(Press-News.org) Toronto -- Math continues to be a powerful force against COVID-19.
Its latest contribution is a sophisticated algorithm, using municipal wastewater systems, for determining key locations in the detection and tracing of COVID-19 back to its human source, which may be a newly infected person or a hot spot of infected people. Timing is key, say the researchers who created the algorithm, especially when COVID-19 is getting better at transmitting itself, thanks to emerging variants.
"Being quick is what we want because in the meantime, a newly-infected person can infect others," said Oded Berman, a professor of operations management and statistics at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management.
This latest research builds on previous work Prof. Berman did with co-investigators Richard Larson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Mehdi Nourinejad of York University. The trio initially developed two algorithms for identifying choice locations in a sewer system for manual COVID-19 testing and subsequent tracing back to the source. Sewers are a rich environment for detecting presence of the disease upstream because genetic remnants of its virus are shed in the stool of infected people up to a week before they may even know they are sick.
The investigators' new research refines and optimizes that initial work by more accurately modelling a typical municipal sewer system's treelike network of one-way pipes and manholes, and by speeding up the detection/tracing process through automatic sensors installed in specific manholes, chosen according to an easier-to-use algorithm.
Under this scenario, a sensor sends out an alert any time COVID-19 is detected. Manual testing is then done at a few manholes further upstream, also chosen according to the algorithm, until the final source is located, be that a small group of homes or a "hotspot" neighbourhood. Residents in that much smaller area can then be contacted for further testing and isolation as needed, limiting potential new outbreaks.
Applying this approach to a wastewater system with 2,000 manholes shows that only seven sensors would have to be installed along the network to detect and trace COVID-19 back to its origin within one day.
"The sensors allow us to manually sample a smaller number of manholes than in our earlier work and to detect the infection much sooner," said Prof. Berman.
Although such sensors are not yet available, such technology is under development. An accurate and rapid on-site test for COVID-19 and field testing for finetuning the system will also be needed.
The results hold promise not only for detecting COVID-19 but other viruses too, such as noroviruses which are highly infectious and cause vomiting and diarrhea. There is also potential for the work to be used in surveillance for crystal meth labs and illegal bomb production, because of the chemical by-products that end up in wastewater.
Prof. Berman typically works on problems of the future, such as the introduction of autonomous cars, making his wastewater research the first time that he has applied his expertise to an urgent global issue.
"It's exciting to work on something that is very much needed and might have the potential to help people soon," he said. "It's very different from what I've done before."
INFORMATION:
The study was recently published in PLOS ONE.
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ROCHESTER, Minn. -- A study by researchers at Mayo Clinic Cancer Center has found that cancer patients diagnosed with COVID-19 who received care at home via remote patient monitoring were significantly less likely to require hospitalization for their illness, compared to cancer patients with COVID-19 who did not participate in the program. Results of the study were presented Friday, June 4, at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting and published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
"For our study, we evaluated 224 Mayo Clinic patients with cancer who were found to have COVID-19 through standardized screening prior to receiving cancer treatment, or due to symptoms or close exposure," says Tufia Haddad, ...
While previous research early in the pandemic suggested that the vitamin D cuts the risk of contracting COVID-19, a new study from McGill University finds there is no genetic evidence that the vitamin works as a protective measure against the coronavirus.
"Vitamin D supplementation as a public health measure to improve outcomes is not supported by this study. Most importantly, our results suggest that investment in other therapeutic or preventative avenues should be prioritized for COVID-19 randomized clinical trials," say the authors.
To assess the relationship between vitamin D levels and COVID-19 ...
Effector and killer T cells are types of immune cells. Their job is to attack pathogens and cancers. These cells can also go after normal cells causing autoimmune diseases. But, if harnessed properly, they can destroy cancer cells that resist treatment.
Scientists at St. Jude wanted to understand how these T cells are controlled. They looked at enhancers, sequences of DNA that when bound to certain proteins determine how genes are turned on or off.
The scientists found that enhancers of a gene named Foxp3 work as a pair to keep effector and killer T cells in check. The enhancers working together is essential.
"These ...
A research group from Kobe University has demonstrated that the heat generated by the impact of a small astronomical body could enable aqueous alteration (*1) and organic solid formation to occur on the surface of an asteroid. They achieved this by first conducting high-velocity impact cratering experiments using an asteroid-like target material and measuring the post-impact heat distribution around the resulting crater. From these results, they then established a rule-of-thumb for maximum temperature and the duration of the heating, and developed a heat ...
The melodic and diverse songs of birds frequently inspire pop songs and poems, and have been for centuries, all the way back to Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" or "The Nightingale" by H.C. Andersen.
Despite our fascination with birdsong, we are only beginning to figure out how this complicated behavior is being produced and which extraordinary specializations enabled songbirds to develop the diverse sound scape we can listen to every morning.
Songbirds produce their beautiful songs using a special vocal organ unique to birds, the syrinx. It is surrounded by muscles that contract with superfast speed, two orders of magnitude faster than e.g. human leg muscles.
"We found that songbirds have incredible fine control of their song, including frequency ...
Philadelphia, June 4, 2021--ADHD medications may lower suicide risk in children with hyperactivity, oppositional defiance and other behavioral disorders, according to new research from the Lifespan Brain Institute (LiBI) of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the University of Pennsylvania. The findings, published today in JAMA Network Open, address a significant knowledge gap in childhood suicide risk and could inform suicide prevention strategies at a time when suicide among children is on the rise.
"This study is an important step in the much-needed effort of childhood suicide prevention, ...
What The Study Did: This survey study in California assesses what the public knows about extreme risk protection orders and if people are willing to use them to prevent firearm-related harm, both in general and when a family member is at risk, and if not, why not. The orders temporarily suspend firearm and ammunition access by individuals a judge has deemed to be at substantial risk of harming themselves or others.
Authors: Nicole Kravitz-Wirtz, Ph.D., M.P.H., of the University of California Davis School of Medicine in Sacramento, is the corresponding author.
To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/
(doi:10.1001/jamahealthforum.2021.0975)
Editor's Note: The article includes funding/support disclosures. Please ...
(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- Extreme risk protection orders, also known as END ...
The cost of offsetting corporate carbon emissions needs to increase ten-fold to drive meaningful climate action, says a landmark report by Trove Research and UCL.
Current prices of carbon offsets are unsustainably low and need to increase significantly to encourage greater investment in new projects that remove carbon from the atmosphere.
If prices stay low companies could be accused of greenwashing their emissions, as real emissions reduction and carbon removals are more costly than today's prices.
Prices of carbon credits used by companies to offset their emissions are currently low, due to an excess of supply built up over several years, together with issues over whether payments for credits really result in additional reductions ...
Details:
Peripersonal space (PPS) is defined as the space near the body within which we can reach external objects and be reached by others. It has the special function of multisensory facilitation. A research team at Toyohashi University of Technology, in collaboration with researchers at Keio University and the University of Tokyo, investigated PPS representation in the front, rear, left, and right directions by audio-tactile multisensory integration using tactile detection with task-irrelevant approaching and receding sounds. They found that the tactile stimulus was detected faster near the body space than far from it when sound approached from any direction, but not when it receded. Thus, peripersonal representations exist with approaching sound, irrespective ...
