1 in 6 families in new study spent more than $5,000 to have a baby

Out-of-pocket spending for maternal and newborn hospitalizations among privately insured families can exceed $10,000 if babies require neonatal intensive care

MICHIGAN MEDICINE - UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Research News

 

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - The price tag for giving birth in America may bring some families sticker shock - even for those with private insurance.

And when delivering moms require caesarians or their newborns need neonatal care, some families may spend as much as $10,000 out-of-pocket, according to a new Michigan Medicine-led study.

"Childbirth is the most common reason for hospitalization in the U.S.," said lead author Kao-Ping Chua, M.D., Ph.D.,a pediatrician and researcher at University of Michigan Health C.S. Mott Children's Hospital and the Susan B. Meister Child Health Evaluation and Research Center.

"Our findings show that some privately insured families are shouldering an astoundingly high financial burden for childbirth-related hospitalizations."

During 2016-2019, privately insured families paid an average of $3,000 out-of-pocket for maternal and newborn hospitalizations, according to the research in Pediatrics. But for one in 6 families, out-of-pocket spending exceeded $5,000. And when neonatal intensive care was required, the price climbed to over $10,000 for about 1 in 11 families.

"Many privately insured families believe that if they have health insurance, they're protected from the costs of childbirth hospitalizations. Unfortunately, this is simply not true for many families, particularly if their baby needs NICU care," Chua said.

"Having a healthy baby is expensive enough given the costs of diapers, childcare, and baby equipment. Adding a $10,000 hospital bill on top of this can devastate some families."

Researchers analyzed national data of 12 million privately insured enrollees across all states in the country. They identified 398,410 maternal deliveries that were linked to at least one newborn hospitalization covered by the same family plan. Overall, average out-of-pocket spending for the delivery and newborn hospitalizations was $3,068.

When cesarean birth occurred, the average bill was $3,389. When NICU care was needed, the average bill was $4,969. This bill exceeded $10,000 for 9% of instances when NICU care was needed.

About 30% of the time, deliveries and newborn hospitalizations were covered by high-deductible health plans, such as a health reimbursement arrangement or health savings account. Out-of-pocket costs were primarily driven by deductibles and co-insurance.

Chua said he was inspired to pursue the study because of his own personal experience that involved a $5,000 out-of-pocket bill after the birth of his second daughter.

"This is an issue that impacts millions of Americans at some stage in their lives," he said.

"Before delivery, clinicians can help privately insured families understand their childbirth benefits. If large bills are expected, clinicians should advise families to save money, assuming they have the means to do so. After delivery, clinicians should screen families for financial hardship, particularly those experiencing resource-intensive hospitalizations, such as NICU care, and connect them with local resources to address food, housing, and financial insecurity."

While substantial cost-sharing may be justified for low-value care, childbirth is a necessary, high value service, says senior author Michelle Moniz, M.D., M.Sc.,an obstetrician gynecologist at University of Michigan Health Von Voigtlander Women's Hospital. Moniz says policies should aim to alleviate the financial burden of childbirth on families.

Ideally, insurers would waive most or all cost-sharing for these hospitalizations, consistent with the approach taken by Medicaid programs and many peer, high-resource countries, she says.

The new study adds to Moniz' previous study examining the out-of-pocket costs of pregnancy, delivery, and postpartum care for mothers. .

"Maternal and childbirth hospitalizations are essential to families' health and wellbeing, with some babies needing longer stays because of complex or unexpected medical conditions," Moniz said.

"These services are vital to ensuring the best possible outcomes for moms and newborns. We should be looking at ways to improve childbirth coverage to avoid sending families home from the hospital with thousands of dollars in debt."

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Paper cited: "Out-of-Pocket Spending for Deliveries and Newborn Hospitalizations Among the Privately Insured," Pediatrics. DOI: 10.1542.2021-050552

Pandemic-era crowdfunding more common, successful in affluent communities

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

Research News

 

IMAGE: THESE BAR CHARTS SHOW DIFFERENCES IN CROWDFUNDING CAMPAIGN CREATION, AMONG OTHER DIFFERENCES, ACCORDING TO COUNTIES' MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME. view more 

CREDIT: IGRA ET AL., 2021, SOCIAL SCIENCE & MEDICINE

During the first several months of the pandemic -- when communities locked down, jobs were lost, PPE was scarce and store shelves were cleared --thousands of people turned to online crowdfunding to meet their needs.

But a new University of Washington analysis of requests and donations to the popular crowdfunding site GoFundMe, along with Census data, shows stark inequities in where the money went and how much was donated.

A study published June 15 in Social Science & Medicine found more than 175,000 COVID-19-related GoFundMe campaigns in the U.S., raising more than $416 million, from January through July 2020. Researchers found that affluent and educated communities created more fundraising campaigns, and received more in return, than other communities with fewer resources.

What's more, researchers found that campaign success, overall, was hard to come by. Some 43% of campaigns didn't receive a single donation. More than 90% of campaigns didn't meet their goals.

Researchers say the study reveals the challenges inherent to online crowdfunding, as well as its capacity to reinforce existing socioeconomic divides.

"Our study shows that even though COVID-19 had an impact across the country, the places that benefitted most from crowdfunding were the places that already had the most resources available," said the study's lead author, Mark Igra, a graduate student in sociology at the UW.

While some results may not be surprising from an economic standpoint -- people in wealthier communities likely have more money to donate to charitable causes -- researchers say the results highlight other factors contributing to campaign success. For example, people in more educated communities are likely better able to tap into existing social networks to raise money -- whereas in communities where education is lower the needs may be greater, but residents may have fewer connections to affluent donors, and fewer campaigns reach their goals.

Other recent research has explored online crowdfunding specific to medical needs, finding that campaigns are common, but often unsuccessful, in communities where health care resources and insurance coverage are lacking. This study is believed to be the first to examine online crowdfunding as a broader crisis response, and its impacts on inequality.

In examining COVID-19-related fundraising campaigns that mentioned a need associated with the pandemic, such as a lost job and a need for food or rent money, researchers eliminated those that were part of a GoFundMe program providing matching funds for businesses, leaving about 164,000 campaigns to sort through. Because demographic data about crowdfunding users is hard to come by, researchers analyzed campaign data at a county level and compared it with other county-level socioeconomic characteristics using U.S. Census data. Among their findings:

• The median campaign goal was $5,000, with a median of two donations and only $65 raised.
• The top 1% of campaigns received nearly one-quarter of all the money raised.
• As COVID-19 cases and unemployment rose in a variety of communities, more fundraising campaigns were created in communities with higher education and income levels.
• Counties where 35% of residents are college graduates can expect about 50% more campaigns than counties where only 12% are graduates.
• Counties with a median household income of at least $130,000 raised nearly $150 million, almost three times as much as counties with a median income of $19,000 to $47,000, even though the populations of those counties are about the same.
• A keyword search of GoFundMe campaign requests found that those identifying business and medical needs yielded more donations than those campaigns that mentioned personal financial needs.

GoFundMe's approach of highlighting and promoting certain campaigns, whether those tied to a high-profile person or those that are gaining attention and growing at a faster rate, means success begets success, researchers said.

Co-author Nora Kenworthy, an associate professor of nursing and health studies at UW Bothell, said the study shows who's able to leverage resources in a crisis, and that the nature of online crowdfunding as a social media platform exacerbates the dynamics of a crisis.

"During the pandemic, there's been a lot of talk of communities supporting communities, but we need to ask, where does that happen, for whom, and who gets left out?" said Kenworthy. "The more we rely on social media platforms to shape that community response, the more we are blinded to where help is not happening and who's not getting assistance."

That's not to say crowdfunding doesn't serve a valuable purpose, the authors point out. It's more a sign "that we shouldn't shy away from more structural solutions," Kenworthy said, such as government-run programs that could cast a wider net than crowdfunding can cover.

"People's fundamental needs for health and well-being shouldn't be dependent on such an unpredictable source of funds. It's really a question of what is our shared commitment to the things people should have, regardless of whether they can be successful at crowdfunding," Igra said. "It's a good thing that people are helping, but people who aren't being helped aren't visible."

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The study was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Center for Studies in Demography & Ecology at the UW, and the School of Nursing and Health Studies at UW Bothell. Additional co-authors were Cadence Luchsinger of the UW Department of Health Services and Jin-Kyu Jung of the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at UW Bothell.

For more information, contact Igra at igra@uw.edu or Kenworthy at njk8@uw.edu.

 

New models predict fewer lightning-caused ignitions but bigger wildfires by mid century

OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: CHARRED TREES FROM THE 2003 B&B COMPLEX FIRE ARE SEEN IN THE FOREGROUND AS THE 2007 WARM SPRINGS LIGHTNING COMPLEX FIRE BURNS. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO BY ANDREW MEIGS

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Human-caused wildfire ignitions in Central Oregon are expected to remain steady over the next four decades and lightning-caused ignitions are expected to decline, but the average size of a blaze from either cause is expected to rise, Oregon State University modeling suggests.

Scientists including Meg Krawchuk of the OSU College of Forestry and former OSU research associate Ana Barros, now of the Washington Department of Natural Resources, say the findings can help local decision-makers understand how a changing climate might affect natural and human-caused fire regimes differently and inform fire staffing, preparedness, prevention and restrictions.

"The significance of these results lies in what we can collectively do about it as a society and in our individual actions," Barros said. "For lightning-ignited fires, depending on where and when they happen, it can be an opportunity. Where safe for firefighters, communities and highly valued resources, we can use these ignitions to accomplish important forest restoration work."

Findings of the study, which involved 3.3 million hectares on the east slope of the Cascade Range, were published in Environmental Research Letters.

"In the United States, two-thirds of the area burned by wildfires is from fires started by lightning, but human-caused blazes make fire seasons longer and result in fires reaching areas where they wouldn't naturally occur," said Krawchuk, a fire ecologist who oversees the College of Forestry's Landscape Fire and Conservation Science lab group. "People are the primary cause of large fires in both the eastern and western U.S., and while climate is the primary driver of how much area burns, the human footprint is a close second."

Wildfire is casting an increasingly large shadow globally, including in the American West, as the climate continues to become warmer and drier. Eight of the 10 largest California wildfires on record have occurred in the last seven years, and in 2020, multiple huge fires tore through the west side of the Cascade Range in Oregon, consuming more than 1 million acres.

Barros notes that in the lower 48 U.S. states, 29 million people live where there is potential for extreme wildfire, including 12 million considered "socially vulnerable."

"Census tracts that are majority Black, Hispanic or Native American are associated with the greatest vulnerability to wildfire," she said. "That means climate change is expected to exacerbate social inequalities unless ecosystems and communities do a good job of adapting to a changing climate and more fires in an equitable way."

Barros, Krawchuk, OSU faculty research assistant Rachel Houtman and collaborators from the U.S. Forest Service and the University of California, Merced looked at ignition data for the study area from 1992 through 2015. There were more than 15,000 ignitions, most of which did not result in a big blaze. Just 400 of the ignitions ended up burning an area greater than 10 hectares, but those fires accounted for 99% of the area that burned.

Melding those data with multiple global climate projections, the scientists developed statistical models for when and where fires could potentially occur between 2031 and 2060, and how much area they would burn, for lightning- and human-caused ignitions. The models included predictions for the number of fires and the frequency of extreme wildfire events, or EWEs.

The models, which include a metric for daily fuel dryness known as energy release component or ERC, predicted no significant change in the number of human-caused fire ignitions and a 14% reduction in lightning-caused ignitions, with the number of lightning fires per season burning more than 10 hectares staying about the same.

But mean fire sizes were 31% larger for fires caused by humans and 22% bigger for fires caused by lightning; predicted increases in area burned were driven by increases in mean fire size resulting from more extreme wildfire events.

"All but one of the climate models we considered projected increased frequency of record-breaking events, with the largest future fires being about twice as big as those of the contemporary period," Barros said.

The scientists note that historically, lightning ignitions in Central Oregon have been more likely on days with moderate fuel dryness and less likely on days with higher ERC. That's possibly because in the region, lightning-caused fires tend to happen after light precipitation such as that from cold fronts that can cause ERC to drop.

"When it comes to human-caused fires, the key word is prevention because any ignition can become that record-breaking event," Barros said. "The takeaway here is that large fires are coming our way. What we do about it between now and then will determine our success in mitigating negative consequences and even accomplish positive outcomes."

Collaborating with Krawchuk and Barros were Michelle Day, Alan Ager and Haiganoush Preisler of the Forest Service and John Abatzoglou of the University of California, Merced.

"Extreme wildfires are increasingly becoming a reality in many parts of the world, but how we respond to these fires and how we prevent them depends on a lot on how they start," Day said. "In our study we showed that historical records for fire size will continue to be broken. And the timing of these fires will differ depending on cause, with more human-caused ignitions happening in late summer and fall."

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The National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture supported this research.

 

New beetle species discovered and named after iconic sci-fi heroines

MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

EAST LANSING, Mich. - The original Star Trek television series took place in a future when space is the final frontier, but humanity hasn't reached that point quite yet.

As researchers like Michigan State University entomologists Sarah Smith and Anthony Cognato are reminding us, there's still plenty to discover right here on Earth.

Working in Central and South America, the duo discovered more than three dozen species of ambrosia beetles -- beetles that eat ambrosia fungus -- previously unknown to science. Smith and Cognato described these new species on June 16 in the journal ZooKeys.

The Spartans also selected an unusual naming theme named in deference to the female beetles who have helped their species survive and thrive by boldly going where they hadn't before.

Many of the new species are named for iconic female science fiction characters, including Nyota Uhura of "Star Trek"; Kara "Starbuck" Thrace from the 2000s "Battlestar Galactica" TV series; and Katniss Everdeen from "The Hunger Games" books and movies.

"One of our colleagues from London was asking if it's good to name a species after popular characters, if the popularity would backfire and make people think this is frivolous," said Cognato, director of the Albert. J. Cook Arthropod Research Collection. He's also an entomology professor with appointments in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and the College of Natural Science.

"But overall, our colleagues think it's a good thing," Cognato said. "It gives us a chance to talk about taxonomy -- the science of classifying organisms -- and about diversity."

Understanding the world's biodiversity is one of the major drivers of this and related research. Scientists estimate that there are 10 million nonbacterial species in the world and that humans have classified only about 20% of those.

"And some are lost before they're ever discovered," said Smith, who is the curator of the A. J. Cook Arthropod Research Collection. When people disrupt native ecosystems with farming and mining, for example, undiscovered species can face extinction before researchers know about them.

For this project, the team did some of its field work in Peru, where illegal gold miners can be particularly devastating to forests. "They're turning the forest into a wasteland" Smith said. "It may never recover."

Working in such threatened areas, Smith and Cognato are helping identify beetle species before it's too late, as well as characterizing a rich variety of physical traits and behaviors.

To be clear, they did this field work long before the pandemic struck, starting around 2008. But it takes time to perform the thorough investigations required to ensure that a species is indeed distinct from its closely related cousins.

"With South America, it can be really hard to know whether a species is new or not, just because the fauna is so poorly studied," Smith said.

With the stay-at-home orders in effect, she and Cognato had time to focus on projects that had been simmering on the backburner, such as this one that details ambrosia beetles they had collected belonging to the genus Coptoborus.

These tiny beetles make their homes by boring into trees. Once inside, they sustain their nests by cultivating fungus that serves as food. There, a mother produces many female offspring and one or two dwarfed males. The main job of those males is to mate with their sisters, creating a new generation of females prepared to disperse and produce a new brood. This all leads to another reason for studying these beetles: they can become pests.

These females arrive at trees ready to bore inside, start a fungus farm and reproduce. Though most prefer to nest in dead or dying parts of trees, some can attack fully healthy trees that are ecologically and economically important. For example, there are species within the genus known to attack balsa trees in Ecuador, the world's leading exporter of balsa wood.

And if tree-dwelling beetles find their way into nonnative habitats, they can pose large threats to trees that have no natural defenses against the insects. Michiganders are all too familiar with the emerald ash borer, which has claimed millions of ash trees in the state. Another nonnative species of fungus-farming beetle devastated redbay laurels and avocado trees in the Southern U.S.

By identifying species abroad, in their native habitats, researchers including Smith and Cognato are helping the U.S. better prepare for if and when a new pest shows up here. And, historically speaking, Coptoborus beetles are hardy travelers.

Their ancestors originated about 20 million years ago, likely in Southeast Asia, before emigrating and making homes across much of the tropics.

"That's one of the reasons we chose to name them after female sci-fi characters. Not to anthropomorphize too much, but you have these adventurous females that were blown off their log or had their wood-encased home thrown into the ocean by a mudslide," Cognato said. If these mated females made it to a new land, they could start a new population, allowing the species to proliferate.

"Along the way, there were so many ways to die, but they ended up colonizing an entire continent."

Fast forward to now and there are thousands of ambrosia beetle species, including more than 70 of the Coptoborus genus -- and counting. In christening the new beetles, Smith and Cognato got some inspiration by finding similarities between the beetle and its namesake.

For instance, the C. uhura was given its name because its reddish color, reminiscent of the uniform worn by Nichelle Nichols's Uhura character in the original "Star Trek" TV series.

And Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley character in the "Alien" film franchise had a shaved head in the movie "Alien 3." One of the beetles, now named C. ripley, was also glabrous, or without hair.

Other names were selected because the duo just liked the characters and found them inspiring. For example, the C. scully beetle was named after Dana Scully, Gillian Anderson's character on "The X-Files."

The character is also behind what's known as the "Scully Effect." By showing a successful female scientist on TV, the show helped raise awareness of science, technology, engineering and mathematics -- or STEM -- professions among young women.

In their paper, Smith and Cognato wrote, "We believe in the 'Scully Effect' and hope future female scientists, real and fictional, continue to inspire children and young adults to pursue STEM careers."

Smith and Cognato also took the opportunity to name some beetles in honor of real-life people who have made an impact on their work and their lives.

For example, the C. erwini, is named after a renowned entomologist and friend Terry Erwin, who passed away in 2020. Erwin helped popularize a technique called canopy fogging to collect beetle specimens living in treetops.

"Without his dedication to canopy fogging, this species and most of those described in this publication may never have been discovered," Smith and Cognato wrote in their study, which is part of a special issue in memory of Erwin, who was also editor-in-chief of ZooKeys.

Also, the C. bettysmithae is named after Smith's grandmother, Catherine "Betty" Smith. Sarah remembers Betty's incredible strength in battling cancer and her help fostering her granddaughter's scientific interest.

"My grandmother supported me a lot with entomology," Smith said. "I used to spend many weekends with her, and she'd take me out to catch dragonflies."

Now, she and Cognato are out catching and characterizing insects that are new to science. In doing so, they're helping protect native ecosystems, painting a more complete picture of the planet's bountiful biodiversity and even drawing some attention to the power of naming and classifying things.

"Taxonomy was probably one of the first sciences of humans. You can find evidence of it throughout history and across cultures," Cognato said.

This naming likely started so humans could easily share information about which plants were safe to eat and which animals were dangerous. This is still valuable information today, but naming has evolved to help us appreciate even more dimensions of life on Earth.

Think about being a kid in a park or backyard, Cognato said, and the innate desire to know and name the animals there, say, robins or squirrels. Classification builds connection.

"It helps us communicate and it helps us live better," Cognato said. "It helps us understand the world and biodiversity."

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Michigan State University has been working to advance the common good in uncommon ways for more than 165 years. One of the top research universities in the world, MSU focuses its vast resources on creating solutions to some of the world's most pressing challenges, while providing life-changing opportunities to a diverse and inclusive academic community through more than 200 programs of study in 17 degree-granting colleges.

For MSU news on the Web, go to MSUToday. Follow MSU News on Twitter at twitter.com/MSUnews.

DO QUANTUM TORNADOES LAND ON QUANTUM TRAILER PARKS?

Giant quantum tornados in a hybrid light-matter system give insight into complex physical phenomena

SKOLKOVO INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (SKOLTECH)

Research News

 

Researchers from Skoltech and their colleagues from the UK have managed to create a stable giant vortex in interacting polariton condensates, addressing a known challenge in quantized fluid dynamics. The findings open possibilities in creating uniquely structured coherent light sources and exploring many-body physics under unique extreme conditions. The paper was published in the journal Nature Communications.

In fluid dynamics, a vortex is a region where a fluid revolves around a point (2D) or a line (3D); you've clearly seen one in your sink or may have felt one in the form of turbulence while flying. The quantum world also has vortices: the flow of a quantum fluid can create a zone where the particles revolve persistently around some point. The prototypical signature of such quantum vortices is their singular phase at the core of the vortex.

Skoltech Professors Natalia Berloff and Pavlos Lagoudakis and colleagues studied vortices created by polaritons - odd hybrid quantum particles that are half-light (photon) and half-matter (electrons) - forming a quantum fluid under the right conditions. They were looking for a way to create vortices in these polariton fluids with high values of angular momentum (i.e., getting them to rotate fast). These vortices, also known as giant vortices, are generally very hard to obtain as they tend to break apart into many smaller vortices with low angular momentum in other systems.

Creating stable giant vortices shows that non-equilibrium (open) quantum systems, like polariton condensates, can overcome some severe limits of their thermodynamic equilibrium counterpart such as Bose-Einstein condensates of cold atoms. Control over the vorticity of a quantum fluid could open new perspectives on analog simulation of gravity or black hole dynamics in the microscopic world. Moreover, the polariton condensate continuously emits photons that carry all the intricacies of the vortex which could become important for optical data storage, distribution, and processing applications.

The researchers had been working on using interacting polariton condensates as candidates to simulate a planar vector model known as the XY model. They realized that when multiple condensates were arranged into a regular polygon with an odd number of vertices the ground state of the whole system could correspond to a particle current along the polygon edge. By going from a triangle, pentagon, heptagon, and so on, the authors showed that the current rotated faster and faster, forming a giant vortex of varying angular momentum.

"The formation of stable clockwise, or anticlockwise, polariton currents along the perimeter of our polygons can be thought of as a result of geometric frustration between the condensates. The condensates interact like oscillators that want to be in antiphase with each other. But an odd-numbered polygon cannot satisfy this phase relation because of its rotational symmetry, and therefore the polaritons settle for the next-best thing which is a rotating current," first author Tamsin Cookson says.

"This is a very nice demonstration of how polaritons can provide a very flexible sandbox to probe some of the more complex phenomena of nature. What we show here is a system that shares a lot of characteristics with a black hole, which still emitting, a white hole if you wish!" Professor Lagoudakis adds.

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Other organizations involved in this research include the University of Southampton, the University of Cambridge, and Cardiff University.

 

Scientists prepare for next coronavirus pandemic, maybe in 2028?

New drug target found for future and current coronaviruses

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

• 'God forbid we need this, but we'll be ready'
• Medication would be taken early in the disease, so you don't get as sick
• Future drug could also treat common cold

CHICAGO --- Scientists are already preparing for a possible next coronavirus pandemic to strike, keeping with the seven-year pattern since 2004.

In future-looking research, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine scientists have identified a novel target for a drug to treat SARS-CoV-2 that also could impact a new emerging coronavirus.

"God forbid we need this, but we will be ready," said Karla Satchell, professor of microbiology-immunology at Feinberg, who leads an international team of scientists to analyze the important structures of the virus. The Northwestern team previously mapped the structure of a virus protein called nsp16, which is present in all coronaviruses. This new study provides critical information that could aid drug development against future coronaviruses as well as SARS-CoV-2.

"There is great need for new approaches to drug discovery to combat the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic and infections from future coronaviruses," Satchell said.

"The idea is this future drug would work early in the infection," Satchell said. "If somebody around you gets the coronavirus, you would run to the drugstore to get your medication and take it for three or four days. If you were sick, you wouldn't get as sick."

The paper was published in Science Signaling.

Satchell's team has mapped or 'solved' three new protein structures in three-dimensional views and discovered a secret identifier in the machinery that helps the virus hide from the immune system.

They discovered a coronavirus-specific pocket in the protein, nsp16, that binds the virus-genomic fragment held in place by a metal ion. The fragment is used by the coronavirus as the template for all the viral building blocks.

For this reason, Satchell said, there is potential to make a drug to fit this unique pocket that would block function of this protein from the coronavirus. It would not block the function of a similar protein from human cells that lacks the pocket. Thus, such a drug would only target the invader protein.

Nsp16 is considered one of the key viral proteins that could be inhibited by drugs to stop the virus shortly after a person gets exposed. The goal is to stop the virus early before people get too sick. Since little research was done on nsp16, Satchell's team has worked to generate key information about this protein and is collaborating with chemists who will use the information to design drugs against the protein.

While some of the coronavirus proteins vary a lot, nsp16 is nearly the same across most of them. The unique pocket discovered by Satchell's group is present in all the different coronavirus members. This means that drugs designed to fit this pocket should work against all coronaviruses, including a virus that emerges in the future. And it should work against the common cold that is caused by a coronavirus.

Satchell envisions any drug developed from her team's discovery of the coronavirus pocket would be part of a treatment cocktail taken by patients early in the course of the disease. That could include drugs similar to Remdesivir, a drug that prevents the virus from producing the template for the building blocks that is necessary for it to replicate itself.

The team behind the discovery

The Northwestern team in the Center for Structural Genomics of Infectious Diseases (CSGID) expressed, purified and crystallized this protein. The idea of the project came from first study author George Minasov, research associate professor of microbiology-immunology at Feinberg. He worked with Feinberg research associate professor Ludmilla Shuvalova to crystallize the protein and also with post-doctoral fellow Monica Rosas-Lemus, who developed an assay to test the function of the protein based on information from the structure.

The team collaborated with Purdue University investigator Andrew Mesecar, who helped with biochemistry assays. Data on the structure was collected by the Life Sciences Collaborative Access Team at the Advanced Photon Source of Argonne National Laboratories by Joseph Brunzelle. Minasov solved the structure from the collected data. This project is one of many carried out by the CSGID to use structural biology to understand the biology of the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Overall, the center has made significant contributions to the development of vaccines, drugs and diagnostics. The international team has solved more than 70 different viral structures to reveal viral protein structure, interactions with possible drugs and interactions with antibodies. This work is made freely available to the global community to use to accelerate efforts to design new treatments against coronavirus to combat COVID-19 and future pandemics.

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The CSGID is supported by a contract from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, in part to serve as a response site to conduct structure biology research in the event of an unexpected infectious disease outbreak. NIAID has been working closely with the Center since early January to coordinate center activities with other research supported by NIAID to enable drug discovery.

This study was funded by contract HHSN272201700060C from NIAID.

Subterranean investigations

Researchers explore the shallow underground world with a burrowing soft robot

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SANTA BARBARA

Research News

 

We've seen robots take to the air, dive beneath the waves and perform all sorts of maneuvers on land. Now, researchers at UC Santa Barbara and Georgia Institute of Technology are exploring a new frontier: the ground beneath our feet. Taking their cues from plants and animals that have evolved to navigate subterranean spaces, they've developed a fast, controllable soft robot that can burrow through sand. The technology not only enables new applications for fast, precise and minimally invasive movement underground, but also lays mechanical foundations for new types of robots.

"The biggest challenges with moving through the ground are simply the forces involved," said Nicholas Naclerio, a graduate student researcher in the lab of UC Santa Barbara mechanical engineering professor Elliot Hawkes and lead author of a paper on the cover of the journal Science Robotics. Whereas air and water offer little resistance to objects moving through them, he explained, the subterranean world is another story.

"If you're trying to move through the ground, you have to push the soil, sand or other medium out of the way," Naclerio said.

Fortunately, the natural world provides numerous examples of underground navigation in the form of plants and fungi that build underground networks and animals that have mastered the ability to tunnel directly through granular media. Gaining a mechanical understanding of how plants and animals have mastered subterranean navigation opens up many possibilities for science and technology, according to Daniel Goldman, Dunn Family Professor of Physics at Georgia Tech.

"Discovery of principles by which diverse organisms successfully swim and dig within granular media can lead to development of new kinds of mechanisms and robots that can take advantage of such principles," he said. "And reciprocally, development of a robot with such capabilities can inspire new animal studies as well as point to new phenomena in the physics of granular substrates."

The researchers had a good head start with a vine-like soft robot designed in the Hawkes Lab that mimics plants and the way they navigate by growing from their tips, while the rest of the body remains stationary. In the subterranean setting, tip extension, according to the researchers, keeps resisting forces low and localized only to the growing end; if the whole body moved as it grew, friction over the entire surface would increase as more of the robot entered the sand until the robot could no longer move.

Burrowing animals, meanwhile, serve as inspiration for an additional strategy called granular fluidization, which suspends the particles in a fluid-like state and allows the animal to overcome the high level of resistance presented by sand or loose soil. The southern sand octopus, for instance, expels a jet of water into the ground, and uses its arms to pull itself into the temporarily loosened sand. That ability made its way onto the researchers' robot in the form of a tip-based flow device that shoots air into the region just ahead of the growing end, enabling it to move into that area.

"The biggest challenge we found and what took the longest to solve was when we switched to horizontal burrowing, our robots would always surface," Naclerio said. Whereas gases or liquids evenly flow over and under a traveling symmetric object, he explained, in fluidized sand, the distribution of forces is not as balanced, and creates a significant lift force for the horizontally travelling robot. "It's much easier to push the sand up and out of the way than it is to compact it down."

To understand the robot's behavior and the largely unexplored physics of air-aided intrusions, the team took drag and lift measurements as a result of different angles of airflow into from the tip of a solid rod shoved horizontally into sand.

"Frictional force response in granular materials greatly differs from that of Newtonian fluids, as intruding into sand can compact and stress large swaths of terrain in the direction of motion due to high friction," said Andras Karsai, a graduate student researcher in Goldman's lab. "To mitigate this, a low-density fluid that lifts and pushes grains away from an intruder will often reduce the net frictional stress it has to overcome."

Unlike with gas or liquid, where a downward fluid jet would create lift for the travelling object, in sand the downward air flow reduced the lift forces and excavated the sand below the robot's growing tip. This, combined with inspiration from the sandfish lizard, whose wedge-shaped head favors downward movement, allowed the researchers to modulate the resisting forces and keep the robot moving horizontally without rising out of the sand.

A small, exploratory, soft robot such as this has a variety of applications where shallow burrowing through dry granular media is needed, such as soil sampling, underground installation of utilities and erosion control. Tip extension enables changes in direction, while also allowing the body of the robot to modulate how firmly anchored it is in the medium -- control that could become useful for exploration in low gravity environments. In fact, the team is working on a project with NASA to develop burrowing for the moon or even more distant bodies, like Enceladus, a moon of Jupiter.

"We believe burrowing has the potential to open new avenues and enable new capabilities for extraterrestrial robotics," Hawkes said.

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Research for this paper was conducted also by Mason Murray-Cooper, Yasemin Ozkan-Aydin and Enes Aydin at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Underwater robot offers new insight into mid-ocean "twilight zone"

WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION

Research News

 

IMAGE: MESOBOT, AN UNDERWATER ROBOT CAPABLE OF TRACKING AND RECORDING HIGH-RESOLUTION IMAGES OF SLOW-MOVING AND FRAGILE ZOOPLANKTON, GELATINOUS ANIMALS, AND PARTICLES, IS PROVIDING RESEARCHERS WITH DEEPER INSIGHT INTO THE VAST MID-OCEAN... view more 

CREDIT: EVAN KOVACS/©WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION

An innovative underwater robot known as Mesobot is providing researchers with deeper insight into the vast mid-ocean region known as the "twilight zone." Capable of tracking and recording high-resolution images of slow-moving and fragile zooplankton, gelatinous animals, and particles, Mesobot greatly expands scientists' ability to observe creatures in their mesopelagic habitat with minimal disturbance. This advance in engineering will enable greater understanding of the role these creatures play in transporting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to the deep sea, as well as how commercial exploitation of twilight zone fisheries might affect the marine ecosystem.

In a paper published June 16 in Science Robotics, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) senior scientist Dana Yoerger presents Mesobot as a versatile vehicle for achieving a number of science objectives in the twilight zone.

"Mesobot was conceived to complement and fill important gaps not served by existing technologies and platforms," said Yoerger. "We expect that Mesobot will emerge as a vital tool for observing midwater organisms for extended periods, as well as rapidly identifying species observed from vessel biosonars. Because Mesobot can survey, track, and record compelling imagery, we hope to reveal previously unknown behaviors, species interactions, morphological structures, and the use of bioluminescence."

Co-authored by research scientists and engineers from WHOI, MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute), and Stanford University, the paper outlines the robot's success in autonomously tracking two gelatinous marine creatures during a 2019 research cruise in Monterey Bay. High-definition video revealed a "dinner plate" jellyfish "ramming" a siphonophore, which narrowly escaped the jelly's venomous tentacles. Mesobot also recorded a 30-minute video of a giant larvacean, which appears to be nearly motionless but is actually riding internal waves that rise and fall 6 meters (20 feet). These observations represent the first time that a self-guided robot has tracked these small, clear creatures as they move through the water column like a "parcel of water," said Yoerger.

"Mesobot has the potential to change how we observe animals moving through space and time in a way that we've never been able to do before," said Kakani Katija, MBARI principal engineer. "As we continue to develop and improve on the vehicle, we hope to observe many other mysterious and captivating animals in the midwaters of the ocean, including the construction and disposal of carbon-rich giant larvacean 'snot palaces.'"

Packaged in an hydrodynamically efficient yellow case, the hybrid robot is outfitted with a suite of oceanographic and acoustic survey sensors. It may be piloted remotely through a fiberoptic cable attached to a ship or released from its tether to follow pre-programmed missions or autonomously track a target at depths up to 1,000 meters (3,300 feet). This autonomous capability will one day enable Mesobot to follow a target animal for over 24 hours without human intervention, which is enough time to observe its migration from the midwater twilight zone to the surface and back. Future studies with Mesobot could provide researchers with valuable insight into animal behavior during diel vertical migration, known as "the greatest migration on Earth" because of the vast number and diversity of creatures that undertake it each night.

"By leveraging the data we've collected using Mesobot, and other data that we've been curating for 30-plus years at MBARI, we hope to integrate smarter algorithms on the vehicle that uses artificial intelligence to discover, continuously track, and observe enigmatic animals and other objects in the deep sea," Kakani said.

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The design, construction, and initial testing for Mesobot was funded by the U.S. NSF program for Ocean Technology and Interdisciplinary Coordination (OTIC). The research in this paper was supported by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and WHOI's Ocean Twilight Zone (OTZ) Project, funded as part of The Audacious Project housed at TED.

See more Mesobot here:

https://youtu.be/5hjZtBvsmVY

About Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is a private, non-profit organization on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, dedicated to marine research, engineering, and higher education. Established in 1930, its primary mission is to understand the ocean and its interaction with the Earth as a whole, and to communicate an understanding of the ocean's role in the changing global environment. WHOI's pioneering discoveries stem from an ideal combination of science and engineering--one that has made it one of the most trusted and technically advanced leaders in basic and applied ocean research and exploration anywhere. WHOI is known for its multidisciplinary approach, superior ship operations, and unparalleled deep-sea robotics capabilities. We play a leading role in ocean observation and operate the most extensive suite of data-gathering platforms in the world. Top scientists, engineers, and students collaborate on more than 800 concurrent projects worldwide--both above and below the waves--pushing the boundaries of knowledge and possibility. For more information, please visit http://www.whoi.edu

About MBARI

MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute) is a private non-profit oceanographic research center founded by David Packard in 1987. Shortly after he funded the creation of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Packard recognized the need for a separate research institution focused on developing innovative technologies for exploring and understanding the ocean. MBARI partners with the Aquarium to educate the public and inspire ocean conservation and works to share the knowledge and solutions gained with the global science and conservation community.

Key takeaways:

• Mesobot is an underwater robot capable of capturing high-resolution images and oceanographic data in the mid-ocean known as the "twilight zone," located approximately 200-1,000 meters (600-3,300 feet) below the surface.
• Designed to minimize disturbance of fragile twilight zone creatures, Mesobot features red lights (which most mid-ocean creatures cannot see) and low-power thrusters that allow it to hover in place and track animals as they ride internal waves.
• Mesobot is a hybrid vehicle, meaning it can be piloted remotely through a fiberoptic cable attached to a ship, or released from its tether to follow pre-programmed missions or autonomously track a target.
• In tests, Mesobot successfully tracked two gelatinous animals without human intervention, recording valuable video of predation and filter-feeding behavior.
• The data and imagery collected by Mesobot will allow scientists to study a relatively unknown part of the ocean and the creatures that live there, as well as how commercial exploitation of twilight zone fisheries might affect the marine ecosystem.
• Mesobot will enable greater understanding of the "biological carbon pump," in which animals transport carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to the deep sea.

Alternate-day intermittent fasting leads to less fat loss than traditional daily energy restriction

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE

Research News

 

An alternate-day intermittent fasting schedule offered less fat-reducing benefits than a matched "traditional" diet that restricts daily energy intake, according to a new, 3-week randomized trial involving 36 participants. The study, which is one of the first to tease apart the effects of fasting and daily energy restriction in lean individuals, indicates that alternate-day fasting may offer no fasting-specific health or metabolic benefits over a standard daily diet. However, the authors caution that longer studies with larger groups are needed. Intermittent fasting, which involves cycling through voluntary fasting and non-fasting periods, has become one of the most popular approaches to losing weight. There are many different intermittent fasting schedules, ranging from fasting for part of each day to the popular 5:2 diet (eating 5 days a week and fasting 2 days) to alternate-day fasting (eating one day, fasting the next). Many participants report that fasting schedules are relatively easy to adopt and stick by, and theories suggest that fasting can trigger beneficial changes in metabolism that encourage weight loss. However, few studies have examined the fasting-specific effects of intermittent fasting or compared its effects to diets that simply reduce daily net calories. Iain Templeman and colleagues recruited 36 lean participants and split them into 3 groups of 12, who followed different diets for 3 weeks. The first group followed a restricted, alternate-day fasting diet (eating 150% of their habitual daily energy intake only every other day), the second group followed an energy-matched non-fasting diet with 75% daily energy intake, and the last group followed an alternate-day fasting diet with no restriction in energy intake (200% daily energy intake every other day). After 3 weeks, the second group showed the greatest losses of both weight and fat, with an average fat loss of 1.57 kg. Meanwhile, the first group of alternate-day fasters lost weight but lost fat less effectively (an average of .74 kg), and the last group showed no significant drops in either weight or fat. Further studies showed there were no key differences in cardiometabolic health, metabolic molecules, or gene expression in fat cells between the 3 groups. Templeman et al. noted that the alternate-day fasters tended to be less active than before starting the diet, hinting at one factor that may have impacted fat loss. The authors speculate that individuals considering alternate-day fasting should make sure to include opportunities for physical activity to maintain their energy expenditure.

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How sex trafficking trauma affects the way its survivors parent

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY'S MAILMAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Research News

 

A study of young immigrant mothers who are survivors of sex trafficking found that the trauma affected how they parented: it made them overprotective parents in a world perceived to be unsafe, it fueled emotional withdrawal when struggling with stress and mental health symptoms, and was a barrier to building confidence as mothers. Yet, they coped with such challenges finding meaning in the birth of their child and through social support and faith.

Results of the community-based participatory research study by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Copenhagen University, and ECPAT-USA (End Child Prostitution and Trafficking-USA) appear in the journal PLOS One.

The researchers interviewed 14 young women (20-36 years) from Mexico and Central America who were survivors of sex trafficking to understand the effect of that experience on their relationship with their pre-school children. Recruited through the nonprofit Sanctuary for Families, participants had been forced to enter sex trafficking at an average age of 19 years, with one-third trafficked as minors. Most of these women experienced PTSD symptoms, despite having escaped their victimization 2 to 10 years earlier.

TRAUMA'S SCARS

The study found that many sex trafficking survivors questioned their ability to be "good mothers." This negative self-perception was linked to participants' experiences of disempowerment from being trafficked for sex. Most noted that their avoidant behaviors and generalized fear often led to overprotecting their young children and foregoing opportunities for socialization with other children or adults. When children are overprotected, their independence may be discouraged, hindering the development of autonomy and increasing the risk for developing anxiety and separation issues. Conversely, mothers also discussed how moments of sadness and emotional numbness lead them to feel emotionally disconnected from their children, decreasing their ability to respond to their young children's emotional needs in moments of stress.

Mothers' challenges to be emotionally present during stressful moments appeared to result from the accumulation of stressors before, during, and after victimization: neglect and abuse, forced separation from their older children, post-trafficking poverty, and migration-related stressors, rather than directly from the trafficking experiences. Fears of deportation and limited job options appeared to further contribute to their become stay-at-home mothers and engaging in overprotective parenting.

FINDING MEANING IN MOTHERHOOD

Despite these challenges, mothers found ways to cope--by finding meaning in the birth of their child and using social support and faith to build confidence. All participants regarded their children as the main reason for living, for working towards a better future. Many reported experiencing strong connections to their children, with moments of joy and playfulness. The study showed how the process of reestablishing feelings of happiness and trust through motherhood can help women find meaning in life, increasing their resilience and ability to cope with the consequences of traumatic experiences. Early childhood programs appeared to help mothers experience empowerment and develop stronger bonds with their children.

"We can support mothers' resiliency through government policies and programs aimed at reducing daily stressors and including mental health services, job and life skills training, and stable housing. These will facilitate women to be able to process their pain, while building confidence in their ability to be loving mothers," says first author Maria Martí Castañer, PhD, who carried out the research while a post-doctoral researcher at the Columbia Mailman School and is now at the Center for Migration, Ethnicity, and Health at the University of Copenhagen.

POLICY SOLUTIONS

The researchers propose several policies to support mothers who are survivors of sex trafficking. These include pre and postnatal mental health and psychosocial support, focusing on parenting-related changes; the provision of parenting and early childhood education programs to facilitate the development of healthier parent-child relationships; measures that improve living conditions and enhance long-term opportunities to regain independence and confidence to accelerate their recovery from trauma. The latter might include English language and literacy as well as job skills. These can help women re-construct their new identity in addition to supporting their role as mothers.

Anti-trafficking agencies, nonprofit organizations working with sex trafficking survivors, and healthcare providers involved in prenatal and child health care can play a key role in identifying women (and older adolescents) in need, and in encouraging their referral to programs that offering psychosocial, parenting, and early childhood support and education.

"Our project highlights the unique opportunities for partnership across legal and public health disciplines. Ultimately the wellbeing of these young migrant women and their children benefits from collaboration between legal and healthcare services. Such collaborations can help inform both disciplines and thus facilitate the provision of effective and more holistic care," senior author Manuela Orjuela-Grimm, MD, assistant professor of epidemiology and pediatrics says.

BACKGROUND ON SEX TRAFFICKING

According to estimates from the International Labor Organization, there are approximately 4.5 million victims of sexual exploitation at any given time, and 98 percent are estimated to be women or girls. An estimated that 15,000-50,000 people are trafficked annually in the U.S.

Central American women are trafficked en route to the U.S. with smugglers sometimes pass them on to traffickers. Others, especially women from Mexico, are seduced by young men who convince them with promises of a new life in new home towns only to place them in trafficking with threats of retaliation to their families.

Women from Mexico and Central America typically are sold for 15-minute sex acts between 15-20 times per day on a weekday and 25-35 times per day on the weekend. When women fail to meet their quota, their traffickers frequently beat, starve, and threaten them. Survivors of sex trafficking have high rates of comorbid mental health disorders and health problems.

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Co-authors include Rachel Fowler, Cassie Landers, and Manuela Orjuela-Grimm at Columbia Mailman, and Lori Cohen previously the legal director at Sanctuary for Families and now directing ECPAT-USA. The authors wish to acknowledge the critical role played by Helena Duch while she was at Columbia.

This project was funded through discretionary funds from the New York State Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.