It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, August 09, 2021
SCARY
Ancient, newly identified ‘mammoth weevil’ used huge ‘trunk’ to fight for mates
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Oregon State University research has identified a 100-million-year-old weevil unlike any other known fossilized or living weevil.
George Poinar Jr., an international expert in using plant and animal life forms preserved in amber to learn about the biology and ecology of the distant past, calls the male specimen a “mammoth weevil” because of its “monstrous trunk” – also known as the weevil’s rostrum or beak.
Poinar said Rhamphophorus legalovii, as the long-bodied weevil fossil is known scientifically, probably wielded its trunk as a weapon while in combat with other males over females.
Encased in Burmese amber, the specimen represents a new tribe, genus and species. Rhamphophorus derives from a pair of Greek words meaning “curving beak” and “to bear,” and legalovii honors Russian weevil specialist Andrei A. Legalov.
“Entomologists will be discussing the systematic placement of this fossil for years since it is so bizarre,” said Poinar, who has a courtesy appointment in the OSU College of Science.
Findings were published in Cretaceous Research.
There are nearly 100,000 known species of weevils – small, plant-eating beetles known for their elongated snouts. Well-known North American species are the boll weevil that attacks cotton, the alfalfa weevil and the strawberry root weevil.
Weevils with straight antennae are categorized as primitive weevils, and those whose antennae feature an elbow-like bend are known as true weevils; Rhamphophorus is a primitive weevil with an 11-segment antenna and Poinar placed it in the Nemonychidae family, whose members are known as “pine flower weevils.”
“The story of the family’s ancient history is told by species in Mesozoic amber deposits, although no extinct or extant species with such elongated rostrums are known,” he said. “The larvae and adults of many nemonychids eat pollen from developing male cones of pines and other conifers.”
The newly identified weevil genus and species belongs to the sub-family Cimberidinae, consisting of particularly long-nosed weevils whose physical characteristics are developed like highly specialized tools. Of the 70 known species of Cimberidinae, many are sexually dimorphic – males and females look quite different from one another. Thus the female of Rhamphophorusprobably had a much shorter rostrum.
The new weevil, which likely lived on the ground rather than in trees, is 5.5 millimeters long, almost half of which is head and rostrum. The amber in which it is preserved came from the Noije Bum 2001 Summit Site mine first excavated in Myanmar’s Hukawng Valley in 2001.
“Rhamphophorushad extended middle foot segments that might have increased its ability to grasp plant surfaces or better reach its foes during fights for females,” Poinar said. “It would be interesting to know if females also had this feature.”
Injuries suffered by Rhamphophorus suggest it may have been doing battle with another male over a female just before it fell into the resin and was preserved.
“Rhamphophorus shows many features unknown on living or extinct fossil weevils,” Poinar said. “It shows how an adult beetle can become so specialized that even its family position can be questioned. Certainly lifestyle in conjunction with microhabitat influenced the evolutionary development of this weevil, which gives us an exciting glimpse of morphological diversity in mid-Cretaceous weevils.”
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JOURNAL
Cretaceous Research
DOI
10.1016/j.cretres.2021.104948
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Experimental study
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
Animals
ARTICLE TITLE
A new tribe, genus and species of weevil, Rhamphophorus legalovii gen. et sp. nov., (Coleoptera, Nemonychidae, Rhamphophorini tribe nov.) in Burmese amber
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
8-Jul-2021
TOO LATE ITS HERE AND NOW
Paleoclimatologist lead author on IPCC global climate change report
Team contributes to major report by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, forming scientific underpinnings for negotiations to limit carbon emissions worldwide
IMAGE: NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY REGENTS’ PROFESSOR DARRELL KAUFMAN EXAMINES A LAKE SEDIMENT CORE HE AND HIS STUDENTS RECENTLY COLLECTED FROM CENTRAL ALASKA.view more
CREDIT: NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC) has just released its latest major assessment report on global climate change, approved by the world’s governments.
Climate Change 2021: Physical Science Basis is the Working Group I contribution to the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). The Working Group comprises more than 200 scientists from 66 countries who assessed the current scientific understanding of climate change. Northern Arizona University Regents’ Professor Darrell Kaufman of the School of Earth and Sustainability is a lead author of the report, which will form the scientific underpinnings for negotiations with governments later this year to limit global carbon emissions.
The IPCC report is the world’s most comprehensive and authoritative source of scientific information on understanding and responding to climate change. The report is based on a review of many thousands of scientific papers and is scrutinized by hundreds of scientists from around the world. Since the Fifth Assessment Report was published in 2013, new evidence shows how much humans are influencing the climate system, and how society’s actions to limit greenhouse gas emissions will determine the future of Earth’s climate.
“The contributions of Dr. Kaufman and his team to the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, which is being played out on the world’s stage, speak to NAU’s stature as a research university as well as to the prominence of each of these individual scientists. As we continue to build on our strong legacy of environmental and climate science research, our paleoclimatologists have again proven that the value of this work lies in its global impact on public policy—ultimately affecting the quality of life for all,” NAU President José Luis Cruz Rivera said.
Kaufman is a lead author on the chapter, “The changing state of the climate system,” which features information about natural climate variability over a wide range of time scales. “My role in the new report focused on changes in the climate system prior to industrialization, or ‘paleoclimate’, as context for understanding what’s happening now and what could happen in the future,” Kaufman said.
He also co-authored the report’s FAQs and summary documents, including the “Summary for policy makers,” which was subjected to an intense line-by-line approval process involving dialogue between the authors and delegates from more than 100 countries. “It was a lot of work, but super gratifying to have the opportunity to carry it through to the approval step. That’s where authors and governments collaborated to craft a summary that’s timely and most helpful for policy decisions.”
The IPCC represents the world’s scientific community by periodically reporting on the state of knowledge about climate change, following an extensive and transparent review process by experts and governments around the world to independently assess all published information and to summarize the most relevant advances in climate science.
Recent publications by Kaufman and other NAU paleoclimate scientists were featured prominently in the report. The paleoclimate team includes professor R. Scott Anderson, associate professor Nicholas McKay, assistant professor of practice John Fegyveresi and assistant research professors Michael Erb and Cody Routson, as well as their postdoctoral researchers, graduate and undergraduate students. They study how the climate system changes on time scales of decades to many thousands of years, as it responds to both natural and human-caused forcings.
“Understanding environmental change and its current trajectory requires a long-term perspective of the natural variability in the Earth system,” he said. “We conduct our field-oriented research in Arizona, Colorado, Alaska, Antarctica and New Zealand. In the lab, we analyze a variety of biological and physical properties of sediment cores that we collect from lakes, and ice cores from polar ice sheets. And in collaboration with our colleagues worldwide, we are developing major global datasets of long-term climate to better quantify past changes and to compare them with the output of Earth system models.
Key NAU studies inform IPCC assessment
Several major NAU research projects, funded chiefly through grants from the National Science Foundation, have been aimed at understanding the causes and effects of natural climate variability. The scientists’ recent work clarifies how unusual recent global warming has been compared to natural climate fluctuations of the past.
Evidence from warmer periods that occurred prior to industrialization, generated by NAU studies, was also used in the report to clarify how climate change will play out over multiple centuries and millennia, as polar ice, deep ocean circulation and other slow-moving features of the climate system adjust to a warmer world.
Key NAU studies that contributed to the upcoming IPCC report include the following:
Over the past 150 years, global warming has more than undone the global cooling that occurred over the past six millennia, according to a major study published in 2020 in Nature Research’s Scientific Data. The findings show that the millennial-scale global cooling began approximately 6,500 years ago when the long-term average global temperature topped out at around 0.7°C warmer than the mid-19th century. Since then, accelerating greenhouse gas emissions have contributed to global average temperatures that are now surpassing 1°C above the mid-19th century. Kaufman led this study, with McKay as co-author, along with collaborators Routson and Erb. The team worked with scientists from research institutions all over the world to reconstruct the global average temperature over the Holocene Epoch—the period following the Ice Age and beginning about 12,000 years ago. (See related story.)
In 2020, NAU doctoral candidate Ellie Broadman led a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Working with Kaufman and four noted British scientists, Broadman and the team compiled a new record of hydroclimatic change in the past 10,000 years in Arctic Alaska, revealing that periods of reduced sea ice result in isotopically heavier precipitation derived from proximal Arctic moisture sources. The researchers supported their findings about this systematic relationship through isotope-enabled model simulations and a compilation of regional paleoclimate records. (See related story.)
Also in 2020, an international group of 93 paleoclimate scientists from 23 countries—led by Kaufman, McKay, Routson and Erb—published a set of records in Scientific Data representing the most comprehensive paleoclimate data ever compiled for the past 12,000 years, compressing 1,319 data records based on samples taken from 679 sites globally. At each site, researchers analyzed ecological, geochemical and biophysical evidence from both marine and terrestrial archives, such as lake deposits, marine sediments, peat and glacier ice, to infer past temperature changes. Countless scientists working around the world over many decades conducted the basic research contributing to the global database.
In 2019, Routson led the paleoclimate team in a study published in Natureusing climate records dating back thousands of years to demonstrate that warming in the Arctic is associated with fewer storms and increased aridity in a huge swath of the Northern Hemisphere, including most of the continental United States. The scientists showed that this pattern could lead to dramatic effects on agriculture and population centers throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. (See related story.)
According to a 2016 study, global warming began in the Arctic and tropical oceans before thermometers were widespread enough to record the early signal. Kaufman andMcKay, along with scientists from around the world, discovered that human-caused global warming began in the mid-1800s. The NAU scientists, who co-authored the study published in Nature, examined the climate variation found in corals, ice cores, tree rings and the changing chemistry of stalagmites in caves worldwide. (See related story.)
Several other NAU scientists have served on IPCC working groups and/or contributed research to previous IPCC reports as well, including Regents’ Professor Scott Goetz, professor Kevin Gurney, Regents’ Professor Bruce Hungate, professor Yiqi Luo, Regents’ Professor Michelle Mack, and Regents’ Professor Ted Schuur. All NAU scientists’ efforts for the IPCC are voluntary.
About Northern Arizona University
Northern Arizona University is a higher-research institution providing exceptional educational opportunities in Arizona and beyond. NAU delivers a student-centered experience to its nearly 30,000 students in Flagstaff, statewide and online through rigorous academic programs in a supportive, inclusive and diverse environment. Dedicated, world-renowned faculty help ensure students achieve academic excellence, experience personal growth, have meaningful research opportunities and are positioned for personal and professional success.
*Note to reporters: The embargo date of Aug. 9 assumes that the report will be approved by the world’s governments prior to that date. Before Aug. 9, please direct media inquiries to the IPCC, which welcomes and supports media reports about its work and outcomes of its assessments The IPCC media office invites journalists to sign up for embargoed materials prior to the Aug. 9 press conference. For further information, photos and videos, visit the Media Contacts page on the IPCC website: https://www.ipcc.ch/news/media-contacts/. Once the embargo has been lifted, NAU Regents' Professor Darrell Kaufman is available to discuss his paleoclimate research and information in the report related to changes in the climate system prior to industrialization.
FINALLY, AFTER ALL THE BALLYHOO
Graphene binds drugs which kill bacteria on medical implants
IMAGE: USNIC ACID (YELLOW) IS INTEGRATED IN AND RELEASED FROM THE IMPLANT’S GRAPHENE COATING. THE USNIC ACID KILLS THE BACTERIA (GREEN) AND THEREBY PREVENTS THEM FROM FORMING INFECTIOUS BIOFILMS ON THE SURFACE.view more
CREDIT: YEN STRANDQVIST/CHALMERS UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
Bacterial infections relating to medical implants place a huge burden on healthcare and cause great suffering to patients worldwide. Now, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have developed a new method to prevent such infections, by covering a graphene-based material with bactericidal molecules.
“Through our research, we have succeeded in binding water-insoluble antibacterial molecules to the graphene, and having the molecules release in a controlled, continuous manner from the material” says Santosh Pandit, researcher at the Department of Biology and Biological Engineering at Chalmers, and first author of the study which was recently published in Scientific Reports.
“This is an essential requirement for the method to work. The way in which we bind the active molecules to the graphene is also very simple, and could be easily integrated into industrial processes”.
Certain bacteria can form impenetrable surface layers, or ‘biofilms’, on surgical implants, such as dental and other orthopaedic implants, and represent a major problem for healthcare globally. Biofilms are more resistant than other bacteria, and the infections are therefore often difficult to treat, leading to great suffering for patients, and in the worst cases, necessitating removal or replacement of the implants. In addition to the effects on patients, this entails large costs for healthcare providers.
Graphene is suitable as an attachment material There are a variety of water-insoluble, or hydrophobic, drugs and molecules that can be used for their antibacterial properties. But in order for them to be used in the body, they must be attached to a material, which can be difficult and labour intensive to manufacture.
“Graphene offers great potential here for interaction with hydrophobic molecules or drugs, and when we created our new material, we made use of these properties. The process of binding the antibacterial molecules takes place with the help of ultrasound,” says Santosh Pandit.
In the study, the graphene material was covered with usnic acid, which is extracted from lichens, for example fruticose lichen. Previous research has shown that usnic acid has good bactericidal properties. It works by preventing bacteria from forming nucleic acids, especially inhibiting of RNA synthesis, and thus blocking protein production in the cell.
Simple method paves way for future drugs Usnic acid was tested for its resistance to the pathogenic bacteria Staphylococcus aureus and Staphylococcus epidermidis, two common culprits for biofilm formation on medical implants. The researchers’ new material displayed a number of promising properties. In addition to successful results for integrating the usnic acid into the surface of the graphene material, they also observed that the usnic acid molecules were released in a controlled and continuous manner, thus preventing the formation of biofilms on the surface.
“Even more importantly, our results show that the method for binding the hydrophobic molecules to graphene is simple. It paves the way for more effective antibacterial protection of biomedical products in the future. We are now planning trials where we will explore binding other hydrophobic molecules and drugs with even greater potential to treat or prevent various clinical infections,” says Santosh Pandit.
The research project is run by Professor Ivan Mijakovic's group at the Department of Biology and Biotechnology at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. It is funded by Formas and the Swedish Research Council.
Read about previous results from the research group
For more information, please contact Santosh Pandit, Department of Biology and Biological Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden +46 729 48 40 11, pandit@chalmers.se
JOURNAL
Scientific Reports
DOI
doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-89452-5
ARTICLE TITLE
Sustained release of usnic acid from graphene coatings ensures long term antibiotic film protection
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
10-May-2021
How to increase vaccination rates among Black people in Canada
To increase vaccination rates among Black people who are at high risk of COVID-19, employing an Afrocentric health-promotion approach that is centred on respecting patients' values and perspectives can help, argue authors in a commentary published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.210949.
"An Afrocentric approach, which acknowledges that health care experiences of Black people are affected by historical and present-day anti-Black racism, can be combined with communication frameworks to counsel vaccine-hesitant patients," writes Dr. Onye Nnorom, a family physician and assistant professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, and President of the Black Physicians' Association of Ontario, with coauthors.
The authors are a team of Black female clinicians, researchers, nurses and community health leaders who have led COVID-19 vaccination efforts in Black communities.
Despite the higher risks of infection and serious complications, only 56.6% of Black Canadians reported willingness to receive the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, compared with 76.9% of the overall population.
To combat vaccine hesitancy, which has roots in medical distrust and structural racism, the authors discuss how Afrocentric approaches and the LEAPS of care counselling framework have been successful in increasing influenza and COVID-19 vaccination rates in Black communities.
The LEAPS of care framework encourages providers to Listen and Learn more about the patients' lived experiences; Empower and Engage patients by respecting their own self-determination and perspectives; Ask and Acknowledge patients' concerns and previous health care encounters where they may have experienced racism; Paraphrase and Provide vaccine recommendations; Support and Spark community partnerships to respectfully overcome barriers to vaccination and support patients navigating a complex system.
"Black patients experience disrespectful discourse with providers because of anti-Black racism and biases in health care. Our position is that in every encounter, patients should feel respected. Please respect Black patients' values, views and concerns when it comes to the vaccine. That's how we can rebuild trust, and that is the key message from this framework," says Dr. Nnorom.
Black-led community partnerships can be very effective at helping increase vaccination rates: vaccine clinics held in a hard-hit hotspot part of Toronto from April to May 2021 increased vaccine uptake from 5.5% to 56.3%.
"Confidence in the vaccines will not improve if Black communities are told that they are at high risk and should continue to socially distance, while they are also excluded from vaccine priority lists or are not provided greater access to vaccines," write the authors. "Providers should offer accurate, current information to high-risk Black patients about how to access vaccines, given the difficulties in keeping up with changing preregistration criteria at different sites."
"Increasing SARS-CoV-2 vaccination rates among Black people in Canada" is published August 9, 2021.
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JOURNAL
Canadian Medical Association Journal
DOI
10.1503/cmaj.210949
ARTICLE TITLE
Increasing SARS-CoV-2 vaccination rates among Black people in Canada
Inequities intensify effect of COVID-19 on ethnocultural communities
A new study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) sheds light on the impact of COVID-19 on ethnocultural community members living in vulnerable circumstances https://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.210131.
Researchers from the University of Alberta and the Multicultural Health Brokers Cooperative (MHBC) — community health workers of immigrant and refugee backgrounds serving diverse ethnocultural communities in Edmonton, Alberta — collaborated during the fall of 2020 to collect 773 stories of the impacts of COVID-19 and the efforts to mitigate it.
"We sought to understand how the challenges of COVID-19 are entangled with contextual factors at multiple levels, how families and communities are leveraging strengths and social capital to adapt, and the role of cultural brokers in managing the crisis," write co-leads Yvonne Chiu, co-executive director of MHBC, and Denise Campbell-Scherer, University of Alberta professor of family medicine, with coauthors.
The team found that COVID-19 destabilized family units and made it more time-consuming and resource-intensive for people to support their families. For many, finding appropriate information and support to help manage the impacts of the pandemic was also a major challenge. Financial, food and housing insecurity; precarious employment; job loss; lack of sick leave to allow self-isolation; low English literacy and other factors intensified the negative effects of COVID-19.
"The surge of COVID-19 in ethnocultural communities across North America, and the pandemic's destabilizing effect on health care systems, has highlighted the systemic structures that result in poorer health in ethnocultural communities," write the authors.
The study also shows how families and communities have leveraged strengths and social capital to adapt and highlight the important role of community health workers in helping people navigate health and social care systems.
"Cultural brokering and community social capital were key supports for people in [the COVID-19] crisis, and our findings can support policy and interventions that may reduce harm and support community resiliency," the authors conclude.
"Illuminating and mitigating the evolving impacts of COVID-19 on ethnocultural communities: a participatory action mixed-methods study"is published August 9, 2021.
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JOURNAL
Canadian Medical Association Journal
DOI
10.1503/cmaj.210131
ARTICLE TITLE
Illuminating and mitigating the evolving impacts of COVID-19 on ethnocultural communities: a participatory action mixed-methods study
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
9-Aug-202
SYSTEMIC RACIST MEDICAL PRACTISE
Study links economic mobility to racial mortality gaps
A new study suggests structural racism measured by the racial economic mobility gap between Black and White persons with a similar parental income (as an indicator of similar childhood socioeconomic status) is strongly associated with Black-White disparities in mortality in the United States, both in a recent birth cohort and in all ages combined. These findings, appearing in Cancer Epidemiology, suggest that the effects of structural racism on mortality have persisted with a similar magnitude across generations in the past century.
Social inequalities and discriminatory policies by race/ethnicity, also collectively known as structural racism, is a major factor contributing to health disparities. Structural racism can adversely affect economic, social, service, and physical living environments leading to limited educational and job opportunities; lower income; poorer housing, transportation, and public safety; food insecurity; and limited health care.
This is one of the few studies to examine the association of structural racism to death from multiple specific causes. Investigators led by Farhad Islami, MD, PhD of the American Cancer Society, examined county-level data on economic mobility and death from all causes, heart diseases, cerebrovascular diseases, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), injury/violence, all malignant cancers, and 14 cancer types in all ages combined and on all-cause mortality in ages 30-39 years. Data for ages 30-39 years covered 69% of individuals in that age group nationally and for all ages combined covered 82% to 90% of the U.S. population.
“Although more research is needed to identify factors mediating these associations and appropriate interventions to mitigate them, equitable and broad implementation of proven interventions to increase health equity, such as equitable access to care and preventive measures can help reduce health disparities,” said Dr. Islami.
Findings show that in the U.S., death rates are higher among non-Hispanic Black (Black) persons than among non-Hispanic White (White) persons. In ages 30-39 years, a one percentile increase in the economic mobility gap was associated with a 6.8% increase in the Black-White mortality gap among males and a 10.7% increase among females, based on data from 471 counties.
In all ages combined, the corresponding percentages based on data from 1,572 counties were 10.2% among males and 14.8% among females, equivalent to an increase of 18.4 and 14.0 deaths per 100,000 in the mortality gap, respectively. Similarly, strong associations between economic mobility gap and mortality gap in all ages were found for major causes of death, notably for potentially preventable conditions, including COPD, injury/violence, and cancers of the lung, liver, and cervix.
“Dismantling structural racism will require greater efforts to implement meaningful institutional changes, with broad societal engagement to create equitable local, state, and federal policies,” write the authors. “Results of this study could help advocate for and inform public policies to improve equity and establish a benchmark by which to evaluate progress in reducing structural racism and its adverse health effects.”
Article: Islami F, Fedewa SA, Thomson B, Nogueira L, Yabroff R, Jemal A. Association between disparities in intergenerational economic mobility and cause-specific mortality among Black and White persons in the United States. Cancer Epidemiology. doi: 10.1016/j.canep.2021.101998.
JOURNAL
Cancer Epidemiology
DOI
10.1016/j.canep.2021.101998
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Data/statistical analysis
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
People
ARTICLE TITLE
Association between disparities in intergenerational economic mobility and cause-specific mortality among Black and White persons in the United States
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
4-Aug-2021
Attachment style secures your love during lockdowns
What constitutes good relationship quality in times of crisis
Are there specific variables determining which relationships make it through times of crisis? Researchers led by Stephanie Eder from the University of Vienna set out to answer this question during the COVID-19 pandemic. 313 participants who were in a romantic relationship repeatedly completed questionnaires during the "first wave" of the COVID-19 pandemic. They filled in questionnaires assessing psychological characteristics, and answered questions with regards to their relationship and how the pandemic had affected their lives. Using machine-learning algorithms, the researchers identified predictors of having a high relationship quality during this time. So: What constitutes a "good" relationship during a lockdown?
The most important predictor was the so-called "Attachment style": Participants with a “secure” attachment tend to have a higher relationship quality than those with "anxious" or "avoidant" attachment styles. This psychological predictor by far trumps external factors. However, predicting changes in relationship quality over the course of the lockdowns is harder, where the researchers could not identify predictive variables.
The results of this study highlight the role of attachment style even in adult relationships. The study is the first to show the role of attachment style for romantic relationship quality during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Publication in "Frontiers in Psychology": Eder, S. J., Nicholson, A., Stefanczyk M., Pieniak, M., Martínez-Molina, J., Pešout Ondra, Binter, J., Smela, P., Scharnowski, F., Steyrl, D. (2021). Securing Your Relationship: Quality of Intimate Relationships During the COVID-19 Pandemic Can Be Predicted by Attachment Style. In: Frontiers in Psychology (12); DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.647956
Related studies on psychological aspects of the pandemic via the "Open Science Framework": Eder, S. J., Stefańczyk, M., Pieniak, M., Molina, J. M., Pešout, O., Binter, J., … Nicholson, A. (2021). Predicting interpersonal dynamics during the COVID-19 pandemic using machine learning: A cross-national longitudinal study. Verfügbar unter: osf.io/db4px
JOURNAL
Frontiers in Psychology
DOI
10.3389/fpsyg.2021.647956
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Survey
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
People
ARTICLE TITLE
Securing Your Relationship: Quality of Intimate Relationships During the COVID-19 Pandemic Can Be Predicted by Attachment Style
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
20-Jul-2021
Disclaimer: AAAS a
Tick tock in the brain: Chinese scientists provide molecular insights into primate hippocampal aging
IMAGE: DANGEROUS PROTEIN AGGREGATES (AMYLOID-BETA) ACCUMULATE IN THE AGED MONKEY HIPPOCAMPUS.view more
CREDIT: GUANGHUI LIU, INSTITUTE OF ZOOLOGY, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE
Deep inside our brain is a region called the hippocampus. It plays a crucial role in learning and memory, and its progressive deterioration with age is functionally linked to a variety of human neurodegenerative diseases. But what drives it down the path of aging?
The hippocampus is a complex structure with a highly heterogeneous cell composition, so it is difficult to accurately reveal the molecular regulatory networks of various cell types contributing to the aging process with traditional techniques. In addition, due to the ethical restrictions, it is difficult to obtain disease-free human brain tissues of both young and old ages. All these factors limited our understanding of the aging mechanism in the human hippocampus, let alone the development of therapeutic interventions.
Using brain tissues from non-human primates (NHPs), the ideal model to mimic human hippocampal aging, scientists from the Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Xuanwu Hospital Capital Medical University have worked jointly and established the first single-nucleus transcriptomic landscape of primate hippocampal aging, revealed the molecular mechanism of its functional deterioration with age, and provided a valuable resource for the identification of new diagnostic biomarkers and potential therapeutic targets for interventions against hippocampal aging and related human neurodegenerative disorders. This study entitled “Single-nucleus transcriptomic landscape of primate hippocampal aging” is published online in Protein & Cell on 2021.
In this study, the aged NHP hippocampus was found to demonstrate an array of aging-associated damages, including genomic and epigenomic instability, loss of proteostasis, as well as increased inflammation. To explore unique cellular and molecular characteristics underlying these age-related phenotypes, scientists generated a high-resolution single-nucleus transcriptomic landscape of hippocampal aging in NHPs. This landscape is composed of the gene expression profiles of 12 major hippocampal cell types, including neural stem cells, transient amplified progenitor cells (TAPC), immature neurons, excitatory/inhibitory neurons, oligodendrocytes, and microglia. Among them, TAPC and microglia were most affected by aging, as they manifested the most aging-related differentially expressed genes and those annotated as high-risk genes for neurodegenerative diseases. In-depth analysis of the dynamic gene-expression signatures of the stepwise neurogenesis trajectory revealed the impaired TAPC division and compromised neuronal function, underlying the early onset and later stage of dysregulation in adult hippocampal neurogenesis, respectively. This landscape also enabled us to to unveil contributing factors to a hostile microenvironment for neurogenesis in the aged hippocampus, namely the elevated pro-inflammatory responses in the aged microglia and oligodendrocyte, as well as dysregulated coagulation pathways in the aged endothelial cells. This may aggravate the loss of neurogenesis in the aged hippocampus, and may lead to the further decline of cognitive function and the occurrence of neurodegenerative diseases.
This study established, for the first time, a comprehensive single-nucleus transcriptomic atlas of primate hippocampal aging, which provides extensive resources for the illustration of age-related molecular signatures at the single-cell level, including changes of internal factors and external microenvironment that contribute collectively to the impaired ability for neuronal regeneration in the old hippocampus. It has deepened our understanding of age-related changes in hippocampal structure and function, and identified cell types and molecules that are most susceptible in the aging process of hippocampus, thus enabling the identification of potential diagnostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets for neurodegenerative diseases associated with hippocampal aging.
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All relevant data can be accessed via an interactive user-friendly webtool at Aging Atlas.
Reference: Hui Zhang et al (2021). Single-nucleus transcriptomic landscape of primate hippocampal aging, Protein & Cell DOI: 10.1007/s13238-021-00852-9
About Higher Education Press
Founded in May 1954, Higher Education Press Limited Company (HEP), affiliated with the Ministry of Education, is one of the earliest institutions committed to educational publishing after the establishment of P. R. China in 1949. After striving for six decades, HEP has developed into a major comprehensive publisher, with products in various forms and at different levels. Both for import and export, HEP has been striving to fill in the gap of domestic and foreign markets and meet the demand of global customers by collaborating with more than 200 partners throughout the world and selling products and services in 32 languages globally. Now, HEP ranks among China's top publishers in terms of copyright export volume and the world's top 50 largest publishing enterprises in terms of comprehensive strength.
The Frontiers Journals series published by HEP includes 28 English academic journals, covering the largest academic fields in China at present. Among the series, 13 have been indexed by SCI, 6 by EI, 2 by MEDLINE, 1 by A&HCI. HEP's academic monographs have won about 300 different kinds of publishing funds and awards both at home and abroad.
About Protein & Cell
Protein & Cell is a peer-reviewed international journal that publishes original research articles, reviews, and commentaries concerning latest development in multidisciplinary areas in biology and biomedicine, with an emphasis on protein and cell research. The subject areas include, but are not limited to biochemistry, biophysics, cell biology, oncology, genetics, immunology, microbiology, molecular biology, neuroscience, stem cell, plant science, protein science, structural biology and translational medicine. In addition, we also address the up-to- date research highlights, news and views, and commentaries covering research policies and funding trends in China. The recent impact factor of Protein & Cell is 10.164.
DOI
10.1007/s13238-021-00852-9
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Experimental study
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
Animal tissue samples
ARTICLE TITLE
Single-nucleus transcriptomic landscape of primate hippocampal aging
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
29-May-2021
Antibodies dovetail with protection, study in non-human primates shows
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)
A study by Kizzmekia Corbett et al. reports that antibody responses induced by the mRNA-1273 (Moderna) vaccine are a correlate of protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection in non-human primates. Defining immune correlates of protection is a critical aspect of vaccine development for extending the use of approved vaccines and facilitating the development of new candidate vaccines. Although immune responses associated with protection after primary infection have been assessed in non-human primates (NHPs), there are no studies to date that have specifically defined immune correlates of protection in upper and lower airways after vaccination with any COVID-19 vaccine approved for use in humans. To investigate the correlates of protection for such a vaccine, Kizzmekia Corbett et al. studied NHP immune responses to various doses of the mRNA-1273 vaccine. Using bronchoalveolar lavages and nasal washes, they determined that mRNA-1273 vaccination elicited spike protein-specific antibodies in the airways, which correlated with protection against SARS-CoV-2 replication in the lungs. Lower antibody levels were needed for reduction of viral replication in the lower airway than in the upper airway, the authors found, which may explain why the current crop of vaccines is more effective against severe lower tract disease. To determine if the antibodies generated from the vaccine are not only a correlate of protection but also the mechanism of protection, the researchers transferred NHP antibodies to Syrian hamsters and found they offered protection against SARS-CoV-2 challenge. The authors note that ongoing NHP studies will assess the durability of mRNA-1273-elicited protection against global SARS-CoV-2 variants.
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JOURNAL
Science
DOI
10.1126/science.abj0299
ARTICLE TITLE
Immune Correlates of Protection by mRNA-1273 against SARS-CoV-2 in Nonhuman Primates
