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)
Sunday, July 05, 2020
HERBALISM
In mouse study, black raspberries show promise for reducing skin inflammation
Early findings indicate eating the fruit could help with skin allergies
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Eating black raspberries might reduce inflammation associated with skin allergies, a new study indicates.
In a study done with mice and published earlier this month in the journal Nutrients, researchers found that a diet high in black raspberries reduced inflammation from contact hypersensitivity - a condition that causes redness and inflammation in the skin.
"A lot of times, treatments are directly applied to the skin - things like steroids," said Steve Oghumu, senior author on the paper and an assistant professor of pathology at The Ohio State University.
"And it was interesting that the mere consumption of a fruit can achieve the same effects."
The researchers put a group of mice on a diet that incorporated black raspberries - equivalent to a single serving per day for humans. They also kept a control group, where mice were fed the same diet, but without black raspberries.
Three weeks after the diets began, the researchers exposed one of each mouse's ears to irritants that caused contact hypersensitivity. Then, they measured the reductions in swelling, comparing the ears of each mouse.
They found that in mice fed a diet that included black raspberries, swelling went down compared to the mice that did not eat black raspberries.
The researchers found that the black raspberries appear to modulate dendritic cells, which act as messengers to the body's immune system, telling the immune system to kick in or not - essentially whether to create inflammation or not.
"The immune system is very complex, with multiple players, and so once you begin to identify the unique cells that are being affected by the berries then it helps us to see how berries are inhibiting inflammation," Oghumu said. "A lot of the bad effects that we see are not always due to the pathogens or allergens themselves, but are due to the way our body responds to these triggers."
In the case of contact hypersensitivity, for example, a person's skin encounters an allergen and the body responds by flooding the area with cells that cause inflammation and itchiness.
"And so one way to manage these types of diseases is controlling that response, and that is one of the things black raspberries appear to be able to do," he said.
Oghumu and colleagues in his lab have been studying the effects of black raspberries on inflammation for years. A diet rich in black raspberries has shown promise in reducing inflammation associated with some types of cancer, and Oghumu and his team have wondered if fruit might also help reduce inflammation in other conditions.
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This study is an early indication that those benefits might exist, Oghumu said. He noted that more work needs to be done to determine what specific properties of black raspberries lead to a decrease in inflammation.
This work was funded by an internal grant from the Ohio State Foods for Health initiative. Other Ohio State researchers on this study include Kelvin Anderson, Nathan Ryan, Arham Siddiqui, Travis Pero, Greta Volpedo and Jessica L. Cooperstone.
A scientific measure of dog years
CELL PRESS NEWS RELEASE
IMAGE: THIS GRAPHIC DEPICTS THE EPIGENETIC TRANSLATION FROM DOG AGE TO HUMAN AGE. view more
CREDIT: IDEKER LAB, UC SAN DIEGO
How old is your tail-wagging bundle of joy in human years? According to the well-known "rule of paw," one dog year is the equivalent of 7 years. Now, in a study published July 2, in the journal Cell Systems, scientists say it's wrong. Dogs are much older than we think, and researchers devised a more accurate formula to calculate a dog's age based on the chemical changes in the DNA as organisms grow old.
Dogs share the same environment as their owners and receive almost the same standard of health care as humans, providing a unique opportunity for scientists to understand aging across species. Like humans, dogs follow similar developmental trajectories that lead them to grey and become more susceptible to age-related diseases over time. However, how they age on a molecular level is more complicated--aging rapidly at first and slowing down later in life.
"In terms of how physiologically mature a 1-year-old dog is, a 9-month-old dog can have puppies. Right away, you know that if you do the math, you don't just times seven," says senior author Trey Ideker (@TreyIdeker) of the University of California, San Diego. "What's surprising is exactly how old that one-year-old dog is--it's like a 30-year old human."
Human and dog DNA, which codes who we are, doesn't change much throughout the course of life, but chemical marks on the DNA, called methylation marks, do. Ideker considers these marks like wrinkles in the genome. "I tend to think of it very much like when you look at someone's face and guess their age based on their wrinkles, gray hair, and other features," he says. "These are just similar kinds of features on the molecular level."
The researchers studied 104 Labrador retrievers spanning from few-week-old puppies to 16-year-old dogs with the help of two canine experts, Danika Bannasch of the University of California, Davis, and Elaine Ostrander of the National Institutes of Health. They compared the changes in the methylation pattern to humans.
The comparison revealed a new formula that better matches the canine-human life stages: human age = 16 ln(dog age) + 31. Based on the new function, an 8-week-old dog is approximately the age of a 9-month-old baby, both being in the infant stage where puppies and babies develop teeth. The average 12-year lifespan of Labrador retrievers also corresponds to the worldwide life expectancy of humans, 70 years.
"I like to take my dogs on runs, and so I'm a little bit more sympathetic to the 6-year-old now," says Ideker, who realized that his dog is pushing 60 according to the new calculation.
In both species, they found that the age-driven methylation largely happens in developmental genes that are hotly fired up to create body plans in utero and regulating childhood development. By the time one becomes an adult and stops growing, "you've largely shut off these genes, but they're still smoldering," says Ideker. "If you look at the methylation marks on those developmental genes, they're still changing."
Focusing on the smoldering developmental genes, the team developed a clock that can measure age and physiological states across different species, while other methylation-quantifying age-predicting methods only do well in one species. Ideker also noted that future investigation in different dog breeds with various lifespans could provide more insight into the new clock. The clock may not only serve as a tool to understand cross-species aging but also apply as clinical practice for veterinarians to take proactive steps to treat animals.
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This work is supported by the following: the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, the Maxine Adler Endowed Chair Funds, and the Intramural Program of the National Human Genome Research Institute.
Cell Systems (@CellSystemsCP) is a monthly journal published by Cell Press devoted to systems biology. Cell Systems papers use approaches from physics, engineering, mathematics, and computer science to address salient biological questions. Visit: http://www.cell.com/cell-systems. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.
Gender gaps in STEM college majors emerge in high school
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
ITHACA, N.Y. - Although studies have shown that women are more likely than men to enter and complete college in U.S. higher education, women are less likely to earn degrees in science, technology, engineering and math fields.
In new research, Kim Weeden, the Jan Rock Zubrow '77 Professor of the Social Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University, traces the discrepancy in college majors back to gender differences that emerge early in high school.
Weeden is corresponding author of "Pipeline Dreams: Occupational Plans and Gender Differences in STEM Major Persistence and Completion," published in Sociology of Education. Co-authors are Dafna Gelbgiser of Tel Aviv University and Stephen L. Morgan of Johns Hopkins University.
THE FAILURE OF CAREER PREP AND TRACKING IN NORTH AMERICAN EDUCATION
The researchers found that gender differences in high school students' occupational plans - where they see themselves at age 30 - have a large effect on gender differences in STEM outcomes in college, whereas gender differences in high school grades, math test scores, taking advanced math and science courses, self-assessed math ability, and attitudes toward family and work account for only a small percentage of the gap between female and male STEM major graduates.
"Gender differences in academic achievement in high school and in work-family orientation are 'zombie explanations': They refuse to die, no matter how weak the empirical evidence for them," said Weeden, director of the Center for the Study of Inequality.
Gender differences in plans emerge very early in students' academic careers, Weeden added, "even among students who do well in math and science and have similar orientation to work and family."
The researchers analyzed data from the Educational Longitudinal Surveys (ELS), a data set collected by the U.S. Department of Education that tracked students who were high school sophomores in 2002 through 2012.
"The ELS cohort is one of the first to complete its schooling after women's college completion rates began to exceed men's and when the gender composition of the STEM workforce became a significant focus of policy and discussions about higher education," the researchers wrote.
The gender differences in occupational plans are substantial. Among high school senior boys, 26% planned to enter STEM or biomed occupations, compared with 13% of girls, while 15% of girls planned to enter nursing or similar health occupations compared with 4% of boys.
At the college level, gender disparities show up not only among those completing a STEM major, but also among those who persist in STEM after declaring a STEM major as a college sophomore. Among all college entrants, 18% of men compared with 8% of women completed STEM/biomedical majors. Among college sophomores who declared STEM majors, 42.5% of women went on to complete a STEM baccalaureate degree, compared with 58.2% of men.
The results suggest that efforts to reduce gender differences in STEM outcomes need to begin much earlier in students' educational careers. This is hard to do, Weeden said, because of persistent cultural messages and a gender-segregated adult workforce that reinforce young men's and women's beliefs - whether accurate or not - about the types of occupations where they will be welcome and rewarded fairly.
"University-based programs to support students in STEM are worthwhile," Weeden said, "but they can't really be expected to reverse all the social and cultural influences on the plans that young men and young women form well before college."
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Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.
Nitrous oxide may bring relief to veterans suffering from PTSD, new study suggests
LAUGHING GAS ANOTHER SIXTIES PARTY DRUG FINDS A USEFUL FUTURE
For military veterans suffering from PTSD, symptoms such as anxiety, anger and depression can have a devastating impact on their health, daily routine, relationships and overall quality of life.
"Effective treatments for PTSD are limited," said anesthesiologist Peter Nagele, MD, chair of the Department of Anesthesia & Critical Care at UChicago Medicine and co-author of the paper. "While small in scale, this study shows the early promise of using nitrous oxide to quickly relieve symptoms of PTSD."
The findings, based on a study of three military veterans suffering from PTSD and published June 30 in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, could lead to improved treatments for a psychiatric disorder that has affected thousands of current and former members of the U.S. military.
For this new study, three veterans with PTSD were asked to inhale a single one-hour dose of 50% nitrous oxide and 50% oxygen through a face mask. Within hours after breathing nitrous oxide, two of the patients reported a marked improvement in their PTSD symptoms. This improvement lasted one week for one of the patients, while the other patient's symptoms gradually returned over the week. The third patient reported an improvement two hours after his treatment but went back to experiencing symptoms the next day.
"Like many other treatments, nitrous oxide appears to be effective for some patients but not for others," explained Nagele, who is himself a veteran of the Austrian Army and grateful to have identified an opportunity to help other veterans. "Often drugs work only on a subset of patients, while others do not respond. It's our role to determine who may benefit from this treatment, and who won't."
The next step for the team is to determine whether nitrous oxide effects are replicated in a larger sample under randomized, controlled conditions and whether the effects benefit specific PTSD domains (http://ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT04378426). If these findings are replicated in independent samples, it may be feasible that nitrous oxide can be implemented to achieve rapid symptom reduction while longer-term PTSD treatments like psychotherapy or pharmacology are allowed to take effect over a longer time course.
Nagele is a pioneer in the field of using nitrous oxide to treat depression. Most commonly known for its use by dentists, nitrous oxide is a low-cost, easy-to-use medication. Although some patients may experience side effects like nausea or vomiting while receiving nitrous oxide, the reactions are temporary.
Exactly how and why nitrous oxide relieves symptoms of depression in some people has yet to be fully understood. Most traditional antidepressants work through a brain chemical called serotonin. Nitrous oxide, like ketamine, an anesthetic that recently received FDA-approval in a nasal spray form to treat major depression, works through a different mechanism, by blocking N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors.
A 2015 landmark study by Nagele found that two-thirds of patients with treatment-resistant depression experienced an improvement in symptoms after receiving nitrous oxide.
For his next study, Nagele is researching the ideal dose of nitrous oxide to treat intractable depression. Study participants with treatment-resistant depression received different doses of nitrous oxide so that Nagele and his team could compare each dose's effectiveness and side effects. The study is being funded by the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation.
Marine alga from the Kiel Fjord discovered as a remedy against infections and skin cancer
GEOMAR research group successfully applies bioinformatics methods and machine learning in marine drug discovery
HELMHOLTZ CENTRE FOR OCEAN RESEARCH KIEL (GEOMAR)
IMAGE: BALTIC SEA SEAWEED FUCUS VESICULOSUS AND ITS FUNGAL SYMBIONT WERE INVESTIGATED IN THIS STUDY. view more
CREDIT: LARISSA BÜDENBENDER
Healing with the help of marine organisms is no utopia. Already 12 life-saving drugs, e.g. against cancer, have been developed from marine organisms and their symbiotic microbiota. Their high potential for drug development is hampered by the lengthy and costly discovery process. The research group of the Marine Natural Product Chemistry Research Unit at GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, supported by computer-aided automated approaches, has now successfully discovered marine molecules as potential remedies against infections and skin cancer in an alga and its fungal symbiont originating from the Kiel Fjord.
The search process for marine active ingredients starts with the extraction of marine macro- and microorganisms, followed by the purification and characterization of their novel and bioactive chemical constituents, which are intended to be used for the development of new therapeutics. "One of the biggest pitfalls in drug research is the isolation of already described natural molecules, using the 'classical' bioactivity-guided isolation process", explains Prof. Dr. Deniz Tasdemir, head of Research Unit Marine Natural Product Chemistry at GEOMAR and GEOMAR Centre for Marine Biotechnology. "This approach is complicated and often prone to failures", Dr. Tasdemir continues.
In her research group, she addressed this problem through automated, computer-based approaches in combination with bioactivity screenings. In a one-year study, it was found that the brown alga Fucus vesiculosus (bladder wrack) from the Kiel Fjord, inhibits the pathogenic bacterium Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which causes hospital infections.
"Algorithm-based bioinformatics strategies and machine learning tools have enabled us to map the massive metabolome of brown alga and at the same time predict the molecular clusters responsible for their antibiotic activity", said Dr. Larissa Büdenbender, a former postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Tasdemir's group and first author of one of the two articles now published in the journal Marine Drugs. The algorithms applied in this study group together the molecular families in complex networks based on their chemical similarity scores in mass spectrometry analyses, and together with in silico machine learning tools, help us to chemically identify the known and new compounds already in the extract. After the first rapid chemical fractionation step of the extract, a bioinformatic programme is used to predict the bioactivity score of molecules according to their relative abundance in the fractions. These bioactive compounds are isolated. "The classical discovery approach from extraction to characterization of bioactive ingredients of the alga would normally take 3-4 years. These automated tools helped us to accelerate the targeted discovery of new natural antibiotics down to some months", emphasizes Prof. Tasdemir.
"In nature, bladder wrack is often under strong pressure from fouling and biofilm formation by millions of microorganisms found in seawater. Therefore, membrane-bound compounds, as we identified in this study, are of high ecological importance for self-protection of the alga. Such molecules, which perform a critical function in natural space, often display related activities against human pathogens. Since bladder wrack is an edible seaweed, such activities make it an attractive candidate not only as a source of drugs, but also for food supplements or food protection", says Prof. Tasdemir. Next, we will be investigating the application potential of bladder wrack in food industry.
Many fungi also live in symbiosis on the surfaces and inside of seaweed. These are also promising sources for the discovery and development of new drugs. Bicheng Fan, a PhD student of Professor Tasdemir, has isolated more than 120 symbiotic fungi from bladder wrack and has studied the fungus Pyrenochaetopsis sp. in detail, as it efficiently kills melanoma-type skin cancer cells with low cytotoxicity and has a very rich chemical inventory. Bicheng also used computer-aided automated approaches to isolate special molecules with a rare chemical scaffold. The study was also recently published in Marine Drugs.
According to Prof Tasdemir, this is only the second chemical study on the previously completely unexplored fungal genus Pyrenochaetopsis. "Fungi, which we isolated from bladder wrack and fermented in optimized laboratory conditions, are an established source of natural anti-cancer agents. We have found several novel natural products here, which we named as pyrenosetins A and B, that have a high potential for fighting skin cancer", the chemist continues.
"Nature is the source of more than half of all modern medicines that we use today. Access to the revolutionary genomics, metabolomics, bioinformatics and machine learning tools will enable, in an unprecedented way, new and rapid discovery of marine compounds, and more rational and efficient use for subsequent drug development with industrial partners"," Professor Tasdemir concludes.
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Stemming the spread of misinformation on social media
A simple 'nudge' encourages people to share more truthful COVID-19 content online
ASSOCIATION FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
The bad news, not that anyone needs more of it: The dangers of COVID-19 could worsen if misinformation on social media continues to spread unchecked. Essentially, what people choose to share on social media about the pandemic could become a life-or death decision.
The good news? Though there is no practical way to fully stem the tide of harmful misinformation on social media, certain tactics could help improve the quality of information that people share online about this deadly disease.
New research reported in the journal Psychological Science finds that priming people to think about accuracy could make them more discerning in what they subsequently share on social media. In two studies that included more than 1,700 participants, researchers found that when people are asked directly about accuracy, they become more adept at recognizing truth from falsehoods than they otherwise would be.
"People often assume that misinformation and fake news is shared online because people are incapable of distinguishing between what is true and what is false," said Gordon Pennycook, with the University of Regina, Canada, and lead author on the paper. "Our research reveals that is not necessarily the case. Instead, we find that people tend to share false information about COVID-19 on social media because they simply fail to think about accuracy when making decisions about what to share with others."
This inattention to accuracy, he notes, is often compounded by what the researchers consider "lazy" thinking, at least as it pertains to considering the truth of news content on social media.
For their research, Pennycook and his team acquired a list of 15 false and 15 true headlines related to COVID-19. The veracity of the headlines was determined by using various fact-checking sites like snopes.com, health information from mayoclinic.com, and credible news sites like livescience.com. The headlines were presented to the participants in the form of Facebook posts. The participants were then asked if they thought the posts were accurate or if they would consider sharing them.
In the first of the two studies, Pennycook and his colleagues found that people often fail to consider accuracy when deciding what to share on social media, and they are more likely to believe and share falsehoods if they rely more on intuition or have less scientific knowledge than others.
In the second study, the researchers found that simply asking participants to rate the accuracy of one non-COVID-related headline at the beginning of the study-subtly nudging them to think about the concept of accuracy later in the study-more than doubled how discerning they were in sharing information.
These results, which are in line with previous studies on political fake news, suggest that a subtle mental nudge that primes the brain to consider the accuracy of information in general improves people's choices about what to share on social media.
"We need to change the way that we interact with social media," said Pennycook. "Individuals need to remember to stop and think about whether something is true before they share it with others, and social media companies should investigate potential ways to help facilitate this, possibly by providing subtle accuracy nudges on their platform."
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APS is the leading international organization dedicated to advancing scientific psychology across disciplinary and geographic borders. Our members provide a richer understanding of the world through their research, teaching, and application of psychological science. We are passionate about supporting psychological scientists in these pursuits, which we do by sharing cutting-edge research across all areas of the field through our journals and conventions; promoting the integration of scientific perspectives within psychological science and with related disciplines; fostering global connections among our members; engaging the public with our research to promote broader understanding and awareness of psychological science; and advocating for increased support for psychological science in the public policy arena.
Psychological Science, the flagship journal of APS, is the leading peer-reviewed journal publishing empirical research spanning the entire spectrum of the science of psychology. For a copy of this article, "Fighting COVID-19 Misinformation on Social Media: Experimental Evidence for a Scalable Accuracy-Nudge Intervention," and access to other research in Psychological Science, contact news@psychologicalscience.org. Pennycook, G., et. al, (2020) Fighting COVID-19 misinformation on social media: Experimental evidence for a scalable accuracy nudge intervention. Psychological Science, https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620939054
Researchers examine refugee children's academic, social, and emotional learning outcomes
Outcomes yield key insights for post-COVID-19 return to school
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
IMAGE: SENIOR RESEARCH SCIENTIST AT GLOBAL TIES FOR CHILDREN HA YEON KIM view more
CREDIT: GLOBAL TIES FOR CHILDREN
Study of more than 400 Syrian refugee children in Lebanon identified significant development and learning difficulties when children are above the regular age for their grade.
NYU researchers drew insights into potential impacts as children around the world return to school following COVID-19.
Abu Dhabi, July 2, 2020: Researchers at Global TIES for Children, an international research center based at NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU New York, examined a variety of post-migration risks faced by Syrian refugee children enrolled in Lebanese public schools and found that students being older than expected for the grade in which they were placed was most consistently and strongly associated with developmental and learning difficulties. As many schools around the world prepare to reopen in 2020 and beyond, the study provides critical insights that can help inform efforts to reintegrate children into schools after significant disruption and time away.
The findings of the study are detailed in a paper published in the Journal for Applied Developmental Psychology and corresponding policy brief released on July 1, 2020. The study collected and analyzed assessment data from 448 Syrian refugee children in November 2016 through March 2017. Researchers found that children who were older than expected for their grade level - so-called "age-for-grade" - had poorer cognitive executive functioning and behavioral regulation skills than children who were placed in a typical grade level for their age. Being overage-for-grade also forecasted decrements in literacy and math skills.
"We embarked on one of the first comprehensive and rigorous studies to look at the interaction between adversities that refugee children face living in middle-income host-countries and learning outcomes, including academic, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral skills and processes," said co-author of the paper and Deputy Director of Global TIES for Children Carly Tubbs Dolan. "As of today, over a billion children worldwide have faced numerous personal and academic adversities and disruptions. This type of research can help inform the design, implementation, and funding of evidence-based programs and policies to ensure children's holistic learning during crisis situations."
School closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic have left nearly 1.6 billion children and youth out of school around the world, while the cascading economic impacts are anticipated to force millions more to drop out. Recent research indicates that even short-term, 14-week school closures can have significant long-term repercussions on children's academic outcomes.
"Our research suggests that such cumulative experiences of adversity can have repercussions for both children's academic performance and their social and emotional skills," said lead author of the study and a Senior Research Scientist at Global TIES for Children Ha Yeon Kim. "To best support children in returning to school, we recommend that practitioners use differentiated instructional and pedagogical strategies appropriate for children's varying ages, and incorporate evidence-based strategies - such as social and emotional learning (SEL) practices and curricula--into education programming."
In this study, grade level may be associated with cognitive, behavioral, and academic difficulties for several possible reasons. First, being older than expected for a grade can be a marker that a child has faced numerous and cumulative risks earlier in childhood that interrupted schooling or impaired learning. Second, studying in a classroom without same-age peers or developmentally appropriate teaching practices, routines, and learning materials may itself result in cognitive and behavioral challenges. Third, and conversely, there may be a tendency to place older children with lower cognitive, behavioral, and socio-emotional skills in lower grades.
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Global TIES for Children designs, evaluates, and advises on programs and policies to improve the lives of children and youth in the most vulnerable regions across the globe. The study was recently conducted as part of a larger collaboration with the International Rescue Committee and supported by Dubai Cares, the E-Cubed Research Envelope, and NYU Abu Dhabi.
About Global TIES for Children
NYU Global TIES for Children is an international research center embedded within NYU's Institute of Human Development and Social Change (IHDSC) and supported by the NYU Abu Dhabi Research Institute and NYU New York. Established in 2014, Global TIES for Children was developed to lead efforts in generating rigorous evidence to support the best and most effective humanitarian and development aid. To date, Global TIES for Children has secured a position at the front lines of advances in methods and measures for assessing child development and for understanding variation in program impacts at multiple levels in low-income and crisis-affected contexts.
About NYU Abu Dhabi
NYU Abu Dhabi is the first comprehensive liberal arts and science campus in the Middle East to be operated abroad by a major American research university. NYU Abu Dhabi has integrated a highly-selective liberal arts, engineering and science curriculum with a world center for advanced research and scholarship enabling its students to succeed in an increasingly interdependent world and advance cooperation and progress on humanity's shared challenges. NYU Abu Dhabi's high-achieving students have come from more than 115 nations and speak over 115 languages. Together, NYU's campuses in New York, Abu Dhabi, and Shanghai form the backbone of a unique global university, giving faculty and students opportunities to experience varied learning environments and immersion in other cultures at one or more of the numerous study-abroad sites NYU maintains on si
Global threats: How lessons from COVID-19 can prevent environmental meltdown PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, WOODROW WILSON SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
IMAGE: COVID-19, CLIMATE EMERGENCIES, AND MASS EXTINCTION ALL SHARE STRIKING SIMILARITIES, ESPECIALLY WITH REGARD TO THEIR "LAGGED IMPACTS. " IN EACH, EARLY INTERVENTION CAN PREVENT FURTHER DAMAGE. view more
CREDIT: OPEN SOURCE Epidemiologists highlighted the dangers of Covid-19 in its early stages, but their warnings went largely ignored until rising infection rates forced policymakers to take action.
Likewise, climate and environmental scientists have warned, for decades, that human activity is triggering global heating and another mass extinction could occur if countries do not enact regulations to reduce their environmental impact.
Covid-19, climate emergencies, and mass extinction all share striking similarities, according to an essay co-authored by David S. Wilcove, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and public affairs and the Princeton Environmental Institute at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.
Wilcove and his co-authors draw analogies between Covid-19 and environmental threats, especially with regard to their "lagged impacts."
That is, a lag exists between the first few cases of Covid-19 to the worldwide pandemic it has become. The same is true of ongoing environmental crises. Human-induced shifts in climate and habitat can seem minor now but will have catastrophic effects down the road, the authors wrote.
Early intervention is necessary in order to contain them and prevent future damage.
Multiple analyses have confirmed that delaying "stay at home" orders increased the mortality rates due to Covid-19 in many countries. If lockdown had been enacted just one week earlier, there would have been approximately 17,000 fewer deaths in the United Kingdom and 45,000 fewer deaths in the United States, according to the co-authors.
On a global level, the world is on track to experience a net temperature increase of +2.0° C. With early action, this could have been reduced to a net increase of +1.5° C. Although this difference appears insignificant, it has grave ramifications.
Since early intervention was not taken to reduce this global heating, an estimated 62 to 457 million more people will be exposed to a broad range of climate risks. Early intervention is also crucial for species conservation; when action is delayed, species losses increase, and conservation efforts become less likely to succeed.
While intervention is often delayed under the premise that it will interfere with peoples' livelihoods, the researchers posit that the opposite is true.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts that economic growth will be lower in countries with higher current rates of Covid-attributed deaths. This means countries that delayed lockdown to sustain their economic stability could ultimately lose out in the end, just as climate change will curtail economic growth as countries delay reducing their environmental impacts.
"The notion that paying short-term costs may be vital to securing longer-term prosperity is echoed in several assessments of the overall economic consequences of responding to the climate and extinction crises," the team wrote. "On both environmental fronts intervening now rather than delaying further is critical to securing our future wellbeing and that of our children and grandchildren."
The magnitude of these issues require policymakers and citizens to look beyond self-interests and make choices that will safeguard society's most vulnerable populations as well as future generations.
"In the Covid-19 crisis, this means young and working people making sacrifices for the older and more vulnerable. For the climate and extinction crises, effective action requires wealthier people forgoing extravagance both for the present-day poor and for all future generations," the team wrote.
In moving forward to address these challenges, it is essential that governments listen to and act in accordance with independent scientists. Their voices have gone ignored by policymakers who can create the changes necessary to avoid global catastrophe, the team believes. This requires coordination and cooperation on the international level, not just local or federal.
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Wilcove drafted the essay, "COVID-19: Analogues and lessons for tackling the extinction and climate crises," with a team of scientists and policy experts from the United Kingdom and the United States including Andrew Balmford of the University of Cambridge, Brendan Fisher of the University of Vermont, Georgina M. Mace of the University College London, and Ben Balmford of the University Exeter Business School.
The article was made available online June 28 through Cell Press.
'Fang'tastic: researchers report amphibians with snake-like dental glands
Utah State University and Butantan Institute scientists publish evolutionary findings in 'iScience.'
UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY
IMAGE: A MAGNIFIED IMAGE OF THE MOUTH OF A RINGED CAECILIAN, SIPHONOPS ANNULATUS, REVEALS SNAKE-LIKE DENTAL GLANDS. RESEARCHERS FROM BRAZIL'S BUTANTAN INSTITUTE AND UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY SAY THE GLANDS COULD INDICATE... view more
CREDIT: BUTANTAN INSTITUTE, BRAZIL
LOGAN, UTAH, USA - Utah State University biologist Edmund 'Butch' Brodie, Jr. and colleagues from São Paulo's Butantan Institute report the first known evidence of oral venom glands in amphibians. Their research, supported by the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, appears in the July 3, 2020, issue of iScience.
"We think of amphibians - frogs, toads and the like -- as basically harmless," says Brodie, emeritus professor in USU's Department of Biology. "We know a number of amphibians store nasty, poisonous secretions in their skin to deter predators. But to learn at least one can inflict injury from its mouth is extraordinary."
Brodie and his colleagues discovered the oral glands in a family of caecilians, serpent-like creatures related to frogs and salamanders. Neither snakes nor worms, caecilians are found in tropical climates of Africa, Asian and the Americas. Some are aquatic and some, like the ringed caecilian (Siphonops annulatus) studied by Brodie's team, live in burrows of their own making.
In 2018, the team reported the species secreted substances from skin glands at both ends of its snake-like body. Concentrated at the head and extending the length of the body, the creature emits a mucous-like lubricant that enables it to quickly dive underground to escape predators. At the tail, caecilians have glands armed with a toxin, which acts as a last line of chemical defense, blocking a hastily burrowed tunnel from hungry hunters.
"What we didn't know is these caecilians have tiny fluid-filled glands in the upper and lower jaw, with long ducts that open at the base of each of their spoon-shaped teeth," Brodie says.
His research colleague Pedro Luiz Mailho-Fontana, who studied with Brodie as a visiting graduate student at USU's Logan campus in 2015, noticed the never-before-described oral glands. Using embryonic analysis, Mailho-Fontana, first author of the paper, discovered the glands - called "dental glands" - originated from a different tissue than the slime and poison glands found in the caecilian's skin.
"The poisonous skin glands form from the epidermis, but these oral glands develop from the dental tissue, and this is the same developmental origin we find in the venom glands of reptiles," he says.
The researchers surmise caecilians, equipped with no limbs and only a mouth for hunting, activate their oral glands when they bite down on prey, including worms, termites, frogs and lizards.
The team doesn't yet know the biochemical composition of the fluid held in the oral glands.
"If we can verify the secretions are toxic, these glands could indicate an early evolutionary design of oral venom organs," Brodie says. "They may have evolved in caecilians earlier than in snakes."
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First evidence of snake-like venom glands found in amphibians
CELL PRESS
IMAGE: THIS IMAGE SHOWS A GENERAL VIEW OF THE RINGED CAECILIAN, SIPHONOPS ANNULATUS. view more
CREDIT: CARLOS JARED
Caecilians are limbless amphibians that, to the untrained eye, can be easily mistaken for snakes. Though caecilians are only distantly related to their reptilian cousins, researchers in a study appearing July 3 in the journal iScience describe specialized glands found along the teeth of the ringed caecilian (Siphonops annulatus), which have the same biological origin and possibly similar function to the venom glands of snakes. If further research can confirm that the glands contain venom, caecilians may represent the oldest land-dwelling vertebrate animal with oral venom glands.
Caecilians are peculiar creatures, being nearly blind and using a combination of facial tentacles and slime to navigate their underground tunnels. "These animals produce two types of secretions--one is found mostly in the tail that is poisonous, while the head produces a mucus to help with crawling through the earth," says senior author Carlos Jared, a biologist and Director of the Structural Biology Lab at the Butantan Institute in São Paulo. "Because caecilians are one of the least-studied vertebrates, their biology is a black box full of surprises."
"It is while examining the mucous glands of the ringed caecilian that I stumbled upon a never before described set of glands closer to the teeth," says first author Pedro Luiz Mailho-Fontana, a post-doctoral student in the Structural Biology Lab at the Butantan Institute.
What Mailho-Fontana found were a series of small fluid-filled glands in the upper and lower jaw, with long ducts that opened at the base of each tooth. Using embryonic analysis, he found that these oral glands originated from a different tissue than the slime and poison glands found in the caecilian's skin. "The poisonous skin glands of the ringed caecilian form from the epidermis, but these oral glands develop from the dental tissue, and this is the same developmental origin we find in the venom glands of reptiles," says Mailho-Fontana. This marks the first time glands of this kind have been found in an amphibian.
Researchers suspect that the ringed caecilian may use the secretions from these snake-like oral glands to incapacitate its prey. "Since caecilians have no arms or legs, the mouth is the only tool they have to hunt," says co-author Marta Maria Antoniazzi, an evolutionary biologist at the Butantan Institute. "We believe they activate their oral glands the moment they bite down, and specialized biomolecules are incorporated into their secretions.
A preliminary chemical analysis of the oral gland secretions of the ringed caecilian found high activity of phospholipase A2, a common protein found in the toxins of venomous animals. "The phospholipase A2 protein is uncommon in non-venomous species, but we do find it in the venom of bees, wasps, and many kinds of reptiles," says Mailho-Fontana. In fact, the biological activity of phospholipase A2 found in the ringed caecilian was higher than what is found in some rattlesnakes. Still, more biochemical analysis is needed to confirm whether the glandular secretions are toxic.
If future work can verify the secretions are toxic, caecilian oral glands could indicate an early evolutionary design of oral venom organs. "Unlike snakes which have few glands with a large bank of venom, the ringed caecilian has many small glands with minor amounts of fluid. Perhaps caecilians represent a more primitive form of venom gland evolution. Snakes appeared in the Cretaceous probably 100 million years ago, but caecilians are far older, being roughly 250 million years old," Jared says.
Very few groups of land-dwelling vertebrates have serpent-like bodies, and this research suggests there might be a connection between a limbless body plan and the evolution of a venomous bite. "For snakes and caecilians, the head is the sole unit to explore the environment, to fight, to eat, and to kill," says Antoniazzi. "One theory is that perhaps these necessities encourage the evolution of venom in limbless animals."
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This work was supported by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), and Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brazil (CAPES).
iScience (@iScience_CP) is an open-access journal from Cell Press that provides a platform for original research and interdisciplinary thinking in the life, physical, and earth sciences. The primary criterion for publication in iScience is a significant contribution to a relevant field combined with robust results and underlying methodology. Visit: http://www.cell.com/iscience. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.
How prison and police discrimination affect black sexual minority men's health
Incarceration and police discrimination may worsen psychological and physical health, Rutgers led study finds
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY
Incarceration and police discrimination may contribute to HIV, depression and anxiety among Black gay, bisexual and other sexual minority men, according to a Rutgers led study.
The study, funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH) and published in the journal Social Science & Medicine, examined associations between incarceration, police and law enforcement discrimination and recent arrest with Black sexual minority mens' psychological distress, risk for HIV and willingness to take pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV prevention.
"Evidence suggests Black sexual minority men in the United States may face some of the highest rates of policing and incarceration in the world," said lead author, Devin English, assistant professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health. "Despite this, research examining the health impacts of the U.S. carceral system rarely focuses on their experiences. This study helps to address this gap."
"We examined how incarceration and police discrimination, which have roots in enforcing White supremacy and societal heterosexism, are associated with some of the most pressing health crises among Black sexual minority men like depression, anxiety, and HIV," English added.
The researchers surveyed 1,172 Black, gay, bisexual, and other sexual minority men over the age of 16 from across the U.S. who reported behaviors that increased their risk for HIV over the previous six months. Participants reported on their incarceration history, experiences of police and law enforcement discrimination, anxiety and depression, sexual behavior, and willingness to take PrEP.
They found that 43 percent of study participants reported police discrimination within the previous year, which was most frequent among those with a history of incarceration. Respondents who faced high levels of police discrimination within the previous year also tended to show high levels of psychological distress and HIV risk, and a low willingness to take PrEP compared with their peers. The study also found that respondents who were previously incarcerated or recently arrested had a heightened HIV risk and lower willingness to take PrEP.
"These findings transcend individual-level only explanations to offer structural-level insights about how we think about Black sexual minority men's HIV risk," says co-author Lisa Bowleg, professor of psychology at The George Washington University. "The study rightly directs attention to the structural intersectional discrimination that negatively affects Black sexual minority men's health."
The article states that the findings support the need for anti-racist and anti-heterosexist advocacy and interventions focused on reducing discrimination in U.S. society, and the carceral system specifically.
"Despite experiencing a disproportionate burden of violence and discrimination at the hands of the police, and extremely high carceral rates, Black queer men are largely invisible in discourse on anti-Black policing and incarceration," says co-author Joseph Carter, doctoral student of health psychology at the City University of New York's Graduate Center. "Our study provides empirical support for the intersectional health impacts of police and carceral discrimination that have been systemically perpetrated onto Black queer men."
