study was published online in advance in eNeuro, an open-access journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

Problems ingesting, chewing, or swallowing food occur in up to 80 percent of children with developmental disorders and can lead to food aspiration, choking, or life-threatening respiratory infections.

Suckling, feeding, and swallowing difficulties -- known as pediatric dysphagia -- are among the most serious and frequent complications in infants. They are common in DiGeorge syndrome, which is a genetic disease caused when a small part of chromosome 22 is missing. The syndrome carries a high risk for autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia, as well as heart, face, and limb malformations.

In the study, associate research professor Xin Wang and co-senior author David Mendelowitz, vice chair and professor of pharmacology and physiology, both with the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, traced the motor neurons in mouse models DiGeorge syndrome from their target muscles, labeled each class of motor neuron, and recorded their electrical properties.

The motor neurons responsible for the forward and backward movement of the tongue in the DiGeorge syndrome models spontaneously fired compared with motor neurons of normal mice, and the excitatory impulses were not balanced by inhibitory responses.

As a result, the increased excitability of motor neurons affected compression and movement of the tongue muscles, which would threaten both food intake efficiency and airway safety in infants and toddlers.