CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Former BHS owner Dominic Chappell jailed for tax evasion
BY THEINDUSTRY.FASHION
-5TH NOVEMBER 2020

Dominic Chappell outside court

Former BHS owner Dominic Chappell has been jailed for evading more than half a million pounds in taxes on income from his £1 deal to buy the failed high street chain.

The 53-year-old’s offending was an “egregious example” of cheating the public revenue, Southwark Crown Court heard, with the businessman spending a fortune on a luxury lifestyle.

He was jailed for six years for evading VAT, corporation tax and income tax owed on his £2.2 million income from the BHS deal.

His lawyers claimed he became, and still is, “utterly broke” because BHS’s hugely underfunded “pension problem exploded” within two weeks of him controversially buying BHS from retail tycoon Sir Philip Green in 2015.

Rejecting his defence team’s suggestion that, had BHS not failed, he would have had the funds to pay his tax liability, a jury found Chappell guilty of dishonesty after deliberations over three days.

He had denied three charges of cheating the public revenue between January 2014 and September 2016, related to his bankrupt finance company Swiss Rock Limited.

Mr Justice Bryan said Chappell had engaged in a “long and consistent course of conduct designed to cheat the revenue” and that his actions “over a substantial period of time is an egregious example of such offending”.

He said Chappell had “cynically allowed Swiss Rock as a limited liability company to go to the wall, like many others before it, in the hope that HMRC would whistle in the wind for the outstanding tax”.

The judge said not paying VAT or corporation tax, taking receipts out of the company and then putting it into liquidation was “one of the oldest tricks in the book”.

The judge gave the total figure lost to HMRC in unpaid taxes as £583,739.20, and told Chappell his crimes were so serious that “only an immediate custodial sentence is appropriate”.

Chappell, wearing a light-coloured shirt, blue suit jacket, jeans and blue, white and orange trainers stood as he was sentenced and had no reaction as he was led, carrying a holdall, from the dock by a prison officer.

The businessman, of Blandford Forum, Dorset, had claimed to be “simply too busy” to sort out his business dealings properly and said he was “let down by others”.

But the judge said: “You were not overwhelmed by your other pressures, and you were not too busy or under too much pressure to spare the time to buy yourself trappings of luxury with monies that would have been better deployed to pay the taxes due.”

He added: “You did not pay your tax. Instead you holidayed in the Bahamas over the Christmas period on a yacht that was purchased in your name.”

The court heard that in an email at that time, Chappell had said: “I am having to slum it in the Bahamas for the next three weeks. I know you will all feel my pain.”

The judge said on his return from the holiday, and a day after income tax should have been paid, Chappell had bought a £91,000 Bentley Continental as well as a pair of Beretta guns for £11,000. He later bought a £33,000 Land Rover.

BHS was losing £1 million a week and had a £250m-£500m pension deficit when Chappell’s consortium bought it in 2015.

It limped on before collapsing and causing the loss of 11,000 jobs in April 2016.



With the benefit of hindsight, Chappell told the jury the BHS deal was “a life-changing catastrophe” and he should “never have touched it with a barge pole”.

He added: “This catastrophe has cost me my marriage, my money and my reputation.”

During his evidence, Chappell repeatedly said he is “not an accountant” and was relying on the advice of his professional financial experts to deal with the situation as he was “firefighting” the pending collapse of BHS.

Chappell claimed that BHS was forced into liquidation because of the actions of Sir Philip in reneging on promises of financial support for the pension fund and going back on a promise to provide working capital to BHS after the sale.

But the judge told him despite being left “penniless and owing millions to The Pension Regulator” Chappell could not “lay all the blame for that at the door of others including Sir Philip Green”.

He said: “It is you, not anyone else, who has ruined your reputation by your offending, however much the actions of others may have damaged you financially.”

Following the verdict, Andrew Fox, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “Using evidence gathered by HMRC we were able to show the jury that Chappell simply chose not to pay large amounts of tax which were due and, as a result, they were sure that he had acted dishonestly.”

Simon York, director of the fraud investigation service at HMRC, said: “This was deliberate theft from UK citizens.

“Chappell was a high-profile businessman who knew tax had to be paid on his income and profits but chose not to do so.

“That’s money that should have been supporting our vital public services instead of funding his lavish lifestyle.”

In November 2019 Chappell was banned from running a company for 10 years, with the Government’s Insolvency Service saying he had carried out “reckless financial transactions” and “failed to maintain adequate company records”.

And in January this year he was ordered by The Pensions Regulator to pay £9.5 million into BHS’s pension schemes.

Reporting: PA 

Ancient burial hints that prehistoric women may have hunted as much as men
PTI

LOS ANGELES, NOVEMBER 05, 2020




Illustration of female hunter depicting hunters who may have appeared in the Andes 9,000 years ago. | Photo Credit: Matthew Verdolivo/UC Davis IET Academic Technology Services


Scientists have unearthed a 9,000-year-old female hunter burial in the Andes Mountains of South America which counters the long-held belief that when early human groups sought food, men hunted and women gathered.

“An archaeological discovery and analysis of early burial practices overturns the long-held ‘man-the-hunter’ hypothesis,” said Randy Haas, lead author of the study from the University of California (UC), Davis in the U.S.


The researchers believe the findings, published in the journal Science Advances, are particularly timely in light of contemporary conversations surrounding gendered labour practices and inequality.

Sexual division of labour

“Labour practices among recent hunter-gatherer societies are highly gendered, which might lead some to believe that sexist inequalities in things like pay or rank are somehow ‘natural’,” Haas said. “But it’s now clear that sexual division of labour was fundamentally different — likely more equitable — in our species’ deep hunter-gatherer past.”

In 2018, during archaeological excavations at a high-altitude site called Wilamaya Patjxa in what is now Peru, the researchers found an early burial that contained a hunting toolkit with projectile points and animal-processing tools. They said the objects accompanying people in death tended to be those that accompanied them in life. Based on an analysis of the bones and dental proteins, the study found that the hunter was likely female.


This illustration from the study shows tools recovered from the burial pit floor including projectile points (1 to 7), unmodified flakes (8 to 10), retouched flakes (11 to 13), a possible backed knife (14), thumbnail scrapers (15 and 16), scrapers/choppers (17 to 19), burnishing stones (17, 20, and 21), and red ocher nodules (22 to 24). | Photo Credit: Randy Haas/UC Davis

From further examination of records of ancient burials throughout North and South America, the researchers identified 429 individuals from 107 sites. Of those, they said 27 individuals were associated with big-game hunting tools of whom 11 were female and 15 were male.

The scientists believe this sample is sufficient to “warrant the conclusion that female participation in early big-game hunting was likely non-trivial”. They also found that somewhere between 30% to 50% of hunters in these populations were female.

According to the researchers, this level of participation stands in stark contrast to recent hunter-gatherers, and even farming and capitalist societies, where hunting is a decidedly male activity with low levels of female participation, “certainly under 30%.”

In future studies, the scientists hope to understand how the consequences of sexual division of labour changed in different times and places among the hunter-gatherer populations of the continent.

 

Tel Aviv University says 'environmentally-friendly' tableware harms marine animals

Research also reveals that bioplastics do not degrade rapidly in a marine environment

AMERICAN FRIENDS OF TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

A new Tel Aviv University study compares the effects of two types of disposable dishes on the marine environment -- regular plastic disposable dishes and more expensive bioplastic disposable dishes certified by various international organizations -- and determines that the bioplastic dishes had a similar effect on marine animals as regular plastic dishes. Moreover, the study finds that bioplastic does not degrade rapidly in the marine environment.

The research was led by research student Guillermo Anderson and Prof. Noa Shenkar of the School of Zoology at the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences and the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History, Israel National Center for Biodiversity Studies, Tel Aviv University. The study was published online on August 20, 2020, in the journal Environmental Pollution. It will be published in the print version of the journal in January 2021.

"People buy expensive disposable dishes and utensils with the special bioplastic standard seal of compliance on the assumption that they are being environmentally responsible," Prof. Shenkar says. "Our study proves that while this may be good for their conscience, it can still damage the environment."

Environmental pollution caused by plastics in general and at sea in particular is a well-known crisis. According to various assessments, some 350 million tons of plastic goods are produced every single year, half of which is disposable dishes and utensils thrown away after a single use. Plastic is a very durable polymer made of chemicals derived from fossil fuels. Marine animals ingest plastic microparticles containing toxic additives that are integral to these harmful microparticles.

"In recent decades, substances called 'bioplastics' came on the market," Anderson explains. "Bioplastics are made of natural, renewable materials, and biodegrade relatively fast under certain conditions. Disposable dishes and utensils made of bioplastics were granted various international standard seals and are marketed to consumers as environmentally friendly. We wanted to test the supposedly environmentally friendly disposable dishes to see if they do, in fact, meet expectations."

The study compared disposable cups made of regular plastic and bioplastic and their effects on ascidians, a type of a marine invertebrate; examined the extent, if any, to which these marine invertebrates were capable of digesting particles of the regular plastics and bioplastics; then observed the recruitment of marine organisms to the materials.

At least in the short term, both types of plastic have a similar detrimental effect, Prof. Shenkar says. "Bioplastics are made of natural materials and, in that sense, they are more beneficial environmentally speaking. But they may also contain toxins just like regular plastic dishes and they do not biodegrade quickly in the aquatic habitat. In fact, the standard appearing on the label is dated. It doesn't refer at all to different kinds of plastic additives and speaks of biodegrading within 180 days, but that is specifically under conditions available only in industrial composting settings."

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Coronavirus infection odds twice as high among Black, Latinx hospital workers

Support staff in health care settings have higher infection rates than physicians and nurses, Rutgers study finds

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

Support staff and Black and Latinx hospital employees with and without patient care responsibilities are at highest risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection in health care settings, a Rutgers study found.

After screening 3,904 employees and clinicians at a New Jersey hospital between late April and late June for the SARS-CoV-2 virus and for lgG-antibodies to the virus, whose presence suggests past recent infection, the study, published in the journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases, found that these employees are at higher risk than previously thought.

"The risk to workers in health care settings with little or no patient contact has attracted relatively little attention to date, but our results suggest potentially high infection rates in this group," said lead author Emily S. Barrett, an associate professor at Rutgers School of Public Health and a member of the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute. "By contrast and to our surprise, physicians, nurses and emergency medical technicians showed much lower infection rates."

Health care workers who live in highly impacted communities may have been susceptible to becoming infected outside of the hospital during the early surge of COVID-19, according to co-lead author Daniel B. Horton, an assistant professor at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and a member of the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research.

"In the early phase of the pandemic, support staff in the hospital may also have had less access to personal protective equipment or less enforcement of safety protocols," he said. "Going forward, as cases of COVID-19 in the hospital rise again, protecting these and all hospital workers from infection both in and out of the hospital is critical."

In the hospital-based study, researchers found that 13 participants tested positive for the virus and 374 tested positive for the antibody, which suggests recent past infection -- nearly 10 percent of those studied -- and that Black and Latinx workers had two times the odds of receiving a positive test for the virus or antibody compared to white workers.

Phlebotomists had the highest proportionate rate of positive tests--nearly 1 in 4 tested--followed by those employed in maintenance/housekeeping, dining/food services and interpersonal/support roles. By comparison, positivity rates were lower among doctors (7 percent) and nurses (9 percent).

Regardless of whether the infections originated in the hospital or in the community, Barrett said, the results suggest a need to enact safety protocols for hospital employees to protect the health care workforce from future waves of infection.

"The 40 percent of infected health care workers who reported having had no symptoms of infection could be a potential source of SARS-CoV-2 spread in hospitals even if their infections were initially acquired in the community," she said.

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The study was funded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health.

Other Rutgers authors include Jason Roy, Weiyi Xia, Patricia Greenberg, Tracy Andrews, Maria Laura Gennaro, Veenat Parmar, William D. Russell, Nancy Reilly, Priyanka Uprety, John J. Gantner, Lydia Stockman, Stanley Z. Trooskin, Martin J. Blaser, Jeffrey L. Carson and Reynold A. Panettieri Jr.

 

Paper addresses fieldwork safety for minority scientists

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

ITHACA, N.Y. - Scientists and graduate students with minority identities who conduct fieldwork report being stalked, followed, sexually assaulted, harassed, threatened, having guns pulled on them and police called on them.

These issues threaten minority-identity researchers' physical health and safety during fieldwork, while also affecting their mental health, productivity and professional development.

A paper on the topic, "Safe fieldwork strategies for at-risk individuals, their supervisors and institutions," was recently published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. The article - written by Amelia-Juliette Demery and Monique Pipkin, graduate students in the field of ecology and evolutionary biology - describes how peers, mentors, departments and institutions can all help to address these problems.

"When we solicited input from students in our department, we found that a lot of these personal experiences and the associated proactive measures that they took following those experiences were pretty universal and extended beyond just the color of someone's skin," Demery said.

The paper was originally intended as an internal document for the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, but feedback from department graduate student, postdoctoral and faculty reviewers encouraged Demery and Pipkin to widen the scope to apply more universally inside and outside of academia. The authors queried and received feedback from their department sources, and from sources at diversity and inclusion committees at the Cornell College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the American Ornithological Society.

"Amelia Demery and Monique Pipkin have done such an important service to outline and explain strategies to keep field researchers safe, particular those who are at risk because of their minority identity," said Jeremy Searle, chair and professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. "We have to do everything possible to ensure individuals are not hindered from doing field research because of identity prejudice, and this paper is a really important contribution for ensuring that," he said.

In their responses, researchers described feeling threatened based on their race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion and/or disability. Such experiences can also occur when American scientists travel internationally.

"Field safety is an issue for everyone," Pipkin said. "There is a lack of general field safety training."

In addition, such experiences take a toll on a scientist's or student's ability to do their work.

"If you have two graduate students, one may not perform as highly as another simply because they can't collect as much data because they are trying to mediate issues of being a woman in the field alone, being a person of color in the field alone, and having to always look over their shoulder," Pipkin said.

"It's an immense emotional and mental strain," Demery said.

These problems can be compounded, she said, by supervisors and advisers of different backgrounds who lack experiences of being 'othered,' and may respond with disbelief and skepticism.

Addressing these problems, Pipkin said, is everyone's responsibility. Individuals should prepare themselves by notifying others where and when they are collecting data, and conduct research with others when possible. Peers may check in on lab mates when they know they are in the field and be prepared to get help in emergencies. And supervisors must educate themselves, understand the specific field risks their students face and prepare their researchers ahead of time.

On department and institutional levels, fieldwork safety presents systemic challenges requiring standardizing safety protocols, Demery said. Such measures can include: developing and mandating field safety, harassment and first aid training; training supervisors; evaluating institutional practices and removing barriers to entry in the sciences; understanding and addressing risks at specific field sites; and hiring diverse faculty.

Demery and Pipkin plan to continue leading discussions across campus, hold workshop seminars and webinars, and design a template for how others can lead conversations on fieldwork safety issues.

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For additional information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.

 

Plot twist

Eradicating black rats on Palmyra Atoll uncovers eye-opening indirect effects

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SANTA BARBARA

Research News

 

The black rats weren't supposed to be there, on Palmyra Atoll. Likely arriving at the remote Pacific islet network as stowaways with the U.S. Navy during World War II, the rodents, with no natural predators, simply took over. Omnivorous eating machines, they dined on seabird eggs, native crabs and whatever seed and seedling they could find.

When the atoll's managers -- the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, The Nature Conservancy and Island Conservation -- were planning to conduct a rat eradication project, UC Santa Barbara community ecologist Hillary Young and her research group saw it as an unusual opportunity. They had already been visiting Palmyra regularly to track another non-native species -- the coconut palm -- to see whether it was spreading invasively in the area, potentially impacting the nesting seabird population and changing the island's soil composition. They had plots where they were monitoring trees in various stages of growth and survival; how would the vegetation respond to the eradication of the island's main seed and seedling eater?

"Prior to the eradication, most of the understory of Palmyra was either bare ground -- sandy soil or coral rubble -- or covered in a carpet of ferns," said Ana Miller-ter Kuile, a graduate student researcher in the Young Group and lead author of a study that appears in the journal Biotropica. The rats were quick to eat seeds and young plants coming out of the ground, and they frequented the canopy as well, often nesting in the coconut palms and eating coconuts.

Eradication of the rats -- which was conducted in 2011 -- did in fact result in a resurgence of vegetation on Palmyra. And not only that. The Asian tiger mosquito was wiped out, while two species of land crab emerged, adding to the atoll's biodiversity.

But rarely is ecology easily untangled. In the years that followed eradication, Palmyra's understory did indeed fill with juvenile trees as seeds that hit the ground were allowed to take root. Only they were often not the Pisonia or other native trees that would have been the more ideal forests for the native seabirds and animals of Palmyra.

"I was on the island in 2012, just after the eradication and could easily navigate through the open jungle understory," Miller-ter Kuile said. "Two years later when I went back, I was wading through an infuriating carpet of seedlings that were taller than me, tripping over piles of coconuts." While the researchers found a 14-fold increase in seedling biomass, most of these new seedlings were juvenile coconut palms, their proliferation left unchecked by the removal of the rats.

"Rats were basically eating almost every nut before it even reached the forest floor," Miller-ter Kuile said. "I knew that rats could have an impact, I just didn't expect it to be this large." In the absence of rats, according to a population model the researchers built based on a decades' worth of data on coconut seed production, growth and survival, the coconut palms' population growth rate increased by 10% -- enough to eventually overtake the island, had the managers not stepped in with an aggressive coconut palm removal project.

The coconut palm invasion is a problem for places like Palmyra Atoll, as it shifts the island's ecology away from native plants and animals.

"Coconuts have a very different 'nutritional' profile from the native tree species on this island, with much more carbon and less nitrogen," Miller-ter Kuile said. "When these trees die, because they have different nutrient profiles from native plants, they are likely to break down differently -- and more slowly -- and influence rates of decomposition." In addition, she said, native seabirds do not nest in coconut palms, which would deprive the atoll of the nutrients in their guano, which, in turn, "would lead to what would likely be a fairly nutrient-poor system, which discourages other native plants from growing in those areas."

Continuing their restoration of the island, Palmyra's managers were working to remove the vast majority of the island's millions of coconut palms to give local species a chance to dominate, a project that is currently on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Anticipating the indirect downstream effects, such as potential shifts in ecology toward other invasive species, could become part of a more holistic island rodent eradication effort, Miller-ter Kuile said.

"Wildlife management, in particular, has a history of being single-species focused, which often means that a lot of time and energy is put into producing or controlling a species without considering the broader effects of that management effort on all of the rest of the species in that ecosystem," she said. According to the study, "documenting the variation in invasive rodent diet items, along with long-term surveys, can help prioritize island eradications where restoration is most likely to be successful."

"The 'accidental experiment' of our long-term monitoring of trees in this project I think provides a rare opportunity to quantify the immediate and longer-term effects of eradication," she said.

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New research traces the origins of trench fever

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA (USF INNOVATION)

Research News

 

IMAGE: RESEARCHERS ANALYZED BONE FRAGMENTS AND THE TEETH OF 145 INDIVIDUALS ALIVE BETWEEN THE 1ST AND 19TH CENTURIES. APPROXIMATELY 20% OF THOSE REMAINS CONTAINED TRACES OF BARTONELLA QUINTANA, THE BACTERIA RESPONSIBLE... view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA

First observed among British Expeditionary Forces in 1915, trench fever sickened an estimated 500,000 soldiers during World War I. Since then, the disease has become synonymous with the battlefield. But now, new research from an international team of scientists has uncovered evidence challenging this long-held belief.

The research, published this week in "PLOS ONE", outlines the discovery of DNA evidence of the disease in civilian remains predating WWI by thousands of years. In total, the team analyzed bone fragments and teeth of 145 individuals alive between the 1st and 19th centuries. Approximately 20% of those remains contained traces of Bartonella quintana, the bacteria responsible for trench fever.

Davide Tanasi, an associate professor with USF's History Department and member of the Institute for the Advanced Study of Culture and the Environment, excavated remains for this project from a Roman cemetery in Syracuse, Sicily. Tanasi, who is also the director of USF's Institute for Digital Exploration, first began work at the site to better understand the dietary habits and health of the Christian population living there during the 3rd and 4th centuries. Through a collaboration with French epidemiologists, researchers used real-time polymerase chain reaction testing to detect B. quintana DNA within the remains.

"Once contracted, there are diseases, like trench fever, that can leave traces within your DNA and can integrate your DNA with further information," Tanasi said. "This means that once a person dies, even as far back as 2,000 years ago, it is still possible to find traces of the bacterium that infected them."

Tanasi says the discovery sheds light on the complex history of trench fever and begins answering historical questions about the lives of Christian citizens in this region during the 3rd and 4th centuries.

"Archaeology isn't just the study of the past, but it's something that can make the present better through the study of the past," he said. "The more we understand about the behavior of these bacteria in the past, the more we can design plans to address them, contain them and eliminate them in the present."

While most associate this disease with WWI and WWII, occurrences of trench fever are still reported today, most prominently within homeless populations. The bacteria are spread to humans through contact with body lice (Pediculus humanus corporis), making poor personal hygiene a primary factor in its spread and infection rate. Researchers hope that by tracing the progression of B. quintana through history, they're able to identify ways to better manage the spread of the disease today.

For Tanasi, his work with the remains excavated in Sicily continues. Through stable-isotope analysis, his research group examines the diet and lives of those who once lived in the region. He hopes this work will further answer questions about the lifestyle and health of the Christian community of Roman Syracuse.

CAPTION

USF Associate Professor Davide Tanasi leading the excavation of remains from a Roman cemetery in Syracuse, Sicily.

 

Strain of rhizobacteria shown to naturally and sustainably promote rice growth

AMERICAN PHYTOPATHOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Research News

 

IMAGE: WORKING IN THE LAB view more 

CREDIT: ZHIGANG WANG

Large amounts of chemical fertilizers can lead to severe environmental pollution. Biofertilizers are a preferred and sustainable alternative technology that can promote plant health without damaging ecological impacts. Plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPRs) can be used as biofertilizers and reduce the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides while also ensuring sustainable and increased production.

While scientists know the benefits of PGPRs, they are still unclear on how these bacteria function. In a recent study published in the Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions (MPMI) journal, a group of scientists in China studied the Bacillus pumilus LZP02 strain. Using proteomic, transcriptomic and metabolomics techniques, they found that the bacteria could beneficially colonize the rice root surface and promote growth.

"Our study has demonstrated that B. pumilus LZP02 colonizes rice roots and promotes growth by improving carbohydrate metabolism and phenylpropanoid biosynthesis," explained Zhigang Wang, one of the scientists involved in the research. "These findings show a new light on how microbes and plants communicate in a friendly way."

For more information about this research, read "Bacillus pumilus LZP02 Promotes Rice Root Growth by Improving Carbohydrate Metabolism and Phenylpropanoid Biosynthesis" published in the October issue of MPMI.

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Stanford engineers have developed a genetic microlab that can detect COVID-19 in minutes

Using "lab on a chip" technology, Stanford engineers have created a microlab half the size of a credit card that can detect COVID-19 in just 30 minutes.

STANFORD SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING

Research News

 

Throughout the pandemic, infectious disease experts and frontline medical workers have asked for a faster, cheaper and more reliable COVID-19 test. Now, leveraging the so-called "lab on a chip" technology and the cutting-edge genetic editing technique known as CRISPR, researchers at Stanford have created a highly automated device that can identify the presence of the novel coronavirus in just a half-hour.

"The microlab is a microfluidic chip just half the size of a credit card containing a complex network of channels smaller than the width of a human hair," said the study's senior author, Juan G. Santiago, the Charles Lee Powell Foundation Professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford and an expert in microfluidics, a field devoted to controlling fluids and molecules at the microscale using chips.

The new COVID-19 test is detailed in a study published on Nov. 4 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Our test can identify an active infection relatively quickly and cheaply. It's also not reliant on antibodies like many tests, which only indicates if someone has had the disease, and not whether they are currently infected and therefore contagious," explained Ashwin Ramachandran, a Stanford graduate student and the study's first author.

The microlab test takes advantage of the fact that coronaviruses like SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, leaves behind tiny genetic fingerprints wherever they go in the form of strands of RNA, the genetic precursor of DNA. If the coronavirus's RNA is present in a swab sample, the person from whom the sample was taken is infected.

To initiate a test, liquid from a nasal swab sample is dropped into the microlab, which uses electric fields to extract and purify any nucleic acids like RNA that it might contain. The purified RNA is then converted into DNA and then replicated many times over using a technique known as isothermal amplification.

Next, the team used an enzyme called CRISPR-Cas12 - a sibling of the CRISPR-Cas9 enzyme associated with this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry - to determine if any of the amplified DNA came from the coronavirus.

If so, the activated enzyme triggers fluorescent probes that cause the sample to glow. Here also, electric fields play a crucial role by helping concentrate all of the important ingredients - the target DNA, the CRISPR enzyme and the fluorescent probes - together into a tiny space smaller than the width of a human hair, dramatically increasing the chances they will interact.

"Our chip is unique in that it uses electric fields to both purify nucleic acids from the sample and to speed up chemical reactions that let us know they are present," Santiago said.

The team created its device on a shoestring budget of about $5,000. For now, the DNA amplification step must be performed outside of the chip, but Santiago expects that within months his lab will integrate all the steps into a single chip.

Several human-scale diagnostic tests use similar gene amplification and enzyme techniques, but they are slower and more expensive than the new test, which provides results in just 30 minutes. Other tests can require more manual steps and can take several hours.

The researchers say their approach is not specific to COVID-19 and could be adapted to detect the presence of other harmful microbes, such as E. coli in food or water samples, or tuberculosis and other diseases in the blood.

"If we want to look for a different disease, we simply design the appropriate nucleic acid sequence on a computer and send it over email to a commercial maker of synthetic RNA. They mail back a vial with the molecule that completely reconfigures our assay for a new disease," Ramachandran said.

The researchers are working with the Ford Motor Company to further integrate the steps and develop their prototype into a marketable product.

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Climate change will give rise to more cancers

UCSF study focuses on global impact for major cancers and steps needed to lessen risks

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SAN FRANCISCO

Research News

 

Climate change will bring an acute toll worldwide, with rising temperatures, wildfires and poor air quality, accompanied by higher rates of cancer, especially lung, skin and gastrointestinal cancers, according to a new report from UC San Francisco.

In an analysis of nearly five dozen published scientific papers, the researchers provided a synopsis of future effects from global warming on major cancers, from environmental toxins to ultraviolet radiation, air pollution, infectious agents and disruptions in the food and water supply.

Ultimately, the most profound challenge to the global cancer picture could come from the disruption of the complex health care systems required for cancer diagnosis, treatment, and care, the authors wrote. The review appears in The Lancet Oncology.

"In the worldwide battle to mitigate climate change, the international community is not on track to slow emissions of greenhouses gases," said lead author Robert A. Hiatt, MD, PhD, UCSF professor of epidemiology and biostatistics, and associate director for population science at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. "2015-2019 were the five warmest years on record, and 2020 has seen tremendous climate impacts, from wildfires to hurricanes."

The impacts of climate change on health are large and are expected to continue growing without rapid action. High temperatures, poor air quality and wildfires cause higher rates of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Warmer temperatures and changing rainfall patterns raise the risk and spread of vector-borne disease, such as malaria and dengue. "Extreme weather events cause death, injury, displacement, and disrupt health-care delivery," the authors wrote.

Cancer is widely predicted to be the leading cause of death in the 21st century. Worldwide, there were 24.5 million new cases of cancer and 9.6 million deaths in 2017, a striking increase from 2008 with 12.7 million cases and 7.6 million deaths.

The authors said the biggest cancer threats are likely to be from air pollution, exposure to ultraviolent radiation and industrial toxins, and disruptions in food and water supply. Lung cancer, already the primary cause of cancer deaths worldwide, is expected to increase as a result of escalating exposure to particulate matter in air pollution, estimated to be responsible for as much as 15 percent of new cases.

While the overall effects of climate change on nutrition-related cancers are difficult to determine, the authors said, one comprehensive modeling study predicted more than half a million climate-related deaths worldwide, including cancer deaths, as a result of changes in food supply by 2050, such as reduced consumption of fruits and vegetables.

Climate change is already exacerbating social and economic inequities, leading to higher rates of migration and poverty. The authors note that poor people and communities of color are disproportionately affected by cancer and have a higher cancer mortality. World Bank estimates that climate change will push 100 million people globally back into poverty by 2030.

Major disruptions are also expected to take place in the infrastructure of health care systems for cancer control, which could affect all cancers. The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a clear example of this disruption, shifting medical resources away from cancer and causing thousands of patients to delay cancer screenings out of fear of contracting the virus.

"Extreme weather events such as storms and flooding can destroy or damage health-care infrastructure, reducing health care quality and availability," said the authors. These events also interrupt service delivery by causing power shortages, disrupting supply chains, transportation, and communication, and resulting in staff shortages. Ironically, COVID-19 also revealed a ray of hope in reversing the damage.

"The early pandemic response resulted in a striking reduction in air pollution," Hiatt said, "showing the potential of extreme measures to result in rapid environmental change."

It could take decades to fully understand the impact of climate change on cancer, given a sometimes lengthy delay from exposure to clinical diagnosis. But the authors said that shouldn't prevent acting now, as the harmful impacts from air pollution and other climate risks will continue to grow during that time.

"There is a lot we can be doing to mitigate climate change and to mitigate the impact on cancer," said co-author Naomi Beyeler, MPH, co-director of the Evidence to Policy Initiative and Lead for Climate and Health at the UCSF Institute for Global Health Sciences. "We should be doing both, and we should be doing both with urgency."

By reducing pollution, deaths from lung cancer could decline, the authors said, and there are numerous clinical, behavioral, and policy solutions to slow climate change, and prevent cancer cases and deaths.

"The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us the importance of science and public health," said Beyeler, "and we have seen over the past months that as a global health community, we are able to mobilize the investments, research, and collective action needed to solve health problems on a global scale. Now is the time to apply this ambition to tackling the climate crisis."

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