It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, December 24, 2021
THE PROLETARIAN PUBLIC Peter Critchley This book covers the period of working class socialism between the final years of the nineteenth century up to the 1930s. The book contains chapters on Industrial Unionism, Revolutionary Syndicalism and Council Communism. There are substantial chapters on Tom Mann, James Connolly, Antonio Gramsci and Rosa Luxemburg. The principal concern of the book is to analyse the history of socialism as the proletarian transformation of politics, with a view to conceiving a proletarian public life grounded in the associational space of society.
THE PROLETARIAN PUBLIC The Practice of Proletarian Self-Emancipation 1996Dr Peter Critchley Critchley, P. 1996., The Proletarian Public : The Practice of Proletarian Self-Emancipation [e-book]Available through: Academia website http://mmu.academia.edu/PeterCritchley/Books
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dr Peter Critchley is a philosopher, writer and tutor with a first degree in the field of the Social Sciences (History, Economics, Politics and Sociology) and a PhD in the field of Philosophy, Ethics and Politics.
The Proletarian Public was written during the first year of Peter’s period of PhD research.
Peter works in the tradition of Rational Freedom, a tradition which sees freedom as a common endeavour in which the freedom of each individual is conceived to be co-existent with the freedom of all. In elaborating this concept, Peter has written extensively on a number of the key thinkers in this ‘rational’ tradition (Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Dante, Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Habermas). Peter is currently engaged in an ambitious interdisciplinary research project entitled Being and Place.
Thecentral theme of this research concerns the connection of place and identity through thecreation of forms of life which enable human and planetary flourishing in unison. Peter tutorsacross the humanities and social sciences, from A level to postgraduate research. Peterparticularly welcomes interest from those not engaged in formal education, but who wish topursue a course of studies out of intellectual curiosity.
Peter is committed to bringing philosophy back to its Socratic roots in ethos, in the way of life of people. In this conception,philosophy as self-knowledge is something that human beings do as a condition of living the examined life. As we think, so shall we live. Living up to this philosophical commitment, Peter offers tutoring services both to those in and out of formal education. The subject range that Peter offers in his tutoring activities, as well as contact details, can be seen athttp://petercritchley-e-akademeia.yolasite.com The range of Peter’s research activity can be seen at http://mmu.academia.edu/PeterCritchleyPeter sees his e-akademeia project as part of a global grassroots learning experience andencourages students and learners to get in touch, whatever their learning need and level.
Sanders Urges Biden to Demand DeJoy's Resignation Over Postal Service 'Sabotage'
"By any objective measure, Louis DeJoy, a top campaign contributor of Donald Trump, has been, by far and away, the worst postmaster general in the modern history of America."
U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy testifies before the House Oversight and Reform Committee in Washington, D.C. on August 24, 2020. (Photo: Tom Brenner/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday urged President Joe Biden to immediately request the resignation of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, citing the Republican megadonor's ongoing "sabotage" of the U.S. Postal Service and potential conflicts of interest.
"We need a postmaster general who will strengthen and expand the Postal Service."
In a statement, Sanders (I-Vt.) argued that "by any objective measure, Louis DeJoy, a top campaign contributor of Donald Trump, has been, by far and away, the worst postmaster general in the modern history of America."
Since DeJoy took charge of the USPS in 2020, Sanders said, "the quality of the Postal Service has been severely undermined"—a criticism that other lawmakers and advocates have leveled over the past year and a half as the postmaster general has rushed ahead with sweeping changes to mail operations nationwide.
"Tragically, the situation has only gotten worse since Mr. DeJoy began implementing his disastrous 10-year plan to substantially slow down mail delivery, cut back on post office hours, shut down mail processing plants, and dismantle mail sorting machines," the Vermont senator said Thursday. "Senior citizens have experienced massive delays in receiving the lifesaving prescription drugs they desperately need and working families have been forced to pay late fees because it is taking much longer than normal for the Postal Service to mail their bills."
Sanders went on to warn that the Biden administration's newly announced plan to distribute 500 million free at-home coronavirus tests could be undercut by "the deterioration of the Postal Service under Mr. DeJoy."
"How can anyone have confidence that these life-saving tests will be delivered to the American people in a timely and efficient manner? I think the obvious answer to that question is they cannot," said Sanders. "The United States Postal Service is a vital part of our economy and our way of life. We need a postmaster general who will strengthen and expand the Postal Service, not someone who continues to undermine and sabotage it. It is long past time for Mr. DeJoy to go."
Sanders' demand came weeks after Biden moved to replace Ron Bloom and John Barger, two DeJoy loyalists on the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors—the body with the power to remove the postmaster general.
If the Senate confirms Biden's nominees to replace Bloom and Barger, the president's picks will have a majority on the nine-member postal board and enough votes to oust DeJoy, who is reportedly under FBI investigation in connection to his past fundraising activities.
Despite the firestorm of criticism he's received over his performance as postmaster general and alleged financial conflicts, DeJoy has previously said he has no intention of leaving his position any time soon.
Asked during a February congressional hearing how long he plans to remain postmaster general, DeJoy responded: "A long time. Get used to me."
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
A $778 Billion Pentagon Budget Is Our Lump of Coal
U.S. tanks appear during a military training exercise in May of 2016
in Vaziani, Georgia. (Photo: Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
As Congress passed a $778 billion war and military budget, about half of which will go to corporate contractors, they failed to pass the Build Back Better plan that costs less than a quarter of that annually, and would have delivered help to millions of people.
What if you wanted less child poverty, better health care, more help with child care and elder care, and at least a gesture toward a solution to the climate crisis? And what if instead you got a $778 billion check for war profiteering?
Despite the slash and burn approach taken by Congress to the plan, each and every major provision of Build Back Better is supported by a majority of voters.
This is, in fact, not what Americans want. A large majority of voters support the Build Back Better plan, which would continue to send checks to families with children, expand health care subsidies, make child care and home care more affordable, and invest in clean energy. Despite the slash and burn approach taken by Congress to the plan, each and every major provision of Build Back Better is supported by a majority of voters. And a majority would like to see the Pentagon budget cut by ten percent to fund domestic needs – the exact things that Build Back Better funds.
It’s not over. In case you need some motivation to get involved, here are the facts about what Congress is choosing when it funds a $778 billion Pentagon budget over Build Back Better:
More for Pentagon contracts to a single company (Lockheed Martin, $75 billion in FY 2021) than child care and preschool ($40 billion/year under BBBA)
More for equipment and programs the Pentagon didn’t even ask for ($25 billion) than child and earned income tax credits ($20 billion/year under BBBA)
More on guarding the world’s oil supply ($81 billion/year) than for climate and clean energy initiatives to protect the planet($55 billion/year under BBBA)
More for the Space Force ($17.5 billion) than for healthcare for Americans ($13 billion/year under BBBA)
More than twice as much for military bases in Germany ($7.5 billion) than for Medicare hearing benefits ($3.5 billion/year under BBBA)
More for the wasteful F-35 ($12 billion) than on a better immigration system ($10 billion/year under BBBA)
These are the wrong priorities. And it’s up to movements and grassroots pressure to turn this around.
21 Million+ Going Hungry in US as Manchin Tanks Expanded Child Tax Credit
"This program is Social Security for our children, and Democrats must keep it going over the long-term," said Sen. Ron Wyden. Children draw on top of a "cancelled check" prop during a rally in front of the U.S. Capitol on December 13, 2021 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Data released Wednesday by the U.S. Census Bureau shows that more than 21 million people across the country live in households where there was "sometimes or often not enough to eat in the last seven days," a five-month high.
"We're going to keep pushing for an extension of the CTC until it happens. Child hunger is too high a price to pay."
The new figures come as the expanded child tax credit (CTC)—a program that has helped millions of families afford food and other necessities during the pandemic—is set to lapse due to the opposition of Republican lawmakers and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who reportedly wants to remove the benefit from Democrats' Build Back Better package.
While Manchin has publicly claimed to support the CTC, HuffPost reported earlier this week that the West Virginia Democrat told his Senate colleagues behind closed doors that "he thought parents would waste monthly child tax credit payments on drugs instead of providing for their children"—a narrative that critics decried as insidious and false.
According to the new Census Bureau figures, 9.7% of U.S. households were food insecure in the period between December 1 and 13—a percentage that progressive lawmakers and advocates fear will rise sharply if Congress lets the boosted CTC expire at the end of the year. More than 10% of West Virginia households went without adequate food in early December, the data shows.
"Here's the reality of the situation: If expanded child tax credit payments stop going out, roughly 10 million children could sink into poverty," Friends Committee on National Legislation warned earlier this week. "We're going to keep pushing for an extension of the CTC until it happens. Child hunger is too high a price to pay."
After the first tranche of monthly CTC payments went out in July, the percentage of U.S. families with kids that reported not having enough to eat fell substantially, Census Bureau data showed at the time.
"Families received their sixth child tax credit payment last week, and they have come to depend on these payments to cover the essentials like rent, groceries, heat, and clothing for their children," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement on Sunday. "Food insecurity among families dropped by about 25% since these payments began. Child poverty has been cut nearly in half."
"This program is Social Security for our children," he added, "and Democrats must keep it going over the long-term."
The Treasury Department said on December 15—when the final scheduled monthly CTC payment went out—that the families of 61 million U.S. children have benefited from the program, which was implemented as part of the American Rescue Plan.
In its current form, Democrats' $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act would extend for another year the monthly CTC payments of up to $300 per child under the age of six and $250 per child between the ages of six and 17.
But the path forward for the social spending and climate legislation remains unclear after Manchin announced his opposition to the bill in a Fox News appearance on Sunday. Last week, Manchin reportedly presented a $1.8 trillion counteroffer to the White House, which declined to accept because the proposal left out the expanded CTC entirely.
The White House has ruled out attempting to extend the boosted CTC with standalone legislation, which would require the support of every Senate Democrat and at least 10 Republicans. Not a single congressional Republican has endorsed Democrats' expanded CTC program.
If Congress allows the current version of the CTC to expire, the program will revert to its previous form, which provided yearly lump-sum payments but excluded the poorest families with its regressive income phase-in.
Eugenia Harper, a 38-year-old mother of two children, told the Washington Post on Wednesday that the monthly CTC payments have "given us that extra help that we're not able to get from friends or family."
"I get child support and the child tax credit, and I've been able to manage on that," said Harper, who reduced her hours working as a home health aide due to coronavirus concerns. "There's no thrills and frills. We need this money just to survive." Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Crows Are So Smart They Seem to Understand The Concept of Tool Value
A new study has demonstrated crows can assign value to their tools just like we do.
"Many of us will fuss about a brand-new phone, making sure it does not get scratched, dropped or lost. But we may handle an old phone with a cracked screen quite carelessly," said behavioral ecologist Barbara Klump now at Max Planck Institute, Germany.
New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides) are so renowned for their smarts that scientists have been using them as a model species to help puzzle out the evolution of tool use and associated behaviors like planning.
In the wild they use these twig tools, carefully held in their beaks, to annoy grubs safely tucked away in tree crevices. The grubs will bite the tool defensively, allowing the birds to withdraw and eat it. But crows have to put down their tools while eating, so they can fall to the ground or even get stolen.
The researchers used 27 wild caught crows for their experimental trials so their results weren't biased by previous training.
Offering the crows a choice between the two tool types, the team confirmed the birds strongly preferred to use hooked stick tools.
Non- (left) and hooked (right) tools and their use. (James St Clair et al, Nat. Ecol. Evol, 2018)
"Hooked tools are not only more costly to obtain, but they are also much more efficient," explained University of St Andrews behavioral ecologist Christian Rutz.
"Depending on the foraging task, crows can extract prey with these tools up to 10 times faster than with bog-standard non-hooked tools."
Seventeen of the birds were then observed during two trials each on separate days. In both, they were presented with logs containing different sized holes baited with meat or spiders. In one treatment they had access to branches appropriate for hooked tool construction and the other with only straight sticks.
"Subjects were significantly more likely to express safekeeping behavior (storing tools underfoot or in holes) when foraging with hooked stick tools they had manufactured… than when foraging with non-hooked stick tools they had sourced from leaf litter," the team wrote in their paper.
This remained true when the hooked tools were supplied by researchers, suggesting the tool itself was the subject of assigned value rather than the time they put into it.
What's more, they used the most secure safekeeping method – storing the tools in holes – far more for hooked tools.
"It was exciting to see that crows are just that bit more careful with tools that are more efficient and more costly to replace," said University of St Andrews ethologist James St Clair.
"This suggests that they have some conception of the relative 'value' of different tool types."
Given corvids, including ravens and New Caledonian crows have also displayed the ability to plan ahead it makes sense they can also assign value to the objects they use to help prioritize them.
The team notes that not all New Caledonian crows make the hooked stick tools, so their findings may only be generalizable across those populations that do. Their sample size was also too low to fully untangle some of the variables, like material choice, they concede.
But at least one other species of crow, the Hawaiian crow (Corvus hawaiiensis) has also demonstrated such safekeeping behavior.
We've long underestimated the abilities of birds given their relatively small brains. But physiological studies have shown the dense packing of their neurons makes up for what they lack in size.
Behavioral studies are continually revealing these modern dinosaurs are capable of behaviors that we once only thought humans were capable of – such as self control – proving, like everything else biological, intelligence is a complicated and messy spectrum that didn't just spontaneously arise with the arrival of our species.
Scientists Unearth a Ginormous Triassic Sea Monster That Once Roamed The 'Superocean'
(Stephanie Abramowicz/Natural History Museum)
LAURA GEGGEL, LIVE SCIENCE 24 DECEMBER 2021
A sea monster that lived during the early dinosaur age is so unexpectedly colossal, it reveals that its kind grew to gigantic sizes extremely quickly, evolutionarily speaking at least.
The discovery suggests that such ichthyosaurs – a group of fish-shaped marine reptiles that inhabited the dinosaur-era seas – grew to enormous sizes in a span of only 2.5 million years, the new study finds.
To put that in context, it took whales about 90 percent of their 55 million-year history to reach the huge sizes that ichthyosaurs evolved to in the first 1 percent of their 150 million-year history, the researchers said.
"We have discovered that ichthyosaurs evolved gigantism much faster than whales, in a time where the world was recovering from devastating extinction [at the end of the Permian period]," study senior researcher Lars Schmitz, an associate professor of biology at Scripps College in Claremont, California, told Live Science in an email.
"It is a nice glimmer of hope and a sign of the resilience of life – if environmental conditions are right, evolution can happen very fast, and life can bounce back."
(Lars Schmitz)
Above: Ichthyosaurs evolved their large body sizes much quicker than whales. The curves depict the trajectory of the largest body size, expressed in percentage of the largest size ever reached, for ichthyosaurs and whales. The ichthyosaur curve is initially much steeper than the corresponding curve for whales.
Researchers first noticed the ancient ichthyosaur's fossils in 1998, embedded in the rocks of the Augusta Mountains of northwestern Nevada.
"Only a few vertebrae were sticking out of the rock, but it was clear the animal was large," Schmitz said.
But it wasn't until 2015, with the help of a helicopter, that they were able to fully excavate the individual – whose surviving fossils include a skull, shoulder, and flipper-like appendage – and airlift it to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, where it was prepared and analyzed.
The team named the new species Cymbospondylus youngorum, they reported online Thursday (Dec. 23) in the journal Science. This big-jawed marine reptile lived 247 million years ago during the Triassic period. Like other creatures from that time, it was weird.
The new ichthyosaurs skull with a human for scale. (Martin Sander)
"Imagine a sea-dragon-like animal: streamlined body, quite long, with limbs modified to fins, and a long tail," Schmitz said. With a nearly 6.5-foot-long (2 meters) skull, this full-grown C. youngorum would have measured over 55 feet (17 m), or longer than a semitrailer, the researchers found.
When the 45-ton (41 metric tons) C. youngorum was alive, C. youngorum would have lived in the Panthalassic Ocean, a so-called superocean, off the west coast of North America, Schmitz said.
Based on its size and tooth shape, C. youngorum likely ate smaller ichthyosaurs, fish, and possibly squid, he added.
(Georg Oleschinski, courtesy of the University of Bonn)
Above: The Fossil Hill fauna of Nevada not only includes the new giant species but also a number of other ichthyosaurs, such as this small (=30 cm skull length) Phalarodon. This specimen also includes examples of the very abundant ammonite fossils that are associated with the ichthyosaurs.
There are many huge beasts that lived during the dinosaur era, but C. youngorum stands out for several reasons. For instance, C. youngorum lived just 5 million years after "the Great Dying," a mass extinction event that occurred 252 million years ago at the end of the Permian period, which killed about 90 percent of the world's species.
That makes the ichthyosaur's huge size all the more impressive, as it took about 9 million years for life on Earth to recover from that extinction, a 2012 study in the journal Nature Geoscience found.
However, there was a diversification boom of marine mollusks known as ammonoids within 1 million to 3 million years of the mass extinction, the 2012 study found.
It appears that ichthyosaurs' venture into gigantism was, in part, due to chowing down on the early Triassic boom of ammonites, as well as jawless eel-like conodonts that filled the ecological void following the mass extinction, the researchers of the new study said.
In contrast, whales got big by eating highly productive primary producers, such as plankton; but these were absent in dinosaur-age food webs, study co-author Eva Maria Griebeler, an evolutionary ecologist at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz in Germany, said in a statement.
(Stephanie Abramowicz/Natural History Museum)
Above: Direct comparison of two ocean giants from different epochs side by side: The Triassic C. youngorum (the new species described in the paper) versus. today's sperm whale, with a human for scale.
Despite the whales' and ichthyosaurs' different paths and timetables toward achieving gigantism, the groups have a few similarities. For instance, there is a connection between large size and raptorial hunting, just like sperm whales dive to hunt giant squid, as well as a connection between large size and tooth loss, just like the giant filter-feeding whales that are toothless, the researchers said.
"This new fossil impressively documents the fast-track evolution of gigantism in ichthyosaurs," Schmitz said. In contrast, whales "took a different route to gigantism, much more prolonged and not nearly as fast.
"Ichthyosaur history tells us ocean giants are not guaranteed features of marine ecosystems, which is a valuable lesson for all of us in the Anthropocene," paleontologists Lene Delsett and Nicholas Pyenson, who weren't involved with the research wrote in a related Perspective published in the same issue of Science.
The skull of the first giant creature to ever inhabit the Earth, the ichthyosaur Cymbospondylus youngorum, currently on display at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Credit: Natalja Kent / Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
The two-meter skull of a newly discovered species of giant ichthyosaur, the earliest known, is shedding new light on the marine reptiles' rapid growth into behemoths of the Dinosaurian oceans, and helping us better understand the journey of modern cetaceans (whales and dolphins) to becoming the largest animals to ever inhabit the Earth.
While dinosaurs ruled the land, ichthyosaurs and other aquatic reptiles (that were emphatically not dinosaurs) ruled the waves, reaching similarly gargantuan sizes and species diversity. Evolving fins and hydrodynamic body-shapes seen in both fish and whales, ichthyosaurs swam the ancient oceans for nearly the entirety of the Age of Dinosaurs.
"Ichthyosaurs derive from an as yet unknown group of land-living reptiles and were air-breathing themselves," says lead author Dr. Martin Sander, paleontologist at the University of Bonn and Research Associate with the Dinosaur Institute at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM). "From the first skeleton discoveries in southern England and Germany over 250 years ago, these 'fish-saurians' were among the first large fossil reptiles known to science, long before the dinosaurs, and they have captured the popular imagination ever since."
A life recreation of C. youngorum stalking the Nevadan oceans of the Late Triassic 246 million years ago. Credit: Stephanie Abramowicz / Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
Excavated from a rock unit called the Fossil Hill Member in the Augusta Mountains of Nevada, the well-preserved skull, along with part of the backbone, shoulder, and forefin, date back to the Middle Triassic (247.2-237 million years ago), representing the earliest case of an ichthyosaur reaching epic proportions. As big as a large sperm whale at more than 17 meters (55.78 feet) long, the newly named Cymbospondylus youngorum is the largest animal yet discovered from that time period, on land or in the sea. In fact, it was the first giant creature to ever inhabit the Earth that we know of.
"The importance of the find was not immediately apparent," notes Dr. Sander, "because only a few vertebrae were exposed on the side of the canyon. However, the anatomy of the vertebrae suggested that the front end of the animal might still be hidden in the rocks. Then, one cold September day in 2011, the crew needed a warm-up and tested this suggestion by excavation, finding the skull, forelimbs, and chest region."
The new name for the species, C. youngorum, honors a happy coincidence, the sponsoring of the fieldwork by Great Basin Brewery of Reno, owned and operated by Tom and Bonda Young, the inventors of the locally famous Icky beer which features an ichthyosaur on its label.
In other mountain ranges of Nevada, paleontologists have been recovering fossils from the Fossil Hill Member's limestone, shale, and siltstone since 1902, opening a window into the Triassic. The mountains connect our present to ancient oceans and have produced many species of ammonites, shelled ancestors of modern cephalopods like cuttlefish and octopuses, as well as marine reptiles. All these animal specimens are collectively known as the Fossil Hill Fauna, representing many of C. youngorum's prey and competitors.
Owing to their remote location, fossils have only recently been discovered in the Augusta Mountains. An international team of scientists led by Dr. Sander began collecting on public lands there 30 years ago, with fossil finds being accessioned to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County since 2008. Credit: Lars Schmitz
C. youngorum stalked the oceans some 246 million years ago, or only about three million years after the first ichthyosaurs got their fins wet, an amazingly short time to get this big. The elongated snout and conical teeth suggest that C. youngorum preyed on squid and fish, but its size meant that it could have hunted smaller and juvenile marine reptiles as well.
The giant predator probably had some hefty competition. Through sophisticated computational modeling, the authors examined the likely energy running through the Fossil Hill Fauna's food web, recreating the ancient environment through data, finding that marine food webs were able to support a few more colossal meat-eating ichthyosaurs. Ichthyosaurs of different sizes and survival strategies proliferated, comparable to modern cetaceans'— from relatively small dolphins to massive filter-feeding baleen whales, and giant squid-hunting sperm whales.
Co-author and ecological modeler Dr. Eva Maria Griebeler from the University of Mainz in Germany, notes, "Due to their large size and resulting energy demands, the densities of the largest ichthyosaurs from the Fossil Hill Fauna including C. youngourum must have been substantially lower than suggested by our field census. The ecological functioning of this food web from ecological modeling was very exciting as modern highly productive primary producers were absent in Mesozoic food webs and were an important driver in the size evolution of whales."
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Dinosaur Institute volunteer Viji Shook lying next to the skull of Cymbospondylus youngorum for scale, during the preparation of the specimen. Credit: Martin Sander / Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
Whales and ichthyosaurs share more than a size range. They have similar body plans, and both initially arose after mass extinctions. These similarities make them scientifically valuable for comparative study. The authors combined computer modeling and traditional paleontology to study how these marine animals reached record-setting sizes independently.
"One rather unique aspect of this project is the integrative nature of our approach. We first had to describe the anatomy of the giant skull in detail and determine how this animal is related to other ichthyosaurs," says senior author Dr. Lars Schmitz, Associate Professor of Biology at Scripps College and Dinosaur Institute Research Associate. "We did not stop there, as we wanted to understand the significance of the new discovery in the context of the large-scale evolutionary pattern of ichthyosaur and whale body sizes, and how the fossil ecosystem of the Fossil Hill Fauna may have functioned. Both the evolutionary and ecological analyses required a substantial amount of computation, ultimately leading to a confluence of modeling with traditional paleontology."
An ichthyosaur fossil surrounded by the shells of ammonites, the food source that possibly fueled their growth to huge. Credit: Georg Oleschinski / University of Bonn, Germany.
They found that while both cetaceans and ichthyosaurs evolved very large body sizes, their respective evolutionary trajectories toward gigantism were different. Ichthyosaurs had an initial boom in size, becoming giants early on in their evolutionary history, while whales took much longer to reach the outer limits of huge. They found a connection between large size and raptorial hunting—think of a sperm whale diving down to hunt giant squid—and a connection between large size and a loss of teeth—think of the giant filter-feeding whales that are the largest animals ever to live on Earth.
Ichthyosaurs' initial foray into gigantism was likely thanks to the boom in ammonites and jawless eel-like conodonts filling the ecological void following the end-Permian mass extinction. While their evolutionary routes were different, both whales and ichthyosaurs relied on exploiting niches in the food chain to make it really big.
A figure from the text comparing C. youngorum to a modern sperm whale as well as rates of body size evolution over time between ichthyosaurs and cetaceans. The lines trending towards the top indicate larger body sizes whereas those towards the bottom are smaller sizes. Time is displayed as starting from the point of origin of the group until their extinction (for ichthyosaurs) or present (for whales). Credit: Stephanie Abramowicz / Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
"As researchers, we often talk about similarities between ichthyosaurs and cetaceans, but rarely dive into the details. That's one way this study stands out, as it allowed us to explore and gain some additional insight into body size evolution within these groups of marine tetrapods," says NHM's Associate Curator of Mammalogy (Marine Mammals), Dr. Jorge Velez-Juarbe. "Another interesting aspect is that Cymbospondylus youngorum and the rest of the Fossil Hill Fauna are a testament to the resilience of life in the oceans after the worst mass extinction in Earth's history. You can say this is the first big splash for tetrapods in the oceans."
More information:P. Martin Sander et al, Early giant reveals faster evolution of large size in ichthyosaurs than in cetaceans,Science(2021).DOI: 10.1126/science.abf5787
Meditation may boost activity of genes that regulate immune response By Alan Mozes, HealthDay News A blood sample analysis suggested that meditation boosted the activity of hundreds of genes known to be directly involved in regulating immune response. Photo by Pexels/Pixabay
Meditation done at an intense level may bring a significant boost to the inner workings of your immune system.
The finding follows a blood sample analysis that took pre- and post-meditation snapshots of genetic activity among more than 100 men and women.
That analysis suggested that meditation boosted the activity of hundreds of genes known to be directly involved in regulating immune response.
But the researchers stressed that their study involved 10-hour daily marathon meditation sessions conducted for eight straight days in total silence. In the real world, most people would be hard-pressed to replicate those methods.
Still, the findings "suggest that meditation could have an important role in treating various diseases associated with a weakened immune system," said study author Vijayendran Chandran.
"Yes, this is an intense retreat," acknowledged Chandran, an assistant professor of pediatrics and neuroscience at the University of Florida's College of Medicine. "But remember, it was just eight days. Long-term meditation for [a] short duration each day may also improve the immune system."
He said his team did not test the less-stringent possibility.
Chandran has, however, walked that walk himself. Prior to launching his study he completed his own 48-day program that entailed roughly 20 minutes a day of at-home meditation.
That experiment left Chandran feeling clearer and more focused. So he decided to take a deeper dive to explore the precise underlying molecular mechanism by which meditation might benefit the body.
The study involved 106 men and women, average age 40. All had enrolled in a meditation retreat conducted at the Isha Institute of Inner Sciences in McMinnville, Tenn.
Multiple blood samples were drawn from all the participants at several times: five to eight weeks prior to the retreat just before the retreat began, and three months after the retreat was completed.
The eight-day retreat provided all participants with vegan cuisine, and all followed a regular schedule. Meditation sessions lasted 10 hours a day and were conducted in silence.
The result: Three months after the retreat's conclusion, Chandran and his colleagues found an uptick in activity involving 220 immune-related genes, including 68 genes engaged in so-called "interferon signaling."
The study authors pointed out that such signaling can be key to mounting an effective defense against various health conditions -- including cancer, multiple sclerosis or even COVID-19 -- given that interferon proteins effectively act as immune system triggers.
Among seriously ill COVID-19 patients in particular, Chandran noted, insufficient interferon activity has been cited as a problem.
He explained that nearly all (97%) of interferon "response genes" were found to be activated following the meditation retreat. But relying on publicly available gene activity data derived from COVID-19 patients, Chandran and his colleagues reported that figure to be 76% among those with mild COVID illness, and just 31% among the most severe cases.
At the same time, the investigators found that while inflammation-signaling gene activity remained stable following in-depth meditation, such signaling shot up among severely ill COVID-19 patients.
The apparent impact on molecular activity seen among retreat participants held up even after accounting for both diet and patterns, the researchers noted, though the findings do not definitively prove that meditation actually caused gene changes to occur.
Even so, Chandran said the findings suggest meditation could someday be folded into newly developed "behavioral therapies [designed] to maintain brain health and modify currently irreversible neurological diseases."
One expert not involved with the study said the findings -- while unsurprising -- are encouraging.
"Many previous studies have discussed the positive associations of meditative practices on psychological and physical health," said Alex Presciutti, a clinical psychology Ph.D. candidate at the University of Colorado Denver.
"This study greatly contributes to this literature by identifying potential mechanisms driving the protective role of meditative practices on psychological and physical well-being," he added.
"Based on this study, we cannot claim that the average person meditating at home would experience the same 'immune boost' seen in this study," Presciutti cautioned. "However, given the abundance of literature of the benefits of meditative practice on well-being, it is likely that the 'average person meditating at home' experiences some degree of benefit."
More information
There's more on the potential medical benefits of meditation at the U.S. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. SOURCES: Vijayendran Chandran, PhD, assistant professor, pediatrics and neuroscience, Department of Pediatrics, University of Florida, Gainesville Alex Presciutti, MA, clinical psychology PhD candidate, University of Colorado Denver Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dec. 21, 2021
Affordable Care Act enrollment hits record number Demonstrators show their support for the Affordable Care Act in front of the Supreme Court in 2020. On Wednesday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced open enrollment for coverage under the ACA had hit a record number, with one month to go until the period closes.
Dec. 22 (UPI) -- A record number of Americans have signed up for health coverage under the Affordable Care Act so far this year, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on Wednesday.
With a month to go in the current open registration period, CMS numbers show a historic 13.6 million people have registered for coverage in 2022.
Under the ACA, which is also known as Obamacare, more than 9.7 million people enrolled in coverage across the 33 states using HealthCare.gov for 2022. That figure is approximately 900,000 higher than the previous high of 8.8 million in 2018, when 39 states were using the platform.
In addition, almost 3.9 million consumers chose plans or were automatically re-enrolled in one for 2022 health coverage using the 18 State-based Marketplaces. That's up from 3.4 million people using 15 SBMs last year at the same time.
The American Rescue Plan increased subsidies and extended enrollment times for the ACA this year. Of those people who signed up for plans through Dec. 15, 92% will receive premium tax credits for their 2022 coverage.
"The historic 13.6 million people who have enrolled in a health insurance plan so far this period shows that the demand and need for affordable healthcare remains high. Thanks to President Biden's American Rescue Plan, more people today have affordable coverage -- and we aren't finished yet: people still have time to sign-up and get covered before the Jan. 15 deadline. This holiday season, let's share the peace of mind that comes with having coverage," said Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.
Open enrollment began Nov. 1 and the period runs a month longer than last year, until Jan. 15. Coverage begins Feb. 1.
The Biden administration has also prioritized reaching out to "those most in health coverage and who have historically lacked access," according to CMS. It has added marketing in six additional languages as part of that initiative.
#ABOLISHPRISON
Incarcerated youths at greater risk for dying early, study finds Previously incarcerated youths are at higher risk for early death compared with those who have not served time in juvenile detention, according to a new study. File photo by Alexander Raths/Shutterstock
Dec. 23 (UPI) -- People incarcerated as adolescents and teens are more likely to die at young age than the rest of the population, an analysis published Thursday by JAMA Network Open found.
Those ages 11 to 21 years who previously served time in juvenile detention facilities have a nearly six-fold higher risk for early death compared with those who have not been incarcerated, the data showed
Of previously incarcerated youths, 56% were slain, the researchers said.
"Youths who have been previously incarcerated are dying at a rate significantly higher than youths who are not involved with the juvenile legal system," study co-author Donna A. Ruch said in a press release.
"We must take the time to understand and spread awareness that youths exiting incarceration in the juvenile legal system are at risk," said Ruch, a researcher at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
Roughly 50,000 adolescents and teens are confined in juvenile correctional facilities across the United States, according to the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
In earlier studies, youth incarceration has been associated with academic failure, limited job opportunities, poor physical and mental health and a lifetime of criminal behavior following release.
For this study, Ruch and her colleagues examined death rates and causes of death for 3,645 youths ages 11 to 21 years who were incarcerated in Ohio's juvenile legal system between 2010 and 2017.
They compared the findings within this group with those from a population of same-aged, non-incarcerated, Medicaid-enrolled youths, they said. Of the 3,645 incarcerated youths in the study, 93% of whom were male, 113 died during the study period, the researchers said.
RELATED Analysis: Juvenile detention overused? Incarcerated youth were 11 times more likely to be killed, four times more likely to die by suicide and four times more likely to die as the result of a drug overdose compared with non-incarcerated youths, the data showed.
In addition, previously incarcerated Black youths had a 14-fold higher risk for being murdered than White youth who had served time in juvenile detention, the researchers said.
Based on the findings, strategies that incorporate a culturally informed approach are key to reducing early death in this high-risk population, they said.
These include counseling, mentoring programs, family-centered interventions and school-based initiatives, the researchers said.
"We need more information on the re-entry process itself, not one solution fits all," Ruch said.
"We'd like to prevent delinquency in the first place, but we also need to do a better job supporting youths in this reentry process by assessing their needs, connecting them to appropriate resources and establishing a target for intervention," she said.
Atlanta owns up to legacy of convict labor that rebuilt city By MICHAEL WARREN
Atlanta's skyline is shown, with Bellwood Quarry Reservoir in the foreground, on Dec. 20, 2021. Atlanta was built with slavery’s successor: unpaid convict labor. Thousands of Black men worked in horrific conditions to break granite at the quarry, now a reservoir holding the city's backup water supply. (Elliott Augustine via AP)
ATLANTA (AP) — The City of Atlanta’s official seal shows a phoenix rising from the ashes of the Civil War. What it doesn’t show is that Atlanta was rebuilt with slavery’s successor: convict labor, working in horrific conditions to break granite at the Bellwood Quarry and burn clay at the Chattahoochee Brick Company.
Thousands of Black men, women and children were pulled off the streets and convicted of petty or nonexistent crimes before vanishing into camps and factories where many were worked to death. The peonage system lasted across the South for seven decades until World War II, yet many Americans have never heard of it.
Restoring this long-ignored chapter of U.S. history to public memory is the goal of a coalition of politicians, executives, foundation chiefs, historians, educators and grassroots activists that has taken shape over the past few months.
“In the same way we served as an example during the civil rights movement of what’s possible in America, I believe that that moment is before us now,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms told The Associated Press. “I think it’s very important for our children and for adults to know what that history is all about.”
A marker in English Park, seen on Dec. 20, 2021, in Atlanta, honors James W. English, a Confederate Army captain, police official and Atlanta mayor who exploited the convict labor system to force unpaid Black men to work in his Chattahoochee Brick Company. They endured whippings and other atrocities while producing hundreds of thousands of bricks a day at the turn of the 20th century. (AP Photo/Michael Warren)
(Lars Schmitz)
The new ichthyosaurs skull with a human for scale. (Martin Sander)
