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)
Federal judge sets hearing on blocking Wisconsin wolf hunt
October 1, 2021 MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A federal judge on Friday scheduled a hearing for later this month on whether to block Wisconsin’s fall wolf hunt.
Six Chippewa tribes filed a lawsuit in the Western District of Wisconsin on Sept. 21 seeking to stop the hunt, saying hunters killed too many wolves during the state’s February season and the kill limit for the fall hunt isn’t based on science.
The tribes filed a motion Friday for a preliminary injunction blocking the hunt. U.S. District Judge James Peterson scheduled hearing on the injunction for Oct. 29, six days before the season is set to begin on Nov. 6.
The Department of Natural Resources’ policy board set the February quota for state-licensed hunters at 119 wolves. Hunters blew past that number, killing 218 wolves in just four days. The DNR was forced to end the season early.
DNR biologists proposed setting the fall quota at 130 wolves, saying they’re not sure what effect a spring hunt had on the overall wolf population. The board set the limit at 300 animals. The Chippewa are entitled to hunt half of those animals, but since the tribes consider the wolf sacred and won’t hunt it, the working quota for state-licensed hunters would be 150 animals.
The latest DNR population estimates put the state’s wolf population at around 1,000 animals. Those estimates were compiled over the winter of 2019-2020.
JBS Foods cited after worker dies in Colorado chemical vat In this Oct. 12, 2020 file photo, a worker heads into the JBS meatpacking plant in Greeley, Colo. Meatpacker JBS Foods Inc. faces about $59,000 in fines after a worker fell into vat of chemicals used to process animal hides and died at one of the company's meat processing facilities in northern Colorado, officials said. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)
GREELEY, Colo. (AP) — Meatpacker JBS Foods Inc. faces about $59,000 in fines after a worker fell into vat of chemicals used to process animal hides and died at one of the company’s meat processing facilities in northern Colorado, officials said.
The employee at the plant in Greeley fell into the vat March 27 while trying to install a paddlewheel used to churn the chemicals, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Investigators determined that JBS failed to adequately secure a trolley and hoist that were being used to lift the paddlewheel.
JBS and its Swift Beef Co. operations were cited for eight safety violations related to the accident, The Greeley Tribune reported on Wednesday.
“The employees at this facility deserve better than to fear for their lives and their safety when they come to work,” OSHA Area Director Amanda Kupper in Denver said in a news release.
JBS said in a statement that employee “health and safety is at the core of all our decisions,” and that the company is committed to providing a safe environment at its facilities.
The company has 15 business days from receipt of the citations, sent Monday, to comply with or contest them, or to ask to meet with Kupper.
OSHA fined JBS $15,615 in September 2020 for failing to protect its employees in Greeley from COVID-19. Six workers there died and nearly 300 were infected.
Native Hawaii fern that was feared extinct is found alive
September 30, 2021
HILO, Hawaii (AP) — A fern species that was believed to be extinct when the last known specimen died on Hawaii’s Big Island has been found on the island of Kauai.
The native pendant kihi fern, which only grows on the trunks of trees, was believed to be extinct for several years until a team from the Hawaii Plant Extinction Prevention Program found another specimen on Kauai earlier this year, Hawaii Tribune-Herald reported Thursday.
The last known Big Island specimen of the fern was found dead in 2015 (Wikimedia Commons)
The last known Big Island specimen of the fern, or Adenophorus periens, was found dead in 2015. That prompted it to be listed as critically endangered and possibly extinct. With the discovery of new specimens on Kauai, it’s no longer considered possibly extinct, the Hilo newspaper reported.
There were nearly 1,300 known specimens of the ferns throughout the state in 1994, but by 2012 there were only 31 on Kauai and less than 10 on the Big Island.
Five of the ferns were discovered at three locations on Kauai, said Matt Kier, a botanist with Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Rare Plant Program.
“So, we’ll try to mass-produce them and hopefully reintroduce them into the wild, which means we may bring them back to the Big Island,” Kier said.
Young climate activists denounce ‘youth-washing’ in Milan
Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate, left, and Swedish activist Greta Thunberg talk during the final day of a three-day Youth for Climate summit in Milan, Italy, Thursday, Sept. 30, 2021.(AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
MILAN (AP) — Young climate activists denounced Italian police for temporarily detaining delegates who protested peacefully inside their Milan conference before Italian Premier Mario Draghi’s speech.
Discontent with the three-day conference had bubbled from its start. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg said the delegates had been “cherry-picked” and that organizers were not really interested in their ideas or input for a document that will be sent to this year’s United Nations climate conference.
But the frustration overflowed on the youth event’s final day, with minor clashes involving climate activists outside the venue and the police intervention with delegates inside. Half a dozen young activists demonstrated their disillusionment with world leaders’ response to global warming by flashing a cardboard sign reading “The Emperor Has No Clothes” at Draghi, chanting “People united will not be defeated,” and walking out before he addressed the group.
The delegates said police then detained them, asked to see their passports and photographed their conference badges. They said they were released after about 20 minutes, but the action left them shaken.
Italy’s environmental transition minister Roberto Cingolani, who is host of the event, said he did not have details of the police action, but said it appeared to have involved the premier’s security detail and be related to tight security around the event.
“There was no violence whatsoever. At the end of the day, it was peacefully fixed,″ Cingolani told a closing press conference.
Saoi O’Connor, an Irish activist in the Fridays for Future movement founded by Thunberg, waved at reporters the well-worn cardboard sign that she has carried in demonstrations since 2018 and had flashed at Italy’s leader.
“They are having police escort us to and from the building, and they are the same police who are brutalizing protesters and keeping our friends out,” O’Connor said. She criticized the document being finalized inside for the U.N. climate conference.
“They are going to say that this is what the youth movement wants,” she said. “And we will not let them.”
Danish delegate Rikke Nielsen estimated that at least one-third of the delegates were not happy with the process that had unfolded at the Milan conference. She said they pushed to include a demand that fossil fuels be abolished by 2030 but wasn’t sure if it would end up in the final version.
The document itself was not yet complete by the end of the conference. Organizers said the youth delegates wanted to fine-tune it and had until Oct. 25. Organizers also chafed against suggestions that it was pre-written, saying it was a compilation of suggestions they had received from delegates going into the meeting, and that the three days had been spent hammering out details.
Thunberg, Ugandan activist Vanessa Nakate and Italian activist Martina Comparelli delayed a news conference where they planned to discuss their private meeting with Draghi to ensure that the detained delegates were free to move around.
In the end, Thunberg declined to speak to demonstrate discontent with police actions, organizers said.
“Come to the demo tomorrow,” the 18-year-old Swedish activist said. Thunberg plans to lead what is expected to be Milan’s largest climate demonstration on Friday.
Comparelli accused political leaders of “youth-washing” and “green-washing” -- that is using environmental terminology and recruiting youth activists to make their pledges for reducing greenhouse gas emissions seem legitimate.
“They cannot divide us into delegates and non-delegates, into activists that can talk to prime ministers and activists that cannot talk to prime ministers. Activists who are stopped because they are raising cardboard, literally cardboard,” she said.
Comparelli said that Draghi was sincere in their private meeting but that she was suspending judgment until a Group of 20 summit scheduled to start in Rome on Oct. 30, the day before the U.N. climate conference begins in Glasgow, Scotland.
Nakate said the premier had promised to use Italy’s current position as the head of the G-20 to advance their demands that governments follow through on pledges to mobilize $100 billion each year from 2020 to 2025 to fight climate change.
Cingolani, the Italian government minister, said about 60% of the 2020 pledges had been met, acknowledging it wasn’t enough.
“We are going to keep demanding for climate action, for a future that is livable a future, that is sustainable, a future that is equitable, a future that is healthy for all of us,” Nakate said outside the conference venue. “We cannot eat coal, we cannot drink oil and we cannot breath so-called natural gas.”
Not all the youth delegates were unhappy with the process. Iraqi delegate Reem Alsaffar, 21, thanked organizers for the opportunity to meet other delegates from countries like hers that are under-represented in the climate discussion.
“I think this event really gave us a new chance for hope for representing our countries bringing our thoughts and talents to the spotlight,″ she said during a closing news conference with Cingolani and Britain’s Alok Sharma, the president of the United Nations Climate Change Conference taking place Oct. 31-Nov. 12 in Glasgow.
M o r e s p a c e b e t w e e n l e t t e r s
c o u l d m a k e r e a d i n g e a s i e r
for kids with dyslexia
By Amy Norton, HealthDay News
A small fix might make reading a bit easier for kids with dyslexia, as well as their classmates: Increasing the amount of space between printed letters.
That's the finding of a small study that tested the effects of "extra-large" letter spacing on school children's reading speed and accuracy. And it adds to a conflicting body of research into whether visual aids are useful to people with dyslexia.
Dyslexia is a learning disability that affects 15% to 20% of Americans, according to the International Dyslexia Association. It causes difficulty with reading, spelling and writing.
In the new study, researchers found that putting extra room between printed letters seemed to make the task of reading aloud a little easier for kids with and without dyslexia.
Overall, children boosted their reading speed during a 3-minute test. And those with dyslexia cut down somewhat on reading errors -- specifically, skipping words.
However, whether extra letter spacing, or any visual aids, make a meaningful difference to kids with dyslexia is controversial.
While there's a popular perception that dyslexia is a visual problem, years of research show otherwise, said Daniela Montalto, a pediatric neuropsychiatrist who was not involved in the study.
"Multiple studies have ruled out that dyslexia is a visual-processing disorder and, therefore, is not remediated or supported by the implementation of visual aids," said Montalto, who is based at NYU Langone's Hassenfeld Children's Hospital in New York City.
Instead, she said, dyslexia is considered a language-based disability.
Research suggests it involves deficits in processing the sounds that make up language, and decoding how they relate to printed letters and words. The impairments are mainly rooted in language areas of the brain, Montalto said.
Still, she noted, some researchers have been looking at whether "weaknesses" in visual processing could contribute to the slow reading seen in dyslexia.
That includes research into visual reading aids like wider letter spacing, color overlays to reduce eyestrain, or "dyslexia-friendly" fonts.
Some studies have suggested benefits. But they've had limitations that make it hard to draw conclusions, according to Montalto. Plus, she said, when other researchers have tried to replicate the results, they've come up with contradictory findings -- particularly with color overlays.
Enter the new study -- published this week in the journal Research in Developmental Disabilities.
The study included 32 children with dyslexia and 27 without, matched for age and IQ scores. The researchers had each child read aloud four short texts -- with or without extra letter spacing, and with or without color overlays.
It turned out that the overlays made no difference in reading speed or errors. But the letter-spacing tactic did: Kids without dyslexia read 5% faster, on average the improvement was bigger among children with dyslexia, at 13%.
Children with dyslexia also tended to skip fewer words when reading from the roomier text. There was no effect, though, on other reading errors, like saying the wrong word or mispronunciations.
"One of the nice aspects of extra spacing is that it can be used for everyone in a class and benefit everyone," said lead researcher Steven Stagg, a lecturer in psychology at Anglia Ruskin University in Britain. "It does not single out children with dyslexia."
It would be relatively easy, Stagg said, for teachers to use extra spacing in handouts. In Britain, he noted, a petition is circulating to get exam boards to print tests in that format. And some companies make texts with extra spacing, he said.
Stagg acknowledged that theories suggesting that dyslexia involves problems with visual processing are "not conclusive." He also noted that kids with dyslexia sometimes have co-existing conditions, like attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or an eye disorder called Meares-Irlen syndrome.
"So it may be the other disorders that conspire to make reading more difficult from a visual-processing standpoint," Stagg said.
According to Montalto, failure to account for those other conditions is one of the limitations of studies testing visual aids for dyslexia. Similarly, they often lack information on the kinds of reading remediation kids had previously received.
Specialized reading instruction, in or outside school, is the standard way to help kids manage dyslexia. While tweaking text spacing or fonts may not cause harm, Montalto said, it's no replacement for comprehensive help.
"It will not remediate or improve the brain regions primarily responsible for dyslexia," she said. "And it may in some instances delay the initiation of proven interventions known to positively change the brains of dyslexic students."
'We lack everything': Afghanistan's health system at breaking point
Issued on: 04/10/2021
A child suffering from malnutrition receives treatment at the Mirwais hospital in Kandahar
in southern Afghanistan
Bulent KILIC AFP
Kabul (AFP)
At an overcrowded hospital in Afghanistan, the few remaining doctors and nurses try urgently to treat skeletal babies and malnourished children packed side by side on beds.
The country's healthcare system is on the verge of collapse following the Taliban takeover in August when international funding was frozen, leaving the aid-reliant economy in crisis.
"We lack everything. We need double the equipment, medicine and staff," said Mohammad Sidiq, head of the paediatric department at the Mirwais hospital in the southern city of Kandahar, where there are twice as many patients as beds.
Many staff have quit after not being paid for months, while others have fled abroad fearing Taliban rule, with many women too afraid to return to work under the hardline Islamists.
Sidiq said there had been an influx of patients as access to the hospital improved following the end of Afghanistan's 20-year conflict, straining resources further.
At just 5.5 kilograms (12 pounds), one 11-month-old baby at the hospital weighed just half what the infant should.
A severely malnourished five-year-old with diarrhoea and pneumonia lay motionless and was being fed through a tube. He weighed just 5.3 kilograms.
"I could not bring him to hospital before because there was fighting," the boy's mother said.
At another hospital in the northern town of Balkh, a medic said the number of patients had also shot up.
"In the past, the roads were closed due to the war and people could not come to the hospital, but now their number is much higher than before," Muzhgan Saidzada told AFP.
"Of course, it has become more difficult to handle," the doctor at the Abo Ali Sina Balkhi Regional Hospital said. - 'Imminent collapse' -
After the Taliban swept to power the World Bank suspended aid to Afghanistan, while Washington denied the Islamist group access to the country's gold and cash reserves, most of which are held overseas.
The International Monetary Fund also said Afghanistan would no longer be able to access the global lender's resources, blocking hundreds of millions of dollars.
Other major donors such as USAID and the European Union have paused funding with no emergency support in place.
Mirwais hospital in Kandahar is struggling with an influx of patients and a lack of resources
BULENT KILIC AFP
Leading aid agencies now say the health sector, which was primarily run by NGOs with international funding, faces "imminent collapse".
HealthNet TPO, a Dutch aid agency which runs the Afghan Japan Hospital in the capital Kabul, said its 2,700 healthcare workers in Afghanistan would go unpaid and services would stop unless emergency money is provided.
At least 2.6 million people rely on the group for medical services at its 100 health centres and hospitals across the country.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said more than 2,000 health facilities had already been shuttered across the nation.
At least 20,000 health workers are not working, or are doing so without pay, it said, including over 7,000 women.
- Covid woes -
Meanwhile, Covid-19 continues to spread across the country, with few resources to bring it under control.
"Maybe in a month, we will not be able to provide for our Covid-19 patients," said Freba Azizi, a doctor for Kabul's only dedicated coronavirus treatment centre at the Afghan Japan Hospital.
"The death rate of Covid-19 patients will increase," she told AFP. "We will see dead bodies on a daily basis."
More people have been able to access hospitals since the end of fighting in Afghanistan BULENT KILIC AFP
One patient, a 32-year-old man, died during AFP's visit to the hospital. He was suffering from severe pneumonia and went into cardiac arrest.
Noorali Nazarzai, a doctor at the centre, told AFP he and his colleagues -- including fellow medics, nurses, managers and other essential workers -- had not been paid in three months.
According to official data compiled by AFP, Afghanistan has recorded 155,000 Covid-19 infections with around 7,200 deaths. But health experts agree a lack of testing means this is a vast underestimate.
A Johns Hopkins University tracker shows only about 430,000 people have been fully vaccinated -- just one percent of the population. - Aid hope -
As the healthcare system struggles, the country remains mired in poverty and food prices are rising.
More than 18 million Afghans -- over half the population -- are in dire need of aid, while a third are at risk of famine, according to the United Nations.
More than 18 million Afghans -- over half the population -- are in dire need of aid BULENT KILIC AFP
The international community has pledged $1.2 billion in humanitarian assistance, but it is unclear how and when the money will reach Afghanistan.
UN chief Antonio Guterres said he believed the cash injection could be used as leverage with the Islamist extremists to exact improvements on human rights, amid fears of a return to the brutal rule that characterised the first Taliban regime from 1996 to 2001.
Some lifesaving aid has started to trickle in, with several aircraft carrying UNICEF, Save the Children and World Health Organization supplies arriving since late September.
The WHO said it has airlifted around 185 metric tonnes of essential medical supplies, including Covid-19 and trauma kits, antibiotics, and rehydration salts.
Tensions run high after deadly farmers clash in India
Issued on: 04/10/2021 -
The incident in Uttar Pradesh state was the deadliest in more than a year of protests by farmers in northern India
Money SHARMA AFP
New Delhi (AFP)
Demonstrators torched a police vehicle in India on Monday as tensions boiled over after clashes involving protesting farmers killed at least nine people.
The incident on Sunday in Uttar Pradesh state was the deadliest in more than a year of protests by farmers in northern India against new agricultural reforms.
Farmers said that a convoy belonging to a government minister, his son and the state's deputy chief minister ran over and killed four people at a demonstration.
The minister said later that a driver lost control of his vehicle after being pelted by demonstrators.
Angry protesters set fire to several cars and at least five more people, four of them supporters of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), were killed.
On Monday, the protesters kept the bodies of the four dead farmers in glass cases for display around the protest site.
Police banned gatherings, cut off mobile internet services, sent extra forces and detained several opposition figures on their way to the scene including Priyanka Gandhi from the Congress party.
In state capital Lucknow, dozens of police detained local Congress chief Akhilesh Yadav outside his home.
Dozens of opposition supporters staged a protest in the city and set fire to at least one police vehicle, television pictures showed.
Protests organised by opposition parties also took place in New Delhi and Bangalore.
Agriculture has long been a political minefield and employs some two-thirds of India's 1.3 billion population.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government says the reforms will infuse much-needed energy and capital in the sector.
Farmers, many of whom have camped outside New Delhi for over a year, fear the changes will leave them at the mercy of big corporations.
As the planets of our Solar System demonstrate, understanding the solar dynamics of a system is a crucial aspect of determining habitability. Because of its protective magnetic field, Earth has maintained a fluffy atmosphere for billions of years, ensuring a stable climate for life to evolve. In contrast, other rocky planets that orbit our Sun are either airless, have super-dense (Venus), or have very thin atmospheres (Mars) due to their interactions with the Sun.
In recent years, astronomers have been on the lookout for this same process when studying extrasolar planets. For instance, an international team of astronomers led by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) recently conducted follow-up observations of two Super-Earths that orbit very closely to their respective stars. These planets, which have no thick primordial atmospheres, represent a chance to investigate the evolution of atmospheres on hot rocky planets.
Artist’s impression of Super-Earths TOI-1634b and TOI-1685b. Credit: NASA Exoplanet Catalog
Dr. Hirano and his team chose two planets originally identified NASA’s Transitting Exoplanet Survey Spacecraft (TESS) – TOI-1634b and TOI-1685b. These two Super-Earth planets that orbit M-type (red dwarf) stars located about 114 and 122 light-years away (respectively) in the constellation Perseus. Using the InfraRed Doppler (IRD) spectrograph mounted on the 8.5 m (~28 ft) Subaru Telescope, the team made multiple confirmations about these two rocky exoplanets.
For starters, Dr. Hirano and his colleagues confirmed that the candidates are rocky super-Earths that measure 1.7 and 1.79 Earth radii and are 4.91 and 3.78 times as massive. They also confirmed that they have ultra-short orbital periods, taking 24 and less than 17 hours to complete a single orbit around their stars. This makes TOI-1634b one of the largest and most massive ultra-short-period rocky exoplanets confirmed to date.
But most importantly, the spectra they obtained provided insight into these planets’ internal and atmospheric structures. What they found was that they were “bare,” meaning that they lacked a primordial hydrogen-helium atmosphere, similar to what Earth had billions of years ago. In all likelihood, this is a result of the planets’ proximity with their host stars, which are prone to flare activity.
In addition, the “bare” nature of these rocky planets raises the possibility of a secondary atmosphere caused by volcanic outgassing. This is also what took place on Earth billions ca. 2.5 billion years ago, which led to Earth transitioning from a hydrogen-helium atmosphere to one composed predominantly of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and other gases that originated inside our planet.
This artist’s impression shows the planet Proxima b orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Solar System. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
Therefore, these planets are a major opportunity for studying how atmospheres evolve on rocky planets, especially ones that orbit red dwarf stars. In addition, the fact that these planets are “bare” means that astronomers will be able to test theories regarding rocky planets that orbit closely to red dwarf stars. Compared to G-type yellow dwarfs (like the Sun), red dwarfs are known for being variable and prone to flare-ups.
Since rocky planets that orbit within a red dwarf’s habitable zone are likely to be tidally locked (with one side constantly facing towards the star), astronomers are naturally curious if they can maintain their atmospheres for long. Red dwarfs make up an estimated 75% of stars in the Milky Way, and many rocky planets have been found in red dwarf systems (including Proxima b, which orbits the closest star to our own).
For all of these reasons, studying these exoplanets could have significant implications in the search for extraterrestrial life. At the same time, it will help astronomers learn more about how this particular class of planet (Super-Earths) form and evolve. “Our project to intensively follow-up planetary candidates identified by TESS with the Subaru Telescope is still in progress, and many unusual planets will be confirmed in the next few years,” said Dr. Hirano.
In the near future, further observations will be possible using next-generation telescopes, including the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Along with several ground-based observatories, astronomers will have the necessary instruments to detect and characterize the atmospheres of these planets.
Ebola resurfaced: some viruses are never really gone
What caused the recent ‘resurrection’ of the Ebola virus?
Transmission electron micrograph (TEM) of an Ebola virus virion.
Credit: Callista Images / Getty images
Seven years after the last Ebola epidemic in Guinea, the virus has once again raised its ugly head, with 23 cases and 12 deaths in a new outbreak. They were caused not by a spillover of the virus from animals to humans, but by latent Ebola hiding inside surviving patients.
What is Ebola?
Ebola virus disease (Zaire ebolavirus) is a rare but deadly virus that causes fever, diarrhea, and severe, uncontrollable bleeding as the blood loses its ability to clot.
The devastating disease kills up to 90% of the people it infects.
Symptoms of Ebola. Credit: Wikimedia commons.
Ebola is a zoonotic virus, a common cause of epidemics. These viruses originate from animals – such as bats and chimpanzees – and are passed to humans when they come in close contact. The exact origin animal of Ebola is unknown.
From there, Ebola is transmitted between humans through contact with bodily fluid, such as blood and semen, either directly or indirectly on clothes, sheets and beds.
People remain infectious for as long as the blood contains the virus, but recovered men can continue to transmit it in semen for up to seven additional weeks.
There is currently no cure for Ebola, and the only two approved vaccines are in limited supply.
Latent Ebola resurgence in Guinea
In a recent study, published in Nature, researchers tracked the genetic lineage of a 2021 Ebola outbreak in Guinea, West Africa. They found that the outbreak was not the result of the disease jumping from animal to human, as normally happens, but originated from latent Ebola.
This ‘resurrected’ virus, transmitting from people who recovered from an Ebola outbreak five years ago, suggests that sometimes survivors still harbour the virus many years later.
Guinea had been Ebola-free since the end of the 2013–2016 outbreak in West Africa, in which 28,000 people were infected and 11,000 died.
The researchers compared the 2013–2016 viral strains to those in 14 individuals from the 2021 outbreak and found there were very few differences between the two.
This suggests it was caused by the same virus that was relatively inactive for five years and had a long period of latency where it didn’t replicate enough to accumulate new mutations.
The alternative option – where the virus independently jumped from animal to human again – doesn’t fit this data, because many more mutations would be expected in a new zoonotic strain.
What is virus latency?
Latency occurs when a virus, bacteria or fungus stops replicating and causing symptoms but remains dormant in the body.
Sometimes, a disease may infect somebody and not cause symptoms until many years later. Other times, a disease may manifest in one way early but have different symptoms later in life.
“Typically when we think of viruses that are latent, its about herpes virus,” says Sanjaya Senanayake, an infectious disease physician and a professor of medicine at the Australian National University.
This group includes genital herpes, cold sores, mono (kissing disease) and chicken pox.
“In that family of herpes viruses, there are eight viruses and they all are latent,” says Senanayake.
“Once you’ve been infected with them, they stick around in different parts of the body and they lie in wait. For a lot of people, they’ll never be heard from again.
“But the most common form of recurrence is when your chickenpox virus, varicella-zoster virus, sitting in the dorsal root ganglia cells in the spinal cord, suddenly has a resurgence.
“It comes back not as chickenpox, but as shingles.”
Why does latency occur?
The main reason virus latency may occur is to keep the virus, bacteria or fungus in the body. When a pathogen enters and is destroyed by the immune system, immunity often prevents that virus from getting a foot in the door again.
However, by hiding within the body, the pathogen has multiple chances of replicating and spreading at a later date. Here, the virus may remain dormant until the body is stressed and has a weaker immune system that the virus could bypass.
It is very hard to avoid the body’s defences, however, which may explain why so few viruses show latency.
How does Ebola evade the immune system?
Herpes virus is a variant made of DNA, which is a stable molecule that can survive for a long time. However, Ebola is a little different to herpes.
“Ebola is interesting because it’s an RNA virus, so you don’t classically expect latency with that,” says Senanayake.
Ordinarily, an RNA virus infects the body and hijacks cell machinery to replicate itself. As new virus builds up, symptoms occur, and the individual becomes infectious.
However, RNA viruses rely on the hijacked cells to replicate. They cannot survive for long, so if a virus stops replicating, the immune system will normally destroy it.
However, latent viruses avoid the immune system in a few ways.
The first involves a stabilised viral RNA that floats around inside the cell. The benefit of this is that the virus doesn’t need to get into the nucleus – which could trigger a whole army of defences – but also means it is susceptible to being digested by cellular enzymes.
The second method involves hiding in plain sight and integrating right into the DNA, where it can never truly be destroyed. However, for this to work, the virus needs to make it all the way into the most well-defended part of the cell – a feat for which HIV is well-known.
Beyond this, some viruses can also evade the immune system by hiding away in specific tissue that isn’t covered by the immune system.
“What we have found with Ebola is that the so-called immune privilege sites,” explains Senanayake.
“Even though it seems to be all-pervasive, there are certain areas that the immune system doesn’t go to, like the testicles, certain areas of the central nervous system, and the eyes.
“Those are areas where the virus could potentially lie later and come back.”
It was already known that latent Ebola could persist in patients – for one man, it persisted in semen for more than 500 days – but the length of this dormancy is unprecedented.
For this reason, few viruses are truly latent because they must possess the ability to cease all replication, hide from immune defences, and reactivate when triggered by an external activator such as stress.
In the case of this Ebola resurgence, further studies are needed to determine the mechanism that caused the virus to remain latent.
Virus latency is different to incubation period, where a person has the virus but hasn’t yet shown symptoms. In this case, the virus is still replicating, but hasn’t accumulated enough to cause symptoms.
The nature of latent the Ebola strain identified in Guinea
For true latency to be achieved, a virus must cease replication altogether.
However, the 2021 Ebola strains had some mutations that differed from the 2013–2016 strain. This means there was some replication during the five-year lull, but not enough to match a normal rate of evolution expected in a zoonotic virus.
Instead of going into complete hibernation, the strain may have instead replicated extremely slowly.
This could give it latency-like properties – it didn’t replicate enough to cause major symptoms and still had a later resurgence, but it didn’t become properly inactive.
However, the rate of evolution is generally relatively consistent and long-phase latency, preceded or followed by enough replication to accumulate a few mutations, may be a more accurate hypothesis, the authors explain in their paper.
Genetic data of previous outbreaks is scarce, however, making it difficult to confirm exactly what happened.
How is latent Ebola managed?
The resurgence of Ebola in 2021 highlights the need for long-term care for Ebola survivors.
“This has really turned our understanding of RNA viruses and latency on its head,” says Senanayake.
“It means we need a very low threshold for considering a diagnosis like Ebola in these cases. We can’t just say, ‘Oh look, there’s no active Ebola at the moment; this person had Ebola before so they are immune and it doesn’t make sense that they could transmit it to anyone.’”
This is especially necessary to consider if some people had previously caught Ebola but were asymptomatic until years later.
A health worker from the Guinean Ministry of Health cleans a suspected contact of an Ebola patient’s arm ahead of administering an anti-Ebola vaccine in Gueckedou, Guinea, on February 23, 2021.
Credit: CAROL VALADE / AFP/ Getty Images.
With this in mind, the authors of the study say that continued, portable genomic surveillance of survivors may help to catch cases before they become symptomatic and allow for early intervention – such as through use of anti-viral agents.
Local facilities also need to be built in countries that are at high risk of Ebola. This will ensure that virus tracking and vaccine supply are equitable.
Additionally, the researchers assert the need for social considerations of the survivors to ensure that they are safe within their community. In previous epidemics, some survivors were seen as heroes who had endured a great battle, but many were stigmatised as a source of danger and were blocked from housing and jobs.
“The other thing it is that it isn’t happening left right and centre,” says Senanayake.
“These are uncommon cases, but I think people like infectious diseases physicians, public health physicians and epidemiologists have to keep that in mind when these cases arrive, they don’t rise.”
Because of this, Ebola management must consider both the genetics and biology of Ebola as well as the health and social impacts of the disease.
Pictured: not a communist (Picture: Theo Wargo/Getty Images)
Grimes really was trolling us all when she was papped reading Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto after her split from multi-billionaire Elon Musk.
Pictures of the singer went viral over the weekend when the 33-year-old was photographed walking through downtown Los Angeles, wearing a brown robe over an outfit perfect for a post-apocalyptic landscape and flipping through a copy of The Communist Manifesto.
Meme-worthy anyway, but even more ironic considering Grimes has just split from the world’s richest man, Elon.
After Page Six published the photos under the headline ‘Grimes seen reading Karl Marx following split with world’s richest man Elon Musk’, Grimes confessed that she staged the pictures in an effort to ‘yield the most onion-ish possible headline’.
However, she stressed she is not a communist, and is still living with her ex, who is worth $199.8billion (£147.5billion).
The Oblivion singer, real name Claire Boucher, wrote on Instagram: ‘I was really stressed when paparazzi wouldn’t stop following me this wk but then I realized it was opportunity to troll .. i swear this headline omg wtf haha im dead [sic].
‘Full disclosure I’m still living with e and I am not a communist (althoughthere are some very smart ideas in this book -but personally I’m more interested in a radical decentralized ubi that I think could potentially be achieved thru crypto and gaming but I haven’t ironed that idea out enough yet to explain it. Regardless my opinions on politics are difficult to describe because the political systems that inspire me the most have not yet been implemented).
‘Anyway if paparazzi keep chasing me perhaps I will try to think of more ways to meme – suggestions welcome!’
She also explained on Twitter: ‘This whole thing is so funny I think my publicist is stressed, I should probably stop impulsively doing controversial things, my friend just had the book and the photogs were outside. I’ll prob regret this later hahaha.
‘Taught myself to stop checking if other ppl think I’m socially acceptable a long time ago. Worrying about being cringe is the enemy of art, failure tolerance is essential for creativity. Deciding not to be mad at ppl enjoying life is ok.’
Grimes and Elon are semi-separated (Picture: Dia Dipasupil/WireImage)
Grimes and Elon, 50, went public with their unlikely relationship in May 2018 at the Met Gala, and they welcomed their first child together, a baby boy called X Æ A-Xii, in May 2020.
