UMD paves the way for growing human organs for transplantation with new proof-of-concept

Start-up company, Renovate Bioscience Inc., wins Invention of the Year and Inventor Pitch Award for this work at UMD

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

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IMAGE: BHANU TELUGU, UMD view more 

CREDIT: EDWIN REMSBERG, UMD

In a new paper published in Stem Cell Reports, Bhanu Telugu and co-inventor Chi-Hun Park of the University of Maryland (UMD) Department of Animal and Avian Sciences show for the first time that newly established stem cells from pigs, when injected into embryos, contributed to the development of only the organ of interest (the embryonic gut and liver), laying the groundwork for stem cell therapeutics and organ transplantation. Telugu's start-up company, Renovate Biosciences Inc. (RBI), was founded with the goal of leveraging the potential of stem cells to treat terminal diseases that would otherwise require organ transplants, either by avoiding the need for transplants altogether or creating a new pipeline for growing transplantable human organs. With the number of people who suffer from organ failures and the 20 deaths per day in the U.S. alone purely from a lack of available organs for transplant, finding a new way to provide organs and therapeutic options to transplant patients is a critical need. In this paper, Telugu and his team are sharing their first steps towards growing fully transplantable human organs in a pig host.

"This paper is really about using the stem cells from pigs for the first time and showing that they actually can be injected into embryos and only go to the endodermal target organs like the liver, which is very important for delivering safe therapeutic solutions going forward," says Telugu. "This is an important milestone. It's a pipe dream in a way because a lot of things need to work out between here and full organ transplantation, but this paper sets the stage for all our future research. We can't really just go and start working with humans in work like this, so we started with pig-to-pig transfer in this paper, working with the stem cells and putting them back into other pigs to track the process to make sure it is safe for liver production as proof-of-concept."

Telugu and his team pitched this work at UMD Bioscience Day on behalf of his company, RBI, and received the Inventor Pitch Award and the UMD Invention of the Year Award in 2018. In order to protect the intellectual property, Telugu worked with the UMD Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC) to secure patents and open the work up for additional fundraising to carry this technology through the preclinical and clinical stages. The Maryland Stem Cell Foundation provided some funding to advance this work, and Telugu is thankful that Maryland funds technologies in the human stem cell space.

"There are many terminal cases where people need some sort of an organ replacement, like organ failure and degenerative diseases that cannot be cured by drugs," explains Telugu. "The traditional paradigm is to find a donor organ, but as of today there are still thousands of patients waiting for transplants, and there is no keeping up with the demand. Researchers have thought for a long time that stem cells could help solve this problem, and these stem cells have the ability to go into a specific organ as opposed to those that go into any lineage. In this case, you can differentiate the cells and place them where they are needed to help rescue a diseased organ, eliminating the need for transplant or at least buying the patient some time. Just making the human liver and collecting them early from a neonatal piglet, the hepatocyte [liver] cells alone are a $3 billion opportunity per year. And in the future, we can move into organ transplantation, first with the liver, and then looking at other organs of interest like the pancreas and lungs."

According to Telugu, this has distinct advantages over other methods that researchers are currently using to create donor organs in pigs, since the organs Telugu and his team are working with are actually of human origin and are therefore more likely to be accepted when transplanted. "Transplant rejections are pretty common even between humans and humans," says Telugu, "and if it is such a problem normally, you can imagine how an organ from a pig could be difficult to accept and may not essentially perform the same functions. Pig proteins may not function the same, so that remains a huge barrier for other methods that are not actually growing fully human organs like ours."

This work has the potential to solve a major problem in the treatment of organ failure and other degenerative diseases, which is what Telugu and his work is all about. "Being a veterinarian by training, we always look at the problem and try to find solutions to them," says Telugu. "Most animal scientists operate by looking for solutions, so integrating research and entrepreneurship to get this to the market where it is needed is essential. We are one of the few groups on the planet that are working in this space, and we have a great team of embryologists here at Maryland to do this work. We are uniquely positioned to accomplish this with both genome editing and stem cell biology expertise, and being able to prove the concept with this paper is a great first step towards our goals."

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The paper, entitled "Extra-embryonic endoderm (XEN) cells capable of contributing to embryonic chimeras established from pig embryos," is published in Stem Cells Reports, DOI: 10.1016/j.stemcr.2020.11.011.

The Milky Way primordial history and its fossil findings

UNIVERSITÀ DI BOLOGNA

Research News

 

IMAGE: PANORAMIC VIEW OF THE MILKY WAY (CREDIT: ESO/S. BRUNIER) WITH THE LOCATION OF THE TWO BULGE FOSSIL FRAGMENTS DISCOVERED SO FAR (LILLER 1 AND TERZAN 5) HIGHLIGHTED. view more 

CREDIT: F. R. FERRARO / C. PALLANCA (UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA)

Just as archaeologists dig hoping to find traces of the past, an international group of astrophysicists managed to get into the thick cloud of dust around the centre of the Milky Way (also known as the bulge) discovering primordial clumps of gas and stars never found so far. They named this new class of stellar system "Bulge Fossil Fragments". A research team led by Francesco Ferraro (Department of Physics and Astronomy "Augusto Righi" at the University of Bologna and member of the National Institute for Astrophysics - INAF) carried out a study published in Nature Astronomy.

Researchers found out about this new class while analyzing Liller 1. The latter is a stellar system in the Milky Way bulge that for more than 40 years has been classified as a "globular cluster", i.e. a system composed of millions of same-aged stars (the Milky Way has at least 150 globular clusters). However, researchers observed Liller 1 closely and found out that its real identity is actually more fascinating than so far believed. Indeed, Liller 1 is a fossil fragment of one of the giant stellar clumps that, approximately 12 billion years ago, merged to form the central region (bulge) of the Milky Way.

"Our results clearly show that Liller 1 is not a globular cluster, but a much more complex object", says Professor Francesco Ferraro, first author and coordinator of the study. "It is a stellar relic, a fossil finding that contains the history of the Milky Way formation".

A VALIDATING RESULT

The existence of "cosmic findings" had already been suggested when researchers discovered a similar object, Terzan 5, some years ago. Terzan 5 looked like a globular cluster within our galaxy bulge, but, at a closer analysis, its features were not consistent with those of other globular clusters.

However, an isolated case is just an intriguing anomaly. This is why Liller 1 is so important. Terzan 5 and Liller 1 shared features confirm the existence of a new class of stellar systems unidentified until today.

FOSSIL FRAGMENTS

Which are the feature of the Bulge Fossil Fragments? These objects are disguised as globular clusters, but are fundamentally different, if one looks at the age of the stars composing them. Two stellar populations are in these systems: one is as old as the Milky Way - it formed 12 billion years ago - and the other one is much younger. On the one hand, this shows that these stellar systems appeared during the Milky Way early stages of formation; on the other hand, it demonstrates that they are able to engender multiple events of stellar generation.

"The features of Liller 1 and Terzan 5 stellar populations suggest that both systems formed at the same time of the Milky Way", explains one of the authors of the study, Barbara Lanzoni, Professor at the University of Bologna and INAF member. "Younger stellar populations are richer in iron and tend to cluster in the central areas of the bulge. Indeed, this is in line with a context of self-enrichment in which the gas ejected by older stars forms new ones".

BEYOND THE CLOUDS

Getting to these findings was anything but easy. Liller 1 is located in one of the most obscured regions of our galaxy, where thick clouds of interstellar dust dim starlight making it up to 10,000 times fainter. The only way of getting through these clouds is infrared light. This is why researchers chose Gemini South to perform the inspection of Liller 1. Gemini South is a powerful telescope with a diameter of 8 meters able to compensate for the distortions in stellar images caused by the atmosphere of the Earth.

The sharpness of Gemini South images is unparalleled. Thanks to these incredible pictures, researchers could do a detailed preliminary analysis of Liller 1 stellar population. Despite this preliminary analysis, researchers had still some work to do to have a complete picture of the composition of this stellar system. Indeed, they needed to know if all the stars shown by those images belonged to Liller 1, or if some of them were simply in the same line of sight, but did not belong to it. They managed to solve this issue by resorting to further observations performed through the Hubble Space Telescope.

"After having combined the two sets of images, we removed the stars that did not belong to Liller 1 and finally had a clear and detailed picture of this stellar system", says Cristina Pallanca, a researcher at the University of Bologna and INAF member who co-authored the study. "Our results surprised us: Liller 1 hosts at least two stellar populations with dramatically different ages, the oldest having formed about 12 billion years ago, the same time the Milky Way formed; the second one, much younger, having formed just 1-2 billion years ago".

A discovery that is remarkably similar to what they found out about Terzan 5, which similarly hosts one stellar population as old as the Milky Way and a much younger one (4.5 billion years).

"The discovery that Liller 1 and Terzan 5 share very similar features allowed for the identification of a new class of stellar systems originated from some ancestors that were massive enough to retain the gas ejected by supernovas. What we observed are just some fragments of these massive structures", adds Emanuele Dalessandro, a researcher at INAF - Space Science Observatory (OAS) in Bologna and co-author of the study.

This then confirmed the existence of the "Bulge Fossil Fragments", i.e. stellar systems composed of the relics of massive primordial objects that, 12 billion years ago, gave birth to the Milky Way.

"The history of the Milky Way is written in these fossil remains. The latter are tokens of an age during which the Universe was very young, just 1 billion years old", concludes professor Ferraro. "Now we need to go deeper. Thanks to the discovery of these fossil remains we can start reading the history of the Milky Way and maybe re-define our knowledge about the formation of the bulge".

THE AUTHORS OF THE STUDY

"A new class of fossil fragments from the hierarchical assembly of the Galactic bulge" is the title of this study published in Nature Astronomy. The researchers involved in this study are Francesco R. Ferraro, Cristina Pallanca, Barbara Lanzoni, Chiara Crociati and Alessio Mucciarelli from the Department of Physics and Astronomy "Augusto Righi" of the University of Bologna and INAF. Emanuele Dalessandro and Livia Origlia form the INAF also participated in the study.

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Moreover, R. Michael Rich (University of California, Los Angeles USA), Sara Saracino (Liverpool John Moores University, UK), Elena Valenti and Giacomo Beccari (European Southern Observatory, Germany), Douglas Geisler and Sandro Villanova (Universidad de Concepción, Cile), Francesco Mauro and Cristian Moni Bidin (Universidad Católica del Norte, Cile) took part in this research.

SwRI-led team finds meteoric evidence for a previously unknown asteroid

Mineralogy points to large, water-rich parent asteroid for carbonaceous chondrite meteorite

SOUTHWEST RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Research News

 

IMAGE: SWRI SCIENTISTS STUDIED THE COMPOSITION OF A SMALL SHARD OF A METEOROID TO DETERMINE THAT IT LIKELY ORIGINATED FROM A PREVIOUSLY UNKNOWN PARENT ASTEROID. THIS FALSE-COLOR MICROGRAPH OF THE METEOROID... view more 

CREDIT: NASA/USRA/LUNAR AND PLANETARY INSTITUTE

SAN ANTONIO -- Dec. 21, 2020 -- A Southwest Research Institute-led team of scientists has identified a potentially new meteorite parent asteroid by studying a small shard of a meteorite that arrived on Earth a dozen years ago. The composition of a piece of the meteorite Almahata Sitta (AhS) indicates that its parent body was an asteroid roughly the size of Ceres, the largest object in the main asteroid belt, and formed in the presence of water under intermediate temperatures and pressures.

"Carbonaceous chondrite (CC) meteorites record the geological activity during the earliest stages of the Solar System and provide insight into their parent bodies' histories," said SwRI Staff Scientist Dr. Vicky Hamilton, first author of a paper published in Nature Astronomy outlining this research. "Some of these meteorites are dominated by minerals providing evidence for exposure to water at low temperatures and pressures. The composition of other meteorites points to heating in the absence of water. Evidence for metamorphism in the presence of water at intermediate conditions has been virtually absent, until now."

Asteroids -- and the meteors and meteorites that sometimes come from them -- are leftovers from the formation of our Solar System 4.6 billion years ago. Most reside in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, but collisions and other events have broken them up and ejected remnants into the inner Solar System. In 2008, a 9-ton, 13-foot diameter asteroid entered Earth's atmosphere, exploding into some 600 meteorites over the Sudan. This marked the first time scientists predicted an asteroid impact prior to entry and allowed recovery of 23 pounds of samples.

"We were allocated a 50-milligram sample of AhS to study," Hamilton said. "We mounted and polished the tiny shard and used an infrared microscope to examine its composition. Spectral analysis identified a range of hydrated minerals, in particular amphibole, which points to intermediate temperatures and pressures and a prolonged period of aqueous alteration on a parent asteroid at least 400, and up to 1,100, miles in diameter."

Amphiboles are rare in CC meteorites, having only been identified previously as a trace component in the Allende meteorite. "AhS is a serendipitous source of information about early Solar System materials that are not represented by CC meteorites in our collections," Hamilton said.

Orbital spectroscopy of asteroids Ryugu and Bennu visited by Japan's Hayabusa2 and NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft this year is consistent with aqueously altered CC meteorites and suggests that both asteroids differ from most known meteorites in terms of their hydration state and evidence for large-scale, low-temperature hydrothermal processes. These missions have collected samples from the surfaces of the asteroids for return to Earth.

"If the compositions of the Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx samples differ from what we have in our collections of meteorites, it could mean that their physical properties cause them to fail to survive the processes of ejection, transit and entry through Earth's atmosphere, at least in their original geologic context," said Hamilton, who also serves on the OSIRIS-REx science team. "However, we think that there are more carbonaceous chondrite materials in the Solar System than are represented by our collections of meteorites."

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For more information, go to https://www.swri.org/planetary-science.

 

NYS can achieve 2050 carbon goals: Here's how

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

ITHACA, N.Y. - By delving into scientific, technological, environmental and economic data, Cornell University engineering researchers examined whether New York could achieve a statewide carbon-free economy by 2050. Their finding: Yes, New York can reach this goal - and do it with five years to spare.

Fengqi You, professor in energy systems engineering and Ning Zhao, a doctoral student in the Process-Energy-Environmental Systems Engineering (PEESE) lab, examined a variety of carbon-neutral energy systems and decarbonization methods after the state passed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) in July 2019. Their new paper, "Can Renewable Generation, Energy Storage and Energy Efficient Technologies Enable Carbon Neutral Energy Transition?" was recently published in Applied Energy.

"Now we have a 2050 'net zero' target," You said. "As New Yorkers, we can commit to making the needed changes on renewable energy transition for electricity and space heating. The law's goals are very feasible from economic and technological perspectives."

Among their research highlights:

• By 2050, offshore wind energy will likely be the main source of electricity for the state;
• Natural gas will play a role at the early stage of carbon neutral energy transition for both power and space heating sectors, but will approach obsolescence between 2040 and 2050;
• Geothermal heating (extracting heat from the Earth) and/or electric air heat pumps will become the top methods to heat homes and buildings, replacing natural gas;
• Solar energy will play an important but limited role, the researchers said, due to a lack of winter-time sunlight and other more economically competitive sustainable energy options;
• Geothermal technology will play a key role in decarbonizing New York state, but when paired with a carbon tax, the state's economy will become sustainably green more quickly - possibly by 2045, according to the scientists.

To motivate public utility companies and New Yorkers to make the needed changes, You and Zhao suggest partnering a carbon tax with the green ideas, so that New York will enjoy a faster trajectory to force out fossil energy.

Young people regarded COVID-19 as a threat to the older generation but not to themselves

NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY

Research News

IMAGE: DURING THE EARLY STAGES OF THE COVID-19 OUTBREAK, YOUNG SINGAPOREANS UNDERSTOOD THE INFECTIOUS DISEASE TO BE RISKY FOR THEIR PARENTS AND OLDER RELATIVES, BUT NOT THEMSELVES, A NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY,... view more 

CREDIT: NTU SINGAPORE

At the start of the pandemic, young Singaporeans regarded COVID-19 as a threat to the older generation but not to themselves, finds NTU Singapore study

During the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak, young Singaporeans understood the infectious disease to be risky for their parents and older relatives, but not themselves, a Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) study has found.

Young Singaporeans were more concerned about the dangers of fake news surrounding COVID-19 rather than the health threat posed by the disease and believed misinformation about the pandemic affected the older generation more than them.

The study led by NTU Singapore's Associate Professor Edson Tandoc Jr and researcher James Lee Chong Boi involved eight focus group discussions with 89 participants aged 21 to 27.

The discussions were held in early February, two months after the first COVID-19 case in the world was confirmed in China last year. Singapore saw its first case in January. At the start of the study, 24 cases here had been confirmed, increasing to 74 by the time the last focus group discussion was conducted. China's numbers were rising exponentially and South Korea had started reporting a steady rise in its number of cases.

Through the focus groups, the two authors from NTU's Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information (WKWSCI) found that rather than actively seeking information about COVID-19, many young adults got their news about the virus from social media platforms and messaging platforms such as WhatsApp.

This in turn shaped their view that the virus was risky for older generations but not for themselves, which in turn shaped their behavioural response to the outbreak, such as not wearing face masks, which was not mandated in the early stages of the outbreak.

Assoc Prof Tandoc, who led the study, said: "Studying initial public reaction towards a health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic could guide practitioners and social policy makers on how to handle the outbreak in the long term. An important consideration from these findings is how to make young people who think they are not prone to COVID-19 to be still engaging in proactive behaviours against the virus. This is even more important during the initial phase of the pandemic, where credible information about the new virus was scarce.

"The results also document how making sense of what is happening in the early stages of a health crisis can go beyond the disease itself and focus more on social order and information quality, which can also shape behaviours. This process of sensemaking, shaped young Singaporeans' initial view that they are not vulnerable to the virus. This also might explain why some young people, such as those reported in other countries, continued to engage in risky behaviour, like going to the beach or partying, during the pandemic."

The study was published in the peer-reviewed academic journal New Media & Society in October.

When misinformation becomes viral

Like in other countries, the COVID-19 outbreak in Singapore was accompanied by an 'infodemic' - a wave of fake news about the pandemic - from messages claiming malls and MRT stations were closed due to suspected cases, to various home remedies to protect oneself from the virus, such as drinking sesame oil. Such misinformation could undermine global response to the crisis and jeopardise health warnings and precautionary measures employed by health officials in containing the disease, said the researchers.

Perceiving the virus as not a big threat to their age group, the participants said that they were more focused on combating the spread of misinformation. The young adults felt the COVID-19 falsehoods affected their parents and older relatives more than themselves. Many of these instances of information sharing were facilitated by messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, the most popular messaging app in Singapore.

One respondent cited generational differences as a factor. His generation would seek to verify a piece of new information, such as a list of 'COVID-19 hotspots' that would later be debunked as a falsehood, rather than to accept it without question. But his parents' generation would change their behaviour based solely on the information, taking a "just-in-case" approach instead.

Assoc Prof Tandoc said: "It was interesting to hear how participants felt the need to actively protect their parents and older relatives from misinformation about COVID-19. This contributed to how they made sense of the outbreak, understanding it more as an issue of social order that involves tackling misinformation so people would not panic, than as a health risk.

"Fighting misinformation is particularly crucial in a time like this, when information flows quickly through channels like social media and messaging apps, to protect not just ourselves but also others in the community. It is therefore important for us to keep an eye not only on the public's information behaviour, but also on the quality of information flowing through various channels - an effort that the work my colleagues and I are doing at WKWSCI seeks to contribute to."

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Note to Editors:

Paper 'When viruses and misinformation spread: How young Singaporeans navigated uncertainty in the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak' published in New Media & Society. October 2020. doi:10.1177/1461444820968212

Media contact:

Foo Jie Ying
Manager, Corporate Communications Office
Nanyang Technological University
Email: jieying@ntu.edu.sg

About Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

A research-intensive public university, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has 33,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students in the Engineering, Business, Science, Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences, and Graduate colleges. It also has a medical school, the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, established jointly with Imperial College London.

NTU is also home to world-class autonomous institutes - the National Institute of Education, S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Earth Observatory of Singapore, and Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering - and various leading research centres such as the Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute (NEWRI) and Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N).

Ranked amongst the world's top universities by QS, NTU has also been named the world's top young university for the past seven years. The University's main campus is frequently listed among the Top 15 most beautiful university campuses in the world and has 57 Green Mark-certified (equivalent to LEED-certified) buildings, of which 95% are certified Green Mark Platinum. Apart from its main campus, NTU also has a campus in Novena, Singapore's healthcare district.

Under the NTU Smart Campus vision, the University harnesses the power of digital technology and tech-enabled solutions to support better learning and living experiences, the discovery of new knowledge, and the sustainability of resources.

For more information, visit http://www.ntu.edu.sg.

Researchers propose process to detect and contain emerging diseases

The team will gather information in Africa on zoonotic diseases that can jump from animals to humans, like COVID-19 and HIV.

UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS

Research News

 

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - A University of Arkansas biologist is part of a global team of researchers developing a strategy to detect and intercept diseases emerging from wildlife in Africa that could eventually infect humans.

Assistant professor Kristian Forbes, along with colleagues from Africa, Europe and North America, have proposed a four-part approach to detect and contain zoonotic diseases, those that begin in animals but spillover into humans, like COVID-19 and HIV.

"A lot of research effort to prepare against the threat of novel disease emergences of wildlife viruses has been to identify unknown viruses in wildlife that might someday infect humans," Forbes said. "These efforts have been very successful for identifying new viruses; indeed, thousands have been discovered, but we don't currently have the tools to know which of them pose the most immediate risks to human health."

To enable fast detection of new zoonotic disease outbreaks, the team proposes a system of procuring and screening samples from hospital patients with fevers of unknown origin, analyzing samples from suspicious fatalities of unknown cause, testing blood serum in high-risk or sentinel groups and analyzing samples that have already been collected and archived. The team outlined their approach in a recent article published in the journal The Lancet Microbe.

None of these methods are new, Forbes said. But to date they have not been combined into a continent-wide program aimed at rapid detection.

"Given limitations to the current model for preventing disease emergences, our article focuses on a coordinated and widespread strategy for early detection so that novel disease outbreaks can be intercepted before they potentially become global pandemics."

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What pandemic messaging around changing holiday rituals gets wrong

A new experimental study by Berkeley Haas researchers offers insight on why it's so difficult to get people to alter holiday rituals, and how public officials might send more effective messages.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - BERKELEY HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

Research News 

In the midst of the raging coronavirus pandemic, we're faced with agonizing decisions about whether to forgo treasured holiday rituals. Many people have defied health officials, putting themselves at risk of contracting COVID-19 or spreading the disease in order to uphold their family traditions in person.

A new paper by two researchers at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business sheds light on the psychology of rituals--and why health officials may have to do more than just tell people not to gather in order to be effective.

That's because coming together to exchange gifts on Christmas isn't just about getting presents; it's a symbol of love. Eating turkey on Thanksgiving isn't just a shared meal; it's an expression of gratitude. "We view rituals as more important than regular types of group activities because they reflect the values of the group," says Dan Stein, a Berkeley Haas doctoral student and lead author on the paper.

"When people alter activities that are more ritualistic, it elicits stronger moral outrage," says Juliana Schroeder, an assistant professor in the Haas Management of Organizations Group and the paper's co-author. Pitting pandemic social distancing against the values of love and togetherness represented by the holidays creates moral conflict for many people. "If messages from officials to social distance are going to be successful, they must come up with a response to these strong group values."

The paper, forthcoming in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, examines the psychology of rituals through experiments that drive home just how strongly people feel about traditions and resist even minor changes. It was co-written by Harvard Business School professors Francesca Gino and Michael Norton along with Nicholas Hobson, founder of The Behaviorist consulting firm.

In one experiment, the researchers asked Berkeley undergraduate students to rate 15 holidays according to how ritualistic they were. They then asked them to rate on a scale of 1 to 7 how angry and frustrated they would feel if the U.S. government "moved celebrations for the holiday one week forward," and also how immoral and inappropriate it would be to change the date. The more ritualistic the holiday, the higher it scored on both scales, signifying stronger "moral outrage" about altering it. Christmas and New Year's scored above 5 on both scales, while Columbus Day scored as a 2 on both.

In other experiments, they found that altering a ritual elicits moral outrage even if a person has a good reason for doing so. When they asked participants--all U.S. citizens--how they would feel if they saw another citizen remaining seated rather than standing for the Pledge of Allegiance, participants reported outrage even when they were told the person was sitting to show solidarity with Americans with disabilities. Participants expressed even more outrage, however, when told that the person was sitting to protest U.S. values--indicating that the reason for the change was important--and they were also upset if told that the person had forgotten to stand. Their irritation only subsided when they were told the person was injured and physically unable to stand.

Even changes that might make a ritual safer elicit moral outrage, they found. In another experiment, the researchers asked Jewish participants how they would feel if a circumcision ceremony--a highly ritualized event occurring the same way for thousands of years--was done in a hospital rather than at a temple. Over 80% of respondents agreed that a hospital ceremony would be safer, and yet they also reported more anger about the suggestion of moving the circumcision ceremony to a hospital rather than keeping it the same, even if it was riskier.

"People don't want to have to pit one sacred value against another," Stein says. "While medical safety represents the sacred value of life in Judaism, circumcision stands for a literal blood covenant with God. That creates an uncomfortable conflict in people's minds."

In fact, the researchers found that the study participants who were most committed to U.S. values expressed the most outrage about changing holiday traditions. "We theorize that moral outrage is functional in the long-run because it can help a group protect its sacred rituals," Stein says. "We need those people who are committed for the group to survive, but our research suggests that trying to tell people, 'By not practicing your ritual, you'll save lives,' might not be effective for everyone."

The challenge for families trying to stay safe during the pandemic is how to alter rituals in ways that keep their values intact, even if getting together physically isn't possible. "This research suggests that to reduce outrage when altering rituals, you should try to change them in ways that still allow people to celebrate group values," says Schroeder. "That's what people are getting upset about when the ritual is altered--and that's the thing that needs to be maintained."

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Evolution of a killer: How African Salmonella made the leap from gut to bloodstream

UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL

Research News

 

IMAGE: AFRICAN SALMONELLA ELECTRON MICROSCOPE IMAGE view more 

CREDIT: DR SIAN OWEN AND DR ROCIO CANALS

University of Liverpool scientists have exploited the combined power of genomics and epidemiology to understand how a type of Salmonella bacteria evolved to kill hundreds of thousands of immunocompromised people in Africa.

Bloodstream infections caused by a drug-resistant type of Salmonella Typhimurium called ST313 are a major public health concern in Africa, where the disease is endemic and causes ~50,000 deaths each year. What was missing was an understanding of the timing of the major evolutionary events that equipped African Salmonella to cause bloodstream infections in humans.

In a new paper published in Nature Microbiology, a team of researchers from the UK, France and Malawi, sampled two comprehensive collections of Salmonella isolates from African patients with bloodstream infections, spanning 1966 to 2018, to piece together the evolutionary journey of the Salmonella over 50 years of human infections in Africa, including the discovery of a new lineage of antibiotic-susceptible ST313.

The study was led by Professor Jay Hinton at the University of Liverpool, who has been researching Salmonella for more than 30 years and leads the 10,000 Salmonella Genomes Project - a worldwide effort to understand the epidemiology, transmission and virulence of invasive non-Typhoidal Salmonellosis.

Professor Hinton said: "Through a remarkable team effort we have removed some of the mystery about the evolution of African Salmonella. We hope that by learning how these pathogens became able to infect the human bloodstream we will be better prepared to tackle future bacterial epidemics."

In the study, scientists sequenced the genomes of 680 Salmonella isolates, from archives kept by the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust (MLW) clinical research programme and the Institute Pasteur, and used them to uncover the timeline of crucial genetic events responsible for the infection of immunocompromised humans by S. Typhimurium ST313. Mutations that influenced gene function during the evolution of ST313 were identified for the first time.

The team also discovered a new antibiotic-susceptible lineage of ST313 that emerged in Malawi in 2016 and is closely related to Salmonella variants that cause stomach infections in the United Kingdom and Brazil. The researchers speculate that changes in antibiotic usage in Malawi between 2002 and 2015 could have created a window of opportunity for the emergence of this new antibiotic-susceptible ST313 lineage.

Dr Caisey Pulford, who carried out much of the research as part of her PhD, said: "By combining the power of genomic analysis with epidemiology, clinical observations and functional insights, we have shown the value of using an integrated approach to link scientific research with public health."

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The study was carried out by researchers from the University of Liverpool, University of Malawi, Queens University Belfast, Institut Pasteur, the Earlham Institute and the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust (MLW) Clinical Research Programme.

Crikey! Massive prehistoric croc emerges from South East Queensland

UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND

Research News

 

IMAGE: THE 'SWAMP KING' WAS ONE INTIMIDATING CROC. view more 

CREDIT: THE UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND

A prehistoric croc measuring more than five metres long - dubbed the 'swamp king' - ruled south eastern Queensland waterways only a few million years ago.

University of Queensland researchers identified the new species of prehistoric croc - which they named Paludirex vincenti - from fossils first unearthed in the 1980s.

UQ PhD candidate Jorgo Ristevski, from UQ's School of Biological Sciences, said they named the species after Geoff Vincent who discovered the giant fossilised skull near the town of Chinchilla.

"In Latin, 'Paludirex' means 'swamp king', and 'vincenti' honours the late Mr Vincent," he said.

"For several years the fossilised skull was on display in the Queensland Museum, before it was donated to the Chinchilla Museum in 2011.

"The 'swamp king' was one intimidating croc.

"Its fossilised skull measures around 65 centimetres, so we estimate Paludirex vincenti was at least five metres long.

"The largest crocodylian today is the Indo-Pacific crocodile, Crocodylus porosus, which grows to about the same size.

"But Paludirex had a broader, more heavy-set skull so it would've resembled an Indo-Pacific crocodile on steroids."

Paludirex was one of the top predators in Australia a few million years ago, capable of preying on giant prehistoric marsupials.

"The waterways of the Darling Downs would once have been a very dangerous place because of it," Mr Ristevski said.

Mr Ristevski's supervisor, Dr Steve Salisbury, said various species of prehistoric crocodylians had existed in Australia.

"Crocs have been an important component of Australia's fauna for millions of years," Dr Salisbury said.

"But the two species we have today -- Crocodylus porosus and Crocodylus johnstoni -- are only recent arrivals, and were not part of the endemic croc fauna that existed here from about 55 million years ago.

"Whether Paludirex vincenti went extinct as a result of competition with species like Crocodylus porosus is hard to say.

"The alternative is that it went extinct as the climate dried, and the river systems it once inhabited contracted - we're currently investigating both scenarios."

The research has been published in the open access journal PeerJ DOI: 10.7717/peerj.10466

CAPTION

Skull pieces of Paludirex vincenti.

CREDIT

Jorgo Ristevski

 

New curriculum improves students' understanding of electric circuits in schools

Researchers at universities in Frankfurt and Tübingen have developed and empirically evaluated a new teaching concept for teaching secondary physics

GOETHE UNIVERSITY FRANKFURT

Research News

 

FRANKFURT / TÜBINGEN. Life without electricity is something that is no longer imaginable. Whether it be a smartphone, hair-dryer or a ceiling lamp - the technical accomplishments we hold dear all require electricity. Although every child at school learns that electricity can only flow in a closed electric circuit, what is actually the difference between current and voltage? Why is a plug socket a potential death-trap but a simple battery is not? And why does a lamp connected to a power strip not become dimmer when a second lamp is plugged in?

Research into physics education has revealed that even after the tenth grade many secondary school students are not capable of answering such fundamental questions about simple electric circuits despite their teachers' best efforts. Against this backdrop, Jan-Philipp Burde, who recently became a junior professor at the University of Tübingen, in the framework of his doctoral thesis supervised by Prof. Thomas Wilhelm at Goethe University, developed an innovative curriculum for simple electric circuits, which specifically builds upon the everyday experiences of the students. In contrast to the approaches taken to date, from the very outset the new curriculum aims to help students develop an intuitive understanding of voltage. In analogy to air pressure differences that cause an air stream (e.g. at an inflated air mattress), voltage is introduced as an "electric pressure difference" that causes an electric current. A comparative study with 790 school pupils at secondary schools in Frankfurt showed that the new curriculum led to a significantly improved understanding of electric circuits compared to traditional physics tuition. Moreover, the participating teachers also stated that using the new curriculum fundamentally improved their teaching.

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The two researchers from Frankfurt and Tübingen have now published a detailed description of the theoretical considerations underlying the teaching concept in the renowned international journal Physical Review Physics Education Research in the framework of the "Focused Collection: Theory into Design". The German Society for Chemistry and Physics Education (GDCP) awarded its "GDCP-Nachwuchspreis", a prize presented each year for the best dissertation or post-doctoral thesis in chemistry and physics education in the German-speaking region, to Burde for his dissertation. As of the winter semester 2019/20 Burde was appointed to a junior professorship for Physics Education Research supported by the Vector Foundation at the University of Tübingen. On the basis of his work a cross-border consortium encompassing the Universities Tübingen, Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Dresden, Graz and Vienna has been constituted with the objective of making the subject of "simple electric circuits" more interesting and more comprehensible by embedding the topic in contexts from daily life.

Picture download:

http://www.uni-frankfurt.de/95652319
Caption: Jun.-Prof. Dr. Jan-Philipp Burde, University of Tübingen.
Photo: Friedhelm Albrecht for University of Tübingen

http://www.uni-frankfurt.de/95652342
Caption: Prof. Dr. Thomas Wilhelm, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt.
Photo: Felix Richter