Culture

UNIVERSITY of Huddersfield experts have made stark warnings about the impact of coronavirus on local authorities. A major increase in mortality rates and staff absences will mean a struggle to issue death certificates, leading to a bottleneck in burials and cremations, with mortuaries filled beyond capacity.

Even if fatality rates are at the lower end of expectations - one percent of virus victims - it is highly likely that death and bereavement services will be overwhelmed, according to newly-published research by Dr Julia Meaton, Dr Anna Williams and researcher Helen-Marie Kruger.

They have drawn on a wide range of data that includes the experience of previous pandemics and analysed the readiness of a local authority in England - anonymised in the article - in order to appraise the scale of the challenge.

The article is titled Pandemic Continuity Planning; will coronavirus test local authority business plans? and is published by the online journal Emergency Management Review.

The findings are based on research carried out in 2019, examining the potential impact of a flu pandemic, but the authors have updated and adapted their facts and figures so that conclusions and recommendations are of immediate relevance. They provide tables and figures that were up-to-date at the point of publication.

"The personal tragedy and loss will be unquantifiable," write the University trio, adding however that the focus of their paper is on how authorities will manage excess deaths. For example, burial and cremation services could be beyond capacity four or five weeks into the outbreak.

Limited cemetery and body storage space will also be a major problem, with mass graves a possibility, although this would be highly controversial and would upset and anger many communities, state the authors.

They have examined the role of coroners and analysed the continuity plans drawn up by local authorities in the event of a pandemic, finding a number of flaws.

In making recommendations, the authors state that both registration and bereavement services know the death toll will increase during a pandemic but are unsure of the actual figures to plan for.

"Underestimating the mortality rate could reduce the effectiveness of business continuity plans, whereas knowing what to expect will focus attention on the resources required. An option would be to have an escalating business continuity plan, where the service prepares for a worst-case scenario, which can then be scaled back depending on the anticipated mortality rate."

Recommendations include the possibility of ring-fencing employees so that during periods of severe staff shortfalls their availability will be guaranteed.

Technological innovations could include an online death registration service that would speed up the process, although with insufficient safeguards it could be open to misuse.

The authors conclude: "The focus has been on the operational implications for a local authority service but the issues this paper raises are primarily about people and how we, as a society, treat our citizens in life and in death. In a pandemic situation, there is likely to be a necessary change to the 'business as usual' death and bereavement management services. How humanely these are managed is hugely important for those affected at the time of crisis and the humanity of the government's response will reflect the nature and values of our society, and will be judged accordingly".

What The Study Did: Evaluating the association of underlying cardiovascular disease and myocardial injury on fatal outcomes in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

Authors: Zhibing Lu, M.D., and Xinghuan Wang, M.D., of  Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University in China, are the corresponding authors.

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

(doi:10.1001/jamacardio.2020.1017)

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

What The Study Did: A description of the presentation of acute myocardial inflammation in a patient with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) who recovered from influenzalike syndrome and developed fatigue and signs and symptoms of heart failure a week after upper respiratory tract symptoms.

Authors: Marco Metra, M.D., of the Institute of Cardiology in Brescia, Italy, 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.2020.1096)

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

What The Study Did: An overview of the basics of coronaviruses, with a focus on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) along with their effects on the cardiovascular system.

Authors: Mohammad Madjid, M.D., M.S., of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, 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.2020.1286)

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

The remaining "bound water" on cotton surfaces cross-link single fibers of cotton, causing hardening after natural drying, according to a new study conducted by Kao Corporation and Hokkaido University. This provides new insight into unique water behaviors on material surfaces and helps us develop better cleaning technologies.

Cotton towels often become stiff when washed without fabric softener and naturally dried, but the mechanism behind it has remained a mystery. In previous studies, the research groups at Kao Corporation suggested the involvement of bound water -- a special type of water that exhibits unique properties on the surface of materials -- for the hardening. The group proposed a theoretical model in which the bound water that remains on the surface of cotton causes cross-linking between single fibers through a process called capillary adhesion.

In the current study published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, the research group reports direct observations of the bound water on cotton surfaces, providing strong evidence for Kao's model. Joined by Ken-ichiro Murata of Hokkaido University, the group employed special analytical techniques called atomic force microscopy (AFM) and AFM-based infrared spectroscopy (AFM-IR) to investigate the bound water on cotton surfaces at the molecular level.

The AFM observations indicated the existence of a viscous substance on the cotton surface that is not cellulose, the major component of cotton. This strongly suggested viscous bound water is present there causing capillary adhesion -- a phenomenon in which liquid sandwiched between solid surfaces causes adhesion of them. In the following experiments, the AFM-IR spectra of naturally dried cotton surfaces showed two-peaks that indicate the existence of water. On the other hand, no peaks were observed after completely removing water on the cotton surface. Furthermore, the spectra, showing two clear peaks, suggested that the bound water takes two different states at the air-water interface and the water-cotton interface, respectively.

"The experiments clarified that bound water is evident on cotton surfaces and contributes to certain dynamic properties such as stiffness mediated by capillary adhesion. Also, the bound water itself manifested a unique hydrogen bonding state different from that of ordinary water," said Ken-ichiro Murata of Hokkaido University. Takako Igarashi of Kao Corporation added, "It has been thought that fabric softeners reduce friction between cotton fibers. However, our results showing the involvement of bound water in the hardening of cotton provide new insight into how fabric softeners work and can help us develop better agents, formulations and systems."

March 27, 2020-- In a new study, researchers found that half of the patients they treated for mild COVID-19 infection still had coronavirus for up to eight days after symptoms disappeared. The research letter was published online in the American Thoracic Society's American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

In "Time Kinetics of Viral Clearance and Resolution of Symptoms in Novel Coronavirus Infection," Lixin Xie, MD, Lokesh Sharma, PhD, and co-authors report on a study of 16 patients with COVID-19, who were treated and released from the Treatment Center of PLA General Hospital in Beijing between January 28 and Feb. 9, 2020. Patients studied had a median age of 35.5 years.

Researchers collected samples from throat swabs taken from all patients on alternate days and analyzed. Patients were discharged after their recovery and confirmation of negative viral status by at least two consecutive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests.

"The most significant finding from our study is that half of the patients kept shedding the virus even after resolution of their symptoms," said co-lead author Dr. Sharma, instructor of medicine, Section of Pulmonary, Critical Care & Sleep Medicine, Department of Medicine, Yale School of Medicine. "More severe infections may have even longer shedding times."

The primary symptoms in these patients included fever, cough, pain in the pharynx (pharyngalgia) and difficult or labored breathing (dyspnea). Patients were treated with a range of medications.

The time from infection to onset of symptoms (incubation period) was five days among all but one patient. The average duration of symptoms was eight days, while the length of time patients remained contagious after the end of their symptoms ranged from one to eight days. Two patients had diabetes and one had tuberculosis, neither of which affected the timing of the course of COVID-19 infection.

"If you had mild respiratory symptoms from COVID-19 and were staying at home so as not to infect people, extend your quarantine for another two weeks after recovery to ensure that you don't infect other people," recommended corresponding author Lixin Xie, MD, professor, College of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing.

The authors had a special message for the medical community: "COVID-19 patients can be infectious even after their symptomatic recovery, so treat the asymptomatic/recently recovered patients as carefully as symptomatic patients."

The researchers emphasized that all of these patients had milder infections and recovered from the disease, and that the study looked at a small number of patients. They noted that it is unclear whether similar results would hold true for more vulnerable patients such as the elderly, those with suppressed immune systems and patients on immunosuppressive therapies.

"Further studies are needed to investigate if the real-time PCR-detected virus is capable of transmission in the later stages of COVID-19 infection," Dr. Xie added.

A new technique allows researchers to test how the deformation of tiny train track-like cell proteins affects their function. The findings could help clarify the roles of deformed "microtubules" in traumatic brain injuries and in neurological diseases like Parkinson's.

Microtubules are tube-like proteins that act like train tracks for other cellular proteins to move along as they transport molecular cargo. In certain diseases, they become deformed, affecting this transport process. But scientists hadn't developed an experimental set-up that allows them to properly study this.

In the study published in ACS Applied Bio Materials, biophysicist Akira Kakugo of Hokkaido University and colleagues developed a novel technique that allowed them to control microtubular deformation and observe its effects on their transportation function.

Microtubules were anchored by proteins to an elastic "microstretcher." When the microstretcher is pulled taut, the microtubules lie parallel to the surface undeformed. Gradually relaxing the microstretcher causes the microtubules to buckle.

The scientists attached motor proteins called dyneins to the microtubules. Inside cells, dyneins appear as if they are walking along microtubules while carrying cargo. In the experiment, the dyneins were conjugated to a fluorescent cargo. The scientists then observed how stretching and relaxing the microstretcher affected dynein-cargo movement along the microtubules.

They found the dynein-cargo moved faster as the microtubules began to buckle, but only up to a certain point. Once the buckling strain reached 25%, the moving proteins and their cargo began to slow down. When the microtubules were bent further, they showed complete stops. The scientists also noticed the speed of movement varied along different sections of the buckled microtubules.

The researchers theorize these altered microtubular dynamics could form the basis of their roles in regulating numerous cellular activities. They next hope to study how microtubular deformation affects the movement of another motor protein, called kinesin, over its surface.

"Our experimental set-up enables us to study the relationship between the deformation of microtubules and their biological functions," says Kakugo. "The more we understand this process, the closer we might get to designing new nature-inspired materials that can act in a similar way."

"The findings are also expected to help explain the pathology of traumatic brain injury, which mechanically stresses cells, and neurological conditions like Huntington's and Parkinson's diseases, in which microtubules are known to malfunction," Syeda Rubaiya Nasrin of the research team added.

An international collaboration led by veterinary scientists at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology (TUAT), Japan, has found that size of a dog heart affects both vortex flow and pressure difference in the heart, which both are promising as an index of diastolic function. Their findings mean that size correction of vorticity and pressure difference allows us to use these indexes in the field of pediatric and veterinary medicine.

Their findings were published in Scientific Reports on January 24th, 2020.

The heart works through 2 steps, contraction (medical term: systole, systolic) and expansion (medical term: diastole, diastolic), to circulate blood to the whole body. Diagnosis of its systolic dysfunction is relatively simple by using echocardiographic examination. In contrast, its diastolic function is far complex despite the fact that patient numbers of the systolic dysfunction are about the same as those of the diastolic dysfunction. "We have to measure the diastolic function precisely by a catheter inserted in the heart," said Ryou Tanaka, Professor in the Department of Veterinary Surgery, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, TUAT, and corresponding author of the paper. "So, we need to develop a noninvasive technique for measuring the diastolic function, which should be simple and reliable."

The heart expands using energy and acquires blood by creating a negative pressure in the heart. Blood entering the heart in response to the pressure difference creates a vortex in the left chamber. Currently, a method called Vector flow mapping (VFM) using echocardiography allows us to visualize and quantify the vortex flow in the heart. Their previous study found that the vortex flow in the left lower chamber (called the left ventricle) was stronger if the pressure was more different. Hence, both the vortex flow and the pressure difference in the left lower chamber when the heart expands could be markers for the diastolic function. It is noted that if the diastolic function becomes weaker, blood congestion tends to lead symptoms of heart failure such as shortness of breath.

"We started wondering wether or not the diastolic function of children hearts, which is much smaller than adults' hearts, could be evaluated by these 2 indexes, that is, the vorticity and the pressure difference," said Katsuhiro Matsuura, D.V.M., Ph.D, the first author of the paper and a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Veterinary Surgery of TUAT. "We then hypothesized that an additional index must be required when the heat sizes are so different. To test this hypothesis, we chose "adult dogs" instead of observing hearts of healthy children and adults," adds Matsuura. It is because the function of the heart itself changes during the growth. Dogs are very different in body size within the same species and the body weight of adult dogs is very different, for example, from 1 kg to 80 kg.

"We examined flow dynamics in the heart of 58 healthy adult dogs (1.3 to 42.3 kg in weight) by VFM. We then found that the heart size is positively correlated with the pressure difference and inversely correlated with the vortex flow," Matsuura explained. "Our findings indicate that to non-invasively diagnose cardiac function using indexes of flow dynamics the heart size should be taken into account. Now that we can extend this non-invasive method to human pediatrics and veterinary medicine, and our next step is to study fluid dynamics in diseased cases," according to Tanaka.

Aichi, Japan -- How much we value an item is often related to what other people have. You might want the newest fashion, but not once everybody has it. Or, winning a free lunch at your favorite restaurant might not seem as great if the other person won a million dollars. Now, researchers in Japan have discovered a region of the brain that controls these kinds of behaviors in monkeys.

In their study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, a team of researchers from the National Institutes of Natural Sciences in Okazaki, Japan show that when monkeys think other monkeys will be rewarded, their own rewards become less appealing. This was evident in the amount that monkeys licked their lips while waiting for their reward. The team found that licking increased the more monkeys anticipated receiving a reward and decreased as they anticipated the other monkey would receive it instead.

This behavior was reflected in the brain. As first author Atsushi Noritake explains, "We found a clear link between brain activity in the lateral hypothalamus and the licking behavior that represented subjective value of the reward." The team recorded activity from neurons as monkeys saw pictures that indicated the chance that they or another monkey would receive a reward. The scientists found that for some cells, firing rates increased with the probability of receiving the reward and decreased with the probability that the other monkey would get the reward.

A second experiment showed that the same brain region was necessary for the social observations to affect how much the monkeys valued the reward. When the scientists temporarily shut down the lateral hypothalamus using an inhibitory drug, the monkeys' licking behavior was unchanged when they anticipated receiving the reward themselves--it still increased with the chance of reward. However, the amount of licking was now unrelated to the chance of reward when they were cued that the other monkey was likely to get it.

This behavior was similar to what happened when the other monkey was prevented from getting the reward or when it was absent altogether.

"Without a functioning lateral hypothalamus, it was as if the monkeys no longer processed what they were seeing as a social situation," says team leader Masaki Isoda. "Thus, we believe that the lateral hypothalamus is necessary for shaping socially motivated behavior, perhaps in coordination with other brain areas such as the medial prefrontal cortex."

Astronomers obtained the first resolved image of disturbed gaseous clouds in a galaxy 11 billion light-years away by using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The team found that the disruption is caused by young powerful jets ejected from a supermassive black hole residing at the center of the host galaxy. This result will cast light on the mystery of the evolutionary process of galaxies in the early Universe.

It is commonly known that black holes exert strong gravitational attraction on surrounding matter. However, it is less well known that some black holes have fast-moving streams of ionized matter, called jets. In some nearby galaxies, evolved jets blow off galactic gaseous clouds, resulting in suppressed star formation. Therefore, to understand the evolution of galaxies, it is crucial to observe the interaction between black hole jets and gaseous clouds throughout cosmic history. However, it had been difficult to obtain clear evidence of such interaction, especially in the early Universe.

In order to obtain such clear evidence, the team used ALMA to observe an interesting object known as MG J0414+0534. A distinctive feature of MG J0414+0534 is that the paths of light traveling from it to Earth are significantly distorted by the gravity of another 'lensing' galaxy between MG J0414+0534 and us, causing significant magnification.

"This distortion works as a 'natural telescope' to enable a detailed view of distant objects," says Takeo Minezaki, an associate professor at the University of Tokyo.

Another feature is that MG J0414+0534 has a supermassive black hole with bipolar jets at the center of the host galaxy. The team was able to reconstruct the 'true' image of gaseous clouds as well as the jets in MG J0414+0534 by carefully accounting for the gravitational effects exerted by the intervening lensing galaxy.

"Combining this cosmic telescope and ALMA's high-resolution observations, we obtained exceptionally sharp vision, that is 9,000 times better than human eyesight," adds Kouichiro Nakanishi, a project associate professor at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan/SOKENDAI. "With this extremely high resolution, we were able to obtain the distribution and motion of gaseous clouds around jets ejected from a supermassive black hole."

Thanks to such a superior resolution, the team found that gaseous clouds along the jets have violent motion with speeds as high as 600 km/s, showing clear evidence of impacted gas. Moreover, it turned out that the size of the impacted gaseous clouds and the jets are much smaller than the typical size of a galaxy at this age.

"We are perhaps witnessing the very early phase of jet evolution in the galaxy," says Satoki Matsushita, a research fellow at Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics. "It could be as early as several tens of thousands of years after the launch of the jets."

"MG J0414+0534 is an excellent example because of the youth of the jets," summarizes Kaiki Inoue, a professor at Kindai University, Japan, and the lead author of the research paper which appeared in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. "We found telltale evidence of significant interaction between jets and gaseous clouds even in the very early evolutionary phase of jets. I think that our discovery will pave the way for a better understanding of the evolutionary process of galaxies in the early Universe."

Researchers from the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) have launched a new database to advance the international research efforts studying COVID-19.

The publicly-available, free-to-use resource (https://covid.crg.eu) can be used by researchers from around the world to study how different variations of the virus grow, mutate and make proteins.

"Scientists are working round the clock to understand SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19, so that we can find its weak spots and beat it. A huge amount of scientific data is being published around the world," says Eva Novoa, a researcher at the CRG in Barcelona.

"However, some of the technologies we use to study SARS-CoV-2, such as nanopore RNA sequencing, are so new that the results of one paper aren't comparable to another due to the patchwork of different standards and methodologies used. We are taking all this data and analyzing it so that it meets a more universally comparable standard. This will help researchers more quickly and accurately spot the strengths and weaknesses of the coronavirus."

To understand how the coronavirus grows, mutates and replicates, scientists have to sequence the RNA of COVID-19. The RNA sequence reveals crucial information about the proteins the virus makes to invade human cells and replicate, which in turn informs governments on the infectiousness and severity of the pandemic.

Traditional sequencing tools can take a long time to provide results. In recent years, sequencing data in real time has become a reality thanks to the use of nanopore sequencing technologies, revolutionizing genomics research and disease outbreak monitoring. Nanopore sequencing provides scientists and clinicians with immediate access to the DNA and RNA sequence information of any living cell in real-time, enabling a rapid response against the threat of a pandemic.

However, the raw data produced by nanopore sequencing is highly complex. Scientists and clinicians currently lack systematic guidelines for the reproducible analysis of the data, limiting the vast potential of the nascent technology.

To standardize the analysis of publicly available SARS-CoV-2 nanopore sequencing data, researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona are using MasterOfPores, a computer program developed by the group of Eva Novoa and CRG Bioinformatics Unit. The software was first described last week in Frontiers in Genetics.

"The internet and an increasing culture of open science, data sharing and preprints have transformed the research landscape. Infrastructure that would take months to set up to research an emerging virus can now be done in just a few days owing to novel scientific computing approaches," says Julia Ponomarenko, Head of the Bioinformatics Unit at the CRG.

MasterOfPores can be executed on any Unix-compatible OS on a computer, cluster or cloud without the need of installing any additional software or dependencies, and is freely available in Github. The publicly-available, free-to-use resource has currently analysed 3TB of SARS-CoV-2 nanopore RNA sequencing data. The CRG researchers will continue to update the resource with new data as soon as it becomes available.

Researchers from North Carolina State University and the Army Research Office have demonstrated a new model of how competing pieces of information spread in online social networks and the Internet of Things (IoT). The findings could be used to disseminate accurate information more quickly, displacing false information about anything from computer security to public health.

"Whether in the IoT or on social networks, there are many circumstances where old information is circulating and could cause problems - whether it's old security data or a misleading rumor," says Wenye Wang, co-author of a paper on the work and a professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State. "Our work here includes a new model and related analysis of how new data can displace old data in these networks."

"Ultimately, our work can be used to determine the best places to inject new data into a network so that the old data can be eliminated faster," says Jie Wang, a postdoctoral researcher at NC State and first author of the paper.

In their paper, the researchers show that a network's size plays a significant role in how quickly "good" information can displace "bad" information. However, a large network is not necessarily better or worse than a small one. Instead, the speed at which good data travels is primarily affected by the network's structure.

A highly interconnected network can disseminate new data very quickly. And the larger the network, the faster the new data will travel.

However, in networks that are connected primarily by a limited number of key nodes, those nodes serve as bottlenecks. As a result, the larger this type of network is, the slower the new data will travel.

The researchers also identified an algorithm that can be used to assess which point in a network would allow you to spread new data throughout the network most quickly.

"Practically speaking, this could be used to ensure that an IoT network purges old data as quickly as possible and is operating with new, accurate data," Wenye Wang says.

"But these findings are also applicable to online social networks, and could be used to facilitate the spread of accurate information regarding subjects that affect the public," says Jie Wang. "For example, we think it could be used to combat misinformation online."

The discovery of a new species of dromaeosaurid -- a family of generally small to medium-sized feathered carnivores that lived during the Cretaceous Period -- is reported in Scientific Reports this week. The fossil furthers our understanding of dinosaur evolution during the Late Cretaceous (70-68 million years ago).

Steven Jasinski and colleagues discovered 20 identifiable skeletal elements of the new dromaeosaurid in deposits of the Ojo Alamo Formation in the San Juan Basin, New Mexico, USA. The dinosaur has been named Dineobellator notohesperus from the Navajo word Diné (Navajo people) and the Latin word bellator (warrior). The authors report a number of unique features, including vertebrae near the base of the tail that curved inwards, which could have increased Dineobellator's agility and improved its predation success. A gouge mark on the fossil's large sickle-shaped claw may have been inflicted during an altercation with another Dineobellator or other theropod such as Tyrannosaurus rex, they speculate.

Phylogenetic analyses of relationships between species suggest that Dineobellator may be part of the Velociraptorinae subfamily, which also includes velociraptors. Ancestors of Dineobellator are thought to have migrated from Asia to North America where multiple lineages may have evolved, potentially accounting for differences in morphology between Dineobellator and other dromaeosaurids.

The findings, which contribute to the sparse fossil record of dromaeosaurids, indicate that this family was still diversifying at the end of the Cretaceous period prior to the mass extinction that wiped out non-avian dinosaurs 65.5 million years ago.

Neanderthals slurping seashells by the seashore? This scene may startle those accustomed to imagining Homo neanderthalensis as a people of cold climes who hunted large herbivores. Yet an international team including scientists from three laboratories affiliated with the CNRS and partner institutions* have just demonstrated that Neanderthals hunted, fished, and gathered prodigious volumes of seafood and other marine animals: they discovered remains of molluscs, crustaceans, fish, birds, and mammals in a Portuguese cave (Figueira Brava) occupied by Neanderthals between 106,000 and 86,000 BCE. The diversity of marine food resources found there even exceeds that observed at other, much more recent Portuguese sites, dated to 9,000-7,500 BCE. The team's findings, published in Science (27 March 2020), suggest that many Neanderthal groups--living in Mediterranean climates far from the mammoth hunts of the frigid steppes--shared these dietary habitats.

The first significant evidence of marine resource use among Europe's Neanderthals is detailed in a new report, demonstrating a level of marine adaptation previously only seen in their contemporary modern humans living in southern Africa. The results further close the behavioral gap once thought to separate modern humans from their closest evolutionary cousins. For modern humans, coastal adaptations are widely recognized as having roots in southern Africa and dating as far back as ~160 thousand years ago (kya). Whether Neanderthals shared a similar interest in the sea's cuisine is debated. Some suggest that the consumption of the seafood and the brain-boosting fatty acids seafood contains enhanced cognitive development in early modern humans, allowing for the wide variety of technological and cultural innovations that blossomed during the Middle Stone Age (MSA), a period spanning 200-25 kya. This in turn allowed our species to expand out of Africa and outcompete coeval hominins. Archaeological evidence of Neanderthal coastal adaptation, meanwhile, is virtually unknown. João Zilhão and colleagues report on recent excavations at the Figueira Brava site on Portugal's coast, which revealed a uniquely preserved record of intense, systematic and long-term coastal resource use by Neanderthals during the Last Interglacial. The seaside site was dated to roughly 106-86 kya and contained middens rich in marine and terrestrial food remains. According to Zilhão et al., Figueira Brava's occupants relied on the sea in a scale comparable to the modern humans of MSA Africa. The results suggest that fisher-hunter-gatherers were widespread and likely relied on the sea earlier than previously thought. The lack of supporting evidence on this to date, they say, is likely a result of Pleistocene sea level-rise, which inundated similar sites across coastal Europe. Manuel Will discusses the study further in a related Perspective.