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"content": "\u003cp>It’s no secret that plastic pollution litters the streets, fouls rivers, and drifts across oceans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, it’s in people, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The average person in the U.S. consumes between 74,000 and 121,000 particles of plastic every year through food that they eat, the beverages that they drink, and the air that they breathe, according to new research from marine biologists at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Adults consume more than children, and men consume more than women, the researchers said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Plastics are everywhere,” Garth Covernton, a co-author on the paper. “We need to re-evaluate our relationship with plastics as a society. We’ve been irresponsibly using plastics for the last 70 or so years, and exponentially increasing our plastic production every single year.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to \u003ca href=\"https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700782\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">research\u003c/a> from UC Santa Barbara, published two years ago, half of all the plastic that ever existed was produced within the prior 13 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.9b01517\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">estimate\u003c/a> from the new study, which appeared last week in the scientific journal \u003cem>Environmental Science & Technology\u003c/em>, is based on 402 data points from 26 different studies that examined plastics in things that people might consume.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Studies show that these tiny particles, known as microplastic, have been found in ambient air, salt, sugar, bottled water, honey, seafood, and tap water — one study even found it in beer. Scientists define microplastics as any particles up to 5 millimeters across, or about the size of a single piece of confetti, though many are so small they’re invisible to the human eye.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To come up with his consumption estimates, Covernton correlated the documented presence of microplastics in food with the recommended dietary intake for people in the U.S., as determined by the federal Department of Health and Human Services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If anything, he says, it’s a low-ball estimate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists don’t know how much plastic is in red meat, poultry, grains, dairy, fruits and vegetables, so Covernton’s estimate accounts for only 15% of the average person’s caloric intake. He says the actual amount is likely far higher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think we need to start really reconsidering whether we want to keep making this huge amount of plastic which continually contaminates our environment and our food,” Covernton said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The study draws a “rational estimate in terms of [plastic consumption] count” for the average American, according to John Torkelson, a chemical engineer with a focus on plastics at Northwestern University , who was not involved in the study. “They did a service.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, some of the study’s research conclusions might be too strong, says Torkelson, who is involved in a new plastic and public health \u003ca href=\"https://isen.northwestern.edu/program-on-plastics-ecosystems-and-public-health\">program\u003c/a> at the \u003ca href=\"https://isen.northwestern.edu/program-on-plastics-ecosystems-and-public-health\">Institute for Sustainability and Energy\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, better recycling programs might be a more effective way to reduce human consumption of microplastic, rather than reducing plastic production and use, as suggested in the paper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, Torkelson suggests that the \u003ca href=\"https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/garbagepatch.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Great Pacific Garbage Patch\u003c/a> is not so much an issue of general use plastic, “but how waste is handled in places like the Philippines, Indonesia, China, Vietnam and Bangladesh.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though he agrees that plastic in the ocean is a significant problem, Torkelson says more research is needed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last week, marine biologists in California published a separate study that found that Monterey Bay is \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1943007/the-new-pollution-monterey-bay-is-swimming-in-microplastic\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">swimming in microplastic\u003c/a> and suggests that the deep sea, the Earth’s largest habitat, could be its biggest \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101871514/study-monterey-bay-infested-by-microplastic-pollution\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">repository of small plastic-debris\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2017, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfei.org/projects/microplastic-pollution#sthash.HVX6YVS4.35Vdgyzi.dpbs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Microplastic Project\u003c/a> at the San Francisco Estuary Institute \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1915692/hunting-for-plastic-in-californias-protected-ocean-waters\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">found\u003c/a> that wastewater treatment plants discharged 7 million plastic particles into San Francisco Bay each day, possibly more than any other major water body in the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Plastic in the ocean is a particular problem because it’s consumed by mussels, sponges and other \u003ca href=\"https://www.britannica.com/science/filter-feeding\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">filter feeders\u003c/a>. The plastic is indistinguishable from the food normally consumed by these small ocean creatures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From there, plastics can enter the larger food web. In 2014, \u003ca href=\"/www.expeditionmed.eu/fr/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Van-Cauwenberghe-2014-microplastics-in-cultured-shellfish1.pdf\">one study\u003c/a> found an average portion of oysters from the Atlantic Ocean contains around 50 plastic bits, while mussels from a farm in Germany had 90.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Covernton’s paper mostly focused on the American diet, but it notes that seafood is a significant source of ingested plastic for people anywhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That could mean that in certain parts of the world where seafood is a much greater part of the diet — Japan, or other parts of Asia — there could be a greater impact,” Torkelson said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But is all that plastic harmful to humans? Covernton says more research is needed on that, as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We don’t fully understand it yet,” he says. “It’s early days in terms of the risk to human health.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED Fuhs Fellow Jazmine Mejia Munoz contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to \u003ca href=\"https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700782\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">research\u003c/a> from UC Santa Barbara, published two years ago, half of all the plastic that ever existed was produced within the prior 13 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.9b01517\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">estimate\u003c/a> from the new study, which appeared last week in the scientific journal \u003cem>Environmental Science & Technology\u003c/em>, is based on 402 data points from 26 different studies that examined plastics in things that people might consume.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Studies show that these tiny particles, known as microplastic, have been found in ambient air, salt, sugar, bottled water, honey, seafood, and tap water — one study even found it in beer. Scientists define microplastics as any particles up to 5 millimeters across, or about the size of a single piece of confetti, though many are so small they’re invisible to the human eye.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To come up with his consumption estimates, Covernton correlated the documented presence of microplastics in food with the recommended dietary intake for people in the U.S., as determined by the federal Department of Health and Human Services.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If anything, he says, it’s a low-ball estimate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists don’t know how much plastic is in red meat, poultry, grains, dairy, fruits and vegetables, so Covernton’s estimate accounts for only 15% of the average person’s caloric intake. He says the actual amount is likely far higher.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think we need to start really reconsidering whether we want to keep making this huge amount of plastic which continually contaminates our environment and our food,” Covernton said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The study draws a “rational estimate in terms of [plastic consumption] count” for the average American, according to John Torkelson, a chemical engineer with a focus on plastics at Northwestern University , who was not involved in the study. “They did a service.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, some of the study’s research conclusions might be too strong, says Torkelson, who is involved in a new plastic and public health \u003ca href=\"https://isen.northwestern.edu/program-on-plastics-ecosystems-and-public-health\">program\u003c/a> at the \u003ca href=\"https://isen.northwestern.edu/program-on-plastics-ecosystems-and-public-health\">Institute for Sustainability and Energy\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, better recycling programs might be a more effective way to reduce human consumption of microplastic, rather than reducing plastic production and use, as suggested in the paper.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, Torkelson suggests that the \u003ca href=\"https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/garbagepatch.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Great Pacific Garbage Patch\u003c/a> is not so much an issue of general use plastic, “but how waste is handled in places like the Philippines, Indonesia, China, Vietnam and Bangladesh.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though he agrees that plastic in the ocean is a significant problem, Torkelson says more research is needed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last week, marine biologists in California published a separate study that found that Monterey Bay is \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1943007/the-new-pollution-monterey-bay-is-swimming-in-microplastic\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">swimming in microplastic\u003c/a> and suggests that the deep sea, the Earth’s largest habitat, could be its biggest \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101871514/study-monterey-bay-infested-by-microplastic-pollution\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">repository of small plastic-debris\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2017, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfei.org/projects/microplastic-pollution#sthash.HVX6YVS4.35Vdgyzi.dpbs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Microplastic Project\u003c/a> at the San Francisco Estuary Institute \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1915692/hunting-for-plastic-in-californias-protected-ocean-waters\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">found\u003c/a> that wastewater treatment plants discharged 7 million plastic particles into San Francisco Bay each day, possibly more than any other major water body in the U.S.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Plastic in the ocean is a particular problem because it’s consumed by mussels, sponges and other \u003ca href=\"https://www.britannica.com/science/filter-feeding\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">filter feeders\u003c/a>. The plastic is indistinguishable from the food normally consumed by these small ocean creatures.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From there, plastics can enter the larger food web. In 2014, \u003ca href=\"/www.expeditionmed.eu/fr/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Van-Cauwenberghe-2014-microplastics-in-cultured-shellfish1.pdf\">one study\u003c/a> found an average portion of oysters from the Atlantic Ocean contains around 50 plastic bits, while mussels from a farm in Germany had 90.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Covernton’s paper mostly focused on the American diet, but it notes that seafood is a significant source of ingested plastic for people anywhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That could mean that in certain parts of the world where seafood is a much greater part of the diet — Japan, or other parts of Asia — there could be a greater impact,” Torkelson said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But is all that plastic harmful to humans? Covernton says more research is needed on that, as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We don’t fully understand it yet,” he says. “It’s early days in terms of the risk to human health.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED Fuhs Fellow Jazmine Mejia Munoz contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941857\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1941857\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/wormlions_20170812_11-800x533.jpg\" alt=\"wormlions\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/wormlions_20170812_11-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/wormlions_20170812_11-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/wormlions_20170812_11-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/wormlions_20170812_11-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/wormlions_20170812_11-1200x800.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/wormlions_20170812_11-1920x1280.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/wormlions_20170812_11.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An assortment of tiny wormlions. \u003ccite>(Joyce Gross)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[dl_subscribe]Ominous creatures that lurk deep underground in the desert, like the sandworms in the classic science fiction novel \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(novel)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“Dune,”\u003c/a> aren’t just make-believe. For ants and other prey, wormlions are a terrifying reality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941929\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1941929\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/joyce_20140719_03-800x980.jpg\" alt=\"Joyce Gross collecting beetles.\" width=\"800\" height=\"980\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/joyce_20140719_03-800x980.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/joyce_20140719_03-160x196.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/joyce_20140719_03-768x941.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/joyce_20140719_03-1020x1250.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/joyce_20140719_03-979x1200.jpg 979w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/joyce_20140719_03.jpg 1671w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Joyce Gross collecting beetles. \u003ccite>(Jae Sullivan)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>While quite small—they can grow up to an inch—wormlions are fly larvae that curl up their bodies like slingshots. Usually found under rock or log overhangs in dry, sandy landscapes, they’ll energetically fling soil, sand and pebbles out of the way to dig pit traps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once an unlucky critter falls in, wormlions move at lightning speed and quickly wrap their bodies around their victims. Squeezing them like boa constrictors, they also inject them with a paralyzing venom. They feed this way for several years, until they transform into adults.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Joyce Gross, a computer programmer for the \u003ca href=\"https://bnhm.berkeley.edu/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">UC Berkeley Natural History Museums\u003c/a>, is fascinated by their unique hunting behavior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They have such a weird life history,” she said. “They’re the only flies that dig pits like this, and wait for prey to fall in, just like antlions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gross, an avid photographer and naturalist in her spare time, has been studying these insects for over three years. Wormlions first appeared on her radar while collaborating with several entomologists to update Jerry Powell and Charles Hogue’s “\u003ca href=\"https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520037823/california-insects\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">California Insects\u003c/a>” field guide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941856\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1941856\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/wormlion_number_13_20180416_25-800x524.jpg\" alt=\"adult wormlion\" width=\"800\" height=\"524\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/wormlion_number_13_20180416_25-800x524.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/wormlion_number_13_20180416_25-160x105.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/wormlion_number_13_20180416_25-768x503.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/wormlion_number_13_20180416_25-1020x668.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/wormlion_number_13_20180416_25-1200x786.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/wormlion_number_13_20180416_25-1920x1258.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/wormlion_number_13_20180416_25.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An adult wormlion emerges from its pupal stage as a fly. \u003ccite>(Joyce Gross)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Gross has been collecting, rearing and photographing wormlions at her home in order to add both research and images to the next edition of the book. She’ll fill a plastic vial with ants from her backyard and will feed them regularly, keeping careful records of their eating patterns.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve had animals all of my life, usually not insects,” said Gross. “Most people feel very bad that I don’t have a dog, but they don’t understand how I can enjoy my other pets. I do like feeding them. I have to admit there’s something about them waiting there and knowing that they’re hungry. It’s sort of like throwing a treat to my dog, but I’m tossing in an ant for my wormlions. They’re pretty ferocious for such tiny things. It amazes me that they don’t seem to get injured by these ants.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941854\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1941854\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/IMG_0984-800x1067.jpg\" alt=\"wormlions\" width=\"800\" height=\"1067\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/IMG_0984-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/IMG_0984-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/IMG_0984-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/IMG_0984-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/IMG_0984-900x1200.jpg 900w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/IMG_0984-1920x2560.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/IMG_0984.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Joyce Gross has been rearing an extensive collection of wormlions in her home for several years. \u003ccite>(Jenny Oh/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>While she’s always been intrigued by the natural world, insects weren’t always her main focus. “I got interested in entomology partly because after digital cameras came around, it became really easy to photograph and learn about them. I was also photographing birds, reptiles and amphibians, but then insects really caught my attention. I like the variety of life histories, and I really like things that people don’t know as much about. There’s lots of birders. But with insects, there are so many of them and relatively few entomologists compared to the numbers of insects.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Plus, it’s just fascinating learning about them. All the weird things that they do. And I love seeing these little tiny things blown up huge. They’re pretty amazing-looking creatures, some of them. That’s the photography aspect. You can also use that to ID things and learn about them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Informal contributions to research are integral to ongoing citizen science projects, such as \u003ca href=\"http://www.planetary.org/explore/projects/seti/seti-at-home.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">SETI@home\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.inaturalist.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">iNaturalist\u003c/a>. But Kip Will, an \u003ca href=\"https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/faculty/kipling-will\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">associate professor at UC Berkeley\u003c/a> who is leading the effort to update the “California Insects” guide, puts Gross in her own category.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve never thought of Joyce as a volunteer or a citizen scientist,” Will said. “She is a co-equal in the new edition of the field guide. Though she isn’t responsible for the text, she is handling all the images and most of the field work.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She knows the natural history of local insects, in general, about as well as anyone,” he added. “A lot of people benefit from her efforts and generosity with images and observations she posts to places like \u003ca href=\"https://bugguide.net/node/view/15740\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">BugGuide\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://calphotos.berkeley.edu/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">CalPhotos\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941855\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1941855\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Vermileo_20180624_06-800x508.jpg\" alt=\"An adult wormlion.\" width=\"800\" height=\"508\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Vermileo_20180624_06-800x508.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Vermileo_20180624_06-160x102.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Vermileo_20180624_06-768x488.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Vermileo_20180624_06-1020x648.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Vermileo_20180624_06-1200x762.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Vermileo_20180624_06-1920x1219.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Vermileo_20180624_06.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An adult wormlion. \u003ccite>(Joyce Gross)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>With the 30 or so wormlions that she has gathered in the field, Gross hopes they’ll mature into flies and lay eggs so she can document an entire life cycle. UC Berkeley’s \u003ca href=\"https://essig.berkeley.edu/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Essig Museum of Entomology\u003c/a> receives some of her specimens for its archives, and she said she may eventually publish her research after she’s amassed more data about the lives of wormlions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s just exciting to me learning about all these insects I didn’t know about,” Gross said. “There are also a lot of questions and mysteries, but what we do know is interesting. Sharing stuff that I’ve learned either through photos or just observations online, that’s fun, too.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Ominous creatures that lurk deep underground in the desert, like the sandworms in the classic science fiction novel \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(novel)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“Dune,”\u003c/a> aren’t just make-believe. For ants and other prey, wormlions are a terrifying reality.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941929\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1941929\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/joyce_20140719_03-800x980.jpg\" alt=\"Joyce Gross collecting beetles.\" width=\"800\" height=\"980\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/joyce_20140719_03-800x980.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/joyce_20140719_03-160x196.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/joyce_20140719_03-768x941.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/joyce_20140719_03-1020x1250.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/joyce_20140719_03-979x1200.jpg 979w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/joyce_20140719_03.jpg 1671w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Joyce Gross collecting beetles. \u003ccite>(Jae Sullivan)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>While quite small—they can grow up to an inch—wormlions are fly larvae that curl up their bodies like slingshots. Usually found under rock or log overhangs in dry, sandy landscapes, they’ll energetically fling soil, sand and pebbles out of the way to dig pit traps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once an unlucky critter falls in, wormlions move at lightning speed and quickly wrap their bodies around their victims. Squeezing them like boa constrictors, they also inject them with a paralyzing venom. They feed this way for several years, until they transform into adults.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Joyce Gross, a computer programmer for the \u003ca href=\"https://bnhm.berkeley.edu/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">UC Berkeley Natural History Museums\u003c/a>, is fascinated by their unique hunting behavior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They have such a weird life history,” she said. “They’re the only flies that dig pits like this, and wait for prey to fall in, just like antlions.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gross, an avid photographer and naturalist in her spare time, has been studying these insects for over three years. Wormlions first appeared on her radar while collaborating with several entomologists to update Jerry Powell and Charles Hogue’s “\u003ca href=\"https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520037823/california-insects\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">California Insects\u003c/a>” field guide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941856\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1941856\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/wormlion_number_13_20180416_25-800x524.jpg\" alt=\"adult wormlion\" width=\"800\" height=\"524\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/wormlion_number_13_20180416_25-800x524.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/wormlion_number_13_20180416_25-160x105.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/wormlion_number_13_20180416_25-768x503.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/wormlion_number_13_20180416_25-1020x668.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/wormlion_number_13_20180416_25-1200x786.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/wormlion_number_13_20180416_25-1920x1258.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/wormlion_number_13_20180416_25.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An adult wormlion emerges from its pupal stage as a fly. \u003ccite>(Joyce Gross)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Gross has been collecting, rearing and photographing wormlions at her home in order to add both research and images to the next edition of the book. She’ll fill a plastic vial with ants from her backyard and will feed them regularly, keeping careful records of their eating patterns.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve had animals all of my life, usually not insects,” said Gross. “Most people feel very bad that I don’t have a dog, but they don’t understand how I can enjoy my other pets. I do like feeding them. I have to admit there’s something about them waiting there and knowing that they’re hungry. It’s sort of like throwing a treat to my dog, but I’m tossing in an ant for my wormlions. They’re pretty ferocious for such tiny things. It amazes me that they don’t seem to get injured by these ants.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941854\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1941854\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/IMG_0984-800x1067.jpg\" alt=\"wormlions\" width=\"800\" height=\"1067\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/IMG_0984-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/IMG_0984-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/IMG_0984-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/IMG_0984-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/IMG_0984-900x1200.jpg 900w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/IMG_0984-1920x2560.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/IMG_0984.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Joyce Gross has been rearing an extensive collection of wormlions in her home for several years. \u003ccite>(Jenny Oh/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>While she’s always been intrigued by the natural world, insects weren’t always her main focus. “I got interested in entomology partly because after digital cameras came around, it became really easy to photograph and learn about them. I was also photographing birds, reptiles and amphibians, but then insects really caught my attention. I like the variety of life histories, and I really like things that people don’t know as much about. There’s lots of birders. But with insects, there are so many of them and relatively few entomologists compared to the numbers of insects.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Plus, it’s just fascinating learning about them. All the weird things that they do. And I love seeing these little tiny things blown up huge. They’re pretty amazing-looking creatures, some of them. That’s the photography aspect. You can also use that to ID things and learn about them.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Informal contributions to research are integral to ongoing citizen science projects, such as \u003ca href=\"http://www.planetary.org/explore/projects/seti/seti-at-home.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">SETI@home\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.inaturalist.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">iNaturalist\u003c/a>. But Kip Will, an \u003ca href=\"https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/faculty/kipling-will\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">associate professor at UC Berkeley\u003c/a> who is leading the effort to update the “California Insects” guide, puts Gross in her own category.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve never thought of Joyce as a volunteer or a citizen scientist,” Will said. “She is a co-equal in the new edition of the field guide. Though she isn’t responsible for the text, she is handling all the images and most of the field work.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She knows the natural history of local insects, in general, about as well as anyone,” he added. “A lot of people benefit from her efforts and generosity with images and observations she posts to places like \u003ca href=\"https://bugguide.net/node/view/15740\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">BugGuide\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://calphotos.berkeley.edu/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">CalPhotos\u003c/a>.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941855\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1941855\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Vermileo_20180624_06-800x508.jpg\" alt=\"An adult wormlion.\" width=\"800\" height=\"508\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Vermileo_20180624_06-800x508.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Vermileo_20180624_06-160x102.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Vermileo_20180624_06-768x488.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Vermileo_20180624_06-1020x648.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Vermileo_20180624_06-1200x762.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Vermileo_20180624_06-1920x1219.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Vermileo_20180624_06.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An adult wormlion. \u003ccite>(Joyce Gross)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>With the 30 or so wormlions that she has gathered in the field, Gross hopes they’ll mature into flies and lay eggs so she can document an entire life cycle. UC Berkeley’s \u003ca href=\"https://essig.berkeley.edu/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Essig Museum of Entomology\u003c/a> receives some of her specimens for its archives, and she said she may eventually publish her research after she’s amassed more data about the lives of wormlions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s just exciting to me learning about all these insects I didn’t know about,” Gross said. “There are also a lot of questions and mysteries, but what we do know is interesting. Sharing stuff that I’ve learned either through photos or just observations online, that’s fun, too.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The New Pollution: Monterey Bay is Swimming in Microplastic",
"headTitle": "The New Pollution: Monterey Bay is Swimming in Microplastic | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiH3f6AKFbc]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monterey Bay — long considered an environmental success story–is now facing a new threat: tiny particles of plastic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And scientists are finding that it’s far worse than they suspected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bay is a national marine sanctuary, a place where environmental protections and sustainable fishing have transformed what was once a stew of dumped waste products from local sardine canneries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Long gone is the industrial filth that John Steinbeck described in his Depression-era novel Cannery Row. Now, the bay is cleaned up and home to seals, otters, and the occasional humpback whale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is not where you would expect to find tons of marine pollution,” said Kyle Van Houtan, who oversees research for the Monterey Bay Aquarium.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But that’s exactly what researchers found when they sent a robot trolling into the water. Van Houtan’s team found microplastics in quantities much higher than previously expected at nearly every level of the water column, according to a paper \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-44117-2\">published\u003c/a> this week in \u003cem>Scientific Reports \u003c/em>from the publishers of \u003cem>Nature\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This suggests that the deep sea, the Earth’s largest habitat, could be its “biggest repository of small plastic debris,” said Anela Choy, the report’s lead author, in a statement released with the study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At about a quarter-mile below the surface they found plastic particles at concentrations four times that near the surface or along the sea floor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most of the samples were collected in Monterey Canyon, about 15 miles off the coast. The team took a smaller number of samples from Moss Landing Harbor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Previous studies focused on plastic on the surface of the ocean, in places such as the much-publicized mid-ocean vortex known as the Great Pacific garbage patch, and on the sea floor. But Scientists have recently begun to focus on degraded motes of microplastics floating around in the water column.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To marine life, scientists say the plastic is indistinguishable from the organic material known as “marine snow,” commonly eaten by small crabs and filter feeders, which consume the plastic and introduce the pollution into the larger food web.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our study demonstrates a link between microplastics distributed across the water column and entry of this foreign material into marine food webs,” said Choy, a marine biologist with Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The paper is a joint study between Scripps, Monterey Bay Aquarium, and its sister organization, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The plastic particles are not likely local, but the accreted debris from plastics that have been in the ocean for years, maybe decades. Much of it was probably once single-use plastic that has broken down over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are finding material that circulated throughout perhaps the entire North Pacific,” Van Houtan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Using robots that filtered seawater to capture particles smaller than 5 millimeters in size, they collected repeated samples at a range of depths, from just below the surface to 3,000 feet below.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1943012\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1943012\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/plastic-sampler-both-800x492.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"492\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/plastic-sampler-both-800x492.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/plastic-sampler-both-160x98.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/plastic-sampler-both-768x473.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/plastic-sampler-both-1020x628.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/plastic-sampler-both-1200x738.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/plastic-sampler-both.jpg 1755w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute engineers spent considerable time and effort developing a device to collect and filter microplastic deep below the surface of Monterey Bay. \u003ccite>(Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“In order for us to access these areas, we rely on robotics to do that work,” said Kakani Katija, an engineer with MBARI. “We were able to find microplastics even in the deep sea.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Removing the plastic from the ocean is a real challenge, Katija said, adding that a solution might be to prevent more of it from polluting the water in the first place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California lawmakers are considering legislation to phase out the sale and distribution of some plastics. The companion bills, \u003ca href=\"http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billStatusClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200SB54\">SB 54\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billStatusClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB1080\">AB 1080, \u003c/a> target a wide range of single-use plastics, such as utensils, containers, and other items that can’t be recycled. The bills \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1942666/which-environmental-bills-made-it-to-the-next-legislative-round\">moved forward\u003c/a> in the Legislature last month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I can’t think of a dive that I’ve been on that I haven’t seen some form of plastic, whether it be plastic bottles, or plastic bags,” said Amanda Kahn, who studies deep sea sponges in Monterey Bay as a postdoctoral fellow for MBARI. “One time we saw a plastic lawn chair.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED Fuhs Fellow Jazmine Mejia Munoz contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/LiH3f6AKFbc'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/LiH3f6AKFbc'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Monterey Bay — long considered an environmental success story–is now facing a new threat: tiny particles of plastic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And scientists are finding that it’s far worse than they suspected.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bay is a national marine sanctuary, a place where environmental protections and sustainable fishing have transformed what was once a stew of dumped waste products from local sardine canneries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Long gone is the industrial filth that John Steinbeck described in his Depression-era novel Cannery Row. Now, the bay is cleaned up and home to seals, otters, and the occasional humpback whale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is not where you would expect to find tons of marine pollution,” said Kyle Van Houtan, who oversees research for the Monterey Bay Aquarium.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But that’s exactly what researchers found when they sent a robot trolling into the water. Van Houtan’s team found microplastics in quantities much higher than previously expected at nearly every level of the water column, according to a paper \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-44117-2\">published\u003c/a> this week in \u003cem>Scientific Reports \u003c/em>from the publishers of \u003cem>Nature\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This suggests that the deep sea, the Earth’s largest habitat, could be its “biggest repository of small plastic debris,” said Anela Choy, the report’s lead author, in a statement released with the study.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At about a quarter-mile below the surface they found plastic particles at concentrations four times that near the surface or along the sea floor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most of the samples were collected in Monterey Canyon, about 15 miles off the coast. The team took a smaller number of samples from Moss Landing Harbor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Previous studies focused on plastic on the surface of the ocean, in places such as the much-publicized mid-ocean vortex known as the Great Pacific garbage patch, and on the sea floor. But Scientists have recently begun to focus on degraded motes of microplastics floating around in the water column.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To marine life, scientists say the plastic is indistinguishable from the organic material known as “marine snow,” commonly eaten by small crabs and filter feeders, which consume the plastic and introduce the pollution into the larger food web.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our study demonstrates a link between microplastics distributed across the water column and entry of this foreign material into marine food webs,” said Choy, a marine biologist with Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The paper is a joint study between Scripps, Monterey Bay Aquarium, and its sister organization, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The plastic particles are not likely local, but the accreted debris from plastics that have been in the ocean for years, maybe decades. Much of it was probably once single-use plastic that has broken down over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We are finding material that circulated throughout perhaps the entire North Pacific,” Van Houtan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Using robots that filtered seawater to capture particles smaller than 5 millimeters in size, they collected repeated samples at a range of depths, from just below the surface to 3,000 feet below.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1943012\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1943012\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/plastic-sampler-both-800x492.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"492\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/plastic-sampler-both-800x492.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/plastic-sampler-both-160x98.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/plastic-sampler-both-768x473.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/plastic-sampler-both-1020x628.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/plastic-sampler-both-1200x738.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/06/plastic-sampler-both.jpg 1755w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute engineers spent considerable time and effort developing a device to collect and filter microplastic deep below the surface of Monterey Bay. \u003ccite>(Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“In order for us to access these areas, we rely on robotics to do that work,” said Kakani Katija, an engineer with MBARI. “We were able to find microplastics even in the deep sea.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Removing the plastic from the ocean is a real challenge, Katija said, adding that a solution might be to prevent more of it from polluting the water in the first place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California lawmakers are considering legislation to phase out the sale and distribution of some plastics. The companion bills, \u003ca href=\"http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billStatusClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200SB54\">SB 54\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billStatusClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB1080\">AB 1080, \u003c/a> target a wide range of single-use plastics, such as utensils, containers, and other items that can’t be recycled. The bills \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1942666/which-environmental-bills-made-it-to-the-next-legislative-round\">moved forward\u003c/a> in the Legislature last month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I can’t think of a dive that I’ve been on that I haven’t seen some form of plastic, whether it be plastic bottles, or plastic bags,” said Amanda Kahn, who studies deep sea sponges in Monterey Bay as a postdoctoral fellow for MBARI. “One time we saw a plastic lawn chair.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED Fuhs Fellow Jazmine Mejia Munoz contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Here's How We Now Know a 3-Million-Year-Old Mouse Had Red Fur",
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"content": "\u003cp>Scientists can now “see” more accurately what long-extinct species looked like.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Researchers from the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park and the University of Manchester have created a chemical image of a 3-million year-old mouse, published Tuesday in \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10087-2?utm_source=Media+List+%28Hand-Curated%29&utm_campaign=d51fa26100-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_05_20_04_57&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2da964dfb8-d51fa26100-41843785\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Nature Communications\u003c/em>\u003c/a>.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The mouse doesn’t look too different from those scurrying around today. The major discovery was its coloring: It \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> had red fur and a white stomach.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Paleontology has concerned itself with what you can see with your naked eye,” said Nick Edwards, a SLAC researcher and co-author of the paper. “That was all we had as a tool for many years, decades even.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But now, using X-ray fluorescence imaging, researchers can map elements like zinc and sulfur that function as color markers. Elements have a unique amount of energy, or wavelength, they emit when bombarded with light. Based on the location of those elements in fossils, scientists can reconstruct the animal’s coloring in real life.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The technique could lead to some new discoveries, Edwards said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s actually that chemistry that could tell us about another level of ancient life, as opposed to just, ‘Here’s how it looked, here’s how it may have moved.’ It’s really like how it may have functioned at the biological level.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The experiment marked the first time scientists have been able to detect a chemical signature of pheomelanin — the same red form of melanin present in animals’ red hair today — in an extinct species.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1942148\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1942148 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/mighty_mouse_fossil_leadart_final-1020x490.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"307\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/mighty_mouse_fossil_leadart_final-1020x490.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/mighty_mouse_fossil_leadart_final-160x77.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/mighty_mouse_fossil_leadart_final-800x384.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/mighty_mouse_fossil_leadart_final-768x369.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/mighty_mouse_fossil_leadart_final-1200x576.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/mighty_mouse_fossil_leadart_final-1920x922.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/mighty_mouse_fossil_leadart_final.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">SLAC researchers imaged the 3-million-year-old mouse. Using elemental markers like zinc and sulfur, they found it likely had red fur and a white stomach.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The technique has some limitations. Edwards explained it can’t use elements to pick up bright blues, yellows, greens and pinks. Only melanin pigments incorporate trace metals into their structure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SLAC and University of Manchester researchers are also using the method to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1921055/hunting-for-historical-buried-treasure-x-rays-mark-the-spot\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">uncover the original writing\u003c/a> on an ancient medical manuscript. Beyond that, the same approach may be used to investigate how pollution moves deep underground over thousands to millions of years, Edwards says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In small doses, elements like zinc, copper and magnesium are harmless. But in larger doses, these same elements can be harmful to human health. So the team is exploring how they could use 3D imaging and X-ray fluorescence to investigate the paths metals take through layers of soil and rock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we go and dump some organic materials and chemicals into the ground, how are those sort of taken up?” Edwards said. \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“Understanding how this kind of matter degrades and lasts over tens of millions of years is pretty important.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Scientists can now “see” more accurately what long-extinct species looked like.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Researchers from the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park and the University of Manchester have created a chemical image of a 3-million year-old mouse, published Tuesday in \u003ca href=\"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10087-2?utm_source=Media+List+%28Hand-Curated%29&utm_campaign=d51fa26100-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_05_20_04_57&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2da964dfb8-d51fa26100-41843785\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cem>Nature Communications\u003c/em>\u003c/a>.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The mouse doesn’t look too different from those scurrying around today. The major discovery was its coloring: It \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> had red fur and a white stomach.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Paleontology has concerned itself with what you can see with your naked eye,” said Nick Edwards, a SLAC researcher and co-author of the paper. “That was all we had as a tool for many years, decades even.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But now, using X-ray fluorescence imaging, researchers can map elements like zinc and sulfur that function as color markers. Elements have a unique amount of energy, or wavelength, they emit when bombarded with light. Based on the location of those elements in fossils, scientists can reconstruct the animal’s coloring in real life.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The technique could lead to some new discoveries, Edwards said.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s actually that chemistry that could tell us about another level of ancient life, as opposed to just, ‘Here’s how it looked, here’s how it may have moved.’ It’s really like how it may have functioned at the biological level.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The experiment marked the first time scientists have been able to detect a chemical signature of pheomelanin — the same red form of melanin present in animals’ red hair today — in an extinct species.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1942148\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1942148 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/mighty_mouse_fossil_leadart_final-1020x490.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"307\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/mighty_mouse_fossil_leadart_final-1020x490.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/mighty_mouse_fossil_leadart_final-160x77.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/mighty_mouse_fossil_leadart_final-800x384.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/mighty_mouse_fossil_leadart_final-768x369.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/mighty_mouse_fossil_leadart_final-1200x576.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/mighty_mouse_fossil_leadart_final-1920x922.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/mighty_mouse_fossil_leadart_final.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">SLAC researchers imaged the 3-million-year-old mouse. Using elemental markers like zinc and sulfur, they found it likely had red fur and a white stomach.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The technique has some limitations. Edwards explained it can’t use elements to pick up bright blues, yellows, greens and pinks. Only melanin pigments incorporate trace metals into their structure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SLAC and University of Manchester researchers are also using the method to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1921055/hunting-for-historical-buried-treasure-x-rays-mark-the-spot\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">uncover the original writing\u003c/a> on an ancient medical manuscript. Beyond that, the same approach may be used to investigate how pollution moves deep underground over thousands to millions of years, Edwards says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In small doses, elements like zinc, copper and magnesium are harmless. But in larger doses, these same elements can be harmful to human health. So the team is exploring how they could use 3D imaging and X-ray fluorescence to investigate the paths metals take through layers of soil and rock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we go and dump some organic materials and chemicals into the ground, how are those sort of taken up?” Edwards said. \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">“Understanding how this kind of matter degrades and lasts over tens of millions of years is pretty important.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dl_subscribe]I hate to break this to you, but you almost certainly have tiny mites living in the pores in your face right now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re called Demodex. And pretty much every adult human alive has a population of these mites living on them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also called eyelash mites, they’re too small to see with the naked eye. They’re mostly transparent, and at about .3 millimeters long, it would take about five face adult mites laid end to end to stretch across the head of a pin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They look like kind of like stubby little worms,” said Michelle Trautwein, an entomologist at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trautwein studies our relationship with these microscopic stowaways by looking at their DNA. Her findings so far show that people in different parts of the world have different face mites living in the skin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They tell a story of your own ancestry and also a story of more ancient human history and migration,” said Trautwein.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941539\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_MichelleTrautwein_microscope.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941539\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_MichelleTrautwein_microscope.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michelle Trautwein of the California Academy of Sciences studies face mites using microscopes and genetic testing. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We use a little spoon and scrape it across the kind of greasier parts of someone’s face — which isn’t as bad as it sounds,” said Trautwein.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once she has collected the samples, she takes them back to the lab to look at the genetics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trautwein has found DNA evidence of face mites on every one of more than 2,000 people she has tested, including tourists from all around the world who make their way to the California Academy of Sciences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“No one is thrilled at the initial notion that they have arachnids on their face,” Trautwein said. “But people are often curious — even in their revulsion.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But how could these creatures live on so many people and still go unnoticed?\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941533\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1941533 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-1020x574.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-1200x675.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Face mites make their home in the follicles found at the root of the peach fuzz that covers most human skin. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Look closely and you’ll see that in addition to the more obvious body and head hair, human skin is covered in a thin, barely visible layer of peach fuzz called vellus hairs. There are a few notable exceptions, such as the palms of our hands and soles of our feet, but other than that our entire bodies are covered in that fuzz. The shaft of each one of those tiny hairs grows out of its own follicle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Face mites spend their days face-down inside your hair follicles nestled up against the hair shaft.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They eat sebum, that greasy oil your skin makes to protect itself and keep it from drying out. The sebum is produced in sebaceous glands, which empty into the hair follicles, coating both the hair shaft and face mites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s why the greasiest parts of your body — like around the eyes, nose and mouth — likely harbor a higher concentration of mites than other areas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They live about two weeks. They spend most of their time tucked inside our pores. But while we’re sleeping, they crawl out onto the surface of our skin to mate before crawling back into our pores to lay their eggs. Fun!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since they live inside your pores, you can’t scrub them off by washing. It’s basically impossible to get rid of all of your face mites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So how does Trautwein study them? With glue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941540\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_SlideCollection_LindsayPalaima.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941540\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_SlideCollection_LindsayPalaima.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lindsay Palaima bravely volunteers to have a slide covered in glue stuck to her forehead in order to capture face mites growing in her pores. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I actually put glue on a glass microscope slide and stick it onto a person’s forehead,” she said. “Then I slowly peel it off. I look under a microscope for mites that are stuck in the follicles that stick up from the thin layer of skin that got peeled off.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It can be pretty addictive and exciting,” she added. “It’s sort of a meditative process of looking through this microforest of follicles and hairs, and looking for just the right potential movement or shape.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941538\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_InFollicle.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1941538 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_InFollicle.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Demodex face mite seen writhing around in the root of a human hair follicle, observed under a microscope. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>These Demodex face mites got their name from the Greek words for “fat” and “boring worm,” but they’re not really worms at all. They’re actually arachnids — related to ticks — and more distantly to spiders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most people have face mites on them and never notice. It seems that our immune system is able to keep their numbers in check. But some people can experience problems with them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you tell patients that they have face mites, first of all, they freak out,” said Dr. Kanade Shinkai, a dermatologist at UCSF.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shinkai occasionally treats patients who have an overload of face mites, which results in a condition called demodicosis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is a very particular look to people suffering from demodicosis. We call it the Demodex frost,” she said. “It’s sort of a white sheen on the skin. And if you look really closely, you can see coming out of every pore. If you scrape those pores, you can see it frothing with little Demodex face mites.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a pretty rare condition and it’s often connected to a change in someone’s immune system, such as receiving immunosuppressive drugs after transplant surgery, chemotherapy or immunodeficiency diseases like HIV.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Demodicosis can also be triggered by local suppression of the immune system, like when itch-relieving hydrocortisone cream is used on the face.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When it does happen, demodicosis usually comes on fast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Patients almost universally describe this explosive development of pustules like whiteheads on their face. It’s really dramatic,” Shinkai said. “And what’s really dramatic about it is that they’re often fine the day before, and then they develop it, overnight.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But for the vast majority of people, face mites are nothing to worry about. While some studies have found loose connections between Demodex and diseases like rosacea, the evidence hasn’t shown a strong link.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What’s really confusing is that if you go into your office and scrape everyone’s face, you would find Demodex probably on everybody,” Shinkai said. “And people who have low burden of Demodex may have no or very severe disease and vice versa.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trautwein also sees face mites as more of a source of interest than fear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re not dangerous in a broad sense because we all have them and most of us seem to be cohabiting quite well with them,” Trautwein said. “We mostly share them within family units and it seems like you are probably initially colonized soon after birth, most likely by your mother, traditionally speaking in human history.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Looking at these mites, researchers like Trautwein can usually tell something about your geographical ancestry — what part of the world your ancestors came from.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941715\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1941715 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers-1020x496.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"311\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers-1020x496.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers-160x78.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers-800x389.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers-768x374.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers-1200x584.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers.jpg 1285w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michelle Trautwein has found that several genetically distinct groups of Demodex face mites (represented by different colors on this map) exist in different geographic areas. \u003ccite>(Michelle Trautwein/California Academy of Sciences)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Face mites are definitely the species of animal that we have the closest connection with as humans, even though most of us don’t know about them or ever see one in our lifetime,” she said. “We still have this very ancient and intimate relationship, and it seems clear that we’ve had these face mite species with us for all of our history. So they are as old as our species, as old as homo sapiens.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Yep, you probably have Demodex mites living on your face. These tiny arachnids feast on sebum, the greasy oil in your pores. But should you be worried about your eight-legged guests? ",
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"title": "These Face Mites Really Grow on You | KQED",
"description": "Yep, you probably have Demodex mites living on your face. These tiny arachnids feast on sebum, the greasy oil in your pores. But should you be worried about your eight-legged guests? ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>I hate to break this to you, but you almost certainly have tiny mites living in the pores in your face right now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re called Demodex. And pretty much every adult human alive has a population of these mites living on them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also called eyelash mites, they’re too small to see with the naked eye. They’re mostly transparent, and at about .3 millimeters long, it would take about five face adult mites laid end to end to stretch across the head of a pin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They look like kind of like stubby little worms,” said Michelle Trautwein, an entomologist at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trautwein studies our relationship with these microscopic stowaways by looking at their DNA. Her findings so far show that people in different parts of the world have different face mites living in the skin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They tell a story of your own ancestry and also a story of more ancient human history and migration,” said Trautwein.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941539\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_MichelleTrautwein_microscope.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941539\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_MichelleTrautwein_microscope.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michelle Trautwein of the California Academy of Sciences studies face mites using microscopes and genetic testing. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We use a little spoon and scrape it across the kind of greasier parts of someone’s face — which isn’t as bad as it sounds,” said Trautwein.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once she has collected the samples, she takes them back to the lab to look at the genetics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trautwein has found DNA evidence of face mites on every one of more than 2,000 people she has tested, including tourists from all around the world who make their way to the California Academy of Sciences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“No one is thrilled at the initial notion that they have arachnids on their face,” Trautwein said. “But people are often curious — even in their revulsion.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But how could these creatures live on so many people and still go unnoticed?\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941533\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1941533 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-1020x574.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-1200x675.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_PeachFuzz_male.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Face mites make their home in the follicles found at the root of the peach fuzz that covers most human skin. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Look closely and you’ll see that in addition to the more obvious body and head hair, human skin is covered in a thin, barely visible layer of peach fuzz called vellus hairs. There are a few notable exceptions, such as the palms of our hands and soles of our feet, but other than that our entire bodies are covered in that fuzz. The shaft of each one of those tiny hairs grows out of its own follicle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Face mites spend their days face-down inside your hair follicles nestled up against the hair shaft.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They eat sebum, that greasy oil your skin makes to protect itself and keep it from drying out. The sebum is produced in sebaceous glands, which empty into the hair follicles, coating both the hair shaft and face mites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s why the greasiest parts of your body — like around the eyes, nose and mouth — likely harbor a higher concentration of mites than other areas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They live about two weeks. They spend most of their time tucked inside our pores. But while we’re sleeping, they crawl out onto the surface of our skin to mate before crawling back into our pores to lay their eggs. Fun!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since they live inside your pores, you can’t scrub them off by washing. It’s basically impossible to get rid of all of your face mites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So how does Trautwein study them? With glue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941540\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_SlideCollection_LindsayPalaima.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941540\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_SlideCollection_LindsayPalaima.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lindsay Palaima bravely volunteers to have a slide covered in glue stuck to her forehead in order to capture face mites growing in her pores. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I actually put glue on a glass microscope slide and stick it onto a person’s forehead,” she said. “Then I slowly peel it off. I look under a microscope for mites that are stuck in the follicles that stick up from the thin layer of skin that got peeled off.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It can be pretty addictive and exciting,” she added. “It’s sort of a meditative process of looking through this microforest of follicles and hairs, and looking for just the right potential movement or shape.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941538\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_InFollicle.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1941538 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL610_FaceMites_InFollicle.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Demodex face mite seen writhing around in the root of a human hair follicle, observed under a microscope. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>These Demodex face mites got their name from the Greek words for “fat” and “boring worm,” but they’re not really worms at all. They’re actually arachnids — related to ticks — and more distantly to spiders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most people have face mites on them and never notice. It seems that our immune system is able to keep their numbers in check. But some people can experience problems with them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you tell patients that they have face mites, first of all, they freak out,” said Dr. Kanade Shinkai, a dermatologist at UCSF.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Shinkai occasionally treats patients who have an overload of face mites, which results in a condition called demodicosis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There is a very particular look to people suffering from demodicosis. We call it the Demodex frost,” she said. “It’s sort of a white sheen on the skin. And if you look really closely, you can see coming out of every pore. If you scrape those pores, you can see it frothing with little Demodex face mites.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a pretty rare condition and it’s often connected to a change in someone’s immune system, such as receiving immunosuppressive drugs after transplant surgery, chemotherapy or immunodeficiency diseases like HIV.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Demodicosis can also be triggered by local suppression of the immune system, like when itch-relieving hydrocortisone cream is used on the face.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When it does happen, demodicosis usually comes on fast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Patients almost universally describe this explosive development of pustules like whiteheads on their face. It’s really dramatic,” Shinkai said. “And what’s really dramatic about it is that they’re often fine the day before, and then they develop it, overnight.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But for the vast majority of people, face mites are nothing to worry about. While some studies have found loose connections between Demodex and diseases like rosacea, the evidence hasn’t shown a strong link.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What’s really confusing is that if you go into your office and scrape everyone’s face, you would find Demodex probably on everybody,” Shinkai said. “And people who have low burden of Demodex may have no or very severe disease and vice versa.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trautwein also sees face mites as more of a source of interest than fear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re not dangerous in a broad sense because we all have them and most of us seem to be cohabiting quite well with them,” Trautwein said. “We mostly share them within family units and it seems like you are probably initially colonized soon after birth, most likely by your mother, traditionally speaking in human history.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Looking at these mites, researchers like Trautwein can usually tell something about your geographical ancestry — what part of the world your ancestors came from.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941715\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1941715 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers-1020x496.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"311\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers-1020x496.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers-160x78.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers-800x389.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers-768x374.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers-1200x584.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/Map_Follic_migration_nonumbers.jpg 1285w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Michelle Trautwein has found that several genetically distinct groups of Demodex face mites (represented by different colors on this map) exist in different geographic areas. \u003ccite>(Michelle Trautwein/California Academy of Sciences)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Face mites are definitely the species of animal that we have the closest connection with as humans, even though most of us don’t know about them or ever see one in our lifetime,” she said. “We still have this very ancient and intimate relationship, and it seems clear that we’ve had these face mite species with us for all of our history. So they are as old as our species, as old as homo sapiens.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Spring means honey bees flitting from flower to flower. In California, this frantic insect activity that starts in late winter and continues through the summer is essential to growing foods like almonds, cherries, raspberries and apples. Bees move pollen, making it possible for plants to grow the fruit and seeds they need to reproduce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941207\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_WITH_POLLEN_BALLS_FORAGES_1920.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941207\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_WITH_POLLEN_BALLS_FORAGES_1920.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_WITH_POLLEN_BALLS_FORAGES_1920.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_WITH_POLLEN_BALLS_FORAGES_1920-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_WITH_POLLEN_BALLS_FORAGES_1920-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_WITH_POLLEN_BALLS_FORAGES_1920-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_WITH_POLLEN_BALLS_FORAGES_1920-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_WITH_POLLEN_BALLS_FORAGES_1920-1200x675.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A honey bee collects pollen in an almond orchard in Woodland, California. It packs the pollen into balls that it carries in structures on its hind legs, called pollen baskets. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But honey bees don’t just move pollen from plant to plant. They also keep a lot for themselves. They carry it around in neat little balls, one on each of their hind legs. Collecting, packing and making pollen into something they can eat is a tough, intricate job that’s essential to the colony’s well-being.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When honey bees don’t have access to pollen, they start depleting the nutrients in their body, said \u003ca href=\"https://www.ars.usda.gov/pacific-west-area/tucson-az/honey-bee-research/people/mark-j-carroll/\">Mark Carroll\u003c/a>, an entomologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And that’s when things get a little rough for bees,” he said, “because you’re using your reserves.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941210\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_RETURNS_TO_HIVE_W_POLLEN.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941210\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_RETURNS_TO_HIVE_W_POLLEN.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A bee returns to the hive loaded down with pollen. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>While nectar from flowers — and the honey they make with it — provide bees with the energy they need to fly around, honey bees also need pollen to grow their colonies. Older female adult bees collect pollen and mix it with nectar or honey and a little saliva as they go along, then carry it back to the hive and deposit it in cells next to the developing baby bees, called larvae. This stored pollen, known as bee bread, is the colony’s main source of protein.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You don’t have bees flying along snacking on pollen as they’re collecting it,” said Carroll. “This is the form of pollen that bees are eating.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Young adult female bees distribute the stored pollen to the whole colony. They eat bee bread to make a liquid food similar to mammal’s milk that they feed to growing larvae and adult bees, including the queen. They also give little bits of bee bread to older larvae.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941212\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_STORED_POLLEN_IS_CALLED_BEEBREAD_1920.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941212\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_STORED_POLLEN_IS_CALLED_BEEBREAD_1920.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_STORED_POLLEN_IS_CALLED_BEEBREAD_1920.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_STORED_POLLEN_IS_CALLED_BEEBREAD_1920-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_STORED_POLLEN_IS_CALLED_BEEBREAD_1920-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_STORED_POLLEN_IS_CALLED_BEEBREAD_1920-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_STORED_POLLEN_IS_CALLED_BEEBREAD_1920-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_STORED_POLLEN_IS_CALLED_BEEBREAD_1920-1200x675.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bee bread inside a beehive in the Central Valley town of Volta. Bees make bee bread by mixing pollen with nectar, honey and a little saliva. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It’s so important to have good protein,” said \u003ca href=\"https://www.honey.com/honey-locator/profile/gene-brandi-apiaries\">Gene Brandi\u003c/a>, a beekeeper in Los Banos. “We’re always endeavoring to have them in places where they have forage.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the almond fields were in bloom in February and March, Brandi placed 3,000 hives in the orchards. With 1.3 million acres of almonds planted in California’s Central Valley, it’s the biggest honey bee pollination in the world, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a warm March morning, hives in white wooden boxes lined the road between rows of almond trees loaded with white flowers. Bees came and went. Almond pollen, which is light yellow, is nutritious and sought after by honey bees, said the USDA’s Carroll.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941215\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_FORAGES_FOR_POLLEN_ON_ALMOND_FLOWER.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941215\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_FORAGES_FOR_POLLEN_ON_ALMOND_FLOWER.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A honey bee forages for pollen in an almond bloom. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The almond pollination event, it’s the time of the year that for most parts of the United States there’s really nothing else available,” Carroll said. “And in some ways, if beekeepers can work it out, this is a great jump for them to get their colonies going for the spring.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Honey bees have been facing challenges for over a decade and the trend appears to continue this year. Brandi said that beekeepers around the country suffered “extremely high losses” this winter with some losing half of their colonies. He said that pesticides, poor nutrition and tiny mites that transmit diseases to bees are likely to blame.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the almond pollination was done in mid-March, Brandi moved his hives to feed on pollen from sage. In the summer, they’ll forage for pollen in cotton and alfalfa fields. Brandi’s goal is to produce honey with different flavors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bees make honey with nectar they collect in the afternoon. They spend their mornings collecting pollen, and they’re well-equipped to do so, with three million hairs that help them trap the grains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941231\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_HONEY_BEE_WORKER_HAS_HAIRS_ON_EYES_USGS_BEE_INVENTORY.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941231\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_HONEY_BEE_WORKER_HAS_HAIRS_ON_EYES_USGS_BEE_INVENTORY.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_HONEY_BEE_WORKER_HAS_HAIRS_ON_EYES_USGS_BEE_INVENTORY.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_HONEY_BEE_WORKER_HAS_HAIRS_ON_EYES_USGS_BEE_INVENTORY-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_HONEY_BEE_WORKER_HAS_HAIRS_ON_EYES_USGS_BEE_INVENTORY-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_HONEY_BEE_WORKER_HAS_HAIRS_ON_EYES_USGS_BEE_INVENTORY-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_HONEY_BEE_WORKER_HAS_HAIRS_ON_EYES_USGS_BEE_INVENTORY-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_HONEY_BEE_WORKER_HAS_HAIRS_ON_EYES_USGS_BEE_INVENTORY-1200x675.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hairs on their eyes help honey bees trap pollen to bring back to the hive. \u003ccite>(USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Honey bees even have hairs on their eyes, said \u003ca href=\"http://www.hu.gatech.edu/Matherne/\">Marguerite Matherne\u003c/a>, a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who is looking at the process of pollen collection up close. She and her colleagues found that the spaces between the hairs on bees’ eyes are about the width of a pollen grain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What this does is it suspends these grains above the eye, so that the leg can grasp them more easily and move them out of the way faster,” said Matherne.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When a bee lands on a flower, it nibbles and licks off the pollen, which sticks to its head. It wipes the pollen off its eyes and antennae with a brush on each of its front legs, using them in tandem like windshield wipers. It also cleans the pollen off its mouth part, and as it does this, it mixes it with some saliva and a little nectar or honey that it carries around in a kind of stomach called a crop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941201\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_CLEANS_POLLEN_OFF_HER_ANTENNAE.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941201\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_CLEANS_POLLEN_OFF_HER_ANTENNAE.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A honey bee wipes pollen off its antennae using brushes on its front legs like windshield wipers. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Then the bee uses brushes on its front, middle and hind legs to move the pollen, conveyor-belt style, front to middle to back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re transferring the pollen from one brush to another, between their legs,” said Matherne. “It’s kind of like running a comb through your own hair.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941228\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_MOVES_POLLEN_FROM_FRONT_TO_BACK.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941228\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_MOVES_POLLEN_FROM_FRONT_TO_BACK.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A honey bee moves pollen from its front to its middle to its hind legs, conveyor-belt style. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As it flies from bloom to bloom, the bee combs the pollen very quickly and moves it into baskets on its hind legs called corbiculae (core-BICK-you-lee). Each basket is made up of a concave section of the hind leg, which is covered by longish hairs that bend over and around the pollen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941216\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_PRESSES_POLLEN_BALL_W_HER_RIGHT_LEG.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941216\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_PRESSES_POLLEN_BALL_W_HER_RIGHT_LEG.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A honey bee pumps its right hind leg to press pollen into a ball. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The bee bends its back legs at the joint to squish the pollen into a ball, using the nectar or honey it added earlier to glue the pollen grains to each other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That way it’s wadded up, and it’s a lot easier to have that actually attached to their leg,” said Carroll.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Matherne found that a bee can fit as many as 160,000 pollen grains in each pollen ball or pellet. By the time a worker bee gets back to the hive with its haul, it is carrying as much as one-third its weight. The bee does this trip up to 12 times a day, said Carroll, its wings becoming ragged from the effort.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941218\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_W_POLLEN_BALLS2_1920.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941218\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_W_POLLEN_BALLS2_1920.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_W_POLLEN_BALLS2_1920.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_W_POLLEN_BALLS2_1920-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_W_POLLEN_BALLS2_1920-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_W_POLLEN_BALLS2_1920-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_W_POLLEN_BALLS2_1920-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_W_POLLEN_BALLS2_1920-1200x675.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A bee gets ready to deposit its pollen pellets in the hive. \u003ccite>(David Hu, Oliver Howington and Marguerite Matherne/Georgia Institute of Technology)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Back at the hive, bees deposit their pollen pellets close to the cells where bee larvae are growing. Another bee might come along and add some more honey to the pollen, and then the bee bread is essentially ready to eat. Scientists had believed that bees left the pollen to ferment for a few days. But Carroll and colleagues found that bees prefer their pollen fresh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Pollen that was less than a few days old was preferred over pollen that was seven to eight days old and beyond,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941219\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_WALKS_OVER_BEE_BREAD.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941219\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_WALKS_OVER_BEE_BREAD.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A bee walks over cells full of bee bread. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>After a few weeks, the constant foraging trips take a toll and the bees die.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a paradox,” said Carroll. “At the time of the year when there’s most food available out in the landscape from flowers, that’s when they have the shortest lives because they’re just so busy.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Every spring, honey bees trap, brush and pack pollen into baskets on their legs to make a special food called bee bread.",
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"title": "Honey Bees Make Honey ... and Bread? | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Spring means honey bees flitting from flower to flower. In California, this frantic insect activity that starts in late winter and continues through the summer is essential to growing foods like almonds, cherries, raspberries and apples. Bees move pollen, making it possible for plants to grow the fruit and seeds they need to reproduce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941207\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_WITH_POLLEN_BALLS_FORAGES_1920.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941207\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_WITH_POLLEN_BALLS_FORAGES_1920.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_WITH_POLLEN_BALLS_FORAGES_1920.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_WITH_POLLEN_BALLS_FORAGES_1920-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_WITH_POLLEN_BALLS_FORAGES_1920-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_WITH_POLLEN_BALLS_FORAGES_1920-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_WITH_POLLEN_BALLS_FORAGES_1920-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_WITH_POLLEN_BALLS_FORAGES_1920-1200x675.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A honey bee collects pollen in an almond orchard in Woodland, California. It packs the pollen into balls that it carries in structures on its hind legs, called pollen baskets. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But honey bees don’t just move pollen from plant to plant. They also keep a lot for themselves. They carry it around in neat little balls, one on each of their hind legs. Collecting, packing and making pollen into something they can eat is a tough, intricate job that’s essential to the colony’s well-being.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When honey bees don’t have access to pollen, they start depleting the nutrients in their body, said \u003ca href=\"https://www.ars.usda.gov/pacific-west-area/tucson-az/honey-bee-research/people/mark-j-carroll/\">Mark Carroll\u003c/a>, an entomologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And that’s when things get a little rough for bees,” he said, “because you’re using your reserves.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941210\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_RETURNS_TO_HIVE_W_POLLEN.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941210\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_RETURNS_TO_HIVE_W_POLLEN.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A bee returns to the hive loaded down with pollen. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>While nectar from flowers — and the honey they make with it — provide bees with the energy they need to fly around, honey bees also need pollen to grow their colonies. Older female adult bees collect pollen and mix it with nectar or honey and a little saliva as they go along, then carry it back to the hive and deposit it in cells next to the developing baby bees, called larvae. This stored pollen, known as bee bread, is the colony’s main source of protein.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You don’t have bees flying along snacking on pollen as they’re collecting it,” said Carroll. “This is the form of pollen that bees are eating.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Young adult female bees distribute the stored pollen to the whole colony. They eat bee bread to make a liquid food similar to mammal’s milk that they feed to growing larvae and adult bees, including the queen. They also give little bits of bee bread to older larvae.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941212\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_STORED_POLLEN_IS_CALLED_BEEBREAD_1920.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941212\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_STORED_POLLEN_IS_CALLED_BEEBREAD_1920.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_STORED_POLLEN_IS_CALLED_BEEBREAD_1920.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_STORED_POLLEN_IS_CALLED_BEEBREAD_1920-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_STORED_POLLEN_IS_CALLED_BEEBREAD_1920-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_STORED_POLLEN_IS_CALLED_BEEBREAD_1920-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_STORED_POLLEN_IS_CALLED_BEEBREAD_1920-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_STORED_POLLEN_IS_CALLED_BEEBREAD_1920-1200x675.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bee bread inside a beehive in the Central Valley town of Volta. Bees make bee bread by mixing pollen with nectar, honey and a little saliva. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It’s so important to have good protein,” said \u003ca href=\"https://www.honey.com/honey-locator/profile/gene-brandi-apiaries\">Gene Brandi\u003c/a>, a beekeeper in Los Banos. “We’re always endeavoring to have them in places where they have forage.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the almond fields were in bloom in February and March, Brandi placed 3,000 hives in the orchards. With 1.3 million acres of almonds planted in California’s Central Valley, it’s the biggest honey bee pollination in the world, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a warm March morning, hives in white wooden boxes lined the road between rows of almond trees loaded with white flowers. Bees came and went. Almond pollen, which is light yellow, is nutritious and sought after by honey bees, said the USDA’s Carroll.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941215\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_FORAGES_FOR_POLLEN_ON_ALMOND_FLOWER.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941215\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_FORAGES_FOR_POLLEN_ON_ALMOND_FLOWER.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A honey bee forages for pollen in an almond bloom. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“The almond pollination event, it’s the time of the year that for most parts of the United States there’s really nothing else available,” Carroll said. “And in some ways, if beekeepers can work it out, this is a great jump for them to get their colonies going for the spring.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Honey bees have been facing challenges for over a decade and the trend appears to continue this year. Brandi said that beekeepers around the country suffered “extremely high losses” this winter with some losing half of their colonies. He said that pesticides, poor nutrition and tiny mites that transmit diseases to bees are likely to blame.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the almond pollination was done in mid-March, Brandi moved his hives to feed on pollen from sage. In the summer, they’ll forage for pollen in cotton and alfalfa fields. Brandi’s goal is to produce honey with different flavors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bees make honey with nectar they collect in the afternoon. They spend their mornings collecting pollen, and they’re well-equipped to do so, with three million hairs that help them trap the grains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941231\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_HONEY_BEE_WORKER_HAS_HAIRS_ON_EYES_USGS_BEE_INVENTORY.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941231\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_HONEY_BEE_WORKER_HAS_HAIRS_ON_EYES_USGS_BEE_INVENTORY.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_HONEY_BEE_WORKER_HAS_HAIRS_ON_EYES_USGS_BEE_INVENTORY.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_HONEY_BEE_WORKER_HAS_HAIRS_ON_EYES_USGS_BEE_INVENTORY-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_HONEY_BEE_WORKER_HAS_HAIRS_ON_EYES_USGS_BEE_INVENTORY-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_HONEY_BEE_WORKER_HAS_HAIRS_ON_EYES_USGS_BEE_INVENTORY-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_HONEY_BEE_WORKER_HAS_HAIRS_ON_EYES_USGS_BEE_INVENTORY-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_HONEY_BEE_WORKER_HAS_HAIRS_ON_EYES_USGS_BEE_INVENTORY-1200x675.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hairs on their eyes help honey bees trap pollen to bring back to the hive. \u003ccite>(USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Honey bees even have hairs on their eyes, said \u003ca href=\"http://www.hu.gatech.edu/Matherne/\">Marguerite Matherne\u003c/a>, a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who is looking at the process of pollen collection up close. She and her colleagues found that the spaces between the hairs on bees’ eyes are about the width of a pollen grain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What this does is it suspends these grains above the eye, so that the leg can grasp them more easily and move them out of the way faster,” said Matherne.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When a bee lands on a flower, it nibbles and licks off the pollen, which sticks to its head. It wipes the pollen off its eyes and antennae with a brush on each of its front legs, using them in tandem like windshield wipers. It also cleans the pollen off its mouth part, and as it does this, it mixes it with some saliva and a little nectar or honey that it carries around in a kind of stomach called a crop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941201\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_CLEANS_POLLEN_OFF_HER_ANTENNAE.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941201\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_CLEANS_POLLEN_OFF_HER_ANTENNAE.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A honey bee wipes pollen off its antennae using brushes on its front legs like windshield wipers. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Then the bee uses brushes on its front, middle and hind legs to move the pollen, conveyor-belt style, front to middle to back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re transferring the pollen from one brush to another, between their legs,” said Matherne. “It’s kind of like running a comb through your own hair.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941228\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_MOVES_POLLEN_FROM_FRONT_TO_BACK.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941228\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_MOVES_POLLEN_FROM_FRONT_TO_BACK.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A honey bee moves pollen from its front to its middle to its hind legs, conveyor-belt style. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As it flies from bloom to bloom, the bee combs the pollen very quickly and moves it into baskets on its hind legs called corbiculae (core-BICK-you-lee). Each basket is made up of a concave section of the hind leg, which is covered by longish hairs that bend over and around the pollen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941216\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_PRESSES_POLLEN_BALL_W_HER_RIGHT_LEG.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941216\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_PRESSES_POLLEN_BALL_W_HER_RIGHT_LEG.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A honey bee pumps its right hind leg to press pollen into a ball. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The bee bends its back legs at the joint to squish the pollen into a ball, using the nectar or honey it added earlier to glue the pollen grains to each other.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That way it’s wadded up, and it’s a lot easier to have that actually attached to their leg,” said Carroll.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Matherne found that a bee can fit as many as 160,000 pollen grains in each pollen ball or pellet. By the time a worker bee gets back to the hive with its haul, it is carrying as much as one-third its weight. The bee does this trip up to 12 times a day, said Carroll, its wings becoming ragged from the effort.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941218\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_W_POLLEN_BALLS2_1920.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941218\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_W_POLLEN_BALLS2_1920.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_W_POLLEN_BALLS2_1920.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_W_POLLEN_BALLS2_1920-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_W_POLLEN_BALLS2_1920-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_W_POLLEN_BALLS2_1920-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_W_POLLEN_BALLS2_1920-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_W_POLLEN_BALLS2_1920-1200x675.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A bee gets ready to deposit its pollen pellets in the hive. \u003ccite>(David Hu, Oliver Howington and Marguerite Matherne/Georgia Institute of Technology)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Back at the hive, bees deposit their pollen pellets close to the cells where bee larvae are growing. Another bee might come along and add some more honey to the pollen, and then the bee bread is essentially ready to eat. Scientists had believed that bees left the pollen to ferment for a few days. But Carroll and colleagues found that bees prefer their pollen fresh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Pollen that was less than a few days old was preferred over pollen that was seven to eight days old and beyond,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1941219\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_WALKS_OVER_BEE_BREAD.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1941219\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/05/DL_609HoneyBeesandPollen_BEE_WALKS_OVER_BEE_BREAD.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A bee walks over cells full of bee bread. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>After a few weeks, the constant foraging trips take a toll and the bees die.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a paradox,” said Carroll. “At the time of the year when there’s most food available out in the landscape from flowers, that’s when they have the shortest lives because they’re just so busy.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Worried About 'Designer Babies'? They're Still Only a Fantasy. And That May Never Change",
"headTitle": "Worried About ‘Designer Babies’? They’re Still Only a Fantasy. And That May Never Change | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Scientists continue to speak out against the prospect of producing engineered embryos that could lead to “designer babies.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote align='right']‘You could have done just as well by throwing a dart at the genome and saying, ‘OK, we’re going to look at this gene and see if it’s associated with depression.’[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leaders of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy \u003ca href=\"https://www.asgct.org/research/news/april-2019/scientific-leaders-call-for-global-moratorium-on-g\">sent a letter\u003c/a> on April 24 to Alex Azar, the secretary of health and human services, adding their voices to the call for a moratorium on experiments that could alter the genes passed down to future generations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This move follows a \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/03/13/701549223/call-for-global-moratorium-on-creating-gene-edited-babies\">widely criticized experiment \u003c/a>in China last year that apparently produced children with edited genomes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The concern is largely ethical. The reality is that biologists probably couldn’t produce designer babies even if they wanted to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It turns out that the genetics underlying desirable traits such as athleticism, intelligence and beauty are so complicated it may not ever be possible to make targeted changes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in the day of Gregor Mendel, the monk who modified the traits of the pea plants in his 19th century garden, it seemed that traits were based on simple elements (later dubbed “genes”). But by the 1920s, \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28987627\">it was becoming clear\u003c/a> that human traits involved many genes acting in concert.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, during the heyday of the Human Genome Project at the end of the 20th century, hopes were high that common diseases might be explained through the interaction of just a handful of genes. You may recall all those stories about scientists hunting “the gene for” various diseases. Hundreds of scientific papers purported to show strong candidates for these critical genes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>British comedian John Cleese poked fun at this idea\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M-vnmejwXo&feature=youtu.be\"> in a video skit\u003c/a>, where he pointed on a chart to “the gene which we scientists now know makes us eat coconut ice cream after a fish dinner.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the scientific effort to find genes for common conditions was largely a flop (with a few notable exceptions, such as Alzheimer’s and breast cancer). For example, hundreds of studies over the years have reportedly found genes associated with schizophrenia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we look at the 20 most studied genes investigated for schizophrenia, \u003ca href=\"https://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-3223(17)31772-9/fulltext\">we find basically no evidence\u003c/a> that any of those are associated at levels greater than we’d expect due to chance,” says \u003ca href=\"https://www.colorado.edu/ibg/matthew-keller\">Matthew Keller\u003c/a> at the University of Colorado.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His lab also looked at the early claims for genes linked to depression. \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30845820\">Those, too, went nowhere\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You could have done just as well by throwing a dart at the genome and saying, ‘OK, we’re going to look at this gene and see if it’s associated with depression,’ ” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, scientists found that thousands upon thousands of genes are associated with common diseases and common traits. And most of them have just a tiny influence on the risk of a disease, often just a small fraction of a percent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Human traits, like height, follow the same story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://profiles.stanford.edu/jonathan-pritchard\">Jonathan Pritchard\u003c/a>, a Howard Hughes investigator at Stanford University, has looked into the genetics of height, which is one of the most thoroughly studied traits. “It quickly became clear there’s huge numbers of variants that affect height,” he says. “We have estimated that it’s probably something like 100,000 variants across the genome, so most of the genome affects height by a small amount.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A few years ago, he suggested that height and presumably other common traits are “omnigenetic,” meaning they involve all of our genes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If that’s the case, each gene must influence many different traits. A gene linked to height might affect the basic mechanism inside many cells. So editing one gene would affect not only height but who knows what else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pritchard and his colleagues \u003ca href=\"https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(19)30400-3\">published a paper\u003c/a> Thursday that reveals the nature of the variants related to complex traits like height. The genetic variation isn’t in the genes themselves (the DNA code that tells cells what proteins to produce) but in genetic elements that regulate those genes at the same time they influence other tasks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His findings suggest our genes work as an interconnected network. It’s not a predictable machine as much as it is a flock of starlings, which wheels in the sky based on group dynamics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That phenomenon makes our biology a challenge to understand, let alone engineer, Pritchard says. “We find nature as it is, not really as we wish it to be,” he says, a bit wistfully.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pritchard’s concept of omnigenetics is not wholly accepted by his peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The logical conclusion is that genetics is “such a mush that we can’t understand it,” says \u003ca href=\"https://www.ebi.ac.uk/about/people/ewan-birney\">Ewan Birney\u003c/a> at the European Bioinformatics Institute. “I find that a bit depressing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Birney still holds out hope that, as we learn more about genetics, clearer mechanisms will emerge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in any event, there’s no question that complicated traits involve thousands of genes with multiple purposes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If anybody thinks we can understand how to change genomes to improve things, they don’t have an appreciation for the lack of knowledge that we have,” Birney says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the case of \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/11/28/671375070/facing-backlash-chinese-scientist-defends-gene-editing-research-on-babies\">the rogue Chinese experiment\u003c/a>, the scientist attempted to edit a gene to create a variant that apparently protects people from HIV infection, resulting in the birth of genetically engineered twins. But going back to the idea that genes all play multiple roles, it’s not clear what else this alteration has done to the children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Birney also notes there’s a big difference between engineering a designer baby with desirable characteristics and fixing a genetic flaw. “We’re much better at understanding when things break, and we call those genetic diseases,” Birney says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There, gene editing could be brought to bear. A broken gene could be edited. But there are other options that carry less risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is already an effective technology, called preimplantation genetic diagnosis, which allows doctors to look for these single-gene flaws in fertilized eggs and select only those that are free of the genetic disease to be implanted in the mother’s womb.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This approach is widely regarded as ethical. And the child isn’t a “designer baby,” but ends up with a natural set of genes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Why+Making+A+%27Designer+Baby%27+Would+Be+Easier+Said+Than+Done&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Ethical concerns aside, the genetic ingredients for human traits are so complex that editing a few embryonic genes is unlikely to have much effect — or achieve the fantasy of enhancing humans.",
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"description": "Ethical concerns aside, the genetic ingredients for human traits are so complex that editing a few embryonic genes is unlikely to have much effect — or achieve the fantasy of enhancing humans.",
"title": "Worried About 'Designer Babies'? They're Still Only a Fantasy. And That May Never Change | KQED",
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"headline": "Worried About 'Designer Babies'? They're Still Only a Fantasy. And That May Never Change",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Scientists continue to speak out against the prospect of producing engineered embryos that could lead to “designer babies.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘You could have done just as well by throwing a dart at the genome and saying, ‘OK, we’re going to look at this gene and see if it’s associated with depression.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Leaders of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy \u003ca href=\"https://www.asgct.org/research/news/april-2019/scientific-leaders-call-for-global-moratorium-on-g\">sent a letter\u003c/a> on April 24 to Alex Azar, the secretary of health and human services, adding their voices to the call for a moratorium on experiments that could alter the genes passed down to future generations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This move follows a \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/03/13/701549223/call-for-global-moratorium-on-creating-gene-edited-babies\">widely criticized experiment \u003c/a>in China last year that apparently produced children with edited genomes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The concern is largely ethical. The reality is that biologists probably couldn’t produce designer babies even if they wanted to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It turns out that the genetics underlying desirable traits such as athleticism, intelligence and beauty are so complicated it may not ever be possible to make targeted changes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in the day of Gregor Mendel, the monk who modified the traits of the pea plants in his 19th century garden, it seemed that traits were based on simple elements (later dubbed “genes”). But by the 1920s, \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28987627\">it was becoming clear\u003c/a> that human traits involved many genes acting in concert.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, during the heyday of the Human Genome Project at the end of the 20th century, hopes were high that common diseases might be explained through the interaction of just a handful of genes. You may recall all those stories about scientists hunting “the gene for” various diseases. Hundreds of scientific papers purported to show strong candidates for these critical genes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>British comedian John Cleese poked fun at this idea\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M-vnmejwXo&feature=youtu.be\"> in a video skit\u003c/a>, where he pointed on a chart to “the gene which we scientists now know makes us eat coconut ice cream after a fish dinner.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the scientific effort to find genes for common conditions was largely a flop (with a few notable exceptions, such as Alzheimer’s and breast cancer). For example, hundreds of studies over the years have reportedly found genes associated with schizophrenia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we look at the 20 most studied genes investigated for schizophrenia, \u003ca href=\"https://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-3223(17)31772-9/fulltext\">we find basically no evidence\u003c/a> that any of those are associated at levels greater than we’d expect due to chance,” says \u003ca href=\"https://www.colorado.edu/ibg/matthew-keller\">Matthew Keller\u003c/a> at the University of Colorado.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His lab also looked at the early claims for genes linked to depression. \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30845820\">Those, too, went nowhere\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You could have done just as well by throwing a dart at the genome and saying, ‘OK, we’re going to look at this gene and see if it’s associated with depression,’ ” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, scientists found that thousands upon thousands of genes are associated with common diseases and common traits. And most of them have just a tiny influence on the risk of a disease, often just a small fraction of a percent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Human traits, like height, follow the same story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://profiles.stanford.edu/jonathan-pritchard\">Jonathan Pritchard\u003c/a>, a Howard Hughes investigator at Stanford University, has looked into the genetics of height, which is one of the most thoroughly studied traits. “It quickly became clear there’s huge numbers of variants that affect height,” he says. “We have estimated that it’s probably something like 100,000 variants across the genome, so most of the genome affects height by a small amount.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A few years ago, he suggested that height and presumably other common traits are “omnigenetic,” meaning they involve all of our genes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If that’s the case, each gene must influence many different traits. A gene linked to height might affect the basic mechanism inside many cells. So editing one gene would affect not only height but who knows what else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pritchard and his colleagues \u003ca href=\"https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(19)30400-3\">published a paper\u003c/a> Thursday that reveals the nature of the variants related to complex traits like height. The genetic variation isn’t in the genes themselves (the DNA code that tells cells what proteins to produce) but in genetic elements that regulate those genes at the same time they influence other tasks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His findings suggest our genes work as an interconnected network. It’s not a predictable machine as much as it is a flock of starlings, which wheels in the sky based on group dynamics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That phenomenon makes our biology a challenge to understand, let alone engineer, Pritchard says. “We find nature as it is, not really as we wish it to be,” he says, a bit wistfully.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pritchard’s concept of omnigenetics is not wholly accepted by his peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The logical conclusion is that genetics is “such a mush that we can’t understand it,” says \u003ca href=\"https://www.ebi.ac.uk/about/people/ewan-birney\">Ewan Birney\u003c/a> at the European Bioinformatics Institute. “I find that a bit depressing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Birney still holds out hope that, as we learn more about genetics, clearer mechanisms will emerge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in any event, there’s no question that complicated traits involve thousands of genes with multiple purposes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If anybody thinks we can understand how to change genomes to improve things, they don’t have an appreciation for the lack of knowledge that we have,” Birney says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the case of \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/11/28/671375070/facing-backlash-chinese-scientist-defends-gene-editing-research-on-babies\">the rogue Chinese experiment\u003c/a>, the scientist attempted to edit a gene to create a variant that apparently protects people from HIV infection, resulting in the birth of genetically engineered twins. But going back to the idea that genes all play multiple roles, it’s not clear what else this alteration has done to the children.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Birney also notes there’s a big difference between engineering a designer baby with desirable characteristics and fixing a genetic flaw. “We’re much better at understanding when things break, and we call those genetic diseases,” Birney says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There, gene editing could be brought to bear. A broken gene could be edited. But there are other options that carry less risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is already an effective technology, called preimplantation genetic diagnosis, which allows doctors to look for these single-gene flaws in fertilized eggs and select only those that are free of the genetic disease to be implanted in the mother’s womb.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This approach is widely regarded as ethical. And the child isn’t a “designer baby,” but ends up with a natural set of genes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Why+Making+A+%27Designer+Baby%27+Would+Be+Easier+Said+Than+Done&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Interview: Theranos Whistleblower Erika Cheung Thinks Elizabeth Holmes Should Spend Years in Prison",
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"content": "\u003cp class=\"danger-zone\">\u003cspan class=\"big-cap-wrap\">\u003cspan class=\"big-cap\">S\u003c/span>\u003c/span>he joined Theranos fresh out of the University of California, Berkeley, a self-described “starry-eyed’’ 22-year-old chemist and biologist who saw Elizabeth Holmes as a role model: the CEO who would revolutionize the blood testing industry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[pullquote align='right'] ‘\u003c/span>I think people can be forgiven for mistakes that they’ve made. But at the same time, to set that example, to say that you have lied to your investors, you have lied to your employees, you endangered the lives of tens of thousands of patients. And now, you’re going to just get away with that? What kind of example does that set for other people within this industry?’\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[/pullquote]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"danger-zone\">Seven months later, Erika Cheung quit her job as a lab associate at the company and became a disillusioned whistleblower, her life now enveloped by one of the biggest business scandals in American history. She was among those who had made clear to federal regulators that she viewed Holmes as a liar who had put patients at risk. (Holmes, and her company’s former president, Ramesh Balwani, have been \u003ca href=\"https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/theranos-founder-and-former-chief-operating-officer-charged-alleged-wire-fraud-schemes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">indicted on charges of defrauding investors\u003c/a> out of hundreds of millions of dollars as well as deceiving hundreds of patients and doctors.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"danger-zone\">In an interview with STAT, Cheung reflected on how she was duped by Holmes, why she believes the disgraced CEO should spend at least five years in prison and how the rifts between her fellow whistleblower Tyler Shultz, and his famous grandfather, George Shultz, went on longer than people know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid=\"futureofyou_203018\"]Shultz and Cheung, both close friends, have turned their attention since they left Theranos to creating an organization called Ethics in Entrepreneurship in the hope of offering advice for people in the world of technology to sniff out bad players early on. Cheung, now 28, lives in Hong Kong, but was in Boston this week to appear at the Atlantic magazine’s Pulse Summit on Health Care, which was co-sponsored by STAT. Here is a transcript of the interview, which was edited for length and clarity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Do you think Elizabeth Holmes should go to jail?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yes. I’m not the type of person to want to serially punish someone for something that they’ve done. I think people can be forgiven for mistakes that they’ve made. But at the same time, to set that example, to say that you have lied to your investors, you have lied to your employees, you endangered the lives of tens of thousands of patients. And now, you’re going to just get away with that? What kind of example does that set for other people within this industry? That it’s OK to raise a whole bunch of money, put on this theatrical show and now walk away scot-free, versus the Fyre Festival guy. On a much smaller scale, all these partygoers ended up going to this festival; they were in FEMA tents and everything, he got five to six years. (She was referring to Billy McFarland, the founder of the Fyre Festival, who was recently sentenced to six years in prison for promoting a “luxury music festival’’ that bilked its backers.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How long do you want to see her locked up? What would make you feel like she’s paying …\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her dues? For me, honestly, my only agenda in all of this was for them to stop processing patient samples. Everything beyond that I’m going to leave it up to the justice system. I just wish that she would have the common sense to come forward and apologize. In terms of number of years in prison? Definitely more, I suppose, than the Fyre Festival guy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What do you make of her being very public these days, out with her \u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/inside-elizabeth-holmess-final-months-at-theranos\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>reported fiance\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong> and her dog?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s just weird. It’s just a bit surreal. When you see someone have this situation and pretend that everything is normal. It’s so bizarre.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Elizabeth Holmes interviewed you to get the job. Did you think anything was off at the beginning?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Initially I came in starry-eyed. I admired Elizabeth Holmes. She was this female entrepreneur in biotech. Really what she represented to me was that you could work really hard and get to a position of running your own company. There was something very powerful about the mission she was trying to put forward: making health care accessible, affordable, allowing for price transparency when you get your blood diagnostics. It’s not until you look at her as a character in retrospect that you realize the red flags and warning signs of her behavior and her personality and the kind of act that she put on to be the front face of Theranos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>When did things turn for you?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Things started to turn for me about a month, two months in. Initially I started in research and development. When things fail in R&D, that’s fine. That’s expected. But about a month in we were starting to get patients that were rolling in from our Walgreens center in Palo Alto. And I had run this patient sample and before I’d run the patient sample, I was running all these quality controls and they kept failing. And failing. Over and over. I was up until 3 a.m. trying to get quality controls to work and they weren’t working. Things weren’t working all the time. They were deleting data as outliers. Untrained staff were making decisions. Upper level management was saying, “Just get the results out,” at any cost. And get it out quickly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The better-known whistleblower, your friend Tyler Shultz, knew Holmes much better through his grandfather. (George Shultz was a former secretary of state and investor and champion of Holmes, who sided with her when his grandson started raising doubts.)\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tyler was a good contact for me to have because he had direct contact with Elizabeth Holmes because of his grandfather. He was eating Thanksgiving dinner with Elizabeth Holmes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Are things OK with Tyler and his grandfather?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yes. It took a while. A lot longer than I think people realize. It took quite a while. Until seven months ago. I think his grandfather finally realized the truth. They’re finally getting dinner together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it’s not what it was. It’s hard, right? For George Shultz, this was a legacy investment in a way. This was one of those last final projects that he was investing in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>It must have been very painful for Tyler.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oh, yeah. Can you imagine? Tyler’s dad too. Tyler’s dad had to be put between his own father and his son. Tyler’s dad supported Tyler but really wanted it to end, all the legal battles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Are you surprised by all the sustained publicity over Theranos, the major movie projects?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yes. It’s blown up into this big story, this big case. One, she got hyped up to this large degree. She was on Fortune, she was considered the youngest billionaire in the United States. And I think rising to the height of everyone treating her as this celebrity and realizing it was on a basis of lies, and not only that it was a company that was around health care. This was people’s lives. It wasn’t developing an app that was like janky you couldn’t get your pizza delivered on time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What’s your sense of whether Elizabeth Holmes knowingly committed fraud or deluded herself about her actions?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s hard when you’re dealing with someone who was clearly delusional to really understand what is going on in their head and what they perceive as reality versus what they’ve sort of imagined. Do I think she was out to scam everybody from the very beginning? At lot of people disagree with me, but I don’t think that was the case. I think she went in, at least initially, with good intentions. But she let her ego get in the way. She was more focused on being the next Steve Jobs of health care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>People have called her a “psychopath.’’\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I don’t know her well enough. But clearly there’s something not right with her. She’s never made an apology. She’s never come forward to the patients and said, “Hey, I’m sorry.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>When you say she’s “not right,’’ do you look back at any clues that you didn’t pick up on?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The secrecy. The extreme amount of paranoia of these big medical diagnostic companies going to come after her and destroy her technology. The fact that before you even go in there and interview you have to sign an NDA. Responding to questions, “Well, until you work for the company, that’s trade secrets.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Did you see that during your interview with Holmes?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She just dodged a lot of questions. Like, “Oh, so what kind of technology are you guys using to run the blood samples?” It would always be the case, “Until you work for the company, those are trade secrets — you’ll be able to find out what we’re working on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What’s the most off-the-wall thing you saw Holmes do?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lying. Watching her do an article with Fortune or with Forbes, and it would just be such a different picture, just a wildly different picture of what was going on internally in the company versus what was being portrayed in the media. It was so disparate to the reality: Sitting at your lab bench and going, “What is she talking about?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What are you doing now?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I founded a \u003ca href=\"http://ethicsinentrepreneurship.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">nonprofit\u003c/a> basically focused on preventing major scandals from happening, like Theranos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’re focused on three different stakeholders: providing resources and tools for entrepreneurs, so that at every stage of development they understand the ethical considerations in building a business and in running a business, from hiring to the culture you implement to building your product. We’re working with ethics departments and seasoned lawyers and compliance officers to basically build out the tools to help entrepreneurs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How big is your staff?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We launched six weeks ago. At the moment we have six people. I’m the only full-time. Tyler is coming on board; he helps with introductions and the strategy of the organization. At this point, we’re self-funded and we’re talking to a few investors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What are long-standing consequences of the Theranos saga?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Investors are very cautious. Is this the next Theranos? A lot of people are very discouraged by this whole scenario. What are the implications of having a strong female founder in biotech being associated with the largest and biggest scandal in Silicon Valley to date? What are the unconscious biases that may go against female founders who are very charismatic, who are very good at selling, in terms of approaching investors or selling to customers?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Do you think this could happen again?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yeah. Maybe not in the same style. A lot of people have been very skeptical of the fireworks and show that Silicon Valley puts on about how they’re going to change the world and make an impact in this very grandiose way without necessarily having the evidence to back up how they’re going to do that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As software in general starts to integrate more into regulated industries, we’re going to have to be on high alert of these types of scenarios happening again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Now that Holmes is out of the picture, is there a woman founder in the sciences you admire?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I like Anne Wojcicki from 23andMe. She’s a very kind, strong female leader. She’s very pragmatic. She’s been able to confront these different challenges of building a tech company in a highly regulated space with a certain level of sensibility about her. It’s not that she gets defeated when regulatory challenges come up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Your advice to entrepreneurs to do good in the health space?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There still is a lot of opportunity to solve a lot of problems in health care. And even though Theranos was how not to do things, there are many good ways to do things well and we’re at an exciting period in this convergence between software and computing power and biology and synthetic biology that really we’re going to start seeing a lot of innovation in the health care space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2019/05/01/from-protegee-to-whistleblower-a-former-theranos-scientist-says-elizabeth-holmes-should-come-forward-and-apologize/\">story\u003c/a> was originally published by \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com\">STAT\u003c/a>, an online publication of Boston Globe Media that covers health, medicine, and scientific discovery.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp class=\"danger-zone\">\u003cspan class=\"big-cap-wrap\">\u003cspan class=\"big-cap\">S\u003c/span>\u003c/span>he joined Theranos fresh out of the University of California, Berkeley, a self-described “starry-eyed’’ 22-year-old chemist and biologist who saw Elizabeth Holmes as a role model: the CEO who would revolutionize the blood testing industry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": " ‘\u003c/span>I think people can be forgiven for mistakes that they’ve made. But at the same time, to set that example, to say that you have lied to your investors, you have lied to your employees, you endangered the lives of tens of thousands of patients. And now, you’re going to just get away with that? What kind of example does that set for other people within this industry?’\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400;\">",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"danger-zone\">Seven months later, Erika Cheung quit her job as a lab associate at the company and became a disillusioned whistleblower, her life now enveloped by one of the biggest business scandals in American history. She was among those who had made clear to federal regulators that she viewed Holmes as a liar who had put patients at risk. (Holmes, and her company’s former president, Ramesh Balwani, have been \u003ca href=\"https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/theranos-founder-and-former-chief-operating-officer-charged-alleged-wire-fraud-schemes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">indicted on charges of defrauding investors\u003c/a> out of hundreds of millions of dollars as well as deceiving hundreds of patients and doctors.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"danger-zone\">In an interview with STAT, Cheung reflected on how she was duped by Holmes, why she believes the disgraced CEO should spend at least five years in prison and how the rifts between her fellow whistleblower Tyler Shultz, and his famous grandfather, George Shultz, went on longer than people know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Shultz and Cheung, both close friends, have turned their attention since they left Theranos to creating an organization called Ethics in Entrepreneurship in the hope of offering advice for people in the world of technology to sniff out bad players early on. Cheung, now 28, lives in Hong Kong, but was in Boston this week to appear at the Atlantic magazine’s Pulse Summit on Health Care, which was co-sponsored by STAT. Here is a transcript of the interview, which was edited for length and clarity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Do you think Elizabeth Holmes should go to jail?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yes. I’m not the type of person to want to serially punish someone for something that they’ve done. I think people can be forgiven for mistakes that they’ve made. But at the same time, to set that example, to say that you have lied to your investors, you have lied to your employees, you endangered the lives of tens of thousands of patients. And now, you’re going to just get away with that? What kind of example does that set for other people within this industry? That it’s OK to raise a whole bunch of money, put on this theatrical show and now walk away scot-free, versus the Fyre Festival guy. On a much smaller scale, all these partygoers ended up going to this festival; they were in FEMA tents and everything, he got five to six years. (She was referring to Billy McFarland, the founder of the Fyre Festival, who was recently sentenced to six years in prison for promoting a “luxury music festival’’ that bilked its backers.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How long do you want to see her locked up? What would make you feel like she’s paying …\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her dues? For me, honestly, my only agenda in all of this was for them to stop processing patient samples. Everything beyond that I’m going to leave it up to the justice system. I just wish that she would have the common sense to come forward and apologize. In terms of number of years in prison? Definitely more, I suppose, than the Fyre Festival guy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What do you make of her being very public these days, out with her \u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/inside-elizabeth-holmess-final-months-at-theranos\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cstrong>reported fiance\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong> and her dog?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s just weird. It’s just a bit surreal. When you see someone have this situation and pretend that everything is normal. It’s so bizarre.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Elizabeth Holmes interviewed you to get the job. Did you think anything was off at the beginning?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Initially I came in starry-eyed. I admired Elizabeth Holmes. She was this female entrepreneur in biotech. Really what she represented to me was that you could work really hard and get to a position of running your own company. There was something very powerful about the mission she was trying to put forward: making health care accessible, affordable, allowing for price transparency when you get your blood diagnostics. It’s not until you look at her as a character in retrospect that you realize the red flags and warning signs of her behavior and her personality and the kind of act that she put on to be the front face of Theranos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>When did things turn for you?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Things started to turn for me about a month, two months in. Initially I started in research and development. When things fail in R&D, that’s fine. That’s expected. But about a month in we were starting to get patients that were rolling in from our Walgreens center in Palo Alto. And I had run this patient sample and before I’d run the patient sample, I was running all these quality controls and they kept failing. And failing. Over and over. I was up until 3 a.m. trying to get quality controls to work and they weren’t working. Things weren’t working all the time. They were deleting data as outliers. Untrained staff were making decisions. Upper level management was saying, “Just get the results out,” at any cost. And get it out quickly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>The better-known whistleblower, your friend Tyler Shultz, knew Holmes much better through his grandfather. (George Shultz was a former secretary of state and investor and champion of Holmes, who sided with her when his grandson started raising doubts.)\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tyler was a good contact for me to have because he had direct contact with Elizabeth Holmes because of his grandfather. He was eating Thanksgiving dinner with Elizabeth Holmes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Are things OK with Tyler and his grandfather?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yes. It took a while. A lot longer than I think people realize. It took quite a while. Until seven months ago. I think his grandfather finally realized the truth. They’re finally getting dinner together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it’s not what it was. It’s hard, right? For George Shultz, this was a legacy investment in a way. This was one of those last final projects that he was investing in.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>It must have been very painful for Tyler.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Oh, yeah. Can you imagine? Tyler’s dad too. Tyler’s dad had to be put between his own father and his son. Tyler’s dad supported Tyler but really wanted it to end, all the legal battles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Are you surprised by all the sustained publicity over Theranos, the major movie projects?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yes. It’s blown up into this big story, this big case. One, she got hyped up to this large degree. She was on Fortune, she was considered the youngest billionaire in the United States. And I think rising to the height of everyone treating her as this celebrity and realizing it was on a basis of lies, and not only that it was a company that was around health care. This was people’s lives. It wasn’t developing an app that was like janky you couldn’t get your pizza delivered on time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What’s your sense of whether Elizabeth Holmes knowingly committed fraud or deluded herself about her actions?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s hard when you’re dealing with someone who was clearly delusional to really understand what is going on in their head and what they perceive as reality versus what they’ve sort of imagined. Do I think she was out to scam everybody from the very beginning? At lot of people disagree with me, but I don’t think that was the case. I think she went in, at least initially, with good intentions. But she let her ego get in the way. She was more focused on being the next Steve Jobs of health care.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>People have called her a “psychopath.’’\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I don’t know her well enough. But clearly there’s something not right with her. She’s never made an apology. She’s never come forward to the patients and said, “Hey, I’m sorry.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>When you say she’s “not right,’’ do you look back at any clues that you didn’t pick up on?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The secrecy. The extreme amount of paranoia of these big medical diagnostic companies going to come after her and destroy her technology. The fact that before you even go in there and interview you have to sign an NDA. Responding to questions, “Well, until you work for the company, that’s trade secrets.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Did you see that during your interview with Holmes?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She just dodged a lot of questions. Like, “Oh, so what kind of technology are you guys using to run the blood samples?” It would always be the case, “Until you work for the company, those are trade secrets — you’ll be able to find out what we’re working on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What’s the most off-the-wall thing you saw Holmes do?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The lying. Watching her do an article with Fortune or with Forbes, and it would just be such a different picture, just a wildly different picture of what was going on internally in the company versus what was being portrayed in the media. It was so disparate to the reality: Sitting at your lab bench and going, “What is she talking about?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What are you doing now?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I founded a \u003ca href=\"http://ethicsinentrepreneurship.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">nonprofit\u003c/a> basically focused on preventing major scandals from happening, like Theranos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’re focused on three different stakeholders: providing resources and tools for entrepreneurs, so that at every stage of development they understand the ethical considerations in building a business and in running a business, from hiring to the culture you implement to building your product. We’re working with ethics departments and seasoned lawyers and compliance officers to basically build out the tools to help entrepreneurs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How big is your staff?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We launched six weeks ago. At the moment we have six people. I’m the only full-time. Tyler is coming on board; he helps with introductions and the strategy of the organization. At this point, we’re self-funded and we’re talking to a few investors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What are long-standing consequences of the Theranos saga?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Investors are very cautious. Is this the next Theranos? A lot of people are very discouraged by this whole scenario. What are the implications of having a strong female founder in biotech being associated with the largest and biggest scandal in Silicon Valley to date? What are the unconscious biases that may go against female founders who are very charismatic, who are very good at selling, in terms of approaching investors or selling to customers?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Do you think this could happen again?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yeah. Maybe not in the same style. A lot of people have been very skeptical of the fireworks and show that Silicon Valley puts on about how they’re going to change the world and make an impact in this very grandiose way without necessarily having the evidence to back up how they’re going to do that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As software in general starts to integrate more into regulated industries, we’re going to have to be on high alert of these types of scenarios happening again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Now that Holmes is out of the picture, is there a woman founder in the sciences you admire?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I like Anne Wojcicki from 23andMe. She’s a very kind, strong female leader. She’s very pragmatic. She’s been able to confront these different challenges of building a tech company in a highly regulated space with a certain level of sensibility about her. It’s not that she gets defeated when regulatory challenges come up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Your advice to entrepreneurs to do good in the health space?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There still is a lot of opportunity to solve a lot of problems in health care. And even though Theranos was how not to do things, there are many good ways to do things well and we’re at an exciting period in this convergence between software and computing power and biology and synthetic biology that really we’re going to start seeing a lot of innovation in the health care space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com/2019/05/01/from-protegee-to-whistleblower-a-former-theranos-scientist-says-elizabeth-holmes-should-come-forward-and-apologize/\">story\u003c/a> was originally published by \u003ca href=\"https://www.statnews.com\">STAT\u003c/a>, an online publication of Boston Globe Media that covers health, medicine, and scientific discovery.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "This Millipede and Beetle Have a Toxic Relationship",
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"headTitle": "This Millipede and Beetle Have a Toxic Relationship | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>[pullquote]\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-3SbfTPJsL8fJAPKiVqBLg?sub_confirmation=1\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Subscribe to Deep Look on Youtube\u003c/a>[/pullquote]Across Northern California, as the rainy season is ending and spring is taking hold, bees are buzzing, flowers are growing and hikers are hitting the trails.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But down at ground level, the pastoral scenery is concealing a surprising battle: relentless chemical warfare between bugs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than 200 millipede species emerge from their underground lairs every year during the winter and early spring months to forage for food and seek mates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They have to fend off insects, mammals, reptiles and amphibians looking for a tasty meal. But they have a secret weapon — an array of toxic chemicals they shoot from special glands. One Bay Area species, Xystocheir dissecta, carries deadly cyanide and benzaldehyde.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If they’re feeling threatened, these millipedes produce an invisible, odorless hydrogen cyanide gas that they spray at predators, which is virtually toxic to all organisms. One byproduct is benzaldehyde, which gives off the scent of bitter almonds, as an additional signal that they’re secreting poison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1940186\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1940186\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Blue_Millipede-1020x574.jpg\" alt=\"Xystocheir dissecta millipede glowing blue under UV light.\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Blue_Millipede-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Blue_Millipede-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Blue_Millipede-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Blue_Millipede-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Blue_Millipede-1200x675.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Blue_Millipede-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Blue_Millipede.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Xystocheir dissecta millipede glowing blue under UV light. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The millipedes don’t poison themselves, however. They’ve developed an immunity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cyanide can kill nearly any other animal trying to dine on the millipedes. Except one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New research has found that one tough beetle is the only known predator in the world that can survive a direct blast of cyanide gas and keep going.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1940184\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1940184\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/Brandt-Weary-With-Millipede-2-e1555013927931-1020x1360.jpg\" alt=\"Brandt Weary holds a Xystocheir dissecta millipede.\" width=\"640\" height=\"853\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/Brandt-Weary-With-Millipede-2-e1555013927931-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/Brandt-Weary-With-Millipede-2-e1555013927931-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/Brandt-Weary-With-Millipede-2-e1555013927931-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/Brandt-Weary-With-Millipede-2-e1555013927931-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/Brandt-Weary-With-Millipede-2-e1555013927931-900x1200.jpg 900w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/Brandt-Weary-With-Millipede-2-e1555013927931.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Brandt Weary holds a Xystocheir dissecta millipede.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Brandt Weary, an entomologist, studied these hardy beetles last year for his senior thesis at UC Berkeley. The beetles, known as Promecognathus crassus, love to eat millipedes, even though they are only one-fifth the millipedes’ size.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Weary wanted to know more about how the beetles withstood the millipedes’ tough chemical defense. He found that while many other beetles will avoid the cyanide-spraying millipedes, Promecognathus seeks them out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’d actually put them in a dish together and watch them hunt,” he said. “The millipedes are spraying cyanide, and the beetles don’t seem to mind. Then I actually tested to see if the beetles can resist cyanide. It seems that they can. It’s very unusual in the animal kingdom.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His advisor, \u003ca href=\"https://pterostichini.wordpress.com/\">Kip Will\u003c/a>, an associate professor who oversaw Weary’s study, said researchers still aren’t entirely sure how the beetles can take a blast of cyanide that would kill many other insects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We knew that the beetles preferred millipedes and seemed to be quite evolved to eat them, but that implies some mechanism by which they overcome or bypass nasty cyanide,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1940185\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1940185\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Beetle-1020x574.jpg\" alt=\"Promecognathus crassus, a ground beetle common in the Bay Area.\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Beetle-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Beetle-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Beetle-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Beetle-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Beetle-1200x675.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Beetle-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Beetle.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Promecognathus crassus, a ground beetle common in the Bay Area. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When it attacks, the beetle clamps down on the millipede’s armor with its unusually long, scissors-like jaws and tries to decapitate it — eventually feeding on the insect from the inside to out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a little surreal to see behavior that I had only ever read in the literature,” Weary said. “At the time, their hunting behavior had never been caught on film and I had never observed it in the wild, so it felt like watching a rare nature documentary.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Weary also ran lab tests that exposed other species of beetles to the chemicals. Not only did Promecognathus last the longest, it was the most tolerant of them all. They were even able to withstand cyanide levels that would knock down beetles 10 times their size.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Will said that Weary’s study is the first to do several things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These beetles don’t, or at least don’t need to, paralyze their prey as suggested by other research,” he said. “Other potential predators that might eat the millipedes actually don’t, and Promecognathus definitely does. And the beetle has a significantly greater tolerance — and perhaps a complete resistance — to cyanide.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re not sure of the biochemical way they do this yet,” Will said. “But whatever it is — an enzyme would be a good hypothesis — it is the first time that cyanide resistance has been shown to be in a predatory species.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All other known research involved insects that fed only on plants that contain cyanide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Weary plans to focus more of his future research on centipedes and millipedes, but he said he was enthralled by the tough little beetles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They have personalities. They’re different from each other, and they have their own little lives. It’s just really fascinating to watch them behave.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "This millipede uses deadly cyanide gas to keep predators at bay. But one beetle can tolerate the toxic defense and rides the millipede like a bucking bronco. Who will win this showdown in the forest? ",
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"title": "This Millipede and Beetle Have a Toxic Relationship | KQED",
"description": "This millipede uses deadly cyanide gas to keep predators at bay. But one beetle can tolerate the toxic defense and rides the millipede like a bucking bronco. Who will win this showdown in the forest? ",
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"headline": "This Millipede and Beetle Have a Toxic Relationship",
"datePublished": "2019-04-23T06:01:14-07:00",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Across Northern California, as the rainy season is ending and spring is taking hold, bees are buzzing, flowers are growing and hikers are hitting the trails.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But down at ground level, the pastoral scenery is concealing a surprising battle: relentless chemical warfare between bugs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than 200 millipede species emerge from their underground lairs every year during the winter and early spring months to forage for food and seek mates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They have to fend off insects, mammals, reptiles and amphibians looking for a tasty meal. But they have a secret weapon — an array of toxic chemicals they shoot from special glands. One Bay Area species, Xystocheir dissecta, carries deadly cyanide and benzaldehyde.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If they’re feeling threatened, these millipedes produce an invisible, odorless hydrogen cyanide gas that they spray at predators, which is virtually toxic to all organisms. One byproduct is benzaldehyde, which gives off the scent of bitter almonds, as an additional signal that they’re secreting poison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1940186\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1940186\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Blue_Millipede-1020x574.jpg\" alt=\"Xystocheir dissecta millipede glowing blue under UV light.\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Blue_Millipede-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Blue_Millipede-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Blue_Millipede-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Blue_Millipede-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Blue_Millipede-1200x675.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Blue_Millipede-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Blue_Millipede.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Xystocheir dissecta millipede glowing blue under UV light. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The millipedes don’t poison themselves, however. They’ve developed an immunity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The cyanide can kill nearly any other animal trying to dine on the millipedes. Except one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New research has found that one tough beetle is the only known predator in the world that can survive a direct blast of cyanide gas and keep going.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1940184\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1940184\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/Brandt-Weary-With-Millipede-2-e1555013927931-1020x1360.jpg\" alt=\"Brandt Weary holds a Xystocheir dissecta millipede.\" width=\"640\" height=\"853\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/Brandt-Weary-With-Millipede-2-e1555013927931-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/Brandt-Weary-With-Millipede-2-e1555013927931-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/Brandt-Weary-With-Millipede-2-e1555013927931-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/Brandt-Weary-With-Millipede-2-e1555013927931-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/Brandt-Weary-With-Millipede-2-e1555013927931-900x1200.jpg 900w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/Brandt-Weary-With-Millipede-2-e1555013927931.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Brandt Weary holds a Xystocheir dissecta millipede.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Brandt Weary, an entomologist, studied these hardy beetles last year for his senior thesis at UC Berkeley. The beetles, known as Promecognathus crassus, love to eat millipedes, even though they are only one-fifth the millipedes’ size.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Weary wanted to know more about how the beetles withstood the millipedes’ tough chemical defense. He found that while many other beetles will avoid the cyanide-spraying millipedes, Promecognathus seeks them out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’d actually put them in a dish together and watch them hunt,” he said. “The millipedes are spraying cyanide, and the beetles don’t seem to mind. Then I actually tested to see if the beetles can resist cyanide. It seems that they can. It’s very unusual in the animal kingdom.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His advisor, \u003ca href=\"https://pterostichini.wordpress.com/\">Kip Will\u003c/a>, an associate professor who oversaw Weary’s study, said researchers still aren’t entirely sure how the beetles can take a blast of cyanide that would kill many other insects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We knew that the beetles preferred millipedes and seemed to be quite evolved to eat them, but that implies some mechanism by which they overcome or bypass nasty cyanide,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1940185\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1940185\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Beetle-1020x574.jpg\" alt=\"Promecognathus crassus, a ground beetle common in the Bay Area.\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Beetle-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Beetle-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Beetle-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Beetle-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Beetle-1200x675.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Beetle-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL608_Beetle.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Promecognathus crassus, a ground beetle common in the Bay Area. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When it attacks, the beetle clamps down on the millipede’s armor with its unusually long, scissors-like jaws and tries to decapitate it — eventually feeding on the insect from the inside to out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a little surreal to see behavior that I had only ever read in the literature,” Weary said. “At the time, their hunting behavior had never been caught on film and I had never observed it in the wild, so it felt like watching a rare nature documentary.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Weary also ran lab tests that exposed other species of beetles to the chemicals. Not only did Promecognathus last the longest, it was the most tolerant of them all. They were even able to withstand cyanide levels that would knock down beetles 10 times their size.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Will said that Weary’s study is the first to do several things.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These beetles don’t, or at least don’t need to, paralyze their prey as suggested by other research,” he said. “Other potential predators that might eat the millipedes actually don’t, and Promecognathus definitely does. And the beetle has a significantly greater tolerance — and perhaps a complete resistance — to cyanide.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re not sure of the biochemical way they do this yet,” Will said. “But whatever it is — an enzyme would be a good hypothesis — it is the first time that cyanide resistance has been shown to be in a predatory species.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All other known research involved insects that fed only on plants that contain cyanide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Weary plans to focus more of his future research on centipedes and millipedes, but he said he was enthralled by the tough little beetles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They have personalities. They’re different from each other, and they have their own little lives. It’s just really fascinating to watch them behave.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Porcupines Give You 30,000 Reasons to Back Off",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dl_subscribe]At first, the idea of using porcupine quills to patch up wounds sounds torturous. But now researchers are taking inspiration from the spiky rodent to make a new type of surgical staple that may be less damaging — and painful — than current staples.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Worldwide, surgeons perform more than 4 million procedures annually, usually using sutures and staples to close wounds in patients. Yet, these traditional tools designed to aid healing can create their own problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doctors often use surgical staples because they’re faster to insert than sutures, which require a needle and thread. But current surgical staples, which are made of metal, tear tissue on the way in and cause more damage when bent to stay in place, said Jeff Karp, a bioengineer at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve been using sutures and staples for decades, and they’ve been incredibly useful,” said Karp. “But there are challenges in terms of placing them for minimally invasive procedures.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Staples that work like porcupine quills could solve those challenges, Karp said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1939841\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_quill_full_length.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1939841 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_quill_full_length-1020x574.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_quill_full_length-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_quill_full_length-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_quill_full_length-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_quill_full_length-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_quill_full_length-1200x675.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_quill_full_length-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_quill_full_length.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Porcupines use the sharp dark tips of their modified hairs, called quills, for defense. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Karp and his team have been searching for new ways doctors can hold tissue together. For inspiration, they turned to nature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In one brainstorming session, the researchers thought of the porcupine and its quill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The North American porcupine appears cute, but it has upward of 30,000 menacing quills over most of its body. The slow-moving herbivore delivers them only as a last-resort defense against predators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1939843\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_eat_leaf.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1939843\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_eat_leaf.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">All porcupines, including this North American porcupine, eat only plant foods. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Generally, the quills, which are specialized hairs, lie flat on the mammal’s body. Only when threatened will the porcupine erect them. And contrary to popular belief, they don’t shoot them out from their bodies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The wonderful thing about porcupines is that they seem to feel secure,” said \u003ca href=\"http://biology.qc.cuny.edu/people/faculty/dr-uldis-roze/\">Uldis Roze\u003c/a>, biology professor emeritus at Queens College, City University of New York. “They feel like they’re not in danger, and they’re sweet.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1939846\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_eats_acorn.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1939846\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_eats_acorn-1020x574.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_eats_acorn-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_eats_acorn-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_eats_acorn-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_eats_acorn-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_eats_acorn-1200x675.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_eats_acorn-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_eats_acorn.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">When the porcupine is relaxed, its other hairs and fur hide most of the quills. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Any potential predator unfamiliar with a porcupine, such as a dog or mountain lion, would be wise to heed its warnings across three senses, according to Roze’s book, “\u003ca href=\"http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100667570\">The North American Porcupine\u003c/a>.” The adult’s contrasting black-and-white pattern on the quills and other hairs — known as aposematic coloration — is a visual warning signal. A unique pungent odor and ominous teeth-clattering should alarm the nose and ears.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Should the predator ignore these signs and attack, the porcupine will use its powerful spiky tail to slap at the aggressor. Each quill is held in place by its own special structure in the porcupine’s skin. The contact from colliding with a predator causes the skin to release the quills from the porcupine’s body.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1939848\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Glove_quilled_by_porcupine.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1939848\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Glove_quilled_by_porcupine.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A quill detaches from the porcupine’s body only from physical impact with a predator. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>North American porcupine quills pack a hidden punch: microscopic, backward-facing barbs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Covering just the needlelike tip of the quills, the barbs make removing a quill difficult, because they flare out when pulled in the opposite direction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That means that if a predator gets quilled, the quill might never come out. When scientists examine the skulls of deceased mountain lions, Roze said, they often find the tips of porcupine quills embedded in their jaws.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The mountain lion just accepts it,” said Roze. “It’s part of the work of killing a porcupine.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, that mountain lion’s days of porcupine feasting may end forever if the quills keep it from eating or end up in the cat’s vulnerable internal organs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1939851\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Removing_quill_from_finger.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1939851\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Removing_quill_from_finger.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The backward-facing barbs hook the quill into the predator’s body. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Still, a quill passing through the body is far from painless — it’s excruciating — as Roze knows from personal experience. He was once quilled in his bicep when up in a tree trying to catch an agile porcupine. Despite his wife’s suggestion to seek medical care, he waited two harrowing days until the quill traveled in one direction and cleanly exited his lower arm. He kept the quill as a souvenir.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The quill’s barbs made penetration into his flesh easier. They also helped drive the quill through until it either exited or reached a stopping point, such as bone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those barbs are the main attraction to Karp. He and his team \u003ca href=\"https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1216441109\">ran experiments\u003c/a> comparing a barbed quill to a barbless quill. They measured the forces required to insert and remove the quills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1939854\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_Barbs_microscopic.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1939854\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_Barbs_microscopic-1020x574.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_Barbs_microscopic-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_Barbs_microscopic-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_Barbs_microscopic-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_Barbs_microscopic-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_Barbs_microscopic-1200x675.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_Barbs_microscopic-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_Barbs_microscopic.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The overlapping microscopic barbs cover only the quill’s tip. \u003ccite>(Woo Kyung Cho/Chungnam National University)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The results show that the barbs are dual-functional.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re reducing the penetration force and increasing the pullout force,” said Karp. “It’s pretty neat.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The team also discovered that the barbs do minimal damage by making a more perfect hole in the tissue on their way in. A barbless quill or surgical staple tears the tissue and creates gaps that are susceptible to infection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A new medical staple designed with two barbed tips would require much less effort to place, and the barbs, with their gripping power, would hold it in position without needing to bend the staple.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1939857\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Barbed_staple_enters_skin.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1939857\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Barbed_staple_enters_skin.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A surgical staple with barbs like those on a porcupine quill could cause little tissue damage, similar to the way a serrated knife cuts a tomato. \u003ccite>(XVIVO Scientific Animation)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Karp said he anticipates making the new staples out of biodegradable material so they would fully dissolve over time without having to be pulled out. That could eliminate the need for a follow-up visit to remove them, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The challenge now is recreating the full barb’s shape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Nature has designs that humans can’t achieve yet, at least at large scale,” Karp said. “Large-scale manufacturing is a human problem.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But he estimated that if the right technologies become available, human testing of tools inspired by porcupine quills could begin in two to five years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This could be an enabler for smaller incisions to be made in a large number of surgeries,” Karp said. That would be good news for both surgeons and patients.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Visit “Penelope” the porcupine at \u003ca href=\"https://lindsaywildlife.org/\">Lindsay Wildlife Experience\u003c/a> in Walnut Creek, California.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Porcupines may be adorable, but their quills are razor-sharp, designed to impale and next to impossible to remove. But it's not all bad news. Researchers are designing new surgical staples that mimic the quill's shape to better close wounds and speed up healing.",
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"title": "Porcupines Give You 30,000 Reasons to Back Off | KQED",
"description": "Porcupines may be adorable, but their quills are razor-sharp, designed to impale and next to impossible to remove. But it's not all bad news. Researchers are designing new surgical staples that mimic the quill's shape to better close wounds and speed up healing.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>At first, the idea of using porcupine quills to patch up wounds sounds torturous. But now researchers are taking inspiration from the spiky rodent to make a new type of surgical staple that may be less damaging — and painful — than current staples.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Worldwide, surgeons perform more than 4 million procedures annually, usually using sutures and staples to close wounds in patients. Yet, these traditional tools designed to aid healing can create their own problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doctors often use surgical staples because they’re faster to insert than sutures, which require a needle and thread. But current surgical staples, which are made of metal, tear tissue on the way in and cause more damage when bent to stay in place, said Jeff Karp, a bioengineer at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’ve been using sutures and staples for decades, and they’ve been incredibly useful,” said Karp. “But there are challenges in terms of placing them for minimally invasive procedures.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Staples that work like porcupine quills could solve those challenges, Karp said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1939841\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_quill_full_length.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1939841 size-large\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_quill_full_length-1020x574.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_quill_full_length-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_quill_full_length-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_quill_full_length-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_quill_full_length-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_quill_full_length-1200x675.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_quill_full_length-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_quill_full_length.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Porcupines use the sharp dark tips of their modified hairs, called quills, for defense. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Karp and his team have been searching for new ways doctors can hold tissue together. For inspiration, they turned to nature.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In one brainstorming session, the researchers thought of the porcupine and its quill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The North American porcupine appears cute, but it has upward of 30,000 menacing quills over most of its body. The slow-moving herbivore delivers them only as a last-resort defense against predators.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1939843\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_eat_leaf.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1939843\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_eat_leaf.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">All porcupines, including this North American porcupine, eat only plant foods. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Generally, the quills, which are specialized hairs, lie flat on the mammal’s body. Only when threatened will the porcupine erect them. And contrary to popular belief, they don’t shoot them out from their bodies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The wonderful thing about porcupines is that they seem to feel secure,” said \u003ca href=\"http://biology.qc.cuny.edu/people/faculty/dr-uldis-roze/\">Uldis Roze\u003c/a>, biology professor emeritus at Queens College, City University of New York. “They feel like they’re not in danger, and they’re sweet.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1939846\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_eats_acorn.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1939846\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_eats_acorn-1020x574.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_eats_acorn-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_eats_acorn-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_eats_acorn-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_eats_acorn-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_eats_acorn-1200x675.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_eats_acorn-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_eats_acorn.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">When the porcupine is relaxed, its other hairs and fur hide most of the quills. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Any potential predator unfamiliar with a porcupine, such as a dog or mountain lion, would be wise to heed its warnings across three senses, according to Roze’s book, “\u003ca href=\"http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100667570\">The North American Porcupine\u003c/a>.” The adult’s contrasting black-and-white pattern on the quills and other hairs — known as aposematic coloration — is a visual warning signal. A unique pungent odor and ominous teeth-clattering should alarm the nose and ears.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Should the predator ignore these signs and attack, the porcupine will use its powerful spiky tail to slap at the aggressor. Each quill is held in place by its own special structure in the porcupine’s skin. The contact from colliding with a predator causes the skin to release the quills from the porcupine’s body.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1939848\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Glove_quilled_by_porcupine.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1939848\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Glove_quilled_by_porcupine.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A quill detaches from the porcupine’s body only from physical impact with a predator. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>North American porcupine quills pack a hidden punch: microscopic, backward-facing barbs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Covering just the needlelike tip of the quills, the barbs make removing a quill difficult, because they flare out when pulled in the opposite direction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That means that if a predator gets quilled, the quill might never come out. When scientists examine the skulls of deceased mountain lions, Roze said, they often find the tips of porcupine quills embedded in their jaws.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The mountain lion just accepts it,” said Roze. “It’s part of the work of killing a porcupine.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, that mountain lion’s days of porcupine feasting may end forever if the quills keep it from eating or end up in the cat’s vulnerable internal organs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1939851\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Removing_quill_from_finger.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1939851\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Removing_quill_from_finger.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The backward-facing barbs hook the quill into the predator’s body. \u003ccite>(Josh Cassidy/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Still, a quill passing through the body is far from painless — it’s excruciating — as Roze knows from personal experience. He was once quilled in his bicep when up in a tree trying to catch an agile porcupine. Despite his wife’s suggestion to seek medical care, he waited two harrowing days until the quill traveled in one direction and cleanly exited his lower arm. He kept the quill as a souvenir.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The quill’s barbs made penetration into his flesh easier. They also helped drive the quill through until it either exited or reached a stopping point, such as bone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those barbs are the main attraction to Karp. He and his team \u003ca href=\"https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1216441109\">ran experiments\u003c/a> comparing a barbed quill to a barbless quill. They measured the forces required to insert and remove the quills.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1939854\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_Barbs_microscopic.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-1939854\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_Barbs_microscopic-1020x574.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_Barbs_microscopic-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_Barbs_microscopic-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_Barbs_microscopic-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_Barbs_microscopic-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_Barbs_microscopic-1200x675.jpg 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_Barbs_microscopic-1920x1080.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Porcupines_Barbs_microscopic.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The overlapping microscopic barbs cover only the quill’s tip. \u003ccite>(Woo Kyung Cho/Chungnam National University)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The results show that the barbs are dual-functional.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re reducing the penetration force and increasing the pullout force,” said Karp. “It’s pretty neat.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The team also discovered that the barbs do minimal damage by making a more perfect hole in the tissue on their way in. A barbless quill or surgical staple tears the tissue and creates gaps that are susceptible to infection.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A new medical staple designed with two barbed tips would require much less effort to place, and the barbs, with their gripping power, would hold it in position without needing to bend the staple.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_1939857\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 500px\">\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Barbed_staple_enters_skin.gif\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1939857\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2019/04/DL607_Barbed_staple_enters_skin.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A surgical staple with barbs like those on a porcupine quill could cause little tissue damage, similar to the way a serrated knife cuts a tomato. \u003ccite>(XVIVO Scientific Animation)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Karp said he anticipates making the new staples out of biodegradable material so they would fully dissolve over time without having to be pulled out. That could eliminate the need for a follow-up visit to remove them, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The challenge now is recreating the full barb’s shape.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Nature has designs that humans can’t achieve yet, at least at large scale,” Karp said. “Large-scale manufacturing is a human problem.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But he estimated that if the right technologies become available, human testing of tools inspired by porcupine quills could begin in two to five years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This could be an enabler for smaller incisions to be made in a large number of surgeries,” Karp said. That would be good news for both surgeons and patients.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Visit “Penelope” the porcupine at \u003ca href=\"https://lindsaywildlife.org/\">Lindsay Wildlife Experience\u003c/a> in Walnut Creek, California.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "A Gulp of Genetically Modified Bacteria Might Someday Treat a Range of Illnesses",
"headTitle": "A Gulp of Genetically Modified Bacteria Might Someday Treat a Range of Illnesses | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Instead of eating a typical breakfast every day, Jonah Reeder gulps down a special protein shake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The nutrients in it like to sit at the bottom, so I usually have to shake it up and get all the nutrients from the protein and everything,” says Reeder, 21, of Farmington, Utah, as he shakes a big plastic bottle.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">‘I think that’s very cool that they found a way to use a natural probiotic that’s found in the digestive tract to help the human body.’\u003ccite>Johah Reeder, Farmington, Utah\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Reeder was born with a \u003ca href=\"https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/phenylketonuria\">rare genetic disorder called phenylketonuria\u003c/a>, or PKU. If he eats meat, drinks milk or consumes other common sources of protein, toxic levels of the amino acid phenylalanine could build up in his body and damage his brain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So Reeder gets his protein from the shake, which is rich in other amino acids, vitamins and proteins that don’t contain phenylalanine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a really healthy drink,” Reeder says. “It’s basically protein, except without phenylalanine.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Reeder hopes a new approach for treating diseases could help people like him. The idea is to use bacteria that have been genetically modified to do what Reeder’s body can’t — get rid of phenylalanine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m really excited to help out and hopefully find a treatment for PKU,” Reeder said recently, as he prepared to volunteer for a study testing the modified bacteria.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bacteria Reeder is helping test are part of a new field of medical research that has emerged from two realms of biomedical science. One is the study of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/series/218987212/microbiome\">human microbiome\u003c/a>, the microbes that inhabit our bodies. The other is synthetic biology, a field that looks at genetically engineering living organisms, including bacteria in the human gut.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a new world of being able to use synthetic biology to program microbes to treat diseases, which I believe is the future,” says \u003ca href=\"https://silver.med.harvard.edu/\">Pamela Silver\u003c/a>, a synthetic biologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists hope to genetically modify microbes from the human microbiome to treat a range of diseases, including digestive disorders like \u003ca href=\"https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/digestive-diseases/ulcerative-colitis\">ulcerative colitis \u003c/a>and \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/ibd/what-is-IBD.htm\">inflammatory bowel disease\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Microbes are something that we as synthetic biologists see as highly engineer-able. We understand how to engineer microbes so it seems like the perfect interface between synthetic biology and health,” Silver says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One company, \u003ca href=\"https://www.actobio.com/\">ActoBio Therapeutics \u003c/a>of Ghent, Belgium, has just started using genetically engineered microbes to try to treat \u003ca href=\"https://medlineplus.gov/diabetestype1.html\">Type 1 diabetes\u003c/a>. Another one, \u003ca href=\"https://www.oragenics.com/\">Oragenics of Tampa, Fla.,\u003c/a> is testing a modified bacterium to treat mouth sores caused by cancer chemotherapy. And \u003ca href=\"http://oselinc.com/home/\">Osel\u003c/a> of Mountain View, Calif., hopes engineered microbes could prevent HIV infections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reeder is helping test modified \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/ecoli/index.html\">E. coli\u003c/a> bacteria. While some types of \u003cem>E. coli\u003c/em> can cause serious illness, the \u003cem>E. coli\u003c/em> type being used in the study is found in the human gut.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is a naturally occurring probiotic bacteria,” says Caroline Kurtz, a scientist at \u003ca href=\"https://www.synlogictx.com/\">Synlogic\u003c/a>, a Cambridge, Mass., biotech company, which created the modified version of the organism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We can enhance its function by introducing genes [or] by changing genes that are there, and design the cells to either produce something or consume something that may be beneficial for a patient,” Kurtz says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Synlogic has also engineered \u003cem>E. coli\u003c/em> to rid life-threatening levels of ammonia from the bodies of people with \u003ca href=\"https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/cirrhosis/symptoms-causes/syc-20351487\">cirrhosis of the liver\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a really exciting new modality that allows us to think about therapies in a new way and really look at diseases in a whole new way: a living medicine that can respond to its environment,” Kurtz says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Preliminary research involving mice and healthy adults \u003ca href=\"http://stm.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.aau7975\">published recently\u003c/a> in the journal \u003cem>Science Translational Medicine\u003c/em> indicates Synlogic’s \u003cem>E. coli \u003c/em>are safe and may work. So the company is now testing them in patients with cirrhosis and PKU.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reeder admits he was a little nervous when he first heard about all this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you hear about \u003cem>E. coli\u003c/em> you think: sickness, throwing up. So I was a little bit skeptical. I wasn’t sure what to think because I was going to be ingesting \u003cem>E. coli\u003c/em>,” Reeder says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the more he learned about it, the more excited Reeder got about trying the engineered microbes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think that’s very cool that they found a way to use a natural probiotic that’s found in the digestive tract to help the human body,” Reeder says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reeder spent the weekend in the clinic so doctors could monitor him closely and run tests as he ingested what normally would be dangerous amounts of protein. He then swallowed either the engineered \u003cem>E. coli\u003c/em> or a placebo. He wasn’t told which.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was liquid solution. It tasted kind of like mint taffy. It was pretty sweet,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reeder thinks he got the engineered microbes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I could immediately feel my cognitive abilities falling down after drinking the 20 grams of protein. And then I took the drug and I started feeling a lot better. I obtained more energy and my cognitive abilities got quicker,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was really cool to feel that. I could tell it was working. It was pretty cool,” Reeder says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much more research is needed to know whether genetically engineered microbes are safe and really work. But Synlogic hopes to report results from the cirrhosis and PKU studies later this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before any of these experimental treatments could be used routinely, they would have to be reviewed and approved by the Food and Drug Administration. That’s a process that could take years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=A+Gulp+Of+Genetically+Modified+Bacteria+Might+Someday+Treat+A+Range+Of+Illnesses&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Instead of eating a typical breakfast every day, Jonah Reeder gulps down a special protein shake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The nutrients in it like to sit at the bottom, so I usually have to shake it up and get all the nutrients from the protein and everything,” says Reeder, 21, of Farmington, Utah, as he shakes a big plastic bottle.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">‘I think that’s very cool that they found a way to use a natural probiotic that’s found in the digestive tract to help the human body.’\u003ccite>Johah Reeder, Farmington, Utah\u003c/cite>\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Reeder was born with a \u003ca href=\"https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/phenylketonuria\">rare genetic disorder called phenylketonuria\u003c/a>, or PKU. If he eats meat, drinks milk or consumes other common sources of protein, toxic levels of the amino acid phenylalanine could build up in his body and damage his brain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So Reeder gets his protein from the shake, which is rich in other amino acids, vitamins and proteins that don’t contain phenylalanine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a really healthy drink,” Reeder says. “It’s basically protein, except without phenylalanine.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Reeder hopes a new approach for treating diseases could help people like him. The idea is to use bacteria that have been genetically modified to do what Reeder’s body can’t — get rid of phenylalanine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m really excited to help out and hopefully find a treatment for PKU,” Reeder said recently, as he prepared to volunteer for a study testing the modified bacteria.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The bacteria Reeder is helping test are part of a new field of medical research that has emerged from two realms of biomedical science. One is the study of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/series/218987212/microbiome\">human microbiome\u003c/a>, the microbes that inhabit our bodies. The other is synthetic biology, a field that looks at genetically engineering living organisms, including bacteria in the human gut.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a new world of being able to use synthetic biology to program microbes to treat diseases, which I believe is the future,” says \u003ca href=\"https://silver.med.harvard.edu/\">Pamela Silver\u003c/a>, a synthetic biologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Scientists hope to genetically modify microbes from the human microbiome to treat a range of diseases, including digestive disorders like \u003ca href=\"https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/digestive-diseases/ulcerative-colitis\">ulcerative colitis \u003c/a>and \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/ibd/what-is-IBD.htm\">inflammatory bowel disease\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Microbes are something that we as synthetic biologists see as highly engineer-able. We understand how to engineer microbes so it seems like the perfect interface between synthetic biology and health,” Silver says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One company, \u003ca href=\"https://www.actobio.com/\">ActoBio Therapeutics \u003c/a>of Ghent, Belgium, has just started using genetically engineered microbes to try to treat \u003ca href=\"https://medlineplus.gov/diabetestype1.html\">Type 1 diabetes\u003c/a>. Another one, \u003ca href=\"https://www.oragenics.com/\">Oragenics of Tampa, Fla.,\u003c/a> is testing a modified bacterium to treat mouth sores caused by cancer chemotherapy. And \u003ca href=\"http://oselinc.com/home/\">Osel\u003c/a> of Mountain View, Calif., hopes engineered microbes could prevent HIV infections.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reeder is helping test modified \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/ecoli/index.html\">E. coli\u003c/a> bacteria. While some types of \u003cem>E. coli\u003c/em> can cause serious illness, the \u003cem>E. coli\u003c/em> type being used in the study is found in the human gut.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is a naturally occurring probiotic bacteria,” says Caroline Kurtz, a scientist at \u003ca href=\"https://www.synlogictx.com/\">Synlogic\u003c/a>, a Cambridge, Mass., biotech company, which created the modified version of the organism.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We can enhance its function by introducing genes [or] by changing genes that are there, and design the cells to either produce something or consume something that may be beneficial for a patient,” Kurtz says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Synlogic has also engineered \u003cem>E. coli\u003c/em> to rid life-threatening levels of ammonia from the bodies of people with \u003ca href=\"https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/cirrhosis/symptoms-causes/syc-20351487\">cirrhosis of the liver\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a really exciting new modality that allows us to think about therapies in a new way and really look at diseases in a whole new way: a living medicine that can respond to its environment,” Kurtz says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Preliminary research involving mice and healthy adults \u003ca href=\"http://stm.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.aau7975\">published recently\u003c/a> in the journal \u003cem>Science Translational Medicine\u003c/em> indicates Synlogic’s \u003cem>E. coli \u003c/em>are safe and may work. So the company is now testing them in patients with cirrhosis and PKU.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reeder admits he was a little nervous when he first heard about all this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When you hear about \u003cem>E. coli\u003c/em> you think: sickness, throwing up. So I was a little bit skeptical. I wasn’t sure what to think because I was going to be ingesting \u003cem>E. coli\u003c/em>,” Reeder says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the more he learned about it, the more excited Reeder got about trying the engineered microbes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think that’s very cool that they found a way to use a natural probiotic that’s found in the digestive tract to help the human body,” Reeder says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reeder spent the weekend in the clinic so doctors could monitor him closely and run tests as he ingested what normally would be dangerous amounts of protein. He then swallowed either the engineered \u003cem>E. coli\u003c/em> or a placebo. He wasn’t told which.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was liquid solution. It tasted kind of like mint taffy. It was pretty sweet,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reeder thinks he got the engineered microbes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I could immediately feel my cognitive abilities falling down after drinking the 20 grams of protein. And then I took the drug and I started feeling a lot better. I obtained more energy and my cognitive abilities got quicker,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was really cool to feel that. I could tell it was working. It was pretty cool,” Reeder says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much more research is needed to know whether genetically engineered microbes are safe and really work. But Synlogic hopes to report results from the cirrhosis and PKU studies later this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before any of these experimental treatments could be used routinely, they would have to be reviewed and approved by the Food and Drug Administration. That’s a process that could take years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=A+Gulp+Of+Genetically+Modified+Bacteria+Might+Someday+Treat+A+Range+Of+Illnesses&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Lions once prevalent over two Southern California mountain ranges could disappear entirely within 50 years, risking local extinction because of conditions both environmental and genetic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the conclusion of \u003ca href=\"https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/eap.1868\">a new study\u003c/a> published in the journal \u003cem>Ecological Applications\u003c/em> that uses 15 years of observational data, modeling and DNA analysis to analyze how cougar populations are changing in the Santa Monica and Santa Ana mountains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The coastal Santa Monica range is home to about 15 mountain lions; 30 more survive in the Santa Anas, straddling Orange and Riverside counties. They’re penned in by a century of development, ranch and agricultural land, and freeways – U.S. 101 in the Santa Monicas, Interstate 15 in the Santa Anas – that are two of the busiest in the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Humans are often to blame for mountain lion deaths: cars and rat poison are two common killers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our research has shown that the mountain lions in the coastal Santa Ana Mountain Range are primarily put at risk by restriction of their movement across I-15,” says T. Winston Vickers, an associate veterinarian at UC Davis who co-authored the report, “and their high mortality rates from vehicle collisions and being killed after they have killed unprotected pets or livestock.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The study pegs the chance of local extinction for the two lion populations at between 16 and 21 percent on the basis of geographic factors alone. And authors say inbreeding caused by the tiny available genetic pool could itself cause rapid extinction. Seth Riley, a co-author on the study and a \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/samo/learn/nature/pumapage.htm\">National Park Service wildlife ecologist\u003c/a>, called that result “sobering.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the report’s lead author says the group’s modeling offers reason for optimism, too, in that enabling lions to cross freeways could minimize risks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It wouldn’t actually take a whole lot more movement of mountain lions,” said John Benson, an ecologist at the University of Nebraska. “Just one every couple of years maybe, where these populations could maintain their genetic diversity and decrease their extinction probability.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Engineered wildlife crossings carry steep price tags. One \u003ca href=\"http://www.dot.ca.gov/d7/projects/libertycanyon/\">proposed at Liberty Canyon\u003c/a>, near the 101 freeway in Agoura Hills, could cost $60 million. If funded, it could break ground within three years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Benson says it would offer permanent benefits and an example to other communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we’re able to do it here in Los Angeles, we can probably do it anywhere,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Lions once prevalent over two Southern California mountain ranges could disappear entirely within 50 years, risking local extinction because of conditions both environmental and genetic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the conclusion of \u003ca href=\"https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/eap.1868\">a new study\u003c/a> published in the journal \u003cem>Ecological Applications\u003c/em> that uses 15 years of observational data, modeling and DNA analysis to analyze how cougar populations are changing in the Santa Monica and Santa Ana mountains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The coastal Santa Monica range is home to about 15 mountain lions; 30 more survive in the Santa Anas, straddling Orange and Riverside counties. They’re penned in by a century of development, ranch and agricultural land, and freeways – U.S. 101 in the Santa Monicas, Interstate 15 in the Santa Anas – that are two of the busiest in the world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Humans are often to blame for mountain lion deaths: cars and rat poison are two common killers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our research has shown that the mountain lions in the coastal Santa Ana Mountain Range are primarily put at risk by restriction of their movement across I-15,” says T. Winston Vickers, an associate veterinarian at UC Davis who co-authored the report, “and their high mortality rates from vehicle collisions and being killed after they have killed unprotected pets or livestock.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The study pegs the chance of local extinction for the two lion populations at between 16 and 21 percent on the basis of geographic factors alone. And authors say inbreeding caused by the tiny available genetic pool could itself cause rapid extinction. Seth Riley, a co-author on the study and a \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/samo/learn/nature/pumapage.htm\">National Park Service wildlife ecologist\u003c/a>, called that result “sobering.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the report’s lead author says the group’s modeling offers reason for optimism, too, in that enabling lions to cross freeways could minimize risks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It wouldn’t actually take a whole lot more movement of mountain lions,” said John Benson, an ecologist at the University of Nebraska. “Just one every couple of years maybe, where these populations could maintain their genetic diversity and decrease their extinction probability.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Engineered wildlife crossings carry steep price tags. One \u003ca href=\"http://www.dot.ca.gov/d7/projects/libertycanyon/\">proposed at Liberty Canyon\u003c/a>, near the 101 freeway in Agoura Hills, could cost $60 million. If funded, it could break ground within three years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Benson says it would offer permanent benefits and an example to other communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If we’re able to do it here in Los Angeles, we can probably do it anywhere,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"soldout": {
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