Scientists see downsides to top COVID-19 vaccines from Russia, China

Allison Martell, Julie Steenhuysen

TORONTO/CHICAGO (Reuters) - High-profile COVID-19 vaccines developed in Russia and China share a potential shortcoming: They are based on a common cold virus that many people have been exposed to, potentially limiting their effectiveness, some experts say.

CanSino Biologics’ (6185.HK) vaccine, approved for military use in China, is a modified form of adenovirus type 5, or Ad5. The company is in talks to get emergency approval in several countries before completing large-scale trials, the Wall Street Journal reported last week.

A vaccine developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute, approved in Russia earlier this month despite limited testing, is based on Ad5 and a second less common adenovirus.

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“The Ad5 concerns me just because a lot of people have immunity,” said Anna Durbin, a vaccine researcher at Johns Hopkins University. “I’m not sure what their strategy is ... maybe it won’t have 70% efficacy. It might have 40% efficacy, and that’s better than nothing, until something else comes along.”

Vaccines are seen as essential to ending the pandemic that has claimed over 845,000 lives worldwide. Gamaleya has said its two-virus approach will address Ad5 immunity issues.

Both developers have years of experience and approved Ebola vaccines based on Ad5. Neither CanSino nor Gamaleya responded to requests for comment.

Researchers have experimented with Ad5-based vaccines against a variety of infections for decades, but none are widely used. They employ harmless viruses as “vectors” to ferry genes from the target virus – in this case the novel coronavirus - into human cells, prompting an immune response to fight the actual virus.

But many people already have antibodies against Ad5, which could cause the immune system to attack the vector instead of responding to the coronavirus, making these vaccines less effective.

Several researchers have chosen alternative adenoviruses or delivery mechanisms. Oxford University and AstraZeneca (AZN.L) based their COVID-19 vaccine on a chimpanzee adenovirus, avoiding the Ad5 issue. Johnson & Johnson’s (JNJ.N) candidate uses Ad26, a comparatively rare strain.

Dr. Zhou Xing, from Canada’s McMaster University, worked with CanSino on its first Ad5-based vaccine, for tuberculosis, in 2011. His team is developing an inhaled Ad5 COVID-19 vaccine, theorizing it could circumvent pre-existing immunity issues.


FILE PHOTO: A logo of China's vaccine specialist CanSino Biologics Inc is pictured on the company's headquarters in Tianjin, following an outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), China August 17, 2020. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo

“The Oxford vaccine candidate has quite an advantage” over the injected CanSino vaccine, he said.

Xing also worries that high doses of the Ad5 vector in the CanSino vaccine could induce fever, fueling vaccine skepticism.

“I think they will get good immunity in people that don’t have antibodies to the vaccine, but a lot of people do,” said Dr. Hildegund Ertl, director of the Wistar Institute Vaccine Center in Philadelphia.

In China and the United States, about 40% of people have high levels of antibodies from prior Ad5 exposure. In Africa, it could be has high as 80%, experts said.

HIV RISK

Some scientists also worry an Ad5-based vaccine could increase chances of contracting HIV.

In a 2004 trial of a Merck & Co (MRK.N) Ad5-based HIV vaccine, people with pre-existing immunity became more, not less, susceptible to the virus that causes AIDS.

Researchers, including top U.S. infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, in a 2015 paper, said the side effect was likely unique to HIV vaccines. But they cautioned that HIV incidence should be monitored during and after trials of all Ad5-based vaccines in at-risk populations.



FILE PHOTO: A scientist works inside a laboratory of the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology during the production and laboratory testing of a vaccine against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Moscow, Russia August 6, 2020. The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF)/Handout via REUTERS

“I would be worried about the use of those vaccines in any country or any population that was at risk of HIV, and I put our country as one of them,” said Dr. Larry Corey, co-leader of the U.S. Coronavirus Vaccine Prevention Network, who was a lead researcher on the Merck trial.

Gamaleya’s vaccine will be administered in two doses: The first based on Ad26, similar to J&J’s candidate, and the second on Ad5.

Alexander Gintsburg, Gamaleya’s director, has said the two-vector approach addresses the immunity issue. Ertl said it might work well enough in individuals who have been exposed to one of the two adenoviruses.

Many experts expressed skepticism about the Russian vaccine after the government declared its intention to give it to high-risk groups in October without data from large pivotal trials.

“Demonstrating safety and efficacy of a vaccine is very important,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, a Harvard vaccine researcher who helped design J&J’s COVID-19 vaccine. Often, he noted, large-scale trials “do not give the result that is expected or required.”


Additional reporting by Christine Soares in New York, Kate Kelland in London, Polina Ivanova in Moscow and Roxanne Liu in Beijing; Editing by Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Fear in America

by EVAGGELOS VALLIANATOS

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

The Democratic Party nominated Joe Biden for president and the Republican Party nominated Donald Trump for another four years in the White House.

These two nominating Conventions opened the formal 2020 election season. Joe Biden’s Convention was behind masks and television screens. The Convention of Trump, imperial in purpose and centered around his family and himself, was out in the open, without masks, facing the beautiful Greek columns of the White House and the explosive fireworks at the Lincoln Memorial.

Hubris

But behind Trump’s extravagant Hollywood affair, there’s hubris and contempt for tradition and the law. Trump is involving his advisors and cabinet officials in his private business of running for reelection.

For example, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on an official diplomatic mission to the Middle East went all the way to Jerusalem to praise Trump and to speak to the Republican National Convention why Americans must reelect Trump. This is a blatant disregard and violation of the Hatch Act, the federal law forbidding government officials from indulging in political activities on official time or using government property or funds to advance their private agenda.

Trump: I am the State

The White House, in which Trump staged his reelection campaign, is a government house, not belonging to Trump or any other president. Yet Trump did not violate the Hatch Act because, under the Clinton administration, in 1993,  Congress amended the Hatch Act and excluded the president and vice-president from its provisions.

I don’t know the real reasons why Congress decided, in 1993 and under a Democratic administration, to give royal prerogatives to the president. That was a regressive decision preparing the ground for authoritarian government. If the president is above the law, as he is in the Hatch Act, the president becomes king. Trump’s advisors probably read the 1993 amendments of this basic law.

Nevertheless, the symbolism of the president not being above the law is potent. Steve Schmidt, a Republican strategist, said that Trump “desecrated” the White House. The Republican National  Convention “was a pageant of breathtaking dishonesty… Make no mistake about what Trump declared over these last four days. In essence he said, I AM THE TRUTH, I AM THE LAW, I AM THE STATE. The Republican Party’s platform has but one demand. One requirement. Obedience and loyalty to Trump.”

I doubt that more than a few people grasped Trump’s message reflecting the French King Louis XIV: “I am the State.”  Not even Biden is fully aware of Trump’s agenda – keep power by any means possible.

Biden facing domestic wars

Biden is struggling how to handle the explosive prospect of Trump remaining in office. In addition, he is caught in a tremendous variety of conflicting emotions and political interests. His black woman vice-president, Senator Kamala Harris of California, may diffuse to some degree the black anger and convince black Americans to vote for Biden.

The country, however, is  not far away from civil war. Congress passes laws primarily when the same party controls both Houses.

The Republicans and Trump are accusing black protesters for burning and looting cities in Oregon, Wisconsin, and Illinois. They are telling Americans that Biden means socialism, anarchy, and open borders.

Biden is trying to neutralize such slander with a big hug: embracing America, whites, blacks, Hispanics, and to some degree, Native Americans. But his choice of Harris for vice-president is probably alienating capable white women like Senator Elizabeth Warren, whose vision for America is more timely and necessary than that of Harris.

Origins of the pandemic plague

The other invisible but deadly force shaping America and the 2020 election is the coronavirus plague, still killing thousands per day. Trump and his royal Republican followers speak in the past tense about the plague. Biden follows medical science and criticizes Trump’s irresponsible attitude and policy.

Yet, neither Trump nor Biden have a clue about the origins of the pandemic or what to do to avert a continuation or repeat of pestilence.

The official narrative of the plague originating in the Wuhan virology laboratory of China may be true, but we don’t really know. America has Wuhan-like labs doing the same biological warfare research Chinese labs do. In fact, American scientists sowed China’s biological warfare field.

Factories of disease

The other unspoken plague facts come from industrialized farming, especially animal farms. These giant factories of cruelty, filth, and toxins are temporary and annual homes to some 9 billion chicken, cattle and hogs. In addition to meat, these abominable processing facilities produce diseases, some of which become pandemics, exactly like the 2020 coronavirus plague.

I don’t expect Trump or his advisors to ever discuss the disease-plague potential of America’s animal farms. But Biden must raise this emerging danger and promise to reform the hazardous and unacceptable way America goes about eating meat. The larger these animal factories, the more pestilential they become.

So, America is going to vote for its next president in the midst of the paralyzing and killings of the corona plague, tremendous unemployment largely from shutting down the country, gross inequality, race riots, police brutality, class struggle and political freeze.

The elephant in the room

In addition, the calamities of the plague, and white Americans’ fear of race protests all but eliminate serious discussion of what to do about the elephant in the room: climate change.

Trump is keeping pushing his deleterious policies of encouraging more pollution, the burning of more petroleum and a warmer Earth, and the devastation of the natural world. In Alaska, Trump’s greed and cruelty are probably encouraging irresponsible local and federal officials to look the other way while hunters are exterminating even mother wolves and their pups. Barbarism is not that far behind.

And Biden, overwhelmed by his efforts to restore race peace, and close the gigantic gap between whites and blacks, has put his green plans in his library.

In all this tumult, it’s easy to spend one’s time in watching fantasies of crime and sex on television – probably the “entertainment” of countless millions. However, such distraction from the issues of life, death, and civilization will make the elephant in the room so large it will wreck the house.

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Prashant Bhushan: India finds an unlikely hero in lawyer-activist

Published

12 hours ago

IMAGE COPYRIGHTGETTY IMAGES

image captionPrashant Bhushan refused to apologise to the Supreme Court and got a symbolic one-rupee fine

Indians have been riveted by a courtroom face off between a prominent lawyer-activist and the country's Supreme Court, writes the BBC's Geeta Pandey in Delhi.

Last week, a one-minute clip from Richard Attenborough's Oscar-winning film Gandhi was being shared widely on WhatsApp in India.

It showed the country's independence hero, played by Ben Kingsley, in the dock, standing up to a British judge who gets more and more flustered as the hearing progresses.

After Gandhi refuses to leave the province or pay a bond so he can be released on bail, the judge asks him, "Do you want to go to jail?"

"As you wish," Gandhi responds.

Similar scenes have been playing out in the Indian Supreme Court in recent weeks, with a three-judge bench repeatedly asking the prominent lawyer and activist Prashant Bhushan to apologise for criticising judges - and the lawyer repeatedly refusing.

Mr Bhushan said as his criticism was rooted in his "bonafide belief" that an apology would be "insincere" and "contempt of my conscience".

To the threat of prison, he quoted Mahatma Gandhi: "I do not ask for mercy. I do not appeal for magnanimity. I cheerfully submit to any punishment that court may impose."

IMAGE COPYRIGHTREUTERS

image captionIndia's Supreme Court is one of the most powerful in the world

On 14 August, the court convicted Mr Bhushan of contempt of court and on Monday he was ordered to pay a symbolic fine of one rupee (0.1p) for two tweets criticising judges.

The three-judge bench ruled that if the 63-year-old didn't pay the fine by 15 September, he would have to spend three months in jail and he would be barred from law practice for three years.

Mr Bhushan said he would pay the fine but he retained the right to challenge the order and seek a review.

"I had already said that I would cheerfully submit to any penalty that can be lawfully inflicted upon me," he said in a statement. "I propose to submit myself to this order and would respectfully pay the fine."

Mr Bhushan's critics said his decision meant "acceptance of guilt", but his spirited fight for "freedom of speech" and "judicial accountability" gripped India and won him praise as a "defender of democracy" and "a hero of our times". He has been compared to Gandhi.

• The 'sanity' row among India's top judges
• Indian activist-lawyer fined one rupee for tweets
• The crisis facing India's Supreme Court

Mr Bhushan's face-off with judiciary began in June, when he posted two tweets to his 1.6 million followers.

In one, he commented on a viral photograph of Chief Justice Sharad Bobde sitting on an expensive Harley Davidson motorbike. In the second, he criticised the conduct of the four previous chief justices over the past six years.

The son of a former Indian law minister, Mr Bhushan is one of India's most-respected lawyers and an outspoken human rights activist who has dedicated his life to fighting cases involving public interest. For the past 35 years, he has fought hundreds of cases relating to government corruption, environment, transparency in courts, and a range of human rights issues.

According to one report, 80% of his time is spent on pro bono work, representing the poor and displaced people.

His defence in this case was led by several of India's top lawyers and his conviction led to a storm of protest in India.

Nearly 3,000 retired judges, lawyers and eminent citizens signed a statement saying holding Mr Bhushan guilty of contempt would have a "chilling effect on people expressing critical views on functioning of the top court".

Thousands took to social media to express their support for the lawyer-activist, and hundreds came out on the streets in solidarity.

IMAGE COPYRIGHTGETTY IMAGES

image captionPrashant Bhushan outside the Supreme Court, where he heard his penalty on Monday

About 10 days back, as the Supreme Court held a crucial hearing in the case, dozens of men and women stood outside the top court in the capital, Delhi, under a grey and rainy sky, holding placards in Mr Bhushan's support. The protesters chanted slogans urging Mr Bhushan to "march on" and assuring him of their support in his fight for justice.

Nearly 1,000 miles away in the southern city of Hyderabad, lawyers stood in a silent protest outside the high court, many carrying placards that said "I am with Prashant Bhushan".

Protests were also held in Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore), Ranchi, and Jaipur, and the participants included lawyers, students, activists and common citizens.

On Monday, as the Supreme Court order was read out, Mr Bhushan's supporters called it a "moral victory" for the defendant and dismissed the one-rupee fine as tokenism - a face-saving move by the judiciary. Legal experts praised the judgement, saying it had avoided further confrontation.

Mr Bhushan simply tweeted a picture of himself with a one rupee coin, adding that his lawyer had donated the fine and he had "gratefully accepted".

Singing Dogs Re-emerge From Extinction for Another Tune

The animal was believed to have disappeared from the highlands of New Guinea, but was found on the island’s Indonesian side.


Scientists investigating sightings of possible New Guinea Singing Dogs on Papua New Guinea were able to retrieve DNA samples from trapped wild dogs in 2018.Credit...Anang Dianto

By James Gorman
Aug. 31, 2020

The New Guinea Singing Dog, a dingo-like animal with a unique howling style, was considered extinct in the wild. But scientists reported Monday that the dogs live on, based on DNA collected by an intrepid and indefatigable field researcher.

Their analysis, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that the dogs are not simply common village dogs that decided to try their chances in the wild. The findings not only solve a persistent, though obscure puzzle, they may shed light on the complicated and still emerging picture of dog domestication in Asia and Oceania.

Claudio Sillero, a conservation biologist at Oxford University and the chair of the canid specialist group at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, said that the study confirms the close relatedness between Australian and New Guinea dogs, “the most ancient ‘domestic’ dogs on earth.”

James McIntyre, president of the New Guinea Highland Wild Dog Foundation and the researcher whose forays in the field were central to the discovery, first searched for New Guinea Singing Dogs in the forbiddingly rugged highlands of the island, which is split between Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, in 1996. He was taking a break from studying intersex pigs in Vanuatu, but that’s another story. Mr. McIntyre has degrees in zoology and education, and has worked at the Bronx Zoo and other zoos, private conservation organizations and as a high school biology teacher.

There are highly inbred populations of the dogs in zoos, and some are kept as exotic pets. But for more than a half-century they remained elusive in the wild until 2012 when an ecotourism guide snapped a photo of a wild dog in the highlands of Indonesia’s Papua province. It was the first seen since the 1950s, and Mr. McIntyre set to work. He received some funding from a mining company, PT Freeport Indonesia. The company, which has a history of conflict with the local population over environmental and safety issues and murky connections to the Indonesian military, operates a gold mine in the highlands near the wild dog sightings. In 2016 he spent about a month searching and captured 149 photos of 15 individual dogs.

“The locals called them the Highland wild dog,” he said. “The New Guinea Singing Dog was the name developed by Caucasians. Because I didn’t know what they were, I just called them the Highland wild dogs.”

But whether they were really the wild singing dogs that had been considered extinct was the big question. Even the singing dogs kept in captivity were a conundrum to scientists who couldn’t decide whether they were a breed, a species or a subspecies. Were these wild dogs the same as the captive population? Or were they village dogs gone feral recently?

In 2018, Mr. McIntyre went back to Papua and managed to get DNA from two trapped wild dogs, quickly released after biological samples were taken, as well as one other dog that was found dead. He brought the DNA to researchers who concluded that the highland dogs Mr. McIntyre found are not village dogs, but appear to belong to the ancestral line from which the singing dogs descended


“For decades we’ve though that the New Guinea singing dog is extinct in the wild,” said Heidi G. Parker of the National Institutes of Health, who worked with Suriani Surbakti and other researchers from Indonesia and other countries on analyzing the DNA samples that Mr. McIntyre returned.

“They are not extinct,” Dr. Parker said. “They actually do still exist in the wild.”

The highland dogs had about 72 percent of their genes in common with their captive singing cousins. The highland dogs had much more genetic variation, which would be expected for a wild population. The captive dogs in conservation centers all descend from seven or eight wild ancestors.

The 28 percent difference between the wild and captive varieties may come from some interbreeding with village dogs or from the common ancestor of all the dogs brought to Oceania. The captive, inbred dogs may simply have lost a lot of the variation that the wild dogs have.

Their genes could help reinvigorate the captive population of a few hundred animals in conservation centers, which are very inbred.

Elaine A. Ostrander of the N.I.H., a co-author of the report, says the finding is also significant for understanding more about dog domestication. The New Guinea Singing Dogs are closely related to Australian dingoes and are also related to the Asian dogs that migrated with humans to Oceania 3,500 years ago or more. It may be that the singing dogs split off around then from a common ancestor that later gave rise to breeds like the Akita and Shiba Inu.

“They provide this missing piece that we didn’t really have before,” Dr. Ostrander said.

Laurent Frantz, an evolutionary geneticist at Queen Mary University of London who studies the domestication and evolution of dogs and was not involved in the research, said the paper makes clear “that these populations have been continuous for a long time.”

But exactly when and where the dogs became feral and “what is wild, what is domestic” are still thorny questions, which the new data will help to address.

Mr. McIntyre did finish his work on the intersex pigs of Vanuatu, by the way, and you can find out more at the website of the Southwest Pacific Research Project. They are bred on purpose because they are highly valued by islanders.

Dogs, Now and Then
Scientists continue to shed light on murky corners of the history and genetics of dogs

Dog Breeding in the Neolithic Age
Fossils and modern DNA show the ancient roots of Arctic sled dogs.


Sled dogs on the southeastern shores of Greenland last summer.
Sled dogs on the southeastern shores of Greenland last summer.Credit...Jonathan Nackstrand/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
James Gorman
By James Gorman
Published June 25, 2020
Updated June 29, 2020

There are two broad stories about dogs and humans. One is of a deep and meaningful partnership between two species that ensures the survival of both. The other is of scavengers and camp followers that live off our garbage and feed on our corpses in the shadow of war.

Both are undeniably true, in different places and different times, but vast mysteries remain about the early roots of dogs and humans, and when the first glimpses of the working partnership appeared.

A 35-person team, including a who’s who of ancient DNA experts, has now uncovered a vivid and genetically detailed picture of the oldest known case of selective breeding, the creation of Arctic sled dogs at least 9,500 years ago.

By that time, the researchers found, sled dogs already had mutations in genes involved in oxygen use and temperature sensitivity that set them apart from other dogs and wolves.

And much of that genetic heritage survives in modern Greenland sled dogs. Other Arctic breeds, like Alaskan malamutes and Alaskan and Siberian huskies, also carry some of that heritage, although not quite as much as the Greenland dogs.

Mikkel-Holger S. Sinding of the University of Copenhagen, one of the lead researchers on the project, said the genome of an ancient Siberian dog, an even older wolf, and some modern dogs provided “the first hard evidence of early dog diversification.” He and his colleagues published their findings Thursday in Science.

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Elaine Ostrander, who studies dog genetics and breed differences at the National Institutes of Health, and was not involved in the research, said it was not a surprise that dogs were being selectively bred by 9,500 years ago. They were first domesticated at least 15,000 years ago. But, she said, the new research is the first “where someone’s put it all together and said, you know, this is what was going on 10,000 years ago.”

Terrie M. Williams at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who studies the exercise physiology of carnivores, said researchers had tried to understand why sled dogs perform better than other breeds at running long distances, by looking at body shape and the mechanics of running. But they didn’t find the major differences they were expecting.

She said she was thrilled to see that the researchers had found specific genetic differences that set sled dogs apart. “That’s what’s so cool here,” she said.

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Sled dogs have well-known roots in human prehistory. A 12,500-year-old tool found at one Arctic site hints at its possible use on sleds. And archaeological investigations at a well-known site on Zhokov Island in the Siberian Sea uncovered dog bones and sled technology indicating that the dogs may have been the first canines bred for a specific task.

Dr. Sinding and colleagues dug deep into the DNA of one of those dogs, using a jawbone from the site dating to 9,500 years ago. They also sequenced the genomes of a Siberian wolf dating to 33,000 years ago and 10 modern Greenland sled dogs. They relied on other canine genomes archived in databases as well.

They found that the Zhokov dog was closest to modern-day sled dogs, particularly to the Greenland sled dogs, which are a “land race,” bred for a task and sharing a look and behavior but not the sort of breed for which studbooks and records are kept.

The Zhokov dog was not a direct ancestor of modern sled dogs, but it shared a common ancestor with modern sled dogs that was probably about 12,000 years old. This evidence suggested that the sled-dog type, bred for hauling loads in brutal winters, was already established 9,500 years ago.

The researchers also found that sled dogs, ancient and modern, did not show interbreeding with wolves, even though other modern dog breeds do, and dog-wolf matings were known in Greenland in historic times. The results suggest hybrids may not have been much use in pulling sleds.

Then the researchers started looking for genes that were different in sled dogs from both wolves and other dog breeds. They found several that made sense. One is involved in a variety of physiological functions including calcium transport and temperature sensitivity. They don’t know what exactly it does in sled dogs, but they do know that several similar genes are different in mammoths, creatures of the cold, and elephants, animals of more temperate climates, suggesting some kind of adaptation to arctic life.

Another gene that distinguished sled dogs from other dogs is involved in coping with low oxygen conditions. It is also found in a group of humans, sea nomads, who have been diving for thousands of years. It could, Dr. Sinding said, contribute to fitness for the extreme demands of long sled-hauling trips.

And finally, one might expect to find the Arctic dogs adapted to a different diet, than say, the dogs of the Fertile Crescent or European farmlands. They do have specific genes to cope with a high fat intake, as do humans and bears who live in the Arctic. And they do not have the same adaptations to digesting starch found in many other dog breeds.

The diet adaptations were not present in the Zhokov dog, indicating that the sled dogs changed over time.

Dr. Sinding cautioned that although the Greenland sled dogs and other Arctic breeds carry a major genetic contribution, particularly in terms of the important genes identified, from ancient sled dogs, they are not the same.

The modern sled dogs and sled technology have their origin in Thule culture, he said, which dates to 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. And the Greenland sled dogs went through what is called a bottleneck, about 850 years ago, when the population shrunk. That was when the Inuit arrived, and they succeeded the Thule people, in Greenland.

Modern Arctic breeds do have a major contribution from the sled dogs of 9,500 years ago, he said, but a gap exists between then and 3,000 years ago.

In other words, if you have a malamute or a husky, do not start parading around with your pet claiming its breed goes back 9,500 years. A good part of its genes may derive from those old sled dogs, but as Dr. Mikkel pointed out, “in principle, all dogs are equally old.”

The Mixed and Mysterious Heritage of Dogs
Untangling the genetics of the oldest domesticated animal can be a bit like unscrambling an egg.

From the Seabed, Figures of an Ancient Cult

A trove of Phoenician artifacts was long ascribed to a single shipwreck. More likely they were tossed overboard, and over centuries, a new study suggests.



Three 2,500-year-old Phoenician figurines recovered from the Mediterranean. The leftmost and center figurines carry a symbol associated with Tanit, a mother goddess of the Phoenician pantheon.Credit...Jonathan J. Gottlieb


By Joshua Rapp Learn
Sept. 1, 2020

In 1972, in one of the early finds of marine archaeology, researchers discovered a trove of clay figurines on the seabed off the coast of Israel. The figurines — hundreds of them, accompanied by ceramic jars — were assumed to be the remains of a Phoenician shipwreck that had rested under the Mediterranean for 2,500 years.

The artifacts were never fully analyzed in a scientific study, and were filed away and mostly forgotten for decades. But a new analysis by Meir Edrey, an archaeologist at the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies at the University of Haifa in Israel, and his colleagues indicates that the items were not deposited all at once in a wreck. Rather, they accumulated over roughly 400 years, between the 7th and 3rd centuries B.C., in a series of votive offerings, as part of a cult devoted to seafaring and fertility.

“These figurines, the majority of them, display attributes related to fertility, to childbearing and to pregnancy,” Dr. Edrey said.

The ancient Phoenicians were a seafaring merchant culture that stretched across the Mediterranean. Their first city states arose nearly 5,000 years ago, and the culture reached its height during the millennium before Carthage was defeated by Rome in 146 B.C.



In the 1970s, a number of the Phoenician figurines began turning up on the illicit antiquities market. Researchers at the time tracked down the vendor and persuaded him to reveal the source; the details led to the discovery of hundreds of figurines and amphorae, or clay jars, at a site called Shavei Zion, off the coast of western Galilee.

The items were ascribed to a shipwreck dating to the 6th century B.C.

But Dr. Edrey’s team examined thousands of pottery shards and found they were quite different in style. Such variation typically indicates that pots come from different time periods, suggesting the site was not the result of a single event.

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“I’m completely convinced that their understanding of this site is correct,” said Helen Dixon, a historian at the East Carolina University who was not involved in the recent study but did some work on the early findings at Shavei Zion as part of her doctoral research. “They’re being cautious and scientific, but I’m sold.”


Hundreds of figurines and other ceramic artifacts or shards from the shipwreck were examined in the study.Credit...Jonathan J. Gottlieb

She noted that the loose jumble of amphorae at Shavei Zion contrasted with that of shipwrecks found off the Maltese coast, which have similar-looking pots laid out in an orderly fashion.

Dr. Edrey and his team also looked at more than 300 figurines, which fit within several themes. Many of the figurines carried symbols associated with Tanit, a goddess of the Phoenician pantheon — and the main goddess of Carthage by the 5th century B.C. Others bore dolphin symbols, also associated with Tanit, while some of the figures showed a pregnant woman carrying a child.

“Tanit was the mother goddess for the pantheon,” said Aaron Brody, director of the Badè Museum at the Pacific School of Religion; he has published work on Phoenician religion but was not involved with the new study. “She quite literally was the mom of the family of deities.”

Dr. Edrey speculated that practitioners of a fertility cult came to this area periodically to cast offerings into the water. The figurines might represent common people, and casting them into the sea could represent a type of sacrifice that substituted for the real thing, he said.

In some figurines the right hand is upright, and the left sits below the mouth. This could indicate some sort of vow in exchange for a divine favor, such as safe passage on a voyage, Dr. Edrey said, which would have been particularly important for the seafaring Phoenicians.

“The figurines are in some ways kind of a bridge between the earthly world and the divine,” Dr. Brody said.

Knowledge of Tanit and of Phoenician religion is limited, as most of the papyrus from that period has not survived. Still, Dr. Dixon said, the Shavei Zion figurines add to what researchers have learned from similar figurines found in tombs.

“In the same way that figurines might be part of ritual going on into a dangerous part of the sea, they might be part of a burial, preparing for a journey to the afterlife,” she said.

“Every day sailors are leaving a record over time, not because they were told to by the king. It’s sort of just romantic and beautiful in that way — a touchstone from everyday people in the past.”

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How to Stop the Next Pandemic 

It’s not just Covid-19. Pathogens once confined to nature are making their way into humans on a more regular basis. And it’s our fault.



By Jonah M. Kessel
Sept. 1, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ET

The pandemic is your fault.

Yes, yours.

If you are avoiding people, wearing a mask and generally following what public health officials tell you to do (even if that has been a moving target), the notion that you have anything to do with why this pandemic occurred may seem ridiculous.

After all, it’s easy to look for blame in others.

You may be pointing your finger at Chinese officials for not acting fast enough. A recent Pew study suggested 78 percent of Americans place “a great deal of the blame for the global spread of the coronavirus on the Chinese government’s initial handling” of the outbreak.

Maybe you blame politicians who have prioritized their political well being over the health of the people they govern? Or are other people’s diets the problem? A dinner party? A beach party? The police?

There is enough blame to go around.

Finding blame in yourself can be a more difficult task. But experts say you have played a role whether you know it or not.

“What we eat, what we wear, all the other kinds of things that we buy, whether we have a cellphone or not, how many children we have (if we have children), how much we travel — all of those choices put varying degrees of pressure on the rest of the natural world,” the pandemic-focused author David Quammen told me in a Zoom interview.

It’s that simple. We’ve created a world where it’s impossible to make choices that don’t impact the natural world.

“The more we disrupt wild, diverse ecosystems, the greater jeopardy we have of contacting all of the very diverse viruses that wild animals carry,” said Mr. Quammen.

Still not convinced? Do you own a cellphone?

“Owning a cellphone makes you a customer for a mineral called coltan,” Mr. Quammen explained

When coltan is refined it makes tantalum. And there’s a trace amount of it inside that phone or computer you are using to read this story. Problem is, it’s only found in a few remote places.

“One of which is a highly diverse forest area in the eastern Democratic Republic of The Congo,” Mr. Quammen continued.

“So when I buy a cellphone, I’m a customer for tantalum and I’m sending a miner into a forest area in eastern Congo. And that miner is probably going to eat bushmeat. So I own a little of the responsibility for the jeopardy that that miner may come in contact with a new virus and spread it to others.”

An awkward pause took hold as I contemplated Mr. Quammen’s proposal.

“Maybe spread it back to you?” I asked.

“Yes, maybe spread it back to me.”

I was talking to Mr. Quammen while doing research for “How to Stop the Next Pandemic,” a 14-minute Times documentary that ask the questions: Why do pandemics happen? And how do we stop them in the future?

Trends in historical data charting the incidents of new emerging infectious diseases point to a future with more Covid-19-like events, not fewer.

“Yes, they’re increasing over time in direct correlation with human population growth and our ecological footprint,” said Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that aims to protect the public from the emergence of disease.

 In 2008 he co-authored a study titled “Global trends in emerging infectious diseases,” which showed how emerging infectious disease events “have risen significantly over time.”

“These pandemics have been with us throughout history,” Dr. Daszak said. “But what’s happening now is we’ve globalized the planet, we’ve colonized the planet, and we’re now coming across the last remaining viruses that wildlife carry that we’ve never experienced before.”

If you don’t want to see more Covid-19-like events in the future, I urge you to watch our short film to become more aware of their origins, what role you play in them and most importantly what we can do to stop them.

Before finishing my interview with Dr. Daszak, I cautiously joked, “With Covid-19, is nature sending us a message?”

Dr. Daszak stared at me without smiling.

“Nature didn’t send us this message. We sent it to ourselves,” Dr. Daszak said.

Our consumer habits have changed the planet so significantly that “we dominate every ecosystem on earth right now,” he said.

“And our response is: we blame one country, versus another. We blame people who eat one species over people who eat another. And we blame nature. Well, no, we need to point the finger directly at ourselves, understand what’s going on and change it.”

The call ended.

And just like that, the pandemic was my fault.

Yours too.

 

Jonah M. Kessel is a visual journalist. He creates explanatory and investigative short-form documentaries and innovative visual journalism. He has reported on the ground from over 25 countries for The Times. @jonah_kessel • Facebook

Sea level rise matches worst-case scenario

ENVIRONMENT NEWS MONDAY 31 AUGUST 2020

Ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica whose melting rates are rapidly increasing have raised global sea level by 1.8cm since the 1990s, and are matching worst-case climate warming scenarios.

According to a new study led by Dr Tom Slater from the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at Leeds and with the Danish Meteorological Institute, if these rates continue the ice sheets are expected to raise sea levels by a further 17cm and expose an additional 16 million people to annual coastal flooding by the end of the century.

The worst-case scenarios are those predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Since the ice sheets were first monitored by satellite in the 1990s, melting from Antarctica has pushed global sea levels up by 7.2mm, while Greenland has contributed 10.6mm. And the latest measurements show that the world's oceans are now rising by 4mm each year.

“The melting is overtaking the climate models we use to guide us, and we are in danger of being unprepared for the risks posed by sea level rise.”DR TOM SLATER, UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS

"Although we anticipated the ice sheets would lose increasing amounts of ice in response to the warming of the oceans and atmosphere, the rate at which they are melting has accelerated faster than we could have imagined,” said Dr Slater.

“The melting is overtaking the climate models we use to guide us, and we are in danger of being unprepared for the risks posed by sea level rise.”

The results are published today in a study in the journal Nature Climate Change. It compares the latest results from satellite surveys from the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise (IMBIE) with calculations from climate models.

The authors warn that the ice sheets are losing ice at a rate predicted by the worst-case climate warming scenarios in the last large IPCC report.

Dr Anna Hogg, study co-author and climate researcher in the School of Earth & Environment at the Leeds, said: “If ice sheet losses continue to track our worst-case climate warming scenarios we should expect an additional 17cm of sea level rise from the ice sheets alone. That’s enough to double the frequency of storm-surge flooding in many of the world’s largest coastal cities.”

So far, global sea levels have increased in the most part through a mechanism called thermal expansion, which means that volume of seawater expands as it gets warmer. But in the last five years, ice melt from the ice sheets and mountain glaciers has overtaken global warming as the main cause of rising sea levels.

Dr Ruth Mottram, study co-author and climate researcher at the Danish Meteorological Institute, said: “It is not only Antarctica and Greenland that are causing the water to rise. In recent years, thousands of smaller glaciers have begun to melt or disappear altogether, as we saw with the glacier Ok in Iceland, which was declared "dead" in 2014. This means that melting of ice has now taken over as the main contributor of sea level rise."

Further information

This study is an outcome of the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-Comparison Exercise (IMBIE) supported by the ESA Climate Change Initiative and the NASA Cryosphere Program. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0893-y

For additional information and interviews, please contact pressoffice@leeds.ac.uk.
Main picture: Dr Anna Hogg, University of Leeds.

Climate change: Power companies 'hindering' move to green energy


By Matt McGrath BBC Environment correspondent

A giant solar farm in China  GETTY IMAGES

New research suggests that power companies are dragging their feet when it comes to embracing green energy sources such as wind and solar.

Only one in 10 energy suppliers globally has prioritised renewables over fossil fuels, the study finds.

Even those that are spending on greener energy are continuing to invest in carbon heavy coal and natural gas.

The lead researcher says the slow uptake undermines global efforts to tackle climate change. 

In countries like the UK and across Europe, renewable energy has taken a significant share of the market, with 40% of Britain's electricity coming from wind and solar last year.

GETTY IMAGES

But while green energy has boomed around the world in recent years, many of the new wind and solar power installations have been built by independent producers.

Large scale utility companies, including many state and city owned enterprises, have been much slower to go green, according to this new study.

The research looked at more than 3,000 electricity companies worldwide and used machine learning techniques to analyse their activities over the past two decades.

The study found that only 10% of the companies had expanded their renewable-based power generation more quickly than their gas or coal fired capacity.

Of this small proportion that spent more on renewables, many continued to invest in fossil fuels, although at a lower rate.

The vast majority of companies, according to the author, have just sat on the fence.

"If you look at all utilities, and what's the dominant behaviour, it is that they're not doing much in fossil fuels and renewables," said Galina Alova, from the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford.

GETTY IMAGES

"So they might be doing something with other fuels like hydro power or nuclear, but they're not transitioning to renewables nor growing the fossil fuel capacity."

The author says that many of these types of utilities are government-owned and may have invested in their power portfolios many years ago.

The overall conclusion from the analysis, though, is that utility companies are "hindering" the global transition to renewables.

"Companies are still growing their fossil-fuel based capacity," Galina Alova told BBC News.

"So utilities are still dominating the global fossil fuel business. And I'm also finding that quite a significant share of the fossil-fuel based capacity owned by utilities has been added in the last decade, meaning that these are quite new assets.

"But in order for us to achieve the Paris climate agreement goals, they either need to be retired early, or will need carbon capture and storage because otherwise they're still here to stay for decades."

GETTY IMAGES

She says that inertia within the electricity industry is one key cause of the slow transition.

But the news reporting about energy companies doesn't always capture the complexity of their investments.

"Renewables and natural gas often go hand in hand," said Galina Alova.

"Companies often choose both in parallel. So it might be just in media reports we are getting this image of investing in renewables, but less coverage on continued investment in gas.

"So it's not greenwashing. It is just that this parallel investment in gas dilutes the shift to renewables. That's the key issue."

The study has been published in the journal Nature Energy.
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