scientificamerican--2020-11-11--The Real Danger Posed by Coronavirus-Infected Mink

A new coronavirus strain has appeared on Danish mink farms .
Since June more than 200 people have been infected with this new variant , which includes a mutation called “ Cluster 5.
” In order to prevent further spread , on November 4 the Danish government announced that all mink in the country would be killed , although the plan was subsequently put on hold amid opposition from lawmakers .
The fear is that this mutation has the potential to decrease the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines currently under development .
Information about the mutations published to date does not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remains unclear what effect these mutations might have .
Like ferrets and several other animals , mink are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 and capable of spreading it to members of their own species .
In addition , they can also pass the virus on to humans , as several cases in the Netherlands this past June demonstrated .
The Danish coronavirus variant exhibits two mutations that , according to the scant information available thus far from the Statens Serum Institute in Copenhagen , affect the spike protein that the virus uses to infect cells @ @ @ @ @ @ @ analyses , the mutations decrease the efficacy of antibodies .
Researchers discovered in August that one of the mutations deactivates antibodies in the therapeutic cocktail made by the company Regeneron , which was used to treat U.S. president Donald Trump .
Although some initial conclusions can be drawn about the fundamental characteristics of the novel coronavirus from laboratory studies and computer analyses , they do not tell us how the virus actually behaves in humans .
SARS-CoV-2 Already Binds Very Well The challenge of understanding SARS-CoV-2 ’ s behavior became apparent during discussions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which characterizes a dominant virus strain found especially in Europe and along the East Coast of the U.S .
It is still unclear whether this strain ’ s elevated transmissibility observed in the laboratory also occurs in the cells of living people .
This also holds true for the two main mutations , which , according to a team led by Jesse Bloom of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center , increase how well the spike protein binds to human ACE2 receptors .
As Bloom ’ s lab tweeted in early November @ @ @ @ @ @ @ human transmission or disease ?
Impossible to say , but probably nothing at least for transmission.
” Bloom says there is no indication that SARS-CoV-2 is evolving toward increased binding ability .
The virus ’ s existing machinery presumably works sufficiently well .
Other experts in the field also doubt whether the mutations found in minks will prove directly relevant to the pandemic .
Geneticist Francois Balloux of University College London tweeted that the mutations are nothing to worry about .
Because of their already high mutation rate , variants of this sort @ @ @ @ @ @ @ humans .
If they actually provided a significant advantage in terms of transmission , they would have become more widespread long ago .
Presently , the World Health Organization ( WHO ) also sees no evidence of elevated risk .
According to WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan , speaking from Geneva on Friday , there have already been numerous SARS-CoV-2 mutations .
“ It is too early to jump to conclusions as to the implications of what these specific mutations have ” for transmissibility , severity of disease , clinical symptoms , immune @ @ @ @ @ @ @ says .
The situation may be different for “ escape mutations , ” which enable the virus to evade an immune response—and even to compromise the efficacy of the vaccine .
According to Bloom , it is possible for a mutation to have a small antigen effect , meaning it affects binding of the antibodies produced by the vaccine .
But based on his own research , he does not believe that such a mutation alone would dramatically decrease the effectiveness of the immune response .
Mutations are not the only problem raised @ @ @ @ @ @ @ larger issue is the potential for the virus to spread independently in animal populations .
Researchers fear that mink and related species will form a “ reservoir , ” providing a permanent refuge for the virus .
That would significantly complicate the battle against SARS-CoV-2 .
For example , say the virus has been completely eradicated in one region .
If , however , it continues to be present in domesticated animals or even pets , it could reemerge at any time as if out of the blue .
Even if there is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will not be enough of it available at first to vaccinate the entire population—or even high-risk groups .
So the supply that is available must be used in a targeted campaign to contain the virus .
“ Ring vaccination , ” in which a sort of protective wall is created around people known to be infected by vaccinating their contacts and their contacts ’ contacts so that the virus is unable to spread further , could be an important approach .
That would be a promising strategy if coronavirus cases decrease significantly next @ @ @ @ @ @ @ percentage of people infected actually infect others .
This observation explains why many infection chains simply peter out on their own .
Even without a vaccine , some countries have been able to virtually eradicate the virus using targeted measures alone .
With a vaccine , the chances of halting the disease would increase significantly elsewhere as well .
The situation changes , however , as soon as the virus finds refuge and establishes itself in animal hosts .
At that point , breaking the chain of human infection is no longer enough @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This scenario is not at all implausible because , aside from mink , some other species may have a high susceptibility to the virus .
And some of these animals may be preyed upon by cats , which also are vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 .
To date , cats have played no role in the pandemic , but it is unclear what might happen if they come into regular contact with infected wild animals .
This article originally appeared in Spektrum der Wissenschaft and was reproduced with permission .
Read more about the coronavirus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ read coverage from our international network of magazines here .

A new coronavirus strain has appeared on Danish mink farms. Since June mink-related variants have infected more than 200 people, about a dozen of whom had a mutation called “Cluster 5.” In order to prevent further spread, on November 4 the Danish government announced that all mink in the country would be killed, although the plan was subsequently put on hold amid opposition from lawmakers. The fear is that this mutation has the potential to decrease the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines currently under development. Information about the mutations published to date does not support this claim. Nevertheless, it remains unclear what effect these mutations might have.
Like ferrets and several other animals, mink are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 and capable of spreading it to members of their own species. In addition, they can also pass the virus on to humans, as several cases in the Netherlands this past June demonstrated.
The Danish coronavirus variant exhibits two mutations that, according to the scant information available thus far from the Statens Serum Institute in Copenhagen, affect the spike protein that the virus uses to infect cells. According to the institute’s analyses, the mutations decrease the efficacy of antibodies. Researchers discovered in August that one of the mutations deactivates antibodies in the therapeutic cocktail made by the company Regeneron, which was used to treat U.S. president Donald Trump.
Although some initial conclusions can be drawn about the fundamental characteristics of the novel coronavirus from laboratory studies and computer analyses, they do not tell us how the virus actually behaves in humans.
SARS-CoV-2 Already Binds Very Well
The challenge of understanding SARS-CoV-2’s behavior became apparent during discussions around a previously identified mutation called D614G, which characterizes a dominant virus strain found especially in Europe and along the East Coast of the U.S. It is still unclear whether this strain’s elevated transmissibility observed in the laboratory also occurs in the cells of living people.
This also holds true for the two main mutations, which, according to a team led by Jesse Bloom of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, increase how well the spike protein binds to human ACE2 receptors. As Bloom’s lab tweeted in early November, “What does this mean for human transmission or disease? Impossible to say, but probably nothing at least for transmission.” Bloom says there is no indication that SARS-CoV-2 is evolving toward increased binding ability. The virus’s existing machinery presumably works sufficiently well.
Other experts in the field also doubt whether the mutations found in minks will prove directly relevant to the pandemic. Geneticist Francois Balloux of University College London tweeted that the mutations are nothing to worry about. Because of their already high mutation rate, variants of this sort and others have probably already appeared in humans. If they actually provided a significant advantage in terms of transmission, they would have become more widespread long ago. Presently, the World Health Organization (WHO) also sees no evidence of elevated risk. According to WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan, speaking from Geneva on Friday, there have already been numerous SARS-CoV-2 mutations. “It is too early to jump to conclusions as to the implications of what these specific mutations have” for transmissibility, severity of disease, clinical symptoms, immune response or potential vaccine efficacy, she says.
The situation may be different for “escape mutations,” which enable the virus to evade an immune response—and even to compromise the efficacy of the vaccine. According to Bloom, it is possible for a mutation to have a small antigen effect, meaning it affects binding of the antibodies produced by the vaccine. But based on his own research, he does not believe that such a mutation alone would dramatically decrease the effectiveness of the immune response.
Finding Refuge in Animals
Mutations are not the only problem raised by SARS-CoV-2-infected mink, however. The larger issue is the potential for the virus to spread independently in animal populations. Researchers fear that mink and related species will form a “reservoir,” providing a permanent refuge for the virus. That would significantly complicate the battle against SARS-CoV-2. For example, say the virus has been completely eradicated in one region. If, however, it continues to be present in domesticated animals or even pets, it could reemerge at any time as if out of the blue.
Even if there is a sufficient supply of vaccine, there will not be enough of it available at first to vaccinate the entire population—or even high-risk groups. So the supply that is available must be used in a targeted campaign to contain the virus. “Ring vaccination,” in which a sort of protective wall is created around people known to be infected by vaccinating their contacts and their contacts’ contacts so that the virus is unable to spread further, could be an important approach.
That would be a promising strategy if coronavirus cases decrease significantly next summer, especially because only a small percentage of people infected actually infect others. This observation explains why many infection chains simply peter out on their own. Even without a vaccine, some countries have been able to virtually eradicate the virus using targeted measures alone. With a vaccine, the chances of halting the disease would increase significantly elsewhere as well.
The situation changes, however, as soon as the virus finds refuge and establishes itself in animal hosts. At that point, breaking the chain of human infection is no longer enough because animals can cause new outbreaks. This scenario is not at all implausible because, aside from mink, some other species may have a high susceptibility to the virus. And some of these animals may be preyed upon by cats, which also are vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2. To date, cats have played no role in the pandemic, but it is unclear what might happen if they come into regular contact with infected wild animals.
This article originally appeared in Spektrum der Wissenschaft and was reproduced with permission.
Read more about the coronavirus outbreak from Scientific American here. And read coverage from our international network of magazines here.
Editor’s Note (10/11/20): Spektrum der Wissenchaft has updated this story after posting to clarify the number of people infected with a new mink coronavirus variant.


scientificamerican--2020-11-11--Digital Medicine Can Diagnose and Treat What Ails You

Could the next prescription from your doctor be for an app ?
A raft of apps in use or under development can now detect or monitor mental and physical disorders autonomously or directly administer therapies .
Collectively known as digital medicines , the software can both enhance traditional medical care and support patients when access to health care is limited—a need that the COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated .
Many detection aids rely on mobile devices to record such features as users ' voices , locations , facial expressions , exercise , sleep and texting activity ; then they apply artificial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exacerbation of a condition .
Some smart watches , for instance , contain a sensor that automatically detects and alerts people to atrial fibrillation , a dangerous heart rhythm .
Similar tools are in the works to screen for breathing disorders , depression , Parkinson 's , Alzheimer 's , autism and other conditions .
These detection , or “ digital phenotyping , ” aids will not replace a doctor any time soon but can be helpful partners in highlighting concerns that need follow-up .
Detection aids can also take the form of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ devices .
Some are being developed to detect things such as cancerous DNA , gases emitted by gut microbes , stomach bleeds , body temperature and oxygen levels .
The sensors relay the data to apps for recording .
The therapeutic apps are likewise designed for a variety of disorders .
The first prescription digital therapeutic to gain FDA approval was Pear Therapeutics 's reSET technology for substance use disorder .
Okayed in 2018 as an adjunct to care from a health professional , reSET provides 24/7 cognitive-behavioral therapy ( CBT ) and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ' cravings and triggers .
Somryst , an insomnia therapy app , and EndeavorRX , the first therapy delivered as a video game for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder , received FDA clearance earlier this year .
Looking ahead , Odin , a children 's health start-up , has designed a virtual- reality app to treat amblyopia ( lazy eye ) —an alternative to an eye patch .
One day college students might receive alerts from a smart watch suggesting they seek help for mild depression after the watch detects changes in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ might turn to the Woebot chat bot for CBT counseling .
Not all wellness apps qualify as digital medicines .
For the most part , those intended to diagnose or treat disorders must be proved safe and effective in clinical trials and earn regulatory approval ; some may need a doctor 's prescription .
( In April , to help with the COVID-19 pandemic , the FDA made temporary exceptions for low-risk mental health devices . )
COVID-19 highlighted the importance of digital medicine .
As the outbreak unfolded , dozens of apps @ @ @ @ @ @ @ available .
Additionally , hospitals and government agencies across the globe deployed variations of Microsoft 's Healthcare Bot service .
Instead of waiting on hold with a call center or risking a trip to the emergency room , people concerned about experiencing , say , coughing and fever could chat with a bot , which used natural-language processing to ask about symptoms and , based on AI analyses , could describe possible causes or begin a telemedicine session for assessment by a physician .
By late April the bots had already fielded more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and treatments .
Such interventions greatly reduced the strain on health systems .
Clearly , society must move into the future of digital medicine with care—ensuring that the tools undergo rigorous testing , protect privacy and integrate smoothly into doctors ' workflows .
With such protections in place , digital phenotyping and therapeutics could save health care costs by flagging unhealthy behaviors and helping people to make changes before diseases set in .
Moreover , applying AI to the big data sets that will be generated by digital phenotyping and therapeutic apps should @ @ @ @ @ @ @ patterns that emerge will also provide researchers with novel ideas for how best to build healthier habits and prevent disease .

Could the next prescription from your doctor be for an app? A raft of apps in use or under development can now detect or monitor mental and physical disorders autonomously or directly administer therapies. Collectively known as digital medicines, the software can both enhance traditional medical care and support patients when access to health care is limited—a need that the COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated.
Many detection aids rely on mobile devices to record such features as users' voices, locations, facial expressions, exercise, sleep and texting activity; then they apply artificial intelligence to flag the possible onset or exacerbation of a condition. Some smart watches, for instance, contain a sensor that automatically detects and alerts people to atrial fibrillation, a dangerous heart rhythm. Similar tools are in the works to screen for breathing disorders, depression, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, autism and other conditions. These detection, or “digital phenotyping,” aids will not replace a doctor any time soon but can be helpful partners in highlighting concerns that need follow-up. Detection aids can also take the form of ingestible, sensor-bearing pills, called microbioelectronic devices. Some are being developed to detect things such as cancerous DNA, gases emitted by gut microbes, stomach bleeds, body temperature and oxygen levels. The sensors relay the data to apps for recording.
The therapeutic apps are likewise designed for a variety of disorders. The first prescription digital therapeutic to gain FDA approval was Pear Therapeutics's reSET technology for substance use disorder. Okayed in 2018 as an adjunct to care from a health professional, reSET provides 24/7 cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and gives clinicians real-time data on their patients' cravings and triggers. Somryst, an insomnia therapy app, and EndeavorRX, the first therapy delivered as a video game for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, received FDA clearance earlier this year.
Looking ahead, Luminopia, a children's health start-up, has designed a virtual-reality app to treat amblyopia (lazy eye)—an alternative to an eye patch.* One day college students might receive alerts from a smart watch suggesting they seek help for mild depression after the watch detects changes in speech and socializing patterns; then they might turn to the Woebot chat bot for CBT counseling.
Not all wellness apps qualify as digital medicines. For the most part, those intended to diagnose or treat disorders must be proved safe and effective in clinical trials and earn regulatory approval; some may need a doctor's prescription. (In April, to help with the COVID-19 pandemic, the FDA made temporary exceptions for low-risk mental health devices.)
COVID-19 highlighted the importance of digital medicine. As the outbreak unfolded, dozens of apps for detecting depression and providing counseling became available. Additionally, hospitals and government agencies across the globe deployed variations of Microsoft's Healthcare Bot service. Instead of waiting on hold with a call center or risking a trip to the emergency room, people concerned about experiencing, say, coughing and fever could chat with a bot, which used natural-language processing to ask about symptoms and, based on AI analyses, could describe possible causes or begin a telemedicine session for assessment by a physician. By late April the bots had already fielded more than 200 million inquiries about COVID symptoms and treatments. Such interventions greatly reduced the strain on health systems.
Clearly, society must move into the future of digital medicine with care—ensuring that the tools undergo rigorous testing, protect privacy and integrate smoothly into doctors' workflows. With such protections in place, digital phenotyping and therapeutics could save health care costs by flagging unhealthy behaviors and helping people to make changes before diseases set in. Moreover, applying AI to the big data sets that will be generated by digital phenotyping and therapeutic apps should help to personalize patient care. The patterns that emerge will also provide researchers with novel ideas for how best to build healthier habits and prevent disease.
*Editor’s Note (11/11/20): This sentence has been revised after posting to update the name of the company.


scientificamerican--2020-11-11--Spatial Computing Could Be the Next Big Thing

Imagine Martha , an octogenarian who lives independently and uses a wheelchair .
All objects in her home are digitally catalogued ; all sensors and the devices that control objects have been Internet-enabled ; and a digital map of her home has been merged with the object map .
As Martha moves from her bedroom to the kitchen , the lights switch on , and the ambient temperature adjusts .
The chair will slow if her cat crosses her path .
When she reaches the kitchen , the table moves to improve her access to the refrigerator and stove , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to eat .
Later , if she begins to fall when getting into bed , her furniture shifts to protect her , and an alert goes to her son and the local monitoring station .
The “ spatial computing ” at the heart of this scene is the next step in the ongoing convergence of the physical and digital worlds .
It does everything virtual-reality and augmented-reality apps do : digitize objects that connect via the cloud ; allow sensors and motors to react to one another ; and digitally represent the real @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with high-fidelity spatial mapping to enable a computer “ coordinator ” to track and control the movements and interactions of objects as a person navigates through the digital or physical world .
Spatial computing will soon bring human-machine and machine-machine interactions to new levels of efficiency in many walks of life , among them industry , health care , transportation and the home .
Major companies , including Microsoft and Amazon , are heavily invested in the technology .
As is true of virtual and augmented reality , spatial computing builds on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ computer-aided design ( CAD ) .
In CAD , engineers create a digital representation of an object .
This twin can be used variously to 3-D-print the object , design new versions of it , provide virtual training on it or join it with other digital objects to create virtual worlds .
Spatial computing makes digital twins not just of objects but of people and locations—using GPS , lidar ( light detection and ranging ) , video and other geolocation technologies to create a digital map of a room , a building or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ digital map with sensor data and digital representations of objects and people to create a digital world that can be observed , quantified and manipulated and that can also manipulate the real world .
In the medical realm , consider this futuristic scenario : A paramedic team is dispatched to an apartment in a city to handle a patient who might need emergency surgery .
As the system sends the patient 's medical records and real-time updates to the technicians ' mobile devices and to the emergency department , it also determines the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Red lights hold crossing traffic , and as the ambulance pulls up , the building 's entry doors open , revealing an elevator already in position .
Objects move out of the way as the medics hurry in with their stretcher .
As the system guides them to the ER via the quickest route , a surgical team uses spatial computing and augmented reality to map out the choreography of the entire operating room or plan a surgical path through this patient 's body .
Industry has already embraced the integration of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Internet of Things to optimize productivity and will likely be an early adopter of spatial computing .
The technology can add location-based tracking to a piece of equipment or an entire factory .
By donning augmented-reality headsets or viewing a projected holographic image that displays not only repair instructions but also a spatial map of the machine components , workers can be guided through and around the machine to fix it as efficiently as possible—shrinking down time and its costs .
Or if a technician were engaging with a virtual-reality version of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as they built a factory , spatial-computing algorithms could help optimize the safety , efficiency and quality of the work by improving , for example , the coordination of the robots and the selection of tasks assigned to them .
In a more common scenario , fast-food and retail companies could combine spatial computing with standard industrial engineering techniques ( such as time-motion analyses ) to enhance the efficient flow of work .

Imagine Martha, an octogenarian who lives independently and uses a wheelchair. All objects in her home are digitally catalogued; all sensors and the devices that control objects have been Internet-enabled; and a digital map of her home has been merged with the object map. As Martha moves from her bedroom to the kitchen, the lights switch on, and the ambient temperature adjusts. The chair will slow if her cat crosses her path. When she reaches the kitchen, the table moves to improve her access to the refrigerator and stove, then moves back when she is ready to eat. Later, if she begins to fall when getting into bed, her furniture shifts to protect her, and an alert goes to her son and the local monitoring station.
The “spatial computing” at the heart of this scene is the next step in the ongoing convergence of the physical and digital worlds. It does everything virtual-reality and augmented-reality apps do: digitize objects that connect via the cloud; allow sensors and motors to react to one another; and digitally represent the real world. Then it combines these capabilities with high-fidelity spatial mapping to enable a computer “coordinator” to track and control the movements and interactions of objects as a person navigates through the digital or physical world. Spatial computing will soon bring human-machine and machine-machine interactions to new levels of efficiency in many walks of life, among them industry, health care, transportation and the home. Major companies, including Microsoft and Amazon, are heavily invested in the technology.
As is true of virtual and augmented reality, spatial computing builds on the “digital twin” concept familiar from computer-aided design (CAD). In CAD, engineers create a digital representation of an object. This twin can be used variously to 3-D-print the object, design new versions of it, provide virtual training on it or join it with other digital objects to create virtual worlds. Spatial computing makes digital twins not just of objects but of people and locations—using GPS, lidar (light detection and ranging), video and other geolocation technologies to create a digital map of a room, a building or a city. Software algorithms integrate this digital map with sensor data and digital representations of objects and people to create a digital world that can be observed, quantified and manipulated and that can also manipulate the real world.
In the medical realm, consider this futuristic scenario: A paramedic team is dispatched to an apartment in a city to handle a patient who might need emergency surgery. As the system sends the patient's medical records and real-time updates to the technicians' mobile devices and to the emergency department, it also determines the fastest driving route to reach the person. Red lights hold crossing traffic, and as the ambulance pulls up, the building's entry doors open, revealing an elevator already in position. Objects move out of the way as the medics hurry in with their stretcher. As the system guides them to the ER via the quickest route, a surgical team uses spatial computing and augmented reality to map out the choreography of the entire operating room or plan a surgical path through this patient's body.
Industry has already embraced the integration of dedicated sensors, digital twins and the Internet of Things to optimize productivity and will likely be an early adopter of spatial computing. The technology can add location-based tracking to a piece of equipment or an entire factory. By donning augmented-reality headsets or viewing a projected holographic image that displays not only repair instructions but also a spatial map of the machine components, workers can be guided through and around the machine to fix it as efficiently as possible—shrinking down time and its costs. Or if a technician were engaging with a virtual-reality version of a true remote site to direct several robots as they built a factory, spatial-computing algorithms could help optimize the safety, efficiency and quality of the work by improving, for example, the coordination of the robots and the selection of tasks assigned to them. In a more common scenario, fast-food and retail companies could combine spatial computing with standard industrial engineering techniques (such as time-motion analyses) to enhance the efficient flow of work.


scientificamerican--2020-11-11--Solving the Mysteries of Ancient Plagues

In 541 C.E.
, after years of campaigning against Goths and Vandals , Emperor Justinian I had built the eastern @ @ @ @ @ dominion , nearly encircling the Mediterranean Sea .
That year , however , gave the @ @ @ @ @ .
Instead he was attacked by a deadly new foe , an invisible and incomprehensible @ @

In 541 C.E., after years of campaigning against Goths and Vandals, Emperor Justinian I had built the eastern Roman Empire into a vast dominion, nearly encircling the Mediterranean Sea. That year, however, gave the ruler no chance to celebrate. Instead he was attacked by a deadly new foe, an invisible and incomprehensible enemy.
A mysterious plague swept across Justinian's lands and into his capital, Constantinople. Victims spiked high fevers, their armpits and groins swelled painfully, and many became delirious. The emperor himself fell ill. Rumors of his demise filled the panicked city. Historian Procopius, a resident of the city, claimed that on some days as many as 10,000 people died. Justinian managed to survive the contagion, but his empire remained scarred for years afterward, losing its grip on many territories and struggling to maintain control of Rome.
Scientists have debated the identity of this scourge up to the present day. While some blamed the plague on a particularly lethal strain of the bacterium Yersinia pestis—the symptoms resembled the medieval Black Death, and Y. pestis is the bug behind that devastation—other have argued Justinian was beset by an influenza virus related to the notorious 1918 flu epidemic, which killed an estimated 50 million to 100 million people. Historians have also wondered where the disease started. Many pointed the finger at Egypt because historical accounts noted a similar ailment appeared there just before Justinian's catastrophe.
Now biologists and archaeologists, teaming up to recover ancient DNA from teeth and bones from that time, have been able to resolve this long-standing debate. The teeth hold DNA from Y. pestis, not remnants of the flu. Following this strain back in time and across the globe, researchers learned that the plague began not in Egypt but in western China and traveled across the high grasslands of the Eurasian Steppe before hitting Europe.
The disease “had evolved for quite a while before it was seen in the Roman Empire,” says Alexander Herbig of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, who used computers to reconstruct DNA changes in the pathogen as it moved from place to place. Over time some of these changes enabled the pathogen to live and spread in new kinds of hosts, extending its devastating reach.
This ability to pull the DNA of disease-causing microorganisms from ancient human remains is helping to fill in a number of big blanks in history books. The molecules show how our history has been shaped by encounters with bacteria and viruses that blew up into pandemics. In addition to the events that shook Justinian's era, scientists have used pathogen DNA to improve our understanding of the origins of the Black Death and the fall of the Aztec Empire. They have even found evidence that a disease during the Bronze Age paved the way for a surge of people out of Asia and into Europe—and those people brought with them technology, culture and genes whose influence can still be seen today.
With these discoveries, certain patterns have emerged about the way microbes turn into plagues. The tiny organisms tend to spread death when they encounter groups of individuals who live packed densely together. They race through populations that have never been exposed before and thus have low levels of natural immunity. Growing international trade and increased human mobility amplify the spread, and pathogens usually have found heightened vulnerabilities among people marginalized and impoverished by society, who have few resources to protect themselves. We are now seeing these patterns again as our current pandemic, driven by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, races across the globe.
Credit: George Retseck (maps) and Jen Christiansen (graphic); Sources: “Ancient Pathogen Genomics as an Emerging Tool for Infectious Disease Research,” by Maria A. Spyrou et al., in Nature Reviews Genetics, Vol. 20; 2019; “Yersinia pestis and the Plague of Justinian 541–543 A.D.: A Genomic Analysis,” by David M. Wagner et al., in Lancet Infectious Diseases, Vol. 14; April 2014; “Emergence and Spread of Basal Lineages of Yersinia pestis during the Neolithic Decline,” by Nicolas Rascovan et al., in Cell, Vol. 176; January 2019; and “Historical Y. pestis Genomes Reveal the European Black Death as the Source of Ancient and Modern Plague Pandemics,” by Maria A. Spyrou et al., in Cell Host & Microbe, Vol. 19; June 2016
Molecular Clues
Scientists and historians have long been interested in connecting pathogen biology to history, but until about a decade ago attempts were thwarted by difficulties in analyzing DNA from ancient remains (aDNA). Efforts to recover pathogen genomes from Black Death burials, for instance, resulted only in “repeated failure, repeated failure, repeated failure,” laments Hendrik Poinar, an aDNA biologist at McMaster University in Ontario. The buried bones were degraded and held only vanishingly small quantities of genetic molecules belonging to the microbes.
Two developments changed the picture in the past decade. One was the recognition by specialists in archaeological genomics that they had been looking at the wrong parts of the skeleton. Teeth, not bones, are the best time capsules. On the outside, teeth are shielded by a tough enamel layer. On the inside, the dental pulp is stuffed with desiccated blood—and the degraded remnants of blood-borne pathogens. Scientists can drill out the interior with a dental drill, dissolve it and, with a little luck, discover some remnants of microbial DNA.
But those samples are scrambled and fragmented. They still need to be stitched back together into long, detailed sequences of DNA so that they can be identified as belonging to a particular bacterium or virus. Next-generation sequencing, a method that speeds up this reassembly, was the second big advance. The technique came into wide use recently thanks to more powerful computers, and it “changed the game entirely,” Poinar says. Essentially the method involves sequencing lots of short strings of DNA at the same time, in parallel, and reassembling them into a recognizable genome by connecting them where series of letters (the familiar A, T, C and G of the genetic code) overlap. The approach makes it possible to reconstruct an entire genome from a degraded sample, sidestepping the need to recover a rare long stretch of high-quality DNA.
One of the first successes of this combination of better samples and new technology came in 2011. Poinar and his colleagues recovered a draft Y. pestis genome from teeth obtained in a London Black Death burial site. Their find confirmed, after decades of speculation, that this bug was indeed responsible for the medieval pandemic that killed 30 percent or more of the European population between 1347 and 1351. There was nothing especially virulent about this strain, researchers learned over the next five years; it was quite similar to modern Y. pestis, which is not nearly as deadly. The high medieval death toll seemed to be driven by an exploding population of runaway black rats, which carried the bacterium through a crowded and malnourished population in burgeoning cities with awful sanitary conditions.
Perhaps the biggest surprise from plague aDNA has come from even earlier burials. It turns out that neither the Justinian nor the medieval pandemics were the first times this microbe altered human events on a transcontinental scale.
A Prehistoric Pandemic
In 2015 data from 101 ancient human genomes, extracted from skeletons buried across the Eurasian Steppe, established that an Early Bronze Age people, the Yamnaya culture, moved down from the steppe around 5,000 years ago, replacing the Neolithic farming cultures of Europe. The newcomers had domesticated horses and new forms of metallurgy and were probably warlike, but still the large-scale population changeover has puzzled scientists because the European groups had done well for centuries. “How on earth could those very well-organized, apparently prosperous European Neolithic societies go into decline?” asked one of the archaeologists involved in this work, Kristian Kristiansen of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Some archaeological evidence pointed toward a Europe-wide population crash among the farmers around the time of the Yamnaya arrival, and Kristiansen says he and his colleagues started to wonder if a disease had weakened European society enough to allow for an incursion. In particular, he asked: “Could it be the Black Death?”
When Kristiansen's team had sequenced the 101 ancient steppe human genomes, they had scooped up everything—not just human DNA but a soup of viruses, bacteria and modern environmental contamination. “Between 95 and 99 percent of the data we didn't use,” says team member Simon Rasmussen of the University of Copenhagen. “We were just throwing it into the dumpster.” But by 2015 the new sequencing technology had given them the ability to sift through the material and compare it with other genomes. “So we took all these data—100 billion small pieces of DNA—and we screened them against the plague,” Rasmussen says.
In about two weeks the scientists’ machines came up with an answer. Around 7 percent of the ancient remains had traces of plague DNA lingering inside their teeth. Bacteria get into teeth via blood vessels, and “if the bacteria are in the blood, that's really bad,” according to Rasmussen. “Very likely these people died from it.” This more lethal form of the disease is called septicemic plague; in the most common type, bubonic plague, the bacterium infects the lymph nodes. Because many aDNA samples they examined were in poor shape, Rasmussen also suspects that the plague DNA might be present in an even higher proportion of the material but was too scrambled to detect. He thinks the evidence is “starting to edge toward a likely pandemic.” Poinar, however, is more cautious and notes that other factors besides Y. pestis—such as famine or warfare—could have contributed to the European population crash.
ANCIENT BACTERIAL DNA IN HUMAN TEETH, excavated from a mass grave in Frälsegården, Sweden, came from the plague microbe Yersinia pestis (1). The grave is about 5,000 years old and held the remains of approximately 78 people (2). Credit: KARL-GÖRAN SJÖGREN (1); PHOTOGRAPH BY TONY AXELSSON (2)
If the plague bacterium was even part of the cause, the effects can be seen today. Kristiansen's team argues that, just like the later Y. pestis outbreaks, this one spread from the steppe into Europe. The Yamnaya likely had some immunity to the bacterium if they had already been exposed to it for hundreds of years. That resistance would have given them an advantage over the plague-ravaged European farmers. So they moved in. With a lighter skin color and a proto-Indo-European language, this group and its migration still influence the look, languages and genes of modern Europe. According to Kristiansen, “it changed the course of European history. It changed the languages in Europe.” Genetically, he says, Europeans “are the descendants of those steppe people.”
Recently the research group found more evidence buttressing this theory of plague-driven change, when it detected Y. pestis DNA in two Swedish Neolithic skeletons dating from around five millennia ago. The disease, it appears, had arrived in Scandinavia just before the Yamnaya takeover. Kristiansen says his colleagues are now scouring “all over the place” for other instances of this early variant. He calls it “the mother of all plagues.”
An Evolutionary Journey
Several dozen ancient Y. pestis genomes now have been analyzed, from various points during the past 5,000 years. Changes in these sequences have enabled researchers to reconstruct an evolutionary history of the bacterium and indicate some early genetic alterations that may have helped transform an opportunistic gut pathogen into one of the biggest killers in human history.
In its earliest form—the 5,000-year-old variant—it was unlikely that the bacterium was carried by rat-riding fleas, as was the Black Death version. The older bacterium lacked an enzyme that the modern microbes use to prevent their digestion in flea guts. It probably spread through airborne droplets when its host—person or animal—coughed. But around 4,000 years ago Y. pestis gained a gene called ymt, possibly from another type of gut bacterium. (Bacteria swap genes frequently.) Ymt codes for that protective enzyme, which enabled the plague organism to live inside fleas and travel with the insects, says Johannes Krause, an ancient DNA specialist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
After acquiring ymt, the Y. pestis bacterium evolved the ability to form a biofilm—and it is this talent that is perhaps the microbe's most sinister innovation. Mutations appeared in a gene that improves the ability to produce an adhesive extracellular matrix, and other mutations hobbled different genes that would normally act to slow or stop matrix production. These changes enabled the bug to coalesce into sticky conglomerations of cells. These build up in the midgut of the flea, blocking its digestive tract. The starved fleas are pushed into a feeding rampage in which they repeatedly bite any mammal around, passing the bacterium with each nip.
People and Pathogens
The aDNA research has made it possible to trace the history of other microbes in addition to Y. pestis, enabling researchers to identify the dates when many modern human pathogens, including strains of leprosy, tuberculosis, hepatitis B virus and parvovirus, emerged as widespread troublemakers. Those dates, perhaps not surprisingly, occur when humans started to settle down, Krause says.
As civilization developed, distant communities were connected by horse, wheel, then boat—and wherever people went, the microbes went along with them. According to Herbig, long-distance trade facilitated “disease exchange on a global scale.” For example, the distribution of ancient hepatitis B and plague genomes follow well-documented human migration routes during the Bronze and Iron Ages. Likewise, tuberculosis was carried by “the crews of Roman trading vessels or the merchants who assembled at waypoints along the Silk Road,” according to Caitlin Pepperell of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, whose team used tuberculosis aDNA to estimate that modern strains emerged less than 6,000 years ago—rather than more than 70,000 years ago, as previously believed.
It was not just trade that spread these microbes. Pathogens often exploit multiple animal hosts, and the DNA data show that when our relationships with certain animals became closer, pathogens soon followed. One of the last remaining populations of red squirrels in the U.K., for example, still harbors a medieval strain of leprosy, possibly shipped into England by Viking fur traders. Similarly, a strain of tuberculosis that afflicts people was apparently transported to South America by seals, as revealed by aDNA from a millennia-old Peruvian skeleton. That tuberculosis genome is most closely related to strains found in modern seals and sea lions. “For this population, it makes quite some sense from an archaeological and anthropological view because they did a lot of seal hunting,” explains Herbig, who was involved with the research. “They created pottery on which you can find images of people seal hunting and also processing seal meat.”
This combination of human factors that increase vulnerability to pathogens—larger populations, greater global connectivity, an ever shifting relationship with the animal world—had a major impact on the New World when Europeans first arrived. The Aztec Empire, centered in Mexico, was invaded by a small contingent of Spanish forces in the early 1500s who toppled the civilization with the aid of disgruntled subjects and rival states. The Spanish then installed a brutal encomienda system of harsh treatment, overwork and malnourishment. And the European outsiders seem to have brought other attackers with them as well.
After the initial conquest in 1521, the Aztec population was devastated by one of the biggest pandemics in history. Written accounts from Spanish Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún, who arrived in Mexico eight years after the initial Spanish contact, indicated that an infection killed off as much as 80 percent of the Indigenous population. But the identity of this cocoliztli pest (as the locals named it) remained a mystery. Guesses have ranged from hemorrhagic influenza to malaria to typhoid to smallpox. To historians, it was not even clear if the disease was of local origin or was imported by the Spanish.
In 2018, however, aDNA pointed to a likely culprit. Obtaining DNA from skeletons discovered in a cocoliztliera mass grave, Krause and his colleagues established that more than half of the samples had Salmonella paratyphi C., a bacterium that causes a severe intestinal disease. Salmonella organisms had not been found in the Americas before European contact, so it was almost certainly shipped across from the Old World. The conquistadors probably carried contaminated food and water on their transatlantic vessels, along with other potential vectors such as chickens, pigs, cattle, and vermin such as rats and mice. All were capable of transmitting disease.
At just this time an environmental misfortune in the Americas helped microbes such as Salmonella find a new home. A series of catastrophic droughts hit Mexico in the 1500s—established by tree-ring data published in 2000—and food shortages and population dislocation left people weak and unable to fight off unfamiliar microbial invaders that their immune systems were not prepared for. A civilization crumbled.
Today societies know much more about pathogens and how to fight them than did people 500 or 5,000 years ago. But our current struggles with COVID-19 show that our vulnerabilities to novel diseases have not changed: they often jump to humans from other species, spread via global trade and travel, and become exacerbated by crowding, poverty and malnourishment. The aDNA research reminds us of those enduring facts and shows that some of the biggest events in history were not just defined by powerful figures such as Emperor Justinian I or conquistador Hernán Cortés. They were also profoundly shaped by the microbes their empires helped to spread.


scientificamerican--2020-11-11--Virtual Patients Could Revolutionize Medicine

Every day , it seems , some new algorithm enables computers to diagnose a disease with unprecedented accuracy , renewing predictions that computers will soon replace doctors .
What if computers could replace patients as well ?
If virtual humans could have replaced real people in some stages of a coronavirus vaccine trial , for instance , it could have sped development of a preventive tool and slowed down the pandemic .
Similarly , potential vaccines that were n't likely to work could have been identified early , slashing trial costs and avoiding testing poor vaccine candidates on living volunteers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of “ in silico medicine , ” or the testing of drugs and treatments on virtual organs or body systems to predict how a real person will respond to the therapies .
For the foreseeable future , real patients will be needed in late-stage studies , but in silico trials will make it possible to conduct quick and inexpensive first assessments of safety and efficacy , drastically reducing the number of live human subjects required for experimentation .
With virtual organs , the modeling begins by feeding anatomical data drawn from noninvasive high-resolution @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into a complex mathematical model of the mechanisms that govern that organ 's function .
Algorithms running on powerful computers resolve the resulting equations and unknowns , generating a virtual organ that looks and behaves like the real thing .
In silico clinical trials are already underway to an extent .
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration , for instance , is using computer simulations in place of human trials for evaluating new mammography systems .
The agency has also published guidance for designing trials of drugs and devices that include virtual patients @ @ @ @ @ @ @ risks of clinical trials , in silico medicine can be used in place of risky interventions that are required for diagnosing or planning treatment of certain medical conditions .
For example , HeartFlow Analysis , a cloud-based service approved by the FDA , enables clinicians to identify coronary artery disease based on CT images of a patient 's heart .
The HeartFlow system uses these images to construct a fluid dynamic model of the blood running through the coronary blood vessels , thereby identifying abnormal conditions and their severity .
Without this technology @ @ @ @ @ @ @ invasive angiogram to decide whether and how to intervene .
Experimenting on digital models of individual patients can also help personalize therapy for any number of conditions and is already used in diabetes care .
The philosophy behind in silico medicine is not new .
The ability to create and simulate the performance of an object under hundreds of operating conditions has been a cornerstone of engineering for decades , such as for designing electronic circuits , airplanes and buildings .
Various hurdles remain to its widespread implementation in medical research and treatment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reliability of this technology must be confirmed , and that will require several advances .
Those include the generation of high-quality medical databases from a large , ethnically diverse patient base that has women as well as men ; refinement of mathematical models to account for the many interacting processes in the body ; and further modification of artificial-intelligence methods that were developed primarily for computer-based speech and image recognition and need to be extended to provide biological insights .
The scientific community and industry partners are addressing these issues through initiatives such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Systèmes , the Virtual Physiological Human Institute for Integrative Biomedical Research and Microsoft 's Healthcare NExT .
In recent years the FDA and European regulators have approved some commercial uses of computer-based diagnostics , but meeting regulatory demands requires considerable time and money .
Creating demand for these tools is challenging given the complexity of the health care ecosystem .
In silico medicine must be able to deliver cost-effective value for patients , clinicians and health care organizations to accelerate their adoption of the technology .

Every day, it seems, some new algorithm enables computers to diagnose a disease with unprecedented accuracy, renewing predictions that computers will soon replace doctors. What if computers could replace patients as well? If virtual humans could have replaced real people in some stages of a coronavirus vaccine trial, for instance, it could have sped development of a preventive tool and slowed down the pandemic. Similarly, potential vaccines that weren't likely to work could have been identified early, slashing trial costs and avoiding testing poor vaccine candidates on living volunteers. These are some of the benefits of “in silico medicine,” or the testing of drugs and treatments on virtual organs or body systems to predict how a real person will respond to the therapies. For the foreseeable future, real patients will be needed in late-stage studies, but in silico trials will make it possible to conduct quick and inexpensive first assessments of safety and efficacy, drastically reducing the number of live human subjects required for experimentation.
With virtual organs, the modeling begins by feeding anatomical data drawn from noninvasive high-resolution imaging of an individual's actual organ into a complex mathematical model of the mechanisms that govern that organ's function. Algorithms running on powerful computers resolve the resulting equations and unknowns, generating a virtual organ that looks and behaves like the real thing.
In silico clinical trials are already underway to an extent. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, for instance, is using computer simulations in place of human trials for evaluating new mammography systems. The agency has also published guidance for designing trials of drugs and devices that include virtual patients.
Beyond speeding results and mitigating the risks of clinical trials, in silico medicine can be used in place of risky interventions that are required for diagnosing or planning treatment of certain medical conditions. For example, HeartFlow Analysis, a cloud-based service approved by the FDA, enables clinicians to identify coronary artery disease based on CT images of a patient's heart. The HeartFlow system uses these images to construct a fluid dynamic model of the blood running through the coronary blood vessels, thereby identifying abnormal conditions and their severity. Without this technology, doctors would need to perform an invasive angiogram to decide whether and how to intervene. Experimenting on digital models of individual patients can also help personalize therapy for any number of conditions and is already used in diabetes care.
The philosophy behind in silico medicine is not new. The ability to create and simulate the performance of an object under hundreds of operating conditions has been a cornerstone of engineering for decades, such as for designing electronic circuits, airplanes and buildings. Various hurdles remain to its widespread implementation in medical research and treatment.
First, the predictive power and reliability of this technology must be confirmed, and that will require several advances. Those include the generation of high-quality medical databases from a large, ethnically diverse patient base that has women as well as men; refinement of mathematical models to account for the many interacting processes in the body; and further modification of artificial-intelligence methods that were developed primarily for computer-based speech and image recognition and need to be extended to provide biological insights. The scientific community and industry partners are addressing these issues through initiatives such as the Living Heart Project by Dassault Systèmes, the Virtual Physiological Human Institute for Integrative Biomedical Research and Microsoft's Healthcare NExT.
In recent years the FDA and European regulators have approved some commercial uses of computer-based diagnostics, but meeting regulatory demands requires considerable time and money. Creating demand for these tools is challenging given the complexity of the health care ecosystem. In silico medicine must be able to deliver cost-effective value for patients, clinicians and health care organizations to accelerate their adoption of the technology.


scientificamerican--2020-11-11--Viruses Can Be Delicious as Well as Deadly

Now that we ’ ve been held hostage by a virus for seven months that feel like seven years , many of us could use some good old-fashioned retribution .
Well , it turns out there is a satisfying place where the viruses are the ones that have to worry about social distancing , and that place is the ocean .
In seawater , viruses massively outnumber cellular life .
There are an estimated 1030 virions there .
Their victims are usually bacteria or other microbes .
Every second this viral swarm infects 1023 such creatures , killing 20 percent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ each day ( ocean microbes reproduce so quickly and often that they maintain an equilibrium nevertheless ) .
It ’ s hard to imagine such a horde could escape the culinary attentions of everything in the sea .
Viruses also have some features that make them potentially appealing entrees .
Compared to cellular life forms , they are rich in phosphorous and nitrogen , making them nutritious as well as abundant little nibbles .
Yet it ’ s long been thought marine viruses serve only one function : killing .
Like the sludgy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has been seen by ecologists as “ viral shunt , ” a fancy way of saying viruses are good at converting living creatures into drifting bits of the “ pool of dissolved organic matter.
” But a recent report in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology suggests the reverse can also occur : viruses are microbe chow .
Until now , I had never considered viruses as a potential foodstuff , and apparently , few scientists had either .
Although at least five studies had suggested that microbes may prey on viruses , until @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had followed up to discover just how widespread or important the process actually is .
A team of American and Spanish scientists finally decided to examine whether grim reaping was truly viruses ’ only function , and to what extent any alternative was the case , by screening the cells of marine microbes for associated viral genes .
The microbes in question were not bacteria or archaea , the simplest cells .
Rather , they were protists : tiny life forms that—similar to their much larger cousins known as plants and animals—have complicated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , produce energy and do all sorts of other jobs .
This team analyzed a variety of protists from water samples from the Gulf of Maine and the Mediterranean Sea .
Viral genes were detected alongside 51 percent of protist cells from the gulf and 35 percent from the sea .
Two groups , the Picozoa and the Choanozoa , were always found associated with viruses , and contained many more viral sequences per cell than other groups .
Though obscure to humans , choanozoans and picozoans are important and abundant in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bacteria , minuscule even for protists .
These creatures , in spite of being prolific enough to make up half of the biomass in nutrient-poor coastal waters , were completely new to science as of 2007 .
Choanozoa , also called choanoflagellates , are the closest living relatives of animals and sport a jaunty collar and tail with which they both move and capture prey .
They too are tiny , yet choanozoa are estimated to filter 10–25 percent of coastal surface water each day , a staggering sum .
In this study @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sequences per cell ; picozoans 5.7 .
However , as only 22 out of 1,698 protist genomes detected belonged to these two groups , these results are certainly suggestive but by no means definitive .
What could explain the presence of these viruses in the many protists studied ?
One might expect that if they were parasites rather than supper , we would observe a wide variety of sequences for targeting many potential hosts .
If they were food , on the other hand , we might expect just a few sequences as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ abundant viruses .
In this study , most of the viruses detected were nearly identical , few were specific to particular protists , and many infect only bacteria : bacteriophages and gokushoviruses .
Also detected was a new and somewhat mysterious group called CRESS DNA viruses , whose hosts are diverse .
These too had nearly identical sequences .
To assume near-identical viruses were infecting all the cells studied in this report would imply that some viruses are capable of infecting organisms from different phyla , the taxonomic rank just below kingdom , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can do this .
What are some other alternatives ?
It ’ s possible the viruses inserted themselves into the protists ’ genomes , a feat that the chickenpox virus is famous for ( it can reemerge years after the initial infection as shingles ) .
Many other viruses can end up as permanent residents of their host ’ s genome , which from the viral perspective is ideal as it confers immortality without the continual bother of trying to find a new host .
But the near-identical sequences detected once again argue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ viruses isolated within particular genomes should result in a variety of sequences .
Perhaps the viruses ended up in the protists because they were eating bacteria that happened to be infected by viruses .
But many of the protists contained viral genes without any bacterial genes .
It ’ s also possible the viruses were randomly assorted into the sample wells along with the protists .
But the fact that some protist lineages were found with many more viruses than others seems to argue against that .
Perhaps there ’ s something about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ makes them especially sticky to viruses .
But the way these protists eat makes viral ingestion more likely , the authors argue .
They are suspension feeders : they eat whatever they can swallow that is unlucky enough to bump into them .
Since previous studies have shown choanozoans and picozoans are certainly capable of consuming viruses , their universal presence and abundance suggests that is exactly what the protists are doing .
Choanozoans and Picozoans may not be unique in their eating habits , either .
Several other protist groups in this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would be expected by chance , but because these other protists feed in many ways , the authors refrained from making inferences about the viruses ’ presence .
In retrospect , it ’ s not entirely surprising that massively abundant , defenseless , drifting bonbons of protein and nucleic acid would be scarfed up by something .
A paper also published this year in Scientific Reports even showed that marine sponges were extremely efficient at removing viruses from seawater and concluded it was possible they too are eating viruses .
Protists … sponges @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have food pyramids that include viruses ?
Why didn ’ t we know this ?
And how can we get in on the action ?
The idea of viruses as food for anything is a bit mind-warping , but it ’ s also a rich source of schadenfreude at a moment where humans could really , really use some .
While we are at the undisputed mercy of one virus , it ’ s satisfying to think about legions of others meeting their ends in the gullet of a living , breathing cell @

Now that we’ve been held hostage by a virus for seven months that feel like seven years, many of us could use some good old-fashioned retribution. Well, it turns out there is a satisfying place where the viruses are the ones that have to worry about social distancing, and that place is the ocean.
In seawater, viruses massively outnumber cellular life. There are an estimated 1030 virions there. Their victims are usually bacteria or other microbes. Every second this viral swarm infects 1023 such creatures, killing 20 percent of the ocean’s microbial biomass each day (ocean microbes reproduce so quickly and often that they maintain an equilibrium nevertheless). It’s hard to imagine such a horde could escape the culinary attentions of everything in the sea.
Viruses also have some features that make them potentially appealing entrees. Compared to cellular life forms, they are rich in phosphorous and nitrogen, making them nutritious as well as abundant little nibbles.
Yet it’s long been thought marine viruses serve only one function: killing. Like the sludgy recycling pit in Waterworld, their role has been seen by ecologists as “viral shunt,” a fancy way of saying viruses are good at converting living creatures into drifting bits of the “pool of dissolved organic matter.”
But a recent report in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology suggests the reverse can also occur: viruses are microbe chow.
Until now, I had never considered viruses as a potential foodstuff, and apparently, few scientists had either. Although at least five studies had suggested that microbes may prey on viruses, until this most recent report, no one had followed up to discover just how widespread or important the process actually is.
A team of American and Spanish scientists finally decided to examine whether grim reaping was truly viruses’ only function, and to what extent any alternative was the case, by screening the cells of marine microbes for associated viral genes.
The microbes in question were not bacteria or archaea, the simplest cells. Rather, they were protists: tiny life forms that—similar to their much larger cousins known as plants and animals—have complicated cellular furniture called organelles that house DNA, produce energy and do all sorts of other jobs.
This team analyzed a variety of protists from water samples from the Gulf of Maine and the Mediterranean Sea. Viral genes were detected alongside 51 percent of protist cells from the gulf and 35 percent from the sea.
Two groups, the Picozoa and the Choanozoa, were always found associated with viruses, and contained many more viral sequences per cell than other groups.
Though obscure to humans, choanozoans and picozoans are important and abundant in the ocean. Picozoa are the size of bacteria, minuscule even for protists. These creatures, in spite of being prolific enough to make up half of the biomass in nutrient-poor coastal waters, were completely new to science as of 2007.
Choanozoa, also called choanoflagellates, are the closest living relatives of animals and sport a jaunty collar and tail with which they both move and capture prey. They too are tiny, yet choanozoa are estimated to filter 10–25 percent of coastal surface water each day, a staggering sum.
In this study, choanozoans averaged an incredible 28 viral sequences per cell; picozoans 5.7. However, as only 22 out of 1,698 protist genomes detected belonged to these two groups, these results are certainly suggestive but by no means definitive.
What could explain the presence of these viruses in the many protists studied? One might expect that if they were parasites rather than supper, we would observe a wide variety of sequences for targeting many potential hosts. If they were food, on the other hand, we might expect just a few sequences as grazers and predators indiscriminately gobble the most abundant viruses.
In this study, most of the viruses detected were nearly identical, few were specific to particular protists, and many infect only bacteria: bacteriophages and gokushoviruses. Also detected was a new and somewhat mysterious group called CRESS DNA viruses, whose hosts are diverse. These too had nearly identical sequences.
To assume near-identical viruses were infecting all the cells studied in this report would imply that some viruses are capable of infecting organisms from different phyla, the taxonomic rank just below kingdom, the authors say. No known virus can do this.
What are some other alternatives? It’s possible the viruses inserted themselves into the protists’ genomes, a feat that the chickenpox virus is famous for (it can reemerge years after the initial infection as shingles). Many other viruses can end up as permanent residents of their host’s genome, which from the viral perspective is ideal as it confers immortality without the continual bother of trying to find a new host. But the near-identical sequences detected once again argue against this, because random mutations in viruses isolated within particular genomes should result in a variety of sequences.
Perhaps the viruses ended up in the protists because they were eating bacteria that happened to be infected by viruses. But many of the protists contained viral genes without any bacterial genes. It’s also possible the viruses were randomly assorted into the sample wells along with the protists. But the fact that some protist lineages were found with many more viruses than others seems to argue against that.
Perhaps there’s something about the surfaces of Picozoans and Choanozoans that makes them especially sticky to viruses. But the way these protists eat makes viral ingestion more likely, the authors argue. They are suspension feeders: they eat whatever they can swallow that is unlucky enough to bump into them. Since previous studies have shown choanozoans and picozoans are certainly capable of consuming viruses, their universal presence and abundance suggests that is exactly what the protists are doing.
Choanozoans and Picozoans may not be unique in their eating habits, either. Several other protist groups in this study also contained more viral sequences than would be expected by chance, but because these other protists feed in many ways, the authors refrained from making inferences about the viruses’ presence.
In retrospect, it’s not entirely surprising that massively abundant, defenseless, drifting bonbons of protein and nucleic acid would be scarfed up by something. A paper also published this year in Scientific Reports even showed that marine sponges were extremely efficient at removing viruses from seawater and concluded it was possible they too are eating viruses.
Protists … sponges … how many more creatures out there have food pyramids that include viruses? Why didn’t we know this? And how can we get in on the action?
The idea of viruses as food for anything is a bit mind-warping, but it’s also a rich source of schadenfreude at a moment where humans could really, really use some. While we are at the undisputed mercy of one virus, it’s satisfying to think about legions of others meeting their ends in the gullet of a living, breathing cell.


scientificamerican--2020-11-11--Birdlike Flight Formations Could Cut Airline Emissions

To save energy and tackle pollution , the aviation industry is taking some surprising aerodynamic cues from birds .
Aircraft manufacturing giant Airbus is developing a system , called fello ’ fly , in which two commercial planes mimic migrating birds by traveling in tandem with one close behind the other .
The company says this arrangement could enable the follower aircraft to reduce its fuel requirements by as much as 10 percent per trip .
Fello ’ fly was inspired by the way some birds , notably geese , often fly in formation to save energy .
Like a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wake of disturbed air behind as its wings generate swirling vortices .
These vortices move in a circular motion and expand outward until they dissipate , creating an updraft around the wake .
If a second aircraft follows the leader at a specific distance and slightly away from the center of the wake , this updraft provides extra lift .
Such a boost allows the follower to cut down on engine thrust , fuel use and emissions .
But to reap these benefits , airliners have to position themselves carefully : if the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the leader ’ s path , the vortices will actually push it downward instead of up .
Planes also have to greatly reduce the distance they usually maintain .
“ Fello ’ fly operations will reduce longitudinal ‘ tail to tail ’ separation from around 55 kilometers in oceanic airspace to three kilometers , ” says project leader Nick Macdonald , a senior engineer at Airbus .
The multinational company conducted three tests of the system in July .
Two Airbus A350 aircraft flew in France ’ s western Atlantic airspace , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ These tests demonstrated that it is possible to stabilize the aircraft within the wake updraft on autopilot and that the fuel savings are significant , ” Macdonald says .
Fello ’ fly is intended to work with compatible craft from different airlines that happen to be in the same airspace at the same time .
For the next stage of testing , which is designed to develop safety protocols and is set to take place over the Atlantic Ocean as early as next year .
Airbus recently signed agreements with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ SAS ) .
Other planned participants include international air navigation service providers such as France ’ s Directorate of Air Navigation Services ( DSNA ) , the U.K. ’ s NATS Holdings ( formerly National Air Traffic Services ) and the Belgium-based EUROCONTROL .
Aircraft flying so close would need to coordinate meticulously to prevent accidents and excessive turbulence , and this coordination would need to start on the ground .
Airline pilot David Mrak , who is not affiliated with the fello ’ fly project , says challenges would likely include setting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , deciding on the role of air traffic controllers , maintaining communication between all parties involved , creating plans to deal with emergency situations or bad weather , and divvying up the economic benefits .
“ For example , with two different airlines envisaged in a fello ’ fly flight , the issue becomes ‘ Who gets to save the gas ?
’ ” Mrak says .
EUROCONTROL is partnering with Airbus on this project .
The organization will focus on codifying the requirements and procedures for the predeparture phase , including enhancing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ controllers .
Giovanni Lenti , who heads EUROCONTROL operations that deal with airspace data maintenance , flight plans and flow management , says strict rules of operation , in combination with specialized software , will aid in tackling such challenges—and in choosing which planes to pair up .
“ The software that will help in finding the suitable partners and pairing the aircraft [ by taking into consideration their respective flight plans ] is being developed by Airbus , ” he says .
A pair of airplanes using fello ’ fly would take @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then rely on an onboard system to safely bring the two craft into formation .
Currently , air traffic controllers are largely responsible for maintaining horizontal separation between two aircraft at the same altitude , Lenti says .
But “ to reduce the distance to around 1.5 nautical miles ( around three kilometers ) , which is necessary for fello ’ fly , ” he adds , “ it will have to be done by using new onboard technology , embedded in aircraft avionics , by the pilots.
” Although the minimal separation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that operating planes so near each other may not be out of the question .
“ As aviators , we undergo extensive training , ” he says .
“ Flying aircraft in formation is a matter of proper training and protocol.
” As a further fail-safe , Lenti says , the air traffic controller would have to keep a dedicated flight route empty about 305 meters below both aircraft .
That way , if either plane encounters a problem that requires it to change its flight level , it can immediately disengage from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ altitude .
Airbus also has to contend with the fact that flying in such proximity could create too much turbulence for passenger comfort .
But Macdonald claims that previous fello ’ fly tests have already addressed this issue .
He says these tests found that if the follower plane stays at a suitable point in the leader ’ s wake updraft , it will only experience turbulence similar to what an aircraft typically encounters during normal operations .
Airbus hopes to roll out the concept in commercial airline operations around 2025 , although @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only be used on oceanic routes in order to avoid heavier air traffic .
“ At the beginning , it will not be possible to implement it on continental , aircraft-congested routes , ” he says .
“ However , on the ocean , it can work very well—with significant fuel savings for the follower aircraft.
” Mrak estimates that if the system works , “ it could potentially save the airlines thousands of pounds [ several metric tons ] of fuel per transatlantic trip.
” And according to Airbus , every metric @ @ @ @ @ @ @ metric tons less carbon dioxide emitted .

To save energy and tackle pollution, the aviation industry is taking some surprising aerodynamic cues from birds. Aircraft manufacturing giant Airbus is developing a system, called fello’fly, in which two commercial planes mimic migrating birds by traveling in tandem with one close behind the other. The company says this arrangement could enable the follower aircraft to reduce its fuel requirements by as much as 10 percent per trip.
Fello’fly was inspired by the way some birds, notably geese, often fly in formation to save energy. Like a bird, a moving airplane leaves a wake of disturbed air behind as its wings generate swirling vortices. These vortices move in a circular motion and expand outward until they dissipate, creating an updraft around the wake. If a second aircraft follows the leader at a specific distance and slightly away from the center of the wake, this updraft provides extra lift.
Such a boost allows the follower to cut down on engine thrust, fuel use and emissions. But to reap these benefits, airliners have to position themselves carefully: if the follower gets too close to the center of the leader’s path, the vortices will actually push it downward instead of up. Planes also have to greatly reduce the distance they usually maintain. “Fello’fly operations will reduce longitudinal ‘tail to tail’ separation from around 55 kilometers in oceanic airspace to three kilometers,” says project leader Nick Macdonald, a senior engineer at Airbus.
Credit: Brown Bird Design; Source: Airbus
The multinational company conducted three tests of the system in July. Two Airbus A350 aircraft flew in France’s western Atlantic airspace, remaining three kilometers apart for four hours. “These tests demonstrated that it is possible to stabilize the aircraft within the wake updraft on autopilot and that the fuel savings are significant,” Macdonald says.
Fello’fly is intended to work with compatible craft from different airlines that happen to be in the same airspace at the same time. For the next stage of testing, which is designed to develop safety protocols and is set to take place over the Atlantic Ocean as early as next year, Airbus recently signed agreements with the airlines French Bee and Scandinavian Airlines (SAS). Other planned participants include international air navigation service providers such as France’s Directorate of Air Navigation Services (DSNA), the U.K.’s NATS Holdings (formerly National Air Traffic Services) and the Belgium-based EUROCONTROL.
Aircraft flying so close would need to coordinate meticulously to prevent accidents and excessive turbulence, and this coordination would need to start on the ground. Airline pilot David Mrak, who is not affiliated with the fello’fly project, says challenges would likely include setting rules of engagement between the two planes, deciding on the role of air traffic controllers, maintaining communication between all parties involved, creating plans to deal with emergency situations or bad weather, and divvying up the economic benefits. “For example, with two different airlines envisaged in a fello’fly flight, the issue becomes ‘Who gets to save the gas?’” Mrak says.
EUROCONTROL is partnering with Airbus on this project. The organization will focus on codifying the requirements and procedures for the predeparture phase, including enhancing communication between the aircraft and air traffic controllers. Giovanni Lenti, who heads EUROCONTROL operations that deal with airspace data maintenance, flight plans and flow management, says strict rules of operation, in combination with specialized software, will aid in tackling such challenges—and in choosing which planes to pair up. “The software that will help in finding the suitable partners and pairing the aircraft [by taking into consideration their respective flight plans] is being developed by Airbus,” he says.
A pair of airplanes using fello’fly would take off separately, and their pilots would then rely on an onboard system to safely bring the two craft into formation. Currently, air traffic controllers are largely responsible for maintaining horizontal separation between two aircraft at the same altitude, Lenti says. But “to reduce the distance to around 1.5 nautical miles (around three kilometers), which is necessary for fello’fly,” he adds, “it will have to be done by using new onboard technology, embedded in aircraft avionics, by the pilots.”
Although the minimal separation might sound potentially dangerous, Mrak suggests that operating planes so near each other may not be out of the question. “As aviators, we undergo extensive training,” he says. “Flying aircraft in formation is a matter of proper training and protocol.”
As a further fail-safe, Lenti says, the air traffic controller would have to keep a dedicated flight route empty about 305 meters below both aircraft. That way, if either plane encounters a problem that requires it to change its flight level, it can immediately disengage from the pairing and descend to a safe altitude.
Airbus also has to contend with the fact that flying in such proximity could create too much turbulence for passenger comfort. But Macdonald claims that previous fello’fly tests have already addressed this issue. He says these tests found that if the follower plane stays at a suitable point in the leader’s wake updraft, it will only experience turbulence similar to what an aircraft typically encounters during normal operations.
Airbus hopes to roll out the concept in commercial airline operations around 2025, although, Leni notes, it would initially only be used on oceanic routes in order to avoid heavier air traffic. “At the beginning, it will not be possible to implement it on continental, aircraft-congested routes,” he says. “However, on the ocean, it can work very well—with significant fuel savings for the follower aircraft.”
Mrak estimates that if the system works, “it could potentially save the airlines thousands of pounds [several metric tons] of fuel per transatlantic trip.” And according to Airbus, every metric ton of fuel saved means roughly three metric tons less carbon dioxide emitted.
A version of this article with the title “Tight Flight” was adapted for inclusion in the February 2021 issue of Scientific American.


scientificamerican--2020-11-11--How Biden Might Reverse Trump's Attacks on Climate Research

Activists are hoping the next four years will represent a new era for U.S. climate action .
President-elect Joe Biden has outlined an ambitious climate plan aimed at achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 .
And he ’ s pledged to immediately reenter the U.S. in the Paris climate agreement .
The election won ’ t only affect climate mitigation .
Basic climate and environmental research also stands to benefit .
Over the last four years , the Trump administration has undermined climate science at federal agencies , including by suppressing research and filling top leadership positions with officials who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ warming .
These practices have inhibited government scientists ’ ability to conduct and communicate their own research and promoted misinformation about climate change , according to scientists and advocates .
These attacks on climate research are in keeping with the Trump administration ’ s broad pattern of science denial .
Climate research is just one field of government science that has suffered under Trump .
Still , many of the practices and policies implemented by the Trump administration could be quickly reversed by Biden .
Here are a few areas to watch : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the Trump administration overhauled a wonky , but highly significant , economic metric used to estimate the monetary costs of climate change .
Known as the social cost of carbon , the metric evaluates the dollar amount that greenhouse gas emissions are likely to cost society in climate change impacts , including future damages to infrastructure , agriculture and human health .
It ’ s frequently employed in cost-benefit analyses used to help develop and evaluate environmental policies .
The Obama administration valued the social cost of carbon at about $ 42 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into the atmosphere .
The Trump administration significantly reduced its estimate of the metric , bringing it down to about $ 6 per ton of carbon dioxide .
The administration then used the lower estimate to help justify rollbacks of several Obama-era environmental rules , including the Clean Power Plan .
Climate experts have argued that the Trump administration ’ s estimate is far too low .
Even the Obama-era estimate may have failed to fully account for the costs of some future climate impacts , researchers suggest .
Some recent studies indicate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ $ 100 per ton of CO2 .
The Biden administration will have the opportunity to revise the social cost of carbon again , accounting for the most up-to-date research and expert opinions .
Trump ’ s EPA is in the process of implementing a controversial rule to bar the agency from considering studies that aren ’ t able to make all their underlying data public .
Critics have argued that the so-called transparency rule would disqualify some crucial studies from consideration , including research containing trade secrets or health studies involving confidential information @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dozens of scientific organizations and institutions penned an open letter to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler expressing concern about the rule .
“ Scientists welcome transparency and encourage scrutiny of their work , ” the letter stated .
“ However , this rule and supplemental are not about strengthening science , but about undermining the ability of the EPA to use the best available science in setting policies and regulations.
” The rule is likely to affect regulations that rely on medical and epidemiological studies , including the human health impacts of various toxins @ @ @ @ @ @ @ targeting sources of both air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions , which often coincide .
The Biden administration could potentially overturn the rule via a federal law known as the Congressional Review Act .
This would require the support of Congress .
Otherwise , a formal rulemaking process could be required to undo it .
Trump has staffed his federal science agencies with numerous top officials known to undermine or deny the science of climate change .
His first EPA administrator , Scott Pruitt , was a known climate skeptic .
Pruitt ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ repeatedly downplayed the seriousness of climate change and stated that he doesn ’ t consider the issue a pressing priority .
The Trump administration has also been criticized for reducing or dissolving various science advisory panels charged with advising government agencies .
The administration has also been criticized for padding the EPA ’ s advisory board with appointees who have connections to industries the agency regulates .
Most recently , the White House has appointed several skeptics of mainstream climate science to top positions at NOAA .
Last month , NOAA ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , removed the agency ’ s acting chief scientist , Craig McLean , and replaced him with meteorologist Ryan Maue .
Maue previously worked for the libertarian think tank Cato Institute and has a history of downplaying the seriousness of climate change .
Maue was joined at NOAA by University of Delaware geography professor David Legates , who ’ s now serving in a newly created position as a deputy secretary .
Legates also has a history of criticizing mainstream climate science and questioning the influence of human carbon dioxide emissions on global @ @ @ @ @ @ @ short-lived .
The Biden administration will have the power to appoint its own top agency officials , with the opportunity to return these positions to individuals who embrace accepted science .
More generally , numerous reports have suggested the Trump administration has suppressed climate research , quietly removed climate information from agency websites and pressured scientists not to communicate about climate change .
The Silencing Science Tracker , a joint initiative from Columbia University ’ s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund , tracks government attempts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It cites numerous instances in which scientific studies or reports related to climate change or clean energy were blocked , sidelined or delayed by federal agencies .
One report from Politico found that the Trump administration refused to promote or publicize dozens of government-funded studies conducted by scientists at the Department of Agriculture .
Over the last four years , numerous reports have documented how climate information has quietly disappeared from government websites and documents .
Meanwhile , a 2018 survey of scientists across 16 federal agencies found that 18 % of all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the National Park Service and 35 % from EPA , reported being asked to omit the phrase “ climate change ” from their work .
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from E & E News .
E & E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at www.eenews.net .

Activists are hoping the next four years will represent a new era for U.S. climate action.
President-elect Joe Biden has outlined an ambitious climate plan aimed at achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. And he’s pledged to immediately reenter the U.S. in the Paris climate agreement.
The election won’t only affect climate mitigation. Basic climate and environmental research also stands to benefit.
Over the last four years, the Trump administration has undermined climate science at federal agencies, including by suppressing research and filling top leadership positions with officials who question or reject the tenets of global warming. These practices have inhibited government scientists’ ability to conduct and communicate their own research and promoted misinformation about climate change, according to scientists and advocates.
These attacks on climate research are in keeping with the Trump administration’s broad pattern of science denial. Climate research is just one field of government science that has suffered under Trump.
Still, many of the practices and policies implemented by the Trump administration could be quickly reversed by Biden. Here are a few areas to watch:
The value of climate costs
In 2017, the Trump administration overhauled a wonky, but highly significant, economic metric used to estimate the monetary costs of climate change.
Known as the social cost of carbon, the metric evaluates the dollar amount that greenhouse gas emissions are likely to cost society in climate change impacts, including future damages to infrastructure, agriculture and human health. It’s frequently employed in cost-benefit analyses used to help develop and evaluate environmental policies.
The Obama administration valued the social cost of carbon at about $42 for every ton of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere.
The Trump administration significantly reduced its estimate of the metric, bringing it down to about $6 per ton of carbon dioxide. The administration then used the lower estimate to help justify rollbacks of several Obama-era environmental rules, including the Clean Power Plan.
Climate experts have argued that the Trump administration’s estimate is far too low. Even the Obama-era estimate may have failed to fully account for the costs of some future climate impacts, researchers suggest. Some recent studies indicate that the metric should be well above $100 per ton of CO2.
The Biden administration will have the opportunity to revise the social cost of carbon again, accounting for the most up-to-date research and expert opinions.
Science-informed policy
Trump’s EPA is in the process of implementing a controversial rule to bar the agency from considering studies that aren’t able to make all their underlying data public.
Critics have argued that the so-called transparency rule would disqualify some crucial studies from consideration, including research containing trade secrets or health studies involving confidential information about patients.
Earlier this year, dozens of scientific organizations and institutions penned an open letter to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler expressing concern about the rule.
“Scientists welcome transparency and encourage scrutiny of their work,” the letter stated. “However, this rule and supplemental are not about strengthening science, but about undermining the ability of the EPA to use the best available science in setting policies and regulations.”
The rule is likely to affect regulations that rely on medical and epidemiological studies, including the human health impacts of various toxins and pollutants. These may include regulations targeting sources of both air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, which often coincide.
The Biden administration could potentially overturn the rule via a federal law known as the Congressional Review Act. This would require the support of Congress. Otherwise, a formal rulemaking process could be required to undo it.
Deniers in leadership
Trump has staffed his federal science agencies with numerous top officials known to undermine or deny the science of climate change.
His first EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, was a known climate skeptic. Pruitt’s successor, Andrew Wheeler, has repeatedly downplayed the seriousness of climate change and stated that he doesn’t consider the issue a pressing priority.
The Trump administration has also been criticized for reducing or dissolving various science advisory panels charged with advising government agencies. The administration has also been criticized for padding the EPA’s advisory board with appointees who have connections to industries the agency regulates.
Most recently, the White House has appointed several skeptics of mainstream climate science to top positions at NOAA.
Last month, NOAA’s acting chief of staff, Erik Noble, removed the agency’s acting chief scientist, Craig McLean, and replaced him with meteorologist Ryan Maue. Maue previously worked for the libertarian think tank Cato Institute and has a history of downplaying the seriousness of climate change.
Maue was joined at NOAA by University of Delaware geography professor David Legates, who’s now serving in a newly created position as a deputy secretary. Legates also has a history of criticizing mainstream climate science and questioning the influence of human carbon dioxide emissions on global warming.
These latest appointments may be short-lived. The Biden administration will have the power to appoint its own top agency officials, with the opportunity to return these positions to individuals who embrace accepted science.
Science suppression
More generally, numerous reports have suggested the Trump administration has suppressed climate research, quietly removed climate information from agency websites and pressured scientists not to communicate about climate change.
The Silencing Science Tracker, a joint initiative from Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, tracks government attempts to restrict scientific research or communication. It cites numerous instances in which scientific studies or reports related to climate change or clean energy were blocked, sidelined or delayed by federal agencies.
One report from Politico found that the Trump administration refused to promote or publicize dozens of government-funded studies conducted by scientists at the Department of Agriculture.
Over the last four years, numerous reports have documented how climate information has quietly disappeared from government websites and documents.
Meanwhile, a 2018 survey of scientists across 16 federal agencies found that 18% of all respondents, including 47% of respondents from the National Park Service and 35% from EPA, reported being asked to omit the phrase “climate change” from their work.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from E&E News. E&E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at www.eenews.net.