Archive for the ‘Female Genetics’ Category

Most people know that the novel coronavirus has killed older people in far higher numbers and disproportionatelyaffected people of color. But the gender gap in COVID-19 deaths is less well knownand understood.

It is being reported across China, Italy, Spain, Iran, and Germany that the number of men testing positive and dying from COVID-19 is double that of women, said Cummings School associate professorJanetrix Hellen Amuguni, VG11. In Italy, men have accounted for 71 percent of the deaths.

But why are men dying in higher numbers than womenand are both sexes being similarly affected?

This question requires an extensive analysis from both a gender and sex perspective, said Amuguni, an expert on the relationship between gender roles and infectious disease in global health.

It might be that the mens immune systems are built in a different way from womens, she said. Or it could be that gender roles linked to behaviors of men and womenaccess and control over resources and opportunities, power dynamics, and cultural norms that determine what men or women do dailyare playing an underlying role in determining who contracts this infection.

To study the many factors potentially at play, Amuguni has assembled a team of researchers from Cummings School and the Tufts School of Medicine. The scientists have been awarded $50,000 inCOVID-19 Rapid Response Seed Fundingfrom Tufts University and Tufts Medical Center to study sex differences and gender disparities in COVID-19.

Michael R. Jordan, A94, M98, an assistant professor at the School of Medicine, has cared for scores of people with COVID-19 as an attending physician in the Division of Geographic Medicine and Infectious Diseases at Tufts Medical Center.

Several studies suggest that men with COVID-19 do less well, and we know that many diseases can affect men and women differently, said Jordan. He noted that biological differences between men and women may affect how severe or deadly COVID-19 is for them.

Higher fatality rates were seen in men than women with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), two other deadly infections caused by coronaviruses, said Tess Gannaway, V16, a Ph.D. candidate in infectious disease and global health at Cummings School and member of the Tufts research team.

One hypothesis about COVID-19s higher fatality rates in men is that the female hormone estrogen may be protective in some way, said Jordan. And some scientists suspect that male hormones called androgens, such as testosterone, may be to blame for mens poorer outcomes.

Genetic differences linked to the X chromosomeof which women inherit two versus mens onealso may lead to different immune responses or host environments for the infection in men and women, Jordan said.

Gannaway noted that a 2017 study of mice infected with the virus that causes SARS pointed to important sex differences. The male mice were more likely to die than female mice when infected with that coronavirus.

Higher amounts of virus accumulated in the lungs of the males. And the male mice had a different immunological response to the SARS virus that ended up making them more susceptible to the development of disease, said Gannaway.

Estrogen appeared to counter both these mechanisms in the female mice infected with SARS, she said. When scientists reduced or eliminated estrogen levels in female mice, for example, the female mice had mortality rates from SARS that were closer to the rates of the male mice.

With that in mind, its really important to characterize how the immune system is responding to COVID-19 in the two sexes, so you can target interventions more accurately for males and females, Gannaway explained. It may even help determine what we need to target within the male subset for better drug development and other new therapies.

To isolate any sex-based differences for SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19, the Tufts researchers will conduct studies in mice at the Tufts New England Regional Biosafety Laboratory. The team also plans to draw on a new Tufts resourcethe Tufts Medical Center/Tufts University COVID-19 Biorepository and Comprehensive COVID-19 Database.

The biorepository is collecting blood and other samples from up to 400 hospitalized patients with COVID-19 who consent to have these used for research. Meanwhile, the database will collect anonymous data on all individuals testing for COVID-19 at Tufts Medical Center, regardless of their results.

Specimens for the biorepository are taken from patients at multiple time points, said Jordan, the director of the COVID-19 biorepository and database. So well be able to look at the viral loads in the nose and throat, as well as the evolution of antibodies over time in male and female human patients, and we can compare that with what we see in the mice.

The Tufts researchers also will investigate gender-based factors that may contribute to increased susceptibility and mortality in COVID-19.

Mens increased susceptibility and mortality may reflect other diseases or health conditions, said Jordan. Theres likely an interplay between the overall health and genetics. For example, men may be more likely than women to be overweight or to have high blood pressure.

Theres speculation that mens lifestyles might predispose them to develop COVID-19, explained Amuguni. For example, in China men are more likely to be smokers than women, and so have more compromised lungs. Theres also evidence that men take longer than women to seek necessary health care.

Men may tend to work in occupations that put them at higher risk, too, noted Marieke Rosenbaum, V14, MG14, VG14, another member of the Tufts research team. Perhaps men are more likely to greet someone by putting their hand on their shoulder or shaking hands, she said.

If we can identify what gender-specific behaviors make men at higher risk for COVID-19, we can identify what precautions might help curb transmission and what behavioral changes would reduce other gender-based impacts, said Rosenbaum.

Even though the early data suggests that men typically have a higher risk of dying from COVID-19 overall, the coronavirus has killed more women than men in Massachusetts. Scientists suspect this may be because women tend to live longer than men, and people living in long-term care facilities were the population hit hardest by COVID-19 in the state.

The pandemic may also be disproportionately harming women and other individuals in other ways, Amuguni said.

There are gender-related consequences as a result of confinement related to stay-at-home advisories and orders, and these would differ across the world, she explained. We need to consider simple questions such as, has the workload increased for men or women? What does this mean for decision making, access, control over resources, and power dynamics? And if there an increase in domestic violence, who is affected the most?

Gannaway noted that women may be at higher risk losing their jobs or of contracting COVID-19 as a result of the pandemic. For example, seventy percent of the care force working within the health-care sector are women, and these women have more exposure to the coronavirus and greater risk of getting the disease, she said.

Gender roles, distribution of labor, and resources historically have played an important role in the spread of other infectious diseases, as well as in their control and prevention, noted Amuguni.

Therefore, these issues need to be addressed to understand better the risks for COVID-19and to develop adequate prevention and control strategies, she said.

Amuguni pointed to Ebola as one example. When this deadly virus spill overs from animals to people, the first person infected is usually a male. Thats because the index case, as it is called, is often someone who has been going into animals habitatand in Africa, hunters are typically men.

However, Amuguni said that over the first forty-five days of the Ebola outbreak in Liberia, 75 percent of the people who died were women.

Ebola was being transmitted primarily among women because of their important role in their communities, she said. When someone was sick, women cared for that person. And when people died, women were the ones cleaning their bodies and cooking and serving food at their funerals.

Of course, like the sex differences, the possible gender-related risk factors for COVID-19 are just hypotheses until theyve been rigorously studied. Thats why the second component of the Tufts teams study will include interviews to gather more qualitative data on what gender-based factors may increase susceptibility or spread of the infection.

We need to really dig in and listen to the experiences of all these people to understand their situations and to look for trends, said Rosenbaum.

With the help of Tufts Medical Center, the researchers will administer online surveys and hold focus groups with people who have recovered from COVID-19.

For example, public-health policies and programs also may have different impacts on straight men and women, the lesbian, gay and bisexual community, and people who identify as non-binary, Jordan said. We want to explore if these affect individuals decision-making around health-seeking behavior or testing, or their access to testing and ability to isolate safely at home.

Its a different way to approach health care and medical research during an outbreak, said Amuguni. Most of the time we approach infectious diseases as a medical emergency and focus solely on treating people.

But we have to look at other social determinants to figure out what other factors are actually related to the pandemic, she added. What role did gender factors play to get us to this situationand what role can they play to help the response and get us out of this situation?

Genevieve Rajewski can be reached at genevieve.rajewski@tufts.edu.

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Why Is There a COVID-19 Gender Gap? - Tufts Now

Our ancestors domesticated the wild jungle fowl, the ancestor of the modern chicken, sometime before 2,000 B.C. By 450 B.C. cockfighting was a major sport in ancient Rome. In Alabama, cockfighting remains a major sport even though it was outlawed here as early as 1896.

On Thursday, Animal Wellness Action and the Animal Wellness Foundation held a press conference to announce that they have asked U.S. Attorney Jay E. Town to investigate possible illegal cockfighting after their recent investigation produced evidence that the illegal activity is not only still practiced in Alabama, but that Alabama gamebird breeds are trafficking game birds to Guam, a U.S. Territory.

The investigation by AWA and AWF that revealed that several Alabamians are among the top shippers of fighting birds to Guam.

The AWA and AWF named: Jerry Adkins of Slick Lizard Farms; Royce Flores, and the late Jason Campbell, all of Nauvoo as being top breeders of gamebirds and of shipping gamecocks to Guam. They allege that Adkins and Flores breed and train birds and then ship them around the world for the purpose of cockfighting.

The animal welfare groups told reporters that these individuals, according to shipping records, packed birds in boxes and sent them through the U.S. Postal Service to Guam for later use, allegedly, in fights. AWA and AWF claim to have detailed information on a host of other major cockfighting operations in Alabama, with thousands of birds raised for fighting and shipped to Mexico, the Philippines, and other far-flung jurisdictions. Many of the cockfighting enthusiasts, whose operations dot many parts of the state, appear to be affiliated with the Alabama Gamefowl Breeders Association.

The AWA says that Alabama is the cockfighting capital of the Southeast. Filipino TV recently visited a number of Alabama farms where they interviewed breeders and showed how the animals are raised. Cockfighting is both very legal and very popular in the Philippines. Many of the birds were allegedly bred in Alabama.

Possessing and shipping birds for cockfighting have been banned under federal law. since 2002 and has been a felony since 2007, when President George W. Bush (R) signed the enhanced penalty provisions into law and also criminalized the sale of cockfighting implements.

It is a federal felony to buy, sell, deliver or possess any bird with the intent to engage the bird in a cockfight, and thats clearly what were seeing, said Marty Irby, executive director of Animal Wellness Action and a native of Mobile. Alabama has become a launching point for global trafficking of fighting animals, and its time for authorities to crack down on this criminal conduct.

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Through public records requests to the Guam Department of Agriculture, AWF and AWA obtained nearly 2,500 pages of avian shipping records dated November 2016 to September 2019. These records detail approximately 750 shipments of birds by 71 individuals from more than a dozen states to Guam.

Alabama cockfighters had the fifth highest total number of shipments to Guam. Mr. Flores was the top shipper to Guam from Alabama and the sixth biggest shipper in the U.S., selling more than 400 birds to Guam during the three years.

The shipping records show that the nearly 8,800 birds were sold and shipped as brood fowl. The AWA and AWF however claim that Guam does not have a significant animal agriculture industry or a show-bird circuit. Additionally, the ratio of roosters to hens in these shipments was nearly 10 to 1 with some shipments being over 100 to 1. Cockfighters fight the roosters. Hens, which are more social and less violent than their brothers, arent used for fighting. Chickens also are not monogamous so one rooster can service two dozen hens easily; thus a normal chicken breeder is going to normally prefer hens 20:1 and someone raising chickens for eggs may purchase only pullets (juvenile hens).

Its nonsensical to think of any animal agriculture enterprise requiring more males than females, Irby said. Standard breeding protocols would have the ratio of male to female birds to be inverted, but male birds are used in cockfighting. Any reasonable person would conclude that these shipments was primarily for the cockfighting industry, which is robust on the island.

The AWA and AWF claims that their investigation shows the Alabama operators to be running their illegal operations in full view of law enforcement and the public.

Adkins claimed in videos produced by the Philippines-based cockfighting broadcaster BNTV in April 2020 that he ships 6,000 birds a year from his Nauvoo farm to destinations for fighting purposes, including 700 birds to a single buyer in Mexico.

Selling 6,000 birds for the fighting trade would likely yield $1 million to $3 million in gross sales, Irby claimed.

Federal authorities have busted major dogfighting operations in the state, but the state law against cockfighting is so weak its unusable. In 2016, the FBI broke up a fighting operation in Mobile County, but very modest penalties were imposed in the case at the recommendation of the Department of Justice, which was led at the time by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. When he served as a U.S. Senator, Sessions opposed efforts to make it a crime to attend a dogfight or cockfight or to bring a child to such a spectacle (Roll Call Vote # 154).

Jonathan Buttram, president of the Alabama Contract Poultry Growers Association has previously expressed concerns about cockfighters spreading avian influenza.

Cockfighters ship birds very long distances, and engage in very intimate contact with the birds, sometimes sucking fluids from the air passages of the birds in order to keep an injured bird fighting, noted Buttram. The shipments and the fighting birds would allow an avian disease to spread far and wide very fast and potentially to spread to humans. This kind of twisted entertainment does not warrant the disease risks.

The chicken breeds used in cockfighting are highly specialized. The chicken bloodlines used in modern commercial laying chickens (normally White Leghorns) and broiler chickens (normally a line combining genetics from White Rocks with Broadbreasted Cornishs) are useless in cockfighting.

Wayne Pacelle, president of AWA, called on Alabama state legislators to upgrade the state law against cockfighting, in order to better align that law with the states tough anti-dogfighting law and the strong federal anti-animal fighting statute.

While dogfighting is a felony, cockfighting warrants less in the way of penalties than a parking ticket, Pacelle noted. The law imposes no jail time for perpetrators, a minimum fine of $20, and a maximum fine of $50. The law has not been upgraded since it was enacted in 1896.

Theyre everywhere now, Buttram said of the Alabama cockfighting farms, When they have these derbys theres drugs, prostitution, and betting going on. Its unbelievable all thats going on.

Buttram said that our food biosecurity is at risk here due to the threat of avian influenza and puts Alabamas multi $billion poultry industry potentially at stake.

If AI gets in here it would be devastating, Buttram said. In my area here it is chicken house after chicken house there would be millions of dead birds and if it mutates into humans there could be millions of dead humans also.

The groups want a federal animal fighting unit created to investigate cockfighting and dog fighting fulltime.

Buttram warned that cockfighting is, A very good way for AI to come into the United States,

Animal Wellness Action (Action) is a Washington, D.C.-based 501(c)(4) organization with a mission of helping animals by promoting legal standards forbidding cruelty.

The Animal Wellness Foundation (Foundation) is a Los Angeles-based private charitable organization with a mission of helping animals by making veterinary care available to everyone with a pet, regardless of economic ability.

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Fourth Alabama inmate dies with COVID-19, 13 others from same prison test positive - alreporter.com

Biopharmaceutical companies need to look beyond the usual targets when addressing neurodegenerative disorders and also must work to correlate genetic changes to cognitive changes in patients, according to panelists at BIOs on-demand session, Battle of the Brains: Rethinking Neurodegenerative Disease Treatment.

Among the many challenges is the fact that Alzheimers disease and many other neurodegenerative diseases develop slowly.

By the time symptoms manifest, the disease has evolved and become complicated, panel moderator Selina Koch, executive editor for BioCentury, Inc. noted.

Therefore, the panelists are wrestling with how to identify and treat patients early and whether to look at individual pathways or develop a polypharmacologic approach involving multiple pathways.

We believe that, as with cancer, you have to hit several areas with, maybe, a combination of therapies, Elizabeth Jeffords, chief commercial and & strategy officer at Alkahest, said. Our approach is to look at the plasma proteome to understand which proteins change with age and, among them, which are important biological drivers not just reporters for neurodegenerative diseases.

One of the challenges in developing neurodegenerative drugs is the inability to target specific cell types in the brain, but, more importantly, its important to understand not just germ line mutations but what makes them vulnerable to mutations, Brad Margus, CEO of Cerevance said.

By sorting nuclei from various types of cells taken from post-mortem human tissue from brain banks, Cerevance gains a broader perspective than is possible by single cell analysis.

We feel were getting to the real problem, seeing changes in genes (that wouldnt be evident with single cell analysis.) This may help identify novel target beyond amyloid and tau, he said.

Esya Labs, a seed-stage company, is focused on Alzheimers disease and lysosomal disorders with the goal of developing tools to match patients to therapies.

We have three different approaches: one identifies which lysosomal storage drugs work on patients, the second identifies patterns in the manifestation of those diseases, and the third will make a diagnostic, Dhivya Venkat, CEO and co-founder, told listeners.

Her company has identified signatures for Alzheimers and how it manifests across the lysosome, suggesting there may be many sub-type of the disease. Therefore, since 60% of the factors that determine whether individuals respond to a drug is genetic, we need to identify which patients respond best to particular targets, and to develop ways to validate those targets early on.

Ideally, patients would be diagnosed very early in the onset of the disease, before symptoms appear. Eysa Labs has found traces of neurodegenerative disease in the circulating cells that may help with that. By looking at the signatures of the macrophages, you can profile the endosome, golgi and lysosome and have an indication of whats happening in the brain. If functional structures are degrading, protein builds up, Venkat explained.

Cell types react differently to aging, Margus added. Cerevance researchers have studied brain tissues from donors aged 8 to 97 and overlaid some of those changes onto disease models. At a high level, the brain of a typical Parkinsons patient at age 60 has the signature of healthy person of 70 or 75.

Applying that to preclinical research may be challenging. Its hard to find aged mice, Jeffords quipped. Instead, much of the preclinical work is performed on African green monkeys.

Virscio, a preclinical contract research organization specializing in non-human primates, has a facility for such research in the Caribbean. It focuses on de-risking drugs. From that facility, Matthew Lawrence, CEO and SCO of Virscio, said his organization is looking at the inducible form of Alzheimers in young and old animals to enable the design of screening studies that will align as closely as possible to humans. Gender differences play a role, too, he added.

Many neurodegenerative disorders, aside from Parkinsons, are womens diseases, Jeffords pointed out. Going forward, two-thirds or more of the Alzheimers cohort will be women, but clinical studies today dont take that into account. Only 20 25% of all clinical studies for all diseases include women.

Those figures hold true for in vitro cell studies, too.

The rationale, Lawrence explained, was that we historically enrolled men or women based on the stereotaxic coordinates for which we had the biometry already determined for that given sex, as well as concerns about hormonal cycles affecting the data. Over the past decade, science has appreciated that the hormonal variable has meaningful biological ramifications for the interpretation of translational utility of that data. As industry demands gender balance, it will be further emphasized.

The results of including female cells in preclinical work and females as clinical trial participants could have a significant effect on outcomes. Jeffords cited one study in which, she said, The 17% of trials that segregated results by gender saw a difference between the sexes in the response to the agents they were testing. Its worth a look.

As neurodegenerative research advances, the panelists expect it to adopt many of the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. The most notable may be the widespread realization of the importance of preventing diseases and of diagnosing diseases earlier so they can be better managed.

That suggests the need for the continued advance of personalized medicine. That, in turn, requires a deeper understanding of individual diseases, their mechanisms of action, and the role of genetics in their onset. The biomarkers being hinted at today will likely play a huge role in addressing neurodegenerative diseases and therapies in the relatively near future.

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BIO 2020: Neurodegenerative Therapies Need a Personalized Approach - BioSpace

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Global Leukemia Therapeutics Market By Factor (Artificial ionizing radiation, Viruses, Chemotherapy, Genetics, Others), By Severity, By Blood Cell, By Age Groups, By Sex, By Treatment, By Diagnosis, By Route of Administration, By Drugs, By Region, Forecast & Opportunities, 2025" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The Global Leukemia Therapeutics Market is expected to grow at a formidable rate during the forecast period.

The market is driven by the technological advancements and innovations in the field of blood cancer testing on account of the growing number of patients suffering from leukemia. Additionally, growing awareness among the population pertaining to adoption of preventive healthcare is further expected to propel the market during forecast period. Furthermore, supportive government initiatives & policies for promoting cancer awareness is anticipated to fuel the market growth until 2025.

The market can be segmented based on factor, severity, blood cell, age groups, sex, treatment, diagnosis, route of administration, drugs, company and region. Based on severity, the market can be bifurcated into acute and chronic. The chronic leukemia segment is expected to dominate the market during forecast period. This can be accredited to the rising geriatric population and increasing funding for cancer research and the development of new therapies.

Regionally, the Global Leukemia Therapeutics Market has been segmented into Asia-Pacific, North America, South America, Europe, and Middle East & Africa. Among these regions, North America is expected to dominate the market during forecast period. This can be attributed to the presence of a large geriatric population base in the country. Additionally, the presence of key players in the region is further expected to propel the market over 2025.

Major players operating in the Global Leukemia Therapeutics Market include Novartis, AbbVie, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Roche, Amgen, Gilead sciences, Celgene, Eisai, AstraZeneca, Incyte Corporation, Johnson & Johnson, Biogen, Merck, PerkinElmer, Eli Lilly, Abbott, Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Otsuka Holdings, Astellas Pharma and others. The companies operating in the market are using organic strategies such as product launches, mergers and collaborations to boost their share. For instance, in August 2017, Bristol-Myers Squibb acquired IFM Therapeutics in order to fortify its oncology product line.

Years considered for this report:

Objective of the Study

Key Topics Covered

1. Product Overview

2. Research Methodology

3. Executive Summary

4. Voice of Customer

5. Global Leukemia Therapeutics Market Outlook

5.1. Market Size & Forecast

5.1.1. By Value & Volume

5.2. Market Share & Forecast

5.2.1. By Factor (Artificial ionizing radiation, Viruses, Chemotherapy, Genetics, Immune suppression, Others)

5.2.2. By Severity (Acute, Chronic)

5.2.3. By Blood Cell (Lymphocytic, Myelogenous)

5.2.4. By Age Groups (0-15, 15-30, 30-50, 50+)

5.2.5. By Sex (Male, Female)

5.2.6. By Treatment (Targeted Therapy, Interferon Therapy, Radiation Therapy, Surgery, Stem Cell Transplantation, Drugs, Gene Therapy, Immunotherapy, Vaccine Therapy, Chemotherapy, Blood Transfusion)

5.2.7. By Diagnosis (Blood test, Biopsy, Physical Exam, Imagining (CT-SCAN, X-RAY, MRI))

5.2.8. By Route of Administration (Oral, Intravenous, Subcutaneous, Intramuscular, Intrathecal)

5.2.9. By Drugs (Antimetabolites, Biosimilars, Asparagine-Specific Enzymes, Hormones (Corticosteroids), Hypomethylating (Demethylating) Agents, Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors, Others)

5.2.10. By Company (2019)

5.2.11. By Region

5.3. Market Attractiveness Index

6. Asia-Pacific Leukemia Therapeutics Market Outlook

7. Europe Leukemia Therapeutics Market Outlook

8. North America Leukemia Therapeutics Market Outlook

9. South America Leukemia Therapeutics Market Outlook

10. Middle East and Africa Leukemia Therapeutics Market Outlook

11. Market Dynamics

11.1. Drivers

11.2. Challenges

12. Market Trends & Developments

13. Competitive Landscape

13.1. Competition Outlook

13.2. Players Profiled (Leading Companies)

13.2.1. Novartis

13.2.2. AbbVie

13.2.3. Bristol-Myers Squibb

13.2.4. Roche

13.2.5. Amgen

13.2.6. Gilead Sciences

13.2.7. Celgene

13.2.8. Eisai

13.2.9. AstraZeneca

13.2.10. Incyte Corporation

13.2.11. Johnson & Johnson

13.2.12. Biogen

13.2.13. Merck

13.2.14. PerkinElmer

13.2.15. Eli Lilly

13.2.16. Abbott

13.2.17. Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma

13.2.18. Thermo Fisher Scientific

13.2.19. Otsuka Holdings

13.2.20. Astellas Pharma

14. Strategic Recommendations

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/2sotj2

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Global Leukemia Therapeutics Market Forecast and Opportunities to 2025 - ResearchAndMarkets.com - Business Wire

KINGSTON, R.I. June 9, 2020 Men are taller than women because millennia ago big, strong men beat out their shorter rivals for access to mates. The female pelvis is broader than the male pelvis because women have evolved to give birth. So the thinking goes.

Theyre compelling evolutionary narratives that have lasted in textbooks, classrooms and pop culture as explanations for the skeletal differences between men and women. But as explanations, these simple stories no longer stand up to current science, says Holly Dunsworth, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Rhode Island.

Poring over decades of existing research, Dunsworth has reevaluated and rewritten the narrow, reigning theories for sex difference in height and pelvic width in a new paper, Expanding the evolutionary explanations for sex differences in the human skeleton. The paper, published online by the journal Evolutionary Anthropology, maps out the critical role of estrogen production on bone growth in men and women.

A lot of these conventions and how they support these old stories, such as sexual selection made men taller, are out of a tradition where we really only had skeletons to study, says Dunsworth. People hadnt done behavioral observations, or studied the physiology or the genetics. There have been so many advances in 150 years of human biology, and when you put all these things together, the old origin stories dont add up.

In rewriting the explanations, Dunsworth waded through hundreds of existing studies. Her paper cites 94 references, but she reviewed five times that. I tried not to go too far back. The further I went the more misconceptions I found, she says. I think there is an old assumption out there that testosterone makes men taller, but thats just not the science.

In her paper, Dunsworth focuses on how different levels of estrogen production dictate bone growth in both sexes, with ovaries producing more estrogen than testes. Boys and girls grow at roughly the same pace, reaching about 62 inches by age 13. At that age, greater estrogen production in girls causes long bone growth plates to fuse. Boys continue to grow taller for about five more years, until they reach levels of estrogen that fuse their bones. In that time, boys grow another 8 inches on average; girls just 2. As with height, sex differences in the pelvis skeleton are also rooted in the differing levels of estrogen and its effects over time on differing systems of gonads, genitals, ligaments and bones.

There are ways that men and women are so obviously different in their evolved reproductive physiology, Dunsworth says. Its really as if the reigning theories just look at the skeleton to claim that men are taller because they evolved to be dominant and competitive as if women didnt and to claim that women are broader because they evolved for reproduction as if men didnt. Conspicuous sex differences in our bodies lead to assumptions about gender differences. They feed our narratives about what a man is and what a woman is, and what our different roles in society should be. These myths about human nature havent exactly worked wonders for women and they fuel toxic masculinity.

Dunsworth, a biological anthropologist, sees it as her job as a professor and researcher to overturn outdated and false evolutionary traditions and to retell origin stories that are inclusive and unbiased.

We make meaning out of human evolutionary origin stories, she says. Whether they really dig human evolution or not, people are using it to make sense of the world and theyre thinking that some of these very narrow, very outdated ideas are the science, are the facts, she says. There are facts and then there are stories we tell about them. But we can improve our stories. There are more inclusive stories to tell, more complicated, more dynamic, more interesting, more scientific ways of describing the facts and telling stories about those facts.

Despite their flaws, theories of sexual selection for height and natural selection for pelvis size continue to be taught in classrooms, Dunsworth says, even in hers.

Weve taught it for years because theres an obsession with comparing the degree of difference between men and women to the much larger difference between male and female gorillas. Somehow, its supposed to show that we are more peaceful and more cooperative, while still acknowledging that, because human men are bigger than women, the big men in our ancestry have been the big winners, she says. I was teaching sexual selection. Its canon. I thought this is how we explain this until I sat back and thought it through.

Dunsworth had doubted the use of sexual selection to explain male and female body size differences. But the tipping point came in 2016 after she took exception on social media to comments by a well-known evolutionary biologist who was defending the theory in a politically charged rant.

Im a feminist and Im trying to be part of this inclusive, diverse future of the world, Dunsworth says. I knew that this one simple, narrow story wasnt even scientific. So, I spoke out. Thats when I realized this is a huge problem.

She started her research immediately and submitted her paper in 2018 for peer-review in Evolutionary Anthropology. Already available online, it appears in the May/June issue of the journal.

To have this new way of thinking in a major journal in my field and reviewed by my peers is the gold standard of knowledge, she says. Its not just me on my blog, raising my feminist fist in the air. This is how you advance knowledge.

Continued here:
URI anthropology professor challenges evolutionary narratives of big, competitive men and broad, birthing women - URI Today

More than 4,000 high-quality French breeding pigs have been transported to China. | Image: Unsplash  |  Photo Credit: Representative Image

Beijing: Over 4,000 high-quality French breeding pigs have been transported to China in six planes so far this year. China is rushing to restock imports after an outbreak of African swine fever swept through the country from late 2018. The fever killed tens of millions of pigs and reduced the sow herd by about 60 per cent.

The farmers who had stopped buying pigs have resumed orders due to soaring pork prices and a government drive to rebuild. Some farmers are doubling contracts that had been signed before the outbreak of the disease.

"Its like after World War Two. They lost half the herd and need to repopulate fast to get it back," Marie Pushparajalingam, global strategist for French swine genetics company Axiom, told Reuters.

China is importing breeding pigs to get the advantage of traits such as increased productivity and better meat quality that global genetics firms select for during breeding. A top breeding sow (female pig primarily used for breeding) can have a litter of as many as 16 piglets.

Axiom sent two 777 jets to China in January and two 747s were sent last month, totalling about 3,400 pigs. Pushparajalingam said that deals for six more plane-loads have been signed. The company is expecting additional business.

Another herd of 500 pigs bred by Dutch firm Topigs Norsvin arrived from France in southwestern Guizhou last week, Chinas Dekang Group said. The pigs will be in a nucleus breeding farm to produce 20 million pigs for slaughter.

China slaughters about 700 million pigs every year to produce over 50 million tonnes of pork. However, the disease outbreak reduced pork output by 21 per cent in 2019, leading to soaring prices. Production will fall again this year.

Due to the severe shortage of sows, producers are even holding back female pigs which are usually destined for slaughter to be used in breeding farms. These pigs will produce much smaller litters than a sow.

According to the estimates of a genetics company, China may need over 150 planeloads of pure bred pigs to replenish its herd.

The pigs undergo a month of health checks and spend another 30 days in quarantine under the observation of an official Chinese vet before shipment. Once they are transported, the pigs spend another 45 days at a quarantine facility to ensure that they are disease-free.

Laurent Poussart, manager of Francexporc, a pig freight specialist, said that the coronavirus pandemic has further complicated the shipments.

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'Pigs can fly'! Jumbo jets carry world's biggest hog herd from France to China - Times Now

One day not long before I turned 12, I got my first migraine. I was triumphantly competing for my primary school in a regional cross-country race when zig-zags of neon light began to buzz in my peripheral vision.

Then suddenly they were gone replaced by swathes of nothing, like Photoshop had just chopped out chunks of the path ahead. The race ended with me projectile vomiting into a garbage bin by the side of the road.

That afternoon, I cowered in a bedroom back at home, enduring a headache that no standard painkiller could touch.

When my mother took me to the doctor soon after, I described in detail the crazy vision, the pounding headache, the dramatic vomit and the next two days spent tiptoeing around dark rooms as the slightest vibration or sliver of light threatened to set things off again.

"Welcome to the world of migraines," said the GP, who had seen it all before.

Migraine sufferers, or "migraineurs" as they're termed, get pretty antsy when anyone with a bad headache calls on this diagnosis. Those of us who have experienced one know (as the clich goes) this is far, far more than a headache.

But the story of migraine isn't just a tale about the mistaken identity of pain.

For many it is a story of chronic disability and economic loss, it affects women three times more often than men and the latest research has drawn unsettling links to the risk of everything from depression and endometriosis to an increased chance of stroke.

Yet research funds are extremely difficult to come by and as a result, precisely how genetics, hormones and lifestyle interact to cause migraine, let alone universally effective treatments, is still being worked out.

Migraine is a mysterious condition and yet surprisingly common. About 12 per cent of Australians have experienced one and migraine makes a lot of top 10 lists: it is the world's most frequently diagnosed neurological problem; a leading cause of disability in Australia and the third most-common medical problem globally behind a hole in the tooth and a standard headache.

In 2018 alone the economic cost to Australia was estimated at more than $35 billion.

Like me, Lyn Griffiths got her first migraine as a child. But her mother suspected immediately what was up because she suffered from migraines too. When Griffiths' son started complaining of head pain at five years old, it didn't take long to join the dots.

But there's more to Griffiths' story than her family link to migraine.

She is better known as Professor Lyn Griffiths, a molecular geneticist and the executive director of the Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation at the Queensland University of Technology, where she has pioneered international research into migraine and DNA.

"About 50 per cent of the time people who suffer from migraine have another close relative that also suffers," says Griffiths. "It was pretty obvious that there was a strong genetic component and as a geneticist with migraine in my own family that was interesting to me. I thought someone ought to be looking at this from a genetics perspective."

In 1998 Griffiths' research found the first gene linked to migraine. Since then genes responsible for two kinds of migraines including a deeply traumatic version known as a hemiplegic migraine that can cause paralysis and even coma have been discovered.

The genes for hemiplegic migraine are "heritable and causative", she says. That means if you have them you will definitely get this very severe form of migraine and can pass the gene mutation to your children who each have a 50 per cent chance of developing migraine too.

But the second and more common migraine is no walk in the park. Sure, sufferers don't lose consciousness, but they don't escape the hallmark pounding one-sided headache, light and sound sensitivity and nausea. For 20-30 per cent in this group, like me, there is also what's known as an aura causing vision changes and sometimes speech disturbances

Raphaella Crosby suffers from hemiplegic migraine. During an attack she typically loses her vision and become paralysed down one side of her body.

"What happened to me seemed too intense to be a migraine and it took me years to accept it," says Crosby, who had her first attack at 22. "It felt like my body was malfunctioning in really strange ways, I couldn't see, couldn't speak, couldn't lift my arms and parts of my body were numb."

An attack in 2012 put her in hospital for 10 days. After tests for everything from multiple sclerosis to lupus, the diagnosis was migraine.

"I didn't really recover from that point on," says Crosby, now 43. For the next seven years the migraines came one after another "until they all blurred into one".

Migraine cost Crosby her career, her friendships and any chance of a normal relationship. Eventually she took a disability pension and started using opiates to cope with the pain. "Things got really bad and I was going to hospital regularly," she says. "You get to a point where it's migraine all day, every day. I would often be completely paralysed and require care. I had to concede defeat to the beast."

Then 16 months ago something miraculous happened. Crosby joined the trial of a new class of drugs developed from the research of people like Griffiths. These drugs work by suppressing a peptide that soars in migraine patients during an attack.

Crosby's response to the medication was lifechanging. "I'm a super responder," she says of the monthly injections of a substance called erenumab-aooe, which is not a silver bullet for most people. "Only about 25 per cent of people respond as well as me and it's transformative because I thought I was totally and permanently disabled."

But there's a catch. The drug one of five in a new crop of similar medications that target and suppress calcitonin gene-related peptides, or CGRP is not listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Crosby received it for free while she was on the trial but now pays $695 a month to continue treatment. It's a big outlay for someone who is only just trying to rebuild a working life.

She has sold assets to pay for the medication over the next few months and is nervous about giving up the only effective treatment she has ever found.

"Where I'm at now is thinking about going back to work, knocking out my PhD, having a life again," she says. "I'm making friends. Life is good."

In the past 20 years at least 50 genes have been found that to relate to migraine.

But the complex web of influences that lead someone to actually suffer an attack are yet to be fully unravelled.

Instead, experts like Griffiths and Melbourne-based neurologist Tissa Wijeratne talk about "susceptibilities" and "triggers", as well as causes.

Migraines have long been associated with eating things like chocolate or drinking red wine. "We think certain perfumes, certain foods and even barometric pressure changes can be the triggers for those who are genetically predisposed," Griffiths says.

For Crosby, while her genes drive the condition, her triggers include dust and preservative 202, potassium sorbate, which is often found in things like yoghurt and sparkling wine. Crosby calls it "my kryptonite": "If I have even the slightest amount, I'm in all kinds of trouble".

Archaeologists have found references to migraine in ancient human civilisations and yet there seems to be no evolutionary benefit to maintaining migraine susceptibility in human DNA. I asked Griffiths why she thinks it hasn't been bred out of us.

She points to the work of Harvard neurologist Elizabeth Loder who has hypothesised that in fact there was a benefit. If migraine was triggered by an incoming storm or an approaching herd of wild animals then the migraineur hiding in the back of the cave had a survival advantage.

I grew out of my childhood migraines but a few years ago, soon after the birth of my third baby and quite out of the blue, I had another episode.

This time a peculiar numbness crept across the tips of my fingers on one hand and when I tried to speak only gibberish came out. I could not read or write as words and letters bounced all over the page. A short time later I experienced a ferocious headache. And there was vomiting.

"I suspect you'd like a scan of your brain?" the doctor deadpanned when I went for a check-up. The all-clear meant one thing was most likely: the migraines were back.

As an illness that affects 18 per cent of women but only 6 per cent of men, Wijeratne says it's a given that female hormones are also one of the culprits. This helps explain why migraine is linked to things like endometriosis and often emerges during puberty, childbirth and menopause.

It is possible that some of the gene mutations related to migraine risk are passed on by the X chromosome, Griffiths says, and because women carry two copies of X, their risk of inheriting the condition is higher. She is also researching how mitochondria, which are inherited maternally, may also potentially pass on genes involved in susceptibility to migraine.

Wijeratne specialises in treating migraine and is a sufferer himself. He began his career working with stroke patients but soon realised that many who turned up for treatment were what he calls "stroke mimics" like Crosby, not suffering from stroke at all, but migraine.

Wijaratne now has around 17 different medications to choose from when treating patients ranging from triptans to CGRPs, but he says coming up with an effective dose and combination remains trial and error.

Part of the reason for this, he believes, is a lack of funds for research. Migraine research attracts just 0.07 per cent of medical funding, says Wijaratne.

Griffiths sighs in frustration when funding is mentioned. "It's the hardest thing in the world to get funding for migraine research," she says. "It's one of the most common neurological disorders and yet one of the lowest on the scale for funding to support research."

Wijaratne agrees: "It has links to every human health condition under the sun including cardiovascular disorders," he says, emphasising that migraine patients take their own lives two-to-three times more frequently than the wider population.

"Migraine is definitely the most neglected, worst managed and most under-recognised medical disorder worldwide, wherever you are," he says. "If you have cancer, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease or stroke, you can actually see the disability. If you suffer from migraine you can't see anything although the suffering is unbelievable high."

This is a comparison Crosby can relate to having also experienced what she describes as "a minor skirmish with breast cancer".

"People find it very confronting when I say that breast cancer was nothing compared to migraine," she says, explaining that the emotional and medical support she received as a cancer patient far exceeded her experiences with migraine treatment. "I don't say it a lot because I don't want to offend people who have had very difficult battles with cancer but mine was caught early, dealt with and off I went."

Wijaratne encourages patients to use therapeutic treatments ranging from acupuncture and Botox injections to meditation and yoga all of which have scientific studies supporting effectiveness in some patients, he says.

Neuromodulation in which electric currents are used in the brain is a newer treatment with promise.

And so are "nutriceuticals", where vitamins not pharmaceuticals are used to supplement deficiencies that are now known to kick off a migraine. These include vitamin B2, magnesium and Q10, but one of the most promising is folate, a B-group vitamin that is found in green leafy vegetables.

A mutation on the gene methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (known as MTHFR) can make carriers susceptible to migraine with aura, Griffiths says, and this gene reacts strongly to folate levels in the diet.

MTHFR is also what Griffiths calls a "susceptibility gene" for stroke and may help to explain the migraine-stroke link.

The stroke risk underscores the importance of a healthy lifestyle if you are a migraine sufferer, says Wijaratne.

"If you are a patient with migraine and visual aura then the increased stroke risk is small," he says. "However, if you add any other risk factor. Let's say you pick up smoking, or don't eat well, don't sleep well, don't maintain blood pressure, then your risk goes up as much as 12 times."

Some patients don't respond to existing treatments, Wijeratne says, but he is adamant "one should never lose hope".

"If a doctor says 'I've tried everything', then choose a different doctor. You should always be hopeful."

Raphaella Crosby is a founding member of patient advocacy group Migraine Australia.

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Migraines strike women three times more than men, and we're finally starting to understand why - ABC News

Pedigree, a record of ancestry or purity of breed. Studbooks (listings of pedigrees for horses, dogs, etc.) and herdbooks (records for cattle, swine, sheep, etc.) are maintained by governmental or private record associations or breed organizations in many countries.

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consanguinity: Inbreeding and pedigree construction

Measurement of inbreeding in terms of the degree of consanguinity between two parents is another significant application of data on consanguinity....

In human genetics, pedigree diagrams are utilized to trace the inheritance of a specific trait, abnormality, or disease. A male is represented by a square or the symbol , a female by a circle or the symbol . Mating is shown by a horizontal line (marriage line) connecting a male symbol and a female symbol; offspring symbols are connected in a row (sibship line) beneath the mated pair. The offspring symbols appear from left to right in the order of birth and are connected to the marriage line by a vertical line. Possession of the character under study is shown by a solid or blackened symbol, and absence is shown by an open or clear symbol. Multiple births are designated by joining the individual symbols to the same point on the sibship line. Siblings not shown as individual symbols are indicated by a number within a large symbol for each sex.

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pedigree | Definition, Breeding, & Symbols | Britannica

American scientist and cytogeneticist

Barbara McClintock (June 16, 1902 September 2, 1992) was an American scientist and cytogeneticist who was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. McClintock received her PhD in botany from Cornell University in 1927. There she started her career as the leader in the development of maize cytogenetics, the focus of her research for the rest of her life. From the late 1920s, McClintock studied chromosomes and how they change during reproduction in maize. She developed the technique for visualizing maize chromosomes and used microscopic analysis to demonstrate many fundamental genetic ideas. One of those ideas was the notion of genetic recombination by crossing-over during meiosisa mechanism by which chromosomes exchange information. She produced the first genetic map for maize, linking regions of the chromosome to physical traits. She demonstrated the role of the telomere and centromere, regions of the chromosome that are important in the conservation of genetic information. She was recognized as among the best in the field, awarded prestigious fellowships, and elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1944.

During the 1940s and 1950s, McClintock discovered transposition and used it to demonstrate that genes are responsible for turning physical characteristics on and off. She developed theories to explain the suppression and expression of genetic information from one generation of maize plants to the next. Due to skepticism of her research and its implications, she stopped publishing her data in 1953.

Later, she made an extensive study of the cytogenetics and ethnobotany of maize races from South America. McClintock's research became well understood in the 1960s and 1970s, as other scientists confirmed the mechanisms of genetic change and protein expression that she had demonstrated in her maize research in the 1940s and 1950s. Awards and recognition for her contributions to the field followed, including the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, awarded to her in 1983 for the discovery of genetic transposition; she was the only woman to receive an unshared Nobel Prize in that category.

Barbara McClintock was born Eleanor McClintock on June 16, 1902 in Hartford, Connecticut, the third of four children born to homeopathic physician Thomas Henry McClintock and Sara Handy McClintock.[5] Thomas McClintock was the child of British immigrants; Sara Ryder Handy was descended from an old American Mayflower family. Marjorie, the oldest child, was born in October 1898; Mignon, the second daughter, was born in November 1900. The youngest, Malcolm Rider (called Tom), was born 18 months after Barbara. When she was a young girl, her parents determined that Eleanor, a "feminine" and "delicate" name, was not appropriate for her, and chose Barbara instead. McClintock was an independent child beginning at a very young age, a trait she later identified as her "capacity to be alone". From the age of three until she began school, McClintock lived with an aunt and uncle in Brooklyn, New York in order to reduce the financial burden on her parents while her father established his medical practice. She was described as a solitary and independent child. She was close to her father, but had a difficult relationship with her mother, tension that began when she was young.

The McClintock family moved to Brooklyn in 1908 and McClintock completed her secondary education there at Erasmus Hall High School; she graduated early in 1919. She discovered her love of science and reaffirmed her solitary personality during high school. She wanted to continue her studies at Cornell University's College of Agriculture. Her mother resisted sending McClintock to college, for fear that she would be unmarriageable, something that was common at the time. McClintock was almost prevented from starting college, but her father allowed her to just before registration began, and she matriculated at Cornell in 1919.

McClintock began her studies at Cornell's College of Agriculture in 1919. There, she participated in student government and was invited to join a sorority, though she soon realized that she preferred not to join formal organizations. Instead, McClintock took up music, specifically jazz. She studied botany, receiving a B.Sc in 1923. Her interest in genetics began when she took her first course in that field in 1921. The course was based on a similar one offered at Harvard University, and was taught by C. B. Hutchison, a plant breeder and geneticist. Hutchison was impressed by McClintock's interest, and telephoned to invite her to participate in the graduate genetics course at Cornell in 1922. McClintock pointed to Hutchison's invitation as a catalyst for her interest in genetics: "Obviously, this telephone call cast the die for my future. I remained with genetics thereafter." Although it has been reported that women could not major in genetics at Cornell, and therefore her MS and PhDearned in 1925 and 1927, respectivelywere officially awarded in botany, recent research has revealed that women were permitted to earn graduate degrees in Cornell's Plant Breeding Department during the time that McClintock was a student at Cornell.

During her graduate studies and postgraduate appointment as a botany instructor, McClintock was instrumental in assembling a group that studied the new field of cytogenetics in maize. This group brought together plant breeders and cytologists, and included Marcus Rhoades, future Nobel laureate George Beadle, and Harriet Creighton. Rollins A. Emerson, head of the Plant Breeding Department, supported these efforts, although he was not a cytologist himself.

She also worked as a research assistant for Lowell Fitz Randolph and then for Lester W. Sharp, both Cornell botanists.[20]

McClintock's cytogenetic research focused on developing ways to visualize and characterize maize chromosomes. This particular part of her work influenced a generation of students, as it was included in most textbooks. She also developed a technique using carmine staining to visualize maize chromosomes, and showed for the first time the morphology of the 10 maize chromosomes. This discovery was made because she observed cells from the microspore as opposed to the root tip. By studying the morphology of the chromosomes, McClintock was able to link specific chromosome groups of traits that were inherited together. Marcus Rhoades noted that McClintock's 1929 Genetics paper on the characterization of triploid maize chromosomes triggered scientific interest in maize cytogenetics, and attributed to her 10 of the 17 significant advances in the field that were made by Cornell scientists between 1929 and 1935.

In 1930, McClintock was the first person to describe the cross-shaped interaction of homologous chromosomes during meiosis. The following year, McClintock and Creighton proved the link between chromosomal crossover during meiosis and the recombination of genetic traits. They observed how the recombination of chromosomes seen under a microscope correlated with new traits. Until this point, it had only been hypothesized that genetic recombination could occur during meiosis, although it had not been shown genetically. McClintock published the first genetic map for maize in 1931, showing the order of three genes on maize chromosome 9. This information provided necessary data for the crossing-over study she published with Creighton; they also showed that crossing-over occurs in sister chromatids as well as homologous chromosomes. In 1938, she produced a cytogenetic analysis of the centromere, describing the organization and function of the centromere, as well as the fact that it can divide.

McClintock's breakthrough publications, and support from her colleagues, led to her being awarded several postdoctoral fellowships from the National Research Council. This funding allowed her to continue to study genetics at Cornell, the University of Missouri, and the California Institute of Technology, where she worked with E. G. Anderson. During the summers of 1931 and 1932, she worked at the University of Missouri with geneticist Lewis Stadler, who introduced her to the use of X-rays as a mutagen. Exposure to X-rays can increase the rate of mutation above the natural background level, making it a powerful research tool for genetics. Through her work with X-ray-mutagenized maize, she identified ring chromosomes, which form when the ends of a single chromosome fuse together after radiation damage. From this evidence, McClintock hypothesized that there must be a structure on the chromosome tip that would normally ensure stability. She showed that the loss of ring-chromosomes at meiosis caused variegation in maize foliage in generations subsequent to irradiation resulting from chromosomal deletion. During this period, she demonstrated the presence of the nucleolus organizer region on a region on maize chromosome 6, which is required for the assembly of the nucleolus. In 1933, she established that cells can be damaged when nonhomologous recombination occurs. During this same period, McClintock hypothesized that the tips of chromosomes are protected by telomeres.

McClintock received a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation that made possible six months of training in Germany during 1933 and 1934. She had planned to work with Curt Stern, who had demonstrated crossing-over in Drosophila just weeks after McClintock and Creighton had done so; however, Stern emigrated to the United States. Instead, she worked with geneticist Richard B. Goldschmidt, who was a director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology in Berlin.[32] She left Germany early amidst mounting political tension in Europe, and returned to Cornell, remaining there until 1936, when she accepted an Assistant Professorship offered to her by Lewis Stadler in the Department of Botany at the University of Missouri-Columbia. While still at Cornell, she was supported by a two-year Rockefeller Foundation grant obtained for her through Emerson's efforts.

During her time at Missouri, McClintock expanded her research on the effect of X-rays on maize cytogenetics. McClintock observed the breakage and fusion of chromosomes in irradiated maize cells. She was also able to show that, in some plants, spontaneous chromosome breakage occurred in the cells of the endosperm. Over the course of mitosis, she observed that the ends of broken chromatids were rejoined after the chromosome replication. In the anaphase of mitosis, the broken chromosomes formed a chromatid bridge, which was broken when the chromatids moved towards the cell poles. The broken ends were rejoined in the interphase of the next mitosis, and the cycle was repeated, causing massive mutation, which she could detect as variegation in the endosperm. This breakagerejoiningbridge cycle was a key cytogenetic discovery for several reasons. First, it showed that the rejoining of chromosomes was not a random event, and second, it demonstrated a source of large-scale mutation. For this reason, it remains an area of interest in cancer research today.

Although her research was progressing at Missouri, McClintock was not satisfied with her position at the University. She recalled being excluded from faculty meetings, and was not made aware of positions available at other institutions. In 1940, she wrote to Charles Burnham, "I have decided that I must look for another job. As far as I can make out, there is nothing more for me here. I am an assistant professor at $3,000 and I feel sure that that is the limit for me." Initially, McClintock's position was created especially for her by Stadler, and might have depended on his presence at the university. McClintock believed she would not gain tenure at Missouri, even though according to some accounts, she knew she would be offered a promotion from Missouri in the spring of 1942. Recent evidence reveals that McClintock more likely decided to leave Missouri because she had lost trust in her employer and in the University administration, after discovering that her job would be in jeopardy if Stadler were to leave for Caltech, as he had considered doing. The university's retaliation against Stadler amplified her sentiments.

In early 1941, she took a leave of absence from Missouri in hopes of finding a position elsewhere. She accepted a visiting Professorship at Columbia University, where her former Cornell colleague Marcus Rhoades was a professor. Rhoades also offered to share his research field at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island. In December 1941, she was offered a research position by Milislav Demerec, the newly appointed acting director of the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Department of Genetics Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; McClintock accepted his invitation despite her qualms and became a permanent member of the faculty.

After her year-long temporary appointment, McClintock accepted a full-time research position at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. There, she was highly productive and continued her work with the breakage-fusion-bridge cycle, using it to substitute for X-rays as a tool for mapping new genes. In 1944, in recognition of her prominence in the field of genetics during this period, McClintock was elected to the National Academy of Sciencesonly the third woman to be elected. The following year she became the first female president of the Genetics Society of America; she had been elected its vice-president in 1939. In 1944 she undertook a cytogenetic analysis of Neurospora crassa at the suggestion of George Beadle, who used the fungus to demonstrate the one geneone enzyme relationship. He invited her to Stanford to undertake the study. She successfully described the number of chromosomes, or karyotype, of N. crassa and described the entire life cycle of the species. Beadle said, "Barbara, in two months at Stanford, did more to clean up the cytology of Neurospora than all other cytological geneticists had done in all previous time on all forms of mold." N. crassa has since become a model species for classical genetic analysis.

In the summer of 1944 at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, McClintock began systematic studies on the mechanisms of the mosaic color patterns of maize seed and the unstable inheritance of this mosaicism. She identified two new dominant and interacting genetic loci that she named Dissociation (Ds) and Activator (Ac). She found that the Dissociation did not just dissociate or cause the chromosome to break, it also had a variety of effects on neighboring genes when the Activator was also present, which included making certain stable mutations unstable. In early 1948, she made the surprising discovery that both Dissociation and Activator could transpose, or change position, on the chromosome.

She observed the effects of the transposition of Ac and Ds by the changing patterns of coloration in maize kernels over generations of controlled crosses, and described the relationship between the two loci through intricate microscopic analysis. She concluded that Ac controls the transposition of the Ds from chromosome9, and that the movement of Ds is accompanied by the breakage of the chromosome. When Ds moves, the aleurone-color gene is released from the suppressing effect of the Ds and transformed into the active form, which initiates the pigment synthesis in cells. The transposition of Ds in different cells is random, it may move in some but not others, which causes color mosaicism. The size of the colored spot on the seed is determined by stage of the seed development during dissociation. McClintock also found that the transposition of Ds is determined by the number of Ac copies in the cell.

Between 1948 and 1950, she developed a theory by which these mobile elements regulated the genes by inhibiting or modulating their action. She referred to Dissociation and Activator as "controlling units"later, as "controlling elements"to distinguish them from genes. She hypothesized that gene regulation could explain how complex multicellular organisms made of cells with identical genomes have cells of different function. McClintock's discovery challenged the concept of the genome as a static set of instructions passed between generations. In 1950, she reported her work on Ac/Ds and her ideas about gene regulation in a paper entitled "The origin and behavior of mutable loci in maize" published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In summer 1951, she reported her work on the origin and behavior of mutable loci in maize at the annual symposium at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, presenting a paper of the same name. The paper delved into the instability caused by Ds and Ac or just Ac in four genes, along with the tendency of those genes to unpredictably revert to the wild phenotype. She also identified "families" of transposons, which did not interact with one another.

Her work on controlling elements and gene regulation was conceptually difficult and was not immediately understood or accepted by her contemporaries; she described the reception of her research as "puzzlement, even hostility". Nevertheless, McClintock continued to develop her ideas on controlling elements. She published a paper in Genetics in 1953, where she presented all her statistical data, and undertook lecture tours to universities throughout the 1950s to speak about her work. She continued to investigate the problem and identified a new element that she called Suppressor-mutator (Spm), which, although similar to Ac/Ds, acts in a more complex manner. Like Ac/Ds, some versions could transpose on their own and some could not; unlike Ac/Ds, when present, it fully suppressed the expression of mutant genes when they normally would not be entirely suppressed. Based on the reactions of other scientists to her work, McClintock felt she risked alienating the scientific mainstream, and from 1953 was forced to stop publishing accounts of her research on controlling elements.

In 1957, McClintock received funding from the National Academy of Sciences to start research on indigenous strains of maize in Central America and South America. She was interested in studying the evolution of maize through chromosomal changes, and being in South America would allow her to work on a larger scale. McClintock explored the chromosomal, morphological, and evolutionary characteristics of various races of maize. After extensive work in the 1960s and 1970s, McClintock and her collaborators published the seminal study The Chromosomal Constitution of Races of Maize, leaving their mark on paleobotany, ethnobotany, and evolutionary biology.

McClintock officially retired from her position at the Carnegie Institution in 1967, and was made a Distinguished Service Member of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. This honor allowed her to continue working with graduate students and colleagues in the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory as scientist emerita; she lived in the town. In reference to her decision 20 years earlier to stop publishing detailed accounts of her work on controlling elements, she wrote in 1973:

Over the years I have found that it is difficult if not impossible to bring to consciousness of another person the nature of his tacit assumptions when, by some special experiences, I have been made aware of them. This became painfully evident to me in my attempts during the 1950s to convince geneticists that the action of genes had to be and was controlled. It is now equally painful to recognize the fixity of assumptions that many persons hold on the nature of controlling elements in maize and the manners of their operation. One must await the right time for conceptual change.

The importance of McClintock's contributions was revealed in the 1960s, when the work of French geneticists Francois Jacob and Jacques Monod described the genetic regulation of the lac operon, a concept she had demonstrated with Ac/Ds in 1951. Following Jacob and Monod's 1961 Journal of Molecular Biology paper "Genetic regulatory mechanisms in the synthesis of proteins", McClintock wrote an article for American Naturalist comparing the lac operon and her work on controlling elements in maize. Even late in the twentieth century, McClintock's contribution to biology was still not widely acknowledged as amounting to the discovery of genetic regulation.

McClintock was widely credited with discovering transposition after other researchers finally discovered the process in bacteria, yeast, and bacteriophages in the late 1960s and early 1970s. During this period, molecular biology had developed significant new technology, and scientists were able to show the molecular basis for transposition. In the 1970s, Ac and Ds were cloned by other scientists and were shown to be class II transposons. Ac is a complete transposon that can produce a functional transposase, which is required for the element to move within the genome. Ds has a mutation in its transposase gene, which means that it cannot move without another source of transposase. Thus, as McClintock observed, Ds cannot move in the absence of Ac.[65] Spm has also been characterized as a transposon. Subsequent research has shown that transposons typically do not move unless the cell is placed under stress, such as by irradiation or the breakage-fusion-bridge cycle, and thus their activation during stress can serve as a source of genetic variation for evolution. McClintock understood the role of transposons in evolution and genome change well before other researchers grasped the concept. Nowadays, Ac/Ds is used as a tool in plant biology to generate mutant plants used for the characterization of gene function.

In 1947, McClintock received the Achievement Award from the American Association of University Women. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1959.[68] In 1967, McClintock was awarded the Kimber Genetics Award; three years later, she was given the National Medal of Science by Richard Nixon in 1970. She was the first woman to be awarded the National Medal of Science.[71]Cold Spring Harbor named a building in her honor in 1973. She received the Louis and Bert Freedman Foundation Award and the Lewis S. Rosensteil Award in 1978. In 1981, she became the first recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Grant, and was awarded the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, the Wolf Prize in Medicine and the Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal by the Genetics Society of America. In 1982, she was awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University for her research in the "evolution of genetic information and the control of its expression."

Most notably, she received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1983, the first woman to win that prize unshared, and the first American woman to win any unshared Nobel Prize.[74] It was given to her by the Nobel Foundation for discovering "mobile genetic elements"; this was more than 30 years after she initially described the phenomenon of controlling elements. She was compared to Gregor Mendel in terms of her scientific career by the Swedish Academy of Sciences when she was awarded the Prize.

She was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1989. McClintock received the Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Sciences of the American Philosophical Society in 1993. She was awarded 14 Honorary Doctor of Science degrees and an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters. In 1986 she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. During her final years, McClintock led a more public life, especially after Evelyn Fox Keller's 1983 biography of her, A Feeling for the Organism, brought McClintock's story to the public. She remained a regular presence in the Cold Spring Harbor community, and gave talks on mobile genetic elements and the history of genetics research for the benefit of junior scientists. An anthology of her 43 publications The Discovery and Characterization of Transposable Elements: The Collected Papers of Barbara McClintock was published in 1987.

The McClintock Prize is named in her honour.[79] Laureates of the award include David Baulcombe, Detlef Weigel Robert A. Martienssen, Jeffrey D. Palmer and Susan R. Wessler.[79]

McClintock spent her later years, post Nobel Prize, as a key leader and researcher in the field at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, New York. McClintock died of natural causes in Huntington, New York, on September 2, 1992 at the age of 90; she never married or had children.

In 2001, McClintock was the subject of a biography by the science historian Nathaniel C. Comfort's The Tangled Field: Barbara McClintock's Search for the Patterns of Genetic Control. Comfort's biography contests the claim that McClintock was marginalized by other scientists, which he calls the "McClintock Myth" and argues was perpetuated both by McClintock herself as well as in the earlier biography by Keller. Keller argued that because McClintock felt like an outsider within her field, (in part, because of her gender) she was able to look at her scientific subjects from a perspective different than the dominant one leading to several important insights.[80] Keller shows how this led many of her colleagues to reject her ideas and undermine her abilities for many years. For example, when McClintock presented her findings that the genetics of maize did not conform to Mendelian distributions, geneticist Sewall Wright expressed the belief that she did not understand the underlying mathematics of her work, a belief he had also expressed towards other women at the time. In addition, geneticist Lotte Auerbach recounted that Joshua Lederberg returned from a visit to McClintock's lab with the remark: 'By God, that woman is either crazy or a genius.' " As Auerbach recounts, McClintock had thrown Lederberg and his colleagues out after half an hour 'because of their arrogance. She was intolerant of arrogance... She felt she had crossed a desert alone and no one had followed her.'" Comfort, however, asserts that McClintock was not discriminated against because of her gender, citing that she was well regarded by her professional peers, even in the early years of her career.

Many recent biographical works on women in science feature accounts of McClintock's work and experience. She is held up as a role model for girls in such works of children's literature as Edith Hope Fine's Barbara McClintock, Nobel Prize Geneticist, Deborah Heiligman's Barbara McClintock: Alone in Her Field and Mary Kittredge's Barbara McClintock. A recent biography for young adults by Naomi Pasachoff, Barbara McClintock, Genius of Genetics, provides a new perspective, based on the current literature.

On May 4, 2005, the United States Postal Service issued the "American Scientists" commemorative postage stamp series, a set of four 37-cent self-adhesive stamps in several configurations. The scientists depicted were Barbara McClintock, John von Neumann, Josiah Willard Gibbs, and Richard Feynman. McClintock was also featured in a 1989 four-stamp issue from Sweden which illustrated the work of eight Nobel Prize-winning geneticists. A small building at Cornell University and a laboratory building at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory were named for her. A street has been named after her in the new "Adlershof Development Society" science park in Berlin.

Some of McClintock's personality and scientific achievements were referred to in Jeffrey Eugenides's 2011 novel The Marriage Plot, which tells the story of a yeast geneticist named Leonard who suffers from bipolar disorder. He works at a laboratory loosely based on Cold Spring Harbor. The character reminiscent of McClintock is a reclusive geneticist at the fictional laboratory, who makes the same discoveries as her factual counterpart.

Judith Pratt wrote a play about McClintock, called MAIZE, which was read at Artemesia Theatre in Chicago in 2015, and was produced in Ithaca NY, the home of Cornell University, in FebruaryMarch 2018.[88]

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Barbara McClintock - Wikipedia

Few people have the ability, dedication or patience to train a dog to trial standard let alone to sell at public auction, so imagine the elation when Emma Gray sold her first bitch for a record breaking 14,000gns with her second at a world beating, 18,000gns.

But then the Northumberland shepherdess from Fallowlees, Morpeth, is no ordinary dog handler. As the first woman to win the Northumberland Nursery League in 2014 and the English Nursery championship in 2016, Emma has also competed on the world stage both in The Netherlands and in Scotland when the event was staged at Fearn Farm, Tain.

And next month, the young mother who was once dubbed the UKs loneliest shepherd, her husband, Ewan Irvine and son, Len, will be starring in the latest series of This Farming Life.

No stranger to the TV screen, Emma has previously shown her dog handling talents when Countryfile and Robson Green visited Fallowlees. She has also travelled down to London to be on the Alan Titchmarsh show.

Out with this new found screen fame, it is nevertheless Emmas dogs that come first after Ewan and Len of course!

When you live on a farm, youre told from an early age that everything has to earn its keep, so naturally, when I said I wanted a dog, it had to get a Collie, said Emma, who was brought up on her parents Richard and Helen Gray Muirfield farm just outside Hawick.

That was at the tender age of 13. Bitten by the dog training bug, she attended the only shepherding and dog handling course in the UK, four years later at Kirkleyhall College in Northumberland.

It is unbelievable what you can train dogs to do and while every dog is different, you do need to have sheep to train them which is why I went into sheep farming, added Emma who at her first competitive trial, at 21 years of age, came second with the home-bred unregistered bitch, Fly at the Hawick Farm Nursery event.

After college, she did contract shepherding to include three lambings a year, to prove herself and two years later in 2011, took on the lease of the National Trusts remote and extremely exposed, 100-acre Fallowlees upland unit, just outside Morpeth in Northumberland.

She left home, with just four dogs and a suitcase to move into her new abode which in those days was completely bereft of any power or phone reception.

Some 200 draft Blackface ewes were bought at Lanark for crossing to Bluefaced Leicester tups to breed home-bred Scotch Mules which are now put to Texel and Aberfield rams.

Since then, Emma has also taken on a share farming contract on the neighbouring unit at Healy Mill Farm and now farms 400 Texel cross Scotch Mules across both farms, with the flock tupped to Texel and Aberfield rams. Emma and Ewan have also invested in 25 Bluegrey and Whitebred Shorthorn cows.

It is nevertheless the dogs that take priority but then that is no surprise when you see what can be achieved training pups into top class trial dogs. Emmas first big victory as the first female to win the Northumberland Nursery league, in 2014 came with Roy, a dog purchased as a four-month-old puppy from Paul Bristow.

I saw him as a pup and just liked what he did at that age. He was really bold and had a lot of power and turned out a really good work dog. He qualified for the team at the English National as well as for the world sheepdog trials in Tain.

Two years later in 2016, Tweeddale Jamie a dog bought as an eight-week-old pup from Scottish breeder, Dean Aitken, also won the English Nursery final and went on to qualify for the English National where he finished reserve overall at 18months of age. He too qualified for the world trials which were staged in The Netherlands that year and came in third on his qualifying field.

Notably, his son, Telf Joff, scored a hat-trick for Emma, when he too won the Northumberland Nursery League and the English Nursery final when his co-pilot was eight months pregnant at the time!

That was in 2019, a year which not only saw Emma give birth to baby Len, but also produce a new record price for a Border Collie bitch sold at public auction when Brenna, which always stood second to Joff at trials, sold for 14,000gns at Craven Auction Marts Skipton sheepdog sale to America.

A daughter of Aled Owens Welsh National and International supreme champion, Llangwm Cap, Brenna was knocked down to Dr Pamela Helton who farms 60 Swedish Gotland sheep in Maryland, and also runs dogs in eastern and mid-western US trials.

If that wasnt enough to be going on with, the family returned to Skipton earlier this year to sell Megan for the world record price of 18,000gns, again to the US. Another backed by the best of genetics, Megan is by the twice International champion, Roy from Welsh breeder, Ross Games and out of Co Durham-based Lynne Morelands Maggie which is a little sister to Ricky Hutchinsons International supreme winner, Jock.

Megan was bought as an eight-month-old pup from Lynne Moreland and sold over the phone to Wagyu cattle farmer and businessman, Brian Stamps, Tuttle, Grady County, central Oklahoma.

Social media has been really good for advertising working Border Collie dogs on line, and it has been great to see them sell for their true value at auction when you think a Cockapoo pup will sell at 3000 as an eight-week-old pup compared to 300 for a Collie at the same age, said Emma.

As a result, Emma and Ewan, a fireman to trade who is now equally enthusiastic about dog training and trialling, have sold dogs as far afield as the Faroe Islands, Canada, America, Germany, France, Sweden and even as far as North Korea.

But in contrast to many who tend to concentrate on breeding the best, Emma prefers to buy pups from the best bloodlines, although she does also breed them.

I always like to buy dogs as pups and train them up. I like them to have a good free-range puppyhood when they learn something new every day. Pups learn nothing in a kennel.

It doesnt matter where you get a puppy from but it has good to have a good puppyhood and if you buy a well bred one, youll increase your chances of getting a good working dog, said Emma.

Once they get to that nuisance stage at about eight to nine months of age and are looking to kep or chase sheep, they are put in kennels and brought out two or three times a day for schooling and to get them onto their sides. Initially, they get to run round and round a big pen of sheep in the middle of a field and once they have mastered that, the pen is removed and they are encouraged to kep and bring the sheep to Emma.

Dont correct them too much when theyre young, and dont sicken them. Ten minutes two twice a day and then work it up to 20-30minutes when theyre working well. Its arithmetic on a treadmill for them

The best working dogs have plenty power and a good heart with the majority bred from leading trial dogs. Most dogs can be good farm dogs, but a sheepdog trial is the true test of a dog. Working four sheep round a course is a lot more difficult than working a flock of sheep, she said.

Not all dogs get to trial standard either, and while all good handlers have pot lickers, Emma maintains there is always a dog for the right person as not everyone wants a trial dog. With 20 plus dogs on the go at any one time, she always has something to suit people looking to buy a dog privately too.

All dogs are capable of learning but they do have a short life, so you are better to get them working to full potential at two years of age than at four. We like to have ours broken by 18months of age and then get them doing trial work working on farm as much as possible after that, concluded Emma.

ON THE spot

Best investment? : 'My big red Honda bike, most reliable machine ever!!'

Best advice?: 'So many 'Buy the best you can afford; Dont let a shepherdess drive a tractor and Dont work harder, think smarter.'

Biggest achievement?: 'Securing the tenancy of Fallowlees that's how it all started.'

Best working dog you have seen?: 'Ricky Hutchinsons Sweep.'

What you miss most in 2020 as a result of the pandemic?: 'The Royal Highland Show.'

Where do you want to be in 2030?: 'A ring fenced farm where the nearest supermarket isnt an hour away!'

Originally posted here:
Emma - the record breaking shepherdess - The Scottish Farmer

More News07 Jun 2020 | 11:28 PM

Bengaluru, June 7 (UNI) Mr. C Satyanandan, former Chief Engineer (South Zone) Doordarshan, has been elected as Chairman (2020-22) of the Bengaluru Centre of Institution of Electronics & Telecommunications Engineers (IETE), the leading professional body of Electronics, Telecommunications and Information Technology Engineers in the country.

Hyderabad, Jun 7 (UNI) Shriram Bioseed Genetics, a unit of DCM Shriram Ltd one of Indias leading conglomerates, on Sunday announced the launch of a new generation long shelf life and high yielding variety HYBRID TOMATO BIOSEED FLEXI HARVEST 4 here.

Visakhapatnam, Jun 7 (UNI) A 55-year-old man, who is working as an attender in Mandal Revenue Officer (MRO), died after consuming alcohol-based sanitizer believing that it was drinking water at Nakkapalle area in the district on Saturday night.

Hyderabad, Jun 7 (UNI) Telangana Health Minister Etala Rajender has said that the COVID-19 cases were increased in the state due to relaxation of lockdown.

Kakinada, Jun 7(UNI) District Food safety officer Kalyan Chakravarti has said that the food processing units managements should follow the food safety standards as it is mandatory on their part.

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nCoV: 38 more test positive in Belagavi - United News of India

Women, say recent studies, are more likely than men to become depressed during lockdown. Apparently, they worry more, drink more and eat more junk food.

Who says that equals depression? Just because we are slumped in a corner with a glass of vino and three left-over Easter eggs doesnt mean we arent enjoying ourselves.

The findings are quite ironic. About 70% of those taken into intensive care with coronavirus are male. How come women are more depressed when men are more likely to die?

Women cry, men die. I would have put that the other way round men die, women cry but it might have suggested some kind of cause and effect which, according to one psychologist I spoke to, is not necessarily the case.

Hes gone, a female patient told him triumphantly, speaking of her husband. Dead? he asked, taken aback. No, he left me and I feel fabulous.

Mental Health Awareness week ended a fortnight ago. Why deliberately wait until its over to write about depression? Because right now, mental health is an ongoing issue and useful as campaigns are, awareness-raising doesnt end after seven days. It is the start, not the end, of the journey. A puppy is not just for Christmas, we dont only love our mothers one day a year and good mental health is not a seven day, creation-of-the-universe process.

Nor is it, as we sometimes mistakenly think, a recipe for feeling good all the time; a panacea of happiness that leaves us in a Julie Andrews bubble of raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. Many of us are challenged right now but good mental health is not the ability to be permanently happy. Its the ability to deal with unhappiness and challenges and even the depression that being alive and human occasionally brings in a resilient, balanced way.

Does it trivialise psychological difficulties, or encourage addiction, to joke about marital difficulties, or over-indulgence in wine and chocolate? Or does it put psychological difficulty into perspective an expected, but temporary, part of life that we learn to manage rather than obliterate?

The late American comedian Joan Rivers once spoke to me in an interview about her reputation for outrageousness. She joked about everything, she said, because it sucked the power out of difficulty and gave it to her. It put tragedy in its box.

It was a striking feature of interviewing comedians that in person they were rarely like their funny, high-energy stage personas. Mostly, they were deeply serious and introspective. Their introspection sharpened the observation that informed their performances. So what are you going to do if you dont laugh at life. Cry?

In a recent documentary, Tony Blairs old media manager Alastair Campbell, who has suffered from depression for most of his life, interviewed a geneticist. For the purposes of the programme, Campbell had looked into various research programmes, from the use of magic mushrooms to interrupt negative thought processes to experimental head vibration treatments. But it was the simple metaphor the geneticist used that struck him.

Think of a jar, she suggested. In that jar were all the different components affecting our mental health genetics, personal experiences, environmental factors. We cant make the jar smaller, but we can raise the height of it with things that make us feel good spending time with family and friends, pursuing hobbies and a healthy approach to diet, exercise and sleep.

When Campbell listed the things that created space in his jar he realised everything he had written down concerned people, lifestyle and creativity, rather than scientific solutions such as medication.

One of the themes emphasised for good mental health is kindness. There is no doubt that helping someone else, focusing on their needs, forces us out of the vortex of our own particular difficulties into someone elses frame of reference. It makes us, as well as them, feel good.

What the jam jar model reminds us, though, is that we need to be kind to ourselves as well as others.

Perhaps that includes at least attempting to think outside the box, to resist being limited by conformity or constrained by convention, because thats when lifes possibilities open up.

I smiled recently while reading the story of a young, unknown Czech painter who was baffled when her paintings were stolen from a museum. After all, she wasnt Picasso. And they were 6ft by 4ft so you could hardly walk out with them tucked under your arm.

When she met the thief at court, he was a heavily tattooed ex-con. Instead of shunning him, she asked to get to know him for two reasons.

Firstly, she wanted to paint him. Secondly, she wanted to know why he had stolen them. They were beautiful, he said eventually.

Perhaps theft is taking self-kindness too far. But the artists kind response, her curiosity about life, her ability to do the unexpected, struck me as something that would extend her mental health jar quite considerably.

An extension that I suspect limits her need for a glass of vino and three left-over Easter eggs.

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Catherine Deveney: There's so much more to achieving good mental health than just taking medication - Press and Journal

As Benchmarks shrimp facility in Florida begins to gear up towards commercial production, Oscar Hennig, operations director of Benchmark Genetics shrimp-breeding programme who has been in the shrimp sector for nearly 30 years explains to The Fish Site what he hopes to achieve.

Benchmark Genetics

Ive been involved in the sector since 1991, starting off on farms in Australia. After finishing my masters in aquaculture in Florianpolis [in southern Brazil] I received a scholarship from the government of Japan for a two-year research project with shrimp immunology at the Shimonoseki National Fisheries University. From there I returned to Brazil for two years running a diagnostics lab for shrimp at the LABOMAR research institute. In the meantime, to make ends meet, I leased a growout farm. P. vannamei [whiteleg shrimp] farming was just starting in north-east Brazil and there was the need for expertise to help the transition from P. subtilis [southern brown shrimp].

At the end of 1999 I moved permanently to Hawaii, to manage a satellite facility of the Oceanic Institute, in Kona. I have been in Kona ever since, working as breeding-programme manager for different companies, with P. monodon [giant tiger prawn], P. stylirostris [blue shrimp] and mainly P. vannamei.

At the end of 2016 I was hired as a director for Benchmark Genetics, after Benchmark had bought CENIACUA, a P. vannamei breeding programme in Colombia. My role has been to bring this to the international arena.

Oscar Hennig

I was impressed by the CENIACUA facility, and the crew running it, in Cartagena we had as much space as we wanted and as many people as we needed, as the jobs were in the local community.

However, Cartagena doesnt have great logistics and we realised that we need a base in the US to improve our ability to export our stocks.

[The Central Florida town of] Fellsmere was suitable for a number of reasons, not least for being close to three international airports. It is also 30km from the coast, which helps with our biosecurity and also to protect us from the hurricanes that can devastate the Florida coast.

Back in 2017, when we selected the site, my only concern was that we were sourcing water from a well this can impact the fertilisation ratio but weve managed to produce steady numbers of nauplii.

Benchmark Genetics

The water comes from 750m deep, and the well brings a sterile (zero dissolved oxygen), ~32 ppt saline water that is second to none. Due to the inland location, discharging water is a challenge, so all our systems work on recirculation or on biofloc.

All activities are conducted indoors from maturation, to algae, to grow-out, to packing so the biosecurity is excellent.

Im proud of how its turned out and Im really happy with the team weve created. There are currently 15 people involved and theres plenty of space to expand. At the moment were operating at about one fifth of our capacity, as were conducting presale trials, in order to fine tune the lines of shrimp that are needed in our main markets China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand and these are now being tested in a commercial environment.

Most shrimp producers only offer one product but there are so many production systems used by the global shrimp industry and we saw that one size does not fit all. As a result, we decided to cater for a range of options and have launched three lines commercially.

The first, which weve been developing since 2008, is resistant to whitespot, EMS and other diseases. Called BMK Protect this is mainly for customers in northern China, and other areas facing disease challenges. It shows its true potential in harsh/disease conditions.

The second line was bred specifically to improve performance in sites with low salinity: shrimp farming is becoming increasingly popular in water thats less than 5 ppt. It now accounts for roughly 60 percent of Indian shrimp production, 50 percent in China, 15 percent in Vietnam and 15 to 20 percent in Thailand.

The third line, called BMK Yield, balances growth rates with survival to ensure steady production. It produces a consistent yield and a high rate of survival, making it ideal for farms that are working with processing plants, as it allows the farmer to provide a steady supply of raw material.

Benchmark Genetics

At this moment we are using some of that capacity to produce PLs for farmers, in the US and abroad. The PPL will go to our partners multiplication centres worldwide. China has been the main market during this presale year, and BMK Protect has been the number one line. The other two are doing well in the presale, but their evaluation still ongoing.

Breeding without ablation is not a big deal for us; it takes more planning and a few adjustments but nothing major. It is not done at the commercial hatcheries [as opposed to broodstock production facilities] due to a ~30 percent reduction in nauplii production. This reduction off nauplii output is mainly due to the lower frequency of female spawning, not due to lower levels of nauplii per spawn.

We believe that PL produced by non-ablated females are stronger. We ran some trials to support this belief and found that the eggs were bigger in non-ablated females, which makes sense as they have more time to go through the maturation process. We have other trials in mind that we will pursue once we get back to a normal routine.

Consolidation of the industry at different levels and partnership with local companies. I see the industry moving in two extreme directions: high-density, enclosed, biosecure farming systems and extensive open ponds, with not much left in the middle.

There was a small decline in sales during February and it has been hard to get cargo space and to predict when flights would go logistics have been crazy and transport prices also increased. However, I am optimistic that, once Covid-19 is a thing of the past, people will be wanting to celebrate life and demand for shrimp will increase beyond levels prior to this pandemic. As a result, our plan to expand is still in place.

The rest is here:
A new Benchmark in shrimp production - The Fish Site

Mller pulled up a series of graphs and charts on her laptop. These showed that, per capita, Iceland had had more COVID-19 cases than any other Scandinavian country, and more than even Italy or Britain. There was an outbreak in a nursing home in the town of Bolungarvk, in northwestern Iceland, and one in the Westman Islands, an archipelago off the southern coast, which seemed to have started at a handball game. (In Europe, handball is a team sport thats sort of a cross between basketball and soccer.)

The numbers in the beginning were terrible, Mller said. She attributed the countrys success in bringing the caseload down in part to having got an early start. The trio, along with officials from Icelands university hospital, had begun meeting back in January. We saw what was going on in China, she recalled. We saw the pictures of people lying dead in emergency departments, even on the street. So it was obvious that something terrible was happening. And, of course, we didnt know if it would spread to other countries. But we didnt dare take the chance. So we started preparing. For example, it was discovered that the country didnt have enough protective gear for its health-care workers, so hospital officials immediately set about buying more.

Meanwhile, Mller began assembling a backup team. You know, everybody knows everyone in Iceland, she said. And so I rang up the president of the Icelandic Medical Association and the head of the nurses association. Doctors who had recently retired, nurses who had gone on to other jobsall were urged to sign up. When new cases started to be diagnosed in a great rush, the backup team, along with doctors whose offices had been shut by the pandemic, counselled people over the phone. If you were seventy, if you had high blood pressure, you got called every day, Mller told me. But, if you were young and healthy, maybe twice a week. And Im sure that this led to fewer hospital admittances and even to fewer intensive-care admittances.

This, in turn, appears to have cut down on fatalities. Icelands death rate from COVID-19 is one out of every one hundred and eighty confirmed cases, or just 0.56 per centone of the lowest in the world. The figure is so low that it raised some doubts. Mllers department decided to look into how many Icelanders had perished for any reason since the outbreak began. It turned out that over-all mortality in Iceland had actually gone down since the coronavirus had arrived.

I asked Mller about masks. In Massachusetts, an executive order issued by the governor requires that masks be worn by anyone entering a store, taking a cab, or using public transit, and violators can be fined up to three hundred dollars. In Iceland, masks arent even part of the public conversation. Mller said that wearing one might be advisable for a person who is sick and coughing, but that person shouldnt be walking around in public anyway. We think they dont add much and they can give a false sense of security, she said. Also, masks work for some time, and then they get wet, and they dont work anymore.

Mller was careful not to suggest that Iceland had beaten the virus. She seemed almost embarrassed by the idea of claiming credit for herself, for the trio, or for Iceland. The furthest she would go, when pressed, was to say, We are a nation thats used to catastrophes. We deal with avalanches, earthquakes, eruptions, and so on. Among the slides she showed me about the countrys experience with COVID was one labelled Success?

Iceland was one of the last (more or less) habitable places on earth to be settled by humans, sometime toward the end of the ninth century. Genetic analysis performed by deCODE shows that the islands original inhabitants were mainly men from Norway and women from the British Isles. (It seems likely that the women were seized by the Vikings and brought along by force.)

For centuries, hardly anyone from anywhere else bothered to travel to Iceland; it just didnt seem worth the effort. Isolation, combined with low population density, tended to keep out epidemicsthe island was, for example, spared the Black Death. But, when disease did slip in, the effects on a population that lacked immunity could be devastating. In 1707, an Icelander contracted smallpox during a trip to Copenhagen. He died on his way home and was buried at sea. His clothes continued on to the town of Eyrarbakki, on the islands southern coast, sparking an outbreak that, by 1709, had killed about a quarter of the country.

Today, Iceland is still far from anywhere. Its nearest neighbor, Greenland, is mostly ice, and the capital city of Nuuk is almost nine hundred miles away. But jets and cruise ships have turned Reykjavk into a bucket-list destination; last year, almost two million foreign tourists visited, four times the number that visited just a decade ago. Icelands first COVID casualty was, perhaps not surprisingly, a vacationer. The man, whose name was not released, was Australian. He died on March 16th, shortly after arriving at a medical clinic in Hsavk, a small town on the northern coast known for whale-watching. His widow, who also tested positive, was ordered into isolation, a development that prompted an outpouring of sympathy from Icelanders. A woman named Rakel Jnsdttir set up a Facebook group, With Love from Us, so that people could post messages to her; more than ten thousand people joined. You may not see us, you may not know us, but we all think of you and have you in our hearts, Jnsdttir wrote.

Icelanders, too, are big travellers: in 2018, more than eighty per cent of them vacationed abroad. I spoke to several people in Reykjavk whod brought the virus home from overseas. One was Brkur Arnarson, an art dealer. I went to speak to him at his gallery, i8, which was closed to the public at the time. (Rule 4b: Only those being interviewed should have direct interaction with the journalist.)

Arnarson, who represents, among others, the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, had been in New York, attending the Armory Show, at the beginning of March. After the show ended, hed gone to a crowded party where finger food was served. Im not a news guy, he told me. But I knew what was going on here in Iceland, and I knew what was going on in Europe. And I was struck by how New Yorkers were so confident. They didnt believe it was going to happen, or, if it was going to happen, somehow it was going to be O.K.

Arnarson started to feel crappy almost as soon as he got home. His daughter signed the family up for COVID tests that were being offered by deCODE; when his came back positive, Arnarson went into isolation in a studio loaned to him by an artist friend. Every day, someone on the team of nurses and doctors phoned him. They asked, How are you doing? What are your symptoms? Are you getting all the help you need? he recalled. And that was really amazing. It was so comforting, knowing that they were doing this. He was given a number to call in case of an emergency: I dont think they were getting many calls, because they were so proactive. While he was in isolation, his wife and his daughter, whod originally tested negative for the virus, came down with it. They received the same treatment. None of them ended up going to the hospital or to a clinic.

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How Iceland Beat the Coronavirus - The New Yorker

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For almost five decades, biologist Jim Darling has studied the gray whales that regularly return to forage in the waters off the west coast of Canada instead of completing the lengthy migration undertaken by the main herd.

Approximately 27,000 eastern North Pacific gray whales make a monumental annual trek from breeding and calving lagoons along Mexicos Baja California peninsula to summer feeding grounds in the Bering, Beaufort, and Chukchi Seas. The northward migration lasts from February until May. Then, in October, the whales, led by pregnant females, leave the Arctic feeding grounds and again travel up to 11,000 kilometers to return to the warm lagoons of Baja.

However, about 250 animals opt to skip the full migration and spend from spring until fall feeding along the coast from Northern California to southeast Alaska.

Darling has watched generations of whales visit the coastal feeding grounds where they follow prey into areas such as Clayoquot Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Depending on prey availability, other whales will spend extended residencies in Neah Bay or Puget Sound in Washington State, or in the waters off the California-Oregon border, among other feeding grounds.

Eastern North Pacific gray whales spend their winters in the warm calving lagoons of Baja California, Mexico, where they give birth and breed. They migrate to the food-rich waters of the Arctic for summer feeding. Some whales do not complete the full migration and stop to feed in places along the route, such as Clayoquot Sound, British Columbia. Map by Mark Garrison

Some animals visit for only one season, but many reappear annually, and mothers that have themselves grown up feeding along the coast bring their calves to the same locations, apparently instilling memories of the local ecosystem.

The calves return for years, and possibly all their lives, to the location their mother brought them when they were very young and where they were weaned, Darling says.

The calves are weaned in midsummer and then left alone, often hanging out with other calves for the rest of the summer and fall. While some are assumed to join the southward migration of the main herd as it passes Clayoquot Sound in December, others stay through the winter.

Mature females are key to the tendency to stay in coastal feeding areas because they are the ones that have the experience finding prey. That information is passed down to their offspring, says Darling, who, assisted by a photo-identification program, can identify many of the seasonally resident whales.

He recognizes Saddle, a male who was in Clayoquot Sound when Darlings study began in the 1970s; Blackjack, a female who has visited the area for 45 years; Elvis, a female who has had three calves since 1993; and Collage, a grandmother, first recorded in 1975, whose daughter and grand-calf also sometimes return to the sound.

A gray whale called Saddle is a longtime summer resident of Clayoquot Sound. Researcher Jim Darling has photographed the whale in Clayoquot Sound 20 times between 1974 and 2019. Individual whales can be identified by the distinct markings on their backs. Photo by Jim Darling

This is a community of whales. They know each other, in some cases for decades. They know how to sustain themselves herethis is their home. They are not just a random aggregation of whales that dont happen to migrate all the way north, Darling says.

A cross-border controversy is brewing that could put some of the whales that break off from the main migration, identified as the Pacific Coast Feeding Group (PCFG), directly in the harpoon sights of the Makah Tribe, based in Neah Bay, who have applied to hunt up to 25 whales over 10 years. (The Makah is the only tribe in the United States with an explicit treaty right to hunt whales. They legally killed one whale in 1999 and illegally killed another in 2007.) The proposal for the renewed hunt is being supported by the US National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which has asked an administrative law judge for a waiver to the Marine Mammal Protection Actlegislation that protects marine mammals in US waters from lethal activities.

Hearings into the waiver application, held in late 2019, wrapped up after NMFS, the Makah, and groups opposing the hunt presented evidence. The public comment period closed March 16, and the next step is for the judge to make a recommendation on whether the hunt should go ahead.

The Makah, and their close relatives the Nuu-chah-nulth people of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, have a long and rich tradition of whaling for subsistence and cultural purposes. The hunt persisted into the early 20th century as this photo from 1910 attests. Photo by Book Worm/Alamy Stock Photo

But while the United States is considering whether to allow the hunt, in Canada, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) recommended to the environment minister in October 2018 that the PCFG should be designated as endangered under the Species at Risk Act (SARA).

Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) will ask for feedback on listing the whales later this year. If the recommendation to classify them as endangered is accepted, the population and their critical habitats will receive additional protection, and a recovery strategy will be put into action, says DFO communications advisor Lara Sloan.

That would mean that if the Makah hunt is approved in the United States, the very whales that are protected in Canada could be hunted just across the border.

Differences in how to treat the whales center on data interpretationwhether the whales should be regarded as a separate stock, which would give them extra protection, or be included with the overall eastern North Pacific gray whale population. US scientists view the PCFG as an aggregation rather than a stock, so deem a separate management plan unnecessary.

A successful hunt, taking the maximum allowable whales, would reduce the eastern North Pacific gray whale population by only about 0.009 percent a year, said Chris Yates, NMFS assistant regional administrator for protected resources, in a declaration to the hearings.

However, critics say that whether the PCFG is considered an aggregation or a unique stock, killing one whale out of 250 would have a significant effect.

The most faithful whales to our area will be the most punished, said Margaret Owens of the Peninsula Citizens for the Protection of Whales in a rebuttal to Yatess declaration.

Gray whales that take up summer residence in coastal areas go to where there is available food, including crustaceans such as mysids, crab larvae, amphipods, and ghost shrimp. Gray whales are also known to scoop up bottom sediments to gather food as this whale is doing in the shallow water of Grice Bay in Clayoquot Sound. Photo by Flip Nicklin/Minden Pictures

Darling and Timothy Frasier, an associate professor of biology at Saint Marys University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, conducted key research on the PCFG that helped convince COSEWIC to make the endangered status recommendation. Darling and Frasier have no doubt that the PCFG is a distinct group that acts differently from the main population and shows genetic differences, so should be managed separately.

More than a decade ago, Darling and Frasier began to investigate the genetics of these whales that seemed to show an affinity for the west coast of Vancouver Island. The pair published two research papers, in 2011 and 2013, which found that the whales using the coastal feeding areas possessed a unique genetic signature in their mitochondrial DNA.

Mitochondrial DNA is inherited from the mother and nuclear DNA is inherited from both parents. Although the PCFG whales are known to mix and mate with the main population, as is evident in their nuclear DNA, their preference for returning to coastal feeding areas is a behavior that shows up in their mitochondrial DNA signature, Frasier explains.

The mitochondrial DNA in the PCFG represent whales who learned about this feeding area, instead of the Arctic, from their mothers and then passed that along to their offspring generation after generation, Frasier says. [It] reflects the maternally-based knowledge transfer of migratory routes and feeding ground locations.

NMFS, however, has chosen to base its decision on mitochondrial and nuclear DNA from all whales using these coastal feeding areasincluding those that stay for only one seasoninstead of looking exclusively at whales that regularly return.

If you lump them all together and take all the whales that have ever been seen in the PCFG area and compare them to the rest of the population, that [mitochondrial DNA] signal gets diluted because youre including a lot of individuals that dont really qualify, Frasier says. Then, of course, you are going to come to different conclusions.

After Darling and Frasier completed their initial research, it was presented at a 2010 International Whaling Commission meeting. NMFS then did its own study, which yielded similar results. The matter of how to treat the PCFG seemed to be settledto the point that it brought a 2012 NMFS assessment of the impact of a Makah hunt to a halt.

A gray whale cow and her calf feed near the kelp in Clayoquot Sound. Photo by Jim Darling

Darling is baffled that, after accepting the research a few years ago, NMFS is now questioning the extent of the genetic and behavioral differences.

I really do not understand itit is so inexplicable if you are just looking at the biology, he says.

Current NMFS views are based on a report from a 2012 task force and agency-only workshop, convened to review North Pacific gray whale data. Workshop participants looked at all whales using the coastal feeding areas, including those temporarily recruited from outside the PCFG, and concluded there was insufficient evidence to classify the group as a separate stock, and that research should continue.

Donna Wieting, director of NOAAs Office of Protected Resources, cites the report in a 2018 letter to the Pacific Scientific Review Group (which advises NOAA on the status of marine mammals) saying, there remains a substantial level of uncertainty in the strength of the lines of evidence supporting demographic independence of the PCFG.

That view was echoed at the 2019 hearings on the renewed Makah hunt by NMFS wildlife research biologist David Weller.

He noted in a submission that when samples from PCFG whales were compared with whales sampled in one of the Mexican wintering lagoons, the 2012 task force found small but significant differences in mitochondrial DNA (inherited from the mother), but no significant differences in analyses of the nuclear DNA (inherited from both parents).

Calves likely follow their mothers to feeding areas and to some extent they return to those feeding areas in subsequent years. There was no evidence, however, that whales that frequent one feeding area are reproductively isolated from whales that frequent other feeding areas, Weller wrote in his declaration.

Other scientists are questioning how the decision was made and want to see a wider-ranging discussion.

Research biologist John Calambokidis, founder of Cascadia Research Collective, based in Olympia, Washington, has conducted extensive research on eastern North Pacific gray whales.

For management purposes, I absolutely do think [the PCFG] warrants treatment as a distinct group, based on both the photo ID information and the genetic data that has come out of two different studies, he says.

A gray whale spyhops in the waters of Clayoquot Sound. Photo by Flip Nicklin/Minden Pictures

Calambokidis questions the task forceworkshop method of deciding the status of the PCFG and the conclusion that, as there was insufficient evidence, further research was required.

I think NMFS should reconsider their status on the PCFG, especially because the workshop was inconclusive and there is now more information, he says. Hed also like to see the decision revisited by a wider group of scientists.

D. J. Schubert, a wildlife biologist with the Animal Welfare Institute, a nonprofit organization in Washington, DC, that is presenting at the hearings, believes the separate stock argument is compelling, and he also wants to see NMFS call another meeting of scientists to look at the evidence.

But they shouldnt limit it to just their scientists; they need to invite outside scientists who do most of the research on these whales, he says.

Oddly, although NMFS does not consider the PCFG whales a separate stock, in an apparent concession to documented differences, it has proposed restrictions to protect the group and a small population of western North Pacific gray whales if the hunt goes ahead. (Some of the western population, a group once considered extinct, were recently tagged and found in areas used by eastern North Pacific gray whales.)

Over a 10-year time frame, for instance, no more than 16 hunting strikes could be on PCFG whales, with a limit of eight strikes on females, and the hunt would be stopped if the number of PCFG whales falls below 192 animals.

In even-numbered years, the hunt would take place during the migration season, reducing the risk to PCFG whales, as the entire herd of 27,000 animals would be passing through the area. In odd-numbered years, the hunt would be held during the summer feeding season to reduce the risk to western North Pacific whales. But, inevitably, that timing would increase the risk of striking any PCFG whales feeding in the area.

To say they will hunt in the summer is absurd. That means the only whales that are present are the small population of local animals, which [COSEWIC] say are endangered, Darling says.

If the hunt is approved, in the heat of the moment it will be largely impossible to differentiate between a PCFG whale and the rest of the herd before shooting, says Frasier.

A theoretical option is to have someone who knows the whales out there and say, Thats not one of our residents, but, to me, thats not really workable, he says.

So far, DFO has not been part of the debate on the status of the PCFG, but that is likely to change if the government approves the SARA designation after public consultations that could be held this fall.

If the recommendations are accepted, then DFO will automatically receive the mandate to provide science advice on these units, including the designation of critical habitat, says Thomas Doniol-Valcroze, head of DFOs cetacean research program.

Adding to the uncertainty over the status and classification of the whales is that the entire eastern North Pacific gray whale population is undergoing an unusual mortality event (UME) with 326 gray whales found dead along the coast from Mexico to Alaska in 2019 and up to May 12, 2020. Scientists estimate that the carcasses found probably represent only between 3.9 and 13 percent of the whales that have died.

Although the current UME is not over, NMFS points to the populations recovery after a 19992000 UME that killed up to one-quarter of the eastern North Pacific gray whales as evidence of their resilience. This is despite the fact that the cause of the previous UME was undetermined.

The cause of the current UME is similarly unclear. Although some whales have shown evidence of emaciation, findings are not consistent, according to NOAA, which is assembling a team of scientists to review data and determine the next step. Climate change, a lack of adequate food in the Arctic, and a theory that the gray whale population has reached carrying capacitythe maximum number of animals for its habitatare among the considerations.

While the scientists wrangle over the outstanding questions of how to classify and manage the gray whales, and how and whether to insert the current UME into the equation, other groups question the revived Makah hunta right granted the nation in 1855on the grounds of animal rights or other more philosophical concerns.

For Darling, though, the focus should remain on science, not politics. This is not about whether whaling should occur, he says, its about getting the biology correct so the impacts and consequences of a hunt and other activities that affect the population are clearly understood.

NMFS is currently preparing a supplemental environmental impact statement. If the recommendation from the judge is for the hunt to proceed, the decision will then go to the NMFS assistant administrator, followed by a 20-day public comment period.

If the hunt is given the go-ahead by the assistant administrator, regulations will be finalized and discussions held with the Makah on the particulars of the hunt.

Whichever way the decision goes, the battle is unlikely to be over, as litigation will probably follow, says Schubert.

The gray whales are currently on their northward migration, and as they make their way up the west coast of North America, they face the uncertainties of a changing ocean. Scientists are also watching to see whether the number of mystery deaths will increase.

This year, the whales will not have to contend with Makah harpoons and rifles off Neah Bay, but there is no guarantee that the hunt wont become another hazard they face during future migrations.

Continued here:
Protected on One Side of the Border, Hunted on the Other - Hakai Magazine

I tie on my shoes every morning. Socks on first, toes pressed into the arch and then inched into the toe box. My heel finds itself at home in the back of my shoe, not through guidance but out of routine, and we are out the door for a run.

I am grateful that my feet dont fight against me the way my mind does. The last month has been a constant tug of war between numbing myself to the reality of another black person being killed for no discernible reason and letting it become all-consuming.

It feels like weve all become experts on crisis. Adjusting to our new reality, we are stretching our imaginations and getting creative with how we work, eat, live, and communicate during the age of the coronavirus.

But how does one begin to understand an epidemic of violence aimed at victims like George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Sean Reed? Before them, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice? And the story that has hit closest to home, Ahmaud Arbery? When police found his body, he was lying in the middle of the street, which was exactly where he was confronted, shot, and killed three months ago by Gregory and Travis McMichael for jogging.

I watched the video of Ahmaud being hunted and gunned down in Georgia, and I immediately regretted visiting the footage.

In running I find there is purposeful pain. I have learned to stretch the limits of discomfort to unlock my potential. Weekly two-hour long runs, grueling tempo sessions on the track, and intense speedwork will teach your body how to make sense of deep physical discomfort. I know pain. But watching that video was one of the most horrific, violent, and painful things Ive ever seen.

His murder took place in February and is only being revisited through our justice system and on social platforms because of video evidence. The same is true of George Floyd. The dehumanization of black and brown bodies seems to matter only when we are forced to look at these types of graphic episodes.

The limited scope of where, and how black people can exist, can have deadly consequences. Its often that individuals dont recognize black people out of place from where they expect to see us. Ahmaud, who, just as many Americans are now doing in the face of COVID-19, turned to running as a way to move through uncertainty. His crime? Occupying space his killers felt was not his within which to exist.

The misinterpretation and characterization of black peoples experiences is something I know well. When I was in high school, a parent approached my coach to inquire whether my mom was white. She had seen my dad at meets to confirm he is black, but the woman was searching for something to explain my discipline and focus. In her world, blackness didnt equate to those characteristics, and it certainly didnt add up to running cross country.

People frequently ask me why I, a distance runner, went to college at the University of Texas. I had the pedigree in high school to go to a powerhouse distance program, but I chose Texas. What was my reasoning behind attending a sprint specialty school as a distance runner?

Cortney White

I was looking for an opportunity to be in a more diverse and more inclusive environment. I was at an age, and time in my life, where I was seeking growth, and you do that by having a variety of people and experiences you are exposed to.

I didnt want to deal any longer with microaggressions of well-meaning friends reminding me that classmates were only asking me out not because I was desirable, but because they were curious about what a black girl would be like or teachers looking to me to give the black perspective on Huckleberry Finn. When I went to visit Texas, I saw the possibility of having a black roommate, a black female head coach, and a community where it wouldnt be a struggle to maintain a sense of self and identity, because I saw myself reflected in my peers.

I felt angry with myself that day for pressing play on the video showing Ahmaud Arberys murder. I knew before I opened that browser that his killers didnt really see him on that February afternoon. Just like that parent who asked if my mom was white never really saw me during my race. Sustained, preconceived notions of people distort authentic narratives. The human experience is vast, and racism cuts our stories short.

I keep hearing COVID-19 referred to as the great equalizer. There is this idea that we are all experiencing tragedy together, that this vortex our lives have suddenly been encapsulated in has funneled out inequalities.

But when I see Ahmauds mother on TV grieving her son, or when I read the staggering data of how COVID-19 has disproportionately affected black communities because of underlying health issues as a manifestation of genetics or poverty, I come to realize there are parts of this country that will never open back up to some Americansbecause they were never open to them to begin with.

Here is my reality: Im going running tomorrow. Im not afraid to go running, but it feels inconceivable that I even have to think about it. Its even more frightening that there will be people who dont run tomorrow. Who will tell their kids not to run tomorrow, or whose families will sit at home wondering if their loved ones will return home.

Its time to acknowledge that the running community, which has long been heralded as one of the most accessible, most inclusive communities, does not exclude itself from the impact that issues of intolerance and bigotry create in this country.

Sean RayfordGetty Images

As a professional runner, I make a living being singularly focused. I spend months at a time sequestered in the mountains at altitude training camps in order to be performance-ready. These deaths like Ahmauds, however, shock the system.

They bring us back from our individual realities and demand a collective response. I find it difficult to look at these tragedies as isolated incidents. You cannot overlook the structural breakdowns in our society that allow for a young man to be murdered in broad daylight, individuals instigating police action on innocent people, harassment in parks, targeted social distance stops, and leadership that calls exhausted and enraged protesters thugs because they are trying to navigate and stand up against police brutality after years of justice being demanded and denied. Moving forward means truly lamenting.

But expressing grief is hard when you are navigating two realities. I often feel compelled to maintain a certain demeanor as to not alienate myself. If I talk about whats going on, I cant be too angry. I dont want to offend anyone, or be overbearing with my opinions. I am on high alert to be disappointed, and above all discouraged, that human lives are being minimized to hashtags. It is frightening to see all the names and deaths that have been recorded, and even more unsettling to know that there are many more that have gone on unreported.

Im sad, Im righteously angry, and to be honest, Im exhausted. Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Sean Reed, and now George Floyd weigh heavily in my mind. Every day we are waking up to headlines that remind us of how fragile and undervalued black lives seem to be.

If we want our running community to be a force for change, and not a reflection of the biases that our nation endures, we have to be willing to consistently have a sustained conversation that will effect change and is capable of asking questions without immediate answers or solutions.

I hear people laughing about the inconveniences of having socially distant parties, and it feels forced to join in that laughter. All around me, I hear small talk about whether the lockdown was worthwhile, and guilt consumes me for taking part in those conversations.

I hear this chatter and all I can really think about is how sad it is that in Chicago, black people are 70 percent of COVID-19 deaths but make up only 30 percent of the population.

These patterns are appearing all over the U.S., yet this tragedy is often mocked or said to be blown out of proportion because of our refusal to really see and acknowledge the people it affects most.

Perceiving my body as a target for violence or fearing for my life during exercise may not be my exact experience. I do know, however, what its like to be viewed, but not really seen. To view Ahmaud was to see him as a criminal running away from something, because thats what black bodies do. To see him is to know that among many things, he was a son, a student, an athlete, and a friend.

His name is Ahmaud Arbery, his murder was no mistake, and he should be alive today. His execution could send a message that black Americans cant exercise, even when that exact action could help combat structural inequalities black Americans endureliving in food deserts and parts of the country with poor air quality, or lacking health insurance.

Ahmauds story is not a singular event. If we want our running community to be a force for change, and not a reflection of the biases that our nation endures, we have to be willing to consistently have a sustained conversation that will effect change and is capable of asking questions without immediate answers or solutions.

I dont know how you unlearn the type of hate that threatens black life. I do know that the work needs to happen everywhere, not just in individual communities in Georgia, Minneapolis, New York, or Louisville.

The ripple effects of racism that lead to the violence we are witnessing are likely to be appearing in our schools, workplaces, and communities. Who is in our running groups? Who do we follow on Instagram? What books are we reading, shows are we watching, or podcasts are we listening to? Do they feature stories with people of color? I believe challenging ourselves to have relationships and interactions that are diverse, transparent, and open to authentic dialogue can effect meaningful change.

Fighting racial injustice in America is an endurance sport. It is going to take time, and sustained focus, to galvanize our communities. Being tired is not enough. The race can be won, but it requires dutiful action from all of us.

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Marielle Hall - Racing to Stay Alive as a Black Runner - runnersworld.com

The skeleton of a Central Asian women found at the bottom of a well after a violent death in an ancient city in Turkey is helping scientists understand population movements during a crucial juncture in human history.

Dubbed the Lady in the Well, her bones are found among 110 skeletal remains of people found at different site who lived in a region of blossoming civilization running from Turkey through Iran between 7,500 and 3,000 years ago.

After analyzing genome-wide data of the remains, the team discovered that populationsacross Anatolia, which is modern-day Turkey, and the Southern Caucasus, which roughly corresponds to modern Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, began to genetically mix some 8,500 years ago, resulting in a distinct admixture that gradually spread across the entire region.

However, the Lady in the Well showed evidence of long-distance migrations on an individual level during the late Bronze Age about 4,000 years ago, as either she or her ancestors traveled from Central Asia to the Mediterranean Coast.

The study was conducted by a team of international scientists in Europe, Asia and North America, led by the Department of Archaeogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

The team analyzed the skeletal remains of 110 people unearthed in archaeological sites in in Anatolia, Northern Levant, and the Southern Caucasus, which revealed two influential genetic events.

Populations in Anatolia and the Southern Caucasus began to genetically mix some 8,5000 years ago.

This event led the introduction of new genetic lineages into the population that slowly began to spread across the entire nation.

This gradual change, which experts call cline in genetics, was observed a millennia laterin Anatolian populations that spanned from Central-North to Eastern Anatolia.

Rather than indicating stationary populations, as apparent genetic continuity often does, the authors argue the spread of genetic information from North and Central Anatolia to the Southern, the researches shared in a press release.2

The team suggests that the Caucasus mountains, which stretch from the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, and Zagros mountains,a long range in Iran, Iraq and southeastern Turkey, indicated ongoing human mobility and development of a regional genetic melting pot in Anatolia.

Johannes Krause, co-director at Max Planck and senior author of the study, said: This far-reaching vortex of homogenization shows that ancient people within Western Asia biologically mix before their increasing connectedness and emerging sociocultural developments became visible in the archaeological record.

In contrast to the gradual changes taking place in Anatolia, the Northern Levant experienced an introduction of new populations.

Eirini Skourtanioti, lead author of the study, said: We found that the genetic makeup of Bronze Age populations from the ancient cities of Alalakh and Ebla in todays southern Turkey and northern Syria differed from preceding populations from the same area.

We detected subtle genetic changes that point to influences from external groups.

Along with the long-term transitions of entire populations, the team also uncovered proof of long-distance movements of individuals.

While investigating theAlalakh site in southern Turkey, the team found the lady in the well, whose genetic makeup is similar toBronze Age populations in Central Asia.

Her DNA showed she came from somewhere in Central Asia, some 2,000 miles away from where she was laid to rest in a watery grave.

The analysis also suggested that she was 40 to 45 years old when she died, which was probably between1625 BC and 1511 BC.

Researchers know she experienced a violent death due to the multiple injuries found on her skeleton.

Philipp Stockhammer, co-director of MHAAM and another senior author of the study, said: I was fascinated by our results for the lady in the well.

She provides a unique insight into individual female mobility over large distances. We know from literary sources that women traveled in this time throughout Western Asia very often as marriage partners.

However, the story of this woman of Central Asian origin will remain an enigma.

The lady in the well has raised multiple questions that scientists know can not be uncovered using analytical tools.

They wonder how this woman move from her home in Central Asia to Northern Levant?

Was she exiled from her home?

Was her death an accident or was the woman murdered?

Although there is much mystery that surrounds the lady in the well, researchers noted that she proves ancient humans traveled long distances in the pastand points to the existence of migrant communities in a globalized ancient world.

Ludwig Maximilian University Munich archaeologist and co-author of the study Philipp Stockhammer, said: How and why a woman from Central Asia or both of her parents came to Alalakh is unclear, said Trader? Slaves? Marriage?

What we can say is that genetically this woman is absolutely foreign, so that she is not the result of an intercultural marriage, he added.

Therefore, a single woman or a small family came this long distance.

The woman is killed. Why? Rape? Hate against foreigners? Robbery? And then her body was disposed in the well.

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Skeletal remains of 'Lady in the Well' reveal long-distance migrations began 4000 years ago - Brinkwire

A new study has suggested that genetics could be the reason as to why some women gain weight while they're on birth control.

Many women take birth controlregularlyin order to regulate their menstrual cycle and prevent pregnancy. But like with any medication, it comes with its fair share of side effects. Some of them can be a mere nuisance whereas others can be serious or even life-threatening.

One side effect that leans towards the former is weight gain. While it can happen, it doesn't happen to every woman who goes on birth control. That can be frustrating if this side effect has happened to you. But now,a new study has revealed that genetics could determine why some women gain weight while using birth control.

The study in question was carried out by researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. They recruited 276 women to see if they gained weight while having an etonogestrel contraceptive implant inserted in their arm. Since it contains etonogestrel, it inhibits ovulation. Moreover, it's arguably the most effective method of birth control.

Related: The Strangest Myths About Birth Control Debunked

The study found that 73.9 percent of participants gained weight with theetonogestrel contraceptive implant. When they looked at just how much weight they gained, the median was 3.2 kilograms, which is just over seven pounds. That median was determined over a time span of 27 months.

After that, researchers looked into whether or not genetics played a role in why some participants gained weight, and others didn't. That study found genetic variants in estrogen receptor 1 (ESR1) were associated with weight gain. Women with two copies of ESR1 were found to have gained an average of 14.1 kilograms (over 31 pounds) while using the aforementionedcontraceptive implant.

There are currently no links found between ESR1 and obesity. However, past research had found links between ESR1 and how it affects other medications. Also, it's not yet known if ESR1 is only linked to weight gain to other forms of birth control outside the contraceptive implant used in the study. More studies will need to be conducted in order to determine this. That being said, this is a great start looking into this particular matter.

"For years, women have said that birth control causes them to gain weight but many doctors failed to take them seriously.Now we have looked at the genetics and found that the way genes interact with some hormones in birth control could help explain why some women gain more weight than others," explained Aaron Lazorwitz, Md., the study's lead author.

Next: Hailey Bieber Admits That Starting Birth Control Lead To Acne Breakouts

Source:TheJakarataPost

How To Effectively Quit Smoking While Trying To Conceive

Elizabeth Sarah Larkin is a full-time freelancer who specializes in writing, social media, and public relations. She has published articles for many online publications, including Babygaga and Moms.com. She graduated from Conestoga College with a Bachelor of Public Relations (Honours), where she learned and honed her skills. Her interests include music, video games and working out. You can follow her on Twitter (@ElizabethSL95) or Instagram (@elizabethsarahl); or you can contact her at elizabeth@elizabethsarahlarkin.ca

Original post:
Study Suggests That Genetics Could Be Why Some Women Gain ...

May 19 (UPI) -- African-American and white women share several genetic mutations that increase risk for breast cancer, according to a study published Tuesday by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Researchers at Boston University and the Mayo Clinic found that mutations of the BRCA1, BRCA2 and PALB2 genes, which are known to raise breast cancer risk in white women, including those of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, are also found in African-American women with the disease.

The genetic mutations have been associated with a more than seven-fold higher risk of breast cancer, the researchers noted.

"We also found that mutations in PALB2, RAD51C and RAD51D confer increased risks of estrogen receptor negative breast cancer in the African-American population," study co-author Fergus Couch, the Zbigniew and Anna M. Scheller Professor of Medical Research at the Mayo Clinic, said in a statement.

About one out of every eight women in the United States will develop invasive breast cancer during their lifetimes, according to BreastCancer.org. African-American women tend to be diagnosed at a younger age and are more likely to die from the disease.

However, rates of breast cancer genetic testing are substantially lower in African-American women than in white women, the authors of the JNCI study said. Differences in health recommendations given to African-American women have been identified as one of the drivers of this disparity, they added.

For the study, Couch and his colleagues sequenced germline DNA from 5,054 African-American women with breast cancer and 4,993 age-matched African-American women without cancer, looking for mutations in 23 genes believed to predispose women to the disease. The researchers then estimated the risk of developing breast cancer associated with having a mutation in any of the genes.

They found that more than 7 percent of women with breast cancer, regardless of race, had a mutation in one of the genes, as compared with 2 percent of the controls. Among women with breast cancers that lacked estrogen receptors -- or had estrogen receptor negative breast cancer -- more than 10 percent had a mutation in one of these genes.

In comparison, 5 percent of women with estrogen receptor positive breast cancer had a mutation in the cancer-related genes.

In addition to common mutations of the BRCA1, BRCA2, PALB2, RAD51C and RAD51D, the authors identified four other genetic mutations associated with a more moderate increase in risk for breast cancer among the women in the study. Previous studies of women of African ancestry were too small to identify genetic mutations other than those affecting BRCA1 and BRCA2.

Based on these findings, testing for breast cancer predisposition genes can prevent breast cancer deaths -- both in women who have never had breast cancer and in women with breast cancer -- according to the researchers.

"The multi-gene panels that are currently available to test women diagnosed with breast cancer or women at high risk due to their family history will be useful for African American women," said co-author Julie Palmer, director of Boston University's Slone Epidemiology Center.

"Depending on results of the testing and an individual's own weighing of pros and cons, a woman with a mutation in any of these genes may choose more aggressive screening for cancer, and women with mutations in the high risk BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes may choose removal of her breasts and/or ovaries as a way to prevent initial breast cancer or recurrence," she added.

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African-American, white women share genetic mutations ...

Jason Osterstock, DMV, PhD, vice president of Zoetis and the global head for the genetics portion of the business, said ensuring each animal U.S. agriculture grows must reach its full genetic potential in order to sustainably and responsibly feed a hungry world.

It is by applying genetics and data to commercial operations, he said, so more high-quality beef can be produced.

To this end, Zoetis Genetics has released INHERIT Select, a genetic test borne of a combination of genomic technologies and advancements. The multi-breed genomic test provides predictions for commercial females and, in turn, those predictions provide genetic insights to improved replacement selection and improved breeding decisions.

Dr. Kent Andersen, Zoetis director of global beef genetics, is active on his familys Nebraska cow calf operation though he and his family live in Colorado. Andersen said replacement costs to raise a heifer to the day she has her first calf are second only to feed costs on most operations. Through identification of heifers that express greater lifetime efficiency of production, he said the herd can be frontloaded efficiently.

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Theres things behind the scenes that might be economically relevant that I might be overlooking, he said. Hence, Im likely selling some I should have otherwise kept and vice versa, keeping some I should have otherwise culled.

Andersen said choosing based on which female will be the most productive over her lifetime includes optimum mature cow size and milk production level, teat and udder quality, growth relative to sensible birth weight and, post weaning, which females will produce progeny that will convert most efficiently and produce carcasses that bring the largest premiums. While he said visual appraisal and good cowboy common sense ought not be abandoned, INHERIT can offer a look into those traits that are economically relevant.

The test, which requires an Allflex tissue sampling unit, or an ear punch, is a multibreed genetic evaluation that is designed specifically for commercial cow calf producers running a crossbreeding program. The samples should be collected on any commercial female that meet the visual criteria to be considered as a replacement. It is not, Andersen said, a way to enable commercial producers to breed and keep purebred bulls, and only data on females will be reported. INHERIT Connect, a companion product, enables bull batteries to be tested to allow for parentage determination of the daughters.

Previously, Andersen said, only purebred seedstock producers have had access to genetic evaluation. This test provides predictions for 16 traits, and while there is a tremendous amount of information available, producers are provided Zoetis Indexes to summarize the complex data into a few summaries. The Zoetis Cow Calf Index is designed for producers who sell their calves at weaning, the Zoetis Feedlot Carcass Index ranks animals based on combined genetic merit post-weaning including gain, dry matter intake, carcass weight and grade, and the Zoetis Total Return Index is an economic index that ranks animals for genetic merit across all evaluated traits.

With that one number you can access the ranking of animals from the expected net return perspective for all the evaluated traits, he said.

Genomic approximation of breed composition is also available by taking the marker information and returning a percentage of Angus or Red Angus, British (South Devon and Hereford), or Continental (Simmental, Gelbvieh, Limousin and Charolais) breeds. Other breeds that would show as unknown breed composition include Indicus, dairy and Wagyu. As far as beef on dairy calves, an Angus/Holstein cross calf could certainly be tested for authentication of breed composition but if they are over 25 percent unknown breed, the efficacy of the predictions would be compromised. In the future, Andersen said he looks toward growth and carcass information being added for beef on dairy crosses.

The bottom line, he said, is the tool can identify the strengths and weaknesses of a cowherd to improve bull selection in the future based on where emphasis ought to be placed.

Its good then for a lifetime of mating decisions, particularly for cow calf customers using synchronization and AI on their heifers and maybe even in their cows, he said. We know most of them turn out multiple sires and multiple breeding pastures. It enables more strategic thinking to get bulls matched with females to accentuate and complement the strengths but then to correct any weaknesses.

Marketing is another area that can benefit from the tool. Producers who sell replacement baldie females can authenticate the merit of the animals at time of sale and, he said, although the test is for females, it would provide information about the steer mates, offering ammunition to use in the negotiation of selling cattle.

Results are available in a spreadsheet and also in an online tool called Search Point, an online cow calf management tool that comes with the purchase of the tests. Tests are run weekly, so results are updated weekly as additional information is added from the companys seedstock partners to expand ranking and benchmarking. Additional features may also be added, including a PAP EPD for high altitude cattle.

Gabel is an assistant editor and reporter for The Fence Post. She can be reached at rgabel@thefencepost.com or (970) 768-0024.

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Multi trait genetic evaluation: No longer just for purebred and seedstock operations - Fence Post

FROM 1960 till 2020, there has been a 28-fold increase in the number of centenarians. The path to longevity is strewn with false promises of expensive elixirs, exotic supplements, and stem cell rejuvenation. Human longevity is a complex interplay between the genes, the environment and lifestyle.

Genes and longevity

The study of human longevity genes is a developing science. Scientists estimate that between 15 and 30 per cent of the variation in human life span is determined by genes, but it is not clearly understood which genes are relevant, and how they contribute to longevity. In 2015, Ancestry, a genealogy and genetics company, partnered Calico, a Google spinoff, to study data from more than 54 million families and their family trees representing six billion ancestors, and were able to tease out a set of pedigrees that included over 400 million people. These individuals were connected to one another by either a parent-child or a spouse-spouse relationship.

In 2018, they published their results in Genetics, a journal of the Genetics Society of America. The study found that the lifespan of spouses were more similar and better correlated than in siblings of opposite gender. The study concluded that life span heritability is likely 7 per cent or less, and hence the contribution of genes to longevity is even lower.

Although genes seem to have only a small influence on lifespan, they appear to play a larger role in centenarians. Hence, there are a few genetic factors that do give you a headstart in the journey to longevity.

Being a first-degree relative of a centenarian makes it more likely for you to remain healthy longer and to live to an older age than your peers. First-degree relatives are less likely at age 70 years to have the age-related diseases that are common among older adults.

Women generally live longer than men , and the number of female centenarians is more than fourfold higher than that of male centenarians. It is thought that this is due to a combination of social and biological factors. Studies on mammals and Korean eunuchs has shown that the removal of testosterone at a young age was correlated with an increase in lifespan.

Genetic studies show that centenarians have a lower genetic risk of having heart disease, stroke , high blood pressure, high cholesterol, Alzheimer's disease and decreased bone mineral density. A study on Chinese centenarians published in 2013 showed that 55 per cent have normal systolic blood pressure, 82 per cent had normal diastolic blood pressure and less than 20 per cent were on long term medication. Hence, centenarians appear to have genes that reduce that risk of age-related chronic illnesses.

Biological clock

Epigenetics is the study of changes in organisms caused by modification of gene expression rather than alteration of the genetic code itself. One of the major mechanisms in which epigenetics manifest itself is by the process of DNA methylation, which involves the chemical modification of the DNA, thereby modifying the gene function and expression.

Through this process, certain genes can be silenced or activated and potentially impact age-related diseases such as cancer, osteoarthritis, and neurodegeneration. The biological or epigenetic clock in centenarians show a decrease in DNA methylation age, indicating that they are biologically younger than their chronological age. There is also data to suggest that although circadian rhythms deteriorate during ageing, they seem to be well preserved in centenarians, including preserved sleep quality.

Environment and longevity

Environmental factors have a large impact on longevity. Better living environment, clean food, clean water, good sanitation, reduction of infectious diseases, and access to better healthcare have resulted in significant improvement in human longevity.

Using Italy as an example of the impact of a better living environment, the average life expectancy went up from 29 years in 1861 to 84 years in 2020. The number of centenarians in Italy increased from 165 in 1951 to more than 15,000 in 2011, and the incidence of deaths occurring in those less than 60 years of age, decreased from 74 per cent in 1872 to less than 10 per cent in 2011 .

The continuous increase in lifespan in recent decades is mainly due to the advances in medical science. It is estimated that medical advances have allowed an increase in lifespan of five years in the last two decades and additional two years in the last decade.

When comparing two countries at different stages of development in 1950, the average life expectancy increase of 11 years from 68 years in 1950 to 79 years in 2020 in the USA, which was more developed in 1950, was much less remarkable than the increase of 3114 years in average life expectancy from 43 years in 1950 to 77 years in 2020 in China, which was less developed in 1950. The significant improvement in the living environment in China has contributed to the narrowing in the average life expectancy between those living in the US and China.

Lifestyle and longevity

In addition to environmental factors, lifestyle factors have an important impact on longevity. A study of more than 300,000 individuals over 7.5 years showed that individuals with social relationships have more than 50 per cent greater probability of survival compared with those with few and poor social interactions.

A study on centenarians in Utah in the US between 2008 and 2015 suggested that sleep, life satisfaction and social attachment were significant predictors of days lived. There is an extricable linkage between lifestyle and socioeconomic status. The term socioeconomic status as used in longevity studies encompass all the factors that can impact longevity including wealth, geography, education, occupation, ethnicity, cultural environment, neighbourhood environment, quality of healthcare and quality of diet. It is well established that the socioeconomic status of an individual will have a major impact on health and longevity.

A study on more than 120, 000 individuals by researchers from Harvard, published in the Circulation journal in April 2018, identified five low-risk lifestyle factors for increased life expectancy. They were: no smoking, non obese ( body mass index of 18.5 to 24.9 kg/m2), exercise (at least 30 minutes per day of moderate to vigorous physical activity, including brisk walking), low-risk alcohol consumption (5 to 15 gm/day for women and 5 to 30 gm/day for men), and a high score for healthy diet.

In this study, the projected life expectancy at age 50 years was on average 14.0 years longer among female Americans with five low-risk factors compared with those with zero low-risk factors; for men, the difference was 12.2 years.

These findings are consistent with a study on Chinese centenarians in which less than 20 per cent were smokers and less than 40 per cent drank alcohol. Hence, in general, most centenarians do not smoke, do not drink alcohol or are low-risk alcohol drinkers, are sociable, friendly, cope well with stress, are satisfied with life, have healthy diets and sleep well.

In summary, the main drivers of longevity in the first eight decades of life are the socioeconomic environment and lifestyle choices. Beyond the eighties, the inheritance of genes that defer age-related chronic diseases and a younger biological clock will help to propel these individuals beyond a hundred years.

This series is produced on alternate Saturdays in collaboration with Singapore Medical Specialists Centre

Link:
How to live to 100 - Business Times

A Pembrokeshire dairy farm is screening the genomics of its heifer calves to select the best replacements for the milking herd.

Rearing replacements is one of the biggest costs on a dairy farm - rearing a calf from birth to calving is estimated to be around 1,800.

The Hannah family believes that testing their heifers for genomic traits is where big gains can be made in their spring calving herd.

They farm at Mountjoy, near Haverfordwest, where they milk a herd of 370 mainly New Zealand Friesian dairy cows and rear 200 replacement heifers.

The farm has embarked on a project to improve the lifetime productivity of cows by selecting efficient genetics for the herd.

Working with the Welsh government's Farming Connect scheme, the business aims to rear only the most productive heifers, to prevent unnecessary costs.

The less productive animals can be sold, removing the unnecessary cost of rearing and, in turn, improving the genetics and performance of the dairy herd.

Genomic testing could help us to select the best herd replacements to match the requirements of our system," said farmer William Hannah.

We feel there are real gains to be made from this, by eliminating poor genetics so that only the very best animals are retained within the herd."

Genomic testing could help select the best herd replacements to match the requirements of the farm's system, said farmer William Hannah

Industry figures show that 14.5% of female youngstock fail to reach their first calving, whilst 33% dont make it to their second lactation.

Dairy cows dont start paying back through milk sales until after the second lactation, by which time a vast amount of money and effort have been invested.

Simon Pitt, dairy technical officer with Farming Connect, who is overseeing the project at Mountjoy, said genomic estimated breeding values can be calculated at birth.

As it has a high accuracy, a strategy that utilises these advantages can be used to determine which female calves will be the most cost effective and the most productive.

Compared to traditional herd genetics, which is 18-25% accurate, genomic testing is 50-60% accurate (SCI-Spring Calving Index), he explained.

Genomic selection offers many advantages with regards to improving the rate of genetic gain in dairy cattle breeding programs.

"One benefit of interest to this project is that genetic testing can predict a greater accuracy of predicted genetic merit for young animals," said Mr Pitt.

Health benefits are also flagged up through testing; as Mountjoy sits in a high-risk TB area, among the traits of interest are TB Advantage and calf survival index.

See the rest here:
Dairy farm exploits genomic testing to become more productive - FarmingUK

life-style, books,

We all know at least one couple who just make no sense, a perplexing pairing that irks and boggles us. One of them might be vivacious, gregarious, classically attractive and yet the other is a little freeze ray of misery and seems to despise socialising. So why, oh why, are they together? Neuroscience, according to Dr Hannah Critchlow, may have the answer to this eternal question, and plenty more - why we get more opinionated and closed minded as we age, how our political leanings are formed, why some couples don't even seem to like each other much. Critchlow, a British researcher, writer and broadcaster who has been described as "the female Brian Cox", lays out in her brain-bending book - The Science of Fate - just some of the recent research into determinism and the theory that we don't so much make our own decisions as inherit them. The fast-moving field of modern neuroscience will, she believes, "one day be considered as profound as Darwin's Theory of Evolution". So, what can the brain tell us about the laws of opposite attraction? Well, there's a lot more to love than what meets our eyes, and it may well involve senses we didn't know we were even using. "Scientists used to believe we only had five senses, but we're finding more and more we didn't know we had, through experiments, all the time," explains Critchlow, who found herself "happily stuck" in Noosa by the coronavirus lockdown while on an Australian book tour. One fascinating trial, carried out at the Zoological Institute at Bern University and later replicated in the US, showed that women may actually be turning the smell of potential male partners into complex information. Researchers asked men to wear the same T-shirt for a few days without washing, deodorising or eating smelly foods. A group of women were then given the appetising task of sniffing the shirts and rating them for attractiveness. The results clearly showed that women would choose the odour of men whose immune systems were highly differentiated from their own. Finding a mate with different gene variations from your own produces the strongest possible offspring; a child with the greatest resistance to a wide range of infections, and thus the best chance of survival. Just how women were able to detect their biological ideal man using optimum genetics via the smell of a stinky armpit is "quite mysterious", as Critchlow understates it. "But we are, at some level, just animals, driven by the single desire to interact in a way that will pass on our genetic material," she says. "Love, it seems, is largely a by-product of the brain circuitry that prioritises reproduction and the survival of the species." Interestingly, the sniff test does not work with men, but boys are not without their own mysteries. A study of thousands of lap dances in the US found that strippers would make almost twice as much in tips on the few days when they were at the most fertile point of their menstrual cycle. Somehow, the men just found them more attractive on those days, without having any idea why. "When it comes to sex, it seems that a choice that may feel highly personal and deeply intimate is, to a large extent, the behavioural result of our brains' coding to seek maximum opportunities for our genes to be passed on," Critchlow says. Like many of her colleagues, she has come to accept that many of the choices we make are hugely influenced by the genes given to us by our parents, and our grandparents' parents. Even the foods we like are choices driven by what our ancestors were eating, and enjoying. "Basically, we are designed to eat food when we can get it, because there might not be any around tomorrow, but now we live in a world where many of us can have whatever we want, whenever we want it, which obviously leads to obesity," she says. "Genetic mutations to encourage eating less weren't passed on because food was scarce and there was no advantage in that. Mutations that made us eat as much as possible in case there was no more are a problem now that we live in abundance. "Evolution has not caught up with Uber Eats." The reassuring sense we have that we are making our own choices is "just our brains messing with us", in much the same way that we like to perceive the sun as "rising" and "setting", when we know, scientifically, that it is just the world turning. "There is always scope for changing your mind, this is the basis for consciousness, but it's not as big as we perceive it - that scope to change is limited based on the genetics we've been given," Critchlow says. "Remember that our brains use 20 per cent of our daily energy quota to fuel this enormous circuit board, and to save energy your brain filters a lot of information, and makes assumptions, based on past experience. "Judging people in the first few minutes that we meet them is all about saving energy. "With friendship groups, or clans, people look for individuals with a similar outlook and who have similar genetics as well (unlike the way they look for sexual partners). "You are drawn to people, friends, who are genetically similar to you, so you are more likely to see the world in the same way and have the same biases. "You're saving energy because you don't have to explain things." Speaking of biases, just think how reassuring it would be to discover that people who hold political views that strike you as unjustifiable were just born that way. As Critchlow puts it, understanding that people believe in certain things, like religion or politics, because their brains were built that way, "might have massive consequences for reducing conflict at every level - as we discover more about the neurobiology of belief formation and prejudice, we might be able to boost our openness to new ideas". She quotes the work of Jonas Kaplan, Professor of Psychology at USC's Brain and Creativity Institute, who has found that activity in the amygdala, and the size of people's anterior cingulate cortex, can be used to predict whether they are liberal or conservative. His researchers were able to use brain scans to predict the political leanings of American test subjects - whether they voted Republican or Democrat - "with high sensitivity and accuracy". "It's quite incredible and it does help me to understand people a little bit more, because those who are more liberal have a less-sensitive amygdala are more able to think about collaborations and partnerships for the future, rather than being scared in the moment," Critchlow says. "Conservative types have a more reactive amygdala, and that gives them a heightened reactivity to fear. They assess risks and react conservatively. "But the fact is, both types of people are really important for our survival as a species. If we were all one type it would be a disaster, we wouldn't have moved forward as a species." This, of course, raises the interesting quote most often wrongly attributed to Winston Churchill: "if you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart , if you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain." Why would people's leanings change as they age? "There's been some research at Oxford into that, following people from the 1960s to see whether they got more conservative as they got older, and it showed a 20-point increase in conservatism by the time they were 80 years old," Critchlow says. "As you get older, you rely on more tried and tested routes within your mind, there is slightly less potential for plasticity, so you might become more risk averse. "You also start to weigh how you process information differently; you place less weight on signals from the outside world, and more weight on the internal capacity of your mind - the information you have stored there. "In a way, older people are not really listening to new ideas, because they take too much energy. They're relying on their own, refined information. Or what we think of as wisdom." Kaplan, from USC, provides the quote in The Science of Fate that most neatly sums up the way most neuroscientists now see the world, which sounds radical to most people but is, Critchlow says, very much the accepted wisdom in her academic milieu. "I don't believe in free will. The universe is deterministic,'' Kaplan says. "We aren't the authors of our own actions, because everything is caused by something prior." He is aware, however, that unlike scientists, many people would find this idea hard to live with, and adds: "Decisions are partially controlled by our emotional state, and most people find it depressing to believe that they have little or no free will, so there is a lot of value in believing in it." Critchlow says abandoning the idea of free will can actually be quite relaxing. She says she frets less about the way she parents her young son, because she's not sure there's much point worrying about it. "I tend to forget that most people don't think this way and I was chatting with my agent recently and she said 'So hang on, you really think we're really just like machines?' And I was like, 'oh yeah, that's what all of the people in my little bubble of neuroscientists think'," she says. "But I think it's an idea that will become more accepted, and it's starting to happen. "Don't forget that Darwin's theories were pretty radical there for a while."

https://nnimgt-a.akamaihd.net/transform/v1/crop/frm/9gmjQxX8MpSQh6J68NHMnY/97fc079b-a059-4a2f-a1e9-c7ff49cbd985.jpg/r74_0_5021_2795_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg

We all know at least one couple who just make no sense, a perplexing pairing that irks and boggles us. One of them might be vivacious, gregarious, classically attractive and yet the other is a little freeze ray of misery and seems to despise socialising. So why, oh why, are they together?

Neuroscience, according to Dr Hannah Critchlow, may have the answer to this eternal question, and plenty more - why we get more opinionated and closed minded as we age, how our political leanings are formed, why some couples don't even seem to like each other much.

Critchlow, a British researcher, writer and broadcaster who has been described as "the female Brian Cox", lays out in her brain-bending book - The Science of Fate - just some of the recent research into determinism and the theory that we don't so much make our own decisions as inherit them. The fast-moving field of modern neuroscience will, she believes, "one day be considered as profound as Darwin's Theory of Evolution".

So, what can the brain tell us about the laws of opposite attraction? Well, there's a lot more to love than what meets our eyes, and it may well involve senses we didn't know we were even using.

"Scientists used to believe we only had five senses, but we're finding more and more we didn't know we had, through experiments, all the time," explains Critchlow, who found herself "happily stuck" in Noosa by the coronavirus lockdown while on an Australian book tour.

One fascinating trial, carried out at the Zoological Institute at Bern University and later replicated in the US, showed that women may actually be turning the smell of potential male partners into complex information.

Researchers asked men to wear the same T-shirt for a few days without washing, deodorising or eating smelly foods. A group of women were then given the appetising task of sniffing the shirts and rating them for attractiveness.

The results clearly showed that women would choose the odour of men whose immune systems were highly differentiated from their own. Finding a mate with different gene variations from your own produces the strongest possible offspring; a child with the greatest resistance to a wide range of infections, and thus the best chance of survival.

Dr Hannah Critchlow, author of The Science of Fate. Picture: Simon Weller

Just how women were able to detect their biological ideal man using optimum genetics via the smell of a stinky armpit is "quite mysterious", as Critchlow understates it.

"But we are, at some level, just animals, driven by the single desire to interact in a way that will pass on our genetic material," she says.

We are, at some level, just animals, driven by the single desire to interact in a way that will pass on our genetic material.

"Love, it seems, is largely a by-product of the brain circuitry that prioritises reproduction and the survival of the species."

Interestingly, the sniff test does not work with men, but boys are not without their own mysteries. A study of thousands of lap dances in the US found that strippers would make almost twice as much in tips on the few days when they were at the most fertile point of their menstrual cycle. Somehow, the men just found them more attractive on those days, without having any idea why.

"When it comes to sex, it seems that a choice that may feel highly personal and deeply intimate is, to a large extent, the behavioural result of our brains' coding to seek maximum opportunities for our genes to be passed on," Critchlow says.

Like many of her colleagues, she has come to accept that many of the choices we make are hugely influenced by the genes given to us by our parents, and our grandparents' parents. Even the foods we like are choices driven by what our ancestors were eating, and enjoying.

"Basically, we are designed to eat food when we can get it, because there might not be any around tomorrow, but now we live in a world where many of us can have whatever we want, whenever we want it, which obviously leads to obesity," she says.

"Genetic mutations to encourage eating less weren't passed on because food was scarce and there was no advantage in that. Mutations that made us eat as much as possible in case there was no more are a problem now that we live in abundance.

"Evolution has not caught up with Uber Eats."

The reassuring sense we have that we are making our own choices is "just our brains messing with us", in much the same way that we like to perceive the sun as "rising" and "setting", when we know, scientifically, that it is just the world turning.

"There is always scope for changing your mind, this is the basis for consciousness, but it's not as big as we perceive it - that scope to change is limited based on the genetics we've been given," Critchlow says.

"Remember that our brains use 20 per cent of our daily energy quota to fuel this enormous circuit board, and to save energy your brain filters a lot of information, and makes assumptions, based on past experience.

"Judging people in the first few minutes that we meet them is all about saving energy.

Abandoning the idea of free will, and leaving everything to fate, can actually be quite relaxing. Picture: Shutterstock

"With friendship groups, or clans, people look for individuals with a similar outlook and who have similar genetics as well (unlike the way they look for sexual partners).

"You are drawn to people, friends, who are genetically similar to you, so you are more likely to see the world in the same way and have the same biases.

"You're saving energy because you don't have to explain things."

Speaking of biases, just think how reassuring it would be to discover that people who hold political views that strike you as unjustifiable were just born that way.

As Critchlow puts it, understanding that people believe in certain things, like religion or politics, because their brains were built that way, "might have massive consequences for reducing conflict at every level - as we discover more about the neurobiology of belief formation and prejudice, we might be able to boost our openness to new ideas".

She quotes the work of Jonas Kaplan, Professor of Psychology at USC's Brain and Creativity Institute, who has found that activity in the amygdala, and the size of people's anterior cingulate cortex, can be used to predict whether they are liberal or conservative.

His researchers were able to use brain scans to predict the political leanings of American test subjects - whether they voted Republican or Democrat - "with high sensitivity and accuracy".

"It's quite incredible and it does help me to understand people a little bit more, because those who are more liberal have a less-sensitive amygdala are more able to think about collaborations and partnerships for the future, rather than being scared in the moment," Critchlow says.

"Conservative types have a more reactive amygdala, and that gives them a heightened reactivity to fear. They assess risks and react conservatively.

"But the fact is, both types of people are really important for our survival as a species. If we were all one type it would be a disaster, we wouldn't have moved forward as a species."

This, of course, raises the interesting quote most often wrongly attributed to Winston Churchill: "if you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart , if you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain." Why would people's leanings change as they age?

"There's been some research at Oxford into that, following people from the 1960s to see whether they got more conservative as they got older, and it showed a 20-point increase in conservatism by the time they were 80 years old," Critchlow says.

"As you get older, you rely on more tried and tested routes within your mind, there is slightly less potential for plasticity, so you might become more risk averse.

"You also start to weigh how you process information differently; you place less weight on signals from the outside world, and more weight on the internal capacity of your mind - the information you have stored there.

"In a way, older people are not really listening to new ideas, because they take too much energy. They're relying on their own, refined information. Or what we think of as wisdom."

Kaplan, from USC, provides the quote in The Science of Fate that most neatly sums up the way most neuroscientists now see the world, which sounds radical to most people but is, Critchlow says, very much the accepted wisdom in her academic milieu.

"I don't believe in free will. The universe is deterministic,'' Kaplan says.

"We aren't the authors of our own actions, because everything is caused by something prior."

He is aware, however, that unlike scientists, many people would find this idea hard to live with, and adds: "Decisions are partially controlled by our emotional state, and most people find it depressing to believe that they have little or no free will, so there is a lot of value in believing in it."

Critchlow says abandoning the idea of free will can actually be quite relaxing. She says she frets less about the way she parents her young son, because she's not sure there's much point worrying about it.

"I tend to forget that most people don't think this way and I was chatting with my agent recently and she said 'So hang on, you really think we're really just like machines?' And I was like, 'oh yeah, that's what all of the people in my little bubble of neuroscientists think'," she says.

"But I think it's an idea that will become more accepted, and it's starting to happen.

"Don't forget that Darwin's theories were pretty radical there for a while."

Original post:
Why do opposites attract, and can we change our political leanings as we grow older? Neuroscience has the answers - The Canberra Times

The Smithsonians National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute is asking the public to help name the litter of four cheetah cubs born April 8 at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) in Front Royal, Virginia. The births were streamed live on the Zoos new cheetah webcam, and virtual viewers have been watching them grow ever since. Keepers currently identify each cub by a small shave mark on their left shoulder (male), right hip (female), left hip (male) and base of the tail (male). Voters can select their favorite names from May 22 to May 26on the Zoos website.

The names were selected from a list submitted to SCBIs cheetah animal care team by staff from across the Zoo, SCBI and Friends of the National Zoo (FONZ), the Zoos membership organization. There are three possible name choices for the female cub and five choices for the three male cubs. The names that receive the most votes will be bestowed on the cubs. Keepers will assign the winning names to the individual animals. The winning names will be announced May 27.

The name choices for the female cub are:

The name choices for the three male cubs are:

The cubs were born to first-time mom, 5-year-old Echo and sired by 4-year-old Scott. Staff have been closely monitoring Echo and her cubs via the webcam. Keepers approached the cubs for the first time April 14. Less than a week later, the cubs were sexed and weighed. The cubs had their first vet exam May 20. Follow #CheetahCubdates on the Zoos Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to stay up-to-date on cheetah cub milestones.

The cheetah webcam is one of six live animal webcams hosted on the Zoos website. A downloadable animal webcam educational activity packet is available. As the cheetah cubs continue to grow, they will spend more time outside the den. If the cubs are not on the cam,the public can check out the photos and videos located on the cams page.

SCBI is part of the Cheetah Breeding Center Coalitiona group of 10 cheetah breeding centers across the United States that aim to create and maintain a sustainable North American cheetah population under human care. These cubs are a significant addition to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums Species Survival Plan for Cheetahs, as each individual contributes to this program. Earlier this year, SCBI experts performed a successful in vitro fertilization resulting in two cubs.

Cheetahs live in small, isolated populations mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. Many of their strongholds are in eastern and southern African parks. Due to human conflict, poaching and habitat- and prey-base loss, there are only an estimated 7,500 to 10,000 cheetahs left in the wild. TheInternational Union for Conservation of Natureconsiders cheetahsvulnerableto extinction.

As a public health precaution due to COVID-19, the Smithsonians National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute is temporarily closed to the public. Animal keepers and veterinary staff remain working on site at the Zoo and SCBI to provide the usual highest quality care for the animals.Due to the public closure, a COVID-19 Emergency Fund has been created as the Zoo is no longer receiving important funds on which it relies.Additional information on the Zoos COVID-19 response is posted to theZoos website. During the closure, the Zoo is sharing animal updates from behind the scenes using the hashtag #NatZooZen onFacebook,InstagramandTwitter.

The Zoos legacy of conservation work extends beyond the public Zoo in Washington, D.C., to SCBI in Front Royal, Virginia. Scientists at SCBI study and breed more than 20 species, including some that were once extinct in the wild, such as black-footed ferrets and scimitar-horned oryx. Animals thrive in specialized barns and building complexes spread over more than 3,200 acres. The sprawling environment allows for unique studies that contribute to the survival of threatened, difficult-to-breed species with distinct needs, especially those requiring large areas, natural group sizes and minimal public disturbance.

SCBI spearheads research programs at its headquarters in Virginia, the Zoo in Washington, D.C., and at field research stations and training sites worldwide. SCBI scientists tackle some of todays most complex conservation challenges by applying and sharing what they learn about animal behavior and reproduction, ecology, genetics, migration and conservation sustainability.

Read more here:
Smithsonian's National Zoo Seeks Help in Naming Four Cheetah Cubs - Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute

The difference in COVID-19 death rates between white people and black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people in the UK is shocking. One recent report found that, between the beginning of February and the end of April 2020, black people in England were 71% more likely than white people to die from COVID-19. And Asian people were 62% more likely.

This disparity has led to an inquiry by Public Health England and funding for urgent academic research into the issue. We expect many factors to be involved, including the disadvantages that BAME people face due to greater chances of poverty and health issues.

But its important that we examine whether there may also be a genetic component to the problem in order to fully understand whats going on. My colleagues and I are conducting research among frontline healthcare workers to try to see if there are any innate differences in the way different peoples immune systems respond to this specific virus, including genetic differences that may be associated with ethnicity.

Researchers have identified a greater chance of dying from COVID-19 among BAME people in several countries aside from the UK, including Norway and the US. There are many social reasons why ethnic minorities may generally be more vulnerable to disease, including a greater chance of malnutrition, more exposure to pollution due to where they live, or greater likelihood of working in less healthy environments.

Inequality and poverty also play a role in the fact that BAME people are more likely to suffer conditions that we know are linked to a greater chance of dying from COVID-19, such as diabetes and heart disease.

Initial data suggests that BAME healthcare workers are more likely to die from COVID-19 than their white colleagues. British Medical Association research has found that BAME doctors are twice as likely as white doctors to feel pressured into working with inadequate PPE when they are at risk of infection. And they are twice as likely not to feel confident enough to raise concerns about workplace safety.

However, all these established facts alone dont seem to explain why the risks of COVID-19 vary between different ethnic groups and are lowest among white people. This is particularly the case when we compare it with other forms of viral pneumonia that do not lead to such a difference.

The study that found BAME people in England were more likely to die from the disease accounted for differences in some underlying health conditions that are strongly linked to social issues, suggesting these werent the main factor. But the preliminary results from another study suggest ethnic minorities arent more likely to die once other factors linked to deprivation are taken into account.

To clarify this issue, its important to examine whether there may be some genetic component that predisposes ethnic minorities to a higher risk to COVID-19, while still recognising the critical role of other factors.

The way peoples immune systems work depends on genetic factors, not just environmental and social ones. There are effectively two parts to our immune systems. One is the part that produces antibodies, called the adaptive immune system. When our body has never seen a virus before, it can take several days for it to produce them, which is why some people get sick in the first place.

We also have an innate immune system that acts before our body has had time to make antibodies. This system is strong in children and young people, but not very good after the age of 65. This is likely to be one reason why older people are at higher risk of dying of COVID-19.

When a virus like the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 enters a cell, molecules called toll-like receptors, or TLRs, alert the immune system that something potentially harmful is present. Interestingly, many of the bodys TLRs that can detect viruses come from genetic instructions found in the X chromosome, for which men have only one copy and women two.

We know that women can have a more effective innate immune response to other viruses such as HIV than men, and that oestrogen, the female hormone, enhances this type of immune response. We also know that women are less likely to die from COVID-19 than men.

Just as there are variations in DNA that are responsible for the differences in response of immune cells between the sexes, there can also be variations between people of different ethnic backgrounds. For example, the amount and type of genes that immune cells produce when the TLR-virus pathway is stimulated, are very different between people of African and of European origin.

This is not surprising, because we know that human populations from different parts of the planet have had to adapt to different types of infections. Ethnic differences in the risk to other respiratory viral diseases have been linked to genetic variation, and these variants are different in BAME groups and white people in these same pathways. However, the role of ethnicity in genetic susceptibility to viral diseases is still controversial.

We want to see if it could be a factor in the higher rate of BAME deaths from COVID-19. To do this, we are taking blood from frontline healthcare workers of a variety of ethnic backgrounds, assessing DNA differences and measuring the various substances the samples contain. The results could indicate if differences in the innate immune systems of BAME groups result in higher risk of developing severe COVID-19.

If there is some genetic element to the different death rates from COVID-19 between ethnic groups, its important that we understand it to give us the best chance of fighting the disease. For example, if we do find that the way the innate immune system works plays a role, we can advise people on ways to improve that system, such as through what we eat.

But that wont change the fact that the generally worse health among BAME groups in western societies is strongly linked to socioeconomic factors that are known to play a very significant role in this pandemic.

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Coronavirus: BAME deaths urgently need to be understood, including any potential genetic component - The Conversation UK