Nazi Propaganda and Censorship | The Holocaust Encyclopedia

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Nazi Propaganda and Censorship Once they succeeded in ending democracy and turning Germany into a one-party dictatorship, the Nazis orchestrated a massive propaganda campaign to win the loyalty and cooperation of Germans. The Nazi Propaganda Ministry, directed by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, took control of all forms of communication in Germany: newspapers, magazines, books, public meetings, and rallies, art, music, movies, and radio. Viewpoints in any way threatening to Nazi beliefs or to the regime were censored or eliminated from all media.

During the spring of 1933, Nazi student organizations, professors, and librarians made up long lists of books they thought should not be read by Germans. Then, on the night of May 10, 1933, Nazis raided libraries and bookstores across Germany. They marched by torchlight in nighttime parades, sang chants, and threw books into huge bonfires. On that night more than 25,000 books were burned. Some were works of Jewish writers, including Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. Most of the books were by non-Jewish writers, including such famous Americans as Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, and Sinclair Lewis, whose ideas the Nazis viewed as different from their own and therefore not to be read.

The Nazi censors also burned the books of Helen Keller, who had overcome her deafness and blindness to become a respected writer; told of the book burnings, she responded: "Tyranny cannot defeat the power of ideas." Hundreds of thousands of people in the United States protested the book burnings, a clear violation of freedom of speech, in public rallies in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and St. Louis.

Schools also played an important role in spreading Nazi ideas. While some books were removed from classrooms by censors, other textbooks, newly written, were brought in to teach students blind obedience to the party, love for Hitler, and antisemitism. After-school meetings of the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls trained children to be faithful to the Nazi party. In school and out, young people celebrated such occasions as Adolf Hitler's birthday and the anniversary of his taking power.

December 5, 1930Joseph Goebbels disrupts premiere of filmIn Berlin, Joseph Goebbels, one of Adolf Hitlers top deputies, and Storm Troopers (SA) disrupt the premiere of "All Quiet on the Western Front," a film based on the novel of the same title by Erich Maria Remarque. Nazi protestors throw smoke bombs and sneezing powder to halt the film. Members of the audience who protest the disruption are beaten. The novel had always been unpopular with the Nazis, who believed that its depiction of the cruelty and absurdity of war was "un-German." Ultimately, the film will be banned. Remarque will emigrate to Switzerland in 1931, and the Nazis, after coming to power, will revoke his German citizenship in 1938.

March 13, 1933 Joseph Goebbels heads Reich Propaganda MinistryJoseph Goebbels, one of Adolf Hitler's most trusted associates, is appointed to head the Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda. This agency controls the writing and broadcast of all media (newspapers, radio programs, and movies) as well as public entertainment and cultural programs (theater, art, and music). Goebbels integrates Nazi racism and ideas into the media.

May 10, 1933 Joseph Goebbels speaks at book burning in BerlinForty thousand people gather to hear German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels speak in Berlin's Opera Square. Goebbels condemns works written by Jews, liberals, leftists, pacifists, foreigners, and others as "un-German." Nazi students begin burning books. Libraries across Germany are purged of "censored" books. Goebbels proclaims the "cleansing of the German spirit."

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Nazi Propaganda and Censorship | The Holocaust Encyclopedia

The march of progressive censorship – Spectator.co.uk

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Its official: criticising Black Lives Matter is now a sackable offence, even here in the British Isles, thousands of miles away from the social conflict currently embroiling the US. As protesters again fill the streets of a rainy London on Saturday, as part of a now internationalised backlash against the brutal police killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, those who criticise them do so at their peril as two men have recently found out.

Stu Peters, a presenter on Manx Radio, has been suspended, pending an investigation, for an on-air exchange with a black caller. He said nothing racist, you can read the transcriptfor yourself. What he did was rubbish the idea of white privilege: I've had no more privilege in my life than you have. And he questioned the wisdom of staging a protest on the Isle of Man against a killing in Minnesota: You can demonstrate anywhere you like, but it doesn't make any sense to me.

For this, he has been taken off air. ManxRadio has even referred the exchange to the Isle of Mans Communications Commission to assess whether any broadcast codes have been broken. And for what? He took issue with the idea that skin colour confers privilege, regardless of any other consideration: a mad ideology whose adherents will actuallyreadily say that white homeless people enjoy white privilege.

And he wondered out loud if a protest against US cops on a small island in the Irish Sea is, well, a bit pointless. If Peters has broken any code it is a very new and unwritten one, and hes not the only person to fall foul of it in recent days. MartinShipton, chief reporter for the Western Mail, has been asked to step down as a judge of the Wales Book of the Year competition over some tweets he posted about the BLM protests in Cardiff. He said they were exercises in virtue-signalling and expressed concern about the effect they might have on the spread of Covid-19. He also got into some robust exchanges with people who told him that, as an old white man, he should just shut up.

How did we get here? In the space of just a few days, Black Lives Matter, its tenets and adherents have become almost unquestionable. No one worth wasting breath on disagrees with the literal message of the movement. But those who dare criticise a lot of the identitarian ideological guff that unfortunately accompanies the movement now risk being treated as heretics. Even criticising these mass gatherings for breaking lockdown remember when sitting too closely on a beach was a scoldable offence? is treated as alarming evidence of non-conformity or perhaps even racism.

This is all a neat demonstration that censorship is not exclusively about state clampdowns. The suspension of Peters and the sacking of Shipton are examples of what John Stuart Mill called the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them. If expressing an opinion, even one as mild as I support the sentiment, but Im not sure these protests are a great idea, the resulting backlashcan cost you your job or social status.

But this is also profoundly worrying not only for free speech but also for the quality of our discussion about racism and how to defeat it. We are being compelled to have a conversation about race, but one in which any dissent from the most extreme and absurd positions such as that Western society is still racist to the core and that dirt-poor white folk benefit from it, even if they dont realise it are treated as suspect. This is a recipe for censorship, division and neverending culture war and nothing else.

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The march of progressive censorship - Spectator.co.uk

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman thanks users that asked for more censorship on the platform – Reclaim The Net

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The last couple of weeks have highlighted just how much influence external pressure can have on the social media executives who shape content moderation policies.

Two weeks ago, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg criticized Twitters decision to fact-check President Trump and suggested that the company wouldnt be censoring his posts.

Less than a week after making this original statement and after facing sustained pressure to take action against the President, Zuckerberg changed his tune and said the company was considering adding warning labels to posts from world leaders.

But even this wasnt enough to stop the demands for more censorship on the platform with Facebooks moderators penning a letter this week which calls for the censorship of President Trump.

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Now a similar situation is playing out on Reddit with more than 500 subreddits with over 200 million subscribers signing an open letter that demands more censorship of hate speech on the platform.

Related: How the term hate speech has become a mainline internet censorship tool

This open letter was penned after Reddit CEO Steve Huffmans recent announcement that even stricter moderation policies for tackling hate will be coming to the platform in the next few weeks.

The letter states that these upcoming changes are not enough and urges Huffman to ban hate speech targeted against protected groups, proactively ban hate-based communities, and ban hate users.

It also calls for Reddit to take a meaningful stand against hate by hiring more minorities and women, hiring more community managers, and honoring the wishes of Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian by having his Reddit board seat filled with a black candidate.

Huffman responded to the open letter by thanking the users who had signed and insisting that theres lots of overlap between the demands of the open letter and the stricter moderation policies that will be coming to Reddit:

We shared our thoughts and intentions last Friday, June 6; your list and our list have a high amount of overlap. Wed like to show progress with what we do in the coming weeks rather than what we say. Im looking forward to speaking directly with those of you participating in the Mod Councils. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and for all you do for your communities.

Days before Huffman thanked these users who are demanding even more censorship on the platform, he wrote that the decline of The Donald, a community that was once one of the most popular subreddits on the site, was fine with him and that he wished hed quarantined it sooner.

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Reddit CEO Steve Huffman thanks users that asked for more censorship on the platform - Reclaim The Net

The Censorship of COVID-19 Data Around the World | Sam Bocetta – Foundation for Economic Education

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Times of crisis always bring out the best and worst of human nature. The COVID-19 pandemic is no different.

Communities around the world are rallying together to support vulnerable people, and healthcare workers are putting their health (and even their lives) at risk to fight the virus.

On the other hand, many governments are using the crisis as an excuse to increase censorship, mass surveillance is spreading alongside the disease, and the pandemic is exposing the failure of economic policy to deal with instability.

The Chinese government, in particular, has been accused of suppressing research into the disease, and of using the crisis as an excuse to further restrict the right to free speech in that country. In reality, governments around the worldfrom Iran to the United Kingdom to Spain to the United Stateshave been doing the same, albeit in less obvious ways.

In this article, well look at the scale of censorship in China, and how this has contributed to the spread of COVID-19. Well then return our focus to the USA, and see how it compares to China.

The scale of censorship in China is already huge during normal times, with more than 13,000 websites shut down by the Chinese government since 2015. Unfortunately, COVID-19 has seen a rapid and worrying increase in the scale of suppression.

Some of this censorship has been achieved through keyword-based analysis of popular social media sites such as WeChat, where COVID-19 discussions that are critical of the government have been blocked or removed.

More worrying is that the hashtag We Want Freedom of Speech has also been suppressed. Some activists have attempted to get around these restrictions by using the Ethereum blockchain, where an interview with Dr. Ai Fen (a subject of attempted Chinese state censorship) was posted by journalist Sarah Zang.

Given the growing scale of global internet censorship, such actions are not surprising. In the context of the current crisis, however, there are more worrying aspects of the Chinese governments approach to censorship.

Several news outlets have reported that the government appears to be censoring research on the origins of the virus by requiring that scientists submit their studies to the Ministry of Science and Technology before publication.

The most famous case of this concerned ophthalmologist Li Wenliang, who raised early warnings about the virus and then died of it himself, but there have been reports of many other pieces of research also being suppressed.

During normal times, this censorship would be concerning enough. During a global pandemic, suppression of key information has undoubtedly cost many thousands of lives.

In Europe and the USA, governments have been widely criticized for being slow to react to the crisis, and epidemiologists have pointed out that losing just a few days in the response to the pandemic can have a huge impact on the final death toll.

The impact of censorship goes much further than just limiting the information supplied to governments, though. Without the ability to freely express themselves online, citizens groups in China are finding it difficult to coordinate responses to the virus: if you cant mention COVID-19, its difficult to arrange a food collection for vulnerable people in the wake of the virus.

Even worse is the fact that governments appear to be censoring the wrong information. Posts criticizing the response of authorities to the virus have been blocked or removed in many countries, but those relating to conspiracy theories have not. This has allowed falseand often absurdconspiracy theories to spread, most notably the belief that the ongoing rollout of 5G telecoms networks has caused the virus.

At the broadest level, this censorship also points to a dark future. The scale of the pandemic has made it easy for governments around the world to claim emergency powers: powers that they will be hesitant to give up in the coming years.

Though criticism over censorship has been mainly directed at China, it is far from the only country that has sought to suppress information about the virus. In Iran, the government has launched attacks against VPN services operating in the country, in order to make sure that citizens only have access to government-approved versions of websites.

In fact, a look at the countries that banned VPNs before the crisiswhich includes China and Iranis a fairly good guide to those countries that have put in place the most severe censorship in response to it.

The USA doesn't appear on that list, of course. But there are concerns that many local, state, and federal agencies across the country have dramatically slowed their responses to requests for access to public information in the past few months. Whilst some of these agencies face genuine difficulties in fulfilling these requests due to the way that their records are stored, others have put in place restrictions that don't seem to be directly related to the pandemic.

For example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has now totally stopped processing electronic records requests, and now requires that all such requests be made by mail. The State Department has gone even further, having suspended all requests made under the Freedom of Information Act until further notice.

City governments have also responded in much the same way: the city of Philadelphia has declared a state of emergency in which "non-essential" city business, including FOI requests, have been suspended. Fresno, California has declared that all requests are on hold "until further notice".

Some of these responses are undoubtedly a genuine response to the crisis. Government employees working from home might not have access to the records requested, and agencies across the country are stretched, even as several waves of stimulus come fresh off the printing press.

We should also not underestimate the role of incompetence in what may be instances of "accidental" censorship: we've previously noted that decades of FDA misrule have made the pandemic worse, and agencies' IT infrastructure is notoriously outdated. This has led to them becoming a major target for cyberattacks.

Others have seen a more conscious intent behind these shifts, however. We should not forget that we are in an election year, and the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to have a huge impact on the way in which citizens vote in November.

The government also has form when it comes to suppressing information it doesn't like: one of the most frustrating aspects of the recent Huawei scandal was just how little information was released by the federal government, under the auspices that 5G network infrastructure is a critical part of national defense.

The current situation in the USA can be read in many ways. Some have argued that the crisis, and the number of denied or delayed FOI requests that it has caused, has merely exposed the failings of the FOI system itself. A lot of reporters would say the FOIA system is already broken, but this is just exposing the seams of it, says Colin Lecher, a reporter at The Markup.

Others worry that the problem runs deeper. At the moment, there is little to no clarity from the Federal or state governments as to how long their state of emergency is going to last. This could very well mean that we enter the next US Presidential Election without clear information on how our government has responded to the worst crisis since the Second World War. Information on the functioning of public bodies is important during normal times, of course, but during times of crisis it becomes even more so.

Its important to keep a sense of perspective, of course. The current suppression of FOI requests in the USA is on nowhere near the scale of the press crackdown around the world, and its unlikely that social media posts about COVID-19will be actively blocked or removed by the American government.

However, the steps taken in recent weeks may be the start of a slippery slope. The current crisis is undoubtedly important, but if we cannot protect constitutional rights during the pandemic, we risk lasting damage to the country.

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The Censorship of COVID-19 Data Around the World | Sam Bocetta - Foundation for Economic Education

Censorship row over report on UK BAME Covid-19 deaths – The Guardian

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Concerns about censorship have been raised after third-party submissions were left out of the government-commissioned report on the disproportionate effects of Covid-19 on black, Asian and minority ethnic people

Public Health England said it had engaged with more than 1,000 people during its inquiry. But the report, which has been criticised for failing to investigate the reasons for the disparities or make recommendations on how to address them, did not mention the consultations.

Anger has been compounded by a report in the Health Service Journal claiming that before publication the government removed a section detailing responses from third parties, many of whom highlighted structural racism.

The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), which called in its written submission for specific measures to tackle the culture of discrimination and racism [within the NHS], said it had contacted PHE to ask why its evidence was not included.

Its secretary general, Harun Khan, said: To choose to not discuss the overwhelming role structural racism and inequality has on mortality rates and to disregard the evidence compiled by community organisations, whilst simultaneously providing no recommendations or an action plan, despite this being the central purpose of the review, is entirely unacceptable. It beggars belief that a review asking why BAME communities are more at risk fails to give even a single answer.

TheMCBis seeking further clarification from PHE as to why the report removed the submission from theMCBand others. It is imperative that the full uncensored report is published with actionable policies and recommendations as suggested by community stakeholders, and a full Covid race equality strategy is introduced.

The report, which was published on Tuesday, found that BAME groups were up to twice as likely as white Britons to die if they contract Covid-19. But numerous studies had already established disproportionate mortality among BAME people, leaving many furious as to why PHE did not examine the reasons for the disparities or propose solutions.

Dr Zubaida Haque, the interim director of the Runnymede Trust, who attended a Zoom consultation relating to the review, said: Its extraordinary, theres nothing about that in the document at all. What was the point of carrying out that consultation exercise? Its a partial review, in terms of the fact that it doesnt have any written recommendations or plan of action, and its a partial review because it clearly hasnt taken onboard any of the concerns of voluntary and grassroots organisations. In that sense its very difficult to have confidence and trust in the review.

In a webinar on 22 May, Prof Kevin Fenton, the PHE regional director for London, who led the review, said the public health body had engaged more than 1,000 almost coming up now to 1,500 individuals who have participated in briefings, lectures, discussions, listening sessions on this issue. The extensive exercise included steps being taken already because we shouldnt be waiting to act when we know what to do, he said.

The British Medical Associations written evidence included the need to take account of socioeconomic factors. Its council chair, Dr Chaand Nagpaul, said: It is further incredibly concerning, if true, to hear claims that parts of the review have not been published. We first pushed for this review two months ago and a number of concerns we have consistently raised are not reflected in the paper. While this review was being compiled, BAME workerswere dying and will continue to do so unless the government engages in actions not words.

Neither PHE nor the Department for Health and Social Care responded to the Guardians question as to whether a section of the report had been removed before its publication.

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Censorship row over report on UK BAME Covid-19 deaths - The Guardian

Blood Brothers #36: Social media censorship, nationalism and defending Muslim rulers – 5Pillars

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In this episode of the Blood Brothers Podcast, Dilly Hussain speaks with the founder and editor-in-chief of DOAM (Documenting Oppression against Muslims), Zahid Akhtar.

Zahid explains how he manages DOAM across various social media platforms and in five different languages, and the challenges he has faced with bans, closures and censorship.

The content creator states how nationalism and weak leadership has resulted in the current state of the Ummah.

Both Dilly and Zahid briefly go over the different groups of Muslims who are being persecuted around the world: the Rohingya (Myanmar), Uyghurs (China), Palestinians, Syrians, Kashmiris, India among others.

Topics of discussion also include whether Uyghur Muslims should seek help from the U.S. against China, the role of Muslims in the west in standing up for the oppressed, and collaborating with other media outlets who we may differ with on some areas for the sake of unity.

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This makes us unique in comparison to other online Muslim media outlets who are neither independently regulated by a reputable body nor are they managed by qualified journalists.

Our journalism takes time, money and effort to deliver. But we do it because we believe we have a duty to Allah (swt).

You may not agree or like everything we publish. However, which other Muslim news site that is run by experienced journalists will take on the responsibility of being a shield for Islam and Muslims in the media?

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Blood Brothers #36: Social media censorship, nationalism and defending Muslim rulers - 5Pillars

Expert Insight: Discover the genetic dependencies of antibiotic function – SelectScience

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Join us on Friday, June 19, to find out how massively parallel microbial strain engineering may lead to the development of novel therapeutics to combat the most difficult antibiotic-resistant pathogens

Massively parallel microbial strain engineering on a CRISPR-based benchtop platform has enabled the exploration of the genetic dependencies of antibiotic function in unprecedented scale and detail. The ability to design and deliver precisely determined edits throughout the entire E. coli genome has resulted in an unparalleled opportunity to query a diverse population of strain variants for their growth responses to antibiotics from multiple different functional classes.

Find out more in this expert webinar as Dr. Dan Held, Director of Synthetic Biology, Microbial Applications Development, Inscripta, outlines how the knowledge garnered through the use of this strain engineering technology has significant potential to lead to the development of novel therapeutics against our most difficult antibiotic-resistant pathogens.

Key learning objectives

Who should attend?

This webinar will run on Friday, June 19, 2020, at:

Register to watch the full webinar here>>

SelectScience runs 3-4 webinars a month across various scientific topics,discover more of our upcoming webinars>>

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Expert Insight: Discover the genetic dependencies of antibiotic function - SelectScience

Genetically modified mosquitoes could be released in Florida and Texas beginning this summer silver bullet or jumping the gun? – The Conversation US

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This summer, for the first time, genetically modified mosquitoes could be released in the U.S.

On May 1, 2020, the company Oxitec received an experimental use permit from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to release millions of GM mosquitoes (labeled by Oxitec as OX5034) every week over the next two years in Florida and Texas. Females of this mosquito species, Aedes aegypti, transmit dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever and Zika viruses. When these lab-bred GM males are released and mate with wild females, their female offspring die. Continual, large-scale releases of these OX5034 GM males should eventually cause the temporary collapse of a wild population.

However, as vector biologists, geneticists, policy experts and bioethicists, we are concerned that current government oversight and scientific evaluation of GM mosquitoes do not ensure their responsible deployment.

Coral reefs that can withstand rising sea temperatures, American chestnut trees that can survive blight and mosquitoes that cant spread disease are examples of how genetic engineering may transform the natural world.

Genetic engineering offers an unprecedented opportunity for humans to reshape the fundamental structure of the biological world. Yet, as new advances in genetic decoding and gene editing emerge with speed and enthusiasm, the ecological systems they could alter remain enormously complex and understudied.

Recently, no group of organisms has received more attention for genetic modification than mosquitoes to yield inviable offspring or make them unsuitable for disease transmission. These strategies hold considerable potential benefits for the hundreds of millions of people impacted by mosquito-borne diseases each year.

Although the EPA approved the permit for Oxitec, state approval is still required. A previously planned release in the Florida Keys of an earlier version of Oxitecs GM mosquito (OX513) was withdrawn in 2018 after a referendum in 2016 indicated significant opposition from local residents. Oxitec has field-trialed their GM mosquitoes in Brazil, the Cayman Islands, Malaysia and Panama.

The public forum on Oxitecs recent permit application garnered 31,174 comments opposing release and 56 in support. The EPA considered these during their review process.

However, it is difficult to assess how EPA regulators weighed and considered public comments and how much of the evidence used in final risk determinations was provided solely by the technology developers.

The closed nature of this risk assessment process is concerning to us.

There is a potential bias and conflict of interest when experimental trials and assessments of ecological risk lack political accountability and are performed by, or in close collaboration with, the technology developers.

This scenario becomes more troubling with a for-profit technology company when cost- and risk-benefit analyses comparing GM mosquitoes to other approaches arent being conducted.

Another concern is that risk assessments tend to focus on only a narrow set of biological parameters such as the potential for the GM mosquito to transmit disease or the potential of the mosquitoes new proteins to trigger an allergic response in people and neglect other important biological, ethical and social considerations.

To address these shortcomings, the Institute for Sustainability, Energy and Environment at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign convened a Critical Conversation on GM mosquitoes. The discussion involved 35 participants from academic, government and nonprofit organizations from around the world with expertise in mosquito biology, community engagement and risk assessment.

A primary takeaway from this conversation was an urgent need to make regulatory procedures more transparent, comprehensive and protected from biases and conflicts of interest. In short, we believe it is time to reassess risk assessment for GM mosquitoes. Here are some of the key elements we recommend.

First, an official, government-funded registry for GM organisms specifically designed to reproduce in the wild and intended for release in the U.S. would make risk assessments more transparent and accountable. Similar to the U.S. database that lists all human clinical trials, this field trial registry would require all technology developers to disclose intentions to release, information on their GM strategy, scale and location of release and intentions for data collection.

This registry could be presented in a way that protects intellectual property rights, just as therapies entering clinical trials are patent-protected in their registry. The GM organism registry would be updated in real time and made fully available to the public.

Second, a broader set of risks needs to be assessed and an evidence base needs to be generated by third-party researchers. Because each GM mosquito is released into a unique environment, risk assessments and experiments prior to and during trial releases should address local effects on the ecosystem and food webs. They should also probe the disease transmission potential of the mosquitos wild counterparts and ecological competitors, examine evolutionary pressures on disease agents in the mosquito community and track the gene flow between GM and wild mosquitoes.

To identify and assess risks, a commitment of funding is necessary. The U.S. EPAs recent announcement that it would improve general risk assessment analysis for biotechnology products is a good start. But regulatory and funding support for an external advisory committee to review assessments for GM organisms released in the wild is also needed; diverse expertise and local community representation would secure a more fair and comprehensive assessment.

Furthermore, independent researchers and advisers could help guide what data are collected during trials to reduce uncertainty and inform future large-scale releases and risk assessments.

The objective to reduce or even eliminate mosquito-borne disease is laudable. GM mosquitoes could prove to be an important tool in alleviating global health burdens. However, to ensure their success, we believe that regulatory frameworks for open, comprehensive and participatory decision-making are urgently needed.

This article was updated to correct the date that Oxitec withdrew its OX513 trial application to 2018.

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Genetically modified mosquitoes could be released in Florida and Texas beginning this summer silver bullet or jumping the gun? - The Conversation US

USDA revised regulations of GMO and gene edited plants. Here’s what it means. – Genetic Literacy Project

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The long-awaited updates from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to its genetically engineered (GE) organism regulation have been issued. This final rule completed a more than 10-year process started back in 2008 to revise regulations promulgated in 1987. This article discusses these new regulations and some of their potential impacts. Overall, the rule ignores concerns raised by some industry, consumer and environmental groups that the new regulations, including an option for developers to self-determine whether their products are regulated, and could lead to adverse environmental and/or agricultural impacts, potential food safety risks, trade disruptions and a lack of consumer acceptance of new food technologies.USDA oversight from 1987 to the present

To understand the USDAs new regulation of GE plants, it is important to know how the agency has regulated GE plants since 1987. USDA regulates the import, interstate movement, and environmental release of GE plants under its legal authority to manage plant pests under the Plant Protection Act. A plant pest is any organism that can directly or indirectly injure, cause damage to, or cause disease in any plants or plant product. Under USDA regulations, a GE plant has been considered a potential plant pest if any of its newly introduced DNA came from an organism on USDAs list of plant pests, or if the method of introducing DNA into the plants genome involved an organism on USDAs list of plant pests. For example, if a GE plant was developed using the plant pest Agrobacterium to introduce new DNA, as many are, it was regulated. However, if the same DNA were introduced using the gene-gun method of transformation, USDA would not regulate the GE plant.

Under those regulations (found at 7 CFR part 340), developers were required to submit their GE plant products to one of three oversight processes before environmental release.

The first process, known as notification, is used to regulate field trials of low-risk GE plants. The applicant provides the USDA with information detailing its trial and the agency has 30 days to decide whether to permit the trial to proceed. As many as 1,000 field trials are authorized yearly using this procedure.

The second process is permitting, which requires a more detailed application for any outdoor planting (e.g., field trial) of higher-risk GE plants. After reviewing the application, USDA may issue a permit authorizing the release. The USDA has issued hundreds of permits since 1987.

The third process involves a petition for non-regulated status, where a developer requests the USDA to determinebased on evidence from field trialsthat the GE plant presents no plant pest risk and no longer requires regulation. The petition process is the primary path to commercialization and more than 140 plants have been deregulated.

For each regulatory process, the USDA is ensuring that the GE plant is not going to become a plant pest and cause harm to agricultural interests.

Up until 2011, every GE plant tested outdoors either submitted a notification or received a permit, and all commercialized plants satisfactorily completed the petition process. Then, in 2011, the USDA established a process whereby GE seed developers could ask the agency whether the GE plants they were developing required regulation, or whether they were exempt because they did not involve any plant pest components. The USDA responded to these Am I regulated? inquiries stating whether the GE plant was not regulated and could be planted without oversight. By the end of 2019, USDA determined that more than 85 plants did not fall within its regulatory authority and are exempt from oversight. So, over the last eight years, we have seen a decrease in how many GE plants USDA regulates.[1]

The new rule (called the Sustainable, Ecological, Consistent, Uniform, Responsible, Efficient, (SECURE) Rule), which will be implemented over the next 18 months, applies to organisms produced through genetic engineering, which is defined to include techniques that use recombinant, synthesized, or amplified nucleic acids to modify or create a genome. This broad definition includes classical genetic engineering, which add one or more new genes to organism (transgenics, or what consumers consider GMOs), and newer gene editing techniques such as CRISPR, which can make edits within an organisms existing genome.

While the definition captures all GE plants, the USDA exempts many of them from any oversight. First, it exempts products with a single sequence deletion, substitution, or addition (if the addition is from the plants gene pool). Second, it exempts any GE plant that has the same plant-trait-mechanism of action as any GE plant previous regulated by the USDA. This means that if the USDA previously regulated a GE plant, such as an glyphosate-tolerant variety of corn, a new GE glyphosate-tolerant corn is exempt if it employs the same mechanism of action (meaning it biologically operates the same way to provide tolerance). Developers can self-determine whether they qualify for these exemptions; confirmation of their self-determination from the USDA is not required and the agency need not be informed.

If a GE plant is not exempt, the developer can either: (1) apply for a permit if the GE plant has potential plant pest risks; or (2) seek a Regulatory Status Review (RSR). The RSR starts with an initial 180-day process where the USDA determines if the GE plant has any plausible plant pest risks. That initial RSR step is a closer look at the GE plant than the current am I regulated? process, but less detailed than the process used for petitions for non-regulated status. The USDA stated that the initial review does not require any plant-specific laboratory or field-test data. If the USDA decides there are no plausible risks, it sends a letter to the developer stating the plant is not regulated and publishes the letter on its website. If the USDA cannot conclude that there are no plausible risks, then the developer can either: (1) request that the USDA conduct the second part of the RSR, which is detailed evaluation of potential plant pest risks that can take up to 15 month); or (2) apply for a permit. The more lengthy and detailed RSR evaluation is comparable to the current petition for non-regulated status process and ends in the USDA determining either that the GE plant is not regulated or that it needs a permit. If a developer receives a permit from the USDA, any outdoor planting (e.g. a field trial or a commercial planting) is subject to restrictions to prevent inadvertent release into the environment and any adverse plant pest impacts. These are the same restrictions that virtually all GE plants were subject to prior to 2012 under the notification and permitting processes. Only GE plants that receive permits have any continued USDA oversight.

The exemptions are one worrisome aspect of the new SECURE rule. First, they are not supported by scientific evidence showing that these categories of GE plants do not pose risks. Instead, the USDA states that since a single deletion, substitution or addition produces a plant that could be achieved by conventional breeding methods, and because conventionally bred plants have not raised plant pest risks, gene-edited plants that are the same as products that could be achieved through conventional breeding will not pose plant pest risks. The problem with this argument is that a science-based regulatory system should base its oversight on whether the plant possesses traits that make it a potential plant risks, not the plants method of production. One reason the USDA revised its rules was to focus on the properties of a product, not how it was developed, yet that is the very approach these exemptions enshrine. While many, if not most, plants with a single deletion may not present any plant pest risks, if one does, shouldnt USDA regulate it?

The second concern is that the developer self-determines if its product qualifies for an exemption. This sets up an inherent conflict of interest because developers have financial incentives to determine themselves exempt. While some developers will diligently determine the regulatory status of a GE plant, others may not. In addition, when a developer self-determines its product is exempt, neither the USDA nor the public know that the GE plant is being released into the environment and entering the food supply because there is no requirement to notify the agency of ones self-determination. If the USDA does not know which GE plants are self-determined as exempt, how can it confirm that the determination is correct?

One positive of the new rule is the agencys decision to limit the exemptions to single edits. The USDA reasons that while a single edit mimics a product that can be produced through conventional breeding methods, the same is not true for products with multiple edits. Therefore, if a developer makes two or more edits, the developer must apply for a permit or ask for an RSR. The first gene edited commercial product in the USCalyxts high oleic soybean, which the USDA exempted under the am I regulated? processwould not be exempt under the new rules because it has two edited genes. If most gene-edited products end up having two or more edits, the exemptions may have limited applicability.

While multi-edited products are not automatically exempt, the USDA is likely to find in the initial step of the RSR process that many do not pose any plausible plant pest risk. So the result may be the samethese products are not regulated. However, at least the initial RSR determination (instead of a developer self-determination), is made public, so stakeholders will know which multi-edited products are entering the market.

The USDA states that one goal of its revisions is to provide regulatory relief, and the final rule clearly achieves that. Many GE plants that historically required containment for field trials through either the notification or permitting process will no longer be subject to any substantive regulation. They either will be exempt or deemed to have no plausible plant pest risks through the initial step of the RSR process. What this means in practice is that GE plant developers (both private developers and academic scientists) can conduct field trials without any confinement conditions that ensure the GE plants do not persist in the environment after the trial is completed. The USDA stated in its proposed rule that it hopes developers voluntarily continue confinement measures, but that may or may not happen. GE plants have escaped from field trials with USDA oversight in the past and the likelihood of that happening will only increase without USDA oversight. That could mean new proteins inadvertently entering our food supply before they are deemed safe for human consumption. Experimental GE plants persisting in the environment after a field trial is concluded could also harm non-target organisms. Finally, if an unregulated GE plant escapes from a field trial and enters the export market, it could result in rejection of the US commodity because the experimental plant has not been approved in the importing country.

The final rule also fails to provide needed transparency on GE plants that will be commercialized. The USDA, food industry and consumers will be at the mercy of developers to make public information about products that they have deemed exempt. How will the food industry know which foods contain GE plants to ensure they are complying with export market legal requirements? How will food manufacturers and retailers answer questions from consumers asking whether their products contain ingredients from GE or gene-edited plants? If consumers are unable to access information about which GE plants are commercialized, will they become skeptical about those products and their safety? The lack of transparency inherent in the rule could result in international trade problems and misinformed consumers.

GE plants have provided benefits to farmers, the environment and consumers and are likely to continue to do so in the future. However, the USDA rule could impact the food industrys acceptance of those products and fuel consumer suspicions about biotech crops and foods.

[1] While the USDA is the primary agency regulating GE plants, the FDA and EPA regulate subsets of GE plants. If a GE plant is used for food or feed, the FDA regulates it under a voluntary consultation process set up under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. If a GE plant produces a pesticide, the EPA regulates it as a plant-incorporated protectant under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act.

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USDA revised regulations of GMO and gene edited plants. Here's what it means. - Genetic Literacy Project

How a rare bird and the coronavirus remind us that our safety depends on sciencenot wishful thinking – Genetic Literacy Project

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There are worse places to spend a COVID-19 lockdown than next to a sanctuary with one of the worlds rarest birdsthe New Zealand takah. And during this strange moment in history, its wonderful to watch these remarkable relics from the pasttakah were twice declared extinct and twice rebounded unexpectedly from the deadin the shadow of their last wild refuge, the Murchison Mountains in Fiordland National Park.

Indeed, these colorful swamphens and the coronavirus pandemic both exemplify opposite extremes of widely held beliefs about the natural world; attitudes towards nature, moreover, that reflect much popular misunderstanding about evolutionary biologyand genetics in particular.

Given this, the much-regarded bird and the much-reviled virus can usefully illustrate some of the important contradictions and confusions that befuddle broader public appreciation of modern genetic science. So lets begin with a little more detail about the former, the amusingly clumsy-looking takah, the worlds largest rail.

Well-known in pre-contact times to New Zealands indigenous Maori, takah were initially thought extinct by the first European scientists to examine their fossilized remainsan assessment that proved mistaken when a small number of these flightless rails were caught during the latter part of the 19th century, the last in 1898.

Presumed extinct (for the second time) for the following fifty years, takah were famously rediscovered in the rugged and remote Fiordland mountains in 1948an event that triggered both an international avalanche of publicity and intense debate about how best to protect the last remnants of the species. Today considered a national taonga or treasure, this cherished bird is now a darling poster child for New Zealand conservation.

They are also, by all accounts, extremely tastyearly Maori hunted them extensively as a source of much-prized feathers and food, and the sealers who caught and cooked one in 1850 declared it a most delicious dainty.

This then raises a question that is less facetious than might first appear: Would it be okay to eat a takah? And if not, why not? Here we can start to explore the popular beliefs about nature alluded to above, ones that result in wider uncertainty about modern genetic science and, at an extreme, vocal opposition to genetic modification and genetic engineering.

To many nature-lovers, even talking about eating an animal like the takah would likely seem immoral; after all, these birds (like other endangered species everywhere, from black rhinos to gorillas to whales) are special. Yet if we examine this belief, being special appears to amount to little more than being rare. Nor could being wild be a cause for special status; this implies, for instance, that captive-bred rare animals are of less value than their free-living counterparts.

Yet while it is rationally unclear (independent of scarcity) why wild animals should have greater intrinsic value than farmed ones, it is nevertheless a distinction that many people maketreasuring rare or wild animals over well-known domesticated ones. (This inconsistency in attitudes is also evident in the furor over the euthanizing of a single giraffe in 2014 in a zoo in Denmark, an agricultural country where tens of thousands of farm animals are routinely slaughtered each day.) If takah were as common as chickens, sayor whales as widespread as cowswould they still be seen as special?

The old adage familiarity breeds contempt is also evident in antipathy towards genetically modified foods. That is, in the same way that familiar livestock are overlooked in comparison with wild/rare animals, so too are supposedly natural everyday foodstuffs in the vehement rejection of unnatural genetically adulterated Frankenfoods. In reality, of course, all of our staple crops have themselves been genetically modified through selective breeding over time, with manyincluding such common items as corn, peaches and watermelonsveritable monstrosities compared to their wild precursors.

Furthermore, such unexamined beliefs about what is natural and what is unnatural help explain how support for wildlife conservation can morph into opposition to genetic sciencemost especially, in the idea that human activities destroy the delicate balance of nature. Despite having been long-since rejected by ecologists, the romanticized concept of a natural balanceanthropomorphised as a wise and benign Mother Nature, constantly striving to maintain the natural harmonystill holds sway in public consciousness.

A surprising example of this concept of purpose and harmony in nature is Pope Franciss recent suggestion that COVID-19 is natures response to climate change. While the Pope is an odd source for such a claim (after all, traditionally God is the one who directs plagues for His own purposes, as many believers still insist), it is nevertheless based on the same belief in a natural (or supernatural) guiding force maintaining natures equilibrium in a world bespoilt by humankind.

Such a notion, of course, stands in stark contrast to the Darwinian concept of life, in which the illusion of harmony merely masks a precarious stalemate in the ceaseless competition between and among species. Moreover, the evolutionary view regards nature as purposeless and amoral, with the ultimate aim of living organisms being simply survival and replication.

In which case, COVID-19 is not natures revenge (or Gods wrath), but rather the mindless spread of an incredibly successful sequence of genes, a contagious virus replicating at the expense of other organisms that just happen to be us. Plagues and pestilence, in other words, are as much a part of nature as wonderful animals like the takah (a point humorously made in Monty Pythons All things dull and ugly).

Potentially, the current coronavirus crisis may disabuse many people of their romanticized notions about benevolent and harmonious nature; at any rate, the overwhelming world reaction is not simply to let nature take its course but rather to act to mitigate its worse effects. And while the unexpectedness and novelty of the pandemic has left many nations floundering over how best to respond, the ultimate solution(s) can only be derived from evidence and factsin other words from empirical science. At the same time, however, the fight against COVID-19 will likely be hindered by the very things that dog the rational application of genetics to human needsmisinformation, conspiracy thinking and pseudo-science.

But before drawing the disparate threads of this argument together, lets return to the takah, itself an excellent example of the pitiless Darwinian account of life. Like much of New Zealands avian fauna, the takahs ancestors were accidental, wind-blown arrivals on these remote South Pacific islands. Lacking competition in their new environment, takah numbers rapidly expanded while at the same time evolutionary processes, including island gigantism, gradually morphed them into the large, flightless and slow-breeding animals we see today. And, like numerous other New Zealand species, the takah were therefore easily out-competed by the next set of arrivals, the fast-breeding mammals introduced by human beings.

Yet while the ensuing tidal wave of bird extinctions was initially viewed as natural and inevitable, modern attitudes have changedand now New Zealands conservation efforts are directed at preserving the surviving native species by eradicating the more recent mammalian invaders. A tragic irony here is that, in the name of conservation, many native species are kept alive only through the mass killing of exotics.

Further ironies abound. Reassured by evidence-based science, the majority of New Zealanders accept the use of 1080 sodium monofluoroacetate poison as the most effective means to control pest speciesyet at the same time, research into more humane genetic alternatives (such as the use of gene drives) are stymied by the countrys vocal anti-GMO movement and its dated and restrictive legislation on genetic technology.

Indeed, the emotional, anti-scientific hostility to 1080 poison captures many of the points raised above, most especially in the belief that native and introduced species can coexist in a natural equilibrium (a notion belied by the estimated 25 million native New Zealand birds killed by introduced predators each year).

As for the takah itself, an initial willingness to let nature take its course was a factor in the species calamitous decline to just over 100 individuals by the 1980s, before more scientifically guided (and better funded) conservation policies began to take effect. Genetics has since played a strong part in hauling the takah back from the brink of extinction, particularly in mitigating the damaging effects of in-breeding. Genetic research has also uncovered surprising findings about the takahs origins; originally divided into two subspeciesone in New Zealands North Island and the other in the South Islandmore recent genetic analysis suggests these were instead two separate species, with the extinct northern variety descended from Australian swamphens and the extant southern species more closely related to South African rails. (Convergent evolution explains the physical similarities between the distinct species on either island.)

And here, takah genetics can usefully illustrate a final point about our conceptions (and misconceptions) of the natural world. Those most attracted to idealized visions of nature (and hence prey to anti-science attitudes), often assume that science robs nature of its glory and wonder. In fact it does the opposite; the more we understand about animals such as the takah (or indeed viruses such as SARS-cov-2), the more we are able to marvel at the wonders of evolved creation. And while romantic wishful thinking wont save the tasty takah from extinction (nor us humans from COVID-19), modern science just might.

Patrick Whittle has a PhD in philosophy and is a freelance writer with a particular interest in the social and political implications of modern biological science. Follow him on his website patrickmichaelwhittle.com or on Twitter @WhittlePM

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How a rare bird and the coronavirus remind us that our safety depends on sciencenot wishful thinking - Genetic Literacy Project

Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Could be Released in Florida and Texas This Summer – The Daily Beast

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This article originally appeared on The Conversation.

This summer, for the first time, genetically modified mosquitoes could be released in the U.S.

On May 1, 2020, the company Oxitec received an experimental use permit from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to release millions of GM mosquitoes (labeled by Oxitec as OX5034) every week over the next two years in Florida and Texas. Females of this mosquito species, Aedes aegypti, transmit dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever and Zika viruses. When these lab-bred GM males are released and mate with wild females, their female offspring die. Continual, large-scale releases of these OX5034 GM males should eventually cause the temporary collapse of a wild population.

However, as vector biologists, geneticists, policy experts and bioethicists, we are concerned that current government oversight and scientific evaluation of GM mosquitoes do not ensure their responsible deployment.

Coral reefs that can withstand rising sea temperatures, American chestnut trees that can survive blight and mosquitoes that cant spread disease are examples of how genetic engineering may transform the natural world.

Genetic engineering offers an unprecedented opportunity for humans to reshape the fundamental structure of the biological world. Yet, as new advances in genetic decoding and gene editing emerge with speed and enthusiasm, the ecological systems they could alter remain enormously complex and understudied.

Recently, no group of organisms has received more attention for genetic modification than mosquitoesto yield inviable offspring or make them unsuitable for disease transmission. These strategies hold considerable potential benefits for the hundreds of millions of people impacted by mosquito-borne diseases each year.

Although the EPA approved the permit for Oxitec, state approval is still required. A previously planned release in the Florida Keys of an earlier version of Oxitecs GM mosquito (OX513) was withdrawn in 2016 after a referendum indicated significant opposition from local residents. Oxitec has field-trialed their GM mosquitoes in Brazil, the Cayman Islands, Malaysia and Panama.

The public forum on Oxitecs recent permit application garnered 31,174 comments opposing release and 56 in support. The EPA considered these during their review process.

However, it is difficult to assess how EPA regulators weighed and considered public comments and how much of the evidence used in final risk determinations was provided solely by the technology developers.

The closed nature of this risk assessment process is concerning to us.

There is a potential bias and conflict of interest when experimental trials and assessments of ecological risk lack political accountability and are performed by, or in close collaboration with, the technology developers.

This scenario becomes more troubling with a for-profit technology company when cost- and risk-benefit analyses comparing GM mosquitoes to other approaches arent being conducted.

Another concern is that risk assessments tend to focus on only a narrow set of biological parameterssuch as the potential for the GM mosquito to transmit disease or the potential of the mosquitoes new proteins to trigger an allergic response in peopleand neglect other important biological, ethical and social considerations.

To address these shortcomings, the Institute for Sustainability, Energy and Environment at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign convened a Critical Conversation on GM mosquitoes. The discussion involved 35 participants from academic, government and nonprofit organizations from around the world with expertise in mosquito biology, community engagement and risk assessment.

A primary takeaway from this conversation was an urgent need to make regulatory procedures more transparent, comprehensive and protected from biases and conflicts of interest. In short, we believe it is time to reassess risk assessment for GM mosquitoes. Here are some of the key elements we recommend.

First, an official, government-funded registry for GM organisms specifically designed to reproduce in the wild and intended for release in the U.S. would make risk assessments more transparent and accountable. Similar to the U.S. database that lists all human clinical trials, this field trial registry would require all technology developers to disclose intentions to release, information on their GM strategy, scale and location of release and intentions for data collection.

This registry could be presented in a way that protects intellectual property rights, just as therapies entering clinical trials are patent-protected in their registry. The GM organism registry would be updated in real time and made fully available to the public.

Second, a broader set of risks needs to be assessed and an evidence base needs to be generated by third-party researchers. Because each GM mosquito is released into a unique environment, risk assessments and experiments prior to and during trial releases should address local effects on the ecosystem and food webs. They should also probe the disease transmission potential of the mosquitos wild counterparts and ecological competitors, examine evolutionary pressures on disease agents in the mosquito community and track the gene flow between GM and wild mosquitoes.

To identify and assess risks, a commitment of funding is necessary. The U.S. EPAs recent announcement that it would improve general risk assessment analysis for biotechnology products is a good start. But regulatory and funding support for an external advisory committee to review assessments for GM organisms released in the wild is also needed; diverse expertise and local community representation would secure a more fair and comprehensive assessment.

Furthermore, independent researchers and advisers could help guide what data are collected during trials to reduce uncertainty and inform future large-scale releases and risk assessments.

The objective to reduce or even eliminate mosquito-borne disease is laudable. GM mosquitoes could prove to be an important tool in alleviating global health burdens. However, to ensure their success, we believe that regulatory frameworks for open, comprehensive and participatory decision-making are urgently needed.

Written by Brian Allan, Associate Professor of Entomology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Chris Stone, Medical Entomologist, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Holly Tuten, Vector Ecologist, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Jennifer Kuzma, Goodnight-NCGSK Distinguished Professor, North Carolina State University; Natalie Kofler, Levenick Resident Scholar in Sustainability, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Could be Released in Florida and Texas This Summer - The Daily Beast

Novavax President of R&D Dr. Gregory Glenn to Discuss the Development of COVID-19 Vaccines on Panel at 2020 BIO Digital – Yahoo Finance

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GAITHERSBURG, Md., June 08, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Novavax, Inc. (NVAX), a late-stage biotechnology company developing next-generation vaccines for serious infectious diseases, today announced that Gregory M. Glenn, M.D., President of Research and Development, will join other vaccine industry leaders for a panel discussion at 2020 BIO Digital. Taking place on Tuesday, June 9 at 11:30 a.m. EDT, the panel will discuss COVID-19 vaccines. The conversation will consider the complex path from lab to clinical trials, the impact of the evolving science on candidate development and consider how collaboration will bring life-saving vaccines to the world.

Details for the panel are as follows:

About Novavax

Novavax, Inc. (NVAX) is a late-stage biotechnology company that promotes improved health globally through the discovery, development, and commercialization of innovative vaccines to prevent serious infectious diseases. Novavax recently initiated development of NVX-CoV2373, its vaccine candidate against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, with Phase 1 clinical trial results expected in July of 2020. NanoFlu, its quadrivalent influenza nanoparticle vaccine, met all primary objectives in its pivotal Phase 3 clinical trial in older adults. Both vaccine candidates incorporate Novavax proprietary saponin-based Matrix-M adjuvant in order to enhance the immune response and stimulate high levels of neutralizing antibodies. Novavax is a leading innovator of recombinant vaccines; its proprietary recombinant technology platform combines the power and speed of genetic engineering to efficiently produce highly immunogenic nanoparticles in order to address urgent global health needs.

For more information, visit http://www.novavax.com and connect with us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Contacts:

InvestorsNovavax, Inc. Erika Trahanir@novavax.com240-268-2022

WestwickeJohn Woolfordjohn.woolford@westwicke.com443-213-0506

MediaBrandzone/KOGS CommunicationEdna Kaplankaplan@kogspr.com617-974-8659

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Novavax President of R&D Dr. Gregory Glenn to Discuss the Development of COVID-19 Vaccines on Panel at 2020 BIO Digital - Yahoo Finance

Does China Have A Coronavirus Vaccine? Expert Says One Could Be Available Within Months – International Business Times

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KEY POINTS

Chinas top respiratory expert said Tuesday a vaccine for the coronavirus could be ready as early as autumn for emergency use, months earlier than the timeline envisioned by U.S. experts. The comments came amid a Harvard University study that found the virus began circulating in China much earlier than previously suspected.

Zhong Nanshan, former president of the Chinese Medical Association and current the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Thoracic Disease, said guidelines are being drafted to determine who will get the vaccine first and when, along with what would constitute emergency use.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, has said 100 million doses of a vaccine could be ready by the end of the year even before trials on safety and efficacy are completed.

China has spent a reported $703 million on the development of a vaccine, with five currently undergoing testing. Several others developed elsewhere in the world also are undergoing trials, setting up a global competition akin to the space race.

The journal Cell on Saturday published a preliminary study of a vaccine developed by the Bejing Institute of Biological Products that effectively blocked infection in rhesus monkeys. Development of an effective vaccine by China likely would help deflect criticism of the countrys early handling of the outbreak.

Another vaccine developed by the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products is in the midst of human trials. Both vaccines use inactivated viruses. Research also is focused on other techniques including genetic engineering.

Zhong said without a vaccine, death tolls will continue to mount. By midmorning Tuesday, more than 407,000 people had died worldwide from COVID-19 -- more than a quarter in the United States alone.

Natural immunity needs 60- to 70% of a countrys population to be infected by the novel coronavirus, which could cause a death toll of 30 [million] to 40 million, Zhong told the South China Morning Post. The [only] solution is still mass vaccination.

He added: Large-scale vaccination will take one to two years. The new vaccine can be used in an emergency as early as this autumn or the end of the year.

China rejected findings by Harvard University that coronavirus began circulating in Wuhan as early as August by examining satellite images of hospital parking lots. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying called the conclusions preposterous, but the researchers said the findings line up with the recent recognition that gastrointestinal symptoms are a unique feature of COVID-19 disease and may be the chief complaint of a significant proportion of presenting patients.

China has maintained the infection emerged in November but has been sharply criticized for suppressing information in the initial stages of the pandemic.

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Does China Have A Coronavirus Vaccine? Expert Says One Could Be Available Within Months - International Business Times

Swarm of MILLIONS of gene-hacked mosquitoes will be unleashed across USA to wipe out malaria with death sex – The Sun

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MUTANT mosquitoes created in a lab to stop the spread of deadly diseases like malaria will be unleashed across the US this summer.

The gene-hacked bugs, crafted by UK biotech company Oxitec, are designed tokill off or reduce local populations of mosquitoes by mating with them.

3

Mosquitoes carry diseases like dengue, Zika and malaria which are then passed to anyone bitten by the creepy crawlies.

While the technology has shown promise in lab experiments, experts warn the scheme could go horribly wrong out in the wild.

"These strategies hold considerable potential benefits for the hundreds of millions of people impacted bymosquito-borne diseaseseach year," a group of scientists and ethicists wrote in The Conversation.

"However, we are concerned that current government oversight and scientific evaluation of genetically-modified mosquitoes do not ensure their responsible deployment."

3

Oxitec's controversial scheme was in May approved for "experimental use" in Florida and Texas by the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Starting this summer, millions of genetically-modified (GM) male mosquitoes will be released every week over the next two years.

When the lab-bred bugs are released and mate with wild females, their female offspring die.

Only female mosquitoes bite, meaning Oxitec's male-only insects won't spread diseases to people.

What is gene editing?

Here's what you need to know

Over time, repeated, large-scale releases of the modified insects should drive the temporary collapse of wild populations.

This should halt the spread of nasty diseases carried by mosquitoes, potentially saving thousands of lives.

Mosquito-borne illnesses like malaria are on the rise in the southern United States as climate change pushes bug populations up from South America.

Scientists are concerned about the lack of oversight for Oxitec projects in Florida and Texas.

For its part, Oxitec said in a statement that the article is The Conversation contained "a number of false or baseless claims".

3

The company has run into trouble before.

In Brazil, an Oxitec project spectacularly backfired after millions of the GM bugs were released into neighbourhoods in Jacobina.

Some scientists believe the project accidentally created a super-resistant mosquito species that's tougher to kill than before.

Oxitec's work has been heavily criticised by Friends of the Earth, a charity dedicated to protecting the environment.

Back in 2012, Friends of the Earth's Eric Hoffman said: "Trials of its mosquitos must not move forward in the absence of comprehensive and impartial reviews of the environmental, human health and ethical risks."

In a statement at the time, Friends of the Earth said: "The GM mosquitoes are intended to reduce the wild population by mating with naturally occurring mosquitoes and producing progeny which dont survive, thus reducing the population and therefore the transmission of the tropical disease dengue fever.

"The company has been widely criticised for putting its commercial interests ahead of public and environmental safety.

"Its first releases of GM mosquitoes took place controversially in the Cayman Islands, where there is no biosafety law or regulation.

"Oxitec staff have been closely involved in developing risk assessment guidelines for GM insects worldwide, leading to concerns about lack of independent scrutiny and conflict of interest."

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Swarm of MILLIONS of gene-hacked mosquitoes will be unleashed across USA to wipe out malaria with death sex - The Sun

MIT Engineers Developed an Interesting Method to Extend the Shelf Life of Foods – Somag News

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Benedetto Marelli and his teammates at MIT have discovered a method to naturally prolong the shelf life of foods. In the method, it was discovered that coating food with silk had a serious effect.

Benedetto Marelli, who worked as an assistant professor at the environmental engineering department at MIT, came across a book about the use of silk one day by chance while doing his post-doctoral study at Tufts University. When asked for each set to contain silk in the cooking contest for the universitys laboratory, Marelli accidentally forgot some strawberries wrapped in silk on her counter.

Realizing that the strawberries that were interacting with silk were still edible when she returned almost a week later, Marelli observed that the other strawberries were already spoiled. This situation had a shock effect on the researcher who had previously studied the biomedical applications of silk. Marelli realized that she could find a solution to the problem of food waste with this situation that she discovered by chance and started to work.

Benedetto Marelli, who is an associate professor at MIT, has decided to seek help from different scientists in this regard. Cambridge Crops, which includes these scientists, wanted to test and expand Marellis discovery.

The company aimed to develop products that would extend the shelf life for all easily perishable foods. Thanks to this discovery of the company, it is expected that the shelf life of the food will be prolonged and a solution to the problem of waste, which is of great importance. As a result, it will be possible to reach fresh food more easily.

As you know, while 10% of the worlds population is struggling with hunger, one third of the global food stock is unconsciously wasted every year. Food waste; It is a fact that it has a social and economic impact in developed and developing countries. Although many different technologies that we come across offer us solutions that will prolong the life of fresh foods, most of these solutions contain risks such as playing genetics with foods, and packaging materials and environmental hazards. We can say that this is often accompanied by high costs.

Marelli considers this situation as follows: To date, the vast majority of solutions developed on agricultural technologies and food have been based on genetic engineering, mechanical engineering, artificial intelligence, or computer science. However, nano materials and bio materials can be preferred instead.

According to Marelli, the use of silk can be an excellent opportunity for many problems faced by the food industry, and it can increase the shelf life of the foods without the need to change their essence. Marelli also stated that the food will not change in any way thanks to the coating of silk with flavors, smells and tissues. Allegedly, this practice can naturally increase the shelf life of foods by up to 200%.

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MIT Engineers Developed an Interesting Method to Extend the Shelf Life of Foods - Somag News

Optogenetic market 2020: Future Analysis and know what to expect from this Industry along with analysis Global Trends, Industry Growth, Top Company…

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Optogenetic Market research added by the insight partners, offers a comprehensive analysis of growth trends prevailing in the global business domain. This report also provides definitive data concerning market, size, commercialization aspects and revenue forecast of the Optogenetic industry. In addition, the study explicitly highlights the competitive status of key players within the projection timeline while focusing on their portfolio and regional expansion endeavours.

This report on Optogenetic Market delivers an in-depth analysis that also comprises an elaborate assessment of this business. Also, segments of the Optogenetic Market have been evidently elucidated in this study, in addition to a basic overview pertaining to the markets current status as well as size, with respect to the profit and volume parameters. The study is ubiquitous of the major insights related to the regional spectrum of this vertical as well as the companies that have effectively gained a commendable status in the Optogenetic Market.

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MARKET INTRODUCTIONOptogenetic is the biological technique in which light is used to control the cell in living tissue, it is emerging technique. The optogenetics helps to understand the normal and abnormal functioning of brain and used to treat the neurological disorder. In Optogenetics light and genetic engineering is used to control the cell activity and neurons activity. Optogenetics is used to treat the retinal disease, hearing loss, memory disorder.

Key Competitors In Optogenetic Market areCoherent, Inc., Thorlabs, Inc., Cobalt International Energy, Inc., Scientifica, Laserglow Technologies, Gensight Biologics, Jackson Laboratories, Regenxbio Inc., Circuit Therapeutics, Inc., Bruker and Others

MARKET SCOPE

The Global Optogenetics Market Analysis to 2027 is a specialized and in-depth study with a special focus on the global medical device market trend analysis. The report aims to provide an overview of optogenetics market with detailed market segmentation by product type, application, and geography. The global optogenetics market is expected to witness high growth during the forecast period. The report provides key statistics on the market status of the leading Optogenetics market players and offers key trends and opportunities in the market.

Market segmentation:

By Product Type (Actuators, Sensors, Light Instruments);

By Application (Retinal Disease Treatment, Neuroscience, Cardiovascular Ailments, Pacing, Hearing Problem Treatment)

By Geography North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA) and South & Central America. And 13 countries globally along with current trend and opportunities prevailing in the region.

Key Questions Answered

How big will the market for Optogenetic be in 2027? What is the current CAGR of the Optogenetic Market? Which product is expected to have the highest market growth? Which application should be used to win a large part of the market for Optogenetic ? Which region is likely to offer the most opportunities on the Optogenetic Market? Will the market competition change in the forecast period? Who are the main players currently active in the global Optogenetic Market? How will the market situation change within the coming years? What are the usual commercial tactics for players? What is the growth perspective of the global Optogenetic Market?

Answering these types of questions can be very useful for gamers to clear up their doubts as they implement their strategies to grow in the global Optogenetic Market. The report provides a transparent picture of the actual situation in the global Optogenetic Market so that companies can work more effectively. It can be tailored to the needs of readers to better understand the global market for Optogenetic.

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Optogenetic market 2020: Future Analysis and know what to expect from this Industry along with analysis Global Trends, Industry Growth, Top Company...

Eight Research Projects Receive Funding from Manning Fund for COVID-19 Research – University of Virginia

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A recent gift of $1 million from the Manning family, strong supporters of the University of Virginia, established The Manning Fund for COVID-19 Research, designed to support the Universitys practically oriented research on COVID-19-related topics that can be acted upon quickly and have commercial potential.

More than 50 proposals were received from UVA faculty for projects related to developing COVID-19-related solutions.

The offices of the Provost and the Vice President for Research, which co-manage the fund, havefunded eight proposals that support improved antibody testing, vaccine development and improving patient outcomes.

These researchers showed they had both great ideas for conquering COVID-19, and a solid plan for how to accomplish their goals, said Melur Ram Ramasubramanian, vice president for research. We couldnt be more pleased with the projects proposed and their potential impact.

Many of our researchers have set current and pressing projects aside to redirect their energies to COVID-19, said Liz Magill, the Universitys provost. Were grateful that the Manning Fund has enabled this critical research that takes advantage of the cross-disciplinary networks UVA has nurtured over the past few years.

I want to thank the entire research team and administrationfor their acute sense of urgency and entrepreneurship to come up with these helpful solutions to the COVID crisis. They set short term goals and achieved them, said local businessman and investor Paul Manning. I am very grateful.

A rundown of the selected projects:

IgG to SARS-CoV-2 With ImmunoCAPJeffrey Wilson, School of Medicine, Asthma, Allergy & Immunology

Jeffrey Wilson and his team plan to develop a novel assay to measure antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, taking advantage of the lmmunoCAP platform and producing a quantitative readout of how much IgG is present instead of just a yes or a no, as is common in current commercial systems. This has implications in developing an understanding of the likely attachment sites of the virus and accelerating the development of effective vaccines.

A COVID-19 Killed Whole Cell Genome Reduced E. coli Fusion Peptide Subunit VaccineSteven Zeichner, School of Medicine, Pediatrics

A vaccine for COVID-19 is urgently needed to control the pandemic. Steven Zeichner and his team aim to develop a vaccine that helps the body develop antibodies directed against a specific fusion peptide found on the surface of SARS-CoV-2 virus as a component of its spike protein. The novelty of this project is the use a modified E. coli bacterial surface to display this peptide and help the body develop specific antibodies against it. When the real virus enters the body due to infection, the body can recognize this fusion peptide and neutralize the virus.

We expect the results from this project can be quickly translated into a safe, inexpensive, scalable, and effective vaccine appropriate for pandemic response globally, enabling an end to the COVID-19 pandemic not only in developed countries, but around the world, said Steven Zeichner.

Targeted Antibodies From Convalescent Plasma to Protect Against COVID-19Peter Kasson, School of Medicine, Molecular Physiology & Biomedical Engineering

Individuals vary substantially in their antibody response to COVID-19, both in amount and type of antibodies produced. Peter Kassons team aims to purify the serum from recovered patients and identify specific antibodies that are most potent against SARS-CoV-2 and to produce concentrated amounts of these target specific antibodies for the treatment of patients with increased potency.

Novel Reagents to Improve Testing for COVID-19 AntibodiesJames Zimring, School of Medicine, Pathology

The goal of James Zimring and his team is to develop novel testing reagents to eliminate the problem of cross-reactivity with common coronaviruses and develop a neutralization reagent that can be added to any serological assay and any analytic platform for antibody testing, which will eliminate signal from other non-COVID-19 antibodies and improve the accuracy of the test significantly.

Adenosine A2A Receptor Agonists in the Prevention of COVID-19-Related Lung Injury and Systemic Inflammatory ResponsesKenneth Brayman, School of Medicine, Surgery & Molecular Physiology, Infectious Diseases

The main cause of death in COVID-19 is acute respiratory distress syndrome, which is a type of respiratory failure characterized by rapid onset of widespread inflammation in the lungs. Kenneth Brayman and his team aim to test the use of Adenosine A2AR agonists to reduce the mortality associated with COVID-19. This immunotherapy is expected to be used preemptively, in the asymptomatic phase to prevent onset of COVID-19 or in the symptomatic phase, to reverse progression.

Isolation and Identification of Novel T-cell Receptors Responsive to SARS-CoV-2 for the Genetic Engineering of Third-Party T-cells for Off-the-Shelf Therapeutic UseDaniel Lee, School of Medicine, Hematology/Oncology, Pediatric

Daniel Lee and his team plan to study the T-cell-based immune response from patients who have been infected SARS-CoV-2 to identify viral specific T-cell receptors with the future goal of genetically engineering third-party, allogeneic T-cells with the responsive T-cell receptor, thereby producing an off-the-shelf cellular therapeutic bank for the treatment of subsequent infected patients experiencing severe symptoms. This cell therapy would be especially beneficial for immunocompromised patients infected with COVID-19.

Mass Cytometry to Identify Biomarkers for COVID-19 Severity and Response to JAK InhibitionHema Kothari, School of Medicine, Medicine & Cardiovascular Medicine

Cytokine storm in patients has been linked to COVID-19 disease severity. Hema Kotharis team aims to develop a customized diagnostic biomarker assay for early identification of those at risk of a cytokine storm and improve patient outcomes by taking timely action to block cytokines.

COVID-19: Big Data and Analytics for Early Detection of Cardiorespiratory DeteriorationRandall Moorman, School of Medicine, Medicine, Biomedical Engineering and Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics

Randall Moormans team at UVA Center for Advanced Medical Analytics plans to apply artificial intelligence and big data techniques to the problem of acute and unsuspected clinical deterioration of SARS-CoV-2-infected patients, with the goal to provide continuous risk estimation of imminent deterioration using mathematical analysis of readily available clinical and monitoring data.

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Eight Research Projects Receive Funding from Manning Fund for COVID-19 Research - University of Virginia

Earth Matters: The evolution of a pollinator gardener – GazetteNET

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I love to grow stuff. Ive been gardening since elementary school. When I grew my first sweet corn in fifth grade, I was so amazed when I went to the garden one day and the corn plants were taller than I was!

Since then, Ive learned a lot about how to keep plants healthy and happy, and have experimented with a wide range of species. In the process, Ive had successes and a great many failures. With all the recent talk of planting for pollinators, Ive lately been adopting a perspective in addition to my long interest in promoting diversity.

I knew about pollination and honeybees but am now actively working to support pollinators. On a Hitchcock Center field trip in 2017, I learned about some of our less common native bee species. Upon returning home I observed my (nonnative) lambs ear in blossom and, sure enough, there were wool carder bees (also nonnative). The aggressive males were dive-bombing any other insect that dared approach the flowers. The industrious females were gathering pollen and nectar and wool from the leaves to pack into crevices as a nest for their eggs. They had been right there in front of me, probably for years, but I never took the time to stop and look.

That August, as I learned more about pollinators and took time to observe them, my pink diamond hydrangeas came into bloom. Id seen insects flying around the big flower clusters in other years, but hadnt focused on them much.

As I watched, the flowers were mobbed by honeybees, flies, smaller bees and wasps. It was fun to watch them all buzzing around the flowers, learning to distinguish different species, and searching out patterns in their behavior.

One day I watched a big, fast, bald-faced hornet zooming around the flowers. And soon I noticed that she wasnt nectaring at all, but seemed to be patrolling quickly around the flowers. And then I saw her collide with a smaller insect in what could only be a purposeful way. I saw the same thing again and again. I was intrigued, wondering what was happening. Looking up the bald-faced hornet online I found, sure enough, that they are predators, feeding chewed-up flies and other prey to their larvae.

I had discovered this natural drama in the world of pollination around my hydrangeas! I have an affection for bald-faced hornets, even though I have vivid memories of blundering into a nest in a bush outside our front porch when I was a kid and getting painfully stung a number of times. I still like them they wont hurt us if we dont bother them.

Im getting rapidly on board with plantings to support pollinators, especially natives. Theres a general consensus that the best way to serve our native pollinator species is to provide a diverse array of native plants that offer pollen/nectar throughout the growing season, and thats what Im trying to achieve.

My gardens in our suburban neighborhood attract a variety of them. Ive removed some of the peonies and double irises that have had the pollen bred out of them, and taken out some of the evergreen shrubs that are pollinated by wind and not insects. Ive replaced them with a variety of perennials rich in pollen and nectar. Some of my favorites are blue cloud calamint, sweet black-eyed Susan, cut-leaf coneflower, a variety of trilliums, wild ginger, mountain mint, seaside goldenrod, fern-leaf bleeding heart, shrub bush-clover, scarlet bee-balm, New England aster, summersweet and American witch hazel.

Our raspberries and blackberries also attract a lot of pollinators.

I love nurturing a landscape that welcomes insects and the birds that feed on them. Its a small attempt to recreate an ecological diversity that so many of our land-use decisions destroy. We humans depend on the natural systems that support all life. And learning ways to support native pollinators is one way I try to help maintain those systems.

Ted Watt is an educator/naturalist at the Hitchcock Center for the Environment. To see a list of the plants he has used in his gardens, visit tinyurl.com/earthmatters-52.

Earth Matters has been a project of the Hitchcock Center for the Environment for 11 years, produced by volunteers and friends of the center. The COVID-19 crisis has caused the center to cancel almost all programming, leading to a huge budget shortfall. To help Hitchcock through this very challenging time, please visit hitchcockcenter.org and click donate.

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Earth Matters: The evolution of a pollinator gardener - GazetteNET

Human Population Evolution – Why Are There So Many Humans? – SAPIENS

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Something curious happened in human population history over the last 1 million years. First, our numbers fell to as low as 18,500, and our ancestors were more endangered than chimpanzees and gorillas. Then we bounced back to extraordinary levels, far surpassing the other great apes.

Today the total population of gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans is estimated to be only around 500,000, according to the World Wildlife Fund. Many species are critically endangered. Meanwhile, the human population has surged to 7.7 billion. And the irony is: Our astonishing ability to multiply now threatens the long-term sustainability of many species, including ours.

What happened? Why do we live in the Anthropocene and not a world resembling Planet of the Apes? We share around 99 percent of our DNA with our great ape cousins, chimpanzees and bonobos. So, what makes us different from our closest relatives that gives us our staggering capacity for reproducing and surviving?

As an evolutionary anthropologist, these questions have led me to live and study among the Yucatec Maya of Mexico, the Pum hunter-gatherers of Venezuela, and the Tanala agriculturalists of Madagascar. My research,* combined with genetic data and other studies, offers clues to what developed in the deep past that has made humans so successfulfor better or for worse.

In the 1970s, the isolated village of Xculoc, in Mexicos Yucatan Peninsula, was home to about 300 Maya people. The maize-farming residents had no electricity or running water. Women hauled water from a 50-meter-deep well using ropes and buckets. They ground maizethe mainstay of their dietin hand-cranked grinders.

Then two technologies were introduced that changed these Mayas lives and, ultimately, their population: a gas-powered water pump and two gas-powered maize grinders.

Using these devices, young women saved about two and a half hours of labor and 325 calories a day. In addition, younger siblings could more easily fetch water and crush maize, freeing up their older sisters time and literally decreasing their daily grind. Thats important because studies have found that heavy subsistence work suppresses ovarian function, whereas reducing labor and raising womens energy balance is associated with a bump in fertility.

In this 1993 photo, a Maya woman draws water from a centralized spigot that is fed by a gas-powered pump, which saves about 400 calories per day compared with hauling water from wells. Such changes relax energy demands on women and have led Maya women to bear more children. Karen Kramer

Subsequently, the age at which women in Xculoc first gave birth dropped by two years. And according to my long-term research, women who started childbearing after these machines arrived produced significantly larger families than prior generations. By 2003, women who started reproducing in the 1970s had eight to 12 children.

Saving women time and energy is central to increasing the population. And humans have developed numerous technological and social ways of accomplishing this that differ from our great ape relatives.

Its important to note that scientists must be cautious about drawing direct analogies between contemporary people or apes and our ancient ancestors. But modern humans and primates are our best tools for inferring how the underpinnings of our numerical success may have evolved.

Somewhere along the evolutionary road, humans started to favor new ways of having and raising their young. Mothers began weaning their infants earlier. In modern societies where infants rely on their mothers milk and not bottle feeding, babies nurse for two to three years. By contrast, great ape mothers nurse their young for four to six years.

Breastfeeding is calorically expensive. It takes a mother about 600 extra calories a day to produce milk. So, the sooner she stops nursing, the sooner she can biologically support another pregnancy. In modern societies without contraception, mothers give birth on average every three years. Other great apes may wait as many as six to eight years between births.

Our ancient ancestors also fed, sheltered, and cared for youngsters who were weaned but still growing. This gave them a better chance at surviving than nonhuman great ape young, which fend for themselves after theyre weaned. Today a child living in a hunter-gatherer society is twice as likely as a wild chimpanzee to survive to age 15.

Novel ways of parenting, compared to earlier hominins, meant human mothers were in the unique situation of having multiple dependents of different ages to care for at the same time. I cannot underscore enough how much this sets human mothers and children apart from the other great apes.

Having lots of kids is great for the success of the species. But theres a hitch. Mothers dont have enough hours in the day to care for their babies full time while providing for their older offspring. Thats especially true because the unique aspects of the human diet give mothers a lot of tasks to juggle

When these ancient life history traits were evolving, our ancestors made their living as hunter-gatherers, who typically eat diverse fare, including fruits, nuts, tubers, roots, large and small game, birds, reptiles, eggs,Having lots of kids is great for the success of the human species. But theres a hitch. insects, fish, and shellfish. Cobbling together such a menu requires modern hunter-gatherers to travel, on average, 13 kilometers per day. By contrast, chimpanzees and gorillas roam, on average, 2 kilometers per day.

Whats more, hunter-gatherers process most of their food to make it more digestible or to boost the bioavailability of nutrients. And as everyone who prepares food knows, that takes a significant amount of time.

Among the Pum hunter-gatherers from the savannas of Venezuela, women spend about three hours a day cracking, mashing, grinding, pounding, sifting, winnowing, butchering, and cooking food. The same is true of Efe womenhunter-gatherers living in the Ituri forest of Central Africa.

That prep time is in addition to the hours the Pum and Efe spend foraging and then carrying ingredients back to camp. Furthermore, each processing task requires a specialized technology, which means someone has to collect raw materials and make tools. !Kung women and men in the Kalahari Desert of Southern Africa spend about an hour each day making and repairing tools. Savanna Pum women devote nearly two hours to toolmakingtwice as much as the men.

On foraging days, Savanna Pum boys carry home enough fish to feed themselves and some members of their family. Russell D. Greaves

Hunter-gatherers also build shelters and hearths to provide a safe place to process ingredients, to store food and tools, and to leave children who may be too young to accompany others on long foraging trips. Plus, they must haul water, chop firewood, fashion clothing, and maintain the social and information networks needed to access geographically dispersed resources.

There are simply not enough hours in the day for any one person to accomplish all this. So, our ancestors came up with a solution.

That solution was cooperationbut not the kind of task-sharing many species engage in. Hunter-gatherers developed a distinct feature called intergenerational cooperation: Parents help kids, and children help parents.

This is not a trait we share with the other great apes, who arent particularly good at sharing food, helping mothers or offspring who arent their own, or even supporting their own children after they reach a certain age. Nonhuman great ape mothers rarely share meals with their juvenile offspring once theyre weaned, and juvenile apes dont offer food to their moms.

But among humans, intergenerational cooperation means it really does take a village to raise a child. Across cultures, mothers in hunter-gatherer and agricultural societies offer only about half of the direct care an infant receives. Savanna Pum infants, for example, have an average of nine caretakers besides their mother. Efe infants have an average of 11.

Fathers and grandparents certainly play important roles in supporting their families. But its not enough. An average Maya mother is 60 by the time her last child leaves home, so she has very few years after that to be a babysitting or food-collecting grandmother.

My research suggests a much more obvious source of help has been overlooked: kids. Other than mothers, children provide most of the child care in many cultures. And 7- to 10-year-olds do the bulk of the babysitting.

Children are also responsible for processing much of the food and running the household. A Pum boy carries home an average of 4.5 kilograms of wild fruit on days he forages. Thats the equivalent of 3,200 caloriesenough to feed himself and at least some of his family. (And thats in addition to any snacking he does in the field.) His sister can bring home more than a kilogram of roots (worth about 4,000 calories)some of which she will eat, but most of which she shares. Among the Hadza hunter-gatherers of East Africa, children forage for five to six hours a day. By age 5, they can supply about 50 percent of their own calories during some seasons.

Yucatec Maya girls, shown here washing clothes, spend several hours a day doing domestic chores and field work. Sam S. Urlacher

Children in agricultural communities are also hard workers. Yucatec Maya between the ages of 7 and 14 devote two to five hours a day to domestic and field work. Teens between the ages of 15 and 18 labor about 6.5 hours a dayas much as their parents.

By the time a Maya mother is 40, she has an average of seven children at home. These children contribute a combined 20 hours of work a day and supply 60 percent of what the family consumes.

Thanks to this multigenerational help, a woman can spend time doing what only she can do: have more children. So, children increase the population, but their labor is also a built-in engine to fuel their communitys fertility and speed up reproduction.

With intergenerational cooperation and a diversity of dietary strategies, our ancestors multiplied and weathered population bottlenecks. Just after 1800, the human population hit 1 billion.

The global population then expanded exponentially, largely due to the enhanced survival of both infants and older people. It reached 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in 1960, 4 billion in 1974, 5 billion in 1987, 6 billion in 1999, 7 billion in 2011, and today is at over 7.7 billion.These figures intrigue me as an evolutionary enigma and deeply concern me as a contemporary issue. There is no question, though, that humans have been incredibly successful. The question is: How long can we maintain that success and still be sustainable? The answer, like our secret to growth in the past, stands on the shoulders of cooperation.

* Editors note: The author derived much of this essay from her 47th JAR Distinguished Lecture, How There Got to Be So Many of Us, which was published in the Winter 2019 issue of the Journal of Anthropological Research.

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Human Population Evolution - Why Are There So Many Humans? - SAPIENS

The Evolution of a Bacterial Navigation System – ScienceBlog.com

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Caltech researchers and collaborators have discovered how the bacteriaEscherichia colievolutionarily repurposed cellular machinery into a kind of navigation system to control movement through its environment.

The study was led by researchers in the laboratory ofGrant Jensen, professor of biophysics and biology and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. A paper describing the research appeared in the journalNature Communicationson April 27.

Much like you might follow your nose toward delicious odorsor away from bad smellsbacteria sense chemicals in their environments and move around accordingly using rotating tails called flagella. This process of detecting an external chemical signal and taking steps to move correspondingly is called chemotaxis.

The chemotaxis system sniffs for chemical cues in the environment and guides the bacteria toward beneficial places and away from harmful ones, says postdoctoral scholar Davi Ortega, first author on the new research. Some consider this system as the brain of the bacteria as it is a relatively simple and yet sophisticated mechanism for decision makingit tells the bacteria where to go. It does that by considering a multitude of different chemical cues, integrating the information, and comparing the current state of the environment with how it was a few moments ago.

Chemotaxis is an example of a chemosensory pathway. There are 19 different types of chemosensory pathways known in bacteria, though not all control motility. Each pathway is made up of different subsets of chemosensory proteins and form independent macromolecules.

The chemosensory system inE. coliwas previously studied, but in this new study, researchers looked at the molecular machinery making up chemosensory pathways in other bacteria of the same class, using a technique called cryo-electron microscopy. They imaged four organisms,Vibrio cholerae(the bacterium that causes cholera),Pseudomonas aeruginosa,Shewanella oneidensis,andMethylomicrobium alcaliphilum,and found two chemosensory systems that were present in all of the bacteria. The systems assemble in distinct structures. One of the systems is known to control flagellar motility, but the function of the other remains a mystery; it only appears in a bacterium when the organism is starving.

Using comparative genomics and phylogenetic analysis, the researchers found that, for still unknown reasons, the chemosensory pathway controlling the flagellar motor inPseudomonasandVibriois different than the one used inE. coli. The system with unknown function later evolved into the chemotaxis system inE. coli, the team found.

We found that changing the input and output of chemosensory systems can change their biological roles in the cell, says Ortega. We show how nature repurposed a complex chemosensory machine to perform a different biological function by making relatively straightforward changes. This work makes chemosensory systems viable candidates to control different cellular functions in the future. For a speculative example, we may one day be able to develop bioengineered bacterial robots, controlled by adaptable chemosensory pathways, that can work as drug delivery systems.

The paper is titled Repurposing a chemosensory macromolecular machine. Additional co-authors include Wen Yang and Ariane Briegel of Leiden University in the Netherlands; former Caltech postdoctoral scholar Poorna Subramanian; Petra Mann and Simon Ringgaard of the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Germany; former Caltech visiting student Andreas Kjr, now of Oxford University; Caltech research scientist Songye Chen (PhD 07), co-facility director of the Beckman Institute Resource Center for Cryo-EM; Kylie Watts of Loma Linda University; Sahand Pirbadian of the University of Southern California; David Collins and Marina Kalyuzhnaya of San Diego State University; and Romain Kooger of Eidgenssische Technische Hochschule Zrich.

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The Evolution of a Bacterial Navigation System - ScienceBlog.com