Culture

Many LGBTQ youth continue to experience stigma and discrimination despite Canada's progress in protecting human rights. New research from UBC's school of nursing shows that supportive communities--and a progressive political climate--can help mitigate the effects of stigma on mental health.

The researchers combined data from the BC Adolescent Health Survey with an inventory of different LGBTQ events and youth supportive service in communities across B.C. They found that the greater the LGBTQ youth supports in a community, the less likely sexual minority youth, particularly lesbian and bisexual girls, were to have suicidal thoughts or attempts, or to self-harm, compared to their counterparts in communities with fewer supportive events, groups and services. The team also found that lesbian and bisexual girls in communities where more people voted BC NDP in the 2013 provincial general election were less likely to report suicidal thoughts or self-harm.

In their inventory, the researchers counted LGBTQ-youth drop-ins and LGBTQ-youth friendly health services, as well as positive events like Pride parades, anti-bullying days, and meetings for parents, families and friends of LGBTQ people. Community resources that show support for LGBTQ people more generally, such as rainbow crosswalks, supportive faith communities, and queer-friendly coffee houses, also made the list.

"The impact of stigma and discrimination continues to put the health of LGBTQ youth at risk, but this risk isn't equal everywhere in B.C.," said lead researcher Elizabeth Saewyc, a UBC nursing professor and director of Stigma and Resilience Among Vulnerable Youth Centre (SARAVYC). "Our research found that where lesbian, gay and bisexual youth live--their community environment, and the kind of LGBTQ-inclusive supports that are or aren't there--appears to play a role in their odds of suicidality and self-harm."

Saewyc says research shows that safe and inclusive schools, particularly those with gender and sexuality alliances, or GSAs, contribute to LGBTQ youth well-being, but this is among the first studies in Canada to look at the importance of the wider community at the same time.

"Even after accounting for school environments, our study found community supports and progressive political climates contribute to lesbian and bisexual girls' health. It's an important point for health care professionals and policymakers to consider - that LGBTQ visibility and support throughout communities can make a difference. We also need to recognize that the work is not yet done--we still have a long way to go to protect the health and well-being of all LGBTQ youth," said Saewyc.

Dozens of molecules may tangle up with rogue bundles of tau, a protein that normally gives nerve fibers structure, to cause brain cell damage that contributes to neurodegenerative diseases, a new study shows.

Neuroscientists have previously found that tau can become toxic when extra chemical molecules accumulate with its structure in the brain, causing it to form tangles of protein that destroy surrounding tissue.

Led by researchers from NYU Grossman School of Medicine, the new study analyzed the makeup of such tangles and found 12 proteins that they say have not before been tied to both tau and Alzheimer's disease. They also uncovered several dozen other proteins that appear in the latest stages of the disease as well as in the earliest phases of dementia.

"Our findings expand our understanding of the molecular interactions that drive Alzheimer's and other brain-damaging diseases related to misbehaving tau proteins," says study co-lead author Eleanor Drummond, PhD, a research assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at NYU Langone Health.

"Now that we have better insight into possible 'key players' in neurodegeneration, we may have clearer targets for potential therapies," says co-lead author Geoffrey Pires, a doctoral student in neurology at NYU Langone.

An estimated 5 million Americans are living with Alzheimer's, a progressive disease that affects mostly those over 65 and interferes with memory, language, and decision making. Currently, there are no effective treatments or prevention strategies for Alzheimer's. Experts have long linked it to a buildup of extra phosphate molecules on tau proteins. However, how these tangles damage neurons and what other proteins are involved in the development of Alzheimer's signature bundles have been poorly understood, says Drummond.

The new study, publishing online July 28 in the journal Brain, provides what Drummond and her colleagues say is the largest overview to date of proteins present in these tau tangles.

For the investigation, the research team analyzed donated brain tissue samples from 12 men and women with Alzheimer's disease. After separating the tau knots from the surrounding tissue, the researchers examined the bundles to identify the many proteins tangled within.

According to the findings, the tangles were composed of 542 different proteins in total, some of which are involved in essential processes within cells, such as energy production (vacuolar-ATPase subunit ATP6V0D1), the reading of genetic material (RNA binding protein HNRNPA1), and cell breakdown and digestion (PSMC 1 through 5). These results provide clues to how the tangles lead to neuron death, says Drummond.

"Alzheimer's has been studied for over a century, so it is eye opening that we are still uncovering dozens of proteins that we had no idea are associated with the disease," says study senior author Thomas Wisniewski, MD, the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman Professor in the Department of Neurology at NYU Langone.

Wisniewski, also a professor in the departments of Pathology and Psychiatry at NYU Langone, plans next to investigate the newly identified proteins in tissue samples of people with other tau-linked neurodegenerative diseases, such as Pick's disease and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, as well as other forms of dementia.

A new piece in Family Practice, published by Oxford University Press, indicates that tracking symptoms affiliated with the novel coronavirus through an app may not be a good predictor of the spread of the disease.

Over the course of 2020, as the novel coronavirus has spread across the globe causing extensive illness and economic havoc to communities everywhere, health care providers and the general public have been eager to find a way to identify the illness. In the absence of readily available tests, scientists have worked to identify clues to detect those who might have the illness as a way to combat the spread of the virus.

A recent study, "Real-time tracking of self-reported symptoms to predict potential COVID-19," published in Nature Medicine, suggested that a prediction score combining loss of smell and taste, fatigue, cough, and loss of appetite - collected through an app - was able to prospectively identify people at risk of COVID-19.

Researchers here compared the main features of the population involved in the Nature Medicine study, and the performance of their score, with data from a cross-sectional study conducted between March 24th and April 29th 2020, and applied the Nature Medicine model to these data.

Applying the probability threshold in the Nature Medicine study to these data indicated that 41% of positive tests were false positives, while 17% of negative tests were false negatives.

In the Family Practice piece, general practitioners referred most patients because they were complaining of COVID-like symptoms. It is likely that this population was symptomatic due to the triage performed by general practitioners prior to testing. Indeed, nearly half the patients in the sample reported fever (45.4%), reflecting the common reason for doctors to refer patients to testing at the time these data were collected.

Fever was registered in the app in the Nature Medicine study by only one-third of patients.

In conclusion, while real-time symptom collection through an app seems to be an attractive method to screen for potential infections, and the Nature Medicine study confirms the crucial value of specific symptoms such as loss of smell and taste, the score proposed in the study does not appear to perform well in a primary care population.

"These results confirm the crucial role of laboratory testing in COVID-19 and the need to support research on COVID-19 in primary care populations," said the letter's lead author, Benoit Tudrej.

Media coverage of the March 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings contributed to an increase in public support for gun control, a study by researchers at the University of Otago, Wellington has found.

The researchers studied print media coverage for the three months following the attacks, in which 51 people were killed while gathering to worship at two mosques in Christchurch. The attacks were livestreamed to Facebook by the shooter.

Dr Susanna Every-Palmer, the head of the Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Otago, Wellington says one of the most notable features of media coverage was the refusal by most media outlets to name the shooter.

Of the 749 reports that focused on the mosque shootings, only 53 (7.1 per cent) mentioned his name, and only twice did it appear in the headlines.

She says this was likely influenced by the strong message delivered by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern four days after the attack, in which she vowed never to speak the gunman's name and asked others to follow her lead.

Dr Every-Palmer says the media's decision to leave the perpetrator nameless and faceless meant New Zealanders were far more likely to support changes in government policy, rather than blaming the event on the actions of an individual.

"The New Zealand media's focus on the ease with which someone could legally obtain dangerous weapons and the environment in which terrorism can grow, rather than on the shooter himself, is important.

"There is also evidence that not naming the shooter may reduce the risk of copycat events," she says.

The New Zealand media's decision not to sensationalise the perpetrator and his views differed markedly from the approach to previous mass shootings with 85 per cent of print media articles naming the perpetrators of the mass shootings in Norway in 2011 and in Las Vegas in 2017 in the six months following the attacks.

The researchers analysed print-based media reports from major New Zealand newspapers covering the mass shooting between 15 March and 15 June, 2019. They identified 958 reports. Of these, 749 had the mosque shootings as a central focus.

Dr Every-Palmer says there were more articles on the mosque shooting than any other event in 2019, with the story dominating the headlines for three months.

"Several factors, including the scale of the Christchurch attacks - the worst in New Zealand's history - the media focus on the fact that the weapons had been legally obtained, and the fear of further violence all meant there was strong support for changes to gun laws, and a sense of urgency about implementing them."

Within a week of the mass shootings, the Government had announced a ban on military style semi-automatic weapons. The following month, legislation to restrict semi-automatic firearms and magazines with more than 10 rounds passed in Parliament with near unanimous support. The second tranche of gun control reforms, which includes a register for firearms, was passed by Parliament in June this year.

Dr Every-Palmer says the Government's rapid action on the first tranche of gun control measures coincided with the window of maximum support for legislative change.

"Opinion polls in the United States reveal peaks in public support for gun control that appeared to coincide with mass shootings such as that at Columbine High School in the United States in 1999, although such peaks quickly dissipated," she notes.

Dr Every-Palmer says bipartisan support for gun control in New Zealand was also likely generated by the shootings which acted as a 'focusing event'.

"This could reflect New Zealanders holding broadly similar attitudes towards gun ownership in a way that has not been observed in other countries such as the United States."

An Otago economist argues New Zealand should expand its trade agreements in the wake of COVID-19, as his new research shows the country benefited from the NZ-China free trade agreement.

University of Otago Economics Lecturer Dr Murat Ungor and his former Masters student, Sam Verevis collaborated on the paper What has New Zealand gained from the FTA with China: Two counterfactual analyses, which has just been published in the Scottish Journal of Political Economy.

It is one of the first systematic studies to analyse the effects of the historic 2008 NZ-China FTA on the economic performance of NZ, and found evidence it has contributed strongly to NZ's export growth.

Its release comes as NZ renegotiates and diversifies its trade agreements to maintain economic security as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.

Dr Ungor says China is still New Zealand's most important trade partner, and its emergence into the world market has caused unforeseen shifts in world trading patterns.

It has become NZ's top commodity export destination, with exports from NZ to China increasing from around US$90 million in 1979 to more than US$11 billion in 2019.

His co-authored paper with Mr Verevis sought to answer whether NZ's exports to China increased significantly due to the 2008 FTA, and how the agreement has affected NZ's per capita income.

"We find NZ exports to China were 200 per cent higher in 2014 than what they would have been, had the FTA never been signed," he says.

Food and live animal exports to China in 2014 were more than 180 per cent higher than the counterfactual model.

However, Dr Ungor says while NZ made substantial export gains, the research did not find a significant or robust impact on NZ's GDP per capita.

Globally, trade-exposed businesses have been among the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, and NZ has been very active to strengthen its economic ties.

China's economy was already showing signs of slowing down in 2019, and while it's plausible to expect it to continue to be NZ's major trading partner, there's no reason NZ can't diversify its trade agreements, Dr Ungor says.

"There is no reason to put all of your eggs in the same basket.

"Diversifying export partners and export goods, improving the current agreements and developing new strategic ties are very important."

Rather than NZ reducing its economic transactions with China, it should expand the size of current trade agreements or sign new bilateral and multilateral agreements, he says.

He notes a key item on the agenda at a video meeting of trade ministers from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) later this month will be the implementation of inclusive policy measures to ensure a fast-track regional recovery from COVID-19.

"The economic consequences of the negotiations and renegotiations of NZ's FTAs in the age of COVID-19 is another direction for future research," he says.

Dr Ungor suggests what could also be useful for policymakers is research on the spill over effect from a downturn in an economy of a large trading partner like China, on a smaller economy like NZ.

"It would be extremely interesting to examine how a small open economy is affected by trade with such a large open economy in terms of productivity, reallocation of capital, and labour," he says.

Mr Verevis and Dr Ungor's study used a synthetic control method commonly used in economics, political science and international relations.

As it would be impossible to know what would actually have happened to the NZ economy if it had not signed the China FTA, a 'synthetic' counterfactual model of an alternate reality had to be created, Dr Ungor says.

"We used a combination of 24 OECD countries to construct a 'synthetic' control NZ, which resembles relevant economic characteristics of the NZ economy before signing the FTA with China.

"This was our benchmark control group."

Countries used in the model had not signed FTAs with China.

As the Bushfire Royal Commission investigates the deadly "Black Summer" and how it could have been prevented, research from the Climate the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes (CLEX) and Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales shows how climate change may alter prescribed burning in the future across Australia.

Unexpectedly, it is not all bad news, but as the coming century progresses there are definitely changes ahead for our firefighters in Australia when it comes to preparing for a fire season, especially along the east coast of Australia.

Most prescribed burning along this densely populated coastal region takes place in March, April and May, when conditions are safest for hazard reduction efforts. In the future as climate change takes hold and conditions change, climate models show that the burning windows for these months decline over many regions. However, at the same time new burning windows open up from June to August and even into the early parts of September.

"Our research shows that, considering the whole year, the number of prescribed burning days along the east coast of Australia will remain the same and may even increase in some cases but the timing of the burning windows shifts," said lead author Dr Giovanni Di Virgilio from the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales.

"This is because the multiple conditions that make for a good day for prescribed burning - like mild and still days - shift to later in winter. It highlights the vagaries of climate change."

To get their results the researchers looked at five variables - maximum temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, fuel moisture, and the McArthur forest fire danger index. Assuming emissions continue to rise at their current pace, they modelled how these would combine at a regional level to create prescribed burning windows in the period 2060-2079. They then compared these results to observations from 1990-2009 to find out how they differed.

Changes to these burning windows occurred over many parts of Australia but it was not uniform across space and time. Much of the Australian east coast and South Australia saw seasonal shifts in burning windows amounting to around a 50% reduction of burning windows in March to May but an increase from June to October.

Meanwhile much of Victoria and in particular the southern regions saw an increase in burning windows during April to May and in some parts of the State through September and October as well.

Only the east Queensland coast saw a general overall reduction in prescribed burn days from April through to October.

While this is mostly good news for those involved in the bushfire mitigation process, a complicating factor arising from previous CLEX research is that the conditions which create suitable prescribed burning windows often correspond with conditions that form inversion layers.

"Our past research showed climate change makes inversion layers in the winter months even more common and these can trap the smoke and fine particulate matter emitted from fires close to the ground. This has adverse impacts on many groups, such as asthmatics and those affected by high concentrations of air pollution,' said co-author from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes Prof Jason Evans.

"It is clear that climate change will influence future hazard reduction burning activities, shifting them to new times of the year. But it is fortunate that for the next century at least, the available days where we can perform these important activities before a fire season will, for the most part, remain similar or even increase."

A research team from Japan has developed a single-camera machine vision algorithm, making it possible for lightweight hovering indoor robots to guide themselves by identifying and interpreting reference points on a tiled floor. The technology opens the door to a new breed of functional, low-cost drones with potentially wide-ranging uses.

The team, led by Chinthaka Premachandra, an Associate Professor in the Department of Electronic Engineering at Shibaura Institute of Technology, published its findings in IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica, a joint publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Chinese Association of Automation (CAA).

Since GPS signals are too weak to penetrate most structures, indoor drones must rely on environmental queues, which are typically visual. A drone designed for indoor use is likely to be smaller and lighter than an outdoor drone, according to Premachandra. "We considered different hardware options, including laser rangefinders," he said. "But rangefinders are too heavy, and infrared and ultrasonic sensors suffer from low precision. So that led us to using a camera as the robot's visual sensor. If you think of the camera in your cell phone, that gives you an idea of just how small and light they can be."

Premachandra's research team aimed to design the guidance algorithm to be as simple as possible, allowing for a small, inexpensive microprocessor. The team used the Raspberry pi3, an open-source computing platform that weighs approximately 45 grams.

Their study prototype had a single downward facing camera with intentionally low resolution - only 80 by 80 pixels. "Our robot only needed to distinguish its direction of motion and identify corners. From there, our algorithm allows it to extrapolate its position in the room, helping it avoid contacting the walls," Premachandra said.

The team's program worked by taking each 80x80 image through a series of simple processing steps ending in a black and white grid, making it easier to quickly identify motion along the X and Y planes.

The guidance method is limited because it relies on a room with a tile floor and predictable patterns. Premachandra said next steps in research into lightweight, autonomous-hovering, indoor robots might include adapting the technology for infrared cameras so they could function in the dark, as well as adding a second camera so the robot could visually determine both its X,Y position and its altitude in the room.

"There are many potential applications," Premachandra said. "Hovering indoor robots may be useful in warehouses, distribution centers, and industrial applications to remotely monitor safety."

Professor Kimoon Kim's research group at POSTECH has developed a highly pure and efficient technique for purifying antiviral and anti-cancer protein therapeutics using molecular affinity interaction.

With the COVID-19 showing no signs of slowing down around the world, the development of a vaccine seems to be the sole solution to end the pandemic. However, even if a vaccine is developed, the task of manufacturing well-refined drug molecules, which treat a number of other comorbid conditions, remains elusive. Besides COVID-19, there are growing concerns for developing a source treatment protocol to deal with new infectious diseases that may find their way into our lives.

A joint research team made up of Professor Kimoon Kim (POSTECH University Professor of Department of Chemistry at POSTECH, Director of Center for Self-assembly and Complexity (CSC) and of Institute for Basic Science (IBS)) and Dr. Kyeng Min Park (Research fellow and Group leader at CSC and IBS) have together developed a source technology using the affinity interaction of cucurbiturils to purify recombinant therapeutic proteins used as antiviral drugs or as anti-cancer agents with high efficiency and high purity. The research findings were published online in Nature Biomedical Engineering (DOI: 10.1038/s41551-020-0589-7) on July 20.

Recombinant DNA technology uses biotechnological techniques to insert genes from one organism into another and activate them to change its genetic trait. Using this method, a vaccine can be developed to exterminate pathogenic microorganisms or weaken their toxicity by expressing all or part of the proteins. For the mass-production of the hormones, antibodies or vaccines made from this process, the proteins must be purified.

Until now, therapeutic protein purification technology has used protein-based affinity columns. However, they face financial and technological difficulties as the materials are costly, their storage or reuse is not efficient and their suitability and efficiency depends on the properties of each therapeutic protein.

The researchers succeeded in purifying various types of therapeutic proteins expressed in cells by harnessing the molecular affinity interaction using a synthetic host molecule cucurbit[7]uril (or CB[7] in short), which was first discovered by the same research group. The molecular affinity principle, a key element in the development of the purification technique, is dependent on the high-affinity and controllable host-guest interaction between CB[7] and guests such as adamantane.

The new purification technology has succeeded in purifying a monoclonal antibody drug, Herceptin (breast cancer treatment), as well as much smaller Interferon alpha (leukemia treatment) with high efficiency and high purity.

In particular, by applying small and stable synthetic molecules, the team succeeded in securing the manufacturability, sterilization, and recyclability of purified materials in a stable manner as well as increasing the purity and productivity of purified protein therapeutics. In addition, introducing adamantine (or AdA in short) to therapeutic proteins through genetic regulation and enzyme treatment can purify them regardless of their size or type.

This technique can be applied to most recombinant therapeutic proteins, including antibodies or fusion proteins that effectively prevent or treat fatal diseases such as viral infections or cancer, and is highly efficient and reusable. Furthermore, it is applicable to a wide variety of therapeutic proteins used in the development of vaccines or treatments which will speed up their production.

The research was conducted with the support from the Institute of Basic Science.

Depression in mothers during and after pregnancy increased the odds of depression in offspring during adolescence and adulthood by 70%, according to a new study by researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).

The systematic review was recently published in JAMA Network Open. It is the first study to examine the effects of maternal depression on children age 12 and older.

The authors note that 10-20% of mothers experience perinatal depression, which refers to the time during pregnancy (antenatal) or within the first year after birth (postnatal). Perinatal depression has been associated with reduced growth rates, malnutrition, and an increased risk of childhood health problems and obesity.

"There are a lot of studies that look at how perinatal depression affects a child's growth or emotional well-being, but we wanted to look at how it affects offspring later in life," said Vaishali Tirumalaraju, MBBS, a resident with the Louis A. Faillace, MD, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth and one of the study's first authors.

Researchers examined all published studies on the topic, zeroing in on six major cohorts following long-term symptoms in more than 15,000 children age 12 or older.

"We found that the offspring of mothers who had perinatal depression, especially antenatal depression, had a greater chance of having depression when they grow up," said Sudhakar Selvaraj, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of psychiatry with McGovern Medical School, the director of the Depression Research Program, and the study's senior author. "This is important because it shows perinatal depression not only negatively affects the mother, but also has a lasting negative impact on the child."

This research comes during a time of increased stress and strain on mental health, as the COVID-19 pandemic poses challenges for new and expecting mothers.

"Pregnancies during these times are particularly stressful given the social situation and physical distancing guidelines in place. There are a lot of moms without support who have to isolate, and many are handling extra stressors with limited resources," Tirumalaraju said.

"Stress can cause changes in eating habits, less desire to exercise, and overall less healthy behaviors that can lead to depression," said Selvaraj, a psychiatrist with UT Physicians, the clinical practice of McGovern Medical School. "Due to stigma, depression is hard to track because often mothers don't want to report that they are sad or having trouble mentally. Our study shows the potential long-term impact of depression in offspring and therefore the need for proper screening so that moms who could benefit from counseling and/or medication can be provided the resources they need."

Selvaraj is part of the UTHealth Women's Mental Health Program, which provides access to specialists in psychology and psychiatry in certain UT Physicians Women's Centers, simplifying the process for women to seek help for perinatal depression and other mental health conditions.

Study authors say more research into the factors involved in depression risk transmission and assessments of how to reduce this risk could help develop future strategies to mitigate depressive disorders in pregnancy.

HOUSTON - (July 27, 2020) - Income is inextricably linked to access to education in America and it has been for a century, according to a new study from researchers at Stanford University and Rice University.

"A century of educational inequality in the United States," published July 27 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examines the link between education and income dating back to the early the 20th century. The research draws upon a dozen nationally representative datasets on college enrollment and completion between 1908 and 1995 as well as tax data from more recent years. It is one of the first studies to examine this link over such an extended period of time.

Researchers Michelle Jackson from Stanford and Brian Holzman from Rice's Houston Education Research Consortium, part of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research and School of Social Sciences, found that income and educational inequality moved in lockstep with one another throughout the 20th century. The authors said previous studies of this topic, which haven't examined data going so far back in time, did not reveal such a strong link.

Their paper detailed how inequality in college enrollment and completion rose in the 1930s and 1940s amid rising income inequality; was low for Americans born in the late 1950s and 1960s, when income inequality was low; and rose again for Americans born in the late 1980s, when income inequality peaked. This U-turn indicates the nation is experiencing levels of collegiate inequality not seen for generations, the authors wrote.

"Long story short, the findings reveal that longstanding worries about income inequality and its relationship to college opportunity are warranted," Holzman said.

One notable exception was during the Vietnam War. For young people at risk of serving in the war, collegiate inequality was high while income inequality was low. During this period, inequality in college enrollment and completion was significantly higher among men than women, suggesting a bona fide "Vietnam War effect," according to the paper.

The researchers hope the paper will further demonstrate the systemic nature of the link between income and education and inform future work on increasing educational opportunities, particularly for disadvantaged people.

What The Article Says: The presence of myocardial injury in patients recently recovered from COVID-19 are evaluated in this observational study.

Authors: Eike Nagel, M.D., of University Hospital Frankfurt in 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/jamacardio.2020.3557)

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, conflicts of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

What The Study Did: The presence of SARS-CoV-2 in myocardial tissue from autopsy cases is evaluated in this observational study.

Authors: Dirk Westermann, M.D., of the University Heart and Vascular Centre Hamburg in 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/jamacardio.2020.3551)

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, conflicts of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

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What The Study Did: The characteristics and expected strength of evidence of COVID-19 studies registered on ClinicalTrials.gov are evaluated in this observational study.

Authors: Mintu Turakhia, M.D., M.A.S., of the Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California, is the corresponding author.

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(doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2020.2904)

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The latest round of offshore wind farms to be built in the UK could reduce household energy bills by producing electricity very cheaply.

Renewable energy projects, including onshore and offshore wind and solar farms, have so far been subsidised by government support schemes. This has led to some to complain that clean energy is pushing up bills.

However, the most recently approved offshore wind projects will most likely operate with 'negative subsidies' - paying money back to the government. The money will go towards reducing household energy bills as the offshore wind farms start producing power in the mid-2020s.

This is the conclusion of an analysis by an international team led by Imperial College London researchers published today in Nature Energy.

Lead researcher Dr Malte Jansen, from the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial, said: "Offshore wind power will soon be so cheap to produce that it will undercut fossil-fuelled power stations and may be the cheapest form of energy for the UK. Energy subsidies used to push up energy bills, but within a few years cheap renewable energy will see them brought down for the first time. This is an astonishing development."

Negative subsidies

The analysis for five countries in Europe, including the UK, focused on a series of government auctions for offshore wind farms between February 2015 and September 2019. Companies that want to build wind farms bid in the auctions by stating the price at which they will sell the energy they produce to the government.

These are known as 'contracts for difference' or CfDs. If a company's bid is higher than the wholesale electricity price on the UK market once the wind farm is up and running, then the company will receive a subsidy from the government to top up the price.

However, if the stated price is less than the wholesale price, then the company will pay the government back the difference. This payback is then passed through to consumer's energy bills, reducing the amount that homes and businesses will pay for electricity.

The UK's September 2019 auction made the headlines as winning companies said they could build new offshore wind farms for around £40 per megawatt hour (MWh) of power. This was a new record set by these wind farms with bids 30 percent lower than just two years earlier.

While this was an impressive reduction, researchers could only speculate whether this meant offshore wind had become subsidy free or even subsidy negative, because that depends on how future wholesale electricity prices evolve.

The team analysed likely future electricity price trends and found that contracted price is very likely to be below the UK wholesale price over the lifetime that these wind farms would produce electricity, from the mid-2020s onwards.

The team say that these wind farms are likely to be built and run with these costs, since financing is now accessible at lower costs for such projects, owing to trust in the now mature technology.

A cheap tool for decarbonisation

The researchers analysed similar offshore wind auctions held by governments of five European countries. They found that Germany and the Netherlands have seen some zero-subsidy offshore wind farms winning auctions, but that the UK projects are likely to be the world's first negative-subsidy offshore wind farms.

Dr Iain Staffell, from the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial, said: "The price of offshore wind power has plummeted in only a matter of a decade, surprising many in the field. The UK auctions in September 2019 gave prices that were around one-third lower than those of the last round in 2017, and two-thirds lower than we saw in 2015.

"This amazing progress has been made possible by new technology, economies of scale and efficient supply chains around the North Sea, but also by a decade of concerted policymaking designed to reduce the risk for investing in offshore wind, which has made financing these huge billion-pound projects much cheaper.

"These new wind farms set the stage for the rapid expansion needed to meet the government's target of producing 30 percent of the UK's energy needs from offshore wind by 2030. Offshore wind will be pivotal in helping the UK, and more broadly the world, to reach net-zero carbon emissions with the added bonus of reducing consumers' energy bills."

Mega turbines and hydrogen fuels

One reason the price of offshore wind has fallen so rapidly is technology development, in particular the ability to build larger wind turbines further out at sea. Larger turbines can harness more wind energy and have access to more consistent wind speeds at higher altitudes.

The biggest wind turbines under construction have rotor diameters of 220 metres - twice the diameter of the London Eye. At the same time, wind farms are getting larger; the newest wind farm at Dogger Bank has the same installed capacity as Hinkley Point C and is expected to produce about two-thirds of its annual electricity.

The success of UK offshore windfarms, which are now primarily built in the Dogger Bank region of the North Sea, also means the UK has considerable skills and expertise than can be exported around the world.

The researchers also say this success means even more ambitious projects may now be attempted at offshore wind farms, such as producing hydrogen fuels using the wind power on site, out at sea. Hydrogen fuels could be another key technology in helping decarbonise the UK, by replacing petrol used in transportation and natural gas used for heating homes.

Researchers from Harvard University, the Centro Nacional de Análisis Genómico (CNAG) and the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), describe the first technology able to visualize hundreds to potentially thousands of genomes at the same time under the microscope. The tech images genomes more cheaply, more quickly and increases range of visibility compared to currently available methods. The technique is described in Nature Methods.

Each human cell has two metres of genome condensed down into 10 microns within the cell nucleus. This blueprint of life folds to help genes make physical contact with other genes that may be located quite a distance away along the chromosome. This three-dimensional organisation is crucial for cell function, but its complexity and constant dynamism make it incredibly difficult to visualize. Imaging more than a handful of genes at the same time has been impossible, limiting researchers' ability to characterize how genomes function.

One of the most common ways of studying the genome is by using fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), which uses fluorescent probes to mark the presence or absence of specific DNA sequences on chromosomes. Scientists have made landmark discoveries such as how cells divide thanks to FISH, and still use it this day for medical applications or species identification, amongst other applications.

First developed in the 1980s, FISH is an ageing technology that can only visualise a handful of genes at the same time. Since then, new methods have been created that can image genomes at a high resolution, but map a very limited number of regions or chromosomes at a time.

Today authors of a a new study in Nature Methods describe OligoFISSEQ, a technology using new computational methods that overcomes these limitations. They used it to create three-dimensional maps of 66 genomic targets across six chromosomes in hundreds of cells, showcasing OligoFISSEQ's potential to visualize the entire genome at a molecular resolution out of reach until now.

"Up to this moment, seeing a large number of different genes at the same time under the microscope was impossible," says Marc A. Marti-Renom, co-lead author of the study and ICREA Professor at CNAG-CRG. "We combined existing sequencing technologies in a smart way so that we can see hundreds of genes by sequencing their targets under the microscope. Before OligoFISSEQ, reaching this number of genes at the same time was slow and expensive. It is like upgrading from a dial-up phoneline to fibre-optic internet and paying 40 times less for it."

The researchers also tested OligoFISSEQ by mapping all of the 46 regions along the length of the human X chromosome. The higher resolution of the technology revealed new patterns in the way the genome organizes itself, including that the length of the chromosome's arm is not correlated with its angle. The researchers hypothesise this may be indicative of cell type, cell state or cellular health or age.

"The resolution offered by OligoFISSEQ has huge potential to shed new light on patterns we could not see before", concludes Marti-Renom. "Because of the coverage it provides to study the genome, it is well suited for spotting what may seem like a minor, seemingly inconsequential change in one part of the nucleus that may have a 'butterfly effect' elsewhere. What may have previously have been thought of as random may turn out to be anything but. That is the power of this tool."