Culture

Leesburg, VA, July 30, 2020--An open-access article published in ARRS' American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR) investigating the association between coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and stroke subtypes determined that patients with COVID-19 presenting with acute neurologic symptoms warrant a lower threshold for suspicion of large vessel occlusion (LVO) stroke, thus necessitating prompt workup.

"To our knowledge, this is the first study to describe an association between COVID-19 and large vessel strokes," wrote lead investigator Shingo Kihira of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

This retrospective case-control study included patients for whom a code for stroke was activated during March 16 to April 30, 2020 at a single system of six hospitals across the New York City boroughs of Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn. Demographic data (age, sex, and race or ethnicity), COVID-19 status, stroke-related risk factors, as well as clinical and imaging findings pertaining to stroke were collected from the electronic medical record.

Among the 329 patients (175 [53.2%] men, 154 [46.8%] women; mean age, 66.9 years) in the study sample, 35.3% (116) had acute ischemic stroke confirmed with imaging; 21.6% (71) had LVO stroke; and 14.6% (48) had small vessel occlusion (SVO) stroke.

The most commonly observed LVO [62.0% (44/71)] was middle cerebral artery segment M1-M2 occlusion. Meanwhile, multifocal LVOs were observed in only 9.9% (7/71) of patients with LVO stroke.

With COVID-19 present in 38.3% (126/329) of patients, the 61.7% (203/329) of patients without COVID-19 formed the negative control group. LVO stroke was present in 31.7% of patients with COVID-19, compared with 15.3% of patients without COVID-19 (p = 0.001). SVO stroke was present in 15.9% of patients with COVID-19 and 13.8% of patients without COVID-19 (p = 0.632).

As Kihira et al. explained: "In multivariate analysis controlled for race and ethnicity, presence of COVID-19 had a significant independent association with LVO stroke (odds ratio, 2.4) compared with absence of COVID-19 (p = 0.011)."

After stratification for race and ethnicity, the results from this AJR study indicate that the risk of large vessel stroke among patients with COVID-19 was 2.4 times as high as that among patients without COVID-19.

"Although the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in New York City is declining, a large population of patients continue to present with COVID-19," Kihira and colleagues noted. Clarifying that COVID-19 is associated with LVO stroke--but not with SVO stroke--the authors of this AJR article reiterated the lower threshold of suspicion for large vessel stroke in COVID-19 patients who present with acute neurologic symptoms.

In medicine, men generally earn more than women for similar work, but a new study published July 30 in BMJ finds that the income gap between genders shrinks substantially in practices with more equal gender distributions of staff physicians.

The analysis showed that in nonsurgical specialty practices with at least as many women as men, men earn 12 percent more than women. However, that gap nearly doubles--to 20 percent--for practices with more than 90 percent male physicians on staff.

In absolute terms, this means that in nonsurgical specialty practices with 90 percent male representation, female physicians earn as much as $91,000 less per year than their male peers.

The study's senior author, Anupam Jena, the Ruth L. Newhouse Associate Professor of Health Care Policy in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School collaborated with researchers from the Rand Corporation, the University of California, Berkeley, and Doximity.

The findings offer important evidence supporting the notion that diversity in the workplace may have a positive effect on reducing earnings gaps and other inequities, the researchers said.

"There are many good reasons to have greater diversity in our workplaces, including the idea that if you make a workplace more diverse, some of the pay inequities we see will go away," Jena said. "This is exciting evidence that diversity can improve equity, not just in terms of representation, but in very tangible economic terms."

The researchers analyzed data from a national survey of physician salaries in the United States from 2014-18 that included 18,802 physicians from 9,848 group practices. They compared earnings across practices with different proportions of male and female physicians, adjusting for physician specialty, years of experience, hours worked, measures of clinical workload, practice type and geography.

Research into workplace diversity and income equity has been scant at best, the study authors said, in part because it is difficult to combine information about an individual's income and demographic information about their workplace. This survey assigned each doctor a unique practitioner identifier number, which allowed the researchers to compare information about respondents' individual incomes against demographic information about the practices where they work. Doximity conducted the survey and owns the database containing practice demographic information.

The researchers found that among 11,490 nonsurgical specialists, the absolute adjusted difference in annual income between men and women was $36,604 for practices with less than 50 percent male physicians compared with $91,669 for practices with at least 90 percent male physicians.

They found a similar distribution of incomes among 3,483 surgical specialists, with absolute adjusted gender differences of $46,503 in annual income for practices with less than 50 percent male physicians compared with $149,460 for practices with at least 90 percent male physicians. The relative difference in pay for surgical specialists was 10 percent in the practices with the most women compared to 27 percent in practices with more than 90 percent men.

Incomes were not affected by gender representation among primary care practitioners. Among the 3,829 primary care physicians in the sample, differences in income for men and women did not vary according to the proportion of male physicians in a practice. The researchers said that this was likely because there is less variation in income among primary care physicians. Primary care is among the specialties with the highest proportion of female physicians.

The researchers said that one likely explanation for greater equity in practices with more women was that the experience of working with women might change some of the implicit and explicit biases that many people hold about women in the workplace. They also said that women who were hired by practices with more female physicians might face less difficulty negotiating parameters such as how long they are allowed to spend with each patient, how long it will take to become a partner and other factors that impact earnings over the long term.

"For a woman negotiating the initial terms of her employment with a new practice, there might be a real difference if you're sitting at the table with five men compared to if there are three men and two women," said Christopher Whaley, the study's lead author and policy researcher at the Rand Corporation.

Whaley said that the wage gap would fall by about 20 percent if practices had more equal gender representation.

"Our findings suggest that increasing the gender diversity of specialty practices would do a lot to close the pay gap between men and women in medicine," Whaley said. "Yet another reason to push for greater diversity."

Compounds tested for their potential as antibiotics have demonstrated promising activity against one of the deadliest infectious diseases - tuberculosis (TB).

Researchers from the John Innes Centre evaluated two compounds with antibacterial properties, which had been produced by the company Redx Pharma as antibiotic candidates, particularly against TB.

TB, which is caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is often thought of as a disease of the past. But in recent years it has been increasing due, in part, to rising resistance to treatments and decreasing efficacy of vaccines.

One strategy in the search for new treatments is to find compounds that exploit well-known existing targets for drugs such as the bacterial enzyme DNA gyrase. This member of the DNA topoisomerase family of enzymes is required for bacterial DNA functionality, so compounds that inhibit its activity are much sought after as antibiotic candidates.

Using X-ray crystallography, the team elucidated the molecular details of the action of the compounds against their target.

Surprisingly, a very common mutation in DNA gyrase that causes bacteria to be resistant to a related group of antibiotics, the aminocoumarins, did not lead to resistance to the compounds under scrutiny here.

"We hope that companies and academic groups working to develop new antibiotics will find this study useful. It opens the way for further synthesis and investigation of compounds that interact with this target," says Professor Tony Maxwell one of the authors of the study which appears in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy.

To date, efforts to develop new treatments for TB have been unsuccessful, with current treatments having been used for over 50 years.

World Health Organisation (WHO) figures reveal that each day over 4000 people die from TB and 300,000 people fall ill from the disease. Nearly 500,000 people fell ill with drug-resistant TB in 2018.

Professor Maxwell says: "Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is now well-recognised as one of the biggest problems facing us in the in the 21st Century. If we don't find solutions to it soon, we could be looking at epidemics of bacterial disease going forward. People know about the bubonic plague and other such terrible pestilence through studying history but it's not overstating the case that bacterial diseases of this sort could reemerge if we do not have effective antibiotics. We must find a way of bringing together expertise from the academic and business sector towards decisive action."

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The list of companies that have filed for bankruptcy during the first half of 2020 reads like a "who's who" of major retailers and recognized brands. Consumers may know J.C. Penney, Hertz, Neiman Marcus, J. Crew and Pier 1, but the carnage also includes tech firms previously seen to have much potential.

With the recent rise in bankruptcies, suppliers and partners of these companies are being forced to make a difficult decision: Should they bet on the bankrupt customer or partner to survive by continuing to invest in the relationship? Or should they bet that the bankrupt customer or partner will not survive by cutting off their investments so they can minimize losses and redeploy resources?

New research from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business found that when a company is in bankruptcy, its advertising and research and development investments can cut both ways. They increase the odds of surviving for some bankrupt companies and decrease the odds for others.

"This difference hinges on the influence that the bankrupt company's suppliers have in the bankruptcy process," said Niket Jindal, assistant professor of marketing and the study's author. "Advertising and R&D increase bankruptcy survival when suppliers have high influence, whereas they decrease bankruptcy survival when suppliers have low influence."

His article, "The Impact of Advertising and R&D on Bankruptcy Survival: A Double-Edged Sword," appears in the current issue of the Journal of Marketing.

Jindal studied whether a company's past investments in intangible assets -- specifically investments in advertising and R&D -- can help suppliers and partners make a decision on whether to bet on the bankrupt company. He analyzed 1,672 bankruptcy cases filed in U.S. bankruptcy courts from 1996 to 2019 and found that managers could substantially improve their odds of correctly predicting whether a bankrupt customer or partner will survive by considering the company's past advertising and R&D investments, in addition to the usual financial predictors.

He found that by considering a bankrupt company's advertising and R&D, managers can increase the accuracy of predicting whether that company will survive by 11 percent.

Specifically, the results show that a bankrupt company's advertising increases the odds of its survival when at least 38 percent of the company's debt has been borrowed from suppliers. For R&D, the cutoff point is when at least 21 percent of the company's debt has been borrowed from suppliers.

"A losing bet can be catastrophic for a supplier or partner," Jindal said. "If the company bets on a bankrupt customer or partner to survive and they do not survive, investments in the relationship will be lost, and the company will have fewer resources and time to try to attract other customers and partners to make up for the lost sales. On the other hand, if the company bets against the bankrupt customer or partner and they do survive, the relationship will be soured and will put future sales from them at risk."

Jindal said that suppliers and partners should be careful when including a bankrupt firm's advertising and R&D investments in their decision-making process.

"The key is to look at the portion of the bankrupt company's debt that is due to suppliers versus banks, because this shows the influence that the bankrupt company's suppliers will have, relative to other creditors, in the bankruptcy process," he said.

Suppliers have greater noncontractual revenue and generally do not require collateral, while banks have less noncontractual revenue and generally do require collateral. The impact of advertising and R&D on the value that is received if the bankrupt firm survives versus gets liquidated differs for suppliers versus banks.

Women receiving standard treatment in New York City for ovarian, uterine, and cervical cancers are not at increased risk of being hospitalized for or dying from COVID-19 due to their cancer, a new study shows. The researchers found that neither having cancer nor receiving treatment for it, which can come with its own toxicities, worsened COVID-19 disease outcomes.

Led by researchers at NYU Langone's Perlmutter Cancer Center and NYU Grossman School of Medicine, the study showed that 121 women, ages 51 to 63, who were receiving standard treatments for such malignancies and who contracted the pandemic coronavirus had similar rates of hospitalization and death as those who only had COVID-19.

Publishing in the journal Cancer online July 31, the study showed that 54 percent of the women (66 of 121) required hospitalization and among these, 25 percent (17 of 66) died, for an overall death rate of 14 percent. This is comparable to the results of another study, which showed a 21 percent death rate among all 5,700 hospitalized patients with COVID-19 in the city, who were mostly male (60 percent) and at greater risk of the disease, researchers say.

Having late-stage gynecologic cancer, cancer surgery, or high-dose chemotherapy also did not increase a woman's risk of dying from COVID-19.

Importantly, the work also found that 75 percent of gynecologic cancer patients with COVID-19 had a mild form of the disease and recovered from their infection.

"Our study should be reassuring for women with gynecologic cancers who are worried that having cancer increases their risk of becoming seriously ill if they go to the hospital because of COVID-19," says study lead investigator Olivia Lara, MD, an oncology fellow in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Perlmutter. These patients already contend with increased inflammation and imbalanced immune systems that, in theory, coronavirus infection could make worse.

"Women with gynecologic cancers have the same risk factors for dying from COVID-19 as women without these cancers," says study senior investigator Bhavana Pothuri, MD, MS, a professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Perlmutter.

These shared risk factors, she says, which overall double women's risk of dying from COVID-19, are being African-American or having two or more underlying health conditions, such as hypertension, obesity, and diabetes.

As part of the study, researchers reviewed the medical records of women treated for both COVID-19 and gynecologic cancer at area hospitals between March 1 and April 22, 2020. These included NYU Langone's Perlmutter Cancer Center, NYC Health + Hospitals Bellevue Hospital, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Columbia University Medical Center, SUNY Downstate Medical Center, and the Montefiore Medical System.

Another study finding was that a small number (eight of 121) of participants receiving immunotherapy, drugs that harness the immune system to attack cancer cells, were three times more likely to die than women who were receiving standard radiation, surgery, chemotherapy, or a combination of these therapies. However, Pothuri cautions that the number of women receiving immunotherapy was not large enough to lead to any firm recommendations about clinical care. (or to result in any firm conclusions about clinical care)

Pothuri says the team has plans to analyze patient records for further insights into any factors that might lessen the impact of these underlying risk factors for COVID-19 on women with cancer, including how best to communicate with local community groups.

For now, Pothuri says, women should definitely not put off screening, diagnosis, or treatment of new cancers out of any additional fear they have about the risks from COVID-19. "The basic rules of cancer care have not changed during the pandemic," she says. "Early detection, screening, and care lead to more people surviving what remains a leading cause of death among American women."

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., - July 30, 2020 - The scientists who developed the first 3D multicellular brain organoid with a functional blood brain barrier now report that the model could be a promising platform to screen drugs that could work to control inflammation, which is at the center of many neurological conditions, like ischemic stroke.

Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) scientists first published in 2018 that they had developed the 3D brain organoid - the first engineered tissue equivalent to closely resemble normal human brain anatomy containing all six major cell types found in normal organs including neurons and immune cells. They reported that the organoids promoted the formation of a fully cell-based, natural and functional barrier - the blood brain barrier - that mimics normal human anatomy. The blood brain barrier (BBB) is a semipermeable membrane that separates the circulating blood from the brain, protecting it from foreign substances that could cause injury.

"It is well known that inflammation is at the center of many neurological conditions," said Goodwell Nzou, PhD., a co-author of the study. "Our results here implicate inflammation as one of the causes of blood brain barrier dysfunction. These organoids can help us gain understanding of some of the brain physiological changes that happen as the result of a stroke."

For this study, the 3D brain organoid was used to model the effects of oxygen deprivation and inflammation on blood brain barrier function to better understand what is happening in a human brain during an ischemic stroke. The team evaluated the expression levels of proteins critical in BBB maintenance, basement membrane proteins, tight junction proteins, and BBB transport proteins, finding significant changes that may contribute to BBB dysfunction. The research shows how the BBB becomes leaky and allows blood-born components to easily cross the barrier.

"The work demonstrates how important this model is to further understanding of disease mechanisms at the BBB, the passage of drugs through the barrier, and the effects of drugs once they cross the barrier," said Anthony Atala, MD, senior author and director of WFIRM. "We can also optimize the model for personalized medicine. An organoid containing patient derived cells to identify therapeutic targets that are specific to the individual could be tested with different drugs to determine efficacy which will result in better outcomes for patients."

Winter cover crops benefit soil health and can suppress weeds in subsequent row crops but may also lead to lower yields. Some farmers and agronomists speculate that allelopathic chemicals released by cover crops may be the cause for some of the observed yield reductions, but cause-and-effect relationships are rarely established. We know that allelopathic cover crops inhibit weed seed germination and early growth, but do they also impact row crops?

In an article recently published in Agricultural & Environmental Letters, a publication of the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America and Soil Science Society of America, researchers reviewed literature documenting effects of allelopathic winter cover crops on four row crops. Studies that used known allelochemicals in the lab or measured allelochemicals in the field were included.

Only seven studies met the criteria for inclusion and six of them were lab studies. Corn and wheat germination and root length were sometimes impacted by allelopathic chemicals from cereal rye and other cover crops, but soybean was unaffected. One field study reported reduced cotton performance due to allelopathic cover crops.

We could not establish clear cause-and-effect relationships for row crops grown in the field due to the limited number of studies. However, with the increase in cover crop acreage and constantly evolving management practices, research to identify risk factors for allelopathic impacts and how to avoid them is needed.

Australian researchers have shown how viruses can be used to save lives, developing the potential use of bacteriophages in bandages to treat life-threatening golden staph infections which may not respond to traditional antibiotics.

Targeting multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus ('golden staph') in diabetic foot ulcers, Flinders University microbiology researchers have joined infectious diseases and pharmaceutical partners to show the usefulness of a possible 'phage cocktail' therapy on wound infections.

A phage (or bacteriophage) is a virus capable of infecting a bacterial cell and is capable of being used in a range of medical applications including as a therapy against 'superbugs'.

Bacteriophages (phages, viruses that infect bacteria) represent an alternative or adjunct therapy to antibiotics, with S aureus a common and particularly virulent pathogen often found to be resistant and limited for antimicrobial treatment options.

"Diabetic foot ulcers are very dangerous and when infected can lead to amputation and even death," says Flinders University Associate Professor Peter Speck, who is Secretary of the Australasian Virology Society.

"The next step in our research is to bind phages to a dressing to make a truly antibacterial dressing, with specific activity against golden staph. The technology exists to make such a dressing, with a big advantage being that bound phages remain viable for a year even when stored at room temperature, making this approach ideal for use in hospitals and clinics - even in rural and remote settings."

Co-author on a new paper in BMC Microbiology, Flinders PhD Legesse Garedew Kifelew says the results of the sound treatment in mice were very promising.

"This study demonstrates that phage therapy could be a potential alternative in combating antibiotic-resisant bacterial infections," says Mr Kifelew, who works in infectious disease management at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and has ties to St Paul's Hospital Millennium Medical College, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

"The phages effectively decreased the bacterial load and significantly improved wound healing in in multi-drug resistant S aureus infection - similar or superior to the currently prescribed antibiotic treatment," he says.

With diabetes on the rise, the global burden of diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) is also affecting up to 26.1 million people each year, with these ulcers the cause of almost 90% of limb amputations. The five-year mortality rate following foot amputation due to DFUs has been estimated at up to 74%.

Based on 2015 prevalence data from the International Diabetes Federation, it is estimated that foot ulcers develop in 9.1 million to 26.1 million people with diabetes annually worldwide.

In the US, the annual cost of managing DFU infections is estimated at an additional US$9-13 billion over the cost of diabetes itself. In England, it is estimated that the annual cost of managing DFUs exceeds the total cost of breast, prostate and lung cancers combined.

Whale-watching season is delighting the viewing public along the east Australian coast but while it’s a boon for the tourism industry, for the majestic humpback whale it’s potentially a time of less optimal health.

UNSW Sydney researchers collected and analysed samples of whale blow – similar to mucus from a human nose – and found “significantly less” microbial diversity and richness on the return leg of the whales’ migration, indicating the whales were likely in poorer health than when their journey began.

Microbial diversity accounts for the wide array of microorganisms – the smallest forms of life.

Lead author Dr Catharina Vendl, UNSW Science researcher, said the study, published in Scientific Reports this week, provided the first evidence whales’ airway microbiota was a potential indicator of a whale’s overall health.

East Australian humpback whales complete, on average, an arduous 8000-kilometre round trip between Antarctica and Queensland from May to November each year, fasting for most of their journey.

“The physical strains of the humpback’s migration likely affected the microbial communities in the whales’ airways – so, our findings are key to further developing the analysis of airway microbiota as a non-invasive method for monitoring the immune function and overall health of whales and dolphins,” Dr Vendl said.

“People enjoy whale-watching season, but with it comes reports of whales becoming stranded. Although humpback whale stranding events occur naturally and regularly to injured and young whales, it is crucial to monitor the population health of this iconic species to ensure its long-term survival.

“Humpback whales do not only play an essential role in their marine ecosystem but also represent an important economic resource, because whale watching is a booming industry in many Australian cities and around the world.”

Humpback whales were almost hunted to extinction. The last whaling station in NSW, at Byron Bay, closed in 1962 because so few whales could be found.

Humpback whales are now protected throughout Australia, and in NSW are listed as a vulnerable species under the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016.

Dr Vendl, who has a background in veterinary science, said it was amazing the east and west Australian humpback whale populations had recovered well in the years since whaling stopped.

“So, these whale populations are not endangered, but that doesn't necessarily mean things will stay that way,” she said.

Collecting whale ‘snot’

Dr Vendl said it was important to find a non-invasive method to study whale health, because many whale populations around the world were endangered – yet scientists still knew fairly little about whales’ physiology.

“Many whale species are at or near the top of their food chain – so, a whale’s general health can be a good indicator of the health of their marine ecosystem,” she said.

“Humpback whales mostly live on tiny creatures called krill, but because there is less of this preferred food along the east Australian coast and it’s such a huge effort for them to open their mouths to feed, they rely on energy stored in their blubber.

“Fasting is therefore a major physiological strain during the whales’ migration.”

Dr Vendl collected airway mucus from 20 whales in Hervey Bay, Queensland, during the humpback’s return leg to Antarctica when the whales were several months into their migration in August 2017.

The researchers then analysed and compared the whales’ blow microbiota to samples Macquarie University scientists collected near Sydney in May and June 2017, for a separate study, when the whales were at the start of their migration.

UNSW Science Professor Tracey Rogers pioneered the technique the UNSW researchers used to examine the whales’ airway microbial communities, more than a decade ago.

Dr Vendl said researchers wanted to determine if there was a significant difference between the microbial communities of the whales at the start of and later on in their migration.

“I used two methods to collect the whales’ blow while working from a boat. For one method, I flew a waterproof drone over the whales which carried a petri dish,” she said.

“It was pure luck waiting for the whales to exhale at the same time the drone was within range for droplets from their blow to settle on the petri dish.

“My second technique was a 4.6-metre long telescopic pole with petri dishes attached to the end. In Hervey Bay, the whales are curious and approach boats.

“So, I held the pole out and waited until the whales exhaled and then collected their samples that way.”

Migration pressure link to potential poor health

The study found the whales’ respiratory microbiota was severely depleted in diversity and richness the longer they fasted during their migration.

Dr Vendl said such changes often reflected a compromised state of health in the airways of humans.

“We concluded the physical strains of the migration, likely in addition to the exposure to marine pollutants, compromise the whales’ immune systems and consequently cause a shift in the whales’ airway microbiota.

“Our findings are the first to provide good evidence of a connection between the whales’ airway bacterial communities, their physiology and immune function – something that has been established in humans.”

Dr Vendl said a high level of bacterial variety and richness in respiratory microbiota was a sign of healthy airways in humans.

“I researched literature in human medicine: when you have a respiratory disease in a person, it also means the bacterial communities in their airways have changed and are usually depleted,” she said.

“We had no idea if we would find a similar pattern in whales, but we at least showed the initial evidence for that occurring.”

New potential for non-invasive methods

Dr Vendl said she hoped her research would lead to further study in non-invasive techniques to monitor whale health in populations around the world.

“Our findings showed the first evidence of a link between whales’ respiratory microbiota and their overall health, but more research needs to be done,” she said.

“Analysing whale blow to assess and monitor whale health opens up more possibilities for the use of non-invasive techniques, such as photogrammetry – where you fly a drone to film and measure whales to determine how much blubber they have and things like that.

“Other methods were outside the scope of my PhD, but it’s important for researchers to experiment with and refine new techniques to assess their effectiveness in helping whale conservation.”

Find the study in Scientific Reports: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-69602-x

Journal

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-020-69602-x

A review paper by Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute (BDI), published in the high-impact journal Nature Reviews Microbiology, casts light on organelles, the internal compartments in bacterial cells that house and support functions essential for their survival and growth.

The BDI's Professor Trevor Lithgow and Associate Professor Chris Greening, experts in bacterial cell biology and physiology, were invited to review the available scientific literature worldwide to consolidate the latest knowledge of organelles.

"There was an age-old truism until recently that bacteria were simply a bag of enzymes, the simplest type of cells," Professor Lithgow said. "New developments in nanoscale imaging have shown that internal compartments - organelles - make them very complex," he said.

Cryoelectron microscopy and super-resolution microscopy have allowed scientists to fathom the workings of bacterial organelles, which typically have a diameter 10,000 times smaller than a pinhead. The BDI has been at the forefront in Australia in adopting and developing the use of these technologies, Professor Lithgow said.

"It's been a rewarding experience doing this scholarly review and being able to showcase the broad swathe of work that demonstrates the complexity of bacterial cells," he said.

Organelles enable bacteria to do extraordinary things. They help bacteria photosynthesise in dimly lit environments, break down toxic compounds like rocket fuel or even orientate themselves relative to the Earth's magnetic field by lining up magnetic iron particles. Some bacteria use gas collected within organelles to control buoyancy to let them rise or go deeper in water, allowing optimal access to light and nutrients for growth and division.

Exploring and understanding the intricacies of bacterial cells is not only important for scientific knowledge, but also for biotechnological applications and for addressing global issues of human health.

"Organelles enable many bacteria to perform functions useful for us, from supporting basic ecosystem function to enabling all sorts of biotechnological advances. But a few pathogens use organelles to cause disease," Associate Professor Greening said. "The deadly pathogen that causes tuberculosis, for example, scavenges fatty molecules from our own bodies and stores them as energy reserves in organelles, helping the pathogen to persist for years in our lungs, compromising treatment and making the emergence of drug resistance likely."

Countering drug-resistant infections are key 21st century problems for humans, Professor Lithgow said. "In these times of COVID-19 the death tolls we're seeing for viral infections are terrible, but the projection is that by 2050 at least 22,000 Australians (and 10 million people worldwide) will die every year due to infections caused by drug-resistant bacteria," he said.

Robots working in abattoirs, sky-high vertical farms, more gene-edited foods in our supermarkets and automated farming systems could all help guarantee food supply in the next pandemic.

University of Queensland Professor Robert Henry said the technologies had all been in various stages of planning prior to COVID-19, but food producers would now be moving much faster to prepare for the next pandemic.

"Food processing facilities like meat works have had to close due to a staff member being infected with the coronavirus, and all food processing industries where you have workers in small confined spaces are similarly at risk," Professor Henry said.

Professor Henry, who is the Director of the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI), said roboticised abattoirs and automated harvesting and production facilities would also reduce the risk of transmission of pathogens among workers but also the spread of viruses via the food itself.

"COVID does not seem to be transmissible from an infected human touching food but a future pandemic virus might be transmitted this way, so automating the food supply chain reduces this risk.

"It also minimises reliance on human workers that are not available due to migration restrictions and border closures."

Professor Henry said protected cropping, including vertical farms - or growing food in vertically stacked layers similar to a skyscraper building - would optimise plant growth and enable control over climate variations, chemical inputs and water resources.

"There will have to be policies that drive consumer acceptance of gene edited foods, which some consumers consider as GMOs.

"Advanced technologies need to be adopted globally, in each region, to deliver local food production capability that could provide secure sources of food in future pandemics.

"We will need to design crops to suit automated systems - for example for fruit to grow in places where it can be harvested robotically."

Professor Henry said the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic made it difficult to fully assess the impact on agriculture and food supply.

He said despite growing stocks of foods such as cereals, it was estimated the number of people facing a food crisis will grow from 135 million to 265 million by the end of 2020.

"It may seem to those of us in Western countries that the only impact on food supply has been a rush on pasta and rice in the supermarket and home-baking but the loss of income caused by the pandemic has hit some countries in Africa hard.

'We are in a situation where we have food surpluses while there has been a doubling in the number of people who can't afford to eat - and the situation is likely to get worse."
Professor Henry said increased investment in agricultural research and development would support enhanced food security.

Have you ever wondered why stars twinkle? It's because turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere makes light emitted from the star wobble as it completes its lightyears-long journey to the lenses in our eyes and telescopes.

But now scientists from international research institutions including UNSW Sydney have found the best place on Earth where - with the help of technology - we can view distant stars as they really appear, without the distorting twinkle.

And it happens to be situated due south of Australia's Davis Station in Antarctica, on a plateau 4000 metres above sea-level called Dome A.

In research published today in the journal Nature, scientists showed that the conditions at the plateau lend themselves perfectly to viewing stars from Earth with greatly reduced interference from atmospheric turbulence.

According to UNSW Science's Professor Michael Ashley, who was part of Chinese-led research team of scientists that designed, built and set up a small telescope system at Dome A, the findings represent a fantastic opportunity to obtain better observations of the universe from ground-based telescopes.

"After a decade of indirect evidence and theoretical reasoning, we finally have direct observational proof of the extraordinarily good conditions at Dome A," says Prof Ashley, an astronomer with UNSW's School of Physics.

"Dome A is the highest point in the central plateau region of Antarctica, and the atmosphere is extremely stable here, much more so than anywhere else on Earth. The result is that the twinkling of the stars is greatly reduced, and the star images are much sharper and brighter."

The telescope that was installed at Dome A - the KunLun Differential Image Motion Monitor - was 25cm in aperture and placed on an eight metre platform. The height of the platform was crucial because it raised the telescope above the steep temperature gradients near the ice.

As Prof Ashley explains, turbulent eddies build up when wind moves across a changing topography such as mountains, hills and valleys.

"This causes the atmospheric turbulence which bends the starlight around so by the time it hits the ground, it's all over the place and you get these blurry images."

BOUNDARY LAYERS

But, he says, Dome A in Antarctica is a plateau that is almost dead flat for many hundreds of kilometres in every direction, making its atmosphere very stable. It's also at an altitude of more than 4000 meters - much higher than Mount Kosciuszko.

"There is this very slow wind that blows across the plateau which is so smooth that it doesn't generate much turbulence," Prof Ashley says.

"What little turbulence there is we see restricted to a very low 'boundary layer' - the area between the ice and the rest of the atmosphere.

"We measured the boundary layer thickness at Dome A using a radar technique about a decade ago and it's about 14 meters, on average, but it fluctuates - it goes down to almost nothing, and it goes up to maybe 30 metres."

The team found that by setting up their telescope on an 8-metre platform, it protruded past the boundary layer about a third of the time. Last year between April 11 and August 4 the telescope took photos every minute, and obtained 45,930 images taken when the boundary layer was lower than the 8-metre platform, it reported in Nature.

Prof Ashley says it was very challenging to finally obtain the readings and images that confirmed Dome A to be the premier location on earth to see into the depths of the cosmos.

"It was very difficult because the observations have to be made in mid-winter with no humans present. UNSW played a crucial role in designing and building the infrastructure that was used - the power supply system, computers, satellite communications - which was managed by remote control."

GROUND VS SATELLITE TELESCOPES

But if the atmosphere plays such havoc with our instruments on Earth, wouldn't a satellite - such as the Hubble Telescope, launched back in 1990 - be ideal for such a job?

Prof Ashley says there are a couple of good reasons why a ground telescope set up at Dome A would be the better option. Beyond the obvious savings in dollars, there are also savings in time.

"Satellites are a lot more expensive," Prof Ashley says, "we're talking maybe factors of 10 to 100 times the cost. But another advantage of making Earth-based observations is you can always add the latest technology to your telescope on the ground. Whereas in space, everything is delayed. And you can't easily use a lot of modern integrated circuits because they're not radiation hardened. So you end up with space lagging the technology on the ground by 10 years or more."

Another advantage of using a telescope at Dome A rather than anywhere else on the planet is that smaller and fainter stars are suddenly much more observable thanks to the better resolution.

"Basically this means that for a given size telescope, you're going to get a lot better images at Dome A. So rather than build a big telescope on a non-Antarctic site, you could build a smaller one and get the same performance, so it's cheaper."

POLAR NIGHTS

There is also a strategic advantage in the location of Dome A - which is 900km from the South Pole - over other areas on Earth at more hospitable latitudes. Being so far from the equator, polar nights of 24 hours or more of darkness in mid-winter open up a much wider window to view stars.

"If you were to observe a star in say, Sydney, from when it rises to when it sets, you can only observe it for maybe eight hours a night," Prof Ashley says.

"Whereas in wintertime at Dome A you can observe a star continuously. And for some projects like searching for planets around other stars, the fact that you can observe them continuously means you can find planets around them much more effectively."

Looking ahead, Prof Ashley says he would like to continue the research with UNSW's Chinese partners, and notes that China has an impressive and growing record in Antarctic scientific research. But he wonders whether Australia recognises the great potential that Dome A represents in space research.

"Dome A is a superb site for astronomical observations, and we should make every effort to participate in an international project to put a large telescope there to take advantage of the conditions.

"With Antarctica being so close to Australia, it is a tremendous opportunity," he says.

In a breakthrough new study, scientists and engineers at the University of Minnesota have electrically transformed the abundant and low-cost non-magnetic material iron sulfide, also known as "fool's gold" or pyrite, into a magnetic material.

This is the first time scientists have ever electrically transformed an entirely non-magnetic material into a magnetic one, and it could be the first step in creating valuable new magnetic materials for more energy-efficient computer memory devices.

The research is published in Science Advances, a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

"Most people knowledgeable in magnetism would probably say it was impossible to electrically transform a non-magnetic material into a magnetic one. When we looked a little deeper, however, we saw a potential route, and made it happen," said Chris Leighton, the lead researcher on the study and a University of Minnesota Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science.

Leighton and his colleagues, including Eray Aydil at New York University and Laura Gagliardi (chemistry) at the University of Minnesota, have been studying iron sulfide, or 'fool's gold,' for more than a decade for possible use in solar cells. Sulfur in particular is a highly abundant and low-cost byproduct of petroleum production. Unfortunately, scientists and engineers haven't found a way to make the material efficient enough to realize low-cost, earth-abundant solar cells.

"We really went back to the iron sulfide material to try to figure out the fundamental roadblocks to cheap, non-toxic solar cells," Leighton said. "Meanwhile, my group was also working in the emerging field of magnetoionics where we try to use electrical voltages to control magnetic properties of materials for potential applications in magnetic data storage devices. At some point we realized we should be combining these two research directions, and it paid off."

Leighton said their goal was to manipulate the magnetic properties of materials with a voltage alone, with very little electrical current, which is important to make magnetic devices more energy-efficient. Progress to date had included turning on and off ferromagnetism, the most technologically important form of magnetism, in other types of magnetic materials. Iron sulfide, however, offered the prospect of potentially electrically inducing ferromagnetism in an entirely non-magnetic material.

In the study, the researchers used a technique called electrolyte gating. They took the non-magnetic iron sulfide material and put it in a device in contact with an ionic solution, or electrolyte, comparable to Gatorade. They then applied as little as 1 volt (less voltage than a household battery), moved positively charged molecules to the interface between the electrolyte and the iron sulfide, and induced magnetism. Importantly, they were able to turn off the voltage and return the material to its non-magnetic state, meaning that they can reversibly switch the magnetism on and off.

"We were pretty surprised it worked," Leighton said. "By applying the voltage, we essentially pour electrons into the material. It turns out that if you get high enough concentrations of electrons, the material wants to spontaneously become ferromagnetic, which we were able to understand with theory. This has lots of potential. Having done it with iron sulfide, we guess we can do it with other materials as well."

Leighton said they would never have imagined trying this approach if it wasn't for his team's research studying iron sulfide for solar cells and the work on magnetoionics.

"It was the perfect convergence of two areas of research," he said.

Leighton said the next step is to continue research to replicate the process at higher temperatures, which the team's preliminary data suggest should certainly be possible. They also hope to try the process with other materials and to demonstrate potential for real devices.

Planter performance is a critical component when laying the foundation for a successful crop season. Environmental and soil conditions can significantly impact crop germination and emergence and help or hinder development of an adequate crop stand early in the season. Adjusting specific planter components and settings to match current field conditions can ensure maximized emergence and increase yield in most cases.

The key planter parameters used to maximize crop emergence include uniform and high-stand establishment, consistent seed depth at planting, and accurate seed placement. To identify the best setting for each parameter, Wesley Porter, an Extension Precision Ag and Irrigation Specialist at the University of Georgia, conducted cotton depth and downforce research, in which he tested three downforce settings, three preplant irrigation applications, three seeding depths, and two seed sizes.

Porter found that wetter field conditions and deeper depths reduced emergence on the whole but using a larger seed produced a slight increase in emergence. Additionally, hill-drop planting was found to overcome some inadequate field conditions, and in some cases, plants were able to compensate for the lack of stand establishment. Overall, Porter found that environmental conditions are a critical factor in successful planting and recommends that growers monitor these conditions and adjust planter depth and downforce accordingly.

Porter explains the research in detail in the webcast "Importance of Planter Depth and Downforce in Cotton Production" and offers more advice to cotton growers. This 28-minute presentation is available through the "Focus on Cotton" resource on the Plant Management Network. This resource contains more than 100 webcasts, along with presentations from a number of conferences, on a broad range of aspects of cotton crop management: agronomic practices, diseases, harvest and ginning, insects, irrigation, nematodes, precision agriculture, soil health and crop fertility, and weeds. These webcasts are available to readers open access (without a subscription).

What The Study Did: Mood homeostasis (the ability to stabilize your mood with mood-modifying activities) before and during the COVID-19 lockdown among Dutch students was investigated in this observational study.

Authors: Guy M. Goodwin, M.D., of Warneford Hospital in Oxford, United Kingdom, 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/jamapsychiatry.2020.2389)

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

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JAMA Psychiatry