Solitary bees are born with a functional internal clock - unlike honeybees

Developmental lag in the circadian clock may facilitate sociality

FRONTIERS

Research News

 

IMAGE: FEMALE OF THE SOLITARY RED MASON BEE INSIDE THE LOCOMOTOR ACTIVITY MONITOR SYSTEM FOR REGISTERING ACTIVITY RHYTHMS view more 

CREDIT: THE AUTHORS

Social insects like honeybees and hornets evolved from solitary bees and wasps, respectively. A common trait of many social insects is age-specific behavior: when they emerge from the pupa, workers typically specialize in around-the-clock tasks inside the darkness of the nest, starting with brood care. But they gradually shift towards more cyclic tasks away from center of the nest as they get older -- culminating in foraging outside, exclusively in daylight, towards the end of their life. Here, researchers find evidence that this shift from around-the-clock to rhythmic tasks, which does not occur in solitary insects, seems to be driven by a slower maturation of the endogenous (i.e. internal) "circadian" clock of social honeybees compared to solitary bees.

They find that in the solitary red mason bee Osmia bicornis, where females of every age forage to provide food for offspring, females and males emerge with a mature, fully functional circadian clock, as shown by their 24-h movement rhythm and the activity of the brain cells that produce the "pacemaker" protein Pigment-Dispersing Factor (PDF).

"Our results indicate that the maturation of the circadian clock is delayed in social honeybees as compared to solitary mason bees. We predict that rapid maturation of the circadian clock is the ancestral condition and will be found throughout the solitary bees and wasps, which all need to forage and perform brood care throughout their lifespan. In contrast, a delay in maturation may have evolved secondarily in social species, to enable age-related behavioral shifts from acyclic brood care to daily foraging," says Dr Katharina Beer, a postdoctoral scientist at the Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology of the Julius Maximilian Universitaet Wuerzburg, Germany. Her study, done with Professor Charlotte Helfrich-Foerster, the Chair of Neurobiology and Genetics at Julius Maximilian University, is published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology.

The red mason bee is an important pollinator for agriculture, occurring across Europe, North Africa, and the Near East. Unlike in social insects, there is no infertile worker caste: females overwinter in their natal nest to emerge in the spring, mate, and build new nests in hollow stems. Females forage on many different plant species for pollen and nectar, which they store inside a row of sealed cells, laying a single egg per cell.

Beer and Helfrich-Foerster collected newly emerged bees -- 40 workers (females) from isolated brood combs of honeybees (Apis mellifera), and 56 females and 31 males from isolated pupal cocoons of O. bicornis -- and placed these inside separate tubes inside a Locomotor Activity Monitor system, an apparatus for registering the activity of individual. Infrared beams cross at the center of each tube, which are interrupted whenever the bee moves. By registering the activity pattern, in darkness and at constant temperature, around the clock for 3 to 45 days after emergence, the researchers could derive the rhythm of each bee.

The results showed that none of the honeybees showed a spontaneous ca. 24-h rhythm immediately after emergence from the pupa -- regardless of the degree of contact with the natal colony -- while 88% of O. bicornis females and males did so. The 12% of O. bicornis who did not died young. However in time, at an age of at least two days, each honeybee also developed a pronounced ca. 24-h rhythm. Beer and Helfrich-Foerster conclude that solitary O. bicornis bees, but not social honeybees, emerge with a functional endogenous circadian clock.

What is the neural basis for this difference? To answer this question, the researchers used immunohistochemistry to compare the maturation of the neurons that synthetize PDF, in the two species. In the brain of insects, a cluster of specialized cells called the lateral ventral neurons functions as a circadian pacemaker, secreting bursts of PDF, a so-called neuromodulator which affects the activity of the Central Nervous System. By staining dissected, fixed brains with two antibodies, the first recognizing PDF and the second, labeled with an fluorescent tag, binding to the first, Beer and Helfrich-Förster could count the PDF-producing neurons in each brain hemisphere at different ages, from just before emergence to four weeks after. They show that these steadily increase in number with age in honeybees, but not in O. bicornis.

The authors conclude that the circadian pacemaker is fully mature in newly emerged O. bicornis, but needs to develop to become fully active in honeybees, explaining why young honeybees don't yet show an circadian rhythm. This delay in maturation is likely an evolutionary adaptation to sociality, where young bees need to engage in around-the-clock care of their immature siblings.

"It will be most interesting to perform similar studies on other social insects such as ants, which have various forms of social behavior: some display age-related behavior like in honeybees, wile others don't. If we find similar differences in the maturation of the endogenous clock related to the different social structures of these ant species, this will strongly support our hypothesis," concludes Helfrich-Foerster.

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Dairy cows exposed to heavy metals worsen antibiotic-resistant pathogen crisis

PENN STATE

Research News

 

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Dairy cows, exposed for a few years to drinking water contaminated with heavy metals, carry more pathogens loaded with antimicrobial-resistance genes able to tolerate and survive various antibiotics.

That's the finding of a team of researchers that conducted a study of two dairy herds in Brazil four years after a dam holding mining waste ruptured, and it spotlights a threat to human health, the researchers contend.

The study is the first to show that long-term persistence of heavy metals in the environment may trigger genetic changes and interfere with the microorganism communities that colonize dairy cows, according to researcher Erika Ganda, assistant professor of food animal microbiomes, Penn State.

"Our findings are important because if bacterial antimicrobial resistance is transferred via the food chain by milk or meat consumption, it would have substantial implications for human health," she said. "What we saw is, when heavy metal contamination is in the environment, there is potential for an increase of so-called 'superbugs.'"

A declaration from the World Health Organization supports Ganda's assertion, saying that resistance to antimicrobials is one of the top 10 global public health threats facing humanity. Antimicrobial resistance occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites change over time and no longer respond to medicines, making infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death.

A South American environmental calamity triggered the research. Known as the Mariana Dam disaster, in 2015 the Fundao Tailings Dam suffered a catastrophic failure and released more than 11 billion gallons of iron ore waste. The huge wave of toxic mud flowed into the Doce River basin surrounding Mariana City in Minas Gerais, a state in southeast Brazil.

Following this catastrophe, the team analyzed the consequences of long-term exposure to contaminated drinking water on dairy cattle.

To reach their conclusions, researchers identified bacterial antimicrobial-resistance genes in the feces, rumen fluid and nasal passages of 16 dairy cattle in the area contaminated by the iron ore waste four years after the environmental disaster. Researchers compared samples taken from those animals to analogous samples from 16 dairy cattle on an unaffected farm, about 220 miles away.

The microorganism community in the cattle continuously exposed to contaminated water differed in many ways from that of the cows not exposed to heavy metals, noted researcher Natalia Carrillo Gaeta, doctoral student and research assistant in the Department of Preventive Veterinary Medicine and Animal Health, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The relative abundance and prevalence of bacterial antimicrobial-resistance genes were higher in cattle at the heavy metals-affected farm than in cattle at the non-contaminated farm, she pointed out.

The data, published today (Nov. 16) in Frontiers in Microbiology, suggest that exposure to heavy metal contamination results in the selection of bacteria that have resistance genes to heavy metals, biocides and several drugs, Gaeta explained. "We found that bacterial antimicrobial-resistance genes are most readily detected in fecal samples."

The link between heavy metal concentration in the environment and increased prevalence of antibiotic resistance in bacteria has been seen before, Ganda said. It's known as "co-resistance phenomenon" and is characterized by the closeness between different types of resistance genes located in the same genetic element.

"As a result of this connection, the transfer of one gene providing heavy metal resistance, may occur in concert with the transfer of the closest gene, providing antibiotic resistance, she said. "Consequently, some resistance mechanisms are shared between antibiotics and heavy metals."

Ganda's research group in the College of Agricultural Sciences works with the one-health perspective, which focuses on the interaction between animals, people and the environment. She believes this research presents a good description of a one-health problem.

"In this Brazilian environmental disaster, not only were several people and animals killed by the devastating flood caused by the dam rupture, but the contamination persisted in the environment and made it into dairy cows, that could potentially pose another risk for humans," Ganda said. "If these animals are colonized, resistant bacteria could also make it to humans and colonize them through the food chain."

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Also involved in the research at Penn State were Asha Marie Miles, postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Animal Science, and Emily Bean, doctoral candidate in the Intercollege Graduate Degree Program in Integrative and Biomedical Physiology; and Daniel Ubriaco Oliveira Gonçalves de Carvalho, Mario Augusto Reyes Alema, Jeferson Silva Carvalho and Lilian Gregory, Department of Internal Medicine, School of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

This work was supported by Sao Paulo Research Foundation, the Brazilian Agency CAPES and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

Chronic alcohol use reshapes the brain's immune landscape, driving anxiety and addiction

In their quest to understand how the immune system is implicated in alcohol use disorder, Scripps Research scientists have found a potential path for treatment

SCRIPPS RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Research News

 

LA JOLLA, CA--Deep within the brain, a small almond-shaped region called the amygdala plays a vital role in how we exhibit emotion, behavior and motivation. Understandably, it's also strongly implicated in alcohol abuse, making it a long-running focus of Marisa Roberto, PhD, professor in Scripps Research's Department of Molecular Medicine.

Now, for the first time, Roberto and her team have identified important changes to anti-inflammatory mechanisms and cellular activity in the amygdala that drive alcohol addiction. By countering this process in mice, they were able to stop excessive alcohol consumption--revealing a potential treatment path for alcohol use disorder. The study is published in Progress in Neurobiology.

"We found that chronic alcohol exposure compromises brain immune cells, which are important for maintaining healthy neurons," says Reesha Patel, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in Roberto's lab and first author of the study. "The resulting damage fuels anxiety and alcohol drinking that may lead to alcohol use disorder."

Roberto's study looked specifically at an immune protein called Interleukin 10, or IL-10, which is prevalent in the brain. IL-10 is known to have potent anti-inflammatory properties, which ensures that the immune system doesn't respond too powerfully to disease threats. In the brain, IL-10 helps to limit inflammation from injury or disease, such as stroke or Alzheimer's. But it also appears to influence key behaviors associated with chronic alcohol use.

In mice with chronic alcohol use, IL-10 was significantly reduced in the amygdala and didn't signal properly to neurons, contributing to increased alcohol intake. By boosting IL-10 signaling in the brain, however, the scientists could reverse the aberrant effects. Notably, they observed a stark reduction in anxiety-like behaviors and motivation to drink alcohol.

"We've shown that inflammatory immune responses in the brain are very much at play in the development and maintenance of alcohol use disorder," Roberto says. "But perhaps more importantly, we provided a new framework for therapeutic intervention, pointing to anti-inflammatory mechanisms."

Alcohol use disorder is widespread, affecting some 15 million people in the United States, and few effective treatments exist. By examining how brain cells change with prolonged exposure to alcohol, Roberto's lab has uncovered many possible new therapeutic approaches for those with alcohol addiction.

In the latest study, Roberto's lab collaborated with Silke Paust, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology. Paust and her team determined the precise immune cells throughout the whole brain that are affected by chronic alcohol use. The findings revealed a large shift in the brain immune landscape, with increased levels of immune cells known as microglia and T-regulatory cells, which produce IL-10.

Despite a higher number of IL-10-producing cells in the whole brain of mice with prolonged alcohol use, the amygdala told a different story. In that region, levels of IL-10 were lower and their signaling function was compromised--suggesting that the immune system in the amygdala responds uniquely to chronic alcohol use.

This study complements recent findings by the Roberto lab demonstrating a casual role for microglia in the development of alcohol dependence.

Future studies will build on these findings to identify exactly how and when IL-10 signals to neurons in the amygdala and other addition-related brain circuits to alter behavior.

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The study, "IL-10 normalizes aberrant amygdala GABA transmission and reverses anxiety-like behavior and dependence-induced escalation of alcohol intake," was authored by Reesha Patel, Sarah Wolfe, Michal Bajo, Shawn Abeynaike, Amanda Pahng, Vittoria Borgonetti, Shannon D'Ambrosio, Rana Nikzad, Scott Edwards, Silke Paust, Amanda Roberts and Marisa Roberto.

Support for this study was provided by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (grants AA021491, AA013498, AA006420, AA017447, AA015566, AA027700, AA026765, AA007456) and the Pearson Center for Alcoholism and Addiction Research.

Media, NGO framing of climate change affects how people think about issue: studies

Message frames influence perceptions, whether people will take action

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS

Research News

 

LAWRENCE -- Climate change is an emotionally charged topic that can stir political arguments and inspire people to take action. How people talk about it, especially news media and organizations dedicated to combating the issue, can influence how people think about climate change, a University of Kansas researcher shows in a pair of new studies.

Compelling arguments in climate change news

In one study, Hong Tien Vu, assistant professor of journalism & mass communications at KU, and co-authors examined the concept of "compelling arguments" in news media and how it affects public opinion. The study analyzed data from George Mason and Yale universities that surveyed Americans twice a year between 2009 and 2015. It compared that data to media coverage of climate change from The New York Times and Wall Street Journal published before each data collection. Previous research has focused on how coverage is communicated, but the current study incorporated sentiment and emotion of coverage and readers.

"What we wanted to see is, when incorporating emotion, if it affects how people think about climate change," Vu said. "When we factor in these variables, we can see it does in fact influence the way people view the issue."

The study appears in The Agenda Setting Journal and was co-written with Maxwell McCombs of the University of Texas at Austin, Annelise Russell of the University of Kentucky and Paromita Pain of the University of Nevada Reno. It analyzed three attributes of news coverage: existence, effects and solutions, or if the coverage states the problem exists, the effects it has on the planet and what can be done about it. That was compared to how people reported feeling about the issue, in positive or negative emotions, anger or sadness.

The findings showed climate change effects were mentioned most in the coverage, followed by solutions, then existence. Anger had the strongest influence on the salience of the issue on the public, as the more coverage used anger as a way to discuss the issue, the less people felt it was important. Positive emotions in coverage correlated with the public seeing the issue's importance. Priority of the matter also increased with use of negative emotions included in coverage. Anger also played the strongest role when compared to coverage of climate change effects and solutions. When demographic information was included, only political identification had significant effect on how people felt about climate change, showing that the issue has been highly politicized in the United States.

The results show that how media cover the topic can affect how people think about it. Media and media scholarship have long subscribed to a doctrine of presenting two sides of an issue, even if they are not even or there is little argument in favor of a given side. In public affairs news of great importance, such as climate change, news media has a responsibility to properly inform the public.

"When you talk about climate change, it's pretty abstract. News media has to help people make sense of it," Vu said. "What we found was, when we incorporate emotion, the significance level is higher, or the effects of the news on public opinion is higher. Covering facts alone is important, but we clearly see when emotion is included, it has an effect on the perceptions of the public. It's a fine line to walk."

NGOs and climate change social media activism

As the study on media message framing showed, climate change has been highly politicized, which has led to some news outlets not reporting on the topic or doing so in a way that supports a given agenda. With that in mind, Vu and colleagues conducted a study in which they analyzed how global climate nonprofits communicated about the issue through Facebook.

"That makes it very difficult for people to grasp the issue," Vu said of scant news coverage. "That's where I see the role of NGOs being important. Because they are on the ground, they can create resonance with audiences, including the public and policymakers. NGOs have the tools of the emerging media environment at their disposal."

The study analyzed climate change messages on Facebook from 289 climate NGOs in 18 countries. Forthcoming in the journal Science Communication, it was co-written with Matthew Blomberg, Hyunjin Seo, Yuchen Liu and Fatemeh Shayesteh, of KU's School of Journalism & Mass Communications, and Hung Viet Do of Trader Interactive. It analyzed the frames the organizations use in their messaging, including impact, action and efficacy. Impact refers to whether messages talked about the effects of climate change nationally or globally and if they happened in the past, are happening now or will happen in the future. Action applied to who can and should take action, while efficacy examined if messages created a sense of hope that people's actions will make a difference.

The analysis revealed that, in their messages aimed at persuasion, the NGOs used the action frame most frequently, followed by impact. Efficacy was used the least. The researchers also compared characteristics of the home nation of each NGO and the effect that had on message frames used. They found developed nations were more likely to discuss climate actions than developed countries, which focused more on impact, and framed climate change as a global issue affecting everyone.

"If we look at the issue globally, countries are very different from each other and compete with each other," Vu said. "There have been differences in how all countries should work together to combat climate change. Global climate NGOs can work across the world to bridge those differences and mobilize countries to work together. How they communicate about climate change is, therefore, important."

Findings also showed NGOs tend to use a diagnostic frame most often. In other words, the majority of their messages focused on identifying problems more than coming up with solutions or motivating people to understand the issue or take action.

Understanding how NGOs communicate via social media is vital, given their unique ability to reach audiences of people dedicated to combating the issue and policymakers, while bypassing the traditional gatekeepers of media, Vu said. He has previously conducted research about how NGOs discuss the topic on Twitter, and such analysis can help illustrate which methods are the most effective, which parts of the world are leading the conversation and how best to motivate people to take action.

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Researchers quantify carbon changes in Sierra Nevada meadow soils

Collaborative study indicates meadows hold promise to help control carbon released into the atmosphere

UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, RENO

Research News

 

IMAGE: A SIERRA NEVADA MEADOW THAT SEQUESTERED LARGE AMOUNTS OF SOIL CARBON PART OF STUDY TO QUANTIFY CARBON CHANGES. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO BY C.C. REED, UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, RENO.

RENO, Nev. - Meadows in the Sierra Nevada mountains are critical components of watersheds. In addition to supplying water to over 25 million people in California and Nevada, meadows contain large quantities of carbon belowground. While it has been known for some time that meadows have large quantities of soil carbon, whether meadow soils are gaining or losing carbon has remained unclear.

A new study led by researchers in the College of Agriculture, Biotechnology & Natural Resources at the University of Nevada, Reno, has demonstrated for the first time that meadows throughout the region are both gaining and losing carbon at high rates. Capture and storage of carbon in soil is a natural way to reduce carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and combat climate change. However, human activities can disrupt natural processes and lead to the loss of soil carbon to the atmosphere. These results suggest that meadow management may either contribute to climate change or mitigate the harmful effects of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The research was conducted in partnership with the University of California Merced, as well as numerous restoration practitioners and conservation organizations in more than a dozen meadows throughout the Sierra Nevada mountains. The study is aimed at arming restoration practitioners with information to help make good management decisions.

"Meadows are known for their lush, diverse vegetation supported by soils that stay wet into the summer," explained University of Nevada, Reno, doctoral candidate Cody Reed, who led the study. "However, a long history of human activity in many meadows throughout the Sierra Nevada has resulted in drier soils and the replacement of wetland vegetation with sparse grasses and shrubs."

In research published this week in the scientific journal Ecosystems, Reed and her coauthors, including Associate Professors Benjamin Sullivan and Paul Verburg and Professor Emeritus Sherman Swanson from the University, revealed that meadows with wetland plant communities and dense root mats were large net carbon sinks during the year measured, meaning they removed carbon from the atmosphere. In fact, per acre, the amount of carbon captured in these meadows was similar to rates measured in tropical rainforests. On the other hand, meadows with more bare ground and plant communities associated with drier soil released large amounts of carbon from the soil to the atmosphere.

In the long-term, such changes to the large soil carbon stocks in meadows could add up. And unlike in forests, where most carbon is sequestered in wood aboveground, the change in carbon in meadows is belowground. This means meadow soil carbon is less vulnerable to disturbances such as wildfire and may persist in the ecosystem for longer than aboveground carbon. At the same time, soil carbon provides other important benefits besides taking carbon out of the atmosphere.

"Worldwide, soils may contain up to four times as much carbon as the atmosphere," Reed explained. "Soil carbon in meadows also helps improve water quality and quantity, as well as soil fertility to support diverse plant communities important for wildlife and grazing."

The research will likely help meadow restoration practitioners identify meadows in need of conservation to maintain soil carbon gains and meadows in need of restoration to prevent additional losses of soil carbon to the atmosphere. The researchers estimate that three acres of surrounding forest are required to offset the amount of carbon lost by one acre of degraded meadow. On the other hand, one acre of meadow may sequester as much carbon as six acres of forest.

"Our research shows meadows may be some of the best bang for the buck in terms of carbon management in the region," Sullivan said. "My hope is that soil carbon sequestration can be integrated with other objectives to achieve management strategies that improve ecosystem functions in meadows."

Sullivan said he and his colleagues in the College's Department of Natural Resources & Environmental Science and Experiment Station plan to conduct future research to quantify the impacts of meadow restoration on soil carbon.

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Mediterranean diet helps reduce effects of stress in animal model, study shows

WAKE FOREST BAPTIST MEDICAL CENTER

Research News

 

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - Nov. 16, 2020 - Even before the pandemic and the presidential election, Americans reported some of the highest perceived levels of stress in the world, according to the American Psychological Association. Not only does stress have negative effects on work and personal relationships, it also increases the risk of many chronic conditions, such as heart disease and Alzheimer's disease, and is associated with higher mortality rates.

But eating a Mediterranean diet may provide a relatively easy way to help lessen the physiological effects of stress and promote healthy aging, according to a new study conducted by researchers at Wake Forest School of Medicine, part of Wake Forest Baptist Health.

Findings from the study, the first preclinical trial to measure the effects of long-term consumption of a Western versus Mediterranean diet on stress under controlled experimental conditions, are published in the current online edition of the journal Neurobiology of Stress.

"It is very difficult to control or reduce stressors in our lives," said Carol A. Shively, Ph.D., professor of pathology and comparative medicine at Wake Forest School of Medicine and principal investigator of the study. "But we do know that we can control our diet, and previous observational studies have suggested that lower perceived stress is associated with high fruit and vegetable consumption.

"Unfortunately, Americans consume a diet rich in animal protein and saturated fat, salt and sugar, so we wanted to find out if that diet worsened the body's response to stress compared to a Mediterranean diet, in which much of the protein and fat come from plant sources."

The researchers studied the effects of the chronic stress of low social status and the acute stress of being socially isolated for 30 minutes in 38 middle-age animals that were fed either a Mediterranean or Western diet. The diets were formulated to closely reflect human diets, with protein and fat derived largely from animal sources in the Western group and primarily from plant sources in the Mediterranean group.

To determine the diets' effect on stress responses, the scientists measured changes in the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems and in the adrenal gland hormone cortisol, in response to acute and chronic stress.

The sympathetic nervous system is involved in the "fight or flight" response and regulates bodily functions such as heart rate and blood pressure. The parasympathetic nervous system has opposite effects that help the body return to a calmer state. High sympathetic nervous system activity can be harmful to health, so maintaining a healthy balance between the two systems is important, Shively said.

Cortisol, the body's main stress hormone, helps the body access resources needed to fight or flee. However, if stress is continuous, cortisol levels stay high and damage tissues.

Compared to animals fed a Western diet, those fed the Mediterranean diet exhibited enhanced stress resilience as indicated by lower sympathetic nervous system and cortisol responses to stress, and more rapid recovery after the stress ended, Shively said.

"Our study showed that the Mediterranean diet shifted the balance toward the parasympathetic nervous system, which is good for health," Shively said. "By contrast, the Western diet increased the sympathetic response to stress, which is like having the panic button on all the time - and that isn't healthy."

As the animals aged over the 31-month study, which is equivalent to about 9 years in humans, the research group noted that sympathetic nervous system activity increased. However, the Mediterranean diet slowed the aging of the sympathetic nervous system.

The study's findings suggest that population-wide adoption of a Mediterranean-like diet may provide a relatively simple and cost-effective intervention to reduce the negative impact of psychological stress on health and delay nervous system aging, Shively said.

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The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health R01HL087103, RF1AG058829, R01HL122393, U24DK097748, and the Wake Forest Claude D. Pepper Older American Independence Center P30AG012332.

Health care workers most at risk for COVID-19

A Rutgers study finds nurses have the highest prevalence of infection

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

Health care workers -- particularly nurses -- have a higher prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection than non-health care workers, according to researchers at Rutgers, which released baseline results from a large prospective study of participants at Rutgers and affiliated hospitals recruited during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study, published in the journal BMC Infectious Diseases, found that in early spring, the participants most likely to test positive for COVID-19 were nurses, workers taking care of multiple patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 and those who worked in a hospital with a higher proportion of infected patients.

As of Nov. 15, 2020, according to the CDC, there were more than 216,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases among health care workers in the United States, leading to at least 799 deaths. The Rutgers study evaluated 546 health care workers with direct patient exposure at two New Jersey hospitals and 283 non-health care workers with no direct patient contact.

At the start of the study in March, 40 health care workers and one non-health care worker tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection. Among all participants enrolled, more than 7 percent of health care workers were found to be positive for the novel coronavirus as compared to the very low rates of positive testing among non-health care workers. Also, consistent with disparities observed in the general public, Black and Hispanic participants had more positive test results.

Health care workers who reported caring for five or more patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 and those who spent a greater proportion of their time in patients' rooms were more likely to test positive for the infection themselves.

Of the 40 infected health care workers, 25 were nurses. Intensive care unit workers had the lowest rates of infections among the health care workers, possibly due to the more consistent use of personal protective equipment.

"We have all heard about how health care workers are the heroes on the frontlines of this pandemic, but we still don't have solid answers about the risks to health care workers and who is most at risk ," said lead co-author Emily Barrett, an associate professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at Rutgers School of Public Health. "The initial results show that at the beginning of the pandemic, the higher rate of infection observed in urban North New Jersey areas, like Newark, was also reflected in the health care workers serving those communities."

"The baseline data reported here have helped us to monitor the spread of infection and examine risk factors for transmission among health care workers and others," said lead co-author Daniel Horton, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and assistant professor of epidemiology at Rutgers School of Public Health. "These findings and our ongoing follow-up of study participants have informed local strategies to protect the health care workforce, their families and their patients."

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The study was coordinated by Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, the university's academic health system. Study investigators are also involved in clinical trials and other studies exploring new drug treatments, antibody testing and long-term health tracking to provide insight into how to treat COVID-19 and prevent its spread. The study was funded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health.

Other Rutgers authors include Jason Roy, Maria Laura Gennaro, Andrew Brooks, Jay Tischfield, Patricia Greenberg, Tracy Andrews, Sugeet Jagpal, Nancy Reilly, Jeffrey Carson, Martin Blaser and Reynold Panettieri.

Implementing carbon pricing during the pandemic could help countries recover greener, smarter

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, WOODROW WILSON SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

Research News

 

PRINCETON, N.J. --Countries across the globe have been struggling to deal with the impact of Covid-19 and its accompanying economic slowdown. As economies "build back better," it may be an opportune time to introduce carbon pricing to tackle climate change, according to new Princeton University policy research.

While endorsed by many economists, carbon pricing has been slower to gain traction because of its potential to shock economies and the difficulty of securing political support for increasing taxes. However, fuel prices are already low and people are buying fewer goods and traveling less, so there could be greater benefits to introducing or strengthening carbon prices, the authors argue in the journal Climate Policy.

Carbon pricing -- whether in the form of taxes or emissions trading -- is an economic approach to account for the environmental costs of emitting greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels. Carbon taxes typically apply to the producer with increased costs ultimately trickling down to any activity using carbon. For example, oil-extraction companies would be taxed, adding costs to any process that involved burning oil. Emissions-trading schemes set some cap on emissions and permits to emit are traded, but the number of total permits available correspond to that cap.

"When we think about long-term problems like the pandemic or climate change, it's easy to assume that the solutions could conflict since they all require massive resources," said lead author Kian Mintz-Woo, a former postdoctoral research associate in Princeton's University Center for Human Values and the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA). "But what we describe in this article is how the context of the coronavirus crisis actually provides a unique opportunity for mutually reinforcing forward-thinking solutions to improve sustainability and wellbeing as countries recover."

Mintz-Woo, who recently joined the Philosophy and Environmental Research Institute at University College Cork, Ireland, added that this research expands on an op-ed co-authored with Princeton Professor Peter Singer published on May 7 by Project Syndicate.

With markets already reorienting to adjust to supply-and-demand shocks brought on by the pandemic, introducing carbon pricing now would result in marginally less disruption and could actually help drive greener economic activity. Placing a price on carbon could prompt industries to move away from more costly fossil-fuel intensive practices and toward long-term economic and environmental sustainability.

"Since carbon pollution already increases health and environmental costs borne by society, forcing those generating the costs to pay for them would lead to fairer production and consumption," Mintz-Woo said.

In the context of low fuel prices over an extended period, as seen in recent months, the researchers suggest that a carbon tax could help stabilize prices and ensure that renewable energy sources -- the prices of which were becoming cost-competitive even before the Covid-19 crisis -- can remain competitive. The researchers say that as economies move toward recovery, a carbon price can drive individuals and firms to adopt less carbon-intensive processes, rather than locking-in unsustainable energy practices that will ultimately require more drastic future corrections.

"Preventing commitment to future emissions is the key," Mintz-Woo said. "But that cannot come at the expense of those who may be at risk for job losses in this transition. Governments should use the revenue to both reduce any regressive effects of the taxation and retrain those who come from industries that could be adversely affected."

The researchers acknowledge that governments are under pressure to prioritize economic recovery from the Covid-19 crisis, so any policy changes with the potential to dampen a stimulus effect could be unpopular. However, they argue that high prices are not the primary obstacle to consumer purchasing; the cause of the economic slowdown has more to do with restricted market activity during the pandemic.

Revenue generated from a carbon price could contribute toward government spending on social safety nets, fund other green priorities to drive innovation and new jobs, or be returned as credits to taxpayers. In all cases, the potential revenue source could be a welcome infusion during the Covid-19 crisis, when regional and national governments face massive fiscal shortfalls which can be expected to grow in the coming months.

"Right now, governments are considering bailouts for carbon-intensive sectors, like the airline industry," Mintz-Woo said. "While it's really hard on employees in that industry right now, government money would be far better spent on clean research and development investments and other strategies to help companies prepare for the future. And that means preparing for employment transitions away from carbon-intensive jobs and towards areas that will be more beneficial to the environment. Carbon pricing can help us do just that."

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The paper, "Carbon Pricing and COVID-19," first appeared in Climate Policy on 15 November.
Additional co-authors on the article are Francis Dennig (Yale-NUS Singapore); Hongxun Liu (Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs); and Thomas Schinko (Risk and Resilience Program (RISK), International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis).

A short version of the article's arguments is expected to be released on the blog
https://climatestrategies.wordpress.com.

Computer scientists launch counteroffensive against video game cheaters

Cheat detection system could gracefully kick out cheating players

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS

Research News

 

IMAGE: DR. LATIFUR KHAN, PROFESSOR OF COMPUTER SCIENCE IN THE ERIK JONSSON SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE view more 

CREDIT: THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS

University of Texas at Dallas computer scientists have devised a new weapon against video game players who cheat.

The researchers developed their approach for detecting cheaters using the popular first-person shooter game Counter-Strike. But the mechanism can work for any massively multiplayer online (MMO) game that sends data traffic to a central server.

Their research was published online Aug. 3 in IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing.

Counter-Strike is a series of games in which players work in teams to counter terrorists by securing plant locations, defusing bombs and rescuing hostages. Players can earn in-game currency to buy more powerful weapons, which is a key to success. Various software cheats for the game are available online.

"Sometimes when you're playing against players who use cheats you can tell, but sometimes it may not be evident," said Md Shihabul Islam, a UT Dallas computer science doctoral student in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science and lead author of the study, who plays Counter-Strike for fun. "It's not fair to the other players."

In addition to fair play, cheating also can have an economic impact when dissatisfied players leave to play other games, Islam said.

Cheating incidents also can have serious consequences in esports, a fast-growing industry with annual revenues close to $1 billion. Cheating can result in sanctions against teams and players, including disqualification, forfeiture of prize money and a ban on future participation, according to the Esports Integrity Commission based in the United Kingdom.

Detecting cheating in MMO games can be challenging because the data that goes from a player's computer to the game server is encrypted. Previous research has relied on decrypted game logs to detect cheating after the fact. The UT Dallas researchers' approach eliminates the need for decrypted data and instead analyzes encrypted data traffic to and from the server in real time.

"Players who cheat send traffic in a different way," said Dr. Latifur Khan, an author of the study, professor of computer science and director of the Big Data Analytics and Management Lab at UT Dallas. "We're trying to capture those characteristics."

For the study, 20 students in the UT Dallas class Cyber Security Essentials for Practitioners downloaded Counter-Strike and three software cheats: an aimbot, which automatically targets an opponent; a speed hack, which allows the player to move faster; and a wallhack, which makes walls transparent so players can easily see their opponent. The researchers set up a server dedicated to the project so the students' activity would not disrupt other online players.

The researchers analyzed game traffic to and from the dedicated server. Data travels in packets, or bundles, of information. The packets can be different sizes, depending on the contents. Researchers analyzed features, including the number of incoming and outgoing packets, their size, the time they were transmitted, their direction and the number of packets in a burst, which is a group of consecutive packets.

By monitoring the data traffic from the student players, researchers identified patterns that indicated cheating. They then used that information to train a machine-learning model, a form of artificial intelligence, to predict cheating based on patterns and features in the game data.

The researchers adjusted their statistical model, based on a small set of gamers, to work for larger populations. Part of the cheat-detection mechanism involves sending the data traffic to a graphics processing unit, which is a parallel server, to make the process faster and take the workload off the main server's central processing unit.

The researchers plan to extend their work to create an approach for games that do not use a client-server architecture and to make the detection mechanism more secure. Islam said gaming companies could use the UT Dallas technique with their own data to train gaming software to detect cheating. If cheating is detected, the system could take immediate action.

"After detection," Khan said, "we can give a warning and gracefully kick the player out if they continue with the cheating during a fixed time interval.

"Our aim is to ensure that games like Counter-Strike remain fun and fair for all players."

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Other authors of the study include Swarup Chandra PhD'18, a research engineer at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and UT Dallas computer science doctoral student Bo Dong. Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham, Founders Chair in Engineering and Computer Science, professor of computer science and executive director of the Cyber Security Research and Education Institute at UT Dallas, is senior author of the study.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, National Security Agency, IBM and Hewlett-Packard Development Co.

OHIO's Franz publishes study on strategies hospitals adopt to address opioid epidemic

OHIO UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

While the world's attention to public health remains focused on COVID-19, Berkeley Franz, Ph.D., assistant professor at the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, continues to focus her attention on one of the largest public health crises in the United States today - the opioid epidemic.

Franz, along with Cory Cronin, Ph.D., assistant professor in OHIO's College of Health Sciences and Professions, and José Pagán, Ph.D., professor of public health policy and management at New York University, co-authored the article, "What Strategies Are Hospitals Adopting to Address the Opioid Epidemic? Evidence From a National Sample of Nonprofit Hospitals," to identify what hospitals are doing to combat the opioid epidemic and how they could better address these problems in communities.

The study led by Franz is published in Public Health Reports, the official journal of the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General and the U.S. Public Health Service.

"Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the opioid epidemic was the most vexing health problem," Franz said. "High rates of addiction were cited as one of the main reasons that American life expectancy declined in multiple years, something we rarely see. At the same time, opioid misuse increased to be the greatest causes of preventable death. This study shows that hospitals can play a clear and important role in implementing interventions and effectively treating patients, especially if they are willing to do so on site."

This study is part of ongoing research Franz is doing to understand whether hospitals are addressing the most critical public health needs in their communities. She is also studying institutional barriers to adopting new programs to address opioid misuse, including the presence of bias/stigma among health care professionals.

Through their research, Franz, Cronin and Pagán found that hospitals often don't do evidence-based programs despite evidence that treating the patient at the hospital rather than through a referral leads to more effective treatment and reduces death from subsequent overdoses.

"With opioid misuse, people often end up in hospitals for care, which is a great place to address other, secondary health consequences that come from the misuse," Franz explained. "Aside from an actual overdose itself, people can get infections at the injection site, heart and skin infections, infectious diseases linked to intravenous drug use and more. By taking care of these individuals in a hospital setting, medical professionals can also address these issues as well as introduce treatment for the underlying substance use disorder."

To compile data, the researchers analyzed data from a 20% sample of all U.S. hospitals to determine what they were doing to address opioid abuse.

The researchers looked at whether hospitals offered specific kinds of services - and specifically whether the hospitals were directly addressing the issue or redirecting patients to primary care or other outpatient care.

"While individual health needs assessments and implementation strategies are publicly available, our hope is that by aggregating strategies and trends, we can provide a snapshot of the overall picture, which may be helpful to decision makers in health care organizations or public agencies," Cronin said.

The study shows that nonprofit hospitals invest in clinical strategies and risk education, but they could do more by initiating medication-assisted treatment at the hospitals and adopting harm reduction initiatives, such as distributing naloxone or offering syringe exchanges.

"We have created a great partnership between Ohio University and New York University researchers interested in the contribution of hospitals to improve the health of our communities," Pagán said. "I am very lucky to have had the opportunity to work with this great team and bring awareness to the important leadership role hospitals play in our communities to help reduce opioid abuse."

Pagán added that state support is important, as hospitals are more likely to adopt harm reduction programs and other strategies in states that take the lead encouraging the use of these strategies.

Although some hospitals are adopting evidence-based strategies to address opioid misuse, the pandemic is affecting how hospitals can implement such programs effectively. For instance, many hospitals are currently focused on fighting COVID 19, so they may have fewer opportunities to offer substance abuse services. At the same time, the added societal stress of the pandemic can actually exacerbate substance misuse. Also, some hospitals do not offer direct services for those who misuse substances.

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Franz is also holder of the Heritage Career Development Faculty Endowed Fellowship in Population Health, Osteopathic Heritage Foundation Ralph S. Licklider, D.O., Research Endowment, which supported this research study through providing funding support to train/work with Jose A. Pagán and also provided direct funds for carrying out the research itself.