Published today as a research letter in The Lancet, their study compared the newer monovalent COVID vaccine, which specifically targets the XBB variant of Omicron (as recommended by the World Health Organisation), with older bivalent vaccines containing a mix of an Omicron variant and the original strain of COVID-19, which the UK deployed in Autumn 2023 before turning to monovalent vaccines¹.

The researchers found that both vaccines generated neutralising antibodies against the most recent strain of Omicron, BA.2.86. However, the new monovalent vaccine generated higher levels of antibodies against a range of other Omicron variants.

The team collected blood and nasal mucosal samples both before and after a fifth dose vaccination from 71 participants of the Legacy study, a research collaboration between the Crick and the NIHR University College London Hospitals Biomedical Research Centre. They compared the antibody levels before and after vaccination.

All 36 participants who received the bivalent vaccine and 17 who received the monovalent vaccine had boosted levels of antibodies against all variants tested, including the newest strain BA.2.86, which caused a wave of infection this winter. But those with the newer monovalent vaccine had 3.5x higher levels of antibodies against the XBB and BQ.1.1 strains after their booster vaccination.

Since the Omicron virus is highly transmissible and the virus replicates in the nose and throat, the researchers tested the levels of antibodies in the participants’ nasal cavity.

They found that the monovalent vaccine increased their ability to produce mucosal antibodies against most of the tested variants, whereas the bivalent vaccine didn’t provide a significant boost.

Neither vaccine increased neutralising antibody levels in the nasal cavity against the newest variant, BA.2.86, suggesting that current vaccines may be less likely to stop transmission or prevent asymptomatic or mild illness, while still protecting against severe disease.

This highlights the importance of careful vaccine updates and continuing to complement a vaccination programme with the development of antibody drugs that work against all variants, as some more vulnerable people don’t respond well to vaccines.

Emma Wall, Senior Clinical Research Fellow at the Crick and Consultant in Infectious Diseases at UCLH, said: “The UK’s strategy to deploy stocks of older vaccines paid off last year, as both vaccines provided equal protection against the newest strain. However, ongoing monitoring is needed, as the virus is continuing to evolve, so vaccine-induced antibodies might not work so well in the future. In the long run, vaccines that are effective against all new variants and can block COVID-19 being transmitted from person to person are needed.”

David LV Bauer, Group Leader of the RNA Virus Replication Laboratory at the Crick, said: “The situation this winter could have been different if the newly emerged BA.2.86 and JN.1 variants were substantially distinct from older Omicron variants, but fortunately this wasn’t the case.

“Most new variants arise quicker than most clinical trials can produce data. But laboratory analysis can provide a detailed picture very quickly. Continued surveillance will help us stay on top of viral evolution.”

That is what Ben-Gurion University of the Negev physicist Prof. Hezi Yizhaq and Prof. Itzhak Katra and their colleagues from Denmark, Germany, Italy, China, and the US contend in a cover article published in Nature Geoscience.

Sand ripples photographed on Mars by NASA’s Curiosity rover in 2015 showed two distinct patterns — large ripples (meter scale) and a shorter “impact” ripples pattern (decimeter scale). The prevailing theory proposed since then argues that the smaller scale ripples are produced by the impact mechanism of the particles transported by the wind like normal ripples on Earth and the larger ripples form due to hydrodynamic instability like subaqueous ripples. Furthermore, it was believed that the physical conditions that produced them on Mars could not produce them on Earth.

However, Prof. Yizhaq and Prof. Katra have proven experimentally using Ben-Gurion University’s wind tunnel and Aarhus University’s Mars tunnel that such a phenomenon could exist on Earth — we just haven’t noticed it yet because we didn’t know we should be looking for it.

Imitating Martian sand was not easy because it’s finer than sand here on Earth, explains Prof. Yizhaq, but the breakthrough occurred when they decided to try tiny glass balls to represent fine grains of sand.

Furthermore, the international research team has proposed a unified theoretical framework that would explain sand ripples on Mars and on Earth. At its most basic level, sand ripples on Mars caused by wind look like sand ripples on Earth caused by water.

“There is much more research, both fieldwork and experimentally, needed to prove our theory, but it is amazing to propose something so radically new in a field I have been studying for over 20 years. It is exciting to go out and try to find on Earth what can clearly be seen on Mars,” says Prof. Yizhaq.

Prof. Yizhaq is a member of the Department of Solar Energy and Environmental Physics. Prof. Itzhak Katra is a member of the Department of Environmental, Geoinformatics and Urban Planning Sciences.

The research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant no. 1270/20), the German-Israel Foundation for Scientific Research and Development (GIF) (Grant no. 155-301.10/2018), the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station, Europlanet grant no. 871149, and the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program.

“Our earlier work introduced the idea of a fourth traffic signal called a ‘white phase,’ which taps into the computing power of autonomous vehicles (AVs) in order to expedite traffic at intersections — but we had not yet incorporated what this concept would mean for pedestrians,” says Ali Hajbabaie, corresponding author of the paper and an associate professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering at North Carolina State University. “We’ve now expanded our computational modeling to account for foot traffic, and the results are extremely promising for both pedestrians and vehicles.”

The white phase concept makes use of AVs’ ability to communicate wirelessly with both each other and the computers that control the traffic signals. When enough AVs are approaching the intersection, this would activate a new traffic light — the white light. While red lights mean stop, and green lights mean go, white lights tell human drivers to simply follow the car in front of them. In short, the white light is a signal that AVs are coordinating their movement to facilitate traffic through the intersection more efficiently.

“Our previous research found that the more AVs there are on the road, the more efficiently the traffic moves,” Hajbabaie says. “To be clear, this improves travel time, fuel efficiency and safety for all of the cars on the road — not just AVs.”

To account for pedestrian traffic, the researchers incorporated a suite of new parameters into the optimization model that assessed the impact foot traffic would have on all traffic through an intersection.

“We found that, when pedestrians are added into the mix, the white phase concept still improves traffic efficiency for everyone,” Hajbabaie says. “And, again, the higher the percentage of traffic that is made up of AVs, the more efficiently traffic moves through intersections.

“If at some point in the future we see almost universal adoption of AVs, our models suggest that delays at intersections would decrease by more than 25%. More realistically, we will eventually see a lower percentage of wirelessly connected AVs on the road, but there would still be meaningful improvements in traffic time.”

The researchers know that governments will not be adopting these new traffic technologies in the immediate future, but are already taking steps to ensure that future pilot projects will be safe and effective.

“We are currently setting up a physical testbed that will allow us to experiment with this concept in the physical world — not just in a computer model,” Hajbabaie says. “However, the vehicles we are using in the testbed are small enough to hold in your hands. This will help us identify challenges in implementation without the expense — and safety risk — involved with using full-scale vehicles. In the meantime, we are open to working with industry and research partners to explore ways to move forward with these technologies.”

The study could serve as a blueprint for assessing anti-racist interventions.

“Young people are aware of racial injustice and related social issues, and schools are interested in helping students understand racial justice and develop the tools they need to discuss these issues in a meaningful way,” says Kelly Lynn Mulvey, co-author of a paper on the work and an associate professor of psychology at North Carolina State University.

“There are multiple programs that aim to help schools accomplish these goals,” Mulvey says. “In this study, we wanted to determine how effective one such program was. Did it help students understand racial justice issues? Did it make them more comfortable talking about these issues? Were there any unintended effects on the students?”

For the study, researchers from NC State, Duke University and Dickinson College worked in partnership with a public high school to assess the impact of a classroom intervention aimed at helping students understand and discuss issues related to racism. The intervention was conducted for 45 minutes once a week for 10 weeks. Specifically, the researchers did an assessment of 227 students before the intervention and three months after the intervention, aimed at capturing how engaged students were, how students related with staff, the extent to which students felt that they belonged in the school community, student stress, and the extent to which students perceived social inequality.

In addition, 67 of the study participants also completed daily surveys for three weeks during the intervention. These surveys were designed to capture daily fluctuations in each student’s stress levels and feelings of belonging.

“One of the key findings was that 60% of study participants reported being highly engaged with the intervention, and another 20% were passively/somewhat engaged,” says Jackie Cerda-Smith, first author of the paper and a Ph.D. student at NC State.

“Students in our study were actively interested in learning about and discussing issues related to racism,” says Mulvey. “And the highly engaged group demonstrated significant growth in their awareness of social inequality after the intervention.

“We also found that there was no increase in stress — or decrease in feelings of belonging — on days when students were involved in the anti-racism intervention,” Mulvey says. “That was true for all 67 participants who did daily surveys, regardless of how engaged they were in the intervention.”

“A lot of the opposition to addressing racism in schools hinges on the idea that anti-racist programming is somehow harmful or stressful for students,” says Cerda-Smith. “Our study finds that, at least with this program in this school, students are actually benefiting from these programs. What’s more, there is no evidence that the intervention is stressful or has an adverse impact on students’ feelings of belonging in their school community.

“Based on what we learned here, and on our interactions with the educators at this school, this study also underscores the value of partnerships between educators and the research community,” Cerda-Smith says. “We were able to capture real-world data on how students are responding to anti-racist interventions, which expands our understanding of this subject and gives teachers insights into their students. Hopefully, this will encourage more researchers and educators to pursue partnerships like this one.

“This study was particularly valuable for teachers at our partner school, because it took place during the pandemic when classes were being conducted online,” Cerda-Smith says. “Normal social cues that would help teachers determine how students were responding weren’t available, but our assessment gave them insights into students’ experiences with the intervention.”

“Another exciting component of this study was that we were able to capture student experiences in a variety of ways,” says Mulvey. “Many studies rely solely on pre-intervention and post-intervention testing to see what has changed. By having a subset of study participants provide data on a daily basis, we were able to better understand the effects of the intervention in real time. Further, we were able to capture student engagement with the intervention and see how that engagement related to outcomes. Previous work on this subject didn’t capture the role that engagement plays.

“This approach could serve as a model for future work aimed at broadening our understanding of anti-racist interventions, or other interventions in schools — such as interventions that focus on mental health or academic skills,” says Mulvey.

The paper, “A Novel Approach for Evaluating a Schoolwide Antiracist Curriculum Intervention,” is published open access in the journal AERA Open. The paper was co-authored by Paula Yust, an assistant professor of psychology at Dickinson College; Molly Weeks, director of research in Duke University’s Office of Undergraduate Education; and Steven Asher, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University.

The research was supported by a grant from the American Educational Research Association.

The study found that different areas of the brain start with a similar organization rather than already being specialized in early development. This suggests that the brain might use a single shared blueprint to guide early development.

“Throughout life, the brain continually builds on the foundations set earlier in development. This strong similarity in early development across very different areas of the brain suggests that neurodevelopmental disorders — such as autism or schizophrenia, which affect many different parts of the nervous system — may act similarly across these different brain areas,” said Gordon Smith, Ph.D., assistant professor at the U of M Medical School and principal investigator on the study. Dr. Smith is also a member of the Medical Discovery Team on Optical Imaging and Brain Science.

In collaboration with the Frankfurt Institute of Advanced Studies, the research team used advanced optical imaging techniques to measure spontaneous activity in diverse brain areas. They found that even in different parts of the brain — such as those responsible for hearing, seeing and feeling touch — as well as in areas linked to thinking in both the front and back part of the brain, the activity in networks of brain cells showed a very similar organization during early development. Researchers discovered that nerve cells in these areas work together in small, synchronized groups. These groups are part of bigger networks that cover millimeters in each part of the brain.

“This type of organization has long been a hallmark of visual brain areas, but finding it in other regions — especially in non-sensory regions like the prefrontal cortex — was a surprise,” said Dr. Smith.

Ongoing research will examine other brain regions at different stages of development to determine how the common blueprint identified in this study changes over time.

Funding for this study was provided by the National Institutes of Health’s National Eye Institute [R01EY030893-01], Whitehall Foundation, National Science Foundation and Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

The research team, made of members from The University of Texas at Arlington and 25 other institutions, are now a quarter of the way through inputting nearly 30,000 media files to the open-source repository MorphoSource. This will allow researchers and scholars to share findings and improve access to material critical for scientific discovery.

“Thanks to this exciting openVertebrate project, also called oVert, anyone — scientists, researchers, students, teachers, artists — can now look online to research the anatomy of just about any animal imaginable without leaving home,” said Gregory Pandelis, collections manager of UT Arlington’s Amphibian and Reptile Diversity Research Center. “This will help reduce wear and tear on many rare specimens while increasing access to them at the same time.”

A summary of the project has just been published in the peer-reviewed journal BioScience reviewing the specimens that have been scanned to date and offering a glimpse of how the data might be used in the future.

For example, one research team has used the data to conclude that Spinosaurus, a massive dinosaur that was larger than Tyrannosaurus rex and thought to be aquatic, would have actually been a poor swimmer, and thus likely stayed on land. Another study revealed that frogs have evolved to gain and lose the ability to grow teeth more than any other animal.

The value of oVert extends beyond scientific inquiry. Artists are using the 3D models to create realistic animal replicas. Photographs of oVert specimens have been displayed as part of museum exhibits. In addition, specimens have been incorporated into virtual reality headsets that allow users to interact with the animals.

Educators also are able to use oVert models in their classrooms. From the outset of the project, the research team placed a strong emphasis on K-12 outreach, organizing workshops where teachers could learn how to use the data in their classrooms.

“As a kid who loved all things science- and nature-related and had a particular interest in skeletal anatomy, I would go through great pains to collect, preserve and study skulls and other specimens for my childhood natural history collection, the start of my scientific inspiration,” Pandelis said. “Realizing that you could study these things digitally with just a few clicks on a computer was eye-opening for me, and it opened up the path to my current research using CT scans of snake specimens to study their skull evolution. Now, this wealth of data has been opened and made publicly accessible to anyone who has a professional, recreational or educational interest in anatomy and morphology. Natural history specimens have never been so accessible and impactful.”

In the next phase of the research project, the team will be creating sophisticated tools to analyze the data collected. Since researchers have never had digital access to so many 3D natural history specimens before, it will take further developments in machine learning and supercomputing to use them to their full potential.