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Friday, September 16, 2022
AIRSHIPS
Ghost islands of the Arctic: The world’s ‘northern-most island’ isn’t the first to be erased from the map
Kevin Hamilton, Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Hawaii 9/9/2022
Video player from: YouTube (Privacy Policy, Terms)
This was not the first such disappearing act in the high Arctic, or the first need to erase land from the map. Nearly a century ago, an innovative airborne expedition redrew the maps of large swaths of the Barents Sea.
The view from a zeppelin in 1931
The 1931 expedition emerged from American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst’s plan for a spectacular publicity stunt.
Hearst proposed having the Graf Zeppelin, then the world’s largest airship, fly to the North Pole for a meeting with a submarine that would travel under the ice. This ran into practical difficulties and Hearst abandoned the plan, but the notion of using the Graf Zeppelin to conduct geographic and scientific investigations of the high Arctic was taken up by an international polar science committee.
The airborne expedition they devised would employ pioneering technologies and make important geographical, meteorological and magnetic discoveries in the Arctic – including remapping much of the Barents Sea.
The expedition was known as the Polarfahrt – “polar voyage” in German. Despite the international tensions at the time, the zeppelin carried a team of German, Soviet and U.S. scientists and explorers.
Among them were Lincoln Ellsworth, a wealthy American and experienced Arctic explorer who would write the first scholarly account of the Polarfahrt and its geographical discoveries. Two important Soviet scientists also participated: the brilliant meteorologist Pavel Molchanov and the expedition’s chief scientist, Rudolf Samoylovich, who performed magnetic measurements. In charge of the meteorological operations was Ludwig Weickmann, director of the Geophysical Institute of the University of Leipzig.
The expedition’s chronicler was Arthur Koestler, a young journalist who would later become famous for his anti-communist novel “Darkness at Noon,” depicting totalitarianism turning on its own party loyalists
‘The disadvantage of not existing’
The high latitude regions the Polarfahrt passed over were incredibly remote. In the late 19th century, Austrian explorer Julius von Payer reported the discovery of Franz Josef Land, an archipelago of nearly 200 islands in the Barents Sea, but initially there had been doubts about Franz Josef Land’s existence.
The Polarfahrt confirmed the existence of Franz Josef Land, but it would reveal that the maps produced by the early explorers of the high Arctic had startling deficiencies.
For the expedition, the Graf Zeppelin had been outfitted with wide-angle cameras that allowed detailed photography of the surface below. The slowly moving Zeppelin was ideally suited for this purpose and could make leisurely surveys that were not possible from fixed-wing aircraft overflights.
“We spent the remainder of [July 27] making a geographical survey of Franz Josef Land,” Koestler wrote.
“Our first objective was an island called Albert Edward Land. But that was easier said than done, for Albert Edward Land had the disadvantage of not existing. It could be found on every map of the Arctic, but not in the Arctic itself …
"Next objective: Harmsworth Land. Funny as it sounds Harmsworth Land didn’t exist either. Where it ought to have been, there was nothing but the black polar sea and the reflection of the white Zeppelin.
"Heaven knows whether the explorer who put these islands on the map (I believe it was Payer) had been a victim of a mirage, mistaking some icebergs for land … At any rate, as of July 27, 1931, they have been officially erased.”
The expedition would also discover six islands and redraw the coastal outlines of many others.
A revolutionary way to measure the atmosphere
The expedition was also remarkable for the instruments Molchanov tested aboard the Graf Zeppelin – including his newly invented “radiosondes.” His technology would revolutionize meteorological observations and led to instruments that atmospheric scientists like me rely on today.
Until 1930, measuring the temperature high in the atmosphere was extremely challenging for meteorologists.
60 days in Iceberg Alley, drilling for marine sediment to decipher Earth’s climate 3 million years ago
Kevin Hamilton, Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Hawaii 9/9/2022
THE CONVERSATION
In 2021, an expedition off the icy northern Greenland coast spotted what appeared to be a previously uncharted island. It was small and gravelly, and it was declared a contender for the title of the most northerly known land mass in the world. The discoverers named it Qeqertaq Avannarleq – Greenlandic for “the northern most island.”
In 2021, an expedition off the icy northern Greenland coast spotted what appeared to be a previously uncharted island. It was small and gravelly, and it was declared a contender for the title of the most northerly known land mass in the world. The discoverers named it Qeqertaq Avannarleq – Greenlandic for “the northern most island.”
PHOTO © Martin Nissen These 'islands' are on the move.
But there was a mystery afoot in the region. Just north of Cape Morris Jesup, several other small islands had been discovered over the decades, and then disappeared.
Some scientists theorized that these were rocky banks that had been pushed up by sea ice.
But when a team of Swiss and Danish surveyors traveled north to investigate this “ghost islands” phenomenon, they discovered something else entirely. They announced their findings in September 2022: These elusive islands are actually large icebergs grounded at the sea bottom. They likely came from a nearby glacier, where other newly calved icebergs, covered with gravel from landslides, were ready to float off.
But there was a mystery afoot in the region. Just north of Cape Morris Jesup, several other small islands had been discovered over the decades, and then disappeared.
Some scientists theorized that these were rocky banks that had been pushed up by sea ice.
But when a team of Swiss and Danish surveyors traveled north to investigate this “ghost islands” phenomenon, they discovered something else entirely. They announced their findings in September 2022: These elusive islands are actually large icebergs grounded at the sea bottom. They likely came from a nearby glacier, where other newly calved icebergs, covered with gravel from landslides, were ready to float off.
Video player from: YouTube (Privacy Policy, Terms)
This was not the first such disappearing act in the high Arctic, or the first need to erase land from the map. Nearly a century ago, an innovative airborne expedition redrew the maps of large swaths of the Barents Sea.
The view from a zeppelin in 1931
The 1931 expedition emerged from American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst’s plan for a spectacular publicity stunt.
Hearst proposed having the Graf Zeppelin, then the world’s largest airship, fly to the North Pole for a meeting with a submarine that would travel under the ice. This ran into practical difficulties and Hearst abandoned the plan, but the notion of using the Graf Zeppelin to conduct geographic and scientific investigations of the high Arctic was taken up by an international polar science committee.
The airborne expedition they devised would employ pioneering technologies and make important geographical, meteorological and magnetic discoveries in the Arctic – including remapping much of the Barents Sea.
The expedition was known as the Polarfahrt – “polar voyage” in German. Despite the international tensions at the time, the zeppelin carried a team of German, Soviet and U.S. scientists and explorers.
Among them were Lincoln Ellsworth, a wealthy American and experienced Arctic explorer who would write the first scholarly account of the Polarfahrt and its geographical discoveries. Two important Soviet scientists also participated: the brilliant meteorologist Pavel Molchanov and the expedition’s chief scientist, Rudolf Samoylovich, who performed magnetic measurements. In charge of the meteorological operations was Ludwig Weickmann, director of the Geophysical Institute of the University of Leipzig.
The expedition’s chronicler was Arthur Koestler, a young journalist who would later become famous for his anti-communist novel “Darkness at Noon,” depicting totalitarianism turning on its own party loyalists
.
© Wikimedia Built in 1928 and longer than two football fields, the Graf Zeppelin was normally used for ultra-luxurious commercial passenger transportation. Financing for the science mission came in part from the sale of postcards with stamps specially issued by the postal authorities of Germany and the Soviet Union.
The five-day trip took them north over the Barents Sea as far as 82 degrees north latitude, and then eastward for hundreds of miles before returning southwestward.
Koestler provided daily reports via shortwave radio that appeared in newspapers around the world.
“The experience of this swift, silent and effortless rising, or rather falling upwards into the sky, is beautiful and intoxicating,” Koestler wrote in his 1952 autobiography. “… it gives one the complete illusion of having escaped the bondage of the earth’s gravity.
"We hovered in the Arctic air for several days, moving at a leisurely average of 60 miles per hour and often stopping in mid-air to complete a photographic survey or release small weather balloons. It all had a charm and a quiet excitement comparable to a journey on the last sailing ship in an era of speed boats.”
The five-day trip took them north over the Barents Sea as far as 82 degrees north latitude, and then eastward for hundreds of miles before returning southwestward.
Koestler provided daily reports via shortwave radio that appeared in newspapers around the world.
“The experience of this swift, silent and effortless rising, or rather falling upwards into the sky, is beautiful and intoxicating,” Koestler wrote in his 1952 autobiography. “… it gives one the complete illusion of having escaped the bondage of the earth’s gravity.
"We hovered in the Arctic air for several days, moving at a leisurely average of 60 miles per hour and often stopping in mid-air to complete a photographic survey or release small weather balloons. It all had a charm and a quiet excitement comparable to a journey on the last sailing ship in an era of speed boats.”
‘The disadvantage of not existing’
The high latitude regions the Polarfahrt passed over were incredibly remote. In the late 19th century, Austrian explorer Julius von Payer reported the discovery of Franz Josef Land, an archipelago of nearly 200 islands in the Barents Sea, but initially there had been doubts about Franz Josef Land’s existence.
The Polarfahrt confirmed the existence of Franz Josef Land, but it would reveal that the maps produced by the early explorers of the high Arctic had startling deficiencies.
For the expedition, the Graf Zeppelin had been outfitted with wide-angle cameras that allowed detailed photography of the surface below. The slowly moving Zeppelin was ideally suited for this purpose and could make leisurely surveys that were not possible from fixed-wing aircraft overflights.
“We spent the remainder of [July 27] making a geographical survey of Franz Josef Land,” Koestler wrote.
“Our first objective was an island called Albert Edward Land. But that was easier said than done, for Albert Edward Land had the disadvantage of not existing. It could be found on every map of the Arctic, but not in the Arctic itself …
"Next objective: Harmsworth Land. Funny as it sounds Harmsworth Land didn’t exist either. Where it ought to have been, there was nothing but the black polar sea and the reflection of the white Zeppelin.
"Heaven knows whether the explorer who put these islands on the map (I believe it was Payer) had been a victim of a mirage, mistaking some icebergs for land … At any rate, as of July 27, 1931, they have been officially erased.”
The expedition would also discover six islands and redraw the coastal outlines of many others.
A revolutionary way to measure the atmosphere
The expedition was also remarkable for the instruments Molchanov tested aboard the Graf Zeppelin – including his newly invented “radiosondes.” His technology would revolutionize meteorological observations and led to instruments that atmospheric scientists like me rely on today.
Until 1930, measuring the temperature high in the atmosphere was extremely challenging for meteorologists.
© Radiosonde Museum of North America Pavel Molchanov and Ludwig Weickmann prepare to launch a weather balloon.
They used so-called registering sondes that recorded the temperature and pressure by weather balloon. A stylus would make a continuous trace on paper or some other medium, but to read it, scientists would have to find the sonde package after it dropped, and it typically drifted many miles from the launch point. This was particularly impractical in remote areas such as the Arctic.
Molchanov’s device could radio back the temperature and pressure at frequent intervals during the balloon flight. Today, balloon-borne radiosondes are launched daily at several hundred stations worldwide.
The Polarfahrt was Molchanov’s chance for a spectacular demonstration. The Graf Zeppelin generally flew in the lowest few thousand feet of the atmosphere, but could serve as a platform to release weather balloons that could ascend much higher, acting as remotely reporting “robots” in the upper atmosphere.
They used so-called registering sondes that recorded the temperature and pressure by weather balloon. A stylus would make a continuous trace on paper or some other medium, but to read it, scientists would have to find the sonde package after it dropped, and it typically drifted many miles from the launch point. This was particularly impractical in remote areas such as the Arctic.
Molchanov’s device could radio back the temperature and pressure at frequent intervals during the balloon flight. Today, balloon-borne radiosondes are launched daily at several hundred stations worldwide.
The Polarfahrt was Molchanov’s chance for a spectacular demonstration. The Graf Zeppelin generally flew in the lowest few thousand feet of the atmosphere, but could serve as a platform to release weather balloons that could ascend much higher, acting as remotely reporting “robots” in the upper atmosphere.
© Radiosonde Museum of North America. To launch radiosondes from the zeppelin, weather balloons were weighted to sink at first. The weight was designed to drop off, allowing the balloon to later rise through the atmosphere.
Molchanov’s hydrogen-filled weather balloons provided the first observations of the stratospheric temperatures near the pole. Remarkably, he found that at heights of 10 miles the air at the pole was actually much warmer than at the equator.
Fate of the protagonists
The Polarfahrt was a final flourish of international scientific cooperation at the beginning of the 1930s, a period that saw a catastrophic rise of authoritarian politics and international conflict. By 1941, the U.S., Soviet Union and Germany would all be at war.
Molchanov and Samoylovich became victims of Stalin’s secret police. As a Hungarian Jew, Koestler would have his life and career shadowed by the politics of the age. He eventually found refuge in England, where he built a career as a novelist, essayist and historian of science.
Molchanov’s hydrogen-filled weather balloons provided the first observations of the stratospheric temperatures near the pole. Remarkably, he found that at heights of 10 miles the air at the pole was actually much warmer than at the equator.
Fate of the protagonists
The Polarfahrt was a final flourish of international scientific cooperation at the beginning of the 1930s, a period that saw a catastrophic rise of authoritarian politics and international conflict. By 1941, the U.S., Soviet Union and Germany would all be at war.
Molchanov and Samoylovich became victims of Stalin’s secret police. As a Hungarian Jew, Koestler would have his life and career shadowed by the politics of the age. He eventually found refuge in England, where he built a career as a novelist, essayist and historian of science.
© Wikimedia The Graf Zeppelin was designed for luxury air travel.
The Graf Zeppelin continued in commercial passenger service principally on trans-Atlantic flights. But one of history’s most iconic tragedies soon ended the era of zeppelin travel. In May 1937, the Graf Zeppelin’s younger sister airship, the Hindenburg, caught fire while trying to land in New Jersey. The Graf Zeppelin was dismantled in 1940 to provide scrap metal for the German war effort.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.
Read more:
What’s going on with the Greenland ice sheet? It’s losing ice faster than forecast and now irreversibly committed to at least 10 inches of sea level rise
The Graf Zeppelin continued in commercial passenger service principally on trans-Atlantic flights. But one of history’s most iconic tragedies soon ended the era of zeppelin travel. In May 1937, the Graf Zeppelin’s younger sister airship, the Hindenburg, caught fire while trying to land in New Jersey. The Graf Zeppelin was dismantled in 1940 to provide scrap metal for the German war effort.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.
Read more:
What’s going on with the Greenland ice sheet? It’s losing ice faster than forecast and now irreversibly committed to at least 10 inches of sea level rise
60 days in Iceberg Alley, drilling for marine sediment to decipher Earth’s climate 3 million years ago
World's oldest mammal revealed as 'shrew-like' animal that lived with dinosaurs 225 million years ago.jpg)
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Wyatte Grantham-Philips, USA TODAY
Before the discovery about the Brasilodon's age, scientists had previously confirmed that the Morganucodon, another small, rodent-like creature, was the world's earliest mammal.
The Morganucodon's oldest fossils, which are isolated teeth, date back 205 million years. So, the Brasilodon is believed to be roughly 20 million years older.
Why teeth? Scientists use fossils to identify prehistoric mammals
To date, mammalian glands (such as those that produce milk) have not been persevered in any recovered fossils. Scientists have to turn to "hard tissues," such as bones and teeth that fossilized, "for alternative clues," the Natural History Museum notes.
The Brasilodon was identified as a mammal because of its two sets of successive teeth. When analyzing three lower jaws of different growth stages in particular, the researchers concluded that the Brasilodon's first set of teeth (which started developing before birth) were later replaced with an "adult set."
When did modern humans first walk the Earth? Oldest remains of modern humans are much older than thought, researchers say
What's everyone talking about? Sign up for our trending newsletter to get the latest news of the day
Two sets of teeth characterize mammals, the researchers note. In contrast, reptiles, for example, see teeth replaced many times throughout their lives.
"The evidence from how the dentition was built over developmental time is crucial and definitive to show that Brasilodons were mammals," Moya Meredith Smith, contributing author and professor at King’s College London stated. "Our paper raises the level of debate about what defines a mammal and shows that it was a much earlier time of origin in the fossil record than previously known."
9/9/2022
The world's oldest known mammal has been identified using dental records – predating what scientists previously thought was the first mammal to walk the Earth by millions of years – according to new research.
In the study, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Anatomy on Monday, Brazilian and British researchers from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, London's Natural History Museum and King’s College London confirmed that the Brasilodon quadrangularis was the earliest mammal with fossil records of the animal's teeth sets.
The Brasilodon was a tiny, "shrew-like" animal that measured almost 8 inches long. Dental records for the mammal date back more than 225 million years – meaning the Barsilodon existed at the same time as some of the oldest dinosaurs, but 25 million years after the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, according to a Natural History Museum news release.
"Dated at 225.42 million years old, this is the oldest known mammal in the fossil record contributing to our understanding of the ecological landscape of this period and the evolution of modern mammals," Martha Richter, scientific associate at the museum and senior author of the paper, stated in the release.
The world's oldest known mammal has been identified using dental records – predating what scientists previously thought was the first mammal to walk the Earth by millions of years – according to new research.
In the study, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Anatomy on Monday, Brazilian and British researchers from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, London's Natural History Museum and King’s College London confirmed that the Brasilodon quadrangularis was the earliest mammal with fossil records of the animal's teeth sets.
The Brasilodon was a tiny, "shrew-like" animal that measured almost 8 inches long. Dental records for the mammal date back more than 225 million years – meaning the Barsilodon existed at the same time as some of the oldest dinosaurs, but 25 million years after the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, according to a Natural History Museum news release.
"Dated at 225.42 million years old, this is the oldest known mammal in the fossil record contributing to our understanding of the ecological landscape of this period and the evolution of modern mammals," Martha Richter, scientific associate at the museum and senior author of the paper, stated in the release.
Before the discovery about the Brasilodon's age, scientists had previously confirmed that the Morganucodon, another small, rodent-like creature, was the world's earliest mammal.
The Morganucodon's oldest fossils, which are isolated teeth, date back 205 million years. So, the Brasilodon is believed to be roughly 20 million years older.
Why teeth? Scientists use fossils to identify prehistoric mammals
To date, mammalian glands (such as those that produce milk) have not been persevered in any recovered fossils. Scientists have to turn to "hard tissues," such as bones and teeth that fossilized, "for alternative clues," the Natural History Museum notes.
The Brasilodon was identified as a mammal because of its two sets of successive teeth. When analyzing three lower jaws of different growth stages in particular, the researchers concluded that the Brasilodon's first set of teeth (which started developing before birth) were later replaced with an "adult set."
When did modern humans first walk the Earth? Oldest remains of modern humans are much older than thought, researchers say
What's everyone talking about? Sign up for our trending newsletter to get the latest news of the day
Two sets of teeth characterize mammals, the researchers note. In contrast, reptiles, for example, see teeth replaced many times throughout their lives.
"The evidence from how the dentition was built over developmental time is crucial and definitive to show that Brasilodons were mammals," Moya Meredith Smith, contributing author and professor at King’s College London stated. "Our paper raises the level of debate about what defines a mammal and shows that it was a much earlier time of origin in the fossil record than previously known."
Humans evolved with their microbiomes – like genes, your gut microbes pass from one generation to the next
Taichi A. Suzuki, Postdoctoral Research Associate in Microbiome Science, Max Planck Institute for Biology
For our analysis, we used data from 839 adults and 386 children. To assess the evolutionary histories of humans and gut microbes, we created phylogenetic trees for each person and as well as for 59 strains of the most commonly shared microbial species.
When we compared the human trees to the microbial trees, we discovered a gradient of how well they matched. Some bacterial trees didn’t match the human trees at all, while some matched very well, indicating that these species codiversified with humans. Some microbial species, in fact, have been along for the evolutionary ride for over hundreds of thousands of years.
We also found that microbes that evolved in tandem with people have a unique set of genes and traits compared with microbes that had not codiversified with people. Microbes that partnered up with humans have smaller genomes and greater oxygen and temperature sensitivity, mostly unable to tolerate conditions below human body temperature.
In contrast, gut microbes with weaker ties to human evolution have traits and genes characteristic of free-living bacteria in the external environment. This finding suggests that codiversified microbes are very much dependent on the environmental conditions of the human body and must be transmitted quickly from one person to the next, either passed down generationally or between people living in the same communities.
Confirming this mode of transmission, we found that mothers and their children had the same strains of microbes in their guts. Microbes that were not codiversified, in contrast, were more likely to survive well outside of the body and may be transmitted more widely through water and soil.
Gut microbes and personalized medicine
Our discovery that gut microbes evolved right along with their human hosts offers another way to view the human gut microbiome. Gut microbes have passed between people over hundreds to thousands of generations, such that as humans changed, so did their gut microbes. As a result, some gut microbes behave as though they are part of the human genome: They are packages of genes that are passed between generations and shared by related individuals.
Personalized medicine and genetic testing are starting to make treatments more specific and effective for the individual. Knowing which microbes have had long-term partnerships with people may help researchers develop microbiome-based treatments specific to each population. Clinicians are already using locally sourced probiotics derived from the gut microbes of community members to treat malnutrition.
Gut bacteria could be used to help treat various diseases and conditions.
Taichi A. Suzuki, Postdoctoral Research Associate in Microbiome Science, Max Planck Institute for Biology
Ruth Ley, Director, Department of Microbiome Science, Max Planck Institute for Biology
THE CONVERSATION - Yesterday
When the first humans moved out of Africa, they carried their gut microbes with them. Turns out, these microbes also evolved along with them.
The gut microbiome may also play a role in personalized medicine.© nopparit/iStock via Getty Images Plus
The human gut microbiome is made up of hundreds to thousands of species of bacteria and archaea. Within a given species of microbe, different strains carry different genes that can affect your health and the diseases you’re susceptible to.
There is pronounced variation in the microbial composition and diversity of the gut microbiome between people living in different countries around the world. Although researchers are starting to understand what factors affect microbiome composition, such as diet, there is still limited understanding on why different groups have different strains of the same species of microbes in their guts.
We are researchers who study microbial evolution and microbiomes. Our recently published study found that not only did microbes diversify with their early modern human hosts as they traveled across the globe, they followed human evolution by restricting themselves to life in the gut.
Microbes share evolutionary history with humans
We hypothesized that as humans fanned out across the globe and diversified genetically, so did the microbial species in their guts. In other words, gut microbes and their human hosts “codiversified” and evolved together – just as human beings diversified so that people in Asia look different from people in Europe, so too did their microbiomes.
To assess this, we needed to pair human genome and microbiome data from people around the world. However, data sets that provided both the microbiome data and genome information for individuals were limited when we started this study. Most publicly available data was from North America and Western Europe, and we needed data that was more representative of populations around the world.
So our research team used existing data from Cameroon, South Korea and the United Kingdom, and additionally recruited mothers and their young children in Gabon, Vietnam and Germany. We collected saliva samples from the adults to ascertain their genotype, or genetic characteristics, and fecal samples to sequence the genomes of their gut microbes.
When the first humans moved out of Africa, they carried their gut microbes with them. Turns out, these microbes also evolved along with them.
The gut microbiome may also play a role in personalized medicine.© nopparit/iStock via Getty Images Plus
The human gut microbiome is made up of hundreds to thousands of species of bacteria and archaea. Within a given species of microbe, different strains carry different genes that can affect your health and the diseases you’re susceptible to.
There is pronounced variation in the microbial composition and diversity of the gut microbiome between people living in different countries around the world. Although researchers are starting to understand what factors affect microbiome composition, such as diet, there is still limited understanding on why different groups have different strains of the same species of microbes in their guts.
We are researchers who study microbial evolution and microbiomes. Our recently published study found that not only did microbes diversify with their early modern human hosts as they traveled across the globe, they followed human evolution by restricting themselves to life in the gut.
Microbes share evolutionary history with humans
We hypothesized that as humans fanned out across the globe and diversified genetically, so did the microbial species in their guts. In other words, gut microbes and their human hosts “codiversified” and evolved together – just as human beings diversified so that people in Asia look different from people in Europe, so too did their microbiomes.
To assess this, we needed to pair human genome and microbiome data from people around the world. However, data sets that provided both the microbiome data and genome information for individuals were limited when we started this study. Most publicly available data was from North America and Western Europe, and we needed data that was more representative of populations around the world.
So our research team used existing data from Cameroon, South Korea and the United Kingdom, and additionally recruited mothers and their young children in Gabon, Vietnam and Germany. We collected saliva samples from the adults to ascertain their genotype, or genetic characteristics, and fecal samples to sequence the genomes of their gut microbes.
For our analysis, we used data from 839 adults and 386 children. To assess the evolutionary histories of humans and gut microbes, we created phylogenetic trees for each person and as well as for 59 strains of the most commonly shared microbial species.
When we compared the human trees to the microbial trees, we discovered a gradient of how well they matched. Some bacterial trees didn’t match the human trees at all, while some matched very well, indicating that these species codiversified with humans. Some microbial species, in fact, have been along for the evolutionary ride for over hundreds of thousands of years.
We also found that microbes that evolved in tandem with people have a unique set of genes and traits compared with microbes that had not codiversified with people. Microbes that partnered up with humans have smaller genomes and greater oxygen and temperature sensitivity, mostly unable to tolerate conditions below human body temperature.
In contrast, gut microbes with weaker ties to human evolution have traits and genes characteristic of free-living bacteria in the external environment. This finding suggests that codiversified microbes are very much dependent on the environmental conditions of the human body and must be transmitted quickly from one person to the next, either passed down generationally or between people living in the same communities.
Confirming this mode of transmission, we found that mothers and their children had the same strains of microbes in their guts. Microbes that were not codiversified, in contrast, were more likely to survive well outside of the body and may be transmitted more widely through water and soil.
Gut microbes and personalized medicine
Our discovery that gut microbes evolved right along with their human hosts offers another way to view the human gut microbiome. Gut microbes have passed between people over hundreds to thousands of generations, such that as humans changed, so did their gut microbes. As a result, some gut microbes behave as though they are part of the human genome: They are packages of genes that are passed between generations and shared by related individuals.
Personalized medicine and genetic testing are starting to make treatments more specific and effective for the individual. Knowing which microbes have had long-term partnerships with people may help researchers develop microbiome-based treatments specific to each population. Clinicians are already using locally sourced probiotics derived from the gut microbes of community members to treat malnutrition.
Gut bacteria could be used to help treat various diseases and conditions.
© Artur Plawgo/iStock via Getty Images Plus
Our findings also help scientists better understand how microbes transition ecologically and evolutionarily from “free-living” in the environment to dependent on the conditions of the human gut. Codiversified microbes have traits and genes reminiscent of bacterial symbionts that live inside insect hosts. These shared features suggest that other animal hosts may also have gut microbes that codiversified with them over evolution.
Paying special attention to the microbes that share human evolutionary history can help improve understanding of the role they play in human well-being.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.
Read more:
Which microbes live in your gut? A microbiologist tries at-home test kits to see what they reveal about the microbiome
Our findings also help scientists better understand how microbes transition ecologically and evolutionarily from “free-living” in the environment to dependent on the conditions of the human gut. Codiversified microbes have traits and genes reminiscent of bacterial symbionts that live inside insect hosts. These shared features suggest that other animal hosts may also have gut microbes that codiversified with them over evolution.
Paying special attention to the microbes that share human evolutionary history can help improve understanding of the role they play in human well-being.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.
Read more:
Which microbes live in your gut? A microbiologist tries at-home test kits to see what they reveal about the microbiome
PORRIDGE
New revelation about ancient eating habits could tell us a lot about the present, researchers sayDanya Gainor CNN
The breakfast habits of ancient Scots may not have been too different from ours, new research has found.
Shards of Neolithic pottery were found at Loch Bhorgastail, one of the ancient human-made islands. - F. Pedrotti
It’s Scottish lakes that get the credit for preserving this culinary snapshot of the diets and habits of humans living thousands of years ago, revealing that they enjoyed hot-cereal-like porridge, according to a new study published in Nature Communications.
The finding comes via preserved bits of food DNA in Neolithic-era pottery that was submerged in the lake water. Commingled ancient wheat and dairy residues, which ultimately provided the first direct evidence of porridge-like foods on humans’ menu, had been virtually absent from the prehistoric record. Now, archaeologists have a clear idea of the culinary practices of a 6,000-year-old community, which can offer key insights about the present.
“It is important to learn about people’s past food procurement practices and culinary traditions to help us understand who we are today,” said Lara González Carretero, a lecturer in bioarchaeology at the University of York in the United Kingdom, via email.
Food choices can reveal a lot about a community’s socioeconomic pressures, contact with other cultures and migration, as well as ritual behavior, added Carretero, who was not involved with the study. “Understanding all these aspects of past societies would allow us to shed light on the socio-cultural changes and patterns that populations in a particular area went through and how these have shaped who these populations are today,” she said.
These learnings can also inform alternatives to modern food systems, potentially making them more sustainable through the application of knowledge and food production techniques gleaned from the past, Carretero said.
Excavations at four different sites along the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland revealed dozens of pieces of Neolithic pottery stored underwater among ancient human-made islands known as crannogs, which look almost like houses on stilts. Using highly sensitive biomolecular techniques and what scientists call an organic residue analysis on the deposits in the pots, the UK-based team of researchers behind the study were able to identify what the artifacts once contained and reconstruct foodways of the past.
The unglazed pottery had absorbed small traces of animal, wheat, dairy fats and oils that had been cooked inside of them. The residues were locked in place due to the preservative qualities of the freshwater environment they were part of for so long, according to the researchers.
“The fats and oils are very resilient to being washed away,” said study coauthor Lucy Cramp, associate professor of archaeology at the University of Bristol in the UK. “Imagine cooking bacon in a frying pan, and if you just left that in cold water with no detergent for weeks, it’s still going to be really greasy.”
This microscopic “grease” is what holds the Scottish recipes of 4000 BC.
No mixing and matching
This early Scottish community might have been full of picky diners, as they were very intentional about which pots were used for certain foods, the study found.
Researchers rarely identified cereals, the type of residue from domesticated grasses like wheat and barley, in the same pots as traces of animal meat.
The finding comes via preserved bits of food DNA in Neolithic-era pottery that was submerged in the lake water. Commingled ancient wheat and dairy residues, which ultimately provided the first direct evidence of porridge-like foods on humans’ menu, had been virtually absent from the prehistoric record. Now, archaeologists have a clear idea of the culinary practices of a 6,000-year-old community, which can offer key insights about the present.
“It is important to learn about people’s past food procurement practices and culinary traditions to help us understand who we are today,” said Lara González Carretero, a lecturer in bioarchaeology at the University of York in the United Kingdom, via email.
Food choices can reveal a lot about a community’s socioeconomic pressures, contact with other cultures and migration, as well as ritual behavior, added Carretero, who was not involved with the study. “Understanding all these aspects of past societies would allow us to shed light on the socio-cultural changes and patterns that populations in a particular area went through and how these have shaped who these populations are today,” she said.
These learnings can also inform alternatives to modern food systems, potentially making them more sustainable through the application of knowledge and food production techniques gleaned from the past, Carretero said.
Excavations at four different sites along the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland revealed dozens of pieces of Neolithic pottery stored underwater among ancient human-made islands known as crannogs, which look almost like houses on stilts. Using highly sensitive biomolecular techniques and what scientists call an organic residue analysis on the deposits in the pots, the UK-based team of researchers behind the study were able to identify what the artifacts once contained and reconstruct foodways of the past.
The unglazed pottery had absorbed small traces of animal, wheat, dairy fats and oils that had been cooked inside of them. The residues were locked in place due to the preservative qualities of the freshwater environment they were part of for so long, according to the researchers.
“The fats and oils are very resilient to being washed away,” said study coauthor Lucy Cramp, associate professor of archaeology at the University of Bristol in the UK. “Imagine cooking bacon in a frying pan, and if you just left that in cold water with no detergent for weeks, it’s still going to be really greasy.”
This microscopic “grease” is what holds the Scottish recipes of 4000 BC.
No mixing and matching
This early Scottish community might have been full of picky diners, as they were very intentional about which pots were used for certain foods, the study found.
Researchers rarely identified cereals, the type of residue from domesticated grasses like wheat and barley, in the same pots as traces of animal meat.
Dozens of pottery pieces were stored underwater among these
artificial islands known as crannogs. - B. Mackintosh
The research team also found a direct correlation between the size of a pot’s rim and its designated contents. Vessels less than 10 inches in diameter were used almost exclusively for dairy products. Those larger than about 12 inches held meat, with the occasional coappearance of dairy and plants.
“Once you have that combination, even if it’s only wheat and milk, you’re getting a little bit of a sense of how they constructed their food world and their diet,” said study coauthor Duncan Garrow, professor of archaeology at the University of Reading in the UK. “It just brings you a little bit closer to them.”
The research team also found a direct correlation between the size of a pot’s rim and its designated contents. Vessels less than 10 inches in diameter were used almost exclusively for dairy products. Those larger than about 12 inches held meat, with the occasional coappearance of dairy and plants.
“Once you have that combination, even if it’s only wheat and milk, you’re getting a little bit of a sense of how they constructed their food world and their diet,” said study coauthor Duncan Garrow, professor of archaeology at the University of Reading in the UK. “It just brings you a little bit closer to them.”
Mount Everest is teeming with life, from fungi to butterflies
Jude Coleman 
Finding life in meltwater
The team went to Mount Everest as part of the Perpetual Planet initiative, a research collaboration between the National Geographic Society and Rolex studying Earth’s forests, oceans, and mountains. In addition to studying biodiversity, other teams set up new weather stations and collected ice cores. Like most researchers and hikers on Everest, their work was supported by a team of sherpas who carried equipment, maintained camp, and guided the scientists across the mountain.
Seimon’s key to finding signs of life was collecting DNA from pools of thawed water. All living things routinely shed environmental DNA, or eDNA, into the surrounding air, water and soil. Scientists can match up a snippet of unknown eDNA with existing data to find out what organism it came from, in the same way that a library barcode tells librarians information about a book. (Learn how eDNA is revealing secrets of animals’ lives.)
The researchers focused on Everest’s highest ponds and streams, located between 14,700 and 18,000 feet in the high-alpine zone and beyond. In total, the team collected just over five gallons of water from 10 water bodies around the Khumbu region. From that, they identified 187 different orders, one sixth of all of Earth’s taxonomic orders.
A taxonomic order is a classification that helps scientists chart how individual organisms are distantly related to each other. For example, humans are classified as Homo (genus) and sapiens (species), but also fall under the family Hominidae and the order Primate, which also includes lemurs, monkeys, and apes.
In some cases, researchers could identify organisms more specifically down to the genus level; but because so little data exists about Mount Everest’s inhabitants, there was often not enough information to cross reference the DNA in such detail.
Seimon says that Mount Everest and other high mountain ecosystems are understudied.
“The global landmass that exists above 14,700 feet is less than three percent of the global land surface landmass,” she says. “It was very exciting to find as much biodiversity as we found up there.”
Looking deeper on Everest
Among the organisms swimming, flying, and scurrying on Mount Everest’s seemingly barren slopes were tardigrades and rotifers, two hardy microscopic critters that can survive even in the vacuum of space. Butterflies, mayflies, and other flying insects were also present, in addition to various fungi, bacteria, and plants.
“It's the top of the world and it’s so inaccessible,” says Kristine Bohmann, a biologist from University of Copenhagen who works with airborne eDNA and was not involved in the research. She says the work shows that studying biodiversity doesn’t always require a full team of taxonomists and can sometimes be done simpler and more efficiently, even in harsh environments. (Meet the animals that thrive in extreme mountain conditions.)
More research will help create a better record of diversity on Mount Everest and document specific organisms. Performing future studies in different seasons may yield more biodiversity, and show which genera and species live on the mountain in different climatic conditions.
Having created a baseline, one of Seimon’s next goals is to compare the data with future sampling, particularly to document the effects of climate change on Everest’s biodiversity. Their work can help inform future studies, paving the way for more research on the roof of the world.
Jude Coleman
© Photograph By J Dong Lei, Nature Picture Library
The Tibetan snowcock (pictured in Tibet) is one of the species recorded on Mount Everest.
In the spring of 2019, Tracie Seimon would lie awake listening to the deep rumble of cracking ice. The glacier she was sleeping on at the base of Mount Everest was shifting beneath her tent.
Seimon, a molecular biologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York City, spent three weeks trekking around that glacier. She hoped to create a snapshot of biodiversity in one of the planet’s most extreme environments—a mountain more than five miles high that’s prone to subzero temperatures, limited oxygen, and intense storms.
But despite its inhospitable nature, the world’s tallest peak is teeming with life. Seimon and her team found 16 percent of Earth’s taxonomic orders—a classification including families, genera, and species—on just Mount Everest’s southern flank. They recently published their findings in the journal iScience.
“You feel very small as you're venturing up into the mountains,” says Seimon. “It’s incredible.”
She adds that most trekkers aren’t aware of the abundant life around them.
Mount Everest’s base camp sits atop the Khumbu Glacier, where Seimon’s team lived during part of the study in tents alongside summit-seeking hikers. The colorful cluster of tents sees around 40,000 people every year, which can be disruptive to the surrounding ecosystem, says co-author Anton Seimon, an atmospheric scientist at Appalachian State University and a National Geographic Explorer.
In addition to the foot traffic, climate change is also straining the mountain, which is why researchers wanted to create a baseline for its biodiversity. Understanding what life exists on Mount Everest now will help scientists track changes in the future.
It’s “been a fascinating experience and a privilege to be part of the effort,” says Anton, who is married to Seimon.
In the spring of 2019, Tracie Seimon would lie awake listening to the deep rumble of cracking ice. The glacier she was sleeping on at the base of Mount Everest was shifting beneath her tent.
Seimon, a molecular biologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York City, spent three weeks trekking around that glacier. She hoped to create a snapshot of biodiversity in one of the planet’s most extreme environments—a mountain more than five miles high that’s prone to subzero temperatures, limited oxygen, and intense storms.
But despite its inhospitable nature, the world’s tallest peak is teeming with life. Seimon and her team found 16 percent of Earth’s taxonomic orders—a classification including families, genera, and species—on just Mount Everest’s southern flank. They recently published their findings in the journal iScience.
“You feel very small as you're venturing up into the mountains,” says Seimon. “It’s incredible.”
She adds that most trekkers aren’t aware of the abundant life around them.
Mount Everest’s base camp sits atop the Khumbu Glacier, where Seimon’s team lived during part of the study in tents alongside summit-seeking hikers. The colorful cluster of tents sees around 40,000 people every year, which can be disruptive to the surrounding ecosystem, says co-author Anton Seimon, an atmospheric scientist at Appalachian State University and a National Geographic Explorer.
In addition to the foot traffic, climate change is also straining the mountain, which is why researchers wanted to create a baseline for its biodiversity. Understanding what life exists on Mount Everest now will help scientists track changes in the future.
It’s “been a fascinating experience and a privilege to be part of the effort,” says Anton, who is married to Seimon.
Finding life in meltwater
The team went to Mount Everest as part of the Perpetual Planet initiative, a research collaboration between the National Geographic Society and Rolex studying Earth’s forests, oceans, and mountains. In addition to studying biodiversity, other teams set up new weather stations and collected ice cores. Like most researchers and hikers on Everest, their work was supported by a team of sherpas who carried equipment, maintained camp, and guided the scientists across the mountain.
Seimon’s key to finding signs of life was collecting DNA from pools of thawed water. All living things routinely shed environmental DNA, or eDNA, into the surrounding air, water and soil. Scientists can match up a snippet of unknown eDNA with existing data to find out what organism it came from, in the same way that a library barcode tells librarians information about a book. (Learn how eDNA is revealing secrets of animals’ lives.)
The researchers focused on Everest’s highest ponds and streams, located between 14,700 and 18,000 feet in the high-alpine zone and beyond. In total, the team collected just over five gallons of water from 10 water bodies around the Khumbu region. From that, they identified 187 different orders, one sixth of all of Earth’s taxonomic orders.
A taxonomic order is a classification that helps scientists chart how individual organisms are distantly related to each other. For example, humans are classified as Homo (genus) and sapiens (species), but also fall under the family Hominidae and the order Primate, which also includes lemurs, monkeys, and apes.
In some cases, researchers could identify organisms more specifically down to the genus level; but because so little data exists about Mount Everest’s inhabitants, there was often not enough information to cross reference the DNA in such detail.
Seimon says that Mount Everest and other high mountain ecosystems are understudied.
“The global landmass that exists above 14,700 feet is less than three percent of the global land surface landmass,” she says. “It was very exciting to find as much biodiversity as we found up there.”
Looking deeper on Everest
Among the organisms swimming, flying, and scurrying on Mount Everest’s seemingly barren slopes were tardigrades and rotifers, two hardy microscopic critters that can survive even in the vacuum of space. Butterflies, mayflies, and other flying insects were also present, in addition to various fungi, bacteria, and plants.
“It's the top of the world and it’s so inaccessible,” says Kristine Bohmann, a biologist from University of Copenhagen who works with airborne eDNA and was not involved in the research. She says the work shows that studying biodiversity doesn’t always require a full team of taxonomists and can sometimes be done simpler and more efficiently, even in harsh environments. (Meet the animals that thrive in extreme mountain conditions.)
More research will help create a better record of diversity on Mount Everest and document specific organisms. Performing future studies in different seasons may yield more biodiversity, and show which genera and species live on the mountain in different climatic conditions.
Having created a baseline, one of Seimon’s next goals is to compare the data with future sampling, particularly to document the effects of climate change on Everest’s biodiversity. Their work can help inform future studies, paving the way for more research on the roof of the world.
Mass trial of Cambodian opposition members charged with treason
Yesterday
Cambodian opposition party activists and former lawmakers have been put on trial for treason, the latest mass trial of opponents of the country’s long-ruling Prime Minister Hun Sen.
Prisoners arrive by police truck at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court, Cambodia, on September 15, 2022
Yesterday
Cambodian opposition party activists and former lawmakers have been put on trial for treason, the latest mass trial of opponents of the country’s long-ruling Prime Minister Hun Sen.
Prisoners arrive by police truck at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court, Cambodia, on September 15, 2022
[File: Heng Sinith/AP Photo]
© Provided by Al Jazeera
A total of 37 defendants were summoned to the court in the capital, Phnom Penh, on Thursday, though only three were physically present as the majority were either in exile abroad or in hiding, defence lawyer Sam Sokong said.
The hearing was the third mass trial targeting members of the popular opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), which in 2013 came close to defeating Hun Sen’s party.
The Clooney Foundation for Justice, established by lawyer Amal Clooney and her actor husband George Clooney, said on Thursday that the conviction in an earlier mass trial that involved Cambodian-American lawyer Theary Seng was “a travesty of justice”.
“Theary Seng was convicted not because of what she did, but because she supported democratic change in Cambodia,” the foundation said in a statement.
“Expressing political views should not have been the basis for criminal charges, let alone a conviction and prison sentence. Cambodia must stop misusing its laws to criminalize dissent,” the foundation said.
The CNRP was banned just ahead of the 2018 general election by a court that ruled the opposition party had plotted to overthrow Hun Sen, whose authoritarian rule has kept him in power for 37 years.
Cambodian courts are widely understood to be under the influence of Hun Sen.
The disbanding of the opposition allowed his party to sweep all seats in the 2018 election, effectively turning Cambodia into a one-party state.
The allegations of treason mostly stem from an abortive attempt by a top CNRP leader, Mu Sochua, to return to Cambodia from self-exile abroad.
The defendants are accused of committing treason by helping organise the trip.
Among those charged is the party’s co-founder and longtime Hun Sen opponent, Sam Rainsy, who currently lives in France.
The trial, which started in 2020 but was suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic, involved more than 100 defendants who were divided into three separate trial groups for manageability.
More than 80 people were convicted in the first two mass trials earlier this year, receiving sentences of up to 10 years.
In March, the court convicted 21 people and sentenced them to between five and 10 years in prison for treason and conspiracy to commit treason and incitement to commit a felony.
Those convicted included opposition leader Sam Rainsy, his wife Tioulong Saumura, six former lawmakers and other party supporters.
The same court in June convicted Cambodian-American lawyer, Theary Seng, and 60 opposition supporters of treason, handing down prison sentences ranging from five to eight years.
A total of 37 defendants were summoned to the court in the capital, Phnom Penh, on Thursday, though only three were physically present as the majority were either in exile abroad or in hiding, defence lawyer Sam Sokong said.
The hearing was the third mass trial targeting members of the popular opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), which in 2013 came close to defeating Hun Sen’s party.
The Clooney Foundation for Justice, established by lawyer Amal Clooney and her actor husband George Clooney, said on Thursday that the conviction in an earlier mass trial that involved Cambodian-American lawyer Theary Seng was “a travesty of justice”.
“Theary Seng was convicted not because of what she did, but because she supported democratic change in Cambodia,” the foundation said in a statement.
“Expressing political views should not have been the basis for criminal charges, let alone a conviction and prison sentence. Cambodia must stop misusing its laws to criminalize dissent,” the foundation said.
The CNRP was banned just ahead of the 2018 general election by a court that ruled the opposition party had plotted to overthrow Hun Sen, whose authoritarian rule has kept him in power for 37 years.
Cambodian courts are widely understood to be under the influence of Hun Sen.
The disbanding of the opposition allowed his party to sweep all seats in the 2018 election, effectively turning Cambodia into a one-party state.
The allegations of treason mostly stem from an abortive attempt by a top CNRP leader, Mu Sochua, to return to Cambodia from self-exile abroad.
The defendants are accused of committing treason by helping organise the trip.
Among those charged is the party’s co-founder and longtime Hun Sen opponent, Sam Rainsy, who currently lives in France.
The trial, which started in 2020 but was suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic, involved more than 100 defendants who were divided into three separate trial groups for manageability.
More than 80 people were convicted in the first two mass trials earlier this year, receiving sentences of up to 10 years.
In March, the court convicted 21 people and sentenced them to between five and 10 years in prison for treason and conspiracy to commit treason and incitement to commit a felony.
Those convicted included opposition leader Sam Rainsy, his wife Tioulong Saumura, six former lawmakers and other party supporters.
The same court in June convicted Cambodian-American lawyer, Theary Seng, and 60 opposition supporters of treason, handing down prison sentences ranging from five to eight years.
Photos show contraband smuggled into South Africa from Zimbabwe, not other way round
Tendai Dube, AFP South Africa - Yesterday
Photos circulating on social media are being shared alongside claims that Zimbabweans were caught smuggling medication from South Africa back home. The pictures are genuine, taken by the South African army during recent busts. However, it was the other way round: the images show Zimbabweans caught trying to smuggle contraceptives and other goods into South Africa. The misleading claim piggybacks on rising jingoism targeting foreigners, especially Zimbabweans, in South Africa.
“Zimbabweans collecting medication from south African clinics pretending to be sick and smuggling it to zim (sic),” reads a Facebook post published on September 7, 2022.
The post includes three photographs: one of a carry bag filled with blister packs containing medication, and another two showing men and soldiers in the bushveld surrounded by large packages sealed in plastic.
Photos show contraband smuggled into South Africa from Zimbabwe, not other way round© Provided by AFP Fact CheckA screenshot of the misleading claim, taken on September 12, 2022
The same claim about the images was retweeted thousands of times on Twitter.
Some social media users believed the claim and expressed support for Phophi Ramathuba, the political head of health in South Africa’s Limpopo province who was filmed ranting at a Zimbabwean patient in a state medical facility, saying foreigners were placing additional pressure on the country’s public healthcare system.
Photos show contraband smuggled into South Africa from Zimbabwe, not other way round© Provided by AFP Fact CheckA screenshot of comments on the Facebook post, taken on August 13, 2022
The claim, however, is misleading.
Vice versa
A reverse image search of the picture with the tablets led to a statement posted on Facebook by the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) describing recent successes with various anti-smuggling operations, one of which included a seizure of pills ─ the same ones in the picture shared with the misleading claim.
According to the statement, the pills were being smuggled into South Africa ─ not out.
“At Echo 2 our soldiers confiscated what is called Control L Hormonal Contraceptives pills valued at R423 916.00 (approximately $24,000) which were being smuggled into South Africa from Zimbabwe,” reads the SANDF statement, published on September 5, 2022.
The statement detailed other recent busts of illegal goods, including sneakers and firearms, and included the two photos of large, black packages.
This illicit trade of medication from Zimbabwe to South Africa is not new. An April 2021 report by non-profit news agency GroundUp said it was spurred by demand from Zimbabwean women in South Africa who preferred to use familiar brands rather than local options.
Traders also told GroundUp that women turned to this illegal market to avoid long queues at clinics.
Photos show contraband smuggled into South Africa from Zimbabwe, not other way round© Provided by AFP Fact CheckScreenshot from the GroundUp article published in April 2021
The article includes a photo of the packaging for Control contraceptive pills. The box carries the Zimbabwean health ministry’s logo in the bottom left corner.
Photos show contraband smuggled into South Africa from Zimbabwe, not other way round© Provided by AFP Fact CheckPhoto of the contraceptive pack published by GroundUp
The same pill is listed on the Zimbabwe National Family Planning Council website as a contraceptive.
Photos show contraband smuggled into South Africa from Zimbabwe, not other way round© Provided by AFP Fact CheckA comparison of the pills distributed in Zimbabwe (L) and those seized in the bust
Tendai Dube, AFP South Africa - Yesterday
Photos circulating on social media are being shared alongside claims that Zimbabweans were caught smuggling medication from South Africa back home. The pictures are genuine, taken by the South African army during recent busts. However, it was the other way round: the images show Zimbabweans caught trying to smuggle contraceptives and other goods into South Africa. The misleading claim piggybacks on rising jingoism targeting foreigners, especially Zimbabweans, in South Africa.
“Zimbabweans collecting medication from south African clinics pretending to be sick and smuggling it to zim (sic),” reads a Facebook post published on September 7, 2022.
The post includes three photographs: one of a carry bag filled with blister packs containing medication, and another two showing men and soldiers in the bushveld surrounded by large packages sealed in plastic.
Photos show contraband smuggled into South Africa from Zimbabwe, not other way round© Provided by AFP Fact CheckA screenshot of the misleading claim, taken on September 12, 2022
The same claim about the images was retweeted thousands of times on Twitter.
Some social media users believed the claim and expressed support for Phophi Ramathuba, the political head of health in South Africa’s Limpopo province who was filmed ranting at a Zimbabwean patient in a state medical facility, saying foreigners were placing additional pressure on the country’s public healthcare system.
Photos show contraband smuggled into South Africa from Zimbabwe, not other way round© Provided by AFP Fact CheckA screenshot of comments on the Facebook post, taken on August 13, 2022
The claim, however, is misleading.
Vice versa
A reverse image search of the picture with the tablets led to a statement posted on Facebook by the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) describing recent successes with various anti-smuggling operations, one of which included a seizure of pills ─ the same ones in the picture shared with the misleading claim.
According to the statement, the pills were being smuggled into South Africa ─ not out.
“At Echo 2 our soldiers confiscated what is called Control L Hormonal Contraceptives pills valued at R423 916.00 (approximately $24,000) which were being smuggled into South Africa from Zimbabwe,” reads the SANDF statement, published on September 5, 2022.
The statement detailed other recent busts of illegal goods, including sneakers and firearms, and included the two photos of large, black packages.
This illicit trade of medication from Zimbabwe to South Africa is not new. An April 2021 report by non-profit news agency GroundUp said it was spurred by demand from Zimbabwean women in South Africa who preferred to use familiar brands rather than local options.
Traders also told GroundUp that women turned to this illegal market to avoid long queues at clinics.
Photos show contraband smuggled into South Africa from Zimbabwe, not other way round© Provided by AFP Fact CheckScreenshot from the GroundUp article published in April 2021
The article includes a photo of the packaging for Control contraceptive pills. The box carries the Zimbabwean health ministry’s logo in the bottom left corner.
Photos show contraband smuggled into South Africa from Zimbabwe, not other way round© Provided by AFP Fact CheckPhoto of the contraceptive pack published by GroundUp
The same pill is listed on the Zimbabwe National Family Planning Council website as a contraceptive.
Photos show contraband smuggled into South Africa from Zimbabwe, not other way round© Provided by AFP Fact CheckA comparison of the pills distributed in Zimbabwe (L) and those seized in the bust
Mauritanians Protest Law Requiring Arabic Language Lessons
Joseph Hammond, Zenger News - Yesterday
Opposition groups have vowed to keep protesting against a law they say will threaten the future of non-Arabic culture in Mauritania. The Mauritanian government says that the new law, passed this summer, is much-needed educational reform.
"[This will] put an end to the alarming deterioration of the national education system," the National Education Minister Mohamed Melainine Ould Eyih said earlier this year in a public appearance.
The law passed in July calls for primary-level classes to be taught in a local vernacular. It also requires the teaching of Arabic to non-Arabic speakers and of at least one national language to Arabic speakers.
Organization of the Officialization of National Languages (OLAN) was founded in March 2022 and claims to have hundreds of active members.
"The day after the publication by the government of the content of the bill, we found it so unfair and so clear about its desire to endorse the choice of the Arabic language as the absolute language of the country;" said Dieynaba Ndiom, awareness officer of OLAN. "The treatment that this bill reserved for other languages is so vague and minimalist that we immediately recognized the Arabization project that has always been supported by the state."
Four languages are recognized by the Mauritanian constitution: Arabic, Pulaar, Soninke, and Wolof. Only Arabic is official, and French is widely spoken. The OLAN movement protested the passage of the law with some of its members being arrested and others injured in a series of clashes with the police. It was unclear if any Mauritanian security forces were injured in the mostly peaceful protests. According to a video posted on social media, some protestors against the law made it into Mauritania's parliament during the consideration of the bill.
"The preservation of cultural and linguistic diversity is at stake. Each of us has the right to fully live our cultural identity, and the assimilation project hatched by the Mauritanian system is criminal and unacceptable," Ndiom said.
OLAN members confront Mauritanian security forces during a
Joseph Hammond, Zenger News - Yesterday
Opposition groups have vowed to keep protesting against a law they say will threaten the future of non-Arabic culture in Mauritania. The Mauritanian government says that the new law, passed this summer, is much-needed educational reform.
"[This will] put an end to the alarming deterioration of the national education system," the National Education Minister Mohamed Melainine Ould Eyih said earlier this year in a public appearance.
The law passed in July calls for primary-level classes to be taught in a local vernacular. It also requires the teaching of Arabic to non-Arabic speakers and of at least one national language to Arabic speakers.
Organization of the Officialization of National Languages (OLAN) was founded in March 2022 and claims to have hundreds of active members.
"The day after the publication by the government of the content of the bill, we found it so unfair and so clear about its desire to endorse the choice of the Arabic language as the absolute language of the country;" said Dieynaba Ndiom, awareness officer of OLAN. "The treatment that this bill reserved for other languages is so vague and minimalist that we immediately recognized the Arabization project that has always been supported by the state."
Four languages are recognized by the Mauritanian constitution: Arabic, Pulaar, Soninke, and Wolof. Only Arabic is official, and French is widely spoken. The OLAN movement protested the passage of the law with some of its members being arrested and others injured in a series of clashes with the police. It was unclear if any Mauritanian security forces were injured in the mostly peaceful protests. According to a video posted on social media, some protestors against the law made it into Mauritania's parliament during the consideration of the bill.
"The preservation of cultural and linguistic diversity is at stake. Each of us has the right to fully live our cultural identity, and the assimilation project hatched by the Mauritanian system is criminal and unacceptable," Ndiom said.
OLAN members confront Mauritanian security forces during a
protest over the country's new language law on July 25, 2022,
in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania.
OLAN via Zenger© OLAN via Zenger
Mauritania's cultural demographics make it a bridge between North Africa and West Africa. Five major ethnic groups make up the country. Since its independence in 1960 from France, the cohabitation of its ethnic components has often been a source of cultural tensions.
Mauritania's linguistic policies have always been seen as discriminatory by speakers of minority languages. Several linguists has also noted that in certain societies, a "prestige" language or dialect is often promoted at the expense of others.
In the 1980s, the government of Mauritania forcibly deported over 70,000 members of the Fulani, Toucouleur, Wolof, Soninke and Bambara ethnic groups.
Mauritania's cultural demographics make it a bridge between North Africa and West Africa. Five major ethnic groups make up the country. Since its independence in 1960 from France, the cohabitation of its ethnic components has often been a source of cultural tensions.
Mauritania's linguistic policies have always been seen as discriminatory by speakers of minority languages. Several linguists has also noted that in certain societies, a "prestige" language or dialect is often promoted at the expense of others.
In the 1980s, the government of Mauritania forcibly deported over 70,000 members of the Fulani, Toucouleur, Wolof, Soninke and Bambara ethnic groups.
Protestors against a new language law gather outside the parliament building in Nouakchott, Mauritania, on July 25, 2022. Speakers of minority languages worry that the law will lead to discrimination.
OLAN via Zenger© OLAN via Zenger
"The linguistic and cultural diversity that we observe today in Mauritania is a heritage built over the last two millennia, under extremely powerful empires that have existed on this part of the continent," said Mouhamadou Sy, a Mauritanian affairs expert and professor at Johns Hopkins University.
Sy points out that Mauritanian identity should draw inspiration from more than the country's Arab cultural ties. For instance, the capital of the empire of Ghana, called Koumbi Saleh, was located in the southeast of present-day Mauritania. During its heyday, the Mali Empire was one of the wealthiest in the world. Other empires and states have also left their imprint on Mauritania's cultural heritage, he said.
"Many sub-Saharan languages reigned over this country long before the arrival of Arabic in the 15th century. All these languages, including Arabic, are a national heritage and a wealth for the present-day country. Contrary to the Arabization that the State has always wanted to promote at the expense of its diversity, we can well adopt a multilingual system like that of Switzerland, which corresponds most to our social and historical reality," Sy said.
OLAN activists have vowed to continue to raise awareness of the issue. The next protest is scheduled for late September.
"The linguistic and cultural diversity that we observe today in Mauritania is a heritage built over the last two millennia, under extremely powerful empires that have existed on this part of the continent," said Mouhamadou Sy, a Mauritanian affairs expert and professor at Johns Hopkins University.
Sy points out that Mauritanian identity should draw inspiration from more than the country's Arab cultural ties. For instance, the capital of the empire of Ghana, called Koumbi Saleh, was located in the southeast of present-day Mauritania. During its heyday, the Mali Empire was one of the wealthiest in the world. Other empires and states have also left their imprint on Mauritania's cultural heritage, he said.
"Many sub-Saharan languages reigned over this country long before the arrival of Arabic in the 15th century. All these languages, including Arabic, are a national heritage and a wealth for the present-day country. Contrary to the Arabization that the State has always wanted to promote at the expense of its diversity, we can well adopt a multilingual system like that of Switzerland, which corresponds most to our social and historical reality," Sy said.
OLAN activists have vowed to continue to raise awareness of the issue. The next protest is scheduled for late September.
Life Inside a Catholic-Run Residential School for Canadian Indigenous Children
A new edition of "The Education of Augie Merasty:
A Residential School Memoir"
is available from University of Regina Press.
© Provided by Time
Joseph ‘Augie’ Merasty - Yesterday - TIME
In late May of 2021, when spring was unfurling across the country, Canadians awakened to the discovery near Kamloops, British Columbia of 200 dead Indigenous children in unmarked graves. More grizzly discoveries would continue across the country tied to the nation’s history between 1881 and 1996 of forcing more than 150,000 Indigenous children to attend residential schools that were rife with abuse. The numbers of presumed corpses, mostly children, are now in the thousands. When the headlines emerged, announcing these unmarked gravesites one after another, it felt as though all of Canada had been summoned to a mass exhumation. Doubtless, the people most deeply traumatized by this nightmare were First Nations and Métis, but many of us in all walks of life have still not awakened from this nightmare. How could these schools, which were largely Catholic-run institutions, have operated for so long with such impunity? How could this have happened?
The late Joseph Auguste (Augie) Merasty, laborer, taxi driver, security guard, boxer, trapper, hunter, fisherman, town drunk, visual artist and memoirist has some answers to these questions. His memoir of life and abuse in these schools The Education of Augie Merasty: A Residential School Memoir was published in 2015. The excerpt below sheds light on the experiences Merasty had at St. Therese Residential School in Saskatchewan, Canada, which he attended from 1935-1944. — David Carpenter, editor of The Education of Augie Merasty
I was born in 1930 at Sturgeon Landing and baptized there by Father Aquinas Merton, who was also the principal at St. Therese Residential School from 1927, when the school was opened. Two of my sisters and my brother, Peter, were the first three to walk inside the school. Annie and Jeanette were the names of my two sisters. There were also six uncles and the same number of aunts who attended the school in its first year.
All those sisters and cousins, uncles, and many other unrelated people from other villages told me what had happened. Good and bad, positive or negative, were told to me and others when we got to school eight years later, and they all told basically the same stories. So one has to assume they were speaking the truth.
We used to enjoy going out miles away from the school, going on picnics, either to the beach or going fishing at the rapids north of the school. It felt so nice to get out of the enclosed playground. Most of the time, we were forced to stay within the yard, which was surrounded by a high barbed-wire fence. It felt like getting out of prison.
I really can’t recall just how many times I was made to pay for minor offences. I was once made to walk about twenty miles in –40°F weather with a fellow student, Abner Joseph, back to where we walked the day before, across the big lake with a strong wind blowing. I imagine the wind chill factor was about –60°F. Just because we lost one mitten each. We were very nervous and scared all the way, as we were only about eleven or twelve years old at the time. And we saw some fresh wolf tracks about six miles out on the lake and kept our eyes busy looking every which way, expecting to see some wolves following us.We came back without the lost mittens as the wind and snow had covered everything that could be lost. That was January 1941, and it was that meanest of all nuns, Sister St. Mercy, who had forced us to walk in that god-awful weather, only to come back empty-handed. We, of course, got the strap, twenty strokes on both hands.
Sometimes for punishment we were made to kneel on the cold cement floor from 8:30 p.m. until almost midnight, after everyone had gone to bed upstairs. We would fall asleep on the cold cement floor before Sister Mercy came or sent for her co-worker Sister Joy to tell us to go to bed upstairs. Then we were woken up early in the morning to go to church. We were usually awakened at 7:30 a.m., like it or not. All we used for toothpaste was salt, which the sister carried in a saucer. Salt, something we didn’t even get to use at mealtime. Yet the cows and horses were getting all they wanted in blocks in the fields.
They really enjoyed causing pain and other kinds of suffering as punishment for the smallest infractions. I think they were paranoid in the position they had, being masters of a lower race of creatures, Indians, as we were called.
“Indians from the bush, what can you expect?” was Sister Mercy’s favourite phrase.
They wanted to show who was superior, and no rule or order was to be broken or spoken against. They wanted to impress upon us that all this was for our own good and the will of God, and that the order of nuns, brothers, and fathers of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) were to some degree servants of God on Earth, and we must take any punishment without complaints. To be disobedient was a sin in the eyes of God.
Every morning at breakfast, we ate rotten porridge and dry bread that was hard as cardboard. We always watched an impeccably white-clothed cart eight feet long being wheeled to the Fathers’ and Brothers’ dining room. Right through the centre of the refectory for all us boys and girls to turn and watch, licking our chops, all the beautiful food going past us ten feet away. It happened almost on a daily basis. Our keepers, one on the girls’ side and one on the boys’ side, banged on their clappers, and we were told to get back to our porridge and don’t turn our heads again or it would be detention or another kind of penance.
I always wondered why our keepers and teachers talked about Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and all the love they had for mankind, and Jesus being born in poverty and we should try to emulate him and learn to take punishment for our wrongs to pay here on Earth and not later in hell or purgatory. Apparently they didn’t know it was suffering enough to see all that beautiful food being wheeled by and only getting a smell of it. I know they never practised what they preached, not one iota.
Whenever there were visits from the head Catholic cleric in the district or visits from chiefs or members of council from any Indian reserve, they used to make us dress in our best clothing, provide concerts, and they even served us some edible food, beef stew or something. And they treated those northern visitors with good food and everything nice, and of course that chief or counsellor would get up at the end of the concert and speak from the stage facing all 110 children, telling us how lucky we were to be looked after in such a school as St. Therese Residential, and we should be thankful to God and to the administration for such blessings.
Oh, God, I used to think, what hypocrisy. Somebody sure pulled the wool over their eyes, because that is how it was meant to look, and it happened time after time.
In late May of 2021, when spring was unfurling across the country, Canadians awakened to the discovery near Kamloops, British Columbia of 200 dead Indigenous children in unmarked graves. More grizzly discoveries would continue across the country tied to the nation’s history between 1881 and 1996 of forcing more than 150,000 Indigenous children to attend residential schools that were rife with abuse. The numbers of presumed corpses, mostly children, are now in the thousands. When the headlines emerged, announcing these unmarked gravesites one after another, it felt as though all of Canada had been summoned to a mass exhumation. Doubtless, the people most deeply traumatized by this nightmare were First Nations and Métis, but many of us in all walks of life have still not awakened from this nightmare. How could these schools, which were largely Catholic-run institutions, have operated for so long with such impunity? How could this have happened?
The late Joseph Auguste (Augie) Merasty, laborer, taxi driver, security guard, boxer, trapper, hunter, fisherman, town drunk, visual artist and memoirist has some answers to these questions. His memoir of life and abuse in these schools The Education of Augie Merasty: A Residential School Memoir was published in 2015. The excerpt below sheds light on the experiences Merasty had at St. Therese Residential School in Saskatchewan, Canada, which he attended from 1935-1944. — David Carpenter, editor of The Education of Augie Merasty
***
I was born in 1930 at Sturgeon Landing and baptized there by Father Aquinas Merton, who was also the principal at St. Therese Residential School from 1927, when the school was opened. Two of my sisters and my brother, Peter, were the first three to walk inside the school. Annie and Jeanette were the names of my two sisters. There were also six uncles and the same number of aunts who attended the school in its first year.
All those sisters and cousins, uncles, and many other unrelated people from other villages told me what had happened. Good and bad, positive or negative, were told to me and others when we got to school eight years later, and they all told basically the same stories. So one has to assume they were speaking the truth.
We used to enjoy going out miles away from the school, going on picnics, either to the beach or going fishing at the rapids north of the school. It felt so nice to get out of the enclosed playground. Most of the time, we were forced to stay within the yard, which was surrounded by a high barbed-wire fence. It felt like getting out of prison.
I really can’t recall just how many times I was made to pay for minor offences. I was once made to walk about twenty miles in –40°F weather with a fellow student, Abner Joseph, back to where we walked the day before, across the big lake with a strong wind blowing. I imagine the wind chill factor was about –60°F. Just because we lost one mitten each. We were very nervous and scared all the way, as we were only about eleven or twelve years old at the time. And we saw some fresh wolf tracks about six miles out on the lake and kept our eyes busy looking every which way, expecting to see some wolves following us.We came back without the lost mittens as the wind and snow had covered everything that could be lost. That was January 1941, and it was that meanest of all nuns, Sister St. Mercy, who had forced us to walk in that god-awful weather, only to come back empty-handed. We, of course, got the strap, twenty strokes on both hands.
Sometimes for punishment we were made to kneel on the cold cement floor from 8:30 p.m. until almost midnight, after everyone had gone to bed upstairs. We would fall asleep on the cold cement floor before Sister Mercy came or sent for her co-worker Sister Joy to tell us to go to bed upstairs. Then we were woken up early in the morning to go to church. We were usually awakened at 7:30 a.m., like it or not. All we used for toothpaste was salt, which the sister carried in a saucer. Salt, something we didn’t even get to use at mealtime. Yet the cows and horses were getting all they wanted in blocks in the fields.
They really enjoyed causing pain and other kinds of suffering as punishment for the smallest infractions. I think they were paranoid in the position they had, being masters of a lower race of creatures, Indians, as we were called.
“Indians from the bush, what can you expect?” was Sister Mercy’s favourite phrase.
They wanted to show who was superior, and no rule or order was to be broken or spoken against. They wanted to impress upon us that all this was for our own good and the will of God, and that the order of nuns, brothers, and fathers of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) were to some degree servants of God on Earth, and we must take any punishment without complaints. To be disobedient was a sin in the eyes of God.
Every morning at breakfast, we ate rotten porridge and dry bread that was hard as cardboard. We always watched an impeccably white-clothed cart eight feet long being wheeled to the Fathers’ and Brothers’ dining room. Right through the centre of the refectory for all us boys and girls to turn and watch, licking our chops, all the beautiful food going past us ten feet away. It happened almost on a daily basis. Our keepers, one on the girls’ side and one on the boys’ side, banged on their clappers, and we were told to get back to our porridge and don’t turn our heads again or it would be detention or another kind of penance.
I always wondered why our keepers and teachers talked about Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and all the love they had for mankind, and Jesus being born in poverty and we should try to emulate him and learn to take punishment for our wrongs to pay here on Earth and not later in hell or purgatory. Apparently they didn’t know it was suffering enough to see all that beautiful food being wheeled by and only getting a smell of it. I know they never practised what they preached, not one iota.
Whenever there were visits from the head Catholic cleric in the district or visits from chiefs or members of council from any Indian reserve, they used to make us dress in our best clothing, provide concerts, and they even served us some edible food, beef stew or something. And they treated those northern visitors with good food and everything nice, and of course that chief or counsellor would get up at the end of the concert and speak from the stage facing all 110 children, telling us how lucky we were to be looked after in such a school as St. Therese Residential, and we should be thankful to God and to the administration for such blessings.
Oh, God, I used to think, what hypocrisy. Somebody sure pulled the wool over their eyes, because that is how it was meant to look, and it happened time after time.
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