Researchers thought they found a giant, extinct shark. Here's what they really picked up.

Saleen Martin, USA TODAY 9/8/2022

© Jon Dodd/The Atlantic Shark Institute via Instagram A sonar photo of a school of mackerel. Because of its size, researchers initially thought they'd captured a photo of a megalodon, also known as the meg, an extinct shark species.

A discovery that would've been quite huge, literally, got people talking this week about an extinct shark that lived millions of years ago, the megalodon.

Researchers from the Atlantic Shark Institute, a Rhode Island based nonprofit that works in shark research and conservation, picked up a shape on its sonar fish finder that looked like the megalodon, also known as the meg.

Jon Dodd from the Atlantic Shark Institute took the photo three weeks ago just south of Block Island, Rhode Island.

The shape appeared for several minutes, but soon transitioned into something else.

The culprit?

A school of Atlantic mackerel. The fish "hung around the boat for about 15 minutes," the researchers wrote in a Facebook post Sunday.

"So close, but so far," the post read. "The Megalodon (Otodus megalodon), disappeared more than 3 million years ago and will likely stay that way, but, for a few minutes, we thought he had returned!"

The researchers also wrote that the figure eventually looked like "90% of all the schools we see offshore."

"Just happened to take the shape of a shark for about 2 minutes," they wrote.

What drove the megalodon to extinction? The great white shark may have

Sharks: 'The find of a lifetime': 8-year-old boy discovers giant shark tooth in South Carolina

The post amassed just over 40 comments, including some jokes and more scientific approaches.

One Facebook user wondered if the shape was some sort of adaptation the mackerel made to discourage hunters like whales and dolphins, asking if it could be sonar mimicry.

The megalodon was one of the largest predators that ever lived up until its extinction 3.6 million years ago, according to the Natural History Museum in the United Kingdom. Researchers believe it grew to between 50 and 60 feet long. Because of its large teeth, experts think it feasted on whales and large fish, and probably other sharks.

Nonetheless, the researchers don't think the shark is coming back anytime soon.

"While it would be equal parts fascinating, and terrifying, I don’t think we are going to see the return of the meg," the institute replied to one social media user.

Joe Biden Thinks a Rail Strike has Been Averted. Do Rail Workers?

September 16, 2022 / Jonah Furmant

The midnight deadline was mooted, but a strike or lockout is still possible if members reject the tentative agreement, which is still under wraps. Photo: Tyler Silvest (CC BY 2.0)

Just after 5 a.m. on Thursday, Marty Walsh tweeted that the railroad companies and the railroad unions had come to a tentative agreement, less than 19 hours from a potential shutdown:

“Moments ago, following more than 20 consecutive hours of negotiations at [the Department of Labor], the rail companies and union negotiators came to a tentative agreement that balances the needs of workers, businesses, and our nation’s economy. The Biden Administration applauds all parties for reaching this hard-fought, mutually beneficial deal. Our rail system is integral to our supply chain, and a disruption would have had catastrophic impacts on industries, travelers and families across the country.”

By 11:30 a.m., Joe Biden was in the White House Rose Garden, declaring victory: “This is a win for tens of thousands of rail workers and for their dignity and the dignity of their work, it’s a recognition of that.”

As the President turned to leave, a reporter called out a question: “Mr. President, is it premature to celebrate before the unions vote?”

Strictly speaking, the answer is yes. The signed tentative agreement now goes out for a ratification vote to the members of 12 different rail unions.

Per the Railway Labor Act, a new tentative agreement means a new cooling-off period, so the midnight deadline was mooted as part of the deal. But a contract rejection is still a very live possibility, based on discussions with members and leaders of various unions involved. So a strike (or lockout) is still on the table.

WHAT’S IN THE DEAL?

The actual language agreed upon by the National Carriers’ Conference Committee and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and SMART-TD bargaining committees has not been released to the public nor to the membership, to some members’ frustration. So we can only speculate based on press releases and officials’ public comments.

But the general consensus is that the deal makes two main improvements upon the Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) recommendations (which the holdout unions, BLET and SMART-TD, refused to accept, and which the Brotherhood of Railway Signalmen’s general chairmen and the Machinists District Lodge 19’s membership both voted to reject).

One is the addition of some number of unpaid sick days. Time-off policies in general and sick time in particular have been a focus of discussion. During negotiations, union leaders told the Washington Post, they abandoned their demand for 15 paid sick days, but maintained that “members should be allowed to attend routine medical appointments without jeopardizing their employment.”

Per the BLET/SMART-TD press release after the deal was announced, the agreement contains “contract language exempting time off for certain medical events from carrier attendance policies,” but the release doesn’t specify a particular number of days or which medical events are covered.

The other improvement in the deal is a limit to health care cost increases. The PEB agreement recommended that workers should pay 15 percent of health care premium payments. Currently, railroad workers pay about $230 per month for both family and individual plans.

This deal has workers paying the 15 percent, but a release from the Brotherhood of Railway Signalmen says it caps the monthly amount workers will pay at $398.97.

The BLET/SMART-TD release doesn’t mention the cap, just that “no additional increases will apply to our monthly contributions while the parties bargain over the next National Agreement.” Which is to say, there will be no premium increases from 2024 (the end of the term of this tentative agreement) until the next agreement is ratified (which could be months or years).

The deal, as announced by the rail employers, was negotiated to cover the BLET, SMART-TD, and BRS, all of whom were facing the midnight deadline with no deal or extension in place. But most if not all of the other rail unions have a “me-too” clause in their contracts, or otherwise understand the additions to apply to their contracts as well.

VOTING BLIND

Members in most unions haven’t received much if any official communication about the timeline of the extended cooling-off period, voting periods, or renewed strike authorizations.

A general chairman of the BMWE said on a membership call that by mid-afternoon on Thursday, 10 hours after Walsh’s announcement, the union’s headquarters said it didn’t have the final language of the deal. Nor had any tentative agreement language been released as of Friday afternoon.

A SMART-TD statement today says that the language is still being reviewed by both sides’ attorneys and a finalized TA will not be presented to the union’s general chairpersons until sometime next week, so “anyone who states that they have seen a final copy of the TA, have a copy of the final TA or knows the final contents of the agreement is not being truthful.”

Two unions appear to have set voting timelines. The BMWE plans to send mail ballots, and begin electronic and telephone voting, on Tuesday, September 20, with a vote count scheduled for October 10. The Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen announced a similar timeline.

A member of the Boilermakers said the union leadership told members to use previously mailed ballots based on their PEB-based tentative agreement in order to vote on the new tentative agreement—though some members had already returned those

Some members of the Machinists District Lodge 19, who voted to reject a tentative agreement before the Walsh-brokered updates were announced, were under the impression that their cooling-off period was still set to end September 29, the date the union set (without a membership vote) in its contract rejection announcement. That was also the date the IBEW was set to announce its vote count. These timelines may have shifted with the announcement of new tentative agreements.

An anonymous local BLET leader said that the union planned to delay voting until October 15 to November 17, and extend the cooling-off period to December 9.

The leadership of the Transport Workers Union (TWU), which represents about 700 carmen under the Transportation Communications Union (TCU) contract but does not have signatory power according to an agreement from the 1990s, sent a letter to the TCU to emphasize that “TWU local presidents and officers did not participate in the contract balloting process. Instead, they chose to remain in unity with our Brothers and Sisters in the BLET, SMART-TD, and BRS who are fighting for improvements.”

Presumably, TCU will not hold a new round of balloting, having already voted to accept the tentative agreement based on the PEB.

CAN IT PASS?

So has a rail strike been averted? In 1992, the last national rail shutdown, it took just one union, the Machinists, on one rail line, CSX, to strike and cause a crisis on the rails.

Only one union would have to vote down the TA and reach the end of a cooling-off period to shut down a substantial amount of freight rail traffic. According to a Railroad Workers United survey of 3,162 rail workers before the latest TA, over 90 percent said they would vote down a contract based on the PEB deal, and 96 percent supported striking at the end of a cooling-off period.

According to internal SMART-TD polling data obtained by Labor Notes, 78 percent of members think the union should “reject the PEB (potential self-help/strike) and ultimately let Congress decide the National Rail Contract.”

Obviously, things have changed with the new deal. But the relatively minor nature of the additions and lack of specific contract language doesn’t bode well for the 40-point swing needed to ratify these agreements.

One thing that might weigh heavily is rail workers’ assessments of the role Congress might play in a redo. Some rail workers are dismayed that just one Senator, Independent Bernie Sanders, stepped in to halt the implementation of the PEB by Congressional action.

“I’m not willing to take a second run at Congress when literally every Democratic senator sat on their hands while Republicans sought to impose the PEB,” an anonymous BLET member told me. “I and many more feel like political pawns—we don’t want a second beating.”

Others think things could change after the midterm elections—either the Democrats would feel less pressure to avert a strike once the elections have passed, or newly elected Republicans would soon be in a better position to implement a worse deal.

Politico reported that Walsh, the morning of the settlement, said, “It’s like, Holy Christ: The magnitude of what would have happened. We’ll never fully understand, thank God.”

For better or worse, the Labor Secretary may be wrong.

Jonah Furman is a staff writer and organizer for Labor Notes.jonah@labornotes.org

 

Banning Nuclear Weapons: Ukrainian Student Yelyzaveta Khodorovska Delivers ICAN Statement To NPT Review Conference ICAN statement to NPT Review Conference 2022 SEPT 01, 2022    On August 5th 2022, ICAN's statement to the 10th Review Conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty was delivered by Yelyzaveta Khodorovska, a student and young nuclear weapons scholar from Ukraine. The full statement, co-authored by Yelyzaveta Khodorovska, Valeriia Hesse, and ICAN can be read in full below.  I am Liza, I am 18 years old and I’m speaking on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). I am also speaking as a representative of Ukrainian youth. Russia’s war against Ukraine and the realities of nuclear threats bring me to New York. How do I feel about being here now? I feel grateful for the opportunity to be heard, to be a voice of youth. At the same time, I feel pain. I am Liza, I am 18 years old, I am a voice of Ukrainian youth. Most Ukrainians like me did not believe that this war was possible. We never imagined that we will be suffering from a brutal aggression reminiscent of the colonial era, coupled with inhumane crimes and torture that break every law of war, all made possible by the terrorizing threats to use nuclear weapons. But here we are. Do Ukrainians now believe that the Russian government's nuclear threats are real? Unfortunately, we do. Through the five months of this cruel war, we realize that there is no limit to how far toward the unimaginable they can go. An NPT nuclear-weapon state threatens to use its nuclear arsenal not only against a sovereign NPT non-nuclear-weapon state, but against anyone who dares to intervene in the conflict to help protect innocent lives. Nuclear weapons are killing people in Ukraine even when they are not used because Russia is utilizing nuclear deterrence as a shield to protect its atrocities. This is unacceptable. As parties to the NPT, it is your job to condemn this and all nuclear threats, and to make sure it never happens again. Otherwise, what is the point of this conference? Fifty-two years since the Treaty’s entry into force, we see that the international security system has failed to do what it is supposed to do, totally paralyzed by a nuclear-armed veto-holder. Nuclear-weapon states have failed to fulfill their disarmament obligations, yet nuclear deterrence has worked – to deter the enforcement of human rights, to deter justice, to deter help, to deter the hope my generation should feel. I feel that the nuclear-weapon states have turned their back on the NPT, not living up to their commitments. China and Russia are increasing their arsenals, and the United Kingdom has raised the cap on the maximum number of warheads by 40%. All the nuclear-armed countries are fueling a new nuclear arms race by spending $82 billion on nuclear weapons in 2021 alone, including building new and more dangerous weapons. But it is not just the nuclear-weapon states. None of the non-nuclear-weapon states that rely on extended nuclear deterrence (the “nuclear umbrella”) have taken any steps towards reducing their reliance on nuclear weapons. Instead, more states come under the “umbrella,” moving in the opposite direction. Moreover, Belarus is offering to host nuclear weapons on its territory. What signal does this send to the world? That these countries think security is impossible without nuclear weapons? Is it not why we hear North Korea declare its readiness to use its nuclear potential? Must we actually see nuclear weapons used again before we finally make real efforts to end this nuclear tyranny? We cannot risk it: the next time could be the last time, ending the whole world too. Dangerous thinking Believing that a nuclear exchange can be limited is a dangerous thought, there are too many risks that it will not be. And even if it will, how can we let so many people endure so much pain for generations? Radiation knows no borders, and our globalized world knows no isolation from the socioeconomic catastrophe of even a limited nuclear conflict. We know the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons too well: nuclear use brought tremendous suffering in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the consequences of nuclear testing still haunt the people of Kazakhstan, the Marshall Islands, and elsewhere. I feel that people have forgotten the horrors that the use of nuclear weapons brings. Think about it: the world has erased the collective memories of 1938 and appeased the aggressor in 2014 again. Humanity did not learn from the past and let a big war happen in Europe in 2022. Do we really want to repeat the use of nuclear weapons as well, this time risking to be wiped out from our planet? We must stop this, and for the sake of future generations, we cannot afford to wait. It can be done. It is not some dream. The NPT review conference was postponed due to the global pandemic and 2022, by an unlucky coincidence, highlighted that nuclear threats can be confronted, must be condemned, and must be stopped. There is a unique opportunity for brave decisions: many countries here have already shown the way, by creating the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Now nuclear weapons, like chemical and biological weapons, are comprehensively prohibited by international law. I want to thank the 66 TPNW member states that confronted and unequivocally condemned nuclear threats by adopting the Vienna Declaration and that made a plan for disarmament by adopting the 50 point Vienna Action Plan. They are making the NPT stronger, they are advancing the disarmament obligations in the treaty. I urge all NPT members to strengthen this synergy by signing and ratifying the TPNW. Why am I here? I am Liza, I am 18 years old, I am Ukrainian, and I do hope for the safe future of my country and the world. The future with less fear. The future with no nuclear war. The future with no nuclear weapons. ...Read More More info from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

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

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.”

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.

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 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.

© 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.

© 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

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

Wyatte Grantham-Philips, USA TODAY 

 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.

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 

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.

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

Researchers identified over 5,500 new viruses in the ocean, including a missing link in viral evolution

PORRIDGE

New revelation about ancient eating habits could tell us a lot about the present, researchers say

Danya 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.

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.”

Mount Everest is teeming with life, from fungi to butterflies

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.

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 

[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.

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