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Tag: Biology

  • Glass act: Scientists reveal secrets of frog transparency

    Glass act: Scientists reveal secrets of frog transparency

    WASHINGTON — Now you see them, now you don’t.

    Some frogs found in South and Central America have the rare ability to turn on and off their nearly transparent appearance, researchers report Thursday in the journal Science.

    During the day, these nocturnal frogs sleep by hanging underneath tree leaves. Their delicate, greenish transparent forms don’t cast shadows, rendering them almost invisible to birds and other predators passing overhead or underneath.

    But when northern glass frogs wake up and hop around in search of insects and mates, they take on an opaque reddish-brown color.

    “When they’re transparent, it’s for their safety,” said Junjie Yao, a Duke University biomedical engineer and study co-author. When they’re awake, they can actively evade predators, but when they’re sleeping and most vulnerable, “they have adapted to remain hidden.”

    Using light and ultrasound imaging technology, the researchers discovered the secret: While asleep, the frogs concentrate, or “hide,” nearly 90% of their red blood cells in their liver.

    Because they have transparent skin and other tissues, it’s the blood circulating through their bodies that would otherwise give them away. The frogs also shrink and pack together most of their internal organs, Yao said.

    The research “beautifully explains” how “glass frogs conceal blood in the liver to maintain transparency,” said Juan Manuel Guayasamin, a frog biologist at University San Francisco of Quito, Ecuador, who was not involved in the study.

    Exactly how they do this, and why it doesn’t kill them, remains a mystery. For most animals, having very little blood circulating oxygen for several hours would be deadly. And concentrating blood so tightly would result in fatal clotting. But somehow, the frogs survive.

    Further research on the species could provide useful clues for the development of anti-blood clotting medications, said Carlos Taboada, a Duke University biologist and study co-author.

    Only a few animals, mostly ocean dwellers, are naturally transparent, said Oxford University biologist Richard White, who was not involved in the study. “Transparency is super rare in nature, and in land animals, it’s essentially unheard of outside of the glass frog,” White said.

    Those that are transparent include some fish, shrimp, jellyfish, worms and insects — none of which move large quantities of red blood through their bodies. The trick of hiding blood while sleeping appears to be unique to the frogs.

    “It’s just this really amazing, dynamic form of camouflage,” said White.

    ———

    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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  • Famed LA mountain lion euthanized following health problems

    Famed LA mountain lion euthanized following health problems

    LOS ANGELES — P-22, the celebrated mountain lion that took up residence in the middle of Los Angeles and became a symbol of urban pressures on wildlife, was euthanized Saturday after dangerous changes in his behavior led to examinations that revealed worsening health and injuries likely caused by a car.

    Officials with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said the decision to euthanize the beloved big cat was made after veterinarians determined it had a skull fracture and chronic illnesses including a skin infection and diseases of the kidneys and liver.

    “His prognosis was deemed poor,” said the agency’s director, Chuck Bonham, who fought back tears during a news conference announcing the cougar’s death. “This really hurts … it’s been an incredibly difficult several days.”

    The animal became the face of the campaign to build a wildlife crossing over a Los Angeles-area freeway to give big cats, coyotes, deer and other wildlife a safe path to the nearby Santa Monica Mountains, where they have room to roam.

    Seth Riley, wildlife branch chief with the National Park Service, called P-22 “an ambassador for his species,” with the wildlife bridge a symbol of his lasting legacy.

    State and federal wildlife officials announced earlier this month that they were concerned that P-22 “may be exhibiting signs of distress” due in part to aging, noting the animal needed to be studied to determine what steps to take.

    The aging mountain was captured in a residential backyard in the trendy Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles on Dec. 12, a month after killing a Chihuahua on a dogwalker’s leash. An anonymous report that indicated P-22 may have been struck by a vehicle was confirmed by a CT scan that revealed injuries to his head and torso, wildlife officials said.

    State authorities determined that the only likely options were euthanasia or confinement in an animal sanctuary — a difficult prospect for a wild lion.

    P-22 was believed to be 12 years old, longer-lived than most wild male mountain lions.

    His name was his number in a National Park Service study of the challenges the wide-roaming big cats face in habitat fragmented by urban sprawl and hemmed in by massive freeways that are not only dangerous to cross but are also barriers to the local population’s genetic diversity.

    The cougar was regularly recorded on security cameras strolling through residential areas near his home in Griffith Park, an island of wilderness and picnic areas in the middle of Los Angeles.

    “P-22’s survival on an island of wilderness in the heart of Los Angeles captivated people around the world and revitalized efforts to protect our diverse native species and ecosystems,” Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement Saturday.

    Ground was broken this year on the wildlife crossing, which will stretch 200 feet (60.96 meters) over U.S. 101. Construction is expected to be completed by early 2025.

    P-22 usually hunted deer and coyotes, but in November the National Park Service confirmed that the cougar had attacked and killed a Chihuahua mix that was being walked in the narrow streets of the Hollywood Hills.

    The cougar also is suspected of attacking another Chihuahua in the Silver Lake neighborhood this month.

    Beth Pratt with the National Wildlife Federation said she hopes P-22’s life and death will inspire the construction of more wildlife crossings in California and across the nation. The nonprofit was a major advocate for the LA-area bridge.

    “He changed the way we look at LA. And his influencer status extended around the world, as he inspired millions of people to see wildlife as their neighbors,” Pratt said.

    ———

    Associated Press reporter John Antczak contributed.

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  • WSJ News Exclusive | Amgen in Advanced Talks to Buy Horizon Therapeutics

    WSJ News Exclusive | Amgen in Advanced Talks to Buy Horizon Therapeutics

    U.S. biotechnology company was the last of three suitors standing in an auction for Horizon

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  • Oldest DNA reveals life in Greenland 2 million years ago

    Oldest DNA reveals life in Greenland 2 million years ago

    NEW YORK — Scientists discovered the oldest known DNA and used it to reveal what life was like 2 million years ago in the northern tip of Greenland. Today, it’s a barren Arctic desert, but back then it was a lush landscape of trees and vegetation with an array of animals, even the now extinct mastodon.

    “The study opens the door into a past that has basically been lost,” said lead author Kurt Kjær, a geologist and glacier expert at the University of Copenhagen.

    With animal fossils hard to come by, the researchers extracted environmental DNA, also known as eDNA, from soil samples. This is the genetic material that organisms shed into their surroundings — for example, through hair, waste, spit or decomposing carcasses.

    Studying really old DNA can be a challenge because the genetic material breaks down over time, leaving scientists with only tiny fragments.

    But with the latest technology, researchers were able to get genetic information out of the small, damaged bits of DNA, explained senior author Eske Willerslev, a geneticist at the University of Cambridge. In their study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, they compared the DNA to that of different species, looking for matches.

    The samples came from a sediment deposit called the Kap København formation in Peary Land. Today, the area is a polar desert, Kjær said.

    But millions of years ago, this region was undergoing a period of intense climate change that sent temperatures up, Willerslev said. Sediment likely built up for tens of thousands of years at the site before the climate cooled and cemented the finds into permafrost.

    The cold environment would help preserve the delicate bits of DNA — until scientists came along and drilled the samples out, beginning in 2006.

    During the region’s warm period, when average temperatures were 20 to 34 degrees Fahrenheit (11 to 19 degrees Celsius) higher than today, the area was filled with an unusual array of plant and animal life, the researchers reported. The DNA fragments suggest a mix of Arctic plants, like birch trees and willow shrubs, with ones that usually prefer warmer climates, like firs and cedars.

    The DNA also showed traces of animals including geese, hares, reindeer and lemmings. Previously, a dung beetle and some hare remains had been the only signs of animal life at the site, Willerslev said.

    One big surprise was finding DNA from the mastodon, an extinct species that looks like a mix between an elephant and a mammoth, Kjær said.

    Many mastodon fossils have previously been found from temperate forests in North America. That’s an ocean away from Greenland, and much farther south, Willerslev said.

    “I wouldn’t have, in a million years, expected to find mastodons in northern Greenland,” said Love Dalen, a researcher in evolutionary genomics at Stockholm University who was not involved in the study.

    Because the sediment built up in the mouth of a fjord, researchers were also able to get clues about marine life from this time period. The DNA suggests horseshoe crabs and green algae lived in the area — meaning the nearby waters were likely much warmer back then, Kjær said.

    By pulling dozens of species out of just a few sediment samples, the study highlights some of eDNA’s advantages, said Benjamin Vernot, an ancient DNA researcher at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology who was not involved in the study.

    “You really get a broader picture of the ecosystem at a particular time,” Vernot said. “You don’t have to go and find this piece of wood to study this plant, and this bone to study this mammoth.”

    Based on the data available, it’s hard to say for sure whether these species truly lived side by side, or if the DNA was mixed together from different parts of the landscape, said Laura Epp, an eDNA expert at Germany’s University of Konstanz who was not involved in the study.

    But Epp said this kind of DNA research is valuable to show “hidden diversity” in ancient landscapes.

    Willerslev believes that because these plants and animals survived during a time of dramatic climate change, their DNA could offer a “genetic roadmap” to help us adapt to current warming.

    Stockholm University’s Dalen expects ancient DNA research to keep pushing deeper into the past. He worked on the study that previously held the “oldest DNA” record, from a mammoth tooth around a million years old.

    “I wouldn’t be surprised if you can go at least one or perhaps a few million years further back, assuming you can find the right samples,” Dalen 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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  • Oldest DNA reveals life in Greenland 2 million years ago

    Oldest DNA reveals life in Greenland 2 million years ago

    NEW YORK — Scientists discovered the oldest known DNA and used it to reveal what life was like 2 million years ago in the northern tip of Greenland. Today, it’s a barren Arctic desert, but back then it was a lush landscape of trees and vegetation with an array of animals, even the now extinct mastodon.

    “The study opens the door into a past that has basically been lost,” said lead author Kurt Kjær, a geologist and glacier expert at the University of Copenhagen.

    With animal fossils hard to come by, the researchers extracted environmental DNA, also known as eDNA, from soil samples. This is the genetic material that organisms shed into their surroundings — for example, through hair, waste, spit or decomposing carcasses.

    Studying really old DNA can be a challenge because the genetic material breaks down over time, leaving scientists with only tiny fragments.

    But with the latest technology, researchers were able to get genetic information out of the small, damaged bits of DNA, explained senior author Eske Willerslev, a geneticist at the University of Cambridge. In their study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, they compared the DNA to that of different species, looking for matches.

    The samples came from a sediment deposit called the Kap København formation in Peary Land. Today, the area is a polar desert, Kjær said.

    But millions of years ago, this region was undergoing a period of intense climate change that sent temperatures up, Willerslev said. Sediment likely built up for tens of thousands of years at the site before the climate cooled and cemented the finds into permafrost.

    The cold environment would help preserve the delicate bits of DNA — until scientists came along and drilled the samples out, beginning in 2006.

    During the region’s warm period, when average temperatures were 20 to 34 degrees Fahrenheit (11 to 19 degrees Celsius) higher than today, the area was filled with an unusual array of plant and animal life, the researchers reported. The DNA fragments suggest a mix of Arctic plants, like birch trees and willow shrubs, with ones that usually prefer warmer climates, like firs and cedars.

    The DNA also showed traces of animals including geese, hares, reindeer and lemmings. Previously, a dung beetle and some hare remains had been the only signs of animal life at the site, Willerslev said.

    One big surprise was finding DNA from the mastodon, an extinct species that looks like a mix between an elephant and a mammoth, Kjær said.

    Many mastodon fossils have previously been found from temperate forests in North America. That’s an ocean away from Greenland, and much farther south, Willerslev said.

    “I wouldn’t have, in a million years, expected to find mastodons in northern Greenland,” said Love Dalen, a researcher in evolutionary genomics at Stockholm University who was not involved in the study.

    Because the sediment built up in the mouth of a fjord, researchers were also able to get clues about marine life from this time period. The DNA suggests horseshoe crabs and green algae lived in the area — meaning the nearby waters were likely much warmer back then, Kjær said.

    By pulling dozens of species out of just a few sediment samples, the study highlights some of eDNA’s advantages, said Benjamin Vernot, an ancient DNA researcher at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology who was not involved in the study.

    “You really get a broader picture of the ecosystem at a particular time,” Vernot said. “You don’t have to go and find this piece of wood to study this plant, and this bone to study this mammoth.”

    Based on the data available, it’s hard to say for sure whether these species truly lived side by side, or if the DNA was mixed together from different parts of the landscape, said Laura Epp, an eDNA expert at Germany’s University of Konstanz who was not involved in the study.

    But Epp said this kind of DNA research is valuable to show “hidden diversity” in ancient landscapes.

    Willerslev believes that because these plants and animals survived during a time of dramatic climate change, their DNA could offer a “genetic roadmap” to help us adapt to current warming.

    Stockholm University’s Dalen expects ancient DNA research to keep pushing deeper into the past. He worked on the study that previously held the “oldest DNA” record, from a mammoth tooth around a million years old.

    “I wouldn’t be surprised if you can go at least one or perhaps a few million years further back, assuming you can find the right samples,” Dalen 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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  • Extinctions, shrinking habitat spur ‘rewilding’ in cities

    Extinctions, shrinking habitat spur ‘rewilding’ in cities

    DETROIT — In a bustling metro area of 4.3 million people, Yale University wildlife biologist Nyeema Harris ventures into isolated thickets to study Detroit’s most elusive residents — coyotes, foxes, raccoons and skunks among them.

    Harris and colleagues have placed trail cameras in woodsy sections of 25 city parks for the past five years. They’ve recorded thousands of images of animals that emerge mostly at night to roam and forage, revealing a wild side many locals might not know exists.

    “We’re getting more and more exposure to wildlife in urban environments,” Harris said recently while checking several of the devices fastened to trees with steel cables near the ground. “As we’re changing their habitats, as we’re expanding the footprint of urbanization, … we’ll increasingly come in contact with them.”

    Animal and plant species are dying off at an alarming rate, with up to 1 million threatened with extinction, according to a 2019 United Nations report. Their plight is stirring calls for “rewilding” places where they thrived until driven out by development, pollution and climate change.

    Rewilding generally means reviving natural systems in degraded locations — sometimes with a helping hand. That might mean removing dams, building tunnels to reconnect migration pathways severed by roads, or reintroducing predators such as wolves to help balance ecosystems. But after initial assists, there’s little human involvement.

    The idea might seem best suited to remote areas where nature is freer to heal without interference. But rewilding also happens in some of the world’s biggest urban centers, as people find mutually beneficial ways to coexist with nature.

    The U.S. Forest Service estimates 6,000 acres (2,428 hectares) of open space are lost daily as cities and suburbs expand. More than two-thirds of the global population will live in urban areas by 2050, the U.N. says.

    “Climate change is coming, and we are facing an equally important biodiversity crisis,” said Nathalie Pettorelli, senior scientist with the Zoological Society of London. “There’s no better place to engage people on these matters than in cities.”

    In a September report, the society noted rewilding in metropolises such as Singapore, where a 1.7-mile (2.7-kilometer) stretch of the Kallang River has been converted from a concrete-lined channel into a twisting waterway lined with plants, rocks and other natural materials and flanked by green parkland.

    Treating urban rivers like natural waters instead of drainage ditches can boost fish passage and let adjacent lands absorb floodwaters as global warming brings more extreme weather, the report says.

    The German cities of Hannover, Frankfurt and Dessau-Rosslau designated vacant lots, parks, lawns and urban waterways where nature could take its course. As native wildflowers have sprung up, they’ve attracted birds, butterflies, bees, even hedgehogs.

    London Mayor Sadiq Khan, describing the United Kingdom as “one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world,” announced a plan last year to fund 45 urban rewilding projects to improve habitat for stag beetles, water voles and birds such as swifts and sparrows.

    In the north London borough of Enfield, two beavers were released in March — 400 years after the species was hunted to extinction in Great Britain — in the hope their dams would prevent flash flooding. One died but was to be replaced.

    Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium and the nonprofit Urban Rivers are installing “floating wetlands” on part of the Chicago River to provide fish breeding areas, bird and pollinator habitat and root systems that cleanse polluted water.

    Urban rewilding can’t return landscapes to pre-settlement times and doesn’t try, said Marie Law Adams, a Northeastern University associate professor of architecture.

    Instead, the aim is to encourage natural processes that serve people and wildlife by increasing tree cover to ease summer heat, storing carbon and hosting more animals. Or installing surface channels called bio-swales that filter rainwater runoff from parking lots instead of letting it contaminate creeks.

    “We need to learn from the mistakes of the mid-20th century — paving over everything, engineering everything with gray infrastructure” such as dams and pipes, Adams said.

    Detroit’s sprawling metro area illustrates how human actions can boost rewilding, intentionally or not.

    Hundreds of thousands of houses and other structures were abandoned as the struggling city’s population fell more than 60% since peaking at 1.8 million in the 1950s. Many were razed, leaving vacant tracts that plants and animals have occupied. Nonprofit groups have planted trees, community gardens and pollinator-friendly shrubs.

    Conservation projects reintroduced ospreys and peregrine falcons. Bald eagles found their way back as bans on DDT and other pesticides helped expand their range nationwide. Anti-pollution laws and government-funded cleanups made nearby rivers more hospitable to sturgeon, whitefish, beavers and native plants, such as wild celery.

    “Detroit is a stellar example of urban rewilding, ” said John Hartig, a lake scientist at the nearby University of Windsor and former head of the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge. “It’s been more organic than strategic. We created the conditions, things got better environmentally, and the native species came back.”

    The refuge, a half-hour’s drive from downtown, consists of 30 parcels totaling 6,200 acres (2,509 hectares), including islands, wetlands and former industrial sites. It’s home to 300 bird species and a busy stopover for ducks, raptors and others during migration, said Manager Dan Kennedy.

    To Harris, the Yale biologist formerly with the University of Michigan, Detroit offers a unique backdrop for studying wildlife in urban settings.

    Unlike most big cities, its human population is declining, even as its streets, buildings and other infrastructure remain largely intact. And there’s diverse habitat. It ranges from large lakes and rivers to neighborhoods — some occupied, others largely deserted — and parklands so quiet “you don’t even know you’re in the city,” Harris said while changing camera batteries and jotting notes in a woodsy section of O’Hair Park.

    Her team’s photographic observations have yielded published studies on how mammals react to each other, and to people, in urban landscapes.

    The project connects them with local residents, some intrigued by coyotes and raccoons in the neighborhood, others fearful of diseases or harm to pets.

    It’s an educational opportunity, Harris said — about proper trash disposal, resisting the temptation to feed wild animals and the value of healthy, diverse ecosystems.

    “It used to be that you had to go to some remote location to get exposure to nature,” said Harris, a Philadelphia native who was excited as a child to glimpse an occasional squirrel or deer. “Now that’s not the case. Like it or not, rewilding will occur. The question is, how can we prepare communities and environments and societies to anticipate the presence of more and more wildlife?”

    Rewilding can be a tough sell for urbanites who prefer well-manicured lawns and think ecologically rich systems look weedy and unkempt or should be used for housing.

    But advocates say it isn’t just about animals and plants. Studies show time in natural spaces improves people’s physical and mental health.

    “A lot of city people have lost their tolerance to live with wildlife,” said Pettorelli of Zoological Society of London. “There’s a lot of reteaching ourselves to be done. To really make a difference in tackling the biodiversity crisis, you’re going to have to have people on board.”

    ——————

    Follow John Flesher on Twitter: @JohnFlesher

    ——————

    Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • As the University of Idaho homicide investigation enters a critical stage, police must protect information ‘at all costs,’ experts say | CNN

    As the University of Idaho homicide investigation enters a critical stage, police must protect information ‘at all costs,’ experts say | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    The investigation into the murders of four University of Idaho students is entering a critical stage in its third week, as police are starting to receive forensic testing results from the crime scene, law enforcement experts tell CNN.

    Dozens of local, state and federal investigators have yet to identify a suspect or find the murder weapon used in the attack last month in Moscow.

    The public, as well as the victims’ family members, have criticized police for releasing little information, in what at times has been a confusing narrative.

    But the complex nature of a high-level homicide investigation involves utmost discretion from police, experts say, because any premature hint to the public about a suspect or the various leads police are following can cause it to fall apart.

    “What police have been reluctant to do in this case is to say they have a suspect, even though they have had suspects who have risen and fallen in various levels of importance, because that’s the nature of the beast,” said John Miller, CNN chief law enforcement analyst and former deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism for the New York Police Department.

    “Police having no suspects is factually incorrect,” Miller said. “Police have had a number of suspects they’ve looked at, but they have no suspect they’re willing to name. You don’t name them unless you have a purpose for that. That’s not unusual.”

    The victims – Ethan Chapin, 20; Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Madison Mogen, 21 – were found stabbed on the second and third floors of their shared off-campus home on November 13, according to authorities.

    The quadruple murder has upended the town of 26,000 residents, which had not recorded a single murder since 2015, and challenged a police department which has not benefited from the experience of investigating many homicides, let alone under the pressure of a national audience, Miller says.

    The Moscow Police Department is leading the investigation with assistance from the Idaho State Police, the Latah County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI, which has assigned more than 40 agents to the case across the United States.

    “They have really coordinated this into over 100 people that are operating as one team,” Miller said of the homicide investigation.

    The FBI plays three important roles in the Idaho investigation, according to Miller.

    The first involves its behavioral science unit, which is highly valuable for cases with an unknown offender because it narrows the scope of offender characteristics.

    The second is its advanced technology, such as its Combined DNA Indexing System, which allows law enforcement officials and crime labs to share and search through thousands of DNA profiles.

    Lastly, the FBI has 56 field offices in major cities throughout the country, which can expand the reach and capability of the investigation.

    “The FBI brings a lot to this, as well as experience in a range of cases that would be beyond what a small town typically would have,” Miller said.

    Every homicide investigation begins with the scene of the crime, which allows investigators only one chance to record and collect forensic evidence for processing, which includes toxicology reports on the victims, hair, fibers, blood and DNA, law enforcement experts say.

    “That one chance with the crime scene is where a lot of opportunities can be made or lost,” Miller said.

    Extensive evidence has been collected over the course of the investigation, including 113 pieces of physical evidence, about 4,000 photos of the crime scene and several 3D scans of the home, Moscow police said Thursday.

    “To protect the investigation’s integrity, specific results will not be released,” police said.

    Latah County Coroner Cathy Mabbutt told CNN she saw “lots of blood on the wall” when she arrived at the scene and police said “some” of the victims had defensive wounds.

    Chances are “pretty high” a suspect could have cut themselves during the attack, so police are looking carefully at blood evidence, says Joe Giacalone, adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and retired NYPD sergeant who directed the agency’s Homicide School and Cold Case Squad.

    Lab results from the scene can be returned to investigators fairly quickly, but in this case investigators are dealing with mixtures of DNA, which can take longer, he says.

    “When you have several donors with the DNA, then it becomes a problem trying to separate those two or three or four. That could be part of the issue … toxicology reports can sometimes take a couple of weeks to come back,” Giacalone added.

    The next stage in a homicide investigation is looking at the behavioral aspects of the crime. Two agents with the FBI’s Behavior Analysis Unit were assigned to the case to assess the scene and go over evidence to learn about the suspect or suspects’ behavior, based on the way they carried out the crime, Miller says.

    “Understanding the victimology in a mystery can be very important, because it can lead you to motivation, it can lead you to enemies and it can lead you to friends,” he said.

    Investigators will learn every detail about the four victims, their relationships with each other and the various people in their lives, Miller says. This includes cell phone records and internet records, he says, as well as video surveillance from every camera surrounding the crime scene.

    “When you do an extensive video canvass, you may get a picture of a person, a shadowy figure, and then if you have a sense of direction, you can string your way down all the other cameras in that direction to see if that image reappears,” Miller said.

    At this stage, investigators rely on the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, which collects and analyzes information about violent crimes in the United States.

    The program can match a suspect’s DNA found at the scene with that of a person who is already in the system. It also scans all crimes across the country to determine if the way the attack was carried out mirrors a previous one, pointing to the same perpetrator, Miller says.

    “You always start with people who are close to the victims, whether it’s love, money or drugs,” Giacalone told CNN. “That’s generally the first step that you take because most of us are victimized by someone we know. We have to ask things like, who would benefit from having this person or in this case, a group, killed?”

    In an effort to locate the weapon – believed to be a fixed-blade knife – detectives contacted local businesses to see if a similar knife had been purchased recently.

    “It’s highly unlikely, although not impossible, that a first-time offender is going to come prepared with a tactical knife and murder multiple people, even in the face of resistance, and that this is going to be their first encounter with violent crime or the use of a knife,” Miller said.

    One aspect of a homicide investigation is to “keep the media happy,” according to Giacalone.

    “Today in the social media, true crime, community-driven world in these cases, the demand for information is so great that sometimes police departments kind of fill in that blank air and say something just for the sake of saying something, and then realizing that it’s either not 100% true, or it’s misleading,” he said.

    It’s critical for police to protect their information at “all costs” and they always know more than what they release to the public. Otherwise, it could cause the suspect to go on the run, he says.

    The media gathers as Moscow Police Chief James Fry speaks during a news conference.

    Miller said it’s “not fair” to investigators for the public or media to criticize them for not releasing enough information about the case.

    But, ultimately, the department has a moral obligation to share some information with families who are suffering in uncertainty, Miller says, but they must be judicious about what they share.

    “If you tell them we have a suspect and we’re close to an arrest but that doesn’t come together, then everybody is disappointed or thinks you messed it up or worse, goes out and figures out who the suspect is and tries to take action on their own,” he said.

    Investigators rely on the trove of physical and scientific evidence, information from the public and national data on violent crimes to cultivate possible leads, Miller says.

    Public tips, photos and videos of the night the students died, including more than 260 digital media submissions people have submitted through an FBI form, are being analyzed, police say. Authorities have processed more than 1,000 tips and conducted at least 150 interviews to advance the case.

    “Any one of those tips can be the missing link,” Miller said. “It can either be the connective tissue to a lead you already had but were missing a piece, or it can become the brand new lead that solves the case.”

    Every tip must be recorded in a searchable database so investigators can go back to them as they learn new details over the course of the investigation, Miller says. While 95% to 99% of public tips may provide no value, one or several might crack the entire case, he adds.

    “Police in this case could be nowhere tonight, having washed out another suspect, and tomorrow morning they could be making an arrest,” Miller said of the Idaho investigation. “Or, for the suspect they’re working on today, it might take them another month from now to put together enough evidence to have probable cause. That’s just something they won’t be able to reveal until it happens.”

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  • Panama confronts illegal trafficking of animals

    Panama confronts illegal trafficking of animals

    ANCON, Panama — In a tropical forest beside the Panama Canal, two black-handed spider monkeys swing about their wire enclosure, balanced by their long tails. They arrived at this government rehabilitation center after environmental authorities seized them from people who had been keeping them as pets.

    In the coming months, biologists and veterinarians will shift them to a diet mirroring what they would eat in the wild, help them re-learn skills to survive in the jungle and wean them from human contact.

    Panamanian authorities are trying to raise awareness about the dangers — to humans and wildlife — of keeping wild animals in their homes. This month, Panama hosted the World Wildlife Conference, where participants voted to tighten restrictions on the international trade in animals and plants.

    Black-handed spider monkeys are listed in the most endangered category of international species, and Panama’s Ministry of Environment say they are in “critical danger.” Trade in the monkeys is permitted only in exceptional circumstances.

    “People don’t understand they can’t buy a wild animal from someone who doesn’t have authorization to sell it,” said Felipe Cruz, the Environment Ministry’s adviser on environmental crimes. “The environment can’t take any more. We’re at a critical point.”

    From January through September, Panama’s Attorney General’s Office had recorded 19 cases of wild species trafficking and 14 cases of extraction of species that were protected or in danger of extinction. Shirley Binder, an adviser to the Environment Ministry, said the real extent of the problem could be greater.

    “The country is big, there could be cases that we don’t have,” Binder said. “We have formed strategic alliances with security sectors that now are conscious of the environmental issue, … but we also need the support of citizens generally so that when they see these cases they report them.”

    Earlier this year, the government introduced a catalog with photographs and technical details to assist in the identification of the most commonly trafficked species. The plan was to distribute it to security, border and customs authorities nationwide.

    Panamanian law strictly limits the possession of wildlife. The Environment Ministry issues permits to zoos, breeding centers or for the raising and consumption of some sources of protein such as deer and iguana, but not for endangered species.

    Biologist Samuel Sucre operates one of those businesses, Natural Tanks, which has government permits allowing him to collect amphibians and reptiles from the wild and breed them for sale.

    Sucre said the government closed down some “ghost farming” operations.

    “These farms were claiming they were breeding the frogs, but in reality they were just field collecting them and then claiming that these were bred (on) their farm,” Sucre said.

    “The problem with the illegal trade in countries like mine, developing countries, people don’t understand the value of that resource,” Sucre said. The people who want to sell animals go to residents of rural areas who have very little income and offer payment per frog.

    He advocates instead for finding sustainable ways to commercialize some species so people can learn the value of the natural resources and make a living.

    Spider monkeys are among the most popular wild pets, said Erick Núñez, the Environment Ministry’s chief of national biodiversity. “They’re usually friendly with people … however, when they reach the age of sexual maturity, when they become jealous, they can become aggressive and attack people,” he said. “That is the natural behavior of the species when it is stressed.”

    Primates can adapt relatively well to living in with humans, making their rehabilitation especially challenging, he said.

    The new government rehabilitation center, which was built on land adjacent to former U.S. military facilities, began receiving animals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Animals cycle in and out, but it holds up to 50 animals and there are plans to expand.

    Primates like the spider monkeys are among the most frequent arrivals, but the center also receives cat species such as ocelots and jaguarundi, and birds including toucans and owls.

    The two spider monkeys that arrived separately this year have long rehabilitations ahead. “They are animals that are very used to human presence,” said Núñez. “Here we only come once a day to bring food. The contact with us is very scarce.”

    For now, they feed them fruit such as papaya and mango, but biologists also collect fruit from the jungle. As they get closer to being released, their diet will shift away from fruits they would not find in the wild, where they would also eat some leaves and even eggs from birds’ nests. Biologists will hide their food in the enclosure “to awaken that wild, natural instinct,” Núñez said.

    They will only be reintroduced to the wild after thorough evaluation by the center’s biologists and specialists from nongovernmental organizations. The monkeys will need to show that they can find their food and recognize other members of their species.

    Núñez said people still see monkeys as making good pets, an attitude he said is “unjust and inappropriate.”

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  • State says DNA sample was obtained legally in 1976 Marinette Co. campground murders case

    State says DNA sample was obtained legally in 1976 Marinette Co. campground murders case

    Court rules DNA ruse legal in cold case murder

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  • Chris Hemsworth receives ‘strong indication’ of a genetic predisposition to Alzheimer’s disease while filming new show | CNN

    Chris Hemsworth receives ‘strong indication’ of a genetic predisposition to Alzheimer’s disease while filming new show | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Chris Hemsworth embarked on a personal and physically demanding journey for his new series “Limitless” that ultimately led to a sobering discovery.

    The “Thor” actor, 39, learns in one episode of the limited Disney+/National Geographic series – which shows him exploring ways to enhance his longevity and combat aging – that he has two copies of the APOE4 gene, one from each of his parents, meaning he has a heightened predisposition for developing Alzheimer’s disease.

    “They took all my bloodwork and did a bunch of tests and the plan was to on-camera tell me all the results and then talk about how you can improve this and that,” Hemsworth shared with Vanity Fair in an article published on Thursday. “And Peter Attia, who is the longevity doctor in that episode, and overseeing a lot of the show, called [“Limitless” creator] Darren [Aronofsky] and said, ‘I don’t want to tell him this on camera. We need to have an off-side conversation and see if he even wants this to be in the show.’ It was pretty shocking because he called me up and he told me.”

    Upon learning the news, Hemsworth said he “had a bunch of questions,” later adding that he “didn’t really know what to think. I was like, ‘Am I supposed to be worried? Is this concerning?’”

    He also said that the show then “became even more relevant and important for me, even more poignant than I ever thought it would be,” adding that APOE4 is “not a pre-deterministic gene, but it is a strong indication. Ten years ago, I think it was more thought of as determinant.”

    The new information, which Hemsworth said makes him “eight to 10 times more likely” to eventually develop Alzheimer’s disease, naturally caused him to reflect on death and his own mortality.

    “There was an intensity to navigating it. Most of us, we like to avoid speaking about death in the hope that we’ll somehow avoid it,” he told Vanity Fair. “We all have this belief that we’ll figure it out. Then to all of a sudden be told some big indicators are actually pointing to this as the route which is going to happen, the reality of it sinks in.”

    “Limitless,” which shows the Marvel star engaging in various stunts and practices to prolong and enhance his life, in fact deals with facing death in the final episode.

    “I think that’s my favorite episode. That’s where I worked with the death doula and people who worked in palliative care and end of life care and then spoke to a number of people who were at the end of their days or coming upon them – even younger people that were diagnosed with cancer and didn’t have long to live,” he shared.

    “Doing an episode on death and facing your own mortality made me go, ‘Oh God, I’m not ready to go yet,’” he later added. “I want to sit and be in this space with a greater sense of stillness and gratitude. And then you start talking about kids and family and going, ‘Oh my God, they’re getting older, they’re growing up and I keep slapping another movie on top of another movie.’ Before you know it, they’re 18 and they’ve moved out of house, and I missed the window.”

    In preparing the show for air, Hemsworth also mentioned that he was “offered a version of the episode where we didn’t talk about [his discovered genetic predisposition to Alzheimer’s],” but that the prospect of helping others helped him to get over any hesitation.

    “I thought, ‘No, look, if this is a motivator for people to take better care of themselves and also understand that there are steps you can take – then fantastic.’ My concern was I just didn’t want to manipulate it and overdramatize it, and make it into some sort of hokey grab at empathy or whatever for entertainment.”

    Hemsworth, who most recently appeared as the MCU’s God of Thunder in his fourth solo outing in this summer’s “Thor: Love and Thunder,” is next set to appear in another sequel, next year’s “Extraction 2.” He is also wrapping up a yet-to-be-revealed role in 2024’s “Furiosa,” costarring Anya Taylor-Joy, set in the universe of “Mad Max.”

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  • Scientists try to bolster Great Barrier Reef in warmer world

    Scientists try to bolster Great Barrier Reef in warmer world

    KONOMIE ISLAND, Australia — Below the turquoise waters off the coast of Australia is one of the world’s natural wonders, an underwater rainbow jungle teeming with life that scientists say is showing some of the clearest signs yet of climate change.

    The Great Barrier Reef, battered but not broken by climate change impacts, is inspiring hope and worry alike as researchers race to understand how it can survive a warming world. Authorities are trying to buy the reef time by combining ancient knowledge with new technology. They are studying coral reproduction in hopes to accelerate regrowth and adapt it to handle hotter and rougher seas.

    Underwater heat waves and cyclones driven in part by runaway greenhouse gas emissions have devastated some of the 3,000 coral reefs making up the Great Barrier Reef. Pollution fouls its waters, and outbreaks of crown of thorns starfish have ravaged its corals.

    Researchers say climate change is already challenging the vibrant marine superstructure and all that depend upon it — and that more destruction is to come.

    “This is a clear climate change signal. It’s going to happen again and again,” said Anne Hoggett, director of the Lizard Island Research Station, on the continuing damage to the reef from stronger storms and marine heat waves. “It’s going to be a rollercoaster.”

    ———

    RELATED: Damage and regrowth on the Great Barrier Reef

    ———

    Billions of microscopic animals called polyps have built this breathtaking 1,400-mile long colossus that is visible from space and perhaps a million years old. It is home to thousands of known plant and animal species and boasts a $6.4 billion annual tourism industry.

    “The corals are the engineers. They build shelter and food for countless animals,” said Mike Emslie, head of the Long-Term Monitoring Program of the reef at the Australian Institute for Marine Science.

    Emslie’s team have seen disasters get bigger, and hit more and more frequently over 37 years of underwater surveys.

    Heat waves in recent years drove corals to expel countless tiny organisms that power the reefs through photosynthesis, causing branches to lose their color or “bleach.” Without these algae, corals don’t grow, can become brittle, and provide less for the nearly 9,000 reef-dependent species. Cyclones in the past dozen years smashed acres of corals. Each of these were historic catastrophes in their own right, but without time to recover between events, the reef couldn’t regrow.

    In the last heat wave however, Emslie’s team at AIMS noticed new corals sprouting up faster than expected.

    “The reef is not dead,” he said. “It is an amazing, beautiful, complex, and remarkable system that has the ability to recover if it gets a chance – and the best way we can give it a chance is by cutting carbon emissions.”

    The first step in the government’s reef restoration plan is to understand better the enigmatic life cycle of the coral itself.

    For that, dozens of Australian researchers take to the seas across the reef when conditions are ripe for reproduction in a spawning event that is the only time each year when coral polyps naturally reproduce as winter warms into spring.

    But scientists say that is too slow if corals are to survive global warming. So they don scuba gear to gather coral eggs and sperm during the spawning. Back in labs, they test ways to speed up corals’ reproductive cycle and boost genes that survive higher temperatures.

    One such lab, a ferry retrofitted into a “sci-barge”, floats off the coast of Konomie Island, also known as North Keppel Island, a two-hour boat ride from the mainland in Queensland state.

    One recent blustery afternoon, Carly Randall, who heads the AIMS coral restoration program, stood amidst buckets filled with coral specimens and experimental coral-planting technologies. She said the long-term plan is to grow “tens to hundreds of millions” of baby corals every year and plant them across the reef.

    Randall compared it to tree-planting with drones but underwater.

    Her colleagues at AIMS have successfully bred corals in a lab off-season, a crucial first step in being able to at scale introduce genetic adaptions like heat-resistance.

    Engineers are designing robots to fit in a mothership that would deploy underwater drones. Those drones would attach genetically-selected corals to the reef with boomerang-shaped clips. Corals in specific targets will enhance the reef’s “natural recovery processes” which would eventually “overtake the work that we’ve been doing to keep it going through climate change,” she said.

    Australia has recently been slammed by historic wildfires, floods, and cyclones exacerbated by climate instability.

    That has driven a political shift in the country as voters have grown more concerned with climate change, helping sweep in new national leadership in this year’s federal elections, said Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics.

    The nation’s previous prime minister, Scott Morrison, was a conservative who was chided for minimizing the need to address climate change.

    The new center-left government of Anthony Albanese passed legislation to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and includes 43% green house gas reductions by 2030. Australia is one of the world’s largest exporters of coal and liquefied natural gas, and lags behind major industrial countries’ emission targets.

    The new government has blocked a coal plant from being opened near the Great Barrier Reef, yet recently allowed other coal plants new permits.

    It is also continuing investment to boost the reef’s natural ability to adapt to rapidly warming climate.

    The Italy-sized reef is managed like a national park by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.

    GBRMPA chief scientist David Wachenfeld said that “despite recent impacts from climate change, the Great Barrier Reef is still a vast, diverse, beautiful and resilient ecosystem.”

    However, that is today, in a world warmed about 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit).

    “As we approach two degrees (Celsius) and certainly as we pass it, we will lose the world’s coral reefs and all the benefits that they give to humanity,” Wachenfeld said. He added that as home to over 30% of marine biodiversity, coral reefs are essential for the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people all over the tropics.

    The reef is “part of the national identity of Australians and of enormous spiritual and cultural significance for our First Nations people,” Wachenfeld said.

    After long mistreatment and neglect by the federal government, Indigenous groups now have a growing role in management of the reef. The government seeks their permission for projects there and hires from the communities to study and repair it.

    Multiple members of the Yirrganydji and Gunggandji communities work as guides, sea rangers and researchers on reef protection and restoration projects.

    After scuba diving through turquoise waters teeming with fish and vibrant corals, Tarquin Singleton said his people hold memories more than 60,000 years old of this “sea country” — including previous climatic changes.

    “That connection is ingrained in our DNA,” said Singleton, who is from the Yirrganydji people native to the area around Cairns. He now works as a cultural officer with Reef Cooperative, a joint venture of tourism agencies, the government and Indigenous groups.

    “Utilizing that today can actually preserve what we have for future generations.”

    The Woppaburra people native to Konomie and Woppa islands barely survived Australian colonization. Now they’re forging a new kind of unity “in a way that wouldn’t happen normally” by sharing ancient oral histories and working on research vessels, said Bob Muir, an Indigenous elder working as a community liaison with AIMS.

    For now, reef-wide farming and planting corals is plausible science fiction. It’s too expensive now to scale up to levels needed to “buy the reef time” as humanity cuts emissions, Randall said.

    But she said that within 10 to 15 years the drones could be in the water.

    But Randall warns that robots, coral farms and skilled divers “will absolutely not work if we don’t get emissions under control.”

    “This is one of many tools in the toolkit being developed,” she said. “But unless we can get emissions under control, we don’t have much hope for the reef ecosystem.”

    ———

    Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment and Sam McNeil on Twitter @stmcneil

    ———

    Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • 10,000 brains in a basement: The dark and mysterious origins of Denmark’s psychiatric brain collection | CNN

    10,000 brains in a basement: The dark and mysterious origins of Denmark’s psychiatric brain collection | CNN

    Editor’s Note: Watch the special documentary, “World’s Untold Stories: The Brain Collectors,” November 12-13 on CNN International.



    CNN
     — 

    For years, there had been whispers. Rumors swirled; stories exchanged. It wasn’t a secret, but it also wasn’t openly discussed, adding to a legend almost too incredible to believe.

    Yet those who knew the truth wanted it out.

    Tell everyone our story, they said, about the brains in the basement.

    As a child, Lise Søgaard remembers whispers, too, though these were different – the family secret kind, hushed because it was too painful to speak it out loud.

    Søgaard knew little about it, except that these whispers centered on a family member who seemed to exist solely in one photograph on the wall of her grandparent’s house in Denmark.

    The little girl in the picture was named Kirsten. She was the younger sister of Søgaard’s grandmother, Inger – that much she knew.

    “I remember looking at this girl and thinking, ‘Who is she?’ ‘What happened?’” Søgaard said. “But also this feeling of a little bit of a horror story there.”

    As she grew into adulthood, Søgaard continued to wonder. One day in 2020, she went to visit her grandmother, now in her mid-90s and living at a care home in Haderslev, Denmark. After all that time, she finally asked about Kirsten. Almost as if Inger had been waiting for that very question, the floodgates opened, and out poured a story Søgaard never expected.

    Kirsten Abildtrup was born on May 24, 1927, the youngest of five brothers and her sister, Inger. As a child, Inger remembers Kirsten as quiet and smart, the two sisters sharing a close bond. Then, when Kirsten was around 14 years old, something began to change.

    Kirsten experienced outbursts and prolonged bouts of crying. Inger asked her mother if it was her fault, often feeling that way because the two girls were so close.

    “At Christmas, they were supposed to go on a visit to some family members,” Søgaard said, “but my great-grandmother and father, they stayed home and sent all of their children away except for Kirsten.”

    When they got back from that family visit, Søgaard said, Kirsten was gone.

    It was the first of many hospitalizations, and the start of a long and painful journey that would ultimately end in Kirsten’s death.

    The diagnosis: schizophrenia.

    Kirsten was first hospitalized towards the end of World War II, when Denmark and the rest of Europe were at last on the verge of peace.

    Like so many places, Denmark was also grappling with mental illness. Psychiatric institutions had been built across the country to provide care for patients.

    Doctors prepare a patient for electroshock therapy at Augustenborg Psychiatric Hospital in Denmark, 1943.

    But there was limited understanding of what was happening in the brain. The same year peace came to Denmark’s doorstep, two doctors working in the country had an idea.

    When these patients died in psychiatric hospitals, autopsies were routinely performed. What if, these doctors thought, the brains were removed – and kept?

    Thomas Erslev, historian of medical science and research consultant at Aarhus University, estimates that half of all psychiatric patients in Denmark who died between 1945 and 1982 contributed – unknowingly and without consent – their brains. They went to what became known as the Institute of Brain Pathology, connected to the Risskov Psychiatric Hospital in Aarhus, Denmark.

    Doctors Erik Stromgren and Larus Einarson were the architects. After roughly five years, said Erslev, pathologist Knud Aage Lorentzen took over the institute, and spent the next three decades building the collection.

    Dr. Larus Einarson, shown here teaching a class, was one of the co-founders of the brain collection at the Institute of Brain Pathology.

    The final tally would amount to 9,479 human brains – believed to be the largest collection of its kind anywhere in the world.

    In 2018, pathologist Dr. Martin Wirenfeldt Nielsen got a call. The brain collection, as it would come to be known, was on the move.

    A lack of funding meant it could no longer stay in Aarhus, but the University of Southern Denmark in the city of Odense had offered to pick up the mantle. Would Wirenfeldt Nielsen be interested in overseeing it?

    Pathologist Dr. Martin Wirenfeldt Nielsen now oversees the brain collection, housed in Odense, Denmark.

    “I’d sort of heard of it in the periphery,” Wirenfeldt Nielsen recalled. “But my first real knowledge about the vast extent of it was when they decided to move it down here … (because) how do you actually move almost 10,000 brains?”

    The yellowish-green plastic buckets housing each brain, preserved in formaldehyde, were placed into new white buckets that were sturdier for the transport, and hand-labeled in black marker with a number. And then the brains, give or take a few (no one knows where bucket #1 is, for example) made their way to their new home in a large basement room on the university’s campus.

    “The room wasn’t actually ready when they moved it down here,” Wirenfeldt Nielsen said. “The whole collection was just standing there, buckets on top of each other, in the middle of the floor. And that’s when I saw it for the first time … That was like, okay, this is something I’ve never seen before.”

    Eventually, the nearly 10,000 buckets were placed on rolling shelves, where they remain today – waiting – representing lives, and a range of psychiatric disorders.

    There are roughly 5,500 brains with dementia; 1,400 with schizophrenia; 400 with bi-polar disorder; 300 with depression, and more.

    What separates this collection from any other in the world is that the brains collected during the first decade are untouched by modern medicines – a time capsule of sorts, for mental illness in the brain.

    “Whereas other brain collections … (are) maybe specified for neurodegenerative diseases, dementia, tumors, or other things like that – we really have the whole thing here,” Wirenfeldt Nielsen said.

    But it has not been without controversy. In the 1990s, the Danish public got wind of the collection, which had been sitting idle since former director Lorentzen’s retirement in 1982.

    It would kick off one of the first major ethical science debates in Denmark.

    A history of The Brain Collection

    1945

    The Institute of Brain Pathology is founded, connected to the Risskov Psychiatric Hospital in Aarhus, Denmark

    Risskov, pictured here in the early 1900s.

    Credit: Museum Ovartaci

    1945-1982

    Nearly 9,500 brains are collected without permission from deceased psychiatric patients across the country

    Brains were collected and sent from Danish hospitals, including Rigshospitalet (pictured) in Copenhagen.

    Credit: Jesper Vaczy/Medical Museum

    1982

    The head of the brain collection, Knud Aage Lorentzen, retires. Nobody takes his place, and the collection sits untouched in a basement

    The brains, shown here in their original yellow buckets, would remain largely untouched for more than 20 years.

    Credit: Hanne Engelstoft

    1987

    The Danish Council of Ethics is established

    The Council of Ethics is an independent group formed to advise the Danish parliament (pictured here in 2016) on ethical matters.

    Credit: olli0815/iStock/Getty Images

    1991

    After the Council of Ethics says the brains can be used with certain restrictions in place, SIND (Denmark’s national association for psychiatric health) demands the brains be buried – sparking one of the first major ethical science debates in Denmark

    Some pieces of brain material are preserved in paraffin wax.

    Credit: Hanne Engelstoft

    2005

    Danish scientist Karl-Anton Dorph-Petersen takes over the collection’s daily maintenance at Aarhus

    Karl-Anton Dorph-Petersen helped revive and preserve the collection in the mid-2000s.

    Credit: Hanne Engelstoft

    2006

    The Council of Ethics goes against political and religious demands by ruling it is ethically sound to use deceased psychiatric patient brains for research without getting the consent of relatives. This time, SIND agrees

    The collection includes patient records and tissue preserved on slides, such as these.

    Credit: Hanne Engelstoft

    2017-2018

    A lack of funding threatens the brains, and the collection is saved by moving it to Odense, where Dr. Martin Wirenfeldt Nielsen takes over

    The brains were put into new white buckets to move to Odense, where they remain safely stored on rolling shelves.

    Credit: Samantha Bresnahan/CNN

    Source: Thomas Erslev, historian of medical science

    Graphic: Woojin Lee, CNN

    “There was a discussion back and forth, and one position was that we should destroy the collection – either bury the brains or get rid of them in any other ethical way,” said Knud Kristensen, the director of SIND, the Danish national association for mental health, from 2009 to 2021, and current member of Denmark’s Ethical Council. “The other position said, okay, we already did harm once. Then the least we can do to those patients and their relatives is to make sure that the brains are used in research.”

    After years of intense debate, SIND changed its position. “All of a sudden, they were very strong proponents for keeping the brains,” Erslev said, “actually saying this might be a very valuable resource, not only for the scientists, but for the sufferers of psychiatric illness because it might prove to benefit therapeutics down the line.”

    “For (SIND),” Kristensen said, “It was important where it was placed and to make sure that there would be some sort of control of the future use of the collection.”

    By the time it moved to Odense in 2018, the ethical debate was largely settled, and Wirenfeldt Nielsen became caretaker of the collection.

    A few years later, he would get a message from Søgaard. Was it possible, she asked, that he had a brain there belonging to a woman named Kirsten?

    In the search for what happened to her great aunt Kirsten, Søgaard realized there were clues all around her. But piecing together what exactly had happened to her grandmother’s sister was slow, filled with dead ends and false starts.

    Yet she was enthralled, and began officially reporting her journey for Kristeligt Dagblad, the Copenhagen-based newspaper where she worked – eventually bringing it to light in a series of articles.

    At one point, Søgaard decided to focus on a single word her grandmother had told her, the name of a psychiatric hospital: Oringe.

    “I opened my computer and I searched for ‘Oringe patient journals,’” she said. After putting in a request through the national archives, “I got an email that said, ‘Okay, we found something for you, come have a look if you want.’ … I felt this excitement … like, she’s out there.”

    Journalist Lise Søgaard made it her mission to find out what happened to her grandmother's little sister, Kirsten -- a journey that would take her places she never imagined. She shared that experience with CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta at her home outside Copenhagen in April 2022.

    That excitement was short-lived. At the national archives, they placed a mostly empty file in front of her. It wasn’t much to go on, but it confirmed Kirsten’s diagnosis of schizophrenia.

    Without another solid lead, Søgaard wondered where to go next. Then, almost in passing, as they looked through old family photos together, her mother said something that she’d never heard before.

    “She said, ‘You know, they might have kept her brain,’ and I said, ‘What?!’” Søgaard told CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta at her house outside of Copenhagen. “And she told me what she knew about the brain collection.”

    At age 95, Søgaard’s grandmother, Inger, could still clearly picture visiting her little sister Kirsten in the hospital, after the symptoms she first started experiencing at age 14 continued to progress.

    Upon one visit, Inger remembered, “(Kirsten) was lying there, completely apathetic. She was not able to speak to us. … Another day we went to visit her, and she was gone from her room. They told us she had thrown a glass at a nurse, and they had sent her to the basement, to a room where they (restrained) her with belts. And we were not allowed to go in, but I saw her through a hole in the door; she was lying there, strapped up.”

    One floor of the Oringe psychiatric hospital is now a museum, which displays medical treatments and patient rooms such as this one.

    Inger felt confused and scared, she said, because it could have been anyone, including her, that might get “sick.”

    At Sankt Hans, one of the largest and oldest psychiatric hospitals in Denmark, Dr. Thomas Werge walks the same grounds he did as a child, when his own grandmother was hospitalized there. Now, he runs the Institute for Biological Psychiatry there, where he and his team study the biological causes that contribute to psychiatric disorders.

    A 2012 study found that roughly 40% of Danish women and 30% of Danish men had received treatment for a mental health disorder in their lifetimes – though Werge estimated that number would “almost certainly” be higher if the same study was done today. (By comparison, that same year, less than 15% of US adults received mental health services.) Among the other Nordic countries, including Sweden and Norway, Werge said the numbers would be comparable to Denmark’s, as there are “similar [universal] health care systems and standards for admission.”

    “Mental (health) disorders are all over,” he added. “We just do not recognize this when we walk around among people. Not everybody carries their pain on the outside.”

    For schizophrenia, there are no blood tests or biomarkers to signify its presence; instead, doctors must rely only on a clinical exam.

    Schizophrenia presents itself in what the World Health Organization (WHO) calls “significant impairments in the way reality is perceived,” causing psychosis that can include delusions, hallucinations, disorganized behavior or thoughts, and extreme agitation.

    Roughly one in 300 people are affected by schizophrenia worldwide, according to the WHO, but less than one-third of those will ever receive specialist mental health care.

    denmark cemetery of the brainless spc intl_00013202.png

    Visiting a ‘cemetery of the brainless’ in Denmark


    02:10

    – Source:
    CNN

    The standard treatment since the mid-1950s has been anti-psychotic drugs, which typically work by manipulating dopamine levels: the brain’s reward system. But, Werge said, it can come with a cost.

    “Schizophrenia and psychosis are linked to creativity,” he said. “So, when you try to inhibit the psychosis, you also inhibit the creativity. So, there’s a price for being medicated … Whatever causes all these problems for humans is also what makes us humans in the good sense.”

    Though there haven’t been many significant scientific breakthroughs regarding an understanding of the disease, researchers have confirmed that genetics and heritability play a significant role.

    According to Werge, the heritability estimate is as high as 80% – the same as height. “It’s not a surprise to people that if you have very tall parents … there’s a lot of genetics in that,” he said. “The genetic component is equally large in most of the mental disorders actually.”

    Those inherited genetic factors either come from the parents, he added, or can arise in a child even if the parents don’t carry the gene.

    Søgaard, who has two young children, said the genetic connection was not a driving motivator in her mission to find out what happened to Kirsten, but she has thought about what it means for herself and her family.

    When families reach out about possible relatives in the brain collection, “that’s an ethical dilemma that we need to take into consideration,” Wirenfeldt Nielsen said. In Søgaard’s case, she received approval for the Danish National Archives to check the set of black books that contain the names of every person whose brain is in the collection.

    There on the list was Kirsten’s name.

    “I got an email back [from the National Archives], and they scanned the page where Kirsten’s name was, and her birthday, and the day they received the brain. And in the column out to the left, there was a number,” Søgaard remembered. “Number 738.” She immediately wrote an email to Wirenfeldt Nielsen, asking if that number corresponded to the bucket with Kirsten’s brain.

    “I said, ‘Yes, that’s it,’” Wirenfeldt Nielsen recalled. But he also said he couldn’t be sure the bucket was there because a few are missing for unknown reasons. He ventured down to the basement storage room to verify it was there.

    On one of the rolling shelves sat bucket #738.

    Kirsten’s brain.

    Bucket #738 -- Kirsten's brain -- sits on a shelf among the rest of the brain collection in the basement at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense.

    When Søgaard first saw it, she felt compelled to hug the bucket.

    “I had learned a lot about Kirsten,” she said. “I feel some kind of connection … (and) I know the pain that she felt, and I know what she went through.”

    What Kirsten went through was another extraordinary beat in this incredible story, and the long history of psychiatric care in Denmark.

    As part of her treatment, Kirsten received what’s known commonly in Denmark as “the white cut.”

    In medical terms: a lobotomy.

    The procedure was an integral part of the country’s psychiatric history. During the time the brain collection was running from the 1940s until the early 1980s, Denmark reportedly did more lobotomies per capita than any other country in the world.

    01 denmark brain sanjay

    A look at the brain like you’ve never seen it before


    03:08

    – Source:
    CNN

    “It’s a very poor treatment, because you destroy a big part of the brain,” Wirenfeldt Nielsen said. “And it’s very risky, because you can kill the patient, basically – but they had nothing else to do.”

    Treatment options were limited, and in many ways extreme. Seizures were induced by placing electrodes on either side of the head; insulin shock therapy meant patients were administered large doses of insulin, reducing blood sugar and resulting in a comatose state; and the lobotomy, either transorbital – using a pick-like instrument inserted through the back of the eye to the front lobe – or prefrontal.

    The prefrontal lobotomy was pioneered by a Portuguese neurologist, Antonio Egas Moniz. Now considered barbaric, he actually won the Nobel Prize for the procedure in 1949.

    A tool is inserted into the frontal lobe, scraping away tracts of white matter – the reason behind the “white cut” moniker. “Emotional reactions … are located at least in part in the frontal lobe,” explained Wirenfeldt Nielsen, “so they thought that just by cutting (there), that could sort of calm the patient down.”

    Left: Portuguese neurologist Antonio Egas Moniz was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1949 for pioneering the prefrontal lobotomy. Upper right: Lobotomies became a popular treatment option from the 1930s to the early 1950s. Here, a surgeon drills into a patient's skull at a hospital in England, 1946. Lower right: By cutting tracts through brain matter in the frontal lobe, the belief was the lobotomy could treat symptoms of mental illness.

    In Kirsten’s case, Inger said there were glimpses of “the old Kirsten” before she got the white cut – but after that, she was gone. In 1951, the year after her lobotomy, Kirsten died.

    She was just 24 years old.

    On a metal table in a small, standalone building on the grounds of Oringe psychiatric hospital, Kirsten’s brain was removed, set into a small plastic bucket, placed in a wooden box, and shipped – by regular mail carrier – to the Institute of Brain Pathology at Risskov, to join the brain collection.

    Søgaard saw the metal table, where a white wooden block still sits on one end – where the heads were placed – and upon which small marks are still visible today. This is where the skulls were opened.

    The standalone building at Oringe (left) housing the autopsy room where Kirsten's brain was removed in 1951 still stands today, and includes the wooden boxes (right) that were once used to ship the brains to Risskov.

    Despite the graphic reminders, in reporting out this story both for herself, and for the newspaper, “it was important (for me) to not write a story that was a horror story,” she said, adding it was easy to look back and say, “How could you do that?”

    “I don’t think the doctors wanted to do bad. I think they actually wanted to do good. … I think the most ethical thing you can do is to make sure that you know exactly what you can do with these brains. And that’s what they’re doing now. They’re trying to find out, ‘How can they help us?’”

    There have been studies using the collection over the years, including a discovery in 1970 of what is now known as familial Danish dementia, and a new study is ongoing, focused on mRNA in the brains, by Danish researcher Betina Elfving.

    For the most part, the brains represent untapped, enormous potential. Yet the one in bucket #738 has already done something extraordinary, thanks in large part to Søgaard herself. She worked to break the cycle of stigma surrounding mental health disorders by sharing her most personal, intimate family details with the world.

    “(My grandmother) expressed gratitude,” Søgaard said. “She also said, ‘I feel like I’m moving closer to my sister now.’”

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  • Veterans and scientists fulfill ‘no man left behind,’ returning long-lost American remains from lonely Pacific WWII battlefield | CNN

    Veterans and scientists fulfill ‘no man left behind,’ returning long-lost American remains from lonely Pacific WWII battlefield | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    On a remote Pacific sandbar, replete with the ravages of war, a small group of veterans, volunteers and archeologists are doing their best to keep the enduring promise of “no man left behind.”

    According to the Department of Defense, nearly half of the known American casualties from the Battle of Tarawa were never recovered. Approximately 1,000 Marines and sailors lost their lives on the small sandbar November 20-23, 1943, in the US military’s first offensive of the war in the central Pacific.

    Graves remained lost for decades, Pentagon historians write, because of bad record keeping, poor memories, and in some instances, war infrastructure inadvertently built over service members’ unmarked final resting places. DOD records show by 1950, a military board declared hundreds of Americans who fought and died on the island “non-recoverable,” leaving families without words, images or ideas of where the young men rested.

    After excavation efforts paused during the pandemic, teams will return to the lonely atoll, with the goal of returning as many remains of US service members as they can.

    “This is not a normal thing for somebody to be doing,” said Paul Schwimmer, a retired US Army Green Beret who searches for American remains with the non-profit group, History Flight, who added a new chapter of history is unfolding along the isolated and idyllic shore.

    “Don’t tell us these men are not recoverable, give us a chance to go after them.”

    Government figures show 72,627 Americans are currently classified as missing in action from World War II. There are more US troops missing from 1941-1945, than from all other wars with US involvement combined.

    In 2003, commercial pilot and World War II history aficionado Mark Noah founded History Flight. The group’s initial aim was to preserve American aviation history, an outgrowth of Noah’s love of antiquity, aircraft and his family tradition of scholarship.

    “My father was a diplomat for the State Department, a Harvard and MIT-trained sinologist,” Noah said in an interview with CNN. “I was born in China, where my dad was posted, and I was able to see the lingering effects of World War II up close. That was the beginning of a fascination with the Second World War.”

    Noah relates the multitude of missing service members to those missing in his own life.

    “Four of my close friends in Beijing disappeared during Tiananmen Square,” Noah said. “And I’ve always wondered where they fell into, this deep void, the unknown. And at a subconscious level, it’s one of the reasons why I’m driven to find our missing Americans, especially when we know where they are, on an island.”

    Noah said 2008 was a turning point, when History Flight’s mission changed from aviation to recovery missions.

    “I was doing research about a missing airplane that crashed in the lagoon of Tarawa, and I was shocked at just how many people were missing on this small island,” Noah said.

    “So, I self-funded what became our first Tarawa excavation, and with all of those people missing in such a small place, we chose Tarawa because we thought we could deliver a project with a high probability of success.” The cost was $25,000, with a team of 10 people.

    A cadre of veterans, scientists and students interviewed residents who found bones underneath their homes. The non-profit also used ground-penetrating radar on the atoll, ultimately finding scores of American graves buried within a working commercial seaport.

    In the decade since its first dig, History Flight has led to the identification of 96 American service members killed on Tarawa, according to the branch of the Pentagon charged with finding US military remains, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

    “That number undoubtedly will go up,” agency spokesperson Johnie Webb said.

    In a cozy East Wenatchee, Washington, living room, twins Don and David McCannel held the crumbling and corroded helmet buried with their uncle, Gunnery Sgt. Arthur B. Summers, a Tarawa Marine once considered missing in action.

    Summers’ near-complete skeleton is among the latest remains discovered by History Flight. His return home for burial in America followed a now familiar ritual of repatriation: Delicately-handled bones are discovered on Tarawa, then flown to the US for positive identification, and finally, re-buried with full military honors.

    The McCannel twins are now 76 years old, born three years after a telegram told their mother Summers was killed in action, his body missing on a faraway Pacific island.

    “My most vivid memory is, when I was about 10 years old, my mother said to me, ‘my brother was killed in Tarawa and his body was never recovered,’” David McCannel described in an interview. “She didn’t cry. She just said he’s gone forever.”

    Schwimmer, the retired Green Beret with History Flight, said he was within the Tarawa excavation site when Summers’ remains were discovered in 2019, and attended Summers’ Washington funeral in August 2022.

    “To see this, to look over my shoulder, to put my hand on the casket and say, ‘Hey bud, I saw you in 2019. I took you from Tarawa to here.’ For me, that’s great,” Schwimmer said. “Now, put me back on an airplane, get me in the field, I got work to do.”

    Summers was killed on November 23, 1943, the final day of fighting on the island, and according to military records, the day Summers’ second enlistment extension was to expire.

    “I thank them eternally, and forever,” Don McCannel said of History Flight and those responsible for Summers’ identification. “My uncle Arthur did his duty, and these men and women today did theirs, truly.”

    Marine Corps Gunnery Sgt. Arthur B. Summers, 27. Summers' remains are among the latest to be discovered by History Flight on Tarawa and reburied in America.

    The Pentagon agency tasked with finding the remains of an astounding 81,500 Americans missing since World War I, contracts Tarawa excavation work with History Flight. But the agency itself is solely responsible for the process of DNA identification.

    There is no margin for error. Scientists and military personnel from Hawaii, Nebraska and Delaware finish the process of uniting stories, names, and family histories with the skeletal remains of US troops.

    The remains of Tarawa U.S. Marine 1st Lt. Alexander Bonnyman, discovered by History Flight, in a rare photo released publicly of how Tarawa remains are found.

    Dr. John Byrd, the agency’s laboratory director, explained the challenges of dealing with DNA from that era. “They’re highly degraded, there’s only a tiny amount of DNA left in there at all. And our DNA lab is the best in the world at extracting what little bit is left in there.”

    Byrd said the average time to identify an individual is 2.5 years, but can be as quickly as two weeks.

    “When none of the stars are aligned, it can take several years. We have ID’s we’ve made after more than 10 years, when we finally got enough evidence together to be able to prove the identity.”

    For Summers’ remains, delivered to the agency’s Pearl Harbor laboratory in July 2019, the DOD agency was able to make a positive DNA identification in a matter of months, on October 17, 2019.

    First, remains arrive at an agency laboratory in Honolulu, or Omaha, Nebraska. “They come from a variety of sources, from our own excavations, and from excavations from our partners … We also do a lot of disinterments of unknown remains, right from our national cemeteries,” Byrd explained.

    Next, as the remains are assigned to evidence managers, scientists determine which tests are needed to identify the remains. The majority will involve DNA testing, but other methods, such as dental records, can be used.

    DNA testing and other identification work then begins. Samples are sent to the Armed Forces DNA Identification Lab in Dover, Delaware, and a type of identification known as stable isotope analysis can also be performed at the agency’s Pearl Harbor lab. The isotope testing is used to trace remains’ geographic origin.

    Finally, test results are evaluated, and perhaps even more testing is needed.

    “You love it when the test results come back in, and they clearly direct you to one individual that these remains should be,” Byrd said. “But we also sometimes get results that aren’t strong enough to point to one person only. And then we have to find another way to try to resolve the case other than the testing we did in the first round … that is one of the most difficult steps for many of our cases.”

    History Flight estimates their Tarawa excavation efforts are halfway finished.

    “We believe about 250 sets of remains can still be found, and we want to keep going,” History Flight founder Mark Noah said.

    The non-profit’s vice president, retired U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. Justin LeHew, is currently walking across America, from Boston to Newport, Oregon, to donations for the group’s ongoing work in the Pacific.

    LeHew served in the 2nd Marine Division, the same (albeit modern day) combat element which engaged in the Battle of Tarawa in November 1943. His previous chapter of military service includes receiving the Navy Cross, awarded for his 2003 role in rescuing ambushed soldiers in Iraq, including Pfc. Jessica Lynch.

    “Team members are putting in the work for the missing,” LeHew wrote on Facebook, as his walk on U.S. Highway 20, America’s longest road, approached Yellowstone National Park.

    “This specific road was selected to highlight the long journey home that over 81,000 missing U.S. Servicemembers have been trying to make since World War II,” LeHew said.

    “We know that we can fulfill this promise of ‘no one left behind’ on Tarawa,” Noah added. “We simply need people to know we’re there, to know about us, put the financial resources in place, and help us carry on this sacred mission.”

    History Flight team on Tarawa, from left, archeologists Aundrea Thompson & Hillary Parsons, retired Korean War veteran John Craig Weatherell, archeologists Maddeline Voas & Heather Backo.

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  • Death in CRISPR gene therapy study sparks search for answers

    Death in CRISPR gene therapy study sparks search for answers

    The lone volunteer in a unique study involving a gene-editing technique has died, and those behind the trial are now trying to figure out what killed him.

    Terry Horgan, a 27-year-old who had Duchenne muscular dystrophy, died last month, according to Cure Rare Disease, a Connecticut-based nonprofit founded by his brother, Rich, to try and save him from the fatal condition.

    Although little is known about how he died, his death occurred during one of the first studies to test a gene editing treatment built for one person. It’s raising questions about the overall prospect of such therapies, which have buoyed hopes among many families facing rare and devastating diseases.

    “This whole notion that we can do designer genetic therapies is, I would say, uncertain,” said Arthur Caplan, a medical ethicist at New York University who is not involved in the study. “We are out on the far edge of experimentation.”

    The early-stage safety study was sponsored by the nonprofit, led by Dr. Brenda Wong at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School and approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The hope was to use a gene-editing tool called CRISPR to treat Horgan’s particular form of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The rare, genetic muscle-wasting disease is caused by a mutation in the gene needed to produce a protein called dystrophin. Most people with Duchenne die from lung or heart issues caused by it.

    At this point, it’s unclear whether Horgan received the treatment and whether CRISPR, other aspects of the study or the disease itself contributed to his death. Deaths are not unheard of in clinical trials, which test experimental treatments and sometimes involve very sick people.

    But trials involving CRISPR are relatively new. And Fyodor Urnov, a CRISPR expert at the Innovative Genomics Institute at University of California, Berkeley, said any death during a gene therapy trial is an opportunity for the field to have a reckoning.

    “Step one is to grieve for the passing of a brave human soul who agreed to be basically a participant in an experiment on a human being,” Urnov said. “But then, to the extent that we can, we must learn as much as we can to carve out a path forward.”

    FEW ANSWERS YET

    A statement from Cure Rare Disease said multiple teams across the country are looking into the details of the trial and its outcome, and the company intends to share findings with the scientific community.

    “It will probably be 3-4 months to come up with a full conclusion,” said spokesman Scott Bauman. “At this stage of the game, saying anything is pure speculation.”

    The company, which is also working on 18 other therapeutics, said in its statement that the teams’ work is essential not only to shed light on the study’s outcome but also “on the challenges of gene therapy broadly.” Meanwhile, it said, “we will continue to work with our researchers, collaborators, and partners to develop therapies for the neuromuscular diseases in our pipeline.”

    Bauman said the company has filed a report on death the with the FDA as required. The FDA declined to release or confirm the report.

    Sarah Willey, spokeswoman for Chan Medical School, said scientists there provided data to the company for the report. She later emailed to say no one there would comment further; out of respect for the family’s wishes, all information would come from Cure Rare Disease. Monkol Lek, a Yale genetics expert who has been collaborating on the effort, did not respond to a request for comment. Yale spokeswoman Bess Connolly asked a reporter for context on the story but didn’t respond to a follow-up email or phone call.

    A crucial question is whether CRISPR played a part in Horgan’s death.

    The chemical tool can be used to “edit” genes by making cuts or substitutions in DNA. The tool has transformed genetic research and sparked the development of dozens of experimental therapies. The inventors of the tool won a Nobel Prize in 2020.

    In this case, scientists used a modified form of CRISPR to increase the activity of a gene. The CRISPR therapeutic is inserted directly into the body and delivered to cells with a virus.

    But CRISPR is not perfect.

    “We know that CRISPR can miss its target. We know that CRISPR can be partially effective. And we also know that there may be issues with … viral vectors” that deliver the therapy into the body, Caplan said. “Red flags are flying here. We’ve got to make sure that they get addressed very, very quickly.”

    Safety issues have arisen in gene therapy studies before. Late last year, Pfizer reported the death of a patient in its early-stage trial for a different Duchenne muscular dystrophy gene therapy. And in a major earlier setback for the gene therapy field, 18-year-old Jesse Gelsinger died in 1999 during a study that involved placing healthy genes into his liver to combat a rare metabolic disease. Scientists later learned that his immune system overreacted to the virus used to deliver the therapy. Many recent studies, including the Cure Rare Disease trial, use a different virus that’s considered safer.

    Another difference? The recent trial involved just one person — a type of trial Caplan is skeptical about.

    Horgan’s recent death, he said, “may make us think whether we really do like studies that are just on one person, and do we want to say: ‘No, ethically, you’ve got to at least have a trial where you line up 5, 10, 20 people (and) you learn from the data.’ ”

    A ‘MEDICAL PIONEER’

    On the company’s web site, Horgan was described as a “medical pioneer” who “will be remembered as a hero.”

    In 2020, the Montour Falls, New York resident blogged that he was diagnosed with Duchenne at age 3. As a kid, he said, he loved computers — once building his own — and would play catch in the driveway with his family when he could still walk. Later in his life, he used a motorized wheelchair. He studied information science at Cornell University and went on to work at the school in the information science department.

    “As I grew up and began to understand what it meant to have DMD, my fears about this disease began to grow as it began to manifest,” Horgan wrote. “There weren’t many, or any, trials available to me through the years” — until this one brought the prospect of a customized drug.

    Horgan was enrolled in the study on Aug. 31. The plan was to suppress his immune system to prep his body for a one-time, gene-editing therapy delivered by IV at UMass medical school, followed by monitoring in the hospital. The company explained that the therapy is designed to increase the level of an alternate form of the dystrophin protein using CRISPR, with the goal of stabilizing or potentially reversing the progression of symptoms.

    Urnov, scientific director for technology and translation at the Berkeley genomics institute, said no other trial targeted this disease using this kind of virus to deliver this particular payload with its modified form of CRISPR.

    Some other gene therapy trials – such as those targeting the blood disorders sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia – involve removing stem cells from someone’s blood, using CRISPR in the lab, then putting the altered cells back into the person. The first time CRISPR was used to edit genes within the body was to address a blindness-causing mutation.

    Given the “exceptional distinctness” of the Cure Rare Disease approach, Urnov said he doesn’t think Horgan’s death will have a major impact on things like using gene therapy to fix blood diseases. But he said pinpointing the exact cause will help inform scientists throughout the field.

    “History teaches us that in the case of such fatalities – which have been rare – that a deep dive into what happened was critical for the field to move forward.”

    ———

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

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  • Ian ruins man-made reefs, brings algae bloom to Florida

    Ian ruins man-made reefs, brings algae bloom to Florida

    FORT MYERS, Fla. — Hurricane Ian not only ravaged southwest Florida on land but was destructive underwater as well. It destroyed man-made reefs and brought along red tide, the harmful algae blooms that kill fish and birds, according to marine researchers who returned last week from a six-day cruise organized by the Florida Institute of Oceanography.

    Researchers who used the cruise to study marine life in the Gulf of Mexico following the hurricane say it left in its wake red tide and destroyed artificial reefs from as far away as 30 miles (48 kilometers) from the coast of southwest Florida.

    “The one-time vibrant reefs are now underwater disaster sites themselves,” said Calli Johnson, safety dive officer for the research cruise. “Where there used to be a complete ecosystem, there are now only fish that were able to return after swimming away.”

    Before the Category 4 storm made landfall a month ago, southwest Florida had a reputation for being one of the best saltwater fishing destinations in the U.S. Saltwater and freshwater fishing in Florida has an economic impact of around $13.8 billion, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

    “Time will tell how this affects our greater economy, because changes in the fishing industry and tourism will come from changes in our underwater world,” Johnson said.

    The marine researchers on the cruise found high counts of the naturally-occurring algae that causes red tide offshore Punta Gorda, Boca Grande and southwest of Sanibel Island. It will be several weeks before researchers can analyze water samples that were collected to determine the threat to sea life off the Florida coast.

    The red tide outbreak also is threatening manatees off Sarasota and Charlotte counties that rely on seagrass for food, according to the Ocean Conservancy.

    “Florida is at a crossroads, with a record number of manatees dying,” said J.P. Brooker, director of Florida conservation for the Ocean Conservancy. “We must keep this issue at the forefront, so leaders statewide will invest in solutions to improve water quality—protecting natural habitats to save our beloved manatees.”

    Through mid-October, there have been 719 manatee deaths recorded by Florida wildlife officials. There were 982 manatee deaths last year.

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  • Man arrested in connection with 42-year-old homicide cold case using new DNA technology | CNN

    Man arrested in connection with 42-year-old homicide cold case using new DNA technology | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department has arrested a man in connection with the killing of 25-year-old Sandra DiFelice, nearly 42 years after her death.

    Paul Nuttall, 64, was arrested on charges of “open murder” with the use of a deadly weapon, sexual assault with the use of a deadly weapon and burglary while in possession of a deadly weapon, police said in a statement Monday.

    In Nevada, a person accused of murder will generally be charged with “open murder,” meaning a general allegation of murder which includes, “Murder in the First Degree and all necessarily included offenses. These would include Murder in the Second Degree and possibly Voluntary Manslaughter and Involuntary Manslaughter based upon the specific facts of the case,” according to Clark County’s website.

    CNN has reached out to Nuttall’s public defender but has not yet heard back.

    DiFelice was allegedly brutally raped and murdered inside her home on December 26, 1980, according to police.

    In February 2021, DiFelice’s daughter – who at the time of the incident was three years old and at her grandparents’ house – called cold case detectives at the police department to ask for an update on the investigation.

    Detectives reviewed the investigation, and “upon a review of that investigation, in conjunction with our DNA forensics lab, they were able to determine that there was additional evidence that could be submitted for processing using new DNA technology. During that processing of the evidence, DNA recovered from under the fingernails of Sandra DiFelice identified the suspect of Sandra DiFelice’s murder as Paul Nuttall,” Lt. Jason Johansson said during a news conference.

    Nuttall was originally named as a person of interest during the initial stages of the investigation, police said during the news conference. Authorities said his fingerprint was found in DiFelice’s home, but it was determined that Nuttall knew DiFelice’s roommate and that explained why his fingerprint was there, police said during the news conference.

    Nuttall is currently in custody at the Clark County Detention Center, according to online records.

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  • Cell biologist from Duke named new president of MIT

    Cell biologist from Duke named new president of MIT

    CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — While there were myriad reasons Sally Kornbluth felt pulled to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it was the chance to help address some of the world’s greatest challenges that played perhaps the biggest role, the school’s new president said at an introductory news conference on Thursday.

    “Maybe above all, I was drawn here because this is a moment when humanity faces huge global problems, problems that urgently demand the world’s most skillful minds and hands,” she said. “In short, I believe this is MIT’s moment. I could not imagine a greater privilege than helping the people of MIT seize its full potential.”

    Kornbluth, a cell biologist who has spent the past eight years as provost at Duke University, was elected MIT’s 18th president on Thursday by the MIT Corporation, the school’s governing body.

    She will officially take over on Jan. 1, succeeding L. Rafael Reif, who in February announced that he planned to step down after 10 years on the job. She is the second woman to lead MIT.

    Kornbluth has been on the Duke faculty since 1994, and is currently a professor of biology. As provost at the North Carolina school since 2014, Kornbluth was responsible for carrying out Duke’s teaching and research missions; developing its intellectual priorities; and partnering with others to improve faculty and students.

    It was her accomplishments at Duke that made her the clear frontrunner out of the four finalists for the MIT presidency, said Diane Greene, chair of the MIT Corporation.

    “Dr. Kornbluth is an extraordinary find for MIT,” Greene said, noting that the vote was unanimous. “She’s an exceptional administrator, widely respected for her ability to create an environment that breaks barriers, and importantly, enables every student, faculty and staff member to contribute at their highest levels. She is known for her judgment, plain-spokenness, and integrity.”

    Kornbluth also pledged to keep MIT a welcoming and comfortable environment where everyone can reach their potential.

    “I’m absolutely committed to building a more diverse and increasingly inclusive environment here at MIT,” she said.

    Kornbluth already has one strong tie to MIT. Her son, Alex, is a Ph.D. student in electrical engineering and computer science at the school. Her husband, Daniel Lew, is a professor of pharmacology and cancer biology at the Duke School of Medicine, and her daughter, Joey, is a medical student at the University of California at San Francisco.

    She grew up in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, and has degrees from Williams College, Cambridge University, and Rockefeller University.

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  • Sparkling fish, murky methods: the global aquarium trade

    Sparkling fish, murky methods: the global aquarium trade

    LES, Indonesia — After diving into the warm sea off the coast of northern Bali, Indonesia, Made Partiana hovers above a bed of coral, holding his breath and scanning for flashes of color and movement. Hours later, exhausted, he returns to a rocky beach, towing plastic bags filled with his darting, exquisite quarry: tropical fish of all shades and shapes.

    Millions of saltwater fish like these are caught in Indonesia and other countries every year to fill ever more elaborate aquariums in living rooms, waiting rooms and restaurants around the world with vivid, otherworldly life.

    “It’s just so much fun to just watch the antics between different varieties of fish,” said Jack Siravo, a Rhode Island fish enthusiast who began building aquariums after an accident paralyzed him and now has four saltwater tanks. He calls the fish “an endless source of fascination.”

    But the long journey from places like Bali to places like Rhode Island is perilous for the fish and for the reefs they come from. Some are captured using squirts of cyanide to stun them. Many die along the way.

    And even when they are captured carefully, by people like Partiana, experts say the global demand for these fish is contributing to the degradation of delicate coral ecosystems, especially in major export countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines.

    There have been efforts to reduce some of the most destructive practices, such as cyanide fishing. But the trade is extraordinarily difficult to regulate and track as it stretches from small-scale fishermen in tropical seaside villages through local middlemen, export warehouses, international trade hubs and finally to pet stores in the U.S., China, Europe and elsewhere.

    “There’s no enforcement, no management, no data collection,” said Gayatri Reksodihardjo-Lilley, founder of LINI, a Bali-based nonprofit for the conservation and management of coastal marine resources.

    That leaves enthusiasts like Siravo in the dark.

    “Consumers often don’t know where their fish are coming from, and they don’t know how they are collected,” said Andrew Rhyne, a marine biology professor at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island.

    STUNNED BY CYANIDE

    Most ornamental saltwater fish species are caught in the wild because breeding them in captivity can be expensive, difficult and often impossible. The conditions they need to reproduce are extremely particular and poorly understood, even by scientists and expert breeders who have been trying for years.

    Small-scale collection and export of saltwater aquarium fish began in Sri Lanka in the 1930s and the trade has grown steadily since. Nearly 3 million homes in the U.S. keep saltwater fish as pets, according to a 2021-2022 American Pet Products Association survey. (Freshwater aquariums are far more common because freshwater fish are generally cheaper and easier to breed and care for.) About 7.6 million saltwater fish are imported into the U.S. every year.

    For decades, a common fishing technique has involved cyanide, with dire consequences for fish and marine ecosystems.

    Fishermen crush the blue or white pellets into a bottle filled with water. The diluted cyanide forms a poisonous mixture fishermen squirt onto coral reefs, where fish usually hide in crevices. The fish become temporarily stunned, allowing fishermen to easily pick or scoop them from the coral.

    Many die in transit, weakened by the cyanide – which means even more fish need to be captured to meet demand. The chemicals damage the living coral and make it more difficult for new coral to grow.

    LAX ENFORCEMENT

    Cyanide fishing has been banned in countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines but enforcement of the law remains difficult, and experts say the practice continues.

    Part of the problem is geography, Reksodihardjo-Lilley explains. In the vast archipelago of Indonesia, there are about 34,000 miles (54,720 kilometers) of coastline across some 17,500 islands. That makes monitoring the first step of the tropical fish supply chain a task so gargantuan it is all but ignored.

    “We have been working at the national level, trying to push national government to give attention to ornamental fish in Indonesia, but it’s fallen on deaf ears,” she said.

    Indonesian officials counter that laws do exist that require exporters to meet quality, sustainability, traceability and animal welfare conditions. “We will arrest anyone who implements destructive fishing. There are punishments for it,” said Machmud, an official at Indonesia’s marine affairs and fisheries ministry, who uses only one name.

    “NO REAL RECORD-KEEPING”

    Another obstacle to monitoring and regulating of the trade is the quick pace that the fish can move from one location to another, making it difficult to trace their origins.

    At a fish export warehouse in Denpasar, thousands of fish a day can be delivered to the big industrial-style facility located off a main road in Bali’s largest city. Trucks and motorbikes arrive with white Styrofoam coolers crammed with plastic bags of fish from around the archipelago. The fish are swiftly unpacked, sorted into tanks or new plastic bags and given fresh sea water. Carcasses of ones that died in transit are tossed into a basket or onto the pavement, then later thrown in the trash.

    Some fish will remain in small rectangular tanks in the warehouse for weeks, while others are shipped out quickly in plastic bags in cardboard boxes, fulfilling orders from the U.S., Europe and elsewhere. According to data provided to The Associated Press by Indonesian government officials, the U.S. was the largest importer of saltwater aquarium fish from the country.

    Once the fish make the plane ride halfway around the world from Indonesia to the U.S., they’re checked by the Fish and Wildlife Service, which cross-references the shipment with customs declaration forms.

    But that’s designed to ensure no protected fish, such as the endangered Banggai Cardinal, are being imported. The process cannot determine if the fish were caught legally.

    A U.S. law known as the Lacey Act bans trafficking in fish, wildlife, or plants that were illegally taken, possessed, transported, or sold – according to the laws in the country of origin or sale. That means that any fish caught using cyanide in a country where it’s prohibited would be illegal to import or sell in the U.S.

    But that helps little when it’s impossible to tell how the fish was caught. For example, no test exists to provide accurate results on whether a fish has been caught with cyanide, said Rhyne, the Roger Williams marine biology expert.

    “The reality is that the Lacey Act isn’t used often because generally there’s no real record-keeping or way to enforce it,” said Rhyne.

    LOCAL RESPONSE

    In the absence of rigorous national enforcement, conservation groups and local fishermen have long been working to reduce cyanide fishing in places like Les, a well-known saltwater aquarium fishing town tucked between the mountains and ocean in northern Bali.

    Partiana started catching fish – using cyanide — shortly after elementary school, when his parents could no longer afford to pay for his education. Every catch would help provide a few dollars of income for his family.

    But over the years Partiana began to notice the reef was changing. “I saw the reef dying, turning black,” he said. “You could see there were less fish.”

    He became part of a group of local fishermen who were taught by a local conservation organization how to use nets, care for the reef and patrol the area to guard against cyanide use. He later became a lead trainer for the organization, and has trained more than 200 fellow aquarium fishermen across Indonesia in use of less harmful techniques.

    Reksodihardjo-Lilley says it this type of local education and training that should be expanded to reduce harmful fishing. “People can see that they’re directly benefitting from the reefs being in good health.”

    For Partiana, now the father of two children, it’s not just for his benefit. “I hope that (healthier) coral reefs will make it possible for the next generation of children and grandchildren under me,” He wants them to be able to “see what coral looks like and that there can be ornamental fish in the sea.”

    A world away in Rhode Island, Siravo, the fish enthusiast, shares Partiana’s hopes for a less distructive saltwater aquarium industry.

    “I don’t want fish that are not collected sustainably,” he says. “Because I won’t be able to get fish tomorrow if I buy (unsustainably caught fish) today.”

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    Associated Press video journalist Kathy Young reported from New York. Marshall Ritzel contributed to this report from Rhode Island. Edna Tarigan contributed from Jakarta.

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    Follow Victoria Milko on Twitter: @thevmilko

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

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  • Genetic twist: Medieval plague may have molded our immunity

    Genetic twist: Medieval plague may have molded our immunity

    Our Medieval ancestors left us with a biological legacy: Genes that may have helped them survive the Black Death make us more susceptible to certain diseases today.

    It’s a prime example of the way germs shape us over time, scientists say in a new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

    “Our genome today is a reflection of our whole evolutionary history” as we adapt to different germs, said Luis Barreiro, a senior author of the research. Some, like those behind the bubonic plague, have had a big impact on our immune systems.

    The Black Death in the 14th century was the single deadliest event in recorded history, spreading throughout Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa and wiping out up to 30% to 50% of the population.

    Barreiro and his colleagues at the University of Chicago, McMaster University in Ontario and the Pasteur Institute in Paris examined ancient DNA samples from the bones of more than 200 people from London and Denmark who died over about 100 years that stretched before, during, and after the Black Death swept through that region.

    They identified four genes that, depending on the variant, either protected against or increased susceptibility to the bacteria that causes bubonic plague, which is most often transmitted by the bite of an infected flea.

    They found that what helped people in Medieval times led to problems generations later — raising the frequency of mutations detrimental in modern times. Some of the same genetic variants identified as protective against the plague are associated with certain autoimmune disorders, such as Crohn’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. In these sorts of diseases, the immune system that defends the body against disease and infection attacks the body’s own healthy tissues.

    “A hyperactive immune system may have been great in the past but in the environment today it might not be as helpful,” said Hendrik Poinar, an anthropology professor at McMaster and another senior author.

    Past research has also sought to examine how the Black Death affected the human genome. But Barreiro said he believes theirs is the first demonstration that the Black Death was important to the evolution of the human immune system. One unique aspect of the study, he said, was to focus on a narrow time window around the event.

    Monica H. Green, an author and historian of medicine who has studied the Black Death extensively, called the research “tremendously impressive,” bringing together a wide range of experts.

    “It’s extremely sophisticated” and addresses important issues, such as how the same version of a gene can protect people from a horrific infection and also put modern people — and generations of their descendants — at risk for other illnesses, said Green, who was not involved in the study.

    All of this begs the question: Will the COVID-19 pandemic have a big impact on human evolution? Barreiro said he doesn’t think so because the death rate is so much lower and the majority of people who have died had already had children.

    In the future, however, he said more deadly pandemics may well continue to shape us at the most basic level.

    “It’s not going to stop. It’s going to keep going for sure.”

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

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  • Ancient DNA gives rare snapshot of Neanderthal family ties

    Ancient DNA gives rare snapshot of Neanderthal family ties

    NEW YORK — A new study suggests Neanderthals formed small, tightknit communities where females may have traveled to move in with their mates.

    The research used genetic sleuthing to offer a rare snapshot of Neanderthal family dynamics — including a father and his teenage daughter who lived together in Siberia more than 50,000 years ago.

    Researchers were able to pull DNA out of tiny bone fragments found in two Russian caves. In their study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, they used the genetic data to map out relationships between 13 different Neanderthals and get clues to how they lived.

    “When I work on a bone or two, it’s very easy to forget that these are actually people with their own lives and stories,” said study author Bence Viola, an anthropologist at the University of Toronto. “Figuring out how they’re related to each other really makes them much more human.”

    Our ancient cousins, the Neanderthals, lived across Europe and Asia for hundreds of thousands of years. They died out around 40,000 years ago, shortly after our species, the Homo sapiens, arrived in Europe from Africa.

    Scientists have only recently been able to dig around in these early humans’ DNA. New Nobel laureate Svante Paabo — who is an author on this latest study — published the first draft of a Neanderthal genome a little over a decade ago.

    Since then, scientists have sequenced 18 Neanderthal genomes, said lead author Laurits Skov, a geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. But it’s rare to find bones from multiple Neanderthals from the same time and place, he said — which is why these cave discoveries were so special.

    “If there was ever a chance to find a Neanderthal community, this would be it,” Skov said.

    The caves, located in remote foothills above a river valley, have been a rich source of materials from stone tools to fossil fragments, Viola said. With their prime view of migrating herds in the valley below, researchers think the caves might have served as a short-term hunting stop for Neanderthals.

    Archaeologists excavating the caves have found remains from at least a dozen different Neanderthals, Viola said. These remains usually come in small bits and pieces — “a finger bone here, a tooth there” — but they’re enough for scientists to extract valuable DNA details.

    The researchers were able to identify a couple of relatives among the group. Along with the father and daughter, there was a pair of other relatives — maybe a boy and his aunt, or a couple of cousins.

    Overall, the analysis found that everyone in the group had a lot of DNA in common. That suggests that at least in this area, Neanderthals lived in very small communities of 10 to 20 individuals, the authors concluded.

    But not everyone in these groups stayed put, according to the study.

    Researchers looked at other genetic clues from mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down on the mother’s side, and the Y chromosome, which is passed down on the father’s side.

    The female side showed more genetic differences than the male side — which means females may have moved around more, Skov said. It’s possible that when a female Neanderthal found a mate, she would leave home to live with his family.

    University of Wisconsin anthropologist John Hawks, who was not involved in the study, said the research was an exciting application of ancient DNA evidence, even as many questions remain about Neanderthal social structures and lifestyles.

    Figuring out how early humans lived is like “putting together a puzzle where we have many, many missing pieces,” Hawks said. But this study means “somebody’s dumped a bunch more pieces on the table.”

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

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