Current FDA oversight of vaping industry likely to have minimal impact

It’s failing to target key players and products most popular with young people

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BMJ

Current Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversight of the vaping industry in the US is likely to have minimal impact, suggests an analysis of the regulator’s warning letters for marketing violations, published online in the journal Tobacco Control.

The regulator is failing to target the key players or the products most popular with young people, the analysis suggests, with over 90% of warnings sent to small online retailers rather than leading tobacco companies, and a focus on refillable devices.

While the prevalence of vaping among US adults remains low, at just under 4% in 2020, it is four times higher among young people.

In 2016 the FDA announced plans to regulate the vaping industry, including a requirement for the manufacturers of e-cigarettes to obtain pre-market approval (PMTA) to ensure that their products protect public health.

In 2017, the regulator began sending warning letters to manufacturers, retailers, and distributors for potential violations, such as advertising to young people, selling to minors, packaging or labelling that contravened regulations, and failure to apply for a PMTA.

But little is known about who received these letters, the types of product they concerned, or details of the violations and their consequences.

To try and find out, the authors from non-profit tobacco control organisation, Truth Initiative, assessed the content and recipients of publicly available FDA warning letters issued in 2020 and 2021. In total, the FDA issued 303 warnings:126 in 2020 and 177 up to 9 September 2021.

The analysis revealed that in 2021, over 98% of all the targeted companies fulfilled all three roles (manufacturer, distributor and retailer). 

But nearly all the letters (97%) were sent to small online retailers, none of which was a large company with measurable market share, as evidenced by sales data. 

Companies were cited for between one and three infractions. Most involved failure to obtain a PMTA. In 2020 and 2021, respectively, 56% and 99%+ of the infractions concerned a PMTA violation.

And more than 90% of the products cited–880 different ones in total–were flavoured refillable e-cigarette liquids, rather than the disposable vaping devices (‘pod mods’) which the evidence indicates are most popular with young people.

Penalties ranged in severity from product detention to product seizure and fines. But loss of tobacco distributor licence and criminal charges appeared less frequently in both years than these other consequences.

At the time of the review, most (72%) of the websites cited for 2020 infractions were still operating, as were 29% of websites cited for 2021 infractions.

And as the authors note, it was impossible to find out how the targeted companies responded, and whether the FDA followed through with the consequences cited in the warning letters, because that information isn’t publicly available.

“While current research estimates that online sales comprise around one-third of the marketplace, data tell us that most young people get their products from friends (32.3%), buy them from another person (21.5%), or purchase from a vape shop (22.2%),” note the authors.

“Prioritising the products most accessed by youth which are made available from a variety of sources will be important to curb youth use,” they add.

And they emphasise:“Strong, impactful and transparent consequences need to be in place to prevent the sale of products that violate regulations necessary in protecting the health of adult users of e-cigarettes and preventing youth use alike.”

“The FDA should use its enforcement powers to target the manufacturing, distribution, and sellers of the tobacco products that have the greatest impact on youth and products that provide no public health benefit,” they conclude. 

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JOURNAL

Tobacco Control

DOI

10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2022-057359 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Analysis of e-cigarette warning letters issued by the Food and Drug Administration in 2020 and 2021

New research shows e-cigarettes cause cardiac arrhythmias

Some cardiac effects of e-cigarette ingredients are similar to or worse than conventional cigarettes

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE

 

IMAGE: ALEX CARLL, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN THE UOFL DEPARTMENT OF PHYSIOLOGY, FRONT, WITH MATTHEW NYSTORIAK, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE. view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE PHOTO

A new study from University of Louisville researchers in the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute has found that exposure to e-cigarette aerosols can cause heart arrhythmias in animal models — both in the form of premature and skipped heart beats. The study findings, published Oct. 25 in Nature Communications, suggest exposure to specific chemicals within e-cigarette liquids (e-liquids) promote arrhythmias and cardiac electrical dysfunction.

“Our findings demonstrate that short-term exposure to e-cigarettes can destabilize heart rhythm through specific chemicals within e-liquids,” said Alex Carll, assistant professor in the UofL Department of Physiology who led the study. “These findings suggest that e-cigarette use involving certain flavors or solvent vehicles may disrupt the heart’s electrical conduction and provoke arrhythmias. These effects could increase the risk for atrial or ventricular fibrillation and sudden cardiac arrest.”

The researchers tested the cardiac impacts of inhaled e-cigarette aerosols solely from the main two ingredients in e-liquids (nicotine-free propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin) or from flavored retail e-liquids containing nicotine. They found that for all e-cigarette aerosols, the animals’ heart rate slowed during puff exposures and sped up afterwards as heart rate variability declined, indicating fight-or-flight stress responses. In addition, e-cigarette puffs from a menthol-flavored e-liquid or from propylene glycol alone caused ventricular arrhythmias and other conduction irregularities in the heart.

Conducted in collaboration with Daniel Conklin and Aruni Bhatnagar, professors in the UofL Division of Environmental Medicine, this work adds to a growing body of research on the potential toxicity and health impacts of e-cigarettes reported by the American Heart Association Tobacco Regulation and Addiction Center, for which UofL serves as the flagship institute.

"The findings of this study are important because they provide fresh evidence that the use of e-cigarettes could interfere with normal heart rhythms -- something we did not know before," Bhatnagar said. "This is highly concerning given the rapid growth of e-cigarette use, particularly among young people."

As e-cigarette use has grown nationwide, the potential advantages and harms of vaping have been debated. Since vaping does not involve combustion, it exposes users and bystanders to little if any carbon monoxide, tar or cancer-causing nitrosamines compared with conventional cigarettes. However, e-cigarettes can deliver aldehydes, particles and nicotine at levels comparable to combustible cigarettes. Vaping might help smokers quit combustible cigarettes, but the appeal and addictiveness of e-cigarettes may encourage youth to vape amidst unknown long-term risks or take up smoking. More than 25% of high schoolers and 10% of middle schoolers in the U.S. reported using e-cigarettes before the pandemic.

Additional research by Carll and Matthew Nystoriak, an associate professor of medicine at UofL, to determine the effects of vape flavorings on the heart recently received $3.6 million in research funding from the National Institutes of Health.

“Our team’s findings that specific ingredients in e-cigarette liquids promote arrhythmias indicates there is an urgent need for more research into the cardiac effects of these components in both animals and humans,” Carll said.

###

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-33203-1

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Heart, Lung, And Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) under Award Number R01HL147353 (A.P.C.), R01HL163818 (A.P.C. and M.A.N.), U54HL120163 (A.B.), and R01HL122676 (D.J.C.), the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the NIH under Award Number P30GM127607 (A.B.), the Jewish Heritage Fund for Excellence (M.A.N. and A.P.C.), a Fellowship from the American Heart Association (AHA) Tobacco Regulation and Addiction Center (AHA FX-ATRAC-UL1-05; A.P.C.), and the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) Scholarship - Process no {88881.131525/2016-01} (C.A. and R.S.). Research reported in this publication was supported by NHLBI and FDA Center for Tobacco Products (CTP). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH, the FDA, or the AHA.

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JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-022-33203-1 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

E-cigarettes and Their Lone Constituents Induce Cardiac Arrhythmia and Conduction Defects in Mice

New data on how intermittent fasting affects female hormones

New evidence comes from study of pre- and post-menopausal obese women on the “warrior diet”

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS CHICAGO

Intermittent fasting has been shown to be an effective way to lose weight, but critics have worried that the practice may have a negative impact on women’s reproductive hormones. Now, a team of University of Illinois Chicago researchers has published a study in Obesity that brings new evidence to the table. 

The researchers, led by Krista Varady, UIC professor of nutrition, followed a group of pre- and post-menopausal obese women for a period of eight weeks on the “warrior diet” method of intermittent fasting.

The warrior diet prescribes a time-restricted feeding window of four hours per day, during which dieters can eat without counting calories before resuming a water fast until the next day. 

They measured the differences in hormone levels, obtained by analyzing blood sample data, in groups of dieters who stuck to four- and six-hour feeding windows against a control group that followed no diet restrictions. 

Varady and her team found that levels of sex-binding globulin hormone, a protein that carries reproductive hormones throughout the body, was unchanged in the dieters after eight weeks. The same held true for both testosterone and androstenedione, a steroid hormone that the body uses to produce both testosterone and estrogen.

However, dehydroepiandrosterone or DHEA, a hormone that fertility clinics prescribe to improve ovarian function and egg quality, was significantly lower in both pre-menopausal and post-menopausal women at the end of the trial, dropping by about 14%.  

While the drop in DHEA levels was the most significant finding of the study, in both pre- and post-menopausal women, DHEA levels remained within the normal range by the end of the eight-week period.

“This suggests that in pre-menopausal women, the minor drop in DHEA levels has to be weighed against the proven fertility benefits of lower body mass,” Varady said. “The drop in DHEA levels in post-menopausal women could be concerning because menopause already causes a dramatic drop in estrogen, and DHEA is a primary component of estrogen. However, a survey of the participants reported no negative side effects associated with low estrogen post-menopause, such as sexual dysfunction or skin changes.“

As an added benefit, since high DHEA has been linked to breast cancer risk, Varady said a moderate drop in levels might be helpful in reducing that risk for both pre- and post-menopausal women. 

The study measured levels of estradiol, estrone and progesterone — all hormones vital to pregnancy — as well, but only in post-menopausal women, due to the changing levels of these hormones throughout pre-menopausal women’s menstrual cycles. Among post-menopausal women, there was no change in these hormones at the end of eight weeks. 

Women in both the four-hour and six-hour dieting groups experienced weight loss of 3% to 4% of their baseline weight throughout the course of the study, compared with the control group, which had almost no weight loss. The dieters also saw a drop in insulin resistance and in biomarkers of oxidative stress. 

Perimenopausal women, who are typically in their 40s, were excluded from the study. 

Still, Varady said, “I think this is a great first step. We’ve observed thousands of pre- and post-menopausal women through different alternate-day fasting and time-restricted eating strategies. All it’s doing is making people eat less. By shortening that eating window, you’re just naturally cutting calories. Much of the negative information on intermittent fasting reported has come from studies on mice or rats. We need more studies to look at the effects of intermittent fasting on humans.”

The study, “Effect of time-restricted eating on sex hormone levels in premenopausal and postmenopausal females” was supported by a grant (R01DK119783) from the National Institutes of Health.

Co-authors of the study are Faiza Kalam, Rand Akasheh, Sofia Cienfuegos, Aparna Ankireddy, Kelsey Gabel, Mark Ezpeleta, Shuhao Lin, Chandra Tamatam, Sekhar Reddy, Bonnie Spring and Seema Khan.

---

JOURNAL

Obesity

DOI

10.1002/oby.23562 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Randomized controlled/clinical trial

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Effect of time-restricted eating on sex hormone levels in premenopausal and postmenopausal females

ARTICLE PUBLICATI

VLA finds cosmic rays driving galaxy's winds

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NATIONAL RADIO ASTRONOMY OBSERVATORY

 

IMAGE: ARTIST'S ILLUSTRATION OF COSMIC RAY DRIVEN WINDS (BLUE AND GREEN) SUPERIMPOSED ON A VISIBLE-LIGHT IMAGE OF THE TRIANGULUM GALAXY M33 (RED AND WHITE) OBSERVED WITH VLT SURVEY TELESCOPE AT ESO’S PARANAL OBSERVATORY IN CHILE. view more 

CREDIT: INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH IN FUNDAMENTAL SCIENCES- IPM & EUROPEAN SOUTHERN OBSERVATORY (ESO).

Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have discovered an important new clue about how galaxies put the brakes on vigorous episodes of star formation. Their new study of the neighboring galaxy M33 indicates that fast-moving cosmic ray electrons can drive winds that blow away the gas needed to form new stars.

Such winds are responsible for slowing the rate of star formation as galaxies evolve over time. However, shock waves from supernova explosions and energetic, black hole-powered jets of material coming from galactic cores have been considered the primary drivers of those winds. Cosmic rays were thought to be minor contributors, particularly in galaxies like M33 that have regions of prolific star formation.

"We have seen galactic winds driven by cosmic rays in our own Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy, which have much weaker rates of star formation, but not before in a galaxy such as M33," said Fatemah Tabatabaei, of the Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences in Iran. 

Tabatabaei and an international team of scientists made detailed, multi-wavelength VLA observations of M33, a spiral galaxy nearly 3 million light-years away and part of the Local Group of galaxies that includes the Milky Way. They also used data from previous observations with the VLA, the Effelsberg radio telescope in Germany, and millimeter-wave, visible-light, and infrared telescopes.

Stars much more massive than our Sun speed through their life cycles, ultimately exploding as supernovae. The explosive shock waves can accelerate particles to nearly the speed of light, creating cosmic rays. Enough of these cosmic rays can build pressure that drives winds carrying away the gas needed to continue forming stars.

"The VLA observations indicated that cosmic rays in M33 are escaping the regions where they are born, making them able to drive more extensive winds," said William Cotton, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

Based on their observations, the astronomers concluded that the numerous supernova explosions and supernova remnants in M33's giant complexes of prolific star formation made such cosmic ray-driven winds more likely.

"This means that cosmic rays probably are a more general cause of galactic winds, particularly at earlier times in the universe's history, when star formation was happening at a much higher rate," Tabatabaei said. She added, "This mechanism thus becomes a more important factor in understanding the evolution of galaxies over time."

Tabatabaei, Cotton and their colleagues are reporting their findings in the 25 October issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

###
 

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JOURNAL

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Cloud-scale Radio Surveys of Star Formation and Feedback in Triangulum: VLA Observations

Virginia Tech researchers address the grand challenges of pandemic prediction and prevention

Grant and Award Announcement

VIRGINIA TECH

 

IMAGE: PREDICTIVE INTELLIGENCE FOR PANDEMIC PREVENTION GRANT TEAM MEMBERS (FROM LEFT) INCLUDE X.J. MENG, NEETI GANDHI, T.M. MURALI, BLESSY ANTONY, PADMA RAJAGOPALAN, ANDREW CHAN, SARAH GOUGER, LISA M. LEE, AND JIE BU. NOT PICTURED ARE SANKET DESHMUKH, KATHY HOSIG, LAURA HUNGERFORD, ANUJ KARPATNE, PAUL SKOLNIK, JAMES WEGER-LUCARELLI, KRISTINA JILES, CHARLIE PLATE, NURE TASNINA, AND KATIE TILLER. view more 

CREDIT: VIRGINIA TECH

Complex, ill-structured, and thorny challenges require a convergence of expertise to advance beyond disciplinary boundaries and develop new frameworks for problem-solving.

One such challenge continues to loom large on the global stage: SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

While COVID-19 is only one among many zoonotic viral diseases (those transmissible between animals and humans), its spread to pandemic proportions has highlighted important scientific, societal, and ethical aspects that require consideration for the successful prediction and prevention of further pandemics.

T.M. Murali, a professor in the Department of Computer Science, along with several colleagues from across Virginia Tech, has received a $1 million National Science Foundation grant to tackle grand challenges in the prediction and prevention of infectious disease pandemics. The award comes from the Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention (PIPP) program, which provides an opportunity for multidisciplinary teams to work across scientific and other disciplinary divides to implement an effective approach to pandemic predictive intelligence.

Murali, principal investigator in the grant, and the research team use the convergent power of their expertise to identify expedient, efficient, cost-effective options for the prevention and containment of zoonotic viruses.

“Virginia Tech is a great place to do this research,” said Murali. “It is challenging and exciting and all of the researchers are eager to work together to see how they can contribute value.”

X.J. Meng, co-principal investigator, University Distinguished Professor of Molecular Virology at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine and professor of internal medicine at the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, said the university is well positioned to meet this challenge, citing the interdisciplinary and collaborative research taking place in the Center for Emerging, Zoonotic, and Arthropod-borne Pathogens (CeZAP), one of the four core centers within the Fralin Life Sciences Institute.

“With the establishment of CeZAP in 2020, and now with this PIPP Phase I center award on pandemic prevention led by Dr. Murali, Virginia Tech is on an upward trajectory to become a leader in infectious disease research and pandemic prevention,” said Meng.

Over the next 18 months, this team of experts will be scaling up coordination and mapping convergence opportunities to build the research capacity that will make Virginia Tech highly competitive for a national-level center. With the goal of predicting and preventing future pandemics using novel approaches to research and transdisciplinary problem-solving, the team will use its professional and technical expertise to develop a common discourse and shared research agenda across three cross-cutting themes. The work conducted in each theme will inform and be informed by the discoveries in the other themes.

Theme 1: Computational prediction of viral adaptation to human cells

James Weger-Lucarelli, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences and Pathobiology in the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, and Anuj Karpatne, an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science, will lend their expertise to developing computational and experimental methods to analyze the genomic sequences of viruses that currently infect animals. Determining how those viruses evolve in order to cross species barriers will lead to the development of predictive, science-guided machine learning models necessary for the effective development of interventions.

Critical to the development of these predictive models of zoonotic viral behaviors is work conducted by Padma Rajagopalan, the Robert E. Hord, Jr. professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and the program director for the interdisciplinary graduate program on Computational Tissue Engineering.  Rajagopalan shares her expertise in 3D tissues, also known as organoids. “These organoids are lab-assembled and comprise almost all the cells found in a specific tissue,” she said. “We need these kind of tissues because they are the closest we can get before doing animal testing. Because they are 3D in nature, they can provide knowledge and insight as to what happens inside the body.”

Theme 2: Rapid repurposing and redesign of drugs to prevent viral replication

Determining the evolutionary behaviors of viruses that move between animal and human hosts and their subsequent actions on tissues provides foundational data to support the identification, repurposing, and redesign of existing drugs that may be used in the prevention and replication of zoonotic viruses.

Sanket Deshmukh, an associate professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering; Laura Hungerford, professor of veterinary public health and epidemiology and the department head for the Department of Population Health Sciences in the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine; and Paul R. Skolnik, infectious disease physician and professor at the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, all contribute their expertise to explore the appropriateness of existing drug compounds, chemistry, design, and effectiveness to prevent viruses from evolving and/or replicating. 

Theme 3: Community-informed research

Despite the successful development and approval of multiple effective vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, the adoption of new pharmaceutical interventions has proven to be a barrier.

Specifically in the United States, societal resistance to vaccination has considerably hindered the ability of public health agencies to curb infections. Murali believes that one of the distinctive factors setting Virginia Tech’s proposal apart from its peers was the deep integration of community engagement.

“What we realized in the COVID-19 pandemic is that health professionals have to build trust with the community and scientists need to be informed about what the concerns are,” said Murali. As such, the investigators will engage with the community at large to develop an understanding of societal and ethical concerns of the research.

For Kathy Hosig, an associate professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences and director of the Virginia Tech Center for Public Health Practice and Research, this work is vitally important to public health, particularly for alleviating health inequities. “Bringing transdisciplinary teams together to tackle public health issues such as pandemic prediction and prevention will build capacity for both researchers and communities to efficiently and effectively address current and future health threats,” she said.

Murali; Hosig;h Lisa Lee, a research professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences, associate vice president for research and innovation, and director of the Division of Scholarly Integrity and Research Compliance; and Kristina Jiles, research assistant professor and public health extension specialist in the Center for Public Health Practice and Research, will lead community engagement studios between researchers and group members. The studios provide an atmosphere where researchers can describe their project in lay terms to patients, community members, and health care professionals with trained facilitators to moderate the discussion. The studios will launch later this fall or during the spring 2023 semester.

The success of interdisciplinary research programs and centers at Virginia Tech is evidence of the university’s commitment to becoming a global leader for the improvement of the quality of life and the human condition by inspiring and empowering people to learn, innovate, and serve beyond boundaries. Hosig credits this success to the passionate researchers, such as Murali, who are committed to transdisciplinary research and rigorous training for students to tackle sticky issues. She also acknowledges the Virginia Tech Graduate School and its support and flexibility to establish creative graduate certificates and to develop new strategies for training graduate students.

Vaginal immune activity increases after first-time intercourse

A study suggests the immune system in the vagina becomes more active after young women start having intercourse, which may increase or decrease sexually transmitted infection risk.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

ELIFE

The changes detected may have important implications for sexually transmitted infection (STI) risk. But the authors do not yet know if the changes increase or decrease the risk of acquiring an STI. 

Girls and young women between the ages of 15 and 24 have a higher risk of acquiring an STI than older women. However, it has not been determined if riskier behavioural choices or physiological factors may explain the increased risk. 

“We measured immune changes in young women before and after initiating sex to determine if immune changes may play a role in increased STI vulnerability,” says lead author Sean Hughes, a research scientist in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, US.

Hughes and colleagues compared vaginal samples collected from 95 adolescent women in Kenya before or after they began having sexual intercourse. They found a sharp increase in proteins that control the immune response, including IL-1β, IL-2, and CXCL8, during the first year after the participants became sexually active. These changes were confirmed to not be due to pregnancy or having an STI.

The team reviewed data collected in two other studies to verify the result. One included 93 young women in Belgium, and another included 19 participants in the US. The combined data from those two studies also showed elevated levels of immune-controlling proteins, including IL-1β, IL-2, and CXCL8, after participants became sexually active. 

“The initiation of sexual activity was associated with higher levels of immune mediators, but we don’t know for sure if the start of sexual activity caused the changes,” says co-senior Florian Hladik, professor in the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, Washington. “Other factors associated with the timing of sex initiation, such as socioeconomic status, could have contributed to immune system changes.”

The consequences of this immune activation are also not clear. The immune changes detected in the study may help boost fertility or may be a protective defence against sexually transmitted infections. If it is an attempt at defence, it may inadvertently increase young women’s vulnerability to HIV infection by recruiting the CD4 T immune cells targeted by the virus to the vagina. More studies are needed to confirm the connection between the start of sexual activity and these immune changes and understand their consequences for young women’s sexual health. 

“More research on the immune changes associated with the initiation of sexual activity may help us understand the elevated STI risk in young women,” says co-senior author Alison Roxby, Associate Professor of Infectious Disease and Global Health at the University of Washington School of Medicine. “It may also help us identify new ways to prevent STIs in this vulnerable population.” 

 

##

 

About eLife

eLife transforms research communication to create a future where a diverse, global community of scientists and researchers produces open and trusted results for the benefit of all. Independent, not-for-profit and supported by funders, we improve the way science is practised and shared. From the research we publish, to the tools we build, to the people we work with, we’ve earned a reputation for quality, integrity and the flexibility to bring about real change. eLife receives financial support and strategic guidance from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Max Planck Society and Wellcome. Learn more at https://elifesciences.org/about.

To read the latest Immunology & Inflammation research published in eLife, visit https://elifesciences.org/subjects/immunology-inflammation.

And for the latest in Medicine, see https://elifesciences.org/subjects/medicine.

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JOURNAL

eLife

DOI

10.7554/eLife.78565 

ARTICLE TITLE

Starting to have sexual intercourse is associated with increases in cervicovaginal immune mediators in young women: a prospective study and meta-analysis

Predicting mortality risks using smartphones

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CARL R. WOESE INSTITUTE FOR GENOMIC BIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

 

IMAGE: MEASURING HEALTH WITH A CARRIED SMARTPHONE, USING THE CHARACTERISTIC MOTION OF A HUMAN BODY THAT HAS BEEN COMPUTED FROM A PHONE SENSOR view more 

CREDIT: QIAN CHENG

Healthcare professionals have long recognized the association of physical activity with mortality risk—those who engage in more moderate-to-vigorous activity have lower mortality rates. In a new study, researchers across the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have shown that smartphones suffice to monitor people’s walking activity. They used sensor data from 100,000 participants to construct models of health status and mortality risk.

Measuring physical activity usually falls into three categories: self-reported questionnaires, walking a fixed distance under timed observation, and wearing activity monitors. The first two focus on quality of movement instead of quantity. However, sensor-based methods are the most advantageous because they measure physical activity during daily living. Unfortunately, access to such wearable sensors is limited due to health inequities.  

To circumvent this problem, the researchers turned to smartphones. According to the Pew Research Center, 97% of the US population own a cell phone, and 83% possess a smartphone that contains motion sensors. Since mobile phones are often carried while walking, they could be used to measure physical activity. Although the total measure of activity over 24 hours may not be possible, smartphones can be used to measure the quality of walking.

For their study, the researchers used the UK Biobank, which is the largest national cohort with sensor records that span the last 20 years. They studied 100,000 participants who were demographically representative of the UK population. The categories that were considered included age, sex, race, health disorders, previous hospitalizations, lifestyles, education levels, and income.

Each participant wore activity monitors with motion sensors for one week. Although the wrist sensor was worn differently than how an equivalent smartphone sensor is carried, the motion sensors were able to obtain information on walking intensity from short bursts of normal walking. The researchers analyzed these datasets to model the characteristic motions of these walking sessions to predict mortality risk. The UK Death Registry was used to determine which participants had passed away over a five-year timeframe.

Using Biocluster2, a high-performance computing resource at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, the team was able to successfully validate predictive models of mortality risk using only 6 minutes per day of steady walking measured by the sensor. This time period is a vast improvement over the activity monitors, which assume the participants wear the sensors for 10 hours per day. The accuracy achieved was similar to physical measures such as gait speed during short walks, as well as similar to activity monitors that measure total activity.

"Our work is a big advance in health equity,” said Bruce Schatz (EIRH), a professor of library administration in the university library. “Smartphones are ubiquitous in high-income countries and increasingly common in low-income countries. Showing that they can predict mortality as accurately as existing methods implies that health monitors at a population scale are now feasible.”  

There are limitations to the study that the researchers would like to address in their future studies. Although they chose a demographically representative population, low-income lifestyles differ from high-income lifestyles even when age and sex are the same. Consequently, walking tests may differ since the 6 minutes of steady walking was chosen to mimic walk tests for hospital patients with cardiopulmonary disorders. The researchers will also broaden their population samples to include the US Precision Medicine Initiative, where the participants will be representative of the US national population, which is more diverse than that of the UK.  Since the models rely only on machine learning from sensor inputs, other types of health status may also be accurately predictable, such as cardiac health or asymptomatic detection of infectious diseases like COVID-19.

The research team consisted of Schatz; Haowen Zhou, a visiting scholar in the Schatz group at the IGB and now a graduate student in statistics at the University of Virginia; Ruoqing Zhu (CGD), an associate professor of statistics; Anita Ung, a staff physician at the McKinley Health Center.  During this research, Schatz and Ung were faculty in the College of Medicine at the University of Illinois, using the IGB facility to collaborate with the Department of Statistics.

The study “Population analysis of mortality risk: Predictive models from passive monitors using motion sensors for 100,000 UK Biobank participants” was published in PLOS Digital Health and can be found at https://journals.plos.org/digitalhealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pdig….

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JOURNAL

PLOS Digital Health

DOI

10.1371/journal.pdig.0000045 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Population analysis of mortality risk: Predictive models from passive monitors using motion sensors for 100,000 UK Biobank participants

MIT Press journal Open Mind is now a diamond open access publication

With the removal of all financial publishing barriers, the cognitive science journal provides free access for both readers and scholars

Business Announcement

THE MIT PRESS

The MIT Press is pleased to announce that Open Mind is now a diamond open access journal, eliminating all article processing fees for scholars. By embracing the diamond open access (OA) model, the Journal strives to encourage the publication of new research by more diverse voices and better serve the greater cognitive science community. 

Since its founding in 2017, Open Mind has been a venue for the highest quality, most innovative work in cognitive science, delivering permanent and free access to its articles for readers. The Journal covers the broad array of content areas within cognitive science, including cognitive psychology, computer science and mathematical psychology, cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology, comparative psychology and behavioral anthropology, decision sciences, and theoretical and experimental linguistics. With the elimination of processing fees for authors, Open Mind hopes to increase the rate of submissions across these content areas and aid researchers in publishing their scholarship open access. 

“We have seen a hurdle in the form of costs associated with publishing open access,” said Edward Gibson, editor of Open Mind and professor, department of brain & cognitive Sciences, MIT. “Even though our open access charge was very low, we think that this was a major deterrent to cognitive science researchers. We are optimistic that these changes will lead to many more submissions to Open Mind, and we hope that the rate of submissions will grow much more over the coming months.”

“We are thrilled to have Open Mind join the diamond OA scholarly ecosystem,” says Nick Lindsay, director of journals and open access at the MIT Press. “With this move, the Journal joins a growing number of diamond OA publications at the MIT Press that are removing financial barriers to make scholarly communications more equitable.”

In July, Samuel J. Gershman, professor of psychology, Harvard University joined Gibson as co-editor of Open Mind. With Gershman on board, Open Mind aims to better service the broader computational cognitive science community. Gershman explains, “We are hoping researchers from many more domains within cognitive science will see the Journal as a good place to report their projects. We are currently working on special issues on computational cognitive neuroscience, principles of intelligence, and information theory in cognitive systems, with the first scheduled to publish in Spring 2023.”

To support the sustainability of the diamond OA model, Open Mind will be utilizing Janeway for submission and peer review management. Janeway is an inexpensive, open source publishing platform developed by the Centre for Technology and Publishing at Birkbeck, University of London, to support the goals of the Open Library of Humanities, an open access academic publisher.

To learn more Open Mind, visit https://direct.mit.edu/opmi. 

About The MIT Press
Established in 1962, The MIT Press is one of the largest and most distinguished university presses in the world and a leading publisher of books and journals at the intersection of science, technology, art, social science, and design.

UCF researchers create lunar regolith bricks that could be used to construct Artemis base camp

Using resources found in space to construct off-world structures can drastically reduce the need to transport building materials for programs like Artemis

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA

 

VIDEO: UCF MECHANICAL AND AEROSPACE ENGINEERING ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR RANAJAY GHOSH AND GRADUATE RESEARCH ASSISTANT PETER WARREN EXPLAIN THE PROCESS THEY USED TO CREATE CYLINDRICAL BRICKS USING SIMULATED LUNAR AND MARTIAN REGOLITH. view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA.

Using resources found in space to construct off-world structures can drastically reduce the need to transport building materials for programs like Artemis.

ORLANDO, Oct. 25, 2022 – As part of NASA’s Artemis program to establish a long-term presence on the moon, it aims to build an Artemis base camp that includes a modern lunar cabin, rover and mobile home. This fixed habitat could potentially be constructed with bricks made of lunar regolith and saltwater, thanks to a recent discovery from a team of UCF researchers.

Associate Professor Ranajay Ghosh of UCF’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and his research group found that 3D-printed bricks of lunar regolith can withstand the extreme environments of space and are a good candidate for cosmic construction projects. Lunar regolith is the loose dust, rocks and materials that cover the moon’s surface.

The results of their experiments are detailed in a recent issue of Ceramics International and were also featured in New Scientist magazine prior to publication.

“It is always an honor to be able to publish our work in a prestigious journal such as Ceramics International, and we are quite delighted that New Scientist picked our research to publish in their magazine,” Ghosh says. “Considering UCF’s special place as a space grant university, we feel privileged to contribute to the great tradition of scientific knowledge.”

To create the bricks, Ghosh’s team in the Complex Structures and Mechanics of Solids (COSMOS) Lab used a combination of 3D printing and binder jet technology (BJT), an additive manufacturing method that forces out a liquid binding agent onto a bed of powder. In Ghosh’s experiments, the binding agent was saltwater, and the powder was regolith made by UCF’s Exolith Lab.

“BJT is uniquely suitable for ceramic-like materials that are difficult to melt with a laser,” Ghosh says. “Therefore, it has great potential for regolith-based extraterrestrial manufacturing in a sustainable way to produce parts, components and construction structures.”

The BJT process resulted in weak cylindrical bricks called green parts that were then baked at high temperatures to produce a stronger structure. Bricks baked at lower temperatures crumbled, but those exposed to heat of up to 1200 degrees Celsius were able to withstand pressure of up to 250 million times the Earth’s atmosphere.

Ghosh says the work paves a path for the use of BJT in the construction of materials and structures in space. Their findings also demonstrate that off-world structures can be built using resources found in space, which can drastically reduce the need to transport building materials for missions like Artemis.

“This research contributes to the ongoing debate in space exploration community on finding the balance between in-situ extraterrestrial resource utilization versus material transported from Earth,” Ghosh says. “The further we develop techniques that utilize the abundance of regolith, the more capability we will have in establishing and expanding base camps on the moon, Mars, and other planets in the future.”

The first author of the paper is Peter Warren, Ghosh’s graduate research assistant. Co-authors include mechanical engineering doctoral candidate Nandhini Raju, mechanical engineering alumnus Hossein Ebrahimi ’21PhD, mechanical engineering doctoral student Milos Krsmanovic, and aerospace engineering professors Seetha Raghavan and Jayanta Kapat.

Ghosh joined UCF in 2016 as an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and is a researcher with MAE’s Center for Advanced Turbomachinery and Energy Research. He manages the Complex Structures and Mechanics of Solids Laboratory, better known as the COSMOS Lab, where he and his team fabricate and design novel materials with the aid of computer models and experiments. He earned his doctorate in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Cornell University in 2010 and is a recipient of the U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER Award.

Writer: Marisa Ramiccio, University of Central Florida

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JOURNAL

Ceramics International

DOI

10.1016/j.ceramint.2022.07.329 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Effect of sintering temperature on microstructure and mechanical properties of molded Martian and Lunar regolith