Wider use of convalescent plasma might have saved thousands more lives during pandemic

Authors say findings support considering convalescent plasma deployment for future infectious diseases emergencies

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

A new study led by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health estimates that thousands of lives could have been saved during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic if convalescent plasma had been used more broadly, particularly in outpatients at high risk for severe disease and in hospitalized patients during their first few days of admission.

Convalescent plasma from patients who had recovered from COVID was used starting in the early months of the pandemic at the urging of a group of physicians who cited the blood byproduct’s success as a therapy in earlier infectious disease emergencies, including the global influenza pandemic of 1918–1920, and the SARS epidemic of 2002–2004. Plasma from patients recently recovered from a pathogenic infection, such as COVID, typically contains antibodies that may block or reduce the severity of the infection in others.

Over 500,000 patients were treated with convalescent plasma in the U.S. in the first year of the pandemic. 

In their new paper, published online October 1 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, the authors estimate that treating hospitalized COVID patients with convalescent plasma saved between 16,476 and 66,296 lives in the United States between July 2020 and March 2021. For these estimates of actual lives saved, the researchers drew from convalescent plasma weekly use data, weekly national mortality data, and convalescent mortality reduction data from meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials. 

The researchers also estimated the number of potential lives that would have been saved had convalescent plasma been more widely used among patients being treated for COVID in hospitals. The researchers used the most optimistic assumptions possible: Had 100% of patients hospitalized with COVID been administered high-titer convalescent plasma within three days of admission between July 2020 and March 2021, the authors concluded that—depending on which mortality estimates they used for their analysis—between 37,467 to 149,318 (an approximately 125% increase) or between 53,943 to 215,614 (an approximately 225% increase) lives would have been saved in the first year of the pandemic. 

A total of 647,795 units of plasma was given to inpatients with COVID between July 2020 and March 2021. The team used this as a measure of the number of patients treated.

“This is a therapy that can reduce mortality, be immediately available, and is relatively inexpensive—we should be prepared to use it much more in a future infectious disease emergency or pandemic,” says study senior author Arturo Casadevall, MD, PhD, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Bloomberg School.

Casadevall was one of the earliest proponents of convalescent plasma at the start of the pandemic. The study’s first author is Quigly Dragotakes, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Casadevall laboratory.

The authors also estimated the number of hospitalizations that might have been avoided between July 2020 and March 2021 using a range of assumptions: 

• If 15% of outpatients had received convalescent plasma, the authors estimate that between 85,268 and 227,377 hospitalizations would have been avoided. 
• If 75% of outpatients received convalescent plasma, between 426,331 and 1,136,880 hospitalizations would have been avoided. 

During the first year of the pandemic, convalescent plasma was approved only for use in patients hospitalized with COVID.

Initial studies of the effectiveness of convalescent plasma in the U.S. and other countries had mixed results. Casadevall and colleagues note this was due in part to the challenges of ensuring that convalescent plasma contained sufficiently high anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody concentrations. Another issue with many early studies, the researchers say, was that convalescent plasma was given to patients hospitalized with COVID already too sick to benefit much from the therapy.

Later studies showed convalescent plasma could be effective, including a clinical trial led by Johns Hopkins researchers that found that early use of convalescent plasma among outpatients reduced the relative risk of hospitalization by 54%. (Those findings were announced in December 2021.)

The researchers note that use of convalescent plasma during the pandemic was safe and its cost—averaging about $750 per unit in the U.S.—is lower than newer, patented COVID treatments.

The authors recommend that public health preparedness planning for future infectious disease outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics include readiness to collect and deliver convalescent plasma at scale.

The authors note that the study has several limitations. While estimates of convalescent plasma units used in their analysis captured most convalescent plasma used during the study period, the exact number of units used is not known. This is likely due in part to the national Blood Centers of America not capturing convalescent plasma treatments administered locally in the early stages of the pandemic. In addition, the mortality reduction estimates the authors used to calculate lives saved varied widely. It’s not known if they mirrored use and efficacy of convalescent plasma use in clinical settings throughout the U.S. 

“We should be ready to set up outpatient centers to treat people early on with convalescent plasma during a future outbreak,” Casadevall says. “It would require designating spaces in hospitals for that purpose, but we wouldn’t need any new technology—this is well-established medical knowledge and practice.”

“Estimates of Actual and Potential Lives Saved in the United States from the Use of COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma” was co-authored by Quigly Dragotakes, Patrick Johnson, Matthew Buras, Rickey Carter, Michael Joyner, Evan Bloch, Kelly Gebo, Daniel Hanley, Jeffrey Henderson, Liise-anne Pirofski, Shmuel Shoham, Jonathon Senefeld, Aaron Tobian, Chad Wiggins, R. Scott Wright, Nigel Paneth, David Sullivan, and Arturo Casadevall.

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Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

 

Decline of mpox antibody responses after modified vaccinia Ankara–Bavarian Nordic vaccination

JAMA Network

About The Study: 

The modified vaccinia Ankara–Bavarian Nordic (MVA-BN) vaccination generated mpox antibodies that waned by 6 to 12 months. In participants who received 2 doses of MVA-BN vaccine, mpox antibody responses at 12 months were comparable to or lower than peak antibody responses in people receiving 1 dose, which provided limited protection.

Quote from corresponding author Dan H. Barouch, MD, PhD:

“In this observational study, we show that mpox antibody responses decline 6-12 months following Jynneos (MVA-BN) vaccination. Our data suggest that protective immunity may be waning in individuals who were vaccinated with this vaccine in 2022.”

Contact information for Dan H. Barouch, MD, PhD: email dbarouch@bidmc.harvard.edu.

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

(doi:10.1001/jama.2024.20951)

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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Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article This link will be live at the embargo time https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/10.1001/jama.2024.20951?guestAccessKey=bb14d353-976b-4703-883f-1d2cdabf8ec1&utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=100324

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Journal

JAMA

 

Our brains divide the day into chapters. New psychology research offers details on how.

Columbia University

The moment a person steps off the street and into a restaurant—to take just one example—the brain mentally starts a new “chapter” of the day, a change that causes a big shift in brain activity. Shifts like this happen all day long, as people encounter new environments, like going out for lunch, attending their kid’s soccer game, or settling in for a night of watching TV.

But what determines how the brain divides the day into individual events that we can understand and remember separately?  That’s what a new paper in the journal Current Biology aimed to find out. The research team, led by Christopher Baldassano, an associate professor of Psychology, and Alexandra De Soares, then a member of his lab, turned up interesting results.

The researchers wanted to better understand what prompts the brain to form a boundary around the events we encounter, effectively registering it as a new “chapter” in the day. One possibility is that new chapters are entirely caused by big changes in a person’s surroundings, like how walking into a restaurant takes them from outdoors to indoors. Another possibility, however, is that the new chapters are prompted by internal scripts that our brain writes based on past experience, and that even big environmental changes might be ignored by our brain if they are not related to our current priorities and goals.

To test their hypothesis, researchers developed a set of 16 audio narratives, each about three to four minutes long. Each narrative took place in one of four locations (a restaurant, an airport, a grocery store, and a lecture hall) and dealt with one of four social situations (a breakup, a proposal, a business deal, and a meet cute).

The researchers found that the way the brain divides up an experience into individual events depends on what a person currently cares about and is paying attention to. When listening to a story about a marriage proposal at a restaurant, for example, subjects’ prefrontal cortex would usually be organizing the story into events related to the proposal, leading up (hopefully) to the final “yes.”

But the researchers found that they could force the prefrontal cortex to organize the story in a different way if they instead asked study participants to focus on the events related to the dinner orders of the couple. For study participants who were told to focus on these details, moments like ordering dishes became critical new chapters in the story.

“We wanted to challenge the theory that the sudden shifts in brain activity when we start a new chapter of our day are only being caused by sudden shifts in the world—that the brain isn’t really ‘doing’ anything interesting when it creates new chapters, it’s just responding passively to a change in sensory inputs,” Baldassano said. “Our research found that isn’t the case: The brain is, in fact, actively organizing our life experiences into chunks that are meaningful to us.”

The researchers measured where the brain created new chapters both by looking at MRI scans of the brain to identify fresh brain activity, and, in a separate group of participants, by asking them to press a button to indicate when they thought a new part of the story had begun.

They found that the brain divided stories into separate chapters depending on the perspective they were told to be attuned to—and it didn’t just apply to the proposal-in-a-restaurant scenario: A person hearing a story about a breakup in an airport could, if prompted to pay attention to details of the airport experience, register new chapters as they went through security and arrived at their gate. Meanwhile, a person who heard a story about a person closing a business deal while grocery shopping could be prompted to register either the new steps of the business deal as new chapters, or to be attuned primarily to the phases of grocery shopping instead. The details that the study participants were prompted to pay attention to influenced what their brain perceived as a new chapter in the story.

Moving forward, the researchers hope to investigate the impact that expectations have on long-term memory. As part of this study, the researchers also asked each participant to tell them everything they remembered about each story. They are still in the process of analyzing the data to understand how the perspective they were asked to adopt while listening to the story changes the way they remember it. More broadly, this study is part of an ongoing effort in the field to build a comprehensive theory about how real-life experiences are divided up into event memories. The results indicate that prior knowledge and expectations are a key ingredient in how this cognitive system works.

Baldassano described the work as a passion project. “Tracking activity patterns in the brain over time is a big challenge that requires using complex analysis tools,” he said: “Using meaningful stories and mathematical models to discover something new about cognition is exactly the kind of unconventional research in my lab that I am most proud of and excited about.”

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Journal

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2024.09.013 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Top-down attention shifts behavioral and neural event boundaries in narratives with overlapping event scripts

Article Publication Date

3-Oct-2024

 

Stem cell transplants close macular holes in monkeys eyes

Cell Press

Human stem cell transplants successfully repaired macular holes in a monkey model, researchers report October 3rd in the journal Stem Cell Reports. After transplantation, the macular holes were closed by continuous filling of the space with retinal tissue.

“We confirmed for the first time in a non-human primate model that embryonic stem-derived retinal organoid sheet transplantation facilitates the closure of macular holes,” says senior study author Michiko Mandai of the Kobe City Eye Hospital. “Our results suggest that this method could become a practical, safe, and effective treatment option with minimal invasive risks, particularly for difficult macular hole cases.”

Macular holes are small gaps that form in the macula—the central part of the retina in the eye. They can cause blurred or distorted central vision, making it difficult to read, drive, or see fine details. In the past decade, advances in surgical techniques have achieved closure rates exceeding 90%, but refractory cases are still a problem. Management of recurrent macular holes after surgery is also challenging. For retinal degenerative diseases, cell-based therapy is a promising strategy for restoring visual function. Although retinal transplantation has shown good anatomic success, visual improvement is limited, and peripheral visual field defects are inevitable.

In the new study, Mandai and collaborators evaluated whether they could overcome these hurdles by transplanting human embryonic stem cell-derived retinal organoid sheets. Transplantation of the retinal tissue resulted in graft survival and maturation and the development of light-detecting retinal cells called photoreceptors, including rods and cones. Additional experiments revealed improvements in eye fixation and responses to light.

However, the researchers pointed out a few caveats, including mild transplantation rejection, which they controlled using steroid injections. “The mild rejection may have limited the functional integration of the transplanted tissue,” Mandai says. “Additionally, this was a single-case result for one eye, and the model did not exactly replicate the pathology of human refractory macular holes. However, the findings suggest that the surgical technique is feasible for human macular holes.”

The authors say further studies will be required to validate the advantage of the stem cell-derived retina, including the protective effect for host retinal cells. More research is also needed to understand how cell composition in the graft influences visual function. For their own part, the researchers plan to examine whether some form of synaptic communication can be established between the host and graft over a longer period of observation.

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This research was supported by the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED), the Japan Science and Technology Agency, and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

Stem Cell Reports, Iwama et al.: “Transplantation of human pluripotent stem cell-derived retinal sheet in a primate model of macular hole.” https://www.cell.com/stem-cell-reports/fulltext/S2213-6711(24)00264-9  

Stem Cell Reports (@stemcellreports), published by Cell Press for the International Society for Stem Cell Research (@ISSCR), is a monthly open access peer-reviewed publication communicating basic discoveries across the spectrum of stem cell research and translational and clinical studies. The journal focuses on shorter, single-point manuscripts that report original research with conceptual or practical advances that are of broad interest to scientists and clinicians across the continuum of stem cell science and application. Visit http://www.cell.com/stem-cell-reports. To receive Cell Press media alerts, please contact press@cell.com.

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Journal

Stem Cell Reports

 

Reconstruction of costumes based on wall paintings from Faras

SWPS University

 

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A premiere presentation of re-created costumes based on wall paintings from the cathedral of Faras in the collections of the National Museum in Warsaw and the Sudan National Museum in Khartoum, accompanied by a popularisation session at Sorbonne University.

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Credit: Credit: SWPS University, Photo: Paulina Matusiak & Eddy Wenting

WHAT:
A premiere presentation of re-created costumes based on wall paintings from the cathedral of Faras in the collections of the National Museum in Warsaw and the Sudan National Museum in Khartoum, accompanied by a popularisation session at Sorbonne University.

WHEN & WHERE:
15 October 2024, 3:30 PM–5:00 PM
La Sorbonne, Centre de civilisation polonaise, Campus Malesherbes
108, boulevard Malesherbes, 75017 Paris
Room 208
17 October 2024, 12:30 PM
Musée du Louvre, Auditorium Michel Laclotte, Room 1 (free entry upon reservation here)
As part of the Louvre Museum’s regular program Midis de l’archéologie!

WHO:
Faculty of Archaeology, University of Warsaw
Institute of Design + Faculty of Design, SWPS University, Warsaw

CONTACT:
Karel Innemée: k.innemee@uw.edu.pl
Dobrochna Zielińska: d.zielinska@uw.edu.pl
Agnieszka Jacobson-Cielecka: ajacobson@sof.edu.pl

PEOPLE INVOLVED:
- Dr Karel Innemée (project manager, Faculty of Archaeology, UW)
- Dr Agnieszka Jacobson-Cielecka (project curator, Institute of Design, SWPS University)
- Dr hab. Grzegorz Ochała (epigrapher, Faculty of Archaeology, UW)
- Paulina Matusiak (designer, Faculty of Design, SWPS University)
- Dorothée Roqueplo (costume Designer, Faculty of Design, SWPS University)
- Dr hab. Katarzyna Schmidt-Przewoźna (researcher, expert in natural dyeing, Institute of Natural Fibers, Faculty of Design, SWPS University)
- Dr Magdalena Woźniak-Eusèbe (archaeologist, Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, UW)
- Dr habil. Dobrochna Zielińska (archaeologist, Faculty of Archaeology, UW)

PHOTOGRAPHY:
Paulina Matusiak & Eddy Wenting

GRAPHIC DESIGN:
Paulina Matusiak

ORGANISERS:
Museum of the University of Warsaw, University of Warsaw, SWPS Innovations, SWPS
University

PARTNERS:

Musée du Louvre, Université Paris-Sorbonne, Centre de civilisation polonaise, Polish Institute in Paris

PATRONAGE:
Permanent Delegation of Poland to UNESCO

CONTEXT:
In the 1960s, the Egyptian government decided to build the Aswan High Dam. To study and salvage areas threatened by flooding by the Nile, scholars from twenty-six countries participated in a UNESCO-led initiative to save cultural heritage. A Polish team, led by Prof. Kazimierz Michałowski from the University of Warsaw, chose as their research site the city of Faras, one of the medieval capitals of the Kingdom of Makuria, which existed in today’s southern Egypt and northern Sudan between the sixth and fourteenth centuries. The discovery of a cathedral and a set of unique murals marked the beginning of studies that remain a Polish specialty today. Faras Gallery at the National Museum in Warsaw houses a globally unique collection of medieval Nubian art.
Particularly now, during the tragic civil war in Sudan, our efforts remind the world that not only the people of this country, but also its rich heritage are under severe threat. We hope that the international community will support peace efforts in Sudan. #keepeyesonsudan

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
In cooperation with Nubiologists at the University of Warsaw, Dr Karel Innemée leads a project titled Creations of Power: Depicting the Royal Family and Clergy in Medieval Nubia. As the scarcity of written sources make studying medieval Nubia incredibly difficult, to learn more about the medieval Kingdom of Makuria, the researcher has turned to iconographic sources, archaeological and iconographic data being the primary knowledge base for Nubia studies.
In the archaeological and historical research phase of the project, Dr Innemée, along with Dr Magdalena Woźniak-Eusèbe and Dr hab. Dobrochna Zielińska, examined how Christianity, a new faith that came to Nubia from Constantinople in the sixth century, influenced the official attire of rulers and religious leaders. Like today, garments and decorative elements were part of a non-verbal communication system, where each element had its meaning. Monumental images of the court and clergy members were an essential part of Nubian church decoration, meant to influence worshippers and demonstrate the connections between the kingdom, the church, and the divine source of power. Costume studies have shown how rich a source of knowledge these murals could be.
To understand the material aspect of these garments — their construction, volume, and weight — a key part of the project was the recreation of five outfits depicted on the murals that once adorned the walls of the cathedral in Faras. Two examples of royal attire, the garments of two royal mothers (a position at court ensuring the inheritance of power,
characteristic of Nubian culture), and the attire of a bishop were selected for reconstruction.
The royal garments illustrate an evolving combination of visible Byzantine influences, brought to the kingdom with the Christian religion, native cultural elements, and new fashion trends from the Muslim East. The ecclesiastical attire, unchanged throughout the centuries of Christianity in the region, demonstrates Nubia’s strong ties to the Church of
Constantinople.
The work of archaeologists from the University of Warsaw was supported by designers from SWPS University, who expanded the analysis of archaeological material with practical knowledge based on the ergonomics of movement, the construction of garments, fabrics, and methods of dyeing and decorating them. The first task in this research-design process was to reconstruct the historical colours of royal and clerical attire. The basis for this was archaeological research by Dr Magdalena Woźniak (University of Warsaw) and the unique expertise in natural dyeing of Dr hab. Katarzyna Schmidt-Przewoźna (SWPS University). In order to achieve reliable results not only knowledge of dyes, but also of the fabrics that were used in medieval Nubia, their production and trade, were indispensable.
From the colour palette proposed by Dr hab. Schmidt-Przewoźna, designers Dorothée Roqueplo and Agnieszka Jacobson-Cielecka selected the ones closest to the original colours, using collections from the Textile Research Centre in Leiden (NL) and the murals from Faras at the National Museum in Warsaw. The most challenging task was translating the two-dimensional, sometimes unclear murals into three-dimensional forms and understanding the layers of the garments, including those not visible in the paintings but known from tradition or other sources, including our knowledge of Christian rites. Close cooperation and the exchange of knowledge and experience between specialists from various fields were indispensable and crucial.
On fabrics dyed according to the colour palette, stencil-printed patterns, hand embroidery, and appliqués were applied. Bishop’s stoles and mappae (handkerchiefs symbolising high social status, borrowed from Byzantine culture) were hand-embroidered by Alicja Kozłowska and Anastasia Bernatowicz, graduates of the School of Form at SWPS University, and Lena Nowak. The entire team working on the construction of the costumes and the decoration of the fabrics was led by Dorothée Roqueplo. The accessories worn by the figures, originally made of gold, were recreated from brass with the use of natural and synthetic gemstones by Bartosz Wiking Głowacki and Kuba Łagunionok.
The reconstructed costumes were presented on models to fully showcase their physical form and impact on viewers. Sudanese people, representatives of the communities from the Netherlands and Germany, impersonated Nubian dignitaries and were photographed at Pastoor van Ars Church in The Hague. The artistic concept and styling of the photographs were created by Paulina Matusiak, with the photos taken by Eddy Wenting.
The projects Creations of Power: Depicting the Royal Family and Clergy in Christian Nubia and Dress to Impress are unique examples of transdisciplinary academic collaboration, which not only generates and popularises new knowledge, but also demonstrates that past artefacts and phenomena can have a contemporary face.
**These studies are part of project no. 2021/43/P/HS3/00764, co-financed by the Polish National Science Centre and the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement no. 945339 (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions).

The project was carried out in collaboration with SWPS Innovations and with financial support from the Institute of Design at SWPS University.

 

FAU awarded $10M to train people with disabilities for in-demand tech jobs

Florida Atlantic University

 

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(From left): Ayse Torres, Ph.D., principal investigator and an associate professor in the Department of Counselor Education, College of Education; Stella Batalama, Ph.D., co-principal investigator and dean, College of Engineering and Computer Science and professor of electrical engineering and computer science; and Javad Hashemi, Ph.D., co-principal investigator, inaugural chair and professor of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and associate dean for research, College of Engineering and Computer Science.

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Credit: Alex Dolce, Florida Atlantic University

The rising demand for tech jobs presents an outstanding opportunity for growth and inclusivity in the industry. Developing accessible training programs tailored for individuals with disabilities can foster a more diverse workforce. Florida Atlantic University’s College of Education and the College of Engineering and Computer Science have received a $9,961,460 grant from the United States Department of Education’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to increase the capacity and participation of transition-age youths and working-age adults with disabilities in high demand technology jobs locally and nationally.   

The five-year project, “Advancing Career Choices for Employment Success in Technology” (ACCESS-Technology), will assist individuals with disabilities nationwide to acquire certified skills needed for entry into high quality technology sectors. The program, which can serve as a model for similar initiatives, will offer career counseling, work-readiness skills training, and customized-training leading to a certificate in cybersecurity, cloud computing solutions, and computer-aided design and 3D printing.

“ACCESS-Technology is a groundbreaking initiative that aims to transform the lives of people with disabilities by providing them with tailored training and certifications in high-demand technology fields,” said Ayse Torres, Ph.D., principal investigator and an associate professor in the Department of Counselor Education within FAU’s College of Education. “By bridging the gap between disability and technology careers, we are not only opening doors to competitive integrated employment but also fostering a more inclusive and diverse workforce that will drive innovation in the 21st century.”

A distinctive feature of this project is that it combines the expertise from the College of Education’s Clinical Rehabilitation Counseling Program with that of the College of Engineering and Computer Science, to create innovative technology certification courses tailored for individuals with disabilities.

“This exciting project is the keystone in a series of initiatives that the two colleges of engineering and computer science and education have jointly planned to make FAU a leader in technology centered education and workforce development. Our goal is to use tech-driven education to enhance and complement learning and training in engineering fields among people with any form of disability,” said Javad Hashemi, Ph.D., co-principal investigator, inaugural chair and professor of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and associate dean for research, FAU College of Engineering and Computer Science.

The project is designed to inspire people with disabilities by providing career counseling to crystalize their technology career interests, provide trainings leading to customized industry-recognized standards, and create opportunities to realize their vocational skills and acquire soft skills.

“By partnering with leading technology companies to offer paid internships, we are providing both theoretical knowledge and invaluable real-world, hands-on experience, which is crucial for success in the tech industry,” said Stella Batalama, Ph.D., co-principal investigator and dean, FAU College of Engineering and Computer Science and professor of electrical engineering and computer science. “We envision this approach to be a hallmark of education at FAU.”

Although the FAU team will focus on youth and adults with disabilities who have a high school diploma and are current or former participants of state vocational rehabilitation services, the developed education and training modules will be available to all who are interested in a tech career.

“This unique project exemplifies the power of interdisciplinary research, and I am incredibly proud of this collaborative effort,” said Stephen Silverman, Ed.D., dean, FAU College of Education. “By combining our expertise, we are not only creating innovative solutions for people with disabilities entering the workforce but also opening up exciting new avenues for our faculty to conduct pioneering research that addresses complex societal challenges.”

The project will offer fully online, accessible technology training programs including text, audio, video and gamification. Assistive technologies and accessibility features will be integrated into all learning platforms, with flexible, self-paced options to meet diverse needs. A fully accessible and interactive project website also will be developed.

“Because of its online nature, ACCESS Technology will be inherently effective in a variety of settings,” said Torres. “The project will also include a comprehensive ‘how to’ manual detailing standardized ACCESS-Technology interventions, and will encompass recruitment, training, certification and other essential components, which we will provide to state vocational rehabilitation agencies and community rehabilitation programs. The manual will ensure consistent, high-quality interventions, enhancing career opportunities and outcomes for individuals with disabilities.”

The project team will also establish a stakeholder advisory committee with representatives from various groups, including people with disabilities, agency managers, counselors, rehabilitation staff, health professionals, community leaders, educators and tech company administrators.

“This specialized training will help enhance economic opportunities and promote a more inclusive workforce, foster long-term professional growth, and provide the tools and support needed to excel in advanced technology fields,” said Hashemi.

The low employment rate for people with disabilities – 41.7% in May 2024, compared to 77.7% for those without disabilities – highlights a significant issue, as it increases their risk of unemployment-related challenges.

Encouragingly, U.S. companies are increasingly recognizing the benefits of disability inclusion. A 2023 Accenture study revealed that companies excelling in disability inclusion see substantial performance gains, including 1.6 times more revenue, 2.6 times more net income, and double the economic profit compared to their peers. These companies also outperform industry peers in productivity by 25%. This evidence underscores that embracing disability inclusion not only fulfills a social responsibility but also enhances business performance.

The FAU project aims to recruit 240 youth and adults with disabilities and anticipates an 80% completion rate for those enrolled in certificate programs. Half of the participants will be provided with paid internships in leading technology companies, and 50% of certificate earners are expected to secure employment, while 25% may transition to further education in technology.

- FAU -

About the College of Education:

In 1964, Florida Atlantic University’s College of Education became South Florida’s first provider of education professionals. Dedicated to advancing research and educational excellence, the College is nationally recognized for its innovative programs, evidence-based training, and professional practice. The College spans five departments: Curriculum and Instruction, Educational Leadership and Research Methodology, Special Education, Counselor Education, and Communication Sciences and Disorders, to prepare highly skilled teachers, school leaders, counselors, and speech pathologists. Faculty engage in cutting-edge research supported by prestigious organizations, including the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, and the State of Florida.

 

About the College of Engineering and Computer Science:

The FAU College of Engineering and Computer Science is internationally recognized for cutting-edge research and education in the areas of computer science and artificial intelligence (AI), computer engineering, electrical engineering, biomedical engineering, civil, environmental and geomatics engineering, mechanical engineering, and ocean engineering. Research conducted by the faculty and their teams expose students to technology innovations that push the current state-of-the art of the disciplines. The College research efforts are supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Department of Defense (DOD), the Department of Transportation (DOT), the Department of Education (DOEd), the State of Florida, and industry. The FAU College of Engineering and Computer Science offers degrees with a modern twist that bear specializations in areas of national priority such as AI, cybersecurity, internet-of-things, transportation and supply chain management, and data science. New degree programs include Master of Science in AI (first in Florida), Master of Science and Bachelor in Data Science and Analytics, and the new Professional Master of Science and Ph.D. in computer science for working professionals. For more information about the College, please visit eng.fau.edu. 

 

About Florida Atlantic University:
Florida Atlantic University, established in 1961, officially opened its doors in 1964 as the fifth public university in Florida. Today, the University serves more than 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students across six campuses located along the southeast Florida coast. In recent years, the University has doubled its research expenditures and outpaced its peers in student achievement rates. Through the coexistence of access and excellence, FAU embodies an innovative model where traditional achievement gaps vanish. FAU is designated a Hispanic-serving institution, ranked as a top public university by U.S. News & World Report and a High Research Activity institution by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. For more information, visit www.fau.edu.

 

Researchers study 3D printing tungsten parts for extreme conditions in nuclear reactors

Iowa State University

 

image: 

Iowa State's Sougata Roy is leading a project to explore new ways to process tungsten for use in nuclear reactors.

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Credit: Photo by Christopher Gannon/Iowa State University.

10-2-24

 

Contacts:

Sougata Roy, Mechanical Engineering, 515-294-5001, sroy@iastate.edu

Mike Krapfl, News Service, 515-294-4917, mkrapfl@iastate.edu

 

Researchers study 3D printing tungsten parts for extreme conditions in nuclear reactors

 

AMES, Iowa – Sougata Roy, who doesn’t study electrons or grids or wind turbines, has found a way to contribute to a clean-energy future.

 

“This work in advanced manufacturing, particularly in using additive manufacturing, is about making a difference,” said Roy, an Iowa State University assistant professor of mechanical engineering and a Building a World of Difference Faculty Fellow in Engineering.

 

Roy has a new four-year, $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to study the possibilities of using additive manufacturing, known as 3D printing, to create shields and components that could be used in nuclear reactors.

 

“One of the major things that excites me about this project is working with nuclear energy,” Roy said. “It’s the largest source of clean power in the United States. This emission-free electricity is important for the future.”

 

(The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that the U.S. produces about 19% of its electricity from nuclear power. About 10% comes from the country’s wind turbines.)

 

The grant will allow Roy, as the lead researcher, to assemble what he calls a DREAM-TEAM project: “Developing a Robust Ecosystem for Additive Manufacturing of Tungsten for Extreme Applications and Management.”

 

Joining Roy on the project are Yachao Wang, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of North Dakota, and researchers from three of the U.S. Department of Energy’s labs: Ames National Laboratory on the Iowa State campus, Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

 

The grant is part of a $36 million effort by the energy department’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (known as EPSCoR). The program is designed to build energy-related research capabilities and expertise across the country.

 

The researchers will work with tungsten, a top material candidate for the inner walls of fusion reactors because it maintains strength at high temperatures, has a high melting temperature, resists erosion under high-energy neutron irradiation and retains low levels of radioactive tritium.

 

But, Roy said, tungsten is expensive for conventional manufacturers to work with because it’s hard and brittle.

 

So, the researchers asked, what if we try unconventional processing?

 

They’ll try 3D printing tungsten-based alloys using technology known as laser powder-blown directed-energy deposition. It involves using a laser under oxygen-controlled conditions to process tungsten powder and, layer by layer, print the metal.

 

Roy, who has experience 3D printing other steel-based alloys for nuclear energy applications, said the project will allow him to purchase a new instrument to characterize the mechanical properties (including the instrumented indentation characteristics and the fracture toughness) of the printed samples.

 

Roy said the most unique part of the project isn’t the actual printing, it’s the physics-based modeling and computational simulations of the printing process that will complement the experimental work.

 

The modeling and simulations, which will include work with machine learning and artificial intelligence tools, will help researchers establish the theories behind their experimental results. The simulations will also help them develop recipes for tungsten alloys that can withstand the extreme conditions inside a nuclear reactor.

 

“We’ll start with pure tungsten,” he said. “Eventually we’ll develop new alloys to resolve this cracking challenge.”

 

Roy puts the emphasis on the “we” when he talks about the project and its goals.

 

“This is a real DREAM-TEAM,” he said, “nothing like this project can be done alone.”

A 3D printer at work in Sougata Roy's lab.

Credit

Photo by Christopher Gannon/Iowa State University.

 

Small brains can accomplish big things, according to new theoretical research

Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Neuroscientists had a problem.

For decades, researchers had a theory about how an animal’s brain keeps track of where it is relative to its surroundings without outside cues – like how we know where we are, even with our eyes closed.

According to the theory, which was based on brain recordings from rodents, networks of neurons called ring attractor networks maintain an internal compass that keeps track of where you are in the world. An accurate internal compass was thought to require a large network with many neurons, while a small network with few neurons would cause the compass’s needle to drift, creating errors.

Then researchers discovered an internal compass in the tiny fruit fly.

“The fly’s compass is very accurate, but it’s built from a really small network, contrary to what previous theories assumed,” says Janelia Group Leader Ann Hermundstad. “So, there was clearly a gap in our understanding of brain compasses.”

Now, research led by Marcella Noorman, a postdoc in the Hermundstad Lab at HHMI's Janelia Research Campus, explains this conundrum. The new theory shows how it is possible to create a perfectly accurate internal compass with a very small network, like in fruit flies.

The work changes the way neuroscientists think about how the brain carries out many tasks, from working memory to navigation to decision-making.

“This really expands our knowledge of what small networks can do,” Noorman says. “They actually can do a lot more complicated computations than previously known.”

Generating a ring attractor

When Noorman arrived at Janelia in 2019, she was presented with the problem Hermundstad and others had been puzzling over: How could the fruit fly’s small brain generate an accurate internal compass?   

Noorman first set out to show that you couldn’t generate a ring attractor with a small network of neurons, but that you needed to add “extra stuff” -- like other cell types and more detailed biophysical properties of the cells – to get it to work. To do that, she stripped away all the “extra stuff” from existing models, to see if she could generate a ring attractor with what was left over. She thought this wouldn’t be possible.

But Noorman struggled to prove her hypothesis. That’s when she decided she needed a different approach.

“I had to flip my mindset and think, well, maybe it’s because you can generate a ring attractor with a small network,” she says, “and then figure out what specific conditions the network has to satisfy to make that happen.”

By changing her assumption, Noorman discovered that, in fact, it is possible to generate a ring attractor with as few as four neurons, as long as the connections between them are carefully adjusted. Noorman worked with other researchers at Janelia to test the new theory in the lab, finding physiological evidence that the fly brain can generate a ring attractor.

“Smaller networks and smaller brains can perform more complicated computations than we previously thought,” Noorman says. “But, to do so, the neurons have to be connected much more precisely than they would otherwise need to be in a larger brain where you can use a lot of neurons to perform the same computation.”

“So there’s a trade-off between how many neurons you use for this computation and how carefully you have to connect them,” she says.

Next, the researchers plan to explore whether the “extra stuff” might provide additional robustness to the ring attractor network, and whether the base computation could serve as a building block for more complicated computations in bigger networks with multiple variables. Additional experiments could also help researchers understand how the connections between neurons in the network are adjusted and how sensory cues might impact the network’s representation of head direction.

For Noorman, a mathematician turned neuroscientist, it has been challenging but fun to figure out how to translate biology into a math problem that can be solved.

“The fly’s head direction system is the first example of neural activity that I’d ever seen, so it’s been fun to actually figure out and understand how that works,” she says.

---

Journal

Nature Neuroscience

DOI

10.1038/s41593-024-01766-5 

Article Title

Maintaining and updating accurate internal representations of continuous variables with a handful of neurons

Article Publication Date

3-Oct-2024

 

Wake Forest University School of Medicine awarded $3.4 million to study medical misinformation

Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Oct. 3, 2024 – Researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine have received a five-year, $3.4 million grant from the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health, to study medical misinformation.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, public distrust in science and medicine grew. The hyper-politicized environment, evolving health guidelines as scientists learned more and disagreements about trustworthy sources for health information only intensified the spread of misinformation.

While many physicians discuss medical misinformation with their patients during clinical visits, there’s little known research on the factors that assist or impede these conversations.

“Health care providers play a crucial role in mitigating misinformation,” said Zubin Master, Ph.D., associate professor of social sciences and health policy at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and the study’s principal investigator. “However, we need a better understanding of why physicians may choose not to confront patient misinformation.”

Master said that older patients are also disproportionately affected by health misinformation, which can hurt informed decision-making and health outcomes.

For the study, the research team will conduct 100 interviews and survey a national sample of 1,400 physicians to evaluate attitudes about confronting medical misinformation surrounding two topics known to have rampant misinformation: COVID-19 vaccinations and unproven stem-cell therapies.

Master said while these topics vary in their politicization, misinformation in both areas is a threat to public health. For example, unproven stem cell therapies have not been scientifically tested for patient safety and effectiveness, and yet, there’s a direct-to-consumer market that flourishes.

Using online focus groups with older adult patients, researchers will also evaluate communication preferences and willingness in being confronted with evidence-based health information from physicians.

Master said that future research will involve translating data from these studies to create a toolkit for physicians that can be tested and implemented within a health system.

“Health care providers are highly trusted information brokers,” Master said. “This funding will support our long-term goal in understanding the best methods to increase health literacy and counter medical misinformation among an aging public.”