We are two neuroscientists who study the processes of learning and numerical cognition—how people use and understand numbers. While there is still much to discover about the mathematical abilities of the human brain, one thing is certain: People are terrible at processing large numbers.

During the peak of the omicron wave, over 3,000 U.S. residents died per day—a rate faster than in any other large high-income country. A rate of 3,000 deaths per day is already an incomprehensible number; 1 million is unfathomably larger. Modern neuroscience research can shed light on the limitations of the brain in how it deals with large numbers—limitations that have likely factored in to how the American public perceives and responds to COVID-related deaths.

The brain is built to compare, not to count

Humans process numbers using networks of interconnected neurons throughout the brain. Many of these pathways involve the parietal cortex—a region of the brain located just above the ears. It's responsible for processing all different sorts of quantities or magnitudes, including time, speed and distance, and provides a foundation for other numerical abilities.

While the written symbols and spoken words that humans use to represent numbers are a cultural invention, understanding quantities themselves is not. Humans—as well as many animals including fish, birds and monkeys—show rudimentary numerical abilities shortly after birth. Infants, adults and even rats find it easier to distinguish between relatively small numbers than larger ones. The difference between 2 and 5 is much easier to visualize than the difference between 62 and 65, despite the fact that both number sets differ by only 3.

The brain is optimized to recognize small quantities because smaller numbers are what people tend to interact with most on a daily basis. Research has shown that when presented with different numbers of dots, both children and adults can intuitively and rapidly recognize quantities less than three or four. Beyond that, people have to count, and as the numbers get higher, intuitive understanding is replaced by abstract concepts of large, individual numbers.

This bias toward smaller numbers even plays out day to day in the grocery store. When researchers asked shoppers in a checkout line to estimate the total cost of their purchase, people reliably named a lower price than the actual amount. And this distortion increased with price—the more expensive the groceries were, the larger the gap between the estimated and actual amounts.

Once you get into large numbers like millions and billions, the brain begins to start thinking of these values as categories rather than actual numbers.

Bad at big numbers

Since anything bigger than 5 is too large a quantity to intuitively recognize, it follows that the brain must rely on different methods of thinking when confronted with much bigger numbers.

One prominent theory proposes that the brain relies on an inexact method whereby it represents approximate quantities through a sort of mental number line. This line, imagined in our mind's eye, organizes small to large numbers from left to right (though this orientation depends on cultural convention). People tend to make consistent errors when using this internal number line, often underestimating extremely large quantities and overestimating relatively smaller quantities. For example, research has shown that college students in geology and biology courses commonly underestimate the time between the appearance of the first life on Earth and the dinosaurs—which is billions of years—but overestimate how long dinosaurs actually lived on Earth—millions of years.

Further research looking at how people estimate the value of large numbers shows that many people place the number 1 million halfway between 1,000 and 1 billion on a number line. In reality, a million is 1,000 times closer to 1,000 than 1 billion. This number line gaffe may visually represent how people people use words like "thousand" and "billion" as category markers that represent "big" and "bigger" rather than distinct values.

When grappling with numbers outside of everyday experience, precise values just mean less.

1,000,000 deaths

Numbers are a useful, clear and efficient way to summarize the harms of the pandemic, but the truth is that the brain simply can't understand what it means that a million people have died. By abstracting deaths into impossibly large numbers, people fall prey to the limitations of the mind. In doing so, it's easy to forget that every single numerical increase represents the entire lived experience of another human being.

This pandemic has been full of hard-to-comprehend numbers. The filtration efficiency of various face masks, the accuracy of different COVID-19 tests, statewide case numbers and worldwide death rates are all complicated concepts far beyond the brain's intuitive number processing abilities. Yet these numbers—and how they are presented—matter immensely.

If the brain were built to understand these kinds of numbers, perhaps we would have made different individual decisions or taken different collective action. Instead, we now mourn for the million people behind the number.

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The first vaccine against the most common cause of cervical cancer was approved in 2006, and in the years that followed, parents were eager to get their daughters protected.

More than a decade later, that kind of anticipation for a vaccine would be hard to imagine. Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, fewer than half of McKean County residents were fully inoculated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and just 38% had received a booster shot by early March—among the lowest rates in Pennsylvania.

This rural Central Pennsylvania county is hardly an outlier: Among adults in the U.S., only about 4 in 10, or 42%, had gotten a booster as of January, according to an ongoing study by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Two years of a pandemic tearing a path of sickness and death through the U.S.—surging, ebbing, then surging again—eroded trust in medicine along the way, doctors and others say.

Low U.S. rates for booster shots are a reflection of that wariness.

The numbers are not much better in urban Allegheny County. Fewer than half of those eligible—46.7%—had gotten a COVID-19 booster shot by the end of February. That's a month shy of the two-year anniversary of Gov. Tom Wolf's closure of schools statewide because of the pandemic, keeping more than 1.7 million kids out of the classroom.

Doctors are pushing back against the distrust, as they have always done, with candor and science, but also by building trust one patient at a time through new professional relationships with patients. Discouraged by health insurers' growing control of medical care, a group of Pittsburgh-area doctors has created a new model for the patient-doctor relationship, one they say is the future of medicine.

In the mid-20th century, the response to medical advances was different.

The peak of the polio outbreak in the U.S. came in 1952, when about 58,000 cases were reported. Children with parents' permission packed school auditoriums to get polio shots in 1955—and vaccinations against measles, mumps, rubella and HPV in the decades that followed.

But in early 2020, as a new disease quickly spread around the world, so did the rumors and sometimes contradictory information about what to do about it. Individual interpretations of scientific evidence became the norm, and distrust of medicine rose—even as COVID-19 became the third leading cause of death in the U.S. that year with 350,831 recorded fatalities, trailing only heart disease and cancer.

A pre-existing distrust of science was "exacerbated by conflicting messages, questionable treatments reported in research publications, concerns about political interference in public health recommendations and decisions regarding the efficacy of therapeutics, and pseudoscience and conspiracy theories," a 2020 column in the Journal of the American Medical Association noted.

Among the confusing issues:

— Face masks were discouraged to save supplies, then recommended for everyone, then later sometimes mandated.

— Officials said COVID-19 was spread by close contact, then it turned out getting infected didn't have to mean close contact at all.

— Even after vaccines were made available, people who were fully vaccinated sometimes died, feeding an alternative narrative about the shots.

And the situation grew worse as the pandemic wore on. A Pew Research Center study in February found 60% of U.S. adults said they have felt confused by changing public health recommendations on how to curb COVID-19 cases, up 7 percentage points from August.

"Everybody feels really lied to," said the 53-year-old Brown, who lives in Elk County and who recalled a time when people seemed more confident in their doctors. The office of her physician grandfather was attached to his house into the 1970s, a time when trust in doctors was high.

The shift began before COVID.

In a 1966 survey of adults in the U.S., 73% said they had great confidence in the leaders of the medical profession, according to a Journal of American Medical Association column in 2020. A survey done in 2012 found only 34% expressing such confidence.

The fall from embracing science to "pseudoscience and conspiracy theories" was steep.

"We had problems with people using too many antibiotics," Brown said. "Now they turn to essential oils. We have essential oils and this YouTube guy. These are societal failures."

Through February, the COVID-19 pandemic had taken 824,708 lives in the U.S., including 42,247 Pennsylvanians, according to a new survey by Kaiser Health News and PolitiFact.

The start of the pandemic in the U.S. brought with it an "historic level of disregard of scientific advice" about the disease, Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science at Harvard University, wrote in Scientific American magazine in 2020. That made the outbreak "worse in the U.S. than in many other countries."

She compared the message that presented use of face masks as an issue of personal freedoms to Big Tobacco's longtime marketing of cigarettes.

Brown, for her part, blames the distrust of medicine on the opioid epidemic, which took the lives of many of her friends and former students. Trust in medicine and corporate America was easier before the overdose deaths began piling up, she said.

The opioid epidemic began in the 1990s with doctors writing more prescriptions for the medicine, having been given assurances of safety from the drug industry. But overdoses began spiking by 1999, leading to the declaration of a public health emergency in 2017.

In 2021, U.S. overdose deaths topped 100,000 for the first time.

Hampton family physician Kirsten Lin says the distrust of medicine was there all along—the pandemic just brought it to light.

In 2016, for the first time, fewer than half of practicing physicians had an ownership stake in their practice as health systems snapped up medical practices, turning doctors into employees. The shift meant pumped-up patient volume requirements for doctors as health systems sought to juice revenue.

The result was shorter office visits and a deterioration in the doctor-patient relationship.

"People are more easily able to access information on the internet than from their physician," Dr. Lin said. "Trust is really the issue."

The shift helped prompt Dr. Lin and family practice partner Natalie Gentile in 2017 to form Direct Primary Care Physicians, which operates outside the traditional health care system by eliminating barriers to patient care they say health insurers can create.

Direct Primary Care offers patients office visits that can last 45 minutes rather than the standard 10- to 15-minute increments. The doctors make house calls. The practice doesn't accept Medicare, Medicaid or commercial insurance, so the service may not be for everyone.

The concept has been around for about 10 years but has been getting traction recently. There are 22 independent direct primary care offices in the state, according to the Pennsylvania Direct Primary Care Association.

Drs. Lin and Gentile say they've counseled people who distrusted the COVID vaccines.

Whatever the reasons, recent studies showing booster shots provide the best protection against infection did not seem to resonate among those who were already wary—some of whom had to be convinced earlier to get the first two rounds of COVID vaccinations.

Only 1% of those eligible in January said they would get a booster "as soon as possible," down sharply from 34% who said they would in December 2020 before the sense of urgency about the virus waned, according to the Kaiser study. About 34% of adults had received two shots, but not a third.

Only 10 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties exceeded 50% for residents getting boosted, including Beaver County with 50.6%—the highest in Western Pennsylvania, according to CDC data from early March.

In four Pennsylvania counties, the booster rate was under 40%.

The issue is bigger than Western Pennsylvania. A New York Times analysis in January found that the U.S. lagged well behind Belgium, Britain, Germany and five other countries for share of the population getting booster shots, pushing up death rates in the U.S. from COVID-19.

The digital era has supercharged the speed at which information—and disinformation—spreads, feeding the belief that science is a matter of personal opinion, said Kenneth Behrend, a Downtown lawyer who has represented students at North Allegheny and other school districts in court who challenged the lifting of mask mandates in schools.

Recently, a man asked Behrend to represent him in a case fighting mask use before realizing that Behrend very much believes in the value of face masks in curbing the spread of COVID-19.

"Well, you have your science," the man told Behrend, who remembers standing in line as a child for sugar cubes containing the polio vaccine. "And I have mine."

Meanwhile, on a recent weekday, Direct Primary Care Physicians of Pittsburgh co-founder Dr. Gentile drove to the O'Hara home of Megan and Greg Hilkert, both 35, to see their son, 2-month-old Owen. It was a well-baby visit, where he would be weighed, measured—and get four vaccines.

Dr. Gentile, 33, reassured Hilkert about a light rash on the infant's scalp and marveled at the child's size, tugging at his foot on a long measuring tape to get a reading.

Later, the doctor said she believes she can build a trusting relationship with patients minus the treatment limitations health insurers can impose. Personal trust fosters trust in science and medicine.

"The dissolution of trust in the health care system—where are you going to go for answers?" Dr. Gentile said. "How are you going to expect them to trust you when you recommend a vaccine?"

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Using a super-sensitive probe that took decades to invent, researchers have shown sand dunes regularly inhale and exhale tiny amounts of water vapor.

The inhales are harder to achieve when the sand is drier. But when the wind flows over the surface of a dune, it carries off the top layer, creating a rapid change in surface moisture and pressure. As a result, "evanescent waves of humidity" from the atmosphere above flow downward.

The probe used to detect this flow is so sensitive to moisture, it can pick up tiny films of water on a single grain of sand.

When plunged into a dune in the Qatar desert, the instrument was able to scan the temperature, radiation, and moisture in its surroundings on a millimeter-scale resolution in just 20 seconds.

These measurements were repeated every 2.7 minutes for two whole days, amassing a huge quantity of data.

The authors know of no other instruments that can keep tabs on a sand dune with such high spatial or temporal resolution.

In combination with data on wind speed and direction as well as ambient temperature and humidity, the authors have revealed an extremely subtle behavior of sand in the desert.

Unlike heat, which is conducted through individual sand grains, water vapor seems to percolate between grains.

The pores of a sand dune, therefore, carry moisture from the surface downward, and these pathways are made and remade as the wind blows.

"The wind flows over the dune and as a result creates imbalances in the local pressure, which literally forces air to go into the sand and out of the sand. So the sand is breathing, like an organism breathes," explains mechanical engineer Michel Louge from Cornell University. 

This 'breathing' could be part of what allows microbes to live deep in sand dunes, even when no liquid water is available.

Interestingly, at the surface of the dune, the probe measured less evaporation than scientists were predicting. For such a hyper-arid region, the leaching of moisture from the sand dune to the atmosphere was a relatively slow chemical process.

"This is the first time that such low levels of humidity could be measured," says Louge.

The sensitivity of the new probe is a feat of technology that could allow scientists to more accurately measure how agricultural lands turn to desert, a process exacerbated by climate change.

"The future of the Earth, if we continue this way, is a desert," warns Louge.

Knowing more about how deserts work could, therefore, be really useful. And not just for a better understanding of our own planet.

Probes that can sensitively measure moisture within sand could help experts find invisible signs of water on, say, Mars.

Just because the desert looks deserted on the surface, doesn't mean there isn't life hiding below.

The study was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface.

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It’s no surprise that when a person gets a diagnosis of heart disease, cancer or some other life-limiting or life-threatening physical ailment, they become anxious or depressed. But the reverse can also be true: Undue anxiety or depression can foster the development of a serious physical disease, and even impede the ability to withstand or recover from one. The potential consequences are particularly timely, as the ongoing stress and disruptions of the pandemic continue to take a toll on mental health.

The human organism does not recognize the medical profession’s artificial separation of mental and physical ills. Rather, mind and body form a two-way street. What happens inside a person’s head can have damaging effects throughout the body, as well as the other way around. An untreated mental illness can significantly increase the risk of becoming physically ill, and physical disorders may result in behaviors that make mental conditions worse.

In studies that tracked how patients with breast cancer fared, for example, Dr. David Spiegel and his colleagues at Stanford University School of Medicine showed decades ago that women whose depression was easing lived longer than those whose depression was getting worse. His research and other studies have clearly shown that “the brain is intimately connected to the body and the body to the brain,” Dr. Spiegel said in an interview. “The body tends to react to mental stress as if it was a physical stress.”

Despite such evidence, he and other experts say, chronic emotional distress is too often overlooked by doctors. Commonly, a physician will prescribe a therapy for physical ailments like heart disease or diabetes, only to wonder why some patients get worse instead of better.

Many people are reluctant to seek treatment for emotional ills. Some people with anxiety or depression may fear being stigmatized, even if they recognize they have a serious psychological problem. Many attempt to self-treat their emotional distress by adopting behaviors like drinking too much or abusing drugs, which only adds insult to their pre-existing injury.

And sometimes, family and friends inadvertently reinforce a person’s denial of mental distress by labeling it as “that’s just the way he is” and do nothing to encourage them to seek professional help.

How common are anxiety and depression?

Anxiety disorders affect nearly 20 percent of American adults. That means millions are beset by an overabundance of the fight-or-flight response that primes the body for action. When you’re stressed, the brain responds by prompting the release of cortisol, nature’s built-in alarm system. It evolved to help animals facing physical threats by increasing respiration, raising the heart rate and redirecting blood flow from abdominal organs to muscles that assist in confronting or escaping danger.

These protective actions stem from the neurotransmitters epinephrine and norepinephrine, which stimulate the sympathetic nervous system and put the body on high alert. But when they are invoked too often and indiscriminately, the chronic overstimulation can result in all manner of physical ills, including digestive symptoms like indigestion, cramps, diarrhea or constipation, and an increased risk of heart attack or stroke.

Depression, while less common than chronic anxiety, can have even more devastating effects on physical health. While it’s normal to feel depressed from time to time, more than 6 percent of adults have such persistent feelings of depression that it disrupts personal relationships, interferes with work and play, and impairs their ability to cope with the challenges of daily life. Persistent depression can also exacerbate a person’s perception of pain and increase their chances of developing chronic pain.

“Depression diminishes a person’s capacity to analyze and respond rationally to stress,” Dr. Spiegel said. “They end up on a vicious cycle with limited capacity to get out of a negative mental state.”

Potentially making matters worse, undue anxiety and depression often coexist, leaving people vulnerable to a panoply of physical ailments and an inability to adopt and stick with needed therapy.

A study of 1,204 elderly Korean men and women initially evaluated for depression and anxiety found that two years later, these emotional disorders increased their risk of physical disorders and disability. Anxiety alone was linked with heart disease, depression alone was linked with asthma, and the two together were linked with eyesight problems, persistent cough, asthma, hypertension, heart disease and gastrointestinal problems.

Treatment can counter emotional tolls

Although persistent anxiety and depression are highly treatable with medications, cognitive behavioral therapy and talk therapy, without treatment these conditions tend to get worse. According to Dr. John Frownfelter, treatment for any condition works better when doctors understand “the pressures patients face that affect their behavior and result in clinical harm.”

Dr. Frownfelter is an internist and chief medical officer of a start-up called Jvion. The organization uses artificial intelligence to identify not just medical factors but psychological, social and behavioral ones as well that can impact the effectiveness of treatment on patients’ health. Its aim is to foster more holistic approaches to treatment that address the whole patient, body and mind combined.

The analyses used by Jvion, a Hindi word meaning life-giving, could alert a doctor when underlying depression might be hindering the effectiveness of prescribed treatments for another condition. For example, patients being treated for diabetes who are feeling hopeless may fail to improve because they take their prescribed medication only sporadically and don’t follow a proper diet, Dr. Frownfelter said.

“We often talk about depression as a complication of chronic illness,” Dr. Frownfelter wrote in Medpage Today in July. “But what we don’t talk about enough is how depression can lead to chronic disease. Patients with depression may not have the motivation to exercise regularly or cook healthy meals. Many also have trouble getting adequate sleep.”

Some changes to medical care during the pandemic have greatly increased patient access to depression and anxiety treatment. The expansion of telehealth has enabled patients to access treatment by psychotherapists who may be as far as a continent away.

Patients may also be able to treat themselves without the direct help of a therapist. For example, Dr. Spiegel and his co-workers created an app called Reveri that teaches people self-hypnosis techniques designed to help reduce stress and anxiety, improve sleep, reduce pain and suppress or quit smoking.

Improving sleep is especially helpful, Dr. Spiegel said, because “it enhances a person’s ability to regulate the stress response system and not get stuck in a mental rut.” Data demonstrating the effectiveness of the Reveri app has been collected but not yet published, he said.

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Pfizer, Moderna vaccines aren’t the same; study finds antibody differences

Koscher and his colleagues received permission last year to access and broadcast from a Canadian satellite known as Anik F1R, launched to support Canadian broadcasters in 2005 and designed for 15 years of use. The satellite's coverage extends below the US southern border and out to Hawaii and the easternmost part of Russia. The satellite will move to its graveyard orbit soon, and nearly all other services that use it have already migrated to a new satellite. But while Anik F1R still had its uplink license and transponder slot lease, Koscher had the opportunity to take over and broadcast to the northern hemisphere.

“My favorite thing was actually seeing it work!” Koscher tells WIRED.  “It's kind of unreal to go from making a video stream to having it broadcast across all of North America.”

Koscher and his colleagues from the Shadytel telecommunications and embedded device hacking group broadcast a livestream from another security conference, ToorCon San Diego, in October. At ShmooCon last week, he explained the tools they used to turn an unidentified commercial uplink facility (a station with a special powered dish to communicate with satellites) into a command center for broadcasting from the satellite.

In this case, the researchers had permission to access both the uplink facility and the satellite, but the experiment highlights the interesting gray area when a defunct satellite is not being used but has not yet moved father away from Earth to its final resting orbit. 

“Technically, there are no controls on this satellite or most satellites—if you can generate a strong enough signal to make it there, the satellite will send it back down to the Earth,” Koscher explains. “People would need a big dish and a powerful amplifier and knowledge of what they were doing. And if a satellite were fully utilized, they would need to overpower whoever else was using that particular transponder spot or frequency.”

In other words, whoever yells loudest into a (geosynchronous orbiting) microphone will have their voice amplified the most, but it's difficult to overpower established broadcasting giants—although not unprecedented. In 1986, for example, a hacker who called himself Captain Midnight broke into an HBO broadcast of The Falcon and the Snowman by hijacking the Galaxy 1 satellite signal.

More recently, hackers have taken advantage of underutilized satellites for their own purposes. In 2009, Brazilian Federal Police arrested 39 suspects on suspicion of  hijacking US Navy satellites using high-powered antennas and other ad hoc gear for their own CB (citizens band) short-distance radio communications.

Beyond independent hackers, Koscher points out that the lack of authentication and controls on satellites could allow countries to hijack each others' equipment. “One implication is that states who want to broadcast propaganda could do it without launching their own satellite, they could use another satellite if they have the ground equipment,” he says.

Ang Cui, an embedded device security researcher who launched the NyanSat open source ground station project in 2020, notes that decommissioned satellites aren’t the only ones that could be hijacked. “One could take over even newish satellites,” he says. But thinking about those in the end-of-life stages, he adds, “There definitely are things that are just hanging out up there.”

One of Koscher's colleagues, who goes by the hacker name Falcon, notes that from a pluralistic, freedom-of-information perspective, satellite uplink capabilities could be reimagined as plentiful and available rather than exclusive and scarce. “What if this was just a universal utility,” Falcon says with a faraway look.

Researchers Used a Decommissioned Satellite to Broadcast Hacker TV

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A cosmic mystery: Astronomers capture dying star blowing smoke rings

The study, led by U-M researcher Helen Levy, examined the probability that older adults will experience food insufficiency, or not having enough to eat, at some point over a long time period—about 20 years. She found the likelihood of food insufficiency over a longer period of time was about three times as high—22% compared to 8%—as any single point in time. The study was published in the journal Applied Economic Perspective Policy.

"The extent of food-related hardship among seniors in any given year is well documented. In 2019, 2.8% of Americans ages 60 and older reported experiencing food insufficiency. From some perspectives, this is a relatively small fraction," said Levy, a research professor in the Survey Research Center at the U-M Institute for Social Research. "But it still means more than 2 million seniors did not have enough food, and the prevalence of hardship over a longer time period will almost certainly be greater."

To date, there is no research on how many older adults experience food insufficiency over a long period of time, said Levy, also a research professor at the Ford School of Public Policy and the School of Public Health. To address this, Levy examined a 20-year period in an older adult's life, using data from the Health and Retirement Study, a longitudinal panel study of older Americans conducted by the Survey Research Center at ISR with funding from the National Institute on Aging and the Social Security Administration.

The Health and Retirement Study measures food insufficiency with a yes or no question. New respondents are asked, "In the last two years, have you always had enough money to buy the food you need?" Participants who have been previously included in a survey wave are asked the same question covering the period of time since the previous wave. For this study, Levy focused on individuals born between 1936 and 1953.

The rate of food insufficiency is particularly high for certain subgroups over the 20-year window of their 60s and 70s. Nearly 40% of those without a high school degree, 37.5% of non-Hispanic Black respondents and nearly 44% of those in poor health at baseline will experience food insufficiency during that time period.

But even those who have low rates of food insufficiency at baseline—the year they first responded to the panel survey—can have higher rates of food insufficiency in the longer term, Levy said. The baseline rate of food insufficiency for college graduates is 3.9%, for example, but 13.2% of this group will experience insufficiency during the 20-year window. Just 3.9% of those in excellent health at baseline experience food insufficiency, but 17% will experience it in the longer term.

"These results suggest that food insufficiency is not concentrated among a small group of persistently disadvantaged elderly, but is instead a surprisingly common feature of later life, affecting 1 in 5 Americans at some point in their 60s and 70s," Levy said.

Levy also found that food insufficiency is a transient experience for many seniors. About half of those who report food insufficiency at some point during an 8-year period report it only once, while about one-fifth of those with any food insufficiency experience it more than half the time.

While previous research shows that income is a major predictor of food-related hardship, most older adults who experience food hardship aren't poor, Levy said.

"It could be that short and long spells of hardship arise for different reasons," she said. "For example, if you can't get enough work hours and your income dips, you might have a brief period of food insufficiency. But if the problem is a chronic health condition, they may face persistent hardship—even with benefits like SSI or SNAP."

Levy said future research should use longitudinal data to explore the dynamics of food-related hardships, and whether they have consequences for the health of older adults.

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The researchers have developed simplified synthetic versions of the molecule teixobactin, used by producer bacteria to kill other bacteria in soil.

They have developed and tested a unique library of synthetic versions of the "game changing" antibiotic, optimizing key features of the drug to enhance its efficacy and safety, plus enabling it to be inexpensively produced at scale.

Pioneering research

Lead researcher Dr. Ishwar Singh said: "Introducing synthetic diversity to generate the library of synthetic teixobactins is important to overcome the high failure rates associated with the next stages of drug development."

This work builds upon pioneering research by Dr. Singh, an expert in antimicrobial drug discovery and development and medicinal chemistry at Liverpool's Centre of Excellence in Infectious Diseases Research (CEIDR). The latest results were achieved as part of a Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) project, funded by the Department of Health and Social Care. This program was delivered by Innovate UK on behalf of DHSC, with a goal of creating five lead compounds for future use in the battle against antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

The research has proved that simplified synthetic teixobactins kill a wide range of bacteria taken from human patients, where current antibiotics fail. They also successfully eradicated MRSA in mice and were found to accumulate at sites of infection for up to 24 hours in amounts greater than that required to kill superbugs.

This suggests that in future, patients may be treated with just one dose of teixobactin per day for systemic life-threatening resistant bacterial infections. The synthetic teixobactins have been found to be robust and stable at room temperature for years thus do not need a cold chain for distribution and storage, thus have potential to tackle resistant bacterial infections in different clinical settings globally.

Improving efficacy and safety

Dr. Singh has also identified designs and method for cheaply "scaling up" viable antibiotics based on natural teixobactin—previously prohibitively expensive. By swapping out certain amino acids on the molecule for low cost, commercially available alternatives, the cost of materials has been reduced by over 2,000 times, while improving efficacy and safety. The researchers developed highly efficient solid phase synthesis using automation, speeding up a single coupling step from 30 hours to just 10 minutes in high yields.

Furthermore, the team have optimized preparation to scale up yield from 30mg to 1g scale and beyond. The process can now be adapted for application up to 1kg scale or higher, simply by increasing the scale and size of the reactor. Scalability is an important key building block for commercial production to realize the therapeutic potential of synthetic teixobactins.

'Last line of defense' against superbugs

Dr. Singh said: "Our motivation is to adapt the natural teixobactin molecule and make it suitable for human use. This is a journey. Through this project we have demonstrated that we can make synthetic molecules at low cost and with high safety, which potently kills the resistant bacteria in mice. The advantage of synthetic diversity is that we can select or deselect properties and modify molecules to impact potency and other desirable drug-like qualities. Our ultimate goal is to have a number of viable drugs from our modular synthetic teixobactin platform which can be used as a 'last line of defense' against superbugs to save lives currently lost due to AMR.

"Our next steps will be to focus upon the central benefit of synthetic teixobactin to overcome multi-drug resistant bacteria in different disease models, scale up process, followed by safety testing, which if successful, could potentially be used in hospitals as an investigational new medicine and be turned into a drug fit for treating resistant bacterial infections in humans globally. We will work with colleagues from CEIDR which have expertise in antimicrobials from drug discovery to clinic, to develop synthetic teixobactins into viable drugs."

Professor William Hope, director of CEIDR, said: "New antibiotics are urgently needed to address unmet medical needs related to multiple and extremely drug resistant bacteria. Infections due to these superbugs compromise the treatment outcomes for many patients. The teixobactins have the potential to provide valuable new therapeutic options for patients throughout the UK and globally."

Forefront of scientific advancements

Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid said: "It is fantastic to see such innovative work like this happening in the UK—another clear example of this country being at the forefront of scientific advancements which can benefit people across the world.

"The rising tide of antimicrobial resistance is threatening the future of modern medicine, with currently treatable infections becoming untreatable and routine medical procedures such as cesarean sections becoming far less safe.

"Continuing to develop new drugs is critical in ensuring this risk does not become reality and that is why these results are so encouraging."

'Delighted' with results

Dr. Phil Packer, Innovation lead for AMR and vaccines at Innovate UK said: "This has been an excellent project and we sincerely hope this work will continue and go much further. There is lots of development going on in the AMR space, however much of it is focused on modifying existing classes of molecules. This is useful in the short term, but these scaffold molecules are already familiar to bacteria, making resistance development against these molecules more likely. There is a lack in the AMR pipeline for new classes of antibiotics, which is where this project fits in.

"We are delighted with results, which have validated synthetic teixobactin's promise to tackle resistant bacterial infections when currently used antibiotics fails. We look forward to following this journey closely in future."

An AMR review commissioned by the UK government has predicted that by 2050 an additional 10 million people will succumb to drug resistant infections each year. Furthermore, COVID-19 is thought to be accelerating the global threat of antimicrobial resistance as many infected patients admitted to hospital receive antibiotics to keep secondary bacterial infections in check. Greater use of antibiotics leads to increase in bacterial resistance. The development of new antibiotics which can be used as a last resort when other drugs are ineffective is therefore a crucial area of study for healthcare researchers around the world.

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The assessment of data from 157 studies of cognitive behavioral therapy led by University of Manchester and University of South Wales scientists is published today in the British Journal of Psychiatry.

The study compared CBT alone and with one or two additional components such as social skills training, assertiveness training, relaxation techniques and psychoeducation.

All three protocols, they found, reduced depressive symptoms by a substantial 8.44 points on the Beck Depression Inventory, a 21 item self-reporting scale which measures symptoms of depression.

However only CBT with one or two additional components sustained the effects in the long-term, reducing depression to at least 5 or 8 points respectively after 6 months when compared to CBT alone.

In addition, CBT given with two extra components was more effective when delivered by non-mental health specialists such as nurses.

Age also appeared to affect the effectiveness of CBT: participants younger than 30 and younger than 59 responded better to CBT with two or one extra components respectively.

And the analyses also demonstrated that participants from lower socio-economic status responded better to CBT with two or one extra components.

Lead author Dr. Ioannis Angelakis said: "Depression is the most common mental health condition with more than 264 million people being affected worldwide.

"It impacts negatively on people's quality of life and is very costly for health and care systems, so understanding how to best to treat it is paramount.

"Our study shows that CBT can significantly reduce depression after treatment, however when given with one or two extra components it becomes effective in the long term."

He added: "When enhanced CBT is given to younger people, policy makers should also focus on supporting non mental health professionals in giving this extra help.

"A nurse providing enhancements may also play the role of the main care coordinator for wider range of health problems.

"That could explain why enhanced CBT seems more effective when they deliver it however more research is needed to understand this more fully."

Source

We’ve seen an increased demand for support, suggesting more people are trying to cut back or quit.

There are so many options for cutting back or quitting alcohol it’s hard to know what will be most effective.

What works depends on how much you drink

Most people successfully quit or cut back their alcohol consumption on their own.

People who drink more frequently are much more likely to have symptoms of dependence and might find it more difficult.

• You might be dependent if:
• you can’t easily go a day without drinking alcohol, or find it hard to cut back
• a lot of your social activities include or are based around drinking
• you find yourself thinking about or wanting alcohol a lot
• you find it difficult to control the amount you drink once you start
• you need to drink a lot to feel the effects
• you experience withdrawal symptoms, even mild ones, such as feeling unwell or a slight shaking in your hands when you go a day or two without alcohol.

If all of your social activities revolve around alcohol, this could be a sign of dependence. Shutterstock

The more of these signs you have and the more severe they are, the more dependent you’re likely to be. You can check your risk of dependence here.

If you have a mild dependence on alcohol, you may be able to cut back on your own. But if you are moderately dependent, you may need to get some kind of support.

If you are severely dependent, you should seek medical advice before you make any change to your drinking because stopping suddenly can cause severe health problems, including seizures and even death in some people.

For people who are severely dependent, the usual recommendation is to take a permanent or temporary break from alcohol. It may take six months to a year or more before you are able to start drinking again. Some people find it’s better for them not to drink again at all. With severe dependence, there’s a high risk of quickly going back to heavy drinking if you just try to cut back.

If you experience any symptoms of dependence, once you stop or cut back your drinking, you might need specialist treatment or ongoing support to prevent going back to heavy drinking.

‘Cold turkey’ or reduction?

If you’re not dependent, you should be able to either reduce the quantity or frequency of drinking or quit altogether. You may do this on your own or choose to get some support. If one method doesn’t work, try a different way.

If you experience mild to moderate dependence, every time you have a drink it can become a trigger to drink more. So it’s sometimes easier to increase drink-free days, rather than reducing the quantity on drinking days, or to quit altogether for a period of time.

If you think you have an alcohol dependence, speak to your GP. Shutterstock

People who are severely dependent usually require some kind of withdrawal support to stop drinking. It is usually better to stop altogether (“cold turkey”) as long as you have medical support. You can undertake withdrawal treatment in a hospital, at home with the help of a GP or nurse, or via telehealth. Alcohol withdrawal typically lasts about five to seven days.

Zero-alcohol drinks

Zero-alcohol drinks are alcoholic drinks with the alcohol removed but which retain a taste similar to the alcoholic version. There is now a huge variety of options for spirits, beer and wine.

If you are not dependent but are trying to reduce your alcohol intake for health or other reasons, these can be a good option. By replacing some or all of your usual alcoholic drinks with zero-alcohol drinks, you can still enjoy the social aspects of drinking without the health risks of alcohol.

If you are dependent on alcohol, the smell and taste of zero-alcohol drinks can act as a trigger for drinking alcohol. They might make it more difficult to make permanent changes to your drinking.

Treatment apps and online support

A range of computerised, web-based, and mobile apps have been developed to support people cutting back or quitting alcohol. They have shown promising results in early trials. The benefit of these apps is accessibility, but the outcomes are modest and they seem to work best in conjunction with professional support.

Hello Sunday Morning’s Daybreak program is a large online alcohol support community, accessed through a mobile and desktop app. It’s designed for moderate drinkers who want to cut back or quit. Early research suggests it’s effective in reducing drinking, as well as improving psychological well-being and quality of life.

Some previously face-to-face support groups like SMART Recovery and Alcoholics Anonymous have moved online, which has increased accessibility. These are typically more suited to people who are dependent on alcohol.

Psychological interventions

Brief interventions

As little as five minutes of advice from a GP can reduce alcohol consumption by 30%, especially for people who are in the mild to moderate dependence category. So it’s worth chatting to your doctor if you need a little help getting started.

Counselling and psychological therapy

The main treatment type to help with alcohol issues is counselling. Sessions are usually once a week with a qualified professional, such as a psychologist. Sometimes they are delivered in group settings. Counselling is suitable for any level of drinker who is trying to make changes.

Some of the main evidence-based counselling treatments in Australia are behavioural and cognitive therapies, such as cognitive behavioural therapy and mindfulness-based relapse prevention. These types of treatments have been shown to be at least as effective as medication

Group programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous don’t have much research supporting their effectiveness. Shutterstock

Intensive group programs

A number of more intensive group programs are suited to people who are dependent on alcohol or who are having significant problems, including:

• residential rehabilitation, which is usually for people who have tried other treatments unsuccessfully or who may be unsuitable for non-residential treatment because their home life is not supportive of making changes. It has been shown to be effective in increasing abstinence in dependent drinkers
• day programs, which are similar to residential rehabilitation programs but participants live at home and go in each day. These are a relatively new treatment type and there is limited good quality research on their outcomes.

Medication

A number of medications can help people who are moderately to severely dependent on alcohol. They tend to work best in conjunction with counselling.

• disulfiram is an older medication that works on the alcohol metabolism system and induces nausea and vomiting if alcohol is taken at the same time
• acamprosate can help prevent relapse in people who have already been through withdrawal
• naltrexone reduces cravings in heavy drinkers.

Self-help groups

Alcoholics Anonymous’s 12-step movement has a long history dating back to the 1930s, when there was very little available in the way of real alcohol treatment. There is relatively little research on AA and much of that has been conducted from within the organisation. The known outcomes are modest – the success rate is estimated to be around 10% and the dropout rate appears high.

AA can be helpful for some people and also provides a very well-established peer support network if you need support. It seems to be more effective in conjunction with professional treatment.

There are many options if you are trying to reduce your drinking and no single strategy works for everyone. The best approach is to start with something that looks appealing and feasible to get the outcomes you are looking for. If that’s not effective, try something else or seek professional help.

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Fungus foils invading hordes of crazy ants, and that’s great for Texas

"Patients who have heart failure experience a poorer quality of life compared to their peers, with high levels of depression, anxiety and spiritual distress," said Rachel S. Tobin, MD, resident in Internal Medicine at Duke University Hospital, and lead author of the study. "Contributing to diminished quality of life is the fact that heart failure, unlike many other chronic diseases, is very unpredictable and can lead to hopelessness, isolation and altered self-image."

The American College of Cardiology and other major cardiovascular societies recommend palliative care for heart failure patients.

Spirituality is a core domain of palliative care, with the goal of identifying and addressing spiritual concerns and providing patients with appropriate spiritual and religious resources. However, limited research has been conducted on spirituality's impact on patients with heart failure, and there are no known tools designed to measure it.

According to the researchers, spirituality is hard to define, but they reference several definitions that describe spirituality as how individuals find meaning and purpose in life, which can be separate from religious beliefs.

For instance, the Institute of Medicine defines spirituality as "the needs and expectations which humans have to find meaning, purpose and value in their life. Such needs can be specifically religious, but even people who have no religious faith or are not members of an organized religion have belief systems that give their lives meaning and purpose."

Researchers conducted a review of 47 articles in order to explore the current knowledge of spirituality in heart failure patients; describe associations between spirituality and quality of life, as well as patient outcomes; and propose clinical applications and future directions for spirituality in this population. There were approximately 10 varying instruments used to measure spirituality, some simple, others complex. Key data examined include:

• In the Palliative Care in Heart Failure (PAL-HF) trial, spiritual well-being improved in patients randomized to a palliative care intervention compared to usual care as evaluated by FACIT-Sp. The FICA spiritual history tool was also used to gather information on spirituality.

• Patients randomized to palliative care had increased quality of life as measured by Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire (KCCQ) and Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Palliative Care (FACIT-Pal). They were also found to have lower levels of anxiety and depression.

• Another study found that after a 12-week mail-based psychosocial intervention, patients completing the intervention had higher quality of life as measured by KCCQ, as well as less depression and searching for meaning. Out of the 33 patients included, 85.7% felt that the intervention was worthwhile. In a pilot study, spiritual counseling was associated with improved quality of life, although there was no control group to determine if the effect was significant.

"The literature suggests not only can spirituality improve quality of life for the patient, it can help support caregivers and potentially help heart failure patients from needing to be readmitted to the hospital," Tobin said. "What we have suggested and are now doing is developing a spirituality screening tool, similar to ones used to screen for depression. This can be used to identify heart failure patients in palliative care who are at risk for spiritual distress. However, this is just a start. More research needs to be done."

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But what we perceive can be influenced by a great many things, and a strange new experiment shows just how easily our perceptions can be manipulated by our own expectations and assumptions.

In a new study, scientists discovered a "novel perceptual illusion" that effectively reorders the perceived temporal order of events in a sequence.

"Is our perception of time and temporal order a faithful reflection of what happens in the world (or at least what arrives at our retina) or can seemingly higher-level expectations, such as [presumed] causality, affect the order in which we experience events occurring?"

writes a team of researchers led by first author and experimental psychologist Christos Bechlivanidis from University College London.

In a series of experiments, the researchers showed over 600 participants an animation in which a seemingly simple 'ABC' chain of events appears to take place: an A square collides with a B square, which in turn collides with a C square.

In truth, however, the animation really showed the C square beginning to move before the B square collided with it (called 'ACB'), and even slightly – 150 milliseconds – before the B square begins to move from its collision with A.

In a previous study co-authored by Bechlivanidis, researchers found that when the ACB animation is shown, many people remember the chain of events as ABC, with their perception of temporal order seemingly being influenced by their expectations of causality.

"Initially we became interested in backwards causation, and whether, under some circumstances, people can perceive causes happening after their effects," Bechlivanidis told PsyPost.

"After running a few experiments, we quickly realized that the expectation of a temporal direction (that causes precede their effects) is so strong that even if we reverse the order, people insist to have seen the causes happening first."

One explanation for the phenomenon is that people may be misremembering what occurred when they later retrieve the memory after seeing the chain of events – what researchers labelled the 'memory hypothesis'.

Indication of flash timing based on perception of the sequence. (Bechlivanidis et al., Psychological Science, 2022)

In the new experiments, Bechlivanidis and his team again showed participants the ACB animation, but this time they recorded the participants' responses in real-time, asking them to indicate the moments when B and C begin to move by synchronizing their timing with a brief flash that appeared on the screen.

If the memory hypothesis were correct, as per the figure above, participants would indicate the timing accurately in real-time.

However, despite repeated viewings, the experiment showed people actually perceiving B moving earlier than it really did, while C appeared to move later.

"When watching the reordered ACB sequence, participants actually perceive B happening earlier and C happening later, at timings that in total approach the temporal displacement necessary to turn the ACB sequence into the causal ABC one," the researchers explain in their paper.

"Displacements of such magnitude were not observed when one of the objects was hidden. It is thus the illusory causal context that produces the online reversal of temporal order."

While there's much we still don't fully understand about this perceptual illusion, the researchers say our ability to objectively perceive the timing of a signal is superseded by inferences we make regarding the timing of its transmission, irrespective of the nature of the signals.

In this case, the domino-like physics of an assumed ABC chain of events overrides our ability to perceive what's really happening, with strong causal expectations overpowering incoming information from a visual signal.

As for how deep the illusion goes remains to be seen, but it's just the latest evidence of the surprising ways our perception is affected, as the brain tries to juggle the non-stop flood of visual information we're bombarded with.

The findings are reported in Psychological Science.

Source

But no climate fix is ever that simple. Multiple studies have found that tree-planting campaigns don’t always deliver the benefits they promise. If newly planted forests aren’t properly cared for and monitored, the trees can die and any carbon they stored will be released back into the atmosphere. Sometimes there aren’t enough seedlings for these programs in the first place. The mass enthusiasm for tree-planting programs has sparked a partial backlash, with scientists arguing that planting trees is important, sure, but we shouldn’t kid ourselves that it’s a silver bullet for the vast challenges of the climate crisis.

Other scientists point to a different problem with mass tree-planting efforts: the trees themselves. What if existing trees just aren’t good enough at storing carbon? If scientists could find a way to increase trees’ carbon-sucking potential, we’d be unlocking more cost-effective carbon capture with every tree planted. A better tree could be what we've been waiting for. We just have to make it.

Maddie Hall, CEO and founder of the climate startup Living Carbon, is looking for the Tesla of trees. “Not just a tree that’s better for the environment, but a tree that grows faster and might be able to survive or perform better in climates than traditional varieties,” she says. “A lot of that comes down to how you could improve the growth rate and also carbon-capture potential of trees.”

The way that plants take carbon dioxide and sunlight and turn them into living material is nothing short of miraculous, a biological alchemy that supports almost all life on Earth. But this process—photosynthesis—is also woefully inefficient. Only a tiny fraction of sunlight that falls on leaves actually gets turned into living material—in the case of most plants around 95 percent of all that energy is wasted. For plant scientists like Amanda Cavanagh at the University of Essex, UK, this waste looks like an opportunity. If she can find a way to get plants to cut out some of this inefficiency, trees might put that energy into growth instead. Like most researchers in this area, Cavanagh’s focus is on faster-growing crops that can feed more people, but the same approach could be a boon for pulling carbon from the atmosphere, too. Photosynthesis-enhanced trees should be quicker at turning atmospheric carbon into trunks, leaves, and roots. That’s the theory, at least.

In 2019, Cavanagh and her colleagues published a paper in Science that strongly suggested they were on to something. By inserting a couple of new genes into tobacco plants, the scientists could get them to recycle a waste product of photosynthesis back into a molecule the plant could use to grow. Once they were planted, Cavanagh’s edited tobacco plants were 40 percent more productive than their non-edited equivalents. (Tobacco plants are the lab rats of the plant science world—the ultimate goal is to repeat this trick with crops like wheat or soy.)

Now a Californian startup has taken the same approach, but this time with poplar trees. In a non-peer-reviewed preprint first posted on February 19, scientists at Living Carbon claimed that by inserting new genes into poplar trees, they can make the plants grow 53 percent more quickly than their non-edited equivalents. Both sets of trees were grown under controlled conditions that differ significantly from the ones the plants would face in the wild, but Hall hopes that the edited trees will supercharge tree-planting plans by drawing down atmospheric carbon more quickly.

“Our belief is that climate change is a problem of relative rates. And also it’s one that we can’t just solve with man-made, intensely managed human processes like direct air capture,” she says. (Direct air capture means building devices that could scrub atmospheric carbon dioxide—or others that might trap methane—but by one recent estimate it could take 10,000 such machines to make a difference in CO₂ levels.) Living Carbon’s eventual business model will be to plant its genetically engineered trees on land leased from private landowners, then give those landowners a share of the money earned by selling carbon credits earned against the growth of the trees.

When most plants photosynthesize, they produce a toxic byproduct called phosphoglycolate, which they then have to use energy to break down—a process called photorespiration. Living Carbon’s edited trees have extra genes from algae and pumpkin that help the plant use less energy to break it down, as well as recycling some of the sugars created by this process. This pathway was an obvious target for making plants more efficient, says Yumin Tao, Living Carbon’s VP of biotechnology. “You channel that byproduct into energy and nutrients for plant growth,” says Tao. And more plant growth means more carbon captured.

Tao and his colleagues grew the genetically engineered poplars for 21 weeks in a lab before harvesting and weighing them to see how much biomass they’d accumulated. The best-performing seedling had 53 percent more above-ground biomass than non-edited plants. Tests also showed that the edited plants took up more carbon than their non-edited cousins, an indication that these plants had a higher rate of photosynthesis.

“It’s a really exciting first step,” says Cavanagh, who was not involved in Living Carbon’s research. But she cautions that we don’t know whether these trees will be better at storing carbon in the long run. Living Carbon’s poplars were harvested after only five months, but in the wild the trees can live for more than 50 years. Only further studies will reveal whether the edited trees will continue to grow quickly as they mature. Their growth rate might slow, or they might become so unhealthy that they fall over and release all that carbon back into the atmosphere when they rot. “Is the effect you see at the seedling phase the same at different stages of maturity, or does the plant fight back?” asks Cavanagh.

Soon this will be put to the test. Living Carbon has already planted 468 of its photosynthesis-enhanced trees in central Oregon, part of a field trial it’s running with Oregon State University. The company will analyze how quickly the trees grow over longer periods of time and also how they perform in different environments. It has also secured agreements to plant poplars created using a slightly different technique on around 3,500 acres of private land in the US, with the first plantings scheduled to start in late 2022, according to Hall.

But releasing genetically engineered trees into the wild is still controversial. Researchers at the State University of New York have engineered a chestnut tree that is resistant to a blight that has ravaged the species in the US, but the tree has still not been approved by the Department of Agriculture. Only two genetically engineered trees have been approved in the US: varieties of virus-resistant papaya and plum trees. The trees that Living Carbon is currently working with don’t produce pollen, which should limit the problem of genetic material from the edited plants mixing with wild trees.

But some plant scientists think there’s a simpler path to making a better tree: cultivating them the old-fashioned way. Humans have been breeding better crops for thousands of years, says Richard Buggs, an evolutionary biologist who studies plant health at Kew Gardens in London. “I’m totally in agreement with that core premise that we need trees that are more productive and fix carbon faster. I just think there are fantastic opportunities to do that by variation that already exists in nature,” says Buggs. Typically, cultivation means either hybridizing two varieties through cross-pollination—fertilizing the flowers of one tree with the pollen of another—or reinforcing a desirable trait within a species by self-pollinating a plant with that trait.

Rather than meddling with something as fundamental as photosynthesis, Bugg suggests there are other traits that might be useful for making more efficient trees. “There are actually lots of things that are already happening in nature that affect the growth of a tree that we could be working with,” he says, like variation in how quickly trees grow, how straight their trunks are, and when they drop their leaves. All would affect their suitability for carbon capture, Bugg says. “I would prefer that kind of approach. I think it’s more realistic, and you’re much more likely to end up with a tree that will survive and fix carbon in the long term in natural environments.”

Hall doesn’t actually envisage giant public forests of genetically engineered trees. She says that most of the time her trees will eventually be cut down for timber—another reason to find a way to speed up their growth. Other companies are interested in fast-growing trees too: In 2015 the Brazilian government approved a eucalyptus tree engineered by a paper-producing firm to produce 20 percent more wood than conventional trees.

The debate between natural breeding and genetic engineering has been bubbling along in the agricultural world for more than half a century. Now a similar conversation is starting to play out when it comes to forestry. We might be able to cultivate more productive trees, but that approach could take decades. We might not have that kind of time, Cavanagh says. “Thirty years will be the end of my career,” she says. “I would like to know I’ve done everything I can to make sure that there are solutions if things look as bad as the worst-case projections.”

A Bold Idea to Stall the Climate Crisis—by Building Better Trees

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For the week of Jan. 8, as cases of the highly contagious variant surged, the rate of COVID-related deaths among people who had the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) shot was more than five in 100,000, according to figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That compared with about two deaths per 100,000 among those who received the Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccines, CBS News reported.

But death rates among those with the J&J shot—which is not an mRNA vaccine—were still much lower than those among unvaccinated Americans. Their death rate was close to 20 per 100,000.

Among people who received booster shots, those initially vaccinated with the J&J vaccine had higher COVID-19 death rates than those who started with doses of Pfizer or Moderna, CBS News reported.

But breakthrough infections among J&J vaccine recipients were similar or lower compared to the others, according to CDC data released as federal officials consider a new round of booster shots.

"The CDC data adds to the growing body of evidence indicating the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine provides durable protection against breakthrough infection and hospitalization," J&J spokesman Jake Sargent said in a written statement.

The data were not adjusted for a number of factors that can affect direct comparisons between different groups of vaccinated people, including length of time since vaccination and underlying health problems, CBS News reported.

"The J&J vaccine is different in that, initially the antibody responses are quite a bit lower than the mRNA vaccines. But those responses actually are maintained very well over time, even increase a little bit," Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, told CBS News.

For now, only immunocompromised recipients of the J&J shot are eligible to receive a third shot. But that could change soon. Both Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech are seeking to roll out additional booster shots that would include recipients of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration plans to discuss additional boosters next month.

"Given the parallel protection that we have seen with J&J that is boosted or the mRNAs that are boosted, as well as the mix and match, which have been done, where you can vaccinate with one platform and boost with the other, we have found very interestingly that it works quite well," the president's chief medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, told reporters in January.

Source

Patients with co-infection of SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, and influenza viruses were over four times more likely to require ventilation support and 2.4 times more likely to die than if they only had COVID-19, experts found.

Researchers say the findings show the need for greater flu testing of COVID-19 patients in hospital and highlight the importance of full vaccination against both COVID-19 and the flu.

The team from the University of Edinburgh, University of Liverpool, Leiden University and Imperial College London, made the findings in a study of more than 305,000 hospitalized patients with COVID-19.

The research—delivered as part of the International Severe Acute Respiratory and emerging Infection Consortium's (ISARIC) Coronavirus Clinical Characterisation Consortium—is the largest ever study of people with COVID-19 and other endemic respiratory viruses.

ISARIC's study was set up in 2013 in readiness for a pandemic such as this.

The team looked at the data of adults who had been hospitalized with COVID-19 in the UK between 6 February 2020 and 8 December 2021.

Test results for respiratory viral co-infections were recorded for 6965 patients with COVID-19. Some 227 of these also had the influenza virus, and they experienced significantly more severe outcomes.

Dr. Maaike Swets, Ph.D. student at the University of Edinburgh and Leiden University, said: "In the last two years we have frequently witnessed patients with COVID-19 become severely ill, at times leading to an ICU admission and the employment of an artificial ventilator to help with breathing. That an influenza infection could give rise to a similar situation was already known, but less was understood about the outcomes of a double infection of SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory viruses."

Professor Kenneth Baillie, Professor of Experimental Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, said: "We found that the combination of COVID-19 and flu viruses is particularly dangerous. This will be important as many countries decrease the use of social distancing and containment measures. We expect that COVID-19 will circulate with flu, increasing the chance of co-infections. That is why we should change our testing strategy for COVID-19 patients in hospital and test for flu much more widely."

Professor Calum Semple, Professor of Outbreak Medicine and Child Health at the University of Liverpool, said: "We are seeing a rise in the usual seasonal respiratory viruses as people return to normal mixing. So, we can expect flu to be circulating alongside COVID-19 this winter. We were surprised that the risk of death more than doubled when people were infected by both flu and COVID-19 viruses. It is now very important that people get fully vaccinated and boosted against both viruses, and not leave it until it is too late."

Dr. Geert Groeneveld, doctor at Leiden University Medical Center's infectious diseases department, said: "Understanding the consequences of double infections of SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory viruses is crucial as they have implications for patients, hospitals and ICU capacity during seasons that SARS-CoV-2 and influenza circulate together."

Professor Peter Openshaw, Professor of Experimental Medicine at Imperial College London, said: "Being infected with more than one virus is not very common but it's important to be aware that co-infections do happen. The vaccines that protect against COVID-19 and flu are different, and people need both. The way that these two infections are treated is also different so it's important to test for other viruses even when you have a diagnosis in someone who is hospitalized with a respiratory infection. This latest discovery by the ISARIC consortium again adds significantly to improving the way we manage patients."

The findings have been published in The Lancet.

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A former Microsoft employee accused the tech giant of corruption in The Wall Street Journal, and in an essay posted Friday to the website Lioness, which publishes whistleblower accounts.

The employee says he was fired after working for Microsoft from 1998 to 2018 in Africa, where he said he saw company employees involved in corrupt practices in several countries in the region.

He said the practices included using local partner companies to help sell Microsoft products.

Asked about the allegations, a Microsoft executive said Saturday, "We believe we've previously investigated these allegations, which are many years old, and addressed them."

"We cooperated with government agencies to resolve any concerns," Becky Lenaburg, vice president and deputy general counsel for compliance and ethics at Microsoft, told AFP.

Employees were fired and partnerships were ended as part of the response to the original allegations, the company said.

"We are committed to doing business in a responsible way," Lenaburg added.

Microsoft "always encourage(s) anyone to report anything they see that may violate the law, our policies, or our ethical standards," she said.

The Journal said the whistleblower employee also warned the US financial watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Commission), of his concerns in 2019.

In deposition documents, the employee claimed Microsoft had "engaged for many years in rampant bribery practices," according to the Journal.

The employee estimates that Microsoft spent more than $200 million per year on bribes and kickbacks in countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, according to news website The Verge.

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But through all of that, it seems Earth has been keeping time. A recent study of ancient geological events suggests that our planet has a slow, steady 'heartbeat' of geological activity every 27 million years or so.

This pulse of clustered geological events – including volcanic activity, mass extinctions, plate reorganizations, and sea level rises – is incredibly slow, a 27.5-million-year cycle of catastrophic ebbs and flows. But luckily for us, the research team notes we have another 20 million years before the next 'pulse'.

"Many geologists believe that geological events are random over time," said Michael Rampino, a New York University geologist and the study's lead author, in a 2021 statement.

"But our study provides statistical evidence for a common cycle, suggesting that these geologic events are correlated and not random."

The team conducted an analysis on the ages of 89 well-understood geological events from the past 260 million years.

As you can see from the graph below, some of those times were tough – with over eight of such world-changing events clustering together over geologically small timespans, forming the catastrophic 'pulse'.

(Rampino et al., Geoscience Frontiers, 2021)

"These events include times of marine and non-marine extinctions, major ocean-anoxic events, continental flood-basalt eruptions, sea-level fluctuations, global pulses of intraplate magmatism, and times of changes in seafloor-spreading rates and plate reorganizations," the team wrote in their paper.

"Our results suggest that global geologic events are generally correlated, and seem to come in pulses with an underlying ~27.5-million-year cycle."

Geologists have been investigating a potential cycle in geological events for a long time. Back in the 1920s and 30s, scientists of the era had suggested that the geological record had a 30-million-year cycle, while in the 1980s and 90s researchers used the best-dated geological events at the time to give them a range of the length between 'pulses' of 26.2 to 30.6 million years.

Now, everything seems to be in order – 27.5 million years is right about where we'd expect. A study published in late 2020 by the same authors suggested that this 27.5-million-year mark is when mass extinctions happen, too.

"This paper is quite good, but actually I think a better paper on this phenomenon was [a 2018 paper by] Muller and Dutkiewicz," tectonic geologist Alan Collins from the University of Adelaide, who wasn't involved in this research, told ScienceAlert in 2021.

That 2018 paper, by two researchers at the University of Sydney, looked at Earth's carbon cycle and plate tectonics, and also came to the conclusion that the cycle is approximately 26 million years long. 

Collins explained that in this latest study, many of the events the team looked at are causal – meaning that one directly causes the other, thus some of the 89 events are related: for example, anoxic events causing marine extinction. 

"Having said this," he added, "this 26-30 million year cyclicity does seem to be real and over a longer period of time – it also is not clear what is the underlying cause of it!"

Other research from Rampino and his team have suggested comet strikes could be the cause, with one space researcher even suggesting Planet X is to blame.

But if Earth really does have a geologic 'heartbeat', it might be due to something a little closer to home.

"These cyclic pulses of tectonics and climate change may be the result of geophysical processes related to the dynamics of plate tectonics and mantle plumes, or might alternatively be paced by astronomical cycles associated with the Earth's motions in the Solar System and the Galaxy," the team writes in their study.

The research has been published in Geoscience Frontiers.

A version of this article was first published in June 2021.

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The development marks the first time a Russian entity has been added to the list that's been otherwise dominated by Chinese telecommunications firms. Also added alongside Kaspersky were China Telecom (Americas) Corp and China Mobile International USA.

The block list includes information security products, solutions, and services supplied, directly or indirectly, by the company or any of its predecessors, successors, parents, subsidiaries, or affiliates.

The FCC said the decision was made pursuant to a Binding Operational Directive (BOD) issued by the Department of Homeland Security on September 11, 2017 that barred federal agencies from using Kaspersky-branded products in their information systems.

The security services provider, in response, said it was disappointed with the FCC's decision and that it's "being made on political grounds" without any technical assessment of its products.

"Kaspersky maintains that the U.S. Government's 2017 prohibitions on federal entities and federal contractors from using Kaspersky products and services were unconstitutional, based on unsubstantiated allegations, and lacked any public evidence of wrongdoing by the company," it added.

The announcement arrives as HackerOne said it's indefinitely suspending Kaspersky's access to the bug bounty platform in response to sanctions imposed on Russia and Belarus. The company said it "finds this unilateral action an unacceptable behavior."

The FCC's decision also mirrors an advisory released by Germany's Federal Office of Information Security (BSI) this month against using the company's security solutions in the country over "doubts about the reliability of the manufacturer."

"No evidence of Kaspersky use or abuse for malicious purpose has ever been discovered and proven in the company's twenty-five years' history notwithstanding countless attempts to do so," the company's founder Eugene Kaspersky said on March 16.

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The team behind the research, led by epidemiologists from Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts, says it shows how important it is to carefully monitor antibiotic use – and also how important it is that we understand the link between what's going on in our guts (which antibiotics can affect) and what's happening in our brains.

Plenty of previous studies have highlighted the link between the gut microbiome and the brain, but it's not clear exactly what the relationship might be. This new research adds more data points in a much-needed field of study.

"In a cohort of over 14,000 women, we observed that antibiotic use in midlife was significantly associated with subsequent poorer scores for global cognition, learning, and working memory, and psychomotor speed and attention," write the researchers in their paper.

"To our knowledge, our study represents the first large study of chronic long-term use of antibiotics and subsequent cognition."

The women in the cohort (a long-term chronic disease research project called Nurses' Health Study) had taken antibiotic drugs for a variety of reasons, including for respiratory infections, dental problems, acne, and urinary tract infections.

For those on antibiotics, the resulting drop in brain power across the various categories of learning, response, and memory was the equivalent of about three or four years of normal aging, according to the data.

Cognitive ability was assessed an average of seven years after the antibiotic use began, through an online test the participants completed at home. The test includes four different tasks in total, designed to measure different aspects of cognitive performance.

"This relationship was associated with longer duration of antibiotic use and persisted after adjustment for many potential confounding factors," write the researchers.

As usual with studies such as this, the link isn't enough to prove causation – that is, the data don't show it's definitely antibiotic use that's leading to a drop in cognition. It's possible that the conditions the antibiotics were intended to treat, rather than the antibiotics themselves, caused this small drop in cognition, for example.

However, there is enough here to suggest that more research is definitely warranted. The limitations of this study are that it didn't look at any particular type of antibiotic and that it relied on self-reporting for antibiotic use. However, the large sample size and the factoring in of other variables, including diet and other medications, increase its value.

Investigations into the link between antibiotics, gut microbiome, and brain function will continue, but to date, this is one of the best studies we've got looking at the potential long-term effects in adult human beings.

"Given the profound effect of antibiotic use on the gut microbiome – with prior studies showing alterations in functional potential at two and four years after antibiotic exposure – the gut-brain axis could be a possible mechanism for linking antibiotics to cognitive function," write the researchers.

The research has been published in PLOS One.

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Secret to keeping ice cream creamy (not crunchy) might be plant-based nanocrystals

The study included 371,463 adults—with an average age of 57 years and an average alcohol consumption of 9.2 drinks per week—who were participants in the UK Biobank, a large-scale biomedical database and research resource containing in-depth genetic and health information. Consistent with earlier studies, investigators found that light to moderate drinkers had the lowest heart disease risk, followed by people who abstained from drinking. People who drank heavily had the highest risk. However, the team also found that light to moderate drinkers tended to have healthier lifestyles than abstainers—such as more physical activity and vegetable intake, and less smoking. Taking just a few lifestyle factors into account significantly lowered any benefit associated with alcohol consumption.

The study also applied the latest techniques in a method called Mendelian randomization, which uses genetic variants to determine whether an observed link between an exposure and an outcome is consistent with a causal effect—in this case, whether light alcohol consumption causes a person to be protected against cardiovascular disease. "Newer and more advanced techniques in 'non-linear Mendelian randomization' now permit the use of human genetic data to evaluate the direction and magnitude of disease risk associated with different levels of an exposure," says senior author Krishna G. Aragam, MD, MS, a cardiologist at MGH and an associate scientist at the Broad Institute. "We therefore leveraged these new techniques and expansive genetic and phenotypic data from biobank populations to better understand the association between habitual alcohol intake and cardiovascular disease."

When the scientists conducted such genetic analyses of samples taken from participants, they found that individuals with genetic variants that predicted higher alcohol consumption were indeed more likely to consume greater amounts of alcohol, and more likely to have hypertension and coronary artery disease. The analyses also revealed substantial differences in cardiovascular risk across the spectrum of alcohol consumption among both men and women, with minimal increases in risk when going from zero to seven drinks per week, much higher risk increases when progressing from seven to 14 drinks per week, and especially high risk when consuming 21 or more drinks per week. Notably, the findings suggest a rise in cardiovascular risk even at levels deemed "low risk" by national guidelines from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (i.e. below two drinks per day for men and one drink per day for women).

The discovery that the relationship between alcohol intake and cardiovascular risk is not a linear one but rather an exponential one was supported by an additional analysis of data on 30,716 participants in the Mass General Brigham Biobank. Therefore, while cutting back on consumption can benefit even people who drink one alcoholic beverage per day, the health gains of cutting back may be more substantial—and, perhaps, more clinically meaningful—in those who consume more.

"The findings affirm that alcohol intake should not be recommended to improve cardiovascular health; rather, that reducing alcohol intake will likely reduce cardiovascular risk in all individuals, albeit to different extents based on one's current level of consumption," says Aragam.

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The world is in the midst of an anxiety epidemic, and it’s no wonder, according to Dr Ellen Vora. Modern life is fraught with stressors, ranging from our phones to an “always on” work culture and underexposure to sunlight. But, she argues, our understanding of this crisis is in need of an overhaul.

In her warm and highly readable new book, The Anatomy of Anxiety, Vora makes a compelling case that anxious people should tackle the condition not just in their minds but in their bodies. That begins with sorting unease into two categories: “false anxiety” and “true anxiety”. Both cause real suffering, but each one calls for a very different approach.

False anxiety, as Vora describes it, is largely rooted in our physical health. We might feel anxious because we’re chronically sleep deprived, or over-caffeinated, or eating too much junk food. All this can provoke a stress response in our bodies, which send a message to our brains: something’s off. “At these times, our minds are all too happy to swoop in with an explanation,” Vora writes, and we decide that it’s relationship issues, a recent email from work, or fears about the news that have us on edge.

This should come as a relief, because it means there are fairly simple steps we can take to rectify the situation. Vora, who describes herself as a holistic psychiatrist, focuses on changes we can make to our daily habits.

Many of her suggestions feel achievable: minimise blue light exposure late in the day; eat more vegetables; limit social media use. Others seem more daunting, including quitting sugar altogether. But Vora writes with compassion and is rarely prescriptive, noting that acting on even a few of her suggestions will be beneficial and urging readers not to be overcautious about diet: “The multifaceted pleasures of food are, in themselves, powerful medicine for anxiety.”

Once we’ve eliminated these sources of false anxiety, we can turn to what Vora calls true anxiety. This is any unsettled feeling that remains, “which we can think of as an emotional compass telling us something is not OK”. Perhaps it’s a signal that we’re following the wrong path in our career or relationships, or distress at the state of the world and a sense we should take action. Instead of trying to erase this sensation, we should embrace it: “Our uneasy feelings are no longer the enemy or something to vanquish – they become our tools and allies instead.”

The key, Vora says, is to figure out how to 'tune in' to this true anxiety and hear its message

It’s a redeeming way to look at the condition, as not merely a burden but ultimately a blessing. As Vora shifts to focus on true anxiety, the book becomes unexpectedly moving; as someone with lifelong anxiety, I found the idea validating and hopeful. The key, she says, is to figure out how to “tune in” to this true anxiety and hear its message. That depends on learning to sit quietly and listen to ourselves. Vora offers a simple and nonjudgmental guide to meditation, and suggests calming ourselves by getting in touch with nature and with others, since, “at the end of the day, our wellbeing rests on our connections with other people above everything else”.

Vora has a medical degree from Columbia University and extensive experience in alternatives to western medicine. The result is an open-minded and well-rounded approach to the psyche. But there are a few moments – as in her discussion of psychoactive substances or eating disorders – where Vora’s judgments can appear a little too reflexively anti-orthodox, and she seems sometimes to give greater weight to individual patients’ stories than to the scientific consensus. That said, she is careful to advise readers that their own experiences are unique.

“The tone of life these days is anxiety,” Vora writes. “Anxiety is the verb, the vibe, the texture, the pH of our age”. Anxious people are the proverbial canaries in the coalmine, Vora argues, sensitive to “the toxic influences of our modern world” before others identify them. Those living with the condition, then, can take pride in it; they are empathic, intuitive, creative. Anxiety “means you may have a bigger antenna than the average person, so you pick up more of the background noise,” she says. “This can be a liability, because the world can be pretty loud these days, but it’s also a gift.”

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