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<title>28 March, 2024</title>
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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>The inflammatory microenvironment of the lung at the time of infection governs innate control of SARS-CoV-2 replication</strong> -
<div>
SARS-CoV-2 infection leads to vastly divergent clinical outcomes ranging from asymptomatic infection to fatal disease. Co-morbidities, sex, age, host genetics and vaccine status are known to affect disease severity. Yet, how the inflammatory milieu of the lung at the time of SARS-CoV-2 exposure impacts the control of viral replication remains poorly understood. We demonstrate here that immune events in the mouse lung closely preceding SARS-CoV-2 infection significantly impact viral control and we identify key innate immune pathways required to limit viral replication. A diverse set of pulmonary inflammatory stimuli, including resolved antecedent respiratory infections with S. aureus or influenza, ongoing pulmonary M. tuberculosis infection, ovalbumin/alum-induced asthma or airway administration of defined TLR ligands and recombinant cytokines, all establish an antiviral state in the lung that restricts SARS-CoV-2 replication upon infection. In addition to antiviral type I interferons, the broadly inducible inflammatory cytokines TNF and IL-1 precondition the lung for enhanced viral control. Collectively, our work shows that SARS-CoV-2 may benefit from an immunologically quiescent lung microenvironment and suggests that heterogeneity in pulmonary inflammation that precedes or accompanies SARS-CoV-2 exposure may be a significant factor contributing to the population-wide variability in COVID-19 disease outcomes.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.27.586885v1" target="_blank">The inflammatory microenvironment of the lung at the time of infection governs innate control of SARS-CoV-2 replication</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Virological characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.5.2.48</strong> -
<div>
With the prevalence of sequentially-emerged sublineages including BA.1, BA.2 and BA.5, SARS-CoV-2 Omicron infection has transformed into a regional epidemic disease. As a sublineage of BA.5, the BA.5.2.48 outbreak and evolved into multi-subvariants in China without clearly established virological characteristics, especially the pathogenicity. Though reduced airborne transmission and pathogenicity of former Omicron sublineages have been revealed in animal models, the virological characteristics of BA.5.2.48 was unidentified. Here, we evaluated the in vitro and in vivo virological characteristics of two isolates of the prevalent BA.5.2.48 subvariant, DY.2 and DY.1.1 (a subvariant of DY.1). DY.2 replicates more efficiently than DY.1.1 in HelahACE2+ cells and Calu-3 cells. The A570S mutation (of DY.1) in a normal BA.5 spike protein (DY.2) leads to a 20% improvement in the hACE2 binding affinity, which is slightly reduced by a further K147E mutation (of DY.1.1). Compared to the normal BA.5 spike, the double-mutated protein demonstrates efficient cleavage and reduced fusogenicity. BA.5.2.48 demonstrated enhanced airborne transmission capacity in hamsters than BA.2. The pathogenicity of BA.5.2.48 is greater than BA.2, as revealed in K18-hACE2 rodents. Under immune selection pressure, DY.1.1 shows stronger fitness than DY.2 in hamster turbinates. Thus the outbreaking prevalent BA.5.2.48 multisubvariants exhibites divergent virological features.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.26.586802v1" target="_blank">Virological characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.5.2.48</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>CCQM-P199b: Interlaboratory comparability study of SARS-CoV-2 RNA copy number quantification</strong> -
<div>
Nucleic acid amplification tests including reverse transcription-quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) are used to detect RNA from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causative agent of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Standardized measurements of RNA can facilitate comparable performance of laboratory tests in the absence of existing reference measurement systems early on in a pandemic. Interlaboratory study CCQM-P199b 'SARS-CoV-2 RNA copy number quantification' was designed to test the fitness-for-purpose of developed candidate reference measurement procedures (RMPs) for SARS-CoV-2 genomic targets in purified RNA materials, and was conducted under the auspices of the Consultative Committee for Amount of Substance: Metrology in Chemistry and Biology (CCQM) to evaluate the measurement comparability of national metrology institutes (NMIs) and designated institutes (DIs), thereby supporting international standardization. Twenty-one laboratories participated in CCQM-P199b and were requested to report the RNA copy number concentration, expressed in number of copies per microliter, of the SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid (N) gene partial region (NC_045512.2: 28274-29239) and envelope (E) gene (NC_045512.2: 26245-26472) (optional measurement) in samples consisting of in vitro transcribed RNA or purified RNA from lentiviral constructs. Materials were provided in two categories: lower concentration (approximately 10 x 1 - 10 x 4/uL in aqueous solution containing human RNA background) and high concentration (approximately 10 x 9/uL in aqueous solution without any other RNA background). For the measurement of N gene concentration in the lower concentration study materials, the majority of laboratories (n = 17) used one-step reverse transcription-digital PCR (RT-dPCR), with three laboratories applying two-step RT-dPCR and one laboratory RT-qPCR. Sixteen laboratories submitted results for E gene concentration. Reproducibility (% CV or equivalent) for RT-dPCR ranged from 19 % to 31 %. Measurements of the high concentration study material by orthogonal methods (isotope dilution-mass spectrometry and single molecule flow cytometry) and a gravimetrically linked lower concentration material were in a good agreement, suggesting a lack of overall bias in RT-dPCR measurements. However methodological factors such as primer and probe (assay) sequences, RT-dPCR reagents and dPCR partition volume were found to be potential sources of interlaboratory variation which need to be controlled when applying this technique. This study demonstrates that the accuracy of RT-dPCR is fit-for-purpose as a RMP for viral RNA target quantification in purified RNA materials and highlights where metrological approaches such as the use of in vitro transcribed controls, orthogonal methods and measurement uncertainty evaluation can support standardization of molecular methods.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.27.584106v1" target="_blank">CCQM-P199b: Interlaboratory comparability study of SARS-CoV-2 RNA copy number quantification</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>TCR transgenic clone selection guided by immune receptor analysis and single cell RNA expression of polyclonal responders</strong> -
<div>
Since the precursor frequency of naive T cells is extremely low, investigating the early steps of antigen-specific T cell activation is challenging. To overcome this detection problem, adoptive transfer of a cohort of T cells purified from T cell receptor (TCR) transgenic donors has been extensively used but is not readily available for emerging pathogens. Constructing TCR transgenic mice from T cell hybridomas is a labor-intensive and sometimes erratic process, since the best clones are selected based on antigen-induced CD69 upregulation or IL-2 production in vitro, and TCR chains are PCR-cloned into expression vectors. Here, we exploited the rapid advances in single cell sequencing and TCR repertoire analysis to select the best clones without hybridoma selection, and generated CORSET8 mice (CORona Spike Epitope specific CD8 T cell), carrying a TCR specific for the Spike protein of SARS-CoV-2. Implementing newly created DALI software for TCR repertoire analysis in single cell analysis enabled the rapid selection of the ideal responder CD8 T cell clone, based on antigen reactivity, proliferation and immunophenotype in vivo. In contrast, a traditional method based on hybridoma technology was unsuccessful. Identified TCR sequences were inserted as synthetic DNA into an expression vector and transgenic CORSET8 donor mice were created. After immunization with Spike/CpG-motifs, mRNA vaccination or SARS-CoV2 infection, CORSET8 T cells strongly proliferated and showed signs of T cell activation. Thus, a combination of TCR repertoire analysis and scRNA immunophenotyping allowed rapid selection of antigen-specific TCR sequences that can be used to generate TCR transgenic mice.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.27.586931v1" target="_blank">TCR transgenic clone selection guided by immune receptor analysis and single cell RNA expression of polyclonal responders</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>In-silico docking platform with serine protease inhibitor (SERPIN) structures identifies host cysteine protease targets with significance for SARS-CoV-2</strong> -
<div>
Serine Protease Inhibitors (SERPINs) regulate protease activity in various physiological processes such as inflammation, cancer metastasis, angiogenesis, and neurodegenerative diseases. However, their potential in combating viral infections, where proteases are also crucial, remains underexplored. This is due to our limited understanding of SERPIN expression during viral-induced inflammation and of the SERPINs full spectrum of target proteases. Here, we demonstrate widespread expression of human SERPINs in response to respiratory virus infections, both in vitro and in vivo, alongside classical antiviral effectors. Through comprehensive in-silico docking with full-length SERPIN and protease 3D structures, we confirm known inhibitors of specific proteases; more importantly, the results predict novel SERPIN-protease interactions. Experimentally, we validate the direct inhibition of key proteases essential for viral life cycles, including the SERPIN PAI-1’s capability to inhibit select cysteine proteases such as cathepsin L, and the serine protease TMPRSS2. Consequently, PAI-1 suppresses spike maturation and multi-cycle SARS-CoV-2 replication. Our findings challenge conventional notions of SERPIN selectivity, underscore the power of in-silico docking for SERPIN target discovery, and offer potential therapeutic interventions targeting host proteolytic pathways to combat viruses with urgent unmet therapeutic needs.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.18.517133v2" target="_blank">In-silico docking platform with serine protease inhibitor (SERPIN) structures identifies host cysteine protease targets with significance for SARS-CoV-2</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Inference of epidemic dynamics in the COVID-19 era and beyond</strong> -
<div>
The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the key role that epidemiology and modelling play in analysing infectious threats and supporting decision making in real-time. Motivated by the unprecedented volume and breadth of data generated during the pandemic, we review new analytic opportunities and methodological developments available to address questions that emerge during a major modern epidemic. Following the broad chronology of insights required - from understanding initial dynamics to retrospective evaluation of interventions, we describe the theoretical foundations of each approach and the underlying intuition. Through a series of case studies, we illustrate real life applications, and discuss implications for future work.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/bmjxf/" target="_blank">Inference of epidemic dynamics in the COVID-19 era and beyond</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Global variation in prior exposure shapes antibody neutralization profiles of SARS-CoV-2 variants up to BA.2.86</strong> -
<div>
The highly mutated SARS-CoV-2 variant, BA.2.86, and its descendants are now the most frequently sequenced variants of SARS-CoV-2. We analyze antibody neutralization data from eight laboratories from the UK, USA, Denmark, and China, including two datasets assessing the effect of XBB.1.5 vaccines, to determine the effect of infection and vaccination history on neutralization of variants up to and including BA.2.86, and produce antibody landscapes to describe these neutralization profiles. We find evidence for lower levels of immune imprinting on pre-Omicron variants in sera collected from Denmark and China, which may be explained by lower levels of circulation of the ancestral variant in these countries, and the use of an inactivated virus vaccine in China.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.27.586820v1" target="_blank">Global variation in prior exposure shapes antibody neutralization profiles of SARS-CoV-2 variants up to BA.2.86</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Changes in values and well-being amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland</strong> -
<div>
COVID-19 caused a global change in the lifestyles of people around the world. It provided a unique opportunity to examine how external circumstances impact two crucial aspects of functioning relating to “who I am” (values) and “how I feel” (well-being). Participants (N = 150) reported their values, subjective and eduaimonic well-being nine months before lockdown in Poland, two weeks and four weeks into lockdown. We observed significant changes in values: an increase in self-direction, achievement, security, conformity, humility, benevolence and universalism, and a decrease in hedonism. All well-being indices showed a decrease in well-being with one specific difference between men and women: women experienced a more significant increase of negative affect compared to men. Finally, we showed that Openness to change values predict lower negative affect and higher eudaimonic well-being two weeks into lockdown. This study is unique in that it shows, that well-being and individually held values are flexible and adaptive systems that react to external circumstances, such as global critical events.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/xr87s/" target="_blank">Changes in values and well-being amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Social norms (not threat) mediate willingness to sacrifice in individuals fused with the nation</strong> -
<div>
Identity fusion with the community has been previously found to mediate altruism in post-disaster settings. However, whether this altruistic response is specifically triggered by ingroup threat, or whether it can also be triggered by global threats remains unclear. We evaluated willingness to sacrifice in the context of the covid-19 pandemic across three surveys waves. Against expectations, participants fused with the nation (vs. non-fused) did not differentially respond to a national vs. global threat condition. Conversely, social norms decisively influenced willingness to sacrifice in this sample, with fused individuals with stronger norms about social distancing reporting the highest altruistic response during the first weeks of the pandemic. Longitudinally, after an initial peak in the altruistic response, deteriorating social norms mediated decreases in willingness to sacrifice in individuals fused with the nation (versus non-fused). Implications of these results for the development of interventions aimed to address global challenges are discussed.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/r6hf4/" target="_blank">Social norms (not threat) mediate willingness to sacrifice in individuals fused with the nation</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Chronumental: time tree estimation from very large phylogenies</strong> -
<div>
Phylogenetic trees are an important tool for interpreting sequenced genomes, and their interrelationships. Estimating the date associated with each node of such a phylogeny creates a “time tree”, which can be especially useful for visualising and analysing evolution of organisms such as viruses. Several tools have been developed for time-tree estimation, but the sequencing explosion in response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has created phylogenies so large as to prevent the application of these previous approaches to full datasets. Here we introduce Chronumental, a tool that can rapidly infer time trees from phylogenies featuring large numbers of nodes. Chronumental uses stochastic gradient descent to identify lengths of time for tree branches which maximise the evidence lower bound under a probabilistic model, implemented in a framework which can be compiled into XLA for rapid computation. We show that Chronumental scales to phylogenies featuring millions of nodes, with chronological predictions made in minutes, and is able to accurately predict the dates of nodes for which it is not provided with metadata.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.27.465994v3" target="_blank">Chronumental: time tree estimation from very large phylogenies</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Unrestricted versus Regulated Open Data Governance: A Bibliometric Comparison of SARS-CoV-2 Nucleotide Sequence Databases</strong> -
<div>
Two distinct modes of data governance have emerged in accessing and reusing viral data pertaining to COVID-19: an unrestricted model, espoused by data repositories part of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration and a regulated model promoted by the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza data. In this paper, we focus on publications mentioning either infrastructure in the period between January 2020 and January 2023, thus capturing a period of acute response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Through a variety of bibliometric and network science methods, we compare the extent to which either data infrastructure facilitated collaboration from different countries around the globe to understand how data reuse can enhance forms of diversity between institutions, countries, and funding groups. Our findings reveal disparities in representation and usage between the two data infrastructures. We conclude that both approaches offer useful lessons, with the unrestricted model providing insights into complex data linkage and the regulated model demonstrating the importance of global representation.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.05.13.540634v3" target="_blank">Unrestricted versus Regulated Open Data Governance: A Bibliometric Comparison of SARS-CoV-2 Nucleotide Sequence Databases</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Can we rely on trust in science to beat the COVID-19 pandemic?</strong> -
<div>
In order to provide time critical information on the social determinants of health during the COVID-19 pandemic, we relate levels of trust in science with government responses to the pandemic and the extent to which populations reduced mobility, a measure identified by epidemiologists as critical to halt the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. We used data from the 2018 Wellcome Global Monitor to develop a comparable index of trust in science across 144 countries using confirmatory analysis models for categorical data (often referred as Item Response Models) with alignment optimisation. We use this index to provide evidence on the association between trust in science, country level mobility changes following the COVID-19 pandemic and the stringency of regulations to halt COVID-19 spread. We find that trust in science was highest in Nordic European countries, among individuals with high educational attainment and income. Differences by religiosity, gender and residency were less pronounced. Countries where individuals trust science the most enacted less stringent regulations in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic than countries where individuals trust science the least. Irrespective of country-specific trust in science, behaviors such as mobility reductions changed the most in countries with more stringent regulations. Stringent regulations were associated with large reductions in mobility irrespective of levels of trust in science. By contrast, where regulations were less stringent, mobility decreased more in countries with lower levels of trust in science. Many governments are considering relaxing regulations that were put in place following the rapid surge of cases and deaths and the risk that health care systems would be overwhelmed. At the country level, higher levels of trust in science appear to be associated with less voluntary adoption of behaviors that could reduce transmission, such as mobility reductions.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/yq287/" target="_blank">Can we rely on trust in science to beat the COVID-19 pandemic?</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>The impact of COVID-19 on physical activity and mental health: A mixed-methods approach</strong> -
<div>
The global COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted people’s physical and mental health, and studies on ways to support people are scarce. This mixed-methods study investigated how and why physical activity (PA), anxiety, depression and self-perceived loneliness are related, and the feasibility of social prescribing in supporting individuals. Data from the UCL-Penn Global COVID Study wave 1 (17 April – 17 July 2020, N = 1,037) were analysed. Twenty-one UK adults who self-identified as low (n = 15) and high (n = 6) on PA at wave 1 were interviewed at wave 4 (18 March – 1 August 2022). At wave 1, depression was associated with higher odds of low-PA (OR = 1.05; 95% CI 1.01-1.10, p = .02). Both high/low-PA groups cited the threat of contracting coronavirus, general impacts of COVID-19 policies and heightened awareness of the mind-body connection. Findings detail practical and emotional challenges in engaging with social prescribing through clinical settings.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://osf.io/64u7j/" target="_blank">The impact of COVID-19 on physical activity and mental health: A mixed-methods approach</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>Influenza sequence validation and annotation using VADR</strong> -
<div>
Tens of thousands of influenza sequences are deposited into the GenBank database each year. The software tool FLAN has been used by GenBank since 2007 to validate and annotate incoming influenza sequence submissions, and has been publicly available as a webserver but not as a standalone tool. VADR is a general sequence validation and annotation software package used by GenBank for Norovirus, Dengue virus and SARS-CoV-2 virus sequence processing that is available as a standalone tool. We have created VADR influenza models based on the FLAN reference sequences and adapted VADR to accurately annotate influenza sequences. VADR and FLAN show consistent results on the vast majority of influenza sequences, and when they disagree VADR is usually correct. VADR can also accurately process influenza D sequences as well as influenza A H17, H18, H19, N10 and N11 subtype sequences, which FLAN cannot. VADR 1.6.3 and the associated influenza models are now freely available for users to download and use.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.21.585980v1" target="_blank">Influenza sequence validation and annotation using VADR</a>
</div></li>
<li><strong>System and transcript dynamics of cells infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)</strong> -
<div>
Statistical laws arise in many complex systems and can be explored to gain insights into their structure and behavior. Here, we investigate the dynamics of cells infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) at the system and individual gene levels; and demonstrate that the statistical frameworks used here are robust in spite of the technical noise associated with single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data. A biphasic fit to Taylor's power law was observed, and it is likely associated with the larger sampling noise inherent to the measure of less expressed genes. The type of the distribution of the system, as assessed by Taylor's parameters, varies along the course of infection in a cell type-dependent manner, but also sampling noise had a significant influence on Taylor's parameters. At the individual gene level, we found that genes that displayed signals of punctual rank stability and/or long-range dependence behavior, as measured by Hurst exponents, were associated with translation, cellular respiration, apoptosis, protein-folding, virus processes, and immune response.
</div>
<div class="article-link article-html-link">
🖺 Full Text HTML: <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.25.586528v1" target="_blank">System and transcript dynamics of cells infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)</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>Diaphragmatic Breathing Exercises for Post-COVID-19 Diaphragmatic Dysfunction (DD)</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Post-Acute Sequelae of COVID-19 <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Other: Usual care of traditional treatment; Other: Specific DB program/Diaphragmatic manipulation program <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: University of Minnesota <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>Valacyclovir Plus Celecoxib for Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Long COVID; PASC Post Acute Sequelae of COVID 19 <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Drug: Valacyclovir celecoxib dose 1; Drug: Valacyclovir celecoxib dose 2; Drug: Placebo <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Bateman Horne Center <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>Supervised Computerized Active Program for People With Post-COVID Syndrome (SuperCAP Study)</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Post-COVID Condition <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Device: SuperCAP Program <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: Fundación FLS de Lucha Contra el Sida, las Enfermedades Infecciosas y la Promoción de la Salud y la Ciencia; Institut de Recerca de la SIDA IrsiCaixa; Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital <br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Utilizing Novel Blood RNA Biomarkers as a Diagnostic Tool in the Identification of Long COVID-19</strong> - <b>Conditions</b>: Long COVID <br/><b>Interventions</b>: Diagnostic Test: RNA Biomarker Blood Test <br/><b>Sponsors</b>: MaxWell Clinic, PLC <br/><b>Recruiting</b></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-pubmed">From PubMed</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Role for CCN1 in lysophosphatidic acid response in PC-3 human prostate cancer cells</strong> - Lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) and sphingosine 1-phosphate (S1P) are bioactive phospholipids that act as mitogens in various cancers. Both LPA and S1P activate G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs). We examined the role of CCN1/CYR61, an inducible matricellular protein, in LPA-induced signal transduction in PC-3 human prostate cancer cells. We found that both LPA and S1P induced expression of CCN1 and CCN2 within 2-4 h. CCN1 was induced by 18:1-LPA, but not by 18:0-, 18:2-, or 18:3-LPAs. A free fatty…</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>Fungal metabolite 6-pentyl-alpha-pyrone reduces canine coronavirus infection</strong> - Canine coronavirus (CCoV) can produce a self-limited enteric disease in dogs but, because of notable biological plasticity of coronaviruses (CoVs), numerous mutations as well as recombination events happen leading to the emergence of variants often more dangerous for both animals and humans. Indeed, the emergence of new canine-feline recombinant alphacoronaviruses, recently isolated from humans, highlight the cross-species transmission potential of CoVs. Consequently, new effective antiviral…</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>Pilot Study on Evaluating the Impact of Tetanus, Diphtheria, and Pertussis (Tdap), Influenza, and COVID-19 Vaccinations on Antibody Responses in Pregnant Women</strong> - This study assessed IgG levels to influenza/pertussis and neutralizing antibody (Nab) responses of COVID-19 vaccines in blood of pregnant women following immunization with pertussis (Tdap), influenza, and COVID-19 vaccines. We prospectively collected 71 participants categorized by the following vaccine combinations: 3TI, 4TI, 3T, and 4T groups (three and four doses of COVID-19 vaccines plus Tdap/influenza or Tdap vaccines alone). Our findings have indicated that the 3TI group exhibited elevated…</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>Recent Advances on Targeting Proteases for Antiviral Development</strong> - Viral proteases are an important target for drug development, since they can modulate vital pathways in viral replication, maturation, assembly and cell entry. With the (re)appearance of several new viruses responsible for causing diseases in humans, like the West Nile virus (WNV) and the recent severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), understanding the mechanisms behind blocking viral protease’s function is pivotal for the development of new antiviral drugs 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>A Pseudovirus-Based Neutralization Assay for SARS-CoV-2 Variants: A Rapid, Cost-Effective, BSL-2-Based High-Throughput Assay Useful for Vaccine Immunogenicity Evaluation</strong> - Neutralizing antibody responses from COVID-19 vaccines are pivotal in conferring protection against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Effective COVID-19 vaccines and assays measuring neutralizing antibodies against emerging variants (i.e., XBB.1.5, XBB.1.16, and XBB.2.3) are needed. The use of biosafety level (BSL)-3 laboratories for live virus assays results in higher costs and a longer turnaround time; therefore, a BSL-2-based pseudovirus neutralization assay (PNT)…</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>Design, Synthesis, and Biological Evaluation of Novel Coumarin Analogs Targeted against SARS-CoV-2</strong> - SARS-CoV, an RNA virus, is contagious and displays a remarkable degree of adaptability, resulting in intricate disease presentations marked by frequent genetic mutations that can ultimately give rise to drug resistance. Targeting its viral replication cycle could be a potential therapeutic option to counter its viral growth in the human body leading to the severe infectious stage. The M^(pro) of SARS-CoV-2 is a promising target for therapeutic development as it is crucial for viral transcription…</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>Saponins from <em>Allium macrostemon Bulbs</em> Attenuate Endothelial Inflammation and Acute Lung Injury via the NF-κB/VCAM-1 Pathway</strong> - Endothelial inflammation is a multifaceted physiological process that plays a pivotal role in the pathogenesis and progression of diverse diseases, encompassing but not limited to acute lung infections like COVID-19, coronary artery disease, stroke, sepsis, metabolic syndrome, certain malignancies, and even psychiatric disorders such as depression. This inflammatory response is characterized by augmented expression of adhesion molecules and secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines. In this study,…</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>Factors Facilitating and Inhibiting the Implementation of Telerehabilitation-A Scoping Review</strong> - Due to the coronavirus pandemic, telerehabilitation has become increasingly important worldwide. While the effectiveness of telerehabilitation is considered proven for many indications, there is comparatively little knowledge about the implementation conditions. Therefore, this scoping review summarises the current state of facilitating and inhibiting factors that may influence the uptake of telerehabilitation. The review follows the JBI methodology for scoping reviews. The article search was…</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>Agonists or positive allosteric modulators of alpha7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor prevent interaction of SARS-Cov-2 receptor-binding domain with astrocytoma cells</strong> - SARS-Cov-2, the virus causing COVID-19, penetrates host target cells via the receptor of angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). Disrupting the virus interaction with ACE2 affords a plausible mechanism for prevention of cell penetration and inhibiting dissemination of the virus. Our studies demonstrate that ACE2 interaction with the receptor binding domain of SARS-Cov-2 spike protein (RBD) can be impaired by modulating the α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (α7 nAChR) contiguous with ACE2. U373…</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>Correction: Selective Inhibition of the Interaction between SARS-CoV-2 Spike S1 and ACE2 by SPIDAR Peptide Induces Anti-Inflammatory Therapeutic Responses</strong> - Paidi, R. K., M. Jana, R. K. Mishra, D. Dutta, and K. Pahan. 2021. Selective inhibition of the interaction between SARS-CoV-2 spike S1 and ACE2 by SPIDAR peptide induces anti-inflammatory therapeutic responses. J. Immunol. 207: 2521-2533.In the original Supplemental Fig. 2C, the “Control” image was duplicated from the “Spike S1 (heat inactivated)” image due to an error during figure preparation. The supplemental figure has been corrected in the online version of the article.</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>Indoor Inactivation of SARS-CoV-2 Virus by Liquid Hyperoxygen</strong> - The possible future emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 virus variants pushes the development of new chemoprophylaxis protocols complementary to the unspecific and specific immune-prophylaxis measures currently used. The SARS-CoV-2 virus is particularly sensitive to oxidation, due to the relevant positive electrical charge of its spike protein used as a ligand for target cells. The present study evaluated the safety and efficacy of a new oxidant preparation, liquid hyperoxygen (IOL), to neutralize 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>Accelerating therapeutics development during a pandemic: population pharmacokinetics of the long-acting antibody combination AZD7442 (tixagevimab/cilgavimab) in the prophylaxis and treatment of COVID-19</strong> - AZD7442 is a combination of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)-neutralizing antibodies, tixagevimab and cilgavimab, developed for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and treatment of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Using data from eight clinical trials, we describe a population pharmacokinetic (popPK) model of AZD7442 and show how modeling of “interim” data accelerated decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic. The final model was a two-compartmental distribution…</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>In vitro and in vivo validation of the antiviral effect of hCypA against SARS-CoV-2 via binding to the RBD of spike protein</strong> - The novel coronavirus disease 2019 has stimulated the rapid development of new biological therapeutics to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 infection; however, this remains a challenging task. In a previous study using structural analysis, we revealed that human cyclophilin A inhibits the entry of SARS-CoV-2 into host cells by interfering with the interaction of the receptor-binding domain of the spike protein with angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 on the host cell surface, highlighting its potential for…</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>Exosomes from senescent epithelial cells activate pulmonary fibroblasts via the miR-217-5p/Sirt1 axis in paraquat-induced pulmonary fibrosis</strong> - CONCLUSION: These findings highlight a potential strategy for the treatment of pulmonary fibrosis induced by PQ poisoning. Disrupting the communication between senescent epithelial cells and pulmonary fibroblasts, particularly by targeting the miR-217-5p/SIRT1/β-catenin axis, may be able to alleviate the effects of PQ poisoning on the lungs.</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>Predicting anti-COVID-19 potential: in silico analysis of Mauritine compound from Ziziphus-spina christi as a promising papain-like protease (PLpro) inhibitor</strong> - The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO), has led to 164,523,894 confirmed cases and 3,412,032 deaths globally as of May 20, 2021. SARS-CoV-2 encodes crucial proteases for its replication cycle, including the papain-like protease (PLpro), presenting a potential target for developing COVID-19 treatments. Mauritine, a cyclopeptide alkaloid found in the Ziziphus-spina christi plant, exhibits antiviral properties and was investigated for…</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>The Aftermath of China’s Comedy Crackdown</strong> - Standup flourished during the pandemic. Now performers fear the state—and audience members. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-aftermath-of-chinas-comedy-crackdown">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What Have Fourteen Years of Conservative Rule Done to Britain?</strong> - Living standards have fallen. The country is exhausted by constant drama. But the U.K. can’t move on from the Tories without facing up to the damage that has occurred. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/01/what-have-fourteen-years-of-conservative-rule-done-to-britain">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Lila Neugebauer Interrogates the Ghosts of “Uncle Vanya”</strong> - A director of the modern uncanny steers the first Broadway production of Chekhov’s masterpiece in twenty years. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/01/lila-neugebauer-profile-theatre">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Bryan Stevenson Reclaims the Monument, in the Heart of the Deep South</strong> - The civil-rights attorney has created a museum, a memorial, and, now, a sculpture park, indicting the city of Montgomery—a former capital of the domestic slave trade and the cradle of the Confederacy. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/01/bryan-stevenson-reclaims-the-monument-in-the-heart-of-the-deep-south">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Dutch Architect’s Vision of Cities That Float on Water</strong> - What if building on the water could be safer and sturdier than building on flood-prone land? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/01/a-dutch-architects-vision-of-cities-that-float-on-water">link</a></p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
<ul>
<li><strong>ISIS-K, the group linked to Moscow’s terror attack, explained</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="A woman and child are among a crowd of people outside a large concert hall, laying flowers at the base of a pile of flowers, candles, and other memorial tokens. " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/4YmwgDkq9CbFCv9lqnwpvTR8St8=/342x0:5771x4072/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73238427/2110551920.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
People lay flowers at Crocus City Hall in Moscow, the concert hall where a terror attack killed at least 140 people on March 22. | Sefa Karacan/Anadolu via Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
ISIS-K has become a global terror threat while the world has been distracted.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yX1lvP">
The Islamic State — the notorious group known for building a brutal regime in Iraq and Syria — has claimed responsibility for Friday’s terror attack at a Moscow concert venue that killed at least 139 people.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xhpHyK">
ISIS released graphic <a href="https://meduza.io/en/news/2024/03/24/isis-affiliated-media-publish-graphic-body-cam-footage-from-moscow-terrorist-attack">footage via its media apparatus</a>, claiming that it was their gunmen who left more than 100 people injured at the Crocus City concert hall. And it likely is the case, despite <a href="https://www.vox.com/russia">Russia</a>’s attempts to tie the incident to Ukraine. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/22/world/europe/isis-moscow-attack-concert-hall.html">US intelligence officials</a> linked the terror group’s outpost in the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26326469?seq=4#metadata_info_tab_contents">historical Khorasan region</a> — which encompasses parts of <a href="https://www.vox.com/afghanistan">Afghanistan</a>, Iran, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan — to the attack. Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged that Islamic radicals perpetrated the attack, but the Kremlin has <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putins-hawks-say-ukraine-was-involved-deadly-moscow-concert-attack-2024-03-26/">still tried to link Ukraine to the incident</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2GpSfx">
“We know by whose hand the crime against Russia and its people was committed. But what is of interest to us is who ordered it,” <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-casts-doubt-islamic-state-responsibility-concert-attack-2024-03-25/">Putin said in a video address Monday</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vkPV12">
ISIS has always been somewhat rhizomatic, with offshoots connected to<strong> </strong>the main entity in Iraq and Syria.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8cDPph">
For years, ISIS welcomed the emergence of affiliate groups that might have more local or regional goals, like ISIS-K and ISIS-West Africa, as long as they pledged allegiance<a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/90221"> to the caliphate</a> ISIS had declared. But after ISIS suffered a major territorial defeat in Iraq and Syria five years ago, ISIS-K has since solidified its distinct political grievances, which center around its battle for power with the Taliban in Afghanistan. And because of its location in a fairly lawless region, the group can recruit and train without significant interference.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AWpbip">
For ISIS-K and the larger group, attacking Russia is a logical outgrowth of ISIS’s territorial defeat, since Russia supports the Assad regime in Syria and helped it regain control of the land ISIS briefly held. ISIS-K also has grievances with Russia because of its 1979-1989 war in Afghanistan, as well as Russia’s slaughter of Chechen Muslims in its war there.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7gAJ0x">
While it seems like ISIS-K holds some degree of responsibility, just how much the organization was involved in Friday’s attack is a lot less clear, according to Riccardo Valle, the director of research at <a href="https://thekhorasandiary.com/">the Khorasan Diary</a>, which provides analysis on non-state and militant actors in the region.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="t3i4aO">
“There are several hints, some stronger, some weaker, that could suggest the involvement of the Islamic State of Khorasan branch in the implementation of the attack,” Valle told Vox, “from providing financial support or logistic support, operational support, or could be also more limited involvement,” like using its Russian- and Tajik-language propaganda to encourage local ISIS cells in Russia to attack.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0h7eTQ">
There’s a lot of noise around ISIS-K, and whether the Moscow attack means ISIS is “back” — meaning it has the ability to carry out attacks in Western countries and hold territory the way it did a decade ago. While it’s difficult to say what ISIS-K or the core group might do next, recent events show that the threat of extremism isn’t gone.
</p>
<h3 id="PBwaFc">
What we know about ISIS and its affiliates now
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="IiPCgH">
ISIS is an extremist group that follows a fundamentalist version of Sunni Islam and grew out of Al Qaeda’s Iraqi affiliate following the US invasion there in 2003. It gained prominence, though, in 2014 when it captured large swaths of Iraq and Syria. That was central to the group’s primary goal: to establish a global caliphate — traditionally understood as an <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Caliphate">Islamic political and religious state</a> like the one that existed following the death of the prophet Muhammad, but which ISIS interpreted in a much more violent and repressive manner, especially when it came to women and religious minorities.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xk7XQL">
The nature of ISIS has always been somewhat diffuse; it has historically claimed <a href="https://understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/GLOBAL%20ROLLUP%20Update.pdf">attacks or groups</a>, like a splinter faction of <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/west-africa/nigeria/after-shekau-confronting-jihadists-nigerias-north-east">Boko Haram in northwestern Africa</a>, often referred to as ISWAP, that pledges its allegiance to the broader organization, even encouraging lone wolf actors to increase its reach.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mvj1Df">
“It’s much more about ‘taking the fight to our enemies,’ rather than focused on particularly the nuances of Islamic theology,” <a href="https://www.csis.org/people/daniel-byman">Daniel Byman</a>, senior fellow with the <a href="https://www.csis.org/programs/transnational-threats-project">Transnational Threats Project</a> at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Vox.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="esnsfW">
And that broad ideology incorporates political motivations as well as religious ones. So although according to ISIS the US, <a href="https://www.vox.com/israel">Israel</a>, Europe, Iran, and Russia are all “idolators,” or enemies based on religious affiliation, they’re also political adversaries. In other words, ISIS is predominantly interested in creating that global caliphate over which it maintains territorial, ideological, and political control.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LSqmHe">
Enter: ISIS-K.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="o5MONN">
The group was founded in 2014 or 2015 (around the same time as the core ISIS group rose to prominence) as <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/8/27/22643461/isis-k-kabul-airport-afghanistan-taliban">something of an offshoot of the original group</a>. It was also founded in opposition to the Taliban and made the case for a global caliphate, not a national emirate like the Taliban wanted — particularly, the control of the entire Khorasan region.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8sauVr">
The historical Khorasan region is important to Islam, and particularly Islamic jihadist and messianic tradition <a href="https://www.hudson.org/national-security-defense/prophecy-the-jihad-in-the-indian-subcontinent#footNote1">because of a teaching attributed to the Prophet Muhammad</a>, which claims that Muslims will fight non-believers in the region at the end of the world.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="AY87lI">
ISIS-K <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2015/02/islamic-state-in-afghanistan-start-of-a-turf-war/">has been fighting the Taliban since 2015</a> — a tension that really ramped up following the fall of Afghanistan’s elected government in August 2021 after the US withdrew.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8Q2GkA">
It has repeatedly attacked ethnic Hazara in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime — both as a repudiation of the minority group’s Shia ideology, but also to prove the Taliban’s poor handle on security in the country and its lack of willingness to protect minorities. The Taliban is also, according to ISIS-K, “just the natural successors to the Afghan Islamic Republic, and hence they are basically [allies] of all regional countries and of the United States [who are] all united to fight the Islamic State in Afghanistan and globally,” Valle said.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="77EmZ0">
But, again, given the group’s global focus, their conflict doesn’t stop with the Taliban.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UzdrFW">
Russia became another natural target, for example. That’s in part because the core ISIS group sees the country as responsible for its destruction, due to Russia and Iran’s role in propping up the Assad regime in Syria, especially as it regained control of ISIS’s former caliphate. (It doesn’t help that both the Assad regime and Iranian government are Shia.)
</p>
<h3 id="cuD6dF">
How to understand the ISIS threat now
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Y9qaWD">
What is clear, according to the experts Vox spoke to, is that ISIS is still well coordinated and capable of causing harm across the region.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pBSzvJ">
Take the latest attack in Russia, which was pulled off in Moscow amid a war:
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HZqDIx">
“All that points to some significant training,” said <a href="https://thesoufancenter.org/team/colin-p-clarke/">Colin Clarke</a>, an analyst at the Soufan Center. “This wasn’t an example of an incident where some [random] radicalized Central Asians living in Russia were sitting around on their phones, imbibing ISIS propaganda, and they decided to launch an attack of their own.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1cVMRn">
We don’t know exactly what the directives for last Friday’s attack might have looked like or how much the core group is instructing affiliates — so we might never know the breakdown of how exactly it happened. Russia has <a href="https://apnews.com/article/russia-moscow-krasnogorsk-gunmen-concert-hall-fire-b719cbe27d26207955fd423b1e3ddc68">released photos of the alleged attackers</a>, but the exact order of operations and planning is unlikely to come out any time soon, both because of the nature of Russian propaganda and the groups themselves.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="06SIc9">
More broadly: It’s difficult to tell how connected ISIS-K and other affiliates are to the core ISIS group, and to what extent the affiliates take direction from the core and coordinate with each other to carry out attacks.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="O561YG">
“These groups are basically fluid, they are not armies, they are not states,” Valle said. “So they move in a fluid manner. So we cannot [distinguish] from one to the other so sharply; sometimes people work with different entities and networks.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gSHHCf">
But in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan where ISIS-K trains and operates, there’s very little ability for the Taliban — let alone the international community — to monitor or threaten the group.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XHYyWi">
“Afghanistan has been a free-for-all” since the US withdrawal in 2021, Clarke said. “The US probably still has decent signals intelligence … but probably almost no human intelligence. And that’s gonna lead to some blind spots naturally. And so I think we don’t know a lot about what’s been going on in Afghanistan, clearly.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0x8odb">
Though Western intelligence services adapted to the ISIS threat in the mid-2010s, Clarke noted that the world’s attention had turned away from those kinds of terror threats. “Now, it’s all about great power competition, <a href="https://www.vox.com/china">China</a>, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2023/4/28/23702644/artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-technology">artificial intelligence</a>, all these other things,” he said. “There’s a certain sense of terrorism fatigue, after 20 years of the global war on terrorism, people don’t want to think about it. They don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want to prepare for it.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rH7G4A">
But ISIS, and ISIS-K in particular, haven’t stopped training and planning just because the Western world stopped paying attention. The group’s bold and well-coordinated attack in Moscow, as well as the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/kerman-us-warning-isisk-bombings-bcb47f04165b3eb7b9bc7b4868c8399c">ISIS-K attack in Iran in January</a>, indicate that at least some affiliates possess the capabilities, funding, and motivation to inflict significant casualties and serious damage on their perceived enemies.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4TcZUG">
And though the threat is diminished compared to the height of ISIS’s power in the mid-2010s, the overall terror threat is “in absolute terms, I would say it’s pretty high,” Valle said. Specifically, there is “risk that something similar or to a lesser extent — still dangerous — can happen also in Europe, and this is because in the last months of 2023 and the first months of 2024, several cells and local networks of militants were dismantled in Europe, in Austria, Germany, Netherlands, and the UK.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uXQVbP">
Indeed, both Italian and French authorities <a href="https://apnews.com/article/europe-italy-france-security-moscow-attack-d81b3f768a505e5b0f1a2369d705eab5">ramped up security following the attacks in Moscow</a>. Both countries have major cultural events upcoming — Holy Week celebrations in Italy and the Summer <a href="https://www.vox.com/olympics">Olympics</a> in Paris. ISIS-K has a pattern of attacking large cultural events, including <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/13/world/asia/shiite-mosque-attack-afghanistan.html">mosques during prayers in Afghanistan</a> and a memorial service for assassinated Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani in Iran earlier this year.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uLaJd9">
But it’s important to note that European counterterror services are much more capable of detecting these kinds of threats than they were a decade ago. And US intelligence knew about the Iran and Moscow attacks before they happened, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/22/world/europe/isis-moscow-attack-concert-hall.html">warning both countries of the threats</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3ytOvo">
None of that is to say that a terror attack on a Western country is impossible, but the US and Europe are better equipped for one than a decade ago.
</p></li>
<li><strong>AI already uses as much energy as a small country. It’s only the beginning.</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="An illustration of a lush mountainous landscape is partially covered by black shapes simulating a glitching screen. AI chat bubbles are scattered within the black shape. A large red exclamation point is in the center of the image." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/rnuoHBS_MEZNYVZrR-P2Fe7jzh4=/107x0:1814x1280/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73238351/AIClimate_Lede_Pvickers.0.png"/>
<figcaption>
Paige Vickers/Vox; Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The energy needed to support data storage is expected to double by 2026. You can do something to stop it.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7B3QUt">
In January, the International Energy Agency (IEA) issued its <a href="https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/6b2fd954-2017-408e-bf08-952fdd62118a/Electricity2024-Analysisandforecastto2026.pdf">forecast</a> for global energy use over the next two years. Included for the first time were projections for electricity consumption associated with data centers, <a href="https://www.vox.com/crypto">cryptocurrency</a>, and <a href="https://www.vox.com/2023/4/28/23702644/artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-technology">artificial intelligence</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UndU0P">
The IEA estimates that, added together, this usage represented almost 2 percent of global energy demand in 2022 — and that demand for these uses could double by 2026, which would make it roughly equal to the amount of electricity used by the entire country of Japan.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1mOHUp">
We live in the digital age, where many of the processes that guide our lives are hidden from us inside computer code. We are watched by machines behind the scenes that bill us when we cross toll bridges, guide us across the internet, and deliver us music we didn’t even know we wanted. All of this takes material to build and run — plastics, metals, wiring, water — and all of that comes with costs. Those costs require trade-offs.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0weD9A">
None of these trade-offs is as important as in energy. As the world heats up toward increasingly dangerous temperatures, we need to conserve as much energy as we can get to lower the amount of climate-heating gases we put into the air.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fpvb1z">
That’s why the IEA’s numbers are so important, and why we need to demand more transparency and greener AI going forward. And it’s why right now we need to be conscientious consumers of new technologies, understanding that every bit of data we use, save, or generate has a real-world cost.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wBWbhy">
One of the areas with the fastest-growing demand for energy is the form of machine learning called generative AI, which requires a lot of energy for training and a lot of energy for producing answers to queries. Training a large language model like OpenAI’s GPT-3, for example, <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/2211.02001.pdf">uses</a> nearly 1,300 megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity, the annual consumption of about <a href="https://www.theverge.com/24066646/ai-electricity-energy-watts-generative-consumption">130 US homes</a>. According to the IEA, a single Google search takes 0.3 watt-hours of electricity, while a ChatGPT request takes 2.9 watt-hours. (An incandescent light bulb draws an average of <a href="https://www.energysage.com/electricity/house-watts/how-many-watts-does-a-light-bulb-use/">60 watt-hours </a>of juice.) If ChatGPT were integrated into the 9 billion searches done each day, the IEA says, the electricity demand would increase by 10 terawatt=hours a year — the amount <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy">consumed</a> by about 1.5 million <a href="https://www.vox.com/european-union">European Union</a> residents.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SEBnSh">
I recently spoke with <a href="https://huggingface.co/sasha">Sasha Luccioni</a>, lead climate researcher at an AI company called Hugging Face, which provides an open-source online platform for the machine learning community that supports the collaborative, ethical use of artificial intelligence. Luccioni has researched AI for more than a decade, and she understands how data storage and machine learning contribute to <a href="https://www.vox.com/climate">climate change</a> and energy consumption — and are set to contribute even more in the future.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XXDoh4">
I asked her what any of us can do to be better consumers of this ravenous technology. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
</p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="dnHWbO"/>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JZywJ8">
<strong>Brian Calvert</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4BXG8k">
AI seems to be everywhere. I’ve been in meetings where people joke that our machine overlords might be listening. What exactly is artificial intelligence? Why is it getting so much attention? And why should we worry about it right now — not in some distant future?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pGmcAC">
<strong>Sasha Luccioni </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xloq6l">
Artificial intelligence has actually been around as a field since the ’50s, and it’s gone through various “AI winters” and “AI summers.” Every time some new technique or approach gets developed, people get very excited about it, and then, inevitably, it ends up disappointing people, triggering an AI winter.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="az5qOU">
We’re going through a bit of an AI summer when it comes to generative AI. We should definitely stay critical and reflect upon whether or not we should be using AI, or generative AI specifically, in applications where it wasn’t used before.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="nrClGR">
<strong>Brian Calvert</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8EtVRN">
What do we know about the energy costs of this hot AI summer?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jhVXVw">
<strong>Sasha Luccioni </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mNh658">
It’s really hard to say. With an appliance, you plug it into your socket and you know what energy grid it’s using and roughly how much energy it’s using. But with AI, it’s distributed. When you’re doing a Google Maps query, or you’re talking to ChatGPT, you don’t really know where the process is running. And there’s really no transparency with regard to AI deployment.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="k8xKgT">
From <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/01/1084189/making-an-image-with-generative-ai-uses-as-much-energy-as-charging-your-phone/">my own research</a>, what I’ve found is that switching from a nongenerative, good old-fashioned quote-unquote AI approach to a generative one can use 30 to 40 times more energy for the exact same task. So, it’s adding up, and we’re definitely seeing the big-picture repercussions.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XZABiq">
<strong>Brian Calvert</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bVEzvf">
So, in material terms, we’ve got a lot of data, we’re storing a lot of data, we’ve got language models, we’ve got models that need to learn, and that takes energy and chips. What kind of things need to be built to support all this, and what are the environmental real-world impacts that this adds to our society?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cBt6SE">
<strong>Sasha Luccioni</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tkKxTo">
Static data storage [like thumb drives] doesn’t, relatively speaking, consume that much energy. But the thing is that nowadays, we’re storing more and more data. You can search your Google Drive at any moment. So, connected storage — storage that’s connected to the internet — does consume more energy, compared to nonconnected storage.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="qIlZLe">
Training AI models consumes energy. Essentially you’re taking whatever data you want to train your model on and running it through your model like <em>thousands</em> of times. It’s going to be something like a thousand chips running for a thousand hours. Every generation of GPUs — the specialized chips for training AI models — tends to consume more energy than the previous generation.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Co6NX8">
They’re more powerful, but they’re also more energy intensive. And people are using more and more of them because they want to train bigger and bigger AI models. It’s kind of this vicious circle. When you deploy AI models, you have to have them always on. ChatGPT is never off.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eQrEw3">
<strong>Brian Calvert </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xwQPaO">
Then, of course, there’s also a cooling process. We’ve all felt our phones heat up, or had to move off the couch with our laptops — which are never truly on our laps for long. Servers at data centers also heat up. Can you explain a little bit how they are cooled down?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MUO7dz">
<strong>Sasha Luccioni</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Xeg3if">
With a GPU, or with any kind of data center, the more intensely it runs, the more heat it’s going to emit. And so in order to cool those data centers down, there’s different kinds of techniques. Sometimes it’s air cooling, but majoritarily, it’s essentially circulating water. And so as these data centers get more and more dense, they also need more cooling, and so that uses <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/why-ai-so-thirsty-data-centers-use-massive-amounts-water-1882374">more and more water</a>.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="DrJPdK">
<strong>Brian Calvert </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tYHxGW">
We have an AI summer, and we have some excitement and some hype. But we also have the possibility of things scaling up quite a bit. How might AI data centers be different from the data centers that we already live with? What challenges will that present from an ecological or environmental perspective going forward?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wJGydp">
<strong>Sasha Luccioni </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="daUgLc">
Data centers need a lot of energy to run, especially the hyperscale ones that AI tends to run on. And they need to have reliable sources of energy.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ar1nAh">
So, often they’re built in places where you have <a href="https://www.vox.com/fossil-fuels">nonrenewable energy sources</a>, like natural gas-generated energy or coal-generated energy, where you flip a switch and the energy is there. It’s harder to do that with solar or wind, because there’s often weather factors and things like that. And so what we’ve seen is that the big data centers are built in places where the grid is relatively carbon intensive.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ahTTN4">
<strong>Brian Calvert</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9LzG2g">
What kinds of practices and policies should we be considering to either slow AI down or green it up?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kKGxSe">
<strong>Sasha Luccioni </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rDmpOd">
I think that we should be providing information so that people can make choices, at a minimum. Eventually being able to choose a model, for example, that is more energy efficient, if that’s something that people care about, or that was trained on noncopyrighted data. Something I’m working on now is kind of an Energy Star rating for AI models. Maybe some people don’t care, but other people will choose a more efficient model.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iZy49R">
<strong>Brian Calvert</strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pf1fjg">
What should I think about before upgrading my data plan? Or why should I hold off on asking AI to solve my kid’s math homework? What should any of us consider before getting more gadgetry or getting more involved with a learned machine?
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jtJDNl">
<strong>Sasha Luccioni </strong>
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XhK7vo">
In France, they have this term, “<a href="https://www.culture.gouv.fr/en/Thematic/Ecological-transition/Adopting-digital-sobriety-in-the-management-of-cultural-structures">digital sobriety</a>.” Digital sobriety could be part of the actions that people can take as 21st-century consumers and users of this technology. I’m definitely not against having a smartphone or using AI, but asking yourself, “Do I need this new gadget?” “Do I really need to use ChatGPT for generating recipes?” “Do I need to be able to talk to my fridge or can I just, you know, open the door and look inside?” Things like that, right? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it with generative AI.
</p></li>
<li><strong>The slow death of Twitter is measured in disasters like the Baltimore bridge collapse</strong> -
<figure>
<img alt="A cargo ship in the water with a piece of a bridge broken across its bow." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/XdDLf46yPo2Q8E0WZoxZ4AWiUIw=/653x0:5881x3921/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73238311/2117494777.0.jpg"/>
<figcaption>
Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed after being struck by a cargo ship on March 26. | Scott Olson/Getty Images
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Twitter, now X, was once a useful site for breaking news. The Baltimore bridge collapse shows those days are long gone.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5w4aUZ">
Line up a few years’ worth of tragedies and disasters, and the online conversations about them will reveal their patterns.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FJzN5B">
The same <a href="https://archive.is/gvOL9">conspiracy-theory-peddling</a> personalities who spammed X with posts claiming that Tuesday’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/2024/3/26/24112776/baltimore-bridge-collapse-francis-scott-key-maryland-cargo-ship-explainer-analysis">Baltimore bridge collapse </a>was a deliberate attack have also called mass shootings “false flag” events and <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/andrew-tate-tucker-carlson-ukraine-covid-b2373786.html">denied basic facts </a>about the <a href="https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-covid19">Covid-19 pandemic</a>. A Florida Republican running for Congress <a href="https://archive.is/QLoKA">blamed “DEI” </a>for the bridge collapse as racist comments <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/180134/fox-news-racist-conspiracy-theory-baltimore-key-bridge-collapse">about immigration</a> and Baltimore <a href="https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1772694080239063284">Mayor Brandon Scott</a> circulated among the far right. These comments echo Trump in 2019, who called Baltimore a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” and, in 2015, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/i-would-fix-it-fast-in-2015-trump-criticized-obama-for-not-doing-enough-to-help-baltimore/2019/07/29/d202ade2-b207-11e9-8f6c-7828e68cb15f_story.html">blamed</a> President Obama for the unrest in the city.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6Jjy6q">
As conspiracy theorists compete for attention in the wake of a tragedy, others seek engagement through <a href="https://www.garbageday.email/p/ceos-want-podcasters-now">dubious </a><a href="https://www.404media.co/baltimore-amateur-bridge-engineers-have-logged-on/">expertise</a>, juicy speculation, or stolen video clips. The boundary between <a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/10/12/23913472/misinformation-israel-hamas-war-social-media-literacy-palestine">conspiracy theory and engagement bait is permeable</a>; unfounded and provoking posts often outpace the trickle of verified information that follows any sort of major breaking news event. Then, the conspiracy theories become content, and a lot of people marvel and express outrage that they exist. Then they kind of forget about the raging river of Bad Internet until the next national tragedy.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cVBXyh">
I’ve seen it so many times. I became a breaking news reporter in 2012, which means that in internet years, I have the experience of an almost ancient entity. The collapse of the Francis Scott Key bridge into the Patapsco River, though, felt a little different from most of these moments for me, for two reasons.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zvOZRj">
First, it was happening after a few big shifts in what the internet even is, as <a href="https://www.vox.com/twitter">Twitter</a>, once a go-to space for following breaking news events, became an <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/15/1065013/twitter-brain-death/">Elon Musk-owned factory</a> for verified accounts with bad ideas, while <a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/24079459/sora-openai-video-tool-world-simulator">generative AI tools </a>have superpowered grifters wanting to make plausible text and visual fabrications. And second, I live in Baltimore. People I know commute on that bridge, which forms part of the city’s Beltway. Some of the <a href="https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/community/transportation/key-bridge-collapse-YDNMRSLMDREE7ADUZJQFQJ3WDA/">workers who fell,</a> now presumed dead, lived in a neighborhood across the park from me.
</p>
<h3 id="MJrH3P">
The local cost of global misinformation
</h3>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="G9JOxt">
On Tuesday evening, I called <a href="https://twitter.com/LisaESnowden">Lisa Snowden</a>, the editor-in-chief of the <a href="https://baltimorebeat.com/">Baltimore Beat</a><em> —</em> the city’s Black-owned alt-weekly — and an influential presence in Baltimore’s still pretty active X community. I wanted to talk about how following breaking news online has changed over time.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6vVhaO">
Snowden was up during the <a href="https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/baltimore/key-bridge-collapse-ship-pilot-LKDWFY237JFR5NCR7KXZIWRDVA/">early morning hours </a>when the bridge collapsed. Baltimore’s X presence is small enough that journalists like her generally know who the other journalists are working in the city, especially those reporting on Baltimore itself. Almost as soon as news broke about the bridge, though, she saw accounts she’d never heard of before speaking with authority about what had happened, sharing unsourced video, and speculating about the cause.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2YJAJw">
Over the next several hours, the misinformation and racism about Baltimore snowballed on X. For Snowden, this felt a bit like an invasion into a community that had so far survived the slow death of what was once Twitter by simply staying out of the spotlight.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HHIkrU">
“Baltimore Twitter, it’s usually not as bad,” Snowden said. She sticks to the people she follows. “But today I noticed that was pretty much impossible. It got extremely racist. And I was seeing other folks in Baltimore also being like, ‘This might be what sends me finally off this app.’”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EAp7sx">
Here are some of the tweets that got attention in the hours after the collapse: Paul Szypula, a MAGA <a href="https://www.vox.com/influencers">influencer</a> with more than 100,000 followers on X, <a href="https://archive.is/jhmGL">tweeted</a> “Synergy Marine Group [the company that owned the ship in question] promotes DEI in their company. Did anti-white business practices cause this disaster?” alongside a screenshot of a page on the company’s website that discussed the existence of a diversity and inclusion policy.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BzDQg6">
That tweet got more than 600,000 views. Another far-right influencer speculated that there was some connection between the collapse and, I guess, Barack Obama? I don’t know. <a href="https://archive.is/mZSRg">The tweet</a> got 5 million views as of mid-day Wednesday.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="W4XYRg">
Being online during a tragic event is full of consequential nonsense like this, ideas and conspiracy theories that are inane enough to fall into the fog of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2017/06/23/the-three-old-rules-that-explain-basically-the-entire-internet-in-2017/">Poe’s Law</a> and yet harmful to actual people and painful to see in particular when it’s your community being turned into views. Sure, there are<a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/10/12/23913472/misinformation-israel-hamas-war-social-media-literacy-palestine"> best practices you can follow</a> to try to contribute to a better information ecosystem in these moments. Those practices matter. But for Snowden, the main thing she can do as her newsroom gets to work reporting on the impact of this disaster on the community here is to let time march on.
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="iHCp64">
“In a couple days, this terrible racist mob, or whatever it is, is going to be onto something else,” Snowden said. “ Baltimore … people are still going to need things. Everybody’s still going to be working. So I’m just kind of waiting it out,” she said “But it does hurt.”
</p>
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="z9qoua">
<em>A version of this story was published in the Vox Technology newsletter. </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/pages/newsletters"><em><strong>Sign up here</strong></em></a><em> so you don’t miss the next one!</em>
</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>Field Of Dreams and Juliette catch the eye</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>Sharfuddoula Ibne Shahid first Bangladesh umpire to enter ICC elite panel, Nitin Menon enters fifth year</strong> - ICC Elite Panel of Match Referees has been reduced from seven members to six, with Chris Broad not included in the panel for 2024-25.</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>Cricket Australia drops David Warner, Marcus Stoinis, Ashton Agar from central contracts list 2024-25</strong> - Pacers Xavier Bartlett and Nathan Ellis are among those who have been offered contracts for the first time.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>IPL-17: RCB vs KKR | Bengaluru, Kolkata eye course correction to add momentum to campaign</strong> - The Royal Challengers defeated Punjab Kings by four wickets, while the Knight Riders elbowed out Sunrisers Hyderabad by four runs to garner some early points.</p></li>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>IPL 17’s opening day registers record-breaking viewership: Broadcaster</strong> - Disney Star, the official broadcaster, said the opening day also registered a watch-time of 1276 crore minutes – the highest-ever for the first day of any season</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>University of Hyderabad signs pact with NMDC to make ‘green’ steel</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>Embassy in close touch with Indians onboard ship in U.S., local authorities: MEA</strong> - During his weekly media briefing, MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that “the Indian crew members are in good shape, good health.”</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>Box culvert being constructed near Ooty causing traffic snarls</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>‘Aadujeevitham – The Goat Life’ movie review: Prithviraj’s performance drives a survival drama that borders on monotony</strong> - If hard work were the sole benchmark for a film, ‘Aadujeevitham’ would rank right up there among the best</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>No change in trade policy with India: Pakistan</strong> -</p></li>
</ul>
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
<ul>
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>France to sue teen in headscarf row with school head</strong> - The girl’s false allegations about her headmaster led to death threats and his sudden resignation.</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>Battle to run Istanbul becomes key to Turkey’s future</strong> - Millions of Turks vote on Sunday, and President Erdogan hopes to regain control of Turkey’s biggest city.</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>Prosecutors seek two-year jail term for Rubiales kiss</strong> - Spain’s ex-football boss could go to prison because of a non-consensual kiss at the Women’s World Cup.</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>After Moscow attack, migrants from Central Asia hit by backlash</strong> - Migrants in Russia reported an uptick in xenophobia after Moscow said Tajiks were behind last week’s attacks.</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>Ireland to intervene in ICJ case against Israel</strong> - The court has been asked to consider whether Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians.</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>The Delta IV Heavy, a rocket whose time has come and gone, will fly once more</strong> - The final Delta IV Heavy rocket is scheduled to launch Thursday, weather permitting. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=2012923">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Thousands of servers hacked in ongoing attack targeting Ray AI framework</strong> - Researchers say it’s the first known in-the-wild attack targeting AI workloads. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=2013046">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Quantum computing progress: Higher temps, better error correction</strong> - Amazon, IBM, and traditional silicon makers all working toward error correction. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=2013053">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Oregon governor signs nation’s first right-to-repair bill that bans parts pairing</strong> - Starting in 2025, devices can’t block repair parts with software pairing checks. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=2013030">link</a></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Puerto Rico declares public health emergency as dengue cases rise</strong> - Cases so far are up 140 percent compared to this point last year. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=2013036">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>I once hooked up with a Japanese porn star…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
…but it was a total blur.
</p>
</div>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Cookie3nCream"> /u/Cookie3nCream </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1bppntv/i_once_hooked_up_with_a_japanese_porn_star/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1bppntv/i_once_hooked_up_with_a_japanese_porn_star/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What do you call a lesbian orgy?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
A whole shebang.
</p>
</div>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/BigMartin58"> /u/BigMartin58 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1bpm39z/what_do_you_call_a_lesbian_orgy/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1bpm39z/what_do_you_call_a_lesbian_orgy/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>When women sleep with a ton of dudes, she’s empowered, but…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
when us guys do it, it’s gay all of a sudden
</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Nostalgic-Banter"> /u/Nostalgic-Banter </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1bphh5r/when_women_sleep_with_a_ton_of_dudes_shes/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1bphh5r/when_women_sleep_with_a_ton_of_dudes_shes/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What’s the difference between a prostitute and Jesus?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
The sound they make when you’re nailing them. Happy Easter you filthy degenerates.
</p>
</div>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Cookie3nCream"> /u/Cookie3nCream </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1bppm8h/whats_the_difference_between_a_prostitute_and/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1bppm8h/whats_the_difference_between_a_prostitute_and/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>How many perverts does it take to put in a light bulb?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
<div class="md">
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
Just one, but it takes the entire emergency room to get it out.
</p>
</div>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/G1ngerBoy"> /u/G1ngerBoy </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1bp0xsg/how_many_perverts_does_it_take_to_put_in_a_light/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1bp0xsg/how_many_perverts_does_it_take_to_put_in_a_light/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
</ul>
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