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Bobby Wayne, a retired reverend, called the state seeking help getting the vaccine. He said he was told there was no evidence the vaccine was effective.Bobby Wayne, a retired reverend with prostate cancer and leukemia, had spent a week calling health agencies around his county in Mississippi, trying to find out where to get the Covid-19 vaccine.But when Mr. Wayne, 64, called the state’s hotline on Monday, he said an operator, whose job was to help residents schedule vaccine appointments, gave him unnerving and incorrect information.“This is the way she put it to me: They had no documentation that the vaccine was effective,” Mr. Wayne said. “And then she asked me did I still want to take it.”When he told her “yes,” he said the operator replied that there were no appointments available and that he should call again the next morning.Bobby Wayne said he was anxious to get the vaccine and baffled when a state hotline operator told him there was no proof it would work. Elizabeth WayneThe confusion was the result of “miscommunication” over a misleading script that the hotline operators had been given, according to the State Department of Health.The script referred to pregnant women, women who were lactating and people with compromised immune systems.It asked: “Do you still want to be vaccinated with an understanding there are currently no available data on the safety or effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines, including Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, in pregnant people, lactating people, or immunocompromised people?”Most experts agree that the risks to pregnant women from Covid-19 are far greater than any theoretical harm from the vaccines. Doctors have said they believe that the vaccines are safe for people with autoimmune conditions.Liz Sharlot, a spokeswoman for Mississippi’s State Department of Health, said that the wording in the script could be confusing “when read out of context.”“We are replacing this confusing and misleading language,” she said in a statementHowever, Ms. Sharlot said the operators were never told that there was no documented proof that the Moderna vaccine or any other vaccine authorized for use by the Food and Drug Administration worked.“Just the opposite is true,” she said. “Both Moderna and Pfizer have high efficacy rates.”Ms. Sharlot added, “I think the gentleman misunderstood.”Mr. Wayne said he understood perfectly.“I’m not confused at all,” he said. “I may be 64 years old and handicapped, but my brain is still functioning and my ears are, too.”Mr. Wayne said it was unsettling to think people calling for information about getting vaccinated could be discouraged by the very people who are meant to help them get a shot.“I wouldn’t want anybody else going through that,” he said.Mississippi has administered at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine to 22 percent of its population, according to a New York Times database, putting it among the states that have had a slower rollout. Just over 12 percent of state residents have been fully vaccinated.Mr. Wayne’s daughter, Elizabeth Wayne, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, complained on Twitter about her father’s conversation with the state hotline operator and called it a “violence.”“It’s dangerous,” Dr. Wayne said. “There is a therapy available. There is a way to treat something, and you’re making it difficult for them to have access to that treatment so it’s increasing the likelihood they may become sick.”The Mississippi Free Press reported the story after Dr. Wayne wrote about her father’s experience on Twitter.Dr. Thomas E. Dobbs III, the state health officer, responded to her post on Twitter, sharing a link to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that showed the Moderna vaccine was 94.1 percent effective at preventing Covid-19 and that “no safety concerns were identified.”Dr. Wayne said she was pleased that the health department appeared to take her concerns, and her father’s, seriously.“I think it was a really good example of the State Health Department trying to reach out because they actually want to restore faith” in the vaccine, she said.Mr. Wayne said he got his shot on Wednesday morning.“I feel a whole lot better,” he said.

Scientists make pivotal discovery of method for wireless modulation of neurons with X-rays that could improve the lives of patients with brain disorders. The X-ray source only requires a machine like that found in a dentist’s office.
Many people worldwide suffer from movement-related brain disorders. Epilepsy accounts for more than 50 million; essential tremor, 40 million; and Parkinson’s disease, 10 million.
Relief for some brain disorder sufferers may one day be on the way in the form of a new treatment invented by researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and four universities. The treatment is based on breakthroughs in both optics and genetics. It would be applicable to not only movement-related brain disorders, but also chronic depression and pain.
This new treatment involves stimulation of neurons deep within the brain by means of injected nanoparticles that light up when exposed to X-rays (nanoscintillators) and would eliminate an invasive brain surgery currently in use.
“Our high-precision noninvasive approach could become routine with the use of a small X-ray machine, the kind commonly found in every dental office,” said Elena Rozhkova, a lead author and a nanoscientist in Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM), a DOE Office of Science User Facility.
Traditional deep brain stimulation requires an invasive neurosurgical procedure for disorders when conventional drug therapy is not an option. In the traditional procedure, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, surgeons implant a calibrated pulse generator under the skin (similar to a pacemaker). They then connect it with an insulated extension cord to electrodes inserted into a specific area of the brain to stimulate the surrounding neurons and regulate abnormal impulses.

Sarcomeres are small repeating subunits of myofibrils, the long cylinders that bundle together to make the muscle fibres. Inside the sarcomeres, filaments of the proteins myosin and actin interact to generate muscle contraction and relaxation. So far, traditional experimental approaches to investigate the structure and function of muscle tissue were performed on reconstructed protein complexes or suffered from low resolution. “Electron cryo-tomography, instead, allows us to obtain detailed and artefact-free 3D images of the frozen muscle,” says Raunser.
Cryo-ET was for a long time an established yet niche methodology. But recent technical advances in electron cryo-microscopy (cryo-EM) as well as the new development of cryo focused ion beam (FIB) milling are pushing cryo-ET resolution. Similar to cryo-EM, researchers flash-freeze the biological sample at a very low temperature (- 175 °C). Through this process, the sample preserves its hydration and fine structure and remains close to its native state. FIB milling is then applied to shave away extra material and obtain an ideal thickness of around 100 nanometers for the transmission electron microscope, which acquires multiple images as the sample is tilted along an axis. Finally, computational methods reconstruct a three-dimensional picture at high resolution.
Raunser’s team performed cryo-ET on mouse myofibrils isolated at the King’s College, and obtained a resolution of one nanometer (a millionth of a millimetre, enough to see fine structures within a protein): “We can now look at a myofibril with details thought unimaginable only four years ago. It’s fascinating!,” says Raunser.
Fibres in their natural context
The calculated reconstruction of the myofibrils revealed the three-dimensional organisation of the sarcomere, including the sub regions M-, A-, and I- bands, and the Z-disc, which unexpectedly forms a more irregular mesh and adopts different conformations. The scientists used a sample with myosin strongly bound to actin, representing a stage of the contracting muscle that is called the rigor state. And indeed, they could visualise for the first time in the native cell how two heads of the same myosin bind to an actin filament. They also discovered that the double head not only interacts with the same actin filament but is also found split between two actin filaments. This has never been seen before and shows that proximity to the next actin filament is stronger than the cooperative effect between the neighbouring heads.
“This is just the beginning. Cryo-ET is moving from niche to widespread technology in structural biology,” says Raunser. “Soon we will be able to investigate muscle diseases at molecular and even atomic level.” Mouse muscles are very similar to those of humans, yet scientists plan to investigate muscle tissue from biopsies or derived from pluripotent stem cells.
Story Source:
Materials provided by Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Businesses across the United States and beyond are offering free stuff to people who have been vaccinated. The perks include movie popcorn, alcohol and even marijuana.The benefits of getting vaccinated against Covid-19 — namely, protection against a dangerous virus — should be obvious by this stage in the pandemic.If that isn’t sufficient motivation, consider the swag.Businesses across the United States and beyond are offering free merchandise and other stuff to people who receive Covid shots. The perks include free rides, doughnuts, money, arcade tokens and even marijuana.Experts in behavioral motivation say that offering incentives is not necessarily the most effective or cost-efficient way to increase vaccine uptake. But that hasn’t stopped the freebies from piling up.In Cleveland, the Market Garden Brewery is offering 10-cent beers to the first 2021 people who show a Covid-19 vaccine certificate. “Yes, you read that right,” the brewery says on its website. “Ten Cents.”At the Greenhouse of Walled Lake, a medical marijuana dispensary in Michigan, anyone 21 and over who gets a Covid vaccine can pick up a prerolled joint until the end of the month.Chobani provides free yogurt at some vaccination sites. And Krispy Kreme said on Monday that for the rest of the year, it would give one glazed doughnut per day to anyone who provides proof of a Covid-19 vaccination.As vaccinations accelerated across the United States, “We made the decision that said, ‘Hey, we can support the next act of joy,’ which is, if you come by, show us a vaccine card, get a doughnut any time, any day, every day if you choose to,” the company’s chief executive, Michael Tattersfield, told Fox News.The Krispy Kreme initiative is no relation to the “vaccinated doughnuts” that were sold last month by a bakery in Germany, garnished with plastic syringes that dispense a sweet, lemony-ginger amuse-bouche. It also does not entitle vaccinated Americans to endless doughnuts, as Mr. Tattersfield seemed to imply in his Fox News interview — just one per day, as the company notes on its website.In a promotion it is calling “Tokens for Poke’ns,” Up-Down, a chain of bars featuring vintage arcade games, is offering $5 in free tokens to guests who present a completed vaccination card. Up-Down, which has six locations in five Midwestern states, is extending the offer to guests who visit within three weeks of their final dose.David Hayden, Up-Down’s communications manager, said he came up with the idea while sitting in an observation room after receiving his own vaccine.“It’s something we anticipated for so long,” he said, adding that the token giveaway was a way of giving customers something else to look forward to after being vaccinated.Cleveland Cinemas, a movie-theater chain in Ohio, is offering a free 44-ounce popcorn at two of its locations to anyone who presents a vaccination card through April 30.A woman was inoculated in February as part of an initiative in Tel Aviv offering a free drink at a bar to people getting the Covid vaccine.Corinna Kern/ReutersTo encourage younger people to get vaccinated, the city of Tel Aviv set up a mobile vaccination clinic at a bar last month, and offered free beer and shots of nonalcoholic peach juice to those who received a shot, The Times of Israel reported.Presenting cards for so many promotions might cause some wear and tear. To protect the cards from damage, Staples is offering to laminate them at no charge after customers have received their final dose. The promotion runs through May 1.Some vaccine perks flow from corporations to their employees. Tyson Foods, Trader Joe’s and others pay for the time it takes them to get vaccinated, while Kroger pays them a $100 bonus.Other incentives target people in vulnerable groups. Uber, for instance, has agreed to provide 10 million free or discounted rides to seniors, essential workers and others in countries across North America, Europe and Asia to help them get to vaccination centers.“Governments like these initiatives because they help them to get more vaccines in more arms,” said Chris Brummitt, a spokesman for the company in Singapore.That may be true, but the science of motivating people to get vaccinated is complex.“Behavioral nudges” that are based on scientific observations may be a more cost-effective way to persuade people to get vaccinated against Covid-19 than straight-up incentives, said Hengchen Dai, a professor of management at the University of California, Los Angeles.In a recent study, Ms. Dai and her colleagues found that text messages could boost uptake of influenza vaccinations. The most effective texts were framed as reminders to get shots that were already reserved for the patient. They also resembled the kind of communication that patients expect to receive from health care providers.Jon Bogard, a graduate student at U.C.L.A. who contributed to the study, said that policymakers should proceed with caution on incentives because they can sometimes backfire. One problem is that the campaigns are expensive, he said. Another is that people receiving shots could see a large incentive as a sign that “vaccines are riskier than they in fact are.”A better alternative, Mr. Bogard said, could be handing out “low-personal-value, high-social-value” objects — like stickers and badges — that tap into a larger sense of “social motivation and accountability.”There appears to be no shortage of such swag swirling around the world’s hospitals and vaccination clinics.“Protected!” says a button that patients receive at a vaccination site in Hong Kong. It shows a cartoon syringe fist bumping a masked doctor.At a minor-league baseball stadium in Hartford, Conn., people receiving shots can pick up an “I got my Covid-19 vaccination” sticker bearing the home team’s mascot, a goat.If you aren’t satisfied with the vaccine-related style accouterment at your local clinic, there are plenty of options available for purchase online.One badge — “I got my Fauci ouchi” — pays homage to America’s best-known doctor, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci.“Thanks, science,” says another.

Businesses across the United States and beyond are offering free stuff to people who have been vaccinated. The perks include movie popcorn, alcohol and even marijuana.The benefits of getting vaccinated against Covid-19 — namely, protection against a dangerous virus — should be obvious by this stage in the pandemic.If that isn’t sufficient motivation, consider the swag.Businesses across the United States and beyond are offering free merchandise and other stuff to people who receive Covid shots. The perks include free rides, doughnuts, money, arcade tokens and even marijuana.Experts in behavioral motivation say that offering incentives is not necessarily the most effective or cost-efficient way to increase vaccine uptake. But that hasn’t stopped the freebies from piling up.In Cleveland, the Market Garden Brewery is offering 10-cent beers to the first 2021 people who show a Covid-19 vaccine certificate. “Yes, you read that right,” the brewery says on its website. “Ten Cents.”At the Greenhouse of Walled Lake, a medical marijuana dispensary in Michigan, anyone 21 and over who gets a Covid vaccine can pick up a prerolled joint until the end of the month.Chobani provides free yogurt at some vaccination sites. And Krispy Kreme said on Monday that for the rest of the year, it would give one glazed doughnut per day to anyone who provides proof of a Covid-19 vaccination.As vaccinations accelerated across the United States, “We made the decision that said, ‘Hey, we can support the next act of joy,’ which is, if you come by, show us a vaccine card, get a doughnut any time, any day, every day if you choose to,” the company’s chief executive, Michael Tattersfield, told Fox News.The Krispy Kreme initiative is no relation to the “vaccinated doughnuts” that were sold last month by a bakery in Germany, garnished with plastic syringes that dispense a sweet, lemony-ginger amuse-bouche. It also does not entitle vaccinated Americans to endless doughnuts, as Mr. Tattersfield seemed to imply in his Fox News interview — just one per day, as the company notes on its website.In a promotion it is calling “Tokens for Poke’ns,” Up-Down, a chain of bars featuring vintage arcade games, is offering $5 in free tokens to guests who present a completed vaccination card. Up-Down, which has six locations in five Midwestern states, is extending the offer to guests who visit within three weeks of their final dose.David Hayden, Up-Down’s communications manager, said he came up with the idea while sitting in an observation room after receiving his own vaccine.“It’s something we anticipated for so long,” he said, adding that the token giveaway was a way of giving customers something else to look forward to after being vaccinated.Cleveland Cinemas, a movie-theater chain in Ohio, is offering a free 44-ounce popcorn at two of its locations to anyone who presents a vaccination card through April 30.A woman was inoculated in February as part of an initiative in Tel Aviv offering a free drink at a bar to people getting the Covid vaccine.Corinna Kern/ReutersTo encourage younger people to get vaccinated, the city of Tel Aviv set up a mobile vaccination clinic at a bar last month, and offered free beer and shots of nonalcoholic peach juice to those who received a shot, The Times of Israel reported.Presenting cards for so many promotions might cause some wear and tear. To protect the cards from damage, Staples is offering to laminate them at no charge after customers have received their final dose. The promotion runs through May 1.Some vaccine perks flow from corporations to their employees. Tyson Foods, Trader Joe’s and others pay for the time it takes them to get vaccinated, while Kroger pays them a $100 bonus.Other incentives target people in vulnerable groups. Uber, for instance, has agreed to provide 10 million free or discounted rides to seniors, essential workers and others in countries across North America, Europe and Asia to help them get to vaccination centers.“Governments like these initiatives because they help them to get more vaccines in more arms,” said Chris Brummitt, a spokesman for the company in Singapore.That may be true, but the science of motivating people to get vaccinated is complex.“Behavioral nudges” that are based on scientific observations may be a more cost-effective way to persuade people to get vaccinated against Covid-19 than straight-up incentives, said Hengchen Dai, a professor of management at the University of California, Los Angeles.In a recent study, Ms. Dai and her colleagues found that text messages could boost uptake of influenza vaccinations. The most effective texts were framed as reminders to get shots that were already reserved for the patient. They also resembled the kind of communication that patients expect to receive from health care providers.Jon Bogard, a graduate student at U.C.L.A. who contributed to the study, said that policymakers should proceed with caution on incentives because they can sometimes backfire. One problem is that the campaigns are expensive, he said. Another is that people receiving shots could see a large incentive as a sign that “vaccines are riskier than they in fact are.”A better alternative, Mr. Bogard said, could be handing out “low-personal-value, high-social-value” objects — like stickers and badges — that tap into a larger sense of “social motivation and accountability.”There appears to be no shortage of such swag swirling around the world’s hospitals and vaccination clinics.“Protected!” says a button that patients receive at a vaccination site in Hong Kong. It shows a cartoon syringe fist bumping a masked doctor.At a minor-league baseball stadium in Hartford, Conn., people receiving shots can pick up an “I got my Covid-19 vaccination” sticker bearing the home team’s mascot, a goat.If you aren’t satisfied with the vaccine-related style accouterment at your local clinic, there are plenty of options available for purchase online.One badge — “I got my Fauci ouchi” — pays homage to America’s best-known doctor, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci.“Thanks, science,” says another.

Despite continued improvements in antibiotics and hospital intensive care, staph sepsis — a bloodstream infection caused by Staphylococcus aureus bacteria — still causes severe illness or death in 20 to 30 percent of patients who contract it.
Rather than continue to throw more antibiotics at the problem, University of California San Diego researchers want to boost the other side of the equation: the patient’s own immune system.
The team recently discovered a battle that occurs between staph bacteria and platelets — blood cells known better for their role in clotting than in immune defense. In some sepsis cases, they found, the bacteria win out and platelet levels plummet. Patients with fewer platelets were more likely to die of staph sepsis than patients with higher platelet counts.
The researchers also determined that two currently available prescription medications, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for other uses, protect platelets and improve survival in mouse models of staph sepsis. The two repurposed drugs were ticagrelor (Brilinta), a blood thinner commonly prescribed to prevent heart attack recurrence, and oseltamivir (Tamiflu), prescribed to treat the flu.
The study publishes March 24, 2021 in Science Translational Medicine.
“In many cases, the antibiotics we give these patients should be able to kill the bacteria, based on lab tests, yet a significant number of patients are not pulling through,” said senior author Victor Nizet, MD, Distinguished Professor at UC San Diego School of Medicine and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. “If we can reduce mortality in staph sepsis by 10 or 20 percent by arming or protecting the immune system, we can likely save more lives than discovering an additional new antibiotic that may still not cure the sickest patients.”
The study started with a group of 49 University of Wisconsin patients with staph sepsis. The team collected the patients’ blood, bacteria samples, and demographic and health information. To their surprise, it wasn’t white blood cell counts (immune cells) that correlated with patient outcomes — it was the platelet count. Low platelet counts, defined in this case as fewer than 100,000 per mm3 blood, were associated with increased risk of death from staph sepsis. Approximately 31 percent of patients with low platelet counts died from the infection, compared to less than 6 percent of patients with platelets above the threshold.

Universities and other institutions looking to protect themselves from Covid-19 may benefit from sharing their testing resources with the wider community, a new study suggests.Last year, when the National Football League decided to stage its season in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, it went all-in on testing. The league tested all players and personnel before they reported for summer training camp, and continued near-daily testing in the months that followed. Between Aug. 1 and the Super Bowl in early February, the N.F.L. administered almost one million tests to players and staff.Many other organizations have sought safety in mass testing. The University of Illinois is testing its students, faculty and staff twice a week and has conducted more than 1.6 million tests since July. Major corporations, from Amazon to Tyson Foods, have rolled out extensive testing programs for their own employees.Now, a new analysis suggests that schools, businesses and other organizations that want to keep themselves safe should think beyond strictly themselves. By dedicating a substantial proportion of their tests to people in the surrounding community, institutions could reduce the number of Covid-19 cases among their members by as much as 25 percent, researchers report in a new paper, which has not yet been published in a scientific journal.“It’s natural in an outbreak for people to become self-serving, self-focused,” said Dr. Pardis Sabeti, a computational biologist at Harvard University and the Broad Institute who lead the analysis. But, she added, “If you’ve been in enough outbreaks you just understand that testing in a box doesn’t makes sense. These things are communicable, and they’re coming in from the community.”The study has “really profound implications, especially if others can replicate it,” said David O’Connor, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved in the analysis but reviewed a draft of the paper. As the pandemic enters its second year, he said, “We want to start using more sophisticated modeling and probably economic theory to inform what an optimal testing program would look like.”Dr. Sabeti is an epidemic veteran, part of teams that responded to an Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014 and a mumps outbreak in the Boston area a few years later. When the coronavirus closed down the country last spring, many colleges and universities sought her advice on how to safely reopen.At a time when testing resources were in short supply, many of these institutions were proposing intensive, expensive testing regimens focused entirely on their own members. Again and again, Dr. Sabeti suggested that universities think more broadly, and allocate some of their tests to people who might be friends, family members or neighbors of their students and employees.“The metaphor I often used on the calls was to say, ‘You’re in a drought in a place with a lot of forest fires, and you have a shortage of fire alarms,’” she recalled. “‘And if you run out and buy every fire alarm and install it in your own house, you’ll be able to pick up a fire the moment it hits your house, but at that point it’s burning to the ground.’”Still, convincing university officials to divert precious testing resources away from their own institutions was a hard sell, Dr. Sabeti said, especially without data on the effectiveness of the approach. So she and her colleagues decided to gather some.“Fundamentally, the paper is about the intersection of kindness and success — how being generous with one’s resources actually is the most effective” strategy, said one of the study’s authors.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesThey developed an epidemiological model to simulate how a virus might spread through a midsize university, like Colorado Mesa University, one of the schools Dr. Sabeti’s team has been advising. (Several C.M.U. officials and researchers are co-authors of the paper.)Using real-world data from C.M.U., the researchers created a baseline scenario in which 1 percent of people at the school, and 6 percent of those in the surrounding county, were infected by the coronavirus, and the university was testing 12 percent of its members every day. The team assumed that they had a complete list of each university member’s close off-campus contacts, and that if someone tested positive for the virus, they and their contacts would quarantine until they were no longer infectious.Under these conditions, the researchers found, if the university used all of its tests on its own members, it would have roughly 200 Covid-19 cases after 40 days. But if instead it parceled out some of those tests, using them on community members who were close contacts of students and staff, the number of cases dropped by one-quarter.“The optimal proportion of tests to use outside the institution on those targeted, first-degree contacts came out to be about 45 percent,” said Ivan Specht, an undergraduate researcher in Dr. Sabeti’s lab and a co-author of the paper. In short, institutions could reduce their caseloads by one-fourth if they used almost half their tests on people just outside their direct membership. That percentage “is remarkably high considering that most institutions use zero percent of their tests outside of themselves,” Mr. Specht noted.The researchers then tweaked the model’s parameters in various ways: What if the virus were more prevalent? What if students and staff did not report all their contacts? What if they were better about mask-wearing and social distancing? What if the university deployed more tests, or fewer?.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-akgeos{margin-bottom:15px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.75rem;line-height:1rem;color:#787878;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-akgeos{font-size:0.8125rem;line-height:1.125rem;}}.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;}#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-coqf44{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-coqf44 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-coqf44 em{font-style:italic;}.css-coqf44 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-coqf44 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#333;text-decoration-color:#333;}.css-coqf44 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Unsurprisingly, the more testing the university did, and the more information it had about its members’ close contacts, the fewer Covid-19 cases there were. But in virtually every scenario, sharing at least some tests with the broader community led to fewer cases than hoarding them.“The surprising thing is just how robust that finding is in the face of some pretty plausible variations,” said A. David Paltiel, a professor of health policy and management at Yale School of Public Health, who was not involved in the study.Still, he noted, there were plenty of scenarios that the model didn’t test, and the paper still needs to undergo a thorough peer review.Its predictions should also be tested in the real world, Dr. O’Connor said: “It needs to be explored and tested head-to-head with other allocation methods.”But if the findings hold up, it would suggest that schools and other institutions that are trying to reopen safely should think beyond their own walls when they develop testing programs. “Even if your goal is only to protect the students in your care, you will still be doing the maximum to protect those students by taking care of the people in the surrounding community,” Dr. Paltiel said. “That’s a pretty strong argument.”Some universities are beginning to adopt this outlook. C.M.U. now offers free tests to all of its students’ self-reported contacts, whether or not they are affiliated with the university, and runs a testing site that is open to local residents, said Amy Bronson, a co-chair of the university’s Covid-19 task force and an author of the paper.And in November, the University of California, Davis, began offering free coronavirus tests to anyone who lives or works in the city. The Healthy Davis Together program, a partnership with the city, has since administered more than 450,000 tests and identified more than 1,000 people with the virus, said Brad Pollock, an epidemiologist at U.C. Davis who directs the project.“A virus does not respect geographic boundaries,” Dr. Pollock said. “It is ludicrous to think that you can get control of an acute infectious respiratory disease like Covid-19, in a city like Davis that hosts a very large university, without coordinated public health measures that connect both the university and the community.”There are barriers to the more altruistic approach, including internal political pressure to use testing resources in house and concerns about legal liability. But the researchers hope that their model convinces at least some institutions to rethink their strategy, not only during this epidemic but also in future ones.“An outbreak is an opportunity to buy a lot of community good will, or to burn a lot of community good will,” Dr. Sabeti said. “We could have spent an entire year building up that relationship between organizations and institutions and their communities. And we would have done all that hard work together, as opposed to everybody turning inward.”

Eating just one cup of leafy green vegetables every day could boost muscle function, according to new Edith Cowan University (ECU) research.
The study, published today in the Journal of Nutrition, found that people who consumed a nitrate-rich diet, predominantly from vegetables, had significantly better muscle function of their lower limbs.
Poor muscle function is linked to greater risk of falls and fractures and is considered a key indicator of general health and wellbeing.
Researchers examined data from 3,759 Australians taking part in Melbourne’s Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute AusDiab study over a 12-year period. They found those with the highest regular nitrate consumption had 11 per cent stronger lower limb strength than those with the lowest nitrate intake. Up to 4 per cent faster walking speeds were also recorded.
Lead researcher Dr Marc Sim from ECU’s Institute for Nutrition Research said the findings reveal important evidence for the role diet plays in overall health.
“Our study has shown that diets high in nitrate-rich vegetables may bolster your muscle strength independently of any physical activity,” he said.

The pandemic has led to new contemplations of fragility, and sick or disabled artists are using new attention to imagine a more accessible art world.Many artists with chronic illnesses or disabilities feared the worst when the pandemic started. Like those who are immunocompromised or have underlying conditions, accessing care and continuing to work would be tough. And it was. Some artists moved to remote areas to save money and protect themselves; others maintained strict quarantines in their homes.But the creative juices never stopped flowing, at least not for Panteha Abareshi, whose first major solo exhibition opened online, with the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery.“It was a massive, frantic crunch,” Abareshi, whose work pulls from a lifetime of experience with chronic pain, said about the three-month planning process.Through videos, performances and sculptures, Abareshi examines the disabled body as a depersonalized object in the medical system. It’s a feeling now understood by more of the general public.“Able-bodied people have never had to think about the politics of their bodies as it pertains to sickness,” said Abareshi, who is 21. “And now they want to experience that subjectivity.”Panteha Abareshi’s art in a first major solo exhibition online, at Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. For Abareshi, the nuances of disability and chronic illness are often lost on able-bodied  individuals.Panteha AbareshiAnd, Abareshi said, “There is a real expectation by the public to find some superficial positivity within the disabled experience, a portrayal that follows notions of empowerment or emancipation.” “People want that kind of message because it means they can stop being critical of their own relationships to illness,” Abareshi went on, even when living while sick is more complex.As the public becomes more aware of chronic illness through the coronavirus’s lasting effects on the body, artists who focus on it, like Abareshi, are receiving more inquiries from cultural institutions that are interested in work commenting on the health system. Some of these artists have mixed feelings: happy for the opportunities but painfully aware of how many museums lack accessibility options.Abareshi’s  “Aggregation” (2020), an installation featuring video of the artist connecting to an EKG machine, part of the exhibition at Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery.Panteha AbareshiIn a normal year, Alex Dolores Salerno might not have had the opportunity to become an artist-in-residence at the Museum of Art and Design, in New York. But virtual programming opened the door, as organizers became more receptive to artists who often have to stay close to home.Salerno has taught audiences about the history of artists who have worked from their beds. Salerno’s own work — sculptures designed from bed frames, linens and mattress toppers — explores interdependency and care. But the artist is still navigating how much to disclose about their disability.“I think about this demand that marginalized groups have to give a diagnosis or explanation to prove their identities,” Salerno said. “Why are marginalized groups always the ones asked to provide the public with an education?”Alex Dolores Salerno’s “At Work (Rest) no. 1” (2019), another example of the artist’s use of bedding materials to examine notions of care and interdependency.Alex Dolores SalernoSalerno’s “Pillow Fight” (2019). Salerno became an artist-in-residence at the Museum of Art and Design in New York in the last year.Object StudiesA similar question had flicked through the mind of Sharona Franklin, who moved to a small border town in Canada to save money after the pandemic shut down businesses associated with her work. Later, several high-profile institutions came calling for her kaleidoscopic jelloid sculptures infused with medicinal herbs and filled with syringes — sculpted shrines based on her experience living with a degenerative disease.“I’m working so much right now and hoping it will pay off,” she said.Since last summer, she has been contacted for various opportunities: a solo exhibition for spring 2022, which would be her first at a major institution, at the List Visual Arts Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; to have her work shown in a gallery in Brussels; and to participate in a group exhibition, which opened March 13, at the Remai Modern, in Saskatchewan, with artists whose work critiques the medical industry.Such artists often find themselves explaining accessibility and how there is no one-size-fits-all situation, as well as navigating a system that wasn’t built for them. Some have created their own advocacy groups in the past year, like the artists behind the Sick in Quarters collective. Many have become impromptu consultants on disability rights, teaching well-intentioned curators how to talk about disease.Franklin, in a self-portrait, “DTES Social Housing,” in her home. The artist is known for creating jelloid sculptures embedded with medicinal herbs and syringes.Sharona FranklinFranklin’s “Mycoplasma Altar,” one of her jelloid sculptures infused with medicinal herbs and filled with syringes.Sharona Franklin and Kings LeapAmanda Cachia, a curator and lecturer at California State University San Marcos, said, “I’m pretty exhausted.” Since the pandemic started, she has received requests to speak with institutions about accessibility, including at the Munch Museum, in Norway, and the USC Pacific Asia Museum, in California.“It’s not just how much labor is demanded of the artists’ bodies,” she tells her audiences, “but how curators communicate their ideas, needs and interests without language that’s offensive.”Bethany Montagano, director of the USC Pacific Asia Museum, said frank conversations about disability have changed her institution’s direction.“Museums need to be far more than A.D.A. compliant,” she said in a statement. “We are working as a staff to lay out strategic priorities, which involve planning programs and planning exhibitions that not only include but buoy the voices of sick and disabled artists.”The museum is also “prioritizing actively acquiring works from sick and disabled artists.”A spokeswoman for the Munch Museum said that Cachia’s talk was inspiring. The museum is planning a variety of new accessibility initiatives, including the creation of a diversity council and plans to translate a contemporary art exhibition into sensory experiences for audiences.Among other institutions that are turning to disabled people for guidance is the Shed, which also created a disability council — on it, a range of people with different disabilities — to advise curators on accessibility for programming. Those types of discussions will help inform curation decisions, said Solana Chehtman, the organization’s director of civic programs. “We wanted to put access and artistry at the center,” Chehtman said, mentioning an ongoing digital commissioning series. “And I think this is a time to recognize what sick and disabled artists have made.”Local governments are backing the efforts. New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs says that it has invested $400,000 in the current fiscal year to support organizations that help artists, audiences and cultural workers with disabilities. Over the last three years, the agency has devoted $1.68 million for disability access and artistry.“We are committed to fostering a cultural community that is accessible to all,” Gonzalo Casals, the cultural affairs commissioner, said in a statement. He added that the agency was working on being inclusive “by supporting and expanding disability inclusion within the buildings, programming, and hiring practices of our city’s cultural institutions.”Last year, the Ford Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation announced the Disability Futures fellowship, a joint initiative to provide 20 artists with $50,000 grants.Emil Kang, the program director of arts and culture at the Mellon Foundation, said, “What we have already done is only a drop in the bucket.”“We wanted to show the world that disabled artists are and have always been making work,” he said. “There just hasn’t been a national program like this before.”Ezra Benus, an artist who also helps administer thefellowship, said, “The world is experiencing illness, so people have turned to us.”“There is also pressure on sick and disabled people to create work only based on our illnesses, which can be difficult to navigate,” he added. As artists are more engaged with cultural institutions, some are now coming prepared with access riders, which outline the terms of their engagement.Christine Sun Kim, an artist who performed the national anthem in American Sign Language at the Super Bowl in 2020, is writing her own document for organizations working with deaf artists like herself, with resources and tip sheets.The pandemic has presented its own challenges for Kim, who said she reduced her workload after attending virtual events on Zoom, where it was difficult to focus on the host and interpreter. “It’s just too much for me,” Kim said. “My deaf friends often FaceTime separately with their own interpreters when on Zoom.”But she also sees an opportunity for institutions to start thinking broadly about accessibility.“There has definitely been a shift in the United States where people are becoming more aware,” she said. Whether or not more accommodating policies survive in the long-term, artists like Franklin feel confident their work will.“Friends think the world is going to forget about us once people aren’t scared for their own lives,” she said. “But the art we make is going to stick around.”

The mammalian center for learning and memory, hippocampus, has a remarkable capacity to generate new neurons throughout life. Newborn neurons are produced by neural stem cells (NSCs) and they are crucial for forming neural circuits required for learning and memory, and mood control. During aging, the number of NSCs declines, leading to decreased neurogenesis and age-associated cognitive decline, anxiety, and depression. Thus, identifying the core molecular machinery responsible for NSC preservation is of fundamental importance if we are to use neurogenesis to halt or reverse hippocampal age-related pathology.
While there are increasing number of tools available to study NSCs and neurogenesis in mouse models, one of the major hurdles in exploring this fundamental biological process in the human brain is the lack of specific NSCs markers amenable for advanced imaging and in vivo analysis. A team of researchers led by Dr. Mirjana Maletic-Savatic, associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine and investigator at the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s Hospital, and Dr. Louis Manganas, associate professor at the Stony Brook University, decided to tackle this problem in a rather unusual way. They reasoned that if they could find proteins that are present on the surface of NSCs, then they could eventually make agents to “see” NSCs in the human brain.
“The ultimate goal of our research is to maintain neurogenesis throughout life at the same level as it is in the young brains, to prevent the decline in our cognitive capabilities and reduce the tendency towards mood disorders such as depression, as we age. To do that, however, we first need to better understand this elusive, yet fundamental process in humans. However, we do not have the tools to study this process in live humans and all the knowledge we have gathered so far comes from analyses of the postmortem brains. And we cannot develop tools to detect this process in people because existing NSC markers are present within cells and unreachable for in vivo visualization,” Maleti -Savati said. “So, in collaboration with our colleagues from New York and Spain, we undertook this study to find surface markers and then develop tools such as ligands for positron emission tomography (PET) to visualize them using advanced real-time in vivo brain imaging.”
Typically, antibodies are made against known antigens but the team set out to generate antibodies for unknown target proteins, which made their mission rather challenging. They solved this problem by relying on an age-old method of generating antibodies by injecting mice with whole-cell or membrane preparations. This resulted in 1648 clones out of which 39 reacted with NSCs. Upon closer examination, one potential candidate most strongly labeled NSCs. Mass spectrometric analysis of the human hippocampal tissue identified the target protein as the Brain-Abundant Signal Protein 1 (BASP-1), previously shown to be present in the neurons of the mouse brain but not in NSCs. Interestingly, the specific antibody that recognizes BASP-1 in NSCs did not label neurons or any other cells apart from NSCs, indicating that it could be used to visualize these cells in the live mammalian brain.
“Using our new antibody, we found that BASP-1 is restricted to NSCs in neurogenic niches in the mammalian brains, including humans, during development in utero and after birth. Thus, our work identified membrane-bound BASP-1 protein as a possible biomarker of NSCs that would allow us to examine the mechanisms of adult human neurogenesis as well as to explore its role in the process,” Maleti -Savati concluded.
With this newly discovered biomarker, scientists can better understand the relevance and intricate mechanisms of neurogenesis, which may lead to new future therapeutic approaches to treat and manage neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders associated with diminished neurogenesis. The study was published in the journal, Scientific Reports.
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Materials provided by Texas Children’s Hospital. Original written by Rajalaxmi Natarajan, PhD. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.