Nature Briefing

Friday 12 June 2020

Hello Nature readers, Today we learn that the Universe’s coolest lab has created bizarre quantum matter in space, explore how healthy blood vessels might protect children from serious effects of COVID-19 and go on the hunt for the microbial ‘dark matter’ that has never been cultured in the lab.

The International Space Station is home to the Cold Atom Lab — one of the coldest places in the known Universe. (NASA)

Quantum matter in the coolest place in space Physicists have made a Bose–Einstein condensate on the International Space Station. (Bose–Einstein condensates form when clouds of atoms are chilled to just above absolute zero and they coalesce into a single macroscopic quantum object.) The results are a proof-of-principle showing that the Cold Atom Lab can successfully exploit the microgravity of space in ways that should allow scientists to create phenomena that would be impossible on Earth. The US$100-million facility is on track to become the coldest place in the known Universe. Nature | 4 min read Go deeper with the expert view in the Nature News & Views article. Reference: Nature paper

Hear more about the the Cold Atom Lab, plus other top stories, in the Nature Podcast. (22 min listen)

Hong Kong security law concerns academics Last month, China’s central government approved plans to enact a national security law in Hong Kong. The decision follows a year of protests in the city, which lawmakers say the new law is going to stop. The law hasn’t been written yet, but some academics are concerned that it will lead to government interference in research, restrict international collaborations and increase self-censorship. Others think research will be unaffected. Nature | 5 min

Microsoft joins face-recognition moratorium Following similar announcements by IBM and Amazon, Microsoft has said that it will not sell facial-recognition technology to police departments in the United States until the technology is regulated at national level. The company has not said whether it would sell the technology to federal agencies or to law-enforcement agencies in other countries. “When even the makers of face recognition refuse to sell this surveillance technology because it is so dangerous, lawmakers can no longer deny the threats to our rights and liberties,” says technology and civil liberties lawyer Matt Cagle. Washington Post | 4 min read

COVID-19 coronavirus update Children account for fewer than 2% of confirmed COVID-19 infections in the United States. (Jaime Reina/AFP/Getty) Healthy arteries could protect kids Researchers have proposed a new theory for why children avoid the worst complications of the new coronavirus, such as excessive blood clotting that leads to heart attacks and stroke. Such complications are linked to malfunction in the cells that line blood vessels, called the endothelium. Scientists have found that SARS-CoV-2 can infect endothelial cells. They posit that because endothelial cells deteriorate with age, children’s vessels might be able to cope with a viral attack better than many adults’ can. Nature | 4 min AI tools to tame the literature Developers hope that tools for processing natural language will help biomedical researchers and clinicians to find the COVID-19 papers that they need. Nature | 7 min read

Features & opinion

The search for microbial dark matter The vast majority of microbes have still never been cultured in the lab. This microbial ‘dark matter’ could hold useful enzymes, new antimicrobials and other therapeutics. Researchers are developing technologies to find and grow microbes that have previously been unculturable. Nature | 9 min read

Scientists tackle motion sickness Motion sickness has been affecting humans since time immemorial — and driverless cars, megaskyscrapers and virtual reality have introduced yet more ways to make our vestibular systems miserable. Last year, researchers held the first international conference on motion sickness in Iceland — a country that knows a thing or two about the perils of life at sea. Icelandic journalist Egill Bjarnason explores the latest research into motion sickness and its influence on the culture and well-being of his home nation. Hakai | 15 min read

Where I work

In this photograph, taken at Pomberuk, or Hume Reserve, on the River Murray, archaeologist Christopher Wilson sits on what had been the base of a rainwater tank built by the local Aboriginal people between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. The Ngarrindjeri community is working with the local council to conserve the area, and is regrowing native plants, such as the umbrella bush (Acacia ligulata) seen in the background, to prevent erosion. “As a proud member of the Aboriginal Ngarrindjeri, Kaurna and Latje Latje Nations… this site inspires me because my people have occupied this landscape for tens of thousands of years,” says Wilson. “As I go through the layers of excavation, I’m also pulling back the layers of my history, my culture and my identity.” (Nature | 2 min read) (Iain Bond for Nature)

Quote of the day “As ‘Black-ademics,’ we’re often the only one. So when these racist acts happen, whether it’s covert or overt, it’s very easy to think, ‘Gosh, I must have done something wrong.’ But when you have this, when you share your experience, you’re able to see that other people have gone through the exact same things.” Communications researcher Shardé Davis spoke to Nature about the Twitter hashtag #BlackInTheIvory, which she co-created with Joy Melody Woods. (Nature | 6 min read)

This week, our playful penguin Leif Penguinson is hiding among the limestone ‘tufa towers’ that rise above the surface of Mono Lake in California. Can you spot the penguin? The answer will be in Monday’s e-mail, all thanks to Briefing photo editor and penguin wrangler Tom Houghton. I won’t be working on Monday, but not to worry! I’ll be back on Tuesday and I leave you in the safe hands of the Nature News team. Flora Graham, senior editor, Nature Briefing With contributions by Nicky Phillips and Davide Castelvecchi

Coronavirus research highlights: 1-minute reads

Many viral imports seeded the UK outbreak
The new coronavirus has jumped into the United Kingdom more than 1,300 times — mostly from France and Spain. Researchers analysed nearly 30,000 SARS-CoV-2 genomes to track the virus’s spread. People coming from China accounted for less than 0.1% of introductions.
Reference: Virological preprint (not yet peer reviewed)

Virus conscripts a pair of human proteins to invade cells
Researchers have found a second protein that SARS-CoV-2 uses to enter human cells. The SARS-CoV-2 protein called Spike has been known to attach to a human protein called ACE2, which allows the virus to enter cells. Two teams of researchers have now found that the human protein neuropilin-1 aids viral invasion. This finding could potentially offer a new target for vaccines and drugs.
Reference: bioRxiv preprint (not yet peer reviewed)

People who feel fine can unwittingly spread the virus
A massive coronavirus-testing campaign in Vietnam has found evidence that infected people who never show any symptoms can pass on the virus. Early in the global COVID-19 outbreak, Vietnam began to repeatedly test people at high risk of infection. Of roughly 14,000 people tested between mid-March and early April, 49 were infected, 30 of them were monitored and 13 developed symptoms. Researchers say that it’s “highly likely” that two of the asymptomatic participants were the source of infection for at least two other people.
Reference: Clinical Infectious Diseases paper

Get more of Nature’s continuously updated selection of the must-read papers and preprints on COVID-19.

Coronavirus vaccine: where we are now

There are more than 135 vaccines in development against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Only one, from pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, is starting phase III clinical trials that will test whether it actually works. A pleasantly visual vaccine tracker from The New York Times enumerates the status of all the vaccines that have reached trials in humans, along with a selection of promising vaccines that are being tested in cells or animals.

The New York Times | 6 min read

Scientists have grown structures made of stem cells that mimic a 21-day-old embryo. (Naomi Moris)

Lab-grown cells mimic crucial moment Gastruloids, embryo-like structures created from stem cells, are the first to form a 3D assembly that lays out how the body will take shape. The gastruloids developed rudimentary components of a heart and nervous system, but lack the components to form a brain, as well as cell types that would make them capable of becoming a viable fetus. The artificial structures avoid ethical concerns about doing research on human embryos. They could shed light on the causes of pregnancy loss and early developmental disorders, such as congenital heart conditions and spina bifida. Nature | 4 min read Reference: Nature paper

40% of all hospitalized COVID-19 patients have the same pattern of indirect cardio damage

Almost all cases show damage in the right ventricle

A unique pattern of damage: Israeli team shows how coronavirus harms the heart

Tel Aviv doctors find 40% of all hospitalized COVID-19 patients have the same pattern of indirect cardio damage; discovery should help understand the disease better

By Nathan Jeffay 9 June 2020, 11:07 pm 3

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Doctors at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center treat a patient in the coronavirus unit. May 4, 2020. (Yossi Aloni/Flash90)

With confusion around the world regarding how COVID-19 harms the heart, an Israeli cardiologist says he has pieced together the clearest picture to date.
The disease causes a unique pattern of damage on the right side of the heart, which occurs in two out of every five hospitalized patients, according to a team led by Dr. Yishay Szekely of the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center.

“Nobody knew what actually happened to the heart, and we’re now saying that 40 percent of hospitalized patients suffer from dysfunction on the right side, and that it’s rarely harming the left,” Szekely told The Times of Israel.

“We’ve proved what actually happens in the heart, and this is the first step toward understanding the disease better in relation to the heart, and more effectively guiding future treatment,” he added. “I believe that this is a big step.”

Dr. Yishay Szekely, cardiologist at Tel Aviv’s Sourasky Medical Center (courtesy of Yishay Szekely)

Szekely recently published his research in the American Heart Association journal Circulation, and says that the 100-patient study is the world’s first to systematically use cardiac imaging to show the impact of coronavirus on the heart, rather than relying on laboratory tests alone.
COVID-19 is thought to manifest itself mostly as a respiratory illness, but is known to commonly cause heart damage. Szekley said that he instituted heart imaging for many of his hospital’s coronavirus patients in order to get some clarity — and has been surprised by what he saw.
He expected to witness damage to the left side of the heart, based on early reports from China and Europe, but instead found that almost all cases of heart damage are in the right ventricle.
When viruses cause direct damage to the heart, they mostly affect the left side, said Szekley. He added that there may also be harm to the right side, but he has never encountered a virus that consistently caused damage to the right side alone.

But as this seemed to be the case with COVID-19 based on his study, he said, there were only two ways of interpreting the results. One was to conclude that coronavirus has a different effect on the heart than other viruses — Szekely dismissed this as highly unlikely. The other possibility was to conclude that the heart isn’t reacting directly to the virus, but rather to strain in the lungs.

This made sense, Szekely said, given that the right side of the heart is tasked with pumping blood to the lungs. “Elevated pressure in the lungs causes the right side of the heart to work harder,” he said. “Think of a pump that needs to work harder because of more resistance.”

This finding should discourage researchers from investing in directly addressing the impact of coronavirus on the heart, and encourage them to consolidate their efforts on finding ways of improving patient health in the lungs, Szekely said.

He has several theories as to why the disease is damaging the right side of the heart, some related to the lungs’ reaction to the virus, and one hypothesis that suggests that treatment could actually be agitating the lungs.

A doctor checks a medical ventilator control panel at the Samson Assuta Ashdod University Hospital, on March 16, 2020 (Jack Guez/AFP)

“It may be that if you ventilate patients at high pressures you cause damage, so it could be caused by the treatment and not by the disease,” he said. If true, this would vindicate some doctors who have claimed that ventilation can sometimes be harmful.
Szekely thinks the main importance of his work is that insights into how the disease affects the heart will help researchers, doctors and drug companies to develop treatments. But he said that even before such breakthroughs, his findings can help doctors with patient care.
Based on the research and on his current hypotheses for explaining his findings, Szekely believes doctors may want to start paying close attention to the right side of the heart throughout hospitalization.

“The research can already start to help guide treatment, for example [by] prompting use of blood thinners in order to allow the right ventricle to work against lower pressure, and adjusting ventilation parameters based to a greater degree on the state of the patient’s heart,” he said.

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A Civics Lesson From the Pandemic

As America has struggled to respond to Covid-19, the virus has reminded everyone of how disorganized the country’s patchwork, federalized system of government can be. (As Fareed has written, the “challenge of creating a national strategy” to confront the virus in the US “is complicated by the reality that the true power in public health lies with 2,684 state, local and tribal systems, each jealously guarding its independence.”) But rather than any problem with the system, Harvard political theorist Danielle Allen argues in a new Foreign Affairs essay, Covid-19 has exposed a lack of civic competence in America’s citizenry.

President Trump has failed to lead everyone in the right direction, Allen argues, but American citizens haven’t handled it well, either. When it came time to make complicated decisions about lockdown policies—to weigh the advice of health experts against that of economists on a localized, case-by-case basis—Americans did not congeal around the common purpose of solving the problem. A civic shortfall revealed itself well before the pandemic, after Trump’s election in 2016, Allen argues: “What astonished me was how few people knew where to start,” Allen writes writes of those disgruntled over Trump’s win. “They did not know how to call a meeting, how to engage their fellow Americans in a conversation about diagnosing their circumstances and finding some sort of shared purpose. All that constitutional democracy is, is a set of institutions that give people the chance to do these things and, if they do them well, to shape their communities. Yet Americans no longer understood how to use the machinery sitting all around them.” The civic deficit has been on display again during the pandemic, she writes.

So while the federal government may have failed a leadership test, Allen argues, Covid-19 has revealed a need for better civic awareness. “The federal government spends $54 per student per year on the STEM fields,” Allen notes, lamenting a decline in civics education in American high schools. “The figure for civics education: five cents.” It’s not America’s system of government that’s the problem, Allen argues; it’s that we’ve forgotten how to use it.

South Asia: The Next Region to Be Hit?

“Over the past week Bangladesh, India and Pakistan have largely lifted nationwide lockdowns intended to curb the spread of covid-19,” The Economist writes. “The freeing of 1.7bn people—more than a fifth of humanity—from varied restrictions will bring relief to the region’s battered economies.” But along with that lifting has come a rise in cases, the magazine writes, predicting South Asia could be the next world region to be hit hard by the virus.

Troublingly, health systems are coming under strain: “Three medical interns at another hospital in the centre of Mumbai recently released a video claiming that they had been left for hours in sole charge of 35 seriously ill covid-19 patients, with no doctors, nursing or cleaning staff to help,” the magazine writes. “Doctors in Pakistan say the government’s claim that there are adequate hospital beds is nonsense.”

In India, the magazine writes, one can partly blame the policies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, as a sudden lockdown led migrant workers to rush home—just the kind of travel one wants to avoid encouraging during the pandemic. “The authorities first tried to block the movement, bottling migrants in urban slums with the highest infection rates, and then allowed perhaps 20m workers to leave, spreading the disease across the country,” the magazine writes. As Amy Kazmin wrote late last month for the Financial Times, India swiftly implemented the world’s largest lockdown—only to completely reverse it. As government data show, cases are now rising fast.

Former WHO Chief Says Europe Acted Too Slowly

Former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland headed the World Health Organization as its director-general from 1998 to 2003, a stretch that included the SARS epidemic—and China’s lack of transparency surrounding it. In an interview with Der Spiegel this week, Brundtland defended current WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’s much-criticized approach to China amid Covid-19 ("his intention could have been to get China to cooperate more closely”) and questioned whether the US will really exit the WHO over it, as President Trump has promised: “the U.S. President is not omnipotent—there is still Congress in Washington, after all,” Brundtland said. “Besides, there will be an election in half a year.”

As for Europe’s handling of the pandemic, Brundtland said she “was a little surprised that the reactions were so slow all over Europe.” Information about Covid-19 may have developed slowly, but there were early signs that it was being transmitted between humans. “Europe made mistakes, too. Apparently, many of the people responsible were very optimistic about the efficiency of their healthcare system. And they obviously underestimated how contagious the new coronavirus is.”

And a future pandemic could be even worse than this one, Brundtland warned, arguing that air travel, in particular, needs new policies to keep deadly viruses from spreading around the world so quickly.

How Epidemiologists Are Feeling About All This

When do you imagine you’ll feel safe attending a dinner party? Bringing in mail without precautions? Getting a haircut? Traveling by airplane? The New York Times asked these—the questions of our era—of 511 epidemiologists to gauge how they’re personally approaching Covid-19 and the risk-avoidance lifestyle.

The results were somewhat encouraging: 64% said they’d feel fine bringing in mail without precautions this summer; 60% would see a doctor for a nonurgent appointment before fall. Pluralities said it wouldn’t be until later in the next year, three to 12 months from now, that they’d feel safe doing things like eating in a restaurant, attending a dinner party, sending their kids to school, or going to the gym. Pluralities said they’d wait a year or more to attend a wedding or funeral, hug or shake hands when greeting a friend, or attend a religious service. Attending a sporting event, concert, or play ranked last among things they’d feel safe doing, with 64% saying they wouldn’t for a year or more.

For epidemiologists, as for the rest of us, it’s about tradeoffs between Covid-19 and other kinds of well-being, like mental health and children’s development at school, camp, or day-care, the Times’ Margot Sanger-Katz, Claire Cain Miller, and Quoctrung Bui note. Recent PhD Melissa Sharp “said she’d consider dating after a period of confinement,” they write. “‘I’m young and single, and a gal can only last so long in the modern world,’ she said. For Robert A. Smith of the American Cancer Society, a haircut might be worth the risk: ‘It really is a trade-off between risky behavior and seeing yourself in the mirror with a mullet.’”

CORONAVIRUS BRIEFING

The last seven days may not have been as upsetting and infuriating as the seven before them but, let’s be honest, that’s an imposingly high bar to clear. As protests around the death of George Floyd and other instances of police brutality continue in the United States and abroad, coronavirus remains the background noise in every conversation. Please don’t let your guard down too far. This week’s Haymarket Media Coronavirus Briefing is 1,059 words and will take you six minutes to read.

The news

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More and more states have thrown themselves open for haircuts and spray tans and medium-distance appetizers, which should provide a degree of relief for the millions of businesses gutted by the shutdowns of the last few months. Unfortunately, that relief comes with a price.

“America Is Giving Up on the Pandemic,” The Atlantic reports, even as infection and hospitalization rates are nudging upward in several pockets of the country. The New York Times asked 511 epidemiologists how long they expect it will be before they work in a shared office, attend a wedding or funeral, and more. Spoiler: Pretty long. Potentially misleading headline notwithstanding, this story calls into doubt the working theory that asymptomatic individuals have been driving the spread of coronavirus. Should it prove inaccurate – and the writers make it clear more study and data are needed – the new information could prompt major changes in the way we manage the pandemic going forward. The World Health Organization already walked back its statement somewhat. A not-yet-peer-reviewed study of an outdoor festival in Germany that triggered a super-spread of COVID-19 found a 2.5x increase in infection rate among attendees. The study was distributed via medRxiv, a server for medical and clinical preprints.

The Takeaway:

To quote a guy who knew his way around an aphorism: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” We’re getting ahead of ourselves and we know it.

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The workplace

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Many of our peers say they’ve gotten used to the way we’re currently working – the Zoom calls, the child/pet/non-cute uninvited guest invasions and the leisurewear. But with so much of the workplace environment relegated to virtual purgatory, it’s easy to forget about the many, many things that have to happen for companies to function effectively. Some of those things are happening; many are not.

MM&M editor in chief Steve Madden writes how, in the realm of medical marketing, talent and execution have helped agencies overcome many of the logistical challenges created by the coronavirus pandemic. Those agencies, in turn, have stepped up their philanthropic and community efforts during the crisis. People Management’s Katie Fudakowski and Maria Strauss explore the challenges associated with workplace investigations in the era of COVID-19. One of the biggest potential pitfalls: delays, which can be detrimental to employees and employers alike. Amid the coronavirus crisis, employment in nursing homes and other residential care settings continues to fall, Amy Novotney from McKnight’s Senior Living reports. The overall size of the workforce has declined 4.7% since February, with 37,000 more jobs lost during May. Companies charged with the maintenance and nurturing of office plants while most people work from home have navigated a range of struggles, Horticulture Week’s Matthew Appleby reports. Worried about flying for work-related purposes – or any other purpose, really – sometime soon? You’re not alone, according to research from Civic Science.

The Takeaway:

In conversations about the state of the workplace, “normal” has entered the realm of abstract concept.

The media

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Marketers and publishers seem genuine in wanting to wrestle with the myriad challenges confronting us all. Let the uncomfortable conversations continue.

MM&M’s Alison Kanski analyzes the results of CMI/Compas’ most recent social listening report, which found an increasing prevalence of bots and anti-vaccine sentiment in social chatter around COVID-19. In PRWeek, Kim Davis assesses what “the new normal” could mean for communicators and marketers. The Pew Media Center reports that African American adults follow coronavirus-related news topics more closely than do white and Hispanic adults and discuss the pandemic more frequently with other adults. Earlier, Pew reported that older Americans were more closely following COVID-19 news than younger ones. Amanda Richman, U.S. CEO of WPP media agency Wavemaker, spoke with Campaign US’ Lindsay Stein about advertising in the era of disease and unrest. Campaign Asia’s Jessica Goodfellow recaps WPP CEO Mark Read’s virtual presentation for Advertising Week JAPAC, during which he stressed that coronavirus is “not an existential challenge” for the company.

The Takeaway:

Marketers and advertisers don’t have more or better answers than the rest of us, and that’s okay. Be suspicious of anyone who tells you otherwise.

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The science

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With every week comes a bit more knowledge and understanding. There’s optimism around more than one of the potential vaccine candidates. A few of the expected infection super-spreaders – looking at you, Lake of the Ozarks merrymakers – haven’t materialized. Let’s quit while we’re ahead.

COVID-19 recovery post-ventilation isn’t the linear experience many patients expect, as The Washington Post details. With the prospect of a second wave of COVID-19 infection looming, the American Medical Directors Association has issued ecommendations for reducing spread among long-term care facility residents and staff, McKnight’s Long-Term Care News’ Liza Berger reports. They include enhanced testing and contact tracing for staff, twice-daily resident screenings and the creation of COVID-specific units. Once more, with feeling: the use of hydroxychloroquine does not appear to prevent COVID-19 after moderate- to high-risk exposure, per the results of a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine and analyzed by MPR. According to a review published in Heart Rhythm, coronavirus-afflicted African Americans may be at greater risk for serious cardiac problems owing to genetic susceptibility and environmental factors, Cardiology Advisor’s Brandon May reports. Dr. Anthony Fauci told virtual attendees of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization conference that COVID-19 was his “worst nightmare” and that our understanding of the virus remains in its infancy.

The Takeaway:

Yeah, there’s still more discouraging news on the medical/scientific front than encouraging news. Strike that intro paragraph, will you?

…and some songs

Know Your Rights, The Clash You’re With Stupid Now, Aimee Mann This Perfect World, Freedy Johnston

That’s it for this week’s edition of Haymarket Media’s Coronavirus Briefing. May you and yours continue to be safe and well. See you on the other side of the weekend.