Despite the dangers, early humans risked life-threatening flintknapping injuries

Peer-Reviewed Publication

KENT STATE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: METIN EREN, PH.D., ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR AND DIRECTOR OF ARCHEOLOGY AT KENT STATE UNIVERSITY, DEMONSTRATES FLINTKNAPPING. view more 

CREDIT: KENT STATE UNIVERSITY

Every day, hundreds of stone artifact enthusiasts around the world sit down and begin striking a stone with special tools attempting to craft the perfect arrowhead or knife. This craft is known as flintknapping, and for most, it is a skilled hobby or art form that was thought to occasionally require bandages or stitches. However, new research suggests flintknapping is far more dangerous than previously understood. And for early humans who were without the modern conveniences of hospitals, antibiotics, treated water and band-aids, a more severe cut could get infected and be life-threatening.

“Knapping injuries were a risk past peoples were willing to take,” said Metin I. Eren, Ph.D., associate professor and director of archaeology at Kent State University.

Eren and his colleague Stephen Lycett, Ph.D., associate professor of anthropology at the University at Buffalo, both also flintknappers themselves, were curious about knapping injuries and risks. More than 10 years ago, they began discussing a study they wanted to conduct that involved surveying modern flintknappers and documenting their injuries systematically.

“We’ve known for a long while that flintknapping can result in injuries, but its never been quantitatively assessed on a widespread level,” Eren said. “What is the frequency of injury? How bad can flintknapping injuries get? For that sort of thing, you need a large sample size.”

They found Nicholas Gala, at the time a Kent State undergraduate anthropology major working in Kent State’s Experimental Archaeology Lab, who was looking for a senior honors thesis project. 

Gala conducted the survey that led to his first authored article in North America’s flagship archaeology research journal, American Antiquity. They received survey responses from 173 modern flintknappers who described their wide-ranging injuries. The article, “The Injury Costs of Knapping,” was also co-authored by Eren, Lycett and Michelle Bebber, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at Kent State.

“Nick’s work on this project has been fantastic,” Lycett said. “Successfully coordinating a number of different project elements always requires considerable skill and organization. The number of parts in this project, from coming up with a questionnaire to reaching out to many flintknappers and then collating and thinking about all the data, was a difficult task.”

Gala earned his Bachelor of Science in Anthropology at Kent State in 2022 and is now pursuing a master’s degree at the University of Tulsa, where he received two fellowships and is currently studying lithic technology.

Flintknapping and Injuries

Flintknapping is the method of breaking, flaking and shaping stone tools, such as points for arrow tips or sharp blades for an axe or knife. Archaeological evidence for knapping goes back more than 3 million years.

“People like to say, ‘You are going to cut yourself while learning to flint knap, even if you are an expert flintknapper,’ so we wanted to know how dangerous it actually is,” Gala said. “What are the most severe injuries that people have? How can we relate that to past people?”

The researchers learned that knapping is far more dangerous than they previously imagined. Among some of the most severe injuries reported by flintknappers included running a flake across their bone like a wood planar, cuts deep into the periosteum of the bone, and the need for a tourniquet after piercing their ankle with a flake. Thirty-five people surveyed said they have had small stone flakes fly into one of their eyes. The researchers also shared a historical account of William Henry Holmes who disabled his entire left arm from flintknapping back in the late 1890s. Several grislier examples are reported in the open-access study.

“This study emphasizes how important stone tools would have been to past peoples,” Eren said. “They literally would have risked life and limb to make stone tools during a period without band-aids, antibiotics or hospitals. But despite those injury costs, past peoples made stone tools anyway – the benefits provided must have been immense.”

“What, to us, might seem a minor inconvenience, could in the past have proven fatal if the wound became infected and prevented an individual from effectively gathering food, water and undertaking other essential activities,” Lycett said. “For those taking care of small infants, not only would their life be in jeopardy, but the life of these infants would also be in the balance. The costs of injury in the ancient world were magnified. These are exactly the kinds of costs that evolutionary models will need to take account of, and our study is a step toward that.”

Bebber collaborated with Gala on how to best visualize and report his data and developed a color-coded figure, which illustrates that injuries are not just limited to the hands. Injury frequency varies, and there are injuries that occur on the entire body, including flintknappers’ feet, legs and torso.

“The eye injuries are the most dangerous from my perspective, simply because they seem to be common and could result in loss of sight, which would significantly impact the life of the knapper,” Bebber said. “Stone tools were vital to their daily activities and overall survival. I think overall they were used to a more dangerous lifestyle and also would have had their own ways of treating injuries.”

Social Learning

The researchers were also interested in more accurately considering how injury risks might be incorporated into ongoing debates about the likelihood of ancient species (Homo erectus, Homo habilis) engaging in social learning (to teach and prevent injuries) when learning to make stone tools.

“Social learning involves directly copying the outcomes or actions of a more skilled individual rather than learning everything by yourself through trial and error,” Lycett said. “We know from studies of animals and humans that social learning, rather than learning individually, is more likely when there is an increased risk or cost to learning alone. The injury risks involved in knapping are exactly the kind of activity that would have made learning from a skilled individual more likely since it would help reduce the risks associated with individual learning.

“Stone tools are the best evidence we have to track social learning early in our evolution because they withstand the passage of time,” Lycett continued. “Other skills may have been socially learned deep in prehistory, but evidence for those behaviors is not so well preserved.”

Additional Information

For more information about Kent State’s Department of Anthropology, visit www.kent.edu/anthropology.

Kent State holds the esteemed distinction of being one of only five institutions in Ohio to be recognized as an R1 top-tier research university by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. For more information about research at Kent State, visit www.kent.edu/research.

A color-coded figure illustrates that flintknapping injuries are not just limited to the hands.

CREDIT

Kent State University

Photo Caption:
Metin Eren, Ph.D., associate professor and director of archeology at Kent State University, demonstrates flintknapping.

Illustration Caption:
A color-coded figure illustrates that flintknapping injuries are not just limited to the hands.

Media Contacts:
Jim Maxwell, jmaxwel2@kent.edu, 330-672-8028
Metin Eren, meren@kent.edu, 330-672-4363

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JOURNAL

American Antiquity

DOI

10.1017/aaq.2023.27 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The Injury Costs of Knapping

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

25-May-2023

Robots and Rights: Confucianism Offers Alternative

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

Philosophers and legal scholars have explored significant aspects of the moral and legal status of robots, with some advocating for giving robots rights. As robots assume more roles in the world, a new analysis reviewed research on robot rights, concluding that granting rights to robots is a bad idea. Instead, the article looks to Confucianism to offer an alternative.

The analysis, by a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), appears in Communications of the ACM, published by the Association for Computing Machinery.

"People are worried about the risks of granting rights to robots," notes Tae Wan Kim, Associate Professor of Business Ethics at CMU's Tepper School of Business, who conducted the analysis. "Granting rights is not the only way to address the moral status of robots: Envisioning robots as rites bearers—not a rights bearers—could work better."

Although many believe that respecting robots should lead to granting them rights, Kim argues for a different approach. Confucianism, an ancient Chinese belief system, focuses on the social value of achieving harmony; individuals are made distinctively human by their ability to conceive of interests not purely in terms of personal self-interest, but in terms that include a relational and a communal self. This, in turn, requires a unique perspective on rites, with people enhancing themselves morally by participating in proper rituals.

When considering robots, Kim suggests that the Confucian alternative of assigning rites—or what he calls role obligations—to robots is more appropriate than giving robots rights. The concept of rights is often adversarial and competitive, and potential conflict between humans and robots is concerning.

"Assigning role obligations to robots encourages teamwork, which triggers an understanding that fulfilling those obligations should be done harmoniously," explains Kim. "Artificial intelligence (AI) imitates human intelligence, so for robots to develop as rites bearers, they must be powered by a type of AI that can imitate humans' capacity to recognize and execute team activities—and a machine can learn that ability in various ways."

Kim acknowledges that some will question why robots should be treated respectfully in the first place. "To the extent that we make robots in our image, if we don't treat them well, as entities capable of participating in rites, we degrade ourselves," he suggests.

Various non-natural entities—such as corporations—are considered people and even assume some Constitutional rights. In addition, humans are not the only species with moral and legal status; in most developed societies, moral and legal considerations preclude researchers from gratuitously using animals for lab experiments.

 

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JOURNAL

Communications of the ACM

DOI

10.1145/3571721 

ARTICLE TITLE

Should Robots Have Rights or Rites?

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

24-May-2023

THERE IS NO EARTH B

The search for habitable planets expands

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Image

A University of Michigan astronomer and his team are suggesting a new way to expand the search for habitable planets that takes into account a zone not previously considered: the space between the star and what's called soot-line in planet-forming disks. 

 

Worlds that form in this region—a disk of dust rotating around a central star from which planets may be built—could have surfaces rich in volatile carbon compounds quite different from Earth’s. These planets would also be rich in organic carbon, but water poor, according to Ted Bergin, who led the study that included geochemists, planetary scientists, astrochemists and exoplanet experts.

 

When we search for Earth-like planets, we are particularly interested not only in bodies that look like ours, but also in those that are formed by processes similar to ours. Current models of rocky exoplanets are built using Earth-like atmospheric conditions and bulk composition, including the molecules essential for life that form from carbon-based building blocks and water. These models also focus on zones within planet-forming disks called ice lines, regions distant enough from the disk's center star which mark where water or other key molecules transition from gas to solid phases.  

 

Terrestrial worlds, like our planet, formed from solids. It has long been thought that Earth, which contains only approximately 0.1% water by mass, must have formed inside the water-ice line.

 

But that type of model may be too limited, Bergin said. To expand the search for habitable planets, Bergin and his research team suggest a new model that considers  the soot line, a boundary closer to the solar system's star. Between this boundary and the star, organic compounds in solids sublimate out of the solid into gas. Considering this region would also encompass rocky planets that may have more carbon than Earth has, raising questions about what that means for habitability in these kinds of planets.

 

The findings by the interdisciplinary research team are published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

 

"It adds a new dimension in our search for habitability. It may be a negative dimension or it may be a positive dimension," Bergin said. "It's exciting because it leads to all kinds of endless possibilities."

 

Just as Earth is poor in water, it is carbon poor as well, Bergin said. When forming, it likely received only 1 carbon atom per 100 available in planet-forming materials. Astronomers think the soot line explains why Earth has so little carbon. If Earth's building blocks formed inside the soot line, the temperature and solar radiation blasted the materials that would form the young planet, turning carbon-rich compounds into gas and limiting carbon in the solids that are supplied to the forming Earth. 

 

The team's model theorizes about the formation of other planets born in between the soot line and water-ice lines.

 

Such a world does not appear to exist in our solar system, but our solar system is not representative of most known planetary systems around other stars, Bergin said. These other planetary systems look completely different. Their planets are closer to the sun and are much larger, ranging in size from what are called super-Earths to mini-Neptunes, he said.

 

"These are either big rocks or small gas giants—that's the most common type of planetary system. So maybe, within all those other solar systems out in the Milky Way galaxy, there exists a population of bodies that we haven't recognized before that have much more carbon in their interiors. What are the consequences of that?" Bergin said. "What this means for habitability needs to be explored."

 

In their study, the team models what happens when a silicate-rich world with 0.1% and 1% carbon by mass and a variable water content forms in the soot line region. They found that such a planet would develop a methane-rich atmosphere through a process called outgassing. In this circumstance, organic compounds in a silicate-rich planet produce a methane-rich atmosphere. 

 

The presence of methane provides a fertile environment for the generation of hazes through interactions with stellar photons. This is analogous to the generation of hazes from methane in Titan in our own solar system.

 

"Planets that are born within this region, which exists in every planet-forming disk system, will release more volatile carbon from their mantles," Bergin said. "This could readily lead to the natural production of hazes. Such hazes have been observed in the atmospheres of exoplanets and have the potential to change the calculus for what we consider habitable worlds."

 

Haze around a planet might be a signpost that the planet has volatile carbon in its mantle. And more carbon, the backbone of life, in the mantle of a planet means that the planet has a chance to be considered habitable—or at least deserves a second glance, Bergin said. 

 

"If this is true, then there could be a common class of haze planets with abundant volatile carbon, and what that means for habitability needs to be explored," he said. "But then there's the other aspect: What if you have an Earth-sized world, where you have more carbon than Earth has? What does that mean for habitability, for life? We don't know, and that's exciting."

 

Study: Exoplanet volatile carbon content as a natural pathway for haze formation

 

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JOURNAL

The Astrophysical Journal Letters

Astronomers from the University of Liège and CSIC discover a key planetary system to understand the formation mechanism of the mysterious 'super-Earths'

The system, named TOI-2096, consists of two planets orbiting a cool star in a synchronized dance at approximately 150 light-years from Earth.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF LIEGE

 

IMAGE: ARTIST'S VIEW OF THE TOI-2096 SYSTEM view more 

CREDIT: ©LIONEL J. GARCIA / ULIÈGE

A study led by researchers of the University of Liège and the CSIC - using observations from NASA's TESS telescope – presents the detection of a system of two planets slightly larger than Earth orbiting a cold star in a synchronized dance. Named TOI-2096, the system is located 150 light-years from Earth.

The discovery is the result of a close collaboration between European and American universities and was made possible by the US space mission TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), which aims to find planets orbiting nearby bright stars. "TESS is conducting an all-sky survey using the transit method, that is, monitoring the stellar brightness of thousands of stars in the search for a slight dimming, which could be caused by a planet passing between the star and the observer. However, despite its power to detect new worlds, the TESS mission needs support from ground-based telescopes to confirm the planetary nature of the detected signals," explains Francisco J. Pozuelos, astrophysicist, first author of the paper, former member of the ExoTIC laboratory at the Univeristy of Liège, and who has now joined the Spanish National Research Council (IAA-CSIC).

The planets TOI-2096 b and TOI-2096 c were observed with an international network of ground-based telescopes, allowing their confirmation and characterization. The majority of the transits were obtained with telescopes of the TRAPPIST and SPECULOOS projects led by the University of Liège. “Making an exhaustive analysis of the data, we found that the two planets were in resonant orbits: for each orbit of the outer planet, the inner planet orbits the star twice," says Mathilde Timmermans, a doctoral student at the ExoTIC lab at ULiège and second author of the scientific paper. Their periods are therefore very close to being a multiple of each other with about 3.12 days for planet b and about 6.38 days for planet c. This is a very particular configuration, and it causes a strong gravitational interaction between the planets. This interaction delays or accelerates the passage of the planets in front of their star and could lead to the measurement of the planetary masses using larger telescopes in the near future.”

The researchers behind the discovery estimate that the radius of planet b - the closest to its star - is 1.2 times that of Earth, hence the name 'super-Earth'. Its properties could be similar to Earth’s: a planet with a mostly rocky composition, possibly surrounded by a thin atmosphere. Similarly, the radius of planet c is 1.9 times the radius of the Earth and 55% that of Neptune, which could place the planet in the category of 'mini-Neptunes', planets composed of a rocky and icy core surrounded by extended hydrogen- or water-rich atmospheres, such as Uranus and Neptune in our Solar System. These sizes are very interesting because the number of planets with a radius between 1.5 and 2.5 Earth radii is smaller than what theoretical models predict, making these planets a rarity. These planets are of crucial importance given their sizes," notes Mathilde Timmermans, "the formation of super-Earths and mini-Neptunes remains a mystery today. There are several formation models trying to explain it, but none fits the observations perfectly. TOI-2096 is the only system found to date that has a super-Earth and a mini-Neptune precisely at the sizes where the models contradict each other. In other words, TOI-2096 may be the system we've been looking for to understand how these planetary systems have formed.”

“Furthermore, these planets are among the best in their category to study their possible atmospheres," explains Francisco J. Pozuelos. Thanks to the relative sizes of the planets with respect to the host star, as well as the brightness of the star, we find that this system is one of the best candidates for a detailed study of their atmosphere with the JWST space telescope. We hope to be able to do this quickly by coordinating with other universities and research centers. These studies will help confirm the presence of an atmosphere, extensive or not, around planets b and c and thus give us clues as to their formation mechanism.”

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JOURNAL

Astronomy and Astrophysics

DOI

10.1051/0004-6361/202245440 

ARTICLE TITLE

A super-Earth and a mini-Neptune near the 2:1 MMR straddling the radius valley around the nearby mid-M dwarf TOI-2096

Chemistry: Meteoritic and volcanic particles may have promoted origin of life reactions

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SCIENTIFIC REPORTS

Precursors of the molecules needed for the origin of life may have been generated by chemical reactions promoted by iron-rich particles from meteors or volcanic eruptions on Earth approximately 4.4 billion years ago, according to a study published in Scientific Reports.

Previous research has suggested that the precursors of organic molecules — hydrocarbons, aldehydes and alcohols — may have been delivered by asteroids and comets or produced by reactions in the early Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. These reactions may have been promoted by energy from lightning, volcanic activity, or impacts. However a lack of data has meant that it is unclear what the predominant mechanism that produced these precursors was.

Oliver Trapp and colleagues investigated whether meteorite or ash particles deposited on volcanic islands could have promoted the conversion of atmospheric carbon dioxide to the precursors of organic molecules on the early Earth. They simulated a range of conditions that previous research has suggested may have been present on the early Earth by placing carbon dioxide gas in a heated and pressurised system (an autoclave) under pressures ranging between nine and 45 bars and temperatures ranging between 150 and 300 degrees Celsius. They also simulated wet and dry climate conditions by adding either hydrogen gas or water to the system. They mimicked the depositing of meteorite or ash particles on volcanic islands by adding different combinations of crushed samples of iron meteorites, stony meteorites, or volcanic ash into the system, as well as minerals that may have been present in the early Earth and are found in either the Earth’s crust, meteorites, or asteroids.

The authors found that the iron-rich particles from meteorites and volcanic ash promoted the conversion of carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons, aldehydes and alcohols across a range of atmosphere and climate conditions that may have been present in the early Earth. They observed that aldehydes and alcohols formed at lower temperatures while hydrocarbons formed at 300 degrees Celsius. The authors suggest that as the early Earth’s atmosphere cooled over time, the production of alcohols and aldehydes may have increased. These compounds may then have participated in further reactions that could have led to the formation of carbohydrates, lipids, sugars, amino acids, DNA, and RNA. By calculating the rate of the reactions they observed and using data from previous research on the conditions of the early Earth, the authors estimate that their proposed mechanism could have synthesised up to 600,000 tonnes of organic precursors per year across the early Earth.

The authors propose that their mechanism may have contributed to the origins of life on Earth, in combination with other reactions in the early Earth’s atmosphere and oceans.

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Article details

Synthesis of prebiotic organics from CO2 by catalysis with meteoritic and volcanic particles

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-33741-8

Corresponding Author:

Oliver Trapp
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany
Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany
Email: oliver.trapp@cup.uni-muenchen.de

Please link to the article in online versions of your report (the URL will go live after the embargo ends): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-33741-8

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JOURNAL

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-023-33741-8 

ARTICLE TITLE

Synthesis of prebiotic organics from CO2 by catalysis with meteoritic and volcanic particles

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

25-May-2023

HAVANA SYNDROME

Induction of a torpor-like state with ultrasound

Chen’s team used ultrasound to safely, noninvasively induce a torpor-like state in mice, rats

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS

 

IMAGE: HONG CHEN'S TEAM USED ULTRASOUND TO SAFELY, NONINVASIVELY INDUCE A TORPOR-LIKE STATE IN MICE, RATS view more 

CREDIT: IMAGE COURTESY CHEN LABORATORY, WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS

Some mammals and birds have a clever way to preserve energy and heat by going into torpor, during which their body temperature and metabolic rate drop to allow them to survive potentially fatal conditions in the environment, such as extreme cold or lack of food. While a similar condition was proposed for scientists making flights to space in the 1960s or for patients with life-threatening health conditions, safely inducing such a state remains elusive.

Hong Chen, an associate professor at Washington University in St. Louis, and a multidisciplinary team induced a torpor-like state in mice by using ultrasound to stimulate the hypothalamus preoptic area in the brain, which helps to regulate body temperature and metabolism. In addition to the mouse, which naturally goes into torpor, Chen and her team induced torpor in a rat, which does not. Their findings, published May 25, 2023, in Nature Metabolism, show the first noninvasive and safe method to induce a torpor-like state by targeting the central nervous system.

Chen, associate professor of biomedical engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering and of radiation oncology at the School of Medicine, and her team, including Yaoheng (Mack) Yang, a postdoctoral research associate, created a wearable ultrasound transducer to stimulate the neurons in the hypothalamus preoptic area. When stimulated, the mice showed a drop in body temperature of about 3 degrees C for about one hour. In addition, the mice’s metabolism showed a change from using both carbohydrates and fat for energy to only fat, a key feature of torpor, and their heart rates fell by about 47%, all while at room temperature.

The team also found that as the acoustic pressure and duration of the ultrasound increased, so did the depth of the lower body temperature and slower metabolism, known as ultrasound-induced hypothermia and hypometabolism (UIH).

“We developed an automatic closed-loop feedback controller to achieve long-duration and stable ultrasound-induced hypothermia and hypometabolism by controlling of the ultrasound output,” Chen said. “The closed-loop feedback controller set the desired body temperature to be lower than 34C, which was previously reported as critical for natural torpor in mice. This feedback-controlled UIH kept the mouse body temperature at 32.95C for about 24 hours and recovered to normal temperature after ultrasound was off.”

To learn how ultrasound-induced hypothermia and hypometabolism is activated, the team studied the dynamics of the activity of neurons in the hypothalamus preoptic area in response to ultrasound. They observed a consistent increase in neuronal activity in response to each ultrasound pulse, which aligned with the changes in body temperature in the mice.

“These findings revealed that UIH was evoked by ultrasound activation of hypothalamus preoptic area neurons,” Yang said. “Our finding that transcranial stimulation of the hypothalamus preoptic area was sufficient to induce UIH revealed the critical role of this area in orchestrating a torpor-like state in mice.”

Chen and her team also wanted to find the molecule that allowed these neurons to activate with ultrasound. Through genetic sequencing, they found that ultrasound activated the TRPM2 ion channel in the hypothalamus preoptic area neurons. In a variety of experiments, they showed that TRPM2 is an ultrasound-sensitive ion channel and contributed to the induction of UIH.

In the rat, which does not naturally go into torpor or hibernation, the team delivered ultrasound to the hypothalamus preoptic area and found a decrease in skin temperature, particularly in the brown adipose tissue region, as well as about a 1 degree C drop in core body temperature, resembling natural torpor.

This multidisciplinary team consists of Jonathan R. Brestoff, MD, PhD, assistant professor of pathology & immunology at the School of Medicine; Alexxai V. Kravitz, associate professor of psychiatry, of anesthesiology and of neuroscience at the School of Medicine, and Jianmin Cui, professor of biomedical engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering, all at Washington University in St. Louis. The team also includes Michael R. Bruchas, professor of anesthesiology and of pharmacology at the University of Washington.

“UIH has the potential to address the long sought-after goal of achieving noninvasive and safe induction of the torpor-like state, which has been pursued by the scientific community at least since the 1960s,” Chen said. “Ultrasound stimulation possesses a unique capability to noninvasively reach deep brain regions with high spatial and temporal precision in animal and human brains.”

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Yang Y, Yuan J, Field RL, Ye D, Hu Z, Xu K, Xu L, Gong Y, Yue Y, Kravitz A, Bruchas MR, Cui J, Brestoff JR, Chen H. Torpor-like hypothermic and hypometabolic state induced by ultrasound. Nature Metabolism, May 25, 2023. DOI: 10.1038/s42255-023-00804-z

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (R01MH116981, UG3MH126861, R01EB027223, and R01EB030102). JRB is supported by NIH (DP5 OD028125) and Burroughs Wellcome Fund (CAMS #1019648).

 Video explainer: Induction of [VIDEO] 

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JOURNAL

Nature Metabolism

DOI

10.1038/s42255-023-00804-z 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Torpor-like hypothermic and hypometabolic state induced by ultrasound

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

25-May-2023

Scientists use AI to find promising new antibiotic to fight evasive hospital superbug

New process could speed the discovery of other much needed antibiotics

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MCMASTER UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: LEAD AUTHOR JONATHAN STOKES, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN THE DEPARTMENT OF BIOCHEMISTRY & BIOMEDICAL SCIENCE AT MCMASTER UNIVERSITY. RESEARCHERS IDENTIFIED A NEW ANTIBACTERIAL COMPOUND TO TREAT THE PATHOGEN ACINETOBACTER BAUMANNII. view more 

CREDIT: MCMASTER UNIVERSITY

Hamilton, ON, May 25, 2023 – Scientists at McMaster University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have used artificial intelligence to discover a new antibiotic which could be used to fight a deadly, drug-resistant pathogen that strikes vulnerable hospital patients.

The process they used could also speed the discovery of other antibiotics to treat many other challenging bacteria.

The researchers were responding to the urgent need for new drugs to treat Acinetobacter baumannii, identified by the World Health Organization as one of the world’s most dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Notoriously difficult to eradicate, A. baumannii can cause pneumonia, meningitis and infect wounds, all of which can lead to death.

A. baumanni is usually found in hospital settings, where it can survive on surfaces for long periods. The pathogen is able to pick up DNA from other species of bacteria in its environment, including antibiotic-resistance genes. 

In the study, published today in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, researchers report they used an artificial intelligence algorithm to predict new structural classes of antibacterial molecules, and identified a new antibacterial compound, which they have named abaucin.

Discovering new antibiotics against A. baumannii through conventional screening has been challenging. Traditional methods are time-consuming, costly, and limited in scope.   

Modern algorithmic approaches can access hundreds of millions, possibly billions, of molecules with antibacterial properties.

“This work validates the benefits of machine learning in the search for new antibiotics” says Jonathan Stokes, lead author on the paper and an assistant professor in McMaster’s Department of Biomedicine & Biochemistry, who conducted the work with James J. Collins, a professor of medical engineering and science at MIT, and McMaster graduate students Gary Liu and Denise Catacutan.

“Using AI, we can rapidly explore vast regions of chemical space, significantly increasing the chances of discovering fundamentally new antibacterial molecules,” says Stokes, who belongs to McMaster’s Global Nexus School for Pandemic Prevention and Response.

“AI approaches to drug discovery are here to stay and will continue to be refined,” says Collins, Life Sciences faculty lead at the MIT Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health. “We know algorithmic models work, now it’s a matter of widely adopting these methods to discover new antibiotics more efficiently and less expensively.”

Abaucin is especially promising, the researchers report, because it only targets A. baumannii, a crucial finding which means the pathogen is less likely to rapidly develop drug resistance, and which could lead to more precise and effective treatments.

Most antibiotics are broad spectrum in nature, meaning they kill all bacteria, disrupting the gut microbiome, which opens the door to a host of serious infections, including C difficile.

“We know broad-spectrum antibiotics are suboptimal and that pathogens have the ability to evolve and adjust to every trick we throw at them,” says Stokes. “AI methods afford us the opportunity to vastly increase the rate at which we discover new antibiotics, and we can do it at a reduced cost. This is an important avenue of exploration for new antibiotic drugs.”

Attention editors:  High resolution photos with credit information can be downloaded for use at this link: https://photos.app.goo.gl/gwGU2YQ8V4YRsPbN8

Denise Catacutan, graduate student in the Department of Biochemistry & Biomedical Science at McMaster University and co-author of the paper.

CREDIT

McMaster University

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JOURNAL

Nature Chemical Biology

DOI

10.1038/s41589-023-01349-8 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Deep learning-guided discovery of an antibiotic targeting Acinetobacter baumannii

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

25-May-2023

COI STATEMENT

J.M.S. is co-founder and scientific director of Phare Bio. J.J.C. is co-founder and scientific advisory board chair of Phare Bio. J.J.C. is co-founder and scientific advisory board chair of Enbiotix. The remaining authors declare no competing interests.

THIRD WORLD U$A

County-level maternal vulnerability and preterm birth

JAMA Network Open

Peer-Reviewed Publication

JAMA NETWORK

About The Study: The findings of this study using data for 3.6 million births suggest that the Maternal Vulnerability Index (MVI), a novel county-level index designed to quantify maternal vulnerability to adverse health outcomes, was associated with preterm birth even after adjustment for individual-level confounders. The MVI is a useful measure for county-level preterm birth risk that may have policy implications for counties working to lower preterm rates and improve perinatal outcomes. 

Authors: Sara C. Handley, M.D., M.S.C.E., Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, is the corresponding author. 

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ 

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.15306)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

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About JAMA Network Open: JAMA Network Open is an online-only open access general medical journal from the JAMA Network. On weekdays, the journal publishes peer-reviewed clinical research and commentary in more than 40 medical and health subject areas. Every article is free online from the day of publication.

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JOURNAL

JAMA Network Open