Whether it’s reporting on conflicts abroad and political divisions at home, or covering the latest style trends and scientific developments, Times Video journalists provide a revealing and unforgettable view of the world.Whether it’s reporting on conflicts abroad and political divisions at home, or covering the latest style trends and scientific developments, Times Video journalists provide a revealing and unforgettable view of the world.

Exposure to the heavy metal cadmium is known to irritate the stomach and lungs or cause kidney disease, but new research links another health issue to inadvertently ingesting low doses of the pollutant: high activation of the antibodies that cause an allergic response.
Researchers traced this link in mice to gut bacteria that, after exposure to ingested cadmium, over-produced an enzyme that degrades vitamin D — effectively creating conditions that mimic vitamin D deficiency. In terms of clinical effects, the mice sensitized to a specific allergen that consumed cadmium produced high levels of antibodies against the allergen as well as immune cells that increased their respiratory symptoms.
Separate epidemiological research has shown an association in children between vitamin D deficiency and higher susceptibility to asthma and other allergy symptoms. And a Congressional report released on Sept. 29 disclosed an unexpected source of cadmium in kids, announcing that dangerous levels of toxic heavy metals, including cadmium, had been detected in several brands of baby food.
“The problem is, because cadmium doesn’t degrade easily — it has a half-life in the body of at least 15 years — if you are chronically exposed to low doses, it accumulates over time,” said Prosper Boyaka, professor and chair of veterinary biosciences at The Ohio State University and senior author of the study. “It’s also not something we can easily avoid being exposed to because it can remain in air, soil and water.”
Most people ingest the natural element cadmium, a heavy metal used for batteries and making pigments, by eating plant and animal foods that have absorbed the pollutant or drinking contaminated water. The Environmental Protection Agency lists cadmium among eight metals considered extremely toxic at small concentrations.
Boyaka and colleagues found that an experimental compound that inhibits the activated enzymes reduced the allergic response in mice that ingested cadmium.

Scientists at Cincinnati Children’s appear to have flipped another piece in the underexplored puzzle of male infertility.
In findings published Oct. 26, 2021, in Cell Reports, a team led by co-first authors Anna Heinrich, BS, Bidur Bhandary, PhD, and senior author Tony De Falco, PhD, sheds new light on how sperm production can go wrong when a certain gene fails to function at the right time.
“Gaining more understanding about how Cdc42 acts within the male reproductive system provides key information for using this gene as a potential biomarker for infertility or reduced testicular function,” De Falco says.
What’s a Sertoli cell?
The study focuses on the function of Sertoli cells, which line up along the inside walls of long narrow tubes in the testes called seminiferous tubules, in which sperm production takes place. Sertoli cells, sometimes called “nurse cells,” act as docking stations that provide nutrients to developing sperm cells.
In experiments with mouse models, the team found that when the gene Cdc42 is missing or not functioning, it disrupts the polarity of Sertoli cells, meaning that some might be attached or oriented improperly inside the seminiferous tubules. The misaligned cells become less capable of supporting sperm cells, and some of the misaligned Sertoli cells die off themselves, all of which reduces the ability of the testes to produce an ongoing supply of sperm.

We turned to five experts to answer these frequently-asked questions.Children ages 5 to 11 may be eligible for the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine by early next month: two shots spaced three weeks apart. But unlike kids 12 and older, who get the same dosage as adults, the kids in the younger age group will receive 10 micrograms of vaccine per dose, or one-third the amount that a 12-year-old would get.This has created some confusion for parents of 11-year-olds on the cusp of turning 12. Is it best to hold out for the larger dose? Or is it better to get the smaller dose right away? Does the weight or height of the child make any difference?Five experts in immunology and infectious diseases agreed: The appropriate dosage is best determined by a child’s age — not their size. So if your 11-year-old is able to get the shot starting in November, do it right away rather than waiting for your child to turn 12.The virus isn’t going away anytime soon, they said. And different variants could potentially make the virus more infectious or dangerous, said Donna L. Farber, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.The sooner your child can be vaccinated the better, the experts said. The shot greatly reduces the chance of becoming severely ill from Covid and curbs the likelihood of getting infected in the first place and then passing that infection to others.“Just do it,” Dr. Farber said.Although many children who contract the virus will recover easily, “we cannot predict who is going to be very sick,” said Dr. Octavio Ramilo, chief of infectious diseases at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and a professor of pediatrics at Ohio State University.More than 1,000 kids were hospitalized from Covid at Nationwide over the last year and a half, he added, and approximately half of them had been previously healthy.Dr. Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine and an infectious diseases expert at the University of California, San Francisco, said her younger son, who is turning 12 in February, will get vaccinated as soon as possible.“Since the 10 microgram dose is so effective, I would stick with that dose for an 11-year-old,” she advised.The two-dose 10 microgram shot in the vaccine trial of 5- to 11-year-olds had a nearly 91 percent efficacy rate, indicating it is very effective at preventing symptomatic infection in young children. In addition, there were not any new or unexpected side effects or safety concerns, according to a Food and Drug Administration review of Pfizer’s vaccine data.It doesn’t matter whether your child is smaller or larger than other kids their age when it comes to vaccines, the experts said.Weight is an important factor when you give a young child medication like Tylenol because there is a wide variation in weight from infancy throughout childhood and too much of the drug could be toxic.The optimal vaccine dose, however, is dependent on age and tailored to minimize potential side effects. A small 5-year-old and a large 5-year-old will have immune systems that are “functionally similar,” said Dr. David J. Rawlings, chief of the division of immunology at Seattle Children’s Hospital and director of the Center for Immunity Immunotherapies at Seattle Children’s Research Institute.And children in the 5 to 11 age group “have a really robust immune system,” he added. That means they can get a lower vaccine dose than those in the 12 to 17 age group and still produce the same number of antibodies..css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-k59gj9{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;width:100%;}.css-1e2usoh{font-family:inherit;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;border-top:1px solid #ccc;padding:10px 0px 10px 0px;background-color:#fff;}.css-1jz6h6z{font-family:inherit;font-weight:bold;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;text-align:left;}.css-1t412wb{box-sizing:border-box;margin:8px 15px 0px 15px;cursor:pointer;}.css-hhzar2{-webkit-transition:-webkit-transform ease 0.5s;-webkit-transition:transform ease 0.5s;transition:transform ease 0.5s;}.css-t54hv4{-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-1r2j9qz{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-e1ipqs{font-size:1rem;line-height:1.5rem;padding:0px 30px 0px 0px;}.css-e1ipqs a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.css-e1ipqs a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}.css-1o76pdf{visibility:show;height:100%;padding-bottom:20px;}.css-1sw9s96{visibility:hidden;height:0px;}.css-1in8jot{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;font-family:’nyt-franklin’,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;text-align:left;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1in8jot{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1in8jot:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1in8jot{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}What to Know About Covid-19 Booster ShotsThe F.D.A. has authorized booster shots for millions of recipients of the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. Pfizer and Moderna recipients who are eligible for a booster include people 65 and older, and younger adults at high risk of severe Covid-19 because of medical conditions or where they work. Eligible Pfizer and Moderna recipients can get a booster at least six months after their second dose. All Johnson & Johnson recipients will be eligible for a second shot at least two months after the first.Yes. The F.D.A. has updated its authorizations to allow medical providers to boost people with a different vaccine than the one they initially received, a strategy known as “mix and match.” Whether you received Moderna, Johnson & Johnson or Pfizer-BioNTech, you may receive a booster of any other vaccine. Regulators have not recommended any one vaccine over another as a booster. They have also remained silent on whether it is preferable to stick with the same vaccine when possible.The C.D.C. has said the conditions that qualify a person for a booster shot include: hypertension and heart disease; diabetes or obesity; cancer or blood disorders; weakened immune system; chronic lung, kidney or liver disease; dementia and certain disabilities. Pregnant women and current and former smokers are also eligible.The F.D.A. authorized boosters for workers whose jobs put them at high risk of exposure to potentially infectious people. The C.D.C. says that group includes: emergency medical workers; education workers; food and agriculture workers; manufacturing workers; corrections workers; U.S. Postal Service workers; public transit workers; grocery store workers.Yes. The C.D.C. says the Covid vaccine may be administered without regard to the timing of other vaccines, and many pharmacy sites are allowing people to schedule a flu shot at the same time as a booster dose.As an added bonus, with the 10-microgram dose researchers saw less fever and chills after the second dose among the 5- to 11-year-olds than they saw in the older kids who received higher doses.At higher doses, the researchers observed more side effects in the younger children.The bottom line: The appropriate vaccine dose is not determined by weight and “there are no patient weight requirements for Covid-19 vaccination,” the Centers for Disease Control says.Once a child enters puberty, “there are changes in the immune response,” Dr. Rawlings said, and their immune system becomes more like that of an adult. The cutoff of 12 was somewhat arbitrary, he added, but in general, as kids get older they have an immune system that becomes less efficient than that of younger children, hence the need for a bigger dose.“From our studies in immune development, your immunological adulthood is much earlier than 18,” Dr. Farber said.Another important consideration: Vaccine doses are spaced three weeks apart and it takes two weeks for the protection to fully set in after getting the second dose. So if you planned to wait, say, two months for your child to turn 12, you would need to factor in an additional five weeks before your child was fully protected.It’s a gamble that is not worth taking, said Dr. Matthew P. Kronman, the associate medical director of infection prevention at Seattle Children’s Hospital.“That would be like saying: OK, we’re going to drive to Grandma’s house and I’m going to wait 50 miles before putting my seatbelt on and I’ll just wear it for the last 50 miles. It doesn’t make a lot of logical sense,” Dr. Kronman said. “It’s better to get the protection now that we know will work, based on the age.”

An international team of scientists has identified a new connection between certain molecules produced by the microbiome and the function of a protein that impacts gut inflammation.
This finding takes researchers from the University of Bath and the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School (UMass Chan) closer to understanding how a good balance of microbes in our guts is linked to the body’s immune system and intestinal health. It also raises the possibility of new treatments being found to manage debilitating inflammatory diseases of the gut, such as Ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease.
The two classes of molecules identified by the study’s authors are short-chain fatty acids and secondary bile acids. The researchers have not established exactly how these molecules influence the production of P-gp. They plan to examine the role these molecules play in gene and protein regulation in future work.
Both molecules exist in the gut in healthy quantities only when certain microbes are given the right conditions to thrive in the microbiome. These microbes contribute to the digestion of food elements, such as fibre and green leafy vegetables. The researchers’ findings support the growing bank of evidence that the health of a person’s microbiome, and therefore their overall wellbeing, is closely linked to diet.
The intestinal microbiome differs from person-to-person, but overall, an appropriate balance of key microbes is known to be linked to a healthy intestine. This balance can be disturbed by changes to the diet. In particular, a western diet high in simple sugars and fats, and low in plant-based protein, has been associated with a decrease in the quantities of bacteria in the gut that produce short-chain fatty acids and secondary bile acids.
The protein that gets the gut speaking to the immune system
P-glycoprotein (P-gp) — the protein studied in this work — allows the intestine to communicate with the immune system through the gut wall.

Leicester psychologists have, for the first time, created body-maps of the sensations which arise during hallucinations in people experiencing psychosis.
The study, published in The Lancet’s EClinicalMedicine, provides the most extensive descriptive data to date on the feelings which arise during hallucinations and where individuals reported sensations in the body. University of Leicester researchers also studied the emotions reported during hallucinations, with confusion, fear and frustration being the most common.
Although there was great variation in the localisation of feelings across participants, for each individual feelings were recurrently concentrated in particular body areas. Areas of concentration often held repeated sources of feelings like pain, heat, or tension.
Dr Katie Melvin, of the Department of Neuroscience, Psychology and Behaviour at the University of Leicester and corresponding author for the study, said:
“During a systematic review of existing research, we found indicators of the contributions that multiple senses, emotions and feelings may make to hallucinations.
“We designed a study and developed the novel but simple multimodal unusual sensory experience (MUSE) map method to investigate these features further. MUSE maps involve documenting hallucinations in daily life and include body-mapping. The article shares new insights through body-maps and data on the immediate feeling of hallucinations.

Changing levels of the chemical dopamine, a chemical most associated with motivation, may help explain why stressful experiences during infancy can lead to lasting behavioral issues, a new study in rodents shows.
Experts have long understood that negative experiences early in life among rodents and other mammals, including humans, can affect later social development. Past studies in rats, for example, have found that limited bedding causes mother rats to roughly handle pups, impacting pups’ social behavior throughout their lives. However, exactly what changes occurred in the brain as a result of such adversity remained unclear.
In a study led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, investigators tied repeated stress during infancy to increased dopamine levels in the basolateral amygdala, (BLA), a brain region that plays a role in memory formation. When they housed mother rats and their new pups in stressful conditions while rearing their young, the stressed pups had about twice as much BLA activity compared with those raised in a more comfortable nest. In turn, the former group spent at least 90 percent less time near their mothers and over 30 percent less time near other pups compared with the latter group.
“Our findings suggest that repeated dopamine release in the basolateral amygdala plays a key role in infant social development,” says study lead author Maya Opendak, PhD. “As a result, this region of the brain may be a promising target for understanding or even treating psychiatric disorders that can interfere with social interaction, such as autism, anxiety, and depression.”
As part of the study, the study authors artificially blocked dopamine release in the BLA in the distressed infants and found that social behavior returned to normal. By contrast, increasing dopamine levels in pups raised in non-stressful conditions impaired their social behavior.
Opendak, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at NYU Langone Health, notes that elevated BLA activity and social impairment only occurred in pups that were stressed in their mother’s presence. If they experienced stress alone, they showed no sign of these issues. Opendak suggests that the repeated activation of the BLA, already known to play a key role in learning about threats, prompts infants to associate their mother with danger.

Accurate forecasting of epidemic scenarios is critical to implementing effective public health intervention policies. While much progress has been made in predicting the general magnitude and timing of epidemics, there’s still room for improvement in forecasting peak times, as unfortunately evidenced with H1N1 and COVID-19, when peak times occurred later than predicted.
In Chaos, by AIP Publishing, researchers from France and Italy use dynamical stochastic modeling techniques to reveal that infection and recovery rate fluctuations play a critical role in determining peak times for epidemics.
“Some averaged quantities, like infection and recovery rates, are highly sensitive to parameter fluctuations, which means that the latter must be understood, even when average behavior is the only focus of interest,” said co-author Maxence Arutkin. “Our work shows that epidemic peak timing depends on these fluctuations, and neglecting them in epidemiological models can lead to inaccurate epidemic scenarios and unsuitable mitigation policies, not to mention enable viruses to evolve into new variants.”
Using a susceptible-infected-recovered epidemic model that incorporates daily fluctuations on control parameters, the study applies probability theory calculations to infection counts at the beginning of an epidemic wave and at peak times for populations in Italy. While previous works using standard epidemiological models have suggested there is a delay between the epidemic peak date and its prediction (without fluctuations), the researchers suggest the epidemic peak time depends not only on the mean value of the infection and recovery rates but also on their fluctuations.
To predict epidemic trajectory, an important parameter is the basic reproduction number, R0, which describes the average number of infections transmitted from an individual. Infection and recovery rate fluctuations lead to lognormal probability distribution of the number of infected people, similar in its analytical form to price distributions for financial assets.
“In the short term, even when average infections transmitted from a single individual are less than one, we can observe epidemic resurgence due to parameter fluctuations,” said Arutkin. “Also, a dispersion of the epidemic peak time can be quantified showing that, without taking these fluctuations into account, the peak time estimates are biased.”
The study reveals that improved prediction depends on both R0 levels and fluctuations in infection and recovery rates and may provide policymakers with a tool to assess the consequences of parameter fluctuations based on different R0 levels.
“Our findings suggest we must introduce parameter fluctuations in epidemiological models going forward,” said Arutkin.
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For many people, a traumatic experience can leave an indelible impression on the brain in the form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is characterized by hyperarousal and avoidance of risky, potentially aversive behaviors.
Research has revealed that the brain employs distinct circuitries that mediate positive, or rewarding, behaviors and negative, or aversive, ones. PTSD has long been thought to arise from overactivity in the negative valence system, however a new study shows that people with PTSD also displayed a deficit in activation of positive valence processing soon after the trauma, suggesting it plays a role in resilience to PTSD.
The work appears in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, published by Elsevier.
Led by Talma Hendler, MD, PhD, and Ziv Ben-Zion, PhD, both at Tel Aviv University, Israel, the researchers identified 171 people who had been treated in a hospital emergency department for a trauma (such as a car accident) and who, within two weeks of the traumatic event, were experiencing symptoms of PTSD. One month after the trauma, survivors were assessed in the lab by a trained clinical interviewer in more detail, and underwent brain scans by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The same assessments were made at six months and 14 months post-trauma.
While undergoing fMRI, participants played a competitive electronic gambling game designed to test participants’ sensitivity to risk, reward and punishment. Not surprisingly, participants with more severe PTSD symptoms at the start of the study made fewer risky choices in the game, and fMRI scans showed that they had greater activation in the amygdala — a brain region associated with fear processing and a key part of the negative valence system. But decreased activity at one month in the ventral striatum, a mesolimbic brain region involved in processing positive valence like rewards, predicted more severe PTSD symptoms at 14 months.
Dr. Ben-Zion said the work “provides insights on roles of both the positive and negative valence processing systems in the early development of post-traumatic psychopathology. While most of the research to date on stress and trauma has focused on the hyper-active negative valence system (e.g., increased fear and threat responses), our findings also suggest a critical role for hypo-active positive valence system (e.g., less neural activation towards rewards) in PTSD development and point to its role in resilience to traumatic stress and /or adaptive recovery from it.”
Cameron Carter, MD, Editor of Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, said, “This work provides new insights into the fundamental changes in brain function that follow traumatic experiences and underlie the development of PTSD. The study shows us that these changes go beyond dysregulated threat processing and include brain systems related to reward and motivation that are likely to underlie changes in mood and motivated behavior in PTSD.”
The work could have implications for therapeutic strategies to treat stress- and anxiety-related disorders, Professor Hendler said, adding that “novel therapeutic approaches should address both positive and negative valence systems, as these two are intrinsically linked and both affect the symptom development after experiencing traumatic stress.
“Furthermore, we suggest that specific deficits in each valence system are associated with specific symptoms of PTSD, possibly pointing to distinct underlying mental processes that could guide a more personalized approach in psychiatric treatment.”
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Bronchial asthma causes symptoms such as wheezing and cough due to chronic airway inflammation, but there is no fundamental treatment for it, leaving a desire for new prevention and treatment methods. Now a new study reveals that a fermented soy product called ImmuBalance suppresses airway inflammation in animal models of asthma.
Researchers from the Department of Respiratory Medicine, Osaka City University Graduate School of Medicine have found that in a ImmuBalance-treated group of asthma model mice, white blood cells associated with asthma called eosinophils were significantly reduced in the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF). Also, in addition to a decrease in inflammation and mucus around the bronchi, the team found a suppression of proteins that induce eosinophilic inflammation.
“The relationship between soy intake and allergic diseases has been epidemiologically reported in the past,” explained Hideaki Kadotani, first author of the study, “suggesting that the components of soy may have some anti-allergic effects”
“It was reported that imbalances in the gut microbiota may be involved in immune system and allergic diseases, and fermented dietary fiber, like that found in soy, might have beneficial effects in allergic asthma models.” continues Associate Professor Kazuhisa Asai, supporting author of the study.
In the study, the effects of such an imbalance on asthma were examined by giving ImmuBalance-enriched feed to asthma model mice. In the ImmuBalance-treated group, the number of eosinophils in BALF was significantly reduced, and inflammation around the bronchi and mucus production in the bronchial epithelium was suppressed. Also, the expression of Th2 cytokines and the immunoglobulin serum IgE that induce eosinophilic inflammation in BALF were measured and found to be significantly suppressed when compared to mice fed a normal diet.
“In clinical practice, steroid inhalants are the basis of asthma treatments, yet they are known to have adverse side effects,” states Professor Tomoya Kawaguchi, lead advisor to the study. “Our results suggest that the intake of fermented soybean products should be recommended as a complementary coping strategy to asthma with fewer side effects”
These findings appear in the journal Nutrients.
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