Researchers have found evidence that womens menstrual cycles are synchronized with lunar cycles, including the intensity of moonlight and the moons gravitational pull. The experts theorize that this synchronization was strongest in ancient times and has been widely lost due to modern lifestyles and exposure to artificial light at night.

Study lead author Charlotte Frster holds the Chair of Neurobiology and Genetics at the University of Wrzburg (JMU). We know many animal species in which the reproductive behavior is synchronized with the lunar cycle to increase reproductive success, said Frster.

Both menstrual and lunar cycles have a length of around 29.5 days, which indicates that there is a correlation. The idea is also supported by the results of previous research. For example, multiple older studies show that women who have menstrual cycles that are synced up with the moon have the greatest chances of becoming pregnant.

In addition, two longitudinal studies found a significant connection between lunar cycles and birth rate, with an increase in births during the full moon and a decline in births during the new moon. Further evidence suggests that births are more likely to take place at night when there is a full moon, and in the daytime when there is a new moon.

To investigate, Frster and her team analyzed the timing of the menstrual cycles of 22 women who had kept menstrual diaries for up to 32 years. To our knowledge, this approach to analyzing this type of long-term data has not been used before.

Frster explained that the moon exhibits three distinct cycles that periodically change the intensity of moonlight and its gravitational pull here on Earth.

The researchers determined that all three lunar cycles influence the onset of menstruation in women. They found that moonlight seems to have the strongest effect, while gravitational forces of the moon also contribute.

Not all women follow the cycle of moonlight, and those that do only sync up for certain periods of time. Women under 35 years of age have menstrual cycles that follow the light and dark phases of the moon for an average of 25 percent of the time.

The connection between menstrual and lunar cycles decreases as women age, and also decreases with exposure to artificial light sources at night. For example, women who go to bed late and leave lights on longer do not show signs of synchronization with the moon.

The fact that humans follow the rhythm of gravity could explain why other cycles, such as when we fall asleep or how long we sleep, are temporarily influenced by a full moon or new moon.

According to the researchers, the observations suggest that humans respond not only to rapid changes in gravity, like when we are thrown off balance, but also to slow, recurring gravitational changes.

The study is published in the journal Science Advances.

By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer

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Lunar cycles have a secret influence on human reproduction Earth.com - Earth.com

Ian Askew, Director, Department of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research including UNDP-UNFPA-UNICEF-WHO-World Bank Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction

Happy new year! I hope that the last few weeks have offered some moments of pause and rest. At HRP we are energized, determined, and very much looking forward to continuing with you the important work of ensuring that every person can achieve the highest possible level of sexual and reproductive health and rights.

The COVID-19 pandemic, and especially the disruption to national health systems it has caused, has expanded the scope of our work at HRP but also refocused global attention on the challenges of gender inequalities, protecting human rights and reducing inequities in access to services. These are challenges which have always characterized HRPs work.

For example, on the International Day to Eliminate Violence Against Women in December, HRP and WHO introduced the RESPECT implementation package with UN Women. This emphasises the continuing need for our work on prevention of violence against women and management of its health consequences at the same time as highlighting new resources on addressing gender-based violence in the context of the pandemic.

Recently we launched Right To A Better World, a documentary series produced by HRP and WHO in partnership with Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Oxford Human Rights Hub (OxHRH). This powerful series explores how tactics developed by the human rights movement are crucial for achieving sexual and reproductive health rights. Health is a human right, and Right To A Better World has many powerful stories to tell of how human rights frameworks can strengthen the effectiveness of global efforts towards the fulfilment of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Many of us are experiencing that feeling of life on pause because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but this is especially true for children and adolescents. The pandemic is disrupting their education, interfering with their friendships and relationships, and especially for girls increasing their domestic work and care obligations. For some, it is increasing their vulnerability to abuse and violence. HRP and WHO have worked with UNFPA to develop a technical brief titled NOT ON PAUSE: Responding to the SRH needs of adolescents in the context of the COVID-19 crisis, with practical guidance on what can be done to provide adolescents and young people with comprehensive sexuality education, as well as other SRH interventions.

This is, of course, a long-standing challenge and I was very glad to speak at a recent webinar with other UN and government representatives, as well as several youth representatives, launching the first International Technical and Programmatic Guidance on Out-of-School Comprehensive Sexuality Education. HRP and WHO are especially pleased to have contributed evidence from our research for this important document.

Infertility is a social and public health problem that is all too often neglected and stigmatised. More affordable, accessible and acceptable services are needed urgently to address infertility worldwide, as this new research from HRP and WHO shows. I am very glad to say that the infertility Guideline Development Group met online late last year, taking major steps towards developing this long overdue global guidance which should help countries to develop and improve services and care for the millions of people living with infertility and its consequences.

On Universal Health Coverage Day in December, we celebrated the launch of the WHO UHC Compendium of Health Interventions and highlighted the importance of integrating sexual and reproductive health services into national UHC planning. Colleagues in Burkina Faso and Thailand shared how they are achieving this, and in some cases even raising the level of service provision during the pandemic very inspiring.

December was also an exciting month for our collaborative work in striving to mobilise a new era of maternal and perinatal health, in which womens values and preferences are at the centre of their own care.

At the December FIGO Africa Regional Kigali Congress we introduced the Antenatal Care Portal, a one-stop shop' for evidence and tools to support country adaptation and implementation of WHO ANC recommendations. This will be a be a key link between policy-makers, health workers and women and will be regularly updated, reflecting our living guideline approach to maternal health.

We also launched the new Labour Care Guide and accompanying Users Manual, tools for putting the WHO recommendations on intrapartum care into practice. The Labour Care Guide revises and replaces the traditional WHO partograph, an important step forward in evidence-based, individualized labour care.

Our community is saddened by the recent death of Dr Alexander Kessler, HRPs co-founder and first director in 1972. Alexs dynamic and determined leadership, and his truly global commitment to improving the lives of people around the world, live on through HRPs commitment to rigorous research, international cooperation and sexual and reproductive health and rights for all.

2021 begins with some much-needed positive news, as the United States commits to remaining a Member State of WHO. In particular, we celebrate the announcement of support for womens and girls sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights in the United States as well as globally, and the revocation of the Mexico City Policy.

Still, before turning the page on 2020, I encourage you to visit HRP on Twitter and join us in looking back at some of the highlights from this challenging year with the hashtag #SRHR stories. Thank you for your collegiality, your expertise and support. It is wonderful to see how, as a global community, we pulled together and did much to support sexual and reproductive health and rights for all.

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Message from Director SRH/HRP 28 January 2021 - World Health Organization

At the heart of the development of AI appears to be a search for perfection. And it could be just as dangerous to humanity as the one that came from philosophical and pseudoscientific ideas of the 19th and early 20th centuries and led to the horrors of colonialism, world war and the Holocaust. Instead of a human ruling master race, we could end up with a machine one.

If this seems extreme, consider the anti-human perfectionism that is already central to the labour market. Here, AI technology is the next step in the premise of maximum productivity that replaced individual craftmanship with the factory production line. These massive changes in productivity and the way we work created opportunities and threats that are now set to be compounded by a fourth industrial revolution in which AI further replaces human workers.

Several recent research papers predict that, within a decade, automation will replace half of the current jobs. So, at least in this transition to a new digitised economy, many people will lose their livelihoods. Even if we assume that this new industrial revolution will engender a new workforce that is able to navigate and command this data-dominated world, we will still have to face major socioeconomic problems. The disruptions will be immense and need to be scrutinised.

The ultimate aim of AI, even narrow AI which handles very specific tasks, is to outdo and perfect every human cognitive function. Eventually, machine-learning systems may well be programmed to be better than humans at everything.

What they may never develop, however, is the human touch empathy, love, hate or any of the other self-conscious emotions that make us human. Thats unless we ascribe these sentiments to them, which is what some of us are already doing with our Alexas and Siris.

The obsession with perfection and hyper-efficiency has had a profound impact on human relations, even human reproduction, as people live their lives in cloistered, virtual realities of their own making. For instance, several US and China-based companies have produced robotic dolls that are selling out fast as substitute partners.

One man in China even married his cyber-doll, while a woman in France married a robo-man, advertising her love story as a form of robo-sexuality and campaigning to legalise her marriage. Im really and totally happy, she said. Our relationship will get better and better as technology evolves. There seems to be high demand for robot wives and husbands all over the world.

In the perfectly productive world, humans would be accounted as worthless, certainly in terms of productivity but also in terms of our feeble humanity. Unless we jettison this perfectionist attitude towards life that positions productivity and material growth above sustainability and individual happiness, AI research could be another chain in the history of self-defeating human inventions.

Already we are witnessing discrimination in algorithmic calculations. Recently, a popular South Korean chatbot named Lee Luda was taken offline. She was modelled after the persona of a 20-year-old female university student and was removed from Facebook messenger after using hate speech towards LGBT people.

Meanwhile, automated weapons programmed to kill are carrying maxims such as productivity and efficiency into battle. As a result, war has become more sustainable. The proliferation of drone warfare is a very vivid example of these new forms of conflict. They create a virtual reality that is almost absent from our grasp.

But it would be comical to depict AI as an inevitable Orwellian nightmare of an army of super-intelligent Terminators whose mission is to erase the human race. Such dystopian predictions are too crude to capture the nitty gritty of artificial intelligence, and its impact on our everyday existence.

Societies can benefit from AI if it is developed with sustainable economic development and human security in mind. The confluence of power and AI which is pursuing, for example, systems of control and surveillance, should not substitute for the promise of a humanised AI that puts machine learning technology in the service of humans and not the other way around.

To that end, the AI-human interfaces that are quickly opening up in prisons, healthcare, government, social security and border control, for example, must be regulated to favour ethics and human security over institutional efficiency. The social sciences and humanities have a lot to say about such issues.

One thing to be cheerful about is the likelihood that AI will never be a substitute for human philosophy and intellectuality. To be a philosopher, after all, requires empathy, an understanding of humanity, and our innate emotions and motives. If we can programme our machines to understand such ethical standards, then AI research has the capacity to improve our lives which should be the ultimate aim of any technological advance.

But if AI research yields a new ideology centred around the notion of perfectionism and maximum productivity, then it will be a destructive force that will lead to more wars, more famines and more social and economic distress, especially for the poor. At this juncture of global history, this choice is still ours.

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Artificial intelligence must not be allowed to replace the imperfection of human empathy - The Conversation UK

By Kristen Rogers, CNN

CNN We humans tend to spread and frolic about wherever we please, a development that has been found to harm animals' environments and health, and therefore ultimately our own. That may be the effect on crickets because of our constant noisemaking from traffic and other activities.

The mating behavior of crickets may be significantly affected by those sounds, according to a study published Monday in the journal Behavioral Ecology.

The reproduction of field crickets is important to the worlds of plants, humans and animals. Because field crickets eat lots of plant materials rich in cellulose, their fecal matter is easily decomposed by bacteria and fungi.

"Their activity, then, greatly accelerates the energy and nutrient flows in an ecosystem and provides plants with a much more abundant reservoir of highly available, essential growth factors," according to a Penn State New Kensington blog post.

Field crickets' diets also help to manage weed growth on both natural and human-made ecosystems. Additionally, crickets are essential food sources for some birds and other animals that have crucial roles in providing our food, timber, medicine and recreation.

"Humans are continually changing the characteristics of environments, including through the production of anthropogenic noise," said study coauthor Sophie Mowles, a senior lecturer in animal and environmental biology at Anglia Ruskin University in England, in a news release.

"As mate choice is a powerful driving force for evolution through sexual selection, disruptions may cause a decline in population viability. And because anthropogenic noise is a very recent evolutionary selection pressure, it is difficult to predict how species may adapt."

Why noise pollution may confuse mating crickets

Male crickets have an innate playlist of songs from which to choose to attract potential mates: The calling song attracts the female, then the courtship, or mating, song induces the female to mate. A fighting chirp sends warnings to other male suitors. And what both sexes need for all these things to happen are highly sensitive organs on their forelegs, so that they can receive sound.

To assess the effects of environmental changes, the researchers paired female crickets with silenced male crickets in ambient noise conditions, artificial white noise settings and recorded traffic noise conditions.

The researchers allowed the males to court the females, and when the males tried to sing their mating tunes, the researchers played artificial courtship songs that ranged from low- to high-quality.

When induced to mate by a high-quality courtship song amid ambient noise, female crickets mounted the males sooner and more often. But when those crickets were subjected to white noise and traffic sounds conditions, the quality of the mating song didn't help the frequency and duration of females mating with males, the study said.

"Traffic noise and the crickets' courtship song do not share similar acoustic frequencies, so rather than masking the courtship song, we think the traffic noise serves as a distraction for the female cricket," said lead author Adam Bent, who led the study as part of his doctoral program at Anglia Ruskin University, in a news statement.

Mating songs are labor-intensive; they require male crickets to expend a lot of energy and therefore hold key details about the males' qualities, the study said so human-made noise may have changed how the females perceived the males when deciding on a mate. This blurring also could affect male crickets' health if they work to produce a more impressive mating song, and therefore those crickets' survival, too.

"At the same time, female crickets may choose to mate with a lower-quality male as they are unable to detect differences in mate quality due to the man-made noise," Bent added, "and this may lead to a reduction or complete loss of offspring viability."

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In the name of cricket sex, humans need to stop making noise :: WRAL.com - WRAL.com

For those of you who love orderly patterns and grids, Charles Gaines will no doubt be a big inspiration. One of the first generation conceptualist artists of the 1960s and '70s, his groundbreaking work over the last five decades has explored the relationship between language and systems as well as politics, culture and identity. And now his latest artworks are on show at his first-ever solo show in the UK.

Comprising two new bodies from Gaines' critically acclaimed Plexiglas gridworks, the exhibition at Hauser & Wirth London includes his Numbers and Trees and Numbers and Faces series where he literally paints by numbers onto a clear acrylic sheet. It's part of his ongoing exploration of formulas and systems with a closer look at ideas around identity and diversity.

With Numbers and Faces comes the piece, Multi-Racial/Ethnic Combinations Series 1, a continuation of the Faces series that Gaines began in 1978. Here, Gaines creates an amalgam of faces within one artwork and seeks to "interrogate ideas of representation, and more specifically the political and cultural ideas that shape one's understanding of the concept of multi-racial identity," as the Gallery explains it.

In preparing for this work, Gaines searched for people who self-identified as multiracial or multi-ethnic and invited them to be part of the work. "I believe that the system of mapping these faces over a series can, itself, become meaningful by being drawn into an analogy with certain concepts of human reproduction such as heredity, genealogy, descent, lineage, genetics," he says. "Concepts that exist within the same domain. One of the main issues that interest me in working with systems is that, at a certain point, its relationship to any idea is arbitrary."

Each face is assigned two colours: one for the contour lines of the face and the other for the space in between the contour lines. The faces are sequentially mapped out and overlaid one-by-one throughout. "When the image is overlaid, the colours of the faces merge in areas and remain unaltered in other areas; over the course of the series the merging of contours produces different patterns and colour effects that dynamically and formally play out a binary relationship; the generalised structure of a face and the differences between faces."

Formal black and white photographs of each successive sitter appear on the back panel of each work. "The concept of identity politics has played a central role within Gaines' oeuvre, and the radical approach he employs addresses issues of race in ways that transcend the limits of representation," adds the Gallery.

As with all Gaines' artworks, he applies a shared system of rules. But for Numbers and Trees, his latest piece, London Series 1, takes him down a slightly different route as these latest works are larger in scale and inspired by the vast English trees Gaines examined and photographed during a trip to Melbury in Dorst early last year.

Gaines plots each London tree by assigning it a distinctive colour and a numbered grid that reflects the full form of the tree depicted in the detail photo on the back panel of the work. Each successive work is realised by overlaying the forms of trees one at a time and in progression, following Gaines' systematic sequencing process. "As I watch the systems and works evolve, and images being produced, I'm totally reminded that what I'm seeing is not a product of my intention but is a product of a system, and the system has a completely arbitrary relationship with the object thats being represented," Gaines adds.

Born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1944, Charles Gaines lives and works in Los Angeles and has been a member of the CalArts School of Art faculty since 1989, where he recently established a fellowship to provide critical scholarship support for black students in the M.F.A Art programme. His latest exhibition, Multiples of Nature, Trees and Faces, runs at Hauser & Wirth London until 1 May 2021. Check out the virtual show.

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New grid system works by Charles Gaines, the artist who paints faces and trees by numbers - Creative Boom

Legalisation of abortion in Argentina is a huge breakthrough in the struggle for the human rights of women in Latin America. Butmuch work is still to be done if women are to achieve equal citizenship in all aspects of social, economic, cultural, political, and family life instead of being defined by reproduction and motherhood, write PiaRiggirozzi(University of Southampton)andJean Grugel(University of York).

Womens reproductive rights are human rights. Womens right to health includes an obligation on the part of states to respect, protect, and ensure fulfilment of their sexual and reproductive rights. For that reason, there is much to celebrate about the Argentine Senates recent decision to approve legislation permitting abortion during the first 14 weeks of pregnancy. This is particularly true in the context of COVID-19, which has exacerbated existing gender inequalities on an unprecedented scale.

But this law represents only the beginning of a new stage in the struggle for reproductive rights in Argentina, and indeed wider Latin America.There will need to be a focus on building capacity to enforce and uphold the law, most especially for poor and vulnerable women, as well as changes to deeply discriminatory social norms, institutional arrangements, and gendered power relations. Only then will Argentina be able to address the performance gap between legal rights and rights delivery in relation to reproductive health. Otherwise, the new law will fail to deliver the right to reproductive health, wellbeing, and dignity for all women and girls.

Reproductive rights are at the centre of the fight for equal citizenship for women and girls. Reproductive rights mean more than reproductive health understood as a medical minimum. Ensuring that women are able to exercise full and equal citizenship means upholding their place in society not through reproduction and motherhood but as equals in all aspects of social, economic, cultural, political, and family life.

Delivering reproductive rights is an obligation for states, not only in law but also in terms of challenging conservative social norms on the role of women within the family, the workplace, and wider society. States must legislate to advance reproductive rights and eliminate the performance gap, as the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) has made clear.

Though many Latin American states have signed and ratified CEDAW, the region continues to represent a major faultline for global reproductive rights, and it has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world.

Three countries Chile, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic provide no exceptions or extenuating circumstances, and abortion is treated as a crime. In most countries, exceptions are provided only where this is necessary to save a pregnant womans life, or in a small set of very narrowly defined circumstances. In El Salvador and Mexico, jail sentences for women accused of interrupting their pregnancies can be as high as 40 or 50 years respectively.

For most women in the region, abortion is clandestine, risky, and unsafe. It can leave them with life-threatening complications from haemorrhages and infections; cause long-term damage to the cervix, vagina, uterus, and abdominal organs; or even result in death.

A lingering conservatism associated with influential religious and political parties has so far blocked legal changes to broaden rights relating to abortion, contraception, and sexuality. This has also effectively concealed the duty of the state, shifting responsibility on to women themselves and encouraging society to regulate womens behaviour, while disregarding the legal, material, and socio-cultural barriers that women face in accessing contraception and safe abortion.

In practice this means humiliating, criminalising, and punishing women disproportionately. This is especially true of those in poverty, from ethnic minorities, from rural areas, with other sexual preferences, or living as single parents, all of whom face a higher risk of maternal ill-health and even death.

Building upon a long history of feminist and womens movements in Latin America, Argentina has become one of the primary sites of feminist protest in the region. Activists have demanded an end to all forms of violence against women, including what the Argentinian anthropologist Rita Segato has called femi-genocide.

On 3June 2015, some 300,000 people gathered in Buenos Aires and other major cities of Argentina, instantly making the #NiUnaMenos (Not a Single Woman Less) protests one of most visible and important movements for womens rights and gender inequality ever to take place in Latin America. Through subsequent protests like Black Wednesday in June 2016 and the first International Womens Strike on 8March 2017, which gathered activists from some 60 countries, #NiUnaMenos was able tomobilise women as rights-bearers and open up an unprecedented public and political debate.

Reproductive rights were transformed into a critical issue not just for health, but for democracy itself. Asthe Argentine activist Nelly Myniersky put it:

We have been [arguing] for the decriminalisation of abortion since 2007, but we had never achieved that kind of support When we managed to get one and a half million people on to the streets in 2018, and the law was approved [in the lower chamber], it was as if the floodgates had opened. We realised that we were more important than we had considered ourselves to be Since then, people have been talking about abortion like never before.

The annual average unintended pregnancy rate in Latin America between 2015 and 2019 was 69 pregnancies per 1000 women, with just under half of these ending in clandestine and unsafe abortions. This rate of unplanned pregnancy is the result of a generalised failure in the region to deal with issues of sexual violence.

Girls even between the ages of nine and 14 are sometimes forced into motherhood, often after violent coercion into sex. In one case in Argentina in 2005, a young women was raped, secretly gave birth at home after concealing the pregnancy, and then experienced a post-natal psychotic episode that culminated in her stabbing the baby. As a result, she was sentenced tolife imprisonment.

According to latest data released by the National Ministry of Health in Argentina, roughly 275,000 women and girls were admitted to hospital due to complications from illegal abortions between 2011 and 2016. There were over 40,000 such admissions in 2016 alone, and 6,100 of them involved girls and young women between the ages of ten and 19. Human Rights Watchhas estimated that between 370,000 and 522,000 abortions are performed each year in Argentina,resulting in scores of deaths from complications.

With the enactment of the Safe, Legal, and Free Abortion Law on 14January 2021, Argentina guarantees abortion free of charge and ceases to criminalise women for interrupting their pregnancy. This makes it one of a small number of countries in the region Cuba, Guyana, Puerto Rico, and Uruguay whose laws allow for safe and voluntary abortion. Abortion has thus gone from being permissible only in a very narrow set of circumstances to being something much closer to a matter of choice. Though this alone will not eliminate sexual violence or gendered power inequalities, it is a step in the right direction and a huge breakthrough in the struggle for the human rights of women.

That said, work still needs to be done so that all women have access to the rights enshrined in the new law. For that to happen, Argentina like the rest of the region will have to reject social norms that condemn and shame women and girls for the very acts of violence that are forced upon them.

Ensuring that all women have access to their reproductive rights will require the state to address the barriers faced particularly by women and girls in poverty and those from ethnic and other minority groups. This means greater access to abortion and post-abortion services, better information, expansion of properly funded health clinics, investment in education, programmes to counter stigmatisation, and action to prevent conservative movements from blocking services through claims of conscientious objection.

Pushing for further reform and consistent state action in these areas will be the next battle in the campaign for reproductive rights in Latin America, though the success of social movements in achieving legalisation of abortion in Argentina should still be celebrated today.

Notes: The views expressed here are of the authors rather than the Centre or the LSEPlease read ourComments Policy before commenting

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Argentina's legalisation of abortion is only the beginning of the battle for reproductive rights in Latin America | LSE Latin America and Caribbean -...

In the summer of 1868, a 28-year-old Irish widow named Mary Lynch was admitted to Ward 27 of Philadelphia General Hospital. Nicknamed Old Blockley, this huge facility for the poor in West Philadelphia contained a hospital, an orphanage, a poorhouse, and an insane asylum. Just four summers prior, some walls in its Female Lunatic Asylumbeing undermined by workmencollapsed, killing 18 women and injuring 20 more. Patient care at Blockley was a far cry from physician house calls for the wealthy; it was a place for the desperately ill poor, and Lynchs tuberculosis (then called phthisis) put her in a dire situation.

Lynchs family did what they could to make her comfortable while she suffered, visiting her with ham and bologna sandwiches in tow. No one seemed to notice the white specks on the lunchmeata telltale sign of roundworm infection. The trichinosis she contracted from those sandwiches compromised her already weakened state.

Nurses attended to Mary Lynch over six months as her body withered away to a mere 60 pounds. Eventually she succumbed to the two diseases wreaking havoc on her frail frame. When the young doctor John Stockton Hough first encountered Lynch, it was on his autopsy table in January 1869. In an article in The American Journal of the Medical Sciences, Two Cases of Trichiniasis at the Philadelphia Hospital, Blockley, Hough reported that when he opened her chest cavity to observe her tuberculosis-ravaged lungs, he noticed that the pectoral muscles that he had sliced along the way had some unusual lemon-shaped cysts. Looking into his microscope, he realized that the cysts were teeming with Trichinae spiralis (worms) in various stages of development.

Counting the number in one grain of muscle, the whole number of cysts were estimated to be about 8,000,000, Hough reported, making Lynchs the first case of trichinosis discovered in his hospital andas far as he could findin Philadelphia as well. It was during that autopsy that Hough removed the skin from Lynchs thighs. He preserved her skin in a chamber pot and stored it for safekeeping while the rest of Mary Lynchs body was dumped into a paupers grave at Old Blockley.

Decades later, Houghby then a rich, well-respected bibliophileused Lynchs skin to bind three of his favorite medical books on womens health and reproduction, including Louis Barless Les nouvelles dcouvertes sur toutes les parties principals de lhomme, et de la femme (1680), Recueil des secrets de Louyse Bourgeois (1650), and Robert Coupers Speculations on the Mode and Appearances of Impregnation in the Human Female (1789). Hough had cultivated a specialty in womens health beginning in his residency at Old Blockley, where he developed a speculum adaptable for vaginal, uterine, and anal use.

John Stockton Hough, like many gentlemen doctors of his day, enjoyed a classical education at the finest academies New Jersey had to offer before pursuing simultaneous degrees in chemistry and medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. During his residency at the Philadelphia General Hospital, he cultivated disparate clinical interests in reproductive medicine and parasitic trichinae. His family wealth and a lucrative private practice afforded him gentlemanly pursuits, and he began collecting rare books with vigor, particularly medical books from the dawn of the age of print. He traveled to Europe often, sending ahead to antiquarian booksellers a printed list of the medical incunabula he wanted to find; bibliophiles call these wish lists desiderata. He was invited to join book collector societies such as the Grolier Club in New York, established in 1884 to foster the study, collecting, and appreciation of books and works on paper, their art, history, production, and commerce. He delighted in showing off his collection in his luxurious home library in Ewing, New Jersey, to reporters, fellow bookmen, and (on Sundays only) his own children. With a roaring fire flickering off a bookshelf stuffed with rich leather bindings, he would pull down book after book, pointing out one nugget, marvelous gem, or beauty after another.

By the time Hough was 50, he had amassed a collection that was the envy of his fellow doctor bibliophiles; he estimated in 1880 that he owned around 8,000 books. His copy of Fabricius ab Acquapendentes De formato foetu (1627) was rare to start, but Houghs copy was made unique by its 30 painted folios illustrating fetal development. He also had a few examples of anatomical texts from the late 16th and early 17th centuries that featured anatomical flap illustrations, reminiscent of todays childrens books, where flap after flap lifts to reveal the layers of body structures doctors would encounter as they dissected a cadaver. Few of these books survive today given the centuries of curious fingers folding their flaps. Hidden among these gems, looking much the same as any other book on the shelf, were the three works on reproduction bound in the skin of Mary Lynch. Hough died at age 56 after a runaway horse threw him from his carriage, and the bulk of his prized collection went to Houghs alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, and the library at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

While the identities of most of the patients used by doctors to create human skin books are lost to history, the doctors who created them were often well respected in their fields, admired doctors and collectors occupying elevated social strata in a 19th-century United States clamoring for the legitimacy of its European counterparts. Unlike most doctors who created these books, Hough gave some identifying information about the source of his leather in his handwritten notes inside, referring to Mary L___ in each of the three volumes made from her skin. It was this tidbit, plus her knowledge of Houghs tenure at Old Blockley, that inspired the College of Physicians of Philadelphia librarian Beth Lander to dig into the Philadelphia General Hospital archives in search of the true identity of the woman who supplied the skin for three out of their five confirmed anthropodermic books.

This book is the biggest pain, sighed John Pollack, a rare book librarian at the University of Pennsylvania. In my travels studying anthropodermic bibliopegy (a combination of the Greek root words for human [anthropos], skin [derma], book [biblion], and fasten [pegia]), I would soon become accustomed to this reaction from my fellow librarians. A research library full of amazing stuff and people want to see this, he said as he hefted the massive book in his hands.

Anthropodermic bibliopegy has been a specter on the shelves of libraries, museums, and private collections for over a century. Human skin booksmostly made by 19th-century doctor bibliophilesare the only books that are controversial not for the ideas they contain but for the physical makeup of the object itself. They repel and fascinate, and their very ordinary appearances mask the horror inherent in their creation. Anthropodermic books tell a complicated and uncomfortable tale about the development of clinical medicine and the doctoring class, and the worst of what can come from the collision of acquisitiveness and a distanced clinical gaze. The weight of these objects fraught legacy transfers to the institutions where they are housed, and the library and museum professionals who are responsible for them. Each owner handles this responsibility differently.

A few years before, I had joined forces two chemists and the curator of the Mtter Museum in Philadelphia to create the Anthropodermic Book Project. Our aim is to identify and test as many alleged anthropodermic books as possible and dispel long-held myths about the most macabre books in history. My team has so far identified only about 50 alleged anthropodermic books in public collectionsincluding the five at the library at the College of Physicians of Philadelphiaand a few more in private hands.

I try to hedge a little about the types of titles that tend to be bound in human skin, as it takes only one confirmation of a certain kind of book to completely change our understanding of the universe of this practice, since there are so few of them. People often ask me if there are sexy human skin books, and I used to say nountil we tested a 19th-century printing of a 16th-century French BDSM allegorical poem, owned by that same Grolier Club to which Hough belonged, and lo and behold: real human skin. Even so, I have come to see certain traits that tip the scale toward whether an untested book might be real or fake.

To my eye, then, this doorstop at Penn had fake written all over it. It was Houghs copy of the Catalog des sciences mdicales (Catalog of Medical Sciences) from the Bibliothque nationale de France. It contains lists of medical works housed at the library in that era, like a 19th-century librarys equivalent of a phone directory. Its quarter-bound, meaning only one quarter of the book is covered in leather, around the spine, and the front and back covers of the book are more like what we would recognize as a hardcover today, with paper over board. It is so big that opening and closing over the years has put a lot of strain on the binding, which has developed red rot, an irreversible condition in which exposure to acids begins to break down the leather. The library covered it in a clear mylar jacket to stop the red rot from depositing bits of putative human leather on anyone who handles the book.

The real human skin books that our scientific team has verified over the years have content that was specifically chosen to match their macabre binding. The books that Hough bound in Mary Lynchs skin were about womens medicine, bound in the skin of a woman whose hide he held onto for decades before using it. So why would that same person use the worlds rarest binding material to bind a directory? Pollack, too, was incredulous: I feel like he picked the most boring book off his shelf and said, Oh, this will do. This book will always remind me not to lean too heavily on my initial instincts, because a few months prior to my visit, tests had confirmed that the binding of Catalog des sciences mdicales is real human skin.

I might never know the full story behind this misfit skin book, but I slowly started connecting the dots to form a more complete picture of Hough as a gentleman collector. Hough was a bibliographer who loved compiling lists of desiderata, and he also attempted to quantify the worlds rarest medical books in lists. Inside the Catalog he wrote, The Bibliotheque National [sic] in 1889 contained 15,000 incunabula of all kinds, of which a catalogue is being prepared, if 1 out of 30 books are medical there would be 500 medical books printed in the XV Century. That kind of list-making might sound boring to me and John Pollack, but it must have been pretty exciting to Hough, as he was attempting to define the universe of medical incunabula and collect as many as possible. Above that note was another that read, Bound with skin from the back-tanned June 1887, and directly below that, bound Jany. 1888. But there is also a note on that same page that reads Stockton-Hough, Paris, Sept. 1887. It is possible he went back to this page multiple times to update these notes.

The notes in the Catalog reveal that the skin was tanned and the book bound in quick succession, without the intervening decades of storage like the other Hough anthropodermic books, which leads me to wonder whether the inveterate bibliophile, having finally run out of saved skins to bind books, procured more skin to try his hand at binding books himself. The Catalog lacks the gilded embellishments and other signs of skilled craftsmanship of the other specimens that he had created. Those specimens all appear to have been made by the same craftsman. The red rot now affecting the book could be a side effect of some of the newer tannins being used at the time, or it could have been made by someone with less expertise. Perhaps the Catalog was the result of Houghs attempt at bookbindingperhaps he truly did, as Pollack joked, pull any old book off the shelf and say, Thisll do.

The College of Physicians of Philadelphia owns a fourth anthropodermic book, also about reproduction, from John Stockton Houghs collection: Charles Drelincourts De conceptione adversaria (1686). On the flyleaf inside, Houghs handwritten note reveals that it was bound in Trenton, New Jersey, in March 1887, using the skin from around the wrist of a man who died in the [Philadelphia] Hospital 1869Tanned by J.S.H. 1869. This bit of leather never boiled or curried. To curry, in this case, means dressing the already tanned hides by soaking, scraping, or dyeing to achieve a certain look and feel.

I returned to Houghs article on the two cases of trichinosis. Mary Lynch was the first. The other is described as an intemperate 42-year-old Irish laborer he called T McC, who died in February 1869, emaciated and having suffered from chronic diarrhea (just as Mary Lynch had). Hough found Trichinae spiralis during his autopsy as well. Could he be the man whose wrist supplied the binding for the Drelincourt book?

A dig through the Philadelphia General Hospitals Male Register turned up a Thomas McCloskey whose intake and discharge dates all align with those reported by Hough in his article. The timing certainly matches, but since Hough merely describes him, on the books flyleaf, as a man who died in the [Philadelphia] Hospital 1869, I cant draw as bright a line there as Beth Lander could between Mary Lynchs hospital records and the Mary L___ in Houghs handwriting.

If your mental image of a doctor binding books in human skin is that of a lone mad scientist, toiling away in a creepy basement creating abominations, that would be understandable. But the truth about these doctorsand Hough wasnt even the only one in Philadelphia at that time making human skin booksis much harder to square with our current perceptions of medical ethics, consent, and the use of human remains.

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Seeking the Truth Behind Books Bound in Human Skin - Atlas Obscura

THE THIRD WAVE of the pandemic has hit the country harder than could have been imagined, bringing an already stretched health service to breaking point.

Unwelcome records have been broken within the first weeks of the new year, with deaths, cases and numbers in ICU rocketing as frontline staff work around the clock to quell the rising storm.

As staff and resources are again pooled to tackle the latest string of admissions, a host of other services and procedures have been postponed at hospitals across the country.

While attention has been put on elective or non-urgent surgeries or consultant appointments deferred, this month the team at our community-led investigative platform, Noteworthy decided to take a closer look at the impact that Covid-19 is having on services flying under the radar.

We discovered that, among other areas, the crisis has exacerbated a long-term lack of adequate support in emergency psychiatric care, eating disorder services, and for the roll-out of publicly funded IVF treatment.

Emergency mental health services at breaking point

One area that has a need for more support and resources, according to Mater Hospital psychiatrist Anne Doherty, is specialist mental health teams in emergency departments (EDs).

Last month, Dr Doherty explained to us that they are the new frontline in mental health care but are now at a breaking point due to years of underfunding and a lack of hospital beds for psychiatric care.

The data would appear to bear this out. Today, we have just 22 acute public mental health beds per 100,000 population, compared with the EU average of 70 per 100,000.

Services are also underfunded compared to EU colleagues, receiving around 6% of our healthcare budget compared with 10 to 13% in the UK, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands.

The Noteworthy team wants to investigate the measures being taken to tackle a pandemic-induced mental health crisis in Ireland. You can support this project here.

Failed by the health system

A bid to shore up some of the gaps in general mental health funding during the pandemic has, in turn, highlighted serious failings in other areas, including support for people with eating disorders.

As we revealed last month, the entire amount of last years development funding for eating disorder services was used to cover other areas of mental health provision.

This is not the first year funding failed to match the States promised spend. To date, just 137,000 (3.4%) of 4 million in development funding for eating disorders has been spent since 2018.

This lack of support has taken a toll, with several people with eating disorders, parents and medical professionals all contacting us about their struggles with the current system.

A letter to Noteworthy from one parent summed up the frustration of families trying to get the required medical attention for their loved ones:

This is just one of the personal stories that we want to highlight in our proposed Silent Treatment investigation to find out if people with eating disorders are being failed by the public health system. You can find out more details on how you can support this work here.

Funding Fertility

The frustration of various couples has also been expressed to us in recent months about another long overlooked but vitally important area infertility treatment.

Almost one in six couples in Ireland face fertility difficulties, leaving many to face thousands in costs for assisted human reproduction treatment, as they wait on public funding to support those undergoing fertility treatment, first announced in 2017.

This has led many people to travel overseas for cheaper fertility treatment something that the pandemic has impacted and as we showed last month, there continue to be long delays in the roll out of a public model.

According to Health Minister Stephen Donnelly, the development of planned regional fertility hubs has slowed due to the management of the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition, the Department of Health confirmed to us that it cannot provide a concrete timeline for rollout of publicly-funded IVF.

Rory Tallon, who has cystic fibrosis and underwent IVF with his wife Sarah before the birth of each of their two daughters,told us that the cost of treatmentwas comparable to the cost of a wedding or house deposit.

Emma McDade, who is currently undergoing fertility treatment, wrote an opinion piece for us recently where she called for promised regulation of the sector, citing costly tests and extra add-ons. She gave an example of a blood test which cost five times more in the clinic compared to her local GP office.

We want to shine a spotlight on this issue and examine if these long delays in publicly funding IVF has destroyed some peoples chance to have children. Here is how you can support this work.

How to help

You can also helpNoteworthyin a few other ways:

To find out how contributions are used, or anything else about howNoteworthyworks, clickhere. You can also sign up to ourInsider Newsletteror find us onTwitterandFacebook. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to email information@noteworthy.ie

Thanks so much for your continued support!

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What are the wider implications of Covid-19 on our overlooked health services? - TheJournal.ie

Its been suggested that an advance party of robots will be needed if humans are ever to settle on other planets. Sent ahead to create conditions favourable for humankind, these robots will need to be tough, adaptable and recyclable if theyre to survive within the inhospitable cosmic climates that await them.

Collaborating with roboticists and computer scientists, my team and I have been working on just such a set of robots. Produced via 3D printer and assembled autonomously the robots were creating continually evolve in order to rapidly optimise for the conditions they find themselves in.

Our work represents the latest progress towards the kind of autonomous robot ecosystems that could help build humanitys future homes, far away from Earth and far away from human oversight.

Robots have come a long way since our first clumsy forays into artificial movement many decades ago. Today, companies such as Boston Dynamics produce ultra-efficient robots which load trucks, build pallets, and move boxes around factories, undertaking tasks you might think only humans could perform.

Despite these advances, designing robots to work in unknown or inhospitable environments like exoplanets or deep ocean trenches still poses a considerable challenge for scientists and engineers. Out in the cosmos, what shape and size should the ideal robot be? Should it crawl or walk? What tools will it need to manipulate its environment and how will it survive extremes of pressure, temperature and chemical corrosion?

An impossible brainteaser for humans, nature has already solved this problem. Darwinian evolution has resulted in millions of species that are perfectly adapted to their environment. Although biological evolution takes millions of years, artificial evolution modelling evolutionary processes inside a computer can take place in hours, or even minutes. Computer scientists have been harnessing its power for decades, resulting in gas nozzles to satellite antennas that are ideally suited to their function, for instance.

Read more: How we built a robot that can evolve and why it won't take over the world

But current artificial evolution of moving, physical objects still requires a great deal of human oversight, requiring a tight feedback loop between robot and human. If artificial evolution is to design a useful robot for exoplanetary exploration, well need to remove the human from the loop. In essence, evolved robot designs must manufacture, assemble and test themselves autonomously untethered from human oversight.

Any evolved robots will need to be capable of sensing their environment and have diverse means of moving for example using wheels, jointed legs or even mixtures of the two. And to address the inevitable reality gap that occurs when transferring a design from software to hardware, it is also desirable for at least some evolution to take place in hardware within an ecosystem of robots that evolve in real time and real space.

The Autonomous Robot Evolution (ARE) project addresses exactly this, bringing together scientists and engineers from four universities in an ambitious four-year project to develop this radical new technology.

As depicted above, robots will be born through the use of 3D manufacturing. We use a new kind of hybrid hardware-software evolutionary architecture for design. That means that every physical robot has a digital clone. Physical robots are performance-tested in real-world environments, while their digital clones enter a software programme, where they undergo rapid simulated evolution. This hybrid system introduces a novel type of evolution: new generations can be produced from a union of the most successful traits from a virtual mother and a physical father.

As well as being rendered in our simulator, child robots produced via our hybrid evolution are also 3D-printed and introduced into a real-world, creche-like environment. The most successful individuals within this physical training centre make their genetic code available for reproduction and for the improvement of future generations, while less fit robots can simply be hoisted away and recycled into new ones as part of an ongoing evolutionary cycle.

Two years into the project, significant advances have been made. From a scientific perspective, we have designed new artificial evolutionary algorithms that have produced a diverse set of robots that drive or crawl, and can learn to navigate through complex mazes. These algorithms evolve both the body-plan and brain of the robot.

The brain contains a controller that determines how the robot moves, interpreting sensory information from the environment and translating this into motor controls. Once the robot is built, a learning algorithm quickly refines the child brain to account for any potential mismatch between its new body and its inherited brain.

From an engineering perspective, we have designed the RoboFab to fully automate manufacturing. This robotic arm attaches wires, sensors and other organs chosen by evolution to the robots 3D-printed chassis. We designed these components to facilitate swift assembly, giving the RoboFab access to a big toolbox of robot limbs and organs.

The first major use case we plan to address is deploying this technology to design robots to undertake clean-up of legacy waste in a nuclear reactor like that seen in the TV miniseries Chernobyl. Using humans for this task is both dangerous and expensive, and necessary robotic solutions remain to be developed.

Looking forward, the long-term vision is to develop the technology sufficiently to enable the evolution of entire autonomous robotic ecosystems that live and work for long periods in challenging and dynamic environments without the need for direct human oversight.

In this radical new paradigm, robots are conceived and born, rather than designed and manufactured. Such robots will fundamentally change the concept of machines, showcasing a new breed that can change their form and behaviour over time just like us.

See more here:
Were teaching robots to evolve autonomously so they can adapt to life alone on distant planets - The Conversation US

THURSDAY, Jan. 28, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- There have long been theories that women's menstrual cycles align with the moon, and now a new study suggests there's some truth to that.

Using years of records kept by 22 women, researchers found that for many, menstrual cycles "intermittently" synced up with the phases of the moon.

The link happened only about one-quarter of the time for women aged 35 or younger, and just 9% of the time for older women. There was a great deal of variance, though, among individuals.

And for a few women, there were hints that excessive exposure to artificial light at night could have thrown off any moon-menstruation synchrony.

One expert called the findings "interesting," and said they might reflect remnants of a lunar influence that benefited humans' ancient ancestors.

Early primates were nocturnal creatures, so a degree of moon-influenced behavior would make sense for them, according to Deena Emera.

Emera, who was not involved in the study, is an evolutionary geneticist based at the Buck Institute's Center for Reproductive Longevity and Equality, in California.

Mating is risky business, Emera noted, as it makes animals vulnerable to predators. So mating during the new moon, under cover of more darkness, would be a "reasonable strategy," she said.

That also means there would be an advantage to ovulation being timed to the new moon.

"I think any [moon-menstruation] synchronization seen today is probably a relic of an ancient primate trait," Emera said.

She also stressed that women need not worry if their menstrual cycles are not wedded to the moon.

"We're so different from those early rodent-like primates," Emera said. "We certainly don't need to sync our cycles to the moon to successfully reproduce."

The study, published online Jan. 27 in the journal Science Advances, is far from the first to investigate moon-menstruation correlations.

The most obvious one is that both lunar and menstrual cycles are roughly one month long. But research dating back to the 1950s has suggested other links: Women were found to commonly start their periods around the time of the full moon. That would mean ovulation happened near the new moon, two weeks before.

However, relatively more recent studies uncovered no such links.

"I was puzzled by the discrepancy between these quite old results and later studies," said Charlotte Helfrich-Frster, the lead researcher on the new study. She's chair of neurobiology and genetics at the University of Wrzburg, in Germany.

Helfrich-Frster's team took a different approach. Instead of studying a large group of women and looking for broad patterns, they had 22 women keep menstruation diaries, which they did for an average of 15 years, and up to 32 years.

Among women aged 35 or younger, the researchers found, menstrual periods synced up with the moon phases about 24% of the time. But the women varied widely: Some were aligned with the moon more often than not, while others never were.

Three women in the "never" category also reported substantial exposure to artificial light at night.

However, Helfrich-Frster said, it's not possible to say whether the bright lights of modern life have disrupted any synchrony between women's cycles and the moon.

Like Emera, she framed the findings in evolutionary terms, but within human history.

Long ago, Helfrich-Frster said, it would have been prudent to stay inside on dark new-moon nights. And why not use that time to mate? In theory, she explained, women who regularly ovulated around new-moon time would have more children and "spread their genes that inherit the timing to the moon."

When it comes to links between lunar rhythms and reproduction, many studies have found them in sea animals, said Satchidananda Panda, an adjunct professor of biological sciences at the University of California, San Diego.

But, he said, that is seen only rarely in today's primates.

Panda said the current study "opens up another line of scientific investigation on biological rhythms."

He also speculated that in humans, the moon might indirectly influence menstrual cycles.

"For example," Panda said, "many cultural activities in ancestral societies, or even in modern-day Asia and Africa, are on full-moon days or tied to the lunar cycle."

Certain foods consumed during those events, like soybeans, might affect hormonal activity, he added.

More information

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has more on the menstrual cycle.

SOURCES: Charlotte Helfrich-Frster, PhD, chair, neurobiology and genetics, University of Wrzburg, Germany; Deena Emera, PhD, Center for Reproductive Longevity and Equality, Buck Institute, Novato, Calif.; Satchidananda Panda, PhD, adjunct professor, biological sciences, University of California, San Diego, and professor, Salk Institute, La Jolla, Calif.; Science Advances, Jan. 27, 2021, online

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Women's Menstrual Cycles Tied to Moon's Phases - HealthDay News

Evidence is emerging that vitamin D and possibly vitamins K and A might help combat COVID-19. A new study from the University of Bristol published in the journal of the German Chemical Society Angewandte Chemie has shown how they and other antiviral drugs might work. The research indicates that these dietary supplements and compounds could bind to the viral spike protein and so might reduce SARS-CoV-2 infectivity. In contrast, cholesterol may increase infectivity, which could explain why having high cholesterol is considered a risk factor for serious disease.

Recently, Bristol researchers showed that linoleic acid binds to a specific site in the viral spike protein, and that by doing so, it locks the spike into a closed, less infective form. Now, a research team has used computational methods to search for other compounds that might have the same effect, as potential treatments. They hope to prevent human cells becoming infected by preventing the viral spike protein from opening enough to interact with a human protein (ACE2). New anti-viral drugs can take years to design, develop and test, so the researchers looked through a library of approved drugs and vitamins to identify those which might bind to this recently discovered druggable pocket inside the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

The team first studied the effects of linoleic acid on the spike, using computational simulations to show that it stabilizes the closed form. Further simulations showed that dexamethasone which is an effective treatment for COVID-19 might also bind to this site and help reduce viral infectivity in addition to its effects on the human immune system.

The team then conducted simulations to see which other compounds bind to the fatty acid site. This identified some drugs that have been found by experiments to be active against the virus, suggesting that this may be one mechanism by which they prevent viral replication such as, by locking the spike structure in the same way as linoleic acid.

The findings suggested several drug candidates among available pharmaceuticals and dietary components, including some that have been found to slow SARS-CoV-2 reproduction in the laboratory. These have the potential to bind to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and may help to prevent cell entry.

The simulations also predicted that the fat-soluble vitamins D, K and A bind to the spike in the same way making the spike less able to infect cells.

Dr Deborah Shoemark, Senior Research Associate (Biomolecular Modelling) in the School of Biochemistry, who modelled the spike, explained: Our findings help explain how some vitamins may play a more direct role in combatting COVID than their conventional support of the human immune system.

Obesity is a major risk factor for severe COVID. Vitamin D is fat soluble and tends to accumulate in fatty tissue. This can lower the amount of vitamin D available to obese individuals. Countries in which some of these vitamin deficiencies are more common have also suffered badly during the course of the pandemic. Our research suggests that some essential vitamins and fatty acids including linoleic acid may contribute to impeding the spike/ACE2 interaction. Deficiency in any one of them may make it easier for the virus to infect.

Pre-existing high cholesterol levels have been associated with increased risk for severe COVID-19. Reports that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein binds cholesterol led the team to investigate whether it could bind at the fatty acid binding site. Their simulations indicate that it could bind, but that it may have a destabilising effect on the spikes locked conformation, and favour the open, more infective conformation.

Dr Shoemark continued: We know that the use of cholesterol lowering statins reduces the risk of developing severe COVID and shortens recovery time in less severe cases. Whether cholesterol de-stabilises the benign, closed conformation or not, our results suggest that by directly interacting with the spike, the virus could sequester cholesterol to achieve the local concentrations required to facilitate cell entry and this may also account for the observed loss of circulating cholesterol post infection.

Professor Adrian Mulholland, of Bristols School of Chemistry, added: Our simulations show how some molecules binding at the linoleic acid site affect the spikes dynamics and lock it closed. They also show that drugs and vitamins active against the virus may work in the same way. Targeting this site may be a route to new anti-viral drugs. A next step would be to look at effects of dietary supplements and test viral replication in cells.

Alison Derbenwick Miller, Vice President, Oracle for Research, said: Its incredibly exciting that researchers are gaining new insights into how SARS-CoV-2 interacts with human cells, which ultimately will lead to new ways to fight COVID-19. We are delighted that Oracles high-performance cloud infrastructure is helping to advance this kind of world-changing research. Growing a globally-connected community of cloud-powered researchers is exactly what Oracle for Research is designed to do.

The team included experts fromBristol UNCOVER Group, including Bristols Schools of Chemistry, Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Medicine, and Max Planck Bristol Centre for Minimal Biology, and BrisSynBio, using Bristols high performance computers and the UK supercomputer, ARCHER, as well as Oracle cloud computing. The study was supported by grants from theEPSRC and the BBSRC.

Paper

'Molecular simulations suggest vitamins, retinoids and steroids as ligands binding the free fatty acid pocket of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein' byDeborah Karen Shoemark, Charlotte K. Colenso, Christine Toelzer, Kapil Gupta, Richard B. Sessions, Andrew D. Davidson, Imre Berger, Christiane Schaffitzel, James SpencerandAdrian J. Mulhollandin Angewandte Chemie

About coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2)The surface of the coronavirus particle has proteins sticking out of it known as Spike proteins which are embedded in a membrane. They have the appearance of tiny little crowns, giving the virus its name (corona). Inside the membrane is the viral genome wrapped up in other proteins. The genome contains all the genetic instruction to mass produce the virus. Once the virus attaches to the outside of a human cell, its membrane fuses with the human cell membrane and its genetic information into the human cell. Next, the virus instructs the cell to start replicating its genome and produce its proteins. These are then assembled into many new copies of the virus which, upon release, can infect many more cells. The viral proteins play diverse further roles in coronavirus pathology.

Support our COVID-19 researchBristols researchers are part of a global network of scientists responding urgently to the challenge of the coronavirus pandemic.

Find out how you can support their critical work.

Bristol UNCOVER GroupIn response to the COVID-19 crisis, researchers at the University of Bristol formed the Bristol COVID Emergency Research Group (UNCOVER) to pool resources, capacities and research efforts to combat this infection.

Bristol UNCOVER includes clinicians, immunologists, virologists, synthetic biologists, aerosol scientists, epidemiologists and mathematical modellers and has links to behavioural and social scientists, ethicists and lawyers.

Follow Bristol UNCOVER on Twitter at: twitter.com/BristolUncover

For more information about the University of Bristols coronavirus (COVID-19) research priorities visit: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/research/impact/coronavirus/research-priorities/

Bristol UNCOVER is supported by the Elizabeth Blackwell InstituteFind out more about the Institutes COVID-19 research looking into five key areas: virus natural history, therapeutics and diagnostics research; epidemiology; clinical management; vaccines; and ethics and social science.

About Bristol BioDesign InstituteBristol BioDesign Institute (BBI)is the University of Bristol's Specialist Research Institute for synthetic biology. With wide-ranging applications from health to food security, BBI combines pioneering synthetic biology approaches with understanding biomolecular systems to deliver the rational design and engineering of biological systems for useful purposes.

This is delivered through multidisciplinary research that brings together postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers, academics, policy makers and industry, whilst also engaging the public with emerging solutions to global challenges.

About BrisSynBio, a BBSRC/ EPSRC-funded Synthetic Biology Research CentreBrisSynBiois a multi-disciplinary research centre that focuses on the biomolecular design and engineering aspects of synthetic biology.

BrisSynBio is part of theBristol BioDesign Institute.

Our overarching aims are to:

About Oracle for Research

Oracle for Research is a global community that is working to address complex problems and drive meaningful change in the world. The program provides scientists, researchers, and university innovators with high-value, cost-effective Cloud technologies, participation in Oracle research user community, and access to Oracles technical support network. Through the programs free cloud credits, users can leverage Oracles proven technology and infrastructure while keeping research-developed IP private and secure.

Learn more at https://www.oracle.com/oracle-for-research/

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January: molecularsimulations-study | News and features - University of Bristol

By Barry C. Fox, M.D., University of WisconsinBacteria are single-cell organisms that contain the most essential components to survive and reproduce. (Image: kridipol poolket/Shutterstock)What Is Bacterium?

The term bacterium was invented in the 19th century by a German biologist, Ferdinand Cohn, based on the Greek word bakterion, meaning small rod. However, there are three shapes of bacteriarods, spirals, and spheres.

Bacteria are extremely small, usually less than two microns in size, and are found everywhere. Bacteria are single-celled organisms that contain the barest essential components for staying alive and reproducing chromosome, ribosomes, cytoplasm, and an outer membrane.

Bacteria are a simple form of life known as prokaryotes. In the center is a genetic code material known as deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, which is bundled into a central structure known as a chromosome.

The DNA encodes for a specific sequence of building blocks known as amino acids, and these amino acids are combined into proteins at the ribosomal structure. Proteins are subsequently used to control cellular function. The internal fluid, otherwise known as cytoplasm, is surrounded by an outer membrane, and prokaryotic bacteria hence resemble a water balloon filled with bacteria.

Microorganisms that are more complex than the prokaryotic bacteria contain eukaryotic cells that have a nucleus that contains multiple strands of DNA organized into multiple chromosomes. They also have more complex internal structures such as mitochondria, which produce internal energy.

Eukaryotic cells utilize more formal membrane structures, such as a nucleolar membrane, to contain DNA. The simplest one-cell eukaryote is a protozoan called a paramecium. Other examples of multicellular eukaryotes are fungi, plants, and animals.

This is a transcript from the video series An Introduction to Infectious Diseases. Watch it now on The Great Courses Plus.

Prokaryotic bacterial reproduction is under the control of the DNA in the chromosome. Bacteria multiply rapidly by a process known as binary fission, but the repeat replication of DNA is prone to errors.

As a result, it can result in genetic mutations that can either lead to a survival advantage or disadvantage. For example, a germ might develop resistance to an antibiotic that is trying to kill it, or the mutation can be unfavorable and lead to the destruction and death of the germ.

DNA replication is controlled by an important enzyme known as DNA polymerase. DNA polymerase is a prime antibiotic target since the goal is to halt DNA replication.

Some DNA may not be in the center of the cell, but located in the cytoplasm, forming circles of DNA known as plasmids. Plasmid DNA may also be transferred from one bacterium to another through various mechanisms when bacteria touch one another.

Conjugation is one of these means. When this happens, genetic characteristics among bacteria are shared. This is important in the development of bacteria that are resistant to multiple antibiotics, or for other evolutionary traits that support their survival.

Learn more about notorious diseases like bubonic plague, malaria, and polio.

The synthesis of cellular proteins such as enzymes or toxins is under the control of DNA. It acts through the ribosomes, which combine amino acid building blocks in the cytoplasm. The ribosome is also an excellent target for antibiotics because it can interfere with protein synthesis.

Enzymes play a vital role and are responsible for controlling all the ongoing work in a cell. They are chemical reaction machines, which either break molecules apart or put them together.

Another function of an enzyme is to link amino acid building blocks together to form a protein. A bacterium may have over 1000 different types of enzymes floating around in its cytoplasm at any time.

For bacteria to interact, there are special structures called fimbriae and pili on the surface that can help them attach to other bacteria or even to human cells.

These interactions can be divided into three general categories. First, some germs are good bacteria and help humans directly, such as assisting in food digestion. There are some germs that are known as commensal bacteria. They coexist with other bacteria without causing any harm to humans. And finally, some bacteria are harmful and are known as pathogenic.

Learn more about respiratory and brain infections.

Bacteria can be beneficial as well as harmful for human beings. However, there are some good bacteria that help humans directly.

One of the main jobs of the bacteria in the intestines is to break down nutrients, such as sugars and fats, which humans otherwise cannot digest. Most of these gut bacteria do not like the oxygen in the air and are known as anaerobes.

Besides aiding in digestion, gut bacteria also synthesize certain vitamins and aid the immune system. Specifically, Escherichia coli or E. coli is a common bacterium in the intestine. Unlike others, this germ happens to like oxygen, so its known as an aerobic bacterium. It synthesizes vitamin K, which is essential for normal blood clotting. W

hen patients receive antibiotics, the antibiotics can kill the good E. coli as innocent bystanders and alter clotting function.

Bacteria are a simple form of life known as prokaryotes. The term bacterium was invented in the 19th century by a German biologist, Ferdinand Cohn, based on the Greek word bakterion, meaning small rod.

Deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA is a genetic code material that is present in the center of prokaryotic bacteria, which is bundled into a central structure known as a chromosome.

One of the main jobs of the bacteria in the intestines is to break down nutrients, such as sugars and fats, which humans otherwise cannot digest.

Follow this link:
Bacteria: Anatomy and Functioning - The Great Courses Daily News

By Caroline Kelly and Nicole Gaouette, CNN

(CNN) -- President Joe Biden signed a presidential memorandum on Thursday to reverse restrictions on abortion access domestically and abroad imposed and expanded by the Trump administration.

The memorandum will "reverse my predecessor's attack on women's health access," Biden told reporters during a signing ceremony in the Oval Office.

He added that the measure "relates to protecting women's health at home and abroad, and it reinstates the changes that were made to Title X and other things making it harder for women to have access to affordable health care as it relates to their reproductive rights."

Biden's move fulfilled a campaign promise to rescind the so-called Mexico City Policy, a ban on US government funding for foreign nonprofits that perform or promote abortions. The Trump administration reinstated the restriction in 2017 by presidential memorandum and then extended it to cover all applicable US global health funding. That made some $9.5 billion in aid for everything from HIV treatment to clean water projects and child immunizations contingent on groups agreeing not to discuss or perform abortions.

The memorandum also directs the Health and Human Services Department to immediately move to consider rescinding the Trump administration rule blocking health care providers in the federally funded Title X family planning program from referring patients for abortions, according to the Biden administration.

Taken together, the actions show an administration receptive to at least the initial requests of advocates eager to codify a new era of abortion protections after the prior administration took restrictions on the procedure to unprecedented levels.

Advocates for abortion restrictions slammed Biden over the announcement, which coincides with the eve of anti-abortion activists holding the annual March for Life event on Friday -- though this year it will be virtual. Former President Donald Trump made history in 2020 by being the first sitting President to participate in the event, which for decades has drawn large crowds of supporters each year to the National Mall.

The moves come as health care providers, reproductive rights groups and progressive lawmakers seek a more permanent end to longstanding barriers to the procedure.

Beyond US borders, the impact of Trump's expanded Mexico City Policy, formally called "Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance," has "really been devastating," said Melvine Ouyo, a Nairobi-based reproductive health nurse and former clinic director at Family Health Options Kenya. "So many lives were lost."

The policy, also known as the "global gag rule," has been instituted by Republican administrations since President Ronald Reagan and repealed by Democratic ones. A State Department review published last year of the Trump administration's policy to bar funding for foreign nonprofits that perform or promote abortions found it has also affected efforts to treat tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS as well as to deliver nutritional assistance, among other programs, and has had significant impact in sub-Saharan Africa.

Advocates and practitioners like Ouyo say the deaths result from the cuts to health care of all kinds for women, including access to contraception, which sends them in search of illegal, often unsafe and deadly abortions.

"This global gag rule has been one of the most detrimental policies to women's lives, especially women coming from marginalized communities," Ouyu told CNN. "Biden really has a lot to do."

Seema Jalan, executive director of the Universal Access Project and Policy at the United Nations Foundation, said advocates see an opportunity for the Biden administration to work with Congress to make broad changes. She cited the Helms Amendment which bars US foreign aid for performing or promoting abortion, not just to foreign non-profits, but to governments, multilateral organizations and US non-profits and the Hyde amendment, which imposes similar restrictions on groups within the US. The policies currently allow for abortions in cases of rape, incest or a threat to the pregnant person's life.

"There's the hard work of the administration working with Congress putting in place permanent solutions to harmful policy: addressing global gag, Helms, Hyde, and other technical fixes that are highly consequential," Jalan said.

Anti-abortion advocates, however, criticized the rollback, arguing it runs counter to Biden's professed efforts to bring the country together.

"Funneling U.S. tax dollars to abortion groups overseas is an abhorrent practice that flies in the face of the 'unity' Joe Biden and Kamala Harris promised to inspire," said SBA List president Marjorie Dannenfelser.

"Rescinding the Mexico City Policy on the eve of the March for Life is a deeply disturbing move, especially when the President says he wants national unity," March for Life president Jeanne Mancini said Thursday, adding that the government "should work to protect the inherent dignity of all persons, born and unborn."

Biden's memorandum also deals with Title X, a federally-funded program that served about 4 million people a year prior to the abortion referral rule's implementation, according to HHS. The program provides resources including contraception, breast and cervical cancer screenings, and preventive education and testing for sexually transmitted diseases and HIV -- but not abortions.

In 2019, Trump's HHS issued a rule to bar health care providers participating in the program from offering abortion referrals, a policy that opponents argued would hit low-income people, rural residents, communities of color and the uninsured hardest. The rule prompted multiple federal court challenges and was ultimately blocked in federal court. But in July of that year, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the rule to go into effect despite the ongoing challenge against it.

The effects of the rule have been stark. Planned Parenthood which previously covered 40% of Title X's patients and had been involved with the program since it began, according to the organization withdrew from the program soon after the 9th Circuit decision. Additional clinics have dropped out of the program since the rule took effect, leaving six states without Title X providers, according to data from the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. More than 1,000 Title X sub-recipients and sites approximately 25% of the 4,000 clinics in the program prior to the rule have withdrawn from the program, per Kaiser.

National Right to Life President Carol Tobias lamented Biden's memorandum on Thursday.

"During the presidential campaign, Joe Biden made it clear that promoting abortion would be a priority in his administration and it would be done at the expense of taxpayers," Tobias, accusing him of dismantling "domestic protections that have saved countless lives -- and put taxpayer money in the pockets of abortionists."

Biden's memorandum, while a significant change of direction, represents just the beginning of advocates' goals of restoring the program.

"We expect some commitment toward repairing the program, rescinding the rule and getting longstanding providers back into the network so that services can be restored in parts of the country that have gone without Title X funding for so long," said Audrey Sandusky, communications director for the National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA).

Around 1.5 million people lost access to Title X coverage after the rule was implemented, according to Sandusky. The group counts nearly three-quarters of Title X grantees among its membership of providers and administrators and worked with the Biden transition team and HHS staff on Title X's future, she said.

In light of how some "patients have been in the dark" after they were no longer able to get free or low cost health care from their usual providers, "I would say it would take a long time for providers to regain the trust and confidence that patients have had in them," Sandusky said, as well as "to regain trust in the federal government and to assure providers that they have support that they need from this administration and from Congress."

In a call with reporters on Wednesday, Planned Parenthood President and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson called rolling back the Mexico City Policy and the Title X abortion referral restriction "a great start, one that will increase access and meaningfully impact people's lives, but I'll emphasize again, this is a start."

When asked about conversations between Planned Parenthood and the Biden administration on Title X, McGill Johnson described "very robust, and I would say, exciting conversations not just about the domestic gag rule but also thinking about how more investments can go into access to family planning and contraception, how to be more inclusive, how we can use policy to also engage men, to engage other populations."

"We need to improve and modernize Title X," McGill Johnson said, later adding, "making sure that it meaningfully reflects the sexual and reproductive health care needs of all patients."

Lawmakers, pointing to data that show the policies result in more unsafe abortions, more unwanted pregnancies, more maternal deaths and have a disproportionate impact on Black and brown women, say they are seizing the moment as well.

Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, chair of the House Appropriations Committee that oversees Title X funding, told CNN in an interview Wednesday that while she had not been in contact with the Biden administration on Title X, she's focused on returning the program to its prior form.

"What I'm committed to in Appropriations, because we have jurisdiction over Title X funding, is to work with the administration and the providers, those who were forced out of the program, to make sure that the funding is there for them to get back in," she said. "Or work in that legislative direction, and to ensure there are safeguards to make sure that we can't have what the Trump administration tried to do here."

When asked if she would seek to increase funding in this legislative session, DeLauro replied, "I'm going to take a look at what we have by way of an allocation and so forth and, if I can, I will work to increase the funding."

Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire is set to re-introduce on Thursday the Global HER Act, which would permanently repeal the Mexico City Policy. She said it was "shameful" that the Trump administration not only implemented it, but expanded it.

"I'm so relieved that President Biden has made rescinding this policy an early priority," Shaheen told CNN. "The data doesn't lie. We know how detrimental this policy has been -- how it likely contributed to increased maternal deaths, unsafe abortions and compromised access to critical care. Rescinding this rule is the start but it is not enough -- there needs to be a permanent fix."

And in the House, Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois and others will reintroduce a bill to repeal the Helms Amendment. Also in their sights: the Hyde Amendment.

Access to reproductive health care and abortion, if needed, "is central to women's independence, success and bodily autonomy," Schakowsky told CNN. "If you cannot control reproduction for yourself, then you can never really plan your life."

And some lawmakers, along with reproductive rights groups, are pushing Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to go further. The Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus is asking Biden to take immediate action on multiple fronts beyond repealing the Mexico City policy and reconsidering the Title X rule, including expanding US foreign assistance support for abortion care, rescinding an executive order that restricts abortion access under the Affordable Care Act, and directing the Health and Human Services Secretary to lift the Food and Drug Administration decision that an over-the-counter medication to safely end early pregnancy cannot be mailed during the pandemic.

Over 90 advocacy groups, including NFPRHA and Planned Parenthood, have presented the Biden administration with a "Blueprint for Sexual and Reproductive Health, Rights and Justice" calling for such actions and others, such as rescinding the Hyde Amendment.

Marcela Howell, president of In Our Own Voice: National Black Women's Reproductive Justice Agenda, which is one of the groups, told reporters Wednesday that lawmakers freely discussing abortion access contributed to their goals.

"The reality is that all of us have been fighting stigma around abortion, and if we cannot get the administration and members of Congress to actually use the word abortion care, then that furthers the stigma," she said. "And we believe that it is a safe and legal procedure that women have accessed at various points in their lives and the stigma around it needs to be eliminated."

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Biden signs memorandum reversing Trump abortion access restrictions - WDJT