BMW’s design dares to be different, and that’s OK

After 9 difficult months, Firefly is set to take its next shot at orbit

"Because beta-carotene increased the risk of lung cancer for current smokers in two NIH-supported studies, our goal with AREDS2 was to create an equally effective supplement formula that could be used by anyone, whether or not they smoke," said Emily Chew, M.D., director of the Division of Epidemiology and Clinical Application at the National Eye Institute (NEI), and lead author of the study report. "This 10-year data confirms that not only is the new formula safer, it's actually better at slowing AMD progression."

AMD is a degenerative disease of the retina, the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye. Progressive death of retinal cells in the macula, the part of the retina that provides clear central vision, eventually leads to blindness. Treatment can slow or reverse vision loss; however, no cure for AMD exists.

The original AREDS study, launched in 1996, showed that a dietary supplement formulation (500 mg vitamin C, 400 international units vitamin E, 2 mg copper, 80 mg zinc, and 15 mg beta-carotene) could significantly slow the progression of AMD from moderate to late disease. However, two concurrent studies also revealed that people who smoked and took beta-carotene had a significantly higher risk of lung cancer than expected.

In AREDS2, begun in 2006, Chew and colleagues compared the beta-carotene formulation to one with 10 mg lutein and 2 mg zeaxanthin instead. Like beta-carotene, lutein and zeaxanthin are antioxidants with activity in the retina. The beta-carotene-containing formation was only given to participants who had never smoked or who had quit smoking.

At the end of the five-year AREDS2 study period, the researchers concluded that lutein and zeaxanthin did not increase risk for lung cancer, and that the new formation could reduce the risk of AMD progression by about 26%. After the completion of the five-year study period, the study participants were all offered the final AREDS2 formation that included lutein and zeaxanthin instead of beta-carotene.

In this new report, the researchers followed up with 3,883 of the original 4,203 AREDS2 participants an additional five years from the end of the AREDS2 study in 2011, collecting information on whether their AMD had progressed to late disease, and whether they had been diagnosed with lung cancer. Even though all the participants had switched to the formula containing lutein and zeaxanthin after the end of the study period, the follow up study continued to show that beta-carotene increased risk of lung cancer for people who had ever smoked by nearly double. There was no increased risk for lung cancer in those receiving lutein/zeaxanthin. In addition, after 10 years, the group originally assigned to receive lutein/zeaxanthin had an additional 20% reduced risk of progression to late AMD compared to those originally assigned to receive beta-carotene.

"These results confirmed that switching our formula from beta-carotene to lutein and zeaxanthin was the right choice," said Chew.

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But Covid cases could be undercounted by a factor of 30, an early survey of the surge in New York City indicates. “It would appear official case counts are under-estimating the true burden of infection by about 30-fold, which is a huge surprise,” said Denis Nash, an author of the study and a distinguished professor of epidemiology at the City University of New York School of Public Health.

About one in five – 22% – of adult New Yorkers likely had Covid between 23 April and 8 May, according to the preprint study, which has not been peer-reviewed or published. That would mean 1.5 million adults in the city had Covid in a single two-week period – far higher than official counts during that time.

While the study focused on New York, these findings may be true throughout the rest of the country, Nash said. In fact, New Yorkers likely have better access to testing than most of the country, which means undercounting could be even worse elsewhere.

“It’s very worrisome. To me, it means that our ability to really understand and get ahead of the virus is undermined,” Nash said.

More than half of the Covid patients surveyed also said they didn’t know about Paxlovid, an antiviral that can be highly effective at preventing hospitalization and death among high-risk people. And those who were able to access Paxlovid tended to be younger, with better access to resources, signaling that Paxlovid may still not be reaching those who need it the most.

“We need to be able to know who among the most vulnerable is not getting access to Paxlovid after they have a Covid infection, and make sure that they’re being reached and targeted quickly,” Nash said.

Pfizer’s Covid pill Paxlovid is packaged last year. Photograph: Pfizer/Reuters

Gaps in case counts may also explain why many people don’t realize the US is in the midst of a serious surge now, experts said. Even those paying attention to cases likely don’t realize how widespread Covid is right now.

“We’ve always known there were undercounts. We didn’t always know by how much they were under-counted,” he said. But in recent months, the gap appears to be widening.

The team of researchers did a similar survey after the first Omicron surge and estimated that about 1.8 million adults likely had Covid between 1 January until the middle of March.

That estimate was about three to four times greater than the official case count during that time, Nash said – markedly lower than the 30-fold difference the researchers are seeing now.

The huge disparity between estimated and official case counts is likely due to a rise in home testing, which is usually not included in official numbers, and pandemic fatigue or lack of information leading some people not to test at all, even if they have symptoms or exposure to the virus.

There is also a “huge disincentive” for many people to get tested for Covid, said Lara Jirmanus, a family physician and clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School. Americans have been told the virus is mild and won’t affect their lives, she said, but if they test positive, they need to stay home from work and school.

“It’s almost as though we’ve created a national ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ Covid policy – and that is a perfect way to promise that Covid will spread rapidly,” she said – especially concerning given as much as 60% of Covid transmission happens from people who never have any symptoms.

Without good data on the true extent of Covid, it’s more difficult to protect against it, experts said.

“We don’t really have a good handle of what’s going on with Covid, and therefore people can’t make decisions about what to do in a surge,” Nash said.
“We’ve been asked by our elected leaders and governments to make the best decisions for us as individuals,” he continued. “Well, what information does an average person refer to when they’re trying to make the best decisions for themselves around Covid precautions?”

Increased monitoring of viruses like Covid – by examining wastewater or conducting surveys, like Nash and his colleagues did – would sound the alarm on future surges and help experts understand how many people may be vulnerable to the virus.

Local and national public health officials need to “give a better picture of what the true Covid burden might be, so that people can make these informed decisions,” Nash said.

People need to be given “clear on-ramps and off-ramps” for precautions as Covid surges and ebbs, Jirmanus said. Instead, “we’re basically just putting ourselves at the risk of this virus and we have no idea what the future holds – the next variant could make people sicker or kill people more quickly.”

Because of the protection offered by vaccines and recovery from previous cases, the hospitalization rate and death toll of this surge is lower than previous waves so far.

But “we’re not at a place where we can confidently say that each of these new variant surges is not going to result in a surge of deaths”, Nash said.
Hospitalization and death are also not the only negative outcomes of cases. “The long Covid threat is going to be something that’s with us for a while, even after hospitalizations and deaths become less of an issue,” Nash said.

Long Covid can occur in an estimated 10 to 30% of cases, and each infection – and reinfection – seems to be “a roll of the dice” for developing long-term health issues, he said.

“It’s very poorly understood, in my view, given how important a public health issue it could be. But it is absolutely high on the list of reasons to avoid Covid infection right now. It’s tragic that this is not something that is discussed as a reason to prevent the impact of a surge.”

Vaccines protect against long Covid by about 15%, new research suggests, underscoring the need for other precautions to prevent infections.

“This idea that we need to return to normal and that’s the most important thing, rather than just actually using mitigation measures to save lives – it’s actually not that hard, and if it were normalized, we could do it,” Jirmanus said.

“To just decide that it’s perfectly fine for everyone to be infected three to four times a year in the future with a new virus whose effects we don’t fully understand is a huge, huge gamble,” she continued. “We just don’t know what Covid could lead to in the future… We’re playing with fire.”

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Infamously, Amazon punishes and sometimes fires warehouse workers who it believes are wasting time at work. A new filing obtained by Motherboard gives detailed insight into how Amazon tracks and records every minute of "time off task" (which it calls TOT) with radio-frequency handheld scanners that warehouse associates use to track customer packages.

The documents, filed with the National Labor Relations Board as part of a dispute at the recently-unionized Amazon warehouse in Staten Island called JFK8, reveal that workers can receive a written warning for accumulating 30 minutes of time off task in a day one time in a rolling one year period. They can be fired if they accumulate 120 minutes of time off task in a single day or if they have accumulated 30 minutes of time off task on three separate days in a one year period. Examples and sample spreadsheets provided in the documents show Amazon tracking, down to the minute, the amount of time individual workers spent in the bathroom and infractions such as "talking to another Amazon associate," going to the wrong floor of a warehouse, and, as an example, an unaccounted for 11-minute period where a worker "does not remember" what they were doing.

A set of guidelines for TOT reveals that Amazon asked managers at JFK8 in 2019 to use a tracking tool every shift to identify a “top offender,” the person who accumulated the most time off task in a shift as calculated by inactivity on their item scanner. The manager was then required to ask the top offender about their whereabouts for each time stamp registered in the system as unproductive, and discipline them when appropriate. Each shift “managers will use the TOT tool to identify and engage the top offender per manager,” the guidelines say. As an example of this, Amazon shows a summary of how a manager might ask their employees to account for how long they used the bathroom at a certain time of day: "Amazon Associate understands the process. AA stated he was in the bathroom for the 10 TOT. Coached AA on the TOT policy." The New York Times first reported that Amazon tracks TOT “top offenders” at JFK8.

While Amazon managers were trained to write up the “top offender” per shift, they could interrogate at least three workers about their whereabouts per shift, the documents show. A template for a worker who registered 47 minutes of time off task on March 17, 2019 shows that Amazon’s tool registered the five blocks of time as TOT. Subsequently a manager asked the worker for an explanation for what they were doing during each block of time.

“18:22-18:37 - [worker] went to floor one and was sent to floor 2.”

“20:30-20:40 - [worker] was in bathroom”

“20:00-20:05 - [worker] had [equipment] issue, verified with [process assistant] (time not counted into TOT)”

“21:13-21:23 - [worker] was talking to another [worker] with no barriers identified.”

“23:04: 23:15 - [worker] does not remember”

According to the example, Amazon forgave the worker for the time spent going to the bathroom and experiencing an equipment issue, but not for time spent going to the wrong workstation, time spent speaking to another employee, or for time that they could not remember where they were.

In one of the documents, Amazon explains the purpose of its TOT policy to associates, saying workers’ “commitment to completing assigned tasks is critical in order to be Earth's most customer-centric company.”

Motherboard also obtained an internal list of 18 warehouse workers at JFK8 who were terminated for accumulating more than two hours of TOT in a single day between January 1, 2020 and February 25, 2020.

The documents provide new clarity about a much-talked-about but until now opaque process that is used to surveil, discipline, and sometimes terminate Amazon warehouse workers around the United States. Amazon warehouse workers who have talked to Motherboard say they don’t have insight into how much TOT they’ve accumulated, and have said they skip water and bathroom breaks because they fear being disciplined and terminated. As the country’s second largest employer, Amazon’s productivity policies impact hundreds of thousands of workers.

The documents also include screenshots of Amazon's "Time Off Task Tool" which is used to track individual employees' TOT.

Amazon's time off task tracking tool.

After identifying the “top offender” for every shift, the manager is then required to have a conversation with the worker to let them explain “if there were any true barriers that would warrant the deduction of time” from the total TOT tracked by the scanner.” The manager makes any adjustments to the total time off task, and provides feedback and disciplinary write-ups when appropriate. If the top offender during a shift is found to have justified TOT, the manager is then required to coach the worker with the second highest amount of TOT. A tool allows managers to sort through the top offenders on any shift. The documents also indicate that Amazon uses surveillance footage to corroborate employees’ claims about their whereabouts, and describes an instance in which a worker's alibi was later disproven using "video footage."

A proposed script for having a conversation with the "top offender" reads as follows: "Your recent time-on-task performance has fallen below behavioral expectations. On [DATE] at various points throughout your scheduled shift you were observed to be off-task for a total of [total TOT minutes after subtraction]. This number was reached by calculating all of your TOT for the day which totaled [Total TOT without subtracting breaks/standup] minutes then subtracting 12 minutes for standups and 17 minutes for each of the paid breaks. During a 'Seek to understand' conversation you stated that you faced the following barriers [FINDINGS FROM STU]. These behaviors are violations of Amazon's Standards of Conduct and Attendance policy. 'Failure to adhere to starting time, quitting time, or break time policies, or wasting time' is considered a Category 2 violation of the Standards of Conduct. "

Amazon previously stated that less than 1 percent of terminations in 2019 were for time off task or failing to meet rate requirements, and in its own guidelines suggests that tracking TOT is primarily used to motivate workers to stay productive. The goal, Amazon’s guidelines say, “of auditing this TOT is to create an environment not where we are writing everyone up, but that associates know that we are auditing for TOT, and will own their own time to be within standard.”

According to the guidelines for JFK8 obtained by Motherboard, workers should receive a first written warning when they accumulate 30 to 59 minutes of time off task for the first time in a given 12 month period. Managers should give workers a final written warning if the tool tracks an hour to 119 minutes of T.O.T in a single day, or between 30 and 59 minutes of TOT and a first written warning within the same 12 month period. Amazon says that a termination is warranted when a worker accumulates two hours of TOT in a given shift or has received a final written warning and has registered 30 minutes or more of TOT within the same 12 month period.

Amazon did not respond to a request for comment, or questions about whether these policies are still in place at JFK8 or used by other Amazon warehouses around the country.

Morgan Lewis, a high-profile law firm that represents Amazon and specializes in fighting union drives, submitted the documents to the National Labor Relations Board in February 2020 in order to dismiss a charge that Amazon had unlawfully retaliated against a JFK8 warehouse worker who collected signatures from their coworkers for a petition. The documents were then obtained via public records request. A note from Morgan Lewis’ attorney says that these documents should be treated “as confidential” and that Amazon requested that the labor board not reveal any of the contents without its “prior written consent.”

The documents include an example of a JFK8 employee who was registered as the top offender and then fired for accumulating three hours and 57 minutes of TOT in a single day in 2019, internal documents show. That employee’s manager then provided them a list of all of the times during that shift, minute by minute, when their scanner was inactive, so that the employee could explain any periods of justified inactivity. For example, the scanner registered inactivity from 7:25am to 7:37am, but the employee explained that they were having workstation issues, so Amazon subsequently subtracted that time from their total TOT.

In the end, the employee could only provide justification for an hour and 12 minutes of inactivity during that shift and subsequently lost their job. “Amazon terminated [redacted]’s employment because [redacted was unjustifiably and completely unproductive for at least 2 hours and 45 minutes,” a letter Amazon sent to the National Labor Relations Board said.

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Now, a new population-based study from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has found evidence of a curious coronavirus advantage for those with allergies.

In an analysis of more than 4,000 people who all lived in households that included minors, researchers noted several curious trends in terms of SARS-CoV-2 infection, including that individuals with a food allergy were only about half as likely to become infected.

The findings match other recent research, which found allergic conditions, like asthma, might offer some protection against severe cases of COVID-19.

Somewhat similarly, the new NIH study found that asthma was not linked to increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection, despite asthma being a condition that impacts the respiratory system.

On the other hand, obesity and a high BMI index were factors that increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection, as was the age of children and teens sharing the living space.

But the finding with regard to food allergies might be the most remarkable discovery.

"[T]he observed association between food allergy and the risk of infection with SARS-CoV-2, as well as between body-mass index and this risk, merit further investigation," says Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Researchers aren't sure why food allergies seem to make people less vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2, but there are a few possible explanations.

Half of all the participants in the study claimed they had been diagnosed with a food allergy, asthma, eczema, or allergic rhinitis. These self-reports were then backed up by a subset of blood tests, which revealed antibodies linked to allergic disease.

Researchers then tracked the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in participant households from May 2020 to February 2021.

People with eczema and asthma didn't show extra vulnerability to the virus, but they also didn't seem to be any more protected.

Those with food allergies, meanwhile, were at a 50 percent lower risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Not all forms of asthma are atopic (aka highly allergic), and previous studies have shown that only those with atopic asthma express lower airway levels of the ACE2 receptor, which is what SARS-CoV-2 attaches to.

This suggests that the virus does not have as many ways to invade cells in the lungs of those with respiratory allergies.

Something similar could be occurring among people with food allergies, although the authors only looked at SARS-CoV-2 infection, and not the severity of the infection.

"It is not known whether this is also the case in food allergic individuals, but it is tempting to speculate that type 2 inflammation, a characteristic of food allergy, may reduce airway ACE2 levels and thus the risk of infection," the researchers write.

"Supporting this possibility, we found significantly greater levels of general atopy among those with self-reported food allergy, relative to both those without food allergy, and even those with asthma."

Interestingly, while some studies suggest allergic asthma protects from severe cases of COVID-19, the current study found the condition does not protect from the initial contraction of the virus.

What's more, when a participant with asthma or food allergies did contract the novel coronavirus, they were no more likely to be asymptomatic.

Further research is needed to tease apart the mechanisms behind the new findings, but the authors are hopeful that their research can offer new avenues for COVID-19 prevention.

The study was published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

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Not only that, but they're going to appear in order of their distance from the Sun, from left to right as you scan the horizon: that means starting with Mercury (an average of 58 million kilometers or 36 million miles from the Sun) and ending with Saturn (an average of 1.4 billion kilometers or 886 million miles from the Sun).

The not-to-be missed celestial show will be visible towards the eastern horizon just before the Sun rises and obscures the view. In the Northern Hemisphere, look towards the east and the south; in the Southern Hemisphere, look towards the east and the north.

While the arrangement should be visible throughout the month of June, note that on the mornings of June 3 and June 4, the separation between Mercury and Saturn will be at its smallest: a mere 91 degrees.

Another date to bear in mind is June 27. This will see the separation increase to 107 degrees, and the waning crescent Moon should show up between Venus and Mars (you could even think of it as a stand-in for Earth).

Mercury will be clearly visible on June 27 as well, making it easier for you to spot it before working your way to the right along the horizon. On this particular morning, the planetary show should be visible for about an hour.

Those dates are most relevant to the US – these events and the visibility of the planets may vary in terms of dates depending on where you are in the world. There should be plenty of opportunity for everyone to see the five planets though, even if you get a few cloudy days across the month.

Being able to see the planets together like this is known as a conjunction, and conjunctions involving five planets are rather rare – the last one was in December 2004, so we'd recommend taking the opportunity of seeing this one.

On certain days you may even be able to catch a look at Uranus and Neptune too, astronomers say. However, you're going to need binoculars and a telescope to spot these dots, as these planets can't be seen with the naked eye here on Earth.

This has been in the works for a while: you might remember that Saturn, Mars, Venus, and Jupiter were lined up in the sky during the month of June. It's all a trick of perspective of course – but these are stunning sights to observe.

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Manipulating photons for microseconds tops 9,000 years on a supercomputer

Though the COVID-19 pandemic is not yet over, fatigue from the global public health emergency has surged to levels only an omicron subvariant could rival. We're all eager to move on. But for scientists and public health experts, that means preparing for the next inevitable pandemic and dealing with the aftermath of this one.

Ahead of Ars Frontiers, I connected with virologist Angela Rasmussen to talk about pandemic preparedness: what went well in this pandemic, what didn't, what we learned—and what lessons we already seem to be ignoring.

Rasmussen brought a lot to the conversation. She's a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan and an affiliate at Georgetown University Center for Global Health Science and Security. She has long studied highly pathogenic emerging viruses—including coronaviruses, Ebola, and influenza viruses—focusing on host responses to those viral infections. Currently, she's working with the Coronavirus Variants Rapid Response Network, a research network funded by the Canadian government, to surveil and characterize SARS-CoV-2 variants that could spill over and spill back between animals and humans.

Think global

We started our discussion with the mammoth questions: What should we do to prepare for the next pandemic—and are we doing those things? Her answer, basically: We need to be thinking globally and long-term. We're doing some of that now, but we also seem to be falling into a common pattern that could leave us unprepared.

Some things went well in this pandemic, Rasmussen said, highlighting the speedy sharing of genomic sequences that paved the way for the equally speedy development of highly effective vaccines. She also noted the impressive stand-up of genomic surveillance around the world. But on many other fronts of pandemic prevention and response, we failed, she said.

"And one of the biggest reasons that I think we failed is that a lot of the pandemic responses have really been nationalized," she said. "This is a global problem that is facing all of us, and if we really want to be prepared and more capable of responding to the next one, we need to be looking for global solutions… We need to be focusing on solutions that rely on global cooperation, that rely on surveillance programs that transcend national borders, and that provide a fair and equitable exchange of scientific knowledge and collaboration across borders, particularly in the global south and in low- and middle-income countries that are likely going to be more profoundly affected should an epidemic or pandemic occur."

The World Health Assembly and the World Health Organization have been raising these points and scientists are hearing them, she said. But the funding and focus need to be long-term. Invariably, when new threats arose in the past—such as the original SARS outbreak in 2003 or the emergence of the related MERS in 2012—there was an initial burst of funding to research and prepare for outbreaks. But then, when the threat subsided, interest faded, and the funding dried up.

"When those grants came up for renewal, a lot of them were not renewed because that was no longer considered an important investment," Rasmussen said.

Transcript here (PDF)

We may already be falling into the same trap of pandemic unpreparedness

The planet, called 55 Cancri e, orbits so close to “its Sun-like star” that surface conditions could literally be like the Hell of biblical description: a dimension in a constant state of burning.

Data show 55 Cancri e is less than 1.5 million miles from its star — 1/25 the distance super hot Mercury is from our sun, NASA says.

“With surface temperatures far above the melting point of typical rock-forming minerals, the day side of the planet is thought to be covered in oceans of lava,” NASA reported last week.

“Imagine if Earth were much, much closer to the Sun. So close that an entire year lasts only a few hours. So close that gravity has locked one hemisphere in permanent searing daylight and the other in endless darkness. So close that the oceans boil away, rocks begin to melt, and the clouds rain lava.”

Nothing like it exists in our solar system, NASA says.

Among the things the scientists hope to discover is if the planet is “tidally locked, with one side facing the star at all times” or if it rotates in a manner that would create day and night.

Initial views from NASA’s less powerful Spitzer Space Telescope show something mysterious is happening on 55 Cancri e, because the hottest spot is not the part directly facing its star.

One theory is that the planet has “a dynamic atmosphere that moves heat around,” NASA says.

Another idea is that 55 Cancri e rotates to create day and night, but with nightmarish results.

“In this scenario, the surface would heat up, melt, and even vaporize during the day, forming a very thin atmosphere that Webb could detect,” NASA says.

“In the evening, the vapor would cool and condense to form droplets of lava that would rain back to the surface, turning solid again as night falls.”

The James Webb Space Telescope is expected to be fully operational in “just weeks” and its first observations are expected through the summer, NASA says.

The telescope is capable of detecting the presence of an atmosphere, scientists say.

Its first year will be devoted to studying 55 Cancri e and the airless planet LHS 3844 b, to try and understand “the evolution of rocky planets like Earth,” NASA says.

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In severe cases, patients are put on a ventilator, but these machines are often scarce and can cause problems of their own, including infection and injury to the lungs.

Scientists may have now found a breakthrough, and it's one that that could significantly impact how ventilators are used.

In addition to traditional mechanical ventilation, there's another technique called Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO), where blood is carried outside the body so that oxygen can be added and carbon dioxide can be removed.

Thanks to a new discovery, oxygen may now be able to be added directly, and the patient's blood can stay where it is. With a condition like refractory hypoxemia, which can be brought on by being on a ventilator, having this approach available could save lives.

"If successful, the described technology may help to avoid or decrease the incidence of ventilator-related lung injury from refractory hypoxemia," the researchers write in their new paper.

The new technique works by channeling an oxygen-laden liquid through a series of nozzles that get smaller and smaller. By the time the process is finished, the bubbles are smaller than red blood cells – and that means they can be directly injected into the bloodstream without blocking blood vessels.

A lipid membrane is used to coat the bubbles before they're added to the blood, which prevents toxicity and stops the bubbles from clumping together.

After the solution is injected, the membrane dissolves and the oxygen is released.

In experiments on donated human blood, blood oxygen saturation levels could be lifted from 15 percent to over 95 percent within just a few minutes. In live rats, the process was shown to increase saturation from 20 percent to 50 percent.

"Importantly, these devices allow us to control the dosage of oxygen delivered and the volume of fluid administered, both of which are critical parameters in the management of critically ill patients," the researchers write.

The researchers are keen to emphasize that this is a "proof of concept" for now and it has yet to be tested on people. However, they seem to have found a potentially effective formula with the size of the bubbles and the coating used.

Getting oxygen into the body like this is a difficult balancing act, because complications can quickly ensue if too much or too little is added, or it's added in the wrong way. The researchers now want to test their technology on larger animals before moving on to human trials.

While it's not able to completely replace ventilators or ECMO life support in its current form, it's hoped the new device may be able to better prepare the body to be put on these machines, or keep the lungs going until a ventilator becomes available.

"It is worth mentioning that our device could potentially be integrated into existing ventilators, allowing for seamless integration into existing clinical workflows," the researchers write.

The research has been published in PNAS.

Source

Japanese weather satellite accidentally watched Betelgeuse go dim

AstroForge aims to succeed where other asteroid mining companies have failed

• Judge finds IBM induced BMC to sign contract through fraud

(Reuters) - A Houston federal judge ruled Monday that International Business Machines Corp must pay mainframe-software competitor BMC Corp $1.6 billion after finding IBM improperly replaced BMC's mainframe software at AT&T Corp with its own.

U.S. District Judge Gray Miller said IBM convinced software company BMC through fraud to sign a contract that allowed IBM to "exercise rights without paying for them, secure other contractual benefits, and ultimately acquire one of BMC's core customers."

IBM's conduct "offends the sense of justice and propriety that the public expects from American businesses," the court said.

Armonk, New York-based IBM said in a statement that the ruling is "entirely unsupported by fact and law" and it intends to appeal. The company said the decision to replace BMC's software "rested solely with AT&T."

BMC senior vice president and general counsel Patrick Tagtow said the company was pleased with the decision.

IBM and BMC are competitors in the software industry, but have an agreement for IBM to maintain and operate mainframes running BMC software. As part of their contract, BMC had agreed to let IBM service its software on client mainframes for free, and IBM said it would not convince BMC clients to replace its software.

AT&T was one of Houston-based BMC's biggest clients, and hired IBM to manage its mainframe operations. The court said IBM had already agreed to replace BMC's software at AT&T when it negotiated the contract in 2015 and did not intend to comply.

Miller said IBM believed that it could settle a dispute over the provision for "pennies on the dollar."

AT&T, which was not part of the lawsuit, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Miller said Monday that BMC was entitled to $717.7 million in unpaid license fees. He added the same amount in punitive damages for IBM's "fraudulent and malicious" conduct and $168.2 million in interest.

Miller also said IBM did not breach other parts of the agreement or steal BMC trade secrets.

The case is BMC Software Inc v. International Business Machines Corp, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, No. 4:17-cv-02254.

For BMC: Sean Gorman and Christopher Dodson of Bracewell

For IBM: Richard Werder of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan; and Paul Yetter of Yetter Coleman

Source

But in rare cases, some people are responsive to their surrounds under general anesthesia, yet they cannot remember what happened afterwards.

This is called 'connected consciousness', and now the largest study of its kind to date on the phenomenon suggests that it's more common than first thought, affecting 1 in 10 young adults, and women more than men.

The findings highlight the need to better understand how different people respond to anesthetic drugs, the researchers say. Even after 170 years of use, we still don't have a firm grasp on how general anesthesia works – and now age and sex seem to be another factor in the mix.

"There is an urgent need for further research on the biological differences, particularly sex, that may influence sensitivity to anesthetic medication," says study author Robert Sanders, an anesthetist and neuroscientist at the University of Sydney in Australia.

If the results of the new study can be replicated, it might put us one step closer to understanding who is more likely to experience 'connected consciousness' and how anesthetists can reduce the odds of it happening.

Past estimates had suggested around 5 percent of people going under general anesthesia experienced 'connected consciousness'. But Sanders' team had suspected, based on other research, that it might have been more common in younger people.

The results of the new study suggest that a larger than expected amount of young adults are still responsive under general anesthesia, before surgery begins.

Roughly one in 10 of the 338 young adults in the study, aged between 18 and 40 years, responded to commands asking them to squeeze the researchers' hand once if they understood, and twice if they were in pain while under general anesthesia.

An hour after waking up, participants were asked to recall 16 words that they had heard under anesthesia, to see what they remembered of the experience.

Women were between two to three times more likely than men to experience 'connected consciousness', the study found.

The odds of 'connected consciousness' were also lower if a continuous level of anesthesia was maintained in the minutes after anesthesia was induced and before intubation, the point where a plastic tube is inserted down a person's windpipe to maintain airflow and deliver anesthetic drugs during surgery.

It's important to note that 'connected consciousness' is different to the unintended awareness that an even smaller fraction of people – just 0.1 percent – experience during anesthesia, after which they can recall specific details about the procedure.

'Connected' in this instance refers to parts of the brain still being capable of processing sensations from their environment, half-paying attention but not fully aware.

"Patients expect to be unconscious under anesthesia, and not be in pain, and this demonstrates why research into anesthesia is so important," Sanders says.

Around 13 percent of women in the study responded to commands under anesthesia, compared to only 6 percent of men, even though they received the same weight-adjusted amounts of propofol, a drug used to start and maintain general anesthesia.

"Differences in dosing, if present, were small and do not explain why females experienced connected consciousness more often than males," write the researchers in their paper.

About half of the 37 people who responded to commands also indicated they were in pain, which would have been swiftly rectified by adjusting the dose of anesthetic drugs. One person also clearly recalled the experience of surgery after the procedure ended.

"In our opinion, this is a higher level of consciousness than patients (or their anesthesiologists) anticipate during general anesthesia," Sanders and colleagues write in the paper.

While it may feel like anesthetics knock us out with a slug-punch of drugs that hit before you can count to ten, being in a state of anesthesia only requires a person to be disconnected from their environment, not necessarily involving a full loss of consciousness.

However, that clearly seems to be very fine line for anesthetists to tread, and one which appears to vary greatly from person to person.

At least now, anesthetists might have a better understanding of how maintaining continuous anesthesia in the first few minutes (which is already standard practice in many countries) may help reduce the incidence of 'connected consciousness'.

"It is very important to note that patients did not remember responding to the commands," says Sanders, noting that overall, general anesthetics are very safe.

"It was also reassuring to see that if anesthetic drugs are administered continuously in the time period between induction of anesthesia and intubation, the risk of connected consciousness was greatly reduced," he says.

The study was published in the British Journal of Anaesthesia.

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Dr. Bruno Laeng, a professor at the Department of Psychology of the University of Oslo and the study's first author, said, "The 'expanding hole' is a highly dynamic illusion: The circular smear or shadow gradient of the central black hole evokes a marked impression of optic flow, as if the observer were heading forward into a hole or tunnel."

Optical illusions aren't mere gimmicks without scientific interest: Researchers in the field of psychosociology study them to better understand the complex processes our visual system uses to anticipate and make sense of the visual world—in a far more roundabout way than a photometer device, which simply registers the amount of photonic energy.

In the new study, published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Laeng and colleagues show that the "expanding hole" illusion is so good at deceiving our brain that it even prompts a dilation reflex of the pupils to let in more light, just as would happen if we were really moving into a dark area.

Pupil reflex depends on perception, not necessarily reality

"Here we show based on the new 'expanding hole' illusion that that the pupil reacts to how we perceive light—even if this 'light' is imaginary like in the illusion—and not just to the amount of light energy that actually enters the eye. The illusion of the expanding hole prompts a corresponding dilation of the pupil, as it would happen if darkness really increased," said Laeng.

Laeng and colleagues explored how the color of the hole (besides black: blue, cyan, green, magenta, red, yellow, or white) and of the surrounding dots affect how strongly we mentally and physiologically react to the illusion. On a screen they presented variations of the "expanding hole" image to 50 women and men with normal vision, asking them to rate subjectively how strongly they perceived the illusion. While participants gazed at the image, the researchers measured their eye movements and their pupils' unconscious constrictions and dilations. As controls, the participants were shown "scrambled" versions of the expanding hole image, with equal luminance and colors, but without any pattern.

The illusion appeared most effective when the hole was black. Fourteen percent of participants didn't perceive any illusory expansion when the hole was black, while 20% didn't if the hole was in color. Among those who did perceive an expansion, the subjective strength of the illusion differed markedly.
The researchers also found that black holes promoted strong reflex dilations of the participants' pupils, while colored holes prompted their pupils to constrict. For black holes, but not for colored holes, the stronger individual participants subjectively rated their perception of the illusion, the more their pupil diameter tended to change.

Minority not susceptible

The researchers don't yet know why a minority seem unsusceptible to the "expanding hole" illusion. Nor do they know whether other vertebrate species, or even nonvertebrate animals with camera eyes such as octopuses, might perceive the same illusion as we do.

"Our results show that pupils' dilation or contraction reflex is not a closed-loop mechanism, like a photocell opening a door, impervious to any other information than the actual amount of light stimulating the photoreceptor. Rather, the eye adjusts to perceived and even imagined light, not simply to physical energy. Future studies could reveal other types of physiological or bodily changes that can 'throw light' onto how illusions work," concluded Laeng.

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Researchers induced type 1 diabetes in 35 mice and used a Vickers microhardness tester to compare their teeth with those of 35 healthy controls over 28 weeks. Although the two groups started with comparable teeth, enamel grew significantly softer in the diabetic mice after 12 weeks, and the gap continued to widen throughout the study. Significant differences in dentin microhardness arose by week 28.

"We've long seen elevated rates of cavity formation and tooth loss in patients with diabetes, and we've long known that treatments such as fillings do not last as long in such patients, but we did not know exactly why," said Mohammad Ali Saghiri, an assistant professor of restorative dentistry at the Rutgers School of Dental Medicine.

The study, now published in Archives of Oral Biology, advances a multiyear effort by Saghiri and other researchers to understand how diabetes affects dental health and to develop treatments that counter its negative impact. Previous studies have established that people with both types of diabetes have significantly elevated rates of most oral health issues, both in the teeth and the soft tissues that surround them. Saghiri and other researchers also have demonstrated that diabetes can interfere with the ongoing process of adding minerals to teeth as they wear away from normal usage.

"This is a particular focus of mine because the population of people with diabetes continues to grow rapidly," Saghiri said. "There is a great need for treatments that will allow patients to keep their teeth healthy, but it has not been a major area for research."

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The new investigation, published in Cell, is the first study in history to compare how three different vaccine platforms trigger an immune response against the same pathogen.

"This study is important because it lets us answer how different vaccine platforms perform in terms of inducing immune responses," says LJI Professor Alessandro Sette, Dr. Biol. Sci.

The researchers studied human immune responses to an mRNA platform (Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines), a recombinant protein-based adjuvanted vaccine platform (Novavax), and a viral vector-based platform (Janssen/J&J). All four vaccines in this study were designed to prepare the immune system to fight the same target, called the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein.

"We aren't giving a vaccine scorecard," says LJI Research Assistant Professor Daniela Weiskopf, Ph.D., who co-led the study with Sette and LJI Professor Shane Crotty, Ph.D. "This kind of side-by-side analysis has never been done before with people who received different vaccines at the same time—in a real life setting. Just understanding the immune responses to these vaccines will help us integrate what is successful into vaccine designs going forward."

Key findings:

•  Antibodies: After six months, those given Moderna had highest levels of neutralizing antibodies, followed by those given the Pfizer-BioNTech and Novavax vaccines. The Janssen/J&J vaccine led to the lowest neutralizing antibody levels.

•  B cells: Participants given the Janssen/J&J vaccine had the highest percentage of memory B cells after six months.

•  CD4+ T cells: All participants retained a similar percentage of memory CD4+ "helper" T cells against the virus.

•  CD8+ T cells: The Novavax vaccine led to the lowest levels of CD8+ "killer" T cells. A higher CD8+ response was seen in those given Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, or Janssen/J&J vaccines. Overall, after six months, only 60 to 70 percent of participants retained memory CD8+ T cells.

"This is a very valuable, comprehensive immunological evaluation of these four different vaccines," says Crotty.

The new study confirms that most people retain some immune response to SARS-CoV-2, regardless of which vaccine they receive. The researchers caution that this immune memory may not prevent infection, but it appears to help fight severe disease.

"Even if it is difficult to maintain a high level of neutralizing antibodies long term, the presence of a stable cellular immunity shows that the immune system can be reactivated very quickly, in a matter of days, if there is an infection," says Sette.

LJI serves as a COVID-19 research hub

This research was possible thanks to the efforts of LJI's recently opened John and Susan Major Center for Clinical Investigation. The center staff and scientists drew blood from local volunteers and processed many samples sent by study collaborators. The study leaders then worked with these samples to compare the four vaccines.

"LJI is a great place for collaboration in science," adds Crotty. "We were doing fifteen kinds of immune system measurements, and there are very few places that can handle that kind of complexity and have that kind of expertise."

"With this study, we have the same people, in the same lab, using the same tests to study immune responses," says Weiskopf.

Going forward, the researchers are interested in the effects of COVID-19 vaccine booster shots on long-term immune memory. The scientists are also keeping a close eye on immune cell responses to SARS-CoV-2 variants and are currently analyzing immune responses in people who were vaccinated and experienced "breakthrough" infections.

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The research is based on Americans aged 40 to 85 who wore accelerometers on their waist for a week.

“The potential public health benefit of changing daily physical activity by a manageable amount is not yet known. In this study, we used accelerometer measurements to examine the association of physical activity and mortality in a population-based sample of U.S. adults,” the authors write in their paper. “These findings support implementing evidence-based strategies to improve physical activity for adults and potentially reduce deaths.”

The study shows that adding 10 minutes of physical activity each day resulted in an estimated 111,174 preventable deaths per year. Not surprisingly, the more physical activity, the more deaths prevented. The number almost doubled and tripled to 209,459 and 367,037, respectively, for 20 and 30 minutes. Similar results were observed for men and women, including those of all ethnic backgrounds.

Volunteers were tracked for an average of ten years, during which time 1,165 deaths occurred. The researchers used a statistical technique called PAF (population attributable fraction (PAF). It estimated the proportion that could have been prevented annually with
modest increases in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA).

For healthy adults, doctors recommend at least 150 minutes of activity or 75 minutes of moderate or vigorous aerobic activity, respectively, a week.

“Previous studies suggest a substantial number of deaths could be prevented annually by increasing population levels of physical activity,” the paper says. “However, previous estimates have relied on convenience samples, used self-reported physical activity data and assumed relatively large increases inactivity levels – for example, more than 30 minutes per day.”

Exercise helps people lose weight, of course, lowering the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and some cancers. It also protects against dementia by boosting blood flow to the brain.

“To our knowledge, this is the first study to estimate the number of preventable deaths through physical activity using accelerometer-based measurements among U.S. adults while recognizing that increasing activity may not be possible for everyone,” the authors note.

The paper is published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

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The way the body regulates inflammation is only partly understood. Previous research by Peder Olofsson's group at Karolinska Institutet and other research groups has shown that electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve can reduce inflammation. Such nerve stimulation has been used with encouraging results in clinical studies of patients with inflammatory bowel disease and rheumatoid arthritis. However, how nerve signals regulate active resolution of inflammation was unclear.

"We have now studied effects of signals between nerves and immune cells at the molecular level," says April S. Caravaca, a researcher in Peder Olofsson's group at the Department of Medicine, Solna, Karolinska Institutet and the Stockholm Center for Bioelectronic Medicine at MedTechLabs. "A better understanding of these mechanisms will allow for more precise applications that harness the nervous system to regulate inflammation."

The researchers showed that electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve in inflammation shifts the balance between inflammatory and specialized anti-inflammatory molecules, which promotes healing.

"Inflammation and its resolution plays a key role in a wide range of common diseases, including autoimmune diseases and cardiovascular diseases," says Peder Olofsson. "Our findings provide insights on how the nervous system can accelerate resolution of inflammation by activating defined signaling pathways."

The researchers will continue to study how nerves regulate the healing of inflammation in more detail.

"The vagus nerve is only one of many nerves that regulate the immune system. We will continue to map the networks of nerves that regulate inflammation at the molecular level and study how these signals are involved in disease development," says Dr. Olofsson. "We hope that this research will provide a better understanding of how pathological inflammation can resolve, and contribute to more effective treatments of the many inflammatory diseases, such as atherosclerosis and rheumatism."

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Ovarian cancer often undergoes a process called peritoneal metastasis. In this process, its cells detach from their primary site in the ovary and travel to a secondary implantation site, such as the peritoneal wall or diaphragm. The peritoneum defends against this process using a barrier consisting of mesothelial cells, which prevent the adhesion of cancer cells and limit their spread. However, ovarian cancer gets around this defense by transforming the protective mesothelial cells into cancer-associated mesothelial cells. This creates an environment that helps metastasis, assisting the spread of cancer around the body.

The group, led by Dr. Masato Yoshihara of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in collaboration with colleagues at the Bell Research Center and the Department of Pathology at Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, found that vitamin D not only counteracted this process but also restored cancer-associated mesothelial cells to their original state. This process strengthened the barrier effect of mesothelial cells and reduced further spread of the cancer. Their study suggests that vitamin D therapy may be a useful addition to the treatment of ovarian cancer.

"We showed the potential of vitamin D for normalizing cancer-associated mesothelial cells, which is the first study of this kind," said Dr. Kazuhisa Kitami, the first author of the study. "This study's most interesting point is that in situations where early detection of ovarian cancer is still extremely difficult, we showed that the peritoneal environment can be restored to its normal state where it prevents the adhesion and growth of cancer cells."

Vitamin D can do this because of the complicated way cancer spreads. Previous studies found that cancer cells secrete a protein called TGF-β1, which is associated with cell growth. This also increases the amount of another protein, thrombospondin-1, through the TGF-β/Smad pathway. Thrombospondin-1 has long interested researchers of ovarian cancer because it is found in higher amounts in the later, more deadly stages of cancer. In ovarian cancer, thrombospondin-1 is a key protein that enhances the adhesion and proliferation of ovarian cancer cells to the peritoneum. As vitamin D disrupts the TGF-β/Smad pathway, it may prevent cancer.

Dr. Kitami explains: "The administration of Vitamin D helps normalize the peritoneal environment. This suggests that the combination of Vitamin D and conventional remedies can enhance their therapeutic efficacy for ovarian cancer. We think this helps prevent the adhesion of cancer cells to the peritoneum, which may make it possible to prevent the recurrence of ovarian cancer."

The potential of a vitamin to combat a cancer that affects one in 75 women remains an exciting prospect, especially since it does so by restoring the natural defenses of the body. The creation of therapies using this research could offer new ways to combat the high death rate of ovarian cancer.

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In general, radio sources are various objects in the universe that emit relatively large amounts of radio waves. Among the strongest sources of such emission are pulsars, certain nebulas, quasars, and radio galaxies.

Now, a team of astronomers led by Joel Balzan of Western Sydney University in Australia, report the finding of a new radio source, whose true nature is still uncertain. While observing NGC 2082 using Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) and Parkes radio telescope, they identified a strong point radio source positioned 20 arcseconds from the galaxy center. NGC 2082 is a G-type spiral galaxy in the Dorado constellation, located some 60 million light years away from the Earth, with a diameter of approximately 33,000 light years.

"We present radio continuum observations of NGC 2082 using ASKAP, ATCA and Parkes telescopes from 888 MHz to 9,000 MHz. Some 20 arcsec from the center of this nearby spiral galaxy, we discovered a bright and compact radio source, J054149.24–641813.7, of unknown origin," the researchers wrote in the paper.

The study found that the radio luminosity of J054149.24–641813.7 at 888 MHz is at a level of 129 EW/Hz and that it has a flat radio spectral index (about 0.02). This, according to the astronomers, disfavors the scenario in which J054149.24–641813.7 may be a supernova remnant (SNR) or a pulsar, suggesting that the source may be of thermal origin.

The researchers noted that the compact nature of J054149.24–641813.7 and its location at the outskirts of NGC 2082 are reminiscent of those of some fast radio bursts (FRBs). However, the results suggest that J054149.24–641813.7 is probably not bright enough to be a persistent radio source with an embedded FRB progenitor.

The astronomers concluded that the most likely remaining possibility is that J054149.24–641813.7 is an extragalactic background source, such as quasi-stellar object (QSO, quasar), radio galaxy or active galactic nucleus (AGN). They added that the flat spectral index together with somewhat weak polarization at 5,500 and 9,000 MHz support this hypothesis. However, there is currently no high resolution neutral atomic hydrogen (HI) absorption data for NGC 2082, which could confirm this assumption.

"We find that the probability of finding such a source behind NGC 2082 is P = 1.2 percent, and conclude that the most likely origin for J054149.24–641813.7 is a background quasar or radio galaxy," the authors of the paper explained.

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Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer related deaths globally, with around 1.8 million deaths reported annually. Chronic inflammation is a risk factor for lung cancer and other diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma.

"Berberine has shown therapeutic benefits for diabetes and cardiovascular disease. We were keen to explore its potential in suppressing lung cancer and reducing inflammation," says lead researcher Dr. Kamal Dua, a senior lecturer in Pharmacy at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS).

The evaluation of berberine's effect on non-small cell lung cancer has just been published in the journal Pharmaceutics. It shows that berberine exhibits potent anticancer activity, suppressing cancer cell growth in vitro.

The potential mechanism of action for anti-cancer activity was determined by measuring the mRNA levels of tumor-associated genes and protein expression levels. It showed that berberine upregulates tumor suppressor genes, and downregulates proteins involved in cancer cell migration and proliferation.

The study follows research recently published in Antioxidants, also led by Dr. Dua, showing berberine can inhibit oxidative stress, and reduce inflammation and cellular senescence induced by cigarette smoke extract in lab-grown human healthy lung cells.

The research team includes Professor Phil Hansbro, Professor Brian Oliver, Dr. Bikash Manandhar and Dr. Keshav Raj Paudel along with international collaborators from the International Medical University in Malaysia and Qassim University in Saudi Arabia.

Dr. Dua's focus is on exploring the curative potential of traditional medicinal plants and how their active compounds work at the cellular level. He has a multi-faceted research background with experience in drug delivery technology, biomedical sciences, immunology and microbiology.

Berberine has long been used in traditional Chinese and Ayruvedic medicine; however, its therapeutic benefits have been limited by its lack of water solubility and absorption in the gut, as well as toxicity at higher doses.

To overcome these challenges Dr. Dua has developed the use of liquid crystalline nanoparticles, an advanced drug delivery system that encapsulates berberine in tiny soluble and biodegradable polymer balls to enhance safety and effectiveness.

Decades of research has shown that cigarette smoke is toxic to lung cells, causing inflammation of the airways and hastening diseases such as cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma.

The researchers found that berberine supressed the generation of inflammatory chemicals, called reactive oxygen species, which cause damaging effects to cells. It also modulated genes involved in inflammation, oxidative stress, and reduced premature cell senescence.

Dr. Dua is now in discussion and working closely with Sydney based companies to take this research to the next level and identify the best formulation and delivery system for these nanoparticles, so that it can be translated to the bedside.

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Bear hibernation: More than a winter’s nap

When enabled, users can just say, "Alexa, call for help," and they will be connected to a Lively agent who will assess the situation and dispatch medical authorities when needed.

"We are moving along the path of our services will not just be available through our phones and personal emergency response [devices] anymore, but they will be available through devices that people want to use in their home," Deborah Di Sanzo, president of Best Buy Health, said in an interview.

The move builds on Lively's existing access through Apple Inc.'s watches and Best Buy's own Jitterbug mobile phones. A pioneer in the smart speaker industry, Amazon's Alexa has long been the dominant platform in the market, though its share has shrunk as competitors emerged.

The Lively monthly subscription service, which was called GreatCall when it was purchased by Best Buy in 2018, is primarily used by seniors. It expanded its membership by 15% to more than 2.5 million during 2021, Best Buy announced in March.

While many people remember commercials for one-touch personal emergency response devices from decades ago, the industry has evolved, with customers now able to use their everyday mobile and smart home devices in case of an emergency.

During the pandemic, there has been increased consumer adoption of at-home medical services like virtual appointments, Di Sanzo said. There has also been more acceptance by medical professionals of the benefits of health care from home, she said.

"Consumerism really came to health during the pandemic and so what Best Buy's customers were saying is that, 'I need technology to help me take care of my family in my home 365 days a year.' ... As soon as you mention consumer technology, that's Best Buy's area," Di Sanzo said.

Best Buy Health, which includes Lively and Current Health, produced $525 million in revenue last year. That's about 1% of Richfield-based Best Buy's overall revenue.

Before the pandemic, Best Buy began to train groups of blue-shirted Best Buy store staff on Lively services. For the past year, Geek Squad has worked on delivering Lively's personal emergency response devices to people in their homes, especially those who are part of Medicare and Medicaid.

This summer, Best Buy will begin training Geek Squad workers in patient monitoring services as part of its integration of a firm called Current Health that it bought last year.

Started in 2015, Current Health, which has dual headquarters in Boston and Edinburgh in the United Kingdom, is developing a variety of services aimed at delivering care to patients in their homes through condition monitoring with the help of connected devices, telehealth services and more. It works with hospital systems to try to lower admission rates as well as pharmaceutical companies as they track clinical trials.

Earlier this week, Best Buy executives told analysts that Current Health had its best commercial booking quarter ever with the expansion of its relationships with health systems such as Mount Sinai Health System, Parkland Health, as well as the U.K. National Health Service.

Di Sanzo said Current Health will continue to pursue health system clients in both the U.S. and U.K. It will also try to attract more global pharmaceutical clients.

Di Sanzo said there was still room for Best Buy to grow in chronic disease monitoring devices, skincare, fitness and wearables. Earlier this month, Best Buy announced it has expanded its skincare products to include items like facial steamers.

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