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4.    <title>News from Science</title>
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17.    <item>
18.      <title>Horses buried alive in medieval funerals came from distant lands  </title>
19.      <link>https://www.science.org/content/article/horses-buried-alive-medieval-funerals-came-distant-lands</link>
20.      <description>Animals may have been transported on Viking ships across the Baltic Sea</description>
21.      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<article>
22. <div data-interstitial="3">
23.  <p>
24.   An ancient cemetery on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea contains some surprising bodies. Here, 1100 years ago, prominent warriors were cremated and buried with grave goods including amber beads, axes, and silver jewelry. Also present: the skeletons of young horses. Travelers’ tales and archaeological clues suggest a cruel ritual, in which the animals were raced to exhaustion, then led into a pit and forced onto their knees before being buried alive.
25.  </p>
26.  <p>
27.   Archaeologists had long thought these horses were local, but new research—reported today in
28.   <em>
29.    Science Advances­
30.   </em>
31.   —suggests
32.   <a href="http://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ado3529">
33.    they came from distant lands, likely borne on Viking ships
34.   </a>
35.   . Many were also female, suggesting that the birthplace, and perhaps coat color, of these sacrificial victims was more important than their sex.
36.  </p>
37.  <p>
38.   “Horses were so important to these people it was worth transporting them,” says University of Warsaw archaeologist Bartosz Kontny, who was not part of the research. The work, he says, provides a glimpse into the rituals of a little-known part of Europe.
39.  </p>
40.  <p>
41.   The study, he says, also confirms the transformative power of the sail, introduced to the Baltic by the Vikings in early medieval times. “If you have sails, you have more space on board for crew, cargo—and maybe for horses as well.”
42.  </p>
43.  <p>
44.   Over the past 150 years, archaeologists have found thousands of horse burials in Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, and Poland dated between 0 C.E. to the 1200s. The bones reveal that the animals were usually killed at the prime age of between 3 and 5 years old. Some were buried whole; others were dismembered. Some were killed standing upright in pits; others were pinned on their sides under heavy stones and buried alive. In Viking Age Lithuania, the exhausted animals were forced to kneel on subterranean ramps and buried faced down as though galloping into the earth.
45.  </p>
46.  <p>
47.   The one consistent theme: “They’re purposefully sacrificing expensive animals as part of a funerary rite,” says Washington State University archaeologist Katherine French, a co-author of the new study.
48.  </p>
49.  <p>
50.   To understand more about the horses, researchers took samples from their tooth enamel, looking for variations in the element strontium. Absorbed through water and food, strontium incorporates into teeth as they form, providing a telltale clue as to where an animal spent the early years of its life. Strontium in the teeth of horses buried in the Baltic region between 0 C.E. and about 800 C.E. was a match for the eastern Baltic, as predicted by earlier archaeologists.
51.  </p>
52.  <figure>
53.   <div>
54.    <img alt="Horse sacrificial deposits " src="https://www.science.org/do/10.1126/science.zqcsc7p/files/_20240517_on_horse_sacrifice_secondary_720.jpg"/>
55.   </div>
56.   <figcaption>
57.    <span>
58.     Baltic people raced horses to exhaustion, then led them into pits and killed them, or buried them alive as part of funeral rituals.
59.     <span>
60.      Maciej Karczewski
61.     </span>
62.    </span>
63.   </figcaption>
64.  </figure>
65.  <p>
66.   But with the dawn of the Viking Age and its sailing ships, the strontium in some sacrificed horses suggests origins hundreds of kilometers away across the Baltic Sea, in Finland or central Scandinavia. “There’s wide-ranging contact,” says study author Aleksander Pluskowski, an archaeologist at the University of Reading. “These people are well-connected to their neighbors.”
67.  </p>
68.  <p>
69.   DNA recovered from the teeth, meanwhile, yielded another surprise: The horses were as likely to be mares as stallions, suggesting the sex of the animal was less important than thought. Rather than needing a supposedly masculine horse for such rituals, the people of the time may have instead prized other attributes such as coat color. Historical accounts and later folk tales suggest white horses were valued for sacrifices, for example.
70.  </p>
71.  <p>
72.   Even though horses were still available and common locally, the increase in imported animals suggests the expense of shipping a horse hundreds of kilometers probably played a role, too. Young horses imported specifically for sacrificing demonstrated the importance and wealth of the deceased—and perhaps the extent of their network or connections. “The prestige element is much more important than the sex of the animal, French says. “It seems like this was a public rite everyone was participating in.”
73.  </p>
74.  <p>
75.   The archaeological data are “so important because of the lack of written sources from the Baltic region,” says Roman Shiroukhov, an archaeologist at the Leibniz Center for Archaeology who was not part of the work. For Roman-era writers such as Tacitus, the region was beyond the edge of the civilized world, known only through unreliable second-hand reports. During the Viking period and Middle Ages, chroniclers in neighboring Christian kingdoms considered the Balts exotic “pagans.”
76.  </p>
77.  <p>
78.   The eastern Baltic was one of the last corners of Europe to adopt writing and Christianity, Shiroukhov notes, converting at sword-point in the 1200s as part of a “northern Crusade” by Teutonic knights from Germany. “The people who sacrificed these horses didn’t write about themselves.”
79.  </p>
80.  <p>
81.   The sailing ships that brought the horses also connected the Baltic to rivers leading east to Kyiv, Ukraine, and on to the eastern Roman Empire. As the region’s importance grew, so did its wealth—reflected in burgeoning numbers of horse sacrifices.
82.  </p>
83.  <p>
84.   Shiroukhov says the rituals were no longer reserved for powerful leaders but also incorporated into funerals for less prominent men and women. “By the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries, this phenomenon was very popular, and not only for rich people,” Shiroukhov says. “It’s really a new page in the horse trade.”
85.  </p>
86. </div>
87. </article>
88. ]]></content:encoded>
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91.      <pubDate>Fri, 17 May 2024 15:20:00 -0400</pubDate>
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93.    </item>
94.    <item>
95.      <title>Keto diet may cause organ damage, mouse study finds  </title>
96.      <link>https://www.science.org/content/article/keto-diet-may-cause-organ-damage-mouse-study-finds</link>
97.      <description>High-fat, low-carb regimen stresses out cells in heart, kidneys, brain, and liver, but effects may be reversible</description>
98.      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<article>
99. <div data-interstitial="3">
100.  <p>
101.   Many influencers, athletes, and regular folks swear by ketogenic diets—skimping on carbs and feasting on fats to quickly shed pounds and improve their metabolism. Yet piling on the bacon and skipping the pancakes could come with a dangerous downside, according to a new study. Mice fed a particular type of ketogenic diet
102.   <a href="http://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ado1463">
103.    accumulated so-called senescent cells in their organs
104.   </a>
105.   , researchers report today in
106.   <cite>
107.    Science Advances
108.   </cite>
109.   .
110.  </p>
111.  <p>
112.   The same kind of cells build up in our bodies as we age and can impair the functions of tissues. However, keto aficionados may not need to chuck their low-carb recipe books just yet. The study also found no increase in senescent cells in mice that took regular breaks from the diet.
113.  </p>
114.  <p>
115.   The results don’t prove that ketogenic diets are harmful in people, stresses W. H. Wilson Tang, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic who wasn’t involved in the work. But, “This paper is an important addition” to the research on their potential side effects, he says. “We need to be more cautious and less cavalier.”
116.  </p>
117.  <p>
118.   The rationale behind ketogenic diets is that slashing the consumption of carbohydrates—a class of molecules used by cells as fuel—forces the body to burn fat instead. To feed cells that normally subsist on carbs, the liver pumps out molecules called ketones, hence the diet’s name. A doctor at the Mayo Clinic devised the regimen in the 1920s to treat epilepsy in children, and many kids with the neurological condition still follow it today.
119.  </p>
120.  <p>
121.   But ketogenic diets have also taken off among people looking to lose weight, reduce blood sugar, boost athletic performance, or gain other benefits. Keto dieters typically obtain 70% to 80% of their calories from fat and only 5% to 10% from carbohydrates, whereas the average U.S. resident gets about 36% of their calories from fat and 46% from carbs. Keto dieters can lose weight, and clinical trials suggest possible benefits in illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease.
122.  </p>
123.  <p>
124.   Radiation oncologist David Gius wasn’t looking for detrimental outcomes of the ketogenic diet. Instead, he and colleagues at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio were probing the diet’s effects on p53, a potent cancer-fighting protein.
125.  </p>
126.  <p>
127.   One of p53’s roles is to orchestrate cellular senescence, telling stressed-out, unruly cells to stop dividing before they cause problems. The immune system usually culls senescent cells. But, “When they persist, they cause havoc,” says Jesús Gil, a cellular senescence expert at Imperial College London who wasn’t connected to the new research. If stem cells undergo senescence, for example, they can undermine tissues’ ability to make repairs. Senescent cells also exude molecules that can trigger inflammation and other deleterious effects.
128.  </p>
129.  <p>
130.   Gius and his team stumbled on the senescence connection when they put mice on a supercharged ketogenic diet in which about 90% of the calories came from fat—mainly in the form of the shortening Crisco. A control group of rodents dined on food in which fat provided only 17% of the calories. After the mice stayed on these diets for 7 or 21 days, the researchers analyzed tissue samples from their hearts, kidneys, livers, and brains.
131.  </p>
132.  <p>
133.   Levels of the p53 protein climbed in animals on the ketogenic diet, the team found. The scientists also detected an increase in other molecules that indicate the presence of senescent cells.
134.  </p>
135.  <p>
136.   The researchers tested whether the cells went away after the mice switched to a normal diet. After a 3-week hiatus, the level of senescent cells had almost returned to normal, they found. Gius and his colleagues also probed the effects of temporarily taking time off from the ketogenic regimen, a so-called intermittent diet. The team put mice on a high-fat food for 4 days, allowed them to eat normal chow for 7 days, and then repeated the cycle twice more. Senescent cells did not build up in these rodents, an analysis of the animals’ organs showed.
137.  </p>
138.  <p>
139.   Gil says he was surprised that the senescent cells disappeared so quickly when the mice returned to their normal diet. Cells don’t recover from senescence, he says, so it’s possible that the cells in the mice were not senescent; they may have entered a similar inactive state that is reversible.
140.  </p>
141.  <p>
142.   Senescent cells don’t always mean a tissue is unhealthy, notes cell biologist Yi Zhu of the Mayo Clinic. They help wounds heal, for example. Before anyone could claim keto diets are dangerous, researchers would need to demonstrate that the cells actually harm the mice, she says. “Only showing an increase in senescence is not enough to show that the diet is detrimental.”
143.  </p>
144.  <p>
145.   Obesity researcher and statistician David Allison of Indiana University adds that ketogenic diets vary in many ways, including in the sources of fat and protein. The new study finds an effect “for this [one] diet that happens to be ketogenic,” he says. “That doesn’t mean it’s true for all ketogenic diets.”
146.  </p>
147.  <p>
148.   Although the effects haven’t been replicated in humans, Gius notes the results may offer a lesson for people following keto regimens. “We aren’t saying the diet is bad,” he says. “[But] you probably need to take a break.”
149.  </p>
150. </div>
151. </article>
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157.    </item>
158.    <item>
159.      <title>Researchers reflect on the death of billionaire science donor Jim Simons and his charitable impact  </title>
160.      <link>https://www.science.org/content/article/researchers-reflect-death-billionaire-science-donor-jim-simons-and-his-charitable</link>
161.      <description>A brilliant mathematician who made billions on Wall Street, Simons gave heavily to basic science and higher education</description>
162.      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<article>
163. <div data-interstitial="3">
164.  <p>
165.   Jim Simons, a math prodigy who gave up an academic career to make a fortune with the world’s first quantitative investing firm,
166.   <a href="https://www.simonsfoundation.org/2024/05/10/simons-foundation-co-founder-mathematician-and-investor-jim-simons-dies-at-86">
167.    died last week
168.   </a>
169.   at the age of 86 at his home in New York City after a battle with lung cancer. Late in his life, Simons and his wife, Marilyn Simons, gave billions of dollars through their foundation to fund basic research in math, physics, astronomy, computer science, and neuroscience, in addition to a number of educational and humanitarian pursuits.
170.  </p>
171.  <p>
172.   “Fundamentally, Jim had a really deep interest in science,” says David Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation, which reported more than $4 billion in assets in 2023. “He was just really curious.” Spergel adds that Simons was careful to ensure the Simons Foundation would continue to operate normally after his death.
173.  </p>
174.  <p>
175.   After a childhood in Brookline, Massachusetts, Simons graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1958 and earned a Ph.D. in math at the age of 23 from the University of California, Berkeley in 1962. He then worked as a code breaker for the Institute for Defense Analyses, a contractor of the National Security Agency. He was fired in 1968, after publicly voicing his opposition to the Vietnam War.
176.  </p>
177.  <p>
178.   Simons quickly rebounded, accepting an offer from Stony Brook University to lead and assemble its math department, at one point hiring 10 faculty members per year. While there, he worked with colleague Shiing-Shen Chern to develop the influential Chern-Simons theory, a topological theory that has since been shown to have important connections to condensed matter and quantum physics.
179.  </p>
180.  <p>
181.   But Simons was restless. He had always been interested in business. Before graduate school, he invested in a Colombian floor tile company while on a motor scooter trip in South America. “He knew about the world of business and the world of investments,” says Tony Phillips, an emeritus mathematician and former colleague at Stony Brook. “It sort of came naturally to him.” In 1978, Simons left Stony Brook to start Renaissance Technologies, an algorithm-driven investment firm. Instead of hiring financiers or business school graduates, he sought scientists—the world’s first “quants”—to help him look for patterns and gain an edge in the trading markets.
182.  </p>
183.  <p>
184.   Renaissance was incredibly successful. At the time of his death, Simons was worth some $31 billion, according to Forbes. In 1994, Simons and Marilyn, who has a Ph.D. in economics from Stony Brook, established the Simons Foundation to give some of their fortune away.
185.  </p>
186.  <p>
187.   One of the foundation’s biggest efforts is the Flatiron Institute, which focuses on using computational methods to advance research in math, quantum physics, biology, astrophysics, and neuroscience. “It really does speak to Jim’s unique combination of vision and patience and drive,” says Leslie Greengard, director of the institute’s Center for Computational Mathematics. “It’s had a major impact on all the fields that are represented within Flatiron in a surprisingly short time span.”
188.  </p>
189.  <p>
190.   The Simons Foundation also funds two editorially independent magazines:
191.   <cite>
192.    The Transmitter
193.   </cite>
194.   , a neuroscience publication, and
195.   <cite>
196.    Quanta Magazine
197.   </cite>
198.   , a basic science publication that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2022. Since 2011, it has backed operations of arXiv, a preprint server that’s popular in physics and astronomy.
199.  </p>
200.  <p>
201.   The foundation also contributed $40 million to the $110 million Simons Observatory, a telescope high in Chile’s Atacama Desert that recently began operations. Its microwave detectors will make detailed maps of the big bang’s afterglow in the hopes of detecting evidence of gravitational waves thought to have been generated shortly after the universe’s birth.
202.  </p>
203.  <p>
204.   Suzanne Staggs, a physicist at Princeton University who is on the board of the observatory, says the telescope was the foundation’s first foray into a giant construction project. “Jim and Marilyn Simons kind of set this atmosphere that the foundation could have as big a vision as it felt like.”
205.  </p>
206.  <p>
207.   Simons also made big gifts to education. The foundation established Math for America, a program to recruit public math school teachers in New York City, and it has given heavily to Stony Brook, including a gift of $500 million in 2023 that represents the largest unrestricted gift to a university in U.S. history.
208.  </p>
209.  <p>
210.   Simons was also happy to take risks, both in his everyday life and in his business affairs, Phillips says. He had a penchant for adventure, often bringing his friends and family along on cruises on his superyacht, the
211.   <em>
212.    Archimedes
213.   </em>
214.   . And he was a continuous smoker since the age of 14. “I think if I stopped smoking, I’d get stupider than I am,” he
215.   <a href="https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/45111">
216.    told a historian
217.   </a>
218.   in a 2020 interview with the American Institute of Physics.
219.  </p>
220.  <p>
221.   Some of Simons’s lesser known giving was more personal. Two of his sons died in two separate accidents—one biking, one drowning—within the span of 10 years. He funded two charitable causes in their names, one focused on development in Nepal, and another that created a nature preserve in New York state. He also created a research initiative to study autism, influenced by a family member with autism. (Simons additionally backed
222.   <cite>
223.    Spectrum
224.   </cite>
225.   , an autism research publication, before it became part of
226.   <cite>
227.    The Transmitter
228.   </cite>
229.   ).
230.  </p>
231.  <p>
232.   Despite his philanthropic pursuits, Simons drew his fair share of criticism. In 2017, he was lambasted for keeping $8 billion sheltered from taxes in an offshore fund in Bermuda. At the time, Simons said he viewed the money as future funds for his charitable enterprises. And in 2021, top Renaissance investors were forced to pay as much as $7 billion to the federal government after settling a tax dispute.
233.  </p>
234.  <p>
235.   Most, however, remember him for his legacy of philanthropy and love of science. Spergel says that one of Simons’s last wishes was to see data collected by the Simons Observatory. “They showed him first results, and he passed away within a few weeks,” Spergel says. “He kept saying ‘I want to see this’ before he died, and he did. And that experiment has only just begun.”
236.  </p>
237. </div>
238. </article>
239. ]]></content:encoded>
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241.      <enclosure url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/770f6f67b3.jpg" length="33416" type="image/jpg"/>
242.      <pubDate>Thu, 16 May 2024 18:30:00 -0400</pubDate>
243.      <media:thumbnail url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/770f6f67b3.jpg" height="529" width="800"/>
244.    </item>
245.    <item>
246.      <title>No humans needed: AI robots discover new laser materials on their own  </title>
247.      <link>https://www.science.org/content/article/no-humans-needed-ai-robots-discover-new-laser-materials-on-their-own</link>
248.      <description>Automated labs across the globe create, test, and assemble light-emitting compounds that could be used in advanced displays and telecom devices</description>
249.      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<article>
250. <div data-interstitial="3">
251.  <p>
252.   Who needs scientists anyway? A global consortium of six automated laboratories, overseen by artificial intelligence (AI), set out to produce new laser materials, dividing the labor from synthesis to testing. The effort
253.   <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk9227" rel="noopener" target="_blank">
254.    yielded a compound that emits laser light with record-setting efficiency
255.   </a>
256.   , researchers report today in
257.   <em>
258.    Science
259.   </em>
260.   . Along with other recent results, the feat suggests that, in some areas, self-driving labs can surpass the best scientists, making discoveries missed by humans.
261.  </p>
262.  <p>
263.   “Automated labs are going beyond proof-of-concept demonstrations,” says Milad Abolhasani, a chemical engineer at North Carolina State University who developed a self-driving lab unaffiliated with the new work. “They have started to push the edge of science to the next level.”
264.  </p>
265.  <p>
266.   The allure of AI-driven labs for developing new drugs, industrial catalysts, and energy and emission-reduction technologies is clear. Creating new molecules and materials is normally slow and tedious. Researchers must explore not only myriad recipes for making molecules, but also different reaction conditions. They have to test new compounds at every step and evaluate schemes for scaling up production and assembling materials into devices.
267.  </p>
268.  <p>
269.   Over the past decade, robots have begun to automate many of these repetitive steps. In 2015, for example, Martin Burke, a chemist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, unveiled
270.   <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.347.6227.1190" rel="noopener" target="_blank">
271.    an automated system for synthesizing small molecules
272.   </a>
273.   . Later, by incorporating AI, researchers added feedback loops, so data from newly characterized compounds
274.   <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/ai-driven-robots-start-hunting-novel-materials-without-help-humans" rel="noopener" target="_blank">
275.    could guide decisions on what to synthesize
276.   </a>
277.   next. But discovering new materials and assembling them into devices requires robots to work in concert across even more steps, Burke says. “Nobody has all those tools and perspectives in one lab.”
278.  </p>
279.  <p>
280.   Burke and Alán Aspuru-Guzik, a theoretical chemist at the University of Toronto, thought they could unite these disparate functions, hosted in different labs. “We thought, let’s make a self-driving lab made of self-driving labs,” Aspuru-Guzik says.
281.  </p>
282.  <p>
283.   So, the duo teamed up with labs at the Institute for Basic Science in South Korea, the University of Glasgow, the University of British Columbia (UBC), and Kyushu University to focus on a specific goal: discovering organic compounds that can emit highly pure laser light. Such materials could power advanced displays and telecommunications devices because they can be made into thin, flexible, light-emitting films. But despite more than a decade of work in the field, only about a dozen candidate organic laser emitters have been discovered.
284.  </p>
285.  <p>
286.   To start, the Glasgow and UBC labs made sugar cube–size quantities of building blocks for the materials. These colored powders were packaged up and sent to Burke’s and Aspuru-Guzik’s groups, where robots knitted them in different combinations into candidate emitters. All of those were passed to Toronto, where other robots characterized their light-emitting properties in solution. For the best ones, the UBC lab determined how to synthesize and purify the larger quantities needed for making devices. In batches of a few grams, the materials were then shipped to Japan, where the Kyushu lab incorporated them into working lasers and tested their properties.
287.  </p>
288.  <p>
289.   The whole operation was overseen by a cloud-based AI platform designed primarily by the teams in Toronto and South Korea to learn from each experiment and incorporate feedback into subsequent iterations. “It was almost like a symphony,” says Lee Cronin, who leads the lab in Glasgow. The main hurdle became shipping compounds around the world in time. “FedEx became the bottleneck,” Burke says.
290.  </p>
291.  <p>
292.   The collaboration paid off. The effort produced 621 new compounds, including 21 that rivaled state-of-the-art laser emitters and one that emits blue laser light more efficiently than any other organic material. “It’s really impressive to make all of these different components work together,” says Philippe Schwaller, an expert in self-driving labs at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. And the pace of discoveries was “fantastic,” says Donna Blackmond, a chemical engineer at Scripps Research. “Their methods got them to the good candidates much faster than usual,” she says.
293.  </p>
294.  <p>
295.   It’s not the only recent success. Last year, for example, Abolhasani’s lab reported[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/aenm.202302303] creating nanoparticles of so-called perovskite minerals that showed record-setting photoluminescence, a property that can identify materials likely to work well in solar cells. And in a preprint posted last year on ChemRxiv, Burke’s team
296.   <a href="https://chemrxiv.org/engage/chemrxiv/article-details/64ef56463fdae147fa2346d4" rel="noopener" target="_blank">
297.    reported an AI setup that not only synthesized a bevy of new light-harvesting compounds
298.   </a>
299.   , but also revealed what made them stable rather than prone to rapid breakdown, offering a rare glimpse of how an AI—normally a black box—made its decisions.
300.  </p>
301.  <p>
302.   Burke hopes that advances in automation and AI will allow more and more labs to join forces. “That’s something we desperately need,” he says. It might ultimately allow scientists to stop pursuing robotic tasks and become robot overlords.
303.  </p>
304. </div>
305. </article>
306. ]]></content:encoded>
307.      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.science.org/content/article/no-humans-needed-ai-robots-discover-new-laser-materials-on-their-own</guid>
308.      <enclosure url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/16133be3e9.jpg" length="29755" type="image/jpg"/>
309.      <pubDate>Thu, 16 May 2024 15:00:00 -0400</pubDate>
310.      <media:thumbnail url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/16133be3e9.jpg" height="529" width="800"/>
311.    </item>
312.    <item>
313.      <title>Tool use keeps these adorable otters out of the dentist’s chair  </title>
314.      <link>https://www.science.org/content/article/tool-use-keeps-these-adorable-otters-out-dentist-s-chair</link>
315.      <description>Rocks and other objects allow the marine mammals to eat tougher prey without damaging their teeth—and females benefit most</description>
316.      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<article>
317. <div data-interstitial="3">
318.  <p>
319.   When it comes to cracking open hard-shelled prey, sea otters are remarkably resourceful. These whiskered critters use everything from stone “
320.   <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/sea-otter-archaeology-reveals-most-smashing-rocks">
321.    utensils
322.   </a>
323.   ” to glass bottles and other pieces of human trash to get at the tender meat of crabs and clams. Some particularly creative otters have even been seen using boat hulls and ship ladders as makeshift “anvils” for smashing open mollusks.
324.  </p>
325.  <p>
326.   The clever approach doesn’t just give the adorable mammals a leg up as foragers,
327.   <a href="http://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj6608">
328.    it also protects their teeth
329.   </a>
330.   , researchers report today in
331.   <cite>
332.    Science
333.   </cite>
334.   . And it turns out that females, which can’t bite as hard as males, are especially talented tool users.
335.  </p>
336.  <p>
337.   The sea otter has long been a poster child for tool use in nonprimates, but the precise advantages of this strategy have never been fully clear, says Daniel Costa, a marine biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz who wasn’t involved with the research. The new study, he adds, “puts things together in a very novel and exciting way.”
338.  </p>
339.  <p>
340.   California sea otters (
341.   <em>
342.    Enhydra lutris nereis
343.   </em>
344.   ) generally prefer to chow down on filling, easily accessible food such as sea urchins and abalone. But when competition for these snacks gets fierce, they turn to prey that’s tougher to crack. Even though otters have powerful chompers, regularly crunching on hard-shelled meals—including clams and mussels—can cause lasting damage.
345.  </p>
346.  <p>
347.   “If they just use their teeth, chances are they either won’t be able to open them, or they’ll just destroy their teeth,” says Chris Law, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Texas at Austin.
348.  </p>
349.  <p>
350.   To find out how otters deal with this predicament, Law and his colleagues joined forces with a group of volunteer “otter spotters.” Altogether, the team spent more than a decade trekking up and down the beaches of central California, carefully tracking the eating habits of 196 radio-tagged animals—not a bad gig, Law tells
351.   <cite>
352.    Science
353.   </cite>
354.   : “You just hang out by the California coast and watch sea otters.”
355.  </p>
356.  <p>
357.   The researchers found that, in general, tool use was a smashing success for animals that employed it. Using rocks and other objects to crack open dinner means being able to go after tougher shelled prey, which tend to be larger and more energy packed. As a result, otters that used tools often consumed more calories than those that didn’t. Dental exams on captured or deceased otters also found tool-using otters had relatively little tooth damage, whereas the teeth of their less handy brethren were much worse for wear.
358.  </p>
359.  <p>
360.   The behavior seemed to disproportionately benefit female otters. They employed rocks and other tools more frequently than males to crack open prey that was harder, larger, and more calorie dense.
361.  </p>
362.  <p>
363.   This disparity makes sense, Costa explains, because when it comes to raising offspring, “females do all the work.” Sea otters are already known for their voracious appetites, typically consuming about one-quarter of their body weight in seafood every day. But a pregnant or suckling female is especially ravenous and will continue to forage for two for up to 1 year after giving birth.
364.  </p>
365.  <p>
366.   Just because an otter was a habitual tool user didn’t mean it always went after calorie-packed prey such as clams or crabs, however. Some seemed to prefer marine snails, which are tiny and notoriously hard to smash open. The team eventually discovered that these “snail specialists” were interested in quantity, not quality. Clams can be difficult to find, but an industrious otter can scrounge up dozens of marine snails, then eat them all in one sitting. “Bang, bang—eat. Bang, bang—eat,” Law says.
367.  </p>
368.  <p>
369.   The findings represent a “remarkable showcase” of how members of the same species—and even individuals within the same population—can use wildly different strategies to approach the same problem, says Briana Abrahms, a wildlife biologist at the University of Washington who wasn’t involved in the new study.
370.  </p>
371.  <p>
372.   And no matter what an otter eats, using tools is still a good way to protect dental health. As Law explains, just because a shell
373.   <em>
374.    can
375.   </em>
376.   be broken open with teeth alone doesn’t mean it
377.   <em>
378.    should
379.   </em>
380.   be. Female otters, which are more likely than males to use tools to smash open all their meals, often have healthier mouths.
381.  </p>
382.  <p>
383.   These benefits could potentially help female otters live longer and reproduce more successfully than their male counterparts, says Janet Mann, an animal behavior expert at Georgetown University who wasn’t involved in the new study. Law wants to directly test these ideas in the future.
384.  </p>
385.  <p>
386.   At the same time, conservation scientists are still trying to find ways to return the endangered California sea otter population—which has recently endured
387.   <a href="https://oceanographicmagazine.com/news/algal-blooms-sea-otters/">
388.    toxic algal blooms
389.   </a>
390.   ,
391.   <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/deadly-parasite-threatens-california-sea-otters">
392.    deadly parasites
393.   </a>
394.   , and
395.   <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/sea-otters-falling-prey-great-white-sharks">
396.    attacks from great white sharks
397.   </a>
398.   —to its former glory. Restoring otter populations via habitat protection and reintroduction programs is
399.   <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hungry-sea-otters-help-prevent-erosion-on-californias-coast-180983717/">
400.    already having a positive impact on local ecosystems
401.   </a>
402.   .
403.  </p>
404.  <p>
405.   Yet these otters have not expanded out of their relatively small habitat off the coast of central California. As a result, roughly 3000 animals are currently duking it out over dwindling resources and may be forced to rely on hard-shelled prey. If that happens, the craftiest otters may be the most prepared.
406.  </p>
407. </div>
408. </article>
409. ]]></content:encoded>
410.      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.science.org/content/article/tool-use-keeps-these-adorable-otters-out-dentist-s-chair</guid>
411.      <enclosure url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/213e16dd5b.jpg" length="33111" type="image/jpg"/>
412.      <pubDate>Thu, 16 May 2024 15:00:00 -0400</pubDate>
413.      <media:thumbnail url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/213e16dd5b.jpg" height="532" width="800"/>
414.    </item>
415.    <item>
416.      <title>News at a glance: Solar storm stuns, COVID-19 vaccine withdrawn, and fossils return to Brazil  </title>
417.      <link>https://www.science.org/content/article/news-glance-solar-storm-stuns-covid-19-vaccine-withdrawn-fossils-return-brazil</link>
418.      <description>The latest in science and policy</description>
419.      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<article>
420. <div>
421. </div>
422. <div data-interstitial="2">
423.  <div>
424.   <span>
425.    SPACE WEATHER
426.   </span>
427.   <h2>
428.    <span>
429.     Solar storm puts on stunning display
430.    </span>
431.   </h2>
432.   <p>
433.    On the night of 10 May, Earth’s magnetic field got walloped by the Sun, as the planet
434.    <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/extreme-solar-storm-generated-auroras-and-surprise">
435.     experienced its most extreme geomagnetic storm since 2003
436.    </a>
437.    . The disturbance stemmed from a series of huge plasma expulsions from the Sun known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), flung toward Earth by a sunspot cluster more than 15 times wider than Earth. The CMEs energized Earth’s magnetic fields enough to generate aurorae at latitudes as low as the Florida Keys—and took scientists’ breath away with their combined intensity. “We knew there was something coming; we didn’t quite know what,” says Mathew Owens, a physicist at the University of Reading. The storm disrupted GPS signals, dragged satellites into lower orbits, and caused power grid irregularities.
438.   </p>
439.  </div>
440.  <div>
441.   <span>
442.    SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY
443.   </span>
444.   <h2>
445.    <span>
446.     NSF to count LGBTQ Ph.D. grads
447.    </span>
448.   </h2>
449.   <p>
450.    Following years of pilot testing and pressure from scientists, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) announced last week it will add questions about sexual orientation and gender identity to its annual census of Ph.D. recipients. The Survey of Earned Doctorates, which is filled out by roughly 55,000 graduates each year, is a key source for researchers and policymakers interested in how diverse the U.S. STEM pipeline is. Scientists have long fought for NSF to collect data about LGBTQ scientists to study their representation in STEM and identify areas of inequity. Data from a pilot test of more than 30,000 respondents, released last week, offered some starting estimates: Roughly 2% to 3% of respondents identified as a gender minority and roughly 13% to 15% identified as a sexual minority.
451.   </p>
452.  </div>
453.  <div>
454.   <span>
455.    POLICY
456.   </span>
457.   <h2>
458.    <span>
459.     Scientists join House of Lords
460.    </span>
461.   </h2>
462.   <p>
463.    Two scientists have been appointed to the House of Lords, the United Kingdom’s unelected upper legislative chamber. University of Cambridge evidence communication researcher Alexandra Freeman and University of Oxford engineer Lionel Tarassenko were appointed through a little-known process in which any British, Irish, or Commonwealth citizen living in the U.K. can apply to become a lifetime peer of the House of Lords, unaffiliated with any political party. Just 13 such appointments have been made in the past decade; most of the 786 peers are either appointed by politicians or inherit their titles from their families. Freeman, whose academic work has focused on how to understand and communicate uncertainty, says she hopes to use her skills to improve the way evidence is used in the chamber.
464.    <cite>
465.     Science
466.    </cite>
467.    ’s interview with Freeman is at
468.    <a href="https://scim.ag/HouseofLords">
469.     https://scim.ag/HouseofLords
470.    </a>
471.    .
472.   </p>
473.  </div>
474.  <div>
475.   <div>
476.    <img alt="quotation mark" src="https://www.science.org/pb-assets/images/styleguide/quotation-mark-1672180580783.svg"/>
477.    <div>
478.     You can give this picture to any geologist in the world, and they’ll say what I’m saying.
479.    </div>
480.    <ul>
481.     <li>
482.      <strong>
483.       Geologist and art historian Ann Pizzorusso
484.      </strong>
485.     </li>
486.     <li>
487.      in
488.      <cite>
489.       The Observer
490.      </cite>
491.      , about her new analysis
492.      <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/article/2024/may/11/where-mona-lisa-was-painted-mystery-solved-geologist-claims">
493.       claiming to resolve a debate about the location shown
494.      </a>
495.      in Leonardo da Vinci’s
496.      <em>
497.       Mona Lisa
498.      </em>
499.      . Apparent gray-white limestone and other features in the background, she says, help place the location near the northern Italian town Lecco, which the artist had visited.
500.     </li>
501.    </ul>
502.   </div>
503.  </div>
504.  <div>
505.   <span>
506.    PUBLIC HEALTH
507.   </span>
508.   <h2>
509.    <span>
510.     COVID-19 vaccine withdrawn
511.    </span>
512.   </h2>
513.   <p>
514.    One of the first COVID-19 vaccines is no longer available, after drugmaker AstraZeneca announced on 7 May it was withdrawing the shot, called Vaxzevria, worldwide. Although other companies have updated their vaccines to fight newer strains of SARS-CoV-2, Vaxzevria still targets the strain that emerged in 2019, and AstraZeneca says demand for it has disappeared. Developed by scientists at the University of Oxford and cheaper and easier to store than some competitors’ vaccines, Vaxzevria played an important role in global vaccination efforts. But wealthy countries dropped it after the shots were shown to cause a very rare but potentially deadly clotting disorder. AstraZeneca says more than 3 billion doses were distributed worldwide, though it is not clear how many were actually administered.
515.   </p>
516.  </div>
517.  <div>
518.   <span>
519.    PUBLIC HEALTH
520.   </span>
521.   <h2>
522.    <span>
523.     Cancer risk in Black women
524.    </span>
525.   </h2>
526.   <p>
527.    The American Cancer Society last week launched the
528.    <a href="https://voices.cancer.org/">
529.     largest ever study of cancer risk in Black women
530.    </a>
531.    , which will follow more than 100,000 participants who have never had cancer over 3 decades. Black women are more likely to die from most cancer types, such as breast and stomach cancer, than other U.S. racial and ethnic groups. VOICES of Black Women is enrolling volunteers ages 25 to 55 from 20 states and Washington, D.C. Twice a year for the next 30 years, participants will fill out online surveys about their medical history, lifestyle, and experience—such as with systemic racism—so researchers can untangle how these factors shape Black women’s cancer risk and survival.
532.   </p>
533.  </div>
534.  <div>
535.   <span>
536.    PALEONTOLOGY
537.   </span>
538.   <h2>
539.    <span>
540.     Brazilian museum gets massive fossil donation
541.    </span>
542.   </h2>
543.   <figure>
544.    <div>
545.     <img alt="skull fossil of Ludodactylus pterosaur" src="https://www.science.org/do/10.1126/science.z5u0bes/files/_20240517_nib_fossils.jpg"/>
546.    </div>
547.    <figcaption>
548.     <span>
549.      <span>
550.       HANDERSON OLIVEIRA/MUSEU NACIONAL/UFRJ
551.      </span>
552.     </span>
553.    </figcaption>
554.   </figure>
555.   <p>
556.    The National Museum of Brazil received more than 1000 fossils last week to help rebuild its paleontology collection, which was largely destroyed in a fire in 2018. The fossils originate from Brazil’s Araripe Basin, where conditions 115 million years ago fostered stunning preservation of soft tissue. The specimens include ancient turtles, plants, insects, dinosaurs, and pterosaurs, including the skull of a
557.    <em>
558.     Ludodactylus pterosaur
559.    </em>
560.    (pictured). Some fossils are thought to represent previously undescribed species, including two additional pterosaur skulls and two small raptor dinosaurs. The fossils were donated by Burkhard Pohl, a Swiss German private collector, and had been housed in his private collection, with a few specimens on display at German museums. Pohl purchased the fossils legally at trade fairs in Europe and the United States over the past 50 years, according to his spokesperson, but some Brazilian paleontologists suggest the fossils must have originally been exported illegally from Brazil, and thus consider their transfer a repatriation rather than a donation.
561.   </p>
562.  </div>
563.  <div>
564.   <span>
565.    SCIENTIFIC MISCONDUCT
566.   </span>
567.   <h2>
568.    <span>
569.     Concussion publications pulled
570.    </span>
571.   </h2>
572.   <p>
573.    The
574.    <cite>
575.     British Journal of Sports Medicine
576.    </cite>
577.    (
578.    <cite>
579.     BJSM
580.    </cite>
581.    ) last week
582.    <a href="https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/56/23/1327.responses">
583.     retracted six publications
584.    </a>
585.    by its former editor-in-chief, Paul McCrory, an Australian neurologist and concussion expert. Evidence of plagiarism and other issues in McCrory’s single-author papers first emerged in 2022, leading to 10 earlier
586.    <cite>
587.     BJSM
588.    </cite>
589.    retractions. BMJ, which publishes
590.    <cite>
591.     BJSM
592.    </cite>
593.    , announced on 10 May that a further investigation has now concluded, with the journal pulling four editorials and a book review for plagiarism and a letter for duplicate publication. McCrory “agrees” with the retractions, BMJ said in a statement. McCrory previously headed the Concussion in Sports Group, which periodically publishes
594.    <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/sports-related-concussions-not-proved-cause-later-brain-disease-says-expert-group">
595.     influential concussion research consensus statements in
596.     <em>
597.      BJSM
598.     </em>
599.    </a>
600.    , but he resigned when issues with his papers first became public.
601.   </p>
602.  </div>
603.  <div>
604.   <span>
605.    PHILANTHROPY
606.   </span>
607.   <h2>
608.    <span>
609.     Billionaire science donor dies
610.    </span>
611.   </h2>
612.   <p>
613.    Jim Simons, a billionaire investor and science philanthropist, died last week at the age of 86. Simons began his career as a mathematician and code breaker for the Institute for Defense Analyses, but in 1978 left a position at Stony Brook University to start the algorithm-driven investment firm Renaissance Technologies. The success of Renaissance made Simons a billionaire, and in 1994 he and his wife Marilyn Simons founded the Simons Foundation, which funds research in math and basic science. In recent years, the foundation has funded a new observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert to observe microwave background radiation from the big bang, and created the Flatiron Institute, which applies computational methods to scientific research. In 2023, the foundation gifted $500 million to Stony Brook University—one of the largest such donations in U.S. history.
614.   </p>
615.  </div>
616. </div>
617. </article>
618. ]]></content:encoded>
619.      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.science.org/content/article/news-glance-solar-storm-stuns-covid-19-vaccine-withdrawn-fossils-return-brazil</guid>
620.      <enclosure url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/cfff45c246.jpg" length="26380" type="image/jpg"/>
621.      <pubDate>Thu, 16 May 2024 15:00:00 -0400</pubDate>
622.      <media:thumbnail url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/cfff45c246.jpg" height="529" width="800"/>
623.    </item>
624.    <item>
625.      <title>An inflamed brain can trigger psychosis. The search is on for patients who might be cured  </title>
626.      <link>https://www.science.org/content/article/inflamed-brain-can-trigger-psychosis-search-patients-might-cured</link>
627.      <description>The discovery of rogue antibodies behind paranoia, hallucinations, and other symptoms could bring a “paradigm shift” to psychiatry</description>
628.      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<article>
629. <div data-interstitial="">
630.  <div>
631.  </div>
632.  <div>
633.   <div>
634.    <div>
635.     <div>
636.      <div>
637.       <div>
638.        <span>
639.         Related podcast
640.        </span>
641.       </div>
642.       <div>
643.        <div>
644.         <div>
645.          <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z4pdg62">
646.           How the immune system can cause psychosis, and tool use in otters
647.          </a>
648.         </div>
649.        </div>
650.        <div>
651.         <div>
652.          <div>
653.           BY
654.           <li>
655.            Sarah Crespi
656.            <span>
657.             ,
658.            </span>
659.            Richard Stone
660.            <span>
661.             ,
662.            </span>
663.            Katherine Irving
664.           </li>
665.          </div>
666.          <div>
667.           Podcast
668.          </div>
669.          <div>
670.           <strong>
671.            16 May 2024
672.           </strong>
673.          </div>
674.         </div>
675.        </div>
676.       </div>
677.      </div>
678.     </div>
679.    </div>
680.   </div>
681.  </div>
682.  <p>
683.   <span>
684.    Thomas Müller
685.    <a href="#footnote" id="top" title="Footnote">
686.     *
687.    </a>
688.    once enjoyed
689.   </span>
690.   a serene life as a psychiatrist with his wife and three children in Lahr, a German town near the French border. He was also a talented artist who loved painting with his kids, and a voracious reader fond of the speculative science fiction of Philip K. Dick and the eldritch tales of H. P. Lovecraft. But in 2012, Müller fell into a profound depression. He couldn’t read more than a few dozen words before losing his concentration. He began to have memory lapses. “I couldn’t sleep at all, for nights at a time. I’d wander restlessly,” he says. Dark thoughts crept into his mind. “I thought it would be better if I did not exist.”
691.  </p>
692.  <p>
693.   Müller quit his job in a pain clinic and received various diagnoses from different physicians, including delusional disorder and schizophrenia. He spent weeks at a stretch in psychiatric hospitals, sometimes against his will. In 2017, he developed an unquenchable thirst that compelled him to guzzle up to 15 liters of fluids a day. He moved into his parents’ house, where he’d lie in bed all day, sobbing and “afraid of dying,” he says. “I knew there was something terribly wrong with me.”
694.  </p>
695.  <p>
696.   Then, in 2019, Müller’s aunt shared a magazine article about Ludger Tebartz van Elst, a neuropsychiatrist at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg who is exploring a new frontier of medicine: autoimmune conditions that trigger psychosis. Müller went to visit, and that August, Tebartz van Elst’s team isolated telltale antibodies from Müller’s blood serum. They signaled an autoimmune brain disease with a jawbreaker of a name: anti-leucine-rich glioma-inactivated 1 (anti-LGI1) encephalitis. The team administered high doses of intravenous cortisone, a first-line treatment for brain inflammation. “My expectations were tempered,” Tebartz van Elst says. “Were we too late to help him?”
697.  </p>
698.  <p>
699.   Müller showed scant improvement at first, ending up back in a psychiatric ward in early 2020. But after a second stint under Tebartz van Elst’s care, his symptoms started to relent. By the fall of 2021, he was on the road to recovery.
700.  </p>
701.  <p>
702.   Over the past 15 years, researchers have identified 18 different diseases, all triggered by an immune attack on the brain, that can lead to diverse neurological symptoms, and in some cases, psychosis. Like other autoimmune diseases, which include rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, and lupus, these autoimmune brain inflammations, or encephalitides, arise when antibodies turn against the body. These antibodies may originate in the brain or slip in from the bloodstream. They then bind to targets on the surface of neurons or in the synapses between them, altering brain function and triggering a cascade of inflammatory processes.
703.  </p>
704.  <p>
705.   “These aren’t new disorders,” says Belinda Lennox, a psychiatrist at the University of Oxford. But before the aberrant antibodies behind autoimmune encephalitis were unmasked, many affected individuals died in intensive care units. Some languished in psychiatric wards—and a handful were even subjected to exorcisms. “You can be fine one day, and absolutely psychotic the next. And that’s horrifying,” says Stacey Clardy, a neuroimmunologist at the University of Utah.
706.  </p>
707.  <p>
708.   When the first form of autoimmune encephalitis was discovered in 2007, psychiatrists largely ignored the revelation—or didn’t think it was relevant to their patients, Lennox says. There was a “barrier to change” in the field, she acknowledges.
709.  </p>
710.  <p>
711.   Many have now come around. Psychiatrists and neurologists are increasingly joining forces to find and treat patients with autoimmune psychoses. “We’ve been waiting for this moment, when everybody finally listened,” Clardy says. Hubs for treatment and research have sprouted across Europe and in the United States. Scientists at Columbia University’s newly launched
712.   <a href="https://www.vagelos.columbia.edu/departments-centers/centers-and-institutes/stavros-niarchos-foundation-center-precision-psychiatry-mental-health">
713.    Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for Precision Psychiatry & Mental Health
714.   </a>
715.   are planning this fall to screen for autoantibodies in patients in the New York state mental health system—14 psychiatric centers totaling 3000 beds—who may have undiagnosed autoimmune conditions.
716.  </p>
717.  <p>
718.   The true rate of autoimmune encephalitis isn’t known, but most researchers suspect only a small fraction of psychosis cases trace to autoantibodies. In some ways, these patients are the lucky ones. When Clardy sees a patient who has hallmark symptoms, including acute onset psychosis and seizures, and no family history of schizophrenia, “We want so desperately for it to be autoimmune. That implies we can fix it,” she says. People treated with immune-modulating therapies routinely stage remarkable recoveries—a story of hope popularized by
719.   <i>
720.    The New York Post
721.   </i>
722.   ’s Susannah Cahalan in her 2012 book
723.   <i>
724.    Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness
725.   </i>
726.   , which describes her hospitalization and eventual diagnosis with autoimmune encephalitis.
727.  </p>
728.  <p>
729.   Now, researchers are pursuing hints that errant antibodies could play a role in other disorders once thought to lie squarely in the realm of psychiatry, including obsessive compulsive disorder and depression. “This new area of research could revolutionize clinical psychiatry,” Tebartz van Elst predicts, although he cautions that more work must be done to reveal “the precise role these antibodies play in the disease process.”
730.  </p>
731.  <div>
732.   <div>
733.    <div>
734.     <div>
735.      <img alt="quotation mark" src="https://www.science.org/pb-assets/images/styleguide/quotation-mark-1672180580783.svg"/>
736.      <div>
737.       This new area of research could revolutionize clinical psychiatry.
738.      </div>
739.      <ul>
740.       <li>
741.        <strong>
742.         Ludger Tebartz van Elst
743.        </strong>
744.       </li>
745.       <li>
746.        Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg
747.       </li>
748.      </ul>
749.     </div>
750.    </div>
751.   </div>
752.   <div>
753.    <span>
754.     <span>
755.      Lena Giovanazzi
756.     </span>
757.    </span>
758.   </div>
759.  </div>
760.  <p>
761.   Indeed, some researchers warn that intriguing clues that fail to pan out will raise false hopes in patients and their families. “There’s a lot of naïvete,” says Josep Dalmau, a neuro-oncologist at the
762.   <a href="https://www.clinicbarcelona.org/en/idibaps">
763.    University of Barcelona’s Hospital Clinic-IDIBAPS Research Center
764.   </a>
765.   whose 2007 discovery of anti-N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (anti-NMDAR) encephalitis ignited the field. “Some ideas are very premature.”
766.  </p>
767.  <p>
768.   But Lennox, who is probing for autoantibodies in patients with postpartum psychosis and bipolar disorder, is confident that the pool of autoimmune mental illness is wider and deeper than many have believed. “If we find something that’s a cause of illness, that’s curable,” she says, “for goodness’ sake, we should make it available to everybody.”
769.  </p>
770.  <p>
771.   <span>
772.    Hanging on a wall
773.   </span>
774.   above a microscope in Dalmau’s lab, a poster depicts rat brain slices magnified to show intricate brown staining patterns. The staining maps how various antibodies extracted from the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of patients bind to the rat brain tissue. One 2-centimeter-long brain slice bears the distinctive pattern of anti-NMDAR antibodies. Two decades ago, Dalmau says, detecting those autoantibodies in the CSF of several young women “was a eureka moment.”
775.  </p>
776.  <p>
777.   Dalmau’s path to discovery was circuitous. He grew up in rural Catalonia, where as a child his parents had to scrimp and save to buy the four-volume set of anatomy textbooks he now keeps on a shelf in his office. As a medical student at the Hospital de Sant Pau in Barcelona, Dalmau became entranced by the neurological complications of cancer and cancer treatments. He was offered a postdoctoral position at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center just as his wife, Martha, fell ill with metastatic cancer, and he put his career on hold to care for her until her death in 1988.
778.  </p>
779.  <p>
780.   Dalmau arrived at Sloan Kettering several months later. His English was “very poor,” his lab chops weak, and looking back, he says, “I was probably clinically depressed.” He persevered, met his current wife, neurologist Myrna Rosenfeld, and in 2002 followed her to the University of Pennsylvania, where she was hired to run clinical trials on brain tumors. He studied rare neurological conditions in cancer patients usually caused by T cells, another immune system warrior, attacking the nervous system.
781.  </p>
782.  <p>
783.   One day, he was called in to consult on the case of a 26-year-old woman admitted to the intensive care unit in a Philadelphia hospital. Her initial symptoms included inappropriate laughing, paranoia, and combative behavior. Antipsychotic medications and antibiotics failed to help; eventually, she could no longer recognize family members, developed severe facial twitches, then lapsed into a coma and was intubated after having trouble breathing. Her only physical abnormalities, it seemed, were mild brain inflammation and a teratoma—a rare kind of germ cell tumor—in her ovary. “We were totally lost,” Dalmau says.
784.  </p>
785.  <p>
786.   Then, the case took a surprising turn. After ruling out a viral infection, physicians put the woman on steroids to try to tamp down the brain inflammation. She steadily improved and within a year got a clean bill of health. It dawned on Dalmau that three other young women with similar symptoms referred to him in previous months also had benign ovarian teratomas. He suspected that antibodies their immune systems generated to attack the teratomas were mistakenly taking aim at proteins in their brains as well.
787.  </p>
788.  <p>
789.   “I changed my strategy to search for new kinds of antibodies,” Dalmau says, and this “act of faith” paid off. The women’s CSF contained never-before-seen antibodies targeting brain tissue. This was a new kind of autoimmune disease.
790.  </p>
791.  <p>
792.   After several months of sleuthing, Dalmau’s team worked out that the culprit autoantibodies were latching onto NMDA receptors. These channels allow ions, primarily calcium, to flow into neurons and help regulate how these cells communicate with each other—a conversation that is vital for learning and memory. After publishing
793.   <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ana.21050">
794.    their findings
795.   </a>
796.   in the
797.   <i>
798.    Annals of Neurology
799.   </i>
800.   in 2007, Dalmau says, “we were bombarded with emails from all over the world” from physicians who had encountered similar patients.
801.  </p>
802.  <figure>
803.   <div>
804.    <img alt="Josep Dalmau sitting at a table and talking with another person. There is a bookshelf behind him. He is leaning in and talking with his hands." src="https://www.science.org/do/10.1126/science.zet43su/files/_20240517_nf_jospedalmau_1200px.jpg"/>
805.   </div>
806.   <figcaption>
807.    <span>
808.     Josep Dalmau discovered anti-NMDAR encephalitis in 2007 and has since unmasked 10 more varieties of autoimmune brain disease.
809.     <span>
810.      University of Barcelona Hospital Clinic
811.     </span>
812.    </span>
813.   </figcaption>
814.  </figure>
815.  <p>
816.   The revelation also seemed to explain puzzling cases in the medical literature. These stretch as far back as 1843, to a description in an Austrian medical journal of an 18-year-old woman who was gravely ill with seizures and catalepsy for more than a year before recovering spontaneously—the same distinctive disease course seen in anti-NMDAR encephalitis. In the early 1990s, Guillaume Sébire, a pediatric neurologist then in France, had observed a similar condition in six children who suffered confusion and abnormal movements and lapsed into comas before rallying and recovering fully. Fifteen years later, says Sébire, who’s now at McGill University, “I read Dalmau’s paper, and said, ‘Oh my God! That had to be the same disease.’”
817.  </p>
818.  <p>
819.   Typical acute symptoms of anti-NMDAR encephalitis include seizures, involuntary movements, hypersexuality, violent outbursts, and terrifying hallucinations caused by inflammation of the amygdala, the brain’s fear center. “There’s nothing quite as haunting as looking in their eyes. It’s primal,” Clardy says. Dalmau notes that some individuals “underwent rituals of demonic expulsion.” Sébire suggests the 14-year-old boy hospitalized in 1949 who inspired the 1971 horror novel
820.   <i>
821.    The Exorcist
822.   </i>
823.   may have had anti-NMDAR encephalitis.
824.  </p>
825.  <p>
826.   Confronted with such cases before the discovery of autoimmune encephalitis, psychiatrists often prescribed antipsychotics such as chlorpromazine or haloperidol. But these dopamine-blocking drugs tended to make autoimmune patients even sicker. Perhaps one in five would fall into a coma and die, Tebartz van Elst says. Others would recover but face neurological deficits for the rest of their lives.
827.  </p>
828.  <p>
829.   Today, first-line immunotherapies include plasmapheresis, in which blood is circulated outside the body to purge plasma of antibodies, or an infusion of immunoglobulins—antibodies produced by plasma cells—which prompts the body to sop up autoantibodies. Most patients also get high doses of steroids.
830.  </p>
831.  <p>
832.   <span>
833.    After Dalmau’s 2007
834.   </span>
835.   <span>
836.   </span>
837.   discovery, he and Rosenfeld decamped from Philadelphia to Barcelona to focus on antibody-mediated encephalitides. Altogether, they and Barcelona colleague Francesc Graus have uncovered 11 of the 18 known varieties: a rogue’s gallery with sharply different symptoms depending on the autoantibody responsible. In one, antibodies attack a cell-surface protein on neurons called IgLON5, causing abnormal sleep patterns and a buildup of tau, the protein that forms insoluble tangles in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease. Patients, usually stricken in middle or old age, often succumb to the disease, Dalmau says.
838.  </p>
839.  <p>
840.   The other 17 autoimmune encephalitides tend to have better outcomes, but the consequences can still be profound. In anti-LGI1 encephalitis, the second most common of these diseases after anti-NMDAR encephalitis, autoantibodies glom onto and impede LGI1 protein, which is found in synapses and helps regulate the transmission of electrical signals between neurons. Patients usually recover, but with lasting deficits: memory gaps, mild seizures, and muscle twitching. “It’s an iceberg phenomenon,” Dalmau says: Uncharted pathology lurks below the surface.
841.  </p>
842.  <figure id="f1">
843.   <figcaption>
844.    <h3>
845.     Turncoats in the brain
846.    </h3>
847.    <p>
848.     Herpes infections and tumors can both generate antigens that lead to the production of rogue antibodies that attack the brain, causing autoimmune encephalitis. Different autoantibodies have distinct effects on neurons, influencing symptoms and prognosis.
849.    </p>
850.   </figcaption>
851.   <img alt="Graphic showing the mechanism of two types of autoimmune encephalitis." src="https://www.science.org/do/10.1126/science.zet43su/files/feature_autoimmuneschizophrenia_f1.svg"/>
852.   <figcaption>
853.    <span>
854.     <span>
855.      N. Burgess/
856.      <cite>
857.       Science
858.      </cite>
859.     </span>
860.    </span>
861.   </figcaption>
862.  </figure>
863.  <p>
864.   Antonio Serra, a 74-year-old survivor of anti-LGI1 encephalitis, is physically fit 4 years after receiving treatment, with a wry smile that rarely leaves his face as he readies for his thrice-yearly overnight checkup with Dalmau at the University of Barcelona Hospital Clinic. After experiencing a perplexing, but fleeting, memory lapse one day in 2019, Serra’s memory black hole formed suddenly and irrevocably in March 2020. “I woke up and didn’t remember anything,” he says. “I didn’t remember that my parents had died,” more than 10 years earlier.
865.  </p>
866.  <p>
867.   Physicians initially thought he had a neurodegenerative disease before Dalmau found he had anti-LGI1 antibodies. He improved after immunotherapy, but his memory remains poor, and his personality has changed, says his wife, Montse Serra. Before his illness, he had a short temper. “His aggression has disappeared,” she says. The couple has adapted to his new reality: They binge TV dramas, for example, so he can watch an entire series before he forgets earlier episodes. More vexing to Montse, her husband has lost interest in travel. “In other houses I wake up disoriented,” he explains.
868.  </p>
869.  <p>
870.   For Serra, like most patients, what biological match lit the autoimmune fire is a mystery. Teratomas and other tumors set off some cases. In about 5% of anti-NMDAR patients, a brain inflammation caused by a herpes simplex infection later turns into autoimmune encephalitis; researchers think neurons destroyed by the virus release molecules that prompt the production of autoantibodies (
871.   <a href="#f1">
872.    see graphic
873.   </a>
874.   , above). “We’re trying to track down other triggers,” Lennox says.
875.  </p>
876.  <p>
877.   Regardless of their trigger, all these diseases are unicorns. Anti-NMDAR encephalitis occurs in only about 1.5 out of 1 million people each year. Still, that means there are thousands worldwide who develop a life-threatening but treatable illness, Lennox says—“not a trivial number of people who might be helped.”
878.  </p>
879.  <p>
880.   <span>
881.    In Germany
882.   </span>
883.   , a lucky few patients find their way to Freiburg, on the edge of the Black Forest. On his university’s medical campus there, dotted with towering sequoias, Tebartz van Elst established an outpatient autoimmune clinic after receiving a €400,000 gift from a private foundation for schizophrenia research. Patients whose sudden-onset symptoms lead their doctors to suspect autoimmune psychosis are referred here from across the country.
884.  </p>
885.  <p>
886.   Tebartz van Elst and neurologist Kimon Runge run patients through a standard set of tests: bloodwork, electroencephalography, neurological exams, an MRI brain scan, and in many patients a spinal tap. One of the most definitive tests is the rat brain staining that Dalmau pioneered 20 years ago, which involves daubing the rodent brain slices with samples of a patient’s serum or CSF to reveal the signature patterns of known autoantibodies (
887.   <a href="#f2">
888.    see graphic
889.   </a>
890.   , below). If the test identifies signs of autoimmunity, patients can be treated promptly.
891.  </p>
892.  <div>
893.   <div>
894.    <img alt="quotation mark" src="https://www.science.org/pb-assets/images/styleguide/quotation-mark-1672180580783.svg"/>
895.    <div>
896.     We have to be extra cautious and collect evidence that treatments work to a gold standard.
897.    </div>
898.    <ul>
899.     <li>
900.      <strong>
901.       Belinda Lennox
902.      </strong>
903.     </li>
904.     <li>
905.      University of Oxford
906.     </li>
907.    </ul>
908.   </div>
909.  </div>
910.  <p>
911.   The Freiburg clinic can be a last resort. Alina Sternberg’s diagnostic odyssey began in 2005, when she was a medical student. She loved playing sports, but suddenly started putting on weight and suffering muscle pain after mild exertion. She was treated for an autoimmune disease called Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, and her symptoms abated. But in 2017, she was hit with crushing fatigue and brain fog. Over the next 3 years, she visited several neurology clinics but never received a definitive diagnosis. “They said I was depressive. I told them, ‘No, I can enjoy my life and I know what depression is.’ It was absurd—I’m a psychiatrist!”
912.  </p>
913.  <p>
914.   Sternberg deteriorated. She struggled to help her husband care for their two daughters, both of whom are autistic, and in 2021 had to close her private practice. By early 2023, she was spending most days in bed. One afternoon she lost her way to her home in Heidelberg, where she’d lived for 20 years. She forgot how to use an ATM. She developed severe muscle spasms and insomnia. “It was a catastrophe,” she says.
915.  </p>
916.  <p>
917.   Sternberg asked a colleague whether she might have autoimmune encephalitis. “He said that was impossible, because I wasn’t psychotic.” She asked him to test her for neuronal autoantibodies, but he refused, and other neurologists backed him up. “It made me sad and angry that they didn’t believe me,” she says. Then early last year, she came to Tebartz van Elst’s clinic. Her bloodwork revealed antibodies to contactin-associated protein-like 2 (CASPR2), a membrane protein in the central nervous system that’s crucial to transmission of neural signals.
918.  </p>
919.  <p>
920.   The CASPR2 autoantibody levels in Sternberg’s blood were borderline, but considering all the evidence, Runge says, the medical team put her on intravenous cortisone. Within days she was jogging again, for the first time in nearly a decade. In November 2023, Sternberg went back to work as a forensic psychiatrist. “It’s just incredible,” she says. “I got my life back.”
921.  </p>
922.  <p>
923.   Not every autoimmune patient responds so spectacularly, cautions Tebartz van Elst, whose clinic sees several new patients a week. They identify known autoantibodies in only about 1% of their cases—a low number, he says, because other German hospitals and clinics are proficient at catching clear-cut cases of anti-NMDAR and anti-LGI1 encephalitis. In up to 20% of patients they detect unidentified antibodies, and some of those patients also respond well to immunotherapy, he says.
924.  </p>
925.  <p>
926.   Diagnosis can be tricky, Dalmau notes: All anti-NMDAR encephalitis patients have antibodies in their CSF, but not all have them in their blood, leading to false negative diagnoses if only serum is tested. On the other hand, autoantibodies can turn up in the blood of people without autoimmune disorders, leading to false positive diagnoses. Yet another wrinkle is that commonly used commercial assays, which detect the interaction of antibodies with their protein targets in cells, sometimes fail to find CASPR2 and LGI1 antibodies in the CSF of patients with these types of autoimmune encephalitis. Such diagnostic pitfalls are less likely with the more definitive confirmatory test that uses rat brain slices. But few labs are equipped to carry out such tests—which aren’t mandated by current clinical guidelines.
927.  </p>
928.  <figure id="f2">
929.   <figcaption>
930.    <h3>
931.     ID’ing the perp
932.    </h3>
933.    <p>
934.     Daubing razor-thin slices of a rat brain with samples of a patient’s serum or cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) can test for autoimmune encephalitis. Staining patterns reveal where the autoantibodies are binding, and which proteins they are targeting. An unknown number of disease-causing autoantibodies are yet to be identified.
935.    </p>
936.   </figcaption>
937.   <img alt="" src="https://www.science.org/do/10.1126/science.zet43su/files/feature_autoimmuneschizophrenia_f2_1.svg"/>
938.   <figcaption>
939.    <h4>
940.     NMDA receptor autoantibodies
941.    </h4>
942.    <p>
943.     Autoantibodies bind to NMDA receptors primarily in the hippocampus—the seat of memory and learning—and the amygdala, which processes emotions.
944.    </p>
945.   </figcaption>
946.   <img alt="" src="https://www.science.org/do/10.1126/science.zet43su/files/feature_autoimmuneschizophrenia_f2_2.svg"/>
947.   <figcaption>
948.    <h4>
949.     LGI1 autoantibodies
950.    </h4>
951.    <p>
952.     Autoantibodies bind to the LGI1 protein throughout the brain, but are especially concentrated in the hippocampus and the temporal lobes, also vital for learning and memory formation.
953.    </p>
954.   </figcaption>
955.   <img alt="" src="https://www.science.org/do/10.1126/science.zet43su/files/feature_autoimmuneschizophrenia_f2_3.svg">
956.    <figcaption>
957.     <span>
958.      <span>
959.       N. Burgess/
960.       <cite>
961.        Science
962.       </cite>
963.      </span>
964.     </span>
965.    </figcaption>
966.   </img>
967.  </figure>
968.  <p>
969.   Some experts worry less experienced practitioners are making the wrong call and giving immunotherapy to patients who will not benefit. “We’re trying to get them to calm down and not overdiagnose it on a whim,” Clardy says.
970.  </p>
971.  <p>
972.   Immunotherapy is not risk-free, after all. Steroids suppress the immune system, leaving patients vulnerable to infection. And in rare cases, steroids can themselves induce psychiatric symptoms including catatonia, insomnia, mania, and suicidal thoughts. Given these hazards, “enthusiasm has to be very tempered” when doctors suspect autoimmune encephalitis, Clardy says. “It can take years to undo a rash decision.”
973.  </p>
974.  <p>
975.   If first-line therapies fail or offer only temporary relief, the drug of choice has been rituximab, a monoclonal antibody used to treat blood cancers and rheumatoid arthritis. It targets a surface protein called CD20 on B cells, which produce antibodies, tagging these cells for destruction. To test that approach, Lennox’s team is heading
976.   <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31174586/">
977.    a clinical trial
978.   </a>
979.   that is recruiting people with psychosis who have known autoantibodies and mild illness. Half are put on immunoglobulins, followed by rituximab. The other half get a placebo. “There’s a track record of false hope with new treatments in psychiatry,” Lennox says. “That’s why we have to be extra cautious and collect evidence that treatments work to a gold standard.”
980.  </p>
981.  <p>
982.   Meanwhile, a clinical trial at 40 sites around the world is vetting what could become an even more potent treatment. The
983.   <a href="https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/WNL.98.18_supplement.1651">
984.    ExTINGUISH trial
985.   </a>
986.   , led by University of Utah Health and sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, is recruiting newly diagnosed anti-NMDAR patients to test inebilizumab, a monoclonal antibody used to treat another autoimmune condition. Inebilizumab targets a different antigen on B cells, CD19. Unlike CD20, it’s also on the surface of young plasma cells, which means the drug tags for destruction an additional source of autoantibodies. Trial results are expected as early as 2027.
987.  </p>
988.  <p>
989.   <span>
990.    Harald PrÜss
991.   </span>
992.   <span>
993.   </span>
994.   of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases and the Charité University Hospital of Berlin is a close collaborator of Tebartz van Elst—and his go-to person for staining rodent brain slices for autoantibodies. Earlier this year he found that the CSF of a 21-year-old piano prodigy diagnosed with schizophrenia produced an enigmatic staining pattern. She improved greatly after immunotherapy. Prüss is now striving to identify the antibody—and perhaps unmask yet another autoimmune encephalitis.
995.  </p>
996.  <p>
997.   In recent months, he has also been blazing a more provocative trail: a hunt for autoantibodies that might have a role in a wider range of psychiatric ailments. “This is a paradigm shift,” he asserts. Whereas high levels of some autoantibodies cause encephalitis, Prüss posits that at lower levels, the same antibodies or others might cause chronic psychiatric illness in a much larger population. In people with depression, for instance, he and colleagues have found autoantibodies that target astrocytes, the most abundant cell in the central nervous system,
998.   <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165178122004966">
999.    they reported
1000.   </a>
1001.   in
1002.   <i>
1003.    Psychiatry Research
1004.   </i>
1005.   in 2022. The same year, they published
1006.   <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01688-3">
1007.    a case report
1008.   </a>
1009.   in
1010.   <i>
1011.    Molecular Psychiatry
1012.   </i>
1013.   describing autoantibodies against certain cells in the hippocampus, isolated from the CSF of a young woman with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
1014.  </p>
1015.  <p>
1016.   Prüss suggests that autoimmune reactions might even shape the course of Alzheimer’s disease. He points to a recent patient with memory problems who appeared to be developing Alzheimer’s. The man’s CSF had high levels of autoantibodies to voltage-gated potassium channels (VGKCs), proteins that are key to neuronal signaling. After he was treated with plasmapheresis and rituximab, his condition stabilized for a year before “the underlying genetic disease” began to progress again, Prüss says. This is just a single case study, he says, “but our interpretation is that the antibodies were responsible for a certain fraction of his disease.”
1017.  </p>
1018.  <p>
1019.   Dalmau calls Prüss’s conclusions “highly speculative” and notes that other research has failed to verify the clinical significance of VGKC autoantibodies. He adds that few centers now test for them, “due to the high frequency of diagnostic errors.” More broadly, he cautions, many antibodies will prove to be red herrings that have nothing to do with disease processes. “Autoimmune psychosis is a sexy concept that sells papers—an enormous number of splashy papers,” he says. Tebartz van Elst says, “I accept his skepticism,” but argues it is nevertheless important to get preliminary findings in front of peers. “You collect the data and look for patterns,” he adds. “And of course, treat as well as you can.”
1020.  </p>
1021.  <p>
1022.   Most autoimmune encephalitis patients face a long road to recovery and never fully regain their old selves. At Tebartz van Elst’s clinic, Müller, who has come in for a routine follow-up, is leafing through an album filled with prints of his artwork and mementos of his life before his downward spiral. After a second round of cortisone therapy, he regained the ability to concentrate and express himself coherently, he says. He moved out of his parents’ house into his own place. But insomnia keeps him up all night at least once a week. He doesn’t expect to be able to practice psychiatry again. “I miss it,” he says.
1023.  </p>
1024.  <p>
1025.   Still, Müller can read books again, and “painting distracts me from my depression,” he says. Every Wednesday, his teenage son comes by, and he has monthly visits with his daughters. And he’s in a new relationship. “It’s been so long since I could truly feel happiness or joy,” Müller says. “But at least my life has some meaning again.”
1026.  </p>
1027.  <div id="footnote">
1028.   <span>
1029.    *All patients in this story have been given pseudonyms to protect their privacy.
1030.    <a href="#top">
1031.     Return to top
1032.    </a>
1033.   </span>
1034.  </div>
1035. </div>
1036. </article>
1037. ]]></content:encoded>
1038.      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.science.org/content/article/inflamed-brain-can-trigger-psychosis-search-patients-might-cured</guid>
1039.      <enclosure url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/934722ac33.jpg" length="71105" type="image/jpg"/>
1040.      <pubDate>Thu, 16 May 2024 09:01:00 -0400</pubDate>
1041.      <media:thumbnail url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/934722ac33.jpg" height="534" width="800"/>
1042.    </item>
1043.    <item>
1044.      <title>Federal officials suspend funding to EcoHealth Alliance, nonprofit entangled in COVID-19 origin debate  </title>
1045.      <link>https://www.science.org/content/article/federal-officials-suspend-funding-ecohealth-alliance-nonprofit-entangled-covid-19</link>
1046.      <description>Group headed by conservation biologist Peter Daszak partnered with Chinese institute that some accuse of sparking COVID-19 pandemic</description>
1047.      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<article>
1048. <div>
1049.  <div>
1050.   <div>
1051.    <div>
1052.     <div>
1053.      <div>
1054.       <span>
1055.        Related article
1056.       </span>
1057.      </div>
1058.      <div>
1059.       <div>
1060.        <div>
1061.         <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.acx9652">
1062.          ‘We’ve done nothing wrong.’ EcoHealth leader fights charges that his research helped spark COVID-19
1063.         </a>
1064.        </div>
1065.       </div>
1066.       <div>
1067.        <div>
1068.         <div>
1069.          BY
1070.          <li>
1071.           Jon Cohen
1072.          </li>
1073.         </div>
1074.         <div>
1075.          News
1076.         </div>
1077.         <div>
1078.          <strong>
1079.           17 Nov 2021
1080.          </strong>
1081.         </div>
1082.        </div>
1083.       </div>
1084.      </div>
1085.     </div>
1086.    </div>
1087.   </div>
1088.  </div>
1089. </div>
1090. <div data-interstitial="3">
1091.  <p>
1092.   Federal officials today suspended federal funding for the EcoHealth Alliance, possibly dealing a mortal blow to a U.S. research nonprofit that has been under fire since early in the COVID-19 pandemic. The group has been the focus of concerns that SARS-CoV-2 may have emerged from bat virus research funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and conducted by EcoHealth’s collaborators in Wuhan, China.
1093.  </p>
1094.  <p>
1095.   In a
1096.   <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Tab-1-EHA-SUSP4D-Notice_5.15.2024_signed.pdf">
1097.    letter
1098.   </a>
1099.   to the New York City organization, an official for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), NIH’s parent agency, informed the group it is suspended from all federal funding programs and that the department is proposing to formally debar—or ban—the organization from receiving future funding. Grants from NIH and other U.S agencies provide the bulk of its budget, which was about $14 million in 2022.
1100.  </p>
1101.  <p>
1102.   EcoHealth said in a statement it “is disappointed by HHS’[s] decision today and we will be contesting the proposed debarment. We disagree strongly with the decision and will present evidence to refute each of these allegations and to show that NIH’s continued support of EcoHealth Alliance is in the public interest.”
1103.  </p>
1104.  <p>
1105.   The move comes 2 weeks after a bipartisan House of Representatives panel
1106.   <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/house-lawmakers-both-sides-grill-head-nonprofit-worked-with-chinese-virologists">
1107.    grilled
1108.   </a>
1109.   EcoHealth President Peter Daszak about allegations the group had violated NIH grant rules. Members of the House’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic cited missteps such as the group filing a late progress report on its bat virus studies and highlighted allegations that EcoHealth misrepresented the risks of experiments conducted by its collaborators at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
1110.  </p>
1111.  <p>
1112.   The announcement also comes 1 day before a top NIH official is
1113.   <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/release/wenstrup-announces-hearing-with-nih-principal-deputy-director-lawrence-tabak/">
1114.    scheduled to testify
1115.   </a>
1116.   before the same panel. Representative Brad Wenstrup (R–OH), chair of the subcommittee, called HHS’s actions “a victory for the U.S. taxpayer, but also for American national security and the safety of citizens worldwide.” The panel’s ranking member, Representative Raul Ruiz (D–CA), also praised HHS’s action. While noting Democrats on the panel do not believe EcoHealth helped create the pandemic, he pointed to EcoHealth’s “failure” to “meet the utmost standards of transparency and accountability to the American public.”
1117.  </p>
1118.  <p>
1119.   The suspension involves EcoHealth’s management of a grant to study bat coronaviruses with WIV, which received a small subaward. In April 2020, then-President Donald Trump pressured NIH to ax the grant after some conservative politicians and commentators alleged that SARS-CoV-2 could have leaked from WIV. That move sparked condemnation by scores of scientists who defended EcoHealth’s actions and history of pandemic prevention research. HHS reinstated the grant a few months later but immediately suspended it. Last year it was
1120.   <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-restarts-bat-virus-grant-suspended-3-years-ago-trump">
1121.    restarted
1122.   </a>
1123.   without WIV, which failed to respond to NIH’s requests for lab notebooks related to the work.
1124.  </p>
1125.  <p>
1126.   Meanwhile, documents obtained through public records requests by
1127.   <cite>
1128.    The Intercept
1129.   </cite>
1130.   raised numerous questions about EcoHealth’s oversight of the work. For example, they found that WIV had filed a 2019 progress report more than 2 years late. Critics also suggested experiments at the lab creating hybrid bat viruses qualified as dangerous “gain-of-function” (GOF) research that should have received high-level scrutiny from HHS. EcoHealth noted it consulted on the work with NIH, which found the experiments did not meet its definition for risky GOF studies.
1131.  </p>
1132.  <div>
1133.   <h2>
1134.    <span>
1135.     EcoHealth’s ups and downs
1136.    </span>
1137.   </h2>
1138.   <p>
1139.    Peter Daszak, the EcoHealth Alliance’s CEO, sounded the alarm about the COVID-19 pandemic early, but he and his organization have been accused of a lack of transparency, conflicts of interest, and downplaying the lab-leak hypothesis (see
1140.    <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/weve-done-nothing-wrong-ecohealth-leader-fights-charges-research-helped-spark-covid-19" rel="noopener" target="_blank">
1141.     2021
1142.     <cite>
1143.      Science
1144.     </cite>
1145.     profile
1146.    </a>
1147.    ).
1148.   </p>
1149.   <h3>
1150.    2019
1151.   </h3>
1152.   <div>
1153.    <p>
1154.     <strong>
1155.      24 July
1156.     </strong>
1157.     The National Institutes of Health (NIH)
1158.     <a href="https://reporter.nih.gov/search/jF4RIpD590-v0SaY4NniDg/project-details/9819304">
1159.      renews
1160.     </a>
1161.     EcoHealth’s 5-year grant on risks of bat coronaviruses emerging.
1162.    </p>
1163.   </div>
1164.   <h3>
1165.    2020
1166.   </h3>
1167.   <div>
1168.    <p>
1169.     <strong>
1170.      17 April
1171.     </strong>
1172.     “We will end that grant very quickly,” President Donald
1173.     <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4869590/user-clip-us-2015-grant-wuhan-lab-question">
1174.      Trump says
1175.     </a>
1176.     at press conference.
1177.    </p>
1178.    <p>
1179.     <strong>
1180.      24 April
1181.     </strong>
1182.     NIH
1183.     <a href="https://www.science.org/do/10.1126/science.abc5616/full/lauer.daszak.nih_grant_killed.partial_email_transcripts.april_2020.pdf">
1184.      axes
1185.     </a>
1186.     $3.7 million EcoHealth grant.
1187.    </p>
1188.    <p>
1189.     <strong>
1190.      20 May
1191.     </strong>
1192.     Seventy-seven
1193.     <a href="https://www.science.org/do/10.1126/science.abc9393/full/nl_letter_final.pdf">
1194.      Nobel laureates
1195.     </a>
1196.     are “alarmed” by NIH’s decision.
1197.    </p>
1198.   </div>
1199.   <h3>
1200.    2021
1201.   </h3>
1202.   <div>
1203.    <p>
1204.     <strong>
1205.      30 March
1206.     </strong>
1207.     World Health Organization commission report says lab origin is “extremely unlikely.”
1208.    </p>
1209.    <p>
1210.     <strong>
1211.      6 September
1212.     </strong>
1213.     Gain-of-function concerns flare when
1214.     <em>
1215.      The Intercept
1216.     </em>
1217.     obtains
1218.     <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21055989-understanding-risk-bat-coronavirus-emergence-grant-notice">
1219.      EcoHealth grants
1220.     </a>
1221.     .
1222.    </p>
1223.    <p>
1224.     <strong>
1225.      20 September
1226.     </strong>
1227.     DRASTIC releases EcoHealth’s
1228.     <a href="https://drasticresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/main-document-preempt-volume-1-no-ess-hr00118s0017-ecohealth-alliance.pdf">
1229.      Department of Defense grant proposal
1230.     </a>
1231.     to introduce furin cleavage sites.
1232.    </p>
1233.    <p>
1234.     <strong>
1235.      20 October
1236.     </strong>
1237.     NIH
1238.     <a href="https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/nih-eco-health-alliance-letter/512f5ee70ce9c67c/full.pdf">
1239.      criticizes EcoHealth
1240.     </a>
1241.     for “late” grant report.
1242.    </p>
1243.    <p>
1244.     <strong>
1245.      26 October
1246.     </strong>
1247.     EcoHealth calls
1248.     <a href="https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/EcoHealth%20letter%20(1).pdf">
1249.      NIH’s assertions “mistakes.”
1250.     </a>
1251.    </p>
1252.   </div>
1253.   <h3>
1254.    2023
1255.   </h3>
1256.   <div>
1257.    <p>
1258.     <strong>
1259.      25 January
1260.     </strong>
1261.     The Department of Health and Human Services’s (HHS’s) Office of Inspector General issues
1262.     <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/federal-watchdog-finds-problems-nih-oversight-grant-funding-bat-virus-research-china" rel="noopener" target="_blank">
1263.      critical audit
1264.     </a>
1265.     of EcoHealth and NIH.
1266.    </p>
1267.    <p>
1268.     <strong>
1269.      May
1270.     </strong>
1271.     NIH
1272.     <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-restarts-bat-virus-grant-suspended-3-years-ago-trump" rel="noopener" target="_blank">
1273.      restarts suspended Ecohealth bat virus grant
1274.     </a>
1275.     .
1276.    </p>
1277.    <p>
1278.     <strong>
1279.      19 July
1280.     </strong>
1281.     HHS
1282.     <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/why-the-us-has-banned-funding-for-chinese-lab-at-center-of-pandemic-origin-dispute" rel="noopener" target="_blank">
1283.      moves to debar EcoHealth collaborator
1284.     </a>
1285.     , Wuhan Institute of Virology.
1286.    </p>
1287.   </div>
1288.   <h3>
1289.    2024
1290.   </h3>
1291.   <div>
1292.    <p>
1293.     <strong>
1294.      1 May
1295.     </strong>
1296.     Daszak
1297.     <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/house-lawmakers-both-sides-grill-head-nonprofit-worked-with-chinese-virologists">
1298.      testifies
1299.     </a>
1300.     before House of Representatives panel on COVID-19 origins.
1301.    </p>
1302.    <p>
1303.     <strong>
1304.      15 May
1305.     </strong>
1306.     HHS suspends all of EcoHealth’s federal grants and proposes debarment.
1307.    </p>
1308.   </div>
1309.  </div>
1310.  <p>
1311.   At last month’s hearing, both Democrats and Republicans hammered Daszak and EcoHealth for allegedly mismanaging grants and making misleading statements about the work at WIV. NIH had told the committee last fall that a forensic audit found no evidence to support EcoHealth’s claims that it was unable to file the 2019 progress report because it was locked out of NIH’s grants system.
1312.  </p>
1313.  <p>
1314.   In an 11-page
1315.   <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Tab-2-EHA-SUSP4D-ARM_05.15.2024_signed.pdf">
1316.    memo
1317.   </a>
1318.   , HHS suspension and debarment official Henrietta Katrina Brisbon echoes the select committee’s concerns, including questions about whether EcoHealth should have reported an experiment finding unexpected growth in mice of a chimeric virus distantly related to SARS-CoV-2. “I have determined that the immediate suspension of EHA [EcoHealth Alliance] is necessary to protect the public interest and due to a cause of so serious or compelling a nature that it affects EHA’s present responsibility,” the memo states.
1319.  </p>
1320.  <p>
1321.   It is relatively rare for HHS to debar an NIH grantee. Debarments typically last about 3 years, but agencies have the option of lengthening or shortening the penalty.
1322.  </p>
1323.  <p>
1324.   For years, EcoHealth has led research aimed at identifying viruses found in the wild that could pose a threat to humans. That work has produced hundreds of publications over the past 2 decades, including papers in high-profile journals such as
1325.   <cite>
1326.    Science
1327.   </cite>
1328.   and
1329.   <cite>
1330.    Nature
1331.   </cite>
1332.   . The group has a total of three active NIH grants totaling $2.6 million in fiscal year 2023 to study the risks that animal viruses will jump to humans in Southeast Asia and how Nipah virus moves from bats to people in Bangladesh. It also has large awards from the Department of Defense and other U.S. agencies.
1333.  </p>
1334.  <p>
1335.   Lawrence Gostin, an expert on global health law at Georgetown University, says that although EcoHealth has 30 days to contest the suspension, he expects any such effort will fail.
1336.  </p>
1337.  <p>
1338.   “All in all, this has an unpleasant political smell behind it,” Gostin says, adding that he believes the move reflects “a political campaign to dissuade scientific cooperation with China.”
1339.  </p>
1340.  <p>
1341.   Virologist Stuart Neil of King’s College London says the alleged grant offenses are not “crimes, nor are they evidence of misuse of public money.” He calls the HHS action “performative political nonsense carried through by the cowardice of the ranking Democrat members [on] the select committee.”
1342.  </p>
1343.  <p>
1344.   Peter Hotez, a vaccine researcher at Baylor College of Medicine, adds that “EcoHealth Alliance is one of the few organizations we have to track the emergence of new and dangerous virus pathogens. If they disappear, our national security suffers.”
1345.  </p>
1346.  <p>
1347.   But critics of EcoHealth applauded the decision. More details may come out at tomorrow’s hearing, where NIH Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak will answer questions about EcoHealth and NIH’s grants process.
1348.  </p>
1349.  <div>
1350.   <span>
1351.    With reporting by
1352.    <a href="https://www.science.org/content/author/meredith-wadman">
1353.     Meredith Wadman
1354.    </a>
1355.    .
1356.   </span>
1357.  </div>
1358.  <div>
1359.   <span>
1360.    <strong>
1361.     Update, 16 May, 2:40 p.m.:
1362.    </strong>
1363.    At today’s hearing, Tabak voiced unequivocal support for the HHS decision to suspend EcoHealth from receiving federal funding and propose debarment. While noting that the decision was made by HHS and he could not comment “on what input they considered,” when asked whether NIH agrees, he said: “Yes, we do.”
1364.   </span>
1365.  </div>
1366. </div>
1367. </article>
1368. ]]></content:encoded>
1369.      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.science.org/content/article/federal-officials-suspend-funding-ecohealth-alliance-nonprofit-entangled-covid-19</guid>
1370.      <enclosure url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/7a52604610.jpg" length="38143" type="image/jpg"/>
1371.      <pubDate>Wed, 15 May 2024 18:20:00 -0400</pubDate>
1372.      <media:thumbnail url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/7a52604610.jpg" height="529" width="800"/>
1373.    </item>
1374.    <item>
1375.      <title>Limits on access to DeepMind’s new protein program trigger backlash  </title>
1376.      <link>https://www.science.org/content/article/limits-access-deepmind-s-new-protein-program-trigger-backlash</link>
1377.      <description>Critics accuse Nature, which published the research, of failing to meet its own transparency standards</description>
1378.      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<article>
1379. <div data-interstitial="3">
1380.  <p>
1381.   Last week’s announcement of AlphaFold 3, a new artificial intelligence–powered program from Google DeepMind,
1382.   <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/powerful-new-ai-software-maps-virtually-any-protein-interaction-minutes">
1383.    sparked excitement in the scientific community
1384.   </a>
1385.   for its promise to vastly improve predictions of the structure and interactions of proteins and aid discovery of new drugs. But DeepMind and
1386.   <cite>
1387.    Nature
1388.   </cite>
1389.   , which published the research, have come under fire for offering only restricted access to the program and failing to release the computational code underlying it.
1390.  </p>
1391.  <p>
1392.   <a href="https://zenodo.org/records/11186537">
1393.    In an open letter
1394.   </a>
1395.   that had received more than 650 signatures as of 14 May, researchers write that they’re “disappointed” by the lack of resources
1396.   <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07487-w">
1397.    accompanying the publication
1398.   </a>
1399.   , and accuse the journal of undermining its own rules on code availability. “While companies have the right to capitalize on their innovations, using the imprimatur of academic publications without the possibility of reproducing the results, far less building on them, subverts the enterprise,” the researchers write in the letter, posted on 11 May. “When journals fail to enforce their written policies about making code available … they demonstrate how these policies are applied inequitably and how editorial decisions do not align with the needs of the scientific community.”
1400.  </p>
1401.  <p>
1402.   <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/powerful-new-ai-software-maps-virtually-any-protein-interaction-minutes">
1403.    Experts in the field of protein prediction have described AlphaFold 3
1404.   </a>
1405.   as “transformative” and “very impressive.” They say the work marks a significant advance on earlier programs, such as AlphaFold 2 and RoseTTAFold All-Atom, and will help generate more accurate predictions of proteins’ interactions with biomolecules such as DNA and RNA.
1406.  </p>
1407.  <p>
1408.   However, whereas its predecessors were released with downloadable code, AlphaFold 3 is currently only
1409.   <a href="https://www.alphafoldserver.com">
1410.    accessible through a web server
1411.   </a>
1412.   . On its launch, each user could run just 10 requests per day, although that number has since risen to 20. Users also face limitations on the molecules they can analyze. It isn’t possible to predict interactions between proteins and novel drugs, for example, reportedly to avoid competition with drug discovery efforts of DeepMind spinoff Isomorphic Labs.
1413.  </p>
1414.  <p>
1415.   AlphaFold 3’s code wasn’t available during the review process for the
1416.   <cite>
1417.    Nature
1418.   </cite>
1419.   paper, either. Roland Dunbrack, a computational structural biologist at the Fox Chase Cancer Center and letter co-author,
1420.   <a href="https://twitter.com/RolandDunbrack/status/1788262978166596053">
1421.    says he received the manuscript
1422.   </a>
1423.   without any way to test the program. After contacting the journal, he got access to an early version of the web server, but repeated requests for code in the leadup to publication went unanswered, he says. “I don’t understand why [
1424.   <cite>
1425.    Nature
1426.   </cite>
1427.   ’s editors] sent it out for review under those conditions.”
1428.  </p>
1429.  <p>
1430.   The paper doesn’t provide a justification, simply noting, “Code is not provided”—an omission that appears to “flagrantly violate”
1431.   <cite>
1432.    Nature
1433.   </cite>
1434.   ’s policies, says James Fraser, a structural biologist at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) and one of the letter’s organizers.
1435.   <cite>
1436.    Nature
1437.   </cite>
1438.   ’s
1439.   <a href="https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/initial-submission">
1440.    submission guidelines
1441.   </a>
1442.   state that custom code supporting a paper’s main claims must be made available to referees upon request, and its
1443.   <a href="https://www.nature.com/nature-portfolio/editorial-policies/reporting-standards">
1444.    editorial policies
1445.   </a>
1446.   specify that “authors are required to make [code] promptly available to readers without undue qualifications.”
1447.  </p>
1448.  <p>
1449.   The apparent contradiction has prompted ire from researchers. “In my opinion, large parts of this work [do] not fulfill the requirements of scientific studies,” Erik Lindahl, a biophysicist at Stockholm University and signatory on the letter, tells
1450.   <cite>
1451.    Science
1452.   </cite>
1453.   Insider. “[I]t is effectively an ad for commercial services.”
1454.  </p>
1455.  <p>
1456.   <cite>
1457.    Nature
1458.   </cite>
1459.   has defended its handling of the paper. “While seeking to enhance transparency at every opportunity,
1460.   <cite>
1461.    Nature
1462.   </cite>
1463.   accepts that there may be circumstances under which research data or code are not openly available,” Editor-in-Chief Magdalena Skipper says in a statement. Editors “reflect on many different factors, including the potential implications for biosecurity and the ethical challenges this presents. In such cases we work with the authors to provide alternatives that will support reproducibility.” The paper includes “pseudocode”—a description of the steps run by the program—she adds.
1464.  </p>
1465.  <p>
1466.   DeepMind has restricted access to its products
1467.   <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/09/19/1079871/deepmind-alphamissense-ai-pinpoint-causes-genetic-disease/">
1468.    on biosecurity grounds before
1469.   </a>
1470.   , although study co-author John Jumper, a senior researcher at the company, reportedly told
1471.   <a href="https://fortune.com/2024/05/08/alphafold-3-google-deepmind-isomorphic-labs-biology-drug-discovery/">
1472.    <cite>
1473.     Fortune
1474.     <cite>
1475.      magazine
1476.     </cite>
1477.    </cite>
1478.   </a>
1479.   last week that biosecurity experts advised the company that risk from AlphaFold 3 was marginal, and outweighed by potential benefits. A
1480.   <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01383-z">
1481.    news story in
1482.    <cite>
1483.     Nature
1484.    </cite>
1485.   </a>
1486.   , meanwhile, quoted Pushmeet Kohli, vice president of Research at DeepMind, as suggesting restrictions were implemented so as not to compromise the ability of Isomorphic Labs to pursue commercial drug discovery plans.
1487.  </p>
1488.  <p>
1489.   Regardless, since the open letter was posted, DeepMind researchers have indicated that more information on AlphaFold 3 is on the way. A DeepMind media representative pointed
1490.   <cite>
1491.    Science
1492.   </cite>
1493.   to
1494.   <a href="https://twitter.com/pushmeet/status/1790086453520691657">
1495.    a 13 May social media post
1496.   </a>
1497.   in which Kohli, another co-author, announced the increase in the web server’s daily request limit to 20. The team is also “working on releasing the AF3 model” for academic use within 6 months, Kohli wrote, a move welcomed by researchers who spoke to
1498.   <cite>
1499.    Science
1500.   </cite>
1501.   .
1502.  </p>
1503.  <p>
1504.   Stephanie Wankowicz, a computational structural biologist at UCSF and another of the letter’s organizers, says she hopes the episode will encourage the computational biology community to set concrete standards for research communication, particularly given the increasing influence of for-profit companies in this field.
1505.  </p>
1506.  <p>
1507.   It’s also an opportunity for journals to reflect on their role in upholding scientific standards, Fraser says. If they apply standards selectively, “it’s like they’re the traffic cops that are letting some people speed and pulling other people over for rolling through a stop sign. And that’s not fair.”
1508.  </p>
1509. </div>
1510. </article>
1511. ]]></content:encoded>
1512.      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.science.org/content/article/limits-access-deepmind-s-new-protein-program-trigger-backlash</guid>
1513.      <enclosure url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/0e6c99207f.jpg" length="29245" type="image/jpg"/>
1514.      <pubDate>Wed, 15 May 2024 14:55:00 -0400</pubDate>
1515.      <media:thumbnail url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/0e6c99207f.jpg" height="532" width="800"/>
1516.    </item>
1517.    <item>
1518.      <title>Spending cuts imperil Argentina’s ambitious nuclear research programs  </title>
1519.      <link>https://www.science.org/content/article/spending-cuts-imperil-argentina-s-ambitious-nuclear-research-programs</link>
1520.      <description>Reactors, neutron beam laboratory, and medical isotope production face disruptions</description>
1521.      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<article>
1522. <div data-interstitial="3">
1523.  <p>
1524.   Deep budget cuts have begun to cripple Argentina’s once ambitious nuclear research and development programs. Once-thriving construction sites are dormant, and engineers with years of experience are leaving for the private sector, says Andrés Kreiner, a physicist at Argentina’s Constituyentes Atomic Centre, one of the nation’s three major nuclear research laboratories. “When people see no resources to work with, they become demoralized.”
1525.  </p>
1526.  <p>
1527.   Under President Javier Milei, who has pledged to rein in government spending as part of his plan to address Argentina’s economic crisis, funding for the nation’s National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA) has dropped precipitously, from about $270 million a year to about $100 million for this year. That’s less than 40% of the amount needed to sustain CNEA’s current programs, which employ more than 3800 people and operate three nuclear power plants and six research reactors, analysts say. The agency could run out of money this summer unless it receives additional funds, they note, imperiling efforts to complete new reactors, produce medical isotopes, and create Latin America’s most advanced neutron beam facility for studying materials.
1528.  </p>
1529.  <p>
1530.   “We are facing dismantling within the nuclear sector, heading towards paralysis that jeopardizes our very existence,” says Diego Hurtado, a physicist and former vice president of CNEA who left the agency when Milei took office in December 2023.
1531.  </p>
1532.  <p>
1533.   Until the budget cuts, Argentina was striving to become South America’s leader in nuclear R&D. In recent decades, for example, CNEA launched efforts to design and build a small modular power reactor, the Argentine Center of Modular Elements (CAREM), as well as a new multipurpose research reactor called the RA-10. Both projects now face uncertainty.
1534.  </p>
1535.  <p>
1536.   The RA-10, which will replace a less powerful reactor, was scheduled to open in 2025. Delay or cancellation would have wide ramifications for researchers. The 30-megawatt reactor is supposed to produce neutrons for the Argentine Neutron Beam Laboratory (LAHN), which planners hope to make a regional hub for neutron science training and experiments. Among other activities, researchers planned to use LAHN’s beamline to test fuel rods and other materials used in nuclear reactors. They also hope to irradiate silicon with the neutrons, creating “doped” silicon that could be sold to the semiconductor industry.
1537.  </p>
1538.  <p>
1539.   In addition, the RA-10 would produce radioisotopes used in medicine, including some that can’t currently be made in Argentina. The country could lose “the capacity to sustain the entire production chain [for medical isotopes] if the economic situation is not reversed,” says Natalia Stankevicius, manager of the Radioisotope Production and Radiation Applications Area at CNEA. Argentina has already spent more than $400 million on the RA-10, and officials say an additional $80 million is needed to finish it.
1540.  </p>
1541.  <p>
1542.   Other teams working in nuclear medicine are also concerned about their future. One is just 2 years away from completing a particle accelerator for boron neutron capture therapy, a treatment for certain cancers. Another needs about $6 million to complete the Argentine Proton Therapy Center in Buenos Aires, the first facility of its kind in Latin America. “It would be very painful if this project does not come to fruition,” says Jesuana Aizcorbe, president of the Center for Nuclear and Molecular Medicine Entre Ríos. But, she adds, “It’s difficult to be optimistic.”
1543.  </p>
1544.  <p>
1545.   There is also renewed doubt about the fate of CAREM, which has seen numerous delays since it was first proposed in the 1980s. Planner hoped the plant, to be completed in 2027, would provide electricity to remote areas and industrial parks, as well as power desalination plants in coastal areas with limited freshwater. The project has already cost more than $600 million, and completing it is expected to cost an additional $300 million. To raise money, the government is reportedly exploring privatizing existing Argentina’s nuclear power plants, which provide less than 10% of the nation’s electricity. But the CAREM construction site near the city of Zárate is already quiet, as spending cuts have forced builders to lay off workers.
1546.  </p>
1547. </div>
1548. </article>
1549. ]]></content:encoded>
1550.      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.science.org/content/article/spending-cuts-imperil-argentina-s-ambitious-nuclear-research-programs</guid>
1551.      <enclosure url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/29f594d87e.jpg" length="124968" type="image/jpg"/>
1552.      <pubDate>Wed, 15 May 2024 14:10:00 -0400</pubDate>
1553.      <media:thumbnail url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/29f594d87e.jpg" height="529" width="800"/>
1554.    </item>
1555.    <item>
1556.      <title>Researcher steps on deadly vipers 40,000 times to better predict snakebites  </title>
1557.      <link>https://www.science.org/content/article/researcher-steps-deadly-vipers-40-000-times-better-predict-snakebites</link>
1558.      <description>Science chats with João Miguel Alves-Nunes about his risky experimental approach, and how it could help save lives</description>
1559.      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<article>
1560. <div data-interstitial="3">
1561.  <p>
1562.   More than 5 million people are bitten by snakes every year, resulting in thousands of deaths and permanent disabilities. Yet despite advances in developing antivenoms, scientists still don’t know why some snakes bite humans and others don’t.
1563.  </p>
1564.  <p>
1565.   João Miguel Alves-Nunes has developed an unusual—and some would say insane—way to find out. The biologist at the Butantan Institute has stepped on jararacas—one of South America’s most venomous and dangerous vipers—
1566.   <span>
1567.    <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-59416-6">
1568.     more than 40,000 times
1569.    </a>
1570.   </span>
1571.   . The results of this risky experiment, published this month in
1572.   <cite>
1573.    Scientific Reports
1574.   </cite>
1575.   , could help save lives, he says.
1576.  </p>
1577.  <p>
1578.   <cite>
1579.    Science
1580.   </cite>
1581.   spoke with Alves-Nunes about his work and why he puts himself in mortal danger for science. This interview has been translated from Portuguese and edited for clarity and length.
1582.  </p>
1583.  <h3>
1584.   Q: Why did you decide to do this experiment?
1585.  </h3>
1586.  <p>
1587.   <strong>
1588.    A:
1589.   </strong>
1590.   Snake behavior has been generally neglected as a field of research, especially in Brazil. And most studies don’t examine what factors make them want to bite. If you study malaria, you can research the parasite that causes the disease—but if you don’t study the mosquito that carries it, you will never solve the problem. Up until now, the popular wisdom was that the jararaca would only attack if you touched it or stepped on it. But that was not what we found.
1591.  </p>
1592.  <h3>
1593.   Q: Why did you need to be the victim?
1594.  </h3>
1595.  <p>
1596.   <strong>
1597.    A:
1598.   </strong>
1599.   The best way to do this research is to put snakes and a human together. In this case, the human was me. We put the snakes inside a ring on the floor of our lab until they got used to it, then I stepped in wearing special protective boots. I stepped close to the snake and also lightly on top of it. I didn’t put my whole weight on my foot, so I did not hurt the snakes. I tested 116 animals and stepped 30 times on every animal, totaling 40,480 steps.
1600.  </p>
1601.  <h3>
1602.   Q: Did you feel safe?
1603.  </h3>
1604.  <p>
1605.   <strong>
1606.    A:
1607.   </strong>
1608.   That is a good question! I chose the protective boot based on the opinion of experienced colleagues at Butantan. They were leather boots covered in foam that went 3 centimeters above my knees. I felt 100% safe, and the jararaca bites never punctured them. However, when I was doing simulations with a rattlesnake, one punctured the boot, and I was bitten.
1609.  </p>
1610.  <p>
1611.   Thankfully, I was in the best place I could be. The Butantan Institute is a leader in antivenom development, and I was very well-assisted at its hospital. Unfortunately, I discovered that I am allergic to both antivenom and snake toxins. I had to take a 15-day medical leave.
1612.  </p>
1613.  <h3>
1614.   Q: Did you reconsider working with snakes after that?
1615.  </h3>
1616.  <p>
1617.   <strong>
1618.    A:
1619.   </strong>
1620.   No, this is my passion. I love working with these animals. After the accident, I reinforced the boots so I would not be bitten again. Because of my allergy, I now avoid directly handling the snakes. I leave it to the lab technicians, and I concentrate on the experiment design and data analysis instead.
1621.  </p>
1622.  <figure>
1623.   <div>
1624.    <img alt="João Miguel Alves-Nunes" src="https://www.science.org/do/10.1126/science.za0ci0s/files/_20240514_on_snakebite_researcher.jpg"/>
1625.   </div>
1626.   <figcaption>
1627.    <span>
1628.     During his experiments, João Miguel Alves-Nunes discovered he’s allergic to the venom of rattlesnakes like the one he’s holding.
1629.     <span>
1630.      Adriano Fellone
1631.     </span>
1632.    </span>
1633.   </figcaption>
1634.  </figure>
1635.  <h3>
1636.   Q: What did your colleagues think when you proposed stepping on snakes?
1637.  </h3>
1638.  <p>
1639.   <strong>
1640.    A:
1641.   </strong>
1642.   It was seen as normal. It is very common practice in the study of nonvenomous animals to
1643.   <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347213005733">
1644.    poke them with your finger
1645.   </a>
1646.   and
1647.   <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-74279-3">
1648.    handle them
1649.   </a>
1650.   to observe their defensive behavior. My adviser’s adviser [Ivan Sazima, a biologist at the State University of Campinas]
1651.   <a href="https://pesquisa.bvsalud.org/portal/resource/pt/lil-66619">
1652.    pioneered the practice of offering his legs to snakes back in 1988
1653.   </a>
1654.   . In those experiments, he did so only once and more gently, not directly touching the animals. So no one had done this in such a direct way to simulate bites like we did.
1655.  </p>
1656.  <p>
1657.   The hard part is that, after my accident, some people started to see me as reckless. And that is not true. I ran these experiments with a solid scientific base, followed the same protocol thousands of times, and had only one accident. And from that accident, a research question was born: I am now comparing the bite strength of rattlesnakes and jararacas and how resistant different materials and shoes are to them.
1658.  </p>
1659.  <h3>
1660.   Q: What did you discover about snake behavior?
1661.  </h3>
1662.  <p>
1663.   <strong>
1664.    A:
1665.   </strong>
1666.   The smaller the animal, the greater the chance it will bite you. Another thing is that females are more aggressive and prone to bite, especially when they are young and during the daytime. We also found that the animals get more aggressive in hotter temperatures.
1667.  </p>
1668.  <p>
1669.   All of this is consistent with the epidemiologic data we have from snakebite hospital records. In São Paulo, it is during the summer that we have most accidents, mostly with smaller, female snakes. We also saw that it makes a difference where you touch the snake’s body when you step on it. When the contact occurs on the head, the probability of a defensive bite is much higher than when you step on its midbody or tail.
1670.  </p>
1671.  <h3>
1672.   Q: How can these findings help with snakebite prevention or management?
1673.  </h3>
1674.  <p>
1675.   <strong>
1676.    A:
1677.   </strong>
1678.   Local governments can’t distribute antivenom to everyone everywhere. Often, it is sent to big hospitals. But some of their patients are bitten in towns where there is no antivenom available and then travel to get assistance. So, the hospital record does not necessarily reflect the place where the accidents are happening.
1679.  </p>
1680.  <p>
1681.   With our new findings, we can predict where bites may happen and plan better antivenom distribution. By combining our data with data from other studies showing snake distribution, we can identify the places where the animals are more likely to be aggressive. For example, warmer places with a higher female snake population should be a priority for antivenom distribution.
1682.  </p>
1683.  <h3>
1684.   Q: Any regrets?
1685.  </h3>
1686.  <p>
1687.   <strong>
1688.    A:
1689.   </strong>
1690.   When I was bitten by the rattlesnake during the simulation, I recorded it with a camera. And what was the first thing I did? I called my mother right there. Now I have this embarrassing moment on video: me crying to my mother.
1691.  </p>
1692. </div>
1693. </article>
1694. ]]></content:encoded>
1695.      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.science.org/content/article/researcher-steps-deadly-vipers-40-000-times-better-predict-snakebites</guid>
1696.      <enclosure url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/dc1aed06e7.jpg" length="88762" type="image/jpg"/>
1697.      <pubDate>Wed, 15 May 2024 13:30:00 -0400</pubDate>
1698.      <media:thumbnail url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/dc1aed06e7.jpg" height="529" width="800"/>
1699.    </item>
1700.    <item>
1701.      <title>Watch a lizard-inspired building shed parts to escape catastrophe  </title>
1702.      <link>https://www.science.org/content/article/watch-lizard-inspired-building-shed-parts-escape-catastrophe</link>
1703.      <description>Strategy developed by engineers could help save structures from collapse</description>
1704.      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<article>
1705. <div data-interstitial="3">
1706.  <p>
1707.   When faced with a predator, a lizard won’t hesitate to abandon its (often still-wriggling) tail as a distraction before scurrying to safety. Although losing a body part has its drawbacks, it’s a much better option than getting eaten. And thanks to specialized anatomical regions known as fracture planes, these reptiles can even sever their tails at precise points the moment they sense danger.
1708.  </p>
1709.  <p>
1710.   <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07268-5">
1711.    What if buildings could do the same thing in response to earthquakes?
1712.   </a>
1713.   That’s the idea behind a study published today in
1714.   <cite>
1715.    Nature
1716.   </cite>
1717.   . Architects and engineers usually incorporate strong connections between different building sections, which can protect against small-scale failures, but distributing stress throughout a structure in this way can inadvertently cause the whole thing to fall down.
1718.  </p>
1719.  <p>
1720.   The new approach, dubbed “hierarchy-based collapse isolation,” instead ensures that beams connecting different parts of the building break if they are subjected to enough force. That way, in the event of an earthquake or other major disaster, the part of the structure that falters first will crumble before the damage can spread.
1721.  </p>
1722.  <p>
1723.   To test the method, the team built a large, two-story building—roughly the same size as a single-family house—out of concrete, then used a forklift to topple a critical, load-bearing column. Thanks to the structure’s lizard-inspired design, only an isolated portion of it collapsed (as seen in the above video), while the rest was left standing tall. In the future, the team behind the work says, such an approach could save lives, aid in rescue efforts, and minimize the amount of rebuilding required in the wake of a disaster.
1724.  </p>
1725. </div>
1726. </article>
1727. ]]></content:encoded>
1728.      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.science.org/content/article/watch-lizard-inspired-building-shed-parts-escape-catastrophe</guid>
1729.      <enclosure url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/6bc15ee0de.jpg" length="62616" type="image/jpg"/>
1730.      <pubDate>Wed, 15 May 2024 12:00:00 -0400</pubDate>
1731.      <media:thumbnail url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/6bc15ee0de.jpg" height="532" width="800"/>
1732.    </item>
1733.    <item>
1734.      <title>Human ancestors may have hunted cave bears 300,000 years ago  </title>
1735.      <link>https://www.science.org/content/article/human-ancestors-may-have-hunted-cave-bears-300-000-years-ago</link>
1736.      <description>Later, more intense hunting by modern humans probably pushed cave bears to extinction</description>
1737.      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<article>
1738. <div data-interstitial="3">
1739.  <p>
1740.   For Stone Age hunters armed with little more than wooden spears, cave bears must have been a daunting foe. Adult members of
1741.   <em>
1742.    Ursus spelaeus
1743.   </em>
1744.   weighed upward of 750 kilograms, half again as big as modern grizzly bears. Standing upright, they towered more than 3 meters.
1745.  </p>
1746.  <p>
1747.   Yet archaeological evidence suggests that for as long as humans and our close ancestors—collectively known as hominins—called the European continent home, cave bears were on the menu. In 2001, Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen paleozoologist Susanne Münzel found a smoking gun at Hohle Fels Cave in southwestern Germany:
1748.   <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/251685470_Cave_Bear_Hunting_in_the_Hohle_Fels_a_Cave_Site_in_the_AchValley_Swabian_Jura">
1749.    a stone spear tip embedded in a cave bear vertebra
1750.   </a>
1751.   , evidence of a hunt 29,000 years ago.
1752.  </p>
1753.  <p>
1754.   Now, after more than 2 decades of additional research, Münzel and her colleagues have found
1755.   <a href="https://authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S0277-3791(24)00102-1">
1756.    dozens of additional signs pointing to cave bear hunting across Germany
1757.   </a>
1758.   , as they report in the June issue of
1759.   <cite>
1760.    Quaternary Science Reviews
1761.   </cite>
1762.   . The team closely examined hundreds of cave bear bones, looking for evidence that humans had made the kill and stripped the carcass of its fur and flesh. At site after site, beginning about 300,000 years ago, the researchers found similar patterns: slice marks on paw bones and skulls where hides would have been cut free, bones cracked open to extract nutritious marrow, and scrapes on long bones showing they were carefully and thoroughly stripped of every last scrap of meat.
1763.  </p>
1764.  <p>
1765.   The work “gives us an overall view that our interaction with bears goes really far back in time,” says Marco Peresani, an archaeologist at the University of Ferrara who was not involved with the research. “It clearly shows our impact on these big animals.”
1766.  </p>
1767.  <p>
1768.   With a few exceptions—such as the spear tip embedded in a vertebra from Hohle Fels—it’s possible that early hominins were simply scavenging bear carcasses, not hunting the giant animals. But Münzel argues the signs of defleshing and stripping hides suggest otherwise, providing strong circumstantial evidence that the bears were freshly killed. From personal experience collecting dead bears from modern zoos for research purposes, she says the smell of even a day-old bear carcass “is completely unbearable” and would have deterred all but the hungriest hominin. “I’m sure if they have cutmarks and butchering marks, these animals have been hunted.”
1769.  </p>
1770.  <p>
1771.   The team also looked at differences in the way cave bear bones were treated, and how often they popped up in archaeological assemblages. In the earliest caves, bones with marks made by Neanderthals and their immediate predecessor, known as
1772.   <em>
1773.    Homo heidelbergensis
1774.   </em>
1775.   , were often found intermingled with untouched cave bear bones—a sign that plenty of these bears died natural deaths. That may mean early hominins hunted cave bears only occasionally, not routinely.
1776.  </p>
1777.  <p>
1778.   Starting 40,000 years ago, things changed. Almost all the cave bear bones in caves occupied by modern humans were modified, suggesting hunting had become more systematic. During the last glacial maximum—an intense cold spell that began about 27,000 years ago and lasted more than 7000 years—cave bears would have been an especially tempting target. The animals could dependably be found hibernating in caves, making them a reliable and vulnerable food source during frigid winters. “It’s not isolated encounters, or unforeseen encounters, but a clear strategic exploitation,” Peresani says.
1779.  </p>
1780.  <figure>
1781.   <div>
1782.    <img alt=" Examples of different bear bones with cut marks and retouch marks" src="https://www.science.org/do/10.1126/science.ziqrlkr/files/_20240514_on_cave_bear_hunting_secondary.jpg"/>
1783.   </div>
1784.   <figcaption>
1785.    <span>
1786.     A cave bear bone shows cutmarks from stone tools wielded by Neanderthals more than 100,000 years ago.
1787.     <span>
1788.      G. Toniato
1789.      <em>
1790.       et al
1791.      </em>
1792.      .,
1793.      <cite>
1794.       Quaternary Science Review
1795.      </cite>
1796.      s, 333 (2024)
1797.     </span>
1798.    </span>
1799.   </figcaption>
1800.  </figure>
1801.  <p>
1802.   Modern humans also did more with the bones during this period, using cave bear teeth to make pendants, bones as tools, and even the penis bone as an ornament. They carefully defleshed even the fatty pads of the paws for food. “At the youngest sites, there’s an intense exploitation of cave bears by humans,” says Tübingen archaeozoologist Giulia Toniato, a co-author of the new paper.
1803.  </p>
1804.  <p>
1805.   That illustrates a stark difference in how earlier and later hominins hunted and consumed these animals, says study co-author Gabriele Russo, an archaeozoologist at Tübingen. “For the Neanderthals, bears were an occasional side dish,” he says. “For modern humans, they were a seasonal entree on the menu.”
1806.  </p>
1807.  <p>
1808.   This rise in cave bear hunting may have played a role in their eventual extinction—but it wasn’t the only factor. Humans weren’t just hunting these animals, they were competing with them for habitat, particularly the caves both species relied on for winter shelter. That put
1809.   <em>
1810.    U. spelaeus
1811.   </em>
1812.   on a collision course with
1813.   <em>
1814.    Homo sapiens
1815.   </em>
1816.   , particularly as human populations grew along with warming temperatures about 20,000 years ago.
1817.  </p>
1818.  <p>
1819.   By 10,000 years ago the last of the ferocious herbivores were gone. “They live well with other hominin species, but when
1820.   <em>
1821.    Homo sapiens
1822.   </em>
1823.   arrives, the population starts to decline,” Toniato says. “
1824.   <em>
1825.    Homo sapiens
1826.   </em>
1827.   really delivers a big blow.”
1828.  </p>
1829. </div>
1830. </article>
1831. ]]></content:encoded>
1832.      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.science.org/content/article/human-ancestors-may-have-hunted-cave-bears-300-000-years-ago</guid>
1833.      <enclosure url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/59bd5048f2.jpg" length="114965" type="image/jpg"/>
1834.      <pubDate>Wed, 15 May 2024 09:01:00 -0400</pubDate>
1835.      <media:thumbnail url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/59bd5048f2.jpg" height="529" width="800"/>
1836.    </item>
1837.    <item>
1838.      <title>Why are elite athletes prone to abnormal heart rhythms?  </title>
1839.      <link>https://www.science.org/content/article/why-are-elite-athletes-prone-abnormal-heart-rhythms</link>
1840.      <description>Studying cardiac effects of extreme exercise could yield clues to atrial fibrillation</description>
1841.      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<article>
1842. <div>
1843. </div>
1844. <div data-interstitial="3">
1845.  <p>
1846.   On 1 July 2023, as Tour de France riders pedaled out of Bilbao, Spain, toward the French Pyrenees mountains, sports cardiologist Andre La Gerche tuned in from Melbourne, Australia. “It’s exciting watching the screen and knowing the engines”—the hearts powering the cyclists forward, says La Gerche, who works at the St. Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research and the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute. Five of the cyclists who won daily stages early in the race are also participants in an ambitious study, led by La Gerche, of the effects of endurance exercise on the heart. These include powerful protection against heart disease—but also the potential, in some endurance athletes, to bring on a troublesome arrhythmia called atrial fibrillation (AF).
1847.  </p>
1848.  <p>
1849.   Most AF patients are older than 65 and have known risk factors, particularly high blood pressure, obesity, and sleep apnea. Why cyclists, runners, and other athletes in otherwise impeccable health are sometimes at risk is poorly understood, and could involve both genetic factors and exercise-related remodeling of the heart and its electrical rhythms. La Gerche and others are now studying this paradox. Not only could such work help affected athletes, but it also offers the chance to study AF without the confounding effects of other health concerns, says exercise physiologist Jack Goodman of the University of Toronto.
1850.  </p>
1851.  <p>
1852.   The efforts are important because AF represents a “burgeoning epidemic,” driven largely by obesity and an aging population, says Mina Chung, a cardiac electrophysiologist at the Cleveland Clinic. It affects
1853.   <a href="https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIR.0000000000001193">
1854.    more than 5 million people
1855.   </a>
1856.   in the United States alone, and the global prevalence is expected to double from 2010 to 2030, she says.
1857.  </p>
1858.  <p>
1859.   In AF, the upper chambers of the heart, called the atria, beat erratically and at runaway speeds, out of sync with the lower chambers. The condition can cause fatigue, fainting, chest pain, and other symptoms, and it comes with more serious hazards when it persists long term. Last month, a study from Denmark reported that about 40% of people in that country with AF
1860.   <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/385/bmj-2023-077209">
1861.    eventually developed heart failure
1862.   </a>
1863.   and 20% suffered a stroke, caused by blood clots that form when the atria don’t pump properly. Treatment, which includes blood thinners and other drugs as well as a procedure that destroys heart tissue fueling abnormal activity, is often not a cure.
1864.  </p>
1865.  <p>
1866.   For years, doctors have urged both their sedentary AF patients and those at risk to get moving. Activity is a potent force for good, reducing the heart’s stiffness, improving blood flow, and promoting electrical stability—all of which likely help prevent and manage AF, says Adrian Elliott, a cardiac physiologist at the University of Adelaide. But studies over the past 2 decades suggest it may be possible to get too much of a good thing: Engaging in intense exercise over many years may itself tip the heart into
1867.   <a href="https://academic.oup.com/eurjpc/article/27/19/2123/6125402?login=true">
1868.    an unhappy electrical state
1869.   </a>
1870.   , giving some athletes a risk of AF as much as five times higher than nonathletes the same age. Most studies show endurance athletes develop AF
1871.   <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/2711895">
1872.    later in life
1873.   </a>
1874.   , though in some cases it can turn up during their sporting careers, Elliott says.
1875.  </p>
1876.  <p>
1877.   Until recently, women athletes were rarely studied and considered potentially exempt from AF risk. But a handful of recent papers are overturning that assumption. A study published in July 2023 in the
1878.   <cite>
1879.    British Journal of Sports Medicine
1880.   </cite>
1881.   <a href="https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/57/18/1175">
1882.    put the risk for women athletes
1883.   </a>
1884.   at three to five times that of nonathletes, which is “similar to men,” says Nikola Drca, the lead author and a cardiac electrophysiologist at Karolinska University Hospital. Still, he cautions, the study was small, with only 10 AF cases diagnosed among the 228 Swedish women endurance athletes.
1885.  </p>
1886.  <p>
1887.   La Gerche’s study, called Pro@Heart, is among the largest efforts to learn more. It launched in 2016 with collaborators in Australia and Belgium and so far includes nearly 500 elite athletes who were between 16 and 23 years old when they enrolled. The study aims to follow them for at least 25 years and track changes to the heart, including in its size and electrical conduction patterns. A separate arm is exploring AF prevalence and susceptibility in 128 former elite competitive rowers between the ages of 45 and 80, along with a matched comparator group of people who are not competitive athletes.
1888.  </p>
1889.  <p>
1890.   It’s already known that the heart gets larger in endurance athletes. MRI scans during exercise in the younger Pro@Heart cohort have also shown some athletes’ hearts “are so large that [they get] pushed up against the chest wall and the spine,” says La Gerche, who wonders whether that friction could cause cardiac inflammation. Such inflammation has long been eyed as a potential AF driver, and it can also arise from conditions such as diabetes and obesity. La Gerche’s team, which also includes Elliott, will track whether there’s rubbing of the atria against the spine that leads to inflammation and later AF.
1891.  </p>
1892.  <p>
1893.   Pro@Heart’s older cohort, the retired rowers, has a startling rate of AF: 20%, compared with 3% in the control group. Elite rowers may have a higher AF risk than some other endurance athletes—perhaps because the sport attracts taller people.
1894.   <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1003288">
1895.    Height is a documented AF risk factor
1896.   </a>
1897.   , though the reasons are still being explored. Another factor may be that rowers routinely train as much as 20 or 30 hours a week. “How much exercise is too much?” Goodman wonders.
1898.  </p>
1899.  <p>
1900.   The answer isn’t clear, and it likely depends on other factors, including genetics. With a $14 million, 5-year grant from the National Institutes of Health, Chung and her colleagues are exploring which genes might set the stage for the disease in the general population and are looking for potential drug targets. Another study, launched last year by pediatric cardiologist Greg Webster at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and his colleagues, will hunt for genetic variants linked to AF in people who develop it while still extraordinarily young, before age 35, and probe how those variants contribute. “It can lend an understanding of the broad spectrum of disease, if you know what happens at the extremes,” Elliott says.
1901.  </p>
1902.  <p>
1903.   What to advise endurance athletes with AF is unclear. Many aren’t comfortable with standard medicines. Blood thinners reduce stroke risk but also heighten bleeding if athletes fall off their bike or while running or skiing; beta blockers, prescribed to slow a racing heart, can reduce performance.
1904.  </p>
1905.  <p>
1906.   One common prescription for athletes with AF is to pare back physical activity. Marius Myrstad, an internal medicine doctor who studies and treats AF at Baerum Hospital, recently launched the first trial to see whether that’s good advice—especially given that exercise has many benefits, too. The researchers will randomize 120 athletes with AF who run at least 5 hours or cycle at least 8 hours a week to either continue their regimen or reduce its intensity and shorten it by about 20%. Heart monitors implanted under participants’ skin and training watches will track the number and duration of AF episodes in the two groups.
1907.  </p>
1908.  <p>
1909.   These athletes “really don’t want to stop competing or stop training” if they don’t have to, Myrstad says. “It’s the most natural thing to ask the patient in front of you, ‘Do you have to run this marathon? Can’t you just reduce the training?’” he says, “but I’m not sure it’s right.”
1910.  </p>
1911. </div>
1912. </article>
1913. ]]></content:encoded>
1914.      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.science.org/content/article/why-are-elite-athletes-prone-abnormal-heart-rhythms</guid>
1915.      <enclosure url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/39fe69f24e.jpg" length="58644" type="image/jpg"/>
1916.      <pubDate>Tue, 14 May 2024 17:00:00 -0400</pubDate>
1917.      <media:thumbnail url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/39fe69f24e.jpg" height="529" width="800"/>
1918.    </item>
1919.    <item>
1920.      <title>LGBTQ Ph.D. graduates will soon be counted in key U.S. survey  </title>
1921.      <link>https://www.science.org/content/article/lgbtq-ph-d-graduates-will-soon-be-counted-key-u-s-survey</link>
1922.      <description>It’s “very long overdue,” one scientist says</description>
1923.      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<article>
1924. <div>
1925.  <img alt="An illustration of a line of raised hands. Each arm is a different color, forming a rainbow spectrum." height="792" src="https://www.science.org/do/10.1126/science.z0d1u4l/full/_20240510_car_lgbtq-1715788729243.jpg" width="1408"/>
1926.  <figcaption>
1927.   <span>
1928.    <span>
1929.     Adapted from mustafahacalaki/istock.com
1930.    </span>
1931.   </span>
1932.  </figcaption>
1933. </div>
1934. <section data-interstitial="3">
1935.  <p>
1936.   The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) plans to add questions about sexual orientation and gender identity to its
1937.   <a href="https://ncses.nsf.gov/surveys/earned-doctorates/2022">
1938.    Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED)
1939.   </a>
1940.   in the coming months, the agency announced last week. The move, which comes after years of pilot testing, pressure from scientists, and a scientific integrity complaint, is being applauded by activists and diversity experts who say the data will be critical for understanding how many LGBTQ people are in STEM. But NSF has yet to release specific details about its plan, including how it will safeguard the information.
1941.  </p>
1942.  <p>
1943.   The SED serves as an annual census of the nation’s Ph.D. recipients—roughly 55,000 respondents per year, across all academic disciplines—and is a key data source for researchers and policymakers who are interested in the diversity of the U.S. STEM pipeline. It asks questions about their gender, race, disability status, educational background, career plans, and more. But until now, the survey hasn’t included any questions that indicate whether the Ph.D. graduates identify as LGBTQ. In addition, the gender options were limited to just “male” or “female.”
1944.  </p>
1945.  <p>
1946.   Last week’s announcement is “exciting” and “very long overdue,” says Jon Freeman, an associate professor of psychology at Columbia University. Freeman has spent years drumming up support for NSF to collect data on LGBTQ scientists through its suite of workforce surveys—particularly on the SED, which he considers the “crown jewel.”
1947.  </p>
1948.  <p>
1949.   Last year, NSF added a question about gender identity to its National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG), a biennial survey of more than 160,000 U.S. bachelor’s degree holders. But data at all educational levels are needed, says Bryce Hughes, an associate professor of adult and higher education at Montana State University, “to understand where inequities need to be addressed and to make visible the participation of these communities.” Hughes, whose research has documented
1950.   <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/stem-losing-male-lgbq-undergrads">
1951.    lower retention rates for gay men pursuing STEM bachelor’s degrees
1952.   </a>
1953.   than for their heterosexual peers, hopes that as these kinds of questions get added to more surveys researchers will be able to study the retention of LGBTQ researchers through different stages of the STEM pipeline.
1954.  </p>
1955.  <p>
1956.   NSF conducted a pilot test last year to determine how best to phrase the questions on the SED. Of primary concern was whether the questions were clear, the respondents felt comfortable answering them, and their presence might decrease the overall survey response rate if respondents chose to leave the survey after seeing the questions. After collecting responses from more than 30,000 Ph.D. graduates who saw different iterations of the questions from May 2023 to March 2024, NSF found that less than 7% didn’t answer or selected “I prefer not to answer” for all test questions. Few respondents left the survey because they were asked about their sexual orientation and gender identity—approximately the same amount as left on other survey questions. Most respondents also reported feeling comfortable answering the test questions, although between 40% and 61% of LGBTQ respondents—depending on what question was asked—said they were concerned about how the data would be used.
1957.  </p>
1958.  <p>
1959.   In a statement last week that accompanied the release of
1960.   <a href="https://ncses.nsf.gov/surveys/earned-doctorates/2022#card2136">
1961.    the pilot data
1962.   </a>
1963.   , NSF announced it would add new questions to the 2025 SED that will allow respondents to specify their sex at birth, their current gender identity, and their sexual orientation. Data collection for the 2025 SED will run from July 2024 to June 2025, and a summary of the data is expected to be released in October 2026.
1964.  </p>
1965.  <p>
1966.   It’s not clear how the new questions will be phrased or what the response options will be, and NSF declined to provide specific details in an email to
1967.   <cite>
1968.    Science
1969.   </cite>
1970.   Careers. The plans are subject to approval by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, which oversees changes to federal surveys. NSF says it plans to submit those plans later this month.
1971.  </p>
1972.  <p>
1973.   Many are hopeful that, if approved, the new data collection effort will provide a window into LGBTQ representation in the academic research community. The pilot data released last week offered some starting estimates: Roughly 2% to 3% of respondents identified as a gender minority and roughly 13% to 15% identified as a sexual minority. Given that these numbers point to a sizable presence of LGBTQ people in the Ph.D. population, “I feel like that indicates really strongly the need for these kinds of questions,” says Zara Weinberg, a postdoc at the University of California San Francisco.
1974.  </p>
1975.  <p>
1976.   Weinberg, who co-authored a
1977.   <a href="https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00187-9">
1978.    commentary in
1979.    <cite>
1980.     Cell
1981.    </cite>
1982.   </a>
1983.   this year listing actions scientists and institutions can take to better support transgender researchers, points out that
1984.   <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/deserves-our-attention-new-data-highlight-lgbtq-scientists-workplace-challenges">
1985.    studies have identified
1986.   </a>
1987.   numerous workplace challenges faced by LGBTQ professionals in STEM, such as higher incidents of harassment. “But we don’t actually have any data about how that affects actual representation at different stages of career progression,” she says.
1988.  </p>
1989.  <p>
1990.   NSF has been exploring the idea of adding sexual orientation and gender identity questions to its workforce surveys
1991.   <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/nsf-moves-pilot-lgbt-questions-national-workforce-surveys">
1992.    since at least 2018
1993.   </a>
1994.   , telling
1995.   <cite>
1996.    Science
1997.   </cite>
1998.   Careers at the time that it would require a “lengthy, deliberate process involving extensive experimentation.” The first pilot test came in 2021, when the agency asked 5000 respondents on the NSCG to answer questions about their sexual orientation and gender identity.
1999.  </p>
2000.  <p>
2001.   In 2023, NSF decided to officially add a question about gender identity to that year’s NSCG, allowing respondents to select whether they currently describe themselves as male, female, transgender, or a different term that they can write in. (The survey also includes a question about the respondents’ assigned sex at birth.) But it declined to add a question about sexual orientation, citing pilot results indicating that respondents took longer to complete the question, were more likely to change their answers, and that some exited the survey after seeing the question. In response,
2002.   <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/545d3fabe4b0811b5cc48193/t/63c867aefb89f3761070a5a3/1674078140137/Letter+to+NSF+Director+-+LGBTQ%2B+Data_redacted.pdf">
2003.    Freeman drafted a letter last year
2004.   </a>
2005.   , cosigned by hundreds of researchers, protesting the decision and requesting that the pilot data be made public. Ramón Barthelemy, an assistant professor at the University of Utah and a signatory on the letter, said at the time, “We have fought so hard for so long to try to get representation in the scientific community, and what NSF is communicating to us is,
2006.   <a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/nsf-still-won-t-track-sexual-orientation-among-scientific-workforce-prompting">
2007.    they don’t want us to have that representation
2008.   </a>
2009.   .”
2010.  </p>
2011.  <p>
2012.   A report describing the NSCG pilot data was posted online in January, but that didn’t clarify for Freeman and others why the sexual orientation question was left off the 2023 survey. “At least 16 other questions on the survey led respondents to exit at an equal or higher rate,” Freeman wrote in
2013.   <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ado5636">
2014.    a letter published last month in
2015.    <cite>
2016.     Science
2017.    </cite>
2018.   </a>
2019.   .
2020.  </p>
2021.  <p>
2022.   Freeman filed a formal complaint with NSF’s Office of Scientific Integrity last month, as well as with the U.S. House of Representatives. Both confirmed to
2023.   <cite>
2024.    Science
2025.   </cite>
2026.   Careers that they’d received the complaint. The Democratic staff of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology added that it has held meetings with experts who corroborated the concerns raised by Freeman.
2027.  </p>
2028.  <p>
2029.   “I am concerned about the non-scientific biases—described in the complaint—that may have contributed to a delay in the implementation of a sexual orientation question. This complaint must be assessed expediently,” Representative Zoe Lofgren (D–CA), who serves as the ranking member of the House committee, communicated in an email to
2030.   <cite>
2031.    Science
2032.   </cite>
2033.   Careers. “We can only ensure our scientific enterprise is safe and welcoming for all if we collect data on the experiences of people who historically may not have been welcomed in our scientific enterprises.”
2034.  </p>
2035.  <p>
2036.   An NSF spokesperson wrote to
2037.   <cite>
2038.    Science
2039.   </cite>
2040.   Careers that the complaint is being handled according to the agency’s scientific integrity policy. “Given that it is an open case, there is no information that can be shared,” they added.
2041.  </p>
2042.  <p>
2043.   It’s unclear whether those events factored into NSF’s decision to add sexual orientation and gender identity questions to the 2025 SED. But Freeman says he was glad to see a detailed report of the pilot data accompanied NSF’s announcement this time around. It’s what he and others have been requesting for years, he says.
2044.  </p>
2045.  <p>
2046.   “They did a really comprehensive job,” agrees Clair Kronk, a lecturer at the Yale University School of Medicine who is an expert on sex and gender data collection standards in health care and biomedicine. She’s glad NSF is moving to add new questions to the full survey, saying she knows some nonbinary Ph.D. graduates who didn’t complete the SED in prior years because it lacked their gender as an option and didn’t allow respondents to skip the question or select “I prefer not to answer.” But she remains cautiously optimistic until NSF releases the final details of its plans. “I’ll believe it when I see it fully,” Kronk says.
2047.  </p>
2048.  <p>
2049.   One detail that isn’t clear is how NSF will handle individually identifiable sexual orientation and gender identity data. Currently, SED data are shared with respondents’ home institutions under data sharing agreements. Although the answers to the pilot test questions were not shared, it remains an open question whether that will change once the questions are added to the full survey, or whether the data will be withheld or shared “in aggregated form,” an option that was mentioned in the report released last week.
2050.  </p>
2051.  <p>
2052.   Given the wave of antitrans laws, it’s important to carefully consider who has access to the data, Kronk says. “There are a number of institutions that exist wherein I could see negative outcomes for people if this information were to get back to those institutions,” she says. “That’s something that NSF should definitely very much consider.”
2053.  </p>
2054. </section>
2055. </article>
2056. ]]></content:encoded>
2057.      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.science.org/content/article/lgbtq-ph-d-graduates-will-soon-be-counted-key-u-s-survey</guid>
2058.      <enclosure url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/c5ab0ab420.jpg" length="43620" type="image/jpg"/>
2059.      <pubDate>Tue, 14 May 2024 15:15:00 -0400</pubDate>
2060.      <media:thumbnail url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/c5ab0ab420.jpg" height="529" width="800"/>
2061.    </item>
2062.    <item>
2063.      <title>Amid Haiti’s escalating chaos, a ‘heroic network’ keeps medical research running  </title>
2064.      <link>https://www.science.org/content/article/amid-haiti-s-escalating-chaos-heroic-network-keeps-medical-research-running</link>
2065.      <description>Night bikers deliver meds and cholera sleuths persist as gangs dominate life and landscape</description>
2066.      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<article>
2067. <div>
2068. </div>
2069. <div data-interstitial="3">
2070.  <p>
2071.   <span>
2072.    Samuel Pierre, a research physician at the major Haitian HIV/AIDS treatment and study center GHESKIO, flew to Denver on 2 March, excited for what he expected to be a short work trip to a conference. Three days later, after presenting a poster describing his team’s successful trial of an HIV drug regimen, he learned that heavily armed gangs had attacked Haiti
2073.   </span>
2074.   ’
2075.   <span>
2076.    s international airport. It soon shut down and remains closed to commercial traffic.
2077.   </span>
2078.  </p>
2079.  <p>
2080.   <span>
2081.    Undeterred, Pierre is managing his staff while perched with family in New York City and he’s eager to resume his research on site.
2082.   </span>
2083.   “
2084.   <span>
2085.    I am intending to go back as soon as the airport is open,” he says.
2086.   </span>
2087.   “
2088.   <span>
2089.    This is the kind of risk you need to take if you want to keep moving forward providing care, conducting research.”
2090.   </span>
2091.  </p>
2092.  <p>
2093.   <span>
2094.    Pierre is one of a determined set of health researchers who are still running studies in Haiti, despite mounting chaos. The turmoil surged on 29 February, when a coalition of gangs launched a new wave of violence aimed at toppling the government while then–Prime Minister Ariel Henry was out of the country. It has not subsided: According to an
2095.   </span>
2096.   <a href="https://apnews.com/article/haiti-gang-attack-gressier-gresye-4420aa9dd4a1a08f3f0b65bd0d676f85">
2097.    <span>
2098.     Associated Press report
2099.    </span>
2100.   </a>
2101.   <span>
2102.    , gangs on 11 May attacked the police station and the community in the coastal city of Gressier, an area that historically has been a site of medical research.
2103.   </span>
2104.  </p>
2105.  <p>
2106.   <span>
2107.    “
2108.   </span>
2109.   <span>
2110.    There is this heroic network of physicians and scientists that have figured out ways to keep aspects of science and medicine happening,” says Eric Nelson, a pediatrician and cholera researcher at the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida (UF), which runs a research facility in rural Haiti.
2111.   </span>
2112.   <span>
2113.    “
2114.   </span>
2115.   <span>
2116.    And this may be the darkest hour of that challenge.”
2117.   </span>
2118.  </p>
2119.  <p>
2120.   <span>
2121.    Medical research in Haiti has long had to contend with the country’s instability. Before February, gangs already controlled an estimated 80% of Port-au-Prince, the capital and largest city. The violence has forced 60% of GHESKIO’s staff to leave since 2021; the son of its director, Jean William “Bill” Pape, was kidnapped in November 2023, held for 3.5 months, and released only after five ransom payments were made.
2122.   </span>
2123.  </p>
2124.  <p>
2125.   <span>
2126.    But in recent months, the situation got worse after one notorious gang leader united other gangs against the government. Since then, they have stormed prisons, releasing thousands of inmates, burned police stations, and strangled the main port, putting more than 1 million people at risk of famine. Henry resigned in late April, and a divided
2127.   </span>
2128.   <span>
2129.    “
2130.   </span>
2131.   <span>
2132.    transitional council” narrowly voted to appoint a new prime minister, Fritz B
2133.   </span>
2134.   <span>
2135.    élizaire. The next day,
2136.   </span>
2137.   <span>
2138.    1 May, gangs launched a new round of attacks in Port-au-Prince, burning homes and sending terrified residents fleeing.
2139.   </span>
2140.  </p>
2141.  <p>
2142.   <span>
2143.    “
2144.   </span>
2145.   <span>
2146.    We
2147.   </span>
2148.   <span>
2149.    ’
2150.   </span>
2151.   <span>
2152.    re not going to stop just because it
2153.   </span>
2154.   <span>
2155.    ’
2156.   </span>
2157.   <span>
2158.    s difficult,” says UF research coordinator Molly Klarman, Nelson
2159.   </span>
2160.   <span>
2161.    ’
2162.   </span>
2163.   <span>
2164.    s co-investigator on a U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded study aiming to digitize a pediatric service called MotoMeds. It operates at night to serve sick children in regions that include the site of the new attack in Gressier. Nurses fielding calls from parents triage cases and dispatch motorcycle drivers with medicines and sometimes nurses. So far, they have relied on pen and paper for the triage calls, but the study will test whether training nurses on an app will reduce call and delivery times without negatively impacting outcomes. If it does, the researchers hope to take MotoMeds national.
2165.   </span>
2166.  </p>
2167.  <figure>
2168.   <div>
2169.    <img alt="A laboratory technician in the Haitian National Laboratory tests samples for cholera, December 7, 2023" src="https://www.science.org/do/10.1126/science.z2q5cbh/files/_20240513_nid_haiti_researchers_secondary.jpg"/>
2170.   </div>
2171.   <figcaption>
2172.    <span>
2173.     A technician in Haiti’s national public health lab tests stool samples for cholera in December 2023. The Port-au-Prince lab is still functioning amid violence and chaos.
2174.     <span>
2175.      Louise C. Ivers
2176.     </span>
2177.    </span>
2178.   </figcaption>
2179.  </figure>
2180.  <p>
2181.   <span>
2182.    With the country
2183.   </span>
2184.   <span>
2185.    ’
2186.   </span>
2187.   <span>
2188.    s ambulance network effectively shut down, road travel often dangerous, and many health facilities shuttered, demand for the MotoMeds service has increased, from two calls per night last fall to three per night in April. Parents “are just more uneasy about leaving their home, so they like the [MotoMeds] idea,” says nurse practitioner Youseline Cajusma, who oversees the call center and is training the nurses in the study.
2189.   </span>
2190.  </p>
2191.  <p>
2192.   <span>
2193.    Nelson adds:
2194.   </span>
2195.   <span>
2196.    “
2197.   </span>
2198.   <span>
2199.    Early access to low-cost, proven, effective medications is becoming all that families can do.”
2200.   </span>
2201.  </p>
2202.  <p>
2203.   <span>
2204.    Disease surveillance efforts are also hobbling through the crisis. In 2019, after violence made it perilous to travel the 31 kilometers between Port-au-Prince and UF
2205.   </span>
2206.   <span>
2207.    ’
2208.   </span>
2209.   <span>
2210.    s infectious disease research lab in Gressier, the university relocated its research to a new high-end lab in a rural area near the border with the Dominican Republic. In Gressier, researchers led by Glenn Morris, director of UF
2211.   </span>
2212.   <span>
2213.    ’s Emerging Pathogens Institute,
2214.   </span>
2215.   <span>
2216.    had churned out paper after paper,
2217.   </span>
2218.   <span>
2219.    <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04111-z">
2220.     identifying coronaviruses that leapt from pigs to children
2221.    </a>
2222.   </span>
2223.   ,
2224.   <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9527705/">
2225.    <span>
2226.     turning up rare viruses
2227.    </span>
2228.   </a>
2229.   <span>
2230.    previously thought to be confined to South America, and
2231.   </span>
2232.   <span>
2233.    <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1918763117">
2234.     revealing aquatic reservoirs
2235.    </a>
2236.   </span>
2237.   <span>
2238.    of cholera during an epidemic that began in 2010, resurged in 2022, and has sickened more than 800,000 Haitians.
2239.   </span>
2240.  </p>
2241.  <p>
2242.   <span>
2243.    “
2244.   </span>
2245.   <span>
2246.    Having the surveillance in Haiti has allowed us to get a much better feel for the movement of viruses really across the entire Caribbean and South America,” Morris says. But the violence is now hampering the rural lab, too. To avoid dangerous areas, some employees were recently driving 5 hours from their homes to reach work, where they would stay for several weeks. That proved unsustainable, and today, just one employee is on site, ensuring the freezers are running. The output of papers has slowed to a crawl.
2247.   </span>
2248.  </p>
2249.  <p>
2250.   <span>
2251.    “
2252.   </span>
2253.   <span>
2254.    We have difficulties to get supplies, difficulties to ship samples. To get dry ice is a nightmare,” says Valery Madsen Beau De Rochars, a Haitian epidemiologist at UF who once supervised the rural research operation but has not been able to travel to the lab himself since 2022.
2255.   </span>
2256.  </p>
2257.  <p>
2258.   <span>
2259.    “
2260.   </span>
2261.   <span>
2262.    [UF] used to send students and faculty in Haiti to train our staff,” adds Rigan Louis, a Haitian nurse practitioner earning a Ph.D. at UF who managed the rural lab more recently. The end of those visits since 2020
2263.   </span>
2264.   <span>
2265.    “
2266.   </span>
2267.   <span>
2268.    has significantly affected our ability to continue doing research.”
2269.   </span>
2270.  </p>
2271.  <p>
2272.   The many obstacles are reflected in the number of proposals for human subject research submitted to Haiti’s national institutional review board, says Gerald Lerebours, president of that board, which evaluates and approves such studies before they can start. Before 2020, Lerebours says, the group was asked to review 40 to 60 protocols annually; during the 12 months that ended in September 2023, it received 20.
2273.  </p>
2274.  <p>
2275.   <span>
2276.    Funding work in Haiti has also become harder, some researchers say. Gene Kwan, a cardiologist and global health researcher based at Boston University, last year applied for NIH funding to run a study assessing whether artificial intelligence could give nonspecialist physicians an edge as they use portable ultrasound scanners to diagnose and rate the severity of congestive heart failure—a major problem in Haiti. But reviewers were
2277.   </span>
2278.   <span>
2279.    “
2280.   </span>
2281.   <span>
2282.    very critical of the [study
2283.   </span>
2284.   <span>
2285.    ’
2286.   </span>
2287.   <span>
2288.    s] feasibility … given everything that is going on,” Kwan says. He didn
2289.   </span>
2290.   <span>
2291.    ’
2292.   </span>
2293.   <span>
2294.    t win the grant.
2295.   </span>
2296.  </p>
2297.  <p>
2298.   <span>
2299.    Morris
2300.   </span>
2301.   <span>
2302.    ’
2303.   </span>
2304.   <span>
2305.    s own NIH grant, to study whether previous coronavirus exposure blunted COVID-19
2306.   </span>
2307.   <span>
2308.    ’
2309.   </span>
2310.   <span>
2311.    s impact in Haitians, has entered an
2312.   </span>
2313.   <span>
2314.    “
2315.   </span>
2316.   <span>
2317.    unfunded continuation phase” because he couldn
2318.   </span>
2319.   <span>
2320.    ’
2321.   </span>
2322.   <span>
2323.    t complete the work required to move to the next stage, he says. He is waiting on a renewal decision for another NIH grant that allowed his team to track cholera.
2324.   </span>
2325.   <span>
2326.    “
2327.   </span>
2328.   <span>
2329.    There may be a massive cholera epidemic occurring right now,” he says.
2330.   </span>
2331.   <span>
2332.    “
2333.   </span>
2334.   <span>
2335.    There
2336.   </span>
2337.   <span>
2338.    ’s no data.
2339.   </span>
2340.   <span>
2341.    ”
2342.   </span>
2343.  </p>
2344.  <p>
2345.   <span>
2346.    Another long-standing NIH grant, now focused on approaches to controlling cholera with vaccination and water treatment, is up for renewal next year. The project
2347.   </span>
2348.   <span>
2349.    ’
2350.   </span>
2351.   <span>
2352.    s co–lead investigator, infectious disease physician and researcher Louise Ivers of Massachusetts General Hospital, is hesitant about applying.
2353.   </span>
2354.   <span>
2355.    “
2356.   </span>
2357.   <span>
2358.    We have exciting [new] questions,” Ivers says, but
2359.   </span>
2360.   <span>
2361.    “
2362.   </span>
2363.   <span>
2364.    the sociopolitical context might mean that we can’t do new work. We haven’t completely come to that decision. But we may have to, depending on how things go in the next 6 months.”
2365.   </span>
2366.  </p>
2367.  <p>
2368.   <span>
2369.    Yet the commitment of her Haitian colleagues is heavy on her mind. In December 2023, she visited Haiti
2370.   </span>
2371.   <span>
2372.    ’
2373.   </span>
2374.   <span>
2375.    s National Laboratory of Public Health and met with her collaborator, center Director Jacques Boncy, who was back at work after being kidnapped and injured several months earlier.
2376.   </span>
2377.  </p>
2378.  <p>
2379.   <span>
2380.    “
2381.   </span>
2382.   <span>
2383.    People were going into work. The lab was functioning. They were showing me their beautiful biobank,” Ivers recalls.
2384.   </span>
2385.   <span>
2386.    “
2387.   </span>
2388.   <span>
2389.    If we try to renew our grant, it
2390.   </span>
2391.   <span>
2392.    ’
2393.   </span>
2394.   <span>
2395.    s going to be to honor these people
2396.   </span>
2397.   <span>
2398.    ’
2399.   </span>
2400.   <span>
2401.    s dedication.”
2402.   </span>
2403.  </p>
2404. </div>
2405. </article>
2406. ]]></content:encoded>
2407.      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.science.org/content/article/amid-haiti-s-escalating-chaos-heroic-network-keeps-medical-research-running</guid>
2408.      <enclosure url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/e1d83fe9a9.jpg" length="103288" type="image/jpg"/>
2409.      <pubDate>Mon, 13 May 2024 16:30:00 -0400</pubDate>
2410.      <media:thumbnail url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/e1d83fe9a9.jpg" height="450" width="800"/>
2411.    </item>
2412.    <item>
2413.      <title>Born to run? Endurance running may have evolved to help humans chase down prey  </title>
2414.      <link>https://www.science.org/content/article/born-run-early-endurance-running--may-have-evolved-help-humans-chase-down-prey</link>
2415.      <description>“Pursuit hunting” was sometimes more efficient than stalking, survey of Indigenous hunting methods suggests</description>
2416.      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<article>
2417. <div data-interstitial="3">
2418.  <p>
2419.   Since the Stone Age, hunters have brought down big game with spears, atlatls, and bows and arrows. Now, a new study reveals traditional societies around the globe also relied on another deadly but often-overlooked weapon: our legs.
2420.  </p>
2421.  <p>
2422.   According to a report published today in
2423.   <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01876-x">
2424.    <span>
2425.     <cite>
2426.      Nature Human Behaviour
2427.     </cite>
2428.    </span>
2429.   </a>
2430.   , running down big game such as antelope, moose, and even kangaroos was far more widespread than previously recognized. Researchers documented nearly 400 cases of endurance pursuits—a technique in which prey are chased to exhaustion—by Indigenous peoples around the globe between the 16th and 21st centuries. And in some cases, they suggest, it can be more efficient than stealthy stalking.
2431.  </p>
2432.  <p>
2433.   The findings bolster the idea that humans evolved to be hunting harriers, says Daniel Lieberman, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University. “Nobody else has come up with any other explanation for why humans evolved to run long distances,” says Lieberman, who adds that he’s impressed with the paper’s “depth of scholarship.”
2434.  </p>
2435.  <p>
2436.   For decades, some anthropologists have argued that endurance running was among the first hunting techniques employed by early hominins in Africa. Advocates suggest subsequent millennia spent chasing down prey shaped many unique human features, including our springy arched feet, slow-twitch muscle fibers optimized for efficiency, heat-shedding bare skin, and prodigious ability to sweat. The “born to run” idea has become something of an origin story among many endurance athletes.
2437.  </p>
2438.  <p>
2439.   But a pack of skeptics has dogged the theory. Critics cited the higher energetic costs of running over walking and noted that accounts of persistence hunting among modern foragers are rare.
2440.  </p>
2441.  <p>
2442.   Yet hints of such pursuits kept popping up as Eugène Morin, an archaeologist at Trent University and co-author of the new paper, scoured the literature for a book he was writing on hunting among traditional societies. As he pored over early accounts by missionaries, travelers, and explorers, he repeatedly found descriptions of long-distance running and tracking.
2443.  </p>
2444.  <p>
2445.   For Morin and his colleagues, the study was its own exercise in endurance: They spent more than 5 years exploring the ethnographic literature and other sources, surveying more than 8000 texts spanning about 500 years. “I don’t think you can exaggerate just how much effort they must have put in,” Lieberman says.
2446.  </p>
2447.  <p>
2448.   The researchers found 391 historical reports of endurance pursuits around the world—an order of magnitude more than what was previously known.
2449.  </p>
2450.  <p>
2451.   For example, one rich trove of information about Native Americans’ hunting methods came from the Culture Element Distribution surveys conducted by the University of California (UC) in the 1930s and 1940s. Among 141 western North American societies surveyed, 114, or 81%, practiced some form of persistence hunting.
2452.  </p>
2453.  <p>
2454.   “It’s probably a lot more ubiquitous than we understood,” says co-author Bruce Winterhalder, a behavioral ecologist at UC Davis and pioneering scholar of forager theory. “When it does work, it’s just as good, or maybe better, than other techniques.”
2455.  </p>
2456.  <p>
2457.   Sometimes running was more efficient than quietly stalking prey, the study suggests. Running costs more energy than walking, but when it’s successful, it allows for a quicker kill—and a better return on time invested.
2458.  </p>
2459.  <p>
2460.   The authors cite a hypothetical hunt of a gemsbok, a large antelope from southern Africa. At a walk, a hunter might pursue the quarry for 2 hours and cover 8 kilometers before killing it. By speeding up the chase to 10 kilometers per hour—a trot within the ability of many recreational joggers—the hunter might drive the creature to exhaustion in only 24 minutes, resulting in a fivefold greater payoff in calories gained per time invested.
2461.   <br/>
2462.   <br/>
2463.   When hunting faster prey, humans can rely on our unusual ability to run at a steady pace for hours and keep cool by sweating. A skilled tracker can force faster running prey into a relentless cycle of sprinting, overheating, exhaustion, and eventual collapse—then finish off the animal with a coup de grâce delivered by spear or club.
2464.  </p>
2465.  <p>
2466.   Hunters also employed slow running if faster prey could be disadvantaged by snow, rocky terrain, soft sand, or soggy ground. Sudanese hunters slogged through daylong pursuits of giraffes when the animals were slowed by rain-softened ground. Ojibwe hunters wore snowshoes to chase down elk that became exhausted by sinking into deep drifts.
2467.  </p>
2468.  <p>
2469.   Cara Wall-Scheffler, a biological anthropologist at Seattle Pacific University, applauded the new paper for adding a wealth of new examples. But she notes the study’s own findings confirm that persistence hunting was rare and that other methods were more common in the historical record. She doubts the technique was a powerful force in human evolution. “Selection acting every single day, everywhere, is more powerful, and persistence running is definitely not an everyday occurrence,” she says. “This paper actually doubles down with how unusual [it] is.”
2470.  </p>
2471.  <p>
2472.   Others remain skeptical that occasional behaviors by traditional societies offer a reliable guide to what human ancestors might have done millions of years ago. Linking the evolution of human traits to persistence running “can become a just-so story,” says Scott Simpson, a paleoanthropologist at Case Western Reserve University who has done extensive research on human evolution in Africa. “Maybe persistence hunting was part of the mix, but I doubt it was a big part.”
2473.  </p>
2474.  <p>
2475.   The authors acknowledge that endurance running represented just one arrow in the hunter’s quiver alongside other techniques such as communal hunts, traps and snares, quiet stalking, and ambush. Yet even if Paleolithic runners were more like weekend warriors than full-time marathoners, that’s still a useful skill, they say.
2476.  </p>
2477.  <p>
2478.   “If you’re stuck to one method,” Morin says, “you’re going to starve.”
2479.  </p>
2480. </div>
2481. </article>
2482. ]]></content:encoded>
2483.      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.science.org/content/article/born-run-early-endurance-running--may-have-evolved-help-humans-chase-down-prey</guid>
2484.      <enclosure url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/bfd98f754a.jpg" length="112939" type="image/jpg"/>
2485.      <pubDate>Mon, 13 May 2024 14:20:00 -0400</pubDate>
2486.      <media:thumbnail url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/bfd98f754a.jpg" height="529" width="800"/>
2487.    </item>
2488.    <item>
2489.      <title>Extreme solar storm generated aurorae—and ‘surprise’  </title>
2490.      <link>https://www.science.org/content/article/extreme-solar-storm-generated-auroras-and-surprise</link>
2491.      <description>The biggest disturbance of Earth’s magnetic field in more than 20 years dazzled onlookers the world over</description>
2492.      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<article>
2493. <div data-interstitial="3">
2494.  <p>
2495.   <span>
2496.    Earth got its bell rung this past weekend, sucker-punched by the Sun itself in the biggest geomagnetic storm in more than 2 decades. The storm—triggered when the magnetic fields in blobs of plasma from the Sun collided with Earth’s magnetic field—not only yielded once-in-a-generation aurorae at latitudes as low as the Florida Keys, but also took scientists’ breath away with its power. “What took us by surprise was the intensity of the storms,” says Mathew Owens, a physicist and space weather forecaster at the University of Reading. “We knew there was something coming. We didn’t quite know what.”
2497.   </span>
2498.  </p>
2499.  <h2>
2500.   What happened this weekend?
2501.  </h2>
2502.  <p>
2503.   <span>
2504.    This weekend’s fireworks began with Active Region 3664, a giant cluster of sunspots, more than 15 times wider than Earth, where the Sun’s magnetic field is highly concentrated. The magnetic field lines twisted and eventually snapped, causing the cluster to fling off a series of enormous, billion-ton blobs of plasma toward Earth, each embedded with strong magnetic fields.
2505.   </span>
2506.  </p>
2507.  <p>
2508.   <span>
2509.    The detection of at least five of these expulsions, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), caused U.S. forecasters to
2510.    <a href="https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/swpc-issues-its-first-g4-watch-2005">
2511.     issue a “severe” G4 watch
2512.    </a>
2513.    —its first since 2005—on 9 May, the day before the blobs struck Earth. None of the individual CMEs was especially spectacular on its own, but all of them were directed at Earth. What’s more, as they moved toward Earth, they coalesced into a single complex mass. “We spend all this time looking out for the Big One, and sometimes the Big One is seven little ones in a trench coat,” Owens says.
2514.   </span>
2515.   The storm was upgraded to an extreme G5.
2516.  </p>
2517.  <p>
2518.   <span>
2519.    When these CMEs smashed into Earth’s magnetic field on Friday, they stripped magnetic layers on the planet’s day side back like an onion and forced its night side to build up to the breaking point. As the field lines snapped back into more stable configurations, huge amounts of energy poured into Earth’s magnetosphere, in a disturbance known as a
2520.    <a href="https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/phenomena/geomagnetic-storms">
2521.     geomagnetic storm
2522.    </a>
2523.    .
2524.   </span>
2525.  </p>
2526.  <h2>
2527.   How rare are geomagnetic storms?
2528.  </h2>
2529.  <p>
2530.   <span>
2531.    Geomagnetic storms that approach this weekend’s severity occur about four times per 11-year solar cycle, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The last G5 resembling this weekend’s event, the so-called “Halloween storms” of 2003,
2532.    <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2004SW000123">
2533.     caused power outages in Sweden
2534.    </a>
2535.    and
2536.    <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20211001225441/https:/www.sansa.org.za/2018/11/14/protecting-south-africas-power-lines-from-the-sun/">
2537.     blew out transformers in South Africa
2538.    </a>
2539.    . Another G5 storm in 1989 knocked out power for 6 million people in Quebec in Canada.
2540.   </span>
2541.  </p>
2542.  <p>
2543.   <span>
2544.    The 11-year cyclical rise and fall in the Sun’s magnetic activity also affects the chances of a big event. In
2545.    <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11207-021-01831-3">
2546.     a 2021 study
2547.    </a>
2548.    , researchers including Owens showed that geomagnetic storms tend to occur more often during periods of higher activity, centered around peaks known as solar maxima. Based on the number of sunspots, which increase during periods of high activity,
2549.    <a href="https://www.spaceweather.gov/products/solar-cycle-progression">
2550.     SWPC forecasts
2551.    </a>
2552.    that we are approaching a solar maximum now, with a peak expected sometime next summer.
2553.   </span>
2554.  </p>
2555.  <h2>
2556.   How did the aurorae form?
2557.  </h2>
2558.  <p>
2559.   <span>
2560.    After the CMEs stir up Earth’s magnetic field, electrons get accelerated along Earth’s magnetic field lines and funneled toward the planet’s poles. These electrons excite the atoms and molecules there and cause them to emit light—yielding the glow that we call an aurora. An aurora’s green and red glow is caused by excited states of atomic oxygen. Purple glows stem from excited nitrogen molecules.
2561.   </span>
2562.  </p>
2563.  <h2>
2564.   How damaging was this storm?
2565.  </h2>
2566.  <p>
2567.   <span>
2568.    Powerful solar storms can cause Earth’s magnetic fields to fluctuate, which can induce unexpected electrical currents in long-distance power lines and even oil pipelines.
2569.    <a href="https://twitter.com/NWSSWPC/status/1789274423498842362">
2570.     According to SWPC
2571.    </a>
2572.    , some power grid irregularities were reported as a result of this weekend’s storm.
2573.   </span>
2574.  </p>
2575.  <p>
2576.   <span>
2577.    The storms can also disrupt GPS signals by forcing those satellites to transmit through a more electron-rich ionosphere, a layer of the upper atmosphere. During this weekend’s storm, some U.S. farmers
2578.    <a href="https://www.404media.co/solar-storm-knocks-out-tractor-gps-systems-during-peak-planting-season/">
2579.     reportedly paused their planting
2580.    </a>
2581.    because of the sudden imprecision of their GPS-enabled tractors.
2582.   </span>
2583.  </p>
2584.  <p>
2585.   <span>
2586.    And just as running current through a wire heats it up, ionospheric currents heat up and expand the upper atmosphere, increasing atmospheric density at high altitudes. This causes satellites to feel more drag and spiral inward into lower orbits.
2587.   </span>
2588.  </p>
2589.  <p>
2590.   <span>
2591.    Although this weekend’s storm didn’t appear to take out any satellites, it may shorten some of their life spans. According to Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Hubble Space Telescope—which orbits roughly 510 kilometers above Earth’s surface—descended roughly 85 meters per day between 11 May to 13 May. That’s about twice the average daily rate over the previous 3 months.
2592.   </span>
2593.  </p>
2594.  <h2>
2595.   How do forecasters predict geomagnetic storms, and what’s coming next?
2596.  </h2>
2597.  <p>
2598.   <span>
2599.    CMEs are difficult to predict. So forecasts of geomagnetic storms are limited to 2 or 3 days’ notice, once the CMEs are observed leaving the Sun and heading our way. What’s more, forecasters can’t confirm CMEs’ exact arrival time until they pass by satellites operating between Earth and the Sun.
2600.   </span>
2601.  </p>
2602.  <p>
2603.   <span>
2604.    AR3664 may well throw more at us. Sunspot clusters can last months, and this one has only just rotated out of view; in 2 weeks or so, it will rotate back into view of Earth again, as the Sun moves through its 27-day rotation.
2605.   </span>
2606.  </p>
2607.  <p>
2608.   <span>
2609.    In the meantime, AR3664 still poses another hazard—high-energy particles. If the sunspot were to belch any particles out in the coming days, they would likely follow the Sun’s spiraling magnetic field lines directly to Earth, potentially posing a radiation risk to astronauts on board the International Space Station, Owens says. “The risk of particle radiation is going up, whilst the geomagnetic storm hazard drops.”
2610.   </span>
2611.  </p>
2612. </div>
2613. </article>
2614. ]]></content:encoded>
2615.      <guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.science.org/content/article/extreme-solar-storm-generated-auroras-and-surprise</guid>
2616.      <enclosure url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/d26fa938e1.jpg" length="23404" type="image/jpg"/>
2617.      <pubDate>Mon, 13 May 2024 09:01:00 -0400</pubDate>
2618.      <media:thumbnail url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/d26fa938e1.jpg" height="529" width="800"/>
2619.    </item>
2620.    <item>
2621.      <title>The U.S. wants to change how researchers get access to a huge trove of health data. Many don’t like the idea  </title>
2622.      <link>https://www.science.org/content/article/u-s-wants-change-how-researchers-get-access-huge-trove-health-data-many-don-t-idea</link>
2623.      <description>Universities could no longer store Medicare and Medicaid data, and costs for many researchers would rise</description>
2624.      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<article>
2625. <div>
2626. </div>
2627. <div data-interstitial="3">
2628.  <p>
2629.   Health researchers are urging the U.S. government to rethink a plan that would require them to use an in-house government system, and pay substantially more, to access a massive trove of data assembled by federal programs that support medical care for some 140 million people.
2630.  </p>
2631.  <p>
2632.   Ahead of a 15 May deadline to provide comment, researchers are highlighting concerns with the proposed policy change by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which administers Medicare and Medicaid. The two programs subsidize health insurance and medical care for people who are elderly, or have disabilities or low incomes, and CMS claims data include a wealth of information, including patient locations, demographics, diagnoses, and care costs. Academic researchers have long used data CMS has exported to their universities to produce peer-reviewed studies, including some that have led to changes in policy.
2633.  </p>
2634.  <p>
2635.   Such independent analyses will be imperiled if CMS follows through on its plan to force researchers to abandon their institution-based data and use a government system that will cost them substantially more, say critics of the plan. “This is not just about the research. … This will potentially harm the evolution of policy in ways that might actually hurt health outcomes,” says William Schpero, a health economist at Weill Cornell Medicine and co-author of
2636.   <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2818453">
2637.    a commentary criticizing the proposed changes published this week in
2638.    <em>
2639.     JAMA
2640.    </em>
2641.   </a>
2642.   .
2643.  </p>
2644.  <p>
2645.   For decades, CMS has allowed research institutions to purchase and house deidentified medical claims data after paying a single upfront fee, typically tens of thousands of dollars, and more modest fees when the data are used again for additional projects. Any number of research team members can access data for a given project. On 12 February, however,
2646.   <a href="https://www.cms.gov/files/document/request-information-research-data-request/access-policy-changes.pdf">
2647.    the agency announced
2648.   </a>
2649.   it planned to stop FedExing encrypted thumb drives of data to universities. Instead, it wrote, it will soon require researchers to access data through its Virtual Research Data Center (VRDC).
2650.  </p>
2651.  <p>
2652.   To get access to the VRDC, researchers pay an initial “project fee”
2653.   <a href="https://resdac.org/sites/datadocumentation.resdac.org/files/2024-04/CMS%20Fee%20List%20for%20CCW%20VRDC%20Cloud%20Environment.pdf">
2654.    of at least $15,000
2655.   </a>
2656.   , and pay at least $10,000 per year thereafter to maintain access. In addition, CMS charges an annual “seat fee” for each user: at least $20,000 per user in the first year and at least $13,000 per user each year thereafter, with additional fees for extra storage space and more frequent data updates.
2657.  </p>
2658.  <p>
2659.   At the same time, universities would have to dissolve their collections of CMS data, often built over decades.
2660.  </p>
2661.  <p>
2662.   CMS said the changes are needed to ensure data security, given the increasing threat posed by hackers. CMS also argues the VRDC, which is already used by some external researchers, provides data in a timelier and more cost-effective manner.
2663.  </p>
2664.  <p>
2665.   “I just find [the proposal] a little shocking,” says Rachel Werner, a health economist at the University of Pennsylvania who met with a senior CMS official to voice her concerns. “We live in a time in which consumers and the public are increasingly demanding transparency about all aspects of health care. Yet we are on the precipice … [of being left] in the dark about how it has been delivered in … some of the largest and most important health care programs in the country.”
2666.  </p>
2667.  <p>
2668.   Werner adds that concerns about money, as well as data security, seem to be driving CMS. “What I have been told is that the proposed fee changes are simply to allow [CMS] to completely balance their books.”
2669.  </p>
2670.  <p>
2671.   Other critics of the proposal say it will hamper scrutiny of government health spending. “Furnishing these data to academics—who are just about the only people trying to figure out what’s going on in these programs—scarcely costs taxpayers anything. CMS should be giving away Medicare and Medicaid data at least as freely as it shovels taxpayer dollars out the door to high‐cost, low‐quality health care providers,” economist Michael Cannon of the libertarian Cato Institute
2672.   <a href="https://www.cato.org/blog/should-cms-raise-price-reduce-subsidy-academics-use-medicare-medicaid-data">
2673.    wrote on a blog
2674.   </a>
2675.   in February.
2676.  </p>
2677.  <p>
2678.   Researchers have used CMS data to explore hospitals’ role in
2679.   <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34289277/">
2680.    racially unbalanced prescribing of opioid pain medications
2681.   </a>
2682.   <span>
2683.    .
2684.   </span>
2685.   The data have shown that rates of
2686.   <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2813379">
2687.    adverse events
2688.   </a>
2689.   and
2690.   <a href="https://academic.oup.com/rfs/article/37/4/1029/7441509">
2691.    deaths
2692.   </a>
2693.   <span>
2694.    rise after private equity firms buy
2695.   </span>
2696.   hospitals and nursing homes, respectively. They have revealed
2697.   <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37023459/">
2698.    state-by-state differences
2699.   </a>
2700.   in the causes and rates of severe maternal morbidity. Perhaps most famously, a 2009 study uncovered
2701.   <a href="https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmsa0803563">
2702.    high rehospitalization rates
2703.   </a>
2704.   among Medicare patients, leading to new monitoring by the government and fines on hospitals. Ongoing projects include one using Medicaid data from 37 states to assess
2705.   <span>
2706.   </span>
2707.   how increases in the distance to abortion care affect birth rates, women’s mental health, and maternal morbidity and mortality.
2708.  </p>
2709.  <p>
2710.   Becky Staiger, a health policy researcher at the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health who is working on the abortion project with colleagues, worries the proposed seat fees will hit young researchers, who often have less funding, particularly hard. Staiger says when she was a graduate student and a postdoc accessing data housed at a university, she paid $2000 total for 4 years of access to all the files she needed for her research on physician churn in Medicaid and
2711.   <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8815618/">
2712.    its impact on patient outcomes
2713.   </a>
2714.   . She estimates her current project will be charged $43,000 in its first year and somewhat less after that.
2715.  </p>
2716.  <p>
2717.   Still, Staiger says the forced mass migration to the VRDC could “democratize” access to CMS data, particularly for researchers at less wealthy institutions that haven’t already purchased their own internal troves of CMS data. Building and securing such databases “is a
2718.   <em>
2719.    really
2720.   </em>
2721.   expensive endeavor,” she says. In contrast, researchers conducting research through the VRDC can avoid some of those costs.
2722.  </p>
2723.  <p>
2724.   Karen Joynt Maddox, a health policy researcher and cardiologist at Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) who has
2725.   <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21325183/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">
2726.    long studied
2727.   </a>
2728.   Medicare hospital readmissions, holds similar views. She began to use the VRDC several years ago after moving from Harvard University to WUSTL, which doesn’t house a Medicare data trove. She pays about $45,000 annually for each of two projects, a cost easily covered by her National Institutes of Health grants. That gives her access to data worth “probably millions of dollars.” But she cautions that the data portal is “clunky … [and] breaks with some regularity … I can’t imagine that if it performs like this with the current level of users that it would be at all functional with more users.”
2729.  </p>
2730.  <p>
2731.   As this story went to press, CMS had not responded to questions from
2732.   <em>
2733.    Science
2734.   </em>
2735.   Insider about the proposed changes. But the agency has pledged “to carefully consider and be responsive to comments and concerns in adopting the policy changes.” And it appears the outcry has had an impact. On 1 March CMS announced it would give the public more time to comment,
2736.   <a href="https://www.cms.gov/files/document/request-information-research-data-request/access-policy-changes.pdf">
2737.    advancing the deadline to 15 May.
2738.   </a>
2739.   And on 15 April,
2740.   <a href="https://www.cms.gov/data-research/files-order/data-disclosures-and-data-use-agreements-duas/important-research-data-request-access-policy-changes-0">
2741.    the agency announced
2742.   </a>
2743.   that, based on the “helpful feedback” it had received, it would delay any changes to at least 2025.
2744.  </p>
2745.  <div>
2746.   <span>
2747.    <b>
2748.     Correction, 13 May, 10:05 a.m.:
2749.    </b>
2750.    This article has been corrected to refer to the correct Medicare readmissions paper on which Karen Joynt Maddox was first author.
2751.   </span>
2752.  </div>
2753.  <div>
2754.   <span>
2755.    <strong>
2756.     Correction, 14 May, 12:45 p.m.:
2757.    </strong>
2758.    This article has been corrected to accurately reflect the annual seat fee charged to VRDC users after the first year of a project.
2759.   </span>
2760.  </div>
2761. </div>
2762. </article>
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2765.      <enclosure url="https://feeds.science.org/rss/images/science-news/a0949913f5.jpg" length="62542" type="image/jpg"/>
2766.      <pubDate>Fri, 10 May 2024 15:55:00 -0400</pubDate>
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2768.    </item>
2769.    <item>
2770.      <title>A scientist asked to join the U.K. House of Lords—and got in  </title>
2771.      <link>https://www.science.org/content/article/scientist-asked-join-u-k-house-lords-and-got</link>
2772.      <description>“I got one of those lovely phone calls,” evidence communication researcher Alexandra Freeman says about her surprise appointment</description>
2773.      <content:encoded><![CDATA[<article>
2774. <div data-interstitial="2">
2775.  <p>
2776.   Alexandra Freeman’s career has already taken one sharp turn: After 16 years as an award-winning science journalist at BBC, in 2016 she moved to academia, where she worked on improving public understanding of risk and evidence, as well as reforming scientific publishing to address skewed incentives in research. Now, she is moving again—this time into the House of Lords, the United Kingdom’s unelected upper legislative chamber that scrutinizes, amends, and approves proposed legislation.
2777.  </p>
2778.  <p>
2779.   Freeman’s appointment, announced on 7 May, was made through a little-known process in which any British, Irish, or Commonwealth citizen living in the U.K. can apply to become a lifetime peer of the House of Lords, sitting as a “crossbencher” unaffiliated with any political party. These positions are rare—the House of Lords Appointments Commission has chosen just 13 peers like Freeman in the past decade—and are meant for those who can bring specific expertise to the chamber. (The commission also announced it is appointing University of Oxford engineer Lionel Tarassenko, an expert in the use of machine learning in health care.) Most of the 786 peers are appointed by the prime minister or a political party, or inherit their titles from their families.
2780.  </p>
2781.  <p>
2782.   As Freeman prepares to join the chamber and become a baroness (of where, she has yet to decide) she is wrapping up her work as the former director of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge, where she has helped journalists, lawyers, and doctors better understand and communicate uncertainty. She plans to continue her work at
2783.   <span>
2784.    <a href="https://www.octopus.ac/">
2785.     Octopus
2786.    </a>
2787.   </span>
2788.   , an experimental publishing platform that allows researchers to publish more comprehensive records of their work—from detailed methods to analyses—than a traditional journal allows.
2789.   <cite>
2790.    Science
2791.   </cite>
2792.   Insider spoke this week with Freeman about her plans for her new role, which will begin after a range of legal and ceremonial formalities. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
2793.  </p>
2794.  <figure>
2795.   <div>
2796.    <img alt="headshot of Alexandra Freeman" src="https://www.science.org/do/10.1126/science.zs7nqe6/files/_20240509_on_qasecondary.jpg"/>
2797.   </div>
2798.   <figcaption>
2799.    <span>
2800.     Alexandra Freeman
2801.     <span>
2802.      Ilan Goodman
2803.     </span>
2804.    </span>
2805.   </figcaption>
2806.  </figure>
2807.  <h3>
2808.   Q: What made you decide to apply for appointment to the House of Lords?
2809.  </h3>
2810.  <p>
2811.   <strong>
2812.    A:
2813.   </strong>
2814.   I was listening to the radio and I heard somebody from the House of Lords talking about the previous interviewee and saying, “We really need more people like that, who can get their head around scientific evidence as crossbenchers. I must make sure that more people apply for these positions.” So I looked it up and found that there are two appointments a year that you can apply for to be a completely apolitical expert in anything. And there aren’t that many scientists. I thought that sounded like an amazing fit for what I want to do. I was looking for something where I could work in public service, but not have to deal with the party politics.
2815.  </p>
2816.  <h3>
2817.   Q: What was the application process like?
2818.  </h3>
2819.  <p>
2820.   <strong>
2821.    A:
2822.   </strong>
2823.   I put in an application and then didn’t hear anything for about 18 months, so I thought the application had just gone straight in the bin. And then I heard at the beginning of this year that I’d been invited to interview, which was one of those moments where you see an email and you go, “What?!”
2824.  </p>
2825.  <h3>
2826.   Q: After the interview process, how did you learn that you’d been made a peer?
2827.  </h3>
2828.  <p>
2829.   <strong>
2830.    A:
2831.   </strong>
2832.   I got one of those lovely phone calls, on a Friday afternoon. I was just here doing my work at home. But I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone. I haven’t had a chance to celebrate yet.
2833.  </p>
2834.  <h3>
2835.   Q: Why did you feel you would be right for the role?
2836.  </h3>
2837.  <p>
2838.   <strong>
2839.    A:
2840.   </strong>
2841.   A lot of my training, especially in my career as a documentarymaker, was about taking in scientific information and evidence, interviewing experts about it, getting to grips with that. And then my more recent work in evidence communication is about trying to help people make decisions on the basis of evidence.
2842.  </p>
2843.  <h3>
2844.   Q: How do you see those skills being useful in the House of Lords?
2845.  </h3>
2846.  <p>
2847.   <strong>
2848.    A:
2849.   </strong>
2850.   Every day, you are having evidence presented to you, and you are trying to take that in, trying to understand the pros and cons, who’s going to be a winner and a loser from this policy. Being able to ask those questions—how will that affect this subgroup of people? What will the benefits be? What will the harms to some people be?—I would like to be able to help express those to the house to help decision-making.
2851.  </p>
2852.  <h3>
2853.   Q: When you announced your appointment on X (formerly Twitter), you said, “I live by the mantra that if there are things that need changing, work to change them. And I intend to work hard!” What issues were you alluding to?
2854.  </h3>
2855.  <p>
2856.   <strong>
2857.    A:
2858.   </strong>
2859.   I wasn’t alluding to anything specific. But I don’t want to stick with status quo—I always look at things and think, “what’s the best way to do this?” not “what’s the way it’s always been done?” So I guess I was thinking of things like Octopus, where we shouldn’t just be trying to put small sticking plasters over the problems; we need to look at the root causes of the problems and try and change things from the base.
2860.  </p>
2861.  <h3>
2862.   Q: What are your thoughts on how evidence and uncertainty are currently handled in the House of Lords?
2863.  </h3>
2864.  <p>
2865.   <strong>
2866.    A:
2867.   </strong>
2868.   I think the committees [small groups of members who conduct detailed inquiries to guide policy decisions] do a really good job of questioning, synthesizing, dealing with uncertainties. I would really like to try and help get that work better known, so that we can all hear from the experts about what’s going on in engineering, biology, or ultraprocessed food, or any of these inquiries that are going on at the moment.
2869.  </p>
2870.  <p>
2871.   Within the floor of the House, it’s much more difficult because you’ve got such a broad range of expertise and people, and you only get a short bit of time to speak—it’s quite a stilted way of communicating. There isn’t real time fact checking or anything like that going on. And I think that can be problematic.
2872.  </p>
2873.  <h3>
2874.   Q: Will you continue being so outspoken?
2875.  </h3>
2876.  <p>
2877.   <strong>
2878.    A:
2879.   </strong>
2880.   Oh yes—the whole point of being an independent member of the House of Lords is to be able to be outspoken. You’re there to be able to have an opinion that’s not policed by any political party or anybody.
2881.  </p>
2882. </div>
2883. </article>
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