Startling images reveal coronavirus forming tentacles in cells. It may help identify new treatments.

 OMG! 
ITS NOT A CORONAVIRUS IT'S A CTHULHU-VIRUS 

AKA CTHULHU-19

Mark Johnson, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, USA TODAY•June 26, 2020

MILWAUKEE – Startling, never-before-seen images show that the new coronavirus hijacks proteins in our cells to create monstrous tentacles that branch out and may transmit infection to neighboring cells.

The finding, accompanied by evidence of potentially more effective drugs against COVID-19, published Saturday in the journal Cell by an international team of scientists.

Fluorescence microscopy image of human epithelial cells taken from the colon and infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus, that causes COVID-19. The infected cells produce tentacles, known formally as filopodia ( in white) extending out from the cell surface containing viral particles (M protein in red).

By focusing on the fundamental behavior of the virus — how it hijacks key human proteins and uses them to benefit itself and harm us — the team was able to identify a family of existing drugs called kinase inhibitors that appear to offer the most effective treatment yet for COVID-19.

"We've tested a number of these kinase inhibitors and some are better than remdesivir," said Nevan Krogan, one of more than 70 authors of the new paper, and director of the Quantitative Biosciences Institute at the University of California, San Francisco.

While remdesivir has yet to be approved for use against COVID-19, U.S. regulators are allowing "emergency use" of the drug in hospitalized patients.

Krogan said tests of kinase inhibitors showed some, including Gilteritnib and Ralimetinib, required lower concentrations than remdesivir in order to kill off 50% of the virus.

The new study, which involved experiments using cells from humans and others from African green monkeys, shows that the virus known as SARS-CoV-2 is especially adept at disrupting vital communications. These communications take place both within cells and from one cell to another.

Electron microscopy image of cells from the kidney of a female African green monkey that have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Infected cells produce tentacles known formally as filopodia (orange) extending out from the cell surface to enable budding of viral particles (blue) and infection of nearby cells.

(SAME MONKEY SPECIES THAT THEY FIRST DISCOVERED HAD HIV)

"This paper shows just how completely the virus is able to rewire all of the signals going on inside the cell. That's really remarkable and it's something that occurs very rapidly (as soon as two hours after cells are infected)," said Andrew Mehle, an associate professor of medical microbiology and immunology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The communications system known as cell signaling, allows cells to grow, and to detect and respond to outside threats. Errors in cell signaling can lead to such illnesses as cancer and diabetes.

Mehle, who was not involved in the study, said the work shows that scientists are contending with a daunting enemy in the new conronavirus. "These are highly efficient, evolutionarily-tuned machines that will make it very challenging to develop therapeutics," he said.

A different approach

From early in the pandemic, Krogan and his colleagues have taken a different approach from that of many researchers seeking treatments for the new virus.

Many scientists have been screening thousands of drugs already approved for other uses to determine if they can also be used to treat COVID-19.

"We're not doing that," Krogan said. "We're saying 'Let's understand the underlying biology behind how the virus infects us, and let's use that against the virus.' "

In the search for treatments, many scientists have homed in on key proteins in the virus — especially the Spike protein, which allows the viral cells to attach themselves to human cells.

Fluorescence microscopy image of of human epithelial cells taken from the colon and infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Viral N protein (red) hijacks human Casein Kinase II (green; co-localization in yellow) to putatively produce branching filopodia protrusions (white outline boxes) to enable budding of viral particles and infection of nearby cells.

Krogan and his team looked in the opposite direction, focusing on the human proteins, instead of those in the virus. Dozens of human proteins play a critical role in the disease process because the virus needs them to infect people and to make copies of itself.

There is an important advantage to developing treatments aimed at the human, rather than the viral, proteins. Viral proteins can mutate causing them to develop resistance to the drugs targeted to them. Human proteins are far less likely to mutate.

In April, Krogan and his colleagues published a study in the journal Nature showing that 332 human proteins interact with 27 viral proteins.

Feixiong Cheng, a PhD researcher who runs a lab at Cleveland Clinic Genomic Medicine Institute, called the mapping of interactions between these proteins "a novel" and "powerful" strategy for finding existing drugs that might help COVID-19 patients.

In the new study, Krogan's international team looked deeper into the biology, focusing on how the new coronavirus changes a complex process called phosphorylation. This process acts as a series of on-off switches for different cell activities, including growth, division, death and communication with one another.

"What they've done is really a fantastic next step," said Lynne Cassimeris, a professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University, explaining that the work builds on the previous paper and applies knowledge of cell biology gained over the last 30 years.

"It's an amazing leap. We know that the virus has to be manipulating these human proteins. Now we have a list of what is changing over time."

Cassimeris said that mapping these changes allows researchers to seek drugs that can intervene at specific points.

The scientists found that on-off switches changed significantly in 40 of the 332 proteins that interact with the new coronavirus.

The changes occur because the virus either dials up or down 49 enzymes called kinases. The dialing up or down of kinases cause them to alter 40 of the proteins that interact with virus.

Imagine the kinases as guards protecting our health until the new coronavirus turns them against us. In each case, however, the new study identified treatments that can stop the virus from turning guards into assailants.

The virus most powerfully hijacks a kinase called CK2, which plays a key role in the basic frame of the cell as well as its growth, proliferation and death.

This led the scientists to investigate a drug called Silmitasertib. Tests found this drug inhibits CK2 and eliminates the new coronavirus.

Electron microscopy image of cells from the kidney of a female African green monkey, which have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Infected cells produce tentacles known formally as filopodia (orange) extending out from the cell surface to enable budding of viral particles (blue) and infection of nearby cells.

They also found that the virus has a dramatic effect on a pathway — a group of kinases that form a cascade a little like falling dominoes. The virus hijacks this cascade so that the end result becomes a dangerous overreaction by our immune system.

The study's finding on this pathway may help to explain the extreme overreaction — a cytokine storm — that causes the immune system to kill both healthy and diseased tissue, leading to more than half of the deaths from COVID-19.

Major COVID-19 killer: UW joins drug trial aimed at stopping haywire immune response

Here too, the scientists were able to identify treatments, including the experimental cancer drug Ralimetinib, which may prevent the immune system overreaction.

Authors of the new study also found that the virus harms a family of kinases called CDKs. These play roles in cell growth and in the response to DNA damage. An experimental drug called Dinaciclib may be effective in thwarting this viral assault.

Finally, Krogan and his colleagues found that the virus also hijack a kinase that helps cells stay healthy in different environments and cleans out damaged cells. A small molecule called Apilimod targets this kinase and has been able to hinder the virus in lab tests.

Krogan, who is also an investigator at the Gladstone Institutes at UCSF, said the strategy of examining the human kinases affected by the virus has proved fruitful.

"The kinases are a very druggable set of proteins in our cells," he said.

Follow Mark Johnson on Twitter: @majohnso

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Coronavirus grows tentacles inside cells, providing clue for treatment


#CTHULHU #CORONAVIRUS

Deportation airline secures $67 million in coronavirus bailout

Alexander Nazaryan National Correspondent, Yahoo News•June 23, 2020

WASHINGTON — Four days before the 2016 presidential election, Republican candidate Donald Trump arrived for a campaign rally at an airplane hangar in Wilmington, Ohio, that belonged to an aviation company called Air Transport Services Group, or ATSG. The company’s chief executive at the time, Joe Hete, was a reliable supporter of the Republican Party.

In his speech, Trump promised to “drain the swamp” and spoke at length about the deleted emails of Hillary Clinton, a favorite topic.

Trump has not been back to Wilmington since then. But his administration has not forgotten about ATSG. Last month, an ATSG-owned charter airline company, Omni Air, secured a $67 million bailout as part of the congressional coronavirus relief package. That came on the heels of a $77.65 million contract with the Department of Defense for “international charter airlift services.”

An Omni Air International Boeing 767. (Liam Allport via Flickr)

In addition, Omni Air has charged the federal government exorbitant prices for “high risk” deportation flights for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency tasked with addressing the plight of millions who live within the United States without proper documentation. The expense was related to the unwillingness of airlines other than Omni Air to conduct such flights.

The case of Omni Air illustrates what the president’s critics have feared would happen with the CARES Act, the $2 trillion relief package passed by Congress in March.

“This brazen betrayal of CARES Act intent needs immediate strong scrutiny,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told Yahoo News. “Congress intended CARES Act grants to keep airline workers on the job, not bankroll the Trump administration’s unconscionable anti-immigration crusade. Trump officials are exploiting a loophole to misuse taxpayer money and continue deportations during a pandemic. Congress should act to help stop it.”

Passenger airlines were devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, which essentially stopped all global travel for several months. Sympathy for airlines did not run especially high, though, in part because Americans were chronically frustrated by the discomfort of flying amid relentless cost cutting and seat shrinking. And in recent years the major carriers had used their profits for stock buybacks, which benefit investors but not employees.

A pilot wearing a protective mask walks through Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Va., on June 9. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The language of the coronavirus relief bill affords Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin a high degree of discretion in the airline-assistance effort, for which Congress allotted $32 billion. “The amount to be received by each air carrier or contractor is based on its payroll expenses” from 2019, the Treasury Department explains on its website.

There are limited details about how those funding determinations were made. The main conditions stipulated by Congress were that airlines receiving coronavirus relief funds could not engage in share buybacks or lay off employees until the end of the current fiscal year on Sept. 30.

“Treasury has not released any details on the process of how they determined award amounts for the airline companies,” says Sean Moulton, a senior policy analyst with the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight. (After this article was published, a Treasury spokesperson emailed to say that Moulton’s assertion “has no grounding in fact,” noting that Treasury has, in fact, issued a guidance to airlines.)

So far, 427 aviation companies have received coronavirus-related support from the Treasury. Recipients include well-known giants like Southwest ($3.2 billion) and many much smaller companies like Catalina Flying Boats ($569,176). Of those 427 companies, 407 received less money than Omni Air. And of those that did receive more, most are large passenger carriers. And even some of those, including JetBlue, Alaska Airlines and Spirit, received less per aircraft than Omni, which operates only 15 airplanes (it does not appear that fleet size figured into Treasury's calculation, with a spokesperson telling Yahoo News that the $67 million award was based on $88 million of salary and benefit expenditures reported by Omni Air for the relevant period).

Among nonpassenger airlines, the largest grant went to Atlas Air, a cargo carrier that like Omni Air works closely with the Pentagon. It received $406 million from the Treasury Department, even though it also appears not to have lost any business during the pandemic.

“The Trump administration’s idea of saving the economy is giving tens of millions in free tax money to a private airline [like Omni] that already profits massively from doing ICE’s deportation dirty work,” said Kyle Herrig, president of the progressive government watchdog group Accountable.US, which has been tracking how the administration spends coronavirus funds.

“Every dollar wasted like this is a dollar not being spent to help small businesses and workers struggling to make ends meet,” Herrig added. “The White House has reached a new low in their disastrous response to this crisis.”

Paul Cunningham, director of corporate communications for ATSG, the Omni Air parent company, sent Yahoo News a statement confirming the $67 million grant. The statement said the airline, which employs more than 800 people, “must refrain from conducting involuntary furloughs or reducing employee rates of pay or benefits,” while limiting executive compensation and maintaining regular services.

Donald Trump speaks in front of his plane during a campaign event at an Air Transport Services Group hangar in Wilmington, Ohio, on Nov. 4, 2016. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

“I cannot answer questions related to flights or customers,” Cunningham wrote. He also declined to answer questions about the company’s finances, in particular whether Omni Air was experiencing hardship at the time of its request to the Treasury Department.

No aviation expert contacted by Yahoo News had any insight into why Omni Air did so much better than significantly bigger counterparts that employ many more people.

ATSG donates exclusively to Republican candidates through its political action committee. One of its lobbyists is Kevin DeWine, formerly the head of the Ohio chapter of the GOP and second cousin to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican.

The Trump administration has repeatedly vowed that politics has played no part in either this or any other coronavirus-related funding decision. “Political affiliation has absolutely no bearing on the Payroll Support Program, including applicant eligibility, the amount of assistance provided or use of funds,” a Treasury spokesperson told Yahoo News.

Democrats were infuriated by Mnuchin’s recent refusal to reveal who has benefited from a $600 billion small-business loan program (Mnuchin eventually relented and said he would make the information public). Like the airline bailout, the small-business loan program is part of the CARES Act, a complexly cobbled-together set of grants and loans meant to stimulate spending by consumers and keep businesses from laying workers off.

Democrats worry that Trump and his Republican allies on Capitol Hill have used the coronavirus crisis to justify the transfer of millions of taxpayer dollars to well-connected companies like Omni. Republicans, meanwhile, have argued that distributing money as quickly as possible was their sole objective. What their Democratic opponents see as instances of corruption, Republicans regard as nothing more than the natural outcome of an immense effort to rescue the American economy.

A United Airlines plane prepares to land at San Francisco International Airport on June 1. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

But even though the Omni grant may have adhered to the Treasury’s opaque guidelines, the airline and other coronavirus-bailout recipients have faced scrutiny from Congress, in particular the Democratic-controlled House. “It’s troubling, if not surprising, to see a company behave this way,” Jennifer Ahearn of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington told Yahoo News. “This kind of behavior is the reason Congress built oversight into the structure of the CARES Act.”

In addition to disputing suggestions of political influence, the Treasury Department spokesperson explained that the “standard for determining air carrier eligibility was set by Congress on a bipartisan basis, and each applicant’s eligibility is verified by the Department of Transportation before any funds are disbursed.”

A Transportation Department spokesperson said his agency only verified that “carrier applicants” had the proper federal credentials to apply for relief funds, and referred questions back to the Treasury Department. “DOT reported its findings to Treasury, which is responsible for administering the financial assistance provisions of the CARES Act,” the spokesperson told Yahoo News.

Omni Air is hardly a stranger to government funding. The Pentagon contracts the airline to fly uniformed personnel around the world. Omni is also part of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, whose participants — including major civilian airlines like American and Delta — agree to work with the federal government as needed. During the war in Iraq, Omni was one of several airlines to benefit from the constant movement of people and cargo between the United States and the Middle East.

To this day, Omni Air continues to benefit from Defense Department contracts. Last fall, the Pentagon awarded Omni a contract for $77.7 million, which was to go toward “airlift services.”

The airline’s more controversial operations, however, have involved deportation of immigrants.

In March 2018, Omni flew 110 Kenyan, Somali and South Sudanese immigrants from the United States to Nairobi, Kenya, according to press reports from that time. Later that year, Omni earned the ire of the Cambodian-American community when it participated in the expulsion of 46 Cambodian immigrants from the United States. At the time, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance called that “the largest deportation flight of Southeast Asian refugees in United States history.” In August 2019, Omni flew 40 deported Ghanaians back to their native country, on the western coast of Africa.

An Omni Air DC-10 military charter from Hawaii at Long Beach Airport in California. (John Murphy via Flickr)

According to documents obtained by news outlet Quartz, Omni specializes in “special high-risk charter” flights. The passengers on those flights are immigrants who potentially have significant criminal records.

Other airlines have refused to engage in such transports because outrage over Trump’s hard-line immigration policies has resulted in boycotts of companies that contract with ICE.

Because of this effective monopoly, Omni Air has been able to charge astonishingly high prices, according to reporting by Quartz, which obtained internal ICE records to that effect. Last year, a single Omni flight carrying 163 “high risk” deportees back to Asia cost the federal government $1.8 million, Quartz reported. In May, Omni flew 167 Indian immigrants from the United States to Amritsar, a city in the northern region of Punjab.

ICE did not respond to a request for comment about its work with Omni.

News of Omni’s coronavirus relief package outraged Asian-American organizations, some of which had denounced the airline when it deported the Cambodian immigrants in 2018. “It’s shameful that funds are being diverted from frontline communities on the ground to businesses, like Omni Air International, who are profiting from separating families,” said Aarti Kohli, executive director of the Asian Law Caucus.

But with a low public profile and few disclosures about its operations, the “murky” airline — as Omni has been described by the Center for Human Rights at the University of Washington — has suffered no ill effects from participating in one of the most controversial policies of the Trump administration.

To the contrary, Omni has proved a profitable entity for ATSG. When the parent company released its first-quarter earnings in May, it noted that “revenues were up 12 percent, or $41.1 million, to $389.3 million.” The increased revenue was the result “mainly from growth in Omni Air” and another subsidiary, Air Transport International.

Two weeks later, ATSG got more good news when the Treasury Department announced that Omni Air would be awarded its $67 million grant. That means that in the last eight months it has received more than $140 million from Washington, not counting the millions it continues to charge for deportation flights no other airline is apparently willing to conduct.

_____

New study examines recursive thinking

A multi-institutional research team found the cognitive ability to represent recursive sequences occurs in humans and non-human primates across age, education, culture and species

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: A U.S. ADULT PARTICIPATING IN THE STUDY ON RECURSION. view more 

CREDIT: CANTLON LAB

Recursion -- the computational capacity to embed elements within elements of the same kind -- has been lauded as the intellectual cornerstone of language, tool use and mathematics. A multi-institutional team of researchers for the first time show this ability is shared across age, species and cultural groups in a new study published in the June 26 issue of the journal Science Advances.

"Recursion is a way to organize information that allows humans to see patterns in information that are rich and complex, and perhaps beyond what other species see," said Jessica Cantlon, the Ronald J. and Mary Ann Zdrojkowski Professor of Developmental Neuroscience at CMU and senior author on the paper. "We try to trace the origins of our complex and rich intellectual activities to something in our evolutionary past to understand what makes our thinking similar to and distinct from other species."

The team set up a series of experiments with U.S. adults, adults from an indigenous group in Bolivia that largely lacks formal education, U.S. children and non-human primates. After training on the task, the researchers provided each group with sequences to order. They studied how each group conducted this task, either in a recursive or non-recursive way (listing) and looked to see which order they naturally chose.

The researchers found that the human participants from all age and cultural groups spontaneously ordered content from a recursive approach by building nested structures. The non-human primate subjects more commonly used a simpler listing strategy but with additional exposure began using the recursive strategy, eventually ending up in the range of performance of human children.

"This ability to represent recursive structures is present in children as young as three years old, which suggests it is there even before they use it in language," said Stephen Ferrigno, a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University and first author on the paper. "We also saw this ability across people from widely different human cultures. Non-human primates also have the capacity to represent recursive sequences, given the right experience. These results dispel the long-held belief that only humans have the capacity to use this rule."

The team found that working memory was an important factor affecting the sequencing abilities of participants. A strong correlation exists between working memory and the use of the hierarchical strategy.

"Some of the errors were due to working memory, because participants had to remember which objects went first and relate that to other objects later in the list," said Ferrigno. "Children and non-human primates had more errors, which may be due to lower working memory capacity."

The authors note that this work offers a simplified version of a recursive task using visual cues. A more complex series of tasks may not yield the same results.

"There is something universal of being a human that lets our brains think this way spontaneously, but primates have the ability to learn it to some degree," said Cantlon. "[This research] really gives us a chance to sort out the evolutionary and developmental contributions to complex thought."

###

Cantlon and Ferrigno were joined by Samuel Cheyette and Steven Piantadosi at the University of California, Berkeley on the study titled, "Recursive sequence generation in monkeys, children, US adults, and native Amazonians." This work received support from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the James S. McDonnell Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the University of Rochester.

Gas cooker exposure can lower blood pressure, study finds

GIVES NEW MEANING TO THE DRUG ADDICTION 

KNOWN AS SNIFFING GAS 

KING'S COLLEGE LONDON

The study, published recently in Circulation Research and led by a team from King's College London, has investigated how nitrogen dioxide can impact the cardiovascular system.

The study examined the blood chemistry and cardiovascular changes of 12 healthy volunteers. They sat next to a domestic gas cooker for ninety minutes followed by ninety minutes with normal background nitrogen levels. On another occasion, the volunteers were exposed to normal background nitrogen dioxide levels for three hours.

The period next to a gas cooker increased nitrogen dioxide levels in the air 10-fold and subsequently lowered blood pressure by 5 mm Hg from 45 minutes onwards. The study also found that blood levels of the substance nitrite increased by 15% after 15 minutes.

Previous studies have shown nitrite, which can be converted from dietary nitrate following the ingestion of green leafy vegetables and beetroot, can lower blood pressure. This study suggests nitrite can also be made when the body processes nitrogen dioxide and makes a link between previous research focusing on dietary nitrate and studies of inhalation of nitrogen dioxide for the first time.

Air pollution contributes to illness and death in the general population, but it is a complex mixture of airborne particles and gases, including nitrogen dioxide. Working out the individual effects of each is challenging and there has been a running debate about how to distinguish between the independent effects of nitrogen dioxide and respirable particles in the air.

While the evidence linking nitrogen dioxide to a worsening of symptoms in respiratory disease is well established, its short-term impact on the heart and circulation is less clear. Notably, people with domestic gas appliances or people working in kitchens with gas cookers may be exposed to higher levels of nitrogen dioxide, but with less particulate matter, than that found on the street.

This unique study helps to shed light on some of the rapid effects of nitrogen dioxide on the heart and circulation. Looking at previous air pollution studies, it had been unclear whether the nitrite in the blood came from nitrogen dioxide or from particulate matter causing inflammation and generation of nitric oxide, which is converted to nitrite. This study suggests that it is the nitrogen dioxide that causes nitrite to be formed in the blood.

Crucially, while this effect of short-term exposure to nitrogen dioxide in healthy volunteers may be beneficial, there are other studies of adverse effects of long-term exposure to nitrogen dioxide, and on adverse effects of short-term exposure in asthmatics.

Further research will confirm these findings in larger studies and examine the effects on a more varied cohort.

Dr Andrew Webb, Clinical Senior Lecturer at King's College London, said: "High blood pressure is the biggest single contributor to deaths around the world. Therefore, if exposure to nitrogen dioxide from gas cookers contributes to lowering blood pressure, this could be beneficial per se, and in the context of general air pollution may partially offset the adverse cardiovascular effects of short-term exposures to elevated particulate matter concentrations.

"The mechanism by which nitrogen dioxide lowers blood pressure appears to be through linking into the same pathway as dietary nitrate (found in green leafy vegetables and beetroot): both result in an increase in blood nitrite levels. Therefore, it is not just what you eat, but how you cook it that matters."

Neuromarketing of taste

Taste similarity of food products can be compared with the help of electroencephalography

NATIONAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY HIGHER SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS

 

Marina Domracheva and Sofya Kulikova, researchers from HSE University's campus in Perm, have discovered a new approach to analyse the perceived similarity of food products, based on electroencephalography (EEG) signals. They note that the power of gamma oscillations can reflect similarities in a cross-modal approach. Their paper was published in the journal Food Quality and Preference.

The most common tools used to understand people's perception of food products are hall tests, surveys and observations. There is a general assumption that consumers can evaluate and express their real preferences, but it is not uncommon when a consumer's expressed opinion of the product does not comply with their behaviour. In addition, such research can be costly for companies.

Neuromarketing may help to eliminate these troubles. To analyse consumers' preferences, neuromarketing specialists can apply neuroimaging technologies, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and electroencephalography (EEG).

The researchers from HSE University used a cross-modal approach to study how food product similarity is assessed. This approach is based on the integration of senses from different modalities (taste, smell, and visual appearance) in an integral image of an object. For this experiment, 18 participants tasted multi-cereal candies, and then looked at images of similar objects, such as cookies, cereal bars or oatmeal. The respondents evaluated the similarities of each of these products with the candy they had just tried. While this was happening, their brain activity was recorded using EEG.

Two EEG-based metrics were considered as a potential measure of product similarity: the power of induced gamma oscillations during a 400-600 ms period after the presentation of a visual stimulus and an amplitude of N400 evoked response potentials.

In EEG-registered brain activity, oscillations of varying frequency and amplitude can be detected, which are related to various psychological processes. Gamma oscillations have frequency over 30 Hz and are detected when the brain is solving tasks that require focusing the attention and exchanging the information between different brain areas.

Evoked gamma oscillation with a power of 30-80 Hz is thought to ensure the distributed processing of information in various areas of the brain to form a common consistent perception of a given object on the basis of its various characteristics - visual, audial, and taste. For example, if the vocalization of an animal is congruent with the animal's image, the power of the evoked gamma oscillations grows. The researchers also assumed that a similar effect may be observed when food products are compared. And indeed, when the respondents looked at products that were similar to multi-cereal candies (such as cereal bars), the power of the gamma oscillations was at their highest.

'The amplitude of the N400-like negative difference component is registered by EEG when we see a minor error or incongruency: e.g, between a taste feeling and the visual perception of the product,' says Sofya Kulikova. 'When an experiment participant tasted the candy and then viewed an image of broccoli or fried potatoes, the amplitude was at its highest.'

The N400-like component is a wave that appears on the EEG at about 400 ms after the onset of the stimulus and has a negative amplitude polarity.

It turned out that both approaches are reasonable, but the N400-like component amplitude displayed a high variability among the respondents. Therefore, in a perceived similarity assessment, it is better to rely on the power of gamma oscillations.

The approach discovered by the researchers may be applied to neuromarketing studies of food taste perception. In particular, this method can be a useful tool to study the perception of new innovative products manufactured with the use of innovative technologies, or from unconventional ingredients, to which consumers might be unaccustomed.

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Repeated head impacts associated with later-life depression symptoms, worse cognitive function

Largest study to date on living patients lends insight into the differences between the consequences of traumatic brain injury or concussion and repetitive subconcussive head impacts.

BOSTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

 

(Boston) -- Scientists have long believed that a single traumatic brain injury (TBI) earlier in life may contribute to problems with memory, thinking and depression later in life. In most previous studies, however, research failed to examine the possible role of having a history of exposure to repetitive head impacts, including those leading to "subconcussive" injuries, in these later-life problems. In the largest study of its kind, an association has been found in living patients exposed to repetitive head impacts and difficulties with cognitive functioning and depression years or decades later.

Scientists from the Boston University (BU) Alzheimer's Disease and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) Centers, the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and San Francisco VA Healthcare System teamed up to analyze the records of 13,323 individuals age 40 and older (average age 62) who participate in the internet-based Brain Health Registry. Of those, 725 or 5 percent of participants reported exposure to previous repetitive head impacts through contact sports, abuse or military service. In addition to repetitive head impact history, the scientists also examined the effects of having a TBI with and without loss of consciousness.

Along with self-report questionnaires of repetitive head impact and TBI history, participants completed measures of depressive symptoms and computerized cognitive tests. The findings, published in the journal Neurology, reveal that participants with a history of both repetitive head impacts and TBI reported greater depression symptoms than those who did not have such history. In addition, when repetitive head impacts and TBI were examined separately, a history of repetitive head impacts had the strongest effect on later-life symptoms of depression. The findings were independent of age, sex, racial identity and education level.

"The findings underscore that repetitive hits to the head, such as those from contact sport participation or physical abuse, might be associated with later-life symptoms of depression. It should be made clear that this association is likely to be dependent on the dose or duration of repetitive head impacts and this information was not available for this study," said Michael Alosco, PhD, associate professor of neurology at BU School of Medicine (BUSM) and co-director of the BU Alzheimer's Disease Center Clinical Core.

There was a dose-response-like pattern between head trauma and depression symptoms. Specifically, participants without any history of either TBI or repetitive head impacts had the fewest symptoms. While depression symptoms increased when a history of TBI alone was present, depression symptoms were highest for the groups who had a history of both repetitive head impacts and TBI. Indeed, the group that had a history of repetitive head impacts and TBI with loss of consciousness reported the most depressive symptoms.

A similar cumulative effect was seen among those exposed to repetitive head impacts and TBI on tests of memory, learning, processing speed, and reaction time. Participants with a history of repetitive head impacts or TBI had worse performance on some of the tests compared to those without any head trauma history, and those with both a history of repetitive head impacts and TBI with loss of consciousness had worse performance on almost all of these computerized cognitive tests.

"These findings add to the growing knowledge about the long-term neurological consequences of brain trauma," said Robert Stern, PhD, professor of neurology, neurosurgery and anatomy & neurobiology at BUSM and director of clinical research at the BU CTE Center. "It should be noted that not all people with a history of repetitive hits to the head will develop later-life problems with cognitive functioning and depression. However, results from this study provide further evidence that exposure to repetitive head impacts, such as through the routine play of tackle football, plays an important role in the development in these later-life cognitive and emotional problems," added Stern, one of the senior authors of the study.

A major limitation of the study is that the researchers did not have access to measurements or estimates of the degree of repetitive impact exposure nor TBI frequency. In October, BU researchers reported a dose-response relationship between the number of years of exposure to tackle football (regardless of the number of concussions) and the presence and severity of the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). In a sample of 266 deceased football players, each year of exposure to tackle football was associated with 30 percent increased odds of having CTE and 17 percent increased odds of having severe CTE. It is unknown if any subjects in this study have CTE or any other neurodegenerative disease.

The research team plans to extend their work through continued collaboration between BU and UCSF investigators utilizing data from the Brain Health Registry. "We are excited to partner with BU on this important study that used the Brain Health Registry to increase our understanding on the long-term effects of repetitive head impacts and TBI," said Michael Weiner, MD, PI of the Brain Health Registry and professor-in-residence in radiology and biomedical imaging, medicine, psychiatry and neurology at UCSF. "The Brain Health Registry is a novel and exciting resource for both the scientific community and the general public. It allows for large-scale recruitment, screening and study of dementia, and more than 60,000 individuals across the world are enrolled. It offers a way for the general public to track their thinking, memory, mood, and behavior over time, and also serves as a readiness registry for future research and clinical trials of prevention and treatment." You can visit the BHR here: http://bit.ly/brainhealthreg.

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The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, grant numbers U01NS093334; K23AG046377; K23NS102399; P30AG013846.

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SYSTEMIC RACISM

SNAP work requirements put low-income Americans at risk

Work requirements will disproportionately affect Black working-age adults and harm people with disabilities, new study says

GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

 

WASHINGTON, DC (June 26, 2020) - When work requirements for a federal food safety-net program start again, many low-income Americans will lose benefits - and Black adults will be hardest hit, according to a study published today. In addition, some disabled people will lose these crucial food assistance benefits.

The authors point out that the loss of food assistance would damage the health of low-income people, who suffer from high rates of COVID-19 and other serious health conditions.

"The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in record rates of unemployment. SNAP benefits are critical to help people who have lost work get the food they need," said lead author Erin Brantley, PhD, MPH, a senior research associate at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health (Milken Institute SPH). "When work requirements for SNAP start again, history shows we can expect to see a disproportionate impact on black families."

Work requirements for Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly called the food stamp program, are temporarily paused under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act but are set to resume when the federal public health emergency ends. Separate from this action, the Trump administration issued a new rule to limit the ability that states traditionally have had to waive SNAP work requirements when unemployment is high, although a federal court has temporarily stopped implementation.

The study is the first to find that SNAP work requirements lead more Black adults to lose food assistance compared to white adults. It is also the first published research to show that SNAP work requirements cause disabled adults to lose benefits. Although SNAP work requirements exempt some people with disabilities, others may not qualify for an exemption, despite facing substantial health challenges. In some cases, disabled people may lose SNAP benefits because they cannot navigate the paperwork requirements, the authors point out.

Brantley and her colleagues at the Milken Institute SPH analyzed the impact of the requirement that low-income Americans prove that they are working - or lose SNAP benefits. The study examined what happened when many states put work requirements for SNAP into place between 2013 and 2017. The researchers found that:

• Food stamp work requirements for adults aged 18 to 49 led to a 21 percent drop in participation in the program overall;
• Black adults experienced a 23 percent loss in food assistance during that time, much larger than the 16 percent decline for white adults, likely because black workers have fewer work prospects;
• Even though the law exempts some with disabilities, there was a significant 7.8 percent drop in participation for these Americans.

The authors point out that although work requirements are paused during the public health emergency, the economic fall-out, high rates of unemployment and food insecurity could last long after the crisis is declared over.

"Our study suggests that even when the economy was strong such work requirements created disparities that harmed low-income people, especially in Black communities and people with disabilities," said Leighton Ku, director of the Center for Health Policy Research at Milken Institute SPH and co-author of the study. "The harm will be far worse when jobs are scarce during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, since high unemployment is expected to persist."

The findings also have implications for health insurance coverage. The Trump administration has encouraged states to introduce work requirements to Medicaid. Although federal courts have blocked implementation of Medicaid work requirements in some states, several states have continued to develop plans for new policies.

SNAP provides an estimated 37 million Americans with electronic vouchers to help pay for groceries. Low-income people who receive SNAP benefits have improved food security and that leads to better health, Ku and Brantley say.

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The paper, Association of Work Requirements with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Participation by Race/Ethnicity and Disability Status, 2013-2017, was published June 26 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Open Network. The Commonwealth Fund supported the research.

Sexist views on education within families affect future academic choices

A UOC study has analysed academic sexism in baccalaureate programmes at Spanish secondary schools

UNIVERSITAT OBERTA DE CATALUNYA (UOC)

 

According to senior researcher at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya's Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) Gender and ICT (GenTIC) research group, Milagros Sáinz, "In those cases where families have very sexist attitudes in relation to education and life, their opinions in terms of academic and other skills which boys and girls are ideally supposed to have may hold even more weight."

Despite the current lockdown being a temporary event, the researcher suggests that such circumstances may influence the decisions being made by young people with regard to their educational path in terms of their choice of courses for post-compulsory secondary or university education.

"There is a risk that young people, especially those from certain socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, will be more likely to be swayed by the opinions and experiences of their parents than they would have been prior to the health crisis," says Sáinz, who went on to add that, "They are not socializing with others, such as teachers or members of their peer groups in the same way as they were before quarantine."

In a study published in the International Journal of Social Psychology, the researcher with José Luis Martínez and Julio Meneses, also from the UOC, analysed the differences corresponding to gender in the response mechanisms of secondary school students with regard to scenarios related to academic sexism. The researchers explain that "girls are particularly likely to encounter this kind of situation, as they are more frequently faced with sexist attitudes about their abilities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects than boys."

According to the study, students whose parents had completed intermediate or higher level academic studies showed a greater predisposition to actively confronting sexist situations. "Interestingly, we observed that boys tend to use avoidance in response to scenarios of academic sexism, whereas girls are more likely to confront them or seek help from people in authority, such as teachers or family members, when it comes to this type of situation," the expert pointed out.

Boys are also affected by sexism

The study sampled 954 first-year baccalaureate students across ten schools in the metropolitan areas of Madrid and Barcelona. Sixty per cent of the students described their parents' level of academic achievement as intermediate, while 30% said that it was high and the final 10% reported a low level of education. In terms of origin, 80% of the student's parents were born in Spain.

Students were asked to complete a questionnaire in which they were presented with a series of different scenarios involving sexist attitudes towards their academic abilities and they had to state whether they would respond by: confronting the situation, asking for help or avoidance.

The students also had to indicate to what extent they agreed with five sexist statements about the academic abilities of boys and girls. In terms of their own personal experience, they also had to say whether anyone around them had ever made discouraging remarks about their abilities in STEM fields, such as mathematics, technology and physics (in the case of girls), or in languages and biology (in the case of boys).

In the words of Milagros Sáinz, "Our society tends to undervalue women's abilities with regard to highly prestigious and socially valued subjects and fields, such as science and technology. Boys, however, are used to their skills being valued above those of girls, which is also an example of sexism, albeit positive in this case, as it works in their favour."

According to the expert, this type of sexism does not mean that all boys have a greater affinity for those subject areas and they also feel frustrated and suffer its negative effects because many "do not comply with that ideal of masculinity".

The influence of parental academic achievement

In addition to gender being influential in determining the way young people tackle academic discrimination, the study also emphasizes an impact corresponding to levels of parental education.

As pointed out by Sáinz, "Gender explains the different ways of coping with academic sexism per se but the educational level of parents helps us understand the degree to which groups of students are predisposed to actively respond to such situations."

Girls whose parents had completed post-compulsory secondary education or university studies tended to respond to sexist scenarios by confronting the relevant person, whereas in boys with a similar family background, the response was often avoidance.

The study also reveals that, in some cases, the students themselves are not aware of having personally witnessed or experienced this kind of discrimination. "Girls are often exposed to academic sexism that questions their technological competence but they perceive this as being based on their own personal lack of ability and rule out pursuing it as a result," explained Sáinz, adding that, "They don't realize that this is a stereotypical belief applied to women based solely on the fact that they are women." The opposite is true for boys: their decisions and behaviours are also strongly conditioned by social and cultural expectations related to masculinity.

To prevent these kinds of imbalances, the expert stressed the importance of educating boys and girls on issues related to equality and how to deal with different academic or other types of sexist scenario; a programme that would also need to be extended to teachers and families.

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Gender bias kept alive by people who think it's dead

UNIVERSITY OF EXETER

Workplace gender bias is being kept alive by people who think it's no longer an issue, new research suggests.

In the study, managers were given identical descriptions of a worker - the only difference being either a male or female name.

Most managers rated the male worker as more competent, and recommended a higher salary - an average 8% pay gap.

The "key drivers" of this gap were managers who thought bias no longer existed in their profession, while those who believed bias still existed recommended roughly equal pay.

This means holding this belief constitutes a "critical risk factor", and may be vital to identifying who in a profession is perpetuating issues of gender bias.

Two thirds of the managers who thought gender bias no longer existed were men - but female managers with this opinion undervalued female staff just as much as male managers did.

The research -by the University of Exeter, Skidmore College and the British Veterinary Association (BVA) - focussed on the veterinary profession.

"Managers who thought gender bias is no longer an issue recommended annual pay that was £2,564 ($3,206) higher for men than for women," said lead author Dr Christopher Begeny, of the University of Exeter.

"This represents an 8% gap - which closely matches the real pay gap we see in veterinary medicine.

"When you break this down, it's like going to that male employee after an hour's work and saying, 'ya know what, here's an extra two bucks - not because you're particularly qualified or good at your job, but simply because you're a man'.

"And then the next hour, you go back and give that male employee another $2, and the next hour another $2.

"And on and on, continuing to do that every hour for the next 2,000 hours of work."

The research was made up of two studies.

The first asked vets about their experiences, and showed women were more likely than men to report experiencing discrimination, and less likely to experience recognition among colleagues for their value and worth.

In the second study, managers participated in a randomised double-blind experiment, with the stated purpose of "understanding their experiences managing others".

They were each given a fictitious performance review for a veterinary surgeon.

Everyone was given an identical performance review, except that the name of the vet differed: either Mark or Elizabeth.

Managers evaluated the vet's performance/competence and indicated the salary they would advise if this employee was in their own practice.

"The resulting evaluations were systematically biased among those who thought gender bias was no longer an issue," said co-author, Professor Michelle Ryan, of the University of Exeter.

"Unsurprisingly, these biased evaluations led to lower pay recommendations for female vets.

"We have worked closely with the BVA, and when presenting these findings to managers in the veterinary profession they are often shocked and concerned."

The studies also found:

- Vets were split over whether gender bias still existed in their profession (44% said yes, 42% said no; the rest were undecided).
- Gender bias among managers who thought bias was not an issue was not only evident among those who strongly believed this, but also those who only slightly held this view.
- Because of seeing the female as less competent, managers were also less likely to advise giving her more managerial responsibilities, and less likely to encourage her to pursue important opportunities for promotion. This shows how managers' biases not only affect women's current employment situation (current pay) but can affect the entire trajectory of their career, by discouraging them from pursuing promotions.
- All of these effects held true when controlling for managers' own gender, their years of managerial experience, how long they've been in the profession, etc.
- They also held true when controlling for managers' endorsement of more overtly sexist beliefs (i.e., endorsement of hostile sexism)

Women have outnumbered men in the veterinary profession for more than a decade, so biased perceptions of women lacking competence might be expected to have disappeared.

The bias shown in this study may be a harbinger of what's to come in other professions - those that are striving to increase women's representation, perhaps thinking, erroneously, that this will resolve any issues of gender bias.

"With many professions working to increase the number of women in their ranks, companies need to be careful not to equate gender diversity with gender equality - even with equal numbers you can have unequal treatment," said Dr Begeny.

"There is no 'silver bullet' to ensure gender equality has been achieved.

"Ongoing vigilance is required, including awareness training to guard against some forms of bias.

"It is also important to have 'guardrails' that help prevent discrimination, including by removing names from job applications, which can signal the applicant's gender, and ensuring standard questions in interviews."

Dr Begeny added: "Overall, this research highlights a rather insidious paradox that can arise when individuals misperceive the level of progress made on gender equality in their profession, such that those who mistakenly think gender bias is no longer an issue become the highest risk for perpetuating it."
VIDEO
https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/235663.php?from=468614

The research received funding from the BVA and the European Research Council.

The paper, published in the journal Science Advances, is entitled: "In some professions women have become well-represented, yet gender bias persists - perpetuated by those who think it is not happening."

Global economic stability could be difficult to recover in the wake of the COVID-19, finds study

UNIVERSITY OF SURREY

 

Analysis from the University of Surrey suggests that the economies of countries such as America, the United Kingdom and Germany should prepare for a long slow recovery with prolonged periods of instability.

Rates of growth across member states of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have been in decline since the 1970s, a phenomenon known as 'secular stagnation'. The average growth in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita fell from over 4 percent in the mid-1960s to little more than 1 percent in the pre-pandemic years. The International Monetary Fund expects global GDP to decline by 5 percent this year alone (2020) with a contraction of 3 percent likely even in the emerging and developing market economies.1

In a paper published by Nature, researchers from Surrey's Centre for Understanding Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP) broke new research ground by applying critical slowing down (CSD) theory, typically used in physics and ecology, to analyse long-term trends in the global GDP datasets from as far back as the 1820s.2,3

CSD theory suggests that when a constrained, dynamic system is close to breaking point, its ability to recovery decreases. Fluctuations around the system's equilibrium become deeper and more pronounced because its internal stabilisation forces have weakened.

The team from CUSP found that, even before the Covid-19 crisis, many of the world's leading economies were experiencing larger slower growth cycles (recession cycles), suggesting precisely such a period of critical slowing down in the economic system. The team's analysis suggests that the added weight of the Covid-19 crisis may result in one of the weakest and most unstable recoveries in recorded history for many economies.

Professor Tim Jackson, Director of CUSP at the University of Surrey, said: "The global economy is facing one of the largest downturns since the Great Depression in the 1930s. Placing the economy on hold to prevent unfathomable human tragedy from the Covid-19 pandemic was the right decision. Trying to force our way back to economic growth now would be the wrong one. A post-growth world is the new normal.4

"It's time to rethink and remake the economic models that have been failing us for decades. The challenge is enormous. But so is the prize. CSD theory suggests that a resilient, sustainable economic system which protects the health of people and planet is now within our grasp."

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Notes for Editors:

1. Publication in Nature Scientific Reports: Rye, C and T Jackson 2020. Using critical slowing down indicators to understand economic growth rate variability and secular stagnation. Nature Scientific Reports. Online at: http://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-66996-6

2. The Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP) is an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Research Centre hosted at the University of Surrey: https://cusp.ac.uk/slowing-down-indicators.

3. IMF Global Forecast for 2020: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2020/06/24/WEOUpdateJune2020

4. Further work on the Post-Growth Challenge: https://www.cusp.ac.uk/themes/aetw/tj_ee_post-growth-challenge/.