Mars has right ingredients for present-day microbial life beneath its surface, study finds

BROWN UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: JESSE TARNAS, A BROWN UNIVERSITY GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH AT NASA'S JET PROPULSION LABORATORY, WORK IN CANADA'S KIDD CREEK MINE. WATER IN THE DEPTHS OF THE MINE THAT HASN'T SEEN... view more 

CREDIT: JESSE TARNAS

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- As NASA's Perseverance rover begins its search for ancient life on the surface of Mars, a new study suggests that the Martian subsurface might be a good place to look for possible present-day life on the Red Planet.

The study, published in the journal Astrobiology, looked at the chemical composition of Martian meteorites -- rocks blasted off of the surface of Mars that eventually landed on Earth. The analysis determined that those rocks, if in consistent contact with water, would produce the chemical energy needed to support microbial communities similar to those that survive in the unlit depths of the Earth. Because these meteorites may be representative of vast swaths of the Martian crust, the findings suggest that much of the Mars subsurface could be habitable.

"The big implication here for subsurface exploration science is that wherever you have groundwater on Mars, there's a good chance that you have enough chemical energy to support subsurface microbial life," said Jesse Tarnas, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who led the study while completing his Ph.D. at Brown University. "We don't know whether life ever got started beneath the surface of Mars, but if it did, we think there would be ample energy there to sustain it right up to today."

In recent decades, scientists have discovered that Earth's depths are home to a vast biome that exists largely separated from the world above. Lacking sunlight, these creatures survive using the byproducts of chemical reactions produced when rocks come into contact with water.

One of those reactions is radiolysis, which occurs when radioactive elements within rocks react with water trapped in pore and fracture space. The reaction breaks water molecules into their constituent elements, hydrogen and oxygen. The liberated hydrogen is dissolved in the remaining groundwater, while minerals like pyrite (fool's gold) soak up free oxygen to form sulfate minerals. Microbes can ingest the dissolved hydrogen as fuel and use the oxygen preserved in the sulfates to "burn" that fuel.

In places like Canada's Kidd Creek Mine, these "sulfate-reducing" microbes have been found living more than a mile underground, in water that hasn't seen the light of day in more than a billion years. Tarnas has been working with a team co-led by Brown University professor Jack Mustard and Professor Barbara Sherwood Lollar of the University of Toronto to better understand these underground systems, with an eye toward looking for similar habitats on Mars and elsewhere in the solar system. The project, called Earth 4-D: Subsurface Science and Exploration, is supported by the Canadian Institute for Advances Research.

For this new study, the researchers wanted to see if the ingredients for radiolysis-driven habitats could exist on Mars. They drew on data from NASA's Curiosity rover and other orbiting spacecraft, as well as compositional data from a suite of Martian meteorites, which are representative of different parts of the planet's crust.

The researchers were looking for the ingredients for radiolysis: radioactive elements like thorium, uranium and potassium; sulfide minerals that could be converted to sulfate; and rock units with adequate pore space to trap water. The study found that in several different types of Martian meteorites, all the ingredients are present in adequate abundances to support Earth-like habitats. This was particularly true for regolith breccias -- meteorites sourced from crustal rocks more than 3.6 billion years old -- which were found to have the highest potential for life support. Unlike Earth, Mars lacks a plate tectonics system that constantly recycle crustal rocks. So these ancient terrains remain largely undisturbed.

The researchers say the findings help make the case for an exploration program that looks for signs of present-day life in the Martian subsurface. Prior research has found evidence of an active groundwater system on Mars in the past, the researchers say, and there's reason to believe that groundwater exists today. One recent study, for example, raised the possibility of an underground lake lurking under the planet's southern ice cap. This new research suggests that wherever there's groundwater, there's energy for life.

Tarnas and Mustard say that while there are certainly technical challenges involved in subsurface exploration, they aren't as insurmountable as people may think. A drilling operation wouldn't require "a Texas-sized oil rig," Mustard said, and recent advances in small drill probes could soon put the Martian depths within reach.

"The subsurface is one of the frontiers in Mars exploration," Mustard said. "We've investigated the atmosphere, mapped the surface with different wavelengths of light and landed on the surface in half-a-dozen places, and that work continues to tell us so much about the planet's past. But if we want to think about the possibility of present-day life, the subsurface is absolutely going to be where the action is."

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The research was supported by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

CAPTION

New research showing that the subsurface of Mars is potentially habitable will be featured on the cover of the journal Astrobiology.

CREDIT

Astrobiology/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

 

Fat-footed tyrannosaur parents could not keep up with their skinnier adolescent offspring

TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP

Research News

 

IMAGE: ARTISTIC RECONSTRUCTION OF A TYRANNOSAUR CREATING FOOTPRINTS. IMAGE COURTESY OF JOSÉ VITOR SILVA. view more 

CREDIT: VITOR SILVA

New research by the University of New England's Palaeoscience Research Centre suggests juvenile tyrannosaurs were slenderer and relatively faster for their body size compared to their multi-tonne parents.

The research, published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, analysed a collection of fossilised tyrannosaur footprints to learn more about the way these animals aged and how they moved.

UNE PhD student and study leader, Nathan Enriquez -- in international collaboration with the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum, University of Alberta, Royal Ontario Museum, University of Bologna and the Grande Prairie Regional College -- believes the findings contribute a new line of evidence to previous findings based on bone anatomy and computer models of muscle masses.

"The results suggest that as some tyrannosaurs grew older and heavier, their feet also became comparably more bulky," Mr Enriquez said.

"Fully grown tyrannosaurs were believed to be more robust than younger individuals based on their relatively shorter hind limbs and more massive skulls, but nobody had explored this growth pattern using fossil footprints, which are unique in that they can provide a snapshot of the feet as they appeared in life, with outlines of the soft, fleshy parts of the foot that are rarely preserved as fossils.

Footprints can be ambiguous and hard to interpret correctly -- the shape of a footprint may be influenced by the type of ground surface that is stepped on and the motions of the animal making the footprints. In addition, the exact identity of the animal may not always be clear. These challenges have previously limited the use of fossil footprints in understanding dinosaur growth.

The answer lay in the Grande Prairie region of Northern Alberta, Canada, where the research team worked with well-preserved samples of footprints of different sizes that are suggested to belong to the same type of animal.

"We explored a remote dinosaur footprint site where we discovered a new set of large carnivorous dinosaur footprints within very similar rocks to those which have produced tyrannosaur tracks in the past," Mr Enriquez said.

"Based on the relatively close proximity between these discoveries and their nearly equivalent ages -- about 72.5 million years old -- we suggest they may indeed belong to the same species.

"We were also careful to assess the quality of preservation in each footprint, and only considered specimens which were likely to reflect the shape of the actual feet that produced them."

Once the team had a suitable sample, they analysed the outlines of each specimen using a method called geometric morphometrics. This process removes the effect of overall size differences between each footprint and shows what the most important differences in track shape are.

"The greatest difference in shape was found to be the relative width and surface area of the heel impression, which significantly increased in size between smaller and larger footprints," Mr Enriquez said.

"The smaller tracks are comparably slender, while the biggest tyrannosaur tracks are relatively broader and had much larger heel areas. This makes sense for an animal that is becoming larger and needs to support its rapidly increasing body weight. It also suggests the relative speed of these animals decreased with age.

"Increasingly bulky feet in the adults aligns with previous suggestions that juvenile tyrannosaurs would have been faster and more agile for their body size in comparison to their parents, and means that we can add footprints as another line of evidence in the debate over tyrannosaur growth.

"Lastly, it demonstrates the usefulness of footprints for investigating a potentially wider range of ideas about the lives of extinct species than has been considered previously."

CAPTION

Photograph of a large theropod track natural cast that was discovered during the field season.

CREDIT

Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology

CAPTION

Footprint size comparison from young to old

CREDIT

Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology

What Parkinson's disease patients reveal about how art is experienced and valued

Impaired motor function, like that experienced with Parkinson's disease, impacts art perception and valuation, Penn Medicine research finds

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

Research News

 

PHILADELPHIA-- Art appreciation is considered essential to human experience. While taste in art varies depending on the individual, cognitive neuroscience can provide clues about how viewing art affects our neural systems, and evaluate how these systems inform our valuation of art. For instance, one study shows that viewing art activates motor areas, both in clear representations of movement, like Adam and Eve in Michelangelo's Expulsion from Paradise, and in implied movement through brush strokes, like in Franz Kline's gestural paintings.

Altered neural functioning, like that experienced in patients with Parkinson's disease, changes the way art is both perceived and valued, according to a study published recently in The Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience by researchers from the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics at the University Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine. They found that people with neurological motor dysfunction demonstrated decreased experiences of motion in abstract art and enhanced preferences for high-motion art, compared to a healthy control group.

"People can experience movement in abstract art, even without implied movement, like brush strokes," says author Anjan Chatterjee, MD, a professor of Neurology and director of the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics. "These representations of movement systematically affect people's aesthetic evaluations, whether they are healthy individuals or people with Parkinson's disease."

The study examined the aesthetic experiences of 43 people with Parkinson's disease and 40 controls in the same age group. The subjects made motion and aesthetics judgements about 10 Jackson Pollock and 10 Piet Mondrian paintings. Using seven-point Likert scales, participants rated the paintings along nine categories: Liking, Beauty, Interest, Familiarity, Motion, Complexity, Balance, Color-Hue, and Color-Saturation. The Color dimensions served as relatively objective control ratings.

People with Parkinson's disease demonstrated stable and internally consistent preferences for abstract art, but their perception of movement in the paintings was diminished compared to controls. This finding provides evidence that the brain's motor system is involved in translating nonrepresentational information from static visual cues in the image into representations of movement.

For example, Mondrian paintings receiving the highest motion ratings in this study contained more visual elements, overlapping lines, repetition, and many small areas of contrasting colors. Mondrian's final Boogie-Woogie paintings, inspired by the New York jazz scene, are viewed as dynamic and rhythmic, despite an absence of gestural brushwork. The feeling of movement brought about by works like these likely results from the way these visual elements are interpreted, leading to abstract representations of movement rather than simulations of specific bodily actions. Similarly, Pollock paintings may be felt as dynamic because the increasing number of overlapping colors and the manner of paint application leads to more repetition, curvature, and contrast, which are thought to evoke feelings of movement.

"Our findings are particularly significant because, previously, it was posited that viewing abstract art stimulated the motor system because people could envision the gestures the artist took when painting," says lead author, Stacey Humphries, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in the department of Neurology. "But our research shows that even without those representations of movement, the motor system can interpret static visual clues as movement and in turn impact the viewer's aesthetic appreciation."

The motion effects cannot be attributed purely to greater complexity in the higher motion paintings. Researchers found no significant differences in the complexity ratings or the relationship between complexity and liking of art given by patients and controls.

The researchers note that the patients participated while on their usual medication. One factor not yet considered is the effect that dopaminergic medication might have on aesthetic experiences. Dopamine plays a significant role in the normal functioning of the brain's reward system, which is consequently disturbed in Parkinson's disease.

The fundamental insight of the study is that the brain's ability to construct abstract representations of movement influences people's aesthetic experiences of art.

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This study was supported by the Smith Family Fund.

Penn Medicine is one of the world's leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, and excellence in patient care. Penn Medicine consists of the Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (founded in 1765 as the nation's first medical school) and the University of Pennsylvania Health System, which together form a $8.9 billion enterprise.

The Perelman School of Medicine has been ranked among the top medical schools in the United States for more than 20 years, according to U.S. News & World Report's survey of research-oriented medical schools. The School is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $496 million awarded in the 2020 fiscal year.

The University of Pennsylvania Health System's patient care facilities include: the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Penn Presbyterian Medical Center--which are recognized as one of the nation's top "Honor Roll" hospitals by U.S. News & World Report--Chester County Hospital; Lancaster General Health; Penn Medicine Princeton Health; and Pennsylvania Hospital, the nation's first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional facilities and enterprises include Good Shepherd Penn Partners, Penn Medicine at Home, Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital, and Princeton House Behavioral Health, among others.

Penn Medicine is powered by a talented and dedicated workforce of more than 44,000 people. The organization also has alliances with top community health systems across both Southeastern Pennsylvania and Southern New Jersey, creating more options for patients no matter where they live.

Penn Medicine is committed to improving lives and health through a variety of community-based programs and activities. In fiscal year 2020, Penn Medicine provided more than $563 million to benefit our community.

Machine learning model generates realistic seismic waveforms

New research could reduce manual labor and improve earthquake detection

DOE/LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

Research News

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IMAGE: SEISMOGEN, A MACHINE LEARNING TECHNIQUE DEVELOPED AT THE LABORATORY, IS CAPABLE OF GENERATING HIGH-QUALITY SYNTHETIC SEISMIC WAVEFORMS. THE TECHNIQUE COULD SAVE TEDIOUS AND INTENSIVE MANUAL LABELING EFFORT AND HELP IMPROVE... view more 

CREDIT: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., April 22, 2021--A new machine-learning model that generates realistic seismic waveforms will reduce manual labor and improve earthquake detection, according to a study published recently in JGR Solid Earth.

"To verify the e?cacy of our generative model, we applied it to seismic ?eld data collected in Oklahoma," said Youzuo Lin, a computational scientist in Los Alamos National Laboratory's Geophysics group and principal investigator of the project. "Through a sequence of qualitative and quantitative tests and benchmarks, we saw that our model can generate high-quality synthetic waveforms and improve machine learning-based earthquake detection algorithms."

Quickly and accurately detecting earthquakes can be a challenging task. Visual detection done by people has long been considered the gold standard, but requires intensive manual labor that scales poorly to large data sets. In recent years, automatic detection methods based on machine learning have improved the accuracy and efficiency of data collection; however, the accuracy of those methods relies on access to a large amount of high?quality, labeled training data, often tens of thousands of records or more.

To resolve this data dilemma, the research team developed SeismoGen based on a generative adversarial network (GAN), which is a type of deep generative model that can generate high?quality synthetic samples in multiple domains. In other words, deep generative models train machines to do things and create new data that could pass as real.

Once trained, the SeismoGen model is capable of producing realistic seismic waveforms of multiple labels. When applied to real Earth seismic datasets in Oklahoma, the team saw that data augmentation from SeismoGen?generated synthetic waveforms could be used to improve earthquake detection algorithms in instances when only small amounts of labeled training data are available.

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The Paper: SeismoGen: Seismic Waveform Synthesis Using GAN with Application to Seismic Data Augmentation, Tiantong Wang, Daniel Trugman, and Youzuo Lin. Published in JGR Solid Earth. April, Volume 126, Issue 4, e2020JB020077, 2021. DOI: 10.1029/2020JB020077

The Funding: The research was supported by the Center for Space and Earth Science and the Laboratory Directed Research and Development program under project number of 20210542MFR at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

About Los Alamos National Laboratory

Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is managed by Triad, a public service oriented, national security science organization equally owned by its three founding members: Battelle Memorial Institute (Battelle), the Texas A&M University System (TAMUS), and the Regents of the University of California (UC) for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.

Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns.

 

Using spatial distance strategically with luxury and popular product displays

News from the Journal of Marketing

AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION

Research News

 

Researchers from Nanjing University, National Sun Yat-sen University, and Northwestern University published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that shows that the spatial distance between products and consumers can affect perceived value and willingness to pay.

The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "Values Created from Far and Near: Influence of Spatial Distance on Brand Evaluation" and is authored by Xing-Yu (Marcos) Chu, Chun-Tuan Chang, and Angela Y. Lee.

No one ever questions why some retail products are on display in cabinets behind the sales counter, where shoppers can only view them from a distance, while other displays take center stage to greet shoppers as they walk inside the store. Consumers likely reason that the former practice is to protect high-value products from potential damage or theft and that the latter practice is to entice shoppers to purchase these items. However, there are additional hidden advantages to these practices. This research team finds that keeping a distance between consumers and products enhances the perceived value and prestige of luxury items while proximity increases the perceived sincerity and closeness of popular products.

The researchers propose that the spatial distance between the product and the consumer, whether in real life or in ads or websites, may enhance or devalue consumers' perceptions of the product depending on whether the brand image reflects status or broad appeal. Specifically, distance signals prestige when status and luxury are relevant to the brand image, in which case a far distance should help enhance the brand image. On the other hand, distance signals social closeness when popularity and broad appeal are relevant to the brand image, in which case a close distance should help to enhance that brand image.

Across seven studies, they show that the distance between the product and the consumer, whether in real life or in ads, can have a profound influence on how consumers evaluate the product and make purchase decisions. The researchers observe the relationship between spatial distance and consumer perception and price judgments in a variety of contexts that include store display, window display, print ads, and websites. In the first study, participants designing a mock ad positioned the image of a product further away from the image of the model when the ad was for a prestigious brand than for a popular brand. In the next set of studies, participants estimated the same distance between the model and an expensive handbag to be further apart than for an inexpensive handbag; but they estimated the distance between the model and a popular brand to be closer than for an unpopular brand.

In the next two studies, participants evaluated an expensive leather backpack more favorably when they were standing five feet (versus three feet) away, but an everyday-use canvas backpack more favorably when they were standing three ft (versus five feet) away. Participants in the sixth study evaluated a coffeemaker with the tagline "Aromatic coffee, distinguished taste. Luxurious life, prestigious choice" more positively when it was positioned further away from the model in an ad, but the coffeemaker with the tagline "Aromatic coffee, trendy taste. Cozy life, popular choice" more positively when it was positioned closer to the model in the ad. Finally, in the last study, consumers receiving a text sent to their mobile phone were more likely to click on the ad with a "Luxurious lifestyle, Prestigious choice" tagline and visit the website to redeem a discount coupon when the product image is further away from the model in the ad. But they were more likely to click on the ad with a "Cozy lifestyle, Popular choice" tagline when the product image is closer to the model in the ad.

These findings offer useful insights to marketers about how to leverage visual cues in window and store displays and in advertising. By strategically matching the distance between the product and the consumer, marketers can effectively enhance value and increase consumers' willingness to pay a price premium for luxury brands by enhancing perceived prestige. Alternatively, they can enhance value and increase consumers' willingness to pay a price premium for brands with broad appeal by enhancing perceived social closeness. For luxury brands or products with an exclusive brand image, a distal distance signals prestige and exclusivity. In contrast, for popular brands or products that appeal to a wide customer base, a proximal distance signals connectedness and sincerity.

Images are powerful communication tools. Today's time-starved consumers are bombarded by information. Chu explains that "Vivid images can capture attention and convey meaning without words and lengthy messages. Marketers can easily incorporate the insights from our research into their communication strategy--whether it be window displays, store layouts, website designs, billboards, print ads, etc. Far distance can enhance perceived status for brands with a prestigious brand image whereas proximal distance can enhance social connectedness for brands with a popular brand image." Marketers should also be aware of the corresponding downsides--keeping a distance can dampen the perceived connectedness of popular products, while proximity can lower the perceived prestige of luxury products.

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Full article and author contact information available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/00222429211000706

About the Journal of Marketing

The Journal of Marketing develops and disseminates knowledge about real-world marketing questions useful to scholars, educators, managers, policy makers, consumers, and other societal stakeholders around the world. Published by the American Marketing Association since its founding in 1936, JM has played a significant role in shaping the content and boundaries of the marketing discipline. Christine Moorman (T. Austin Finch, Sr. Professor of Business Administration at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University) serves as the current Editor in Chief. https://www.ama.org/jm

About the American Marketing Association (AMA)

As the largest chapter-based marketing association in the world, the AMA is trusted by marketing and sales professionals to help them discover what is coming next in the industry. The AMA has a community of local chapters in more than 70 cities and 350 college campuses throughout North America. The AMA is home to award-winning content, PCM® professional certification, premiere academic journals, and industry-leading training events and conferences. https://www.ama.org

 

Use of e-cigarettes plus tobacco cigarettes linked to higher risk of respiratory symptoms

Cough and wheeze are more likely to develop among those who both vape and smoke

MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL

Research News

 

BOSTON - Exclusively using (or "vaping") e-cigarettes can help people quit smoking, but many people using e-cigarettes to quit smoking continue to smoke cigarettes. New research led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) reveals that respiratory symptoms--such as cough and wheeze--are more likely to develop when people use both e-cigarettes and tobacco cigarettes together compared with using either one alone. The findings are published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, the flagship journal of the American Thoracic Society.

The investigators analyzed information on 20,882 individuals aged 12 years and older in the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study, a U.S. nationally representative longitudinal survey.

The analyzed participants had no respiratory symptoms when surveyed in 2015-2016. When they were surveyed about one year later, respiratory symptoms were reported by 10.7% of those who did not use e-cigarettes or tobacco cigarettes, 11.8% of exclusive e-cigarette users, 17.1% of exclusive tobacco smokers, and 19.7% of dual users (those who both vaped e-cigarettes and smoked tobacco cigarettes). Dual users had a 1.9-times higher odds of developing respiratory symptoms compared with exclusive e-cigarette users and a 1.24-times higher odds compared with exclusive tobacco smokers. The risk of new respiratory symptoms among individuals who vaped but did not smoke was not significantly higher than the risk among individuals who neither vaped nor smoked.

"To help people quit smoking, FDA-approved medications, such as the nicotine patch or the medication varenicline, are preferred," says lead author Krishna Reddy, MD, MS, an investigator in MGH's Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and the MGH Tobacco Research and Treatment Center. "People who vape e-cigarettes in an effort to stop smoking tobacco cigarettes should be cautioned against using both and instead should switch over completely from smoking to vaping, with an ultimate goal of stopping vaping as well."

Senior author Nancy Rigotti, MD, director of the Tobacco Research and Treatment Center, adds: "This study helps identify how e-cigarettes can best be used to reduce the harms caused by smoking cigarettes. Exclusive e-cigarette use did not increase the risk of new respiratory symptoms while using both products (e-cigarettes and cigarettes) did."

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Funding for the study was provided by the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Cancer Institute of the NIH and Food and Drug Administration Center for Tobacco Products, and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the NIH.

Co-authors were Sara Kalkhoran, MD, MAS, and Eli Schwamm of MGH; Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH, then of MGH, now of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and Farzad Noubary, PhD, of Northeastern University.

About the Massachusetts General Hospital

Massachusetts General Hospital, founded in 1811, is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The Mass General Research Institute conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the nation, with annual research operations of more than $1 billion and comprises more than 9,500 researchers working across more than 30 institutes, centers and departments. In August 2020, Mass General was named #6 in the U.S. News & World Report list of "America's Best Hospitals."

Malaria vaccine becomes first to achieve WHO-specified 75% efficacy goal

Researchers from the University of Oxford and their partners have today reported findings from a Phase IIb trial of a candidate malaria vaccine, R21/Matrix-M, which demonstrated high-level efficacy of 77% over 12-months of follow-up.

UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

Research News 

Researchers from the University of Oxford and their partners have today reported findings from a Phase IIb trial of a candidate malaria vaccine, R21/Matrix-M, which demonstrated high-level efficacy of 77% over 12-months of follow-up. In their findings (posted on SSRN/Preprints with The Lancet) they note that they are the first to meet the World Health Organization's Malaria Vaccine Technology Roadmap goal of a vaccine with at least 75% efficacy.

The authors report (in findings in press with The Lancet) from a Phase IIb randomised, controlled, double-blind trial conducted at the Clinical Research Unit of Nanoro (CRUN) / Institut de Recherche en Sciences de la Santé (IRSS), Burkina Faso. 450 participants, aged 5-17 months, were recruited from the catchment area of Nanoro, covering 24 villages and an approximate population of 65,000 people.

The participants were split into three groups, with the first two groups receiving the R21/Matrix-M (with either a low dose or high dose of the Matrix-M adjuvant) and the third, a rabies vaccine as the control group. Doses were administered from early May 2019 to early August 2019, largely prior to the peak malaria season.

The researchers report a vaccine efficacy of 77% in the higher-dose adjuvant group, and 71% in the lower dose adjuvant group, over 12 months of follow-up, with no serious adverse events related to the vaccine noted.

Following these results, the Phase IIb trial, which was funded by the EDCTP2 programme supported by the European Union (grant number RIA2016V-1649-MMVC), was extended with a booster vaccination administered prior to the next malaria season one year later.

The researchers, in collaboration with Serum Institute of India Private Ltd., and Novavax Inc., have now started recruitment for a Phase III licensure trial to assess large-scale safety and efficacy in 4,800 children, aged 5-36 months, across four African countries.

Halidou Tinto, Professor in Parasitology, Regional Director of IRSS in Nanoro, and the trial Principal Investigator said: 'These are very exciting results showing unprecedented efficacy levels from a vaccine that has been well tolerated in our trial programme. We look forward to the upcoming phase III trial to demonstrate large-scale safety and efficacy data for a vaccine that is greatly needed in this region.'

Adrian Hill, Director of the Jenner Institute and Lakshmi Mittal and Family Professor of Vaccinology at the University of Oxford, and co-author of the paper, said:

'These new results support our high expectations for the potential of this vaccine, which we believe is the first to reach the WHO's goal of a vaccine for malaria with at least 75% efficacy.

'With the commitment by our commercial partner, the Serum Institute of India, to manufacture at least 200 million doses annually in the coming years, the vaccine has the potential to have major public health impact if licensure is achieved.'

Professor Charlemagne Ouédraogo, Minister of Health, in Burkina Faso said:

'Malaria is one of the leading causes of childhood mortality in Africa. We have been supporting trials of a range of new vaccine candidates in Burkina Faso and these new data show that licensure of a very useful new malaria vaccine could well happen in the coming years. That would be an extremely important new tool for controlling malaria and saving many lives.'

Professor Alkassoum Maiga Ministry of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Innovation in Burkina Faso, said:

'I am proud of Burkina Faso researchers who made a great contribution to reach this important milestone. Hope that the upcoming phase III trial will confirm these exciting findings and that this vaccine could have a real impact on this disease affecting millions of children every year.'

Dr Cyrus Poonawalla and Mr Adar Poonawalla, Chairman and CEO of the Serum Institute of India said:

'We are highly excited to see these results on a safe and highly effective malaria vaccine which will be available to the whole world through an excellent collaborative effort between Serum Institute, the University of Oxford and Novavax Inc.. Serum Institute is committed to global disease burden reduction and disease elimination strategies by providing high volume, affordable vaccines. We are highly confident that we will be able to deliver more than 200 million doses annually in line with the above strategy as soon as regulatory approvals are available.'

Dr Michael Makanga, EDCTP Executive Director, said:

'We congratulate the Multi-stage Malaria Vaccine Consortium on these highly promising results from the Burkina Faso trial of R21. This study represents a key advance in the clinical development of the R21 malaria vaccine towards licensure, and an important step closer to malaria control and elimination.'

Gareth Jenkins, Director of Advocacy, Malaria No More UK, said:

'An effective and safe malaria vaccine would be a hugely significant extra weapon in the armoury needed to defeat malaria, which still kills over 270,000 children every year. For decades, British scientists have been at the forefront of developing new ways to detect, diagnose, test and treat malaria, and we must continue to back them.

'A world without malaria is a world safer both for the children who would otherwise be killed by this disease, and for us here at home. Countries freed from the malaria burden will be much better equipped to fight off new disease threats when they inevitably emerge in the future.'

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Note to Editors: For further information, or requests for interview with Prof. Hill, please contact: news.office@admin.ox.ac.uk

About R21/Matrix-M:

R21 was produced by expressing recombinant Hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) virus-like particles in Hansenula polymorpha, comprising the central repeat and the C-terminus of the Plasmodium falciparum circumsporozoite protein (CSP), fused to the N-terminal end of HBsAg. It is manufactured by the Serum Institute of India Private Ltd (SIIPL). R21 was mixed prior to administration with Matrix-M, a saponin-based vaccine adjuvant produced by Novavax AB, Uppsala, Sweden.

Development of R21/Matrix-M, a vaccine which targets P. falciparum malaria, has been accelerated by a collaboration between the Jenner Institute at Oxford University, the Serum Institute of India Pvt Ltd and Novavax Inc. working with many clinical trial units in the UK and Africa.

About Malaria:

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that malaria causes over 400,000 deaths each year globally and progress in reducing malaria mortality has stalled in recent years. Most deaths are amongst children in Africa where very high transmission rates are found in many countries.

229 million cases of clinical malaria were reported in 2019.

Over 100 malaria vaccine candidates have entered clinical trials over recent decades but none has shown the >75% efficacy targeted by World Health Organization's Malaria Vaccine Technology Roadmap.

About the Jenner Institute:

The Jenner Institute is based within the Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, and operates out of the Old Road Campus Research Building, in Headington, Oxford. The Jenner Institute also supports senior vaccine scientists, known as Jenner Investigators, within many other departments across the University of Oxford, as well as externally within The Pirbright Institute and the Animal and Plant Health Agency.

The Jenner Institute brings together investigators who are designing and developing numerous vaccines to generate an exceptional breadth of scientific know-how and critical mass, whilst still allowing the individual investigators to remain independent and accountable to their funders and stakeholders.

The Jenner Institute is supported by the Jenner Vaccine Foundation, a UK registered charity and is advised by the Jenner Institute Scientific Advisory Board.

About the University of Oxford

Oxford University has been placed number 1 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for the fifth year running, and at the heart of this success is our ground-breaking research and innovation.

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Radar satellites can better protect against bushfires and floods

CURTIN UNIVERSITY

Research News

 VIDEO: THE RESEARCH USED SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR DATA OBTAINED BY THE EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY SENTINEL-1 SATELLITE, AMONGST OTHERS. view more 

CREDIT: EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY

New research led by Curtin University has revealed how radar satellites can improve the ability to detect, monitor, prepare for and withstand natural disasters in Australia including bushfires, floods and earthquakes.

The research used Synthetic Aperture Radar data obtained by the European Space Agency Sentinel-1 satellite, amongst others, to evaluate Australia-specific case studies.

Lead researcher Dr Amy Parker, an ARC Research Fellow from Curtin's School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said the Sentinel-1 satellite mission provided the first complete global Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) dataset and the first opportunity to use this type of data to assess hazards in new locations, including Australia.

"What makes SAR so valuable is that it provides all-weather and night-and-day capability to remotely monitor the Earth's surface, unlike traditional optical Earth Observation (EO) imagery which is at the mercy of cloud, fog, rainfall and smoke," Dr Parker said.

"SAR data can be used to precisely map topography, track movements of the ground surface, characterize land-use change, and map damage to infrastructure, all of which can significantly improve how we track and respond to natural disasters.

"But despite SAR satellites being well-documented as a hazard monitoring tool, the uptake of such data varies, and in Australia the use of SAR data has been limited."

The research applied SAR data to nine case studies covering critical issues such as bushfires, floods and earthquakes to assess the power of SAR as a disaster mitigation and prevention tool.

"For example we looked at the 2016 Wildman Coastal Plains Floods in the Northern Territory and found that SAR has added benefits in mapping flood patterns and floodplain dynamics."

Dr Parker said these benefits can also be applied to maintaining mine site safety and better understanding seismic hazards and activity.

"Globally, Australia is one of the largest users of Earth observation data derived from satellites, which contributes to national hazard monitoring and response and more than 100 state and federal government programs. Our research shows SAR data can effectively complement this." Dr Parker said.

"Previously SAR data has been considered too expensive to use as a tool for hazard mitigation, but our findings show, through Sentinel-1 we now have economically viable wall-to-wall, consistent sensor imaging of Australia.

"The uptake of SAR data for hazard applications globally will continue to benefit from validated case studies such as ours, the development of tools that support operational use, and the continued provision of open-access imagery by large-scale satellite missions."

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The research paper is titled 'Applications of Satellite Radar Imagery for Hazard Monitoring: Insights from Australia' was published in Remote Sensing.

Study uncovers human-to-cat transmission of the virus that causes COVID-19

WILEY

Research News

 

New research provides evidence that people have transmitted SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, to cats during the pandemic in the UK. The study, which is published in Veterinary Record, detected the virus last year in cats that developed mild or severe respiratory disease.

Investigators used a range of laboratory techniques to show that two domestic cats from households with suspected cases of COVID-19 were infected with SARS-CoV-2.

"These findings indicate that human-to-cat transmission of SARS-CoV-2 occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK, with the infected cats displaying mild or severe respiratory disease. Given the ability of the coronavirus to infect companion animals, it will be important to monitor for human-to-cat, cat-to-cat and cat-to-human transmission," said lead author Margaret Hosie, PhD, of the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research.