More than 100 SARS-CoV-2 infected mink may have escaped from Danish fur farms, raising the risk that these escapees could spread the novel coronavirus to wild animals, creating a new reservoir for the virus, The Guardian reported.
“Every year, a few thousand mink escape,” and this year, an estimated 5 percent of these escaped animals may have been infected with SARS-CoV-2, Sten Mortensen, veterinary research manager at the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration, told The Guardian.
These mink may be spreading the coronavirus to wild animals, even as millions of mink still on farms are being culled to prevent spread of the virus.
Welcome back to our series on Martian colonization! In Part I, we looked at the challenges and benefits of colonization. In Part II, we looked at what it would take to transport people to and from Mars. In Part III, we looked at how people could live there. Today, we will address the question of how people could establish an industrial base there.
If we intend to “go interplanetary” and establish a colony on Mars, we need to know how to address the long-term needs of the colonists. In addition to shelter, air, water, food security, and radiation shielding, the people will need to create an economy of sorts. The question is, what kind of industry would Mars support?
There’s Gold in Them Thar’ Hills!
One of the main reasons why Mars is considered an attractive location for a colony is the similarities it has to Earth. Like Earth, it’s a terrestrial (aka. rocky) planet that’s composed primarily of metals and silicate minerals, which are differentiated between a metallic core and a silicate mantle and crust.
AI, Genetics, and Health-Tech / Wearables — 21st Century Technologies For Healthy Companion Animals.
Ira Pastor ideaXme life sciences ambassador interviews Dr. Angela Hughes, the Global Scientific Advocacy Relations Senior Manager and Veterinary Geneticist at Mars Petcare.
The global petcare industry is significantly expanding, with North America sales alone expected to hit US $300 billion by 2025. And while we may associate the Mars Corporation, the world’s largest candy company, with leading confectionary brands like Milky Way, M&M’s, Skittles, Snickers, Twix, etc. They also happen to be one of the world’s largest companies in pet care as well.
Dr. Angela Hughes, is the Global Scientific Advocacy Relations Senior Manager & Veterinary Geneticist at Mars Petcare. Dr. Hughes is both Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, and a PhD with a focus in Canine Genetics, both from the University of California, Davis. Dr. Hughes also serves as Veterinary Genetics Research Manager of Wisdom Health, a business unit of Mars Petcare, which has developed state-of-the-art genetic tests for companion animals, leading to revolutionary personalized petcare. She also serves as a Veterinary Geneticist of Hughes Veterinary Consulting, focused on small animal and equine genetics and with a special interest in small animal reproduction and pediatrics.
Dr Hughes is published in multiple academic journals, including the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association and has contributed chapters for publication in Veterinary Clinics of North America Small Animal Practice: Pediatrics and Large Animal Internal Medicine.
On this ideaXme episode we will hear from Dr. Hughes about:
-Her background — how she developed an interest in veterinary medicine and animal genetics, and how she arrived at Mars Petcare.
-Her role as the senior manager of Global Scientific Advocacy Relations at Mars Petcare.
A recent study published Tuesday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine found that most Americans are still susceptible to COVID-19.
According to the study, researchers studied the blood samples of 177,919 Americans across the nation, D.C., and Puerto Rico between July 27 and Sept. 24. They found that fewer than 10% of the people had detectable COVID antibodies.
“In this U.S. nationwide seroprevalence cross-sectional study, we found that as of September 2020, most persons in the US did not have detectable SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, and seroprevalence estimates varied widely by jurisdiction,” the authors concluded. “Continued biweekly testing of sera collected by commercial laboratories will allow for assessment of the changing epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 in the U.S. in the coming months. Our results reinforce the need for continued public health preventive measures, including the use of face masks and social distancing, to limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the U.S.”
Now those islands are some of the only remaining corners of the globe where the coronavirus doesn’t exist, thanks to their total suspension of inbound tourism and other nonessential travel.
The islands of Samoa, which include the U.S. territory of American Samoa, closed to nonessential travel in March and have not recorded any confirmed coronavirus cases. To enter, U.S. citizens must hold permanent residency and request permission from the Samoan Health Ministry to travel on a commercial flight to Samoa through Auckland, New Zealand, before quarantining for 14 days.
We know that spending hour after hour sitting down isn’t good for us, but just how much exercise is needed to counteract the negative health impact of a day at a desk? A new study suggests about 30–40 minutes per day of building up a sweat should do it.
Up to 40 minutes of “moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity” every day is about the right amount to balance out 10 hours of sitting still, the research says – although any amount of exercise or even just standing up helps to some extent.
That’s based on a meta-analysis across nine previous studies, involving a total of 44,370 people in four different countries who were wearing some form of fitness tracker.
And, of course, there is patriarchy. In some parts of the world, women have no control over their health. It is the men – fathers, husbands and uncles – who decide what treatment “their” women receive. Humanitarians have seen men refuse emergency caesareans for their wives. They have also seen them refuse vaccinations for women whose bodies they effectively control.
The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine has launched the world on a pro-poor route to fair global vaccination against COVID-19. This is wonderful news. Now we need to address the challenges of a pro-poor roll-out. A major part of this must involve all States getting behind the COVAX effort to ensure fair global access to COVID-19 vaccination tools. It is good to see the UK co-leading on this with others.
Public health officials and drugmakers must be transparent about the side effects people may experience after getting their first shot of a coronavirus vaccine, doctors urged during a meeting Monday with CDC advisors as states prepare to distribute doses as early as next month.
Dr. Sandra Fryhofer of the American Medical Association noted that both Pfizer’s and Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccines require two doses at varying intervals. As a practicing physician, she said she worries whether her patients will come back for a second dose because of the potentially unpleasant side effects they may experience after the first shot.
Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and the CRISPR-associated gene Cas9 represent an invaluable system for the precise editing of genes in diverse species. The CRISPR/Cas9 system is an adaptive mechanism that enables bacteria and archaeal species to resist invading viruses and phages or plasmids. Compared with zinc finger nucleases and transcription activator-like effector nucleases, the CRISPR/Cas9 system has the advantage of requiring less time and effort. This efficient technology has been used in many species, including diverse arthropods that are relevant to agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and public health; however, there is no review that systematically summarizes its successful application in the editing of both insect and non-insect arthropod genomes. Thus, this paper seeks to provide a comprehensive and impartial overview of the progress of the CRISPR/Cas9 system in different arthropods, reviewing not only fundamental studies related to gene function exploration and experimental optimization but also applied studies in areas such as insect modification and pest control. In addition, we also describe the latest research advances regarding two novel CRISPR/Cas systems (CRISPR/Cpf1 and CRISPR/C2c2) and discuss their future prospects for becoming crucial technologies in arthropods.
Keywords: CRISPR/Cas9, insects, non-insect arthropods, research progress, prospects.
Genome editing technologies are useful for understanding the functions of target genes in diverse organisms (Segal and Meckler, 2013). Before the CRISPR/Cas9 system was discovered, zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs) and transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs) technologies were used for genome modification; both technologies can be used to design a DNA-binding domain that can effectively recognize and modify virtually any sequence, and both technologies have been widely applied in various fields (Gaj et al., 2013). ZFNs and TALENs, however, require the use of a variety of nucleases, and the off-target effects of nucleases can lead to cellular toxicity. In addition, methods using ZFNs and TALENs are complex and labor-intensive (Kanchiswamy et al., 2016). These two genome-editing systems have been recently replaced by the CRISPR/Cas9 system, which is far more convenient and effective than ZFNs and TALENs (Lander, 2016; Mohanraju et al., 2016; Wang H. et al., 2016; Westra et al.
