You can look and feel better by keeping up a regular exercise schedule, but did you know that exercise also supports bone and muscle health? Locomotor fragility, which affects people who are unable to exercise, causes the muscles and bones to deteriorate. Recently, Japanese researchers discovered a new drug that, by producing effects comparable to those of exercise, may help treat locomotor frailty.

The muscles and bones can weaken due to physical inactivity, a condition known as sarcopenia (known as osteoporosis). Exercise dispels this frailty by boosting muscular strength and suppressing bone resorption while simultaneously promoting bone formation. Exercise therapy, however, cannot be used in every clinical situation. When patients have dementia, cerebrovascular disease, or are already bedridden, drug therapy may be very helpful for treating sarcopenia and osteoporosis.

However, there is no one drug that targets both tissues at the same time.

Researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) used a novel drug screening system in a recent study that was published in the journal Bone Research to identify a compound that replicates the changes in muscle and bone that arise from exercise. Using the screening system, the researchers discovered the aminoindazole derivative locamidazole (LAMZ). LAMZ has the ability to stimulate the growth of bone-forming osteoblasts and muscle cells while inhibiting the formation of osteoclasts, which break down bone.

LAMZ was successfully transmitted into the bloodstream of mice when administered orally, with no evident side effects. Takehito Ono, the study’s lead author, stated, “We were pleased to find that LAMZ-treated mice exhibited larger muscle fiber width, greater maximal muscle strength, a higher rate of bone formation, and lower bone resorption activity.”

The research team further addressed the mode of function of LAMZ and found that LAMZ mimics calcium and PGC-1α signaling pathways. These pathways are activated during exercise and stimulate the expression of downstream molecules that are involved in the maintenance of muscle and bone.

To investigate whether LAMZ can treat locomotor frailty, LAMZ was administrated to an animal model of sarcopenia and osteoporosis. “Both oral and subcutaneous administration of the drug improved the muscle and bone of mice with locomotor frailty,” says senior author Tomoki Nakashima.

Taken together, the research team’s findings show that LAMZ represents a potential therapeutic method for the treatment of locomotor frailty by mimicking exercise.

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The world’s biggest digital camera is finally coming into focus. While a very powerful personal camera might have megapixel resolution, astronomers have constructed a device that will image the distant universe with 3.2 gigapixel resolution. (A gigapixel is equivalent to 1,000 megapixels.)

That camera will be the workhorse for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s telescope, which has been in the works for about two decades but is nearly complete. At the end of September, scientists and technicians working in an enormous clean room at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California, finished assembling the sensitive camera’s mechanical components, and they are now moving ahead to its final pre-installation tests.

“In the combination of the camera’s giant focal plane and a 25-foot mirror to collect light, we are unparalleled,” says Aaron Roodman, an astrophysicist at SLAC and deputy director of the Rubin Observatory. He mentions that both the 5.5-foot lens, which comes with its own extra-large lens cap, and the focal plane are in the Guinness Book of World Records because of their extraordinary size.

Engineers will test the camera in about two months, and in May the team will put it on a chartered flight to the telescope’s site in the desert mountains of northern Chile. Scientists will conduct the telescope’s first imaging tests in the second half of 2023, and they're aiming for Rubin’s official debut, called “first light,” in March 2024.

That’s when the telescope will begin collecting 20 terabytes of data every night for 10 years. With it, scientists will build a vast map of the sky as seen from the southern hemisphere, including 20 billion galaxies and 17 billion stars in the Milky Way—a significant fraction of all galaxies in the universe and of all stars in our own galaxy, Roodman says. They’ll also amass images of 6 million asteroids and other objects in our solar system. Such a gigantic cosmic database would’ve been unthinkable until very recently.

It’s the opposite of the approach used for the Hubble or James Webb space telescopes, which zoom in to capture spectacular images of narrow slices of the heavens. Instead, Rubin will repeatedly scan the entire southern sky—about 18,000 square degrees—collecting data on every viewable object and imaging each area 825 times at a range of optical wavelengths. Rubin will also go deeper and chart more of the cosmos than its predecessors, like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and Dark Energy Survey.

That fire hose of valuable data will come thanks to this new, nearly 3-ton camera. Its imaging sensor is made up of more than 200 custom-designed charge-coupled devices (CCDs), and they’ll take images with six filters covering the optical electromagnetic spectrum, from violet to the edge of infrared.

The camera will image each piece of the sky every three days, providing snapshots that can be used together to examine faint or distant objects, or spot changing ones, such as supernova explosions and the paths of near-Earth asteroids and comets slowly moving in their orbits. “It’s making a 10-year color movie,” says Risa Wechsler, a Stanford University astrophysicist and member of the Rubin Observatory scientific advisory committee. “And in addition, it’s stacking the frames of that movie to get a really deep image. That will give us a map of all of the galaxies, which traces where all of the matter is, which is mostly dark matter. We’ll see what the universe looked like billions of years ago and learn more about what dark matter is.”

Wechsler and her colleagues will also take advantage of the huge maps to study the expansion of the universe, investigate the Milky Way’s structure and its history, and probe the hidden skeleton of dark matter particles that are holding all the galaxies together. However, the third dimension of those 3D maps of the universe—the distance from Earth—will be uncertain, making them slightly fuzzy. But the researchers are prepared for that challenge, Wechsler says.

The Rubin team will release this data to the scientific community—which includes some 10,000 users—as soon as the images are processed, and they'll send out nightly alerts about objects that move or vary in brightness, so others can track the trajectories of nearby asteroids, for example.

The massive telescope, funded by the US National Science Foundation and Department of Energy, is named after astronomer Vera Rubin. In the 1960s and '70s, she used telescopes in Arizona to map out the spiral arms of stars of nearby galaxies. The rapid orbits of those stars—too rapid, if the stars were the only thing there—revealed a dilemma: Either there was hidden matter somewhere, or gravity works differently than physicists previously thought when it comes to the vast scales of a galaxy. Though Rubin was snubbed for a Nobel prize, her discovery led to research on dark matter.

Calling it the Rubin Observatory was a notable choice—it’s the first national observatory to be named after a woman. (The choice, announced in early 2020, has been popular and avoided the pitfalls of the Webb telescope, whose namers were criticized for honoring James Webb, a former NASA chief who was accused of enforcing discriminatory and homophobic policies at the agency in the 1950s and ’60s.)

But before Roodman and the rest of the team can pack up the camera to send it to Chile, they need to finish up their work in SLAC’s giant clean room, where technicians wear Tyvek “bunny suits” covering their hair, clothes, skin, and shoes. They must wipe down equipment they bring near the camera to ensure no stray strand of hair or dust grain falls on a sensor and diminishes its capabilities.

Their final testing regime includes checking the filters, the sensors, and the refrigeration systems needed for cooling them. After that, they’ll carefully package the camera, lens, filters, and the camera stand, and fly directly from San Francisco to Santiago on a Boeing 747 freighter jet. From there, it will be a short drive to the telescope, where the camera’s components will be reintegrated. And then those billions of cosmic objects await.

A New 3,200-Megapixel Camera Has Astronomers Salivating

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Nepenthes (pronounced neh-PEN-theeze) is a genus of pitcher plants typically found in Southeast Asia, Australia, and Madagascar. The plants produce vase-shaped contraptions that grow from emerald leaves fanning off a vine, each one topped with a mouthlike opening and shielded from the rain by an umbrella lid. The pitchers secrete a sweet nectar that insects find irresistible and inebriating. After a sip or two, sugar-drunk bugs stumble into the mouths and fall to their doom, landing in a pool of digestive juices enclosed by walls so slippery that even the stickiest-footed fly can’t escape. The drowned corpses slowly dissolve, and the pitchers absorb their nutrients like a stomach, allowing Nepenthes plants to grow in nutrient-poor soils. It’s this macabre survival strategy that makes the plants so bizarrely beautiful, and so coveted by hobbyists.

Nepenthes pitchers come fuzzy, spotted, and striped; petite, lanky, and globous. One type makes traps the size of a human head and eats rodent feces—and the rodents, if they’re not careful. Another has hooked black fangs ringing its maw, as if Mother Nature commissioned H. R. Giger to design a plant. All the rage in the Victorian era, Nepenthes have made a comeback in the world of houseplant collecting in recent years, accelerated by a combination of increased availability and a burst of plant lust on the part of stuck-at-home, social media–fueled urbanites decking out their abodes with potted greenery. (Seventy percent of millennials, according to one survey, identify as “plant parents.”)

But buyers beware: Nepenthes collecting—as I’d eventually learn almost too well—is next-level stuff. There’s a lot more to these plants than fertilizer and YouTube how-tos. They’re botanical prima donnas, liable to walk out on life without notice if their specific needs aren’t met. And your new hobby will shove you into a strange world. There’s something dark in the pits of those pitchers, and it’s not the rotting bugs. If you fall in, you may land in an acidic soup of crime, addiction, and existential angst.

Mat Orchard thought he could handle Nepenthes. They nearly ate him alive.

Nepenthes pitchers come fuzzy, spotted, and striped; petite, lanky, and globous.

Photograph: Zen Sekizawa

Mat had never looked twice at a plant before. An Australian national, he spent most of his childhood in the US collecting turtles and obsessing over snakes in library books. He considered himself an animal guy. Then, in 2011, after he’d started college at Portland State University, his friend bought a pitcher plant from a farmers market. Mat beheld it with wonder. Its elegant little pitchers ate and digested flesh—just like him. Mat wanted one of his own. Or two. Before long he had three. Lining them up on a table in his college apartment, he felt a euphoric fixation. “I can get a little weird about collections,” Mat recalls warning his girlfriend at the time.

Now that he had the Neps, Mat needed to care for them. He found online forums dedicated to carnivorous plants, where experienced hobbyists shared grow tips and pictures of their prized beauties. There were more than 160 species, he discovered, each of them collectible. As he learned more and more, his table of plants overflowed with new specimens, so Mat bought shelves. These plants were fussy, with particular climate requirements and painfully slow growth rates, but that’s what made them so exclusive, so niche. Mat relished the challenge. He visited other growers’ greenhouses, taking note of their expensive climate-control setups. Giant specimens of strange and rare species with teeth and stripes and pitchers that could swallow a human arm filled their collections. These were the sort of Nepenthes that would spark the envy of other growers on the forums. Mat wanted his own, but he’d have to step up his game.  

Over the next two years, his 650-square-foot apartment transformed into a greenhouse. Fluorescent lights and a grow tent crowded his living room. The industrial humidifier he installed flooded the apartment with mist. To water his plants, he ran a hose every few days from the kitchen sink to his grow tent, soaked the pots, then hand-siphoned the water back out of their trays. “It was a pain in the ass,” Mat tells me, but he did it to keep their roots from rotting. Whenever he wasn’t caring for or staring at his collection, Mat was on his computer reading about Nepenthes, daydreaming about them. Originally interested in majoring in English or history, he instead pursued a degree in biology with a focus on botany. “Because that’s all I could think about,” he says. The switch added at least a year to his education and inflated his student loan debt.

Carnivorous plant nurseries charge hundreds, occasionally thousands of dollars for desirable species. These expensive specimens are often tiny, decades shy of Instagrammable maturity. If Mat was going to collect with the best of them, he’d need a cheaper source. So when a fellow hobbyist shared an eBay listing for a fairly priced Nepenthes rigidifolia—an extremely rare species that few collectors grow—Mat was intrigued. The vendor lived in Indonesia, where N. rigidifolia comes from. Mat’s research had taught him that importing plants without the proper certificates was illegal, but the seller assured him everything would work out fine. Mat clicked Buy It Now.

When the package arrived without issue, the vendor turned Mat on to the Facebook Nepenthes community. If the forums were the farmers markets of carnivorous plant collecting, Facebook was its Amazon. Southeast Asian sellers posted literal piles of rare Nepenthes species for sale, often far larger than nursery plants and at a fraction of the price. His collecting went into overdrive. “It just blew my mind,” Mat says. “All these people who had these amazing plants, I realized, were ordering them from people internationally. And this is the way they were able to acquire these things without completely breaking the bank.”

As his home life came to revolve around his collection, so did Mat’s social circle. The growers he met on the forums became real-life friends. He founded a carnivorous plant club in Portland and invited anyone who wanted to attend—his classmates, old-timer collectors. At one meeting in November 2013, a new collector showed up and introduced himself as Jimmy. A white man with sandy blond hair and a “sunken” face, Mat says, Jimmy “kinda looked like a hunter … one of those off-the-grid types.” Jimmy was friendly, but to Mat he seemed nervous, “furtive.” Theft is common among jealous Nepenthes collectors, and Mat suspected Jimmy was scoping the growers’ collections, searching for a mark. But Jimmy asked a lot of entry-level questions, and Mat soon pegged him as an awkward Nepenthes noob trying to learn more about the hobby. Mat gave him a chance. He told Jimmy to look up pictures of Nepenthes rajah, a giant species that makes gallon-sized traps. “I have those, I grow them,” Mat boasted.

Two months later, Jimmy tagged along with a handful of enthusiasts to Mat’s apartment to see his collection. Mat complained that a Nepenthes shipment had arrived infected with fungus, and now he’d never be able to resell them. Jimmy snapped a photo of the infested plants. It wasn’t the first time Mat had received Neps in rough shape. In some cases, it was because he’d bought them from Borneo—the source.

As he had connected with more sellers from Malaysia and Indonesia, some of his orders had arrived tattered, fresh dirt and moss still clinging to their roots. Horticulturally produced Nepenthes don’t typically come with the patchy, sunburnt leaves these plants had. They looked as if they’d come straight from the unforgiving rain forests where they grew naturally—and where they were protected by local and international law. Mat wasn’t just importing plants illegally. He was importing illegal plants.

Soon after this realization, he received an envelope from the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The feds had seized one of his packages from Malaysia, a shipment of 35 plants, including at least one N. rajah, which falls under the tightest restrictions on internationally traded wildlife, alongside leopards, pandas, and various species of orchid. When Mat asked more experienced growers about the letter, they assured him it was no big deal. They’d lost shipments to the feds before, too. The worst that could happen was a fine, maybe a warning visit from a federal agent. 

At this point, it didn’t matter. He couldn’t stop.

Mat’s girlfriend had begun fronting him rent money after he blew it on plants—most from reputable nurseries, yes, but some not. She repeatedly asked him to stop buying Nepenthes, but another box would always arrive in the mail. Paranoid that a power outage could doom his collection, Mat avoided going on vacation. Even in the dead of winter, he opened his windows before bed to ensure the nightly temperature drops his plants needed. Mat lay awake in the cold, thinking about his collection. “Everything was geared toward the growing environment for the plants, regardless of how I felt, or how other people felt,” he says. “You’re not complete unless you have this next species.”

On any social media platform today you’ll find countless plant collectors who have fallen for Nepenthes’ clever traps. Instagram influencers pose nude with their priceless collections and give live greenhouse tours to adoring fans. Growers post pictures of the Styrofoam McMansions and converted wine coolers they’ve built to house their pretties, equal parts engineering feats and eyesores. Dozens of Facebook groups adopt names flaunting their obsessions (Nepenthes Hoarders Anonymous, The Nepenthes Religion, NEPENTHES ONLY). The hobbyists, who are mostly men, often joke that their wives have threatened to leave them over their collecting. Some might be serious. One Nepenthes nursery owner told me he’d seen collectors dig themselves into trenches of credit card debt and even turn to theft in order to feed their addictions. (He asked not to be identified for fear of alienating his customers.)

I know the allure of Nepenthes collecting well. In my late twenties, as I transitioned from itchy-footed drifter to anchored student, my girlfriend insisted I buy some decorative plants for my new bedroom. So I begrudgingly bought a small clutch of Home Depot succulents. Moderation has never been my strength, and I quickly became hooked. I bought my first Nepenthes from a local garden store, fascinated by its otherworldliness. That first one soon became a windowsill collection, then a 50-gallon tank full of plants. I pumped cold night air into the room where I kept them, just like Mat. I even forbade two out-of-town guests from running the heater when they slept in there. I stubbornly explained the importance of cold nighttime temperatures as I closed the door to their icebox of a bedroom. Eventually, I built a small greenhouse in my backyard and filled it with pitcher plants.

To my knowledge, I have never bought a poached Nepenthes. But it’s impossible to know for sure. I’ve impulsively purchased plants I couldn’t afford, then sulked in shame at my intemperance. I couldn’t resist the thrill of clicking Buy It Now, of unwrapping a new plant from its box and placing it just so within my collection. Between purchases, I compared plant prices and researched, researched, researched. I was so obsessed with Nepenthes that I decided to write my graduate school thesis about the world of pitcher-plant collecting. It’s the story you’re reading now.

As I tumbled into this world, I found a group of fellow plant dorks, dorking out. Many collectors were kind and accepting, and some were vocally against poaching. But after I had explored the community further, sifting through the rumors of scams, theft, and sabotage, I began to understand its dark truth: Ignorant and uncaring collectors were quickly eradicating their favorite species in the wild. Poaching threatens almost a fifth of the genus, according to one recent ecological survey, and 13 species have nearly vanished from the rain forests. The problem has only gotten worse, according to Adam Cross, a coauthor of the survey, as demand remains strong and it becomes easier to access formerly secluded Nepenthes populations. If this isn’t addressed, Cross says, “these species could be extinct in five or 10 years—or sooner.”

Some are already there. When Mat bought his N. rigidifolia on eBay in 2012, that species still existed in the wild. Today it’s most likely extinct, living only in collectors’ greenhouses. Many species grow on one or two mountaintops—nowhere else—and reproduce so slowly that poachers can devastate an entire species in a single visit. Poaching has gotten so bad that Cross’ colleagues have stopped announcing when they discover new populations of endangered Nepenthes. “If they shared even a photo of the habitat online, the plants would be gone,” he says. Collectors’ “primal desire” to own these plants has turned them into the grim reapers of their own obsession.

For his part, Mat vaguely understood the damage he was causing, but it didn’t stop him spiraling. Jimmy seemed to be following in his footsteps. He kept asking Mat’s opinion of this or that Nepenthes seller. Many were clearly poachers. In an act of cognitive dissonance Mat can’t explain, he warned Jimmy against buying illicit Nepenthes. “Aside from being illegal, you have no guarantee that you will even get the plants,” he wrote to Jimmy in a Facebook message in July 2014. Within two months, Mat had arranged to import two more shipments of poached Nepenthes, including more N. rajahs. And with each order he placed, a 7,000-mile-long Rube Goldberg machine whirred to life, carrying plants from the soggy jungles of Malaysian Borneo as they tumbled into poacher’s backpacks, flopped onto tiled floors, and bounced around damp shipping boxes on their journey across the Pacific Ocean.

It took three days of flying, a day of driving, and two days of guided hiking up a forested mountain to find the wild Nepenthes. As a small group of us slopped through shin-high mud toward the summit this past August, the clouds encircled Mt. Trusmadi, turning Malaysia’s second-highest peak into an island. Dawn light had just begun to creep through the dripping trees, silhouetting the pitchers dangling like wind chimes from the mossy branches.

In the serenity of this golden-hour fairy tale, we stumbled onto a crime scene.

I found the yellowing Nepenthes leaf on the ground. Its stem ended abruptly in a diagonal line. Probably just a ranger clearing the trail, my guides Maik Miki and Jesseca Liew assured me. But 10 paces down the path, we discovered the body: several hacked chunks of a Nepenthes macrophylla strewn in the mud, likely abandoned by the poachers as they rushed to leave the scene. The stems of each piece had been chopped in the same diagonal lines. Later, Jesseca found the desiccated remains of an enormous N. macrophylla hanging from the branches above. Maik estimated the plant had been at least 100 years old. This critically endangered species, coveted by collectors for the red fangs that line its pitcher mouths, had been cut at ground level, the reachable segments of its stalk removed and its remaining pitchers left to shrivel into gray husks. 

“We were here last July and they were green,” Jesseca said, photographing the dead plant. She would need to file a report. Members of her tribe, the Dusun, work with the local forestry department to safeguard local wildlife, but it’s impossible to patrol all 8.9 million acres of protected rain forest. Back at basecamp, Maik told stories of previous run-ins with poachers armed with axes. They’re difficult to catch because they avoid hiking trails and travel at night, he said. Authorities in Southeast Asia have publicized several high-profile Nepenthes smuggling busts in recent years. But the poachers aren’t the problem, Maik said. He constantly has to instruct his Nepenthes-enthusiast clients not to collect seeds on hikes. The forestry service randomly searches visitors’ bags for poached specimens. There is nothing it can do, though, to prevent collectors from buying poached plants online. “Hopefully they will stop,” Maik said with a weary smile.

Nearly everyone I interviewed for this story pointed to collectors as the prime drivers of the Nepenthes train wreck. The poachers themselves are just the crossties under the tracks, they said. Still, I wanted to learn why someone would poach plants, and whether they saw themselves as the machete-wielding arms of the Western extinction machine. So when an American Nepenthes nursery owner tipped me off that a Malaysian man had recently tried to sell him poached plants, I reached out and, after a series of awkwardly translated WhatsApp messages, arranged a meeting with a professional poacher whom I’ll call Syah. (He spoke on the condition that his real name not be used.)

A few days later, I watched a hand-rolled cigarette bounce haphazardly from the corner of Syah’s mouth as he explained his poaching process. It was all very simple, he said via an interpreter: Go into the forest. Find the plants. Ship the plants. Pay the bills. From the same tribe as Jesseca and Maik, Syah lives in a village on the shoulder of Mt. Kinabalu—home to several desirable Nepenthes species. 

Syah lost his job back in 2015. Even with steady work, it’s not easy to support a handful of kids and a wife in Borneo, so he turned to the family business. Most of his village poaches exotic plants, he said, to supplement earnings from the local rubber plantations. Syah’s brother-in-law taught him the basics, and he soon earned more as a poacher than he’d ever made through legal employment. Today, he estimates that 80 percent of his income is from poaching Nepenthes and orchids; all of his business comes from Facebook. 

When a buyer submits an order, Syah looks up where the species grows online. Then he packs some food, a frying pan, matches, and a bolt of canvas, and drives to the edge of the forest. Some of his orders are a 50- to 100-kilometer hike into the jungle, but Syah often walks off-trail, camping out among the venomous creatures and barbed plants to evade the rangers who patrol the protected forests. He brings a machete for protection against snakes and bears. (He hasn’t had to use it yet, but you never know.) When he finds the plants he’s after, Syah uproots and bags them, then hikes home. During our interview, he showed me a recent harvest of young N. villosa plants taken from the national park near his village. Nursery-grown specimens of this size could fetch thousands of dollars each in the United States. Syah makes $35 per plant.

If caught with them, he faces fines, or worse. Two men from a neighboring village recently received a six- to 12-month prison sentence for Nepenthes poaching, he told me. Syah fears being arrested himself. He also knows that his business imperils plant populations, but his kids need school supplies. “As long as there’s an order, I will go into the forest,” he said. 

After Syah completes his role, the poached Nepenthes head to the post office, where they travel down one of two routes—straight to a collector, or to an intermediary who acclimates the plants to greenhouse conditions before marking them up and reselling them. Syah claims he has sent some of his orders to a Taiwanese Nepenthes fence named Alfie Chiang. Alfie’s online shop sells some of the world’s most sought-after species at shockingly low prices. A 2021 price list from his online store shows 2-inch N. edwardsiana seedlings priced at $120, a fifth of what they’d fetch in a US nursery. Anti-poaching advocates have posted screenshots of an alleged damning Facebook conversation between Alfie and a Nepenthes collector. In it, he brags that the children of a poacher he employs would “eat dirt” if he didn’t pay him to poach plants. Alfie claims these screenshots are faked, that he does not purchase poached plants, and that he has never met Syah.

Whichever route they take, pitcher plants face the most precarious leg of their journey in the mail. Any delay in the shipping can doom a thirsty Nep. To sneak the packages through customs, poachers label them as “gifts” instead of declaring the plants. It often works. Most shipments arrive on the doorsteps of Nep-heads all over the world without a hitch. These plants often die soon afterward. The stress of being shipped across the globe proves too much, or the buyer lacks the skills and equipment needed to keep them alive. Those that survive get traded and sold until there’s no telling where they came from. Private collections swell while wild populations shrink.

Federal inspectors do snag the occasional illicit Nepenthes shipment. They certainly found one of Mat’s when his box of 35 Nepenthes arrived at a Los Angeles mail inspection facility in 2013, fungus-ridden and limp after their journey from Malaysia. Mat had eventually shrugged it off, but the feds hadn’t.

On April 26, 2016, the day it all ended, Mat was running late for work, so he barely noticed the strangely dressed men standing across the street when he took the dog out. The pounding started while he was in the shower. His door rattled in its frame. When he finally answered it, Jimmy was there. He wore a bulletproof vest and had a gun, Mat remembers. This wasn’t Jimmy the Nep-head—this was Special Agent Jimmy Barna of the Fish and Wildlife Service. He handed Mat a search warrant as seven more federal agents entered the apartment. 

Jimmy had been undercover since 2013. Over two and a half years, he had photographed Mat’s apartment and his plants, secretly recorded some of his club meetings, and dropped hints that he wanted Mat’s advice on how to buy poached plants. He’d even been monitoring Mat’s emails, recording his transactions with poachers around the world. Mat sat dazed on his bed for 10 hours as the federal agents swarmed his apartment, questioning him, seizing his electronics and grow equipment. The same morning, agents visited the California and Michigan homes of hobbyists Mat had conducted business with. The feds raided the home of a third collector in Massachusetts a week later. Special Agent Barna believed these individuals were all part of Mat’s plant-smuggling operation, and confiscated their plants too. The agents took an estimated 380 plants from Mat’s apartment (though he claims there were fewer). He recalls watching, helpless, as the agents carried away a piece of himself. “My entire ego had been built out of these plants,” he tells me. “When those were taken away, I was left free-falling. I felt like I had been stripped of my soul.”

After the agents left, Mat broke down. Depression set in as the months passed and the court case loomed closer. He drank heavily, and his relationship with his girlfriend crumbled. He was charged with violating the Lacey Act and faced a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison and a $20,000 fine. Mat took a plea deal. Family and friends sent the court a deluge of letters in support of Mat. He read a heartfelt allocution to the judge, who turned out to be sympathetic and gave Mat three years’ probation and a $100 court fee. As part of his sentence, he was forbidden to purchase Nepenthes during his probation. By the end of the trial, most of Mat’s plants had died. Many of them were thrown into a dumpster. The rest were incinerated.

“It’s a really horrible feeling knowing that an obsession could lead to, potentially, the destruction of something you genuinely love,” he says. “That quiet admiration for the plants can turn into avarice. It does something to you.” It took years of therapy and dialing in medications for Mat to address the underlying mental health issues that had almost certainly aggravated his addiction. Looking back, he thinks getting caught helped him get the treatment he needed. Mat moved away from Portland and started a new life. He gave up collecting altogether. 

Nepenthes represent an enormous challenge for botanic conservationists: How do you convince collectors to get worked up about saving plants across the globe when they can have them all to themselves at home? Part of the issue is that most people don’t care much about wild plants—including many plant nerds. Humans’ threat modeling tells us to treat animals like the furniture in a room and plants like the wallpaper. We’re so focused on the chairs, we don’t notice the peeling walls. Botanists even have a term for this: plant blindness. Nepenthes collectors are blind not to the plants themselves, but to their own eradication campaign.

Nepenthes influencers didn’t have tens of thousands of Instagram followers when Mat was a collector. They do now—even as more and more species are closer than ever to extinction. Today, citizen crime fighters on Facebook post callouts of poachers and their customers, rally sympathetic collectors to report poached eBay listings, and preach about the evils of poaching. It may not be enough. Mat has words of caution. “Look at my example as a warning,” he says. “Owning these things, it’s never gonna satisfy you. There’s always gonna be something else. Always.”

Back home, I stepped into my greenhouse, surrounded by my plants. The more I learned about the world of Nepenthes collecting, the more I wondered whether my collection was indefensible. I picked up my own baby N. macrophylla—bred sustainably, I’m told—and ran my finger along the teeth of its pinky-sized pitchers. Even as I’d held the dead remains of this plant’s elders on Mt. Trusmadi, I couldn’t stop thinking about this one. I still loved this little plant, adored its newest leaf (so big!). It was my plant. Mine.

Am I a monster? Maybe. Addicted to collecting? Definitely. Carnivorous plant nurseries are hard at work growing their wares in laboratories, trying to find ways to mass-produce what is quickly disappearing. If collectors can just get past their obsession with having mature, unique plants, Nep shops might be able to artificially produce the most popular species fast enough to meet demand.

Regardless, I don’t know whether I’ll ever buy another Nep. Who can sleep with the ethical conundrum of an active pitcher plant hobby? I collect vinyl now. See you at the record store.

Reporting for this story was made possible with a grant from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

When a Houseplant Obsession Becomes a Nightmare

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As early as 2025, NASA’s astronauts will be back on the moon. It will be the first return since the 1970s, and the first time humans will explore the moon’s south polar region. What they find there could change the course of lunar exploration.

They will be investigating areas inside deep craters where the sun never rises above the surrounding walls. In these permanently shadowed regions, frigid temperatures may have persisted long enough to have trapped water, frozen below the surface. Such ice could potentially be used as drinking water and as a source of fuel, helping future explorers spend longer periods on the lunar surface.

But before any of this can happen, NASA needs to select a safe landing site with navigable routes to these potential water deposits. It has drawn up a short list of places to touch down, using high-resolution models of the lunar surface. Now, there is a new tool that could help determine which is best. Researchers have developed an additional, novel way of creating 3D maps of the moon’s surface that could offer increased assurance of the actual terrain that explorers and rovers will encounter.

The approach is rooted in a technique that has been used for approximately 50 years: using shadows to reveal the topography of the moon’s surface, such as changes in elevation within craters or the steepness of slopes.

“It’s natural for our eyes to see the shapes and forms of objects when we look at shadows,” says Iris Fernandes, a geophysicist at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen and lead author of the study detailing the new technique. This system of terrain modeling essentially does the same but uses multiple shadowed images of an area, data on the incoming angle of the light in each satellite image, and elevation data to build a 3D model of what’s casting the shadows in those pictures.

For example, shadowed images of a crater taken at different times, when sunlight hits the terrain at different angles, can be used to work out, for instance, that the crater’s wall must have a 20-degree incline to produce the shadows observed.

Traditionally, to use this shadow technique, some assumptions need to be made about what the terrain looks like. Then an initial rough elevation model is created using the technique and repeatedly improved until it matches the shadowed images to an acceptable degree of accuracy. “This trial and error can take a long time,” says Fernandes.

In their new method, Fernandes and her colleague Klaus Mosegaard worked around this by solving an equation that relates the angles of incoming sunlight and the shape of the terrain. This is the first time that anyone has produced a topographic model using this equation. The result is that the new approach doesn’t require any prior assumptions about the terrain, and produces high-resolution terrain maps in one try, making it faster than existing methods. This is a big advantage when building terrain models for multiple areas.

The team tested their approach on an area centered in the Mare Ingenii, a region on the far side of the moon. They fed the algorithm the angles of incoming sunlight from photographs containing shadows taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)—a satellite that continuously circles the moon, capturing information—along with elevation data collected by its laser altimeter. The resulting high-resolution terrain model matched the shadowed photographs to a high degree of accuracy, and vastly improved the elevation resolution. The elevation data gathered by the LRO’s laser altimeter has a resolution of 60 meters per pixel; the new method’s final terrain model had a resolution of 0.9 meters per pixel. This meant that craters with diameters as small as three meters became identifiable. “It’s a different approach for understanding the topography of the moon that could help prepare for future human and robotic exploration,” says Noah Petro, a planetary geologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center who wasn’t involved in the research.

The LRO has been orbiting the moon since 2009, collecting data that has been used to create a digital terrain model that covers 98 percent of the moon’s surface. This is the base map that any higher-resolution terrain models, such as the one from the new study, are placed on. Together, such high-resolution maps are the foundation for planning trips to the surface. Landing sites need to be flat with no boulders. Travel routes to and from craters ideally shouldn’t be steep, so that they can be navigated by rovers.

High-resolution maps of the lunar landscape can be used to model light conditions too. Predicting when and where to expect shadows and sunlight is crucial for planning upcoming missions, says Paul Hayne, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. Potential landing sites will need to receive solar radiation for at least part of the day to recharge instruments and rovers. Sunlit areas directly adjacent to craters could also be useful, because exploring shadowed regions may take time, meaning rovers might need to be recharged as soon as they exit a crater.

A more detailed understanding of the terrain can also help NASA decide which permanently shadowed regions to target when searching for water ice. For example, the steepness of crater walls can provide insight into how long ago the crater formed and whether the shadows and temperatures could have persisted for long enough for water ice to be present. “We often need highly accurate terrain models to turn a snapshot into a time history, to find the cold-traps where ice might be stable for long periods,” says Hayne.

And on top of all this, the new imaging approach should also help with navigation. Rovers need to be able to travel along precisely calculated routes. Onboard motion detectors can help rovers navigate, but sensor and estimation errors can add up over large distances, causing vehicles to drift off course. One way to overcome this is to have rovers use onboard cameras to create high-resolution terrain models on their own, and then pinpoint their location relative to known features and adjust their path accordingly, says Martin Schuster, a robotics scientist at the German Aerospace Center’s Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics. “Matching local terrain models to externally created high-resolution models, like the one produced in the new study, can help rovers localize,” he says. If the resolution of previously created terrain maps is too low, staying on path can be more difficult.

The moon is a quarter of a million miles from Earth. Getting there is difficult, and if astronauts experience unexpected issues on the surface, they will be limited in how they can respond. Anticipating what terrain features explorers and rovers will encounter is therefore extremely important—and could even be lifesaving. Finding the best, most accurate ways to map the moon’s surface is an integral part of mission preparation. “We want to use all available data to tell us everything we can about the places we want to explore,” says Petro.

A Clever Way to Map the Moon’s Surface—Using Shadows

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Federal health authorities say they are looking into whether the scientists should have sought their permission before undertaking research that could lead to a "gain of function" in the virus gaining new or enhanced abilities, which can be "inherently risky."

And locally, a spokesperson for the Boston Public Health Commission says it is now reviewing application materials from the study's scientists "to confirm that the research was conducted in conformity with protocols, and that they were properly overseen."

The commission approved a proposed research protocol submitted by the scientists in March 2020, the spokesperson said.

However, Boston University says its research followed "all required regulatory obligations and protocols" to safely experiment with the viruses.

"Before anything is done in the [National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories], it goes through multiple layers of careful safety review and this is done through committees that are part of Boston University and also committees that are outside of, independent of, BU," Robert Davey, a professor at Boston University's National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories, said in a statement.

The scientists were studying what role the Omicron variant's highly-mutated spike protein might play in its generally milder severity compared to previous waves.

Mice were exposed to "chimeric recombinant" versions created by the scientists, which carried the Omicron variant's spike protein combined with the "backbone" of the original strain. Similar kinds of recombinant variants have evolved in the wild.

Their findings were released Friday as a preprint that has yet to be peer-reviewed. The NIH's scrutiny was first reported by Stat News.

Though NIH money was not directly sought for the experiments, the agency is probing whether it may have still been subject to their grants policy.

The experiments may have also required clearance first by the federal government's rules governing experiments that could lead to a "gain of function" in the virus, the NIH said. This kind of research is supposed to be vetted by a group of experts convened by the federal government before it can be funded.

However, Boston University says it "did not have an obligation to disclose this research" to the NIH.

While funding from the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was acknowledged by the scientists in their paper, Boston University said the grants were only for "tools and platforms" used by the scientists .

"NIAID funding was acknowledged because it was used to help develop the tools and platforms that were used in this research; they did not fund this research directly. NIH funding was also acknowledged for a shared instrumentation grant that helped support the pathology studies," Rachel Lapal Cavallario, a spokesperson for the university, said in a statement.

News of the NIH's probe follows coverage of the Boston University research first in the Daily Mail. The university had denounced the tabloid for sensationalizing their research, with "false and inaccurate" reporting that took their findings out of context.

For example, those early reports on the findings highlighted that 80% of infected mice died after scientists infected the animals with the recombinant strain, while none died after being exposed to the Omicron variant.

The university points out that the original variant led to 100% of the mice dying, meaning that their recombinant virus was made effectively "less dangerous."

If there were any signs the viruses they created for their experiments were "gaining function," the scientists would have "immediately" stopped and reported their research, Lapal Cavallario said.

The research was also conducted in the university's "BSL-3" lab. That is the second-highest tier of precautions scientists can take when studying viruses, short of those taken for studying the most dangerous pathogens "for which no vaccine or therapy is available."

"We take our safety and security of how we handle pathogens seriously, and the virus does not leave the laboratory in which it's being studied," Ronald Corley, director of Boston University's NEIDL, said in a statement.

The study's lead author, Mohsan Saeed, and other experts have cited other research that have performed similar kinds of experiments without controversy.

One study co-authored by Food and Drug Administration researchers over the summer also generated "chimeric viruses" with the Omicron and ancestral strains to test on mice.

"In this case, we are interested in understanding viral genes or factors or mutations that attenuate SARS-CoV-2 so that we can use the knowledge to design live attenuated viral vaccines," FDA spokesperson Abby Capobianco said in a statement.

The FDA's internal research review committees approved the work, Capobianco said. The work was deemed not to be so-called "P3CO" research, which would have triggered a review before experiments that may "create, transfer, or use" enhanced potential pandemic pathogens (ePPP).

The Boston University preprint comes amid scrutiny of the federal government's policies governing ePPP research, which are in the midst of a review by an NIH working group.

"It is concerning that this research – like the research in Wuhan that may have caused the pandemic – was not identified by the funding agency as possible ePPP research," Rutgers University Professor Richard Ebright wrote on Twitter.

Ebright and others also disputed the university's claim that the research was not a "gain of function" experiment.

"First, these are unquestionably gain-of-function experiments. As many have noted, this is a very broad term encompassing many harmless and some potentially dangerous experiments," Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at Harvard University and key official in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's forecasting arm, said Wednesday on Twitter.

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The study, published in the journal Science Advances, provides new insight into the neurobiological mechanisms by which mindfulness treats addiction. Study findings provide a promising, safe and accessible treatment option for the more than 9 million Americans misusing opioids. Eric Garland is the lead author of the paper and is a distinguished professor and associate dean for research at the University of Utah College of Social Work. He also directs the University of Utah's Center on Mindfulness and Integrative Health Intervention Development.

Garland's study builds on previous research measuring the positive effects of theta waves in the human brain. Researchers have found that individuals with low theta waves tend to experience a wandering mind, trouble concentrating or they ruminate on thoughts about themselves. Theta waves can best be viewed on electroencephalogram, or EEG, scans of the frontal midline regions of their brains. Low theta waves result in a loss of self-control as the brain slips into its default mode of automatic habits. In contrast, when a person is focused, present and fully absorbed in a task, EEG scans will show increased frontal midline theta wave activity.

"With high theta activity, your mind becomes very quiet, you focus less on yourself and become so deeply absorbed in what you are doing that the boundary between yourself and the thing you are focusing on starts to fade away. You lose yourself in what you are doing," said Garland.

Garland's new study showed it is in this mindful, theta wave state that people begin to experience feelings of self-transcendence and bliss, and the brain changes in ways that actually reduce one's addictive behaviors.

Garland's research team recruited 165 adults with long-term opioid use for the study. Participants were randomly placed into either the control group that participated in supportive group psychotherapy or the experimental group taught to incorporate Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) into their daily lives. Before and after the eight weeks of study treatment, all participants were brought into the research lab and had their brain waves measured with EEG while they were asked to try to practice mindfulness meditation. Participants were assessed for opioid misuse for nine months after the treatment ended.

MORE is an eight-week, mindfulness-based therapy created by Garland to treat addiction, pain and emotional distress by promoting self-awareness and self-regulation of automatic and addictive habits. In a large clinical trial recently published in Science Advances, MORE was shown to reduce opioid misuse by 45%, more than doubling the effect of standard therapy.

Study participants in the MORE group learned to practice mindfulness meditation by focusing their attention on their breath or body sensations for sustained periods of time and refocusing their attention when their minds began to wander into obsessive thinking about drugs or life stressors.

Participants showed more than twice as much frontal midline theta brain activity following treatment with MORE, whereas those in supportive therapy showed no increase in theta. Participants in MORE who showed the biggest increases in theta waves reported more intense experiences of self-transcendence during meditation, including the sense of one's ego fading away, a sense of oneness with the universe or feelings of blissful energy and love.

MORE also led to significant decreases in opioid misuse through the nine-month follow-up. These reductions in opioid misuse were caused in part by the increases in frontal midline theta brain waves. Garland explained that by achieving "tastes of self-transcendence" through meditation, mindfulness therapy boosted theta waves in the frontal lobes of the brain to help participants gain self-control over their addictive behaviors.

"Mindfulness can create a pathway for us to transcend our limited sense of self," said Garland. "Civilizations have known for thousands of years that self-transcendence, the experience of being connected to something greater than ourselves, has powerful therapeutic benefits."

This, he explained, is a part of why some cultures engage in spiritual practices, practice deep meditation or use psychedelic substances like psilocybin mushrooms. Even in the popular 12-step addiction treatment program, the 11th step—seeking conscious contact with a higher power through prayer or meditation—taps into this same mechanism to promote recovery from addiction.

The state of transcendence can be like a blissful, natural high, said Garland. "Rather than seeking a high from something outside of yourself like a drug, meditation can help you to find an even greater sense of pleasure, peace and fulfillment from within."

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The gut microbiome consists of thousands of micro-organisms living in the gut. These play a vital role in digesting nutrients and can have a positive or negative influence on our health, including our digestive and immune systems. The mechanisms of how the gut microbiomes have an impact on human health is still being investigated, but evidence suggests eating specific types of food can positively influence the types of bacteria in our gut or what they do in our gut.

Researchers recruited 87 healthy adults who were already eating less than the recommended amount of dietary fiber and who snacked on typical unhealthy snacks (e.g. chocolate, crisps). Participants were split into three groups: one group changed their snacks for 56 g of whole almonds a day, another for 56 g of ground almonds a day, and the control group ate energy-matched muffins as a control. The trial lasted four weeks.

"Part of the way in which the gut microbiota impact human health is through the production of short-chain fatty acids, such as butyrate. These molecules act as a fuel source for cells in the colon, they regulate absorption of other nutrients in the gut, and help balance the immune system," says lead author Professor Kevin Whelan, Head of Department of Nutritional Sciences[.]

Researchers found that butyrate was significantly higher among almond eaters compared to those who consumed the muffin. Butyrate is a short-chain fatty acid that is the main source of fuel for the cells lining the colon. When these cells function effectively, it provides an ideal condition for gut microbes to flourish, for the gut wall to be strong and not leaky or inflamed and for nutrients to be absorbed.

No significant difference was observed in gut transit time—the time it takes for food to move all the way through the gut—however whole-almond eaters had an additional 1.5 bowel movements per week compared to the other groups. These findings suggest eating almonds could also benefit those with constipation.

Testing showed that eating whole and ground almond improved peoples' diets, having higher intakes of monosaturated fatty acids, fiber, potassium and other important nutrients compared to the control group.

Professor Whelan added, "we think these findings suggest almond consumption may benefit bacterial metabolism in a way that has the potential to influence human health."

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"The Ministry of Health of Uganda has shown remarkable resilience and effectiveness and (is) constantly fine-tuning a response to what is a challenging situation," Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the U.N. health agency's regional director for Africa, told reporters. "A better understanding of the chains of transmission is helping those on the ground respond more effectively."

Uganda declared an outbreak of Ebola on Sept. 20, several days after the contagious disease began spreading in a rural farming community. Ebola has since infected 64 people and killed 24, although official figures do not include people who likely died of Ebola before the outbreak was confirmed.

At least three of the confirmed patients traveled from the virus hot spot in central Uganda to the capital, Kampala, about 150 kilometers (93 miles) away, according to Moeti. Fears that Ebola could spread far from the outbreak's epicenter caused authorities to impose a lockdown, including nighttime curfews, on two of the five districts reporting Ebola cases.

Doctors wearing protective equipment pray together before they visit a patient who was in contact with an Ebola victim, in the isolation section of Entebbe Regional Referral Hospital in Entebbe, Uganda Thursday, Oct. 20, 2022. Uganda's Ebola outbreak is "rapidly evolving" a month after the disease was reported in the country, a top World Health Organization official said Thursday, describing a difficult situation for health workers on the ground. Credit: AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda

Ebola "numbers that we are seeing do pose a risk for spread within the country and its neighbors," Dr. Ahmed Ogwell, the acting head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a separate briefing Thursday.

While the risk of cross-border contamination is there, "it's a manageable risk," Ogwell said, adding that the outbreak does not yet necessitate going into what he called "full emergency mode."

There is no proven vaccine for the Sudan strain of Ebola that's circulating in Uganda. A WHO official in Uganda told the AP Wednesday that plans are underway to deploy two experimental vaccines in a study targeting health workers and contacts of Ebola patients.

Ugandan officials have documented more than 1,800 Ebola contacts, 747 of whom have completed 21 days of monitoring for possible signs of the disease that manifests as a viral hemorrhagic fever, Ogwell said.

Protective equipment is laid outside to dry after being disinfected, outside the isolation section of Entebbe Regional Referral Hospital in Entebbe, Uganda Thursday, Oct. 20, 2022. Uganda's Ebola outbreak is "rapidly evolving" a month after the disease was reported in the country, a top World Health Organization official said Thursday, describing a difficult situation for health workers on the ground. Credit: AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda

Ebola is spread by contact with bodily fluids of an infected person or contaminated materials. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and, at times, internal and external bleeding.

Scientists don't know the natural reservoir of Ebola, but they suspect the first person infected in an outbreak acquired the virus through contact with an infected animal or eating its raw meat. Ugandan officials are still investigating the source of the current outbreak.

Uganda has had multiple Ebola outbreaks, including one in 2000 that killed more than 200 people. The 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa killed more than 11,000 people, the disease's largest death toll.

Ebola was discovered in 1976 in two simultaneous outbreaks in South Sudan and Congo, where it occurred in a village near the Ebola River, after which the disease is named.

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In a U.S. government lab in Bethesda, Maryland, virologists plan to equip the strain of the monkeypox virus that spread globally this year, causing mostly rash and flulike symptoms, with genes from a second monkeypox strain that causes more serious illness. Then they’ll see whether any of the changes make the virus more lethal to mice. The researchers hope that unraveling how specific genes make monkeypox more deadly will lead to better drugs and vaccines.

Some scientists are alarmed by the planned experiments, which were first reported by Science. If a more potent version of the outbreak strain accidentally escaped the high-containment, high-security lab at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), it could spark an “epidemic with substantially more lethality,” fears epidemiologist Thomas Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. That’s why he and others argue the experiments should undergo a special review required for especially risky U.S.-funded studies that might create a pathogen that could launch a catastrophic pandemic.

But it’s not clear that the rules apply to the proposed study. In a 2018, a safety panel determined it was exempt from review. Monkeypox did not meet the definition of a “potential pandemic pathogen” (PPP), the panel decided, because it didn’t spread easily. Now, with monkeypox widespread, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is planning to reexamine the work, but it still might not qualify as “enhancing” a PPP, the agency says. That’s because the study will swap natural mutations, not create new ones, so it is not expected to create a monkeypox strain more virulent than the two already known.

The monkeypox controversy marks just the latest flare-up in a decade-old debate over exactly when a study that alters a pathogen is too risky for the U.S. government to fund—and who should have the power to decide. That wrangling became especially ferocious over the past 2 years, as the COVID-19 pandemic spawned allegations, so far unproven, that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a laboratory in China. Now, in the pandemic’s wake, the U.S. government appears poised to make sizable changes to how it manages so-called gain-of-function (GOF) studies that tweak pathogens in ways that could make them spread faster or more dangerous to people.

There are significant potential risks to both under- and overregulation.

Last month, an expert panel convened by NIH and its parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), released a draft report that recommends the GOF rules be broadened to include pathogens and experiments that are exempt from the current scheme. If the recommendation is adopted—which could come next year—the monkeypox study could come under tighter scrutiny. And other researchers working with viruses such as Ebola, seasonal flu strains, measles, and even common cold viruses could face new oversight and restrictions.

Some scientists are watching nervously, worried that an expanded definition could worsen what they already see as a murky, problematic oversight system. The existing rules, they say, have caused confusion and delays that have deterred scientists from pursuing studies critical to understanding emerging pathogens and finding ways to fight them. If not implemented carefully, the proposed changes could “greatly impede research into evolving or emerging viruses,” worries virologist Linda Saif of Ohio State University, Wooster. She and others say expanding the regulations could add costly red tape, potentially driving research overseas or into the private sector, where U.S. regulations don’t apply or are looser.

Others say the proposed changes don’t go far enough. They’d like to see the U.S. government create an entirely new independent body to oversee risky research, and for the public to get far more information about proposed experiments that could have fearsome consequences.

Some have even called for curbing the now common practice of collecting viruses from wild animals and studying them in the lab, saying it only increases the risks that the viruses—or modified versions—will jump to humans.

“We really should be asking important questions about whether that work should continue,” Inglesby says. And virologist James LeDuc, who retired last year as director of the University of Texas Medical Branch’s Galveston National Laboratory, says, “It’s one thing to recognize that these viruses exist in nature. It’s another to modify them so that you can study them if in fact they could become human pathogens.”

All sides agree on one thing: The proposed rules represent a potential pivot point in the debate over the funding of high-risk GOF studies by the U.S. government, which is one of the world’s largest supporters of virology research. “There are significant potential risks to both under- and overregulation in this field,” says virologist Jesse Bloom of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, who like LeDuc is part of a group of scientists pushing for the changes. “The goal,” he adds, “needs to be to find the right balance.”

The controversy over studies that enhance or alter pathogens ignited a decade ago, but such work goes back more than a century. To make vaccines, for example, virologists have long passaged, or repeatedly transferred, a virus between dishes of animal cells or whole animals, so that it loses its ability to harm people but grows better—a gain of function. Since the late 1990s, genetic engineering techniques have made these studies much more efficient by allowing virologists to assemble new viral strains from genomic sequences and to add specific mutations.

In 2011, two such NIH-funded experiments with H5N1 avian influenza set off alarm bells worldwide. Virologists Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the University of Tokyo and Ronald Fouchier at Erasmus University Medical Center were interested in identifying mutations that could enable the virus, which normally infects birds, to also spread easily among mammals, including humans. Small but frightening outbreaks had shown H5N1 could spread from birds to people, killing 60% of those infected. By introducing mutations and passaging, Kawaoka and Fouchier managed to tweak the virus so it could spread between laboratory ferrets, a stand-in for humans.

Controversy erupted after Fouchier discussed the work at a scientific meeting prior to publication. Soon, worries that the information could land in the wrong hands or that the tweaked virus could escape the lab prompted journal editors and government officials to call for a review by an HHS panel called the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB). HHS established NSABB after the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States to consider so-called dual use research that could be used for both good and ill. During the review, flu researchers worldwide voluntarily halted their GOF experiments. Ultimately, NSABB concluded the scientific benefits of the studies outweighed the risks; the H5N1 papers were published and the work resumed.

Then in mid-2014, several accidents at U.S. labs working with pathogens, along with worries about some new GOF papers, prompted the White House to impose a second “pause” on U.S.-funded GOF research. It halted certain studies with influenza and the coronaviruses that cause Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), SARS-CoV-2 cousins that have caused small though deadly outbreaks. NIH ultimately identified 29 potential GOF projects in its funding portfolio. After reviews, the agency allowed 18 to resume because it determined they didn’t meet the risky GOF definition or were urgent to protect public health. Some, for example, adapted MERS to infect mice, a step that can help researchers develop treatments. The remaining 11 studies had GOF components that were removed or put on hold.

During the second pause, U.S. officials promised to come up with a more comprehensive approach to identifying and potentially blocking risky studies before they began. Advocates of tighter rules also pushed for less-risky approaches for studying altered viruses, such as using weakened virus strains, computer models, or “pseudoviruses” that can’t replicate.

Many virologists, however, argued that only studies with live virus can accurately show the effect of a mutation. “There’s only so much you can learn [from alternative techniques],” says University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, virologist Michael Imperiale, who supported the H5N1 GOF studies. “Sometimes using intact virus is the best approach.”

An unfolding debate

Researchers have long conducted gain-of-function (GOF) research that gives viruses and other pathogens new capabilities. But a decade ago, studies that enabled H5N1 avian flu to more easily spread among mammals kicked off a debate that continues today over how tightly the United States should regulate such research.

V. Altounian/Science

In 2017, the debate culminated with the release of the current HHS policy, dubbed Potential Pandemic Pathogens Care and Oversight (P3CO). It requires that an HHS panel review any NIH-funded study “reasonably anticipated” to create or use an enhanced version of an already highly virulent, highly transmissible pathogen that might cause a pandemic. But it exempts natural, unmodified viruses and GOF work done to develop vaccines or as part of surveillance efforts, such as tweaking a circulating flu virus to assess the risks of a newly observed variant.

The HHS committee charged with implementing the policy, which operates behind closed doors, has since reviewed only three projects, and approved all. Two were continuations of Kawaoka’s and Fouchier’s H5N1 work. (Both grants are now expired.) The third involved work with H7N9 avian influenza, but the investigator later agreed to use a nonpathogenic flu strain.

Other concerning studies have been given a pass, critics say. As an example, they point to work led by coronavirus expert Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In the 2000s, his team became interested in determining whether bat coronaviruses had the potential to infect humans. (COVID-19 has since shown the answer is emphatically yes.) But the researchers often could not grow the viruses in the laboratory or enable them to infect mice. So they created hybrid, or chimeric, viruses, grafting the gene encoding the surface protein, or “spike,” that the wild bat virus uses to enter a host cell into a SARS strain that infects mice.

NIH let this work continue during the 2014 pause. The researchers had no intention of making the mouse-adapted SARS virus more risky to people, Baric has said. But something unexpected happened when his lab added spike from a bat coronavirus called SHC014: The chimeric virus sickened mice carrying a human lung cell receptor, Baric’s team reported in 2015 in Nature Medicine. The hybrid virus could not be stopped by existing SARS antibodies or vaccines. In essence, critics of the work assert, it created a potential pandemic pathogen.

A review panel might “deem similar studies building chimeric viruses based on circulating [bat coronavirus] strains too risky to pursue,” Baric acknowledged. Yet he has also called these chimeric viruses “absolutely essential” to efforts to test antiviral drugs and vaccines against coronaviruses, and many virologists agree. They also argue that Baric’s work and related experiments provided an early warning that, if heeded, might have helped the world prepare for the COVID-19 pandemic.

The pandemic has supercharged the GOF debate, in large part because of unproven but high-profile allegations—including from former President Donald Trump—that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. One prominent advocate of the lab-leak theory, Senator Rand Paul (R–KY), a senior member of the Senate’s health panel, has sparred with NIAID Director Anthony Fauci over experiments in virologist Shi Zhengli’s lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). With money from an NIH grant to a U.S. nonprofit organization, the EcoHealth Alliance, Shi had created chimeras by adding spike proteins from wild bat coronaviruses to a SARS-related bat strain called WIV1. The WIV researchers used methods developed by Baric, who has collaborated with Shi.

Last year, documents obtained by the Intercept showed that—like Baric’s work during the 2014 pause—NIH had exempted the EcoHealth grant from the P3CO policy. (The agency later explained that the bat coronaviruses were not known to infect humans.) But NIH also said that if Shi’s lab observed a 10-fold increase in a chimeric virus’ growth compared with WIV1, it wanted to be informed, because the experiments could then require a P3CO review.

The documents show WIV did observe increased growth in the lungs of infected mice and more weight loss and death in some animals. NIH has said EcoHealth failed to report these “unexpected” results promptly as required, but EcoHealth disputes this. Paul and some proponents of the lab-leak theory have gone further, alleging that NIH actively conspired with EcoHealth to hide the risks of the study.

As often is the case in GOF debates, there is no scientific consensus on whether the WIV experiments—or the results—crossed a red line. Paul and some scientists have fiercely argued that they were unacceptably risky. Others forcefully disagree. NIH officials, meanwhile, have emphasized that the hybrid viruses created by Shi’s lab were genetically too distant from SARS-CoV-2 to have generated the pandemic.

Even as NIH officials have defended their assessment of the EcoHealth grant, they have conceded the pandemic made it clear that the GOF rules needed a fresh look. In February, NIH asked NSABB to broaden an existing review of the P3CO policy, launched in January 2020 to examine ways to increase transparency in the review board’s membership and deliberations. Now, NSABB had bigger issues to weigh: Some White House officials even wanted the panel to consider whether the United States should simply ban funding for some kinds of GOF studies.

I worry that people will [fear] accidentally tripping a wire.

In September, an NSABB working group released a draft report that does not go that far. It does recommend that GOF work done for vaccine development and pathogen surveillance no longer be automatically exempt from P3CO review. It also recommends that the definition of a pathogen that triggers a review be significantly expanded to include two new categories not explicitly covered by the current rules.

One category would sweep in “potentially highly transmissible pathogens having low or moderate virulence or case-fatality rates.” That definition would cover SARS-CoV-2, which studies suggest kills about 1% or less of infected people. It also could include tuberculosis bacteria, measles, seasonal flu, and the noroviruses that cause stomach bugs, Saif and others suggest.

The second category would include pathogens that are “less transmissible” but have “higher virulence or case-fatality rates.” That definition could include rabies, the Nipah virus spread by fruit bats, and Ebola, which is deadly but isn’t easily transmitted because it’s spread through blood or other body fluids.

Even with the new rules, determining whether a pathogen or experiment fits into a reviewable category will remain a judgment call. Predicting whether a virus can become “highly transmissible,” for example, can be difficult. So can defining “low or moderate” virulence, acknowledges working group co-chair Syra Madad, an epidemiologist at New York University, speaking in a personal capacity. Policymakers should provide illustrative examples, her panel said. Its final recommendations are due out in December or January 2023.

Some researchers worry this subjectivity will deter researchers from pursuing valuable pathogen science, for fear they’ll get entangled in red tape. “When things are unpredictable, I worry that people will avoid going close to the line for fear of accidentally tripping a wire,” says Gigi Kwik Gronvall, a biosecurity specialist at Johns Hopkins.

Other scientists, however, say even an expanded policy could be too lax. Shi’s WIV1 chimeric virus experiments, for example, still might not qualify for review because the starting viruses weren’t known to cause human disease. And the NIAID monkeypox studies may not qualify because they aren’t creating new genes. Still, the gene swapping is “like changing the machinery of a clock where you have a lot of different pieces that work together. We don’t know exactly how it is going to work,” says monkeypox virologist Gustavo Palacios of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

To close some gaps, a group of GOF critics organized by Inglesby has urged NSABB to expand the review requirements to include GOF studies of any pathogen, however harmless, that could be manipulated to become a PPP. And others have urged that the reviews be conducted by a new, independent agency rather than HHS, which they argue has been reluctant to aggressively regulate studies it funds through NIH.

Currently, NIH is funding at least 11 grants that likely should have gone through P3CO review but did not, estimates molecular biologist Richard Ebright of Rutgers University, Piscataway, a prominent GOF critic who has surveyed the agency’s grant abstracts. (He says full proposals, which are typically not public, would verify his estimate.) They involve eight institutions in the United States, most studying flu, SARS, and MERS. His list includes a currently funded grant proposal by EcoHealth that describes plans for further bat coronavirus chimera work in Baric’s lab.

But a broader P3CO policy will affect “still a pretty small area” of research, suggests Lyric Jorgenson, acting director of the NIH Office of Science Policy. And this time, she does not expect another “crippling” shutdown of experiments while they are reviewed.

A U.S. clampdown will have no sway over privately funded GOF research or what happens in other countries, which typically lack policies like the P3CO framework. In Japan and most of Europe, for example, oversight is limited to rules on biosafety and, sometimes, biosecurity along with voluntary self-regulation, say biosecurity experts Gregory Koblentz of George Mason University and Filippa Lentzos of King’s College London. It’s too soon to say how a 2020 Chinese biosafety law will affect PPP research, they say.

Such rules have not prevented GOF work that some researchers consider too risky. For example, since 2018 labs in China have published at least three papers in journals describing experiments with potential pandemic bird flu strains that Bloom thinks might have crossed the line because they added mutations for drug resistance or adaptation to mammals. None, however, was “as alarming as the earlier Fouchier or Kawaoka [H5N1] studies,” says Bloom, who examined the papers for Science.

A study described in a June preprint by a team at the Pasteur Institute has also drawn concerns. The scientists passaged a bat coronavirus from Laos that is a distant cousin of SARS-CoV-2 through human cells and in mice to see whether it acquired a specific mutation that would help it infect people. The virus did not—a finding that some scientists said sheds light on how the COVID-19 pandemic began. But others told The New York Times that the work, which was reviewed by a local biosafety committee, might not have been worth the risk.

Meanwhile, a growing number of laboratories around the world are jumping into the field. In an interview with the MIT Technology Review last year, for example, Baric noted that just three or four labs were engineering bat coronaviruses before the pandemic, but that number has since multiplied. The expansion is “unsettling,” he said, because some “inexperienced” groups could proceed “with less respect for the inherent risk posed by this group of pathogens.” (Baric could not be reached for this story.)

Some GOF critics hope to launch a broader global dialogue about how to regulate high-risk pathogen studies. Bloom and Lentzos are part of the Pathogens Project, a 1-year taskforce launched in September by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, best known for its Doomsday Clock warning of threats such as nuclear war. The project will gather international experts, including University of Cambridge microbiologist Ravindra Gupta, who has advised the United Kingdom’s COVID-19 response, and George Gao, former director of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, to hammer out recommendations for working safely with risky pathogens.

Co-chair and microbiologist David Relman of Stanford University says, “The idea is to reach out and try to find a broad set of interested parties from across the globe and ask, what are the key questions? What are some possible actions? Is there an appropriate international entity right now that could take this on?” Those may be modest goals, he says, but it’s a start.

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U.S. rivers are getting into hot water. The frequency of river and stream heat waves is on the rise, a new analysis shows.

Like marine heat waves, riverine heat waves occur when water temperatures creep above their typical range for five or more days (SN: 2/1/22).

Using 26 years of United States Geological Survey data, researchers compiled daily temperatures for 70 sites in rivers and streams across the United States, and then calculated how many days each site experienced a heat wave per year. From 1996 to 2021, the annual average number of heat wave days per river climbed from 11 to 25, the team reports October 3 in Limnology and Oceanography Letters.

The study is the first assessment of heat waves in rivers across the country, says Spencer Tassone, an ecosystem ecologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He and his colleagues tallied nearly 4,000 heat wave events — jumping from 82 in 1996 to 198 in 2021 — and amounting to over 35,000 heat wave days. The researchers found that the frequency of extreme heat increased at sites above reservoirs and in free-flowing conditions but not below reservoirs — possibly because dams release cooler water downstream.

Most heat waves with temperatures the highest above typical ranges occurred outside of summer months between December and April, pointing to warmer wintertime conditions, Tassone says.

Human-caused global warming plays a role in riverine heat waves, with heat waves partially tracking air temperatures — but other factors are probably also driving the trend. For example, less precipitation and lower water volume in rivers mean waterways warm up easier, the study says.

“These very short, extreme changes in water temperature can quickly push organisms past their thermal tolerance,” Tassone says. Compared with a gradual increase in temperature, sudden heat waves can have a greater impact on river-dwelling plants and animals, he says. Fish like salmon and trout are particularly sensitive to heat waves because the animals rely on cold water to get enough oxygen, regulate their body temperature and spawn correctly.

There are chemical consequences to the heat as well, says hydrologist Sujay Kaushal of the University of Maryland in College Park who was not involved with the study. Higher temperatures can speed up chemical reactions that contaminate water, in some cases contributing to toxic algal blooms (SN: 2/7/18).

The research can be used as a springboard to help mitigate heat waves in the future, Kaushal says, such as by increasing shade cover from trees or managing stormwater. In some rivers, beaver dams show promise for reducing water temperatures (SN: 8/9/22). “You can actually do something about this.”

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A long day in the office can leave you empty of energy and overcome with desire for TV and a takeaway. But you've been sitting down all day. So why do you feel as tired as your friends who have physical jobs?

Struggling through your list of essential tasks feels ever more grueling as the clock ticks down for home-time. Worse still is bumping into a colleague on your way out who "just wants a quick minute".

It might seem obvious that you are more likely to make impulsive decisions at the end of a long day, but people often power through anyway.

A recent study that scanned people's brains at different points in their work day found high-demand tasks which require intense, constant concentration can lead to build-up of a potentially toxic chemical called glutamate.

Normally used to send signals from nerve cells, in large quantities glutamate alters the performance of a brain region involved in planning and decision making, the lateral prefrontal cortex (lPFC).

Science has shown time again that mental fatigue has real effects. There are numerous studies which show that court decisions can depend on how fatigued the judge is.

For example, after a long day in court, judges are more likely to deny parole (which is considered the safer option). Studies show that clinicians are more likely to prescribe unnecessary antibiotics at the end of a tiring clinical session.

The new study, from Paris Brain Institute (ICM), investigated whether cognitive functions such as focus, memory, multitasking, and problem-solving can cause fatigue of the lPFC, which influences the decisions we make when we cross things off our list.

Opportunity cost

The brain is the command centre of the body, regulating circulation, breathing, motor function, and the nervous system. The brain coordinates these activities at the expense of huge energy use.

Nerve cells break down nutrients to release energy (metabolism). But this process accumulates byproduct molecules known as metabolites. Glutamate is a type of metabolite. The brain clears this toxic waste chemical in your sleep.

The authors of the Paris study wanted to see whether prolonged cognitive tasks exhaust the brain's supply of nutrients. They also tested whether this type of high-focus demand builds up a greater concentration of toxic substances in the lPFC than other parts of the brain.

In this case, the authors compared lPFC to the primary visual cortex, which receives and processes visual information.

To test their hypothesis the authors divided their 40 participants into two groups. Both groups sat in an office in front of a computer for six and a half hours. One group had to do difficult tasks that called on their working memory and constant attention.

For example letters were displayed on a computer screen every 1.6 seconds and participants had to sort them into vowels and consonants or, depending on the color of the letter, upper or lowercase. The second group did similar but much simpler tasks. Both groups managed an average 80 percent correct response rate.

The scientists used magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) to scan participants' brains and measure levels of metabolites. The authors took readings at the beginning, middle, and end of the day.

They found fatigue markers, such as increased glutamate concentration, but only in the high-demand group. The build-up of toxic chemicals was only observed in the lateral prefrontal cortex [lPFC]) and not the primary visual cortex.

After the high and low-demand cognitive tasks, the two groups had decision tests. This included choices about their willingness to exert physical effort (whether to ride a bike at different intensities), cognitive effort (whether to perform harder or easier versions of the cognitive control tasks) and patience (how long they were willing to wait to receive a larger reward).

The rewards ranged from €0.10 to €50 (about US 10¢ to $50). Delays for receiving the reward ranged from immediate cash after the experiment or bank transfer after one year.

Rethinking the work day

The authors found that the high-demand group, which had an elevated level of metabolites in the lPFC, preferred choices that were less taxing. These participants' pupils were less dilated (dilated pupils suggests arousal) and took less time to make decisions, which indicates they experienced this part of the experiment as undemanding.

So the Paris study also raises questions about whether the working day is structured in the best format.

According to the results of the study we should break up high-demand cognitive control tasks that need working memory and constant attention and take into account the fact that performance takes a hit at the end of the day. Some professions may need very different structuring considering these results.

During their shift, air traffic controllers only guide aircraft for up to two hours, followed by a half-hour break. But bus drivers, clinicians, and pilots would benefit from regular, compulsory rests too.

Our brains have many different areas that are active during different tasks, such as speaking, hearing, and planning. So not all of our decisions can be explained by the Paris study findings.

Considering the interactions across the entire body, a 2006 study from the USA suggested that new information may be best processed in a state of hunger. But hunger makes it harder to store newly learned information. Satiety means fuels are available to build neuron circuits to store long-term memory.

Decisions about a third party, for example a judge delivering a verdict on a defendant, may be better in a state of satiety while tasks that involves fine motor functions, such as surgery, may be compromised. This is is because after a meal, self interest in survival is diminished because we do not need to search for food.

This allows us to more objectively judge our environment. But satiety is a time when the body needs to rest to process food, which is why complex fine motor skills aren't at their best in this state.

Next time you have to make a difficult decision at the end of a long day, be aware you will be inclined towards low-effort actions with short-term rewards.

If possible, you should sleep on it.

Zoltán Molnár, Professor of Developmental Neuroscience, University of Oxford and Tamas Horvath, Professor of Neurobiology and Ob/Gyn, Yale University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The imagery has been captured over those years by the NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer) space telescope, which was originally launched in 2009 under the previous name 'WISE' to study the Universe outside of our Solar System.

It has since been repurposed, and renamed, to track near-Earth objects including asteroids and comets.

A mosaic of infrared images put together by the NEOWISE telescope. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA)

Data collected by NEOWISE gives scientists an invaluable insight into how celestial objects are moving and changing over time (time-domain astronomy) – whether that's stars exploding or wandering across the night sky, or black holes gobbling up gas.

"If you go outside and look at the night sky, it might seem like nothing ever changes, but that's not the case," says astronomer Amy Mainzer, from the University of Arizona, which is the principal investigator for NEOWISE.

The readings taken by NEOWISE show the location of hundreds of millions of objects, and the amount of infrared light each one is emitting. This information can then be analyzed to figure out what an object is doing.

An entire sky's worth of data is collected every six months (the time it takes the telescope to travel half the way around the Sun), and astronomers have now stitched together 18 of these maps to form the time lapse.

The maps have been particularly useful for studying brown dwarfs – objects that don't quite have the mass to spark the fusion necessary to become a brightly-burning star, despite starting their existence in similar ways. Those that happen to be closer to Earth appear to zip faster across the sky than more distant objects, enabling NEOWISE to pick them out more easily.

Around 260 brown dwarfs have now been identified by the telescope, and thanks to its investigations we know about twice as many Y-dwarfs – the coldest brown dwarfs that are of particular interest to astronomers, providing clues on the efficiency of star generation and its timing in the evolution of our galaxy.

"We never anticipated that the spacecraft would be operating this long, and I don't think we could have anticipated the science we'd be able to do with this much data," says astronomer Peter Eisenhardt, from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

We're also learning more about how stars form through the telescope's sky scanning: protostars stand out as flickering objects before becoming stars, and scientists are now tracking almost 1,000 of them to see how they develop.

Then there's perhaps the most compelling celestial object of them all – the black hole. Data from NEOWISE can be used to identify the bursts of infrared light from the clouds of matter churning around black holes, allowing us to see these objects at a greater distance.

The work is far from finished, and NEOWISE continues on its mapping journey, with two more sky maps due in March 2023. Expect a lot more to be revealed by the project – activity that you can't see when gazing up at the stars at night.

"Stars are flaring and exploding," says Mainzer. "Asteroids are whizzing by. Black holes are tearing stars apart. The Universe is a really busy, active place."

You can learn more at the NEOWISE Project website.

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On 29 August 2020, near the town of Whitehorse in Yukon, Canada, Thomas Jung – a wildlife biologist with the Government of Yukon's Department of Environment – saw a sight he knew few had ever witness before.

Luckily for us, he managed to quickly get his phone out and film it, giving the world a good look at a black-coated Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis).

The fur on these big cats is typically silvery gray in the winter, and a darker reddish brown during the summer months. The appearance of a black (or melanistic) Canadian lynx is therefore of great interest to experts.

"There are only a small number of records of coat color polymorphisms in the genus Lynx," writes Jung in his published paper.

"The adaptive significance of melanism in lynx is unknown, but the loss of camouflage when hunting during winter is likely maladaptive."

A black Canada lynx is going to have a much harder time blending in as easily when hunting prey like the snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus) – which, Jung speculates, might explain, likely explains why there aren't a lot of the cats with this color fur around.

Jung viewed the animal from a distance of around 50 meters (roughly 160 feet), which didn't seem too perturbed by the presence of people nearby. In the 30-second clip you can also hear a dog barking, which might be what eventually caused the big cat to slowly sneak away.

The brevity of the sighting means it hasn't been possible to run any detailed examinations of the lynx's coat color, beyond a few quick observations. Although the footage is rather shaky and pixelated, several experts have confirmed that the creature is indeed a Canada lynx.

"It had a black coat containing whitish gray guard hairs throughout, as well as whitish gray hairs in the facial ruff and the rostrum and dorsal regions," reports Jung.

Bear this in mind the next time that you're out and about with your smartphone: as well as snapping photos of the kids and the pets, you might also get the chance to record footage of an animal that's never been seen before.

While coat color doesn't usually vary much in the case of the Canada lynx, color variations in other species, including bears and wolves, can be incredibly diverse. As with the Canada lynx, it's thought that color ties into how animals hunt for food, or even provide advantages in cooling down or warming up.

Throughout the animal kingdom, camouflage and colors that blend in with the background can help in sneaking up on prey (or avoiding predators). Bright colors that stand out can help in attracting mates (or putting off predators). Sadly, color changes can also come about because of human activity too.

Keeping track of the range of colors possible in a population of mammals could have significance in predicting the way a species might react to changes in their environment.

"Indeed, with increased competition by coyotes (Canis latrans) a concern for Canada lynx encountering increasingly shallow snow as a result of climate change, the added disadvantage of lost camouflage to melanistic lynx hunting hares during winter would likely result in melanism being maladaptive," writes Jung.

The research has been published in Mammalia.

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Indonesia's Food and Drug Monitoring Agency said it was tracing 26 medicinal syrups used to treat fevers, coughs and colds, noting that testing showed five such medicines had ethylene glycol levels "that exceeded the safe threshold," it said in a statement.

The Health Ministry, which banned all syrup medicines on Wednesday, is working with the food and drug agency to determine which other drugs to potentially withdraw as a preventive measure, Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said.

There have been 206 cases of acute kidney injury in children reported from 20 provinces in Indonesia this year, and a death rate of 48%, the Health Ministry said Wednesday.

"Previously, there were only a few cases of kidney injuries, only one or two every month. But at the end of August there was a spike in cases that got our attention. It is an atypical progressive acute kidney injury. We call it atypical as the cause is still under investigation or unknown," said Mohammad Syahril, a spokesperson from the Health Ministry.

However, the agency cautioned that other risk factors can also cause acute kidney injury.

The Food and Drug Monitoring Agency, together with the Ministry of Health, pharmaceutical experts, clinical pharmacology experts, the Indonesian Pediatrician Association and other related groups are exploring other risk factors.

Syahril said there is no evidence of any link between the kidney injuries in these cases and the COVID-19 vaccine or virus infection.

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Rinsing warm saltwater through your nose — in one nostril and out the other — as an antidote for a variety of woes like sinus inflammation, congestion and allergies may seem strange and possibly scary; especially if you’ve heard about its links to rare but deadly brain-eating amoeba infections.

But according to ear, nose and throat doctors, nasal rinsing, which traces back thousands of years to the Ayurvedic medical traditions of India, is an unusual example of a practice that is at once ancient, trendy and evidence-based. And, it’s safe and inexpensive to boot.

It has a “very, very high level of evidence, randomized controlled trial evidence, that shows that it does work and it does help,” said Dr. Zara Patel, an associate professor of otolaryngology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Here’s what we know.

How is nasal rinsing beneficial?

When you inhale, the mucus in your nose traps all sorts of undesirable particles from the air, like viruses, bacteria, allergens and pollutants, said Dr. Rakesh Chandra, a professor of otolaryngology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Microscopic hairs in the nose then sweep those trapped particles, with the mucus, into the throat so they can be swallowed into (and largely neutralized by) the gut.

This filtering system generally works well, but sometimes, people “react to that stuff that’s getting caught up in the mucus,” leading to inflammation that can cause symptoms like congestion, pressure and pain, Dr. Chandra said.

This is where nasal irrigations can be so helpful. “One of their biggest functions is to sort of wash all that stuff out so that it doesn’t collect in the sinus cavities and elicit those reactions,” he added.

Nasal rinsing is also thought to thin the mucus and reduce swelling that can cause congestion, Dr. Patel said: “It’s like a sort of natural decongestant.”

What kinds of ailments does nasal rinsing help with?

In 2021, an international team of experts published a consensus on how best to manage common sinus issues, like chronic inflammation of the nasal and sinus passages that can cause runny nose, congestion, impaired sense of smell and facial pressure or pain. They concluded, based on the best yet limited evidence, that regular rinsing with saltwater was one of the treatments most proven to be effective.

Other small studies have suggested that saltwater rinses can help with seasonal or environmental allergy symptoms like congestion, runny nose, itching and sneezing.

And there is some evidence that rinsing can help soothe symptoms of acute upper respiratory infections, like those caused by common cold or flu viruses, though there is less research on this use. One of the largest studies to date, published in 2008, was conducted on about 400 children aged 6 to 10 with colds or flus in the Czech Republic. Among the children who used saltwater rinses several times per day, their symptoms resolved more quickly and they were less likely to use fever medications, decongestants or antibiotics, or to have to miss school, than the children who didn’t rinse.

Dr. Patel, who practices in California, said that rinsing can also help clear fine particles from wildfire smoke, which can be irritating.

Though the evidence that rinsing helps with these various nasal issues is of mixed quality, experts say there are few downsides to trying it. “The risk is so low and the potential benefit so high for rinsers” that it’s worth giving it a go, said Dr. Nyssa Farrell, an assistant professor of otolaryngology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

For people with chronic sinus inflammation, Dr. Patel recommends rinsing twice per day — morning and evening. For those with milder symptoms, daily rinsing may be enough. “Doing it on a regular, preventive basis is much better at keeping inflammation under control and at bay versus trying to catch up once inflammation has already set in,” she said.

How do you rinse properly?

First, choose your rinsing apparatus. The neti pot is just one of several devices designed for nose rinsing; Dr. Patel prefers a simpler plastic squeeze bottle (like the one she uses in this video) because it’s easy to use and offers slightly more pressure than a neti pot.

Powered irrigation devices, which use a motor to flush saltwater through your nose, are also available, but they’re not necessarily more effective and are more expensive and trickier to keep clean, Dr. Patel said.

Next, prepare your saltwater solution. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends purchasing distilled or sterile water, or using tap water that has been boiled for at least one minute and then cooled.

Then, add the salt. It’s easiest to use premixed salt packets sold over the counter as a dried powder mix, but you can easily make your own salt solution using pickling or canning salt (don’t use table salt, which has too many additives).

To rinse your nose, stand over the sink or in the shower, bend forward, and tilt your head to one side. While breathing through your mouth, gently squirt or pour about four ounces of your solution into the upper nostril, letting it run out the lower nostril. Some may run into your mouth. Repeat on the other side.

The technique can take some getting used to, and may even feel uncomfortable or burn at first. But any discomfort should subside with time. “A lot of my patients, after they get used to it, absolutely love it, because they feel so much better,” Dr. Farrell said.

After you rinse, clean your device with soap and water or according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Is nasal rinsing safe?

If you’ve heard reports of nasal rinsing causing fatal amoeba infections of the brain, it may be hard to wash that fear from your mind.

“That risk is real,” Dr. Farrell said, but it’s “exceedingly low.” To her knowledge, just three cases have been reported in the medical literature in the United States in the last decade or so. All were associated with rinsing with untreated or improperly treated water.

Tap water may contain low levels of amoebae and still be safe to drink, because stomach acid can kill these organisms. However, it’s not safe to put untreated tap water in your nose.

Can nasal rinsing help treat Covid-19?

The coronavirus primarily infects people through the nose, so early in the pandemic, researchers and doctors wondered if nasal rinsing could help treat Covid-19 infections.

In one study of recently diagnosed Covid-19 patients published this month, researchers found that when compared with participants who didn’t do any nasal rinses, those who rinsed with saline solution twice a day for 21 days had no improvement in their symptoms, and had the same amount of coronavirus in their noses.

Dr. Justin Turner, one of the study’s authors and an associate professor of otolaryngology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said he was surprised by these results, but another experiment in the study offered an explanation. “The virus is just produced so rapidly that no matter how much of it you wash away, the virus is continuously produced,” he said.

That finding leaves him skeptical of nasal rinse solutions marketed as protective against Covid-19. “Unless there’s good clinical data behind it, I think you have to be really careful about trying some of these things that are being advertised, of which there are several,” he said. Even substances that seem natural or innocuous could be toxic to cells in the nose. For example, a popular zinc nasal spray was recalled in 2009 after hundreds of users reported damaged or lost sense of smell.

So, if you’re rinsing your nose, stick with saline. For anything else, check with your doctor first.

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Stunning new Webb Telescope image showcases the “Pillars of Creation“

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She will appear as part of an effort to feature notable women on American quarters.

Wong, who is considered the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood, is the fifth and final woman to be individually featured on the coin this year.

The quarter will enter general circulation on Monday.

It will feature President George Washington on one side and Wong on the other.

Ventris Gibson, director of the US Mint, called Wong "a courageous advocate who championed for increased representation and more multi-dimensional roles for Asian American actors".

"This quarter is designed to reflect the breadth and depth of accomplishments by Anna May Wong, who overcame challenges and obstacles she faced during her lifetime," she said.

The quarter featuring Anna May Wong will enter general circulation on Monday

Wong was born in Los Angeles in 1905 to Chinese immigrants. Her name at birth was Wong Liu Tsong, but later in life she adopted the stage name of Anna May Wong, formed by joining both her English and family names.

She was cast in her first role at 14 as an extra in the film The Red Lantern and continued to take on smaller parts until her lead role in The Toll of the Sea in 1922.

She appeared in more than 60 movies across her career, including silent films and one of the first made in technicolour.

Wong was also the first Asian American lead actor in a US television show, The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong, in which she played a Chinese detective.

After facing discrimination in the US, she travelled to Europe to work in English, French and German films.

She was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, and died the following year aged 56.

Gemma Chan, known for appearing in Crazy Rich Asians and Marvel's Eternals, is set to portray Wong in an upcoming biopic about the star's life.

The American Women Quarters Program began this year and will feature five women each year until 2025. Native Hawaiian hula teacher Edith Kanaka'ole has been named as one of the selections for 2023.

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Classified US software is helping China get an edge over the former in the hypersonic weapons race, despite tight export controls on such technology.

The Washington Post reported this week that blacklisted Chinese military research groups have been purchasing US software designed for computer simulations of hypersonic weapons tests. It uncovered 300 sales since 2019 of advanced software products from nearly 50 US firms to Chinese research groups involved in missile development programs.

The report claims that US firms have received millions of dollars in funding from the Pentagon and circumvented US export controls by selling to Chinese private middlemen distributors. Although the US has strict export controls on such sensitive technology, The Washington Post claims that US firms have turned a blind eye to private Chinese firms.

The report says that US exporters are responsible under US Commerce Department guidance to determine if their distributor sells to a restricted party or for prohibited uses. “What we’ve always told companies is you cannot self-blind,” said Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration Matthew Borman to the Washington Post.

Computer simulation is critical in designing hypersonic weapons and identifying design errors before wind tunnel testing and live fire tests. At hypersonic speeds, air exhibits complex characteristics, requiring specialized aeronautical engineering software to simulate. These computer simulations allow China to advance its hypersonic weapons program while avoiding the US “test often, fail fast and learn” approach.

The Washington Post claims that the Chinese Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics (CAAA) used US simulation software to develop the hypersonic glide vehicle used in China’s August 2021 hypersonic glide vehicle test (HGV), wherein it circled the globe before crashing into its target. General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, described the test as a “Sputnik moment,” reflecting the surprise China’s hypersonic missile test caused throughout the US defense establishment.

US software may have also aided China to design the high-end microchips necessary for its supercomputers to run hypersonic weapons simulations. Electronic design automation (EDA) software is at the heart of this design process, as it allows engineers ever more complex chips with billions of microscopic transistors on integrated circuits. However, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Review, the US has a near-monopoly on EDA software, with US companies controlling 70% of the global market.

Despite that near-monopoly, in 2021, The Washington Post reported that Chinese semiconductor company Phytium Technologies used US EDA software to design microchips for supercomputers used to run hypersonic weapons simulations, with the microchips manufactured in Taiwan.

EDA software used in high-end chip design is the latest technology the US is trying to keep out of the hands of China. Image: Twitter

In August this year, the US moved to ban the export of EDA software to China to hobble its ability to create microchips with so-called gate-all-around technology. These new microchips perform significantly better than existing designs, as they can be made smaller, packing more transistors on a single chip. They also feature improved performance without needing exotic cooling systems, enabling even more powerful supercomputers to be built.

“Supercomputing capabilities are vital for the development of many – perhaps almost all – modern weapons and national security systems, such as nuclear weapons and hypersonic weapons,” said US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo in a press release.

Despite those recent revelations, China has apparently used US software to simulate hypersonic weapons tests. For example, a November 2020 article in the South China Morning Post states that a research paper published in the Chinese Journal of Aeronautics revealed that US software provided by Pennsylvania-based company Ansys helped a Chinese research team simulate the aerodynamics of a hypersonic missile capable of taking out all existing air defense systems.

Despite the obvious national security risks to the US, corporate profit motives seem to have overridden security concerns. According to Mao Baofeng, a professor at the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, US software firms do not want to lose the richly invested and profitable Chinese market, which is second only to the US in size.

Chinese companies, especially those in strategic sectors such as semiconductors, often operate under state supervision to capture critical technologies.

A 2019 report by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission notes that Chinese companies, in many instances with the backing of the Chinese government, use various methods to gain access to valuable technologies.

These methods range from legal and coercive to covert means. The report also mentions that China’s case is unique since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) prioritizes as a matter of policy technology transfer and provides direct and indirect support to companies engaged in such activities.

China may also exploit US underinvestment in technology firms to acquire critical technology. A 2019 Politico article notes that China uses bankruptcy courts and foreign venture capital firms to secure access to US technology with surprisingly little US government oversight.  

Moreover, a 2022 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report notes that software sales may be harder to restrict with export controls, as software is intangible, developed by many international companies and often based on openly available academic research.

Andrea and Mauro Gilli note in a 2019 article in the International Security peer-reviewed journal that rising states such as China can benefit from the “advantage of backwardness,” freeriding on the research and technology of more advanced countries.

They also note that Chinese military strategists are taking advantage of imitation and that China has relied on acquiring, assimilating and replicating foreign technology.

A Chinese wind tunnel like those used to test hypersonic weapons. Image: Twitter

Additionally, in a 2014 article for Harvard Business Review, Regina Abrami and other writers said that China may enjoy the “latecomer’s advantage,” which is the ability to learn and improve previous works.

In acquiring hypersonic weapons testing software tools, China may have examined its source code to make its tailor-made versions suited to its specific needs. This March, Asia Times reported that Chinese researchers have claimed to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) application that can independently design hypersonic weapons.

The research team claimed that the AI could identify most shock waves produced in hypersonic wind tunnel tests, mirroring the purpose of US-made aeronautical engineering software. Most significantly, the research team claims to have built a knowledge base to develop new hypersonic engines and planes without human intervention.

All in all, China’s use of US software in its hypersonic weapons program is an apparent case of a tool being used against its makers.

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An essential step in coronavirus infection occurs when spike protein binds to the host's receptor. After establishing consistent infections in the host, the spike protein becomes adapted to the host's receptor.

Through detailed structural biology analysis, researchers identified several mutations in the omicron spike protein that were uniquely adapted to the mouse receptor and incompatible with the human receptor. This suggests the omicron variant might not have originated from humans directly, and instead may have been transmitted from other animal species to humans.

"These omicron mutations are evolutionary traces left by the virus during its transmission from one animal species to another," said lead author Fang Li, Ph.D., an endowed professor of pharmacology at the U of M Medical School and director of the Center for Coronavirus Research. "Our detailed structural biology approach has successfully recovered these subtle yet unique evolutionary traces."

Researchers say the COVID-19 virus is capable of infecting many animal species—which is one of the main reasons why variants keep emerging. These findings also suggest that epidemic surveillance of rodents may be important for stopping new COVID-19 variants from emerging in the future.

"Animal to human transmission of coronaviruses will likely continue to threaten global health. It has been suggested that all coronaviruses circulating in humans came from animals," said Dr. Li. "I'm working with my colleagues to address current and potential future coronavirus pandemics by developing therapeutics targeting both human coronaviruses and animal coronaviruses."

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Whether we are fans of swearing or not, many of us are likely to resort to it now and again. To estimate the power of swearing, and work out where it comes from, we recently carried out a review of more than 100 academic papers on the subject from different disciplines. The study, published in Lingua, shows that the use of of taboo words can deeply affect the way we think, act and relate to each other.

People often associate swearing with catharsis—the release of strong emotion. It is undeniably different from—and more powerful than—other forms of language use. Interestingly, for speakers of more than one language, the catharsis is nearly always greater when swearing in one's first language than any languages learned subsequently.

Swearing arouses the emotions. This can be measured in autonomic responses such as increased sweating and sometimes increased heart rate. These changes suggest that swearing can trigger the "fight or flight" function.

Neuroscientific research suggests that swearing might be located in different parts of the brain from other speech regions. Specifically, it might activate parts of the "limbic system" (including features known as the basal ganglia and the amygdala). These deep structures are involved in aspects of memory and emotion processing which are instinctive and difficult to inhibit. This might explain why swearing can remain intact in people who have suffered brain damage and struggle to speak as a result.

Laboratory-based experiments also show cognitive effects. We know that swear words command more attention and are better remembered than other words. But they also interfere with the cognitive processing of other words/stimuli—so it seems swearing can sometimes get in the way of thinking, too.

This may, however, be worth it—at least sometimes. In experiments requiring people to submerse a hand in icy water, swearing produces pain relief. In these studies, vocalising a swear word leads to higher pain tolerance and higher pain threshold compared with neutral words. Other studies have found increased physical strength in people after swearing.

But swearing doesn't just influence our physical and mental selves—it also affects our relationships with others. Research in communication and linguistics has shown an array of distinctive social purposes of swearing—from expressing aggression and causing offence to social bonding, humour and story-telling. Bad language can even help us manage our identities and display intimacy and trust as well as boosting attention and dominance over other people.

Digging deeper

Despite having such a noticeable effect on our lives, we currently know very little about where swearing gets its power. Interestingly, when we hear a swear word in an unfamiliar language, it seems just like any other word and will not produce any of these outcomes—there's nothing particular about the sound of the word itself that is universally offensive.

So, the power does not come from the words themselves. Equally, it is not inherent in the word meanings or sounds: neither euphemisms nor similar sounding words have such a profound effect on us.

One explanation is that "aversive conditioning"—the use of punishment to prevent continued swearing—typically occurs during childhood. This may establish a visceral connection between language use and emotional response. While this hypothesis sounds correct, it is weakly evidenced by only a handful of studies that have investigated memories of childhood punishment for swearing. There are almost no empirical studies of links between such memories and adult responses to swearing.

To get to the bottom of why swearing has such a profound effect on us, we need to investigate the nature of people's memories for swearing. What were their significant swearing incidents? Did swearing always bring about unpleasant consequences, such as punishment, or were there benefits too? What about people's ongoing experiences of swearing throughout the lifespan? After all, our research shows that swearing can sometimes help people bond with one another.

We think it might be possible for swearing to show a similar memory pattern to that for music—we remember and like the songs best that we listened to during adolescence. That's because, like music, swearing possibly takes on new meaning in adolescence. It becomes an important way to respond to the intense emotions we tend to have during this time, and an act that signals independence from parents and connection with friends. So, swear words and songs used during this time may become forever linked with important and highly memorable experiences.

Research also needs to examine whether there is a link between memories of swearing and the effects observed in experiments. This could show whether people with more positive memories respond differently to those with negative memories.

A final point to consider is whether swearing will start to lose its power if it becomes more socially acceptable and thus loses its offensiveness. For now, however, it certainly remains a faux-pas.

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The University also noted that the research was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC), which consists of scientists as well as local community members, and that the Boston Public Health Commission had approved the research.

"They've sensationalized the message, they misrepresent the study and its goals in its entirety," says Ronald B. Corley, NEIDL director and BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine chair of microbiology, of the news reports.

The study set out to examine the spike proteins on the SARS-CoV-2 omicron variant (BA.1). Researchers were interested in comparing the variant with the original virus strain, known as the Washington strain. They wanted to find out if the virus was truly less virulent, says Corley, "simply because it wasn't infecting the same cells as the initial strain." They were "interested in what part of the virus dictates how serious of a disease a person will get."

But Corley says the news reports pulled one line from the paper's abstract out of context, with the Daily Mail suggesting in its headline that the researchers had created a "deadly COVID strain with an 80% kill rate." The newspaper went on to make a series of other misleading claims, including that the study was "gain of function research," alleging researchers set out to make a more deadly virus.

Not true, says Corley. And the University's statement strongly denied it.

"We want to address the false and inaccurate reporting about Boston University COVID-19 research, which appeared today in the Daily Mail," said the BU statement. "First, this research is not gain-of-function research, meaning it did not amplify the Washington state SARS-CoV-2 virus strain or make it more dangerous. In fact, this research made the virus replicate less dangerous."

Corley says the line pulled out of context actually had nothing to do with the virus' effect on humans. The study began in a tissue culture, then moved to an animal model.

"The animal model that was used was a particular type of mouse that is highly susceptible, and 80 to 100% of the infected mice succumb to disease from the original strain, the so-called Washington strain," says Corley. "Whereas omicron causes a very mild disease in these animals."

That 80% number is what the media reports latched onto, misrepresenting the study and its goals.

"This was a statement taken out of context for the purposes of sensationalism," says Corley, "and it totally misrepresents not only the findings, but [also] the purpose of the study."

In fact, according to BU's statement, "this research mirrors and reinforces the findings of other, similar research performed by other organizations, including the FDA." That's supported by one of the lead researchers on the study, Mohsan Saeed, a NEIDL investigator.

"Consistent with studies published by others, this work shows that it is not the spike protein that drives omicron pathogenicity, but instead other viral proteins," says Saeed, a BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine assistant professor of biochemistry. "Determination of those proteins will lead to better diagnostics and disease management strategies."

Stringent safety procedures

Since its opening in 2009, NEIDL has allowed scientists to study a range of infectious diseases and pathogens in a protected environment. The lab is governed by strict safety procedures. Long before a researcher begins studying a disease or pathogen, their proposal has to go through a series of rigorous safety reviews, says Robert Davey, a BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine professor of microbiology, who is based at the NEIDL.

"Before anything is done in the NEIDL, it goes through multiple layers of careful safety review and this is done through committees that are part of Boston University and also committees that are outside of, independent of, BU, such as the Boston Public Health Commission," says Davey.

"We get a completely independent look at anything that's about to be done. Only after all that is approved and double-checked are you then allowed to proceed with the work. And that work only occurs with the oversight of the environmental health and safety group at BU."

The study was conducted in the lab's biosafety-level 3 facilities. All studies are conducted in a biosafety cabinet, with researchers having to enter their workspace through a series of interlocked doors. All floors and walls are sealed, and the lab is fitted with sophisticated filtration and decontamination technology. And if the researchers had seen anything untoward during the study, they would have immediately shut it down and reported it.

"We take our safety and security of how we handle pathogens seriously, and the virus does not leave the laboratory in which it's being studied," says Corley. "Our whole goal is for the public's health. And this study was part of that, finding what part of the virus is responsible for causing severe disease. If we can understand that, we can then develop the tools that we need to develop better therapeutics."

"Ultimately, this research will provide a public benefit," according to the University's statement, "by leading to better, targeted therapeutic interventions to help fight against future pandemics."

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