scientificamerican--2020-09-14--Why Pet Pigs Are More like Wolves Than Dogs

It 's a classic television trope : Timmy has fallen down a well !
Lassie ca n't save him herself , so she runs to find help .
Actually , Timmy never did fall down a well in the entire run of the TV show , but the idea that a dog could seek help from a human for help does have a solid basis in science .
In what ’ s known as the `` unsolvable task '' experiment , a dog first learns how to open a puzzle box with a tasty treat inside .
The puzzle is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ impossible to solve .
After becoming frustrated , dogs shift their attention away from the puzzle and onto a nearby human , and then back to the puzzle .
The dog attempts to shift the human 's attention to the puzzle as a request for help .
Human infants do the same thing .
Such efforts are called `` referential communication . ''
So if dogs behave this way , you might expect the same from their close relatives , wolves .
But when researchers tested wolves raised by humans , the animals @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , never seeking help .
Since the dogs and wolves were all raised the same way and by the same people , domestication must be responsible for the behavior .
So researchers began studying other domesticated creatures .
`` Other animal species , for example horses [ and ] goats , have been tested in this test .
But there were no direct comparisons with dogs . ''
Paula Pérez Fraga , an ethologist at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary .
Pet cats respond more like wolves than like dogs .
Cats are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like dogs and wolves .
Pigs , however , are social .
`` When pigs live in the wild , or even wild boars , these animals live in groups .
They need to communicate with their conspecifics to be able to live . ''
Which is why the researchers decided to compare pet dogs with pet pigs .
While the pigs revealed that they were capable of referential communication , they did n't actually turn to people for help .
Once the task became unsolvable , they acted more like wolves , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ own .
The results were published in the journal Animal Cognition .
[ Paula Pérez Fraga , et al .
Who turns to the human ?
Companion pigs ' and dogs ' behaviour in the unsolvable task paradigm ] '' What domestication means is literally that there 's a genetic change in the animal , in the species from their wild relatives .
And normally this genetic change has appeared because of human pressure . ''
Most domesticated animals , including dogs , cats , horses , goats , foxes , and so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ changes associated with domestication .
But Fraga says her study shows that the domestication process can proceed along different pathways in different animals .
And that could explain why domestication and sociality alone ca n't explain why dogs react the way they do when faced with an unsolvable puzzle .
Fraga thinks that it could be related to their domestication history .
`` Their domestication was different—pigs have been domesticated mostly for being a meat resource . ''
It was only later that we started treating some pigs as pets .
Dogs , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as companion animals from almost the beginning .
Which appears to explain their willingness to ask for our help .

Full Transcript
[CLIP: Lassie opening]
It’s a classic television trope: Timmy has fallen down a well! Lassie can’t save him herself, so she runs to find help. Actually, Timmy never did fall down a well in the entire run of the TV show. But the idea that a dog could seek help from a human does have a solid basis in science.
In what’s known as the “unsolvable task” experiment, a dog first learns how to open a puzzle box with a tasty treat inside. The puzzle is then secretly switched for another that’s impossible to solve. After becoming frustrated, dogs shift their attention away from the puzzle and onto a nearby human and then back to the puzzle. The dog attempts to shift the human’s attention to the puzzle as a request for help. Human infants do the same thing. Such efforts are called "referential communication.”
So if dogs behave this way, you might expect the same from their close relatives: wolves. But when researchers tested wolves raised by humans, the animals just kept trying to solve the puzzle, never seeking help. Since the dogs and wolves were all raised the same way and by the same people, domestication must be responsible for the behavior. So researchers began studying other domesticated creatures.
“Other animal species—for example, horses, goats—have been tested in this test. But there were no direct comparisons with dogs.”
Paula Pérez Fraga, an ethologist at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary.
Pet cats respond more like wolves than like dogs. Cats are domesticated, but they are not social like dogs and wolves. Pigs, however, are social.
“When pigs live in the wild—or even wild boars—these animals live in groups. They need to communicate with their conspecifics to be able to live.”
Which is why the researchers decided to compare pet dogs with pet pigs. While the pigs revealed that they were capable of referential communication, they didn’t actually turn to people for help. Once the task became unsolvable, they acted more like wolves, determined to find a solution on their own. The results were published in the journal Animal Cognition. [Paula Pérez Fraga et al., Who turns to the human? Companion pigs' and dogs' behaviour in the unsolvable task paradigm]
“What domestication means is literally that there’s a genetic change in the animal, in the species from their wild relatives. And normally this genetic change has appeared because of human pressure.”
Most domesticated animals, including dogs, cats, horses, goats, foxes, and so on, show similar anatomical and physiological changes associated with domestication. But Fraga says her study shows that the domestication process can proceed along different pathways in different animals. And that could explain why domestication and sociality alone can’t explain why dogs react the way they do when faced with an unsolvable puzzle. Fraga thinks that it could be related to their domestication history.
“Their domestication was different. Pigs have been domesticated mostly for being a meat resource.”
It was only later that we started treating some pigs as pets. Dogs, on the other hand, were treated as companion animals from almost the beginning—which appears to explain their willingness to ask for our help.
[CLIP: Barking]
—Jason G. Goldman
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]


scientificamerican--2020-09-14--Coronavirus Vaccine U.K. Trial Restarts, But Scientists Question Lack of Transparency

The UK trial of a leading coronavirus vaccine , which was abruptly halted last week because of safety concerns , restarted on Saturday after the university conducting the trial said an independent committee found that it was safe to do so .
The University of Oxford and pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca paused enrolment in the global trials of their vaccine candidate on 6 September , after a person participating in the UK trial experienced an adverse reaction .
Scientists say that a pause is not uncommon in large trials , and that a speedy resumption of testing was expected .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the trial , they say .
“ Like anybody else who knows the importance of vaccines , I am very happy that the trial will continue , ” says Klaus Stöhr , a retired influenza researcher who headed the World Health Organization ’ s research and epidemiology division for severe acute respiratory syndrome .
But some scientists have criticized the trial sponsors for not releasing more information about the reason for the pause and their decision-making .
The University of Oxford and AstraZeneca have not yet released details of the adverse reaction @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pause and how the decision to resume the UK study was made .
It is also not known whether trials of the vaccine in South Africa , Brazil and the United States will also resume .
Marie-Paule Kieny , a vaccine researcher at INSERM , the French national health-research institute in Paris , says she hopes that research groups working on this or other coronavirus vaccines will share more information about clinical-trial holds in future .
The transparency bar should be set much higher than this latest example , says Kieny .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ available , public trust will be paramount to ensure public-health impact .
And trust needs transparency.
” This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on September 14 2020 .

The UK trial of a leading coronavirus vaccine, which was abruptly halted last week because of safety concerns, restarted on Saturday after the university conducting the trial said an independent committee found that it was safe to do so.
The University of Oxford and pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca paused enrolment in the global trials of their vaccine candidate on 6 September, after a person participating in the UK trial experienced an adverse reaction.
Scientists say that a pause is not uncommon in large trials, and that a speedy resumption of testing was expected. The episode shows that care is being taken with the trial, they say.
“Like anybody else who knows the importance of vaccines, I am very happy that the trial will continue,” says Klaus Stöhr, a retired influenza researcher who headed the World Health Organization’s research and epidemiology division for severe acute respiratory syndrome.
But some scientists have criticized the trial sponsors for not releasing more information about the reason for the pause and their decision-making.
The University of Oxford and AstraZeneca have not yet released details of the adverse reaction that led to the trial’s pause and how the decision to resume the UK study was made. It is also not known whether trials of the vaccine in South Africa, Brazil and the United States will also resume.
Marie-Paule Kieny, a vaccine researcher at INSERM, the French national health-research institute in Paris, says she hopes that research groups working on this or other coronavirus vaccines will share more information about clinical-trial holds in future. The transparency bar should be set much higher than this latest example, says Kieny. “When ultimately a vaccine will be made available, public trust will be paramount to ensure public-health impact. And trust needs transparency.”
This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on September 14 2020.


scientificamerican--2020-09-14--A Rebuilt Paradise Nervously Watches Wildfire on the Horizon

Paradise , the postcard Sierra Nevada town incinerated 22 months ago by the worst wildfire in California history , passed a milestone last month on its journey to rebuild from the ashes of 2018 .
`` The Town of Paradise has surpassed the 1,000th building permit issued ! ''
officials crowed in an Aug. 12 recovery update .
The occasion marked the town 's rise from what remained of 14,000 destroyed homes and buildings .
A new Tractor Supply Co. will fill half of the once burned-out Kmart store .
The Best Western opened 11 hotel rooms , with another @ @ @ @ @ @ @ end of the year .
Things were looking up .
Until Wednesday .
That 's when every standing resident of Paradise — new arrivals and returnees — awoke to see a plume of black-orange smoke coming over the ridge from the Bear Fire just 8 miles to the east .
`` I have n't talked to a person , including myself , who did n't think , 'Oh , no , not again , ' '' Vice Mayor Steve Crowder said in a phone interview Friday from his rebuilt home on the edge @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to distinguish whether we were seeing fire or seeing the sun trying to come through the fire around us . ''
Many feared Paradise 's gamble against nature was lost .
The town 's aggressive rebuild could be reduced to ash in spite of stricter fire codes for new homes and buildings .
Some argue that environmentalists and climate researchers are right .
Wildfire has become an insurmountable risk in the Sierra Nevada and other parts of the West .
Climate warming would see that prediction through .
Crowder is n't buying it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ back on its feet and grow larger than before .
`` Everywhere you go in town , there are sticks in the air , and it 's great to see , '' he said .
`` It 's funny because in this community , unless somebody lives there , they do n't understand .
It 's got a draw to it . ''
Nearby Berry Creek , just down the road from Paradise , had a similar draw before succumbing to the North Complex Fire on Wednesday .
With a population of just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ less certain .
The conundrum over whether to rebuild or leave is one of the most pressing and controversial issues facing towns in fire-prone parts of the Sierra Nevada in Northern California and the Cascade Range of Oregon and Washington .
It 's likely to get more intense as climate change leads to more severe heat that bakes the landscape and primes forests and scrub for wildfire .
High temperature records fell in all three states last week .
Fires burned across roughly 5 million acres as of yesterday .
Oregon Sen. Jeff @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his state `` apocalyptic '' on ABC 's `` This Week '' program , adding , `` I could never have envisioned this . ''
The death toll in Oregon also mounted yesterday , with 23 dead by midday .
California and Washington had reported 10 deaths combined .
Experts , some of whom were watching fires roar toward their own homes on Friday , said worsening climate conditions are pushing fire-prone communities like Paradise to the brink .
Unlike other parts of Northern California , mountain towns are not necessarily havens for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , for instance , roughly a quarter of Paradise 's housing was either manufactured homes or trailers .
Yana Valachovic , a forest adviser and extension agent at the University of California and member of the California Fire Science Consortium , said property owners in places like Paradise often have little choice but to return to their burned-out communities .
Their decisions are usually based upon economic realities and family ties .
`` It 's just like any other place , '' she said .
`` There 's immense pressure on local politicians @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rebuild ] , and that 's true in flooded areas and hurricane zones just like it is with fires .
`` What if all you have is insurance money to rebuild [ in the same place ] or sell the property way below its value to someone else ?
How would you make that choice ? ''
Valachovic added .
And if people choose to stay , she said , `` who is going to issue an eminent domain proclamation and take private property , and does that make sense fundamentally ?
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ questions . ''
In the absence of big , disruptive policy changes , Valachovic said , the best opportunity for towns like Paradise `` is to adapt and rebuild smarter , '' including through adoption and enforcement of stronger building codes that require property owners to use fire-resistant materials like concrete , stone and stucco .
California already requires that new construction in high-hazard areas meet what is known as `` Class A '' roof standards .
Those buildings must have reinforced roofs of brick , masonry or concrete with roof vents that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to escape .
Walls and floors also must be built to withstand flames and high heat , while yards must be maintained to eliminate ignitable vegetation .
All newly built structures in Paradise meet those standards , which were established in 2008 .
Roughly 1,700 homes not destroyed by the Camp Fire were grandfathered under the old rules , while some other communities have skirted them altogether .
In Paradise , the city has benefited from a first-of-its-kind Federal Emergency Management Agency program to remove more than 500,000 dead , dying or stressed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or public roadway if felled by wildfire .
Some of the 86 deaths in Paradise linked to the Camp Fire were caused by downed trees and debris blocking residents from using narrow roads to reach lower-elevation evacuation areas , officials said .
As for climate change and wildfire risk , many returnees to Paradise acknowledge the climate experts are at least partly right .
Hot days are rising in number and sticking around longer , sometimes up to a week , and summer nights once marked by cool mountain air are becoming rarer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cool their homes .
`` This summer has definitely been hotter than we 've experienced in the past , '' Crowder said , a condition he attributes in part to the loss of shade trees to the Camp Fire .
`` The feeling here is [ climate change ] has something to do with it , '' he added .
`` I think the biggest issue , in my view and of most of the people I talk to , is that our state and federal governments have mismanaged our forests .
You @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then you have outfits like the Sierra Club that when you try to do something to clean up a forest , they sue to stop it . ''
The challenges did not dissuade Paradise from rebuilding out of the ashes .
In a normal year , the city issues between 25 and 30 permits for new construction .
Less than two years after the Camp Fire , the permit number is pushing 1,100 , with nearly 350 homes already holding certificates of occupancy .
`` You 'll never find a more resilient community @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people were more stressed than others , and to be honest , I thought [ the Camp Fire ] was happening all over again .
I just thank God it never got into town , but I was sure it would . ''
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from E & E News .
E & E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at www.eenews.net .

Paradise, the postcard Sierra Nevada town incinerated 22 months ago by the worst wildfire in California history, passed a milestone last month on its journey to rebuild from the ashes of 2018.
"The Town of Paradise has surpassed the 1,000th building permit issued!" officials crowed in an Aug. 12 recovery update. The occasion marked the town's rise from what remained of 14,000 destroyed homes and buildings.
A new Tractor Supply Co. will fill half of the once burned-out Kmart store. The Best Western opened 11 hotel rooms, with another 50 planned to be ready by the end of the year.
Things were looking up. Until Wednesday.
That's when every standing resident of Paradise — new arrivals and returnees — awoke to see a plume of black-orange smoke coming over the ridge from the Bear Fire just 8 miles to the east.
"I haven't talked to a person, including myself, who didn't think, 'Oh, no, not again,'" Vice Mayor Steve Crowder said in a phone interview Friday from his rebuilt home on the edge of town. "It was hard to distinguish whether we were seeing fire or seeing the sun trying to come through the fire around us."
Many feared Paradise's gamble against nature was lost. The town's aggressive rebuild could be reduced to ash in spite of stricter fire codes for new homes and buildings.
Some argue that environmentalists and climate researchers are right. Wildfire has become an insurmountable risk in the Sierra Nevada and other parts of the West. Climate warming would see that prediction through.
Crowder isn't buying it. He insists the town will be back on its feet and grow larger than before.
"Everywhere you go in town, there are sticks in the air, and it's great to see," he said. "It's funny because in this community, unless somebody lives there, they don't understand. It's got a draw to it."
Nearby Berry Creek, just down the road from Paradise, had a similar draw before succumbing to the North Complex Fire on Wednesday. With a population of just 1,200, its prospects for rebuilding are less certain.
The conundrum over whether to rebuild or leave is one of the most pressing and controversial issues facing towns in fire-prone parts of the Sierra Nevada in Northern California and the Cascade Range of Oregon and Washington. It's likely to get more intense as climate change leads to more severe heat that bakes the landscape and primes forests and scrub for wildfire.
High temperature records fell in all three states last week. Fires burned across roughly 5 million acres as of yesterday. Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley (D) called conditions in his state "apocalyptic" on ABC's "This Week" program, adding, "I could never have envisioned this."
The death toll in Oregon also mounted yesterday, with 23 dead by midday. California and Washington had reported 10 deaths combined.
Experts, some of whom were watching fires roar toward their own homes on Friday, said worsening climate conditions are pushing fire-prone communities like Paradise to the brink.
Unlike other parts of Northern California, mountain towns are not necessarily havens for the wealthy. Before the Camp Fire, for instance, roughly a quarter of Paradise's housing was either manufactured homes or trailers.
Yana Valachovic, a forest adviser and extension agent at the University of California and member of the California Fire Science Consortium, said property owners in places like Paradise often have little choice but to return to their burned-out communities. Their decisions are usually based upon economic realities and family ties.
"It's just like any other place," she said. "There's immense pressure on local politicians to respond to personal demand [to rebuild], and that's true in flooded areas and hurricane zones just like it is with fires.
"What if all you have is insurance money to rebuild [in the same place] or sell the property way below its value to someone else? How would you make that choice?" Valachovic added. And if people choose to stay, she said, "who is going to issue an eminent domain proclamation and take private property, and does that make sense fundamentally? The entire American West is wrestling with these questions."
In the absence of big, disruptive policy changes, Valachovic said, the best opportunity for towns like Paradise "is to adapt and rebuild smarter," including through adoption and enforcement of stronger building codes that require property owners to use fire-resistant materials like concrete, stone and stucco.
California already requires that new construction in high-hazard areas meet what is known as "Class A" roof standards. Those buildings must have reinforced roofs of brick, masonry or concrete with roof vents that draw in cool air and allow heat to escape. Walls and floors also must be built to withstand flames and high heat, while yards must be maintained to eliminate ignitable vegetation.
All newly built structures in Paradise meet those standards, which were established in 2008. Roughly 1,700 homes not destroyed by the Camp Fire were grandfathered under the old rules, while some other communities have skirted them altogether.
In Paradise, the city has benefited from a first-of-its-kind Federal Emergency Management Agency program to remove more than 500,000 dead, dying or stressed trees tall enough to hit a private or public roadway if felled by wildfire.
Some of the 86 deaths in Paradise linked to the Camp Fire were caused by downed trees and debris blocking residents from using narrow roads to reach lower-elevation evacuation areas, officials said.
As for climate change and wildfire risk, many returnees to Paradise acknowledge the climate experts are at least partly right.
Hot days are rising in number and sticking around longer, sometimes up to a week, and summer nights once marked by cool mountain air are becoming rarer, with residents using air conditioning to cool their homes. "This summer has definitely been hotter than we've experienced in the past," Crowder said, a condition he attributes in part to the loss of shade trees to the Camp Fire.
"The feeling here is [climate change] has something to do with it," he added. "I think the biggest issue, in my view and of most of the people I talk to, is that our state and federal governments have mismanaged our forests. You are not allowed to cut trees, then you have outfits like the Sierra Club that when you try to do something to clean up a forest, they sue to stop it."
The challenges did not dissuade Paradise from rebuilding out of the ashes. In a normal year, the city issues between 25 and 30 permits for new construction. Less than two years after the Camp Fire, the permit number is pushing 1,100, with nearly 350 homes already holding certificates of occupancy.
"You'll never find a more resilient community," Crowder said. "Some people were more stressed than others, and to be honest, I thought [the Camp Fire] was happening all over again. I just thank God it never got into town, but I was sure it would."
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from E&E News. E&E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at www.eenews.net.


scientificamerican--2020-09-14--Venus Might Host Life, New Discovery Suggests

There is something funky going on in the clouds of Venus .
Telescopes have detected unusually high concentrations of the molecule phosphine—a stinky , flammable chemical typically associated with feces , farts and rotting microbial activity—in an atmospheric layer far above the planet ’ s scorching surface .
The finding is curious because here on Earth , phosphine is essentially always associated with living creatures , either as a by-product of metabolic processes or of human technology such as industrial fumigants and methamphetamine labs .
Although toxic to many organisms , the molecule has been singled out as a potentially @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so difficult to make through ordinary geological or atmospheric action .
Swathed in sulfuric acid clouds and possessing oppressive surface pressures and temperatures hot enough to melt lead , Venus is a hellish world .
But the particular cloud layer where the phosphine is present happens to be relatively balmy , with ample sunlight and Earth-like atmospheric pressure and temperature .
The results will have to be carefully vetted by the scientific community .
Yet they seem likely to spark renewed interest in exploring our sister planet next door .
“ It ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doesn ’ t fit in our conception of what kinds of chemicals should be in Venus ’ s atmosphere , ” says Michael Wong , an astrobiologist at the University of Washington .
Planetary scientist Sanjay Limaye of the University of Wisconsin–Madison agrees .
“ The bottom line is we don ’ t know what ’ s going on , ” he says .
( Neither Wong nor Sanjay were involved in the work . )
After the sun and moon , Venus is the brightest object visible to the naked eye in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of years , people told stories about the glittering jewel that appeared around sunrise and sunset .
Venus ’ s brilliance is what made it attractive to Jane Greaves , a radio astronomer at Cardiff University in England .
She typically focuses her attention on distant newborn planetary systems but wanted to test her molecular identification abilities on worlds within our cosmic backyard .
In 2017 Greaves observed Venus with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope ( JCMT ) on Mauna Kea in Hawaii , searching for bar code–like patterns of lines in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the presence of different chemicals .
While doing so , she noticed a line associated with phosphine .
The data suggested the molecule was present at around 20 parts per billion in the planet ’ s atmosphere , a concentration between 1,000 and a million times greater than that in Earth ’ s atmosphere .
“ I was stunned , ” Greaves says .
Phosphine is a relatively simple molecule containing one phosphorus atom and three hydrogen atoms .
It is known to reek of garlic or rotting fish , though by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ smell it , it is likely to cause lung damage .
In the pilot episode of the series Breaking Bad , the character Walter White prepares phosphine gas to knock out two assailants who are threatening him .
Yet making the substance is not as easy as seen on TV .
Phosphorus and hydrogen “ hate each other , ” says Clara Sousa-Silva , a molecular astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a co-author of a study reporting the phosphine finding .
“ Hydrogen has much better stuff to do , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But if you throw enough energy at them , they can come together and be stable in some environments.
” The gas giants Jupiter and Saturn contain phosphine because they have hot interiors where it can be energetically favorable to produce the molecule .
Venus ’ s runaway greenhouse atmosphere , by contrast , is full of oxygen-containing chemicals such as carbon dioxide that would normally soak up phosphine ’ s phosphorus .
For the molecule to be present at any level , let alone the amounts Greaves was seeing , was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ built her career around studying phosphine—she goes by the handle @ DrPhosphine on Twitter—predicting how it might appear in the atmosphere of a distant alien exoplanet .
“ I was considering these exotic worlds light-years away—super-Earths , tropical planets , sewage planets , ” she says .
“ And the whole time , it was just here next door.
” The researchers and their colleagues made follow-up observations of Venus with the more powerful Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array ( ALMA ) in Chile last year , again detecting the atmospheric signature of phosphine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with every possible reason for the strange molecule ’ s existence , including volcanic activity , lightning strikes and even meteorites breaking up in the planet ’ s atmosphere .
“ I think the best routes we could find fell short by a factor of about 10,000 , ” Greaves says .
Of course , there might be additional pathways to making phosphine the team has not yet considered .
But after exhausting their imaginations seeking out abiotic explanations , the researchers felt forced to acknowledge one other possibility in their paper , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the molecule could be made by life on Venus , just as life is the main way it manifests on Earth .
Astrobiologists have long been enamored with Mars , a dry , rocky planet with conditions not all that dissimilar to those of Earth .
More recently , they have become moonstruck by icy , potentially habitable worlds in the outer solar system , such as Saturn ’ s geyser-spewing satellite Enceladus and Jupiter ’ s oceanic moon Europa .
But despite its drawbacks , Venus has not been entirely neglected by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ abodes .
From 50 to 60 kilometers above the Venusian surface , there is an atmospheric layer with pressure equal to that of sea level on Earth and temperatures between zero and 50 degrees Celsius .
If not for the sulfuric acid clouds , one might call this layer “ hospitable.
” Even so , there are terrestrial organisms that will happily tolerate such extremely acidic conditions in hot springs or other environments .
This relatively clement region is precisely the place where the phosphine has been found .
Since the 1960s , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s clouds are not reflecting as much of the sun ’ s ultraviolet light as they should be : an unknown something in the atmosphere seems to be preferentially absorbing that light instead .
This observation led the late astrobiologists Harold Morowitz and Carl Sagan to propose that energy-hungry photosynthetic organisms might be the culprit .
Meanwhile other researchers have never stopped searching for alternative abiotic explanations .
Recent evidence suggests that the planet is still geologically active .
And a model released earlier this year showed that Venus might have had an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only disappeared a few hundred million years ago .
Conceivably , life could have arisen on Venus when our sister world was much more Earth-like , only becoming airborne as the runaway greenhouse effect rendered the planet ’ s surface uninhabitable .
“ I ’ ve always thought it ’ s as plausible to have life in the clouds of Venus as to find it in the subsurface of Mars , ” says David Grinspoon , an astrobiologist at the Planetary Science Institute , who was not involved with the study .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ habitable but isn ’ t guaranteed to be.
” Yet an almost equally good case can be made for Venus ’ s clouds being inimical to life as we know it .
Microbes have been found floating around in Earth ’ s atmosphere , but none are known to exclusively spend their entire life cycle there .
All of them have to land eventually , and Venus ’ s surface seems too inhospitable a place to make for a good reservoir .
The Venusian area under consideration is also 50 times more arid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the driest place on our planet .
And although it is true that living things have found good ways to thrive in aqueous environments tinged with traces of sulfuric acid , conditions on Earth ’ s evil twin essentially reverse that formula : its cloud layer is mainly sulfuric acid with just a bit of water .
Venus remains an underexplored place .
“ Despite it being literally the planet next door , there are many mysteries that still need to be solved , ” Wong says .
In order to rule out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ phosphine , researchers will have to learn a great deal more about the planet itself , including its chemistry , geology and atmospheric physics , he adds .
Another issue might be the detection of phosphine itself .
Noisy ripples that make resolving any particular line somewhat challenging are superimposed on Venus ’ s spectrum in the team ’ s data .
These wavy structures could mimic a phosphine signature , says Bruno Bézard , a spectroscopist at the Paris Observatory .
“ I don ’ t see a strong argument to say @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” he says .
Greaves counters that the odds of finding the same signal using two separate facilities , JCMT and ALMA , is statistically small .
Nevertheless , she and her colleagues are hoping to do additional observations at other wavelengths , such as infrared , to further test their initial results .
Making higher-resolution maps of where the phosphine appears and seeing if it exhibits any kind of seasonal variation could also help tie it to biological processes .
In many ways , the unexpected finding appears analogous to the 1996 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ancient Martian meteorite designated Allan Hills 84001 .
Along with structures that looked like fossil bacteria , the sample contained an unusual form of iron crystals that appeared identical to those produced by microbial creatures on Earth .
It took many years before researchers were able to figure out an inorganic explanation for those crystals .
Although life did not pan out as an explanation in that case , “ it got everybody thinking , ‘ Well , why not ?
’ ” Grinspoon says .
“ Everything we know about Mars is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to a huge movement and catalyzed astrobiology as a field.
” The phosphine finding might play a similar role in getting planetary scientists to pay more attention to Venus .
In recent years , there has already been a contingent of researchers clamoring for more missions to our sister planet .
Russia has proposed sending its Venera-D mission , which would include an orbiter and lander , to Venus as early as 2026 .
The European Space Agency similarly has the EnVision spacecraft on its drawing board , and it could reach its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is currently considering proposals for two different Venus missions for funding under its Discovery Program : the orbiting VERITAS and DAVINCI+ .
The latter would fly the first probe through Venus ’ s atmosphere since the Soviet Vega balloons of 1984 .
A selection is expected sometime next year .
Any of these efforts , along with additional observations using telescopes on Earth , could help bolster or weaken the case for phosphine on Venus .
Until then , many in the field are likely to reserve their full judgment .
“ It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there is life on Venus , ” Wong says .
“ But it ’ s also speculative to say there definitely can ’ t be life on Venus.
” For her part , Sousa-Silva is hoping the rest of the scientific community will subject her and her colleagues ’ methods and conclusions in the study to rigorous scrutiny .
“ I ’ m confident our models and data reduction are good , but I ’ m still skeptical , ” she says .
“ I expect the world to come and point out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Such debates are important for science because similar conundrums are going to unfold every time someone claims evidence for life on a planet in our solar system or beyond , Sousa-Silva says .
“ I think it ’ s very hard to prove something like this , ” she adds .
“ We have an innate desire to find life , and then we have our own rational minds that say , ‘ None of this is sufficient evidence.
’ We want to not be alone , but we also want to not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are hard to make coexist .
”

There is something funky going on in the clouds of Venus. Telescopes have detected unusually high concentrations of the molecule phosphine—a stinky, flammable chemical typically associated with feces, farts and rotting microbial activity—in an atmospheric layer far above the planet’s scorching surface.
The finding is curious because here on Earth, phosphine is essentially always associated with living creatures, either as a by-product of metabolic processes or of human technology such as industrial fumigants and methamphetamine labs. Although toxic to many organisms, the molecule has been singled out as a potentially unambiguous signature of life because it is so difficult to make through ordinary geological or atmospheric action.
Swathed in sulfuric acid clouds and possessing oppressive surface pressures and temperatures hot enough to melt lead, Venus is a hellish world. But the particular cloud layer where the phosphine is present happens to be relatively balmy, with ample sunlight and Earth-like atmospheric pressure and temperature. The results will have to be carefully vetted by the scientific community. Yet they seem likely to spark renewed interest in exploring our sister planet next door.
A Molecular Mystery
“It’s a really puzzling discovery because phosphine doesn’t fit in our conception of what kinds of chemicals should be in Venus’s atmosphere,” says Michael Wong, an astrobiologist at the University of Washington. Planetary scientist Sanjay Limaye of the University of Wisconsin–Madison agrees. “The bottom line is we don’t know what’s going on,” he says. (Neither Wong nor Sanjay were involved in the work.)
After the sun and moon, Venus is the brightest object visible to the naked eye in Earth’s sky. For thousands of years, people told stories about the glittering jewel that appeared around sunrise and sunset. Venus’s brilliance is what made it attractive to Jane Greaves, a radio astronomer at Cardiff University in Wales. She typically focuses her attention on distant newborn planetary systems but wanted to test her molecular identification abilities on worlds within our cosmic backyard.
In 2017 Greaves observed Venus with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, searching for bar code–like patterns of lines in the planet’s spectrum that would indicate the presence of different chemicals. While doing so, she noticed a line associated with phosphine. The data suggested the molecule was present at around 20 parts per billion in the planet’s atmosphere, a concentration between 1,000 and a million times greater than that in Earth’s atmosphere. “I was stunned,” Greaves says.
Phosphine is a relatively simple molecule containing one phosphorus atom and three hydrogen atoms. It is known to reek of garlic or rotting fish, though by the time it reaches concentrations where humans can smell it, it is likely to cause lung damage. In the pilot episode of the series Breaking Bad, the character Walter White prepares phosphine gas to knock out two assailants who are threatening him.
Yet making the substance is not as easy as seen on TV. Phosphorus and hydrogen “hate each other,” says Clara Sousa-Silva, a molecular astrophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a co-author of a study reporting the phosphine finding. “Hydrogen has much better stuff to do, and phosphorus would rather bond with oxygen. But if you throw enough energy at them, they can come together and be stable in some environments.”
The gas giants Jupiter and Saturn contain phosphine because they have hot interiors where it can be energetically favorable to produce the molecule. Venus’s runaway greenhouse atmosphere, by contrast, is full of oxygen-containing chemicals such as carbon dioxide that would normally soak up phosphine’s phosphorus. For the molecule to be present at any level, let alone the amounts Greaves was seeing, was a genuine head-scratcher.
Meanwhile Sousa-Silva has built her career around studying phosphine—she goes by the handle @DrPhosphine on Twitter—predicting how it might appear in the atmosphere of a distant alien exoplanet. “I was considering these exotic worlds light-years away—super-Earths, tropical planets, sewage planets,” she says. “And the whole time, it was just here next door.”
The researchers and their colleagues made follow-up observations of Venus with the more powerful Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile last year, again detecting the atmospheric signature of phosphine. They then tried to come up with every possible reason for the strange molecule’s existence, including volcanic activity, lightning strikes and even meteorites breaking up in the planet’s atmosphere. “I think the best routes we could find fell short by a factor of about 10,000,” Greaves says.
Of course, there might be additional pathways to making phosphine the team has not yet considered. But after exhausting their imaginations seeking out abiotic explanations, the researchers felt forced to acknowledge one other possibility in their paper, which appeared today in Nature Astronomy: the molecule could be made by life on Venus, just as life is the main way it manifests on Earth.
Life in the Clouds
Astrobiologists have long been enamored with Mars, a dry, rocky planet with conditions not all that dissimilar to those of Earth. More recently, they have become moonstruck by icy, potentially habitable worlds in the outer solar system, such as Saturn’s geyser-spewing satellite Enceladus and Jupiter’s oceanic moon Europa. But despite its drawbacks, Venus has not been entirely neglected by scientists speculating about life’s extraterrestrial abodes.
From 50 to 60 kilometers above the Venusian surface, there is an atmospheric layer with pressure equal to that of sea level on Earth and temperatures between zero and 50 degrees Celsius. If not for the sulfuric acid clouds, one might call this layer “hospitable.” Even so, there are terrestrial organisms that will happily tolerate such extremely acidic conditions in hot springs or other environments. This relatively clement region is precisely the place where the phosphine has been found.
Since the 1960s, astronomers have also noticed that Venus’s clouds are not reflecting as much of the sun’s ultraviolet light as they should be: an unknown something in the atmosphere seems to be preferentially absorbing that light instead. This observation led the late astrobiologists Harold Morowitz and Carl Sagan to propose that energy-hungry photosynthetic organisms might be the culprit. Meanwhile other researchers have never stopped searching for alternative abiotic explanations. Recent evidence suggests that the planet is still geologically active. And a model released earlier this year showed that Venus might have had an ocean for nearly three billion years—one that only disappeared a few hundred million years ago. Conceivably, life could have arisen on Venus when our sister world was much more Earth-like, only becoming airborne as the runaway greenhouse effect rendered the planet’s surface uninhabitable.
“I’ve always thought it’s as plausible to have life in the clouds of Venus as to find it in the subsurface of Mars,” says David Grinspoon, an astrobiologist at the Planetary Science Institute, who was not involved with the study. “Each is an environment that could be habitable but isn’t guaranteed to be.”
Yet an almost equally good case can be made for Venus’s clouds being inimical to life as we know it. Microbes have been found floating around in Earth’s atmosphere, but none are known to exclusively spend their entire life cycle there. All of them have to land eventually, and Venus’s surface seems too inhospitable a place to make for a good reservoir.
The Venusian area under consideration is also 50 times more arid than Chile’s Atacama Desert, the driest place on our planet. And although it is true that living things have found good ways to thrive in aqueous environments tinged with traces of sulfuric acid, conditions on Earth’s evil twin essentially reverse that formula: its cloud layer is mainly sulfuric acid with just a bit of water.
Venus Revisited
Venus remains an underexplored place. “Despite it being literally the planet next door, there are many mysteries that still need to be solved,” Wong says. In order to rule out all nonliving explanations for the creation of phosphine, researchers will have to learn a great deal more about the planet itself, including its chemistry, geology and atmospheric physics, he adds.
Another issue might be the detection of phosphine itself. Noisy ripples that make resolving any particular line somewhat challenging are superimposed on Venus’s spectrum in the team’s data. These wavy structures could mimic a phosphine signature, says Bruno Bézard, a spectroscopist at the Paris Observatory. “I don’t see a strong argument to say it’s not a ripple,” he says.
Greaves counters that the odds of finding the same signal using two separate facilities, JCMT and ALMA, is statistically small. Nevertheless, she and her colleagues are hoping to do additional observations at other wavelengths, such as infrared, to further test their initial results. Making higher-resolution maps of where the phosphine appears and seeing if it exhibits any kind of seasonal variation could also help tie it to biological processes.
In many ways, the unexpected finding appears analogous to the 1996 announcement of potential microscopic life in an ancient Martian meteorite designated Allan Hills 84001. Along with structures that looked like fossil bacteria, the sample contained an unusual form of iron crystals that appeared identical to those produced by microbial creatures on Earth. It took many years before researchers were able to figure out an inorganic explanation for those crystals.
Although life did not pan out as an explanation in that case, “it got everybody thinking, ‘Well, why not?’” Grinspoon says. “Everything we know about Mars is consistent with that possibility. That led to a huge movement and catalyzed astrobiology as a field.”
The phosphine finding might play a similar role in getting planetary scientists to pay more attention to Venus. In recent years, there has already been a contingent of researchers clamoring for more missions to our sister planet. Russia has proposed sending its Venera-D mission, which would include an orbiter and lander, to Venus as early as 2026. The European Space Agency similarly has the EnVision spacecraft on its drawing board, and it could reach its target in the next decade.
NASA is currently considering proposals for two different Venus missions for funding under its Discovery Program: the orbiting VERITAS and DAVINCI+. The latter would fly the first probe through Venus’s atmosphere since the Soviet Vega balloons in 1985. A selection is expected sometime next year.
Any of these efforts, along with additional observations using telescopes on Earth, could help bolster or weaken the case for phosphine on Venus. Until then, many in the field are likely to reserve their full judgment. “It’s very speculative to say that there is life on Venus,” Wong says. “But it’s also speculative to say there definitely can’t be life on Venus.”
For her part, Sousa-Silva is hoping the rest of the scientific community will subject her and her colleagues’ methods and conclusions in the study to rigorous scrutiny. “I’m confident our models and data reduction are good, but I’m still skeptical,” she says. “I expect the world to come and point out the mistakes I’ve made.”
Such debates are important for science because similar conundrums are going to unfold every time someone claims evidence for life on a planet in our solar system or beyond, Sousa-Silva says. “I think it’s very hard to prove something like this,” she adds. “We have an innate desire to find life, and then we have our own rational minds that say, ‘None of this is sufficient evidence.’ We want to not be alone, but we also want to not be wrong. Sometimes those two things are hard to make coexist.”
Editor’s Note (9/15/20): This article was edited after posting to correct the location of Cardiff University and the date of when the Soviet Vega balloons reached Venus.


scientificamerican--2020-09-14--Photos Show Massive Wildfires Devastating Oregon and California

From the Mexican border to the forests of Washington State , the West Coast is ablaze .
Dozens of fires have roared to life across the western states , burning millions of acres of forest and grassland .
California has borne the brunt of the onslaught , with more than 3.3 million acres going up in flames so far this year .
That number greatly surpasses the state ’ s record of more than 1.9 million acres set afire in 2018—and this year ’ s blazes have occurred before the prime period of the traditional wildfire season has even arrived @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 20 largest wildfires have ignited this year , including the largest on record : the August Complex fire , which has burned more than 877,000 acres and claimed the top spot from a 2018 conflagration called the Mendocino Complex .
Devastating fires have also erupted across Oregon , Washington State , Colorado and other Western states .
Together , they have destroyed hundreds of homes , killed dozens of people and forced tens of thousands to evacuate .
The blazes have also had an impact beyond the edge of the flames : smoke @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the region , turning skies orange and making the air unhealthy to breathe .
Though the immediate causes of the fires have ranged from a rare intense lightning storm to a gender-reveal party gone awry , climate change and a century of fire suppression have helped set the stage for such massive , destructive blazes .
Fire suppression strategies have left forests with a buildup of ready fuel in the form of branches , leaves and other detritus .
Climate change has increased the likelihood and intensity of heat waves that can dry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can quickly explode into an inferno .
Here , we feature photographs showing the effects of the recent weeks ’ wildfires on the landscape and people of the West .
Aircraft drops fire retardant on a ridge during the Walbridge fire , part of the larger LNU Lightning Complex fire , as flames spread in Healdsburg , Calif. , on August 20 , 2020 .
Such aircraft are a key part of the firefighting response in the West , though planes often can not fly when winds are strong , making it harder @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this aerial view from a drone , people walk through a mobile-home park destroyed by the Almeda fire in Phoenix , Ore. , on September 10 , 2020 .
Hundreds of homes in the city were lost to the flames .
The fires raging around the state have burned more than one million acres , or about twice the area that has burned each year over the past 10 years , Governor Kate Brown said .
Firefighters light a backfire near the Berry Creek area of unincorporated Butte County in California on September @ @ @ @ @ @ @ used to burn grass and leaf litter ahead of the advancing flames to deprive them of fuel and arrest their progress .
The Bear fire , part of the North Complex fire , was propelled by strong winds and tore through Berry Creek , leaving several dead .
Artist Marcia Ritz , age 77 , walks through the rubble of her home in the Spanish Flat Mobile Villa trailer park in Lake Berryessa , Calif. , on August 27 , 2020 .
It was one of hundreds of structures destroyed by the Hennessy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Complex fire , on August 18 .
Ritz and her husband Jerry Rehmke , 80 , survived the fire by sheltering with nine others aboard a pontoon boat on the lake as the flames raced through the area .
The fire was one of several ignited by a rare intense lightning storm that moved over Northern California .
Red flames of the Grizzly Creek fire glow against mountains tinged purple in the night sky in Glenwood Canyon , Colo .
The fire began on August 10 and kept part of Interstate 70 closed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fueled by hot , dry , windy weather that plagued the state in August—the hottest August on record in parts of Colorado and other western states .
Such heat extremes have become both more likely and more intense because of climate change .
A sudden shift in the weather in early September brought snows that helped to tamp down the fires burning across the state .
Firefighter douses flames from the Creek fire as they push toward homes in the Cascadel Woods area of unincorporated Madera County in California on September 7 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ September 4 , and by September 13 , it had burned through more than 201,000 acres .
A sun tinted orange by smoke from wildfires in Oregon and southern Washington State sets behind a hill in Kalama , Wash. , on September 9 , 2020 .
The smoke has also made the air unhealthy to breathe across a large swath of the West .
The smallest particles can make their way deep into the lungs , where they can exacerbate existing lung conditions , such as asthma .
Residents have been advised to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , even during a heat wave and the pandemic of COVID-19 , which spreads more quickly when people gather indoors .
Person who did not want to give his name contemplates the view from San Francisco ’ s neighborhood of Embarcadero as smoke from the northern California wildfires turns the skies an orange-red on September 9 , 2020 .
A stable layer of cooler , moist air from over the ocean keeps the smoke aloft , where particles filter out wavelengths of the sun ’ s rays , leaving only the orange-red part @ @ @ @ @ @ @

From the Mexican border to the forests of Washington State, the West Coast is ablaze. Dozens of fires have roared to life across the western states, burning millions of acres of forest and grassland. California has borne the brunt of the onslaught, with more than 3.3 million acres going up in flames so far this year. That number greatly surpasses the state’s record of more than 1.9 million acres set afire in 2018—and this year’s blazes have occurred before the prime period of the traditional wildfire season has even arrived. Six of the state’s 20 largest wildfires have ignited this year, including the largest on record: the August Complex fire, which has burned more than 877,000 acres and claimed the top spot from a 2018 conflagration called the Mendocino Complex.
Devastating fires have also erupted across Oregon, Washington State, Colorado and other Western states. Together, they have destroyed hundreds of homes, killed dozens of people and forced tens of thousands to evacuate. The blazes have also had an impact beyond the edge of the flames: smoke has poured into the atmosphere and blanketed the region, turning skies orange and making the air unhealthy to breathe.
Though the immediate causes of the fires have ranged from a rare intense lightning storm to a gender-reveal party gone awry, climate change and a century of fire suppression have helped set the stage for such massive, destructive blazes. Fire suppression strategies have left forests with a buildup of ready fuel in the form of branches, leaves and other detritus. Climate change has increased the likelihood and intensity of heat waves that can dry out those fuels, so any spark can quickly explode into an inferno.
Here, we feature photographs showing the effects of the recent weeks’ wildfires on the landscape and people of the West.
Aircraft drops fire retardant on a ridge during the Walbridge fire, part of the larger LNU Lightning Complex fire, as flames spread in Healdsburg, Calif., on August 20, 2020. Such aircraft are a key part of the firefighting response in the West, though planes often cannot fly when winds are strong, making it harder to bring fires under control.
In this aerial view from a drone, people walk through a mobile-home park destroyed by the Almeda fire in Phoenix, Ore., on September 10, 2020. Hundreds of homes in the city were lost to the flames. The fires raging around the state have burned more than one million acres, or about twice the area that has burned each year over the past 10 years, Governor Kate Brown said.
Firefighters light a backfire near the Berry Creek area of unincorporated Butte County in California on September 9, 2020. Such backfires are used to burn grass and leaf litter ahead of the advancing flames to deprive them of fuel and arrest their progress. The Bear fire, part of the North Complex fire, was propelled by strong winds and tore through Berry Creek, leaving several dead.
Artist Marcia Ritz, age 77, walks through the rubble of her home in the Spanish Flat Mobile Villa trailer park in Lake Berryessa, Calif., on August 27, 2020. It was one of hundreds of structures destroyed by the Hennessy Fire, part of the LNU Lightning Complex fire, on August 18. Ritz and her husband Jerry Rehmke, 80, survived the fire by sheltering with nine others aboard a pontoon boat on the lake as the flames raced through the area. The fire was one of several ignited by a rare intense lightning storm that moved over Northern California.
Red flames of the Grizzly Creek fire glow against mountains tinged purple in the night sky in Glenwood Canyon, Colo. The fire began on August 10 and kept part of Interstate 70 closed for two weeks. It was initially fueled by hot, dry, windy weather that plagued the state in August—the hottest August on record in parts of Colorado and other western states. Such heat extremes have become both more likely and more intense because of climate change. A sudden shift in the weather in early September brought snows that helped to tamp down the fires burning across the state.
Firefighter douses flames from the Creek fire as they push toward homes in the Cascadel Woods area of unincorporated Madera County in California on September 7, 2020. The blaze was ignited on September 4, and by September 13, it had burned through more than 201,000 acres.
A sun tinted orange by smoke from wildfires in Oregon and southern Washington State sets behind a hill in Kalama, Wash., on September 9, 2020. The smoke has also made the air unhealthy to breathe across a large swath of the West. The smallest particles can make their way deep into the lungs, where they can exacerbate existing lung conditions, such as asthma. Residents have been advised to stay inside and keep their windows closed, even during a heat wave and the pandemic of COVID-19, which spreads more quickly when people gather indoors.
Person who did not want to give his name contemplates the view from San Francisco’s neighborhood of Embarcadero as smoke from the northern California wildfires turns the skies an orange-red on September 9, 2020. A stable layer of cooler, moist air from over the ocean keeps the smoke aloft, where particles filter out wavelengths of the sun’s rays, leaving only the orange-red part of the spectrum to shine through.


scientificamerican--2020-09-11--Coronavirus News Roundup: September 5-September 11

The items below are highlights from the free newsletter , “ Smart , useful , science stuff about COVID-19.
” To receive newsletter issues daily in your inbox , sign-up here..
Please consider a monthly contribution to support this newsletter .
At Nature , Nicky Phillips , David Cyranoski and Smriti Mallapaty covered the announcement that a collaboration between researchers at AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford is pausing Phase 3 vaccine-candidate experiments due to a “ suspected adverse event ” in a study participant in the UK ( 9/9/20 ) .
The collaboration ’ s Phase 3 studies are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , South Africa and the UK , Nature reports .
“ The news highlights the importance of waiting for the results of large , properly designed trials [ experiments ] to assess safety before approving a vaccine for widespread use , ” the story states .
Investigators will start by trying to find out if the participant received the vaccine candidate or a placebo , the story states .
And then if it was the vaccine , they will assess whether the participant ’ s reaction is related or unrelated to receiving it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this group [ of investigators ] will very quickly assess this adverse event and make the results of that investigation known , ” said a McGill University bioethicist quoted in the story .
Presumably in response to reports of political pushing for approvals this fall , the chief executive officers ( CEOs ) of 9 pharmaceutical companies released a pledge ( dated 9/8/20 ) to “ uphold the integrity of the scientific process as they work towards potential global regulatory filings and approvals of the first COVID-19 vaccines.
” The CEOs — including @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Johnson & Johnson , Merck , Moderna , and Pfizer — assert they will “ only submit for approval or emergency use authorization after demonstrating safety and efficacy through a Phase 3 clinical study that is designed and conducted to meet requirements of expert regulatory authorities such as [ the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ] .
” In other words , they don ’ t plan to cut any corners in their research nor to yield to political pressure .
For more contextualized commentary on what Ed Silverman describes as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ '' see his column at STAT ( 9/7/20 ) .
Meanwhile , the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ( FDA ) has quickly taken measures to block any political influence over ongoing research to develop vaccines to protect us from SARS-CoV-2 , report Anna Edney , Drew Armstrong , and Robert Langreth for Bloomberg ( 9/8/20 ) .
One measure reportedly includes the FDA “ sticking by '' June guidance that the agency will only consider for approval vaccine candidates that are at least 50 % effective .
Lower down in the story @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is no guarantee the vaccines furthest along in development will be the most effective , or be safe.
” And it could take “ months more ” for Phase 3 findings to be conclusive , the story suggests .
Still , the story ends with estimates by drug makers for how soon they might complete their Phase 3 studies ( efficacy and safety experiments in thousands of study subjects ) of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidates .
Moderna reportedly says as soon as Thanksgiving , and Pfizer reportedly has been saying next month .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I came across a searchable web site called “ Dear Pandemic , ” which bills itself as an “ interdisciplinary all-female team of researchers and clinicians with expertise including nursing , mental health , demography , health policy/economics , and epidemiology.
” Posts date back to July but the site appears to have officially launched 9/10/20 .
Their mission is to “ educate and empower individuals to successfully navigate the COVID-19 information overwhelm.
” About two-thirds of the way down the home page , there ’ s a “ submit a question ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ posts are indexed by topic and dates .
The risk of catching SARS-CoV-2 on an airplane is “ relatively low ” if travelers are screened for sickness , wear masks , and are spaced out among seats , according to experts interviewed by Noah Y. Kim for Kaiser Health News ( 9/10/20 ) .
The air exchange rate and use of HEPA ( high-efficiency particulate air ) filters on planes also significantly reduce the risk of catching the virus from travelers who are several rows away , according to the story .
There @ @ @ @ @ @ @ person seated nearby , the story states .
And air filtration alone is insufficient to prevent transmission even when travelers are distanced in the plane , Kim writes .
Delta , Hawaiian , Southwest and JetBlue currently keep middle seats open , the story states .
Security checks and waiting at gates also pose some transmission risk .
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has not confirmed any SARS-CoV-2 transmission aboard a U.S. flight , an airline industry source says in the story , but that might reflect the difficulty of determining where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Kim writes .
“ Even though flying is a relatively low-risk activity , ” the story states , “ traveling should still be avoided unless absolutely necessary.
” An undated , recently published ESPN interactive , bylined by Kyle Bonagura , illustrates its analysis and mapping of anonymized cellphone tracking data for three 2019 U.S. college football games .
The maps provide a sense of where fans travel to and disperse to after games and thus the regional concentration of potential SARS-CoV-2 ( and other infectious disease ) spread resulting from the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ after big match-ups .
The piece includes updates on some of the football conferences ’ plans and protocols for the 2020 season .
The Big Ten and Pac-12 have postponed their seasons , whereas the SEC ( Southeastern Conference ) seems to be allowing each school to set its own attendance guidelines .
I can ’ t pretend to follow NCAA ( National Collegiate Athletic Association ) football designations but some or all of the NCAA teams drew “ more than 47.5 million '' attendees last season , the piece states .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ limited-capacity crowds , the prospect that college football could play a role in spreading the coronavirus is too obvious to ignore , ” the story states .
Thanks to a reader for alerting me to this piece .
Check out “ To build emotional strength , expand your brain , ” by Kerry Hannon at The New York Times ( 9/2/20 ) .
It basically asserts that learning new material , such as a language or craft , that expands your horizons helps you deal with change and crisis , such as the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the piece lists some free or low-cost online class sites and some programs that allow nontraditional students to audit classes or work on projects with enrolled graduate and undergraduate students .
You might enjoy “ Looks like I wasn ’ t muted during our Zoom meeting , ” by Susie Aquilina , for McSweeney ’ s ( 9/10/20 ) .

The items below are highlights from the free newsletter, “Smart, useful, science stuff about COVID-19.” To receive newsletter issues daily in your inbox, sign-up here.. Please consider a monthly contribution to support this newsletter.
At Nature, Nicky Phillips, David Cyranoski and Smriti Mallapaty covered the announcement that a collaboration between researchers at AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford is pausing Phase 3 vaccine-candidate experiments due to a “suspected adverse event” in a study participant in the UK (9/9/20). The collaboration’s Phase 3 studies are being paused in the U.S., Brazil, South Africa and the UK, Nature reports. “The news highlights the importance of waiting for the results of large, properly designed trials [experiments] to assess safety before approving a vaccine for widespread use,” the story states. Investigators will start by trying to find out if the participant received the vaccine candidate or a placebo, the story states. And then if it was the vaccine, they will assess whether the participant’s reaction is related or unrelated to receiving it. “I have every confidence that this group [of investigators] will very quickly assess this adverse event and make the results of that investigation known,” said a McGill University bioethicist quoted in the story.
Presumably in response to reports of political pushing for approvals this fall, the chief executive officers (CEOs) of 9 pharmaceutical companies released a pledge (dated 9/8/20) to “uphold the integrity of the scientific process as they work towards potential global regulatory filings and approvals of the first COVID-19 vaccines.” The CEOs — including those for AstraZeneca, BioNTech, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Moderna, and Pfizer — assert they will “only submit for approval or emergency use authorization after demonstrating safety and efficacy through a Phase 3 clinical study that is designed and conducted to meet requirements of expert regulatory authorities such as [the U.S. Food and Drug Administration].” In other words, they don’t plan to cut any corners in their research nor to yield to political pressure. For more contextualized commentary on what Ed Silverman describes as a “highly unusual turn of events," see his column at STAT (9/7/20). Meanwhile, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has quickly taken measures to block any political influence over ongoing research to develop vaccines to protect us from SARS-CoV-2, report Anna Edney, Drew Armstrong, and Robert Langreth for Bloomberg (9/8/20). One measure reportedly includes the FDA “sticking by" June guidance that the agency will only consider for approval vaccine candidates that are at least 50% effective. Lower down in the story, the reporters write, “There is no guarantee the vaccines furthest along in development will be the most effective, or be safe.” And it could take “months more” for Phase 3 findings to be conclusive, the story suggests. Still, the story ends with estimates by drug makers for how soon they might complete their Phase 3 studies (efficacy and safety experiments in thousands of study subjects) of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidates. Moderna reportedly says as soon as Thanksgiving, and Pfizer reportedly has been saying next month. I remain reasonably skeptical.
On Twitter, I came across a searchable web site called “Dear Pandemic,” which bills itself as an “interdisciplinary all-female team of researchers and clinicians with expertise including nursing, mental health, demography, health policy/economics, and epidemiology.” Posts date back to July but the site appears to have officially launched 9/10/20. Their mission is to “educate and empower individuals to successfully navigate the COVID-19 information overwhelm.” About two-thirds of the way down the home page, there’s a “submit a question” link. And below that, previous posts are indexed by topic and dates.
The risk of catching SARS-CoV-2 on an airplane is “relatively low” if travelers are screened for sickness, wear masks, and are spaced out among seats, according to experts interviewed by Noah Y. Kim for Kaiser Health News (9/10/20). The air exchange rate and use of HEPA (high-efficiency particulate air) filters on planes also significantly reduce the risk of catching the virus from travelers who are several rows away, according to the story. There is still a risk from an infected person seated nearby, the story states. And air filtration alone is insufficient to prevent transmission even when travelers are distanced in the plane, Kim writes. Delta, Hawaiian, Southwest and JetBlue currently keep middle seats open, the story states. Security checks and waiting at gates also pose some transmission risk. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has not confirmed any SARS-CoV-2 transmission aboard a U.S. flight, an airline industry source says in the story, but that might reflect the difficulty of determining where people in the U.S. contract the virus, Kim writes. “Even though flying is a relatively low-risk activity,” the story states, “traveling should still be avoided unless absolutely necessary.”
An undated, recently published ESPN interactive, bylined by Kyle Bonagura, illustrates its analysis and mapping of anonymized cellphone tracking data for three 2019 U.S. college football games. The maps provide a sense of where fans travel to and disperse to after games and thus the regional concentration of potential SARS-CoV-2 (and other infectious disease) spread resulting from the mixing of people before, during and after big match-ups. The piece includes updates on some of the football conferences’ plans and protocols for the 2020 season. The Big Ten and Pac-12 have postponed their seasons, whereas the SEC (Southeastern Conference) seems to be allowing each school to set its own attendance guidelines. I can’t pretend to follow NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) football designations but some or all of the NCAA teams drew “more than 47.5 million" attendees last season, the piece states. “Even with fewer teams in action and limited-capacity crowds, the prospect that college football could play a role in spreading the coronavirus is too obvious to ignore,” the story states. Thanks to a reader for alerting me to this piece.
Check out “To build emotional strength, expand your brain,” by Kerry Hannon at The New York Times (9/2/20). It basically asserts that learning new material, such as a language or craft, that expands your horizons helps you deal with change and crisis, such as the coronavirus pandemic. Near the end, the piece lists some free or low-cost online class sites and some programs that allow nontraditional students to audit classes or work on projects with enrolled graduate and undergraduate students.
You might enjoy “Looks like I wasn’t muted during our Zoom meeting,” by Susie Aquilina, for McSweeney’s (9/10/20).


scientificamerican--2020-09-15--COVID-19 Dreams, Synchronicity and Visitors from Another Solar System

Have you been sleeping well this year ?
If not , you 're not alone .
Nightmares about COVID-19—fears of being in crowded spaces , touching germy surfaces , feeling exposed without a mask—have been disturbing the sleep of people around the world .
The pandemic seems to have introduced a new shared unreality , with dreams that are as alarming as that one about being late for a final exam you have n't studied for .
Our cover story this month is from psychiatrist and dream researcher Tore Nielsen , who is busy studying the largest inadvertent sleep-disruption experiment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pandemic in a century , in part because the coronavirus behaves in unexpected ways .
At first , we thought the disease spread primarily through sneezes and coughs and from people touching surfaces where respiratory droplets had landed .
Now we know the virus spreads through the air , often from people who do n't have symptoms and do n't realize they 're infected .
Asymptomatic transmission is one of the ways the new pandemic resembles the HIV/AIDS pandemic , and longtime researcher William A. Haseltine shares lessons for COVID-19 from the early @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more touching observations is that there is a social element to both diseases .
People go to bars and parties when they are seeking companionship , which is natural and human .
When a bizarre object zipped through our solar system in late 2017 , astronomers quickly realized it was from out of this world .
‘ Oumuamua is the first object from another solar system to be detected in ours .
We call it an object because nobody really knows what it is—it 's kind of comet-ey , kind of asteroid-ey , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it 's not entirely unlike an alien ship .
( In general , whenever somebody says , “ Maybe it 's aliens , ” it 's never aliens . )
A second extrasolar interloper soon followed , and astronomers David Jewitt and Amaya Moro-Martín , among others , are eagerly anticipating the next ones .
The COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating the health effects of racism , with disproportionate illness and deaths among people of color .
Janet Currie , an expert on social and environmental impacts on health , explains how infants can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ side of her article is that access to health care and nutritional support , as well as other interventions and policies , can and do improve the health of babies born at a disadvantage , leading to dramatic improvements in lifelong health and economic security .
The story on unlearning racism shows one person 's struggle , using science and scholarship , to understand and confront the bias we 're pickled in .
A lot of people are newly recognizing systemic inequalities in the U.S. and other parts of the world , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the books she recommends will help .
People who live in the forests around Lake Mensabak in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas are descendants of the Lacandon Maya , a group that left the large cities of the Maya empire when drought , war , slavery and disease devastated the civilization .
Now modern Lacandon Maya are collaborating with archaeologists to study their history and understand how their ancestors adapted to a new life .
Freelance writer Zach Zorich takes us there .
When people move , dance , sing or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ distinct form of joy and fellowship .
Writer Marta Zaraska shares the social science and brain science of synchrony , which some researchers claim has a social-bonding function that helped early humans form cohesive groups ( and make beautiful music together ) .
Thank you for reading Scientific American .
All of us here wish you good health and pleasant ( or as pleasant as possible ) dreams .

Have you been sleeping well this year? If not, you're not alone. Nightmares about COVID-19—fears of being in crowded spaces, touching germy surfaces, feeling exposed without a mask—have been disturbing the sleep of people around the world. The pandemic seems to have introduced a new shared unreality, with dreams that are as alarming as that one about being late for a final exam you haven't studied for. Our cover story this month is from psychiatrist and dream researcher Tore Nielsen, who is busy studying the largest inadvertent sleep-disruption experiment in history.
COVID-19 is the worst pandemic in a century, in part because the coronavirus behaves in unexpected ways. At first, we thought the disease spread primarily through sneezes and coughs and from people touching surfaces where respiratory droplets had landed. Now we know the virus spreads through the air, often from people who don't have symptoms and don't realize they're infected. Asymptomatic transmission is one of the ways the new pandemic resembles the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and longtime researcher William A. Haseltine shares lessons for COVID-19 from the early days of AIDS. One of his more touching observations is that there is a social element to both diseases. People go to bars and parties when they are seeking companionship, which is natural and human.
When a bizarre object zipped through our solar system in late 2017, astronomers quickly realized it was from out of this world. ‘Oumuamua is the first object from another solar system to be detected in ours. We call it an object because nobody really knows what it is—it's kind of comet-ey, kind of asteroid-ey, and according to a few theorists, it's not entirely unlike an alien ship. (In general, whenever somebody says, “Maybe it's aliens,” it's never aliens.) A second extrasolar interloper soon followed, and astronomers David Jewitt and Amaya Moro-Martín, among others, are eagerly anticipating the next ones.
The COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating the health effects of racism, with disproportionate illness and deaths among people of color. Janet Currie, an expert on social and environmental impacts on health, explains how infants can be unequal at birth. One hopeful side of her article is that access to health care and nutritional support, as well as other interventions and policies, can and do improve the health of babies born at a disadvantage, leading to dramatic improvements in lifelong health and economic security.
The story on unlearning racism shows one person's struggle, using science and scholarship, to understand and confront the bias we're pickled in. A lot of people are newly recognizing systemic inequalities in the U.S. and other parts of the world, and we hope writer Abigail Libers's story and the books she recommends will help.
People who live in the forests around Lake Mensabak in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas are descendants of the Lacandon Maya, a group that left the large cities of the Maya empire when drought, war, slavery and disease devastated the civilization. Now modern Lacandon Maya are collaborating with archaeologists to study their history and understand how their ancestors adapted to a new life. Freelance writer Zach Zorich takes us there.
When people move, dance, sing or swing together, they often experience a distinct form of joy and fellowship. Writer Marta Zaraska shares the social science and brain science of synchrony, which some researchers claim has a social-bonding function that helped early humans form cohesive groups (and make beautiful music together).
Thank you for reading Scientific American. All of us here wish you good health and pleasant (or as pleasant as possible) dreams.