Garlic and selenium increase stress resistance in carps, says a RUDN University biologist

RUDN UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: A BIOLOGIST FROM RUDN UNIVERSITY CONFIRMED THAT SELENIUM NANOPARTICLES AND GARLIC EXTRACT CAN EFFECTIVELY REDUCE THE NEGATIVE IMPACT OF STRESS ON THE HEALTH OF GRASS CARP IN THE BREEDING INDUSTRY. view more 

CREDIT: RUDN UNIVERSITY

A biologist from RUDN University confirmed that selenium nanoparticles and garlic extract can effectively reduce the negative impact of stress on the health of grass carp in the breeding industry. The results of his study were published in the Journal of the World Aquaculture Society.

Grass carp or Ctenopharyngodon Idella is a valuable commercial fish type. In order to increase productivity, fish farms tend to breed more and more fish in small reservoirs. This extreme population density causes stress in carps that negatively affects their health, namely, reduces immunity, slows down growth, suppresses digestion, and interferes with intestinal functions. To mitigate these effects and support the immune system of the fish, farmers often use dietary supplements. A biologist from RUDN University confirmed the efficiency of selenium and garlic extract that increase stress resistance in carps.

"Being a component of the enzyme glutathione peroxidase, selenium protects cell membranes from oxidative damage. It is also known to support immunity and gut health in fish. In its turn, garlic increases the growth rate, improves immunity and antioxidant activity, and supports the activity of digestive enzymes in fish. However, until recently, no data on the effect of selenium and garlic extract on the productivity of actively bred young grass carps has been available. Therefore, we decided to research the ability of these substances to mitigate stress," said Morteza Yousefi, PhD, an assistant professor at the Department of Veterinary Medicine, RUDN University.

The team divided 1,008 healthy juvenile grass carps with an average weight of two grams into six groups and put them into 18 48-liter pools with low (24 fish), medium (48 fish), and high (96 fish) population density. Half of the fish received 1 mg of Se nanoparticles and 1 g of garlic per 1 kg of fodder (diet 1), while the other half got twice as much of both supplements (diet 2). After 60 days, the team compared the growth rate, blood composition, and digestive enzyme activity in both groups and broke the data down by population density levels.

The fish from the pools with medium and low population density that received more selenium and garlic grew the most: by 286% and 276%, respectively. The experiment showed that both low and high population density caused a stress reaction in fish that led to the reduction of antioxidant enzyme activity. However, regardless of the density, the levels of cortisol, also known as the hormone of stress, were lower in the group that received diet 2: 30 ng/ml against 40 ng/ml in the group that received diet 1. According to the researchers, adding selenium and garlic to fodder could partially compensate for the stress of breeding in highly populated pools.

"We confirmed that both dietary supplements and population density have a prominent effect on growth rate and food utilization in grass carp. Higher concentrations of selenium and garlic extract in the diet suppress the stress reaction, reduce oxidizing damage and lipid damage, and improve the growth rate, digestive enzyme activity, antioxidant properties, and the general state of health of the fish. Moreover, at medium population density, the fish grew bigger than at low or high density. Therefore, these conditions should be considered the most optimal for breeding," added Morteza Yousefi, PhD, an assistant professor at the Department of Veterinary Medicine, RUDN University.

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COVID-19: Schools urgently need guidelines on improving ventilation in classrooms

SAGE

Research News

 

There is an urgent need for guidelines on how schools can use ventilation to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission in the classroom, according to doctors at Imperial College London and the headteacher of a secondary school in Pinner, Middlesex. In a commentary published by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, the authors say that improving air quality in classroom spaces should be as important as following government advice regarding social distancing, mask-wearing and hand washing.

The authors point to lessons from the airline industry, where the risk of contracting COVID-19 on a flight is currently lower than from an office building or a classroom. Lead author Dr Kaveh Asanati, Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer in occupational lung disease at the National Heart & Lung Institute, Imperial College London, said: "The multi-layer risk reduction strategy used in the aviation industry seems to have been working efficiently. The strategy includes testing passengers, the use of face coverings or masks, hygiene measures and, more importantly, maintaining clean air by circulating a mix of fresh air and recycled air through High-Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters."

Few school buildings have HEPA filtration but a potential practical option for schools would, according to the authors, be the use of portable HEPA filtration units. They say that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends for healthcare workers during COVID-19 pandemic to consider the addition of these units to augment air quality in areas when permanent air-handling systems are not a feasible option. The authors go on to describe a study in a hospital room of COVID-19 patients, where the researchers were able to detect SARS-CoV-2 in aerosols, only when they used the air samplers without a HEPA filter on the inlet tube.

Dr Asanati said: "To keep schools open, there is an urgent need to implement more effective on-site mitigation strategies, with particular attention to ventilation and testing. In addition, it is essential that teachers and other school staff should be added to the priority list for vaccination."

The authors say a feasibility study of implementing better ventilation and filtration systems in schools is needed, as well as some pilot work and research involving indoor air quality and heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) experts. Until then, they write, keeping doors and windows open - for as much as is reasonably practicable - seems to be the best way forward.

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Civil engineers find link between hospitals and schools key to community resilience

Hospitals' and schools' collective recovery must be considered in the wake of a disaster

COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

Health care and education systems are two main pillars of a community's stability. How well and how quickly a community recovers following a natural disaster depends on the resilience of these essential social services.

New research from the Colorado State University Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, published in Nature Scientific Reports, has found hospitals and schools are interdependent, suggesting their collective recovery must be considered in order to restore a community in the wake of disaster.

Because hospitals and schools are so integral to a community's well-being, Associate Professor Hussam Mahmoud and Ph.D. graduate student Emad Hassan wanted to determine the correlation between them to understand their overall influence on community recovery following extreme events. They found extensive direct and indirect relationships between health care and education, indicating recovery of one system relies on recovery of the other.

"This quantification has never been done before, so it was exciting to show that they depend on each other quite a bit," Mahmoud said. "Synchronizing the recovery might actually be very important if you want to optimize the overall recovery for the community."

Checking in on Centerville

A community's health care and education systems are complex on their own. Each has its own facilities and functions, requiring infrastructure, staff and supplies. To examine the intricate interactions between these systems, Hassan and Mahmoud comprehensively modeled hospitals, schools, community-built environments and even community members.

They based their study on a virtual community called Centerville, complete with physical, social and economic sectors and 50,000 individuals. The model was so detailed that the imaginary residents had their own roles within the community and were able to interact, learn, adapt and make decisions.

"The study, with this level of resolution, enabled us to capture interdependencies between hospitals and schools at the family and individual levels, which surprisingly showed that the two systems are significantly related and have an enormous role in community recovery after disasters," said Hassan, who was awarded a grant from the American Geophysical Union to present the research at the AGU Fall Meeting 2020.

Working within the NIST Center for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning at CSU was helpful to understand the nature of these complicated systems from different perspectives, he said.

The study revealed the compounded role of hospitals and schools in communities' social stability and allowed the researchers to apply different strategies to these systems that might accelerate the whole community recovery after disasters.

Now the modeling approach Hassan and Mahmoud developed can be used to investigate other systems subjected to various kinds of disasters.

How stable is your community?

In response to the high level of interdependence they uncovered between health care and education systems, Hassan and Mahmoud created a social services stability index, so policymakers and community leaders can measure the social services stability within their own communities based on the functionality of hospitals and schools combined.

Mahmoud hopes this tool and deeper understanding of how these interdependent systems function will help communities recover faster, rather than wither, following disaster. He points to Butte County, California, where the population has dropped by 11,000 in the aftermath of the Camp Fire, which badly damaged the only local hospital.

"Without schools and hospitals, society cannot function properly," Mahmoud said.

If healthy people are purposefully infected with COVID-19 for the sake of science, they should be paid

Multidisciplinary team of international experts suggests participants should receive a "substantial" amount, be paid ethically

TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP

Research News

 

IMAGE: MULTIDISCIPLINARY TEAM OF INTERNATIONAL EXPERTS SUGGESTS PARTICIPANTS SHOULD RECEIVE A "SUBSTANTIAL " AMOUNT, BE PAID ETHICALLY. view more 

CREDIT: TAYLOR & FRANCIS THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BIOETHICS

Multidisciplinary team of international experts suggests participants should receive a "substantial" amount, be paid ethically

Healthy people volunteering to be infected with SARS-CoV-2, in order to help scientists better understand how to tackle the virus, should receive payment - if it is determined that these studies are otherwise ethical to proceed.

Those are the findings of a new peer-reviewed study published in the American Journal of Bioethics, which has assessed the ethics of paying participants to take part in so-called 'Human Infection Challenge Studies' (HICS).

Over the past few months there has been vast media coverage and discussion about the first COVID-19 HICS in the world, planned to begin in the UK later this year. This type of study can be particularly valuable for testing vaccines and can speed up the development of new vaccines.

Using HICS for a disease that can be fatal and currently lacks a cure is ethically controversial. Part of that controversy has to do with whether participants should be paid for such a risky endeavor and how payment might affect their consent.

Among the advocates of pursuing COVID-19 challenge trials is the organization, 1Day Sooner.

1Day Sooner sponsored the report on which the new study is based, seeking an independent assessment of whether and how much people should get paid to take part in challenge trials.

The international research team from the UK, US, and Canada does not necessarily endorse the use of HICS for COVID-19. But if HICS proceed, their findings reflect that not only should participants be paid, but their payment should be "substantial".

The research team - including experts in bioethics, economics, science, medicine, and law, as well as two individuals expressing interest in participating in SARS-CoV-2 HICS - created a framework for scientists to follow in order to ethically assess payments for people taking part in HICS. They also looked at payment in similar studies, but noted the difficulty of finding out this information.

"Our work was spurred by concerns that payment for SARS-CoV-2 HICS might require a novel ethical framework, which we ultimately determined to be unfounded," states lead author Holly Fernandez Lynch, John Russell Dickson, MD Presidential Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania.

"Payment for HICS participation should be treated like payment in other clinical studies involving healthy participants," she says.

"High offers of payment are sometimes met with scrutiny and concern, but it can be ethically appropriate to offer substantial payment for research participation and we have to consider that low payment also raises significant ethical concerns."

Professor Fernandez Lynch, who is a lawyer and bioethics expert, adds: "SARS-CoV-2 HICS should not be allowed to proceed in any setting in which there have not been adequate provisions made for compensating research-related harms, as well as other efforts to minimize risk and promote social value.

"Our hope going forward is that our analysis will serve both to ease concerns about payment in these studies, should they proceed, and to advance the broader project of ensuring ethical payment to participants in all clinical research."

The framework the team has developed is split into two-parts. The first focuses on three main motives for payment: 'reimbursement' (for out-of-pocket expenses), 'compensation' (which includes payment for time, burden, inconvenience of isolating, etc.), and 'incentive' (to broaden the range of individuals willing to consider participation). The second part considers appropriate compensation in the event any harm materializes - ranging from injury to death.

In developing the framework, the team paid special attention to public trust, acknowledging that "research payments could affect public trust in several ways". Ultimately, they conclude that "the best way to promote trust in HICS is by helping the public understand why this design can be both scientifically important and ethically acceptable".

"HICS can proceed only when strict research and ethical standards are satisfied," says co-author Thomas Darton, from the Department of Infection, Immunity and Cardiovascular Disease at The University of Sheffield.

Dr Darton is a HICS researcher, although he does not work with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

He states: "If the risks associated with these studies are unreasonable in relation to their potential benefits, payment for participation cannot help achieve ethical acceptability. But if the research is otherwise ethical, it doesn't become unethical simply because payment is offered."

Another factor the team considered is whether COVID-19 HICS would be "uniquely risky" and how that should influence payment levels. Ultimately, they concluded that "the ethical concerns about payment for these studies are the same as those for payment in all clinical research".

"Although certainly relevant to considerations regarding the ethical acceptability of HICS, including the importance of planning for research-related harm, heightened risks do not support adopting a novel framework for HICS payment as compared to other types of research," adds co-author Emily Largent, the Emanuel and Robert Hart Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania.

Limitations of the project include the team's perspectives being "limited to the Global North". They state, therefore, that additional considerations may be relevant when research is conducted elsewhere. The team also declined to identify a payment amount or even a range that would be appropriate for HICS or SARS-CoV-2 HICS. "Stakeholders must take the final step between conceptual guidance and actual payment offers on their own," the paper concludes. "This means that there may be several different payment offers that could be justified, but the framework can help determine which offers are ethically appropriate," says Professor Fernandez Lynch.

New study shows pandemic's toll on jobs, businesses, and food security in poorer countries

A new study by an international team of economists published Feb.5 in Science Advances finds COVID-19 and its economic shock present a stark threat to residents of low- and middle-income countries -- where most of the world's population resides.

INNOVATIONS FOR POVERTY ACTION

Research News

 

IMAGE: SHARE OF HOUSEHOLDS EXPERIENCING DROPS IN FOOD SECURITY view more 

CREDIT: INNOVATIONS FOR POVERTY ACTION

Washington, D.C.. -- The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic caused a sharp decline in living standards and rising food insecurity in developing countries across the globe, according to a new study by an international team of economists.

The study, published Feb. 5 in the journal Science Advances, provides an in-depth view of the health crisis's initial socioeconomic effects in low- and middle-income countries, using detailed micro data collected from tens of thousands of households across nine countries. The phone surveys were conducted from April through July 2020 of nationally and sub-nationally representative samples in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Colombia, Ghana, Kenya, Nepal, Philippines, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone. Across the board, study participants reported drops in employment, income, and access to markets and services, translating into high levels of food insecurity. Many households reported being unable to meet basic nutritional needs.

"COVID-19 and its economic shock present a stark threat to residents of low- and middle-income countries -- where most of the world's population resides -- which lack the social safety nets that exist in rich countries," said economist Susan Athey, of Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. "The evidence we've collected show dire economic consequences, including rising food insecurity and falling income, which, if left unchecked, could thrust millions of vulnerable households into poverty."

Across the 16 surveys, the percentage of respondents reporting losses in income ranged from 8% in Kenya to 86% in Colombia. The median, or midpoint of the range, was a staggering 70%. The percentage reporting loss of employment ranged from 6% in Sierra Leone to 51% in Colombia with a median of 29%.

"Painting a comprehensive picture of the economic impact of this global crisis requires the collection of harmonized data from all over the world," said Edward Miguel, the Oxfam Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, Director of the Center for Effective Global Action, and a co-author of the study. "Our work is an exciting example of fruitful collaboration among research teams from UC Berkeley, Northwestern, Innovations for Poverty Action, The Busara Center for Behavioral Economics in Kenya, Yale, and many others working in multiple countries simultaneously to improve our understanding of how COVID-19 has affected the living standards of people in low- and middle-income countries on three continents."

Significant percentages of respondents across the surveys reported being forced to miss meals or reduce portion sizes, including 48% of rural Kenyan households, 69% of landless, agricultural households in Bangladesh, and 87% of rural households in Sierra Leone -- the highest level of food insecurity. Poorer households generally reported higher rates of food insecurity, though rates were substantial even among the better off. The steep rise in food insecurity reported among children was particularly alarming given the potentially large negative long-run effects of under-nutrition on outcomes later in life, according to the study.

Survey results from Bangladesh and Nepal suggest that levels of food insecurity were far higher during the pandemic than during the same season in previous years.

In most countries, a large share of respondents reported reduced access to markets, consistent with lockdowns and other restrictions on mobility implemented between March and June 2020 to contain the spread of the virus. The amount of social support available to respondents from governments or non-governmental organizations varied widely across the surveys, but the high rates of food insecurity reported suggest that support was insufficient even when present, the researchers state.

The study shows that in addition to increasing food insecurity, the pandemic and accompanying containment measures have undermined several other aspects of household wellbeing. Schools in all sample countries were closed during most or all of the survey period. Respondents also reported reduced access to health services, including prenatal care and vaccinations. Combined, these factors could be particularly damaging to children in the long run, the researchers note.

"The pandemic's economic shock in these countries, where so many people depend on casual labor to feed their families, causes deprivations and adverse consequences in the long term, including excess mortality," said study co-author Ashish Shenoy, of the University of California, Davis. "Our findings underscore the importance of gathering survey data to understand the effects of the crisis and inform effective policy responses. We demonstrate the efficacy of large-scale phone surveys to provide this crucial data."

Current circumstances may call for social protection programs that prioritize addressing immediate poverty and under-nutrition before tackling deeper underlying causes, the researchers state. They suggest policymakers consider identifying poor households using mobile phones and satellite data and then provide them mobile cash transfers. The researchers also recommend providing support for basic utilities, such as water and electricity, through subsidies and by removing penalties for unpaid bills. They note a fundamental link between containing COVID-19 and providing economic relief as households facing acute shortages may be less willing than others to follow social distancing rules so that they can find opportunities to meet basic needs.

CAPTION

A scene in Bangladesh

CREDIT

Rajib Dhar/Dhaka Tribune

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Researchers on the study represent the following institutions: University of California, Berkeley and the Center for Effective Global Action; The World Bank; Innovations for Poverty Action; University of California, Davis; Northwestern University, Global Poverty Lab and the Kellogg School of Management; Yale University and Y-RISE; University of Basel, Switzerland; Princeton University; Busara Center for Behavioral Economics, Nairobi, Kenya; Stanford University; WZB Berlin Social Science Center; Columbia University; London School of Economics and Political Science, International Growth Centre; Vyxer Remit Kenya, Busia, Kenya; American University; University of Goettingen, Germany; Harvard University; and Wageningen University, Netherlands.

POSTMODERN ALCHEMY

Mysterious organic scum boosts chemical reaction efficiency, may reduce chemical waste

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, NEWS BUREAU

Research News

 

IMAGE: ILLINOIS RESEARCHERS ARE PART OF MULTI-INSTITUTIONAL TEAM THAT FOUND THAT SOLVENTS SPONTANEOUSLY REACT WITH METAL NANOPARTICLES TO FORM REACTIVE COMPLEXES THAT CAN IMPROVE CATALYST PERFORMANCE AND SIMULTANEOUSLY REDUCE THE ENVIRONMENTAL... view more 

CREDIT: GRAPHIC COURTESY ALEX JEREZ, IMAGING TECHNOLOGY GROUP - BECKMAN INSTITUTE.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Chemical manufacturers frequently use toxic solvents such as alcohols and benzene to make products like pharmaceuticals and plastics. Researchers are examining a previously overlooked and misunderstood phenomenon in the chemical reactions used to make these products. This discovery brings a new fundamental understanding of catalytic chemistry and a steppingstone to practical applications that could someday make chemical manufacturing less wasteful and more environmentally sound.

The study led by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researcher David Flaherty, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities researcher Matthew Neurock and Virginia Tech researcher Ayman Karim is published in the journal Science.

Combining solvents and metal nanoparticles accelerates many chemical reactions and helps maximize yield and profit margins for the chemical industry. However, many solvents are toxic and difficult to safely dispose, the researchers said. Water works, too, but it is not nearly as efficient or reliable as organic solvents. The reason for the difference was thought to be the limited solubility of some reactants in water. However, multiple irregularities in experimental data have led the team to realize the reasons for these differences were not fully understood.

To better understand the process, the team ran experiments to analyze the reduction of oxygen to hydrogen peroxide - one set using water, another with methanol, and others with water and methanol mixtures. All experiments used palladium nanoparticles.

"In experiments with methanol, we observed spontaneous decomposition of the solvent that leaves an organic residue, or scum, on the surface of the nanoparticles," said Flaherty, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Illinois. "In some cases, the scumlike residue clings to the nanoparticles and increases reaction rates and the amount of hydrogen peroxide formed instead of hampering the reaction. This observation made us wonder how it could be helping."

The team found that the residue, or surface redox mediator, holds oxygen-containing species, including a key component hydroxymethyl. It accumulates on the palladium nanoparticles' surface and opens new chemical reaction pathways, the study reports.

"Once formed, the residue becomes part of the catalytic cycle and is likely responsible for some of the different efficiencies among solvents reported over the past 40 years of work on this reaction," Flaherty said. "Our work provides strong evidence that these surface redox mediators form in alcohol solvents and that they may explain many past mysteries for this chemistry."

By working with multiple types of experiments and computational simulations, the team learned that these redox mediators effectively transfer both protons and electrons to reactants, whereas reactions in pure water transfer protons easily, but not electrons. These mediators also alter the nanoparticles' surface in a way that lowers the energy barrier to be overcome for proton and electron transfer, the study reports.

"We show that the alcohol solvents as well as organic additives can react to form metal-bound surface mediators that act much in the same way that the enzymatic cofactors in our bodies do in catalyzing oxidation and reduction reactions," Neurock said.

Additionally, this work may have implications for reducing the amounts of solvent used and waste generated in the chemical industry.

"Our research suggests that for some situations, chemical producers could form the surface redox mediators by adding small amounts of an additive to pure water instead of pumping thousands of gallons of organic solvents through these reactors," Flaherty said.

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The Energy and Biosciences Institute through the EBI-Shell program and the National Science Foundation supported this research.

Editor's notes:

TThe paper "Solvent molecules form surface redox mediators in situ and cocatalyze oxygen reduction on Pd" is available from the U. of I. News Bureau

Climate change may have driven the emergence of SARS-CoV-2

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

Research News

 

IMAGE: ESTIMATED INCREASE IN THE LOCAL NUMBER OF BAT SPECIES DUE TO SHIFTS IN THEIR GEOGRAPHICAL RANGES DRIVEN BY CLIMATE CHANGE SINCE 1901. THE ZOOMED-IN AREA REPRESENTS THE LIKELY SPATIAL... view more 

CREDIT: DR ROBERT BEYER

Global greenhouse gas emissions over the last century have made southern China a hotspot for bat-borne coronaviruses, by driving growth of forest habitat favoured by bats.

A new study published today in the journal Science of the Total Environment provides the first evidence of a mechanism by which climate change could have played a direct role in the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study has revealed large-scale changes in the type of vegetation in the southern Chinese Yunnan province, and adjacent regions in Myanmar and Laos, over the last century. Climatic changes including increases in temperature, sunlight, and atmospheric carbon dioxide - which affect the growth of plants and trees - have changed natural habitats from tropical shrubland to tropical savannah and deciduous woodland. This created a suitable environment for many bat species that predominantly live in forests.

The number of coronaviruses in an area is closely linked to the number of different bat species present. The study found that an additional 40 bat species have moved into the southern Chinese Yunnan province in the past century, harbouring around 100 more types of bat-borne coronavirus. This 'global hotspot' is the region where genetic data suggests SARS-CoV-2 may have arisen.

"Climate change over the last century has made the habitat in the southern Chinese Yunnan province suitable for more bat species," said Dr Robert Beyer, a researcher in the University of Cambridge's Department of Zoology and first author of the study, who has recently taken up a European research fellowship at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany.

He added: "Understanding how the global distribution of bat species has shifted as a result of climate change may be an important step in reconstructing the origin of the COVID-19 outbreak."

To get their results, the researchers created a map of the world's vegetation as it was a century ago, using records of temperature, precipitation, and cloud cover. Then they used information on the vegetation requirements of the world's bat species to work out the global distribution of each species in the early 1900s. Comparing this to current distributions allowed them to see how bat 'species richness', the number of different species, has changed across the globe over the last century due to climate change.

"As climate change altered habitats, species left some areas and moved into others - taking their viruses with them. This not only altered the regions where viruses are present, but most likely allowed for new interactions between animals and viruses, causing more harmful viruses to be transmitted or evolve," said Beyer.

The world's bat population carries around 3,000 different types of coronavirus, with each bat species harbouring an average of 2.7 coronaviruses - most without showing symptoms. An increase in the number of bat species in a particular region, driven by climate change, may increase the likelihood that a coronavirus harmful to humans is present, transmitted, or evolves there.

Most coronaviruses carried by bats cannot jump into humans. But several coronaviruses known to infect humans are very likely to have originated in bats, including three that can cause human fatalities: Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) CoV, and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) CoV-1 and CoV-2.

The region identified by the study as a hotspot for a climate-driven increase in bat species richness is also home to pangolins, which are suggested to have acted as intermediate hosts to SARS-CoV-2. The virus is likely to have jumped from bats to these animals, which were then sold at a wildlife market in Wuhan - where the initial human outbreak occurred.

The researchers echo calls from previous studies that urge policy-makers to acknowledge the role of climate change in outbreaks of viral diseases, and to address climate change as part of COVID-19 economic recovery programmes.

"The COVID-19 pandemic has caused tremendous social and economic damage. Governments must seize the opportunity to reduce health risks from infectious diseases by taking decisive action to mitigate climate change," said Professor Andrea Manica in the University of Cambridge's Department of Zoology, who was involved in the study.

"The fact that climate change can accelerate the transmission of wildlife pathogens to humans should be an urgent wake-up call to reduce global emissions," added Professor Camilo Mora at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, who initiated the project.

The researchers emphasised the need to limit the expansion of urban areas, farmland, and hunting grounds into natural habitat to reduce contact between humans and disease-carrying animals.

The study showed that over the last century, climate change has also driven increases in the number of bat species in regions around Central Africa, and scattered patches in Central and South America.

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Not all banking crises involve panics

Study shows many kinds of finance-sector failures -- not just history's most famous bank runs -- lead to economic downturns

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Research News

 

A banking crisis is often seen as a self-fulfilling prophecy: The expectation of bank failure makes it happen. Picture people lining up to withdraw their money during the Great Depression or customers making a run on Britain's Northern Rock bank in 2007.

But a new paper co-authored by an MIT professor suggests we have been missing the bigger picture about banking crises. Yes, there are sometimes panics about banks that create self-reinforcing problems. But many banking crises are quieter: Even without customers panicking, banks can suffer losses serious enough to create subsequent economy-wide downturns.

"Panics are not needed for banking crises to have severe economic consequences," says Emil Verner, the MIT professor who helped lead the study. "But when panics do occur, those tend to be the most severe episodes. Panics are an important amplification mechanism for banking crises, but not a necessary condition."

Indeed, in an ambitious piece of research, spanning 46 countries and going back to 1870, the study surveys banking crises that occurred with and without panics. When there is a panic and bank run, the research finds, a 30 percent decline in banking-sector equity predicts a 3.4 percent drop in real GDP (gross domestic product adjusted for inflation) after three years. But even without any creditor panic, a 30 percent decline in bank equity predicts a 2.7 percent drop in real GDP after three years.

Thus, virtually all banking crises, not just history's greatest hits, create long-term macroeconomic damage, since banks are less able to furnish the credit used for business expansion.

"Banking crises do often come with very severe recessions," says Verner, who is the Class of 1957 Career Development Professor and an assistant professor of finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

The paper, "Banking Crises Without Panics," appears in the February issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics. The authors are Matthew Baron, an assistant professor of finance at Cornell University; Verner; and Wei Xiong, a professor of finance and economics at Princeton University.

A rigorous, quantitative approach

To conduct the study, the researchers constructed a new dataset of bank stock prices and dividends in 46 countries from 1870 through 2016, using existing databases and adding information from historical newspaper archives. They also gathered nonbank stock prices, monthly credit spread information, and macroeconomic information such as GDP and inflation.

"People had looked historically at defining and identifying different episodes of banking crises, but there wasn't that much of a rigorous, quantitative approach to defining these episodes," Verner says. "There was a bit more of a 'know it when you see it' approach."

Scholars examining past banking crises divide roughly into two camps. One group has focused on panics, with the implication that if bank runs could be prevented, then banking crises would not be as bad. Another group has looked more at bank assets and focused on circumstances in which banks' decisions lead to big losses -- through bad loans, for instance.

"We come down in the middle, in some sense," Verner says. Panics make bank troubles worse, but nonetheless, "There are a number of examples of banking crises where banks suffered losses and cut back lending, and businesses and households had a harder time getting access to credit, but there weren't runs or panics by creditors. Those episodes still led to bad economic outcomes."

More specifically, the study's close look at the monthly dynamics of banking crises shows how often these circumstances are in fact presaged by an erosion of the bank's portfolio, and recognition of this fact by its investors.

"The panics don't just come out of the blue. They tend to be preceded by bank stocks declining," Verner says. "The bank equity investors recognize the bank is going to suffer loses on the loans it has. And so what that suggests is that panics are really often the consequences, rather than the fundamental cause, of troubles that have already built up in the banking system due to bad loans."

The study also quantifies how impaired bank activity becomes in these situations. After banking crises with visible panics involved, the average bank credit-to-GDP ratio was 5.7 lower after three years; that is, there was less bank lending as a basis for economic activity. When a "quiet" banking crisis hit, with no visible panic, the average bank credit-to-GDP ratio was 3.5 percent lower after three years.

Historical detective work

Verner says the researchers are pleased they were "able to do some historical detective work and find some episodes that had been forgotten." The study's expanded set of crises, he notes, comprises "new information that other researchers are already using."

Formerly overlooked banking crises in this study include a welter of episodes from the 1970s, Canada's struggles during the Great Depression, and various 19th century banking failures. The researchers have presented versions of this study to an array of policymakers, including some regional U.S. Federal Reserve boards and the Bank of International Settlements, and Verner also says he hopes such officials will keep the work in mind.

"I think it's valuable going forward, and not just for historical perspective," he says. "Having a broad sample across many countries is important for recognizing what the lessons are when new crises happen."

The researchers are continuing their research in this area with further studies about patterns in the loans banks make before losing value -- for instance, identifying the kinds of businesses who are less likely to repay bank loans. When banks start lending more heavily to certain kinds of companies -- possibly including restaurant, construction, and real estate companies -- it may be a sign of incipient trouble.

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Support for the research was provided, in part, by the Cornell Center for Social Sciences and the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

Written by Peter Dizikes, MIT News Office

Additional background

Paper: "Banking Crises Without Panics" https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/136/1/51/5919461?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Women's voices in the media still outnumbered by those of men - study

New gender gap research finds men outnumber women quoted in the media about three to one

SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

New research from Simon Fraser University shows that women's voices continue to be underrepresented in the media, despite having prominent female leaders across Canada and internationally. Researchers in SFU's Discourse Processing Lab found that men outnumber women quoted in Canadian news media about three to one. The findings from the team's Gender Gap Tracker study were published this week in the journal PLOS ONE.

The research team collected data from seven major Canadian media outlets from October 2018 to September 2020. Over the two-year period, 29 per cent of people quoted in media stories were women versus 71 per cent men. B.C. Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry, quoted more than 2,200 times, notably topped the list for women most quoted in the news--many others were also public health officials during the COVID-19 pandemic--but still had fewer quotes than the top three male voices, all politicians.

"What this study shows is that we are very far from parity in mainstream news," says SFU linguistics professor and lab director Maite Taboada. "This has profound implications, as we tend to look for role models in the media."

Politicians, both male and female, were most often quoted in the media, followed by sports figures for men, and healthcare professionals for women.

"We found that, although men and women politicians appear regularly, men are quoted far more often. This is the case even despite Canada's gender-balanced cabinet," says Taboada.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump was found to be quoted the most often - 15,746 times to be exact, followed by Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ontario's Premier Doug Ford. Other top women quoted were Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott and Canada's Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland.

The team used its Gender Gap Tracker software to analyze daily coverage from CBC, CTV, Global, HuffPost Canada, National Post, The Star and the Globe and Mail. Researchers used the power of large-scale text processing and big data storage to collect news stories daily and perform Natural Language Processing (NLP) to identify who is mentioned and who is quoted by gender.

"We are very proud of this team effort, as it highlights the potential of Natural Language Processing to contribute positively to society, in this case to show the gender gap in media," Taboada adds. "Natural Language Processing is a field at the intersection of computer science and linguistics that aims to analyze and extract information from large amounts of language data."

The researchers found that articles written by women quote more women (34 per cent for articles authored by women compared to 25 per cent for articles authored by men) and suggest part of the solution to addressing the gender gap in media includes hiring more women as reporters.

The study was conducted in partnership with Informed Opinions, which encourages media to diversify their sources and better reflect both genders. While the Gender Gap Tracker can only capture one kind of diversity, since it relies on names to assign gender to sources, the authors suggest considering other forms of diversity, given many other groups are underrepresented in the news.

The Gender Gap Tracker is available online (gendergaptracker.informedopinions.org) and updates 

Tom Hanks' COVID-19 diagnosis likely shaped behaviors, thoughts toward virus

PENN STATE

Research News

 

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.-- When actor Tom Hanks announced his COVID-19 diagnosis on March 11, 2020, many Americans were still learning about the virus and its severity. According to new research, Hanks' announcement may have affected how some people understood the virus and their behavior toward its prevention.

The day after Hanks posted the news on social media, Jessica Gall Myrick, an associate professor in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State, and Jessica Fitts Willoughby, associate professor at Washington State University, surveyed 682 people about their attitudes and behaviors toward COVID-19.

Just under 90% of the people surveyed had heard about Hanks' social media posts saying he contracted the virus, and approximately half of that group reported it changed their attitudes and behaviors. The results were published in the journal Health Communication.

"There is a growing body of research about how celebrity behavior and social media posts can affect public health," Myrick said. "This research was different in that we were able to launch our study really fast and collect survey data within a day of Hanks posting about his diagnosis."

According to the study, the people who had heard the news reported Hanks' diagnosis "highlighted the reality of COVID-19" and broadened their understanding of not only the severity of the situation, but also their susceptibility to the illness.

Nearly half of the participants who had heard the news when surveyed reported a range of emotional responses, according to the study. Responses included "surprise, fear, anger, sadness and hope." The respondents who reported making changes said Hanks' disclosure inspired them to seek more information and/or take stricter precautions.

"Celebrities can have a huge reach, often more so than typical scientists or doctors or the health department," Myrick said. "If they are encouraging positive health behavior change, then it can serve as a de facto public health intervention."

The half of respondents who heard the news and said Hanks' diagnosis did not change their thoughts or behaviors reported thinking the actor would recover from the illness. They also noted they were already aware of COVID-19 and its effects and did not think Hanks' announcement changed their outlook or intentions regarding the virus.

The researchers conducted a statistical analysis to see if and what characteristics could predict whether people's attitudes and behaviors changed after learning Hanks' diagnosis. The results indicated that people who identified with Hanks or said they knew him were more likely to change their thoughts or COVID-related behaviors due to the announcement.

"People who said they typically trust celebrities, friends, family, or Donald Trump for health information were more likely to say that Hanks' announcement led to positive behavior change," Myrick said. "This suggests that public health officials and advocates may want to use these types of celebrity announcements to help reach people who may be harder to reach. They don't rely as much on news or on scientists for health information."

Because the study was launched so quickly -- the day after the announcement -- the researchers were able to talk to some people who had not yet heard the news. Nearly 4% of respondents reported not hearing the news about Hanks' diagnosis. The researchers showed half of these participants the Facebook post where Hanks announced his COVID-19 diagnosis and the other half a non-COVID Hanks post.

The researchers found one notable difference among these groups. Those who read the COVID-19 post said they felt less capable of avoiding the virus compared to the group who read the non-COVID-related Facebook post. It could be that learning of Hanks' diagnosis, despite his wealth and resources, resulted in people thinking that if Hanks could not avoid COVID-19 then they may not be able to, either, said the researchers.

Myrick is affiliated with the Science Communication Program, a program in the Bellisario College that supports research in the science of science communication. Willoughby is an associate professor at the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State, where she is a member of the strategic communications department.

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