The vaquita, an icon of the Gulf of California, is swiftly dying out. But its strange DNA could hold valuable lessons for other threatened species.
from Wired https://ift.tt/2VtBSIS
via
Thursday, April 16, 2020
Wednesday, April 15, 2020
Model quantifies the impact of quarantine measures on Covid-19’s spread
The research described in this article has been published on a preprint server but has not yet been peer-reviewed by scientific or medical experts.
Every day for the past few weeks, charts and graphs plotting the projected apex of Covid-19 infections have been splashed across newspapers and cable news. Many of these models have been built using data from studies on previous outbreaks like SARS or MERS. Now, a team of engineers at MIT has developed a model that uses data from the Covid-19 pandemic in conjunction with a neural network to determine the efficacy of quarantine measures and better predict the spread of the virus.
“Our model is the first which uses data from the coronavirus itself and integrates two fields: machine learning and standard epidemiology,” explains Raj Dandekar, a PhD candidate studying civil and environmental engineering. Together with George Barbastathis, professor of mechanical engineering, Dandekar has spent the past few months developing the model as part of the final project in class 2.168 (Learning Machines).
Most models used to predict the spread of a disease follow what is known as the SEIR model, which groups people into “susceptible,” “exposed,” “infected,” and “recovered.” Dandekar and Barbastathis enhanced the SEIR model by training a neural network to capture the number of infected individuals who are under quarantine, and therefore no longer spreading the infection to others.
The model finds that in places like South Korea, where there was immediate government intervention in implementing strong quarantine measures, the virus spread plateaued more quickly. In places that were slower to implement government interventions, like Italy and the United States, the “effective reproduction number” of Covid-19 remains greater than one, meaning the virus has continued to spread exponentially.
The machine learning algorithm shows that with the current quarantine measures in place, the plateau for both Italy and the United States will arrive somewhere between April 15-20. This prediction is similar to other projections like that of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
“Our model shows that quarantine restrictions are successful in getting the effective reproduction number from larger than one to smaller than one,” says Barbastathis. “That corresponds to the point where we can flatten the curve and start seeing fewer infections.”
Quantifying the impact of quarantine
In early February, as news of the virus’ troubling infection rate started dominating headlines, Barbastathis proposed a project to students in class 2.168. At the end of each semester, students in the class are tasked with developing a physical model for a problem in the real world and developing a machine learning algorithm to address it. He proposed that a team of students work on mapping the spread of what was then simply known as “the coronavirus.”
“Students jumped at the opportunity to work on the coronavirus, immediately wanting to tackle a topical problem in typical MIT fashion,” adds Barbastathis.
One of those students was Dandekar. “The project really interested me because I got to apply this new field of scientific machine learning to a very pressing problem,” he says.
As Covid-19 started to spread across the globe, the scope of the project expanded. What had originally started as a project looking just at spread within Wuhan, China grew to also include the spread in Italy, South Korea, and the United States.
The duo started modeling the spread of the virus in each of these four regions after the 500th case was recorded. That milestone marked a clear delineation in how different governments implemented quarantine orders.
Armed with precise data from each of these countries, the research team took the standard SEIR model and augmented it with a neural network that learns how infected individuals under quarantine impact the rate of infection. They trained the neural network through 500 iterations so it could then teach itself how to predict patterns in the infection spread.
Using this model, the research team was able to draw a direct correlation between quarantine measures and a reduction in the effective reproduction number of the virus.
“The neural network is learning what we are calling the ‘quarantine control strength function,’” explains Dandekar. In South Korea, where strong measures were implemented quickly, the quarantine control strength function has been effective in reducing the number of new infections. In the United States, where quarantine measures have been slowly rolled out since mid-March, it has been more difficult to stop the spread of the virus.
Predicting the “plateau”
As the number of cases in a particular country decreases, the forecasting model transitions from an exponential regime to a linear one. Italy began entering this linear regime in early April, with the U.S. not far behind it.
The machine learning algorithm Dandekar and Barbastathis have developed predicted that the United States will start to shift from an exponential regime to a linear regime in the first week of April, with a stagnation in the infected case count likely between April 15 and April 20. It also suggests that the infection count will reach 600,000 in the United States before the rate of infection starts to stagnate.
“This is a really crucial moment of time. If we relax quarantine measures, it could lead to disaster,” says Barbastathis.
According to Barbastathis, one only has to look to Singapore to see the dangers that could stem from relaxing quarantine measures too quickly. While the team didn’t study Singapore’s Covid-19 cases in their research, the second wave of infection this country is currently experiencing reflects their model’s finding about the correlation between quarantine measures and infection rate.
“If the U.S. were to follow the same policy of relaxing quarantine measures too soon, we have predicted that the consequences would be far more catastrophic,” Barbastathis adds.
The team plans to share the model with other researchers in the hopes that it can help inform Covid-19 quarantine strategies that can successfully slow the rate of infection.
from MIT News https://ift.tt/2VBfld6
via
Cowboys’ Dak Prescott denies hosting 30 people during house party
Last week, there was a report Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott violated stay-at-home guidelines by throwing a party at his home. Now a frustrated Prescott has issued a statement clarifying what took place at the gathering.
According to ESPN, after it was reported approximately 30 people were gathered at the quarterback’s house in Prosper, Texas, on Friday, Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones said the organization spoke to Prescott and Cowboy’s running back Ezekiel Elliott about their involvement.
READ MORE: NFL Star Malcolm Jenkins warns Black community not to depend on government for COVID-19 help
Prescott and Elliott came under scrutiny after posting videos on social media working out with former teammate Dez Bryant.
Two weeks before the latest incident, Prescott was shown arm-in-arm in a picture with Bryant and other players following a workout, leading to a growing perception that the athletes weren’t following social distancing mandates.
“I think they’re certainly aware now of how sensitive these situations are,” Jones said Tuesday to Dallas station 105.3. “I don’t think you’ll be seeing that anymore. They’re certainly guys we have the utmost respect for, and I certainly know they understand the sensitivity of the situation we’re in today. It’s certainly very serious and something that we know and certainly know they understand.”
READ MORE:
Ezekiel Elliott and Dak Prescott are partying like it's NOT 2020 in the middle of a pandemic — hanging together for a celebration that appears to violate the Texas "safer-at-home" order. https://t.co/rzw1jiyvZm
— TMZ Sports (@TMZ_Sports) April 11, 2020
But later that same day, Prescott claimed there were less than 10 people at the party.
“I understand and accept that there are additional responsibilities and media scrutiny that come with being an NFL quarterback, but it is very frustrating and disappointing when people provide completely inaccurate information from anonymous sources, especially now,” read the statement.
“To set the record straight — I know that we all need to do our best to socially distance and like everyone else, I am continuing to adjust to what that requires, but the truth is that I was with fewer than 10 people for a home dinner — not a party — on Friday night.
“I am very sensitive to the challenges we are all facing and making sure to support the first responders and medical personnel and everyone else putting in long hours. We are all at a time when we need to keep educating ourselves about the importance of health and isolation during this pandemic and I will continue to make sure to do my part by following the guidelines until we are approved to start returning to normal activities.”
READ MORE: Former NFL quarterback Tarvaris Jackson dies in car crash at 36
The post Cowboys’ Dak Prescott denies hosting 30 people during house party appeared first on TheGrio.
from TheGrio https://ift.tt/2V9rXZY
via
Dyjuan Tatro of ‘College Behind Bars’ talks education reform for prisons
More often than not, incarcerated persons are viewed negatively in society. Ken Burns and Lynn Novick‘s documentary, College Behind Bars, is striving to change that narrative.
“Inside the walls of a classroom, you escape the walls of a cell — and you become an individual again,” says Shawnta Montgomery, speaking at the 16th commencement of the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI), in the documentary.
College Behind Bars first premiered Nov. 25, 2019 on PBS and has since then become popular among Netflix audiences. The four-part series follows the journey of men and women incarcerated in maximum and medium-security prisons across New York state over the span of four years.
The documentary shadows them as they pursue college-accredited degrees through BPI, one of the most challenging prison education programs in the nation.
To further discuss College Behind Bars and the advocacy for college access in all prisons, theGrio spoke with Dyjuan Tatro, a formerly incarcerated student of BPI who appears in the documentary. Tatro completed his incarceration in 2017.
READ MORE: Black man, denied early release, becomes first federal inmate to die of coronavirus
“One thing I am grateful for about College Behind Bars is that it complicates the narrative we see around incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people like myself,” Tatro tells theGrio.
“The filmmakers decided to introduce you to the subjects as people before you found out what they were incarcerated for. The film brings people to acknowledge the humanity of others. We view someone who went to prison for something and we say that’s who they are.”
Before incarceration, Tatro says going to college was not a part of his solid plans for the future.
“I look back, and now realize that I had this vague sense that college was something that I should have been striving for. I had no real expectations that it was something that I would actually ever do,” Tatro says.
READ MORE: Jay Z and Yo Gotti file second lawsuit against Mississippi prisons
“I vividly remember sitting in Five Points Correctional Facility and seeing a 60-minute segment on the Bard Prison Initiative come on, and there were these amazingly-smart men who were in prison just like me, wearing green like me, embarked on this rigorous educational endeavor. At that moment I decided, that was what I was going to do.”
Founded in 1999, BPI is now present in six New York State prisons. Prospective students undergo a meticulous admissions process and then enroll full-time in the same classes that they would take on Bard College’s main campus.
BPI students receive the exact education from college professors in seminar settings and are still held to the same academic expectations as Bard students outside of prison. BPI students can pursue associate and bachelor’s degrees.
College Behind Bars was filmed in real-time as students carried out their prison terms.
“There was a lot of uncertainty and pressure going into Bard. Getting into BPI is a competitive process and you don’t know what to expect,” Tatro reveals.
“I found the course material to be really challenging, and that was intimidating but I was never scared to walk into that classroom because for the first time in my life I was learning what a professor was. But it built my intellectual capacity to a level where I could keep meeting the Bard standards.”
Tatro touched on what life was like being a student while incarcerated, amongst the rest of the prison population.
“There’s a popular joke that people, like myself, who received an education in prison had all of the time in the world and that’s why it was easy for us. The reality is its the total opposite,” he explains. “Prison is not conducive to receiving an education. Everything about prison impedes your education.
“My professors assigned me 43 books for example, and I’m only allowed to have 35 books in my cell at one time. It’s those kinds of practical tensions in getting an education that you have to grapple with, on a day to day basis,” Tatro says.
“You’re on a noisy cell block and you can’t tell everyone to be quiet or shut up, you can be in class and at any given moment sent back to your cell because of a shutdown and your professor can’t be let back in. One thing I had to do was find it in myself to focus in such a way that despite what was happening, I still received a rigorous education.”
BPI offers a string of electives for students to participate in such as the debate team, which Tatro was a part of. Since 2013, the BPI Debate Union has met weekly with the college faculty coach to prepare and practice for intercollegiate debate competitions with colleges and universities including West Point, Harvard, Brown, The University of Vermont, and the historically Black Morehouse College.
READ MORE: Rep. Ayanna Pressley’s husband testified to Congress on prison re-entry reform
“It was such a great moment for us as debaters; as students; as ambassadors of the power of college in prison,” Tatro says. “That win against Harvard was so profound and it went viral. Sitting in prison and seeing the media pick up the story and getting letters and calls from friends, it inspired so many people. It also moved the general public to think differently about who incarcerated people are, and what they are capable of.”
Tatro spoke about the assumptions that his success story, portrayed through the documentary, has made people believe that prison was a positive experience for him.
“Getting an education in prison was less than ideal … I did not go to prison to get an education,” Tatro said. “I would have rathered gone to college without having ever gone to prison. But the reality is if I never went to prison and BPI didn’t exist, I’d probably never have gotten a college education.
“Our country spends $80 billion a year on mass incarceration. That’s enough money to make tuition at all of our public colleges and universities free,” he continued. “There’s an assumption that prison did something for me — no. Bard College did something for me.”
A 2016 study by the RAND Corporation found that inmates who participated in educational programs like BPI were up to 43% less likely to have recidivism. That same study found that for every dollar invested into correctional education, nearly five dollars is saved in reincarceration costs over three years. Since filming College Behind Bars, Tatro has gone on to become the BPI Government Affairs and Advancement officer, a prison reform advocate, and a political consultant.
Tatro and BPI continue to take strides to make education accessible for more prisons nationwide, although, there are still prominent obstacles in the way of that goal. Funding seems to be the main reason behind slow progress in gaining adequate education in more prisons, according to Tatro. In retrospect, the 1994 Clinton Crime Bill ended inmates’ eligibility for federal Pell grants during the era of “tough on crime” policies. Because of that, many education programs in prisons were stripped overnight.
“For the last 20 years, BPI has been an example of the power of education in prison. We have students who have faced 15-20 years and then gone onto Ph.D. programs at Yale, Columbia, and other Ivy League universities,” Tatro says. “What the students have done is lead by example.”
Beyond the documentary, Tatro is continuing to advocate for Pell Grant funding on the state and national levels, as BPI anticipates launching more “micro-colleges” around New York City within the next five years for the “at-risk.” The documentary itself has sparked conversation nationwide, furthering the support and advocacy of the cause.
“Currently, we are working with Warner Brothers to turn the BPI vs. Harvard debate story into a movie,” Tatro claimed. “We will continue to be out engaging around the film and lobbying on behalf of getting access to college in prison.”
College Behind Bars is available on Netflix now.
The post Dyjuan Tatro of ‘College Behind Bars’ talks education reform for prisons appeared first on TheGrio.
from TheGrio https://ift.tt/2VanAOg
via
Cyntoia Brown-Long not involved in new Netflix doc on her life
Cyntoia Brown-Long, who was freed from jail last year after serving 15 years of a life sentence for murder, is the subject of a new Netflix documentary.
On Wednesday, the Nashville native made clear she is not involved with the new feature with a statement posted to Instagram.
“While I was still incarcerated, a producer who has old footage of me made a deal with Netflix for an UNAUTHORIZED documentary, set to be released soon. My husband and I were as surprised as everyone else when we first heard the news because we did not participate in any way.
However, I am currently in the process of sharing my story, in the right way, in full detail, and in a way that depicts and respects the woman I am today. While I pray that this film highlights things wrong in our justice system, I had nothing to with this documentary.”
The new documentary, murder to Mercy: The Cyntonia Brown story features footage from one made years ago while Brown-Long was facing a life sentence for murder. That documentary Me Facing Life: The Cyntoia Brown Story was released in 2011.
There are no new interviews in the new Netflix doc from Brown-Long. There does appear to be new ones with some of the people who were involved in her case.
She was just 16 in 2004 when she was arrested for the murder of real estate agent Johnny Lee Allen, 43. He met her in a fast-food parking lot and paid her to have sex with him.
At the time, Brown-Long was a runaway and living with an older man named Garion L. “Kut-Throat” McGlothen, who’d forced her to earn money through prostitution. She said that she went to Allen’s house in order to earn the money McGlothen expected.
Brown-Long testified that she was unnerved by Allen showing her weapons. Feeling as though she may be detained or killed, she shot him with a .40 caliber gun she’d brought with her for protection. Other testimony in trial records indicated that Brown targeted Allen to rob him.
After the murder, she left with Allen’s truck, two of his guns and $172 in cash.
Brown-Long was ultimately tried as an adult, and in 2006 she was found guilty of first-degree murder, felony murder, and aggravated robbery. She was sentenced to life without eligibility for parole for 51 years.
During her trial, a documentary filmmaker Daniel H. Birman became interested in her story and ultimately Me Facing Life: The Cyntoia Brown Story was made and released in 2011.
Through the documentary, Brown-Long’s story became a cause for activists and celebrities who believed she acted in self-defense to save herself from a predator. Rihanna and Kim Kardashian West were among those who advocated for Brown’s release.
In 2019, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam commuted Brown’s sentence, impressed by her turnaround in jail where she earned a G.E.D and an associate’s degree and the global campaign to free her from a life sentence.
That same year, Brown-Long released her memoir Free Cyntoia: My Search for Redemption in the American Prison System. She married musician and entrepreneur Jamie Long while still in jail.
The post Cyntoia Brown-Long not involved in new Netflix doc on her life appeared first on TheGrio.
from TheGrio https://ift.tt/34CmNZK
via
Kellyanne Conway dragged for blaming slow COVID-19 response on WHO
Kellyanne Conway is known for finding unconventional ways to spin the facts in favor of the Trump administration, but this week, the top White House aide made comments that even some of her own supporters found baffling.
Wednesday, during an appearance on Fox News, Conway implied that COVID-19’s name is derived from the number of already known coronavirus diseases.
READ MORE: Coronavirus front lines: A New York City nurse details life in a pandemic
“This is COVID-19 ― not COVID-1, folks,” Conway informed the hosts of Fox & Friends. “And so you would think the people charged with the World Health Organization would be on top of that.”
It’s common knowledge that But COVID-19 stands for “coronavirus disease 2019” to refer to the date it was identified, and not an indication that there were 18 previous versions of it.
Viewers watched in dismay as the high-ranking adviser to the president, opined, “It is called COVID-19 – not COVID-20 ― yet it took WHO until March to call it a global pandemic.”
Kellyanne Conway: "This is COVID-19, not COVID-1 folks, and so you would think the people in charge of the World Health Organization, facts and figures, would be on top of that." pic.twitter.com/losQ3H4ZhW
— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) April 15, 2020
After Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) called on her to “do better” after her remarks, Conway seemingly attempted to save face by responding that she knows the “19 refers to the year.”
She then pivoted the focus by rhetorically asking the congressman, “Which felt better: insulting me or endorsing Bloomberg for president?”
“It’s telling that you perceive the truth as an insult,” Rush tweeted back.
Dear @RepBobbyRush: I know 19 refers to year. I’m in Task Force daily (Congress is out until May 4). Point: WHO has received billion$ from USA for decades; it should see pandemics coming & be honest
Which felt better:insulting me or endorsing Bloomberg for President?
God bless https://t.co/3LpvkoQERb
— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) April 15, 2020
Conway’s comments appear to be part of the administration’s concerted efforts to blame the World Health Organization’s response to the coronavirus pandemic for why America is now the most infected country on the globe.
“The WHO failed in its basic duty and must be held accountable,” President Donald Trump said Tuesday while announcing the U.S. is placing a hold on funding to WHO while his team investigates the group’s potential mismanagement of the crisis. “So much death has been caused by their mistakes.”
READ MORE: World Health Organization head targeted with racism, death threats
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of WHO, responded to Trump’s decision today with these comments:
The post Kellyanne Conway dragged for blaming slow COVID-19 response on WHO appeared first on TheGrio.
from TheGrio https://ift.tt/2RHrgF5
via
Plasma Science and Fusion Center receives $1.25M from ARPA-E to explore practical paths to fusion
The Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) will receive $1.25 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). The award is part of the $32 million Breakthrough Enabling Thermonuclear-fusion Energy program established to explore lower-cost approaches to creating energy from nuclear fusion.
Fusion requires confining plasmas at extraordinarily high temperatures, up to 200 million degrees Celsius. One of the most promising ways to heat plasmas to these temperatures is with electromagnetic waves. Fusion power plants will need tens of thousands of kilowatts to be launched and absorbed by the plasma — with each kilowatt roughly the power of a conventional microwave oven. Complex analytic theory and computer simulations are required to design effective and efficient plasma heating scenarios. MIT’s project seeks to apply established state-of-the-art theoretical and simulation tools, developed and tested by the fusion community on more traditional concepts like tokamaks and stellarators, to explore the potential of novel, lower-cost fusion concepts.
The principal investigator for the project, PSFC Principal Research Scientist John Wright, along with PSFC Principal Research Scientist Abhay Ram, comprise the MIT team that will be working with colleagues from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and CompX, a private company. They are excited about leveraging MIT radio-frequency (RF) heating expertise in the service of new, or renewed, approaches to fusion.
“The main fusion program pursues the tokamak and the stellarator,” says Wright, “but there are other magnetic geometries considered by the program in the past that have been set aside due to difficulties at the time. They may deserve a second look, to see if any of these have a shorter or cheaper path to fusion. These include the mirror concept, for which there are two ARPA-E experimental awards.”
While a tokamak confines hot plasma in a toroidal chamber, using high magnetic fields to steer it away from the interior walls, a mirror contains the plasma in a linear device that features higher-strength magnets at each end. The PSFC will help explore the mirror’s potential both as a fusion concept and as a source of neutrons, which are needed to study the effect of neutrons on materials used in long-lived fusion or fission devices.
The PSFC will work closely with two other projects funded in this ARPA-E funding round — one on magnetic mirrors led by the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and another led by Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) on fast-ramping high-temperature superconducting solenoids. The PSFC is a significant collaborator on the CFS-led project, responsible for testing the performance of the novel magnets built by CFS. If successfully demonstrated, these magnets will reduce the cost and complexity of commercial tokamak power plants, further accelerating the advent of commercial fusion. An immediate application for these magnets would be for the SPARC project, now under design by a joint team from MIT and CFS. The collaboration with the University of Wisconsin grew out of discussions about applications of high-temperature superconducting magnets to other fusion experimental configurations.
“The tools we have developed in the tokamak community can help other fusion concepts, including the mirror, to do as well as possible,” says Wright. “We are excited to take our knowledge of RF in tokamak and stellarator geometries and see what surprises there are as we travel other paths to fusion.”
from MIT News https://ift.tt/3boZzbS
via
Bhad Bhabie defends darkening skin; says Lil Kim looks like a ‘white person’
Bhad Bhabie is striking back at critics who slammed her for darkening her skin by pointing to Lil Kim.
The 17-year-old rapper did an Instagram Live session recently and pointed to Lil Kim’s light appearance and plastic surgery in her defense to her critics about darkening her own skin.
READ MORE: Bhad Bhabie accused of cultural appropriation, darkening skin
“I used darker foundation,” Bhad Bhabie said on the stream. “Lil Kim uses foundation that … no disrespect toward Lil Kim. I’m actually a fan of hers. No disrespect to her, but the girl wears foundation that’s too light for her face. The girl went and got a nose job to have a smaller nose like white people. Like y’all don’t see that? She turned herself into … like I said, no disrespect toward her. I don’t have no problem with it. She can do what she do and make her happy.”
“That’s all her. But I’m saying she literally got surgery to make herself look like a white person. She’s wearing makeup that’s light and y’all don’t say a g*dd*mn word about her. Y’all don’t say a g*dd*mn f*ckin’ word about her, but I put on a foundation that makes me look tan…”
Earlier this month, Bhad Bhabie, whose birth name is Danielle Bregoli, posted an Instagram video of herself with the Black girl look, along with a face beat that may or may not have included fuller-looking lips. In another video, Bregoli added that “Ion even need no wig” as some questioned the length of her straight tresses.
View this post on Instagram
Critics accused her of cultural appropriation and “blackfishing.”
READ MORE: California Court grants Skai Jackson a temporary restraining order against Bhad Bhabie
Her most recent explanation was aimed at those critics. Bhad Bhabie said her darker skin was for a photo-shoot and asked “Who wants to be Black? I don’t understand that. I just really can’t comprehend it.”
“Millions of people sick, thousands dying every day and y’all worried about me getting makeup done for a photoshoot? the rapper wrote in her IG Stories. “I’m usually the wild one but y’all need to chill and focus on what’s important right now.”
The post Bhad Bhabie defends darkening skin; says Lil Kim looks like a ‘white person’ appeared first on TheGrio.
from TheGrio https://ift.tt/2VbD3h3
via
Nanosensor can alert a smartphone when plants are stressed
MIT engineers have developed a way to closely track how plants respond to stresses such as injury, infection, and light damage, using sensors made of carbon nanotubes. These sensors can be embedded in plant leaves, where they report on hydrogen peroxide signaling waves.
Plants use hydrogen peroxide to communicate within their leaves, sending out a distress signal that stimulates leaf cells to produce compounds that will help them repair damage or fend off predators such as insects. The new sensors can use these hydrogen peroxide signals to distinguish between different types of stress, as well as between different species of plants.
“Plants have a very sophisticated form of internal communication, which we can now observe for the first time. That means that in real-time, we can see a living plant’s response, communicating the specific type of stress that it’s experiencing,” says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT.
This kind of sensor could be used to study how plants respond to different types of stress, potentially helping agricultural scientists develop new strategies to improve crop yields. The researchers demonstrated their approach in eight different plant species, including spinach, strawberry plants, and arugula, and they believe it could work in many more.
Strano is the senior author of the study, which appears today in Nature Plants. MIT graduate student Tedrick Thomas Salim Lew is the lead author of the paper.
Embedded sensors
Over the past several years, Strano’s lab has been exploring the potential for engineering “nanobionic plants” — plants that incorporate nanomaterials that give the plants new functions, such as emitting light or detecting water shortages. In the new study, he set out to incorporate sensors that would report back on the plants’ health status.
Strano had previously developed carbon nanotube sensors that can detect various molecules, including hydrogen peroxide. About three years ago, Lew began working on trying to incorporate these sensors into plant leaves. Studies in Arabidopsis thaliana, often used for molecular studies of plants, had suggested that plants might use hydrogen peroxide as a signaling molecule, but its exact role was unclear.
Lew used a method called lipid exchange envelope penetration (LEEP) to incorporate the sensors into plant leaves. LEEP, which Strano’s lab developed several years ago, allows for the design of nanoparticles that can penetrate plant cell membranes. As Lew was working on embedding the carbon nanotube sensors, he made a serendipitous discovery.
“I was training myself to get familiarized with the technique, and in the process of the training I accidentally inflicted a wound on the plant. Then I saw this evolution of the hydrogen peroxide signal,” he says.
He saw that after a leaf was injured, hydrogen peroxide was released from the wound site and generated a wave that spread along the leaf, similar to the way that neurons transmit electrical impulses in our brains. As a plant cell releases hydrogen peroxide, it triggers calcium release within adjacent cells, which stimulates those cells to release more hydrogen peroxide.
“Like dominos successively falling, this makes a wave that can propagate much further than a hydrogen peroxide puff alone would,” Strano says. “The wave itself is powered by the cells that receive and propagate it.”
This flood of hydrogen peroxide stimulates plant cells to produce molecules called secondary metabolites, such as flavonoids or carotenoids, which help them to repair the damage. Some plants also produce other secondary metabolites that can be secreted to fend off predators. These metabolites are often the source of the food flavors that we desire in our edible plants, and they are only produced under stress.
A key advantage of the new sensing technique is that it can be used in many different plant species. Traditionally, plant biologists have done much of their molecular biology research in certain plants that are amenable to genetic manipulation, including Arabidopsis thaliana and tobacco plants. However, the new MIT approach is applicable to potentially any plant.
“In this study, we were able to quickly compare eight plant species, and you would not be able to do that with the old tools,” Strano says.
The researchers tested strawberry plants, spinach, arugula, lettuce, watercress, and sorrel, and found that different species appear to produce different waveforms — the distinctive shape produced by mapping the concentration of hydrogen peroxide over time. They hypothesize that each plant’s response is related to its ability to counteract the damage. Each species also appears to respond differently to different types of stress, including mechanical injury, infection, and heat or light damage.
“This waveform holds a lot of information for each species, and even more exciting is that the type of stress on a given plant is encoded in this waveform,” Strano says. “You can look at the real time response that a plant experiences in almost any new environment.”
Stress response
The near-infrared fluorescence produced by the sensors can be imaged using a small infrared camera connected to a Raspberry Pi, a $35 credit-card-sized computer similar to the computer inside a smartphone. “Very inexpensive instrumentation can be used to capture the signal,” Strano says.
Applications for this technology include screening different species of plants for their ability to resist mechanical damage, light, heat, and other forms of stress, Strano says. It could also be used to study how different species respond to pathogens, such as the bacteria that cause citrus greening and the fungus that causes coffee rust.
“One of the things I’m interested in doing is understanding why some types of plants exhibit certain immunity to these pathogens and others don’t,” he says.
Strano and his colleagues in the Disruptive and Sustainable Technology for Agricultural Precision interdisciplinary research group at the MIT-Singapore Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, are also interested in studying is how plants respond to different growing conditions in urban farms.
One problem they hope to address is shade avoidance, which is seen in many species of plants when they are grown at high density. Such plants turn on a stress response that diverts their resources into growing taller, instead of putting energy into producing crops. This lowers the overall crop yield, so agricultural researchers are interested in engineering plants so that don’t turn on that response.
“Our sensor allows us to intercept that stress signal and to understand exactly the conditions and the mechanism that are happening upstream and downstream in the plant that gives rise to the shade avoidance,” Strano says.
The research was funded by the National Research Foundation of Singapore, the Singapore Agency for Science, Technology, and Research (A*STAR), and the U.S. Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship Program.
from MIT News https://ift.tt/2wG3K46
via
ESPN Asks Top Commentators to Take a 15% Pay Cut Due to the Coronavirus
The results of sports being at a standstill has reverberated across many businesses, especially at television sports networks. ESPN has asked its highest-paid sports commentators to take a 15% reduction in salary over the next three months to help cope with the losses attributed to the coronavirus pandemic, according to CNN.
“We are asking about 100 of our commentators to join with our executives and take a temporary salary reduction,” ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz said in a statement. “These are challenging times and we are all in this together.”
ESPN executives are taking a 20%-30% salary reductions as part of cost-cutting measures instituted throughout Walt Disney Corp. The cuts that are being applied amounted to 30% for executive vice presidents, 25% for senior vice presidents, and 20% for vice presidents.
The pay cuts, which are voluntary, are designed to help deter additional furloughs that would directly affect lower-paid network employees who might be more financially vulnerable. The network has already furloughed employees who work on live events.
According to the New York Post, commentators Stephen A. Smith, Scott Van Pelt, and Dick Vitale are among those who have already agreed to the salary reduction. Endeavor president Mark Shapiro, whose sports agency represents Smith and other ESPN talent, said he understands the network’s position.
“Unprecedented times call for unprecedented sacrifices and like our global workforce has demonstrated, the sports talent we represent intellectually understands that and are embracing the request,” Shapiro told the Post.
The 15% voluntary pay reductions are not expected to affect ESPN’s lower-paid talent, who have salaries in the low six figures.
With the NBA suspending its current season, the National College Athletes Association canceling the men and women’s college basketball tournament, and Major League Baseball delaying Opening Day, ESPN has been scrambling to fill the gaps in sports programming left due to the coronavirus outbreak.
from Black Enterprise https://ift.tt/3bcVRSO
via
Elizabeth Warren Endorses Joe Biden
CNN is reporting that Senator Elizabeth Warren, the former presidential candidate, has endorsed Joe Biden for President of the United States.
This morning, the Massachusetts s tweeted out a video announcing the support of her former rival.
Senator Warren’s endorsement of Biden comes two days after Bernie Sanders endorsed the former vice president and a day after former president Barack Obama endorsed his former number two.
Biden secured the nomination after Sanders dropped out of the Democratic nomination race.
The story is breaking and will be updated.
from Black Enterprise https://ift.tt/2Vbp6Qv
via
Stimulus checks may be delayed because Trump wants his name on them
In an unprecedented move, President Donald Trump is having his name printed on stimulus checks before they go out— a move that may delay checks by a few days.
READ MORE: Americans begin receiving coronavirus stimulus checks from federal government
Senior IRS officials said President Donald J. Trump’s name will be stamped on the left, memo line of the checks sent out to 70 million Americans, according to The Washington Post. This marks the first time a president’s name has ever appeared on an IRS disbursement, and this is true for annual refunds or the few instances where the government issued stimulus money to taxpayers or to pay dividends when the economy was great.
“Taxes are supposed to be nonpolitical, and it’s that simple,” Nina Olson, who was the former head of the Office of the Taxpayer Advocate, the independent IRS entity that helps individual taxpayers with tax challenges and puts on tax clinics for low-income taxpayers, told The Washington Post. “It’s absolutely unprecedented.”
The IRS is sending the checks to people, many of whom are low-income, who the agency doesn’t have banking information. The direct deposits that have already gone out to roughly 80 million people do not bear Trump’s name.
The checks will carry the signature of an official with the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the Treasury Department division that prints the checks. The checks will follow direct deposits issued in recent days to the bank accounts of about 80 million people. Those payments do not include Trump’s name.
Trump’s request was no easy feat, according to a Treasury official who spoke to The Washington Post. The IRS’s information technology team had to make a programming change to add the president’s name to the paper checks, and that new code had to be tested. They are expected to be sent to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service for printing and issuing.
“Any last minute request like this will create a downstream snarl that will result in a delay,” explained Chad Hooper, a quality-control manager who serves as national president of the IRS’s Professional Managers Association.
The Treasury rep said the change didn’t delay things and that checks would be mailed out next week.
“Economic Impact Payment checks are scheduled to go out on time and exactly as planned— there is absolutely no delay whatsoever,” the unidentified representative told The Post in a written statement. She said this was even a faster process than when the George W. Bush administration sent out stimulus checks in 2008 for the recession.
READ MORE: Trump, Congress weigh more coronavirus stimulus checks for Americans
“In fact, we expect the first checks to be in the mail early next week which is well in advance of when the first checks went out in 2008 and well in advance of initial estimates,” the rep added in the statement.
The checks are part of the $2 trillion stimulus package, approved by a bipartisan Congress and signed by the president. Although Trump takes credit for sending checks to individual taxpayers, it was not his idea. The president signed on after Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Mitt Romney (R-Utah) proposed the idea.
The post Stimulus checks may be delayed because Trump wants his name on them appeared first on TheGrio.
from TheGrio https://ift.tt/3afdEat
via
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)