Culture

JUPITER, FL--AUG. 24, 2020--A heart attack can leave parts of the heart permanently scarred and stiff, resulting in prolonged disability and potential progression toward heart failure. Scientists have studied various ways to repair or regenerate such damaged heart tissue, with limited success.

A new study from Scripps Research Chemist Matthew Disney, PhD, shows that by targeting an essential biomolecule that surges in failing heart muscle, it may be possible to one day heal damaged heart tissue with medication.

In a study published Monday in the journal Nature Chemistry, the Disney collaboration describes the discovery of the first compounds able to restart cellular production of a factor called VEGF-A, short for vascular endothelial growth factor A, in cellular models. Research over many years has shown VEGF-A acts as a signal to stem cells, causing them to rebuild blood vessels and muscle in damaged heart tissue, and improve blood flow.

Targeting RNAs, the "middleman" between genes and protein production, makes logical sense, but doing so with medicines was once deemed unfeasible. RNAs were long thought to be poor small-molecule drug targets due to their simple four-base makeup and dynamic shape. Through the years, Disney and colleagues have developed an array of computational and chemical tools designed to overcome those barriers.

"During a heart attack, the injury causes proteins that could promote new, healthy blood vessel growth to go silent," Disney explains. "We analyzed the entire pathway for how the protein is silenced, and then we used that information to identify how to reinvigorate its expression."

Lead author Hafeez Haniff, a graduate student at Scripps Research, Florida, analyzed the genomics underlying VEGF-A production to assess optimal RNA drug targets, working in collaboration with scientists at AstraZeneca. The team selected a microRNA precursor called pre-miR-377, finding it acts like a dimmer switch for VEGF-A production in failing heart muscle.

They then used Disney's computational and chemical tools, in conjunction with a diverse set of compounds from AstraZeneca's collection, in search of chemical partners able to selectively bind to the key conserved structural features of pre-miR-377.

"A remarkable on-target specificity is achieved by combining the active compound with other helper molecules," Haniff explains.

Other strategies that have been attempted to boost VEGF-A production include administration of VEGF-A itself, or delivery of messenger RNA that encodes for the protein.

"Each of these approaches uses large compounds that can have limited distribution to diseased tissues, compared to potential specific, RNA-binding small-molecule lead medicines," Disney says.

The compound has, so far, been tested in cells, not whole-animal models of heart failure, Disney notes.

"We delivered a lead small molecule compound to reprogram the cell's software to force it to re-express VEGF-A," Disney says. "Transforming TGP-377 into a potential medicine that reaches patients will take considerably more time and research."

Disney called their success a "test case" that shows it is possible to reliably and predictably develop medicinal compounds for pre-defined RNA targets and induce protein production in cellular models.

Malin Lemurell of AstraZeneca, calls it a potentially important first step.

"The ability to design small molecules capable of interacting with and modulating RNA could open new avenues to target challenging disease pathways that have previously been considered undruggable," says Lemurell, who is head of Medicinal Chemistry, Research and Early Development, Cardiovascular, Renal and Metabolism, BioPharmaceuticals R&D at AstraZeneca. "This research has enabled the generation of quality tool compounds that will be useful to probe this mode of action further."

Because of the largescale screening done to identify TGP-377, Disney says the group expanded by 20-fold the data set of known RNA-binding small molecules generally, with implications for multiple incurable diseases.

"There are potential RNA drug targets for nearly every disease." Disney says. "We now have a much greater toolbox to search for lead molecules with medicinal potential."

New research from Ghana shows less popular methods of biochar application are more effective in promoting cowpea growth and yield. The article, "Method of biochar application affects growth, yield and nutrient uptake of cowpea" was published in the De Gruyter open access journal Open Agriculture.

Cowpea is widely cultivated in sub-Saharan Africa and in warm regions around the world. The crop is an important source of human food, livestock feed, and green manure, and generates income for smallholder farmers. It is valued for its ability to boost soil fertility by fixing nitrogen.

But West African farmers - under pressure from climate change, drought, pests, and low soil fertility - have struggled to optimize the yield of this valuable crop. Conventional mineral fertilizers remain expensive for smallholders and can cause soil degradation.

Biochar is a charcoal-like substance made by burning waste plant matter. Adding biochar to soil is a relatively new approach, which has been shown to improve crop yields in many ways. It can increase the soil's water-holding capacity, reduce acidity, increase nutrient supply and retention, and promote the growth of beneficial microbes. But to date, there has been little research into the best method of applying biochar to soils to optimize its benefits.

Scientists tested out the different methods of biochar application on fields at Ghana's CSIR-Soil Research Institute. They planted cowpea seeds in the site's sandy soil and tested out the broadcasting, spot, and ring methods of applying biochar, comparing them to a control.

The broadcasting method sees biochar spread uniformly across the surface and worked into the soil using a hoe. For the spot method, biochar is placed into a small hole and covered with soil. For the ring method, biochar is dug into the soil in a ring around the place where the seed is to be planted.

The research team confirmed that biochar improved plant height and girth, the number and weight of nitrogen-fixing nodules on the cowpea, pod number, shoot and seed yield as well as nitrogen and phosphorus uptake. The spot and ring methods significantly improved these various measures of crop success.

"We've shown the traditional method of broadcast and incorporation to be less effective," says lead researcher Edward Yeboah, "whereas the spot and ring methods of biochar application show tremendous benefits for sustainable soil management. Smallholder farmers can now improve their livelihoods by focussing on spot and ring application of biochar for maximum benefit."

Antibiotics are among the most important discoveries of modern medicine and have saved millions of lives since the discovery of penicillin almost 100 years ago. Many diseases caused by bacterial infections - such as pneumonia, meningitis or septicaemia - are successfully treated with antibiotics. However, bacteria can develop resistance to antibiotics which then leaves doctors struggling to find effective treatments. Particularly problematic are pathogens which develop multi-drug resistance and are unaffected by most antibiotics. This leads to severe disease progression in affected patients, often with a fatal outcome. Scientists all over the world are therefore engaged in the search for new antibiotics. Researchers at the University of Göttingen and the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry Göttingen have now described a promising new approach involving "antivitamins" to develop new classes of antibiotics. The results were published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.

Antivitamins are substances that inhibit the biological function of a genuine vitamin. Some antivitamins have a similar chemical structure to those of the actual vitamin whose action they block or restrict. For this study, Professor Kai Tittmann's team from the Göttingen Center for Molecular Biosciences at the University of Göttingen worked together with Professor Bert de Groot's group from the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry Göttingen and Professor Tadgh Begley from Texas A&M University (USA). Together they investigated the mechanism of action at the atomic level of a naturally occurring antivitamin of vitamin B1. Some bacteria are able to produce a toxic form of this vital vitamin B1 to kill competing bacteria. This particular antivitamin has only a single atom in addition to the natural vitamin in a seemingly unimportant place and the exciting research question was why the action of the vitamin was still prevented or "poisoned".

Tittmann's team used high-resolution protein crystallography to investigate how the antivitamin inhibits an important protein from the central metabolism of bacteria. The researchers found that the "dance of the protons", which can normally be observed in functioning proteins, almost completely ceases to function and the protein no longer works. "Just one extra atom in the antivitamin acts like a grain of sand in a complex gear system by blocking its finely tuned mechanics," explains Tittmann. It is interesting to note that human proteins are able to cope relatively well with the antivitamin and continue working. The chemist de Groot and his team used computer simulations to find out why this is so. "The human proteins either do not bind to the antivitamin at all or in such a way that they are not 'poisoned'," says the Max Planck researcher. The difference between the effects of the antivitamin on bacteria and on human proteins opens up the possibility of using it as an antibiotic in the future and thus creating new therapeutic alternatives.

The research project was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Excessive consumption of fructose -- a sweetener ubiquitous in the American diet -- can result in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which is comparably abundant in the United States. But contrary to previous understanding, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine report that fructose only adversely affects the liver after it reaches the intestines, where the sugar disrupts the epithelial barrier protecting internal organs from bacterial toxins in the gut.

Developing treatments that prevent intestinal barrier disruption, the authors conclude in a study published August 24, 2020 in Nature Metabolism, could protect the liver from NAFLD, a condition that affects one in three Americans.

"NAFLD is the most common cause of chronic liver disease in the world. It can progress to more serious conditions, such as cirrhosis, liver cancer, liver failure and death," said senior author Michael Karin, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology and Pathology at UC San Diego School of Medicine. "These findings point to an approach that could prevent liver damage from occurring in the first place."

Fructose consumption in the U.S. has skyrocketed since the 1970s and the introduction of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), a cheaper sugar substitute that is broadly used in processed and packaged foods, from cereals and baked goods to soft drinks. Multiple studies in animals and humans have linked increased HFCS consumption with the nation's obesity epidemic and numerous inflammatory conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, however, currently regulates it similar to other sweeteners, such as sucrose or honey, and advises only moderation of intake.

The new study, however, defines a specific role and risk for HFCS in the development of fatty liver disease. "The ability of fructose, which is plentiful in dried figs and dates, to induce fatty liver was known to the ancient Egyptians, who fed ducks and geese dried fruit to make their version of foie gras," said Karin.

"With the advent of modern biochemistry and metabolic analysis, it became obvious that fructose is two to three times more potent than glucose in increasing liver fat, a condition that triggers NAFLD. And the increased consumption of soft drinks containing HFCS corresponds with the explosive growth in NAFLD incidence."

Fructose is broken down in the human digestive tract by an enzyme called fructokinase, which is produced both by the liver and the gut. Using mouse models, researchers found that excessive fructose metabolism in intestinal cells reduces production of proteins that maintain the gut barrier -- a layer of tightly packed epithelial cells covered with mucus that prevent bacteria and microbial products, such as endotoxins, from leaking out of the intestines and into the blood.

"Thus, by deteriorating the barrier and increasing its permeability, excessive fructose consumption can result in a chronic inflammatory condition called endotoxemia, which has been documented in both experimental animals and pediatric NAFLD patients," said the study's first author Jelena Todoric, MD, PhD, a visiting scholar in Karin's lab.

In their study, Karin, Todoric and colleagues from universities and institutions around the world, found that leaked endotoxins reaching the liver provoked increased production of inflammatory cytokines and stimulated the conversion of fructose and glucose into fatty acid deposits.

"It is very clear that fructose does its dirty work in the intestine," said Karin, "and if intestinal barrier deterioration is prevented, the fructose does little harm to the liver."

The scientists noted that feeding mice with high amounts of fructose and fat results in particularly severe adverse health effects. "That's a condition that mimics the 95th percentile of relative fructose intake by American adolescents, who get up to 21.5 percent of their daily calories from fructose, often in combination with calorie-dense foods like hamburgers and French fries," Karin said.

Interestingly, the research team found that when fructose intake was reduced below a certain threshold, no adverse effects were observed in mice, suggesting only excessive and long-term fructose consumption represents a health risk. Moderate fructose intake through normal consumption of fruits is well-tolerated.

"Unfortunately, many processed foods contain HFCS and most people cannot estimate how much fructose they actually consume," said Karin. "Although education and increased awareness are the best solutions to this problem, for those individuals who had progressed to the severe form of NAFLD known as nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, these findings offer some hope of a future therapy based on gut barrier restoration."

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Each person's gut virus composition is as unique as a fingerprint, according to the first study to assemble a comprehensive database of viral populations in the human digestive system.

An analysis of viruses in the guts of healthy Westerners also showed that dips and peaks in the diversity of virus types between childhood and old age mirror bacterial changes over the course of the lifespan.

The Gut Virome Database developed by Ohio State University scientists identifies 33,242 unique viral populations that are present in the human gut. (A collection of viruses like those in the human gut is called a virome.) This is not cause for alarm: Most viruses don't cause disease.

In fact, the more scientists learn about viruses, the more they see them as part of the human ecosystem - suggesting viruses have potential to represent a new class of drugs that could fight disease-causing bacteria, especially those resistant to antibiotics. Better knowledge of viruses in the gut environment could even improve understanding of the gastrointestinal symptoms experienced by some of the sickest COVID-19 patients.

The researchers plan to update the open-access database on a regular basis.

"We've established a robust starting point to see what the virome looks like in humans," said study co-author Olivier Zablocki, a postdoctoral researcher in microbiology at Ohio State. "If we can characterize the viruses that are keeping us healthy, we might be able to harness that information to design future therapeutics for pathogens that can't otherwise be treated with drugs."

The study is published today (Aug. 24) in the journal Cell Host & Microbe.

Talk of the good and bad bacteria in the gut microbiome is commonplace these days, but viruses in the gut - and everywhere - are hard to detect because their genomes don't contain a common signature gene sequence that bacteria genomes do. So much of the vast sequence space of viruses remains unexplored that it is often referred to as "dark matter."

For this work, the researchers started with data from 32 studies over about a decade that had looked at gut viruses in a total of 1,986 healthy and sick people in 16 countries. Using techniques to detect virus genomes, the team identified more than 33,000 different viral populations.

"We used machine learning on known viruses to help us identify the unknown viruses," said first author Ann Gregory, who completed this work while she was a graduate student at Ohio State. "We were interested in how many types of viruses we could see in the gut, and we determined that by how many types of genomes we could see since we couldn't visually see the viruses."

Their analysis confirmed findings from smaller studies suggesting that though a few viral populations were shared within a subset of people, there is no core group of gut viruses common to all humans.

A few trends were identified, however. In healthy Western individuals, age influences the diversity of viruses in the gut, which increases significantly from childhood to adulthood, and then decreases after age 65. The pattern matches what is known about ebbs and flows of gut bacterial diversity with one exception: Infant guts with underdeveloped immune systems are teeming with a range of virus types, but few bacteria varieties.

People living in non-Western countries had higher gut virus diversity than Westerners. Gregory said other research has shown that non-Western individuals who move to the United States or another Western country lose that microbiome diversity, suggesting diet and environment drive virome differences. (For example, the scientists found some intact plant viruses in the gut - the only way for them to get there is through the diet.) Variations in viral diversity could also be seen in healthy versus sick participants in the 32 studies analyzed.

"A general rule of thumb for ecology is that higher diversity leads to a healthier ecosystem," Gregory said. "We know that more diversity of viruses and microbes is usually associated with a healthier individual. And we saw that healthier individuals tend to have a higher diversity of viruses, indicating that these viruses may be potentially doing something positive and having a beneficial role."

Almost all of the populations - 97.7 percent - were phages, which are viruses that infect bacteria. Viruses have no function without a host - they drift in an environment until they infect another organism, taking advantage of its properties to make copies of themselves. The most-studied viruses kill their host cells, but scientists in the Ohio State lab in which Gregory and Zablocki worked have discovered more and more phage-type viruses that coexist with their host microbes and even produce genes that help the host cells compete and survive.

The leader of that lab, senior study author Matthew Sullivan, has his sights set on "phage therapy" - the 100-year-old idea of using phages to kill antibiotic-resistant pathogens or superbugs.

"Phages are part of a vast interconnected network of organisms that live with us and on us, and when broad-spectrum antibiotics are used to fight against infection, they also harm our natural microbiome," Sullivan said. "We are building out a toolkit to scale our understanding and capabilities to use phages to tune disturbed microbiomes back toward a healthy state.

"Importantly, such a therapeutic should impact not only our human microbiome, but also that in other animals, plants and engineered systems to fight pathogens and superbugs. They could also provide a foundation for something we might have to consider in the world's oceans to combat climate change."

A professor of microbiology and civil, environmental and geodetic engineering, Sullivan has helped establish cross-disciplinary research collaborations at Ohio State. He recently founded and directs Ohio State's new Center of Microbiome Science and co-directs the Infectious Diseases Institute's Microbial Communities program.

Zablocki noted that there is still a lot to learn about the functions of viruses in the gut - both beneficial and harmful.

"I see it as the chicken and the egg," he said. "We see the disease and we see the community structure. Was it because of this community structure that the disease occurred, or is the disease causing the community structure that we see? This standardized dataset will enable us to pursue those questions."

The Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have designed and additively manufactured a first-of-its-kind aluminum device that enhances the capture of carbon dioxide emitted from fossil fuel plants and other industrial processes.

Solutions for reducing global emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases such as CO2 address the continued use of low-cost, domestic fossil fuel resources while mitigating potential climate impacts.

The team tested the novel circular device, which integrates a heat exchanger with a mass-exchanging contactor, inside a 1-meter-tall by 8-inch-wide absorption column consisting of seven commercial stainless-steel packing elements. The 3D-printed intensified device was installed in the top half of the column between the packing elements.

Additive manufacturing made it possible to have a heat exchanger within the column, as part of the packing elements, without disturbing the geometry, thus maximizing the contact surface area between the gas and liquid streams.

"We call the device intensified because it enables enhanced mass transfer (the amount of CO2 transferred from a gas to a liquid state) through in-situ cooling," said Costas Tsouris, one of ORNL's lead researchers on the project. "Controlling the temperature of absorption is critical to capturing carbon dioxide."

ORNL's device focuses on a key challenge in conventional absorption of carbon using solvents: the process typically produces heat that can limit its overall efficiency. By using additive manufacturing, researchers were able to custom design a multifunctional device that greatly improves the process efficiency by removing excess heat while keeping costs low.

Absorption, one of the most commonly used and economical methods for capturing CO2, places a flue-gas stream from smokestacks in contact with a solvent, such as monoethanolamine, known as MEA, or other amine solutions, that can react with the gas.

When CO2 interacts with the solvent, it produces heat that can diminish the capability of the solvent to react with CO2. Reducing this localized temperature spike in the column through cooling channels helps increase the efficiency of CO2 capture.

"Prior to the design of our 3D printed device, it was difficult to implement a heat exchanger concept into the CO2 absorption column because of the complex geometry of the column's packing elements. With 3D printing, the mass exchanger and heat exchanger can co-exist within a single multifunctional, intensified device," said ORNL's Xin Sun, the project's principal investigator.

Embedded coolant channels were added inside the packing element's corrugated sheets to allow for heat exchange capabilities. The final prototype measured 20.3 centimeters in diameter, 14.6 centimeters in height, with a total fluid volume capacity of 0.6 liters. Aluminum was chosen as the initial material for the intensified device because of its excellent printability, high thermal conductivity, and structural strength.

"The device can also be manufactured using other materials, such as emerging high thermal conductivity polymers and metals. Additive manufacturing methods like 3D printing are often cost-effective over time because it takes less effort and energy to print a part versus traditional manufacturing methods," said Lonnie Love, a lead manufacturing researcher at ORNL, who designed the intensified device.

The prototype demonstrated that it was capable of substantially enhancing carbon dioxide capture with the amine solution, which was chosen because its highly reactive to CO2.

In results published in the AIChE Journal, ORNL researchers conducted two separate experiments -- one that varied the CO2-containing gas flow rate and one that varied the MEA solvent flow rate. The experiments aimed to determine which operating conditions would produce the greatest benefit to carbon capture efficiency.

Both experiments produced substantial improvements in the carbon capture rate and demonstrated that the magnitude of the capture consistently depended on the gas flow rates. The study also showed a peak in capture at 20% of carbon dioxide concentration, with percent of increase in capture rate ranging from 2.2% to 15.5% depending on the operating conditions.

"The success of this 3D printed intensified device represents an unprecedented opportunity in further enhancing carbon dioxide absorption efficiency and demonstrates proof of concept," Sun said.

Future research will focus on optimizing operating conditions and device geometry to produce additional improvements in the carbon capture absorption process.

More than 650 wildfires are blazing in California after unprecedented lightning strikes, storms, and a heatwave that has set new records in the state and NASA's Terra satellite captured the smoke-engulfed state on Aug. 24, 2020.

The two largest fires still burning the state are both named after the firefighting units that are battling them and the fact that both began with lightning strikes. The LNU Lightning Complex and the SCU Lightning Complex are both located in northern California. The LNU (Lake Napa Unit) Lightning Complex has burned 347,630 acres and is 21% contained and the SCU (Santa Clara Unit) Lightning Complex has consumed 343,965 acres and is 10% contained according to the CAL Fire website. These two fires are now second and third on the list of California's largest wildfires.

Even discounting these fires there are still hundreds of other fires burning across the state as can be seen in this Terra satellite image taken on Aug. 24, 2020. Red dots litter the landscape designating areas which are most likely fires--so many fires, in fact, that the dots blur together and individual fire are no longer visible.

More insidious than the fires is the smoke that rises from the landscape. This aerosol image below shows not only California being affected by the heavy smoke as seen in the visible image above, but the smoke has traveled across much of the United States affecting areas from California all the way to Minnesota and Nebraska and air currents will undoubtedly carry the smoke across the entire U.S.

The aerosol index provides information about the presence of particles in the air. According to NASA Worldview: "The Aerosol Index is a unitless range from =5.00, where 5.0 [deepest red] indicates heavy concentrations of aerosols that could reduce visibility or impact human health. The Aerosol Index layer is useful for identifying and tracking the long-range transport of volcanic ash from volcanic eruptions, smoke from wildfires or biomass burning events and dust from desert dust storms, even tracking over clouds and areas of snow and ice." In this image deep red areas can be seen in California but can also be seen as far east as Minnesota meaning the heavy aerosols do not necessarily diminish as they travel on the air currents.

When doctors are the same race as their patients, it can sometimes forge a sense of comfort that helps to reduce anxiety and pain, particularly for Black patients, new research from the University of Miami suggests.

In a study recently published in the academic journal Pain Medicine, and led by Steven R. Anderson, recent psychology Ph.D. graduate, and Elizabeth Losin, assistant professor of psychology, groups of non-Hispanic white, Hispanic, and Black patients participated in a simulated doctor's appointment. Patients were given a mildly painful series of heat stimulations on their arm by a medical trainee playing the role of a doctor to simulate a painful medical procedure. Participants indicated how intense their pain was throughout the procedure and researchers also measured the patients' physiological responses to the painful experience using sensors on the patients' hands.

Some of the patients were paired with a doctor who identified as the same race and ethnicity as they did, which is called "racial/ethnic concordance," while others were not. After the experience, researchers compared the pain levels of the group paired with same race/ethnicity doctors with those paired with a doctor of a different race/ethnicity. The most intriguing results came from the Black patients who were paired with Black doctors.

"Black patients paired with Black doctors reported experiencing less pain across several types of measures than Black patients paired with Hispanic or non-Hispanic white doctors," said Losin, who leads the Social and Cultural Neuroscience lab.

Additionally, Losin said that data from the sensors showed the Black patients' physical responses to pain were also lower when they were paired with a doctor of their own race.

"This provides some evidence that Black patients were showing a benefit of having a doctor of their own race at multiple levels--showing pain relief in both their communication and their physiology," Losin said.

The idea to investigate the role of racial concordance in the doctor-patient relationship came from previous research that shows that there are major disparities between racial and ethnic groups in terms of the level of pain experienced from medical conditions and procedures, according to the researchers.

Typically, Black and Hispanic populations report more pain from medical conditions and in pain research studies, compared to non-Hispanic white populations. Also, previous research has suggested that when a patient has a doctor who shares their demographics in terms of gender, race, or language, it can influence peripheral health outcomes like the patient's satisfaction and their adherence to medication. That led Losin's team to investigate whether racial/ethnic concordance between doctor and patient would go deeper to affect the patient's pain level as well.

"There are fewer studies about doctor-patient concordance and its effect on direct health outcomes like pain," Losin said.

To understand why Black patients experienced reduced pain and pain-related bodily responses with a doctor of the same race, the researchers delved into some of the introductory surveys given to the patient participants, Anderson noted, and found a big clue.

"The factor that really differentiated the Black patients from the other groups was that Black patients were much more likely to say they had experienced racial or ethnic discrimination or were currently concerned about it," he said.

What's more, the Black patients who reported experiencing and worrying more about discrimination showed the greatest reductions in their bodily responses to pain when they had doctors of their own race, Anderson said.

"Together these findings suggest that perhaps one reason why Black patients may have had a reduced physiological response to pain when they had Black doctors was because they were less anxious about the possibility of being discriminated against," Losin said. "We know that anxiety is closely tied to pain."

Although non-Hispanic white and Hispanic patients were included in the study as well, whether or not they had a doctor of their own race didn't seem to make a difference for their pain. This was what the study authors expected for the white patients but found surprising for Hispanic patients, who also have been found to report more pain than non-Hispanic whites in previous research studies.

One possible reason Hispanic patients didn't show the same pain reduction benefit of having an own-race doctor as Black patients did, is that on average the Hispanic patients didn't actually perceive the Hispanic doctors to be more similar to them in terms of their race or ethnicity than the Black or non-Hispanic white doctors. This is likely due to the high cultural and national heterogeneity among Hispanic/Latino Americans and suggests more research is needed into what factors related to the doctor-patient relationship may help decrease pain for Hispanic patients.

Losin and Anderson said their study highlights a potential benefit of having more Black physicians in the medical profession: it could mean a reduction in pain disparities.

As of 2019, only around 5 percent of physicians identified as African American and Hispanic respectively, which means that most Black patients will rarely get to experience the benefits of seeing a physician that looks like them and understands their life experiences.

"Physician diversity initiatives are often seen as beneficial for improving patient comfort and satisfaction, but with our study we have evidence that there may be direct health consequences to not having a diverse work force as well," Anderson said. "Our study speaks to the importance of physician diversity in improving health outcomes."

In the wake of the George Floyd killing and other incidents of racially motivated police violence, communities across the country are examining the practices of their local police departments more closely. Some are undertaking comprehensive training and education programs to address racial bias on their forces.

New research conducted in Vermont shows that, while anti-bias police trainings resulted in small improvements in some police departments in the state, they did not by and large alter police behavior.

The research, conducted by University of Vermont Economics professor Stephanie Seguino, Cornell University visiting associate professor Nancy Brooks and Pat Autilio, data analyst, examined data from eight Vermont police departments and builds on a 2017 statewide study of police traffic stops in Vermont.

In the earlier study, using 2015 data, researchers found that Black drivers were four times more likely and Hispanic drivers three times more likely to be searched by police than white drivers. Despite the higher search rate, Black and Hispanic drivers were less likely to be found with contraband compared to white drivers. Arrest rates of Black drivers were also disproportionately higher.

The new studies examine police stops by agencies in seven Vermont towns and cities and by the Vermont State Police, using four additional years of data, including 2019.

The studies found that racial disparities in traffic stop outcomes have persisted, with Black drivers still much more likely to be stopped and searched than white drivers and less likely, in all but one town, to be found with contraband during a search.

In addition, stop rates for all drivers were found to vary widely across agencies, which affects the magnitude of the disparate impact on Black drivers.

In some cases, disparities have widened since the 2017 study was published.

For town by town data, see table at the end end of the press release here: https://www.uvm.edu/uvmnews/news/new-study-despite-years-training-police-departments-vermont-still-exhibit-widespread

The fact that such little progress has been made can be disheartening but speaks to the depth of the challenge. "Racial bias in the United States is systemic, and negative stereotypes about people of color are deeply rooted," Seguino said. "Without sustained attention and commitment, the problem is very difficult to eradicate."

The research studies did show evidence of modest progress in some police departments.

The Vermont State Police has been a leader in investing in training and the use of data; after the earlier study, the agency dramatically improved the quality of its data collection to detect racial disparities. While the 2019 data for the state police showed a widening of some disparities, that followed several years of gradual declines in disparate outcomes. South Burlington has also seen declines in arrest and search rate disparities.

While the earlier study prompted some agencies to engage in anti-bias training and other measures to address racial disparities in policing, other agencies across the state have been slow to act on the racial disparities found in the data.

A key factor in reducing unequal treatment is leadership's commitment to eliminating unjustified disparities and addressing officers' racial bias," Seguino said. "Colonel Birmingham of the Vermont State Police and Chief Burke of South Burlington Police Department have articulated that commitment. The Vermont State Police has gone a step further by using traffic stop data as a way to hold a mirror up to itself, sharing results with its troopers, and linking performance evaluations of its commanders to their effectiveness in promoting bias-free policing.

The data suggest that such efforts show promise but may require more time to bear fruit in closing racial gaps. "Recent attention to the problem of anti-Black bias in policing," Autilio said, "has the potential to hasten change."

The fact that the traffic stop disparities are widespread in Vermont, a state known for its progressive attitudes and policies, is telling, Brooks said.

"It makes clear that racial bias and negative racial stereotypes permeate our country, regardless of where you are," she said. "No state is immune."

CHICAGO: Surgical patients are more likely to experience a postoperative infection if they have low health literacy, which is a limited capacity to understand and act on health information, according to results of a new study presented at the American College of Surgeons (ACS) 2020 Quality and Safety Conference VIRTUAL.

The study was performed by researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Hospital who looked at data from 270 patients undergoing colon and rectal operations. They found the odds of having an infectious complication within a month after the operation were 4.5 times higher in patients with low health literacy compared with patients whose health literacy was adequate.

"It's important to understand that patients with limited health literacy might be at higher risk for an infection after surgery, so we can start to understand why and design interventions and tools to better support those patients," said lead investigator Lauren Theiss, MD, a third-year surgical resident at UAB School of Medicine.

Low or limited health literacy is common among U.S. adults and may affect health outcomes in many ways, according to the government's Healthy People 2020.1 Although patient-level factors such as education, socioeconomic status, older age, and language and cultural barriers can contribute to low health literacy,2 the complexity of the health information that patients receive also contributes to the problem.3

"For many patients, the surgical journey can be very confusing," said Daniel Chu, MD, FACS, a colorectal surgeon at UAB Medicine and the study's senior investigator.

Impact of study results

Dr. Chu said their research findings help fill the gaps in surgeons' knowledge about the relationship of low health literacy to surgical outcomes.

The authors of prior studies suggest that low health literacy is linked to a longer hospitalization4 and an increased rate of minor complications.5 Their new study findings, Dr. Theiss said, show that "some of the infections are very, very serious."

Infections ranged from pneumonia, septic shock, and deep-space infections inside the belly to superficial wound infections and urinary tract infections.

Infections are among the most common preventable postoperative complications, the Patient Safety Network reports.6

Besides 30-day complications, the investigators collected data on the length of hospital stay, readmissions, and deaths recorded from 2018 to 2019 in the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP®) database. The NSQIP database is the leading nationally validated, risk-adjusted, outcomes-based program to measure and improve the quality of surgical care.

Using NSQIP data and medical records, the research team also studied patients' compliance rates with the hospital's enhanced recovery program (ERP). This program employs a collection of best practices that global research findings show improve surgical outcomes, Dr. Theiss said.

The researchers assessed health literacy using the four-question Brief Health Literacy Screening Tool. Among 270 patients, most (78.9 percent, or 213) had adequate health literacy, 38 patients (14.1 percent) had marginal health literacy, and 19 patients (7 percent) had low health literacy, the researchers reported.

Dr. Theiss said that there was a significant difference in the rate of infectious complications but no statistically significant difference in other complications or outcomes analyzed. Whereas postoperative infection occurred in 13.6 percent of patients with adequate health literacy, 36.8 percent of those with low health literacy had an infection postoperatively, according to the study abstract. After controlling for multiple factors that may influence infection rates, the researchers still found a higher risk of postoperative infection in patients with low health literacy (odds ratio, 4.49).

They were unable to determine from the dataset whether infections occurred in the hospital or at home after the patients left the hospital, she said.

Surprisingly, ERP compliance did not differ by health literacy level, including for preoperative bowel preparation, Dr. Theiss said. However, she explained that they studied the rate of prescription of bowel-emptying preparations, not patients' compliance with using the bowel preparation. If low health literacy patients have difficulty correctly taking the bowel preparation, it could place them at higher risk of infections after surgery.

Creating a health-literate surgical program

The UAB surgery department is working to improve surgical patient outcomes by "creating a more health-literate surgical program," Dr. Theiss said. "Our goal is not to modify a patient's health literacy, but modify the way that we interact and communicate with patients and provide them with health information."

They are creating this program in several ways, she said. They revised patient education and discharge materials to be more easily understandable and more visual. Also, through a patient engagement app, some patients receive helpful educational content and checklists throughout their surgical experience. With permission, the researchers are recording and studying patient-surgeon conversations during visits to find ways to teach providers how to better communicate with patients.

Furthermore, if patients do not understand the health information the surgeon has provided, they should communicate that to the provider, Dr. Theiss said. "But the burden should not be on the patient. As providers, we should interact with patients assuming they have limited health literacy. It's our responsibility to engage patients and make sure they understand what's being communicated to them."

Many health literacy toolkits are available, Dr. Chu said, and interventions can be as simple as a surgeon speaking more slowly and illustrating a surgical procedure by drawing it on a piece of paper.

"The beautiful thing about health literacy is that interventions can be done without a lot of money or new technologies," he said.

A re-analysis of fossils from one of Europe's most significant paleontological sites reveals a wide diversity of animal species, including a large terrestrial monkey, short-necked giraffe, rhinos and saber-toothed cats.

These and other species roamed the open grasslands of Eastern Europe during the early Pleistocene, approximately 2 million years ago. Ultimately, the researchers hope the fossils will provide clues about how and when early humans migrated to Eurasia from Africa. Reconstructions of past environments like this also could help researchers better understand future climate change.

"My colleagues and I are excited to draw attention back to the fossil site of Gr?unceanu and the fossil potential of the Olte? River Valley of Romania," said Claire Terhune, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Arkansas. "It's such a diverse faunal community. We found multiple animals that hadn't been clearly identified in the area before, and many that are no longer found in Europe at all. Of course, we think these findings alone are interesting, but they also have important implications for early humans moving into the continent at that time."

About 124 miles west of the Romanian capital of Bucharest, the Olte? River Valley, including the the important site of Gr?unceanu, is one of Eastern Europe's richest fossil deposits. Many Olte? Valley fossil sites, including Gr?unceanu, were discovered in the 1960s after landslides caused in part by deforestation due to increased agricultural activity in the area.

Archeologists and paleontologists from the Emil Racovi?? Institute of Speleology in Bucharest excavated the sites soon after they were discovered. Fossils were recovered and stored at the institute, and scholarly publications about the sites flourished in the 1970s and 1980s. But interest in these fossils and sites waned over the past 20 to 30 years, in part because many records of the excavations and fossils were lost.

Since 2012, the international team, including Terhune and researchers from Romania, the United States, Sweden and France, has focused on this important fossil region. Their work has included extensive identification of fossils at the institute and additional field work.

In addition to the species mentioned above, the researchers identified fossil remains of animals similar to modern-day moose, bison, deer, horse, ostrich, pig and many others. They also identified a fossil species of pangolin, which were thought to have existed in Europe during the early Pleistocene but had not been solidly confirmed until now. Today, pangolins, which look like the combination of an armadillo and anteater and are among the most trafficked animals in the world, are found only in Asia and Africa.

HOUSTON - (Aug. 24, 2020) - A chameleonlike protein in neurons can change its mind, and in the process change our brains.

Scientists at Rice University and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) uncovered new clues in the protein CPEB3 as part of their dogged pursuit of the mechanism that allows humans to have long-term memories.

The study by Rice theoretical biophysicist Peter Wolynes and Neal Waxham, a neurobiologist at UTHealth's McGovern Medical School, provides insight into a positive feedback loop between forming the actin backbones that give dendritic spines their shape and flexibility and the actin-binding domains in CPEB3, a functional prion that binds RNA which also forms long-lived aggregates that may indeed store the stuff that memories are made of.

Protein-folding models by Wolynes and his group at Rice's Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP) and experiments at UTHealth turned up previously unknown structural details for CPEB3 and how it binds to actin, as reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper.

In the process, they also examined the key role played by a protein known as SUMO, a regulator that attaches to and detaches from other proteins in cells to modify their functions. The researchers suspect it helps to regulate when and how CPEB3's chameleonlike ends (the N-terminus and C-terminus) bind to either SUMO or the flexible, filamentous actin (f-actin) spines in dendritic spikes.

CPEB3 proteins are soluble when attached to SUMO, which also buries their actin-binding sites. But during synaptic activity, they can be "deSUMOylated" and become available to bind with the hydrophobic binding pockets along f-actin filaments.

The models show that when attracted to actin, CPEB3 transitions from a coiled coil of helices into a beta sheet structure that "zips" into a hairpin configuration that allows it to aggregate with other CPEB3 proteins.

Upon aggregation, CPEB3 appears to translate its target messenger RNAs, which include actin mRNA that strengthens the synaptic junctions essential to memory, completing the positive loop.

"This is a more ambitious project than the actin-CaM kinase study, where we also simulated a really huge actin system with a really huge protein," Wolynes said. In that study, published a year ago, CTBP researchers modeled how a central protein (CaMKII) holds parallel actin filaments together, a state that could be visualized in an electron microscope by Waxham's lab.

Now the researchers are defining the structural details that allow CPEB3 to bind to either actin or SUMO, but not both. "One of the main aspects of this paper is to reconcile those two quite different parts of the story," he said. "We think the CPEB terminals are chameleonlike because they let the molecule choose whether it will interact with the SUMO or with the actin.

"We're not to the end of the story yet," Wolynes said. "But the latest results put us in a reasonable place to say more about the mechanism."

fibrillation manage their symptoms, according to research presented today at ESC Congress 2020.1

Atrial fibrillation is the most common heart rhythm disorder. One in four middle-aged adults in Europe and the US will develop the condition, which causes 20-30% of all strokes and increases the risk of death by 1.5-fold in men and 2-fold in women. Reduced quality of life is common, and 10-40% of patients are hospitalised each year.2

Symptoms of atrial fibrillation include palpitations, racing or irregular pulse, shortness of breath, tiredness, chest pain and dizziness.

"The symptoms of atrial fibrillation can be distressing. They come and go, causing many patients to feel anxious and limiting their ability to live a normal life," said study author Dr. Naresh Sen of HG SMS Hospital, Jaipur, India.

This study investigated whether yoga could ease symptoms in patients with atrial fibrillation. The study enrolled 538 patients in 2012 to 2017. Patients served as their own controls. For 12 weeks they did no yoga, then for 16 weeks patients attended 30-minute yoga sessions every other day which included postures and breathing. During the yoga period, patients were also encouraged to practice the movements and breathing at home on a daily basis.

During both study periods, symptoms and episodes of atrial fibrillation were recorded in a diary. Some patients also wore a heart monitor to verify atrial fibrillation episodes. Patients completed an anxiety and depression survey3 and a questionnaire4 assessing their ability to do daily activities and socialise, energy levels and mood. Heart rate and blood pressure were also measured. The researchers then compared outcomes between the yoga and non-yoga periods.

During the 16-week yoga period, patients experienced significant improvements in all areas compared to the 12-week non-yoga period. For example, during the non-yoga period, patients experienced an average of 15 symptomatic episodes of atrial fibrillation compared to eight episodes during the yoga period. Average blood pressure was 11/6 mmHg lower after yoga training.

Dr. Sen said: "Our study suggests that yoga has wide-ranging physical and mental health benefits for patients with atrial fibrillation and could be added on top of usual therapies."

WASHINGTON -- Voters who express prejudice against minorities and women are still more likely to support candidates who most closely align with their ideologies, regardless of the race or sex of such candidates, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

"There is some evidence that has already cast doubt on the conventional view that racial and gender prejudice hurts politicians who are Black and female," said author Hui Bai, a doctoral candidate at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. "This research shows that how citizens' prejudice plays a role in their political preferences is more nuanced than many people think. Overall, the perceived ideology of the candidate determines whether the candidate will be popular among racists and sexists. Whether the candidate is Black or white, a man or a woman, does not seem to matter."

The research was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Bai analyzed data from six surveys, three of which were nationally representative, comprising more than 44,800 individuals. Some of the surveys were conducted by independent third parties, and others were partially designed and/or conducted by Bai himself. Each survey included a series of questions designed to measure racism and sexism. For example, the surveys asked participants to rate how unintelligent they think Black people are and how favorably they feel about Black people as ways of measuring racism. To measure sexism, the surveys asked questions such as whether participants think women's place should be in the home as opposed to having a role in society equal to men.

The surveys also asked participants to rate their support of politicians. Some surveys asked about real-life politicians: Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Ben Carson, Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina. Other surveys asked participants to rate their support for hypothetical candidates. Bai also looked at national survey data collected during election cycles from 1972 to 2016 that measured support for congressional and presidential candidates and included items that measured racism and sexism.

Across all the surveys, participants who scored high in prejudice were significantly more likely to support both real and hypothetical conservative candidates, which Bai did not find surprising. What was interesting was that the candidates' race and gender did not seem to matter at all. There was no significant change in support from prejudiced participants when the conservative candidate was Black or a woman compared with when the conservative candidate was white or a man.

"When it comes to supporting a political candidate, the results suggest that ideology is the primary factor that determines whether citizens' prejudice benefits or undermines their support for the politicians, not the politicians' demographic background," said Bai.

"The great insight of this research is that it gets us past the idea that the chief political consequences of racism and sexism are merely to make voters more hostile to candidates of color and to candidates who are women," said Christopher Federico, PhD, Bai's doctoral adviser at UMN. "Rather, the results pretty consistently indicate that racist and sexist attitudes are associated with support for candidates who are less sympathetic to egalitarian goals or who promise to preserve a status quo that includes racial and gender inequality."

However, one type of demographic that still played a role was religious identity. In the last survey, Bai changed the items to measure prejudice against Muslims and then asked participants to rate their support for hypothetical candidates who were either liberal or conservative, and either Muslim or Christian. He found that while, once again, participants with greater prejudice were more likely to support the conservative candidate, there was a significant decrease in support for the Muslim candidates compared with the Christian candidates. This may be because religious identity, unlike race or sex, is an ideology itself, according to Bai.

DALLAS - Aug. 20, 2020 - A pregnant mother who tested positive for COVID-19 transmitted the virus causing the disease to her prematurely born baby, UT Southwestern physicians report. Both were treated and recovered.

The case, detailed in an article published last month in The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, adds to a growing body of evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 virus can be transmitted in utero. It also underscores the importance of limiting COVID-19 exposure for pregnant women.

"Especially with the rising prevalence of the virus here in Texas, it's very important to bring to the forefront this finding that mothers and infants can be affected by COVID-19, transmission can occur during pregnancy, and pregnant mothers need to protect themselves," says Amanda Evans, M.D., an assistant professor of pediatrics specializing in infectious diseases at UT Southwestern and senior author of the paper. "We don't know whether there are any long-term effects of COVID-19 infection in babies."

Although more than 20 million people around the world have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 - the virus that causes COVID-19 - data on how the virus affects pregnant women have been limited. An early study out of Wuhan, China, concluded that SARS-CoV-2 transmission from mother to baby was unlikely, since the researchers found no copies of the virus in any amniotic fluid, umbilical cord blood, or breast milk. But a handful of more recent studies have suggested there may be isolated instances in which such viral transmission does occur during pregnancy.

In the case described in the paper, a woman who was 34 weeks pregnant visited the emergency room with signs of premature labor and was admitted to the COVID unit at Parkland Memorial Hospital when she tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. While she did not have the typical respiratory symptoms associated with COVID-19, she did have a fever and diarrhea, which suggested possible viral infection.

"At that time, we were doing universal testing of anyone with the most common symptoms of COVID-19, including respiratory symptoms and gastrointestinal symptoms" says Wilmer Moreno, M.D., an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UTSW who was involved in the case.

The woman, who did not know how she acquired the virus, remained hospitalized because of her COVID-19 diagnosis. Three days after admission, her water broke. Following an eight-hour labor in early May, she gave birth to a healthy 7-pound, 3-ounce girl.

"The baby really did fine the first 24 hours of life," says Julide Sisman, M.D., an associate professor of pediatrics who cared for the newborn and first author of the paper. "But because she was prematurely born to a COVID-19-positive mother, we did admit her to the NICU in a special area away from other babies."

About 24 hours after birth, the newborn developed a fever that spiked, and she also showed signs of respiratory distress, including an abnormally high breathing rate and lower levels of oxygen in her blood. Sisman and her colleagues ran tests for viruses and bacteria. While other tests came back negative, a COVID-19 test was positive at both 24 and 48 hours after birth.

"At that time, the knowledge we had was that transmission doesn't occur in utero, so we really weren't expecting that at all," says Sisman.

To help pin down how and when the transmission between mother and baby occurred, Dinesh Rakheja, M.D., a UTSW professor of pathology who holds the John Lawrence and Patsy Louise Goforth Chair in Pathology, analyzed the placenta from the pregnancy.

"We found signs of inflammation and evidence that the baby had been stressed," says Rakheja. "And then, to look for the virus, we did tests beyond those routinely done."

He and his colleagues first examined thin slices of the placenta under an electron microscope, spotting structures that looked like viruses. Then they tested small samples of the placenta for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Currently available commercial tests for the COVID-19 virus all rely on bodily fluids, rather than solid tissues, to test for the virus. So Rakheja co-opted a test that had originally been developed for the 2003 SARS virus. Adapted for the new coronavirus, the immunohistochemical test enabled the pathologist to identify the nucleocapsid protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Neither the mother nor the baby had severe enough symptoms to warrant treatment other than oxygen and fluids, and both fully recovered. The baby stayed in the hospital for three weeks and was then released.

"About a week later, I followed up with the family and the baby was doing really great, and still gaining weight," says Evans. "The mom was also doing well."

More data - including not only individual case reports but large cohort studies - are needed to better understand how COVID-19 affects both pregnant women and babies, the physicians agree. At UTSW, the case increased awareness that it's possible for newborns to be born already harboring the virus.

"The fact that this can occur, even if rare, illustrates how important it is to limit exposure for mothers and newborns," says Moreno. "Anything, like telemedicine visits, that can eliminate the need for mom to be around other people will be very helpful."