Culture

Arlington, VA (July 13, 2021) -- Hospitals and other healthcare facilities should require employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19, according to a consensus statement by the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) and six other leading organizations representing medical professionals working in infectious diseases, infection prevention, pharmacy, pediatrics, and long-term care. The paper specifies exemption for those with medical contraindications, and some others circumstances in compliance with federal and state laws.

"The COVID-19 vaccines in use in the United States have been shown to be safe and effective," said David J. Weber, a member of the SHEA Board of Trustees and lead author of the statement. "By requiring vaccination as a condition of employment we raise levels of vaccination for healthcare personnel, improve protection of our patients, and aid in reaching community protection. As healthcare personnel, we're committed to these goals."

SHEA convened a multiorganizational panel of experts in infectious disease prevention, law, and human resources, with representatives from AMDA - The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine, The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC), the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), the HIV Medicine Association (HIVMA), the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (PIDS), and the Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists (SIDP). The panel conducted an eight-week review of evidence on the three vaccines authorized for use in the United States, vaccination rates, and employment law to develop the statement.

Research shows that prior to the pandemic, rates of routine vaccinations among healthcare providers were suboptimal. For flu vaccination, when healthcare employers instituted policies of influenza vaccination as a condition of employment, compliance rose to 94.4 percent compared to 69.6 percent in organizations without a requirement.

Over 33 million Americans have contracted COVID-19 and more than 600,000 have died. The COVID-19 vaccines authorized for use in the United States have been found safe and effective in preventing infection and reducing transmission. Studies have demonstrated that the COVID-19 vaccines authorized for use in the US also protect against variants, and are particularly effective against severe disease, hospitalization, and death.

Despite the positive data, there are still many healthcare professionals who have declined to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

"Vaccinating the healthcare workforce reduces the risk of transmission by protecting patients, healthcare personnel, and communities, and maintains trust in healthcare providers and healthcare institutions," Weber said.

The statement explains what to consider in developing a policy of COVID-19 vaccination as a condition of employment, including a thorough overview of current vaccines' safety and efficacy, legal considerations, ways to engage stakeholders and improve vaccination rates before implementing a policy of vaccination as a condition of employment, and advantages to having a fully vaccinated workforce.

A blood test that quantifies the protein ACE2, the cellular protein which allows entry of the coronavirus into cells, as well as ACE2 fragments, produced as a result of interaction with the virus, could be a simple and effective method for monitoring SARS-CoV-2 infection, according to a study led by Javier Sáez-Valero, from the UMH-CSIC Neurosciences Institute in Alicante, published in FASEB Journal.

This study, carried out during the first wave of the pandemic, found that patients with COVID-19, in the acute phase of infection, have significantly reduced plasma levels of the full-length ACE2 protein, which SARS-CoV-2 binds to enter cells, compared to non-infected controls. In addition, the plasma levels of a lower molecular mass (70 kDa) ACE2 fragment, generated as a result of interaction with the virus, are increased.

These abnormal levels of ACE2 and truncated ACE2 (70 kDa fragment) return to normal after the patients' recovery. This suggests that both forms of ACE2 present in plasma could be used as a good biomarker of the evolution of coronavirus infection. In addition, truncated ACE2 levels served to discriminate between patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 and those infected with influenza A virus.

"In this work we have studied the plasma levels of the coronavirus receptor, the ACE2 protein, and we have been able to determine that there are different forms of the protein in plasma, and that part of the soluble ACE2 are proteolytic fragments of the ACE2 receptor, generated subsequently to interaction with the virus. The full-length protein is also found in plasma, which provides information about tissue affection during infection," explains Javier Sáez-Valero, who led the study.

Although the main research line of Sáez-Valero's group is Alzheimer's Disease, the "similarities" of ACE2 to core proteins of Alzheimer's disease pathology, such as beta-amyloid precursor protein (APP), also cell membrane resident proteins, led this expert to think that perhaps ACE2 could be present in plasma, providing information on its interaction with the coronavirus.

"Our approach to this research line was the possibility that soluble ACE2 protein can serve as a read-out during infection with COVID-19. This hypothesis originates from our expertise in Alzheimer's disease. In this neurodegenerative disease we investigate proteins, such as APP, that are present in the cerebrospinal fluid. APP is also a membrane protein that is processed by the same molecular tools as ACE2, enzymes called secretases, which process several membrane proteins into different fragments. This phenomenon was the clue that led us to think that ACE2 protein fragments, but also the full-length protein, are present in plasma. Thus, we have the possibility of investigating this protein as a possible biomarker," explains Sáez-Valero.

TRIAL PARTICIPANTS

Samples and patient data included in this study were provided by the ISABIAL Biobank, integrated in the Spanish National Biobank Network and the Valencian Biobank Network. Fifty-nine patients with a positive reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test for SARS-CoV-2 in nasopharyngeal swabs were included, of whom 24 were women and 35 men, with a mean age of 64 years). All were hospitalized 7 to 9 days after symptom onset. Of these, 48 SARS-CoV-2 infected patients suffered a moderate presentation of COVID-19, and 11 were considered severe as they suffered respiratory failure requiring invasive mechanical ventilation and/or intensive care unit treatment.

Two additional groups were also analyzed, one of 17 participants (9 women and 8 men), which included people aged 34 to 85 years with influenza A virus pneumonia. The other group consisted of 26 disease-free controls (14 women and 12 men) aged 34-85 years. For the "influenza A group", samples were also taken in the acute phase, before specific hospital treatment.

The ACE2 species in human plasma were identified by immunoprecipitation and western blotting, a technique that allows the detection of a specific protein in a blood or tissue sample, where there is a complex mixture of forms of the protein. Until now, plasma analyses carried out for the coronavirus had mostly used another technique called ELISA, which does not allow the different forms of the proteins to be determined.

Changes in truncated and full-length ACE2 species were also examined in serum samples from humanized K18-hACE2 mice inoculated with a lethal dose of SARS-CoV-2. These humanized mice carry the human gene that produces the ACE2 protein, allowing SARS-CoV-2 infection, which does not occur naturally due to lack of recognition of murine ACE2 by the virus.

The alterations in the forms of ACE2 present in plasma following SARS-CoV-2 infection observed in this study justify, according to the researchers, further investigation of their potential as biomarkers of the disease process, and also for assessing the efficacy of vaccination. The next step will be to investigate what happens to these proteins in asymptomatic PCR-positive or vaccinated individuals.

Philadelphia, July 13, 2021 - Consumers may have less trust in food processes that they don't understand, and animal-based foods may be subject to more uninformed scrutiny than other foods due to consumers' perception of higher risk. Dairy producers can benefit from understanding how consumers interpret unfamiliar terms and claims on dairy product labels. In a new study appearing in the Journal of Dairy Science®, scientists from North Carolina State University conducted interviews and surveyed more than 1,200 consumers regarding their knowledge of and attitudes toward dairy processing terms that may appear on product labels.

Only about a third of respondents reported that they always or often read labels before purchasing dairy products; however, product labels are the primary source of information about food purchases used by consumers. This is reflected by the fact that only 24 percent of respondents were familiar with microfiltered milk, and no respondents could recall seeing the term on dairy product labels. Despite this, 20 percent expressed a negative opinion of it.

"Our survey data align with previous work that suggests the majority of dairy product consumers find both milk and cheese healthy and natural," said corresponding author MaryAnne Drake, PhD, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA. "However, adding processing-related terms to 'milk' lowered average agreement that the resulting product was natural or healthy." Overall, agreement responses suggest that although overall dairy product consumers have a positive view of milk, processing terms introduce uncertainty that may lead to questioning this evaluation.

Providing education about processing terms improves consumer understanding and perception of those terms on labels. Before reading a definition of ultrafiltration and microfiltration, 83 percent of respondents were unfamiliar with the terms. After reading the definition, 97 percent of participants indicated that their understanding had changed. The majority of participants viewed ultrafiltered and microfiltered milk more positively and were more likely to purchase these products.

"Processing-related descriptors in ingredient statements are likely to be overlooked, especially on the labels of products with which consumers already feel familiar. However, consumers may express caution when they are made aware of unfamiliar processing terms," added Drake.

The study suggests that explaining processing-related terms using simple terms may increase positive perception among consumers. On-package education and other marketing messaging should be investigated further.

New research from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has shown that the mutations arising in the COVID-19-causing SARS-CoV-2 virus seem to run in the family -- or at least the genus of coronaviruses most dangerous to humans.

After comparing the early evolution of SARS-CoV-2 against that of its closest relatives, the betacoronaviruses, the Nebraska team found that SARS-CoV-2 mutations are occurring in essentially the same locations, both genetically and structurally.

The mutational similarities between SARS-CoV-2 and its predecessors, including the human-infecting SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV, could help inform predictions of how the COVID-causing virus will continue to evolve, the researchers said.

"The problem of looking at only one virus at a time is that you lose the forest for the trees," said Katherine LaTourrette, a doctoral student in the Complex Biosystems program at Nebraska. "By looking at this big picture, we were able to predict the mutational nature of SARS-CoV-2.

"That gets into these questions of: Are vaccines going to be effective long term? Which variants are going to sneak by? Do we need that booster shot? Are vaccinated people going to be infected a second time?"

'YOU'RE MORE LIKELY TO BE HITTING THAT BULL'S-EYE'

The genetic code of a virus determines its ability to infect cells and direct them to churn out more copies of itself. That code consists of fundamental compounds, or nucleotides, with mutations occurring wherever those nucleotides get added, subtracted or swapped for one another. Many mutations have little or no effect, in the same way that trying to hack an intricate password by changing just one character will likely fail.

But given enough chances, a virus will eventually happen upon a mutation or mutations that change the assembly of its structural joints, or amino acids, enough to help it better invade cells and replicate -- advantages that help it outcompete other strains. In some cases, a new strain can also evade the immune responses stirred by existing vaccines, necessitating the development of new vaccines to protect against it.

LaTourrette and her adviser, Hernan Garcia-Ruiz, were busy comparing mutational patterns across viruses that invade a different biological kingdom -- plants -- when the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic struck. To do it, the researchers were analyzing segments of sequenced DNA from parallel locations on the genomes of all viruses in a genus. They were hunting specifically for single-point mutations: segments in which just one nucleotide had changed. By pinpointing them, the team was sussing out whether certain mutations pop up across related plant viruses, then tracing those mutations to functional amino acid changes in the viruses.

"A lot of times, researchers have a specific plant virus they study," LaTourrette said. "They know it really well. But our question was: Big picture, what is the genus doing? We know that variation isn't random. It accumulates in specific areas of the genome, and those areas are (sometimes) consistent across the genus. Those tend to be areas important for things like host adaptation -- basically, areas that are going to need to keep changing in order to keep co-evolving with their host.

"So when COVID-19 happened, we thought, well, we can download the (betacoronavirus) sequences and run them through the pipeline and see where the variation is occurring."

When they did, LaTourrette and her colleagues found that the so-called spike protein, which protrudes from betacoronaviruses and keys their entry into host cells by binding with receptors on the surface, mutates rapidly across all known betacoronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2.

Despite accounting for just 17% of the SARS-CoV-2 genome, the "hyper-variable" spike protein has so far accumulated roughly 50% of the virus's total mutations, the researchers discovered. Those mutations are emerging in the same regions of the genome, and even the same sub-units of the spike protein, as they have in every other betacoronavirus to date.

"All of our analyses showed that that's really where the variation is happening," LaTourrette said. "It didn't matter when we looked at it, what variant we looked at -- the spike protein was key."

The team also concluded, as other virologists have, that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is disordered --that while its amino acids assemble into the same general architecture, that architecture has what LaTourrette called "some wiggle room" to shift into slightly different configurations. That's bad news, she said, given that its structural flexibility likely gives it some functional wiggle room, too.

"Humans may have slightly different cell receptors, person to person," LaTourrette said. "So then you have to have a (spike protein) receptor that can accommodate those little shifts. If it were very ordered, and it couldn't shift, then maybe it couldn't infect everyone. But by having that flexibility, it's a much better virus.

"Basically, this area is hyper-variable, and it's flexible. So it's the double whammy."

Those qualities will continue to make SARS-CoV-2 a formidable foe that requires vigilance to stave off for the foreseeable future, LaTourrette said. But knowing its strengths, and that the evolutionary history of other betacoronaviruses might serve as a reasonable preview of that future, should help virologists and vaccinologists strategize accordingly.

Vaccines may have to continue targeting the distinctive spike protein as SARS-CoV-2 evolves, but consulting the mutational patterns of betacoronaviruses could help researchers forecast which domains of the protein are most and least likely to mutate. And that could make a moving target much easier to hit, LaTourrette said.

"If you close your eyes when you're throwing a dart at a dartboard, it could go anywhere," she said. "But by looking at the other (betacoronavirus) species, you have an idea of where it's likely to land. And you're more likely to be hitting that bull's-eye."

Though LaTourrette has already returned to the kingdom of plants, she said the opportunity to adapt her work to such a pressing purpose proved gratifying at a time when gratification was in short supply.

"For us, getting to (transition) from plants to coronaviruses was a really positive way of showing that you can take your science and your knowledge, and you can apply it to the benefit of society," LaTourrette said. "We've seen some really great examples in the past year-and-a-half of groups making that shift.

"Even though this is a very difficult time, and there's a lot of hardship, I think it's really positive to see scientists come together and be able to contribute to a cause together."

LaTourrette and Garcia-Ruiz, an associate professor of plant pathology at the Nebraska Center for Virology, conducted the research with recent master's graduate Natalie Holste, doctoral student Rosalba Rodriguez-Peña and Raquel Arruda Leme, a visiting researcher from Brazil.

WASHINGTON--In cities and towns across the United States, neighborhoods with more Black, Hispanic and Asian residents experience hotter temperatures during summer heatwaves than nearby white residents, a new study finds. It is the first to show that the trend, documented in some major cities, is widespread, even in small towns, nationwide.  

According to the new nationwide study, these racial disparities exist because non-white neighborhoods tend to be more densely built up with buildings and pavement that trap heat and have fewer trees to cool the landscape.   

"Urban climate is different from temperatures outside the city," said co-author Susanne Benz, an environmental scientist who conducted this research at the University of California, San Diego, and is now at Dalhousie University. "Inside the city, temperatures are affected by the buildings surrounding you and by the surface of the streets." Dark pavement absorbs sunlight and releases the heat at night, while trees and other vegetation cool an area through transpiration, when they release water vapor through pores in the leaves.  

The new study is published in Earth's Future, AGU's journal for interdisciplinary research on the past, present and future of our planet and its inhabitants. The approach offers city planners and policymakers a way to identify disparities and to evaluate initiatives to address urban heat.    

Summer in the city

Summer heatwaves cause more than 700 deaths each year in the United States. When heat and humidity are so high that a body can no longer cool itself through sweating, heat stroke can set in, rapidly causing brain and organ damage. People who are older, have certain chronic health conditions or are physically exerting themselves are most at risk. Urban environments are commonly hotter than their rural counterparts, and temperatures can vary even within cities. Those few degrees can mean life or death for some residents.

Benz initially had the idea for this study after reading a New York Times article finding that neighborhoods the U.S. government redlined in the 1930s--meaning they classified them as poor investments because people of color lived there--are now hotter than white neighborhoods in the same cities. She and co-author Jennifer Burney, an Earth scientist at the University of California, San Diego, realized they could do a similar analysis for the entire country.   

Benz looked for urban heat patterns using land surface temperatures during summer heat waves collected by a NASA satellite. She subtracted the temperature of nearby rural locations to find variations in urban heat across towns and cities. Then she combined the temperature data with demographic information from the U.S. Census, looking at more than 1,000 counties to see who was most impacted. NOAA and USGS survey data allowed her to estimate how densely built up an area was, and the proportion of land covered by trees.  

The researchers found that in 76% of counties with more than 10 census tracts, poorer neighborhoods were notably hotter than wealthier ones, primarily due to physical differences--more pavement and people and fewer trees. Areas with a larger percentage of people of color or where people had less education also experienced higher temperatures.  

Big cities weren't the only places with race-related heat differences. Benz and Burney also saw the same patterns playing out in less developed areas. "It turns out that even your tiny towns have the same disparities," Benz said, "and this was something that really shocked me."  

The trend held up even when they took wealth out of the picture. When residents had a similar income, non-white neighborhoods still faced significantly higher temperatures than white ones in 71% of the counties.    

"The findings are really quite staggering," said Jeremy Hoffman, a climate scientist and chief scientist at the Science Museum of Virginia, who was not involved in the research. "These disparities exist across virtually every built environment in the country. Money doesn't grow on trees, but it is certainly concentrated underneath them across the U.S." 

How to beat urban heat  

The new analysis provides information for policymakers and establishes a way to evaluate the success of policies designed to address urban heat. "There's a lot of talk in Biden's administration about environmental justice but not so much clarity on what metrics might be used to evaluate policy proposals," said Burney. "These are very concrete metrics that can be tracked over time."  

Now that officials can recognize and measure urban heat disparities, the big question is how to fix them.   

Hoffman thinks it will take thoughtful investment to cool off hotter neighborhoods, such as planting trees at parks, bus stops and along pedestrian thoroughfares and providing incentives for green or white reflective roofs to cool buildings. These initiatives could dovetail with urban agriculture programs, solar panel installation, workforce development and other programs to more holistically address racial inequality.   

Benz hopes that this analysis will be useful for all communities, but especially for smaller towns, whose residents can use the information to understand where disparities exist and take steps to correct them--before they become entrenched through further urbanization. She created a website where interested users can visualize where heat extremes exist in their area. 

The COVID-19 pandemic caused an unprecedented disruption to health care delivery, with resources shifted toward telehealth services and mass viral testing. While early studies in the pandemic highlighted differences in health care utilization among patients with commercial insurance, data from publicly insured or uninsured “safety-net” patient populations continue to emerge.
A recent study from researchers at the University of Minnesota and Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute (HHRI) is among the first to examine how different socio-demographic groups used telehealth, outpatient (i.e., clinic), emergency department and inpatient (i.e., hospital) care to test for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Their findings were recently published in JAMA Network Open.
The study was led by U of M School of Public Health graduate student Rohan Khazanchi. Along with others from Hennepin Healthcare and HHRI, researchers included Medical School Assistant Professor Tyler Winkelman, who is also with the U of M Robina Institute of Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, and HHRI Data Scientist Peter Bodurtha. The team analyzed anonymous electronic health record data for people with symptoms of viral illness who received SARS-CoV-2 testing at Hennepin Healthcare, a large safety-net health system in Minneapolis.
The study found that:

Patients who initiated testing via telehealth were disproportionately white and English-speaking, whereas patients who initiated testing through the emergency department were disproportionately Black, Native American, non-English-speaking and had one or more pre-existing conditions.
Testing initiated through telehealth and outpatient encounters was associated with lower rates of subsequent inpatient and intensive care unit care than testing initiated in more care-intensive settings, such as emergency departments.

"Inequities by race, ethnicity and language in where people seek SARS-CoV-2 testing may point to several structural root causes, including barriers to timely testing access, delays in care seeking, difficulty accessing telehealth services, and higher rates of pre-existing conditions among patients who require higher levels of care," said Khazanchi.
The researchers also added that the inequities could be partially explained by clinician and clinic variations in telehealth use.
“Without structural reforms, rapid implementation of telehealth and other new services may exacerbate inequities in access to care, particularly if these investments come at the expense of other care sites,” said Bodurtha.
The authors said that as investigators explore the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on health use and patient outcomes, future research should continue to examine how and why the health care use of safety-net patients differs from commercially insured individuals to inform equity-oriented interventions.
The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (#UL1TR002494).

Journal

JAMA Network Open

DOI

10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.12857

A team of geneticists and archaeologists from Ireland, France, Iran, Germany, and Austria has sequenced the DNA from a 1,600-year-old sheep mummy from an ancient Iranian salt mine, Chehrābād. This remarkable specimen has revealed sheep husbandry practices of the ancient Near East, as well as underlining how natural mummification can affect DNA degradation.

The incredible findings have just been published in the international, peer-reviewed journal Biology Letters.

The salt mine of Chehrābād is known to preserve biological material. Indeed, it is in this mine that human remains of the famed "Salt Men" were recovered, dessicated by the salt-rich environment. The new research confirms that this natural mummification process - where water is removed from a corpse, preserving soft tissues that would otherwise be degraded - also conserved animal remains.

The research team, led by geneticists from Trinity College Dublin, exploited this by extracting DNA from a small cutting of mummified skin from a leg recovered in the mine.

While ancient DNA is usually damaged and fragmented, the team found that the sheep mummy DNA was extremely well-preserved; with longer fragment lengths and less damage that would usually be associated with such an ancient age. The group attributes this to the mummification process, with the salt mine providing conditions ideal for preservation of animal tissues and DNA.

The salt mine's influence was also seen in the microorganisms present in the sheep leg skin. Salt-loving archaea and bacteria dominated the microbial profile - also known as the metagenome - and may have also contributed to the preservation of the tissue.

The mummified animal was genetically similar to modern sheep breeds from the region, which suggests that there has been a continuity of ancestry of sheep in Iran since at least 1,600 years ago.

The team also exploited the sheep's DNA preservation to investigate genes associated with a woolly fleece and a fat-tail - two important economic traits in sheep. Some wild sheep - the asiatic mouflon - are characterised by a "hairy" coat, much different to the woolly coats seen in many domestic sheep today. Fat-tailed sheep are also common in Asia and Africa, where they are valued in cooking, and where they may be well-adapted to arid climates.

The team built a genetic impression of the sheep and discovered that the mummy lacked the gene variant associated with a woolly coat, while fibre analysis using Scanning Electron Microscopy found the microscopic details of the hair fibres consistent with hairy or mixed coat breeds. Intriguingly, the mummy carried genetic variants associated with fat-tailed breeds, suggesting the sheep was similar to the hairy-coated, fat-tailed sheep seen in Iran today.

"Mummified remains are quite rare so little empirical evidence was known about the survival of ancient DNA in these tissues prior to this study," says Conor Rossi, PhD candidate in Trinity's School of Genetics and Microbiology, and the lead author of the paper.

"The astounding integrity of the DNA was not like anything we had encountered from ancient bones and teeth before. This DNA preservation, coupled with the unique metagenomic profile, is an indication of how fundamental the environment is to tissue and DNA decay dynamics.

Dr Kevin G Daly, also from Trinity's School of Genetics and Microbiology, supervised the study. He added:

"Using a combination of genetic and microscopic approaches, our team managed to create a genetic picture of what sheep breeds in Iran 1,600 years ago may have looked like and how they may have been used.

"Using cross-disciplinary approaches we can learn about what ancient cultures valued in animals, and this study shows us that the people of Sasanian-era Iran may have managed flocks of sheep specialised for meat consumption, suggesting well developed husbandry practices."

The human brain has extreme ability in thinking and computation, but it only requires a very low energy power of about 20W, which is much lower than that of electronic computers. The neuronal connections in the brain network have a globally sparse but locally compact modular topological characteristics, which greatly reduces the total resource consumption for establishing the connections. The spikes of each neuron in the brain are sparse and irregular, and the clustered firing of the neuronal populations has a certain degree of synchronization, forming neural avalanches with scale-free characteristics, and the network can sensitively respond to external stimuli. However, it is still not clear how the brain structure and dynamic properties can self-organize to achieve their co-optimization in cost efficiency. Recently, Junhao Liang and Changsong Zhou from Hong Kong Baptist University and Sheng-Jun Wang from Shaanxi Normal University, tried to address this issue by a biological neural network model through large-scale numerical simulation, combined with a novel mean-field theory analysis. In their research article published in the National Science Review (NSR), they studied the excitation-inhibition balance neural dynamics model on the spatial network.

The research showed that: when a globally sparse randomly connected network (RN) is rewired to a more biologically realistic modular network (MN), the network's running consumption (neuron firing rate) and its building cost of connection are both significantly reduced; the dynamic mode of the network transitions to the region allowing scale-free avalanches (that is, criticality), which makes the network more sensitive in responding to external stimuli (see Figure 1).

Further analysis found that the increased connection density of single modules during the rewiring process is key to account for the dynamical transitions: higher network topological correlation leads to higher dynamical correlation, which makes neurons to firing spikes more easily. Using a novel approximate mean-field theory, the authors derived the macroscopic field equations of a single module, revealing that the increase of module density causes the decrease of neural firing rate and the proximity to the Hopf bifurcation of the system. This explains the formation of critical avalanches and the increased sensitivity to external stimuli with lower firing cost. The coupled oscillator model obtained by coupling multiple modules further reveals the dynamic transition during the rewiring process of the original network (see Figure 2).

The research clearly showed a principle of achieving a co-optimization of (rather than a trade-off between) the brain structural and dynamic properties, and offers a novel understanding of the cost-efficient operational principle of the brain, which also provides insights to the design of brain-inspired computational devices.

While attending a conference at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City several years ago, Sharon Borja was struck by the story of a young man who, as a child, joined his parents repatriating to their native country of Mexico. Like millions of Mexican immigrants, the family had called the United States home for years, and having been born in the U.S., he was an American citizen. Walking one day in his newfound urban Mexican neighborhood, a couple carrying a wooden stick approached him on the street and encouraged him to do the same, Borja recalled the man sharing.

"The stick was for protection against all the stray dogs," said Borja, an assistant professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. "He grew up in America and was in a new country for the first time and didn't understand the various challenges. His story sparked my interest in investigating other hurdles U.S. citizen migrant children face when accompanying their parents back to Mexico, including lack of adequate health insurance."

More than a million Mexican nationals and their families that returned to Mexico from the United States in 2015 fueled in part by the Great Recession limiting job opportunities and increased deportation. Among them were 550,000 U.S.-born minors.

An analysis of more than 36,000 of those minors, published in the peer reviewed journal Health Affairs, found that nearly 54% were underinsured. The situation was even more stark in urban settings, where 80% of U.S. citizen migrant children had limited, inadequate insurance. Among the children who lived in Mexican states near the U.S. border, 65% suffered the same fate.

For the study, "underinsured" was defined as those who reported having no insurance or received coverage through public health services or private insurance, which offer narrower coverage, limited access to high-quality care, and modest protection from catastrophic health expenses compared to employment-based programs through Mexico's Social Security Institute.

"We believe health care is a human right. It's a travesty that these U.S. citizen children are vulnerable to financial risk and delays in care and treatment. Many don't even think about this subgroup of at-risk kids, yet they are U.S. citizens who moved to another country, likely not by their choice," said Borja, lead author of the research paper. "These circumstances elevate their risk for lifelong disparities in health and productivity compared with their counterparts who stayed in the U.S."

The study also revealed that parents' level of education and living with an employed mother were associated with a higher likelihood of having the superior employment-based coverage. In addition, the likelihood of having such coverage is reduced by 59% for U.S. citizen migrant children in border states compared with those in other areas.

Although Mexico established a form of universal health care in 2020 called Instituto de Salud para el Bienestar (INSABI), or the Institute of Health for Well-being in English, it faces insufficient funding and does not cover all health conditions, according to the researchers. Regardless, access is guaranteed only for those with proof of citizenship or legal residency. Fewer than half of U.S. citizen migrant children in Mexico in 2015 reported having Mexican citizenship, further putting them at risk for delayed medical care, particularly when there is no alternative to prove eligibility.

The findings underscore the need for transborder health policies that address the growing place-based inequity in health coverage, according to the study authors. They recommend the following solutions:

Reintegration policies, including assistance to revalidate education and training obtained abroad, to help ease the transition of returning migrants and their families to Mexico.

Expedited dual-citizenship application process to facilitate receipt of health and social protection programs; a U.S.-Mexico bilateral agreement to recognize birth certificates from either country as proof of dual citizenship could further simplify the registration of U.S. citizen migrant children in programs such as INSABI, as these documents already bear their parents' nationalities.

Exempting U.S. citizen migrant children who reside in the 80 Mexican municipalities within approximately 60 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border from automatic suspensions of Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) benefits to ensure uninterrupted care via telemedicine and in-person consultation with U.S. health care providers.

Creation of a workgroup within the Comisión de Salud Fronteriza México-Estados Unidos (U.S.-Mexico Border Health Commission) to help monitor the health status and needs of U.S. citizen migrant children.

Other authors of the research paper include Jodi Berger Cardoso, University of Houston; Pedro Isnardo De La Cruz, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; Krista Perreira, University of North Carolina; Natalia Giraldo-Santiago, University of Houston Ph.D. candidate; Martha Virginia Jasso Oyervides, Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila.

The researchers acknowledge that the evolving geopolitical landscape of U.S.-Mexico migration and the recent implementation of INSABI could present a different picture now, six years after their data was collected. But with increased deportations during the Trump Administration, the numbers of U.S. citizen migrant children lacking adequate health insurance is likely even higher today.

"We recognize that the implementation of cross-border health initiatives could be costly. But the long-term societal savings of investing in early childhood and ensuring timely access to high quality preventive care far outweigh the cost," wrote the researchers. "Sustained political will and consistent commitment to invest in U.S. citizen migrant children, who are often an ignored segment of the population, are needed so that they do not become 'out of sight and out of mind.'"

JUPITER, FL - The brain is wired for learning. With each experience, our neurons branch out to make new connections, laying down the circuitry of our long-term memories. Scientists call this trait plasticity, referring to an ability to adapt and change with experience.

For plasticity to happen, our neurons' synapses, or connection points, must constantly remodel and adapt, too. The mechanics underlying neurons' synaptic plasticity have become clearer, thanks to new research from the lab of Scripps Research neuroscientist Sathya Puthanveettil, PhD.

Scientists have learned that synaptic plasticity requires a complex relay from the neuron's cell body to its dendrite arms and its synapse junctions. Like a 24-hour port and highway network, an internal transportation system of microtubule roads and robot-like couriers shuttle the cell's vital cargo to its farthest reaches. The transported cargo allows ribosome organelles to assemble, read various RNA instructions, and build new proteins as needed in the dendrites.

In a study published July 13 in Cell Reports, Puthanveettil's team reports that among the transport network's courier molecules are two members of the Kinesin family, KIF5C and KIF3A. If KIF5C is knocked out, the team found, the neurons' ability to branch out dendrites and form input-receiving spines suffers. A gain of function to Kif5C improves these traits.

The study's first author, Supriya Swarnkar, PhD, a research associate in the Puthanveettil lab, says discerning the details of these processes points to possible causes of neurological disorders, and offers new directions for treatment. Kifs play an important role, she says.

"The ability to form memories depends on the proper functioning of the neuron's long-distance transport system from cell body to synapse," Swarnkar says. "And many studies have reported links between mutations in Kifs and neurological disorders, including intellectual disability, autism and ALS."

Structurally, many of the Kinesin family proteins resemble a walking robot, something from science fiction. They have a platform for carrying cargo, and two leg-like appendages that move back and forth, in a forward walking motion, along microtubules. In fact, they are referred to as molecular machines. These remarkable walking robots move along with their cargo on their back, until they reach their synapse destination and deposit their packages.

There are 46 different kinds of these molecular machines, specialized to carry different types of cargo, Puthanveettil says. Scientists are beginning to learn which Kifs carry which cargo.

Puthanveettil's team anticipated that KIF5C's cargo might include various RNAs. Cousin of DNA, which encode genes and reside in the nucleus, RNAs are transcribed from DNA, take its genetic instructions out to the cell's cytoplasm, build proteins encoded by the genes, and help regulate cell activities. Each different RNA has a different job.

By isolating complexes of KIF5C and their cargo, and then sequencing the RNA, they documented around 650 different RNAs that rely upon the KIF5C courier.

Significantly, this included an RNA that provides the code to initiate protein building, called EIF3G. If it doesn't show up when and where needed, compounds required for synapse plasticity aren't made. The ability to remodel the synapse with experience and to learn is impaired, Puthanveettil says.

To better understand the role of the Kifs in long-term memory storage and recall, the team carried out both loss- and gain-of-function studies both in cells and in mice, focusing on the dorsal hippocampal CA1 neurons that are involved in multiple forms of learning.

The mouse studies showed that loss of KIF5C diminishes spatial and fear-associated memory. If KIF5C is boosted in the dorsal hippocampus, on the other hand, memory is enhanced and amplified. The cells showed enhancement of synaptic transmission, arborization of dendrite arms, the neurons' arm-like extensions, and eruption of signal-receiving mushroom spines. Mushroom spine density is correlated with memory and synaptic plasticity.

Taken together, the research offers new ideas for addressing a wide variety of neuropsychiatric disorders. Intellectual disability, depression, epilepsy, Alzheimer's disease - anything that could benefit from greater or lesser expression of key proteins in neurons' dendrites might respond to a boosting or diminishing these molecular couriers, Puthanveettil says.

ITHACA, N.Y. - Direct farm marketing efforts, such as farmers markets and roadside stands, are more successful in communities with more nonprofits, social enterprises and creative industries, according to a team including Cornell University researchers, who created a nationwide database of assets to help municipalities craft community-specific development plans.

While many municipalities seek to encourage direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing - an important factor in farmers' livelihoods - the success of their efforts hinges on a wide array of community resources, or capital assets, with natural and cultural assets correlating most strongly with farmers' success, the research found.

To explore differences between communities, Todd Schmit, associate professor in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, and colleagues at Colorado State University and the University of Missouri created a database of assets for every county in the United States, breaking down these community resources in six areas: built, cultural, financial, human, natural and social.

"There's a broad acceptance of the idea that sustainable community development is dependent on this array of capital assets. But when it comes to measuring those capitals, the literature is all over the place," Schmit said. "Some studies will use educational attainment to measure human capital, but others will use food security, or access to medical care. We thought, why not measure all of those things?"

To create their composite database, Schmit and his colleagues gathered data on dozens of factors, such as: the number of manufacturing establishments; the number of owner-occupied housing units without a mortgage; and acreage of farmland. All data came from publicly available sources such as the U.S. Census and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Then they used their new database to evaluate DTC farm marketing against community capital stocks in an article published July 2 in the journal Food Policy: "Measuring Stocks of Community Wealth and Their Association With Food Systems Efforts in Rural and Urban Places."

They found, as expected, that high levels of natural capital, especially farmland, correlated positively with DTC farm marketing. But they also found a positive association with cultural capital: Communities with more nonprofits, social enterprises and creative industries help farmers prosper in direct marketing.

"Art-centric businesses, museums, theaters, symphonies, architecture firms - there was a very complementary effect," Schmit said. "Maybe farmers markets are hosting musicians or art vendors and that's making the farmers market a bigger draw for consumers? Or maybe because people are coming to communities to visit an art gallery or go to a museum, they're saying, 'Well, let's head over to the farmers market, too, and make a day of it.'"

Schmit said he hopes the new database will be helpful for community planners and other researchers studying a variety of issues important for regional development.

"With this paper, we wanted to showcase an application of these capital stocks, but our bigger purpose is to provide this data for others to use in whatever application they want: obesity, child nutrition programs, infrastructure investment planning, conservation protection," he said. "We want people to use this data."

Co-author Becca Jablonski, a Cornell alum and an associate professor of agricultural and resource economics at Colorado State University, hopes the database will enable researchers and planners to craft economic development policies that are more successful because they are community-specific.

"Often policymakers set strategies to support community economic development at the federal level without full consideration of the fact that different types of programs and initiatives will have different impacts in different places based on the comparative advantage of a particular place - what they do better than other places," Jablonski said. "We hope that this database of the stocks of community assets can help decision-makers more thoughtfully reflect on their unique strengths and opportunities."

The University of Alberta-led research followed more than 400 infants from the CHILD Cohort Study (CHILD) at its Edmonton site. Boys with a gut bacterial composition that was high in the bacteria Bacteroidetes at one year of age were found to have more advanced cognition and language skills one year later. The finding was specific to male children.

"It's well known that female children score higher (at early ages), especially in cognition and language," said Anita Kozyrskyj, a professor of pediatrics at the U of A and principal investigator of the SyMBIOTA (Synergy in Microbiota) laboratory. "But when it comes to gut microbial composition, it was the male infants where we saw this obvious connection between the Bacteroidetes and the improved scores."

"The differences between male and female gut microbiota are very subtle, but we do know from CHILD Cohort Study data that girls at early ages are more likely to have more of these Bacteroidetes. So perhaps most girls have a sufficient number of Bacteroidetes and that's why they have improved scores over boys," added Kozyrskyj.

The researchers, led by Kozyrskyj and associate professor of pediatrics Piush Mandhane, studied bacteria found in fecal samples from the infants and identified three different groups exhibiting similar dominant clusters of bacteria. They then evaluated the infants on a variety of neural developmental scales. Of those groups, only the male infants with Bacteroidetes-dominant bacteria showed signs of enhanced neurodevelopment.

The research replicates similar findings from a U.S. study that also showed an association between Bacteroidetes and neural development.

According to Kozyrskyj, Bacteroidetes are one of a very few bacteria that produce metabolites called sphingolipids, which are instrumental for the formation and structure of neurons in the brain.

"It makes sense that if you have more of these microbes and they produce more sphingolipids, then you should see some improvement in terms of the formation of neuron connections in our brain and improved scores in cognition and language," she said.

According to Kozyrskyj, caesarean birth is one factor that can significantly deplete Bacteroidetes. Factors that positively influence gut microbiota composition in infants include breastfeeding, having a high-fibre diet, living with a dog and being exposed to nature and green spaces.

While the findings don't necessarily mean children with a lower proportion of Bacteroidetes will remain behind their peers in later childhood or adulthood, the researchers believe the study offers early promise as a way to potentially identify children at risk of neurodevelopmental disorders.

The team will continue to follow the infants participating in CHILD to determine whether the findings can be predictive of autism or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Moving forward, the researchers are also examining several other factors that may have an impact on neurodevelopment in infants, including stress and gut colonization by the bacterium Clostridium difficile.

"Over the first one to two years of life, your brain is very malleable," said Kozyrskyj. "Now we're seeing a connection between its malleability and gut microbiota, and I think that is very important."

New Rochelle, NY, July 13, 2021--Males with COVID-19 had significantly higher rates of hospitalization and of transfer to the intensive care unit (ICU) according to a new study. A higher percentage of males died of COVID-19 compared to females, as reported in the study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Women's Health. Click here to read the article now.

Joanne Michelle Gomez, MD, Rush University Medical Center, and coauthors, studied the first 8,108 positive COVID-19 patients that presented to the Rush University System from March 1-June 21, 2020. Nineteen percent of males required hospitalization, compared to 13% of females. Eight percent of males compared to 4% of females required escalation of care to the ICU. The authors also reported significantly greater need for vasopressor support and endotracheal intubation among males.

"A significant independent association was observed between male sex and in-hospital mortality when accounting for the total cohort of positive COVID-19 patients," state the authors. "The interplay among biological, hormonal, and gendered behavioral factors is likely responsible for the worse outcomes observed in males in COVID-19 infection."

"The findings of this study clearly demonstrate better outcomes for females infected with COVID-19. The authors propose some of the biological, hormonal, and behavioral factors that could be protective in females," says Journal of Women's Health Editor-in-Chief Susan G. Kornstein, MD, Executive Director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Institute for Women's Health, Richmond, VA.

In a new study of adults from the general population who were infected with COVID-19 in 2020, more than a quarter report not having fully recovered after six to eight months. Those findings are described this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Milo Puhan and colleagues at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.

While initial public health responses to the SARS-CoV-2 virus focused on reducing the acute burden of COVID-19, a growing body of evidence indicates that the infection can also result in longer-term physical and mental health consequences. These long-term consequences, currently referred to as "post-COVID-19 syndrome" or "Long Covid" are of increasing concern for healthcare systems.

In the new study, researchers recruited 431 participants from within the contact tracing system in Zurich, Switzerland. All participants had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 between February and August 2020, and completed an online questionnaire about their health a median of 7.2 months after their diagnosis. Symptoms had been present at diagnosis in 89% of the participants and 19% were initially hospitalized. Compared to individuals not participating in the study, participants were younger--with an average age of 47.

Overall, 26% of participants reported that they had not fully recovered at six to eight months after initial COVID-19 diagnosis. 55% reported symptoms of fatigue, 25% had some degree of shortness of breath, and 26% had symptoms of depression. A higher percentage of females and initially hospitalized patients reported not having recovered compared to males and non-hospitalized individuals. A total of 40% of participants reported at least one general practitioner visit related to COVID-19 after their acute illness. The authors say that their findings underscore the need for the timely planning of resources and patient services for post-COVID-19 care.

The authors add: "This cohort study based on a respresentative, population-based sample of SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals found that 26% did not fully recover within 6-8 months after diagnosis and 40% had at least one further healthcare contact related to COVID-19. These findings underline the need for the timely planning of healthcare resources and services tailored to the needs of individuals suffering from post-COVID-19 syndrome."

Magnetars are bizarre objects -- massive, spinning neutron stars with magnetic fields among the most powerful known, capable of shooting off brief bursts of radio waves so bright they're visible across the universe.

A team of astrophysicists has now found another peculiarity of magnetars: They can emit bursts of low energy gamma rays in a pattern never before seen in any other astronomical object.

It's unclear why this should be, but magnetars themselves are poorly understood, with dozens of theories about how they produce radio and gamma ray bursts. The recognition of this unusual pattern of gamma ray activity could help theorists figure out the mechanisms involved.

"Magnetars, which are connected with fast radio bursts and soft gamma repeaters, have something periodic going on, on top of randomness," said astrophysicist Bruce Grossan, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL). "This is another mystery on top of the mystery of how the bursts are produced."

The researchers -- Grossan and theoretical physicist and cosmologist Eric Linder from UC Berkeley and postdoctoral fellow Mikhail Denissenya from Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan -- discovered the pattern in bursts from a soft gamma repeater, SGR1935+2154, that is a magnetar, a prolific source of soft or lower energy gamma ray bursts and the only known source of fast radio bursts within our Milky Way galaxy. They found that the object emits bursts randomly, but only within regular four-month windows of time, each active window separated by three months of inactivity.

On March 19, the team uploaded a preprint claiming "periodic windowed behavior" in soft gamma bursts from SGR1935+2154 and predicted that these bursts would start up again after June 1 -- following a three month hiatus -- and could occur throughout a four-month window ending Oct. 7.

On June 24, three weeks into the window of activity, the first new burst from SGR1935+2154 was observed after the predicted three month gap, and nearly a dozen more bursts have been observed since, including one on July 6, the day the paper was published online in the journal Physical Review D.

"These new bursts within this window means that our prediction is dead on," said Grossan, who studies high energy astronomical transients. "Probably more important is that no bursts were detected between the windows since we first published our preprint."

Linder likens the non-detection of bursts in three-month windows to a key clue -- the "curious incident" that a guard dog did not bark in the nighttime -- that allowed Sherlock Holmes to solve a murder in the short story "The Adventure of Silver Blaze".

"Missing or occasional data is a nightmare for any scientist," noted Denissenya, the first author of the paper and a member of the Energetic Cosmos Laboratory at Nazarbayev University that was founded several years ago by Grossan, Linder and UC Berkeley cosmologist and Nobel laureate George Smoot. "In our case, it was crucial to realize that missing bursts or no bursts at all carry information."

The confirmation of their prediction startled and thrilled the researchers, who think this may be a novel example of a phenomenon -- periodic windowed behavior -- that could characterize emissions from other astronomical objects.

Mining data from 27-year-old satellite

Within the last year, researchers suggested that the emission of fast radio bursts -- which typically last a few thousandths of a second -- from distant galaxies might be clustered in a periodic windowed pattern. But the data were intermittent, and the statistical and computational tools to firmly establish such a claim with sparse data were not well developed.

Grossan convinced Linder to explore whether advanced techniques and tools could be used to demonstrate that periodically windowed -- but random, as well, within an activity window -- behavior was present in the soft gamma ray burst data of the SGR1935+2154 magnetar. The Konus instrument aboard the WIND spacecraft, launched in 1994, has recorded soft gamma ray bursts from that object -- which also exhibits fast radio bursts -- since 2014 and likely never missed a bright one.

Linder, a member of the Supernova Cosmology Project based at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, had used advanced statistical techniques to study the clustering in space of galaxies in the universe, and he and Denissenya adapted these techniques to analyze the clustering of bursts in time. Their analysis, the first to use such techniques for repeated events, showed an unusual windowed periodicity distinct from the very precise repetition produced by bodies rotating or in orbit, which most astronomers think of when they think of periodic behavior.

"So far, we have observed bursts over 10 windowed periods since 2014, and the probability is 3 in 10,000 that while we think it is periodic windowed, it is actually random," he said, meaning there's a 99.97% chance they're right. He noted that a Monte Carlo simulation indicated that the chance they're seeing a pattern that isn't really there is likely well under 1 in a billion.

The recent observation of five bursts within their predicted window, seen by WIND and other spacecraft monitoring gamma ray bursts, adds to their confidence. However, a single future burst observed outside the window would disprove the whole theory, or cause them to redo their analysis completely.

"The most intriguing and fun part for me was to make predictions that could be tested in the sky. We then ran simulations against real and random patterns and found it really did tell us about the bursts," Denissenya said.

As for what causes this pattern, Grossan and Linder can only guess. Soft gamma ray bursts from magnetars are thought to involve starquakes, perhaps triggered by interactions between the neutron star's crust and its intense magnetic field. Magnetars rotate once every few seconds, and if the rotation is accompanied by a precession -- a wobble in the rotation -- that might make the source of burst emission point to Earth only within a certain window. Another possibility, Grossan said, is that a dense, rotating cloud of obscuring material surrounds the magnetar but has a hole that only periodically allows bursts to come out and reach Earth.

"At this stage of our knowledge of these sources, we can't really say which it is," Grossan said. "This is a rich phenomenon that will likely be studied for some time."

Linder agrees and points out that the advances were made by the cross-pollination of techniques from high energy astrophysics observations and theoretical cosmology.

"UC Berkeley is a great place where diverse scientists can come together," he said. "They will continue to watch and learn and even 'listen' with their instruments for more dogs in the night."