There is always competition somewhere. Different strains of COVID compete against each other. Viruses "compete against our immune systems (which could be considered DNA/RNA competition I suppose). Plants compete against other plants for light, that is why we have trees.
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We created a new subforum for the Civ7 reviews, please check them here!
Newsworthy Science
- Thread starter Birdjaguar
- Start date
Narz
keeping it real
According to this 1min video a virtual brain has been created.
Looking forward to the virtual fly companion app to drop
Not a good couple of days for UK Biobank:
US startup charging couples to ‘screen embryos for IQ’
The company, Heliospect Genomics, has worked with more than a dozen couples undergoing IVF, according to undercover video footage. The recordings show the company marketing its services at up to $50,000 (£38,000) for clients seeking to test 100 embryos, and claiming to have helped some parents select future children based on genetic predictions of intelligence. Managers boasted their methods could produce a gain of more than six IQ points.
The footage appears to show experimental genetic selection techniques being advertised to prospective parents. A Heliospect employee, who has been helping the company recruit clients, outlined how couples could rank up to 100 embryos based on “IQ and the other naughty traits that everybody wants”, including sex, height, risk of obesity and risk of mental illness.
The startup says its prediction tools were built using data provided by UK Biobank, a taxpayer-funded store of genetic material donated by half a million British volunteers, which aims to only share data for projects that are “in the public interest”.
The team offered a guided tour of their test website, which is not yet public. During the presentation, they claimed selecting the “smartest” of 10 embryos would lead to an average IQ gain of more than six points, although other traits such as height and risk of obesity or acne could be prioritised depending on personal preferences.
In future, he speculated, the offering might be extended to include personality types, including providing scores for what he called the “dark triad” traits. Dark triad is normally a reference to machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy. Christensen said it might also be possible to develop scores for depression and creativity. “Beauty is something lots of people actually ask about,” he added.
‘Race science’ group say they accessed sensitive UK health data
Fringe researchers advocating “nefarious” theories that intelligence is based on race have obtained data from a trove of sensitive health information donated by half a million British volunteers, according to undercover footage.
Recordings made by the anti-racism campaign group Hope Not Hate show members of a “race science” network discussing UK Biobank data they claimed to have accessed. Some of the group have been blacklisted by the facility on the grounds they are “not bona fide” academics, but the footage suggests they may have circumvented its controls. It shows them saying they obtained a “large” haul of the data. One of their associates acknowledges they are “not meant to have that”.
US startup charging couples to ‘screen embryos for IQ’
The company, Heliospect Genomics, has worked with more than a dozen couples undergoing IVF, according to undercover video footage. The recordings show the company marketing its services at up to $50,000 (£38,000) for clients seeking to test 100 embryos, and claiming to have helped some parents select future children based on genetic predictions of intelligence. Managers boasted their methods could produce a gain of more than six IQ points.
The footage appears to show experimental genetic selection techniques being advertised to prospective parents. A Heliospect employee, who has been helping the company recruit clients, outlined how couples could rank up to 100 embryos based on “IQ and the other naughty traits that everybody wants”, including sex, height, risk of obesity and risk of mental illness.
The startup says its prediction tools were built using data provided by UK Biobank, a taxpayer-funded store of genetic material donated by half a million British volunteers, which aims to only share data for projects that are “in the public interest”.
The team offered a guided tour of their test website, which is not yet public. During the presentation, they claimed selecting the “smartest” of 10 embryos would lead to an average IQ gain of more than six points, although other traits such as height and risk of obesity or acne could be prioritised depending on personal preferences.
In future, he speculated, the offering might be extended to include personality types, including providing scores for what he called the “dark triad” traits. Dark triad is normally a reference to machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy. Christensen said it might also be possible to develop scores for depression and creativity. “Beauty is something lots of people actually ask about,” he added.
‘Race science’ group say they accessed sensitive UK health data
Fringe researchers advocating “nefarious” theories that intelligence is based on race have obtained data from a trove of sensitive health information donated by half a million British volunteers, according to undercover footage.
Recordings made by the anti-racism campaign group Hope Not Hate show members of a “race science” network discussing UK Biobank data they claimed to have accessed. Some of the group have been blacklisted by the facility on the grounds they are “not bona fide” academics, but the footage suggests they may have circumvented its controls. It shows them saying they obtained a “large” haul of the data. One of their associates acknowledges they are “not meant to have that”.
Narz
keeping it real
I didn't know they had IQ tests for fetuses
I do not believe they do. It is possible that one could usefully select for certain more well understood axis of variation, like susceptibility to metabolic syndrome/diabetes or something. I do not believe they can usefully select between genetic "siblings" for intelligence.
MrCynical
Deity
Indeed - IQ tests remain rather dubious for many years after a kid is born. And IQ isn't the same as intelligence in the general sense anyway. There are various genes that have been dubiously claimed to be associated with intelligence, but I can't think of any studies I'd place any value on in that area.
Well, they can certainly select for sex, with all the ethical problems associated with that. If you're after a particularly tall kid there are definitely genetic features you could select for to tweak the odds. Although somewhat limited by the genetic range of the parents. Probably the the most drastic approach would be to screen for one of the sex chromosome trisomies. Guys with XYY chromosomes have an average height of about 6'3, for example. Would need to screen more than 100 embryos to have a decent shot of getting one with that though. And some of the other stats that have been associated with that might not go down so well with the kind of couple that wants to dabble in eugenics.
Risk of obesity? Well, there's a few specific genetic conditions you could screen out, which might make a slight statistical difference in a large population. Most individuals I doubt there'll be much difference there. And studies linking genes to mental illness? Yeah, there's a lot of garbage in, garbage out there.
Broken_Erika
Play with me.
Mega meteorite tore up seabed and boiled Earth's oceans
A huge meteorite first discovered in 2014 caused a tsunami bigger than any in known human history and boiled the oceans, scientists have discovered.The space rock, which was 200 times the size of the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, smashed into Earth when our planet was in its infancy three billion years ago.
Carrying sledge hammers, scientists hiked to the impact site in South Africa to chisel off chunks of rock to understand the crash.
The team also found evidence that massive asteroid impacts did not bring only destruction to Earth - they helped early life thrive.
“We know that after Earth first formed there was still a lot of debris flying around space that would be smashing into Earth,” says Prof Nadja Drabon from Harvard university, lead author of the new research.
“But now we have found that life was really resilient in the wake of some of these giant impacts, and that it actually bloomed and and thrived,” she says.
The meteorite S2 was much larger than the space rock we are most familiar with. The one that led to the dinosaurs’ extinction 66 million years ago was about 10km wide, or almost the height of Mount Everest.
But S2 was 40-60km wide and its mass was 50-200 times greater.
It struck when Earth was still in its early years and looked very different. It was a water world with just a few continents sticking out of the sea. Life was very simple - microorganisms composed of single cells.
The impact site in Eastern Barberton Greenbelt is one of the oldest places on Earth with remnants of a meteorite crash.
Prof Drabon travelled there three times with her colleagues, driving as far as possible into the remote mountains before hiking the rest of the way with backpacks.
Rangers accompanied them with machine guns to protect them against wild animals like elephants or rhinos, or even poachers in the national park.
They were looking for spherule particles, or tiny fragments of rock, left behind by impact. Using sledge hammers, they collected hundreds of kilograms of rock and took them back to labs for analysis.
Prof Drabon stowed the most precious pieces in her luggage.
"I usually get stopped by security, but I give them a big spiel about how exciting the science is and then they get really bored and let me through," she says.
The team have now re-constructed just what the S2 meteorite did when it violently careened into Earth. It gouged out a 500km crater and pulverised rocks that ejected at incredibly fast speeds to form a cloud that circled around the globe.
“Imagine a rain cloud, but instead of water droplets coming down, it's like molten rock droplets raining out of the sky,” says Prof Drabon.
A huge tsunami would have swept across the globe, ripped up the sea floor, and flooded coastlines.
The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami would have paled in comparison, suggests Prof Drabon.
All that energy would have generated massive amounts of heat that boiled the oceans causing up to tens of metres of water to evaporate. It would also have increased air temperatures by up to 100C.
The skies would have turned black, choked with dust and particles. Without sunlight penetrating the darkness, simple life on land or in shallow water that relied on photosynthesis would have been wiped out.
These impacts are similar to what geologists have found about other big meteorite impacts and what was suspected for S2.
But what Prof Drabon and her team found next was surprising. The rock evidence showed that the violent disturbances churned up nutrients like phosphorus and iron that fed simple organisms.
“Life was not only resilient, but actually bounced back really quickly and thrived,” she says.
“It’s like when you brush your teeth in the morning. It kills 99.9% of bacteria, but by the evening they're all back, right?” she says.
The new findings suggest that the big impacts were like a giant fertiliser, sending essential ingredients for life like phosphorus around the globe.
The tsunami sweeping the planet would also have brought iron-rich water from the depths to the surface, giving early microbes extra energy.
The findings add to a growing view among scientists that early life was actually helped by the violent succession of rocks striking Earth in its early years, Prof Drabon says.
“It seems that life after the impact actually encountered really favourable conditions that allowed it to bloom,” she explains.
The findings are published in the scientific journal PNAS.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g4g455p8lo
Could be the biggest drug ever, and it "can be readily prepared on the kilogram scale"!!
LaKe apparently mimics the physiological effect of exercise and fasting. I think this could be a revolution in health, though it is only in rats at the moment so do not go making it yourself yet.
Preparation and Preclinical Characterization of a Simple Ester for Dual Exogenous Supply of Lactate and Beta-hydroxybutyrate
Elevation of the plasma levels of (S)-lactate (Lac) and/or (R)-beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB) occurs naturally in response to strenuous exercise and prolonged fasting, respectively, resulting in millimolar concentrations of these two metabolites. It is increasingly appreciated that Lac and BHB have wide-ranging beneficial physiological effects, suggesting that novel nutritional solutions, compatible with high-level and/or sustained consumption, which allow direct control of plasma levels of Lac and BHB, are of strong interest. In this study, we present a molecular hybrid between (S)-lactate and the BHB-precursor (R)-1,3-butanediol in the form of a simple ester referred to as LaKe. We show that LaKe can be readily prepared on the kilogram scale and undergoes rapid hydrolytic conversion under a variety of physiological conditions to release its two constituents. Oral ingestion of LaKe, in rats, resulted in dose-dependent elevation of plasma levels of Lac and BHB triggering expected physiological responses such as reduced lipolysis and elevation of the appetite-suppressing compound N-L-lactoyl-phenylalanine (Lac-Phe).
LaKe apparently mimics the physiological effect of exercise and fasting. I think this could be a revolution in health, though it is only in rats at the moment so do not go making it yourself yet.
Preparation and Preclinical Characterization of a Simple Ester for Dual Exogenous Supply of Lactate and Beta-hydroxybutyrate
Elevation of the plasma levels of (S)-lactate (Lac) and/or (R)-beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB) occurs naturally in response to strenuous exercise and prolonged fasting, respectively, resulting in millimolar concentrations of these two metabolites. It is increasingly appreciated that Lac and BHB have wide-ranging beneficial physiological effects, suggesting that novel nutritional solutions, compatible with high-level and/or sustained consumption, which allow direct control of plasma levels of Lac and BHB, are of strong interest. In this study, we present a molecular hybrid between (S)-lactate and the BHB-precursor (R)-1,3-butanediol in the form of a simple ester referred to as LaKe. We show that LaKe can be readily prepared on the kilogram scale and undergoes rapid hydrolytic conversion under a variety of physiological conditions to release its two constituents. Oral ingestion of LaKe, in rats, resulted in dose-dependent elevation of plasma levels of Lac and BHB triggering expected physiological responses such as reduced lipolysis and elevation of the appetite-suppressing compound N-L-lactoyl-phenylalanine (Lac-Phe).
Narz
keeping it real
Just read about that.
We'll see.
We'll see.
I guess the way this purportedly works is that you take a huge volume of genome data of adults who have taken an IQ test. These IQ values are taken as labels for machine learning to get a model that tries to predict IQ of a human with a specific genome. This model is then applied to the genome of a group of embryos and the "best" one is selected. In theory this is plausible enough that I would not be confident that it cannot work. In practice, there is so many pitfalls that I very much doubt that it will work in real life. But it would take at least two decades to conclusively disprove any effect (not that it is likely that anyone would do that) and by then they are long gone.
Before GenAI was a thing, there were plenty of startups that tried to convince managers with too much budget and too little brain that they could use machine learning to make their garbage data into gold. Problem was, that even if it was obvious that they were not entirely honest, it could take years to thoroughly prove that there was not effect (or that the effect could be replicated with 6 lines of code).
An Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis), the most endangered carnivore in Africa, licks nectar from a red hot poker flower (Kniphofia foliosa). Researchers caught this individual and five of its furry friends licking the flowers, coating their muzzles in the plant’s pollen. This suggests that the animals could have a role as pollinators. This has never been seen before in a large predator.
Spoiler Youtube :
These two ancient human relatives crossed paths 1.5 million years ago
Some 1.5 million years ago, two ancient species crossed paths on a lake shore in Kenya. Their footprints in the mud were frozen in time and lay undiscovered until 2021.
Now, analysis of the impressions reveals that they belonged to Homo erectus, a forebear of modern humans, and the more distant relative Paranthropus boisei. The two individuals walked through the lake area within hours or days of each other — leaving the first direct record of different archaic hominin species coexisting in the same place.
“This is the first snapshot we have of those two species living on the same immediate landscape, potentially interacting with one another,” says study co-author Kevin Hatala, a palaeoanthropologist at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The study was published in Science on 28 November.
The prints preserved details about the individuals, including the height of their foot arches, the shape of their toes and their walking patterns.
“It really is a snapshot in time,” says Tracy Kivell,a paleoanthropologist at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
“These fossilized footprints are as close as we are going to get to having a time-machine to take us back to an eastern African lakeshore 1.5 million years ago,” says Bernard Wood, a palaeoanthropologist at George Washington University in Washington DC.
Walking path
Previous studies, based mostly on the fossil record, have suggested that different hominin species lived alongside each other. But fossils are often scattered over large areas and their estimated dates span thousands of years. “You don’t know if they’re actually bumping into each other or not,” says Kivell.
In July 2021, researchers discovered multiple sets of ancient footprints at the Koobi Fora site in the East Turkana Area of Kenya, including a continuous path of impressions left by one hominin individual and isolated prints left by at least three others. The surface dates to 1.52 million years ago, and impressions of rippled sand, reed beds and fish nests suggest that the area was a lake shore with shallow water.
The path comprises 13 footprints. Hatala and his team estimated that the hominin that created it walked at 1.81 metres per second, similar to a modern human walking briskly.
Using 3D X-ray-based imaging techniques, the researchers studied how the motion of a foot shapes the tracks it leaves. They compared arch depth and toe angles in the hominin footprints with those of humans. The analysis suggests that the isolated footprints belong to individuals of H. erectus, thought to be the first human species to walk and run upright like modern humans.
The researchers attributed the continuous trail to an individual from the species Paranthropus boisei, which also seemed to walk upright. That species had a flatter foot and the position of its big toe changed from step to step. The big toe had a greater range of motion — able to angle outwards by up to 19 degrees in the right foot and nearly 16 degrees in the left foot — compared with human big toes, which extend outwards by up to about 10 degrees. “There’s a bit of mobility in the big toe that goes beyond what we see in modern people,” says Hatala.
Animal prints
The footprints of H. erectus and P. boisei are within metres of each other. “We can only assume they were aware of each other’s presence. Exactly how they interacted, or whether they learned from each other or what, that’s still a mystery,” says Wood.
Alongside the hominin footprints, the site contained preserved tracks from 30 relatives of cattle, three horse-like animals and 61 birds, including a giant extinct stork, Leptoptilos falconeri.
Hatala hopes to combine data from fossil footprints and bone fossils to “give a really high-resolution picture of what’s happening in this area during this phase of human evolution”.
Wood says that future studies could focus on the animals and birds. “That just brings the whole thing alive in a way that, with regular fossil evidence, it’s difficult to do.”
Paranthropus boisei
Homo erectus
Some 1.5 million years ago, two ancient species crossed paths on a lake shore in Kenya. Their footprints in the mud were frozen in time and lay undiscovered until 2021.
Now, analysis of the impressions reveals that they belonged to Homo erectus, a forebear of modern humans, and the more distant relative Paranthropus boisei. The two individuals walked through the lake area within hours or days of each other — leaving the first direct record of different archaic hominin species coexisting in the same place.
“This is the first snapshot we have of those two species living on the same immediate landscape, potentially interacting with one another,” says study co-author Kevin Hatala, a palaeoanthropologist at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The study was published in Science on 28 November.
The prints preserved details about the individuals, including the height of their foot arches, the shape of their toes and their walking patterns.
“It really is a snapshot in time,” says Tracy Kivell,a paleoanthropologist at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
“These fossilized footprints are as close as we are going to get to having a time-machine to take us back to an eastern African lakeshore 1.5 million years ago,” says Bernard Wood, a palaeoanthropologist at George Washington University in Washington DC.
Walking path
Previous studies, based mostly on the fossil record, have suggested that different hominin species lived alongside each other. But fossils are often scattered over large areas and their estimated dates span thousands of years. “You don’t know if they’re actually bumping into each other or not,” says Kivell.
In July 2021, researchers discovered multiple sets of ancient footprints at the Koobi Fora site in the East Turkana Area of Kenya, including a continuous path of impressions left by one hominin individual and isolated prints left by at least three others. The surface dates to 1.52 million years ago, and impressions of rippled sand, reed beds and fish nests suggest that the area was a lake shore with shallow water.
The path comprises 13 footprints. Hatala and his team estimated that the hominin that created it walked at 1.81 metres per second, similar to a modern human walking briskly.
Using 3D X-ray-based imaging techniques, the researchers studied how the motion of a foot shapes the tracks it leaves. They compared arch depth and toe angles in the hominin footprints with those of humans. The analysis suggests that the isolated footprints belong to individuals of H. erectus, thought to be the first human species to walk and run upright like modern humans.
The researchers attributed the continuous trail to an individual from the species Paranthropus boisei, which also seemed to walk upright. That species had a flatter foot and the position of its big toe changed from step to step. The big toe had a greater range of motion — able to angle outwards by up to 19 degrees in the right foot and nearly 16 degrees in the left foot — compared with human big toes, which extend outwards by up to about 10 degrees. “There’s a bit of mobility in the big toe that goes beyond what we see in modern people,” says Hatala.
Animal prints
The footprints of H. erectus and P. boisei are within metres of each other. “We can only assume they were aware of each other’s presence. Exactly how they interacted, or whether they learned from each other or what, that’s still a mystery,” says Wood.
Alongside the hominin footprints, the site contained preserved tracks from 30 relatives of cattle, three horse-like animals and 61 birds, including a giant extinct stork, Leptoptilos falconeri.
Hatala hopes to combine data from fossil footprints and bone fossils to “give a really high-resolution picture of what’s happening in this area during this phase of human evolution”.
Wood says that future studies could focus on the animals and birds. “That just brings the whole thing alive in a way that, with regular fossil evidence, it’s difficult to do.”
Paranthropus boisei
Homo erectus
Dark energy 'doesn't exist' so can't be pushing 'lumpy' Universe apart
Date
ecember 20, 2024Source:Royal Astronomical SocietySummary:One of the biggest mysteries in science -- dark energy -- doesn't actually exist, according to researchers looking to solve the riddle of how the Universe is expanding. For the past 100 years, physicists have generally assumed that the cosmos is growing equally in all directions. They employed the concept of dark energy as a placeholder to explain unknown physics they couldn't understand, but the contentious theory has always had its problems. Now a team of physicists and astronomers are challenging the status quo, using improved analysis of supernovae light curves to show that the Universe is expanding in a more varied, 'lumpier' way.
Dark energy 'doesn't exist' so can't be pushing 'lumpy' Universe apart
One of the biggest mysteries in science -- dark energy -- doesn't actually exist, according to researchers looking to solve the riddle of how the Universe is expanding. For the past 100 years, physicists have generally assumed that the cosmos is growing equally in all directions. They employed...
www.sciencedaily.com
This new interactive map lets you scroll through the universe
The map charts a broad expanse of the universe, from the Milky Way to 'the edge of what can be seen'
A new map of the universe displays for the first time the span of the entire known cosmos with pinpoint accuracy and sweeping beauty.Created by Johns Hopkins University astronomers with data mined over two decades by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the map allows the public to experience data previously only accessible to scientists.
The interactive map, which depicts the actual position and real colors of 200,000 galaxies, is available online, where it can also be downloaded for free.
This new interactive map lets you scroll through the universe
New map of the universe displays for the first time the span of the entire known cosmos with pinpoint accuracy, sweeping beauty
hub.jhu.edu
Germ line gene editing is now possible, and could revolutionise medicine? Eugenics comes to the clinic?
Heritable polygenic editing: the next frontier in genomic medicine?
Polygenic genome editing in human embryos and germ cells is predicted to become feasible in the next three decades. Several recent books and academic papers have outlined the ethical concerns raised by germline genome editing and the opportunities that it may present. To date, no attempts have been made to predict the consequences of altering specific variants associated with polygenic diseases.
In this Analysis, we show that polygenic genome editing could theoretically yield extreme reductions in disease susceptibility. For example, editing a relatively small number of genomic variants could make a substantial difference to an individual’s risk of developing coronary artery disease, Alzheimer’s disease, major depressive disorder, diabetes and schizophrenia. Similarly, large changes in risk factors, such as low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and blood pressure, could, in theory, be achieved by polygenic editing.
Although heritable polygenic editing (HPE) is still speculative, we completed calculations to discuss the underlying ethical issues. Our modelling demonstrates how the putatively positive consequences of gene editing at an individual level may deepen health inequalities. Further, as single or multiple gene variants can increase the risk of some diseases while decreasing that of others, HPE raises ethical challenges related to pleiotropy and genetic diversity. We conclude by arguing for a collectivist perspective on the ethical issues raised by HPE, which accounts for its effects on individuals, their families, communities and society.
Predicted change in phenotypic means and disease prevalence among the edited genomes.
Quantification of health inequality in a population that includes a fraction of genome-edited individuals.
Heritable polygenic editing: the next frontier in genomic medicine?
Polygenic genome editing in human embryos and germ cells is predicted to become feasible in the next three decades. Several recent books and academic papers have outlined the ethical concerns raised by germline genome editing and the opportunities that it may present. To date, no attempts have been made to predict the consequences of altering specific variants associated with polygenic diseases.
In this Analysis, we show that polygenic genome editing could theoretically yield extreme reductions in disease susceptibility. For example, editing a relatively small number of genomic variants could make a substantial difference to an individual’s risk of developing coronary artery disease, Alzheimer’s disease, major depressive disorder, diabetes and schizophrenia. Similarly, large changes in risk factors, such as low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and blood pressure, could, in theory, be achieved by polygenic editing.
Although heritable polygenic editing (HPE) is still speculative, we completed calculations to discuss the underlying ethical issues. Our modelling demonstrates how the putatively positive consequences of gene editing at an individual level may deepen health inequalities. Further, as single or multiple gene variants can increase the risk of some diseases while decreasing that of others, HPE raises ethical challenges related to pleiotropy and genetic diversity. We conclude by arguing for a collectivist perspective on the ethical issues raised by HPE, which accounts for its effects on individuals, their families, communities and society.
Predicted change in phenotypic means and disease prevalence among the edited genomes.
Spoiler Legend :
Quantification of health inequality in a population that includes a fraction of genome-edited individuals.
Spoiler Legend :
Batten disease needs to be on the list.
www.texaschildrens.org
https://www.ninds.nih.gov/health-information/disorders/neuronal-ceroid-lipofuscinosis-batten-disease
Batten Disease | Texas Children's
Snowygerry
Deity
Bestbank Tiger
Deity
Lunar bricks...
But why?
Hard to imagine it's worth the harvesting expense.
But why?
Hard to imagine it's worth the harvesting expense.
Broken_Erika
Play with me.
Probably cheaper and easier than shipping them from Earth though.
