Daily briefing: For some people with COVID-19, surviving is just the beginning

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Trauma scars migrants’ mental health

One of the largest and most detailed studies of psychological health in young refugees found that the violent and life-threatening events they often encounter add to their risk of developing psychiatric problems. The uncertainty and stress of navigating asylum systems in their host nations make matters even worse. Researchers worked with 133 apparently healthy young migrants, nearly one-third of whom travelled alone as children. Participants’ stories of trauma and abuse were so horrific that they left the researchers needing counselling themselves.

Nature | 4 min read

Like helium with a dash of antimatter

Move over, plain helium. Pionic helium is here: a helium atom in which one of the two electrons has been replaced by a negative pion, a composite particle made of one quark and one antiquark. Exotic atoms can help physicists to make exquisitely precise measurements of the fundamental constants of nature, such as the size of the proton. Pionic helium could provide a direct measurement of the mass of a related fundamental particle, the neutrino. That has been estimated indirectly, says physicist Masaki Hori, but “it is always nice to have a direct laboratory determination”. Pionic helium is the latest addition to a zoo of exotic atoms, including positronium, muonium, muonic hydrogen, muonic deuterium and antihydrogen. No dilithium crystals yet, though.

Physics World | 6 min read

Source: Nature paper.

Go deeper with the related News & Views and the Nature Podcast.

COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak

Autopsy slowdown is hindering research

Strained health-care systems, lockdowns and safety requirements have hampered efforts to collect tissue from people who have died after coronavirus infection. “We need those tissues to determine what is killing patients affected by COVID-19,” says pathologist Roberto Salgado. “Is it pneumonia? Is it blood clots? Why do they develop kidney failure? We have no clue.” (Nature | 5 min read)

Travel limits hit Australian research jobs

Some 7,000 researchers — more than 4% of Australia’s research force — could lose their jobs within the next 6 months because of a drop in international students. Australian universities, which employ nearly half of the country’s researchers, depend on foreign students for about one-quarter of their revenue. Because of a dramatic drop in the number of these students due to travel bans and visa restrictions, universities will lose billions of dollars — costing scientists their jobs and hobbling PhD projects, according to a report from the country’s chief scientist. (Nature | 3 min read)

How the coronavirus is changing publishing

Fast-tracked peer review, extended scoop-protection policies and video calls between authors and editors are among the many new measures journals are taking in an effort to share coronavirus discoveries more quickly and openly. “COVID-19 may help make these ideas standard,” says journal editor Bernd Pulverer. (Nature Index | 5 min read)

‘Four tests, and I still don’t know if I’ve had it’

Journalist Stephanie Baker thought she might have had COVID-19, so she decided to get an antibody test, which indicates whether a person has been infected. In fact, she took four — and was left with “conflicting results that left me even more anxious — and with more questions than at the start”. Her experience demonstrates why such tests can do more harm than good, and why countries are still scrambling to find tests that are accurate enough to power large-scale disease-control efforts. (Bloomberg Businessweek | 6 min read) Read more: Will antibody tests for the coronavirus really change everything? (Nature, from April)

For some, surviving is just the start

From hard-hit Italy, physicians report that some people who survived the coronavirus face long convalescences — which are even longer for people with lighter symptoms. “It leaves something inside you,” says 77-year-old Albertina Bonetti. “And you never go back the way you were before.” (The New York Times | 7 min read)

11 million

The number of people that authorities in Wuhan, China, aim to test for COVID-19 within a ten-day period. (BBC | 5 min read)

Features & opinion

Turing’s algorithms paint monkeyflowers

The dots that dapple wildly diverse monkeyflower petals are the result of a tug-of-war between two genes — and evidence for a decades-old theory by mathematician Alan Turing. Turing’s ‘reaction–diffusion’ model explains how chemicals with opposite effects can interact to create patterns in a variety of organisms, from seashells to zebra stripes. Researchers genetically altered monkeyflowers in the laboratory to observe how the two genes generate an activator molecule and a repressor molecule to produce the stunning variety of the blossoms.

National Geographic | 7 min read

Reference: Current Biology paper

Bash out better drawings with BioRender

The web-based tool BioRender offers a pared-down set of features specifically for life-science and medical illustration. The results typically serve as illustrated explanations of proposed models, experimental methods or biochemical pathways. A library of around 30,000 icons, which includes depictions of everything from the SARS-CoV-2 virus particles to fruit flies, can cut figure-drawing time down from days to minutes.

Nature | 5 min read

Image of the week

Scientists exploring the deep sea off the coast of Australia have discovered up to 30 new underwater species — including this string-like creature known as a siphonophore, which might be the longest animal ever discovered. Measuring 46 metres — almost twice the average length of a blue whale — it is the largest specimen of the giant siphonophore Apolemia ever recorded. Although they look, behave and move around like individual organisms, siphonophores are actually floating colonies made up of tiny multicellular organisms called zooids that are attached to one another and cannot survive independently.

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