Daily Archives: June 6, 2020

Two new transitional species of plant-eating horned dinosaurs have been unearthed in New Mexico, the United States.

Navajoceratops sullivani and Terminocavus sealeyi. Image credit: Ville Sinkkonen & Denver Fowler.

The newly-discovered dinosaurs roamed the Earth approximately 75 million years ago (Cretaceous period).

Named Navajoceratops sullivani and Terminocavus sealeyi, both species belong to Ceratopsidae, the same family as famous horned dinosaurs Triceratops, Centrosaurus, and Styracosaurus.

Their fragmentary skulls were uncovered from the Hunter Wash Member of the Kirtland Formation in New Mexico.

The specimens are intermediate in age between two previously known ceratopsid dinosaurs Pentaceratops and Anchiceratops.

Pentaceratops lived 75.3 million years ago in New Mexico and had a distinctive deep notch on the back border of the frill, and a pair of spikes at the center of the frill that turn outwards like the wings of a butterfly.

Anchiceratops had no notch in its frill and lived 3.8 million years later in what is now Canada.

In the 1990s, Texas Tech University paleontologist Thomas Lehman proposed that Pentaceratops might have been the ancestor of Anchiceratops.

Navajoceratops sullivani and Terminocavus sealeyi are intermediate in shape between these two dinosaurs and show how the notch in the frill became even deeper through time and eventually closed in on itself, explaining the lack of a notch in Anchiceratops.

The two intermediate skulls form important links in a 5 million year lineage stretching from Utahceratops through Pentaceratops, to Anchiceratops, said study authors Dr. Denver Fowler and Dr. Elizabeth Freedman Fowler from Badlands Dinosaur Museum and Museum of the Rockies.

The parietal frills of Navajoceratops sullivani (top) and Terminocavus sealeyi (bottom). Image credit: Fowler & Freedman Fowler, doi: 10.7717/peerj.9251.

The new specimens revealed a splitting event deep in the evolutionary history of long-frilled ceratopsids (chasmosaurines), after which a Pentaceratops lineage evolved a progressively deepening notch in the frill, contrasting against its sister group, the Chasmosaurus lineage, which evolved a progressively shallower notch.

The origin of this evolutionary split occurred during the Late Cretaceous period, when a vast interior seaway flooded the lowlands of North America dividing it into eastern and western subcontinents, the paleontologists said.

A short period of especially high sea level 85-83 million years ago brought the edge of the sea very close to the young Rocky Mountains.

For hundreds of miles across what is now central Utah to southern Alberta, the coastal plain would have been as little as 5-10 km wide, providing very little habitat for dinosaurs.

This would have effectively cut off northern and southern populations, which then probably evolved in isolation into two distinct lineages. However, after 83 million years ago, the sea receded from the mountain front, allowing northern and southern populations to mix again.

The teams paper appears in the journal PeerJ.

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D.W. Fowler & E.A. Freedman Fowler. 2020. Transitional evolutionary forms in chasmosaurine ceratopsid dinosaurs: evidence from the Campanian of New Mexico. PeerJ 8: e9251; doi: 10.7717/peerj.9251

This article is based on text provided by Dickinson Museum Center.

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Two New Species from New Mexico Help Fill Gap in Evolution of Horned Dinosaurs | Paleontology - Sci-News.com

Twenty-first century neuroscience is an enticing field of research that offers the potential to deliver novel insights into the cognition of the human brain and the molecular mechanisms behind brain diseases. However, it needs a little help.

The brain is immensely complex, comprised of functionally diverse anatomical regions which contain a multitude of different cell types. We know that, in order for these varying cell types to serve their function, an array of genes must be differentially expressed throughout the brain; specific genes are switched off in certain areas and certain genes are turned on in others.

We need to be able to look at the brain through a genomic lens to assess how genes are regulated or dysregulated in the case of some pathologies to gain a holistic view of its function.

The marriage of neuroscience and genomics has birthed a growing research area known as neurogenomics, which aims to understand how the genome contributes to the evolution, structure, development and function of the nervous system through the analysis of regulatory and transcriptional processes.

The advent of single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has made this feat possible. This technique, which continues to be optimized, provides RNA expression profiles of individual cells. Conventionally, bulk RNA sequencing was the "gold standard" technology for the job; however, in mixed cell populations the measurements obtained from bulk RNA sequencing can miss significant differences between individual cells.More recently, developments in single nuclei RNA sequencing (sNuc-Seq) have propelled the field of neurogenomics even further. Now, researchers can isolate nuclei from particular cells to profile gene expression within that cell an elegant alternative to scRNA-seq for cells that are difficult to isolate.A team of scientists led by Philip Khaitovich, a professor at the Skoltech Center for Life Sciences, has conducted a large-scale analysis of gene expression in 33 different regions of human, chimpanzee, macaque and bonobo brains, adopting a mixture of bulk RNA seq and sNuc-Seq. From the data, they have created transcriptome maps of these brain regions, which they hope will be useful in human evolution research. The study is published in the journal Genome Research.

When looking at the cellular level, the scientists detected multiple expression differences between species with each of the cell types. This extended to non-neuronal cell types, where there was a substantially greater excess of human-specific expression differences in examined brain regions when compared to neurons, including astrocytes and oligodendrocyte progenitors.

The researchers were also able to decipher information on the sensitivity of the techniques adopted in the study.

Whilst multiple expression differences were detected between species within each cell type, approximately one third of these differences could be detected using bulk RNA-seq method; the remaining differences were only detectable using sNuc-Seq.

Whilst the cell-type-specific evolution differences observed in the study are indeed novel, the authors note that their findings do concur with the literature. They also identify an important component that they brand as "missing" from their study, which is an analysis of temporal patterns of expression evolution in the developing brain. They suggest this to be the appropriate next step in this research space.

Reference:

Khrameeva et al. (2020). Single-cell-resolution transcriptome map of human, chimpanzee, bonobo, and 3 macaque brains. Genomics Research. Doi: 10.1101/gr.256958.119

Excerpt from:

Exploring the Evolution of the Human Brain at the Single-cell Level - Technology Networks

A passion for minimalistic, human-powered expeditions has taken endurance athlete and ocean rower Olly Hicks to every continent and to every ocean. A world record-breaking adventurer, his brutal ocean crossings have taught him a little bit about solitude and survival. We sit down to find outa little more about the man behind the adventures.

Oceanographic Magazine (OM): How did you first connect with the ocean?

Olly Hicks (OH):My grandparents had a huge lake near their house in Derbyshire.We were always in that lake, swimming or messing around in old canoes. That was where I first connectedwith the water. I also grew up on the Suffolk coast, with the North Sea on my doorstep: brown, muddy water, stone shingle beaches and waves that would just dump on you, but when you dont know any better We also had a river nearby, so we had the best of both worlds.

OM: What captivated you about ocean rowing?

OH: Im not very introspective, but I think it does all stem from childhood in a way, growing up on the coast and messing around in boats. I didnt like any of the racing, but I loved exploring the creeks and going as far as I could on the river. When I was 13 my dad cut an article out of a newspaper about a man called Peter Bird, who died rowing across the Atlantic. That was really the start of it all. Id never heard of ocean rowing before that and I was just captivated by the concept; the beautiful simplicity of getting into a teeny boat on one continent, and with no technical expertise, just rowing until you get to the other side.

OM:What is it about man-powered minimalistic journeys that appeals to you?

OH: The essence of all these projects is the ocean its not really about the mode of transport. What appeals is being at sea. Solitude is a massive factor. Sailing is expensive and a bit more technical there are so many bits of kit, so much clobber, and its not novel. Budget-wise, it was partly born out of practicality but, that simplicity of concept hasnt changed much. Fundamentally its one person or two or four at the oars, and if they dont row, they aint going anywhere. I think thats the beauty of the challenge. When sailing you might make 200 miles while youre asleep in your bunk, whereas in a rowing boat you might make miles, you might go backwards, you might go south, you might go north, and its that jeopardy of the unknown and the simplicity of challenge. Youve got everything you need in your boat and youve just got to row. It just strips back all the complexity that we have to deal with in our daily lives.

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Evolution of a seafarer: In conversation with Olly Hicks, adventurer and Arksen Foundation executive director - Oceanographic - Oceanographic Magazine

Laurence Girard, Fruit Street Health CEO

Like many healthcare startups, Fruit Street Health has experienced many twists and turns in its evolution as a telemedicine company with multiple products. In an interview with MedCity News, CEO and co-founder Laurence Girard discussed the companys product offerings, business model and its focus on building a community of physician investors, as opposed to seeking funding from venture capitalists, all of which are reflective of the companys mission and journey.

After perceiving a growing need for digital health tools to manage chronic conditions, Girard founded Fruit Street Health in 2014. While serving as an ER volunteer, Girard took a course in nutrition epidemiology at the Harvard Extension School with a Harvard School of Public Health professor, which changed his initial plans of attending medical school.

I realized that we can prevent chronic conditions like heart disease, diabetes and stroke through diet and lifestyle. I also started reading about physicians like Dr. Dean Ornish who proved you could reverse heart disease through diet and lifestyle modification. It made me think I could have a bigger social impact through a combination of technology and entrepreneurship in the field of public health.

In its first phase of business development, Fruit Street created a telemedicine software platform that would eventually be licensed to physicians and dietitians. For the first three years the company was developing telemedicine software and striving to find product market fit. It ultimately succeeded with strategic developments and the formation of critical relationships. Fruit Street found success when it pivoted its business model from telehealth software to delivering the CDCs Diabetes Prevention Program.

In 2017, Girard successfully registered the company for the CDC diabetes prevention program based on advice from a Fitbit executive. Fruit Street eventually got a stamp of approval from the CDC when it achieved full recognition. In order to achieve the full recognition designation from the CDC, diabetes prevention programs must achieve outcomes such as 5% average weight loss for participants that take part for at least nine months.

Fruit Streets flagship product is delivery of the CDCs diabetes prevention program via telehealth and live group video conferencing with registered dietitians. The program is designed to help patients with pre-diabetes lose 5% to 7% of their weight to reduce their risk for developing Type 2 diabetes. The program is based on research CMS funded that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine which proved that the diabetes prevention program helped patients with prediabetes reduce their risk for Type 2 diabetes by 58%.

It involves screening patients via a Type 2 diabetes risk assessment. If the results indicate the patient is at risk for the disease, they will be entered into a weekly telehealth program aimed at managing health and preventing the chronic condition. Members not only participate in the weekly group classes, but also share photos of their meals with dietitians providing feedback. They also use a wireless scale and Fitbit to track their physical activity.

When asked about the impact of the current public health crisis on Fruit Streets business, Girard said Medicares loosening of telehealth regulations has helped attract more customers. He noted that the CDC promoted Fruit Streets software as a solution for in-person diabetes prevention programs to switch to delivery of the program online via telemedicine during the pandemic.

Weve seen a big shift from these in-person diabetes prevention programs to adopting telemedicine relatively quickly, he said.

Rachel Neifeld, a registered dietitian, is among Fruit Streets recent hires who have helped thrust the company into pole position. She leads the digital diabetes prevention program. Previously, Rachel served as an inpatient dietitian at Montefiore Medical Center and New York Presbyterian Hospital, then as an outpatient diabetes educator at Beth Israel Mt. Sinai Endocrine Center.

In late April, Fruit Street hired Chief Technology Officer Ian McFarland, who served in a similar role at Pear Therapeutics, a digital therapeutics business. In fact, it was McFarland who persuaded Girard to expand Fruit Streets offering to include a service aimed at preventing and treating the coronavirus.

Fruit Street Health launched CovidMD at the height of the public health crisis, during which the countrys struggle regarding the need to address public health and the need to restore the economy was at its peak. The risk assessment, triage, and telemedicine platform, built on the Salesforce Service Cloud and Zoom, tracks sources of domestic exposure and pre-existing chronic conditions as part of a proprietary risk scoring system. This system generates both an exposure risk score and a health risk score for each person. Then, users are provided with personalized information about next steps, based on their risk scores and the latest CDC guidelines. Theyre also given the option to connect with a healthcare provider via live video, who will be able to take actions such as write a prescription or order an at-home test for Covid-19.

Eventually, Fruit Street plans to develop a more holistic telemedicine solution that will include behavioral health with psychiatrists and psychologists via live video, virtual primary care, and dietitian-based services which Fruit Street already delivers.

Fruit Streets investment model is what sets the company apart from the myriad of telemedicine companies on the market. Rather than utilize venture capital firms for funds, the company focuses on physician angel investors, who also function as advisers.

I realized that I enjoyed working with the physicians that had invested and they were the ones who were more focused on having a social impact, says Girard. I wanted Fruit Street to be a grassroots effort of physicians who want to have a social impact in public health through the power of telemedicine. I wanted to focus on physician investors rather than venture capitalists because physicians know more about healthcare products than a venture capital firm. What if a physician could use my product or tell me how I should design it based on their experience working with patients?

Asif Ali was the companys first physician-investor, a cardiologist at the University of Texas in Houston.

Physicians tend to invest between $25,000 to $50,000. Girard noted that many tap an IRA/401k to invest in the business. Recently, Fruit Street launched a crowdfunding campaign on StartEngine to offer a wider range of investment points for a wider variety of physician investors, demonstrating the companys value for its physician community, as well as its dedication to improving Fruit Streets program for patients and user experience for physicians.

Physicians develop clinical protocols, but they also talk to each other. I dont start every discussion a physician can post an idea and other physicians can respond in real time. So its really kind of like a collegiate forum where we discuss everything and anything. And then well have weekly updates on Zoom, where well share progress made on the product and the business impact in the chat box or just share their comments on product design and clinical protocols. They might make helpful introductions to potential customers; they might recommend colleagues to invest. Some of them use our telemedicine software in their practice. Some of them are actually telemedicine providers.

Girard has had a long journey in the telemedicine industry. He noted that his idea started on a napkin which has now grown into three telemedicine products that are having a social impact on diabetes prevention and providing medical care online.

Looking ahead, Girard envisions building a physician community of 10,000 that will serve as a hub for expert insights on product development and solidify the companys position for future growth.

Photo Credit: Zoom Video Communications

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Cultivated by physician investors, Fruit Street Health's evolution as a telehealth business - MedCity News

Some, like our friend and colleague Michael Medved, have seen a complex design at work in history. Certainly, the knotting in the present situation in the United States is so complex the pandemic, the lockdown, the economic catastrophe, the death of George Floyd, the protests, the riots and looting, now the curfews, what next? as to be nearly impossible to untangle.

Certain threads in the events of recent months suggest the hand of a skilled novelist. Think of the role played by an elementary physiological process, breathing. Weve seen a virus that terrifies because it robs victims of breath, masks to protect us from the virus that themselves impede breathing, a lockdown that suffocates enterprise even as it brings fresh breathable air to cities because people stop driving their cars, a brutal death in which the victim pleads, I cant breathe, pepper spray to disperse unruly protests that, again, works because it makes it takes ones breath away.

The tapestry of the moment extends further back in time. An article in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday reported the death of a woman who was the last recipient of a veterans pension from the Union Army. The veteran was her father. The reminder that the Civil War was not so long ago struck me, too, as a storytellers touch. Slavery, racism, sectional division these forces that drove Americas greatest conflict remain powerful and raw.

From this tangle of motifs, Wesley Smith of the Center on Human Exceptionalism extracts one lesson relevant to our mission here: that the exceptional place of man in nature is a rebuke to racism.

From Racism Violates Human Exceptionalism, at the Humanize blog:

From a human exceptionalist perspective, racism is evil because it treats inherent equals as if they are unequal. And in the fiction, the racist justifies discriminating against, denigrating, and/or objectifying the targeted victim based on the fallacy that the others life is somehow less important or worth valuing. For people of faith, racism also rejects the victim as being equally made in the likeness and image of God. Talk about hubris!

Racism also violates our duties to love and respect each other simply and merely because we are human. Discriminatory behavior violates our duty as human beings to treat each other as we would want to be treated ourselves. Bigotry is an unacceptable form of withholding. It denies the mutual love we each owe to and are entitled to receive from all.

George Floyd is dead because the police officer who pinned his neck to the ground wanted to dominate his prisoner, perhaps because of Floyds race or maybe, simply because the officer, drunk with his own power, simply thought he could. Domination when not temporarily engaged to prevent danger or thwart harmful actions is a gross abuse of authority. It denies the respect we are each owed, and in a non-proper policing context, impedes human freedom.

Discrimination versus dignity, respect versus domination, freedom and creativity versus suffocation, ordered liberty versus the human zoo these are all the motifs of the hour. And looked at from a height, they are the themes of Discovery Institutes programs.

Recognizing the intelligent design in life is an antidote to the most negative ideas circulating in our culture. By contrast, seeing human beings as natural flotsam, tossed up by a random, unplanned material process without purpose or meaning, can contribute nothing positive. It only degrades and impoverishes.

The scientific debate about evolution can be set alongside the cultural impact of evolutionary thinking, uncovered in Discovery Institute documentaries like Human Zoos and The Biology of the Second Reich. A direct line connects Charles Darwin himself with these downstream effects.

In The Descent of Man, Darwin emphasized that humans are only animals in the end: Man is constructed on the same general type or model with other mammals. There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties. There is nothing special about our origins: I have at least, he wrote, as I hope, done good service in aiding to overthrow the dogma of separate creations. From his observations, Darwin drew the conclusion of a racial hierarchy with Africans at the bottom. He predicted that The civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races through the world.

Darwinian racism, with its denial of mankinds exceptional status, flowed like a river into the textbooks that American high school biology students learned from for decades. Only the civil rights movement began to turn that river backward. Martin Luther King Jr. understood the influence of scientific materialism on scientific racism and, as Discovery Institutes John West has noted here, he spoke forcefully against the idea that humans are the products of a blind material process. The design in U.S. history, which were living through right now, cant be understood without due regard for this crucial background.

Photo: A tribute to George Floyd, Minneapolis, by Lorie Shaull / CC BY-SA.

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Racism, Evolution, and Human Exceptionalism - Discovery Institute

The COVID-19 pandemic is making us rethink our life choices. Normalcy has taken on a new meaning and we are yet to experience how it will manifest further. It is not just about our health and economy but more about the basic way of continuing our lives. It does seem like 100 years of evolution is certainly being challenged in the last 100 days.

The last century saw us address needs of life, businesses, and society through newer inventions, technology shifts, industrialisation and automation, and in recent times digitalisation. There is incremental progress made over the years in every sphere of life, but the disruption has been gradual and seamless.

However, with the COVID-19 situation, several businesses are struggling to stay viable, product lifespan is under question and the entire business lifecycle of marketing, sales and operations must be reimagined, redesigned, and calibrated to suit all scenarios.

Businesses drive economy and future innovations. Most enterprises will need to heavily rely on data and digital technologies to carry out analysis and build models/scenarios to help them plan during such crises. A classic case of Darwinism is at play we will see a continued struggle for existence and survival of the fittest.

The big question is will businesses pivot on knowledge or assumptions? Past knowledge might not be relevant, but assumptions supported by a bunch of hypotheses and validated through data (real or simulated), will take us places.

With data-fuelled assumptions, the operating model must engage, serve and support customers for a better flexible design. Education, healthcare, and workplaces are leveraging digital technologies to change how they operate.

From a brick-and-mortar structure to a massive surge in online shopping, app-based deliveries, telemedicine, and repurposed transport vehicles supporting digital infrastructure, we are seeing it all.

Some of these shifts are here to stay. COVID-19 is radically accelerating the digital future towards the following:

Most of the times, businesses fail to ask good questions about data, governance, and agility. They are sitting on answers but are not breaking the barriers of departments. As businesses learn to harness and leverage more cross-departmental data, they will be able to build relevant and credible customer experiences.

Insights from streams of data will continuously improve business processes and machine learning will drive artificial intelligence into the mainstream.

Improvement in real-time data availability enables risk prediction and management. With a rolling forecast, resources could be optimally allocated to brace against sudden business impacts.

A continuous scenario planning around finance, sales, supply chain and operations gives businesses the desired agility for a longer sustenance.

We cannot afford a perpetual denial of the need for a connected digital ecosystem anymore.

With exposed vulnerabilities of processes, systems, and people working in silos, there is now an increased demand for proactive listening and collaboration at every touchpoint, for a fail-proof digital experience.

The new normal will see rapid inventions, innovation areas, and nimble technologies aligned with future needs. There is already a multifold demand for cloud, SaaS and collaborative technologies and investments will skyrocket in these areas.

It is a mixture of automation technologies - from RPA to AI, that exist to augment and expand human capabilities. With increased insights, reduced risks and an educated workforce, businesses will be able to make informed decisions with better inter-operability between processes.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution and digitalisation have already set in motion the wheels of change. As more collaborative digital technologies join the bandwagon of keeping businesses afloat, it not only provides cost saving tickets but also increased job productivity. By empowering employees to work how, where, and when they like, businesses can create a responsive work culture.

If the present scenario is anyway making consumers behave differently, then why not reimagine the way our businesses function. It is time to take steps forward to join this undeniable digital revolution, with numerous technologies and data already at our aid.

Amidst volatility, complexity, and uncertainty lie hidden opportunities of evolution, learning, and growth, fuelled by calculated assumptions of a digital future ahead.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)

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100 years of evolution is being challenged in last 100 days - YourStory

As the world prepares for future waves of COVID-19, the ability to predict mutations in the novel coronavirus even before they emerge will be essential to stopping future outbreaks.

Dr. Natalie Strynadka

UBC faculty of medicines Dr. Robert Brunham and Dr. Natalie Strynadka, together with the faculty of sciences Steven Plotkinalong with a team of commercial and academic collaboratorsare one step closer to achieving this thanks to a $1.8 million grant from the Digital Technology Supercluster COVID-19 Program, which aims to find solutions to urgent health care needs across Canada arising from COVID-19.

The project, Predicting the Evolution of COVID-19, brings together experts in artificial intelligence, computer modelling and structural biology to predict changes to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The findings will inform the early design of effective tests, therapies and vaccines, allowing public health systems globally to prepare and ideally prevent future pandemics caused by evolving strains of the virus.

For the first six-month phase of the project, Dr. Strynadkas lab is working to generate atomic resolution experimental datausing a cutting edge biophysical toolbox including x-ray crystallography and single particle cryo-electron microscopythat will in turn help train the computational algorithms to optimally predict future mutations of the virus

We are incredibly excited about this project, and grateful to the Digital Technology Supercluster for supporting our work, says Dr. Strynadka, a professor in the faculty of medicines department of biochemistry and molecular biology. Our goal is to harness powerful computational methods to predict mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 virus. We are working to create algorithms that will hopefully keep us a step ahead of the virus and give us the ability to know where future mutations might arise.

Our goal is to harness powerful computational methods to predict mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 virus. We are working to create algorithms that will hopefully keep us a step ahead of the virus and give us the ability to know where future mutations might arise. Dr. Natalie Strynadka

Dr. Brunham, a professor in the faculty of medicines division of infectious diseases and head of the Vaccine Research Laboratory at the BC Centre for Disease Control who was involved in responding to the SARS outbreak in 2003, is lending his expertise in vaccine development.

Dr. Robert Brunham

We believe the coronavirus spike protein may very well be the basis for a vaccine for this virus, says Brunham. This work will be tremendously important in anticipating whether the virus will mutate to escape immunity generated by the vaccine.

As part of the project, Plotkins lab is designing a universal antibody therapy that the virus cant easily evade through mutation.

Given past outbreaks such as SARS and MERS, which were also caused by coronaviruses, there is no reason to assume that another pandemic wouldnt happen again, says Plotkin, a professor in the department of physics and astronomy and has held a Canada Research Chair in Theoretical Molecular Biophysics. This is a problem that is not going to go away on its own, so we have to be forward-thinking in finding solutions for it.

The Predicting the Evolution of COVID-19 project is led by Terramera, a Vancouver-based company that fuses science, nature and artificial intelligence to transform how food is grown and the economics of agriculture. Collaborating partners include D-Wave, Menten AI, Microsoft, and ProMIS Neurosciences.

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Predicting the evolution of COVID-19 to help manage future outbreaks - UBC Faculty of Medicine