Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Care home refused free tests. Now, nearly everyone has virus

NATIONALIZE PRIVATE LONG TERM CARE

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The Canyon Creek Memory Care Community is seen in Billings, Mont. on Friday, July 10, 2020. The facility that cares for people with dementia and other cognitive issues has seen at least seven deaths since a coronavirus outbreak sickened almost all its residents and many staff members. The Montana memory care facility that didn't carry out no-cost COVID-19 testing on its residents is reeling from an outbreak that has sickened more than 50 residents and 36 staff. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown)

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — It was meant to be a last line of defense to protect the most vulnerable as the coronavirus spread across the United States: Montana officials offered free testing in May for staff and residents at assisted living and long-term care facilities.

But not all of them followed through, according to state data, including a facility in Billings, Montana’s largest city, that cares for people with dementia and other memory problems. The virus has infected almost every resident there and killed eight since July 6, accounting for almost a quarter of Montana’s 34 confirmed deaths. Thirty-six employees also have tested positive.

While Montana’s rates of confirmed infections and deaths are much lower than other parts of the country, the outbreak at Canyon Creek Memory Care illustrates that even the most simple and common-sense preventive measures have sometimes gone unused during the pandemic, allowing the virus to sweep through elderly care facilities with devastating results.

“I don’t see that there’s good justification for just not testing. You’re operating in the dark,” said Chris Laxton, executive director of the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine, which represents more than 50,000 long-term care professionals.

Nursing homes became the first places with fatal outbreaks in the U.S. Six of Montana’s earliest deaths were tied to infections acquired at another nursing home, but the state initially avoided the widespread early outbreaks seen elsewhere in the nation.

Canyon Creek was among 45 of 289 assisted living and long-term care facilities that initially declined Montana’s call for testing.

“My impression is that the facilities believed they had all protocols in place to keep their residents safe, were doing everything possible, and there was no need (to test) because of so few cases in their area,” said Rose Hughes, executive director of the Montana Health Care Association, which represents long-term care facilities.

Canyon Creek’s operator, Koelsch Communities of Olympia, Washington, hasn’t directly said why it turned down free testing at the facility, which has seen 55 positive cases among the 59 people who lived there when the deaths began. The company says it declined to test residents after three with symptoms in April and May were put in quarantine but tested negative.

The first positive cases — a staff member and a resident — were discovered in late June, just days after Gov. Steve Bullock lifted some restrictions on care facilities. As the outbreak escalated, the Democrat issued a statewide emergency rule that made testing of staff and residents a condition for facilities to receive visitors.

Koelsch Communities, which operates in eight states, has confirmed cases in at least 13 of its 39 facilities and had reported 11 deaths in other places prior to the Montana outbreak. Five of the deaths happened in late June at El Rio Memory Care in Modesto, California.

Company spokesman Chase Salyers said those living at Canyon Creek who aren’t infected are kept separate and that testing of staff and residents will continue.

Older people and those with preexisting conditions are more vulnerable to the respiratory virus. According to a tally by The Associated Press, more than 58,000 COVID-19 deaths have involved nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. That is over 40% of the nation’s more than 135,000 deaths.

There are no federal testing requirements, and rules differ widely among states.

To be effective, testing needs to occur before an outbreak, include residents and staff, and be repeated periodically because staff come and go, said Albert Munanga, an affiliate faculty member at the University of Washington’s nursing school and regional health director for Era Living retirement communities.

Pam Donovan, whose father is a Canyon Creek resident, said “the jury’s still out” on whether the facility should have done testing earlier and whether it would have helped.

Richard Donovan, a retired sheriff’s deputy and coroner, initially tested negative in early July when the outbreak began but developed symptoms days later and was taken to a hospital Thursday, Pam Donovan said. His test came back positive Friday, she said.

Donovan said the only plausible reason to decline free testing would be the difficulty swabbing residents with dementia.

“That’s the only thing I can think of, putting myself in their shoes,” she said. “I don’t know if they’ll ever say what their reason was.”

Administrators at some Montana facilities that declined the testing in May and June said the invasive nasal procedure would frighten dementia patients or make them uncomfortable. They noted their communities had few cases at that point, and they were disinfecting surfaces, washing hands and wearing masks. Some weren’t allowing visitors.

Ashley Samples, administrator at Bee Hive Homes in Columbia Falls, said a concern was false positives.

“I think if there was a more sure way to do it, I think we absolutely would have,” she said.

Bee Hive’s facilities are still on lockdown, staff have their temperatures taken and wear masks, and visits happen through open windows, Samples said.

Hyalite Country Care Assisted Living in Bozeman initially decided not to test residents, partly based on the state’s low infection numbers. Owner LeAnn Bunn said she’s now reconsidering.

More than a dozen other facilities have agreed to test residents and staff following the Canyon Creek outbreak and the governor’s directive, health officials said.

Testing began in mid-May and not all the facilities that have signed on have completed it, health officials said.

For Pam Donovan, it was through a window in an emergency room last week that she saw her father for the first time since visits were suspended in March.

Richard Donovan turned 88 on Monday. A nurse put on protective equipment and entered his room to hold a phone to his ear when his daughter called. Pam Donovan said it was heartbreaking and that she couldn’t understand what he was saying.

“It’s so difficult when you can’t see them yourself,” she said.

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Hanson reported from East Helena, Montana.

How flies flip around on take-off from an upside- down position

CNRS

IMAGE: FLY REORIENTATION CAPTURED BY A HIGH-SPEED CAMERA FILMING AT 1600 IMAGES PER SECOND. view more

CREDIT: ANNA VERBE

Flies are able to right themselves very quickly when taking off from an upside-down position. Scientists from the CNRS and from The Institute of Movement Science (ISM) at Aix-Marseille Université studying this phenomenon discovered the surprising way these insects begin by turning their bodies before their heads on take-off. The research will be published on 15 July 2020 in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

With its legs pointing up and its wings down towards the floor, a fly can casually rest upside-down on a ceiling, but on take-off, it will right itself very quickly. Researchers from the CNRS and Aix-Marseille Université looked at how the insect flips itself around when taking off. With the aid of a high-speed camera, the scientists discovered that, contrary to cats which land on their feet by first turning their heads, flies begin by turning their bodies. The insect reorients itself within six wing beats at a speed of 10,000°/s, or approximately 30 revolutions per second. The whole movement takes approximately 0.05 s with the head turning 0.016 s later than the body.

According to the scientists, during take-off flies flip their bodies before their heads due to an inherent stabilisation reflex. Small stabilisers near the wings function as a type of gyroscope. Humans have a similar reflex which kicks in when they continue to stare at something despite turning their bodies around. In the study, the team included modelling which suggested that, during reorientation, the insect stabilises its visual system before resuming normal flight. The research aims to elucidate how flies orient themselves relative to a vertical axis. The scientists will now further their research to investigate the effect of light on a fly's orientation.

FSU researchers find sun, rain transform asphalt binder into potentially toxic compounds

FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

IMAGE: PHOTOS OF ASPHALT BINDER BEFORE AND AFTER BEING EXPOSED TO WATER AND A SOLAR SIMULATOR FOR A WEEK. view more

CREDIT: CREDIT: SYDNEY NILES

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A dramatic oil spill, such as the Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico a decade ago, can dominate headlines for months while scientists, policymakers and the public fret over what happens to all that oil in the environment. However, far less attention is paid to the fate of a petroleum product that has been spread deliberately across the planet for decades: asphalt binder.

Now a study by chemists at the Florida State University-headquartered National High Magnetic Field Laboratory shows that asphalt binder, when exposed to sun and water, leaches thousands of potentially toxic compounds into the environment. The study was published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Asphalt binder, also called asphalt cement, is the glue that holds together the stones, sand and gravel in paved roads. The heavy, black, sticky goo is derived from bottom-of-the-barrel crude oil at the tail end of the distillation process.

The MagLab, funded by the National Science Foundation and the State of Florida, is a world leader in the field of petroleomics, which studies the mind-numbingly complex hydrocarbons that make up crude oil and its byproducts. Using high-resolution ion cyclotron resonance (ICR) mass spectrometers, chemists there have developed expertise in identifying the tens of thousands of different types of molecules that a single drop can contain, and how that composition can be changed by time, bacteria or environmental conditions.

Ryan Rodgers, director of petroleum applications and of the Future Fuels Institute at the MagLab, had wanted for years to study asphalt binder using the ICR instruments. It was a logical next step in his group's years-long effort to better understand the structure and behavior of petroleum molecules and their potentially toxic effects. Previous studies had shown that soils and runoff near paved roads exhibit higher concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are known to be carcinogenic. Rodgers suspected there were dots connecting those PAHs and asphalt binder, and he wanted to find them.

"The long-term stability of petroleum-derived materials in the environment has always been a curiosity of mine," said Rodgers, who grew up on the Florida Gulf Coast. "Knowing their compositional and structural complexity, it seemed highly unlikely that they would be environmentally benign. How do silky smooth black roads turn into grey, rough roads? And where the heck did all the asphalt go?"

Martha Chacón-Patiño, left, and Sydney Niles are part of a team of chemists studying how asphalt binder in roads weathers over time.

He finally acquired a jug of asphalt binder from a local paving company and handed the project off to Sydney Niles, a Ph.D. candidate in chemistry at Florida State, and MagLab chemist Martha Chacón-Patiño. They designed an experiment in which they created a film of binder on a glass slide, submerged it in water, and irradiated it in a solar simulator for a week, sampling the water at different timepoints to see what was in it. They suspected that the sun's energy would cause the reactive oxygen-containing compounds in the water to interact with the hydrocarbons in the binder, a process called photooxidation, thus creating new kinds of molecules that would leach into the water.

"We had this road sample and we shined fake sunlight on it in the presence of water," explained Niles, lead author on the paper. "Then we looked at the water and we found that there are all these compounds that are derived from petroleum, and probably toxic. We also found that more compounds are leached over time."

The hydrocarbons they found in the water contained more oxygen atoms. The scientists were confident that the sun was indeed the mechanism behind the process because far fewer compounds leached into a control sample that had been kept in the dark, and those had fewer oxygen atoms. In fact, the amount of water-soluble organic compounds per liter that the team found in the water of the irradiated sample after a week was more than 25 times higher than in the sample that had been left in the dark. And, using the lab's ICR magnets, they detected more than 15,000 different carbon-containing molecules in the water from the irradiated sample.

Given the general toxicity of PAHs, these results are cause for concern, Niles and Rodgers said. But the team will need to do more experiments to investigate that toxicity.

"We have definitively shown that asphalt binder has the potential to generate water-soluble contaminants, but the impact and fate of these will be the subject of future research," Rodgers said.

They also plan more studies to look at exactly how the compounds are transforming and if different categories of petroleum molecules behave differently.

Niles worries about hydrocarbons in and out of the lab. If she forgets to bring her reusable produce bags to the grocery store, she'd rather juggle her veggies on the way to the register than use a store-furnished plastic bag. Although these findings aren't good news for the planet, she said, they could lead to positive change.

"Hopefully it's motivation for a solution," she said. "I hope that engineers can use this information to find a better alternative, whether it's a sealant you put on the asphalt to protect it or finding something else to use to pave roads."

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Coumarin compounds from oak barrels could contribute to bitter taste in wine and spirits

AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY

Wine and spirits are complex mixtures of flavor and aroma compounds, some of which arise during aging in wooden barrels. Among other compounds, oak wood releases coumarins, but how they affect wine's sensory properties is unclear. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry have detected and measured six coumarins in oak wood, wine and spirits, showing that a combination of these compounds can produce a bitter taste.

Oak barrels are often used during the aging of wine and some spirits, including cognac, rum and whiskey. Prolonged contact of the beverages with wood alters their sensory properties, and many oak compounds that contribute to color, aroma, mouthfeel and taste have been identified. Oak wood also contains coumarins -- compounds produced by plants as a defense against predators. Many edible plants make coumarins, which at high doses are used as blood thinners, but the tiny amounts in most foods are not large enough to have anti-coagulant effects. Axel Marchal and colleagues wanted to determine exactly how much of these substances end up in wine and spirits, and how they contribute to the taste of these beverages.

To find out, the researchers first screened an oak wood extract for various coumarins using liquid chromatography-high-resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS). They identified five coumarins already known to be present in oak wood, as well as a previously undetected one called fraxetin. In a taste test, trained sensory panelists described five of the compounds as bitter, whereas fraxetin had a slightly sour taste. The team then measured coumarin concentrations in 90 commercial red or white wines and in 28 spirits. In general, higher levels of coumarins were found in red wines, which are aged for a longer time and in newer barrels, than in white wines. Spirits showed higher levels of coumarins than wines, possibly because of longer aging and a greater alcohol content. The tiny amounts of most of the compounds were below levels that humans can taste, but when the researchers added a mixture of all six to non-oak-aged wines or spirits, sensory panelists detected a significant increase in bitter flavor. Future studies could examine ways to reduce the coumarin content of wooden barrels to produce better-tasting wines and spirits, the researchers say.

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The authors acknowledge funding from Remy-Martin, Seguin-Moreau and Biolaffort.

The abstract that accompanies this paper can be viewed here.

The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS' mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and its people. The Society is a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a specialist in scientific information solutions (including SciFinder® and STN®), its CAS division powers global research, discovery and innovation. ACS' main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.

New material mimics strength, toughness of mother of pearl

AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY

In the summer, many people enjoy walks along the beach looking for seashells. Among the most prized are those that contain iridescent mother of pearl (also known as nacre) inside. But many beachcombers would be surprised to learn that shimmery nacre is one of nature's strongest, most resilient materials. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Nano have made a material with interlocked mineral layers that resembles nacre and is stronger and tougher than previous mimics.

Some mollusks, such as abalone and pearl oysters, have shells lined with nacre. This material consists of layers of microscopic mineral "bricks" called aragonite stacked upon alternating layers of soft organic compounds. Scientists have tried to replicate this structure to make materials for engineering or medical applications, but so far artificial nacre has not been as strong as its natural counterpart. Hemant Raut, Caroline Ross, Javier Fernandez and colleagues noticed that prior nacre mimics used flat mineral bricks, whereas the natural material has wavy bricks that interlock in intricate herringbone patterns. They wanted to see if reproducing this structure would create a stronger, tougher nacre mimic for sustainable medical materials.

Using the components of natural nacre, the team made their composite material by forming wavy sheets of the mineral aragonite on a patterned chitosan film. Then, they interlocked two of the sheets together, filling the space between the wavy surfaces with silk fibroin. They stacked 150 interlocked layers together to form a composite that was about the thickness of a penny. The material was almost twice as strong and four times as tough as previous nacre mimics -- close to the strength and toughness reported for natural nacre. The artificial nacre was also biocompatible, which the researchers demonstrated by culturing human embryonic stem cells on its surface for one week. These features suggest that the material could be suitable for sustainable, low-cost medical uses, the researchers say.

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The authors acknowledge funding from the Singapore University of Technology and Design and the National Research Foundation, Singapore.

The abstract that accompanies this paper can be viewed here.

To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.

How long should you fast for weight loss?

UIC study shows fasting diets work

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO

Two daily fasting diets, also known as time-restricted feeding diets, are effective for weight loss, according to a new study published by researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The study reported results from a clinical trial that compared a 4-hour time-restricted feeding diet and a 6-hour time-restricted feeding diet to a control group.

"This is the first human clinical trial to compare the effects of two popular forms of time-restricted feeding on body weight and cardiometabolic risk factors," said Krista Varady, professor of nutrition at the UIC College of Applied Health Sciences and corresponding author of the story.

Participants in the 4-hour time-restricted feeding diet group were asked to eat only between the hours of 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. Participants in the 6-hour time-restricted feeding diet group were asked to eat only between the hours of 1 p.m. and 7 p.m.

In both the study groups, patients were allowed to eat whatever they wanted during the 4-hour or 6-hour eating period. During the fasting hours, participants were directed to only drink water or calorie-free beverages. In the control group, participants were directed to maintain their weight and not change their diet or physical activity levels.

The participants were followed for 10 weeks as weight, insulin resistance, oxidative stress, blood pressure, LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, triglycerides and inflammatory markers were tracked.

The study, published in Cell Metabolism, found that participants in both daily fasting groups reduced calorie intake by about 550 calories each day simply by adhering to the schedule and lost about 3% of their body weight. The researchers also found that insulin resistance and oxidative stress levels were reduced among participants in the study groups when compared with the control group. There was no effect on blood pressure, LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol or triglycerides.

There also was no significant difference in weight loss or cardiometabolic risk factors between the 4-hour and 6-hour diet groups.

"The findings of this study are promising and reinforce what we've seen in other studies -- fasting diets are a viable option for people who want to lose weight, especially for people who do not want to count calories or find other diets to be fatiguing," Varady said. "It's also telling that there was no added weight loss benefit for people who sustained a longer fast -- until we have further studies that directly compare the two diets or seek to study the optimal time for fasting, these results suggest that the 6-hour fast might make sense for most people who want to pursue a daily fasting diet."

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Varady and her colleagues also reported that there were no major adverse health events reported by study participants during the study and that the mild adverse events -- such as dizziness or headaches -- were limited to the beginning of the trial.

Co-authors on the study are UIC's Sofia Cienfuegos, Kelsey Gabel, Faiza Kalam, Mark Ezpeleta, Eric Wiseman, Vasiliki Pavlou, Shuhao Lin and Manoela Lima Oliveira. The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health (R01DK119783).

In one hour, surface coating inactivates virus that causes COVID-19

A chemical engineering professor at Virginia Tech has developed a surface coating that, when painted on common objects, inactivates SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

VIRGINIA TECH

Door knobs, light switches, shopping carts. Fear runs rampant nowadays when it comes to touching common surfaces because of the rapid spread of the coronavirus.

A Virginia Tech professor has found a solution.

Since mid-March, William Ducker, a chemical engineering professor, has developed a surface coating that when painted on common objects, inactivates SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

"The idea is when the droplets land on a solid object, the virus within the droplets will be inactivated," Ducker said.

Since mid-April, Ducker has been working with Leo Poon, a professor and researcher at the University of Hong Kong's School of Public Health, to test the film's success at inactivating the virus. Their research was published July 13 in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, a scientific journal for chemists, engineers, biologists, and physicists.

The results of the tests have been outstanding, Ducker said. When the coating is painted on glass or stainless steel, the amount of virus is reduced by 99.9 percent in one hour, compared to the uncoated sample.

"One hour is the shortest period that we have tested so far, and tests at shorter periods are ongoing," Ducker said.

His expectation is that his team can inactivate the virus in minutes. Results have shown that the coating is robust. It does not peel off after being slashed with a razor blade. It also retains its ability to inactivate the virus after multiple rounds of being exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and then disinfection or after being submerged in water for a week, based on the tests.

If the project's success continues, it is a significant discovery in fighting the virus' spread.

"Everybody is worried about touching objects that may have the coronavirus," said Ducker, who recalled that his wife, in March, questioned whether she should sit on a park bench during the pandemic. "It would help people to relax a little bit."

Already, Ducker's research was focused on making films that kill bacteria. As the COVID-19 virus began to spread to the United States a few months ago, Ducker asked himself "Why not make a coating that can eradicate a virus, rather than bacteria?"

"We have to use our chemical knowledge and experience of other viruses to guess what would kill it [SARS-CoV-2]," Ducker said.

Virginia Tech granted essential personnel status to Ducker, his two PhD. chemical engineering graduate students -- Saeed Behzadinasab and Mohsen Hossein -- and Xu Feng from the university's Department of Chemistry so that they could enter campus labs to make the film and test its properties.

"It was an interesting experience," Ducker said. "Almost the entire campus was shut down, and we were like ghosts wandering the empty halls of Goodwin Hall. But it was very exciting to have such a clear goal. I know that it was a difficult time for many people who were bored, unhappy, or scared. We were just focused on making a coating."

Next, he needed to find someone who could test the coating's effectiveness. Through an internet search, Ducker found Poon, who is known for his work studying SARs-CoV-1, which was the virus that caused the SARS outbreak in 2003 and 2004. Poon has been active in the fight against SARS-CoV-2.

For Poon's tests, Ducker and the graduate students spread three different kinds of coatings on glass and stainless steel. Then, they shipped the samples to Poon.

Now, Ducker said he hopes to attract funding in order to mass produce the film.

To be sure, the film doesn't replace other safety measures that people should take to stop the spread of the coronavirus, such as handwashing, physical distancing, and wearing a mask.

Even so, "people won't have to worry as much about touching objects," Ducker said. "It will be both practical and reducing fear."

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Tulane scientists build high-performing hybrid solar energy converter

Thr work is the culmination of a US Department of Energy project that began in 2014

TULANE UNIVERSITY

IMAGE: THE HYBRID SOLAR ENERGY CONVERTER FEATURES A SOLAR MODULE WITH GLOWING RED CELLS BUILT AT TULANE. view more

CREDIT: PHOTO COURTESY OF MATTHEW ESCARRA

Tulane University researchers are part of a team of scientists who have developed a hybrid solar energy converter that generates electricity and steam with high efficiency and low cost.

The work led by Matthew Escarra, associate professor of physics and engineering physics at Tulane, and Daniel Codd, associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of San Diego, is the culmination of a U.S. Department of Energy ARPA-E project that began in 2014 with $3.3 million in funding and involved years of prototype development at Tulane and field testing in San Diego.

The research is detailed this month in the science journal Cell Reports Physical Science. Researchers from San Diego State University, Boeing-Spectrolab and Otherlab were also part of the project.

"Thermal energy consumption is a huge piece of the global energy economy - much larger than electricity use. There has been a rising interest in solar combined heat and power systems to deliver both electricity and process heat for zero-net-energy and greenhouse-gas-free development," said Escarra.

The hybrid converter utilizes an approach that more fully captures the whole spectrum of sunlight. It generates electricity from high efficiency multi-junction solar cells that also redirect infrared rays of sunlight to a thermal receiver, which converts those rays to thermal energy.

The thermal energy can be stored until needed and used to provide heat for a wide range of commercial and industrial uses, such as food processing, chemical production, water treatment, or enhanced oil recovery.

The team reports that the system demonstrated 85.1 percent efficiency, delivered steam at up to 248°C, and is projected to have a system levelized cost of 3 cents per kilowatt hour.

With follow-on funding from the Louisiana Board of Regents and Reactwell, a local commercialization partner, the team is continuing to refine the technology and move towards pilot-scale validation.

"We are pleased to have demonstrated high performance field operation of our solar converter," Escarra said, "and look forward to its ongoing commercial development."

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Rewriting history: New evidence challenges Euro-centric narrative of early colonization

Indigenous people remained in southeastern US for nearly 150 years, study shows

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS

IMAGE: JACOB LULEWICZ, LECTURER IN ARCHAEOLOGY AT WASHINGTON UNIVERSIITY IN ST. LOUIS, STUDIES SOUTHEASTERN/MIDWESTERN ETHNOHISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY INCLUDING INDIGENOUS-COLONIZER DYNAMICS; SOCIAL NETWORKS AND SOCIOPOLITICS view more

CREDIT: WUSTL

In American history, we learn that the arrival of Spanish explorers led by Hernando de Soto in the 1500s was a watershed moment resulting in the collapse of Indigenous tribes and traditions across the southeastern United States.

While these expeditions unquestionably resulted in the deaths of countless Indigenous people and the relocation of remaining tribes, new research from Washington University in St. Louis provides evidence that Indigenous people in Oconee Valley -- present-day central Georgia -- continued to live and actively resist European influence for nearly 150 years.

The findings, published July 15 in American Antiquity, speak to the resistance and resilience of Indigenous people in the face of European insurgence, said Jacob Lulewicz, a lecturer in archaeology in Arts & Sciences and lead author.

"The case study presented in our paper reframes the historical contexts of early colonial encounters in the Oconee Valley by way of highlighting the longevity and endurance of Indigenous Mississippian traditions and rewriting narratives of interactions between Spanish colonizers and Native Americans," Lulewicz said.

It also draws into question the motives behind early explanations and interpretations that Euro-Americans proposed about Indigenous earthen mounds -- platforms built out of soil, clay and stone that were used for important ceremonies and rituals.

'Myths were purposively racist'

"By the mid-1700s, less than 100 years after the abandonment of the Dyar mound [now submerged under Lake Oconee], explanations for the non-Indigenous origins of earthen mounds were being espoused. As less than 100 years would have passed between the Indigenous use of mounds and these explanations, it could be argued that the motives for these myths were purposively racist, denying what would have been a recent collective memory of Indigenous use in favor of explanations that stole, and disenfranchised, these histories from contemporary Indigenous peoples," Lulewicz said.

The Dyar mound was excavated by University of Georgia archaeologists in the 1970s to make way for a dam. Lulewicz and co-authors -- Victor D. Thompson, professor of archaeology and director of the Laboratory of Archaeology at the University of Georgia; James Wettstaed, archaeologist at Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forests; and Mark Williams, director emeritus of the Laboratory of Archaeology at the University of Georgia -- received funding from the USDA Forest Service to re-date the platform mound, which contained classic markers of Indigenous rituals and ceremonies.

Using advanced radiocarbon dating techniques and complex statistical models, modern-day archaeologists are able to effectively construct high-resolution, high-precision chronologies. In many cases, they can determine, within a 10- to 20-year range, dates of things that happened as far back as 1,000 years ago.

"Radiocarbon dating is really important, not just for getting a date to see when things happened, but for understanding the tempo of how things changed throughout time and really understanding the complex histories of people over hundreds of years," Lulewicz said. "In archaeology, it's really easy to group things in long periods of time, but it would be false to say that nothing changed over those 500 years."

Their research yielded 20 new dates from up and down the mound, which provided a refined perspective on the effects that early Indigenous-colonizer encounters did, and did not, have on the Indigenous people and their traditions.

Missing from the mound was any sign of European artifacts, which is one of the reasons why archaeologists originally believed sites in the region were abruptly abandoned just after their first encounters with Spanish colonizers. "Not only did the ancestors of Muscogee (Creek) people continue their traditions atop the Dyar mound for nearly 150 years after these encounters, but they also actively rejected European things," Lulewicz said.

According to Lulewicz, the Dyar mound does not represent an isolated hold-over after contact with European colonizers. There are several examples of platform mounds that were used beyond the 16th century, including the Fatherland site associated with the Natchez in Louisiana, Cofitachequi in South Carolina and a range of towns throughout the Lower Mississippi Valley.

"However, the mound at Dyar represents one of the only confirmed examples, via absolute dating, of continued Mississippian traditions related to mound-use and construction to date."

Today, members of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, descendants of the Mississippians who built platform mounds like the one at Dyar, live in Oklahoma. "We have a great, collaborative relationship with archaeologists of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Historic and Cultural Preservation Department, so we sent them the paper to review. It was really well received. They saw, reflected in that paper, a lot of the traditions they still practice in Oklahoma and were generous enough to contribute commentary that bolstered the results presented in the paper," he said.

"This is where the archaeology that we write becomes so important in the present. ... Without this type of work, we are contributing to the disenfranchisement of Indigenous peoples from their history."

"Of course, they already knew many of the things we 'discovered,' but it was still meaningful to be able to reaffirm their ancestral link to the land."

In the end, Lulewicz said this is the most important part of the paper. "We are writing about real human lives -- Indigenous lives that we have historically treated very poorly and who continue to be treated poorly today in some cases. With the use of advanced radiocarbon dating and the development of really high resolution chronologies, we are able to more effectively reinject lives into narratives of the past."

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Research brief: Researchers 3D print a working heart pump with real human cells

Discovery could open new doors for heart research

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

IMAGE: THIS IMAGE USED ON THE COVER OF THE AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION'S CIRCULATION RESEARCH JOURNAL IS A 3D RENDERING OF THE PRINTED HEART PUMP DEVELOPED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA. THE... view more

CREDIT: KUPFER, LIN, ET AL., UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

In a groundbreaking new study, researchers at the University of Minnesota have 3D printed a functioning centimeter-scale human heart pump in the lab. The discovery could have major implications for studying heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States killing more than 600,000 people a year.

The study is published and appears on the cover of Circulation Research, a publication of the American Heart Association.

In the past, researchers have tried to 3D print cardiomyocytes, or heart muscle cells, that were derived from what are called pluripotent human stem cells. Pluripotent stem cells are cells with the potential to develop into any type of cell in the body. Researchers would reprogram these stem cells to heart muscle cells and then use specialized 3D printers to print them within a three-dimensional structure, called an extracellular matrix. The problem was that scientists could never reach critical cell density for the heart muscle cells to actually function.

In this new study, University of Minnesota researchers flipped the process, and it worked.

"At first, we tried 3D printing cardiomyocytes, and we failed, too," said Brenda Ogle, the lead researcher on the study and head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering. "So with our team's expertise in stem cell research and 3D printing, we decided to try a new approach. We optimized the specialized ink made from extracellular matrix proteins, combined the ink with human stem cells and used the ink-plus-cells to 3D print the chambered structure. The stem cells were expanded to high cell densities in the structure first, and then we differentiated them to the heart muscle cells."

What the team found was that for the first time ever they could achieve the goal of high cell density within less than a month to allow the cells to beat together, just like a human heart.

"After years of research, we were ready to give up and then two of my biomedical engineering Ph.D. students, Molly Kupfer and Wei-Han Lin, suggested we try printing the stem cells first," said Ogle, who also serves as director of the University of Minnesota's Stem Cell Institute. "We decided to give it one last try. I couldn't believe it when we looked at the dish in the lab and saw the whole thing contracting spontaneously and synchronously and able to move fluid."

Ogle said this is also a critical advance in heart research because this new study shows how they were able to 3D print heart muscle cells in a way that the cells could organize and work together. Because the cells were differentiating right next to each other it's more similar to how the stem cells would grow in the body and then undergo specification to heart muscle cells.

Compared to other high-profile research in the past, Ogle said this discovery creates a structure that is like a closed sac with a fluid inlet and fluid outlet, where they can measure how a heart moves blood within the body. This makes it an invaluable tool for studying heart function.

"We now have a model to track and trace what is happening at the cell and molecular level in pump structure that begins to approximate the human heart," Ogle said. "We can introduce disease and damage into the model and then study the effects of medicines and other therapeutics."

The heart muscle model is about 1.5 centimeters long and was specifically designed to fit into the abdominal cavity of a mouse for further study.

"All of this seems like a simple concept, but how you achieve this is quite complex. We see the potential and think that our new discovery could have a transformative effect on heart research," Ogle said.

In addition to Ogle, Kupfer and Lin, other University of Minnesota researchers involved include University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering faculty Professor Alena G. Tolkacheva (biomedical engineering) and Professor Michael McAlpine (mechanical engineering); University of Minnesota Medical School Associate Professor DeWayne Townsend (integrative biology and physiology); current and former University of Minnesota master's, Ph.D. students and postdocs Vasanth Ravikumar (electrical engineering), Kaiyan Qiu (Ph.D., mechanical engineering), and Didarul B. Bhuiyan (Ph.D.), Megan Lenz (M.S.), and Ryan R. Mahutga (biomedical engineering); and undergraduate student Jeffrey Ai (biomedical engineering). The team also included University of Alabama Department of Biomedical Engineering Professor and Chair Jianyi Zhang and University of Alabama biomedical engineering Ph.D. student Lu Wang and research associate Ling Gao (Ph.D.).

This research was primarily funded by the National Institutes of Health (National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, and National Institute of General Medical Science) with additional funding from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Project and the University of Minnesota Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship.

To read the full research paper entitled "In Situ Expansion, Differentiation and Electromechanical Coupling of Human Cardiac Muscle in a 3D Bioprinted, Chambered Organoid," visit the Circulation Research website.

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