It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, March 20, 2020
Life expectancy crisis in the USA: The opioid crisis is not the decisive factor
The figure displays the results of a simulation that examines the size of the influence of each of the two causes of death. The simulation shows how the life expectancy of 25-year-old American men would have developed between 2010 and 2017 if the number of drug-related deaths had remained constant, and how it would have developed if the number of deaths from cardiovascular diseases had declined to the same extent as it did between 2000 and 2009. (The simulation calculates the remaining life expectancy of 25-year-olds; in the figure, these 25 years are added to the total life expectancy.) Credit: MPIDR
Life expectancy in the USA is no longer rising. This stagnation has long been largely attributed to increasing numbers of drug deaths due to the opioid crisis. But Mikko Myrskylä and colleagues have now shown that deaths due to cardiovascular diseases are in fact having a much larger impact on life expectancy.
Over each decade of the past century, life expectancy in the USA rose by two years. This is no longer the case. Since 2010, life expectancy has not improved. Until now, this fact has mainly been attributed to the rising number of drug deaths due to the opioid crisis.
But Mikko Myrskylä, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, together with Neil Mehta and Leah Abrams from University of Michigan have shown a stall in declining cardiovascular deaths is a more likely explanation for the end of stagnation of life expectancy. They have published their findings in the scientific journal PNAS.
Drug-related deaths have little influence on life expectancy
The remaining life expectancy of 25-year-old Americans would have risen by 1.1 years between 2010 and 2017 if deaths from cardiovascular diseases had declined as much over that period as they did between 2000 and 2009.
By contrast, the rising number of drug-related deaths had a much smaller influence on life expectancy. "If the number of drug-related deaths had remained constant after 2010, male life expectancy would have risen just 0.4 years, or by around five months," Mikko Myrskylä explained. Thus, over the long run, reducing the number of drug-related deaths will not be sufficient to ensure that life expectancy in the USA resumes its upward trajectory.
More information: Neil K. Mehta et al, US life expectancy stalls due to cardiovascular disease, not drug deaths, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2020). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1920391117
Study reveals that odor alters how memories are processed in the brain
Pyramidal cells in the mouse prelimbic cortex (shown in blue) that were active during the formation of a discrete memory (shown in green). These cells have been traditionally thought to be less active upon initial memory formation (or shortly after e.g., one day later) and become more active with the passage of time (when accessed at more remote time points e.g. 21 days later). Credit: Dr. Stephanie Grella (Ramirez Lab)
We've all experienced the strange memory-jogging power of scents. Perhaps the aroma of fresh pine brings you back to your childhood Christmases, or your heart starts to race when you step into a doctor's office and the sharp odor of disinfectant fills your nose. Now, researchers from Boston University's Center for Systems Neuroscience reveal just how much power scents have in triggering the memory of past experiences—and the potential for odor to be used as a tool to treat memory-related mood disorders.
"If odor could be used to elicit the rich recollection of amemory—even of atraumatic experience—we could take advantage of that [therapeutically]," says BU neuroscientist Steve Ramirez, a College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of psychology andbrain sciencesand the senior author of a new paper describing his team's findings inLearning and Memory.
Until now, the scent-memory connection has been something of an enigma. In fact, even the mechanisms that underlie memory formation in general have been debated in recent years. The traditional theory—systems consolidation theory—suggests that our memories start out being processed by a small, horseshoe-shaped brain area called the hippocampus, which infuses them with rich details. Over time, especially when we sleep, the set of brain cells that holds onto a particular memory reactivates and reorganizes. The memory then becomes processed by the front of the brain—the prefrontal cortex—instead of the hippocampus, and many of the details become lost in the shuffle.
This theory has its merits. For starters, it would explain why our memories tend to get a bit fuzzy as time passes. It also helps explain why people with hippocampal damage are often unable to form new memories while their ability to keep old, prefrontal cortex-stored memories remains perfectly intact. In contrast, those with prefrontal cortex damage often exhibit the flavor of amnesia we often see in soap operas: an inability to remember the past.
However, critics of the systems consolidation theory maintain that it doesn't tell the whole story. If memories slip out of the hippocampus and become stripped of their details over time, then why do many people retain vivid recollections of an event even years later—particularly people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)? And why do scents, which are processed in the hippocampus, sometimes trigger seemingly dormant memories?
Pyramidal cells in the mouse prelimbic cortex (shown in blue) that were active during the formation of a discrete memory (shown in green). These cells have been traditionally thought to be less active upon initial memory formation (or shortly after e.g., one day later) and become more active with the passage of time, when accessed at more remote time points e.g. 21 days later (shown in magenta) leading to higher degree of overlap in these populations of neurons (shown in yellow). Credit: Dr. Stephanie Grella (Ramirez Lab)
To answer these questions, Ramirez and members of his lab created fear memories in mice by giving them a series of harmless but startling electric shocks inside a special container. During the shocks, half of the mice were exposed to the scent of almond extract, while the other half were not exposed to any scent. The next day, the researchers returned the mice to the same container to prompt them to recall their newly formed memories. Once again, the mice in the odor group got a whiff of almond extract during their session, while the no-odor group was not exposed to any scent. But this time, neither group received any new electric shocks. Consistent with the systems consolidation theory, both groups exhibited significant activation of the hippocampus during this early recall session, indicating they remembered receiving the shocks from the day before.
However, during the next recall session 20 days later, the researchers were in for a shock of their own. As expected, in the no-odor group, processing of the fear memory had shifted to the prefrontal cortex—but the odor group still had significant brain activity in the hippocampus.
"[This finding suggests] that we can bias the hippocampus to come back online at a timepoint when we wouldn't expect it to be online anymore because the memory is too old," Ramirez says. "Odor can act as a cue to reinvigorate or reenergize that memory with detail."
Ramirez adds that we still aren't sure about odor's exact role in memory processing. Perhaps odors delay a memory's shift to relying on the prefrontal cortex, thereby preserving the details for longer. If this is the case, an odor needs only to be present during memory formation for a memory to retain its vividness. Alternatively, it's possible that the prefrontal-cortex shift still occurs in an odor-associated memory, but that if the same odor emerges again later on, the hippocampus becomes reactivated and the memory regains the details it had lost.
Regardless of the specifics, Ramirez says that this research provides us with a "blueprint" of memory processing in nonhuman animals, and this information might one day lead to breakthroughs in the treatment of mental health conditions in humans, such as PTSD.
Engaging hippocampal engrams across time. Granule cells in the mouse hippocampus (shown in blue) that were active during the formation of a discrete memory were selectively targeted to express activity-dependent DREADDs (shown in green; designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs). These hippocampal cells were traditionally thought to be more active shortly after memory formation (e.g., one day later) and less so when accessed at more remote time points (e.g. 21 days later). Here we show that when salient memories are imbued with highly contextual information such as an odor, this process of systems consolidation is delayed, as they continue to rely on the hippocampus for processing Credit: Dr. Stephanie Grella (Ramirez Lab)
Many psychotherapy- and drug-based treatments for PTSD involve trying to suppress or dampen traumatic memories, but this process can only be carried out effectively when people actively recall the memories first.
"Now that we know that odor can shift memories to become more hippocampus dependent, we could potentially develop strategies that engage or disengage the hippocampus. And then we could integrate some behavioral or drug-based approaches to bring the hippocampus back offline if our goal is to permanently suppress a fear memory," Ramirez says.
In other words, the scents that spark our memories may be more powerful than we realize. Today, they serve as the triggers for our nostalgia and our anxiety—but tomorrow, they could be our treatments.
"We can potentially view memory as its own kind of drug—as an antidepressant or [anxiety reducer]," Ramirez says. "And [odor] could be an experimentally controllable factor that we could deliver to people. It may be a very powerful tool."
More information:Stephanie L. Grella et al, Odor modulates the temporal dynamics of fear memory consolidation,Learning & Memory(2020).DOI: 10.1101/lm.050690.119
Clinical trial shows HIV drugs ineffective against COVID-19
by Bob Yirka , Medical Xpress
This transmission electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2 -- also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19 -- isolated from a patient in the US. Virus particles are shown emerging from the surface of cells cultured in the lab. The spikes on the outer edge of the virus particles give coronaviruses their name, crown-like. Credit: NIAID-RML
A team of doctors and researchers in China has found that drugs that are effective in treating patients with HIV are ineffective against COVID-19. In their paper published in The New England Journal of Medicine, the group describes the clinical trial they conducted with patients in Wuhan, China, and what they learned from it. Lindsey Baden and Eric Rubin with Brigham and Women's Hospital, (Rubin is also editor-in-chief of NEJM) have published an editorial in the same journal issue discussing the work by the team in China.
Recently, it was noted in the medical community that the viruses behind COVID-19 and HIV both need an enzyme called protease in order to be infectious. And prior research has found that the protease inhibitors lopinavir and ritonavir are effective in treating HIV patients, which led many to wonder if they might also be effective against SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19 infections. To find out if that might be the case, the team in Wuhan initiated a clinical trial.
The trial involved assigning 199 patients with advanced cases of COVID-19 to one of two groups—one group received standard care (which included supplemental oxygen), the other standard care plus administration of lopinavir and ritonavir. In the end, 94 of the patients were given the protease inhibitors. Unfortunately, the researchers found no benefit to using the drugs. Those given the drug fared no better than those who were not.
But there were some caveats. First, all of the patients were in advanced stages of the diseases, which made it less likely that any therapy might help them. Second, the trial size was very small. Also, the researchers found that the drugs did shorten the time it took for those patients who survived to see any clinical improvement by one day. Unfortunately, that one-day improvement was only seen in patients who had been given the drugs within 12 days of the onset of symptoms. The upside to the results of the trial, Baden and Rubin note, is that the same drugs still hold the possibility of helping people who receive them sooner after infection. They also note that the bravery exhibited by the team in China has also allowed other teams around the world to use their data in future trials.
More information:Bin Cao et al. A Trial of Lopinavir–Ritonavir in Adults Hospitalized with Severe Covid-19,New England Journal of Medicine(2020).DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2001282
Lindsey R. Baden et al. Covid-19—The Search for Effective Therapy,New England Journal of Medicine(2020).DOI: 10.1056/NEJMe2005477
New fossil specimen helped University of Kansas graduate
student Anna Whitaker solve a 50-year-old marine-worm
mystery. Credit: Anna Whitaker, et al.
When a partial fossil specimen of a primordial marine worm was unearthed in Utah in 1969, scientists had a tough go identifying it. Usually, such worms are recognized and categorized by the arrangement of little knobs on their plates. But in this case, the worm's plates were oddly smooth, and important bits of the worm were missing altogether.
Discouraged, researchers placed the mystery worm in a "wastebasket" genus called Palaeoscolex, and interest in the lowly critter waned for the next 50 years.
That all changed recently when Paul Jamison, a teacher from Logan, Utah, and private collector, and his student Riley Smith were hunting fossils in the Spence Shale in Utah, a 506-million-year-old geologic unit housing a plethora of exceptionally preserved soft-bodied and biomineralized fossils. (Paleontologists call such a mother lode of fossils a "Lagerstätte.") There, Smith discovered a second, more thoroughly preserved example of the worm.
Eventually, thanks to Jamison's donation, the new fossil specimen arrived at the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute, where Anna Whitaker, a graduate student in museum studies, researched and analyzed the worm with scanning electron microscopes, energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometry and optical microscopy.
At last, Whitaker determined the worm represented a new genus of Cambrian sea worm heretofore unknown to science. She's the lead author of a description of the worm just published in the peer-reviewed paleontological journal PalZ.
"Before the new species that we acquired there was only one specimen known from the Spence Shale," she said. "But with our new specimen we discovered it had characteristics that the original specimen didn't have. So, we were able to update that description, and based on these new characteristics—we decided it didn't fit in its old genus. So, we moved it to a new one."
Whitaker and her colleagues—Jamison, James Schiffbauer of the University of Missouri and Julien Kimmig of KU's Biodiversity Institute—named the new genus Utahscolex.
"We think they're closely related to priapulid worms that exist today—you can find them in the oceans, and they are very similar to priapulids based on their mouth parts," Whitaker said. "What's characteristic about these guys is that they have a proboscis that can evert, so it can turn itself inside out and it's covered with spines—that's how it grabs food and sucks it in. So, it behaved very similarly to modern priapulid worms."
While today, Utah is not a place you'd look for marine life, the case was different 506 million years ago, when creatures preserved in the Spence Shale were fossilized.
"The Spence Shale was a shelf system, and it's really interesting because it preserves a lot of environments—nearshore to even deeper offshore, which is kind of unusual for a Lagerstätte, and especially during the Cambrian. These animals were living in kind of a muddy substrate. This worm was a carnivore, so it was preying on other critters. But there would have been whole diversity of animals—sponges, and trilobites scuttling along. We have very large, for the time, bivalve arthropods that would be predators. The Spence has a very large diversity of arthropods. It would have looked completely alien to us today."
Whitaker hopes to complete her master's degree this spring, then to attend the University of Toronto to earn her doctorate. The description of Utahscolex is Whitaker's first academic publication, but she hopes it won't be her last. She said the opportunity to perform such research is a chief reason for attending KU.
"I came for the museum studies program," she said. "It's one of the best in the country, and the program's flexibility has allowed me to focus on natural history collections, which is what I hopefully will have a career in, and also gain work experience in the collections and do research—so it's kind of everything I was looking for in the program."
While ancient sea worms could strike many as a meaninglessly obscure subject for such intense interest and research, Whitaker said filling in gaps in the fossil record leads to a broader understanding of evolutionary processes and offers more granular details about the tree of life.
"I know some people might say, 'Why should we care about these?'" she said. "But the taxonomy of naming all these species is really an old practice that started in the 1700s. It underpins all the science that we do today. Looking at biodiversity through time, we have to know the species diversity; we have to know as correctly as we can how many species there were and how they were related to each other. This supports our understanding of—as we move into bigger and bigger, broader picture—how we can interpret this fossil record correctly, or as best we can."
This digital reconstruction of Pueblo Bonito during its peak occupation depicts the "tree of life," which was long believed to have grown in the plaza. Credit: University of Arizona
A majestic ponderosa pine, standing tall in what is widely thought to have been the "center of the world" for the Ancestral Puebloan people, may have more mundane origins than previously believed, according to research led by tree-ring experts at the University of Arizona.
A study published in the journal American Antiquity provides new data that calls into question the long-held view of the Plaza Tree of Pueblo Bonito as the sole living tree in an otherwise treeless landscape, around which a regional metropolis in New Mexico's Chaco Canyon was built.
Combining various lines of evidence, the study is the first to apply a technique called dendroprovenance to a sample of the plaza tree that uses tree-ring growth patterns to trace the tree's origin. The data revealed that the tree did not grow where it was found, and is therefore unlikely to have played a role as significant as various authors have ascribed to it ever since it was discovered in 1924.
According to the study's first author, Christopher Guiterman, who is an assistant research scientist at the University of Arizona's Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, "the tree goes back all the way to the birth of tree-ring science – a supposedly living tree growing in 'downtown Chaco' during the height of its occupancy – which would make it the only tree of its kind that we know of in southwestern archaeology."
The largest of the buildings known as great houses in Chaco Canyon, Pueblo Bonito is considered widely as the center of the Chaco world, which spanned the four corners region all the way to the edge of the Colorado Plateau. Pueblo Bonito's significance has been likened to Stonehenge in Great Britain and Machu Picchu in Peru. According to the National Park Service, the cultural thriving of the Chacoan people began in the mid 800s and lasted more than 300 years.
During that time, the occupants constructed massive stone buildings, or great houses, consisting of multiple stories that accommodated hundreds of rooms. By 1050, Chaco had become the ceremonial, administrative and economic center of the San Juan Basin and is thought to have served as a major hub connecting trading routes. Pueblo descendants consider Chaco a special gathering place where people shared ceremonies, traditions and knowledge.
During a 1924 dig at Pueblo Bonito, archeologists of the National Geographic Society excavated a 20-foot long pine log in the west courtyard of the monumental great house. The discovery itself was a sensation, Guiterman said.
"The likelihood of finding such a tree after lying undisturbed for 800-plus years seems unbelievable, but we know that is what happened because tree rings don't lie," he said.
The tree was reportedly found just beneath the present-day soil surface, lying on the last utilized pavement. Its "great, snag-like roots precluded the possibility of it ever having been moved," according to the description of expedition leader Neil Judd of the Smithsonian Institution.
The study's lead author, Christopher Guiterman, working in the collections of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. Credit: Chris Baisan
"It's important to recognize that these are only the stubs of roots, not the entire root system," said co-author Jeffrey Dean, UArizona professor emeritus of anthropology. "Lacking the root system, combined with the fact that the log was lying flat on top of the latest plaza surface, means that the plaza tree did not grow in the Pueblo Bonito Plaza."
Dendrochronological analyses initiated in 1928 by Andrew Ellicott Douglass, the founder of the University of Arizona Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, confirmed that the tree lived between 732 and 981, and likely longer, since its outermost wood had eroded away over time.
Guiterman said he had been vexed by the tree's origin story for a long time. Was it the lone remnant of a pine forest growing in Chaco Canyon, the only tree that didn't get cut down for some unknown reason? Or had it been lying there undisturbed all along, even during the peak of the Chacoan culture?
"You don't just find a 1,000-year-old piece of wood on the ground like that," said Guiterman, whose earlier research in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment revealed that the 25,000 trees used to build Pueblo Bonito did not grow nearby, but were transported from distant mountain ranges.
To find out where the plaza tree had come from, Guiterman and his co-authors assembled three lines of evidence, "not unlike building a legal case," as he put it. They scrutinized documentary records, including unpublished correspondence and reports from the early archeological expeditions, strontium isotope signatures from pine trees living in the Chaco Canyon area today and tree-ring patterns that allow scientists to pinpoint the source of the wood in question.
While winter precipitation patterns are fairly uniform across Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado, the summer rainstorms known as monsoons are much more local, Guiterman explained, and the resulting variation in tree-ring patterns allows researchers to match a wood sample to the area where it grew.
"We have this incredible database from 100-plus years of tree-ring science," said Guiterman, who has dated hundreds of trees. "Trees from the San Juan Mountains, the Jemez Mountains or the Chuska Mountains – they all have their own kind of flavor, their own peculiar signature."
Based on the combined analyses of the available evidence, Guiterman and his co-authors conclude that the Plaza Tree of Pueblo Bonito did not grow in Pueblo Bonito or Chaco Canyon. Instead, it most likely was hauled in from the Chuska Mountain range 50 miles west of Chaco Canyon, probably along with many other ponderosa pine beams used in construction. The tree lived in the Chuska Mountains for more than 250 years.
"We will never know exactly when it died because its outer sapwood rings were lost to decay," the authors wrote, "but we estimate that it was living until the early 1100s. Following its death, by either natural causes or cutting, it was transported to Pueblo Bonito in the 12th century, where it was either abandoned or employed for some purpose (possibly as a standing pole). It could have toppled or been left standing to eventually collapse onto the plaza. Finally, it was buried by windblown sand over the centuries."
Sample of JPB-101A, a different ponderosa pine but from around the same time (995-1095) as the Pueblo Bonito plaza tree. Credit: Christopher Guiterman
Yet, even knowing the likely birthplace of Pueblo Bonito's Plaza Tree, the mystery of its purpose remains, Guiterman said.
"Why did the ancient Chacoans carry this tree there, and how?" he said. "We don't see any drag marks, so they must have treated these heavy beams with great care. How they did that is up for debate."
Various roles for the plaza tree of Pueblo Bonito have been brought forth. For example, it could have been used as a ceremonial pole or as a gnomon—the part of a sundial that casts a shadow. Or perhaps it was simply leftover lumber or cast aside as firewood.
According to Barbara Mills, a Regents Professor in the UArizona School of Anthropology who was not involved in the study, it is unlikely a conclusive answer will ever be found.
"Nobody knows what the tree was used for, and unless there were any further clues waiting to be uncovered, such as traces of pollen left behind on the log, we have no way of knowing," Mills said.
Pine trees are known to play roles in present-day Puebloan life. During the San Geronimo Festival held in Taos, New Mexico, for example, pine trees are brought in and used for ceremonial pole climbing or to hang bags with offerings.
"It is not uncommon to bring a pine tree into the plaza during ceremonies, and certain kinds of dancers or kachinas hold boughs of pine in their hands during their dances," Mills said, "but we don't know how far back those practices go. We rely on descendant oral tradition as much as we can, but we have to be careful to not over-extend our interpretations and use as many lines of evidence as we can."
The paper, "Convergence of Evidence Supports a Chuska Mountains origin for the Plaza Tree of Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon," is co-authored by Christopher Baisan and Thomas Swetnam at the UArizona Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research; Jay Quade in the UArizona Department of Geosciences; and Nathan English at Central Queensland University in Townsville, Queensland, Australia.Unexpected wood source for Chaco Canyon great houses
More information:Christopher H. Guiterman et al. Convergence of Evidence Supports a Chuska Mountains Origin for the Plaza Tree of Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon,American Antiquity(2020).DOI: 10.1017/aaq.2020.6
This scanning electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2 (yellow)--also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19--isolated from a patient in the U.S., emerging from the surface of cells (blue/pink) cultured in the lab. Credit: NIAID RML
The virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is stable for several hours to days in aerosols and on surfaces, according to a new study from National Institutes of Health, CDC, UCLA and Princeton University scientists The New England Journal of Medicine. The scientists found that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was detectable in aerosols for up to three hours, up to four hours on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to two to three days on plastic and stainless steel. The results provide key information about the stability of SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19 disease, and suggests that people may acquire the virus through the air and after touching contaminated objects. The study information was widely shared during the past two weeks after the researchers placed the contents on a preprint server to quickly share their data with colleagues.
The NIH scientists, from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases' Montana facility at Rocky Mountain Laboratories, compared how the environment affects SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV-1, which causes SARS. SARS-CoV-1, like its successor now circulating across the globe, emerged from China and infected more than 8,000 people in 2002 and 2003. SARS-CoV-1 was eradicated by intensive contact tracing and case isolation measures and no cases have been detected since 2004. SARS-CoV-1 is the human coronavirus most closely related to SARS-CoV-2. In the stability study the two viruses behaved similarly, which unfortunately fails to explain why COVID-19 has become a much larger outbreak.
The NIH study attempted to mimic virus being deposited from an infected person onto everyday surfaces in a household or hospital setting, such as through coughing or touching objects. The scientists then investigated how long the virus remained infectious on these surfaces.
The scientists highlighted additional observations from their study:
If the viability of the two coronaviruses is similar, why is SARS-CoV-2 resulting in more cases? Emerging evidence suggests that people infected with SARS-CoV-2 might be spreading virus without recognizing, or prior to recognizing, symptoms. This would make disease control measures that were effective against SARS-CoV-1 less effective against its successor.
In contrast to SARS-CoV-1, most secondary cases of virus transmission of SARS-CoV-2 appear to be occurring in community settings rather than healthcare settings. However, healthcare settings are also vulnerable to the introduction and spread of SARS-CoV-2, and the stability of SARS-CoV-2 in aerosols and on surfaces likely contributes to transmission of the virus in healthcare settings.
The findings affirm the guidance from public health professionals to use precautions similar to those for influenza and other respiratory viruses to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2:
Avoid close contact with people who are sick.
Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth.
Stay home when you are sick.
Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue in the trash.
Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces using a regular household cleaning spray or wipe.
More information: Neeltje van Doremalen et al, Aerosol and Surface Stability of SARS-CoV-2 as Compared with SARS-CoV-1, New England Journal of Medicine (2020). DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc2004973
Researchers at Stevens Institute of Technology have developed an AI-powered, smart insole that instantly turns any shoe into a portable gait-analysis laboratory.
The work, reported in January 2020 issue of IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, could benefit clinical researchers by providing a new way to precisely measure walking function in patients with movement disorders or musculoskeletal injuries, in their living environments. The technology could also lead to significant advances for athletes, by helping them improve their running technique.
"From a practical standpoint, that's invaluable," said Damiano Zanotto, lead author and director of Stevens Wearable Robotic Systems Lab. "We're now able to accurately analyze a person's gait in real time, in real-world environments."
Taking a single step might seem simple, but capturing reliable information about a person's gait in real-life environments remains a major challenge for researchers. Gold-standard gait-analysis technologies, such as camera-based motion-capture systems and force plates, are expensive and can only be used inside laboratories, so they offer few insights into how people walk around in the real world. Emerging wearable technologies such as smart shoes, pods, and insoles can potentially overcome this limitation, but the existing products cannot provide accurate gait data.
In their work, Zanotto and his team show that their smart insole can deliver real-time data on the length, speed, and power of a wearer's stride with better accuracy than existing foot-worn technologies—and at a fraction of the cost of traditional laboratory equipment. (Zanotto and his team are seeking two patents relating to the SportSole, and several companies and professional sporting franchises are closely following the team's work.)
The team's SportSole technology uses accelerometers and gyroscopes to monitor its own movement and orientation in space, and an array of force sensors to detect plantar pressure, allowing it to capture 500 readings per second—around a fivefold improvement over smart pedometers and other wearable gait-analysis tools.
The real magic, however, happens outside the shoe. Wearable motion sensors are inherently noisy. To overcome that challenge, Zanotto simmers those 500 measurements per second down to just a few key features, then feeds the results into an AI algorithm capable of rapidly extracting gait parameters that are accurate to within a couple of percentage points.
That's a big improvement over other AI gait-analysis tools, which are computationally intensive and require data to be recorded for later analysis. The Stevens system is far more efficient, allowing it to be baked into a microcontroller capable of delivering real-time gait analysis.
It also works regardless of whether the wearer is walking or running, and generates accurate results without requiring calibration or customization for individual users. Preliminary testing suggests the SportSole even works with children as young as three years of age and elderly with vestibular disorders, whose gait patterns are very different from those of healthy adults.
Such consistent accuracy is impressive because most gait researchers use high-end sensors costing $1,000 or more in a bid to reduce errors. By contrast, Zanotto and his team used off-the-shelf sensors costing around $100, relying on AI to extract reliable data. "We're achieving the same or better results at a far lower cost, and that's a big deal when it comes to scaling this technology," said Zanotto.
For now, though, the team is focusing on testing the SportSole for clinical use. An unobtrusive, wearable gait monitor could help researchers optimize treatments for people with movement disorders, allow remote monitoring of vulnerable populations, or offer important insights into the safety and efficacy of new treatments that might affect gait and balance.
More information: Huanghe Zhang et al, Accurate Ambulatory Gait Analysis in Walking and Running Using Machine Learning Models, IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering (2019). DOI: 10.1109/TNSRE.2019.2958679
Alitalia nationalized
'Worse than 9/11': Coronavirus threatens global airline industry
by Luc Olinga Avec Corentin Dautreppe Et Sonia Wolf À Paris
Many of the world's airlines face possible bankruptcy due to the coronavirus shutdown of the industry
Fears of massive bankruptcies and calls for emergency bailouts swept global airlines Tuesday as a top US official warned the coronavirus crisis threatens the industry even more than the September 11 attacks, which saw US airspace shut down entirely. I
Italy moved to take over insolvent Alitalia while Sweden and Denmark offered 275 million euros in guarantees to help prop up Scandinavian carrier SAS.
In the United States, airlines sought $50 billion in help from the government as the White House prepared a reportedly $850 billion plan to support the entire economy.
"This is worse than 9/11 for the airline industry—they are ground to a halt," US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said.
Industry officials said most airlines face burning through their cash reserves in three months or less.
And airlines warned that vital air cargo could be impacted by the shutdown of 185,000 passenger flights around the world.
"Most airlines in the world will be bankrupt" by the end of May, Market intelligence firm CAPA warned.
"If the crisis will continue at that intensity, it's clear we will see a consolidation," Alexandre de Juniac, director general and CEO of the International Air Transport Association, said in Geneva.
Alitalia nationalized
More airlines slashed flights Tuesday as millions of passengers cancelled travel to self-quarantine and countries blocked arrivals to stem the spread of the COVID-19 infection.
The Italian government will take over Alitalia to prevent its collapse during the COVID-19 pandemic
Belgium-based Brussels Airlines, a Lufthansa subsidiary which operates 48 aircraft, suspended all flights for at least a month on Tuesday. Lufthansa has already cut back flights by 90 percent.
In Australia, Qantas slashed international capacity by 90 percent early Tuesday, as the government required that anyone arriving from abroad needs to isolate themselves for 14 days to be sure they are not carrying the virus.
Italy's government said it would take over Alitalia, the former flag carrier already mired in bankruptcy negotiations since 2017.
"At a time like this, a flag carrier gives the government more leeway," said Deputy Economy Minister Laura Castelli. "We all saw the difficulties our compatriots faced in returning to Italy. Our decision stems from this."
Even with the takeover, the plan was to furlough 4,000 of Alitalia's 11,000 employees.
In Russia, Alexander Neradko, head of the federal agency Rosaviation, said their airlines, hit beginning in February with the shutdown of flights to China, the original epicenter of the virus, were also in trouble.
"There is a rising risk of bankruptcies by airlines that are in a tough financial situation," Neradko said.
"The government is actively discussing how to support airlines," said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.
Airports also desperate
Brian Pearce, economist of IATA, said their early March estimate of $113 billion in losses to the global industry now looks very low.
Most of the world's airlines barely have enough cash to cover the next three months, according to analysts
"Seventy-five percent of the airlines we have looked at have less than three months of cash to pay their fixed costs," Pearce said.
Such numbers put aviation in perhaps the top position of industries requiring a bailout, like banks in the 2008 financial crisis.
"Connectivity is crucial," said the IATA's de Juniac.
"The world will get through this crisis," he said. "And when it does it will need a functioning air transport sector. Without financial relief that is not guaranteed."
Airports too said they were under threat. The Airports Council International Europe said they were bracing for a "near total collapse" of traffic, wiping out earnings while they hold high fixed costs.
ACI Europe president Jost Lammers called in a letter to the European Union Tuesday for urgent financial support.
"This funding needs to be available under similar conditions as those that will be considered for airlines," Lammers wrote.
In the United States, however, some bristled at again, like in 2008, using taxpayer funds to rescue industries and well-paid executives who took excessive risks with their companies.
Critics said US airlines, rather than build up cash reserves, used nearly all their profits in recent years to buy back shares to prop up share prices.
According to Bloomberg, over the past decade US airlines used nearly 96 percent of their free cash flow to buy back shares, with American Airlines the most aggressive, paying out $12.5 billion.
"We cannot permit American and other airlines to use federal assistance, whether labelled a bailout or not, to weather the coronavirus crisis and then return to business as usual," wrote Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu in The New York Times.
3-D printers saving the lives of coronavirus victims
by Peter Grad , Tech Xplore The original valve (left) and its 3-D printed twin. Credit: Cristian Fracassi
Medical valves manufactured with portable 3-D printers are saving the lives of coronavirus victims at a hospital located in what is considered Italy's Ground Zero for the deadly viral infection.
When the founder of Issanova, a startup 3-D printing firm with a staff of 14 learned that a local hospital was running short of critical breathing devices used to help hospital patients suffering from the deadly virus, he sprang into action. He consulted with a fellow engineering expert and the two raced to the desperate hospital located in the small town of Chiari. There, they examined the medical device, called a Venturi valve.
That was on Friday the 13th. By Saturday, after a few hours designing blueprints for the device, they began producing the first of 100 Venturi valves on a 3-D printer that would immediately be shipped to the hospital to help save lives.
At the moment, Italy is suffering from the virus more than any other country in the world, with 2,158 confirmed deaths and 27,980 confirmed infected with the virus as of March 16. On Sunday alone, 368 new deaths were reported.
"We were told the hospital was desperately looking for more valves," Cristian Fracassi, CEO of the 3-D printing firm Isinnova, said. "They're impossible to find at the moment, production can't keep up with demand."
The hospital's valve supplier would not release blueprints of the device, so Fracassi turned to fellow engineer Alessandro Romaioli and the two examined the devices and reverse-engineered the design within hours. They rushed the first units to the hospital the same day. At one point, they brought 3-D printers to the hospital to speed delivery of the critical valves.
Romaioli told BBC News, "They tested it on a patient and they told us that it worked well and so we ran again back to our office and we started to print new valves."
The valves are inexpensive—roughly a dollar apiece—but they are produced slowly, taking about an hour each to complete. Isinnova has only six 3-D printers, so Fracassi contacted fellow firms to join in the effort.
Countries around the world are stepping up restrictions, closing schools, theaters, restaurants and public arenas and are issuing strict warnings to citizens to avoid crowds, wash their hands thoroughly and avoid touching their faces.
According to the Worldometer web site that is tracking the impact of the virus, as of 2 p.m. Tuesday, there are 194,584 reported cases of COVID-19 infection, 7,894 deaths caused by the virus, and 81,080 recoveries.
The Venturi valve is named after its inventor, the Italian 18th century physicist Giovanni Battista Venturi. The component connects oxygen masks to respirators used by patients with respiratory complications.
More Italian hospitals are expected to place calls for emergency replacement valves and the production procedure is sure to be examined closely by health officials globally.
"We haven't slept for two days," Fracassi said. "We're trying to save lives."
The original valve (left) and its 3-D printed twin. Credit: Cristian Fracassi