Culture

With the global COVID-19 pandemic shifting more and more of our work and school online, virtual communities are more important than ever -- but how do we know, without bias, that our online groups are actually successful in helping us with our goals? A team of researchers based in Italy think has proposed the first objective metric to assess the effectiveness of virtual groups. They published their results on IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica.

"Group formation is a key issue in social communities due to the importance of establishing an effective organization in which users perform actions that could benefit from collaboration and mutual social interactions," said the author Giancarlo Fortino, professor of computer engineering in the DIMES Department of the University of Calabria. "Is it possible to form effective groups in virtual communities by exploiting trust information without significant overhead, similarly to real user communities?"

Facebook, for example, reached 2.4 billion active users in 2019, and, in the last five years, more than one billion groups have formed on the platform. In each group, individuals must trust that the group will provide some value to them, whether it is in the form of humor or parenting tips or product reviews. The group, in turn, must determine the value the individual will add to their group, as well as how important that value is, when admitting members.

"In general, the ability of the members of the same groups to have positive interactions will improve the social capital -- or, simply, the effectiveness -- of the community which represents the group itself," Fortino said. In the team's previous research, they proposed that individual members who trust each other and their contributions to a group enforces the cohesiveness of a group even as more members who are not directly connected join, such as friends of friends. "In this work, we address the general problem of forming effective groups."

The researchers examined interaction data from 34,541 individuals on two Italian-based social networks, EPINIONS and CIAO.

"EPINIONS and CIAO users review items and assign them numeric ratings," Fortino said. "Users can also build their own trust network by adding the people whose reviews they think are valuable."

Fortino and the researchers analyzed three classes of users, from most valued to least valued in their reviews. They found that when one user had limited or inadequate interactions with another user, they would turn to their network of friends to determine trustworthiness.

"It's similar to real communities," Fortino said. "We have implemented this strategy in our algorithm to form groups in virtual communities based on a weighted voting mechanism, whereby each vote is represented by a trust value obtained by a suitable combination of reliability and local reputation."

The strategy, when applied to the social network data, significantly improved the overall trust value of groups. The researchers are now studying the trust value metric in more complex configurations of the groups.

The female reproductive tract has the final say in human mate choice, according to new research from the University of Eastern Finland.

Achieving pregnancy has been shown to be more likely between partners who carry dissimilar human leucocyte antigen (HLA) immune genes. Accordingly, humans are expected to choose HLA dissimilar reproductive partners. Earlier studies have demonstrated that HLA dissimilarity preferences are mediated either by body odours or facial preferences. However, it has been unclear whether HLA-based mating preferences could occur after sexual intercourse in the female reproductive tract. Researchers at the University of Eastern Finland have now shown that the women's reproductive tract is capable of mediating post-mating sexual selection (known as the "cryptic female choice") towards the sperm of HLA dissimilar men. This indicates that the ultimate mating bias towards genetically compatible partners occurs only after mating, at the gamete level.

The researchers conducted two experiments, where they activated sperm from multiple men with follicular fluid (the oocyte surrounding bioactive liquid) or cervical mucus from several different women. Then they examined sperm motility and other functionally important physiological changes of sperm in all possible male-female combinations. All the participants were also genotyped for their Human Leucocyte Antigen (HLA) class I and II alleles.

In both studies, the results showed that the fertilisation capability and viability of sperm are strongly dependent on the male-female combination. In other words, women's reproductive secretions had a stronger effect on the sperm performance of some males than others. Both datasets also showed that the sperm performance was better in HLA dissimilar male-female combinations than in HLA similar males and females.

Together, the results indicate that the fertilisation capability of sperm is dependent on the immunogenetic compatibility of the reproductive partners and that the fusion of the gametes may be a highly selective process.

"These findings can have important implications for a deeper understanding of sexual selection and the fertilisation process in humans and other mammals," Associate Professor Jukka Kekäläinen from the University of Eastern Finland says.

"Since the gametes of some partners may be immunologically more compatible than others, our results may also open up novel possibilities for the development of more accurate infertility diagnostics," Annalaura Jokiniemi, MSc, adds.

WASHINGTON, August 18, 2020 -- Trace vapor detection technologies are crucial for ensuring reliable and safe detection of explosives and illegal drugs. Researchers from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory have developed a compact testing device called the Trace Vapor Generator for Explosives and Narcotics (TV-Gen), which is portable and can be used for non-contact sampling of these vapors.

In the journal Review of Scientific Instruments, published by AIP Publishing, the team reports the TV-Gen can accurately generate trace vapors of low vapor pressure compounds, such as explosives or narcotics, and can produce vapors in complex backgrounds.

"We can use the TV-Gen in the early stages of sensor development, where the developer is just determining if their proposed sensing material responds to a target analyte, all the way to determining instrument and assay limits of detection for hand-held trace detectors and hyphenated instrumentation," said author Braden Giordano.

This device is the next generation of the Test Explosive Sensor (TESTbed) developed for the Department of Homeland Security, with advanced vapor mixing and a smaller footprint, making transport to other laboratories or into the field possible.

"The TV-Gen is significantly smaller than the TESTbed, and while providing only a single sample port for device evaluation, it maintains or improves upon the older systems' performance metrics," said Giordano. "It can fit on a small cart, so you can bring the vapor source to your technology, not the technology to the vapor source."

The device can provide a stable vapor for several hours and can rapidly switch between a clean vapor stream and an analyte vapor stream while matching humidity.

"An interesting application that will be taking place this year is testing detector canines to get quantitative measurements of olfactory detection threshold and, potentially in the future, be able to compare canines directly to instrument for the first time," said Giordano.

The researchers hope to continue meeting the needs of the vapor detection community by expanding the library of vapors and exploring methods to maximize vapor generation efficacy at lower operating temperatures.

An enzyme that usually stops bacterial growth in the large intestine stimulates inflammation in some people, resulting in ulcerative colitis - a chronic digestive disease that affects more than 750,000 Americans, according to scientists at Rutgers University-Newark.

In a new study published in Immunity, lead author Nan Gao, Associate Professor of Cell Biology in the Department of Biological Sciences, School of Arts and Sciences-Newark, reports that in people with ulcerative colitis, the gut enzyme lysozyme which normally functions to restrain bacterial growth, instead stimulates inflammation.

This results in the formation of ulcers and sores in the large intestine and rectum, hallmarks of the inflammatory bowel disease. Detecting these cells in the inner lining of the colon and rectum is a standard diagnostic feature of chronic intestinal inflammation.

"This study demonstrated the existence of a delicate balance between inflammatory and anti-inflammatory factors in our intestines," said Gao, who conducted it with postdoctoral researcher Richard Yu and doctoral student Iyshwarya Balasubramanian. "Insights about how to gain such beneficial immune balance may be useful for future intervention of inflammatory bowel disease."

In biochemical and genetic mouse laboratory studies, Gao and his team focused on Paneth cells, the main producers of lysozyme, which are typically found in the small intestine and rarely observed in the large intestine or healthy colon. In cases of patients with inflammatory bowel disease, which affects 1.6 million people in the US, Paneth cells are often seen in the colon and rectum.

"The frequent appearance of Paneth cells in the inflamed tissues of patients colons is highly unusual and poorly understood," Gao said.

In the Rutgers-Newark study, scientists discovered that lysozyme secreted by Paneth cells located in colon results in suppressing the growth of certain bacterial species and results in an imbalance in the gut microbiome which leads to intestinal inflammation.

In healthy individuals that have normal production of gut lysozyme, these bacteria flourish enabling an individual immune response that prevents colitis.

"This delicate balance is achieved and maintained by a constant interaction between our body and the commensal microorganisms that play a significant role in digestion, metabolism, and the immune system," Gao said.

Nearly three-quarters of older adults with dementia have filled prescriptions for medicines that act on their brain and nervous system, but aren't designed for dementia, a new study shows.

That's despite the special risks that such drugs carry for older adults -- and the lack of evidence that they actually ease the dementia-related behavior problems that often prompt a doctor's prescription in patients with Alzheimer's disease and related disorders. In fact, some of the drugs have been linked to worse cognitive symptoms in old adults.

The study looks at several classes of psychoactive drugs, including ones that the federal government has actively encouraged nursing homes to limit using in residents with dementia. The new study suggests a need to reduce prescribing to people living at home with dementia, too.

In all, 73.5% of the study's community-based population filled at least one prescription for an antidepressant, opioid painkiller, epilepsy drug, anxiety medication or antipsychotic drug in a one-year period, according to Medicare prescription records.

The percentages generally were even higher among women, non-Hispanic white patients, people in their late 60s and early 70s, and people with low incomes.

The study is published in the journal JAMA and based on data from 737,839 people with dementia, and is the first large-scale study of prescription-filling patterns for psychoactive medications outside of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.

Nearly half of those in the study received an antidepressant, which might be prescribed to try to counteract the withdrawal and apathy often seen in dementia, says lead author Donovan Maust, M.D., M.S., a geriatric psychiatrist at the University of Michigan and VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System. Unfortunately, antidepressants don't treat this aspect of dementia, he says.

Even so, the study shows antidepressant prescribing at nearly triple the rate for older adults overall.

Meanwhile, for each of the other drug types studied, nearly a quarter of the adults with dementia filled at least one prescription.

"As a nation we have a goal of keeping dementia patients living in the community as much as possible. But the use of these medications appears to be as high for them as it is for those who are in nursing homes," says Maust, who specializes in helping patients with dementia-related behavioral issues at Michigan Medicine, U-M's academic medical center. "Clinicians and caregivers may need more support to provide non-drug based approaches to prevent or address the symptoms that these medications are probably being prescribed for."

Known risks

None of the drug classes studied has received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for use in dementia, and Maust says that evidence for their off-label use is slim.

But all of the drugs are associated with special risks to people in their 60s and older, including falls or dependence that could lead to withdrawal. Most are included on the list known as the Beers criteria, which identifies medications with extra risks for all older adults, not just those with dementia.

While there is limited evidence that antidepressants help people with dementia, Maust notes that someone who had depression before they developed dementia might benefit from staying on a drug that worked for them in the past.

And while there is little evidence of benefit, all these medications have side effects. For example, some people starting a new antidepressant can experience nausea or feel a little "jittery." Unfortunately, a person with dementia might have difficulty articulating such side effects to the loved one who takes care of them. Instead, they may appear more agitated - leading to another prescription medication to calm them.

While the current study doesn't look at polypharmacy - the use of multiple psychoactive drugs by the same patient - Maust is exploring this issue further in the Medicare data.

The long haul

Maust notes that, of the 29% who received opioids, they most often filled just one or two short-term prescriptions, which may indicate treatment of an injury or acute pain.

But those receiving other drugs tended to fill multiple prescriptions in the year that Maust and his colleagues studied. This included epilepsy drugs that are sometimes prescribed as substitutes for antipsychotic drugs, or to treat chronic pain.

Taking these drugs for months on end is especially risky, says Maust. "A brain that has dementia is doing its best to function as well as it can," he explains. "If we add a psychotropic medication into the mix it may not be a helpful thing - and it comes with risks."

One bright spot in the data, Maust says, is that only one in five of the dementia patients studied had filled a prescription for an antipsychotic medicine such as Abilify, Seroquel or Risperdal. Because of the safety risks associated with antipsychotics, they have received a lot of regulatory attention and professional guidelines such as the "Choosing Wisely" for physicians urge caution.

On the other hand, this class of drugs has more evidence than the others that it actually helps some patients with behavioral problems such as aggression. "So it is worrisome that all the other classes -- which have less evidence of benefit -- are all prescribed more widely," says Maust.

Better education needed

In addition to helping caregivers and clinicians understand both the lack of evidence and the elevated risks that come with psychoactive medications, and to learn the non-drug caregiving strategies they can use to reduce behavioral issues in the person they're caring for, Maust notes they may just need better education about the disease itself.

Accessing support services through local, state and federal agencies, including Area Agency on Aging programs, and nonprofits such as the Alzheimer's Association and AARP, could help caregivers too, he says.

"Apathy and withdrawal, and a tendency to get agitated, are common symptoms of dementia," he says. "And as much as health care providers want to help these patients and their family caregivers, these medications are just not helpful enough to justify this amount of prescribing."

What The Study Did: Researchers looked at the association between race and death among patients hospitalized with COVID-19 at 92 hospitals in 12 states.

Authors: Baligh R. Yehia, M.D., M.P.P., of Ascension Health in St. Louis, is the corresponding author.

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

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.18039)

Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

What The Study Did: The readability of information about COVID-19 was evaluated on websites of public health agencies and governments of 15 countries.

Authors: Joseph P. Dexter, Ph.D., of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, is the corresponding author.

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

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.18033)

Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

What The Study Did: This case series describes SARS-CoV-2 transmission on an international commercial airline flight and among a tourist group.

Authors: Sandra Ciesek, M.D., of Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany, is the corresponding author.

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

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.18044)

Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

Maunakea, Hawaii - How complete is our census of the Sun's closest neighbors? Astronomers and a team of data-sleuthing volunteers participating in Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, a citizen science project, have discovered roughly 100 cool worlds near the Sun - objects more massive than planets but lighter than stars, known as brown dwarfs.

With the help of W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea in Hawaii, the research team found several of these newly discovered worlds are among the very coolest known, with a few approaching the temperature of Earth -- cool enough to harbor water clouds.

The study will be published in the August 20, 2020 issue of the Astrophysical Journal and is available in preprint format on arXiv.org.

Discovering and characterizing astronomical objects near the Sun is fundamental to our understanding of our place in, and the history of, the universe. Yet astronomers are still unearthing new residents of the solar neighborhood. The new Backyard Worlds discovery bridges a previously empty gap in the range of low-temperature brown dwarfs, identifying a long-sought missing link within the brown dwarf population.

"These cool worlds offer the opportunity for new insights into the formation and atmospheres of planets beyond the solar system," said lead author Aaron Meisner from the National Science Foundation's NOIRLab. "This collection of cool brown dwarfs also allows us to accurately estimate the number of free-floating worlds roaming interstellar space near the Sun.

To identify several of the faintest and coolest of the newly discovered brown dwarfs, UC San Diego's Professor of Physics Adam Burgasser and researchers from the Cool Star Lab used Keck Observatory's sensitive Near-Infrared Echellette Spectrometer, or NIRES, instrument.

"We used the NIRES spectra to measure the temperature and gases present in their atmospheres. Each spectrum is essentially a fingerprint that allows us to distinguish a cool brown dwarf from other kinds of stars," said Burgasser, a co-author of the study.

Follow-up observations using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, Mont Megantic Observatory, and Las Campanas Observatory also contributed to the brown dwarf temperature estimates.

Brown dwarfs lie somewhere between the most massive planets and the smallest stars. Lacking the mass needed to sustain nuclear reactions in their core, brown dwarfs are sometimes referred to as "failed stars." Their low mass, low temperature, and lack of internal nuclear reactions make them extremely faint -- and therefore extremely difficult to detect. Because of this, when searching for the very coolest brown dwarfs, astronomers can only hope to detect such objects relatively close to the Sun.

To help find our Sun's coldest, nearest neighbors, astronomers with the Backyard Worlds project turned to a worldwide network of more than 100,000 citizen scientists. These volunteers diligently inspect trillions of pixels of telescope images to identify the subtle movements of nearby brown dwarfs and planets. Despite the advances of machine learning and supercomputers, there's still no substitute for the human eye when it comes to finding faint, moving objects.

Backyard Worlds volunteers have already discovered more than 1,500 stars and brown dwarfs near the Sun; this new discovery represents about 100 of the coldest in that sample. Meisner says this is a record for any citizen science program, and 20 of the citizen scientists are listed as co-authors of the study.

The availability of decades of astronomical catalogs through NOIRLab's Astro Data Lab helped make the discoveries possible.

"The technical burden of downloading billion-object astronomical catalogs is typically insurmountable for individual investigators - including most professional astronomers," said Meisner. "Thankfully, the Astro Data Lab's open and accessible web portal allowed Backyard Worlds citizen scientists to easily query massive catalogs for brown dwarf candidates."

Data sets from NASA's WISE satellite as well as archival observations from telescopes at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory and Kitt Peak National Observatory were also key to these brown dwarf discoveries.

"It's exciting these could be spotted first by a citizen scientist," said Meisner. "The Backyard Worlds discoveries show that members of the public can play an important role in reshaping our scientific understanding of our solar neighborhood."

HANOVER, N.H. - August 18, 2020 - Information about COVID-19 offered by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the White House, and state health departments failed to meet recommendations for communicating with the public, according to a Dartmouth study.

The review of written web content during the onset of COVID-19 demonstrates that official information about the virus might have been too complex for a general audience. On average, government sources communicated about three grades higher than the reading level recommended by existing guidelines for clear communication.

The research, which also analyzed international health web pages, appears as a research letter in JAMA Network Open, a medical journal published by the American Medical Association.

"How public health information is presented can influence understanding of medical recommendations," said Joseph Dexter, a fellow at Dartmouth's Neukom Institute for Computational Science and senior author on the study. "During a pandemic it is vital that potentially lifesaving guidance be accessible to all audiences."

The U.S. Plain Writing Act of 2010 requires that "federal agencies use clear government communication that the public can understand and use." The CDC, the American Medical Association and the National Institutes of Health all recommend that medical information for the public should be written at no higher than an eighth-grade reading level.

After studying 137 web pages from federal and state sources, the team found that communications about COVID-19 averaged just over an 11th-grade reading level.

According to the study, information shared by the CDC and other U.S. sources during the onset of COVID-19 exceeded recommendations on the number of words in a sentence, word size, and the use of difficult terms related to public health.

Even though states are not required to follow the federal regulations, they might still benefit from complying with the guidelines. All 50 U.S. states provided information above the eighth-grade level. Nine of the 10 states with the highest illiteracy rates had websites written above a 10th-grade level.

Previous research has found that only 12 percent of American adults exhibit proficient health literacy.

"The differences between eighth-grade and 11th-grade reading levels are crucial. Text written at a higher grade level can place greater demands on the reader and cause people to miss key information," said Dexter.

According to the study, exceeding readability standards may have a greater effect on vulnerable communities with lower health literacy, potentially worsening the impacts of the pandemic.

"Information about COVID-19 can be complex, contradictory, and sometimes false. It is important that members of the public be able to use public health recommendations from trustworthy sources and not have to turn to less reliable outlets," said Dexter.

To assess the readability of information related to COVID-19, the research team analyzed web sites during the critical beginning stages of the pandemic in early April. Pages consulted were meant for general audiences and included lists of frequently asked questions and fact sheets.

Beyond the U.S., the study reviewed 18 international websites, including three public health agencies and 15 official government sites.

Almost all of the international pages scored above the eighth-grade level by five different assessments. All of the pages, including those from the World Health Organization, exceeded the U.S. national eighth-grade guideline by at least one measure.

"WHO coordinates a major effort to redirect anyone searching for information about COVID-19 to reliable sources," said Vishala Mishra, a co-author of the paper and a researcher at Madras Medical College. "Therefore, it becomes especially relevant for governments and health agencies, such as WHO and CDC, to provide more accessible health information that matches the public's health literacy."

Web pages containing COVID-19 information were judged using standard readability formulas that estimate text difficulty based on features such as word and sentence length. The reading level predictions of these formulas were assessed against health literacy guidelines based on federal regulations.

The ease of finding information on the internet is hurting students' long-term retention and resulting in lower grades on exams, according to a Rutgers University-New Brunswick study.

The study, published in the journal Educational Psychology, found that smartphones seem to be the culprit. Students who received higher homework but lower exam scores -- a half to a full letter grade lower on exams -- were more likely to get their homework answers from the internet or another source rather than coming up with the answer themselves.

"When a student does homework by looking up the answers, they usually find the correct answer, resulting in a high score on the assignment," said lead author Arnold Glass, a professor of psychology at Rutgers-New Brunswick's School of Arts and Sciences. "However, when students do that, they rapidly forget both the question and answer. Consequently, they transform homework from what has been, until now, a useful exercise into a meaningless ritual that does not help in preparing for exams."

The research also found that while 14 percent of students scored lower on exams than homework in 2008, that number jumped to 55 percent in 2017 as the use of smartphones for homework has become more common.

Glass says when students read a homework question, they should think about it, generate the answer on their own and commit to that answer.

"If the student does this first and then finds the correct answer online, the student is likely to remember the answer, which will have a significant long-term effect on subsequent exam performance," said Glass, whose goal was to determine when a student knows a particular fact, whether they remember it and can generalize it.

The study included 2,433 Rutgers-New Brunswick students in 11 different lecture courses. Over the 11-year period more than 232 different questions were created.

Working with co-author and graduate student Mengxue Kang, Glass and Kang's study is a part of an ongoing project to use technology to monitor academic performance and to assess the effects of new instructional technologies, like smartphones and the Internet, on how students perform in school.

In the environment, they are often found inside unicellular organisms. A research team led by Matthias Horn at the Centre for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science at the University of Vienna has made use of laboratory experiments to gain a better understanding of how these bacteria adapt to their host cell over time. This is due to changes in the genome and in gene expression. The study has been published in PNAS.

In the laboratory of the Center for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science at the University of Vienna, so-called "Parachlamydia" was observed after a period of 14 months of evolution inside its unicellular host. Parachlamydia is a genus of environmental chlamydiae that is found in water or soil. In contrast to their human-pathogenic relatives, they are not infectious for humans. They live in unicellular organisms and are dependent on nutrients from their hosts. Therefore, over the course of time they have perfected mechanisms to invade host cells and reproduce inside them.

Theoretical predictions confirmed in the laboratory

Parachlamydia serves as a model system to study the adaptation of host-dependent bacteria in the laboratory. The evolutionary experiment carried out for this purpose involved over 500 generations of bacteria, which corresponds to a period of about 15,000 years in human time-frame.

To verify theoretical predictions on the development of infectivity, the bacteria were kept in the laboratory under two different experimental conditions. In one part of the experiment, the bacteria were dependent on frequent infection of new host cells in order to survive. In the other part, they were able to multiply permanently within one and the same host cell. "Our results reveal that if the bacteria are able to remain within one host cell and ensure that they continue to live in the daughter cells of the host when the host cell divides, their infectivity does not change. However, bacteria become increasingly infectious when they have to move from one host cell to another host cell in order to survive." explains Paul Herrera, first author of the study.

Adaptation of the bacteria at the molecular level

The researchers went one step further in their experiments. They examined the genes of the bacteria at the beginning of the evolutionary process and compared them with the genes after 500 generations of evolution. They found that the genes of the two groups of bacteria differed significantly at 1,161 sites.

However, this genetic information alone was not sufficient to explain the differences in infectivity. Only the subsequent analysis of gene expression - i.e. the use of the almost 2,500 genes during infection - revealed that the infectious bacteria, which have to switch between host cells, showed changes in the expression of genes crucial for the infection mechanism and for certain metabolic pathways that are important for survival outside the host cells.

"The transmission pathway plays a crucial role in the development of infectivity in host-dependent bacteria. The observed increase in infectivity is based on a variety of genetic differences and major changes in gene expression. These modifications result in the host cells becoming more easily infected and give the bacteria a better chance to survive outside the host cell," summarises Matthias Horn.

A study from early in the global coronavirus pandemic that evidenced the benefits of using steroids to combat COVID-19 in severely ill patients could have saved lives, according to the University of Huddersfield researchers involved.

Dr Hamid Merchant and Dr Syed Shahzad Hasan assessed the results of using corticosteroid such as dexamethasone on hospitalised COVID-19 patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) on respiratory support. By mid-April they had found that the proportion of COVID-19 patients who died in the steroid group was significantly lower compared to those who did not receive corticosteroids, at 28 per cent compared to 69 per cent. Their research has now been published in the Expert Review of Respiratory Medicine following a lengthy period of scrutiny and peer review.

The Huddersfield academics' work highlights the issues involved in scrutinising scientific evidence, as well as costs involved in research and the UK's preference for evidence-based practice. Oxford University's RECOVERY trial came to similar conclusions as the Huddersfield researchers in mid-June, leading to the UK government's decision that dexamethasone could be made available to patients, a move subsequently taken around the world.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) had, early in the pandemic, recommended that steroids should not be used to combat CoViD-19 due to perceived risk of delayed coronavirus clearance. Despite warnings from WHO, various global bodies acknowledged the mortality benefits of using steroids on COVID-19 patients with ARDS, such as the National Health Commission & State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine (NHC), Surviving Sepsis Campaign (SSC), and the National Institute of Health (NIH).

"What this shows is that providing evidence is not cheap," says Dr Merchant. "It comes at a very high cost; it not only costs time and money but may even cost precious lives. The background of the pandemic highlights this, it's something that we have known for years but unfortunately has been thrown into sharp relief by coronavirus," he adds.

"There is always a dilemma of the risks versus the benefits of evidence-based practice in a medical emergency," says Dr Hasan. "The WHO advice confused a lot of people and many countries stayed away from using steroids due to risks of diminishing immune response."

Dr Merchant adds that, "The benefits of using steroids outweighs the risks. There is a risk that the immune system may go down and there is a possibility of delayed viral clearance from the body, but this is a risk worth taking if it saves lives."

Their work has now been published in the Expert Review of Respiratory Medicine following peer review. The other authors in the study included Toby Capstick, a consultant pharmacist on respiratory medicine at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Syed Tabish Zaidi, Associate Professor in Pharmacy at the University of Leeds, Chia Siang Know, a clinical pharmacist from Malaysia, Faizan Mazhar, a researcher from Italy and Raees Ahmed, a consultant pulmonologist in Texas, USA.

The UK was among countries that steered away from using steroids until confirmed by a randomised controlled trial, but those that did not found using steroids helped to keep death rates from COVID-19 relatively low.

The UK is now using its stockpile of 200,000 doses of dexamethasone.

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. -- Landmines pose a serious threat in conflict areas, yet modern detection systems struggle to discriminate between explosives and clutter. A project funded by the Army developed a new method for landmine identification that will greatly reduce false alarm rates.

Fewer false alarms will significantly reduce the cost of humanitarian landmine clearance operations and provide greater road mobility by avoiding unnecessary route detours. With this new technology, landmines can be detected without digging.

Vadum, Inc., North Carolina State University, the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Army Research Office, an element of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's Army Research Laboratory, collaborated to develop what's known as the Vibration-ENhanced Underground Sensing system, or VENUS.

"New concepts are rare in the area of landmine detection," said Dr. James Harvey, program manager, ARO. "This advance has the potential to be a game changer."

The Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate of the U.S. Army CCDC C5ISR Center supported the research as a part of an Army Small Business Technology Transfer award managed by ARO.

Most conventional landmine detectors are based on detecting the electromagnetic signature of the mine itself, which can easily be confused with other buried metal objects or wet or magnetic soil patches.

With this new technology, published in the proceedings of the 2020 SPIE Defense & Commercial Sensing Conference, the small metal parts inside the landmine are stimulated to vibrate using a pulsed magnetic field.

Most other buried objects don't respond to the magnetic pulse and those that do have very different vibrational characteristics. The vibrations are detected by a unique high dynamic range vibrometer that can distinguish closely-spaced low-frequency vibrations.

"This new capability resulted from combining exciting results from several previous ambitious research projects and is an outstanding example of the transition from university basic research to new military and commercial technology capabilities," said Professor Michael Steer, a NC State research partner. "The mathematical algorithms behind the detection depend on understanding the details of the interaction of magnetic fields, radar pulses, and vibrating components within the landmine as well as with the properties of various soil and clutter objects. Advancing university physical models and analysis continue to support the improvement of the detection algorithms."

The Army awarded the research team an additional two-year Phase II STTR contract to mature its unique technology.

As part of that award, the research team will work to miniature and ruggedize the detection device for reliable outdoor testing at an Army range. The researchers also will collect data from real landmines in a variety of soil conditions and demonstrate the performance of the technology in demanding and stressing field conditions.

"Because conventional metal detectors and ground penetrating radar rely on similar same fields, it should eventually be possible to upgrade conventional systems with VENUS technology to maximize detection capability," said Dr. Josh Wetherington, principal Vadum researcher.

A new study shows how differentiation of a single gene changes behavior in a wild songbird, determining whether the white-throated sparrow displays more, or less, aggression. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published the research, led by neuroscientists at Emory University.

The researchers singled out an estrogen receptor from a complex of more than 1,000 genes known as a "supergene," or genetic material inherited together as a block. The work provides a rare look at how genomic divergence can lead to behavioral divergence in a vertebrate.

"Evolution has tinkered with the DNA sequence of a gene of this songbird, and we demonstrated that those little changes affect both the expression of the gene and the bird's behavior," says Emory graduate student Jennifer Merritt, first author of the paper.

Merritt is a PhD candidate in the lab of Donna Maney, senior author of the paper and an Emory professor of psychology.

"White-throated sparrows are common backyard birds found through most of North America," Merritt says. "What's remarkable about them is that they occur in two different morphs that have not only different plumage, but also different strategies for maximizing reproductive output. Both types of differences are caused by genetic differentiation of only one region of a single chromosome, and we know exactly where it is."

At some point during the evolution of a species, a chromosome can break and flip. This process, called an inversion, isolates the genes that are trapped inside, producing a supergene. In some cases, supergenes have led to distinct morphs within a single species -- individuals with the supergene and those without it.

In the case of the white-throated sparrows, the white-striped morph sports bright yellow, black and white stripes on its crown while the tan-striped morph has more muted, tan and grayish stripes. The white-striped birds, which all possess at least one copy of the rearranged chromosome, tend to be more aggressive and less parental than the tan-striped birds, which do not have the rearranged chromosome.

"Scientists have hypothesized for 100 years that inversions are important for the evolution of some of the complex behaviors that we see in nature," Maney says. "But inversions are challenging to understand because, when they turn into supergenes, all of the genes are inherited together. We already knew a lot about the natural history of the white-throated sparrow, as well as the biological mechanisms underlying its aggression. Using that knowledge, we were able to finally show the evolutionary role of a supergene at the molecular level."

The current paper builds on previous work by the Maney lab, a leader in connecting gene sequence with behavior in free-living animals. In 2014, the lab identified a hormone receptor --estrogen receptor alpha (ER-alpha) -- that appeared connected to the differences in the sparrows' aggression and parenting behaviors in the wild. The white-striped birds express this receptor at much higher levels than the tan-striped birds, and the more the expression, the more aggressive the bird.

"For this paper, we wanted to follow the genetic variation of ER-alpha all the way up to where it's expressed in the brain, and then to behavior, to see if we could trace the behavioral variation to variation in this one gene," Merritt says.

The birds sing to establish a territory. The rate at which they sing gives a measure of their level of aggression, along with the frequency at which they charge, or "attack," animals encroaching on what they consider their territory.

In field studies of white-throated sparrows in their natural habitat, the researchers showed that the more a bird expresses the supergene version of the estrogen receptor, the more vigorously it defends its territory.

The researchers then moved beyond the correlational work by taking an experimental approach. White-throated sparrows in the lab were given a substance to block expression of the ER-alpha gene and their aggression levels were measured. The results showed that when expression of that one gene was blocked, the aggression of the white-striped birds went down so they behaved like the tan-striped ones.

"We believe this is the first demonstration of how a single gene within a supergene drives changes in a social behavior in a wild vertebrate," Merritt says. She gives an analogy for the challenge involved: "Imagine each of the genes within a supergene as tributaries converging into a river, the behavior. And then taking a sample of water from the river and determining which tributary the sample came from."

The Maney lab is continuing to investigate a suite of other neuroendocrine genes captured by the chromosome rearrangement in the white-throated sparrow that are thought to be important players in the regulation of social behavior.