Trump a narcissist shaped by bullying father, says niece in memoir

SHE CONFIRMS TRUMP IS A CLINICAL SOCIOPATH

Issued on: 07/07/2020 -

SAUL LOEB AFP/File

New York (AFP)

Donald Trump's niece describes the US president as a lying narcissist who was shaped by his domineering father, according to excerpts of her eagerly anticipated memoir carried in US media Tuesday.

Mary Trump's "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man" is due out next week amid a legal battle to stop its publication.

In it, she accuses Trump of "hubris and wilful ignorance" stretching back to his younger days, according to CNN, which has seen a copy.


She writes that Trump developed "twisted behaviors" and saw "cheating as a way of life," according to the New York Times.

Trump alleges that the future US leader cheated on an exam, helping him get into the University of Pennsylvania's prestigious Wharton business school, the newspaper reported.

She says her uncle paid someone else to take the precollegiate test when he was a high school student in New York. The Times doesn't say how she knew this.

The 240-page book, out July 14, says Trump is a product of his "sociopath" father Fred Trump, the Washington Post reported.

Mary, a clinical psychologist, says her uncle failed to develop human emotion because his father created an abusive and traumatic homelife.

She says that for the future US leader, "lying was primarily a mode of self-aggrandizement meant to convince other people he was better than he actually was," the Post said.

The memoir is billed as the first unflattering portrayal of Trump by a family insider.

The president's younger brother Robert Trump went to court to try to block publication, arguing that Mary was violating a non-disclosure agreement signed in 2001 after the settlement over her grandfather's estate.

Last week a New York appeals judge ruled that Simon & Schuster is allowed to release the memoir, saying it was "not a party to the agreement."

On Tuesday, White House spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany described it as "a book of falsehoods," even though she admitted she hadn't seen it.

"It's ridiculous, absurd allegations that have absolute no bearing in truth," McEnany told reporters.

- 'Clown' -

Mary is the son of Fred Trump Jr, Trump's older brother, who died in 1981 from complications related to alcoholism. Fred Trump Sr died in 1999.

She writes that her uncle meets all the clinical criteria for being a narcissist, according to the New York Times.

"Donald's pathologies are so complex and his behaviors so often inexplicable that coming up with an accurate and comprehensive diagnosis would require a full battery of psychological and neurophysical tests that he'll never sit for," she writes.

The memoir is also due to reveal that Mary was the crucial source for explosive New York Times reporting on Trump's finances, which suggested the billionaire paid little in tax for decades, according to The Daily Beast.

In the book, she quotes her sister Maryanne Trump Barry as "saying he's a clown -- this will never happen," after Trump announced he was running for president.

It is set to be the latest bombshell book to dish dirt on Trump after former aide John Bolton's tome, which describes Trump as corrupt and incompetent, hit shelves last month.

© 2020 AFP

UK set to resume Saudi arms sales despite Yemen concerns

Issued on: 07/07/2020 -

Campaigners say Britain has licensed nearly £5 billion in weapons to the kingdom since its Yemen campaign began in 2015 JUSTIN TALLIS AFP/File

London (AFP)

Britain said on Tuesday it would resume arms sales to Saudi Arabia, halted last year after a UK court ruling over the Gulf kingdom's bombing campaign in neighbouring Yemen.

Weapons exports were stopped in June 2019 after the Court of Appeal ordered the government to clarify how it assesses whether their use in Yemen's civil war breaches international humanitarian law (IHL).

The conflict has claimed tens of thousands of lives and triggered what the United Nations has described as the world's worst existing humanitarian crisis.

However, the British government has concluded Saudi Arabia "has a genuine intent and the capacity to comply with IHL", according to International Trade Secretary Liz Truss, allowing for export licence reviews to restart.

"I have assessed that there is not a clear risk that the export of arms and military equipment to Saudi Arabia might be used in the commission of a serious violation of IHL," she said in a written statement to parliament

"The government will now begin the process of clearing the backlog of licence applications for Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners that has built up since 20 June last year."

She said it could take "some months" to complete.

The announcement came just a day after Britain slapped sanctions on 20 Saudis for their suspected roles in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

- 'Morally bankrupt' -

The weapons decision drew immediate criticism from arms control activists, with the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) saying it was considering further legal steps.

"This is a disgraceful and morally bankrupt decision," said Andrew Smith of CAAT.

"The Saudi-led bombardment of Yemen has created the world's worst humanitarian crisis, and the government itself admits that UK-made arms have played a central role on the bombing.

"We will be considering this new decision with our lawyers, and will be exploring all options available to challenge it."

Government figures analysed by CAAT show that Britain had licensed nearly £5 billion ($6.4 billion) in weapons to the kingdom since its Yemen campaign began in 2015.

In its 2019 ruling, England's Court of Appeal said the government had broken the law by failing to assess properly whether the arms it sells to Riyadh violated its commitments to human rights.

The court ordered the UK to "reconsider the matter" and weigh up future risks.

Truss said it had now "developed a revised methodology" to assess allegations of violations by Saudi forces, and determined past incidents were "isolated".

She said applications would be "carefully assessed" against the Consolidated European Union and National Arms Export Licensing Criteria.

"A licence would not be granted if to do so would be a breach of the Criteria," Truss said.

Russia seeks 15 years jail for Gulag historian

Issued on: 07/07/2020 -

Russian historian Yury Dmitriyev (pictured April 2018), who heads rights group Memorial's branch in Karelia, speaks to the media as he leaves a court following the verdict in his child pornography trial in the northwestern city of Petrozavodsk OLGA MALTSEVA AFP/File
Moscow (AFP)

Russian prosecutors demanded Tuesday that a respected Gulag historian be sentenced to 15 years in prison over alleged sexual assault in a case his allies say has been trumped up to silence him.

Yury Dmitriyev, 64, spent decades locating and exhuming mass graves of people killed under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's rule.

Rights groups and supporters including many Russian actors have campaigned against Dmitriyev's years-long prosecution.

Activists say the case against him is an attempt to muzzle the outspoken historian who has called attention to one of the darkest chapters in Russia's history.

Dmitriyev is the head of leading rights group Memorial's branch in Karelia in northwestern Russia.

He was first arrested in late 2016 on child porn charges and spent more than a year in pre-trial detention before being released after calls from prominent figures for him to be freed.

In April 2018, he was acquitted of child pornography charges but in a stunning turnabout he was detained later that year again after a higher court overturned the "not guilty" verdict.

He was charged with alleged sexual assault and detained again.

On Tuesday, Dmitriyev's lawyer Viktor Anufriev said prosecutors in the northwestern city of Petrozavodsk demanded that he be sentenced to 15 years in a strict-regime penal colony.

Anufriyev told AFP his client would address court on Wednesday.

The prosecution has claimed the historian sexually abused his adopted daughter, the charges he denies.

Dmitriyev's previous case centred on naked photographs of his then pre-teen adopted daughter Natalya seized during a search of his home after an anonymous tip-off to police.

Dmitriyev is known for helping open the Sandarmokh memorial in a pine forest in Karelia in memory of thousands of victims -- including many foreigners -- murdered in 1937 and 1938.

© 2020 AFP

Facebook ad boycott organizers cite no progress on hate speech


Issued on: 07/07/2020 -

Facebook failed to allay concerns of activists organizing an ad boycott of the leading social network to press for more aggressive action on removing toxic and inflammatory content
Washington (AFP)

Organizers of the Facebook ad boycott vowed Tuesday to continue their campaign, saying the social network's top executives had failed to offer meaningful action on curbing hateful content.

At a virtual meeting that included Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, the #StopHateForProfit coalition leaders "didn't hear anything today to convince us that Zuckerberg and his colleagues are taking action," said Jessica Gonzalez of the activist group Free Press, one of the coalition members.

The meeting took place amid a boycott which has grown to nearly 1,000 advertisers pressing for more aggressive action from Facebook on toxic and inflammatory content which promotes violence and hate.


"I'm deeply disappointed that Facebook still refuses to hold itself accountable to its users, its advertisers and society at large," Gonzalez said in a statement.

"This isn't over. We will continue to expand the boycott until Facebook takes our demands seriously. We won't be distracted by Facebook's spin today or any day."

Sleeping Giants, another activist group involved in the boycott, said it was clear at the meeting that Facebook executives "intend to take no real action to deal with hate and disinformation on their platform."

The boycott has mushroomed to include global brands and small companies joining the effort to pressure Facebook, spurred by the wave of protests calling for social justice and racial equity.

Some of the activists say Facebook should do more to curb disinformation from political leaders including President Donald Trump, and limit his comments which critics say promote violence and divisiveness.

- Sandberg pledges more steps -

Earlier Tuesday, Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg pledged further steps to remove toxic and hateful content ahead of the discussions with the boycott organizers, led by the NAACP, Color of Change and the Anti-Defamation League.

She added that the Silicon Valley giant will be announcing policy updates as a result of discussions with civil rights activists and its own audit of civil rights practices.

"Facebook has to get better at finding and removing hateful content," Sandberg wrote.

"We are making changes -- not for financial reasons or advertiser pressure, but because it is the right thing to do."

Sandberg said the final report of the independent civil rights audit would be published Wednesday following a two-year review, and that this would be used to guide Facebook policy changes.

"While the audit was planned and most of it carried out long before recent events, its release couldn't come at a more important time," she said.

"While we won't be making every change they call for, we will put more of their proposals into practice soon."

The boycott organizers are seeking a top level executive to evaluate "products and policies for discrimination, bias, and hate," as well as independent audits of "identity-based hate and misinformation."

Gonzalez said Facebook should take responsibility for the promotion of violence on the platform including the massacres of Rohingya people in Myanmar, and mass killings which were promoted or streamed on Facebook.

© 2020 AFP

NASA hits Boeing with 80 recommendations before next space test
Issued on: 07/07/2020 -

A Boeing Starliner capsule touches down in White Sands, New Mexico in December 2019 after an unsuccessful uncrewed test flight Bill INGALLS NASA/AFP/FileWashington (AFP)

NASA has drawn up a list of 80 recommendations that US aerospace giant Boeing will have to address before attempting to refly its Starliner space capsule, following the failure of an uncrewed test last year.

The recommendations primarily concern the on-board software, which was the main problem with the flight test last December.

The capsule could not be placed in the correct orbit, due to a clock error, and a had to return to Earth after two days instead of docking with the International Space Station as planned.


Boeing subsequently learned that other software problems could have caused the capsule and the rocket to collide at the time of separation, a potentially very dangerous event if the flight had been crewed.

Most of the problems identified run deep and are organizational, for example NASA's verification procedures. The space agency has been a client of Boeing's for decades, but seems to have placed too much faith in its historic partner.

"Perhaps we were a little more focused on SpaceX," said Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, in a call with reporters.

SpaceX, a relative newcomer to the space industry, is the other company chosen by NASA to develop a crewed vessel -- but unlike Boeing, its Crew Dragon successfully completed its uncrewed test flight in 2019, then its first crewed flight in May, with two astronauts on board.

Starliner's next attempt could take place in "the latter part of this year," added Stich, without making a guarantee. Boeing won't therefore be able to carry astronauts until at least 2021, while SpaceX's second crewed flight is set to take place this summer.

© 2020 AFP

SCHADENFREUDE 

Brazil's Bolsonaro takes Covid-19 test after showing symptoms

WELL AT LEAST WE KNOW HE IS NOT ASYMPTOMATIC 

Issued on: 07/07/2020 - 

 

President Jair Bolsonaro attends the inauguration ceremony of the Main Space Operations Center of the Geostationary Defense and Strategic Communications Satellite in Brasilia, Brazil June 23, 2020. © REUTERS/Adriano Machado

Text by:NEWS WIRES

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Monday he had undergone another test for the novel coronavirus and his lungs were "clean," after local media reported he had symptoms associated with the Covid-19 respiratory disease.

Bolsonaro has repeatedly played down the impact of the virus, even as Brazil has suffered one of the world's worst outbreaks, with more than 1.6 million confirmed cases and 65,000 related deaths, according to official data on Monday.

CNN Brasil and newspaper Estado de S.Paulo reported that he had symptoms of the disease, such as a fever.

Bolsonaro told supporters outside the presidential palace that he had just visited the hospital and been tested.

"I can't get very close," he said in comments recorded by Foco do Brasil, a pro-government YouTube channel. "I came from the hospital. I underwent a lung scan. The lung's clean."

The president's office said in a statement that the president is at his home and is "in good health."

The right-wing populist has often defied local guidelines to wear a mask in public, even after a judge ordered him to do so in late June.

Over the weekend, Bolsonaro attended several events and was in close contact with the U.S. ambassador to Brazil during July 4 celebrations. The U.S. embassy in Brasilia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bolsonaro tested negative for the coronavirus after several aides were diagnosed following a visit to U.S. President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago, Florida, estate in March.

CNN Brasil reported that Bolsonaro has begun taking the drugs hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, which he touts as a COVID-19 treatment despite little proof of their effectiveness.

Bolsonaro's official events on Tuesday have been canceled, according to CNN Brasil.

(REUTERS)

https://www.france24.com/en/20200707-brazil-s-president-bolsonaro-tests-positive-for-coronavirus

French feminists criticise choice of justice, interior ministers over sexism and rape claims



Issued on: 07/07/2020 - 20:05

Many French feminists reacted strongly on Monday evening to the appointments of Gérald Darmanin as interior minister – who has been accused of rape – and Éric Dupond-Moretti – who has been accused of making sexist remarks – as justice minister in President Emmanuel Macron’s revamped cabinet. © Thomas Samson and Gérard Julien, AFP
Text by:Romain BRUNET

3 minFrench feminists have reacted strongly to the appointment on Monday of Gérald Darmanin as interior minister and Éric Dupond-Moretti as minister of justice in France’s reshuffled government. Dupond-Moretti has been accused of making sexist remarks while judges last year ordered that an investigation be reopened into rape allegations against Darmanin.
Several feminists started expressing their dismay on social media soon after the appointments were announced on Monday.

“How can you imagine for one moment that the fight against gender-based and sexual violence will be advanced with the appointment of a rapist at the interior ministry and a sexist at the justice ministry? This government is a disgrace,” tweeted the activist group Osez le féminisme (Dare to be feminist).

Darmanin will take on one of France’s highest-profile jobs as interior minister, a dossier that promises to be challenging as the police force faces allegations of racism and violence while others criticise Macron’s government for not doing enough to support the authorities.

Darmanin has been accused of raping a woman after she sought his help in having a criminal record expunged in 2009. He has denied the claims – Darmanin admitted having sexual intercourse with the complainant but insisted that relations were consensual – and the charges were dismissed in 2018. But in November 2019 judges ordered the investigation to be reopened, with a new inquiry that started on June 11.

https://t.co/d3rLZsRLJ7 pic.twitter.com/IbEDLA7MXZ— inna shevchenko (@femeninna) July 7, 2020

FEMEN protest at Élysée Palace

On Tuesday morning, around 20 feminist activists gathered outside the interior ministry in Paris with smoke bombs, protesting Darmanin ascension to his new role with chants of, “Darmanin, rapist” and “Darmanin, resign”.

Later the same day, three members of the Ukrainian feminist group FEMEN burst into the Élysée Palace shortly before the new government’s first cabinet meeting, shouting accusations that the government had chosen a “sexist reshuffle”. Police soon arrested the topless demonstrators. “The #FEMEN activists came before the Council of Ministers to express their sincere condolences to the French Republic,” tweeted Inna Shevchenko, the group’s leader in France.

“I think opposing these appointments will be our great cause for the remainder of Macron’s term,” tweeted well-known feminist activist Caroline de Haas, in the first of several social media posts in which she criticised remarks by Éric Dupond-Moretti that she deemed sexist.

The famous lawyer came under fire from many quarters during his high-profile defence of Georges Tron, a former member of cabinet, on charges of rape and sexual assault brought by two municipal employees. Upon Tron’s acquittal in 2018, Dupond-Moretti called his accusers “inconsistent, manipulative”.

The lawyer has also targeted feminist groups, including the European Association on Violence against Women at Work (l'Association européenne contre les violences faites aux femmes au travail).


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Dupond-Moretti has acknowledged that "there are predatory men" but said there are also "women who are attracted to power, who like it". By way of example, he cited a hypothetical "starlet who wants to succeed and says to herself, ‘I'm going to sleep [with him]’; 'This is a ‘couch promotion'."

On Monday evening, many were quoting other remarks made by Dupond-Moretti, including his belief that “some women regret not being whistled at” and a lament that actions that would have been considered a misdemeanour in his youth are now considered crimes. He has also been known to observe that, "At 30, a woman is not a bimbo unable to say no to a man."

These two appointments are a “slap in the face” by Macron against “everyone who has campaigned against gender-based violence”, Laurence Rossingol, a former Socialist minister for the family, told France Info news on Tuesday. “It’s a very big problem, especially because neither of the two has made a public commitment to tackling such violence.”

However, Élysée Palace sources said on Monday night that the allegations of rape against Darmanin are “not an obstacle” to his appointment as interior minister.

This article was adapted from the original in French.

COVID-19 shines spotlight on gender inequity in academia

In a new article, a team of 17 faculty members from across the nation, including nine from Texas Tech, examines how the pandemic amplifies gender inequity and proposes novel solutions

TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY

 

As COVID-19 spread across the country earlier this year, forcing schools and universities to close, Jessica L. Malisch began to notice an alarming trend - but not related to the virus.

"I was alarmed by patterns I was observing in the academic community in regards to how COVID-19 campus and childcare closures appeared to be impacting female scientists disproportionately," said Malisch, an assistant professor of biology at St. Mary's College of Maryland.

She called a friend, Breanna N. Harris, a research assistant professor in Texas Tech University's Department of Biological Sciences, with an idea. The pair quickly outlined a paper about the effects of the pandemic on women in academia, then reached out to more than a dozen other women invested in gender equity to contribute their perspectives. The resulting article was published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

Among the authors were nine from Texas Tech:

• Harris
• Jessica L. Spott, a doctoral candidate in educational psychology
• Elizabeth P. Karam, an assistant professor in the Area of Management
• Naïma Moustaïd-Moussa, a professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences and founding director of the Obesity Research Institute
• Latha Ramalingam, a research assistant professor of nutritional sciences
• Amelia E. Talley, an associate professor and associate chair of the Department of Psychological Sciences
• Jaclyn E. Cañas-Carrell, a professor in the Department of Environmental Toxicology and director of the STEM Center for Outreach, Research & Education
• Karin Ardon-Dryer, an assistant professor in the Department of Geosciences-Atmospheric Sciences Group
• Dana A. Weiser, an associate professor in the Department of Human Development & Family Studies

The gender divide in academia is well documented. Women face inequality and inequity. Examples include women's underrepresentation in administrative positions; biases against marriage or having children; shortages of working-mother role models and female mentors in general; pay and grant-funding disparities; and advancement based on student evaluations, which consistently rate men higher than women. Culturally, women are more likely to be the caregivers of children and/or parents, leading to a more difficult work/life balance.

But in the age of COVID-19, these existing challenges have been exacerbated, the authors explained. Importantly, the impacts of inequality and inequity are amplified and compounded for women with intersecting identities. For example, Black women, indigenous women and other women of color experience racial and ethnic bias on top of gender bias.

"The upending of daily life and the shift to remote work is hard on everyone, but women, who traditionally do more of the household and dependent care labor, are likely to bear a greater burden," Harris said. "Women tend to teach more and larger classes, students depend on female faculty for emotional support and expect more leniency from women vs. male faculty, and students evaluate women more harshly in teaching evaluations. With the rapid shift to online learning, more students and/or courses means more work, and having more students during a crisis means students will expect more emotional and academic support.

"In addition to more student demands in the classroom, many women are experiencing increased demands at home - either for care and homeschooling of children or of elderly family members, or for running the household. Given the increased demand of teaching and home responsibilities, women have less time to devote to research and grant writing."

The economic impacts also are likely to be more severe for women, Harris noted, because many institutions' plans for coping with COVID-19 result in some form of decreased income, either through direct firing, furlough or decreased contributions to retirement.

Many universities have instituted gender-neutral policies that treat men and women the same, like tenure-clock extensions. But even these, the authors argue, lead to increased disparity between genders.

"On the surface, having adjustment policies that are gender neutral sounds like the right thing to do, but that isn't always the case," Harris said. "I think it is important to recall the difference between equity and equality. I like the visual of a family riding bikes - in this scenario, the man is riding a traditional man's bike. Equality would be providing everyone in the family with a man's bike, but this solution doesn't address the needs of the woman and the small child. They might be able to manage, but the man's bike isn't the best option. Providing bikes that are suited to their size and needs - for example, adding training wheels for the child - is the better option. This is the equitable solution as it gives each family member the tools they need to complete the task.

"Women in academia face inequality in teaching loads, mentoring and service requirements, and start-up funds and salary. Thus, using policies that are equal for men and women can increase gaps instead of reducing them. In the bike example, it is like giving the whole family a man's bike but the one given to the woman is a lesser or older model, thus there is inequality at the start. A gender-neutral adjustment is then adding something like a cushioned seat to each bike to help the family deal with a long ride. Given that the man already had an advantage, a better bike that is suited to his needs, adding the seat for everyone is helpful, but it helps the man more."

Instead of gender-neutral policies, the authors recommend institutions form Pandemic Faculty Merit Committees to deal with equity issues. Such committees should be proactive, diverse, transparent, informed and trained in both bias and the institution's history.

"We provide a downloadable guide with questions about research, teaching, service and other situations that committees can use as a starting point," Harris said. "We also have a website that contains additional sources and background information."

Co-author Cañas-Carrell, chair of the President's Gender Equity Council, has shared the paper with the council as well as the Women Full Professors Network (WFPN), both of which fully endorsed it.

"The WPFN Executive Board is in support of having some of the group's members work with the administration and the Pandemic Response Merit Committee," Cañas-Carrell said. "We have received a very positive response from the administration and are already working with the Provost's Office to either establish a separate Pandemic Response Merit Committee or to create a subcommittee of the Faculty Success Advisory Council focused on equity in the time of COVID-19."

While there is certainly progress to be made, the authors believe articles like this can help.

"I don't think one article can solve the issues of gender and racial inequity in academia," Harris said, "but I am hoping that committees, departments and institutions use our piece and the provided resources to have honest conversations and personal reflections on their policies and practices. Ultimately, I hope they then enact some changes to begin to remedy inequities."

###

Compounds halt SARS-CoV-2 replication by targeting key viral enzyme

Four promising antiviral drug candidates identified and analyzed by a University of Arizona-University of South Florida team in the preclinical study

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA (USF HEALTH)

 

IMAGE: THREE CONFIGURATIONS OF ACTIVE SITES WHERE INHIBITOR GC-376 BINDS WITH THE COVID-19 VIRUS'S MAIN PROTEASE (DRUG TARGET MPRO), AS DEPICTED BY 3D COMPUTER MODELING. view more 

CREDIT: IMAGE GENERATED BY YU CHEN, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA HEALTH, USING X-RAY CRYSTALLOGRAPHY

TAMPA, Fla. (July 6, 2020) — As the death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic mounts, scientists worldwide continue their push to develop effective treatments and a vaccine for the highly contagious respiratory virus.

University of South Florida Health (USF Health) Morsani College of Medicine scientists recently worked with colleagues at the University of Arizona College of Pharmacy to identify several existing compounds that block replication of the COVID-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2) within human cells grown in the laboratory. The inhibitors all demonstrated potent chemical and structural interactions with a viral protein critical to the virus's ability to proliferate.

The research team's drug discovery study appeared June 15 in Cell Research, a high-impact Nature journal.

The most promising drug candidates - including the FDA-approved hepatitis C medication boceprevir and an investigational veterinary antiviral drug known as GC-376 - target the SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro), an enzyme that cuts out proteins from a long strand that the virus produces when it invades a human cell. Without Mpro, the virus cannot replicate and infect new cells. This enzyme had already been validated as an antiviral drug target for the original SARS and MERS, both genetically similar to SARS-CoV-2.

"With a rapidly emerging infectious disease like COVID-19, we don't have time to develop new antiviral drugs from scratch," said Yu Chen, PhD, USF Health associate professor of molecular medicine and a coauthor of the Cell Research paper. "A lot of good drug candidates are already out there as a starting point. But, with new information from studies like ours and current technology, we can help design even better (repurposed) drugs much faster."

Before the pandemic, Dr. Chen applied his expertise in structure-based drug design to help develop inhibitors (drug compounds) that target bacterial enzymes causing resistance to certain commonly prescribed antibiotics such as penicillin. Now his laboratory focuses its advanced techniques, including X-ray crystallography and molecular docking, on looking for ways to stop SARS-CoV-2.

Mpro represents an attractive target for drug development against COVID-19 because of the enzyme's essential role in the life cycle of the coronavirus and the absence of a similar protease in humans, Dr. Chen said. Since people do not have the enzyme, drugs targeting this protein are less likely to cause side effects, he explained.

The four leading drug candidates identified by the University of Arizona-USF Health team as the best (most potent and specific) for fighting COVID-19 are described below. These inhibitors rose to the top after screening more than 50 existing protease compounds for potential repurposing:

• Boceprevir, a drug to treat Hepatitis C, is the only one of the four compounds already approved by the FDA. Its effective dose, safety profile, formulation and how the body processes the drug (pharmacokinetics) are already known, which would greatly speed up the steps needed to get boceprevir to clinical trials for COVID-19, Dr. Chen said.
• GC-376, an investigational veterinary drug for a deadly strain of coronavirus in cats, which causes feline infectious peritonitis. This agent was the most potent inhibitor of the Mpro enzyme in biochemical tests, Dr. Chen said, but before human trials could begin it would need to be tested in animal models of SARS-CoV-2. Dr. Chen and his doctoral student Michael Sacco determined the X-ray crystal structure of GC-376 bound by Mpro, and characterized molecular interactions between the compound and viral enzyme using 3D computer modeling.

• Calpain inhibitors II and XII, cysteine inhibitors investigated in the past for cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and other conditions, also showed strong antiviral activity. Their ability to dually inhibit both Mpro and calpain/cathepsin protease suggests these compounds may include the added benefit of suppressing drug resistance, the researchers report.

All four compounds were superior to other Mpro inhibitors previously identified as suitable to clinically evaluate for treating SARS-CoV-2, Dr. Chen said.

A promising drug candidate - one that kills or impairs the virus without destroying healthy cells — fits snugly, into the unique shape of viral protein receptor's "binding pocket." GC-376 worked particularly well at conforming to (complementing) the shape of targeted Mpro enzyme binding sites, Dr. Chen said. Using a lock (binding pocket, or receptor) and key (drug) analogy, "GC-376 was by far the key with the best, or tightest, fit," he added. "Our modeling shows how the inhibitor can mimic the original peptide substrate when it binds to the active site on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 main protease."

Instead of promoting the activity of viral enzyme, like the substrate normally does, the inhibitor significantly decreases the activity of the enzyme that helps SARS-CoV-2 make copies of itself.

Visualizing 3-D interactions between the antiviral compounds and the viral protein provides a clearer understanding of how the Mpro complex works and, in the long-term, can lead to the design of new COVID-19 drugs, Dr. Chen said. In the meantime, he added, researchers focus on getting targeted antiviral treatments to the frontlines more quickly by tweaking existing coronavirus drug candidates to improve their stability and performance.

Dr. Chen worked with lead investigator Jun Wang, PhD, UA assistant professor of pharmacology and toxicology, on the study. The work was supported in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health.

Leap in lidar could improve safety, security of new technology

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER

 

IMAGE: A SILICON CHIP WITH A TILED ARRAY OF SERPENTINE OPTICAL PHASED ARRAY (SOPA) TILES. THE 32 TILES IN THE 8-BY-4 ARRAY HAVE SLIGHTLY DIFFERING GRATING DESIGNS, SHOWING HERE TWO MATCHING... view more 

CREDIT: BOHAN ZHANG AND NATHAN DOSTART

Whether it's on top of a self-driving car or embedded inside the latest gadget, Light Detection and Ranging (lidar) systems will likely play an important role in our technological future, enabling vehicles to 'see' in real-time, phones to map three-dimensional images and enhancing augmented reality in video games.

The challenge: these 3-D imaging systems can be bulky, expensive and hard to shrink down to the size needed for these up-and-coming applications. But University of Colorado Boulder researchers are one big step closer to a solution.

In a new paper, published in Optica, they describe a new silicon chip--with no moving parts or electronics--that improves the resolution and scanning speed needed for a lidar system.

"We're looking to ideally replace big, bulky, heavy lidar systems with just this flat, little chip," said Nathan Dostart, lead author on the study, who recently completed his doctorate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Current commercial lidar systems use large, rotating mirrors to steer the laser beam and thereby create a 3-D image. For the past three years, Dostart and his colleagues have been working on a new way of steering laser beams called wavelength steering--where each wavelength, or "color," of the laser is pointed to a unique angle.

They've not only developed a way to do a version of this along two dimensions simultaneously, instead of only one, they've done it with color, using a "rainbow" pattern to take 3-D images. Since the beams are easily controlled by simply changing colors, multiple phased arrays can be controlled simultaneously to create a bigger aperture and a higher resolution image.

"We've figured out how to put this two-dimensional rainbow into a little teeny chip," said Kelvin Wagner, co-author of the new study and professor of electrical and computer engineering.

The end of electrical communication

Autonomous vehicles are currently a $50 billion dollar industry, projected to be worth more than $500 billion by 2026. While many cars on the road today already have some elements of autonomous assistance, such as enhanced cruise control and automatic lane-centering, the real race is to create a car that drives itself with no input or responsibility from a human driver. In the past 15 years or so, innovators have realized that in order to do this cars will need more than just cameras and radar--they will need lidar.

Lidar is a remote sensing method that uses laser beams, pulses of invisible light, to measure distances. These beams of light bounce off everything in their path, and a sensor collects these reflections to create a precise, three-dimensional picture of the surrounding environment in real time.

Lidar is like echolocation with light: it can tell you how far away each pixel in an image is. It's been used for at least 50 years in satellites and airplanes, to conduct atmospheric sensing and measure the depth of bodies of water and heights of terrain.

While great strides have been made in the size of lidar systems, they remain the most expensive part of self-driving cars by far--as much as $70,000 each.

In order to work broadly in the consumer market one day, lidar must become even cheaper, smaller and less complex. Some companies are trying to accomplish this feat using silicon photonics: An emerging area in electrical engineering that uses silicon chips, which can process light.

The research team's new finding is an important advancement in silicon chip technology for use in lidar systems.

"Electrical communication is at its absolute limit. Optics has to come into play and that's why all these big players are committed to making the silicon photonics technology industrially viable," said Miloš Popovi?, co-author and associate professor of engineering at Boston University.

The simpler and smaller that these silicon chips can be made--while retaining high resolution and accuracy in their imaging--the more technologies they can be applied to, including self-driving cars and smartphones.

Rumor has it that the upcoming iPhone 12 will incorporate a lidar camera, like that currently in the iPad Pro. This technology could not only improve its facial recognition security, but one day assist in creating climbing route maps, measuring distances and even identifying animal tracks or plants.

"We're proposing a scalable approach to lidar using chip technology. And this is the first step, the first building block of that approach," said Dostart, who will continue his work at NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia. "There's still a long way to go."

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Additional co-authors of this study include Michael Brand and Daniel Feldkhun of CU Boulder; Bohan Zhang, Anatol Khilo, Kenaish Al Qubaisi, Deniz Onural and Milos A. Popovic of Boston University.