Daily briefing: How COVID damages the brain

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This brittle star, Ophiojura exbodi, belongs to a newly described species, genus and family. It was found on the sea floor at a depth of more than 360 metres, at a site near New Caledonia in the Pacific Ocean. Most brittle stars have five arms, but this unusual specimen has eight, along with eight sets of teeth surrounding the circular mouth in the centre of its body. Researchers say it belongs to a lineage that split from other brittle star families around 180 million years ago, in the late Triassic or Jurassic period.

See more of the month’s sharpest science shots, selected by Nature’s photo team.

Nature | Leisurely scroll

Reference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B paper

More than one billion

The number of intertidal animals, such as mussels and sea stars, that were killed by an unprecedented heatwave in North America’s Pacific Northwest, estimates marine biologist Chris Harley. (CBC | 7 min read)

COVID-19 coronavirus update

Infection with the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 can cause memory loss, strokes and other effects on the brain. New evidence suggests that the coronavirus’s assault on this organ could be multipronged: it might directly attack certain brain cells, reduce blood flow to brain tissue or trigger production of immune molecules that harm brain cells. Researchers hope that growing evidence will point the way to better treatments.

Nature | 7 min read

Countries with high rates of vaccination, such as Israel, the United States and the United Kingdom, are experiencing an ever-increasing proportion of new infections in younger, unvaccinated age groups. The overall risk of severe disease in children remains low. But the trend highlights the possibility that subsequent waves of community spread could be driven by young people, especially in the presence of new, more transmissible variants. Some nations have responded by offering vaccination to ever-younger groups — Israel vaccinates children as young as 12. Others question whether those doses are needed more urgently elsewhere.

Nature | 4 min read

Features & opinion

Research managers are essential to a healthy research culture, argues a Nature editorial. But for maximal benefit, more of these academic administrators need to get involved in the scholarly aspect of research.

Nature | 3 min read

Read more: ‘We’re problem solvers’: research administrators offer guidance to working scientists (Nature | 8 min read)

Biologist David Wake, who has died aged 84, raised the alarm about worldwide amphibian declines in 1989 and spent much of his career mustering the global scientific response to the crisis. His fervor was fuelled by his love of salamanders of the family Plethodontidae, writes biologist James Hanken, a former student. “Dave’s passion for biology, but especially salamanders, was infectious,” writes Hanken. “If you sat next to him during dinner or a long car ride and asked what’s new, it would take only a few minutes before you’d be willing to drop everything and commit the rest of your life to studying plethodontids.”

PNAS | 9 min read

Maori repositories of knowledge, including oral traditions and carvings, support the idea that these early Polynesian settlers of New Zealand have been travelling to Antarctica for centuries. Voyager Hui Te Rangiora might have travelled to the continent as early as the seventh century — a conclusion made by non-Maori ethnologist Stephenson Percy Smith in 1899 and supported by the history of the Ngati Rarua people. But that was just the beginning, emphasizes conservation biologist Priscilla Wehi. “It’s not simply about which humans were in Antarctica first,” says Wehi. “It’s actually about these linkages that have gone on for many hundreds of years and will go on into the future.” Wehi and her colleagues argue that a Maori perspective “offers transformational insight into true collective management and conservation of Antarctica”.

The New York Times | 9 min read (intermittent paywall)

Reference: Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand paper & Nature Ecology & Evolution paper