The tech giants end five years of quietly settling their differences.

After years of relative calm, Google and Microsoft are tossing out their ceasefire, a move that—perhaps ironically—could bring each company additional antitrust scrutiny.

The non-aggression pact, signed five years ago, let the two companies set aside their numerous lawsuits. It also created a process by which they could resolve conflicts behind closed doors, requiring Microsoft and Google to follow that process before asking regulators to step in. During this time, the two companies have tussled over a number of issues, including whether search engines should pay news publishers. But Microsoft reached the end of its rope when it felt that Google wasn’t playing fair in ad tech.

Both companies attempted to solve the impasse through a series of escalating negotiations as laid out in the agreement. The matter ultimately reached the corner office, with CEOs Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai holding a series of talks that didn’t reach a solution. That lack of a resolution is what apparently led to the agreement’s unraveling, according to a new Bloomberg report.

The ad tech problem surfaced just three years into the agreement, when Microsoft complained that Google was dragging its feet in supporting some of Bing’s new ad formats in one of its ad management tools, Search Ads 360. In addition, an antitrust lawsuit filed by state attorneys general claims that Google also favors its own platform by offering automated auctions to optimize bids; an equivalent tool isn’t available to advertisers seeking to book space on Bing. As a result of the moves (or lack thereof), advertisers using Google’s ad platform found it easier to buy ads on Google, not Bing. Other search engines that rely on Bing are also affected, including DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, and Ecosia.

“We raised the concerns with them, and they just turned a deaf ear,” Microsoft President Brad Smith said earlier this year. Google’s unwillingness to work with Bing, he said, was costing the company hundreds of millions of dollars per year in ad revenue.

Increasing scrutiny

When the two companies signed the pact in the fall of 2015, they were engaged in 18 lawsuits that ranged from cellular networking to video compression, SMS messaging, and more. Google’s 2011 acquisition of Motorola Mobility, in which the search giant obtained a broad portfolio of patents, touched off a number of the suits and put Google on the offensive against Microsoft, which had been struggling to field a competitive mobile OS. Microsoft, in turn, sued Google for infringing patents related to reassembling an SMS message longer than 160 characters and for patents related to video compression it had originally developed for the Xbox. 

By not cooperating, the two companies are opening themselves to additional antitrust scrutiny. Because the non-aggression pact attempted to head off clashes before they reached regulators, antitrust officials had fewer formal complaints to draw on when opening investigations or filing lawsuits. But without the pact in place, Microsoft and Google are free to complain about each other to whichever regulators or politicians will listen. And today, there seems to be quite a few. 

Microsoft approached UK regulators last year about its problems with Search Ads 360’s inability to keep up with Bing ad formats. It also complained that Google was providing bid details faster for ads on its own search engine. That complaint echoes a similar one brought by the French Competition Authority, which after a two-year investigation found that Google had used other parts of its ad platform—DoubleClick for Publishers and DoubleClick Ad Exchange—to favor its own services by allowing the two halves to work better with each other than with competitors. The settlement in that case will result in Google changing the way its ad tools work with competitors, though not all changes will appear in all markets.

Microsoft has another reason to drop the ceasefire—lately, it hasn’t been subjected to the same level of scrutiny as Google.

While trust-busting sentiment has been ramping up in Congress and taking aim at Big Tech, Microsoft has been relatively unscathed thus far. That’s probably because the company’s recent success has been in markets that haven’t drawn the attention of regulators, including cloud computing and gaming, fields in which the company is a strong competitor, though not clearly dominant. But recently, Microsoft has shown some of its old colors by giving Teams a leg-up on competitors, according to a complaint filed by Slack with the European Commission.

How the detente’s end affects spaces in which Google and Microsoft have openly cooperated remains to be seen. Shortly after the deal was signed, Microsoft released Office apps for Android, and it ditched Internet Explorer for Edge, which runs on Google’s Chromium rendering engine. It’s unlikely that Office will be pulled from the Google Play Store or that Edge will suddenly drop Chromium, but we may see subtle changes that alter just how closely Microsoft embraces Google’s platforms and technologies.

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An eager queue has already formed in Asia, Latin America, and Africa — but do those nations know about the glitches, or the digital divide issues?

India has decided to open-source the Co-WIN platform it created to arrange bookings for COVID-19 vaccinations.

Doctor Ram Sewak Sharma, CEO of India’s National Health Authority, took to YouTube to proclaim the nation is “ready to offer this Co-WIN platform as a public good” to the nations of the world.

“It is being given as sort of a gift,” he added.

In a Tweet, Sharma said “Over 50 countries from across Central Asia, Latin America & Africa” have expressed interest in Co-Win.

India’s government on Monday announced that it had administered more COVID-19 vaccinations than any other nation, topping even the US total of 323 million jabs.

Co-WIN has been advanced as a system capable of operations at that scale and therefore suitable for any other nation.

As Doctor Sharma put it in his video: “This should help those countries with orderly and transparent vaccination programmes to run in their countries.”

But Sharma didn’t mention that Co-Win has also been plagued by glitches, that its web portal crashed soon after launch, or that the APIs the service offers to third-party developers have resulted in smartphone owners and the tech-savvy securing jabs before India’s less-fortunate population has a chance to register.

Nor did Co-WIN help India avoid a savage second wave of infections that saw the nation officially record over 30 million cases and almost 400,000 deaths — numbers that might significantly under-count actual infections and mortality rates. ®

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A new study in Annals of Emergency Medicine highlights the importance of protecting physician residents—early-career doctors still in training—and emergency care teams from incidents of physical or verbal abuse.

The survey of 123 physicians, residents, and staff in one emergency department found that 78 percent of all health care workers experienced a violent assault in the prior 12 months, including more than one in five (22 percent) emergency physician residents. Eighty-nine percent of residents experienced verbal assault by a patient in the prior 12 months, compared to 80 percent of other health care workers.

"Violent or threatening incidents in the emergency department pose risks to everyone's safety but can also impact health workers' mental health and may increase the likelihood of burnout," said Lauren Querin, MD, MS, lead author and emergency physician with the University of North Carolina (UNC) Chapel Hill Department of Emergency Medicine. "These encounters happen frequently and often go unreported."

Of the total respondents who experienced physical assault or violence, 19 percent did not discuss the incident with anyone. About half (53 percent) only discussed the incident with colleagues while only 20 percent filed a formal incident report with the hospital or police. Among residents, 96 percent discussed incidents with only a colleague or no one at all. None of the residents filed formal reports.

Residents' experience with assault became more common with time in the program, the analysis shows. Sixty-two percent of first year residents and 100 percent of second- and third-year residents experienced verbal assault. While no first-year residents reported a physical assault, 25 percent of second-year residents and 36 percent of third-year residents indicated that they have been physically assaulted.

"More can be done to make sure that every member of the emergency care team can prioritize patient care rather than worrying about their own safety at work," said RJ Sontag, MD, president of the Emergency Medicine Residents' Association (EMRA).

"This study looks at one emergency department but stories like these are common nationwide. We must empower residents and others to report these incidents and take the necessary steps to protect health care workers and patients."

Only 24 percent of the residents believe that workplace violence protocols in place at their facility are adequate while 30 percent do not think the protections are sufficient and 38 percent were unsure. Eight percent were not certain what the protocols were.

Anonymous firsthand accounts of violence, sexual assault, or personal threats are detailed in the analysis.

One resident reported that a patient being discharged threatened to "come find me and shoot me in the kneecaps."

Another resident commented, "I was not only scared for myself and other staff...but also scared regarding the injuries the patient would sustain and I would need to treat."

This qualitative analysis echoes findings from a 2018 poll of more than 3,500 emergency physicians across the nation from the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP). ACEP is leading efforts with physicians, hospitals, care teams, regulators, and policymakers to address violence in the emergency department, including extensive work to support the introduction of the "Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act of 2021," by Rep. Joe Courtney (D-CT) and a bipartisan coalition in the House of Representatives.

For its members, ACEP offers education, training, and advocacy opportunities aimed at curbing violence in the emergency department. The association also launched "No Silence on ED Violence," a campaign with the Emergency Nurses Association (ENA) that gives those impacted a chance to share stories and increase awareness of workplace violence while providing resources and a peer network that supports emergency nurses and physicians.

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Venus’ clouds too dry, acidic for life

A new analysis checks the water available in different planets' atmospheres.

Last year, a study made waves by suggesting a chemical that had been proposed as a potential indicator of life was present in the atmosphere of Venus. While the hellish conditions on the planet's surface preclude the existence of any sort of life there, it remained possible that a milder environment existed in the planet's clouds, high above its surface. So the prospect that the chemical was indicating life couldn't be immediately discounted.

 

In the months following, other researchers cast doubt on the claim that the chemical was present at all. And today, a paper is being released the suggests that the conditions in Venus' clouds are in no way compatible with life even remotely similar to that on Earth. Although the temperatures in the clouds are indeed milder, there's nowhere near enough water to support life, and most of what's present is in droplets that are mostly composed of sulfuric acid.

Setting limits

In a press conference announcing the results, John Hallsworth of Queen's University Belfast said that the new work was inspired by the apparent detection of phosphine in Venus' atmosphere. He and his collaborators realized that two areas of research had combined to create other ways to examine the prospects of life on Venus. One was a study of life in extreme conditions on Earth, driven in part by a NASA effort to determine how best to protect Mars from contamination by the probes we were sending there.

 

The second was also NASA-driven: we'd sent probes into the atmospheres of some planets and imaged others. While these probes didn't specifically look for life, they provided direct measurements of things like temperature and pressure, which set limits on things like the amount of water present in the atmosphere, and the form that it will adopt.

 

Relevant to Venus, people have identified organisms that can maintain a metabolism within various limits: temperature, acidity, and water content. Since temperature changes with altitude, the former sets limits on what altitudes can be considered. The latter two are relevant because Venus is thought to be a very dry planet, and its clouds are generated not by condensed water but rather by the presence of sulfuric acid droplets that would contain some water.

 

The world record holder for surviving dry conditions is currently a salt-tolerant fungus, which can run a metabolism and undergo cell divisions with very little water present. Scientists quantify the amount of available water through a measure called the water activity. In simple conditions like a humid atmosphere, this is the same as the relative humidity—the amount of water present versus the maximum amount at that temperature and pressure. But it can also be measured in a way that takes into account things like dissolved salts or ice formation.

 

For the acid extreme, there is a microbe that survives down to a pH of -0.06, which is the equivalent of having sulfuric acid account for a bit over 10 percent of the weight of its solution (with the rest being water).

Not all clouds bring rain

Applying that information to the conditions on Venus yields grim results. Based on measurements from its atmosphere, the researchers calculate that Venus' relative humidity would be below 0.4 percent—over 100 times lower than the record low tolerated by an organism on Earth.

 

If you assume that Venusian life could have evolved methods of pulling water out of the sparse atmosphere, then the sulfuric acid becomes a big problem. The researchers calculate that the droplets that form around sulfuric acid would have so little water that concentration by weight of sulfuric acid would be 78 percent—at a minimum. The droplets would max out as nearly pure sulfuric acid with a tiny bit of water.

 

At that point, the acidity of the sulfuric acid is less of an issue than its ability to chemically degrade molecules in order to form new water molecules to dissolve in. A graphic demonstration of this process is available in this video, which shows sugar converting into pure carbon when the water is stripped out of it. The authors of the paper list all of the problems it creates: "Sulfuric acid dehydrates the cellular systems, removes water from biomacromolecules, reduces hydrophobic interactions, and damages plasma-membrane integrity."

 

With Venus ruled out, the researchers turn their attention to elsewhere in the Solar System. Mars' clouds are at temperatures well below the point where metabolisms shut down entirely on Earth, based on measurements made by probes that have gone through its atmosphere. Any water present is ice that, for good measure, is bombarded with enough UV radiation to sterilize it. So Mars' clouds are ruled out as well.

What about Earth and Jupiter?

Earth's upper atmosphere is also likely to be too dry to support life, but the relative humidity of its lower atmosphere (the troposphere) can vary anywhere from zero percent to 100 percent. Most clouds in the troposphere, however, will have a water activity that's compatible with life, which is consistent with findings that a variety of microbes probably survive the trips through the clouds that some of them end up taking.

 

Finally, the oddest finding comes from a look at Jupiter, which had been visited by a probe that was dropped off during the Galileo mission. The probe happened to fall through a dry region of the giant planet's atmosphere, but we know that different cloud bands can differ in their composition, and some of them are likely quite wet. Ammonia is a complicating presence but is mostly present at altitudes above those where temperatures are within the range compatible with life.

 

While there are a lot of uncertainties, the overall conclusion is that there's likely to be enough water around to support life at altitudes where the temperatures would range from -30º to 10º C.

That’s life

The researchers note that this same approach should help us look into high-altitude life as we begin to get details on the atmospheres of exoplanets. It won't tell us anything about surface conditions, however (although some of those could probably be inferred from other data). "To be able to pinpoint potential habitability based on that personally excites me," Hallsworth said.

 

The other notable thing here is that this applies to life as we know it: water-based, with extensive use of hydrocarbons and both hydrophilic and hydrophobic interactions. Other liquids have very different boiling and freezing points and would favor very different chemistries. To date, we have no indication that life could form within them, but it's still an exciting possibility. As Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center said during the press conference, "Part of me hopes that, when we do find life elsewhere, it's really, really different."

 

Nature Astronomy, 2021. DOI: 10.1038/s41550-021-01391-3  (About DOIs).

Venus’ clouds too dry, acidic for life

Newly discovered supernova may be same type as the one observed in 1054

SN 2018zd meets all the criteria for an "electron-capture" supernova.

Around July 4, 1054, Chinese astronomers recorded a "guest star" that shone so brightly, it was visible in broad daylight for 23 days. The remnants of that long-ago supernova now form the Crab Nebula, which has long been of great interest to astronomers. Some have hypothesized that SN 1054 (as it is now known) was a new, rare type of supernova first described by a physicist some 40 years ago. A team of astronomers has now identified a second recent supernova—dubbed SN 2018zd—that meets all the criteria for this new type, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, thereby providing a vital missing link in our knowledge of stellar evolution.

 

"The term 'Rosetta Stone' is used too often as an analogy when we find a new astrophysical object, but in this case I think it is fitting," said co-author Andrew Howell of Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO). "This supernova is literally helping us decode thousand-year-old records from cultures all over the world. And it is helping us associate one thing we don't fully understand, the Crab Nebula, with another thing we have incredible modern records of, this supernova. In the process it is teaching us about fundamental physics: how some neutron stars get made, how extreme stars live and die, and about how the elements we're made of get created and scattered around the universe."

 

There are two types of known supernova, depending on the mass of the original star. An iron-core collapse supernova occurs with massive stars (greater than ten solar masses), which collapse so violently that it causes a huge, catastrophic explosion. The temperatures and pressures become so high that the carbon in the star's core begins to fuse. This halts the core's collapse, at least temporarily, and this process continues, over and over, with progressively heavier atomic nuclei. (Most of the heavy elements in the periodic table were born in the intense furnaces of exploding supernovae that were once massive stars.) When the fuel finally runs out entirely, the (by then) iron core collapses into a black hole or a neutron star.

 

Then there is a thermonuclear supernova. Smaller stars (up to about eight solar masses) gradually cool to become dense cores of ash known as white dwarfs. If a white dwarf that has run out of nuclear fuel is part of a binary system, it can siphon off matter from its partner, adding to its mass until its core reaches high enough temperatures for carbon fusion to occur.

 

In 1980, Japanese physicist Ken'ichi Nomoto of the University of Tokyo theorized that there could be a third intermediate type: a so-called "electron-capture" supernova, in which a star isn't heavy enough to produce an iron core collapse supernova, and yet not light enough to prevent its core from collapsing entirely. Instead, such stars stop the fusion process when their cores are composed of oxygen, neon, and magnesium. In this scenario, electrons get gobbled up by the neon and magnesium in the core, thereby causing the core to buckle under its own weight. The end result is a supernova.

Since Nomoto first proposed electron-capture supernovae, theorists have built on his work to identify six key features: the stars should have a lot of mass; they should lose much of that mass before exploding; that mass should have an unusual chemical composition; the resulting supernova should be weak; there should be little radioactive fallout; and the core should contain neutron-rich elements.

 

SN 2018zd was first detected in March 2018, just 31 million light years away in a galaxy known as NGC2146. The team was able to identify the likely progenitor star by scouring archival images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope. They continued to collect data on SN 2018zd over the next couple of years. Astronomers from the University of California, Davis, contributed the spectral analysis that proved to be a key piece of evidence that this was, indeed, an electron-capture supernova.

 

When they combed through the published data on supernovae to date, the team noted a handful that met some of the predicted criteria. But only SN 2018zd ticked all six boxes. Because of this discovery, astronomers are even more confident that the supernova in 1054 that gave birth to the Crab Nebula was also an electron-capture supernova, even though it happened much too long ago to make a definitive confirmation. This would also explain why SN 1054 shone so brightly: it's likely that ejected matter from the explosion collided with material shed by its progenitor star—the same thing that happened with SN 2018zd.

"We started by asking 'what's this weirdo?'" said co-author Daichi Hiramatsu, a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Barbara and LCO. "Then we examined every aspect of SN 2018zd and realized that all of them can be explained in the electron-capture scenario. It was such a 'Eureka moment' for all of us that we can contribute to closing the 40-year-old theoretical loop, and for me personally because my career in astronomy started when I looked at the stunning pictures of the universe in the high school library, one of which was the iconic Crab Nebula taken by the Hubble Space Telescope."

 

Perhaps nobody is more pleased and gratified by the discovery than Nomoto, who first proposed the existence of electron-capture supernovae all those decades ago, as well as predicting just such a supernova could be linked to the Crab Nebula. "This is a wonderful case of the combination of observations and theory," he said.

 

DOI: Nature Astronomy, 2021. 10.1038/s41550-021-01384-2  (About DOIs).

Newly discovered supernova may be same type as the one observed in 1054

New coronavirus cases popped up in cities across Australia on Monday, prompting local authorities to impose restrictions in areas not used to living under strict COVID-19 rules.

Australia has been broadly successful in containing virus clusters, but is now battling flare-ups in at least four cities across the vast continent nation.

Brisbane, Darwin, Perth and Sydney have all reported new cases of the highly contagious Delta variant, which first emerged in India and has spread in Australia after escaping from hotels used to quarantine returning travellers.

The largest outbreak is in Sydney, where 130 people have tested positive for COVID-19 since a driver for an international flight crew was diagnosed in mid-June, with the city's residents now under stay-at-home orders for two weeks.

A 48-hour lockdown of Darwin and surrounding areas—due to end Tuesday—was extended to Friday after a cluster linked to an outback gold mine grew to seven cases.

Northern Territory Chief Minister Michael Gunner said that for the first time during the pandemic there were exposure sites in the city, which is home to a large indigenous population feared to be more vulnerable to COVID-19.

"The risk to the community has grown in the past 24 hours. We are now in an extremely critical period. We must stay in lockdown while we keep this virus trapped," he said, urging Aboriginal people living in remote areas not to travel to Darwin.

Authorities in the cities of Perth and Brisbane again tightened local restrictions Monday, with masks mandatory and limits on social gatherings imposed on more than two million people in Brisbane and surroundings.

Other regions without confirmed cases have ramped up their rules protectively, with masks now required indoors in the nation's capital Canberra and sweeping restrictions announced for South Australia.

"We feel, given the nature of the rapid spread of the Delta virus, we have no alternative but to take pre-emptive action in South Australia to keep our state and our economy strong," said state Premier Steven Marshall.

Australia has recorded a total of just over 30,000 cases and 910 deaths in a population of about 25 million since the pandemic began.

Officials have been quick to implement restrictions when clusters emerge—almost always after the virus escapes the hotel quarantine system.

But the latest measures are among the most widespread since a nationwide lockdown in the early stages of the pandemic.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called a meeting of national leaders late Monday as his government faces a fresh round of criticism for a sluggish vaccine rollout and failing to improve the leaky hotel quarantine system.

Almost 7.4 million vaccine doses have been administered to date, but only a small fraction of people have received both jabs.

The government has refused to release data on how many Australians have been fully vaccinated, but the figure is reported to be around five percent.

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Chinese Zhurong rover sends audiovisuals from Mars  

Chinese Zhurong rover sends audiovisuals from Mars

The Secret Workings of Smell Receptors, Revealed At Last

Researchers have finally seen how some of them bind to odor molecules—yielding new insights into one of the most mysterious and versatile senses.

Smell, rather than sight, reigns as the supreme sense for most animals. It allows them to find food, avoid danger, and attract mates; it dominates their perceptions and guides their behavior; it dictates how they interpret and respond to the deluge of sensory information all around them.

 

“How we as biological creatures interface with chemistry in the world is profoundly important for understanding who we are and how we navigate the universe,” said Bob Datta, a neurobiologist at Harvard Medical School.

 

Yet olfaction might also be the least well understood of our senses, in part because of the complexity of the inputs it must reckon with. What we might label as a single odor—the smell of coffee in the morning, of wet grass after a summer storm, of shampoo or perfume—is often a mixture of hundreds of types of chemicals. For an animal to detect and discriminate between the many scents that are key to its survival, the limited repertoire of receptors on its olfactory sensory neurons must somehow recognize a vast number of compounds. So an individual receptor has to be able to respond to many diverse, seemingly unrelated odor molecules.

 

That versatility is at odds with the traditional lock-and-key model governing how selective chemical interactions tend to work. “In high school biology, that’s what I learned about ligand-receptor interactions,” said Annika Barber, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University. “Something has to fit precisely in a site, and then it changes the [protein’s atomic arrangement], and then it works.”

 

Now, new work has taken a crucial and much anticipated step forward in elucidating the beginning stages of the olfactory process. In a preprint posted online earlier this year, a team of researchers at Rockefeller University in New York provided the first molecular view of an olfactory receptor as it bound to an odor molecule. “That’s been a dream in the field” ever since olfactory receptors were discovered 30 years ago, said Richard Benton, a biologist at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland who was not involved in the new study.

 

“It’s unequivocally a landmark paper,” Datta said. “Although we’ve had access to receptors as molecules for a long time, no one’s ever actually seen with their eyes what it looks like when an odor binds to a receptor.”

 

The result goes a long way toward confirming how animals identify and discriminate among astronomical numbers of smells. It also sheds light on key principles of receptor activity that might have far-reaching implications—for the evolution of chemical perception, for our understanding of how other neurological systems and processes work, and for practical applications like the development of targeted drugs and insect repellents.

 

Several hypotheses have competed to explain how olfactory receptors achieve the necessary flexibility. Some scientists proposed that receptors respond to a single feature of odor molecules, such as shape or size; the brain might then identify an odor from some combination of those inputs. Other researchers posited that each receptor has multiple binding sites, enabling different kinds of compounds to dock. But to figure out which of these ideas was correct, they needed to see the receptor’s actual structure.

 

The Rockefeller team turned to receptor interactions in the jumping bristletail, an ancestral ground-dwelling insect that has a particularly simple olfactory receptor system.

 

In insects, olfactory receptors are ion channels that activate when an odor molecule binds to them. They may be the largest and most divergent family of ion channels in nature, with millions of variants across the world’s insect species. And so they must carefully balance generality against specificity, staying flexible enough to detect an enormous number of potential odors while being selective enough to reliably recognize the important ones, which could differ considerably from one species or environment to another.

What was the mechanism that allowed them to navigate that fine line, and to evolve that way? “It’s a crazy system to think about,” said Vanessa Ruta, a neuroscientist at Rockefeller University who led the research reported in the recent preprint. “So we realized that the best way to gain insight into this problem would probably be through structural methods.”

 

Traditional methods for pinning down the three-dimensional molecular structure of proteins don’t work well on olfactory receptors, which tend to misfold, behave abnormally or become difficult to distinguish under the conditions that those analyses require. But recent technological advances, most notably an imaging technique called cryo-electron microscopy, made it possible for Ruta and her colleagues to try.

 

They looked at the structure of a jumping bristletail olfactory receptor in three different configurations: by itself, and bound to either a common odor molecule called eugenol (which smells like clove to humans) or the insect repellant DEET. They then compared those structures, down to their individual atoms, to understand how odor binding opened the ion channel, and how a single receptor could detect chemicals of very different shapes and sizes.

 

“It actually is very beautiful,” Ruta said.

 

The researchers found that although DEET and eugenol don’t have much in common as molecules, they both docked at the same site within the receptor. That turned out to be a deep, geometrically simple pocket, lined with many amino acids that facilitate loose, weak interactions; eugenol and DEET took advantage of different interactions to lodge within it. Further computational modeling showed that each molecule was able to bind in many different orientations—and that many other kinds of odor compounds, though not all, could bind to the receptor in a similar way. This was no lock-and-key mechanism, but a one-size-fits-many approach.

The receptor “is doing a more holistic recognition of the molecule, as opposed to just detecting any specific structural feature,” Ruta said. “It’s just a very different chemical logic.”

 

When Ruta and her team introduced changes to the receptor’s pocket, they found that mutations of even a single amino acid were enough to alter its binding properties. And that, in turn, was enough to affect the receptor’s interactions with many compounds, entirely reconfiguring what the receptor responded to.

 

Widening the pocket, for instance, increased its affinity for DEET, a larger molecule, while decreasing its affinity for eugenol, which may not have been able to fit as snugly due to its smaller size. Such changes would have many downstream effects on the receptor’s broader odor-detecting palette, too, which the researchers were not set up to identify.

 

The team’s observations may explain how insect olfactory receptors can generally evolve so rapidly and diverge so much among species. Every insect species may have evolved “its unique repertoire of receptors that are really well suited to its particular chemical niche,” Ruta said.

 

“It tells us that more is going on than just the idea that receptors loosely interact with a bunch of ligands,” Datta said. A receptor built around a single binding pocket, with a response profile that can be retuned by the smallest of tweaks, could speed up evolution by freeing it to explore a broad spectrum of chemical repertoires.

 

The architecture of the receptor also supported this view. Ruta and her colleagues found that it consisted of four protein subunits loosely bound at the channel’s central pore, like the petals of a flower. Only the central region needed to be conserved as the receptor diversified and evolved; the genetic sequences governing the rest of the receptor units were less constrained. This structural organization meant the receptor could accommodate a wide degree of diversification.

 

Such light evolutionary constraints at the receptor level probably impose substantial selective pressure downstream on the neural circuits for olfaction: Nervous systems need good mechanisms for decoding the messy patterns of receptor activity. “Effectively, olfactory systems have evolved to take arbitrary patterns of receptor activation and endow them with meaning through learning and experience,” Ruta said.

 

Intriguingly, though, nervous systems don’t seem to be making the problem easier for themselves. Scientists had widely supposed that all the receptors on an individual olfactory neuron were of the same class, and that neurons for different classes went to segregated processing regions of the brain. In a pair of preprints posted last November, however, researchers reported that in both flies and mosquitoes, individual olfactory neurons express multiple classes of receptors. “Which is really surprising, and would increase the diversity of sensory perception even more,” Barber said.

 

The findings from Ruta’s team are far from the last word on how olfactory receptors work. Insects use many other classes of ion channel olfactory receptors, including ones that are much more complex and much more specific than those of the jumping bristletail. In mammals, the olfactory receptor is not even an ion channel; it belongs to an entirely different family of proteins.

 

“This is the first structure of odorant recognition in any receptor from any species. But it’s probably not the only mechanism of odorant recognition,” Ruta said. “This is just one solution to the problem. It would be very unlikely that it’s the only solution.”

 

Even so, she and other researchers think there are many more general lessons to learn from the jumping bristletail’s olfactory receptor. It’s tempting, for instance, to imagine how this mechanism might apply to other receptors in the brains of animals—from those that detect neuromodulators like dopamine to those that are affected by various kinds of anesthetic—“and how imprecise they are ‘allowed’ to be,” Barber said. “It offers a fascinating model for continuing to explore nonspecific binding interactions.”

 

Perhaps this flexible-binding approach should be considered in other contexts as well, she added. Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in March, for example, suggested that even canonical lock-and-key ion channel receptors might not be as strictly selective as scientists thought.

 

If many different kinds of proteins bind to receptors through flexible, weak interactions within some type of pocket, that principle could guide rational drug design for various diseases, particularly neurological conditions. At the very least, Ruta’s work on the binding of DEET to an insect olfactory receptor could provide insights into how to develop targeted repellents. “The mosquito is still the deadliest animal on Earth” because of the diseases it carries, Ruta said.

 

Her findings actually clarify a debate more than a half-century old about how DEET works. DEET is one of the most effective insect repellents, but scientists haven’t understood why—whether it smells bad to insects, for instance, or whether it impairs their olfactory signaling. The work by Ruta and her colleagues elevates a different theory: that DEET confuses insects by activating lots of different receptors and flooding their olfactory system with meaningless signals.

 

“The mystery of chemical recognition is something that we now have a structural lens to think about,” Ruta said. “Structural biology, at its best, is beautiful and clarifying and has amazing explanatory power. My lab does a lot of work in more cellular and systems neuroscience, and very few experiments have as much explanatory power as a structure does.”

 

Datta agreed about the structural biology approach. “I think it’s really a harbinger of things to come,” he said. “It feels like the future.”

The Secret Workings of Smell Receptors, Revealed At Last (May require free registration to view)

Moscow on Sunday recorded its worst daily coronavirus death toll and Indonesia saw more than 21,000 infections in a day, also a record, as countries across the Asia-Pacific region extended or reimposed restrictions to tackle fresh waves of cases.

The pandemic has now killed close to four million people across the world but vaccination drives have brought down infection numbers in many wealthy countries, while the Delta strain of the virus remains a concern.

The variant is now in 85 countries and is the most contagious of any COVID-19 strain so far identified, according to the World Health Organization.

Still, in much of Europe and the United States curbs on daily life are easing as vaccination programmes bear fruit, although Russia is grappling with a deadly third wave.

Moscow on Sunday recorded 144 COVID-19 deaths in the last 24 hours, a day after Saint Petersburg set the previous highest figure.

Saint Petersburg has hosted six Euro 2020 matches and is due to host a quarter-final on Friday, with spectator numbers capped at half but still upwards of 26,000 people.

Russia as a whole has seen an explosion of new infections since mid-June driven by the Delta variant.

The surge comes as officials in Moscow are pushing vaccine-sceptic Russians to get inoculated after lifting most anti-virus restrictions late last year.

"To stop the pandemic, one thing is needed: rapid, large-scale vaccinations. Nobody has invented any other solution," Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said Saturday.

'Up in smoke'

The Delta variant is also feeding fresh outbreaks in Southeast Asia and Australia where authorities have brought back or extended restrictions.

More than five million Sydney residents endured their first full day of a two-week lockdown Sunday.

Restaurants, bars and cafes were shuttered and stay-at-home orders were issued, leaving the city centre virtually deserted.

"Given how contagious this strain of the virus is, we do anticipate that in the next few days case numbers are likely to increase even beyond what we have seen today," New South Wales state Premier Gladys Berejiklian said.

More than 110 COVID-19 cases have been reported in Sydney since a driver for an international flight crew tested positive in mid-June for the Delta variant.

The flare-up has been a shock for a place that had returned to relative normality after months with few local cases.

Professional musician Blain Cunneen, 27, said his work had gone "up in smoke" overnight.

Australia's northern city of Darwin also entered a separate snap 48-hour lockdown on Sunday after a handful of cases were linked to a coronavirus outbreak on a remote gold mine.

"The Northern Territory is now facing its biggest threat since the COVID crisis began," Northern Territory Chief Minister Michael Gunner said.

Restrictions reimposed

Similar spikes in infections have been seen across Southeast Asia, with Indonesia setting a new daily infection record of more than 21,000.

Hospitals are flooded with patients in the capital Jakarta and other COVID-19 hotspots across the region's hardest-hit nation.

Thailand will from Monday reimpose restrictions on restaurants, construction sites and gatherings in the capital Bangkok.

The country's latest wave began in April when a cluster was found in upscale Bangkok clubs.

Premier Prayut Chan-O-Cha has said he plans to fully reopen the country by October, but this would require hitting a target of vaccinating 50 million Thais in four months.

In neighbouring Malaysia, the prime minister announced that a nationwide lockdown in place for about a month already will continue, and he gave no date for the lifting of restrictions.

His government had previously said the strict curbs would be eased in stages, as long as there was a drop in infections, intensive care bed use and a rise in vaccination rates.

Bangladesh also said it would impose a new national lockdown from Monday, with offices shut for a week and only medical-related transport allowed.

The announcement prompted tens of thousands of migrant workers to desert the capital Dhaka, where the lockdown will cut off their revenue sources.

"During lockdown, there is no work," Fatema Begum, 60, told AFP while waiting for a ferry. "And if we don't work, how do we pay rent? So we packed up everything and are going back to our village."

Infections declined in May but started to rise again this month, with over 5,000 new cases and a pandemic high of 119 deaths on Sunday, according to the health ministry.

Meanwhile, AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford on Sunday began new trials to test a modified vaccine against the Beta variant, which first emerged in South Africa.

The new vaccine, known as AZD2816, has been designed using the same base as the main AstraZeneca shot but with minor genetic alterations to the spike protein based on the Beta variant.

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Millions of Sydney residents began the first full day of a two-week coronavirus lockdown on Sunday, as Australia imposed new restrictions to contain an outbreak of the highly contagious Delta variant.

Restaurants, bars and cafes were shuttered after stay-at-home orders for central neighbourhoods were extended Saturday evening across the sprawling city and to the coastal and mountainous regions surrounding it.

While the city centre was virtually deserted, large numbers of surfers and swimmers hit the water at Sydney's Bondi Beach, with outdoor exercise still allowed.

Australia's northern city of Darwin also entered a separate snap 48-hour lockdown on Sunday after a handful of cases were linked to a coronavirus outbreak on a remote gold mine.

Northern Territory Chief Minister Michael Gunner said officials were concerned about being unable to reach close contacts of infected people in the region, home to a large Indigenous population feared to be more vulnerable to COVID-19.

"We are taking extreme action right now to stop or slow any spread before the coronavirus is let loose in the Territory, and that means we need a lockdown," he said.

Health experts had advised that a shorter snap lockdown of Sydney—which has proved effective in other Australian cities in recent months—would not be enough to contain the growing cluster, New South Wales state Premier Gladys Berejiklian said.

More than 110 COVID-19 cases have been reported since a driver for an international flight crew tested positive in mid-June to the highly contagious Delta variant, which first emerged in India.

"Given how contagious this strain of the virus is, we do anticipate that in the next few days case numbers are likely to increase even beyond what we have seen today," Berejiklian told reporters Sunday.

Testing time

The flare-up has been a shock for a city that had returned to relative normality after months with few local cases.

Matt Daly, 37, who lives south of Sydney, said he supported the measures but anticipated a "testing" period of working from home and entertaining his two young children who are on school holidays.

"A lot of juggling over the next two weeks. Really hope it doesn't extend further," he told AFP.

Sydney's restrictions require people to stay home until at least July 9, only venturing out to purchase essential goods, obtain medical care, exercise, go to school or if they are unable to work from home.

Professional musician Blain Cunneen, 27, said his work—performing gigs, studio sessions and teaching students—had gone "up in smoke" overnight.

"All that was starting to operate again almost as normal... very suddenly overnight I got a bunch of emails and texts about everything being cancelled," he told AFP.

Anyone outside of the lockdown zone who had visited Sydney since Monday was also instructed to self-isolate for 14 days, while several other states have banned travel to and from the city.

It is the latest in a string of "circuit-breaker" lockdowns across major Australian metropolises, with most cases linked to quarantining returning travellers.

More than 150,000 people in Darwin and surrounding areas are under stay-at-home orders for at least 48 hours to give health officials time to trace contacts, for the first time since a nationwide shutdown in the early stages of the pandemic.

"The Northern Territory is now facing its biggest threat since the COVID crisis began," Gunner said.

Cases of COVID-19 were also detected in the major cities of Perth and Brisbane on Sunday, prompting local authorities to tighten restrictions.

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said he was confident Australia would manage.

"It's a difficult day but we've done this before, we know how to do it. And we will get through it," he said.

Australia has been among the world's most successful countries in containing COVID-19, with just over 30,000 cases and 910 deaths in a population of about 25 million. However, the government has faced criticism for a sluggish vaccine rollout.

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All the major players spent time in the Denisovan cave

Even the sediment in the floor of Denisova Cave has a story to tell.

At various points in the last 300,000 years, Denisova Cave has sheltered three different species of hominins. But with fossils from only eight individuals—four Denisovans, three Neanderthals, and the daughter of a Neanderthal/Denisovan pairing—it’s hard to tell a detailed story about when each species lived in the cave. According to a recent genetic study, however, the Denisovans were the first, arriving around 250,000 years ago. And they may still have been there when the first members of our species arrived around 45,000 years ago.

 

That timeline is the result of a recent study of mitochondrial DNA (genetic material passed directly from mother to child) mixed into the deep layers of sediment covering the cave floor. The fragments of ancient DNA probably came from a mixture of feces, decomposing remains, and shed skin and hair that ended up mixed with the dirt of the cave floor, according to archaeologist Elena Zavala of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, lead author of the study.

 

"We know that DNA can bind to the minerals found in the sediments and we have also seen microfossils when examining the sediments under a microscope," she told Ars in an email. "Future studies linking specific elements of the sediment to DNA preservation will help increase our understanding of this process."

 

Zavala and her colleagues sampled sediment from every layer of the cave, in all three chambers, at 10-15 centimeter intervals. Then they isolated the sequences of mitochondrial DNA from hominins and other mammal species, like mammoths, bears, and hyenas. To identify which hominin each of the 175 hominin mtDNA samples belonged to, they compared the fragments of DNA to specific parts of the genome that differ among Denisovans, Neanderthals, and us.

New hominins on the block

In a sediment layer that began piling up on the cave floor 250,000 ago, they found the earliest traces of Denisovan mtDNA. That's substantially older than the earliest Denisovan fossil from the cave, which dated to between 194,000 and 123,000 years ago. The earliest Neanderthals showed up in the cave sometime before 170,000 years ago, and for about 40,000 years, the two hominin groups seem to have shared the cave more or less. It’s hard to say for sure, because the layers of sediment only break time down into chunks of several thousand years. That means archaeologists can’t say whether the two species were roommates or whether they alternated possession of the cave every few years, decades, or centuries.

 

“The resolution of the chronology is too coarse-grained to distinguish events at even 1000-year resolution, so we can’t say whether Denisovans and Neanderthals were cohabiting in the cave at times during the Middle Palaeolithic,” University of Wollongong archaeologist Richard Roberts, a coauthor of the study, told Ars.

 

In any case, the arrival of the Neanderthals came on the heels of a major change in the climate. Around 190,000 years ago, the climate in the Altai Mountains turned colder as the world moved out of a relatively warm interglacial period and into another Ice Age. We know this from chemical records locked in ice sheets, cave formations, and marine sediments around the world. The floor of Denisova Cave holds its own record of changing life in the Altai. In layers from this period, Zavala and her colleagues found less mitochondrial DNA from bears and wolves, and more from hyenas and the ancient relatives of modern cattle.

 

Then 130,000 years ago, the climate shifted back into a warmer interglacial period. Deer and wild horses become more common in the mitochondrial DNA record, and the last traces of the Denisovans disappear from the cave by 120,000 years ago. We have no way to know whether they died out or just left. That answer, according to Zavala, probably lies buried at other sites in the region.

 

“To better understand these questions we need to find more sites with Denisovan and Neanderthal remains across this time period,” she told Ars. “It’s possible that the movement or disappearance of the earlier Denisovan was due to climate, but to determine this we would need to identify similar changes in other locations with Denisovan remains. More sites from this time period are needed to track the movements (and disappearances) of different populations of both Neanderthals and Denisovans.”

Who gets credit for these end-scrapers?

These questions matter, in part, because archaeologists want to know who made the stone tools they’ve unearthed at Denisova Cave and other sites around Eurasia. The oldest tools at Denisova Cave date to a period called the early Middle Paleolithic, which spans roughly 200,000 to 170,000 years ago. Denisovans had the cave to themselves for most of that period, and Neanderthals showed up just in time for the last bit of it.

 

The evidence seems to suggest that the “first and principal makers” of the cave’s early Middle Paleolithic scrapers, notched tools, and cores were Denisovans. But since Neanderthals arrived shortly before 170,000 years ago, they may have made at least some of the stone tools from later in the period. That leaves archaeologists with the question of whether Neanderthals learned these manufacturing techniques from Denisovans, contributed some ideas of their own, or developed similar technology independently. Again, the answers probably won’t come from Denisova Cave itself.

 

“What we need are other sites that contain distinctive artefacts and only Denisovan or Neanderthal fossils/DNA deposited alongside them, so that we can link each hominin group to a specific artifact assemblage,” Roberts told Ars.

 

Similar questions linger about bone tools and ornaments dating to a much more recent 45,000 years old, a period called the Initial Upper Paleolithic. Our species arrived in Eurasia sometime between 50,000 and 45,000 years ago, and it’s tempting to give ourselves credit for the relatively advanced suite of bone tools and jewelry that litter these layers of Denisova Cave and other sites across Europe. But there’s evidence to suggest that we probably traded some technology back and forth with the Neanderthals.

Return of the Denisovans

The Neanderthals living in Denisova Cave around 80,000 years ago probably had no cultural memory left of sharing the cave with another hominin group; after all, Denisovans had been absent from Denisova Cave for the last 40,000 years at that point. So it’s interesting to wonder what both sides thought when a group of Denisovans, genetically distinct from the first population to call the cave home, showed up at least 80,000 years ago.

 

“Denisova 11—the bone fragment of the daughter of a Neanderthal mother and Denisovan father—bears witness to Denisovans and Neanderthals becoming very cosy at least once!” Roberts told Ars.

 

The Denisovan mitochondrial DNA in these layers of the cave floor is similar to that from another Denisovan whose DNA archaeologists recovered from a 70,000 to 45,000-year-old site on the Tibetan Plateau. And that could hint at where the second Denisovan population to arrive in the Altai originally came from. Paleontologists studying animal remains from this time period suggest that some large mammals from southeast Asia migrated along the foothills of the Himalayas into the Altai Mountains.

 

“These faunal migrations may have spurred the dispersal of Denisovans into the region in which their remains were first discovered,” Zavala and her colleagues wrote.

When worlds collided

This second wave of Denisovans was still around 45,000 years ago when another hominin species—us—began shedding mitochondrial DNA into the floor of Denisova Cave.

 

In their samples from one chamber of the cave, Zavala and her colleagues found mitochondrial DNA sequences from Denisovans, Neanderthals, and Homo sapiens in a layer dating between 45,000 and 22,000 years ago. Altogether, that suggests that Denisovans, as well as Neanderthals, may still have been living in the Altai Mountains when the first members of our species arrived.

 

That’s not terribly surprising; the location of the Altai Mountains, including Denisova Cave, makes it a geographical meeting point for species moving around among Africa, Europe, and Asia. Bones and mitochondrial DNA from the cave include hyena species from Africa and East Asia as well as extinct European hyena species. But it could also mean that the bone tools of the Initial Upper Paleolithic may have been a multispecies effort.

 

Nature, 2021 DOI: 10.1020874/2071-0437-2021-53-2-1  (About DOIs).

All the major players spent time in the Denisovan cave

What Gaming Does to Your Brain—and How You Might Benefit (may require free registration)

Stanford prof says treatment provides ‘body-wide genetic upgrade,’ long-term protection against heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and other health conditions.

STANFORD, Calif. — A groundbreaking “superhero” vaccine inspired by the DNA code of Olympic athletes could help transform society over the next decade, a top genetic scientist claims.

The vaccine would provide lifelong protection against three of the top ten leading causes of death, according to Euan Ashley, professor of medicine and genetics at Stanford University. The so-called “superhero” jab could offer simultaneous, long-term protection against heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, and liver disease, thanks to advances in genetic engineering.

This breakthrough treatment would deliver the blueprint of “ideal” cells from men and women whose genes are more disease-resistant than those of the average person, together with an “instruction manual” to help the body “repair, tweak and improve” its own versions. A single dose could lead to a “body-wide genetic upgrade” that would cut the risk of premature death in some adults by as much as 50 percent.

When would a ‘superhero’ vaccine become available?

Ashley says the vaccine would be administered to those in serious clinical need before being rolled out to the wider population, including children. Clinical trials of individual components are expected to begin by 2026, with the combination vaccine to become available within 10 to 15 years.

If breakthroughs in genome research and technology continue to evolve at the same rapid pace, the vaccine could be widely available worldwide in just 10 years, according to Ashley, who is also the associate dean at Stanford University. Prof. Ashley, 49, is the founding director of Stanford’s Center for Inherited Cardiovascular Disease and its Clinical Genomics Program.

“Genomic medicine has been promised for decades, but thanks to advances in the field we are now reaching the stage where that promise is set to become reality, ushering in a bold new era of medical treatments,” the professor says in a statement to SWNS.

“We will soon have the genetic engineering tools to repair, tweak and improve DNA associated with a host of life-limiting diseases, to make us all less prone to developing these illnesses across our lifetimes. This isn’t, of course, to say that we can make people live forever, and we can’t guarantee life expectancy will increase, but it is likely premature deaths could be avoided in many cases,” Ashley continues.

“Advances in DNA modification mean the number of people with ‘superhuman’ genes—those who are more disease resistant—is no longer science fiction but, in the coming years, absolute science fact. Potentially millions of people could be impacted by this technology – a superhero jab, for want of a better description.”

“This has the potential to greatly reduce the burden of diseases with a genetic component such as Alzheimer’s disease, liver disease, coronary heart disease and associated conditions such as strokes, and vascular dementia,” the Stanford geneticist goes on to say. “It is not only possible, but probable, that such a jab will become available in the next 10 to 15 years, with the benefits of that treatment becoming apparent within the next two to three decades. If we modelled on fatal heart attacks alone then the new treatment could lead to as much as a 50 per cent reduction in incidence.”

An ‘autocorrect’ vaccine for your genes

Traditional vaccines work by teaching the immune system to recognize a foe by delivering a dead or weakened pathogen into the body. This triggers the immune system’s own antibodies to seek out the pathogens and the foreign proteins they carry and destroy them.

However, most genomic vaccines, including the proposed “superhero” shot, work by delivering strings of genetic code to certain cells. This code includes multiple versions of a “gene editor,” a tool like a word processor, which alters just one letter of DNA from a disease-prone version to a disease-resistant version.

To ensure that the gene editors reach the right organs safely and are not destroyed on the way to the body’s immune system, they are carried by inactivated targeting viruses or encased in lipids (fat particles) to the precise destination. The lipid technique is used by Pfizer-BioNTech to package its COVID-19 vaccine.

Scientists liken gene editing to the “autocorrect” feature used to correct spelling mistakes in documents written on a computer. Instead of rewriting words however, gene editing rewrites corrupt DNA. The technique is not new, but remains relatively untested, at least in humans.

Prof. Ashley says ongoing advances in the genome editing tool CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) will lead to “very significant” developments in the treatment of serious disease within the next decade. They are already considered to be easier and cheaper to make at scale.

“Gene editing is now coming of age, bringing with it the exciting possibility of preventing serious diseases in the population before they develop,” Prof. Ashley adds. “Not everyone will be susceptible to these diseases but, for those who are, this will be a revolutionary new approach to preventing disease.”

“There is still much to do, not least in terms of ensuring the medicine is safe, and nothing in genetic medicine is ever guaranteed, but as it now stands it looks likely that we may be able to avert a large number of heart attacks and strokes and perhaps many other diseases to keep people healthy and happy for longer.”

Real-life superhumans already exist

The likelihood of a “superhero” vaccine relies on finding real-life superhumans whose genes are uniquely resistant to disease, or those more capable of fighting them. An example is the Finnish Olympian Eero Mäntyranta, who was found to have an unusually high level of hemoglobin, indicating an excess of oxygen-carrying red blood cells, which boosted his endurance levels.

Other examples include American Sharlayne Tracy, who was found to have unusually low cholesterol levels, and an unnamed Pakistani boy who could not feel pain. The exact number of people with superhuman genes remains unclear, but is thought to include several million people worldwide.

Prof. Ashley believes genetic databases such as the UK BioBank, which currently holds health and genetic information on more than 500,000 people, will play a crucial part in genetic vaccine development. They have already uncovered superhuman genes for heart disease, liver disease, and Alzheimer’s disease, and could hold the key to cancer prevention and other terminal diseases in the future.

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The world's highest luxury hotel, boasting a restaurant on the 120th floor and 24-hour personal butler service, has opened in Shanghai to guests with deep pockets and a head for heights.

Elevators whizz guests up the intimidating spiral-like skyscraper at ear-popping speeds of 18 metres per second to the J Hotel's 165 opulent rooms.

The hotel occupies the top floors of the 632-metre (more than 2,000 feet) Shanghai Tower in the city's financial district, the second-tallest building in the world after Dubai's Burj Khalifa.

Its opening was delayed partly by the coronavirus pandemic but the hotel has now started receiving well-heeled guests who can call on the services of a dedicated butler at any hour, day or night.

Patrons can also enjoy one of the hotel's seven restaurants, bars, spa, 84th-floor swimming pool, and all the other usual trappings of a top-notch hotel.

It does not come cheap. To celebrate its opening J Hotel is offering a "special experience rate" of 3,088 yuan ($450) a night, but prices for its 34 suites sky-rocket.

A night in a "J Suite", complete with crystal chandeliers and sauna, this Saturday costs over 67,000 yuan.

The hotel is part of Jin Jiang International Hotels, a major Chinese state-owned group, and officially opened on Saturday.

"On the day of our opening even the web page was overloaded with so many visitors with strong interest and they have such (a) strong will to come and experience our hotel," said Renee Wu, sales and marketing director.

"Of course this is very encouraging to all of us, but at the same time, we are committed to making sure that all our guests are well taken care of."

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Diagnostic tool being piloted by NHS England shows ‘impressive results’ in spotting tumours in early stages

A simple blood test that can detect more than 50 types of cancer before any clinical signs or symptoms of the disease emerge in a person is accurate enough to be rolled out as a screening test, according to scientists.

The test, which is also being piloted by NHS England in the autumn, is aimed at people at higher risk of the disease including patients aged 50 or older.

It is able to identify many types of the disease that are difficult to diagnose in the early stages such as head and neck, ovarian, pancreatic, oesophageal and some blood cancers.

Scientists said their findings, published in the journal Annals of Oncology, show that the test accurately detects cancer often before any signs or symptoms appear, while having a very low false positive rate.

The test, developed by US-based company Grail, looks for chemical changes in fragments of genetic code – cell-free DNA (cfDNA) – that leak from tumours into the bloodstream.

The Guardian first reported on the test last year and how it had been developed using a machine learning algorithm – a type of artificial intelligence. It works by examining the DNA that is shed by tumours and found circulating in the blood. More specifically, it focuses on chemical changes to this DNA, known as methylation patterns.

Now the latest study has revealed the test has an impressively high level of accuracy. Scientists analysed the performance of the test in 2,823 people with the disease and 1,254 people without.

It correctly identified when cancer was present in 51.5% of cases, across all stages of the disease, and wrongly detected cancer in only 0.5% of cases.

In solid tumours that do not have any screening options – such as oesophageal, liver and pancreatic cancers – the ability to generate a positive test result was twice as high (65.6%) as that for solid tumours that do have screening options such as breast, bowel, cervical and prostate cancers.

Meanwhile, the overall ability to generate a positive test result in cancers of the blood, such as lymphoma and myeloma, was 55.1%.

The test correctly also identified the tissue in which the cancer was located in the body in 88.7% of cases.

Dr Eric Klein, chairman of the Glickman Urological and Kidney Institute at Cleveland Clinic in the US and first author on the research, said: “Finding cancer early, when treatment is more likely to be successful, is one of the most significant opportunities we have to reduce the burden of cancer.

“These data suggest that, if used alongside existing screening tests, the multi-cancer detection test could have a profound impact on how cancer is detected and, ultimately, on public health.”

Dr Marco Gerlinger, from the Institute of Cancer Research in London and consultant medical oncologist at the Royal Marsden NHS foundation trust, said: “This new study shows impressive results for a simple blood test that can detect multiple cancer types.

“False positives are low which is important as this will avoid misdiagnoses. For some of the most common tumour types such as bowel or lung cancer, the test even picked up cancers that were very small, at a stage where many of them could potentially be cured.

“The study was done in patients whose cancer was already diagnosed based on other tests and this screening technology still needs to be tested in actual screening trials before routine use.

“But it already allows a glance at early cancer detection in the future which will almost certainly be built around liquid biopsy tests, which detect cancer DNA in the bloodstream.”

Meanwhile, the results of the NHS pilot of the test, which will include 140,000 participants, are expected by 2023.

Prof Peter Johnson, national NHS clinical director for cancer, said: “This latest study provides further evidence that blood tests like this could help the NHS meet its ambitious target of finding three-quarters of cancers at an early stage, when they have the highest chance of cure.

“The data is encouraging and we are working with Grail on studies to see how this test will perform in clinics across the NHS, which will be starting very soon.”

Source

Over the last 10 years, melanoma skin cancer among men in the UK has increased by almost 50%.

Though rates for women have risen by 30% during the same time period, skin cancer is more common in men.

Men are also more likely to be diagnosed at a later stage than women, and skin cancers are often found on their torso—potentially explained by going shirtless. This can make it harder to spot unusual changes, particularly if they occur on their back. And sadly, the charity warns that the figures also show an 8% increase in death rates for men.

The new figures come months after a Cancer Research UK-funded study found a potential new link between higher testosterone level in the blood and an increased risk of melanoma in men.

The UK sun is just as strong as when abroad

As the weather in the UK begins to heat up and more people head outside, the charity is releasing these figures to encourage people to protect their skin from the sun, especially if they burn easily.

Michelle Mitchell, Cancer Research UK's chief executive, said: "With staycations looking to be the norm for many this year, we mustn't lose sight of the fact that UK sun can be every bit as strong as when we are abroad. The same advice still applies, and if something doesn't feel right or you notice any changes to your skin, talk to your GP."

"Don't delay contacting your GP'

Adrian Webb, aged 55, from Dudley, was first diagnosed with skin cancer in September 2012 after his wife, Michele, noticed a mole on his back had changed color.

He had treatment including surgery and radiotherapy, but a year later was given the devastating news that his cancer had spread. He was told by his consultant that he may have just 12 months to live.

"I simply wouldn't have consulted my doctor under my own steam, so I'm thankful my wife found the mole and potentially saved my life," said Adrian.

Adrian underwent further treatment which ended in 2016, and his cancer has now been reduced to a trace.

"I couldn't plan ahead for years, but now that I have been treatment free for over four years, I can start to look ahead again.

Though I can't change what happened, life for me now is so wonderful and I'm blessed with an amazing family."

"I hope that my story can help prevent others from going through what I did. I would strongly encourage anyone who notices anything unusual about their skin not to delay contacting their GP."

Staying safe in the sun

Despite rates being on the rise, almost 9 in 10 melanoma skin cancer cases are preventable.

While it's easy to think that a tan is a sign of good health, there's no such thing as a healthy tan from the sun or sunbeds. A tan is the body simply trying to protect itself from harmful rays.

In the UK, the sun's rays are strongest between 11am and 3pm and can cause lasting damage to DNA in skins cells, even in cloudy weather.

Protect your skin:

• Spending time in the shade, especially between 11am and 3pm in the UK.

• Covering up with clothes, a wide-brimmed hat and UV protection sunglasses.

• And using a sunscreen with at least SPF15 and 4 or 5 stars. Use it generously, reapply regularly and use together with shade and clothing.

And although some people are at greater risk, experts warn that anyone can get sunburnt or develop skin cancer. People with naturally dark or brown skin burn less easily and have a lower risk of skin cancer, but when the sun is strong everyone should take the same precautions.

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They tried grocery giveaways and lotteries for new cars and apartments. But an ambitious plan of vaccinating 30 million Russians by mid-June still has fallen short by a third.

So now, many regional governments across the vast country are obligating some workers to get vaccinated and requiring the shots to enter certain businesses, like restaurants.

As many Western countries lift coronavirus restrictions and plan a return to normal life after mass vaccinations, Russia is battling a surge of infections—even though it was the first in the world to authorize a vaccine and among the first to start administering it in December.

Daily new cases have grown from about 9,000 in early June to about 17,000 on June 18 and over 20,000 on Thursday, with Moscow, its outlying region and St. Petersburg combining for about half of all new infections.

Officials have blamed Russians' lax attitude toward taking necessary precautions and the growing prevalence of more infectious variants. But perhaps the biggest factor is the lack of vaccinations.

Only 20.7 million people, or 14% of its population of 146 million, have received at least one shot as of Wednesday, and only 16.7 million, or about 11%, have been fully vaccinated.

In this June 21, 2021, file photo, medical workers carry a patient suspected of having coronavirus on a stretcher at a hospital in Kommunarka, outside Moscow, Russia. An ambitious plan of vaccinating 30 million Russians by mid-June against the coronavirus has fallen short by a third, and the country has started to see a surge in daily new infections. So now, many regional governments across the vast country are obligating some workers to get vaccinated and requiring the shots to enter certain businesses, like restaurants. Credit: AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin, File

Experts say those numbers are due to several factors, including the public's wariness of the rushed approval and rollout of the Sputnik V vaccine; an official narrative that Russia had tamed its outbreak; criticism on state TV of other vaccines as dangerous; and a weak promotional campaign that included incentives such as consumer giveaways.

In light of the surge, at least 14 Russian regions—from Moscow and St. Petersburg to the remote far-eastern region of Sakhalin—made vaccinations mandatory this month for employees in certain sectors, such as government offices, retail, health care, education, restaurants, fitness centers, beauty parlors and other service industries.

Moscow authorities said companies should suspend without pay employees unwilling to get vaccinated, and they threatened to temporarily halt operations of businesses that don't meet the goal of having 60% of staff get at least one shot by July 15 and both shots by Aug. 15.

As of Monday, all Moscow restaurants, cafes and bars will admit only customers who have been vaccinated, have recovered from COVID-19 in the past six months, or can provide a negative coronavirus test from the previous 72 hours. City officials also limited most elective hospital care to those who are fully vaccinated or can provide tests showing they have antibodies to fight the infection.

People stand in line to get a coronavirus vaccine at a center in the GUM, State Department store, in Red Square in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, June 22, 2021. An ambitious plan of vaccinating 30 million Russians by mid-June against the coronavirus has fallen short by a third, and the country has started to see a surge in daily new infections. Credit: AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin

The moves seem to be an act of desperation by authorities.

"They backed themselves into a corner, they have no choice now," said Judy Twigg, a political science professor specializing in global health at Virginia Commonwealth University.

"They overhyped this vaccine so that people didn't trust it. Then they took a series of measures that were clearly attempted to make it seem as though the government had everything under control, the pandemic was no big deal. … And now they're in this situation, not surprisingly, where low vaccination rates have left an opening for the delta variant to come in," she said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted Thursday the vaccinations in Moscow were "voluntary," because those refusing to get the shot can still seek a different job.

The governor of the southern region of Krasnodar, home to the Black Sea resort of Sochi, said hotels and sanitariums will only accommodate vacationers with a negative coronavirus test or a vaccination certificate starting July 1. As of Aug. 1, only vaccinated individuals will be admitted.

A vaccination certificate sits on a computer screen with the website Gosuslugi (public services portal) in Moscow, Russia, Monday, June 21, 2021. Police quickly cracked down, launching 24 criminal cases last week against sellers of fake vaccination certificates. Still, several accounts offering the bogus documents could be found easily on the Telegram messaging app this week. Credit: AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko

The mandates have drawn mixed responses, with some saying they are welcome if they prevent closures of businesses, while other say it's unclear how employers can persuade those who don't want the shots.

"Most restaurateurs believe that vaccination is necessary," said Sergei Mironov, founder of a restaurant chain and vice president of the Federation of Restaurateurs and Hoteliers. "But it is necessary to create (the right) conditions for the vaccination (drive)."

"There are too many rumors, and even doctors say different things," and convincing younger employees to get vaccinated is especially difficult, he said.

Tatyana Moskalkova, the government's human rights commissioner, said the unvaccinated have cited discrimination by employers, with threats of dismissal or withholding bonuses.

At a TV awards ceremony Tuesday, popular actor Yegor Beroyev wore a yellow star akin to those worn by Jews under the Nazis in World War II, and he spoke of "waking up in a world where (COVID-19 vaccination) became an identification mark of whether you are a citizen, … will you be able to visit institutions and events, will you enjoy all the benefits and rights."

A visitor shows a COVID-19 vaccination QR code at the entrance of a restaurant in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, June 22, 2021. As proof of vaccination for entering a restaurant, customers must visit a government website and get a QR code, a digital pattern designed to be read by a scanner. Credit: AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin

As proof of vaccination for entering a restaurant, customers must visit a government website and get a QR code, a digital pattern designed to be read by a scanner.

Restaurant owners won concessions Thursday when Moscow agreed the QR codes aren't needed for the next two weeks at establishments with outdoor terraces, and underage customers won't have to provide documentation if accompanied by their parents.

Still, the situation for many restaurants "is hard and will be harder by the day," Mironov said.

In Moscow, online searches for fake inoculation documents increased shortly after the mayor announced mandatory vaccinations, social anthropologist Alexandra Arkhipova told an online lecture on vaccine hesitancy.

Police quickly cracked down, launching 24 criminal cases last week against sellers of fake vaccination certificates. Still, several accounts offering the bogus documents could be found easily on the Telegram messaging app this week.

In this Friday, June 18, 2021, file photo, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, center, and Moscow's Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, left, visit the hospital for coronavirus patients in Kommunarka, outside Moscow, Russia. An ambitious plan of vaccinating 30 million Russians by mid-June against the coronavirus has fallen short by a third, and the country has started to see a surge in daily new infections. So now, many regional governments across the vast country are obligating some workers to get vaccinated and requiring the shots to enter certain businesses, like restaurants. Credit: Alexander Astafyev, Sputnik/Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File

The number of such offers has grown about 19% every month since March, said Evgeny Egorov, digital risk protection analyst at Group-IB, a Singapore-based cybersecurity company. In mid-June, Group-IB found at least 90 active offers, he said.

The independent pollster Levada Center said polls show about 60% of Russians are unwilling to get vaccinated.

Levada director and sociologist Denis Volkov said the vaccination mandates could change the minds of many because it's a clear signal from the government that the shots are necessary.

"I often hear (from respondents) that they wouldn't do it, are afraid and so on, but if there are restrictions, and it is required for travel, state services, or at work, then yes," Volkov said.

It could be starting to change attitudes. Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said the average vaccination rate across Russia has almost doubled in the past week, and long lines have been seen at pop-up vaccination clinics in Moscow shopping malls.

A restaurant employee, right, checks a visitor's COVID-19 vaccination QR code at the entrance of a restaurant in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, June 22, 2021. As proof of vaccination for entering a restaurant, customers must visit a government website and get a QR code, a digital pattern designed to be read by a scanner. Credit: AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin

A demand for vaccines could also lead to shortages. As of mid-May, just over 33 million doses were produced in Russia, and a significant amount was exported.

Several regions have reported supply problems this week, but Peskov said those were "temporary logistical difficulties."

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The Israeli health ministry reimposed a requirement Friday for masks to be worn in enclosed public places following a surge in COVID cases since it was dropped 10 days ago.

The spike in new infections is a blow for a country which has prided itself on one of the world's most successful vaccine rollouts.

The head of Israel's pandemic response taskforce, Nachman Ash, told public radio the requirement came after four days of more than 100 new cases a day, with 227 cases confirmed Thursday.

"We are seeing a doubling every few days," Ash said. "Another thing that's worrying is that the infections are spreading. If we had two cities where most of the infections were, we have more cities where the numbers are rising and communities where the cases are going up."

Ash said the rise in cases was likely due to the highly contagious Delta variant first seen in India.

Reimposing the mask requirement is a setback for Israel, coming so soon after it was lifted on June 15 on the back of a successful vaccination campaign.

Some 5.2 million people have received both doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, after Israel obtained millions of doses.

Ash said despite the increased number of positive cases, he did not yet see a parallel rise in hospitalisations or deaths.

"It's clear it's a factor of time, that not enough time has passed," Ash said. "But we hope the vaccines will protect us from a rise in hospitalisation and difficult cases."

The health ministry urged Israelis to wear masks in crowded outdoor spaces too, including at pride events scheduled for this weekend.

A pride march scheduled for Friday afternoon in Tel Aviv is expected to draw tens of thousands of people. The event is resuming after it was suspended last year due to the virus.

On Wednesday, Israel already delayed plans to allow the renewed entry of individual tourists and said it could take other steps to counter the spread of the Delta variant.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett warned Tuesday of a "new outbreak" of coronavirus in Israel after a rise in infections he said was likely due to returning travellers carrying the variant.

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Workers and residents in Sydney were ordered to stay home for a week on Friday, as authorities locked down several central areas of Australia's largest city to contain an outbreak of the highly contagious Delta variant of COVID-19.

Sixty-five COVID-19 cases have been reported so far in the flare-up linked to a limousine driver infected about two weeks ago when he transported an international flight crew from Sydney airport to a quarantine hotel.

But authorities have since identified scores of potential infection sites visited by thousands of people across central Sydney, including the city's main business district.

Authorities have been alarmed by instances of people passing on the virus during fleeting encounters in shops and then quickly infecting close family contacts.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian of New South Wales state, which includes Sydney, called it the "scariest period" since the pandemic broke out more than a year ago.

On Friday, she ordered anyone who lived or worked in four central Sydney neighbourhoods to stay home for at least a week, only venturing out to purchase essential goods, obtain medical care, exercise or if they are unable to work from home.

The restrictions included central business district workers over fears that commuters were potentially spreading the virus into other parts of the city, Berejiklian said.

"We've done better than expected in terms of contact tracing and getting on top of all those links," she said.

"But what this does is make sure that we haven't missed any chains of community transmission."

An earlier ban on Sydneysiders leaving the city was also extended until next Friday, as traces of the virus were detected in sewage in the far-flung outback town of Bourke, about nine hours drive northwest of Sydney.

It was a dramatic development for a city that had returned to relative normality after months of recording very few local cases.

Australia Medical Association President Omar Khorshid chided New South Wales authorities for not taking tougher action, including locking down the entire Sydney metropolitan region, home to some five million people.

"The Delta virus is different; it is being transmitted far more easily," Khorshid told media in Canberra.

"Sydney has not faced this before."

Korshid warned that although the economic impact of a lockdown was hard, a wider outbreak could be "catastrophic" for the whole country.

It is the latest in a string of snap "circuit-breaker" lockdowns across major cities around Australia, with most cases linked to returning travellers held in hotel quarantine.

Australia has been among the world's most successful countries in containing COVID-19, with just over 30,000 cases and 910 deaths in a population of about 25 million.

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Research published today in Nature Microbiology has identified 54,118 species of virus living in the human gut—92% of which were previously unknown.

But as we and our colleagues from the Joint Genome Institute and Stanford University in California found, the great majority of these were bacteriophages, or "phages" for short. These viruses "eat" bacteria and can't attack human cells.

When most of us think of viruses, we think of organisms that infect our cells with diseases such as mumps, measles or, more recently, COVID-19. However, there are a vast number of these microscopic parasites in our bodies—mostly in our gut—that target the microbes that live there.

Everybody poos (but not all poo is the same)

There has recently been much interest in the human gut microbiome: the collection of microorganisms that live in our gut.

Besides helping us digest our food, these microbes have many other important roles. They protect us against pathogenic bacteria, modulate our mental well-being, prime our immune system when we are children, and have an ongoing role in immune regulation into adulthood.

It's fair to say the human gut is now the most well-studied microbial ecosystem on the planet. Yet more than 70% of the microbial species that live there have yet to be grown in the laboratory.

We know this because we can access the genetic blueprints of the gut microbiome via an approach known as metagenomics. This is a powerful technique whereby DNA is directly extracted from an environment and randomly sequenced, giving us a snapshot of what is present within and what it might be doing.

Metagenomic studies have revealed how far we still have to go to catalogue and isolate all the microbial species in the human gut—and even further to go when it comes to viruses.

11,810 samples of poo

In our new research, we and our colleagues computationally mined viral sequences from 11,810 publicly available faecal metagenomes, taken from people in 24 different countries. We wanted to get an idea of the extent to which viruses have taken up residence in the human gut.

This effort resulted in the Metagenomic Gut Virus catalogue, the largest such resource to date. This catalogue comprises 189,680 viral genomes which represent more than 50,000 distinct viral species.

Remarkably (but perhaps predictably), more than 90% of these viral species are new to science. They collectively encode more than 450,000 distinct proteins—a huge reservoir of functional potential that may either be beneficial or detrimental to their microbial, and in turn human, hosts.

Biologists estimate there are a few hundred trillion viruses living within and outside our bodies. Credit: Shutterstock

We also drilled down into subspecies of different viruses and found some showed striking geographical patterns across the 24 countries surveyed.

For example, a subspecies of the recently described and enigmatic crAssphage was prevalent in Asia, but was rare or absent in samples from Europe and North America. This may be due to localised expansion of this virus in specific human populations.

One of the most common functions we discovered in our molecular field trip were diversity-generating retroelements (DGRs). These are a class of genetic elements that mutate specific target genes in order to generate variation that can be beneficial to the host. In the case of DGRs in viruses, this may help in the ongoing evolutionary arms race with their bacterial hosts.

Intriguingly, we found one-third of the most common virally-encoded proteins have unknown functions, including more than 11,000 genes distantly related to "beta-lactamases", which enable resistance to antibiotics such as penicillin.

Linking gut viruses to their microbial hosts

Having identified the phages, our next task was to link them to their microbial hosts. CRISPRs, best known for their many applications in gene editing, are bacterial immune systems that "remember" past viral infections and prevent them from happening again.

They do this by copying and storing fragments of the invading virus into their own genomes, which can then be used to specifically target and destroy the virus in future encounters.

We used this record of past attacks to link many of the viral sequences to their hosts in the gut ecosystem. Unsurprisingly, highly abundant viral species were linked to highly abundant bacterial species in the gut, mostly belonging to the bacterial phyla Firmicutes and Bacteroidota.

So what can we do with all of this new information? One promising application of an inventory of gut viruses and their hosts is phage therapy. Phage therapy is an old concept predating antibiotics, in which viruses are used to selectively target bacterial pathogens in order to treat infections.

There has been discussion of potentially customising people's gut microbiomes using dietary interventions, probiotics, prebiotics or even "transpoosions" (faecal microbiota transplants), to improve an individual's health.

Phage therapy may be a useful addition to this objective, by adding species or even subspecies-level precision to microbiome manipulation. For example, the bacterial pathogen Clostridioides difficile (or Cdiff for short) is a leading cause of hospital-acquired diarrhoea that could be specifically targeted by phages.

More subtle manipulation of non-pathogenic bacterial populations in the gut may be achievable through phage therapy. A complete compendium of gut viruses is a useful first step for such applied goals.

It's worth noting, however, that projections from our data suggest we've only investigated a fraction of the total gut viral diversity. So we've still got a long way to go.

More information: Stephen Nayfach et al, Metagenomic compendium of 189,680 DNA viruses from the human gut microbiome, Nature Microbiology (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41564-021-00928-6

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The initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic heightened some of the challenges faced by young Australians with early evidence suggesting that, compared with older age groups, young people experienced higher rates of psychological distress, job loss, and educational disruption during the pandemic.

A new report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) has shown that experiences of severe psychological distress among young people aged 18–24 increased from 14% in February 2017 to 22% in April 2020, and of the 592,000 Australians who lost employment in April 2020, more than 1 in 3 (38%) were aged 15–24.

The report, Australia's youth, brings together data about young people (aged 12–24) and their experiences of school and higher education, mental health and wellbeing, employment, living circumstances, and personal relationships.

The effects of COVID-19 can be dynamic, with outcomes changing quickly when conditions change, such as the introducing or easing of restrictions.

"While data suggest some outcomes for young people have returned to pre-COVID-19 levels, this is not always the case. For example, in April 2021 the average level of psychological distress among young people was below what it was in April 2020, but still higher than in February 2017. Ongoing monitoring is needed to fully understand the longer-term impact of the pandemic," said AIHW spokesperson Ms. Sally Mills.

The proportion of young people aged 15–24 not in education, employment or training rose from 8.7% in May 2019 to 12% in May 2020 following the introduction of COVID-19 restrictions. Since then, the proportion has fallen to 11% in February 2021, a similar rate to February 2020 before the pandemic.

"Adolescence and young adulthood is a critical period in a person's life. Young people often experience rapid physical, social and emotional changes in a time where they are transitioning from dependence to independence," Ms Mills said.

"This is a time when young people are finishing school, pursuing further training and education, entering the workforce, moving out of the family home, and forming relationships."

Despite the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, young people are faring well in a number of areas, with most 15–24 years-olds studying or working, and almost 3 in 5 (59%) young people aged 15–19 years feeling happy/very happy with their lives in 2020; similar to 2019 (61%).

In the past two decades rates of young people engaged in drinking at risky levels, daily smoking, and recent use of illicit drugs have fallen dramatically.

Overall, the proportion of young people aged 14–24 who smoke daily has more than halved, from 19.3% in 2001 to 6.8% in 2019.

Deaths among young people in Australia, have fallen markedly over the past two decades, with about 1,300 deaths in 2019. Injury, cancer, and diseases of the nervous system were the leading causes of death for young people aged 15–24.

"Injury remains the leading cause of death among young people, accounting for 73% of deaths in 2017–19. Just over half of all injury deaths (54%) were intentional, with the remainder classified as unintentional or undetermined intent," Ms Mills said.

This is the AIHW's first comprehensive report on young people since 2015. It brings together updated and new data about Australia's young people and provides suggestions for how to fill known information gaps.

Young people were involved in drafting information pieces on three topics of particular importance to them: discrimination, climate change, and the wellbeing of LGBTIQ+ young people.

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The human family tree keeps getting more complicated

Newly described bones have a mix of Neanderthal and older features. 

 

It's long past time to stop thinking of humanity's nearest relatives as forming a family tree. Our close relatives like the Neanderthals and Denisovans clearly interbred both with us and each other. There are also indications that an older African lineage contributed to our ancestry; Neanderthals seem to have picked up some DNA from an even older lineage as well. All of that makes humanity's ancestry look more like a river delta, with multiple channels separating and reuniting over time.

 

In today's issue of Science, a group of researchers argue that they have found yet another channel that may sit at a key point in our past. A small collection of bones from a site in the Mideast seems to have a mix of archaic and Neanderthal-like features, suggesting that the bones may be related to the source of archaic DNA in the Neanderthal lineage. But the bones come from well after the Neanderthal lineage was distinct, and the artifacts found with them suggest extensive interactions with other human lineages.

A bit of a mix

The site, located in Israel, is called Nesher Ramla. Extensive dating of materials found there suggests that the newly described bones date from roughly 120,000 to 140,000 years ago—a complicated time in our species' history, to say the least. Neanderthals and Denisovans had already inhabited Eurasia, which they shared with other archaic human lineages, along with Homo erectus. Modern humans were present in Africa and shared the continent with various archaic lineages, many of which had some modern features. And there is evidence that a lot of these groups crossed paths in the Mideast.

 

The discovered human bones include part of the parietal bones, which form the roof and sides of the skull, and a portion of the jaw. In many ways, the bones are difficult to characterize because they represent a mix of features that are both archaic and found in more recent lineages. An analysis of the parietal bones places their features awkwardly between groups that include Homo erectus, Neanderthals, and the Homo lineages that were present in Europe at the time. The bones were distant from modern human remains.

 

The jaw produced similar results, with the new remains perched in between Neanderthals and some of the human lineages present in Europe. Homo erectus was a bit more distant, as were other Eurasian human lineages. Imaging of teeth found separately, along with the roots present in the jaw, provided some additional information.

This placement between groups is the product of individual features looking either like those of Neanderthals or those of archaic human lineages, so the researchers are hesitant to assign a new species. But they do argue that this population was a late survivor of a lineage that goes back to before the origin of Neanderthals and likely contributed to them genetically. That argument isn't outrageous given how much we now know about interbreeding among our ancestors, but it's still likely to be the subject of debate going forward. (In fact, the arguing has already started, with at least one paleontologist asserting that the features don't cleanly distinguish the remains from a variation found within Neanderthals.)

Cultural exchange

There will probably be further arguing over the fossils' anatomic relationships with other human ancestors. But the Nesher Ramla site doesn't just have bones; there's also an extensive record of stone tools in the sediment layers. And the structure of these tools indicates that they were made via a very specific manufacturing technique called the centripetal Levallois method.

 

The stone comes from an area near the site, indicating that trade wasn't needed. But the technique used to shape the stone produced artifacts very similar to those associated with Homo sapiens found at sites ranging from North Africa to the Arabian Peninsula. So whatever species or subspecies they were, the people of Nesher Ramla were likely to be culturally integrated with the other human populations around them—at least to the extent that toolmaking techniques were shared.

 

That's an interesting finding in its own right, but it also serves as a caution. Because of the association of this technology with Homo sapiens, it is tempting to use it as a marker for our spread out of Africa. But if the stone technology was readily adopted by archaic populations as well, we can't make the assumption that it travelled with any specific population, the authors said.

 

Science, 2021. DOI: 10.1126/science.abh3020, 10.1126/science.abh3169 (About DOIs).

The human family tree keeps getting more complicated

Scientists using computer modeling to study SARS-CoV-2, the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic, have discovered the virus is most ideally adapted to infect human cells—rather than bat or pangolin cells, again raising questions of its origin.

In a paper published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, Australian scientists describe how they used high-performance computer modeling of the form of the SARS-CoV-2 virus at the beginning of the pandemic to predict its ability to infect humans and a range of 12 domestic and exotic animals.

Their work aimed to help identify any intermediate animal vector that may have played a role in transmitting a bat virus to humans, and to understand any risk posed by the susceptibilities of companion animals such as cats and dogs, and commercial animals like cows, sheep, pigs and horses.

The scientists, from Flinders University and La Trobe University, used genomic data from the 12 animal species to painstakingly build computer models of the key ACE2 protein receptors for each species. These models were then used to calculate the strength of binding of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to each species' ACE2 receptor.

Surprisingly, the results showed that SARS-CoV-2 bound to ACE2 on human cells more tightly than any of the tested animal species, including bats and pangolins. If one of the animal species tested was the origin, it would normally be expected to show the highest binding to the virus.

"Humans showed the strongest spike binding, consistent with the high susceptibility to the virus, but very surprising if an animal was the initial source of the infection in humans," says La Trobe University Professor David Winkler.

The findings, originally released on the ArXiv preprint server, have now been peer reviewed and published in Scientific Reports.

"The computer modeling found the virus's ability to bind to the bat ACE2 protein was poor relative to its ability to bind human cells. This argues against the virus being transmitted directly from bats to humans. Hence, if the virus has a natural source, it could only have come to humans via an intermediary species which has yet to be found," says Flinders affiliated Professor Nikolai Petrovsky.

The team's computer modeling shows the SARS-CoV-2 virus also bound relatively strongly to ACE2 from pangolins, a rare exotic ant-eater found in some parts of South-East Asia with occasional instances of use as food or traditional medicines. Professor Winkler says pangolins showed the highest spike binding energy of all the animals the study looked at—significantly higher than bats, monkeys and snakes.

"While it was incorrectly suggested early in the pandemic by some scientists that they had found SARS-CoV-2 in pangolins, this was due to a misunderstanding and this claim was rapidly retracted as the pangolin coronavirus they described had less than 90% genetic similarity to SARS-CoV-2 and hence could not be its ancestor," Professor Petrovsky says.

This study and others have shown, however, that the specific part of the pangolin coronavirus spike protein that binds ACE2 was almost identical to that of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

"This sharing of the almost identical spike protein almost certainly explains why SARS-CoV-2 binds so well to pangolin ACE2. Pangolin and SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins may have evolved similarities through a process of convergent evolution, genetic recombination between viruses, or through genetic engineering, with no current way to distinguish between these possibilities," Professor Petrovsky says.

"Overall, putting aside the intriguing pangolin ACE2 results, our study showed that the COVID-19 virus was very well adapted to infect humans."

"We also deduced that some domesticated animals like cats, dogs and cows are likely to be susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection too," Professor Winkler adds.

The extremely important and open question of how the virus came to infect humans has two main explanations currently. The virus may have passed to humans from bats through an intermediary animal yet to be found (zoonotic origin), but it cannot yet be excluded that it was released accidently from a virology lab. A thorough scientific, evidence-based investigation is needed to determine which of these explanations is correct.

How and where the SARS-CoV-2 virus adapted to become such an effective human pathogen remains a mystery, the researchers conclude, adding that finding the origins of the disease will help efforts to protect humanity against future coronavirus pandemics.

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A new resource developed at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and The Kinghorn Cancer Center for oncologists could help make targeted cancer therapies more accessible for Australian patients.

The TOPOGRAPH (Therapy-Oriented Precision Oncology Guidelines for Recommending Anti-cancer Pharmaceuticals) database is an online tool that catalogs oncology research to streamline the process of recommending therapeutic treatments in precision cancer medicine.

Garvan Senior Research Officer Dr. Frank Lin led the development of the platform reported this week in the journal npj Precision Oncology.

"TOPOGRAPH is uniquely useful in the Australian context because it combines up-to-date information on treatments approved for use in Australia in both clinical and trial settings," Dr. Lin says. "This tool was designed to systematically organize the vast amount of data from clinical trials and regulatory authorities into an accessible, easy to use platform for oncologists to maximize the therapeutic benefit to patients."

Bringing the data together

While several resources exist that interpret the potential therapeutic significance of genomic variations and other biomarkers in cancer, a number of factors such as government subsidies and approvals by national regulators can limit access to treatments.

Dr. Lin says that in Australia, there was a strong need for a "pragmatic, evidence-based, context-adapted tool to guide clinical management based on molecular biomarkers."

"We designed this tool because there's no good alternatives in Australia to help oncologists sieve through potential treatment options when facing a complex genomic report."

The TOPOGRAPH team, which included researchers from the Garvan Institute, The Kinghorn Cancer Center, St Vincent's Hospital, Australian Genomic Cancer Medicine Program (Omico), UNSW Sydney, The University of Sydney and the NHMRC Clinical Trials Center, conducted a comprehensive literature review and appraisal to develop a database comprising 211 predictive biomarkers, 117 cancer types and more than 400 therapies.

Oncologists can look up any of these parameters on the platform, as well as combinations of biomarkers, cancer types, and therapies to view information tailored for patients with advanced cancer.

Therapies are organized into different tiers according to how effective they have been shown to be for a given cancer based on key biomarkers, its approval for use in Australia, and whether the cost of the treatment can be subsidized through the pharmaceutical benefits scheme (PBS).

Dr. Subo Thavaneswaran, Medical Oncologist at The Kinghorn Cancer Center and Garvan researcher, says the database is already proving useful in a clinical setting.

"Applying TOPOGRAPH to our Molecular Tumor Board recommendations at The Kinghorn Cancer Center gives us greater confidence in their consistency, evidence-base and understanding of accessibility to therapies in the Australian context."

Emerging research

One of the reasons TOPOGRAPH was built was to keep oncologists up to date with the latest research and treatment approvals. The researchers plan to update TOPOGRAPH with treatments and therapies as they emerge and undergo assessment by the Therapeutic Goods Administration.

Professor David Thomas, senior author of the paper and Head of the Genomic Cancer Medicine Laboratory at Garvan, Director of The Kinghorn Cancer Center and CEO of Omico, says that TOPOGRAPH could also be expanded to other jurisdictions by adjusting the platform's tier system.

"While this paper describes the use of TOPOGRAPH in the Australian context, our approach can be applied as a framework to other jurisdictions and the guidelines of different regulatory bodies. From a global oncology perspective, comparing tiered therapies between countries may help identify differences in equity of access by highlighting the disparity in drug utilization compared to scientific advances in cancer therapeutics," he says.

"In addition, there is a potential role for TOPOGRAPH to support translational research, by informing the design of new correlative studies to explore more precise biomarkers for targeted therapies."

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Russia warned on Wednesday of an "explosive" spread of the Delta coronavirus variant in the country that was made worse by a sluggish vaccination campaign leading to rapidly rising infections and deaths.

Citing increases in cases of coronavirus in all Russian regions, Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova called for stronger restrictive measures and speeding up of inoculations.

"Last week the death rate linked to Covid increased by 21.3% compared to previous months," Golikova said, as the country records thousands of new cases and hundreds of deaths every day.

"The situation has become explosive," said Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, who has taken a leading role in Russia's response to the pandemic. 

He said that more than 50,000 new infections had been recorded in the Russian capital, the epicentre of the country's outbreak, over the past two weeks, calling it a pandemic high.

The highly infectious Delta variant, which first appeared in India, represents nearly 90% of new cases in Moscow, Sobyanin said. 

He said that the city has 20,000 beds available for coronavirus patients, more than half of which are occupied. 

Russian authorities have stepped up measures to encourage a populace suspicious of coronavirus vaccines to get inoculated.

Last week Sobyanin announced mandatory vaccinations for 60% of service sector workers by Aug. 15.

The city has also introduced an anti-Covid pass for dining out starting June 28, allowing only residents who have been vaccinated, were sick in the past six months or can present a recent negative PCR test into restaurants.

Although free jabs have been available to Russians since December, just 20.6 million out of a population of about 146 million have received at least one dose of a vaccine, according to the Gogov website which tallies Covid figures from the regions and the media.

Russia is among the countries hardest hit by the pandemic, with the sixth-highest number of cases in the world, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

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