It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, May 20, 2021
Obama Alleged R-Rated Criticism Of Trump Published In New Book: 'F---ing Lunatic'
Obama reportedly called Trump a "madman" in conversations with donors
Obama initially preferred Trump over Sen. Ted Cruz as president
Trump had previously suggested that Obama was a Muslim
Former President Barack Obama reportedly had R-rated criticism of Donald Trump behind the scenes, a new book revealed.
The former president is known for being good-natured and has largely remained mum about former President Trump's administration. However, in a new book to be released next week, Obama reportedly voiced his dismay for the 45th president in scathing remarks.
Obama had R-rated criticisms of Trump in conversations with donors and political advisors, according to "Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats' Campaigns to Defeat Donald Trump," a new book written by The Atlantic writer Edward-Isaac Dovere. The Guardian reported excerpts from the book.
Obama reportedly used terms like “corrupt motherf---er,” “madman” and “racist, sexist pig” to describe his successor. It is not clear when these donor events took place.
“I didn’t think we’d have a racist, sexist pig,” the former president reportedly said.
Obama’s strongest criticism came after reports revealed that Trump was speaking to foreign leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, without any aides present on the call.
In the book, Dovere also revealed that Obama initially preferred Trump as president over Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, who was the runner-up in the GOP primary in 2016.
Trump and Obama have had a contentious relationship in recent years. Trump had promoted a birther conspiracy theory questioning Obama’s citizenship before acknowledging Obama’s birthplace in 2016. He had previously suggested that Obama was a Muslim.
"President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period," he said in a statement. "Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again."
Trump had also launched efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, which was Obama’s signature legislation.
PRIVATE PROFITS FROM TAXPAYER INVESTMENT
Covid-19 Vaccines Have Spawned Nine New Billionaires: Campaign Group
Profits from Covid-19 jabs have helped at least nine people become billionaires, a campaign group said Thursday, calling for an end to pharmaceutical corporations' "monopoly control" on vaccine technology.
"Between them, the nine new billionaires have a combined net wealth of $19.3 billion (15.8 billion euros), enough to fully vaccinate all people in low-income countries 1.3 times," The People's Vaccine Alliance said in a statement.
The alliance, a network of organisations and activists campaigning for an end to property rights and patents for inoculations, said its figures were based on the Forbes Rich List data.
"These billionaires are the human face of the huge profits many pharmaceutical corporations are making from the monopoly they hold on these vaccines," said Anna Marriott from charity Oxfam, which is part of the alliance.
In addition to the new mega-rich, eight existing billionaires have seen their combined wealth increase by $32.2 billion thanks to the vaccine rollout, the alliance said.
Topping the list of new vaccine billionaires were the CEO of Moderna Stephane Bancel, and his BioNTech counterpart Ugur Sahin.
Three other neobillionaires are co-founders of the Chinese vaccine company CanSino Biologics.
The research comes ahead of the G20 Global Health Summit on Friday, which has been a lightning rod for growing calls to temporarily remove intellectual property protections on Covid-19 vaccines.
Profits from Covid-19 jabs have created at least nine new billionaires, a campaign group says Photo: AFP / GUILLAUME SOUVANT
Proponents say doing so would boost production in developing countries and address the dramatic inequity in access.
The United States, as well as influential figures like Pope Francis, back the idea of a global waiver on patent protections.
At a Paris summit seeking to boost financing in Africa amid the pandemic on Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron called for the removal of "all these constraints in terms of intellectual property which blocks the production of certain types of vaccines".
The European Commission said Wednesday it would be a "constructive" voice in WTO talks on the issue.
"The highly effective vaccines we have are thanks to massive amounts of taxpayers' money so it can't be fair that private individuals are cashing in while hundreds of millions face second and third waves completely unprotected," said Heidi Chow, Senior Policy and Campaigns Manager at Global Justice Now, which helped analyse the billionaire data.
"As thousands of people die each day in India, it is utterly repugnant... to put the interests of the billionaire owners of Big Pharma ahead of the desperate needs of millions," she added.
Manufacturers have stressed that patent protection is not the limiting factor in ramping up vaccine production.
They say a wide range of issues -- from the set up of manufacturing sites, to the sourcing of raw materials, to the availability of qualified personnel -- are holding up the manufacturing process.
Plant That Ruined Millions Of J&J COVID-19 Vaccine Doses Had Very Poor Conditions
A key House committee held a hearing to examine the facility’s role in ruining the J&J shots
Some employees at the Baltimore plant failed to shower or change clothes
Top executives of the company received bonuses despite the factory's poor conditions
Employees at a Baltimore plant that ruined millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses had poor hygiene conditions, with some staff members skipping showers or changing clothes, a memo released Wednesday by a key House committee found.
On March 31, federal officials revealed that at least 15 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine were wasted after workers at the Emergent BioSolutions plant in Baltimore accidentally mixed up doses of the J&J and the AstraZeneca vaccines.
Inspections of the Emergent conducted between April 12 and April 20 had flagged the facility for problems with mold, poor disinfection of plant equipment, peeling paint, and black and brown residue on the floors and walls.
A review of security camera footage showed that employees carried unsealed bags of medical waste around the factory. Some bags had also touched materials ready to be used to make batches of coronavirus vaccines.
The inspection also found that employees did not follow procedures to prevent contamination, including failing to shower or change clothes, which is required when working in a factory, according to a 13-page report released by the Food and Drug Administration. In more than three hours of testimony before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, Robert G. Kramer, chief executive of Emergent BioSolutions, acknowledged the unsanitary conditions at the plant.
He also disclosed that the incident led to the hold-up of more than 100 million doses of the J&J vaccines as regulators check them for possible contamination.
"No one is more disappointed than we are that we had to suspend our 24/7 manufacturing of new vaccine," Kramer said, adding: "I apologize for the failure of our controls.”
"We have made significant progress against all of those commitments, we are very close to completing them, and I would expect we would be in a position to resume production within a matter of days,” he added. In his initial statement, Kramer claimed that Emergent’s quality control practices discovered the contamination. However, he later admitted that it was actually the J&J lab in the Netherlands that detected the contamination after Rep. Bill Foster, D-Ill, pressed on the issue.
Despite the poor conditions at the plant, top company executives received bonuses last year. Documents released by the committee showed that Kramer received a $1.2 million bonus, while three other executives receiving more than $400,000 each.
The Wednesday hearing comes more than a month after the mix-up. The Biden administration has since put J&J in charge of the Baltimore plant.
Johnson & Johnson told AFP at the end of March it had identified a batch of doses at a plant in Baltimore run by Emergent BioSolutions "that did not meet quality standards" Photo: AFP / JUSTIN TALLIS
David Hogg Believes Marjorie Taylor Greene Shouldn't Have 'Access To Guns' After AOC Confrontation
Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene made headlines once again after she confronted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday, which led David Hogg, who has also been targeted by the Congresswoman, to speak out against her.
After Ocasio-Cortez, also known as AOC, left a meeting in the House chamber, Greene directly approached her by shouting and asking her why she supported “terrorist” groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter, according to Washington Post reporters who witnessed the exchange first hand.
"You don't care about the American people," Greene shouted. "Why do you support terrorists and Antifa?"
When Hogg, a gun control activist and Parkland school shooting survivor, caught wind of this altercation, he shared his opinion on the Representative, who publicly harassed the now 21-year-old in the past, calling him a “coward” and “#littleHitler.”
Many agreed with him and are sticking by his, and AOC’s side.
While the 46-year-old hasn’t responded to Hogg’s comments, she’s still releasing statements on Twitter to share her opinion about AOC and the security concerns she’s raised since the encounter.
"If I was on a committee, I'd be wasting my time, because my conservative values wouldn't be heard and neither would my district's," Greene said in response at the time, via Politico.
Fivefold rise in young children swallowing magnets over past 5 years in UK
Nearly half of such cases required surgery for retrieval; surgical complication rate high
There's been a fivefold rise in the number of young children requiring treatment after having swallowed a magnet over the past 5 years in the UK, suggests data from specialist doctors in a letter published online in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.
Nearly half of these children required surgery to remove the magnet, with surgical complications after retrieval a common occurrence.
Swallowing 'foreign bodies', such as coins and buttons, is common among young children from the age of 6 months onwards as they explore their environment, which is key to their development. Most of these objects pass out of the body naturally without causing any injury.
But this isn't always the case for button batteries and small neodymium magnets--strong permanent magnets found in cordless tools, hard disk drives, magnetic fasteners, and certain types of children's toy, highlight the authors from The Quadri-South East Paediatric Surgeons (QuadriSEPS) group.
This group comprises four tertiary children's surgical centres in the South East of England: Evelina London Children's Hospital, King's College Hospital, St George's University Hospitals, and the Royal Alexandra Children's Hospital.
Between January 2016 and December 2020, a total of 251 children were admitted to the four centres, after swallowing a foreign body, with a steady increase of 56% in admissions between the two time points.
Coins were the most common item swallowed (93; 37%), followed by magnets (52; 21%), and button batteries (42;17%).
The number of children who had swallowed a magnet increased fivefold between 2016 and 2020. Some 22 (42%) of those who had swallowed magnets required surgery for retrieval compared with just 1 (2.5%) of the button battery cases.
Ten out of 251 (4%) children experienced surgical complications after their procedure, with magnet retrieval accounting for 80% (8) of these cases, 4 of which were serious.
In the UK, there's a statutory requirement set out in the The Magnetic Toys (Safety) Regulations 2008, which requires all magnetic toys sold to be accompanied by a warning, but most manufacturers don't display these, point out the authors.
The age limit suitability on these toys is usually specified as 14 years and above, but the average age of the children who had swallowed magnets at the four centres was 7, ranging from 4 months to 16 years.
And while single magnets usually don't require removal, several swallowed magnets have the potential to wreak havoc in the gut, causing intestinal tissue death (necrosis) and perforation, they highlight.
"As a regional network of paediatric surgeons, we are extremely concerned with the recent rise in cases we have seen with foreign body ingestion and, in particular, magnets," write the authors.
"We recommend a strong public health campaign to increase awareness of the dangers of small, powerful magnets, especially those intended for toys, and to work with manufacturers in clearly warning purchasers of the dangers for children," they urge.
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Externally peer reviewed? Yes Evidence type: Observational Subjects: Children
Scientists will protect the "Smart City" from cyber threats
Researchers developed a methodology for analyzing cybersecurity risks
PETER THE GREAT SAINT-PETERSBURG POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY
IMAGE: RUSSIAN SCIENTISTS WILL PROTECT THE "SMART CITY " FROM CYBER THREATS view more
CREDIT: PETER THE GREAT ST.PETERSBURG POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY
St. Petersburg, like other cities in the Russian Federation, is actively participating in the establishment of the "Smart City" program, which will provide new services for residents of the megalopolis, increasing the safety of citizens. Digital services are essential for such a system.
Due to the Internet of Things (IoT) systems, the environment can adapt to the needs of humanity on its own accord. Cybersecurity threats are especially dangerous for such infrastructure.
Specialists from Peter the Great St.Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU) developed the methodology for assessing cyber risks in intelligent systems of a Smart City. The developed methodology was tested on the "smart crossroads" test bench (a component of the smart transport system of a Smart City). The results were published in the scientific journal "Machines" of the MDPI Publishing House.
Scientists note that the new goal for cybercriminals is to disrupt the functioning of large enterprises and urban infrastructure, as well as is to intercept the control over them. The attackers using wireless links can remotely invade into the target subnet or device (a group of devices), intercept traffic, launch denial of service attacks, and take control of IoT devices to create botnets.
"Currently, traditional cyber risk analysis strategies can't be directly applied in the construction and assessment of digital infrastructures in a Smart City, because the new network infrastructure is heterogeneous and dynamic. The goal of our project is to ensure the level of the information assets security considering the specifics of modern cyber threats," notes researcher Vasily Krundyshev, Institute of Cybersecurity and Data Protection SPbPU.
Researchers of St. Petersburg Polytechnic University developed a methodology for analyzing cybersecurity risks, which includes the stages of identifying asset types, identifying threats, calculating risks, and analyzing the resulting risk values. The proposed methodology is based on a quantitative approach, at the same time it is easily and quickly computable, which is especially important for the functioning of modern dynamic infrastructures. Experimental studies using a set of developed simulation models of typical digital infrastructures of a Smart City (Internet of Things, smart building, smart crossroads) demonstrated the superiority of the approach proposed by the authors over existing analogs.
In the near future, it is planned to arrange the automatic calculation of cybersecurity risks in a Smart City based on the developed methodology.
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The reported study was funded by Russian Foundation For Basic Research according to the research project #19-37-90001.
People are persuaded by social media messages, not view numbers
Study asked users to evaluate YouTube videos about e-cigarettes
COLUMBUS, Ohio - People are more persuaded by the actual messages contained in social media posts than they are by how many others viewed the posts, a new study suggests.
Researchers found that when people watched YouTube videos either for or against e-cigarette use, their level of persuasion wasn't directly affected by whether the video said it was viewed by more than a million people versus by fewer than 20.
What mattered for persuasion was viewers' perception of the message as truthful and believable.
"There wasn't a bandwagon effect in which people were persuaded by a video just because a lot of other people watched it," said Hyunyi Cho, lead author of the study and professor of communication at The Ohio State University.
"The message itself was most important for persuasion."
The study will appear in the June 2021 issue of the journal Media Psychology.
The study involved 819 demographically diverse American adults aged 18-35.
Most of them were shown two YouTube videos either for or against vaping. The pro-vaping videos were commercials for e-cigarette brands. The anti-vaping videos were public service announcements produced by anti-smoking nonprofit organizations.
The researchers, though, manipulated the view numbers that participants saw for the videos. Participants saw view numbers either around 10, 100, 100,000 or 1,000,000.
Participants rated how persuasive the videos were to them: whether they affected their curiosity about e-cigarettes, positive attitude toward e-cigarette use, and susceptibility to using e-cigarettes in the future.
Results showed that participants were more persuaded when they rated them as more truthful and believable. The number of views that the video had did not have a direct impact on how much they were persuaded.
Participants were also asked how much they thought the videos they watched would influence other young adults, Cho said.
Results showed that how participants themselves viewed the videos - whether they thought the videos were believable and truthful - was directly related to their estimation of the videos' impact on other people.
"People focused more on self-related factors - how they felt about the video - when considering how much influence it would have on others," Cho said.
"They concentrated less on other-focused factors - such as view numbers - as a reason why a video might be persuasive."
In addition, participants in the study didn't think that mass media would have as far of a reach as social media would.
Some participants saw the videos in a mock TV condition rather than in the YouTube condition. Overall, participants in the TV condition estimated the videos would have fewer views than did the participants in the YouTube condition.
"Social media may be seen as more pervasive than mass media like television because sites like YouTube do not have the same geographic boundaries as mass media may have," Cho said.
Overall, the results suggest that people should not equate popularity of YouTube videos and other social media posts with how many people find their messages persuasive or are persuaded by them, Cho said.
"We may choose to watch a YouTube video because it has a lot of views, but that is different from whether we are persuaded by the message," she said.
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The research was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health.
YouTube channels run by zoos focus on entertainment over education, according to a new study.
The videos also focus disproportionately on mammals, rather than reflecting the diversity of zoos' animals.
Conservation was the focus of just 3% of zoo videos in the study - but it found that conservation content in videos is gradually increasing.
The study evaluated the most recent and most-viewed videos, so the findings partly reflect the public's preference for certain species and content.
Of the animals that appeared in zoos' most-viewed videos, the top nine were mammals - with giant pandas top of the list - and the only non-mammals were penguins in tenth place.
"They key question is: what are zoos using YouTube for?" said Dr Paul Rose, of the University of Exeter.
"If the aim is to get people to visit the zoo, then a focus on entertainment and popular species might make sense.
"This way, education about wildlife and conservation can be done once people get to the zoo, where they will spend much more time than they would watching a YouTube video.
"However, some zoos have large YouTube audiences, so they should carefully consider how they represent different classes of animal, and how they can create educational material in interesting and accessible forms.
"If an animal is in a zoo's collection, there should be a way for it to be promoted."
Dr Rose said he was encouraged to see an increased focus on conservation in zoo videos.
For example, videos about animals of conservation concern on the IUCN Red List have featured more often in recent years.
Lead author Thomas Llewellyn, a graduate from UWE's Science Communication Unit, said: "It is important that zoos produce a variety of conservation-focused content for a range of different animals.
"Whilst it is reassuring to see YouTube channels upload more conservation-focused videos in recent times, this research is especially important to the conservation projects associated with those 'favoured animals'.
"There is no doubt that YouTube has the potential to become an effective and efficient tool for global conservation education, but more research is needed to be done."
The study's information was gathered before the COVID pandemic, and the content posted on many zoo YouTube channels has changed dramatically since then.
"I've seen a lot more zoos doing live videos during lockdown to explain the significance of their animal collections," Dr Rose said.
"With zoo admissions essentially being non-existent this year, the pandemic has only emphasised the importance of social media for this type of online outreach", added Llewellyn.
The researchers evaluated the content of 1,000 videos from 20 zoological organisations (50 most-viewed videos from each channel) from 2006 to 2019. More than 75% of these videos focussed on mammals.
Separately, educational content in a subsample of 300 of the most viewed and most recent videos from three zoo YouTube channels was catalogued and evaluated for the period 2016 to 2019.
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The paper, published in the Journal of Zoological and Botanical Gardens, is entitled: "Education is entertainment? Zoo science communication on YouTube."
'Pre-bunk' tactics reduce public susceptibility to COVID-19 conspiracies and falsehoods
IMAGE: GO VIRAL! GAMEPLAY ON A PHONE SCREEN. view more
CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
A short online game designed to fight conspiracies about COVID-19 boosts people's confidence in detecting misinformation by increasing their ability to perceive its "manipulativeness" compared to genuine news, according to a study.
Go Viral!, developed by the University of Cambridge's Social Decision-Making Lab in partnership with the UK Cabinet Office and media agency DROG, was launched last autumn as part of the UK government's efforts to tackle coronavirus falsehoods circulating online.
The five-minute game puts people in the shoes of a purveyor of fake pandemic news, encouraging players to create panic by spreading misinformation about COVID-19 using social media - all within the confines of the game.
Researchers say that, by giving people this taste of the techniques used to disseminate fake news, it acts as an inoculant: building a psychological resistance against malicious falsehoods by raising awareness of how misinformation works.
"While fact-checking is vital work, it can come too late. Trying to debunk misinformation after it spreads is often a difficult if not impossible task," said Prof Sander van der Linden, Director of the Social Decision-Making Lab at Cambridge University.
"Go Viral! is part of a new wave of interventions that aim to 'pre-bunk'. By preemptively exposing people to a microdose of the methods used to disseminate fake news, we can help them identify and ignore it in the future."
The latest findings on the game's effectiveness, published in the journal Big Data and Society, are accompanied by research on another COVID-19 "prebunking" intervention used by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
UNESCO deployed infographics across social media highlighting tropes common to COVID conspiracy theories, such as claims of a "secret plot" or that the virus was spread intentionally, as part of their #ThinkBeforeSharing campaign.
CAPTION
The Go Viral! start screen on a phone.
CREDIT
University of Cambridge
"By exposing people to the methods used to produce fake news we can help create a general 'inoculation', rather than trying to counter each specific falsehood," said study lead author and Cambridge Gates Scholar Melisa Basol.
The Cambridge researchers found the UNESCO approach also proved effective, albeit with a smaller effect size than the proactive game.
The Go Viral! project began with seed funding from Cambridge University's COVID-19 rapid response fund, and was then supported and backed by the UK Cabinet Office and promoted by the World Health Organisation and UN.
The game has now been played over 400,000 times in a variety of languages - including Italian, Spanish, Ukrainian, and Brazilian Portuguese - since its October launch.
Players try and gain "likes" by promoting noxious posts on COVID-19, harnessing propaganda techniques such as fraudulent expertise and the use of emotionally charged language to stoke outrage and fear.
The final stage sees players "go viral" when they push a baseless conspiracy theory that explodes online and ignites nationwide protests.
CAPTION
An example of one of the UNESCO infographics, part of their #ThinkBeforeSharing campaign, tested in the study.
CREDIT
UNESCO
For the new study, researchers used a sample of 3,548 players over the age of 18, including native speakers of three languages in which the game is available: English, German and French.
Study participants were shown 18 social media posts - nine containing information from credible news sources, and high-quality versions of COVID-19 conspiracies making up the rest - and asked the extent to which they felt manipulated by the framing and content of each one.
Roughly a third of the study participants then played Go Viral!, while another third - a control group - played Tetris for the same amount of time, and the final group read UNESCO's set of "prebunking" infographics. Lastly, everyone was given the same set of news items to rate, a mixture of real and fake.
Just over half (55%) the Tetris players got better at spotting the falsehoods, little better than chance - suggesting many were guessing.
However, 74% of the "pre-bunked" Go Viral! players got much better at sensing when they were being manipulated by the misinformation: a 19 percentage point increase over the control group.
The infographics generated a more modest but still useful six percentage point increase in manipulation detection compared to the control (61% vs 55%).
When it came to confidence in their ability to spot fake news going forward, only 50% of the Tetris players said it had increased - no better than chance - whereas 67% of Go Viral! players felt they were less likely to get duped in the future.
In a follow-up survey one week after the single play of the game, participants were asked to rate a further set of real and fake social media posts about COVID-19. Go Viral! players were still rating COVID-19 misinformation as significantly more manipulative, while the effects of the UNESCO infographics had faded.
"Both interventions are fast, effective and easily scalable, with the potential to reach millions of people around the world," said Dr Jon Roozenbeek, study co-lead author from Cambridge's Department of Psychology.
"Interestingly, our findings also show that the active inoculation of playing the game may have more longevity than passive inoculations such as reading the infographics."
"COVID-19 falsehoods and conspiracies pose a real threat to vaccination programmes in almost every nation. Every weapon in our arsenal should be used to fight the fake news that poses a threat to herd immunity. Pre-bunking initiatives have a crucial role to play in that global fight," Roozenbeek said.
Stefania Giannini, Assistant Director-General for Education at UNESCO, added: "Cambridge University has provided solid backing for 'pre-bunking' misinformation and conspiracy theories propagated and reinforced during the pandemic, which have real-life consequences undermining trust in science and fueling hate speech.
"In this context, UNESCO's work in education and media and information literacy is even more critical to strengthen learners' digital citizenship."
IMAGE: FUSOBACTERIA, GRACILICUTES AND BACTEROIDOTA ALL BRANCHED OFF FROM A LAST BACTERIAL COMMON ANCESTOR. view more
CREDIT: THE UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND
Scientists now better understand early bacterial evolution, thanks to new research featuring University of Queensland researchers.
Bacteria comprise a very diverse domain of single-celled organisms that are thought to have evolved from a common ancestor that lived more than three billion years ago.
Professor Phil Hugenholtz, from the Australian Centre for Ecogenomics in UQ's School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, said the root of the bacterial tree, which would reveal the nature of the last common ancestor, is not agreed upon.
"There's great debate about the root of this bacterial tree of life and indeed whether bacterial evolution should even be described as a tree has been contested," Professor Hugenholtz said.
"This is in large part because genes are not just shared 'vertically' from parents to offspring, but also 'horizontally' between distant family members.
"We've all inherited certain traits from our parents, but imagine going to a family BBQ and suddenly inheriting your third cousin's red hair.
"As baffling as it sounds, that's exactly what happens in the bacterial world, as bacteria can frequently transfer and reconfigure genes horizontally across populations quite easily.
"This might be useful for bacteria but makes it challenging to reconstruct bacterial evolution."
For the bacterial world, many researchers have suggested throwing the 'tree of life' concept out the window and replacing it with a network that reflects horizontal movement of genes.
"However, by integrating vertical and horizontal gene transmission, we found that bacterial genes travel vertically most of the time - on average two-thirds of the time - suggesting that a tree is still an apt representation of bacterial evolution," Professor Hugenholtz said.
"The analysis also revealed that the root of the tree lies between two supergroups of bacteria, those with one cell membrane and those with two.
"Their common ancestor was already complex, predicted to have two membranes, the ability to swim, sense its environment, and defend itself against viruses."
The University of Bristol's Dr Tom Williams said this fact led to another big question.
"Given the common ancestor of all living bacteria already had two membranes, we now need to understand how did single-membrane cells evolve from double-membraned cells, and whether this occurred once or on multiple occasions," Dr Williams said.
"We believe that our approach to integrating vertical and horizontal gene transmission will answer these and many other open questions in evolutionary biology."
The research was a collaboration between UQ, the University of Bristol in the UK, Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, and NIOZ in the Netherlands, and has been published in Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.abe5011).
