Tag Archives: demise

DNA Analysis Uncovers the True Cause Behind the Demise of Napoleon’s Army in 1812

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Napoleon’s retreat from Russia in 1812 Ary Scheffer

Iandagnall Computing / Alamy Stock Photo

During the retreat of Napoleon’s formidable 500,000-strong army from Russia in 1812, nearly half of the troops fell victim to disease, starvation, and freezing temperatures. Recent advanced DNA analysis is shedding light on the pathogens involved in this tragic demise.

In the summer of 1812, Napoleon amassed an army of 600,000 to invade Russia but was compelled to withdraw from Moscow, depleting the city of resources, and retreat toward the Polish border for the winter. From October to December 1812, around 300,000 French soldiers perished from famine, exposure, and illness.

Survivor accounts from that era indicate that typhoid fever and trench fever were leading causes of mortality and suffering among the troops, a premise that was further validated by genetic testing conducted nearly two decades ago.

Recently, Nicholas Rascovan and his team at the Pasteur Institute in Paris analyzed DNA extracted from the teeth of 13 soldiers interred in Vilnius, Lithuania.

The research team identified the presence of Salmonella enterica, which triggers peritoneal fever, and Borrelia recurrentis, a louse-borne pathogen that leads to recurrent fever.

Unlike earlier studies that relied on methods to amplify specific DNA sequences, Rascovan and his colleagues utilized advanced metagenomic techniques to detect genetic material from pathogens in the samples, allowing for a more extensive analysis.

“Considering our findings, it is plausible that the deaths of these soldiers were due to a combination of various illnesses, including fatigue, colds, lactophoreal fever, and louse-borne recurrent fever,” Rascovan and his team noted in an unpublished report. The team opted not to comment further on the story.

While not always lethal, louse-borne recurrent fever can considerably debilitate individuals who are already in a weakened state, according to the researchers.

Sally Wasef from the Queensland Institute of Technology in Australia opines that historical accounts of symptoms may correspond to multiple infectious diseases beyond those identified in the recent study.

Traces of microbial DNA were isolated from ancient remains, according to Wasef. “In my opinion, this implies that the conclusions drawn are more suggestive than definitive.”

Rascovan and his colleagues also acknowledge the necessity of examining a greater number of soldiers who perished during 1812.

The research underscores the potential of novel methodologies to identify possible infectious agents in historical populations, Wasef explains. She advocates for applying these techniques to study diseases in populations post-contact in regions like the US or Australia.

“Such research holds great promise for uncovering the impact of disease on historical population declines, particularly when written records are sparse or biased,” states Wasef.

topic:

  • Archaeology/
  • Infectious diseases

Source: www.newscientist.com

The heat proves too much for even the hardy desert plants, leading to their demise.

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summary

  • Increasingly frequent and intense heat waves in the Southwest are damaging some of the desert plants known to thrive in harsh conditions.
  • Saguaro cacti and agaves were damaged by the extreme heat this summer and last.
  • Ecologists are working to understand how different species respond to prolonged heatwaves and pinpoint how hot is too hot for them.

LAS VEGAS — On a sun-dappled stretch of West Charleston Boulevard, Norm Schilling parked his truck on the side of the road just to check out his favorite tree.

Schilling, a local horticulturist and owner of a landscape company and garden shop called Mojave Bloom Nursery, rescued the African sumac decades ago after its branches froze and died during an unusually frosty winter. Careful pruning helped the tree survive, but this summer, it faces a new danger: Months of intense heat have dried out the branches, causing the droopy leaves to die in clumps.

This is a seemingly counterintuitive question: the Southwest is accustomed to sweltering heat, and desert plants and trees are drought- and heat-tolerant. Dry, harsh environments are exactly where desert plants and trees thrive.

But as climate change makes heat waves more frequent, intense, and long-lasting, experts say increasingly harsh conditions are testing some iconic desert plants known for their resilience, including saguaro cacti and agaves.

“This summer we’ve seen damage to plants that previously didn’t show heat stress,” Schilling said.

Sun-bleached mock-orange shrub leaves, photographed Aug. 23. Brown spots indicate areas of damaged tissue.
Dennis Chou/NBC

As we drove through Las Vegas, he pointed out the results.

A magnolia shrub in a quiet residential neighborhood was sunburned, its shiny leaf tissue bleached and damaged in places by the sun. On another street, two mulberry trees were dying, likely because they weren’t getting enough water to survive the heat. Around the corner, a large juniper tree was showing signs of “severe decline,” Schilling said, with brown, dead leaves still hanging from its dead branches, evidence that the heat damage was recent.

“That juniper is probably close to 40 or 50 years old. It’s a magnificent tree, but it will soon die,” he said, patting and kissing its rough trunk.

Norm Schilling surveys the deaths of juniper trees in Las Vegas on August 23.
Dennis Chou/NBC

Then, a few blocks away, there was a row of succulents known as gopher spurge, parts of which looked burnt, branches yellowed with dried sap splayed out in all directions.

“This species is very dependable and very common throughout the valley,” Schilling said, “and some of the plants here are getting to the point where they’re not likely to recover.”

Las Vegas has already broken several heat records this summer, including the hottest day on record when temperatures reached 120 degrees Fahrenheit on July 7. Then, seven consecutive days of temperatures above 115 degrees Fahrenheit were recorded. For most of June, July, and August, temperatures remained in the triple digits with little cooling at night.

“The heat we’re seeing right now is a new paradigm. It’s like the ground is shifting beneath our feet,” Schilling said.

Ecologists across the Southwest are studying how different species respond to the annual heatwaves, trying to understand how hot is too hot for desert plants and trees.

Kevin Hultin, director of research at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, studies the effects of heat stress on ecosystems in the Sonoran Desert. He and his colleagues have been tracking an uptick in saguaro cactus mortality that began in 2020 when the state was in the midst of its worst years-long drought and hasn’t slowed down.

“The summer of 2020 was the hottest on record until last year, and we saw a lot of deaths,” Hultin said. “We’ve been seeing deaths ever since, and we’ve seen an accelerated pace of deaths in 2023.”

Source: www.nbcnews.com

The demise of Kotaku, Lifehacker, and Gizmodo: Are we witnessing the death of Australian games journalism?

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IIn 2006, I was fired from my job at EB Games. Looking back, it was a justified decision. One Sunday, I recorded myself leaping over piles of boxes and making inappropriate gestures at strangers. This grainy video of an emo kid in dark clothes was uploaded to YouTube. Ahh, the foolishness of youth.

About eight months later, my manager came across the video and promptly terminated my employment (which today might just go viral on TikTok).

A decade later, I secured a job at the video game and culture website Kotaku Australia, along with its sister sites Lifehacker and Gizmodo, which kickstarted my career.

Now, these well-known brands are no more. Nine’s Pedestrian Group, which held the licensing rights for the three titles from their US counterparts, announced the closure of all three, in addition to Vice and Refinery29, resulting in 40 job losses.

Terrifying months continue for Australian journalismRecent cutbacks include 200 job losses at Nine, 150 at Seven West Media, and significant restructuring at News Corp. While any job losses are regrettable, the shuttering of Kotaku, Gizmodo, and Lifehacker marks a grim day for Australian tech journalism with lasting repercussions.

For video game journalism in Australia, this feels like the end of an era—a catastrophic event. Where once vibrant video game journalism thrived, there now exists a vast void.

Most mainstream Australian publications have journalists covering technology, arts, books, music, entertainment, and sports, but as far as I am aware, none have dedicated video game journalists on staff.

Despite this, there is a significant demand for video game content in Australia. According to Bond University’s Australian Games Report, 81% of Australians play games, with the average player age being 35. With a majority of players falling between 18 and 40 years old, and nearly half of them being female, Australians are projected to spend $4.4 billion on games in 2023.

Video games have also permeated other media forms, from successful movie adaptations to popular series on streaming platforms like Netflix and Apple. The cultural impact of video games is undeniable, yet journalism has struggled to keep pace due to a lack of support and funding.

Video game journalism extends beyond news and reviews, encompassing cultural and business aspects such as lifestyle articles, investigations into the impact of gaming on health, and coverage of the business side of game development studios.

Journalists have been dubbed the authors of history’s first draft, but little has been documented about video games in Australia due to insufficient support. While some independent websites and blogs valiantly cover this space, the closure of mainstream outlets like Kotaku leaves a significant void.

How can we reverse this trend?

The immediate solution lies in major Australian media outlets recognizing the untapped potential in video game journalism. The closure of Kotaku Australia could spell disaster for this field, but it also presents an opportunity for rebirth. Talented individuals are out there, waiting for a chance to shine. All it takes is someone to take that leap of faith.

Furthermore, government initiatives like the Australian Government’s Digital Games Tax Credit and state-based funding for game development can serve as pillars of support for both developers and journalists. These programs have nurtured successful titles in the past and could also aid in bolstering independent games journalism.

And then there’s you, the reader. Your direct support and engagement with journalist-owned websites, like aftermath—founded by a former Kotaku US reporter—show that there is a hunger for quality video game content. Establishing a direct relationship with readers could pave the way for sustainable journalism in Australia.

While I may have left Kotaku in 2017, the closures of these outlets hit close to home. Losing my job at EB Games in 2006 felt like the end of the world, but someone took a chance on me, and I want to see the same happen for video game journalism.

Jackson Ryan is an award-winning science and video games journalist and President of the Australian Science Journalists Association.

Source: www.theguardian.com

Bad luck, not inbreeding, led to the demise of the last mammoths on Earth

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Artist’s impression of the last mammoth

Beth Zaiken

About 10,000 years ago, a handful of woolly mammoths washed up on an island off the Siberian coast in the Russian Arctic. Over the next few thousand years, this small group of perhaps eight animals grew into a stable population of 200-300 animals before going extinct about 4,000 years ago. These mammoths are the last known population of woolly mammals on Earth, and may have survived into modern times but for some bad luck.

The history of these mammoths has been clarified through genetic research. Love Darren A team from Stockholm University in Sweden and their colleagues looked at DNA from 14 mammoths from Wrangel Island and seven from the mainland, dating back to before melting ice sheets caused sea levels to rise and isolate them, covering a combined genetic history of 50,000 years.

The researchers’ analysis found that despite the small population, inbreeding wasn’t the cause of the mammoth’s extinction: While small genetic mutations accumulated, Dallen said, the population was good at eliminating larger, harmful ones.

“We can demonstrate that it’s unlikely that inbreeding or genetic disease caused the population to slowly decline and go extinct,” he said. “Despite the inbreeding, the population did well.”

Mammoth tusk found on Wrangel Island

Love Darren

But the team found that individual mammoths were affected by genetic diseases, and that this negative impact at the individual level had been ongoing for thousands of years. “This means that today’s endangered species, which in most cases were at risk of extinction until very recently, are likely to continue to suffer from genetic diseases for hundreds of generations to come,” says Dallen.

Dallen points to the Tasmanian devil as an example of a species that became isolated on a large island after mainland populations became extinct, leading to reduced genetic diversity. This in turn affects the immune system, Dallen says, which puts the species at greater risk of population decline when faced with new pathogens, such as the facial tumour disease that attacks Tasmanian devils.

“Natural selection appears to have been effective in eliminating potentially lethal mutations, but other, less severe mutations gradually increased,” they said. Adrian Lister At the Natural History Museum, London.

“We’re not sure whether this led to eventual extinction, but it’s possible that, combined with environmental changes, it did,” Lister said. “There are lessons here for monitoring the genetic health of endangered species today.”

The exact cause of the mammoths’ extinction is unknown, but interestingly, Wrangel Island contained freshwater lakes and rivers, which suggests that the mammoths may have been able to survive longer than similarly isolated groups that became extinct 5,600 years ago due to drought.

“Diseases, short-term weather events, tundra fires — all of these are thought to be random events,” Dallen says. “Because they’re random, they’re not inevitable. So if they hadn’t happened, the mammoths might have survived to this day, assuming humans hadn’t killed them when they arrived on Wrangel Island.”

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Source: www.newscientist.com

Strange Alien Planet Indicates Earth’s Survival After Sun’s Demise

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Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library

When I found out the date of the end of the Earth, everything seemed so simple. Five billion years from now, the solar system will have changed dramatically. Instead of the gentle presence we are accustomed to, the sun will become a behemoth, hundreds of times larger than it is today. In the process, it will wipe out the rocky inner planets, including our own.

Or will it be? We recently witnessed the death stages of another star for the first time. And miraculously, it seems some planets will be able to survive this apocalyptic era. Observations like these call into question the story of how the Earth will die, and give us hope that somehow the Earth may outlast the Sun. Even if it doesn’t, all is not lost. The study also provides clues as to where humans might best seek refuge.

How does the sun die?

The sun is powered by nuclear fusion. In nuclear fusion, hydrogen atoms fuse into helium, releasing a huge amount of energy in the process. However, the fate of our star is determined by one fact. This means that the supply of hydrogen is limited. As this energy begins to deplete, in about another 5 billion years, the Sun’s internal structure will change and it will expand to about 200 times its current size. It will change from the current yellow dwarf to a red giant. After another billion years, the star shrinks and expands again, before disappearing and becoming a stellar corpse called a white dwarf.

As it grows…

Source: www.newscientist.com