This fruit attracts birds with an unusual way of making itself metallic blue

CELL PRESS NEWS RELEASE 6-AUG-2020

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VIDEO: A 3D SCHEMATIC OF THE RECONSTRUCTED GLOBULAR LIPID LAYERS OF THE FRUIT'S CELLS. view more 

CREDIT: MIRANDA SINNOTT-ARMSTRONG

There's a reason why blue fruits are so rare: the pigment compounds that make fruits blue are relatively uncommon in nature. But the metallic blue fruits of Viburnum tinus, a popular landscaping plant in Europe, get their color a different way. Instead of relying solely on pigments, the fruits use structural color to reflect blue light, something that's rarely seen in plants. Researchers reporting August 6 in the journal Current Biology show that the fruits use nanostructures made of lipids in their cell walls, a previously unknown mechanism of structural color, to get their striking blue--which may also double as a signal to birds that the fruits are full of nutritious fats.

"Structural color is very common in animals, especially birds, beetles, and butterflies, but only a handful of plant species have ever been found to have structural color in their fruits," says co-first author Miranda Sinnott-Armstrong, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado-Boulder. "This means that V. tinus, in addition to showing a completely novel mechanism of structural color, is also one of the few known structurally colored fruits."

This image shows the drupe fruits of the Viburnum tinus plant.

Senior author Silvia Vignolini (@VignoliniLab), a physical chemist at the University of Cambridge, has been interested in the plants for nearly 10 years. "I actually found this Viburnum in a garden in Italy and observed that they looked weird, so we measured them at the time but didn't have conclusive results. It was kind of always on the back of my mind," she says. As her team grew, they become more interested in V. tinus and eventually had the capability to examine the structure of the fruits using electron microscopy. "Before we got the images, we were just seeing all these blobs," she says. "When we found out that those blobs were lipids, we got very excited."

While most plants have cell walls made of cellulose, used to make cotton and paper, V. tinus fruit cells have much thicker walls with thousands of globular lipids arranged in layers that reflect blue light. The structure formed by this so-called lipid multilayer allows the fruits to create their vibrant blue color while containing no blue pigment. "This is very strange because globular lipids like these are not usually found in this arrangement in the cell wall, as they are normally stored inside the cell and used for transport," says co-first author Rox Middleton, a physicist who studied the optical response of the fruits during her PhD and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bristol. "We also believe that this lipid may contribute to the fruit's nutrition. That means that the fruit can demonstrate how nutritious it is by being a beautiful, shiny blue."

This extra nutrition would be important for V. tinus's main consumers: birds that disperse the plant's seeds. Although the researchers can't say for sure whether the lipids are used as fat by the birds that consume them, there is reason to believe they might be. If so, the researchers suggest that the metallic blue color made by the lipid multilayer could indicate to the birds that if they see this striking blue, the fruit in question will have enough nutrients to make it a worthwhile meal. "While birds have been shown to be attracted to blue fruits," says Vignolini, "other blue fruits that we have studied essentially don't have any nutritional value."

Microscopy view of Viburnum tinus

Going forward, the researchers want to see how widespread blue structural color is in fruits to understand its ecological significance. They had never seen this type of lipid multilayer in a biomaterial before, but since their discovery, they've begun to take notice of other species. "We actually realize now that there are some older electron microscopy pictures from other plants where you can see the blobs. The researchers didn't know that they were lipids at the time, or that lipids could even form this type of structure, but our research suggests that they very well could be, meaning this structure may not be limited to Viburnum," Vignolini says.

Additionally, learning how V. tinus can use such a unique mechanism to make color may have implications for how we color our own foods. "There are lots of problems connected to food coloration," says Vignolini. She adds that once this mechanism is better understood, it could potentially be used to create a healthier, more sustainable food colorant.

But right now, Vignolini is just excited her initial hunch paid off: "I've been working on this type of photonic structure for quite a while, and I was beginning to think there were no new ways to make it--at some point you've seen so many that you think, 'This is more or less the end, it's going to be difficult to find something new,'" she says. "Instead, we discovered much more than what we expected."

Closeup of viburnum tinus

This work was supported by the EPSRC NanoDTC, BBSRC David Phillips fellowship, ERC SeSaME, a microMORPH Cross-Training Grant, a Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies grant, and the National Science Foundation.

Current Biology, Middleton et al.: "Viburnum tinus fruits use lipids to produce metallic blue structural colour" https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)30995-7

Current Biology (@CurrentBiology), published by Cell Press, is a bimonthly journal that features papers across all areas of biology. Current Biology strives to foster communication across fields of biology, both by publishing important findings of general interest and through highly accessible front matter for non-specialists. Visit: http://www.cell.com/current-biology. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.

Metallic blue fruits use fat to produce color and signal a treat for birds

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

IMAGE: VIBURNUM TINUS OWES THE DAZZLING BLUE COLOUR OF ITS FRUIT TO FAT IN ITS CELLULAR STRUCTURE, THE FIRST TIME THIS TYPE OF COLOUR PRODUCTION HAS BEEN OBSERVED IN NATURE. view more 

CREDIT: ROX MIDDLETON

Researchers have found that a common plant owes the dazzling blue colour of its fruit to fat in its cellular structure, the first time this type of colour production has been observed in nature.

The plant, Viburnum tinus, is an evergreen shrub widespread across the UK and the rest of Europe, which produces metallic blue fruits that are rich in fat. The combination of bright blue colour and high nutritional content make these fruits an irresistible treat for birds, likely increasing the spread of their seeds and contributing to the plant's success.

The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, used electron microscopy to study the structure of these blue fruits. While there are other types of structural colour in nature - such as in peacock feathers and butterfly wings - this is the first time that such a structure has been found to incorporate fats, or lipids. The results are reported in the journal Current Biology.

"Viburnum tinus plants can be found in gardens and along the streets all over the UK and throughout much of Europe -- most of us have seen them, even if we don't realise how unusual the colour of the fruits is," said co-first author Rox Middleton, who completed the research as part of her PhD at Cambridge's Department of Chemistry.

Most colours in nature are due to pigments. However, some of the brightest and most colourful materials in nature - such as peacock feathers, butterfly wings and opals - get their colour not from pigments, but from their internal structure alone, a phenomenon known as structural colour. Depending on how these structures are arranged and how ordered they are, they can reflect certain colours, creating colour by the interaction between light and matter.

"I first noticed these bright blue fruits when I was visiting family in Florence," said Dr Silvia Vignolini from Cambridge's Department of Chemistry, who led the research. "I thought the colour was really interesting, but it was unclear what was causing it."

"The metallic sheen of the Viburnum fruits is highly unusual, so we used electron microscopy to study the structure of the cell wall," said co-first author Miranda Sinnott-Armstrong from Yale University. "We found a structure unlike anything we'd ever seen before: layer after layer of small lipid droplets."

The lipid structures are incorporated into the cell wall of the outer skin, or epicarp, of the fruits. In addition, a layer of dark red anthocyanin pigments lies underneath the complex structure, and any light that is not reflected by the lipid structure is absorbed by the dark red pigment beneath. This prevents any backscattering of light, making the fruits appear even more blue.

The researchers also used computer simulations to show that this type of structure can produce exactly the type of blue colour seen in the fruit of Viburnum. Structural colour is common in certain animals, especially birds, beetles, and butterflies, but only a handful of plant species have been found to have structurally coloured fruits.

While most fruits have low fat content, some - such as avocadoes, coconuts and olives - do contain lipids, providing an important, energy-dense food source for animals. This is not a direct benefit to the plant, but it can increase seed dispersal by attracting birds.

The colour of the Viburnum tinus fruits may also serve as a signal of its nutritional content: a bird could look at a fruit and know whether it is rich in fat or in carbohydrates based on whether or not it is blue. In other words, the blue colour may serve as an 'honest signal' because the lipids produce both the signal (the colour) and the reward (the nutrition).

"Honest signals are rare in fruits as far as we know," said Sinnott-Armstrong. "If the structural colour of Viburnum tinus fruits are in fact honest signals, it would be a really neat example where colour and nutrition come at least in part from the same source: lipids embedded in the cell wall. We've never seen anything like that before, and it will be interesting to see whether other structurally coloured fruits have similar nanostructures and similar nutritional content."

One potential application for structural colour is that it removes the need for unusual or damaging chemical pigments - colour can instead be formed out of any material. "It's exciting to see that principle in action - in this case the plant uses a potentially nutritious lipid to make a beautiful blue shimmer. It might inspire engineers to make double-use colours of our own," said Vignolini.

The research was supported in part by the European Research Council, the EPSRC, the BBSRC and the NSF.

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Researchers hope to save seabirds by calculating the value of their poop

CELL PRESS

 

IMAGE: A SEABIRD IN RINGS OF KERRY, IRELAND view more 

CREDIT: RENATA CIANCIARUSO

Seabird species such as gulls and pelicans are often overlooked when it comes to conservation and can struggle to capture the public eye. To raise awareness of their importance to people and the ecosystems we depend on, a Science & Society article appearing August 6 in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution looks at something that most of us find off-putting: their poop. The researchers say that the poop, which is also known as guano and serves as a source of fertilizer and a key contribution to coastal and marine ecosystems, could be worth more than $470 million annually. By calculating this direct benefit to people, they hope to quantify the importance of seabirds and illustrate the monetary cost of declining populations.

"Guano production is an ecosystem service made by seabirds at no cost to us--I can go to an island, collect the guano, and sell it at market price as fertilizer," says co-author Marcus V. Cianciaruso, ecology professor at the Federal University of Goiás in Brazil. While few seabird species produce guano that is currently commercialized, the rest provide important nutrients to the ecosystems where their guano is deposited. "Because there is this scientific and biological importance, it's possible to quantify seabird ecosystem services in a language that the general public and policymakers can begin to understand," he says.

To do this, Cianciaruso and Daniel Plazas-Jiménez, a PhD student at the Federal University of Goiás, began by gathering data about global seabird populations producing commodifiable guano. "Because guano is a commodity, we used its market price to estimate the added value of guano produced by seabirds each year," says Plazas-Jiménez.

For the species that do not produce commodifiable guano, the researchers then estimated the value of nitrogen and phosphorus deposited every year in their colonies by calculating the cost to replace these nutrients with inorganic versions. The result is staggering: when combined, the nutrient deposition and the commodifiable guano could be worth an estimated $473.83 million per year.

Although not all guano can be commodified, these nutrients that it deposits are important to ecosystems such as coral reefs, where guano's presence can increase reef fish biomass by up to 48%. "We made a very conservative estimate that 10% of coral reef fish stocks depend on seabird nutrients," says Plazas-Jiménez. "According to the United Nations and the Australian government, the annual economic returns of commercial fisheries on coral reefs is over $6 billion. So, 10% of this value is around $600 million per year." When added to the previous figure, the value of nutrients deposited by seabirds increases to an estimated $1 billion.

Much of this value comes from threatened or endangered species. "The example of coral reefs is just for a little group of seabirds," says Plazas-Jiménez. "A huge amount of nutrient deposition happens in Antarctic ecosystems: penguins contribute half of the nitrogen and phosphorous deposited by seabirds every year. However, 60% of this contribution is made by penguin species with declining populations, and these contributions will decrease in the future if no conservation activity is taken."

The researchers hope this paper will shed light on how valuable these species are at a global scale. "Seabirds have a lot of importance to people," says Plazas-Jiménez. "Being able to calculate a monetary value of an ecological function made by a particular species is just another tool in the conservation toolbox."

Only a fraction of the value of seabirds to ecosystems and to people is represented by this estimate--among other functions, they contribute to vast birdwatching and tourism industries around the world. "If you start to look into every function that seabirds have and try to monetize this, the value is going to be much, much higher," says Cianciaruso.

Their estimate also doesn't account for the local importance of the birds. For many coastal communities, the direct and indirect benefits of living with them are essential. "In some areas, fishermen follow seabirds to find places to fish," says Plazas-Jiménez. "To that fisherman, seabirds are everything."

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This work was supported by CAPES, the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, and the Goiás Research Support Foundation.

Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Plazas-Jiménez & Cianciaruso: "Valuing ecosystem services can help to save seabirds" https://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169-5347(20)30170-1

Trends in Ecology & Evolution (@Trends_Ecol_Evo), published by Cell Press, is a monthly review journal that contains polished, concise, and readable reviews, opinions, and letters in all areas of ecology and evolutionary science. It aims to keep scientists informed of new developments and ideas across the full range of ecology and evolutionary biology--from the pure to the applied and from molecular to global. Visit http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution. To receive Cell Press media alerts, please contact press@cell.com.

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

Childhood connection to nature has many benefits but is not universally positive, finds review

A connection to nature is complex, as well as positive emotions, it can generate negative emotions linked to issues like climate change

BRITISH ECOLOGICAL SOCIETY

 

The review, published in the British Ecological Society Journal People and Nature, is the first to focus on nature connection in children and adolescents. In the article Dr Chawla comprehensively reviews the full scope of literature on the topic, covering peer-reviewed articles, books and studies by environmental organizations.

The review finds that connecting with nature supports multiple areas of young people's wellbeing. "There is strong evidence that children are happier, healthier, function better, know more about the environment, and are more likely to take action to protect the natural world when they spend time in nature." said Dr Chawla.

Several studies found that children's connection with nature increased with time spent in natural environments. Time spent in this way was also a predictor for active care for nature in adulthood. These findings support strategies and policies that ensure that young people have access to wild areas, parks, gardens, green neighborhoods, and naturalized grounds at schools.

However, a connection with nature is not universally positive. "My review shows that connecting with nature is a complex experience that can generate troubling emotions as well as happiness." said Dr Chawla.

"We need to keep in mind that children are inheriting an unravelling biosphere, and many of them know it. Research shows that when adolescents react with despair, they are unlikely to take action to address challenges."

Thankfully the review finds that there is overlap in the strategies used to increase children's feelings of connection with nature and supporting them with difficult dimensions of this connection.

These strategies include helping young people learn what they can do to protect the natural world, as individuals and working collectively with others, and sharing examples of people who care for nature. Research covered in the review finds that young people are more likely to believe a better world is possible when friends, family and teachers listen sympathetically to their fears and give them a safe space to share their emotions.

One of the most surprising findings from the review was the complete disconnect between researchers studying the benefits of childhood connection to nature and those studying responses to environmental threats. "People who study children's connection with nature and those who study their coping with environmental risk and loss have been pursuing separate directions without referencing or engaging with each other." said Dr Chawla. "I am arguing that researchers on both sides need to be paying attention to each other's work and learning from each other".

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Non-invasive nerve stimulation boosts learning of foreign language sounds

UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH

  

IMAGE: ILLUSTRATION OF THE VAGUS NERVE view more 

CREDIT: KENNETH PROBST/UCSF

PITTSBURGH, Aug. 6, 2020 - New research by neuroscientists at the University of Pittsburgh and University of California San Francisco (UCSF) revealed that a simple, earbud-like device developed at UCSF that imperceptibly stimulates a key nerve leading to the brain could significantly improve the wearer's ability to learn the sounds of a new language. This device may have wide-ranging applications for boosting other kinds of learning as well.

Mandarin Chinese is considered one of the hardest languages for native English speakers to learn, in part because the language -- like many others around the world -- uses distinctive changes in pitch, called "tones," to change the meaning of words that otherwise sound the same. In the new study, published today in npj Science of Learning (a Nature partner journal), researchers significantly improved the ability of native English speakers to distinguish between Mandarin tones by using precisely timed, non-invasive stimulation of the vagus nerve -- the longest of the 12 cranial nerves that connect the brain to the rest of the body. What's more, vagus nerve stimulation allowed research participants to pick up some Mandarin tones twice as quickly.

"Showing that non-invasive peripheral nerve stimulation can make language learning easier potentially opens the door to improving cognitive performance across a wide range of domains," said lead author Fernando Llanos, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher in Pitt's Sound Brain Lab.

"This is one of the first demonstrations that non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation can enhance a complex cognitive skill like language learning in healthy people," said Matthew Leonard, Ph.D., an assistant professor, Department of Neurological Surgery, UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, whose team developed the nerve stimulation device. Leonard is a senior author of the new study, alongside Bharath Chandrasekaran, Ph.D., professor and vice chair of research, Department of Communication Science and Disorders, Pitt School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, and director of the Sound Brain Lab.

Researchers used a non-invasive technique called transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS), in which a small stimulator is placed in the outer ear and can activate the vagus nerve using unnoticeable electrical pulses to stimulate one of the nerve's nearby branches.

For their study, the researchers recruited 36 native English-speaking adults and trained them to identify the four tones of Mandarin Chinese in examples of natural speech, using a set of tasks developed in the Sound Brain Lab to study the neurobiology of language learning.

Participants who received imperceptible tVNS paired with two Mandarin tones that are typically easier for English speakers to tell apart showed quick improvements in learning to distinguish these tones. By the end of the training, those participants were 13% better on average at classifying tones and reached peak performance twice as quickly as control participants who wore the tVNS device but never received stimulation.

"There's a general feeling that people can't learn the sound patterns of a new language in adulthood, but our work historically has shown that's not true for everyone," Chandrasekaran said. "In this study, we are seeing that tVNS reduces those individual differences more than any other intervention I've seen."

"This approach may be leveling the playing field of natural variability in language learning ability," added Leonard. "In general, people tend to get discouraged by how hard language learning can be, but if you could give someone 13% to 15% better results after their first session, maybe they'd be more likely to want to continue."

The researchers now are testing whether longer training sessions with tVNS can impact participants' ability to learn to discriminate two tones that are harder for English speakers to differentiate, which was not significantly improved in the current study.

Stimulation of the vagus nerve has been used to treat epilepsy for decades and has recently been linked to benefits for a wide range of issues ranging from depression to inflammatory disease, though exactly how these benefits are conferred remains unclear. But most of these findings have used invasive forms of stimulation involving an impulse generator implanted in the chest. By contrast, the ability to evoke significant boosts to learning using simple, non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation could lead to significantly cheaper and safer clinical and commercial applications.

The researchers suspect tVNS boosts learning by broadly enhancing neurotransmitter signaling across wide swaths of the brain to temporarily boost attention to the auditory stimulus being presented and promote long-term learning, though more research is needed to verify this mechanism.

"We're showing robust learning effects in a completely non-invasive and safe way, which potentially makes the technology scalable to a broader array of consumer and medical applications, such as rehabilitation after stroke," Chandrasekaran said. "Our next step is to understand the underlying neural mechanism and establish the ideal set of stimulation parameters that could maximize brain plasticity. We view tVNS as a potent tool that could enhance rehabilitation in individuals with brain damage."

Additional authors are Jacie McHaney, of Pitt; and William Schuerman, Ph.D., and Han Yi, Ph.D., both of UCSF.

The research was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Targeted Neuroplasticity Program (contract number: N66001-17-2-4008).

To read this release online or share it, visit https://www.upmc.com/media/news/080620-mandarin-vagus-stim [when embargo lifts].

About the University of Pittsburgh School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences

SHRS is an international leader in rehabilitation and disabilities education, research and community service. SHRS's mission is to improve the lives and independence of all people with a focus on people at risk for, or have chronic conditions or disabilities, and those who have traditionally been underserved and underrepresented. SHRS is home to several nationally ranked programs and world-renowned faculty and clinicians within all areas of the health sciences. For more information, visit http://www.shrs.pitt.edu.

About UCSF

The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. It includes UCSF Health, which comprises three top-ranked hospitals, as well as affiliations throughout the Bay Area. Learn more at ucsf.edu, or see our Fact Sheet.

First food-grade intermediate wheatgrass released

AMERICAN SOCIETY OF AGRONOMY

IMAGE: UMN KERNZA RESEARCHER PRABIN BAJGAIN EVALUATING INTERMEDIATE WHEATGRASS IN SELECTION NURSERY AT ST. PAUL, MN BEFORE HARVEST IN FALL 2019. view more 

CREDIT: PRABIN BAJGAINCompared to annual crops, perennial crops provide sustainable environmental benefits such as reduced soil and water erosion, reduced soil nitrate leaching, and increased carbon sequestration. Inclusion of sustainable cropping systems into mainstream agriculture has been a challenge given the lack of food-grade perennial grain cultivars.

In an article recently published in the Journal of Plant Registrations , a publication of the Crop Science Society of America, University of Minnesota researchers report the release of the first commercially available intermediate wheatgrass (IWG) cultivar. IWG is a cool-season perennial grain crop domesticated primarily for food use while maintaining the ecological benefits it offers.

The cultivar, named 'MN-Clearwater,' produces 696 kg ha-1 (621 lb ac-1) of grain on average with the first two years; it produces its highest grain yields under Minnesota conditions. It is relatively short at 113 cm and has minimal lodging with trace disease levels. MN-Clearwater is expected to perform well in US Upper Midwest, southern regions of Canada, and the US Northeast.

As the first IWG cultivar released for sale under the Kernza® trade name, we expect MN-Clearwater to be a cornerstone resource for the IWG research community as well as for interested growers, food processors, and commercial partners.

Adapted from Bajgain, P, Zhang, X, Jungers, JM, et al. 'MN-Clearwater', the first food-grade intermediate wheatgrass (Kernza perennial grain) cultivar. J. Plant Regist. 2020; 1- 10.

DNA from an ancient, unidentified ancestor was passed down to humans living today

New algorithm suggests that early humans and related species interbred early and often

PLOS

 

A new analysis of ancient genomes suggests that different branches of the human family tree interbred multiple times, and that some humans carry DNA from an archaic, unknown ancestor. Melissa Hubisz and Amy Williams of Cornell University and Adam Siepel of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory report these findings in a study published 6th August in PLOS Genetics.

Roughly 50,000 years ago, a group of humans migrated out of Africa and interbred with Neanderthals in Eurasia. But that's not the only time that our ancient human ancestors and their relatives swapped DNA. The sequencing of genomes from Neanderthals and a less well-known ancient group, the Denisovans, has yielded many new insights into these interbreeding events and into the movement of ancient human populations. In the new paper, the researchers developed an algorithm for analyzing genomes that can identify segments of DNA that came from other species, even if that gene flow occurred thousands of years ago and came from an unknown source. They used the algorithm to look at genomes from two Neanderthals, a Denisovan and two African humans. The researchers found evidence that 3 percent of the Neanderthal genome came from ancient humans, and estimate that the interbreeding occurred between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago. Furthermore, 1 percent of the Denisovan genome likely came from an unknown and more distant relative, possibly Homo erectus, and about 15% of these "super-archaic" regions may have been passed down to modern humans who are alive today.

The new findings confirm previously reported cases of gene flow between ancient humans and their relatives, and also point to new instances of interbreeding. Given the number of these events, the researchers say that genetic exchange was likely whenever two groups overlapped in time and space. Their new algorithm solves the challenging problem of identifying tiny remnants of gene flow that occurred hundreds of thousands of years ago, when only a handful of ancient genomes are available. This algorithm may also be useful for studying gene flow in other species where interbreeding occurred, such as in wolves and dogs.

"What I think is exciting about this work is that it demonstrates what you can learn about deep human history by jointly reconstructing the full evolutionary history of a collection of sequences from both modern humans and archaic hominins," said author Adam Siepel. "This new algorithm that Melissa has developed, ARGweaver-D, is able to reach back further in time than any other computational method I've seen. It seems to be especially powerful for detecting ancient introgression."

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Peer-reviewed / Observational study / People

In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS Genetics:

http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1008895

Citation: Hubisz MJ, Williams AL, Siepel A (2020) Mapping gene flow between ancient hominins through demography-aware inference of the ancestral recombination graph. PLoS Genet 16(8): e1008895. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1008895

Funding: MJH and AS were supported by US National Institutes of Health grant R35-GM127070 (to AS) (https://www.nih.gov), and MJH was additionally supported by National Science Foundation GRFP DGE-1650441 (https://www.nsf.gov). ALW was supported by an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (https://sloan.org/fellowships/) and a seed grant from Nancy and Peter Meinig. This work used the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), which is supported by National Science Foundation grant number ACI-1548562 (https://www.nsf.gov). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the US National Institutes of Health. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Children's pester power a future target for interventions

Children's influence on their homes may be an underdeveloped potential target for future interventions, according to a new study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior

ELSEVIER

 

AUDIO: LEAD INVESTIGATOR TAREN SWINDLE, PHD, DISCUSSES A NEW STUDY THAT HIGHLIGHTS HOW CHILDREN'S PESTER POWER MAY INFLUENCE FOOD CONSUMPTION AND HABITS AT HOME. view more 

CREDIT: JOURNAL OF NUTRITION EDUCATION AND BEHAVIOR

Philadelphia, August 6, 2020 - Children's pester power may contribute to improvements in their family's food environments. A new study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, published by Elsevier, highlights the potential for children to influence food consumption and habits at home.

Researchers from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and Louisiana Tech University studied classrooms that delivered weekly Together, We Inspire Healthy Eating (WISE) lessons at seven Head Start sites across two states in the southern United States. The study demonstrated that children's pester power explained a significant portion of the variance in the residual change of children's dietary intake and parenting practices after one school year of exposure to the WISE intervention.

"The more pester power that parents were exposed to from their children, the greater we saw changes in the desired direction for intake of fruits and vegetables and also supportive parenting practices," said lead study author Taren Swindle, PhD, Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, College of Medicine, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, AR, USA. "It means that children's influence on their homes may be an underdeveloped potential target for future interventions."

The pester power of children is well documented in marketing and advertising research and is increasingly being considered in regard to the nutritional habits and obesogenic environments of children. Future studies can provide insight into which components of educational programs specifically predict successful pester power.

"I like to think of this as hypothesis-generating work. It suggests a really promising area for future exploration," Prof. Swindle said.

UK 

Large proportion of NHS workers may have already had COVID-19

Peer reviewed - survey - people

UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA

 

A large proportion of UK healthcare workers may already have been infected  Covid-19, according to new research led by the University of East Anglia in collaboration with University College London.

In May, Public Health England added a new loss of taste or smell (anosmia) to the list of symptoms for Covid-19.

Research published today in The Lancet Microbe finds a high prevalence of anosmia cases among healthcare workers between mid-February and mid-April.

Senior author Prof Carl Philpott, from UEA's Norwich Medical School, said: "Smell loss as a symptom of Covid-19 is particularly important for healthcare professionals because they are at the frontline of pandemic - and at high risk of both contracting and spreading the virus.

"In many cases smell loss can be the only symptom of Covid-19, or accompanied by mild symptoms.

"We wanted to find out how widespread smell loss has been among healthcare workers."

The research team distributed questionnaires to staff at London's Barts Health NHS Trust - one of the largest NHS trusts in the UK.

The questionnaire was completed by 262 healthcare workers in the week April 17-23. At this time, anosmia was not yet listed as an official symptom and covid-19 testing among NHS workers was still limited to those displaying symptoms of a new continuous cough and/or a high temperature (>37.8°C) as per national guidance.

Nevertheless, 73 (27.9 per cent) of the participants had been tested for Covid-19, with 56 of these (76.7 per cent) confirmed positive.

In line with Public Health England guidance at the time of the study, staff who only had anosmia as a symptom would not have been required to isolate or be eligible for testing. Like other trusts, staff testing for Covid-19 at Barts Health has been available since late March 2020. Loss of smell was included as a symptom in national guidance since May 18 2020 and any staff with that symptom are required to have a test

and self-isolate for seven days.

Prof Philpot said: "The really interesting thing that we found was that 168 of the participants - nearly two thirds - said that they had lost their sense of smell or taste at some point between mid-February and mid-April.

"We also found a strong association between smell loss and the positive Covid-19 test results, with those who had lost their sense of smell being almost five times more likely to test positive.

"This suggests that a large proportion of healthcare workers may have already been infected with Covid-19, with only mild symptoms.

"We conducted this research at Barts Health, however we would expect to see similar results from other NHS trusts too.

"Cases like this most likely went undiagnosed at the time because of a lack of awareness about smell loss as a symptom.

"This is really important because healthcare professionals are at the frontline of the pandemic and are at high risk of both contracting and spreading coronavirus.

"There is a need for awareness and early recognition of anosmia as a means to identify, urgently test and isolate affected healthcare workers in order to prevent further spread of disease," he added.

Rupert Pearse, clinical director for research and development at Barts Health NHS Trust said: "We're delighted to play a central role in supporting key research studies which help us better understand Covid-19. We know that NHS trusts that carry out research deliver better quality patient care and we are one of the leading contributors to clinical research across the NHS.

"Our staff have also volunteered to participate in a variety of important projects too and we are pleased to be able to support studies that focus on our healthcare workers."

The study also involved a follow-up survey in May, in which 47 per cent of respondents reported that their sense of smell and taste had completely recovered. A further 42 per cent said they had partially recovered their sense of smell and taste, but just over 7 per cent still suffered anosmia.

The survey has also been running in two Norfolk hospitals and in two hospitals in the North West with the responses of over 1,000 healthcare workers due to be published soon.

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The research was led by UEA in collaboration with Whipps Cross University Hospital (part of Barts Health NHS Trust), University College London, the Royal National ENT and Eastman Dental Hospitals (part of UCLH NHS Foundation Trust) and the Norfolk Smell & Taste Clinic, at Norfolk & Waveney ENT Service.

'Anosmia/hyposmia in healthcare workers with a SARS-CoV-2 infection' is published in The Lancet Microbe on August 6, 2020.

Peer reviewed - survey - people

Study finds dedicated clinics can reduce impact of flu pandemic

NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY

 

A new study concludes that opening clinics dedicated specifically to treating influenza can limit the number of people infected and help to "flatten the curve," or reduce the peak prevalence rate. While the work focused on influenza, the findings are relevant for policymakers seeking ways to reduce impacts of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

"Dedicated clinics would have less of an impact than interventions such as vaccination, but at the statewide level, we're talking about cutting the overall number of infections by six figures," says Julie Swann, corresponding author of a paper on the work. Swann is the department head and A. Doug Allison Distinguished Professor of the Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at North Carolina State University.

"And while our work here focused on the H1N1 strain of influenza, the findings are useful as we grapple with how best to respond to COVID-19," Swann says. "COVID-19 is more infectious than H1N1, and has a higher mortality rate. So I would expect the effect of using dedicated clinics to be larger for COVID-19."

Swann and her collaborators were inspired to do the study by the fact that some hospitals opened dedicated H1N1 clinics during the H1N1 influenza pandemic in 2009-2010. These clinics focused exclusively on treating patients who were exhibiting symptoms of H1N1. There was some question at the time as to whether these clinics were a good use of limited resources. It was also unclear as to whether the clinics may have had unintended consequences, such as spreading H1N1 to patients who showed up at the dedicated clinic with flu-like symptoms, but didn't actually have the disease.

For this study, Swann and her collaborators at Purdue University, Georgia Tech and Emory University used a simulation model to address questions related to the ultimate impact of dedicated clinics during an H1N1 pandemic.

The researchers found that opening dedicated clinics reduced disease spread and hospitalizations, particularly when open during the periods of peak prevalence - when the most people are sick. Specifically, the researchers found that if dedicated clinics were open for the entire duration of the pandemic, the clinics would have reduced the overall number of infections by 0.4-1.5%; reduced peak prevalence (or "flattened the curve") by 0.07-0.32%; and reduced hospitalizations by 0.02-0.09%.

"For a state that has a population of 10 million, the difference in the baseline clinic case would be about 100,000 cases, with about 6,000 hospitalizations averted," Swann says. "In other words, dedicated clinics certainly don't make things worse, and can make things at least a little better. And these are benefits that come on top of any benefits we'd see from other, behavioral changes - such as wearing masks - which may be more difficult to implement."

North Carolina's population is approximately 10.5 million.

The study on dedicated clinics is part of a larger research initiative that has already published work examining issues related to vaccine distribution for adults and children; the role of mass gatherings and travel in spreading influenza; and the impact of seasons and mutation in the spread of the disease.

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The paper, "The impact of opening dedicated clinics on disease transmission during an influenza pandemic," will be published Aug. 6 in the journal PLOS ONE. The paper was co-authored by Pengyi Shi of Purdue University; Jia Yan and Pinar Keskinocak of Georgia Tech; and by Dr. Andi Shane of Emory University and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. The work was done with support from Georgia Tech, Edward P. Fitts and the A. Doug Allison Distinguished Professorship.