Identification of Omicron and Delta Cases in Mass General Brigham Hospital.

Credit: JAMA Network Open (2022).

DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.38354

In a recent study that represents the largest to date to examine the severity of the SARS-CoV-2 omicron BA.2 subvariant (the strain making a re-emergence this fall), a team led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) determined that the BA.2 subvariant is less severe than the previous delta variant and less severe to an even greater extent than the original omicron variant.

This pattern revealed in the JAMA Network Open study suggests that the severity of SARS-Cov-2 may be diminishing.

To provide an accurate assessment of the severity of SARS-Cov-2 variants above and beyond previous studies, the researchers used a method called entropy balancing to account for potential confounding factors such as prior infections, vaccinations, treatments, and comorbidities. The team applied this method to data leveraged from the Mass General Brigham's electronic health record system that's linked to a COVID-19 vaccine registry.

Of 102,315 confirmed COVID-19 cases from March 3, 2020 to June 20, 2022, there were 20,770 labeled as delta variants, 52,605 labeled as omicron B.1.1.529 variants (the original omicron variant), and 28,940 labeled as omicron BA.2 subvariants.

Mortality rates were 0.7% for delta, 0.4% for the original omicron variant, and 0.3% for omicron BA.2. After adjustments, the odds of death were more than 2-times higher for the delta and the original omicron variant compared with omicron BA.2. Patients with delta and original omicron variants were also more likely to need hospitalizations, invasive ventilation, and intensive care admissions.

"While the SARS-CoV-2 virus always has the potential to mutate to a more deadly form, when you look at the recent trajectory of delta, omicron BA.1, to omicron BA.2, the virus seems to be getting intrinsically less severe. Hopefully this trend will continue," says lead author Zachary Strasser, MD, MBA, an academic physician in the Laboratory of Computer Science at MGH and an Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

"We can continue to use our analytics system and method to assess many other questions such as which vaccinations have the most impact on preventing long COVID, or whether certain treatments reduce the likelihood of long COVID."

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The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. said Antoine Beaini of Milton bought a ticket for the Sept. 23 Lotto Max drawing at Milton Convenience Store on Main Street in Milton.

Beaini said discovering he had won the $734,203.60 top prize -- $1 million Canadian -- was especially shocking, since he had won the same amount from a Lotto Max drawing 13 months earlier.

"I couldn't believe it. I thought 'Again?'" Beaini told OLG officials of his latest win. "It was more shocking than the first win. I told my wife, and she was very happy!"

Beaini said his latest winnings will allow him to take care of his family.

"I want to make sure the next generation of my family is set up comfortably," he said.

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In August, the CEO of Ohio-based marketing company HyperSocial decided that the best way to publicly deal with the layoffs he authorized at his company would be to post a photo of himself crying. “This will be the most vulnerable thing I’ll ever share,” wrote Braden Wallake in a LinkedIn post, then proceeded to detail the emotional toll that letting go of two of his employees had on ... him, the CEO, who still had a job.

Within days, Wallake had become a meme, shorthand for the type of oversharing, virtue-signaling hustle bro who racks up thousands of followers on platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and, most especially, LinkedIn. LinkedIn has always had its own curious posting conventions; while ostensibly geared toward average white-collar professionals seeking job opportunities or a talent pool to hire from, this year the company has gone all-in on “creators.” That is, users hoping to build a personal brand by spouting entrepreneurial advice or nuggets of wisdom (LinkedInfluencers, if you will). When such tools are wielded with skill, those who succeed can nab book deals and speaking gigs.

When done sloppily, they may end up on, say, the very popular Twitter account called @StateOfLinkedIn, which is devoted to mocking the worst offenders. A scroll through its timeline reveals long-winded, self-congratulatory threads detailing anecdotes that probably/definitely didn’t happen, bizarrely poetic descriptions of a day in the life of an entrepreneur, and “subtle” flexes of luxury logos. Together they make up a new sort of business-speak — less jargony a la Office Space and more inspiration-porn a la Gary Vaynerchuk — that runs rampant on places like LinkedIn.

    pic.twitter.com/RLD1kJEoKg

    — The State of LinkedIn (@StateOfLinkedIn) September 11, 2022

For aspiring LinkedInfluencers, the field has never been more competitive. LinkedIn told Vox that there are currently 13 million users with “creator mode” turned on (a setting that expands the kinds of features users can deploy in order to grow their audience). Perhaps unsurprisingly, its focus on making its users famous has made it look and feel quite a lot like Facebook, as many have pointed out. There have never been more people trying to become LinkedInfluencers, and there have never been so many resources they can pay for to do it.

That’s why many of them are turning to professional ghostwriters to spearhead their content strategies. “There’s this perception that ghostwriting is like having someone else do your homework for you, but it’s a collaborative process, and it frees up so much of [the client’s] time,” says Amelia Forczak, founder of the ghostwriting firm Pithy Wordsmithery. In the past few years, her business has doubled.

Forczak specializes in ghostwriting how-to books for her clients, but social media is often a crucial first step. A typical client might be an executive in the corporate world who’s well-respected within their company or industry but not widely known outside of it, and often, those who’ve been in business and tech for decades have no idea how to self-promote. “They’ve had PR training where they’ve learned not to talk about anything personal,” she explains, “or anything that can be used against you.”

Now, the standard advice for LinkedInfluencers is to do the exact opposite: avoid business jargon and sound like a person. Nothing has made this clearer than the pandemic, which forced white-collar workers to move their lives, and more importantly, their reputations, online. “It’s cliché, but it’s true that people want to work with people, people buy from people, people want to see the human side of who you are before they decide to work with you,” says Tara Horstmeyer, an Atlanta-based ghostwriter who offers packages for 12 LinkedIn posts for anywhere between $2,000 and $3,000.

In the same time span, ghostwriting for entrepreneurs has turned into a desirable and potentially lucrative career. Earlier this month, Business Insider published an anonymous account of a tech startup founder who makes $200,000 on his side hustle writing tweets for venture capitalists. “Funders have to build parasocial relationships with founders,” he explains. “A founder might read a tweet from a VC and say: ‘Wow, he’s a cool guy. He’s in on the joke. I want him on my board.’”

LinkedIn ghostwriters I spoke to say that they receive daily inquiries on how to break into the field. Horstmeyer says she’s constantly referring incoming work to other writers she knows, and is considering offering an online course to help aspiring writers build up a client base. Mishka Rana, a 22-year-old college student in India, says that she’s turned down several job offers because her ghostwriting business generates enough income to support her. “I know a lot of people who have left their corporate jobs to start their own agencies,” she says, attributing this in part to the favorable exchange rates (several of her clients are US- or UK-based). Her content packages, which start at $800 for one month and go up to $9,000 for multi-month commitments, have afforded her the ability to buy a car and travel domestically and internationally.

Ghostwriters, though, do more than just write; most of the writers I spoke to also describe their work as content strategy and marketing. Emily Crookston of the Pocket PhD was a philosophy professor before pivoting to ghostwriting; she says her LinkedIn services, for which she charges $2,500 per month, including blogging, strategy, and posts, had become particularly popular during the pandemic. Just like any other social media platform, there’s a little bit of gaming the algorithm, too. Many LinkedIn super users join “pods,” or groups of people who agree to like, comment on, and share each other’s posts in an attempt to increase their engagement. “LinkedIn is really savvy about pods — it knows, and it will hurt your engagement,” she warns. But the biggest mistake people make is “posting and ghosting,” failing to engage with other people’s posts and “using it like a billboard,” she explains.

It’s ironic, considering that one of the major benefits of having a career in tech and finance is the freedom not to have to do this kind of laborious self-promotion. That’s more typically reserved for artists and other people in creative industries, where the field is saturated and competitive and relies heavily on relationships and clout. Like probably any writer, I’ve briefly fantasized about what my life might look like if I worked in, say, finance, or some other high-paying but entirely anonymous job where I felt zero attachment to the numbers I entered into the screen every day and forgot about them on my way out the door. The idea that such a job may also require you to preen and maintain your digital profiles for maximum consumption makes the whole career seem far less enviable — but I suppose that’s why people hire ghostwriters.

Wallake, it seems, has not arrived at this same conclusion. A week ago, the crying CEO ended up on @StateOfLinkedIn again. “My grandma passed away today,” he began his post. The moral of his story was that perhaps hustle culture was making all of us miss out on the important things. A nice sentiment, of course — but not without ending with a plug for his own company.

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When researchers at Boston University (BU) in Massachusetts inserted a gene from the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 into a strain of the virus from the beginning of the pandemic, they were trying to understand why Omicron causes mild disease.

But the experiments, described in a 14 October preprint, have ignited a red-hot controversy over what constitutes truly risky SARS-CoV-2 research—especially now that much of the world’s population has some immune protection from the virus and COVID-19 treatments are available.

At issue is whether—and when—researchers modifying SARS-CoV-2 or other deadly pathogens need to keep regulators and funding agencies such as the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) informed about their work, even if the agencies didn’t fund the experiments in question.

Studies that make pathogens more transmissible or virulent are sometimes called ‘gain of function’ research.

The controversy sparked by the BU study highlights “the lack of clarity that people have on exactly what sorts of experiments have benefits that outweigh risks, and who decides how it’s all reviewed”, says Jesse Bloom, an evolutionary virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, Washington.

“Some guidance is really needed,” says Pei-Yong Shi, a virologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, whose team is seeking permission from the NIH to study whether SARS-CoV-2 can develop resistance to antiviral drugs the group is developing.

Spike study

The brouhaha over the BU research started after a team led by Mohsan Saeed, a virologist at BU’s School of Medicine, posted a preprint on bioRxiv showing that the properties of Omicron’s spike protein—the part of the virus that allows it to infect human cells—might not explain the clinical mildness of the COVID-19 cases it causes. Saeed’s team had created a new strain of SARS-CoV-2 by putting the spike protein from the Omicron BA.1 lineage into the backbone of a viral strain isolated in the early days of the pandemic.

Unlike BA.1, which usually causes mild, non-fatal disease, this strain caused severe disease in mice engineered to be susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Eight of the ten mice exposed to the strain died or had to be killed as a result of weight loss and other consequences of the infection. However, that wasn’t quite as lethal as the unaltered ancestral SARS-CoV-2 strain, which killed all six mice that were infected in the study.

This research is valuable because it suggests that the factors that make certain strains of SARS-CoV-2 deadly might lie outside the spike protein, says David Ho, a virologist at Columbia University in New York City. “But it raises concerns that we have an Omicron virus that’s evasive to many antibodies and yet is more pathogenic than the current version of Omicron.”

The work had been approved by a BU biosafety committee, as well as a Boston city public-health board, and was conducted in a biocontainment facility deemed safe for work with SARS-CoV-2. But it is unclear whether the BU study has run afoul of any rules governing risky pathogen research. Under current guidelines, any research funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—of which the NIH is part—that can be “reasonably anticipated” to make a potential pandemic pathogen (PPP) more virulent or transmissible should undergo extra review.

Saeed’s team acknowledged grants from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and other branches of the NIH in the preprint. But in a statement this week, BU said that the experiments “were carried out with funds from Boston University”, which it said means that they are exempt from the additional review. NIAID’s support was acknowledged “because it was used to help develop the tools and platforms that were used in this research; they did not fund this research directly”, said the university.

On the spectrum of coronavirus research, the experiments are relatively low-risk, Bloom says. The hybrid virus is derived from two strains that have been out-competed by successive variants, so it would be unlikely to spread widely if it ever escaped. Shi points out that the virus the researchers created is less pathogenic than the ancestral strain, which laboratories around the world continue to work with.

“This type of work needs to be reviewed carefully, and it needs to undergo risk–benefit assessments. But I would not put this in sort of the category of the most alarming types of coronavirus studies,” says Bloom. “It seems exceedingly unlikely that this virus would have pandemic potential.”

In a statement, the NIH said that it did not fund the specific experiments reported in the preprint, and it is looking into whether the research still fell under its oversight.

Communication key

Shi says that in his experience, regular communication between researchers, funders and local biosafety committees can prevent problems and misunderstandings of the kind surrounding the BU study. After such discussions, his team created similar strains to study variants’ ability to evade vaccines that are made with a weakened form of SARS-CoV-2.

When Luis Martinez-Sobrido and Chengjin Ye, virologists at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio, wanted to conduct experiments nearly identical to those described by Saeed’s team, they contacted NIAID, which was supporting the researchers through an existing grant.

NIAID and the researchers’ institutional biosafety committee both gave the green light to the work—with the proviso that if any of the changes significantly enhanced the pathogenicity of the strain in animals or its capacity to replicate in cells, the researchers would halt the work and quickly inform the funder. Martinez says his obligations are clear.

Ho’s lab, which also receives NIH funding, has been one of the world leaders in studying SARS-CoV-2 during the pandemic. Ho says it wasn’t always clear what research was subject to review and what wasn’t, and he found himself frequently checking in with officials. When his team reported privately funded work showing that SARS-CoV-2 can evolve resistance to a component of the antiviral treatment Paxlovid, NIAID officials got in touch to confirm that the experiments didn’t fall under its oversight.

In another instance, Ho’s team was growing the virus in the presence of monoclonal antibody drugs, to study its ability to evolve resistance. The studies identified a host of antibody-dodging mutations that would later emerge in Omicron offshoots, including a sublineage called BQ.1 that is likely to drive an infection wave later this year.

But Ho says he scaled back the research and decided not to publish the findings, because of his concerns about how officials at NIAID would perceive the work if it were made public. The agency didn’t fund those experiments, but supported related work characterizing SARS-CoV-2 variants. “There’s a lot of valuable information that could have been shared, but because of these concerns, that was held back,” Ho says.

Better guidance

The discussion around the BU preprint comes amid a years-long effort to revise the US government’s funding guidelines for research involving enhanced PPPs (ePPPs). In February, the NIH asked the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) to revisit its current policy, which was set in 2017. The NSABB released draft recommendations in September, and plans to release its final report late this year or early next.

One recommendation calls for a significant expansion in the pathogens that could fall under the policy.

Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, says that the draft recommendations provide more clarity, but do not address the fundamental concerns that the BU study raises. The final policy should cover any ePPP research done at any US institution—not just research funded by HHS—and should allow for the additional review step to occur if potential for an ePPP to be created becomes apparent, even after the project is funded, he says.

Researchers hope that the update will provide clearer direction on which SARS-CoV-2 research needs NIH approval, and how the agency conducts its extra review. As Shi and his team develop COVID-19 antivirals, he would like to study how readily the virus can evolve mutations to evade drugs, and whether mutations linked to existing drugs can foil new ones. But he says that he has not yet received clear guidance from the NIH on what experiments he can and cannot do.

In some cases, discussions seem to be driven by publicity surrounding experiments such as the BU study, instead of by considerations of the potential risks and benefits of such work, says Bloom. The latest controversy highlights the disconnect between how scientists and the public perceive the risk of research into certain pathogens, he adds. “It’s important for scientists to recognize it’s the general public that’s funding all this research. And there are good reasons that people want more transparency and understanding.”

This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on October 21 2022.

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The vaccine, a mist that is sucked in through the mouth, is being offered for free as a booster dose for previously vaccinated individuals, according to an announcement posted on an official city social media account.

Needle-free vaccines may persuade people who don't like getting a shot to get vaccinated, as well as help expand vaccination in poor countries because they are easier to administer.

China doesn't have vaccine mandates but wants more people to get booster shots before it relaxes strict pandemic restrictions that are holding back the economy and increasingly out of synch with the rest of the world.

A video posted by an online Chinese state media outlet showed people at a community health center sticking the short nozzle of a translucent white cup into their mouths. Accompanying text said that after slowly inhaling, one individual held his breath for five seconds, with the entire procedure completed in 20 seconds.

"It was like drinking a cup of milk tea," one Shanghai resident said in the video. "When I breathed it in, it tasted a bit sweet."

A vaccine taken in the mouth could also fend off the virus before it reaches the rest of the respiratory system, though that would depend in part on the size of the droplets, one expert said.

A resident wearing a face mask watches a man get his routine COVID-19 throat swab test at a coronavirus testing site in Beijing, Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2022.

Credit: AP Photo/Andy Wong

Larger droplets would train defenses in parts of the mouth and throat, while smaller ones would travel further into the body, said Dr. Vineeta Bal, an immunologist in India.

Chinese regulators approved the vaccine for use as a booster in September. It was developed by Chinese biopharmaceutical company Cansino Biologics Inc. as an aerosol version of the same company's one-shot adenovirus vaccine, which uses a relatively harmless cold virus.

Cansino has said the inhaled vaccine has completed clinical trials in China, Hungary, Pakistan, Malaysia, Argentina and Mexico.

Regulators in India have approved a nasal vaccine, another needle-free approach, but it has yet to be rolled out. The vaccine, developed in the U.S. and licensed to Indian vaccine maker Bharat Biotech, is squirted in the nose.

About a dozen nasal vaccines are being tested globally, according to the World Health Organization.

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You might even have heard of prebiotics, foods rich in complex carbohydrates (dietary fiber) that help foster good bacteria in the large intestine. Popular prebiotic foods include oats, nuts and legumes.

But what about postbiotics? What are they and how do they affect our gut health?

What is a postbiotic?

Postbiotics are essentially the by-products of our gut microbiota. In other words, your body produces postbiotics after digesting prebiotic and probiotic foods.

Examples of postbiotics include the short-chain fatty acids butyric acid (or butyrate), acetic acid (or acetate) and propionic acid (or propionate).

These molecules are produced when good probiotic bacteria break down dietary fiber from foods such as fruits and vegetables, grains and legumes.

These postbiotic molecules are important for your gut microbiota. Healthy probiotic bacteria thrive on these short-chain fatty acids in our gut.

And some postbiotics can help suppress "bad" bacteria. For example, probiotic bacteria (such as Lactococcus lactis) produce special chemicals called bacteriocins which can prevent the colonization of pathogens like E. coli in the gut. This process is known as "colonization resistance."

Microbial fermentation is where microbes in the gut break down complex carbohydrates. Microbial fermentation of plant-based diets (which are rich in polyphenols), in particular, leads to the production of the postbiotic phenylacetic acid. This postbiotic can reduce the growth of harmful pathogens in the body.

Not all postbiotics are good

Not all postbiotics are heroes, though.

One type of postbiotic is bile acids, which are produced when we eat too many high-fat foods.

Bile acids have been linked to inflammation and colon cancer.

Staying on a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet for the long term often means people don't eat enough fiber, which is linked to a higher risk of colon cancer.

This may be due to the production of hazardous postbiotics like bile acids.

What's the link between postbiotics and cancer?

Our recent review (led by my colleague Kayla Jaye at Western Sydney University) found short-chain fatty acids—particularly butyrate—have shown promising results against breast and colorectal cancer cells in previous laboratory studies.

One clinical study showed colorectal cancer patients produced significantly lower levels of short-chain fatty acids in their gut than healthy participants.

Another study found the numbers of bacteria that produce short-chain fatty acids were low in premenopausal breast cancer patients.

Some cellular and animal studies have also reported that the postbiotic butyrate can help chemotherapy work better against breast cancer and regulate the immune system.

As reported in epidemiological studies, a fiber-rich diet, particularly whole grains, can lower the risk of colorectal cancer. This is mainly because fiber-rich diets lead to the production of short-chain fatty acids in the colon.

OK great, so what do I eat to get more postbiotics in my gut?

Dietary fiber is the key.

Women and men should consume at least 25 and 30 grams of fiber, respectively, every day. But few Australians meet this recommendation.

The best way to improve the levels of good postbiotics is to consume more vegetables, fruits, legumes, wholegrain bread, nuts and seeds.

Jerusalem artichokes, garlic, onion, leek and asparagus are fantastic prebiotic vegetables.

A diet rich in fruits and vegetables increases the levels of postbiotics like short-chain fatty acids in the gut. It also helps reduce bile acids.

Gut health is all about diversity, which means eating a variety of fruits, vegetables, legumes and whole grains to support healthy gut microbiota.

You can also include fermented foods like sauerkraut and kimchi in your diet. These fermented foods have both prebiotic fiber and live probiotic bacteria, which can help produce healthy postbiotics in the gut.

Of course, further research is needed. But to ensure good gut health, you should include plenty of fruits, vegetables and legumes in your diet.

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With shots and infections, the most common COVID symptoms have shifted

“Metabolism” describes the body’s chemical changes that create the necessary ingredients for growth and overall health. Metabolites are the substances made and used during these metabolic processes—or, as a new discovery out of Scripps Research and its drug development arm, Calibr, indicates, they could also be potent molecules for treating severe diseases.

Researchers used cutting-edge drug discovery technologies to uncover a metabolite that converts white fat cells (“bad” fat) to brown fat (“good” fat) cells. This revelation offers a potential way of addressing obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other metabolic conditions. Moreover, it speaks to the promise of using this creative drug discovery method to identify countless other potential therapeutics. The study was recently published in the journal Metabolites.

Zafirlukast induces the production of brown adipocyte tissue. For preadipocytes treated with zafirlukast (right image), brown adipocytes (shown in red) were much more prevalent than preadipocytes grown with the DMSO control (left image). Credit: Scripps Research and Calibr

 

“The reason many types of molecules don’t go to market is because of toxicity,” says co-senior author Gary Siuzdak, PhD. “With our technology, we can pull out endogenous metabolites—meaning the ones that the body makes on its own—that can have the same impact as a drug with less side effects. The potential of this approach is even evidenced by the FDA’s recent approval of Relyvrio, the combination of two endogenous metabolites for the treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).”

Siuzdak is the senior director of the Scripps Center for Metabolomics and professor of Chemistry, Molecular and Computational Biology at Scripps Research. 

Metabolic diseases are often caused by an imbalance in energy homeostasis—in other words, when the body takes in more energy than it expends. This is why certain therapeutic approaches have centered around converting white fat cells (known as adipocytes) into brown fat cells. White adipocytes store excess energy and can eventually result in metabolic diseases like obesity, while brown adipocytes dissolve this stored energy into heat—ultimately increasing the body’s energy expenditure and helping bring it back into balance.    

DIAM uses technologies such as liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry to pool through thousands of molecules and identify specific metabolites. In this case, the researchers first reduced 30,000 metabolic features to just 17 metabolites, and then found myristoylglycine—an active endogenous metabolite that was able to convert white fat cells to brown fat cells, similar to the drug zafirlukast. Credit: Scripps Research and Calibr

 

To uncover a therapy that could stimulate the production of brown adipocytes, the researchers searched through Calibr’s ReFRAME drug-repurposing collection—a library of 14,000 known drug compounds that have been approved by the FDA for other diseases or have been extensively tested for human safety. Using high-throughput screening—an automated drug discovery method for searching through large pools of information—the scientists scanned ReFRAME for a drug with these specific capabilities.  

This is how they uncovered zafirlukast, an FDA-approved drug used for treating asthma. Through a set of cell culture experiments, they found zafirlukast could turn adipocyte precursor cells (known as preadipocytes) into predominantly brown adipocytes, as well as convert white adipocytes into brown adipocytes.

While an encouraging find, zafirlukast is toxic when administered at higher doses, and it wasn’t entirely clear how zafirlukast was converting the fat cells. This is when the researchers partnered with Siuzdak and his team of metabolite experts.

“We needed to use additional tools to break down the chemicals in zafirlukast’s mechanism,” says Kristen Johnson, PhD, co-senior author of the paper and a director in Translational Drug Discovery Research at Calibr. “Framed another way, could we find a metabolite that was providing the same functional effect that zafirlukast was, but without the side effects?”

Siuzdak and his team designed a novel set of experiments, known as drug-initiated activity metabolomics (DIAM) screening, to help answer Johnson’s question. DIAM uses technologies such as liquid chromatography (a tool that separates components in a mixture) and mass spectrometry (an analytical technique that separates particles by weight and charge) to pool through thousands of molecules and identify specific metabolites. In this case, the researchers were searching through adipose tissue for metabolites that could lead to brown adipocyte cell production.

After reducing 30,000 metabolic features to just 17 metabolites, they found myristoylglycine—an endogenous metabolite that prompted the creation of brown adipocytes, without harming the cell. Of the thousands of metabolic features measured in the analysis, only myristoylglycine had this special characteristic, even among nearly structurally identical metabolites.

“Identifying myristoylglycine among the thousands of other molecules speaks to the power of Siuzdak’s approach and these technologies,” adds Johnson. “Our findings illustrate what happens when an analytical chemistry team and a drug discovery group closely collaborate with each other.”

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Insecticides containing flupyradifurone and sulfoxaflor, chemicals considered harmless to bees and bumblebees when approved, can have devastating effects on honey bee health. The substances damage the insects’ intestinal flora, especially when used in conjunction with a common fungicide. This makes them more susceptible to disease and shortens their life span. This was recently proven in a scientific study that was recently published in Science of the Total Environment. It was conducted at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ). The two insecticides were considered to be harmless to bees and bumblebees when approved, but their use has since been severely restricted.

For the study, honey bees that were free from environmental influences were first bred in the laboratory. “We wanted to control every aspect of the bees’ lives — from their diet to their exposure to pathogens or pesticides,” says Dr. Yahya Al Naggar, the biologist who led the project at MLU and who now works at Tanta University in Egypt. All bees were given the same food, sugar syrup, for the first few days. They were then divided into several groups and various pesticides were added to their food.

One group was given flupyradifurone, while another was given sulfoxaflor. Both substances are approved insecticides in Germany, although their use is now restricted to greenhouses.

As pesticides are often used as a mixture, the scientists also took this into account in their laboratory experiment by enriching the food administered to two other groups not only with the insecticides mentioned, but also with azoxystrobin. This chemical has been used to protect plants from harmful fungi for many decades. The concentration of the substances was well below the legal requirements in each case. “Our approach was based on the realistic concentrations that might be found in pollen and nectar from plants that have been treated with the pesticides,” says Al Naggar. A control group continued to receive the normal sugar syrup without additives.

Bees are often exposed to multiple pesticides in nature. Credit: Uni Halle / Markus Scholz

 

Over a period of ten days, the team observed whether the substances had any effects on the bees and, if so, what. They found that the pesticides are anything but harmless: Around half of all bees whose diet had been supplemented with flupyradifurone died during the study — and even more when combined with azoxystrobin. While sulfoxaflor produced similar effects, more insects survived the diet.

The scientists also analyzed the bees’ intestinal flora, i.e. the bacteria and fungi living in their digestive tract. “The fungicide azoxystrobin led to a significant reduction in naturally occurring fungi. That was to be expected, as fungicides are used to control fungi,” says Dr. Tesfaye Wubet from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), who is also a member of the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig.

Over the course of the ten-day study, however, the team was able to show that the mixture of fungi and bacteria detected in the insects differed greatly from the control group depending on the substances used. According to the researchers, the bacterium Serratia marcescens was able to spread alarmingly well in the digestive tract of the treated insects. “These bacteria are pathogenic and harmful to bees’ health. They can make it harder for the insects to fight off infection, leading to premature death,” explains Al Naggar.

As the study was conducted in a laboratory in Halle to exclude the number of external influences, it is unclear whether the same results can be found in nature. “The effects of the pesticides could well be even more dramatic — or the bees might be able to fully or at least partially compensate for the negative effects,” concludes Wubet. With this in mind, the team calls for the potential effects of new pesticides on beneficial insects to be researched more rigorously before they are approved and for their effects on aspects such as intestinal flora to be included as standard in the risk assessment.

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This forms part of the process of modeling the hypersonic motion of gases around the falling spacecraft through ‘Computational Fluid Dynamics’.

This study of the ATV’s demise took place as part of the MIDGARD (MultI-Disciplinary modellinG of the Aerothemodynamically-induced fragmentation of Re-entering boDies) activity of the European Space Agency’s Open Space Innovation Platform with the University of Strathclyde’s Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering. This ongoing activity aims at reducing the uncertainty of the simulation of destructive atmospheric entry by combining highly accurate but expensive and low-fidelity and fast simulation methods.

A total of five ATVs resupplied the International Space Station between 2008 and 2015, all of them disposed of by atmospheric reentry. Europe’s largest spacecraft leaves a longer-term legacy as the basis for the European Service Module of the NASA-ESA Orion spacecraft, designed to return astronauts to the Moon, and planned to fly on NASA’s first Artemis mission later this year.

Destructive atmospheric reentry is a traditional way of disposing of spacecraft and satellites at the end of their working lives, but ESA and international regulations state that the risk of injury to people or property on the ground must be lower than one in 10,000.

Credit: University of Strathclyde

 

Fábio Morgado of the University of Strathclyde, working on MIDGARD, states: “Addressing the risk of the atmospheric reentry of space debris is progressively becoming more and more pressing due to the increase in the number of orbiting objects and the consequent higher frequency of reentry. The prediction of the reentry processes is impacted by the progressive fragmentation and thermal erosion of the re-entering objects as a result of the severe aerothermal loads.”

Prof. Marco Fossati, Principal Investigator of MIDGARD and Fabio’s supervisor, adds: “Improved modeling and simulation of the aerothermodynamically-induced fragmentation is paramount to design systems for safe demise and to assess the associated ground impact risk.”

An event in Bordeaux, France, at the end of this month will bring together experts in the ‘aerothermodynamics’ of reentry as well as ‘design for demise’ – the practice of designing space hardware to make it more likely to fully burn up in the atmosphere, rather than having any element survive down to the ground.

In the past, heavy elements such as propellant tanks or instrument optic benches have reached the ground intact, but redesigning systems to use lighter parts or making them more likely to break apart earlier in reentry can mitigate against this.

This latest Aero Thermo Dynamics & Design for Demise workshop, ATD3, is being organized by ESA with French space agency CNES with the help of the HYFAR-ARA Hypersonic Flight and Atmospheric Re-entry Association.

The ATD3 workshop will take place on October 27-28.

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Researchers found that participants who ate walnuts early in life showed a greater likelihood of being more physically active, having a higher quality diet, and experiencing a better heart disease risk profile as they aged into middle adulthood after reviewing 20 years of diet history and 30 years of physical and clinical measurements.

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health funded the long-term and ongoing Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults Study (CARDIA), which intended to look at how risk factors for heart disease develop over time.

This study is one of the longest to demonstrate that including a few heart-healthy walnuts into the diet on a regular basis may serve as a springboard for the eventual adoption of other healthy lifestyle practices.

The results also support the idea that walnut consumption throughout adolescence and middle adulthood may reduce a number of heart disease risk factors.

Researchers from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health note in a recent study published in the journal Nutrition, Metabolism & Cardiovascular Diseases that a possible explanation for the findings could be related to the special combination of nutrients found in walnuts and their impact on health outcomes.

Walnuts are the only tree nut that is an excellent source of the plant-based omega-3 alpha-linolenic acid (2.5 grams/oz.), which research shows may play a role in heart health, brain health, and healthy aging. Additionally, just one serving of walnuts (1 oz.), or about a handful, contains a variety of other important nutrients to support overall health including 4 grams of protein, 2 grams of fiber, and a good source of magnesium (45 milligrams). Walnuts also offer a variety of antioxidants, including polyphenols.

According to Professor of Epidemiology and Community Health at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health and Lead Researcher on CARDIA, Lyn M. Steffen, Ph.D., MPH, RD, “Walnut eaters seem to have a unique body phenotype that carries with it other positive impacts on health like better diet quality, especially when they start eating walnuts from young into middle adulthood – as risk of chronic diseases like heart disease, obesity, and diabetes elevates.”

Study Overview

In this observational, longitudinal study, partially supported by the California Walnut Commission, diet and health information was collected and analyzed from 3,023 otherwise healthy black and white men and women aged 18-30 at one of four field centers located in Birmingham, AL, Chicago, IL, Minneapolis, MN, and Oakland, CA, when the CARDIA study began in 1985-86. Self-reported diet history was taken at three times throughout the study: baseline, year seven, and year 20. Physical and clinical measurements were taken at multiple exams spanning 30 years.

Diet history was categorized into “walnut consumers,” “other nut consumers,” or “no nut consumers,” and assessed for relationships among heart disease risk factors, including dietary intake, smoking, body composition, blood pressure, plasma lipids (e.g., triglycerides), fasting blood glucose, and insulin concentrations in 352 walnut consumers, 2,494 other nut consumers, and 177 no nut consumers.

The average intake of walnuts during the study was about ¾ oz./day, and the intake of nuts among other nut consumers was about 1 ½ oz./day.

“There was a good degree of diversity in terms of the research field locations geographically speaking and the population studied,” said Steffen. “Following these black and white women and men for 30 years provides an unparalleled window of study into how lifestyle decisions made in free-living environments in young adulthood can affect health in middle age,” adds Steffen.

Study Results At A Glance

Overall, the researchers reported the following results:

Physical and Clinical Indicators of Heart Disease Risk After 30 Years:

• Walnut consumers had higher self-reported physical activity scores than other nut and no-nut consumers.
• Compared to other nut consumers, eating walnuts was linked with a better heart disease risk profile:
  • Lower body mass index
  • Lower waist circumference
  • Lower blood pressure
  • Lower blood triglyceride levels
• Eating walnuts was associated with less weight gain over the study period, and fewer participants who ate walnuts were classified as people with obesity compared to other nut and no-nut consumers.
• Compared to no-nut consumers, walnut consumers had significantly lower fasting blood glucose concentrations while other nut consumers had higher LDL cholesterol.

Markers of Diet Quality After 20 Years:

Including walnuts in the diet during young adulthood was favorably linked with a higher total diet quality score (Healthy Eating Index 2015) when compared to other and no-nut consumers.

Compared to other nut or no-nut consumers, people who ate walnuts had the following self-reported daily dietary intakes, including a significant relationship with higher intakes of several under-consumed nutrients and food groups of public health importance as outlined in the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans:

Higher (Unit)

• Polyunsaturated fat intake (%kcal)
• Gamma-linolenic acid (GLA) + Alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) intake (grams)
• Dietary fiber intake* (grams)
• Vitamin B6 intake (milligrams)
• Magnesium intake (milligrams)
• Vitamin E intake (milligrams)
• Potassium intake* (milligrams)
• Whole grains* (servings per day)
• Fruit* (servings per day)
• Vegetables* (servings per day)
• Legumes* (servings per day)
• Fish (servings per day)
• Protein sources (servings per day)

Lower (Unit)

• Saturated fat intake (% kcal)
• Added sugar intake (% kcal)
• Refined grain products (servings per day)
• Red meat (servings per day)
• Processed red meat (servings per day)

“Nut consumers showed an advantage in relation to diet quality, but walnut consumers appear to have a better heart disease risk factor profile than the other groups, even after accounting for overall diet quality,” said Steffen. “The surprising, healthy shifts in the overall dietary pattern of walnut consumers suggests walnuts may act as a bridge or ‘carrier food’ for helping people form healthy nutrition and lifestyle habits throughout life.”

While these results are positive and confirm earlier work from the CARDIA study on the health benefits of walnut intake, randomized controlled clinical trials should be done in other populations and settings to confirm the observations in the current study. Observational studies cannot support cause-and-effect conclusions.

Additionally, some of the outcomes for heart disease risk factors relating to cholesterol and lipids in the current study are inconsistent with previous randomized controlled trials. This could be related to differences in study design, including the duration of the intervention (e.g., several months to 30 years) or the amount of nut intake. Last, the researchers did not isolate other specific nuts in their database, so findings cannot indicate no benefit of other nuts.

This study is one of the longest to suggest that adding about a handful of walnuts to the diet every day and early on in life could be linked with benefits to overall diet quality as a heart-healthy “carrier food” that fits into any eating occasion. 

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Consuming low-calorie sweeteners also had an impact on the body’s metabolic signaling, which may result in diabetes and other metabolism-related diseases.

Using laboratory models, scientists discovered that ingesting FDA-approved levels of saccharin, ACE-K, and stevia early in life may result in many changes to the body, including brain areas linked to memory and reward-motivated behavior.

Early-life high-sugar diets have been linked to impaired brain function, but what about low-calorie sugar substitutes? According to recent research, they could have a negative impact on the developing gut and brain.

The News

Researchers from the University of Southern California Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences report that adolescents who consumed the low-calorie sweeteners saccharin, ACE-K, and stevia showed long-term memory impairments in a study that was recently published in the journal JCI Insight.

• The results are consistent with other studies that demonstrated sustained memory impairment in adolescent rats who consume sugar.
• Consuming low-calorie sweeteners also affected metabolic signaling in the body, which can lead to diabetes and other metabolism-related diseases.
• Rats that ate low-calorie sweeteners as adolescents were less inclined to work for sugar as adults, but they ate more sugar if it was readily accessible, which is another factor that may influence the chance of developing metabolic disease.

Diet soft drinks often use low-calorie sugar substitutes such as stevia and acesulfame potassium, or Ace-K, which might have long-term effects on memory, behavior and metabolic functions.

Why It Matters

Diet soft drinks often use low-calorie sugar substitutes such as stevia and acesulfame potassium, or Ace-K, which might have long-term effects on memory, behavior and metabolic functions.
 

There is a broad range of advice on what to eat and when to consume it. According to the researchers, information from studies like these may aid consumers and medical professionals in making better decisions at all stages of life.

“While our findings do not necessarily indicate that someone should not consume low-calorie sweeteners in general, they do highlight that habitual low-calorie sweetener consumption during early life may have unintended, long-lasting impacts,” said Scott Kanoski, associate professor of biological sciences at USC Dornsife.

What It Means for Humans

While most studies of low-calorie sweeteners focus on one substance and use amounts far exceeding the norm, the researchers made sure the study was in line with real-life conditions for people.

• Sweeteners tested include saccharin, acesulfame potassium (ACE-K) and stevia — which are commonly used in sweetened foods.
• The amount of sweetener consumed fell within FDA-approved guidelines for humans.

In Their Words

“Research using rodent models and low-calorie sweeteners has typically involved consumption levels that far exceed the FDA ‘acceptable daily intake’ (ADI) levels and used only a single sweetener. To design our research to be more applicable to humans, we kept consumption levels within the ADI and used multiple low-calorie sweeteners to determine if effects were specific to a given sweetener or general across sweeteners.” — Lindsey Schier, Gabilan Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences at USC Dornsife

The Experiment

To determine the effect of low-calorie sweetener consumption on memory, the researchers used methods that test object recognition and spatial recognition.

Rats were provided water sweetened with either stevia, ACE-K or saccharin or plain water, along with their normal food.

After a month, the rats’ memory was tested using two different methods — one tests if they remember an object they’ve seen before and the other is a maze.

In the end, rats consuming sweetener were less likely to remember an object or the path through the maze than those that drank only plain water.

What Else?

The scientists also found other effects among the rats after they consumed sweeteners.

• They had fewer receptors on their tongues that detect sweet taste.
• The biological mechanism in their intestines that transports glucose into the blood was altered.
• Their brains had changed, specifically in regions associated with memory control and reward-motivated behavior.

What’s Next?

Kanoski and Schier say the findings reveal more questions worth exploring, including:

• How do sweetener substitutes cause a reduction in sweet taste receptors and how does that affect later dietary behavior?
• What does the change in the nutrient transport in the gut mean for health?
• What biological mechanisms link sweetener consumption with the changes to the brain?

The researchers say they intend to explore ways to reverse the long-lasting effects of adolescent low-calorie sweetener consumption and to study how it influences food choices and preferences later in life.

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The ISS has had to maneuver yet again from Russian satellite debris

The pill, AOH1996, was named after young cancer victim Anna Olivia Healey, who was born in 1996. For 20 years now, Linda Malkas, Ph.D., professor in City of Hope’s Department of Molecular Diagnostics & Experimental Therapeutics, has dedicated her research and development efforts to AOH1996.

In trials, the pill has been effective at targeting the proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), which has a crucial role in cell repair and replications.

Using mutated cells as a target in this way has not only been shown to halt growth of cancerous human cells and inhibit spread, but its mechanism of action doesn’t confer any toxic effects to normal, healthy cells.

“Imagine cancer as the water filling up a bathtub. Left unchecked, the tumors or water will eventually overflow and damage other parts of your home. The treatment my team at City of Hope created is akin to a watchful homeowner who shuts the water off — stopping the spread of tumors to other parts of the metaphorical house — and then drains the tub, eliminating the cancer,” says Malkas, co-investigator in the trial and the M.T. & B.A. Ahmadinia Professor in Molecular Oncology, in a media release.

What types of cancer can the pill treat?

The first patient to receive the drug is part of City of Hope’s Phase 1 Clinical trial. The goal of this trial is to accurately determine the highest tolerable dose of the pill and to study the efficacy in preliminary stages. Patients eligible for participation are adults with solid tumors who haven’t responded well to standard cancer treatments. The research team instructs patients to take the pill twice per day.

“Since many patients’ cancers become resistant to our standard therapies, we need new therapeutics with new mechanisms of action — for example, non-cross resistant. AOH1996 is just that kind of new therapy,” explains Daniel Von Hoff, M.D., of the Molecular Medicine Division at the Translational Genomics Research Institute, part of City of Hope, and an advisor on the study.

So far, the drug has been promising against breast, prostate, ovarian, skin, and lung cancers. Malkas hopes to see the day when AOH1996 becomes an FDA-approved inhibitor drug that can be combined with other therapies like chemotherapy to boost their benefits while not increasing risk of side-effects.

Additionally, she mentions that there are other targeted therapies out there that have helped several cancer patients through hindering cell growth and metastasis. This only reinforces her confidence that AOH1996 can do the same. For now, Malkas hopes to have the Phase 1 trial last over the next two years and carefully evaluate new findings over this time.

The current findings of the clinical trial are available here.

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Teena Bharti of the Indian Institute of Management Bodh Gaya in Uruvela, Bihar, India, has considered an important aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic on our future managers and business leaders. The pandemic has had not only an incredibly wide-ranging impact on health across the globe but also on commerce and the economy. Bharti surveyed almost 500 adult management students to explore how mindfulness among them influenced their personal well-being and how gender affected the link between these two traits.

Put simply, the research suggests that mindfulness did indeed lead to greater well-being among the students. Moreover, female students were found to be more mindful and so generally showed greater well-being during these rather troubled times. The findings suggest that offering students guidance in how to be more mindful, might help them cope better with the stresses and strains felt while studying during a crisis. Perhaps the same guidance might even be beneficial to students in other disciplines and indeed the wider public.

Mindfulness is generally thought of as allowing oneself to have one-focus attention. It essentially involves allowing oneself not to be distracted from one's present activity and place by thoughts about other circumstances, the past, nor the future while immersed in that activity or place. It is a key component of many philosophies and is often considered a life skill that can improve one's mental well-being or at the very least, if not improve, then help to reduce the risk of problems arising in stressful circumstances.

Bharti concludes that "moment-to-moment attention [mindfulness] induces subjective well-being and is very relevant in coping with the contingent times (COVID pandemic in this case), loneliness, and other psychological issues."

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In a nationally representative cross-sectional study of about 3,500 older adults, 10% (95% CI 9-11) were classified as having dementia and 22% (95% CI 20-24) as having mild cognitive impairment, according to Jennifer Manly, PhD, of Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City, and colleagues.

Dementia prevalence rates were similar by sex but varied by age, education, and race and ethnicity, they reported in JAMA Neurology.

The findings are from the first representative study of cognitive impairment in more than 20 years, the researchers noted. They're based on participants in the Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol (HCAP) project of the ongoing, longitudinal Health and Retirement Study (HRS). HCAP is a cross-sectional random sample of HRS participants who were ages 65 or older in 2016.

"Because the HCAP study is part of the nationally representative and long-running Health and Retirement Study, these data not only show the burden of dementia now, but will be used in the future to track the trends in dementia burden in the decades ahead," co-author Kenneth Langa, MD, PhD, of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, said in a statement.

"Following those trends will be especially important given the likely impact of COVID and other recent population health changes on the risk for dementia in the coming decades," Langa added.

Of 9,972 age-eligible HRS participants, 3,496 were selected for HCAP and completed a comprehensive neuropsychological test battery and an in-person interview between June 2016 and October 2017.

The researchers classified dementia and mild cognitive impairment with an algorithm based on standard diagnostic criteria and compared participants' test performance to a normative sample. They used population weights to estimate the national prevalence of dementia and mild cognitive impairment.

Mean age of participants was 76.4 and 60% were female. Overall, 71% self-identified as white, 16% as Black, 11% as Hispanic, and 2% as another race.

Compared with white participants, dementia was more common among Black participants (OR 1.81, 95% CI 1.20-2.75), and mild cognitive impairment was more prevalent among Hispanic participants (OR 1.42, 95% CI 1.03-1.96).

Rates rose sharply with age; 3% of people between ages 65-69 had dementia versus 35% of people ages 90 and older. Every 5-year increase in age led to higher risks of dementia (OR 1.95 per 5-year age difference, 95% CI 1.77-2.14) and mild cognitive impairment (OR 1.17 per 5-year age difference, 95% CI 1.09-1.26).

Each additional year of school was linked with a drop in risks of dementia (OR 0.93 per year of education, 95% CI 0.89-0.97) and mild cognitive impairment (OR 0.94, 95% CI 0.91-0.97).

The findings were similar to other recent estimates of dementia prevalence in the U.S., Manly and colleagues noted.

"With increasing longevity and the aging of the Baby Boom generation, cognitive impairment is projected to increase significantly over the next few decades, affecting individuals, families, and programs that provide care and services for people with dementia," Manly said in a statement.

The study provides a snapshot in time and can't assess cognitive impairment incidence or rates of progression among people with mild cognitive impairment, the researchers noted. Several longitudinal studies have reported that a mild cognitive impairment classification can be variable, with high numbers of people who reverted to normal cognition at follow-up, they pointed out.

The HCAP study's cross-sectional design "does not allow for examination of survival bias, which could inflate prevalence if some groups are living longer with dementia or decrease estimates in groups with higher mortality," Manly and colleagues added.

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But what exactly is brain fog, and is it limited to COVID?

It is what it sounds like

Brain fog is not a medical diagnosis, but rather the description patients tend to use for their symptoms. Brain fog is what doctors refer to as "cognitive dysfunction". This describes problems with closely linked tasks such as concentration, information processing, memory, thinking and reasoning, and making sense of language.

Brain fog is exactly what it sounds like: a feeling something like being shrouded by a thick fog, not quite able to grasp ideas, feeling confused or disoriented, and having trouble concentrating or recalling memories.

Sufferers describe experiences with brain fog as lapses in memory and concentration, with some saying they "put food on the gas stove and walked away for over an hour, only noticing when they were burning".

Other people say they "forget how to do normal routines like running a meeting at work".

Brain fog can make even simple tasks like grocery shopping very difficult: navigating the car park, remembering a list of items to buy, switching attention between products and prices, and reading ingredients can be confusing, overwhelming and exhausting.

Brain fog can be unpleasant in the short term, but over time can make it difficult to work and maintain social activities. Brain fog can also take a toll on relationships, and change the way we see ourselves personally and professionally.

One recent study asked people with long COVID about their experiences with brain fog. They reported feeling guilt and shame, especially about how brain fog had affected their ability to return to work and their relationships.

While the symptoms of brain fog can be similar to those experienced by people with Alzheimer's disease and other conditions associated with older age, brain fog can affect people of any age. Brain fog doesn't usually worsen over time, and may not last forever.

Linked to COVID

Brain fog was one of the most common symptoms to emerge in the first months of the COVID pandemic.

Recent reports suggest 20–30% of people have brain fog three months after infection. Up to 85% of people with long COVID also have brain fog.

Although we're hearing a lot about brain fog in relation to COVID, people experience the symptom with many other diseases and disorders.

Scientists aren't sure whether the same biological processes underpin brain fog in different illnesses; however, brain fog is common among people recovering from traumatic brain injury, experiencing persistent post-concussion symptoms, with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, HIV, postural tachycardia syndrome, lupus, post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, and as a side-effect of chemotherapy. People with coeliac disease may even experience brain fog after consuming gluten. It's also been reported as a symptom of menopause.

"the most commonly reported symptoms included breathlessness, palpitations, chest pain and 'brain fog,' or reduced mental acuity" https://t.co/wx1E0MzaRG

    — Garance Franke-Ruta (@thegarance) October 13, 2022

What causes it?

While COVID may cause shrinkage of some brain areas, brain fog itself has not been linked to brain volume changes on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans.

However, a new case report of two people found that while they had normal clinical MRI findings, they also had decreases in oxygen use in a specific part of the brain called the cingulate cortex. This area, within the limbic system, is thought to be involved in attention and memory.

There isn't one single test for brain fog, so it can be difficult to diagnose. Although there are combinations of tests that can be used, formal testing may not always be helpful because symptoms can look different for each person, and some days may be worse than others.

How do you know if you have it?

Traditional assessments can test a person's executive function and cognitive status. But findings have been mixed in people with brain fog due to COVID.

Some studies have found more problems with attention and executive function in people who have had COVID. Cognitive deficits linked to brain fog have also been reported as worse for those with more severe COVID infection.

But other researchers have found standard cognitive screening tests don't show good specificity for brain fog (that is, they might not detect the absence of the condition and produce false negatives) and may not determine the severity of brain fog.

A new study suggested conflicting findings in studies on brain fog might be due to the brain functions assessed by different tests. People with both mild and more severe cases of COVID might experience problems with processing speed, reasoning, verbal and overall performance, but no problems with memory. So studies that use tests for memory are less likely to show the effects of brain fog, no matter the severity.

Outside of scientific studies, brain fog diagnosis is most likely to be based on the symptoms and experiences people report once other causes, such as not sleeping enough, stress or hormonal changes, have been ruled out.

If you think you may be experiencing brain fog, it would be worthwhile to note down your symptoms and track them over several weeks, alongside any changes in stress, diet or sleep. This information can help your doctor understand your symptoms and help you manage them.

How to manage

For people experiencing brain fog, developing coping strategies and prioritizing time to rest may help to manage symptoms. Coping strategies could involve making lists, using visual reminders (such as calendars, digital alerts and timers), and altering work duties where possible.

Clinical trials are underway for naltrexone, a medication used for alcohol and opioid drug addition, which has shown promise in reducing brain fog. While not currently available as a brain fog treatment in Australia, initial research in Ireland shows it is safe and effective in low doses.

Aside from getting enough sleep, people are often encouraged to approach recovery from brain fog holistically. This means looking at their entire health picture and prioritizing exercise and a healthy diet. If you are concerned about brain fog, your GP can refer you to a neurologist or neuropsychologist for further assessment and management.

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Google has been fined $113 million for not allowing third-party developers to use any payment processing services for in-app purchases other than its billing system. The fine was handed by the Competition Commission of India (CCI), the country's antitrust watchdog.

Investigation into the matter kicked off in late 2020 with CCI claiming that forcing people to use the Google Play Billing System (GPBS) imposes an "unfair condition" on consumers and developers, so is in violation of India's laws.

It also emphasized that Google is not using its billing system for its own apps such as YouTube and that the "imposition of discriminatory conditions as well as pricing as YouTube is not paying the service fee as being imposed on other apps covered in the GPBS requirements."

Interestingly, Apple faced a similar legal issue in South Korea recently and was ordered to allow external payment gateways for App Store purchases. India hasn't gone to those lengths yet, and the likely reason for this is that Google has already kicked off a pilot program for user choice billing mechanisms in select countries.

Source: CCI via TechCrunch

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Astronomers at Cardiff University have identified a strange twisting motion in the orbits of two colliding black holes. This exotic phenomenon is predicted by Einstein’s theory of gravity.

Their study reports that this is the first time this effect, known as precession, has been seen in black holes, where the twisting is 10 billion times faster than in previous observations. Led by Professor Mark Hannam, Dr. Charlie Hoy, and Dr. Jonathan Thompson, the research was published on October 12 in the journal Nature.

The Advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors found the binary black hole system through gravitational waves in early 2020. One of the black holes, estimated to be around 40 times more massive than our sun, is likely the fastest-spinning black hole to be found through gravitational waves. Additionally, in contrast to all previous observations, the rapidly revolving black hole distorted space and time so much that the binary’s entire orbit wobbled back and forth.

This form of precession is specific to Einstein’s theory of general relativity. These results confirm its existence in the most extreme physical event we can observe, the collision of two black holes.

“We’ve always thought that binary black holes can do this,” said Professor Mark Hannam of Cardiff University’s Gravity Exploration Institute. “We have been hoping to spot an example ever since the first gravitational wave detections. We had to wait for five years and over 80 separate detections, but finally we have one!”

The Northwest Institute of Nuclear Technology, a Xian-based research institute run by the People’s Liberation Army, claims to have developed a model to evaluate the performance of nuclear anti-satellite weapons at different altitudes and yields with unprecedented detail and accuracy, according to news reports.

The research team’s simulation showed that a 10-megaton warhead could destroy satellites if it detonates at an altitude of 80 kilometers, with the blast turning air molecules into a pear-shaped cloud of radioactive particles that can cause failures and damage to satellites, nuclear physicist Liu Li and his team wrote in a paper published in the Nuclear Techniques peer-reviewed journal.

Liu’s team noted that a space-based nuclear explosion would be ineffective as the lack of air would not generate a large radioactive cloud. Furthermore, the Earth’s atmosphere would capture most of the high-energy particles created by the blast and spread it around the globe as a radiation belt, threatening a wide range of spacecraft.

This drawback makes space-based anti-satellite nuclear weapons broadly ineffective and dangerous.

In contrast, Liu says an atmospheric nuclear blast in near space can create a cloud with a far greater mass than the nuclear device itself. In addition, high concentrations of radioactive particles in the debris cloud amplify the effects on spacecraft and communications.

The simulation showed that immediately after the blast, the radioactive cloud would rise at 2-3 kilometers per second, setting a huge trap for satellites. However, unlike a space blast, most of the air molecules would fall to Earth instead of remaining in orbit, avoiding the radiation belt effect and significantly reducing the risk to other satellites and spacecraft.

Asia Times has previously reported that Chinese state researchers have called for developing anti-satellite capabilities against the US Starlink satellite constellation, citing the system’s potential military applications as a threat to China’s national security.

In an article in the Chinese peer-reviewed journal Modern Defense, a team of senior scientists in China’s defense industry stated that “a combination of soft and hard kill methods should be adopted to make some Starlink satellites lose their functions and destroy the constellation’s operating system.”

A Starlink satellites train is seen from earth in 2020. Photo: YouTube

China has undoubtedly observed Starlink’s crucial role in the Ukraine war and evaluated the constellation’s potential role in a Taiwan-related contingency. Starlink has enabled Ukrainian forces to inflict heavy losses, and military reverses, with its satellites helping coordinate drone and artillery attacks against Russian troops.

In particular, Starlink was supposedly instrumental in the sinking of Russia’s Moskva cruiser this April, providing targeting data for Ukrainian Neptune coastal anti-ship missile batteries.

Conventional anti-satellite weapons such as ground-based jammers, missiles, satellite-mounted energy weapons and hunter-killer satellites may effectively destroy a limited number of satellites. But these weapons may be ineffective against a vast constellation such as Starlink, which has some 2,300 satellites in orbit.

A controlled nuclear explosion in near space may fill China’s requirement for a cost-effective, anti-satellite weapon that can destroy multiple satellites in one attack.

The idea of using nuclear weapons for anti-satellite missions is not new. US anxiety about Soviet orbital nuclear weapons led the Kennedy administration to approve a land-based nuclear anti-satellite program known as Project 437.

However, US scientists noted that high-altitude nuclear explosions are indiscriminate and could destroy all satellites within line of sight, including US satellites. Moreover, many more satellites in low earth orbit could be destroyed by radioactive fallout.

However, China’s recent simulations may have demonstrated the feasibility of overcoming the technical difficulties associated with using nuclear weapons for anti-satellite missions.

China could also use nuclear weapons in an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, disabling satellites, warships and power grids.  

In 2020, US EMP Task Force on Homeland Security released a report on China’s EMP warfare capabilities that estimated Beijing views nuclear EMP as the most potent and effective electronic warfare weapon, including so-called high-altitude EMP (HEMP) propagating through the atmosphere.

The US Homeland Security report notes that the US is potentially more vulnerable than any other country to an EMP attack, noting its extreme reliance on satellites, computers and electronics.

Finally, it discusses the offensive role EMP weapons play in China’s military doctrines against the US and mentions that China could use a low-yield nuclear device to generate a HEMP pulse.

China sees a military threat in SpaceX’s Starlink satellite system. Conceptual Image: Facebook

Daniel Beck, in a 2021 monograph from the US Army Command and General Staff College, notes that China may deploy tactical nuclear weapons to generate a HEMP, with the radiation from a device detonated 70 to 100 kilometers above the Earth’s surface devastating enemy digital systems.

Beck also mentions that such an attack is the only feasible option that meets the criteria for a paralyzing first strike against Taiwan. The US EMP Task Force report notes that China has the technical capabilities to mount nuclear EMP devices on satellites and hypersonic weapons.  

It states that China has the technical capability to mount nuclear EMP devices on satellites, with the weapons clandestinely in orbit until activated for a surprise attack. However, the report states that if China has already deployed such weapons in space it would be one of its most deeply guarded state secrets, as it could induce the US and other nuclear states to put nuclear weapons in orbit.

The Homeland Security report also says that China could opt to equip nuclear EMP devices on its hypersonic weapons, as their operating altitude of 40 to 100 kilometers is ideal for a HEMP attack on a carrier battlegroup or even intercontinental ballistic missile system (ICBM) storage sites.

In using tactical nuclear weapons on hypersonic weapons to deliver EMP strikes, the US EMP Task Force says that China can transform its small nuclear arsenal into a “giant killer,” capable of evading US missile defenses to unleash an EMP “Pearl Harbor” attack.

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Most of us have been spending a lot more time at home these past couple of years, prompting us to ask questions about the quality of the indoor air we breathe. Pre-COVID reports show that we Brits spend more than 90 per cent of our time indoors, where levels of some toxins can be up to five times greater than they are outdoors.

The internet is full of claims that houseplants can help, with just about every wellbeing site boasting its own top-10 rundown of the most powerful air-purifying plants. But is there any truth to the claims?

Unfortunately, not much. Most of the articles, if they cite any evidence, point to a NASA study from 1989. Back then, scientists were investigating plants’ ability to remove harmful chemicals called volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from the air of sealed environments such as space stations. In our homes and offices, sources of VOCs include paints, varnishes, furniture, carpets and printers. The study found that over a 24-hour period, several species of plants could indeed remove up to 70 per cent of one, or more, of the three VOCs tested.

But the results don’t translate well to the typical home or office, according to a 2019 review that revisited the NASA data, along with 11 other studies from the decades since. For starters, the experiments typically used fans to waft the VOCs over the plants, and carbon filters to collect them – setups that most of us don’t have in our homes.

More importantly, the plants were placed in small, sealed chambers. But the buildings we live and work in are surprisingly leaky. In fact, the researchers estimate that you’d need to squeeze between 10 and 1,000 plants into each square metre of your home to approach the rates of VOC removal already happening through passive indoor-outdoor air exchange.

Research shows that houseplants do have a range of other benefits, however. They help regulate humidity. They can improve mood and boost productivity. And they look good, to boot. But if you want to freshen up the air in your home, your best bet is to buy an air purifier with a high-quality filter or – depending on where you live – to open a window.

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Hot on the heels of Apple deciding that using cheap Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp (YMTC) memory chips in iPhones is too risky, the Chinese company is asking American employees to leave.

As the Financial Times(Opens in a new window) reports, all American employees working in core tech positions at YMTC are being forced to leave the company. A person briefed with what's happening inside the company said, "Asking staff to resign is necessary for the company and the right move for employees’ personal risk as well."

YMTC's decision to rid itself of American employees is the inevitable reaction to sanctions imposed by the US government to limit China's access to advanced technology. Last month, YMTC chief executive Simon Yang, who holds a US passport, decided to step down from the role to become YMTC's deputy chair instead. It's unclear if he will now be forced to resign from the company.

YMTC is currently on the US government's Unverified List, which isn't punitive, but it could be moved to the Entity List (export block list) in the future. The problem being faced by the company, and every other chip company based in China, is to create manufacturing facilities that don't rely on US technology, but also to staff them with people who don't hold a US passport.

According to an industry headhunter in Shanghai, these restrictions have "halved the number of available candidates for senior positions in chipmakers and toolmakers." Filling roles with American candidates is still possible, but requires the US Commerce Department to first issue a license, which seems unlikely to happen.

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Einstein’s Nobel Prize came 17 years after his Theory of Relativity, and even then the prize didn’t mention Relativity, which, in 1922, was still too controversial for their conservative tastes.

The other problem is that, too often, scientists die before their Nobel Prize comes along, and then the prize is awarded to secondary contributors instead. One egregious example was when Rosalind Franklin’s prize went to Watson and Crick.

This year, the posthumous winner of the physics Nobel was John S. Bell, author of Bell’s Theorem (1964). The Nobel Committee had squandered 26 years of opportunity when Bell died in 1990.

What is Bell’s Theorem about?

In 1905, a young Einstein, following quickly on the insights of Max Planck, contributed the second, compelling piece of evidence that atomic energy is quantized, that is, it comes in discrete packets of fixed size. But when the Quantum Theory was fully fleshed out in 1926, it had two features that Einstein found abhorrent, and until the end of his days, Einstein was convinced that they must be mistaken.

First, the quantum theory includes an element of randomness. Einstein: “God doesn’t play dice.”

Second, quantum theory violates one of the foundational ideas of Relativity theory, which is that influences propagate from their source at a finite speed. Nothing that happens here can affect what happens there until there has been time for a wave to propagate from here to there. This is sometimes called “locality”, and it is violated in quantum physics. Einstein didn’t like “spooky action at a distance.”

Late in Einstein’s life, his protege, David Bohm, devised an interpretation of Quantum Mechanics in which there is no randomness — but Bohm’s theory sacrifices locality, and it does so in such a wild and non-intuitive way that Bohm’s Pilot Wave theory has never been popular.

It was 1964, nine years after Einstein’s death, that John Bell published his proof that Einstein’s long quest to resolve the two features of QM that he didn’t like was, in fact, a fool’s errand. Bell’s Theorem demonstrates elegantly that you might get rid of randomness, but you would lose locality; or you might preserve locality, but then the random element would remain. Einstein’s wish to have it both ways was a logical impossibility.

In this video, Tim Maudlin corrects a misconception of the Nobel committee, cites Bell, and explains what he demonstrated.

Nick Herbert contributed the most straightforward and comprehensible explanation of Bell’s theorem. His distillation of Bell’s proof was published in 1977. Thirty-five years after publication, his book Quantum Reality remains the clearest and liveliest introduction to quantum weirdness.

The Parapsychological Connection

Tim doesn’t recognize the vast body of research in parapsychology that points to sources of information that don’t arrive via any avenues acknowledged by mainstream science. (Recent related book review. One classic book. Another.) But Nick is open-minded and aware, and he speculates intelligently about this.

Bell’s Theorem proves that if Alice chooses to make one kind of measurement rather than another over here, it affects what Bob sees over there — even if “here” and “there” are far away, and even if Alice’s choice comes after Bob’s observation. This seems to be obvious grounds for precognition and telepathy. But there is a catch: Even though Bell can prove that these influences exist, they are always washed out in the statistics. No signal can be deliberately sent by Alice to Bob. Information is transmitted, but not in any decipherable way.

Alice can affect the details of the quantum randomness that Bob observes, but cannot impose any identifiable pattern on that randomness.

Nevertheless, the connection between quantum theory and parapsychological experiment is so strong that there must be something here that we are not understanding. Nick has done as much as anyone to explore this possibility and speculate about a future of physics where consciousness plays a fundamental role. His books Faster than Light and Elemental Mind are deep and thought-provoking.

A key insight is that quantum “randomness” is not really random but can be influenced by conscious thought. Dean Radin and Stuart Kauffman speculate that the brain may be evolved to exploit this quantum connection to consciousness.

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But one of the most common pieces of advice for people struggling to get a good night's sleep is to exercise regularly. And according to research, this is actually pretty good advice.

For example, a meta-analysis from 2015 which looked at all the current research on sleep quality, duration and exercise, showed that both short-term and regular exercise (a few sessions a week) can lead to better sleep. This means that even a single bout of exercise may be enough to improve sleep quality and duration.

Research also shows us which types of exercise can help improve sleep. Regular aerobic exercise, for instance, has been shown to help people fall asleep quicker, wake up less during the night and feel more rested the following morning. This was true for many different types of aerobic exercise, such as cycling, running, and even brisk walking.

Even just a single, 30-minute session of aerobic exercise can improve multiple aspects of sleep—although not to the same extent as regular aerobic exercise. But, it was still shown to improve sleep duration, decrease the time it takes to fall asleep and increase sleep efficiency (the percentage of time in bed that's actually spent asleep). A higher sleep efficiency indicates better sleep quality.

Research on resistance exercise (such as weightlifting) and its effect on sleep is more limited. But from the small number of studies that have been conducted, it appears resistance exercise may also be able to improve sleep.

Studies have found that people who do resistance exercise regularly (around three sessions per week) have better subjective sleep quality. Even just thinking you have good quality sleep can affect how well you perform throughout the day.

Regular resistance training may also help people with insomnia to fall asleep quicker and increase their sleep efficiency. However, there's still very little research in this area so we need to be cautious about making any conclusions.

The good news is that the benefits of exercise for sleep seem to work for everyone, regardless of your age or whether you have certain sleep disorders (such as insomnia or sleep apnoea).

The influence of exercise

While the research is clear that exercise can improve our sleep, scientists still aren't entirely sure exactly how it does this—though they do have a few theories.

Our body's sleep-wake cycle follows an approximately 24-hour period, which is controlled by an internal body "clock". As part of this cycle, a hormone called melatonin is released in the evening, which helps us feel tired. Exercise during the day can lead to an earlier release of melatonin in the evening, which may be why people who exercise fall asleep quicker.

Exercise also raises our core body temperature. But when we finish a workout, our core body temperature begins to return back to normal. A drop in core body temperature can also help us fall asleep. This may explain why evening exercise can actually help some people sleep better that night—contrary to popular belief.

Exercise might also lead to better sleep because of its positive effects on mood and mental health, both of which can be associated with sleep quality. During exercise, the body releases chemicals known as endorphins, which improve mood. Regular exercise can also reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. The positive effect of exercise on both mood and mental health may therefore help people get to sleep more easily.

Although more research still needs to be done to work out exactly why different types of exercise affect many different aspects of our sleep, it's clear that exercise can be beneficial for sleep. Just 30-60 minutes of exercise daily may help you fall asleep faster, stay asleep during the night and wake up feeling more rested the next morning.

While just one workout can improve your sleep, working out regularly is likely to provide ever greater improvements to your sleep. Since so many types of exercise are linked with improving sleep, all you need to do is choose a workout you enjoy—whether that's running, swimming, lifting weights or even just going for a brisk walk.

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"We can expect more variants to come, and probably from the genomic standpoint, they are going to look more aggressive," said Carla Finkielstein, director of the Molecular Diagnostics Lab at Virginia Tech's Fralin Biomedical Research Institute.

Omicron BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 represent 11.4% of all COVID-19 infections for the week ending Oct. 15, double what they were the previous week. The next CDC data release is scheduled for Friday, Oct. 21.

Finkielstein conducts research on COVID-19 mutations and is following not only BQ.1 and BQ1.1, but spinoff, immune-evasive variants. One of growing concern is XBB, which represents two different strains of omicron. The World Health Organization reports that XBB has been identified in 26 countries, including the U.S.

"Genomic surveillance is critical to maintain the quality of tests available in the marketplace and to guide our response," said Finkielstein. "The advantage is that we have highly effective vaccines and a large immunized population. If needed, new vaccines will be easy to customize."

Carla Finkielstein is a professor at Virginia Tech and director of the Molecular Diagnostics Lab at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC.

Finkielstein improved speed and efficiency of identifying suspected COVID 19 variants through rapid mutational analysis. After quickly identifying the COVID-19 variants, Finkielstein relays the information to Department of Health personnel that same day, thereby giving the health workers an idea of the severity and transmissibility of a variant.

With quick understanding of transmissibility of a particular variant, health workers are better prepared to deal with changing health risks. Later she does whole genome sequencing to confirm the initial analysis. When the pandemic first emerged, Finkielstein anticipated the limitations of existing RNA testing methods and designed testing primers that detected three genes of the virus in lieu of the single gene detected by the CDC testing kit, making it possible both to provide more accurate results and detect various mutations of COVID-19.

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