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Tag: Biology

  • The extreme heat in Phoenix is withering some of its famed saguaro cacti, with no end in sight

    The extreme heat in Phoenix is withering some of its famed saguaro cacti, with no end in sight

    PHOENIX — After recording the warmest monthly average temperature for any U.S. city ever in July, Phoenix climbed back up to dangerously high temperatures Wednesday. That could mean trouble not just for people but for some plants, too.

    Residents across the sprawling metro are finding the extended extreme heat has led to fried flora, and have shared photos and video of their damaged cacti with the Desert Botanical Garden. Nurseries and landscapers are inundated with requests for help with saguaros or fruit trees that are losing leaves.

    Phones have been “ringing nonstop” about everything from a cactus to a citrus tree or ficus, said Sophia Booth, a landscape designer at Moon Valley Nursery, which has nearly a dozen locations across the Phoenix suburbs.

    “A lot of people are calling and saying their cactus is yellowing really hard, fell over or like broken arms, that sort of thing,” Booth said. “Twenty-year-old trees are losing all their leaves, or they’re turning a crisp brown.”

    She advises people to give water and specialty fertilizer to a distressed tree or plant every other day and not to trim them.

    At the Desert Botanical Garden, three of the treasured institution’s more than 1,000 saguaro cacti have toppled over or lost an arm in the last week, a rate that officials there say is highly unusual.

    These saguaros, a towering trademark of the Sonoran Desert landscape, were already stressed from record-breaking heat three years ago, and this summer’s historic heat — the average temperature in Phoenix last month was 102.7 degrees Fahrenheit (39.3 degrees Celsius) — turned out to be the cactus needle that broke the camel’s back.

    “Since 2020, we have had elevated mortality in our population of saguaros compared to mortality rates pre-2020,” said Kimberlie McCue, the garden’s chief science officer. “So part of our thinking is that there are still saguaros today that were compromised from what they went through in 2020. And that this could be sending them over the edge.”

    Saguaros can live up to 200 years and grow as tall as 40 feet (12 meters). Some in the Desert Botanical Garden date beyond its opening 85 years ago, and the largest there measure almost 30 feet (9 meters), according to McCue.

    People commonly assume that cacti are made to endure scorching heat, but even they can have their limits, McCue said. It wasn’t just this summer’s 31-day streak of highs at or above 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius), but also the multiple nights when the low never dipped below 90 degrees (32.2 Celsius). Nighttime is when cacti open their pores to get rid of retained water and take in carbon dioxide, she explained.

    “With water loss, if they become dehydrated, that can compromise the structural integrity that they have in their tissues,” McCue said.

    A cactus’ size can also influence its susceptibility, said Kevin Hultine, the garden’s director of research, and bigger plants with more mass are more prone to the effects of heat and drought.

    “Larger (and older) plants have more arms and thus, they tend to be the first to start to lose structural integrity,” Hultine said via email. “The first sign of heat-related stress in a population are arms falling from large plants. Eventually, the entire plant might fall over from the stress.”

    There is hope that the arrival of thunderstorms during the monsoon season, which traditionally starts June 15, could bring more delayed moisture that will help struggling flora. The U.S. monsoon is characterized by a shift in wind patterns that pull moisture in from the tropical coast of Mexico. It sets up differently in other parts of the world. In Arizona, about half the rain that falls during the year comes during the monsoon.

    It can be a mixed bag — cooling sweltering cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix but bringing the risk of flooding to mountain towns and low-lying deserts alike. It carries a promise of rain but doesn’t always deliver. And even when it does, the moisture isn’t shared equally across the Four Corners region and beyond. The last two seasons were impressive, and the two before that largely duds.

    In the southern Arizona city of Tucson, which has already seen some monsoon activity, the outdoor living Sonoran Desert Museum isn’t running into the same problems with its succulents, McCue said.

    “We have the double whammy of this heat dome that seems to have decided to sit over Phoenix. And we’re also this massively spread out space with highways and parking lots,” McCue said. However, “the story isn’t complete yet.”

    Booth, of Moon Valley Nurseries, agreed that rain could still keep some plants and trees from reaching the point of no return. In the meantime, staffers at the nursery are preparing for temperatures to soar again this week.

    “We do take a lot of precautions, especially to our planters and people that don’t just work in the office,” Booth said. “Our yard crew, they’re in long sleeves. They have their straw hats on. We make sure we have bottled water in the fridge at all times. We haven’t had any heat exhaustion yet out of this (location).”

    As of Wednesday, there was no rain in the forecast anytime soon according to the National Weather Service. After two days of a slight drop, high temperatures reached 111 (43.9 Celsius) and are expected to be 110 degrees (43.3 Celsius) or more for the next 10 days.

    There has been some monsoonal activity in southern and northern Arizona, but Phoenix is “stuck in the middle,” meteorologist Matt Salerno said.

    “There’s still hope maybe the middle of this month the monsoon will become more active again,” Salerno said.

    There will likely be some record-breaking before then, however. The Weather Service plans to issue an extreme heat warning Friday through Monday, when the highs will be between 111 (43.9 Celsius) and 117 (47.2 Celsius).

    In the meantime, the Desert Botanical Garden has been working to propagate cacti that seem better able to endure searing conditions after staffers noticed the 2020 heat was more difficult for some plants than others. Some just seemed to have a genetic makeup that allowed them to thrive.

    “We want to try and capture that and grow more saguaros from seed here to add into our population at the garden with the idea that over time, that is going to bring more resiliency into into our population here,” McCue said.

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  • The highest rates of Alzheimer’s are in these U.S. counties, new research shows

    The highest rates of Alzheimer’s are in these U.S. counties, new research shows

    The eastern and southeastern United States have the highest prevalences of Alzheimer’s dementia, according to new research released Monday at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Amsterdam. 

    The study, by researchers at Rush Medical College in Chicago, includes county-level estimates of Alzheimer’s rates among adults age 65 and older in all 3,142 U.S. counties. 

    Among…

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  • Killings of 3 women in Long Island went unsolved for more than a decade. Here’s how authorities tracked down the suspect | CNN

    Killings of 3 women in Long Island went unsolved for more than a decade. Here’s how authorities tracked down the suspect | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    After the remains of four women were found near a beach in Long Island, New York, more than a decade ago, investigators say DNA evidence and cellphone data now point to a murder suspect – a local architect whose internet history showed him often searching the status of the case and details about the victims.

    Rex Heuermann was arrested in New York City on Thursday, more than a year after a police task force explored his possible connection to the cold case known as the “Gilgo Four,” named for the beach where the remains were found.

    Heuermann, 59, was indicted on one count of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder in each of three of the killings – Melissa Barthelemy in 2009, and Megan Waterman and Amber Costello in 2010, according to the indictment. He pleaded not guilty Friday during his first court appearance on Long Island and was remanded without bail.

    The defendant, who told his attorney he did not carry out the killings, is also the prime suspect in the 2007 disappearance and death of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, according to a bail application from Suffolk County prosecutors. Heuermann has not been charged in the case, but the investigation “is expected to be resolved soon,” the document states.

    “Rex Heuermann is a demon that walks among us. A predator that ruined families. If not for the members of this task force, he would still be on the streets today,” Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison said during a news conference Friday, and offered his condolences to the victims’ families.

    “To the family members of Amber Costello, Melissa Barthelemy and Megan Waterman. I can only imagine what you’ve had to endure over the last decade regarding knowing that your killer was still loose. God bless you,” Harrison said before hugging a few people standing behind him.

    Authorities had been left with little information after a search for a missing woman in 2010 led to the discovery of multiple sets of human remains at Gilgo Beach. By the time the remains of the missing woman, Shannan Gilbert, were found the following year, at least 10 sets of human remains had been recovered across two Long Island counties.

    As they searched for a suspect in the “Gilgo Four” case, investigators combed through phone records from both midtown Manhattan and the Massapequa Park area in Long Island – places where the suspect is believed to have used a burner phone, court documents show.

    “For each of the murders, he got an individual burner phone, and he used that to communicate with the victims. Then shortly after the death of the victims, he then would get rid of the burner phone,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said during a news conference Friday.

    In February 2022, Harrison created a task force to focus on solving the cold case. By mid-March, Heuermann’s name showed up on authorities’ radar after a New York state investigator identified him in a database, according to Tierney.

    Investigators say they narrowed cell tower records from thousands of possible individuals down to hundreds and then to a handful of people. Next, authorities focused on residents who also matched a physical description provided by a witness who had seen the suspected killer.

    As the search pool narrowed, they zeroed in on anyone with a connection to a green pick-up truck a witness had seen the suspect driving, according to two law enforcement sources with knowledge of the case. Later, authorities learned Heuermann drives a green pickup truck registered to his brother.

    Eventually, investigators found Heuermann matched a witness’s physical description, lived close to the Long Island cell site and worked near the New York City cell sites where other calls were captured.

    Cell phone and credit card billing records show numerous instances where Heuermann was in the general locations as the burner phones used to call the three victims “as well as the use of Brainard-Barnes and Barthelemy’s cellphones when they were used to check voicemail and make taunting phone calls after the women disappeared,” Suffolk County prosecutors allege.

    The defendant’s next court appearance is scheduled on August 1.

    A major factor in the case that helped point investigators to Heuermann as a suspect is DNA evidence, which was made possible due to the latest scientific innovations in the field.

    After Heuermann was identified as a suspect in March 2022, authorities placed him and his family under surveillance and would obtain DNA samples from discarded items. A team later gathered a swab of Heuermann’s DNA from leftover crust in a pizza box he threw in the trash, according to Tierney.

    During the initial examination of one of the victims’ skeletal remains and materials discovered in the grave, the Suffolk County Crime Laboratory recovered a male hair from the “bottom of the burlap” the killer used to wrap her body, according to prosecutors. Analysis of the DNA found on the victim and the pizza showed the samples matched.

    Additionally, hair believed to be from Heuermann’s wife was found on or near three of the murder victims, prosecutors allege in the bail application, citing DNA testing. The DNA came from 11 bottles inside a garbage can outside the Heuermann home, the court document says.

    The hairs, found in 2010, were degraded and DNA testing at the time couldn’t yield results. But as technology progressed, mitochondrial DNA testing allowed investigators to make the connection, Tierney explained.

    The victims’ remains “were out in a tough environment for a prolonged period of time. So, there was not a lot of forensic evidence,” Tierney told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Friday, and credited the FBI and one of its agents for a “phenomenal job” with extracting the evidence.

    Evidence shows Heuermann’s wife and children were out of the state when the three women are believed to have been killed, Tierney said during Friday’s news conference.

    A search of Heuermann’s computer revealed he had scoured the internet at least 200 times, hunting for details about the status of the investigation, Tierney added. Heuermann’s internet history also turned up searches for torture porn and “depictions of women being abused, being raped and being killed,” Tierney said.

    Heuermann was also compulsively searching for photos of the victims and their relatives, and he was trying to track down relatives, the district attorney said.

    Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello and Megan Waterman

    While the 10 sets of human remains found are all being investigated as victims of suspected homicide, four of the women found have garnered specific attention due to the similarities found in their deaths.

    The victims known as the “Gilgo Four” were all last seen alive between 2007 and 2010, and their remains were found along a quarter-mile stretch of road in a span of three days in December 2010.

    The women, who all worked in the sex industry, were also buried in a similar fashion, Tierney noted.

    “All the women were petite. They all did the same thing for a living. They all advertised the same way. Immediately there were similarities with regard to the crime scenes,” he said. The killer concealed their bodies by wrapping them in camouflaged burlap, the type used by hunters.

    Authorities have said they believe the death of Gilbert, whose disappearance sparked the searches that found the other victims, may have been accidental and not related to the other killings.

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  • Burner phones. Pizza crust. DNA on burlap. A New York architect was charged with killing 3 women in Gilgo Beach serial killings cold case | CNN

    Burner phones. Pizza crust. DNA on burlap. A New York architect was charged with killing 3 women in Gilgo Beach serial killings cold case | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    A New York architect was charged with murder in connection to the killings of three of the women who became known as the “Gilgo Four,” according to the Suffolk County District Attorney, in a case that baffled authorities for more than a decade in suburban Long Island.

    Rex Heuermann – who told his attorney he is not the killer – was taken into custody for some of the Gilgo Beach murders, an unsolved case tied to at least 10 sets of human remains discovered since 2010, authorities said.

    The case was broken open thanks to cell phone data, credit card bills and DNA testing, which ultimately led them to arrest Heuermann, 59, authorities said.

    Heuermann was charged with one count of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder in each of the three killings – Melissa Barthelemy in 2009, and Megan Waterman and Amber Costello in 2010 – according to the indictment. A grand jury made the six charges, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney.

    He is also the prime suspect in the 2007 disappearance and death of a fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, according to a bail application from prosecutors. Heuermann has not been charged with that homicide but the investigation “is expected to be resolved soon,” the document says.

    This is the first arrest in the long-dormant case, which terrorized residents and sparked conflicting theories about whether a serial killer was responsible.

    Tierney said authorities, fearing the suspect might be tipped off they were closing in, moved to arrest him Thursday night.

    “We were playing before a party of one,” he told reporters. “We knew the person responsible for these murders would be looking at us.”

    See our live coverage here

    Authorities said once Heuermann was identified in early 2022 as a suspect, they watched him and his family and got DNA samples from items that were thrown away.

    During the initial examination of one of the victims’ skeletal remains and materials discovered in the grave, the Suffolk County Crime Laboratory recovered a male hair from the “bottom of the burlap” the killer used to wrap her body, according to the bail application.

    A surveillance team later gathered a swab of Heuermann’s DNA from leftover crust in a pizza box he threw in the trash, the district attorney said.

    Hair believed to be from Rex Heuermann’s wife was found on or near three of the murder victims, prosecutors allege in the bail application, citing DNA testing. The DNA came from 11 bottles inside a garbage can outside the Heuermann home, the court document says.

    Evidence shows Heuermann’s wife and children were outside of the state at the times when the three women were killed, Tierney said.

    The hairs found in 2010 were degraded and DNA testing at the time couldn’t yield results but improvements in technology eventually gave investigators the DNA answers they needed.

    Heuermann was in tears after his arrest, his court appointed attorney, Michael Brown, said Friday.

    “I did not do this,” Brown said Heuermann told him during their conversation after his arrest.

    Rex Heuermann

    Heuermann was remanded without bail. He entered a not guilty plea through his attorney. His next court date is scheduled for August 1.

    Police were still searching his home Friday night, according to a CNN team outside the house.

    Heuermann, who a source familiar with the case said is a father of two, is a registered architect who has owned the New York City-based architecture and consulting firm, RH Consultants & Associates, since 1994, according to his company’s website.

    In 2022, Heuermann was interviewed for the YouTube channel “Bonjour Realty.” He spoke about his career in architecture, and said he was born and raised in Long Island. He began working in Manhattan in 1987.

    CNN has reached out to Heuermann’s company for comment.

    The remains of the Gilgo Four were found in bushes along a quarter-mile stretch of Ocean Parkway in Oak Beach over a two-day period in 2010.

    The skeletal remains of Barthelemy were discovered near Gilgo Beach on December 11. Barthelemy, who was a sex worker, was last seen July 12, 2009, at her apartment when she told a friend she was going to see a man, according to a Suffolk County website about the killings.

    The remains of three other women were found on December 13, 2010: Brainard-Barnes, who advertised escort services on Craigslist and was last seen in early June 2007 in New York City; Amber Lynn Costello, who also advertised escort services and was last seen leaving her North Babylon home in early September 2010; and Waterman, who also advertised as an escort and was last seen in early June 2010 at a Holiday Inn Express in Hauppauge.

    Tierney said of the women, “They were buried in a similar fashion, in a similar location, in a similar way. All the women were petite. They all did the same thing for a living. They all advertised the same way. Immediately there were similarities with regard to the crime scenes.”

    Tierney said the killer tried to conceal the bodies, wrapping them in camouflaged burlap, the type used by hunters.

    The suspect made taunting phone calls to Barthelemy’s sister, “some of which resulted in a conversation between the caller, who was a male, and a relative of Melissa Barthelemy, in which the male caller admitted killing and sexually assaulting Ms. Barthelemy,” according to the bail application.

    The court document alleges cell phone and credit card billing records show numerous instances where Heuermann was in the general locations as the burner phones used to call the three victim,s “as well as the use of Brainard-Barnes and (Barthelemy’s) cellphones when they use used to check voicemail and make taunting phone calls after the women disappeared.”

    The district attorney said the killer got a new burner phone before each killing.

    The case against Heuermann came together in the two years since the restart of the investigation by Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison, authorities said.

    Harrison put together a task force including county police detectives, investigators from the sheriff’s office, state police and the FBI.

    Tierney said the task force held its first meeting in February 2022.

    “Six weeks later, on March 14, 2022, the name Rex Heuermann was first mentioned as a suspect in the Gilgo case,” Tierney said. “A New York state investigator was able to identify him in a database.”

    Investigators had gone backward through phone records collected from both midtown Manhattan and the Massapequa Park area – two areas where a “burner phone” used by the alleged killer were detected, according to court documents.

    Rex Heuermann is seen purchasing extra minutes for one of the burner cell phones connected to some of the crimes at a cellphone store in Midtown Manhattan, prosecutors allege.

    Authorities then narrowed records collected by cell towers to thousands, then down to hundreds, and finally down to a handful of people who could match a suspect.

    From there, authorities worked to focus on people who lived in the area of the cell tower who also matched a physical description given by a witness who had seen the suspected killer.

    In the narrowed pool, they searched for a connection to a green pickup a witness had seen the suspect driving, the sources said.

    Investigators found Heuermann, who matched a witness’s physical description, lived close to the Long Island cell site and worked near the New York City cell sites where other calls were captured.

    They also learned he had often driven a green pickup, registered to his brother. But they needed more than circumstantial evidence.

    When investigators searched Heuermann’s computer, they found a disturbing internet search history, including 200 searches aimed at learning about the status of the investigation, Tierney said Friday.

    His searches also included queries for torture porn and “depictions of women being abused, being raped and being killed,” Tierney said.

    The DA said the suspect was still compulsively searching for photos of the victims and their relatives.

    Heuermann was trying to find the relatives, he added.

    The murder mystery had confounded county officials for years. In 2020, they found a belt with initials that may have been handled by the suspect and launched a website to collect new tips in the investigation.

    Police said some victims identified had advertised prostitution services on websites such as Craigslist.

    The mystery began in 2010 when police discovered the first set of female remains among the bushes along an isolated strip of waterfront property on Gilgo Beach while searching for Shannan Gilbert, a missing 23-year-old woman from Jersey City, New Jersey.

    An aerial view of the area near Gilgo Beach and Ocean Parkway on Long Island where police have been conducting a prolonged search after finding 10 sets of human remains in April 2011 in Wantagh, New York.

    By the time Gilbert’s body was found one year later on neighboring Oak Beach, investigators had unearthed 10 sets of human remains strewn across two Long Island counties.

    The grim discoveries generated widespread attention in the region and sent waves of fear across some communities on Long Island’s South Shore.

    Authorities later said they believe Gilbert’s death may have been accidental and not related to the Gilgo Beach slayings.

    Still, Gilbert’s disappearance led to the discovery of others.

    Crime scene investigators use metal detectors to search a marsh for human remains in December 2011 in Oak Beach, New York.

    Additional remains were uncovered in neighboring Gilgo Beach and in Nassau County, about 40 miles east of New York City. They included a female toddler, an Asian male and a woman initially referred to as “Jane Doe #6,” investigators said.

    In 2020, police identified “Jane Doe #6” was as Valerie Mack, a 24-year-old Philadelphia mother who went missing two decades earlier.

    Mack’s partial remains were first discovered near Gilgo Beach in 2000, with additional dismembered remains found in 2011, according to the Suffolk County police.

    John Ray, a lawyer who represents the family of Shannon Gilbert – whose disappearance and search led to the discovery of “Gilgo Four” and other remains – said Friday he does not know if Heuermann is also responsible for her death.

    “We breathe a great sigh of relief,” Ray said. “We’re happy the police are finally taking a positive step in this respect, but this is just the beginning … This is just the edge of a bigger body of water, shall we say, of murder that has taken place.”

    Melissa Barthelemy, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, Amber Lynn Costello and Megan Waterman

    Ray also represents the family Gilgo Beach victim Jessica Taylor.

    “We don’t know if he is connected to Jessica Taylor’s murder,” he said.

    Jasmine Robinson, a family representative for Taylor, said she’s “hopeful for the future and hopeful that a connection is made” to resolve the other cases.

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  • Parenting 101: Exploring Espace Pour La Vie, the best family destination

    Parenting 101: Exploring Espace Pour La Vie, the best family destination

    I’m always shocked when I mention going to the Biodome, Insectarium, Planetarium, and Botanical Gardens, and someone says, “What’s Espace Pour La Vie?” Every family, whether they have littles or older kids, are grandparents, aunts, or a couple, everyone should visit the various museums that make up Espace Pour La Vie.

    First off, it’s easy to access by car or metro. Then, there’s always different activities and exhibits that change throughout the museums. Right now they have a great little area for eating outdoors, with a few food trucks and picnic areas. And, if you plan things properly, you can finish off your visit with a refreshing dip in the Olympic pool (they have open swim on certain days).

    The Insectarium, which was recently renovated, is roomy and extremely fun to check out. We loved the atrium where all the classified butterflies and bugs were beautifully displayed. We checked out the various aquariums to see first-hand some really cool (and big) insects, and the greenhouse where the butterflies fly freely is nothing short of magical – there are so many species represented there.

    The Biodome, which also underwent a renovation in the last couple of years, has a wide range of habitats to explore, from the warm and balmy rainforest packed with alligators, exotic birds, and monkeys, to the chilly arctic with penguins and a real ice wall. There are animators and experts on-hand to answer questions and offer interesting perspectives and info on the animals that are there. 

    Pack a lunch and head to the Botanical Gardens, the ideal place for some down time. There are so many incredibly gorgeous plant species here, from indigenous plants, roses, edibles, and their stunning Japanese garden. 

    Finally, space enthusiasts will marvel at the displays at the Planetarium. Their immersive theatres also offer a unique perspective on outer space and space exploration.

    It’s a place we go to at least once or twice a year for many years, and you should to. There’s something for everyone at Espace Pour La Vie.

    A full-time work-from-home mom, Jennifer Cox (our “Supermom in Training”) loves dabbling in healthy cooking, craft projects, family outings, and more, sharing with readers everything she knows about being an (almost) superhero mommy.

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  • Fossilized skeletons of aerial and aquatic predators to be auctioned by Sotheby’s

    Fossilized skeletons of aerial and aquatic predators to be auctioned by Sotheby’s

    NEW YORK — The fossilized skeletons of an aerial predator with a 20-foot (6-meter) wingspan and an aquatic reptile with a snake-like neck will be auctioned in New York this month, Sotheby’s announced Tuesday.

    The two creatures, both tens of millions of years old, will be sold July 26 in the latest sale of prehistoric fossils from the auction house that launched a new era of fossil auctions by selling a Tyrannosaurus rex named Sue in 1997.

    “More than 25 years since the groundbreaking sale of Sue the T. rex at Sotheby’s, we are very excited to now turn our attention to its predatory peers of the sky and the sea,” Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s head of science and popular culture, said.

    The mounted skeletons that will be auctioned this month are a pteranodon, a huge bird-like animal that lived about 85 million years ago, and a plesiosaur, an 11-foot (3.3-meter) marine reptile of the type that is thought to have inspired the legend of the Loch Ness monster.

    The pteranodon specimen, nicknamed Horus after the falcon-headed Egyptian god, was discovered in 2002 in Kansas in what was once an inland sea that divided the continent of North America during the Cretaceous Period, Sotheby’s said.

    One of the largest winged creatures that ever lived, the pteranodon flew over water and used its long beak to fish for prey.

    Almost all of the specimen’s original fossil bones have been preserved, Sotheby’s said.

    “To get something of this size with the level of preservation is incredibly rare,” Hatton said. “Generally, if you go to a museum and you find a specimen that’s super well preserved, it’s going to be something on the smaller side.”

    Sotheby’s is estimating that the pteranodon will sell for $4 million to $6 million.

    The 11-foot-long plesiosaur was discovered in the 1990s in Gloucestershire, England and is believed to have lived about 190 million years ago.

    According to Sotheby’s, many have drawn comparisons between plesiosaurs and the Loch Ness monster of Scottish folklore, as the plesiosaur’s long neck, small head and flippers mirror recorded descriptions of the fabled monster.

    Sotheby’s is calling its specimen Nessie. The estimated auction price is $600,000 to $800,000.

    Sotheby’s has not identified the seller of either fossil.

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  • The European Union is moving toward gene tech in food production to counter climate change and shortages

    The European Union is moving toward gene tech in food production to counter climate change and shortages

    BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union took a step Wednesday toward adapting its food production to the new ways of the world: The 27-nation bloc wants to embrace the latest gene techniques it hopes will help safely counter global challenges like climate change and shortages.

    For decades, the EU was conservative in allowing the use of genetically modified organisms — which often brought up connotations of Frankenfood rather than improved crop production — while the United States and others quickly adopted the new bioengineered technologies.

    However, the EU’s executive commission on Wednesday threw its weight behind so-called new genomic techniques, which seek to change organisms in a much less intrusive way than the GMOs of old, and to allow many to be sold without special labeling.

    The election of the first head of a county administration by the far-right Alternative of Germany in a rural eastern region recently has lead to concern among opponents of the party.

    KCCI-TV chief meteorologist Chris Gloninger stands outside his home, Tuesday, June 27, 2023, in West Des Moines, Iowa. Gloninger has announced that he is leaving the Des Moines station due in part to threats he received for his coverage of climate change on air. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

    TV meteorologist Chris Gloninger faced intensifying harassment as he did more reporting on climate change during local newscasts.

    Brayan Manzano wipes sweat off his face while picking yellow squash, Friday, July 7, 2023, at a farm in Waverly, Ohio. As Earth this week set and then repeatedly broke unofficial records for average global heat, it served as a reminder of a danger that climate change is making steadily worse for farmworkers and others who labor outside. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

    As Earth this week set and then repeatedly broke unofficial records for average global heat, it served as a reminder of a danger that climate change is making steadily worse for farmworkers and others who labor outside.

    A statue of Jack Daniels sits on a bench as a visitor enters a souvenir shop in the town where the distillery is located Wednesday, June 14, 2023, in Lynchburg, Tenn. A destructive and unsightly black fungus which feeds on ethanol emitted by whiskey barrels has been found growing on property near the distillery's nearby barrelhouses which has resulted in a lawsuit against it. (AP Photo/John Amis)

    The whiskey and bourbon makers of Tennessee and Kentucky have long been beloved in their communities, where they provide jobs and the pride of a successful homegrown industry.

    “In many ways, new genomic techniques can give you the same results as through conventional and natural selection, or through targeted crossbreeding, but with much more speed, precision and efficiency,” European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said.

    The new techniques are intended to make plants better able to withstand drought while requiring fewer pesticides and to create products with better color and more consistency that are more attractive to consumers.

    Unsurprisingly, large farming companies welcomed the EU’s plans and environmentalists mounted opposition. Wednesday’s proposal is only the start of a drawn-out process since member nations and the European Parliament must endorse the plans before they can become reality.

    The bloc’s current GMO legislation dates back to 2001 after the issue divided the EU for a generation. It gave environmentalists the assurance that the EU wouldn’t become a free-for-all for multinational agro-corporations to produce GMOs in bulk and sell products to the bloc’s 450 million citizens without detailed labeling and warnings.

    The EU’s main farm lobby, Copa-Cogeca, was jubilant Wednesday. “After more than a decade of postponements, the European Commission has finally presented a proposal,” it said in a statement.

    Environmentalists are fully alarmed again, fearing that the newest tools still pose too many dangers and must undergo much better testing.

    “Whether it’s a toy or a face cream, any product on the market needs to be safety tested. Why would there be an exemption for GMOs that end up in our fields or on our plates,” said Eva Corral of Greenpeace. “Biotech companies have long considered these safety procedures an unnecessary bother and it’s disappointing to see the commission agree with them.”

    Timmermans disagreed with that assessment and said his proposal put caution front and center. When it is clear that plants based on new genomic techniques could occur naturally or by conventional breeding, they would be treated like conventional plants, he said. Others would still face the much stricter GMO requirements before they could be introduced.

    The European People’s Party, the biggest in the EU legislature, has welcomed the plans.

    If done right, the proposal will ensure European competitiveness, lower emissions and more food globally, European Parliament member Jessica Polfjärd. said.

    “Everybody should be able to support those objectives,” she said.

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  • Controversial Chinese scientist He Jiankui proposes new gene editing research | CNN

    Controversial Chinese scientist He Jiankui proposes new gene editing research | CNN


    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    He Jiankui, the Chinese scientist who sparked global outrage in 2018 when he revealed that he had created the first gene-edited children, has put forward a new proposal for modifying human embryos that he claims could help aid the “aging population.”

    He, who in 2019 was sentenced to three years in prison in China for “illegal medical practices,” reemerged last year and surprised the global scientific community when he announced on social media that he was opening a research lab in Beijing.

    Since that time, updates on his research posted on his Twitter account have focused on proposed plans to develop gene therapy for rare disease.

    But on Thursday, he again courted controversy by posting a new research proposal that experts say is reminiscent of his earlier work, which scientists broadly decried as unethical and dangerous – with the potential to impact human DNA across generations.

    In a succinct, one page document, He proposed research that would involve gene-editing mouse embryos and then human fertilized egg cells, or zygotes, in order to test whether a mutation “confers protection against Alzheimer’s disease.”

    “The aging population is of grave importance as both a socioeconomic issue and a strain on the medical system … Currently, there is no effective drug for Alzheimer’s disease,” he wrote in an apparent nod to China’s growing demographic burden due to a rising proportion of elderly.

    Unlike the science that landed him in jail, this potential experiment involves a kind of abnormal fertilized egg cell generally considered not suitable to be implanted in a woman.

    No human embryo would be implanted for pregnancy and “government permit and ethical approval” were required before experimentation, the proposal said.

    It’s not clear whether He would get approval for such work in China, even if the proposal he put forward were deemed to have merit – and outside experts say the current proposal is not scientifically sound.

    Authorities in China took multiple steps to tighten rules and ethical standards affecting human gene editing in the wake of the revelations about his previous research. They also banned He from engaging in work related to assisted reproductive technology services and placed limits on his work with human genetic resources, according to state media.

    But the scientist’s release of a new proposal involving gene editing of embryos has scientists and medical ethics experts concerned – and confused.

    “The whole thing is, to put it bluntly, insane,” said Peter Dröge, an associate professor at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, who focuses on molecular and biochemical genetics.

    The proposed research could be seen as a step to explore if such a method of genetic editing could be used in a viable embryo in future, according to Dröge.

    Apart from ethical considerations, gene-editing an embryo to address a complex disease that affects people toward the end of their life and doesn’t have a clear, single genetic cause is “highly questionable,” he said.

    “He basically wants to genetically modify the human species so they don’t get Alzheimer’s,” he said. “I’m really surprised that he’s coming forward with this again.”

    Joy Zhang, founding director of the Centre for Global Science and Epistemic Justice at the University of Kent in Britain, said the proposal seemed to be “more of a publicity stunt than a substantiated research agenda.”

    “However, we do need to take these public claims with vigilance, as it may nevertheless misguide patients and their families, and tint the reputations not just of science in China, but global research effort in this area,” she said.

    In response to questions from CNN, He said he was “collecting feedback from scientists and bioethicists now” and did not have a timeline for the study.

    “I will make a revision to the Alzheimer’s disease proposal later. I will not conduct any experiments until I get the government permit, and also get the approval by an international ethics committee with bioethicists from USA and Europe,” he told CNN via email.

    “I want to emphasize that this is a preclinical study, no embryo will be used for pregnancy in this study. The research will be open and transparent, and all experiment results and progress will be posted on Twitter,” he said.

    He did not address questions on whether he was limited from conducting certain work in China.

    CNN also approached China’s Ministry of Science and Technology and National Health Commission for comment.

    In 2018, He, formerly a researcher at the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, claimed he had used a gene-editing tool called CRISPR to modify human embryos of twin girls in the hopes of protecting them from HIV. A third genetically edited baby was also born from He’s experimentation, a court in Shenzhen later said.

    The research sparked a fierce uproar over the ethics of using new and potentially dangerous technology in people and the risk of unintended mutations being passed on not only to the children but potentially any future offspring. It also raised concerns about cracking open the door to a potentially species-changing future of “designer children.”

    In recent media interviews, He has indicated he feels he acted “too quickly” in conducting the research and has given sparse details on the children, besides indicating they were living “normal” lives.

    Genetic manipulation of human embryos – both viable and nonviable ones – is typically tightly controlled globally and some countries ban all such research, experts say.

    But there is robust global debate around allowing genome editing of human embryos to treat serious genetic conditions or expanding research.

    Scientists say genome editing, including in adults, shows promise for one day treating diseases that are currently difficult to treat or cure, like cystic fibrosis or sickle cell disease.

    Chinese law does not allow gene-edited human embryos used in research to be implanted into humans, or developed for more than 14 days. All gene editing for reproductive purposes has also long been banned.

    Since 2019, a broader raft of regulation of China’s biosciences field has added more legal controls and ethical standards to such research, including a major update to national bioethics guidelines earlier this year.

    There’s also been sharp backlash against He within China’s scientific community.

    In March, over 200 Chinese scholars released a statement in response to his public activities, including what they said was He’s “misleading marketing campaign” over his claimed research plans on rare disease.

    They condemned He’s “attitude and refusal to reflect on his criminal actions of violating ethics and regulations of gene editing,” and called for regulatory authorities to launch a new investigation into He’s “alleged re‐violation of scientific integrity, ethical norms, laws and regulations.”

    “The ethical boundaries shall not be crossed,” they wrote.

    As for the future of He’s research, Canadian bioethicist Françoise Baylis of Dalhousie University said numerous questions should be considered, from whether He has the requisite scientific expertise to test the hypothesis, to whether he can be trusted to follow the rules for research involving humans.

    “It is possible for people to learn from their mistakes and to change their behavior … but many are concerned, however, that He Jiankui may not have learned from his past mistakes,” Baylis said.

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  • Hungry ticks can use this static trick to land on you and your pets

    Hungry ticks can use this static trick to land on you and your pets

    NEW YORK — Hungry ticks have some slick tricks. They can zoom through the air using static electricity to latch onto people, pets and other animals, new research shows.

    Humans and animals naturally pick up static charges as they go about their days. And those charges are enough to give ticks a boost to their next blood meal, according to a study published Friday in the journal Current Biology.

    While the distance is tiny, “it’s the equivalent of us jumping three or four flights of stairs in one go,” said study author Sam England, an ecologist now at Berlin’s Natural History Museum.

    Ticks are “ambush predators,” explained Stephen Rich, a public health entomologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

    They can’t jump or fly onto their hosts, he said. Instead, they hang out on a branch or a blade of grass with their legs outstretched — a behavior known as “questing” — and wait for people or animals to pass by so they can grab on and bite.

    It seemed that ticks were limited to how far they could stretch on their “tippy toes,” England said. But now, scientists are learning that static charges may help expand their reach.

    “They can now actually end up latching onto hosts that don’t make direct contact with them,” he said.

    The researchers looked at a species of tick called the castor bean tick, which is common across Europe. This bloodsucker and its cousins are major culprits in spreading diseases to animals and humans, including Lyme disease, and are most active in warm months.

    Researchers found that when they charged up electrodes and placed them near young ticks, the creatures would whiz through the air to land on those electrodes.

    A normal level of static — the charge that fur, feathers, scales or clothes pick up with movement — could pull the critters across gaps of a fraction of an inch (a few millimeters or centimeters), according to the study. While those distances may seem small to us, for a tiny tick, they represent a big leap, England said.

    In the future, there might be ways developed to reduce that static, experts said. But for now, Rich said people should keep using classic tick prevention measures, including repellents, to keep themselves safe from bites.

    ___

    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Ukraine’s dam collapse is both a fast-moving disaster and a slow-moving ecological catastrophe

    Ukraine’s dam collapse is both a fast-moving disaster and a slow-moving ecological catastrophe

    KHERSON, Ukraine — The destruction of the Kakhovka Dam was a fast-moving disaster that is swiftly evolving into a long-term environmental catastrophe affecting drinking water, food supplies and ecosystems reaching into the Black Sea.

    The short-term dangers can be seen from outer space — tens of thousands of parcels of land flooded, and more to come. Experts say the long-term consequences will be generational.

    For every flooded home and farm, there are fields upon fields of newly planted grains, fruits and vegetables whose irrigation canals are drying up. Thousands of fish were left gasping on mud flats. Fledgling water birds lost their nests and their food sources. Countless trees and plants were drowned.

    If water is life, then the draining of the Kakhovka reservoir creates an uncertain future for the region of southern Ukraine that was an arid plain until the damming of the Dnieper River 70 years ago. The Kakhovka Dam was the last in a system of six Soviet-era dams on the river, which flows from Belarus to the Black Sea.

    Then the Dnieper became part of the front line after Russia’s invasion last year.

    “All this territory formed its own particular ecosystem, with the reservoir included,” said Kateryna Filiuta, an expert in protected habitats for the Ukraine Nature Conservation Group.

    THE SHORT TERM

    Ihor Medunov is very much part of that ecosystem. His work as a hunting and fishing guide effectively ended with the start of the war, but he stayed on his little island compound with his four dogs because it seemed safer than the alternative. Still, for months the knowledge that Russian forces controlled the dam downstream worried him.

    The six dams along the Dnieper were designed to operate in tandem, adjusting to each other as water levels rose and fell from one season to the next. When Russian forces seized the Kakhovka Dam, the whole system fell into neglect.

    Whether deliberately or simply carelessly, the Russian forces allowed water levels to fluctuate uncontrollably. They dropped dangerously low in winter and then rose to historic peaks when snowmelt and spring rains pooled in the reservoir. Until Monday, the waters were lapping into Medunov’s living room.

    Now, with the destruction of the dam, he is watching his livelihood literally ebb away. The waves that stood at his doorstep a week ago are now a muddy walk away.

    “The water is leaving before our eyes,” he told The Associated Press. “Everything that was in my house, what we worked for all our lives, it’s all gone. First it drowned, then, when the water left, it rotted.”

    Since the dam’s collapse Tuesday, the rushing waters have uprooted landmines, torn through caches of weapons and ammunition, and carried 150 tons of machine oil to the Black Sea. Entire towns were submerged to the rooflines, and thousands of animals died in a large national park now under Russian occupation.

    Rainbow-colored slicks already coat the murky, placid waters around flooded Kherson, the capital of southern Ukraine’s province of the same name. Abandoned homes reek from rot as cars, first-floor rooms and basements remain submerged. Enormous slicks seen in aerial footage stretch across the river from the city’s port and industrial facilities, demonstrating the scale of the Dnieper’s new pollution problem.

    Ukraine’s Agriculture Ministry estimated 10,000 hectares (24,000 acres) of farmland were underwater in the territory of Kherson province controlled by Ukraine, and “many times more than that” in territory occupied by Russia.

    Farmers are already feeling the pain of the disappearing reservoir. Dmytro Neveselyi, mayor of the village of Maryinske, said everyone in the community of 18,000 people will be affected within days.

    “Today and tomorrow, we’ll be able to provide the population with drinking water,” he said. After that, who knows. “The canal that supplied our water reservoir has also stopped flowing.”

    THE LONG TERM

    The waters slowly began to recede on Friday, only to reveal the environmental catastrophe looming.

    The reservoir, which had a capacity of 18 cubic kilometers (14.5 million acre-feet), was the last stop along hundreds of kilometers of river that passed through Ukraine’s industrial and agricultural heartlands. For decades, its flow carried the runoff of chemicals and pesticides that settled in the mud at the bottom.

    Ukrainian authorities are testing the level of toxins in the muck, which risks turning into poisonous dust with the arrival of summer, said Eugene Simonov, an environmental scientist with the Ukraine War Environmental Consequences Working Group, a non-profit organization of activists and researchers.

    The extent of the long-term damage depends on the movement of the front lines in an unpredictable war. Can the dam and reservoir be restored if fighting continues there? Should the region be allowed to become arid plain once again?

    Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrij Melnyk called the destruction of the dam “the worst environmental catastrophe in Europe since the Chernobyl disaster.”

    The fish and waterfowl that had come to depend on the reservoir “will lose the majority of their spawning grounds and feeding grounds,” Simonov said.

    Downstream from the dam are about 50 protected areas, including three national parks, said Simonov, who co-authored a paper in October warning of the potentially disastrous consequences, both upstream and downstream, if the Kakhovka Dam came to harm.

    It will take a decade for the flora and fauna populations to return and adjust to their new reality, according to Filiuta. And possibly longer for the millions of Ukrainians who lived there.

    In Maryinske, the farming community, they are combing archives for records of old wells, which they’ll unearth, clean and analyze to see if the water is still potable.

    “Because a territory without water will become a desert,” the mayor said.

    Further afield, all of Ukraine will have to grapple with whether to restore the reservoir or think differently about the region’s future, its water supply, and a large swath of territory that is suddenly vulnerable to invasive species — just as it was vulnerable to the invasion that caused the disaster to begin with.

    “The worst consequences will probably not affect us directly, not me, not you, but rather our future generations, because this man-made disaster is not transparent,” Filiuta said. “The consequences to come will be for our children or grandchildren, just as we are the ones now experiencing the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster, not our ancestors.”

    ___

    Hinnant reported from Paris. Novikov reported from Kyiv. Jamey Keaten in Kyiv and Volodymyr Yurchuk in Kherson, Ukraine, contributed to this report.

    ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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  • Supermom In Training: I’m so excited to be a butterfly ranger – do you know what that is?

    Supermom In Training: I’m so excited to be a butterfly ranger – do you know what that is?

    I absolutely love gardening. It’s my “me time” – it’s quiet, calming, and I find it super rewarding too. A few years ago I became obsessed with sunflowers. The first year the squirrels viciously attacked and ate them all. Over the years I’ve streamlined the process – I don’t plant them around fences where the squirrels have a launching pad, and I have a pup now who voluntarily is on squirrel patrol 24/7.

    My gardening soon started revolving around pollinating plants so I could help attract the bees and butterflies. My son’s school across the street has a beehive on the roof and the summer it was installed my son was able to identify the bees that were from his school on our flowers. 

    This summer I’ve gone all out thanks to The Butterflyway Project through the David Suzuki Foundation. I applied to become a butterfly ranger, which meant I committed to planting a certain number of pollinator plants. They also help you connect with other butterfly rangers in your area – I’ve already arranged for a seed exchange with a neighbour. This year I have four kinds of sunflowers as well as wildflowers, pansies, lilies, bleeding hearts, thyme, and milkweed. 

    This project has introduced me to all kinds of unique gardening projects too. Ever heard of butterflyway canoes? Since 2013, Rangers have installed dozens of canoe gardens in communities across Canada. What began as a nod to Toronto’s buried waterways grew in popularity to become a nation-wide movement.

    If you’d like more information on The Butterflyway Project, visit their website.

    A full-time work-from-home mom, Jennifer Cox (our “Supermom in Training”) loves dabbling in healthy cooking, craft projects, family outings, and more, sharing with readers everything she knows about being an (almost) superhero mommy.

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  • Flower power and diplomacy: Versailles perfume gardens transport public back in time

    Flower power and diplomacy: Versailles perfume gardens transport public back in time

    VERSAILLES, France (AP) — The Versailles flower gardens were once a symbol of the French king’s expeditionary might and helped water-deprived courtiers perfume their skin. Now, they have been reimagined to give today’s public a glimpse — and a sniff — into the gilded palace’s olfactory past.

    Holding secrets to the original concept of flower power, scents of Bulgarian rose, mint and citrus from hundreds of vividly colored historic blooms unveiled this week waft into the nostrils of paying visitors at the Chateauneuf Orangery of the Grand Trianon, transporting them back in time.

    “Those discovering the gardens will, from flower to flower, understand what we loved in history,” Versailles Palace president Catherine Pegard said. “Many are the original scents.”

    The aim of the Perfumer’s Garden is to unlock the mysteries and significance behind the scented flowers of the 17th-century French court — yet also remind us that it was no accident that the Versailles Palace was the very place where the job of perfumer was actually invented during that century.

    The gardens sprawl in four sections, reimagining the vision of Sun King, Louis XIV, who wanted his grounds to overflow with the scents of orange blossom, hyacinth, tuberose and jasmine. The king had a practical reason for his obsessions: Following the plague that killed tens of millions of people in the Middle Ages in Europe, people feared that hot water could spread infection. Courtiers instead washed with alcohol rubs and used scents to mask bodily odors.

    But there was also a diplomatic explanation for these floral obsessions: The king’s flower collection served as a means of projecting strength as France became the world’s greatest power in that century.

    “Versailles was all about olfactory diplomacy in those days. Flower meant power. Dignitaries were impressed by the exotic flowers because only the king — who was now very powerful — had the money to fund expeditions to bring back exotic blooms,” said Giovanni Delu, one of the garden’s creators. “It’s a vegetal cabinet of curiosities.”

    Delu said that court-funded expeditions brought back fashionable plants — many of which feature in the new perfumer’s gardens — from far-flung South Asia that were “nursed” or acclimatized in the French soil of Brittany, before being planted in Versailles. Any French nobleman who wanted to replant the prized flowers in his grounds had to first be granted a royal charter or face punishment.

    The stories of Versailles’ modern gardeners convey the hidden intrigue, humor, knowledge and mystery the flowers once held. Vibrant historical anecdotes flow freely from their mouths, unveiling an unending trove of historical color. Legend has it that Louis XIV loved the orange blossom, as featured in the garden, so much that his courtiers doused themselves in it to curry favor, at one point causing the king to faint. The scent from some blooms was so intense that the bulbs during this latest venture had to be physically separated in the gardens so that they didn’t conspire to produce an undesirable — or equally intoxicating — nasal mix.

    There were unexpected twists in its conception. A “secret garden” — with four brick walls — was only properly discovered and renovated on the site recently, sending ripples of excitement among the Versailles gardening staff. Now a sanctuary, it has been adorned with plant species so delicate that only the head gardener has the right to handle them. One 17th-century plant now growing there called the firethorn — which leaves a delightful citrus smell on the fingers when rubbed — is prized and feared because it literally catches on fire with the slightest heat.

    Another flower holds secrets in its petals to the love story of Louis XV, an obsessive botanist, and his mistress Madame de Pompadour.

    “Louis XV sent botanical species ‘hunters’ around the world to bring species back, because he and his mistress expressed their love through a shared passion for flowers,” gardener Fulvia Grandizio said.

    Grandizio claimed that Louis XV used one of the world’s very first prototype greenhouses here to nurse his plants — a version of which is on display now. Lovingly caressing the flower with billowing pink-red petals called the calycanthus, Grandizio said nostalgically it was Madame de Pompadour’s favorite.

    Yet the garden has its villains. Grandizio’s eyes narrowed when she spoke of Marie Antoinette. It was bad, she said, that the French-Austrian queen wasn’t interested in keeping up the scientific work of the previous king, Louis XV, in exotic flowers — and was taken instead with the heady ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers and unbridled nature.

    “It’s a real shame when Marie Antoinette arrived at Versailles that she transformed what Louis XV built, the big greenhouse and the plant nursery, into a wild English garden,” Grandizio said, with a hint of sadness.

    Despite that claim, Marie Antoinette loved flowers, and was at the heart of the development of perfume.

    “She’s not that bad. History has been unkind to her,” Grandizio added.

    The Versailles Perfumer’s Garden opened on May 30, in collaboration with high-end perfume company Maison Francis Kurkdjian.

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  • Chirping sounds lead airport officials to bag filled with smuggled parrot eggs

    Chirping sounds lead airport officials to bag filled with smuggled parrot eggs

    LOXAHATCHEE, Fla. — The 24 bright green baby parrots began chirping and bobbing their heads the second anyone neared the large cages that have been their homes since hatching in March.

    The Central American natives, seized from a smuggler at Miami International Airport, are being raised by the Rare Species Conservatory Foundation — a round-the-clock effort that includes five hand feedings a day in a room filled with large cages.

    At just 9 weeks old, these parrots have already survived a harrowing journey after being snatched from their nests in a forest. They are almost fully feathered now and the staff has started transitioning them from a special formula to a diet of food pellets and fruit.

    “You ready to meet the children?” asked Paul Reillo, a Florida International University professor and director of the foundation, as he led visitors Friday into a small building tucked behind a sprawling house in Loxahatchee, a rural community near West Palm Beach.

    “They are hand-raised babies,” he said, as the chicks squawked and looked inquisitively at the visitors. “They’ve never seen mom and dad; they’ve been raised by us since they hatched.”

    It was the hatchlings’ faint chirping inside a carry-on bag at the Miami airport that brought them to the attention of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer. The passenger, Szu Ta Wu, had just arrived on TACA Airlines flight 392 from Managua, Nicaragua, on March 23, and was changing flights in Miami to return home to Taiwan, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Miami.

    Officers stopped Wu at a checkpoint. He was asked about the sound coming from his bag, which Reillo later described as a “sophisticated” temperature controlled cooler.

    Wu reached in and pulled out a smaller bag and showed the officer an egg, the complaint said. The officer then looked inside and saw more eggs and a tiny featherless bird that had just hatched.

    He told the officer there were 29 eggs, and that he did not have documentation to transport the birds, according to the complaint.

    Wu was arrested, and on May 5 pleaded guilty to charges of smuggling birds into the United States. He faces up to 20 years in prison when he’s sentenced Aug. 1.

    A lawyer who could speak on his behalf was not listed on court records, but Wu told investigators through a Mandarin interpreter that a friend had paid him to travel from Taiwan to Nicaragua to pick up the eggs. He denied knowing what kind of birds they were.

    The officer took the bag and contacted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. By then, eight of the birds had already hatched or were in the process of hatching.

    It didn’t take long for federal officials to reach out to Reillo.

    “They didn’t know what these things were and wanted my advice on it,” Reillo said. Baby parrots are featherless, so it’s difficult to property identify them.

    He helped set up a makeshift incubator in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s aviary at the airport in a mad dash to save the now-hatching parrots.

    The next day, Dr. Stacy McFarlane, a USDA veterinarian who initially tended to the birds and eggs at the airport, and other officials, delivered the baby parrots and remaining eggs to Reillo’s conservatory.

    “At that point we were off to the races,” he said. “We’ve got all these eggs, the chicks are hatching, the incubator’s running and by the time it was all said and done, we hatched 26 of the 29 eggs, and 24 of the 26 chicks survived.”

    USDA regulations required the birds to be quarantined for 45 days, meaning that Reillo and his team had to scrub down when entering and leaving the room.

    But they still weren’t sure which of the 360 varieties of parrots they were dealing with.

    A forensics team at Florida International extracted DNA samples from the eggshells and the deceased birds to identify the species. They discovered the 24 surviving parrots were from eight or nine clutches and included two species — the yellow naped Amazon and the red-lored Amazon.

    Both birds are popular in the trafficking and caged-bird industries because they are pretty and have a nice temperament, Reillo said.

    The trafficking pipeline out of Central America is well established and has gone on for years, he said.

    “In fact, the biggest threat to parrots globally is a combination of habitat loss and trafficking,” Reillo said, adding that about 90% of eggs are poached for illegal parrot trade.

    BirdLife International lists the yellow-naped Amazon as “critically endangered” with a population in the wild of between 1,000 and 2,500. The red-lored Amazon is also listed as having a decreasing population.

    “The vast majority of these trafficking cases end in tragedy,” Reillo said. “The fact that the chicks were hatching the first day of his travel from Managua to Miami tells you that it’s extremely unlikely that any of them would have survived had he actually gotten all the way to his destination in Taiwan. That would have been another 24 to 36 hours of travel.”

    Reillo is now faced with the challenge of finding a permanent home for the birds, which can live 60 to 70 years, or longer. He said he’s working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services on a plan “to have the birds fly free and help restore their species in the wild.”

    “Parrots live a long time. They are sentient creatures. They’re highly intelligent, very social, and these guys deserve a chance,” he said. “The question will be where will they wind up? What is their journey going to be? It’s just beginning.”

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  • What is a species? | CNN

    What is a species? | CNN

    Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.



    CNN
     — 

    A frog that looks like it’s made of tempered chocolate. A rainbow-colored fish that dwells in the ocean’s “twilight zone.” A hairy sloth with a coconut-shaped head.

    These are just a few of the hundreds of newfound species that scientists described in 2022. The animals join a growing list of more than 1.25 million species that have been scientifically described and cataloged since the 18th century.

    But what defines an organism as a species that’s new to science? And what exactly is a species, for that matter?

    Biologists have wrestled with the concept for about as long as the field of biology has existed. Renowned naturalist Charles Darwin wrote in 1859: “No one definition has as yet satisfied all naturalists; yet every naturalist knows vaguely what he means when he speaks of a species.”

    Fast-forward to the present, and the debate hasn’t changed much. “There are many definitions, and none of them applies broadly to all life on the planet,” said Bruno de Medeiros, assistant curator of insects at the Field Museum in Chicago.

    And yet, recognizing and distinguishing between species is vital — and not only for biologists. It’s also necessary for cultivating the food we eat, treating diseases caused by different pathogens, and conserving endangered animals, plants and habitats.

    The concept is also a critical part of understanding our own evolutionary history and defining our relationship to all life on the planet.

    Teeming with life, Earth is covered with organisms of all shapes and sizes. Some are too small to see without a microscope. Others may tower hundreds of feet tall. Myriad life forms may gestate in a womb or sprout in soil, hatch from an egg or germinate in a corpse. They could be scaly, chitinous, furry or feathered; perhaps they are leafy, dotted with cilia or slick with slime. They might roam for thousands of miles or spend their lifetimes rooted in one spot.

    Scientists make sense of all this biological diversity by classifying organisms based on shared ancestry and features such as physical appearance, internal structures and reproduction. A universal, hierarchical classification system was proposed in 1753 by Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus, and it’s still generally followed today. This branch of science is known as taxonomy.

    The broadest categories for all life on Earth are the domains. There are three domains — Bacteria, Archaea and Eukaryota — and they organize life based on cellular structure. Eukaryotes have cells that typically contain a single nucleus housing DNA: All multicellular life — animals, plants and fungi — as well as some types of unicellular life, are eukaryotes. Bacteria and Archaea are single-celled microorganisms that don’t have a nucleus, and they are evolutionarily distinct from one another.

    The next category is kingdoms. In each kingdom, there are subcategories: phylum, class, order, family, genus and species. With each subcategory, the criteria for grouping organisms become progressively more specific and selective.

    For example, humans are animals. That means we’re eukaryotes in the Animalia kingdom. Our phylum is Chordata, which includes any animal with a spinal cord. We are part of the class Mammalia. Within mammals, we are primates, sharing ancestry with apes, monkeys and lemurs. Our branch of the primate family tree is Hominidae, which includes our closest relatives: the great apes, such as gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos.

    Finally, we arrive at our genus and species — and our scientific name — Homo sapiens. We are the only surviving lineage in the Homo genus. Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis), our last remaining relatives in the Homo group, went extinct about 40,000 years ago.

    Theoretically, “a species is a set of populations or one population of organisms that shares a common evolutionary history and reproduces with one another but not outside that group,” according to Nancy Simmons, curator-in-charge of mammalogy at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

    Myotis nimbaensis is a species of bat discovered in 2021 that's named for West Africa's Nimba Range, the mountain chain where it is found.

    If an animal population in a certain locale looks more or less the same, behaves the same, and mates and generates fertile offspring only with each other, “usually, we call this a species,” de Madeiros added.

    But color, markings and even size can vary widely within a species; this is true for many species of spiders. Not all life reproduces sexually, so that criteria isn’t universal for defining a species, either. And in some organisms that sexually reproduce, closely related species may interbreed and produce fertile offspring. Coydogs, for example, are fertile hybrids of coyotes (Canis latrans) and dogs (Canis familiaris). Humans and Neanderthals interbred, and portions of Neanderthal DNA linger in the human genome, in people of non-African descent.

    It can take millions of years for new species to evolve; often, what biologists are observing is evolution in progress. Closely related species can differ from each other a lot or a little — anatomically and genetically — depending on environmental circumstances and when they diverged from a shared ancestor.

    In the best-case scenarios for describing new species, there are many data sources, Simmons explained. A candidate typically differs physically from its close relatives, with different measurements, different morphology (anatomical structures), or different colors or patterns.

    “But then ideally we’d have other lines of evidence too — different genetic code or some sort of DNA variation,” Simmons told CNN. Behavior can also distinguish between species. In bats, for example, echolocation calls are often species-specific.

    All these criteria — anatomy, genetics, behavior and location — enabled Simmons and her colleagues to describe a newfound orange-and-black bat species, Myotis nimbaensis, in 2021.

    In recent decades, genetic data has transformed classification. Genomic analysis can reveal species-defining differences in near-identical organisms, as de Madeiros discovered while analyzing DNA sequences for palm flower weevils — a type of beetle with an elongated snout — that he had collected in Brazil in 2013 and 2014.

    Weevils of the genus Anchylorhynchus mate on flowers in palm trees in Brazil. Genomic analysis showed two nearly identical weevil species belonging to this genus living alongside one another.

    Initially, he thought there was a mistake in the data. “I had identical beetles that were clearly very distantly related species,” he said. But when he reexamined the insects, which belonged to the genus Anchylorhynchus, he noticed subtle differences in concave depressions in the males’ undersides. These indentations help the males fit snugly on top of females while mating, and likely are important for helping beetles identify and mate with females from the correct species, de Madeiros said.

    In many ways, genetic data has made it easier for scientists to tell species apart — but it has also raised its own set of issues, particularly when closely related organisms that look alike and exhibit similar behavior are also very similar genetically.

    “We get into questions of how much of a percentage of a difference in the genetic code do you have to have to be a distinct species — and people disagree on that, too,” Simmons said. “So, even when we have genetic data, you don’t find complete agreement about how to interpret it.”

    However difficult it might be to define a species, scientists won’t be running out of new discoveries anytime soon. By some estimates, Earth is home to approximately 8.7 million species — about 6.5 million living on land and 2.2 million in the oceans, which means that roughly 86% of land species and 91% of marine species are yet to be found and described.

    “We have a great challenge ahead to keep describing this diversity — how it evolves and how it will continue existing on our planet,” de Madeiros said.

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  • DNA project gives scientists diverse genome for comparison

    DNA project gives scientists diverse genome for comparison

    For two decades, scientists have been comparing every person’s full set of DNA they study to a template that relies mostly on genetic material from one man affectionately known as “the guy from Buffalo.”

    But they’ve long known that this template for comparison, or “reference genome,” has serious limits because it doesn’t reflect the spectrum of human diversity.

    “We need a really good understanding of the variations, the differences between human beings,” said genomics expert Benedict Paten of the University of California, Santa Cruz. “We’re missing out.”

    Now, scientists are building a much more diverse reference that they call a “pangenome,” which so far includes the genetic material of 47 people from various places around the world. It’s the subject of four studies published Wednesday in the journals Nature and Nature Biotechnology. Scientists say it’s already teaching them new things about health and disease and should help patients down the road.

    Paten said the new reference should help scientists understand more about what’s normal and what’s not. “It is only by understanding what common variation looks like that we’ll be able to say, ‘Oh, this big structural variation that affects this gene? Don’t worry about it,’” he said.

    A human genome is the set of instructions to build and sustain a human being, and experts define a pangenome as a collection of whole genome sequences from many people that is designed to represent the genetic diversity of the human species. The pangenome is not a composite but a collection; scientists depict it as a rainbow of stacked genomes, compared with one line representing the older, single reference genome.

    The Human Pangenome Project builds upon the first sequencing of a complete human genome, which was nearly completed more than two decades ago and finally finished last year. Paten, a pangenome study author and project leader, said 70% of that first reference genome came from an African American man with mixed African and European ancestry who answered an ad for volunteers in a Buffalo newspaper in 1997. About 30% came from a mix of around 20 people.

    The pangenome contains material from 24 people of African ancestry, 16 from the Americas and the Caribbean, six from Asia and one from Europe.

    Although any two people’s genomes are more than 99% identical, Paten said “it’s those differences that are the things that genetics and genomics is concerned with studying and understanding.”

    It may take a while for patients to see concrete benefits from the research. But scientists said new insights should eventually make genetic testing more accurate, improve drug discovery and bolster personalized medicine, which uses someone’s unique genetic profile to guide decisions for preventing, diagnosing and treating disease.

    “The Pangenome Project gives a more accurate representation of the genome of people from around the world,” and should help doctors better diagnose genetic conditions, said clinical genetics expert Dr. Wendy Chung at Columbia University, who was not involved in the research.

    If someone has a variation in a certain gene, it could be compared to the rainbow of references.

    Study author Evan Eichler of the University of Washington said researchers will also learn more about genes already linked to problems, such as one tied to cardiovascular disease in African Americans.

    “Now that we can actually sequence that gene in its entirety and we can understand the variation in that gene, we can start to go back to unexplained cases of patients with coronary heart disease” and look at them in light of the new knowledge, he said. Eichler is paid by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which also supports The Associated Press’s health and science department.

    University of Minnesota plant genetics expert Candice Hirsch, who wasn’t involved in the research but has closely followed the effort, said she expects many discoveries to flow from it. Until now, “we really have only been able to scratch the surface of understanding the genetics that underlies disease,” she said.

    The consortium leading the research is part of the Human Genome Reference Program, which is funded by an arm of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

    The team is in the process of adding to the collection of reference genomes, with the goal of having sequences from 350 people by the middle of next year. Scientists are also hoping to work more with international partners, including those focusing on Indigenous populations.

    “We’re in it for the long game,” Paten said.

    ___

    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • KCSO arrests 2 on suspicion of growing, selling marijuana | News – Medical Marijuana Program Connection

    KCSO arrests 2 on suspicion of growing, selling marijuana | News – Medical Marijuana Program Connection

    The Kern County Sheriff’s Office arrested two people in the Frazier Park area on suspicion of growing marijuana and selling it, according to a news release issued Friday. 

    Deputies stopped Hovhannes Sayadyan, 29, and Garni Boghosian-Molhemi, 28, in the area of Cuddy Valley Road and Tecuya Drive on Wednesday. During this stop, the deputies found several large black trash bags filled with marijuana, the news release said. 

    MMP News Author

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  • National Pygmy Goat Association declares April 23 as National Pygmy Goat Day

    National Pygmy Goat Association declares April 23 as National Pygmy Goat Day

    The National Pygmy Goat Association has declared April 23 as National Pygmy Goat Day.

    Members and affiliated clubs are planning events throughout the country to celebrate the day and showcase their pygmy goats.

    The National Pygmy Goat Association is the official registry for Pygmy Goats in the United States and the national organization serving Pygmy Goat owners and enthusiasts. Formed in 1976, it works to promote Pygmy Goats as useful livestock and multi-purpose miniature goats that are just plain fun.

    “As the official registry for pygmy goats, it is our goal to educate the public about the breed,” said Darren Watkins, president of the National Pygmy Goat Association. “What better way to celebrate these wonderful animals than by having a day specifically for them. We couldn’t think of a better time than the anniversary of the birth of the NPGA.”

    People are also reading…

    Not all little goats are Pygmy Goats. Pygmy Goats are a specific breed derived from the Cameroon’s or West African Dwarf Goat. The first Pygmy Goats were brought to the United States in 1959 for use in petting zoos.

    The Pygmy Goat is hardy, alert and animated, good-natured and gregarious, a docile, responsive pet, a cooperative provider of milk, and an ecologically effective browser.

    For more information, visit www.npga-pygmy.com.

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  • National Pygmy Goat Association declares April 23 as National Pygmy Goat Day

    Events across the country will mark National Pygmy Goat Association’s anniversary

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  • Supreme Court clears way for Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed to try to use DNA to prove innocence | CNN Politics

    Supreme Court clears way for Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed to try to use DNA to prove innocence | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The Supreme Court cleared the way on Wednesday for Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed to seek post-conviction DNA evidence to try to prove his innocence.

    Reed claims an all-White jury wrongly convicted him of killing of Stacey Stites, a 19-year-old White woman, in Texas in 1998.

    Texas had argued that he had waited too long to bring his challenge to the state’s DNA procedures in federal court, but the Supreme Court disagreed. Now, he can go to a federal court to make his claim.

    The ruling was 6-3. Justice Brett Kavanaugh delivered the opinion of the court and was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

    Since Reed’s conviction, Texas courts had rejected his various appeals. Celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and Rihanna have expressed support, signing a petition asking the state to halt his eventual execution.

    The case puts a new focus on the testing of DNA crime-scene evidence and when an inmate can make a claim to access the technology in a plea of innocence. To date, 375 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 21 who served time on death row, according to the Innocence Project, a group that represents Reed and other clients seeking post-conviction DNA testing to prove their innocence.

    Kavanaugh, in his opinion Wednesday, said that the court agreed to hear the case because federal appeals courts have disagreed about when inmates can make such claims without running afoul of the statute of limitations. Kavanaugh said Reed could make the claim after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ultimately denied his request for rehearing, rejecting an earlier date set out by the appeals court.

    “Significant systemic benefits ensue from starting the statute of limitations clock when the state litigation in DNA testing cases like Reed’s has concluded,” Kavanaugh said.

    He noted that if any problems with a defendant’s right to due process “lurk in the DNA testing law” the case can proceed through the appellate process, which could ultimately render a federal lawsuit unnecessary.

    Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

    Alito, joined by Gorsuch in his dissent, said Reed should have acted more quickly to bring his appeal. “Instead,” Alito wrote, “he waited until an execution date was set.”

    Alito charged Reed with making the “basic mistake of missing a statute of limitations.”

    Reed has been on death row for the murder of Stites.

    A passerby found Stites’ body near a shirt and a torn piece of belt. Investigators targeted Reed because his sperm was found inside her. Reed acknowledged the two were having an affair, but says that her fiancé, a local police officer named Jimmy Fennell, was the last to see her alive.

    Reed claims that over the last two decades he has discovered a “considerable body of evidence” demonstrating his innocence. Reed claims that the DNA testing would point to Fennell as the murder suspect. Fennell was later jailed for sexually assaulting a woman in his custody and Reed claims that numerous witnesses said he had threatened to strangle Stites with a belt if he ever caught her cheating on him. Reed seeks to test the belt found at the scene that was used to strangle Stites.

    The Texas law at issue allows a convicted person to obtain post-conviction DNA testing of biological material if the court finds that certain conditions are met. Reed was denied. He came to the Supreme Court in 2018 and was denied again. Now he is challenging the constitutionality of the Texas law arguing that the denial of the DNA testing violates his due process rights. 

    But the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals held that he waited too long to bring the claim. “An injury accrues when a plaintiff first becomes aware, or should have become aware, that his right had been violated.” The court said that he became aware of that in 2014 and that his current claim is “time barred.” 

    Reed’s lawyers argued that he could only bring the claim once the state appeals court had ruled, at the end of state court litigation. In court, Parker Rider-Longmaid said that the “clock doesn’t start ticking” until state court proceedings come to an end. He said Texas’ reading of the law would mean that other procedures in the appellate process are “irrelevant.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Pet of the Week: Sammie

    Sammie is a 15-month-old, 55-pound, neutered male standard poodle. He is a joy to be around, however, he is all puppy. Boisterous would be a good description for this happy guy. Sammie requires a fenced yard and an active person/family. He is crate trained and house trained. He loves other dogs and people. Sammie’s adoption fee is $650. To meet him, call 336-574-9600 or visit www.arfpnc.com and submit an application.

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