Culture

'God forbid we need this, but we'll be ready'

Medication would be taken early in the disease, so you don't get as sick

Future drug could also treat common cold

CHICAGO --- Scientists are already preparing for a possible next coronavirus pandemic to strike, keeping with the seven-year pattern since 2004.

In future-looking research, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine scientists have identified a novel target for a drug to treat SARS-CoV-2 that also could impact a new emerging coronavirus.

"God forbid we need this, but we will be ready," said Karla Satchell, professor of microbiology-immunology at Feinberg, who leads an international team of scientists to analyze the important structures of the virus. The Northwestern team previously mapped the structure of a virus protein called nsp16, which is present in all coronaviruses. This new study provides critical information that could aid drug development against future coronaviruses as well as SARS-CoV-2.

"There is great need for new approaches to drug discovery to combat the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic and infections from future coronaviruses," Satchell said.

"The idea is this future drug would work early in the infection," Satchell said. "If somebody around you gets the coronavirus, you would run to the drugstore to get your medication and take it for three or four days. If you were sick, you wouldn't get as sick."

The paper was published in Science Signaling.

Satchell's team has mapped or 'solved' three new protein structures in three-dimensional views and discovered a secret identifier in the machinery that helps the virus hide from the immune system.

They discovered a coronavirus-specific pocket in the protein, nsp16, that binds the virus-genomic fragment held in place by a metal ion. The fragment is used by the coronavirus as the template for all the viral building blocks.

For this reason, Satchell said, there is potential to make a drug to fit this unique pocket that would block function of this protein from the coronavirus. It would not block the function of a similar protein from human cells that lacks the pocket. Thus, such a drug would only target the invader protein.

Nsp16 is considered one of the key viral proteins that could be inhibited by drugs to stop the virus shortly after a person gets exposed. The goal is to stop the virus early before people get too sick. Since little research was done on nsp16, Satchell's team has worked to generate key information about this protein and is collaborating with chemists who will use the information to design drugs against the protein.

While some of the coronavirus proteins vary a lot, nsp16 is nearly the same across most of them. The unique pocket discovered by Satchell's group is present in all the different coronavirus members. This means that drugs designed to fit this pocket should work against all coronaviruses, including a virus that emerges in the future. And it should work against the common cold that is caused by a coronavirus.

Satchell envisions any drug developed from her team's discovery of the coronavirus pocket would be part of a treatment cocktail taken by patients early in the course of the disease. That could include drugs similar to Remdesivir, a drug that prevents the virus from producing the template for the building blocks that is necessary for it to replicate itself.

The team behind the discovery

The Northwestern team in the Center for Structural Genomics of Infectious Diseases (CSGID) expressed, purified and crystallized this protein. The idea of the project came from first study author George Minasov, research associate professor of microbiology-immunology at Feinberg. He worked with Feinberg research associate professor Ludmilla Shuvalova to crystallize the protein and also with post-doctoral fellow Monica Rosas-Lemus, who developed an assay to test the function of the protein based on information from the structure.

The team collaborated with Purdue University investigator Andrew Mesecar, who helped with biochemistry assays. Data on the structure was collected by the Life Sciences Collaborative Access Team at the Advanced Photon Source of Argonne National Laboratories by Joseph Brunzelle. Minasov solved the structure from the collected data. This project is one of many carried out by the CSGID to use structural biology to understand the biology of the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Overall, the center has made significant contributions to the development of vaccines, drugs and diagnostics. The international team has solved more than 70 different viral structures to reveal viral protein structure, interactions with possible drugs and interactions with antibodies. This work is made freely available to the global community to use to accelerate efforts to design new treatments against coronavirus to combat COVID-19 and future pandemics.

Researchers at the National Eye Institute (NEI) have determined how certain short protein fragments, called peptides, can protect neuronal cells found in the light-sensing retina layer at the back of the eye. The peptides might someday be used to treat degenerative retinal diseases, such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD). The study published today in the Journal of Neurochemistry. NEI is part of the National Institutes of Health.

A team led by Patricia Becerra, Ph.D., chief of the NEI Section on Protein Structure and Function, had previously derived these peptides from a protein called pigment epithelium-derived factor (PEDF), which is produced by retinal pigment epithelial cells that line the back of the eye.

"In the eye, PEDF protects neurons from dying. It prevents the invasion of blood vessels, it prevents inflammation, it has antioxidant properties--all these are beneficial properties," said Becerra, the senior author of the study. Her studies suggest that PEDF is part of the eye's natural mechanism for maintaining eye health. "PEDF may have a role for treating eye disease. If we want to exploit the protein for therapeutics, we need to separate out the regions responsible for its various properties and determine how each of them works."

The team used a well-known cell culture model system where immature retinal cells are isolated from the eyes of newborn rats and grown in a dish with minimal nutrients. The system includes not only the retina's light-sensing photoreceptors, but additional types of neurons that help the retina process and transmit visual information to the brain.

"Our model system - using cells isolated from the animal - lets us tease out the individual processes and mechanisms behind PEDF's protective effects," said Germán Michelis, graduate student and the study's first author.

The PEDF protein has functionally distinct domains. The Becerra lab previously found that each domain can work independently. One area, which is called the 34-mer because it is formed by 34 amino acid building blocks, halts blood vessel growth. Aberrant blood vessel growth is central to retinal diseases such as AMD and diabetic retinopathy. The second PEDF domain, called the 44-mer, provides anti-death signals to retinal neurons. The 44-mer can also stimulate neurons to grow neurites, finger-like projections that help the neurons communicate with their neighbors. A shorter version of the 44-mer of only 17 amino acids (17-mer) has identical activities.

Michelis and colleagues tested whether the 44-mer could protect immature retinal cells in a dish. Without the presence of proteins and other cells in their usual retinal environment, immature photoreceptors quickly die but can be preserved with PEDF.

They found that both the 44-mer and 17-mer were as capable of saving these photoreceptors as full-length PEDF.

The researchers also found that PEDF activity appears to be most needed at a specific point in photoreceptor cell development. Light detection takes place in a part of the photoreceptor known as the outer segment, where light-sensing opsin proteins are concentrated. The scientists found that when a photoreceptor cell is just beginning to create its outer segments, PEDF triggers the movement of opsin into the budding outer segment, where it belongs.

Along with photoreceptors, the retina is packed with several other types of neurons, which work together to process visual signals. Via neurites, amacrine neurons form connections, called synapses, to the cells that forward these visual signals to the brain. Becerra and colleagues found that PEDF stimulates amacrine cells to develop neurites in their cell culture model and that the 44-mer and 17-mer were at least as effective - or better - at stimulating these connections than the native protein.

Further, the 44-mer and 17-mer peptides work by binding to a protein receptor (PEDF-R) on the surface of neurons. PEDF activates PEDF-R, which processes molecules like docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), an omega-3 fatty acid critical for babies' development and for eye health. PEDF-R was discovered previously by the Becerra lab.

"We've known for a long time that DHA is important for retinal health. We think PEDF signaling might be a key component of regulating omega-3 fatty acids like DHA, both during eye development and in maintaining the eye's health over time," said Becerra. "We're hoping that we can harness some of these protective effects in a peptide-based therapeutic approach in the near future."

During the first several months of the pandemic -- when communities locked down, jobs were lost, PPE was scarce and store shelves were cleared --thousands of people turned to online crowdfunding to meet their needs.

But a new University of Washington analysis of requests and donations to the popular crowdfunding site GoFundMe, along with Census data, shows stark inequities in where the money went and how much was donated.

A study published June 15 in Social Science & Medicine found more than 175,000 COVID-19-related GoFundMe campaigns in the U.S., raising more than $416 million, from January through July 2020. Researchers found that affluent and educated communities created more fundraising campaigns, and received more in return, than other communities with fewer resources.

What's more, researchers found that campaign success, overall, was hard to come by. Some 43% of campaigns didn't receive a single donation. More than 90% of campaigns didn't meet their goals.

Researchers say the study reveals the challenges inherent to online crowdfunding, as well as its capacity to reinforce existing socioeconomic divides.

"Our study shows that even though COVID-19 had an impact across the country, the places that benefitted most from crowdfunding were the places that already had the most resources available," said the study's lead author, Mark Igra, a graduate student in sociology at the UW.

While some results may not be surprising from an economic standpoint -- people in wealthier communities likely have more money to donate to charitable causes -- researchers say the results highlight other factors contributing to campaign success. For example, people in more educated communities are likely better able to tap into existing social networks to raise money -- whereas in communities where education is lower the needs may be greater, but residents may have fewer connections to affluent donors, and fewer campaigns reach their goals.

Other recent research has explored online crowdfunding specific to medical needs, finding that campaigns are common, but often unsuccessful, in communities where health care resources and insurance coverage are lacking. This study is believed to be the first to examine online crowdfunding as a broader crisis response, and its impacts on inequality.

In examining COVID-19-related fundraising campaigns that mentioned a need associated with the pandemic, such as a lost job and a need for food or rent money, researchers eliminated those that were part of a GoFundMe program providing matching funds for businesses, leaving about 164,000 campaigns to sort through. Because demographic data about crowdfunding users is hard to come by, researchers analyzed campaign data at a county level and compared it with other county-level socioeconomic characteristics using U.S. Census data. Among their findings:

The median campaign goal was $5,000, with a median of two donations and only $65 raised.

The top 1% of campaigns received nearly one-quarter of all the money raised.

As COVID-19 cases and unemployment rose in a variety of communities, more fundraising campaigns were created in communities with higher education and income levels.

Counties where 35% of residents are college graduates can expect about 50% more campaigns than counties where only 12% are graduates.

Counties with a median household income of at least $130,000 raised nearly $150 million, almost three times as much as counties with a median income of $19,000 to $47,000, even though the populations of those counties are about the same.

A keyword search of GoFundMe campaign requests found that those identifying business and medical needs yielded more donations than those campaigns that mentioned personal financial needs.

GoFundMe's approach of highlighting and promoting certain campaigns, whether those tied to a high-profile person or those that are gaining attention and growing at a faster rate, means success begets success, researchers said.

Co-author Nora Kenworthy, an associate professor of nursing and health studies at UW Bothell, said the study shows who's able to leverage resources in a crisis, and that the nature of online crowdfunding as a social media platform exacerbates the dynamics of a crisis.

"During the pandemic, there's been a lot of talk of communities supporting communities, but we need to ask, where does that happen, for whom, and who gets left out?" said Kenworthy. "The more we rely on social media platforms to shape that community response, the more we are blinded to where help is not happening and who's not getting assistance."

That's not to say crowdfunding doesn't serve a valuable purpose, the authors point out. It's more a sign "that we shouldn't shy away from more structural solutions," Kenworthy said, such as government-run programs that could cast a wider net than crowdfunding can cover.

"People's fundamental needs for health and well-being shouldn't be dependent on such an unpredictable source of funds. It's really a question of what is our shared commitment to the things people should have, regardless of whether they can be successful at crowdfunding," Igra said. "It's a good thing that people are helping, but people who aren't being helped aren't visible."

Microplastic pollution of waterways has become a huge concern, with the tiny pieces of plastic entering food webs and potentially having harmful effects on animals and people. In addition, microplastics can act as breeding grounds for antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Now, researchers reporting in Environmental Science & Technology have analyzed antibiotic-resistance genes (ARGs) on five types of microplastics at different locations along the Beilun River in China, finding much higher abundances in urban than rural regions.

In rivers, major sources of microplastics include textile fibers from laundering, water bottle fragments, and films from bags and wrappers. Also prevalent in rivers are antibiotic-resistant bacteria and ARGs, introduced through wastewater discharge and urban or agricultural runoff. Microplastics can act as a favorable surface for bacteria to colonize and grow into biofilms, where they can spread ARGs among themselves. Li Cui and colleagues wanted to examine the prevalence and diversity of ARGs on microplastics in the Beilun River, which flows from mountainous rural areas through Chinese and Vietnamese cities before entering the Beibu Gulf.

The researchers immersed samples of five kinds of microplastics in the Beilun River at 14 sites with different urbanization levels. After 30 days, they collected the microplastics and used high-throughput quantitative polymerase chain reaction to analyze almost all types of ARGs and the mobile genetic elements that help spread them among bacteria. The detected ARGs conferred resistance to almost all major classes of antibiotics used in humans and animals. The abundance of these genes and genetic elements increased by about 1,000 times from rural to urban areas. In addition, the diversity of ARGs increased. Of the five types of plastics, polypropylene had the highest abundance of ARGs and the greatest risk of spreading the genes, possibly because of its larger surface area and ability to release dissolved organic matter. These results indicate that urbanization introduces many new ARGs into rivers from sources such as sewage, the researchers say.

The old cousins of the common woodlice were crawling on Irish land as long as 360 million years ago, according to new analysis of a fossil found in Kilkenny.

The research, published today (00.01 Wednesday 16 June) in the science journal Biology Letters, used state-of-the-art modern imaging technology to create a new picture of the Oxyuropoda - a land-based creature larger than the modern woodlice - using a fossil found in Kiltorcan, Co Kilkenny in 1908.

Lead researcher Dr Ninon Robin, a postdoctoral researcher at University College Cork's (UCC) School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences said that their work advances science's understanding of when land-dwelling species of crustaceans roamed the earth, and what they looked like.

Dr Robin said:

"Woodlice, and their relatives form a group of crustaceans named peracarids that are as species-rich as the more famous group comprising krill, crabs and shrimps named eucarids. From their ancestral marine habitat some peracarids have, unlike eucarids, evolved fully terrestrial ground-crawling ecologies, inhabiting even commonly our gardens, for example pillbugs and sowbugs, which are very common in Ireland.

"Using new modern imaging techniques, we determined that Oxyuropoda was actually a peracarid crustacean, even the oldest known one; which supports the theory that woodlice cousins were already crawling on Irish lands at that very early time, 360 million years ago.

"From previous genomic and molecular studies, scientists had suggested that this group ofcrustaceans must have appeared around 450 million years ago. However their fossils were very rare in the Paleozoic era, which was 560-250 million years ago, so we had no idea at all how they looked at that time, nor if they were marine or yet terrestrial.

"Our work is an advance in the field of the evolution of invertebrate animals, especially crustaceans, and in our knowledge of the timing of their colonisation of land," she said.

The fossil that formed the basis of this research was found in 1908 in a quarry at Kiltorcan, Co Kilkenny. The site has been internationally known since the mid 19th-century as the location of a number of plant, freshwater bivalve, fish, and crustacean fossils.

Québec produces more strawberries than any other Canadian province. Strawberries are delicate and difficult to keep fresh. In response to this challenge, Monique Lacroix, a professor at at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), and her team have developed a packaging film that can keep strawberries fresh for up to 12 days. The team's findings on how this film protects against mould and certain pathogenic bacteria have been published in Food Hydrocolloids.

The innovative film is made of chitosan, a natural molecule found in shellfish shells. This food industry by-product contains key antifungal properties that curb mould growth. The packaging film also contains essential oils and nanoparticles, both of which possess antimicrobial properties.

"Essential oil vapours protect strawberries. And if the film comes into contact with strawberries, the chitosan and nanoparticles prevent mould and pathogens from reaching the fruit's surface," said Professor Lacroix, expert in sciences applied to food.

Among other things, the packaging could be inserted into blotting paper the industry currently uses for strawberries.

Versatile protection

The formula developed for this packaging film has the added advantage of being effective against several types of pathogens. The team tested the film on four microbial cultures. "Our work has shown the film's effectiveness against Aspergillus niger, a highly resistant mould that causes substantial losses during strawberry production," said Lacroix.

This type of bioactive packaging also showed antimicrobial efficacy against the pathogens Escherichia coli, Listeria monocytogenes, and Salmonella Typhimurium, which come from contamination during food handling and are a major source of concern for the food industry.

Benefits of irradiation

Professor Lacroix and her team also combined the packaging film with an irradiation process. When packaging film was exposed to radiation, team members noted longer shelf life, cutting the level of loss in half compared to the control (without film or irradiation). On day 12, the team recorded a 55% loss rate for the control group of strawberries, 38% for the group with the film, and 25% when irradiation was added.

Irradiation not only extended shelf life, it also helped preserve or increased the quantity of polyphenols in the strawberries. These molecules give strawberries their colour and have antioxidant properties.

Researchers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) discovered a titanic galactic wind driven by a supermassive black hole 13.1 billion years ago. This is the earliest-yet-observed example of such a wind to date and is a telltale sign that huge black holes have a profound effect on the growth of galaxies from the very early history of the Universe.

At the center of many large galaxies hides a supermassive black hole that is millions to billions of times more massive than the Sun. Interestingly, the mass of the black hole is roughly proportional to the mass of the central region (bulge) of the galaxy in the nearby Universe. At first glance, this may seem obvious, but it is actually very strange. The reason is that the sizes of galaxies and black holes differ by about 10 orders of magnitude. Based on this proportional relationship between the masses of two objects that are so different in size, astronomers believe that galaxies and black holes grew and evolved together (coevolution) through some kind of physical interaction.

A galactic wind can provide this kind of physical interaction between black holes and galaxies. A supermassive black hole swallows a large amount of matter. As that matter begins to move at high speed due to the black hole's gravity it emits intense energy, which can push the surrounding matter outward. This is how the galactic wind is created.

"The question is when did galactic winds come into existence in the Universe?" says Takuma Izumi, the lead author of the research paper and a researcher at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). "This is an important question because it is related to an important problem in astronomy: how did galaxies and supermassive black holes coevolve?"

The research team first used NAOJ's Subaru Telescope to search for supermassive black holes. Thanks to its wide-field observation capability, they found more than 100 galaxies with supermassive black holes in the Universe more than 13 billion years ago.

Then, the research team utilized ALMA's high sensitivity to investigate the gas motion in the host galaxies of the black holes. ALMA observed a galaxy HSC J124353.93+010038.5 (hereafter J1243+0100), discovered by the Subaru Telescope, and captured radio waves emitted by the dust and carbon ions in the galaxy.

Detailed analysis of the ALMA data revealed that there is a high-speed gas flow moving at 500 km per second in J1243+0100. This gas flow has enough energy to push away the stellar material in the galaxy and stop the star formation activity. The gas flow found in this study is truly a galactic wind, and it is the oldest observed example of a galaxy with a huge wind of galactic size. The previous record holder was a galaxy about 13 billion years ago; so this observation pushes the start back another 100 million years.

The team also measured the motion of the quiet gas in J1243+0100, and estimated the mass of the galaxy's bulge, based on its gravitational balance, to be about 30 billion times that of the Sun. The mass of the galaxy's supermassive black hole, estimated by another method, was about 1% of that. The mass ratio of the bulge to the supermassive black hole in this galaxy is almost identical to the mass ratio of black holes to galaxies in the modern Universe. This implies that the coevolution of supermassive black holes and galaxies has been occurring since less than a billion years after the birth of the Universe.

"Our observations support recent high-precision computer simulations which have predicted that coevolutionary relationships were in place even at about 13 billion years ago," comments Izumi. "We are planning to observe a large number of such objects in the future, and hope to clarify whether or not the primordial coevolution seen in this object is an accurate picture of the general Universe at that time."

Teachers play a key role in supporting children's development in early childhood education classrooms such as Head Start. Research shows significant associations between teachers' depressive symptoms and their students' social and emotional development. However, little research has focused on the associations between teachers' depressive symptoms and academic outcomes of preschoolers from low-income families. Specifically, one important pathway that has not been examined is whether teacher depressive symptoms have implications for the quality of family-teacher relationships. This in turn could affect how supportive parents are of their children's learning.

A new study examined both direct and indirect pathways by which preschool teachers' depressive symptoms could influence preschool children's early mathematical skills. The study showed that teachers' depressive symptoms were significantly associated with children's math achievement in Head Start programs. In addition, the linkage was through the quality of the teachers' relationships with the families, which in turn affected young children's motivation, engagement, and persistence in learning (called their approaches to learning).

The findings were published in a Child Development article, written by researchers at the University of Oklahoma-Tulsa, Johns Hopkins University, The Ohio State University, and the Community Action Project (CAP) Tulsa.

"The results indicate that alleviating Head Start teachers' depressive symptoms could support positive family-teacher relationships, as well as gains in children's approaches to learning and thereby their mathematical skills," said Shinyoung Jeon, senior research and policy associate at the University of Oklahoma-Tulsa Early Childhood Education Institute. "More research is needed to understand the best mechanisms through which to reduce Head Start teachers' depressive symptoms, and more investment is needed in support of teachers' mental well-being. Interventions that pair support for teachers' psychological wellbeing along with emphasis on building high-quality family-teacher relationships, may benefit children's learning and development."

The study used data from the nationally representative Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey 2014 (FACES 2014). FACES 2014 used multiple methods to collect comprehensive information on Head Start children, families, teachers, classroom quality and programs through direct child assessments, teacher surveys, parent surveys, classroom observation and director surveys. The study included a sample of 1,547 children from 212 classroom in 113 centers at 59 Head Start programs in the United States. Children in the present study were 49% female and featured a diverse range of ethnicities, 27% White, 24% Black, 41% Hispanic/Latino, and 8% others.

The study focused on the following measures gathered through teacher report, parent report, and direct assessments of the children:

Teacher depressive symptoms: Teacher responses to statements (such as "I had trouble keeping my mind on what I was doing," and "I felt that everything I did was an effort").

Family-teacher relationships: Teacher reports of knowledge about families (such as, "I know their cultures and values"), practices involving working together families regarding their children ("How often are you able to set goals with parents for their child") and fostering attitude about engagement with the children (such as, "I encourage parents to make decisions about their children's education and care") were rated.

Approaches to learning: Teacher reports about children's motivation, attention, organization, persistence, and independence in learning (such as "How often in the past month did he or she show eagerness to learn new things").

Math skills: Direct assessments conducted with the children focusing on students' measuring, analyzing, and solving practical problems related to numbers and operations in mathematics, as well as understandings of relative size, ordinal numbers, pattern matching, number recognition and children's ability to count, recognize shapes, add, and solve word problems.

Covariates: Data provided by a parental survey on child gender (boy vs. girl), age in months (at time of spring data collection), returning status (newly enrolled vs. enrolled in a previous year in Head Start), English proficiency, child race, maternal education level and income-to-poverty ratio.

The findings showed that teachers with higher levels of depressive symptoms reported more negative relationships with families. While the association between them was not linked to children's math gains, there was evidence that family-teacher relationships are indirectly linked to math skills through children's approach to learning. Poorer family-teacher relationships were associated with lower gains for children in approaches to learning, which was important to how much they progressed in terms of their math skills.

"Since we focused on Head Start children from low-income families, our study adds to the existing literature by identifying possible associations between a teacher's mental wellbeing and children's academic achievement that function via the quality of the teacher-parent relationship," said Lieny Jeon, associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education. "The study findings support Head Start's strong emphasis on family partnerships as a way to enhance Head Start children's learning behaviors and their subsequent effects on academic achievement."

The authors acknowledge that the findings do not imply causal inferences given potential unobserved variables and selection bias. The authors also recognize that the data included teacher self-reported depressive symptoms collected at a single time point which is not necessarily an indicator of clinically diagnosed depression or the teacher's depressive state throughout the school year. Finally, three of the key variables of focus in this study, teacher's depressive symptoms, family-teacher relationships, and children's approaches to learning were all measured via self-report from the teacher. Future work could be strengthened by using different rather than the same respondent for these key measures.

An herbicide widely used in agriculture, forestry and other applications can cause deleterious effects on the reproductive health of a common perennial plant found in forests in British Columbia, Canada. Researchers reported in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science that glyphosate-based herbicides (GBH) deformed various reproductive parts on prickly rose (Rosa acicularis) a year after the chemicals were first applied in both field sites and experimental plots.

The study is one of the first to look at the effects of GBH on the reproductive morphology of a prevalent perennial plant in a commercial forestry operation. The herbicide is commonly used to control plants that could compete with conifers that are grown to be harvested in areas known as 'cutblocks'. Glyphosate has been used since the 1970s but has come under increased scrutiny in recent years over concerns about carcinogenic effects on human health.

Investigators from the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) collected and analyzed samples of prickly rose reproductive parts from three cutblocks, as well as from greenhouse-grown wild plants, and compared them against untreated plants from similar sources.

The results were striking: Pollen viability of plants treated with glyphosate dropped by an average of 66% compared to the controls a year after the initial application. More than 30% of anthers, the part of the stamen that contains the pollen, failed to split open (a process known as dehiscence), condemning these flowers to functional infertility. In addition, researchers found traces of GBH on plant flowers two full years after the herbicide was first sprayed.

"The changes to plants have been documented in the past, in agricultural plants, so it is not surprising to find them in forests," said Dr. Lisa J. Wood, an assistant professor in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management at UNBC. "What is important is the timeline. To continue to find these effects one to two years after herbicide applications, in new parts of growing plants, is noteworthy."

For centuries, indigenous people used prickly wild rose as both food and medicine, particularly the reproductive parts. R. acicularis is also an important plant ecologically, in part, because it provides food for pollinators. Honeybees, for example, are attracted to particular colors displayed by the flowers.

Wood and lead author Alexandra Golt, a graduate student at UNBC, observed color changes in flower petals and anthers of treated plants. Such abnormalities in coloration could affect the interaction between flowers and pollinators.

Wood said a follow-up study will investigate whether coloration changes in the GHB-treated flowers make them less or more attractive to pollinators. The researchers will also test pollinator insects and hummingbird feces to check if glyphosate residue is present.

"This will tell us if pollinators are taking up residues from the plants they feed on," she explained. "We will also research other plants to see if the changes we observed in the wild rose are also found in other flowers."

Wood said that while past research shows glyphosate is not acutely toxic to most organisms at the levels applied commercially in Canada, scientists don't know a lot about the chronic implications of glyphosate use or how it changes the dynamics of the natural environment - such as the interactions between species or the available food quality.

"The more we learn the better, and research can always be used to better inform management," Wood noted. "Herbicide practices may change, if the research shows that this is in the public's best interest."

Antidepressants can help humans emerge from the darkness of depression. Expose crayfish to antidepressants, and they too become more outgoing -- but that might not be such a positive thing for these freshwater crustaceans, according to a new study led by scientists with the University of Florida.

"Low levels of antidepressants are found in many water bodies," said A.J. Reisinger, lead author of the study and an assistant professor in the UF/IFAS soil and water sciences department. "Because they live in the water, animals like crayfish are regularly exposed to trace amounts of these drugs. We wanted to know how that might be affecting them," he said.

Antidepressants can get into the environment through improper disposal of medications, Reisinger said. In addition, people taking antidepressants excrete trace amounts when they use the bathroom, and those traces can get into the environment through reclaimed water or leaky septic systems.

The researchers found that crayfish exposed to low levels of antidepressant medication behaved more "boldly," emerging from hiding more quickly and spending more time searching for food.

"Crayfish exposed to the antidepressant came out into the open, emerging from their shelter, more quickly than crayfish not exposed to the antidepressant. This change in behavior could put them at greater risk of being eaten by a predator," said Lindsey Reisinger, a co-author of the study and an assistant professor in the UF/IFAS fisheries and aquatic sciences program.

"Crayfish eat algae, dead plants and really anything else at the bottom of streams and ponds. They play an important role in these aquatic environments. If they are getting eaten more often, that can have a ripple effect in those ecosystems," Lindsey Reisinger added.

In their study, conducted while A.J. Reisinger was a postdoctoral researcher at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, the scientists wanted to understand how crayfish respond to low levels of antidepressants in aquatic environments.

"Our study is the first to look at how crayfish respond when exposed to antidepressants at levels typically found in the streams and ponds where they live," A.J. Reisinger said.

The researchers achieved this by recreating crayfish's natural environment in the lab, where they could control the amount of antidepressant in the water and easily observe crayfish behavior.

Crayfish were placed in artificial streams that simulated their natural environment. Some crayfish were exposed to environmentally realistic levels of antidepressant in the water for a few weeks, while a control group was not exposed. The researchers used a common type of antidepressant called a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, or SSRI.

To test how antidepressant exposure changed crayfish behavior, researchers used something called a Y-maze. This maze has a short entrance that branches into two lanes, like the letter Y.

At the start of the experiment, the researchers placed each crayfish in a container that acted as a shelter, and that shelter was placed at the entrance to the maze.

When researchers opened the shelter, they timed how long it took for the crayfish to emerge. If the crayfish emerged, they had the choice of the two lanes in the Y-maze. One lane emitted chemical cues for food, while the other emitted cues that signaled the presence of another crayfish. The researchers recorded which direction the crayfish chose and how long they spent out of the shelter.

Compared to the control group, crayfish exposed to antidepressants emerged from their shelters earlier and spent more time in pursuit of food. They tended to avoid the crayfish side of the maze, a sign that the levels of antidepressants used in study didn't increase their aggression.

"The study also found that crayfish altered levels of algae and organic matter within the artificial streams, with potential effects on energy and nutrient cycling in those ecosystems," A.J. Reisinger said. "It is likely that the altered crayfish behavior would lead to further impacts on stream ecosystem functions over a longer time period as crayfish continue to behave differently due to the SSRIs. This is something we'd like to explore in future studies."

The study, co-authored with Erinn Richmond of Monash University and Emma Rosi of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, is published in the journal Ecosphere.

Wondering how you can reduce the levels of antidepressants and other pharmaceuticals in water bodies? There are steps people can take, A.J. Reisinger said.

"The answer is not for people to stop using medications prescribed by their doctor. One big way consumers can prevent pharmaceuticals from entering our water bodies is to dispose of medications properly," he said.

Many cosmetics sold in the United States and Canada likely contain high levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a potentially toxic class of chemicals linked to a number of serious health conditions, according to new research from the University of Notre Dame.

Scientists tested more than 200 cosmetics including concealers, foundations, eye and eyebrow products and various lip products. According to the study, 56 percent of foundations and eye products, 48 percent of lip products and 47 percent of mascaras tested were found to contain high levels of fluorine, which is an indicator of PFAS use in the product. The study was recently published in the journal of Environmental Science and Technology Letters.

"These results are particularly concerning when you consider the risk of exposure to the consumer combined with the size and scale of a multibillion-dollar industry that provides these products to millions of consumers daily," Graham Peaslee, professor of physics at Notre Dame and principal investigator of the study, said. "There's the individual risk -- these are products that are applied around the eyes and mouth with the potential for absorption through the skin or at the tear duct, as well as possible inhalation or ingestion. PFAS is a persistent chemical -- when it gets into the bloodstream, it stays there and accumulates. There's also the additional risk of environmental contamination associated with the manufacture and disposal of these products, which could affect many more people."

Previously found in nonstick cookware, treated fabrics, fast food wrappers and, most recently, the personal protective equipment used by firefighters across the country, PFAS are known as "forever chemicals," because the chemical compounds don't naturally degrade -- which means they end up contaminating groundwater for decades after their release into the environment. Use of PFAS in foam fire suppressants has been linked to contaminated drinking water systems, prompting the Department of Defense to switch to environmentally safer alternatives, for example.

Studies have linked certain PFAS to kidney cancer, testicular cancer, hypertension, thyroid disease, low birth weight and immunotoxicity in children.

Peaslee and the research team tested products purchased at retail locations in the United States as well as products purchased online in Canada. The study found high levels of fluorine in liquid lipsticks, waterproof mascaras and foundations often advertised as "long-lasting" and "wear-resistant." Peaslee said this not entirely surprising, given PFAS are often used for their water resistance and film-forming properties.

What is more concerning is that 29 products with high fluorine concentrations were tested further and found to contain between four and 13 specific PFAS, only one of these items tested listed PFAS as an ingredient on the product label.

"This is a red flag," Peaslee said. "Our measurements indicate widespread use of PFAS in these products -- but it's important to note that the full extent of use of fluorinated chemicals in cosmetics is hard to estimate due to lack of strict labeling requirements in both countries."

Peaslee's novel method of detecting PFAS in a wide variety of materials has helped reduce the use of "forever chemicals" in consumer and industrial products.

Following a study from his lab in 2017, fast food chains that discovered their wrappers contained PFAS switched to alternative options. Peaslee continues to receive samples of firefighter turnout gear from fire departments around the world to test for PFAS, and his research has spurred conversations within the firefighter community to eliminate use of "forever chemicals" in various articles of personal protective equipment.

A new therapy prompts immune defense cells to swallow misshapen proteins, amyloid beta plaques and tau tangles, whose buildup is known to kill nearby brain cells as part of Alzheimer's disease, a new study shows.

Led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, the investigation showed that elderly monkeys had up to 59 percent fewer plaque deposits in their brains after treatment with CpG oligodeoxynucleotides (CpG ODN), compared with untreated animals. These amyloid beta plaques are protein fragments that clump together and clog the junctions between nerve cells (neurons).

Brains of treated animals also had a drop in levels of toxic tau. This nerve fiber protein can destroy neighboring tissue when disease-related changes to its chemical structure causes it to catch on other cells.

"Our findings illustrate that this therapy is an effective way of manipulating the immune system to slow neurodegeneration," says Akash Patel, MS, an assistant research scientist in the Center for Cognitive Neurology at NYU Langone Health.

The investigators say the treatment led to cognitive benefits as well. When presented with a series of puzzles, elderly monkeys given the drug performed similarly to young adult animals and much better than those in their age group that had remained untreated. The treated monkeys also learned new puzzle-solving skills faster than their untreated peers.

According to researchers, past treatment efforts targeting the immune system failed because the drugs overstimulated the system, causing dangerous levels of inflammation which can kill brain cells.

"Our new treatment avoids the pitfalls of earlier attempts because it is delivered in cycles, giving the immune system a chance to rest between doses," says study co-senior author Thomas Wisniewski, MD. He notes that no additional inflammation was seen in the treated monkeys. Wisniewski is the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman Professor in the Department of Neurology and director of the Center for Cognitive Neurology at NYU Langone.

Alzheimer's disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States and has no known cure. Drug therapies designed to slow or manage the symptoms have failed, says Wisniewski, also director of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at NYU Langone. A growing body of evidence has implicated the immune system, the set of cells and proteins that defend the body from invading bacteria and viruses, as a contributor to Alzheimer's disease. A subset of immune cells, those within the innate immune system, swallow and clear away debris and toxins from bodily tissues along with invading microbes. Studies have shown that these immune custodians become sluggish as a person ages and fail to clear toxins that cause neurodegeneration.

The new investigation, publishing as a cover article June 15 in the journal Brain, is the first to target the innate immune system with a potential therapy for the disorder in monkeys, according to Wisniewski. The CpG ODN drugs are part of a class of innate immune regulators that quicken these worn out immune custodians. He says the research team is also the first to use the "pulsing" drug administration technique to avoid excess inflammation, the immune-driven responses like swelling and pain that result from the homing in by immune cells on sites of injury or infection. While necessary to immune defenses and healing, too much inflammation contributes to many disease mechanisms.

For the investigation, the research team studied 15 female squirrel monkeys between 17 and 19 years old. Eight received a single dose of the drug once a month for two years while the rest were instead given a saline solution. The researchers observed the behavior of the two groups and compared brain tissue and blood samples for plaque deposits, tau protein levels, and evidence of inflammation.

Wisniewski notes that as they age, virtually all squirrel monkeys naturally develop a form of neurodegeneration that mimics Alzheimer's disease in humans, which makes them ideal for studying the disease.

"The similarities in aging between the animals studied and our own species give us hope that this therapy will work in human patients as well," says study co-senior author Henrieta Scholtzova, MD, PhD.

Scholtzova, an associate professor in the Department of Neurology at NYU Langone, cautions that the researchers only evaluated elderly monkeys who already showed significant signs of neurodegeneration. Further testing on younger animals, she notes, would allow them to assess the effectiveness of the treatment in earlier stages of the disease.

Scholtzova says the team next plans to begin testing CpG ODN therapy on human patients with mild cognitive impairments or in early stages of dementia. They also intend to study this treatment in related neurodegenerative illnesses.

What The Study Did: Focus groups were conducted with teenagers to examine their responses to exposure to online and media-based vicarious racism and to explore coping strategies that may be used to combat negative emotions.

Authors: Nia Heard-Garris, M.D., M.Sc., of Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, is the corresponding author.

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

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.13522)

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

Nearly one in four teachers may leave their job by the end of the current (2020-'21) school year, compared with one in six who were likely to leave prior to the pandemic, according to a new RAND Corporation survey. Teachers who identified as Black or African American were particularly likely to consider leaving.

U.S. public-school teachers surveyed in January and February 2021 reported they are almost twice as likely to experience frequent job-related stress as the general employed adult population and almost three times as likely to experience depressive symptoms as the general adult population.

These results suggest potential immediate and long-term threats to the teacher supply.

"Teacher stress was a concern prior to the pandemic and may have only become worse. The experiences of teachers who were considering leaving at the time of our survey were similar in many ways to those of teachers who left the profession because of the pandemic," said Elizabeth Steiner, lead author of the report and a policy researcher at RAND, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization. "This raises the concern that more teachers may decide to quit this year than in past years if nothing is done to address challenging working conditions and support teacher well-being."

Stressful working conditions included a mismatch between actual and preferred mode of instruction, lack of administrator and technical support, frequent technical issues with remote teaching, and lack of implementation of COVID-19 safety measures. Stressors relating to mode of instruction and health were ranked most highly by teachers surveyed.

About a third of teachers were responsible for the care and learning support of their own children while teaching. These stressful working conditions were even more prevalent among teachers who were likely to quit after the onset of the pandemic, but not before.

"Given that some pandemic-era stressors, such as remote teaching, might be here to stay, we think district and school leaders can support teachers' well-being by understanding current working conditions and their need for a more supportive and flexible work environment," said Ashley Woo, coauthor and an assistant policy researcher at RAND.

The report recommends schools implement COVID-19 mitigation measures in a way that allows teachers to focus on instruction and offset worries about their health. Schools and districts should consider systematically collecting data about the mental health and well-being needs of teachers to understand the sources of teacher distress in their school communities while also working together to design and implement mental health and wellness supports. Helping teachers access childcare could go a long way to alleviating stress and promoting teacher retention, as would developing clear policies for remote teaching and adopting technology standards for remote teaching equipment.

Washington, D.C. - June 15, 2021 - Viral genome sequencing of wastewater can provide an early warning system of emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants that is independent of investigations of identified clinical cases, according to a new study published in mSystems, an open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. In the study, researchers describe the detection and quantification of variant B.1.1.7, first identified in southeast England, in sewage samples from London, United Kingdom before widespread transmission of this variant was obvious from clinical cases.

"Wastewater sampling and environmental surveillance gives you a quick and accurate picture of what is happening with the coronavirus in the human population. Most people infected but not showing symptoms are not getting tested for the virus. Wastewater sampling gives you information on all people, including asymptomatic individuals, so it better reflects the circulation of the virus among humans," said study principal investigator Javier Martin, Ph.D., a biologist in the Division of Virology, National Institute for Biological Standards and Control, South Mimms, Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom "Environmental sampling and viral genome sequencing provide a less biased picture of virus circulating patterns among humans, how different variants predominate with time and how changes in strain predominance occurs."

In the new study, to evaluate the value of environmental surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 detection, researchers analyzed sewage samples collected in London between January 14, 2020 and January 26, 2021 for the presence of SARS-CoV-2. They had to distinguish the SARS-CoV-2 genetic signal from the billions of bacteria and viruses people excrete every day. "When we received a sample, we concentrated it using standard methods, and then we used PCR amplification and next generation sequencing targeting different regions of the genome to detect different genetic signatures characteristic of the different known variants," said Dr. Martin.

The researchers first detected variant B.1.1.7 in a sample from early November 2020, a few weeks before it was first noticed through clinical surveillance, and found that the frequency of B.1.1.7 mutations detected in sewage rapidly increased to >95% in January 2021, in accordance with increasing SARS-CoV-2 infections associated with B.1.1.7 viruses.

"Here, we show how environmental surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 can be used to help us understand virus transmission patterns and provide an early warning of variants becoming prevalent in the population," said Dr. Martin. "We will continue monitoring for the different variants focusing on those with potential high transmissibility and/or immune-evading properties. Our results contribute to a better epidemic control and future changes in vaccine design if necessary."