Introduction to special issue. Distancing, disease and distress: The young and COVID-19: exploring young people’s experience of inequalities and their resourcefulness during the pandemic

The COVID-19 global pandemic has impacted everyone’s lives—young and old. When the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on 11 March 2020 and one country after another went into lockdown, we as editors of YOUNG and youth researchers living in five different countries naturally started to think about and reflect on what impact the pandemic would have on young people’s everyday lives, their well-being and futures across different national settings. In response to this uncertainty and in the interest of capturing young people’s experiences, we as editors called for this special issue to focus on young people and COVID-19, exploring their changed everyday lives and how they adapted to the global pandemic. To accommodate the immense interest and the high quality of many of the submissions, this special issue of YOUNG is a double issue with 11 articles

Interpreting nonverbal cues to deception in real time

When questioning the veracity of an utterance, we perceive certain non-linguistic behaviours to indicate that a speaker is being deceptive. Recent work has highlighted that listeners' associations between speech disfluency and dishonesty are detectable at the earliest stages of reference comprehension, suggesting that the manner of spoken delivery influences pragmatic judgements concurrently with the processing of lexical information. Here, we investigate the integration of a speaker's gestures into judgements of deception, and ask if and when associations between nonverbal cues and deception emerge. Participants saw and heard a video of a potentially dishonest speaker describe treasure hidden behind an object, while also viewing images of both the named object and a distractor object. Their task was to click on the object behind which they believed the treasure to actually be hidden. Eye and mouse movements were recorded. Experiment 1 investigated listeners' associations between visual cues and deception, using a variety of static and dynamic cues. Experiment 2 focused on adaptor gestures. We show that a speaker's nonverbal behaviour can have a rapid and direct influence on listeners' pragmatic judgements, supporting the idea that communication is fundamentally multimodal

Protection of CpG islands from DNA methylation is DNA-encoded and evolutionarily conserved.

DNA methylation is a repressive epigenetic modification that covers vertebrate genomes. Regions known as CpG islands (CGIs), which are refractory to DNA methylation, are often associated with gene promoters and play central roles in gene regulation. Yet how CGIs in their normal genomic context evade the DNA methylation machinery and whether these mechanisms are evolutionarily conserved remains enigmatic. To address these fundamental questions we exploited a transchromosomic animal model and genomic approaches to understand how the hypomethylated state is formed in vivo and to discover whether mechanisms governing CGI formation are evolutionarily conserved. Strikingly, insertion of a human chromosome into mouse revealed that promoter-associated CGIs are refractory to DNA methylation regardless of host species, demonstrating that DNA sequence plays a central role in specifying the hypomethylated state through evolutionarily conserved mechanisms. In contrast, elements distal to gene promoters exhibited more variable methylation between host species, uncovering a widespread dependence on nucleotide frequency and occupancy of DNA-binding transcription factors in shaping the DNA methylation landscape away from gene promoters. This was exemplified by young CpG rich lineage-restricted repeat sequences that evaded DNA methylation in the absence of co-evolved mechanisms targeting methylation to these sequences, and species specific DNA binding events that protected against DNA methylation in CpG poor regions. Finally, transplantation of mouse chromosomal fragments into the evolutionarily distant zebrafish uncovered the existence of a mechanistically conserved and DNA-encoded logic which shapes CGI formation across vertebrate species

Strategies for the Diversity-Oriented Synthesis of Macrocycles.

Macrocycles have long been recognized as useful chemical entities for medicine, with naturally occurring and synthetic macrocycles clinically approved for use as prescription drugs. Despite this promise, the synthesis of collections of macrocycles has been historically challenging due to difficulties in the formation of large rings. Diversity-Oriented Synthesis (DOS) emerged in the early 2000s as a powerful strategic solution to the construction of diverse molecular libraries. This review details the various strategies developed within the field of DOS for the synthesis of macrocycle libraries, utilizing modern synthetic methodology to deliver structurally diverse collections of macrocyclic molecules, and the exploration of their therapeutic potential. Section 1 of this work details the use of algorithmic strategies and is divided into Build/Couple/Pair, Advanced Build/Couple/Pair, Initiate/Propagate/Terminate, Fragment-Based Domain Shuffling, Two-Directional Synthesis, and Successive Ring Expansion. Section 2 covers strategies based on ring distortion reactions, including Sequential Cycloaddition/Fragmentation, Ring Expansions, and Miscellaneous

Effect of Supplemental Protein and Glucogenic Precursors on Digestibility and Energy Metabolism

A metabolism study was conducted to evaluate the impact of increasing levels of glucogenic precursors on diet digestibility and acetate clearance. Four supplementation strategies containing 0, 30, 40, and 70 g of supplemental glucogenic potential were supplied to a basal diet of bromegrass hay. Addition of glucogenic potential in the form of rumen undegradable protein improved dry matter, organic matter, and acid detergent fiber digestibility efficiency of acetate utilization in growing lambs fed moderate- quality hay. However, no additive effect of supplementing propionate salts and rumen undegradable protein were observed in this study. Th is would suggest that rumen undegradable protein requirements must be met to observe effects from increasing levels of glucogenic potential

The high-energy spectrum of the nearby planet-hosting inactive mid-M dwarf LHS 3844

To fully characterize the atmospheres, or lack thereof, of terrestrial exoplanets we must include the high-energy environments provided by their host stars. The nearby mid-M dwarf LHS 3844 hosts a terrestrial world which lacks a substantial atmosphere. We present a time series UV spectrum of LHS 3844 from 1131-3215A captured by HST/COS. We detect one flare in the FUV, which has an absolute energy of 8.96+/-0.79e28 erg and an equivalent duration of 355+/-31 s. We extract the flare and quiescent UV spectra separately. For each spectrum we estimate the Ly-alpha flux using correlations between UV line strengths. We use Swift-XRT to place an upper limit on the soft X-ray flux and construct a differential emission model (DEM) to estimate flux that is obscured by the interstellar medium. We compare the DEM flux estimates in the XUV to other methods that rely on scaling from the Ly-alpha, Si IV, and N V lines in the UV. The XUV, FUV, and NUV flux of LHS 3844 relative to its bolometric luminosity is log10(Lband/LBol) = -3.65, -4.16, and -4.56, respectively, for the quiescent state. These values agree with trends in high-energy flux as a function of stellar effective temperature found by the MUSCLES survey for a sample of early-M dwarfs. Many of the most spectroscopically accessible terrestrial exoplanets orbit inactive mid- to late-M dwarfs like LHS 3844. Measurements of M dwarf high-energy spectra are preferable for exoplanet characterization, but are not always possible. The spectrum of LHS 3844 is a useful proxy for the current radiation environment for these worlds.Comment: Published in AJ; HLSPs now availabl

Field measurement of natural ventilation rate in an idealised full-scale building located in a staggered urban array: comparison between tracer gas and pressure-based methods

Currently, no clear standards exist for determining urban building natural ventilation rates, especially under varying realistic meteorological conditions. In this study, ventilation rates are determined using tracer gas decay and pressure-based measurements for a full-scale (6 m tall) cube. The cube was either isolated (2 months of observations) or sheltered within a staggered array (7 months), for both single-sided and cross ventilation (openings 0.4 x 1 m). Wind speeds at cube height ranged between 0.04 m s-1 and 13.1 m s-1. Errors for both ventilation methods are carefully assessed. There is no discernible linear relation between normalised ventilation rates from the two methods, except for cross ventilation in the array case. The ratio of tracer gas and pressure derived ventilation rates is assessed with wind direction. For single-sided (leeward opening) cases it approached 1. For cross ventilation the ratio was closer to 1 but with more scatter. One explanation is that agreement is better when internal mixing is less jet-dominated, i.e. for oblique directions in the isolated case and for all directions for unsteady array flows. Sheltering may reduce the flushing rate of the tracer gas from the cube relative to internal mixing rate. This new dataset provides an extensive range of conditions for numerical model evaluation and for understanding uncertainty of ventilation rates. Knowledge of the latter is critical in buildin

Factors affecting consistency and accuracy in identifying modern macroperforate planktonic foraminifera

Planktonic foraminifera are widely used in biostratigraphic, palaeoceanographic and evolutionary studies, but the strength of many study conclusions could be weakened if taxonomic identifications are not reproducible by different workers. In this study, to assess the relative importance of a range of possible reasons for among-worker disagreement in identification, 100 specimens of 26 species of macroperforate planktonic foraminifera were selected from a core-top site in the subtropical Pacific Ocean. Twenty-three scientists at different career stages – including some with only a few days experience of planktonic foraminifera – were asked to identify each specimen to species level, and to indicate their confidence in each identification. The participants were provided with a species list and had access to additional reference materials. We use generalised linear mixed-effects models to test the relevance of three sets of factors in identification accuracy: participant-level characteristics (including experience), species-level characteristics (including a participant’s knowledge of the species) and specimen-level characteristics (size, confidence in identification). The 19 less experienced scientists achieve a median accuracy of 57 %, which rises to 75 % for specimens they are confident in. For the 4 most experienced participants, overall accuracy is 79 %, rising to 93 % when they are confident. To obtain maximum comparability and ease of analysis, everyone used a standard microscope with only 35× magnification, and each specimen was studied in isolation. Consequently, these data provide a lower limit for an estimate of consistency. Importantly, participants could largely predict whether their identifications were correct or incorrect: their own assessments of specimen-level confidence and of their previous knowledge of species concepts were the strongest predictors of accuracy

2020-04-06 DAILY UNM GLOBAL HEALTH COVID-19 BRIEFING

Executive Summary: NM case updates. Several NM policy and legislative actions. Federal vs. state conflict over medical supply lines. Healthcare workers sleep in cars to prevent family exposure. Same-day in-house testing at Cedars-Sinai. Debate over hydroxychloroquine Tx. Death rate differences: Germany and Italy. African innovations. Testing recommended with mild symptoms. CDC guidelines for law enforcement PPE. New WHO first responder training and CDC sign language resources. COVID-19 droplets can travel up to 27 feet. Transmission from the asymptomatic. Humidifiers help. Drug and vaccine progress