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Nature
How the pandemic might play out in 2021 and beyond
June 2021. The world has been in pandemic mode for a year and a half. The virus continues to spread at a slow burn; intermittent lockdowns are the new normal. An approved vaccine offers six months of protection, but international deal-making has slowed its distribution. An estimated 250 million people have been infected worldwide, and 1.75 million are dead.
Scenarios such as this one imagine how the COVID-19 pandemic might play out. Around the world, epidemiologists are constructing short- and long-term projections as a way to prepare for, and potentially mitigate, the spread and impact of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Although their forecasts and timelines vary, modellers agree on two things: COVID-19 is here to stay, and the future depends on a lot of unknowns, including whether people develop lasting immunity to the virus, whether seasonality affects its spread, and — perhaps most importantly — the choices made by governments and individuals. “A lot of places are unlocking, and a lot of places aren’t. We don’t really yet know what’s going to happen,” says Rosalind Eggo, an infectious-disease modeller at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).
“The future will very much depend on how much social mixing resumes, and what kind of prevention we do,” says Joseph Wu, a disease modeller at the University of Hong Kong. Recent models and evidence from successful lockdowns suggest that behavioural changes can reduce the spread of COVID-19 if most, but not necessarily all, people comply.
Why deforestation and extinctions make pandemics more likely
As humans diminish biodiversity by cutting down forests and building more infrastructure, they’re increasing the risk of disease pandemics such as COVID-19. Many ecologists have long suspected this, but a new study helps to reveal why: while some species are going extinct, those that tend to survive and thrive — rats and bats, for instance — are more likely to host potentially dangerous pathogens that can make the jump to humans.
The analysis of around 6,800 ecological communities on 6 continents adds to a growing body of evidence that connects trends in human development and biodiversity loss to disease outbreaks — but stops short of projecting where new disease outbreaks might occur.
“We’ve been warning about this for decades,” says Kate Jones, an ecological modeller at University College London and an author on the study, published on 5 August in Nature. “Nobody paid any attention.”
Science
Illegal deforestation in Brazil soars amid climate of impunity
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has risen sharply in the past year—again. Estimates set to be released this week by Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) will show clearings have increased by at least 28% during the current monitoring year, which runs from August through July, compared with the previous year.
It is the second steep hike under Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who has made good on his campaign promise to loosen environmental law enforcement and step up development in the Amazon.
The numbers come from Brazil’s Real-time Deforestation Detection System (DETER), which uses low-resolution satellite images to quickly identify new forest clearings and alert authorities to possible illegal deforestation. More than 8700 square kilometers (km2) of primary forest cover has already disappeared from the images since August 2019, according to data updated through 23 July, compared with 6800 km2 in the previous 12 months. (Data for the final week will be released on 7 August; because July is prime time for deforestation in most of the Amazon, the number is likely to go up some more.
Humans have altered North America’s ecosystems more than melting glaciers
Recent human activity, including agriculture, has had a greater impact on North America’s plants and animals than even the glaciers that retreated more than 10,000 years ago. Those findings, presented this week at the virtual annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America, reveal that more North American forests and grasslands have abruptly disappeared in the past 250 years than in the previous 14,000 years, likely as a result of human activity. The authors say the new work, based on hundreds of fossilized pollen samples, supports the establishment of a new epoch in geological history known as the Anthropocene, with a start date in the past 250 years.
“It’s hard to overemphasize how profound the effects of ending a glacial cycle are,” says Zak Ratajczak, an ecologist at Kansas State University, Manhattan, who was not involved with the work. “So for humans to have that kind of impact is pretty amazing.”
Eos
Canada’s Rocky Mountain Forests Are on the Move
On an overcast day in 1927, surveyors Morrison Parsons Bridgland and Arthur Oliver Wheeler trekked up from the Owen Creek drainage in what is now Banff National Park to take a series of photos of the mountains along the North Saskatchewan River. They aimed to make the first accurate topographical maps of the region but in the process created something much bigger than they could have imagined.
Outwardly, the black-and-white photographs Bridgland and Wheeler took look like timeless shots of the Canadian Rockies. But new research using these old images is allowing a group of scientists with the Mountain Legacy Project to quantify a century of change in the landscape. Across the Canadian Rockies, forests are on the march.
The most recent results, published in the journal Scientific Reports, found tree lines extending higher and thicker than at the turn of the 20th century. These changes are helping scientists understand how ecosystems will continue to shift in a warming world.
India’s Food Bowl Heads Toward Desertification
Water-guzzling rice consumes more water than Punjab can recharge. If current irrigation rates continue, the state will empty its groundwater reserves within 20 years.
Punjab, a landlocked state in northern India, has a predominantly agriculture-based economy that earns it the nickname the “food bowl of India.” However, experts worry that if the region continues to extract groundwater at current rates, there may not be enough water to grow crops, and the state could be economically and ecologically devastated.
Punjab is slowly starting to adopt measures to control water mining, but the losses are set to continue without more aggressive initiatives.
Phys.org
Predicting drought in the American West just got more difficult
People hoping to get a handle on future droughts in the American West are in for a disappointment, as new USC-led research spanning centuries shows El Niño cycles are an unreliable predictor.
Instead, they found that Earth's dynamic atmosphere is a wild card that plays a much bigger role than sea surface temperatures, yet defies predictability, in the wet and dry cycles that whipsaw the western states. The study, published Monday in Science Advances, is a detailed assessment of long-term drought variability.
Deep-sea misconceptions cause underestimation of seabed-mining impacts
A new publication on the impacts of deep-seabed mining by 13 prominent deep-sea biologists, led by University of Hawai'i at Mānoa oceanography professor Craig Smith, seeks to dispel scientific misconceptions that have led to miscalculations of the likely effects of commercial operations to extract minerals from the seabed.
The deep sea, ocean depths below 650 feet (200 metres), constitutes more than 90% of the biosphere, harbors the most remote and extreme ecosystems on the planet, and supports biodiversity and ecosystem services of global importance. Interest in deep-seabed mining for copper, cobalt, zinc, manganese and other valuable metals has grown substantially in the last decade and mining activities are anticipated to begin soon.
"As a team of deep-sea ecologists, we became alarmed by the misconceptions present in the scientific literature that discuss the potential impacts of seabed mining," said Smith. "We found underestimates of mining footprints and a poor understanding of the sensitivity and biodiversity of deep-sea ecosystems, and their potential to recover from mining impacts. All the authors felt it was imperative to dispel misconceptions and highlight what is known and unknown about deep seabed mining impacts."
Authors' 'invisible' words reveal blueprint for storytelling
The "invisible" words that shaped Dickens classics also lead audiences through Spielberg dramas. And according to new research, these small words can be found in a similar pattern across most storylines, no matter the length or format.
When telling a story, common but invisible words—a, the, it—are used in certain ways and at certain moments. In a study published in Science Advances, researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and Lancaster University in Lancaster, United Kingdom, recorded the use of such words across thousands of fictional and nonfictional stories, mapping a universal blueprint for storytelling.
"We all have an intuitive sense of what defines a story. Until now, no one has been able to objectively see or measure a story's components," said study co-author and UT Austin psychology researcher Jamie Pennebaker.
Gizmodo
Baby Boomers Are Experiencing Greater Cognitive Decline Than Previous Generations, Study Finds
Baby boomers are experiencing a sharper drop in cognitive function as they age, relative to previous generations, according to a recent study. The findings not only suggest that boomers will be more likely to develop conditions like dementia than past cohorts, but future aging generations may be at a similar heightened risk.
The study, published in The Journals of Gerontology: Series B late last month, looked at the cognitive test scores of over 30,000 Americans over the age of 50 who were enrolled in an existing, long-running research project by the University of Michigan, called the Health and Retirement Survey. […]
“It is shocking to see this decline in cognitive functioning among baby boomers after generations of increases in test scores,” study author Hui Zheng, professor of sociology at The Ohio State University, said in a statement released by the university. “But what was most surprising to me is that this decline is seen in all groups: men and women, across all races and ethnicities and across all education, income and wealth levels.”
Cats Can Get And Spread the Coronavirus to Other Cats, Study Finds
A new study is the latest to bring some mixed news when it comes to covid-19 and cats. The study found evidence that cats infected with the coronavirus that causes covid-19 can easily spread it to other cats within two days of exposure. However, none of these cats documented in the study become sick once infected, suggesting but not yet confirming that felines may be able to handle the virus better than people.
Veterinary researchers exposed six healthy cats that were less than six months old to the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, via the nose and mouth. Then a day later, they introduced two other cats to the group and let them socialize; another pair of cats served as the controls. The cats were watched for up to 21 days, with some euthanized and autopsied at various days to study the effects of infection on the body more closely.
NASA
'Shallow Lightning' and 'Mushballs' Reveal Ammonia to NASA's Juno Scientists
New results from NASA's Juno mission at Jupiter suggest our solar system's largest planet is home to what's called "shallow lightning." An unexpected form of electrical discharge, shallow lightning originates from clouds containing an ammonia-water solution, whereas lightning on Earth originates from water clouds.
Other new findings suggest the violent thunderstorms for which the gas giant is known may form slushy ammonia-rich hailstones Juno's science team calls "mushballs"; they theorize that mushballs essentially kidnap ammonia and water in the upper atmosphere and carry them into the depths of Jupiter's atmosphere.
The shallow-lightning findings will be published Thursday, Aug. 6, in the journal Nature, while the mushballs research is currently available online in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.
Vast areas of the Martian night sky pulse in ultraviolet light, according to images from NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft. The results are being used to illuminate complex circulation patterns in the Martian atmosphere.
The MAVEN team was surprised to find that the atmosphere pulsed exactly three times per night, and only during Mars’ spring and fall. The new data also revealed unexpected waves and spirals over the winter poles, while also confirming the Mars Express spacecraft results that this nightglow was brightest over the winter polar regions.
Smithsonian Magazine
Inca Llama Carving Recovered From Depths of Lake Titicaca
In the 15th or 16th century, members of the Inca civilization fashioned a stone box filled with sacred offerings and dropped it deep into Lake Titicaca. It remained there, undisturbed, for some 500 years.
The box was remarkably well preserved upon its rediscovery several years ago, acting as a time capsule for the team that found it on the Bolivian side of the South American lake. Now, a new study published in the journal Antiquity argues that through such offerings, the Inca sought to symbolically and politically reclaim sacred spaces.
Satellites Spy Poop-Stained Ice, Revealing New Emperor Penguin Colonies
Rusty-brown streaks of penguin poo seen from space have led to the discovery of eight new colonies of emperor penguin, reports Carolyn Gramling of Science News. Scientists with the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) spotted the tell-tale smears across Antarctica’s icy white by studying high-resolution satellite images, increasing the global tally of emperor penguin breeding sites by roughly 20 percent to a total of 61.
Sadly, the substantial increase in the number of breeding sites does not translate to a significant bump for the global population of emperor penguins. The new colonies were all small, only adding 5 to 10 percent to the global population of emperor penguins, which now stands at between 531,000 and 557,000.
Science Daily
Ancient part of immune system may underpin severe COVID
One of the immune system's oldest branches, called complement, may be influencing the severity of COVID disease, according to a new study from researchers at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
Among other findings linking complement to COVID, the researchers found that people with age-related macular degeneration -- a disorder caused by overactive complement -- are at greater risk of developing severe complications and dying from COVID.
The connection with complement suggests that existing drugs that inhibit the complement system could help treat patients with severe disease.
The study was published on Aug. 3 in Nature Medicine.
Updating Turing's model of pattern formation
New research revisits the Turing instability mechanism; proving mathematically how the instabilities which give rise to patterns can occur through simple reactions, and in widely varied environmental conditions.
In 1952, Alan Turing published a study which described mathematically how systems composed of many living organisms can form rich and diverse arrays of orderly patterns. He proposed that this 'self-organisation' arises from instabilities in un-patterned systems, which can form as different species jostle for space and resources. So far, however, researchers have struggled to reproduce Turing patterns in laboratory conditions, raising serious doubts about its applicability. In a new study published in EPJ B, researchers led by Malbor Asllani at the University of Limerick, Ireland, have revisited Turing's theory to prove mathematically how instabilities can occur through simple reactions, and in widely varied environmental conditions.
The team's results could help biologists to better understand the origins of many ordered structures in nature, from spots and stripes on animal coats, to clusters of vegetation in arid environments.
The Guardian
Scientists follow the nose to solve mystery of long-necked reptile
The mystery of an ancient reptile with a tremendously long neck has been solved, according to researchers who say the creature lived in the water.
Fossils of the creature, known as Tanystropheus, were first unearthed in Germany around 150 years ago and further specimens have turned up over the decades, largely at Monte San Giorgio on the Swiss-Italian border.
Thought to have lived around 242m years ago, the largest specimens were 6 metres in length, with a tiny skull, tail and a long, stiff neck almost three times the length of its body.
“It probably is the most remarkable [fossil] reptile that there is,” Dr Nick Fraser, a palaeontologist at National Museums Scotland and a co-author of the new research, told the Guardian.
Remains of 10,000-year-old woolly mammoth pulled from Siberian lake
Russian scientists are poring over the uniquely well-preserved bones of a 10,000-year-old woolly mammoth after completing the operation to pull them from the bottom of a Siberian lake.
Experts spent five days scouring the silt of Lake Pechenelava-To in the remote Yamal peninsula for the remains, which include tendons, skin and even excrement, after they were spotted by local residents. About 90% of the animal has been retrieved during two expeditions.
Such finds are happening with increasing regularity in Siberia as climate change warms the Arctic at a faster pace than the rest of the world, thawing the ground in some areas long locked in permafrost.
Science Alert
For The First Time, CRISPR Gene-Editing Has Been Used on Squid
For the first time, the innovative CRISPR gene editing method has been used on squid, marking a milestone in the scientific study of these creatures – and opening up many new areas of potential research.
CRISPR enables very precise, speedy, and low-cost DNA edits. Put simple, the ingenious molecular workings of the method are often described as something that allows us to 'cut' and 'paste' genes; in humans it promises to give us a way of tackling disease and killing superbugs at the genetic level.
In this case CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing was used on Doryteuthis pealeii (the longfin inshore squid) to disable a pigmentation gene, turning off the pigmentation usually found in the squid eye and inside specialised skin cells called chromatophores.
Genomic Study Reveals New Zealand's Tuatara Is Like No Other Animal on The Planet
In the evolutionary tree of life, the lizard-like tuatara from New Zealand is on a branch all to itself.
In the time of the dinosaurs, this extraordinary animal had lots of relatives all around the world, and yet now, there's nothing else like it on Earth.
According to new sequencing of the tuatara's entire genome - one of the largest on record and 50 percent larger than the human genome - it appears this strange creature is neither lizard, bird, nor mammal. Rather, it's some strange amalgamation of all three.
According to the authors of the new study, the animal's genomic architecture is unlike anything previously reported.
Ars Technica
Bill Gates on COVID-19: Most US tests are “completely garbage”
For 20 years Bill Gates has been easing out of the roles that made him rich and famous—CEO, chief software architect, and chair of Microsoft—and devoting his brain power and passion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, abandoning earnings calls and antitrust hearings for the metrics of disease eradication and carbon reduction. This year, after he left the Microsoft board, one would have thought he would have relished shedding the spotlight directed at the four CEOs of big tech companies called before Congress.
But as with many of us, 2020 had different plans for Gates. An early Cassandra who warned of our lack of preparedness for a global pandemic, he became one of the most credible figures as his foundation made huge investments in vaccines, treatments, and testing. He also became a target of the plague of misinformation afoot in the land, as logorrheic critics accused him of planning to inject microchips in vaccine recipients. (Fact check: false. In case you were wondering.)
With COVID-19 spreading, 49% of low-income communities have zero ICU beds
As the coronavirus pandemic spreads uncontrolled in much of the United States, a new study finds that almost half of low-income areas are gravely unprepared to treat severe cases of COVID-19, hinting at higher death rates to come.
Forty-nine percent of the country’s lowest-income communities—with median incomes of $35,000 or less—have zero intensive care unit beds in their area hospitals. Looking only at rural areas, the picture is even worse: 55 percent had no ICU beds. This is in stark contrast to the highest-income communities, defined by a median income of $90,000 and above. Of those, only 3 percent overall lack access to ICU beds. The study, published by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, appeared this week in the journal Health Affairs.
The findings further heighten concern over how the pandemic is exacerbating gaping socioeconomic disparities in the US. Low-income communities are already more vulnerable to contracting COVID-19 due to unavoidable job-related exposure, reliance on mass transit, higher population densities, and less ability to quarantine upon potential exposure, the authors note.
The Washington Post
Scientists ask whether the asymptomatic are key to unraveling virus
When researcher Monica Gandhi began digging deeper into outbreaks of the novel coronavirus, she was struck by the extraordinarily high number of infected people who had no symptoms.
A Boston homeless shelter had 147 infected residents, but 88 percent had no symptoms even though they shared their living space. A Tyson Foods poultry plant in Springdale, Ark., had 481 infections, and 95 percent were asymptomatic. Prisons in Arkansas, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia counted 3,277 infected people, but 96 percent were asymptomatic.
During its seven-month global rampage, the coronavirus has claimed more than 700,000 lives. But Gandhi began to think the bigger mystery might be why it has left so many more practically unscathed.
White House Has Given Up on Pandemic
As the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows is responsible for coordinating the vast executive branch, including its coronavirus response. But in closed-door meetings, he has revealed his skepticism of the two physicians guiding the anti-pandemic effort, Deborah Birx and Anthony S. Fauci, routinely questioning their expertise, according to senior administration officials and other people briefed on the internal discussions.
Meadows no longer holds a daily 8 a.m. meeting that includes health professionals to discuss the raging pandemic. Instead, aides said, he huddles in the mornings with a half-dozen politically oriented aides — and when the virus comes up, their focus is more on how to convince the public that President Trump has the crisis under control, rather than on methodically planning ways to contain it.
During coronavirus meetings, Meadows has repeatedly questioned the scientific consensus that wearing masks helps contain the spread of the novel coronavirus, officials said. He has regularly raised with Fauci and others a range of issues on which he thinks Fauci has been wrong, and he personally monitors the infectious-disease expert’s media appearances. When he catches Fauci sounding out of sync with Trump, the chief of staff admonishes the doctor to “stay on message,” officials said — and he has impressed upon Fauci, Birx and other public health professionals that they should not opine on restrictions or make policy in the media.
Axios
PM prepares for "COVID election" as New Zealand marks 100 days of no community spread
New Zealand has now gone 100 days with no detected community spread of COVID-19, the Ministry of Health confirmed in a statement.
Why It Matters: New Zealanders are going to the polls on Sept. 19. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been widely praised for her leadership that saw NZ lock down hard for several weeks before all domestic restrictions were lifted in June. She sees her government's response to and recovery from the coronavirus outbreak as key to her Labour Party being re-elected.
"When people ask, is this a Covid election, my answer is yes, it is."