Research Rising to the Challenge

Photo by Jeremy Gasowski

By tinkering with the molecular machinery of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, Harish Vashisth and Krisztina Varga are working to halt the virus from replicating once inside a healthy cell, thus blunting its ability to sicken. Their research, one of several projects funded by UNH’s Collaborative Research Excellence, or CoRE, initiative to address the coronavirus pandemic, could lead to a therapeutic drug for people who have COVID-19.

Their research focuses on the viral protein called M^pro, the enzyme that drives the virus’s replication by cutting the long chain of viral proteins that form. “It’s a molecular scissor,” says Vashisth, associate professor of chemical engineering. “And if you inhibit the activity of this enzyme, it will never cut the polypeptide thread into individual proteins,” preventing the virus from replicating. The researchers have designed synthetic molecules that show promise in interrupting the snipping of the M^pro “scissor” enzyme.

Harish Vashisth, associate professor of chemical engineering

Photo by Brooks Payette

“Our studies initially show that indeed, we can block this enzyme from carrying out necessary chemistry,” Vashisth says.

Varga, associate professor of molecular, cellular and biomedical sciences, brings her expertise in nuclear magnetic resonance, or NMR, spectroscopy to this effort. “She looks at the detailed structure of this enzyme with and without the inhibitors,” says Vashisth. “Doing NMR spectroscopy fills certain gaps and can show certain states that aren’t available in a model.”

Reagan Baughman

While Vashisth and Varga explore how the virus replicates on a molecular level, Paul College associate professor of economics Reagan Baughman looked at how it spreads in one of the hardest-hit communities: nursing homes and long-term care facilities. In a recent journal article, Baughman showed that nurses and direct-care workers in nursing homes are about one-third more likely to hold second jobs than other workers, increasing their interactions with additional patients and their potential for transmitting COVID-19.

The research, published in the journal Medical Care Research and Review with co-authors Bryce Smith, a doctoral student at UNH, and former Carsey School researcher Kristin Smith, is particularly relevant in New Hampshire, which holds the dubious distinction of having the nation’s highest percentage of COVID deaths — more than 80% — among long-term care residents. “The pandemic has shone a spotlight on inequalities throughout our society, particularly in healthcare systems and among vulnerable populations like our elders in nursing care,” says Baughman.

Diving Into Data

Researchers at UNH’s Carsey School of Public Policy and Institute on Disability have taken similar dives into economic and employment data to help policymakers and others make sense of the pandemic’s effects. Since May 2020, Carsey researchers have produced COVID-19 Economic Crisis: By State.

“We started this because the economy was tanking and a lot of people were paying attention to the national impact, but there was really no place that was pulling together the data for all the states and putting it together in a comprehensive way,” says Carsey School director Michael Ettlinger, who co-authors the monthly report with Carsey policy analyst Jordan Hensley. The data has been used by reporters, governors and others looking for contextualized trends and information.

Michael Ettlinger, director of the Carsey School of Public Policy

Photo by Valerie Lester

The reports, rich with interactive maps and graphics, brought to light that early in the pandemic, the places suffering the greatest economic hit were the places that had the most COVID. “It wasn’t so much about whether governors shut down their states or not, it was about how much COVID you had in your state,” says Ettlinger, noting that trend is less obvious now as COVID cases have shifted more subtly state to state. “We also show that this economic collapse remains far worse than that of the Great Recession,” says Ettlinger.

At UNH’s Institute on Disability, the team behind the monthly National Trends in Disability Employment (nTIDE) jobs report for people with disabilities, is now parsing population survey data to offer greater detail on the effects of the pandemic on employment for people with disabilities, who in general work at about half the rate of those without disabilities. The team shares their findings in a mid-month COVID-19 webinar.

Not Letting a Crisis Go to Waste

For some researchers, the seismic shifts of the pandemic afforded new opportunities for existing research. Jennifer Miksis-Olds, research professor and director of UNH’s Center for Acoustics Research and Education, calls it opportunistic data collection.

Since 2017, Miksis-Olds, a marine acoustician, has been listening to deep ocean ecosystems via the Atlantic Deepwater Ecosystem Observatory Network (ADEON), a network of acoustic ocean bottom platforms deployed along the outer continental shelf from Virginia to Florida. “We hear all sorts of things: boats, hurricanes, big whales, small whales, echolocation, fish choruses,” she says.

When Miksis-Olds, who directs ADEON, closed out the data collection phase of the project in December 2020, she found herself with a unique chance to eavesdrop on the pandemic’s impact on ocean soundscapes. “We were opportunistically recording during COVID, and we’ve got two years of baseline data prior to that to compare to COVID conditions,” she says.

Jennifer Miksis-Olds, research professor and director of UNH’s Center for Acoustics Research and Education

Photo by Jeremy Gasowski

Michael Ferguson, assistant professor of recreation management and policy

Photo by David Vogt

She and colleagues Kim Lowell, a research scientist at UNH’s Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping, and Bruce Martin of ADEON partner JASCO Applied Sciences, are analyzing their data now to explore if it, like a recent study that listened to near-shore waters, will find a quieter ocean soundscape. “How far reaching, from the shore into the open ocean, were COVID-19 impacts detected in the soundscape? Was it just a coastal phenomenon or was it a global phenomenon far offshore?” she says. “My hunch would be that if we’re going to see a change in the deep ocean soundscape it would be in the sites closest to shipping lanes.”

If shipping lanes grew quiet due to COVID, hiking trails and outdoor recreation in New England’s National Forests buzzed with unprecedented traffic. Michael Ferguson, assistant professor of recreation management and policy (RMP), was well situated to document the impact. 

In October 2019, Ferguson, along with fellow RMP faculty members Robert Barcelona, associate professor, and lecturer Lauren Ferguson, launched a year-long visitor use management study in the White Mountain, Green Mountain and Finger Lakes National Forests in New Hampshire, Vermont and New York for the USDA Forest Service. Since their study relied heavily on face-to-face surveys, “to be frank, I thought our research was dead in the water,” when COVID hit, Ferguson says.

Traffic snarled the scenic Kancamagus Highway in New Hampshire’s White Mountain National Forest in summer of 2020.

Photo by USFS Photo

But the team quickly pivoted to a unique vehicle-based counting method and was able to quantify a whopping 50% increase in National Forest recreation visitation during the summer months of 2020. Ferguson was shocked at the explosion in use. “Anecdotally, we saw a mass influx of visitation all summer. It was beyond belief: parking lots completely full by 8 a.m. and lines of traffic and visitors everywhere,” he says, echoing now well-known trends. “Still, to quantify and empirically validate a 50% visitation increase is striking.”

The USDA Forest Service will use this data to allocate resources and manage the National Forest system while simultaneously providing high-quality experiences. “This research provides resource managers data-driven solutions to inform policy,” says Ferguson. And this unique snapshot will allow researchers to model visitor behaviors and decision-making before, during and after a global pandemic, he adds.
 
Despite the near-crisis situation this spike in visitation wrought upon popular outdoor recreation sites and their management, Ferguson sees the trend as generally positive. “People are now re-remembering and re-discovering the incredible parks and protected areas right in their own backyards.”