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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="covid-19-sentry">Covid-19 Sentry</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-preprints">From Preprints</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-pubmed">From PubMed</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-patent-search">From Patent Search</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-preprints">From Preprints</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Prosocial behavior in emergencies: Evidence from blood donors recruitment and retention during the COVID-19 pandemic</strong> -
<div>
The impact of COVID-19 represents a specific challenge for voluntary transfusional systems sustained by the intrinsic motivations of blood donors. In general, health emergencies can stimulate altruistic behaviors. However, in this context, the same prosocial motivations, besides the personal health risks, could foster the adherence to social distancing rules to preserve collective health and, therefore, discourage blood donation activities. In this work, we investigate the consequences of the pandemic shock on the dynamics of new donors exploiting the individual-level longitudinal information contained in administrative data on the Italian region of Tuscany. We compare the change in new donors’ recruitment and retention during 2020 with respect to the 2017-2019 period, considering donors’ and their municipalities of residence characteristics. Our results show an increment of new donors, with higher growth for older donors. Moreover, we demonstrate that the quality of new donors, as proxied by the frequency of subsequent donations, increased with respect to previous years. Finally, we show that changes in extrinsic motivations, such as the possibility of obtaining a free antibody test or overcoming movement restrictions, cannot explain the documented improvement in performances.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://psyarxiv.com/6t72b/" target="_blank">Prosocial behavior in emergencies: Evidence from blood donors recruitment and retention during the COVID-19 pandemic</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Using a reverse genetics system to generate recombinant SARS-CoV-2 expressing robust levels of reporter genes</strong> -
<div>
Reporter-expressing recombinant virus represents an excellent option and a powerful tool to investigate, among others, viral infection, pathogenicity, and transmission, as well as to identify therapeutic compounds that inhibit viral infection and prophylactic vaccines. To combat the still ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, we have established a robust bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC)-based reverse genetics (RG) system to rapidly generate recombinant severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (rSARS-CoV-2) to study the contribution of viral proteins in viral pathogenesis. In addition, we have also engineered reporter-expressing recombinant viruses in which we place the reporter genes upstream of the viral nucleocapsid (N) gene to promote high levels of reporter gene expression that facilitates the study of SARS-CoV-2 in vitro and in vivo. Although successful, the genetic manipulation of the BAC containing the entire SARS-CoV-2 genome of ~30,000 nucleotides, is challenging. Herein, we depict the technical details to engineer rSARS-CoV-2 expressing reporter genes using the BAC-based RG approach. We describe i) assembly of the full- length (FL) SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences into the empty pBeloBAC, ii) verification of the pBeloBAC-FL, iii) cloning of a Venus reporter gene into the pBeloBAC-FL, and iv) recovery of the Venus-expressing rSARS-CoV-2. By following this protocol, researchers with basic molecular biology and gene engineering techniques knowledge will be able to generate wild-type and reporter-expressing rSARS-CoV-2.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.21.492922v1" target="_blank">Using a reverse genetics system to generate recombinant SARS-CoV-2 expressing robust levels of reporter genes</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Reduced Neutralization of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant in Sera from SARS-CoV-1 Survivors after 3-dose of Vaccination</strong> -
<div>
Recent studies found that Omicron variant escapes vaccine-elicited immunity. Interestingly, potent cross-clade pan- sarbecovirus neutralizing antibodies were found in survivors of the infection by SARS-CoV-1 after BNT162b2 mRNA vaccination (N Engl J Med. 2021 Oct 7;385(15):1401-1406). These pan-sarbecovirus neutralizing antibodies were observed to efficiently neutralize the infection driven by the S protein from both SARS-CoV and multiple SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOC) including B.1.1.7 (Alpha), B.1.351 (Beta), and B.1.617.2 (Delta) (N Engl J Med. 2021 Oct 7;385(15):1401-1406). However, whether these cross-reactive antibodies could neutralize the Omicron variant is still unknown. Based on the data collected from a cohort of SARS-CoV-1 survivors received 3-dose of immunization, our studies reported herein showed that a high level of neutralizing antibodies against both SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 were elicited by a 3rd-dose of booster vaccination of protein subunit vaccine ZF2001. However, a dramatically reduced neutralization of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant (B.1.1.529) is observed in sera from these SARS-CoV-1 survivors received 3-dose of Vaccination. Our results indicates that the rapid development of pan-variant adapted vaccines is warranted.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.21.492903v1" target="_blank">Reduced Neutralization of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant in Sera from SARS-CoV-1 Survivors after 3-dose of Vaccination</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>The SARS-CoV-2 spike protein binds and modulates estrogen receptors</strong> -
<div>
The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spike (S) protein binds angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) at the cell surface, which constitutes the primary mechanism driving SARS-CoV-2 infection. Molecular interactions between the transduced S and endogenous proteins likely occur post-infection, but such interactions are not well understood. We used an unbiased primary screen to profile the binding of full-length S against &gt;9,000 human proteins and found significant S-host protein interactions, including one between S and human estrogen receptor alpha (ER). After confirming this interaction in a secondary assay, we used bioinformatics, supercomputing, and experimental assays to identify a highly conserved and functional nuclear receptor coregulator (NRC) LXD-like motif on the S2 subunit and an S-ER binding mode. In cultured cells, S DNA transfection increased ER cytoplasmic accumulation, and S treatment induced ER-dependent biological effects and ACE2 expression. Noninvasive multimodal PET/CT imaging in SARS- CoV-2-infected hamsters using [18F]fluoroestradiol (FES) localized lung pathology with increased ER lung levels. Postmortem experiments in lung tissues from SARS-CoV-2-infected hamsters and humans confirmed an increase in cytoplasmic ER expression and its colocalization with S protein in alveolar macrophages. These findings describe the discovery and characterization of a novel S-ER interaction, imply a role for S as an NRC, and are poised to advance knowledge of SARS- CoV-2 biology, COVID-19 pathology, and mechanisms of sex differences in the pathology of infectious disease.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.21.492920v1" target="_blank">The SARS-CoV-2 spike protein binds and modulates estrogen receptors</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Intranasal pediatric parainfluenza virus-vectored SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate is protective in macaques</strong> -
<div>
Pediatric SARS-CoV-2 vaccines are needed that elicit immunity directly in the airways, as well as systemically. Building on pediatric parainfluenza virus vaccines in clinical development, we generated a live-attenuated parainfluenza virus-vectored vaccine candidate expressing SARS-CoV-2 prefusion-stabilized spike (S) protein (B/HPIV3/S-6P) and evaluated its immunogenicity and protective efficacy in rhesus macaques. A single intranasal/intratracheal dose of B/HPIV3/S-6P induced strong S-specific airway mucosal IgA and IgG responses. High levels of S-specific antibodies were also induced in serum, which efficiently neutralized SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern. Furthermore, B/HPIV3/S-6P induced robust systemic and pulmonary S-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell responses, including tissue-resident memory cells in lungs. Following challenge, SARS-CoV-2 replication was undetectable in airways and lung tissues of immunized macaques. B/HPIV3/S-6P will be evaluated clinically as pediatric intranasal SARS-CoV-2/parainfluenza virus type 3 vaccine.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.21.492923v1" target="_blank">Intranasal pediatric parainfluenza virus-vectored SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate is protective in macaques</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Modeling suggests that multiple immunizations or infections will reveal the benefits of updating SARS-CoV-2 vaccines</strong> -
<div>
When should vaccines to evolving pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2 be updated? Our computational models address this focusing on updating SARS-CoV-2 vaccines to the currently circulating Omicron variant. Current studies typically compare the antibody titers to the new variant following a single dose of the original-vaccine versus the updated-vaccine in previously immunized individuals. These studies find that the updated-vaccine does not induce higher titers to the vaccine-variant compared with the original-vaccine, suggesting that updating may not be needed. Our models recapitulate this observation but suggest that vaccination with the updated-vaccine generates qualitatively different humoral immunity, a small fraction of which is specific for unique epitopes to the new variant. Our simulations suggest that these new variant-specific responses could dominate following subsequent vaccination or infection with either the currently circulating or future variants. We suggest a two-dose strategy for determining if the vaccine needs updating and for vaccinating high-risk individuals.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.21.492928v1" target="_blank">Modeling suggests that multiple immunizations or infections will reveal the benefits of updating SARS-CoV-2 vaccines</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Anti-chemokine antibodies after SARS-CoV-2 infection correlate with favorable disease course</strong> -
<div>
Infection by SARS-CoV-2 leads to diverse symptoms, which can persist for months. While antiviral antibodies are protective, those targeting interferons and other immune factors are associated with adverse COVID-19 outcomes. Instead, we discovered that antibodies against specific chemokines are omnipresent after COVID-19, associated with favorable disease, and predictive of lack of long COVID symptoms at one year post infection. Anti-chemokine antibodies are present also in HIV-1 and autoimmune disorders, but they target different chemokines than those in COVID-19. Finally, monoclonal antibodies derived from COVID-19 convalescents that bind to the chemokine N-loop impair cell migration. Given the role of chemokines in orchestrating immune cell trafficking, naturally arising anti-chemokine antibodies associated with favorable COVID 19 may be beneficial by modulating the inflammatory response and thus bear therapeutic potential.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.23.493121v1" target="_blank">Anti-chemokine antibodies after SARS- CoV-2 infection correlate with favorable disease course</a>
</div></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Patient satisfaction with telemedicine in the Philippines during the COVID-19 pandemic</strong> -
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Introduction: The capacity to deliver essential health services has been negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic particularly due to lockdown restrictions. Telemedicine provides a safe, efficient, and effective solution that addresses the needs of patients and the health system. However, there remain implementation challenges and barriers to patient adoption in resource-limited settings as in the Philippines. This study thus aimed to describe patient perspectives and experiences with telemedicine services, and explore the factors that influence telemedicine use and satisfaction. Methods: This study used a mixed-methods design through online surveys and in-depth interviews. An online survey using Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) Clinician &amp; Group Adult Visit Survey 4.0 (beta) and Telehealth Usability Questionnaire (TUQ) was accomplished by 200 participants aged 18 to 65 years. A subsample of 16 participants was interviewed to provide insights to the quantitative data. We used descriptive statistics to analyze survey data and grounded theory to analyze data from interviews. Results: Participants were generally satisfied with telemedicine services, with most reporting that this was an efficient and convenient alternative to face-to-face consultations. However, only 2 in 5 perceived telemedicine as affordable. Our quantitative findings suggest that participants preferred telemedicine services rather than in-person consultations, especially in cases where they feel that their condition is not urgent and does not need extensive physical examination. Safety against COVID-19, and the availability of multiple communication platforms contributed to patient satisfaction with telemedicine. Negative perceptions of patients on their telemedicine provider, perceived higher costs, poor connectivity and other technological issues were found to be barriers to patient satisfaction. Discussion: Telemedicine is viewed as a safe and efficient alternative to receiving care. Continued adoption of telemedicine will require improvements in technology and better patient communication related to their telemedicine provider and the associated costs.
</p>
</div></li>
</ul>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.21.22274939v1" target="_blank">Patient satisfaction with telemedicine in the Philippines during the COVID-19 pandemic</a>
</div>
<ul>
<li><strong>Variant-specific symptoms of COVID-19 among 1,542,510 people in England</strong> -
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Infection with SARS-CoV-2 virus is associated with a wide range of symptoms. The REal-time Assessment of Community Transmission -1 (REACT-1) study has been monitoring the spread and clinical manifestation of SARS-CoV-2 among random samples of the population in England from 1 May 2020 to 31 March 2022. We show changing symptom profiles associated with the different variants over that period, with lower reporting of loss of sense of smell and taste for Omicron compared to previous variants, and higher reporting of cold-like and influenza-like symptoms, controlling for vaccination status. Contrary to the perception that recent variants have become successively milder, Omicron BA.2 was associated with reporting more symptoms, with greater disruption to daily activities, than BA.1. With restrictions lifted and routine testing limited in many countries, monitoring the changing symptom profiles associated with SARS- CoV-2 infection and induced changes in daily activities will become increasingly important.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.21.22275368v1" target="_blank">Variant-specific symptoms of COVID-19 among 1,542,510 people in England</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Safety of the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine in Children below 5 Years in Germany (CoVacU5): An Investigator- initiated Retrospective Cohort Study</strong> -
<div>
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Background The safety of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines is unknown in children aged &lt;5 years. Here, we retrospectively evaluated the safety of BNT162b2 vaccine used off-label in children of this age group in Germany. Methods An investigator-initiated retrospective cohort study (CoVacU5) included parents or caregivers having children aged &lt;5 years registered for SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in outpatient care facilities in Germany. Reported short-term safety data of 1-3 doses of 3-10ug BNT162b2 in children aged 0 to &lt;60 months are presented. Co-primary outcomes were the frequencies of 11 categories of symptoms post-vaccination with bivariate analyses and regression models adjusting for age, sex, weight and height. On-label non-SARS-CoV-2 vaccines served as controls in an active-comparator design. Results The study included 7806 representing a 41% response rate of 19,000 registered children. 338 children received the first dose of BNT162b2 at age 0-&lt;12 months, n=1272 at age 12-24 months and n=5629 at age ≥24 to &lt;60 months. A 10ug dosage was more frequently associated with injection-site symptoms compared to lower dosages. The probability of any symptoms (OR: 1.62 [95% confidence interval (CI): 1.36-1.94]), injection-site, musculoskeletal, dermatological or otolaryngological symptom categories were modestly elevated after BNT12b2 compared to non-SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, whereas the probabilities of general symptoms (OR: 0.74 [95% CI: 0.64-0.85]) and fever (OR: 0.43 [95% CI: 0.35-0.51]) were lower after BNT162b2. Symptoms requiring hospitalization (n=10) were reported only at BNT162b2 dosages higher than 3ug. Conclusions The symptoms reported after BNT162b2 administration were overall comparable to on-label non-SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in this cohort of children aged &lt;5 years.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.17.22275005v1" target="_blank">Safety of the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine in Children below 5 Years in Germany (CoVacU5): An Investigator-initiated Retrospective Cohort Study</a>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>COVID-19 symptoms and duration of direct antigen test positivity at a community testing and surveillance site, January 2021-2022</strong> -
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Importance: Characterizing clinical symptoms and evolution of community- based SARS Co-V-2 infections can inform health practitioners and public health officials in a rapidly changing landscape of population immunity and viral variants. Objective: To characterize COVID-19 symptoms during the Omicron period compared to pre-Delta and Delta variant periods and assess the duration of COVID-19 BinaxNOW rapid antigen test positivity during the Omicron variant surge. Design, Setting, and Participants: This public health surveillance study was undertaken between January 2021- January 2022, at a walk-up community COVID-19 testing site in San Francisco, California. Testing with BinaxNOW rapid antigen tests was available regardless of age, vaccine status, or symptoms throughout. Main Outcomes and Measures: We characterized the prevalence of specific symptoms for people with a positive BinaxNOW test during the Omicron period and compared it to the pre-Delta and Delta periods. During the Omicron period, we examined differences in symptoms by age and vaccine status. Among people returning for repeat testing during Omicron period, we estimated the proportion with a positive BinaxNOW antigen test between 4-14 days from symptom onset or since first positive test if asymptomatic. Results: Of 63,277 persons tested, 18,301 (30%) reported symptoms and 4,568 (25%) tested positive for COVID-19. During the Omicron period, 41.6% (3032/7283) of symptomatic testers tested positive, and the proportion reporting cough (67.4%) and sore throat (43.4%) was higher than during Delta and pre-Delta periods. Congestion was higher during Omicron (38.8%) than during the pre-Delta period and loss of taste/smell (5.3%) and fever (30.4%) were less common. Fevers and myalgias were less common among persons who had received boosters compared to unvaccinated people or those who received the primary series. Five days after symptom onset, 31.1% of people with COVID-19 stated their symptoms were similar or worsening. An estimated 80.2% of symptomatic re-testers remained positive five days after symptom onset and 60.5% after ten days. Conclusions and Relevance: COVID-19 upper respiratory tract symptoms were more commonly reported during the Omicron period compared to pre-Delta and Delta periods, with differences by vaccination status. Antigen test positivity remained high after 5 days, supporting guidelines requiring a negative test to shorten the isolation period.
</p>
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</ul>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.19.22274968v1" target="_blank">COVID-19 symptoms and duration of direct antigen test positivity at a community testing and surveillance site, January 2021-2022</a>
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<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Low testing rates limit the ability of genomic surveillance programs to monitor SARS-CoV-2 variants: a mathematical modelling study</strong> -
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Background Genomic surveillance is essential for monitoring the emergence and spread of SARS-CoV-2 variants. SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic testing is the starting point for SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequencing. However, testing rates in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are low (mean = 27 tests/100,000 people/day) and global testing rates are falling in the post-crisis phase of the pandemic, leading to spatiotemporal biases in sample collection. Various public health agencies and academic groups have produced recommendations on sample sizes and sequencing strategies for effective genomic surveillance. However, these recommendations assume very high volumes of diagnostic testing that are currently well beyond reach in most LMICs. Methods To investigate how testing rates, sequencing strategies and the degree of spatiotemporal bias in sample collection impact variant detection and monitoring outcomes, we used an individual-based model to simulate COVID-19 epidemics in a prototypical LMIC. Within the model, we simulated a range of testing rates, accounted for likely testing demand and applied various genomic surveillance strategies, including sentinel surveillance. Findings Diagnostic testing rates play a substantially larger role in monitoring the prevalence and emergence of new variants than the proportion of samples sequenced. To enable timely detection and monitoring of emerging variants, programs should achieve average testing rates of at least 100 tests/100,000 people/day and sequence 5-10% of test-positive specimens, which may be accomplished through sentinel or other routine surveillance systems. Under realistic assumptions, this averages to ~10 samples for sequencing/1,000,000 people/week. Interpretation For countries where testing capacities are low and sample collection is spatiotemporally biased, surveillance programs should prioritize investments in wider access to diagnostic testing to enable more representative sampling, ahead of simply increasing quantities of sequenced samples. Funding European Research Council, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Governments of Germany, Canada, UK, Australia, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Netherlands and Portugal.
</p>
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<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.20.22275319v1" target="_blank">Low testing rates limit the ability of genomic surveillance programs to monitor SARS-CoV-2 variants: a mathematical modelling study</a>
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<li><strong>Comparative effectiveness of sotrovimab and molnupiravir for prevention of severe COVID-19 outcomes in non- hospitalised patients: an observational cohort study using the OpenSAFELY platform</strong> -
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Objective: To compare the effectiveness of sotrovimab (a neutralising monoclonal antibody) vs. molnupiravir (an antiviral) in preventing severe COVID-19 outcomes in non-hospitalised high-risk COVID-19 adult patients. Design: With the approval of NHS England, we conducted a real-world cohort study using the OpenSAFELY-TPP platform. Setting: Patient- level electronic health record data were obtained from 24 million people registered with a general practice in England that uses TPP software. The primary care data were securely linked with data on COVID-19 infection and therapeutics, hospital admission and death within the OpenSAFELY-TPP platform, covering a period where both medications were frequently prescribed in community settings. Participants: Non-hospitalised adult COVID-19 patients at high-risk of severe outcomes treated with sotrovimab or molnupiravir between December 16, 2021 and February 10, 2022. Interventions: Sotrovimab or molnupiravir administered in the community by COVID-19 Medicine Delivery Units. Main outcome measure: COVID-19 related hospitalisation or COVID-19 related death within 28 days after treatment initiation. Results: Patients treated with sotrovimab (n=3288) and molnupiravir (n=2663) were similar with respect to most baseline characteristics. The mean age of all 5951 patients was 52 (SD=16) years; 59% were female, 89% White and 87% had three or more COVID-19 vaccinations. Within 28 days after treatment initiation, 84 (1.4%) COVID-19 related hospitalisations/deaths were observed (31 treated with sotrovimab and 53 with molnupiravir). Cox proportional hazards models stratified by area showed that after adjusting for demographics, high-risk cohort categories, vaccination status, calendar time, body mass index and other comorbidities, treatment with sotrovimab was associated with a substantially lower risk than treatment with molnupiravir (hazard ratio, HR=0.53, 95% CI: 0.32-0.88; P=0.014). Consistent results were obtained from propensity score weighted Cox models (HR=0.51, 95% CI: 0.31-0.83; P=0.007) and when restricted to fully vaccinated people (HR=0.52, 95% CI: 0.30-0.90; P=0.020). No substantial effect modifications by other characteristics were detected (all P values for interaction&gt;0.10). Conclusion: In routine care of non- hospitalised high-risk adult patients with COVID-19 in England, those who received sotrovimab were at lower risk of severe COVID-19 outcomes than those receiving molnupiravir.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.22.22275417v1" target="_blank">Comparative effectiveness of sotrovimab and molnupiravir for prevention of severe COVID-19 outcomes in non-hospitalised patients: an observational cohort study using the OpenSAFELY platform</a>
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<li><strong>Does directly integrating health information exchange (HIE) data with the electronic health record increase HIE use by clinicians in the emergency department?</strong> -
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Objective: Develop and evaluate the effect of a Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) app, Health Dart, integrating information from Indianas community health information exchange (HIE), the Indiana Network for Patient Care (INPC), directly with Cerner, an electronic health record (EHR) Materials and Methods: Health Dart was implemented in 14 Indiana University Health emergency departments (ED) using a stepped-wedge study design. We analyzed rates of INPC use in 286,175 ED encounters between October 1, 2019 and December 31, 2020. Logistic regression was used to model the probability of INPC use given the implementation context, such as user interface (UI) enhancements and the COVID-19 pandemic. Results: INPC use increased by 131% across all encounters (from 3.6% to 8.3%; p&lt;0.001) after Health Dart implementation. INPC use increased by144% (from 3.6% to 8.8%; p&lt;0.001) more than two months post-implementation. After UI enhancements, post-implementation INPC use increased 123% (from 3.5% to 7.8%) compared to 181% (from 3.6% to 10.1%; p&lt;0.001) in post-implementation encounters that occurred before UI enhancements. During the pandemic, post- implementation INPC use increased by 135% (from 3.4% to 8.0%; p&lt;0.001) compared to 178% (from 3.6% to 10%; p&lt;0.001) in post-implementation encounters that occurred before the pandemic. Statistical significance was determined using 95% confidence intervals (α=0.05). Discussion: Direct integration of HIE information into an EHR substantially increased frequency of HIE use, but the effect was weakened by the UI enhancements and pandemic. Conclusion: HIE information integrated into EHRs in the form of dashboards can potentially make information retrieval more efficient and effective for clinicians.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.20.22275255v1" target="_blank">Does directly integrating health information exchange (HIE) data with the electronic health record increase HIE use by clinicians in the emergency department?</a>
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<li><strong>A Mesoscale Agent Based Modeling Framework For Flow-mediated Infection Transmission In Indoor Occupied Spaces</strong> -
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The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, and its associated public health and socioeconomic burden, has reaffirmed the necessity for a comprehensive understanding of flow-mediated infection transmission in occupied indoor spaces. This is an inherently multiscale problem, and suitable investigation approaches that can enable evidence-based decision-making for infection control strategies, interventions, and policies; will need to account for flow physics, and occupant behavior. Here, we present a mesoscale infection transmission model for human occupied indoor spaces, by integrating an agent-based human interaction model with a flow physics model for respiratory droplet dynamics and transport. We outline the mathematical and algorithmic details of the modeling framework, and demonstrate its validity using two simple simulation scenarios that verify each of the major sub-models. We then present a detailed case-study of infection transmission in a model indoor space with 60 human occupants; using a systematic set of simulations representing various flow scenarios. Data from the simulations illustrate the utility and efficacy of the devised mesoscale model in resolving flow-mediated infection transmission; and elucidate key trends in infection transmission dynamics amongst the human occupants.
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🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.20.22275409v1" target="_blank">A Mesoscale Agent Based Modeling Framework For Flow-mediated Infection Transmission In Indoor Occupied Spaces</a>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-clinical-trials">From Clinical Trials</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Role of Glutathione Deficiency and MSIDS Variables in Long COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Dietary Supplement: NAC (N-acetyl cysteine) , Alpha lipoic acid (ALA), liposomal glutathione (GSH)<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   University of California, Irvine;   Hudson Valley Healing Arts Center<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Study to Evaluate the Efficacy of IN STI-9199 in Treating Symptomatic COVID-19 in Outpatient Adults and Adolescents</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: STI-9199;   Drug: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:  <br/>
Sorrento Therapeutics, Inc.<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Safety and Efficacy Study of Hymecromone Tablets for the Treatment of Patients With COVID-19.</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: Hymecromone tablets;   Other: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Shanghai Zhongshan Hospital<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Study on Sequential Immunization of Omicron Inactivated COVID-19 Vaccine and Prototype Inactivated COVID-19 Vaccine in Population Aged 18 Years Old and Above</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: Omicron COVID-19 Vaccine (Vero Cell), Inactivated;   Biological: COVID-19 Vaccine (Vero Cell), Inactivated<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:  <br/>
China National Biotec Group Company Limited;   Beijing Institute of Biological Products Co Ltd.;   Hunan Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Neuro-inflammation and Post-infectious Fatigue in Individuals With and Without COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Radiation: [18F]DPA-714 positron emission tomography (PET) scan<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Amsterdam UMC, location VUmc;   ZonMw: The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development<br/><b>Enrolling by invitation</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Phase II Safety Single-arm Study of CDK4/6 Inhibition With Palbociclib in Hospitalized, Moderate COVID-19 Cases to Prevent Thromboinflammation</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Drug: Palbociclib<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   biotx.ai GmbH<br/><b>Active, not recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Study to Learn About the Study Medicine (Called Nirmatrelvir/Ritonavir) in Pregnant Women With Mild or Moderate COVID-19.</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: nirmatrelvir;   Drug: ritonavir<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Pfizer<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Phase I Clinical Trial of COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine in Adults Aged 18 Years and Older</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: COVID-19 mRNA vaccine;   Biological: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   CanSino Biologics Inc.<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Phase II Clinical Trial of COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine in Adults Aged 18 Years and Older</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: COVID-19 mRNA vaccine;   Biological: Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   CanSino Biologics Inc.<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Evaluation of COVID-19 Vaccines Given as a Booster in Healthy Adults in Indonesia (MIACoV Indonesia)</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: Pfizer-BioNTech Standard dose;   Biological: AstraZeneca Standard dose;   Biological: Pfizer-BioNTech Fractional dose;   Biological: AstraZeneca Fractional dose;   Biological: Moderna Standard dose;   Biological: Moderna Fractional dose<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   Murdoch Childrens Research Institute;   Universitas Padjadjaran (UNPAD);   Universitas Indonesia (UI);   Health Development Policy Agency, Ministry of Health Republic of Indonesia;   Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations;   The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>THEMBA II T-Cell Vaccine: Vaccination With saRNA COVID-19 Vaccines</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: AAHI-SC2 Vaccine;   Biological: AAHI- SC3 Vaccine;   Biological: EUA or approved vaccine<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   ImmunityBio, Inc.<br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>To Evaluate SSD8432/Ritonavir in Adults With COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: SSD8432 750mg;   Drug: SSD8432 placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Jiangsu Simcere Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Study to Evaluate the Efficacy and Safety of DXP604 in Patients With Mild to Moderate COVID-19</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Intervention</b>:   Biological: DXP604<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:  <br/>
Wuhan Institute of Biological Products Co., Ltd<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Evaluation of SSD8432 and Ritonavir in Adult Subjects With COVID-19 Clinical Study</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Drug: SSD8432 300mg;   Drug: SSD8432 750mg;   Drug: SSD8432Placebo<br/><b>Sponsor</b>:   Jiangsu Simcere Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Sequential Immunization of Two Doses of Inactivated COVID-19 Vaccine (Omicron) in Vaccinated Population Aged 18 Years and Above</strong> - <b>Condition</b>:   COVID-19<br/><b>Interventions</b>:   Biological: BIBP Omicron Inactivated COVID-19 vaccine (Vero Cell);   Biological: WIBP Omicron Inactivated COVID-19 vaccine (Vero Cell);   Biological: COVID-19 Vaccine (Vero Cell), Inactivated<br/><b>Sponsors</b>:   China National Biotec Group Company Limited;   Beijing Institute of Biological Products Co Ltd.;   Wuhan Institute of Biological Products Co., Ltd;   The University of Hong Kong<br/><b>Not yet recruiting</b></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-pubmed">From PubMed</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Thiazole-based SARS-CoV-2 protease (COV M<sup>pro</sup> ) inhibitors: Design, synthesis, enzyme inhibition, and molecular modeling simulations</strong> - As an attempt to contribute to the efforts of combating the pandemic virus severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) responsible for COVID-19, new analogs of the repurposed drug nitazoxanide which showed promising inhibitory efficacy on a viral protease enzyme were designed, synthesized and evaluated for their inhibitory activity on the main protease of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, using the COV2-3CL protease inhibition assay. The obtained results showed that the…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity of various PET-bottled Japanese green teas and tea compounds in vitro</strong> - The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS- CoV-2) is a serious threat to global public health. The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants is a significant concern regarding the continued effectiveness of vaccines and antiviral therapeutics. Thus, natural products such as foods, drinks, and other compounds should be investigated for their potential to treat COVID-19. Here, we examined the in vitro antiviral activity against…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Highly polymerized proanthocyanidins (PAC) components from blueberry leaf and stem significantly inhibit SARS-CoV-2 infection via inhibition of ACE2 and viral 3CLpro enzymes</strong> - With the current worldwide pandemic of COVID-19, there is an urgent need to develop effective treatment and prevention methods against SARS-CoV-2 infection. We have previously reported that the proanthocyanidin (PAC) fraction in blueberry (BB) leaves has strong antiviral activity against hepatitis C virus (HCV) and human T-lymphocytic leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1). In this study, we used Kunisato 35 Gou (K35) derived from the rabbit eye blueberry (Vaccinium virgatum Aiton), which has a high PAC…</p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Copper(II) Schiff base complex derived from salen ligand: structural investigation, Hirshfeld surface analysis, anticancer and anti-SARS-CoV-2</strong> - This work deals with the synthesis and characterization of copper(II) complex <a href="1">Cu(salen)(H(2)O)</a> of salen-type Schiff base ligand derived from the condensation of 5-bromo-2-hydroxy-3-methoxybenzaldehyde and ethylenediamine in EtOH. This complex was characterized by different spectroscopic and physicochemical methods. Single crystal X-ray crystallography study revealed that Cu(II) in complex (1) is five-coordinate and adopts a distorted square pyramidal geometry. A DFT calculation was employed…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Discovery and Use of Long dsRNA Mediated RNA Interference to Stimulate Antiviral Protection in Interferon Competent Mammalian Cells</strong> - In invertebrate cells, RNA interference (RNAi) acts as a powerful immune defense that stimulates viral gene knockdown thereby preventing infection. With this pathway, virally produced long dsRNA (dsRNA) is cleaved into short interfering RNA (siRNA) by Dicer and loaded into the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC) which can then destroy/disrupt complementary viral mRNA sequences. Comparatively, in mammalian cells it is believed that the type I interferon (IFN) pathway is the cornerstone of the…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Potential Drug Discovery for COVID-19 Treatment Targeting Cathepsin L Using a Deep Learning-Based Strategy</strong> - Cathepsin L (CTSL), a cysteine protease that can cleave and activate the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spike protein, could be a promising therapeutic target for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). However, there is still no clinically available CTSL inhibitor that can be used. Here, we applied Chemprop, a newly trained directed-message passing deep neural network approach, to identify small molecules and FDA-approved drugs that can block CTSL activity to expand…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Targeted delivery of inhalable drug particles in a patient-specific tracheobronchial tree with moderate COVID-19: A numerical study</strong> - The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to severe social and economic disruption worldwide. Although currently no consent has been reached on a specific therapy that can treat COVID-19 effectively, several inhalation therapy strategies have been proposed to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 infection. These strategies include inhalations of antiviral drugs, anti-inflammatory drugs, and vaccines. To investigate how to enhance the therapeutic effect by increasing the delivery efficiency (DE) of…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Fibrin clot characteristics and anticoagulant response in a SARS-CoV-2-infected endothelial model</strong> - Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients have increased thrombosis risk. With increasing age, there is an increase in COVID-19 severity. Additionally, adults with a history of vasculopathy have the highest thrombotic risk in COVID-19. The mechanisms of these clinical differences in risk remain unclear. Human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) were infected with SARS-CoV-2, influenza A/Singapore/6/86 (H1N1) or mock-infected prior to incubation with plasma from healthy children, healthy…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Characterization of SARS-CoV-2 and host entry factors distribution in a COVID-19 autopsy series</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: This study portrays the impact of dispersed SARS-CoV-2 infection in diverse organ systems, thereby facilitating avenues for systematic therapeutic approaches.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Repurposing of Doxycycline to Hinder the Viral Replication of SARS-CoV-2: From <em>in silico</em> to <em>in vitro</em> Validation</strong> - Since the rapid spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) became a global pandemic, healthcare ministries around the world have recommended specific control methods such as quarantining infected peoples, identifying infections, wearing mask, and practicing hand hygiene. Since no effective treatment for COVID-19 has yet been discovered, a variety of drugs approved by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have been suggested for repurposing strategy. In the current study, we predicted that doxycycline…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Safety and immunogenicity of Nanocovax, a SARS-CoV-2 recombinant spike protein vaccine: Interim results of a double- blind, randomised controlled phase 1 and 2 trial</strong> - BACKGROUND: Nanocovax is a recombinant severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 subunit vaccine composed of full- length prefusion stabilized recombinant SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoproteins (S-2P) and aluminium hydroxide adjuvant.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Unraveling T Cell Responses for Long Term Protection of SARS-CoV-2 Infection</strong> - Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the global need for vaccines to prevent the disease is imperative. To date, several manufacturers have made efforts to develop vaccines against SARS-CoV-2. In spite of the success of developing many useful vaccines so far, it will be helpful for future vaccine designs, targetting long-term disease protection. For this, we need to know more details of the mechanism of T cell responses to SARS-CoV-2. In this study, we first detected pairwise differentially expressed…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Generation of zinc ion-rich surface via in situ growth of ZIF-8 particle: Microorganism immobilization onto fabric surface for prohibit hospital-acquired infection</strong> - Viruses/bacteria outbreaks have motivated us to develop a fabric that will inhibit their transmission with high potency and long-term stability. By creating a metal-ion-rich surface onto polyester (PET) fabric, a method is found to inhibit hospital-acquired infections by immobilizing microorganisms on its surface. ZIF-8 and APTES are utilized to overcome the limitations associated with non-uniform distribution, weak biomolecule interaction, and ion leaching on surfaces. Modified surfaces…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Natural Compound ZINC12899676 Reduces Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus Replication by Inhibiting the Viral NTPase Activity</strong> - Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) is an alphacoronavirus (α-CoV) that causes high mortality in suckling piglets, leading to severe economic losses worldwide. No effective vaccine or commercial antiviral drug is readily available. Several replicative enzymes are responsible for coronavirus replication. In this study, the potential candidates targeting replicative enzymes (PLP2, 3CLpro, RdRp, NTPase, and NendoU) were screened from 187,119 compounds in ZINC natural products library, and seven…</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Promising Role of Emodin as Therapeutics to Against Viral Infections</strong> - Emodin is an anthraquinone derivative that is widely present in natural plants and has a wide spectrum of pharmacological effects, such as antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, anti-fibrotic and anticancer and so on. Through reviewing studies on antiviral effect of emodin in the past decades, we found that emodin exhibits ability of inhibiting the infection and replication of more than 10 viruses in vitro and in vivo, including herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) and type 2 (HSV-2), human…</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-patent-search">From Patent Search</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Will the Coronavirus Pandemic Ever End?</strong> - If Americans decide too soon that it is over, it could paradoxically drag on even longer. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/will-the-coronavirus-pandemic-ever-end">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Consequential Gun Ruling After the Buffalo Massacre</strong> - The racist killings showed the horror of firearms; the Supreme Court may be about to make the problem worse. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/05/30/a-consequential-gun-ruling-after-the-buffalo-massacre">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>An Insurrectionist Could Be the Next Governor of Pennsylvania</strong> - Doug Mastriano, who won the Republican nomination, has pushed Trump’s lies about the election and sent busloads of supporters to the Capitol riot. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/an-insurrectionist-could-be-the-next-governor-of-pennsylvania">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Arkansas Primary Map: Live Election Results</strong> - The latest results from the Arkansas primary ahead of the 2022 midterms. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/election-2022/live-midterm-results-arkansas">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Texas Primary Runoffs: Live Election-Results Maps</strong> - The latest results from the Texas primary runoffs ahead of the 2022 midterms. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/election-2022/live-midterm-results-texas">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>How the internet gets people to plagiarize each other</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-
cdn.com/thumbor/NleKUbGXrJy_3Aa6knQwRpqND4Q=/0x78:1941x1534/1310x983/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70904104/GettyImages_1095167058.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
It should be noted that none of these dogs are guilty of plagiarism. | Getty Images
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Are you “hopping on a trend” or are you plagiarizing?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LkZrTr">
The internet is full of terrible corners, but none are as skin- crawling as what you see when you open a new account on TikTok. The app’s freakishly personalized algorithm gets better at knowing what you like the more you use it, so as someone who’s had a TikTok account for nearly four years, mine’s full of cats, hair tutorials, and 15-year-olds with mental health concerns who will grow up to be successful stand-up comedians.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QplXRU">
An unsullied For You page whose only knowledge is that you are human will serve you a disorienting combination of two things: hot girls’ butts, and advice on how to steal other people’s viral video ideas.
</p>
<div class="c-float-right">
<div id="q2PUzf">
<div>
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</div>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NhvRiH">
Why the butts are there is self- explanatory (they get the most views). The latter phenomenon, however, reveals a much darker side of the human condition. What they’re offering are “tips” or “hacks” on how to go viral on TikTok, which is embarrassing in itself but even worse in practice: titles range from “<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@itxmejules/video/6936210746615270662?_t=8SS6ZkTMggs&amp;_r=1">How to Grow Your Account to 1k Followers in 1 Week,</a>” to <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@itsmarisajo/video/6941540017609116934?_t=8SS6au5fMaI&amp;_r=1">“10 Video Ideas Anyone Can Use,</a>” or “<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@hipsamagrowth/video/6976741619231935750?_t=8SS6Te0B3Tq&amp;_r=1">How to EASILY Produce Video Ideas for TikTok.”</a> That last one gives the following advice: “Find somebody else’s TikTok that inspires you and then literally copy it. You don’t need to copy it completely, but you can get pretty close.”
</p>
<div id="cxQ2tq">
<blockquote cite="https://www.tiktok.com/@hipsamagrowth/video/6976741619231935750" class="tiktok-embed">
<section>
<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@hipsamagrowth" target="_blank" title="@hipsamagrowth"><span class="citation" data-cites="hipsamagrowth">@hipsamagrowth</span></a>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
How to EASILY produce TikTok ideas <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/makemoney" target="_blank" title="makemoney">#makemoney</a> <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/tiktokgrowth" target="_blank" title="tiktokgrowth">#tiktokgrowth</a> <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/tiktokhacks" target="_blank" title="tiktokhacks">#tiktokhacks</a> <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/tiktokhowto" target="_blank" title="tiktokhowto">#tiktokhowto</a> <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/tiktokgrowthtips" target="_blank" title="tiktokgrowthtips">#tiktokgrowthtips</a>
</p>
<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/music/Drive-
Forever-6940036803005007873" target="_blank" title="♬ Drive Forever - Tendency Challenge">♬ Drive Forever - Tendency Challenge</a>
</section>
</blockquote>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="l6cAwM">
While the creator behind it is condoning pretty sleazy, algorithm-brained behavior, I have to appreciate his honesty about a practice that has plagued the internet since it’s existed: plagiarism, both the intentional kind that can fall anywhere on the spectrum of “pretty shitty” to “actively evil,” and the kind you do when you’re making content in a system of increasingly lucrative rewards for stealing successful people’s stuff. Though plagiarism is arguably most prevalent on TikTok, it’s even harder to police the plagiarism that happens between different platforms.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mEcqX9">
Brenden Koerner is used to people using his work as source material. This is typically a good thing: About once a week, he’ll field inquiries from producers hoping to interview him for a documentary or adapt one of his books into a film or a podcast. If they option one of his works, he’ll get a cut of that sale. Earlier this year, the bad kind happened: Someone published a podcast <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/05/john-patterson-kidnapping-mexico/618396/">based exclusively on a story</a> he’d spent nine years reporting for The Atlantic, with zero credit or acknowledgment of the source material. “Situations like this have become all too common amid the podcast boom,” he wrote in a <a href="https://twitter.com/brendankoerner/status/1513502690952855554">now-viral Twitter thread</a> last month.
</p>
<div id="rG6zcy">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" dir="ltr" lang="en">
This podcast series is a shameless rip-off of my <a href="https://twitter.com/TheAtlantic?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"><span class="citation" data-cites="TheAtlantic">@TheAtlantic</span></a> story from last April. No credit is given and the creator did zero original reporting. He even mispronounces the main character’s name through all 8 episodes. (It’s “kuh-SEE,” not “KEY-see.”) <a href="https://t.co/X19tHnSUXF">https://t.co/X19tHnSUXF</a>
</p>
— Brendan I. Koerner</blockquote></div></li>
</ul>
<ol class="example" type="1">
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/brendankoerner/status/1513502690952855554?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 11, 2022</a>
</li>
</ol>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="42iBly">
Amidst the growing thirst for captivating or sensationalist narratives, several <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2019/08/crime-junkie-podcast-plagiarism-scandal.html">true crime</a> and <a href="https://www.damninteresting.com/appendices/dollop-exhibits/new-claims-on-the-dollop-sources-page/">history podcasts</a> have been accused of plagiarizing written articles without credit over the past few years. Koerner has had this happen to him several times. “If something’s easy or free to access, there’s maybe a general assumption that it’s free to use,” he says. “There are a lot of people who’ve had their hard work repackaged for profit, and I fear it’s ultimately going to be a net negative for the whole ecosystem of people who create and tell stories.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="H1aeRG">
Plagiarism, it should be noted, is perfectly legal in the United States, provided it doesn’t cross the (often nebulous) definition of intellectual property theft. Movies, music, or works of fiction have robust legal protections against this (recall the zillions of lawsuits between artists for stealing each other’s samples), and Koerner’s Atlantic story is protected under the law as well (in works where the originality or artistry of the author is sufficiently evident, courts <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._Rural_Telephone_Service_Co.#:~:text=Edit-,Feist%20Publications%2C%20Inc.%2C%20v.,cannot%20be%20protected%20by%20copyright.">will side with the creator</a>), but it often isn’t worth the time and money to pursue legal action.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zvqvca">
Yet the definitions of what constitutes IP get murky quickly. You <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-
goods/2020/2/4/21112444/renegade-tiktok-song-dance">can’t copyright a dance or a recipe or a yoga pose</a>, for instance, and it’s <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/17/528680860/can-you-copyright-your-dumb-
joke-and-how-can-you-prove-its-yours"><em>really</em> hard</a> to copyright a joke. You also, for obvious reasons, can’t copyright a fact, which means that in industries where IP law can only do so much, social and professional norms dictate your reputation: journalism, comedy, and academia, for instance, fields in which plagiarism is the among the most cardinal of sins.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="P2djE4">
So what of the average influencer, YouTuber, or podcaster? Internet posts are, for the most part, not copyrightable intellectual property. Instead, they’re more like a hybrid of journalism and comedy, meaning that social media typically must police itself against thieves.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jxRIUZ">
Meme theft has been the subject of debate for as long as they’ve been around; back in 2015, popular Instagram meme pages like <span class="citation" data-cites="TheFatJewish">@TheFatJewish</span> and <span class="citation" data-cites="FuckJerry">@FuckJerry</span> <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2015/08/comedy-vs-the-fat-jew.html">faced a reckoning over joke stealing</a>, largely from comedians but also from random people who’d made viral tweets and later saw them reposted elsewhere. Fast forward seven years, and the problem hasn’t gone away — in fact, it’s gotten worse. The meme pages, or accounts that curate mostly other people’s content, won. Some have even successfully argued that what they do is <a href="https://money.com/vine-compilations-youtube-collab-payouts/">an art form in itself</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7SeHgL">
Jonathan Bailey became interested in the subject of plagiarism in the early 2000s, when he ran a goth literary blog devoted to his poetry and fiction. After a reader pointed him to another blog that was stealing his work, he did some digging and found hundreds of others in the online goth community republishing his writing as their own. “I actually won a crap ton of contests on AllPoetry.com despite never having an account there,” he says. For the past decade, he’s been focused on his blog <a href="https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/">Plagiarism Today</a>, which tracks current events relating to the subject and advice for what to do if you’ve been plagiarized.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7OhVI9">
He posits that there are three main eras of internet plagiarism. The first was in the ’90s and early 2000s, when people stole each other’s work because they wanted to pass it off on their own, but didn’t necessarily have a profit motive. The second was in the mid-2000s, when search engine optimization became a widespread practice and sites could make money from crappy, AI-written work that capitalized on the strategic placement of certain keywords. “That came to a halt when Google really started clamping down on low-quality content,” Bailey explains. The third era is made up of the kind that flourishes on social media, where users compete for the most attention-grabbing content in the hopes they might make ad revenue or score a brand deal.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="u19fog">
“[Social media] puts a lot of pressure on what is fundamentally a creative process,” he says. “I’ve talked to repeated plagiarists who say ‘I felt pressure to put up this many articles or podcasts or videos.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OLMrCo">
It’s easy to argue that social media platforms practically beg their users to plagiarize each other. “The way that YouTube works is that [people] create trends, and those trends are meant to be followed by everyone else,” explains Faithe Day, a postdoctoral fellow at UC Santa Barbara’s Center for Black Studies Research who works with students on data science and digital platform ethics. “But there’s a fine line between following a trend and copying what someone else is doing and saying it’s your own.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zEObz7">
Determining who copied who is a convoluted and often unsolvable problem, particularly when people exist in such varied digital spaces. “A lot of people who plagiarize don’t know that they’re plagiarizing. They don’t know that the thing they’re talking about someone else has already discovered,” Day says.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qCMK5l">
It’s difficult to name a platform where plagiarism is more pronounced than TikTok, whose technology encourages people to react and build off each other’s work, often with little or no acknowledgment of the original creator. It’s become such an issue that <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/19/23129437/tiktok-credit-tag-individual-video-feature">last week TikTok announced a new feature</a> that allows its users to credit an existing video when posting their own. “These features are an important step in our ongoing commitment to investing in resources and product experiences that support a culture of credit, which is central to ensuring TikTok remains a home for creative expression,” wrote Kudzi Chikumbu, TikTok’s director of creator community, in the announcement.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_rRvPmBGn9Jny9rlttvWbAydTCI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23582743/Credit_Journey.jpg"/> <cite>TikTok</cite>
<figcaption>
TikTok’s new crediting feature.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tfQkZy">
Day sees this most often in instances where popular TikTok creators hop on a trending dance or audio without knowing who the original creator is, thus spreading it to more people for whom the popular creator was the de facto origin. Nowhere was this more clear than in late 2019 and early 2020 when the <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/2/4/21112444/renegade-tiktok-song-dance">Renegade dance took over TikTok</a>, despite its choreographer, a 14-year-old in Atlanta named Jalaiah Harmon, receiving none of the credit or clout until months later.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="i61r3M">
The instance sparked a reckoning on the platform, culminating in a <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2021/6/29/22554596/digital-blackface-megan-thee-stallion-song-tiktok-first-
strike">Black creator strike</a> to protest rampant co-opting of the community’s dances and slang. “Recommendation algorithms are engineered to ensure that people who have large followings are being recommended to other users, so there aren’t a lot of possibilities for smaller creators to get recognition,” Day explains.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="P8Gjlx">
There has never been quite so much to gain, potentially, by being widely credited as a true originator of a viral moment. Coin a term? Sell it <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2021/05/cheugy-is-being-sold-as-an-nft.html">as an NFT</a>. Appeared on a reality show? <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22749123/onlyfans-influencers-sex-work-instagram-
pornography">Launch an OnlyFans</a>. Get a ton of followers for whatever reason? Put your Venmo handle in your bio. Shill for a shady galaxy lights brand or sign <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22309184/ocean-galaxy-light-
twitter-clout-mining-viral">with an agent who specializes in squeezing cash</a> out of small bursts of attention.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4zJuGO">
In a climate like this, people have understandably grown quite protective over their ideas, sometimes to the point of being obnoxious (a fellow journalist recalls a time when a TikToker was angry that she had offhandedly linked to one of their videos without mentioning them by name). There are incentives to passing other people’s work off as your own — incentives, even, to avoid researching whether anyone has done the work before.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qHChfF">
“Everybody’s looking for a side hustle, and an easy way to make money is aggregating content,” says Chris Stokel-Walker, a UK-based journalist who’s experienced several of the kind of muddy is-is-actually-plagiarism moments where you end up feeling used and exploited but unsure of whether it’s worth starting trouble. “It does hurt, in a way. It’s like, well why did I spend months researching a story or a book only for someone to saunter along, cherry-pick the best bits, present it in a different format, and claim all the credit? What’s the point?”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="90kGOq">
While the technology to detect it has improved, it’s far more difficult to weed out plagiarism when it happens in different forms of media: written work that’s turned into a video, a podcast that’s turned into a book. Rather than relying on data systems to tell us when something is stolen, then, plagiarism experts acknowledge that the shift about proper idea attribution needs to happen culturally. “We have to answer that question as a collective society,” Bailey says.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8rrFAu">
“We need greater understanding about media literacy and internet ethics,” Day says. “It’s about doing the extra legwork, doing a Google search before you reproduce something. But people don’t do that extra work because there’s an assumption that what they’re seeing is a direct reflection of reality, which of course is not always true.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ChBb0O">
They also might not be doing it because they have a monetary incentive to remain ignorant. But that’s a more complicated problem, one that can’t be solved with a platform tweak or new crediting system. It has to be widely understood that plagiarism is, for lack of a clearer term, loser behavior. And that begins with all of us.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CHNXCs">
<em>This column was first published in The Goods newsletter. </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/pages/newsletters"><em>Sign up here</em></a><em> so you don’t miss the next one, plus get newsletter exclusives.</em>
</p>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>To kill or not to kill: Butterflying during the “insect apocalypse”</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="A blue butterfly specimen is pinned to a yellow board. A small, white label beneath the
butterfly reads Moreno Dibius Peru." src="https://cdn.vox-
cdn.com/thumbor/9Um6kj4l0uxsFsxHVYL0cPvyDf0=/230x0:2897x2000/1310x983/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70875367/lede.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Amanda Northrop/Vox
</figcaption></figure></li>
</ul>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Is it still ethical to collect butterflies for science?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="q7cEid">
</p>
<div class="c-float- left">
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-
cdn.com/thumbor/YYgW4HsU995yniG4Y5QuEoQvF0Y=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/21899595/VOX_The_Highlight_Box_Logo_Horizontal.png"/>
</figure>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="k9EDZ0">
<em>Part of the </em><em><strong>May 2022 issue </strong></em><em>of </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-
highlight"><em><strong>The Highlight</strong></em></a><em>, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world.</em>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sFhoEL">
The butterfly’s wings are splayed at an unnatural angle, orange-and-black markings visible to full effect. A metal pin skewers it to the wall. Through thick display glass, I read the tiny, hand-drawn label affixed to the pin’s base. This monarch, I learn, was collected from Michoud, Louisiana, in 1938.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Q5bqeA">
Specimens like this one, housed at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, represent priceless bits of scientific data. Studying them has revealed everything from changes in butterfly wing shape over time to the genetics of extinct species to new species altogether. They are also now the subject of a passionate debate.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XyMqBB">
For centuries, butterfly collectors — also known as lepidopterists — have pursued their quarries<strong> </strong>with a standard set of equipment: vials of alcohol, cyanide bricks, metal pins, jars, and the iconic butterfly net. These insect enthusiasts meticulously catalog each butterfly specimen in the name of science (and, occasionally, fun). Their pinned<strong> </strong>prizes make up the bulk of museum butterfly collections to this day.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kfh2UE">
As a former entomology student, I am intimately familiar with catching butterflies. I have maintained my own collection for nearly a decade, donating extra specimens to local science museums. But despite years of experience, the metal pins and poison jars have always made me slightly queasy. Turns out, I’m not alone.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jl1eLm">
The last 30 years have seen the rise of butterflying, a spiritual sibling to bird watching that involves identifying and photographing the insects rather than capturing them. Some of its staunchly anti-net advocates liken capturing, killing, and pinning butterflies to trophy hunting, and accuse collectors of accelerating environmental collapse.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Q5CoaN">
“I’m not saying that we want to throw away the collections that are there,” says Jeffrey Glassberg, founder of the <a href="https://www.naba.org/">North American Butterfly Association</a>. “But randomly collecting butterflies in the United States is nothing but self-serving nonsense.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="I8mTxc">
Some recent studies estimate that since the 1970s, a large portion of insect populations around the globe <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2023989118#sec-2">have declined</a> by approximately 45 percent. Many refer to this as the “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/magazine/insect-apocalypse.html">insect apocalypse</a>.” In the modern era of climate change and biodiversity loss, some entomologists and butterflyers wonder, is it ethical to collect insect specimens at all? The debate has split scientists and hobbyists alike, driving a wedge between conservation groups, research labs, museum curators — and even lifelong friends.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="B7K1re">
Approximately <a href="https://www.si.edu/spotlight/buginfo/butterflyus#:~:text=There%20are%20approximately%20750%20species,species%20known%20in%20the%20world.">750 butterfly species</a> live in North America, <a href="https://www.butterfliesofamerica.com/L/endangered_taxa.htm">22</a> of which are currently listed as endangered or threatened; dozens more hover in the slightly more nebulous “at risk” category. <a href="https://www.xerces.org/endangered-species/butterflies">Five species</a> have gone extinct in the US since 1950. It would be a stretch, most experts agree, to put much of the blame on insect collectors. But for a few cases, the practice can tip an already precarious population into free fall.
</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="dg3WvQ"/>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="r8E5mm">
In the United States, recreational, permit-free collecting is allowed pretty much everywhere: in national forests, in national parks, and on private land.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iD69da">
But collecting for scientific purposes is strictly regulated. And those regulations vary widely from state to state. For instance, permits are required in Oklahoma state parks, but Michigan state parks have no such restrictions. California has perhaps the most confusing collection laws.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BZvsAK">
“Insects were not included as wildlife in the original drafting of the laws,” says Chris Grinter, the entomology collection manager at the California Academy of Sciences. “They were shoehorned into a revision.” By this strange twist, California insects are technically categorized as fish.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0yEH9N">
In addition, the line between recreational and scientific collecting is often blurry. “A lot of global experts are amateurs that just don’t have a full-time job as an entomologist,” says Grinter.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RyrwNk">
Museum collections often rely on specimens donated by amateur (and sometimes famous) lepidopterists, like author Vladimir Nabokov, whose butterflies make up a chunk of the American Museum of Natural History’s 3.5 million butterfly and moth specimens. And it’s not uncommon for non-experts to stumble across specimens new to science. (In 2018, the Florida Museum of Natural History used new gene sequencing technology on an old pinned butterfly. To their surprise, they identified it as a new species — some 60 years after it was collected by a local teen.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nznujb">
Amateur collecting is not without its downsides, however. Under certain circumstances, it can pose real risks to rare species.
</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="qDIcpJ"/>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rUTezl">
Mitchell’s satyrs are small and brown — not the most visually stunning butterflies on Earth. But for avid insect collectors in the 1970s and 80s, they might as well have been gold-plated.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Co8UZ0">
Mitchell’s satyrs have always been rare and, therefore, desirable. They were once found in pockets throughout the US Midwest and Northeast in wet forest clearings known as fens. But in the mid-1980s, the Fish and Wildlife Service noticed that the butterflies’ numbers had declined in several locations. The agency launched <a href="https://ecos.fws.gov/ecp/species/8062">a years-long investigation</a> to uncover the cause.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oFl8vJ">
As an intern at the Sarett Nature Center in southwest Michigan, Nate Fuller says he witnessed these efforts. “There was an undercover Fish and Wildlife Service guy who would walk around the trails, keeping an eye out for anyone who looked suspiciously like they might be trying to steal a butterfly,” he recalls.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZJKfQZ">
The agency ultimately found that habitat loss was the primary danger to Mitchell’s satyrs. But the agency also discovered that entire populations — including the only two in New Jersey — were potentially being wiped out by private collectors for whom the butterfly was a crown jewel. Today, Mitchell’s satyrs are confirmed in just 15 locations in Michigan, Indiana, Mississippi, and Alabama (and haven’t been seen in New Jersey since 1998). The butterflies were officially added to the <a href="https://www.michigan.gov/dnr/education/michigan-
species/insects/satyr#:~:text=Mitchell's%20satyr%20is%20an%20endangered,in%20prairie%20fens%2C%20described%20below.">Endangered Species List</a> in 1992, making them illegal to collect. But some officials still worry about naive — or unscrupulous — collectors low-key swiping specimens.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="a real butterfly collection,
with rows of different butterflies of various shapes and sizes, pinned and framed." src="https://cdn.vox-
cdn.com/thumbor/RkhiK_nzSjsVhrzplmhB3Pp0ka4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23456782/Joanna_Thompson_collection.jpg"/> <cite>Courtesy of Joanna Thompson</cite>
<figcaption>
The author’s personal butterfly collection.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2lwtv9">
“We’re intentionally vague about Mitchell’s satyr locations,” says Fuller, who is now the executive director at Sarett. And his park limits other potentially damaging activities, like hiking through fens.<strong> </strong>Mitchell’s satyrs are extremely delicate, and they make their chrysalises close to the ground, where a lumbering human foot is more than enough to crush them. Fuller says that occasionally, overly enthusiastic butterflyers stray from the center’s established trails in an effort to catch a glimpse of the rare insect and wind up doing unintentional harm.<strong> </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LwoN5X">
“These little suckers are tough to keep alive,” he says.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="I2zQZR">
As an undergraduate entomology student in the 2010s, I was routinely turned loose on North Carolina State University’s campus with specimen jars, a gauzy net, and instructions to swoop up every interesting bug I encountered. As a result, I learned the ins and outs of butterfly death.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JXAkCr">
I know how long to leave a specimen in the freezer to ensure its organs stop working, and how to activate the miniature brick of potassium cyanide fixed to the bottom of a killing jar. I know how to construct a label: location first, then species, date, and name. I know the slight give of an insect’s thorax as the metal pin slides through.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="n6k0QJ">
But the practice quietly unsettled me. There was, for example, the time I convinced myself I’d accidentally caught a rare species. Leaning over an impaled specimen, I flipped through my <em>Butterflies of North Carolina </em>and froze as I read the description: St. Francis’ satyr, endangered, a subspecies of the critically endangered Mitchell’s satyr.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ERw2yG">
Thankfully, I was mistaken. St. Francis’ satyrs are only found at Fort Bragg, 75 miles away. The butterfly was in fact a common Carolina satyr, a totally different species.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IygFYZ">
But what if I <em>had</em> caught a St. Francis’ satyr? Was my silly little collection worth that?
</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="9mO6an"/>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-
cdn.com/thumbor/SYhSil3KHXAQAKaTVuL3XVtPjQs=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23447878/secondary.jpg"/> <cite>Amanda Northrop/Vox</cite>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0RdRBg">
Jeffrey Glassberg grew up on Long Island in the 1950s, chasing butterflies through the neighborhood with friends. He assumed he had outgrown his butterfly days when he enrolled in the civil engineering program at Tufts University. But although he would go on to earn two additional degrees in molecular genetics and law, he kept coming back to butterflies.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6MG5KL">
Glassberg founded the <a href="https://www.naba.org/">North American Butterfly Association</a>, or NABA, in 1992 — the same year the Mitchell’s satyr was declared endangered — on the principle that people don’t need to catch butterflies in order to enjoy them. It’s also the driving message behind his first guidebook, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=butterflies+through+binoculars&amp;i=stripbooks&amp;crid=3A1KMVKS0S7C8&amp;sprefix=butterflies+through+binoculars%2Cstripbooks%2C63&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1"><em>Butterflies Through Binoculars</em></a>, which shows readers how to identify butterflies by sight, much like a bird guide.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="a8TT5k">
Straightaway, the organization and the book drew backlash; Glassberg says he received everything from tongue-lashings to death threats. How, critics exclaimed, could anyone study butterflies without collecting them?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="I7lbK5">
Glassberg says that butterfly collection proponents point to the historical precedent of people like <a href="https://www.audubon.org/content/john-james-audubon">John J. Audubon</a>, the famous wildlife illustrator and ornithologist, who shot birds in the early 1800s in order to study them in close detail. But that was an era before binoculars and high-resolution photography; today, anyone can become a birder with a guidebook and a decent pair of binoculars. “In my mind, that argument is truly stupid,” he says.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rOzKrX">
His message resonated with thousands of butterfly enthusiasts. Since the early 1990s, NABA has opened 23 chapters in 16 states. Today, the organization boasts over 4,500 members and its own kill-free, net-free nature sanctuary: <a href="https://nationalbutterflycenter.org/">the National Butterfly Center</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="curtRh">
Opened in 2004, the National Butterfly Center occupies the site of an abandoned onion field in Mission, Texas, along the US-Mexico border. Its gardens burst with native plants teeming with butterflies and other pollinators, which cannot be collected on the premises. Their soothing insect hum is punctuated occasionally by the overhead chop of a border patrol helicopter.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8XD5eo">
When I arrived at the Center’s Texas Butterfly Festival in early November 2021, most of the 60-odd festival-goers had a pair of binoculars slung around their necks and a hefty-looking camera bag.
</p>
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang">
<figure class="e-image">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><img alt="A butterfly lands on a plant." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/geXxBgVZtcRnRHIIJoB9_6YVL5c=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23450991/Joanna_Thompson_3.jpeg"/> <cite>Courtesy of Joanna Thompson</cite></p>
<figcaption>
A blue metalmark butterfly during the butterfly festival at the World Birding Center in Mission, Texas.
</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="j4Vl0d">
Our guide, Linda Cooper, showed us how to focus our cameras (or phones) at just the right depth for a perfect picture, how to find the flowers most likely to attract butterflies, and how to identify each species.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jRtjNO">
Slowly, I become more attuned to the creatures — because observation is the point.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TUQO8s">
Butterflying evokes the same breathless wonder that quickens my pulse every time I glimpse movement in the brush. But rather than strike with a net, I looked — <em>really</em> looked — at each insect, trying to spot the watermark that tells a queen from a soldier, or the Y-shaped pattern that sets a Turk’s cap skipper apart from a Laviana. It felt good to be filling my library with pictures rather than filling a box with bodies.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TW8vo6">
But even as I lost myself in the thrill, reminders of human threats, including climate change, were inescapable. Some host plants, including pipe vine, had been killed off by February’s extreme cold snap, which had left much of Texas without power. As a result, Cooper said, we were a lot less likely to encounter pipevine swallowtails, which are usually abundant.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="In the foreground a person in a sun
protection hat holds up a camera with a zoom lens pointed at a bush. In the background a person looks through a pair of
binoculars." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/lTa1zCfwbtIxqq8a5ZgmJFpEb8E=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23467417/TD_D513276.jpg"/> <cite>Courtesy of the National Butterfly Center</cite>
<figcaption>
Butterfly hunters catch their quarry with cameras and binoculars during the Texas Butterfly Festival in November, 2021.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Y85cIJ">
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sFzW3F">
And on the horizon, the half-built border wall loomed. If completed, the concrete-and-rebar barrier will cut directly through the center’s gardens and could spell ecological disaster for many of its 300-plus butterfly species — including some found nowhere else on Earth — as well as the annual <a href="https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22823993/monarch-butterflies-mexico-
milkweed">monarch migration</a>.
</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="9vkKwQ"/>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rVsspT">
Many butterfly specialists<strong> </strong>don’t oppose collecting butterflies in a strictly scientific capacity. And those folks include a close childhood friend of Jeff Glassberg, who grew up chasing bugs with him.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CHDVlR">
<a href="https://naturalhistory.si.edu/staff/robert-robbins">Robert Robbins</a> is now the curator of Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, and, like Glassberg, he took an unconventional path to butterflies. He has never taken an etymology course in his life (he majored in math). But a chance encounter after graduate school with Glassberg got him interested in insects again<strong> </strong>— though, in time, the two would find themselves taking different stances.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tfq9sT">
“We don’t disagree on the facts,” says Robbins. “We just sort of have a different take on it.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="p5N83G">
In only studying photographs, Robbins says, entomologists miss out on valuable sensory details. He points to his own research with hairstreak butterflies, in which males have a scent-producing organ on the upper side of their wings. Different hairstreak species have different scents; some are powerfully floral with notes of grape soda, others smell faintly of chocolate, while others give off the odor of sweaty gym shoes.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cPVdmt">
These bits of tangible data, he argues, are essential for inspiring the next generation of scientists. “By collecting, touching, smelling, and feeling, I think that kids get a much more valuable introduction to biology than they do just by using binoculars or cameras or whatever,” Robbins says. Despite their differences in opinion, Glassberg and Robbins have remained friends for 70 years; Robbins even served as a consultant for the National Butterfly Center.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ead7fb">
Another butterfly researcher who views catching butterflies as a necessity is Arthur Shapiro, who grapples with the issue of specimen collection every two weeks, weather permitting. A professor at the University of California Davis, he lives in Northern California, where, over the last 50 years, he has amassed one of the world’s <a href="https://butterfly.ucdavis.edu/">most thorough chronicles of butterfly population change</a>. His data has shed light on regional variation in California butterflies and told the story of their gradual decline.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Y3dwNi">
Regional variation in wing markings is virtually impossible to parse without side-by-side comparison, he says, and collection is a must for sequencing DNA. But as someone acutely aware of butterfly numbers, he is troubled by the thought of collecting specimens from diminishing populations. “I would be hesitant to remove individuals, especially females, for many species today,” he says.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="whoLd9">
Chris Grinter, the entomology collection manager at the California Academy of Sciences, sees<strong> </strong>work like Shapiro’s (and his own studies of micromoths) as indispensable chronicles of climate change.<strong> </strong>Grinter is a member of the <a href="https://www.lepsoc.org/">Lepidopterists’ Society</a>, a coalition of professional and amateur butterfly and moth researchers. He understands the instinct to push back against the practice of killing butterflies — but, he says he believes that collecting ultimately does way more scientific good than environmental harm. What’s more, Grinter thinks that focusing on collecting misses the larger picture.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SNL24m">
“The real problem is habitat loss and destruction,” he says. About <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/06/21/monarch-butterflies-migration-is-part-relay-
race-part-obstacle-course-and-full-of-danger/">20 million monarchs</a> are killed by cars while migrating each year. That’s just a single species — <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24097817?saml_data=eyJzYW1sVG9rZW4iOiIwMmJmMjA2Zi0wOGRjLTQ1YzAtYTg4MS00NzczZmM1ZTlmZWYiLCJlbWFpbCI6Imp0NDEyNkBueXUuZWR1IiwiaW5zdGl0dXRpb25JZHMiOlsiYWZiYWM5MTYtMmExMS00OWYwLTk4NzctMzNiMzUyYmE5OTUyIl19&amp;seq=4">thousands of others</a> are affected by highways every day. The Lepidopterists’ Society has issued a statement that it sees <a href="https://www.lepsoc.org/content/statement-
collecting#:~:text=Collecting%2C%20rearing%2C%20observation%2C%20and,scientifically%20sound%20study%20of%20Lepidoptera.">collecting a few specimens</a> here and there as insignificant by comparison.
</p>
<div>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/sFOirEbrbJuU1KKd5s5742Sd8fg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23450939/GettyImages_134233485.jpg"/> <cite>Boston Globe via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
A Monarch butterfly rests on a flower on a fall day in Martha’s Vineyard. The infamous annual migration of the butterfly has become deadly for many of the insects, as fast-moving cars endanger the process.
</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gcDiPD">
Like Shapiro and Robbins, though, Grinter wouldn’t advocate collecting indiscriminately. “There’s rare species and populations that need to be protected,” he says.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EKdKdX">
But a new tool might someday alleviate much of the need to choose between science and conservation.
</p>
<hr class="p-entry- hr" id="IT9EBV"/>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iAKbtf">
The rapid rise (and decreasing cost) of DNA technology has brought about a new technique that could complement many butterfly studies and greatly reduce the number that are dying for science.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ONOr7Q">
Environmental DNA, or eDNA, refers to the loose bits of an organism’s genetic material floating around in soil, water, or air, that enters the environment through things like shed skin cells and saliva. Theoretically, if scientists are able to collect an adequate sample from a given habitat, they could sequence these bits and identify all of the organisms living there. The technology is still in its infancy, but it is quickly becoming a viable research option — scientists were recently able to identify <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/01/09/1071238185/vacuuming-
airborne-zoo-animal-dna">all of the animals in two different zoos</a> using nothing but DNA pulled from the air.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lD39Yn">
This technique holds particular promise for studying butterflies, which leave genetic traces behind when they land. eDNA has already been used in Denmark to <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.4809">identify which butterflies</a> visited a patch of wildflowers. The technology still has a few limitations to work out; it doesn’t work well in certain conditions, for example, and requires an existing DNA “bank” of different species’ genetic sequences for comparison.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IYXYMp">
Valeria Lencioni, an entomologist at the Museo Delle Scienze in Trento, Italy, is currently in the process of creating such a database for alpine insects.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zyOf0z">
She has dedicated her career to Alpine midges, tiny bugs that live in frozen streams and are one of the best indicator species for both climate change and water quality. Today they’re in peril, which makes her research more vital than ever. But to study them, she has to kill them by the millions.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rFe6aJ">
If eDNA sequencing becomes widely available, she and her fellow researchers won’t have to choose between data and conservation for many studies (though some questions, like variations among individual butterflies, would still require collecting insects).
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pxUkx7">
But that solution may be too far in the future for the butterflies and other insect species in danger now.<strong> </strong>Ultimately, the best way to save insects is to advocate for big-picture goals: protecting and restoring precious habitat while eliminating harmful emissions. In the meantime, though, I’ve decided to swap my butterfly net for a new pair of binoculars.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VOpSEw">
<a href="https://joannathompson.work/"><em>Joanna Thompson</em></a><em> is a science journalist and sometimes fast runner. You can find more of her work at Scientific American, Live Science, Atlas Obscura, and Audubon.</em>
</p>
<div>
<div id="trcdim">
<div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<ul>
<li><strong>The blood-hungry parasite that threatens big fish and business in the Great Lakes</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-
cdn.com/thumbor/2jZdrmAZ6C8EjZj7bd5FfVpjCic=/0x14:2709x2046/1310x983/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/70903938/101.001_HR.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
The mouth of a sea lamprey. | T. Lawrence/Great Lakes Fishery Commission
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
More than a century after they arrived, invasive sea lampreys still threaten the Great Lakes’ $7 billion fishing economy.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xtmAtN">
They have the body of an eel, the mouth of a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarlacc">sarlacc</a>, and the diet of a vampire.
</p></li>
</ul>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gEcaag">
Sea lampreys are fish native to the Atlantic Ocean and the rivers that flow into it. But more than a century ago, they found their way into the Great Lakes, where they multiplied and became one of the most destructive invasive species in US history.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TrnpdN">
These creatures are parasites. To feed, they latch onto fish, bore into them, and start sucking down blood and body fluids, often killing their prey in the process. A single lamprey can kill up to <a href="http://glfc.org/sea-lamprey.php">40 pounds</a> of fish; and hordes of them threaten the Great Lakes fishing economy, which is valued at roughly <a href="http://glfc.org/what-is-at-risk.php">$7 billion</a> a year.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-
cdn.com/thumbor/ixE11gqZPm6ThoEW-9UxQj_ZX3Q=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23577351/102.007_HR.jpg"/> <cite>Marc Gaden/Great Lakes Fishery Commission</cite>
<figcaption>
A salmon from Lake Huron with a sea lamprey attached to it.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="e-image">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/O5TFY1Msm_x2HeE-O_j-
qxikFb4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23577363/GettyImages_1155621698.jpg"/></p>
<cite>Marlin Levison/Star Tribune via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
Sea lampreys are the largest of the lamprey species. Here, two lampreys caught in the Great Lakes.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UTuT1D">
Wildlife officials in the Great Lakes have been culling sea lampreys for several decades, largely using lamprey-specific pesticides. But paradoxically, sea lampreys are <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-62916-w">endangered</a> in parts of their native range, including Western Europe and the northeastern US. Four species of native lampreys also live in the Great Lakes, which wildlife officials are trying to protect.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iSSZpH">
This raises a fundamental tension, common in <a href="https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22796160/invasive-species-climate-change-range-shifting">invasive biology</a>: How we treat a species depends largely on where it is, even if humans put it there. Looks matter, too. And lampreys in the Great Lakes are, unfortunately, unlucky in both respects.
</p>
<h3 id="Qf4IXY">
What the heck is a sea lamprey?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Sn5Xj3">
Reaching up to a meter long, sea lampreys are the largest of 40 or so species of lamprey, a group of truly ancient animals. They’ve been on Earth for <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061025185208.htm">more than 350 million years</a>, surviving no fewer than <a href="http://glfc.org/sea-lamprey.php">four major extinction events</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oOQUQy">
They’re an odd bunch, too. Like sharks, sea lampreys have no bones; like salmon, they swim upstream to spawn and can live in both salty and fresh water; and like frogs, they go through metamorphosis.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NYtqnA">
Then there are those mouths. They’re filled with concentric circles of teeth made of keratin (the stuff in your hair and nails), which they use to suction onto their prey. After they latch on, they bore into the flesh with a beak-like tongue.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-
cdn.com/thumbor/rnDyYmef1baD5n9C-NDtIvU6Ue0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23577357/101.019_HR.JPG"/> <cite>R. McDaniels/Great Lakes Fishery Commission</cite>
<figcaption>
Sea lamprey larvae that were killed by lampricide in Michigan.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nFX182">
Gruesome as that may sound, lampreys are a boon to ecosystems along the East Coast and in western Europe, where they’re native, according to Margaret Docker, a biologist at the University of Manitoba who’s been studying lampreys for more than 35 years. As larvae, lampreys are food for a wide variety of aquatic animals. The larvae live in stream beds, consuming dead or decaying matter that other animals can’t eat, helping cycle nutrients up the food chain.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Y86tym">
After a few years (and sometimes much longer), larval lampreys metamorphose and become parasites, growing new mouths, gills, and functional eyes, and exit the stream in masses, Docker said. “A lot of marine mammals and other fish will wait at the river’s mouth for this flood of lampreys,” she said.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-
cdn.com/thumbor/SeqapkXBL6Cs8GszMZOoAdNzEF4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23577370/GettyImages_1164948433.jpg"/> <cite>David Tipling/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
A common merganser catches a lamprey in Dumfries, Scotland.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jN2E4o">
Even as parasites, sea lampreys aren’t a problem in their native range. They live in “peaceful coexistence” with other fish, Docker said. Sea lampreys tend to seek out larger fish, which can better survive an attack. They also have <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-62916-w">plenty of natural predators</a>, including catfish, and other threats like dams, so there simply aren’t that many of them.
</p>
<h3 id="t74E5q">
How sea lampreys became villains in the Great Lakes
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XQpWT9">
Most species become “invasive” because of humans, whether it’s a <a href="https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22796160/invasive-species-climate-change-range-shifting">predatory snail</a> spreading north due to climate change or <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/03/15/joro-spider-
facts/">parachuting Joro spiders</a> that likely traveled to the US on a container ship. Sea lampreys are no exception. They arrived in the Great Lakes sometime in the 1800s, most likely through the construction of canals. (Some scientists believe that sea lampreys are native to Lake Ontario. There’s also a <a href="https://www.vox.com/down-to-
earth/22796160/invasive-species-climate-change-range-shifting">much broader debate</a> about the term “invasive.”)
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-
cdn.com/thumbor/cxCI76NQN6quYwvFMWLC1JUvlHg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23577366/GettyImages_1156600173.jpg"/> <cite>Jerry Holt/Star Tribune via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
A lake trout caught in Lake Superior with a sea lamprey bite.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xv5MSR">
With plenty of fish to prey on and few natural predators, lampreys thrived in the Great Lakes. And by the 1940s, they were in all five, according to the book <a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/10209106/great_lakes_sea_lamprey"><em>Great Lakes Sea Lamprey: The 70 Year War on a Biological Invader</em></a> by lamprey researcher Cory Brant<em>. </em>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dneag8">
At the same time, the region’s fisheries collapsed. The US and Canada had been harvesting roughly <a href="http://glfc.org/sea-lamprey.php">15 million pounds</a> of lake trout in the upper Great Lakes each year. But by the 1960s, that dropped to <a href="http://glfc.org/sea-lamprey.php">300,000 pounds</a> — just 2 percent of what it once was. “The sea lamprey threatens complete destruction of the Great Lakes fishing industry,” the South Bend Tribune reported in the spring of 1953. (Other threats including overfishing also played a role in the decline of Great Lakes’s fisheries.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IN5RST">
The region’s wildlife officials didn’t hesitate to fight back. In 1954, the US and Canada teamed up and launched an organization called the Great Lakes Fishery Commission (GLFC). Its mission, essentially, was — and still is — to kill sea lampreys.
</p>
<h3 id="dAE2si">
A government assault on lampreys
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RMurCh">
The nation’s assault on sea lampreys is one of the most well organized and well funded efforts to control any invasive species. Its primary weapons are <a href="http://www.glfc.org/lampricide.php">lampricides</a> — namely, two pesticides that target lampreys but don’t seem to harm most other fish. (Scientists discovered them in the 1950s after painstakingly screening more than 7,000 substances.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5GqeYs">
Each year, wildlife officials dump around 175,000 pounds of liquid lampricides into streams that flow into the Great Lakes, where they kill lampreys in their larval forms (they harm native lampreys, too). Officials also rely on small dams or barriers to prevent sea lampreys from migrating upstream to spawn.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CEgYsm">
In a typical year, GLFC — which spends roughly $25 million annually on sea lamprey control — kills roughly 7 million sea lampreys. So far this year, the death toll has reached 1.7 million, according to a <a href="http://glfc.org/sea-lamprey.php">kill ticker</a> on its website.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Vh53RMh2JFhs2hfrac9X-qQ47yE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23577362/108.002_HR.jpg"/> <cite>M. Moriarty/US Fish and Wildlife Service</cite>
<figcaption>
Barriers like this help prevent sea lampreys from swimming upstream to spawn.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="r0NuRk">
Lampricides do their job well. Sea lampreys once destroyed more than <a href="http://www.glfc.org/what-is-at-risk.php">100 million pounds</a> of fish each year in the Great Lakes, but today they kill less than 10 million pounds, according to GLFC. That likely comes with plenty of benefits for non-commercial fish and other organisms as well, experts say.
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But even these gains are somewhat tenuous, according to Robert McLaughlin, a biologist at the University of Guelph in Ontario. “Anytime that control is eased, they quickly start to rebound,” he said. “The numbers of them right now aren’t that high, but that’s because we’ve been controlling them for close to 70 years.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8fEyy7">
Wildlife officials are also far from eradicating the animals altogether. Even though lampricides can kill 98 percent of larvae in a given stream, that leaves some behind to create the next generation, said Marc Gaden, communications director and legislative liaison at GLFC. Just one female lamprey can produce more than 100,000 eggs, he said. “You just can’t get every one of them,” he said, and going that last mile would be extremely expensive.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-
cdn.com/thumbor/YMwQd7k8i7oaCNovWqyGpRyx6Lo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23581008/GettyImages_1178976435.jpg"/> <cite>Steve Russell/Toronto Star via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
Sea lampreys have impressive mouths.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2h2w8Y">
Scientists are now exploring more creative ways to suppress sea lampreys, including the application of scents and <a href="https://www.mlive.com/outdoors/2014/05/sea_lamprey_researchers_studyi.html">pheromones</a>. Certain pheromones attract lampreys, which allows scientists to lure them into traps, while the concentrated smell of dead lampreys repels them. (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxvorkIBbOo">This video</a> shows what happens when you add lamprey repellent to a tank. Warning: it’s a bit gruesome).
</p>
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Controlling sea lampreys has surely benefited fish and those who depend on them in the Great Lakes. But it’s worth pointing out that these efforts threaten the region’s native lampreys — which are susceptible to lampricides, too — and may be harming lampreys everywhere. “In the case of sea lamprey in their native range, there is no doubt that the public’s imagination has been strongly negatively influenced by the need to control the species in the Great Lakes,” authors of a <a href="https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0380133020301969?token=80CB871406F0597B90F5D932DBF8489169283F7E14B21B178CB705EF1A05D62B89A45F3C14FC917F7E3251E6CA2E067D&amp;originRegion=us-
east-1&amp;originCreation=20220522151814">recent study</a> wrote.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="c768Rs">
Sea lampreys are considered “critically imperiled” in parts of the eastern US and “critically endangered” in parts of Europe, to say nothing of the other lamprey species, many of which are threatened with extinction. Yet, as Kelly Robinson, an ecology professor at Michigan State University, puts it, “everybody just thinks lampreys are terrible because of the Great Lakes.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Y013GL">
If nothing else, then, perhaps you can remember that sea lampreys (and other invasive species) <a href="https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22796160/invasive-species-climate-change-range-shifting">aren’t inherently bad</a>, gross as they may look. Some countries even <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sea-lamprey-
recipe_n_56265381e4b0bce34702343a#:~:text=Eating%20sea%20lampreys%20has%20been,blood%20for%20a%20few%20days.">revere them as a source of food</a>. And even if you’re traveling to the Great Lakes and planning to take a dip, you don’t need to worry. Sea lampreys prefer fish to warm-blooded humans.
</p>
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</p>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>French Open | Medvedev wins first-round match on return to tennis court</strong> - Russian tennis star Daniil Medvedev marked his return to the tennis court after a recent hernia surgery to comfortably beat Facundo Bagnis in the first round of the French Open</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Triple Wish, Devils Magic, Forever Together, Crown Consort, Saddler’s Legacy, and A Star Is Born please</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>East Bengal in talks with Manchester United, others for ownership: Ganguly</strong> - Sourav Ganguly has confirmed that Kolkata football giants East Bengal, who are struggling financially and on the pitch, are in talks with English Premier League club Manchester United for ownership of the ISL team</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>BCCI president Sourav Ganguly not worried about Rohit, Kohli's form, says ‘matter of time’</strong> - In Rohit's absence, KL Rahul has been appointed as the captain of the Indian team for the T20I series against the Proteas.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>IPL 2022 Eliminator | RCB pose serious threat to top-heavy LSG</strong> - Having featured in three IPL finals, RCB are one star-studded outfit which has failed to live up to its fans' expectations time and again.</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Woman hacked to death by mentally ill daughter</strong> -</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Data | Poor recovery, increasing delays mar Insolvency &amp; Bankruptcy Code resolution process</strong> - In Q4 of FY22, for the first time, the amount to be realised from the resolution process was lower than the liquidation value of assets</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Data | Rural inflation peaks across States, except in Tamil Nadu and Kerala</strong> - The high prices of food and beverages was one of the primary drivers of rural inflation and within it, the prices of vegetables, oils and fats, and meat and fish increased the most</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A.P. govt. should allocate funds for Vamsadhara, Madduvalasa projects: Somu Veerraju</strong> - ‘The irrigation projects are being ignored’</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>KCR showing disrespect to PM, says BJP</strong> -</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: Russia’s jailed Navalny attacks invasion as judge rejects appeal</strong> - Russia’s prominent opposition figure condemns a war “built on lies” as he faces many more years in jail.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Erdogan blanks Greek prime minister over US remarks</strong> - Turkey’s leader accuses Kyriakos Mitsotakis of trying to block sales of US fighter jets to Ankara.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: Melitopol residents resist Russian occupation</strong> - Partisan groups are carrying out attacks on occupying forces in the south-eastern city of Melitopol.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Deepfake of murdered teen created to aid cold case</strong> - Sedar Soares was shot dead outside a Dutch metro station in 2003, his killer has not been found.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: World faces ‘dark hour’, Biden tells Quad Summit</strong> - The US president meets key Asia allies to discuss China’s influence and differences over Russia’s invasion.</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Digital driver’s license billed as harder than plastic to forge is easily forged</strong> - A litany of security flaws allows forgeries that are easy, quick, and cheap. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1855873">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Logitech MX Master 3S review: The best wireless mouse gets slightly better</strong> - The MX Master 3S has forgettable advantages in its higher DPI range and quieter clicks. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1854057">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Logitech’s MX Keys Mechanical is a satisfying, wireless introduction to mech keebs</strong> - Switches and wireless capabilities are spectacular, but there’s stiff competition. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1855410">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Everything CDC wants you to know about monkeypox and the current risk level</strong> - “We do know a lot about monkeypox from many decades of studying it.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1855910">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The kids are older and not all right in final Stranger Things S4 trailer</strong> - This season’s big bad is Vecna, a villain straight out of <em>Dungeons and Dragons</em> - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1855887">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>Two old men decide they are close to their last days and decide to have a last night on the town…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
After a few drinks, they end up at the local brothel. The madam takes one look at the two old geezers and whispers to her manager: ‘Go upto the first two bedrooms and put an inflated doll in each bed. These two are so old and drunk, I’m not wasting two of my girls on them. They won’t know the difference’. The manager does as he is told and the two old men go upstairs and take care of their business. As they are walking home the first man ssys “You know, I think my girl was dead’.”Dead? says his friend, "Why do you say that?‘’Well she never moved or made a sound all the time I was loving her’. His friend says. ‘Could be worse I think mine was a witch’. ‘A witch??….why the hell would you say that?’ ‘Well, I was making love to her, kissing her on the neck, and I gave her a little bite, then she farted and flew out the window… took my teeth with her!’
</p>
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<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/mzzzm51"> /u/mzzzm51 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/uwfkwg/two_old_men_decide_they_are_close_to_their_last/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/uwfkwg/two_old_men_decide_they_are_close_to_their_last/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>A KGB agent goes to a library and sees an old Jewish man reading a book.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“What are you reading, old man?” he asks.
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“I’m learning Hebrew, comrade,” replies the old Jew.
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The KGB agent asks, “What are you learning Hebrew for? You know it takes years to get a permission to travel to Israel? You will die before you get one.”
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“I’m learning Hebrew for when I go to heaven so I can speak with Moses and Abraham,” replies the old man.
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“How do you know you’re going to heaven? What if you go to hell?” asks the KGB agent.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“I already speak Russian.”
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<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/YZXFILE"> /u/YZXFILE </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/uwko0e/a_kgb_agent_goes_to_a_library_and_sees_an_old/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/uwko0e/a_kgb_agent_goes_to_a_library_and_sees_an_old/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>10 unwritten rules of this subreddit:</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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1:
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2:
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3:
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10:
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/StarMage67"> /u/StarMage67 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/uw50cy/10_unwritten_rules_of_this_subreddit/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/uw50cy/10_unwritten_rules_of_this_subreddit/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>A man is driving down a road when he breaks down next to a monastery. He goes to the monastery, knocks on the door and says “my car broke down. Do you think I could stay the night?”</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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The monks graciously accept him, feed him dinner, even fix his car. As the man tries to fall asleep, he hears a strange sound. The next morning, he asks the monks what the sound was, but they say, “We can’t tell you. You’re not a monk.”
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The man is disappointed but thanks them anyway and goes about his merry way.
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Some years later, the same man breaks down in front of the same monastery.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The monks accept him, feed him, even fix his car. That night, he hears the same strange noise that he had heard years earlier. The next morning, he asks what it is, but the monks reply, “We can’t tell you. You’re not a monk.”
</p>
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The man says, “All right, all right. I’m dying to know. If the only way I can find out what that sound was is to become a monk, how do I become a monk?”
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The monks reply, “You must travel the earth and tell us how many blades of grass there are and the exact number of sand pebbles. When you find these numbers, you will become a monk.”
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The man sets about his task. Forty- five years later, he returns and knocks on the door of the monastery. He says, “I have traveled the earth and have found what you have asked for. There are 145,236,284,232 blades of grass and 231,281,219,999,129,382 sand pebbles on the earth.”
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The monks reply, “Congratulations. You are now a monk. We shall now show you the way to the sound.”
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The monks lead the man to a wooden door, where the head monk says, “The sound is right behind that door.”
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The man reaches for the knob, but the door is locked. He says, “Real funny. May I have the key?”
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The monks give him the key, and he opens the door.
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Behind the wooden door is another door made of stone.
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The man demands the key to the stone door.
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The monks give him the key, and he opens it, only to find a door made of ruby.
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He demands another key from the monks, who provide it.
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Behind that door is another door, this one made of sapphire.
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So it went until the man had gone through doors of emerald, silver, topaz, and amethyst.
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Finally, the monks say, “This is the last key to the last door.”
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The man is relieved to no end.
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He unlocks the door, turns the knob, and behind that door he is amazed to find the source of that strange sound.
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But I can’t tell you what it is because you’re not a monk.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/mykeuk"> /u/mykeuk </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/uwab38/a_man_is_driving_down_a_road_when_he_breaks_down/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/uwab38/a_man_is_driving_down_a_road_when_he_breaks_down/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><strong>When I was in law school, I was rejected by all fraternities because I was circumcised.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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Apparently you need to be a complete dick.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/YZXFILE"> /u/YZXFILE </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/uwl3bd/when_i_was_in_law_school_i_was_rejected_by_all/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/uwl3bd/when_i_was_in_law_school_i_was_rejected_by_all/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
</ul>
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