Nose cells as the key COVID-19 entry point

Sungnak et al. SARS-CoV-2 entry factors are highly expressed in nasal epithelial cells together with innate immune genes. Nature Medicine, April 2020.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Detection of the virus was first reported in Wuhan, China and has since spread worldwide and emerged as a global pandemic. COVID-19 primarily affects the lungs and airways and has a wide range of symptoms including fever, coughing, and sore throat. One of the scariest aspects of the virus is that some people may not manifest symptoms but can still carry and spread it. In severe cases, the virus causes pneumonia that can ultimately lead to death. Studies suggest that the virus is thought to be spread through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes and appears to be easily transmitted within affected areas. COVID-19 has spread to more than 184 countries and claimed more than 190,000 lives so far. One of the major questions scientists around the world are trying to understand is how the virus spreads, how we can prevent transmission, and how we can develop an effective vaccine. To discover the target cells involved in COVID-19 transmission, scientists analyzed the gene expression profiles of thousands of cells from 20 different human tissues including the lung, nasal cavity, eye, gut, heart, kidney, and liver. They specifically looked for individual cell types that expressed both of two key COVID-19 entry proteins – the receptor protein ACE2 and the TMPRSS2 protease. These analyses revealed that mucus-producing goblet cells and ciliated cells on the inner lining of the nose have the highest level of COVID-19 virus proteins of all cells in the airways. While there are many external and internal factors that contribute to the virus’ transmissibility, these findings are consistent with the rapid infection rates of the virus. The location of these cells on the surface of the inside of the nose makes them highly accessible to the virus and also may assist with transmission to other people. Interestingly, ACE2 and TMPRSS2 were also found in cells in the cornea of the eye and in the lining of the intestine. This suggests another possible route of infection via the eye and tear ducts, and also revealed a potential for fecal-oral transmission. These findings have important implications for understanding viral transmissibility and could have critical translational implications. For example, given that nasal carriage is likely to be a key feature of transmission, drugs and vaccines administered intra-nasally could be highly effective in limiting the spread of the virus.

Neutrinos Could Explain Why the Universe Has So Much More Matter Than Antimatter

The T2K Collaboration. Constraint on the matter–antimatter symmetry-violating phase in neutrino oscillations. Nature, April 2020

The current laws of physics propose that 13.8 billion years ago, at the time of the Big Bang, every particle of matter had been created with a counterpart called antimatter. Antimatter is precisely the same as matter but with an opposite physical property such as an electrical charge. The great mystery for physicists is why there is so much more matter than antimatter in the universe. If there had been equal quantities in the beginning then each particle would have wiped each other out in a blaze of energy and left the universe full of just photons and dark matter. To understand the mystery behind this asymmetry, scientists have utilized an experiment known as “T2K.” T2K is a collaboration between 500 international scientists that employs a proton accelerator in Japan that generates beams of subatomic particles called muon neutrinos and antineutrinos which then travel 295 km to the gigantic Super-Kamiokande detector, located in a tank filled with 50,000 tons of water under a mountain in Kamioka on Japan’s west coast. During this trip, the muon neutrinos and antineutrinos change in flight to electron neutrinos and antineutrinos, demonstrating the phenomenon of neutrino oscillations. The team observed for the first time that there is a significant difference between neutrino and antineutrino oscillations. Neutrinos were found to turn into electron neutrinos at a much higher rate than their antineutrino counterparts and, as a result, would propagate regular matter at a higher rate than antimatter. These results show that although matter and antimatter look so similar to each other, they can behave completely different. Previously, scientists have found some differences in behavior between matter and antimatter versions of other subatomic particles called quarks, but the differences observed did not seem to be large enough to account for the dominance of matter in the universe. This new data indicates that subatomic particle neutrinos might be the very reason the universe is dominated by matter. While the scientific community is very excited about these results, most experts suggest collecting a lot more data in order to get the confidence level of their results up over the current ratio of 95%.

Humans Tend To Go With Our “Gut Feelings” Over Evidence-based Decisions

Konovalov& Krajbich. Mouse tracking reveals structure knowledge in the absence of model-based choice. Nature Communications, April 2020.

A new study showed that when faced with a decision, humans prefer to follow their “gut feeling” or habits instead of taking all facts into account. In the study, participants played a simple computer game in which identifying patterns could make them more money. While following the patterns led to success most of the time, there was still a 10-40% chance that it would not give the best outcome. The researchers observed that 56 of the 57 participants were able to identify the pattern to make the decision that gave them the highest chance of success. However, only about 20% of players consistently went with that choice after it failed them. The other 80% of players diverged and made choices based upon their gut feelings. The researchers suggest that participants decided to go with their gut feelings when making in-game decisions because choosing the best pattern only led to a slightly higher chance of success. This study highlights how decision-making works in real life. People can learn what choices lead to the best outcomes; but putting that knowledge into practice can often be difficult as it likely takes a lot of mental and sometimes physical energy to always make decisions based upon your knowledge of your current environment. Moreover, the rewards of following the best strategy aren’t always obvious in real life. Following a familiar strategy may increase your success by only a small percentage. In our decision making, there is always the dilemma – what we should do from a statistical perspective versus what worked out well recently, typically in an anecdotal manner.

However, none of these movies properly – or accurately – explains radiation. Regardless of what you do and where you are on a typical day, you are being exposed to millions of particle showers – another term for radiation – at all times. Radiation is all around us, but we are not turning into monsters, giants, or any other kind of creature. We do not even sense most of the radiation unless the harmful effects reach the detectable level. In fact, radioactive isotopes (the sources of radiation) found in water, air, soil, and most places in the environment have been emitting radiation since the Big Bang ^[1], which occurred approximately 14 billion years ago.

Radiation can be emitted by both natural and man-made sources ^{[2, 3]}. There are generally two main types of natural radiation: radiation from natural sources, such as elements in the ground, is terrestrial, and radiation from outer space, such as charged particles and gamma rays, is cosmic. For example, at this very moment you are being bombarded with cosmic rays every few seconds. On the other hand, the main human-made source of radiation exposure is from medical sources like nuclear medicine, x-rays, computed tomography (CT) scans, etc.

There are various types of radiation emitted by the sun. The most widely recognized forms are visible light, infrared, ultraviolet (UV), x-ray, and gamma radiation. We can only see the visible light, which is defined as having a wavelength on the electromagnetic spectrum between 400-700 nm (a nanometer, or nm, is approximately 10-9 meter). Some of the other kinds of light have greater wavelengths, and some have smaller. In short, visible light’s region is a very narrow part of the wide EM spectrum.

Why can our eyes see only within this limited range? There are several reasons ^[4]: solar emissions, low absorption in the atmosphere, the energy of chemical bonds, the optical properties of matter, black-body emissions, and so on. Unless all these reasons align into a specific rhythm, we cannot see the kind of light. There are many laws determining light, and the fact that we can see even some light is quite remarkable, and a sign of how perfectly calibrated the universe is.

Misfits of the standard model: Neutrinos

Following our discussion of radiation, I would like to focus on one particular type of radiation: neutrinos. Neutrinos are created in certain types of radioactive decay and nuclear reactions, such as those occurring in the sun. They are one of the most abundant particles in the universe; billions of them pass harmlessly through your body, unnoticed. David Griffiths, a physicist at Reed College, describes neutrinos in his book on particle physics ^[5]:

“…neutrinos interact extraordinarily weakly with matter; a neutrino of moderate energy could easily penetrate a thousand light years of lead. That’s a comforting realization when you learn that hundreds of billions of neutrinos per second pass through every square inch of your body, night and day, coming from the sun.”

In total, there are three kinds of neutrino flavors, as they are called. These are electron neutrinos, muon neutrinos, and tau neutrinos. Each kind has a tiny mass. According to the Standard Model, there are three kinds of particles in the universe: “light-weight” leptons, “mid-weight” mesons, and “heavy-weight” baryons, such as protons and neutrons. Neutrinos are in the lepton family, which, in total, has only six particles; they have weak interactions within the universe. Neutrinos are neutral leptons since they are chargeless. Other leptons, electron, muon, and tau are called as charged leptons.

The Standard Model is one of the fundamental models in experimental high-energy physics explaining how the universe came into being. Well-known scientists are still improving the model to categorize particles properly in the universe with the aim of finding missing particles. The model explains very well the fundamental forces governing the world: strong nuclear forces, weak nuclear forces, gravitational force, and electroweak force. There were, frankly, two contradictions challenging the Standard Model until today: the Higgs mechanism ^[6] and the mass of neutrinos. The model predicted that Higgs boson ^[6] is the particle responsible for all the mass in the universe. CERN, the biggest particle accelerator^[7] on earth, announced in July 2012 that they had found a particle that behaves like the Standard Model predicted Higgs boson would. Scientists at CERN are still striving to understand the identity and features of this discovered particle. If they achieve that, they can unravel the mystery and origins of the universe a little bit more. At the end, only the mass of neutrinos will remain a controversial topic within the model.

The Standard Model predicted that neutrinos were chargeless and massless particles. However, cosmic, reactor, and accelerator neutrino experiments, which are the main three experiment types to track neutrinos, confirmed each other on the subject of neutrino oscillation. Neutrino oscillation, in short, means that they can change their flavors. For example, a tau neutrino can convert to an electron neutrino, and vice versa. This discovery shows that these particles can be chargeless but not massless. Each of them has to have small, different masses to be able to perform flavor conversions, according to the laws of physics. That is why these particles are usually called the misfits^[8] of the Standard Model.

Since each particle was produced with its antiparticle, according to Dirac’s theory of pairs^[9], neutrinos also have their antiparticles, so there are actually six types of neutrinos in the universe. Each antiparticle has exactly the same properties as the original particle, just with the opposite charge. What about the chargeless neutrinos? The difference between neutrinos and antineutrinos is their spin behavior, not their charge. They both have zero charge; however, antineutrinos have a right-handed spin and neutrinos have a left-handed spin.

If each particle has its own antiparticle in theory, there should be the same amount of particles and antiparticles in the universe. However, experimental results show that there are more particles than antiparticles. There are a lot of scientists explaining this dilemma by accepting a parallel universe in which there are more antiparticles than particles, so the total would still be the same. In return, some others are trying to clarify this contradiction by accepting that more particles were created at the beginning of the universe, approximately 14 billion years ago.

Acknowledgment: This article is produced at Mergeous ^[10], an online article and project development service for authors and publishers dedicated to the advancement of technologies in the merging realms of science and religion.

References

[1] Kaya, A. 2009. “The Expansion of the Universe and the Big Bang: A Qur’anic Perspective,” The Fountain Magazine, Issue 68.
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation
[3] http://www.chem.duke.edu/jds/cruise_chem/nuclear/exposure.html
[4] Why can we see visible light? 2007. Physics Education, 42(1), pp. 37-40.
[5] David Griffiths, Introduction to Elementary Particles.
[6] Kara, Cihan. 2013. “Will CERN Reveal the Origin of the Universe or Cause the End,” The Fountain Magazine, Issue 92.
[7] http://home.web.cern.ch/
[8] Symmetry Magazine, A Joint Fermilab/SLAC Publication, Spring 2013.
[9] Mahmood B. S. 2009. “The Holy Qur’an and Dirac’s Theory of Pairs,” The Fountain Magazine, Issue 68.
[10] Mergeous, Online article and project development platform, http://www.mergeous.com

Surely every person at some time looks up at the sun and moon and the brilliant stars and asks, who positioned all these so perfectly on the face of the sky’?

People have always marvelled at the stars and planets. But they have not always realized that there is a harmony in their positions and movements, a law and order, as indeed in the whole universe. For example, seen from the perspective of the ancient Greek astronomers, celestial bodies in the universe are aimless objects. That seems to be the implication of the term ‘planet’ which means ‘wandering’. The Greeks may have thought the ‘wandering stars’ or ‘planets’ moved in unstable orbits, more or less randomly.

The ancient astronomers’ judgement was not founded upon the Oneness of the Creator Who orders everything in the universe. Inevitably they did not have a clear grasp of the orderliness of the macro-cosmos and did not seek it.

The Qur’an revealed many centuries ago that it is Allah who created the heavenly bodies and put them into their peculiar orbits. There is nothing in the Islamic teachings that argues the view that phenomena or events are random.

Do they not look at the sky above them, how We have built it and adorned , and there are no flaws in it. (50.6)

We have built above you seven strong (heavens) and placed therein a blazing lamp. (78.12)

The ‘blazing lamp’ referred to is the sun.

People have always been fascinated by the thousands of gleaming lights sprinkled across the night sky. Today many enjoy looking into the heavens and learning about the patterns and positions of the stars, and discovering what stars can tell us about our universe as a whole. From our planet, if very high buildings and city lights permit, we can see about 6,000 stars with the naked eye. They change in colour, size, and brilliance.

We are near enough to one particular star, the sun, to find out many details about what these celestial bodies are made of and how they function. A star is composed of gases and other substances compressed together under the force of gravity. The pressure at the core of a forming star is sufficiently intense to initiate nuclear reactions that begin generating energy. During this process, matter is converted into energy, releasing large quantities of heat and light.

The sun may not catch up the moon, nor may the night outstrip the day. Each one is moving smoothly in its own orbit ( 36.40). Here an essential fact is clearly stated, namely the existence of the solar and lunar orbits. At the time of the Revelation, it was generally believed that the sun orbited a motionless earth. This, the geocentric system, had held sway from the early second century (the time of Ptolemy). It continued to do so until the sixteenth century. Fourteen centuries ago, the Qur’an directed the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula and, through them, all of mankind, towards the truth. The demonstration of the existence and details of the solar and lunar orbits is one of the recent achievements of modern astronomy.

Those who do not believe in One Creator maintain that everything comes about by chance. They do not realize that every creature in motion, from minute particles to the planets, displays on itself the stamp of the Eternal and of His Unity. Also, by reason of its movement, each of them, in some sense, takes possession of all the places in which it travels in the name of Unity, thus including them in the property of its Owner. As for those creatures not in motion, each of them, from plants to the fixed stars, is like a seal of Unity that shows the place in which it is situated to be the letter of its Maker. That is to say, each flower and fruit is a stamp and seal of unity that demonstrates, in the name of Unity, that its habitat and native place is the letter of its Maker. What all that inter-connectednes means is that one who does not have all the stars within his command does not have command over a single small particle either.

There are two other verses in the Qur’an about the sun and the moon and their usefulness to human beings, not only as light, but also as points of reference for space and time:

Allah subjected the night and the day for you, the sun and the moon. The stars are in subjection to His Command. Verily in this are signs for people who are wise. (16.12)

Allah is the One Who made the sun a lamp and the moon a light and ordained for it mansions, so that you might know the number of years and the reckoning (of the time).

Allah created this in truth. He explains the signs in detail for people who know (10.5)

The solar system comprises the sun and the nine planets that orbit it. The closest to the sun is the planet Mercury, at an average distance of 58 million km; the farthest, Pluto, is 5,900 million km from the sun. The closer a planet is to the sun, the shorter the time taken to complete its orbit. Thus, Mercury takes only 88 earth days to go round it, while Pluto orbits the sun only once in 248 earth years. Absolute time and distance are nowadays both measured in terms of light speed–a metre, for example, can be defined as the distance the light travels in a certain ‘space’ of time, in fact, 0.000000003335640952 seconds.

It is hard to think of the sun as a passing event. Nevertheless, its ‘term’ is fixed–the Qur’an is explicit on this point: And the sun runs its course for a period fixed for it (36.38). So, how long has the sun left to run? Astronomers nowadays calculate about 4.5 billion more years in its present state. It will still have nearly the same surface temperature (6.000 °C) and yellowish colour that it has now but it will appear about twice as bright because it will be about 60 percent bigger. Its next 4.5 billion years will have begun to take their toll on the sun’s nuclear fuel supply. What then? We don’t really know. Any calculations we make can only be made on the basis of theory.

The sun is full of gases composed of two thousand trillion tons (2×103 kg) of matter,

with the remains of other elements. For every million atoms of hydrogen there are about 85,000 helium atoms and only about 1,000 of any other kind. Pressure from all that mass compressing into the centre of the sun is high enough for the hydrogen atoms to fuse in the core to form helium. This simultaneously creates new energy which keeps the sun from collapsing further and provides the energy that allows it to (or makes it) shine. A series of nuclear fusion reactions, whose end result is the conversion of hydrogen to helium, happen on a vast scale and release very great amounts of energy in the form of heat, light, X-rays and so on. A part of this reaction must be the release of so-called neutrinos. Neutrinos are particles that interact so little with other matter that they can probably float through entire galaxies without being affected. They exist but have no mass nor any other physical property, which is like saying that they simultaneously exist and do not exist: we know they must be around by the way the movement of other (‘real’) particles is affected. If the theory about the way that the sun shines is correct, the sun should be producing about 180×1036 neutrinos each second. Obviously, only a small portion of these neutrinos will come in the earth’s direction.

The sun generates magnetic fields deep in its interior. Through mechanisms not yet fully understood, some of these fields erupt periodically through the sun’s surface, the photosphere. The high temperature and structure of the corona are produced by energy pumped from the photosphere up into the outer layer of the sun’s atmosphere along these magnetic fields.

The sun has been fusing hydrogen into helium throughout its present lifetime of 4.5 billion years, using up less than half of the available hydrogen in its core. By another 4.5 billion years, 90 percent of the available hydrogen in the core will have been converted into helium. Serious questions about the fusion rate in the sun still remain, but according to one theory, the humans of the future will face a sun that is running out of core hydrogen.

When that happens, the gas temperature and pressure will drop and the interior of the sun will collapse under the weight of the surrounding mass. The pressure in the collapsing gas will build up sufficiently for a rind of hydrogen to start burning around the core, now helium. This fusion will provide an outward force on the outermost layers of the sun, pushing them farther out than they are now. The surface of the sun will expand outward until it reaches the orbit of Venus.

Finally, this hydrogen outside the core will run out. The core of the sun will continue to contract, trying to replace the heat no longer generated by hydrogen burning. When the internal temperatures reach 100 million Kelvins, the helium (generated by the hydrogen burning) will itself start to burn. This will happen quickly, forming a carbon-rich core. Around this burned-out core, helium burning will start, and then the rind of hydrogen also will start to burn. The vast energy released by both rinds will push the sun’s outer layers further out until they reach the orbit of Jupiter. Earth will then be ‘inside’ the sun. The temperature on the surface of earth, around 6.5 billion years from now, will be around 30,000 Kelvins, and everything organic will be burned to a crisp.

Intelligent beings on earth 5 or 6 billion years from now, if any, would face the pressure to leave earth and, indeed, the solar system. They would need to have colonized planets around younger (therefore more stable) stars in order to survive. It is likely that humans in the near future will move off the earth in search of mineralogical and economic gain, whereas the future beings of our speculation will move off in order to save the species. The ageing sun will give future life a focus and a goal. And then, if we may be permitted to use the expression, a sort of Doomsday will have happened: certainly, the sun will have run to the end of its appointed (muslaqarr) time.

SOURCES

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• Astronomy January 1992: March 1993.
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• JONES, B. (1991) Planets, Brian Trodd Publishing House Ltd.
• JONES, B. (1992) The Night Sky, Salamander Books Ltd.
• MATTHEWS, R. (1993) The Mind of God, Virgin Books.
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