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<title>31 January, 2024</title>
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<title>Covid-19 Sentry</title><meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" name="viewport"/><link href="styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="../styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.css" rel="stylesheet"/><script src="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.js"></script></head>
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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>Spike N354 glycosylation augments SARS-CoV-2 fitness for human adaptation through multiple mechanisms</strong> -
<div>
Selective pressures have given rise to a number of SARS-CoV-2 variants during the prolonged course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Recently evolved variants differ from ancestors in additional glycosylation within the spike protein receptor-binding domain (RBD). Details of how the acquisition of glycosylation impacts viral fitness and human adaptation are not clearly understood. Here, we dissected the role of N354-linked glycosylation, acquired by BA.2.86 sub-lineages, as a RBD conformational control element in attenuating viral infectivity. The reduced infectivity could be recovered in the presence of heparin sulfate, which targets the N354 pocket to ease restrictions of conformational transition resulting in a RBD-up state, thereby conferring an adjustable infectivity. Furthermore, N354 glycosylation improved spike cleavage and cell-cell fusion, and in particular escaped one subset of ADCC antibodies. Together with reduced immunogenicity in hybrid immunity background, these indicate a single spike amino acid glycosylation event provides selective advantage in humans through multiple mechanisms.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.29.577677v1" target="_blank">Spike N354 glycosylation augments SARS-CoV-2 fitness for human adaptation through multiple mechanisms</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>A general platform for targeting MHC-II antigens via a single loop</strong> -
<div>
Class-II major histocompatibility complexes (MHC-IIs) are central to the communications between CD4+ T cells and antigen presenting cells (APCs), but intrinsic structural features associated with MHC-II make it difficult to develop a general targeting system with high affinity and antigen specificity. Here, we introduce a protein platform, Targeted Recognition of Antigen-MHC Complex Reporter for MHC-II (TRACeR-II), to enable the rapid development of peptide-specific MHC-II binders. TRACeR-II has a small helical bundle scaffold and uses an unconventional mechanism to recognize antigens via a single loop. This unique antigen-recognition mechanism renders this platform highly versatile and amenable to direct structural modeling of the interactions with the antigen. We demonstrate that TRACeR-II binders can be rapidly evolved across multiple alleles, while computational protein design can produce specific binding sequences for a SARS-CoV-2 peptide of unknown complex structure. TRACeR-II sheds light on a simple and straightforward approach to address the MHC peptide targeting challenge, without relying on combinatorial selection on complementarity determining region (CDR) loops. It presents a promising basis for further exploration in immune response modulation as well as a broad range of theragnostic applications.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.26.577489v1" target="_blank">A general platform for targeting MHC-II antigens via a single loop</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Some mechanistic underpinnings of molecular adaptations of SARS-COV-2 spike protein by integrating candidate adaptive polymorphisms with protein dynamics</strong> -
<div>
We integrate evolutionary predictions based on the neutral theory of molecular evolution with protein dynamics to generate mechanistic insight into the molecular adaptations of the SARS-COV-2 Spike (S) protein. With this approach, we first identified Candidate Adaptive Polymorphisms (CAPs) of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein and assessed the impact of these CAPs through dynamics analysis. Not only have we found that CAPs frequently overlap with well-known functional sites, but also, using several different dynamics-based metrics, we reveal the critical allosteric interplay between SARS-CoV-2 CAPs and the S protein binding sites with the human ACE2 (hACE2) protein. CAPs interact far differently with the hACE2 binding site residues in the open conformation of S protein compared to the closed form. In particular, the CAP sites control the dynamics binding residues in the open state, suggesting an allosteric control of hACE2 binding. We also explored the characteristic mutations of different SARS-CoV-2 strains to find dynamic hallmarks and potential effects of future mutations. Our analyses reveal that Delta strain-specific variants have non-additive (i.e., epistatic) interactions with CAP sites, whereas the less pathogenic Omicron strains have mostly compensatory variants. Finally, our dynamics-based analysis suggests that the novel mutations observed in the Omicron strain epistatically interact with the CAP sites to help escape antibody binding.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.14.557827v2" target="_blank">Some mechanistic underpinnings of molecular adaptations of SARS-COV-2 spike protein by integrating candidate adaptive polymorphisms with protein dynamics</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Low-coverage whole genome sequencing for a highly selective cohort of severe COVID-19 patients</strong> -
<div>
Despite advances in identifying genetic markers associated to severe COVID-19, the full genetic characterisation of the disease remains elusive. This study explores the use of imputation in low-coverage whole genome sequencing for a severe COVID-19 patient cohort. We generated a dataset of 79 imputed variant call format files using the GLIMPSE1 tool, each containing an average of 9.5 million single nucleotide variants. Validation revealed a high imputation accuracy (squared Pearson correlation {approx}0.97) across sequencing platforms, showing GLIMPSE1's ability to confidently impute variants with minor allele frequencies as low as 2% in Spanish ancestry individuals. We conducted a comprehensive analysis of the patient cohort, examining hospitalisation and intensive care utilisation, sex and age-based differences, and clinical phenotypes using a standardised set of medical terms developed to characterise severe COVID-19 symptoms. The methods and findings presented here may be leveraged in future genomic projects, providing vital insights for health challenges like COVID-19.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.28.577610v1" target="_blank">Low-coverage whole genome sequencing for a highly selective cohort of severe COVID-19 patients</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Discovery of orally active SARS-CoV-2 papain-like protease (PLpro) inhibitors</strong> -
<div>
Vaccines and first-generation antiviral therapeutics have provided important protection against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). However, there remains a need for additional therapeutic options that provide enhanced efficacy and protection against potential viral resistance. The SARS-CoV-2 papain-like protease (PLpro) is one of two essential cysteine proteases involved in viral replication. While inhibitors of the SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro) have demonstrated clinical efficacy, known PLpro inhibitors have to date lacked the inhibitory potency and requisite pharmacokinetics to demonstrate that targeting PLpro translates to in vivo efficacy in a preclinical setting. Herein, we report the machine learning-driven discovery of potent, selective, and orally available SARS-CoV-2 PLpro inhibitors, with lead compound PF-07957472 (4) providing robust efficacy in a mouse-adapted model of COVID-19 infection.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.26.577395v1" target="_blank">Discovery of orally active SARS-CoV-2 papain-like protease (PLpro) inhibitors</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Multiple layers of innate immune response antagonism of SARS-CoV-2</strong> -
<div>
Several SARS-CoV-2 proteins have been shown to counteract the host innate immune response, mostly using in vitro protein expression, which may not fully reflect their role in the context of viral infection. In addition, while each viral protein was characterized in a different experimental system, their relative contribution in immunosuppression remains unclear. Here we used a SARS-CoV-2 bacterial artificial chromosome with en passant mutagenesis to recover a panel of twelve infectious recombinant SARS-CoV-2 viruses, each with mutations in either NSP1, NSP2, NSP3, NSP6, NSP12, NSP13, NSP14, NSP15, NSP16, ORF3a, ORF6 or ORF8. We used the interferon-stimulated response element (ISRE)-driven luciferase assay in 293T-ACE2/TMPRSS2 cells to test the panel, demonstrating that mutations in many proteins, especially in NSP1 and NSP15, increased the type I interferon response relative to the parental wild-type virus. RNA-seq analysis of mutant-virus infected Calu-3 cells showed that the mutations in NSP1 or NSP15 lead to higher expression of multiple genes involved in innate immune response, cytokine-mediated signaling and regulation of lymphocyte proliferation. Furthermore, mutations in either NSP1 or NSP15 resulted in a greater maturation of human monocyte-derived dendritic cells in vitro. Infection of K18 hACE2 transgenic mice with either NSP1 or NSP15 mutated viruses demonstrated attentuated respiratory tract replication. Analysis of lung immune cells from infected mice by single-cell RNA-seq identified 15 populations of major myeloid and lymphoid cells with changes in the pattern of their activation associated with viral infection. The effects of mutations in NSP1 or NSP15 on these responses are consistent with differences in the immunosuppressive mechanisms utilized by the two proteins. Overall, these data demonstrate different and redundant mechanisms of innate immune antagonism by SARS-CoV-2 and suppression of activation of antigen presenting cells and T and B lymphocytes mediated by multiple viral proteins.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.29.577695v1" target="_blank">Multiple layers of innate immune response antagonism of SARS-CoV-2</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Nanobody repertoire generated against the spike protein of ancestral SARS-CoV-2 remains efficacious against the rapidly evolving virus</strong> -
<div>
To date, all major modes of monoclonal antibody therapy targeting SARS-CoV-2 have lost significant efficacy against the latest circulating variants. As SARS-CoV-2 omicron sublineages account for over 90% of COVID-19 infections, evasion of immune responses generated by vaccination or exposure to previous variants poses a significant challenge. A compelling new therapeutic strategy against SARS-CoV-2 is that of single domain antibodies, termed nanobodies, which address certain limitations of monoclonal antibodies. Here we demonstrate that our high-affinity nanobody repertoire, generated against wild-type SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (Mast, Fridy et al. 2021), remains effective against variants of concern, including omicron BA.4/BA.5; a subset is predicted to counter resistance in emerging XBB and BQ.1.1 sublineages. Furthermore, we reveal the synergistic potential of nanobody cocktails in neutralizing emerging variants. Our study highlights the power of nanobody technology as a versatile therapeutic and diagnostic tool to combat rapidly evolving infectious diseases such as SARS-CoV-2.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.14.549041v2" target="_blank">Nanobody repertoire generated against the spike protein of ancestral SARS-CoV-2 remains efficacious against the rapidly evolving virus</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Economic precarity and changing levels of anxiety and stress among Canadians with disabilities and chronic health conditions throughout the COVID-19 pandemic</strong> -
<div>
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, multiple event stressors converged to exacerbate a growing mental health crisis in Canada with differing effects across status groups. However, less is known about changing mental health situations throughout the pandemic, especially among individuals more likely to experience chronic stress because of their disability and health status. Using data from two waves of a targeted online survey of people with disabilities and chronic health conditions in Canada (N = 563 individuals, June 2020 and July 2021), we find that approximately 25% of respondents experienced additional increases in stress and anxiety levels in 2021. These increases were partly explained by worsening perceived financial insecurity and, in the case of stress, additional negative financial effects tied to the pandemic. This paper understands mental health disparities as a function of social status and social group membership. By linking stress process models and a minority stress framework with a social model of disability, we allude to how structural and contextual barriers make functional limitations disabling and in turn, life stressors.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/w78su/" target="_blank">Economic precarity and changing levels of anxiety and stress among Canadians with disabilities and chronic health conditions throughout the COVID-19 pandemic</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Undergraduate Research in the Department of Biology at Western University: Effect on project types, learning outcomes, and student perceptions.</strong> -
<div>
Undergraduate research is a high impact practice that offers numerous benefits to students, academic institutions, and the wider scientific community. Unfortunately, undergraduate research has faced restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to assess how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted: (1) the number and types of undergraduate research projects performed in the Department of Biology at the University of Western Ontario, and (2) the satisfaction-levels and perceived learning outcomes of students performing these projects. This study also aimed to incorporate a One Health framework through an emphasis on stakeholder involvement and the need for future action. A survey of 33 students who completed an undergraduate research project in the Department of Biology in the 2020/2021 academic year, and 68 students who completed an undergraduate research project in the 5 years prior was conducted. In keeping with the One Health approach, key stakeholders were identified, and a stakeholder map was constructed. The number of projects performed did not change dramatically despite COVID-19 restrictions. However, a shift towards dry research was observed with 87.9% of students in the 2020/2021 academic year conducting dry research, compared to 16.4% of students in the 5 years prior. Students who conducted research in the 2020/2021 academic year indicated lower overall levels of satisfaction and enjoyment, though their perceived learning outcomes were consistent with students who completed their projects in the 5 years prior. 53 key stakeholders from academia, government, industry, media, and the public were identified. Students provided invaluable feedback on their undergraduate research experiences that can be used to improve the quality of undergraduate research courses in the Department of Biology in the future. Findings may be of use to other departments and educational institutions that are seeking to improve their own undergraduate research courses amidst the COVID-19 pandemic or looking to incorporate experiential-based learning techniques into existing online courses.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.24.577125v1" target="_blank">Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Undergraduate Research in the Department of Biology at Western University: Effect on project types, learning outcomes, and student perceptions.</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Case of Myocarditis, Pericarditis, and Fatal Aortic Dissection following Covid-19 mRNA Vaccination</strong> -
<div>
We present a case study of a 34-year-old male who was in apparent good health prior to his COVID-19 mRNA vaccination. Sixteen days after his first dose, he experienced acute inflammation, sudden thoracic aortic dissection, and pericardial tamponade, rapidly leading to his death. Studies suggest that young males, in particular, appear to be at increased risk of adverse cardiac events following COVID-19 mRNA vaccination. However, we propose that certain information gaps exist in the criteria that inform both public health agencies and the public on incidence rates in certain presentations of even severe myocarditis and cardiac adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination, as is often mentioned within COVID-19 vaccine myocarditis studies and is evident within the findings of this young man’s important case presentation.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/xnr5t/" target="_blank">Case of Myocarditis, Pericarditis, and Fatal Aortic Dissection following Covid-19 mRNA Vaccination</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>nf-core/airrflow: an adaptive immune receptor repertoire analysis workflow employing the Immcantation framework</strong> -
<div>
Adaptive Immune Receptor Repertoire sequencing (AIRR-seq) is a valuable experimental tool to study the immune state in health and following immune challenges such as infectious diseases, (auto)immune diseases, and cancer. Several tools have been developed to reconstruct B cell and T cell receptor sequences from AIRR-seq data and infer B and T cell clonal relationships. However, currently available tools offer limited parallelization across samples, scalability or portability to high-performance computing infrastructures. To address this need, we developed nf-core/airrflow, an end-to-end bulk and single-cell AIRR-seq processing workflow which integrates the Immcantation Framework following BCR and TCR sequencing data analysis best practices. The Immcantation Framework is a comprehensive toolset, which allows the processing of bulk and single-cell AIRR-seq data from raw read processing to clonal inference. nf-core/airrflow is written in Nextflow and is part of the nf-core project, which collects community contributed and curated Nextflow workflows for a wide variety of analysis tasks. We assessed the performance of nf-core/airrflow on simulated sequencing data with sequencing errors and show example results with real datasets. To demonstrate the applicability of nf-core/airrflow to the high-throughput processing of large AIRR-seq datasets, we validated and extended previously reported findings of convergent antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 by analyzing 97 COVID-19 infected individuals and 99 healthy controls, including a mixture of bulk and single-cell sequencing datasets. Using this dataset, we extended the convergence findings to 20 additional subjects, highlighting the applicability of nf-core/airrflow to validate findings in small in-house cohorts with reanalysis of large publicly available AIRR datasets. nf-core/airrflow is available free of charge, under the MIT license on GitHub (https://github.com/nf-core/airrflow). Detailed documentation and example results are available on the nf-core website at (https://nf-co.re/airrflow).
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.18.576147v2" target="_blank">nf-core/airrflow: an adaptive immune receptor repertoire analysis workflow employing the Immcantation framework</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Development and validation of a federated learning framework for detection of subphenotypes of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children</strong> -
<div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Background Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) is a severe post-acute sequela of SARS-CoV-2 infection. The highly diverse clinical features of MIS-C necessities characterizing its features by subphenotypes for improved recognition and treatment. However, jointly identifying subphenotypes in multi-site settings can be challenging. We propose a distributed multi-site latent class analysis (dMLCA) approach to jointly learn MIS-C subphenotypes using data across multiple institutions. Methods We used data from the electronic health records (EHR) systems across nine U.S. childrens hospitals. Among the 3,549,894 patients, we extracted 864 patients &lt; 21 years of age who had received a diagnosis of MIS-C during an inpatient stay or up to one day before admission. Using MIS-C conditions, laboratory results, and procedure information as input features for the patients, we applied our dMLCA algorithm and identified three MIS-C subphenotypes. As validation, we characterized and compared more granular features across subphenotypes. To evaluate the specificity of the identified subphenotypes, we further compared them with the general subphenotypes identified in the COVID-19 infected patients. Findings Subphenotype 1 (46.1%) represents patients with a mild manifestation of MIS-C not requiring intensive care, with minimal cardiac involvement. Subphenotype 2 (25.3%) is associated with a high risk of shock, cardiac and renal involvement, and an intermediate risk of respiratory symptoms. Subphenotype 3 (28.6%) represents patients requiring intensive care, with a high risk of shock and cardiac involvement, accompanied by a high risk of &gt;4 organ system being impacted. Importantly, for hospital-specific clinical decision-making, our algorithm also revealed a substantial heterogeneity in relative proportions of these three subtypes across hospitals. Properly accounting for such heterogeneity can lead to accurate characterization of the subphenotypes at the patient-level. Interpretation Our identified three MIS-C subphenotypes have profound implications for personalized treatment strategies, potentially influencing clinical outcomes. Further, the proposed algorithm facilitates federated subphenotyping while accounting for the heterogeneity across hospitals.
</p>
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.26.24301827v1" target="_blank">Development and validation of a federated learning framework for detection of subphenotypes of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>In silico assessment of immune cross protection between BCoV and SARS-CoV-2</strong> -
<div>
Background: Humans have long shared infectious agents with cattle, and the bovine-derived human common cold OC-43 CoV is a not-so-distant example of cross-species viral spill over of coronaviruses. Human exposure to the Bovine Coronavirus (BCoV) is certainly common, as the virus is endemic in most high-density cattle-raising regions. Since BCoVs are phylogenetically close to SARS-CoV-2, it is possible that cross-protection against COVID-19 occurs in people exposed to BCoV. Methods: This article shows an in silico investigation of human cross-protection to SARS-CoV-2 due to BCoV exposure. We determined HLA recognition and human B lymphocyte reactivity to BCoV epitopes using bioinformatics resources. A retrospective geoepidemiological analysis of COVID-19 was then performed to verify if BCoV/SARS-CoV-2 cross-protection could have occurred in the field. Brazil was used as a model for the epidemiological analysis of the impact of livestock density, as a proxy for human exposure to BCoV, on the prevalence of COVID-19 in people. Results: As could be expected from their classification in the same Betacoronavirus genus, we show that several human B and T epitopes are shared between BCoV and SARS-CoV-2. This raised the possibility of cross-protection of people from exposure to the bovine coronavirus. Analysis of field data added partial support to the hypothesis of viral cross-immunity from human exposure to BCoV. There was a negative correlation between livestock geographical density and COVID-19. Whole-Brazil data showed areas in the country in which COVID-19 prevalence was disproportionally low (controlled by normalization by transport infrastructure). Areas with high cattle density had lower COVID-19 prevalence in these low-risk areas. Conclusions: These data are hypothesis-raising indications that cross-protection is possibly being induced by human exposure to the Bovine Coronavirus.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.01.25.577193v1" target="_blank">In silico assessment of immune cross protection between BCoV and SARS-CoV-2</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>No Substitute for the Real Thing? Physical and Digital Cultural Participation in Denmark during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Research Note</strong> -
<div>
In this research note, we analyze the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cultural participation. We use rich survey data from Denmark to construct pooled time-series cross-sectional data for each month of the years 2019-2021 and report three findings. First, participation in physical cultural activities (e.g., attending a concert or a museum) plummeted during two lockdowns and did not return to its pre-pandemic level by the end of 2021. Second, participation in digital activities (e.g., reading a digital book or following a museum on social media) did not change much during the pandemic. Overall, we find little evidence of substitution from physical to digital cultural participation during the COVID-19 lockdown in Denmark. Third, socioeconomic gradients in cultural participation decreased during the pandemic for physical cultural participation, but did not change for digital cultural participation. We end by discussing what we can learn from our results about how social disruptions affect patterns of cultural participation and inequality.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/ksy9w/" target="_blank">No Substitute for the Real Thing? Physical and Digital Cultural Participation in Denmark during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Research Note</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Stratification in Parents’ Selection of Developmentally Appropriate Books for Children: Register-based Evidence from Danish Public Libraries</strong> -
<div>
This paper studies socioeconomic gradients in selecting developmentally appropriate children’s books from public libraries. I draw on research on developmental gradients in parental inputs to hypothesize that families with high socioeconomic status (SES) are more likely to select books that match children’s developmental stage in order to best improve children’s learning environments. In contrast to previous survey-based research, I use behavioral data on the actual books families have selected from libraries. Based on Danish registry data that cover all books borrowed from public libraries in 2020, I find that highly educated families are more likely to use libraries and borrow more books when they use libraries, but they do not select a larger share of developmentally appropriate books; in fact, they select a slightly lower share. In contrast, I find only a weak positive income gradient for the amount of books borrowed and the share of developmentally appropriate books. The supplementary analyses show that results are robust across families with children of different ages and to account for nonrandom selection into the sample of library users, socioeconomic differences in children’s reading skills, and the impact of library lockdowns due to Covid-19. I conclude that stratification in library book selection is more prominent concerning the voraciousness with which highly educated parents provide reading inputs (more books) than how discriminating they are in terms of selecting developmentally appropriate books.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/8pzv5/" target="_blank">Stratification in Parents’ Selection of Developmentally Appropriate Books for Children: Register-based Evidence from Danish Public Libraries</a>
</div></li>
</ul>
<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>Study on the Effect of Incentive Spirometer-based Respiratory Training on the Long COVID-19</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: COVID-19 Pandemic; Diabetes; Hypertension; Cardiac Disease; Long COVID <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Behavioral: Incentive Spirometer respiratory training <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences; Tri-Service General Hospital <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>Balance Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Long COVID</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Post-COVID-19 Syndrome; Long COVID <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Behavioral: Balance Acceptance and Commitment Therapy <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: King’s College London <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>Predict + Protect Study: Exploring the Effectiveness of a Predictive Health Education Intervention on the Adoption of Protective Behaviors Related to ILI</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Influenza; Influenza A; Influenza B; COVID-19; Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Behavioral: ILI Predictive Alerts, Reactive Content, and Proactive Content; Behavioral: ILI Predictive Alerts, Reactive Content; Behavioral: Proactive Content; Behavioral: No Intervention <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Evidation Health; Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority <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>Long COVID-19 [11C]CPPC Study</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: COVID Long-Haul <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Drug: [11C]CPPC Injection; Drug: [11C]CPPC Injection <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Johns Hopkins University; Radiological Society of North America <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>Thrombohemorrhagic Complications of COVID-19</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019) <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Diagnostic Test: Prevention algorithm <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Volgograd State Medical University <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>Combined Use of Immunoglobulin and Pulse Steroid Therapies in Severe Covid-19 Patients</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Pulse Steroid and Immunoglobulins Drugs in Covid 19 Patients <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Drug: pulse steroid and nanogam <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Konya City Hospital <br/><b>Completed</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>Eficacia Ventilatoria y Remolacha</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: SARS CoV 2 Infection; Muscle Disorder; Fatigue <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Dietary Supplement: Remolacha <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Hospital de Mataró <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>Beneficial Effects of Natural Products on Management of Xerostomia</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Xerostomia; Diabetes Mellitus; Hypertension; Post COVID-19 Condition <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Other: (Manuka honey-green tea- ginger) <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: British University In Egypt <br/><b>Completed</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>Diet and Fasting for Long COVID</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Long Covid19; Long COVID <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Other: Low sugar diet and 10-12 hour eating window; Other: Low sugar diet, 8 hour eating window and fasting <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences <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>The Effectiveness of a Health Promotion Program for Older People With Post-Covid-19 Sarcopenia</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Post COVID-19 Condition <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Other: Protein powder and Resistance exercise <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Mahidol University; National Health Security Office, Thailand <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>Chronic-disease Self-management Program in Patients Living With Long-COVID in Puerto Rico</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Long Covid19 <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Other: “Tomando control de su salud” (Spanish Chronic Disease Self-Management) <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: University of Puerto Rico; National Institutes of Health (NIH) <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>Treatment of Persistent Post-Covid-19 Smell and Taste Disorders</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Post-covid-19 Persistent Smell and Taste Disorders <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Drug: Cerebrolysin; Other: olfactory and gustatory trainings <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Sherifa Ahmed Hamed <br/><b>Completed</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>High-throughput screening for a SARS-CoV-2 frameshifting inhibitor using a cell-free protein synthesis system</strong> - Programmed-1 ribosomal frameshifting (-1 PRF) is a translational mechanism adopted by some viruses, including SARS-CoV-2. To find a compound that can inhibit -1 PRF in SARS-CoV-2, we set up a high-throughput screening system using a HeLa cell extract-derived cell-free protein synthesis (CFPS) system. A total of 32,000 compounds were individually incubated with the CFPS system programmed with a -1 PRF-EGFP template. Several compounds were observed to decrease the -1 PRF-driven fluorescence, and…</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>Prevention of lipid droplet accumulation by DGAT1 inhibition ameliorates sepsis-induced liver injury and inflammation</strong> - CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate that sepsis triggers lipid metabolism alterations that culminate in increased liver LD accumulation. Increased LDs are associated with disease severity and liver injury. Moreover, inhibition of LD accumulation decreased the production of inflammatory mediators and lipid peroxidation while improving tissue function, suggesting that LDs contribute to the pathogenesis of liver injury triggered by sepsis.</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>Pharmacokinetic analysis of placental transfer of ritonavir as a component of paxlovid using microdialysis in pregnant rats</strong> - BACKGROUND: Ritonavir is one of the most potent CYP3A4 inhibitor currently on the market, and is often used together with other antiviral drugs to increase their bioavailability and efficacy. Paxlovid, consisting of nirmatrelvir and ritonavir, was approved for the treatment of COVID-19. As previous studies regarding the use of ritonavir during pregnancy were limited to ex-vivo experiments and systemic safety data, to fully explore the detailed pharmacokinetics of ritonavir in pregnant rats’…</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>Efficacy and safety of aniseed powder for treating gastrointestinal symptoms of COVID-19: a randomized, placebo-controlled trial</strong> - Background: Gastrointestinal symptoms are prevalent amongst patients with a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 and may be associated with an increased risk of disease severity. This trial aimed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of aniseed (Pimpinella anisum L.) powder as an add-on therapy to standard care for treating gastrointestinal symptoms experienced by adults with an acute SARS-CoV-2 infection. Methods: The study was a randomized parallel-group double-blinded placebo-controlled add-on…</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 narrative review on tofacitinib: The properties, function, and usefulness to treat coronavirus disease 2019</strong> - In coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the formation of cytokine storm may have a role in worsening of the disease. By attaching the cytokines like interleukin-6 to the cytokine receptors on a cell surface, Janus kinase (JAK)-signal transducers and activators of transcription (STAT) pathway will be activated in the cytoplasm lead to hyperinflammatory conditions and acute respiratory distress syndrome. Inhibition of JAK/STAT pathway may be useful to prevent the formation of cytokine storm….</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 critical review of advances on tumor metabolism abnormalities induced by nitrosamine disinfection by-products in drinking water</strong> - Intensified sanitation practices amid the recent SARS-CoV-2 outbreak might result in the increased release of chloramine disinfectants into surface water, significantly promoting the formation of nitrosamine disinfection by-products (DBPs) in drinking water. Unfortunately, these nitrosamine DBPs exhibit significant genotoxic, carcinogenic, and mutagenic properties, while chlorinating disinfectants remain in global practice. The current review provides valuable insights into the occurrence,…</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>Cleavage of HDAC6 to dampen its antiviral activity by nsp5 is a common strategy of swine enteric coronaviruses</strong> - HDAC6, a structurally and functionally unique member of the histone deacetylase (HDAC) family, is an important host factor that restricts viral infection. The broad-spectrum antiviral activity of HDAC6 makes it a potent antiviral agent. Previously, we found that HDAC6 functions to antagonize porcine deltacoronavirus (PDCoV), an emerging enteropathogenic coronavirus with zoonotic potential. However, the final outcome is typically a productive infection that materializes as cells succumb to viral…</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>Campesterol and dithymoquinone as a potent inhibitors of SARS cov-2 main proteases-promising drug candidates for targeting its novel variants</strong> - The sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has currently taken approximately 2.4 million lives, with no specific medication and fast-tracked tested vaccines for prevention. These vaccines have their own adverse effects, which have severely affected the global healthcare system. The discovery of the main protease structure of coronavirus (Mpro/Clpro) has resulted in the identification of compounds having antiviral potential, especially from the herbal system. In this study, 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>SARS-CoV-2 NSP2 as a Potential Delivery Vehicle for Proteins</strong> - The development of biomolecule delivery systems is essential for the treatment of various diseases such as cancer, immunological diseases, and metabolic disorders. For the first time, we found that SARS-CoV-2-encoded nonstructural protein 2 (NSP2) can be secreted from the cells, where it is synthesized. Brefeldin A and H89, inhibitors of ER/Golgi secretion pathways, did not inhibit NSP2 secretion. NSP2 is likely secreted via an unconventional secretory pathway. Moreover, both secreted and…</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>AI-driven covalent drug design strategies targeting main protease (m<sup>pro</sup>) against SARS-CoV-2: structural insights and molecular mechanisms</strong> - The emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants has raised concerns about the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines. To address this challenge, small-molecule antivirals have been proposed as a crucial therapeutic option. Among potential targets for anti-COVID-19 therapy, the main protease (M^(pro)) of SARS-CoV-2 is important due to its essential role in the virus’s life cycle and high conservation. The substrate-binding region of the core proteases of various coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2,…</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>Inhibition of multiple SARS-CoV-2 variants entry by Lycium barbarum L. polysaccharides through disruption of spike protein-ACE2 interaction</strong> - Viral respiratory infections are major human health concerns. The most striking epidemic disease, COVID-19 is still on going with the emergence of fast mutations and drug resistance of pathogens. A few polysaccharide macromolecules from traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) have been found to have direct anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity but the mechanism remains unclear. In this study, we evaluated the entry inhibition effect of Lycium barbarum polysaccharides (LBP) in vitro and in vivo. We found LBP…</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>Proposing of fungal endophyte secondary metabolites as a potential inhibitors of 2019-novel coronavirus main protease using docking and molecular dynamics</strong> - In this study, the inhibitory potential of 99 fungal derived secondary metabolites was predicted against SARS-CoV-2 main protease by using of computational approaches. This protein plays an important role in replication and is one of the important targets to inhibit viral reproduction. Among the 99 reported compounds, the 9 of them with the highest binding energy to Mpro obtained from the molecular docking method were selected for the molecular dynamic simulations. The compounds were then…</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>DON/DRP-104 as potent serine protease inhibitors implicated in SARS-CoV-2 infection: Comparative binding modes with human TMPRSS2 and novel therapeutic approach</strong> - Human transmembrane serine protease 2 (TMPRSS2) is an important member of the type 2 transmembrane serine protease (TTSP) family with significant therapeutic markings. The search for potent TMPRSS2 inhibitors against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection with favorable tissue specificity and off-site toxicity profiles remains limited. Therefore, probing the anti-TMPRSS2 potential of enhanced drug delivery systems, such as nanotechnology and prodrug systems, has become…</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>Fluoxetine exerts anti-inflammatory effects on human epidermal keratinocytes and suppresses their endothelin release</strong> - Fluoxetine is a safe antidepressant with remarkable anti-inflammatory actions; therefore, we aimed to investigate its effects on immortalized (HaCaT) as well as primary human epidermal keratinocytes in a polyinosinic-polycytidylic acid (p(I:C))-induced inflammatory model. We found that a non-cytotoxic concentration (MTT-assay, CyQUANT-assay) of fluoxetine significantly suppressed p(I:C)-induced expression and release of several pro-inflammatory cytokines (Q-PCR, cytokine array, ELISA), and it…</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>Flavonoids derived from medicinal plants as a COVID-19 treatment</strong> - The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causes COVID-19 disease. Through its viral spike (S) protein, the virus enters and infects epithelial cells by utilizing angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 as a host cell’s receptor protein. The COVID-19 pandemic had a profound impact on global public health and economies. Although various effective vaccinations and medications are now available to prevent and treat COVID-19, natural compounds derived from medicinal plants,…</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>A Pediatrician’s Two Weeks Inside a Hospital in Gaza</strong> - No space, no supplies, and harrowing life-and-death decisions. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/a-pediatricians-two-weeks-inside-a-hospital-in-gaza">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Rural Ski Slope Caught Up in an International Scam</strong> - A federal program promised to bring foreign investment to remote parts of the country. It soon became rife with fraud. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/02/05/the-rural-ski-slope-caught-up-in-an-international-scam">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Inside the Music Industry’s High-Stakes A.I. Experiments</strong> - Lucian Grainge, the chairman of UMG, has helped record labels rake in billions of dollars from streaming. Can he do the same with generative artificial intelligence? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/02/05/inside-the-music-industrys-high-stakes-ai-experiments">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Perverse Policies That Fuel Wildfires</strong> - We thought we could master nature, but we were playing with fire. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/02/05/the-perverse-policies-that-fuel-wildfires">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine’s Democracy in Darkness</strong> - With elections postponed and no end to the war with Russia in sight, Volodymyr Zelensky and his political allies are becoming like the officials they once promised to root out: entrenched. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/02/05/ukraines-democracy-in-darkness">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>The sun’s poles are about to flip. It’s awesome — and slightly terrifying.</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="An image of the sun, taken from space and showing coronal ejections along with swirling gases on the star’s surface, all tinted bright orange." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/u0frBTV3NScc0ogBBanQVEnPTaY=/0x99:792x693/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73099789/Filament_break_fulldisk_.0.jpeg"/>
<figcaption>
NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The sun is growing feistier. Great news for aurora watchers. Bad news for communication satellites.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="d3UwSE">
The sun is getting ready to flip.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zZJSUG">
Every 11 or so years, the sun undergoes an epic transformation: its magnetic poles reverse. Like on Earth, the sun has a magnetic North and a magnetic South. But unlike Earth, whose poles flip<a href="https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/3104/flip-flop-why-variations-in-earths-magnetic-field-arent-causing-todays-climate-change/#:~:text=The%20time%20intervals%20between%20reversals,place%20about%20780%2C000%20years%20ago."> on the order of hundreds of thousands of years</a>, the sun’s shuffle is a regular occurrence. The sun’s poles <a href="https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2018/10/aa32981-18/aa32981-18.html#:~:text=We%20show%20that%20the%20southern,began%20to%20show%20a%20clear">last reversed in 2013</a>. So we’re just about due — likely <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.10502">starting some time this year</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZcLnGM">
The solar poles flipping is not, as it might sound, the sign of impending apocalypse. You won’t notice it when it happens. The solar cycle<a href="https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/2910/what-is-the-suns-role-in-climate-change/#:~:text=What%20Effect%20Do%20Solar%20Cycles,small%20role%20in%20Earth's%20climate."> only minorly impacts</a> the climate here on Earth. But it’s what happens <em>before</em> <em>the flip</em> that can cause trouble.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WRSnse">
Leading up to the pole reversal is a time of increasingly intense magnetic activity on the surface of the sun. That’s what’s happening right now. “We are indeed seeing the sun more active than it’s been in probably something like 20 years<em>,” </em>says<a href="https://recherche.umontreal.ca/english/our-researchers/professors-directory/researcher/is/in15216/"> Paul Charbonneau</a>, a solar physicist at the University of Montreal.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xY9CQv">
During these peak periods of solar activity, it’s the most extravagant fireworks display in the solar system. “When the magnetic energy content of the sun is a lot larger, that’s when you tend to get more solar flares, more [coronal] mass ejections — more fun stuff,” Charbonneau says.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5PW8Bi">
Of particular concern are coronal mass ejections. These are<strong> </strong>explosions that hurl charged matter like shotgun shot across the solar system — aka a “solar storm.” If these storms reach our planet, they have the ability to disrupt communications satellites in space, of which there are an ever-increasing number, thanks to internet provider satellites like <a href="https://www.vox.com/elon-musk">Elon Musk</a>’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/22396388/space-x-elon-musk-starlink-too-bright-astronomy-stars-pollution">Starlink</a>. If the conditions are just right, they even take parts <a href="https://www.wsj.com/science/environment/solar-storm-early-warning-system-b6324524">of our energy grid on </a>the ground offline.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9fLq12">
But in the eyes of scientists, this active time in the solar cycle doesn’t represent peril — it presents ample opportunity. An active period of solar activity gives researchers an opportunity to study the sun in greater detail to serve two big goals: One, they want to better predict when a solar storm might wreak havoc on Earth and on spacecraft. Scientists want to take the progress meteorologists have made in predicting weather on Earth, and forecast space weather. Doing so could allow for safer <a href="https://www.vox.com/space">space travel</a> as interest in crewed missions to the moon, and Mars, gain momentum.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ir1xAO">
And two, to better understand the mysterious interior of the sun, which generates such awe-inspiring shows, and could help us understand countless other stars in the universe, and eventually a clue to the ultimate mystery: why are we here?
</p>
<h3 id="wMZDtH">
The sun is, basically, an enormous nuclear-powered magnet
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="U5ocnu">
At its core, the sun fuses together hydrogen atoms, forming helium, and releasing a massive amount of energy in the process.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zblt4M">
What happens outside of that core is less clear, as scientists can’t study the interior of the star directly. For one, <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/yoss_act1.pdf">it exists 93 million miles away from us</a>, and the bright, violent activity on the surface obscures the beast that lurks underneath.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="y6heqF">
But outside the core, in a layer called the “convective zone,” the heat generated from the fusion in the core superheats gas into plasma (i.e., gas so hot it has an electrical charge). That plasma, scientists think, moves around the interior of the sun similar to the way water in our ocean moves in great convecting currents, with warmer water rising and cooler water sinking, or how the atmosphere on Earth <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o203JXAnSA0&amp;t=43s">produces great jet streams</a>.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A diagram of the various layers of the sun, with a core in the center, surrounded by the radiative and convective zone, and the outer corona." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/AwmmhYNPySvabiHZtMmeSUElG00=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25257001/655928main_solar_anatomy_MOS_orig_full.jpg"/> <cite><a class="ql-link" href="https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/anatomy-of-sun/" target="_blank">NASA</a></cite>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DAgeni">
Here on Earth, this movement of air and water influences the climate and the weather, mainly by transporting and distributing heat from the equator to the poles.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9w1mpC">
On the sun, something more epic happens because it’s not just transporting heat, but electromagnetism, too.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yEYwFK">
“We think these flows are the ones that are responsible for generating strong electric currents,”<a href="https://space.jhuapl.edu/people/nour-raouafi"> Nour Rawafi, an astrophysicist</a> at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, says. “And whenever you create currents, you create magnetic fields.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AW7FfE">
(Think of the<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkCI-oWUYh4"> classic demonstration</a> you probably saw conducted in elementary school: If you wrap an electrical wire around a nail, and connect it to a battery, that nail will become a magnet.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dOY2pa">
This process by which the sun generates magnetism is called the<a href="https://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/dynamo.shtml"> solar dynamo</a>. And much of how it works is still a mystery to solar physicists because it’s hidden from our direct view.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HYbYxq">
But on the surface of the sun, we can see the power of the dynamo. If the flows of plasma and magnetism inside the sun become unstable, “they pop through the surface, and the magnetic fields are so intense that they appear as dark spots,” says <a href="https://staff.ucar.edu/users/mscott">Scott McIntosh</a>, a solar physicist and the deputy director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Researchers call these “sunspots” (see them in the image below). They appear like freckly blotches on the surface of the sun.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lvDb4V">
The area of magnetism acts like a lid on the sun’s heat and light. Through a telescope, they “look dark and cold relative to their surroundings,” McIntosh says. (To be sure: they are still incredibly hot — <a href="https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/solar-activity/en/#:~:text=Sunspots-,Sunspots%20are%20areas%20that%20appear%20dark%20on%20the%20surface%20of,though%E2%80%94around%206%2C500%20degrees%20Fahrenheit!">around 6,500 degrees Fahrenheit</a> — and bright. That’s just relatively cooler than the sun’s<a href="https://www.weather.gov/fsd/sunspots"> typical 10,000-degree</a> surface temperature.)
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/1d_XvV-43i5NO3zC07HLXmzmsYw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25256947/20141023_hmiic.jpg"/> <cite><a class="ql-link" href="https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/largest-sunspot-of-solar-cycle/" target="_blank">NASA</a></cite>
<figcaption>
A gigantic sunspot — almost 80,000 miles across — can be seen on the lower center of the sun in this image from NASA’s Solar Dynamic Observatory captured in 2014.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JA5kpO">
There’s no analog for sunspots here on Earth. It’s as if a section of the jet stream popped out of our atmosphere and into space, and obscured an astronaut’s view of the continents underneath.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dikVPy">
Astronomers have been observing these sunspots with telescopes <a href="https://www2.hao.ucar.edu/education/about-the-sun/what-are-some-historical-observations-sun#:~:text=The%20first%20written%20record%20of,%2C%20Fabricius%2C%20Scheiner%20and%20Harriot.">for centuries</a>, and they noticed a pattern. Every 11 years, the number of sunspots on the surface of the sun reaches a maximum. In the 1950s and early 60s, researchers realized the increase in the number of sunspots precedes<a href="https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2018/10/aa32981-18/aa32981-18.html"> the poles reversing</a>. (This April’s solar eclipse over the United States <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/01/26/total-eclipse-solar-maximum-aurora/">should benefit</a> from occurring near the peak of the solar cycle. If you get to see the eclipse in totality, you could potentially spot looping areas of magnetism emanating out of the solar atmosphere.)
</p>
<div id="rjxwv1">
<div style="width: 100%; height: 0; padding-bottom: 56.25%;">
</div>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BHQKUc">
But before the poles flip, monsters can emerge from these sunspots. That is, monstrous <a href="https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/phenomena/solar-flares-radio-blackouts">solar flares,</a> which are bright explosions of electromagnetic radiation (including visible light, x-rays, and ultraviolet radiation), and coronal mass ejections.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wf8soc">
Of particular concern are coronal mass ejections. They are explosions that send the sun’s plasma, and charged particles, racing at hundreds of thousands of miles per hour through the solar system. They can arrive at Earth in “typically three days,” says <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/aerospace/delores-knipp">Delores Knipp</a>, an aerospace engineering professor at the University of Colorado Boulder.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QiF2qW">
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/G3Vfziv6JpkNBpBYPJVAMvv9Roo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25256926/Rollingwave.jpeg"/> <cite><a class="ql-link" href="https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/main/item/193" target="_blank">Solar Dynamics Observatory</a></cite>
<figcaption>
A coronal mass ejection spotted by the Solar Dynamics Observatory in 2013.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BuoTAZ">
Once here, the effects can range widely. A lot of the time, the Earth’s own magnetic field will simply <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URN-XyZD2vQ">deflect the storm</a>, like rain bouncing off a cosmic umbrella. In other instances the storm “can actually open up Earth’s magnetic field and allow much more energy and mass to enter in through,” she says, “and when that happens, then we tend to see all kinds of impacts.”
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/LwlCg7Q0_zcOGCHwOYgw9R_DljM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25257085/YOUTUBE_1080_13506_Atmospheric_Escape_youtube_1080.2024_01_30_13_58_40.gif"/> <cite><a class="ql-link" href="https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13506" target="_blank">NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center</a></cite>
<figcaption>
A conceptual animation showing solar wind interacting with Earth’s magnetic field.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QKikRd">
On the mild end, they could result in more vivid auroras visible in lower latitudes on Earth. Auroras are the result of charged particles from the sun colliding with gas in our atmosphere. The deflecting power of Earth’s magnetic fields is weakest at the poles — which is why auroras typically happen near them. But they can occasionally drift closer to the equator, and even <a href="https://www.foxweather.com/watch/play-6bf12b3060013f0">appear above the lower 48 in the United States</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cpNkUF">
If it’s a whopper, it could spell a multitude of disasters. Solar storms can disrupt communications satellites and<a href="https://www.space.com/mild-solar-storms-threat-gps-satellites"> GPS in space</a>, and, on the ground, potentially disable parts of the electrical grid. Just as electrical flows can induce magnetism, magnetism can induce electrical current. “Our power grids are amazingly effective at being a kind-of antenna for that kind of change in magnetic field,” Knipp says.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="W1cPzs">
The possibility of a direct hit by a powerful solar storm is rare. But it can happen. In 1859, a storm called the “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859">Carrington Event</a>” occurred <a href="https://www.space.com/the-carrington-event">nea</a><a href="https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2020/08/carrington-event-warning/">r</a><a href="https://www.space.com/the-carrington-event"> the peak of the solar cycle</a>, and sent currents surging through nascent telegraph lines, sparking fires and stymieing messages, <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/science-research/heliophysics/nasa-enabled-ai-predictions-may-give-time-to-prepare-for-solar-storms/">according to NASA</a>. Auroras<a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/aae47c"> could be seen</a> as far south as Mexico City.<strong> </strong>If a similar event happened today, risk analysts<a href="https://assets.lloyds.com/assets/pdf-solar-storm-risk-to-the-north-american-electric-grid/1/pdf-Solar-Storm-Risk-to-the-North-American-Electric-Grid.pdf"> at Lloyds of London estimate, it could cost trillions</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="plcRJ7">
During the last period of high solar activity in 2012,<a href="https://www.vox.com/2014/7/30/5951263/a-catastrophic-solar-storm-just-barely-missed-earth-in-2012"> scientists spotted a</a> couple of coronal mass ejections which crossed the Earth’s orbit. Luckily, our planet was not in the crosshairs. But “had those bursts hit the Earth’s magnetic field,” Brad Plumer<a href="https://www.vox.com/2014/7/30/5951263/a-catastrophic-solar-storm-just-barely-missed-earth-in-2012"> wrote in Vox in 2014</a>, “they could have induced strong ground currents capable of overloading our electric grids and knocking out transformers, leaving entire regions without power.”
</p>
<h3 id="HpUDQv">
The unique opportunity this year holds for solar science
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yaKnYU">
The above is a simplified description of how our star works. But many pieces are missing. Scientists don’t have a perfect working model of its dynamo — the process by which the motion of plasma and charged particles inside the sun builds up magnetic energy. It means we’re still not very good at predicting why some solar cycles are more intense than others (indeed, it<a href="https://www.weather.gov/news/201509-solar-cycle#:~:text=Solar%20Cycle%2025%20is%20forecast,%E2%80%9D%20said%20Doug%20Biesecker%2C%20Ph."> was predicted</a> that this current — very active — solar cycle would be much milder.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Qg6CBW">
Currently, scientists can’t predict when a coronal mass ejection will erupt. And they are still working on building forecast models to predict how and when a solar storm would arrive at the Earth.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="on5tn0">
Figuring out what the sun is up to is “is not really just an academic debate anymore,” says McIntosh, “because of the growing commercial aerospace sector.” The number of satellites orbiting the Earth has <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/1/7/21003272/space-x-starlink-astronomy-light-pollution">exploded by the thousands</a> in recent years. Elon Musk’s Starlink system — designed to give internet service from space — alone involves more than 4,000 of them. All of them — plus more communications and GPS satellites — can be impacted, or <a href="https://www.space.com/mild-solar-storms-threat-gps-satellites">potentially destroyed</a> by space weather.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EklKmS">
And the deeper humans venture into space, the more exposed they are to dangerous storms. Mars, a target for human exploration, <a href="https://www.universetoday.com/154461/we-might-know-why-mars-lost-its-magnetic-field/">doesn’t have a magnetic</a> shield like the Earth does. So “the ability to predict and preserve astronauts on Mars is a direct result of our capabilities to observe all the sun,” McIntosh says.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Q6ILE2">
Luckily for this solar cycle, scientists have a few new instruments to make critical observations.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1XXSmZ">
First, there’s the<a href="https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Solar_Orbiter"> European Space Agency’s</a> Solar Orbiter, which launched in 2020, orbiting the sun. It’s designed to make the <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/general/new-mission-will-take-1st-peek-at-suns-poles/">first-ever direct</a> observations of the sun’s poles. Importantly, “the solar poles hold key secrets to understanding the solar cycle,” Rawafi says. It’s where the polarity reversal happens. What happens at the poles “seeds the future solar cycles. So, understanding the solar<strong> </strong>poles will help us maybe predict solar cycles in the future.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ORFvST">
Then, there’s<a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/8/8/17630072/parker-solar-probe-timeline-launch-date-corona-solar-physics"> NASA’s Parker Solar Probe</a>, which launched in<a href="https://science.nasa.gov/resource/parker-solar-probe-launch-2/"> 2018</a>, and is on its way to a closest-ever approach to the sun, coming within 4 million miles of its surface. The probe can actually fly<a href="https://www.space.com/parker-cme-flies-through-displaces-dust-solar-physics#:~:text=NASA's%20Parker%20Solar%20Probe%20flies,survives%20to%20tell%20the%20tale&amp;text=This%201st%20CME%20fly%2Dthrough,theory%20about%20our%20host%20star.&amp;text=Coronal%20mass%20ejections%20(CMEs)%2C,sun's%20corona%2C%20are%20fearsome%20indeed."> through coronal mass ejections</a>, making careful measurements of how they accelerate particles across space. Finally, here on the ground is the<a href="https://nso.edu/telescopes/dkist/fact-sheets/dkist-overview/"> Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii</a>, which came online in 2019, which generated the highest resolution images ever taken of the surface of the sun.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="b6cZDL">
These observatories join <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/heliophysics/missions/mission-fleet-diagram/">others</a> already in orbit and on the ground. The dream is to witness an eruption event on the sun and trace its entire path through space, and to the Earth, with the various observatories. With those observations, scientists can make more accurate forecasts, as meteorologists here on Earth <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/10/11/17963958/hurricane-michael-forecast-track-intensity-category">have improved forecasting </a>for storms like hurricanes.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RrGJea">
And studying these bursts during the active solar cycle can also help scientists understand the beast itself — the solar dynamo.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="losU3k">
“It’s like an iceberg,” McIntosh says of studying a coronal mass ejection or flare. “You’re basically getting a glimpse at the machine,” he says. “And so you have to draw inference from the storms to understand what that big machine is doing in the background.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xLmQdk">
Figuring out that big machine would be momentous.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1h42FB">
“A lot of people have joked that it’s like the only Nobel Prize you’ll win in solar physics, is by finally understanding its dynamo process,” McIntosh says. That’s partly because the sun is a fairly common type of star; there are <a href="https://www.space.com/habitable-planets-common-sunlike-stars-milky-way">billions more like it </a>in our own galaxy. And if scientists can figure out how it works, the knowledge instantly multiplies: Suddenly they know how untold number of stars across the universe work a little more deeply. “It’s highly unlikely that what’s going on in the sun is unique,” McIntosh says, “but it’s the one that’s on our doorstep.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ztY0uQ">
And with that knowledge could come answers to even bigger questions. Life exists on Earth because of the energy the sun provides. But if the sun was more active, or if Earth’s magnetic shield was less powerful, then life could not be possible. So, understanding how our star works is a piece of the puzzle in understanding how life arises — both here and potentially around other stars.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OMKwnQ">
“We’re trying to understand if we are the exception in this universe,” Rawafi says, “or if there is life elsewhere.” We’ll need to look at other stars to answer that question completely. But, in the meantime, we can make progress by looking at our own.
</p></li>
<li><strong>The US uses endangered monkeys to test drugs. This law could free them.</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="Two adult macaques hold a baby macaque and look into the distance." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/4ZUC2EWl5IzJHHEgVnxC3zZAKi8=/0x0:4608x3456/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73099767/GettyImages_988013902.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Long-tailed macaques in Indonesia. | Gustavo Mejía/Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Everything from Ozempic to Covid vaccines is tested on long-tailed macaques. Experts believe many are illegally trafficked from the wild.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7zoKrr">
Tanya Sanerib has some advice for your next life: “Don’t come back as a crab-eating macaque.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cuLyW6">
That’s what Sanerib, international legal director for the Center for Biological Diversity, concluded after looking at data on the vast numbers of crab-eating macaques, monkeys also known as long-tailed or cynomolgus macaques, imported into the United States for animal testing.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HkMIRR">
These playful, fruit-loving monkeys have the misfortune of being a standard research model used for toxicology testing in the biomedical industry. In recent years, exporters based largely in their native range of <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2022.839131/full#:~:text=The%20CITES%20Trade%20Database%20revealed,Philippines%2C%20Thailand%2C%20and%20Vietnam.">Southeast Asia</a> have sold <a href="https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/26857/chapter/9#211">more than 30,000 long-tailed macaques</a> annually to the US, largely for laboratory use.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FR8yaA">
Biomedical industry demand for long-tailed macaques is so high that, analysts reported last year, a single animal could be <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Pharmaceuticals/Lab-monkey-prices-soar-in-U.S.-after-China-cuts-off-exports">sold for as much as $60,000</a>. On arrival at pharmaceutical companies and research institutions, they’re destined to live in cages and face experimentation to test everything from the <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/ozempic-was-tested-on-iucn-endangered-monkeys-heres-what-we-know">weight-loss drug Ozempic </a>to <a href="https://nprc.org/research/the-monkeys-behind-covid-19-vaccines/">Covid-19</a> vaccines.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uHPsy4">
US scientists have been using large numbers of these monkeys since the 1970s, when <a href="https://bioone.org/journals/primate-conservation/volume-23/issue-1/052.023.0115/The-Crab-Eating-Macaque-Macaca-fascicularis--Widespread-and-Rapidly/10.1896/052.023.0115.full">India halted exports of rhesus macaques</a>, and researchers had to find a new, more easily replaceable species for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1978/01/23/archives/export-ban-on-monkeys-poses-threat-to-research-export-ban-on.html">lethal pharmaceutical testing</a>. Long-tailed macaques’ relative abundance in the wild meant they fit the bill.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="O0S1Rz">
Unfortunately, they’re not so abundant in the wild anymore.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="10NmZk">
While the animals proliferate in US laboratories, they are struggling in their native habitat, and the animal testing industry is partly to blame. Long-tailed macaque populations <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/fr/species/12551/221666136#population">declined by 40 percent</a> from the mid-1980s to 2006, and in 2022, they were listed as endangered by the <a href="https://www.iucn.org/about-iucn">International Union for the Conservation of Nature</a> (IUCN), a global authority on wildlife threats. The IUCN named several causes for the macaques’ decline, including habitat loss, the pet trade, subsistence hunting, and capture for biomedical research. Throughout the 2010s, 60 percent of the more than 400,000 long-tailed macaques exported from Asia went to <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajp.23547">the US</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VqY54U">
On paper, most long-tailed macaques imported by the US are labeled as captive-bred — meaning they came from facilities that breed them for research rather than from the wild. But <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235277142300040X">some</a> <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajp.23547">experts</a> believe that illegal trade in wild-caught macaques is widespread, and that many of those that end up in US labs have actually been trafficked from the wild. In November 2022, the Department of Justice <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdfl/pr/cambodian-officials-and-six-co-conspirators-indicted-taking-part-primate-smuggling-0">indicted eight people</a> allegedly involved in a smuggling ring that brought <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/20/trafficked-lab-monkeys-cambodia-us-investigation">more than 2,600</a> wild long-tailed macaques from Cambodia into the US under false permits labeling them captive-bred.
</p>
<div class="c-wide-block">
<div class="c-image-grid">
<div class="c-image-grid__item">
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A group of long-tailed macaques hang from a wired ceiling in a fenced-in outdoor area." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/7LRMX4XzNNJ2P--Tao8x8TMjBWw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25256843/WAM10547.jpg"/> <cite>Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals Media</cite>
<figcaption>
Long-tailed macaques at a breeding facility in Vientiane, Laos.
</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<div class="c-image-grid__item">
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A monkey cradles a small baby monkey against the backdrop of a concrete wall." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/WkN8yYYMK15qHJZyAnT3xsG3Dso=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25255542/WAM10567.jpg"/> <cite>Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals Media</cite>
<figcaption>
A long-tailed macaque mother and infant at a breeding facility in Vientiane, Laos.
</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WNVYB1">
Then last April, amid growing concerns about the species, a coalition of <a href="https://www.vox.com/animal-welfare">animal rights</a> activists, conservation groups, and scientists led by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) <a href="https://www.peta.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2023-04-12-PFR-to-List-the-Long-Tailed-Macaque-Under-the-ESA_Redacted.pdf">petitioned</a> the federal government to list the long-tailed macaque under the <a href="https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/2023/12/18/23989030/endangered-species-act-explained-environment-biodiversity-extinction">Endangered Species Act</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vIgRhM">
This could have radical implications: If successful, their call might not only end imports of long-tailed macaques, but also help address the <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23795087/animal-experiments-primates-mental-health-effective">physical and psychological distress</a> they face in US testing labs and perhaps even end their use in research altogether. And it could do that for all members of the species — whether they were abducted from the wild or have lived their whole lives in a cage.
</p>
<h3 id="NlOcjJ">
The Endangered Species Act’s radical potential for animals in captivity
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0FSc9r">
The PETA-led petition’s potential to upend a pillar of biomedical research in the US highlights what may be an underappreciated aspect of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), a landmark federal law passed 50 years ago last month to protect species at risk of extinction. While its most <a href="https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Understanding-Conservation/endangered-species-success-stories">high-profile successes</a> include such symbols of the American frontier as the bald eagle, the Florida panther, and the grizzly bear, the law is not just for protecting animals in wild habitats from human encroachment. It also calls for better treatment of endangered animals in captivity.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CWINsO">
Although the exact status of captive animals under the ESA is far from settled — subject to shifting regulation, controversial loopholes, and evolving case law — its wide-ranging protections promise to free endangered animals from many forms of exploitation that are beyond the reach even of laws ostensibly designed to stop animal cruelty. The 1966 Animal Welfare Act, for example, merely sets <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/12/11/23500157/neuralink-animal-testing-elon-musk-usda-probe">minimal standards</a> for the conditions of animal use, such as minimum cage sizes for animals used in experiments — thereby taking for granted that animals will be harmed for profit-seeking purposes like entertainment, drug development, or cosmetic testing.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IG2so6">
But the ESA provides a basis for challenging such harm. It <a href="https://www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/endangered-species-act-accessible_7.pdf">prohibits</a> any “take” of an endangered animal, which the law defines as “to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct.” It also allows citizens to directly sue entities that they believe are violating the law, making it much easier to enforce than the Animal Welfare Act.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0DmdK0">
In conservation biology, the health of wild animal populations and the welfare of animals held in captivity for human purposes have traditionally been seen as incompatible, or at best unrelated — contributing to a divide between conservationists and animal rights advocates.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="D4wk6T">
Animal advocates are often highly critical of zoos and aquariums, for example, because of the physical and psychological harm that can be inflicted on animals confined to small, unnatural settings. Those most concerned with the survival of wild populations, however, <a href="https://www.iucn.org/sites/default/files/2023-10/2023-position-statement-on-the-role-of-botanic-gardens-aquariums-and-zoos-in-species-conservation.pdf">sometimes support zoos</a> because they help keep the species’ gene pool alive (whether zoos actually help wild animal populations, however, is <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23914885/zoo-animals-conservation-endangered-threatened-species-sanctuaries">contested</a>).
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7LeJ7N">
Michael Soulé, considered a founder of conservation biology, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1310054">wrote</a> in 1985 that the field was not<em> </em>concerned with “the welfare of individuals,” but only with “the integrity and continuity of natural processes.” While he objected to animal cruelty, he cautioned that “conservation and animal welfare … are conceptually distinct, and they should remain politically separate.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LUvqOO">
But in the Endangered Species Act, these two goals — protecting species and protecting individual animals — are linked. “The language, purpose, and legislative history of the ESA … make clear that the act is designed to protect both captive and wild members of protected species,” wrote legal experts Delcianna Winders, Jared Goodman, and Heather Rally in a <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/products/inv/book/413429989/">chapter</a> of the 2021 edition of <em>Endangered Species Act: Law, Policy, and Perspectives</em>. According to Sanerib, that’s part of what makes it one of the stronger environmental laws on the planet.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="57GiBy">
A key ESA case for captive animals began to take shape in the late ’80s, about as far from wilderness as you can get: backstage on the Las Vegas Strip. A dancer at Vegas’s Lido de Paris cabaret <a href="https://news3lv.com/features/video-vault/video-vault-ringling-bros">leaked footage</a> to PETA showing famed animal trainer Bobby Berosini beating the show’s performing orangutans. <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-08-08-mn-161-story.html">Subsequent investigation</a> found further evidence of physical and emotional abuse, including cage sizes roughly one-third of the legal requirement. Attorney Katherine Meyer, who led PETA’s case against Berosini, argued that the orangutan operation wasn’t just a typical animal cruelty case: Because orangutans were listed as endangered, Berosini was violating the ESA.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TjI2ec">
Berosini’s permit to breed the endangered great apes was revoked, and the show closed down. Meyer, who later became the <a href="https://animal.law.harvard.edu/team-member/katherine-meyer/">inaugural director of the Harvard Animal Law and Policy Clinic</a>, said this was the first case she knows of in which the ESA was used to protect captive animals from abusive situations. In the decades since, ESA lawsuits have been brought against the <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5361853">Ringling Bros. and Barnum &amp; Bailey Circus</a>, the <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23937898/orcas-whales-dolphins-seaworld-blackfish-captivity-cetaceans">Miami Seaquarium theme park</a>, and <a href="https://aldf.org/article/animal-legal-defense-fund-lawsuit-shuts-down-inhumane-pennsylvania-roadside-zoo/">numerous</a> <a href="https://www.wizmnews.com/2018/04/12/court-iowa-roadside-zoo-where-la-crosse-bears-retired-violated-endangered-species-law/">roadside zoos</a>, on behalf of endangered bears, elephants, orcas, and other captive animals.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="i5VMdJ">
The exact scope of the law’s protections remains a legal gray area, <a href="https://www.vermontlaw.edu/directory/person/winders-delcianna">Delcianna Winders</a>, a professor and director of the <a href="https://www.vermontlaw.edu/academics/centers-and-programs/animal-law-policy-institute">Animal Law and Policy Institute</a> at Vermont Law and Graduate School, told me. Some courts have decided that poor living conditions or inadequate veterinary care constitute a “take” under the ESA, leading to several closures of roadside zoos. In 1976, Winders added, <a href="https://www.vox.com/congress">Congress</a> rejected an amendment to the ESA pushed by the animal exhibition industry that would have excluded the “ordinary activities of a zoo, circus, menagerie or other similar exhibition” from the law’s purview.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GGPFJY">
But <a href="https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-50/chapter-I/subchapter-B/part-17/subpart-A/section-17.3">exemptions</a> have been written into the law to exclude Animal Welfare Act-compliant practices from the definition of “harassment” — making it harder to argue in court that confining elephants in zoos, for example, is inherently an illegal form of harassment under the ESA.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1yijdu">
“It’s been a decades-long series of trial and error” to figure out how the ESA should treat captive animals, Winders said, and some tension remains.
</p>
<h3 id="juhtiP">
How the Endangered Species Act freed chimps from lab testing
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ow9OKa">
Although the ESA doesn’t outright ban keeping endangered animals in captivity, its prohibitions on what you can <em>do </em>to a captive animal are far more stringent. The law poses a direct challenge to animal testing, which, according to Winders, clearly constitutes a “take.” Invasive experimentation almost definitionally involves the harm, wounding, and often killing of an animal.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aB010J">
While the ESA makes it difficult to experiment on an endangered animal, it is not impossible. Facilities can still carry out such research by obtaining a special permit from the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the federal agency that enforces the Endangered Species Act. In theory, to qualify for a permit, the research is supposed to benefit the species writ large, but in practice, the FWS has established what critics call a “pay-to-play” system: Researchers are allowed to simply donate to the conservation of a species in the wild in exchange for permits to conduct experiments on captive members of that species.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QIqsZq">
These arrangements have become common. In Atlanta, for example, the federally funded Emory National Primate Research Center experiments on the sooty mangabey, an endangered West African monkey held for research <a href="https://www.enprc.emory.edu/animals/sooty_mangabey.html">on HIV/AIDS, immune function, and other subjects</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZOd3PJ">
In 2016, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wildlife-loophole-exclusive-idUSKCN0ZD20U/">Reuters reported</a> that over the previous five years, “the vast majority of the estimated 1,375 endangered species permits granted by the Fish &amp; Wildlife Service involved financial pledges to charity.” In a typical example, the agency approved a permit to transfer endangered African penguins to Miami Seaquarium in exchange for a $5,000 pledge to penguin conservation in South Africa. Following Vox’s interview requests, the FWS did not provide comment.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8ENFZa">
Despite that loophole, invasive research on endangered species remains rare and faces significant hurdles. In fact, the ESA has already succeeded in freeing one iconic species from such research: our social, tool-making, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTgeLEWr614&amp;ab_channel=NewScientist">highly intelligent</a> cousin, the chimpanzee.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dGK8yJ">
Until quite recently, chimps’ genetic proximity to humans was seen as a reason to experiment on them rather than to protect them from captivity and exploitation; they were used around the world to study infectious diseases such as HIV and hepatitis. But in the late ’90s and early aughts, a growing global movement for chimpanzee rights <a href="https://releasechimps.org/laws/international-bans">resulted in bans</a> on using them (along with other great apes, including bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans) in invasive experiments in countries around the world.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SxNJvI">
By 2013, nearly every country that had been using chimps in invasive medical research had ceased the practice — with the US a notable exception, even though chimps were, and still are, endangered in the wild.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uKnxvP">
That was made possible because, for many years, wild chimpanzees and captive chimpanzees were treated differently under the Endangered Species Act. The former were listed as endangered, while the latter were considered only “threatened” — a less severe classification that made it easier to allow the continued “take” of captive chimpanzees.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sTrGGy">
Chimps were the <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/06/11/190714219/u-s-to-recommend-listing-all-chimpanzees-as-endangered">only species</a> subject to this “split listing,” which, the Fish and Wildlife Service <a href="https://awionline.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/wild-chimpuplistingcommentoct2011-012012.pdf">explained</a> in 1990, was due to their “importance in biomedical and other kinds of research” and their “use by zoos, as pets, and in entertainment.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TQ7FRL">
To Katherine Meyer, the split listing seemed unlawful. In 2010, she consulted with Anna Frostic, an attorney for the Humane Society of the United States, who submitted a <a href="https://www.releasechimps.org/photos-and-pics/fws_chimp_endangered_petition%202010.pdf">petition</a> co-signed by the Jane Goodall Institute, the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums, and several other groups urging FWS to classify all chimps as endangered, including captives.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="giXNrN">
Five years later, their effort <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2015/06/16/2015-14232/endangered-and-threatened-wildlife-and-plants-listing-all-chimpanzees-as-endangered-species">succeeded</a>. While some in the research industry <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/12/jane-goodall-us-chimpanzees-endangered">lamented this decision</a>, they <a href="https://www.boston.com/news/innovation/2013/06/12/no-more-monkey-business-biotech-industry-shrugs-at-change-in-chimp-status/">failed to mount</a> a serious opposition. By November 2015, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) <a href="https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/who-we-are/nih-director/statements/timeline-nihs-decision-end-use-chimpanzees-research">announced</a> it would no longer support chimpanzee research, ending a 90-year era of invasive research on our closest relatives.
</p>
<div class="c-wide-block">
<div class="c-image-grid">
<div class="c-image-grid__item">
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A cage stands on dirt ground outdoors amid greenery." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/s8VzJY762pY0cH7iRX7Pr-gfruY=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25257121/WAM10437.jpg"/> <cite>Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals Media</cite>
<figcaption>
A cage once used to house chimpanzees used for research. It now stands empty in Carignan, Québec, at the entrance to the Fauna Foundation, an organization that provides sanctuary to chimps and monkeys formerly used in biomedical research.
</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<div class="c-image-grid__item">
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A chimp sits on a fence against a backdrop of open greenery." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UIe_t9EfiSeopzZQZ95PrS-G_hE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25257135/WAM9573.jpg"/> <cite>Jo-Anne McArthur/New England Anti-Vivisection Society/We Animals Media</cite>
<figcaption>
A chimpanzee rescued from experimentation lives at Save the Chimps, a chimp sanctuary in Florida. The organization was founded in 1997 to house chimpanzees used by the US Air Force in space travel research and has since taken in hundreds of chimps rescued from biomedical research.
</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hoHdmi">
At the time of the petition, Congress had already been considering <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/111th-congress/house-bill/1326/text?s=1&amp;r=37">a bill to ban</a> invasive research on great apes, citing the animals’ intelligence, social nature, and psychological needs. The scientific merit of experiments on chimps had also been thrown into doubt: A 2011 NIH <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK91445/pdf/Bookshelf_NBK91445.pdf">report</a> found that “most current use of chimpanzees for biomedical research is unnecessary” (though it did not endorse a ban). The FWS’s 2015 decision was the final — and critical — nail in the coffin for the practice.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="U7U6Cf">
The case against split listing succeeded, Meyer said, because of the inherent connection between protecting captive animals and helping their wild counterparts. Jane Goodall and other experts argued that the use of captive chimps undermined conservation in their native range. It’s hard to ask poorer African countries to conserve chimps, Meyer explains, “when we’re hypocrites, we’re exploiting the captive members [of the species] in all kinds of ways.”
</p>
<h3 id="tOMm2s">
A scientific reckoning over primate testing
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XeRM9L">
The same is even more true of long-tailed macaques. Experimenting on them not only undermines US endangered species policy by creating the appearance of hypocrisy, but it also contributes directly to the species’ decline, incentivizing the illegal capture and sale of wild macaques. That has put the long-tailed macaque at the center of a reckoning within the scientific community over the exploitation of endangered animals.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="480xjQ">
<a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/fr/species/12551/221666136#assessment-information">According to the IUCN,</a> the current level of long-tailed macaque exports is “considered by trade monitors as ‘extremely unsustainable,’” putting “a significant strain” on the species’ wild populations. The IUCN raised the concern that breeding facilities in Southeast Asia, motivated by “the large amount of money that can be made in the trade,” can illicitly label wild-caught macaques as captive-born, then export them to countries with large biomedical research industries, such as the US and Japan. This allows exporters to sell more macaques without the time, difficulty, and expense involved in breeding them.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tlnyLU">
“There’s so much money in this; it’s too tempting to break the law,” said Jeremy Beckham, former research advocacy coordinator for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. So long as research facilities in wealthy countries are willing to buy these animals, he argues, that is “going to incentivize dishonest actors” to take them from the wild — just as, the Department of Justice alleges, has been happening in Cambodia. The DOJ declined to comment on the ongoing case.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mooa0G">
The 2022 DOJ indictment has had cascading effects on the research industry: In the aftermath, the US <a href="https://fortune.com/2024/01/27/big-pharma-lab-monkey-shortage-crackdown-cambodian-long-tailed-macaque/">has halted nearly all primate shipments from Cambodia</a>, which had previously <a href="https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/26857/chapter/9#212">provided nearly 60 percent</a> of primate imports. In March 2023, the Guardian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/20/trafficked-lab-monkeys-cambodia-us-investigation">reported</a>, the fate of more than 1,000 macaques held by pharmaceutical company Charles River Laboratories, the largest US user of nonhuman primates, was in limbo, as they cannot be experimented on unless it is proven they were truly captive-bred.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="a06zIv">
For now, the macaques remain in Charles River’s custody, and the company told Vox that it has suspended primate shipments from Cambodia “until such time we and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can develop and implement additional procedures to reasonably ensure confidence that the NHPs [non-human primates] we import from Cambodia are purpose-bred.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="G0jXSH">
The situation has raised alarm bells for biomedical researchers, who complain of a “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2023/03/01/monkeys-cambodia-research/">shortage</a>” of laboratory primates. In July, Charles River and various industry groups <a href="https://www.amprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/FINAL-LTM-Statement-7.26.2023.pdf">drafted a statement</a> calling for increasing domestic capacity for breeding long-tailed macaques, so that the US doesn’t have to rely on primates imported from abroad.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TGthnk">
Meanwhile, the National Association for Biomedical Research (NABR), a trade association defending animal research, alleges that the IUCN’s classification of long-tailed macaques as endangered got it wrong, and that the species is <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/groundbreaking-review-on-long-tailed-macaque-conservation-status-published-in-highly-respected-scientific-journal-302021343.html#:~:text=WASHINGTON%2C%20Dec.,for%20Conservation%20of%20Nature%20issued.">in fact thriving</a>. An <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajp.23590">NABR-funded study</a> published last December found “no data” supporting species decline, and the organization has formally challenged the IUCN’s listing. Craig Hilton-Taylor, head of the IUCN Red List Unit, confirmed that the organization is considering NABR’s <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/resources/petitions">petition</a>, and said the evidence will be reviewed by an independent committee.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fJTJ7L">
Many scientists who study primates in the wild see things differently. “All of us who work in the field and have the opportunity to study wild primates can see the impact of laboratory research on wild populations,” primatologist Ángela Maldonado, legal representative at the Colombia-based NGO Entropika and a signatory of the petition to protect long-tailed macaques under the ESA, told me. While she “respect[s the] research and studies” of those who work with captive primates, she believes that “when someone gets a monkey in a lab, and never saw them in the wild, it’s very difficult to understand the ethical and behavioral impacts on animals.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JsC0sU">
The International Primatological Society recently <a href="https://www.internationalprimatologicalsociety.org/harvesting-of-wild-primates-for-use-in-biomedical-research/">called for an end to experimentation on wild-caught primates</a>, and urged scientific journals to refuse to publish research conducted on them. “It is essential that in our quest to protect and improve human health, we do not lose sight of the importance and the inherent value of wild primate populations,” wrote the working group that drafted the statement.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GzT3wT">
The research industry, for its part, stresses the importance of invasive experimentation for human health. “Nonhuman primates … play a critical role in developing new drugs, devices and vaccines,” said NABR president Matthew R. Bailey <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nabr-files-petition-challenging-the-listing-of-long-tailed-macaque-by-the-iucn-301851968.html">in a press release</a> last summer. “Arbitrary restrictions imposed on the importation of long-tailed macaques could jeopardize millions of human lives and threaten global <a href="https://www.vox.com/public-health">public health</a>.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="J75RpQ">
But both the necessity and the ethics of using primates in medical research are highly contested, including by some scientists. Former animal researcher Garet Lahvis <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23795087/animal-experiments-primates-mental-health-effective">argued</a> in Vox last year that lab monkeys are so severely psychologically damaged from being confined in tiny cages as to make them virtually useless as test subjects. Neurologist <a href="https://www.oxfordanimalethics.com/who-we-are/fellows/">Aysha Akhtar</a>, a former medical officer for the Food and Drug Administration and now a fellow at the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4594046/">argues that our reliance on animal testing ends up hurting humans</a> by producing “misleading safety studies, potential abandonment of effective therapeutics, and direction of resources away from more effective testing methods.” In 2022, Congress passed a law <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/health/drug-animals-testing.html">removing the requirement</a> for new drugs to be tested on nonhuman animals.
</p>
<h3 id="fX3rvG">
The long-tailed macaque’s fate hinges on the ESA. What about other animals used in experiments?
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Fg10oI">
Biomedical researchers and animal advocates do agree on one thing: an ESA listing for the long-tailed macaque could transform the species’ use in US labs.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QNK5Nk">
Without external pressure, however, the Fish and Wildlife Service is unlikely to announce protections for long-tailed macaques any time soon. <a href="https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/endangered_species_act/pdfs/Harris_et_al_2011_ESA_and_IUCN.pdf">One 2011 paper</a> looking at 130 animal species listed as endangered by the IUCN found that more than half were not recognized by the Endangered Species Act.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rJCbCp">
The reason for that gap, lead author Bert Harris wrote in an email, is that “the ESA is perpetually bogged down by politics. For example, the number of listings that are done each year changes dramatically when new presidential administrations take over.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9mRMwJ">
A more reliable (though still not guaranteed) path to getting a species ESA protection is to directly petition the FWS — as the PETA-led coalition did for long-tailed macaques last April. The same day, they put forward a <a href="https://www.peta.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/2023-04-12-PFR-to-List-the-Southern-Pig-Tailed-Macaque-Under-the-ESA_REDACTED_Redacted.pdf">similar petition</a> for the southern pig-tailed macaque, which was also <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/es/species/12555/223433999">listed as endangered</a> by the IUCN but is used in lab testing (albeit much less commonly) in the US. Both petitions await a reply from the FWS.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Two adult pig-tailed macaques and one infant surrounded by greenery. One of the adults has their hand on the infant’s back." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/zUmsl0TrKJqBF6t8HMVdLRyng9A=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25256932/GettyImages_534950372.jpg"/> <cite>Stephanie Rabemiafara/Getty</cite>
<figcaption>
Southern pig-tailed macaques in the rainforest in Sepilok, Sabah, Borneo, Malaysia.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MElhgG">
While FWS is supposed to provide at least a preliminary response within 90 days, this has not happened, and experts say the process typically drags on much longer. It often takes years after an initial petition for a species to get Endangered Species Act protection. Politics within the scientific community may factor into the FWS’s decision, too: While chimp experimentation was already on the way out by the time they were listed under the ESA, research on long-tailed macaques is still in very high demand.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OV0HOV">
Still, “given that long-tailed macaques are considered endangered by IUCN and are in trade to and within the United States, there is a good chance FWS will list them under the ESA” — eventually, said Tanya Sanerib of the Center for Biological Diversity, who was not involved in the petition.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="x23r93">
The Fish and Wildlife Service might decide to list the macaque as merely threatened, Winders explained, which would give the agency some leeway in deciding whether experimentation on the species should continue. If it lists the macaque as endangered, however, invasive research might end entirely.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="g2MGNQ">
According to Amy Meyer, manager of PETA’s primate experimentation campaigns, research on long-tailed macaques is unlikely to get the sort of “pay-to-play” treatment applied to research on endangered sooty mangabeys. The permit for sooty research <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/04/11/2022-07647/foreign-endangered-species-receipt-of-permit-applications">allows only</a> “limited invasive sampling, including anesthetizing, collecting blood, skin, and bone marrow tissue samples, and MRI scanning” — “still cruel,” Meyer said, but long-tailed macaques used in labs are regularly exposed to high levels of toxins and chemicals, resulting in poisoning and death, a different scale of harm to the animal.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DxNU42">
For animal advocates, the Endangered Species Act’s potential is doubled-edged. It offers some animals protection against cruelty arguably stronger than what’s found anywhere else in US law, but only if they’re endangered. It’s not the harm itself that matters — the caging, poisoning, vivisecting, or killing — but whether that harm affects the survival of wild populations. While this could buy some relief for the long-tailed macaque, the ESA will remain indifferent to the vast majority of laboratory animals, which are members of non-endangered species such as mice and rats.
</p>
<div>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Three adult macaques sit asleep in a row on a fence in a forest while cradling an infant macaque." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/3kVnLZzsccgd_AzuCeIt0hsojI4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25257926/GettyImages_81470705.jpg"/> <cite>Martin Harvey/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>
Sleeping mother and infant long-tailed macaques in the Alas Kedaton Monkey Forest in Bali, Indonesia.
</figcaption>
</figure>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gdpACQ">
Still, according to Beckham, campaigns to help primates such as long-tailed macaques can help break down the moral barrier that people put between humans and other animals. “If we can … get people to understand we shouldn’t be using monkeys in laboratories, it is probably just the next logical step that people will start to think about dogs, and then rabbits, and then rats.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ka6IMP">
The long-tailed macaque, like the chimpanzee before it, might be an especially good candidate for breaking down that barrier. These monkeys “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beEAKVZsJe8">love to swim</a>,” said Amy Meyer. “I’ve watched videos where they literally are climbing up trees just to jump in water. They like to have fun. [They are] social.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="icgkCo">
In other words, she said, “You look into their eyes and you see ourselves.”
</p></li>
<li><strong>Is this a newborn great white shark? Big if true.</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/JibgXXyUflErWUTa-nuOSX0s_68=/25x0:1056x773/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73098073/Front_View_Framegrab_Copyright_Horzontal_CARLOS_GAUNA.0.jpeg"/>
<figcaption>
A young — potentially newborn — great white shark, spotted last summer off the central coast of California. | Courtesy of <a class="ql-link" href="https://www.instagram.com/themalibuartist/?hl=en" target="_blank">Carlos Gauna</a>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Scientists have never seen a newborn great white shark … until (maybe) now.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PUA801">
Spotting a great white shark only 1,000 feet from the beach is usually quite scary. On rare occasion, these apex predators, which can reach 20 feet long and weigh two tons, bite people.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="g8MVfn">
But that wasn’t the case last summer, when a great white was seen near Santa Barbara, California — because the shark was a baby. At roughly five feet long, the marine animal was possibly only hours old.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3zZPvp">
This observation is now causing a stir among marine biologists. That’s because, in a <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10641-024-01512-7">newly published paper</a>, a researcher and filmmaker who caught the animal on camera suggest that this shark isn’t just young but a newborn. That would make it the first newborn great white ever observed in recorded history.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CAB1GH">
In a video captured by nature filmmaker Carlos Gauna, you can see what the authors describe as an indication of infancy: The young shark is shedding a milky white substance that could be<strong> </strong>remnants of “uterine milk” that mother sharks produce while they’re gestating their babies, <a href="https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2024/01/29/first-ever-sighting-live-newborn-great-white">according to</a> Phillip Sternes, a doctoral researcher at UC Riverside and an author on the paper. (Sternes was with Gauna when the filmmaker’s drone spotted the shark.)
</p>
<div id="dekEXR">
<div style="width: 100%; height: 0; padding-bottom: 56.25%;">
</div>
</div>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cQkxcA">
The duo presented other evidence that the shark is a newborn: The animal not only looked like a baby, with rounded features, but it was also in an area where scientists believe white sharks pup. (Yes, delightfully, shark babies are called pups). Plus, Gauna observed large white sharks that <a href="https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2024/01/29/first-ever-sighting-live-newborn-great-white">he said</a> looked pregnant in this very spot in the days before their observation.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lVVmZx">
Not everyone is convinced that the shark is a newborn.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="s2ZFuF">
“There is absolutely no doubt that it is a very young white shark,” Gavin Naylor, a shark researcher at the University of Florida, told Vox via email. As for whether it’s a newborn, he added: “It seems more likely (to me) that this young animal may have been a couple of weeks old and strayed into shallow water.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="i6AAO1">
There are a few details here that make a convincing counter: According to Naylor, the few pregnant white sharks that scientists have dissected don’t appear to have the sort of white fluid that was coming off the baby shark. White sharks also typically give birth to a litter of eight to 12 pups, not just one, so you might expect that other, newly born babies would be swimming nearby.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="susNcR">
In the paper, Sternes and Gauna acknowledge that the white substance peeling off the shark could be caused by some unknown skin disorder, and not an indication that it’s a newborn.
</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/yKJ_5J7gMLjbfd2VHsnHA6d57UU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25257115/Shedding_Framegrab_Copyright_CARLOS_GAUNA.jpg"/> <cite>Courtesy of <a class="ql-link" href="https://www.instagram.com/themalibuartist/?hl=en" target="_blank">Carlos Gauna</a></cite>
<figcaption>
A still from Gauna’s drone footage shows the young shark sloughing off a white substance.
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AGLdhu">
But what is clear from the observation — and from the reaction to it — is that our understanding of even the world’s most charismatic species is still full of holes. “Despite the high level of interest, there remain some major gaps in white shark life history,” Sternes and Gauna wrote in their paper. (One reason: It’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMbHLF_zwjs">really hard</a> to keep white sharks in captivity.)
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="I3CpEL">
And it’s not just white sharks that are mysterious, Naylor said. Whale sharks, the world’s largest fish, can give birth to up to 300 pups at a time and scientists don’t know where it happens, he said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="RhBaeK">
“We know much less than people assume about most of the life forms on earth,” Naylor said. “Determining exactly where different species of sharks give birth is one of hundreds of millions of things we don’t yet know.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YNQbQA">
These gaps in our understanding are humbling, no doubt — parts of the world are still unknown, there are still frontiers to explore. Yet they also represent a weakness in our efforts to safeguard life on Earth. A lack of scientific knowledge about species makes it hard to implement the right kind of conservation. Put simply, it’s challenging to protect sharks if you don’t have a picture of something as fundamental as where their lives begin.
</p>
<aside id="YvzH1a">
<div>
</div>
</aside>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pVSMrQ">
The global population of white sharks appears to be declining, at least in some regions, <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/ja/species/3855/212629880#population">according to</a> the International Union for Conservation of Nature. IUCN, an authority on endangered species, lists the species as “vulnerable.” Yet they are not federally listed as endangered in the US. And in California, data <a href="https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/visual-storytelling/story/2023-11-18/along-the-california-coast-white-sharks-swim-among-us-often-unnoticed#:~:text=In%20general%2C%20the%20number%20of,by%20overfishing%20in%20the%201970s.">suggests</a> that the white shark population may be increasing, making it something of a stronghold for the species.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oWTQ45">
“If this is indeed a newborn individual, this demonstrates the critical importance of this area in Southern California to Eastern Pacific white sharks,” wrote Sternes and Gauna in the paper. While California’s white sharks are protected by federal regulations, they still get caught accidentally, they said, which can cause harm and potentially even death.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4095Kq">
“Further research is needed to confirm these waters are indeed a great white breeding ground,” Sternes <a href="https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2024/01/29/first-ever-sighting-live-newborn-great-white">said</a> in a statement. “But if it does, we would want lawmakers to step in and protect these waters to help white sharks keep thriving.”
</p></li>
</ul>
<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>Indian Open Race Walking | Double for Manju Rani</strong> - Vijay, Bandana take men’s and women’s 35km titles</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>Reminiscence, Decacorn and Mojito show out</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>Adjustment and La Reina shine</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>Vishnu Saravanan books India’s first sailing ticket to Paris</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>Ashwin retains top spot, Bumrah moves to forth in ICC Test rankings</strong> - Ravichandran Ashwin, Jasprit Bumrah and Ravindra Jadeja feature in the top 10 in the latest ICC Test bowling rankings</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>Here are the big stories from Karnataka today</strong> - Welcome to the Karnataka Today newsletter, your guide from The Hindu on the major news stories to follow today. Curated and written by Nalme Nachiyar.</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>Acciona expresses interest to invest in T.N.</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>Kerala man convicted in Mookkannur triple murder sentenced to double imprisonment and death</strong> - Babu of Mookkannur was convicted for murder of his elder brother Sivan, wife Valsala, and their daughter Smitha using a billhook at their house on February 12, 2018</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>Flights from Punjab’s Adampur to different States to start soon under UDAN, says BJP spokesperson</strong> - At least five routes have been awarded to selected airline operators under UDAN – the regional connectivity scheme, the BJP spokesperson said</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>IT rules on fake news: Bombay High Court’s Division Bench delivers split verdict</strong> - While Justice Gautam Patel agreed with the petitioners’ contentions, Justice Neela Gokhale upheld the government’s side</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>Who is Viktor Orban, Hungary’s PM halting funds for Ukraine?</strong> - He has led Hungary since 2010 and critics denounce his “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy”.</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>Boris Nadezhdin: Putin challenger submits bid to run for Russian president</strong> - The former councillor has been openly critical of the Kremlin and of Russia’s war in Ukraine.</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>Spain congress votes against Catalan separatists amnesty bill</strong> - The amnesty deal sought to benefit Catalan nationalists facing legal proceedings for separatist activity.</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>Shackled woman in Hungary court sparks Italy anger</strong> - Italian Ilaria Salis has reportedly endured harsh conditions in a Budapest jail while awaiting trial.</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>‘I regret posting online that I was Madeleine McCann’</strong> - Julia Wandelt tells the BBC about her motives and remorse after claiming to be the missing girl.</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>Could our Universe be a simulation? How would we even tell?</strong> - Simulations all the way down—the philosophical debate on the nature of our Universe. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1994507">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Someone finally cracked the “Silk Dress cryptogram” after 10 years</strong> - What does “Bismarck Omit leafage buck bank” mean to you? - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1997655">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>YouTube TV starts testing customizable 2×2 multiview options</strong> - YouTube TV has been promising customizable multiview for 10 months. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1999930">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ars Technica used in malware campaign with never-before-seen obfuscation</strong> - Vimeo also used by legitimate user who posted booby-trapped content. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=2000017">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Lawsuit: Citibank refused to reimburse scam victims who lost “life savings”</strong> - Citibank’s poor security helped scammers steal millions, NY AG’s lawsuit says. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=2000043">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
<ul>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Told a joke to a group I met….</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Met a cool group of guys at a bar while traveling. Told a joke that wasn’t well received. Joke: An epileptic guy is having a seizure, a friend says what do we do? Another guy says put him in the bathtub and run some warm water. He does and asks now what? Guy answers grab some soap and the dirty laundry!
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Silence and one guy in the group looks particularly angry. I asked what did I do? It was just a joke? The angry guy informs me that his brother was epileptic and died in the bathtub. Damn did I feel awkward! I muttered, I’m sorry, what happened, did he drown? Guy says NO! He choked on a sock.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Acceptable_Stop2361"> /u/Acceptable_Stop2361 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1af8gfg/told_a_joke_to_a_group_i_met/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1af8gfg/told_a_joke_to_a_group_i_met/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A soldier returns home to his wife after a year-long deployment overseas. He wants to show her how he managed to go a year without having sex with anybody else. “So how did you do it?” she asks.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“I trained my dick to respond to drill commands like so.” He undoes his belt and drops his trousers. “Dick, ten-HUT!”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
His penis springs straight up, erect and raring to go. “Dick, at ease!” His penis soon becomes flaccid. “Now you try!”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
His wife tries it—“Dick, ten-HUT!”, and his penis springs to life again.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Dick, at ease!” The soldier’s penis relaxes and softens. “Oh, we need to show the neighbors this!” The wife leaves and comes back with their neighbor, an attractive 20-something woman. His wife encourages her to try telling the soldier’s penis to come to attention and stand at ease.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Dick, attention!” the neighbor commands. The soldier’s penis, as expected, hardens.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Dick, at ease!” But his penis does not go down. “Dick, at ease!”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The soldier looks down at his penis, still erect. “Dick, at ease!”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
But the military man’s member refuses to go down, so he runs away into the bathroom. His wife follows him and sees him furiously masturbating.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Honey, what are you doing?” she asks with a hint of worry in her voice.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The soldier replies, “He’s not following my orders so I’m giving him a dishonorable discharge!”
</p>
</div>
<!-- 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/1afdzei/a_soldier_returns_home_to_his_wife_after_a/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1afdzei/a_soldier_returns_home_to_his_wife_after_a/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A young boy enters a barber shop and the barber whispers to his customer, "This is the dumbest kid in the world.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
A young boy enters a barber shop and the barber whispers to his customer, “This is the dumbest kid in the world. Watch while I prove it to you.” The barber puts a dollar bill in one hand and two quarters in the other, then calls the boy over and asks, “Which do you want, son?” The boy takes the quarters and leaves. “What did I tell you?” said the barber. “That kid never learns!” Later, when the customer leaves, he sees the same young boy coming out of the ice cream parlor. “Hey, son! May I ask you a question? Why did you take the quarters instead of the dollar bill?” The boy licked his cone and replied: “Because the day I take the dollar the game is over!”
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/SweetElliemama"> /u/SweetElliemama </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1aetpat/a_young_boy_enters_a_barber_shop_and_the_barber/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1aetpat/a_young_boy_enters_a_barber_shop_and_the_barber/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A doctor gets a phone call from a colleague while having dinner home with his wife.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“We need a 4th for Golf”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“I’ll be right over” says the doctor.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Is it serious?” His wife asks when she notices him quickly putting on his coat.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Oh yes.. there are 3 other doctors there already.”
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Buddy2269"> /u/Buddy2269 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1af1xln/a_doctor_gets_a_phone_call_from_a_colleague_while/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1af1xln/a_doctor_gets_a_phone_call_from_a_colleague_while/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Joe dropped dead during poker night…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
…and we didn’t know what to do. We drew straws and I ended up having to go tell his wife.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
I went to their house and rang the bell. “Joe lost your retirement savings, he wanted me to check if you’re okay with that before he came home,” I said when she opened the door.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“You tell that idiot husband of mine he better win it back or die trying!” She screeched.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
“Mmkay, I will,” I said.
</p>
</div>
<!-- SC_ON -->
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/manwhoholdtheworld"> /u/manwhoholdtheworld </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1afbik8/joe_dropped_dead_during_poker_night/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1afbik8/joe_dropped_dead_during_poker_night/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
</ul>
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