Ingestion of microplastics by copepods in Tampa Bay Estuary, FL

Microplastics have been recognized as an emerging contaminant. Copepods are abundant primary consumers in marine food webs. Interactions between copepods and microplastics can lead to negative health effects to the individual and may have implications for populations and ecosystems through biomagnification. Laboratory and field studies have observed various species of zooplankton ingesting microplastics, however, this is the first study to observe microplastic-copepod interactions in Tampa Bay. Over 2 years (November 2017-January 2020), 14 sampling cruises were conducted with seven stations throughout Tampa Bay. At each station copepods were collected by towing a 200 μm mesh ring net (0.5 m diameter) for 3 min. 1,000 individual Acartia tonsa copepods were picked from each sample and digested to release gut contents. Gut contents were stained in a Nile Red solution and then visualized using epifluorescent microscopy, quantified, photographed and sized using image analysis. In Tampa Bay, A. tonsa consumed fragments over fibers, ranging from 0.018 to 0.642 mm, with an average particle size of 0.076 mm. An overall average of 15.38 particles were ingested per 1,000 copepods, or 6.48 particles m–3 when normalized for environmental copepod concentrations. While significant differences were detected between stations and months, no clear spatial (from head to mouth of estuary) or temporal (between wet and dry seasons) trends in ingestion rate or ingested particle size were evident. These results show that A. tonsa ingested microplastics throughout Tampa Bay. These robust baseline data, for a copepod species that dominates estuarine zooplankton communities around the world, set the stage for valuable comparisons between estuaries with different physical mechanisms and levels of anthropogenic impact, allowing for exploration of how the environmental conditions impact ecological interactions

SARS-CoV-2 Receptor ACE2 Is an Interferon-Stimulated Gene in Human Airway Epithelial Cells and Is Detected in Specific Cell Subsets across Tissues.

There is pressing urgency to understand the pathogenesis of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus clade 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which causes the disease COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein binds angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), and in concert with host proteases, principally transmembrane serine protease 2 (TMPRSS2), promotes cellular entry. The cell subsets targeted by SARS-CoV-2 in host tissues and the factors that regulate ACE2 expression remain unknown. Here, we leverage human, non-human primate, and mouse single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) datasets across health and disease to uncover putative targets of SARS-CoV-2 among tissue-resident cell subsets. We identify ACE2 and TMPRSS2 co-expressing cells within lung type II pneumocytes, ileal absorptive enterocytes, and nasal goblet secretory cells. Strikingly, we discovered that ACE2 is a human interferon-stimulated gene (ISG) in vitro using airway epithelial cells and extend our findings to in vivo viral infections. Our data suggest that SARS-CoV-2 could exploit species-specific interferon-driven upregulation of ACE2, a tissue-protective mediator during lung injury, to enhance infection

A united statement of the global chiropractic research community against the pseudoscientific claim that chiropractic care boosts immunity.

BACKGROUND: In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the International Chiropractors Association (ICA) posted reports claiming that chiropractic care can impact the immune system. These claims clash with recommendations from the World Health Organization and World Federation of Chiropractic. We discuss the scientific validity of the claims made in these ICA reports. MAIN BODY: We reviewed the two reports posted by the ICA on their website on March 20 and March 28, 2020. We explored the method used to develop the claim that chiropractic adjustments impact the immune system and discuss the scientific merit of that claim. We provide a response to the ICA reports and explain why this claim lacks scientific credibility and is dangerous to the public. More than 150 researchers from 11 countries reviewed and endorsed our response. CONCLUSION: In their reports, the ICA provided no valid clinical scientific evidence that chiropractic care can impact the immune system. We call on regulatory authorities and professional leaders to take robust political and regulatory action against those claiming that chiropractic adjustments have a clinical impact on the immune system

Rare coding variants in PLCG2, ABI3, and TREM2 implicate microglial-mediated innate immunity in Alzheimer's disease

We identified rare coding variants associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in a 3-stage case-control study of 85,133 subjects. In stage 1, 34,174 samples were genotyped using a whole-exome microarray. In stage 2, we tested associated variants (P<1×10-4) in 35,962 independent samples using de novo genotyping and imputed genotypes. In stage 3, an additional 14,997 samples were used to test the most significant stage 2 associations (P<5×10-8) using imputed genotypes. We observed 3 novel genome-wide significant (GWS) AD associated non-synonymous variants; a protective variant in PLCG2 (rs72824905/p.P522R, P=5.38×10-10, OR=0.68, MAFcases=0.0059, MAFcontrols=0.0093), a risk variant in ABI3 (rs616338/p.S209F, P=4.56×10-10, OR=1.43, MAFcases=0.011, MAFcontrols=0.008), and a novel GWS variant in TREM2 (rs143332484/p.R62H, P=1.55×10-14, OR=1.67, MAFcases=0.0143, MAFcontrols=0.0089), a known AD susceptibility gene. These protein-coding changes are in genes highly expressed in microglia and highlight an immune-related protein-protein interaction network enriched for previously identified AD risk genes. These genetic findings provide additional evidence that the microglia-mediated innate immune response contributes directly to AD development

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

GEOPHYSICAL TECHNIQUES FOR CO2 PLUME MONITORING

This report considers the application of number of different indirect (remote sensing) geophysical techniques for monitoring geologic sequestration of CO2 in brine-bearing formations. The time-lapse monitoring using seismic, gravity, electrical and electromagnetic techniques is described. Geophysical models used for numerical modeling are based on flow simulations of various CO2 sequestration scenarios. Different monitoring approaches are suitable for a site characterization prior to CO2 injection, for monitoring while injecting CO2, or for a post-injection stage. Basic principles of each technique are described. Workflows are described using various examples. Each of the techniques is sensitive to a different subsurface property. The seismic velocity depends on the bulk and shear modulus and density, the gravity response depends on density, and the electrical resistivity is sensitive to changes in formation properties such as porosity, pore fluid resistivity, and fluid saturation. For this reason these techniques are complementary to each other, and when used together they could provide improved characterization of the subsurface. In addition to individual techniques, incorporating an electrical resistance tomography (ERT) into DREAM (Designs for Risk Evaluation and Management) tool is also described

A survey of research on text simplification

Text simplification, defined narrowly, is the process of reducing the linguistic complexity of a text, while still retaining the original information and meaning. More broadly, text simplification encompasses other operations; for example, conceptual simplification to simplify content as well as form, elaborative modification, where redundancy and explicitness are used to emphasise key points, and text summarisation to omit peripheral or inappropriate information. There is substantial evidence that manual text simplification is an effective intervention for many readers, but automatic simplification has only recently become an established research field. There have been several recent papers on the topic, however, which bring to the table a multitude of methodologies, each with their strengths and weaknesses. The goal of this paper is to summarise the large interdisciplinary body of work on text simplification and highlight the most promising research directions to move the field forward

CAMCATT trial over Toulouse (France): a multisensory experiment to validate TRISHNA urban products

International audienceAn extensive field experiment, CAMCATT-AI4GEO, was conducted over 15 days in June 2021 over Toulouse, to acquire an urban reference dataset combining airborne acquisitions and ground measurements. This presentation aims at introducing the objectives of the campaign and describing the collected data to validate the future TRISHNA products: bottom of atmosphere radiance, land surface temperature (LST) and emissivity (LSE), air temperature, microclimatic models, and comfort index.This experiment includes a large variety of acquisitions. Joint airborne multispectral thermal infrared and VISNIR-SWIR hyperspectral images were acquired along a 30 km transect centred over Toulouse. A second flight was devoted to calibrating these sensors with on-ground reference targets. During and between the flights, two cars acquired air temperature and relative humidity along predefined itineraries across the city withsensors mounted on their roof. During the airborne acquisitions, land surface temperature measurements were performed in three locations in Toulouse for calibration purposes. They were completed outside the flight by spectral optical properties in the VISNIR-SWIR and thermal infrared domains over a large range of manmade and natural materials. A specific in-lab session was dedicated to the intercalibration of the on-ground thermal sensors. Atmosphere composition data were monitored using radio-soundings during the airborne acquisitions and completed with continuous measurements from on-ground stations. Finally, the last session was devoted to the validation of a thermo-radiative model. For this purpose, surface temperature sensors were installed at different locations of building walls supplemented by a thermal infrared images acquisition for one of the facades in order to continuously monitor its temperature during the 15 days of the experiment. The air temperature wasalso measured at different positions in the district (under trees, in flats, etc)