Culture

Supply chains collapse, companies are facing bankruptcy, and mass unemployment ensues. Covid-19 has triggered a global financial crisis and is forcing states to develop rescue packages on a scale not seen before. In addition, the crisis has called into question the US dollar's hegemony and could redefine the global monetary system. A team of researchers from the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) has developed four scenarios that show how political decisions will shape the post-Corona world.

Scientific scenarios have become an important tool for political decision-makers as they tackle the Covid-19 pandemic. Models of the Corona Crisis developed by researchers, and predicting shocking infection and death rates, have persuaded governments around the world to adopt strict lockdown measures and reduce economic activities to a minimum. The magnitude of this decision is now becoming increasingly apparent. The measures adopted have triggered a global economic and financial crisis that is affecting both industrialized and - even more so - developing nations, jeopardizing efforts to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Governments tackling this crisis face unprecedented challenges. Their task is made all the more difficult by the dearth of economic scenarios and models that could support decision-making in this situation.

In a collaboration between the IASS, Harvard University and Boston University, a team of researchers led by Steffen Murau, Joe Rini and Armin Haas has developed an innovative political-economic methodology to study the impact of global economic and financial crises precipitated by events such as the Covid-19 pandemic on the global monetary and financial systems. Their findings were recently published in the Journal of Institutional Economics.

The Covid-19 pandemic: A turning point in the global economic order?

At the outset of their study, the researchers examined the dynamics underpinning the development of the global monetary and financial system in recent decades. The team identified two trends that are of central importance in this context: First, while the US dollar is the centrepiece of the global financial system, a substantial share of this currency is now created by private financial institutions outside the USA, and thus outside the control of the United States' central bank, the Federal Reserve (Fed). This happens, for example, when banks outside the United States create deposits by issuing loans in US dollars to finance trade within global supply chains. The researchers refer to this as "offshore dollar creation". Second, shadow banks have become systemically relevant entities and are creating novel forms of credit instruments that researchers now refer to as "shadow money".

In the case of complex and privatized structures such as the offshore dollar-based monetary and financial system, crises are key drivers of change. It is in these moments that political decision-makers lay the groundwork for future developments. The global financial crisis of 2007 - 2009, which escalated following the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers, was one such moment. That crisis began in the shadow banking system and was essentially a bank run on offshore dollars and shadow money. The massive loss of confidence driving that crisis could only be mitigated through the introduction of an institutional innovation: a new form of cooperation between the central banks of the G7 countries - so-called "swap lines" - through which central banks outside the USA could borrow US dollars from the Federal Reserve to support domestic banks.

"In today's global dollar system, the Federal Reserve's US dollar swap lines are the ultimate safety net," explains Steffen Murau, who has researched this issue first at the IASS and then at Harvard University and Boston University. "The European Central Bank is the Federal Reserve's most important partner in this area. In times of crisis, the ECB can borrow US dollars from the Fed and then pass them on as loans to euro zone banks. The crucial issue for the future of the global US dollar system is how robust this safety net will prove to be."

"The Covid-19 pandemic has triggered a new global crisis, the scale of which we still cannot foresee," says Armin Haas, who leads the research team at the IASS. "How political decision-makers respond to this crisis is crucial for the future development of the global economic order. Covid-19 is also a crisis of the global monetary and financial system based on offshore dollars".

This aspect has been the focus of research at the IASS since 2017: "In our research project, we studied scenarios both with and without systemic crises and developed four alternative scenarios," explains Haas. "The scenarios explore possible developments over the next two decades and, in light of the unfolding Covid-19 pandemic, are already proving to be highly relevant for policymakers."

Four scenarios for the global financial system in 2040

The researchers explore four possible development pathways in their analysis. The first two presuppose that the financial system continues to evolve - resolving crises with the instruments of the existing system, much as occurred in 2008. The other two explore possible developments resulting from a collapse of the system that the Fed failed to prevent.

The analyses explore the following four scenarios:

a continuation of the current US dollar hegemony;

the co-existence of competing monetary blocks;

the emergence of an international monetary federation; or

international monetary anarchy.

In the "business as usual" scenario (1), US dollar hegemony persists, with the USA maintaining its role as the central stabilizing factor in the financial system. In this scenario, Trumpism and its policy of "America First" prove to be passing fads. The Eurozone, meanwhile, remains mired in a backlog of much-needed reforms and China fails to establish itself as a rival financial centre.

"The current Covid-19 crisis is putting extreme pressure on the global privatized US dollar system. But the Federal Reserve's interventions in March and April have stabilized the system for the time being, allowing it to continue along its current development path. In doing so, the Federal Reserve is acting as the de facto global central bank," says Steffen Murau. "The eurozone, on the other hand, is in troubled waters. Once again, the issue of Eurobonds is putting the EU to the test and revealing the gulf between reality and European aspirations to strengthen the euro's international role."

In contrast, the second scenario sees the establishment of competing monetary blocs, with the EU and China emerging as two significant rivals to the USA. In this scenario the latter no longer stands as the guarantor of global stability, while the Eurozone successfully overcomes its deficits and China succeeds in internationalizing its currency, the renminbi. These developments result in the further regionalism of world trade and the financial system.

"The pandemic is exposing the failings of America's welfare state. The collapse of the US economy could weaken the geopolitical position of the United States in the medium term. China, on the other hand, has a head-start when it comes to overcoming the effects of the pandemic and could use this to its advantage in the trade war opened by Trump," Murau explains.

In the third (revolutionary) scenario the Federal Reserve proves unable to withstand the global crisis and the global US dollar system implodes in a series of defaults and bankruptcies of leading private financial institutions. However, the scenario assumes that the G20 succeeds in creating an alternative global monetary system at the height of the crisis; a system built not around a single national currency, but around an international organization. In this scenario, the international monetary hierarchy has shifted, with national currency areas now operating alongside each other. In the EU, the Member States reintroduce their former currencies, but retain the euro as a regional supranational unit of account. Offshore credit money creation is completely abolished. While shadow banks continue to operate in some states, elsewhere governments push for tougher regulation aimed at eliminating shadow money.

"The Federal Reserve's rescue efforts run counter to the policies of the Trump Administration, which has probably not yet grasped the scope of these interventions. The question is whether the Fed can maintain this level of commitment in the medium term, especially in the event of Trump's re-election. It is not impossible that a chain of circumstances could take the Fed's swap network to breaking point - an event that would be comparable to the Bank of England's cancellation of the gold standard in 1931," says Armin Haas. "Naturally, there's a touch of liberal utopia to our third scenario. However, proposals for this kind of system have been around in various forms for at least 150 years."

In the fourth scenario, following the collapse of the existing system based on private offshore dollar creation, efforts by the G20 to establish an alternative monetary and financial system founder and eventually fail. Instead, international monetary anarchy reigns. As a consequence, the international payments system grows increasingly unreliable, international value chains break down and barter arrangements become commonplace in international trade. The result: a hard-hitting global depression that compels states to experiment with different institutional arrangements in order to tackle the challenges. These experiments lay the foundations for the development of a new system at some point in the future.

"This is the only scenario in which crypto-currencies are of more than marginal importance," says Joe Rini, who has previously worked in the fintech sector. "In our view, the strong path dependency of the global dollar system makes it unlikely that crypto will emerge as a genuine alternative - unless, of course, the current system implodes. Crypto currencies have been largely ignored in the context of the Covid-19 Crisis and have failed to profit from it so far. But this could quickly change in the event of an uncontrolled systemic collapse."

Charting a course for the transformation towards sustainability

"Our scenarios are not intended to be exact predictions of the future, nor are they normative assessments or institutional blueprints," explains Armin Haas. "What they do is extrapolate existing trends and create a space of possibility in which we can explore the development of the international monetary system along different development pathways through to 2040."

"The ideas presented in these scenarios are already being discussed in expert circles. What we have done is to link these ideas to political and economic development pathways and to highlight the central role of shadow banks and offshore money creation," says Haas. "These scenarios emphasize the decisive role of the US Federal Reserve as the creditor of last resort for the global dollar system and its ability to tackle the crisis."

The development of scenarios to explore the future of the international monetary and financial system dovetails with the mission of the IASS to analyse and support global transformations towards sustainability. "Exploring the implications of different scenarios for the ecological transformation of our societies is integral to our research programme." After all, "financing for transitions towards sustainability will either be provided through the global financial system - or they will not take place," says Armin Haas. "Efforts to create a sustainable and climate-friendly global economy cannot succeed in the absence of a functioning global monetary and finance system."

In an article written in 1931, the American economist and mathematician Harold Hotelling published a model to describe the evolution of the prices of non-renewable resources. Following the 1973 oil crisis, the model aroused fresh interest: the growth theorist Robert Solow named the initial equation in this article 'the Hotelling rule', establishing it as a fundamental principle of the economics of non-renewable resources. However, the prices observed over the past century have never been in line with this equation*, something which has constantly puzzled economists.

Despite everything, the Hotelling rule still retains its central status in the economics of mineral and energy resources: it is on this basis that more sophisticated 'extensions' are constructed to account for market realities. Roberto Ferreira da Cunha, from the Berkeley Research Group (Brazil), and Antoine Missemer, a CNRS researcher attached to CIRED, the International Centre for Research on Environment and Development (CNRS/CIRAD/AgroParisTech/Ecole des Ponts ParisTech/EHESS), undertook a detailed and unprecedented examination of Harold Hotelling's archives**. By analysing the origins of the model, they conclude that its scope of validity is more limited t han commonly established, and decisively clarify the reasons for its empirical weaknesses.

Hotelling's drafts, as well as his correspondence, with oil engineers for example, point to a reinterpretation of the 1931 article. It turns out that the 'rule', which he had devised as early as 1924 for abstract assets, was in no way intended to be applied to the concrete case of mineral and energy resources. From 1925 to 1930, Hotelling himself identified unavoidable geological constraints that changed his initial result: increased production costs as extraction progresses, or the cost resulting from ramped up production. As he outlined, this transformed his model, which was then potentially able to describe bell-shaped production paths, such as those used in debates about peak oil.

The two researchers thus show that, if the Hotelling rule has such difficulty in passing the hurdle of empirical tests in the field of energy and mineral resources, it is because it was not designed for that! They propose to reconstruct the models used in this area, taking as a starting point an alternative Hotelling rule that is more in line with geological realities. More generally, their study questions the theoretical instruments used to address energy and environmental issues today. History, and in this case the history of economic thought, can help to take a fresh look at tools that, although considered well established, still deserve to be questioned.

Researchers at King's College London, Massachusetts General Hospital and health science company ZOE have developed an artificial intelligence diagnostic that can predict whether someone is likely to have COVID-19 based on their symptoms. Their findings are published today in Nature Medicine.

The AI model uses data from the COVID Symptom Study app to predict COVID-19 infection, by comparing people's symptoms and the results of traditional COVID tests. Researchers say this may provide help for populations where access to testing is limited. Two clinical trials in the UK and the US are due to start shortly.

More than 3.3 million people globally have downloaded the app and are using it to report daily on their health status, whether they feel well or have any new symptoms such as persistent cough, fever, fatigue and loss of taste or smell (anosmia).

In this study, the researchers analysed data gathered from just under 2.5 million people in the UK and US who had been regularly logging their health status in the app, around a third of whom had logged symptoms associated with COVID-19. Of these, 18,374 reported having had a test for coronavirus, with 7,178 people testing positive.

The research team investigated which symptoms known to be associated with COVID-19 were most likely to be associated with a positive test. They found a wide range of symptoms compared to cold and flu, and warn against focusing only on fever and cough. Indeed, they found loss of taste and smell (anosmia) was particularly striking, with two thirds of users testing positive for coronavirus infection reporting this symptom compared with just over a fifth of the participants who tested negative. The findings suggest that anosmia is a stronger predictor of COVID-19 than fever, supporting anecdotal reports of loss of smell and taste as a common symptom of the disease.

The researchers then created a mathematical model that predicted with nearly 80% accuracy whether an individual is likely to have COVID-19 based on their age, sex and a combination of four key symptoms: loss of smell or taste, severe or persistent cough, fatigue and skipping meals. Applying this model to the entire group of over 800,000 app users experiencing symptoms predicted that just under a fifth of those who were unwell (17.42%) were likely to have COVID-19 at that time.

Researchers suggest that combining this AI prediction with widespread adoption of the app could help to identify those who are likely to be infectious as soon as the earliest symptoms start to appear, focusing tracking and testing efforts where they are most needed.

Professor Tim Spector from King's College London said: "Our results suggest that loss of taste or smell is a key early warning sign of COVID-19 infection and should be included in routine screening for the disease. We strongly urge governments and health authorities everywhere to make this information more widely known, and advise anyone experiencing sudden loss of smell or taste to assume that they are infected and follow local self-isolation guidelines."

War, torture, human trafficking and extreme poverty are just some of the appalling experiences to which refugees are exposed, both before and during their flight. Experiences such as these put those affected at risk of mental illness, even years afterwards. If that were not enough, after arriving in Germany refugees are often forced to live in conditions which cause further mental stress. A team of researchers led by Hannelore Ehrenreich at the Max Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine has now demonstrated that each additional risk factor puts further strain on the mental health of young refugees. The consequences are functional deficits and behavioural problems, which may be expressed as aggressive and criminal behaviour later in life. It is therefore even more vital to provide care and support for refugees, and to offer them the opportunity to break out of the spiral of negative experiences.

Traumatic experiences, physical and sexual abuse, consumption of cannabis and alcohol, living in cities: these are all factors which increase the risk of a person developing mental disorders. If a person is subjected to several of these risk factors together before the age of 20, he or she is more likely to exhibit aggressive and criminal behaviour later in life.

This observation from previous studies led a group of Göttingen researchers to take a closer look at a specific risk group: young refugees, who often experience traumatic events not only in their home country and during their flight, but often also face mentally stressful conditions after their arrival in Germany. The effect of these risk factors is more pronounced amongst young people, because their brains are still developing, and react particularly sensitively to adverse influences.

Interviews with migrants

To better understand the impact of harmful environmental stress on young refugees, and the consequences for their mental health, the researchers carried out detailed interviews with 133 refugees. The average age of the participants was 22, and they were considered to be in good health. Many had travelled to Germany as unaccompanied minors. In addition to the history taking, the researchers also evaluated the physical health of the participants, and used structured interviews to assess any emerging indications of behavioural problems.

"Many refugees are exposed to a shocking number of risk factors," reports Martin Begemann, first author on the publication. In addition to the actual migration experience, more than 95 percent of the refugees are affected by other stressful life events, habits or living conditions that make them more susceptible to mental illness. The researchers identified two, three or even more than four additional risk factors in the vast majority of cases. Around half the participants had undergone traumatic experiences before and during their journey; a quarter of participants had suffered physical and sexual abuse. Around 40 percent of participants had scars or wounds from stabbing or shooting injuries, explosions or the resultant burns. Four young men displayed clear psychotic symptoms, two of these also had suicidal thoughts.

Number of risk factors is crucial

Overall, the scientists' findings showed: the more risk factors that are present in a person, the greater the reduction in their ability to function, and the more likely they were to exhibit initial indications of mental health problems. Precisely which risk factors were present was less significant. Interestingly, close and stable personal relationships offered the refugees no protection from these negative effects: having fled accompanied by family or friends, or having a good social network at the time of the study, had no influence on a person's current mental state. The authors suspect that social support has only a weak protective effect.

It will be a number of years before researchers will be able to determine the number of young people who actually go on to exhibit psychological problems or even criminal behaviour. However, they expect that they will only be able to contact about half of the participants again. They are likely to lose track of the others due to numerous transfers between refugee centres and deportations to the country of origin.

So what can be done right now to improve the poor prognosis for refugees under extreme stress? "Given that each additional risk factor increases the probability of subsequent aggressive behaviour, criminal activity and mental disorders, we have to prevent the accumulation of further stress factors," Ehrenreich insists. For example, we could consider providing refugees with close medical and psychological care, and giving them their first simple work activities and language courses even before a final decision on their residence status has been made. This could help them to escape from cramped housing conditions where they are confronted with boredom, violence and drugs.

How people vote in the Eurovision Song Contest may tell us more than just the musical tastes of a nation - according to new research.

Although this year's Eurovision Song Contest has been postponed due to the COVID-19 outbreak, academics from the University of Stirling and University of Glasgow have revealed interesting patterns from previous years' public votes.

Dr Isaac Tabner, from Stirling Management School, and Dr Antonios Siganos, from the Adam Smith Business School, have looked at how each country's votes for its favourite song can give an indication of the likelihood and nature of business exchanges across borders.

It has long been alleged that the Eurovision Song Contest is less a talent show and more a measure of countries' geopolitical standing with others. That theory has been supported by anecdotal evidence of favourable voting between countries such as Cyprus and Greece, or Ireland and the UK.

The new research - published in the Journal of International Business Studies - looks in detail at voting patterns between 1999, when public voting began, and 2013 to establish that patterns of voting bias do exist. Dr Tabner and Dr Siganos estimated bias by subtracting the average number of points received by each country from all participants in the contest, from the number of points received from a counterpart within a particular pair.

The authors say: "This research demonstrates that simple voting in the Eurovision Song Contest actually captures more complex elements of relationships which are driven by emotions, familiarity, psychological distance, and feelings of intimacy.

"We found that countries which share above average voting in Eurovision are likely to share more cross-border mergers between businesses. The flipside of this, where countries deliver below average votes for each other and share fewer business transactions, is also true.

"Voting patterns also correlate with levels of foreign direct investment and migration movements across borders. Of course, there are other factors which influence business exchanges between countries, including: sharing a border, the distance between capital cities, the degree to which languages are shared, and whether or not armed conflict has taken place between the countries in question.

"The insight into social affinity between nations which this analysis of Eurovision voting patterns provides may be a better predictor of international business exchanges than traditional measures of cultural similarity, and distance, if you believe that sometimes opposites attract, or that too much similarity, or closeness can lead to friction, clashes or even hostile rivalry.

"While much prior research focusses on similarity and distance measures, we argue that there are times when too much closeness and similarity can be counter-productive. For example, by creating destructive competitive rivalry, or just simply reminding counterparties of each-others' bad points.

"This research provides a measure of affinity by which social scientists can explore nuanced relations between the populations of participating countries, and has the additional benefit of using a sample size - in the millions - much bigger than is typically achieved by surveys."

Telemedicine tools developed at UVA Health to battle Ebola have huge potential in the fight against COVID-19, UVA experts report in a new scientific paper. The tools, they say, allow doctors to provide personal, high-quality care while conserving vital personal protective equipment and reducing infection risks.

The battle against highly contagious diseases represents an important new application for the technology, which has traditionally been used to expand access to healthcare and spare patients the need to travel to see doctors and specialists. Other hospitals and healthcare facilities, the UVA experts believe, can benefit from embracing the potential of telemedicine to enhance care for patients with COVID-19 and other highly infectious illnesses.

"One of the few bright spots of the COVID-19 crisis is that it's shown us how remarkably powerful and versatile telemedicine can be during outbreaks of novel contagious diseases," said UVA Health epidemiologist Costi Sifri, MD. "Its importance in helping us care for patients in their home while sheltering-in-place is clear. What we show here is that telemedicine solutions can also be used within the walls of hospitals, emergency rooms and clinics to help provide enhanced, more efficient and safer patient care for those potentially infected with high-risk pathogens."

The Power of Telehealth

UVA's Karen S. Rheuban Center for Telehealth has long been a leader in using telemedicine to extend care where it's needed most. In the last 20 years, the center has facilitated more than 50,000 patient encounters at more than 150 locations around the state. But UVA leaders turned their attention to a potential internal application of the technology after the state and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention designated UVA a treatment center for Ebola during a worldwide outbreak in 2014.

UVA Health leaders found telemedicine a powerful resource for preparing for the highly infectious illness. They developed the Isolation Communication Management System (iSOCOMS) to provide remote treatment, guidance and supervision for UVA's Special Pathogens Unit and a biocontainment room in UVA's Emergency Department. They have since expanded it to rooms in UVA Health's new South Tower.

The secure system includes visual and audio connections to allow care providers to monitor and communicate with a patient in isolation, and to communicate with care providers inside the room. This limits the number of people who must enter the space, saving valuable PPE and reducing infection risk, and allows doctors who have not received special PPE training to consult on the patient's care. Medical students, too, can be trained in the environment safely.

Importantly, the setup also allows family members, spiritual advisers and others to communicate with the patient. And it helps the patient connect with their care providers by allowing communication without layers of PPE separating them.

Kendall Barger, RN, a nurse in UVA's medical intensive care unit, called iSOCOMS "a game-changer in our ability to safely provide quality care to COVID patients."

"It allows us to communicate with one another as a team, continually visualize the patient and their IV medications for optimal response to clinical change and connect families outside the hospital to their loved ones via video calls," she said.

'Clear Benefit'

In a new paper published in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society, UVA's epidemiology and telehealth leaders report that iSOCOMS provided "clear benefit" to patient care and healthcare provider safety when ruling out potential Ebola cases. (No cases were found at UVA.) "We were surprised by the number of case-use scenarios that were built around iSOCOMS during Ebola preparedness planning, ranging from PPE use, supervision and support of direct patient care, healthcare worker safety, patient-team member communication, extension of consult health services, patient-family communication, patient-support service communications and trainee education," they write.

They caution that hospitals must be mindful of patient privacy even when using secure telemedicine setups internally. But they urge their healthcare colleagues to consider the technology's potential as a relatively low-cost way to improve COVID-19 care.

"The digital transformation of healthcare has unquestionably been propelled by the COVID-19 pandemic," said Karen S. Rheuban, MD, a founder and medical director of UVA's telehealth program. "The use of iSOCOMs and a broad range of telehealth solutions has positively impacted patient access and reduced exposure for our patients and providers alike."

BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA, May 11, 2020--A microscopic algae ("microalgae") could provide a complete and sustainably sourced supplemental diet to boost the robustness of managed honey bees, according to research just published by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists in the journal Apidologie .

Poor nutrition in honey bees is often an underlying factor in colony losses because malnutrition amplifies the detrimental effects of parasites, pathogens, and pesticides. Habitat loss, decreases in flowering plant diversity and large tracts of crop monoculture (cultivation of a single crop over a large area) all can potentially contribute to lessening natural pollen sources, which provide bees essential nutrition.

Now, research by ARS entomologists Vincent Ricigliano and Michael Simone-Finstrom has shown that the microalgae Arthrospira platensis (commonly called spirulina) has a nutritional profile that closely resembles pollen. Spirulina is a part of family of blue-green algae, which are single-celled organisms that exist individually or in chains or groups.

Ricigliano and Simone-Finstrom found that spirulina is rich in essential amino acids and lipids required by bees, with levels matching those found in tested pollen samples.

The two scientists are both with the ARS Honey Bee Breeding, Genetics, and Physiology Research Laboratory in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

"Our work is a pioneering first look into the nutritional and functional properties of a single microalga and how well it corresponds to what is needed in a complete pollen substitute for the honey bee," explained Ricigliano.

In addition to being rich in essential amino acids necessary for protein synthesis, immune function and colony growth in honey bees, spirulina also contains prebiotics that support the growth of healthy gut bacteria.

Commercial beekeepers have become increasingly reliant on artificial pollen substitute diets to nourish colonies during periods of pollen scarcity as well as to bolster colony size before they fulfill pollination service contracts.

Currently available commercial diets for bees usually incorporate a variety of ingredients such as soy, yeast, wheat, lentils and milk proteins in an effort to supply balanced nutrition. These artificial diets are sometimes deficient in essential macronutrients (proteins, lipids, prebiotic fibers), micronutrients (vitamins, minerals), or antioxidants.

"So the need to scientifically improve the efficacy of pollen substitutes can be considered vital to modern beekeeping and we need to think about how we can do it in a sustainable way," Ricigliano said.

Microalgae can be sustainably grown on a large scale with a minimal amount of water and few chemical inputs. It can even be grown in places where soybeans and other crops cannot be grown.

"All it takes are shallow ponds, nutrient salts and sunlight to produce highly nutritious microalgae," said Ricigliano.

Now, the researchers are testing the microalgae diet in a field setting to make sure the diet is attractive to bees and supports colony growth. The excellent nutrition profile of spirulina suggests that there are likely other microalgae that could serve honey bees well, Simone-Finstrom pointed out.

"We have also begun development of new microalgae strains to address other aspects of bee health, including targeted nutrition strategies," Ricigliano added

(Philadelphia, PA) - The vast majority of cells in the human body contain tiny power plants known as mitochondria that generate much of the energy cells use for day-to-day activities. Like a dynamic renewable resource, these little power plants are constantly dividing and uniting in processes called fission and fusion. The balance between fission and fusion is critical for health - especially cardiovascular health.

Now, in new research, scientists at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University (LKSOM) have uncovered a novel mechanism by which abnormalities in mitochondrial fission in endothelial cells - the cells that line the inner surface of blood vessels - contribute to inflammation and oxidative stress in the cardiovascular system. They further show how the fission-fusion balance can be stabilized to lower inflammation using salicylate, the main active ingredient in everyday pain-relieving drugs like aspirin.

The groundbreaking research was published online May 11 in the journal Hypertension.

"It was already known that in cardiovascular disease the function of endothelial cells and mitochondria are impacted by inflammation, but we were unsure whether there was a link between the two," explained Satoru Eguchi, MD, PhD, FAHA, Professor of Physiology and Professor in the Cardiovascular Research Center, Sol Sherry Thrombosis Research Center, and Center for Metabolic Disease Research at LKSOM.

In endothelial cells, chronic inflammation causes mitochondria to become smaller and fragmented. This damaging process is mediated by a molecule known as dynamin-related protein 1 (Drp1). Normally, Drp1 plays a helpful role in maintaining fission-fusion balance. When cells are stressed by inflammation, however, it steps up fission activity, resulting in mitochondrial fragmentation.

"How Drp1 acts to increase mitochondrial fragmentation when endothelial cells are inflamed has been unclear," Dr. Eguchi said. "But we wondered whether it might interact with nuclear factor (NF)-κB, which oversees the regulation of inflammatory processes and is involved in endothelial dysfunction."

In endothelial cells, Dr. Eguchi and colleagues stimulated inflammatory pathways that produced mitochondrial fragmentation. They then examined the effects of blocking Drp1 activity and expression. These experiments showed that in cells, Drp1 inhibition suppresses mitochondrial fission, NF-κB activation, and inflammation. Reductions in fission and inflammation were also observed in cells following NF-κB inhibition, as well as in follow-up studies in mice genetically engineered to have less Drp1.

The researchers next determined whether the anti-inflammatory drug salicylate could also reduce mitochondrial fragmentation. Salicylate works by blocking the activity of multiple inflammatory molecules, including NF-κB. As anticipated, in mice, treatment with salicylate attenuated inflammation and mitochondrial fragmentation via its effects on NF-κB and downstream pathways.

"Our findings suggest that salicylate may be able to maintain the balance between mitochondrial fission and fusion under inflammatory conditions," Dr. Eguchi said. "This observation could have real clinical impact, since salicylate is already used in aspirin and related pain-relievers."

In future work, Dr. Eguchi plans to explore the influence of aging and other factors on Drp1 and mitochondrial fission in endothelial cells.

"Mitochondrial function declines with aging, but we also know that exercise and diet influence this process. How these factors come together mechanistically to impact vascular health is not fully understood," Dr. Eguchi explained.

MAY 11, 2020 -- Microorganisms living inside and on our body play a crucial role in both the maintenance of our health and the development of disease. Now researchers at UTSA have uncovered evidence about the importance of maintaining physical distance to minimize the spread of microbes among individuals.

The scientists observed monkeys in the wild to understand what role genetics, diet, social groupings and distance in a social network play when it comes to the microbes found inside an animal's gut.

"Social microbial transmission among monkeys can help inform us about how diseases spread. This has parallels to our current situation in which we are trying to understand how social distancing during the COVID 19 pandemic and future disease outbreaks may influence disease transmission," said Eva Wikberg, an assistant professor in UTSA's Department of Anthropology who studies the interaction between ecology, behavior and genetics in primates.

The gut microbiome refers to all the microorganisms inhabiting the digestive tract, starting with the stomach and ending with the colon. Over the past decade the microbiome has come under more scientific focus because it's believed that an unhealthy gut microbiome can lead to obesity, impaired immune function, weakened parasite resistance and even behavioral changes.

However, researching microbiomes is difficult because of the variation in microbial composition between individuals. One long-standing question is whether this variation is driven by genetic makeup, diets or social environments.

This research inquiry has been especially hard in wild populations because of the lack of detailed data necessary to tease apart the myriad factors that shape the microbiome.

To find an answer, Wikberg and fellow researchers studied the fecal matter of 45 female colobus monkeys that congregated in eight different social groups in a small forest by the villages of Boabeng and Fiema in Ghana. The scientists saw major differences among social groups' gut microbiomes.

However, individuals from different groups that were more closely connected in the population's social network had more similar gut microbiomes. This discovery indicates that microbes may be transmitted during occasional encounters with members of other social groups.

A similar setting may be when people come into one-meter proximity of each other at a store. Being in close proximity or accidentally brushing up against someone else may be all it takes to transmit certain microbes.

This study suggests that microbes transmitted this way help the colobus monkeys digest the leaves in their diet. However, further research is needed to investigate whether this type of transmission yields health benefits, which could explain why different social groups occasionally have friendly between-group encounters.

"Studies of wild animals can teach us a lot about the importance of using interventions, such as social distancing, to ensure a safer community during this pandemic," said Wikberg.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic wreaked havoc with the nation's food supply and economy, one in seven adults between the ages of 50 and 80 already had trouble getting enough food because of cost or other issues, a new poll finds.

The percentage who said they'd experienced food insecurity in the past year was even higher among those in their pre-Medicare years, and those who are African-American or Latino. Older adults with lower household incomes and lower levels of education were also more likely to say they had had trouble getting food.

Yet only a third of those with food affordability issues were receiving government food aid for people with low incomes, called SNAP benefits or "food stamps." And less than 2% of those over 60 have received free meals served at senior centers or delivered to their home by programs like Meals on Wheels.

Disruptions to food supply chains, employment and social services from COVID-19 may have worsened disparities, say the experts who designed the poll.

The new results come from the National Poll on Healthy Aging, carried out by the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation with support from AARP and Michigan Medicine, U-M's academic medical center. It involved a national sample of more than 2,000 adults aged 50 to 80 who answered a range of questions about their food security in December 2019.

"These data suggest an important opportunity, which is likely even more urgent now, to connect older adults with resources they may not know about, and to explore public policies that could improve access," says Cindy Leung, Sc.D., M.P.H., a member of IHPI and assistant professor of nutritional sciences at the U-M School of Public Health who worked on the poll.

Julia Wolfson, Ph.D., M.P.P., an assistant professor of health management and policy at the School of Public Health, notes the striking differences the poll reveals between those who said they hadn't experienced food insecurity in the past year, and those who had. "Food-insecure older adults were three times more likely to say they were in fair or poor physical health, and nearly five times as likely to say they were in fair or poor mental health," she says.

Older adults with recent experiences of food insecurity were also twice as likely to say their diet was fair or poor. This could have further implications for their long-term health.

"Access to nutritious food and health status are closely linked, yet this poll reveals major disparities in that access," says Preeti Malani, M.D., the poll's director and a professor of internal medicine at Michigan Medicine. "Even as we focus on preventing the spread of coronavirus, we must also ensure that older adults can get food that aligns with any health conditions they have, so we don't exacerbate diabetes, hypertension, digestive disorders and other conditions further."

"This research reaffirms that many older adults struggle to afford the food they need, and are not using available food and nutrition assistance programs," says Alison Bryant, Ph.D., senior vice president of research for AARP. "The current crisis makes it even more urgent to ensure that our most vulnerable populations can access the nutrition they need."

Options for increasing food security after 50

Malani notes that because of COVID-19 and temporary closures of senior centers and other places that served meals, the federal program that supports Meals on Wheels and community food services for older adults has freed up money for more home delivery of meals. And new programs to feed older adults have started at the federal and state levels.

For instance, the state of Michigan has established an expanded program for meal delivery thanks to the newly flexible funds. An online form, available through the state COVID-19 website, acts as the central intake site.

Similarly, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, has allowed states to apply for emergency waivers to make it easier for people to qualify for the program, or to stay on it.

AARP Foundation has provided grants to multiple programs that aim to reduce food insecurity, including Food on the Move, The Campus Kitchens Project and funding for states to help seniors apply for nutrition assistance. In light of the coronavirus crisis, AARP recently called for Congress and USDA to provide a temporary increase in the maxiumum benefit and minimum monthly benefit for SNAP.

The National Poll on Healthy Aging results are based on responses from a nationally representative sample of 2,048 adults aged 50 to 80 who answered a wide range of questions online. Questions were written, and data interpreted and compiled, by the IHPI team. Laptops and Internet access were provided to poll respondents who did not already have them.

In a new multi-center study of U.S. women with newly diagnosed invasive breast cancer, Mount Sinai researchers have shown that insulin resistance is one factor mediating part of the association between race and poor prognosis in the disease. The findings were published in Breast Cancer Research on Tuesday, May 12.

Despite improvements in breast cancer diagnosis and treatment, black women with breast cancer continue to have worse prognoses on average than white women. Breast cancer prognoses also tend to be worse in patients with insulin resistance, a common condition that occurs when metabolic cells in the body don't respond adequately to insulin, causing the pancreas to make more insulin to maintain normal glucose levels. Insulin resistance is an important component of obesity, prediabetes, and type 2 diabetes. Patients with these conditions also tend to have more aggressive breast cancer subtypes and increased mortality.

"Given that obesity and diabetes epidemics disproportionately affect minority populations, it is important to understand the relationship of hyperinsulinemia, insulin resistance, and increased insulin receptor (IR) signaling on the progression of breast cancer," explained lead author Emily J. Gallagher, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Endocrinology, Diabetes and Bone Disease) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Gallagher specializes in onco-endocrinology, the treatment of endocrine complications of oncology treatments. "Understanding these relationships could explain the different patterns of disease seen in different racial groups and help to identify patients who would benefit from targeted therapy," she says.

This is the first cross-sectional study to examine in detail insulin resistance as a factor associated to the disparities in breast cancer prognosis between black women and white women. The study included 515 women with a newly diagnosed breast cancer; about 83 percent of the subjects were white and 17 percent black. The Mount Sinai team evaluated the women for insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome--a cluster of conditions that occur together and may include high blood pressure or high blood sugar--and obesity to investigate whether insulin is a key mechanistic link in the association between these metabolic conditions and breast cancer aggressiveness. Samples of breast cancer tissue were examined to assess the role of insulin receptor and insulin-like growth factor receptor expression in disparities in breast cancer prognoses between the racial groups.

The researchers found that insulin resistance was more prevalent in black women with invasive breast cancer than in white women and that insulin resistance mediated part of the effect of race on prognosis. Additionally, the team found that tumors from black women had a higher expression of the insulin receptor, which is what insulin binds to in the tumors. Tumors with a worse prognosis had higher expression of the insulin receptor.

"Our results raise a number of questions for future research and patient care. It will be important in future studies to explore whether lowering insulin levels or targeting IR signaling will improve breast cancer disparities," said co-senior investigator Nina Bickell, MD, PhD, MPH, Associate Director of Community Engaged and Equity Research of The Tisch Cancer Institute and Co-Director of the Center for Health Equity and Community Engaged Research at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's often involve complex interactions between multiple proteins and other biomolecules. Understanding these interactions using existing imaging technologies is difficult because of insufficient resolution and the impossibility of simultaneously detecting many different proteins.

In a recent interdisciplinary study, a research team led by Professors Dae Won Moon and Su-Il In from Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology developed an innovative approach that extends the applications of the technique 'secondary-ion mass spectrometry' from its original purpose in the semiconductor industry to the biomedical imaging field. Secondary-ion mass spectrometry allows one to analyze the composition of surfaces and offers very high resolution. Using this technology to image proteins was impossible--until now.

In this novel approach, different metal oxide nanoparticles are individually attached to antibodies that bind to specific target proteins. The mass spectrometer can easily detect these nanoparticles even at low irradiation doses, which leaves the cell tissue intact and allows for multiple analyses on the same cells. Through this approach, it is theoretically possible to analyze tens of proteins simultaneously. This vastly surpasses existing fluorescence-based approaches, which allow for the simultaneous imaging of around four proteins.

The researchers used their method to compare the distribution of proteins in the brain tissue of mice that were either healthy or had Alzheimer's. They showed that valuable insight could be gained from observing multiplex protein distributions in the 'hippocampus' section of the brain and demonstrated how these differed between healthy and diseased mice.

Achieving these results required combining knowledge from many disciplines. Prof. Moon remarks, "For me, a special highlight of this work is the collaboration of many researchers from different backgrounds, such as chemists, nano-particle experts, medical doctors, and biologists. It was not easy and took a long time, but it was exciting to see the progress. We can now visualize multiple proteins on cell membranes with a spatial resolution of 300 nanometers." He expects this new imaging approach to become an important tool to deepen our understanding on degenerative diseases. "The proposed technique could be used to figure out the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, in turn allowing for early detection and treatment," he states, hopefully.

The UC San Diego researchers who developed algae-based flip-flops and surfboards are at it again. This time they are advancing their brand of renewable and biodegradable materials for use in other products like coated fabrics, patent leather and adhesives, with some foodie flare, too--flavors and fragrances.

The latest research by Michael Burkart, Stephen Mayfield and Robert Pomeroy--online in Green Chemistry, a journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry--outlines their efforts to develop methods for producing microalgae-based polyols--monomer units for polyurethane polymers--that can be used to make polyurethane foams with waste oils from algae biomass.

Many researches consider algae one of the best renewable resources for replacing fossil fuels and battling global warming without impacting food supplies. But unlike vegetable oils, the oil from algae contains small organic contaminants, like photosynthetic pigments and other cofactors that can complicate their use.

The team chose to work with oil from the green microalgae Nannochloropsis salina, a common source of omega-3 fatty acids that are sold as dietary supplements. The leftover oils, more than 70-percent, are typically either thrown away or burned, but the UC San Diego researchers found a better use for them. They developed a process to purify and convert this waste stream into azelaic acid, a building block for flexible polyurethanes. Wanting to "use the whole buffalo," they also converted the co-product heptanoic acid into a food flavoring and fragrance.

"We showed that we could take waste products from algae-based omega-3 oil production and convert those into valuable and renewable polyurethane foams. These have all kinds of commercial applications, from flip-flops and running shoe soles, to mattresses and yoga mats. In addition, we prepared a flavoring molecule from the remaining co-product that is valued at over $500 per kilogram," said Burkart referring to the team's paper, "Co-production of flexible polyurethanes and renewable solvent from a microalgae oil waste stream."

To start the work, the research team, which included scientists from Division of Physical Sciences, the Division of Biological Sciences and the California Center for Algae Biotechnology at UC San Diego, first found a scalable, cost-effective pathway to improve the purity of algae oil using simple physical methods along with saponification. This is a process by which oils react with sodium or potassium hydroxide to produce glycerol and a fatty acid salt, or soap.

In addition to the fatty acids, Mayfield explained that the team identified multiple contaminants in the waste oil. "Unlike plants, which store mainly triacyglycerides, or vegetable oil, in their seeds, microalgae contain a variety of metabolic components that are insoluble in water but freely soluble in the algae oil when extracted. The presence of these pigments inhibits downstream reaction efficiency, therefore their removal is a key process in the production of renewable chemicals from algae oil."

According to the scientists, their scalable process can be performed on oils from multiple algal species, to produce valuable monomers--molecules that take part in a chain reaction to form polymers--for a highly sustainable source of bio-based plastics. The study included an exploration of the economic value of the team's methodology. According to Pomeroy, they chose the N. salina as a strain for growing algae in large scale because of its established high production of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), a valuable omega-3 oil, and the ability of scientists to grow the strain for high biomass content.

"This study indicates that an algae-sourced waste stream has both the practical and economic potential to support material production of polyurethanes," said Burkart. "We are already working with major shoe companies to turn these into commercial products that people will want to buy. We are finding that consumers are concerned about all of the petroleum-based plastic waste we are generating as a society, and our team is rapidly developing solutions for future products. Stay tuned!"

Kyoto, Japan -- 'Like a frog stared down by a snake', goes an old Japanese expression, descrbing an animal petrified with fear.

However, it now seems that this freeze in action may not be about fear at all, but rather a delicate waiting game of life and death.

A new report from researchers at Kyoto University's Graduate School of Science shows that this common interaction is all about patience, with each animal waiting for and anticipating its opponent's actions.

"When predator and prey face each other, it is generally thought that the initiator has the advantage that would mediate successful capture or escape," explains Nozomi Nishiumi, corresponding author of the report published in the Canadian Journal of Zoology.

"However, in cases involving snakes and frogs, they occasionally move extremely slowly -- or almost not at all. It looks like they purposely avoid taking preemptive action."

Nishiumi, together with colleague Akira Mori, examined how the animals' behaviors affected the consequences of their interaction by focusing specifically on the kinematics of the snakes' strikes and the frogs' flight behavior.

The team analyzed the movement patterns of the Japanese striped snake, Elaphe quadrivirgata, and the black-spotted pond frog, Pelophylax nigromaculatus, both in the field and in staged encounter experiments.

"In the staged encounters we wanted to look at the disadvantages of preemptive actions by analyzing the kinematic characteristics of each animal's movements," explains Nishiumi.

"The field observations, on the other hand, were designed to follow the consequences of the animals' actions and survival."

The team found that the counteractions of each animal were often effective because the initiator's actions were difficult to change once started. For example, if the snake initiated a strike action first, the frog would evade the attack because the trajectory of the strike could not be changed mid-movement, allowing the frog to escape safely while the snake spent time resetting its lunge posture.

Alternatively, if the frog first attempted an escape, the snake would start lunging immediately, and occasionally be able to adjust its strike direction in anticipation of the frog's direction of movement.

"The efficacy of this waiting tactic depends on the distance between them: the closer they are the less likely the counteraction succeeds," continues Nishiumi.

"In this regard, when approaching this critical distance, the animals appropriately switch their behaviors from waiting to taking action."

These results suggest that a game of patience occurs between the animals, providing insight on predicting the decision-making of predators and prey.

A simple saliva test developed by QUT biomedical scientists has detected early throat cancer in a person who had no symptom and no clinical signs of cancer.

In what is believed to be a world-first, the non-invasive test picked up HPV-DNA in a saliva sample from an infected healthy person. Persistent human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is now the leading cause of cancers in the oropharynx (tonsils and tongue base area of the throat).

"The series of saliva tests raised the alert and detected an early cancer before the person had any symptoms," said QUT Faculty of Health's Associate Professor Chamindie Punyadeera, who, with Dr Kai Tang, developed the test.

"This enabled removal of the tonsil which had a 2mm cancer in it, by straightforward local surgery alone.

"The incidence of high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV)-driven throat cancers is on the rise in developed countries and, unfortunately, it is often discovered only when it is more advanced, with patients needing complicated and highly impactful treatment.

"In the US, HPV-driven throat cancers have surpassed cervical cancers as the most common cancer caused by HPV but unlike cervical cancer, up until now, there has been no screening test for this type of oropharyngeal cancer."

Professor Punyadeera said the discovery was made during an HPV-prevalence study which included 665 healthy individuals.

"To take the test all the person has to do is give a salivary oral rinse sample. When the test shows HPV-16 DNA, it is repeated and if the presence of HPV-16 is persistent over a period of time we would be suspicious that there may be underlying cancer.

"The person whom we reported in this study had been consistently HPV-16 DNA positive for 36 months, with a steadily rising count of HPV-16 DNA after testing at 6, 12 and 36 months.

"The patient was found to have a 2mm squamous cell carcinoma in the left tonsil, treated by tonsillectomy. This has given our patient a high chance of cure with very straightforward treatment.

"Since the surgery, the patient has had no evidence of HPV-16 DNA in his saliva."

Professor Punyadeera said this was the first-ever case of histologically confirmed diagnosis of an asymptomatic, hidden throat cancer, diagnosed with a saliva screening test and that wider validation studies were required to confirm this finding.

"The presence of this pattern of elevated salivary HPV-DNA must be fully evaluated, as it may provide the critical marker for early cancer detection.

"We now have the promise of a screening test for oropharynx cancer and there is an urgent need to undertake a major study to validate this test and the appropriate assessment pathway for people with persisting salivary HPV-DNA."