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A frigid, snowy pattern could invade the U.S. during Christmas week
At the same time, there are increasing odds of significant winter storminess in the eastern half of the nation between Wednesday and Christmas Eve. While far from a lock, Mother Nature may deliver a white Christmas for a swath of the Midwest and eastern United States.
The frigid weather and possibility of snow will coincide with a peak time for holiday travelers.
At roughly a week out, it’s not possible to forecast exactly where a storm might form and what areas will see snow or rain or remain dry. But between Dec. 22 and 24, the chance of a significant storm between the Midwest and East Coast is above normal.
The primary setup for our potential outbreak of wintry weather involves strong high pressure building over the eastern Pacific Ocean toward the Alaska Aleutian Islands.
That high acts as a force field, deflecting the jet stream around it. The jet — which separates frigid and more mild air — will bulge toward the Arctic Circle in central North America before crashing southward over the central and eastern United States.
We can glance at a model of the trajectories of air parcels in the atmosphere for clues about the origins of next week’s air mass. If we run the model for Christmas Eve in the Midwest, it traces the air back to Nunavut, Canada, between the Northwest Passages and Baffin Bay, adjacent to Greenland.
The initial blast of cold will drive southward into the northern Rockies and northern Plains on Monday and Tuesday, reaching the Great Lakes Tuesday into Wednesday. Some of the coldest areas near the border with Canada could see temperatures 30 to 40 degrees below normal, meaning highs around minus-10 and lows from minus-20 to minus-30. Subzero temperatures could reach as far south as the central Plains.
The core of the cold will probably remain over the north central United States through midweek, although temperatures 10 to 20 degrees below normal could reach parts of the South and the eastern United States late in the workweek.
A second, reinforcing blast of cold may dive into the northern Plains and Upper Midwest Wednesday and Thursday, pushing frigid air even farther south and east. Minneapolis should expect lows well below zero while Chicago may see highs only in the teens for much of the second half of next week.
By Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, much of the eastern half of the country may see temperatures 10 to 30 degrees below normal.
There are signs a third shot of frigid air could enter the northern Plains around Christmas Day before barreling south and eastward about 10 days from now.
The National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center places high odds of below average temperatures in the central and eastern states both 6 to 10 and 8 to 14 days into the future.
The potential for snowfall will stretch from the Plains to the East Coast during the second half of next week. Here’s what we know:
- Central states: As the jet stream dives south over the Plains, a disturbance embedded within that flow could cause some snow to break out over the central and northern Plains before sweeping across the Midwest and Tennessee and Ohio valleys. The exact of track of any disturbance is still unclear, as is the location of the rain/snow transition line; the timing would probably be around Wednesday into Thursday.
- Mid-Atlantic and Northeast: The disturbance that could bring snow to the central states could evolve into a major East Coast storm. It would have plenty of jet stream energy to feed off and could draw abundant moisture from the Atlantic Ocean. However, it’s still highly uncertain if and where a coastal storm might form and what areas will be hardest hit. The timing of this storm would probably be between Thursday and Christmas Eve.
It’s important to remember the approximate timeline with which meteorologists can cast predictions — understanding that the first blast of cold is still three days away and the possibility of a storm five to seven days away:
At seven to 10 days in advance, forecasters can identify large-scale patterns favorable for cold (or warm) air outbreaks and big storms. That means estimating the approximate shape of the jet stream, which would offer insight into temperature trends — and where storms might form.
At five to seven days in advance, forecasters can start estimating temperature differences from normal. That’s why they can say, for instance, that the impending air mass over the Plains has the potential to be 30 degrees or more colder than average. They can also begin spotting the ingredients needed to make a storm — but can’t tell yet whether they’ll overlap just right.
At three to five days in advance, forecasters can provide a prediction of high and low temperatures with adequate accuracy for planning purposes. They can also tell if a storm will form, and gauge roughly how strong it will be. They might also be able to determine where, within 100 miles or so in either direction, a storm will track. They can’t yet reliably give forecasts of specific rain or snow totals because small shifts in the track could markedly change those amounts.
At one to two days in advance, forecasters know where the storm will go, about how much rain or snow will fall, how bad the winds will be, and how long it will last. They can provide specific snowfall forecasts and guidance for planning purposes.
On the day of, forecasters can identify “mesoscale” influences, or gauge how smaller-scale (about the size of a few counties) features will locally affect conditions. That might mean pinpointing where a 10-mile-wide stubborn snow band will set up, or where the greatest tornado risk of an afternoon might be.
4000-year-old hair from the Middle Nile highlights unusual ancient DNA degradation pattern and a potential source of early eastern Africa pastoralists
Archaeological context of Kadruka 1 SK68
Archaeological fieldwork in the Kadruka district of northern Sudan has revealed widespread past occupation of the alluvial plain and paleochannel systems to the east of the current Nile River channel9. In accordance with broader archaeological sequences for this region of the Middle Nile Valley10,11,12, cultural deposits were primarily linked to the Neolithic (spanning the 7th millennium BP), as well as the more recent Kerma period (3450–4450 BP). Excavation programs in the Kadruka district focused on several cemeteries from these cultural periods, including Kadruka 1 and Kadruka 21. Reflecting local environmental fluctuations between dry and wet conditions associated with more intensive Nile floods during the Middle Holocene, Neolithic skeletal remains at these cemeteries are typically highly degraded13,14. In contrast, progressive local aridification and floodplain contraction15, has facilitated enhanced preservation of organics, including hair and leather items, in the more recent Kerma period burials at Kadruka 116.
A recent study exploring the diet of individuals from Kadruka 21 and Kadruka 1 detected milk proteins attributable to domesticated cow (Bovinae) or sheep (Ovis) in the dental calculus of individual SK129 from Kadruka 21 and to goat (Carpa) in the dental calculus of individual SK68 from Kadruka 117. Furthermore, isotopic analyses of hair from individual SK68 (named “Sudan_Kadruka1_4000BP” in this study) broadly indicate a diet primarily composed of C3-based resources (C3 plants or animals consuming C3 plants, δ13C -17.0‰, δ15N 12.0‰).
The early proliferation of herding economies in northeastern Africa, particularly apparent in the Kerma civilisation of Upper Nubia11,12, has been proposed as a potential link to the dispersal of pastoral populations into eastern Africa5,6,7, though there is as yet no published genetic evidence to support this migration model. Direct palaeoproteomic evidence for milk consumption17, together with the remains of cattle, sheep and goat found in grave assemblages18, identify individuals from Kadruka 1 and Kadruka 21 as belonging to early populations practicing pastoralism, making the sites ideal for archaeogenetic research seeking to examine early pastoralist dispersals in northeastern Africa.
Ancient DNA authentification and sequencing strategy
We screened five specimens deriving from four individuals from the Kadruka district of northern Sudan (Fig. 1a) for aDNA preservation, drawing on tooth (KDR001.A), hair (KDR001.B), petrous bone (KDR002, KDR004) and cranial (KDR003) samples. All specimens were excavated from archaeological contexts dating to the Neolithic and Kerma periods. The only sample that yielded detectable authentic aDNA was a lock of dark hair (127 mg) (Fig. 1b) from a Kerma period individual. We used a total of 27.5 cm of hair for aDNA extraction and 78.5 mg for radiocarbon dating. The hair sample from Kadruka 1 SK68 is directly dated to 3928–4139 calBP (Fig. 1c), contemporaneous to the Pastoral Neolithic period in eastern Africa.
Sample details of the 4,000-year-old hair from Sudan. (a) Geographic location of Kadruka and modern African populations used for subsequent analyses. (b) Picture of the Kadruka hair sample. (c) C14 calibrated age (cal BC) of the Kadruka hair, plotted using IntCal13 calibration curve19.
To maximize the possibility of aDNA retrieval from shotgun sequencing, we applied double-stranded and single-stranded library protocols to the four extracts deriving from the Kadruka skeletal remains, but only applied the single-stranded library protocol to the hair sample, since this protocol typically results in higher yields than the double-stranded library approach for highly fragmented DNA. None of the aDNA libraries extracted from the skeletal elements showed authentic aDNA damage patterns, i.e., substitutions from cytosine to thymine (C- > T) (Table S1). The hair sample (KDR001.B0101), however, provided an observed 17.5% C- > T substitution rate at the first 5-prime base in sequencing reads (Table S1). Accordingly, we selected this library from the hair sample for deeper sequencing.
We found that the average read length was relatively short (33 base pair/bp, Table S1). This poses a challenge, since short DNA fragments can result in spurious alignments to the human reference genome, even if they do not originate from humans, but from, for example, microbes present in the burial environment. On the other hand, while long DNA fragments have high mapping certainty, they are more likely to originate from modern human DNA contamination (which typically consists of long DNA fragments). We therefore explored various read length cut-offs to yield as much authentic human aDNA as possible, while maintaining a low proportion of reads from presumed modern human contamination. For this purpose, we used two tools to assess both the rate of spurious alignments and the rate of modern human contaminants. First, we used SpAl20 which uses simulations to estimate fractions of spurious and authentic alignments given certain read length cut-offs. For a cut-off length of 25 bp, SpAI estimated a spurious alignment fraction of 10% (Table S2). As the read length cut-off increases, the estimation for spurious alignments drops respectively (Table S2). Second, we used AuthentiCT21 to estimate the overall contamination level in the aligned fragments using base substitution patterns. We explored length cut-offs at 10, 25, 30 (custom setting) and 34 bp in the raw data processing steps, and summarised EAGER statistics and respective contamination estimates in Table S2.
We find that at a length cut-off of 30 bp, 47.3 ± 2.4% of retrieved aDNA is likely of modern-human contaminant origin (Table 1). In comparison, a length cut-off of 25 bp yielded 4,680,356 mapped reads with 0.1 ± 0.3% contamination (Table 1). Together with the results from SpAL, we consider 25 bp a safe cut-off length for this library. Thus, we continued our downstream analyses with a 25 bp read length filter, ending up with 231,040 sequencing reads after mapping, from which we derived 3,336 pseudo-haploid allele calls on 1240 k SNP positions (Table 1).
Characteristics of the aDNA fragments from hair
Employing our final read length filter at 25 bp and additionally filtering for alignment mapping quality (Methods), we further explored alignment statistics. We find two unusual characteristics in the aDNA library generated from the Kadruka hair sample. The first is that the sample is enriched in unusually short DNA molecules, giving a median read length of 25 bp, compared to 44 bp for typical bone-derived shotgun aDNA in a previous African aDNA study using the same laboratory pipeline4. The second is that unusually high damage rates were observed in the interior of the DNA molecules from hair, while unusually low damage rates were seen in the exterior of the molecules. For instance, at the interior 10th bp from the 5’ end, damage rates were 10% compared to 1% from typical bone-derived aDNA. While at the exterior, the 1st bp from the 5’ end showed damage rates of 15%, compared to on average of 27%22 from typical bone-derived aDNA. These patterns are consistent with high degradation of DNA fragments in hair through intense sun exposure, already during the lifetime of the individual, which may result in hair containing largely denatured single-stranded DNA fragments, as opposed to the more typically intact double-stranded fragments preserved in bone samples.
We find the ratio of mitochondrial to nuclear DNA in the hair-derived DNA library to be relatively high (with a ratio at 224 at length cut-off 25 bp, Table S1), compared to typical rates with other tissues; for example the ratio is at 110 on average for petrous bones in a previous study using the same laboratory pipeline4. We investigated whether there is a notable difference in terms of aDNA preservation in nuclear DNA and mitochondria from the hair material. Specifically, we examined if the two idiosyncratic features of hair aDNA we describe above apply to both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA from hair. In Fig. 2 and Fig S2, we compared the read length distribution and average base substitution rates of reads mapped to the complete genome (i.e., nuclear and mitochondrial), the nuclear genome, and the mitochondrial genome. We find that both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA have high base substitution rates in the interior of sequence reads (Fig S2a, c), but reads mapped to mitochondria are relatively longer than reads mapped to autosomes (Fig S2b, d).
Characteristics of aDNA fragments from the hair sample. (a) Length distribution of shotgun sequencing reads mapped to the whole genome using read length filter cut-off at 25 bp in the step of adaptor removal. (b) High C-to-T substitution rates in the interior of aDNA fragments.
Given the tenfold reduction of mapped reads after applying a mapping quality filter (Table 1), we examined if the two features of hair aDNA observed here resulted from the mapping quality filter. We find that our mapping quality filter did not have a notable effect on the two features of ultra-short DNA fragment enrichment and high interior aDNA damage pattern (Fig S3).
Given the success of SNP capture techniques for poorly preserved human DNA23, we also performed SNP capture for our hair-derived aDNA library. However, SNP capture did not provide an improvement over shotgun sequencing. Instead, we found the base substitution rates in the exterior and interior of reads are substantially lower in capture data, in comparison to the rate distribution in shotgun data (Fig. S1, Table S1), corroborating the fact of high contamination rate in the capture data (42 ± 3% as estimated by AuthentiCT), likely due to capture preferentially targeting molecules without damage (due to more effective hybridization) than with damage. In addition, longer molecules are preferentially captured over short molecules.
Genetic affinity to early eastern African pastoralists
We performed Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and Outgroup-f3 (Figs. 2, 3) to investigate the genetic ancestry of the individual (Sudan_Kadruka1_4000BP) from whom our hair sample derived, utilizing 3336 mapped reads overlapping with SNP positions from the Shotgun data, after read length filter at 25 bp of Sudan_Kadruka1_4000BP (Table S2). To maximise the resolution given the extremely low coverage and low number of called alleles, we used high-coverage modern African genomic data from the SGDP24 and the HGDP25, which includes all SNPs in 1240 k panel, instead of the commonly used Human Origin array data26, for calculating Principal Components (PCs). We projected ancient Africans and ancient Near Easterners on the background of modern African groups25. Although the number of available populations in SGDP and HGDP is limited, we observe clear separations of African populations from different regions, with eastern/northern, southern and western African populations falling into the right, left and top corner of PC1/PC2 space, respectively.
Genetic ancestry of Sudan_Kadruka1_4000BP. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of African populations. We project Sudan_Kadruka1_4000BP into an African PCA (Table S3) with PCs calculated from modern Africans in SGDP24. We use block jackknife strategy (taking-one-chromosome-out)26 for error bar calculation of Sudan_Kadruka1_4000BP ‘s location on the PCA.
The PCA shows Sudan_Kadruka1_4000BP located close to previously published early pastoralists in eastern Africa4,5, such as Kenya_EarlyPastoral_N (3800–4000 calBP) and Kenya_Pastoral_Neolithic (1500–3000 calBP). Kenya_EarlyPastoral_N is a group of two pastoralist individuals dated to the early stage of the eastern African Pastoral Neolithic, both of whom are genetically derived from admixture between two early northeastern African-related ancestries from Sudan and Northern Africa/Levant5. To estimate the level of noise resulting from the sparsity of our SNP data, we computed a standard error for the projected PCs of Sudan_Kadruka1_4000BP using a block jackknife approach. Specifically, we computed pseudo-values by deleting each chromosome of the genotype data in turn and then used the resulting estimates from the remaining data as input for the weighted jackknife calculation27. We find the standard errors of Sudan_Kadruka1_4000BP to be relatively small compared to overall genetic variation within Africa, which gives us confidence that the location calculated from the full data (Fig. 2a) is robust.
Despite the sparsity of the data, the PCA analyses conducted here clearly suggest a very close genetic relationship between Sudan_Kadruka1_4000BP and ancient eastern African pastoralist populations. To corroborate this finding, we also computed allele sharing rates with ancient populations from the Levant and Africa and present-day African populations at genomic sites where Sudan_Kadruka1_4000BP differs from the chimpanzee reference genome via outgroup-f3 (Sudan_Kadruka1_4000BP, population X; Chimpanzee). Figure 4a shows that Sudan_Kadruka1_4000BP shares the highest genetic affinity with ancient Levantine groups, ancient northern and Eastern Africans and modern Africans from northern Sahara and the Horn of Africa. We computed pairwise comparisons employing f4 (Sudan_Kadruka1_4000BP, Kenya_EarlyPastoral_N; population X, Chimp) to validate the close PC location between Sudan_Kadruka1_4000BP and Kenya_EarlyNeolithic_N. Consistent with PCA location, f4-statistic result confirms the genetic cladality between Sudan_Kadruka1_4000BP and Kenya_EarlyPastoral_N given that none of the tested populations breaks cladality significantly, suggesting that these two individuals are indistinguishable in terms of allele frequencies (Fig. 4b). Additionally, we show that in f4 (Kenya_EarlyPastoral_N, population X; Sudan_Kadruka1_4000BP, Chimp) results (Fig. 4c) that all tested ancient and modern African populations are either significantly positive (suggesting that they are less close to Kenya_EarlyPastoral_N compared to Sudan_Kadruka1_4000BP) or overlapping with zero, indicating equal genetic distance to both.
Genetic affinity with ancient African pastoralists. (a) Outgroup f3(Sudan_Kadruka1_4000BP, population X; Chimp). (b) f4(Sudan_Kadruka1_4000BP, Kenya_EarlyPastoral_N; population X, Chimp). (c) f4(Kenya_EarlyPastoral_N, population X; Sudan_Kadruka1_4000BP, Chimp). Population X includes published ancient African and Near Eastern populations and modern African populations from SGDP and HGDP data sets (Table S3). We plot two standard error bars for f3 and f4 statistics shown here and highlight statistically significant tests (Z-score > 3) in red color.
Pattern of Gene Activity for ADHD Unlocked
Summary: Study reveals differences in gene activity in the caudate and frontal cortex in those with ADHD.
Source: NIH
Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have successfully identified differences in gene activity in the brains of people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
The study, led by scientists at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of NIH, found that individuals diagnosed with ADHD had differences in genes that code for known chemicals that brain cells use to communicate.
The results of the findings, published in Molecular Psychiatry, show how genomic differences might contribute to symptoms.
To date, this is the first study to use postmortem human brain tissue to investigate ADHD. Other approaches to studying mental health conditions include non-invasively scanning the brain, which allows researchers to examine the structure and activation of brain areas. However, these studies lack information at the level of genes and how they might influence cell function and give rise to symptoms.
The researchers used a genomic technique called RNA sequencing to probe how specific genes are turned on or off, also known as gene expression. They studied two connected brain regions associated with ADHD: the caudate and the frontal cortex. These regions are known to be critical in controlling a person’s attention. Previous research found differences in the structure and activity of these brain regions in individuals with ADHD.
As one of the most common mental health conditions, ADHD affects about 1 in 10 children in the United States. Diagnosis often occurs during childhood, and symptoms may persist into adulthood. Individuals with ADHD may be hyperactive and have difficulty concentrating and controlling impulses, which may affect their ability to complete daily tasks and their ability to focus at school or work.
With technological advances, researchers have been able to identify genes associated with ADHD, but they had not been able to determine how genomic differences in these genes act in the brain to contribute to symptoms until now.
“Multiple types of genomic studies are pointing towards the expression of the same genes,” said Gustavo Sudre, Ph.D., associate investigator in the Social and Behavioral Research Branch in NHGRI’s Intramural Research Program, who led this study. “Interestingly, these gene-expression differences were similar to those seen in other conditions, which may reflect differences in how the brain functions, such as in autism.”
Importantly, the researchers found that these differences affected the expression of genes that code for neurotransmitters, which are chemicals that brain cells use to communicate with one another. In particular, the results revealed differences in gene expression for glutamate neurotransmitters, which are important for brain functions such as attention and learning.
“The study advances our understanding of ADHD by showing how the condition is tied to changes in how certain genes are expressed in the brain. This allows us to inch closer to understanding how genomic differences alter gene expression in the brain and contribute to ADHD symptoms,” says Philip Shaw, M.D., Ph.D., senior investigator in the Social and Behavioral Research Branch, who supervised the study.
Postmortem studies are rare because of the limited donation of brain tissue but are incredibly valuable because they provide researchers direct experimental access to the brain.
“Such postmortem studies have accelerated our understanding of other mental health challenges, but to date no such studies have looked at ADHD until now,” said Dr. Shaw.
About this genetics and ADHD research news
Author: Press Office
Source: NIH
Contact: Press Office – NIH
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Closed access.
“Mapping the cortico-striatal transcriptome in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder” by Gustavo Sudre et al. Molecular Psychiatry
See also
Abstract
Mapping the cortico-striatal transcriptome in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
Despite advances in identifying rare and common genetic variants conferring risk for ADHD, the lack of a transcriptomic understanding of cortico-striatal brain circuitry has stymied a molecular mechanistic understanding of this disorder.
To address this gap, we mapped the transcriptome of the caudate nucleus and anterior cingulate cortex in post-mortem tissue from 60 individuals with and without ADHD. Significant differential expression of genes was found in the anterior cingulate cortex and, to a lesser extent, the caudate.
Significant downregulation emerged of neurotransmitter gene pathways, particularly glutamatergic, in keeping with models that implicate these neurotransmitters in ADHD.
Consistent with the genetic overlap between mental disorders, correlations were found between the cortico-striatal transcriptomic changes seen in ADHD and those seen in other neurodevelopmental and mood disorders.
This transcriptomic evidence points to cortico-striatal neurotransmitter anomalies in the pathogenesis of ADHD, consistent with current models of the disorder.
The Incredible Colors of Animals Mean Different Things, But We Just Found a Pattern : ScienceAlert
Dazzling as it often appears, fashion in the animal kingdom can be frightfully repetitive. There are only so many color templates that scream ‘look at me’ amid the greys and greens of foliage and muck.
So it should be no surprise that animals often use the same colors for very different purposes.
The brilliant crimson of a male northern cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) serves as a signal for potential mates to draw closer; in strawberry poison-dart frogs (Oophaga pumilio), that blast of red is a stern warning to keep away, or you’ll ingest a mouthful of powerful, deadly toxin.
Evolutionary biologist Zachary Emberts, currently of Oklahoma State University, and colleague John Wiens of the University of Arizona, wondered what makes the same colors evolve to serve such different purposes in different animals.
They conducted a study of 1,824 species of land vertebrates (aquatic animals can be a whole other kettle of fish), categorizing their coloration as either come-hither or get-lost, and they found the common thread connecting each group.
The come-hither animals, such as birds and lizards, are descended from ancestors that were diurnal, or active during the day. The get-lost animals, such as snakes and amphibians, are descended from nocturnal ancestors.
“Traits that we see today in species can be a result of their evolutionary history,” Emberts says. “We were looking for evolutionary patterns, so we did two separate analyses, one that used their current day-night activity and one that used their ancestral day-night activity.”
No correlation, they found, exists between day and night activity and the animals’ coloration today; instead, the link is purely ancestral. But it’s one that seems to be consistent across all terrestrial vertebrates, whose evolution goes back around 350 million years.
“It doesn’t matter how a species produces the colors,” Wiens says. “The way that a bird makes red is different from how a lizard makes red, but this general pattern of day-night activity still works.”
According to the researchers’ analysis, most of the ancestors of the animals they studied started out rather plain and drab, evolving their vivid hues over time, and most of them live in environments in which their vivid colors stand out. The most reasonable explanation is that more brightly colored animals were better able to survive, and pass their genetic material onto generations that continued the trend.
Colors analyzed included red, orange, yellow, purple, and blue, and the researchers found that, for all colors except blue, the colorations were pretty equally divided between sex signaling and warning. It’s currently unclear what the reason for that could be.
“It’s interesting to see that for some colors like red, orange, and yellow, they’re used with similar frequency as both a way to avoid predators and as a way for mate attraction,” says Emberts.
“On the flip side, blue coloration was more frequently associated with mating as opposed to predator avoidance.”
The diurnal animals’ coloration makes sense: a flashy animal, in the light of day, is going to be seen by other animals, including potential mates. That may make them bigger targets for predators, too, but it seems like being able to find a mate and reproduce is more important than not being eaten. The females of these species are often drab in comparison, and therefore better able to hide from predators and survive to rear offspring.
But nocturnal animals slither and snoop about in the dark. A male nocturnal snake doesn’t have much use for a bright color for sexual signaling if the females can’t see it.
“Warning colors have evolved even in species with no eyes,” Wiens says. “It’s questionable whether most snakes or amphibians can see colors, so their bright colors are generally used for signaling to predators rather than to members of the same species.”
Instead, the researchers suggest, the coloration may have evolved as a way to tell diurnal predators who may happen upon the sleeping animal to steer clear. But future research may reveal more details. The team hopes to delve deeper into the evolution of bright colors to see if their functions have changed over time.
In the meantime, though, the research shows that delving into the evolutionary history of animal traits may reveal patterns that are no longer current today.
The team’s research has been published in Evolution.
Russell Wilson’s fade pattern with Broncos is one of NFL’s big mysteries
The biggest move of the NFL offseason has morphed into the league’s biggest mystery.
It’s a threwdunnit. Where did you go, Russell Wilson?
This is not what the Denver Broncos were expecting when they mortgaged their future for Seattle’s nine-time Pro Bowl quarterback.
Turns out, Wilson is so elusive, even his own team can’t find him.
The Broncos came into Monday night’s game against the Chargers averaging just 15 points per game. The good news is they surpassed that by a point, losing in overtime, 19-16.
It was a huge division victory for the Chargers, who have won three in a row and are in a four-way tie for the AFC’s longest winning streak. The only time they led all night was on the final play, when Dustin Hopkins’ game-winning kick sailed through the uprights.
Every time there was a Hollywood moment, when the Broncos were backed up against the wall and the Wilson of old might have resurfaced, it just didn’t happen. A sack. A short-armed throw. Another missed opportunity.
“This is very disappointing,” Broncos coach Nathaniel Hackett said, speaking generally about the loss. “We need to have a lot more urgency across the board.”
The Chargers have done this before. They are 3-0 against Wilson, the first two matchups when he was playing for the Seahawks.
Wilson is unfailingly upbeat, that part hasn’t changed, so he sounded like a motivational speaker after the game.
“It’s a good football team out there, but we’re just as good if not better, we feel like,” he said. “We’ve got to answer the call. Adversity is definitely challenging us right now. But the only way I know through it all is to continue to work hard and continue to believe.”
This one started with such promise for the Broncos. Wilson was 10 for 10 in the first quarter for 116 yards and a 39-yard touchdown to Greg Dulcich. It was the first career touchdown for the former UCLA tight end who played at St. Francis High in La Cañada Flintridge.
It looked like the Wilson we all know had resurfaced, especially how he set up that touchdown with a 37-yard completion to Jerry Jeudy.
Who could have guessed that in the three-plus quarters after that pristine start he’d complete five of 18 passes for 72 yards?
At his best, Wilson is like the Sundance Kid. He’s better when he moves. That was happening in the first quarter, when he was rolling to his left and right and making plays on the run. Throughout his career, he has turned extending plays into an art form. As longtime quarterback expert Rick Neuheisel puts it, asking Wilson to stay put is like asking Rembrandt to paint between the lines.
That’s what Hackett seemed to be doing with Wilson to this point, keeping him in the pocket to go through his progressions and make those anticipatory throws. It wasn’t working. He came into Monday’s game with four touchdown passes, the fewest through five games in his career.
Then came that opening quarter and the flashbacks to all the success Wilson had in Seattle, when his 113 wins through the first decade of his career set an NFL record.
Turns out, that quarter was just a tease, as the Chargers defense swarmed him, blanketed his receivers and smothered Denver’s offensive production.
“They started to pick up the pressure for sure in the second half,” Broncos running back Latavius Murray said. “We’ve got to find a way to sustain drives and figure it out.”
The Broncos had a 13-10 lead after two quarters but failed to pull away in the second half. Their possessions after halftime ended thusly: punt, punt, punt, field goal, punt, punt, punt.
Since he came into the league, Wilson has 34 career wins in the fourth quarter or overtime. That’s second during that span to Matthew Stafford’s 36. They are clutch quarterbacks.
So it was a made-for-TV moment with 21/2 minutes left in regulation, the score tied, and Wilson facing third and six from his 43. It was his moment to shine.
He took the shotgun snap… and was immediately sacked by linebacker Drue Tranquill blitzing up the middle. It was Tranquill’s second sack of the night — you might say Denver’s offense was tranquilized — and the fourth by the Chargers.
The Broncos dropped to 2-4 and have lost three in a row. More important, they have yet to find the quarterback they thought they knew.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Doctor Warns of Suspicious Pattern Behind Monkeypox Outbreak
There has been much speculation that the novel coronavirus was a bioweapon developed in a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) lab. Now, an American doctor has a theory that the new monkeypox outbreak may also have similar nefarious origins.
Dr. Syed Haider told The Epoch Times that the development of the monkeypox outbreak seems identical to the way COVID-19 was introduced to the world.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), monkeypox is a rare disease caused by infection with the monkeypox virus, which is part of the same family of viruses that causes smallpox. The symptoms of monkeypox are similar to those of smallpox, but are much milder and rarely fatal.
Monkeypox was discovered in 1958, after two outbreaks of the pox-like disease infected colonies of monkeys being kept for research. However, the source of the disease remains unknown. While African rodents and monkeys might harbor the virus and infect people, the first human case of monkeypox wasn’t recorded until 1970.
Prior to the 2022 outbreak, cases of monkeypox in humans had been reported in several Central African and West African countries. However, nearly all cases outside of Africa were linked to international travel.
About a year after the COVID-19 outbreak, Haider said he learned about “Event 201,” which was a tabletop exercise conducted a few months before the coronavirus began to spread.
“It really set the tone for the response by governments all around the world,” Haider explained. “They followed the recommendations that were developed during that tabletop exercise in terms of lockdowns and masks and how to deal with misinformation online. They addressed all of these topics.”
Haider noted that in March 2021, before the current monkeypox outbreak, there was another tabletop exercise hosted by the Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Munich Security Conference. This time, it was for “a strange variant of monkeypox” that was hypothetically bioengineered and released to the world on May 15, 2022, by a terrorist group as a weapon. This hypothetical strain of monkeypox was also defined as resistant to the vaccines that are already available for smallpox, which Haider said are supposed to work on monkeypox as well.
“The bizarre thing is the actual outbreak started within a day or two of the date predicted in the tabletop exercise,” Haider said.
An ‘Unusual Variant’
“It’s an unusual variant,” Haider said. “We’ve never had a variant of monkeypox that primarily spreads between gay men.”
Haider said there are other signs that lead him to believe the current strain of monkeypox was engineered.
He said the monkeypox virus mutates very slowly and that the last known precursor to this variant is so different that it could not have happened naturally, adding that there just wasn’t enough time for natural evolution to create the variant spreading right now.
While it isn’t “proof” or considered to be the proverbial “smoking gun,” Haider said it is very suspicious and that there is “concern that this is also a bioweapon or some sort of bioterrorism event that’s unfolding.”
Haider said that during the monkeypox tabletop exercise, the researchers involved recommended that mandatory masking and lockdowns be instituted and that people should be vaccinated.
“My main concern is to make people aware that this could be used to take away our freedoms the same way the COVID pandemic was used,” he said.
Haider did note that this does not mean that monkeypox may not harm some people or that it’s not a real virus.
“Some people may end up being hospitalized and some might die eventually, especially with the health care system being overwhelmed,” he said. “Right now what we’re seeing is 10 percent of people with monkeypox have been hospitalized just for the sheer pain of the lesions. It can last for weeks, and they may need strong pain killers.”
Repurposed for Control
The important message Haider wants to give to people is that authorities shouldn’t be insisting on trying to control an outbreak with measures they know don’t work. Rather than widespread lockdowns of entire societies, it’s best to establish a program that involves “isolation of the cases.”
“That works,” Haider said. “That’s what stops the spread of monkeypox. It’s a pretty slow-moving virus. It doesn’t spread as quickly as COVID. If you just isolate the cases until they are no longer symptomatic, that’s all you really need to do. At this point, there is no asymptomatic spread, or it’s vanishingly rare. In terms of public health, if something is vanishingly rare, it doesn’t really enter into the equation of public health.”
As Haider explained, what people should be concerned about is the usual route of transmission.
“While it might be possible to get it from kissing someone or being one inch from their face for six hours, that’s not what’s going to drive the pandemic forward,” he explained. “It’s not going to lead to a wildfire spread through society. What’s going to lead to widespread transmission is contact with lesions or contact with the fluid that comes out of the lesions. So we need to educate people to know that if you think you have monkeypox, isolate yourself and you won’t spread it to other people. This is the way to stop a pandemic. Masking is a ridiculous measure for monkeypox, even more ridiculous than it was for COVID.”
That being said, Haider explained that the monkeypox outbreak “can all be easily repurposed as a way to take control away from people, especially going into the midterm elections to try to get us to avoid going to the polls or to use mail-in voting rather than in-person voting.” He said it can also be sued as “an economic weapon.”
“COVID ended up being an economic weapon that destroyed economies around the world and impoverished people,” Haider recalled. “It destroyed medium and small businesses and concentrated wealth at the top. Then it spreads beyond economics into people’s health.”
Inflating the Numbers
As Haider explained, people end up dying when an economy is destroyed through a phenomenon known as “deaths of despair.”
According to the American Council on Science and Health, “deaths of despair” are defined as “mortality resulting from suicide, drug overdose, and alcohol-related liver disease,” which became increasingly problematic during the extended isolation during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Statistics show that easy access to handguns, alcohol, and opioids—either prescribed, diverted, or obtained through illicit means—increases the likelihood of these deaths.
Haider also noted how—just as they did during the COVID-19 pandemic—people may also die at home of a heart attack or a stroke simply because they are too afraid of contracting monkeypox to leave their homes to go to a hospital. Haider also noted that most of the deaths attributed to COVID-19 were actually people who died “with COVID, not from COVID.”
According to a report by the CDC, 95 percent of the Americans who died from COVID-19 as of Aug. 7, 2022, had comorbidities that played a role in their deaths, such as influenza or pneumonia (44.2 percent), hypertension (18.2 percent), diabetes (13.6 percent), Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias (10.3 percent), and sepsis (11 percent). Deaths from heart attacks, and even a death caused by a motorcycle accident, were coded as COVID-19 deaths.
Resist the Fear
According to Haider, the preventable death toll of the COVID-19 pandemic, and what should be avoided with this monkeypox outbreak, is the self-inflicted death tolls caused by mismanagement, lockdowns, and unnecessary mandates that force people into depressive conditions of isolation.
Haider said most people aren’t at risk of contracting monkeypox because it’s primarily being sexually transmitted among gay men.
“I don’t want to be fear-mongering,” Haider insisted, citing the fear he saw in younger patients who had essentially no risk to COVID-19 asking him how many masks they needed to wear or if a biohazard suit would keep them safe.
“Fear itself is harmful to your immune system,” he said. “It triggers immunosuppressants, which will actually make your body more susceptible to infections and illness.”
The main message Haider wants to pass on to people is “don’t be afraid of this thing.”
“If it does get bigger and spread more we will develop protocols, just like we did during COVID,” Haider assured, noting there are already promising preparedness protocols, which he is already offering his patients through his online practice.
“We should not allow governments to seize control the way they did last time,” Haider admonished. “Anyone who thinks it’s laughable and that we’re not going to put up with that again, think again. Once the mainstream media gets going and decides to give monkeypox 24/7 coverage the way they did with COVID, people are going to be convinced again, afraid again, and will accept society-wide lockdowns again.
“We need to start working now to prevent that from happening, again.”
How Ayman al-Zawahiri’s ‘pattern of life’ allowed the US to kill al-Qaida leader | Ayman al-Zawahiri
In the end it was one of the oldest mistakes in the fugitive’s handbook that apparently did for Ayman al-Zawahiri, the top al-Qaida leader killed, according to US intelligence, by a drone strike on Sunday morning: he developed a habit.
The co-planner of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001 had acquired a taste for sitting out on the balcony of his safe house in Sherpur, a well-to-do diplomatic enclave of Kabul. He grew especially fond of stepping out on to the balcony after morning prayers, so that he could watch the sun rise over the Afghan capital.
According to a US official who briefed reporters on Monday, it was such regular behavior that allowed intelligence agents, presumably CIA, to piece together what they called “a pattern of life” of the target. That in turn allowed them to launch what the White House called a “tailored airstrike” involving two Hellfire missiles fired from a Reaper drone that are claimed to have struck the balcony, with Zawahiri on it, at 6.18am on Sunday.
It was the culmination of a decades-long hunt for the Egyptian surgeon who by the time he was killed had a $25m bounty on his head. Zawahiri, 71, was held accountable not only for his part as Bin Laden’s second in command for 9/11, with its death toll of almost 3,000 people, but also for several other of al-Qaida’s most deadly attacks, including the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000, which killed 17 US sailors.
The mission to go after the al-Qaida leader was triggered, US officials said, in early April when intelligence sources picked up signals that Zawahiri and his family had moved off their mountainside hideaways and relocated to Kabul. Following the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan last August, and with the support of the Haqqani Taliban network, Zawahiri and his wife, together with their daughter and grandchildren, had moved into the Sherpur house.
In their telling of events, US officials were at pains to stress that under Joe Biden’s instructions the mission was carried out carefully and with precision to avoid civilian casualties and US officials said no one else was killed or wounded in the attack.
Social media images of the strike suggested the use of a modified Hellfire called the R9X with six blades to damage targets, sources familiar with the weapon told Reuters. They caused surprisingly little damage beyond the target, suggesting they may be a version of the missile shrouded in secrecy and used by the US to avoid non-combatant casualties.
The US president was first apprised of Zawahiri’s whereabouts in April, and for the next two months a tightly knit group of officials delved into the intelligence and devised a plan. A scale model of the Sherpur house was built, showing the balcony where the al-Qaida leader liked to sit. As discussions about a possible strike grew more intense, the model was brought into the situation room of the White House on 1 July so that Biden could see it for himself.
The president “examined closely the model of al-Zawahiri’s house that the intelligence community had built and brought into the White House situation room for briefings on this issue”, a senior administration official told reporters.
The White House made further claims to bolster its argument that the attack was lawful, flawless and with a loss of life limited to Zawahiri alone. Officials said that engineers were brought in to analyse the safe house and assess what would happen to it structurally in the wake of a drone strike.
Lawyers were similarly consulted on whether the attack was legal. They advised that it was, given the target’s prominent role as leader of a terrorist group.
Biden, by now quarantined with Covid, received a final briefing on 25 July and gave the go-ahead. It was a decision in stark contrast to the advice he gave Barack Obama in May 2011 not to proceed with the special forces mission that killed Bin Laden in a raid on his safe house in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
On Monday evening, Biden stood on his own balcony – this one in the White House with the Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial as his backdrop – to address the nation.
“I authorized the precision strike that would remove him from the battlefield once and for all,” Biden said. “This measure was carefully planned, rigorously, to minimize the risk of harm to other civilians.”
Biden’s insistence that no one other than the al-Qaida leader was killed in the attack was amplified repeatedly by US officials. The narrative given by the White House was that Zawahiri was taken out cleanly through the application of modern technological warfare.
Skepticism remains, despite the protestations. Over the years drone strikes have frequently proved to be anything but precise.
In August last year one such US drone strike in Kabul was initially hailed by the Pentagon as a successful mission to take out a would-be terrorist bomber planning an attack on the city’s airport. It was only after the New York Times had published an exhaustive investigation showing that the strike had in fact killed 10 civilians, including an aid worker and seven children, that the US military admitted the mission had gone tragically wrong.
Perhaps mindful of the doubts that are certain to swirl around the Zawahiri killing for days to come, the White House said that the Sherpur safe house where the drone strike happened had been kept under observation for 36 hours after the attack and before Biden spoke to the nation. Officials said that Zawahiri’s relatives were seen leaving the house under Haqqani Taliban escort, establishing that they had survived the strike.
Mysterious fast radio burst in space has a ‘heartbeat’ pattern
Astronomers estimate that the signal came from a galaxy roughly a billion light-years away, but the exact location and cause of the burst is unknown. A study detailing the findings published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are intense, millisecond-long bursts of radio waves with unknown origins. The first FRB was discovered in 2007, and since then, hundreds of these quick, cosmic flashes have been detected coming from various, distant points across the universe.
Many FRBs release super bright radio waves lasting only a few milliseconds at most before disappearing completely, and about 10% of them have been known to repeat and have patterns.
One resource used to spot them is a radio telescope called the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, or CHIME, at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in British Columbia, Canada.
This telescope, in operation since 2018, constantly observes the sky and, in addition to fast radio bursts, is sensitive to radio waves emitted by distant hydrogen in the universe.
Astronomers using CHIME spotted something on December 21, 2019, that immediately caught their attention: a fast radio burst that was “peculiar in many ways,” according to Daniele Michilli, a postdoctoral researcher in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.
The signal, named FRB 20191221A, lasted for up to three seconds — which is about 1,000 times longer than typical fast radio bursts.
Michilli was monitoring the data as it came in from CHIME, when the burst occurred. The signal is the longest-lasting fast radio burst to date.
“It was unusual,” Michilli said. “Not only was it very long, lasting about three seconds, but there were periodic peaks that were remarkably precise, emitting every fraction of a second — boom, boom, boom — like a heartbeat. This is the first time the signal itself is periodic.”
While FRB 20191221A has not yet repeated, “the signal is formed by a train of consecutive peaks that we found to be separated by ~0.2 seconds,” he said in an email.
An unknown source
The research team doesn’t know the exact galaxy from which the burst originated and even the distance estimate of a billion light-years is “highly uncertain,” Michilli said. While CHIME is primed to search for bursts of radio waves, it’s not as good at locating their origin points.
However, CHIME is being upgraded through a project where additional telescopes, currently under construction, will observe together and be able to triangulate radio bursts to specific galaxies, he said.
But the signal does contain clues about where it came from and what may have caused it.
“CHIME has now detected many FRBs with different properties,” Michilli said. “We’ve seen some that live inside clouds that are very turbulent, while others look like they’re in clean environments. From the properties of this new signal, we can say that around this source, there’s a cloud of plasma that must be extremely turbulent.”
When the researchers analyzed FRB 20191221A, the signal was similar to the emissions released by two different types of neutron stars, or the dense remnants after a giant star dies, called radio pulsars and magnetars.
Magnetars are neutron stars with incredibly powerful magnetic fields, while radio pulsars release radio waves that appear to pulse as the neutron star rotates. Both stellar objects create a signal akin to the flashing beam from a lighthouse.
The fast radio burst appears to be more than a million times brighter than these emissions. “We think this new signal could be a magnetar or pulsar on steroids,” Michilli said.
The research team will continue to use CHIME to monitor the skies for more signals from this radio burst, as well as others with a similar, periodic signal. The frequency of the radio waves and how they change could be used to help astronomers learn more about the rate of the universe’s expansion.
“This detection raises the question of what could cause this extreme signal that we’ve never seen before, and how can we use this signal to study the universe,” Michilli said. “Future telescopes promise to discover thousands of FRBs a month, and at that point we may find many more of these periodic signals.”
Report: “Holding pattern” for Seahawks, Panthers, Browns on Baker Mayfield
Three weeks after the draft, quarterback Baker Mayfield continues to be on the Cleveland roster. That likely will continue to be the case.
Jeff Howe of TheAthletic.com reports that a “holding pattern” exists as to Mayfield.
Howe reports that the Panthers and Seahawks remain interested in Mayfield. The problem continues to be the amount of Mayfield’s $18.8 million guaranteed salary that Cleveland will pay, and that his next employer will carry.
Mayfield can play, if heathy. He’s currently not healthy, which reduces the urgency to resolve things.
Then there’s the Deshaun Watson situation. If Watson ends up being suspended for a significant piece of the season, the Browns may need Mayfield. Before they can do that, however, they need to rebuild the bridge to Baker.
That may be impossible. But that’s what the Browns should be doing. Both sides ultimately may need each other, and Mayfield’s best option could be to play for the Browns instead of the Seahawks or the Panthers. Mayfield may need some persuading to get there.