Fauci blasted for joke that he created COVID-19 in his kitchen

 National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci was blasted by conservatives on social media after joking that he created the coronavirus in his kitchen.

"At the epicenter of the initial outbreak, WA1 – Washington 1 is considered the ancestral model strain," Dr. Larry Corey said to Fauci during a discussion at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center campus in Seattle, Washington, where Fauci was receiving an award on Tuesday. 

"No, I developed the ancestral model strain," Fauci jokingly responded. "I created it."

"That’s right, you let it loose," Corey responded while laughing.

"I was in my kitchen, and I..." Fauci said, pretending that he dropped an imaginary object to the floor. 

"Gain-of-function, there we go," Corey said before joking about Fauci making Italian meatballs in his kitchen at the time he created the virus. 

https://www.foxnews.com/health/fauci-blasted-joke-created-covid-19-kitchen-tone-deaf

CDC no longer recommends students quarantine for COVID-19 exposure

 The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday that it will no longer recommend schools or daycares quarantine students or run test-to-stay programs if students are exposed to COVID-19.

The agency also said it is no longer recommending unvaccinated people quarantine after exposure, saying around 95% of the U.S. population has either been vaccinated or had COVID-19 already, or both.

"Prior infection and vaccination confer some protection against severe illness, and so it really makes the most sense to not differentiate with our guidance or our recommendations based on vaccination status at this time," CDC scientist Dr. Greta Massetti said in a media briefing.

The CDC's school guidance also removed recommendations to keep children in cohorts in order to reduce the likelihoood of COVID-19 exposure.

The agency said students who are exposed to COVID-19 should follow CDC recommendations to wear a high quality mask for 10 days and test on day 5.

https://www.foxnews.com/health/us-cdc-longer-recommends-students-quarantine-covid-19-exposure

Recall of Oatly, Grumpy's and other beverages expands

 Lyons Magnus, a maker of coffee and nutritional drinks, is expanding a recall of dozens of different products over potential bacterial contamination that could cause botulism poisoning.

Added to the list of recalled brands is one variety of Grumpy's Ready to Drink Cold Brew Coffee, some varieties of Organic Valley 1% lowfat milk, some Kate Farms nutrition shakes, some cartons of PediaSure Harvest, some cartons of Ensure Harvest and others. Last month, the company recalled brands including Aloha, Oatly, Stumptown, Glucerna and Premier Protein. 

The full list of 88 recalled items, with their lot numbers and UPC codes, is available here.

The Food and Drug Administration said the items, which were distributed starting April 2021, are potentially contaminated with the bacteria Cronobacter sakazakii and Clostridium botulinum, which causes a severe form of food poisoning.

While the FDA noted that Clostridium botulinum has not been found in the products in question, the bacteria can cause severe illness up to and including death. Symptoms, which typically start between two and six hours after eating contaminated food, can include double vision, blurred vision, drooping eyelids, slurred speech, difficulty swallowing and muscle weakness.

About 110 cases of botulism poisoning are reported in the U.S. each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a quarter of which are food-borne.

Meanwhile, Cronobacter infections are rare, but more likely to occur in vulnerable and immunocompromised populations, the FDA noted. Common symptoms include fever, vomiting and urinary tract infection, the agency said. In more severe cases, Cronobacter can also cause sepsis or meningitis, according to the CDC.

The recalled products "did not meet commercial sterility specifications," the FDA noted, although it said it has not received any reports of illnesses or complaints related to the recalled products.

Recalled products should not be consumed, the FDA warned, and instead should be thrown out or returned to the store for a refund. Consumers can also contact the Lyons Recall Support Center at 1-800-627-0557.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lyons-magnus-beverage-recall-expands-oatly-stumptown-grumpy/

Rotator cuff regeneration: Potential breakthrough

 A new way to regenerate muscle could help repair the damaged shoulders of millions of people every year. The technique uses advanced materials to encourage muscle growth in rotator cuff muscles. UConn Health researchers reported the findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) August 8th issue.

Tears of the major tendons in the shoulder joint, commonly called the rotator cuff, are common injuries in adults. Advances in surgery have made ever better rotator cuff repairs possible. But failure rates with surgery can be high. Now, a team of researchers from the UConn School of Medicine led by surgeon, engineer and scientist Dr. Cato T. Laurencin reports that a graphene/polymer matrix embedded into shoulder muscle can prevent re-tear injuries.

"Most repairs focus on the tendon," and how to reattach it to the bone most effectively, Laurencin says. "But the real problem is that the muscle degenerates and accumulates fat. With a tear, the muscle shrinks, and the body grows fat in that area instead. When the tendon and muscle are finally reattached surgically to the shoulder bone, the weakened muscle can't handle normal stresses and the area can be re-injured again.

Dr. Laurencin along with graduate student Nikoo Shemshaki worked with other UConn Connecticut Convergence Institute researchers to develop a polymer mesh infused with nanoplatelets of graphene. When they used it to repair the shoulders of rats who had chronic rotator cuff tears with muscle atrophy, the muscle grew back. When they tried growing muscle on the mesh in a petri dish in the lab, they found the material seemed to encourage the growth of myotubes, precursors of muscle, and discourage the formation of fat.

"This is really a potential breakthrough treatment for tears of the rotator cuff. It addresses the real problem: muscle degeneration and fat accumulation," Laurencin says.

The next step in their work is studying the matrix in a large animal. The team looks forward to developing the technology in humans.

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Explore further

Avoiding pickleball injuries in older adults

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More information: Muscle degeneration in chronic massive rotator cuff tears of the shoulder: Addressing the real problem using a graphene matrix, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.220810611

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-08-rotator-cuff-regeneration-potential-breakthrough.html

US Industries Buckling Under Pressure of Surging Electricity Costs

 Industrial power costs are up 24 percent from a year ago according to Energy Information Agency (EIA) data. That was as of May, and the prognosis is getting worse.

EIA data by user classification, chart by Mish

Rising energy bills have forced companies to scale back industrial operations, threatening a greater drag on the economy.

As of May, electrical energy costs are up 24.4 percent from a year ago. Producer Price Index (PPI) data suggests things are getting worse.

Please consider US Industrial Complex Is Starting to Buckle From High Power Costs

Europe’s fertilizer plants, steel mills, and chemical manufacturers were the first to succumb. Massive paper mills, soybean processors, and electronics factories in Asia went dark. Now soaring natural gas and electricity prices are starting to hit the US industrial complex.

On June 22, 600 workers at the second-largest aluminum mill in America, accounting for 20% of US supply, learned they were losing their jobs because the plant can’t afford an electricity tab that’s tripled in a matter of months. Century Aluminum Co. says it’ll idle the Hawesville, Kentucky, mill for as long as a year, taking out the biggest of its three US sites. A shutdown like this can take a month as workers carefully swirl the molten metal into storage so it doesn’t solidify in pipes and vessels and turn the entire facility into a useless brick. Restarting takes another six to nine months. For this reason, owners don’t halt operations unless they’ve exhausted all other options.

At least two steel mills have begun suspending some operations to cut energy costs, according to one industry executive, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. In May, a group of factories across the US Midwest warned federal energy regulators that some were on the verge of closing for the summer or longer because of what they described as “unjust and unreasonable” electricity costs. They asked to be wholly absolved of some power fees—a request that, if granted, would be unprecedented. 

Michael Harris, whose firm Unified Energy Services LLC buys fuel for industrial clients, says costs have risen so high that some are having to put millions of dollars of credit on the line to secure power and gas contracts. “That can be devastating for a corporation,’’ he says. “I don’t see any scenario, absent explosions at US LNG facilities’’ that trap supplies at home, in which gas prices are headed lower in the long term. 

 EIA Average Electricity Cost Cents

EIA cost data chart by Mish

EIA Cost Data January 2021 vs May 2022

• Residential: 12.69 to 14.92
• Commercial: 10.31 to 12.14
• Industrial: 6.39 to 8.35
• Transportation: 9.61 to 10.79
• All: 10.36 to 12.09

Those prices are through May 2022. Much electrical energy comes from natural gas. 

US Natural Gas Futures 

US Natural Gas Futures courtesy of Trading Economics

US gas prices fluctuated wildly in June and July. I suspect the average price is 7.33 or so for both months. Things are decidedly worse in Europe.

EU Natural Gas Price

US Natural Gas Futures courtesy of Trading Economics

From 25 or even 50 to 200 is one hell of a leap. It's somewhere between 300% and 700% depending on your starting point vs 100% or so for the US. 

Let's now check the latest PPI data for a look at where things are and more importantly headed.  

PPI Electrical Power Index 2020-Present 

PPI data from the BLS, chart by Mish

From pre-pandemic to January of 2021, the PPI electrical power index was flat. It has since surged on a relatively steady pace.

From May to July the index went from 231 to 238. That tacks on another three percentage points since the EIA report. 

PPI Electrical Power Index 1991-Present 

PPI data from the BLS, chart by Mish

Long Term Trend

The long-term trend does not exactly look pretty. 

And as Bloomberg noted, Century Aluminum Co. says it’ll idle the Hawesville, Kentucky, mill for as long as a year, taking out the biggest of its three US sites.

https://mishtalk.com/economics/us-industries-are-buckling-under-pressure-of-surging-electricity-costs

Tracking mental states through the skin

 Researchers at NYU Tandon School of Engineering have reached a key milestone in their quest to develop wearable technology that manages to measure key brain mechanisms through the skin.

Rose Faghih, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, has been working for the last seven years on a technology that can measure mental activity using electrodermal activity (EDA) -- an electrical phenomenon of the skin that is influenced by brain activity related to emotional status. Internal stresses, whether caused by pain, exhaustion, or a particularly packed schedule, can cause changes in the EDA -- changes that are directly correlated to mental states.

The overarching goal -- a Multimodal Intelligent Noninvasive brain state Decoder for Wearable AdapTive Closed-loop arcHitectures, or MINDWATCH, as Faghih calls it -- would act as a way to monitor a wearer's mental state, and offer nudges that would help them revert back to a more neutral state of mind. For example, if a person was experiencing a particularly severe bout of work-related stress, the MINDWATCH could pick up on this and automatically play some relaxing music.

Now Faghih -- along with Rafiul Amin, her former PhD student -- has accomplished a crucial task required for monitoring this information. For the first time, they have developed a novel inference engine that can monitor brain activity through the skin in real time with high scalability and accuracy. The results are featured in a new paper, "Physiological Characterization of Electrodermal Activity Enables Scalable Near Real-Time Autonomic Nervous System Activation Inference," published in PLOS Computational Biology.

"Inferring autonomic nervous system activation from wearable devices in real-time opens new opportunities for monitoring and improving mental health and cognitive engagement," according to Faghih.

Previous methods measuring sympathetic nervous system activation through the skin took minutes, which is not practical for wearable devices. While her earlier work focused on inferring brain activity through sweat activation and other factors, the new study additionally models the sweat glands themselves. The model includes a 3D state-space representation of the direct secretion of sweat via pore opening, as well as diffusion followed by corresponding evaporation and reabsorption. This detailed model of the glands provides exceptional insight into inferring the brain activity.

The new model was run on data from 26 healthy individuals. The researchers showed that they can decipher brain signals with high reliability. Additionally, the computational power requirement of their new algorithm is minimal and can obtain brain and physiological insights within a few seconds whereas another previous approach would take minutes. This means that small, wearable monitoring technology capable of incredible speed, high scalability, and extraordinary reliability is within reach.

The broader impact and applications of the methodology includes performance monitoring, mental health monitoring, measuring pain and cognitive stress. Mental health tracking can help better manage autism, post-traumatic stress disorders, excessive irritability, suicidal tendency, and more. Performance tracking and cognitive stress tracking can help improve individual productivity and quality of life.

"One's performance changes based on their cognitive engagement and arousal levels." says Faghih. For example, very low or very high levels of arousal can result in poor performance. Hence, it is expected that. Ultimately, researchers can utilize the inferred autonomic nervous system activation and decoded arousal to develop interventions for improving productivity."

One example application of this method is early diagnosis of disorders like diabetic neuropathy. Small nerves transmit brain stimulation to many parts of the body, including those linked to skin conductance response. To track the received brain activity, EDA may be measured and monitored on a regular basis in neuropathy-prone skin areas of the body. If a skin area has neuropathy (i.e., tiny nerves have been damaged), the brain will not activate that area. By monitoring changes, doctors can see how a condition like diabetic neuropathy progresses, and can lead to changes in treatment plans.

Another example is a newborn patient in extreme pain following a surgical procedure, who cannot convey their degree of suffering. Doctors may use EDA recordings and infer brain activity to assess how much pain the infant patient is in and intervene as needed.

For Faghih, this work could represent a breakthrough for mental health care. Monitoring the mental status of vulnerable people could help them get more effective care and prevent severe consequences from declining mental health or swings in mood.

Her team is now working on ways to incorporate the model into wearables, including the elimination of informational "noise" caused by factors like robust movement and exercise, as well as seeking potential partnerships to design and manufacture the devices that would carry the algorithm.

This research was funded by a National Science Foundation CAREER award.

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Story Source:

Materials provided by NYU Tandon School of Engineering. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Rafiul Amin, Rose T. Faghih. Physiological characterization of electrodermal activity enables scalable near real-time autonomic nervous system activation inference. PLOS Computational Biology, 2022; 18 (7): e1010275 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010275

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/08/220810105158.htm

Is drug-sparing the solution to future drug shortages?

 The world's only authorized monkeypox vaccine, Bavarian Nordic's Jynneos vaccine, is set to be split into fifths after the FDA cleared the strategy on Aug. 9 — a solution that could indicate the future for resolving emergency drug shortages, pharmacy and supply chain experts said.

States and cities have been clamoring for more monkeypox vaccines for months as cases steadily rose across the country, causing the FDA to consider "drug-sparing," a strategy last studied in 2015 where one Jynneos dose was divided into five syringes and was administered between, rather than under, layers of skin. The research found that patients with the smaller dose had a similar immune response to the full two-dose series. 

With the FDA reporting 123 drugs that are in short supply, this decision could point to future supply issues during public health emergencies. 

"I think this is really exciting," David Dobrzykowski, PhD, director of the University of Arkansas' supply chain master's program in Fayetteville, told Becker's. "All of a sudden, if you take 440,000 doses and split that into five, now it's over 2 million doses. It's just a huge increase in supply that really came out of innovative thinking and the application of the vaccine."

Dr. Dobrzykowski said that before implementing the strategy with other drugs, there would need to be clinical tests for specific medications. 

Erin Fox, PharmD, a pharmacy professor at the Salt Lake City-based University of Utah, said she expects logistical issues to pop up because clinicians will be the ones dividing the doses into fifths, not the suppliers. If other drugs pass similar regulatory steps, though, the drug-sparing strategy could be more common. 

"The concept absolutely needs to be on the radar screen and top of mind with chief supply chain officers and clinical leaders in hospitals and health systems," Dr. Dobrzykowski said.

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/supply-chain/is-drug-sparing-the-solution-to-future-drug-shortages-experts-weigh-in.html