Culture

Alexandria, Va., USA - Walter Siqueira, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada, presented the poster "Self-collected Saliva and Courier Service - A Feasible Diagnostic Strategy for COVID-19" at the virtual 99th General Session & Exhibition of the International Association for Dental Research (IADR), held in conjunction with the 50th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Dental Research (AADR) and the 45th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association for Dental Research (CADR), on July 21-24, 2021.

Saliva has been proposed as a convenient and cost-effective biofluid for diagnostic purposes and in vitro studies have shown that the addition of stabilizers to saliva preserves it for up to 7-10 days at room temperature, but its translational application has never been tested. In this study Siqueira, CADR President and 2019 recipient of the IADR Distinguished Scientist Salivary Research Award, and colleagues tested the feasibility of saliva self-collection and large-scale mailing to a laboratory for further analysis in a sample of subjects distributed widely across Canada. Licensed dentists were enrolled in a prospective cohort study and were asked to collect 1.5 mL of saliva every four weeks for a 12-month period, place the sample tube in a biohazard transportation bag and ship the sample to the University of Saskatchewan.

The results of this ongoing study demonstrate the feasibility of saliva self-collection and mailing from multiple distant areas of Canada to a laboratory for valid analyses. This is the first study dealing with a large-scale saliva collection and shipping protocol and this approach represents an important strategy for the development of timely salivary diagnostic platforms.

View this poster presentation in the IADR General Session Virtual Experience Platform.

To reach the target of carbon neutral, a transition from fossil energy to renewable energy generation is indispensable. Photovoltaic technology is considered as one of the most prominent sources of renewable energy. For decades, about 90% of global solar cell market has been dominated by silicon solar cells. Although the price of silicon solar panels decreases year by year, it is a big challenge to significantly reduce its manufacturing cost further. Hence, next-generation photovoltaic technologies are in urgent need of new materials and novel techniques. Recently, metal halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have attracted extensive attention from both academia and industry, due to their excellent photoelectric conversion efficiency and great commercial potential.

Metal halide perovskite materials can be easily synthesized in solution at low-temperature and deposited into thin-film through a variety of printing method. Recently, many reviews have been published on the topic of perovskite film deposition techniques/mechanisms, such as solvent engineering and additives-engineering, whereas discussions about ink engineering for printing high-quality perovskite films as well as other function layers are few.

In this article, the authors provide a systematical overview of applicable printing technologies that can be possibly used for scaling-up PSCs. The authors consider the ink engineering is the key issue to achieve high quality thin films for efficient solar cells. Therefore, they mainly focus on the perspective of perovskite precursor ink formula and additives on controlling the film formation process. They analyze the potential physical and chemical mechanisms of the nucleation and crystallization process during the printing. For the additives in the printing of PSCs, the authors discuss the effect of additives for the film formation process, the microstructure and defect population.

Moreover, they also present the technical feasibility of printing the other layers besides perovskite layers, including hole transporting layers (HTL) and electron transporting layers (ETL), which might enable a rapid and mass production of PSCs. Finally, they introduce the recent progress of roll-to-roll (R2R) printing and the stability issues of perovskite modules, and give a prospect of mass production of perovskite solar modules in the near future.

PHILADELPHIA--Investing in structural home repairs in historically segregated, low-income, Black and Latino neighborhoods has been associated with reduced crime rates. In Philadelphia, when a home received repairs through a city-funded program, total crime dropped by 21.9% on that block, and as the number of repaired houses on a block increased, instances of crime fell even further, according to research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania published today in JAMA Network Open.

In an effort to address an old housing stock and high levels of historical disinvestment in Philadelphia, the city implemented the Basic Systems Repair Program (BSRP) in 1995, which repairs structural damages to the homes of low-income owners, such as replacing an exterior wall to stop leaking, or electrical repairs that include replacing circuits that overheat, spark, or won't stay on, causing inconsistent heating and unreliable electricity. The majority of BSRP homes are in Black and Latino neighborhoods. Researchers hypothesized that over time these micro-investments would have an impact on community health, including crime.

Using BSRP data from 2006 through 2013, researchers determined that 13,632 houses on 6,732 blocks in Philadelphia received BSRP repairs. They then merged crime data - which included instances of homicide, assault, burglary, theft, robbery, disorderly conduct, and public drunkenness - from the Philadelphia Police Department with BSRP data to create a database that allowed them to understand the impact of BSRP investment on crime in every block across the city over time. This data revealed lower instances of all crime, including homicide, on blocks with a single BSRP-repaired home compared to blocks that were eligible for a BSRP-repaired home but did not get the intervention. With each additional repaired home, instances of crime on that block declined further.

"We can now add structural home repairs to the growing list of place-based neighborhood interventions with strong evidence that they can help reduce violent crime," said lead author Eugenia South, MD, MSHP, an assistant professor of Emergency Medicine and Faculty Director of the Penn Urban Health Lab. "Violent crime is out of control in many cities across the country right now and policy makers should prioritize funding for structural, scalable, and sustainable interventions such as the BSRP that address the lasting scars of historical disinvestment in Black neighborhoods."

The root causes of violent crime in Black urban neighborhoods are structural, including historical racial segregation, concentrated poverty, lack of economic opportunity, and deterioration of the neighborhood's physical conditions - houses in disrepair, blighted vacant lots, and a lack of greenspace. What's more, the health implications of violence exposure are vast and include increased depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and cardiovascular disease.

"There is a critical need to invest in the housing stock in cities across the U.S, particularly in majority Black neighborhood that have not received such investment for far too long, if ever," said senior author Vincent Raina PhD, an Associate Professor of Planning and Urban Economics and the Faculty Director of the Housing Initiative at Penn. "This research shows that even small investments in housing stabilization benefit both those homeowners who live in homes that receive support and the blocks and neighborhoods in which they live through crime reduction."

The research teams says that programs like BSRP are small relative to housing needs, and are not the sole solution to addressing years of systemic racial discrimination in public and private investments and lending in housing, but they are emblematic of the positive impact that a more robust and comprehensive public and private response to systemic racial inequities in housing and neighborhood investments can have.

"Stable housing is important for creating and maintaining safe and functioning neighborhoods," says David Thomas, CEO of Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation (PHDC). "For over 40 years BSRP has helped individuals and families relieve what can be overwhelming financial and mental pressure that occurs when you need necessary housing repairs but lack resources. The program has also helped reduce homelessness by keeping persons in their homes, preserve blocks and communities, and reduce blight."

"Just as there is no one cause of crime there is no one solution," said Mayor Jim Kenney. "Investing in our neighborhoods, as we do with PHDC's BSRP program, strengthens those neighborhoods and, as we see in this study, reduces crime. Our challenge is to continue to find new approaches and resources to supporting community investment for programs like BSRP that stabilize communities."

Commonly accepted advice to keep a straight back and squat while lifting in order to avoid back pain has been challenged by new Curtin University research.

The research examined people who had regularly performed manual lifting through their occupation for more than five years and found those who experienced low back pain as a result were more likely to use the recommended technique of squatting and keeping a straight back, while those without back pain tended not to adhere to the recommended lifting advice.

Lead researcher PhD candidate Nic Saraceni from the Curtin School of Allied Health said the study required participants to each perform 100 lifts using two differently weighted boxes, with researchers observing and measuring their action.

"We found those with low back pain were more likely to lift with a slower, less flexed low back and a more squat-like technique," Mr Saraceni said.

"While both groups lifted using a more comparable technique at the end of the 100 lifts, the low back pain group still demonstrated a tendency to perform a slower and more squat-like lift throughout the task.

"These findings are the opposite of what is expected to occur according to existing advice on correct lifting techniques."

Research supervisor John Curtin Distinguished Professor Peter O'Sullivan, also from the Curtin School of Allied Health, said although the study did not reveal why people with low back pain lift with a more squat-like action, the findings were in line with previous research showing people with low back pain lift in a manner that society perceives to be correct or 'protective' of them.

"It is likely 'a one size fits all' approach to preventing and managing lifting-related low back pain does not exist, rather a more individualised approach may be required, which may be the subject of future research," Professor O'Sullivan said.

"Common assumptions that people who experience low back pain during lifting do so in a way that is 'incorrect' were not supported by our research and this raises questions about current advice regarding 'safe lifting'.

Over the past six months, the World Health Organization has categorized four SARS-CoV-2 variants as being "of concern" because they are more transmissible or may escape the immune response. They have been termed the Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta variants. Scientists from the Institut Pasteur, in collaboration with the French National Health Insurance Fund (CNAM), Ipsos and Santé publique France, conducted a nationwide case-control study to evaluate the effectiveness of mRNA vaccines against symptomatic forms of SARS-CoV-2 infection, be that non-variant virus or the Alpha and Beta variants. The results show that the two-dose vaccination regimen of mRNA vaccines provides 88% protection against non-variant virus, 86% against the Alpha variant and 77% against the Beta variant. The results of this study were published in The Lancet Regional Health Europe on July 14, 2021.

In late 2020, two new variants of SARS-CoV-2 were reported in the United Kingdom and in South Africa, respectively. This occurred at a time when the United Kingdom was experiencing a resurgence in the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infections. This was later attributed to the emergence of the Alpha variant, which has now demonstrated increased transmissibility as compared to the original SARS-CoV-2. The Beta variant was first reported in South Africa and later identified to carry a mutation known as E484K and which is associated with immune evasion. The reporting of the first SARS-CoV-2 variants occurred as mass COVID-19 vaccination campaigns were commencing at global level. In France, both Alpha and Beta were circulating in the first months of 2021. It was therefore important to analyze the effectiveness of the messenger RNA (mRNA) COVID-19 vaccines against these SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern.

In October 2020, the Institut Pasteur, in collaboration with the French National Health Insurance Fund (CNAM), Ipsos and Santé publique France, launched the ComCor study, a case-control study at national level to analyze the sociodemographic, behavioral and practical factors associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection. All those infected with SARS-CoV-2 were invited to take part in the study by the CNAM, while non-infected control were identified through an Ipsos representative panel. The first results of the study were published in The Lancet Regional Health on June 7, 2021 (press release here).

In February 2021, the scientists adapted the ComCor questionnaire to add information about vaccination against COVID-19, previous SARS-CoV-2 infection and information on the variants responsible for infection, provided as part of test results. This information was used to assess the effectiveness of two doses of mRNA vaccine against the Alpha and Beta variants, and to evaluate the protection conferred by previous SARS-CoV-2 infection.

In this study, 7,288 people infected with the original strain, 31,313 people infected with the Alpha variant, 2,550 people infected with the Beta variant and 3,644 non-infected controls were included between February and May 2021. The study enabled the scientists to demonstrate that two doses of mRNA vaccine conferred 88% (81-92) effectiveness against infection with original virus, 86% (81-90) effectiveness against infection with the Alpha variant and 77% (71-90) effectiveness against infection with the Beta variant, as measured seven days after the second dose. No difference in vaccine effectiveness was found between different categories of age, sex or occupational exposure.

"There was much expectation surrounding the (vaccine effectiveness) results for the Beta variant, known for its E484K mutation associated with immune evasion. Our estimate of 77% protection is very close to the estimate of 75% reached by the only other study worldwide to have evaluated the effectiveness of mRNA vaccines against this variant. These analyses confirm the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines and the key role that they have to play in tackling the epidemic," explains Arnaud Fontanet, Head of the Epidemiology of Emerging Diseases Unit at the Institut Pasteur and Professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM).

Another important finding of the study related to previous SARS-CoV-2 infection. The scientists demonstrated that recent infection (in the past 2 to 6 months) confers similar protection to that observed with mRNA vaccines.

The analyses will now be extended to estimate vaccine effectiveness against the Delta variant, which has been the dominant variant in France since early July 2021.

The ComCor project is funded by REACTing, the Fondation de France via the "All United Against Coronavirus" alliance, and the Institut Pasteur. It was recently awarded the CAPNET "national research priority" label.

Tsukuba, Japan - Rice is the world's most commonly grown and consumed crop. It also supports lives and livelihoods, especially in low- and middle-income regions. As such, methods for securing abundant and profitable rice harvests are key in global food security.

The System of Rice Intensification (SRI) offers a repeatable, sustainable system for increasing rice yields. It brings together fundamental planting and harvesting techniques such as strategically spacing plants, minimizing water, and transplanting seedlings. These practices can be repeated in varying conditions. While SRI has been around since the mid-1980s, need persists for evidence to back its merits and distinguish its techniques.

New findings published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics now give much-needed evidence of SRI, following its diffusion to more than 5,000 Bangladeshi farmers. SRI training was introduced and evaluated among the rice farmers in a similar manner to a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in medicine. Certain communities were trained while others were not. This created a pure control group, similar to those who receive a placebo or receiving nothing in an RCT. That in turn allowed compelling comparisons, along with insights into related effects of the training.

Professor Abdul Malek of the University of Tsukuba (Japan), together with international colleagues including Asad Islam (Monash University), Christopher Barrett (Cornell University), Marcel Fafchamps (Stanford University), and Debayan Pakrashi (Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur), conducted these randomized introductions of SRI in Bangladesh and studied them from agricultural and social angles. The core of the researchers' work was two RCTs in 2014-2015 and 2015-2016.

"To a large degree, we already know SRI delivers good yields, among other advantages. Some have, however, questioned its uniqueness and results, so there is continued need for evidence to support it," Professor Malek says. "By randomizing a large cohort of farmers, we have been able to look at both SRI's quantifiable economic benefits and the qualitative benefits of disseminating this agronomic training and knowledge."

Among the results, SRI led to rice yield and profit increases of 14%-17% and 22%-31%, respectively. Household well-being was also found to be higher for farmers in training communities vs. those without training. Additionally, a spillover effect was seen as untrained farmers in training communities also gained exposure to SRI practices.

In two previous studies published as Fafchamps, etal (2021 and 2020) available at respectively: lhab009, https://doi.org/10.1093/wber/lhab009 and https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387818314913
, Professor Malek and colleagues elaborated on these knock-on benefits of this training. His research teams used the trials to show (1) the efficacy of introductory referrals to training and (2) the cost advantages of peer-to-peer transmission of knowledge acquired. The latest work corroborates the overall findings in a broader scope to give valuable evidence of training and of SRI itself.

"We've covered a great deal of ground in verifying how SRI boosts productivity and farmers' well-being," Professor Malek says. "We've also seen how knowledge is transferred among trained farmers. This may help settle intense debates around SRI as a tool for boosting rice productivity and rice farmers' well-being. It also offers a great deal of promise for agronomy in the Global South."

A new study of almost 12,000 Australians has found one-third of the adult population has experienced pure cybercrime during their lifetime, with 14% reporting this disruption to network systems in the past 12 months.

With all forms of cybercrime already costing trillions every year globally, experts from the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) and Flinders University say the crimes involved substantial levels of personal victimisation including direct losses as well as the high cost of preventing future attacks.

A pre-COVID-19 snapshot of the cost of 'pure cybercrime' in 2019 has found an approximate total economic hit of $3.5 billion - comprising $1.4 billion spent on prevention costs, $1.9 billion in money directly lost by victims and $597 million spent dealing with the consequences of victimisation.

With only about $389 million recovered by victims - barely paying for the cost of dealing with the incidents - the survey estimated about 2.8 million Australians had been hit within the past year and nearly 6.7 million Australian adults could have been victims at any time in the past.

Only a small proportion of financial losses are recovered by victims.

'Pure cybercrime' activities include hacking, spreading viruses and other malware, and distributed denial-of-service attacks. While this involves crimes against machines and networks, it is estimated other forms of cyber-enabled identity crime cost Australian government agencies, individuals and businesses additional sums of more than $3bn a year.

"Pure cybercrime is a highly profitable criminal activity and results in substantial financial losses to Australians," says Flinders University Professor Russell Smith, who also warns of a potential rise in online fraud as a result of opportunities for dishonesty created by COVID-19-related economic disruptions.

"On current information, as cybercriminals become more sophisticated, it's clear the need for additional expenditure on prevention will need to increase.

"Equally, it is imperative that the financial harms associated with cybercrime are assessed so that resources for prevention and response activities can be targeted most effectively, and a baseline can be developed against which to measure the impact of future policy responses," Professor Smith says.

A 2018-2019 investigation into identity crime (Smith & Franks 2020) found a cost of $3.1 billion to Commonwealth entities, state and territory agencies (including police), individuals and businesses - most of which, but not all, was a consequence of cyber-enabled identity crime.

Cyber-enabled offences use technology to make conventional crimes such as identity theft, fraud, stalking and harassment easier to commit and with a lower risk of detection.

"Cybercrime is a growing, borderless and continually evolving body of crimes which can threaten individuals, businesses, government and national security," says lead author in the new AIC publication,' Mr Coen Teunissen.

"This study represents the first large-scale Australian study of pure cybercrime prevalence and financial harm.

"Importantly, this is a conservative estimate, as many victims were unable to report how much they had lost or how much they had spent dealing with the consequences of cybercrime. This also excludes the cost to business and government from pure cybercrime," Mr Teunissen says.

Researchers from the Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Interdisciplinary Research Group (IRG) at Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT's research enterprise in Singapore, alongside collaborators from Biobot Analytics, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), have successfully developed an innovative, open-source molecular detection method that is able to detect and quantify the B.1.1.7 (Alpha) variant of SARS-CoV-2. The breakthrough paves the way for rapid, inexpensive surveillance of other SARS-CoV-2 variants in wastewater.

As the world continues to battle and contain COVID-19, the recent identification of SARS-CoV-2 variants with higher transmissibility and increased severity has made the development of convenient variant tracking methods essential. Currently, identified variants include the B.1.17 (Alpha) variant first identified in the United Kingdom and the B.1.617.2 (Delta) variant first detected in India.

Wastewater surveillance has emerged as a critical public health tool to safely and efficiently track the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in a non-intrusive manner, providing complementary information that enables health authorities to acquire actionable community-level information. Most recently, viral fragments of SARS-CoV-2 were detected in housing estates in Singapore through a proactive wastewater surveillance programme. This information, alongside surveillance testing, allowed Singapore's Ministry of Health (MOH) to swiftly respond, isolate and conduct swab tests as part of precautionary measures.

However, detecting variants through wastewater surveillance is less commonplace due to challenges in existing technology. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) for wastewater surveillance is time-consuming and expensive. They also lack the sensitivity required to detect low variant abundances in dilute and mixed wastewater samples due to inconsistent and/or low sequencing coverage.

The method developed by the researchers is uniquely tailored to address these challenges and expands the utility of wastewater surveillance beyond testing for SARS-CoV-2, towards tracking the spread of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern. Dr Wei Lin Lee, Research Scientist at SMART AMR and first author on the paper added, "This is especially important in countries battling SARS-CoV-2 variants. Wastewater surveillance will help find out the true proportion and spread of the variants in the local communities. Our method is sensitive enough to detect variants in highly diluted SARS-CoV-2 concentrations typically seen in wastewater samples, and produces reliable results even for samples which contain multiple SARS-CoV-2 lineages."

Led by Associate Professor Janelle Thompson of NTU, and MIT Professor and SMART AMR Principal Investigator Eric Alm, the team's research "Quantitative SARS-CoV-2 Alpha variant B.1.1.7 Tracking in Wastewater by Allele-Specific RT-qPCR" has been published in prestigious journal, Environmental Science & Technology Letters. The research explains the innovative, open-source molecular detection method based on allele-specific RT-qPCR that detects and quantifies the B.1.1.7 (Alpha) variant. The developed assay, tested and validated in wastewater samples across 19 communities in the US, is able to reliably detect and quantify low levels of the B.1.1.7 (Alpha) variant with low cross-reactivity, and at variant proportions down to 1% in a background of mixed SARS-CoV-2 viruses.

Targeting spike protein mutations that are highly predictive of the B.1.1.7 (Alpha) variant, the method can be implemented using commercially available RT-qPCR protocols. Unlike commercially available products that use proprietary primers and probes for wastewater surveillance, the paper details the open-source method and its development that can be freely used by other organisations and research institutes for their work on wastewater surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 and its variants.

The breakthrough by the research team in Singapore is currently utilised by Biobot Analytics, a global leader in wastewater epidemiology headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the US, serving states and localities throughout the country. Using the method, Biobot Analytics is able to accept and analyse wastewater samples for the B.1.1.7 (Alpha) variant and plans to add additional variants to its analysis as methods are developed.

"Using the team's innovative method, we have been able to monitor the B.1.1.7 (Alpha) variant in local populations in the US - empowering leaders with information about COVID-19 trends in their communities and allowing them to make considered recommendations and changes to control measures," said Dr Mariana Matus, Biobot Analytics CEO and Cofounder.

The SMART AMR team is also currently developing specific assays that will be able to detect and quantify the B.1.617.2 (Delta) variant, which has recently been identified as a variant of concern by the World Health Organisation.

"This method can be rapidly adapted to detect new variants of concern beyond B.1.1.7," said co-corresponding author Professor Eric Alm of MIT and Principal Investigator at SMART AMR. "Our partnership with Biobot Analytics has translated our research into real-world impact beyond the shores of Singapore and aid in the detection of COVID-19 and its variants, serving as an early warning system and guidance for policymakers as they trace infection clusters and consider suitable public health measures."

THE IDEA

Vanderbilt astrophysicist Karan Jani has led a series of studies that make the first case for a gravitational wave infrastructure on the surface of the moon. The experiment, dubbed Gravitational-Wave Lunar Observatory for Cosmology, uses the moon's environment and geocentric orbit to analyze mergers of black holes, neuron stars and dark matter candidates within almost 70 percent of the entire observable volume of the universe, he said.

"By tapping into the natural conditions on the moon, we showed that one of the most challenging spectrum of gravitational waves can be measured better from the lunar surface, which so far seems impossible from Earth or space," Jani said.

WHY IT MATTERS

"The moon offers an ideal backdrop for the ultimate gravitational wave observatory, since it lacks an atmosphere and noticeable seismic noise, which we must mitigate at great cost for laser interferometers on Earth," said Avi Loeb, professor of science at Harvard University and bestselling author of books about black holes, the first stars, the search for extraterrestrial life and the future of the universe. "A lunar observatory would provide unprecedented sensitivity for discovering sources that we do not anticipate and that could inform us of new physics. GLOC could be the jewel in the crown of science on the surface of the moon."

This work comes as NASA revives its Artemis program, which aims to send the first woman and the next man to the moon as early as 2024. Ongoing commercial work by aerospace companies, including SpaceX and BlueOrigin, also has added to the momentum behind planning for ambitious scientific infrastructure on the surface of the moon.

WHAT'S NEXT

"In the coming years, we hope to develop a pathfinder mission on the moon to test the technologies of GLOC," Jani said. "Unlike space missions that last only a few years, the great investment benefit of GLOC is it establishes a permanent base on the moon from where we can study the universe for generations, quite literally the entirety of this century." Currently the observatory is theoretical, with Jani and Loeb receiving a strong endorsement from the international gravitational-wave community.

"It was a great privilege to collaborate with an innovative young thinker like Karan Jani," Loeb said. "He may live long enough to witness the project come to fruition."

SARS-CoV-2 still poses major challenges to mankind. The frequent emergence of mutant forms makes the threat posed by the virus difficult to predict. The SARS-CoV-2 variant B.1.617 circulated in India and gave rise to the Delta variant, B.1.617.2, which is now becoming dominant in many countries. Infection researchers from the German Primate Center (DPZ) - Leibniz Institute for Primate Research in Göttingen have investigated the B.1.617 variant in detail. In cell culture studies, they found that this variant can infect certain lung and intestinal cell lines more efficiently than the original virus. The researchers also demonstrated that B.1.617 is less sensitive to inhibition by antibodies present in the blood of convalescent or vaccinated individuals and resistant to a therapeutic antibody used for COVID-19 treatment. These properties may enable B.1.617 and its subtypes to rapidly spread in the human population, thereby increasing the risk of incompletely vaccinated individuals and individuals with declining immune protection to become infected (Cell Reports).

The spike protein is embedded in the viral envelope and facilitates SARS-CoV-2 entry into host cells. Without the activity of the spike protein the virus cannot replicate in the human body. The currently known virus variants harbor different mutations in the spike protein, some of which make it easier for them to infect host cells and evade the immune system of infected individuals. The B.1.617 variant carries eight different mutations in the spike protein, including two within the receptor binding domain, which is essential for viral attachment to cells and represents the main target for neutralizing antibodies.

A team led by Markus Hoffmann and Stefan Pöhlmann, infection researchers at the German Primate Center, and including scientists from the University Hospital of Göttingen, the University of Erlangen and the Hannover Medical School, investigated how the mutations impact the ability of the B.1.617 variant to enter host cells and how efficiently the antibody response in vaccinated and recovered individuals inhibits this variant.

First, the researchers analyzed entry of the B.1.617 variant into different human cell lines. In two cell lines derived from lung and colon, respectively, they detected a 50 percent increase in the virus' entry efficiency.

The researchers also investigated the efficacy of four different therapeutic antibodies that have been approved for the treatment of COVID-19 patients. They found that the B.1.617 variant was completely resistant against one of these antibodies and slightly less inhibited by another antibody.

In a third step, the scientists tested the efficacy of antibodies from the blood of recovered and vaccinated individuals. Here, they found a two- to threefold reduction in protection against the B.1.617 variant.

"Our study shows that this virus variant can infect lung and intestinal cells more efficiently, suggesting increased viral fitness," Markus Hoffmann, lead author of the study, summarizes the results. "In addition, the protective effect of antibodies is limited because they block the cell entry of B.1.617 less efficiently than that of the original virus. As a result, individuals who are not fully vaccinated or were infected a long time ago and thus produce low amounts of antibodies, may be poorly protected against infection with the B.1.617 variant.

Stefan Pöhlmann, Head of the Infection Biology Unit at the DPZ adds: "In order to prevent further spread of the B.1.617 variant, especially its subtype Delta, and to prevent the emergence of new virus variants it is advisable to quickly achieve full immunization of all people that are willing to be vaccinated. It is also necessary to investigate whether booster vaccinations with existing vaccines or vaccines optimized to target variants provide long-lasting and broad protection."

A high proportion of staff working in intensive care units during the COVID-19 pandemic have experienced mental health conditions, according to a new study.

In a study of 515 healthcare staff working in intensive care units (ICUs) across seven countries, the researchers found that on average 48 percent of participants showed signs of mental health conditions - depression, insomnia and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Their mental health was assessed using a detailed questionnaire and a clinical scoring system.

The team also found a 40 per cent increase in the conditions for those who spent more than six hours in personal protective equipment (PPE) over a course of a day, compared to those who didn't.

The study, led by researchers at Imperial College London, is published in the British Journal of Nursing and is the first to evaluate ICU workers' mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. In line with the UK Government's report on burnout in NHS staff published in June 2021, the researchers suggest that the high level of mental health conditions found among the ICU staff surveyed should inform local and national wellbeing policies.

Dr Ahmed Ezzat, lead author of the study and Honorary Clinical Fellow at Imperial College London, said:

"This is a timely study which acts as a stark reminder of the personal challenges healthcare staff are facing as a result of COVID-19. As within wider society, mental illness of healthcare staff still remains a taboo subject for some.

"Recent public campaigns have started the conversation, but we have a long way to go. COVID-19 has acutely exacerbated the issue, and our concern is how staff resilience has been exhausted and what national medium or long term resources are set in place by policy makers to safeguard this workforce from severe mental illness.

"We have an opportunity to hold a national dialogue of healthcare leaders, stakeholders and governments around the world to address mental health within healthcare."

Dr Matthieu Komorowski, senior author of the study and Clinical Senior Lecturer in the Department of Surgery and Cancer at Imperial College London, said:

"The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the physical and mental health of healthcare workers around the world. The large number of patients admitted to hospital at the height of the pandemic has put considerable demand and pressure on ICUs and staff. Although there has been much reporting on the mental health of frontline workers there has been little done to assess the impact of the pandemic on those who were treating the sickest patients in ICU.

"This study shows the impact of working in ICU on staff's mental health. We saw high levels of depression, insomnia and PTSD. Factors such as individual isolation, loss of social support during lockdown, combined with a change in work pattern may have exacerbated these conditions.

"Work related stress is well documented in healthcare workers and this has been worsened by the COVID-19 crisis. The results of this study suggest that all ICU staff should have access to early and effective mental health assistance as part of a wider staff health and wellbeing strategy. This is especially pressing as hospitals and governments prepare their workforce for potential further surges of COVID-19 patients."

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic there were large intakes of patients admitted to ICUs, exceeding capacity. To manage demand, many hospitals have had to increase the ICU workforce via staff redeployment, with staff required to undertake duties that require different skills from their normal roles.

Although the mental health burden in healthcare workers caused by COVID-19 has gained increasing attention, there has been a lack of data, especially relating to healthcare workers in ICU.

The researchers wanted to examine whether critical care staff experienced adverse mental health in a similar way to frontline healthcare workers, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The team recruited 515 healthcare workers working in ICUs in May 2020. They covered a range of roles such as nurses, junior and senior doctors, healthcare assistants and physiotherapists. Participants were from the UK (73), France (309), Italy (31), Taiwan (29), Belgium (2), Egypt (3) and China (68). They were recruited by word of mouth, emails and social media platforms.

Using a detailed questionnaire, the team asked participants questions on their wellbeing and anxieties. They then scored their responses using three different grading systems used in clinical settings to identify depression, PTSD and insomnia. The team found that across the various countries explored, 37 percent of respondents exceeded the threshold for signs of depression, 78 for insomnia and 28 percent for PTSD.

The team also identified an increase in the scores in those who spent more than six hours in PPE over a course of a day. On average, there was a 40 percent increase in the depression score for those spending over six hours in PPE compared to those who didn't and a 23 per cent increase in the insomnia and PTSD scores, suggesting that mental health conditions amplify with longer time spent in PPE.

The authors also found that 57 percent of respondents declared feeling very or extremely worried about getting infected, while 21 percent were very or extremely worried about dying after catching the virus. Overall, 78 percent of respondents reported feeling at least a little numb about the loss of human lives, and most (89 percent) thought about these difficult experiences outside of work.

Finally, 88 percent agreed that healthcare staff should be offered dedicated time off work once it was clinically safe to do so, and 85 percent were in favour of offering individual counselling sessions to healthcare workers.

The authors acknowledge there are some limitations to the study as respondents were self-selecting rather than randomly chosen, which could affect how representative this group was of ICU workers as a whole. Of those who responded, 11 said they had pre-existing mental health conditions. Despite this, the researchers suggest the data provides a useful indicator of mental wellbeing across ICU staff and the findings can be used to devise local and national policies to address this.

A new approach to analysing the development of magnetic tangles on the Sun has led to a breakthrough in a longstanding debate about how solar energy is injected into the solar atmosphere before being released into space, causing space weather events. The first direct evidence that field lines become knotted before they emerge at the visible surface of the Sun has implications for our ability to predict the behaviour of active regions and the nature of the solar interior. Dr Christopher Prior of the Department of Mathematical Sciences, Durham University, will present the work today at the virtual National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2021).

Researchers are generally in agreement that solar activity is caused by instabilities in giant twists of magnetic ropes threading the visible surface of the Sun, known as the photosphere. However, there has been an ongoing debate about how these tangles form. The two dominant theories have suggested either that coils of field lines emerge through the photosphere from the convection zone below, or that the feet of arching field lines wrap around each other on the surface itself and create braids. Both mechanisms could theoretically produce effects like sunspot rotation and dramatic solar flares but, to date, no direct observational evidence had conclusively supported either scenario.

Prior and colleagues from the University of Glasgow and INAF-Osservatorio Astrofisico di Catania in Italy came up with a new direct measure of the entanglement of the magnetic field by tracking the rotation of field lines at the points where they intersect with the photosphere. This 'magnetic winding' should manifest in different ways for each of the two theories. Thus, applying magnetic winding to observations of the photosphere and examining the resulting patterns could enable a definitive answer to be reached for which theory was correct.

The researchers studied the magnetic winding for 10 active regions on the Sun in observations by solar missions. In every case, the results matched the emergence theory of pre-twisted magnetic field lines rising up from the convection zone.

Prior explains: "The pattern for pre-twisted field lines exactly matched the observational data we considered initially, and this has since been found to be true for all data sets of active regions we have looked at so far. We anticipate that magnetic winding will become a staple quantity in the interpretation of magnetic field structure from observational data."

A protein involved in making cells move offers a clue to how certain types of cancer metastasize and develop into secondary tumours, according to new research from the University of Warwick.

Scientists from Warwick Medical School have demonstrated for the first time that levels of this protein can increase and decrease the movement of a cell, including cancer cells - suggesting that they could play a role in the spread of tumours.

The study is published today (21 July) in the Journal of Cell Biology and was funded by the Medical Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation.

The researchers are investigating a tiny cell component called an Intracellular nanovesicle (INV) which acts like a courier within a cell by transporting cargo to where it is needed. When a cell moves, the INV moves a particle called an integrin from the cell's surface to 'unstick it' from the surface it is attached to. It then recycles and replaces the integrin to stick it to a new surface.

INVs have a protein called Tumour Protein D54, increased levels of which have been associated with certain types of breast cancer and often a poor prognosis for the patient. These patients tend to have more metastases, where tumour cells spread to other parts of the body.

To investigate TPD54's role in cell movement, the Warwick team observed cells migrating on a surface coated with fibronectin, a type of extra-cellular matrix, using a live cell microscope. They then reduced or increased the expression of the protein TPD54 to mimic the expression in a cancer cell, observing how the cell migrates more or less depending upon the levels of TPD54.

They also conducted the same experiment using ovarian cancer cells inside a 3D mesh rich in fibronectin, a more accurate representation of how a cell would behave inside a tumour. When they depleted the levels of the TPD54 protein, the scientists could see that the cells migrated less.

Lead author Professor Stephen Royle, of Warwick Medical School at the University of Warwick, said: "There are circumstances where you don't want cells to move around, such as in cancer. We show in this paper that if you decrease the levels of the TPD54 protein then cells move less, and if you increase the levels they move more. It offers an explanation for why cancer cells that have overexpression of this protein tend to be more metastatic and spread.

"The name Tumour Protein D54 comes from the fact that it is overexpressed in cancer but not a lot is known about it at the molecular level. We have found how this protein attaches to INVs inside cells and controls what cells normally do."

Despite its name, Tumour Protein D54 is involved in a number of normal processes of a cell, and is also involved in the immune response, wound healing, and other functions. The research suggests that TDP54 would not be an ideal target for a cancer intervention due to its role in these normal functions of the cell, but it does give scientists a better understanding of how integrin trafficking is altered in cancer.

Professor Royle adds: "This protein is actually a healthy protein. It's needed for these INVs to move around, to move other cargoes, and perform other functions besides migration. It's one of the most highly expressed proteins in normal cells which indicates that it's probably doing something important. We think it has something to do with this army of INV couriers working within a cell.

"But in cancer, we've suddenly got lots of couriers trafficking lots of integrins, and so we get more movement of cells and that's not good. If you've got cancer cells, you don't want them to migrate."

The Warwick group discovered INVs in 2019, having previously been overlooked. At around 30 nanometres across, they were so small that the team had to use a combination of electron microscopy and the Warwick Open Source Microscope, a super-resolution light microscope built at the University of Warwick, to observe them.

Professor Royle adds: "They were hiding in plain sight - you can go back to micrographs from the fifties and can see that they were there, it's just we didn't have the tools to find them.

"The bigger question for us is how these vesicles behave and what they carry. They carry a whole range of other proteins and they are likely involved in lots of other cell functions. The thinking within the field is that cargoes like integrins are trafficked in very large tubules, but we're showing that it's actually happening in these smaller vesicles."

According to the latest cosmological models, large spiral galaxies such as the Milky Way grew by absorbing smaller galaxies, by a sort of galactic cannibalism. Evidence for this is given by very large structures, the tidal stellar streams, which are observed around them, which are the remains of these satellite galaxies. But the full histories of the majority of these cases are hard to study, because these flows of stars are very faint, and only the remains of the most recent mergers have been detected.

A study led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC), with the participation of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has made detailed observations of a large tidal flow around the Sombrero galaxy, whose strange morphology has still not been definitively explained. The results are published today in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS).

The Sombrero galaxy (Messier 104) is a galaxy some thirty million light years away, which is part of the Local Supercluster (a group of galaxies which includes the Virgo cluster and the Local Group containing the Milky Way). It has roughly one third of the diameter of the Milky Way, and shows characteristics of both of the dominant types of galaxies in the Universe, the spirals and the ellipticals. It has spiral arms, and a very large bright central bulge, which makes it look like a hybrid of the two types.

"Our motive for obtaining these very deep images of the Sombrero galaxy (Messier 104) was to look for the remains of its merger with a very massive galaxy. This possible collision was recently suggested on the basis of studies of the stellar population of its strange halo obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope", says David Martínez-Delgado, a researcher at the IAA-CSIC and first author of the paper reporting the work.

The observations with the Hubble, in 2020, showed that the halo, an extensive and faint region surrounding the Sombrero galaxy, shows many stars rich in metals, elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. This is a feature to typical of new generations of stars, which are normally found in the discs of galaxies, and are quite unusual in galactic halos, which are populated by old stars. To explain their presence astronomers suggested what is known as "a wet merger", a scenario in which a large elliptical galaxy is rejuvenated by large quantities of gas and dust from another massive galaxy, which went into the formation of the disc which we now observe.

"In our images we have not found any evidence to support this hypothesis, although we cannot rule out that it could have happened several thousand million years ago, and the debris is completely dissipated by now -explains David Martínez-Delgado-. In our search we have in fact been able to trace for the first time the complete tidal stream which surrounds the disc of this galaxy, and our theoretical simulations have let us reconstruct its formation in the last three thousand million years, by cannibalism of a satellite dwarf galaxy".

"Observational techniques in present day Astrophysics need advanced image processing. Our modelling of the bright stars around the Sombrero galaxy, and at the same time of the halo light of the galaxy itself has enabled us to unveil the nature of this tidal stream. It is remarkable that thanks to these advanced photometric techniques we have been able to do front line science with a Messier object using only an 18 cm (diameter) telescope", explains Javier Román, a postdoctoral researcher at the IAC and a co-author of the study.

The research team rejects the idea that the large stellar tidal stream, known for more than three decades, could be related to the event which produced the strange morphology of the Sombrero galaxy which, if it was caused by a wet merger, would need the interaction of two galaxies with large masses.

The work has been possible thanks to the collaboration between professional and amateur astronomers. "We have collaborated with the Spanish astrophotographer Manuel Jiménez, who took the images with a robotic telescope of 18 centimetre diameter, and the well-known australian astrophotographer David Malin, who discovered this tidal stream on photographic plates taken in the 90's of the last century. This collaboration shows the potential of amateur telescopes to take deep images of nearby galaxies which give important clues about the process of their assembly which is continuing until the present epoch", concludes Martínez-Delgado.

Pregnancy-induced diabetes, also known as gestational diabetes, is a common metabolic complication of pregnancy. The disorder carries a significant risk of adverse obstetric outcome. Additionally, it is associated with a high risk of recurrence, progression to maternal type 2 diabetes as well as an elevated risk of obesity in foetuses exposed to hyperglycaemia during gestation.

The mechanisms causing gestational diabetes are complex and incompletely understood. The disorder has a strong underlying genetic element that interacts with lifestyle factors and the physiologic changes accompanying pregnancy to alter maternal glucose regulation.

A team of researchers from the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery have applied high-throughput genomics to identify rare highly-penetrant genetic variants that drive the development of gestational diabetes.

The study, entitled 'Screening for monogenic subtypes of gestational diabetes in a high prevalence island population - a whole exome sequencing study' provides the first description of atypical diabetes presenting in pregnancy in the Maltese population.

This research integrates clinical medicine, genomics and protein modelling with longitudinal follow-up data. The paper highlights the genetic heterogeneity underlying disorders of glucose regulation and reinforces the role of precision medicine research in unravelling the aetiology of complex traits.