What is the Daily Intake Formula for Water for Optimum Health?

"The science has never supported eight glasses as an appropriate guideline, if only because it confused total water turnover with water from beverages, and a lot of your water comes from the food  you eat."

"This work is the best we've done so far to measure how much water people actually consume on a daily basis -- the turnover of water into and out of the body -- and the major factors that drive water turnover."

Dale Schoeller, professor emeritus, nutritional sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison

There is no formal recommendation for a daily amount of water people need.   Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York Times

An American nutritionist, Dr. Fredrick J. Stare, suggested in 1974 that six to eight glasses of water daily would represent an optimum liquid intake for people's health. He did add that other drinks and food should be accounted for, within that six to eight glasses of water daily. He was thought to have been the originator of what  became in time a wildly popular and widely accepted basis for fluid intake for the human body.

It is entirely possible that many people have the impression that the more water one drinks for a daily intake, the healthier they will be. In fact, blood sodium content too diluted by the intake of too much water stands the risk of triggering hyponatremis, a potentially life-threatening condition. So common-sense is called for in extreme reactions to any situation. And water intake is entirely situational.

 

Researchers have now studied thousands of people in 26 countries to determine how much water is needed and in the process discovered that there is great variation; water requirements for each individual is not summed up in a generalized 8-glass-a-day formula. It was found that daily averages including water derived from other sources such as food and other types of liquid, ranged from one to six litres per day.

Test subjects in previous studies were asked to self-report their water intake. This study instead measured water as it moved throughout the body. Water containing hydrogen and oxygen isotopes was given to participants so the water could be tracked as it moved through their bodies. Published in the journal Science, the results found amounts required was entirely dependent on temperature, gender and activity levels.

Around 3.2 litres daily was determined to be the ideal water intake of an 154-pound man of age 20 living at sea level in a developed country with a mean air temperature of 50F, with average physical activity. A woman of the sage age weighing 125 pounds whose activity in the same geographic area was average had a requirement of 2.7 litres. While a 112 pound person would need 2.5 litres daily, and an individual weighing 210 pounds would need five litres.

Doubling daily energy expenditure would see the same people requiring an additional litre, according to the researchers. A further 0.3 litres a day would be needed with a 50 percent increase in humidity, to remain properly hydrated.

Spiders Steering Clear of Spider-Predators

Jumping spider lounging on tree.  Getty Images

"Jumping spiders are absolutely amazing because they have this incredible eyesight. And they can see almost as good as we do, so they pay attention to detail."  

"There’s a lot of assessment of the risk in this moment, so they assess how big is that thing? How quick could it get to me?"

"And then also knowing that motion really triggers what jumping spiders perceive, like, moving away in this choppy fashion and really slowly maybe is also a strategy of not getting the attention from the predator."

Daniella Roessler, study lead researcher

 

According to a new study's analysis of spider reaction to the presence of other, predatory spiders, it is not only humans who react negatively to the presence of spiders. The instinct of survival informs spiders when one of their own species known to hunt and eat smaller spiders is around, and that the situation calls for speedy removal from the scene. Hastily extracting themselves from the presence of a hungry spider out to make a meal of a smaller spider is an exercise in survival.  

Published by the British Ecological Society in the journal Functional Ecology, the study looked at the behavioural responses of baby jumping spiders when confronted by predator and non-predator spiders -- with a view to identifying the test-subject spiders' predator-recognition instincts. In the study process Roessler and her research team placed before baby spiders a variety of objects to elicit responses. 

 

A spheroid 3D printed model was first to act as the experimental control. A 3D printed spider and an actual larger, dead spider matched in size, came next.

 

When confronted with a spider-like 3-D model, jumping spiders freeze and back away slowly, especially if the model has eyes.  Daniela Roessler

The jumping spider was placed under observation to determine whether its reaction would be based on its ability to detect which of the objects might cause a survival response, despite that the objects were stationery. The spiders' reactions were videoed, the first of which shows a baby spider seemingly assessing the black 3D spheroid model. Without hesitation, the spider scuttles over to the object, leaping it on the platform and clambering over the model, an obvious indication that fear of repercussions was not involved.

This changed when the baby spider was confronted by a 3D printed black spider, but this one fitted with frontal eye features, the presence of which caused the baby spider to freeze, move cautiously to the side and finally turn decisively away, leaping off in the opposite direction. Again, the same sphere, lacking frontal eye features provoked a more confident reaction in the baby spider, where it moved forward as though assessing the large object before it. Within seconds it turned in the opposite direction away from the object.

When presented with multiple species of dead jumping spiders, the researchers made note of the baby spiders becoming more fearful of the species that appeared just as it did; the brown marpissa muscosa. It refused to approach any nearer the dead specimen; freezing, then slowly backing away...

Tarantula ... Photograph: Redmond Durrell/Alamy

Rivalling Nature's Whole-Milk Human Breast Milk

"I told anyone who would talk to me about BIOMILQ that I was doing this for mothers and babies."

"Informed by my personal experience with breastfeeding failure and by a relentless hunch about the biology of milk biosynthesis, I believed that if someone would just give me a chance to do this thing, it might actually work."

"Our unit economics are better than most of those in the cultivated meat space and our scale-up is more achievable, as we're not trying to constantly regrow cells."

"Some of the cells we've looked at can produce milk for months and months."

Leila Strickland, biologist, co-founder, CSO, BIOMILQ

"Were probably about a year from a whole human milk product that could go into market, but we have a heck of a lot of regulatory work ahead of us before that point."

"Is this an infant nutrition product, is this a milk product? It's an interesting and challenging question that I don't think we have a perfect answer for [it] yet."

Michelle Egger, co-founder, CEO, BIOMILQ

In a world’s first, BIOMILQ has made human breast milk by culturing mammary cells in a lab. Photo by Getty Images

The World Health Organization recommendation is that parents feed babies exclusively breast milk until they reach six months of age. And even then, to continue to incorporate breast milk feeding into their diets until infanthood, at least two years of age. The reason is biologically sound; human breast milk was designed by nature as the primal feeding method for human babies, for nutrition needs to be met, for a bond between mother and child to take its due course, and to ensure that babies gain the immunity qualities that breast milk confers.

Now, a biotech startup out of North Carolina divulged it has succeeded in copying nature in producing a formula to produce human breast milk in the laboratory through the culturing of mammary cells. The goal of the new startup, BIOMILQ, is to give nursing mothers an alternative to the use of baby formula. Either to augment nursing, or to replace it altogether, eschewing formula produced with cow's milk for the laboratory-produced breast milk endowed with the characteristics of naturally-produced breast milk.

Countless studies attest to the health benefits of beast milk. Formula milk, on the other hand, is acknowledged for its convenience and flexibility. According to Health Canada, 89 percent of babies are now breastfed, with over half of nursing mothers remaining with breastfeeding beyond the recommended six-month period. Those mothers who graduate from breast milk to formula milk cite their inability to produce enough milk, or that they're experiencing technique problems.

Benejam/ShutterStock

In these circumstances, mothers look to formula feeding to help fill the gap. The global market for formula is expected to reach $133 billion by 2026. Lacking the complexity and immunity features of breast milk, with production resting on cow's milk (and often palm oil), the formulation contributes to a rising carbon and water footprint.

Cell-cultured BIOMILQ, imitation human breast milk, presents itself as a nourishing alternative to formula, and the bonus presents less of an impact environmentally. The macronutrients in BIOMILQ's formula includes proteins, complex carbohydrates, fatty acids and allied bioactive lipids, all of which are a close match to those present in breast milk, boasting the convenient usefulness of formula-feeding.

Bioreactor  Wikipedia Commons

On their website BIOMILQ streses their product introduces "a whole milk product that maintains the integrity of its incredible evolutionary origin". The cell-cultured milk, produced in a laboratory, not through the biological process that produces human breast milk, is not bioidentical to breast milk."We're not confident it can be. Hormonal changes, baby's cues, skin-to-skin contact and environment all affect the dynamic complexity of breast milk", points out Leila Strickland.

BIOMILQ will still "support immune development, microbiome population, intestinal maturation and brain development in ways that bovine-based infant formula fundamentally cannot", the company founders state, despite the human milk produced by BIOMILQ, lacking antibodies.

BIOMILQ departs in its production focus from other companies in the same field focusing on the creation of components such as in the use of fermentation to make human milk oligosaccharides to produce their whole-milk product.

Emergent Planets in the Immensity of the Universe

"Even though astronomers have indirectly detected thousands of planets in our galaxy, only a tiny fraction of these exoplanets have been directly imaged."
"Direct observations are important in the search for environments that can support life."
Matthew Kenworthy, Associate Professor, Leiden University

"This discovery is a snapshot of an environment that is very similar to our Solar System, but at a much earlier stage of its evolution."
"The possibility that future instruments, such as those available on the ELT, will be able to detect even lower-mass planets around this star marks an important milestone in understanding multi-planet systems, with potential implications for the history of our own Solar System."
Alexander Bohn, PhD student, Leiden University, Netherlands

"These multi-planet systems are intriguing laboratories to study dynamical interactions and scattering events between several planetary-mass companions, which is crucial for understanding the formation and dynamical evolution of planetary systems."
Paper, The Astrophysical Journal Letters 

First ever image of a multi-planet system around a Sun-like star   ESO/Bohn et al

The paper titled the Young Suns Exoplanet Survey, reports results related to a research group led out of the Netherlands' Leiden University. The research team produced new images taken by the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory in Chile. The announcement was made of the first detectable evidence of a "baby planet", in its birthing stages. In fact, there were two planets. And the images presented are those of a double exoplanetary system, the first time ever such a phenomenon has been observed, of the pair estimated to be 17 million years old.

As time lines go, that can be compared to our Sun, which is estimated to be four billion years old. Two other such systems have previously been discovered; one having four giant planets, another with two "accreting protoplanets". Witnessing their orbits through telescopes capable of removing surrounding starlight has afforded a rare opportunity to test prevailing theories of planetary formation dynamics. What this also holds out promise for in allied observations and research is the potential to explain the origin of Earth itself, thought to have been created from a whirling dust disc in solar orbit which over endless time absorbed infalling asteroid masses.

It is also hypothesized that another planet called Theia collided with the infant Earth knocking its centre off orbit by 23 degrees and in the process creating the Moon as rock splashed upward, expressing the sheer dynamic force of the collision. Theia's fate was sealed when most of it shattered and clung to Earth's orbit which absorbed its shattered mass within its own. The process revealed by this new telescopic sighting has presented researchers with an opportunity to observe the formative stages of a planet, an event never before seen.

A subtle "twist" where two spirals intersect to become a whirling disc of dust and gas orbiting around a young star titled AB Aurigae, located 520 light years' distance from Earth, was detected by the four linked mirrors of the Very Large Telescope, in a constellation identified as The Charioteer. Theory has it that the cosmic maelstrom birthing a future planet coalesced into an expanding mass that attracted other orbiting masses -- attaining sufficient gravity over the eons to become a spherical planet.

Publication of this new research from the VLT illustrating the first images ever seen of a pair of immature twin planets -- two gas giants -- in distant orbit around a young star, represents the first time such a celestial event has been directly imaged, ever. Both these exoplanets are larger than gas giants Jupiter or Saturn, in our own Solar System. They orbit  the star called TYC 8998-760-1 at a distance far greater than Jupiter and Saturn orbit our own Sun, at 150 and 320 times the distance between Earth and the Sun, in comparison to about five and ten times for Jupiter and Saturn; both as well six and 14 times a greater mass than that of Jupiter.

What's That Awful Smell?!!!

"Pretty much all the compounds you could draw out of thioacetone are going to reek."
"Not a lot of us have smelled a gem-dimercaptan. It could well be intense."
"It [combining dimethyl sulfide with silicon] smelled like what you'd imagine the exhaust of a U.F.O. to smell like."
"It was spectacularly weird and horrible."
Derek Lowe, medicinal chemist, director in Chemical Biology Therapeutics, Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research

According to a expert chemist Derek Lowe, it can be difficult to know what chemicals produced the odour in an incident dating to 1889 that related to a substance called thioacetone, the subject of experiments in a German laboratory. One reaction from the use of the chemical produced an awful odour, so potent it was escaped the laboratory and contaminated the entire city where the laboratory was located. The reaction it caused among the residents was so impressive the resulting panic ended in mass evacuation.

Mr. Lowe theorizes that the thioacetone would have been converted into another chemical, one he suspects was gem-dimercaptan, which itself would have been subject to further reactions in a chain that resulted in a truly revolting smell. Despite the speculation over the incident, much discussed by chemists, there are none among them willing to figure out which molecules would have been produced by the reactions, by repeating the experiments.

Aroma strength is measured by the "odor detection threshold" associated with particular substances, determining the amount required to add to air before ordinary people are able to smell it. Gasoline, as an example, has an odour detection threshold of about 100 micrograms per cubic meter, so if three litres of it evaporated into the air from on high, it would produce vapour sufficient to give the air an odour like gasoline for 180 meters in all directions.

Ethyl mercaptan, added to natural gas so that leaks become detectable, has an odour detection threshold of just 1 or 2 micrograms per cubic meter, while a few pools of ethyl mercaptan the size of the reservoir in the middle of New York's Central Park, could, spread evenly throughout the atmosphere give the entire planet the smell of a gas leak. Methyl mercaptan, even smellier, might take merely one reservoir to make the globe reek.

On a more acceptable level, one of the substances with the lowest odour detection threshhold is vanillin, the major component of vanilla extract and while estimates vary, its odour detection threshold is likely around 0.1 or 0.2 micrograms per cubic meter, quite a bit lower than ethyl or methyl mercaptan. One or two oil tankers full of vanillin might be used conceivably to render the entire Earth smelling enticingly with the fragrance of vanilla.

In 1998 Pamela Dalton, a cognitive psychologist at Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia was tasked with developing a stink bomb by the U.S. Department of Defense. She discovered in her studies, that people of different backgrounds from various parts of the world whose culture surrounded them with odours and foods specific to time and place frequently disagreed in descriptions of good or bad smells.

Dr. Dalton eventually discovered a candidate for a universally distasteful smell to be something named "U.S.Government Standard Bathroom Malodor", a substance designed to mimic the 'scent' of field latrines linked to the military for the purpose of testing cleaning products. That aromatic liquid was what she chose as the base of her recipe for a stink-bomb, and the resulting formula, Stench Soup, may represent the most rancid smell ever created.

The odour was described as "Satan on a throne of rotting onions", by science writer Mary Roach, one of the few people curious enough to make an effort at inhaling Stench Soup. Dr.Lowe recalls the worst thing he ever smelled came about when he combined dimethyl sulfide with some silicon he was experimenting with; the two odours combined, each of which is known to stink, produced a final odour beyond foul.

The second that ammonium sulphide breaks down to hydrogen sulphide and ammonia you've got yourself a stinky problem. Joe Schwarz, McGill, Office for Science and Society

Feeling Tired? Sleep-Deprived?

"It's what you would consider a modest effect. What's really important is it affects everybody. If you have a large portion of the population that is affected, then you would say even a small effect definitely has a public health impact."

"If it's really DST [Daylight Saving Time] that leads to that increase in traffic accident risk, then we should see that before 2007, the peak in traffic accident risk in spring that has been reported before should move to that week."

"It's hard when you use this large-scale observational data, so it's always really hard for us to say it's really that thing. But this is a novel piece of evidence that further supports our observations."

"Because DST is changing the timing of when you have to get to work -- it doesn't change when the sun comes up, it's just a change of  your clock -- you get less morning light and more evening light."

"Translation always takes some time. I think every change is hard. I think now is a good time [to do away with DST]."

Celine Vetter, director, Circadian and Sleep Epidemiology Laboratory, University of Colorado Boulder

  Getty Images

A new study. Which is to say, yet another study. To augment common-sense attitudes that argue against continuation of Daylight Saving Time. Said to have originated with the needs of a farming constituency, a century earlier. And having no place whatever in the world of today, where its seasonal implementation has been identified as a source of making people generally miserable adjusting to the daylight/time change, and bringing harm to a number of people in any community through fatal traffic accidents.

Tomorrow is the day that practise, not purpose, mandates that all clocks in most of North America jump forward an hour, back to Standard Time. The negative health effects outlined by scientists have long been pointed out but studiously ignored by those 'experts' in public policy who administer these long outlived guidelines of preserving light by timing our days differently. The new study published in Current Biology, traces a link between spring's transition to Standard Time with an increase in fatal vehicle accidents in the United States.

Such that, according to the researchers involved, the rate of fatal car accidents increases by roughly six percent in the week following the clocks being moved forward an hour annually, in the United States. Sleep deprivation is pointed to as the logical culprit; the misalignment of circadian sleep rhythms. Dr. Vetter's research team analyzed a database of fatal accidents that occurred in the United States between the years 1996 and 2017, a total of 732,885 cases, documenting date and time of each collision.

Other possible variables exist to determine whether DST was a factor in the accidents that the research team examined; changing weather patterns for one. One factor, however linked as proof of the time change's impact. The duration of daylight saving time in both Canada and the U.S. by four to five weeks took place in 2007. Prior to 2007 the first Sunday in April would begin DST, which would end on the last Sunday in October. Since 2007 DST begins the second Sunday of March, ending on the first Sunday of November.

Researchers found, through analyzing the accident data, that the increase in fatal car crashes certainly did move from April to March in 2007 when DST made its move. In Western time zones, Dr.Vetter noted, the accident rate increases since the sun rises at a later time there than in the east, requiring people to awaken earlier for work or studies and they are then exposed to less morning sunlight. That causes them to feel less rested; a term she has named "social jet lag". The study's conclusion was that DST be abandoned.

A return to Standard Time should be permanent, not only between the designated months of November and March, but throughout all months of the year. The 28 deaths a year caused by the time change, points out Dr.Vetter, could be prevented through abandoning the time change. And there is no reason whatever to remain on daylight saving time, other than inaction. The Province of Saskatchewan stopped switching clocks, preferring to remain in perpetual daylight savings time, since 1966. And that's a traditional farming province.

Rush hour traffic lines the horizon of a sunrise on March 18, 2014.ELIZABETH McSHEFFREY/DAILY HERALD-TRIBUNE/QMI AGENCY

Leisure Pleasures for Grandmothers in New Caledonia

"The study zone is in the most touristic bay in Noumea, so I often meet people when I am doing field work on sea snakes. When I was snorkelling on my own studying sea snakes, I used to meet a friend of mine called Aline that was snorkelling and taking photos on the same reef. In order to help me, she started taking photos of sea snakes and would send them to me by mail."
"We stated chatting in the water and I explained to her what I was doing, and she told me she wanted to help."
"As soon as the grandmothers set to work, we realized that we had massively underestimated the abundance of greater sea snakes in the bay. We realized they are important mesopredators on the reef."
"If there is one thing I want everyone to learn from this, it's that you should never underestimate grandmothers."
Claire Goiran, marine biologist, University of New Caledonia

"We meet every morning between 8 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. We wear our diving equipment and we swim for one hour or two."
"Sometimes in summer, we can swim for three  hours. Back on the beach we have tea and enjoy the beauty of the site. It is very relaxing."
Marilyn Sarocchi, 63, New Caledonia, Coral Sea

The “fantastic grandmothers,” from left: Geneviève Briançon, Aline Guémas, Monique Zannier, Monique Mazière, Sylvie Hébert, Cathy Le Bouteiller and Marilyn Sarocchi. Image by Claire Goiran/UNC.

The journal Ecosphere recently published an article highlighting an unusual collaboration between scientists studying the presence of sea snakes around the waters off the coast of Australia and the French territorial island archipelago nearby of New Caledonia teeming with over 9,300 marine species, including dugongs, manta rays and venomous sea snakes. The greater sea snake, which can reach close to 1.5 meters in length, capable of killing a human with a single bite, among them.

Sea snakes for the most part live offshore and given that they are expressly dangerous to handle, few scientists are inclined to risk studying the species and their hard-to-reach habitat. Rick Shine, an evolutionary biologist at Macquarie University, Australia, and Claire Goiran from the University of New Caledonia paired up to find out what they were able to, about the greater sea snake.

Their efforts to survey the Baie des Citrons, a bay in Noumea, the capital of New Caledonia, were not very effective. They had a limited time frame to spare, and lacked full-time volunteers as assistants so theirs was a slow start. In the first three years of their study they managed to catalogue a mere 45 greater sea snakes. But then, in June of 2017, a fortuitous meeting took place on a beach between Dr. Goiran and Aline Guemas, a 61-year-old retiree, who offered to help in the search.

Monique Mazière and Sea Snake 79, nicknamed "Déborah."

Claire Goiran/University of New Caledonia

Ms. Guemas came along with Dr. Goiran on weekly surveys to photograph sea snakes and record the location where they were found. This turned out to be extremely useful for Dr. Goiran who soon suggested to Ms. Guemas she might recruit other retirees to volunteer for the same purpose. Soon, a team of seven volunteers had been assembled, their enthusiasm and usefulness soon becoming obvious, earning them the sobriquet of the "fantastic grandmothers".

Since they began their volunteer work on the bay, hundreds of snorkel surveys have taken place in the Baie des Citrons, where they identified hundreds of greater sea snakes. Monique Zannier, 75, one of the women whose ages range from 60 to 79, admits to no concern over the reputation of the sea snakes. "The Baie des Citrons is our playground", she boasts.

A group of snorkeling women who call themselves the “fantastic grandmothers” is helping scientists better understand the venomous greater sea snake. Image by Claire Goiran/UNC.

The researchers now rely on the women to help numerate and track the hundreds of greater sea snakes that come into Noumea's bays. Their data collection includes greater detailed information on the ecology of greater sea snakes than is found for any other wide-ranging sea snakes worldwide, according to Harold Heatwole, professor of zoology at the University of New England in Australia.

"Remarkably, they found a large number of lethally toxic sea snakes in a small bay that is occupied every day by hordes of local residents and cruise ship passengers — yet no bites by the species have ever been recorded at Baie des Citrons, testifying to their benevolent disposition."
Rick Shine, evolutionary biologist, Macquarie University, Australia 

Two of the grandmother dive to photograph the snake's tail for identification.

Claire Goiran

"I have been studying sea snakes in the Baie des Citrons for 20 years, and thought I understood them very well — but the Fantastic Grandmothers have shown me just how wrong I was."
"The incredible energy of the Grandmothers, and their intimate familiarity with ‘my’ study area, have transformed our understanding of the abundance and ecology of marine snakes in this system. It’s a great pleasure and privilege to work with them."
Claire Goiran

These remarkable women have documented at least 250 of the snakes. They showed through photographs they've taken, that within a 25-month period 140 greater sea snakes visited the Baie des Citrons, suggesting that greater sea snakes may have a larger role in the ecosystem function than previously thought, as animals in the middle of a food chain; both predators and prey.

The conservation status of at least 23 species of the sea snakes is unknown, resulting from a lack of data, leaving Dr. Goiran to hope that their data collected by the grandmothers will be of help to conservationists in improving protection for sea snakes of which only two of the 60 species in total are considered critically endangered.

An Insatiable Appetite = Extinction

“It is likely that the lack of reproduction was among the major causes of extinction,”
"As no individuals exist in captivity, and no living tissues are conserved for potential resurrection, the fish should be considered extinct."
Research paper, Science of the Total Environment journal

“It’s very sad. It’s a definitive loss of a very unique and extraordinary animal, with no hope of recovery."
"This is the first of these very large freshwater fish to go and many are at risk—the concern is that more will go extinct, but the hope is that we can reverse their decline before it’s too late."
Zeb Hogan, fish biologist, University of Nevada, Reno

"The extinction of the paddlefish is a huge loss and reflects the critical status of the Yangtze River ecosystem."
"The ecology of the Yangtze River is close to collapse due to human activity in past decades [overfishing, pollution and dam construction]."
Pan Wenjing, forest and oceans manager, Greenpeace East Asia

A Chinese paddlefish specimen made in 1990 is seen on display at the Museum of Hydrobiological Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Wuhan, China. The Chinese paddlefish's sharp, protruding snout made it one of the largest freshwater species in the world. (Museum of Hydrobiological Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences via AP)

"The Chinese paddlefish, Psephurus gladius, was one of only two extant members of a relict lineage that was most diverse and widespread 34–75 million years ago."
Hui Zhang, Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences, Wuhan, China

"Of the estimated 8 million animal and plant species on Earth, about 1 million are threatened with extinction."
"The problem in China, with its rapidly developing economy and urbanizing population, has been particularly acute. Since 1970, almost half of China’s terrestrial animals have vanished."
"The Yangtze River, a key fishery and former home to the Chinese paddlefish, is so dead that President Xi Jinping has said it has reached a 'no fish' level."
"Meanwhile, consumer demand for wildlife products, like tiger-skin rugs or bear bile for medicinal use, is responsible for a boom in the trafficking of endangered species."
Adam Minter, Bloomberg Opinion

No paddlefish here. Photographer: Goh Chai Hin/AFP/Getty Images

It was once considered one of the largest freshwater species of fish in the world. It is now considered extinct. The Chinese paddlefish was one of those strange-looking specimens of the piscine world with its overly-lengthened snout, and it was also identified as a Chinese swordfish. Its ancient lineage dated it back to at least 34 million years. A fish that could grow to aged maturity of seven metres in length. Overfishing, habitat fragmentation and loss of biodiversity in its Yangtze River home spelled its demise.

Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences, the University of Kent in England, and the University of South Bohemia in the Czech Republic collaborated on the research that produced the paper pronouncing the end of the ancient fish. They found the fish's existential collapse matching all the criteria for inclusion on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List (IUCN).

Since the late 1970s, populations of the Chinese paddlefish saw a dramatic decline corresponding with major dam construction on the Yangtze River, to which it was a native fish. The Gezhouba Dam, built on the main stream of the immense river, followed by the opening of the gargantuan Three Gorges Dam project in 2003, represented the very last year that anyone was able to sight a live Chinese paddlefish.

In 2017 and 2018, a survey discovered 332 species of fish in the Yantze, yet a single specimen of Chinese paddlefish eluded the researchers who estimate that the fish became extinct between 2005 and 2010. Overfishing in the most populous country of the world; pollution and dam-building reduced its numbers. Not all that long ago, in the 1970s, fishermen harvested 25 tons of Chinese paddlefish from the Yangtze River. By the 1990s, almost none remained.

A predictable outcome for a species of fish that had been on Earth longer than humanity, but whose unfortunate and tragic end resulted from the presence of humans who sought the delicate flesh of this giant fish predator for their dinner tables. A great predator of the seas, a relative of the sturgeon and American paddlefish, had suffered the fate of being victimized by a predator more populous and more dedicated to its dinner table than its own hunting habit.



 

I'll Have Two of Those and Five of Those...Woof!

"Our work not only shows that dogs use a similar part of their brain to process numbers of objects as humans do -- it shows that they don't need to be trained to do it."
Gregory Berns, neuroscientist, Emory University, Atlanta

"We went right to the source, observing the dogs' brains, to get a direct understanding of what their neurons were doing when the dogs viewed varying quantities of dots. That allowed us to bypass weaknesses of previous behavioural studies of dogs and some other species."
"Part of the reason that we [humans] are able to do calculus and algebra is because we have this fundamental ability for numerosity that we share with other animals."
"I'm interested in learning how we evolved that higher math ability and how these skills develop over time in individuals, starting with basic numerosity in infancy."
Lauren Aulet, psychologist, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia

Emory neuroscientist Gregory Berns is researching how dogs think and view the world.   Kay Hinton

In an effort to determine whether the ability of canines' ability to detect amounts, numbers, through training or whether that ability was innate, Emory University scientists set about to solve the riddle. How can dogs know that they've been given a smaller treat than what they've been accustomed to? Why is it that they appear to have the capacity to determine that their bowl isn't as full at meal time as it generally tends to be? It is known that they have the capacity to process numbers, somewhat similar to how humans do, according to a Science Magazine report.

A recent report published in Biology Letters reflecting a later study from Emory University in Atlanta set out to solve the riddle, leading the researchers to believe that dogs certainly take notice when less food is placed in their bowls. They cannot count, but they detect differences in quantity. This has been named "approximate number system", known for some time that animals can differentiate quantity. The article in Science made it clear that earlier studies in research into animal numeracy made us of trained animals as their study subjects.

A canine mathematician waiting to go for a walk. Getty Images

What the Emory University study set out to do was settle the question: animal evolution or trained brain function? Dr. Berns who led the study along with colleagues undertook to recruit representatives of eleven different dog breeds for his examination whether there was an ingrained sensitivity to numbers in a certain part of canine brains. The dogs were placed in a functional magnetic resonance imagine scanner (fMRI) and strapped into place their heads resting on a block, to focus on a group of light grey dots on a black background.

The grey dots changed in number every 300 milliseconds and with those changes the researchers were able to note activity in a region of the canine brain called the parietotemporal cortex, known as the parieta cortex in the brains of humans, which function of the brain aids humans in the processing of changing numbers. Of the 11 dogs, eight passed the scanning test, their brain activity demonstrating a behaviour pattern similar to that of the human brain, while three dogs failed to pass the test, which Dr. Berns felt might be linked to breed.

Getty Images

Understanding how dogs are able to detect changes in quantity might represent a breakthrough of some significance, stated Dr. Aulet, who participated in the study. There is an expectation that the research results will at some future date, offer scientists deeper insights into matters such as how brain abnormalities could be treated.

"It further increases our confidence that [these representations of quantity in the brain] are ancient and widespread among species", concluded Michael Beran, a psychologist at Georgia State University, speaking of the study as compelling and exciting.

Emory University, YouTube

The Brave New World of Gene Editing

"It's easy to use [Crispr-Cas9, gene-editing technique]."
"They [scientists] can just type a gene sequence into their phone and program the Crispr molecules to manipulate DNA in ways that previously would have been impossible. It has been truly transformative."
"You can't turn back the clock and put the genie back in the bottle. That's just a reality. You know, you can't undiscover things that you have discovered."
"I ended up having several dreams that were very intense -- where I walked into a room, and a colleague said: 'I want to introduce you to someone, they want to know about Crispr'. And I realized with horror that it was Adolf Hitler. And he leaned over and said: 'So, tell me all about how it works'. I remember waking up from that dream, and I was shaking. And I thought: 'Oh, my gosh. What have I done'?"
"What was so horrifying was to see what a disaster the whole effort has been, both from a scientific and technical point of view, as well as from an ethical perspective. The detailed [gene] changes that were made [by He Jiankui in China on twin girls] have never been seen in humans and never been tested in animals."
"So there's no way to know if those changes are safe or defective. That is a horrifying thing to think about, you know, it reminds you of experiments on humans in the past [Nazi Dr.Mengele's infamous experiments on concentration camp inmates during World War II]."
Dr.Jennifer Doudna, professor, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley

Technology Co-Inventor CRISPR-CAS9 Jennifer Doudna speaks onstage at WIRED Business Conference Presented By Visa At Spring Studios In New York City on June 7, 2017 in New York City. Brian Ach/Getty Images

Chinese scientist He Jiankui set the scientific world in an uproar of disbelief and concern when he announced a year ago at a Hong Kong conference that he had been responsible for the first gene-edited human babies. He had altered their DNA, intending to confer immunity to HIV, with the permission of their parents. His use of Crispr for these infants was widely condemned as both irresponsible and dangerous, since the alterations he made to the babies' DNA, irrespective of good intentions, could have far-reaching consequences even beyond the impact on the children themselves; their offspring and their offsprings' offsprings would all henceforth reflect those changes.

What he had done is to leap into the great unknown, given the consideration of the complex interactions of genes with each other and with their environment. The world of science is in no doubt that the twins, Lulu and Nana, have altered genes that will reappear in future generations with no knowledge whatever of what those consequences could be. This incident alone would be enough to give haunting nightmares to 55-year-old Jennifer Doudna, responsible for the gene-editing technique called Crispr-Cas9.

It is reminiscent in its own way as a scientific discovery of great moment and unknown consequences, to the impact on the world community of the smashing of the atom to create atomic bombs through nuclear fission. For good or for ill, the world now possesses far, far more explosives of imaginable destructive dimensions than it would take to destroy all life on the globe. The scientists who saw their success in nuclear fission at the Trinity test site outside Alamagordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945 probably exulted, not envisioning the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima with all the horrors they entailed, less than a month later.

Dr. Doudna, on the other hand, is amazed at the success of the experimental therapy on test patients suffering from sickle cell anemia and beta thalassemia, devastating diseases that prevent red blood cells from carrying as much oxygen as they are meant to do. "Apparently, both patients have been cured. That's an extraordinary thing. Here are diseases of the blood that cause terrible distress and for which there's currently very little that can be done." That, in and of itself, is a tremendous success thanks to the gene-editing technique whose application will go far beyond these two diseases which in this instance have been edited out of the genes of two test subjects.

The HBB gene, responsible for the production of hemoglobin, oxygen-carrying molecules in red blood cells, is one of over a thousand genes on chromosome 11, itself merely one of the 23 pairs of chromosomes comprising DNA. Humans are estimated to have between 20,000 to 25,000 genes, any of which can potentially be edited with use of the Crispr technique. One mutation of the genetic code in DEC2 which influences sleep can permit people to thrive with very little sleep. With Crispr the potential exists for a genetic twist in editing that may allow people to remain healthy with minimal sleep.

Jennifer Doudna in her lab    Credit: Graeme Mitchell/Redux/eyevine

Dr. Doudna has been haunted by uncertainty ever since, in 2012, she published her pioneering paper introducing the concept of Crispr with her co-inventor Emmanuelle Charpentier, ushering in the brave new era of Crispr. A new film explores the extraordinary potential of Crispr, titled Human Nature, where Dr. Doudna speaks of her concerns of the nightmare of eugenics. And Dr. He in China succeeded in making that nightmare a reality with the creation of the first gene-edited human babies. His strange disappearance from public view since then adds another note of mystery. Yet others are determined to follow his example, and Russia may be the next place where something of that nature re-occurs.

"Fifty years from now, people may say: ‘I can’t believe those barbaric people in the early 21st century were just rolling the [genetic] dice with their kids’ lives'."

"The option now exists [to load those dice. Should we use it?]"
"I think the right way to say it is that sex is for recreation, and science is for procreation."
Dr.Stephen Hsu, Vice-President for Research, Professor of Theoretical Physics, Michigan State University 

Silent World

"We had good reason to expect that increasing temperatures would lead to reductions in body size, based on previous studies."
"The thing that was shocking was how consistent it was. I was incredibly surprised that all of these species are responding in such similar ways."
"Periods of rapid warming are followed really closely by periods of decline in body size, and vice versa."
"Being able to show that kind of detail in a morphological study is unique to our paper, as far as I know, and it's entirely due to the quality of the dataset that David Willard generated." 
"It's clear that there's a third component -- changes in body size and shape -- that's probably going to interact with changes in range and changes in timing to determine how effectively a species can respond to climate change."
Brian Weeks, assistant professor, University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability

The researchers analysed 52 different species of migratory birds  The Field Museum

"When we began collecting the data analyzed in this study, we were addressing a few simple questions about year-to-year and season-to-season variations in birds."
"The phrase 'climate change' as a modern phenomenon was barely on the horizon. The results from this study highlight how essential long-term data sets are for identifying and analyzing trends caused by changes in our environment."
"The changes that are being documented are not something you could see with your eye."
"Birds with longer and more pointed wings might be more efficient fliers [compensating for heat-caused stress]."
David Willard, ornithologist, Field Museum of Natural History

Dave Willard with the Field Museum's vast collection of bird specimens, 1999

"Warming temperatures seem to be having a pretty consistent and almost universal effect on a large number of different species, regardless of other aspects of their biology."
"In years when temperatures were a bit warmer, the bodies got smaller. In years when temperatures were a bit cooler, we saw an increase in body size, even though the long-term trend was to decline."
"So that leads us to believe that temperature is pretty important here."
Benjamin Winger, evolution and ecology of birds, University of Michigan

Published in the journal Ecology Letters, a new study out of the University of Michigan has shone a light on one aspect of how a warming climate is affecting bird populations; as the planet goes through a warming period, birds are adapting to the stress they are experiencing by becoming gradually smaller in size. That many bird populations appear as well to be declining is part of the same  story. This aspect of adaptation rather than decline owes much to a collection gathered by Dr. Willard who has measured Chicago's dead birds since the year 1978.

The vast collection and the data accompanying it gave measure to the study of long-term trends in bird bodies; the measurements of their legs, and their lesser weight, and slightly longer wings. These were changes that Dr.Willard detailed measuring with calipers and scales and achieving a notable collection of birds upon whose measurements conclusions could be reached, along with tracked weather trends.

Ledger, measuring tools, and a Tennessee Warbler.

The study of 70,716 bird specimens representing a 40-year accumulation of birds that had been found dead in Chicago as a result of misadventures such as flying into high-rise windows yielded the conclusion that the measured changes are present in close to all the species measured; the result of a seemingly inexorable, changing climate. When Dr. Willard began gathering birds for the museum's collection, climate change would have been the last thing on his mind.

He went about studiously measuring beaks, legs, body mass and wings, representing standard ornithological dimensions simply to satisfy his curiosity relating to seasonal trends. His activities attracted other museum staff and the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, a volunteer organization which collects birds injured by windows. Those birds that were injured and could be rehabilitated were cared for by volunteers, while the dead ones were donated to the museum collection.

Dr. Willard had completed the records of measurements of over 70,000 birds of 52 species by 2016; his ledgers a minefield of explosive data all pointing to birds morphing over time in lock-step with climate change. Swamp sparrows and dark-eyed juncos were among the fifteen species of common birds that represented the majority of the collected specimens, although the collection also has several birds rare for the area. Birds on average surrendered 2.6 percent of their body mass; their legs became shorter by 2.4 percent, and their wings lengthened by 1.3 percent, from 1978 to 2016.

Although there has been a 29 percent decline in North American bird populations since 1970, Dr. Winger hesitates to say whether these small size reductions are harmful to birds. Among data studied by the authors were precipitation, vegetation and allied factors that might contribute to size reduction, determining that an increase in summer temperatures was the strongest predictor for smaller birds emerging.

There is larger surface-area-to-volume ratios with smaller animals, allowing them to lose body heat more quickly. Leading to the proposal that hotter temperatures could stress birds, encouraging them to adapt by becoming smaller, to stay cooler. Research by Simon Griffith, an ecologist at Macquarie University in Australia where zebra finches and house sparrows were studied both in the lab and in the wild, indicates that hot temperatures during breeding season reduces bird offspring size and when fledglings are faced with heat stress they tend not to grow large.

Neanderthal Extinction

"Our results support the hypothesis that the disappearance of Neanderthals might have been the result of demographic factors alone, that is, the result merely of the internal dynamics that operate in small populations."
"Our results are consistent with a scenario in which a small population of Neanderthals persists for several thousands of years, and then, due to a stroke of bad luck, disappears."
"The mere fact that the Neanderthals were living in such a small population might have been enough to [make them] go extinct."
"It's not unusual they were living in small populations, either. It's known that they did."
"The arrival of [humans] would have been a contributory factor rather than the cause of the extinction."
"The species' demise might have been due merely to a stroke of bad demographic luck."
"The mere interspersal of AMH sub-populations between Neanderthal sub-populations reduced the opportunities for intrabreeding and migratory activity among the latter."
"As such, the presence of modern humans in Eurasia would have accelerated a process that, at some point, was likely to have occurred anyway."
Research study, Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands

A moulding of Neanderthal man.  Photo: Stephane D. Sakutin, AP/Getty

"We want us to play a role in their extinction, because it helps us to answer the question as to what makes us unique or human."
"So the standard story, according to which modern humans outsmarted Neanderthals, is attractive to us because it implies that our species can be distinguished from our sister species by reference to our superior intelligence."
Krist Vaesen, Associate Professor, Philosophy of Innovation, Eindhoven University of Technology 

 Published in PLOS One, new research out of the Netherlands has brought out a new theory on the possible cause of Neanderthal extinction. Possibly, the researchers posit from the results of their study, inbreeding was partially responsible. The researchers themselves were somewhat taken aback by the conclusions their research led them to. They ran simulation models that they based on existing hunter-gatherer societies with a view to discovering whether factors aside from human competition might have wiped out Neanderthals some 40,000 years ago.

Obviously, modern humans fell into the category of nature's creatures that managed to adapt and evolve as a species more successfully than did Neanderthals. Earlier research has pointed out that humans and proto-humans lived in fairly close proximity to one another, and in all probability, given that modern science has found Neanderthal DNA in a huge segment of the current population, must also have interbred. Given the larger skull dimensions of Neanderthals it has also been suggested that human females were not that likely to give birth to babies with Neanderthal characteristics; more likely that Neanderthal females more readily gave birth to babies with human features.

The new exhibition at the Canadian Museum of Nature 'deconstructs' stereotypes around Neanderthals. (Nikola Solic/Reuters)

There is agreement among Paleoanthropologists of the disappearance of Neanderthals roughly 40,000 years ago, at a time when anatomically modern humans were expanding their presence into Eurasia, steadily migrating out of Africa. Neanderthal populationss, on the other hand, arose in Eurasia. There has never been full agreement, however on whether and when and how early modern humans may have been responsible in part for the demise of Neanderthals.

The researchers simulated model groups of 50, 100, 500, 1,000 and 5,000 individual populations studying the effects within each group, of inbreeding. They included Allee effects whereby the smaller a population the lower its reproduction rate, and vice versa, along with random fluctuations of a population taking into account factors such as births, deaths and sex ratios, the aim being to determine whether factors such as these could conceivably lead to extinction over a 10,000-year period.

A picture taken on March 26, 2018 shows a thermoforming of a Flores woman displayed for the Neanderthal exhibition at the Musee de l'Homme in Paris. STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP via Getty Images

The study concluded that interbreeding, in and of itself  was not likely to  have led to extinction; the smallest studied group of 50 was found to have gone extinct in this manner, but of groups with 1,000 individuals or fewer, should only a quarter or less of females give birth in any single year, extinction could also occur. When all factors were accounted for (inbreeding Allee effects and demographic fluctuations) over the ten-thousand-year simulation period, extinction was almost certain to result for all group sizes.

The study authors suggest the presence of human ancestors might conceivably have made the presence of Neanderthals more vulnerable to the factors involved in the study, before extinction. But they are also convinced that the human presence was simply coincidental to the final extinction. Which caused the researchers themselves to entirely revise their own former belief, common among paleoanthropologists that homo sapiens contributed hugely to the obliteration of the Neanderthals.

What caused the extinction of Neanderthals after 350,000 years on the planet remains a point of debate for experts ( PA )

Neanderthals have contributed approximately 1-4% of the genomes of non-African modern humans, although a modern human who lived about 40,000 years ago has been found to have between 6-9% Neanderthal DNA (Fu et al 2015). The evidence we have of Neanderthal-modern human interbreeding sheds light on the expansion of modern humans out of Africa. These new discoveries refute many previous hypotheses in which anatomically modern humans replaced archaic hominins, like Neanderthals, without any interbreeding. However, even with some interbreeding between modern humans and now-extinct hominins, most of our genome still derives from Africa. Neanderthals could not have contributed to modern African peoples’ genomes because Neanderthals evolved and lived exclusively in Eurasia and therefore could not have bred with the humans living in Africa at that time.
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History