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)
NIH/NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES
IMAGE: COLORIZED SCANNING ELECTRON MICROGRAPH OF AN APOPTOTIC CELL (GREEN) HEAVILY INFECTED WITH SARS-COV-2 VIRUS PARTICLES (PURPLE), ISOLATED FROM A PATIENT SAMPLE. IMAGE CAPTURED AT THE NIAID INTEGRATED RESEARCH FACILITY (IRF)... view more
CREDIT: NIAID
WHAT:
An investigational vaccine, mRNA-1273, designed to protect against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), was generally well tolerated and prompted neutralizing antibody activity in healthy adults, according to interim results published online today in The New England Journal of Medicine. The ongoing Phase 1 trial is supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. The experimental vaccine is being co-developed by researchers at NIAID and at Moderna, Inc. of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Manufactured by Moderna, mRNA-1273 is designed to induce neutralizing antibodies directed at a portion of the coronavirus "spike" protein, which the virus uses to bind to and enter human cells.
The trial was led by Lisa A. Jackson, M.D., MPH, of Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle, where the first participant received the candidate vaccine on March 16. This interim report details the initial findings from the first 45 participants ages 18 to 55 years enrolled at the study sites in Seattle and at Emory University in Atlanta. Three groups of 15 participants received two intramuscular injections, 28 days apart, of either 25, 100 or 250 micrograms (mcg) of the investigational vaccine. All the participants received one injection; 42 received both scheduled injections.
In April, the trial was expanded to enroll adults older than age 55 years; it now has 120 participants. However, the newly published results cover the 18 to 55-year age group only.
Regarding safety, no serious adverse events were reported. More than half of the participants reported fatigue, headache, chills, myalgia or pain at the injection site. Systemic adverse events were more common following the second vaccination and in those who received the highest vaccine dose. Data on side effects and immune responses at various vaccine dosages informed the doses used or planned for use in the Phase 2 and 3 clinical trials of the investigational vaccine.
The interim analysis includes results of tests measuring levels of vaccine-induced neutralizing activity through day 43 after the second injection. Two doses of vaccine prompted high levels of neutralizing antibody activity that were above the average values seen in convalescent sera obtained from persons with confirmed COVID-19 disease.
A Phase 2 clinical trial of mRNA-1273, sponsored by Moderna, began enrollment in late May. Plans are underway to launch a Phase 3 efficacy trial in July 2020.
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Additional information about the Phase 1 clinical trial design is available at ClinicalTrials.gov using the identifier NCT04283461. This trial was supported in part by the NIAID grants UM1AI148373 (Kaiser Permanente Washington), UM1AI148576 (Emory University) and UM1AI148684 (Infectious Diseases Clinical Research Consortium). Funding for the manufacture of mRNA-1273 Phase 1 material was provided by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).
ARTICLE:
LA Jackson et al. A SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine--preliminary report. The New England Journal of Medicine. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2022483 (2020).
WHO:
NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., and John Beigel, M.D., associate director for clinical research, Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, NIAID, are available to discuss the results of this trial.
CONTACT:
To schedule interviews, please contact Anne A. Oplinger, (301) 402-1663, niaidnews@niaid.nih.gov.
NIAID conducts and supports research--at NIH, throughout the United States, and worldwide--to study the causes of infectious and immune-mediated diseases, and to develop better means of preventing, diagnosing and treating these illnesses. News releases, fact sheets and other NIAID-related materials are available on the NIAID website.
About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov/.
The International Gemini Observatory and W. M. Keck Observatory catch short gamma-ray burst within hours
W. M. KECK OBSERVATORY
IMAGE: THE AFTERGLOW OF GRB181123B CAPTURED BY THE GEMINI NORTH TELESCOPE ON MAUNAKEA IN HAWAII. THE AFTERGLOW IS MARKED WITH A CIRCLE. view more
CREDIT: INTERNATIONAL GEMINI OBSERVATORY/NOIRLAB/NSF/AURA/K. PATERSON & W. FONG, NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY; IMAGE PROCESSING: TRAVIS RECTOR, UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA ANCHORAGE/MAHDI ZAMANI/ DAVIDE DE MARTIN
Observations confirm the object's distance at 10 billion light-years away, placing it squarely in the epoch of cosmic high noon when the universe was in its "teenage years" and rapidly forming stars.
The appearance of an SGRB at such an early time could alter theories about their origins, particularly the length of time it takes two neutron stars to merge and produce these powerful explosions, as well as the rate of neutron star mergers in the young universe.
"This was a very exciting object to study," said Kerry Paterson, a postdoctoral associate at Northwestern University's Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) and lead author of the study. "Our research now suggests neutron star mergers could occur surprisingly quickly for some systems -- with neutron star binaries spiraling together in less than a billion years to create an SGRB."
SGRBs are short-lived, highly-energetic bursts of gamma-ray light. The gamma-ray light lasts for less than two seconds, while the optical light can last for a matter of hours before fading. Therefore, rapid follow-up of the optical afterglow of these intense flashes of gamma-ray radiation is critical. Within just a few hours after NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory detected the object and broadcast a worldwide alert, Paterson's team quickly pointed the Gemini North and Keck I telescopes toward the location of the SGRB.
Using the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph followed by Keck Observatory's Multi-Object Spectrograph for Infrared Exploration (MOSFIRE) instrument, the researchers were able to measure the very faint afterglow of the object, which is named GRB181123B because it was the second burst discovered on November 23, 2018 -- Thanksgiving night.
An artist's impression of how GRB181123B compares to other short gamma-ray bursts. It is the second-most distant short gamma-ray burst to ever be detected, and the most distant to have its optical afterglow captured. Except when they are detected by gravitational wave observatories, the gamma-ray bursts can only be detected from Earth when their jets of energy are pointed towards us.
"It was unreal," said Wen-fai Fong, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Northwestern University and co-author of the study. "I was in New York with my family and had finished having a big Thanksgiving dinner. Just as I had gone to sleep, the alert went off and woke me up. While somewhat of a nuisance, you literally never know when you'll land a big discovery like this! I immediately triggered the Gemini observations and notified Kerry. Thankfully, she happened to be observing at Keck that night and was able to rearrange her original observing plan and repoint the telescope towards the SGRB."
"It was such an adrenaline-rush to be at Keck when the SGRB alert went off and personally move the telescope towards the object to capture data mere hours after the burst," said Paterson.
Precisely-localized SGRBs are rare, typically only 7-8 are detected per year. To pinpoint the distance of GRB181123B, the team obtained spectra of its host galaxy through follow-up observations using Keck Observatory's DEep Imaging and Multi-Object Spectrograph (DEIMOS).
"Once we obtained the optical spectrum from DEIMOS, it was clear this event was one of the most distant SGRBs measured, which further fueled our investigation to determine its precise distance," said Paterson.
This led the team to collect additional observations with Keck Observatory, along with the Gemini South telescope in Chile and Multi-Mirror Telescope in Arizona. With a distance calculated at a cosmological redshift of 1.754, the data confirmed the object is the most distant high-confidence SGRB with an optical afterglow detection ever found.
"The identification of certain patterns in the spectrum, together with the colors of the galaxy from the three observatories, allowed us to precisely constrain the distance and solidify it as one of the most distant SGRBs to date in 16 years of Swift operations," said Paterson.
Once the team identified the host galaxy, they were able to determine key properties of the parent stellar population within the galaxy that produced the SGRB.
"Performing 'forensics' to understand the local environment of SGRBs and what their home galaxies look like can tell us a lot about the underlying physics of these systems, such as how SGRB progenitors form and how long it takes for them to merge," said Fong. "We certainly did not expect to discover an extremely distant SGRB, as they are very rare and faint, but we were pleasantly surprised! This motivates us to go after every one that we possibly can."
THIS IS FROM THE SET OF OBSERVATORIES ON THE DISPUTED SACRED MOUNTAIN OF MAUNAKEA THAT INDIGENOUS AND ALLIES HAVE BEEN PROTESTING OVER THE BUILDING OF A NEW OBSERVATORY THAT CANADA HAS INVESTED IN.
The plight of the Kalahari San
Hunter-gatherers in a globalized world
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS JOURNALS
Over the past few decades, San (Bushmen) communities in southern Africa, former hunter-gatherers, have developed new adaptive strategies to cope with climate change, the presence of other groups on their land, and the impacts of globalization. While San have likely lived in southern Africa for 20,000 to 40,000 years, they remain politically and economically marginalized in relation to other social groups. Such forms of marginalization have been attributed to governance regimes that have dispossessed San groups from their land and livelihoods. According to a newly published article in the Journal of Anthropological Research, San communities face unprecedented challenges in the era of globalization, as cash-based economies continue to become more prevalent and resource-sharing at the communal level decreases.
In "The Plight of the Kalahari San: Hunter-Gatherers in a Globalized World," author Robert K. Hitchcock describes how challenges faced by San communities are connected to national-level and international-level legal and developmental frameworks. In particular, the legal status of San communities varies substantially across three different southern African countries: Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. In Botswana, where the largest number of San resides, San are not classified as an indigenous ethnic group vis-à-vis other ethnic groups; instead, they are categorized as Remote Area Dwellers, and a Remote Area Development Program (RADP) for these communities exist. Nevertheless, San livelihoods in Botswana continue to be at risk, because land tenure protections remain weak. In Namibia, the San are recognized as a distinct indigenous group, and a national-level San Development Office dedicated for San welfare was established by the Namibian government in 2007. They are now considered 'marginalized communities' along with Himba and Ovatue by the Namibian government. In Zimbabwe, no specific government agency is dedicated to the welfare of the San or other groups, though the Zimbabwe Constitution does recognize people that are defined as 'Koisan.'
Since the 1970s, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Namibia have all instituted reforms to land tenure, which resulted in large portions of former tribal lands to be allocated to non-San groups and individuals. As a result, San communities have been displaced from their land in all three countries. Although some San communities have returned to their ancestral lands after court case victories, as occurred in Botswana San livelihoods continue to be vulnerable after the Botswana government criminalized subsistence hunting in 2014. Hunting rights were restored in 2019 but only for private, citizen and foreign safari hunters.
In Namibia, San groups have been involved in conservancies as a form of community-based natural resources management since 1996. In particular, San communities have enrolled as members of state-sanctioned conservancies, such as the Nyae Nyae Conservancy. These conservancies allow members to share revenues derived from safari hunting and tourism. Nyae Nyae, Namibia is the only area left in Africa, besides the Hadza area near Lake Eyasi, Tanzania, where local people have the right to hunt for subsistence as long as they use traditional weapons. The funds that have been made available to Ju/'hoan and !Kung communities have been used to develop gardens and protection facilities for water points. There is also a village schools program that provides San students with mother-tongue language education at the pre-school and primary school levels.
In the past few decades, San communities have gradually reclaimed their ways of life in southern Africa through legal victories at the national level. By mobilizing support for legal advocacy on behalf of San communities, local non-government organizations continue to play crucial roles among the San. Nevertheless, these community-led San organizations continue to face difficulties in obtaining adequate financing. The author of this article admits that "that it is not inexpensive to engage in international and local human rights efforts" San communities continue to call upon their governments and international organizations to recognize their human rights and protect their welfare.
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Researchers cast doubt on earlier COVID-19 origins study citing dogs as possible hosts
International collection of scientists says no evidence to support previous conclusion
UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO ANSCHUTZ MEDICAL CAMPUS
AURORA, Colo. (July 14, 2020) - A study published earlier this year claiming the coronavirus may have jumped from dogs to humans is scientifically flawed, offering no direct evidence to support its conclusions, according to a collaborative group of international researchers, including scientists at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
"During this time of Covid-19 we are seeing people publish things that make wild leaps to conclusions that are not justified by the evidence," said David Pollock, PhD, professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. "And this seems to be one of them."
Pollock and CU Anschutz alumnus Todd Castoe, an associate professor of biology at the University of Texas Arlington, are lead authors of an academic letter published this week in Molecular Biology and Evolution aimed at refuting the earlier study published in the same journal.
Pollock and his co-authors, including PhD student Kristen Wade and colleague Elizabeth Carlton, PhD, MPH, an assistant professor at the Colorado School of Public Health at CU Anschutz, took issue with the April 2020 study by biology Professor Xuhua Xia of the University of Ottawa in Canada.
Many scientists are interested in the origins of the novel coronavirus. The want to know which host the SARS-CoV-2 virus, responsible for Covid-19, came from before making the leap from animal to human.
The classic way to address this is by finding viruses with similar genome sequences in a particular animal host. Xia, however, focused on a feature of the coronavirus genome known as CpG content, and found that a distantly-related dog coronavirus had similar CpG content as SARS-CoV-2. Because this distant virus replicated well in the dog's digestive tract, he concluded that a dog's intestines were the ideal place to have affected the ancestral SARS-CoV-2's CpG content.
"However, there is no evidence for the logical premise of Xia's argument, considering that all mammals have digestive tracts," the researchers wrote.
They showed that dogs aren't special in their content of ZAP and ABOBEC3G proteins, which help safeguard humans from viruses and can interact with viral CpG content.
"Additionally, a recent inoculation study found that while other domesticated mammalian hosts are highly susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, canines exhibited low susceptibility, and no traces of viral RNA were detectable in any dog organs," the scientists wrote.
Pollock and his colleagues said that although the recent origin of SARS-CoV-2 is uncertain, the best current evidence makes it likely that it was passed to humans by horseshoe bats or possibly pangolins, a kind of spiny anteater in China. There is strong evidence that the virus has recently jumped between humans and these animals or other intermediate hosts.
Bat and pangolin viruses also have CpG content similar to human SARS-CoV-2, so the environment that affected viral CpGs must have happened long ago and possibly in one of these two mammals. They noted that there are signs of prior recombination events among divergent viruses. That suggests that over the years relatives of coronaviruses found in bats and pangolins mixed and mutated to give rise to SARS-CoV-2.
The proposition that dogs were likely recent ancestors of SARS-CoV-2 is not justified by the available evidence, the researchers concluded.
"Xia did not demonstrate that the low CpG frequency in the SARS- CoV-2 genome was driven by a unique selective environment in dog digestive tracts," the authors wrote. "Dogs are not more plausible than most other potential host species, and based on current data, far less plausible than bats or pangolins."
Pollock said determining how the virus jumped from animals to humans is critical in preparing for the next pandemic.
Even so, he said, in the midst of a pandemic scientific results can be over-interpreted and misused, leading to misappropriation of resources and effort. Rather than promote the speculations of a study based on weak evidence, he noted, it is better to admit uncertainty. If not, the scientific community has an obligation to respond.
"Considering the ramifications, scientists need to be particularly careful in interpreting findings, and avoid rushing to conclusions that are not well supported by solid evidence" co-lead author Castoe said. "We need to get this right."
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Factors maximize impact of yoga, physical therapy on back pain in underserved population
Fear avoidance, pain medication use, and treatment expectations impact response to nonpharmaceutical treatments to relieve chronic low back pain
BOSTON MEDICAL CENTER
BOSTON - New research shows that people with chronic low back pain (cLBP) have better results from yoga and physical therapy compared to reading evidence-based self-help materials. While this finding was consistent across many patient characteristics, a much larger effect was observed among those already taking pain medication to treat their condition and those who did not fear that exercise would make their back pain worse. Led by researchers at Boston Medical Center and published in Pain Medicine, the findings also showed that individuals who expected to do well with yoga were more likely to have a meaningful improvement in their function if they received yoga compared to receiving physical therapy.
Studying a population of predominately non-white and low-income patients, the results from this clinical trial show that overall, 39 percent of participants responded to one of the three treatment options with a greater response to yoga-or-physical therapy (42 percent) than the self-care group (23 percent). There was not a significant difference in proportion of people responding to yoga versus physical therapy - both showed similar improvements in back-related physical function. Among the study participants that were also using pain medication to treat chronic lower back pain, a large effect was observed among more participants in yoga (42 percent) or physical therapy (34 percent) compared with self-care (11 percent).
This study highlights the effect that fear can have on patient outcomes. Among the participants identified to have less fear around physical activity, 53 percent were more likely to respond to yoga and 42 percent were more likely to respond to physical therapy than self-care (13 percent). In contrast, among participants who started out with high fear avoidance around taking part in physical activity, the proportions of responders to the three treatment options showed no additional effect in response to treatment.
"Adults living with chronic low back pain could benefit from a multi-disciplinary approach to treatment including yoga or physical therapy, especially when they are already using pain medication,' said Eric Roseen, DC, MSc, a chiropractic physician at Boston Medical Center.
The yoga intervention consisted of 12 group-based weekly 75-minute hatha yoga classes incorporating poses, relaxation and meditation exercises, yoga breathing and yoga philosophy. Thirty minutes of daily home practice was encouraged and supported with at-home yoga supplies. The physical therapy intervention consisted of 15 one-on-one 60-minute appointments over 12 weeks. During each appointment, the physical therapist utilized the Treatment-Based Classification Method and supervised aerobic exercise, while providing written instructions and supplies to continue exercises at home. The self-care intervention consisted of reading from a copy of The Back Pain Handbook, a comprehensive resource describing evidence-based self-management strategies for chronic lower back pain including stretching, strengthening, and the role of psychological and social factors. Participants received check-in calls regarding the reading every three weeks.
The study involved 299 participants with chronic lower back pain at a safety net hospital and seven federally qualified community health centers, across 12 weeks of treatment. An exploratory analysis was performed identifying patient-level characteristics that predicted large improvements in physical function and/or modified the effectiveness of yoga, physical therapy, or self-care. The characteristics that were studied as predictors of improvement or treatment effect modifiers were from the domains of sociodemographic, general health, back-related, psychological, and treatment expectations data.
"Focusing on a diverse population with an average income well below the US median, this research adds important data for an understudied and often underserved population," said Roseen, also an assistant professor of family medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. "Our findings of predictors are consistent with existing research, also showing that lower socioeconomic status, multiple comorbidities, depression, and smoking are all associated with poor response to treatment."
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Funding for this study was supported by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (1F32AT009272, 5R01AT005956), the Boston University Clinical and the Translational Science Institute Clinical Research Training Program (National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, 1UL1TR001430).
About Boston Medical Center
Boston Medical Center is a private, not-for-profit, 514-bed, academic medical center that is the primary teaching affiliate of Boston University School of Medicine. It is the largest and busiest provider of trauma and emergency services in New England. Boston Medical Center offers specialized care for complex health problems and is a leading research institution, receiving more than $97 million in sponsored research funding in fiscal year 2018. It is the 15th largest funding recipient in the U.S. from the National Institutes of Health among independent hospitals. In 1997, BMC founded Boston Medical Center Health Plan, Inc., now one of the top ranked Medicaid MCOs in the country, as a non-profit managed care organization. Boston Medical Center and Boston University School of Medicine are partners in Boston HealthNet - 14 community health centers focused on providing exceptional health care to residents of Boston. For more information, please visit http://www.bmc.org.
Correlations identified between insurance coverage and states' voting patterns
'Red' states have the highest uninsured rate, study finds
CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY
Cleveland - Researchers at Case Western Reserve University reviewed national data from the U.S. Census bureau and found associations between states' voting patterns in the 2016 presidential elections and decreases in the number of adults 18 to 64 years of age without health insurance coverage.
"Following the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), we observed sharp decreases in the number of uninsured Americans nationwide," said Uriel Kim, lead author on the study and an MD candidate at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. "However, since the 2016 presidential election, these gains are reversing in so-called 'red' states, and 'purple' states that flipped from blue to red."
The paper State Voting Patterns in the 2016 Presidential Election and Uninsured Rates in Non-elderly Adults was recently published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
Kim and colleagues at the medical school defined states based on voting patterns in the 2016 general election, categorizing them as Blue (21 states and Washington, D.C.), Red (24), or Purple (6)--states that switched from Blue to Red in the 2016 election. (No Red states switched to Blue.)
"The implementation of Medicaid expansion and the marketplaces has varied across states, at least partially explaining our study findings," Kim said. "For example, of the 14 states that have not expanded Medicaid, most are red or purple states. Additionally, while all Americans have access to the insurance marketplaces, the degree to which states invest in outreach and navigation programs for marketplace insurance generally varies along party lines."
In the years 2014 through 2016 (compared to 2013, before key provisions of the ACA were implemented), the data showed that the number of uninsured adults age 18 to 64 decreased by 15.8 million nationwide.
Blue states saw a decrease in the uninsured of over 7.6 million.
Purple states saw a decrease in the uninsured of nearly 3 million.
Red states saw a decrease in the uninsured of nearly 5.2 million.
While the number of uninsured Americans reached record lows in 2016, over 23.5 million remained uninsured.
From 2017-18, following the presidential election, the number of uninsured individuals increased by more than 850,000 nationwide, reversing the positive trends.
Blue states saw a negligible decrease in the number of uninsured.
Purple states saw the number of uninsured grow by 240,000.
Red states saw the uninsured grow by 620,000
Over 24.3 million were still uninsured by 2018, with the majority living in Red states.
Tables and the full study are available in the paper here. Data from 2019 and 2020 were not yet available for the researchers to review.
The ACA expanded coverage with two approaches: the expansion of Medicaid (in some states) to individuals with higher incomes and the creation of "marketplaces" (in all states) that allow individuals to purchase health insurance for themselves and their families. Individuals purchasing insurance on the marketplace receive sliding-scale subsidies based on their income.
The study's senior author, Siran Koroukian, an associate professor in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences in the medical school, added that the study highlights the importance of policies to enable health care access, which has particular relevance during the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic fallout.
"Since the majority of Americans receive insurance through their employer," said Koroukian, "the rise in unemployment following COVID-19 could mean that millions of people could be left without any insurance coverage, especially in states with less robust Medicaid programs or insurance marketplaces. This is problematic when the ability to access care is essential."
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5,000 years of history of domestic cats in Central Europe
Interdisciplinary studies in paleogenetics and archaeozoology
NICOLAUS COPERNICUS UNIVERSITY IN TORUN
IMAGE: PERSPEKTYWICZNA CAVE INSIDE VIEW DURING EXCAVATION. view more
CREDIT: MAGDALENA KRAJCARZ
A loner and a hunter with highly developed territorial instincts, a cruel carnivore, a disobedient individual: the cat. These features make the species averse to domestication. Even so, we did it. Nowadays, about 500 million cats live in households all around the world; it is also difficult to estimate the amount of the homeless and the feral ones
Although the common history of cats and people began 10,000 years ago, the origins of the relation still remain unknown. How was the domestication process carried out? When did the first domesticated cats appear in Central Europe? Where did they come from, and how? What was their role in contemporary people's lives. The knowledge gaps in the topic are numerous; thus, archaeologists, archaeozoologists, biologists, anthropologists as well as other researchers all around the world cooperate to find answers to the questions. Scientists from the Institute of Archaeology at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun have outstanding merits in this field. An article discussing significant research achievements in the area has been published in PNAS, a prestigious official journal of the National Academy of Sciences. The first author is Dr Magdalena Krajcarz who has made an attempt to find ancestors of domestic cats in Neolithic Central Europe. By analyzing cat diet, she is trying to check how close they cohabitated with people
Winding paths of the domesticated cat
According to the assumptions made, the deliberate creation of a breed which involved selecting particular individuals, cross-breeding and reproducing them, took place relatively recently, in the 19th century. In Medieval Poland, cats were not as popular as we could think. According to evidence provided by researchers, semi-domesticated weasels, or even snakes, were used to protect grain crops against rodents. These were people who settled in towns founded in the second half of the 13th century who increased the popularity of cats.
It does not mean, however, that cats had entered into no relations with people even earlier. The first, best-documented domesticated cat remains on the territory of Poland date back to the beginnings of our era. The animals are believed to have spread across Central Europe mainly due to the influence of the Roman Empire. Nonetheless, the earliest cat remains in the area date back to even 4,200-2,300 BC and evidence the first migrations of the Nubian cat which originally inhabited the Near East and North Africa. This particular species is considered as the ancestor of domestic cats in Central Europe.
The Nubian cat is one of wildcat subspecies (next to the European wildcat which is not the domestic cat ancestor even though it is able to cross-bread with it) whose domestication began in the Fertile Crescent ca. 10,000 - 9.000 years ago. In archaeological excavation sites in Anatolia, Syria as well as Israel, a variety of stone figurines representing those cats has been found. Apparently, cats stayed in the proximity of the first farmers and, with high probability, the Neolithic Age is when the first human-cat interrelations were initiated. People gave up nomadism in favor of sedentary life and started to gather eatables which, consequently, attracted rodents of many kinds. This could result in attracting wild cats to easily achievable food sources and the benefits turned out to be mutual. With much likelihood, cats remained rather neutral to people.
Cat skeleton analyses, together with the mammal iconography, allow researchers to make an assumption that cats reached Europe migrating from the Near East, through Anatolia, Cyprus, Crete, Greece, to Ancient Rome, where they were taken over by Celts and Germans .
Ulna bone of near eastern cat from Perspektywiczna cave.
Cat diet vs the history of domestication
The role cats played in Late Neolithic Poland is not clear since scientists have little evidence of these animals presence. The remains found come from caves rather than from human settlements which means that cats not necessarily had to be buried by men. They could as well be pray to other predators or they simply lived and died in caves. Nevertheless, researchers do not reject the hypothesis which says that the animals could be kept by men in order to protect crops from rodents, and thus, benefit from their skills, and occasionally follow them to the caves which contemporary people used as shelters.
Research performed by Dr Magdalena Krajcarz helps to resolve the mystery. In the article entitled Ancestors of domestic cats in Neolithic Central Europe: Isotopic evidence of a synanthropic diet published in PNAS, she provides an insight into cats diet in order to determine how close human-cat relations were.
To carry out studies, six Neolithic cat remains of the Near East characteristics from four cave sites in the Kraków- Czestochowa Upland (southern Poland) were used. Nearby, there used to be farmer settlements located on fertile soils. Moreover, four European wildcat remains from an analogous period and area as well as three Pre-Neolithic and two others from the Roman Period were examined. The reference material additionally covered human and other animal remains.
Analyzing stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes in bone collagen constituted the methodological basis. The stable isotope analysis method is a commonly applied tool in the paleontology and ecology of animals because the isotope composition of their remains reflects the isotope composition of food. According to Krajcarz, the method enables, for example, the identification of feeding habits of particular fossil animal species. In research on wild animal feeding habits, conventional techniques involve analyzing food remnants in faeces or stomachs, which imposes significant limitations. Most importantly, not all the remnants can be identified. Moreover, the remnants are from the last feeding. Finally, the access to such fossil material is very poor.
Owing to the isotope analysis, taking accurate chemical measurements as well as recognizing average diet covering the whole animal lifespan are possible. Primarily, the method allows the examination of feeding habits of animals from the past. All we have are bone tissue remnants which have survived in the unaltered state as the isotope composition of bones has been unchanged for thousands of years - says Dr Krajcarz. To simplify the issue, the Neolithic farmers were knowledgeable enough to apply fertilizers such as dung or plant ash. Rodents which fed on the collected crops were consumed by cats. By the stable isotopes examination we are able to decide whether contemporary cats found food taking advantage of human activity somehow.
So, what are the conclusions drawn by the researchers? According to the examination results, the Near East cats were not fully dependent on men. They made use of all the available food sources, but could also find others in their habitat. They could do it periodically, either benefiting from human activity or hunting individually in forests. Thus, they maintained their independence.
As Dr Krajcarz explains, their findings confirm the hypothesis that the Near East wildcats have spread across Europe accompanying the first farmers, probably as commensal animals. The results of the stable isotope analysis obtained for the Roman Period cats. however, seem to resemble those of men and dogs which suggests that cats followed a similar diet, i.e. they benefited from human resources or were possibly fed by men. Also, the development in farming partially influenced our native European wildcat, even if it was more forest resources oriented.
Neolithic cultural level inside Zarska Cave, where one of the earliest cat remains of the Near Eastern lineage was discovered.
On the track of the cat history
Dr Magdalena Krajcarz and Prof. Daniel Makowiecki from the Institute of Archaeology at the Nicolaus Copernicus University are continuing their research on the history of domestic cats. Together with a team of paleogeneticians supervised by Dr Danijela Popovi? from the Warsaw University, they are initiating a new research project, 5,000 Years of History of Domestic Cats in Central Europe: an Interdisciplinary Paleogenetic and Archaeozoological Study funded by the National Centre of Science. The project will be based on the international cooperation with researchers representing European institutions including Belgium, Serbia, Lithuania, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic.
The main aim of the four year project is to reconstruct migration trails of domestic cats from their domestication regions to Europe and look for traces of the cat genome selection, natural and/or controlled by men. The research team is planning to analyze hundreds of cat bone remains from archaeological and paleontological sites. In the interdisciplinary project, conventional archaeozoological and paleontological morphometric methods as well as fossil DNA analysis and radiocarbon dating will be employed.
The researchers wish to trace all the phenotypic and genetic changes in cats which are responsible for domestication (aesthetic: size, coloration; behavioral: reducing aggression; physiological: adopting to digest anthropogenic food, e.g. milk, starch).
On the basis of the genomic data, they want to estimate the cross-breeding intensity of the Nubian cat and the European wildcat in order to check whether it increased together with the domestic cat population expansion.
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The earliest cat on the Northern Silk Road
NATIONAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY HIGHER SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS
IMAGE: REMAINS OF THE EARLY MEDIEVAL CAT FROM DZHANKENT (KAZAKHSTAN) view more
CREDIT: (COPYRIGHT A. HARUDA 2020)
Dr. Irina Arzhantseva and Professor Heinrich Haerke from the Centre for Classical and Oriental Archaeology (IKVIA, Faculty of Humanities, HSE University) have been involved in the discovery of the earliest domestic cat yet found in northern Eurasia.
Since 2011, the abandoned town of Dzhankent, located near Kazalinsk and Baikonur (Kazakhstan), has been the object of international research and expeditions led by the two HSE archaeologists, together with Kazakh colleagues from Korkyt-Ata State University of Kyzylorda. Last year, the sharp-eyed archaeozoologist on the team, Dr. Ashleigh Haruda from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (Germany), while looking through the masses of animal bones from the excavation, spotted the bones of a feline and immediately realized the significance of the find.
She assembled an international and interdisciplinary team to study all aspects of this cat, and obtain all possible information from the largely complete skeleton. As a result, we now have an astonishingly detailed picture of a tomcat that lived and died in the late 8th century AD in a large village on the Syr-Darya river, not far from the Aral Sea (as it was then). X-rays, 3D imaging and close inspection of the bones revealed a number of serious fractures that had healed, meaning that humans must have looked after the animal while he was unable to hunt. In fact, he was looked after quite well: in spite of his disabilities, he reached an age well over one year, probably several years. Also, stable isotope analysis showed that this tomcat most likely fed on fish, an observation which would also fit the local environment.
Excavations at the citadel of Dzhankent at the spot where the cat remains were found
But even more intriguing is what this high-calibre scientific study says about the relationship between humans and pets at the time. We know from 10th century Arab geographers that Yengi-kent (as Dzhankent was called then) was a town where the ruler of the Turkic Oguz nomads had his winter quarters. But not only is this two centuries after the time when the tomcat lived here: we also know from ethnographic studies that nomads do not keep cats - or rather, cats may temporarily live in nomad camps, but they do not follow the movements of the nomads with their herds. Cats thrive on small rodents which are attracted by human food stores, mostly grain, and nomads do not have large grain stores; such stores are typical of villages and towns, and that is where the history of cats and cat-keeping started.
Cat in the modern village next to Dzhankent
So the presence of Dzhanik (as the archaeologists have begun to call him) at this place implies that this was a reasonably large settlement with a sedentary population even 200 years before it was surrounded by big walls and was called a town. This fits the provisional ideas of the archaeologists about the origins of Dzhankent: the later town of the 10th century grew out of a large fishing village which, as early as the 7th/8th centuries, had trading links to the south, to the Iranian civilization of Khorezm on the Amu-Darya river. Khorezmian traders should have been interested in the location of Dzhankent on the Syr-Darya, the river which around that time became the route of the Northern Silk Road, connecting Central Asia (and ultimately, China) to the Volga, the Caspian and Black Seas and the Mediterranean. And it is along one of these trade routes that domestic cats must have reached Dzhankent, perhaps with a caravan or more likely on a river boat or sailing ship. Because Dzhanik was not a captured, tame wildcat which had lived in the Aral Sea region: ancient DNA has proven that he was most likely a true representative of the Felis catus L. species, the kind of modern domestic cat. And this makes him the earliest domestic mouser in Eurasia north of Central Asia and east of China, about 1200 years ago.
COVID-19 may attack patients' central nervous system
University of Cincinnati researcher says depressed mood and anxiety may be symptoms of a COVID-19 impact on the brain
UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI
IMAGE: AHMAD SEDAGHAT, MD, PHD, SHOWN IN UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI GARDNER NEUROSCIENCE INSTITUTE. view more
CREDIT: COLLEEN KELLEY/UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI CREATIVE + BRAND
Depressed mood or anxiety exhibited in COVID-19 patients may possibly be a sign the virus affects the central nervous system, according to an international study led by a University of Cincinnati College of Medicine researcher.
These two psychological symptoms were most closely associated with a loss of smell and taste rather than the more severe indicators of the novel coronavirus such as shortness of breath, cough or fever, according to the study.
"If you had asked me why would I be depressed or anxious when I am COVID positive, I would say it is because my symptoms are severe and I have shortness of breath or I can't breathe or I have symptoms such as cough or high fever," says Ahmad Sedaghat, MD, PhD, an associate professor and director of rhinology, allergy and anterior skull base surgery, in the UC College of Medicine's Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.
"None of these symptoms that portended morbidity or mortality was associated with how depressed or anxious these patients were," explains Sedaghat, also a UC Health physician specializing in diseases of the nose and sinuses. "The only element of COVID-19 that was associated with depressed mood and anxiety was the severity of patients' loss of smell and taste. This is an unexpected and shocking result."
Sedaghat conducted a prospective, cross-sectional telephone questionnaire study which examined characteristics and symptoms of 114 patients who were diagnosed with COVID-19 over a six-week period at Kantonsspital Aarau in Aarau, Switzerland. Severity of the loss of smell or taste, nasal obstruction, excessive mucus production, fever, cough and shortness of breath during COVID-19 were assessed. The findings of the study are available online in The Laryngoscope.
First author of the study is Marlene M. Speth, MD, and other co-authors include Thirza Singer-Cornelius, MD; Michael Oberle, PhD; Isabelle Gengler, MD; and Steffi Brockmeier, MD.
At the time of enrollment in the study, when participants were experiencing COVID-19, 47.4% of participants reported at least several days of depressed mood per week while 21.1% reported depressed mood nearly every day. In terms of severity, 44.7% of participants reported expressing mild anxiety while 10.5% reported severe anxiety.
"The unexpected finding that the potentially least worrisome symptoms of COVID-19 may be causing the greatest degree of psychological distress could potentially tell us something about the disease," says Sedaghat. "We think our findings suggest the possibility that psychological distress in the form of depressed mood or anxiety may reflect the penetration of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, into the central nervous system."
Sedaghat says researchers have long thought that the olfactory tract may be the primary way that coronaviruses enter the central nervous system. There was evidence of this with SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, a viral illness that first emerged in China in November 2002 and spread through international travel to 29 countries. Studies using mouse models of that virus have shown that the olfactory tract, or the pathway for communication of odors from the nose to the brain, was a gateway into the central nervous system and infection of the brain.
"These symptoms of psychological distress, such as depressed mood and anxiety are central nervous system symptoms if they are associated only with how diminished is your sense of smell," says Sedaghat. "This may indicate that the virus is infecting olfactory neurons, decreasing the sense of smell, and then using the olfactory tract to enter the central nervous symptom."
Infrequent but severe central nervous system symptoms of COVID-19 such as seizures or altered mental status have been described, but depressed mood and anxiety may be the considerably more common but milder central nervous symptom of COVID-19, explains Sedaghat.
"There may be more central nervous system penetration of the virus than we think based on the prevalence of olfaction-associated depressed mood and anxiety and this really opens up doors for future investigations to look at how the virus may interact with the central nervous system," says Sedaghat.
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For the cross-sectional telephone questionnaire study: The two-item Patient Health Question (PHQ-2) and the two-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder questionnaire (GAD-2) were used to measure depressed mood and anxiety level, respectively during COVID-19 and for participants' baseline pre-COVID-19 state.
Funding for the study came from Kantonsspital Aarau, Aarau, Switzerland.
Why hydration is so important when hiking in the heat of summer
ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
You don't have to be an experienced trailblazer to know that if you choose to hike in the heat, you better be hydrated. Yet scientific literature on the subject reports that roughly 25% of heat-related illness cases are a result of a fluid imbalance, rather than heat exposure alone.
New research out of Arizona State University seeks to understand exactly what is going on in the body as it responds to heat stress, looking in particular at hydration levels, core temperature and sweat loss, in the hopes of developing interventions and best practices for those whose mountainous wanderlust just can't be quenched.
The findings of one such related study, recently published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, show that compared to moderate weather conditions, hikers' performance during hot weather conditions was indeed impaired, resulting in slower hiking speeds and prolonged exposure to the elements, thus increasing their risk of heat-related illness.
Perhaps most telling, though, the research team found that most hikers did not bring enough fluid with them on their hike to compensate for their sweat loss. They also found that less aerobically fit participants were most negatively affected by heat stress and performed worse overall compared to their more aerobically fit counterparts.
"The current guidelines for hikers in general are very broad and geared more toward safety than quantifying the adequate amount of fluid they need," said ASU College of Health Solutions Assistant Professor Floris Wardenaar, corresponding author on the paper. "The guidelines also do not take into account fitness levels or the importance of incremental exposure to the heat, which can be affected by acclimatization to specific environments and weather conditions."
Former College of Health Solutions master's degree students Joshua Linsell and Emily Pelham are the first and second authors of the paper, followed by School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning Assistant Professor David Hondula and Wardenaar.
In their study, 12 participants -- seven women and five men in their 20s -- were asked to hike "A" Mountain on a moderate day (68 degrees Fahrenheit) and then again on a hot day (105 degrees Fahrenheit). They were told to prepare as they normally would, bringing however much fluid they thought they would need, and were asked to hike as quickly as possible without becoming uncomfortable. Each time, they hiked up and down the mountain four times, which adds up to roughly the same distance and incline as Camelback Mountain, one of the most popular hiking destinations in the Phoenix area that sees its fair share of heat-related illness cases.
Before their trek, participants' resting metabolism was recorded to estimate their energy production during the hike. Their weight, heart rate, core temperature and hydration status were measured before and after the hike, and their drinking behavior - how much or how little fluid they consumed - was monitored throughout.
Using that data, researchers were able to calculate participants' rate of sweat loss through their bodyweight reduction, which averaged out to about 1%, whether conditions were hot or moderate.
"The 1% bodyweight reduction had different reasons," Wardenaar said. "During hot conditions, participants' sweat rates were higher while drinking more, often resulting in consuming all of the fluid brought, whereas during moderate conditions, sweat rates were lower, but participants drank less. A 1% bodyweight loss is considered manageable and not likely to result in detrimental performance decline. My concern is that when people hike longer than 80 to 90 minutes in hot conditions that they will not bring enough fluid, resulting in larger bodyweight losses."
Overall, compared to moderate conditions, hot conditions significantly impaired hiking performance by 11%, reduced aerobic capacity by 7%, increased rate of perceived exertion by 19% and elevated core temperature. On average, participants took about 20 minutes longer to complete the hike during hot conditions than during moderate conditions, which theoretically could exponentially increase the chance of developing heat-related illness.
"Heat slows you down," Wardenaar explained. "This means that what you normally can hike in 75 minutes under moderate conditions may take up to 95 minutes in the heat. That is something that people should take into account, especially when their hike will substantially exceed the 90 minute cut-off."
Based on their findings, Wardenaar suggests preparing for a hike by familiarizing yourself with your personal hydration needs. You can do so by multiplying your weight before the hike by .01, then subtracting your weight after your hike from your starting weight. If the difference between your starting weight and your ending weight is greater than the product of your starting weight multiplied by .01, you need to be drinking more fluid during your hike.
It's also important to be well-hydrated before you even get out on the trail, Wardenaar said. And avoid alcohol, as it can contribute to dehydration.
