Science shows that the risk of viral transmission outside is very low. The “two-out-of-three rule” can help you decide whether to mask up.As more people get vaccinated and spring weather and sunshine beckon us outdoors, one question may be nagging at you: Do we still need to wear masks outside?More than a year into pandemic life, many people remain confused about the risk of spending time outdoors around other people. A growing body of research shows that transmission of Covid-19 is far less likely outdoors than inside, and the risk will get even lower as more people get vaccinated and cases continue to decline. But many states have yet to lift strict outdoor mask mandates. In Massachusetts, for instance, outdoor masking is required at all times, even when nobody else is around.Recently the online magazine Slate stirred controversy when it suggested an end to outdoor mask rules. The article won support from top public health experts and even The New England Journal of Medicine blog but prompted a fierce backlash from readers, who noted that while the risk of outdoor transmission may be low, it’s not zero.“Shallow and selfish take,” wrote one reader on Twitter. “You have blood on your hands. You should feel ashamed,” posted another.After a year in which many of us have learned to dutifully wear masks and look askance at anyone who does not, it’s understandable that people remain fearful when they cross paths with the unmasked. So how do you make the right decision about when to wear a mask outside?Many virus and public health experts say the guidance hasn’t changed — spending time with others outside during the pandemic has always been safer than indoors. But whether a mask is needed outdoors depends on the circumstances, including local public health rules. Brief encounters with an unmasked person passing you on the sidewalk or a hiking trail are very low risk, said Linsey Marr, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech. Viral particles quickly disperse in outdoor air, and the risk of inhaling aerosolized virus from a jogger or passers-by are negligible, she said. Even if a person coughs or sneezes outside as you walk by, the odds of you getting a large enough dose of virus to become infected remain low, she said.“I think the guidelines should be based on science and practicality,” said Dr. Marr. “People only have so much bandwidth to think about precautions. I think we should focus on the areas that have highest risk of transmission, and give people a break when the risk is extremely low.”Dr. Marr uses a simple two-out-of-three rule for deciding when to wear a mask. In every situation, she makes sure she’s meeting two out of three conditions: outdoors, distanced and masked. “If you’re outdoors, you either need to be distanced or masked,” she said. “If you’re not outdoors, you need to be distanced and masked. This is how I’ve been living for the past year. It all comes down to my two-out-of-three rule.”Use the 2-out-of-3 RuleTo lower risk for Covid-19, make sure your activity meets two out of the following three conditions: outdoors, distanced and masked.Outdoors + Distanced = No Mask NeededOutdoors + No Distance = Mask NeededNot Outdoors + Distanced = Mask NeededWhen masks are needed outdoorsIf you stop to have an extended conversation with someone who isn’t vaccinated, masks are recommended. Even outdoors, your risk of breathing someone else’s air increases the longer and closer you stand to them. One of the few documented cases of outdoor transmission happened in China early in the pandemic, when a 27-year-old man stopped to chat outside with a friend who had just returned from Wuhan, where the virus originated. Seven days later, he had his first symptoms of Covid-19.And masks are still advised if you find yourself in an outdoor crowd. Standing shoulder to shoulder with strangers during an outdoor concert or a protest could increase risk, particularly for the unvaccinated.Recently while hiking without a mask, Dr. Marr said she still made an effort to keep her distance from large groups when the trail got crowded.“If I was passing by a solo hiker it didn’t concern me,” said Dr. Marr. “But if I passed by a group of 10 hikers in a row, I stepped further off the path. The risk is still low, but at some point there could be a large enough pack of people that the risk could become appreciable.”When outdoor risk is lowestWalking your dog, riding a bike, hiking on a trail or picnicking with members of your household or vaccinated friends are all activities where the risk for virus exposure is negligible. In these kinds of situations, you can keep a mask on hand in your pocket, in case you find yourself in a crowd or need to go indoors..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1pd7fgo{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;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1pd7fgo{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1pd7fgo:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1pd7fgo{border:none;padding:20px 0 0;border-top:1px solid #121212;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“I think it’s a bit too much to ask people to put the mask on when they go out for a walk or jogging or cycling,” said Dr. Muge Cevik, a clinical lecturer of infectious disease and medical virology at the University of St. Andrews School of Medicine in Scotland, where outdoor masking has never been required. “We’re in a different stage of the pandemic. I think outdoor masks should not have been mandated at all. It’s not where the infection and transmission occurs.”“Let me go for my run, maskless. Mask in pocket,” tweeted Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, an infectious diseases physician and the medical director of the special pathogens unit at Boston Medical Center. “Given how conservative I have been on my opinions all year, this should tell you how low risk is, in general, for outdoors transmission for contact over short periods — and lower still after vaccination. Keep the masks on you for when you are stationary in a crowd and headed indoors.”To understand just how low the risk of outdoor transmission is, researchers in Italy used mathematical models to calculate the amount of time it would take for a person to become infected outdoors in Milan. They imagined a grim scenario in which 10 percent of the population was infected with Covid-19. Their calculations showed that if a person avoided crowds, it would take, on average, 31.5 days of continuous outdoor exposure to inhale a dose of virus sufficient to transmit infection.“The results are that this risk is negligible in outdoor air if crowds and direct contact among people are avoided,” said Daniele Contini, senior author of the study and an aerosol scientist at the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate in Lecce, Italy.Even as more-infectious virus variants circulate, the physics of viral transmission outdoors haven’t changed, and the risk of getting infected outdoors is still low, say virus experts. Pay attention to the rates of infection in your community. If case counts are surging, your risk of encountering an infected person goes up.When outdoor fun moves indoorsDr. Cevik notes that debates about outdoor masking and articles showing photos of crowded beaches during the pandemic have left people with the wrong impression that parks and beaches are unsafe, and distracted from the much higher risks of indoor transmission. Often it’s the indoor activities associated with outdoor fun — like traveling unmasked in a subway or car to go hiking, or dropping into a pub after spending time at the beach — that pose the highest risk. “People hold barbecues outdoors, but then they spend time indoors chatting in the kitchen,” said Dr. Cevik.As more people get vaccinated, decisions about going maskless outdoors will get easier. While no vaccine offers 100 percent protection, the rate of breakthrough infections so far has been exceedingly low. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported just 5,800 cases of breakthrough infections among 75 million vaccinated people. And the C.D.C. has said vaccinated friends and family members can safely spend time together, without masks.But it’s OK to keep wearing your mask outdoors if you prefer it. After a year of taking pandemic precautions, it may be hard for people to adjust to less restrictive behaviors. Sarit A. Golub, a psychology professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York, said it’s important for both the media and public health officials to communicate the reasons people can modify some behaviors, like outdoor masking.“In the coming months, ‘normal life’ will begin to become safer, but I worry that some people won’t be willing or able to relax pandemic restrictions in ways that makes sense,” Dr. Golub said. “I worry that folks have internalized the fear messaging without understanding the reasons behind specific behavioral recommendations, and therefore, the reasons that they can be modified as circumstances change.”Gregg Gonsalves, assistant professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, said he recently was with a group of parents, including many vaccinated physicians, who met in a New Haven park to celebrate a child’s first birthday. “We’re all just standing around, everybody was masked, and then we started asking, ‘When’s the time we can be outside and take off our masks?’” Dr. Gonsalves said. “If people are vaccinated and you’re outdoors, masks are probably superfluous at this point.”But Dr. Gonsalves said he understands why some people may be reluctant to give up their masks outdoors. “Some of this is Covid hangover,” he said. “We’ve been so traumatized by all of this. I think we need to have a little bit of compassion for the people having trouble letting go.”Illustrations by Eden Weingart

April 22, 2021Pain Is Inevitable. Suffering Is Not.Here are five ways to get unstuck.As a psychologist, I often teach clients in my clinical practice the difference between pain and suffering. Pain on its own can be difficult. But it’s only when you don’t accept it that it turns into suffering.Of course, more than a year into the Covid-19 pandemic, pain and suffering are understandable emotions. But as a compassionate gesture to yourself, it may be liberating to consider how you approach your own anguish, and if there are ways you can ease it a bit.After validating my clients’ legitimate distress, I encourage them to deal with challenges by embracing something called radical acceptance. It is a component of the kind of treatment I practice, dialectical behavioral therapy, which was developed by the psychologist Marsha Linehan. Many people know the term from the popular book “Radical Acceptance” by the meditation teacher, psychologist and podcast host Tara Brach.Radical acceptance means recognizing your emotional or physical distress — whether around minor issues, like traffic, or more significant challenges, such as navigating a chronic illness — and wholeheartedly practicing acceptance.Though it sounds counterintuitive, accepting negative circumstances can help you feel better. “Life regularly and inevitably involves emotional stress, anger, fears around health, shame around failed relationships,” Dr. Brach told me in an interview, “but anything short of fully accepting our human experience will keep us caught in those emotions.”One reason is that the habitual ways we deal with difficult situations, like pretending that everything is fine, acting pleasant when feeling resentful or even trying to acquiesce as a way to avoid truly feeling our emotions, are ultimately depleting, not restorative. That’s where the radical bit of radical acceptance comes in. In this case, the word means being all in rather than going halfway, which will feel phony to you and those around you. It’s the difference between accepting you’re anxious and avoiding, and being willing to feel anxious while approaching meaningful opportunities.Many of my clients initially confuse accepting with resigning themselves to feeling bad, but that couldn’t be further from what this practice intends. Psychologically, acceptance is an active stance that actually promotes change by helping us manage our emotions so we can solve problems. For instance, emotional eating can be a response to feeling bad about excess weight, but in fact, once you compassionately let go of berating yourself it can be easier to make healthy food choices.One trick to approaching radical acceptance, according to Dr. Brach, is to keep the acronym RAIN in mind. RAIN stands for: Recognize and pause to notice; Allow, or accept your current experience; Investigate, by pinpointing what is happening in your mind and body; then Nurture, by bringing compassion to yourself.By choosing acceptance in tense situations, you’ll get into the habit of bringing mindfulness to moments in your life when you need it most. As a bonus, studies have also shown that therapies incorporating acceptance reduce suicidality, substance use, anxiety, chronic pain, and improve relationships and subjective well-being.If becoming a more accepting person feels like an extreme makeover of your personality, research suggests that low-effort self-help exercises, similar to the ones I suggest below, can help you improve peace of mind and quality of life.Step 1Scan your mind for judgmental thoughtsTo begin to bring more acceptance into your life, rather than passively falling into negative thinking, notice thoughts, like “Why me?,” that thwart your ability to cope. Then come back to seeing the present as it is, not as you think it should be. When you’re lost in thoughts about life being unfair or terrible — even if it is — it’s impossible to be effective.For instance, if your child is up hours after bedtime, you may tell yourself, “I can’t take this!” But instead of falling into an emotional spiral, try to recognize what is actually true, such as, “I’m exhausted and crave some time for myself.” Besides easing your frustrations with your child (which will be more conducive to setting the mood for sleep), thinking factually offers more perspective.Step 2Honor your emotionsWhile acceptance will help you feel better, know that it isn’t a way to escape your feelings. Emotions communicate information to us and can motivate useful actions when based on realities, rather than stories our minds churn. That’s why it’s important to allow yourself to experience whatever you’re feeling.Experiment with accepting your emotions and utilizing them to inspire you. If you’re feeling lonely, rather than passively scrolling on social media and thinking you’re never going to have a relationship as amazing as your friends’ posts suggest they have, honor your sadness as a sign that you’re a social being. Let it propel you to reach out, and just as important, ease your pain in the moment. You may be surprised by how much acceptance helps, as fighting emotions by suppressing them often backfires.Step 3Release the tension in your faceOne simple way to amplify acceptance in situations where you want to feel more accepting is to bring your attention to your face. Many experts say that, along with your thoughts and approach to your emotions, your expression influences how you feel. According to something known as the facial feedback hypothesis, the faces we make impact our emotions, which is why I teach my clients who yearn to be more accepting how to go from a scowl to “half smiling.”So in moments when you want to improve your ability to accept what is rather than raging against it, try adopting a more relaxed, serene facial expression. If you are frustrated while waiting in a long line, try a half-smile, ever-so-slightly raising your lips, which automatically releases tension in your forehead and jaw to ease your resentment. Not to be confused with forcing a smile for others, the half-smile is for yourself. By subtly changing your face in a way that feels less taxing, you can begin to feel more accepting from the outside in. “When we soften our eyes, we quiet our minds,” said Dr. Brach.Step 4Act willinglyTrue acceptance also extends to your behavior. Dr. Linehan teaches that in any moment you can either choose willfulness — by refusing to tolerate something or needing to be in control — or opt for willingness — by behaving as if you’re saying yes to participating in reality. Since life is full of activities we dread (doing yet another Zoom meeting), choosing to do so with pep can feel nicer than dragging your feet.So, during your next video call, turn on your camera, close all distracting browsers and see how that compares to attending in a grudging way. As I coach my clients, the challenging and the liberating aspect of radical acceptance is being genuine by aligning your mind and behavior. But it turns out, that’s also the liberating part.Step 5Work on your U-turnsFinally, know that defaulting to fight or flight reactions is normal. It’s unrealistic to think that you’ll decide to radically accept and immediately find enduring bliss. But that’s OK — when you find yourself thinking judgmentally, tensing up or holding back from ultimately helpful actions, you can notice it and try “turning the mind” back to accepting, as Dr. Linehan teaches, without blaming yourself for the detour. Acceptance, I tell my clients, is not merely a one-time choice; you have endless opportunities. At any moment, you can choose to find more freedom.Jenny Taitz is an assistant clinical professor in psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of “How to be Single and Happy: Science-Based Strategies for Keeping Your Sanity While Looking for a Soul Mate” and “End Emotional Eating.”

SharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingIndia has reported 314, 835 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, the highest one day tally ever recorded. Deaths rose by 2,104 in the same time period, the worst daily toll. It brings the country’s total number of confirmed infections close to 6 million. India is in the grip of a vicious second wave and an acute oxygen shortage is raising more fears about the country’s overwhelmed health care system. Delhi’s highest court in has publicly criticised the central government for its handling of the oxygen crisis in the city.The court was hearing a petition by the owner of six private hospitals.It ordered the government to ensure safe passage of oxygen supplies from factories to hospitals across India.”This is ridiculous. We want to know what the centre is doing with regard to oxygen supply across India,” the judges said while reading out the verdict, adding that it was the responsibility of the government to “beg, borrow…steal” to ensure oxygen supplies. A number of people across the country have died while waiting for oxygen though it is not possible to know how many. Indian social media has also been filled with appeals for oxygen.Crowds are gathering outside hospitals in major cities which are filled to capacity. Health services are struggling to cope. image copyrightEuropean Pressphoto AgencyAuthorities in the western state of Maharashtra – which is the worst affected state- announced a series of additional restrictions starting from Thursday evening, as it battles a steep surge in cases. It was already under partial lockdown from 14 April. Maharashtra is India’s richest state and home to its financial hub, Mumbai. It’s also been a Covid hotspot since the start of the pandemic.It now accounts for a quarter of India’s more than 15 million Covid cases.Maharashtra has also reported more deaths from the virus than any other state – 67, 468. India has confirmed more than 180,000 deaths so far. Although deaths have been rising, the fatality rate remains relatively low. India has seen a rapid rise in case numbers over the past month, driven by lax safety protocols, and a Hindu festival attended by millions and variants of the virus, including a “double mutant” strain. It was detected in 61% of samples tested in Maharashtra, according to the National Institute of Virology. Huge election rallies – including by Prime Minister Narendra Modi – were also not halted in the state of West Bengal which has been going to polls in phases. Voters will be out on Thursday as well, for the sixth stage of voting. The government has defended the decision to continue with the polling. Critics have also pointed to the lagging vaccination drive in the country, which experts say needs to pick up quickly to contain the spread. India has so far administered more than 130 million doses, but the drive has so far been restricted to health workers, frontline staff and those above the age of 45 and anyone with comorbidities. From 1 May, people above 18 will also be eligible for the vaccine. But a supply crunch, which is already affecting the drive, could slow it down further.

Next time you make a salad, you might want to consider adding mushrooms to it. That’s because higher mushroom consumption is associated with a lower risk of cancer, according to a new Penn State study, published on March 16 in Advances in Nutrition.
The systematic review and meta-analysis examined 17 cancer studies published from 1966 to 2020. Analyzing data from more than 19,500 cancer patients, researchers explored the relationship between mushroom consumption and cancer risk.
Mushrooms are rich in vitamins, nutrients and antioxidants. The team’s findings show that these super foods may also help guard against cancer. Even though shiitake, oyster, maitake and king oyster mushrooms have higher amounts of the amino acid ergothioneine than white button, cremini and portabello mushrooms, the researchers found that people who incorporated any variety of mushrooms into their daily diets had a lower risk of cancer. According to the findings, individuals who ate 18 grams of mushrooms daily had a 45% lower risk of cancer compared to those who did not eat mushrooms.
“Mushrooms are the highest dietary source of ergothioneine, which is a unique and potent antioxidant and cellular protector,” said Djibril M. Ba, a graduate student in epidemiology at Penn State College of Medicine. “Replenishing antioxidants in the body may help protect against oxidative stress and lower the risk of cancer.”
When specific cancers were examined, the researchers noted the strongest associations for breast cancer as individuals who regularly ate mushrooms had a significantly lower risk of breast cancer. Ba explained that this could be because most of the studies did not include other forms of cancer. Moving forward, this research could be helpful in further exploring the protective effects that mushrooms have and helping to establish healthier diets that prevent cancer.
“Overall, these findings provide important evidence for the protective effects of mushrooms against cancer,” said coauthor John Richie, a Penn State Cancer Institute researcher and professor of public health sciences and pharmacology. “Future studies are needed to better pinpoint the mechanisms involved and specific cancers that may be impacted.”
Paddy Ssentongo, Joshua Muscat, Robert Beelman and Xiang Gao from Penn State also contributed to this research. The researchers declare no conflicts of interest or specific funding support.
Story Source:
Materials provided by Penn State. Original written by Tracy Cox. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Much of common pharmaceutical development today is the product of laborious cycles of tweaking and optimization. In each drug, a carefully concocted formula of natural and synthetic enzymes and ingredients works together to catalyze a desired reaction. But in early development, much of the process is spent determining what quantities of each enzyme to use to ensure a reaction occurs at a specific speed.
New collaborative research from Northwestern University could expedite, or even eliminate, the need for scientists to manually adjust bioproduction reaction conditions at all. Using ideas conceived by graduate students across three labs, Northwestern researchers developed technology that allows microbes to produce drugs with feedback control systems, dialing down or amping up protein concentration as needed.
Implications for this research are vast. With the knowledge that microbial feedback control systems could be used more generally to produce other drugs and products, the ability for microbes to be self-regulating means other important classes of therapeutics may be newly accessible to developers. Currently, because production pathways can be toxic to cells at certain levels, scientists have faced hurdles to engineering such microbes that leverage these pathways. But with the help of tools from the lab of Julius B. Lucks, an associate professor at the McCormick School of Engineering, this barrier may soon be nil.
“We first demonstrated our concept by making the precursor of the anti-cancer drug taxol,” said Lucks, a corresponding author on the paper. “This was a great model target to try because there’s challenges and complicated chemistry, but we hope the technology we developed is general in a sense, and there’s a whole array of products where you’d prefer to have microbial production.”
The research was published earlier this month in the journal ACS Synthetic Biology.
Synthetic biology has been a growing field over the past several decades and has entered the public sphere with the popularization of CRSPR genome editing and development of COVID-19 vaccinations with the use of engineered RNA molecules. Now in its fifth year, the Center for Synthetic Biology at Northwestern houses professors and students across majors and schools. Lucks said the center operates unlike others he’s been a part of because “it’s not top-down”; students are empowered to do awesome stuff.

In an early analysis of coronavirus vaccine safety data, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found no evidence that the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines pose serious risks during pregnancy.The findings are preliminary and cover just the first 11 weeks of the U.S. vaccination program. But the study, which included self-reported data on more than 35,000 people who received one of the vaccines during or shortly before pregnancy, is the largest yet on the safety of the coronavirus vaccines in pregnant people.During the clinical trials of the vaccines, pregnant women were excluded. That left patients, doctors and experts unsure whether the shots were safe to administer during pregnancy.“There’s a lot of anxiety about whether it’s safe and whether it would work and what to expect as far as side effects,” said Dr. Stephanie Gaw, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at the University of California, San Francisco.The new data, Dr. Gaw said, demonstrate that “a lot of pregnant people are getting the vaccine, there isn’t a significant increase in adverse pregnancy effects at this point, and that side effect profiles are very similar to nonpregnant people.”“I think that’s all very reassuring,” she said, “and I think it will really help providers and public health officials more strongly recommend getting the vaccine in pregnancy.”Covid-19 poses serious risks during pregnancy. Pregnant women who develop symptoms of the disease are more likely to become seriously ill, and more likely to die, than nonpregnant women with symptoms.Because of those risks, the C.D.C. has recommended that coronavirus vaccines be made available to pregnant women, though it also suggests that they consult with their doctors when making a decision about vaccination.The new study, which was published on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, is based largely on self-reported data from V-safe, the C.D.C.’s coronavirus vaccine safety monitoring system. Participants in the program use a smartphone app to complete regular surveys about their health, and any side effects they might be experiencing, after receiving a Covid-19 vaccine.The researchers analyzed the side effects reported by V-safe participants who received either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine between Dec. 14, 2020, and Feb. 28, 2021. They focused on 35,691 participants who said that they had been pregnant when they received the vaccine or became pregnant shortly thereafter.After vaccination, pregnant participants reported the same general pattern of side effects that nonpregnant ones did, the researchers found: pain at the injection site, fatigue, headaches and muscle pain..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1pd7fgo{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;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1pd7fgo{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1pd7fgo:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1pd7fgo{border:none;padding:20px 0 0;border-top:1px solid #121212;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Women who were pregnant were slightly more likely to report injection site pain than women who were not, but less likely to report the other side effects. They were also slightly more likely to report nausea or vomiting after the second dose.Pregnant V-safe participants were also given an opportunity to enroll in a special registry that tracked pregnancy and infant outcomes.By the end of February, 827 of those enrolled in the pregnancy registry had completed their pregnancies, 86 percent of which resulted in a live birth. Rates of miscarriage, prematurity, low birth weight and birth defects were consistent with those reported in pregnant women before the pandemic, the researchers report.“This study is of critical importance to pregnant individuals,” Dr. Michal Elovitz, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, said in an email. “It is very reassuring that there were no reported acute events in pregnant individuals” over the course of the study, she said.But the report has several limitations and much more research is needed, experts said. Enrollment in the surveillance programs is voluntary and the data are self-reported.In addition, because the study period encompassed just the first few months of the U.S. vaccination campaign, the vast majority of those enrolled in the pregnancy registry were health care workers. And there is not yet any data on pregnancy outcomes from people who were vaccinated during the first trimester of pregnancy.“I think we can feel more confident about recommending the vaccine in pregnancy, and especially with pregnant people that are at risk of Covid,” Dr. Gaw said. “But we do need to wait for more data for complete pregnancy outcomes from vaccines early in pregnancy.”

If you’re going back to work, and leaving your furry companion, we want to hear from you.During the pandemic, many of us stayed home, our furry or feathered friends nearby, maybe even nestling in our laps with our laptops.Now, as some workplaces have started whistling for their people to come back, what happens to Chico or Birdie or Meowser?We want to hear your stories of how you and your pets are handling the transition.Please share your experiences using the form below. We may follow up with you to hear more, but we won’t publish any part of your submission without contacting you first.

Plenty of people struggle to make sense of a multitude of converging voices in a crowded room. Commonly known as the “cocktail party effect,” people with hearing loss find it’s especially difficult to understand speech in a noisy environment.
New research suggests that, for some listeners, this may have less to do with actually discerning sounds. Instead, it may be a processing problem in which two ears blend different sounds together — a condition known as binaural pitch fusion.
The research, co-authored by scientists at Oregon Health & Science University and VA Portland Health Care System, was published today in the Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology.
The study’s lead author attributes these difficulties to abnormally broad binaural pitch fusion in people with hearing impairment. The new study suggests that, for people with hearing impairment, fusing of different sounds from both ears leads to sound blending together in a way that is often unintelligible.
“This differs from what people with normal hearing experience in what is known as the ‘cocktail party effect,'” said Lina Reiss, Ph.D., associate professor of otolaryngology/head and neck surgery in the OHSU School of Medicine. “People with normal hearing can separate and understand the multiple voices, but they just get confused about which voice is saying what.”
Reiss, who has hearing impairment herself and is part of the Oregon Hearing Research Center at OHSU, previously co-authored research in 2018 that first demonstrated broad binaural pitch fusion in hearing impairment. Together with another study showing blending of the fused pitches, the research suggested the possibility that similar fusion and blending could occur with sounds in speech.

When deciding whether to have children, there are many factors to consider: finances, support systems, personal values. For a growing number of people, climate change is also being added to the list of considerations, says a University of Arizona researcher.
Sabrina Helm, an associate professor in the Norton School of Family and Consumer Sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, is lead author of a new peer-reviewed study that looks at how climate change is affecting people’s decisions about whether to have children.
“For many people, the question of whether to have children or not is one of the biggest they will face in their lives,” Helm said. “If you are worried about what the future will look like because of climate change, obviously it will impact how you view this very important decision in your life.”
Helm and her collaborators wanted to better understand the specific climate change-related reasons people have for not wanting to have children. They started by analyzing online comments posted in response to news articles written about the growing trend of people forgoing having children due to climate change concerns.
They then sought out adults ages 18 to 35 who said climate change plays an important role in their reproductive decision-making. They interviewed 24 participants about their concerns.
The researchers’ findings, published in the journal Population and Environment, identify three major themes that emerged in both the online comments and the interviews.

In the field of robotics, researchers are continually looking for the fastest, strongest, most efficient and lowest-cost ways to actuate, or enable, robots to make the movements needed to carry out their intended functions.
The quest for new and better actuation technologies and ‘soft’ robotics is often based on principles of biomimetics, in which machine components are designed to mimic the movement of human muscles — and ideally, to outperform them. Despite the performance of actuators like electric motors and hydraulic pistons, their rigid form limits how they can be deployed. As robots transition to more biological forms and as people ask for more biomimetic prostheses, actuators need to evolve.
Associate professor (and alum) Michael Shafer and professor Heidi Feigenbaum of Northern Arizona University’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, along with graduate student researcher Diego Higueras-Ruiz, published a paper in Science Robotics presenting a new, high-performance artificial muscle technology they developed in NAU’s Dynamic Active Systems Laboratory. The paper, titled “Cavatappi artificial muscles from drawing, twisting, and coiling polymer tubes,” details how the new technology enables more human-like motion due to its flexibility and adaptability, but outperforms human skeletal muscle in several metrics.
“We call these new linear actuators cavatappi artificial muscles based on their resemblance to the Italian pasta,” Shafer said.
Because of their coiled, or helical, structure, the actuators can generate more power, making them an ideal technology for bioengineering and robotics applications. In the team’s initial work, they demonstrated that cavatappi artificial muscles exhibit specific work and power metrics ten and five times higher than human skeletal muscles, respectively, and as they continue development, they expect to produce even higher levels of performance.
“The cavatappi artificial muscles are based on twisted polymer actuators (TPAs), which were pretty revolutionary when they first came out because they were powerful, lightweight and cheap. But they were very inefficient and slow to actuate because you had to heat and cool them. Additionally, their efficiency is only about two percent,” Shafer said. “For the cavatappi, we get around this by using pressurized fluid to actuate, so we think these devices are far more likely to be adopted. These devices respond about as fast as we can pump the fluid. The big advantage is their efficiency. We have demonstrated contractile efficiency of up to about 45 percent, which is a very high number in the field of soft actuation.”
The engineers think this technology could be used in soft robotics applications, conventional robotic actuators (for example, for walking robots), or even potentially in assistive technologies like exoskeletons or prostheses.
“We expect that future work will include the use of cavatappi artificial muscles in many applications due to their simplicity, low-cost, lightweight, flexibility, efficiency and strain energy recovery properties, among other benefits,” Shafer said.
Technology is available for licensing, partnering opportunities.
Working with the NAU Innovations team, the inventors have taken steps to protect their intellectual property. The technology has entered the protection and early commercialization stage and is available for licensing and partnering opportunities. For more information, please contact NAU Innovations.
Shafer joined NAU in 2013. His other research interests are related to energy harvesting, wildlife telemetry systems and unmanned aerial systems. Feigenbaum joined NAU in 2007, and her other research interest include ratcheting in metals and smart materials. The graduate student on this project, Diego Higueras-Ruiz, received his MS in Mechanical Engineering from NAU in 2018 and will be completing his PhD in Bioengineering in Fall 2021. This work has been supported through a grant from NAU’s Research and Development Preliminary Studies program.